Chapter Text
Ichabod, like many of his classmates, had stealthily engaged in the practice since adolescence. First gently and out of curiosity in his changing body, then later to quench the heat of lust in the days prior to his marriage to Katrina. In truth, taking himself in hand always made him feel puerile, as if shackles of decorum bear no contest to his members’ bestial desires. However, in his lonely new world, this brutish and primal act evolved to necessity. Thus Ichabod Crane commences stroking himself in the night.
Naturally, he imagines his lovely wife. Katrina, who possessed a body soft and pale and forever enthusiastic to his caress. She welcomed their lovemaking eagerly and Ichabod remembers the months after his nuptials where he found his greatest joys in her sighs as she opened to him for amorous congress. These reflections of her bring him to satisfying climax quickly and forcefully. However, in sour moments, Ichabod is encouraged by frustration to grasp himself. Often it is when he recalls that Katrina languishes elsewhere in the cosmic plane, and that without means of receiving his comfort. It is in these occasions that he rubs himself until his skin is over-sensitized and he aches for release. His strained libido encourages his eidetic memory to search of imaginations that will push him over the cliff.
It begins simply enough. The bursting expression of carnal need preceded by visions of Miss Mills. He finds he simply considers the swell of her chest in her fitted chemise and the darkness in the crevasse between her breasts. The tapering elegance of her throat and smooth alto of her voice. Her femininity and strength contained in a package so tidy and compact. Perfect. Yet whilst his breathing slows and his pupils again constrict to a resting diameter, he ashamedly recollects the conjured images and mourns his propriety. The shame that pinks his cheeks afterwards persists longer than the exhilarating release found in his action.
Bright, straight-laced Ichabod understands that this craving stems from his desire for sensual experience of his wife rather than echoed cryptic phrases in the night. He rationalizes that his fantasizing occurs when his nightmares play too vividly and his vexation too deep. However upon consideration he discovers that his habit has become quite frequent over the past year. More heaving chests recovering from the image of her smile; more reveling in the plush of her pursed lips and strength of her hand when she grasps his. There is a niggling in his mind suggesting his visions result from attraction to Miss Mills, but how can this be when he misses his wife so?
How cruel a shock when he truly ponders that he has thought of his wife in his erotic moments none at all over the passing fortnight. Then the humiliating realization that his most recent vision was not of his wife sweetly whispering his name in his ear as he brought himself to orgasm, but of Miss Mills writhing beneath him. It was her hair splayed out on the pillow, her bronzed skin glowing in the darkened room, her mouth a perfect circle as he spurned her release. And granted him the most satisfying orgasm of his reanimated life.
This crisis of conscience worsens in the evenings after his separation from the Horseman, when her proximity and wit evokes the memory of her warm body in his arms before his potential death. If she has any indication of his sordid midnight thoughts, the Lieutenant gives no clue. She goads him and protects him in equal measure and their innate trust of each other strengthens. His discernibly platonic love for her grows.
Then without warning, his fantasies begin to assault him in the light of day.