Critical Tits Chapter Four The d12. It was hers now. Yes, only when Bobby let her, but when he gave his permission, it was hers. That was three down, four to go. From here, they were only going to get better. The d6, useful for all sorts of rolls; a d8, standard dice damage for many of the games most common weapons from longswords to longbows; the d10, not only handy for damage but also completing her d% rolls. Then, finally, the d20. She knew Bobby would save it for last. After all, it was the d20 system. She could roll it, and roll it, and roll, and roll, and roll… The car behind Cindy honked. That same intersection at Jefferson Street, a little ways from Bobby’s house. It was getting so that she almost had to be at least this far out to be able to concentrate again. They tended to play late and cut off abruptly, which left little time for the transition. And what a session! Lows, yes – there would always be lows with assholes like Brent and Andy (and maybe once in a while Bobby) – but highs, too. For the first time, everyone had walked away from the session seeming to look forward to the following week’s. That in and of itself was progress. Cindy only wished she could take more credit for it. After all, the session had mostly comprised of a rescue mission. Targeting her. In a sense, she supposed she deserved some credit. They’d run into their existing problem face first in the opening moments of the game – namely, that the week before, those pencil-dicked assholes had sold her character to the hobgoblin warlord Mokvinorg as a tribute to his pervy goblin king. At first, they’d simply shrugged and said she should make a new character – “One who can actually do anything this time would be nice,” said Andy – but Cindy had thought fast. “I was thinking of doing a half-orc,” she speculated, pivoting on Bobby’s lap to face the stack of core books. “Maybe a barbarian? Finally just embrace a solid cliché, make a hairy-chested, long-tusked thug and kick some ass.” The pronouncement had produced the desired hesitancy. She had little doubt that their diverted gazes were to take in the bobbling, jiggling sight of Sintheigha’s token. However it might embarrass her, she knew full well they liked it, not only for the aesthetic, but precisely because of how it embarrassed her. A brief discussion followed, Andy decrying the perils of gender-bending and Brent encouraging her not quite passive aggressively to try something outside her usual warrior wheelhouse. “I just want to do kind of an opposite thing. Sintheigha worked out so badly – all cute, and soft, and delicate. This time, let’s try some farting, belching, big dick energy, ya know?” “Sintheigha wasn’t so bad,” Brent conceded immediately. “The dagger was probably a bad idea, but hard to complain about walking around with booby armor.” “Booooooooobs,” added Andy gravely. “You guys are sweet. But I don’t want to make you keep carrying me. You’re supposed to be saving Lord Koltron’s mistress, not your own party member.” It worked too well. The two dunderheads spoke on top of each other, both desperate to establish that a rescue operation was their own novel idea. Saving hot babes from dungeons was a timeless trope, something they hadn’t done in so long that it might be fun to relive the glory days. Meaning three years ago. Before she knew it, they had about faced, Brent employed his bardic social skills to dupe Mokvingorg’s hobgoblins into thinking they were considering joining forces. Bobby rolled with it well. Scene wipes transitioned the action back and forth from Skuf and Jerom’s infiltration and where Sintheigha was held captive. Three sessions in and she’d spent two of them in holding cells. As dice rolling became necessary, Cindy scooted off of Bobby’s lap and took her own chair. She soon lost count of how many times Andy had to have something repeated for him because he got lost staring at Cindy’s chest where it heaved out of her off-the-shoulder top. She located Koltron’s mistress in the cell next to hers. This was where the campaign began to take shape, the reveal that Koltron was employing the same tactic as Mokvinorg, selling his woman to the goblin king. Was he a traitor, giving the enemy aid and comfort, or was he a coward, hoping to buy his way out of the worst of the coming invasion? That would come later. For now, she was glad to have an opportunity to roleplay a little, and while usually the guys got fidgety if she hogged the spotlight for too long, today they were all too content to sit back and watch her play. Finally, they pressed their nosiness as far as it was going to go, and battle ensued. Trapped in her cell, helpless, useless, Sintheigha could only listen to the sounds of her rescuers making their way closer. Meanwhile, with nothing to do in game… “Excuse me for a minute.” Never had excusing herself to the bathroom been so awkward. Was that how she usually sounded? Did she usually say anything? She couldn’t have guessed in that moment. She was halfway down the hall when Bobby’s voice caught up with her. “Um, Cindy? Your dice…?” Her eyes squeezed shut, fists clenched in despair. He’d caught her. A forced, pleading smile was plastered on her freshly tanned face when she turned around. “I just want to look at it, OK? I won’t do anything or try to take it – I know it’s yours – but I want to look. Only look. Is that all right? Please? I promise–” Bobby looked at her like instead of dying her hair blonde, she’d gone full medusa. “Uh, sure. I just saw one of them wasn’t on the table and wanted to make sure you hadn’t dropped it or something. Looking out for you, that’s all.” Copper skin turned flaming orange in embarrassment as she heard Andy’s pffffffffft of bemusement. Without saying another word, she headed towards the bathroom. “What the hell is she so nervous about…?” came Brent’s query as the door closed behind her. Bobby’s bathroom was its usual grunginess, mildew spotting the paint on the ceiling overhead and god only knew what around the base of the toilet. Flecks of toothpaste spittle decorated the sink and lower portion of the cracked mirror. Cindy loved it in here. It was a window into the vile, disgusting nature of mankind. (Boykind, anyway; she kept her own bathroom reasonably tidy.) If she had ever thought to give Bobby a shot, it would have been in here. Not that she ever would. That little show out there was all she’d ever give him. (Plus whatever was needed to get those last four dice.) Before releasing the dice from her fist, Cindy made sure the toilet lid was down and the drain on the sink was plugged. No way was she going to risk losing one in an accident. She’d been through too much already. Satisfied that the area was secure, she set the d4, d100, and the new d12 on the counter, kneeling to gaze at them at eye level. For a moment, the bathroom faded to black; there was nothing in her vision except these three miniature starfields, where entire cosmos birthed and swirled and died before her eyes. It was the sum total of existence, on a scale beyond anything her mind could hold. “BOOYA, BITCHES, NAT TWENTY!” roared Andy’s image in the TV from out in the main room. As Bobby congratulated, she gave it a second kiss. Then, just to see what it would be like, she let the pointed tip, currently showing a 2, slide between her lips. She kissed the d4. It was… good. She tried it again. Really good. By the time Cindy came some minutes later – or hours? she really had no idea – she was on her knees in front of the toilet, bobbing up and down on the d4 like it was the tip of an incredibly petite cock. Meanwhile, the d12 was rubbing slow circles around her clit, the energy from it not vibrating, quite, but still pulsing into her in some divine wavelength only her pussy was capable of discerning. As for the d100, she’d been afraid of losing it up inside her pussy, so she’d rummaged through drawers until finding a condom, slipping it inside, and guiding it inside her. In the absence of a bathmat, her hot pink leggings had served as a kneeling pad. Now there was a dark puddle on them from where she’d come. As she unfurled them, she realized it was sort of everywhere, little spots that had been adjacent when they’d been bunched up but were now spread up and down her legs, ass and crotch when she spread them out. There was no hair dryer Cindy could use, even if she could have invented some reason why she might have needed one, so all she could do was pat them with Bobby’s towel (which doubled as the hand towel) and hope he didn’t see. Or smell. God, even she could smell the cum in here. If he noticed anything, he kept it to himself. Cindy made her way right past him, making sure to bend over deep, right in the field of her webcam, as she took her chair. (If the battle had gone badly, she wanted them to remember why they’d suffered on her behalf.) “We’ve almost bailed Sintheigha out,” Brett explained by way of catching her up. “Just got to finish off the jailer and a few more guards, and you’re good.” “Oh, great!” Cindy only just realizing she was still flushed and breathing a bit heavily. She fanned her face with Sintheigha’s sheet, trying not to notice how much jiggling even that small motion set off. “You’re welcome,” he mumbled after. “I promise I’ll show you all the gratitude in the world as soon as you save me.” With her clit still thrumming, it was easier to force a smile at the mother fuckers who’d put her into that cell in the first place than she might have expected. The car behind her honked again. Cindy rolled down the window to flip him off, but found her reminiscing had robbed her of a lot of her fire, so she waved apologetically and proceeded through the intersection. ________________ “Cynthia, don’t clock in yet. We need to talk. In my office.” Mr. Herzog folded his arms across his chest imperiously. “It’s Cindy now, actually.” It would be easier to grit her teeth letting her gaming buddies call her that if she adapted herself to it elsewhere. She was a walking testament to the veracity of immersion therapy. “Cindy then.” He gestured to the office door. Though none of her coworkers were in earshot (and earshot was practically nonexistent over the roar of the carwash), several pairs of eyes followed her in. No doubt they’d heard about her little stunt two days earlier to get sent home early the other day. Not that it was much of a stunt. She’d simply worn a white t-shirt to work instead of the itchy blue wool of her uniform. That was it. After taking his seat opposite her, Mr. Herzog made a show of looking through a stack of papers until finally selecting the one that rested on bottom. Well staged. “Cynth… Cindy,” he looked up, eyeing her new look with obvious distaste, “what can you tell me what happened here this weekend? I have a right-up from Ian, who says… Well. Why don’t you tell me in your own words?” “My work shirt was dirty, so I wore a different shirt. Honest mistake.” She shrugged. The man stroked his chin like this was all an awful lot to ponder for one simple car wash owner. “Mhm, I can understand that. But you’ve worked here for a while now, haven’t you?” “Yeah, I guess.” Another shrug. “And it didn’t occur to you that wearing a, it says here, ‘thin white shirt,’ to your job at a car wash, was particularly poor judgment?” Cindy folded her arms frostily. “And why’s that?” It was plain where this was going, but she was in no mood to make the dressing down easier for him. Fuck this old prick. He frowned. Clearly, he didn’t like being made to put such a fine point on it – that she’d given customers a free pass to a one-woman wet t-shirt contest – but that was his problem, not hers. “You see, Cindy… you’re a pretty young woman. I don’t know what brought about all… this,” he said, gesturing to all of her, “but it’s doubly important for girls like yourself to present themselves… professionally.” “A white shirt is unprofessional?” Her eyes glanced down to his white button-up pointedly. “It can be,” he answered stiffly. “I wouldn’t wash cars in this, after all. But a young girl, like yourself, dressing a certain way…” Oh god, this was turning into an object lesson in rape culture. “And what way is that?” Her boss fidgeted with the papers in his hands. “I think you know perfectly well what way I mean. You, um, appeared not to be wearing any… brassiere.” “So, what, you’re afraid people would see my tits through my shirt? Is that it?” “Well, now, I wouldn’t–” “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re afraid my tits are gonna drive business down? Fuck that!” She rose to her feet as her voice rose to a shout. “Your asswipe customers would line up to get a peek at these things! I looked dynamite Sunday, I’ll have you know. If you can’t handle the heat, get the fuck out the kitchen, old-timer! I bet you my next paycheck that if I keep showing up in a white t-shirt every day, I’d triple your business! At least! You’ll have a line around the block!” Cindy grasped one breast in each hand, raising them up, daring him to notice them. Those idiots at the gaming table had been dancing to their tune all session long. Maybe she’d been wrong all this time about how her body could serve as an asset to her goals. What was her goal here, again? She fondled her tits shamelessly, egging him on. It was too much, but… it also felt really good. Mr. Herzog slowly rose to his feet, keeping his eyes fixed on hers. She’d suspected he was gay before, but this had to make it official. “That is not how I do business here.” “Well maybe it should be! Come on down to Tits ‘N Suds, get your windows cleaned and something worth seeing through ‘em! Nice ring, huh?” Maybe when she was done talking him down, she could sneak off to the bathroom to– “Cindy!” She blinked. His tone suggested he’d had to say her name more than once. She lowered her shirt, not sure when she’d lifted it over her breasts, or when she’d tugged the cups of her bra down to let her at her nipples. “Yes, Mr. Herzog?” So yeah, she got fired. If only that had been the worst of the trouble her libido got her into that week. ________________ Cindy fanned herself with her folder thick with old character sheets from campaigns past. Ever since coming back from the bathroom – though she was already worried there was no coming back from giving your dice a blowjob on a toilet seat – she had been flushed. Sweaty. Leaky all over, really. She’d been nervous to sit back on Bobby’s lap, drippy as she was. The fight was on-going, and her jail cell was now on the battle map displayed on Bobby’s TV screen. Down the hall, Skuf, Jerom and Bregan were battling the barghest jailer and a trio of hobgoblin soldiers who’d doggedly waded through the swath of carnage they’d left in the wake of their rescue. There was Sintheigha’s token in her cell, and Eisheth, Lord Koltron’s discarded mistress, in the one next to her. Sintheigha bore both the sickened and fatigued status effects. (Bobby explained that the poor accommodations were taking their toll, even though she’d only been a prisoner here a few scant hours. Not worth starting an argument over, not when the boys were finally being nice to her. Her hotness would only mask her bitchery so much.) Unfortunately, there was also nothing Sintheigha could do to help in the fight, either. If she’d gone for a spellcasting class, maybe she could have come up with something, but as a fighter, and one stripped to her smallclothes and deprived of weapons, the best she could do was feebly beat her fists on the cell doors. She went so far as to suggest that one of her rescuers make their way down the corridor to liberate her – “another initiative count on our side, right?” – but it was met with irritated eye rolls. “What is it you think you’re gonna contribute with AC 9 and an unarmed strike at a -4 penalty? Maybe score a lucky crit, pull off 1d3+1 x2?” Brent pointed out snidely. “It’s more hit points though, isn’t it?” Andy laughed. “I know they’re hobgoblins, but they’d have to be pretty stupid to waste swings on you. Jerom’s farts are more dangerous than Sintheigha, our so-called fighter.” His image on screen took a few sniffs; she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d actually passed gas to make his point. If there was a point in there. Bobby admonished them for strategizing out of character, his usual reminder that their characters didn’t share a hive mind, and there was nothing for it but to let it drop. Four rounds and almost two hours later, the battle finished. Cindy followed most of it, but her dice were simply too distracting to give it her all. Jerom went down twice thanks to the idiotic melee sorcerer build she’d warned him about during character creation, spared death only by timely healing from the questionably pacifistic Bregan. Skuf hadn’t fared much better. If the two saw any irony in their being repeatedly rescued by the party NPC even as they berated her for necessitating a rescue mission, they gave no sign of it. As if to evidence their displeasure at being tasked with bailing out Cindy’s little-beloved character, they released Eisheth first, and only after making sure both she and her virtue were intact did they turn their attention to Sintheigha’s cell. “I knew you’d come back for me,” Cindy gushed in character. Couldn’t hurt to lay it on thick, especially since she followed it with, “I would have been too glad to help you slaughter those bastards if you’d freed me sooner.” “What good is a naked blonde chick against a barghest, except maybe to sate his infernal appetite?” Skuf answered. Scuffily. “I’m not naked,” Cindy protested, this time out of character. She looked to Bobby imploringly. “Right? You said they took my armor, not my clothes.” “Look at that portrait. If that’s her armor, what the fuck clothes is she talking about?” Andy pointed at what she surmised was the location of Sintheigha’s avatar on his monitor. After a considering look, Bobby slowly nodded. “He has a point, Cindy.” (Already, Cynthia was forgotten by all in the group.) “If you wanted to keep your dignity intact, don’t choose an avatar so scantily clad.” Her jaw dropped as the other two guffawed openly, but she collected herself quickly. This wasn’t about the game. It wasn’t even about her dignity, nor even her increasingly fragile grasp on reality. This was about her dice, plain and simple. “Fine. Well then I’ll start looking around for my armor before they get too much more of an eyeful. Ogle Eisheth instead, guys. She doesn’t seem to mind.” As if they hadn’t been ogling her feed on their monitors with diminishing subtlety all session long. “You minding is what makes it so funny,” Andy pointed out. Still, he and Brent did acknowledge that Eisheth’s portrait showed a reasonably attractive woman as well. Bobby pointed out that although nearly a week of incarceration by hobgoblins hadn’t been especially kind to her, she was still sporting an impressive Charisma, and had been left there in nothing but her shift. Soon enough, Sintheigha came across a locked trunk where, once they used the barghest’s key to access it, they discovered not only Sintheigha’s gear but a cache of loot that was rather impressive for their meager level, Bobby’s way of keeping the party geared up after so little loot had been acquired between levels 1 and 2. Gold and silver, scrolls, potions, what could only be a bored DM’s enjoyment at random loot generation in wondrous items. There was even a magic dagger, albeit merely +1 with no special qualities. For Sintheigha’s paltry DPS, however, it was quite a– “Hold it right there,” Andy interjected. “How come Sintheigha’s getting a share of the loot when she didn’t do any of the actual fighting?” “Yeah, she’s walking out of here full health, consumables unconsumed, her weapons clean and dry, and somehow thinks she’s entitled to an equal share of loot and XP? That’s not fair, Bobby.” “That’s how we’ve always done it,” she protested, hating how meek her voice sounded. Hating how her tits were literally sweating. It wasn’t even hot in there. God, she wanted to run back to the bathroom again. This was important though. Sort of. “Sometimes folks are unlucky, but we still do it equal.” Andy shook his head. “There’s unlucky, and then there’s worthless! What did she do to earn anything in that whole series of encounters aside from grind her ass on the DM’s dick?” There was some back and forth, but the session was already going late, so Bobby soon stepped in to adjudicate. “Gang, let’s meet in the middle, yeah? Sintheigha can get half XP, since she was the reason there even was a mission, even if yeah, she couldn’t contribute much. And loot-wise, why don’t we say she can have a half share of the coinage, and one other thing, but only if she agrees to be the Stuff Girl for the rest of the adventure. Agreed?” Stuff Boy was the group’s usual term for whoever was tasked with the tedium of maintaining the party’s loot stash. Brent had done it for years, hence the choice of gender. The advent of a VTT program had rendered it easier, but still, there was lots of adding and subtracting that came with it. It would have been far less of a slap in the face than the XP deduction – the boys would level up to 3 while she languished back at 2 – except the boys soon added the expectation that Sintheigha personally carry the party’s stuff. A sentient, bipedal pack mule. Albeit one with mouth-watering titties. “And what do we say?” Andy pressed, smirking. As livid as she was at their treatment, the memory of the past weeks and her brushes with banishment were still too fresh. “Thank you,” she muttered sullenly, dragging the items into her character sheet one by one. Sintheigha was suffering from heavy encumbrance by the time it was done. So was Cindy. ________________ “Why do I feel like I shoved a stick of butter up my fucking snatch,” she muttered to herself as she studied her reflection in the mirror. The fog of arousal was intense. She told herself it was merely that it didn’t lessen that gave it the illusion of worsening, but as a trickle of moisture visibly leaked down her inner thigh, she had to admit, this was getting pretty nuts. The dreams were part of it. Most of it, probably. It was always worst first thing in the morning, and waking up with a finger or three in her cunt was no longer strange. The morning she woke up from a dream about begging the boys to let her blow them for a die ended with waking up fellating her own cummy fingers, and it barely fazed her. It was more than that, though. She was hot almost all the time. Her oscillating fan, a relic from years back when her house’s AC had failed and it had taken a few weeks to fix, was now getting a workout, turned up to full blast and aimed straight at her whenever she was in her room. Which was most of the time, because she was edging her pussy whenever both hands weren’t actively engaged elsewhere. Sometimes even when they were. Her mind would wander, eyes slid closed, and a speckled void of nothingness awaited her, stretching her consciousness into atomic thinness over its infinity. No conscious thought remained, only a mindless, frantic longing for her dice. Or at least the opportunity to prove her worthiness of them. Once she forgot to close her door. Her dad was subjected to the sight of his only daughter lying on her bed, black jeans around her ankles, her work shirt hiked up to expose her bra and her bra tugged down to expose her tits, one array of digits crushing a nipple while the other only slightly more gently pistoned in and out of her pussy. Mortified, his intended invitation to the dinner table became a sputter of apologies, as did her own breathy moans. After that – once she finished up – the family sat down for the most awkward meatloaf in recorded human history. As for her remaining job, that was rough going. With restful sleep an increasingly distant memory and her mind constantly slipping into the lustful haze of oblivion, even her simple job was a struggle. Normally she liked working at Arby’s. Doling out sacks of D-grade meat oozing mystery sauce and what could only legally be called “cheese” in the confines of the continental U.S. to fat, impatient strangers was goth as hell, smiling as she distributed heart disease and colon cancer. Suddenly Cindy found herself mixing up orders, spacing out while entering them at the drive-thru, her jaw hanging slack with cow-like ambivalence as she passed food through the window. “Damn, this stuff is gonna be the death of me,” chuckled one diabetic-in-waiting as he accepted his three thousand calorie meal, and Cindy didn’t even laugh. To cope, she eventually hit upon combining her work with her imagination. If doing Arby’s drudgery while keeping her horniness in check was no longer possible, then she’d simply have to channel the one into the other. Whenever her manager wasn’t looking she undid the buttons of her grubby uniform. Tuesday’s shift found her sans bra; Wednesday’s ditched her panties, too. Channeling Bobby’s cheerleading buddy, that cunt Evelyn, her smile to passing customers was less of a smile and more of an unspoken invitation to come back and fuck her face sometime. She uttered the rote “would you like to try our new prime rib sandwich” with the tone and enthusiasm of a phone sex operator who was going to die in two weeks unless she scrounged up enough for a kidney transplant. If she was waiting on an order for drive-thru, she alternated back and forth between hopping up on the counter and letting them stare at her ass through the glass and chatting them up while they waited, bent low, tits dangling like two mouth-watering Happy Meal toys from her old work across the street. Thursday night, she hadn’t even been scheduled but was picking up a shift to give herself something to do other than sit around the house masturbating to LED dice ads for the millionth time. During break, she fucked Charlie in the breakroom. It felt like there ought to be more lead-in to the incident than that, but there really wasn’t. He’d come down to grab some cups and restock, paused to ask how her new boyfriend was liking her makeover. She told him she was single, then proved it. Or proved she was a cheating little slut; she’d forgotten all about Dominic. At any rate, the sex occupied less than a quarter of her thirty-minute break. After inviting Charlie to bend her over the broken shake machine and pump her full of cum, she still had more than enough time to finish her sandwich. It felt slutty. It was slutty. Still, she’d hoped maybe some actual sex would help cool her off, but as she made her way to her car after closing with Charlie’s hand possessively inserted in the back pocket of her work jeans in preparation for another ride, at best it hadn’t made things worse. Charlie swore he was clean, but she still took a morning after pill. If she was going to let herself be the village bicycle, she could at least make sure she didn’t wind up having to squirt out some random loser’s kid. She knew enough of her gaming buddies’ turn-ons to know preggos weren’t numbered among them, and she wasn’t about to jeopardize her time with her dice on account of a fat, stretched out belly. Or, you know, ruin her life becoming a single mom working part time at Arby’s, she supposed. She reflected that things were really getting out of hand somewhere in between unblocking Dominic to invite him to come over and fuck her and getting thrown out of her house. It was an honest mistake. Bobby had sent a group text asking if folks would mind starting and ending an hour early Saturday. Nobody had a problem with it, though Andy couldn’t resist asking if Cindy would be able to get herself “slooted up” in time. She wished she could ask what that idiot term even meant, but it wasn’t mysterious, only stupid. Then Bobby, with surprising sweetness, even added in a separate message only for her, Feel to come over earlier if you want, Cin. Like you used to, back in HS, remember? he added with simple, straightforward smiley face. That was all it had taken, the offer of more time with her dice, barely implicit though it was. She’d let Charlie fuck her to test a theory; if Bobby wanted to stuff it up her ass while the others issued rankings to the way her ass jiggled while he pounded it, that would at least be for a higher purpose. God, what if he wasn’t giving out the dice in pre-planned ways, but randomly? This week could be the d20. The holy of holies. She could picture it, the light-bespeckled icosahedron, resting on the table before her, waiting to service her character’s every need. Skill checks, attack rolls, saving throws. All of it right there at her disposal. She doubted Bobby would be so generous, not even if he knew how thirstily she awaited the day when she was finally told she had earned that prize. Still, the thought of it. Roll after bottomless roll, tumbling down the infinite staircase. So, of course, she stumbled semi-consciously down the hall to her parents’ bathroom to use their shower with its handheld head to spritz her clit to completion. She didn’t hear her dad enter, nor notice him shedding his pants and stroking himself as he watched her play. Cindy almost certainly would have stopped then, if she’d known. If he’d realized it was his daughter there behind the foggy glass and not his wife, as he soon after struggled in vain to explain, he probably would have stopped, too. Instead, he was caught in the act by a wife who went straight to apoplexy, no excuses accepted nor even heard as the both of them pleaded their innocence. That Cindy did so with nothing more than a towel wrapped around her waist likely didn’t help her case, but her titties were on fire. She was told she was no longer welcome in their house, that they’d tolerated enough from their moody daughter over the years and whatever this skanky new phase was, that she’d have to figure it out for herself. She was given enough time to get dressed and then firmly shoved out the door by her still-livid mother, a beet-red husband cowering behind. Cindy shouted a few expletives through the door, then stalked off to her used Subaru and pondered just where the fuck she was supposed to live now. And to finish off what her dick parents had interrupted. ________________ “Cindy? What are you– Hey, yeah, come– Are you crying? Why are– Did you tear your shirt?” “No, it came this way.” By the time she’d made the drive over to Bobby’s slummy apartment complex, reality had slammed home, and the floodgates had opened. She’d been caught masturbating by her dad. Again. Maybe it really had been mistaken identity. Had Mom known about the first time? (Had there been others she hadn’t noticed?) Cindy really had been pretty absent-minded about it, she was pretty sure. Now she was homeless. Disowned. Despised. It was some goth-level hardship, and boy oh boy had she not been in goth-level resilience mode when it happened. No, the curly blonde mess stumbling into Bobby’s studio apartment with its jeans sliced to bare its ass cheeks and its shirt cut off below the nips was very much not goth. It was still somehow Cindy, though. Somehow. The wardrobe adjustment had been a ploy to get in the door. All she needed was a place to crash until her parents cooled off to at least let her pack up her things, maybe a day or two. She could have reached out to Kristelle and Joaquin. They hadn’t hung out much lately since she’d picked up two jobs – ironically, to save up for that day when she could tell her parents to fuck off and move out on her own – but they would have been good company right then. They were fellow goths, or at least what passed for it in this shitty little town. (Joaquin was more an emo kid, but close enough with such slim pickings for like souls.) Having people to vent to, who would share and magnify her sense that the universe was a place of loss and pain and misery, would have been a boon. In the midst of reaching for her phone to text them, though, Bobby’s offer revealed itself again, and the dice had decided it from there. Her presentation was horrible, literally the first t-shirt and first jeans she’d found in her drawers, blood red and Joker purple respectively. The switchblade she kept in the glove box of her car had not been the most efficient tool for tailoring her clothes, hence the right cheek being almost completely exposed yet only a little pinch of butt showing on the left, but things had been so dicey with Bobby lately she wanted some extra incentive for him to let her crash for the night. (The top she’d cut four times until she was sure her tits were looking their best for him.) “Of course you can stay here, Cin,” Bobby agreed immediately. Almost too immediately. “I’m so sorry. It’s hard to imagine your parents flipping out like that. They always seemed so nice. Open-minded and all? About your whole… you know. ‘Goth.’ Thing.” He was distracted by gathering up fast food containers, cups and napkins from around his living room, a frenzy of preparation for hot girl company. Cindy, meanwhile, could see only where the metal dice container was sitting, buried casually beneath a six-pack of Coke Zero and two family-sized bags of Doritos. If the rest of the apartment had been infested with cockroaches or outright burning down, it would still be her preference to stay right where she was. “Thanks, Bobby. It’ll only be for the night. Maybe two. They’ll calm down.” How she’d look either of them in the eye ever again, she didn’t quite know yet. “However long it takes. I’ve actually sorta missed having you around, you know?” “That’s nice of you to say,” Cindy replied hastily,” but it was too late. Bobby saw the chance to play at being Mr. Nice Guy, and there was no going back. “Like, one day we’re going to school together, in classes together, hanging out once or twice over the weekends for gaming, and then bam. School’s over, everybody’s got college or work or both so we’re struggling for bi-weekly hangouts. Then this stupid plague ruins everything so I barely get to see my– you. You can stay as long as you need to, OK? Hell, move in, for all I care.” He laughed awkwardly as if to say it was a joke, but it was a feeble thing, very much within his limits of insisting he was sincere. The couch was finally crumb and wrapper free, and she settled down. Bobby plunked down next to her. “Do you wanna talk? I don’t want to make you dwell on it. If you’d rather have some distraction… Whatever you need.” The TV was running some nature-artsy screensaver, but she’d seen before that it had been paused on Glee. “Just hit play. This is fine.” “Oh, no, I was actually watching…” Her disdain for the show was no secret to him, but before he could work up the nerve to confess it, she’d already seized the remote and done it for him. A group of uninspiringly beautiful assholes were in the midst of singing an even less inspiring melody. In a locker room, for some reason? Whatever, none of it was meant to emulate anything real except to the Franks and Evelyns of the world. “We can watch something else.” “No, keep going. I don’t care.” “I distinctly remember hearing you say that every episode someone watches of this show slices away a portion of their soul.” “I’m goth,” the tanned blonde with her tits and ass spilling out reminded him. “Dicing up souls is cool.” “If you’re sure.” Cindy made it through the song and the credits between that episode and the next. (Holy balls in a batting cage, there were six fucking seasons of this nightmarishly inane garbage?) That was as long as she could hold out. About four minutes, all told. Longer than she’d have thought. Then her resolve broke. “Um, Bobby?” “Yeah, Cin?” “Do you think, um, I could maybe…” She put a hand on his thigh. Couldn’t hurt. “Hold them?” “You mean my…?” He blinked. “Oh! Oh, you mean the dice. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want them to wind up lost in a couch cushion or anything…” “I’ll be careful. I promise.” “Yeah, still, they’re really only for game days, you know?” He winced sympathetically. “Oh. Sorry. Just, I’ve had about the worst day of my life, and I thought…” She trailed off. How could he endure the ham-fisted attempts at gendering empathy for the vapid whores on the show, while feeling so little for her? Her plight was basically made for this show – way too hot girl misunderstood and maltreated by her parents, in desperate need of a friend to see her through the dark hours. Evidently he wasn’t taking much away from his seven hundred viewings of this crap. Instead, he took the trailing off as acquiescence and returned his attention to the screen, where some teacher was mansplaining at a group of girls Cindy knew nothing about but already wished dead for their fashion sense alone about what they could learn from people of different walks of life despite the fact that every indicator said their walks in life were indubitably to the same country club in preparation for some dimwittedly obvious coming together bullshit at the end of the episode which Cindy could only imagine would be unraveled for some fresh mindless drama in the next. Bobby lapped it up, sniffling away tears as the girls learned their oh-so-temporary lesson. So she went to work. Whenever he looked over to monitor whether she was enjoying herself, she smiled politely. As politely as she knew how; showing her teeth without grimacing seemed to work for him. Waiting until she caught him sufficiently inured to her presence to actually sing along in front of her took three more agonizingly insipid episodes. If it put Bobby in a good headspace, though, that was all she could ask for. So she curled up on her side and plopped her head in his lap. “Is this OK? I’m just sorta tired.” On her side, her t-shirt was barely hiding her tits any more, sweat beading on them in the heat only she could seem to feel. It felt fucking whorish, but after the past few weeks, humiliating herself to get things out of Bobby felt disturbingly normal. “Sure. You want a pillow or anything? I, um…” I’m hard as a rock, she assumed was what he meant. Her temple confirmed that, as if it hadn’t been obvious through his baggy athletic shorts even before first contact. “No, this is fine. If you’re comfortable, that is.” His right arm was hovering over her, clearly without a guess about where to put it. She decided it for him, draping it over her, his thick fingers settled over her bare, slick stomach. As he slowly relaxed into it over the next mind-numbing episode, Cindy took initiative only at intervals, attacking by stealth in plain sight. Her elbow hooked over his arm, pinning his hand to her body. A nuzzle here, a vague noise there. (A sigh of contentment? A whimper? Muffled arousal? Listener’s choice.) Her breathing, even, shifted to open-mouthed until she made sure the heat and moisture was palpable on his cock in a way that had to be making him want more. There was only one way he was going to get it, though. Give her permission. Err, no. No, not permission. A die. Give her a die. Sheesh. Little to do but wait and hope he began to see the potential benefits to making her a little happier. Eyes closed, ears closed, Cindy wrapped herself in the space between rolls. Nothing but the stars and the boundless emptiness separating them. More boundless than the unslakable thirst in her throat, more hollow than the trickling hole between her thighs. She sunk so deep she couldn’t even smell the wetness gushing from her arousal, the drool trickling onto the tented shorts of the fat dork she was using as a pillow. It took him until the end of the season finale before he finally caved, but cave he did. “Cindy? Um, if you want, maybe I could let you hold one…? For a little while. Not to keep, mind you, but for a bit.” She moaned in forestalled relief. “Oh thanmf mm…” His cock was in her mouth so fast she forgot to wait for the dice, and his player blew him with a passion like his cum was XP. Bobby would never even guess where she’d been getting her practice. After the second time he came on her face, she finally remembered to wait long enough for him to retrieve what her fingertips assured her was the coveted d8. Sandwiched between two fat, bare, sweat-slicked tits, the points dug lasciviously into her skin until she no longer knew or cared where he shoved his cock. He was inside her, somewhere. The void inside loomed, unfillable, so as her DM’s jizz dried into her eyelashes, she couldn’t help but laugh at him for trying.