---Oskar’s perspective---

---Monday, 1st of January, 2683 Terran Calendar---

---Interior Sahul---

I’m woken by loud singing.

ff♫ Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

Happy BIRTHDAY dear Oskar

Happy birthday to you♫ff

My head aches and I feel exhausted from fighting the snake venom yesterday.

“Reid?! What the hel is going on! Why are you singing me happy birthday!?”

The pretty Scot smiles broadly at me and says “Because it’s your birthday! At least… that’s what you told me last night! January 1st, right?”

“Uhhh… yeah… That’s right…” I confirm.

A memory then hits me.

“I didn’t say anything… else… last night, did I?” I say, concerned, making to stand.

She holds a rigid index finger in the path of my chest, making me jab myself into it.

“As a matter of fact, you did!” she says, smiling as she applies pressure to force me back into my supine position and causing every alarm bell in my body to ring, simultaneously.

“You said that the most sensible thing would be for you to have some R&R today… so you’re staying right there while I go and try to find us some food, water and firewood, Mister!”

“Erm… who exactly are you and what have you done with Esme Reid?” I frown.

“Shush!” she says, playfully slapping my chest before getting up and saying “I’m going now… Try to get some rest… Oh and…” she stops to turn back “…happy birthday again, Oskar!… 18! You’re stuck with me now, aren’t you(!)… Can’t just quit and wait to be reconscripted anymore!”

With a giggle, she disappears out of the cave, both of our canteens rattling on her belt as she goes.

It takes me several, long seconds of rubbing the place on my chest that she poked to realise “Wait… did she just call me ‘Oskar’!?”

---Esme’s perspective---

Beautiful… beautiful… beautiful!

He called me ‘beautiful’!

‘One of the most beautiful girls he’s ever seen!’ were his exact words!

Suuure… he was off his tits on snake venom at the time but… well, he managed to get his birthday right, didn’t he!

It would be a strangely abstract thing to confabulate, wouldn’t it!

I’d be a liar if I said that I hadn’t noticed what an absolutely drop dead gorgeous babe he was, even before our little make up session yesterday!

My stomach growls, not liking the attention I’m paying to things that are not food!

“I know, I know… I’m looking!” I say back, reproachfully.

I look around and… then I see something…

Different parts of me feel differently about this thing…

My feet want to take me as far away from it as it is possible to get!

My mouth, on the other hand… well, I always thought it wasn’t really possible for an adult to salivate hard enough to drool… Turns out that you can if you’re hungry enough.

I walk up to the enormous lizard, sunning itself on a rock.

That thing looks like a fucking dinosaur!

My stomach roils and my heart is in my throat as it lazily turns to look at me and hisses, threateningly.

Pointing the sharpened, firehardened stick at the monster, I say “I really hope you’re not poisonous, dude… Apologies in advance if you are!”

---Oskar’s perspective---

“Yo!” comes a voice from outside the cave.

I look up to see Reid enter with an enormous perentie slung over her shoulders.

She’s speared it through the head and chest… multiple times, as well as seeming to have severed its spinal cord with her knife for good measure.

“Gods, Reid… what did that thing ever do to you(!)”

Not seeming particularly in the mood for jokes, she answers “Be made of meat, be really scary and be very strong when I was killing it was what it did!… I did not like the idea of it miraculously coming back to life while I was carrying it!… Please tell me this bastard is edible and I didn’t kill it for nothing!”

“Erm… well… they have a venomous bite… and their mouths are also bacterial cesspits…” her face sinks “…buuut…” I continue, causing her to perk back up “…people do eat monitor lizards… Let’s maybe just avoid the head, since we don’t know what we’re doing with it.”

Her face lights up “So… I did good?”

“Err… yeah…” I respond, uncertainly.

She keeps staring at me, expectantly.

“Are you… err… waiting for something?” I ask, concerned by whatever it is I’m missing.

“*sigh*…Praise, stupid!… Honestly! How d’you ever expect to get any girl to like you if you don’t praise her!”

For a second, I almost point out that, as a bisexual, I don’t necessarily need to get girls to like me but… well… I stop myself just in time… Something tells me that that would be the wrong thing to say right now…

“You did very well in killing this lizard!… I’m incredibly impressed, Reid!”

“Esme…”

“I’m sorry?”

“My name’s ‘Esme’, Oskar… I’d prefer you call me that…” she says, staring at me with an intense but impenetrable expression.

“O…K…? I’m incredibly impressed… Esme…?”

She smiles broadly, her unnerving expression disappearing “Good!… Now, I’m going to go and gather some firewood for tonight before the sun gets too hot… If you’ve got your motor control back and have the strength for it, maybe you could dress the carcass?… If not, don’t worry… I’ll do it when I get back!”

I watch as she leaves, my brow furrowed and my mouth hanging open in confusion.

“Seriously… Who the hel is that and where the hel is Reid!?” I mutter to myself.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

---Esme’s perspective---

OK, seriously girl!

Get a hold of yourself!

Hot guy calls you ‘beautiful’ and you turn into a giddy schoolgirl!

“I… err… I dug a solar still… my flask is in there filling up with clean water, right now… I hope you don’t mind sharing yours with me, for tonight?” while I definitely don’t think about how your lips are touching it and my lips are touching it and then your lips are touching it again(!)

“No problem, Rei… Esme… Good work today!” he says, poking the lizard flank as it cooks on the coals.

“How… how’re you feeling?” I ask before taking a bite of oily tail that tastes like bitter chicken meat.

“The bite you mean?… Yeah, definitely still not 100% but I should be good to get to work tomorrow… Thanks for looking after me…”

“I was happy to…” I say, honestly.

Then, I realise something “Did I ever thank you?”

“For what?” he asks, turning to me with his eyebrow raised.

“For… you know… saving me… from Forest…”

“Oh… that! I… don’t think you did… Don’t worry about it… I didn’t do it to be thanked.”

“Regardless… Thank you, Oskar…” I smile, placing my hand on his muscular forearm “…You really saved me!”

He waves a ‘forget about it’ motion with his other hand.

“I’m also… sorry I’ve been so horrible to you since we started training… I was projecting my own personal issues on you in a way you didn’t deserve…”

“Listen, Reid… it’s fine! We’re all good!” he grins.

“Esme…” I correct.

“Sorry… Esme…”

He takes the shank off the fire and takes a bite.

There really wasn’t all that much useable meat on the thing…

It felt heavy as a dead donkey when I carried it back but we’re already a third of the way through the meat that hasn’t been put in the ‘dubious’ pile!

“Let’s save the rest…” says Oskar, clearly echoing my thoughts, before offering me the shank and eying up his flask “…Trade?”

I pick up the flask and take one last swig from it before I swap it for the meat.

“You know…” he says, bringing his lips to the rim that my lips were touching a few seconds ago, making my heart flutter “…I’m quite surprised Sands made you go through with this…”

“Sorry?”

He gestures around “On coming here with me… After what happened, I would have assumed that she would’ve offered you the opportunity to go with a girl… Seems quite cruel to force you to be alone with a guy for so long, after what happened… Especially as it’s a guy you watched beat someone half to death the other week… I don’t know, I feel like building team spirit ought to take a backseat in that scenario… She should have given you the choice…”

“She… did…” I admit, my face hot.

He looks at me, confused “She did what?”

“She offered me the opportunity to go with Everard…”

“No…” he frowns “…she can’t have!… You would have taken it if she had!”

I shake my head “I said I didn’t want to upset dorm harmony by being alone with Bailey’s girlfriend.”

“Then… she should have offered you another girl to go with! She still forced you to go with me!”

I shake my head “She offered that, too… I made excuses…”

“Why?” he asks, utterly bewildered.

“When I thought of going with anyone else… when I thought of you going with anyone else… I just got this… this, like… pit of discomfort in my stomach… I said it was rivalry to Sands… told her I didn’t want to lose to you… I probably believed it at the time…”

His brow creases “And… what do you believe now, Esme…?”

I give him a sly smile and ask “…Do you want me to tell you… or do you want me to show you?”

---Oskar’s perspective---

The firehaired girl puts down the meat I just gave her and crawls, slowly, toward me.

I’m frozen in place as she brings her right leg over my lap and straddles me.

She runs her hands up my chest and brings her absolutely stunning face an inch from mine.

I find it hard to meet her unblinking, emerald eyes as her hot breath breaks against my lower face.

I can hear how she shudders even if I couldn’t feel it!

She dives forward to press her lips against mine!

She kisses me, fiercely, passionately!

My mind goes utterly blank as I kiss her back.

Gods, she feels amazing to hold!

Her lips feel and taste incredible!

Her warmth against my body feels sublime!

Then… a horrid thought occurs to me.

Pulling her off me, I say “Waitwaitwaitwaitwait…!”

“What…?” she asks, breathlessly.

“If you’re only doing this out of some sort of sense of obligation for me saving you from Forest then…”

I don’t get a chance to finish before her seraphic features twist into a scowl as she chides “Dude!?… Have a fucking spine!… I don’t want to fuck you because of some stupid debt! As far as I’m concerned, you saved me from Forest, I killed a fucking dinosaur to feed you after you stepped on a venomous snake! We’re square!… Honestly, Oskar! Way to kill the mood!… Now… you’ve got, in your words, ‘one of the most beautiful girls you’ve ever seen’ on your lap… What do you want to do about that fact!?”

So I didn’t dream telling her that…

Eventually, I manage to muster “I’ve… never done it before…”

“Snap…!” she smiles.

“If… you want this…?”

“I want this.” she says, sternly.

“Then… gods yes!”

She grins “Arms up, lad!”

After taking a second to figure out what that means, it clicks and I raise my arms.

She reaches to the hem of my t-shirt and pulls it off.

When I’m able to see again, I see her eyes transfixed on my chest.

“Christ!… These muscles!” she exclaims, running her hand over my pectorals, jingling my dogtags as she pushes them out of the way “Don’t suppose you got any Neanderthal in you with that glasscutting chinspur, do you…?”

“Erm… A 16th on my mum’s side…” I say, hesitantly.

“Snap again!” she smiles, still looking at the chest she’s feeling up “My dad’s side for me!”

“I… err… don’t think my admixture has much to do with my muscles, though…”

She shrugs “Muscles are muscles…” and opens her mouth to bite my pectoral.

I gasp in surprise and she gives a mischievous giggle, mouth still full of my flesh.

“I… I don’t suppose there’s any chance of… your top coming off at any point, is there?” I ask, tentatively.

Releasing her bite, she straightens up and smirks “Oh… I’m sorry, lad(!)… Where are my manners(!)”

She reaches to the hem of her t-shirt and pulls it off, over her head, in a single, fluid motion.

I give a trembling exhale as I admire her gorgeous, bare upper body.

Her pale skin is pristine and blemishless.

Her slender frame belies the quantity of muscle-tone she’s, presumably, acquired, mostly in the last 7 weeks.

Her breasts aren’t large but they’re shapely, round, high and prominent.

She smirks as she reaches behind herself, unclipping her bra and letting the straps fall loose.

Pressing the cups to her chest beneath the dogtags hanging from her neck, she grins as she shrugs the straps over her shoulders and then lets her hands fall.

Obviously, as the child of Norse Pantheonists, this is not the first pare of bare tits I’ve ever seen in my life… but this is the first pair of tits I’ve seen in a sexual context…

Something about knowing that the reason her breasts are bare is because she wants me to see them transforms the experience considerably!

She grabs my wrists and brings my hands to her chest.

I look up at her face and see it’s twisted into a sultry smirk.

She releases my wrists and leans into my hands.

“Oh…!” she says, keeping her lips pursed in the ‘O’ shape as she looks down “…it seems, you’ve got a little friend who’d like to join the fun(!)… Though… based on what I saw yesterday… I’m not exactly sure that ‘little’ is the right word(!)… Shall we let your (not so little) friend out, lad?”

I gulp down a mouthful of saliva and nod, silently.

Grinning, she reaches to the waist of my trousers and digs her fingers in, applying pressure to pull down both them and my pants.

My glans catches in the waistband of my boxers and my ¾ erect cock bends before springing up to slap against my stomach.

“Oh!” she says, sounding genuinely shocked “‘Not so little’ is right!”

“How would you know?” I ask, slightly breathless from my racing pulse.

She smiles up at me and gives my stomach a reassuring pat “Porn exists, dude!… Though, now that I think about it, that makes you impressive by pornstar standards!… Would you mind if I…?”

She points to my cock and raises her eyebrows like I’m supposed to already know how that sentence ends.

“If you what?”

“If I have a little taste of you?”

Slightly revolted, I answer “I… haven’t washed since yesterday morning… I’ll probably taste really sweaty!” letting her know with my tone that she really doesn’t have to do that on my account!

“I don’t mind…” she smiles, opening her mouth wide and bringing it to the tip of my manhood.

She touches her tongue to my glans and smiles before pushing me as far into her mouth as she can before her gag reflex stops her from continuing.

She pulls her mouth back up and off with a *pop*, leaving the top 40% or so of my length drenched in her saliva.

She brings her hand to the wet portion and strokes the moisture down to cover the entire shaft.

“Lubrication…” she explains, in response to my confused expression “…this thing is gonna go inside me, I want all the help I can get(!)”

She stands and I take the opportunity to fully slide off my lowers before looking up.

She smirks down at me and slides her thumbs into her trousers.

She pulls them over her hips and drops them to the floor, leaving her clad only in her panties.

Gods, I feel like I might be in danger of a heart attack!

My musing about whether it might, potentially, be a bad idea to lose my virginity so soon after receiving a snakebite (thus allowing symptoms to be disguised by my arousal or my arousal to trigger symptoms) is banished from my mind by her panties hitting the red stone floor of the cave!

She begins bending, to bring her hips to mine, before reconsidering and standing back up.

My heart sinks for a moment and I’m about to ask what the problem is when she reaches to the back of her head and begins working at something.

Her dominant left hand comes away with a small ring of elasticated fabric… which she drops on her clothes.

She releases her hair and shakes her head to loosen it from its ponytail.

This is the first time I’ve seen her hair liberated and the effect is astonishing!

Her head of curly red hair is, by far, the most voluminous I’ve ever seen on any Human being!

She swoops down on me, sandwiching my shaft between my trunk and her labia.

Her hands on my shoulders, she raises her hips, bringing them to the point where my tip rests against her opening.

“Ready?” she smiles.

“Never been more ready for anything!” I chuckle, breathlessly.

She bares her teeth… and brings down her hips!