Fridays.
Levi almost thought about asking Mike to put him back on the schedule for Fridays. He would have done it, except he didn't want to seem ungrateful for the huge favor his boss had done for him by taking him off the schedule for the two days of the week with the most walk-ins, especially after he fucked up like he did.
The first Friday morning after their whole misunderstanding, the air is filled with awkward tension between Levi and Erna. They're sitting on the stoop, smoking, and after five minutes of silence she finally asks, "So are you… like… gonna go? Or…?"
"Go where?" he asks with a trace of irritation.
"I don't know?" she throws her hands up. "Somewhere not here? Or don't. I don't care. But I'm not using a gag again, so it's going to be loud and I don't give a fuck if it makes you uncomfortable."
"Fabulous," he says sarcastically.
"Wonderful," she quips back.
"Fucking perfect." Levi grinds his cigarette out on the railing of the stoop angrily.
Erna sighs heavily and they both mope there for a minute before she lifts her chin and says, "I'll pay for all the tea you drink if you fuck off to the café for a while."
He wants to say he's not her whore. Her whore will be there in about twenty minutes, but he restrains himself, because he doesn't want a big fight… maybe a little one… but not a big blow out. It's been hard enough to get back to how they used to be, with Erna seeming a little more guarded and defensive and self-conscious around him, and Levi seeming generally a little more depressed and bitchy about the whole thing.
He says, "So I'm getting chased out of my apartment because you want to have a prostitute come over and hit you?"
Erna starts to yell, "She's not –" but she quickly cuts herself off and closes her eyes. She takes a deep breath. "All I'm asking for is one hour of privacy for one day of the week."
"Why don't you just reschedule?"
"I fucking tried. You think I wouldn't do that in a heartbeat if I could? Like I want to be having this conversation with you?"
It would be easy for Levi to go to the café for an hour, in fact, he would be doing that right now anyway if she weren't asking him to. It's just the principle of the thing. He doesn't want to be told when he can and can't be in his own goddamn apartment.
"Stop looking at me like that," she says, her eyes narrowed at him.
"Like what?" he asks. He didn't realize his facial expression changed… ever, but she picks up on the most minute things.
"Like you're sad for me," she says. "Be pissed all you want, but you're not allowed to pity me over this. If you have issues with it, then those are your issues, but I'm happy with what I'm doing, so keep whatever reservations you have about my preferences to yourself."
"So, you can keep me out of my apartment and I can't say shit," he sums up angrily.
She sounds a little tired and mostly pissed off when she answers, "You can say a lot of shit, Levi. Go ahead. What do you have to say?"
His jaw tightens. He grips the lighter in the pocket of his Black Flag hoodie tight enough for his fingernails to dig into his palm.
"I…" he pauses and calms himself. "…I'm going to the café."
He wishes he had his sketchbook. At least he'd be able to do something while he waits. When he gets to the counter Eren gets started on his tea right away without trying to push one of his specials on him. While he waits, Levi pulls out his phone and opens Instagram to see if Hanji posted anything new. He scrolls through pictures of tattoos from a bunch of accounts he follows before he hears Eren clear his throat.
Levi lifts his face and takes in Eren nervously holding out his tea. He puts his phone back in his pocket and takes the cardboard cup from the kid's hand. He says, "Thanks," hands Eren some money, and turns to leave.
He gets stopped by Eren's nervous, "Um…" preamble to, "Do you have a minute?"
Levi stops walking, but doesn't turn around. He tilts his head back and looks upward. "A minute for what?" he asks impatiently.
He hears Eren hop the counter and just like that the kid is in front of him with those big green eyes looking especially pleading. He says hurriedly, "Could I pay you to do a tattoo for me? Like now? Mikasa said it's okay if I'm back before the lunch rush."
Levi raises an eyebrow skeptically at the seemingly desperate twenty-something. This marks the fifty-seventh time Eren has tried to talk to him about a tattoo, but this is the first time Eren has actually asked him to do the thing instead of just trying to talk to him about ideas.
"You're serious?" he asks.
"Yes. Definitely," he answers earnestly.
"Right now?"
"Yeah, if you don't mind." Eren's hand finds the back of his head and he flashes Levi a sheepish smile. "I know you always tell me to make an appointment, but it's really hard for me to get away from the café, and when I'm done with work I'm totally wiped out."
Levi mutters to himself, "I wouldn't know anything about not being able to get away from work."
"What?"
"Nothing." He blows the steam off of his tea and takes a sip as he eyes Eren up and down, which makes the kid squirm. Finally he says, "Let's go."
Eren whips his apron off and throws it behind the counter, tells Armin to cover drinks for him, and shoves his fist into the tip jar. He comes up with a big wad of cash and takes off running after Levi.
It just so happens that Annie is walking up to the building at the same time as them. Erna flashes Levi an outraged look and crosses her arms. "What the fuck, Levi?"
Annie reaches the top step and stands next to Erna. She wears a bemused expression and she says, "More friends?"
"What the fuck is Bambi doing here?"
Eren hangs back behind Levi and says timidly, "Um.. Hey, Erna..."
Annie smirks. "Bambi?"
Levi reaches back and grabs Eren by the arm, pulling him forward and glowering at Annie. "His name is Eren."
"His name is whatever the fuck I call him," Erna counters, and then adds, "and what the fuck is he doing here?"
Eren cringes and tries to step behind Levi again, but the shorter man holds him still in a death grip.
Annie reaches and gently brushes a curl behind Erna's ear, saying with a slight hint of mockery, "It's cute when you're aggressive."
Erna blushes and loses her composure for a moment. Her eyes and chin tilt downward.
"I'm um… getting a tattoo…" Eren explains.
"Right now?" Erna shouts in exasperation.
Again Eren tries to wriggle out of Levi's death grip unsuccessfully. Levi ignores his discomfort as he squares off with Erna. "I need to fucking work."
She crosses her arms over her chest and says, "You're doing this on purpose."
"Like hell I am," he says.
She steps forward a little, which is what she does when she is about to really rip into him, but just as her mouth opens, Annie grips her upper arm and shifts her towards the door saying, "Shall we?"
Erna makes a frustrated little noise, but she doesn't argue. It's strange for Levi to watch her take direction from someone where normally she would be loudly telling them to go get fucked in a variety of ways. It's a whole different side of her that he's never seen, like a submissive, obedient doppelganger.
As Erna goes inside ahead of her, Annie turns and looks down at Levi on the sidewalk and says, "Lovely to see you again," in a bored, disingenuous way.
He waits until the door closes behind her to flip her off.
Finally Eren gets the balls to speak up and he asks Levi, "So who was that?"
Levi pinches the bridge of his nose and wonders what the fuck he should tell the kid.
He settles on, "Let's say she's Erna's girlfriend."
"Oh…" he stammers, "I didn't… Um, that's cool…"
They climb the steps just a flight behind Annie and Erna. When they reach the same floor, Erna is just unlocking the last lock on her door, and Eren notes, "Oh, you guys are neighbors?"
"Shut the fuck up, Bambi," Levi says over his shoulder as he violently opens the door to his apartment.
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Annie sweeps in the door to Erna's apartment with her very specific quality of athletic grace in her corporate-looking pencil skirt and blazer, and she asks very matter of factly, "What's with you and that punky guy?"
"He's my neighbor. I hate him sometimes," Erna says as if that's a foregone conclusion – part of being neighbors.
"That's cute," Annie says with a bored expression. Before Erna can get defensive about it, she changes subjects, "What did we discuss for today?"
She goes to Erna's desk against the wall she shares with Levi's apartment, and there's an audible click as she opens her briefcase. On the left side of the case are some small BDSM tools and accessories. She always packs just what she'll need for the day's clients. When toys are involved she'll usually use what her client already has – a way of avoiding contamination – but there are still basics that she can supply herself. On the right side of the case are manila folders with names written on their little tabs in sharpie.
Annie flips through to the third folder, pulls it out, and opens it as she says, "I didn't have time to check notes from last week."
Erna whimpers a little, because she could give a fuck about the BDSM toys and tools on the left side of the case, but she loves that Annie takes notes. It just adds to her cold, academic, aloof charm that appeals to her sapiosexuality.
"Could you just fuck me?" Erna blurts out. Which is really smooth… so much so that she blushes immediately after the words leave her mouth.
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"Take your fucking shoes off," Levi tells Eren as soon as he steps foot in his apartment.
Eren stammers and falls all over himself to do so and Levi rolls his eyes. He goes to the corner of his apartment that passes as a kitchen and gets him a glass of water. When Eren's just finishing getting his shoes off, Levi pulls him by his upper arm, puts the glass in one of his hands, says, "Drink that," and shoves him to one of the seats at the white formica kitchen table.
When Levi comes back with a piece of paper and a pen, Eren has some more resolve, which is good because if he had to listen to the kid stammer through what is supposed to be a quick consultation, Levi was going to lose his shit.
"Okay. What do you want?"
Eren takes a sip of water, swallows, and then says, "I want this quote with an infinity anchor."
Levi's eyelids close. He takes a very, very deep breath, and steels himself. "What quote?"
"Too something to live, too weird to die?" He mutters as he checks his phone for the screenshot he took of the quote.
Levi sighs and tents his fingers over his forehead, massaging his temples. "It's 'Too weird to live, and too rare to die.'"
"How do you know?"
Levi gives the kid a half-lidded bored stare and asks, "Do you even know where that quote comes from?"
"Um… I saw it on facebook, so…"
Levi's eyes roll to the back of his head. He stands and rolls his shoulders as he goes over to the small table next to his bed. He doesn't read much, but he keeps a few books around that people go to most often when searching for a quote to get inked on them. Some things that he would otherwise never own like the Bible and Alice in Wonderland, and some that he wouldn't mind reading for pleasure like The Hobbit and the book that Eren is clumsily trying to quote: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
He grabs the book by Hunter S. Thompson and tosses it onto the kitchen table in front of Eren.
"Open to the dog-eared page."
As Eren carefully opens the book and reads the highlighted quote in its original form, Levi sits across from him at the kitchen table and bangs out an infinity symbol with an anchor in less than five seconds. He's done about twenty-five of these infinity anchor things in the past two months. He's considering putting them on the get-the-fuck-out-of-my-shop list.
One of the rules at The Basement is that anyone can refuse any work for almost any reason. For example, Mike refuses to tattoo names on people. He got sick of the clients coming in a month later and asking for a cover-up after they broke up with their significant other.
Levi has a longer list of things he will refuse to tattoo, which he calls the get-the-fuck-out-of-my-shop list. Things that made the list are as follows: portrait tattoos (because he finds them boring), gang symbols (because half the time the people asking for them don't even realize that they're gang symbols), and stars (because after his two-hundredth five-pointed star, he just couldn't anymore). Infinity anchors are going to make the list soon after this.
Eren finishes reading the passage that his quote comes from and closes the book. He looks up and startles slightly at the way Levi is staring at him, looking somehow bored and murderous at the same time.
Levi tells him slowly, with emphasis, "First, I'm going to tell you every reason that you're going to keep your mouth fucking shut about this."
Eren swallows down a lump in his throat and nods.
"One:" Levi starts, "I could get in a lot of trouble for doing this out of my home. I could lose my license. If that happens, I have nothing to lose and nothing holding me back from killing you."
"I promise I won't –"
"I'm not finished," Levi growls.
Eren makes a small 'eep' sound, sits up straighter, and folds his hands on his lap.
Levi continues. "Two: You are not going to tell anyone who did this tattoo for you because what you're asking for is the most basic bitch tattoo I've been asked to do all year and I don't want my name attached to it. I have artistic integrity to think about. Honestly, I'm glad you wanted to do this under the table because if you came into the shop and asked for a quote you didn't even know the origin of, along with literally the most trendy, meaningless symbol in tattoos since tribal designs, I'd tell you to get the fuck out."
"You think it's basic?"
With his very straightest face, Levi answers, "It's more basic than a Lewis Carroll quote with incorrect grammar next to a Cheshire cat."
"Do you think I should get something else?
Levi automatically makes a pained, frustrated grunt, not at Eren's indecisiveness, but because he hears Annie's fucking briefcase being set down on the other side of the wall. He can almost hear it click open. Then muffled voices; Annie's voice monotone and professional, then Erna's voice uncharacteristically high and tight and desperate. Levi refocuses himself, leans back in his chair, and takes a deep breath.
"After all the fucking good ideas you've come at me with in the years you've lived here… Yeah, I think you should get something else, but," he points at the infinity anchor symbol he just drew, "I just started working. You want to talk about different ideas, it's another twenty-five dollars. So how much do you have?"
Eren looks down as he roots through his pockets, some of his milk chocolate brown hair falls in his face and he blows it away as he comes up with a wad of assorted bills and change. Just as he starts counting, he pauses as he hears a girlish whimper through the other side of the wall.
Levi tells him, "Don't worry about that."
"Um…" Eren hums as he gets to counting. "I have sixty-three dollars."
"And how big a piece did you want?"
"I guess, like," Eren holds his hand out in front of him, "a little bigger than my hand?"
Eren flinches as another noise penetrates the barrier between Levi and Erna's apartments, like a piece of wooden furniture getting jolted against the wall. Levi is unaffected. He sighs and tells Eren, "You're lucky I'm in a good mood."
"You are?" Eren immediately realizes his mistake in what he just said and covers his mouth as Levi shoots him a look.
"Do you want black ink? Or color? I'll tell you now, you can't afford any colors unless you want to be making up the difference with free tea for the next six months."
"Unhh… I didn't know it would be so expensive," Eren whines.
"The cost goes up when I work at home," Levi explains as he gets up and starts gathering materials. "There's no overhead here, but the risk is higher, not to mention this is my day off, so I'm giving myself overtime pay."
He sets a large bottle of medical grade sterilizing solution on the table along with an unopened roll of paper towels. As he turns to go to the other side of the room to get his inks and needles, he catches the pensive look on Eren's face and stops.
He puts his hands on the table and sighs, before saying, "Look, kid. You've been talking about this for years. You want my advice?"
Eren nods his head enthusiastically.
"Don't stress about the content of the tattoo, just fucking get it done. You'll feel good about it no matter how stupid the design is."
Eren bites his lower lip a little, which Levi has to admit is a good look on him. He tries not to let on too much how warmly he feels toward the kid sometimes with his passionate, but hapless nature. His long, tanned throat bobs as he swallows and he nods at Levi, smiling with resolve.
"Good." Levi says. He lightly smacks Eren upside the back of his head before he walks over to his organized drawers of supplies and tells him, "Now pick a font."
"Um… shit… I didn't think about it," Eren says, rubbing the back of his head where Levi hit him.
"Anything but Lucida. I'm so fucking sick of Lucida," he warns as he looks down at his tattoo machine.
Eren hums nervously as he tries to make a decision, but soon his low, throaty vibration is drowned out by voices, clearer and louder this time. Levi swears he can hear Erna shyly stammering something out. When has she ever fucking been at a loss for words?
"Is that, um…" Eren stutters.
"I said don't worry about it," Levi growls. He grabs a bottle of black ink and wheels over the small industrial tool chest that holds everything he might need in the middle of a tattoo so that he won't need to cross the room.
"Did you think of a font?"
"Um…"
Levi pinches the bridge of his nose and rubs the ends of the barbell there. "How about typewriter? Hunter S. Thompson had a thing for typewriters. It'll make up for the fact that you didn't even know where the quote came from."
"Okay... Yeah..." Eren shifts uncomfortably in his seat.
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a good book," Levi says as he plugs in his foot pedal. "You should read it after getting part of it tattooed on your… Where did you want it?"
"I was thinking on, like, my hip?"
"You should read it after you get part of it tattooed on your hip forever."
"I will," the brunette says sincerely. Then he asks, "Can I borrow your –"
Levi would respond, but he's cut off by Erna making a noise that starts off like a shocked, pained gasp and turns into a whimper and sigh.
Levi takes a deep breath and goes over to the drafting table to grab the big, noise-canceling headphones that are normally hanging on the lamp there; only, he stops short because they're not where they should be. He mutters, "One second," to Eren as he turns around and goes to the closet to pull out his work bag. He squats down on the floor while he rummages through it looking for them.
While he does that, the silent spaces between the noises get shorter and shorter. There are a couple more soft moans that, even though he's trying to ignore them, go straight to his dick and bring forth unbidden imagery from fantasies he gave up on exactly a week ago when he found out about Erna's… preferences. Finally he stands up and shouts, "Shit!" because he must have forgotten his headphones at the shop yesterday.
Eren nearly jumps out of his skin and starts saying apologetically, "I can come back another time if this isn't convenient. I'll pay you for the consultation and all."
Levi stalks over and as he walks past Eren, puts a hand firmly on his shoulder and shoves him back down into the chair as he says, "I'm not getting chased out of this apartment by that psycho doll and neither are you." Without a pause, he keeps moving and picks his Macbook up off the bedside table, sends a playlist to the wall mounted speakers, and turns it up as loud as he can stand. It helps a little, though as the music gets louder, so does the intensity of the session in the apartment next-door, and even The Ramones can't drown out what he's pretty sure is the sound of Erna getting spanked right against her desk which happens to be parallel to the kitchen table where he has to do Eren's tattoo.
He orders Eren to finish the glass of water he gave him and when the kid says it's okay, he isn't thirsty, he pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. "It's not hospitality, fuckwad, your body dehydrates when you're in pain and I'm not letting you pass out in my kitchen. So drink the fuck up."
"Oh. Sorry."
As he gathers his materials and Eren finishes the glass of water, Levi asks, "Did you eat this morning?"
Eren starts describing his breakfast as if this is small talk while Levi wipes the table down in a sterilizing solution. He cuts him short again. "I'm not interested, kid. I'm trying to make sure you're not going to go into shock through some dumbassery on your part."
As he works out the fine details of his drawing, making it as perfectly symmetrical as possible, he asks, "Any history of bad reactions to needles?"
"Like how?"
"Like do you faint when you see them?"
That's something Levi asks everyone now. He's learned that people who have vasovagal reactions to needles are never up front about it. They either think this time will be the one time they don't fucking faint, or they don't want to own up to it because they know they'll be asked to leave because nobody wants to have to call a fucking ambulance to pick up a client with an unfinished tattoo.
Eren's chin is in his hands now, watching with rapt attention as Levi draws out the stencil and he denies ever having fainted at the sight of a needle. He adds that he has a high tolerance for pain.
Levi barely grunts in response to that. Everybody thinks they have a high tolerance for pain until they actually experience it. That thought makes his mind go back to Erna who probably actually does have a high tolerance since she actively seeks it out as a means to get off, which he still doesn't understand. In fact he finds it pretty sad, but judging by the sounds coming through the wall right next to him, she enjoys it just as much as any normal person enjoys sex. Though he wonders if the noises are exaggerated just to annoy him.
He shakes his head. Before he moves on to the lettering, he asks, "Any allergies?"
"I'm pretty allergic to pollen, but being in the city it's not usually a problem."
Levi drops his pen so that he can rub his temples. "Allergies that might be relevant, dumbass."
"Oh. Ummm…" His aquamarine eyes roll upwards as he thinks. "No, I don't think so."
The typewriter font quote is a little harder to draw than the infinity anchor was, which Levi is almost thankful for, because needing to concentrate distracts him a little from Erna's honestly sexy as fuck squeals and yelps. He draws out the quote in a simple curve underneath the anchor and holds the stencil up for Eren's approval.
Eren gives him a thumbs up, so Levi gets a piece of contact paper, copies the design, and turns around to wash his hands.
As he snaps on a pair of gloves, he tells the tall, tan, somewhat adorable barista, "Drop your pants."
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Annie tells Erna just as she is reaching for the box out from under the bed, "Take off the boots, but leave the thigh-highs and the dress."
Erna wants to ask why as she unzips her chunky platform ankle boots. Annie answers her without being asked, "I like your outfits. They make you look like an innocent, mechanical little fuck doll." And with that, she takes a strap-on harness with an average-sized, fleshy colored dildo out of the cardboard box. She digs around for another moment, then lifts her head, watching Erna step out of her shoes as she asks, "Do you have lube?"
"Huh? .. Um.." Erna stammers as she lifts one foot. "I don't think so… I never…" She doesn't finish that, instead it just trails off.
Annie smirks. "You haven't done this in a long time, have you?"
Erna can't answer. She feels her face get hotter and knows that she's got a glowing pink blush working its way over her face.
A wicked smirk appears on Annie's lips as she steps towards her client. She tilts Erna's chin up with a finger and tells her with evil sarcasm, "I feel so special."
Erna is forced to look into her eyes, icy blue and cold. There's a keen intelligence behind those eyes that is a little scary, that makes Erna's stomach drop nervously. She loves the way Annie can make her forget that she's safe. She's always had a thing for the threat of danger in safe situations like this.
Annie backs her up until she's leaning against the desk on the wall opposite the bed, and as she has her caged there between her arms, she sets the strap-on harness down and reaches past to take a small bottle of lube from her briefcase.
Catching the briefcase in her peripheral vision makes Erna remember something she wanted, but even though she's practiced the request in her head at least a dozen times, she's still shy about asking and she stammers as the words get strangled in her throat. "Could you… um…?"
Annie follows Erna's eyeline exactly to a small box of surgical latex gloves in her briefcase and she removes a pair and holds them up for the small, vulnerable girl. "You want these?"
Erna swallows and nods.
Annie puts the lube down on the desk next to the strap-on and pulls the gloves on slowly. "Just out of curiosity," she asks, "is it a germ thing? Or a medical kink?" and when Erna doesn't answer right away, she offers, "because if it's a medical kink, I can bring a nurse's uniform next time."
Erna deflects the question and instead of an answer, she says, "I don't like costumes." The truth is that it isn't a germ thing or a medical kink, though she does like medical play. It's that the gloves make it more impersonal and less intimate. She doesn't like any feeling of intimacy in her scenes.
Annie notices the omission of an answer to her question, but she lets it go. She could punish Erna for it, but from what she can see, the girl is being tortured enough by the difficulty of asking for what she wants. That should be punishment enough, especially if Annie makes her ask for everything.
"How do you want it?" she asks, even though, honestly, she can read the girl like a book and already knows exactly what she'll ask for if she gets the nerve up to actually say anything.
"I…" she squeaks. "Um…"
None of Annie's other clients are like this. Maybe because they're men. They're used to being forward about what they want, even if they're submissive. She thinks it's cute and she's going to draw it out as much as possible.
"Come on, out with it. When we first met you said you like to talk things through."
She brushes Erna's cheek with the tips of her fingers as she reaches to push an inky black curl behind her ear and she smiles at the way the girl's eyes widen as she swallows down her nerves like she's about to say something, but no words come out.
This is going to be an interview then, Annie thinks to herself. She asks matter of factly, "Oral?"
Erna shakes her head, then says, "Never liked it."
"Well that seems to conflict with –" Annie pauses while she reaches a little past and to the side of Erna for her folder on the desk. She opens it, riffles through a couple of pages, pulls up a sheet and points to a particular item, "your kink for deepthroating?"
Annie could almost laugh as the diminutive gothic girl unconsciously brings her hand to her mouth and gently grips the pad of her thumb in her teeth. Then she catches herself, brings her hand back to her side, and says, "Technically not oral."
The girl definitely has an oral fixation, no matter what she says. Annie pushes further. "So choking on a fake cock doesn't count? Or are you squeamish about fluids?"
"It's… um…" Erna doesn't want to say, but she knows that Annie is unrelenting especially when she feels she's backed her client into a corner. "It's not that."
Annie tilts her head at her for the first time and studies her quizzically. A pink blush starts to spread over Erna's face and she looks down at her toes.
"Interesting," Annie says to herself.
Erna's thumb finds its way to her mouth again. Her heart races a little as she gets a rush out of the humiliation of being scrutinized so closely. She likes the feeling of Annie picking her apart. Maybe subconsciously that's why she's not as forthcoming with answers to her domme's questions.
Annie's eyes narrow a little and the corner of her mouth quirks upward. She says without too much of an accusatory tone, "You don't like pussy? Is that it?"
Erna's blush turns her face hot and she swears she's burning as Annie actually lets out a laugh for the first time. When she catches her breath, she asks, "Are you actually straight?"
Erna only nods, still not looking up from her stocking-clad toes.
"Oh my god, you adorable little thing," Annie says patronizingly. She tangles her fingers into Erna's hair and tilts her head back up to look at her. "I've never fucked a straight girl before."
Erna almost wants to apologize, but that doesn't make sense to her. She doesn't know what to say and instead she stammers, "I – I… um…"
Annie shushes her. "I won't torture you about it. It's just interesting… and something for me to cross off my bucket list." It's actually not unheard of in the BDSM community for people to play counter to their sexual orientation. Annie has at least a few friends who are lesbians with long-term male subs. People forget that it's not only about sex. For some, BDSM is something completely independent of sex and therefore, sometimes, sexual orientation doesn't come into play. Though, she supposes, some people, like Erna, do just really need to get fucked once in awhile.
She releases Erna's hair and gives her a break. "Let's move on. Any positions that you find painful?"
Erna's eyes turn upward as she thinks about that one. She can count the positions she's tried in her scenes on one hand, because Annie was right, she doesn't do this often. She views sex with penetration as something cathartic to be done maybe once or twice a year as routine maintenance. Otherwise she doesn't really care for being penetrated at all. She's not even particularly in the mood for it in this instance, but she knows it will be loud and obvious and it will piss Levi off. Finally she answers, "Not that I know of…" a little unsurely.
"Anything else you want me to know? Do you want to go over trigger words again? Anything new since the last time I was here?"
Erna shakes her head so emphatically her curls wave back and forth a little with the motion. All she wants is to finish the interrogation and be told what to do.
"You want me to treat you like an object?" Annie tells her more than asks as her fingers trail up her jawline, over her cheekbone, and suddenly tangle in her hair, grabbing it in a fist. "Something that I can use to get off and then throw away?"
Erna moans low in her throat and it turns into a sigh as Annie pulls harder at her hair.
The intimidating blonde orders her to speak with, "Safe words."
"Red, yellow, green," Erna whines.
"What a good toy," Annie purrs because she knows the keywords to make her subject feel objectified and a little dehumanized, which seems to be her main kink. "Now," she begins, tugging at Erna's hair again, "do I need to warn you about discretion?"
"Ha- ahh," Erna whines again at the pain, "No!"
"Good," Annie says casually and she lets go of her hair. "Bend over the desk."
Erna turns around and rests her forearms on the desk. She turns her head to see Annie's deceptively delicate-looking hands lift the strap-on away and out of her view.
Annie hums to herself as if she's thinking when she runs a hand up over the back of Erna's thighs and pulls her dress up.
She says to herself, "I think I want to spank your ass red first."
Erna involuntarily winces in anticipation when Annie's fist finds her hair again. She was hoping for some kind of impact play first, but was again too shy to ask for it. The shyness is completely new, even in the context of a scene with a domme. It's something Annie specifically brings out of her, Erna thinks. At least she hopes that it's Annie and that it doesn't have anything to do with changes in her personality that are a result of her trauma.
Instead of pulling at her hair like expected, Annie pushes Erna's face harder into the desk and then lets go. She uses both of her hands to part Erna's soft thighs and adjust her position. Annie's fingernails rake over the black thigh-high stockings and then back up, under the dress, and over her ass, squeezing her flesh as she pushes the black ruffled skirt further out of the way.
Standing, Annie reaches down to pull Erna's panties below the curve of her ass. She rests her hand on her head again and this time firmly pushes Erna's face down onto the cool wood. Erna can feel her dominatrix's weight shift as she pulls back her arm, so she tenses, waiting for the blow. For a long moment, Annie stands waiting, until very calmly she tells Erna to relax.
Erna doesn't want to relax. It hurts more if she doesn't relax. But, biting harder on her lip, she takes a deep breath and does her best to comply. Annie's hand finally comes down full on her pale flesh with a sudden, sharp sound — once, twice. Again, harder, and she lets a long, relieved moan escape her lips.
When Annie starts hitting her with full strength Erna feels and hears the little shrieks and sobs coming from her mouth, but she feels more and more disconnected from the sounds the more the pain blooms and burns. Again Annie hits her, switching between each cheek. She pauses and grabs Erna's now-stinging ass, her fingertips digging in, leaving white circles in the red, aching skin.
Then a latex-gloved finger curls and gently traces over the burning skin and downward to caress the swelling lips of Erna's cunt, the new subject of her attention.
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"Good?" Levi asks Eren after he gets the transfer onto his left hip.
He can just barely hear Eren's response over the loud music. "I don't know," he says uncertainly. "Do you think it's good?"
Levi's shoulders slump. He's never had such an indecisive client. He pinches the bridge of his nose and says, "Yes."
"Okay, then."
If he were being honest, Levi would have told the kid to go higher so that the quote would start just at the cleft of his ass, because artistically it would make a better line for the eye to follow, but for that he would need to make Eren take his navy blue boxer briefs off and the poor kid is sporting the bulge of half a boner already with Erna's moans and whines coming through the wall directly next to him.
Upon hearing his answer, Levi picks up his machine and starts concentrating on the design and the lyrics of the song that's playing; anything but the slapping sounds coming from the adjacent apartment.
Levi has Eren stay standing. It would be easier if they were at the shop. He could maneuver him into a better position to keep the skin flat. But he works with what he has, gets down on one knee, and uses the splayed fingers of his left hand to keep the smooth, tan skin of Eren's thigh taut as he passes over the infinity anchor first.
Eren flinches and Levi glances up at him with an irritated half-lidded look.
"Sorry," he yelps out.
"Hold the fuck still or you're going to have a shitty tattoo," Levi mutters at him.
"Sorry!" he says again, more earnestly this time.
"Don't be sorry, just don't move," Levi deadpans.
He starts his machine again, and then, just as an experiment, he gives Eren a sharp pinch on his lower thigh with his thumb and pointer finger instead of touching the machine to his skin. The kid jumps and yelps again and Levi shakes his head. "Look, if you can't handle this, I'm not going to keep going. The more you move the worse it's going to come out, and shitty work makes gives me a shitty reputation."
"No," Eren begs, "I can hold still. I'm sorry. Just…" and then, in an unexpected move, he brings his hand to his mouth and bites down on the thumb and sensitive fleshy part between his thumb and palm. Then he nods for Levi to go on.
Levi tilts his head and takes in the wrinkle between Eren's brows as the kid focuses on the pain in his hand instead of the tattoo. His eyes shut tight as he winces and, inexplicably, the expression makes him look hot as fuck. Levi shakes his head at himself and looks back down to the half centimeter of ink he's gotten down on Eren's thigh so far. He reminds himself that this is just work. He thinks the sounds on the other side of the wall are getting to him.
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Erna feels a little of her breath leave her as the strong woman looming over her pushes her sternum harder into the desk. The coarseness of her voice when she says, "Tell me how rough you like it," contrasts how gently her fingers are playing over Erna's wet lips, softly prodding at her opening.
With an extra little parting shove, Annie releases the pressure she's applying to Erna's shoulders to reach for the lube on the desk and she tells the smaller girl, "Hold still," as she pushes two fingers just a little roughly inside her.
Erna bites her lip and groans at the harsh treatment and the strange feeling of fingers going inside her for the first time in almost a year. Even though Annie goes slow, it feels invasive to her and slightly uncomfortable. She thinks if she could spread her legs it might feel less awkward, but she can't move them any further with her underwear only pulled down to mid-thigh. Only just as she's starting to get used to the pressure, Annie takes her hand away and she hears her domme's skirt whisper its descent to the floor. She bites the back of the knuckle of her thumb and her cheeks blush when Annie asks again, "How rough?"
Erna's eyes roll up and a pained, humiliated whine gets strangled in her throat before she takes a deep breath and admits, "Really rough," quickly and clearly, though her voice sounds high-pitched and pitiful and not like her own.
"Yeah?" Annie asks as she coats her palm in lube, then slides it over the head of her strap-on cock. She smirks as the smaller girl bent over her desk cants her hips back and whines like she's dying for it, as Annie takes the strap-on in her hand and slides the head over Erna's lips, finding her opening and teasing it with slight stutters of pressure. "You want it how hard?" She almost laughs as Erna pants and moans and comes undone on the desk under her, squirming and clenching her fingers.
"Really hard?" Erna whines. "Pleas–"
Erna's attempt at begging gets cut off at the beginning when Annie grabs her by both shoulders and pulls her back as she snaps her hips forward hard and impales Erna on her cock, only giving the smaller woman a moment for her scream to die in her throat before pulling back out, almost to the tip, and then pushing forward quickly to bottom out inside her again.
Erna's forearm, along with the edge of the desk under her, hits the wall hard. The resulting bang punctuates her pained wail. Annie's hips still for a second and, given the opportunity to breathe, Erna can only say, "Fuck!"
Evilly, Annie asks, "Too hard?" She splays her left hand across the small of Erna's back and continues to hold the base of the dildo so that she can angle it as best she can to avoid hurting her client too much.
"Color," she demands just before she pulls back, ready to thrust hard again if she gets a dishonest answer.
After a few breathless pants, Erna squeals, "Green."
"Hmm… Yeah? You want me to keep going that hard?" Annie gets ready for another brutal, punishing thrust as she watches Erna tense up.
"Yellow!" Erna backpedals, ashamed of what she sees as an admission of weakness.
"There, was that so hard?" the dominatrix asks smugly as she changes her pace and watches with pleasure as the realistic-looking dildo disappears more slowly. "You should be more careful what you ask for. Don't overestimate yourself."
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As he's finishing up the last bit of the quote underneath Eren's tattoo, Levi distinctly remembers Erna getting defensive last week and saying that she and Annie don't have sex.
He remembers that because the very rhythmic banging against his wall and the screams suggest otherwise. From the wooden sound of the noise he can tell that it's a piece of furniture that keeps hitting the wall, and with how close it sounds, he'd have to guess that it's that wooden desk Erna has pushed up against the wall right where his kitchen table would be if there were no wall there at all. For all the good it does at shutting out noise, there may as well not be a wall there anyway.
He has to squeeze his eyes shut for a second and take one long deep breath to try and shut out the question that comes to the front of his brain: Is she getting fucked sitting on top of the desk, or bent over it taking it from behind? Because that's irrelevant. What's important is that she's being fucking rude. She's a horrible neighbor and next time he sees her she's going to hear about it.
He tries not to rush. Rushing wouldn't be fair to Eren. It wouldn't be his best work. And after biting down on his hand, the kid's been much better at holding the fuck still, even though he's still whimpering every so often and his face hasn't relaxed from its wincing, pained expression. But he is holding still, so there's no excuse to give him a less-than-perfect tattoo, except he really just wants to get this over with and go outside and smoke maybe like three cigarettes.
So despite himself, he does the last bit of text as fast as he can without getting too sloppy. He wipes away the excess ink with a paper towel and sits back on his heels to make a quick appraisal before he calls it finished.
It takes him longer to get focused than usual. His eyes are staring at the line work of the tattoo, but his head is somewhere else. His cock is trying to jump with every thud against the wall accompanied by those delicious high-pitched yelps, whines, and whimpers. He thanks fuck that his jeans are tight as hell or he would be pitching a visible tent like Eren is right now.
At that thought, his eyes tick upward. Poor Eren. Even though the needle's stopped, his eyes are still screwed shut and he looks like he's in immense pain, though now it's probably more from blue balls than from the needle. Levi wants to tell him that it's not the first erection someone's gotten while getting a tattoo. For some reason the body just reacts that way sometimes, and he would tell him that in order to assuage the kid's embarrassment, except he looks fucking cute when he's embarrassed. So Levi keeps his mouth shut and goes back to his final check of the tattoo.
And then he yells, "Shit!"
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"Shit!... Haa—ah! Fuck!.. Me!... Ah!"
After easing up, Erna was able to adjust and give Annie the green light to go harder again and the pro-domme can't deny that she enjoys it much more that way. The harder she fucks Erna, the more vocal she gets and the less self conscious she is about her vocalizations. She seems so far gone, Annie doubts she even knows what she's saying anymore.
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"Motherfucker!" Levi shouts relatively quietly as he closes his eyes in irritation and pinches the bridge of his nose.
"What's wrong?!" Eren asks a second time, looking down at Levi and quickly getting more and more worried.
Levi stands up and angrily slams his tattoo machine down on the table.
"Fuck me."
"Did I move too much?"
Levi cuts the cute, tan barista off, because he's not about to even let him apologize for his own massive fuck up. "No, you didn't move too much," he says, completely irritated with himself. He points at the finished tattoo on Eren's thigh and says, "Look."
Eren has been looking, but he doesn't see anything wrong. "I like it. What's wrong?"
"Jesus," Levi mutters. "You didn't get good grades in English class, did you?"
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Annie didn't know that Erna could get this loud. When they're doing pain play, she's much quieter. Not silent, but not screaming like she is now. When she's being hurt in a scene she usually seems to be trying to concentrate and focus on the pain to get the most out of it. There's none of that focus now in the petite girl writhing and clawing at the desk as she comes completely undone.
As much fun as it is, Annie wonders if she's ever going to come, because she's just starting to break a sweat. She digs her fingers into Erna's hips and pulls her off of the desk so that she's on her feet and more upright. She has to bend her knees a bit to be able to keep fucking the shorter girl, but this way she can reach her clit with her fingers. As she starts rubbing in soft, quick circles, she brushes her lips against Erna's ear and whispers, "Come for me, pet."
"Ah! –" Erna yelps at another thrust of Annie's hips, then catches her breath and whines, "I caaan't."
"I think you can," Annie assures her. She's made her come before without any fucking at all. It should be easier now.
Erna struggles to get her head together enough to explain, "No… I mean… Ah! I can't come with…"
Annie realizes that this isn't just the usual begging and whining, so she stills her hips for a second and stops moving until Erna catches her breath.
As she quiets down and pants for air, Erna tells her, "I can't come with penetration… Like, not just that it doesn't make me come, but it makes it impossible."
That's a new one to Annie. She pauses and doesn't say anything, her brows merely knitting together as she thinks on that for a second.
Erna rushes to fill the silence. "I don't need to. It's okay. It still feels good, it's just different."
She feels like she should apologize, but she's not sure what for. Because she paused the scene? Made it awkward? Because she's weird? She doesn't know why she's never been able to come with anything inside her – fingers, toys, whatever. It's like an interrupting switch that makes it impossible for her to get out of her head enough to have an orgasm.
While Erna tries to think of how to save the situation, Annie pulls the strap-on out of her. Erna whimpers at the sudden emptiness, which feels just as uncomfortable as being filled too fast.
"Hush," Annie chides as she goes about undoing the harness and dropping the whole thing onto the desk before picking her skirt up off the chair and pulling it back on.
"You don't have to stop," Erna begs. Her stomach sinks and she starts to feel depressed, thinking that she fucked up in some way.
Suddenly Annie grabs her tightly and spins Erna around to face her.
"Didn't I just tell you to be quiet?" she asks, with a growl.
Annie gives her a gentle shove back against the desk. She puts her hands around Erna's tiny waist and the girl takes the cue and gives a little push off of her toes as Annie lifts her to sit on it.
"Sorry," she says quietly, looking down so that her long black eyelashes shadow her grey eyes.
"I don't want you to apologize," Annie tells her. "I want you to come. Whether you 'need' to or not."
Erna worries her lip with her teeth and wriggles uncomfortably. She feels too self conscious now, too out of the moment.
Annie's hands press down on Erna's thighs as she leans into her, lowering her face to look into her client's downcast eyes.
"Touch yourself for me. Now."
Those grey eyes widen and Erna's skin quickly starts turning a dark shade of pink. Annie can feel the heat of humiliation coming off of her.
Erna regrets everything. She shouldn't have asked Annie to fuck her. She shouldn't have said anything about not being able to come. She feels far too exposed now and she's never been so self conscious.
Asking a client to masturbate in front of her isn't anything new to Annie. It's actually pretty common. But the look on Erna's face tells her she hasn't done this before, and she smiles. She likes pushing people out of their comfort zones. The girl said she liked humiliation on her list of kinks… she thinks she remembers that correctly. So many notes to keep up on…
"Come on," she says impatiently. "If you can't come while I'm fucking you, then I want to see how you can."
Tentatively, Erna reaches between her thighs and her eyelids flutter shut.
"What a good girl," Annie murmurs.
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Eren looks hard at his tattoo. He loves it, just like Levi said he would. He doesn't see what the problem is. Maybe because from his viewpoint it's upside down? Is that how he's missing what Levi's seeing?
"It's 'too' with two O's, fuckstick," Levi snarls. Then he hits his palm against his forehead, because why is he getting mad at Eren? If he wants to blame anyone but his damn self, he can blame that witchy little succubus screaming and moaning in the next apartment.
"Oh," Eren hums looking at the quote. "Is it?"
"Yes."
Eren looks at the quote. Both of the 'to's only have one O. He shrugs. "That's okay. I don't care."
Levi almost sputters in rage. "The fuck do you mean you don't care? You should care. I care. That's a bullshit mistake. Who does that?"
Apparently he does.
Levi shakes his head. He's better than this. He's never gotten spelling or grammar wrong on a tattoo… until now.
"But it still looks awesome," Eren says cheerfully.
The fact that Eren is okay with it doesn't make Levi feel better at all. If anything he feels shittier about it. He rubs his hand over the back of his head and thinks about what he should do.
He gets back down on his knees and looks closely. The letters aren't spaced out enough that he could fit in the extra O's without it looking shitty. He sighs, cards his fingers into his hair and says, "Fuck me," again.
At almost exactly the same moment, he hears Erna scream on the other side of the wall, "Fuck! .. Ah!.. Oh my god!" like she's finally reached her climax.
He shakes his head and mutters, "Goddamnit."
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Annie takes in the panting, disheveled wreck of a girl in front of her and asks simply, "You okay?"
Strange thing to ask after someone's just had a body-shaking orgasm in front of you, Erna thinks, but she answers quietly, "Yeah," though she's a little unsure. Physically, of course, she's fine. Mentally and emotionally, maybe not so much. She's never been brought to that depth of humiliation by anyone, and she isn't sure how she feels about it.
"Can you stand?"
Erna thinks she can, so she tries. She gets off of the desk and is glad that her legs don't go wobbly, but suddenly standing up makes her conscious of how disgusting she feels. Her inner thighs are all wet and she's sure she looks like a complete mess.
"Good," Annie says. Then she crosses her arms. "Now I'm going to ask you again if you're okay, and this time you're going to answer me honestly."
"I'm…" Erna wants desperately to say that she's fine and have it be true, because she doesn't want to be weak.
Annie's never had anyone so stubbornly refuse aftercare. She's seen people get a little embarrassed about needing it, but they come around pretty quickly as soon as they start to experience sub drop. Not this one.
"Look," she says seriously. "I'm going to stick around for a few minutes." She peels off her gloves, turns around, and tosses them into the trash can in the kitchen only some feet away in the tiny apartment. "I have some notes to take on you anyway and I'd rather do it now while my memory's fresh."
She moves back to Erna who still looks dazed and she smoothes her clothes out for her, straightening her dress back into place somewhat. She looks into her eyes to make sure she's hearing her and she says, "We don't have to call it aftercare. I'm just going to be here if you need anything. Is that okay with you?"
Erna nods slowly.
Annie gently moves her out of the way and grabs a bleach wipe from her briefcase. She proceeds to wipe down the desk so that she can use it to write down a few things for her file on Erna.
Erna stands and watches. Then, as Annie seems to not pay her another thought while she sits down and opens up her manila folder, she slowly begins to feel a little more normal.
She's also quickly becoming more and more aware of the gross feeling between her legs. She makes a face, peels her panties the rest of the way down her legs, and tosses them into the hamper by the bed. Accidentally, she catches a look at herself in the small mirror on the wall, and she frowns.
A litany of self-hate issues come forth toward the reflected image. She thinks she's ugly. She's disgusting. She's depressing and weird and hateful and horrible and broken. She wants to cry.
She finally starts to see the benefit of conventional aftercare.
Her stocking-clad feet pad softly as she crosses the room back to Annie who continues to act like she's not even there until Erna kneels next to the desk chair and rests her head against her domme's thigh. While still writing with her right hand, Annie cards the fingers of her left hand into Erna's hair and starts to pat her head slowly.
At first, Erna's even more ashamed for liking the gentle treatment. She's weak, she thinks. Then, after a minute, strangely, she starts to accept it and accept herself. It starts to feel okay to be a normal fucking person who needs aftercare after an especially intense scene.
After a while, she asks quietly, "What kind of notes?"
Annie is quiet for a moment, making Erna wonder if she's going to answer, but then she finishes the sentence she was writing and says, "That you overestimate your capacity for pain, you may not take humiliation well without care; you're sexually inhibited, possibly self-loathing, et cetera, et cetera," almost as if it's boring and perfectly ordinary.
It stings a little, but Erna has nothing to say to that. If anything, she should just admire Annie's power of perception.
Suddenly, Erna stands up, realizing she has an opportunity for something she hasn't done in a while. She blurts out, "Do you mind if I take a shower?"
Annie doesn't even turn her head. She just waves her hand and says, "Go ahead."
Erna hasn't had a real shower in weeks. She sticks to baths instead, which are adequate, considering she's not the most active person, but they're not the same. She loves showers, but for the longest time she's been too paranoid and too edgy for them. The water is too loud and she can't do anything lately that would inhibit her ability to hear everything around her. Being alert and aware is the only thing that makes her feel safe when she's alone in her apartment.
"You won't leave until I'm out?"
"Of course not," Annie answers dismissively.
The water feels so fucking good Erna could come all over again. She gives herself a scalp massage with her fingers as she works the honey shampoo Deirdra sent her into a lather and she breathes in the steam in deep breaths. She spends at least fifteen minutes exfoliating every inch of skin and using almost every RIPE product she has that isn't a bath bomb, lip gloss, or lotion.
When she finally comes out wrapped in a big, fluffy white towel, Annie has a glass of water for her and asks knowingly, "Feel better?"
Erna hums.
"Same time next week then?"
Erna is about to nod, then she remembers. "You still can't take me on any other days?"
"Oh, that's right," Annie says, remembering the last time Erna begged her to change her schedule. "I'll check again, but it's not likely."
"I can do literally any time on any day. Just not Friday or Saturday anymore."
"We'll see," Annie nods as she takes up her briefcase and heads for the door.
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Levi rolls his eyes and mutters to himself, "Now she stops…" after the noises die out, meaning it would have been a lot more convenient for her to finish before he permanently fucked up a tattoo on Eren's thigh because of her fucking screaming. He grabs the remote for the speakers and turns the music off.
He starts to put his things away after covering Eren's thigh in a little bacitracin and a piece of soft cotton gauze. Eren just stands there like he's waiting to be told what to do, so Levi tells him to put his pants back on.
As Eren does, Levi tells him, "You're going to have to come back for a cover-up. The fact that I fucked up might be a blessing in disguise. Now I have to give you a better tattoo for free."
"Sorry," Eren says, even though he shouldn't be apologizing.
Levi tries to soften his tone for the kid. "Don't show that piece of shit to anyone and come back in a month with some better ideas. I'm good at cover-ups. I'll turn that into anything you want."
He turns away from his inks to see Eren just pulling his skinny jeans up over his ass. Then he smirks, because the kid's erection has calmed down a little but not enough for him to be able to comfortably zip them back up.
Fucking adorable hipster nerd.
"Hey, can I use your bathroom for a second?" he asks as if Levi doesn't know exactly what he's thinking.
"No, you can't jerk off in my bathroom," he deadpans.
Eren's mouth drops open and he stutters, "N-no! I wasn't… I swear!"
Levi points at the kitchen table. "You can sit in that chair until I'm finished cleaning up and then you're out of here, hard-on or not."
Eren lets out a long groan as he slumps down into the chair.
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After Erna finishes cleaning up her toys she feels weighed down and exhausted. Her internal clock tells her it's time for a latte and a cigarette, but her cunt is sore and her eyelids are heavy.
She breaks routine for the first time in months, pulls her comfy black robe tight around her body, and crawls under the covers of her bed. She falls asleep almost instantly and has vivid dreams about being shamed and punished for various intrinsic shortcomings that Freud would have loved to analyze, and would have troubled anyone else who wasn't an admitted and self-identified masochist.
Levi, on the other hand, shames and punishes himself. He could kick himself for fucking up something that he would have judged someone else so harshly over. Bad grammar on a tattoo is unacceptable and anyone who is dumb enough to get something like that wrong and permanently ink it onto a paying customer is a fucking idiot.
So, according to reasonable logic, he is a fucking idiot. He tells himself this over and over and has no evidence with which he can defend himself against the accusation. The only thing he can do is play the blame game and think that he wouldn't have fucked anything up if it weren't for Erna. He grinds his teeth and tries to tell himself that it's all her fault, except that he isn't that childish or irrational. She had been distressed about his being there this morning. She'd offered to pay his café tab if he stayed away. In her own irascible way, she was almost apologetic about the timing. He'd been a stubborn ass and decided to be inflexible and stay in his apartment whenever he goddamn felt like it. He'd jumped on Eren as an excuse to justify sticking around and making her as uncomfortable as her sexual proclivities made him.
So he was a fucking idiot, and an asshole.
And if he thought about it through a more honest lens, he was acting like a pathetic little boy with a crush on someone unattainable. Something he'd never done before. In fact, he's never "pursued" anyone. He's never bothered to even look that way at anyone who wasn't visibly dying for a taste of him, but he knew the signs from watching other pathetic men make asses of themselves, getting indignant when it started to become clear that the object of their affection would never return the interest, turning into annoying little pigs who pull at ponytails or throw insults.
He thinks that's what he's going to become if he doesn't kick himself in the ass, hard.
He decides to at least try to work. Drawing something terrible in frustration is better than drawing nothing, so he sits down at his drafting table and flips through his sketchbook. He rolls his eyes at himself for the pages and pages of sketches resembling Erna. He tilts his head back and hits his forehead with his palm, closing his eyes and sighing.
He needs to get over it. Nothing more useless than harboring a crush on your lesbian neighbor. But then he thinks, what if she isn't. She could be bi. That could be a thing. He never specifically asked. He just assumed based off of her very obvious and admitted hatred of all things male-identifying… which, now that he thinks about, it is a pretty reliable assumption.
He shakes his head at himself and looks down at a sketch he's already been in the process of inking on someone's shoulder over the course of three appointments. The one where she's little red riding hood. It's his favorite because the eyes are different. There's some vulnerability captured there. It makes him feel hopeless again, because even if, against all reason, she could return his feelings, the one thing she was extremely clear on was that she gets off on being hurt, and he could never find it in him to cause her any pain, not even if it would make her happy.
When he thinks about it… when he isn't fucking pissed at her. All he wants to do is hold her and tell her everything is always going to be okay because he'll make it okay. He wants to make her feel safe. He thinks it would kill him to see her in pain, even if she wanted it. So there's that.
He's fucked himself with that train of thought, because now he can't stop thinking about holding her. Can't stop thinking about how good it would be to feel her and caress every inch of skin under all those skirts and ribbons and lace, and to get her to make those noises that are still ringing through his head.
"Goddamnit," he mutters as his eyes close and his hands automatically go to his pants.
He's not jerking off to one more thought of her. He's decided on that. It feels creepy and violating in a new way now that he knows for sure that she would kill him for it, but he got himself all worked up and he needs to jerk off to something. He tries to pull up past encounters, but they all seem so boring now and so far away. Instead, he pulls up that image of Eren wincing and biting at his lip. That's good enough.
Eren is much more in line with what he would typically go for: enthusiastically willing. It's easy to imagine Eren on his knees, licking Levi's cock eagerly and gratefully like a goddamn puppy. Levi thinks about twisting his fingers in that messy chocolate brown hair, tilting the barista's head back and looking into those big, blue, doe eyes as he stretches his pretty little mouth.
After a few minutes, it becomes clear to him that for some reason, this isn't going to work. The fantasy is hot, it's not that. In his hazy mind, he wonders if something about his technique is off. It might be easier if he was lying down, but he doesn't want to stop, get up, and cross the room to the bed. He leans back in the chair instead… as far back as he can without falling over. But the movement distracts him from his fantasy and it's hard to get back to it.
His eyes snap open and despite himself, he uses his free hand to flip the pages of his sketchbook to a quick sketch he did a week or two ago. The one where he decided to be a self-indulgent twit and draw Erna and her perfect ass in that thong he'd spotted when he pulled her laundry out of the dryer.
It's a saving grace that he's close enough, he doesn't need to fantasize about anything specific. Just looking at that image brings him to the edge.
He ignores the creaking of the chair as he grips his cock harder.
If his eyes didn't close he might have noticed the upset in his balance. As it is, any falling feeling gets attributed to the impending intensity of the orgasm he's about to have.
That is, until he realizes that he is actually fucking falling backwards.
Levi rolls to his side on the floor and groans. From the pain, he's pretty sure the way he fell on the back of the stool bruised one of his kidneys. He kicks the broken chair away in frustration. Drafting stools were definitely not made to be leaned back in.
While Erna sleeps, Levi curses and cleans and swears he's never going to masturbate again.
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It's late afternoon when Erna finally starts to come out of her drowsy subspace, and the need for things like food and nicotine and caffeine start to nag at her.
She has to look out the window to try and judge the time, but it's becoming dusk, and she can't tell if it's before or past cafe hours. She'd hate to miss two lattes in one day. Having missed one is bad enough. Missing her late afternoon latte will give her a splitting headache, so she dresses herself with less care and attention to detail than usual. She barely gets to smooth out her hair. She rushes, afraid that she'll miss her chance.
She does get to the café in time. Then she's made to feel self-conscious by Bambi who blushes now when he sees her and gives her the most awkward service ever. She lashes out after she gets her latte safely in her hands, no latte art this time, and shouts at him, "What?!"
She gets a stuttered response that amounts to, "Nothing…"
She wants to tell him that no amount of blushing and stuttering he can throw at her is going to make her feel ashamed about getting fucked within his earshot that morning, but she doesn't waste the energy. He's not even worth it. He's barely human to her.
She's equal parts relieved and regretful when Levi isn't out on the stoop when she walks back. She's relieved that she won't have to talk to him yet, but worry gnaws at her. She's afraid that he might not have come down because he's angry at her, as he has a right to be.
She would be pissed if she were him. Any other time, she would welcome a screaming match, just for fun, but this time she genuinely feels bad about her behavior, and that takes all the fun out of a good fight.
So, with her tail tucked between her legs, she goes inside and climbs the many stairs it takes to get up to the roof. This way she can drink her latte, smoke her cigarette, and avoid finding out whether Levi is pissed at her or not until maybe tomorrow morning when there is a better chance he will have cooled off.
Ten minutes later, she nearly jumps out of her boots when she hears the fire door behind her slam. She spins around and her fingers turn to fists in mock anger.
She tells Levi, "You're not allowed to come up here to avoid me while I'm already up here avoiding you."
The low sun glints off of one of his snakebite piercings as he smirks at her. He lets the door slam shut behind him and reaches around the corner. He grabs a chair and holds it up, "You forgot to block the door."
She did forget. He's always the one to barricade the door and she's never been up here without him.
She wonders, as he walks over and stands next to her at the edge of the roof, if he ever comes up here without her, or if he came to the roof to avoid her same as she was avoiding him. Instead of asking, she runs with her worst assumption, which has always been a defense mechanism against disappointment, and she says, "Why were you avoiding me?"
And he echoes back, "Why were you avoiding me?"
Erna sighs deeply and ashes her cigarette over the edge of the rooftop. She decides to be honest.
"Because I thought you might be angry."
She steels herself for a tirade of vitriol about how inconsiderate she is or something, but all she gets is a grunt from Levi as he takes out a cigarette and lights it. She prods him, "Now you."
"Why was I avoiding you?" He repeats as if he forgot the question. "Oh. That?" He says sarcastically, then he raises his voice louder. "I was avoiding you because I just heard you getting fucked very loudly against my wall!"
She crosses her arms. "Well, it's my wall too."
Levi gets animated and gestures with his cigarette, "Why couldn't you get fucked against the other wall? The Krista & Ymir wall? Their place is renovated, they have thicker walls."
Instead of saying that she's sorry like she should, she says, "You would have heard it either way. That's why I asked you to fuck off for a while. There's nothing I could do that would be quiet enough that you wouldn't hear it."
Instead of saying that he's sorry, because he knows he should have listened to her, he asks her, "Are you always that loud or were you just doing that to be an asshole?"
"Yeah, Levi, because I was totally thinking about you while I was getting fucked. In fact, I always do. I come every night thinking of new ways to piss you off and make your life more difficult. The only way I can achieve climax is if I'm making you miserable." She almost blushes, because even though she is being heavily sarcastic, there's a small amount of truth in it. There have been times that she's thought about him, though it kills her with how wrong it feels. She doesn't fantasize about anything specific. That would make it so much worse. But usually after a good argument with him, especially if she's able to get him close to losing his temper, she goes upstairs and can get herself off to how good it felt to get that reaction out of him. There's something she likes about the way he looks when he's angry, which makes her feel fraught with conflict, because as a sapiosexual she isn't supposed to be attracted to looks.
"Fucking worked," he mumbles around his cigarette before he takes it between his fingers. "Made me fuck up the kid's tattoo."
"Oh what's the difference? You're fucking up perfectly good skin either way."
"That's like saying that a painter is fucking up the canvas they paint on."
She shrugs at that. "I like a blank canvas just fine."
He rolls his eyes and tells her, "You're a waste of good skin."
Erna's stomach does a flip because underneath the insult he said that she has good skin. And then they're both quiet for a few moments. She soaks up the compliment and Levi thinks about all the things he'd draw on her smooth, unblemished, paper-white skin.
"How did you fuck it up?" she finally asks.
From her peripheral vision she sees him wince, and as he cards his hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face, she feels a strange flutter in her heart like a rush of adrenaline or butterflies.
"I fucked up the grammar in a quote."
"Oh, well, that's unforgivable," she scolds. "Did you misplace a comma? Because if you did, we can't be friends anymore."
"Worse," he smirks. "I used the wrong 'to'… twice."
Erna gasps and covers her mouth as if he just admitted to killing several puppies, then she laughs when he shoots her a look that says, 'shut the fuck up'.
"I'm flattered to have been so distracting," Erna says demurely, tilting her chin up and letting smoke curl out over her lips.
"Aren't there gags in bondage?" Levi asks desperately, "Isn't that a thing?"
Erna leans over to stub her cigarette out against the cement and she says, "First of all, I don't do bondage. I'm a masochist who hates being tied up. So if you have to refer to it as anything it's more politically correct to use the umbrella acronym BDSM."
"Yeah, I'm extremely concerned about being politically correct about this," Levi deadpans.
She ignores him. "And second of all, yes, but I used a ball gag last week and you heard anyway, so I don't see the point."
"I'll go to the café next time," he mutters.
"Yeah? Like I told you to in the first place? I was trying to do you a favor, you know."
"I see that now," he concedes. Then he puts out his cigarette and lights another one because he's been craving it all day while he was staying indoors and distracting himself with cleaning and avoiding going out for a smoke break.
"You made Eren get a hard-on while I was tattooing him," he says, looking at the horizon as the sun starts to set.
Erna laughs through her nose at the image, then she says, "I'd be terribly disgusted if I thought that were true, but I've seen the way Bambi looks at you with those big puppy eyes. If he got hard, it wasn't because of me."
She laughs louder as the realization hits Levi and he covers his face with his palm.
"You should have hit that," she teases him.
"Ugh," Levi groans, "I could have."
"Would you have?" she asks. "If you didn't like quit sex because you're an addict or whatever?"
"Of course," he says without a thought, because that's the thing about being a sex addict.
And at that Erna's a little disappointed, but she hides it with her dry humor. "Well, if you ever change your mind, you have my permission to fuck him against the wall."
"Good," he says, narrowing his brows, following with deadpan sarcasm, "Thanks."
She bends down quickly, her skirt puffing up a little against the air, and she picks her coffin purse up off of the ground. Levi watches the motion closely as she unlatches it, opens the box, takes the lighter out of her pocket. He focuses on the way her lips move to take the cigarette.
He has this bad habit of watching her light up. It's a bad habit because of what he thinks about when her cheeks suck in as she takes that first drag. She never notices, though. She's always looking off in the distance, keeping him next to her instead of across, always avoiding eye contact when she speaks with someone. She makes it look like she's being aloof. She takes a symptom of a lack of confidence and makes it look like she's too good for everyone.
Maybe she's tricked him, because he would agree that she is too good for everyone. Definitely too good for him. He resolves that he is going to get over the uncharacteristic romantic feelings he feels towards her and be a better friend.
Erna would never guess at any of those thoughts. In her mind, Levi is the morally perfect opposite of everything she normally hates about men. It's not a conclusion she came to lightly. She's been picking him apart for months and can't find a trace of misogyny or entitlement in him. It's almost depressing to have found something that could make a chink in her carefully constructed armor of misandry. You think you have the world figured out, and then someone ruins everything you were so sure was true.
They're quiet for a while, just listening to traffic noise from the ground four stories down.
