#ler!joe

Day one: Boo! / Jump scare:

Day 2: Decorating:

Day 3: Hide n' Seek

Day 4: Surprise / Anticipation

Day 5: "I'm not ticklish":

His slightly curly golden hair was tousled, his face frozen in utter shock, and Joe was no less stunned, not understanding what had come over her. In any normal situation, she would’ve slapped herself for such antics, but now, even when she should’ve backed off and apologized profusely, Joe didn’t feel like doing it. Energy overflowed from how desperately she wanted to prove Kyle wrong about her thoughts of someone else. Damn it, she’d been thinking about him long before he knew of her existence!

Joe was pulled out of her thoughts about justifying her behavior by Kyle’s flustered attempt to say something. The girl could physically feel the frantic rhythm of the heartbeat of the man beneath her — the owner of beautiful but utterly bewildered blue eyes. And as soon as Kyle opened his mouth, Joe immediately seized his sides, starting to rattle them like piano keys.

"AH!" A mix of fright and trembling was reflected in Kyle's exclamation, quickly replaced by nervous laughter. That’s when Joe realized she’d found the right leverage...

"Why do you have to be so stubborn, Kyle?" as if nothing had happened she continued in her still-angry tone, rapidly kneading his squirming sides. "See what consequences this leads to?"

Terrible ones! Kyle threw his head back, laughing like he’d never laughed in his life. And the thing was, he had never been tickled before. The sensation was overwhelming and unfamiliar, and Joe’s attacks in this situation were merciless. Little did he know that she was going easy on him yet...

"Ah, wait! Stop, don’t do that! It’s... ahahaha! Joe, listen!"

"What? Why should I listen to you when you refuse to hear me?" The girl’s hint was perfectly clear.

"I’m begging you! Hahahaha! I— Ah! It’s too much! I’ll do anything, just stop!"

"Oh, really? Then maybe you’ll finally admit that I don’t need anyone but you?! So I can hear it loud and clear." Her fingers began sliding downward authoritatively, dancing along the lower part of his ribs, sometimes brushing against the back and making Kyle arch like a bow.

"W-what?! Ahah! HAHahah! D-damn it! Joe!.."

Kyle was going insane, not knowing where to escape. Not only was he redder than a tomato from the tickling, but now he was also under moral pressure from Joe’s insanely embarrassing demand. How could he admit such a thing? How could he be sure of it without knowing what was going on in her pretty little head?

"You heard right. I want you to say that I don't have another woman." Joe stubbornly insisted, wanting to clearly see the fruits of her labor on Kyle’s character. If she was in this world for this purpose, she’d achieve it by any means necessary! Not that she disliked this method... After all, she loved a little bit of risky mischief.

"But I saw it myself! Joe, this is going nowhere! Please, make it stop, hahahaha!"

Joe’s blood boiled even hotter at such stubbornness. There was no longer any desire to reason with this child in an aristocrat’s body, only to force the truth out of him! Her hands slid lower, straight to his trembling hips, and immediately began digging in, eliciting an unprecedented wail from her victim.

"NO! Not there! Ahahahaha!!!" It seemed like the walls and ceiling were shaking in time with Kyle’s convulsions, and Joe herself occasionally glanced at the entrance door to make sure no one decided to drop by. "Fine! I give up! You don’t have anyone else, just stop!"

"That doesn’t sound very sincere," she leaned down, her breath tickling his neck. The portion of blush on Kyle’s cheeks — a man used to control and distance — instantly doubled, if not tripled. Not letting up on his hips, Joe continued tormenting the weakest spots. The blond desperately tried to grab her wrists, but it was futile. In her determined state, Joe was far too agile.

"Hahahaha! Ah! Why are you doing this to me?!" came a drawn-out, dramatic moan as the girl intensified the tickling on his unexpectedly sensitive hips, which were thrashing wildly in attempts to escape or shake off the tormentor. A smirk played on Joe’s lips. She realized tickling was foreign to Kyle and almost felt sorry for him. But punishing him for slander and proving her point was more tempting than pity.

Of course, Kyle had seen how tickling affected others. But he could never have imagined the overwhelming sensations it could cause, especially from the fingers of someone he... truly, genuinely cared about.

Maybe Joe really did care about him too, if her touches could make him feel like this? Or was it just the torture clouding his mind? Between attempts not to lose his mind from the ticklish assaults, thoughts raced through Kyle’s head about everything Joe did just to make him smile. Even if her methods were slightly violent.

"Ah... I get it!... I get it..." Kyle’s voice cracked as he began to realize his anxiety might have been an overreaction. "You... don’t have another woman."

But then Joe decided to push her luck a little and ask for more — just to be absolutely sure of his thoughts.

"And?"

"And you don’t need anyone..." Kyle hesitated, this time trying to fully convince himself, "...except me."

Joe finally relaxed and smiled softly.

Her hand mercifully retreated from his weak spots, brushing away droplets of sweat from the heavily breathing man’s forehead.

"And I want you to always remember that."

And Kyle really did remember. He’d always known it. Always seen it in her thoughts. But why was it so treacherously easy to lose confidence with this girl? Now, shame washed over Kyle, and Joe saw it in his downcast eyes.

"You want to control everything so badly, but believe me — you don’t need to. I made my choice a long, long time ago." She gently tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear and, with a light smile, kissed his brow, leaving Kyle speechless.

The blond let out a defeated exhale, merging with his already heavy breathing. For a moment, his face brightened with a relieved smile, and his eyes sparkled.

"Joe, you..."

The girl listened attentively.

"...are just a monster. How could you so cruelly..."

Tickle you? Joe almost teased him but realized her beloved character had suffered enough. The sentence ended with a full stop in the form of Kyle's puffed-up cheek, turning away in embarrassment, but not risking moving Joe off of him.

While Kyle struggled and fought back as much as he could, Joe seemed amused by the whole scene. The prince could feel a drop of sweat trickling down his temper, the heat gathering around his collar and the blush rushing across his face. The air itself felt warm, almost hot enough to suffocate, but also comforting enough to make him consider–

No! This wasn’t it!

“You’ve never come inside my hut before… Am I dreaming?” Joe mumbled softly, her voice gentle and peaceful, calm. A faint blush spreaded over her cheeks as well, and even if they were lost, her eyes seemed to glisten in the dimly lit bedroom.

Kyle opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Joe smiled at his reaction, giggling quietly.

“Joe,” he sighed, “I know you don’t remember, but last time- mmph!”

And just when he lowered his guard, thinking her clinginess was coming to a halt, Joe moved her hands. She held him by his face, gently but firmly, and pulled Kyle towards herself.

Before the prince could say anything, their lips met, stopping his words and thoughts in their tracks. He could still taste the alcohol lingering in her mouth and, hadn’t he been so shocked, Kyle felt like that kiss would have made him crumble right there and then.

After a couple seconds, they lips parted. Kyle’s face, still held between Joe’s hands, was even redder than before. She squeezed his cheeks slightly, smiling at his flustered expression.

“It’s okay because this is a dream, right?” She giggled, smiling fondly while her thumbs caressed his face. 

‘What was she thinking?’, Kyle yelled inside his head, trying to stick to his better judgement and keep in mind that she was drunk, not thinking straight. This had to come to an end, Kyle told himself. 

The prince slowly reached for Joe’s hand at his face, closing his fingers around her palm to dislodge it from his face. Or so he wanted to, but found himself hesitating to break the touch between them.

Even if she was drunk, her smile made his chest ache, as if the space around his heart suddenly became tighter than ever.

“Kyle..~” Joe called, tilting her head in her pillow while moving her free hand down to his shoulder and then to his chest, “hehe, are you nervous? Your face is so red right now ~”

He pressed his eyes shut, refusing to take another look into that sweet expression, even if it was just for a single more second. “Kyle always looks so cute, but in my dreams you’re extra handsome right now…”

“You’re not- h-hey, get yourself together, now,” he groaned, feeling a shiver creeping up his spine when her fingers roamed next to his ribs, pressing into the soft spots between each bone. “I s-shouldn’t be here in fihi- h-hey!”

[“He looks so serious, I want him to smile more…”]

Kyle widened his eyes as those words made it from Joe’s head to inside his own. She wasn’t just getting handsy, it was something worse, way worse!

“J-Joe, nohow it’s not- agh, gehehet off! Thihis isn’t t-the time for fooling aharound!”

No matter how much he tried to scold her, the only answer he would get from her was a lazy chuckle, poised with the alcohol from earlier. Kyle would push one hand away from the side of his chest, just to have the other one poking at his side. 

Besides that, keeping his balance with just one arm while being tickled was proving to be a more difficult task than he first expected. Kyle felt his muscles tremble, threatening to falter and fail their owner - and he couldn’t have that, not while Joe was right beneath him!

“Heh, aren’t you just so cute? Kyle is so ticklish… ~” Joe giggled, amused by their play-fight. “Kyle’s flustered smile is much better than a flustered frown… he should always be like this when he visits me in my dreams, heheh…”

“S-stohop the nohohonsense!” Kyle groaned, arching his back in a vain attempt of moving his stomach away from Joe’s hands. He tried to move and cover his ribs and sides, but her hands would always find their way back to his body, making those restrained, helpless giggles escape his lips.

“But it’s my dream! And I want to tickle Kyle in my dream…”

Such a nuisance!

He gritted his teeth, his eyes pressing shut and even his nose scrunching up a little as he tried to resist the urge to dissolve into a laughing mess on top of her. If that would make Joe behave, should he just let her have it? At least this would mean that there was no risk of her wandering around or running into some kind of problem, after all.

Against the better judgement, he lowered the hand that he was using to protect his body from the assault, placing it back by the side of Joe’s body. “D-dohohon’t be soho harsh, at leheheast!”

Joe gasped, happy and surprised. What an amazing dream, she thought (and made Kyle’s cringe with it). “Kyle will let me tickle him? This is the best- eheh, best dream ever!”

“I-I’m nehehever lehehetting you drihink again, you- ahAHAh, I- I tohohold you to behe gehentle!”

Those words, however, made it to one of her ears and then came out of the other, with not a single one of them sticking up to her intoxicated brain. Kyle scrunched up his shoulders and pressed his chin down towards his chest, hoping to build at least one effective barrier against Joe’s fingers.

She tickled his neck, managing to push up her fingers past the tight spaces and tease the sensitive skin. She tickled him at his armpits, prodding and vibrating right into that sensitive nerve in the middle of his underarms, hitting that soft spot over and over in a maddening way that made Kyle want to crumble.

Her hands continued to roam, and much to Kyle’s demise, to tickle the prince as much as they could. His ribs, sides, stomach, and even down to his waist. 

On the contrary of what Kyle hoped for, Joe didn’t seem to be getting tired or satisfied - at least, not at any time soon. The more she tickled, the more encouraged she seemed to get by his laughter and strangled pleas.

With a smile plastered on her face, Joe looked up to her fairytale prince. “You look so cute right now, heheh… chirping for me just like a little canary! ~”

Those words made Kyle feel like his stomach was turning upside down. If only he wasn’t so busy laughing, he would probably retort or snap back at that. Properly, at least. “S-shuhut it! AHAhaha, I-I’m nohot a bihihird!”

“Of course you’re not - birds are not this handsome or… heh, sexy…” Joe added, grinning as she cupped Kyle’s cheek with one hand while the tickled back at his armpit, making him twist in a funny way that made her chuckle along. “I also don’t have dreams about birds, just about you ~”

Kyle clenched his hands, clasping so tightly at the bedsheets that his knuckles were turning white while his palms trembled a little.

As if the tickling alone wasn’t enough to make him crave an exit from this awful situation, the teasing was making ten- no, a dozen times worse. He wasn’t sure if he was feeling shy or secondhand embarrassment, truth to be told.

That sweet talk was too sweet. Nauseating, even. He felt like he was being exposed to the depths of Joe’s feelings with no filter or social cues to hold her tongue - or fingers, for this matter - back.

And on top of that, the fact that Joe, of all people, was the one saying these obscene absurdities to him… Probably being thrown a tomato in public would feel less humiliating than this. He should stop her, Kyle knew it, but a part of him wanted to pry more into these feelings, to let it happen and see just how much Joe would be willing to share.

Still, there had to be some other way to do this than being tickled to his dismay. “J-Joe! Yohohou ahAHahre- ahAH, s-stohop sahahaying nohOHohonsense, you dah- AHaha, w-wahahait!”

“It’s not nonsense, your highness,” she cooed, cupping both sides of his ribcage and slowly wiggling her fingers up into the tight spaces under his arms, her thumb teasing his chest while she did so. “I wish I could stay in this dream forever, just to see you laughing like this, my dear Kyl- ah.”

Enough- that was enough of that humiliating talk. Kyle gasped, his hands that were on the mattress suddenly lifted from the bedsheets, his fingers closing around Joe’s wrists and pulling her hands away from his body once for all. In a blink of an eye, the control over the situation was stripped from her hands.

“I tohold you- hahh, to stop these absurdities, Gingja Ging!” Kyle scolded, his flushed face and disheveled hair contrasting his anger features. He still felt the heat around his collar, the burning in his lungs and the tingles on his skin, but above all that, Kyle still felt the embarrassment from the way Joe talked so casually about him. Yes, she was drunk, but there was only so much he could take. “You s-shouldn’t have pushed your luck.”

“Eh?” Joe giggled, clueless. In her intoxicated mind, this was all but reality, after all. Was the Kyle in her dream going to act scary now? This wasn’t really the Kyle she always thought about, but the idea of a ‘bad boy’ of sorts was… curious.

Still, these would’ve been better kept inside her mind only. “Stop having these foolish thoughts!” Kyle hissed, “you-”

“Kyle looks so handsome when he is angry, heh,” she smiled at his rage, tilting her head.

The prince opened his mouth to talk back, but no words came out. His lips, then, pressed back into a thin line, refraining from letting anything unneeded escape him at that moment. There was no reason, not at that moment at least. “Let me do it your way, then.”

With few things making sense inside her brain at that moment, Joe calmly watched as Kyle gathered her wrists under just one of his hands, pinning her arms right above her head. Her eyes shifted from where their hands were back to Kyle’s annoyed smile, trying to figure him out. Was he going to do something nast-

!!!

“W-whAHahat- ahahah, K-Kyle, thihihis tihihickles!” Joe laughed, her back arching off the mattress while the prince began to wiggle his fingers against her side and then at her ribs. His touch was rougher than usual, but as ticklish as ever.

In silence, Kyle shook his head, feigning disapproval as he continued to tickle. “Don’t start complaining now, you brought upon yourself,” he scolded, his eyes narrowing into a cold, sharp gaze as he clawed at her stomach, pinching and squeezing whatever soft spot he could get a hold onto.

Joe shook and pressed her head back into the pillow while free, careless laughter poured from her lips. “NohOHOH, ahhahah, t-thihihs is my dreheheam! I waHAhahanted to tihickle you moHOHore!”

“You- ugh, just stop talking at once!”

“K-Kyle, noHOHOH! AHAHA!! ~” She squealed, her feet kicking the sheets behind them as the tickling seemed to step up a notch all of the sudden. Why was the man of her dreams so angry at her? Wasn’t he just a cute, giggling canary in her hands moments ago?

She was as loud as she could possibly be, loud enough to make Kyle worry if there wasn’t going to be any inconvenient passerby to get the wrong idea about what was happening inside that bedroom, but, still, Joe deserved this punishment. “Spare your voice, I don’t want to hear whatever you may have to say!”

Despite the cold nature of his words, this was as far as he could possibly get while acting angry at her. The more Kyle looked at Joe now, the less sense this whole scene seemed to have. Maybe even under the effect of alcohol, Joe still had a better understanding of the situation than him.

“You should think about what you did,” he added later, his tone less fierce than before. He moved his fingers and focused his tickling under her arm, gently clawing at the middle of her armpit before moving further down to tickle her ribs.

Just like Kyle’s anger, Joe’s laughter was slowly dying down as well. Maybe because the tickling wasn’t as harsh as when it started or maybe because she was growing used to the feeling, but her laughter began to sound more lighthearted, tranquil even. 

She dragged her heels over the bed in a playful squirming and lightly arched her back, barely going anywhere as she was still trapped inside Kyle’s grip. Her cheeks were as red as they could be, but something about Joe’s smile made it look even more genuine than when she was teasing the prince.

And when Kyle realized these were none other than his own thoughts, his hands froze in their tracks, with his fingers pressed - but staying completely still - against her side. For some reason, despite Joe being the one that was tickled for the past minutes, Kyle found himself out of air at that moment.

His heart was beating fast and his chest felt like it was clenching around his heart when he looked down at her. Was this..?

The prince shook his head, trying to recover his better judgement of the situation. He sighed, getting off of Joe’s lap and running a hand through his hair, giving her a stern look with the corner of his eyes. “Looks like you had enough, after all.”

She didn’t answer, only giggling to herself while staring blankly at the ceiling of the room. Joe looked like she was in a daze, lost in thoughts kept to only to herself this time. Maybe it was better like this, Kyle thought, sliding to the edge of the bed.

“I’m going to get a physician, so… please, behave,” he muttered, hoping to not wake Joe from whatever dream she had going on inside her head.

However, just as he was about to stand back on his feet, her hand closed around the back of his clothes. With her tight grip closed shut, Joe pulled the prince back into the bed, quickly wrapping her arms around his body.

“Don’t go,” she hummed, quickly securing the upper hand and straddling his lap instead this time. Joe looked down at him, her smile just as wide as when she was getting tickled just now. Kyle felt his heart skip a beat, swallowing whatever words he had to say back to her when he looked at her face.

“This is my favorite dream ever,” Joe giggled, leaning forward to hug the prince and rest her head on top of his chest, “Kyle appeared in my dream… we kissed… I could tickle him… and he tickled me back, hehe…”

Kyle clenched his hand, feeling something funny stirring up inside his stomach. Her words reached him, one after the other. Part of him wondered what it would be like later on - was she going to remember this moment and cherish it like a precious memory? Or was it going to become a blurry memory, a feverish dream at best?

The other part of him, however, couldn’t focus on anything else but the present, but the woman he had just before his arms and the way she made his heart beat faster and faster, out of rhythm and control.

He sighed, his hand hesitating before wrapping itself around her body as well, turning that awkward position into a comforting hug. “So… am I always like this in your dreams?”

“Not always,” she hummed, nuzzling her cheek into his chest, filling her nostrils with his scent, “sometimes you act shy and then you get angry, but you always have that cute face and a handsome body… sometimes, heheh, I have really fun dreams…”

“F-fun?”

“Yeah… we are all by ourselves and… you and I… heheh…”

“‘You and I’..?” Kyle repeated, feeling his throat drying up at the sound of those words. Could she mean that they..?

…

“Ahm, Joe?” He called, waiting a couple seconds in the dead silence of the room before calling her out again. Still, no response. “Joe..? You, you didn’t fall asleep, right? Hey, Joe!” He called, louder this time, as he shook her body by her shoulder.

“You can’t be serious!! Gingja Ging! Wake up!! Don’t you dare fall asleep on me again,” Kyle shouted, now on his knees as he stood by her side, trying to get Joe out of her deep, deep slumber.