Raj felt like he couldn't talk to women again. He had things to say, but the words tangled together like giant squid in the depths of his chest, then brutally wrapped their long sucking tentacles around one another's squishy necks and perished together in a tortured orgy of blood and ink before any trace of them could rise up to his lips.

Of course, he could talk to women now, but sitting on the couch, watching Leslie pace naked around his living room it occured to him that she might be a new species of person all together, and he would have to overcome an even-more-selective mutism to communicate.

She stopped, jotted down an equation on the back of a pizza menu she had pulled off his fridge and then turned to him.

"You know, I don't think we've ever really talked before, have we?" she said.

"We still haven't talked," Raj said. He tried not to visibly sigh with relief. Not mute, just hopelessly intimidated. He could live with that. "We just had sex."

Leslie frowned. "I said 'take your pants off.' You said, 'ok.'"

He didn't think that counted, but what did he know? "I used to not be able to talk to women. Like, at all." He looked around for his clothes, careful not to let the blanket slide off. It was all very well for her to strut her stuff - her perfect, perfect stuff - around, but he was shy.

"At all?" Leslie leaned over the back of the couch to look at him curiously. From this angle, he mostly had a great view of her breasts. Her perfect, perfect breasts. Keep breathing, Rajesh. Keep breathing.

"Not a word, unless I had a drink."

"Huh." Leslie nodded. "You would think that I would have noticed someone I worked with for five years had never said a word to me."

Raj shrugged. "Don't worry, I fade into the background."

"Oh, good, so it's you, not me."

"Why is that good?"

"I've been told I can be callous."

"No, not at all! You're...you're straightforward and refuse to participate in a patronizing cultural norm that demands women be sweet and submissive."

Leslie seemed taken aback by that. "That's a very nice way of looking at it."

"I admire the uncompromising forcefullness of your personality," he lied. It terrified him.

"Huh." She shrugged and came around the couch to look down at him. "Another round?"

"Around of what-oh!" Yes seemed to be the correct answer. Actually, the twitch of his cock informed him that it was definitely the correct answer. "Yes. Naturally. Always. You know me."

"Stop talking," Leslie said.

She pushed him back and climbed into his lap in single fluid movement. It seemed like there were things that mattered here, things he should be saying, but the feel of her nipples, hard against the palms of his hands, was too deliriously good. Raj kissed his way down her neck, her shoulder, her breasts. He could feel her response in her hands on his back and the tiny, tense shifts of her body against his. Her teeth closed on his ear, gentle, and then not so gentle.

He pulled away, caught her around the hips and twisted them both around until she was on her back, under him. Her skin was flushed and her breathing short, but her face was composed and oddly removed from the moment. I can make her moan, he thought. I can make her...

Before the thought was quite complete, Leslie pulled his face down to her breasts and wrapped her legs insistently around his waist. Make her scream my name, that was it, that was how it was supposed to go, but that much contact, skin to skin, shorted something in his brain. Her fingers closed around his penis and he forgot. He forgot about going down on her. He forgot about about making her scream his name. Possibly, he forgot his name. The world crashed down to a hot bubble of sensation. The Big Cruch Theory in action, rushing towards collapse and singularity at the speed of light.

His cock in her hands, and then in her. Fingernails digging into his shoulder. Her breath on his chest. Mostly his cock again. The rhythm of the thing. It felt amazingly good. Actually, unbelievably good. Forward and back, a little up and down. Still his cock. He needed this, so badly. These moments that weren't cold and weren't lonely.

He came with a bang and then with a whimper. His apartment swam slowly back into focus. Floor, couch, tv, doodads - they had gone away for a while there. Leslie pushed him away and rolled off the couch smoothly. She stretched like a cat, supple and satisfied. She was satisfied, right? He had meant...something. He forgot. It was just that he had needs. He was a man and he had needs. That was it.

"Leslie?" She would tell him if it wasn't good, right? That he could count on from Leslie Winkle, for sure.

"You were amazing," she said. It sounded like she was lying, maybe, but everything Leslie said sounded like she was lying. Maybe. It was just the way she talked, that ironic monotone. "I'm going to take a shower."

"Now?" He could do other things to her. Make it up to her. Make her...

She shrugged. "Yup."

It took her less than ten minutes to shower, and less than that to get dressed.

"I'll call you." Raj asked while she tied her shoes, perched on the end of the couch where they had made love, of a sort.

"You don't have to," she said.

"I don't?"

Leslie stood, shrugged one last time, and opened the door for herself. "I might call you," she said brightly. "I probably won't, but I might. This was nice. Until next time."

She was gone.

Raj got up numbly to lock the door behind her. Out of the corner of his eye, the screensaver clock on his laptop informed him it was just shy of half past nine o'clock, pm.

"Huh," he considered the situation. "Twice in an hour."

All told, it was possible to have a worse night.