In response again to SinkingWaterLilly's review - You have no idea how f*cking happy I would be if you did fanart for my fanfictions, that's the best thing ever omggg! I'm so excited! :D Where would you be posting it? I'll follow you on deviantart if you have one.

Thank you, SWL and everyone else for all your support, it buoys me up and drives me to write better fanfiction :)

Giroro insists that I let him pay for our room at the hotel. I don't try hard to stop him because it isn't that much, and it allows Giroro to retain what little self-respect he has for himself anymore.

He accepts the room key from the woman at the desk and pockets it, then leads us down the hallway to the door marked 19.

Giroro unlocks the door and holds it open for me. As I step into the room, I get a strange feeling that it's like we're a married couple on their honeymoon. I smile and look around at Giroro. He has a slight crease of worry between his eyebrows, but with Giroro I suppose that that's to be expected.

I feel suddenly affectionate, so I walk over to him and wrap my arms around his waist. "What do you want to do, corporal?" I ask, giving him a squeeze.

He pulls away from my grasp and awkwardly clears his throat. "Um…," he says, "Do you want to get something to eat?"

"Yeah, that sounds good," I say. "Give me a chance to get changed first, though."

"Okay."

Fleetingly, I consider just getting changed in front of him, because I don't care if he sees me and I think that it could help set the tone for the evening, but I almost immediately decide against it. Giroro doesn't seem like he's in the mood to be intimate right now, so I'll (… Like a slow burn, leading us on and on and on…) stretch this out a little. I take my bag into the bathroom to get changed.

I dress in an olive green button-up shirt and black pants, I brush my teeth and comb my hair back and clean my glasses before looking at myself in the mirror that hangs on the back of the door. I look nice, I think.

We go to a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant that I've been to what feels like a billion times over the course of my life, but that Giroro says he's never gone to. I make Giroro share a curry with me because for some reason there's something so subtly arousing about seeing Giroro eat curry (and it's the most delicious thing in the world besides).

It occurs to me that this is our first date and I think to myself about how unorthodox our relationship is: First we lived together, then we had sex, then I carefully courted him, and then we had our first date. I guess that our relationship is unconventional all-around, though, so it doesn't matter.

There's a few times throughout the date that I consider telling him 'I love you', but I never end up actually doing it. That's fine, maybe I'll say it a little later this evening…

We spend a nice night just enjoying each other's company and talking about normal things and being like a regular couple for once, but we have to leave when the employees kick us out at 10:30 so that they can lock up.

It's cold outside, but the walk back to the hotel isn't that bad since I have a cute boyfriend with warm hands.

"We have to stop by the station tomorrow morning," Giroro informs me once we're back in our hotel room. "I need to tell my director that I'm quitting."

"That's fine. What time do we have to be there?"

"He usually gets there at eight," he replies. "Do you want to shower tonight, Kululu?"

"No, I'll do it in the morning," I say. "You can if you want to, though."

"I think I will."

"I'll be here when you come out, lover," I say in a sing-song voice. His face tinges pink and he doesn't reply. He closes the bathroom door behind himself and a few minutes later, I hear the shower come on.

I lie on the bed and skim through the bible that's in the nightstand drawer until Giroro comes out, his arms blotchy from the hot water and his hair standing up in wet spikes.

"Do you have your laptop with you?" he asks.

"Yes."

"Would you look up the exact date of the Doinaka Train Expo? I know it's sometime next week, but I'm not sure which days."

"Nah," I reply. "You can, though." I get my laptop from my bag and enter my user password before handing it to him.

He sits on the edge of the bed and crosses his knees as he starts typing.

I put the bible aside and swing my legs over the side of the bed to sit next to him. After a few minutes of watching Giroro look up dates, I scoot back and come up on my knees behind him. I put my hands on his shoulders and gently massage them. I feel his muscles first tense up and then relax beneath my fingers. He evidently finishes gathering information because he closes the laptop.

"I think we should go to bed, Kululu," he says quietly.

"Mm…" I put my arms around his neck and lean in to kiss him. He pulls away, yields a little and kisses me unresistingly for a moment, and then stands up.

"Kululu…" I press our lips together again. My glasses are bumping into his face, so I break the kiss to remove them.

"We really should be getting to sleep, Kululu, I-"

"You should take your pants off," I say, leaning in again.

He pushes me away, and a slight look of fear crosses his face. "I'm not going to… We're not…"

"What are you talking about?" I ask, feeling a little worried myself.

"You're trying to-to…"

"Corporal…?"

"I'm not having sex with you," he says shortly.

Dull shock registers in my mind. "But we already-"

"Kululu, I was drunk," he says. "That's not something I would have done if I were sober."

I open my mouth to say something a couple of times, but I ultimately remain silent. It's strange to think that I was so happy and confident just a few minutes ago.

My emotionally battered mind registers the feeling of betrayal for what is not even the first time in the past forty-eight hours and I look down at the carpet.
He doesn't want to touch me. Giroro doesn't want to touch me and he never would have before had it not been for alcohol.

"I'm gonna take a shower," I mumble, even though I hadn't been planning on taking one tonight and I walk past Giroro into the bathroom that's still steaming from when he was in there.

I stand in the shower with the water running over the top of my head for a long time, but I never actually get around to washing my hair or anything.

Giroro is asleep with the light off by the time I've come out of the bathroom, his chest rising and falling peacefully and his face relaxed.

I climb into bed next to him in just my underwear and listen to his breathing until I'm finally able to doze off.

;_;

r.i.p. Kululu's dick