The smoke swirled up into the air as the two women stood on the balcony of the penthouse, where the wake was being held.

“He was quiet when he fucked you. Right to the end. And then he…”

“Made a soft adorable moan in your ear, right when he came.”

“Yeah.”

“And sometimes, he drooled a little bit and his body shook.”

“If he came hard, yeah. But always so quiet, I could barely hear him breathing or anything.”

“Yes. I sometimes tried hard to be quiet so I could hear something, a sharp intake of breath, or a wee gasp, but it was nothing. Just silent, and thrusting, with a blank face like he was staring at the wall.”

“I asked him once why.”

“Yeah, me too. He said he wasn’t aware he had to make faces to have sex.”

“I asked him if it felt good once. He said, ‘Well I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t feel good.’ And I then replied. ‘You never look like you’re enjoying it.”

“What did he say then?”

“Just shrugged.”

“Charlie was one of a kind.”

“Yeah, I’ll miss him.”

“Me too.”

“We should go back inside.”

“Probably.”

“When was the last time you fucked him?”

They were stomping out cigarette butts, preparing to go back inside, but letting the smoke swirl around them a bit longer before they left the crisp cold air of the February afternoon.

“I don’t know, must have been about six months, maybe seven? You?”

“Six weeks.”

“Isn’t that when you learned you were …”

“Yep.”

“Pity.”

“I’m gonna hafta disappear, Freida, I can’t stay here, not with everyone … being the way they are about how …”

“It is difficult to love an assassin, I understand, maybe more than most. You’ll get no judgment from me.”

“You’ll give my regards to Harold and Brandon, right?”

“If anyone can, I will try.”

“Yeah.”

“Take care of yourself, Moira. I mean it.”

“Always do. “

Stepping inside and looking around at the mourners she took a deep breath. “About time I slipped out.”

Frieda looked away and wandered over to get some pretzels and dip, not acknowledging Moira, so that she could leave discreetly.

___

The city traffic was static against a bright winter day. Moira hailed a taxi and made her way back to her apartment. Slipping the key in the lock, after she walked up the five flights of stairs.

There was a man on her bed, his hand moving fast under the blankets, his breathing harsh and shallow.

“What are you doing here, Eugene?” she greeted him with acid in her voice.

“What’s it look like?” he retorted in a raspy groan, but he didn’t stop what he was doing, in fact the blanket moved faster.

“That’s not what I mean, I meant ---”

“Ahh, fuck….” He grit his teeth as he came, body twisting in the bed, toes curling, and then he opened his great green eyes, and sat up - tossing the vibrator onto the other side of the bed.

Moira winced. “You can just keep that. I don’t know where you’ve been.”

“You could always ask, and I could tell you.”

“I should be saying that to you, just up and breaking into my apartment and jerking off with my vibrator. What do you want?”

“Since you asked, how about a snack? I could use a sandwich, turkey, and mustard if you got it?”

“Get out of my bed, get dressed, and get the fuck out.” Moira scoffed commandingly.

“How was the funeral?”

“I said get out!”

Eugene smirked and chuckled. “Can you hand me my pants there on the back of that chair?” 

He motioned to the desk chair next to Moira. She rolled her eyes and threw them at him.

Swishing his long legs out of the bed, he pulled his pants on and stood up to pull them all the way up. Then he looked around for his shirt. 

“You got a smoke at least? Since you won't be a good hostess and make me a sandwich?” He went closer to her; she gritted her teeth.

“Smoked my last one at the funeral. Get your shirt and get the fuck out.”

“You enjoy watching me get dressed?”

“I don’t trust you in my room, you already stole my vibrator, and I don’t want your grubby hands to find anything else”

“Do you have anything else worth my grubby hands?”

“Eugene!”

He leaned in and kissed her full on the mouth. She froze but then, Heaven help her, she kissed him back: hungry and almost involuntary. He pulled back with a cocksure smile. “I knew you still felt something for me.”

“You are a fucking bastard.”

“And you’re wet. I can smell it.”

“That’s your own cunt you smell. Get out of my apartment!” she demanded and pushed at him.

He chuckled. “Fine, I’m going, I’m going, but tell me this… hm?”

“What?”

“Was Frieda there?”

“Yeah, she was.”

“Must have been hard for you to see her again….”

Moira crossed her arms across her chest, holding and hugging herself. “Just go already.”

Grabbing his shirt from the floor, and toe-ing into his faux-leather boots. He nodded. “Drop by the Aerie before you go? Have a drink with me? I mean if you are dropping off the edge of the Earth, I think one last drink with an old flame isn’t too much to ask.”

“Depends on the flame. Get your ass out of here.”

“You’ll at least think about it while you pack up your life?”

“Yes. Now go.”

Eugene made his way out of the bedroom and moments later, Moira heard the main door open and then shut leaving her apartment strangely silent. She glanced around the room and noticed he left the used vibrator on the bed. She grimaced and rolled her eyes.

“Things will be much better once I get to Anaheim,” she said to herself, pulled her hair scarf off, and let her dark brown hair fall in a cascade down her back, too much curl and not enough waves. “I’m so tired of New York.”

She made her way to the adjoined bathroom, stripping off the rest of her clothes. She turned on the shower. The water was cold because she didn’t pay the bill, but the shock of the cold water was what she needed then, to make the complicated memories of men fly away out of her mind.

In a dissociated haze, she watched the cold, blank water run down her skin, forgetting soap, shampoo, just rinsing the past few hours off her body. She didn’t even notice that her hand was between her legs rubbing herself off, for the need of it until she came with her thighs clamped down rigidly trembling and trapping her hand against her clit and folds. Her jaw clenched as she jailed the sound behind bone.

She had no idea who she was trying to be quiet for. Maybe it was the memory of Charlie haunting her mind in defiance of Eugene and his vulgar seizures when he climaxed. It all felt so dramatic and fake in a lot of ways when placed in contrast to the silence and stone face of Charlie.

Eugene was all fire and wild expressions. He frowned and pouted quivered lips, he bucked his hips and dug his fingers deeper inside himself. He begged and moaned, stroked till he sweat, edged till he ached. He probably did all those things with the vibrator he’d left behind on her bed.

__

It took her two hours and six minutes to pack what she wanted to keep. She’d wait til Monday to do the legality of things, break her lease, call the moving truck, the realtor and all the other important phone calls. She knew the Aerie would open in an hour. She didn’t want to go there on an empty stomach, even though she was not able to drink alcohol, she didn’t want to break the habit and go to a bar or pub on an empty stomach.

With a deep breath, she made and ate a small meal and then grabbed her keys and made her way to the Aerie. By the time she got there, it had been open for twelve to fifteen minutes. Eugene was still setting up the bar. He looked up when she entered, and while he was in ‘work mode’ she saw something soften around his eyes. But he didn’t smile or show any hint of a smile til she sat down at the bar.

“What can I get for you?”

“Cranberry Juice, on the rocks.”

“Isn’t your usual a Perfect Rob Roy?”

“It is. But … tonight I want Cranberry Juice on the rocks.”

“You come to a pub and order cranberry juice?”

“Eugene. You invited me here, You said have a drink with you, you didn’t say it had to be alcoholic, if you had said that I wouldn’t have come here.”

“Are you giving it up? Drinking?”

“Yeah, for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“Nine months.”

Eugene’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit. I mean I know it's not mine, do I know who --”

“He’s dead, and you were too busy breaking into my apartment while I was at the funeral”

“Moira…” his voice was soft.

“Don’t.”

“Okay.”

“Well? Where is my cranberry juice?”

He smirked then. “Coming right up.”

“It’s a slow night,” Moira commented.

“Yes, well we did just open for the night. I’ll be kicking them out with a broom come last call”

“Well, I will be long gone by then.”

“Pity. I was hoping for a quickie in the back, after my shift, before you left my world forever.”

“Don’t be so dramatic…”

“Part of my neurology, doll, I can’t help it.”

“I’m not your doll anymore, Eugene”

“Old habit, And maybe I had a moment of wanting to call you that one more time.”

His eyes looked her up and down with a kind of cryptic expression of lust, and something more solemn and harder for her to read.

“What?”

“You realize, you don't have to leave, you can have a life here, with me.”

“You are hardly the parental type.”

“I have six younger sisters, It can’t be that much different.”

“I need to get out of New York. I can’t … stay here”

“Where do you plan to go?”

“Better you don’t know.”

Eugene slammed a fist on the counter. And leaned in to look her in the eye. “I am not them, I am not like them, you understand? I know the world you’re part of, and I’m just a simple bartender from Nowhere Vermont, My shitty parents or any of my sisters don’t even call me and now you, my only family is leaving me too, And I can’t even come visit you, or write you a fucking holiday card, is that how it is to be, Moira, after everything? We part on amicable terms after all the on-and-off summers of mind-blowing sex and now… You want to burn the bridge we spent building together?”

She avoided looking at him. He set her cranberry juice in front of her and then walked around the other side of the bar to sit on the stool next to her - reaching out to caress the side of her face with the backs of his knuckles. She nearly winced and he retreated his hand a moment, but then reached toward her again

“Is this where you tell me you love me?” Moira mumbled.

“This isn’t some movie. Besides, you know how I feel about you, I have told you, that you are my most favorite person in the world”

“You still have never said it more directly than that.“

“Not with words.”

He glanced at her, with a half-smirk that was a bit self-deprecating from the effacing memory, and as she met his eyes, her own memories washed up in her mind. And before she could think differently she found herself spilling out words. “I don’t want to burn the bridge, I’ll stay here, til last call, I … do want … one more time, why not? You’re still the best fuck I’ve had.”

Chuckling, he leaned in to kiss her briefly on the lips, “Is that so? I thought I was just the loudest?”

“That too.”

“Well, I take that as a badge of honor.” 

He looked up and swore under his breath. 

“Duty calls, so just sit here and I will keep the cranberry juice coming. Okay? More people are starting to fill up the bar, so the time will probably … go by fast.”

“Alright, I’ll be here.”

She watched as he went behind the counter and back to work. Moira sat there, sipping cranberry juice and chewing the ice. She watched in a kind of daze how he treated every person like they were the most important person in the room. Barely listening to or talking to any of the others in the pub like she was in a kind of trance. All that existed was Eugene. She watched him move and make drinks and socialize and beam and flirt and smile, and charm and pour drinks and take tips and wink and charm and on and on and on til people dwindled out and he really did have to shoo the last few people out of the pub with a broom.

Watching as he locked up and flipped the sign over to the side that said closed. Moira stared at his body; the lean muscles, sun-kissed bronze skin, short curly hair, that was only a slightly darker brown, the way the slight curve of his body fit in his clothes. He turned around, caught her staring and smiled tilting his head at her.

“I know that look,” he said, his voice low, husky.

She blinked and looked up at his face. “What look?” she asked, trying to feign innocence.

“Don't play coy. You don’t have to. Not with me, remember?”

Moira let herself smirk, and look at Eugene like she was undressing him with her eyes. It was an unmasked expression and Eugene felt heat rushing all over his body.

“There she is.”

She raised her eyes to his face, so expressive, with the way he appreciated her admiration.

“You said you wanted to have a quickie in the back room before I went, right?”

“Yes, I did.”

Reaching into her purse she pulled out the small battery-operated vibrator he’d borrowed earlier.

“Do you mind if I brought a friend?”

His eyes dropped to the vibrator in her hand. And he exhaled a sound of amusement. “Oh you know me, I’m always up for a threesome or foursome, the more the messier.” He grinned, closing the distance, leaning down, kissing her full on the mouth but briefly before his lips parted for a breath.

“You get me so hard, so fast. Pet, How do you do that?”

“Because you taught me.”

He rushed in to kiss her again, and she had to lash out a hand to hold on to the bar top so she didn’t fall over and off the barstool. She smiled against his mouth.

“This is not the back room, Gene, we should move there before this gets any more…”

“Messy … Yeah … we totally should, Mm, you should drink cranberry juice more often, it tastes good on your lips. And your tongue and …”

Moira placed a hand between Eugene’s legs; he gasped, his lips still close to hers. She watched his eyes dilate as her hand made a massage motion on his groin. He kept making stuttering moaning gasp sounds.

“Do I need to lead you back to the back room using your fucking cunt as a leash, mm? Cos I have before I can do it again.” Moira teased.

“Uh-huh, I remember. Ah, you … are the only one I’d trust to … to …”

She got up from the barstool, holding his bulge and walking slowly backward toward the end of the bar, then turning til she was headed toward the swing door that led to the back room. The swing door smacked him on the ass as it closed behind them. There were boxes and cases of booze, shelves, and a small office back here. The barback had left already. The office was locked, and the only other key was in Eugene’s keyring that was in his pocket.

“Your thumb is …"

“Do you want me to stop?”

“Fuck no. Don’t you dare,” Eugene replied and his mouth went slack a little as she kept rubbing, stroking him through his pants, the moaning was soft, but it was there. It was very much there.

“You got the keys to your office, I want this in my mouth,” she said with an emphatic squeeze of his bulge.

Reaching without another word, he pulled the keyring out of his back pocket and dangled it toward her. She grinned and accepted the keys then tugged him by his ‘leash’ and went to unlock the door. Her hand squeezed him as she tried to juggle the keys trying each one, not sure which it was. Eugene was too lost in the sensation to really guide her what key it was.

His eyes closed and face puckered as each breath brought a tag-along sound of a moan or a groan, or a stalled-out sound, it was like a song with notes and rests held at different durations and pitches.

“Got it!” She pushed the door open and tugged him into the dark office, fumbling along the wall for the light switch. The lights were on for only a few seconds, before he opened his eyes and reached to turn the lights off again. “We’re supposed to be closed, lights stay off.”

“Okay then.”

She handed the keys back to him and he put them back in his pocket. And then gently took her hand from his groin, and pressed a kiss on her palm. “Now, there was something you wanted in your mouth, correct?”

“Yes, Keeper,” she answered reflexively, then cleared her throat.

“Mm, you’ll always be my doll, as long as you still call me that.”

“I know. I … it just slipped out.”

“Exactly. Your subconscious is still attracted to me.”

“Not just my subconscious”

“I know.”

The sound of his zipper going down in the dark summoned a hungry sound from Moira’s throat.

“On your knees.”

Obeying, she got down to her knees slowly holding onto his body for guidance in the dark. The scent of him was fragrant and beckoning, not just for her to take him in her mouth, but of memories of the times she had before, in other back rooms, subway stations, movie theaters, stolen cars, public restrooms, and a long list of other places.

Moira pulled him by his hips toward her mouth and had to guide herself by scent and taste to get the head of him in her mouth. That sharp ‘Ah’ gasp that he always made once he was inside her, sent a jolt of arousal down her body.

She sucked him as hard and tight as she could. And his hand went into her hair as his hips wiggled, and he fucked her face, fighting the reflex to lift his knee and rest it on her shoulder to frame her face as he fucked up into it. His pants were connecting his legs together, as they were shoved lopsidedly down to his calves.

“Oh fuck … where is your friend, I want your friend inside me. Pull her out. Pull her out now.”

Having shoved the vibrator back into her small purse, she reached inside, pulled it out, and turned it on, Reaching between his legs, she wiggled it til it was in the dark wet hole of Eugene’s cunt. He exhaled such a shaky groan as she continued sucking the hard clit. He’d never really called it anything else.

The silence was punctuated with his hyperventilating sounds as his orgasm slammed into him that he nearly screamed. He didn’t want to buck and shake so hard that he hurt her but he could only hold back so much, and the pleasure had to be expressed one way or another.

“S-Sto … ohhh gawd …” 

On  the second orgasm, however,  he did buck against her, as his cunt swallowed the toy. She moved the hand that was holding it there back, right when he made the start of a second scream before his voice cut out to raspy sounds and his eyes shut, his legs trembling and shaking.

“The vibrator is stuck,” she mumbled, with his clit still partially in her mouth. He didn’t hear her. He kept rutting against her mouth, with his upper body half shivering. She ran her hand up to try to steady him. He wobbled, stepping back, and reaching to take the vibrator out of himself with a squelching sound as his wetness, trailed along and clung to the toy.

“Damn, Moira,” Eugene gasped, turning the toy off.

She looked up at him on her knees, looking like the doll he’d trained her to be.  

“Here. Suck the taste of me off this toy, get it clean, while I … recover from what was probably the most intense orgasms I have had in a while.”

She took the toy from his hand and licked along the entire shaft of it. And then dried it off on her dress, and reached into her purse to put in a fresh battery.

“Are you going to use the toy on me?”

“Is that what you want?”

“I always like sharing a friend with you.”

“I know you do. Mm, as good as you look down there, stand up so I can reach that pussy of yours.”

She stood up awkwardly. He pulled her into another kiss, tasting himself from her lips, her mouth. One hand taking the toy from her hand, and the other holding her close as he continued to make out with her. 

After breaking the kiss, he turned her so her back was to his chest, his pants all closed but his shirt was untucked in the front now. He held her to his body and reached under her dress, to find her damp panties clung and half devoured by her slick and slippery folds. He ran his fingers against the thin, lacy fabric and Moira dipped her head back against his shoulder and chest.

“Yesss,” she whispered, feeling his stubble against her jawline, against her neck.

He moaned in her ear as he turned the vibrator on and ran it between her tits. She giggled til he moved the buzzing friend to her nipple, and her breath crescendoed until it was sucked into a whimpering sigh. 

She pressed against him. Wiggling, writhing.

“Mmhmm, that’s it, good, doll.”

She wiggled more, as he kept circling her nipple, but then cried out loud when he pressed the vibrator on the very tip of her very hard nipple, “Oh please … pleaa -- ahh. I need …”

“Patience.”

“Gene …” Moira pouted.

“Nuh-uh. You will let me enjoy you how I see fit, you are my toy right now, and me and your friend are enjoying this nipple. Enjoying how it is turning you into a whimpering fucking mess.”

“More the messier …” Moira repeated his words. He hummed affirmatively.

She kept wiggling, Her nipples were so sensitive. He was being a tease. His hand on her pussy was still, and he focused on circling the hard point of her nipple through the cloth of her dress, like a shark circling a meal before devouring it. It felt so intense she wanted to cry.

His breath caught sharply in her ear. “Give me those tears, you know it's okay to be wet in every way for me, right? You remember … how liberating it feels, to be wet and in my arms, don’t you?”

“Y-Yes, Keeper … I remember … ah … ahh …”

Her mouth went ajar and the sound was silent, it was like her scream was reaching a frequency that neither of them could hear but could feel as her eyes watered. It was like the wet was pulled out of them, or a valve released and the tears trickled down her cheeks.

The oversensitive stimulation on her nipple was too much and yet she couldn’t get enough of it. He spun her around, and she gasped, then he moved her dress strap down and took that nipple into his mouth the warmth of him summoned soft, sharp, sob sounds of catharsis from Moira, Her hand went up to cup his head as everything was cried out of her, while he nursed.

“Oh ho ho myyy gaawwddd …” The words were sob-stuttered out, like a staccato of percussion, her breath gasping between each sob, like rests to the music of her crying.

He sucked a bit longer before he moved to lick the salty tears from her face, before moving to suck in the shaking sobs, kissing them muffled; finally holding her close, till she was sniffling the sobs to silence.

He broke the kiss enough til they were just breathing in each other’s faces in the dark. Passing the vibrating friend to his other hand to rub against the soaked lace of her panties right over her slit, up and down, up and down til it settled under her clit, and he turned the speed up from low, to medium.

Moira made a gurgling grunt noise in response as her head flopped back, he used his free hand to catch her head and tip her forward til she was slobbering and sighing her pleasure against his shoulder. He pet her hair, as their ‘friend’ was rubbed up and down and pressed flush against her clit.

She exhaled as her breath in such a way that she was panting,  like a puppy girl, she was panting harder and harder, and Eugene tried to move her head to look at her face, but she was too much flop and not enough focus, as her pleasure was pounding her whole body into a kind of ‘pet space’

“Look at me, Moira, please? Please look at me.”

She looked at him with eyes adjusted to the dark. His silhouette gave her comfort as her memories filled in the details that she could not see without the light.  She heaved a husky sound of mirth that was birthed from a goofy smile that he could not fully see without his memories either.  That husky sound was startled into a shout, as he turned the vibrator up one more time from medium to high.

Suddenly cumming against him, his hand trapped as her thighs clenched together and she was making stuttering moans as her eyes rolled in her face. She was trying to follow the command of looking at him but it felt so good, she couldn’t keep anything still. He watched her in the dark, listening, memorizing, everything he could. Her sounds, her scent, the slick of her sex around his fingers.

She finished with a squeak as she shook with her aftershocks and fell to her knees. The toy clattered to the floor between her thighs, Eugene was licking the taste of her from his fingers, letting her recover how she needed to.

For what felt like a long moment, the scent of them in the dark was the only loud thing, beyond the buzzing of their friend, that was rattling against the rug. She reached down to turn it off, and then they were just in silence again. She looked up to see that his silhouette was still in the room. He was leaning against the desk, half sitting on it.

“You’re gonna miss all this when you’re gone,” Eugene finally said.

“I know. That’s why I have to leave.”

“That … doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yeah, I know it doesn't. Not to you. But I don’t know how to explain it any other way.”

“Fair enough. It would only be a matter of time before you got tired of me. No sense in trying to start anything up again,”

“I never said we were going to start anything up again.”

“I know, I just … maybe I was hoping.”

“You really gotta stop doing that. This was goodbye sex. That’s all.”

“I know.”

“It was what you asked for.”

“Yes.”

Moira got up and straightened her clothes out as best she could in the dark.

“I should go.”

Eugene didn’t say anything. Moira waited a few more moments, “You need to escort me out, everything is locked down and I don’t want to set off any security alarms or anything.”

“The warehouse door is unlocked, til I lock it when I leave.”

“It’s dark. Walk me to the subway station?”

“Okay.”

He led her out of the office and locked up, as they went out the warehouse door. They were silent once they were out in the night air, walking side by side, in the late night, early morning. Just two bodies walking parallel to each other in silence. Until they got to the subway station staircase. And they stopped and looked at each other awkwardly.

She reached for his hand and placed the vibrator in his palm. “Hold on to our friend, once I get settled, I may send you a postcard or something, so you know I’m safe and settled. Okay?”

“Yeah okay.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“You too.”

She gave him a brief smile and then turned to leave down the stairs.

“Moira?”

She turned around to look at him, only a few stairs down, she stopped. “Yeah?”

“You’re still my most favorite person in the world”

“I know, Keeper, I know.”

Then she turned around and went down the stairs and Eugene watched til she was out of eyesight. He put the vibrator in his pocket and took a deep breath before he flagged down a taxi, and made his way home, in the opposite direction, on the other side of town.

___