We picked up dessert on the way to his place.

Manu wanted something sweet. I complained that he didn't think I was sweet enough. He said that he would happily enjoy two desserts tonight. I went a bit red and fanned myself jokingly. He called me a chameleon, and I went redder, and he laughed.

He wanted to buy me ice cream. I didn't like ice cream, so we settled on popping into a bakery and getting a lemon meringue pie about ten minutes before it closed. The store owner said we looked like a cute couple and asked how long we'd been together, and was shocked when I said it was our second date (and Manu corrected me to 'third') and that we only met Friday night. I noticed, and noted as we walked out, that we got pegged as a couple instantly, though. He said it was easy when we walked in hand-in-hand.

The pie sat unopened in its cardboard container on Manu's kitchen table as I rode him on his living room couch. From the moment we walked in to the apartment, we couldn't keep our hands off each other. Or our lips, or various other parts of ourselves. Neither of us had even bothered to take off our shirts, we were just naked from the waist down, he was sitting on the couch and leaning against the back, and I was straddling him with my knees on the cushions and my hands on his shoulders, and we were fucking in excited, if somewhat careful, manner. I didn't want to fall off, after all.

It wasn't a spiritual experience, this time, when he came inside me, when he pushed a few times more to get me off. It was purely physical, purely joyful, two bodies just having fun. It was just sex, if there can ever be such a thing as just sex. There was no fire, no poetry, nothing even particularly artful about it. If anything, it was a paradoxical combination of mechanical and naturalistic action. Animal instinct and robotic execution.

I sat there, afterwards, feeling warm inside and out, my bare ass on his couch, as Manu went to clean up and bring me a washcloth. I tried not to leave any spots on the cushions while I waited for him, and I'm not sure that I succeeded, but then, neither did he. We sat there, afterwards, only wearing shirts, eating our pie, tasting lemon gelatin and buttery crust and sugary meringue on each others' faces.

"You know," I said, breaking the silence that wasn't actually silent—you know that feeling where it's not quiet but you're not actually saying anything important?—and slowly running my left hand over his right hip, "aside from the fact that we just met two days ago, this feels... normal. I like normal."

"You've had a lot of not-normal," Manu replied. "And I'm happy to offer you a lot more normal all night long if you like."

"Well, can't go all night. Didn't bring a bag, I have a morning seminar."

"Yeah, I saw that." He licked his fork. "I remember Monday morning classes. I'll have you home before you turn back into a lizard."

I stuck my tongue out at him. He tapped it with the point of his fork, prompting a slight, wonderful sting with just a hint of citrus. I pulled back, a bit surprised, and giggled.

"It's..." He sighed, happily. "It's amazing, seeing so many different sides of you in, what, two damn days? Three? Friday night, Saturday, and now."

"What do you mean?" I asked as he stood up and took our empty plates. His cock hung briefly right in front of my face as he walked past.

"Well, little Chameleon—"

"'Little'?" I objected mildly.

"You're smaller than me."

I stood up and faced him, fists on my hips, as he put the dishes in the sink. "That doesn't make me little!" I snapped back, trying (and probably failing) to sound serious, and offended.

"But that's just my point," he said, turning back. "I've seen so many different sides of you! And not just... well, okay, more than just different aspects of the same person, it's like every one of those is someone new. Surprise and shock, flirting, then coping with an emergency, drawing on your strength to face your fear to help a dorm-mate... the power you had yesterday, and the just sort of..."

He shrugged, and it made his balls bounce, and I couldn't keep a straight face in that moment. I covered my grin, but it was no use.

"... yes?" he asked. I didn't tell him.

"Okay, okay, I get it." I sat back down. I felt a little ridiculous with both of us still wearing our shirts. "'Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.'" I emphasized the word 'large' to make the point, but another line from the poem rang in my mind: Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?

Manu sniffed the air a little, looking like he wasn't sure where the wood-smoke he could smell was coming from. "I've heard that before. That's not yours, right?"

"Walt Whitman," I replied. "'Song of Myself,' part fifty-one."

"Part fifty-one?"

"Of fifty-two," I confirmed with a nod.

"And you know the whole thing?"

"Nah. I mean, I've read the whole thing, I just know bits of it. It's... raw," I said. "Inspirational to me, a bit, I guess. Especially now. It was attacked, almost censored, for being too sexy."

"Too sexy?"

"Yup."

"And Walt Whitman—"

"Solid 19th-century," I answered, knowing what Manu was about to ask.

"So 'sexy' for the time, was...?"

I smirked.
This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair,
This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.

"Oh," Manu said, and he let out a shuddering breath like he'd been cold. "Okay, yeah. But it's probably mostly sexy because it's coming from you." Literally right in front of my eyes, I could see the effect my words had.

"Honestly, I haven't thought about that poem in... since, like, second year. I'm surprised I remember so much of it. Though I mean it's just, what, seven lines out of something like twelve hundred."

"Got any more?" he asked, still standing very close.

"Of that? Probably could call up some. It's not all sexy, though, there's a lot of violence and death, and a lot of nature, and American politics, and he spells 'Kanada' with a 'K'."

"Mhmm, okay. I, uh... kind of thought of another mad science experiment."

With his half-erect member right there I was thinking of other experiments. "Okay, go on."

"On me. I want to know what's different if you read other people's poetry versus when you read your own."

"You just like hearing me talk."

"Yeah, that's true. And I think figuring out your gift is far more important than my reactions."

I ran my hand over his hip. "There's a reaction that's got my attention right now."

"Oh yeah?"

I pulled my shirt off and sat there, completely naked. "I think we have time before I need to go home."

He chuckled. "Chameleon again."

"Am I really that changeable?" I asked softly, standing up and putting my hands on his shoulders.

"Mmm, yeah, and I like it," he said.

I stepped closer and
I could feel the truth of that statement pressing
against my hip and I could hear it
in his ragged breath and I could
see the honesty in his eyes and
if there was anyone in the world I would change for
in that minute, in that moment, in that instant
it would be him

He inhaled through clenched teeth. I could feel him tremble. My hand encircled his hardness, ever-so-slowly sliding back and forth. He seemed... paralyzed.

His breath came out with one word, long and drawn out and full of pleasure: "No."

I stopped, but didn't move.

He looked down at me, gathering himself. "Don't change for me," he said. His words were full of effort, as though he was fighting against my speech to force them out. "Be who you are," he said, "and as many yous as you are, and I'll follow those changes, and..." He trailed off on long 'L' sound.

I resumed the movement of my hand, slow, steady, pressing even closer.
Let my words give courage to your words
Let my body give power to your body
Let my spirit give strength to your spirit
Let my fire give light to your fire
Let my heart give love to your heart

He didn't have to say it, but he did anyway.

"... and love you the whole time, no matter who you are."
The biggest word in all of the language
has only four letters,
has only one syllable,
but it has the size to fill rooms,
buildings,
cities,
continents.
It fills minds,
lives,
hearts,
and shapes the course of history

He moaned with the ministration of my hand, and my words. "It's..." he gasped, not moving, "way too soon, isn't it," he choked out.

I looked up at him and I could feel the fire in my eyes when our gazes met. "I don't think it is," I replied.
If it were anyone else,
if it were anywhen else
if it were anywhy else
it would be
but
I could be with him
at this moment
for this reason
and we would be
in love

We stood there, still but for my hand slowly stroking and his body trembling like an autumn leaf, for a while. It didn't make sense, but it didn't have to. The fire burned between us.

What we had, was love, but there was something else there.

We were going to have sex, that was certain. There was no need to rush towards that inevitability. But another thought, another feeling, was boiling up inside, a heat deeper and more complicated even than love.

We held our gaze, and though it's impossible, it felt like neither of us were blinking.
With the fire in my blood
with the fire in my voice
with the fire in my words
I draw you to me
I bind you to me
I brand you as mine

He came, then, with a full-body shudder that spread warm, sticky fluid on my leg.

He didn't break eye contact.

"Too fast?" I asked. I was still stroking his softening, soaking cock.

Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head. "If anything," he breathed, "I'd like it to be faster."

I could feel my smile turning almost predatory. "I'm not sure how it could be faster."

He was still trembling, and I could still feel warm liquid oozing forth from him onto my hand in drips. "I..." he started.

"Yeah?"

"I need my shirt off," he said. "I can't... ugh, I don't..."

"You can't explain it," I said. "The feeling of the cloth on your skin is, somehow, wrong. It makes your whole body crawl like there's ants everywhere."

Manu nodded, and without waiting a moment more, pulled his shirt over his head, and we were both naked. He sighed, and finally I let him go, and he relaxed.

He spoke first. "This... this isn't me. This isn't... isn't normal for me. I mean, I'm a fast mover, and if you were amenable and it wasn't for Zeyla—"

"I get it," I said. "I really do. It challenges everything you thought—"

"About me, about life, about relationships... but more about science, right?"

"Yeah."

"You... you've studied poetry, you're an artist, you're... I don't know, more connected to this sort of thing?"

I laughed loud. "Yeah, it was covered in my first-year Rhymes and Sorcery class." I shook my head. "I'm flying blind here. I need some kind of..."

"Guidance?" he suggested.

"That sounds right." I pressed my body, hot, sticky, sweaty, needy, against his. "Guide me?"

"Only place I'm guiding you is the bedroom."

"Let's go."

We nearly made it all the way to the bed before our mutual sexual need took over again, and I pressed him, forced him (with his very willing participation) against the wall of his room, and our kisses lasted long enough for him to start getting hard again, at which point I spun with him across the floor and all but tossed him onto the blankets. He certainly didn't resist as he landed on his back, knees bent at the edge of the bed. Nor did he resist as I pressed my body on top of his and kissed him more, moving myself past his waist, my knees finding space under his armpits and leaning down so he could suck on my tits, which he did to our mutual pleasure. But after a moment I straightened and pushed forward again, allowing him to bury his face between my thighs. His arms made their way over my lower legs, and I leaned down, his kisses becoming more and more urgent as my hands landed on the bed. He gripped my ass and his tongue started its fantastic work, and my hands took solid hold of the blankets and I let out a solid, loud moan of pleasure.

He knew how to do more than just make me recite poetry.

I felt raw, animalistic. It probably helped that I was on all fours. My moans and gasps felt like snarls and howls. In the disconnect of orgasm, I wondered if the fire singing in my blood was going to change me into a werewolf, and I found it no less believable than the magic my last few weeks had been full of. My sense of smell seemed sharper, and I could feel the sex in the air. I held myself up just long enough for Manu to get out from under me before I rolled—more, collapsed—onto my left side, and my breathing seemed like happy whimpers in my ears.

Manu wasn't done. He pulled himself up beside me, and I could feel his hardness drawing a slick, sticky line along my leg, just as his lips were making pecks along my sweaty torso. He seemed to revel in my salty flesh, not so much kissing as tasting, lingering too long to be only an expression of affection. His half-selfish gesture extended the aftershocks of pleasure that were rocking through my body, and when he reached my lips and I could taste sweat and sex, so very, very different from the salt of the fast food the day before, I automatically, instinctively stretched my body out and pressed against him, his cock tantalizingly close to my soaking core, and if I'd had more energy I could have pushed him over and impaled myself, but my body had used a lot of its reserves responding to his acts and so I could only make entreaty with my eyes as he gently helped me to my back.

I was so wet, and he so considerate of my state, that I barely registered his initial penetration, consciously at least. My body clenched down as he pulled back, trying to keep him in place, but his momentum wouldn't be denied, sliding back into me, timed with my own breathing so that I had to gasp. Flickers of poetry, of fire, flashed through my mind and were banished immediately as he pressed a third time, leisurely, calmly. This was his poetry, taming and calming all that was feral inside me with patience, effort, emphasis. When my thoughts resurged, a simple, disciplinary thrust inside me sent them tumbling back into the blaze. When the fire threatened to consume, his pace slowed, and the heat lowered, until again I could near make my way to coherence.

He was balance to my passion, order to my chaos. I wasn't even paying attention to his condition; I couldn't. All my focus was being driven inward, in some attempt to make a reasonable reply, but nothing in my entire existence at that moment could approach a response. What was probably five minutes, if that, felt like eternity stacked on top of eternity. Where the previous orgasm felt like the onrush of floodwaters, this was the ebb and flow of the tide, eternal, inevitable, unstoppable, but still measured, predictable, adapted-to. And when from some distant other universe I head his breathing hitch and his own voice cry out, I realized it was being heard through my own ecstatic screams, that were instigated by the onrush of his own floodwaters.

The din seemed to echo on more or less forever in my mind, melting through words and thoughts and leaving me splayed out and worn on the bed. Where was my fire? Where were my words? My whole core of my identity seemed to be left there in the blankets and the sweat and the aches that were slowly pulling me back to functional awareness.

"Water," I gasped.

He kissed my cheek. "Right away," he whispered in my ear, voice hoarse.

He moved quickly, but he could have been going at the speed of light and it wouldn't have been enough. Still, it's not like I held it against him. He even brought me water first before going back to get his own. By the time he returned with a second glass for himself, I had finished mine, and he just handed me his and went back for another.

I had smothered the fire inside me with his love, and now I was drowning it.

I was only half done when he returned a second time, and he almost automatically handed me the full glass, and I almost as automatically handed him the half-finished one, and we drank. It felt like a toast, nonsensically.

"More?" he asked when we finished.

I flopped back on the bed, letting my glass fall onto the blanket. "I don't think I have the energy to drink more."

He laughed, sitting on the edge of the bed. "I'm gonna be hurting tomorrow, for sure. Should I just carry you to the car?"

"Nah, I wouldn't make you haul me down the stairs like that."

"I could fill you with booze until you pass out and then roll you into the elevator."

I giggled. I felt... weird. Normal. Normal was weird. Normal was lying in my lover's bed, giggling about little jokes, pushing thoughts of cleaning up and going home out of my mind, enjoying the moment. That felt so strange. The absence of the flames, the inspiration, being... just me, not being a poet, not being a performer, not being powerful was odd, offputting.

"What's on your mind?" Manu asked, sitting on the bed.

I took a deep breath. "Just ruining the mood for myself," I said lightly.

He saw through the flimsy deception. "You're not joking."

"Erhhhh," I let out the sigh slow and low. "I'm gonna start by saying that I'm absolutely in love. This is nothing to do with you. Or... I guess everything to do with you, because you're amazing and wonderful and ... well yeah, I'm absolutely in love. But this..."

"Too fast?" he asked gently.

"No! no, no. This is perfect. And that's the problem. I mean... okay, no, it's not, you fell on me, we rescued my dormmate, I'm having these weird... What am I doing, you know all this. You were there. Ugh." I sighed. "I'm babbling. You're gonna be... I don't know what you're gonna be."

He put a comforting hand on my leg. "I'll be here. Have I not listened to you yet?"

"True. Yeah. Good point. Okay. This... feels... right and normal."

"The horror."

I laughed. He laughed. "Yeah, I know, but... I mean it's two things, right? Earlier, just before this, I spontaneously created poetry that shifted reality, yeah? And then this whole month, so far—oh my god, so far! There's still like three months until winter break!—anyway, it's all been so screwed up, yeah? So... so there's that, which also means that I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, right?"

"I get it." He shuffled further onto the bed, and his hand gently rubbed my knee. "If it helps, I'm not wearing shoes."

"Or anything else," I pointed out.

"Or anything else. Look, I'm not the expert on metaphor, but if there's another shoe to drop, it drops on us both, alright?"

I didn't say that it was actually a clumsy metaphor, but it did make me feel better. I sat up and put my hand on his. "Yeah. We're doing this together." I stroked his hand. "Mad science, poetry, school, whatever. We're doing this together." I traced the line of the black-and-red tattoo that ran almost from his wrist up to his knuckles. "I like this," I said. "Looks like a flame."

He nodded. "Yeah, it does."

"I don't remember seeing it before. When did you get it?"

"An hour ago or so," he said. "Will that cover the weirdness for the night?"

I blinked. "Yeah."

"Thought it might."

"Too tired to think about it now. Need home. Need bed."

He smirked at me. "Come on, Chameleon. Let's get cleaned up, and get you home."