#geppetto complex

I can’t see shit through these glasses, but I had to do it once I realized I had some purple hair dye that would make me look like @evayoblog’s OC Maya Widmore.

“I can take off my tie now, right?” Cain asks, already loosening the knot.

“That depends,” Jazz replies, taking the tie in her fingers. “Is this dry clean only?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Then yeah, better take it off. Jacket, too, if it’s the same deal.” But she rubs the smooth silk, lifting it before letting it drop limp against Cain’s chest.

He smiles and holds his tongue, lest he spoil whatever surprise she’s got cooked up for his birthday by suggesting he lose all the clothes. With dinner being rather lowkey, why did she insist on a suit anyway?

His ears burn with the memory of her answer: Because I like it when you look smart, Captain.

Jazz guides him to the coffee table, jutting out at a weird perpendicular from the couch instead of its usual parallel setup. The only things sitting on the normally cluttered piece, often spilling out to the couch cushions themselves, were a shot glass and a square, amber bottle of tequila. She gently presses down on his shoulders, urging him to sit. Once there, she instinctively gives him a little neck rub.

“Now you just wait and listen,” she instructs, giving him a peck on the temple. “And help yourself to a shot or two.”

Cain fiddles with the bottle, paying little mind to the loud, robotic voice announcing, “Power On. Ready To Pair.” Whatever mood music Jazz has planned for whatever this is, he hopes she put it on an actual mp3 player and not her phone. Hearing that voice once while setting up is one thing, but the speaker randomly announcing, “Call Rejected,” when things are getting hot and heavy is another entirely.

One shot down and he realizes Jazz is no longer in the room, waiting behind her bedroom door. The couch creaks a little when he shifts weight to get up, but the dulcet tones of a guitar coming from the speaker begs him stay. He’s heard this song somewhere before. But while he takes the time to figure it out, the door slips open, wider and wider.

Jazz stands in the frame, clad in black lingerie and delicate chain body jewelry. A comically plush pink snake sits draped over her shoulders and arms, googly eyes hidden behind a sewn on pair of shades declaring the snake, “Mr. Cool.” Her smirk teeters out of seductive and into her sticking her tongue out between her teeth.

Thank god Cain didn’t have to learn the burn of tequila through the nose, snorting into his hand and bent in half laughing. But as the laughter dies down and Tito y Tarantula’s haunted heat crescendos, his eyes catch the sway of Jazz’s hips and the arch of her back. How can something be so funny and so hot at the same time?

Jazz floats in ballerina-like step over the coffee table and shakes the snake’s head towards Cain. “Sorry, but I couldn’t get a real snake.”

“That’s okay,” Cain says between snickers.

She takes the snake off and drapes it around his neck. Now unoccupied, she slides her hands down her belly and thighs. She swings her high ponytail around a bit before tangling a hand up there and setting her hair free, a curtain between them slowly parting as she leans back, re-revealing skin and lingerie and Jazz. She crouches down a moment, burning eyes locked with Cain’s, and grabs the bottle of tequila.

Cain watches her lift her leg, but he doesn’t grasp what she wants him to do until he feels her toes on his lips. He parts them, hypnotized by the cascade of tequila she pours down her leg and to his waiting mouth.

“Call Rejected.”

“Are you kidding me?!” Jazz yells, heedlessly pouring on. “I could have sworn I turned all notifications off!”