I'm back for Smutember Week 2 celebrating smut fanfiction and sex-positivity with a small multichapter piece this time! The prompt I used for this one, quite obviously, is "In Your Dreams!"
On my tumblr you can find a list for last week's contributions if you want to see them all in one place, if you want more smutember goodness ;) And again, if you liked any of the fics, please leave them some cheering on (so they'll be motivated to write even more for us ;) ;) )
Anyway, this fic was actually written because of an ask game on tumblr – a couple months ago or so I played this game where people were to send me a fake fic title and I wrote a short synopsis of a fic idea I would write for it. My wonderful beta, Uglygreenjacket, loved the idea so much she wanted me to write it, so here we are. The fake title (that I didn't end up using) was 'They say dreamers never die'. Some of you might remember this, but for all others, I'll tel you what the synopsis was after Part II, as not to spoil anything!
Anyway, on we go!
Lucid
Written For Smutember 2019
Every night, Mamoru tried to hold her in a way that she would never leave. He'd crawl between her legs as someone who tried to make her stay, hold her face between his hands when he kissed her like someone afraid she'd disappear if he didn't give his all.
She always disappeared.
But it didn't keep him away.
And so, he found himself climbing the tree outside her bedroom window like an old, familiar friend, knowing which branch would hold him and which had been cracked a little too harshly by his weight before. He hopped onto her small balcony like someone who knew he could survive any fall and slipped the sliding door open in that silent way like someone who was allowed in at all times but never to be detected.
Her room was littered with moving boxes, but her bed was still the same, and she lay on it on her stomach, with her cheek against a manga, eyes blinking right at him and the window in a slow half-lidded smile that he met with a slow smirk of his own, neither of them saying a word.
He climbed onto her bed and onto her thighs and smoothed his body across her back, pinning her as if to capture her.
She sighed and scrunched up her nose in that adorable little wrinkle and moved her head in that way that made room for him to drag his nose along her throat and inhale deeply with a sigh so devout that it would have been embarrassing would it not have been her. It made her hum in that way that sounded like a smile and she curled her fingers between his, pinned to her mattress and enveloped by his form.
Then, she simply stretched a little, dropped her manga to the floor, and moved her free hand up and behind to slip and tangle in his hair.
"I missed you," he breathed against the junction of her neck and the baby hairs that escaped her golden hair buns, then dipped his tongue against her skin and ran his hand up her side between them, slipping beneath her loose shirt to find the creamy skin beneath.
"Oh, I missed you, too," she breathed back into the sheets, voice husky and muffled, and she hummed again and arched her back and pushed her butt against the hard-on that had been growing ever since he climbed her tree.
He shuddered, let himself be moved by her bum and pushed back just a little. He felt her answering sigh deep in his gut, causing him to twitch against her cheeks, causing her to sigh and arch again, it was a delicious loop of arousal and he hissed through his teeth when she stemmed her knees into the mattress and pushed against him so hard it lifted him just a little.
She was strong. He wasn't under any illusion that he could hold her here if she chose to throw him off of her, even in this vulnerable position, lying on her stomach, both of his thighs straddling her on either side.
She wriggled her shoulders, she always did when she wanted him to move, and he sat up, sitting on the back of her knees and moved two greedy hands along her short, short, short pajama bottoms, stroking his fingers back and forth along the seams.
He loved this pair, even if not as much as what lay beneath. She wore them often. Softest cotton fabric, pink and yellow print, so short it left the delicious little wrinkled line bare; the line where her legs met her plump, full, gorgeous butt, and his cock throbbed again in his too tight jeans when he dipped his thumbs into the waistband and dragged the fabric ever so very slowly down her creamy thighs, exposing her delicious, flushed and pink ass.
He pushed them down to just above her knees, where his own legs around her kept him from pulling them down further, and sighed in unison with her when he let go of the fabric to stroke his palms slowly but ever so firmly back up the path her pj bottoms had travelled, back up the back of her thighs, his fingers making a little detour stroking across that coveted line where legs became ass, and across her plump cheeks, palms grabby and greedy and kneading ever so slightly.
She never really wore panties under these anymore.
He bent forward all the way with a bitten back groan to greet his dearest friends, five tiniest little dotted birthmarks on her left butt cheek that, would he connect them, could almost form a little heart. He pressed a kiss to each, and then let his tongue do just that, connect the little dots a little too carefully, sighing in reverence.
She giggled. It was tinkling, full-body sound and it moved her little bum-heart against his lips in tiny shudders and he smiled against the soft, soft skin.
"Hi to you, too, Mamo-chan." He could hear the smile and the tease in her voice as she stretched her arms out to cross in front of her head and lay her cheek on them. She wriggled her butt at him while she did that ever so cheekily, and he smiled again and bit into her butt with the barest bit of pressure.
He'd aimed for another giggle. He was surprised to hear a soft little moan instead.
"Mmmmh," she hummed. "Do that again?"
He smirked, he couldn't help it, but instead of biting, he dragged his teeth a little lower, his back arching uncomfortably, along that delicious seam where her ass met her creamy, glorious thighs.
She wriggled her butt at him impatiently, and this time he chuckled out loud.
"How was your week?" he whispered before he pressed his teeth ever so gently back into her full bum.
The back of her head lifted from their perch of their folded arms and she moved up to her elbows, arching her back and throwing him a pout over her shoulder that made him twitch against her shin again.
"Lonely," she mumbled at him, bottom lip out and eyes big and beautiful and irresistible.
He moved a tiny bit back up her body, spread one hand on her butt, stroking slowly, and bent down again to press a line of kisses against the soft skin on the opposite side of her hip. "You don't have to be lonely tonight," he hushed against her skin and she hummed again, nodding her head, while he kissed a line of tiny, slow pecks down to the prettiest of all dimples, the one above her butt on the small of her back.
She made a soft little noise of content and wriggled her butt against, and then she moved as if to turn around, and he practically jumped to sit on her thighs and press his hands into the small of her back, fingers lacing around her waist on either side, keeping her pinned down to the mattress. "No, please," he cried. "Stay like this."
It was her turn to chuckle, and the small sound was just that side of breathy, but she nodded and she arched back against him, throwing her head back just that little bit, and he bent forward to bury his nose in her hair for just a second with an appreciative little moan low in his own throat.
He dragged his palms further up, beneath her loose shirt and up her sides, catching the sides of her soft boobs just barely. He couldn't keep himself from moving his hips and biting his lip when the contact made her moan, and arch her back harder, craning her neck. One long pigtail moved across her shoulder to pool on the mattress in the process.
With her propped up on her elbows like that, arching so eagerly up towards him, it would be so easy to reach around and palm the creamy mounds, but he didn't. Instead, he moved his palms back down her sides, grabbing strong and firm and stroking his hands along her waist. He took his time, revelling in the feeling of his hands moving so slowly across her skin, of her tremors beneath his fingertips, the sensation of the goosebumps that formed on her skin in his wake. Revelled in the small noises he elicited from her, in her tiniest of wriggles, in the way she reacted to his more or less innocent touch with pleaing mewls and writhing movements.
He knew her skin better than his own. Knew every freckle and birthmark and dimple and plane. It sang to him and he could play it fluently, alternating between firm strokes and just the barest touch just with the tips of his fingers, brushes of his lips against her shoulders, his cheeks rubbing against her back, his kiss soft and slow at the nape of her neck.
He hadn't had her all week. He needed to re-acquaint himself with every freckle, every goosebump.
He needed to go slow. He needed to savor. He needed this to last forever.
To the soundtrack of her heavy breathing that steadily grew heavier, and the soft creaks of her bed underneath his knees, clamped around her hips, he moved his hands back out of her shirt to meet at the small of her back again, then dragged them, slow, slow, slow, so innocently now across the fabric and up the strong muscles of her back and shoulder blades, up her throat and down her neck on either side.
She bucked her ass and he rocked his erection back against her once to a soft little cry that fell from her lips, up on her thighs with a bite to his lip, resettling. He settled his painfully detained cock against the naked cheeks of her ass, rubbing the rough jean fabric against her soft skin just barely before settling his full weight back down on her, and reached around and stroked one firm hand up her throat to her chin as he lifted her back flush against his dress shirt, then moved his cheek against hers.
He turned his head to press a kiss to her temple. Her mouth had popped open so deliciously, gasping and mewling with every heavy intake of breath as his other hand moved around as well and stroked firmly and slowly into the neckline of her loose tank top and across her collarbone, just his pinky moving down the soft skin between her breasts but nothing else.
He held her chin firmly while he inhaled the smell of her hair. "How much did you miss me?" he whispered against the shell of her ear.
She bucked her hips against his erection, and he exhaled heavily and open-mouthed into her ear, he couldn't help it.
"You have no idea how much, Mamo-chan," she whimpered. Her hips turned restless, writhing wildly, he could barely hold her still against him. "I miss you so much, Mamo-chan. I always miss you so, so much."
One of her hands clawed his arm, the other flying into his hair, a desperateness to her voice that hurt his soul.
"Me too," he whispered, and suddenly there's a lump in his throat, and he reached under her shirt, and brushed his knuckles to stroke the soft side of her left breast.
She cried out immediately, arching against his hand, his knuckles and his thumb stroking so softly.
"Please, Mamo-chan." Her voice broke, and she bucked back against him.
He exhaled harshly against her neck, the arm across her collarbone crushing her tighter towards him in an effort to ground him, to calm down.
"I need to make this last, Usako," he managed to breathe down her neck, his voice ever so slightly apologetic.
"Please," she begged again, voice strained and breathy and her eyes squeezed shut and her hips moving, moving, moving.
His mouth popped open in a silent groan, and he relented. His thumb reached out just that little further, stroked across her nipple as she bucked and rubbed her ass against his clothed erection. He didn't grip her waist, didn't hold her still, and when she arched her back and pushed her breast against his hand and turned her face to settle back into the crook of his neck, lips catching at his throat, he grasped her nipple between two fingers, pinched, then rolled it between the tips the way she liked.
She cried out against his throat, upper lip catching at his throat and dragging. She cried out even harder when he moved his fingers away, stroked the underside of her breast instead, back and forth, back and forth, soft and slow.
"Please, Mamo-chan," she whimpered against his throat, wet and breathy. "Please."
He needed to make this last. But he was also so turned on he was shivering from the intensity, and he didn't have a good grip on his control whatsoever, it was slipping like sand through his fingers. It had been a week and they're insatiable.
He wanted to go slow. He wanted to. And yet he bent forward and slammed her back flush against the bed, her fingers curling into the sheets immediately with a relieved sigh and a buck of her ass, and his hand reached back down, back between his own legs, brushing against the painful bulge in his pants to slip between her thighs to probe between her legs.
She was so wet he slipped against her easily, so wet he wasn't entirely sure if he was slipping along her folds or if his finger slipped inside and they both cried out in muffled, broken, shivering sounds.
If he didn't have a grip on his control, her's was completely gone, entirely non-existent. Her hips bucked against him wildly, rocking against him in unrhythmic, searching thrusts.
"More," she cried out, clutching at his hair.
He lifted his hips with trembling thighs and quivering knees to get distance between his writhing hand between her legs and his own erection. But he was still imprisoned against her by his hair in her fist and his mouth against her shoulder blade and so it was an awkward position, but he couldn't not, he'd burst otherwise, and she growled in protest but bucked against his hand instead.
It was her lips, swollen and encasing his fingers snugly and tightly between her closed legs. He found her clit blindly, flicked it. It caused a sharp exhale and the back of her head to sharply hit his face and it hurt, but the smirk was back on his lips instantly and he did it again. This time she keened.
He did it again.
"More," she cried out, almost a shout, feral.
But he withdrew his hand completely and she growled, her hand pulling on his hair almost painfully, the other punching her mattress. Instead he cupped his own bulge, he needed to rein it in. He needed this to last forever. Please, it needed to last.
But apparently this was the last straw, and she twisted around as much as she could with him practically sitting on her ass and grabbed at his shirt to flip him over, eyes fierce and half-lidded and intense.
But gosh, no, if she was to be in control, he wouldn't last a minute, and so he held up his hands, clenched his knees tighter against her butt to brace himself against the onslaught and whimpered a tortured, surrendering, "ok, ok, ok!" into her mouth, hands already fumbling with his belt, as she'd reached back awkwardly, half turned, and pulled his face down by his collar and attacked it, and captured his lower-lips with her teeth.
She released his lip with a small pop and a relieved sigh and slumped back down to one elbow, half twisted around, wriggling her butt when his belt fell to the floor with a loud clunk.
She hummed at the sound of his zipper lowering and cursed through her teeth and collapsed back on her stomach fully, forehead hitting the mattress with a hiss between her propped up elbows, when it was finally his cock that he stroked against her instead.
He had to bite his lip so, so painfully. And it was so hard, so, so, very hard not to thrust in to the hilt, grab her hips and slam into her like a madman on crack, but he couldn't. If he did it would be all over and he needed her.
He wanted to keep it slow and yet here he was with his violently trembling hand on the base of his quivering, leaking cock, rubbing it up and down her wetness to her bucking hips with his jeans around his knees.
Her white-knuckled hands were in her sheets and so was her mouth, and her mewls were downright pitiful, so was the way her butt stretched up against him every time his cock rubbed anywhere close to where he could just push in, just once, just a little—
"Fuck," he hissed, because it felt too good. It felt too good and he was too weak, way, way too weak, and so he snarled through his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut and his hand stilled with his cock at her entrance.
He exhaled in a vibrating 'aaah' to the chorus of her almost obscene moan when he dipped the tip into her. Just a little. Just so much.
He didn't know where he found the self-control in himself to pull back out, and he was seriously concerned for Usagi's old and tattered moon-and-bunnies comforter with the way she clawed at it when she cried out in harsh, haggard, vocal protest, but he was quick to swirl his twitching cock against her clit in tight, hard circles and appease her just a little and she whimpered and turned to goo beneath him, but then he rubbed back up and this time he pushed in all the way.
It was him who cried out brokenly, this time.
She was so tight like this, her legs pinched closed, his own legs straddling her ass, his pulsating cock squeezing between the cheeks of her butt to push into her, rolling his hips against her ass again and again and it was so dangerous that this was probably the most comfortable way he'd ever had her, no strain whatsoever to ground him and keep the sensation away. And he could hear her, shit could he hear her, the muffled sound as she bit the sheets and keened and cried and moaned in lost abandon, begging him to fuck her harder.
He went too fast and too far out and he slipped out of her on accident and down her lips instead, but it helped him regain focus just barely. And she cried out and then cried out again when his hand was back at the base of his cock to tease her clit with the tip, rubbing across and smacking it against her, and he exhaled harshly through his mouth when he brought it back up and plunged himself back home.
He allowed himself a solid ten hard strokes to the soundtrack of her broken, desperate gasps before he pulled back out and she hissed and pounded her fist against the sheets.
He'd long learned what to do here. To keep teasing her until she almost cries, to keep teasing until, when he's burying himself back into her, she pushes back to fuck herself on him in desperation, not letting him go, only for him to then slip back out of her and tease again even when she's shouting words at him by this points, not wanting him to go. To only give in and thrust in hard and fast and strong and keep going when she's so feral she's on her way to turn around and pin him down and take control instead, if he's not giving it to her right now.
It's what he did now, too. It's what he always at least tried to do, when it was in his control. So they could stay.
He felt his cue when her walls started to flutter and contract deliciously, overwhelmingly against his cock, when her back grew stiff and her bum stopped moving and she started to hold her breath. He knew she was oh so very close. And so, when she was almost there, he pulled out all the way with a sudden yank, so she couldn't come.
She grunted almost violently, low in her throat, hitting her forehead against the sheets in frustration, raising her bum underneath him to follow his cock, but he pinned her down hard so she couldn't fight it.
Only when her harsh panting slowed did he rub himself back against her. And only when she keened again, swore and pleaded and fell apart, he slammed himself back in, hard and slow, pausing inside to feel her contractions around him, soaking her in, quivering and unraveling on his cock, before pulling out slowly only to plunge back in. Like this he'd bring her there again, so close but never over. He couldn't let her go over.
Repeat until he couldn't.
It was excruciating, hyper-sensitive, overstimulated torture for them both, and yet he kept going, always to that brink of release, to where the threshold almost overtook them, to the point where the rush of orgasm beckoned to just slam into her once more – and then deny them of it.
He tried to hold out with everything he had, biting on his tongue so hard, trying so hard not to come. He needed more. It would be all over if he came.
But his breathing came in harsh pants and the pull just became too much and so he squeezed his eyes shut and curled his hand around her waist and into the side of it in a way that must have hurt her a little, trying so hard to hold on, trying so hard not to come, but it was no good, however hard he tried, he couldn't hold it back.
He finally lost the battle and came with a howl and his cock in his fist, pumping beneath his sheets, and he sat up in his own bed, alone and with ripped open eyes and panting breaths as he spurted out in warm, mocking bursts against his fingers and his pj bottoms, the moon shining through his windows and taunting him.
He flinched, sighed deeply, exhaling harshly through his nose in a huff, glaring at his ceiling.
With a stubborn set to his jaw, he tried to go back to sleep, tried to ignore the sticky, uncomfortable mess between his legs and against his sheets, squeezing his eyes shut.
Of course, sleep didn't return. And even if it did, it was no guarantee he'd be back with her at all, of course.
When he blinked his eyes back open with an even heavier sigh, he had to blink back tears.
With a groan and a loud creak of his mattress, he sat up, wiped himself off on the already messed up sheets and chucked them to the floor next to the bed, then padded to his bathroom in the dark.
The light, when he switched it on, was too bright and too blinding and he grunted and squinted and rubbed his hand over his face. His reflection glared back at him, a little too pale, dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked dramatically, stupidly sad.
Ignoring the accusing look of his reflection, he stripped and chucked his pj bottoms into his hamper, then grabbed a starched and impeccably folded white washcloth from the shelf among identical starched and folded washcloths. He held it underneath the running faucet, rubbed his simple white bar of soap against it and dabbed it against his face, the back of his neck, before he finally lifted his sad and flaccid cock and cleaned until it hurt, glaring at it all the while.
It had been a week since he'd seen her last. A week that had felt like a year, that had left him worried and tense because he didn't know if he'd get to see her again before she moved. Or if this supposed 'move' was his insane brain building up a narrative to get rid of her once and for all. All week it had left him stupidly worried and tense and on edge and apparently also stupendously horny.
He regretted it now – that he couldn't hold out, that he couldn't be patient. Why couldn't he at least have taken his fucking clothes off, or her shirt. Why couldn't he have left all their clothes on, goddammit. He wanted to take it back, cuddle her against his chest and talk to her and whisper in her ear all night before he dared to touch her.
He missed her. He missed her so much.
Mamoru didn't dream of her every night. Most nights, yes. But sometimes, rarely, there was a week or two in between where he didn't. Those were the worst. Those were the times where he was terrified he'd gotten better and the hallucinations stopped and he would never see her again.
The first nights after these were always the most intense.
It wasn't even always at night. Sometimes, very, very rarely, when he'd take a nap during the day, his eyes would open in his dream in her bed in the middle of day, his nose almost touching hers and finding her smile as she curled against him and then onto his chest, and sometimes he'd wake up to her in his bed, or her in front of his door barging in, and open his arms wide when she fell into his arms and it felt like he was whole when he could hold her.
Then he'd wake up alone in his bed and feel lonelier than ever before.
They didn't always have sex. In fact, they didn't for years.
For years they used to just lie there and tell each other of their days. She was rubbish at school and sometimes he would help her with a concept she didn't understand, and he was rubbish with people and she would patiently explain why his classmates' reaction wasn't as obscure as he had previously thought.
She was cluttery and her room was a mess most of the time, there was sticky stuff in her bed and they bickered and sometimes he couldn't understand her at all. She was infuriating and she was chaos personified and her thought processes sometimes drove him up the wall. And she was the most perfect thing he was able to imagine.
He would flirt shamelessly with her until she blushed and hit him in the chest, and she would scoff and make fun of him when he once again didn't know what some certain anime or pop culture reference was, and she would throw him a frown and pop open a page and read to him from shoujo mangas (he used to argue one could not read from a manga like from a book and she'd settle in the crook of his arm and prove him wrong). Or they would curl up and sometimes just look into each other's eyes for hours and say nothing at all, and sometimes everything at once.
He whispered of his loneliness and a boy that lost his memories and never had a home outside of her arms, and he held her for nights and nights and months and months when her father got sick and then slowly recovered. She stroked his hair and the bridge of his nose when he was worried about university and he'd calmed her down when she stressed over graduation finals. He used to tease her endlessly about her study habits and she'd scrunch up her nose and hurl insults at him that curled in his heart and urged him to press his lips against hers and drown her in his kisses.
The first time he couldn't refrain from the feeling anymore and finally kissed his imaginary friend, he thought that was it, he had finally gone insane.
She was his best friend, his confidante, the presence in his dream he confessed every last intimate thought to. He knew he was in love with her. She knew he was in love with her. She knew he wanted to touch her until she cried because he'd confessed it to her over and over across the years. But he hadn't acted on it so far. They hadn't. Not a single kiss. It was his last shred of sanity.
He crossed it spectacularly.
The floodgates had opened and then night after night he got to know her every patch of skin and every nook of her body that made her howl and bite and snarl at him and if this was insanity he never wanted the real world again, he only wanted her moans.
It was one week. Seven nights, night after night, after he had first kissed her in his dreams and explored her further and deeper and more breathlessly, and then he was fucking her every fucking night.
That had been two years ago.
Sometimes they held out, didn't fuck each other's lights out until they hadn't talked at least for a little while. They knew it was over if either of them came. Sometimes they managed to not do it at all. Just talk like old times.
At the moment, she was in the process of moving out of her family home now that her father was finally better, moving in with a friend, and it was stressing her out. He'd only recently cleared his first set of state exams, afterwards he'd been allowed to take classes that finally felt like medicine proper, and it had all stressed him out, too, and she was his only ear.
Sometimes, they managed to stop before either of them came, curl up in each other's bodies, and talk the night through even when he was still inside of her. These were his favorites. When he got to hold her, his face pillowed on her soft breasts and her warm thighs around him, listening to the rumble of her chest as she talked.
Sometimes, the rarest of them all, even if he did come and then woke up snarling, he'd blink his eyes open and return to her when he fell asleep again right away, and they could try again. He wasn't usually that lucky.
He was insane. He knew he was. Schizophrenic, maybe. Some kind of rare, severe sleep disorder at the minimum. He should see a doctor. He needed to. He had an imaginary girlfriend he loved so hard he would die for her. Do anything for her if she asked. He slept a minimum of 10 hours per night and went to bed sometimes when the light was still out just so he could see her more, had done this for years. On days he missed her so much it hurt he just stayed in bed and tried his hardest for sleep to claim him.
He didn't go out to university mixers and he didn't try to befriend classmates very hard. He didn't date and he didn't tell the few friends he had what was going on in his crazy mind.
It terrified him to the bone when he stumbled upon a manga in a Book-Off he had never held in his hand and yet knew front to cover because she'd read it to him a dozen times. It was the first volume of her favorite. He knew it by heart. He'd bought it and read it and it was the same and he despaired for weeks where he could have known it from, where he'd read it and forgotten for his subconscious to use.
It lay on his nightstand. When it was one of the fewer occasions where, in his dreams, they were in his bed and not in hers, she'd grabbed at it in delight and mocked him with mischief in her eyes for buying it, too, then read to him from it.
She just shrugged and whispered 'magic', with a twinkle in her eyes and wriggling her fingers at his face when he confessed his fear about the topic, rambled his worry that he didn't know where he actually knew this manga from, how could he know it, when her endless and eye-rolling mantra of 'because I've been reading it to you, duh!' didn't seem to be fruitful at all to soothe his nerves.
She had that too, she confessed, later, her voice muffled by his collarbone as he moved slowly and languidly inside of her. She always used to remember the things he explained to her for tests, and they were always right.
He thought he'd had a heart attack that one day when he took a different path through a more residential area because he was trying to clear his head, and found himself standing petrified in front of a house he couldn't know.
And he didn't know it. He'd never seen it from that angle. His dreams never started outside of the fence.
But he knew that tree and he knew that balcony and the branches looked wonky where he used to dangle himself off of them in his dreams. His heart had beat so hard he thought he might choke, and he ran and ran and ran all the way home.
He'd never walked that particular path again, too afraid both that he would find that tree and that balcony again and also that it would not be there if he looked for it again, that it was just his hallucinations spilling over into his wakefulness.
He hadn't gotten a whole lot of sleep after he'd woken up last night, and went through his day feeling a little like a sleep-walker who'd run a marathon the previous day.
Also not an unfamiliar feeling, and while his mind regularly battled the fact that really, he shouldn't be enjoying any of this, it was a condition and he clearly wasn't well, he was usually caught in the dilemma instead that while he regretted not getting to spend his limited time with her talking, deep down he couldn't mind the undoubtably spectacularly intense sex his imagination tended to provide for him.
Even with the downright fear he'd developed of achieving orgasms, and the endless riled up state of eternal horny induced by a two-year-long streak of blue-balling himself via his imagination, he could never truly regret the ride.
Especially since he knew it was likely the only sex he'd ever get. His mind was so good at keeping him hooked, other women didn't even tend to register in his peripherie. Not that he hadn't tried.
(Yes, he was totally messed up. He was well aware.)
And so today was another one of these days where he left his bike at home because he didn't trust himself not to fall asleep on it, tried to hide behind his sunglasses, dragged himself from class to class hoping against hope that his notes would at least make SOME sense later on, because really, he hadn't paid so much attention to what he'd been writing down, and the bus back from Keio to central Juuban felt stifling and bombarding to the senses as he stood pressed between people in the late summer air.
He got off two stops early when it just became too much for him and decided to walk the rest of the way to clear his own head and maybe get a coffee. His lonely apartment didn't seem that inviting today anyway.
This was how he found himself trudging up the steps on the side of Crown arcade up to the second story Fruit Parlor. Maybe Motoki was on shift, or even Unazuki. He could use an hour hearing about Reika or college boys or other refreshingly normal human behaviour while he tried to cure his comatose state with caffeine.
He cracked his shoulders, the bones in his spine popping audibly as he trotted through the opening sliding doors with a sigh and his heavy book bag hanging sad and limp from his slumped shoulders, pulling at his merino cardigan in a way he would usually avoid to not damage the fabric.
And this was how he found himself at the counter, in the process of sitting down at one of the familiar old red stools, with heavy bags under his eyes and a headache behind his skull, faced with the impossible.
His heart felt like it stopped. He fell off the stool and caught himself barely back into a stand, nearly dropping his bag in shock.
It couldn't be.
Don't stare.
It isn't—
She—
She reacted to him too, looked at him wide-eyed. There she was, in an orange Crown apron, golden hair a little messy and clutching the till, looking him up and down slowly with apprehension in her eyes.
Because you're staring it's because you're staring, stop staring—
It's not her. It can't be her.
He barely managed to speak but somehow, he found his voice.
He swallowed. "A latte to go, please."
She looked at him almost unblinking.
Only when he cleared his throat and fumbled for his shades, clumsily slipping them up his nose, did she react with a small jump.
"S-sure," she said. "Coming, um… Coming right up."
He almost choked. Her voice –
It couldn't be.
This girl moved the same. She looked the same. She sounded the same. The nervous flick of her hair, the crunching of of her nose as she worked the coffee machine. It was her her her.
He tried to be normal. Tried to act as if nothing was the matter. Hid behind his shades and put on his poker face. Just a few more moments and he could run.
He nearly spilled his coffee crushing the paper cup when his hand brushed hers when she handed it over, felt like vomiting by the time he'd managed to collect his wits enough to put a high enough bill into the little plastic tray to pay.
He fled without his change and he fled without saying goodbye or thanks or anything.
Out he needed out.
It couldn't be.
The only solution his brain came up with nauseated him.
He must have seen her before. Maybe even at the Crown. He was there a lot, it made sense. He must have seen her there and used her face for the hallucination, and it made him feel like a monster.
A random girl, someone he'd maybe seen countless times and never really noticed, and his brain had taken her image and licked patterns on her buttcheeks in his imagination.
He must have seen her and then projected her very, very attractive face and person into his subconscious.
By the time he found his bearings – his heart still going a mile a minute and his whole body covered in cold sweat – he found himself miles in the wrong direction with no clue what happened to his coffee. It was gone, but he'd never taken a sip.
He'd found himself at home and staring holes into his ceiling for god knows how long but long enough that it was already dark outside, until he blindly reached for his phone and dialed Motoki's number.
When the line connected, he didn't wait for a greeting.
"The blonde girl that works at the Crown what's her name?" he rushed out in one breath.
He could practically hear Motoki's frown.
"Um, hi," Motoki said. And then, with confusion laced into his every word, "No blonde girl works at the Crown, Mamoru."
It felt like a punch to his stomach.
"She was there today! At the Fruit Parlor!" he pretty much shouted down his phone. "Long blonde hair, weird hairstyle, blue eyes, gorgeous," he rattled off in an accusing tone. "Who is she?"
"Mamoru. I promise you. The only girls that work at the Crown are Unazuki and Himiko. Himiko has short black hair and brown eyes."
Another slam right into his heart.
Mamoru clicked the call away before Motoki was done speaking.
Were his hallucinations getting that bad?
Mamoru didn't sleep that night. Not a minute of it. And when he zombie'd his way through his morning class, he skipped the rest of classes and walked all the way from Mita to Juuban to the Fruit Parlor.
Sure enough, when he stumbled through the sliding doors, there was a girl behind the counter with a black bob of hair and brown eyes that he vaguely recognized.
Heart pounding in his throat, he ordered a latte.
It was when he'd already paid and turned to go that he found his nerve and turned back to her.
"Um..." he started, his voice all off and hoarse. "Have I… Have I ordered from you before?"
The girl raised both eyebrows and looked at him strangely. "Sure you have. Lots of times," she said. "You're Motoki's friend, right?"
He clicked his mouth shut and frowned and tried again. "Um, I mean, do you remember me from, um… from yesterday?"
The strange look turned even stranger and she looked him up and down. "Um... I'm not sure?"
"But... you, uh," he started, swallowed, started again. "You were working here yesterday? Yesterday afternoon?"
She tilted her head not averting her eyes. "I was, yes...?"
He swallowed. Nodded, wide-eyed. "Right," he murmured. "Nevermind."
This latte, too, somehow disappeared.
Anyway I AM DYING TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK IS GOING ON HERE XD. See you tomorrow with Part II (of 3). Reviews are love, let me know what you thought!