I'm your Hell, I'm your dream

Nick was surprised to hear that his attendance wouldn’t be required at Gina’s party tonight. He’d assumed that his presence at those was a matter of course. But Dakota had explained that, since it was a slumber party, there were, of course, “No boys allowed.”

Apparently, she was taking things very seriously. But as much as Nick was surprised, he wasn’t that disappointed. He could absolutely see where she was coming from.

…And frankly, it might be good, for him to spend some time away from the other girls, especially considering the situation in front of him.

“In our ROOM!?” Cinder roared, throwing a mannequin head against the wall. “Are you insane!? Perra cachonda-! How could you?! WHY would you do… that in here!?”

Ella hadn’t stood a chance. For a few moments there, she’d stood in the doorway to the Fashion Suite, brain overloaded by all the stimulus she was receiving at once. So many things flooded into her like a tidal wave that it took her a second to process it all.

But once she did, and fully understood what she’d just walked in on, she snapped like a twig and Cinder emerged to let her feelings on the subject be known.

Lucky for Rose, **** wasn’t permitted on Harem Hotel.

“Stop gawking like a bimbo!” Cinder screamed, storming forward with **** in her eyes. “Why here!? In our bedroom!?”

“Be-because… there’s a bed?” Rose’s cheeky response wasn’t going to win any points with her roommate, and her shaky, squeaky voice showed how much she knew that. She looked frantically at the other girl, sweating bullets as Cinder seethed at her, opening and closing her fists as Nick could see just how hard she was trying to control herself.

A passing thought he had was that he felt glad Cinder could control herself better. But he knew better than to say anything right now. Cinder didn’t want to hear it, and it would probably just make her even angrier given her animosity towards him. So even though he was just as much at fault for this as Rose, but-

…Wait. Neither of them were at fault here!

“Cinder! Hold on a sec!” Nick said, quickly rushing to Rose’s defense. “It isn’t Rose’s fault!”

“What?” Cinder snarled, turning to look at him for the first time. “Are you saying you **** yourself on her?” She looked aghast.

“What?! No, of course not!”

“I wish…”

“ROSE!”

“Sorry, right, not helpful right now,” Rose said, shutting up. Apparently copying Gina’s style led to an inadvertent overlap in their sexual fetishes.

…Or maybe she was just stirring the pot now that the heat was off her. With Rose you really couldn’t be sure.

Nick took a deep breath, trying to calm down, and hoping that if he calmed down, Cinder might calm down as well.

…Unlikely, but a guy could dream, right?

At least the enraged latina was hearing him out. She stood in the center of the room, burning a hole into him with her eyes, hands trembling like she wanted to throttle him but keeping herself restrained for now.

Nick’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat, trying to explain. “Rose has a transformation. It’s called Scenes from a Hat. It triggers randomly, whenever Dakota has the urge. And when it does… Rose just finds herself shoved into a sexual scenario that she has to execute. And we were right in the middle of one of them. That’s why we were doing it here, in your room. If it were up to me, I would have wanted to go somewhere else, where we could have more privacy, but…”

Nick wasn’t lying about that. The Fashion Suite kind of creeped him out. The thought of having sex in front of all those mannequins, it just made him feel all kinds of weird.

Cinder was still glaring. But at least now she didn’t look like she wanted to commit a double homicide, which was progress.

“I swear, I definitely wouldn’t have done anything if I knew you were going to walk in on it!” Rose said, nodding frantically. “It was the transformation!”

Nick fought back a sigh. Rose was trying to help, but acting like the problem was that they got caught…

Well, Rose is going to be Rose, no matter how she’s dressed.

Cinder was still seething. Her cheeks were red, and Nick thought he saw tears in her furious eyes. She balled up her hands into fists again, and both he and Rose could feel a scream coming on.

But it never did.

“So it… wasn’t your fault.” It sounded like saying that physically hurt Cinder to do. Every word sounded like it came with a mouthful of glass.

“No, it wasn’t, it was the transformation. But we’re still really sorry it happened anyway,” Nick said, taking a step closer, trying to soothe her.

It didn’t work. She recoiled from him, her face cringing with disgust.

“If you’re really so sorry… then why are your pants still down!?” Cinder roared.

…Whoops.

---

Well, Cinder had gotten an eyeful, no changing that. But it wasn’t like she and Nick hadn’t had uncomfortable sexual interactions like that in the past. Nick still felt just awful about it, though, and quickly excused himself. Rose wanted to come, but had stayed behind, to try and placate Cinder.

Nick had wanted to argue, but he knew better. As much as the idea of Rose trying to calm another girl down sounded like a horrible proposition, he was probably the only other person in the building who would make things even worse. So he pulled up his pants and clumsily scurried away to regroup.

What a mess. He had been trying to build bridges with the latina- with both sides of her- and yet, stuff like that just kept happening!

“How’s your day going, Nick? Having a good time, I hope?”

…Right. It wasn’t “just happening” it was because of the sneering woman standing in front of him.

“My day’s going great, Dakota,” Nick said sarcastically. “Thanks for that Scenes from a Hat scenario for Rose. That definitely helped my relationship with Cinder and Ella, and wasn’t at all like throwing a live grenade on a tank of gasoline.”

Dakota furrowed her brow into a scowl.

“Contrary to what you might believe, Nick, I am not responsible for every single thing that goes wrong on this island,” Dakota sniffed, crossing her arms over her chest.

That was a curious statement. Nick raised his eyebrow, and looked at her in surprise.

Seeing his reaction, Dakota’s scowl deepened. “What? What’s that face you’re making there?” She snapped.

Nick shrugged. “Just, I’m surprised that you would consider what just happened in there ‘something going wrong’ that’s all.”

Knowing Dakota, he would have expected her to grab a bucket of popcorn and watch the fireworks.

“…I set up a little sexy scene for you, since this is Gina’s night with you but you won’t be attending the party,” Dakota huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “And this is how you thank me?”

“So you didn’t arrange the whole thing to keep Rose and I together in there, so Ella could walk in on us?” Nick asked. He wasn’t sure if he could believe her or not. But against his better judgment, he really wanted to.

Dakota snorted.

“And how could I do that, when the time limit for Scenes from a Hat had already elapsed?” She pointed out. “By the time you got to the titjob, the two of you were on your own. No prompting from me.”

Now that she mentioned it, Rose had changed the “scenario” once or twice in there, to suit her own interests. So maybe it was their fault, and they did owe Cinder and Ella a bit of an apology for getting carried away.

On the other hand, it still wouldn’t have happened if Dakota hadn’t gotten the ball rolling in the first place. And once that happened, well… momentum like that is hard to stop.

On some level, Nick was aware that he his habit of taking responsibility for things that weren’t his fault was a bad one that had caused no end to the drama in his life, going all the way back to Dakota’s accident and his feelings of guilt over his involvement in that. But this was one time that he felt his own actions weren’t to blame.

“…Let’s just call it an unfortunate accident and move past it, okay?” He sighed, scratching his head. “Just because Rose and I were in control, don’t think that makes you blameless.”

“Blameless? I think I’m deserving of the credit,” Dakota replied without a tinge of remorse. Yes, things may have gone a little lopsided, but she hadn’t made Ella walk into that room. “At least you two hadn’t reached full-blown intercourse yet,” she pointed out.

“…Yeah. That’s some real silver lining here, you got me,” Nick said sarcastically, shaking his head. He cared about Dakota, in spite of everything she’d done. And he really tried to be on good terms with her whenever he could, but sometimes it was hard to get back to their old dynamic- especially when she showed such a fundamental disregard for other people. “Like that makes up for traumatizing the poor girl.”

Dakota rolled her eyes and snorted again. “Oh please, now you’re just being melodramatic,” she scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Nobody got traumatized. Have you ever considered the possibility that Ella- and Cinder- might have actually liked what they saw?”

“Not even a little.”

“Well… okay. But maybe you should open your mind a bit more, that’s all I’m saying,” Dakota said, shrugging. “It’s not like either side of that girl is some fresh-faced virgin with zero sexual experience, you definitely took care of that the other night.”

Nick recalled the strange encounter in the bathroom and the manic way the latina had gone after him. They’d been caught in such a frenzy of passionate emotions that in the heat of the moment he couldn’t even be sure if it had been Cinder or Ella by the end there.

He shivered and shook his head. “Look, if this was some way of trying to get Ella and I closer together-”

“Again, I didn’t machinate any of this,” Dakota interrupted him. She looked seriously at Nick, her golden eyes boring holes into his skull. “I didn’t.”

For the first time, Nick believed her without feeling like he was getting played.

“…Then okay,” he relented. “But still. In the future, nothing like that, okay? Not with those two.”

Dakota sulked at him. “No special privileges, Nick,” she huffed. “I’m not going to give her special treatment just because she’s a little moody and damaged. I’m a little moody and damaged, and you don’t see me getting any special consideration!”

“Then don’t arrange for situations like that with anybody!” Nick proposed. “Sounds like a simple solution.”

“Well now you’re just talking crazy,” Dakota scoffed, rolling her eyes.

Yeah, that was about what he expected. But it was worth a try.

“Look, Ella is complicated, you and I both know that,” Nick said, scratching his head. “She wants a genuine romance. And I’ve been trying to give that to her. But when all this sexual stuff gets **** on her, that just throws everything off, you know?”

Dakota shrugged. “It didn’t hurt your relationship with Mary,” she pointed out. “Or Kim, for that matter.”

Or any of the other girls. Dakota wasn’t wrong, both Mary and Kim had approached Nick with the intent of forming a genuine emotional bond with him, and in spite of all the sexual occurrences on the island, both relationships had been relatively successful up until this point.

But Ella…

“…It’s different with Ella,” he said lamely. “Because of Cinder.”

Dakota raised her eyebrow and shook her head. “Oh, Nick… it’s a good thing I’m here! Because believe me, that is absolutely not the kind of mindset you want to have pursuing that girl. Thinking you need to go easy on her, just because of her alternate personality.”

Nick flinched. He knew Dakota was right- Ella didn’t want to be treated with kid gloves just because Cinder could arise whenever she got too overstimulated. She wanted to be treated like anybody else. And if she had overheard what Nick had said to Dakota, it would have hurt.

But… Ella wasn’t like everybody else, even if she wanted to be treated that way. The fact was, there were things about her that required a gentler, more thoughtful hand, in order to keep from inadvertently setting off the bomb in her head and bringing Cinder out.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to her for Nick to think about her like that. But Nick wasn’t going to apologize for treating the women in his life differently depending on their needs. Gina needed a firm hand, Carly needed casualness, with no strings attached, and Rose needed to be pampered. All the women in Nick’s harem, from his wife Mary to Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had their own needs to accommodate for, which Nick tried to take into consideration when interacting with them. Treating Ella “like everybody else” may have sounded good on paper, and it may have been what Ella wanted, but was it what she needed?

Nick really wished he had an answer to that.

“When’s my date with her again?” He asked. Things had gotten so hectic that he’d completely forgotten the schedule.

Dakota was happy to remind him with a wave of her cane.

1. Carly

2. Dawn

3. Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin

4. Gina

5. Vivian

6. Rose

7. Dani

8. Kim

9. Cinder/Ella

10. Morgana

11. Sylvia

12. Amelia

“Your night with Cinder and Ella is on the ninth day,” she said with a smirk. “Quite a ways away. You’ve got plenty of time to prepare. In the meantime, Vivian’s date is tomorrow, and that should be quite a bit of fun.”

Nick frowned. While preparation time would be nice, he was also worried about upsetting her in the meantime. He had to work on building his relationship with her until then however he could, or else things would get very awkward.

Dakota’s expression softened when she saw the look on Nick’s face. “…You don’t need to worry too much about this,” she assured him. “Ella doesn’t hate you, and that means Cinder doesn’t hate you, either. Both sides of that girl are just having difficulty expressing herself to you. It’s going to take time, that’s why I put her near the end of the week this time around, so you would have more time to really get to see the different sides of her this time, so she can be more open and honest on her date with you.”

A playful gleam flashed in the host’s eyes. “And the more loosened up she gets by her night with you, the more you can do together,” she said with a purr.

Nick sighed. Of course that would be Dakota’s motivation for that.

He didn’t even want to think about why Sylvia and Amelia were eleventh and twelfth on that list, either. He had a sinking suspicion Dakota’s motivations were quite similar in that regard. And that notion sent a shiver down his spine.

“…Thank you for that,” he said, and the look on Dakota’s face when he did was amusing. It was a strange mixture of pleasure and surprise, because he’d caught her off-guard. Just as he’d intended to do.

“…Well…”

“I mean it,” Nick said, taking a step closer to her. “You didn’t have to tell me any of that, Dakota. You could have just let me keep floundering around in confusion. But in your own way, you were trying to help me with this, and I appreciate that. Really, I do.”

Dakota’s pale cheeks flushed, but the smug look of triumph on her face overshadowed that.

“Well it’s about time,” she said with a smirk. “Soon enough, you’ll come to realize that everything I’m doing here, Nick, has been to help you.”

She really believed that. And maybe, in some small way, she could even be right. But the way she was going about all this- the way Harem Hotel went about all this- it was wrong, and Nick doubted he would ever think differently about that.

But looking at the proud glee on her face, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. For once, they’d had an interaction that ended on a genuinely positive note. Saying anything else would just ruin that.

So he just gazed into her eyes, wondering all the while what he could do to have more positive conversations like this in the future. He spent so much time staring that Dakota actually started to look a little uncomfortable.

“…That’s enough of that,” she said finally, tapping her cane on the ground. “You’ve had quite a long day, Nick. Gina and Rose in the coat room, then Amelia, then Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin, then Rose again… and now, Cinder and Ella. I’m quite pleased that you’ve been so happily embracing your time with the other girls, but the day is almost over. There’s a slumber party to get to, after all, and unlike the ones from our childhood, this time it’s no boys allowed.”

Nick hadn’t realized just how late it was until now. He sighed and scratched his head. “Oh man… I see. Well… I guess I better get up to the Master’s Suite, then.”

“Oh, and by the way, your wife will be attending as well. And so will Holly. So if you want dinner, you’ll have to be preparing that yourself,” Dakota added with a cheeky smirk.

Nick sighed and rolled his eyes. He should have figured that, in hindsight. If I let Mary and Holly know that I’m not going to be there, one or both of them might decide to call it quits. But they should have a nice night of mingling with the other girls. So I guess I’ll just have to kill some time and avoid everyone for a while.

“Well, is there anyone who isn’t going?” Nick questioned.

“Your stepmother isn’t,” Dakota immediately informed him, almost like she’d been anticipating this question. “Oh, and I believe Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin has shown a lack of interest herself. So if you wanted, I suppose you could spend your evening in the company of both of them.”

Oh, gee. That sounded like a great idea. Nick was sure that after those two spent the whole morning locked up in the same room, the first thing they wanted to do now was spend more time together.