One Time's A Charm by Lillie Bell
It had been a long two weeks. For Mamoru and for Usagi. Day after day, Usagi would mark out the countdown to her girlfriend's next visit. And every few days, Mamoru would open the back of a battery-powered object and stare at the indentations where a set of AAs used to be.
She had taken them all. The TV remote, the emergency flashlights, the thermostat–thankfully, the summer heat had just ebbed–were all empty. Even the alarm clock by his bed, which she knew was sacred, was unscathed. It was the one and only possession he'd carried from room to room at the orphanage. Until it, and he, rested in the two-bedroom apartment in Azabu. A place where he could finally settle into a life undisturbed by the constant rotation of white-walled rooms of his childhood.
Usagi had followed him. Insisting as his oldest friend that he'd spent more than enough years completely alone and that there was no way she was going to abandon him to rot away in an apartment by himself. And that's just how Usagi was. She'd barged into his life in grade school when he was crying under the bleachers. Her small frame had stomped under the lines of light and shadow to announce that if he didn't have any friends–he didn't, it was why he was crying, after all–that she would be his friend. And that was that.
So when Usagi announced she would take up his second bedroom and a small portion of the rent—
("Mamo-chan, I would need to work double shifts just to pay the electric bill in this place," she had whispered when she had seen where he was looking: the heart of Azabu with glass doors, a doorman, an access code to the top floors, and a stunning view of Tokyo Tower.
Admittedly, the last one was as much for her as it was for him. They had so many memories from school trips at its height, jostling for space in the elevator and hearing the latest gossip. Through Usagi-friend-osmosis, his inner circle grew astronomically until he had his own contingent who looked out for him the same way Usagi did. Outside of school, the pair would meet under the shade of a red arch and have lunch. She'd gush over the homemade bento he had assembled in his room–never the orphanage kitchen where the heads could claim he'd stolen from the shelves and then slap his hands or lock him in his room as punishment. Tokyo Tower had been just for them.)
– He had said that was fine. Pay the electricity, or pay what she could, and get the room. It was his money, and it was how he wanted to spend it. She didn't deny him that freedom, that choice, and he loved her more for it.
Only, after going to sharpen a pencil and finding the pencil sharpener devoid of charge, he really, really wished she'd convert to electric. And maybe find a not-so-long-distance relationship.
In the absence of the remote, he was working to connect his phone to the TV. He'd already missed the first ten minutes of his documentary. Each tick that didn't sound from his little alarm clock, each second and minute that passed without the comforting sound, each second and minute he ignored Usagi's closed door and why all the batteries were gone and why all of his electronics had to suffer for it, his frustration grew and grew. He could feel it in the line of sweat around his neck, the heat in his cheeks, the way his phone creaked as he clenched it. For all the love he had for Usagi, he was pissed.
Right as he slammed the phone into the couch, it springing like a bungee jumper from one cushion to another, Usagi barreled out of her room in her patented Usagi way. Blonde pigtails flying, face burning, chest heaving, and two legs that needed three or four extra steps to settle into a shoulder wide stance. Her eyes honed in on him, dazed and wild.
His name was a pant, and he swallowed and leaned his thighs into the back of the couch. Seeing her flushed and saying his name did things he didn't want to have to explain. Things he'd managed not to have to explain for years.
"Mamo-chan," she repeated, tucking away the loose strands around her face. She inhaled and exhaled slowly, steadying herself. The color on her cheeks faded, and she smiled at him sweetly. "You wouldn't happen to have any extra batteries?"
His hands clawed at the top of the couch, wrapping around the edges of the wood frame beneath the leather. He didn't have to look to know his knuckles were white. She must have seen him tense because her smile twitched in the right corner. A nervous tick he usually found endearing.
"There's not a single AA in this apartment. You've scalped them all." And because he was thirty minutes late to his hour-long documentary on cuttlefish and because his only companion from the orphanage was silent and couldn't speak for itself, he added: "Even Mr. Face!"
He closed his mouth before he could ask if she'd enjoyed it. Not sure if he meant stealing the batteries or the device they powered.
For her part, Usagi looked sheepish. She opened her mouth a few times and closed it. They'd never talked about her needs. Not her food needs or furniture needs or how to share the single bathroom needs–her sexual needs that required a mountain's worth of AAs and a drawer of appliances that Mamoru had accidentally discovered when combing her room for dirty glasses and plates she had squirreled away. He'd never opened that drawer again. Dishes be damned.
"It's been a really stressful week with finals and Jessa gone. Sometimes I can't make my head stop. So, I read a sexy manga or story and, you know, it really helps me relax."
Mamoru's anger shifted to embarrassment. Usagi had always been open and honest, and he loved that about her. But this conversation had his head thinking way too much about what happened behind her closed door with the whirring, vibrating, oversized objects from the drawer-we-don't-talk-about and he leaned his hips further into the couch as his body responded.
"And, to be honest, I think there's something wrong with me. Sometimes it takes a few… goes… to get the tension out. And it's electric, but it's old and it doesn't have a good charge and," she stepped up to the backside of the couch with him, her hand delicately pressed into the brown leather as her hip leaned into the frame, "sometimes I need to switch to battery power to finish the job."
He peeled his tongue from the roof of his mouth. Against his better reasoning, he asked: "And now?"
Usagi flailed in Usagi fashion, nearly hitting his arm. "No, no, no. It died in the middle of round two. I'm easily a three or four round gal." She huffed and wiggled her leg. He must have looked and his curiosity mistaken for judgment, because she crossed her arms.
"Don't tell me you've never rubbed one out, Mamo-chan. I've seen you with your residency exams. You're nearly manic. There's no way you'd keep it together without something to relieve the tension."
The fear on his face encouraged her. Because he had no secrets and she had suddenly found one.
She leaned forward. Her flowery shirt hung from her sweaty skin. The shadows fell between her breasts, outlining the petite curves.
"Tell me, Mamoru. What do you think about when you're rubbing it out?"
You.
He bit so hard his jaw hurt to keep the words buried inside of him.
She blinked. Her hand rubbed down her face.
"I'm sorry. That's not–I don't." She exhaled a long breath. Classic Usagi getting her thoughts together. She didn't meet his eyes. "That's personal and I shouldn't have asked. I'm sorry." She closed her eyes and shuddered. "I'm just so frustrated. I can't calm down."
"Calm down?"
She leveled him with a glare. "I didn't finish, you know." Her eyebrow raised pointedly and he nodded that, yes, he understood her connotation and, no, she didn't need to spell it out. Please don't spell it out or he might end up rutting into the couch and that'd be really, really hard to explain. He was already grasping for an excuse to sneak past and step into the bathroom without his obvious erection coming into view.
And, because he was more focused on a getaway than what his mouth was doing, he heard himself say: "Is there something I can do to help?"
They both paused. Eyes wide, staring and not seeing the other. Equally embarrassed and, unknown to Usagi, equally turned on. Hundreds of memories of being just friends suddenly culminated in this moment of friends with benefits? which Mamoru really wished had been an instant leap of friends to lovers.
Yes, sometimes Usagi read her sexy stories aloud to him and, yes, she had force-fed him tropes for years. He was oh-so-grateful she never asked why friends to lovers was his favorite.
She broke from her stupor. "Do you know what you're asking?"
Her voice had just enough lilt that she might be considering. And, fuck, he was gone. Hook, line, sinker. His fantasies catapulted to the forefront that he might be of service to her. Sexually.
He nodded, keeping level with the couch, curling his toes to keep his hips from thrusting into the soft leather.
"Would it help?" His voice cracked and her gaze moved from his face down his chest to the corner of the elastic band of his sweatpants. Her eyebrows raised as she put things together.
"With the topic, you know… it doesn't take much for a guy." He tried to laugh it off.
"We could… help each other," she said, unsure.
A gnash of teeth as he fought to control a buck. "You're the one with a problem. You don't need to worry about me."
"We don't have to," she made a circle and put her finger through it, "we could just… with hands and mouths."
He couldn't hide the shaky breath that filled the distance between them. Or the pulse that flared in his groin.
His rational mind, which had been pushed down down down in favor of lust and heat, bobbed to the surface for a moment. This act would change their relationship forever. As much as Mamoru wanted Usagi's petite, delectable body, as much as he had imagined writing his name across every inch of her, he wanted all of her. He wanted to fulfill her needs in every sense, not just sexually. Not just hunger.
"I don't have as much experience. I may not be as good," he said, giving her an out. Giving him an excuse to walk away and keep the carefully erected walls around his heart intact.
She fanned away his worries. Her skirt flipped against her long legs and Mamoru thought again about the pulsing bud beneath and how uncomfortable she might be.
"I don't have much experience with guys, so we can learn together. The secret is to check in and see if it's working or if it's time for a change."
Her gaze dropped to his hip. A lone finger snaked across the couch to gently hook into his waistband. The way her inky eyelashes split her sky-blue eyes as she looked up at him, all seduction and promise, had him trembling.
"I could start, if that's easier."
"No, no." Mamoru pushed away her hands and slammed onto his knees before her. His palms pressed into her thighs as he inhaled her sweet scent. His cock twinged painfully against his thigh as he wondered if she tasted like spun sugar. "You're the one who needs it more. You got interrupted, right? I can't say I'll be better than a machine, but I'll try."
His fingers nervously kneaded into her thighs. He watched the indentations swirl against her skin. Her fingers dipped into his hairline, pulling his bangs back from his forehead as she peered down at him.
"Mamo-chan," her moan spider-walked up his spine. "You never told me you were good at massage."
She rolled to push her bottom against the couch, and he moved with her. Her blue skirt laid against her open thighs as he stroked the muscles.
"Do you," he cleared his throat as he stared at the frayed edges of the fabric. Its scant inches were the last line of defense before they changed everything forever. "Do you like it slow or fast?"
"This," she scratched across his scalp, and tendrils of pleasure zipped through him. "This is a good start."
He swallowed, thumbing the edge of her skirt. "May I?"
"Yes, but–" He was faster than her warning and she giggled nervously as he choked on his surprise at finding not panties, but her wet, swollen sex beneath the veil.
"I was in the middle, you know."
Mamoru breathed through his nose, which only filled him with her sugary smell and had his mouth watering as he took in her pink center and lips. She opened her hips further; beads of slick spread across her labia. He couldn't turn away from the glistening vision of her sex.
He surrendered to his curiosity.
"Can I taste you?"
"Fuck, Mamo-chan. Please. Do whatever you want."
"But you said we should check in and see what's good and what's working."
"It's working, it's working," she half-laughed, half-panted. She pulled at his roots and he rose on his knees until he was face-to-face with her dripping center. His gasps were deep and ragged as he wrestled with himself. This act would change everything. Fuck, he wanted it.
She slung a leg over his shoulder, her core opening and tapping across his nose with the motion, and the temptation to taste her was too great.
He pressed his face into her folds. Her slick covered his nose and lips and cheeks as he inhaled her scent. She yanked him closer and her hips rolled to coat him in her juices.
His tongue unfurled and snaked through her labia. A long lick to collect and savor her sweet. She tasted as good as she smelled. He pressed his mouth around her, sucking her sex as he moaned his desire around her. Her hips bucked. The nails in his hair turned into claws that raked against the grain. Her answering moan filled the apartment.
She pulled him where she needed him. Up or down. In or out. Suck or bite. Flat or tip. Swirl or flick. Until he learned the succession of strokes and pressure she needed to build her up and up and up. Until her hips were chasing his tongue and his thumbs were massaging the outside of her entrance before he dipped and swirled and lathed at her core. Until her mewls were raw and aching and flowing from one to another, her hitching breath the only break in the song of her pleasure.
She tumbled over and he swallowed her down. He was leaning away from licking her clean when she slammed him back into her sex.
"Another, another," she panted as the world came back to her. And he remembered she had said she was at least a three or four round gal.
"Do you mind?" His fingers tapped against her thigh.
"Oh, oh. Yes. Please."
His fingers were already slick from her thighs, and he ran them through her folds to coat them well. He circled her entrance before sliding one, then two, fingers into her. She was as intoxicating around his hand as his tongue. He curled and kicked his fingers to find the spot that her sexy manga said would drive her crazy. They did not disappoint, though she didn't scream his name.
He wanted to taste her again and did, swirling and lapping at her clit while her walls convulsed around him. Her thighs flapped and shook like butterfly wings as he pumped. Fast and hard, he took her over the edge. She screamed, scratching at his head and shoulders as her orgasm plowed through her. He drank every part of her–her screams, her taste, her smell, her trembling walls–into his memories.
"Here," she said, after her jelly legs were on the floor and he had sat back on his heels. She had pulled a napkin from the end table and diligently cleaned his face. He had hoped to wipe the cream on his arm so that he could smell her for a few hours after. The hours it would likely take for them to realize this was all a mistake and either laugh it off and agree to never again, or awkwardly not talk about it till they fell into each other's bodies again, or let it destroy their friendship and the very cornerstone of his existence since that day under the bleachers.
He was wildly fluctuating across these possibilities when she backed him into the high-top counter that served as their dining area. He slid between the swivel barstools, still lost in a world of extreme bliss and utter devastation, when her thumbs hooked into the band of his sweatpants and she pulled them, underwear and all, down to his ankles.
His cock, half-hard with his recent panic, and wet from the pre-cum that had leaked from how good she had tasted and how wonderful her heat had felt and how satisfying her cries had sounded, bobbed between them. Her fingers splayed across the distance, the phantom of a fingertip pressed into his shaft, as she looked at his cock in wonder. His thoughts screeched to a halt, caught in the airbag of his desire, and he hardened immediately.
"You don't have to," he gasped. Wishing and dreaming that this moment would both end so he could shoulder all the guilt when they had to walk away and never stop so that he could at least have the memory of how she had pleasured him. Something to fill his fantasies for the months after they went their separate ways.
"It's only fair," she answered. Her hand had moved to graze along the bottom of his length. She seemed entranced by his velvet feel, how easily he moved beneath the gentle guidance of her fingertips. The catch in his voice when she brushed the vein along the side.
She met his eyes. "But I don't feel obligated. No one is forcing me to, and this isn't tit-for-tat." She bit her lip, the only sign that she might be nervous. "As long as you're comfortable."
He was close-lipped as his body screamed YES YES YES, and simply, clearly, nodded.
She knelt before him. He leaned into the bar at his back, grounding himself in the cool solidness of the granite. Proving to himself that this was indeed reality and not a dream.
Her thumb rubbed into the pre-cum at his tip, the pad spreading the drop from tip to base. Her nail clipped through his curls and stars burst under his skin.
"Is this okay?"
He grunted. Not certain of his answer only that he didn't want her to stop.
"I don't really know what I'm doing down here." Her words blew across the line of wetness and he had to remember to breathe.
She didn't say more, and he looked down. She peered up at him, her eyes big beneath her thick eyelashes, her nose inches from his jutting cock, her cheeks flushed. The twin buns and tails of her hair flowed down her back in a sea of gold that sparkled in the twilight of their apartment.
"Can you show me–can I watch you…"
She made a sound as his cock bounced in front of her, an involuntary ripple from holding back the urge to drive himself into her open mouth. Because her words, hot damn, her words had an effect he was still feeling from his head to his toes.
"Sure," he choked out. His hand slid from behind the chairs. He watched as she watched: his knuckles became prominent in the darkness, each hair standing on end, as his hand wrapped around his base. He let out a shaking exhale, suspending the moment and hoping to extend his time, before he stroked himself before her eyes.
He didn't dare do more than long, slow strokes. Not with her fixated gaze or her fingers floating in the air nearby half-miming his grip and motion or the short distance to her mouth that if he spewed now would definitely fill the half-open hole and cover her chest.
His body shivered as he forced himself to keep the leisurely pace. He swallowed down the growing pleasure, hedging as best he could for the inevitable moment when she either walked away or grabbed him. It was the best way he could last for her, Miss three-to-four-rounds. Miss first-time-with-a-guy. Her girlfriends probably went multiple rounds, too. Guys could only dream of that. He really did not want to disappoint her with his one-time's-a-charm release.
"May I?"
His hand lifted away. The callous, thick fingers were replaced by soft, thin ones. Sensations, like lightning, zigzagged through his body as she tested various angles and strokes. Her touch was electrifying, every hair standing on end, as she settled into a long downstroke and fast upstroke rhythm that had him thrusting into her hand and moaning for more.
On one upstroke, as his panting grew ragged and his eyes slitted, her mouth followed her hand. Her warm, wet mouth and the tight grip of her lips covered his tip and shaft as her fist slammed into his base. He cried out, his back arching as his nerve endings flared. His entire being was focused on the soft lining of her cheeks, the roll of her tongue, as they wrapped around his length and she sucked.
She slid him out and back in, her mouth chasing her hand, gliding on the spit left behind. More and more, his length filled her mouth as she worked him with each pump. His body was alight, buzzing in a storm of lust and desire and fulfillment. He forced his eyes open to commit every second to memory for the lonely nights to come.
She pulled him in deep and he was so, so close. Too close to turn back and if this was the only time he'd ever have her, then he might as well take what he could. His hand looped into her hair, grabbing a bun and loose golden threads, and yanked her onto him. She made a sound but no other sign that it was too much. So, again, he thrust into her hot mouth and, again, she swallowed him down. He was drowning in the heaven of her mouth, filling her over and over in a frenzy as he chased his edge. She reached between them as he moved. The knuckles of her fingers tapped his scrotum as her fingers pressed into his taint.
With a roar, he came into her mouth. Again and again he spurted, his circuits on overload as she tried to gulp every wave of him down. She didn't quite succeed, coughing to the side as he spilled onto her collarbone and down her chest.
As the black flecks dispersed from his vision and his nerves relaxed back to normal, as he breathed heaps of oxygen into his lungs, and his toes stretched from their curled state, he shakily began building back his mental walls. The barrier that had been unable to withstand the wrecking ball of a hot and bothered Usagi who had run out the batteries of her vibrator and a head-over-heels Mamoru who would give her anything–anything–she asked for. Even his body and heart and soul.
He layered the bricks with fresh mortar, slick and translucent, between the red clay squares. Cracks were already visible because there was no turning back from this moment. There was no way he could ignore the curve of her lips when he'd felt them so personally or the taste of her skin or the sweetness of her cream. The scent of her that lingered in the apartment would drive him insane if this encounter was his only intimate moment with her. And so, brick by brick, he set about building a cage around his precious heart as she gently tucked him into his boxers and settled his pants on his hips.
Because undoubtedly she would see this as a mistake. A beautiful, glorious, amazing awakening would become a terrible, relationship-destroying, Mamoru-breaking mistake.
She raised her eyes to his. She smiled bashfully.
He slathered a diagonal of mortar for the inevitable slam, and handed her a towel to clean her shoulder.
"Well, I feel much better." She laughed, dabbing up the semen dripping down her chest. "How about you?"
He nodded, dumbly. Too fragile to open his mouth lest all his emotions make one last ditch effort to save him by blurting out his love for her.
"I kind of liked it. Maybe… we could do it again sometime?"
His breath blew at her bangs. It took a few beats for his words to reach his lips. "Yeah, yeah." He couldn't stop the small smile, or the budding seed of hope, that tugged at the edge of his mouth. "Let's do it again sometime..."
His lips clamped down before Usako spilled out.
"Nice, nice," she said to herself. Calculating something in her mind before she nodded and stepped away. Whatever it was, she had either decided or would not worry about it now.
"Dibs on the shower!" She sprinted off to the single bathroom and shut the door.
Mamoru stared at the door as the showerhead came on. He laid the last splat of mortar and settled the last brick around his aching heart before putting the water on for tea.