"I didn't dispute the fruit-ness of the moon because I wasn't sure they should really jump up the tech tree like that, it ... didn't seem like an obvious great idea, but probably before we die we should have a go at convincing them. - or I guess we can just leave it to Alex."

"Yeah. And Wishbone'll still be here. I - wonder what they'll do. I guess they probably don't know yet."

"As much as I like the idea that they'll wait around until we turn up again, I'll be kind of judgy if they don't prevent, like, the Holocaust and so on and it seems unlikely that after a responsible amount of frowning on atrocities you get all the same people in all the same places."

"Yeah. That one episode of Star Trek where Earth is an evil empire but also has versions of all the same people on it did always seem wildly off, even if it was a fun forty minutes of TV."

"Can I kiss you?"

"Yeah."

He kisses her.

She kisses him back. Not sure how good she is at it, but, uh, maybe there are points for effort.

It's OK. It's... maybe kind of nice? It could be described as nice.

It's something. 

He's - kind of reluctant to move on for a while.

Karen is super unclear on how much kissing people usually do before this, so, uh, she's just gonna keep doing this for a while.

She's twitchy and nervous and if they were dating he wouldn't push his luck, here, even if she wasn't sixteen which was kind of contained in the hypothetical where they were dating actually, but. 

Well, everything's going fine, really.

"I want to go down on you. Is that okay?"

Karen.... actually has no idea what this means. Possibly this is just a term for having sex? That would probably be OK? That is in fact what they are here to do. But probably she should admit that she doesn't actually know what this means, because what if she says it's fine and then whatever it is is very not fine? But also maybe Ryan would find that super concerning and rethink this whole thing if she doesn't know basic things, because it's not like he's going to be doing weird things that are totally outside what normal people do when they're having sex, right? So probably it'll be fine? Probably?

" - yeah."

What he's going to do, apparently, is duck his head under the blanket and kiss her navel, and then down from there.

- oh wow OK that's a thing. That's a thing that people do apparently. OK. Wow.

She's just gonna stay here and breathe sort of erratically and make the occasional quiet little whimpering sound.

Well that's the first thing that's happened in a month that's made him feel remotely competent as a human being at anything he cares about. 

It's probably better to do this for a really, really long time, too, under the circumstances, though poor Karen is going to get the impression that sex is six hours long and dicks involved for five minutes of that.

Yeah Karen is just gonna go on being super confused about everything. She's not going to complain, though. She's kind of shut down the part of her brain that tells her whether things are nice, because every time it reports that something is nice it also reminds her that did she know that she's going to hell for all eternity, but at the moment she's pretty fine with this continuing indefinitely.

Eventually his tongue will get too sore to keep this up even under the really exceptional circumstances and he will go get a glass of water and then take a minute so that he doesn't sound like his tongue is too sore to move when he says "everything still okay?"

"Yeah," she sighs. She should probably ever say any other words at any point but her brain is still not super cooperating on that front.

He heard from a guy in his unit that in Japan all women just lie there because it's a cultural thing. Not that that's what's going on here obviously, just, perfectly normal in some contexts. Is it racist to think about that? He has another sip of water. He looks away from Karen and faces the wall and jerks himself off and then climbs back into bed -

- he shouldn't ask 'are you okay?' again, he just asked that, you can't just keep asking the same question every five minutes - 

- kisses her, lines himself up -

- oh, what the hell - 

"everything okay?"

"Mmhmm. M'good."

        "Okay."

Then they'll try this.

- OK. Karen realizes some things.

One: Ryan is really really nice and she really appreciates him as a person but she is super not emotionally prepared for this and is going to have to process a whole lot of feelings about having to do this under these circumstances as soon as she has any pieces of her brain left to think about anything else.

Two: Oh God if she ever makes it out of this then no nice Catholic boy is ever ever ever going to want to date her. Probably the baby murder would do that anyway, actually, but the Evangelicals didn't give youth group presentations on how guys won't like you if you do human sacrifices, did they, they just talked about licked candy bars and roses with the petals torn off, and it sure is a good thing that Ryan is a nice human being because he is probably the only person who is ever potentially going to be interested in her ever.

These things are sort of dwarfed by realization number three: Sex is excruciatingly painful. She feels like someone could have mentioned this at some point. Like, she's read enough historical things to know that it's supposed to be painful your first time, virgins are supposed to bleed, something something hymens, whatever, but the pain levels here are - the relevant comparison is, like, that time she was shot in the head with a bullet, except that was a momentary shooting pain and then she was fine or she was dead, and this is sustained, this is everything hurting worse and worse the longer it goes on, this is feeling like there was a wall inside you and for a second you were sure nothing could go through it except it did but everything is complaining VERY LOUDLY now and she kind of wants to break down sobbing.

However. She is the slayer. She is the one girl in all the world - literally - who alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She made it through being shot in the head, she made it through being strangled almost to death by Lurconis, she made it through carrying Billy all the way down the mountain, barefoot in the snow, and back to the hospital. She can make it through this. She can. She can.

She clamps her jaw shut and turns her waterfalls up so they roar and focuses on not reacting weirdly and keeping all of the scream-sobs inside her brain.

At some point he's going to have to stop anxiously monitoring for Karen-reactions (Karen is not reacting, anyway) if they're going to, well, get this done. This is not really the sexiest situation he has ever been in but she's cute, and sweet, and okay, and this is okay, very melodramatic and everything but not actually horrible -

- that's really not going to do it -

- she's beautiful, and the vampire slayer, and she likes him and trusts him even though she's scared -

God god god god god god god -

It's got to stop hurting at some point, right, something would break or stretch or something, and then there would be enough room, and then everything wouldn't hurt so badly, right, baby heads come through here so it doesn't make any sense that there wouldn't be space -

It keeps not stopping, it keeps just being this horrible searing pain with a dull ache around it that she can't focus on now but that's probably gonna be terrible later, but - it's fine it's fine it's fine, she just has to endure it for a little bit, Ryan is really nice and really really considerate and he's not going to drag this out and god god god -

She keeps her jaws shut - can't scream if your mouth is closed - but the waterfalls dissolve and her brain is screaming screaming screaming -

Karen -

- KAREN -