Chapter 6

Mara pulled out pink fabric.

A lot of pink fabric.

Soft pink. Warm pink. Blush pink. The kind of pink that looked like strawberry cream and flower petals and everything my face immediately wanted to become.

“No,” I said.

Mara held it up.

The dress unfolded in the air.

It was not huge or dramatic. Not a ball gown. Not one of those cathedral length things nobles wore when they wanted staircases to respect them. It was short enough to be practical, soft enough to move in, with a fitted bodice, puffed sleeves, and a skirt that flared gently from the waist. There were tiny embroidered white flowers along the hem and little ribbon ties at the sleeves. It was very cute.

Very, very cute.

My betrayal must have shown on my face because Mara smiled.

“There it is.”

“There what is?”

“The want.”

“I do not want.”

“Yuzu.”

“I have concerns.”

“That is not the same as not wanting.”

I took the dress from her carefully, because it felt wrong to let something that pretty hang unsupported in the air too long. “I don’t know if I can wear this.”

Mara’s eyes searched my face. “Because it feels wrong?”

“No.”

“Because it feels too feminine?”

I blinked at her. “What?”

She hesitated. “Some boys feel uncomfortable in dresses. Like it threatens their Masculinity.”

I stared.

Then looked down at the dress.

Then back at Mara.

“Oh,” I said. “People worry about that?”

Mara stared at me this time.

“I mean, I guess that makes sense,” I added quickly. “People worry about lots of things. I worry about train doors and patches and whether Charlie gets lonely when I’m at work. But I’m still a boy if I wear a dress.”

Mara’s expression softened in a way that made me feel like I had accidentally said something important.

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m not confused about that part.” I rubbed the fabric between my fingers. “I’m a man. A small one. A pretty one, maybe. A femboy if someone is being accurate and not mean. The dress doesn’t change that. It’s just clothes.” My face heated. “Very cute clothes. That I would maybe not want to wear every day because the skirt seems like a tail logistics problem and also I like pockets.”

Mara smiled. “It has pockets.”

I gasped.

She looked deeply satisfied.

“That is unfair,” I whispered.

“Yes.”

The party happened on a rooftop garden three blocks from the bakery, up an old building whose elevator had been replaced by a polite vine lift that hummed softly while carrying people upward in a basket woven from living branches. I spent the whole ride gripping the rail with one hand and the side of my skirt with the other, because wearing a dress was apparently less frightening than accidentally flashing a roof full of strangers.

I had chosen soft stockings. Mara insisted on comfortable shoes. She had helped me tie my hair back with a pink ribbon that matched the dress, then looked like she was going to cry until I panicked and asked if the bow was uneven. It was not uneven. She said she was proud of me. That was much worse.

The rooftop opened around us in gold evening light.

New Avalon stretched in every direction, all towers, gardens, bridges, old stone crowns and new living wood. like the city had grown fantasies out of broken steel. Mana lamps hung between trellises of night blooming vines, each one glowing in soft rainbow glass for Libertas. There were tables of food, little floating lanterns, musicians tuning instruments beneath a rose arbor, and people everywhere. Men in suits with painted nails. Women in armor polished bright enough to blind birds. Chimerin with feathered collars. A dwarf in a skirt made of chainmail rings. Two goblins wearing matching capes. An older human couple dancing slowly before the music had even started.

It was beautiful.

It was terrifying.

It was both.

Mara’s wife met us near the punch table.

Her name was Sel, and she was tall, broad shouldered, dark skinned, and had the calm confident energy of someone who could carry Mara out of a burning building while making eye contact with the fire. She looked me over once, smiled, and said, “You must be Yuzu.”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

“Dress suits you.”

My face warmed. “Thank you. It has pockets.”

“Excellent. Vital feature.”

Mara pointed at her. “See? This is why I married her.”

“I thought it was my knife collection.”

“That too.”

I did not know whether that was a joke.

I decided not to ask.

For the first hour, I stayed close to Mara and Sel like a moon orbiting a very married planet. People said hello. People complimented the dress. Someone called me adorable in a tone that made me unsure whether to thank them or hide under the snack table. A woman with violet hair asked where I got my ribbon. A jackal chimerin man with silver eyeliner told me my horns looked “radiant with the pink,” which made me touch one horn and forget how words worked for several seconds.

Then more people flirted.

Not all at once.

That would have killed me.

But enough that I started noticing a pattern and then started not knowing what to do with it.

A woman with green lipstick told me I had “dangerous eyes,” which was confusing because my eyes were yellow and mostly anxious. A young man in a cropped velvet jacket asked if I danced. I said badly. He said he liked teaching. I laughed because I thought he was being nice, then realized from his smile that he was being something else too. A chimerin girl with moth antennae touched the edge of my sleeve and said I looked like “dessert with horns,” which was maybe a compliment, maybe a warning, possibly both.

Men.

Women.

People who were neither or both or something else entirely.

They looked at me and did not immediately look afraid.

Some looked too interested, which was a separate problem, but it was not the same problem.

I did not know what to do with being wanted.

Before Riko, there had been movies and daydreams and one very embarrassing crush on a boy who delivered flour to the bakery and smiled with his whole face. I had filed that away as maybe admiration. Or maybe wanting to be friends.

Now a man in a velvet jacket was making my stomach flutter a little when he bowed over my hand like a elf prince.

I waited for the identity crisis.

It did not arrive.

Mostly I felt curious.

A little embarrassed.

A little warm.

A little like I had opened a cupboard and found a room behind it.

(I suppose boys are not unpleasant.)

That sounded silly.

Of course boys were not unpleasant. Some were very pleasant. Some smelled good. Some had nice hands. Some smiled in ways that made my brain go sideways. The important thing, I realized slowly while watching the velvet jacket man laugh with his friends near the lanterns, was not whether someone was a boy or a girl.

It was whether they made my chest do that painful hopeful thing.

Riko did.

If Riko had been a boy, I thought, with the same red orange hair and sharp grin and terrible need to be wanted, I would still love her.

That landed inside me gently.

Not like thunder.

Like a warm cup set into cold hands.

“Oh,” I whispered.

Mara appeared beside me immediately. “Good oh or bad oh?”

I looked at her. “I think I like people.”

Mara blinked.

Then her face did something complicated and tender. “That is a very Yuzu way to put it.”

“I mean… not all people. Some people are very mean. And some people chew with their mouths open. And one man at the bakery once asked if croissants were a type of fish.”

“Deeply troubling.”

“But boys. Girls. People who are not those. I think maybe the person part matters more.”

Mara smiled. “Sounds like a good realization.”

I touched my skirt, then my ribbon, then one horn. “Am I supposed to pick a word?”

“Only if you want one.”

“What if I pick one and then it changes?”

“Then it changes.”

“That is allowed?”

“Very.”

I looked out over the party, the lanterns, the dancers, the city glowing beyond the rooftop. “That is nice.”

“It is.”

For a little while, I was happy.

Not suddenly wise.

Just happy in a small, floating way.

Then the jackal chimerin man with silver eyeliner came back.

He had been friendly earlier. Maybe too friendly, but I was not very good at measuring that. He was handsome in a sharp city way, with dark hair tied at the nape of his neck, rings on almost every finger, and a shirt open low enough that even I understood it was a choice. He handed me a cup of punch I had not asked for.

“For the pretty oni,” he said.

“Oh. Thank you.” I took it because refusing gifts felt rude, then immediately wondered if accepting drinks from strangers at parties was one of those rules everyone else knew already. “That’s kind.”

He leaned against the trellis beside me. “You here alone?”

“With Mara and Sel.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I blinked. “Oh. Um. My girlfriend is not here.”

“Shame.”

I smiled nervously. “She’s busy. I think.”

He looked me up and down slowly.

Too slowly.

The kind of look that made the dress feel different. Like wrapping paper someone wanted to tear.

“Her loss,” he said.

I laughed because I did not know what else to do. “That is nice of you to say.”

“Bet you’re fun.”

My smile got smaller. “I like baking.”

“I bet you like lots of things.”

His hand touched my waist.

Not hard.

Not exactly forceful.

But sudden enough that my whole body went still.

The patch under my sleeve pulsed amber.

I looked down at his hand.

He did not move it.

“I’ve always wondered about oni,” he said, voice lower now. “How much of the stories are true. The stamina. The pheromones. The way you get when someone gets you going. Heard even suppressed ones can make a person stupid if you get close enough.”

My stomach turned.

There it was.

Not fear this time.

Fascination.

Maybe worse.

“I’m on suppressants,” I said automatically.

“I can see that.”

“That means ”

“I know what it means.” His thumb moved slightly against the fabric of the dress. “Doesn’t mean there’s nothing there.”

I should have stepped back.

I should have said no clearly.

I should have looked for Mara.

Instead I froze.

“I should probably find my friends,” I said.

He smiled. “I know a quieter spot.”

“That’s okay.”

“You don’t even know what I’m offering.”

“I think I do not want the quiet spot.”

He laughed softly. “Gods, you’re sweet. Is that real or part of the act?”

My face heated, but not with fluster this time.

With something close to anger.

Small.

Frightened.

Mine.

“It’s real,” I said.

His smile sharpened. “Even better.”

The system pinged.

For one absurd second, relief hit me so hard I almost swayed.

Riko.

Riko finally answered.

I opened the message because I was nervous and cornered and stupidly, desperately glad for any interruption that had her name on it.

There was a video.

The preview showed Riko.

My heart stopped before I pressed play.

I did not want to open it.

I opened it anyway.

The party noise fell away.

I stared at my panel.

The preview image showed Riko's face, half lit in dim amber light, her red eyes looking directly at the camera. Her flame bright hair was messy. Her lips were parted.

There was something in front of her mouth.

I pressed play.

The video started with her tongue.

Long and slow, dragging up the underside of a cock that wasn't mine. A human cock, I thought, or maybe elf thick and veined, the head flushed dark. Her cyan seams pulsed softly as she worked, that familiar glow I'd watched strobe for me now lighting up someone else's bedroom.

She looked at the camera.

At me.

"Mm," she hummed around him, and the sound was the exact same sound she'd made with my cock in her mouth.

Her hand wrapped around the base. She stroked while she sucked, her head bobbing in a rhythm I recognized, a rhythm she'd used on me, and the wet sounds were obscene and unmistakable.

Then deeper.

Then all the way.

Her nose pressed against his pelvis. Her throat worked. Her eyes never left the lens.

She pulled back with a gasp, a string of saliva connecting her lips to his tip, and smiled.

That smile.

The one that didn't reach her eyes.

"Watch," she said to the camera. To me.

She went back down. Faster now. Hungry. Worshiping him with her mouth, her tongue, her throat. Her free hand came up to cup his balls, rolling them gently, and I could hear him groan somewhere off screen. A male voice. The same male voice from the video call.

Roommate.

She sucked him like she was trying to pull his soul out through his cock. Her seams flared brighter with every bob of her head, that strobing cyan pulse that had lit up my ceiling while she rode me. Her moans vibrated around him. Her eyes stayed on me.

On the camera.

On the panel in my hand at a party where a stranger's fingers were still on my waist.

The man in the video groaned louder. His hips jerked. Riko pulled back just enough that I could see her mouth open, tongue out, waiting.

He came.

Thick white ropes across her tongue, her lips, the corner of her mouth. She caught most of it, let some of it drip down her chin, and then she looked at the camera and opened her mouth wide.

Showing me.

A pool of cum on her tongue, glistening in the low light.

She held it there for three long seconds.

Then she swallowed.

Opened her mouth again.

Empty.

Smiled.

The video ended.

I stood very still.

The party noise came back in pieces. Laughter somewhere. Music. The clink of glasses. The smell of flowers and punch and too many bodies in too small a space. My hand holding the panel was shaking so badly the screen blurred.

Another message appeared.

Riko: If you're going to cheat on me, I'm going to cheat on you.

I read it three times.

If I was going to

Cheat on her?

When had I

The jackal's thumb moved on my waist.

"Bad news?" His voice was low, amused, too close to my ear.

I couldn't answer. My throat had locked shut. The screen glowed up at me with her message, with the paused final frame of the video where her empty mouth smiled at me, and nothing in my head was working correctly.

"Pretty oni?"

His other hand came up. Touched my chin. Tilted my face toward his.

"Hey," he said, softer now. "You okay? You look like someone died."

"I " My voice cracked. "I should go "

"Why?"

"I need to "

"You need to what? Go home to whoever just sent that?" His thumb brushed my jaw. "I saw your face. That wasn't a happy message."

"It's not "

"Let me guess. She fucked someone else."

I flinched.

He smiled.

Not kind.

Not cruel exactly.

Hungry.

"Thought so." His hand slid from my chin down to my throat, not squeezing, just resting there. "That's rough. That's really rough. Someone as cute as you doesn't deserve that."

"Please "

"I can make you forget about her."

"I don't "

"Just for tonight." His body pressed closer. "Just for a few hours. Let someone treat you right for once."

"I can't "

"You can." His hips shifted against mine. Through the dress, through the panties her panties, the ones I was still wearing because she'd told me to, because I was obedient, because I was hers I felt something hot and hard pressing against my thigh.

Not human.

Canine.

The tapered tip of something sliding out of a sheath, thick and getting thicker, threading through the gap between my thighs like it was looking for a home.

I made a sound. Small. Frightened.

His breath was hot on my ear. "There it is. There's that oni sensitivity. Bet you're already getting wet for me, aren't you? Bet those suppressants don't do shit when someone actually touches you right."

"I'm not a g "

"Shh." His hips rolled, and his cock gods, his cock, it was so thick, the knot at the base already starting to swell slid along the cleft of my ass through the thin cotton of the panties. "You don't have to do anything. Just let me take care of you. Just be my good little bitch for the night and I'll make you feel so good you won't even remember her name."

The word hit me like ice water.

Bitch.

Not good boy.

Not the way she said it.

Something inside me something that had been frozen and compliant and too scared to move cracked.

"No," I said.

He didn't stop moving. "No?"

"I said no."

"Come on, pretty "

"No."

My hands came up and shoved at his chest. Not hard enough, not nearly hard enough, but enough that he stepped back half a pace, enough that his cock slipped free of the space between my thighs, enough that I could breathe.

He stared at me.

For a moment something ugly flickered behind his silver lined eyes.

Then he laughed.

"Alright," he said, hands up, that easy predator smile back in place. "Alright, message received. Can't blame a guy for trying."

I was shaking. My whole body was shaking. The panel was still clutched in my hand and her message still glowed on the screen and I could still feel the phantom slide of him against me through the fabric she'd given me.

"I'm going to find my friends," I said.

"Sure."

"Don't follow me."

"Wouldn't dream of it." He picked up his drink from where he'd set it on the trellis. "But hey if you change your mind, I'll be around. Offer stands all night."

I turned and walked away.

My legs didn't feel like they belonged to me. The party was too loud, too bright, too full of people who weren't looking at me except for all the ones who were. I found a corner, a dark one, behind a potted fern and a statue of some goddess I didn't recognize.

I looked at my panel.

Her message.

If you're going to cheat on me, I'm going to cheat on you.

I hadn't done anything.

I hadn't done anything.

That wasn't cheating.

That was

I didn't know what that was.

My thumb hovered over the keyboard.

I should explain. I should tell her she was wrong. I should ask why she sent that video, who that was, what I had done to make her think I would ever

I typed: I didn't cheat on you

I stared at it.

I deleted it.

I typed: Why would you

Deleted.

Riko I love

Deleted.

I put the panel in my pocket.

I stood in the corner behind the fern, in her dress and her panties, with the taste of bile in my throat and the ghost of her smile burned into the backs of my eyes.

The party went on without me.

I found a bathroom.

Small. Private. A single lock on the door that clicked shut behind me. The noise of the party became muffled, distant, someone else's problem. I leaned against the sink and stared at my own reflection in the mirror.

Yellow horns. White hair. Pink cheeks that had nothing to do with blush anymore. Eyes that looked like they belonged to someone who had just been hit very hard in a place that didn't leave bruises.

My panel was heavy in my pocket.

I should delete the video.

I should block her number.

I should call Mara and ask to go home and never think about any of this again.

I pulled out the panel and opened the video.

The first frame was her face. That half lit amber glow. Those red eyes looking directly at the lens. I remembered the preview image, how my heart had stopped, how I had known before I pressed play that something was wrong.

I pressed play again.

Her tongue came out.

Long and slow and wet, dragging up the underside of his cock. The same motion she'd used on me. The same deliberate savoring, like she was tasting something expensive, something she wanted to remember. Her cyan seams pulsed softly in the dim light, that familiar glow that had strobed for me when I was inside her.

I watched her lips part around the head.

I watched her take him in.

The wet sound of it filled the small bathroom, tinny through the panel speaker but unmistakable. Slick and obscene and rhythmic. Her head bobbed in that same pattern I knew, up and down, up and down, her hand working the base of his shaft in time with her mouth.

But her eyes.

I leaned closer to the screen.

Her eyes weren't looking at him.

I'd been so shocked the first time, so gutted by the simple fact of what I was seeing, that I hadn't really looked. Hadn't studied. Hadn't done what an adventurer was supposed to do, which was observe before reacting.

Now I observed.

Her red eyes were fixed on the camera. Not up at the man attached to the cock she was worshiping. Not lost in pleasure or focused on her task or closed in concentration. She was staring directly into the view with an intensity that made my stomach flip in a way I couldn't name.

She was looking at me.

Not at him.

The realization hit me strangely. Not relief there was nothing relieving about watching my girlfriend suck another man's cock. Not quite jealousy either, or not only jealousy. Something more complicated. Something that felt like being pinned to a board by someone who wanted to make sure I saw every detail of what they were doing.

She took him deeper.

I watched her throat work around him, watched the bulge of his cock distending the pale column of her neck, watched her seams flare brighter as she swallowed around his length. Her eyes stayed on on me. Tears gathered at the corners from the strain of it, glistening in the amber light, but she didn't look away.

She pulled back with a gasp, strings of saliva connecting her lips to his tip, and in that half second before she went back down I saw her smile.

She went back down. Hungrier this time. Sloppier. Her hand left his base and both palms pressed flat against his thighs as she took him all the way to the root, her nose buried in the hair at his pelvis, her throat convulsing around his length.

He grabbed her hair.

I saw his hand come into frame. Held her with his cock fully sheathed in her throat, and I watched her eyes water and her seams strobe and her throat work helplessly around him.

She didn't look away from the camera.

From me.

He started to move.

Not her. Him. His hips rocking forward, fucking her throat while she knelt there and took it. I could hear the wet choking sounds she was making, could see the way her whole body jerked with each thrust, could watch the tears spill down her cheeks and mix with the saliva dripping from her chin.

And still she looked at me.

Her eyes were saying something. I didn't know what. I didn't know if it was look what you made me do or look what I can do or look at me, look at me, don't look away, I'm doing this for you to see.

Maybe all of them.

Maybe none.

He fucked her face harder. I could see the muscles in his thighs tensing with each thrust, could hear the slap of his balls against her chin, could watch her take it and take it and take it without ever breaking eye contact.

With me.

My cock was hard.

I noticed it distantly, the way you notice a sound from another room. The strain of it against the pink panties she'd given me, the ones I was still wearing because she'd told me to, because I was obedient, because I was hers. I was hard watching my girlfriend get her throat fucked by another man.

I didn't know what that said about me.

I didn't want to know.

He pulled out. She gasped for air, her mouth open, and I could see the ruined mess of her makeup where the tears had carved channels through it. She looked wrecked. She looked beautiful. She looked directly at me and smiled that smile again.

"More," she said, her voice hoarse and raw. "Please."

The word hit me somewhere below the ribs.

Please.

She'd said please to him.

Had she said please to me? I couldn't remember. I'd been so overwhelmed that first night, so lost in the sensation of her body around mine, that I hadn't catalogued the words. But I didn't think she had. I didn't think she'd begged.

She was begging for him.

For the camera.

For me.

He gave her what she asked for. His cock pressed back between her lips and she opened for it eagerly, hungrily, her tongue swirling around the head before he thrust back into her throat. This time she met his movements, bobbing forward to take him deeper each time he pushed in, working with him instead of just receiving.

The sounds were obscene. Wet and sloppy and desperate. I could hear her moaning around his cock, little vibrating hums of pleasure that I recognized from when she'd had me in her mouth, and I hated that I recognized them. Hated that the same sounds she'd made for me she was making for him.

Except she wasn't looking at him.

She was looking at me.

Always at me.

Her hand came up between her own thighs. I could see her arm moving, could tell from the angle that she was touching herself while she sucked him, and her seams flared brilliant cyan with each movement. She was getting off on this. On him. On me watching. On all of it.

I was getting off on this.

My hand had moved without permission, pressing against the front of the panties, against the straining outline of my cock through the thin cotton. I was touching myself in a stranger's bathroom watching my girlfriend cheat on me and I couldn't stop.

She looked at the camera and moaned around his cock and I pressed harder against myself.

"Fuck," the man's voice said, off screen, strained. "Fuck, I'm gonna "

She pulled back. Held her mouth open. Tongue out. Waiting.

Looking at me.

He came.

The first rope hit her tongue and her eyes fluttered but didn't close, didn't break contact. The second caught her upper lip, dripped down onto her chin. The third and fourth painted her tongue white, pooling there, glistening. Some of it missed entirely, striping across her cheek, her nose, the corner of her eye.

She held perfectly still through all of it.

When he was done she stayed there, mouth open, showing me what he'd given her. Her tongue was a mess of white, thick and viscous, and I could see her throat working as she fought the urge to swallow.

Three seconds.

She held it for three seconds while I watched.

Then she swallowed.

I watched her throat bob. Watched the cum disappear down her throat. Watched her open her mouth again to show me it was empty, her tongue clean except for a thin sheen.

She smiled at the camera.

At me.

The video ended.

I was breathing hard. My hand was still pressed against my cock through the panties and I was so hard it hurt, straining against the fabric, the head pushed up past the waistband and leaking against my belly.

I played the video again.

This time I watched only her eyes. Watched the way they stayed fixed on me through every moment. Through the teasing licks and the deep throating and the face fucking and the begging and the cum shot and the swallow. She never looked away. Never looked up at him. Never gave him what she was giving the camera.

What she was giving me.

I didn't understand.

If she was cheating on me, why did it feel like she was performing for me?

If this was punishment?

If she hated me for whatever she thought I'd done, why couldn't she stop looking at me?

I played it again.

Her tongue dragging up his cock. Her eyes on the lens. Her seams pulsing for me to see.

I should be devastated.

I was devastated.

My hand slipped under the waistband of the panties her panties and wrapped around my cock. The touch made me gasp, too sensitive, too wound up, but I didn't stop. I stroked slowly, watching the video, watching her watch me while she sucked another man's cock.

She looked so beautiful with her mouth full.

I hated that I thought that.

I stroked faster.

On screen she was taking him deep again, her throat bulging, her eyes watering, her gaze never leaving mine. I matched my rhythm to the bob of her head, up when she pulled back, down when she swallowed him to the root.

She was fucking him but she was looking at me.

She was choking on his cock but she was showing me.

She was cheating on me but she was

I didn't know.

I didn't know what she was doing.

But I couldn't stop watching.

The video reached the part where he grabbed her hair and started fucking her face and I stroked faster, my breath coming in short desperate pants in the small bathroom. I could hear the wet sounds, could see the tears on her cheeks, could watch her take it and take it and take it.

For me.

It was for me.

I didn't know how I knew that but I knew it.

She wanted me to see this. As something else. Something I didn't have words for. Something that made my cock throb and my heart ache and my brain short circuit trying to understand.

The video reached the end. The cum on her tongue. The swallow. The empty mouth. The smile.

I came.

Hard.

Into her panties, against my palm, biting my own lip to keep from making noise. It hit me in waves, each pulse punching out of me with a force that made my knees weak, thick and hot and endless. I came watching my girlfriend smile at me with another man's cum in her throat.

When it was over I slumped against the sink, panting, my hand still wrapped around my softening cock, her panties ruined with my jizz.

The video had ended.

Her message still glowed beneath it.

If you're going to cheat on me, I'm going to cheat on you.

I stared at the words.

I still didn't understand.

But something in me something small and frightened and desperately confused wanted to.

I stepped out of the bathroom and into the night air, mara found me alone staring off into the city below.

Mara turned to me.

“Yuzu?”

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

My system pinged.

I flinched so hard Mara’s hand caught my elbow before I stepped backward into a planter.

Riko: Wait.

Riko: Wait wait wait.

Riko: Yuzu.

Riko: Don’t do that face.

I stared at the messages.

Another ping.

Riko: It wasn’t today.

My heart stopped.

Riko: It wasn’t today.

Riko: Baby answer me.

Riko: I didn’t do it today.

Riko: It’s old.

Riko: It’s from before you.

Riko: Last boyfriend.

Riko: I didn’t cheat.

The whole rooftop tilted sideways.

Old.

Before me.

Last boyfriend.

I grabbed those words because they were better than the others. They were not good words. They did not undo the video. They did not unmake the way she had sent it like a thrown knife because she thought I might let someone else touch me. But they were better than today. Better than now. Better than imagining her finding someone the moment she got angry at me.

My knees felt strange.

“I need to sit down,” I whispered.

Mara guided me to a bench beneath a hanging lantern tree. Sel sat on my other side, big and solid and quiet, blocking the party from feeling too close. The dress pooled pink over my knees. My hands shook around the panel.

Mara looked like she wanted to ask.

She did not.

That was one of the reasons Mara was good.

Riko kept messaging.

Riko: I didn’t cheat.

Riko: I was mad.

Riko: I thought you were going to.

Riko: I know how people look at you.

Riko: I know you pretend you don’t notice.

Riko: Don’t pretend with me.

Riko: I wanted you to feel it.

Riko: That was bad.

Riko: I know that was bad.

Riko: But you scared me first.

I read that last one three times.

My chest hurt.

It hurt because part of me wanted to say sorry immediately. Sorry for going. Sorry for wearing the dress. Sorry for being looked at. Sorry for having a good time without her. Sorry for making her scared enough to hurt me.

That was not right.

I knew that.

The knowing was small, but it was there.

A tiny candle in a room full of wind.

I typed slowly.

Yuzu: I didn’t cheat on you.

The words looked too plain.

Too small.

I added more.

Yuzu: I wasn’t going to cheat on you.

Yuzu: I told you about the party because I wanted to be honest.

Yuzu: I wanted you to answer.

Yuzu: I wanted you there.

My fingers hovered.

There were bigger words under those ones.

Words I had nearly said in my apartment. Words I had swallowed when she said mine. Words that lived in my chest now and bumped against everything else when I moved.

I love you.

They were so close that my thumb twitched toward them.

But the video was still in my head.

I could not put love into the same message as that. Not yet. It felt like carrying a cake through a battlefield. Something soft and sweet would get ruined, and then I would not even have the cake.

So I wrote around it.

Yuzu: I care about you so much.

Yuzu: I’m really sorry if I made you feel like I was leaving you behind.

Yuzu: I wasn’t.

I sent it.

Mara read over my shoulder because I let her, which was maybe embarrassing but also nice because my thoughts were trying to become soup.

She frowned a little. “You don’t have to apologize for going to a party.”

“I know.”

I did not know.

Not properly.

But I wanted to.

Riko answered almost immediately.

Riko: Say it better.

My throat tightened.

Mara’s face changed.

Sel’s hand flexed once on her knee.

I looked at the message until the letters blurred slightly.

Say it better.

Yuzu: I missed you.

Riko: Better.

Riko: Again.

I closed my eyes.

Yuzu: I missed you, Riko.

Riko: Do you want to see me?

Yes.

That answer rose up so fast it scared me.

Yes, yes, yes, even after this, especially after this, because I was confused and hurt and frightened and I still wanted to see her face more than I wanted to keep sitting under lanterns pretending my heart had not been dropped off a roof.

Mara touched my wrist.

“Think first,” she said softly.

I did.

I thought about the video.

I thought about her saying it was old.

I thought about her leaving before dawn. The panties. The cold messages. The warm messages. The way she could make my whole body feel chosen with two words, then make the floor vanish with one silence.

I thought about Charlie sitting in my apartment, probably being very wise and photosynthetic.

I thought about how if Charlie were here, he would not tell me what to do, because he was a plant, but he would maybe remind me that growing toward light did not mean pretending shadows were not real.

That was a very good plant lesson.

I typed.

Yuzu: I want to see you.

Then, before she could answer, I added:

Yuzu: But I’m hurt.

My hand shook after sending that one.

It felt mean.

It was not mean.

Probably.

Maybe.

Riko did not answer immediately.

The silence stretched long enough that my lungs started forgetting their job.

Then the panel pinged.

Riko: I know.

Another pause.

Riko: I’m sorry.

I stared.

Riko: I’m sorry, okay?

Riko: I didn’t cheat.

Riko: I wouldn’t.

Riko: I just wanted you to stop.

Yuzu: Stop what?

Riko: Stop being there without me.

I read that sentence and something inside me folded very gently in half.

Not snapped.

Not broke.

Just folded.

Mara must have seen it land on my face because she made a low sound under her breath. “Yuzu.”

“I know,” I whispered.

I did not know enough.

But I knew more than I had before.

I typed slowly.

Yuzu: I can’t only exist where you can see me.

The dots appeared.

Stopped.

Appeared again.

Stopped.

Riko: Wow.

Riko: Okay.

Riko: So that’s what they’re teaching you.

Cold.

Immediate.

A bucket of ice water after fire.

My fingers panicked.

Yuzu: No, that’s not what I meant.

Yuzu: I just mean I need to have friends too.

Yuzu: And work.

Yuzu: And Charlie.

Yuzu: Charlie is a plant but still.

Mara covered her mouth with one hand.

Sel looked away, shoulders moving once.

I did not know if they were laughing or crying internally. Maybe both. Both things could be true.

Riko did not answer for almost a minute.

Then:

Riko: I hate the plant.

I let out a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob.

Yuzu: He believes in growth.

Riko: Don’t be cute right now.

Yuzu: I don’t know how to stop.

Riko: I know.

Riko: That’s why this is hard.

That message was different.

Just tired.

Real tired.

I held the panel close to my chest for a second because I did not know where else to put the feeling.

Mara’s voice came quietly. “Do you want us to take you home?”

I looked up.

The party was still bright around us. The lanterns, the music, the dancers, the pretty people who had flirted with me and made me. I had wanted the night to be a little adventure. A safe one. A good one.

Now I was tired all the way through.

“I think I want to go home,” I said.

Mara nodded. “Okay.”

Riko messaged again while Mara helped me stand.

Riko: Are you leaving?

Yuzu: Yes. I’m going home.

Riko: Alone?

I looked at Mara.

Then Sel.

Then the emergency charm Sel had pressed into my hand earlier because she had a very practical kind of love.

Yuzu: Mara and Sel are walking me to the building.

Riko: Of course they are.

Riko: Do they think I’m dangerous?

I swallowed.

Yuzu: They care about me.

Riko: Not an answer.

I stared at that.

Then wrote the truth as softly as I could.

Yuzu: I think they’re scared because I was scared.

The reply came fast.

Riko: Of me?

My thumb hovered.

I did not want to answer.

Not because I wanted to lie.

Because I did not want to make her feel like a monster.

Yuzu: Of what happened.

Riko: That is not an answer either.

I closed the panel.

Not forever.

Just for a breath.

Then another.

Mara squeezed my shoulder.

The journey home happened in pieces.

The lift down from the rooftop. The street. The train. Mara on one side, Sel on the other. Nobody talked much. That was kind of them. My head was too full of messages and video and Riko’s voice and the way the jackal’s cock had felt on my thighs and the way the velvet jacket boy’s bow had felt nice earlier and the strange little realization that maybe people were the important part.

I wanted to tell Riko that part.

I wanted to tell her that if she had been a boy, I would still care. If she had been neither, both, something else, made of porcelain light and terrible choices, I would still look for her in a room. I wanted that to be romantic.

Tonight, it felt like something she might use to hurt herself with.

So I kept it in my chest.

At my building door, Mara stopped me.

“Message me when you’re inside,” she said.

“I will.”

“Actually do it.”

“I will actually do it.”

Sel handed me a small green emergency charm card. “Break this if you need help.”

I looked down at it.

The rune was silver and simple. It felt heavier than it should.

“That seems dramatic,” I said.

Sel’s expression did not change. “Good.”

I gave a tiny laugh because I was very close to crying and laughs were sometimes the same door from the other side.

“Thank you.”

Mara touched my cheek lightly. “You did good tonight.”

That made the tears arrive.

Only a little.

Enough to make my eyes sting.

“I don’t feel like I did.”

“I know.”

“I think I made everything worse.”

“You didn’t.”

“I answered too much.”

“Maybe.”

That startled another tiny laugh out of me.

Mara smiled sadly. “But you also said some true things.”

True things.

Those were very hard.

People should label them better.

I climbed the stairs alone.

My apartment building was quiet in the way old buildings got when they were pretending not to listen. The stairs creaked under my shoes. The dress brushed my knees. Sel’s jacket was still around my shoulders, too big and warm and smelling faintly of smoke and cedar. The emergency charm sat in my pocket like a tiny responsible stone.

My panel stayed quiet.

No messages.

That scared me more than too many messages.

By the time I reached the sixth floor, my hands were cold.

The hallway window showed a narrow slice of New Avalon. Vines glowing along old brick. A distant castle spire outlined in festival colors. A paper lantern caught on a gargoyle’s wing across the alley, bobbing gently in the wind while the gargoyle looked deeply offended.

I almost smiled.

Then I saw the light under my door.

My apartment light was on.

I had turned it off.

I knew I had turned it off because I always told Charlie goodbye before leaving, and I had turned off the lamp after telling him to be brave and not let the panties organize a rebellion.

My heart stopped.

The key charm shook in my hand.

For a second, I considered going back downstairs.

I considered breaking Sel’s charm.

I considered messaging Mara.

Then my system pinged.

Riko: Don’t be scared.

That made me more scared.

I unlocked the door.

Slowly.

The room was warm.

Too warm, maybe, because the little lamp beside the bed was on and the kettle shaped like a fat bird was steaming on the counter. Charlie sat in his chipped blue pot by the window, silver leaves glowing softly, apparently unharmed but definitely forced to witness things again.

Riko sat on my bed.

She had changed since the video. Or maybe the video was old, so changed was not the right word. She was here now in her bright jacket, one sleeve slipping off her shoulder, red orange hair messy around her face. Her porcelain white skin held faint cyan pulses under the surface, but the rhythm was wrong. Too fast. Uneven. Her eyes glowed red at first, then amber when she saw me, then something close to blue for half a second before she looked away.

She had been crying.

Døll tears were light.

There were faint glowing trails on her cheeks.

My hand tightened around the emergency charm in my pocket.

Riko noticed.

Her mouth twisted. “They gave you a panic button.”

I shut the door behind me.

Carefully.

Not locked.

“It’s a safety charm,” I said.

“For me.”

“For emergencies.”

“Same thing.”

“No.”

She laughed once, sharp and empty. “Look at you. Party dress. Borrowed jacket. Safety charm. Friends downstairs waiting to see if the crazy girl eats you.”

I flinched.

Riko saw it and hated herself for seeing it.

I saw that too.

That was the hardest thing about her. She was not cruel because she did not know where the knife went. She knew. Sometimes she knew exactly. Sometimes she stabbed and then looked horrified by the blood.

I stood near the door with Sel’s jacket wrapped around me.

“How did you get in?” I asked.

Riko looked toward the window.

The latch hung open.

“I fixed your window,” she said.

“You mean you came through it.”

“And fixed it after.”

“We are on the sixth floor.”

“I climb.”

“That is not normal.”

“You like normal now?”

I closed my mouth.

Her eyes flashed.

Then dimmed.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

The apology was so small I almost missed it.

Riko hugged her knees. “I didn’t cheat.”

I nodded.

“You believe me?”

The question came too fast.

Too hungry.

Too fragile.

I looked at her.

I wanted to say yes.

I wanted it so badly.

The word was right there, easy and warm and probably the only thing that would make her stop looking like she was waiting for me to throw her out.

But the video was still in my head.

“I want to believe you,” I said.

Riko went still.

Her eyes turned red.

“That is a horrible answer.”

“I know.”

“You’re supposed to say yes.”

“I know.”

“Then say yes.”

“I can’t make myself know something because you need me to.”

The room froze.

So did I.

Riko stared at me like I had struck her.

I immediately wanted to apologize.

I did not.

My hand found the edge of Sel’s jacket and held on.

Riko’s voice went low. “They did this.”

“No.”

“They did. You didn’t talk like this before.”

“I think I did,” I said quietly. “Maybe only in my head. Maybe I was too scared to hear it.”

She stood up.

The bed creaked.

Charlie’s leaves trembled.

Riko looked at him. “Stop watching.”

“He is a plant.”

“He’s judging.”

“He believes in growth,” I said.

It was the wrong thing.

I knew it was the wrong thing the moment it left my mouth, because Riko’s face changed.

Not in the obvious way. Not anger first. Not shouting. Something smaller and uglier happened before that. Her eyes flicked toward Charlie, toward the little chipped blue pot, toward the silver leaves catching the lamplight, and for half a second she looked wounded by him. By a plant. By the fact that I had given him a name and a place and a joke and a tiny piece of my heart that was not hers. Her red eyes brightened too fast. The cyan seams beneath her porcelain skin pulsed hard, uneven, like something inside her had skipped a beat and then tried to make up for it all at once.

“I hate him,” she said.

My chest tightened. “Riko.”

“No,” she said, voice rising. “No, don’t do that. Don’t say my name like I’m a customer who knocked over a display.”

“He’s just Charlie.”

“He’s not just Charlie if you keep hiding behind him.”

“I’m not hiding behind him.”

“You are.” She pointed at the window, her hand shaking. “You keep putting him between us like he understands you better than I do. Charlie says this. Charlie believes that. Charlie is brave. Charlie is wise. Charlie is a plant, Yuzu.”

“I know he’s a plant.”

“Then stop talking like he gets to be part of this.”

“He’s not part of this,” I said, softer now, because I could feel the room getting thinner under my feet. “He just helps me feel less alone.”

Riko froze.

There it was.

The wrong sentence.

Her face went blank for one breath. Then it twisted. Her mouth trembled before she forced it into a smile that looked nothing like happiness. “Less alone.”

“Riko ”

“So I leave and you have Charlie.” Her voice broke on the name. “I go quiet and you have Charlie. I hurt you and you talk to Charlie. You don’t need me. You have your stupid plant and your bakery friends and your pretty little dress and your whole new brave life where everyone teaches you how to talk back to me.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you meant.”

“No.” I stepped toward her, hands lifted a little, not reaching yet. “No, that isn’t what I meant. Please don’t make it into that.”

“Don’t tell me what I’m making.”

“I’m not ”

Riko moved.

Fast.

Too fast for me to stop her, too fast for my brain to decide what she was doing until her hands were already around Charlie’s pot. The chipped blue ceramic scraped against the windowsill. Silver leaves shook. Soil shifted. For one terrible second, my whole body locked instead of moving, because the scene was so wrong that it did not fit into the world.

“Riko, no.”

She turned toward me with Charlie in both hands.

Her eyes were red, but the light behind them was wet and shattered. “Now you don’t have to ask him.”

Then she threw him out the window.

The sound I made did not feel like language.

It came out of me small and sharp and helpless, barely more than breath. I lunged after the pot, but I was too late. My hands caught the windowsill. The latch banged against the frame. Cold night air rushed in against my face, carrying the distant noise of New Avalon.

Charlie fell.

For a second, impossibly, I saw him clearly in the glow from the alley lamps. The little blue pot turning over in the air. Silver leaves fluttering. A spill of dark soil trailing behind like a comet tail. Then he hit the pavement far below.

The pot broke.

Just a small, final crack of ceramic against stone, followed by the soft scatter of soil.

I stared down.

Charlie was a dark little shape on the alley floor, roots exposed, silver leaves bent under the fall.

My breathing stopped working.

Behind me, Riko made a sound.

A tiny, frightened sound, like she had watched her own hand do something and only understood it after the world answered.

I turned slowly.

She stood in the middle of my room with her hands still raised, fingers spread as if the pot was still there. Her eyes had gone pale amber at the edges, then cyan, then red again, flickering through colors too fast for any of them to settle into meaning. Her mouth was open. Her shoulders shook. The anger was gone. Or maybe it had burned through itself and left something worse underneath.

“I didn’t ” she started.

Then stopped.

Because she had.

She had done it.

There was no way to soften the shape of it. No way to turn it into a misunderstanding, no way to say she had only meant to scare me, no way to pretend Charlie had slipped. She had grabbed him. She had thrown him. She had broken something that was mine.

My throat tightened so hard it hurt.

“Charlie,” I whispered.

Riko flinched like I had shouted.

“He was just a plant,” she said.

The sentence came out too quickly. Defensive. Panicked. Mean because frightened things bit first. “He was just a plant, Yuzu. He wasn’t alive like I mean, he was alive, but not not like us. Not like a person. He was just ”

“Stop.”

She stopped.

I had not yelled.

I wished I had yelled. Maybe yelling would have made more sense. Maybe if I got angry enough, I could make the room become simple.

Riko’s hands lowered. Her fingers curled against her palms. “Yuzu.”

I looked at her, and the worst thing was that I could see she was hurting too.

That was unfair.

She had done the hurting. She had thrown Charlie. She had broken him. She had made the choice. And still, her face looked ruined. Her whole body looked like it was collapsing around the knowledge of herself. Døll tears gathered in her eyes and spilled over, glowing blue white down her cheeks.

She looked like someone drowning in a room with no water.

And because I was me, because I was stupid and soft and still in love with her even with Charlie broken on the stones below, my first instinct was to comfort her.

“Riko,” I said, voice trembling.

She shook her head hard. “Don’t. Don’t be kind right now. Don’t do that. Don’t make me worse by being kind.”

“I don’t know how to stop.”

“You should learn.” Her voice cracked. “You should learn fast.”

I crossed the room anyway.

She backed up one step, then another, until her knees hit the edge of the bed. “No.”

I stopped.

The word hurt, but I stopped.

Her hands came up, not quite pushing me away, not quite covering herself. “I want to hit something.”

My breath caught.

“I want to hit you,” she said, and the horror in her voice made it worse, because it was not a threat the way the words sounded. It was confession. It was warning. It was her holding up the ugliest thing inside herself and begging me to see it. “I want to scream at you until you stop looking like that. I want to make you say it’s okay. I want to make you say I didn’t mean it. I want to make you hug me and tell me I’m not bad and I hate that I want that.”

That was when I started crying.

Not big at first. Just tears slipping free before I could stop them. My vision blurred. The room turned soft and watery: the bed, the kettle, the open window, the empty space on the sill where Charlie had been. The place looked wrong without him. Too open. Too bare. Like a little tooth had been pulled from the room.

“He was all I had,” I said.

Riko went silent.

The words came out before I could decide whether they were fair. They were not entirely true anymore. I had Mara. I had the bakery. I had Sel’s charm in my pocket. I had Riko, maybe, in some terrible storm shaped way. But Charlie had been there first. Charlie had been there when I came home from bad shifts and train platforms and quiet little humiliations. Charlie had listened when I talked because no one else was there to hear.

“He was all I had before,” I corrected, sobbing now. “Before you. Before Mara knew things. Before any of this. He was just a plant, I know that, but he was mine.”

Riko sank down onto the edge of the bed.

Her hands covered her mouth.

Light leaked through her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I cried harder.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and this time it sounded different from the quick, jagged apologies she used when she wanted the room to stop hurting. It sounded like the words had nowhere to go because nothing could carry enough weight. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t I did, I did, I know I did, but I didn’t ”

She cut herself off with a small, broken sound.

“I don’t understand myself,” she whispered.

I looked at her through tears.

Riko stared at the floor. Her bright hair had fallen across her face, hiding one eye. The other glowed cyan now, soft and terrified. “I feel things and they become everything. I don’t know where they start. I don’t know where they’re supposed to stop. I want something and it feels like if I don’t grab it, I’ll disappear. I get scared and it turns into anger before I can name it. I get jealous and it feels like dying. I get loved and I want to bite down on it until it can’t leave.”

Her hands shook.

“I don’t know what I am,” she said. “I know what Dølls are supposed to be. I know the stories. Made for love. Made for touch. Made to want and be wanted and echo someone else’s desire back perfectly. But I’m not perfect. I’m not even close. I don’t know if the wanting is mine or if it was built into me. I don’t know if I love right or if I just malfunction beautifully enough that people mistake it for romance.”

My chest hurt so badly I could barely breathe.

She looked up at me.

“And now I hurt you,” she said. “I hurt you for real. I can’t make that cute. I can’t make it flirting. I can’t say I was scared and have that fix it. I threw Charlie out the window because I wanted to win against a plant.”

A laugh escaped her.

It broke immediately.

“I lost to a plant,” she whispered.

I should have laughed.

Charlie would have maybe not laughed, because Charlie was a plant, but if he had been capable of humor, maybe he would have appreciated that. It was exactly the sort of ridiculous sentence I would have told him about while making tea.

But I could still see the pot falling.

I could still hear it break.

Riko stood suddenly, too fast, hands clenched. “Hit me.”

I recoiled. “What?”

“Hit me,” she said again. “Or yell. Or throw something at me. Do something. Don’t just stand there crying like I like I killed someone.”

“You hurt me.”

“I know!”

Her voice cracked into a shout, and then she slapped both hands over her mouth like she had scared herself.

The room trembled with the echo.

I stepped back.

Riko saw that too.

Her face went empty with horror.

She lowered her hands slowly. “I’m sorry.”

The apology was almost silent.

I took another breath, but it caught halfway.

“I love you,” I said.

Everything stopped.

Riko stared at me.

I stared back, crying too hard to make it beautiful. That was probably good. Maybe love should not have been beautiful right now. Maybe it needed to be small and wet and shaking and honest in the middle of a room with an open window and a broken plant below.

“I love you,” I said again, because the first time had not killed me. “I love you even when I’m angry at you. I love you even when I’m hurt. I love you even when I don’t know what to do with you. I love you, Riko.”

Her mouth trembled.

“No,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“No, don’t say it now.”

“I do.”

“Don’t say it like this.”

“I don’t know how else to say it.”

Her eyes filled with light again. “You’re supposed to say it when I’m good.”

I shook my head.

Something in her cracked.

Not broke. Cracked. Opened maybe.

She crossed the space between us with a sound that was almost a sob and almost a growl. For one terrifying instant, I thought she really would hit me. Her hand came up fast, fingers curled, her whole body shaking with the need to do something violent with the feeling because there was too much of it inside her and no safe place to put it.

Then her hand opened against my chest.

Not a strike.

A touch.

She grabbed my shirt instead, pulled herself against me, and kissed me.

It was not gentle at first. It was desperate. Wet with tears. A little too hard. Her teeth caught my lip, not enough to break skin, but enough to make me gasp. She made a wounded sound into my mouth, like kissing me was the only way she knew to keep from screaming. Her hands clutched at me, then released, then clutched again, like she was fighting herself every second not to grab too tight.

I kissed her back.

Not because it fixed anything.

It did not.

Charlie was still broken below.

Riko had still thrown him.

I was still crying.

But she was crying too, and I loved her, and I did not know how to separate comfort from grief.

So I kissed her back until she collapsed against me.

Then I wrapped my arms around her.

Carefully.

Not like surrender.

Not like forgiveness.

Like holding someone who was shaking too hard to stand and still should not be allowed near anything breakable.

Riko buried her face against my shoulder and sobbed.

“I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Yuzu, I’m sorry.”

I wanted to say it’s okay.

I wanted to say it's okay.

But it wasn't.

And something else was rising in me instead. Something I didn't have a name for. It wasn't forgiveness and it wasn't anger, or maybe it was both of those things fused together at a temperature high enough to melt the difference. Charlie was broken on the stones below. Riko was sobbing into my shoulder. The video she'd sent was still living behind my eyes, her mouth full of another man, her eyes on the camera, on me. The jackal's hands on my waist. Her message. All the cold that always came before her warmth.

It was too much.

It had been too much for weeks.

"Riko," I said.

She lifted her head, face wet, eyes flickering through colors.

"I need " My voice was shaking. My hands were shaking. "I need you. Right now. I need I don't know how to say it "

Her breath caught.

She looked at me.

Really looked. And whatever she saw in my face, she understood it the way she always understood the wanting things, the desperate things, the things underneath words.

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes. Please. Take it out on me. Take all of it out on me. Please, Yuzu, please "

I pushed her onto the bed.

She went down willingly, pulling me with her, and her hands were already tearing at my clothes. The dress I was still in the dress, the pretty one, the one that had felt like wrapping paper under the jackal's eyes and she got her fingers into the neckline and pulled and the fabric gave way with a sound like everything else tonight. She ripped it off me in pieces, still crying, tears glowing blue white down her face, and her mouth was on my chest before the last of it hit the floor, kissing up my sternum, my collarbone, desperate open mouthed kisses that tasted of salt.

"I'm sorry," she gasped between them. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, use me, I want you to, I want you to "

I pinned her down.

My hands found her wrists and pressed them into the mattress and she went still beneath me, chest heaving, eyes wide and burning and wanting. Her seams were strobing wild and uneven, lighting the dark room in pulses.

"Yes," she breathed. "Like that. Like that, baby, just like that, don't be gentle, I don't want gentle "

I yanked her panties down her legs and threw them somewhere into the dark.

Then my mouth was on her neck.

I kissed her there hard, harder than I'd ever kissed anything, hard enough that she gasped and arched and I felt the synthetic skin give under my lips, felt myself leaving a mark, my mark, a bruise dark bloom on porcelain white. She moaned, broken and grateful.

"More harder I want to feel it tomorrow "

I trailed down. Her throat. Her collarbone. The seam at her sternum that pulsed frantic light against my lips. My mouth found her breast and I sucked her nipple in hard, rolling it with my tongue, and her whole body bowed up off the bed, her freed hands flying into my hair, gripping at the base of my horns.

"Yuzu "

I switched to the other one. Sucked. Bit, gently, then less gently when her nails dug into my scalp and she sobbed yes. Her hips were grinding up against nothing, searching, desperate, and I could feel the heat of her, could feel how wet she was already where her thigh pressed against me.

I grabbed her hips.

I lined myself up.

For one half second I looked at her face at her ruined, beautiful, tear streaked face and she looked back at me and nodded, frantic, begging.

"Do it. Do it, give it to me, give me all of "

I drove into her.

All of it. One thrust. Full force, balls deep, ten inches of me slamming home into the slick clenching heat of her, and she screamed not pain, I knew her pain sounds by now, this was the other thing, this was the sound she made when something was too good to survive and her legs locked around my waist and her seams flared so bright the whole room went cyan.

"OH oh fuck oh fuck, Yuzu "

"I'm bigger than him," I heard myself say. My voice didn't sound like mine. It was low and rough and shaking. "Whoever he was. I'm bigger."

Her eyes went wide.

"I watched it," I said, and I pulled back and slammed into her again, and she wailed. "I watched the whole thing. At the party. With a stranger's hands on me. I watched you."

"Yuzu "

"I'm bigger."

"You are gods, you are, you're so much bigger, there's no one like you, no one, no one "

I fucked her.

There is no softer word for what I did. I fucked her hard and brutal and loving all at the same time, every thrust driving the full length of me into her, the bed slamming against the wall in a rhythm like a heartbeat gone violent. Charlie. Thrust. The video. Thrust. The party. The cold. The silence. The waiting. The good boy and the bad nights and every single hour I'd spent holding my panel hoping. I fucked all of it into her and she took it, she took every bit of it, crying and moaning and clawing at my back and chanting my name like the only prayer she knew.

"Yes yes harder I deserve it give it to me fuck me like you hate me fuck me like you love me don't stop, don't you dare stop "

"I love you," I growled into her throat, and slammed into her.

"Ah !"

"I love you " Thrust. " and you broke " Thrust. " everything "

"I know I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, punish me, fuck me, I'm yours, I'm yours "

Her body was made for this. That was the terrible, wonderful truth of her. Every inch of her gripped me, fluttered around me, pulled me deeper. Dølls were made for love, she'd said. Made for touch. Made to want and be wanted. And right now she was wanting with her entire being, her whole body an instrument of it, and I played her as hard as I could because she was begging me to, because this was the only language big enough for what was between us tonight.

I kissed her while I fucked her.

That was the part I couldn't explain. Even at my most brutal, even with my hips snapping into her hard enough to shake the windowframe, my mouth found hers and the kisses were soft. Wet with both our tears. Tender in a way that made no sense against the violence of everything below our shoulders. She whimpered into my mouth and kissed back like she was drowning and I was air.

Her body started to shake.

I knew the signs by now. The flutter. The clench. The way her seams started strobing faster and faster, blue white blue white, the way her moans pitched up and her words dissolved.

"Yuzu Yuzu I'm I'm gonna oh gods, oh gods, don't stop, don't stop, don't stop "

I didn't stop.

She came apart underneath me with a scream, her whole body bowing, her pussy clamping down around me in spasming waves and then she squirted, a hot gush of it soaking us both, the sheets, my thighs, and I felt it and heard her wail and I still didn't stop. I fucked her straight through it, every thrust splashing now, obscene and wet and relentless, and she sobbed and shook and clung to me as the orgasm rolled into a second one before the first had even finished.

"YUZU "

"More," I growled. "You said all night once. You said you were nowhere near done. Neither am I."

"Yes yes yes "

I was balls deep and I kept trying to go deeper. It made no sense. There was no deeper. But my body didn't believe that, my hips kept driving like there was some final place inside her I hadn't reached yet, some place where all of this would finally be enough, where the grief would run out, where the pot would un break and the video would un send and we would just be two people who loved each other without any of the wreckage. I grabbed her hips and pulled her down onto me as I thrust up and she howled and her nails raked down my back.

"Deeper I can feel you everywhere I can feel you in my throat gods, baby, you're going to break me "

"Good."

"Yes break me, break me like I break everything, I deserve it, I want it "

"No." I caught her face in one hand, made her look at me, never slowing. "Not because you deserve it. Because you're mine."

Her face crumpled.

"Yours," she sobbed. "Yours, yours, I'm yours, I'm sorry, I'm yours "

The pressure was building in me now, that huge unfamiliar wave that had only ever crested in dreams before her, and I chased it with everything I had. My rhythm went ragged. My thrusts went desperate. She felt it, she always felt it, and her legs locked tighter around my waist, heels digging into the small of my back, holding me in.

"In me," she gasped. "In me, all of it, don't you dare pull out, fill me up, I want to feel it for days "

"Riko "

"Come for me, baby. Come for me. Come in me."

I buried myself to the hilt and broke.

It tore out of me in thick scalding ropes, pulse after pulse after pulse, my whole body convulsing with it, and she came again at the exact same moment screaming, squirting again, her seams blazing white and we shook apart together, locked as deep as two bodies could be, her pussy milking every last drop out of me while I groaned her name into her shoulder.

It went on for a long time.

When it finally ebbed, I collapsed onto her, and she wrapped around me arms, legs, everything and held on like the building was falling.

The room was quiet except for our breathing.

The window was still open. Cold air moved over our cooling skin. Somewhere far below, in the alley, in the dark, Charlie lay broken in his spilled soil.

Riko's hand stroked slowly through my hair, careful around my horns.

Her voice cracked. "We fix what I broke. The parts that can be fixed."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"And the parts that can't?" I asked quietly.

She didn't look away. That was new. That was different. She held my eyes even though hers were terrified.

"I don't know," she said.

I laid my head back down on her chest, over the soft pulsing light of her seam, over whatever a girl like Riko had instead of a heart.

It wasn't okay.

But it was honest.

And for tonight, honest was the most either of us had to give.