Your Troubles

You tapped your fingers rapidly on your desk, breathing out a rhythmless pattern through your pursed lips.

You were nervous. Which was a little absurd when you tried to look at things from a bird’s eye view. Everything that had been happening with April over the last month had been… astounding. Amazing. An absolute dream. It felt like nothing could go wrong, or mess things up. You’d won a stupid dating app contest to meet her, she’d somehow not only liked you as a person but actually found you attractive despite your weight issues. She got along with your friends and showed an obvious effort of wanting to do so. You got along with her friend, though the how of that had been a little odd.

You thought she was gorgeous, and you were officially boyfriend and girlfriend.

And you had sex. Super-duper stupendous sex. And not only that, but April even felt comfortable enough to not only go with a spur-of-the-moment threesome plan with her best friend, but also do it again.

That birds-eye-view was looking pretty fucking good.

And maybe that was what worried you the most. Things weren’t just good; they were… too good.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” you murmured to yourself.

The devil was always in the details.

“Pardon?” Hikaru asked from over in the kitchen. She’d already been home from her early morning shift when you got back from work and had made you go get changed and sit down to have time to yourself while she put together a snack for you. You'd noticed she was in much better spirits since she’d started at Paula’s coffee shop, having somewhere to go and a purpose to her days, but she still insisted that she would take care of the cooking whenever you were both home.

“Nothing,” you called back. “Just muttering to myself.”

“About what?” she asked.

“Just… stuff,” you sighed.

“Stuff at work?”

“No…”

“Stuff with April,” Hikaru guessed, glancing up at you.

You might have been able to lie if she hadn’t been looking at you, though it would have been a lie by omission by grunting wordlessly or something. As it was, she saw the look on your face.

“Did something happen?” she asked. “Did she cancel on you tonight?”

“No, no,” you said, shaking your head. “Nothing’s happened. I’m still meeting her for dinner.”

“Then… is it her parents?”

“No,” you said. “It’s nothing like that.”

She sighed, coming out of the kitchen carrying a plate and a big glass of water. She was dressed in sweatpants that hung a little low on her hips and a thin, long-sleeved shirt with an anime print for a show you didn’t immediately recognise. For a moment, as she was coming over, you almost choked on your own tongue thinking about how she’d been doing her makeup since she’d started ‘trying something new.’ She’d admitted that Zara had encouraged her and shown her some stuff. You were happy for her. The issue was that it was like looking at a completely different Hikaru and you noticed things. Things like how she had a rather… large chest on her thin frame. Or how there was a gap of about three inches of bare skin between her sweatpants and her shirt. And her shirt hugged her torso tightly…

You cleared your throat, not liking where those thoughts were going. You’d been having them way more often now, about too many people who were close to you.

“Well, it’s something,” Hikaru said, setting down the plate to show she’d made you a small almond butter sandwich out of the **** low carb bread that Hannah had approved for your diet, and she’d cut off the crusts and sliced the sandwich in an X like her mom used to do for the two of you when you were kids. “Will you please just tell me? You don’t really...”

“I don’t what?” you asked, suddenly concerned at the look on her face.

She let out a little huff of breath. “You don’t really talk to me like you used to.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I’m not trying to hide anything.”

“No, I know,” she said. “But you used to talk my ear off, Ollie. About everything. And I liked that. I liked hearing about everything going on with you, and what you were watching, or what you’d read that day in nerdy news. I liked hearing about your games, or what you were planning for your next one, or that you were considering buying a new model kit. And it’s not like you’re not telling me that stuff or anything, but you’re not excited to tell me anymore because you’re excited to talk to April about it. And I- I get that, and it makes sense. But if something is really bothering you, I just want to be able to listen and help you. Please.”

You swallowed hard. Especially at seeing the hurt in her eyes.

“Hiki,” you murmured, standing up and trying to hug her, but she put a hand up and kept you back a little bit.

“I don’t want a- Well, I do want a hug, but that’s not going to help with this, Ollie,” she said. “I need you to let me in. What’s wrong?”

You let out a heavy sigh, feeling your shoulders drop. “I’m worried that things are too good. Too easy. I’m waiting for the thing that’s going to make this feel more like real life instead of a dream.”

Hikaru frowned at that, blinking a few times and then stepping back and sitting on the arm of the couch. “You’re worried that it’s going too well?” she asked.

“Well, I mean… think about it,” you said. “Everything you and the girls ‘talked about’ last weekend? It’s kind of ridiculous, right?”

Hikaru blushed, knowing he was at least in part referring to the fact that she, Hannah and Margot knew about the threesomes. “OK, that’s fair,” she said. “It is a little… fast.”

“Just fast?” you asked. “I mean, Hiki, it’s kind of wild even if it was five years down the road from now.”

“Is it?” she asked, catching you up.

“What… do you mean?” you asked.

“Well, how ‘wild’ is it, really?” she asked, frowning a little as she spoke slowly, picking her words carefully. “Think about it. Sure, it would have been super crazy like, I dunno, twenty or thirty years ago, right? Except how wild would it have been, really? There were swingers back then, and people cheating on each other, and all sorts of… I dunno. Sex stuff. People just didn’t talk about it. But it’s been getting more popular in media all over the world, so it’s more… acceptable to talk about now? That doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening before. Polyamory is a thing people know about now, and maybe people still think it’s kinda weird but it’s not… I dunno.”

You were blushing. Hard. So was she. “Still,” you said, not sure where you were going.

“Like, look at popular fiction,” Hikaru said. “Love triangles have always been popular because of the tension. Twilight, Team Jacob and Team Robert.”

“Team Edward,” I corrected her. “Robert was the actor.”

“Right,” she shook her head, smiling a little. “Still. Fanfiction stuff was wild for that, right? Like, people wanting kinky stuff to happen, or the girl to be with both of them, or the two guys to get together. And that’s how 50 Shades got big - it was Twilight fanfiction, and it’s not like that made people like kinky stuff, it just gave them a way to like it that was palatable or socially OK. And, like, do you know how popular reverse-harem fiction is in Japan? It’s crazy.”

“Wait, what?” you asked. “‘Reverse-harem?’”

“It’s when there’s one girl protagonist and a bunch of guys who want to be with her,” Hiki said. “And depending on the story, either she somehow never needs to pick, or some of them decide they are OK all being with her, or… yeah. They figure it out.”

“But… wouldn’t that just be a harem?” you asked.

Hikaru shrugged. “I guess that’s just the same thing, but one guy and multiple girls? My friends back in Japan don’t read that, but I bet it’s a thing, too.”

“OK, but that’s fiction,” you said, rubbing your forehead because you felt like it and your cheeks were going to burst into flame, having this conversation with her. “And April’s not- Having a threesome with Zara wasn’t some sort of relationship thing. It was sex. The point is I’m worried that nothing feels… hard. Nothing is going wrong. I've never been in a relationship before, but I feel like we should disagree about something, shouldn’t we? I feel like Karma is going to come flying out of nowhere and slap me so hard I lose a tooth.”

Now Hikaru let out a hard breath, frowning as she stood up and crossed her arms over her chest. “Have you considered that maybe April is part of Karma paying you back for how good a person you are, Oliver?” she demanded. “That maybe you’ve been such a good friend, such a good person, for so long that you deserve to have things go really well for you?”

“I… I don’t know,” you admitted. “I don’t feel like I’ve been that ‘good.’”

She let out another hard breath, almost a scoff, and stood up and crossed to you, bending down and wrapping her arms around your shoulders as she hugged you tightly.

“I love you, you big idiot,” she murmured. “Just let us love you, and love yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” you said, not sure what to say. “I love you too.”

She sniffed, squeezing you a little tighter, and then let go and stood up. You weren’t sure why she was getting so emotional, but she had to wipe her eyes. “Eat your snack,” she told you, and headed towards her room.

“Thank you,” you called after her, a little unsure of what all that had been.

And for all that she’d tried to reassure you, you were still nervous about your date with April. You had a lot to talk out with your girlfriend.

‘So I may have planted some seeds,’ Hikaru texted Margot as she sat on the edge of her bed.

She still couldn’t believe she’d managed not to say everything she had without chewing her own tongue out of embarrassment.

‘???’ Margot sent back.

Hikaru bit her lower lip. Bringing up reverse-harem and harem fiction had been tactical. She wasn’t supposed to do it yet, but she’d realised she had an opportunity and she took it.

Because if she and Margot got their way, Ollie would be the protagonist in a harem relationship. It would just be real life and not some Isekai or something.

‘He was feeling off,’ she texted Margot, who she knew would understand who ‘He’ was immediately. ‘About stuff. And I kind of saw a place to mention polyamory. And harems.’

‘Did he freak out???’

Hikaru sighed. ‘A little but not in a bad way. I don’t think he suspects anything though.’

‘Good job, girl! Now we just need to figure out how to bring it up with April.’

Hikaru put her phone down and sighed again, licking her lips and bouncing her foot. That was crazy. She still couldn’t believe she’d talked to Ollie about… swingers, and threesomes, and harems.

She swallowed, chewing a little on the inside of her cheek, and then scooted herself up more to the middle of her bed and slipped a hand inside her sweatpants, touching herself lightly. What if Ollie had responded more… ‘wildly?’ What if he’d had the realisation that this would all be a good thing, and he’d stood up and come to her and kissed her, his hands roaming…

Breakthebar erotica is powered by Patreon, where early chapters are released ahead for all of my series. Unexepected Appreciation is a Commissioned Work. PM if interested in helping fund the series, or if you are looking to commission a story of your own!