[C] Freeze Your Brain

Mads often brought his work home with him. When your job was memorising and performing an entire two-hour play, sometimes you had to do a little extra work outside of work.

He'd pushed aside his couch to open up his large living room, and was now perched on his sideboard, holding a glass tumbler.

"I've been through ten high schools,
They start to get blurry.
No point planting roots,
Cause you're gone in a hurry."

He moved across his makeshift stage, gesturing and acting out his performance as if he was being watched by hundreds.

"My dad keeps two suitcases
Packed in the Den
So it's only a matter of when.

I don't learn the names,
Don't bother with faces.
All I can trust is this concrete oasis.

Seems like every time I'm about to despair,
There's a 7-11 right there

Each store is the same,
From Las Vegas to Boston,
Linoleum aisles that I love
To get lost in

I pray at my altar of slush.
Yeah, I live for that sweet frozen rush!"

He mimed taking a sip through a straw, and grimaced theatrically.

"Freeze your brain.
Suck on that straw, get lost in the pain.
Happiness comes when everything numbs
Who needs cocaine?

Freeze your brain.
Freeze your- oh."

He stopped dead when he caught sight of the woman standing before him.

"Been here long, 'Cola?"

"I heard some yelling and I wanted to see if your cat was okay, neighbour."

She put the key down on a nearby surface. The corner of her lipstick stained lips curved up into a teasing smile.

"Turned out it was just you singing. I was rather impressed at the bit where you pretended to take a sip."

She was still in her work clothes; a knee length pencil skirt and a loose blouse. Her heels clicked against the tiled surface as she made her way over to the couch to perch on the armrest. She made a waving motion with her hand.

"Don't mind me, keep going. I want to see if this involves stripping."

"Fuck off," he snorted, setting the tumbler down on the sideboard and crossing his arms over his chest.

Pugile is... ah, there he is."

The scarred cat darted from the bedroom, right to Nicola's lap. He rolled over in her lap, lying with his belly facing up.

Already he was shedding white hair onto her skirt.

"Sorry to disappoint, but no stripping until Dead Girl Walking."

Her hand instantly began scratching the cat's only ear. She had gotten enough dick here to know that none of her clothes was safe from his cat. Particularly her darks.

Actually, it seemed to be only her darks.

But he was cute enough for her to forgive him. One-eared, scared and all.

"Skip to that one then."

"It's a duet."

His shoulders shrugged, clearly not sorry in the slightest that he couldn't sing it for her.

"You'll have to live with the ode to 7-11, or nothing. So what really brings you here? I know this place is soundproofed to fuck. If it wasn't, I'd be hearing your bed creaking above me every night. So, out with it."

He shifted across the room to perch on the arm of the couch and reached out to pet Pugile.

Her lips pursed. She narrowed her eyes.

This fuckbuddy business was going into dangerous territory. Or maybe it already tipped into it.

She clicked the roof of her mouth before searching through her designer bag.

"The usual; crazy ex." She wasn't secretive about it. "He sent me flowers to my workplace. My favourite flowers. It had a letter attached, too."

She showed it to him. It was open. The contents of the letter full of grovelling apologies, devotions of love and begs for her to take him back. This sort of stuff she wasn't so frank about.

Well there was a surprise. The crazy ex was at it again.

His bros shot up when she actually told him what the crazy ex did this time. Usually she just came over demanding to fuck.

He took the letter and read through it, snorting before he even got to the end. "What a cock. Ignore the fucker, girl. Straight up. It'll probably piss him off more."

A grin lit up his blue eyes. "Could also send him a steamy picture of us."

Nicola hummed. Ignore the fucker was a good advice. It is why she ended up here instead of a few paces more to her apartment.

But she was liking that glint in his eyes.

He own lips curled up.

"Now that would really piss him off."

It might also give him the signal to just finally fuck off and crawl away. Might being a keyword.

"How steamy are we talking?"

Well, pissing him off was the point.

How steamy?

"You can decide, dear. My body is at your picture-taking disposal." Mads had very little shame, and even less when it meant pissing off some cunt that was bugging people he knew.

Green eyes lit up.

"Your body is at my disposal, hm?"

She picked the cat up, hearing it purr as she did so, before chucking it out of the room and closing the door behind her. She didn't fancy being interrupted. Again.

Her attention turned back to the couch.

"Your body at my disposal," she repeated to herself, quietly, playfully. One arm crossed her body while she tapped her bottom lip in mocking thought.

"You're going to strip for me. I think that is a good place to start. I even have some music."

As she was speaking she pulled out a speaker from her bag and fished out her phone. After few swipes at her phone and music started playing. An embarrassing pop-punk playlist. It will do. She didn't want to fanny about trying to sort some music out when there were some much more pressing matters.

She left her bag and speaker on a counter and took a seat on the couch. Pose casual and waiting. Her phone was still in her hand.

"Always, dear."

He watched as she gt up to dispose of the cat. Well, this wasn't what he had planned for the evening, but he wasn't complaining. When Nicola got ideas in her head, he always had a fun time.

Mads relaxed as he watched her ponder his fate, and a smirk appeared when she made her decision.

He hopped up off the couch when she moved to sit on it, and he took a few steps backwards.

"It's going to be sadly short." He hadn't bothered getting dressed today, so he was in a simple black t-shirt, and a pair of black pyjama bottoms. No underwear, no extra layers.

He spent a moment just listening to the track, and trying to get a feel for it, before his hips began to swing, finding the beat. Mads was all about dancing and singing along to music. He could improvise with the best of them.

His hands moved to the hem of his shirt, pulling it up slightly over his tattooed stomach.

Bonuses of having a fuckbuddy who works in musical theatre: They can dance.

In a purposeful motion, she brought her lip between her teeth and followed the shirt with her eyes as it was dragged up, watching his hips sway. Tattoos and that harsh scar being slowly revealed.

How he'd got it, she didn't know. She never asked. What she was interested in about it was how sensitive it was.

"Short, but still hot."

"That's the goal."

He dropped the hem of his shirt and bought his arms up behind his head, gripping the neckline and pulling it, divesting himself of his shirt in a swift tug.

He tossed it aside and took the two strides towards Nicola, hunkering down with his hands on the back of the couch, nose to nose with her.

"Hi."

She looked at him with almost passive coolness. The corners of her mouth were curved up. Her eyes were dipped low to focus on his lips.

"Hi yourself."

Her well-manicured fingers drifted along his cheek, down his neck and lower across the planes of his torso until she found his waistband. Hooking one finger, she pulled it back and snapped it. The action spoke as loud as words; take it off.

His stomach muscles twitched when the waistband snapped against his skin.

"You don't want it ending so soon, do you?"

He shifted his weight to one arm, and used his now free hand to grip one of hers, and press her palm flat against his stomach. It was lightly defined, but clearly toned, ridged with a few light scars scattered around the thick stretched out scar on his upper stomach, partially hidden under a tattoo.

"What can I say? I'm impatient."

She let her hand be guided. Fingers splayed, she felt the dips, curves and rough edges of his body. She let out a long, appreciative noise.

"Wouldn't mind licking something other than cum off this one day. Preferably something sweeter."

"I've noticed." Impatience was one of her biggest traits.

His hand returned to the back of the couch as her hand set about exploring his stomach appreciatively.

"I'm not much of a sweet tooth, so you'll have to provide your own condiments." He certainly liked the idea, but he didn't have anything that'd be considered suitable right now. It'd have to be a future purchase.

"I can do that," she promised.

Her other hand joined the other in exploring his body in symmetry. She felt up his abs, the sides of his torso, across his shoulders and chest, playfully brushing her fingers against his nipples. The phone was left on her lap.

Her eyes were still dropped low. Not on his face, but on his torso, observing how each muscle would twitch under her touch.

"I look forward to it."

His muscles tensed and relaxed under her questing fingertips, and his eyes slid shut as he enjoyed the feel of her exploration.

He had plenty of fairly sensitive scars littered across his body that elicited little shivers and twitches from him.

If she was anyone else, she would have appreciated all the subtle reactions a little longer. But what can she say? She was impatient.

Her hands dipped lower, over the curve of his ass. The elastic waistband pushed down easily until gravity took over and the bottoms pooled at his feet.

"Oops."

She grinned up at him and gave his ass a cheeky squeeze.

His own grin formed as she pushed down his pants.

"Oops, indeed," he responded, lifting one foot from the bottoms, and kicking them aside.

The tip of his nose brushed against Nicola's as he moved, straddling the woman's thighs.

Her hands moved as he did, resting on the inside of his thigh. Her thumbs massaged little circles close the groin, on the tendon.

Her nose scrunched a little as the tip brushed against Mad's. She didn't pull away. Each of his outward breaths tickled her lips.

"What shall I do to you now? Let me think for a second."

She tilted her head up to close the tiny gap between them, kissing him slowly but confidently.

He very nearly made a sarky comment about her taking a moment to think. If he knew Nicola at all by now, it was that she always had something fun in mind.

Instead Mads pressed into the kiss, turning what Nicola intended to be a gentle slow kiss into something much more firm and fast. He was just as tired of the slow pace as Nicola was.

His hands moved from the back of the couch, to smooth over her shoulders and chest, palming a handful of breast before searching out the top button.

She gave in to his demands for a faster and more intense kiss. A slight gasp caught the back of her throat when her breast was cupped. That was as far as she was letting this go.

She caught the wrists before the could undo the first button.

"Not yet. I'm still thinking. You may even prolong the process by doing that."

Mads tutted when his wrists were caught, but leaned back away from her slightly, conceding defeat.

"The only thing you're thinking about is whether to be mean or really mean, dear."

And now he'd said that, she was likely to be really mean.