Page 25 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

“I told you, we only just got to quit our day jobs,” I say with a chuckle. “My day job was riding around in ambulances all day. I was a paramedic.”

“Mnn—hot tattooed paramedic? Where have you been all my life?”

I laugh. “You are very good at deflection, I see,” I say.

She sighs and lets her head loll against my shoulder. Her hand goes up to her neck where her fingers search for something. Then her face goes pallid again and she drops the hand back to her lap.

Something in her expression looks so...dismal. When I’d met her on the street, she had been so charming and bubbly. I knew she probably isn’t feeling great because of the seizure, but I wonder if something happened to her during the show.

“Bed,” she finally says, looking like a sad kitten.

She points one of her sharp fingernails to a door. It’s cracked open and the wood is carved with words that are too hard to read in the dim light of her apartment. The inside of her room is just as charming as the rest of her apartment. Her bed is set up in the corner of the room beneath the gauzy curtains of one of those ceiling-mounted bed canopies. More twinkle lights glimmer in a panel of strings behind the bed.

She has a number of floating shelves that house mounted skulls. I can’t tell what all of them are but I recognize that one is of a cat and then maybe some kind of canine, like a fox or a coyote. On her nightstand sits a stack of books with surprising titles like The Qabalistic Tarot and The Golden Dawn along with a notebook that looks as if it’s had pages added to it with how it sits with its hard cover distended and a ribbon begging for mercy around it.

I smile at the Portent posters she has on her walls—three of them and all framed like they’re precious. She even has a couple of our vinyls displayed on her walls.

I lay her down on her bed, which more resembles a nest of pillows and some cute plague doctor plushes, Kuromi squishies and Bat-shaped pillows. When I release her, she keeps her hands locked behind my neck, keeping me in place.

“I’m really sorry. I really did want to kiss more,” she whispers, her expression painfully tragic. “I wanted to do other things too.”

“I’m here for like three months, off and on. I’m sure I can find another opportunity to stick my tongue down your throat,” I say, though I can’t bring myself to give her my usual flirtatious grin.

Her eyes search mine. They look almost violet in this lighting. If she keeps me locked in with her like this, I might just end up kissing her again, anyway. “Let me help you get comfortable and I promise I’ll reward you with another kiss, alright?”

She doesn’t let me go right away. When she finally untangles her arms from behind my neck, she lets her hands brush down the sides of my throat, then my shoulders, and finally the plane of my chest. Her nails faintly catch on my skin, and I have to stifle a shiver that threatens to run from head to toe.

She rests her hands over her chest and I straighten, moving to tug off her cute Kuromi socks.

“You want these fishnets off?” I ask her. She nods but doesn’t try to move to peel them down off her hips. “Can I?” I ask her. She nods again.

My movements are purely practical as I reach under the hem of her skirt to pull the waistband down and quickly off of her pale legs. I fold the tights and set them neatly to the side. “Where do you keep your pajamas?” I ask.

“There are sweats in the third drawer down,” she says, pointing to an antique dresser that she appears to have painted black. I retrieve the most comfortable ones I can find—which just so happen to be pale violet and covered in little adorably cranky Kuromi heads and I turn my back to her as she shimmies them onto her hips. When she announces she’s done putting them on, I find her peeling her denim skirt off from over them.

She lifts her torso off the bed, reaching awkwardly under herself for the clasp of her bra and struggling a bit before she gives up and sighs. “I’ll just sleep with it on,” she grumbles.

“Want help?” I ask, and when she gives me a knowing look I put my hands up in a gesture of innocence. “I’ll be a good boy. I promise. Remember the fishnets?”

“What if you’re a titty man?” she asks me.

“I solemnly swear that I sit squarely in the camp of being an ass man,” I say, a hand over my heart.

She squints at me for a few more seconds before she finally nods. “Very well, I’ll allow it.”

I slip my hand underneath her back and find the ridges of the clasp. I give it a quick little squeeze and it pops open. She gasps, making me chuckle.

“You are suspiciously good at that,” she says as she slides the straps off and pulls the undergarment from under her shirt.

I can’t help but look at the lavender lace as it falls to the ground. Damn, it would have been nice to see her in that bra. I wonder if her panties match.

“I’ve lost you, haven’t I?” She asks me.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” she says as she grabs onto a soft, stuffed bat. “Kiss now?” she asks.

I huff a laugh. She’s so fucking cute I can’t stand it.