Round 1 Day 1 - Breakfast

Matt found himself in darkness, with an uncomfortable pressure on his face. He grunted in discomfort, then again when he reached up to remove the obstacle only for something pointy to tumble off his arm and into his bare chest. A flailing hand met a hard leather cover, then the bright dawn light lanced into his tired eyes as he pulled away the book that was resting atop his head.

“Damn, Matty,” said the reason he had woken up, “You might be skinny, but you're not half bad under your clothes.”

Still not completely conscious, Matt blinked wearily until the blurry shape of Scarlet resolved in his vision, sitting cross legged at the foot of the bed and grinning far too widely. He jolted the rest of the way awake, sitting bolt upright and flailing around in a panic, not to try and cover his chest with the bedsheets but frantically searching through the novels scattered around him until he found one simply titled: The HH.

“This season!” he exclaimed, his voice still croaky with remnant sleep as he thrust the book insistently towards the Host, “Lesbian contestant. There's this thing, the IVA, she doesn't have to do anything with the master!”

Scarlet idly smiled at the display. “Good season, that one. One of my favourites, and the host is...” she trailed off, frowning to herself, “I think I must have known her before this season. She still knows me, somehow, even though she shouldn’t.” She shrugged and the grin returned, “Anyway, no need to recommend The HH to me. I'm already up to date on it.”

“The IVA,” Matt insisted again, ignoring the odd statement and flicking the book open to the page he had bookmarked, “Can you activate it for Poppy?”

“Ohhhh,” Scarlet nodded slowly, as though only just realising his point, “Right. That. No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?!”

“It's not applicable this season,” she shrugged, “The only way they earn points is the first time for each act that pleases you,” she cocked her head to one side, “Or through challenges and tropes, I guess, but nobody is hitting 100VP that way.”

Matt huffed in frustration, and flicked through the book some more. “Okay. Um. I noticed that in a few of these the master ends up getting some kind of female form?”

“Was that a question?” Scarlet asked, raising an eyebrow.

His posture went very stiff. When his voice came out it was thin and strained, but determined. “Could that happen to me, in this season?”

The eyebrow remained raised. The grin went slightly wider. “And you'd want that?”

“Yes,” he lied, then realised he was lying and corrected himself, “If I needed to. For Poppy, and maybe to open up some options with Sarah and Emma.”

“Come on, Matt, pay attention,” she admonished, still grinning, “It has to please you. You wouldn't be comfortable doing anything as a woman, so no points even if it happened. Which it won't.”

Matt growled, his face screwed up, his teeth bared. He made to hurl the book aside, only to stop himself at the last second. He paused, took a deep breath, and slowly set it down on the bedside table instead.

“So it's my fault again?” he muttered to himself, then looked up at the Host, “What are you even doing here?”

“Just a wakeup call,” Scarlet rolled over onto her side, propping her head up on one hand. Her yellow eyes sparkled with mischief. “You've got fifteen minutes before you're due for breakfast. Best get ready.”

“Fifteen minutes?” Matt looked down at himself, naked beneath the sheets and not even slightly ready for the day, then shook his head. “No, that's not enough time”

Scarlet stared. Smiled. “Fourteen and a half,” she said brightly.

“But I haven't showered, I haven't shaved,” he protested.

“Better get moving then,” the Host commented.

“I'm meant to be trying to attract them,” Matt complained, a little of last night's panic creeping into his voice, “I need to be at my best. They can't see me like this!”

“...Fourteen minutes,” Scarlet continued after a short pause, “Then if you're not already heading out the bedroom door, I'll teleport you into the baked beans in whatever state you're in by that point.”

The threat caught Matt full in the chest, and suddenly he was hurling himself towards the bathroom in a mad scramble. As he escaped the bed, the sheets shifted, throwing Scarlet off balance and sending her tumbling to the floor with a yelp of surprise.

“Hey, watch it!” the disgruntled Host called after the Master's retreating backside, getting no response. Scarlet rolled into a sitting position again, rubbing the elbow that had absorbed most of her impact with the ground, feeling the embers smoulder below the skin as the bruise healed before it could form. “Thirteen and a half!” she yelled over the noise of the shower starting.

The spray from the shower came out at the perfect temperature immediately, a wide spray of warm rain at just the right pressure to massage without bludgeoning, but Matt didn’t have time to enjoy it. He scrubbed his hair and body quickly but thoroughly with the familiar toiletries from his home, nearly slipped on the tiles as he launched himself out of the cubicle as soon as he had rinsed off, then paused in front of the mirror.

There was a day’s worth of stubble on Matt’s face that he regretted not having enough time to deal with, but what made him wince was the bags under his eyes. He had spent most of the night reading, desperately searching for answers until he had decided to rest his eyes for a second, and then opening them to find he was running late for breakfast. A wasted effort. Worse than wasted, in fact, because he had handicapped himself as the first round had only just begun. He did what he could in the time that he had, rapidly brushing his teeth and then checking his posture: spine straight, shoulders back, but his stance kept loose and his smile seeming effortless. Presenting a confidence that he badly needed today.

Back in the bedroom, Matt ignored Scarlet’s wolf whistle as he struggled into his clothes. A suit, for the structure it gave him. Plain white shirt, no tie and the top two buttons left open so the structure didn’t become too stiff. Medium-grey slacks and jacket, not as formal as black but not loud either. Brown belt, and the brown shoes with the broguing, to break the monochrome.

“How am I doing for time?” he asked, running a comb through his hair and spritzing himself with a sharp and fresh cologne.

“Five,” the Host said pleasantly, leaning against the wall, still smiling like the whole world was an inside joke.

Matt relaxed by an increment. He’d managed all of that quicker than he had expected.

“Four,” she continued, “Three...”

The comb clattered to the floor, the cologne bottle landed in the sock drawer, and then Matt was sprinting out the door. Scarlet pushed herself away from the wall, peered through the doorway to confirm she had successfully sent him to the corridor outside the buffet rather than into the suite, then allowed the smile to fall from her face. She wandered back over to the bed and rifled through the books, checking which seasons Matt had read, and how far into each of them he had managed.

The answer Matt had been looking for wasn’t in any of these seasons, though it was in more than a few of the others he hadn’t got to yet. The question was, would he even recognise it when he came across it? Possibly not, as long as he kept assuming he was part of the problem rather than the reason that the solution worked. Definitely not, until he did some self-reflection on what exactly would “please” him. The Contestants might even stumble across it by accident before he figured it out at this rate. Scarlet took her time assembling the books into a neat stack, then slowly meandered off to make her morning announcements.

---

Sarah was the first to arrive at the breakfast buffet. She’d gone for the shower as soon as she woke up, trying very hard to forget about April hiding her head under the covers on the other side of the window, then dressed and left the room to give her roommate some actual privacy. It was the least she could do, really, and had absolutely nothing to do with avoiding her intrusive curiosity about what exactly she might sneakily see through the shower glass if she had stayed in the room.

The positive side of getting ready in such a hurry was that it hadn’t given Sarah time to stress too much about her choice of clothes, though she would have chosen differently if she’d been paying more attention. She had reflexively picked out an outfit that offered the most possible coverage: a long-sleeved black top with a high neckline, and similar skinny jeans to yesterday. Unfortunately, she hadn’t considered how tight and stretchy the top was, or how thin the fabric, or that all of her bras had gone up in smoke. It fit her like a second skin. The shape of her nipples were visible if you squinted, even though the air was pleasantly warm, and it was taking considerable effort to ignore that fact.

The empty serving counters from last night had been filled with far more food than the number of people merited, but it looked and smelled amazing. Coffee, tea, fruit juices, fresh pastries, bread, butter, various jams, a selection of meats and cheeses. Then the hot food section had the Full English selection of sausages, bacon, hash browns, roasted tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, and even black pudding. At the far end, a goblin in a chef’s hat was eagerly waiting behind a stovetop with a pile of pans and a precarious stack of eggs. After a hesitant moment of wondering whether it would be more polite to wait for the other women competing for her husband, Sarah grabbed a plate and began to fill it with anything that caught her interest.

Max was the next to arrive, when Sarah was halfway down the hot buffet. She staggered in with bleary eyes, not even acknowledging Sarah’s presence as she poured herself a coffee, drank half of the scalding liquid immediately, then topped the mug back up to full and slumped into the nearest chair.

Chrissy appeared soon after, scowling and furtive at the same time. She grabbed a glass of orange juice and a sweet and sticky pastry, then secreted herself at the furthest corner to glare suspiciously out at the room, sitting low in her chair so that her exposed breasts were concealed below the edge of the table.

More Contestants arrived piecemeal over the next few minutes. April with a nervous wave, Eleanor with a strut and a raised nose, Grace with a cold expression and her fiery hair leading the way. Then came Emma. She surveyed the room, her eyes catching on Sarah sitting down with her meal. She hesitated. She approached, slowly at first but with gathering momentum, and stopped above and behind. Sarah didn’t acknowledge her presence, finding fascination in the goblin-fried eggs instead.

“I said it yesterday, but a lot was going on so I wanted to say it again,” Emma began, stiff with rehearsal but heavy with conviction, “I’m sorry, for how I acted back in school. No excuses. It doesn’t matter what I figured out about myself after that. It was wrong, and I shouldn’t have done any of that to you.”

“...and to Matt?” Sarah asked quietly, head down as she nudged a sausage around her plate with the tines of her fork.

Emma deflated with a low sigh, clenching and unclenching her fists. She could see Chrissy staring at her in her peripheral vision, but she forced herself to ignore her. “What I did to Matt? I already apologised to him so many times. It didn’t make anything better.”

“No, it didn’t,” Sarah stabbed down with the fork, hard, and lifted her angry eyes to glare at the tall blonde, “And it never will. You took advantage of him for years. You made my life miserable for almost as long. You don’t get to just say some words and then walk back into our lives.”

“I’d stay away if I could, but I don’t get that choice now,” she shrugged, defeated, “I’d take it all back if I could, but I can’t. I know I was awful to you both. All I can do is apologise again, say that I’m not the same person I was back then, and hope that we can find some way through this.”

“Not the same person?” Sarah scoffed, “You think you’ve changed? Are you treating her any better than you did Matt?”

Sarah nodded to one side, and Emma whipped her head around. Poppy had arrived, as quiet as always and even harder to notice now she was so much smaller. She stared up at her girlfriend with a blank expression from less than a pace away. The rest of the room all looked away, pretending that they hadn’t been watching the argument.

“Was it all a lie?” Poppy asked plainly, seeming more curious than upset.

Emma's explanations caught in her throat, and in that moment the doors swung open again as Matt burst in. He stopped just inside the threshold, looking frantically around the room, then took a breath, straightened his jacket, and put a relaxed smile back on his face.

“Morning everyone,” he said with a nod of greeting, then calmly walked over to the buffet, poured himself a glass of pineapple juice, and carried it over to where Sarah was sitting, “Everything okay over here?”

“It’s fine,” Sarah said, looking back down at her breakfast, “The conversation was over anyway.”

Matt glanced at Emma for confirmation, and she grimaced but nodded. She turned to find an empty seat further down the table, but when she reached out to take Poppy’s hand the small girl just looked at it blankly, following without taking hold. Matt watched them go, and sat down beside his wife, more heavily than he intended to. He joined her in staring silently at his breakfast, gripping the glass in both hands but making no move to drink from it.

“Are you alright?” Sarah asked, then got her first proper look at her husband’s face, taking in the uncharacteristic stubble and the deep black bags under his eyes, “What happened? You look exhausted!”

“Ah, just a rough night,” he glanced up and flashed her an easy smile that only lasted until he broke eye contact again. “I missed having you in bed with me,” he quietly admitted.

“Oh,” Sarah blinked. She didn’t quite believe him, about either thing, but she knew him well enough to tell that something was wrong beyond the lack of sleep. “Aren’t you going to eat something?”

“Not really hungry,” he shrugged.

Sarah’s own breakfast was already half eaten, and she pursed her lips while extracting the fork from the sausage she had stabbed in the heat of the moment. Laying down the cutlery, she pushed her chair back and stood up. “I’ll be right back,” she muttered, returning to the buffet.

The goblin chef watched Sarah approach with wide, green, glimmering eyes. The tiny green woman peered through the steam of a boiling pot as the contestant stood thinking, opening and closing her mouth as she worked out what to say.

“Could you make-” she began, only to be interrupted as a plate clattered onto the serving pass.

The goblin moved in a whirlwind, plating up a toasted english muffin, then topping with slices of smoked salmon, fishing a freshly poached egg out of the boiling water, then dousing the whole plate in a silky yellow sauce. A sprig of parsley was delicately placed on top, then the plate was gently nudged towards Sarah.

“How did you...?” she asked the goblin, her eyes wide.

The goblin just grinned, and tapped the side of her head.

“Right,” Sarah nodded, remembering the explanation from yesterday of the staff’s psychic powers, “Thank you.”

The goblin gave a deep bow at the thanks as Sarah carried the plate away, only slightly scorching the top of the chef’s hat on the stove. The dish was placed carefully in front of Matt, and Sarah took her seat beside him again. She resumed eating her breakfast without otherwise acknowledging she had done anything at all.

Matt blinked, sat up slightly, and finally let go of his deathgrip on the juice. He smiled, a genuine one this time - though Sarah was the only person in the world who knew him well enough to tell the difference. “Eggs royale,” he said with a quiet laugh, “You remembered.”

“Of course I remembered,” she teased, “It was half of your breakfasts for our entire honeymoon.”

“That hotel made a really good one,” he retorted, picking up his cutlery. He paused before digging in, knife and fork poised in mid air. “I love you, and thanks.”

“I love you too,” Sarah replied softly, feeling a little better about herself for the first time in a long time, though her improved mood didn’t last long as she continued reminiscing about the honeymoon. Matt had eggs royale for breakfast seven times out of fourteen mornings while they had been staying in the fancy Parisian hotel. They hadn’t had sex once.

“GOOOOOD MORNING EVERYONE!” came a voice far too loud for the size of the body it was coming from, as Scarlet exploded into the room with her arms spread wide.

Matt and Sarah looked up in surprise. Max coughed out a spray of coffee and April let out a squeak, her tail standing up straight and fluffing out. Eleanor and Grace watched warily. Chrissy tried to shrink down even further behind the table. Emma and Poppy paused the very fraught whispered discussion they were having to pay attention to the Host who was currently demanding her tithe.

“Welcome to your first proper day,” she continued with a grin, at a slightly more reasonable volume, “A couple of announcements. To begin with: some invites for our Master and his wife. The three of us are off to a wedding. You two are going to the bachelor and bachelorette parties as well.”

With a flourish of the quill and a burst of flame, three envelopes of thick white paper with blue and gold detailing appeared out of thin air and sailed into the confused couple’s hands. Matt was the first to open his, sliding out the decadently decorated invitation and quickly skimming the text.

“Who’s Andy?” he asked Scarlet while he was still reading, “Wait, it’s on the set of The HH? This is Andy Cooper?”

“Someone you know?” Sarah questioned, reading through her own copy, “...that’s a lot of brides.”

“Andy is in the same position as me, but a lot further on,” he awkwardly explained, “His season was on my bookshelf. I read a bit of it last night.”

Matt gingerly laid the invite down on the table, then tugged the second piece of paper out of his envelope. This one was crumpled, stained with coffee and something that might have been jam, and covered in doodles of swords, dice, and other pieces of geeky paraphernalia. His eyes caught briefly on the dragon in the top left. Was that personalised to him, or just a coincidence? Probably a coincidence.

“It’s another season?” Sarah eyed the second invite suspiciously, “You’re going on a Harem Hotel stag do?”

“I really don’t think it’s what you’re worried about,” Matt chuckled tiredly, and passed the invite across to his wife so she could read it herself, “I doubt the hen do is going to have strippers either, but feel free to enjoy yourself if it does.”

Sarah skimmed the bachelor party invite, her frown softening as salacious details failed to reveal themselves, then Matt’s words pierced the thinning (but not vanishing) cloud of worry and she checked her own second invite. She took in the floral and nautical decoration, wondered at the mysterious activity descriptions, and then swallowed nervously at the thought of spending a day surrounded by the kind of women who were apparently comfortable enough in themselves to marry a man with six other brides. She almost wished she was brave enough to decline the invitation, but she wasn’t.

“Why us?” Matt asked while she was still reading, “Has Andy read about us like I did about him? We’ve only been here about twelve hours, and most of that was overnight.”

“It’s been a few days for them, due to relative timestreams,” Scarlet corrected, “But no, I don’t think he knows you. You’re just making a cameo appearance to try and draw some of his readers over to us.”

“Then why aren't the rest of us invited?” Eleanor demanded haughtily.

“If you really want to spend all day on a sunny island testing the limits of your new transformation, then you're welcome to come along,” the Host raised an eyebrow, staring at Eleanor until the heiress's nerves broke and she looked away, “As for the rest of you...” she cast her eyes around the room, “Max and Emma might put dear wifey over there into bitch mode, which isn't the impression we want to give; Grace and April wouldn't do well in the crowds; and Chrissy?” she grinned at the bully as she attempted to look like she wasn't hiding, “They would eat you alive out there. Maybe it's worth bringing you along for that reason alone.”

Chrissy swallowed heavily, but didn't respond.

Max snorted a laugh, took another gulp of her coffee, then pointed at the one woman who hadn’t been mentioned. “What about her?”

All eyes turned to Poppy, who blinked slowly and turned to the Host.

“Poppy's invited too, if she's willing to work for it,” Scarlet explained, “5BP to do the photography, and I'll give you access to your camera for the rest of the show, as well as your computer for editing, plus an invite to the bachelorette party where you won’t have to take any pictures unless you want to.”

Poppy stared blankly for a moment as she thought through the offer, then nodded.

“Excellent,” the Host beamed and clapped her hands together, causing a third envelope to blaze into existence on the table in front of Poppy, “Now the second announcement is that there will be mandatory dates this week. On each Contestant's assigned night, you will have to spend at least half the day with him as well. Take advantage of the Hotel's amenities, commission a fanfic, or just spend the afternoon fucking like bunnies; whatever you like. The Hotel will keep other Contestants away, unless it's narratively convenient or you're in one of the common areas.”

“What if we don’t want to?” Chrissy grumbled, glaring at Matt, disgusted and distrusting.

“Then you’ll probably have a miserable time when you’re forced to do it anyway,” she smirked, “I’d suggest you try and come up with something you’d like to do together before it gets to your date. Maybe explore the castle a bit, and it might guide you to something that suits your story.”

“Exploring might be a good idea for our ‘date’ by itself, if you’re alright with that?” Matt muttered to his wife, his tired brain lurching into action with the beginnings of a plan. He’d started gathering information last night on Harem Hotel in general, but he needed to know more about this Storytelling Edition specifically. The set itself seemed like a good place to start.

“Huh, so that’s how obvious I need to get with my hints before you pick up on them,” Scarlet mused, suddenly much closer to Matt than he had realised. He startled, glared, then looked to his wife.

Sarah shrugged, then nodded. It didn’t matter what Matt wanted to do, she would follow. It was probably better that he had been the one to decide anyway, given that she had no idea where to even start.

Scarlet grinned with satisfaction, almost collided with a chair as she did a rapid about-turn, and sauntered her way back out of the buffet. “Well, enjoy your breakfast, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she paused in the doorway, “And by that, I mean don’t be boring. Toodles!” With a final wink, the Host slammed the door behind her and left them to their meal.

---

Leaning heavily against the other side of the door to the buffet, Scarlet sighed deeply and pulled out the final envelope, containing her own invitation. She’d already read it as soon as Cleo had delivered it in the morning, of course, but then she’d read it again before waking up Matt, then again again before making her announcements. Now she once more slipped the pair of pages out and scoured them for... she wasn’t sure what, exactly.

There was the non-interference waiver first. That made sense. Scarlet knew better than to interfere with someone else’s story, and Arabella probably knew what she was doing. Whatever happened would happen, and she wouldn’t ruin anyone’s plot pacing or character arcs if she could help it.

The part that really caught Scarlet’s attention was the invitation to the evening event. She traced a finger over the word ‘memories’ with her lips pressed into a thin line. She’d been invited to reminisce with people she had never met before, even though she knew their names and faces. An intimate, emotional gathering with people who weren’t really her friends. A farewell celebration, with someone who she was effectively meeting for the first time.

Then there was the note, addressed to Scarlet directly. Handwritten, with specific and personal details. Arabella remembered her. Arabella missed her. It shouldn’t have been possible, Scarlet’s past had been totally erased and had never even happened, but if anyone could be an exception to the effect then it was a being of myth and memory like Arabella.

The Host’s yellow eyes landed on the tiny heart drawn on the final line, and a wicked smile slowly spread across her face. She had absolutely no idea what to expect from this evening event, but she was excited to find out. It would make for a good story, if nothing else.