I remember why I know this place

Once they finally made it back to the Proximity Palace, Kim felt like she could breathe easy again. Still, she felt nervous.

Could anyone blame her? Right in front of her was a construct meant to fulfill her deepest fantasies. Sure, it wasn’t to the extent that Dream Alley granted her, but it was still something she couldn’t help but be fascinated with.

And it was also where she’d be spending the rest of the night with Nick, subjecting her body to his touch, and letting him do with her as he pleased… a prospect that was exciting, intriguing… and nerve-wracking.

Even with her newly-enhanced physique, Kim was not entirely confident in her ability to withstand what was coming. In fact, you could even say she was very, very nervous about what awaited her.

Something that Nick could pick up on, much to her chagrin.

“Kim, are you sure about this?” He asked her, placing his hand on her shoulder. “I mean… this is really major. You don’t have to go through with it.”

Normally Kim might have made some quip about him being too gentle and tender, and too afraid to upset her. But she knew that wasn’t what he was doing. Nick was well aware this was new territory for her; he had done stuff like this plenty of times with Gina, she was pretty sure, so he wasn’t getting cold feet or anything.

He was being considerate. He knew she was getting into something that she’d never done before, and wanted her to make it clear, again, that this was what she wanted.

And if she said no? If she backed out? Then it would be fine. Dakota would probably mock her, but did Kim care what Dakota thought of her? Absolutely fucking not.

“…I would be lying if I said I was ready for this,” she admitted, turning to face him with a sheepish smile on her lips. “To tell you the truth, I’m really fucking nervous. I mean… I’ve never done anything like this before, you know? Spankings and stuff. It’s absolutely, completely out of my comfort zone. To, like, an **** degree.”

Nick nodded, understanding where she was coming from completely. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re-”

“Like I’m being pressured into it, right, yeah, you’re an epiphany too late on that one, I already thought about that,” Kim interrupted, holding up her hand to stop him. “I don’t feel that way. Just want to get that out there.”

She shook her head. “No… it’s not pressure. Not by you, definitely not by Dakota… but maybe by me, a little bit.”

Nick raised his eyebrow, surprised. “What, because you took the bounty?”

Kim shook her head. “It’s all that stuff we were talking about before,” she explained. “You know, how I’ve always been hesitant to go after what I really want, to… indulge myself, I guess is the term, right?”

She looked anxiously at him. “I don’t want to be like that… so maybe I’m trying to **** it too hard? Maybe? Trying too hard to go the other way with it, to prove that I can ‘handle it’ and can do anything? You know?”

Nick frowned. “So you are forcing yourself, then?”

Kim sighed and scratched her head. “No, I’m not… I mean… no, it’s just… well… okay, so, like… …Agh, I can’t explain it any better!” She groaned, slumping over in defeat. “I don’t know. That’s the issue. Is this something I want to do? No fucking clue. I just kinda ended up stuck with it. I know I don’t not want to do it, or else I wouldn’t, but… I’m nervous. You know?”

No, he really didn’t. “Well Kim, we both know I don’t want you to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with, right?”

Kim nodded. “Yeah, because you’re a great guy like that, Nick. Believe me, I know that perfectly well.”

Nick smiled. That was nice to hear. “Well, good then,” he said, nodding. “Because I like seeing you enjoy yourself. So if you don’t think this is something you’d enjoy, then let’s not do it.”

Kim’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yeah. Look, I wasn’t all that comfortable with doing stuff like this either, my first time,” he pointed out. “When Gina first proposed it, I was definitely hesitant. Because I cared about her and didn’t want to hurt her. But it was also what she wanted, and I wanted to make her happy. So I was willing to give it a try. Because even though the idea of spanking her like that made me nervous, I wanted… I wanted to do something for her, that would make her happy.”

Kim frowned. “Well, it’s different for me,” she pointed out. “I’m not doing this to make you happy. I’m doing it for me.”

“Yeah, right, I know,” Nick said, shaking his head. “That’s not… that’s not what I meant.”

Kim raised her eyebrow. “Then what?”

“My point was… if I was really uncomfortable about it? Like, I didn’t think I could handle it? I wouldn’t have done it. Even if Gina really wanted me to. My point I guess is that there’s only so far you can go with yourself. Doing things that make you feel bad… don’t do them. Whether it’s for your own sake, or someone else’s, you shouldn’t do something that makes you feel uncomfortable and awful inside, something that makes you question the kind of person you are.”

Kim could sort of see what Nick was saying. “So you mean… there’s a limit,” she murmured, turning and looking at the dilapidated Proximity Palace.

“When it comes to dipping your toe into something new? Absolutely,” Nick confirmed. “And yeah, there are girls like Carly who will try almost everything at least once; she’s got an amazingly open mind. I wish I could be like her sometimes. And it’s not that I’m close-minded, but-”

“But you’ve got stuff that you’re comfortable with, and stuff you’re not comfortable with,” Kim finished for him, nodding knowingly. “Yeah… yeah, I think I get it.”

Nick sighed in relief. “You do? That’s good…”

“Yeah… me, I mean… look at me.” Kim waved at herself and shrugged. “I’ve done so many jobs that were absolutely miserable, I guess I kind of wore down my sense of ‘I don’t have to do this if I don’t want to’ until it was basically nonexistent. And even I know that’s really fucking bad.”

She sighed and shook her head.

“But you know what?” She shrugged. “I don’t really care. I need to figure it out for myself. Is this something I can be comfortable with? Comfortable enough to go into it with an open mind, and see if I like it? Or is it something I’m not willing to take a chance on?”

Many people liked to repeat the phrase “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it” and that was definitely true for a lot of things.

But it wasn’t true for everything. “Don’t knock suicide ‘til you try it”, “Don’t knock heroin addiction ‘til you try it”, “Don’t knock nuclear annihilation ‘til you try it”.

There were plenty of things that you shouldn’t just blindly do because you “might” like them.

Was this one of those things for Kim?

That was a question only she could answer, really.

Kim closed her eyes and thought long and hard on just what she was comfortable with doing, and whether or not her discomfort with doing THIS thing in particular was too much just on the possibility that she might actually like it.

“…This isn’t too much for me,” she finally decided. “I can handle this. Or at least… any concerns I have, they aren’t big enough to drown out the rest of what I’m feeling.”

“And what are you feeling?” Nick asked, knowing how stubborn Kim could be and hoping this wasn’t more of that.

Kim gave him a lopsided smile. “I’m feeling… like maybe it never hurts to reject something out of hand, just because it might be too much. And yeah, getting 50 spanks is a lot, especially for a first-timer. But if I’m done after 50, well, we can just stop.”

She shrugged. “And even if I can’t make it to 50… my 100% Completion transformation isn’t some suicide pact. It’s annoying to resist it, sure, but I can do it. If getting spanked is so bad that the discomfort from my transformation seems pleasant in comparison, doesn’t that say something too?” She pointed out.

Nick could understand her logic. Though if it were up to him, Kim wouldn’t have to do anything she was uncomfortable with at all. But he wasn’t going to make her choices for her. Kim had been having choices made for her for her entire life. Now that she had the freedom to do what she wanted, he would respect what she chose to do, even if she was nervous about it.

Because he cared about Kim and wanted what was best for her.

“Okay then,” he said with a nod and a smile. “If you’re willing to try, I’ll try to make it as comfortable for you as possible!”

It was really great to hear him say that. Kim relaxed into her smile and nodded. “Good. Then with that in mind…”

She turned and looked at the Proximity Palace again.

“…Maybe we should head into the magic shapeshifting house that can be as comfortable as we want it to be, instead of continuing the difficult conversation out here in the wilderness?” She joked.

Nick’s laugh blew away all the remaining tension. “Well, when you put it like that, maybe you’ve got a point,” he agreed. This conversation really could have waited until they were inside and relaxing instead of out here.

The two entered the building and found… a shack.

“…So what now?” Kim looked around, frowning. She had a sinking feeling that Dakota might be punking her.

“It’s like Dream Alley,” Nick reminded her. “Because we think it looks like a shack, it looks like a shack. But if we put our minds to it…”

The first thing that popped into Nick’s head as being the opposite of the rundown cabin they were standing in was the Master’s Suite. In an instant the rotted wooden boards and faded wallpaper transformed into the opulent golden walls and plush carpet of the ostentatious hotel penthouse, a drastic enough transformation it almost knocked Kim over as the walls expanded outwards and the entire structure of the building changed.

“…Well, it’s different now,” she said, straightening up and looking around. She had a mild look of disapproval on her face. “Still… is this really what you’re going for here, Nick?”

He couldn’t agree more. “Sorry, I was just thinking about making it look different,” Nick replied, scratching his neck sheepishly. “But you’re right, I don’t want to stay in a place like this anyway.” He was about to change the appearance of the room into something else, when Kim took over.

“My prize,” she reminded him as the walls started to shift. “So I should get a say in what it looks like, don’t you think?”

Nick held up his hands and stepped aside. “Be my guest,” he agreed as the room blurred around them. He noted the walls shrinking, but not excessively so. As the gold drained away and was replaced with warm browns and dark greens, Nick actually found the place looking rather cozy.

When Kim was finished with her work, Nick wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at. It seemed so normal. Like the kind of living room you might find in a house from some old sitcom set in the suburbs, with a white picket fence and a backyard.

Pausing for a moment, Nick peaked out the window. Yup, his instincts were right. White picket fence, backyard. Of course, the rest of the neighborhood still consisted of the wilderness of the island, but here in the boundaries of the Proximity Palace he found himself in a charming two-story suburban dream house.

“So?” Kim looked at him only slightly expectantly. “What do you think? Do you like it?”

“It’s nice,” Nick said, nodding. “It’s so quaint and cozy. Where’d you dream this up, Kim?” He considered the possibility that this might be her house back home. But before he opened his mouth and made a fool of himself, he remembered the kind of living situation that Kim had escaped from.

She gave him a sheepish look and blushed.

“Promise not to laugh?” She urged him.

“Of course I won’t laugh,” Nick assured her.

She sighed in relief. “Okay, well… it’s like this, see…” Kim bit her lip. “Growing up, I never really got to live in, like, a house. Like a house house. It was all just apartments, and shitty ones at that. We had bars on our windows, Nick. Bars. Except for that one time when we lived over a bowling alley, and let me tell you- yikes.”

Yeah, Nick wasn’t sure what part of this story he was supposed to be laughing at. Cry, maybe, but did Kim really expect him to laugh at her misfortune?

She sighed and shook her head. “Look, the point is… I always wanted to live in a house when I grew up,” she admitted. “When I was a kid, I would always ask my mom why so many people got to live in houses, and when would we get to live in a house? …I was really an idiot back then.”

The fact that she could smile about it now didn’t make Nick feel any better. In fact, he only felt worse for Kim, that she had become so used to her crappy living situation that she could make jokes about it at her own expense.

“Kim…”

“No, it’s fine, I got over it,” Kim said, waving her hands. “…Well, not really. I mean, hardly anybody can afford a house these days, so it’s not just me, right?”

Again, Nick was waiting for the “funny” part. Then again, Kim did have a pretty twisted sense of humor sometimes.

“…So anyway, I would always look at magazines, you know? Back when I worked at gas stations and supermarkets, they always had these magazine racks, and there’d be these articles about houses and remodels and stuff… and I could just pass the time staring at them, imagining the kind of house I’d like to live in when I could afford it.”

Kim looked wistfully around the room.

“…So this is it,” she said. “My dream house… I guess. Kinda. It doesn’t have the indoor swimming pool with a diving board from the second story and the staircase doesn’t double as a slide, and no indoor rollercoaster, but hey, I’m not a little kid anymore so I had to make some sacrifices for the sake of realism.”

Kim laughed again, and that gave Nick a flash of inspiration.

“Well, technically, you don’t,” he pointed out. “This place can be whatever you want it to be, just like Dream Alley, remember?”

He concentrated, and suddenly the room expanded lightly. The wall pushed out, and as it retreated the space that opened up in the floor beneath it filled in with water. In a couple seconds, Nick had added a pool feature to Kim’s design plans.

Kim’s jaw dropped in surprise. “Nick!?”

“There, see?” Nick turned to her with a smile. “Simple as that. Just had to think about it, and we could have it. Now, the diving board might be a little trickier, but…”

“You dummy.” Kim’s eyes watered and she lightly socked him in the shoulder. “You don’t understand at all.”

“What do you mean?” Nick asked, worried that he’d upset her somehow.

Kim sighed. She looked up at him, then at the pool, then back at him, and shook her head, biting her lip slightly.

It looked like she wanted to say something, but she couldn’t bring herself to spit it out for whatever reason.

“Whatever you want to say, Kim, say it,” Nick urged her. It wasn’t just about helping Kim do the things she wanted and get the things she wanted, he also wanted her to be able to say what she wanted out loud.

That wasn’t usually a problem… but right now…

“That’s all just kid stuff,” she said finally. “Like having a racecar track in the basement. I can’t really do those things with a real house.”

“But that’s just it,” Nick said, shaking his head. “This isn’t a real house, so-”

“But I want it to be, that’s the thing,” Kim cut him off sharply.

The look of determination in her eyes gave him pause. She relaxed her gaze a few seconds later, but Nick wouldn’t forget that intensity anytime soon.

“I don’t just want some wild fantasy of a dream that I can’t ever get,” Kim said, waving her hand and dismissing the pool. “Would it be great to have a pool right next to the couch? Yeah, I’d love it. But that’s a kid’s dream, not reality. Humidity would ruin everything.”

She turned to him again, her expression softer now.

“I want to build this house someday,” she said quietly. “And that means I don’t want to fill the Proximity Palace with childish impossibilities. I want something real. Something I can really imagine myself having. Because that… that’s what I want.”

Nick understood her completely. He’d been focusing on the crazy things that were possible with this place, but Kim was already thinking ahead. In her mind, she had already picked out a contractor and laid the foundation.

This was Kim’s dream house. In a very real, tangible sense. The house of her dreams, that she wanted to make a reality.

She’d made compromises, and accepted reality. But she also refused to give up on attaining a house like this someday.

And knowing Kim? Nick wouldn’t bet against her.

“…If this is the kind of house you want, then I’ll support it,” Nick agreed. “So why don’t you show me around? Since you’ve got it set up so perfectly I mean.”

Kim beamed at him and nodded. “I thought you’d never ask. …Just because there’s no pool in the living room, though, doesn’t mean I was fastidious! I have a few… outrageous things, here and there. If you look carefully enough.”

Nick smiled. “Well, I’d love the guided tour,” he said, letting her take the lead and show him every last nook and cranny of the house that she had been designing in her head ever since she was a little girl thumbing through magazines.

And of course, she started with the kitchen, all prepped up and ready to make sushi.

After all, she had promised him, hadn’t she? The night was young and there was still so much she wanted to do now that they were finally alone together!