Imagine your fave placing their bare feet in your lap and asking you to tickle them, their face flushed with embarrassment. You comply, teasing them slowly at first but quickly picking up the pace, delighting in your fave’s wiggling toes and squirming body, their loud laughter gradually becoming shrieks of pleasure and arousal.
YAK stroked the soles from bottom to top. The feet stayed together
for the most part, so his thumbs stayed parallel as he danced his
fingernails. Well, “danced” is generous, but the noises made him
confident that he was doing something right. No one could act that well.
He tried to spiral his fingers on the next scrape, spreading them in
lazy ornithopter paths, but it wound up as more a general scrabbling.
His
company didn’t complain. The feet were squirming, of course, but it was
hard to tell if they were pulling back or moving closer. YAK expected
that neither of them knew. Thought was kind of out-the-window, at the
moment. The man connected to the feet was too busy ululating, and YAK
himself only saw things in a reviewing sense, looking over the actions
of a few seconds previous, trying to gauge his own reactions when there
weren’t any.
Well, there weren’t any above the waist.
He
continued in lines, up and down, side to side. There was something
entrancing about the patterns that could be drawn, something that made
him think that he could do this for hours, or stare off into space and
wake up to find himself still stroking. It was a little like
improvising on the piano- you didn’t need to know the keys or how to
read music to invent a quick rhythm. You just had to touch here, and here, and then do a long lazy wiggle of the index fingers here.
The
curves of his fingers drew an approximation of a chalice, moving
symmetrically. If he’d drawn with ink, he could’ve checked his
handiwork, and seen if he could see two lovers about to kiss. Drawing
optical illusions on feet opened up far too many possibilities for one
evening.
At the same time, he was aware of a change in the
sound, of tiredness, of sweat. He turned his eyes to his mock-captive,
who had long since given up the pretense of sitting, and had sprawled
his body onto the leather with aplomb. He smelled of sandalwood and
raspberries, and his untidy hair was greying and receding prematurely.
Denis Diderot.
The 1700s French philosopher opened his eyes lazily, dreamily, sultrily. The feet shifted, toes demurely brushing his wrists, and YAK realized he’d stopped. Changing tack without breaking that eye contact, he started to rub the arches. The eyes closed while the toes flexed against his forearm, and murmurous moans slipped from between the Frenchman’s soft lips.
Fingers intermingled with toes, slipping between them
and holding them, like holding hands. There was giggling as they
settled, and then they were properly clasped. It was something they
might never feel again.
After a minute’s time, YAK pulled himself from the feet and moved upwards, hands gliding along calves, lingering on thighs, and then resting on the chest, keeping the philosophe-encyclopédiste lying on his back. There was no protest to the motion, barely a response; Diderot was a still pool of serenity under YAK’s fingers.
Gently, warily, those selfsame fingers traveled to the clasp of the breeches, and broke the seal.
“People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you’ve got to keep your feet warm.“
-Rameau’s Nephew, Diderot
