Restrain from your chicken

You step into the shower and feel the hot water rinse the accumulated sweat and grime off your body. You soap up your body, shampoo in your hair, marveling at how different it feels from before. Where there might have been just a little bit of fat under your skin there is now none, even if you aren’t a musclebeast, you definitely feel fitter and bigger than you did.

For Alice, idly staring into and stirring the chicken noodle soup in the kitchen, she also could not help but feel like something was off. She’d been smacked in the face with some musky smell, sweet and earthy like ripe fruit, that was overpoweringly strong on walking in here which had left her head reeling and eyes nearly watering.

But Mark’s note had given her suspicions. He had opened the windows, what a few hours ago, and it still smelled like this? Had it smelled all musky here last night when she had helped John into his dorm? She could believe that John, being a college boy, might relax his hygiene standards in the comfort of his own dorm, but what could even do to make the whole place smell this much?

And then there was John. Her eyes narrow at her bespeckled reflection in the soup. Something about John seemed off. She could have sworn that he looked, what, different? More muscular? More unkempt? More manly? Had he been going to the gym more often and she hadn’t noticed? Who exactly was he trying to impress?

Alice shrugged, tucking a hair behind her ear. She had to suppose that he’d probably think the same things if he showed up at her door after she slept in all day. Except for the going to the gym part, she thought, glancing down at herself.

Regardless, she would like to think that she would not have never come to the door with sweat-stained underwear that basically hid nothing from view. She glanced over at John’s bedroom, the door ajar, the water running. She was quite sure that she’d herself never be quite that shameless, even if it technically wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before.

Her eyes narrowed at her reflection in the soup as it started to lightly bubble. She turns down the heat on the stove to keep it warm.

There were still a lot of things in her mind that hadn't added up about last night that she wanted to see if she could get answers from John before submitting a formal report. She frowned as she searched the cupboards, and then pulled out two bowls and soup spoons. A formal incident report was not what she wanted on her record, especially if she wanted to go off to graduate school after next year.

It wasn’t even a matter of John being a clutz, both he and she were off the record and on the down low working down there in the archives unsupervised. If she submitted a formal incident report about a student falling off an unstabilized ladder as part of the department’s little black ops, that became a minefield that was administrator and legal team territory. That was people getting asked to give signed statements, injury lawyers circling like vultures with dollar signs in their eyes, and anyone without tenure possibly looking at the door, and Alice was not about catching any of that smoke if she could help it. No, she thought, keep it under wraps for now. If John didn’t say anything about it then neither would she.

She sets the bowls out on the table, and looks at Mark’s note again. Her eyes narrowed to slits. She was pretty sure she knew exactly who the “she” in his note was referring to, and she did not like it one bit.

She wasn’t surprised that Mark had, well, opinions about her, no doubt in part passed along from John. She knew it was an unreasonable expectation for John to actually be fair and unbiased to his roommate about their shared history, but that did not make her feel better. Just the way that Mark had underlined she, her, Alice, was not supposed to be here. She was the begrudgingly welcomed guest, if that, it was hard to tell if John was surprised, upset, or indifferent to her just showing up at his door after the events of last night. Last night.

Images of John on the floor, not moving, hardly breathing flashed across her vision.

She was getting herself worked up, she could feel it. She had been working herself into a right tizzy all day, and was outright panicking when John had been a no show at the archives. The fact that she had shown enough concern to speed over here from campus to check on him, for him shocked herself a little, some little ember of―

Alice’s ears perked up, the sound of the water running in the bathroom cutting out. She took a moment to collect herself, wanting to look as cool and calm as she could.

You dry yourself off with your towel, sighing and feeling much cleaner than you did before. You slip on your change of clothes, just a t-shirt, underwear, and basketball shorts, and feel like they definitely are tighter then they are supposed to be. You can see your muscles through your shirt more clearly, and the crotch of your shorts is definitely looking more packed then you remember it being.

You rerack your towel as you leave the bathroom through a cloud of steam and smell food, and feel your mouth instantly begin to water.

You are moving on autopilot into the kitchen, propelled by a ravenous hunger. You see Alice, wide eyed and looking at you, but more importantly, you see the bowl of hot soup that she has just ladled out of the pot.

You grab the bowl, making Alice jump a little as your big hands enwrap her much smaller hands, but right now the food is your only goal.

“Thanks,” you say as you sit down at the table, not even bothering to grab a spoon but simply lifting the bowl to your lips and tilting it back. You gulp the soup down, delicious chicken noodle soup. Your eyes close, and you make a note to get the recipe for this from Mark.

You set the empty bowl down on the table with a satisfied sigh.

“Can I have another bowl of that please?” you ask, offering the empty bowl to her, who, still looking shocked, takes it from you to refill it at the stove.

You steal a look at her with hungry eyes as she ladles out the soup from the pot again. She’s wearing tight jeans, which show off her legs quite nicely, but between the apron and unflattering lines of the sweater she is wearing, you wouldn’t imagine the honkers she is hiding if you weren’t once familiar with every inch of them.

Once Alice has refilled the bowl, she walks back to you with more soup. You eagerly take the bowl from her hands.

“Thanks,” you say, meeting her eyes for a moment before chugging another bowl of soup in one long go, leaning back and emptying the soup directly down your gullet.

“Goodness,” you hear her murmur, watching you in macabre interest.

“Oh that hit the spot,” you breathe out as you set the bowl down again

“Hey,” she says, catching your attention again, “there’s a little bit of soup left, do you want it now or?”

“Absolutely,” you grin, offering your bowl to her, again, which she takes, again, and ladling out the last of the soup in the pot.

“Here,” she replies, handing you the bowl.

“Thanks,” you say, taking the half full bowl of soup, giving her a grin that makes her look away.

You then unsurreptitiously bring the bowl to your lips and knock back the last of the soup in one long slurp.

“Thanks for that,” you say setting the bowl down on the table, giving a big stupid grin at Alice, who meets your gaze for a moment and then glances down at the floor. She starts to speak, slowly, working the fabric of the apron between her fingers.