Prompt
One night at a bar, Dojima picks up a woman who's as lonely and slightly drunk as he is - Eri. They commiserate over their children and how hopeless they feel as parents, then they go off together and have a one-night stand.
Dojima/Eri needy!sex
Cold Comfort
She wasn't really sure why she had decided to go out that evening.
It wasn't like she was stressed out. Far from it: She really hadn't had much to do lately. For all of the awkwardness between them, Yuuta was a good boy: Mostly polite, not too loud, obedient to her few requests, and pleasant enough company when she walked him to and from school and daycare. Hopefully he would like the gifts she bought for him.
Maybe she just wanted a little excitement? The shows on TV hadn't been too interesting lately, being dominated by the usual holiday programming. She had tried taking up a hobby after Haru left a month ago, but she didn't have much of a green thumb and her attempts at baking had literally fallen flat. Maybe she should have tried something a little easier than orchids or soufflés to start with.
She didn't have a plan when she walked out of her house into the crisp winter evening, but her feet instinctively took her to the same little izakaya where she and her husband used to go together when they were dating. There was a free stool at the end of the bar that looked inviting, next to a a rather ruggedly handsome man. It would be a good spot to do some people watching, which was a little like watching TV but less predictable.
The first of her vodka tonics that night was empty before she even finished looking over the menu. She decided on some chicken karaage; it seemed appropriate given the holiday. The chicken was salty and crispy and deliciously greasy, and the man next to her looked over enviously as he munched on his edamame and yakitori.
In the mirror behind the bar she could see the reflection a dozen pairs of young lovers in the restaurant. Just last year she and her husband-to-be might have been one of those couples. They weren't quite so young as the ones sitting there that night; she was a romantic who had waited for true love and Haru had been honest about his disastrous first marriage. Of course, Haru hadn't been completely honest with her, but she couldn't blame Yuuta for that. It wasn't his fault.
From the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of a happy woman in the mirror, and it took her a second to recognize herself. She didn't remember the last time she saw that reflection; apparently, the recipe for happiness was fried chicken and alcohol. Speaking of which...
"Excuse me, I'd like another vodka tonic, please."
"Of course, Miss." The bartender freshened her drink and then turned to the man next to her. "How about you, Dojima? Another round of the usual?" he asked needlessly; he was already pouring Canadian Club over the half-melted ice in the otherwise empty glass.
"Yeah, thanks."
"You going home to that daughter of yours?" asked the bartender.
"Later, I've got to head back to the station first to finish up some paperwork," said Dojima. "All the younger guys took their girlfriends out on dates tonight, so I got stuck with it."
"Why don't you just get Adachi to do it? Or are you afraid he's gonna mess it up?"
"Nah, he could handle it, but even he's got a date tonight. Or at least he says he does."
"Is this Adachi-san not much of a ladies' man?" she blurted out; the other mothers at Yuuta's school gave her nothing but cold shoulders, so it had been ages since she had anyone to gossip with. "Oh, um, excuse me, I didn't mean to interrupt..." She blushed and took a long sip of her drink.
The man turned to her with a half-smile and the bartender went to help some of his other customers.
"Haha, that's alright. Adachi's my new partner. I try to stay out of his personal business." Dojima rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Though I've never seen him take any calls or have any photos of a girlfriend lying around..."
"Partner?"
"I'm sorry. Let me introduce myself. Ryotaro Dojima, I'm a detective with the Inaba police."
"V-Very nice to meet you, Dojima-san. Um, I'm Eri Minami."
"A pleasure, Minami-san."
"How about you, Dojima-san?" she asked boldly.
"What about me?"
"A-Are you a ladies' man?"
He roared with laughter. "Maybe I was once upon a time, but I'm too old for that sort of thing now. And I don't think Nanako would appreciate it."
"Your wife? Or girlfriend?"
"My daughter." Dojima pulled out his wallet and showed her a school photo of a cute little girl in a pink dress. He smiled warmly with paternal pride. "She turned six last October."
Thoughts of Yuuta flashed guiltily in her mind. She didn't remember exactly when his birthday was. Sometime in the summer. Maybe Haru would be back by then and the three of them could have a birthday party. That would give her an excuse to take a photo that she could carry around with her.
"She's adorable, Dojima-san. I have a son around her age, maybe we can set up a playdate?" Anything to keep Yuuta occupied.
"Uh, sure," Dojima said uncommittedly as he put the photo away. "Is he at home with your husband tonight?"
"No, a nice high school girl is babysitting Yuuta for me tonight."
Dojima played with one of his bare yakitori skewers. "Do you have her number?" He quickly explained himself before she could misunderstand him. "Nanako's usually alone at home, I could use a good babysitter."
She fished out a pen and a card from her purse and wrote down the phone number from memory, then passed it to Dojima. "Megumi-chan's not cheap, but she's very good with children." Not to mention that Megumi had had plenty of experience with Yuuta during the months that Haru was a single father.
"Thank you, Minami-san. Haha, you must use her a lot since you know her number so well. I bet your husband's a workaholic like me."
"I'm a single mother," she said, and finished her drink.
"Divorce?" asked Dojima gently.
"Yes," she said a little too quickly. The thought had crossed her mind before.
"I'm a single father."
"Divorce?"
"Dead."
"Oh." An awkward pause hung between them. "I'm sorry," she said finally.
He shook off her sympathy with the ease of long practice. "My wife Chisato died in an accident." He sighed. "Now Nanako's all I have left." He finished his whisky, signaled for another one, and stared down at the worn wooden bar. "And now I'm all Nanako has left, for all the good that'll do."
"A lot of good!" she said a little too loudly, catching the attention of the bartender who had refilled her drink as well. "You're blood!"
"Haha, I wish it were that easy, Minami-san. It's not like you and Yuuta-kun. Trust me, I know it's hard being a single parent, but it's different with mothers."
"And why is that?"
"Kids may like their dads, but they need their moms."
She laughed wryly. "Well, Dojima-san, you don't know Yuuta. He was happy to have me out of the house tonight."
"Maybe we should swap kids," he deadpanned.
She giggled. If only.
"Well, come this spring I'll have the chance to be twice as bad of a parent... my nephew's gonna be staying with me for a year, poor kid," said Dojima.
"How old is he? Young?" She knew from experience that young boys were hard to live with. Distant and insolent. Well, that was to be expected. Yuuta only had her, a perfect stranger, to look after him.
"He's a high schooler. My big sis tells me he can look after himself. Heh, he'd have to I guess."
"Why's that? Is he a delinquent?"
"Nah, I don't think he's a punk. His dad - my brother-in-law - is some sort of big-shot architect and my sis handles the business side of things for him. They're always at work, so Souji's had to take care of himself. He's pretty quiet, I think."
"You think?"
"The last time I saw him was when I was changing his diapers."
She sighed enviously. "It must be nice to be so involved in your work, I wish I had something like that."
Anything would be better than that big empty house and Yuuta's big empty eyes.
"Take it from me, it's not all it's cracked up to be."
"My husband- Er, my ex-husband loves his job. He's in China right now."
"What's he do?"
"Haru's some sort of mining engineer. His family's always been in mining. Coal here in Inaba, some sort of rare metal for magnets in China."
"You think he loves his job more than you and your son?"
She must have looked as shocked as she felt, because Dojima coughed and immediately apologized. "I'm sorry, Minami-san, I didn't mean to turn this into an interrogation."
"Detective's instinct?" She paused and thought and sipped her drink. "Well no, I don't think- I'm sure he doesn't love the job more than his- our son, but as for me..." She trailed off into nervous laughter and drank again.
"His loss. A beautiful woman like you is hard to find, but easy to-" He winced.
"Easy to...?" She knew the answer before he said anything.
"Lose. Easy to lose." He played with his wedding band as if by reflex.
A wild, crazy, stupid idea bubbled up from inside her somewhere, some dark and desperate pit.
The air all around was hot and she didn't know if it was because of the vodka or the grill or the mob of bodies squeezed into the little restaurant. She thought she knew then how it felt to be like one of those characters in TV dramas. Those stories always ended in tragedy, but at least it was something to do, something exciting and new and somehow beautiful in its ugliness.
She trembled. "Y-You found me tonight, Dojima-san."
He looked like she dumped ice water down the back of his shirt. "Um, what are you saying, Minami-san?"
She put her right hand over his left, stopping him from playing with his ring; she slipped her other hand to lay on his thigh. The bartender conspicuously turned around to rearrange some bottles.
"We're both alone, right? Let's be alone together tonight."
After a moment's hesitation, Dojima signaled for the check and looked cross when she tried to fish out her wallet. "It's on me, Minami-san."
They walked in silence to the train station just a few streets down from the izakaya.
There was only one love hotel in Inaba and it was near the station. It had been built sometime in the 1960s, so it was rather plain, not garish like the love hotels in the cities. The typical accommodation was just a small, simple room with a small bathroom, clean sheets, a box of tissues, and a small TV. If it weren't for a drawer full of condoms, little single-serving bottles of lubricant, and a menu for room service that included sex toys and fetish pornography along with the usual omuraisu and katsudon, it was just like any other cheap little motel.
The hotel was busy that night, or what passed for busyness in quiet little Inaba. Nervous young couples studiously ignored each other as they passed in front the place, some coming out, more going in.
She was familiar with the place, since it was where she and her husband had met up when he was still just her boyfriend and then just her fiancé. She would occasionally catch a train from the city and meet him here in his hometown. She had always wondered why Haru didn't bring her to his home when they made love, but when she was introduced to Yuuta just weeks before the wedding, she understood only too well.
Dojima was charmingly nervous as she pulled him by the hand into the empty lobby of the hotel. She smiled and shook her head when he went to pull out his wallet.
"Since you paid for dinner, this is on me," she said, and handed over a small wad of cash to the little old lady behind the frosted glass window of the reception counter.
Dojima was still nervous when she led him to their room, dimmed the lights, and invited him to sit next to her on the bed. And if she were honest with herself, she was terrified, too, but her body seemed to move purely by instinct, and it was just too exhilarating to stop herself.
His stubble was scratchy against her skin when they kissed, haltingly at first, but with increasing conviction. Dojima was very different from Haru, who was baby-faced and meticulously neat. The scent of stale smoke and cheap cologne filled her nose while he gently kissed down her neck and clumsily took off her jacket; she had an easier time tearing his shirt off and pulling his pants down. After she impatiently wriggled out of her dress and the two of them were stark naked, she laid back against the bed and pulled him down on top of her.
The weight of his body against hers felt right. The warmth of his hands against her breasts felt right. The taste of whisky on his lips felt right. The hardness of his manhood inside her felt right. But his eyes - gentle and loving and completely focussed on hers - made her feel hopelessly, horribly, unbearably wrong.
She clamped her arms around his neck to stop his passionate embraces and whispered in his ear. "I'm sorry, you're wonderful, but I... I like it best on all fours."
A twinge of embarrassment for her lewd request made her heart beat even faster, but Dojima simply kissed her deeply and wordlessly helped her roll over onto her hands and knees. They weren't so silent when he plunged himself hard into her, giving her the sort of companionship that she ached for.
In the back of her mind, she worried about the condom breaking, but a dark part of her thought it would be poetic justice if her husband returned and found her pregnant with a child that wasn't his. Her mind then wandered to Yuuta, of what Megumi-chan had made for his dinner, of what TV shows he was watching, of what he would think if he ever learned that his step-mother was having a one night stand with a total stranger.
She buried her face deep into the pillow as Dojima thrust into her faster and faster, and she tried to savor the welcome hot fullness inside, but it was no use, no use, no use.
And suddenly, cruelly, it was all over. Dojima grunted softly and held himself tight against her. She arched her back and moaned for him because it was the polite thing to do.
Afterwards, they laid together under the sheets for a while. He stroked her hair; she laced her fingers with his. She, with a live husband, had left her wedding ring at home; he, with a dead wife, had worn his.
Maybe she should have brought Dojima to the Amagi Inn instead of to the love hotel. Maybe it would have been more romantic. Maybe the mood would have been better and she would have had a real orgasm. Maybe she would suggest it to him next time, if there were a next time.
"Let me walk you home," said Dojima after he rose from bed and dressed.
She stayed in bed and declined. "I'm sorry, but it would be better if I weren't seen with you by the babysitter."
"Why not?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
"She might tell my husband when he comes home from China."
"I... I see." He paused, searching for the right words, but he eventually gave up. "Goodbye, Minami-san." He walked to the door and opened it to leave. "And Merry Christmas," he said without turning around.
"Merry Christmas, Dojima-san," she said evenly and softly to his back and the closing door.
The bed was soft and warm, and she still had an hour left for the room. She considered ordering a vibrator from room service, but in the end it was just too embarrassing. She played with herself instead, forcing her fingers hard up against herself inside again and again until she finally found release.
Even though she came, it felt like it did before with Dojima.
It felt just like how she knew she would feel when she finally dragged herself back home, paid Megumi, tried to tuck Yuuta into bed, and then watched the late-night shows on TV by herself.
Unsatisfying.
Fin