Chapter 6: Platonic Oral
The apartment felt different without Troy. His absence wasn’t just a lack of noise; it was a shift in atmospheric pressure. The living room, usually a stage for their trio, seemed larger, its clutter more profound. Annie sat cross-legged on the couch, a textbook open but unread on her lap. Abed was in his armchair, editing footage on his laptop, the soft click-clack of keys a metronome in the quiet.
Three days had passed since the shower. Three days of normalcy so meticulously performed it felt like a lie. They’d watched movies, ordered Chinese, discussed Freudian subtext in Alien. Not a word about the steam, the kneeling, the raw sounds ripped from her throat. It hung between them, a plexiglass wall.
The clicking stopped.
“Annie.”
She jumped, her pencil skittering across the page. “Yes, Abed?”
He was looking at her, not through her, his dark eyes reflecting the blue glow of his screen. “Troy is at his overnight shift at the air conditioning repair school garage. He will be gone for seven more hours and fourteen minutes.”
“I’m aware of his schedule,” she said, her voice tighter than she intended.
“I have been analyzing the data from our last interaction,” he stated, closing his laptop. “The ‘lab time.’ My performance was technically proficient, but lacked a crucial variable.”
“Oh?” Her heart began a slow, heavy thud against her ribs.
“Your climax was achieved. The objective was met. But in post-shower analysis, Troy described an emotional component he experienced. A ‘connection.’ I did not factor for that.”
Annie swallowed. “It’s not something you can factor for, Abed. It just… is or isn’t.”
“I would like to run a new experiment,” he said, his tone as even as if he were proposing they re-watch a director’s cut. “A controlled, one-on-one scenario. To isolate the variables of technique and this… connection.”
She stared at him. The sheer, unvarnished clinicality of his proposal should have offended her. It should have sent her running to her room. But beneath it, she heard something else. Not lust, not even curiosity. A desire to understand. To get it right. It was the most Abed thing she could imagine.
“What kind of experiment?” Her own voice sounded distant.
“I would like to go down on you,” he said. No hesitation. No euphemism. “Here. Now. Without the water, which acted as a sensory filter. Without Troy, whose participation creates a distracting parallel narrative. Just the act itself. To study it.”
The vulgarity of the phrase, delivered in his flat, analytical tone, sent a shockwave straight to her core. Her skin felt hyper-sensitive, as if the air itself was touching her.
“As a friend?” The question slipped out, naive and desperate.
“Yes,” he nodded. “And as a co-investigator. The goal would be your pleasure. I would catalog the methods that elicit the strongest physiological responses. But I would also attempt to observe the intangible ‘connection’ metric.”
She should say no. This was insanity. It was crossing a line from which there was no return.
But the silence of the apartment was suffocating. The memory of his tongue, so precise and dedicated, was a live wire in her mind. And the idea… the idea of being studied like that, of her pleasure being someone’s earnest academic pursuit… it unspooled something warm and dark low in her belly.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Okay,” he repeated. He stood up, walked to the coffee table, and began calmly moving the pizza boxes and remote controls to the floor. He cleared a space. It wasn’t predatory. It was preparatory.
“Assume the position that is most comfortable for you for recipient oral sex,” he instructed. “The couch appears suitable.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat but died. He was waiting, watching. She pushed her textbook aside. Her movements felt slow, dreamlike. She lay back on the couch cushions, legs dangling over the edge near where he knelt. She didn’t take her clothes off. The denim of her shorts was rough against her thighs.
Abed observed her for a moment, his head tilted. “This configuration will create an obstruction.” He reached forward, his fingers deftly unbuttoning her shorts, pulling the zipper down. The sound was obscenely loud. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her shorts and her plain cotton panthers, and in one smooth motion, pulled them both down to her knees.
Cool air hit her exposed skin. She was spread open before him, utterly vulnerable on their stupid, crumb-filled couch.
“Begin recording mental notes,” Abed said, though whether to her or himself, she couldn't tell. “Initial observation: subject exhibits signs of heightened vascular flow to the genital region. Presence of slight lubrication.”
Then he leaned in, and his entire demeanor shifted. The analyst vanished, replaced by the singular focus of the practitioner. He didn’t start gently.
His mouth covered her completely, a hot, wet seal. His tongue delved inside her, not teasing, but sampling. It was a shock. She cried out, her back arching off the couch.
He pulled back, his lips glistening. “Taste is more concentrated without water dilution. Salty. Musky.” He said it to the room, logging the data. Then he went back in.
This time, his approach was systematic. He licked a long, firm stripe from her entrance to her clit, holding her down with a hand on her stomach. He circled her opening, dipped inside, then retreated to flick the tip of his tongue against her hooded nerve endings. It wasn’t passionate. It was meticulous. And it was devastatingly effective.
“Oh god, Abed…”
“Which action elicited that response?” he asked, pausing, his breath hot on her wetness. “The circular motion or the targeted pressure?”
“The… the pressure. Don’t stop.”
He resumed, applying consistent, rhythmic pressure with the flat of his tongue, his eyes open, watching her face. His other hand came up to part her further, his thumb stroking her inner thigh. The combination of his clinical narration and the intense physical pleasure was fracturing her mind.
“Increased lubrication,” he noted, his voice slightly muffled. “Respiratory rate increased. Pupils dilated.”
“Shut up,” she moaned, tangling her hands in his hair. “Just… just fucking eat me. Please.”
A command. He understood those. His head dipped lower, his tongue working faster, driving into her with a pace that felt relentless. He added a low hum, and the vibration tore a scream from her.
“Yes! Right there! Just like that, you fucking… you brilliant… don’t you dare stop!”
Her language dissolved. She was babbling, begging, pulling his hair to grind her cunt against his face. He took it, his technique never faltering, adapting to the arch of her hips, the tightening of her thighs around his head. He was deconstructing her orgasm, piece by piece, and she was letting him.
The climax, when it hit, was a silent, shattering implosion for a second before the sound followed. A raw, guttural shout ripped from her lungs as her body bowed, electric and unseen. He stayed with her, his tongue gentling but persistent, coaxing out every last shudder until she collapsed back onto the cushions, boneless and gasping.
He finally sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He was breathing heavily. His hair was a mess from her grip.
“Observation,” he said, his voice rough now. “The ‘connection’ variable may be tied to vocal feedback and physical guidance. The data was… compelling.”
Annie could only manage a weak, trembling laugh. She felt hollowed out and put back together wrong. Or maybe right.