and i said "oh cool" like an idiot, and then she went to bed and i sat on the couch for two hours.

i'm not upset with her. i want to be really clear about that. i'm just— i keep thinking, what if i've been doing it wrong this whole time and she was just too nice to say anything? what if what i'm giving her isn't enough? i really love her and the idea of her leaving because i'm somehow deficient in this area is genuinely making me spiral.

anyway. any advice would be appreciated. please be normal about it.

[1.2k comments]

.-.-.-.

posted by u/keyskingdom_dev

UPDATE: i took the test. she took the test. i need to sit down.

okay. i read all your comments. you guys are insane but also somehow helpful, which i wasn't expecting.

someone told me to take a BDSM test. several people actually. i did it. i answered every question as honestly as i could, including the ones that made me feel like i needed to close my laptop and go for a walk.

your predictions were right. vanilla. i'm a vanilla. i had to google what that meant and then felt embarrassed that i had to google what that meant. and what i’ve learned… is that i’m nowhere near freak city.

i showed my girlfriend expecting her to laugh at me and she didn't. she got this really soft look on her face and said she was glad i was "exploring my sexuality." which is a sentence that short-circuited my brain a little. then she took her phone out and showed me her own results and

okay.

i feel embarrassed that we've been together almost a year and i never once asked her about this stuff. like genuinely embarrassed. i'm a developer. i build entire open-world systems based on user experience and i didn't think to ask the person i love what she actually wants.

i don't know where to start. i don't think i can have sex with her until i figure something out. which she's noticed, i think. she keeps looking at me like she's trying to solve me and i keep asking her if she wants takeout.

send help.

[3.4k comments]

.-.-.-.

posted by u/keyskingdom_dev

SECOND UPDATE: three knives are on their way to my apartment and i need safety tips

hi. it's me again. i had another conversation with her.

she gave me a list. an actual list. which, honestly, very her. i love her. she color-coded it. i don't want to know what the colors mean.

bondage— okay. i can figure that out. 

roleplay— fine, actually. i'm literally a developer for an open-world RPG. i do roleplay adjacent things for a living. this is the one area where i feel mildly competent.

knife play.

she put knife play on the list.

i laughed. like actually laughed out loud and she just looked at me very patiently while i got it out of my system. then she went to bed and i spent the next four hours going down a research rabbit hole that i'm not sure i'll ever fully surface from.

here is what i know: i'm not scared of it anymore. i'm actually— i don't know. i'm not going to say anything on a public forum.

here is also what i know: i have three knives arriving thursday and i need someone to tell me how to not accidentally kill my girlfriend. i love her quite a lot and i would like to keep her alive :c

okay that's all. safety tips please.

[6.1k comments] [🔒 post locked by moderators]

.-.-.-.

The dinner party is at eight o'clock, and you've been ready since seven fifteen.

Not because you're anxious— or not only because you're anxious— but because you made the mistake of watching Keys get dressed, and after that, sitting still felt like the only thing keeping you from doing something that would make both of you late.

He's in navy. A suit you didn't know he owned until he pulled it from the back of the closet last week, still in the dry-cleaning bag, and held it up with an expression that suggested he'd forgotten he bought it. The jacket sits across his shoulders like it was made for them— because it was, tailored somewhere along the line by a version of Keys who clearly had a fancier social calendar than the one you know, the one who shows up to your movie nights in quirky tees and mismatched socks and somehow still makes your chest ache a little.

His brown hair is swept back. Mostly. A few strands have already given up and curled back against his forehead, the same ones that always do, the ones you've pushed back absently a hundred times while he's reading over your shoulder or half-asleep against you on the couch. His glasses catch the light when he turns his head. His tie is navy too, knotted a little tighter than it needs to be, and you had to actively stop yourself from reaching up to loosen it.

He holds the door for you. His hand finds your back the second you step through it, palm flat against skin that the dress leaves bare, and it stays there the entire ride up the elevator to the penthouse.

It's been there all night.

That's what's making this hard.

The past month has been a quiet kind of distance— not cold, never unkind, just absent in a way you felt before you could name it. You'd change in front of him and he'd look at his phone. You'd find him at two in the morning in the blue light of his office, hands clasped in front of his mouth, staring at his screen like he was trying to solve something it kept refusing to give him. You told yourself it was the game. The pitch. The investors. Keys is a perfectionist in the way that means he doesn't sleep right before a deadline, and Axel Voss's money could fund two more years of development, so of course he was wound tight.

You told yourself you hadn't broken anything.

But now his hand is on your back, warm and large and present, thumb tracing slow absent circles against your spine like he doesn't know he's doing it— or like he does and doesn't want to stop— and you're standing in a penthouse in a plum satin dress trying to follow a conversation about projected market growth while every nerve ending in your back reports exclusively to that thumb.

He talks easily with the investors. That surprises people sometimes, that he can do this— Keys in a room full of money, fluid and unhurried, making Axel Voss laugh with something quiet and dry that you only half catch. His hand never leaves your back. When you drift to the edge of a conversation, his fingertips curl slightly, possessively, pulling you back in without interrupting his own sentence.

When they move to the dinner table, he pulls out your chair.

You sit. His hand trails away slowly, fingers catching on the halter strings at your neck on his way to his own seat, one finger looping around a bow before releasing it, and you stare at your water glass for a moment until your pulse decides to behave.

The food arrives.

Steak, for most of the table. The sauce pools amber and glossy in the low chandelier light, and the presentation is the kind you photograph and never actually recreate, perfect in a way that feels almost aggressive. You pick up your fork. Across the table, someone is talking about acquisition projections.

You look at Keys.

He hasn't touched his food.

He's looking at the knife.

Not at it the way you'd glance at silverware— studying it, the way he studies things he wants to understand, tilting it slightly in his hand so the blade catches the light, the steak juices sliding gold from the edge. His expression is the same one he gets in front of his monitor at two in the morning. Focused. Working something out.

"Well, McKey." Axel sets down his glass, clasping his hands with the particular energy of a man who finds himself very interesting. "Something wrong with the knife?"

Keys startles. His eyes go wide behind his glasses— caught— and he looks at you first, a quick panicked flash, before turning back to Axel. "Oh — no, I just—"

Axel is already waving a server over, pointing. Thirty seconds later the knife is gone from Keys' hand and a new one appears in its place, glinting clean under the chandelier.

Keys stares at it.

"Thanks," he says.

He drops it.

It happens fast— a soft clink against the marble, rolling toward the chair leg— and he makes a sound that is genuinely, helplessly awkward, an oh, oops that makes the woman across from you bite back a smile, and then he pushes back his chair and ducks down to retrieve it.

You glance down.

His jacket pulls taut across the width of his back when he bends, the fabric going tight across his shoulders, the shape of him so familiar and so unfair. The candlelight catches the line of his jaw as he reaches. You are wearing a very nice dress in a very expensive penthouse and you are staring at your boyfriend's back like a teenager.

You reach for your water glass.

And then you feel it.

It starts at your ankle— the very edge of the blade, not enough to cut, just enough to feel, a thin bright drag up the inside of your calf that your whole body decides to have an opinion about immediately. Your breath goes shallow. It traces up past your knee, following the inner seam of your leg with a precision that makes your fingers curl around the base of the glass, every nerve ending lighting up in sequence like a slow-pulled fuse. The satin of your dress pushes up with it, pooling at your mid-thigh by the time the blade reaches there, and you press your lips together and look straight ahead at the centerpiece and become very, very interested in the flower arrangement.

His hand grips your thigh.

Not gentle— certain, fingers wrapping around the inside of your leg and spreading you open incrementally, the way he does things when he's decided to do them, the knife tracing the skin between your thighs in long unhurried strokes like he has all night, like there are not six other people at this table discussing Series B funding. The flat of the blade is cool where your skin is hot. He moves it higher. Slowly. The tip grazes the hem of your underwear— a single pass, barely a whisper of contact— and heat floods the cradle of your hips so suddenly your thighs want to close around his hand of their own accord.

He doesn't let them.

His grip tightens. Keeping you open. The knife withdraws— an inch, two— and then his hand leaves your thigh entirely, unhurried as it arrived, and he straightens back into his chair with the recovered knife and slightly pink cheeks and the absolute audacity to reach for his water glass.

He swallows. Adjusts his glasses with one knuckle. Cuts into his steak.

You take a breath that you try very hard to make look like any other breath.

"McKey, did you want a fresh one?" Axel nods at the knife in Keys' hand. 

Keys considers this with an entirely straight face.

"No," he says. "I'm good." A small, private curve at the corner of his mouth. "Five second rule."

Mild laughter around the table. Under it, his hand finds your thigh again— just the weight of it this time, thumb pressing once into muscle— and he turns back to the conversation like nothing happened.

You take a long drink of water. It doesn't help.

He eats the rest of his steak methodically, cutting each piece with full attention. You watch his hands and regret it. When the plates are cleared he sets down his fork, lifts his knife, and turns to look at you with dark, patient eyes.

He licks the blade clean.

Slow. Unhurried. His tongue flat against the flat of the steel, eyes holding yours the whole time, and then he does the same to the fork tines, one at a time, and sets it down on the plate like that was nothing, like you're not gripping the edge of the table with two fingers just to have something to hold onto.

"Wasn't dinner delicious?" he asks.

His voice is soft. His glasses have slipped slightly down the bridge of his nose and he doesn't push them up and the candlelight is doing something unreasonable to the line of his jaw and you want to take him apart with your hands.

You bite the inside of your lip.

"Yeah," you manage. "Really good."

Keys smiles at you— that dopey, unguarded smile, the one that has absolutely no business existing on a man who just did what he did, the one that made you fall for him in the first place— and turns back to Axel, fingers finding your knee beneath the tablecloth.

You're going to have a very hard time making it through dessert.

The city moves past the window in amber smears, red brake lights bleeding into wet asphalt, and Keys' hand is on your thigh.

That's it. His palm flat and warm through the thin satin of your dress, fingers relaxed like he put them there and forgot about them, and he's looking out the window with the quiet, settled expression of a man who has just won something significant and is choosing not to perform it. The car smells faintly of pine air freshener and leather. The driver has the radio on low— something soft and indistinct— and outside the city keeps happening, indifferent and bright.

You are not indifferent.

You are sitting very still with your hands in your lap and thinking about the flat of a knife against the inside of your thigh, and the shape of his jaw in candlelight, and the way he licked the blade clean while looking directly at you, and you are doing an absolutely terrible job of thinking about anything else.

He takes your hand.

He lifts it from your lap, turns it over, and brings it to his mouth. His lips press to your knuckles, warm and dry, lingering a beat longer than a casual gesture. You feel the slight exhale of his breath across your fingers when he releases. Then he laces his fingers through yours and rests them back on his thigh, and the weight of his hand over yours is steady and unhurried and somehow the most unbearable thing that has happened all evening.

"I've got a nice bottle of wine," he murmurs, low and close, and you feel the warmth of his breath at your temple before you feel the words. "To celebrate."

You smile. You rest your head against his shoulder— the wool of his jacket soft against your cheek, the smell of him beneath it — and in the rearview mirror, caught in a passing streetlight, you can see the small private curve of his mouth.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

When you arrive outside your complex, he gets out first.

The night air hits warm and close when he opens the door, the city still breathing around you— distant traffic, someone's music two floors up, the click of your heels when you step out onto the pavement and take his offered hand. He thanks the driver without looking away from you. His hand finds your back before the door swings shut— and it's different now than it was all evening, somehow, the same palm in the same place but the pressure of it more deliberate, guiding you toward the building entrance with quiet ownership.

The lobby is marble and cool air and the hum of fluorescent light.

The elevator doors open.

You step in together. The doors close. The numbers begin to climb.

You're aware of everything. Like the faint sound of the city muffled through the walls, the soft mechanical shift of the elevator cable, the heat radiating off his arm where it almost touches yours. You look at the door. Your reflection looks back, slightly gold in the polished metal, and beside you his reflection stands still and tall with his jacket sharp at the shoulders and his tie hanging loose from his collar.

You hear him swallow.

The sound of it, quiet in the small space, does something to you that it has absolutely no right to do.

In your periphery he reaches up and works his tie looser, one knuckle under the knot, his collar opening. His throat moves. He lets his hand fall and says nothing and looks straight ahead and the elevator is very small and the numbers are climbing very slowly and you press the ball of your foot into the floor through your heel and breathe.

The doors open.

He walks you to the couch like the apartment is somewhere you've never been.

"Sit," he says, low and easy, and something in the register of it moves through you like a plucked string, and you sit, sinking into the familiar give of the cushions, the fabric soft against the backs of your thighs. He disappears toward the kitchen and you listen to the sounds of him— the soft clink of glasses, the refrigerator seal releasing, the quiet pop of a cork— and you press your palms flat against your knees and wait.

He comes back with his jacket gone.

White button-up, sleeves folded to the elbow, the fabric shifting loose at his throat where the collar hangs open. He sets everything on the coffee table and crouches to pour, and the lamp light catches the amber of the wine as it fills each glass, and you watch his forearms— the flex and shift of muscle as he tilts the bottle, the knob of his wrist bone, the faint trace of vein— and take a careful breath through your nose.

He hands you your glass. His fingers brush yours in the exchange, brief and warm.

He settles at the other end of the couch. Back to the armrest, long legs stretching across the cushions toward you, head propped on one hand. The lamp throws soft light across the planes of his face— the glint of his glasses, the dark of his eyes behind them, the loose tie draped against his chest. He holds his wine loosely. He looks at you.

You look back.

You take a slow sip. He takes a slow sip. The wine is good. It’s rich and dry at the back of your throat, and the apartment is quiet except for the low ambient hum of the city through the windows, and you are both being extraordinarily civilized about this.

Your heels are still on. Deliberate. You're aware of them the way you're aware of a card kept close — the specific, familiar thing that makes his eyes track down and then back up with a particular quality of attention. So instead of tucking your feet under you like you normally would, you extend your legs across the gap between you and settle them in his lap.

His hand drops there on instinct.

Thumb moving across the straps, slow, tracing the buckle, the fine bones of your ankle, settling into the curve of your calf. The leather of your heel is warm from being worn all evening and his thumb moves against the strap like he's reading something written there. His eyes lift to yours. Drop to your legs. Lift again.

You hold his gaze.

And you brush the sole of your foot, slow and soft, across his crotch.

The breath that leaves him is thin and catches slightly on the way out. His jaw shifts. He lifts his wine and takes a measured sip and looks at the middle distance like he's considering a complex development problem, like this is purely academic, and you do it again— more intentional, a slow roll of your foot, watching— and his free hand grips the back of the couch. The fabric bunches under his fingers. His knuckles go pale.

The line of him pressing hard and obvious against his slacks.

You pull your bottom lip between your teeth. You keep going— unhurried, a rhythm now, watching the way his hips make the smallest involuntary tilt toward you, the way his breathing has changed, shallower and quicker at the edges, the way he's gripping the couch. His wine glass is half raised and not moving. A muscle in his jaw jumps.

He finishes his wine in one swallow.

Sets the glass on the table with a quiet click.

You stop.

Here it is, some part of you thinks. He'll stop. He hasn't wanted—

He turns back. His brow furrowed, his eyes dark, his hand still warm on your calf.

"Why'd you stop?"

Quiet. Genuine. Slightly wrecked.

You smile. You start again.

His head drops back— just a degree, just enough— and a low sound escapes him before he catches it, his hips rolling up once to meet the pressure of your foot, twice, his fingers flexing helplessly on your calf, and then something in him makes a decision.

His hands close on your knees.

He parts your legs and slides between them, in one smooth movement, settling on his knees like he has all the time in the world, the loose tie swinging forward from his collar. He looks down at you with a slow smile, unhurried and dark-eyed, and reaches to take the wine glass from your hand. Sets it beside his on the table.

Then he brackets you in.

Both palms flat on the cushions beside your thighs, the tie hanging between you, his face close enough that you can smell the wine on his breath and feel the warmth radiating off him. He is so much larger than he seems when he's hunched over a keyboard. 

His nose nudges yours.

"Hi," you breathe.

He laughs, low and soft, and the vibration of it passes through the small space between you like a frequency. "Hi." His hands come up— wide palms cupping your face, thumbs at the hinge of your jaw, thumbs that could feel your pulse if they wanted to— and he kisses you.

Soft, first. Just the warmth of his mouth, the slight catch of his lower lip against yours, the exhale of his breath.

Then his hand slides down your side— the curve of your waist through the satin, the flare of your hip, down to the hem riding up your thigh. His finger finds you through the thin fabric and grazes, once, barely, a ghost of a touch, and you make a sound into his mouth that you immediately wish you could take back and would never actually take back.

"I've missed this," he murmurs. His mouth moves against yours when he speaks. You feel the words more than hear them. His hips press forward and the hard line of him presses into your stomach and your fingers curl into his shirt, the cotton warm and slightly wrinkled and smelling like him.

You pull back. Look at him— his flushed cheeks, his slightly fogged glasses, his mouth. "Whose fault is that?"

The flush deepens. He pushes his glasses up with one knuckle. Takes a small breath. "I'm sorry." He presses his mouth to your jaw, unhurried, the slight wet warmth of it. "I just had a lot to think about." His lips trail to your neck and he takes his time there— open-mouthed, slow, the edge of his teeth barely grazing your pulse point before his mouth seals over it. You feel it all the way down your sternum. "Wanted the next time to be good."

You go still.

His head comes up when you take his face in your hands.

"What do you mean?" you ask.

He blinks. His eyes do their thing— the quick dart left, back to you, off to some invisible middle distance, back to your face— the expression of a man rapidly auditing everything he just said.

"Well," he starts. "You know." He shifts on his knees. The fabric of his trousers pulls across his thighs. "After what we talked about, I wanted— I wanted you to enjoy it. I wanted it to actually be—"

"Baby." You look at him. "Did you think I asked for kinkier sex because I wasn't enjoying the sex we already have?"

He clicks his tongue. His mouth opens. Closes.

"...Yeah," he says.

You laugh— the disbelieving, incredulous, helplessly fond kind— and pull him in by the back of his neck and kiss him, and he makes a small surprised sound before kissing back, his hands finding your waist. "It's always good," you tell him, between kisses. "It's really good, it's great, it's—"

"Yeah?" He pulls back just enough. His eyes searching yours, wanting it to be true.

"You're good." You kiss him once, plainly, on the mouth. "Keys. You're good."

Something moves through his face like weather. The uncertainty of the last month traveling through and out of him, some long-held tension releasing in real time, and he looks at you like you've returned something he thought he'd lost. Then his eyes go dark.

He kisses you like he's been waiting to.

Slow and deep and thorough. His tongue licking into your mouth, tasting of wine and wanting, and you open for him because there's nothing else to do, and he takes his time with it the way he takes his time with everything he actually cares about. Long, languid strokes of his tongue against yours. His hand in your hair, tilting your head back. He sucks on your bottom lip— gently, drawing it out between his teeth, feeling the give of it— and then the top, and you are holding fistfuls of his shirt and breathing through your nose because your options are limited. The kiss is wet and unhurried and thorough and obscene and when he finally breaks it the string of saliva between your lips catches the lamplight before breaking, and you are both breathing in the same hot close rhythm, mouths barely apart, his glasses slightly fogged.

Keys sits back on his heels.

His voice is different now. Low and even and settled into something sure.

"I think we should move to the bedroom." Not a question. Not a suggestion. He's already rising, already extending his hand for yours. "I have something to show you."

He walks you there with his mouth at your spine.

Hands on your shoulders, lips moving down your bare back in slow reverent kisses, each one warm and slightly damp, and you look at the dresser while he does it— the black cloth folded precise and flat in the center, edges aligned.

You'd noticed it before you left. You'd had a dress to get into and you'd let it go.

His hands settle warm on your shoulders. His mouth finds the curve of your neck.

"Go on," he says softly, his breath at your ear, low and close and certain. "Look."

You pull back the cloth.

Three knives catch the low amber of the bedroom lamp— each one different, laid out in careful, deliberate order. The blades glint. The handles sit flush and even, and the cloth beneath them is folded without a wrinkle, and you understand all at once that he did this before dinner, that he laid them out before he straightened his tie and held the door open and pressed his hand to your back, that every moment of the evening— his thumb on your spine, the knife beneath the table, the way he looked at you when he licked the blade clean— was intentional.

His lips find the nape of your neck.

Warm. Unhurried. Like the knives on the dresser are perfectly normal and he has all the time in the world.

"Keys?"

"Hm." Not quite a question.

"What are these?"

He moves to your side, hand still at your back, and reaches out with his free hand to pick up the first one— a slim, dark-handled blade, narrow and elegant. "Okay so this one," he starts, in the particular tone he uses when he's about to explain something he has researched extensively and is slightly too excited about, "is a safety knife. The edge is designed to exert pressure without piercing, which means for surface dragging it's actually—"

He picks up the second one.

"And this one has a tanto point which I know looks more aggressive but structurally the tip geometry actually gives you more control when you're—"

You kiss him.

Soft and warm and right in the middle of his sentence, your hand at his jaw, and he makes a small surprised sound before melting into it— the way he always does, like every time is still slightly unexpected, like he hasn't caught up to the fact that you want to. When you pull back he blinks at you through his glasses.

You're smiling. You can't help it.

"So," you say. "That's what dinner was about."

He laughs— short, a little caught, looking off to the side with his hand coming up to push his glasses up even though they're fine. "I— well. I did research. Because you brought it up, so I figured—"

"I was expecting maybe handcuffs." You tilt your head. "Not straight to—"

You bite your bottom lip. Look at him.

Then you pull him in— slow, deep, your fingers at the back of his neck— and when you feel him lean into it you move your mouth to his jaw, the sharp line of it, then down to his throat where his pulse lives, and you feel it jump under your lips.

"Show me," you say against his skin, low and soft, "what you've learned."

The difference between show and tell. He knows your voice when it does this— the drop in register, the particular quiet of it. You feel him straighten. Feel his jaw tick against your lips.

His knuckle brushes your cheek. Then he steps behind you.

His mouth finds your shoulder first, the blade of it, then moves inward between your shoulder blades, pressing warm open kisses down your bare back. His foot wedges between yours, nudging them apart— casual, unhesitating, like rearranging furniture.

"Pick which one." Low and sharp at your ear.

Your stomach turns over. Heat pools deep at the base of your abdomen, a slow gathering ache, and you feel his hand slide between your thighs from behind without hesitation— his fingers pressing against the fabric of your underwear in one long, certain stroke.

"Keys—" His name comes out broken and wanting.

His hand stills completely.

"I said choose." A beat of silence, his breath warm at the back of your neck. "Or I won't continue."

You swallow. Your eyes move across the dresser, the three knives glinting, each one different. You point to the middle one. Sage green handle, the blade medium-length and slightly curved, warm-toned in this light.

"Pick it up."

Your hand is not entirely steady when you reach for it. The handle is smooth and cool against your palm, lighter than it looks, and your back arches involuntarily as Keys' right hand snakes around your front and back under the hem of your dress— his fingers trailing up the inside of your thigh in one slow deliberate path, the pads of his fingertips dragging against the sensitive skin there, unhurried as if he's reading the terrain and finding it satisfactory.

His hand slips beneath the waistband.

His fingers graze you— once, barely— and your hips rock toward him.

His free hand clamps onto your thigh. Stopping you completely.

"Nope." Almost amused. "Show me how the knife looks against you."

You exhale shakily. Bring the blade up toward your chest, watching it catch the light, and in the mirror above the dresser you can see him watching you— his dark eyes tracking the movement of your hand, his pupils blown wide, black swallowing hazel, his mouth parted just slightly.

His finger slips inside you.

You gasp. It’s a sharp bright sound, and he kisses your shoulder once, sweetly, like a contradiction.

"So wet," he murmurs against your skin, soft and wondering, like he's noting something privately.

Then he swirls his finger, slow and thorough, stretching, and the sweetness of it doesn't distract you from what his hand is doing at all, and you sigh out something that doesn't resolve into a word.

A second finger.

The thing about Keys— the specific, devastating thing— is his hands. You've always known this in a background sort of way, watching them on a keyboard, watching them pour wine, watching them cut a steak with quiet precision. Long fingers. The kind that know how to apply pressure. He uses both now, curling slightly as he finds his rhythm, and you react to it immediately, a full-body answer, your free hand flying to grip the dresser's edge.

He sets a pace.

Steady and deep, his fingers working in and out of you, and then his thumb finds your clit— not precise, not yet, a sloppy circle that is nevertheless catastrophically effective— and the electricity of it shoots from your hips up your spine and short-circuits something in your brain. Your head falls back onto his shoulder. Your knees lose their opinion about bearing weight. The knife in your hand trembles.

His other hand covers yours.

He tsks.

And then the knife is no longer in your grip. It’s lifted smooth and easy, and you feel the chill of the flat of the blade against the side of your face. Slow. Moving from your cheekbone downward, the cool metal a shock against flushed skin.

You open your eyes.

In the mirror, Keys is watching himself do it. His mouth is open slightly. His brow is drawn together in concentration, or want, or something that lives in the space between them. His throat moving as he swallows, his Adam's apple dipping once. The blade drifts lower. The edge comes close to your throat and his arm tightens around you from behind, and you watch him watch you, and his fingers curl.

You arch.

"Careful," he says, low and even, barely above a breath. "Wouldn't want you to get hurt, do we?"

He punctuates it by thrusting his fingers faster, his thumb pressing harder against your clit, and the moan that escapes you is genuinely embarrassing and you cannot bring yourself to care. Your hips roll toward his hand despite everything and pleasure builds in thick gathering waves at your core, tightening—

"I don't want to ruin such a pretty face."

His breath is hot against your neck, the words pressed into your skin, and something about the register of his voice— low and dark and certain, so far from the man you know— undoes something in you completely. Your arm shoots back. Your fingers find his hair and grip, pulling, and your head presses hard into his shoulder and his name comes apart in your mouth in two broken syllables.

He works faster.

The flat of the blade traces down the length of your arm, the one thrown back around him— cool against the heat of your skin, following the line from your shoulder toward your elbow— and he hits that spot with his fingers again, the one that makes your vision go briefly white at the edges, and you wriggle, whole-body, a helpless squirm—

The hiss leaves you before you feel it.

A small bright sting at your bicep. Not pain exactly but a sudden sharp awareness of it, immediate and clarifying.

You catch his eyes in the mirror.

You watch the panic move across his face in real time— his brow snapping together, his jaw tightening, his gaze dropping to the tiny bead of blood welling at your skin. Barely a nick. It barely broke surface. But you can see his thoughts written plainly across his expression, the self-directed alarm of someone whose entire preparation was in service of not doing that one thing—

You grind back against his hand.

A broken sound, low in your throat. Keep going. I'm fine. Keep going.

He goes still.

He looks at you.

You hold his gaze in the mirror and rock your hips again, and watch him wrestle with it— the worry and the wanting— and then his expression settles into something else. Something with an edge.

He frowns.

"Told you." He dips his head and his mouth closes over the small nick— warm, his tongue pressing flat against your skin, licking it clean in one slow stroke. Then a kiss, pressed directly to the spot, his lips lingering. "This is why we stay still, honey."

The word lands soft and devastating. Honey. Like a reprimand wrapped in something tender.

Your fingers tighten in his hair. You press back against him— the hard line of him through his slacks unmistakable, heat and want and the undeniable evidence of exactly what this is doing to him— and a cry tears out of you when he removes his fingers–– sharp. Sudden. Bereft. Your hips chasing something that's already gone.

"K-Keys—"

He moves fast.

One hand at your waist, spinning you— the room swinging— your back meeting the edge of the dresser as he walks you into it, one smooth decisive motion. The sage-handled knife comes up, the flat of the blade cool and certain beneath your chin, tipping your face up.

You look at him.

He looks back.

His glasses are slightly askew. His collar is open, his tie hanging loose, his white shirt untucked on one side. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes are black and he is looking at you with the focused, patient, unhurried expression of a man who has done his research.

"I told you to stay still." Low. Even.

The blade is cool against your throat. His eyes don't move from yours.

"You'll come," he says quietly, "when I think you're ready to."

He straightens.

One hand comes up to adjust his glasses, and you catch it— the slight tremble in his fingers as he pushes them up the bridge of his nose. Just a flicker. A tell. The composed, dark-eyed stranger who has been running this show all evening still has Keys McKey living inside him, and Keys McKey is a man who spent a month on research forums and ordered three knives and laid them out on a dresser because he loves you and was nervous about it.

You hold onto it for approximately two seconds before the tip of the blade touches your throat.

It moves slowly. A millimeter of pressure at a time, tracing down the column of your neck— not the edge, just the tip, a single point of cool steel that your pulse hammers against like it's trying to meet it. your breath goes shallow and your chin tips back and you watch him watch the knife move.

His jaw is set. His eyes track it with the focused, careful attention he gives things that matter.

Down your throat. To the hollow at its base. Then lower, following the line of your sternum, into the valley between your breasts, the blade cold where your skin is hot, the contrast of it pulling a soft involuntary sound from somewhere low in your chest.

He reaches the halter.

The tip catches the fabric— a light tug, lifting it slightly away from your skin— and he holds it there. His eyes finally lift from the knife to your face.

"I think," he says, quiet and even, each word deliberate, "if you know what's good for you—"

A pause.

The corner of his mouth moves. Just barely. A flicker of a smirk, there and gone, like he can't help it, like Keys is still in there behind all that composure and finding this at least a little bit funny and refusing to let it win.

"—you should take this off."

The apartment is silent except for your breathing.

You hold his gaze.

And you reach behind you.

Your fingers find the tie at the nape of your neck— the same strings he'd been playing with all evening, in the car, at the dinner table, fingers looping and releasing like he was thinking about this exact moment— and you pull the bow loose, slow, watching his face while you do it.

His throat moves.

The fabric goes slack.

The dress pools at your feet.

Satin whispering down your body in one smooth fall, settling in a plum circle around your ankles, around the heels you're still wearing, and you are standing in maroon lace and lamplight and nothing else. You have always been easy in your own skin with Keys,  but the knife is in his hand and his face is unreadable and his eyes are moving over you with the slow, thorough attention of someone taking inventory, and the room is cold in a way that has nothing to do with the temperature.

Your arms begin to cross over your chest.

The tip of the blade presses to the center of your belly. One point of cool steel, light, immovable.

"Nuh-uh." His voice is low and even. His eyes stay on your face. "Let me see you." The tip traces a small idle circle against your skin. "Wanna figure out what to do with you."

The heat that moves through your stomach at that has nothing to do with embarrassment anymore.

Your arms fall.

He looks at you. All of you, unhurried, like he's memorizing something. Then the knife tilts toward the bed.

"Sit."

You go.

The mattress gives beneath you and you settle at the edge of it, and Keys stands over you— the full height of him, white shirt open at the collar, tie hanging loose, the lamp throwing gold across one side of his face— and he smiles at you.

One moment. Warm and private. Entirely him.

Then he turns back to the dresser, picks up a different knife, and comes back to the bed.

He moves behind you. His knees bracket your hips, his weight settling warm, and his mouth finds your neck. It’s open, slow, the heat of his breath arriving before his lips do. The sounds he makes are unguarded and close, low and wanting. His chest presses against your back and lower down you feel him hard against you and you arch without deciding to, your spine curving into the solid warmth of him, and the groan it pulls from his throat is the most honest sound you've heard all evening.

The blade slips under the band of your bra.

He pauses.

"This looks expensive," he mutters, his lips moving against your shoulder.

It is. He knows exactly how expensive it is. He bought it. He bought all of it, the bra and the panties and the heels and the dress now crumpled on his floor, because you sent him a link once and it arrived the next morning and neither of you ever said anything about it. 

He doesn't wait for an answer.

The blade catches and pulls and the fabric parts. It’s a clean rip, your tits bouncing slightly. The breath that leaves him at the sight is brief and stuttered and swallowed quickly, like he caught himself.

His hand moves the remaining fabric aside.

His nose nudges against your cheek— soft, unhurried, the gentlest thing in the room right now— and he presses one kiss below your ear. Goosebumps chase each other up your arms in a wave, every fine hair rising, your body reading the tenderness of it as its own kind of threat.

His palm spreads flat across your stomach. Travels upward. Wraps around your throat. No pressure, fingers loose, the weight of his hand a collar of warmth, and with the other he brings the knife to your tits.

He traces your nipples with the edge.

Slow. Watching. His chin at your shoulder, his eyes tracking your face in the mirror across the room as your body answers him— the way they harden under the cool metal, the soft gasp that slips out before you can close your mouth around it, the way your thighs press together and find nothing. His hand at your throat tightens by a fraction.

His thumb finds your lower lip. Opens you.

He kisses you and it is nothing like the careful, checking-in kisses from the couch— this is all tongue and heat and intention, licking into your mouth with the patience of someone who has made a decision and is in no hurry to finish making it. When he pulls back the sound it makes is soft and obscene and he moves away from you entirely and you whine, audible and undignified, before you can stop yourself.

You turn to look at him.

"Lay down."

You hold his gaze as you move.

Hands and knees first, crawling up the length of the bed and then you roll onto your back and he's already there. Straddling your hips, his weight grounding and warm, both hands wrapping your wrists in one careful motion and pinning them above your head. His face hangs over yours. His lips brush the corner of your mouth— barely— and you chase them and he lets you almost reach before pulling back, the smirk flickering at his mouth again, the knife resting cool against your cheek.

His nose nudges yours.

He shifts lower, straddling your thighs, and the knife begins its slow path down your body— more pressure now than before, the edge tracing from your collarbone to your sternum in a firm bright line, dragging sensation in its wake that your whole body lights up to receive. He releases your wrists.

"Stay still for me." The register of his voice has gone somewhere quieter and more certain, the particular tone that lands behind your sternum and stays there. "I know you can be good." His tongue drags across his lower lip. "Can you do that?"

"Y-yes."

He raises an eyebrow. Already moving, smirking, pushing down on your hips, widening you. He kisses right beside your pussy and inside your thigh,his teeth grazing your inner thigh in a brief sharp nip that makes you flinch against the mattress.

"Yes, Keys. I promise."

His nose drags along the hem of your underwear. A kiss pressed just above your center, right where the lace is damp, and his exhale is warm through the fabric and you feel it everywhere.

"And you promise to tell me stop if you want me to stop?"

"Yes. I promise. Please — please just—"

He sits back on his heels.

"Watch," he says.

Your head lifts. Your hands stay. You watch him bring the knife to the side of your underwear— a pause, one breath— and then he cuts. The fabric gives in one sharp motion and you whimper at the sound of it, at the flat of the blade pressing against you through the remaining lace and dragging down in a slow deliberate pull. The second cut. The fabric snaps free and falls away.

The blade hovers.

He presses it flat against your center and drags. Up, down, a slow measured stroke that makes your fingers curl into the pillow— and then light taps, rhythmic, against your pussy. you are pressing your lips together so hard they go white, your heels digging into the mattress, holding yourself still through sheer stubbornness.

The knife drifts lower. Barely parts you. Your head drops back.

He reaches up. One hand, fluid— the tie loosening from his collar in a single pull— and through the open buttons of his shirt you catch a glimpse of his chest, the dark hair there, the flush spreading down.

The knife taps once against your center.

"Sit up."

You sit. He leans forward and the tie comes up, and the world goes dark and soft and immediate. His mouth finds your ear.

"This okay?"

"Yes."

He ties it. His fingers move through your hair, smoothing it back from your face.

"Tell me stop if you need me to."

"I will," you breathe.

His large hands lay you back— warm and careful, guiding— and your wrists find their place above your head again without being told. The darkness makes everything else louder: the rustle of fabric, the soft clink of his belt, a pause, the thud of it meeting the floor. The bed dips. His mouth presses soft against your center. One kiss, unhurried, almost sweet then followed by a few slow passes of his tongue over your clit that make your whole body shudder, wrung out and wanting more at the same time.

He moves up your body.

His chest brushes yours— the sparse hair there, the warmth of his skin, and he's shed the shirt but kept the slacks, the leather of the belt gone but the fabric still rough against the inside of your thigh as he settles over you. He grinds against you once, slow, and the sound that comes out of you has no shape to it.

The knife finds your ribs.

Not the edge— the flat, pressed firm against your skin, dragging from your ribs to your sternum in a line of cool pressure that your nerve endings receive like a current. Down your stomach. Across the curve of your tits. Your skin maps every millimeter of it. Beneath the blindfold, every sensation doubles. The steel and his mouth arriving in sequence, lips pressing warm into every path the blade has drawn, teeth catching the skin at your hip, your inner thigh, the back of your knee as the knife travels lower. The threat of the edge and the warmth of his mouth are the same language. Your body stops trying to tell them apart.

The handle presses against your entrance.

A soft wince— the fullness of it, the strangeness— and his hand moves to your hip immediately.

"You can take it, baby." Low and even, his lips against your shoulder. "We both know you can."

Shallow at first. Patient. His thumb finds your clit and the combination of it drags a cry from somewhere in your chest, your hands fisting the pillow, knuckles aching. He angles it — searching, methodical— and when he finds the right place your thighs try to close around his hand.

His palm lands flat on your knee. Holds you open.

Tears prick at the corners of your eyes. The pleasure builds in thick stacking waves, a tightening that starts deep in your stomach and radiates outward with each pump, each precise circle of his thumb, your own sounds reaching you from a slight distance—

"Keys—" Your voice cracks on the second syllable. "I'm — I'm so close—"

His thumb tightens its circles. His pace quickens.

"Keys— I'm going to—"

Everything stops.

The handle withdraws. His thumb lifts. The absence is so sudden your whole body arches into nothing, hips rolling against empty air.

"Please—" The word comes out broken and small. "Baby, please — why—"

"What did I tell you, hm?" Quiet. Patient. Not unkind.

You swallow. Your throat works around it. "You'll finish when you want me to."

"Yes."

The flat of the blade comes back to your throat. 

"That's my girl."

It lifts. His lips replace it— soft, warm, held there for a breath— and then the bed dips as he moves off it. You go still. You stay still. You listen to the room: his breathing, the faint sounds of the city below, the particular quiet of him standing nearby and watching you hold yourself in place for him.

He comes back.

His mouth finds your center again— soft, careful, a few slow passes that make your thighs tremble— and then his hands are moving up your body, relearning it, warm and unhurried, and his mouth finds yours. The kiss is wet and deep, his tongue moving against yours, and you taste him and breathe him in and grab onto any part of him you can reach. His mouth moves to your jaw, your throat, your chest, taking his time, no hurry anywhere in his body.

His hand moves between you.

The tip of him against your entrance— a light tap against your clit that makes you whimper— and then he presses forward and buries himself inside you in one slow, full stroke.

The sound you make isn't a word. You're not sure you have any left.

His hands settle at your hips and he moves— deep, steady, each thrust rolling through you— and you can feel him everywhere, the stretch and heat of him, the slight throb that tells you the entire evening has wound him as tight as it's wound you. Your hands fly to his arms, his shoulders, gripping whatever you can find.

"Feels so good, Keys— fuck—"

His thumb finds your clit. Lazy, imprecise circles— barely working for it— and it doesn't matter because the buildup of the entire evening— the dinner, the knife under the table, all of it— has reduced your threshold to almost nothing. Your walls tighten around him and he makes a low rough sound that he doesn't try to swallow.

"I can feel you." His fingers dig into the soft inside of your thigh, keeping you open, keeping you there. His voice drops to something softer. "Cum for me, honey. It's okay. I've got you."

And there it is.

Not the knife. Not the blade or the blindfold or any of it— it's that, the I've got you, the Keys who will do anything for you, who spent a month on research forums at two in the morning because he wanted to get it right, who is somehow both the man holding a knife to your throat and the man who asks the Uber driver to have a good night—

The feeling crests and breaks.

You cum with your nails in his skin and his name on your lips, your heels pressing into the mattress, the wave moving through you long and complete. He works you through it without stopping, thumb maintaining its circles until your thighs are shaking and you're pulling at his wrist—

He pulls out. Shifts your hips in one smooth motion— your leg tossed over— and slides back in from behind, the new angle pulling a sharp sound from both of you. One large hand gripping a fistful of your ass.

You writhe.

"Hold still." A grunt against the back of your neck, breathless, his hips snapping forward. "Let me finish."

His pace builds— one hand at your hip, one palming your tit, the room filling with the sounds of it, skin and heat and his breathing going ragged— and you are already climbing again and you reach to find him.

"Need to see you." Wrecked, honest, wanting. "Please."

The hand at your chest disappears.

The blindfold tears free.

Light floods in. The amber lamp. And his face— his face— flushed dark and completely undone, glasses knocked sideways, his mouth open and pink, sounds falling out of him that he has entirely stopped trying to manage. His eyes find yours and even now, even here, even like this, something in them goes soft.

You tip over the edge again. He follows. His hips stuttering, rhythm collapsing into something sloppy and desperate— your name first, clearly, and then a scatter of words that don't cohere, syllables breaking apart as he shudders through it, burying himself deep, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding himself up by your waist.

The room settles around you both.

He’s panting, chest moving up and down. Outside, the city hums its indifferent low note.

He reaches up and pushes his glasses back to the bridge of his nose with one finger.

His tongue finds the corner of his mouth. He looks thoroughly, completely wrecked— hair mussed, shirt somewhere on the floor, cheeks dark— and he shifts. He repositions you until he can see all of you again. His gaze travels down and goes still.

His large hand settles warm and heavy at the base of your stomach.

He reaches to the nightstand. The knife catches the lamplight as he picks it up, and he brings the edge close, carefully, and gathers, spreading it on your pussy at first. Slowly, his eyes tracking the movement with the same focused attention he gives everything he cares about. He holds the blade up. Examines it. Then he looks at you, something dark and wondering moving through his expression, the faint beginning of a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

He does it again. Both sides.

Then he sets the knife down and looks at you and crooks two fingers.

You sit up, moving to him, folding your legs to the side, watching his face for the explanation. His hand cups your jaw. His thumb opens your mouth— pressing inside briefly, warm— and he withdraws it and brings the knife up instead, and you understand.

You lean forward and press your tongue flat against the blade— metallic, warm from his hand, the salt and spent of both of you— and then you feel him lean in too. His tongue alongside yours on the flat of it, his eyes tipping up to find yours over the blade.

Together.

You both sit back. Swallow.

He reaches out and wipes the corner of your mouth with his thumb— slow, absent, like he's thinking about something else— and then he kisses you. Once, soft, his mouth and yours slow and tenderly sweet.

"Let's get you cleaned up," he says quietly.

He sets the knife on the nightstand. Looks at it for a moment. Looks back at you and that dopey smile breaks through again, helpless and warm and completely Keys.

"And then after," he glances at the nightstand, back to you, "we should look into ordering those handcuffs."

Later, he's on his back with one arm tucked behind his head and the other around you, your cheek pressed to his chest, rising and falling with him. His heartbeat has slowed to something easy.

His thumb moves in a slow absent arc across your shoulder. Up and back. Up and back. The same motion he's probably been making all night without knowing it, muscle memory, some part of him always finding the nearest patch of your skin and staying there. His glasses are on the nightstand. Without them his face looks softer, younger. 

You tip your head up to look at him.

His eyes are already closed, his lips slightly parted, his chest moving in the long even rhythm of someone almost asleep. A curl has fallen back against his forehead. The flush hasn't fully left his cheeks.

You settle back down against his chest and listen to his heartbeat and say nothing, because nothing needs saying.

His thumb keeps moving. Up and back. Up and back.

“What was that? What’s going on?” Keys asked you. 

“I should be asking you that.” You retorted. 

He just looked at you with a puzzled face, his stupid confused face. “What are you talking about? What did I do?” 

“You made me look like an idiot back there! I was trying to get that guy and you were just completely overtaking the operation!” 

“We got him, so what does it matter if we used my strategy or yours?”

“Because you think I’m stupid. Is it so unreasonable to be upset that my best friend thinks I’m incompetent?”

He just looked even more confused than before now. “I could never think that about you.”

Your water had finished boiling, so you poured the water into your mug. “Well, you ignored everything I said so you could go and kill him by yourself. We should have been working together.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I’ve had to deal with this asshole before, I’m so tired of having to go after the same guy over and over. I’ve learned how to handle him, so I know how to go about things in the most efficient way. I’m sorry I took over the operation, I promise I won’t do it again.”

You emptied out a sugar packet into your drink, still mad at him but less so than a few minutes ago. You sighed as you threw out the paper package. 

“You can start making it up to me by volunteering to file the paperwork for banning him from Free City.” 

He seemed relieved with your proposition. “Yeah, absolutely! Will do.”

“Good.” You moved past him and opened the door to leave, steadily carrying your hot beverage. “And I’m on break right now but you’re not, so you better get on that.” 

✦✧✦✧✦

You hadn’t spoken to Keys since your argument in the snack room. It’s hard enough to completely ignore him on a day when you’re not at work, but it was so much worse when he was sitting right across from you. 

You got a confirmation notification on your computer screen about the ban paperwork that Keys had apparently just filed. Not even three seconds after you both received the message, your coworker had already stood up so he could speak over the glass partition between you two. 

“Did you see I wrote up the slip to get him banned?” He asked you urgently. 

You answered without even looking at him. “Yep, thanks for that.”

He didn’t sit back down. Keys just kept looking at you like he was waiting for something. 

“Do you want a pat on the back or something, Keys?”

“Do you forgive me now?”

You sighed and finally looked at him beyond just seeing him out of your peripheral vision. “I said I’d think about forgiving you. I’m still a bit pissed at you.”

He slumped back into his chair, then went back to his computer. A few seconds later, you got another push notification. 

Curious, as it had Keys’ name attached, you clicked on the little pop-up. It opened 2 messages from the man. The first was him apologising once more, and the second was a colon and closed bracket forming a little smiley face. 

Even though you weren’t all that mad at him, you still didn’t react to the small yet altogether cute gesture. You thought it would be fun to see what else he does to get you to forgive him. 

One more message floats up onto your screen. “Is it working?”

You typed a message in reply. “Sort of. Keep going.” 

✦✧✦✧✦

Throughout the day, Keys had dropped off several snacks on your desk, stuck up multiple post-it notes adorned with fun doodles on the glass partition between you, and sent you many more sweet messages. 

If you were being honest, you had forgiven him after the second gesture. If Keys was being honest, he had figured that out about an hour ago. But now it was the end of your work day, and Keys just had to make sure you two were okay. 

You were finishing up your last few emails of the day, and Keys had walked over to your side of the desk clump. 

“Okay, I know you’re busy, but I really don’t want us to end the day on bad terms. Have you forgiven me yet?” He asked desperately.

“That depends.” You told him, a soft smirk gracing your face. “Do you have one more offer or did you just come here to beg on your knees?”

He wasn’t on his knees beside your chair with his hands clasped together, so that kind of gave you the answer, but he answered anyway. 

“Will you forgive me if I buy you dinner? There’s that new Italian place down the street; we can go tonight and I’ll pay, even if it’s crazy expensive.” 

You tried holding back the giddy smile you felt coming on because of his offer, but you were sure that the expression was peeking through your facade. 

“That kind of sounds like a date.” You played innocent. “Keys, are you asking me out?”

“That depends. Have you forgiven me yet?”

“Not quite sure, I think you’ll have to take me out, and I’ll let you know soon.”

The laugh rips out of him and jolts him back in his chair. To think that the limited amount of time he spends not working on this godforsaken game he happens to spend playing the game. He must have something wrong with him. He drops the flashbang back into his inventory and scuttles over to your crouched avatar.

"Sometimes I wonder why they let you graduate," you poke, swiveling in circles in the wavering shade of a big tree, blank eyes staring up at the sky.

"Hey, if I didn't graduate, we never would've met."

You chuckle. "Oh, Keys, life would be so horrible without you"—you click your tongue and your avatar's knees straighten, and his heart shouldn't skip a beat the way it does with your digital face this close to his—"because I have nothing better to do than sit at my desk all day and talk to a stranger on the internet."

"A handsome stranger," he teases.

"I'm logging off."

"Wait—"

"Nope!"

"Come on," he whines, "you know you love me."

Curse him with that sometimes confidence and all-the-time charm. And maybe that's the one thing you don't know. He smoked you out just to get at you while unassuming and lovely. You blink hard just to realize you've gone a little blurry, and the sun slices through your blinds and glares against your monitor.

"Is it light where you are?" you mumble, a songbird cooing and flapping away outside your window. His character goes still, no longer shuffling across the grass, just still. Strands of his hair animated to flow. It makes you smirk every time you think of it.

"Yeah, think so. Geez—"

"What if I was a stalker? Now I know the sun is up for you. That eliminates like... a lot of places," you say, very proudly and kind of worried. You don't rest well as it is, and now this boy might be giving out his address to random users.

"Okay, but is the sun rising or setting?"

"...Maybe it's neither," you hum.

"Maybe it's both."

It takes a second for him to laugh, and he's crazy but it's contagious. You shake your head and press your face into your palms to muffle a soft laugh. Hoping he doesn't hear you humor him. But you do, and he does.

"You're delirious, go have caffeine," you huff, definitely smiling, even with your jaw aching from wearing a headset for much too long. But you're sure the tightness in your neck is worth it when he hums softly and rustles with something on his desk.

"No," he whines, spamming the space bar, sending his character hopping down the grassy slope of the park's small hill. He sighs. "Alright, fine. Didn't feel like staying online anyway."

"Oh, hush, it'll be good for you. Plus, I gotta head out, and I don't want you missing me too much."

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbles, "but you better be on tonight."

"C'mon, baby, you know me," you say, head lulling to the side as he sprints back up the hill just to slip down once he's halfway there. He must be too tired to think about it. Because you've called him that once before, and it sent him reeling. He's glad the game wasn't designed for webcam gameplay. Not only would that be nightmarish, but you would immediately catch him beet red and fidgety.

He yawns.

"Alright, see ya."

You chirp something nice into his ear. Like a goodbye, but you'd never say it. He powers his desktop down and throws on a crewneck before heading a couple blocks north, hands shoved in his pockets the whole way. Head incessant with the thought of you. Even if he could stop it, he wouldn't. If you'd stay holed up in his noggin until the next supernova, he'd be satisfied. And the coffee shop is sticky and warm when he steps in from the chill.

But something makes him smile. Only a few tables have anybody seated there: mostly couples. Except, there's one person sitting alone. Occupying the table closest to the register, scarf draped over the back of the oaky chair, fingertips patting along a dim phone screen.

"Morning, two sugars," the barista chirps, "the usual?"

Keys hisses in a deep breath, eyes flicking over the extensive, swirly-lettered menu.

"You know what—?"

"Aw, break my heart, man—don't tell me you're switching it up on me now."

Keys chuckles with a shrug, "what can I say? I'm a sucker for a limited time offer. Gimme one of those seasonal drinks.”

"That's it, no more discounts for you," he huffs, already scribbling 'Keys' and a pouty face across the side of a bright orange cup.

"You were giving me a discount?"

"Keys," a soft voice chirps. And it's not something he could've imagined if he tried, because it sounds like you, and maybe this is some wishful thinking hat trick, but he turns to the side. And there you are. Arm perched on the back of the chair, torso twisted around to peer up at him. And he peers back. It's you. Wide-eyed and grinning.

"Hi," he pants, "it's you."

Your chair scrapes across the wood flooring, and you get real close to him like you're still not sure this is real life and not a simulator. Or you accidentally signed up for a drug-induced sleep study, and this is the desired, coma-adjacent lucid dream.

"In the flesh." You scoff, hands on your hips. He wonders if you're letting him look at you. It's a little perverted, but he's in denial, watching your mouth and the way it's so different from your in-game avatar. "I was hoping... I mean, I wanted it to be you. You sound like you."

He nods. And his hair flops into his face. Hides his soft pink forehead and the line between his furrowed brows.

"You're... taller than I thought you'd be. And you wear glasses," you say, lifting your hand like you're about to touch him. It makes him happy. He knows you—he's known you exclusively by your code and the sound of your voice, and yet your first instinct was to reach for him. And even though you drop your hand and glance away, he smiles.

"Disappointed?" he teases like he's expecting the rejection. Like you'll laugh and tell him to scram because yes, he's not what you had imagined. Maybe you had imagined him to perfection and doomed him in the process.

But you shake your head.

Decisively, a serious conclusion, borderline frowning at the sentiment. How could you be disappointed after spending days upon days doing absolutely nothing and everything with him. Just him.

You sigh, "You techies are always a wild card. To be honest, I'm just glad you're not a serial killer."

He chuckles and takes a deep breath. Letting it buzz through him because by some miracle, you're glad.

"I take it my dashing looks are just an added bonus," he huffs, raising his brows, but out of the corner of his eye, you smile. You don't laugh, but you smile. Brightly, too, sincere in the creases by your tired eyes.

"Toffee latte for... Keys?"

He scratches the back of his neck when you look away, feeling like he's sweating buckets all over the polished floor. Then you look back at him, lips only parted for a breath, mouth quirked. You look cute. Like he couldn't have imagined you sweeter. He just knows you're gonna leave him all syrupy and stuck on you after this.

"So... d'you—"

"Keys! Latte for Keys?"

"I think that might be you," you tease, nodding over to the pick up window with a grin.

"Oh. Oh, right!"

He hurries over to the disgruntled employee, grabbing his coffee and a couple of napkins and a stopper between his teeth before popping it into the lid. When he turns back around, you're not there. And his heart sinks. Frantic, he cranes his neck, spinning dizzily before catching your wave and the bell above the door. And you duck outside.

The cold smacks him into reality. It’s terrifying the way you look back at him with a smile because he’s been thinking about it since the day he first heard your voice. And now you’re letting him catch up to you, walking backwards with your arms crossed over your chest.

"Sorry for ditching. It was kinda stuffy in there—"

He chuckles, suddenly shy with the way you look right through him. And you’re right. Everything’s clearer. Crisp and frosty, but it’ll melt away with the sun.

"No, yeah, it's totally..." he huffs, "I know."

"Good, 'cause I was hoping you'd walk me home."

He shudders, not knowing whether it's the cold or the way you're so sure of him. Even with sweat rolling down his back. He doesn’t think he’ll make it as far as you plan on taking him. Not after you've flattered him enough to lay him bare on the sidewalk.

“You live around here?”

“‘Course I do. I’m not about to drive fifteen minutes for a cup of coffee,” you grumble, skipping over the cracked pavement where weeds sprout up into teensy yellow flowers. Then the toe of your show catches a jilted and offset curb, sending you teetering forward.

“Woah”—Keys catches you by the hand, too focused on the way your fingertips find their way to his, slotting down hard and curling. “I gotcha.”

“Pssh,” you scoff, tugging him close as an excuse to catch you breath. Only, you’re in the middle of the sidewalk and a biker wheels by with a groan. “White knight.”

“I prefer the term gentleman, but whatever floats your boat.”

You stick your tongue out at him when he takes a swig of his coffee and flinches away from it, fingers clenching around your knuckles.

“Hot?”

“Burning.”

“Thanks,” you say with a wink. And his tongue isn’t the only thing burning when it settles into his ears and nose.

“So, are you nearby, or…?”

“Oh! Yeah, this is my building.” You thrust a thumb over your shoulder and yeah, he’s hooked. So hooked he doesn’t realize you’re less than a block up the road from his building. He doesn’t realize he could have been yours. He could be yours, but he’s too hooked.

“Shit. Then I guess this is goodbye.” He leers up at the art deco apartment complex with a squint. Kind of disappointed before he realizes his palm is damp pressed to yours. Suffocating into the space you give him when he scuffs against the rough concrete.

“Guess so.” The sunlight beams from between the strands of his mussed hair, catching the rim of his lenses, and rendering you in awe. “At least we have the game.”

He scoffs. “We’ll always have the game.”

You shrug and tap the bottom edge of his cup. “And you’ll always have this.” Your finger traces the digits and dashes along until they’re dotted off with a heart. “Definitely didn’t slip him ten bucks for that.”

“You’re pretty desperate, huh?”

You smile. “Yup.” You squeeze his hand and tug him close to kiss the supple place his cheek dimples just slightly when he smiles. And he shifts a little. On accident. But suddenly, your mouth is pressed to the corner of his, and he’s short-circuiting when you pull away. “Sorry!”

“It’s… it’s okay, I’m not—I don’t mind,” he sputters and you laugh despite yourself, “Really, don’t worry about it, I mean, I’m not worried, it’s not a big deal, I just—”

You kiss him again. In front of the steps of your apartment building, holding his hand, and boiling him up inside. He can’t help but smile when you tongue at his bottom lip and drop his hand in favor of his waist. He thinks only you’d be so delicate with him. After all, it’s you. And when you pull away, his mouth is a little pink and a little slobbery, and you swipe your thumb across his chin.

“You better call that number,” you warn. He smirks.

“Beats talking to strangers on the internet.”

Mouser looked like he was about to say otherwise, but then dropped his protests. “Keys, can you like, stand on your toes and see what’s going on?”

He obliged and stood up as tall as he could, looking for the front of the line. After a few seconds of the most perfect posture you’d ever seen on your friend, he slumped back down to his normal height. 

“It’s not the regular bouncer. This one’s checking, like, everyone’s IDs for five minutes each.” Keys explained, pulling out his wallet already.

You held back a laugh at the obvious hyperbole and thanked him for the update on what was taking this line so long to move. 

Keys was right; you were actually close to the front of the line. It was still unbearably cold and it wasn’t even winter yet. Keys saw your discomfort and wrapped an arm around you. Maybe that was more than a coworker slash friend should do, but hey, you work at a video game company: nothing was really like other workplaces. 

Once you were finally at the doors, the new bouncer asked for IDs from all three of you—which you thought was ridiculous because none of you looked like you were minors—and thoroughly scanned each one of them. 

Yours was first, and maybe the quickest. Mouser showed his ID next, and then it was Keys’ turn. The worker looked at his driver’s license for longer than he had yours and Mouser’s, then passed it back to Keys with the card in between his index and middle finger. 

Keys seemed to be in a rush to put it back into his wallet, and when you caught a glimpse of it as he shut the leather flaps, you understood why. 

Your friend had never told you his real name before. Come to think of it, you weren’t sure he’s told anyone. What was perhaps his biggest secret was now in your hands, and there were infinite possibilities on what to do with it. 

You kept quiet while the group picked a booth to sit at, then went up to order a round of kamikaze shots to start the night off with a bang. After you’d all taken one shot together, Mouser went off to use the washroom, leaving just you and Keys together. 

Impatient as always, you had decided now was the time to do something with your newly acquired information. Biting back a smile, you tried to act as inconspicuous as possible. 

“You know what?” You started. “I know we still have a round of shots, but I’m gonna head up to the bar and get something with as many maraschino cherries as they’ll let me have. Do you want anything?”

He shook his head, smiling at your drink request. “No, I’m alright. I’ll stay here.”

You stood up, bringing a dollar bill from your purse to tip the bartender. “Okay, I’ll be back, Walter.”

He didn’t even notice your use of his name at first. But when your words played back over in his head—as most things you say to him do—his eyes widened and he shot up from the seat. 

“How did you— I don’t tell people my real name.” Keys said softly but urgently. 

You smiled at him. “I know. I saw it on your driver’s license outside. I just wanted to tease you a bit since I’m now one of the only people in the world who knows it.”

“You are.” He confirmed. “Just, please don’t use it at work or anything. I just think it’s embarrassing.”

“More embarrassing than ‘Keys’?” You giggled. You started walking towards the bar, and he followed closely behind. “You don’t need to worry, though. I like being the keeper of your secret.”

Relief washed over his face. “Thank you.”

You waved over one of your favourite bartenders, then brought your attention back to Keys. “Just for the record, I actually like your real name. It’s like a cute old man you live next to and bring in the newspaper for.” 

He bit the inside of his cheek and stood up from the barstool. “You know, just for that, I do want a drink. You’re buying it for me.”

You rubbed his upper arm to confirm there was nothing bad between you. “I’ll surprise you, Walt.” You told him as he walked back to your booth. 

Unsurprisingly, you were met with his turned back and a middle finger flipped at you. 

He had ordered it in advance, so all he needed to do on the release date was go to the local games store and pick it up. When he came home a few minutes later than usual from work last night, you remembered why when you saw the plastic bag in his hands. 

"I got it, babe!" He said with an ear-to-ear smile. 

His face was so happy that you just felt his excitement pass on to you. You suggested ordering a 'New Horizons release day dinner' as if that was a thing anyone was doing, and you called in a delivery order from your favourite Thai restaurant just a few blocks down. 

He started loading the game onto the switch connected to your tv after you placed the order and you made him promise to take a break when dinner gets here. You knew better than anyone that Keys will get into something, then put every single drop of his focus into it, blocking out everything else—besides you, of course; he could never ignore you. 

Once the game was loaded and ready to play, Keys started designing his character in the game. He tried getting all the colours right to make sure it looked perfect to start with, even though you reminded him he could probably change it later. 

“See? And you can make a little version of you after and our avatars can be just a little version of us!”

After he finished making his character, you decided to take a break and go have a shower since you figured it would be worldbuilding and exposition for a little bit, and you knew your boyfriend would just explain all of that to you later anyways. 

After you came out in a pair of striped pyjamas that you put on to avoid getting dressed in real clothes again, you saw that Keys had brought in the takeout, eaten his portion, and was already running around the island doing random tasks to pay off Tom Nook’s surprise loan. 

Throughout the evening, Keys gave you turns using his character to fish and catch bugs and help him start off the game. It was fun and you loved having him teach you all about everything related to Animal Crossing, but you got tired after a while. 

You kissed his neck and mumbled a goodnight to him. “I’m gonna head to bed, and I’m hoping you join me so don’t stay up too late, okay?”

“Okay, babe. I’ll shut it off soon.”

He did not shut the game off anytime soon. You knew this because you woke up to something he was angrily muttering to himself in the middle of the night. All you could hear of it was something about a ‘goddamn sea bass’. You trudged out of the bedroom, rubbing your eyes sleepily. 

“I thought you said you’d be done soon.” You said, sitting down next to him on the couch. 

“I can leave now. What time is it?” He stood still in the game until the clock showed up in the corner of the screen. “Oh my god, baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise how late it was. I just got distracted trying to start the perfect island life for us.” He pressed a button on the controller in his left hand to save the game and he turned off the screen.

You smiled at him, then took his hand so you could both go to bed together. “You can see a perfect apartment life with me if you don't stay up all night playing video games.”

he’s spent WEEKS scrolling thru adoption ads online and scouring shelters for the bestest boy and then

looking for a loving home: misha! chocolate lab, 7 month old, friendly/affectionate/playful, vaccines up-to-date

with the sweetest little face and a picture of him playing catch

like COME ON

you know keys immediately called the number and sped on over to the address they sent for this pup

misha sat in the passenger’s seat the whole way home, and keys quickly found out he likes the spice girls

they’re already best friends and it was only a four hour drive

……. he’s committed

only he didn’t consider: food, bowls, a bed, toys, leash, etc.

so the journey is back on, and you’re off work soon

lets misha trot around the store picking out his favorite toys (chooses the loudest, most squeaky ones and is grinning like a bastard the entire time)

picks out a matching collar + leash and a fluffy bed and like 100 pounds of dog food

needless to say, he may or may not have spent almost $1000 that day

no matter ‘cause the look on your face is gonna be priceless, he can already tell

then he lets misha off his leash and into the apartment

and he’s off

sprinting into the bedroom and out again, barking at nothing, bouncing off the walls, he’s got the ZOOMIES for sure

and keys is just standing in the front doorway, leash in hand like……. what have i done

apartment: trashed

so now he’s chasing after the ball of energy, picking up knocked over books and a lamp and trying to get the shoe out of his mouth when he hears

“… i’m home”

all while he’s crouched by the arm of the couch, eyes wide, and turned over his shoulder to smile at you

“surprise?”

and the dog comes SPRINTING out of nowhere, completely mowing him over, flattening him on the carpet

and keys just groans because he can hear you laughing while the dog laps at his face

you set your stuff down and kick the door closed and are DOUBLED over looking at this fully grown man with a dog wiggling around on top of him and nearly suffocating him

and you’re just kneeling down next to them and scratching the dog’s head while keys is playing dead and you’re like

“who’s this little guy?” “the devil” “awww, such a good boy, what’s your name, bub?” “it’s misha. and he’s insane” “hi, misha!!”

and the puppy hops into your lap and you have to hold him back from climbing you like a tree

he’s such a sweetie, and keys is still recovering

then misha sits down in your lap and is panting and nudging your hand until you pet him more 🥺🥺

“so who are we dogsitting for?”

“we’re not”

and you just laugh and shake your head while keys wipes the slobber off his face and sits up

“ha ha very funny. who?”

but keys just stares at you with that little stupid smirk and you look up from the dog and your face go so serious

keys is scared

“he’s ours?” “mhm”

and you just hug the little puppy and are literally on the verge of tears and grabbing keys by the back of his neck to give him a big kiss

and misha starts barking up at the two of you

and you pull away laughing with keys holding your hand

“he’s ours”

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