"...and so Margo tilted her head back a little, you know, that way she does when she thinks she's looking all imperious and wise but she's really just giving you a good look straight up her nostrils? And she was all, 'Well, maybe it's different now than it was when I was in grad school,' and it's like, oh my god, Margo, we get it. You think you're so much better than us because you have your Master's. As if we don't all know your real degree was from XYU, right?" Paul gave Lois a playful swat on the shoulder, snorting so hard with laughter he almost choked on his pad thai.

Lois laughed too, but it was the kind of laughter you gave when you were hanging out with an old friend and the atmosphere was so warm and convivial and cheerful that everything was kind of funny, even the jokes you didn't get. It soon faded into a slightly confused expression Paul must have noticed, because he said to her, "Oh, come on. You can't really tell me you forgot about XYU?" Which only made Lois's brow furrow even deeper in bewilderment, because she genuinely had no idea what he was talking about at all. She gave him a shrug, taking a mouthful of noodles to forestall further questions until she had a few moments to reflect back on her long-faded college memories.

But Paul set his spoon down and gave her a surprised look. "Okay, seriously, you really don't remember? We had two classes together that semester, Linguistics and Alternative Strategies in Psychology, and Shari was part of our study group only we kept making excuses to split off because that was the year she was big into the 'yonic consciousness' and kept trying out bits from that godawful one-woman show she was working on about the 'ineffable sacrality of the Divine Cunt'? Come on, that has to ring a bell for you. We all had to attend the premiere."

Lois nodded and swallowed. "Okay, yes, I remember that semester, and I remember Shari's show, but what does that have to do with this 'XU' thing?" Lois knew that wasn't right, but it felt weird to make a big deal about the odd little discrepancy between her memories and Paul's. If they had some inside joke ten years ago now, surely it couldn't be genuinely important, could it?

Judging by the curious expression on his face, it apparently could. Lois set her spoon down and turned slightly on the couch to face him. "You're really serious?" he asked, fixing her with a skeptical stare that reminded her of the frustrating attempts they made to hypnotize each other back during their brief flirtation with a Psych major. "You don't remember anything about XYU? Because, I mean, I thought it was all just kind of, you know, role-playing, but...."

Lois rolled her eyes. "No, I don't remember XYU. That was why you were telling me about it, so I could remember it and we could get back to gossiping about Margo and the whole 'reply all' incident, right?" She sighed. Obviously she'd known Paul for well over a decade now, and she was used to the way he sometimes went down conversational rabbit holes she didn't really care about, but it could get kind of exhausting. She could already feel herself beginning to zone out despite her best efforts to pay attention.

Paul nodded, but he continued to scrutinize her with that same skeptical gaze as he continued. "So yeah, that semester we spent a lot of time doing one-on-one study sessions, and, y'know, kind of dipping our toes into that whole 'friends with benefits' idea." Lois certainly didn't remember that happening, but the last thing she wanted to do was distract Paul away from his distraction with an argument about something she didn't even remember happening, so she just settled back against the arm of the couch and fixed her features into an expression of polite interest she didn't really feel.

"And so yeah," Paul continued, "we were just making jokes about 'yonic' this and 'yonic' that, all the time, because everything was 'yonic' if you listened to Shari. Bowls were 'yonic', drinking cups were 'yonic', everything that had a divot deeper than an inch became an expression of yonic consciousness. I think your purse was yonic that semester, wasn't it?" Lois let out a little chuckle and a nod. She definitely remembered that part, and she had to admit it was kind of funny even if her brain was already glazing over with enforced patience until Paul could get his shaggy dog story on track.

"And we were working on a project for that linguistics class, digging into the Greek prefixes and how they applied to English words, and we were getting pretty punchy by the end, especially because we were combining it with that unit on hypnotherapy and you had gotten so fucking fractionated by all those practice sessions that you couldn't stop giggling." That definitely didn't sound right--Paul had never succeeded in getting her to go under, not once in what felt like an interminable number of tries, but again, Lois didn't want to get bogged down in contradicting him. Especially because they were talking about something she'd already admitted she didn't remember very well.

That didn't stop her from rolling her eyes yet again, but if Paul noticed he didn't say anything. "So we were all the way down to 'xylo', and the only word we could think of for it was 'xylophone', but you had to have three examples for every prefix and we had to dig out an actual physical dictionary to find something we could write down. And I think we used 'xylocarp', and we just had the biggest laugh pretending it meant 'wooden fish' like you really needed a word for it, and then we got to 'xylophagous', which meant 'wood eating', and here we are both in our twenties and combining our study sessions with weed and booze and sex, and...."

He shrugged. "It kind of became a running bit, y'know? Any time I wanted a blowjob, I asked if you were feeling xylophagous. Because I figured you wanted to eat my wood." Lois fought the instinct as hard as she could, but she couldn't stop herself. She rolled her eyes again, so hard this time she wondered for a moment if she'd even be able to get them to look straight at Paul again. He'd always had a crush on her, sure, but she thought that was over and done with when he started dating Tabitha and she got engaged to Jim. Why he had to start making up stories about the past like this, just because they were both single again and hanging out more, Lois had absolutely no idea.

But correcting him felt too much like work. Too much like effort, especially when she was feeling pleasantly full of pad thai and the apartment was stultifyingly warm and all she really wanted to do was curl up on the couch and take a nap. So instead she simply smiled and nodded and let her eyes glaze over in blank indifference until the story ended. Let Paul remember their college years however he wanted. She didn't care anymore.

But somehow the story still wasn't over yet. "And, um... so, so the next semester, um...." He tilted his head quizzically, examining her with an expression on his ruddy features that was somehow the opposite of confusion. He looked like he was just beginning to understand something, but he wasn't quite ready to follow through on his tentative conviction without further evidence to validate his gradually dawning clarity. So instead, he kept talking. "So next semester was when Shari started having an affair with Professor Langenkamp. And she wasn't subtle about it, either. And he was her senior adviser as well as her instructor, and we were all, like, 'Ohhh, this is kind of awkward.'"

He put out a hand in Lois's direction, almost as if to gently jostle her knee to make sure she was paying attention, but thought better of it. Lois let her left leg slip off the couch to rest on the floor, a rush of nostalgia hitting her as she remembered all those study sessions when her body would find the strangest positions comfortable, and her lips quirked into a tiny smile. She allowed the cushions to support the weight of her head completely and closed her eyes, amiably disinterested in where the rest of the story led.

It brought back fond, familiar memories when Paul said, "And I mean, I'm not proud of it now, because in hindsight it's kind of obvious that she was just another undergrad to perv on as far as Professor Langenkamp was concerned, but at the time... yeah. We joked about how Shari was going to get a degree in Xylophagous Yonic Studies, and after that any time we saw a student making eyes at a teacher we called them a graduate of XYU. You, um... you really don't remember any of this, do you?" Lois did, now. Along with a number of other things. Everything seemed to be coming back to her, especially that one particular word that sparked all the other recollections in her dazed and drowsy head.

Of course Paul had successfully hypnotized her. They did it all the time, and... and oh fuck, did it always get Lois's motor running. She couldn't think how that had possibly slipped her mind. Trance made her wet and horny and all excited to play with his hard cock, and she loved going so deep that the details went all fuzzy and blank inside her head and she couldn't always keep the memories straight of what actually happened to her.

And naturally she remembered that word, 'xylophagous'. Paul used it all the time when he was in the mood for sex, and he always got turned on whenever she got that blank, sexy look in her eyes, and hypnosis always led to fucking and sucking and so it was only natural that Lois would associate that word with the mindlessly mesmerized feelings she got when she spread her legs and opened her mouth and offered herself up for him to use. She'd only forgotten because... um, well, because... because....

"Lois? Are you feeling xylophagous right now?" Oh. Right. Because it felt so good to forget. It felt so good to be gullible and malleable and submissive, even if she never worked up the nerve to tell Paul exactly what it was that got her all hot and bothered about their 'practice sessions' together. She let all that knowledge, all those memories sink away into the back of her head because otherwise it would bother her so much to have that itch without any way to scratch it, but deep down that was the problem with Jim and the problem with Kyle and the problem with every guy she'd gotten involved with since college. They couldn't fuck her mind the way Paul could. And she missed that so much since he and Tabitha got together.

It was enough to make her pussy ache with the desire to masturbate, but her whole body felt so heavy and relaxed and passively lethargic that all Lois could really manage to do was nod vacantly and murmur out a tiny, sighing, "mhmmm." Thankfully Paul got the message, and it was only a matter of moments before she felt him flipping up her skirt and tugging off her plain white cotton panties to reveal a slick, neatly trimmed cunt. She could feel the flush of arousal on her usually pale skin, the liquid heat making her labia part ever so slightly in anticipation. God, she couldn't wait to fuck him again.

She heard a crinkling sound, and Lois was almost pathetically grateful that Paul thought to use protection because the notion would never even have occurred to her empty little head. All she could think about was taking in his stiff cock, her hungry cunt swallowing every last inch of him, and when he finally did thrust inside her she let out a tiny mewl of desire that startled her with its intensity. It hadn't been that long since her last time with another man. But it had been over a decade since she'd fucked in trance like this.

He rocked his hips back and forth, and even though the slightly awkward way he fucked her made it obvious that it had been a little longer for Paul than it had for Lois, that didn't matter when she was so wet and so ready and so eager to cum for him. Her legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him in closer and closer, and Lois hoped Paul was going to use this trigger on her every time they got together because this was sating an urge in her that she hadn't gotten satisfied in years and she really didn't think her conscious mind was going to be able to remember any of it. She'd just have to make excuses to be with him again, the way she did when she found out about his divorce, and hope he was willing to take advantage of her.

The fantasy of being his unknowing sex slave gave Lois her first orgasm, and once the floodgates burst they stacked up like departing planes in a Chicago snowstorm as she strained her whole body into his cock and moaned with desperate urgency for more of everything he was giving her. She wanted to swallow every inch of his shaft inside her pussy, and it felt oddly satisfying to know that the trigger he'd accidentally invented couldn't be more appropriate. Her pussy was hungry for his dick. And she couldn't get enough.

He could, unfortunately, and eventually the overwhelming sensation of their sex overwhelmed whatever self-control he had and he emptied his balls into the condom he had on. He pulled out, softening, and Lois found herself slowly returning to consciousness with an odd little glow of contentment in the back of her mind even as the details of what prompted it finally faded. She didn't notice the post-coital wetness slowly seeping into her panties. She barely even noticed that her pad thai had gotten cold.

"So anyway, Margo told him, 'Maybe it's different now than when I was in grad school,' as if having a degree was the reason most people used the BCC feature on a company-wide email," Paul continued, after a momentary pause to reheat their dishes in the microwave. If Lois heard any shakiness to his voice, she didn't let herself think about it. But she hung eagerly on every word of his story, hoping without quite knowing why that she would hear one in particular.

THE END