I HATE HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU: Dreadful Love

Now that you've faced down your demons, it's time to make some choices. Who do you want to be? Well?

Before Dreadful Love and Princess Fay tear each other apart.

Fuck. Fay has the weepies again.

"What do I fucking do now?"

You kneel down to where the thought-forms are struggling, grab each of them by her platinum-blonde hair and tell them "STOP."

"Quiet, now, hush," you say. "Hush," as Dreadful Love Fay makes to protest. "Wait."

Tess is carrying on, off in the corner with the Tessies. There are fewer than there were, but more than a couple of them left. And it's still a ragged chorus of lust. As if you needed any more distraction. But it raises a smile. Ah, and there goes another orgasm. You think it's Tess herself, this time. You hope Tess finishes today a better woman than she started it.

And you think you know what you need to do to help. Deep breaths. More deep breaths. Princess Fay vibes at you, projecting her desire me, admire me that was Tess's hunger for you. You're no Princess, you need no Princess, and neither does Tess. If Tess wants Fay, here you are.

You stroke Dreadful Love's hair. "Abide, sweet. Hush. Sit. Abide." She's not keen on following your direction, but neither does she resist.

"Rise, Fay," you say, taking Princess Fay's hand. She grips back, showing something more than just an attitude. You release her and take a step back. "I am already everything I need. You cannot give me anything of myself that I want." Mean Girl helps a bit, here. Princess Fay's face goes from irritation to rage, her cheeks flush, she leaps forward and swings her open hand toward your cheek. You hear a slap but barely feel an impact. "You're not a person, you're a pose. Tess and I are better off without you."

Princess Fay rages at you, striking out again and again, but each slap and kick is more and more insubstantial until you no longer feel them.

"Kind of you to do all the work," you say to the ghostly outline of someone else's dream.

You raise your wand. In four swift strokes you cut a door in the magic circle warding the secret apartment, with five more you draw a sigil of banishment. With one word you send the figment hence. With four strokes you close the door, and with five you seal it.

You walk back to Dreadful Love. She stares at you with fear and defiance.

Well then.

"C'mon Fay," you tell your last double. "You win. You've pulled. Come home with me tonight."

Dreadful Love rises at your hand. Weepies from Fay. Weepies from Other Fay.

Love her and forgive her. You're healing. She'll heal with you.

You collapse into each other's arms until the two of you melt into one.

That ache is back, that familiar pain with a direction.

"I hate how much I love you, Morgan!" spills from your lips. Silly soppy hedge-witch broomstick with a flyaway black mop of hair.

But it's no longer ****, no longer dreadful. Not even heavy. You blink. "Oh," you say aloud. "Built myself some bigger shoulders."

You pad quietly over toward Tess. She's wrapped up tightly with the last of her doubles in some incredibly twisted variation on 69 available only to Tess the Transformer, her fingers stretched to double the length, her tongue forked, extended snake-like into her partner's cunt, ass, mouth and ears, puffing and blowing and snuffling and moaning. Tuning in quietly to their sexual aura, you see waves of arousal building higher and higher, manifesting in grunts and twitches and writhings and twistings, the pitch of their lust converging toward a...

...a moment of confusion for you, a roaring and rushing and a sudden explosion into climax.

Tess is calling out to you. She touches you on one shoulder. "Fay? Fay are you alright?"

You're still standing up. Your thighs are clammy and damp from some great gush of fluid. You feel that delicious après-sex glow, but something seems off. You blink your eyes and turn your head toward Tess. There's a sliding motion on one side of your face and a sharp thump as something small and hard strikes the floor.

Something's wrong with one eye. You can only see Tess clearly on one side. You rub the blurry eye. Something else strange. Your eyebrow is thicker and coarser than you recall.

"Something's wrong," you tell Tess. "My eye is all blurry." Through the other eye, Tess looks much as you'd expected. This time she has some sort of riveted brass rims round her lenses, and heavier earpieces to her glasses.

Tess bends and scoops something off the floor on the blurry side of your field of vision. With both hands, she carefully holds it in front of your eye, tucking a side piece under your hair and under your ear. Your vision clears.

"Hold that up," Tess says.

It's half a pair of glasses, with a thick brass frame like Tess's.

"Do you know what happened?" Tess asks.

"I walked over to see what you were doing," you say. "Like you told me you're a prying bitch, well, I'm a pervy bitch, and I was soaking up all that good sex stuff from close up."

Tess nods. "Of course," she says, all matter-of-fact.

You may be Beavertails now, but you're both Minervals at your formation, Tess and Fay, voyeuses like two peas in a pod. If your places had been reversed, Tess would have been taking notes.

You laugh. "Of course. I'd never seen anything like what you were doing, you know, your tongue and your fingers and all that."

Tess smiles. It's a little crooked in your sight with one eye bare and one eye behind a lens. She nods and continues, "It just happened, you know? I mean, well, I have done that sort of thing before on purpose, but things transform really easily here. And once you'd told me they were thought-forms, well..." She laughs. "Well, what you saw."

"So, right," you say. "I was up close watching all that amazing sex, and then..." you explain to Tess, holding the half-glasses so you could look at her with both eyes.

"Oh," she says. "Just a moment."

Tess takes out her wand and conjures the seeming of a mirror.

One side of your face is Fay Applebum, moon-pale, round, framed by platinum-blonde hair, with a finely drawn eyebrow. The other side of your face is Tess Lectura, shading toward peaches-and-cream, framed by copper-red hair with, the eyebrow thicker, more definite.

"Oh," you say.

"Let me fix something," Tess says. She dismisses the mirror. She touches a fingertip to the hinge of your half-a-pair-of-glasses and rests her wand on the place where they stop in the center of your face. With an intent look on her eyes behind her brass-framed glasses, Tess draws her wand in a careful, curved trace across your face and back behind your ear. She nods. "That should hold for now."

You lift your Fay-side hand and touch a slim double wire, a make-do for the missing half, resting atop your other ear and crossing over your eye to meet the half-pair where it holds the lens.

"You learn that from Master Elbegast?"

"Learned it working with him," Tess says. "Comes easier for me, but he kept saying I had sloppy technique. Seems to work, anyroads."

"You think you can fix me up?" you ask Tess.

"Yes. You want me to try?" she says.

"We better not," you say. "Here and now, that is. I mean, you and I are both where angels fear to tread sorts of witches." You gesture to the secret apartment and the hasty magic circle guarding you from more thought-forms seeping in. "But I'm thinking that we should go have a rest, you know, first?"

"Fay," she says. "One look at you and everyone will know that you and me were up to no good, together. So maybe you should have a thought or two?"

You feel a little irked that Tess is suddenly the sensible one.

"You aren't wrong. But let's go. I mean, Morgan will understand, anyway."

"I think I better GLAMOUR you back to your regular looks. I mean, she doesn't know where we were, she doesn't even know you were with me, and, well, you know, secrets?" Tess says.

You laugh. "You're Tess the Transformer, you could have done this to me anywhere."

"Fair," Tess says. "Fair enough anyway."

"Secrets," you say.

"Secrets," Tess echoes.

Tess ghosts you out through the "regular" doorway into the kitchen and back to the room you share with Morgan.

You don't actually hate how much you love her. But that memory lives within you and tells you how much you've grown.

Gain +1 XP, get a CONSEQUENCE (Transformation Splash!).
You now have 3 XP.

You have Ambition +2, Bravery -1, Cunning +2, Diligence +0; XP: 3
FRIEND: Morgan, who also owes you a FAVOR.

You have a date to HAVE SEX with Cook, who walks about in a mouthwatering scent cloud of cinnamon apple tart.

When you return from the secret apartment, roll +DILIGENCE(+1) (-1 CONSEQUENCE, +2 FRIEND) to ENCOUNTER Morgan.

⚅⚃ + 1 = 11.

On a 10+, Morgan is happy to see you and help you however she can.