نوال بشارة (nawal) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-01-12 19:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, muhammad benhamou, nawal bechara |
WHO: Muhammad Benhamou and Nawal Bechara
WHAT: Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor.
WHEN: Saturday, 12 January, nebulously post midnight (which I guess would make it Sunday), after this
WHERE: Mo's room, 7F
WARNINGS: Vague sexuality, the fire alarm going off
STATUS: Complete log!
Nawal had been at the pub warehouse when she received Mo's texts. She analyzed them for a moment and asked Harlow her opinion ("I would think you would need sugar in that.") before punching out a reply and heading back to the dorm. The pub wake was a good idea, but Nawal was tired. It was too much. She couldn't go through it all twice, and she couldn't shake the niggling feeling that Mason was trying to undermine her or prove that he was better than the Student Council at doing the only thing they ever did anymore. Maybe a cup of tea with a friend was exactly what she needed. She had seen Mo at pub night, briefly, but he must have left. Maybe he was in the same state of mind. She stopped in her room to grab the bag of sugar she kept stashed in her desk. As she was leaving, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the back of the door and stopped for a few seconds to brush her hair -- which was a stupid thing to do, given that she was going to be seeing Muhammad, who in all likelihood did not even own a comb, but something compelled her to do it anyway. Not long after she received his text, Nawal was in the boys' dorm, rapping at the door of Mo's room. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the empty spot where Erik's name label had been, but it suddenly struck her how sad it was that Mo no longer shared that room with anyone. At the knock, Muhammad rose from where he crouched over his tea kettle and padded to the door. (He was careful not to stray too far into Erik’s side of the room — which was still, as far as Mo was concerned, Erik’s side of the room, no matter how thoroughly they’d stripped it of his belongings, or vacuumed up his dust. To stand in that space would be like walking into the belly of a ghost, he thought.) Opening the door, he gave his visitor a winsome smile, not without a hint of guilt (could he do anything without feeling a little guilty?), before ushering her in. “T’aal fi, t’aal, he said, and was surprised at how good it felt just to speak Arabic with someone. He’d built up such a stamina for English that he’d almost forgotten how exhausting it was. His electric kettle whistled and he hurried over to it, sitting cross-legged on the floor as he poured the hot water into his tea pot. He turned his small glass cup in his hands as the tea steeped, tracing the gold filigree absently. “I got these in Brussels, in a Moroccan market,” he said, handing her a second cup. “Real Arabic tea cups. Reminds you of home, no?” Nawal joined Mo on the floor, tucking her legs daintily underneath her skirt. She set her bag of sugar down next to Mo's teapot and accepted the cup, holding it in two hands like something precious. The bell-shaped glass felt fragile in her grasp, but familiar. For years, she hadn't touched glasses at all. Here, she drank her tea mostly from a mug with "IVI" emblazoned on the side, like it belonged to a real school. Her sister in Canada had used a ceramic tea set, supposedly imported from Japan, but in Ramallah, years ago, Nawal had drank tea out of something like this. "Na'am," she muttered in agreement, the Arabic slipping out of her mouth more like a gasp than a word. "They're lovely." “They were cheap,” he admitted, with a wry smile. He picked up the teapot and poured into Nawal’s glass first, then his own, adding a very generous spoonful of sugar to each. He let his cup sit for a moment, not wanting to scald himself. “I broke two on the way to Prague.” Mo paused, raising an eyebrow. “I hope Rianne did not tell you about that madcap adventure. Wallah, [i swear to god] I am not always that wild. Or — drunk.” He paused again, taking a cautious sip. “You came from pub night?” Nawal scooted closer, to make the pouring easier. She brought the cup to her lips and blew across the brim to cool it. Little tendrils of steam rose from the surface, and the familiar scent of the spiced tea soothed her. "I did, but I only had a little wine. I'm not drunk." Nawal wasn't sure why she was so defensive. Her roommate hadn't told her much of any adventures in Amsterdam (the timing didn't seem right to discuss things like that), but she could infer enough to know that Muhammad wasn't in any place to judge her. Especially not when he was a Muslim and shouldn't be drinking at all, but what Nawal had told him was true. She had known her fair share of bad Muslim boys in Ramallah. “Okay,” he said lightly, burying a bemused smile in his cup. He studied her over the brim. She reminded him of girls he’d known back in Algeria, with her primness and her big, serious brown eyes. More cautious than European girls, more inhibited. Arab girls don’t put out, they used to complain, in high school, and Mo had since regarded it as mostly fact. Arab girls were nice girls, the kind you married. If you still planned on things like that, those childhood assumptions of the future. Mo wasn’t sure he did. “It wouldn’t hurt, you know. Every once in a while, to let go. Have stories to keep a secret from your mother-in-law. You know?” He smiled, reaching out a hand to tug at the end of her braid, playfully. “You are so serious.” Nawal batted at his hand. She had heard plenty of times before the she was too serious, but she never thought anything of it. This time, though, the words seemed to resonate in her. Nawal set her teacup down on the floor. Maybe she really did want to prove Mo wrong, maybe it was the wine, maybe she just thought he was lonely here, in this room that he shared with a ghost, but she leaned in close. "Stories?" she said, and she pressed her lips to his. It was far from the first time that a kiss had landed on Mo out of left field, so after a near-inaudible noise of surprise, he adjusted rather quickly to this sudden paradigm shift. Now they inhabited a reality in which Nawal would make out with him on impulse — which was really quite alright with Mo. Unexpected, yes, but not unwelcome. He ran his hand down her arm, steadying himself, lengthening the kiss, which was warm and sweet and tasted of sage. He sensed her hesitancy at first, but she didn’t end it — in fact, it went on so long that his knee felt stiff, so he shifted his leg — “Ah!” he gasped, pulling away at last. He looked sheepishly down at his overturned tea cup and his soaked pant leg. “Should have been more careful...” Nawal mirrored his gasp and drew back, away from the spill. "You're not hurt, are you?" she asked, reaching out to touch the wet spot on his pant leg. "It was very hot." “No, no, it’s fine,” he said, still breathless. Glancing down at where her hand now rested on his upper thigh, it seemed his clumsy mishap hadn’t impeded developments, either. He grinned at her, coltishly, and leaned forward to kiss her again, first on the corner of her mouth, then travelled up her jaw to ghost his lips over her ear. “I could just take them off but — “ He nipped at her earlobe, wondering if he should admit outright that he wasn’t wearing any underwear. “I didn’t do my laundry, so....” Before long, the pants did come off. So did Nawal's dress. The tea was left to overbrew and grow cold as they moved from the floor to Mo's bed. Nawal had kissed boys before, years ago in Ramallah, but never before had she gone to bed with one. "I don't really do this," she said, knowing that this was the kind of thing that Mo did all the time. When she was a teenager, she had anticipated that she might find someone at university, but of course she never went to university. There hadn't been enough room to share her first cell, then later she had been surrounded by women, then Israeli soldiers. By the time she arrived at IVI, losing her virginity was another one of many things she'd never had the opportunity to do. She hadn't expected to do it here, tonight, with an Algerian, but then she supposed it was as good a time as any. She was 22, and he was gentle and did not make her feel any more uneasy for her lack of experience or the ugly scar across her back. She leaned into him, pressing a kiss at the juncture of neck and shoulder. Across the room, she didn't notice a collection of cellulose molecules supercharging. It happened too quickly. In an instant, the bedside table exploded. Just moments prior, Mo had been quite enjoying himself. Sex was easy for him, familiar and yet unfamiliar, a welcome distraction from his anxieties and his grief. Even the gloominess of the air dissipated; it seemed he could sexile a ghost as well as a living roommate. He’d never — he didn’t think — been someone’s very first, which he had not been told, exactly, but had more — figured. It bothered him less than he expected it might. He didn’t take her virginity so much as he watched as she stripped it off like an old dress and flung it into the past, where it belonged. There was no doubt that she was ready, that she wanted this. He reached for the hand that was grazing his hip (and beginning to tickle) and kissed it, firmly, looking down into Nawal’s dark eyes. “Okay?” he murmured, before beginning to move in earnest. Her hand tightened in his; her eyes flickered closed; he thought, with her long hair fanned out on the stark white pillow beneath it, her delicate gold jewelry nestled in the hollow of her bare chest, she looked so elegant. He opened his mouth, about to say words to this effect, when — He thought he felt splinters across his skin, first, a smattering of stinging pain he tried to make sense of, but the only thing he could hear was a great clunk of a heavy object and then — Muhammad slumped to the side, swallowed up by oblivion. The lamp rolled to the floor. Nawal screamed. As if on cue, the room's overhead sprinkler went off, and the fire alarm began to sound. She shook Mo's body, trying to wake him up and get him off of (and out of) her, and, for a long, panicked moment, she feared that he had died. Pressing two fingers to his neck, Nawal took a deep breath, releasing it only when she felt a pulse. She closed her eyes for a moment, as if she could somehow will this situation into never having happened. Of course she couldn't. She knew there was no fire. She didn't have to leave, but she couldn't stay in this room with the sprinklers spraying and the alarm sounding, and she couldn't leave Mo. He needed to go the infirmary. Maybe she had concussed him. She couldn't tell. She sighed and pushed him off of her. Nawal retrieved her dress from the floor, throwing it on inside-out, but she was in no place to care about things like that. The more pressing issue was how she would get Muhammad out. His clothes would take too long. The only thing she could think to do was to untuck the sheet and wrap him in it. "Yalla..." she muttered, yanking him off the bed. His head lolled to the side. Fuck her life. |