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movement

noun. a song played by the marching band, comprising a whole show with multiple movements.

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AFTER TUESDAY'S DRILL PRACTICE, I eat leftover pasta for dinner and decide to have a drunken night out.

I wear all black tonight, with pops of silver from the various zips on my cargo pants, my rings and my pendant. Engraved on the back of the pendant is Christian's birthday, and he owns a matching necklace with my birthday engraved on the back.

I take some Engineering friends with me to the Foxhole. Quentin should be here with us boys, but lately on party nights he's been going with his badminton friends to Topaz, one of the nightclubs in Halston's town center. Which is insane, because he hates clubbing. According to him, clubs are shady, smelly, overpriced, with shitty booze and shittier music. (Who is worth the suffering? Krista, Quen's new lady friend.)

Personally, I can make a memorable night in any location, which comes to fruition through successive rounds of tequila shots, dirty dancing in front of the DJ stage, and wing-manning for my boys. Bay is working tonight, as usual. She saw me walk in, made unwitting eye contact, and has refused to look at me again. Her dark hair is swept up into a messy bun, and the black bartender apron obscuring all her curves does nothing to erase her naked body from my memory.

Does Bay look at me and feel the ghost of my body in her? Does she think about reaching out and dragging my mouth onto hers like I do? I can't tell. Outside the bedroom, it's business as usual to her—but I remember how she'd unraveled for me, how much she wanted me back. I'd seen straight into the burning chaos that lay underneath her frosty demeanor. I can't get enough.

When I step up to order more tequila, she sends me an expression stuck halfway between disdain and constipation, and conveniently goes for a break before I can talk to her. Coward.

"What can I get you?" a new bartender asks me, her fingers flying across the electronic till screen.

Tapping the corner of my credit card on the counter, I deliberate before saying, "Nothing, never mind."

I remember the time I encountered Bay leaving work while skateboarding around the campus, the personnel entrance in the alley behind the building. Chancing it, I ensure that my friends are occupied with good company, and that the company is feeling good, before I push my way through the throng of bodies towards the door. I slip out of the bar—the line to get in is steadily growing, and I accept that I might not re-enter the Foxhole—and into the silent evening, cobbles damp and air smelling like old leaves after a recent rainfall.

Behind the building, Bay is leaning against the brick wall, sheltered by the slightly overhanging gutter. She's scrolling mindlessly on her cellphone, and only looks up when my sneaker hits a puddle. She squints, then flicks off her phone and recognizes me.

Her face morphs from suspicion into irritation. She groans. "Uh, no."

"What?"

"No. Just because we fucked doesn't mean anything has to change. I still hate you, you still hate me, so this little Prince Charming act doesn't need to happen." She waves a finger over my figure. "I don't need supervising or escorting or looking after. Especially not by you."

Well, I'm not particularly eager to walk her home again either. But...

"I had an idea."

"Your first ever," she deadpans, "which you must joyously broadcast to the world?"

"Ha," I laugh dryly. When she arches her eyebrows expectantly, I hold a hand up, already anticipating her shooting the idea down. "Benefits."

Bay scoffs. "You're insane."

Fuck yes I'm insane.

She made me like this. Two weeks I have not been able to focus or relax or unwind. All my previous pastimes have lost their color compared to what Bay made me feel. The memory of her haunts me. I wake up dreaming of her smell and hating myself when consciousness returns, realizing the front of my boxers are already damp. But I think she wants me just as badly. Ever since we made out in Toby's bathroom I haven't stopped wanting to kiss you again. She said it in words, she said it in moans, she said it in stolen glances.

Bay wants me even if she despises me.

I just need to make the case logically, appeal to her unshakable rationale.

"Just hear me out." Before Bay can reject my appeal, I barrel onwards. Reason one: "I have no spare time this year—marching band now and an internship starting in spring." Reason two: "You wish every person you fuck would just forget about you afterwards—I won't even try to contact you unless it's for band." Reason three: "You said it yourself: I can get you there when other people can't, which means more fun and less admin." Reason four: "Plus, currently neither of us want to date, so this is a convenient alternative to the dating pool, with all its mismatched intentions and situationships. I'm totally risk-free."

"Aw," Bay coos. "No other takers?"

I don't even need to defend myself from such blasphemy. She's the one who purportedly noticed, at band camp, six different people fall for me in a week's time. Then jumped up my ass about band-cest.

I smile with closed lips, patronizing. "Sweetheart, you aren't done with me yet. Just like I'm not done with you." When I step closer, forcing her to tilt her head back against the wall to keep eye contact, I hear a sharp intake of breath. I continue, "When have we ever walked away before someone's been declared a winner?"

Reason five.

"Ah, sex: just a game to win," she retorts lazily, not missing a beat. "How would you envision winning? Ejaculating prematurely because Mommy didn't raise someone who comes last?"

"For someone who couldn't even keep her eyes open as she came on my face, you say that with an unbelievable amount of conviction."

"Have no convictions and one can say anything."

I don't let her philosophical detours sway me. I'm not going to lose focus. "I'm surprised, section leader," I hum. "Three years of marching and you still don't know the true definition of winning."

It's too dark out here for her eyes to be anything but two dark vortices, sucking me in, but I can see them flickering, scanning, searching. Bay huffs, unable to read my face, and relents. "Enlighten me."

My hand reaches up to cup her chin and turn her head to the side. I lean down and place a chaste kiss on her bare neck. "Winning is not about trophies and rankings. It's about good sportsmanship," I whisper against her skin, feeling as much as hearing her sigh, "and mastery."

Bay swallows, her throat flexing in front of my eyes. "Mastery," she repeats hollowly.

I nod, letting my hand fall, stretching back to my usual height. "This is just like music; how to play each other's bodies like an instrument. Until I can do that, things don't feel finished, do they?"

"I'll think about it," she says.

I smirk. Now I know. "You already have."

Bay glowers at me. I hold her gaze.

Two beats of silence.

Then she starts counting her conditions on her fingers. One: "No-one can know." Two: "This ends at graduation." Three: "We aren't obligated to be any nicer to each other, and," she puts a fourth finger up, "if the arrangement damages the progress of the drumline, everything stops and we go back to normal."

I agree with everything Bay says. The marching band sometimes is too close for comfort, just like most families. Band couples are subject to attention, rumors, carnage. Quentin would be aghast. Shane would want graphic descriptions. And above all, the percussion section comes first.

"I had the exact same terms."

Bay seems satisfied. "Good."

Then her hand grabs the front of my shirt and she pulls me down to kiss her. Her lips are full, soft, pillowing, and I waste no time caging her in my arms and kissing her back, hard. In contrast to the cool air, her tongue is hot like a furnace, and I pull her bottom lip between my teeth until she moans and bites me back. Her hand snakes under the hem of my t-shirt, caressing up and down my oblique.

I feel like an idiot, because I wish I'd figured this out sooner. For three years I've been riling her up and fighting with her instead of doing this.

Bay pulls away to check the time, her lips swollen and breath labored. "Sorry. My break is over."

"Okay," I whisper, breathless.

"Meet me here at midnight."

"Okay."

As she quickly walks away, I watch. Each footstep of hers matches a pulse in my chest.

Beat, beat, beat.

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So begins the worst idea, the best mistake, of my life.

I have come to accept that I'm not as smart as I thought as I was—despite the private school, the musical accolades, the robust grades throughout my Engineering degree—because of how eagerly I walk into danger like this.

The good thing about my housemates is that none of them are in the marching band, or other musical ensembles, none of them study Math or Philosophy, and when they do go to the Foxhole, they've never remembered Bay as notable.

Basically, they are complete strangers to her and she likes it that way. She's not one to make casual conversation on her suggestive trek to my bedroom, not one to really care about any aspect of my life outside the moments that intertwine with hers.

The second time we have sex, I lean back against the headboard and Bay rides me, easing herself up and down at a maddeningly slow pace. I put my hands on her hips, only slightly urging—mostly to feel her soft skin, the warmth of her, the priceless little tremors that wrack her body when she comes and her thighs give out completely.

The third time, I stand by the bed as she gets on her knees in front of me. She sucks my cock in long, deep pulls of her mouth. She drags her tongue around the tip, presses her tongue against the sensitive nexus on the underside, and then she withdraws to softly blow air over the wet sheen, a crushing sort of euphoria, icy heaven and tingling hell.

"Wow," she whispers with faux reverence, "I wonder how the rest of you tastes." She locks eyes with me and slowly guides her hand between her legs, stroking herself.

And then I blow my load, ostensibly on her face and hair, but Bay sees it, me, coming—I'm one-hundred percent sure she knew what she was doing when she put the image of releasing in her mouth in my head—and swallows every drop, her bleary eyes full of triumph as they stare up at me. I'm almost blinded and debilitated by pleasure (my knees like rubber, almost collapsed) and that decommissions me for the next forty-five minutes.

(Half in thanks and half in punishment, I eat her out until I'm hard again, until she's a dripping, twitching mess.)

This enemies with benefits situation sometimes feels like a game or a competition. Sometimes we're on the same team, passing a baton between us, and sometimes we're racing, trying to make the other come undone the fastest. Thankfully, it's never a performance. I can spot the moment when Bay retreats back into her head and lets some immaculately-rehearsed automaton take over the burden of communication and expression and emotion. She does it at work, at band, but I'm never going to let her do it in my bedroom.

Before I know it, the days blur by, and we have a system hammered out, contingency plans and secret rendezvous points. Sometimes we both linger at the Music Department after rehearsals or band leadership meetings, other times we head off in separate directions only for someone to circle around and reunite with the other. Now, when we finish, Bay doesn't immediately turn her back to me in bed. And she brings her toothbrush, phone charger, and pajamas over.

"How are you going to celebrate your birthday?" I ask Bay. It's in five days' time.

"Renata's taking me to town," she answers absently.

We're naked, sweaty, limbs wrapped up in each other. Bay has her head on my bare chest, and I've slung an exhausted arm around her shoulders. Bay's finger traces bizarre whorls and lines in the air, and it takes me a moment of staring at her face to realize she's just preventing and permitting the light from my lamp reaching her eyes; I can see when her eyes are illuminated, and when the shadow of her index finger passes over like an eclipse.

"Anything planned with your family?"

Her finger keeps moving back and forth. "No."

"Really?" That surprises me. I'm very close to my family. There have been moments in my past where I talk about family traditions, holidays, inside jokes, close sibling relationships only to find out that not everyone had similar stories to share. Not everyone likes their family. Or even loves them. Some families are toxic, or strained, or estranged. I feel very grateful to have never experienced that.

Bay puts her hand down on my collarbone, and I watch her eyes slowly close, eyelashes fanning on her cheeks. "I don't even usually celebrate my birthday."

"Is... is there a story there?" Nothing about her changes, but I sense a stoic silence that answers for me. "Never mind. Forget I asked."

"The story is short," she sighs, "because I don't have a family. I'm not in contact with my blood relations, because I don't know who they are. I grew up in foster care, aged out, and now I'm here."

Oh. Shit.

I always knew Bay was tight-lipped about her family life. Her admission makes all my peripheral memories and observations sharpen, like a camera lens I didn't know was just barely unfocused until I see things in sharp relief. She never posted on her birthday, nor holidays, and I've never heard her mention relatives.

I imagine Bay in a group home and imperceptibly, my arm tightens around her shoulder. "That must have been hard."

She scoffs, finally opening her eyes to give me a dry smile. "I don't need your sympathy, Callum."

If this is a smile to mask pain, I can't tell. If she wanted to mask her childhood, she wouldn't have even told me. But she seems genuinely calm, neutral. The story is short. "It's all ancient history anyway. My life is in front of me, not behind."

I don't know what to say. Even getting this piece of knowledge was more than I could ever hope for.

Growing up in foster care can't be easy, but I don't know Bay's perspective. Maybe her childhood wasn't as bad as I've heard it can be; maybe it was no tsunami, just a wide river that carried her here, to this moment, and she doesn't need any rescuing. I want to ask her, but does she want to be asked? Would she even tell me more? Does she want to just move on?

Unable to find the right thing to say, I pick up her hand, turn it over until her wrist faces up, and press my lips to her pulse. Her skin is soft like waxy lily petals. Bay chuckles through her nose, wry as always, but she doesn't pull her hand away.

"Thanks," she chuckles.

I shut my eyes and inhale her smell, pushing the image of a tiny, toddler Bay curled up in a corner out of my mind.

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a / n :

welcome to the midpoint! we are 50% through the story and anyone familiar with narrative structure will know that everything changes from here ;)

 and for the astrology girlies, Bay is a Scorpio and Callum is a Pisces.

see you in the next chapter,

aimee x