Dr Max watched the object of her illicit affections from the relative cool afforded her by the shade of the old smoker's pavilion. Which was a grand name for a left-over bike shelter that had at some point in the last two decades been assembled on the rooftop of the college science block and had served as the refuge for lecturers and staff (from whose lounge the rooftop also opened onto).
At least it had while there was still a minority using tobacco. Once that had fully gone out of favour and the excuse for ten glorious minutes of privacy along with it, it was surprising the number of staff that had taken up vaping or similar habits. Which in turn had led to a (against college policy) penchant for the newly de-criminalised recreational substances, especially with the many a varied advances in atomic chemistry this decade had surprised the world with.
There was nothing chemically induced about the relaxation Maximillia was enjoying, however. Illicit? Possibly. Against policy? Oh certainly, although that only made it all the more enjoyable. The heat of the day was pushing the dials up past thirty-five, but it wasn’t the sun that was making her feel flush, reaching for water that couldn’t quench a thirst, or testing her self- restraint. The frustration of the wait was part of the fun.
She watched as the light bronze of his bare back caught the glare of the midday sun and shimmered like burnished gold. In the shadowy recesses created by each line of finally toned muscle perspiration caught and sparkled like diamonds in the spectacle of the midday. It was certainly worth the hours spent courtside cheering on the college’s prize Zone Tennis Lead, if it meant Scott—never one for gyms and mirrors—stayed looking like one of the tallest, coolest, drinks on the bar.
Scott, for his part, was also enjoying himself. The manual labour was repetitive but rewarding. The time his athletic body spent going through the motions was time his keen mind could run away free from the distractions of day-to-day life, peers, deadlines, constant comms interruptions. The exercise gave him focus to let his mind spin on, chasing to keep up with Max, her genius as much a challenge -the chase- as it was the jewel of her alure. Not that he couldn’t think of a few other aspects to admire.
He chanced a glance back, under his right arm, as he leaned over to reposition the solar panel. She was definitely appreciating the view. He looked away and forced himself to concentrate on the equipment but did nothing to stop the proud smile spreading across his face. He knew he looked great. A million miles away from the awkward boy she had first met a few years past. The natural flow of time had helped him become a tall and strong young man, and his time with Maxi... she’d brought more out of him than he’d ever admit existed.
He hefted the panel up onto one shoulder and turned to face his admirer. There was absolutely no need for the obvious flex, but his shirt was forgotten two floors below, the sun made his white-blonde hair shine like platinum, and the woman of his dreams was devouring him with her eyes.
This was the last piece of the rooftop equipment. What a dilemma: prolong the manual labour and the topless tease show for his audience of one, or finish up and make her choose to test her new scientific toys over joining him in the showers?
Max ran both hands along the delicate curve of her neck, spreading her fingers as she pushed them up through her long amber hair, lifting it out from where it caught around the collar of her blouse and feeling the cool breeze kiss the back of her neck. In truth, it was too hot for office-wear, and it was too hot to have her hair down, since it reached almost to the nape of her back. Then again, she knew Scott was wild for redheads, and college policy meant she, a professor (albeit the youngest), had to maintain a certain standard of attire, especially when ‘supervising’. Even when the sun wasn’t the only thing raising her temperature.
She watched as the star of her own private show fixed the last piece of equipment, congratulated herself on not once making an internal innuendo about his equipment, and then caught a lump in her through as he reached over, displaying smoothed curved thighs and a sculpted rear, trapped beneath Lycra ZT shorts. It was an obvious display, but she was hardly complaining, and in truth the biggest thrill was that it was all for her.
He gestured to the ladder that hung off the side of the rooftop deck. picking up a thick coil of spare cabling, and indicating he’d see her down below. She watched as he disappeared below the lip of the roof, but not before fixing her with a winning smile. Damn, there better be no one else using the staff lift.
How she’d made it back to her Senior-Staff apartment so thoroughly well behaved she couldn’t imagine. The whole way over, the drone of the electric engine beneath her had matched the positive hum of tension originating between her tightly crossed legs. She had begged the automated vehicle to hurry the hell up!
Finally, inside the Department Head campus apartment, she kicked off her wonderful but seriously not summer friendly kitten heels, and made it to the bedroom. The door hissed closed behind her; she thumbed the lock screen and let out a little sigh, despite herself, at the reassurance of privacy.
She had no right to complain, of course. At 34, she had made department head faster than any of her peers. She had the run of one of the best science labs in the country, easy teaching schedule, an on-campus apartment, and, of course, a very generous unofficial ‘benefit’ in a breathtaking package. Not that she could combine the two, of course. That they were both consenting adults be hanged, student/teacher relationships were against policy. The added frisson of fear and taboo that added to their tryst was usually a welcome wrinkle, however, but when the sensible brain was overcome with lustful thoughts, the distance across campus to the student block felt like a chasm.
This also meant that Scott would have to be home alone, at least until he could change into something more appropriate for a private teaching appointment (that his test scores were so artificially low, despite his obvious genius, was a less than perfect cover - but it had suited them so far). She looked around her modest but entirely private master bedroom, with its deliciously practical wet-room style ensuite, and instead compared it to the communal showers on each floor of the student dorms Scott would have to be enduring. She tapped her phone screen (it was the smallest model yet still seemed large on the back of her delicate, petite hand), a message from Scott:
“meet you in the showers?”
He was crazy, and incorrigible. She liked it.
“absolutely not! warm urslf up 4 me... any extra credit fun U got to share notes remember!! M-xxx"
She sent back, already thinking about him peeling himself out of his skintight sportswear and padding down the hallway in naught but a towel to the shared bathrooms. A towel discarded in favour of getting under the warm water and slippery soap as soon as possible. Would he already be hard? Was it thrill-enough just working topless for her lone admiring, appreciative gaze to excite him? If he was, would he hide it?
She tried to think only of the rivulets of water coursing their way down his tall, slim, body. Tracing the lines of definition of a once skinny and lanky, now genuinely athletic form, hard won on the courts, not artificial or sculpted by vanity. She tried to keep her mind on only his hard and defiant manhood, standing proud, displaying the wicked curve that she was aching to be hooked with. Betraying his secret passion for anyone to discover in the communal intimacy of the showers.
Then that was all she could think about.
It had been a huge part of their relationship, when Scott had confessed his attraction to other guys and the wonderful flights of fantasy it had taken them both on. It was hard to imagine it was still a taboo at all on this side of the 2050s, with the liberal shift in public opinion about private lives in the last ten years – just about everyone was on the curious end of the sexual spectrum it seemed. Yet somehow it remained, at least in a small part, a guilty secret between male lovers. She suspected they partly liked it that way.
They’d always agreed that Scott should take boys to bed as he found them. He’d spent all of his young life too embarrassed to socialise with, and especially play sports in same-sex spaces because of his feelings, so when he’d finally opened up to his wiser older lover she’d actively encouraged him to make up for lost time, both on the court, and after!
Their forbidden love such-as-it-was meant that having other partners was basically necessary for them both, anyway. If only as a cover, and they’d quickly just made the open bedroom part of their fantasy play. They would compare notes on which of the feminine beauties about campus turned their mutual heads, and she would, of course, share titillating innuendo about the freshmen and sophomore girls with the other female teachers. Since fraternizing with the young college studs was a career-ending offence, and workplace hookups just made things complicated, she would have seemed almost prudish to the other female staff if she didn’t join in the commonplace, in fact expected and shared, sapphic-curious crushes the female staff gossiped about.
Despite all the rules to the contrary, or maybe by design, she mused; life on campus was akin to something out of ancient Greece.
Then she was right back to the shared male showers of 4A. Did they even try and hide it? Face the wall, eyes down? Wet, naked, curious young men? Surely, was it quick and guilty solo relief in the corner as everyone pretended not to notice. Or even now, was a younger first year blushing as he admired her secret suitor, exchanging knowing glances, Scott running his hand through the other boy's hair and admiring his cherubim features, even as the nervous young stranger sank slowly to his knees, ready for the ultimate act of submission and worship?
Without even realising it, shed sunk back against the wall, not even making it away from the doorway. Her left hand had already traced its path up her slim smooth thighs, the satin finish of her stockings forgotten in the subconscious rush to reach up and brush at the heat from her womanhood, to press and spread the concentrated frustration knotted up there by her own lustful imaginings. She glanced desperately at the back of her free hand, at the screen, willing another flirtation to arrive from Scott with some sordid hint at his own solo satisfactions. Nothing came, well, not electronically anyway.
Perhaps he couldn’t reply, perhaps his hands, or otherwise, were occupied? She gave up and slipped the unrewarding free hand between the buttons of her blouse and over her discretion-wear bra; it belied the intensity of her aching nipples as they pressed uselessly against the smartfabric. She squeezed roughly, delighting in the ache, not sure if she was punishing the modern lingerie or her small but firm breasts it hid.
She let out a half-purr, half-growl of animalistic frustration and denial as the alarm sounded. It was ready. The exotic matter she’d been prepping in the High-Energy Lab (Annex-A) for the last 6 hours was at its prime. If her experiment was to happen it had to be now!
She pulled off her black satin thong, now thoroughly unsuited to go out in public due to the arousals of the morning and replaced it. The feeling of new cold fabric against the warmest part of her sent a thrill through her body that only succeeded in drawing another growl.
Why was it Time, of all things, couldn’t wait for a better time?
She half fell through the sliding safety door off the teaching lab and into the annex, trying desperately to get her safety equipment off the rack, switch her hand-phone into dictation mode, and seal the lab against interruptions. More haste; less speed was needed. Time, paradoxically, took more time.
Fifteen minutes later, she was ready. The staging area, a raised hexagon of ferrous metals partially enclosed by super conductive plates was already the most brightly lit part of the small open plan annex lab, and the computers hummed as their fans fought a battle with the rising heat and the vast amounts of data and power surging around the room.
She checked her test destination for the twenty-third time. It hadn’t changed since she set it this morning. Heck, it hadn’t changed since they’d agreed it four weeks ago.
Scott had booked out and spent a full two hours two weeks ago, sitting, barely moving, in a private ZT training court. Not a minute of sport being played as they kept every variable of the space to a minimum. He hadn’t reported anything at the time, or since then, but that didn’t mean the experiment was already a write-off. What if causality didn’t even work how they expected? No result was its own kind of result.
True of science experiments maybe, but not of her own state of mind, no result was driving her mad. She was rushing things, desperate to get out of here despite it being her life's work to date! She should have known better than to let them both get so worked up on the morning of such an important day. Scott was already late! Was he caught up, busy receiving a better offer?
She shoved the thoughts aside. She needed the tuned mind of a rational being, not a starving nymph right now. Then again... why hadn’t Scott reported anything? They’d agreed that would be where and when the test would arrive. Had he been fully focused that day, not distracted by the temptations of a hot, sweaty, sports centre full of highly strung young athletes? She should have insisted on being there as well, variables be damned. No. She grinned at the thought. Then there definitely would have been distractions.
Maybe though, she should choose somewhere safer, more controllable, somewhere she knew she would be the only variable. Somewhere she could remember every detail of every second. A place and moment-in-time so vivid in her mind she could compare what she remembered now with the new memories the test would surely form, and how they would come back with her after. Where though, and when? When could she be absolutely sure of those things? A short lifetime spent exclusively in academia hadn’t afforded her a great deal of time when she was in total control of her life, and...
And then it hit her...
The cross wired firings of an addled mind? She didn’t stop to care. One thought, one memory had leaped into her consciousness, and the excited state she was in, she couldn’t shift it.
It had been the perfect night, a perfect moment. Writ indelibly in her young mind in exquisite detail. Intensely private. It had been her moment of mind-opening self-discovery, and it would make the perfect moment to change her history. She lightly brushed the touchscreens to change the chosen moment, then wrote herself a note - handwritten, in this day-and-age, how quaint.
She attached it to the test payload, along with the Recall Device—must not forget that! Then stepped off the platform to wait. Should she feel the memories come to her now, as soon as the choice was made, or not until the actual travel happened? Surely, the change in the timeline should be instantaneous? She thought back hard to the crystal-clear moment in her life. The problem was the memory that made it so perfect, such a known, private quantity, rather clouded her attempts to think... rationally.
What was wrong? Why hadn’t it happened yet? Was the field failing to form, was the quantum entanglement regulator off again, she’d trusted that to Scott... No. It was the test itself, she’d knocked all the maths out of wack when she’d introduced the note to it, unaccounted for mass! How stupid of her, all for a love letter to herself! Maximillia surged forward onto the platform. The elastic protective gloves over her slip-on shoes chose that moment to squeeze, and her feet popped clean out of them, but they could wait a second or two. She reached for the note. Retrieve it, get clear, there was still time. She’d remember the all-new history in a moment.
The effect was jarring. A momentary wave of extreme vertigo. A total collapse of any sense of what was up or down, her balance, any sense she took for granted... and it was cold. Intensely cold, but only for a moment. At some point she’d shut her eyes tight, so it was a surprise when the first thing that reached her was the smell.
She’d been so focused on remembering all the details of the darkness, the silence, the breaking point memories of touch... that she didn’t expect such a prosaic smell to cause her head to spin or her heart to surge first. Fresh, clean citrus – masking soap. Dust, but the kind accrued by time, not dirt. Bodies, hundreds of them, echoes of the day. The museum was dark now though silent, locked down. Her own playground.
Max fought to get her head straight in the moment. Confused sensations of kneeling on a polished wooden floor, fighting light-headedness, pinned for the moment by her lab coat caught under her own knees and yet, she also felt warm, safe, comfortable, wrapped in softness... a sleeping bag, she felt/remembered now. This was the night they’d stayed over. Everything was right, every detail new and yet as she remembered it was remembering it now. She looked at her phone on the back of her hand. It wasn’t working, of course. She smiled at this very modern instinct, now out of time. The network wouldn’t exist for at least another five years at least, if she had her count right.
If she did then she had the next forty minutes or so all to herself. Not a soul would disturb her. Again.
Her mother would have seen the silent proximity alert, and, having given Geoff the night off before the big Open Day so they could enjoy their mother/daughter camp-out in the museum, would be off across the complex to check the systems. She would have nothing to worry her, or occupy her young and excited mind, except the warm camping blankets, and what her imagination could do with the dark. She began to remember it fondly and, to her pleasant surprise, felt the self-same feelings of curiosity and self-discovery rising again.
She put aside the comfortable youthful fancies and tried to focus on the here and now... here and then...
The test package wasn’t with her. That wasn’t entirely unexpected. You could never just move in time, since all of everything was always in motion relative to everything else. You always had to adjust for position as well. A little drift was bound to happen if – as was obviously the case, she’d done something stupid like be inside the displacement field when it was active. She had to find it though; it couldn’t interact with anything, the changes hadn’t been predicted. She didn’t remember her younger self discovering any strange device though, so that was something. She still had time.
There she was, Maxie, herself. Watching herself across an empty gallery. Lying on the floor at the foot of a perfectly good, comfortable sofa. Half covered by an open sleeping bag, surrounded in an absolute avalanche of small pillows, what had she been thinking? Oh yes, hard, cold floors and icky public sofas. Maxie shifted slightly, the open sleeping bag slipping, revealing the oversized man's tee that had served as the entirety of her nightwear at the time.
Max could see her own eyes closed, darting beneath the soft pale lids, how cute and strange to see what you looked like dreaming, from the outside. She smiled, content to watch herself for the movement from the archway that lead from her arrival point across the large gallery to where she slept alone, except for herself, of course.
Was she asleep, though? Max didn’t remember getting much sleep that night, alone in the dark, excited to be in such a magical place after everyone else had gone home. She certainly didn’t remember finding a strange blinking box with a note on it. What had she been doing? Oh yes. There had been the fantasy of a stranger with her, a secret lover, stepped out of one of the bygone eras in the displays, what on earth had given her younger self such flights of fancy? The feeling came back in a cascade of wonderful moments of erotic recollection and new sensation.
For second it overwhelmed her, she let out a gasp of excitement. Then clamped an alarmed hand over her own mouth! What was she doing?! She couldn’t afford such a stupid mistake... not on top of everything else going wrong because of her losses of control. But she hadn’t heard herself. She didn’t remember hearing anyone shout in the gallery that night, there had only been the soft moaning of her imagined lover come to her in her... daydream... the soft moaning?
It was all Maximillia could do to stifle a giggle.
There was a reason she knew this moment so absolutely. Was so sure that no one, and nothing would disturb it. Why it was a perfect private moment. This had been her moment, her secret moment, she hadn’t even fully shared with Scott, or anyone before. When she had discovered loving herself – oh– not that first time, that had been much earlier and more frantic, no, this had been her first time fantasising about the touch of another woman. A mystery lover who had come to life from the glass-enclosed past of the museum and laid down behind her in the dark, loving her until she’d slept the blissful night away.
Undisturbed by... ahh... there it was, the wasp in the balm. Across from her, her younger her, was the test device. A blinking Pandora’s box of potential, to ruin a moment of the past and future.
But that night, she could only remember strong warm arms holding her, hands mixing indistinguishable from her own, but nobody pressed against her. Sleeping with the scent of another woman's love filling her senses. If she hadn’t, didn’t remember anything wrong, then what could she do to stop herself, distract herself, but also not disturb the third mystery woman who would surely come by any moment?
Indecision and anticipation made Max pause in the dark, watching Maxie doze fitfully. She didn’t dare move. If she made her younger self wake up, look up, it would ruin the perfect past just as if she somehow interrupted the two. If the mystery woman she remembered was even coming? Had that really all been a fantasy?
It had seemed too real. She was sure she couldn’t have dreamt it all, but if her solo imaginings weren’t enough to keep herself from quite literal self-discovery, then? In that moment, she made a plan. Her heart overwhelmed her head, but it had help from a few other choice parts of the body, more overwhelmed by remembered passion than common sense.
Max crept forward, starting at every imagined sound. Her rational mind chastising her, of course, everything would be wonderful, it had already been a perfect fantasy. All she had to do now was live it again. She reached the back of the large black public sofa in one agonisingly long minute, let her hands rest on the fabric, and paused. Breathless. She looked down at her younger self, eyes closed, a half-smile already on her face. A smile spread over Max’s face, but then – she remembered what was coming. Holding her breath, she watched another moment more, then as slowly as she dared, as lightly as she could, Max traced the back of her middle finger along her, the other her’s exposed arm.
Maxie sighed at the touch, and Max caught her breath and held it as the memory of the caress mixed with the feel of warm delicate skin beneath her fingers. She lived and relived the sensual touch in the same moment, a rush that made her head swim, and she watched the arousing effect that her simple contact was already having on herself. She watched as her younger reflection smiled in her dreaming haze and remembered all the fantasies she had about being taught, touched, for the first time by another woman. An older, more experienced lover, straight out of ancient Greece, a warrior from Lesbos or a devotee of the poet Sappho, perhaps? What would she do if she opened her eyes now and realised, she was dreaming of making love with herself?
As she watched, Maxie slipped her hand - their hand she guessed - under the open sleeping bag and blankets. Listened to herself sigh quietly content. She pressed her luck, her own luck. The thought made her stifle a giggle. She ran a finger through her twin's amber hair and brushed her cheek, already flush with blossoming young passion.
Her breath caught in her chest as she remembered the feel of her young fingers searching across the fabric of her sensible boxer briefs, sensible things for a sensible young woman, nothing like the satin and lace number her other self could feel already made warm and damp by her own memories, subconsciously pressed against the sofas soft back cushions.
She was the older lover, aching to touch herself as she watched her sapphic student explore her own passions, even as her own fantasies were unfolding, imagining what new experiences her wiser mystery partner would impart next. Max reached down and – forgetting herself, both of them – in the moment, hooked a finger carefully under the long tshirt that had already bunched up around her slumbering self’s small chest, pushed away from arms that were slowly becoming more animated, rising and falling shapes under the blankets. Max held her breath and dragged her hand slowly up her younger body, exposing the candy pink flush on Maxie's chest to the cool conditioned air. She smiled and blushed seeing herself like that. Two pert, proud peaks of young womanhood, betraying the secret passions. Max knew she wasn’t so much maturely shaped now, as a woman in her late 30s, but she didn’t remember ever looking like such a blossom waiting to bloom.
Without even realising it, she had begun tracing the slightest touch she could manage around the perfect points of her own nipples, on both bodies – then and future, both now. Feeling and remembering being felt at the same time. The breathy sigh from the figure below her matched the one she held behind fear-locked lips, as if even a breath out of place would ruin the moment. She was so focused on how long the moments seemed to last, how exquisitely keen the fear of discovery heightened everything, that she was almost surprised to see her right hand move. Give up its teasing of her fuller chest and slowly seek out its partner, a lifetime removed, busy beneath the covers.
She knelt now, the soft but firm sofa cushion relenting as she leant in more urgently, to be closer to herself, to be the lover she remembered dreaming had her now. She sank close, as close as she dared, till both Maximillia were almost cheek to cheek. Their hands met, hidden beneath the cover. Maxie yielded instantly to the touch and intertwined their fingers, holding hands with herself across the decades. Max led herself, age informing innocence.
The feeling of the warmth, softness, radiant heat, it merged with the memory of itself and joined the sensations of the same spreading up through Max in the other direction. It was all she could do to keep from giving up and focusing on the ache between her own thighs, but that was the last thing she needed, to ‘arrive’ loudly and publicly, overcome by her own self. She swallowed the desire and let herself focus on her other self, and sensations being enjoyed.
Maxie sighed now, squeezing her eyes tighter shut, woken from the dream perhaps, but unwilling to let the fantasy escape. The touch of her own searching hands between her legs felt, perplexing and exciting, like two. She squeezed at the soft shapes of her chest with the other and yet something pinched at both achingly aroused points, stinging wonderfully in the cold air. Suddenly a wave shook her, and she gasped for air. Something had penetrated her, reached out and touched something inside herself she’d hadn’t dared before.
Max bit her lip, resisted the panic to suddenly stop, the moment had taken her, and now she was committed. She felt herself tense, squeeze down, then arch, a suppressed spasm against her own hand, hands, so intimately close and a generation away. In that moment she couldn’t remember if this had been the first time she’d graduated from amateur fumbling, felt penetrated so fully? The memories swept over her now, though, so intoxicating that she didn’t care if it was the first time, now, remembered or pure fantasy.
To her own surprise, Maxie overtook herself, gripping the sensation of a second lover and urging it on with her own stroking, squeezing, tormenting touch. The younger woman sighed as she swore she’d felt her unseen fantasy lover suckle her ear, nibble her neck. With an urgency she pressed herself against the phantom second caress with an urgency that overwhelmed any thought of who or how.
When they arrived, they both did, much to their shared surprise. Maxie shuddered against the twin touch, loving herself in a way she never had before. She arched her back, pushing herself up, sure she felt a stranger’s arm stretched her across her stomach a woman's touch and cradling her, holding onto the heat from between her trembling, weakening, legs. Max gasped against the urge to cry out. Memories of a youthful love surged to mix with the feeling of her young lover shuddering under her touch, her own touch.
Overcome, Max pulled away. Actually falling back over her heels, her butt struck the marble floor as she disappeared behind the sofa, in that moment missing, and yet remembering, Maxie’s half-opened eyes, searching the dark empty night even as she let out a guttural and primal groan of loss and disappointment that the ecstasy of the phantom touch was gone. Max remembered it though, the moment of loss, then being overtaken by the afterglow, sinking back into the warmth of the pillows and the privacy and solitude(?) of the dark.
“Wow... ah... damn, Max,” Scott managed.
He squired awkwardly around into the oversized beanbag they were sharing, subconsciously trying to find release for the ache that even now threatened the integrity of the buttons of his jeans. Her story had certainly added some spice to their little champaign celebration, as they toasted to the scientific breakthrough of their lifetimes, and indeed into them.
“Can you imagine though, if you really had gone back to then, been there, done that?” he sighed
“If only...” Maximillia smiled, and tapped ‘delete’ on the experiment log, watching her favourite student draining his glass to chase down the excitement of her... tale.
( If you liked this story, and want to read more, let me know.)
