Berries and Greed

“I wasn’t trying to be a creep,” I told him anxiously, wanting to touch him but refraining for the time being. Clearing my throat, I nodded at the tin. “If you want to smoke while we talk about this, you can.”

He immediately lunged for the tin with a squawk of nervous laughter. “Cool. Thanks. I, um… This is weird.”

“It’s not weird, Greid. We’re different species. There’ll be things we need to discover about each other. And…” I paused, waiting for him to strike a match and light his joint. “I could sense you were maybe a little nervous when I said I wanted to touch you this morning, and I was wondering if it was because you were worried.”

“I mean, yeah.” His knee bounced as he rolled the joint between two long fingers, watching its smoking tip. “It would’ve, um, hurt you.”

I watched him. “So the spikes are sharp, then?”

His ears fluttered wildly, but he took another deep drag and said, “Not sharp enough to pierce skin, unless you were… you know. Human. And rubbing your hand over them repeatedly.”

“So how do you jerk off?” I asked without thinking. “Or have any kind of sex that involves penetration?”

“Christ, I should’ve stayed upstairs,” he mumbled, rubbing his face. A tiny hint of hurt tightened my chest.

“We don’t have to talk about this,” I said quietly. “I just thought—”

“No.” He exhaled, then finally turned to face me. “I’m sorry, I’m just… really fucking nervous. We should probably, um, talk about it. If we’re… If this…”

“Look, why don’t I tell you something first?” I shifted onto my knees and sat back on my heels. “And it might… put you at ease a bit.”

“Okay.” Greid eyed me nervously, sucking on his joint.

“So I don’t…” I picked at the blanket beside me. I wasn’t overly worried about Greid’s reaction, but it was still nerve-wracking, and an intimate thing to share. “I have vaginismus, so whenever I’ve attempted penetrative sex in the past, it hurt. A lot. But I… I don’t actually like being penetrated anyway.” I shrugged. “I have no idea if it’s a coincidence or if they’re linked. Probably the latter though, seeing as vaginismus is usually a psychological thing.”

Taking a breath, I forced myself to look at Greid. He gave me a tiny smile but stayed quiet, waiting for me to finish.

“So, yeah. If you were worried about anything…” I hesitated, then reached out and curled my fingers over his free hand. He immediately flipped it to thread his fingers through mine and squeezed. “And if you did still want… something with me, then… the spikes wouldn’t be a problem.”

I managed to give him a wry smile, but it dropped as I chewed my lip and added, “But obviously it would mean… you know, some kinds of sex aren’t possible for us.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, they wouldn’t be anyway. Because of, um, my spiky dick and all.”

I snorted, then clutched his hand tighter as I asked, “Does that bother you?”

“What?” He shook his head with an incredulous laugh. “What kind of asshole would I be if it did?”

“I don’t know.” A smile was twisting my mouth. “Some people have been assholes about it.”

He snorted. “What, some douchebag who whined about only getting a handjob from a beautiful woman?”

Butterflies exploded in my stomach at hearing him call me beautiful. My smile stretched as I leaned closer to him. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“Then they were a total dickhead. I love handjobs, by the way,” he added hurriedly. “Big fan of handjobs here. I think they’re great.”

I laughed, squeezing his hand as I teasingly said, “Good to know.”

“And I…” He swallowed, ears twitching, but pushed on. “Not being able to do that with you, Beryl… it wouldn’t make it any less, you know, meaningful to me,” he mumbled shyly. “I… I like you.”

My heart squeezed tight. God, he was so sweet. Clutching his hand tighter, I rasped, “Thanks, Greid. I like you too. So much.”

He let out a breath. “Okay. My turn. What… um, what do you want to know?”

I cocked my head. “Well, I am very interested in giving you handjobs. So we should probably talk about how that would work, but I’m also just curious. Do the spikes not… hurt?”

“Oh. Right. Okay,” he croaked, taking a long drag of his joint as his face spikes flexed rapidly. “Well, I mean, demiurgus skin is tougher than a human’s, so the spikes don’t… they don’t hurt me.”

“You mean they don’t hurt your hand? When you…”

His ears fluttered. “Yeah. But they would hurt you.”

“So what about… I mean, I saw demiurgus having sex in the porn. How does that not… hurt the one being penetrated?” I asked curiously.

“Well, um, demiurgus are tougher on the inside too.” He cleared his throat and took a drag. “What I remember from sex ed is that the, uh, the spikes are an evolutionary thing designed to… you know, stimulate sensations. They feel good to a demiurgus. And then, uh…” He gave me a sheepish glance. “Did you see any demiurgus with dicks, um, come? In the porn? I mean, like… outside of a body.”

I snorted. “They were all outside of a body.”

His mouth twitched. “Got to get that money shot.”