Avoidance and Flavored Condoms
by B. Cavis

Avoidance and Flavored Condoms
by B. Cavis

He relishes playing with her. Playing her husband, her lover, her dirty little secret. He likes that she calls him "honey" all the time when they're Mr and Mrs. Loves the look of "oh, they're one of those" that their audience gets when they walk in.

Loves the fact that they have an audience to call their own.

The touches are most frequent when she's in significant other mode. More solid and meaningful than the occasional brush that she gives his shoulder when they're at the office. Playing gives Alex the freedom to be tactile. The freedom to be a Mrs. Bobby.

Bobby is an extremely tactile person.

Touching, tasting, feeling-- he was given two hands and he uses them as often as possible on every given surface in front of him. He was the child that would touch something to see if it was hot, instead of holding a palm above it to adsorb the second hand warmth. Bobby gets into everything and everyone, and he is damn good at being touchy feel-y.

Except for when it comes to his partner.

Bobby is an extremely tactile person, but when it comes to his partner, he avoids all skin to skin contact and most other forms as well. As often as he can, actually. When they're playing is one thing, one totally different universe. But in real life; in the real life they live in-- Bobby doesn't allow himself to touch his partner.

He can't. He won't. Out of fear of dirtying her, out of fear of saving himself; he can't touch her the way he knows he could. The Damned touching an Angel. The sacrilege sends shivers up and down his back in offense.

Still, weak and exhausted by the fight of every day criminal investigations, the impulse will crunch at him. Pushing and pulling with never ending ferocity until he gives in-- until he reaches for her. Some of the people they deal with, the cases they face are enough to send them screaming in desperation and shame, and the major was to fight that is to reaffirm their own humanity.

To reaffirm their own mortality.

His life; their lives grate until the only thing either one of them has left is the promise of a steady pulse of human skin next to their own.

After the hard ones, the long ones; the ones with kids or mentally insane mothers, they'll touch hands or shoulders briefly. He'll run his fingers over the clothed curve of her upper arm, and she'll trace the expanse between his two shoulder blades with the palm of her hand. When they can't hold out anymore, when doing so is just too much to bear... they touch.

Bobby fights losing battles like they're going out of style.

Of course, when such cases end, they each know what the other does once they leave each other. Sometimes Alex can see the nibbles on his throat left there from a creature comfort of the night. Soft and forgiving. Always, Bobby can see the thick bites on Alex's neck the morning after. Meaty. Hard.

The need for stimuli-- strong, shocking, and thick-- runs through them both after the cases that swipe a little bit of their souls as they go. That haunting need. So they touch each other, and then go fuck two someone elses.

Avoidance is the key to the successful Unresolved Sexual Tension relationship they seem to be having. Avoidance and flavored condoms.

Neither one of them says anything. Ever. Not about their cases, their touching, their throats. Nothing said is almost as good as hiding their heads in the sand; an emotional block out that hasn't failed them yet and shows no signs of doing so in the future.

Outside of their playing, outside of the world where their names aren't their own, Bobby can't touch his partner, just as she won't touch him. Their hands stay firm and at their sides. Because if they ever did touch, if Bobby even did explore all of the crevices and the silk skin that he wants to, he wouldn't be able to stop. He would take and taste and own and make his until Alex and Bobby were no longer two separate entities.

He would take her and make her a part of him, and he would get her to a place that she would love it.

Bobby can't touch his partner because he knows exactly how he would go about doing it. And he is sore afraid.

It's a kid. Was a kid. Should still be in the "is" category, actually, and it's that bitter realization that sends Xandra's hemline soaring as her feet take her into her favorite hunting grounds.

She needs the beat of a human heart next to hers tonight. Needs the reassessment that she is still human and that no perp has managed to drag her into their world. She needs to share her body tonight, because it's become way too much for her to handle on her own, and it's starting to scare her.

Come and share me, boys, she thinks with a humorless cackle, and slips fully into the role of a one night stand. Xandra.

Leather and silk. He watches from the corner with his current reprise sitting on his lap and moaning as he does wonderful things to her collarbone. Fancy that.

Her heels are high enough tonight to push her hips forward. Her legs are still short, but stacked and well formed, and she flexes a calf muscle and the bartender drops a glass.

She looks good enough to fuck hard and fast against the wall, and she knows it, which makes her look even better. The top laces up the back in some ridiculously complex design. It's nothing but strings and lace, and she looks damn good in it.

His lips turn up in approval. He hates himself for it, but he can't stop it anyhow. Robert appreciates a good piece of ass. Fine piece of ass.

Fine looking woman who is so not Bobby Goren's partner.

Isn't it nice how that happened?

The woman on his lap grunts as he bites down just a little bit harder than warranted, but is quickly soothed with a hot tongue and strong lips. Her hips move softly and persistently in his lap, feeling the first stirrings of a hard on there.

Too bad it's not for her, he thinks without humor, and focuses back on the woman who is still oblivious to his presence.

Her whole persona has been put together tonight by the same part of her mind that tells her mouth what to say when she's playing the bride at work. Xandra has a fine tuned sense of drama. It's always served her well.

She wants to forget and she wants someone to make her forget. Preferably all night long up against a headboard she can wrap her fingers around for support.

She sips something appallingly alcoholic and too sweet, and loves it for the electric green color that goes just perfectly with the danger and sex she's got on tonight. Robert wonders how she'd look spread out on his sheets; if she would mind that they aren't that same acidic green color, and decides that she just might.

Xandra.

Someone sends her a drink before she's even half way done with what she's got now, and she ignores it. Premature drink-ers and often pre-mature everything else-ers. She wants to get fucked, not pricked.

The first man approaches her, pulls her flat up against him and gyrates his hips against hers in a pseudo promise. She looks up at him, smirks, and shoves him away. Another drink, please.

Robert laughs to himself quietly. The woman on his lap moans and begins to squirm. If he keeps his hands doing whatever they're doing, she'll come on his dark jeans.

Eh. No skin off of his back. His fingers keep moving across her.

Over in his vision, Xandra rejects a third and fourth man with practiced ease. She finally settles on a man who dwarfs her in ever respect; big and dark. She curves herself into him, and he leads her out onto the dance floor, dry humping her to the beat.

Robert laughs again, only this time it's not funny.

His distraction pants into his neck and looks up at him with fuzzy eyes. "God Jesus..."

"No. Just Robert."

She laughs for more than the joke is worth and unfolds herself from his much larger form. Her blond head is pretty and her eyes are full of life. "This is my favorite song," she says softly. "Wanna dance with me, Robert?"

She licks the side of his neck and bites down on his earlobe with sharp little teeth. Little women. He can't remember a time when he was attracted to little women, and now he can't seem to be anything but.

He could break this waif of a heart beat in one hand if he wanted too.

"Sure," he whispers, silk and gravel. "Why not?"

Grind. Thrust. Pull back, push forward.

Xandra has the whole art of dirty dancing down to a science. She can move with the best of them; shake all on her own when ever she wants too. Seduction in dancing shoes.

Grind.

Her current suitor is behind her, thrusting against her while his hips sway from side to side to keep up the pretense of dancing. If he stopped moving, it would be public indecency, but because of that little sway, it's just fashionable. She tangles her fingers in the thick paw that's wrapped around her waist and bares her teeth happily.

Relief is coming soon enough, she thinks to herself. Soon enough, she won't feel like someone sand blasted her insides.

It's a feeling she's looking forward too immensely.

Thrust.

The man's big hand trails down the front of her skirt to the very hemline, and starts to inch it up one of her legs. She tilts her head back to allow him access to her throat, and smirks as he takes the hint. Good choice for the night, Xandra, honey.

A big tall man who is not at all Alex's partner. Perfection.

The song ends, and her man's hand finds the curve of her thong.

"This is nice," he purrs. "I like this." Not much for brains, she admits to herself, but still enough for her to have a night with.

...Not quite yet.

"Get me another drink?" And he's off to do her bidding. She stands on the dance floor for a moment, watching him, and wonders if another drink will erase the fact that he looks like Alex's partner, or erase the fact that he's not.

A warm arm encircles her waist once more, thicker and stronger, and she curls up against it.

"Did your lover boy just leave you hanging like that, baby?"

She glances up at him, sees the darkness in his eyes and the stubble on his checks, knows him, and doesn't have a clue as to who he is tonight.

"Yeah," she whispers scratchily. "He did, actually." She turns in the circle of his arm. "Why? You think you can do better?"

His teeth flash oily and white in the light from the strategically places globes in the club. "Yeah," he remarks, "I think I could do much better for you if you're up for it." He leans down and seizes her neck with his teeth in that place (oh God just like that) that he knows, he knows will make her ooze down onto his shoes in all the right ways.

He parts his lips and whispers the right question into her skin. "Who are you tonight?"

"Xandra," she whimpers as his tongue dominates the spot that her clavicle curves into her shoulder. "It's Xandra."

"Robert," he grunts back, and pulls her flush up against him. "Come home with me, Xandra. I'll make it worth your while."

The beat picks up again, but they're not moving. His fingers tap a staccato on her lower back, finding the flesh through the strings and playing her firmly. He could ask her to strip naked and masturbate herself on his lap, and she'd do it. Gladly.

Power is a great aphrodisiac, he thinks with a smirk, and loves the fact that he has power over this woman right now.

"Yes," she whispers. "Let's get out of here."

And as quickly as that, he's got her outside in a cab.

The driver keeps his eyes on the road because he saw the gun under Robert's arm when they got in the car. He focuses on the yellow stripes that lead him towards the given address, and blocks out the moans and pants in back by tuning his ears onto the radio.

Xandra straddles him the second they start moving, and his fingers work her skirt up a second after that. The Cossabella thong is pulled tight and moved to one side, and his hands trace and pull at her flesh mercilessly. Possessively.

"God you're so hot," he groans into her hair as she bites down on his shirt and unbuckles his belt. "You're nothing but fire and skin, aren't you?" He slides his fingers down the crack of her ass, past the clenching little whole he finds there, and into the warm wet that has begun to seep into his pants leg. "Jesus God..."

"Robert," she breathes into his chest. "Stop praying and start doing what you promised me you would." She shifts impatiently on his lap and grind herself back onto his fingers. The groan they both let out makes the driver turn the radio up.

"Fuck me," she whispers.

"I am," he grunts back, and his fingers start to move in and out of her as her own hands unbutton his boxers and slip inside.

She traces the head with her thumb. He presses down on her clit with the callous on his trigger finger, and she groans as the sensation burns through her. There's an electric current running through the reminder of who he really is and her body's recognition of that, and it feels oh so good and oh so wrong.

He's not allowed to want her like this. She's not allowed to want him back.

Fuck being allowed.

His other hand comes down to press her closer to him and trace her ass even as his fingers dig and pull at her insides. He finds her mouth harshly and presses his own lips to hers before his tongue probes for entrance. Her own mouth parts, and they taste each other in every crevice they can find. He will never forget how she tastes, and he will make it his life goal if need be to make sure she can't forget it either.

God this is so bad.

"Robert," she whimpers against his lips, and he tears loose to bite down on her neck desperately. Remember this, he orders his mind. Remember her.

Her hands are on him, jerking and pulling and hard, and he can feel the evidence of her distraction in her movements. His knee is wet with her, and he thrusts it up against her to add more friction. She cries out and her hands still for a moment before she forces herself to focus once more.

"You're close," he tells her, and she nods in agreement. "You're hot," he tells her, and she moans in response. "I am going to take you home and tie you to my bed for all eternity. You're never going to be rid of me, babe, because I won't let you." God, she thinks, why hadn't anyone ever told her how hot it was to have a man use his mouth for talking?

He rubs his knee back and forth, rocking her on his leg, and she's keening constantly into this air now, as his teeth make a mess of her neck. He can feel her fingers tightening, feel his balls drawing up, feel her around his fingers and on his tongue and under his mouth...

God damn it, he needs her.

"It..." A started conversation, excuse maybe, that is quelled in her throat by the simple action of his fingers picking up speed and his leg bouncing her up in the air once, only to catch her again. She's panting and begging and wanting, and he wants to give her everything in that one pure moment of love and lust and adoration.

She tightens around his fingers, her hand tightens around his cock, and it's all over for the both of them.

"Bobby," she calls out, searching for an anchor.

"Alex," he answers, catching her before she falls.

And the world starts to dissolve from that moment on in.

His hand knocks dully on the window separating them from the driver, and a voice that he can't recognize as his own gives the man Alex's apartment address instead.

Alex.

He pulls her skirt down and she zips his pants up, but she doesn't crawl off his lap. He can feel her shaking, crying without tears, and he wraps his arms tight around her in desperation and fear.

Life is back.

They cling to each other like their begging for a breath of air, and when the car stops in front of her apartment, she looks up at him with such complete and utter sadness in her eyes, that he kisses her just to make it go away. The tears streak down their faces in a silent testimonial to the reality of who they are, and she pulls away as her insides start to deteriorate in agony.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she whispers, and he wipes his eyes on the back of his sleeve quickly.

"Yeah. G... Goodnight, Alex."

"Goodnight, Bobby."

He watches until she gets inside the building and the light in her apartment goes on, before telling the driver his address again and closing his eyes in sheer unadulterated pain.

Xandra and Robert.

"You okay, buddy?" The driver gathers up his courage enough to inquire. Bobby looks up at him, and then lets his head drop back again.

"Yeah," he responds. "Just fine."

The next day, when they both come in, they don't look at each other's throats for evidence of their nights. Alex smiles at him hesitantly and takes his offer of coffee. He smiles back openly, and she loses the fear in her eyes. He wishes he could lose his own apprehension so easily, and sighs.

They have a new case, and the next time they go to a store where a suspect shopped, they pull out their badges instead of the wedding rings.

Bobby watches her spine stiffen as the man gives them a problem, and realizes that if they were Mr. and Mrs. again, they would have already been done with this.

Playing and it's benefits.

FIN