September, 2016

Oskar grabbed the headboard for support, groaning as he neared his melting point. Ingrid's fingernails scratched red ravines into his shoulder blades, which she held onto for dear life. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and stifled his urge to scream. Making love to Ingrid always made him mad because it felt so good but he felt so guilty.

Too damn good. So fucking guilty.

He rolled off her when she released him and lay still on his back to catch his breath. By not opening his eyes, he hoped he'd fall asleep and wake up only to find it had all been a dream he'd had in his own bed.

Ingrid's unique text ringtone tore through his reverie.

"Fuck," he grunted and sat up. "You still didn't change that annoying frog? What are you giggling at?"

Ingrid bit her lip and showed him. "Dale has discovered the wonders of Snapchat filters."

A lump of ice dropped to the pit of his stomach. "Dale?" Oskar barely murmured.

"Yeah, the British kid who studies Russian, remember?"

"Leave him alone, Ingrid." Oskar crawled to the edge of the bed. "Before you break him," he added more to himself.

"What was that?"

He glanced at her over his shoulder, but looked down at his knees before she met his eyes. "I said to leave him alone before you break him."

Ingrid let out a snort of laughter. "Seriously? What on earth would make you say that?"

"Personal experience."

She raised an eyebrow at his back. "The hell? You're saying I broke you?"

"Yes," Oskar said abruptly and stood up. "And I still haven't managed to put myself back together."

There was a pensive pause as Ingrid frowned at the bright crimson marks she'd left on his skin. Oskar began to gather his things from the floor.

"What are you doing here, then?" she asked.

"I just told you. I haven't been able to put myself together yet." He went into the bathroom without looking back at her.

Oskar locked the door and stepped under the shower. He turned the water to hot, although he still felt the scratches pulse raw on his back. A self-castigation of sorts for the weakness he continued to show when it came to Ingrid.

The steaming water seared his exposed flesh. He clenched his teeth hard, but he couldn't take it for long. He flipped the shower faucet off and pressed his back to the cold tiles. A pained hiss escaped from his lips as he slid down into the tub. The now-warm water trickled past his feet into the drain.

Crouched against the wall of the tub, Oskar grabbed fistfuls of his wet hair and wailed. It was more than weakness. It was dependency. Addiction, even. He sought her approval with every fibre of his being and the world didn't feel right if he couldn't get it. If he did get it, realisation of his own idiocy would hit him next and make him hate himself... and cry in a bathtub.

Her bathtub.

The mere thought of Ingrid coming undone in his arms made him feel at once sick and excited. He wanted both to have that over and over, and to never hold her again. Pain and pleasure clashed in the depths of his chest, causing it to ache.

When Oskar finally came out of the bathroom, he found the bedroom empty and headed for the kitchen. Ingrid was making American pancakes, which she must have known were one of his personal favourites. The smell opened the flashback floodgate. Memories overwhelmed him, good and bad, but one in particular stood out.

"Remember that time when you almost OD'd and you wouldn't let me take you to the hospital?"

Ingrid froze. She turned her head to look at him, but her eyes quickly faced downwards. The fresh batch of pancake dough sizzled in the pan.

"I thought you weren't gonna make it through the night," Oskar continued.

Ingrid shook at the pan and flipped the pancake. "I hoped I wouldn't."

"Don't," Oskar said harshly. "I don't know what the fuck happened to you in New York, but I fixed you. I fixed you and you broke me, you do not get to say shit like that."

Ingrid dropped the pancake on top of the pile and forgot to put the pan away. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

Oskar laughed softly. "You know, that's the first time you've ever said that to me."

Ingrid tried to reach for the maple syrup and rediscovered the hot pan in her hand. She turned off the stove, went to dump the pan in the sink. She grabbed the whipped cream can from the fridge, sprayed some on the stash of pancakes after she drenched them in maple syrup and brought the plate to the table.

"Then let this be the last time I make you pancakes," she said.

Oskar took a deep breath, as if a weight had just been lifted off his chest and his lungs could function properly again, though his heart fluttered.

"Not sure if this is what you want to hear, Oskar, but I'm proud of you." Her smile came out lopsided. "I am sorry if I did you wrong, but for better or worse, you turned out great. Maybe no thanks to me, despite me even, nevertheless: I am grateful I got to watch you grow. I am grateful you had my back at the worst of times. You kept me clean, and sane, and for that I owe you. Whenever you might like to collect, just hit me up. I'll do anything."

Oskar picked up his fork, weighed it in his palm like he was weighing his bloody beating heart ripped from his ribcage.

"You don't owe me anything, Ingrid. None of those things that I did..."

He sighed.

"None of it was so you would be indebted to me. I did them out of love and love...love does not keep track of debts. Love does not create debts. But if you want to do one thing for me in exchange, do this: don't hurt Dale. He's too fucking precious, he'd never bounce back."

Her gaze turned to molten steel, a sight so rare it scared him.

"I promise," Ingrid said. "Oskar, you have my word I'll do my best."

Oskar smiled, relieved.

"Good." He dug his fork into the pancakes. "Good. Great, Ingrid, thanks."

For all her shortcomings, Ingrid was a woman whose word one could rely on. That alone kept most of her suitors tangled with her. She never promised them anything, but the promise of what she could promise deluded them. The few promises she made she kept religiously, which left her lovers yearning for more, taking every emotional failure in stride because just around the corner, they might bump into a fruitful pledge.

These were too few and far between, however, to compensate for her detachment. It had taken Oskar months and a massive amount of willpower to distance himself from her poisonous promises. He'd never managed to sever the connection completely, but now it was done.

Clean-cut. She'd let him go and he relished the fall. It tasted like freedom or it might have just been the maple syrup. Probably the last time he'd have maple syrup, too.

Clean-cut.

No strings.

No look back.

But maybe one last kiss for the road.

He pushed the pancake plate aside and stretched over the table towards her. Ingrid met him halfway. Oskar got up, moving the small table out of his way, and made her back up into the cupboard. In a swift second, he hoisted her up onto the countertop, still savagely assaulting her lips. She only wore a man's shirt, the vestige of some long-forgotten fool who had once crossed her threshold. Beneath it, Oskar's hands met warm, bare skin.

"I never knew you had a rough side," Ingrid murmured as he took a breather to unbuckle his jeans, his forehead resting against hers.

"You bring out the worst in me," Oskar whispered back and grazed his teeth along her neck before he bit down, hard. At the same time, he drove himself deep into her, his fingers gripping her ass to meet his thrust.

Ingrid gasped loudly, startled.

"Fuck," she cried out and wrapped her arms and legs around him as if to hold herself together.

He was pulling her apart.

Piece by piece and in the heat of the moment, he fucking enjoyed it.

It came so easy to him because those very same pieces, he'd put them in place himself, years ago. When he loved her.

When he—

One of her hands latched onto the edge of the countertop for support in his ruthless embrace. Oskar ground on, one grunt at a time, oblivious to the vengeance he was inflicting upon her.

Ingrid's heart hurt with his pain while her body became numb to pleasure. His pace quickened with each angry thrust of his hips, until he burst and melted at her chest. She held him tight, with a hand in his hair.

When he withdrew and pulled his jeans up, Ingrid pressed her legs together, unsure whether to get down or fold them up to her chest. Oskar tried to reach out and help her, but she held up her hand to stop him. He grabbed her legs instead because they hung in the air, trembling from the effort, and he kissed each of her knees in turn.

"I'm so sorry," he said, "that was selfish and unnecessary and I'm up for one final rematch to make it up to you."

"That's fine." Ingrid cleared her throat. "Maybe this is just how it's supposed to end."

His left forearm slid under her knees as he moved to put his right arm around her waist. "But is it how you want it to end?"

"Why does it even matter?"

She held fast onto his shoulders when he lifted her off the countertop and didn't let go when he lowered her on a chair, forcing him to kneel beside her.

For a moment, he looked wounded. "It matters. To me."

Ingrid rolled her eyes. "Alright, Adele, don't get your knickers in a twist."

Her thighs remained glued together, tense from the strain. He nestled his cheek on her lap, in an attempt to restore some tenderness. Ingrid toyed with his hair.

"I love you, Ingrid. In a way, I think I always will."

Ingrid said nothing.

For once in her life, she wished she could just say I love you back but she couldn't... because she didn't. Not like he would have wanted. Not like he needed. In that moment, Ingrid decided: no rematch. Oskar should get to keep his revenge.

*

It turned out Dale owed his lean physique to years of competitive swimming, which he had all but given up upon starting university. It continued to be his favourite pastime, however, and he never missed a chance to enjoy it. Once he finished sharing the history of his athletic prowess with her, Ingrid proposed that they go swimming to the pool she frequented as part of her gym membership. He couldn't pass up the opportunity.

They hugged when they met up just outside the train station, all smiles as they began the short walk to the pool.

"So how are you settling in?" Ingrid asked.

Dale hesitated. "It's a bit tough but, uh...I'm doing quite alright, I think."

"You still look great," Ingrid noted, "I lost so much weight when I first moved to London because everything was just so stressful. I know people who gained weight and struggled with it for years."

"That's not exactly helping," Dale pointed out.

She laughed. "Sorry! It's your first time leaving the country, isn't it?"

He nodded.

"Well, like I said. You look great, ergo you're doing great. Smart move signing up for the summer school first. That must have helped break the ice."

"Oh, yeah!" Dale readily agreed. "It's been a life-saver. I've got Oskar watching my back at every turn. It's made a huge difference. A lot of the other Erasmus kids seem to be so cut off from the rest of the students but Oskar introduced me to everybody, it's made me feel like I've been here forever."

"That's amazing. Lucky you!"

"Quite." Suddenly he blushed and looked away. "And then there's you."

"What about me?"

His cheeks got even redder but before he could speak, Ingrid announced that they had arrived.

Dale in swimming trunks looked at least five years older and his well-defined musculature stood witness to all the years of hard work he'd put in. Ingrid wore a plain one-piece swimsuit, with a round, unrevealing neckline but a very low back. She pulled up her short hair into a tight ponytail and tied a towel around her waist. They both admired each other for a few seconds before a conversation sprung up.

"Wow, man," Ingrid reached up to squeeze Dale's biceps, "it's like you're made of rock!"

"Nah, this is nothing. I used to be even fitter, but I got a little soft since I started spending more time reading than swimming."

Ingrid gave his upper arm another squeeze. "This is soft? Damn, I would have loved to see you hard."

His head flushed crimson from chin to ears, like a thermometer dropped in boiling water.

"Let's dive in," Ingrid suggested, to alleviate the awkwardness. She tapped his 'soft' muscles and went to leave her towel on a chair.

He quietly followed her into the pool, too embarrassed to speak. But as soon as he hit the water, his body blossomed with a newfound freedom. Beside him, Ingrid felt like how a frog might have felt next to a dolphin. Small, inappropriate and ugly.

"Will you teach me how to swim?" she asked when he emerged from an underwater stunt.

"You mean you can't swim?"

"Oh, I can, but only, like...amphibian style." She mimed the movements. "I thought you could teach me how to swim like a butterfly."

Dale shook his head. "The butterfly stroke is really difficult."

"Something easy, then. Something I can get the hang of in the next couple of hours or so. Anything at all," Ingrid added, seeing Dale unable to come up with an idea.

He did eventually think of something and whether it was needed or not, this impromptu swimming lesson involved a lot of skin-to-skin contact. To put it simply, she was a clumsy student and he an overprotective teacher. It worked out well for both parties.

*

The sun hadn't yet set when they concluded their training session. They arranged to have burgers for dinner afterwards, at a tiny tavern by the Fernsehturm, but instead of going straight to Alexanderplatz, they took a detour on Friedrichsstrasse and the Unter den Linden Boulevard. As they passed the Humboldt University and crossed the Spree, they stopped in the Lustgarten for Dale to take pictures of the Berliner Dom.

Before they knew it, the sky had darkened. The sunlight had fooled Ingrid when leaving home into not bringing a jacket. Now she stood among the trees, shivering. Dale noticed when he tried to ask her to take a picture of him. As if on cue, a cool breeze blew through falling leaves and Ingrid's damp, wavy hair.

Dale put an arm around her. "Jesus, you're freezing out here. Your hair's still wet, too."

Ingrid shook her head, although she trembled. "Jesus might be freezing, but I'll be fine."

"Here." Dale took off his hoodie and wrapped it tight around her shoulders, pulling the hood up on her head. "Do you wanna put your hands through so I can zip you up?"

Ingrid hesitated.

"Come on," he urged her. "It's better to be safe than sorry, believe me."

Ingrid rolled her eyes. "Okay, if you insist."

He held out each side of the hoodie at a time for her to slide her arms through. The sleeves hung loose, a couple of inches longer than her fingertips.

"There you go." Dale zipped her up and adjusted her hood.

The oversized hoodie and the towering height of its owner made her feel like a child. It wasn't a feeling Ingrid liked to have in public.

"Hey, listen," she grabbed his elbow, "why don't we get an Uber to my place? Then we can order some pizza."

Dale blinked, out of his depth. Pink tinged his cheeks. "Your place?"

"Yeah, so we don't have to stay out in the cold and everything. What with my hair still a bit wet and all."

He gulped but couldn't say no. There was no way he could argue with her decision to go home—unless he wanted to be separated from her, which didn't seem to be the case.

"We'll just have a pizza and then you can go home with your hoodie," Ingrid said.

Dale nodded, albeit reluctantly. He didn't have much of a choice.

"Great!" Ingrid beamed. "Let's go back to Friedrich's statue. We can sit on the benches there and wait for the Uber."

She linked her arm with his and led the way back across the Spree to the massive statue of Frederick the Great at the east end of Unter den Linden. Dale remained awfully quiet throughout. Ingrid held her phone in her free hand, trying to find an available driver. She managed to catch one just as they reached a bench.

"Should be here in five minutes or so."

Dale said nothing. Ingrid still held onto him and they were now standing face to face. She looked up. His eyes were confused and confusing at the same time. She could not distinguish much through the fog in his baby blues. There was something there, a fire her touch had ignited and now the smoke rose to his gaze, shrouding his emotions.

Her hand slid to his palm and his fingers twitched. She took a step towards him, tilting her head further back so that the hood slipped off. Dale drew shaky breaths, his plump lips slightly parted. Ingrid had to rise on her tiptoes and bring a hand to the back of his head to reach his mouth. She moved slowly enough to allow him to choose whether he accepted her kiss or not, but he didn't oppose her.

Quite the contrary, he reached for her waist once their lips melded together. The kiss deepened in a matter of seconds and having regained control, Ingrid steered him to the bench behind them and pushed him down. She stood between his knees, her hands on either side of his face, his hands on either side of her hips.

He pulled her towards him as the heat built up at his core, wanting to wrap his whole body in the warmth he felt against his palms. The tension surged in his groin at that thought and he had to break the kiss with an exhausted sigh. He fell back on the bench, running a hand through his hair, unable to process the experience.

Just then, Ingrid's phone buzzed with the notification that their driver had arrived.

His speech function had failed and his defence firewall had been breached, there was simply nothing he found himself capable of doing to resist her.

The ride to her flat was grim and silent.

He followed her, dazed and unquestioning, into a building, up a staircase, through a door to a sofa. When she spoke, he first heard the echo of her voice, then the meaning of her sentences. They had pizza and beer and watched a tedious film on Netflix until it had become too late for him to leave. Ingrid offered the continued services of her living-room sofa and popped into the shower.

Dale finally had time to despair. His psyche was not prepared to handle this sort of thing. Ingrid existed in a plane of her own, which only marginally intersected itself with the one he dwelled in. He did not know the rules of the game she was playing because his world knew no such games.

"Here," Ingrid spooked him out of his trance, throwing some laundry at him. Sweatpants, a towel and a T-shirt. "I've an extra toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet. Make yourself at home." She winked. "Good night, Dale."

"Thanks," he mumbled. "Good night."

Somehow, he had a feeling it would be anything but good.

*

A sensation akin to thirst disturbed Ingrid's slumber not long after she had fallen asleep and forced her to clamber out of bed. Faint noises came through to her in the kitchen from the living-room as she fixed herself a glass of water. Dale was up, watching TV.

"Can't sleep?"

He turned around. "Hey. Sorry, did I wake you?"

She held up her glass of water, then put it down on the side table. "Nah, just midnight thirst."

A heavy silence settled between them. Ingrid walked over and stood before him in nothing but her silky nightgown. He looked up, gulping, and leaned back against the sofa as she pushed on his shoulders. Slowly, one leg at a time, Ingrid straddled him. His temperature skyrocketed. She cupped his cheeks and moved her hips in tandem to the languorous lips seizing his mouth for the second time that day.

One of her hands then travelled down his chest to the waistband of his sweatpants. Dale froze. Ingrid stopped. His mouth hung open but no words came out. Her hand continued its journey, he clamped his mouth shut and gulped again.

"Touch me," she whispered.

"Wh-what? Wh-where?"

"Wherever you want."

His hand went up to her face and she smiled as he brushed his thumb across her bottom lip. The hand then fell to her shoulder, dragging down the strap of her nightgown. He kissed that shoulder, the collarbone beneath it, but the strap wouldn't go any lower. Until he remembered there was a second one and tugged on that, too. The garment sank to her waist. He measured her breasts with his palms and took one in his mouth. Once he'd tasted both, his eyes instinctively darted lower but he didn't dare reach further.

"Go on," Ingrid urged him.

Seeing that he continued to hesitate, she guided his hand between her legs and placed it on her thigh. With her guidance still, he pressed his palm against her warmth and she exhaled pleasure.

"Are you ready?" she murmured in his ear.

"I'm—I'm not...sure."

Ingrid kissed him again, for courage.

It also served to distract him from the main event, so that he wouldn't panic. He tensed up as she lowered herself onto him and the heat became too intense to bear. Despite himself, he moaned and moved along. Within excruciating minutes, he could no longer tolerate the lazy rhythm Ingrid had set and he laid her down on the sofa, to make haste.

Soon, ecstasy followed.

It left him gasping for air, like the most strenuous of workouts. Ingrid soothingly rubbed his back.

"Good boy," she said, "now roll over."

"I'm not a puppy," he argued, although he did roll over.

Ingrid chuckled. "Good boy," she said again and kissed his cheek.

Dale could barely keep his eyes open. His lashes fluttered together and once they merged for good, his lights were out.