Chapter 2: Pissing Contest
Steam curled from the surface of the bathwater, a low, inviting haze in the dim light of the single candle on the toilet tank. The air was thick with the clash of lavender soap and the sharper, animal scent of their bodies. A damp towel hung from the shower rod, brushing Felix’s back as he moved.
His hands were tight on Daphne’s hips, his fingers leaving pale impressions on her skin. She was arched over the cold porcelain rim of the tub, her dark curls sticking to her neck, her knuckles white where they gripped the edge. The water below mirrored the candle flame, rippling with every driving thrust he made into her.
It wasn’t just the sex. It was the game. The only rule was simple, brutal, and currently holding their bodies hostage.
Whoever broke, whoever let go and pissed first, lost. But losing didn’t mean stopping. You had to release during, no stopping the fucking. The winner got to choose where to finish. Wherever they wanted. In or on was always an option.
It was the only game they played anymore.
“You’re shaking,” Felix gritted out, his voice strained. His own need was a seismic event waiting in his pelvis, a urgent, liquid weight that threatened to unmake him with every movement.
“I’m winning,” Daphne gasped, the words hitting the side of the tub. Her whole body was a tight wire of opposition, muscles clenched in a civil war—some pulling him deeper, others holding back the flood. A fine tremor ran through her thighs.
He drove into her, harder, trying to focus on the slick heat, the punishing rhythm, anything but the screaming pressure in his bladder. It was like trying to ignore a heartbeat. The candlelight danced over the tiles, over the sweat-slick plane of her back. He saw the chart, mentally, a messy grid in her notebook. This would be a new entry. Game: Bathroom. Stakes: Control. Outcome: Pending.
Her moan was sharp, fractured. “Felix… wait.”
“No waiting.” His jaw ached. “Rules.”
“I know the goddamn rules.” She pushed back against him, a desperate counter-rhythm. “I just… I need a second to…”
But a second was a concession. A second was loss. He didn’t give it to her. He kept moving, a relentless piston, his breath coming in ragged grunts. The water in the tub sloshed, whispering against the porcelain. He was close. So close. The pleasure was a narrow, burning line piercing the much broader, debilitating need to piss. It was agony. It was everything.
Daphne’s breathing changed. It hitched, became a series of shallow, panicked pants. Her grip on the tub slipped, one hand splashing into the warm water. “Oh, fuck,” she whispered, a confession.
He felt it the moment she lost. Not in her sex, but in the total, surrendering collapse of the tension in her abdomen. A hot, distinct rush added to the wetness between them, pattering into the bathwater below. A long, helpless stream of release that went on and on, mingling with the steamy air.
She cried out, a sound of pure, shocked relief and immediate defeat.
He won.
The knowledge hit him like a drug. His own climax ripped through him, a seismic wave that finally, triumphantly, overwhelmed the other pressure. He held onto her, pounding through it, as his own bladder let go in a violent, uncontrollable gush, adding to the mess in the water, a mutual surrender that only he had timed correctly. The rules held. He didn’t stop.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing and the quiet drip from the edge of the tub.
Slowly, he slid out of her. Daphne didn’t move, her forehead resting on her arms, her body still trembling. The candle flickered.
“You chose hours ago, didn’t you?” she said, her voice muffled and raw. “Where you’d go. If you won.”
Felix leaned against the damp towel, spent, empty, a strange clarity washing over him. He looked at the elegant line of her spine, the water beading on her skin. He thought of the chart, the infections, the cranberry juice talisman on the nightstand. He thought of the stubborn, stupid love that had turned their bodies into battlegrounds and their intimacy into a scorekeeping war of attrition.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice quiet.
He reached out, his hand hovering over the small of her back, then lower. He didn’t touch her skin. His fingers found the puckered, still-tender skin just below her waistline, the oldest souvenir from their first real bout, the one that had required the strong stuff. The proof of their persistence.
“Here,” he said.
It wasn’t about possession. It wasn’t even really about sex. It was a claim. A monument. A way of saying, I am here, and you are here, and this is the mark we make. He spilled himself over the faint, silvery scar, the warmth stark against her cooling skin.
Daphne shivered, understanding. She finally pushed herself upright, turning to look at him. Her green eyes were exhausted, fever-bright, utterly known. She looked at the milky trace on her skin, then at the murky water in the tub.
“We should get in,” she said, no victory in her voice, just a deep, shared weariness. “Before it gets cold.”
He nodded, watching as she stepped into the water, disturbing the surface, dissolving the evidence of their game into a general, cloudy film. He followed, the heat a shock, and sank down opposite her. Their legs tangled underwater, unseen.
She reached over the side for her notebook and pen, left on the toilet lid. She didn’t open it. Just held it on her knees, above the waterline.
“Winner writes the entry,” she said, handing him the pen.
He took it. The damp cover felt like skin. He didn’t write anything. He just held it, the pen poised over the page, as the water around them slowly stilled, holding the shape of them both.