Dani's Fandom

I had a professor who always said "if being a college student doesn't give you enough material to write about, you're not paying attention". I remember that because of Dani, who had it written across the front of her notebook in our first year. Dani is the one I think of first, and last, out of all of those years. When I first met her, she had this kinda cutesy short haircut and freckles, she was short, and she always wore t-shirts that looked a little too big on her. I think she finished high school early, so there was a little bit of an age gap that might have made it harder for her to fit in. Which wasn't her fault, and she could hang with the smart kids, for sure - she and I made up part of the regular front row in one of those giant lecture-hall English classes in our first year, and she was always the one with the smart questions during class. It always gave me a smile when she took the seat next to me and we got to catch up before class. She was a sweetheart. And hey, I was a college-aged guy; I'm sure I fantasized about ripping those jeans and t-shirts off of her body, just like I did with every other girl on campus. But I thought of her as more of a little sister, and probably treated her like one. Which means I should have been paying more attention.

There was one morning before class, when we were talking about how we'd spent the weekend. Nothing exciting, but I thought she was being a little vague. With a little prodding, though, I got it out of her that she and a friend had spent the weekend doing with fanfiction. She had that sheepish look people get when they're not sure whether they'll have to explain their hobbies or defend them, but I tried to give her my best 'knowing smile' and asked what her fandom was. I'd had a few friends who were fanfic people. If I remember right, she and her buddy were writing a crossover fic between Dr. Who and another show I'd never watched, so the conversation didn't go too deep. But I think she was relieved that she'd finally outed herself on that hobby, without losing any points with her cool, older college friend. Cute, right?

Before long, she was regularly emailing me stories she was working on, and she took the seat next to me every day in class so we could talk about them. It's great, when you're a college student and everyone is just trying to look cool and bored all the time, when somebody has real excitement for something, and doesn't mind sharing it with you. I knew Dani was a good writer already, but I liked getting in on her imagination, too - there was something almost intimate about getting to peek at those hints of personality that showed through in her writing. She said herself that you can do things in fiction you'd never do in real life.

One Friday, she sat down next to me with a look I couldn't quite place. Smiling, but definitely nervous about something. She hovered next to me without sitting down.

"Hey, Dani." I smiled.

She blurted out "did you get the last thing I sent you?" and she was literally biting her lip in anticipation. I had to think about it. "The one you emailed me Wednesday?"

"No, this morning."

"Oh, then no. I didn't check my email yet."

She relaxed by a few degrees. "Oh, you don't have to." she said. "I just... I dunno. It is what it is. Thought you might want to read it."

"I will! I like your stories." I was trying to be reassuring, but not sure what I was reassuring, exactly, so I was out of the loop.

"Hey, Dani, want to sit down?" I smiled. She gave a little laugh and, finally, un-tensed a little. The room was filling up, and I took out my phone while Dani got her notes out and got ready for class. There was her email.

'Weightless in your arms, and hungering...' it started. '...will you kiss my feet when I have walked on fire...'

A wiser man would have played this differently, I know. Just believe me that I hadn't connected her nervousness with the fact that she'd emailed me, probably on an instantly-regretted impulse, a love poem. I was as oblivious to crushes as any young guy, so I just didn't get that the situation was delicate. "Is this a poem?" I asked her. She turned, saw me reading off of my phone, and blushed bright red. "I didn't know you wrote poetry, too."

Maybe there was a second where I could have turned it around - either given her the reaction she wanted, or played it cool. But whatever she needed from me then, I didn't have a clue. "You really don't have to read that." she said, almost in a whisper. "It's stupid." She looked like she wished she could have sunk into the floor. I don't think she let herself look in my direction for the rest of that class period, no matter how many times I tried to catch her eye. After the lecture, I had to run to catch her on the way out of the building.

"Hey, Dani?"

She shook her head, embarrassed. "Just forget it."

"Dani. Really. It's okay." But she clutched her notebooks to her chest and marched off into the parking lot. She wasn't in class the next day. For all the good it did, I emailed her just to ask if she was okay, and I got a response a day later (unusually long to wait, for her,) saying she was embarrassed, but fine, and could we just forget the whole thing. I still saw her in class, that semester, but she didn't take the seat next to me any more. She had other friends, and I guess I did, too. I don't think Dani and I had a real conversation for the rest of the year. Then, the class was over. We went our separate ways.

I know it really could have ended there. But college is full of second chances, isn't it? You don't have to be psychic to see that if you take a first-year class with someone, you're probably going to cross paths again in four years. About a year after that English class, there was a Spring semester when I couldn't get into a class I needed, but I still needed 3 more credits to keep my scholarship, so I took the last resort and enrolled in "self-guided fitness": You show up at the gym for 2 hours a week, and get your A. So, I spent that couple of hours a week on a treadmill, trying to be subtle about checking out all the spandex asses on the girls working the stationary bikes. There are worse ways to spend your tuition. And then, one day, I saw Dani again.

She was walking out of the gym while I was just working up a sweat, and I think we both noticed each other at the same time, because I caught her smiling at me before she even remembered to be nervous or shy or anything.

"Dani! How've you been?" I asked, distracted for the moment from the treadmill. Her cheek curled up in a half-smile, and she said "I've been okay." She looked happy to see me, which was a bigger relief than I thought it would be.

"You got stuck in fitness too, huh?" I said.

She laughed a laugh I hadn't heard in a long time. Something about it, just for a second, made me forget about all the yoga pants and halter tops in that room. Dani had grown up a little. She'd let her hair grow a little longer, and in a sweaty tee at the end of a workout, she sure didn't look like a kid any more. But there was still plenty of that cuteness I remembered. Still those freckles across her cheeks. But she looked - I don't know. Like she was more comfortable in her skin, somehow. Her gym shorts showed off her hips a little, and she was doing a little stretch that brought out all of her body's curves. Maybe I stared too long.

"Yep. Last resort fitness, right?" Then she gave me a wave, and said she'd see me around.

The next week, our schedules aligned again, and this time I ran into her on my way out of the gym when she was leaving, too.

"Good workout?" she asked as I caught up.

"Hey, good enough. How's yours?"

On the walk down the stairs from the gym, we got to catch up a little. She'd had a busy year with classes, she'd moved onto campus from her parents' place, she'd done some traveling over the summer. We walked down the walkway past the basketball courts, and into the hallway that eventually split off into the locker rooms. I was just happy hearing her voice again. Before we parted ways, I told her so.

"It's nice getting to talk like this again." I said. "I missed it."

She gave me a smile, and said she had, too. "Things got weird. I'm sorry."

"Don't be." I told her. "Really. You don't have to be."

She glanced down, maybe trying to decide how much history we wanted to dig up.

"No, I'm sorry I kinda stopped talking to you. I jut felt like I was doing so well, and then it was just this... train wreck. I think I just wanted you to like me."

"I always liked you, Dani." I said.

She didn't mind hearing that, but it didn't change the look in her eyes, either. "You know what I mean." she said. Then, "I didn't want you to think of me as a kid." I didn't have anything to say to that.

There was a drop of sweat working its way down the far side of her eye, and she wiped it away. "Anyway, things shouldn't have ended up like that."

"Yeah." I nodded. "I feel the same way."

Neither of us could think of a thing to say, but I just didn't want her to leave.

"How's the fanfic going?" I asked, half joking.

She gave me a sentimental smile. "Okay." She answered. "Not spending as much time with it, lately. Maybe I want to be having more adventures in real life, you know?"

She swayed just a little to the song playing on the radio over the PA system. The yellow cotton shirt she wore to the gym still stuck close to her body, and there was a sheen of sweat on her bare legs. I couldn't keep my eyes from tracing the curve from her ribs to her hip bone and down through her legs. This was the same girl who'd written me a love poem. How had I sat next to her all those mornings, and never seen how gorgeous she was? And how had I let her just disappear?

Searching for a word, I said "You look confident. It looks good on you."

Dani laughed again, a little coy. "I don't know about that. I'll settle for being able to show my face." She sighed. "You know what a crush I had on you, right?"

I smiled a little sheepishly. "I guess I should have put it together."

"Well, listen, I've got to get my shower and change and get to my next class." Dani said without actually moving. We both had to be somewhere, but I wished we could have stayed right there.

"I guess I'll see you around." I forced myself to say. And I walked into the locker room, and into a long, cold shower.

'will you kiss my feet/ when I have walked on fire/ when I am nobody's sister/ when I am nobody's child'

At one o'clock that morning, I was lying in bed in my dorm, staring into the light of my phone, reading a year-old email from Dani. The poem I didn't know to handle more carefully. From the girl who, somehow, I didn't know to fall in love with. Well, I knew it now. Dani had been so close to my thoughts all that day that I felt like I'd been physically carrying her with me. I'd run through a million different versions of that day in the literature class a year ago. The blanket on my bed weighed against an aching hard-on that I couldn't lose no matter how hard I tried. I didn't even feel horny, exactly. I just needed to see her face, or hear her voice, to be close to her again.

When I wrote her an email, it was a reply to that poem. Maybe calling it 'the reply I never sent' is rewriting history, but maybe some stories deserve to be re-written. All I knew was that I was never going to get to sleep if I didn't write to her.

Re: A poem.

Dani,

Thinking about you a lot. Let's hang out.

When I woke up, I felt a kind of dread about the emails that might be waiting on my phone. Was I toying with things she'd rather forget? Had I missed my chance by a year? I steadied my nerves and switched my phone on, and there was exactly one reply from Dani.

'Sure.' it said. 'Let's hang out.'

An exclamation mark, an 'xo' - it seemed like anything would have tipped that message into something clearer. Something that could have told me what I was dying to hear, that she was feeling the same thing I was that night. But 'sure' was all I got. Within a few more emails that morning, 'let's hang out' turned into a plan to take a walk in the arboretum just off campus, with a vague plan to get a bite to eat afterward. I was 21 but she wasn't yet, which cut down the list of places we could go a little, but it was impossible to focus on the details. I just wanted to see her.

I picked her up outside her dorm building on a Wednesday afternoon. We'd both agreed to skip our afternoon classes. It had only been a couple of days, but it felt like ages. I texted her from the parking lot, and tried to steady my nerves. It was the moment of truth. Why hadn't I brought flowers? I'd second-guessed myself so many times, I was sick of it. But there I was, in my crappy car and my least-crappy shirt, waiting for her.

Dani stepped out of her building in a crowd of other girls, and looked around the lot for a second before she found me. She wore white denim shorts and a tank top with a see-through blouse over it, with her hair clipped up and a splash of makeup across her face. Glossy lips and something around her eyes. I guessed her roommate was to thank for the makeup, because I'd never seen her wear it before. But who knows what had changed since the last time I'd really talked with her? A band-aid on her shin made me wonder if she'd shaved her legs in a hurry. But she looked perfect. The sight of her let something in me finally relax.

"Hi." I said. She smiled and said hi back. I'd already run through this scenario in my head over and over. A hug, a handshake, a kiss, a compliment. I felt half frozen, but told her she looked nice. ('Nice.' What idiot tells a girl she looks 'nice'?) But she said thanks, I opened the car door for her, and we drove off to the arboretum.

In our emails, we'd both said we wanted to talk again like we used to, but it was clear after 30 seconds in the car together that talking wasn't first on either of our minds. She filled me in on her classes and what her family had been up to, but without much heart in it. Me, I had a hard enough time just keeping my eyes on the road. When we parked, she let me walk around and open her door for her. She took my hand to get up out of the car, and didn't let go when we walked off towards a quiet trail. Her palm was warm in my hand. I'd been asking about her trip over the summer, and she was talking about the trains in London when we walked past a cluster of red flowers blooming on a low tree, and she leaned over to inhale their perfume. The movement, with my hand in hers, pulled me close to her, almost spooning. She felt her butt brush against my lap and she turned her head, speechless and questioning with those sweet, pretty eyes searching my expression, and that's when I kissed her.

I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't kissed her then. She made a moan when I combed my fingers through her hair. Her lip gloss tasted like some kind of candy, and I made up my mind to lick every drop of it off. I wanted those sweet, bare lips I'd stared at all those days in the lecture hall. My arm wrapped up the arch of her back and pulled her close. Dani was an inexperienced kisser, and I probably was, too - not quite sure what to do with our tongues, and occasionally losing our balance at the height of a deep, close kiss. But I held her, and kissed her, until she finally pulled away to catch her breath. The smells of the flowers and the trees poured in around us.

We were both looking for words. Something cool to say. But what I really wanted was more. I wanted to hear her moan. I tilted her head to the side and kissed her neck, as softly as I could stand. She whimpered out a slow breath and dug her fingers into my hair. My hand was under her tank top, trying to stroke her lightly despite the hunger I felt to grab her, crush her body into mine and devour the warmth and softness of her skin.

A minute later, I felt her stiffen and tap my shoulder. "Someone's coming." She said, panting. A group of four or five people was turning onto the trail from the parking lot, and we stood aside to let them pass. Maybe to Dani, it counted as almost getting caught. I could feel her heart pounding for a minute after they passed.

"Let's go somewhere we're not going to be interrupted." I said. I was thinking of my bed, or even a hotel, but she glanced up a narrow trail that led deeper into the woods, and looked back at me with an irresistible 'pretty please' in her eyes.

"Okay." I said, catching my breath. We grabbed a blanket from my trunk and half-ran into the trees until we were out of sight from the trail. Then we fell onto the blanket together, before we could even get it spread out on the undergrowth. She laid on her back and cuddled close to me. Her fingertip traced a path down the inside of me arm.

"Dani." I whispered. Her name was all I could think to say. Leaning on an elbow over her, I got to stare into her eyes like I never had before. I felt almost drunk on it.

"Kiss me." she said in a warm breath.

Freed from having to stay on our feet, we fell into a longer, wetter kiss and let ourselves thrill to it. When my fingers slid up her stomach to tease around the edge of her bra, she let out a sweet shudder like nothing I'd ever heard from her before. She moved her hand under my shirt, too, as the kisses ranged farther and farther from each other's mouths.

Before long, we'd slid her bra straps over her arms and I was hovering at her chest, sucking a nipple between my lips. The fingernails digging into the back of my head told me to keep going. She pulled one of my hands to her mouth to kiss. The soft skin of her chest, wet from my tongue, gave off a scent that I wished I could get lost in. We hoped we were well hidden, but at that moment, someone could have walked over us and we wouldn't have known it. With my hands kneading her tits, I moved my mouth down over her stomach, on a course for the button of her shorts.

She moaned something unspecific and unbuttoned them herself, then changed her mind, painfully, and held the waist shut with her hands.

"Should we go somewhere else?" she asked.

I kissed my way back up her stomach, chest and neck to whisper in her ear "I will take you anywhere you want, Dani, but I have to taste you." She answered that with a shivering laugh, and wetted a finger under her panties to tease me with. When she put the fingertip in my mouth, she tasted like clear, sweet honey.

"You are so hard." she cooed, feeling that aching hard-on pressed against her through my jeans.

"And you are so perfect."

Ten minutes later, we parked my car on a side road next to a lake. Quiet enough for privacy, and I knew we didn't want the distraction of sneaking into each other's dorm buildings. It wasn't far from sunset when we parked. Dani swigged water from a plastic bottle, and I did the same, just noticing how dry the long makeout session had left my mouth.

"Do you really want to lick me?" she cooed as we climbed into the back seat.

"You want to make me beg for it?" I asked.

She laughed and let me unbutton her shorts. "Just making sure."

"I'm really, really sure I want to lick you." I said, pulling her zipper open. A faint thread of soft brown hairs peeked from the waist of her cotton panties. Maybe crossing the point of no return, finally, I pulled her shorts and underwear down her smooth legs and into the floor behind the passenger seat. I got between her knees. Kissing the inside of her thigh, I let my fingers flick over her damp, mousy-brown fuzz and tease her lips apart. I hadn't been with many women at that time, but Dani's pussy was shockingly sweet - short, puffy outer lips and tight pink insides glistening wet. I could only tease her for a few seconds longer. She positioned the wadded-up blanket behind her neck to get comfortable, and I closed my mouth around the mound of her pubic bone, finally taking a full, wet mouthful of her pussy.