One Plus Two Minus One

by Tess Mackenzie

  They sat across a corner, at one end, and she watched him as they ate. She still had her shirt off, and her tits were moving slightly every time she moved her arm. Not much, because she didn’t have much to jiggle around, but enough Ethan was watching. She liked that he was. They weren’t really talking much.

  She wasn’t sure if she still wanted to talk, or if she was just being polite before they fucked again. Liking her mind implied they should talk, though.

  She got up and put her shirt back on. He watched her, and grinned.

  “You were distracted,” she said.

  “Yep.”

  She sat back down and wondered what to say. Nothing came to mind except another lecture about maths. She supposed they didn’t have that much in common.

  “Have you ever been in love?” Ethan said suddenly.

  Beth was surprised. “What?”

  “Have you?”

  She chewed for a while. “Why do you care?”

  “I just wondered.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I just wondered.”

  “So don’t.”

  “I wondered who you are, when you stop being a professor.”

  She sat there for a while, thinking about people liking her mind, and how far that went. He’d jumped straight past small-talk to really big shit and she was a little annoyed, feeling a bit pressured. Like he should have asked her favorite color first.

  “I’m me,” she said.

  “I want to know who that is.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “How about we fuck for a bit first, then we decide if we want to be best friends forever?”

  He shrugged. She ate for a while, and now felt guilty. She supposed there was no real reason he shouldn’t ask. “You really want to know?” she said. “To know me?”

  He nodded.

  She thought. “Nerd at school. Geek, whatever. Not cool. Not that many friends. I used to skate a bit.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Yeah. The tattoos, the swearing. And you’re fit.”

  “I walk to work.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Of course. That’s it. Do you still skateboard?”

  She pointed to the hall cupboard. “I used to commute on it, when I was a student. Decided it was a bit undignified in a professor. And you can’t with heels on.”

  He nodded, said, “What else?”

  “You tell me. What have you worked out?”

  “You like sex. A lot. More than you like to admit to yourself.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably true.”

  “It’s true. You’re taking risks, having me here. But are. So…”

  That made sense.

  “You’re ambitious,” he said.

  “Obviously.”

  “You aren’t sure if you need more people in your life.”

  She looked at him.

  “Because you’re talking to me like this. Not just fucking me and telling me to go. Or telling me to stop asking personal stuff and actually meaning it.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You’re good at people. Smartass. Better than me.”

  “You used to be more nervous about lecturing. When you started.”

  “You can stop,” Then, “Why’s that?”

  “You used to dress up. Now you don’t.”

  That was true. “It got hot, too.”

  “Not in the middle of winter, when I’m talking about.”

  She glared at him. After a while said, “Yeah, fuck you too.”

  “Why do you swear so much?”

  “No fucking idea.”

  He grinned.

  “Okay,” she said. “What about you? If we’re doing this, tell me about you.”

  “Same, really. Too smart for school. Not many friends. More than some people because I had music and girls, but not many. College was a big thing. Like starting life over again.”

  “Same here.”

  “It’s a pity all the same people follow you here though. You know, the ones you’ve always been hoping to avoid.”

  “Stay a bit. They’ll get bachelor’s degrees and piss off. Then it gets better. I never really talked to anyone until honors.”

  Ethan nodded.

  “I hate high schools,” Beth said. “Everyone in them. I really fucking hate them. And teachers. I don’t have time for people who are just going to end up there.’

  “That’s obvious.”

  “How’s that?”

  “In class. You pretty much ignore questions from people you think are stupid. Don’t give them any time. Try and shut them down if they want to talk.”

  “I’m not that bad.”

  “Yeah, you are.”

  She chewed, decided to be honest. “Maths is hard. If they can’t do it, they can’t. The whole class doesn’t need to hear me explain everything two or three times because someone doesn’t get it.”

  “The whole class might not understand either.”

  “One person does.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “One person always does. That’s the one I care about.”

  “And the rest of us? Me?”

  She shrugged.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep,” she said. “I don’t give a shit.”

  He looked at her and she just looked back.

  “It’s a university,” she said. “I teach at the right speed. I teach the speed I was taught. And the people who taught me. And people before them. All the same, at the same pace, for hundreds of years. We know how to do this, and it’s not an evolving field. Most of it doesn’t change. Just now we have all this white noise, all these pointless people running around buzzing in the air about how I should do my job.”

  He seemed to be waiting.

  “I teach at the speed you need,” she said. “You and three or four others like you. That’s who I’m there for. The rest of the class are just high school teachers waiting to happen. They don’t need to understand what I’m talking about, they just need to sit there for three years and leave with a degree.”

  “That’s pretty fucking brutal.”

  “That’s what a university is.”

  He kept looking at her, and she wasn’t sure if he was offended or upset or something. “I said I was teaching you,” she said, in case he hadn’t noticed.

  “What if I’m not as smart as you think?” he said. “What if I slip?”

  “I’ll still fuck you.”

  “You sure? Because sometimes it doesn’t seem like it.”

  “I’m sure.”

  He looked at her for a while longer, and she wondered if he was getting insecure.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t have at first,” she said. “But I’m getting used to you. I’ll still fuck you if you turn out to be stupid.”

  He looked at her for a while, then said, “Thanks.”

  Beth grinned. “Yeah, that might have sounded a bit up myself.”

  “A bit.”

  She ate another forkful.

  “Don’t worry,” Ethan said. “I’ll give you a really nice teaching survey. Since everyone else is going to hate you.”

  “No offence, but they’re all twenty. With twenty-year-old brains. I’m hot and I’m rude so they give me good scores. And I don’t give a shit anyway.”

  “Sexy,” he said. “Great fuck, tastes better than any other professor.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “It’s anonymous.”

  “Yeah, sure it is.”

  He looked surprised.

  “I know all your handwriting. Or I would, if I read the surveys or cared.”

  “You do. Whoever collects them doesn’t.”

  “And if you write that it means one of my students thinks I’m a good fuck. Or want to find out. They just don’t know which one.” She thought. “And they’d probably hunt you down anyway thinking you were a danger to me. So don’t.”

  He grinned and chewed and looked at her. “What’s with the
guy in the photo?”

  Beth shook her head. “You don’t need to know that yet.”

  “Another thing about you,” Ethan said. “You’re controlling.”

  “No shit. I’m your professor.”

  She grinned at him and said, “Eat, I want to fuck you again.”

  *

  They went back upstairs and he looked at the vibrators, still on the floor, and said, “Which is your favorite?”

  “Nope,” she said. “No way. I don’t know you nearly that well.”

  He kept looking at her.

  “No,” she said again. Sharply.

  “Use one.”

  “Not a fucking chance.”

  “Please,” he said.

  “Eat me instead,” she said. “Then we’ll see.”

  He made her come with his mouth, then looked at her all expectantly, like she was actually going to get herself off again with a dildo. She shook her head and laughed at him when he reached for one anyway. Reached over hopefully, but didn’t really seem to mind when she refused, like he’d known she wouldn’t all along.

  He was still hard, though, from thinking about that, or from having her in his mouth, or something.

  She lay there and looked at his cock and wondered how to get him off. She’d come a few times, and didn’t need sex again, and she’d never quite understood the rules about oral. You definitely didn’t have to the first time, if you were a girl and he fucked you, maybe not the first few times, but at some point you started looking like a selfish bitch, and she didn’t want that. He was a bit ahead of her on giving each other head, and she wanted to even it up.

  “Lie down,” she said, and sat up.

  He kissed her, and grinned, and did.

  She bent over him, then stopped. “It won’t be as good as the other times,” she said. “In the bar and downstairs.”

  “Don’t care. And it will.”

  “Nah, not without all the rest of it. All the hurry and horny.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’m just saying. Don’t be disappointed. Don’t think badly of me.”

  “I’m not,” he said, and looked at her, and she wondered for a moment if she shouldn’t have said that, if he was going to worry she’d meant something else, that it hadn’t been good for her. He seemed to just be horny, though. He reached up and grabbed the side of her face, and kissed her, then pulled her slowly onto his cock.

  She shouldn’t let him do that. She shouldn’t like it when he pushed her around like that, but she did.

  He was hot and hard in her mouth, felt him twitch as she tasted him with her tongue. Her hair kept getting in the way, and she didn’t want to stop and find a hair tie, so he held it for her, stroked her shoulders, and told her how wonderful she felt.

  She was pretty sure it was some head from the teacher fantasy, but she was starting not to mind. She was here too. She slid off the bed, said, “Over here,” and knelt in front of him, on the floor. He stood over her, and she slid her mouth up and down his cock, and kept her hands away, behind her back, except for when he popped out. If she was going to be a fantasy, she may as well do it properly.

  He came. He came a lot, even now, so it spilled out onto her lips and chin. She swallowed him and licked him clean and got back up on the bed. Kissed him with some of his come still sticky on her lips, just to see if he would.

  He seemed to know what she was doing. “I don’t care,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “Was I supposed to?”

  “Just checking.”

  He started stroking her. Just to touch her, she thought. He seemed to really like her body, and him noticing made her like him. He started licking her tummy, fingering her gently. Just enough it got her horny and lazy, not enough to bother doing anything.

  “What’s the kinkiest thing you’ve ever done?” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I wondered.”

  She lay there. “You first.”

  “Threeway.”

  She rolled onto her side, looked at him. “Go on.”

  “Go on what?”

  “Details.”

  “A friend and his girlfriend. Everyone a bit pissed.”

  “Shit,” Beth was actually impressed. Actually kind of turned on. Suddenly, “When? You’re only…”

  “That’s cruel,” he said. Then, “Last year.”

  She kept looking at him. Almost seeing him again like she had at the beginning. A troublemaking player, not trustworthy.

  “Shit,” he said. “Don’t look like that. It was once.”

  She shook her head. He kept looking at her.

  “You like that idea?” he said suddenly, and she was almost embarrassed it was that obvious.

  “A little,” she said.

  “Two guys?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I like it. Stop fucking smirking.” After a minute. “How does that work. I mean, one after the other, or…”

  “Both at once?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That. She wanted it like that.”

  After a minute. “How? Like, one at each end?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Shit,” Beth said. “I mean, fuck.” Another hesitation, then, “So, she’s on her back, or side, or what?”

  “Her kneeling, was how it turned out. Which was kind of awkward since him and me were looking at each other the whole time.”

  Beth just looked at him.

  “I think she wanted it like that,” Ethan said after a while. “Like a turn-on for her or something.”

  “I get it,” Beth said.

  Ethan looked at her.

  She realized. “I’m not doing that with you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to. Not yet.”

  She glared.

  “What? You’re turned on by the idea.”

  “But it’s never, ever going to happen. I mean, shit, imagine the fuss if I got caught having threeways with my students…”

  “That might be bad.”

  “It might.”

  Silence for a while. “What about you?” he said. “Kinkiest thing ever?”

  “Shit, forget it. You win.”

  “Nothing like that? Not ever?”

  “This, here, last weekend and here, is probably the kinkiest ever. Other than that, just, you know, one person and sex.”

  “I’ve got a friend whose dad saw her home-made porno,” he said.

  Beth looked at him. “Ouch.”

  “Shit yeah. She left it on her computer so she deserves it, but yeah. Ick. That must have been creepy.”

  Beth lay there. “Imagine if you didn’t realize at first, were sitting there watching then suddenly, oh fuck, that mole looks familiar…”

  “Except for how you’re looking around in your daughter’s porn collection.”

  “Ah, yeah, except for that.”

  “Have you got some?”

  She didn’t move. “Yep.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “None of your business.”

  Silence for a while. He stroked her tummy. Ran his hand up to her breast, down to her hips, long, slow, silky strokes.

  “Do you play chess?” he said.

  “Why would I play chess?”

  “Maths professor…”

  “Supposed to be moving on from that. And deeply fucking offensive stereotype, by the way.”

  He grinned.

  “I don’t play chess. I’m pretty sure I could play chess, but why? It’s just memorizing shit. You can write software to play chess better than any human, so why bother?”

  “What do you do for fun?”

  “Maths.” She grinned, stretched. “And fuck.”

  He grinned.

  Another silence.

  “And you really don’t care about teaching surveys?”

  “I really don’t. Self-selected survey. It’s meaningless data.”

  He grinned.

  “Stop smiling, it’s true. And they don’t correlate the comment
s against the students’ grades, so what’s the point. Why would I care about results that include everyone I failed?”

  “Do you fail a lot?”

  “Nope.”

  He kissed her side. “You seem like you would.”

  “My bell curve’s way higher than everyone else’s.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep. Don’t tell anyone, I don’t want to be seen as an easy course, but yeah. I pass most people, and it’s a theory course, meant to be harder, so no-one objects. I don’t give a shit if I pass a bunch of incompetent maths teachers. But your A, you fucking earned that.”

  She lay there for a while. He took her hand, kissed her tattoos.

  “Is this turning you on?” she said suddenly. “Lying in bed with me talking about me being a professor. Since you thought that was hot.”

  “I was just talking.”

  “Better fucking be.”

  Silence for a while.

  “There’s something you said in a lecture…”

  “No,” she said, and sat up. “No way.”

  He looked at her.

  “Okay,” she said. “What? But you have to stop reminding me.”

  “Linear feedback shift registers,” he said. “Why aren’t they random?”

  She lay there for a minute. “It repeats. It has a finite number of possible states.”

  “Yeah, you said. But why?”

  “It’s a function. But not. Don’t think about input and output, it’s a sideways shift of the bits. Engineering rather than maths.”

  He looked at her. “I don’t get why. Why you can’t just have an infinitely big register?”

  “It’s still deterministic. And a just a bunch of XOR gates. Or a polynomial. So either way it can’t be arbitrarily infinite. But even if it was, it’s still running through a fixed cycle, even if it’s enormous, so eventually it repeats.”

  He lay there for a while.

  “Still no?”

  “Sorry.”

  “An example?”

  “Maybe. If that isn’t too weird.”

  She tried to explain drawing equations on the sheet, then realized he couldn’t see them like she could, couldn’t imagine them and fix them in his mind and keep track of what she’d said a minute and three lines ago. She got up and found paper and a pen and wrote out a whole proof for him, then did a worked example, step by step.