Ulysses Paradox (a Will Lenney fanfiction.)

chapter fifteen

Ruby was sat up in bed when Will woke up, reading Twitter. She hadn't slept well and it was still early. She watched him stretch and roll over onto his stomach, and his face was close enough to her leg for him to press his forehead into her outer thigh, and brush his hand over the smooth skin of her calf.

"Hi." He said.

"Good morning."

Will propped himself up on his elbows and brushed through his bedhead with his hands.

"How did you sleep?" He asked. She had woken up intermittently throughout the night and each time Will had his arms wrapped around her, his hands resting on her bare skin. She laid there, unable to find sleep again, and considered how she had arrived at this point in her life. She knew there, in the night, how Molly had felt, the confusion and frustration in her narrative that had no beginning or end, except to those she shared her thoughts with.

I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like made and yes I said

yes I will Yes.

"I slept fine," she said. "You?"

"You always say fine," Will pointed out. "Everything is always fine."

"I don't know how to respond to that. I mean I did sleep fine, so I don't know what you want me to say." She said.

"I'm just giving you a hard time, lass. It's fine."

"You're cheeky." She told him, looking back at her phone.

"You give away how American you are when you say that. It's a bit clunky." She blushed. "It's okay, you moved out to London, you're tryin your hardest to get away from it."

"Oi, yous is takin 'a piss wif me, mate," She argued back in a caricaturized version of Will's Geordie accent, and it made him laugh.

"Nah, I don't sound like that," He said.

"Yeah you do," Ruby countered, also laughing. "And now you're telling me I'm trying to get away from my roots by moving to London while completely ignoring your own experience. Embarrassing, really." The mood in the room lifted just a bit, and Ruby felt better about being here with him when they were both sober.

"Do you want to talk about everything?"

"That's very open-ended." Ruby pointed out. Will rolled his eyes.

"You know what I'm talking about," He said. They were quiet for a minute. "We need to stop doing this."

That's not what she wanted to hear. Preferably, she wanted Will to collapse at her bedside and give her one more chance and beg her to be with him again, and unlike last night she would say yes to him this morning and she would ask him to hide her away from the sinking temptation of forever with a man who only loved the way her body looked next to his.

She put her phone down and sank back into her mattress. She turned to look at Will, whose head was now perched in his hands so he could look down on her, and she quietly asked him to fuck her. He nodded and brought himself closer so he could hold his body over hers, and when he leaned down to kiss her it was so slow that she could've had a thousand thoughts pass through her mind in the time before their lips touched.

Instead she just stared at him and watched his eyes for a sign of hesitation, but his pupils were wide and he seemed to be just as interested in keeping them on her. He pulled away after a moment.

"Is this okay?" He asked. She nodded.

"It's fine—I mean, good. It's good." Will's eyebrows were furrowed. "I want you to keep going."

They stayed quiet, even though no one else was there in the flat, and when Will was all the way in her he stopped and buried his head in her neck, murmuring empty words to God about how good it felt. They had both taken off their underwear, but Ruby had left her night shirt on and now it was riding up uncomfortably on her back so she took that off too, and looked down at their bodies and wished everything was as simple as this.

Will changed his position and let his hand drift toward her navel, and when he applied a little bit of pressure she cried out and her orgasm made her whole body shake, and tears spring to her eyes. She let out an involuntary sob from the intensity of it all and Will froze, looking down on her and asking if she was okay. All Ruby could do was nod, and her hips jerked to encourage Will to keep going.

"It's alright," her teeth bumped together and she was still shaking, "please keep going."

He finished all over her stomach and chest and then slumped over next to her. When she felt that she could stand up without her legs buckling under her, she went into the bathroom and started filling up the tub. She poked her head around the corner and let him know she was taking a bath.

"Sounds good." He said.

"You can too," She offered. "We could both..."

"Oh, yeah alright. I'll be in there in a moment." Ruby nodded and went back to the tub and climbed in while the water was still running, and cleaned her body off.

They didn't consider that the size of the bathtub wasn't inherently conducive to two tall bodies, so they squished into one another and Ruby tried to shrink herself into the space between Will's legs.

"You know, I've thought about how nice it would be to take a bath in this tub since I saw that picture of it." Will said to her, finally breaking the silence.

"Does it live up to the expectation?" Ruby asked.

"It surpasses it. I didn't think I'd actually get to have you in it with me."

"Hmm, so you might call it a dream come true?" She was joking, but it felt nice to hear Will say yes and then start kissing her.

They stayed there in the tub for a while, kissing each other and musing about their current predicament until the water got too cold, and they toweled off and drained the water and didn't look at each other for a little bit.

They sat together on her couch once they'd gotten dressed again. Will asked Ruby what she thought she would do about Jake.

"I mean, we probably shouldn't keep on with this if you really want things to work out with him," he said.

"I know."

"Do you want to stay with him?" Will asked. It was hard for her to answer when she didn't really know.

"I'm not sure, truthfully." She told him. He shrugged.

"Right. Well then do you want to be with me?" Caught in the predicament of choosing one person over the other, Ruby always thought deciding would be easy. It turns out the easy part was entertaining them both, and a conclusion was hard to come by. Her hesitation and inability to articulate anything other than another I don't know had created the third option. Ending up by herself. Will obviously hadn't liked her answer, and got up to gather his things from her room. She thought this was fair, and perhaps what she deserved for being so indecisive. She didn't get up or even look his way as headed towards the door, and as it creaked open, Will said,

"You should figure that out first." And he was gone.