Critical Tits
Chapter Five
 
“Uh, what the heck are you wearing, Cin? I mean… You look…”
“Brent’s trying to say that you look like half a shit sandwich with double shit. Jesus. The goth shit was hot. The slut shit was hot. This is just… you’re dressed like my little brother.”
“I had a bit of a situation come up,” Cindy muttered, then repeated herself once it was clear the mic hadn’t picked it up.
“What situation? Washer break down? Man, I guess it’s your wardrobe and all, but still.”
“Mind if we get started, guys? I planned kind of a lot for today, and I was hoping to get through as much as possible. You two can play fashion critic on your own time.”
Bobby set up the next leg of the adventure. With Mokvinorg’s forces broken and scattered by their offensive, they began to process their other captive. Eisheth, the beleaguered ex-mistress of Lord Koltron, exposited about her lover’s betrayal. Taken captive and made to pose as his doting lover, she sounded as if she’d have been happy to sell him out even before he gave her away to the goblins. She knew next to nothing of why he betrayed her; her attentions had always been received with ardor. While she was no adventurer herself, the information she had about him and his estate could be invaluable in learning more.
To his credit, Brent focused on the story foremost. Even Andy only made one joke about how Sintheigha and Eisheth should hook up and let them watch, but admitted that Cindy’s “little boy vibes” kept him from putting his heart into it.
They fled the scene, pursued by Mokvinorg’s remaining minions, few in number but not diminished in strength like the party. Bobby had arranged a fun little minigame of cat and mouse, abstracting almost a week of chases into a half hour of skill checks that culminated in the party turning the tables and ambushing Mokvinorg alone in his camp. Cindy watched the boys defeat him with a forced smile; her character had been assigned to the distraction that led his fellow hobgoblins astray. 400 XP to Sintheigha, 3600 apiece to Skuf and Jerom.
Around that time, Brent finally put his finger on the truth that had been eluding him. “Hang on… Bobby, wasn’t Camp ToKenOke the boy scout camp we went to in like fifth grade?”
“Um, yeah. It was,” Bobby admitted, eyes unable to look at the camera.
“So then… why is Cindy wearing your Camp ToKenOke t-shirt?”
Andy pointed at his monitor. “It is. Oh my god! Oh my GOD!”
“You guys–”
“You two fucked!”
“Did you guys hook up, Bobby?!”
“Dude, she’s wearing his shirt! Look how she won’t look at us.” He laughed. “Pouts don’t count. Dude, you finally got in those goth panties! Grats, brah!”
The two fell all over themselves congratulating Bobby, who, to his credit, tried to clarify that they didn’t go all the way or anything, and that she was just crashing there for a bit while she worked things out with her parents. She’d arranged to get a spare Arby’s uniform so she could still work, but beyond that, all she had was Bobby’s charity to sustain her. This shirt had been a keepsake, but since he was a 2 or often 3XL and she was a women’s M, this old thing had fit a lot better than most of his stuff, though it was skin-tight. The paper-thin fabric made it all too obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it. She’d only brought the one, and she couldn’t afford to waste it on these idiots, who’d all seen her in far more compromising attire.
Brent asked, “Don’t you have a studio, Bobby?” 
“Uh, yeah…”
“So… what’s the sleeping situation?”
Cindy opened her mouth to insist that it wasn’t their business, that she’d slept on the couch almost the whole night – and with most of her clothes on, no less – but then she heard how it sounded and her jaw clamped shut with an indignant sulk. There were no excuses that didn’t sound beyond pathetic. Bobby didn’t have AC, so it was too hot to sleep fully dressed. He’d let her pick one die and hold it for the night, which had made her way too horny not to crawl over to his bed, a grungy old mattress and box springs on the floor in the corner, and ask if he wanted another blowjob. She’d given him a shake, but he still didn’t wake up; embarrassed, she went into the bathroom and diddled herself until the hot water ran out.
“I have a couch, Brent,” Bobby said while she was still remembering how hard she’d come, kneeling in the least mildewed spot on the shower floor, staring at the d12 resting on the soap dish. (She’d wanted so desperately to hold it, but the thought of dropping it, of it slipping down the drain and being lost forever, made her throw up all over herself in pure terror. Right place to do that kind of thing, she supposed. It hadn’t slowed her down, that was for damn sure.)
“Can we get back to the game, boys?” Calling them boys, she’d been noticing the past couple weeks, seemed a more successful way of guiding them. It was gentle and a little flirty. Two traits she deeply loathed in a woman, but it beat being kicked out again. Ingratiating herself was fast becoming second nature.
________________
It was weird, not driving home after the session. After congratulating Bobby on how interesting the plot seemed to be shaping up, she learned a bit about his post-game ritual, typing up notes to himself and for the next few hours cranking out plans and adjustments to existing plans while the energy and ideas were hot. For Bobby, D&D didn’t end when the session concluded. It was a way of life. Meanwhile, Cindy briefly tidied up her own books and papers, then quietly curled up on the couch with her dice until Bobby told her it was time to put them away.
She started masturbating right there on his sofa three times before that came, though each time she thought she caught it before he noticed. She really had to quit being such a fucking slut around Bobby before he got the wrong idea. He was just a friend who–
No. A gaming buddy. But yeah, just a gaming buddy who was lending her a hand, and who happened to have randomly picked the most incredible dice in history of the multiverse as a gift. That was it. She couldn’t keep sucking his dick when she wanted something, or when she was horny.
Luckily, she had other outlets. 
“You know, not for nothing, Cynthia, but I always thought you were sorta hotter with the whole goth witch look,” Charlie shared in the Arby’s breakroom that Tuesday.
Her glare over her shoulder could have lit the grease vats on fire. “Are you seriously going to complain right now? With your dick inside me, you wanna tell me I’m not at my best? Fucking really?”
Charlie grimaced and kept plugging away at her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything. Just sayin’. Goth shit was hot is all. Not that you’re not killing it with the blonde Barbie doll thing.”
Cindy merely grunted and ignored him. Charlie didn’t matter. What he said and did meant as much to her as what team won the big sportsball match. So long as he helped her fuck this shit out of her system. The backs of her eyelids were the stars in the void, and while he blathered on asking her when she’d decided to “YOLO that puss.” The cretin’s choice of words couldn’t pierce her veil. She came, and came, and at some point he came, and then he went.
Only that time, he came back. Still reeling in delirium, tingling with bliss of anticipation and nostalgia of the dice, Cindy lay bent down with her cheek resting on a pile of empty roast beef sandwich containers that had paradoxically already picked up their future occupants’ signature odor. Suddenly Charlie’s cock was back inside her; it was only then she realized she’d forgotten to pull her pants back up, just lying there in the break room presenting herself. 
He was quicker this time, which was a shame, but she supposed she had to clock in again soon so it was just as well. He came even quicker the second time around, though that time the fucker pulled out and came all over the back of her work shirt. She wouldn’t even have noticed but she felt some dribble onto her bare butt, too. He ran off before she was even through her first slew of curse words. Only then, she pictured the tiny flecks of pearlescent white shimmering on the black field of her shirt and she was back inside her dice, and she came all over again.
Back on the floor, some fat slob was making a bunch of special requests for his order. Cindy ignored him – what was he gonna do, drive back after he got home and found out? – and shot a glare at Charlie behind the grill.
“What’d I do now?” he asked tiredly.
She put her hand over her mic and spoke in a vicious hiss. “Coming on my fucking uniform? Asshole?”
Except his reaction was to give an exasperated look at Kyle sweeping up behind the register. Kyle blushed and focused hard on his broom.
It took her a moment to comprehend that look, but only a moment. Fucking hell. He’d sent someone else in to finish her off. She hadn’t even known that some 30-year-old rando she barely knew had fucked her. Worse yet, even knowing that, it was still sort of hot picturing that stain on her back. She wished she could see it instead of everybody but her. For the rest of her shift, when waiting for an order to come up, she made it a point to sit down on the counter next to the drive-thru window to show it off.
She made sure to tell Kyle before her shift ended that if he wanted another shot, he better up his stamina next time. Slutty, yes, but she was still horny, and maybe if she fucked enough other guys she’d keep herself from climbing into bed with Bobby and making everything weird. Weirder. Besides, every interaction with men was another chance to practice being flirty and deferential to them. It was easy to forget sometimes that she was only doing it to prepare herself for more of Brent and Andy’s bullying. She knew how short her fuse was, and if it blew again, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she chose a solid jibe over another die. 
Only two left. She could hold out for two more weeks. Maybe no longer, but at least that.
Meanwhile, what had happened with her parents began to sink in. Her dad, jerking off watching her masturbate. Maybe he’d really thought it was his wife; maybe he didn’t. Her blonde hair still looked pretty dark wet. She shuddered every time she thought of it, tried not to think how amazing she’d felt at the time. Not because of her dad, obviously, but because her skin felt so sensitive to touch that it was an ever-present temptation. Maybe something in the finish of the dice rubbing off on her? Hard to say. 
Still, it was royally fucked up. As it was, her stupid parents were probably going back into couples counseling, and she wished them oodles of fun trying to talk their way past jacking it to their daughter’s naked ass in the shower. Bobby swore she could stay as long as she needed. Blowjob like that, small wonder, though she still thought she was getting the better end of that deal. 
The apartment was hers most of the time. She only worked three shifts a week at Arby’s (though she’d requested more after getting fired from the carwash), and Bobby was out more often than in. He worked, of course, a job every bit as prestigious as hers, but he also spent a couple days a week with his old cheerleading buddies, at least those of them who hadn’t gone to college. She’d already been notified he was having them over on Friday, which her brain interpreted as “find somewhere else to be.” Her life might be circling the drain, but she wasn’t about to stoop to hanging out with wastes of stardust like Evelyn and Frank. 
So instead of trying to work her way back in, she stopped by her parents’ place after work from Arby’s, Kyle’s cum still sticking to her back through her shirt, to pick up her things. 
To her surprise, there was a note on the door. GARAGE, it read in her mother’s hand. So she went over to the garage. Preferring stealth, Cindy tried to sneak in through the side door, but her key wouldn’t fit in the lock. Fuckers. So she used the keypad and opened the big mechanical door; that hadn’t been changed. There, where her dad’s car should be, was a pile of trash bags and cardboard boxes she soon discovered were filled with her possessions. Clothes, books, bathroom stuff, all her useless old goth makeup. No need for that any more. The guys liked the new her, the one that was tan and blonde and cheerleader-sexy. 
So once she loaded it into her car, Cindy withdrew a black tube of lipstick and wrote CUNT a couple dozen times on her mother’s new SUV.
It was empowering. The first empowering thing she’d done in what felt like forever. Having to make herself smaller, less than, quieter, meeker, objectifying herself and – she wasn’t about to forget – sucking off and fucking all these random guys… it had begun to feel normal. Like that was the real her, or maybe that she was becoming who she was meant to be. Leveling up, as it were. Striking back at someone felt like a return to sanity. What was more Cynthia than calling her mom a cunt and doing a little destruction to make a point? She didn’t even feel bad about it. After all, who was to say it wasn’t an improvement? Nothing was meant to be this way or that way. Besides, property was a social construct, so to call her act “damage” was meaningless. 
Also, fuck that bitch.
Cindy sneezed, and for a moment, saw stars. Not the real stars in outer space, but the better ones, the ones inside. Also, she nearly came.
Without really knowing why, she decided to drive one last nail into the coffin of her relationship with her rat-fucking parents. After a couple minutes of searching, she found a spot with good lighting. With a hand trembling with nervous, elated energy, Cindy took off her top – still no bra, of course – and retrieved the lipstick from where she’d jammed it inside the gas cap. There was still plenty left. Using her phone as a mirror, she scrawled another message on herself in lipstick. The heat trapped in the garage had softened the stuff quite a bit, so it came off in broad smudges. Some of her letters came out backwards, which was fine by her, and all of them sloppy. Legible, though. When she finished, she snapped a picture, tapped a few buttons, and headed back to her car with all the bags she felt like carrying.
She was around the corner of the block before she realized she’d forgotten her work shirt on the garage floor. Whatever. She could convince her manager to issue her another new one. Put the stupid asshole in line behind Charlie and Kyle if she had to. Her seatbelt smeared the lipstick, but she’d done what she’d wanted to do – why had she wanted to do that? – and if she held it in place just so, it covered most of her boobs.  Once she got back to Bobby’s apartment complex, she was hesitant to smear lipstick on her purse, so she used an old paper bag from Arby’s as a sort of physical censorship box. Some of his neighbor’s got an eyeful, including one old lady who gaped when she saw Cindy go through Bobby’s door. 
Not a lot of half-naked sluts strolling into that pad, she’d bet.
She paused as the door closed behind her. Don’t call yourself a slut, she reminded herself. Not that she wasn’t. Like, she’d fucked two guys today, neither of whom she even liked much less respected, nor even wanted anything in return from, and one of them she hadn’t even meant to. To say nothing of what she’d done in that garage. What in the hell had possessed her to… 
Suddenly all thoughts of her parents and that pic dissipated in a wisp of steam. There they were. The container out, open, on the end table beside the sofa. That’s not where they’d been when she left for work. Had Bobby been doing something with them? She almost laughed at the idea that they had ensnared her host as they had her. Still, they were there. Out in the open. All of them. Her knees caught her, mostly, but she crawled rather than walked from there. It was too much. Another multiverse. Hers could never contain such a wealth of geometric transcendence. 
Bobby emerged a moment later from the kitchen. Not that Cindy heard him asking how work was, what had happened to her shirt, why her jeans were down around her knees as she crawled toward her tiny portable Shangri-la.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to… shoot.” Bobby rushed out in front of her, quickly stuffing the dice back into their tin container and sealing the lid.
The strength in Cindy’s arms gave out. She collapsed on her face and began masturbating. And crying.
“Oh, don’t cry, hon,” Bobby said once he got past staring at the way her ass rippled as she plumbed around in her panties.
“Can’t… help it…” she whimpered. “So… beautiful…”
Bobby frowned, not that she saw, tears shimmering in a thousand infinitesimal sparks in the slits between the darkness of her eyelids. “Hey. OK, what if I… just for a bit.”
She wasn’t listening, but gradually felt a cool pressure on her skin, a smoothing motion across the middle of her forehead. Slowly, she opened her eyes, and there was Bobby’s hand, holding… something. She went cross-eyed trying to see it, almost sure what it must be but unable to get a good enough look. He watched her with a nervous smile, and finally pulled back so she could see what he was holding.
The d6. A perfect cube of perfect darkness, penetrated by perfect chaos in speckles of perfect light. As her jaw lowered, Bobby sat back on his grungy couch filled with chip crumbs and loose change and here and there a little stuffing. Cindy followed him by instinct. Followed the die, anyway. The d6. The classic die people thought of when they thought of dice. Handaxes and hand crossbows, shortswords and shortbows.  The most common damage dice  for spells. A die that came up in a thousand and one minor functions.
She crawled until it touched her forehead again. Which coincided with when Bobby’s cock reached her lips.
“Oh thank you, thank you, thanffmm…” She engulfed him in her mouth, and he resumed stroking her forehead with it. It was rapture. She lost herself in the blowjob, savoring and lavishing affection on the turgid staff (staff – quarterstaff – dual weapon – BOTH d6 damage – oh fucking GAWD) in her mouth. He came in her mouth without warning. Or maybe he warned her. She didn’t care if he slapped her in the face or tattooed “cum disposal site” on her forehead so long as he kept rubbing.
“Can I keep sucking? Please?”
Bobby looked like he was thinking it over. “You had a rough week, so I suppose. Tell you what. I know how hard it is for you to ask, so I’ll just say something if I want you to stop, or you can stop whenever. OK?”
Cindy smiled. Sort of. Smiling wasn’t really possible with her face all dick-mounted like that. Sometimes she was glad for Bobby and his stupid passive aggressive nice guy bullshit. At some point she realized he was snoring – how many times had he come by then? not nearly as many as her, she was sure; those corners just felt so sharp and crisp and ungh – but she didn’t stop until she fell asleep, too. Once or twice she woke up and found out he’d slipped out, but the d6 was still there, in his hand, so every time, she slurped him back between her lips and blew him until she drifted off again.
Bobby woke up first. He’d had the courtesy to pull out and come on her body rather than risk drowning her in the stuff in his sleep. Or maybe he just wanted to give her a cum bath. Either way, she awakened to the sound of a jarring CREAK in the pipes as his shower turned off. Modesty was still apparently a thing for him, as he soon exited the bathroom fully dressed. Cindy blinked sleepily, frowning at all the black lipstick smudges smeared incomprehensibly around her torso.
“Is there hot water left? I wanna wash the cum off.” It was hard to even sound ashamed at this point. But not impossible. She managed.
“Should be if you don’t take too long. And thanks for last night, by the way. You were great.”
“Thanks for, you know, the…” The what? Rubbing a d6 on my face? Letting me sleep with your cock in my mouth so I could be as close to it as possible for as long as possible? “You know.”
“I’m sure I don’t, but hey, I’ll take it.” He chuckled and patted her shoulder affectionately. Realizing he’d accidentally patted a splotch of his own half-dried splooge, he darted back into the bathroom ahead of her to rinse his hand, then ducked out and waved her in. 
As the hot water dwindled and eventually turned cold, Cindy began to examine her circumstances. Homeless. Part-time employed at $0.85 over minimum wage. Sucking off one of her gaming buddies without even eking out a promise from him to let her keep staying there. 
This was bad. 
No. “Bad” would be any one of those conditions. This was a catastrophe.
But in spite of it, knowing that d6 would be hers to roll all session long Saturday, it was hard to worry too much. Living in the Arby’s dumpsters and fucking her coworkers in exchange for… she forgot why she was letting them fuck her. Practice? Anyway, it wouldn’t be that awful so long as she got the dice occasionally. In the freezing water, she warmed herself up masturbating to the thought of rolling that d20 over and over. Her brain even generated a random result for her. It was showing a 4 when her orgasm hit her. The result was nothing. Everything was nothing. The die was everything.
With the water off, she could just make out Bobby’s voice from the living room. Nothing worth paying attention to, sounded like – and so she thought right up until she exited the bathroom, her curves stuffed with pathetic insufficiency into a coarse white bath towel, and saw that he was speaking to someone on her phone.
Who is that? she mouthed demandingly, livid and confused.
He held up a finger. “Mhm. No yeah, I understand that. I agree with you. Totally unacceptable. I’m shocked, honestly. Shocked.”
Someone’s voice (female, Cindy thought) responded. They sounded angry. Bobby kept his admonishing finger aloft – the very same finger which had the power to grant or deny her access to her dice – so she kept silent. For the dice, she obeyed.
“No, you’re absolutely right. I had no idea.”
“Yes, I’ll tell her.”
“Oh, that’s just awful. I’m so sorry. Really. I just… gosh. No words.”
“Mhm. Yeah, I saw it all right. Yep, no doubt about it.”
“Wow. Oh yeah, she’ll hear about it from me, too.”
“No, I mean, I can’t… Yes, I appreciate that. But I couldn’t… No, yes, I mean I get you. But I can’t… If you’d just let me…”
The woman on the other end of the phone call was getting louder, but by then Cindy had discovered where the dice tin was sitting and it was hard to focus.
“Look, I’m as upset with her as you are, but I can’t let her roam the streets. I just can’t. But you better believe I’ll talk to her.”
“Yes. Yes, you have a good– well no, I guess that’s out. But I’m so sorry, and I hope you have a better tomorrow. Mhm. Good night.”
Was it night time? Having just woken up, Cindy had thought… but no. Day and night, light and darkness, reason and madness, all of it blurred together.
Bobby hung up her phone. The scowl that had been deepening on his face throughout the conversation was perhaps the most displeased she’d ever seen him. He hadn’t looked that pissed even when he’d found out she’d started a rumor that his male lifter buddy Frank had been roiding up (which, she still maintained, he probably had been, muscles as big as her goddamn head).
“So… can I have my phone back now?”
Wordlessly, he held it out to her, though clearly he wasn’t about to let whatever it was drop. Cynthia snatched it greedily, which made her towel slip to show her left tit, which made her squeak in embarrassment and tug it up, which made her drop her phone, which made her fumble-squat to recover it, which made her towel fall off altogether, which gave Bobby got an excellent view of her bare ass and pussy as she bent to pick it up. Which did not make him look any happier with her, somehow. (Should she bleach her asshole? She’d heard that was a thing.)
Towel back in place, phone in hand, she endured his stony, judgmental glare and opened up her recent calls.
“You… that was my fucking mom?!”
“It was. Anything you’d like to tell me about?”
“What? No! None of that is any of your butt-fucking business whatso-fucking-ever. It’s got nothing to do with you, and fuck you for poking around in my fucking life!” Oh god, she was taking an attitude with him, and he was already mad. She fell to her knees in contrition, though simultaneously tried to maintain an indignant glower of her own. How dare he?! 
And also, maybe he could make it up to her with an extra die?
“You’re my friend, Cindy, and also, I’m the person you turned to for shelter, so yeah, it kind of is my business.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “You told me your parents threw you out because they got mad about your new boyfriend. Now your mother says it was actually because you were putting on a show? A… sexy show…? For your dad?” His face was pure disgust. Not a in tag fan, Bobby, evidently.
“I said it was about my new boy-toy, not boyfriend, which is sort of true, because…” She couldn’t say it. He was getting too much leverage over her already without hearing because your dice turn me on more than any boy ever has or ever could and I can’t stop jilling myself stupid. “Whatever. The point is, it’s between me and them. You had no right.”
“No right? Cindy, I’ve known your folks since I was like twelve years old. Earlier actually – remember when your dad chaperoned that field trip to the zoo in second grade? And I was in a group with you and him, and I got scared in the reptile house and he covered for me. It was huge.”
Cindy actually remembered that, though she hadn’t thought of it in forever. That was the day she fell in love with snakes, watching a boy almost piss himself because he leaned too close to the glass and didn’t see a giant constrictor until it slithered at his face. As to his status with her parents… whatever. They’d always liked Bobby. You’d have to find the douchiest meth-head trailer park in America to find a set of parents who wouldn’t cream themselves over a do-gooder suck-up like Bobby. 
It was funny, almost. When she first started having boys over as a middle schooler to play D&D in the basement, they’d insisted on open doors, and her mother had found excuses to come down at painfully regular intervals to watch for hanky panky. Yet when she’d gotten tired of her parents’ ham-fisted nudging to give Bobby a chance and moved the game over to his place, they’d literally tried to bribe them into staying with a hoard of new gaming stuff that she just packed up and biked over to Bobby’s basement. His parents sure didn’t want their son to have anything to do with the weird girl with the black nail polish and skull ring.
“So?” Her look could have burned through solid steel.
“So, you went too far. Way too far!”
“Whatever she told you, it’s bullshit. I didn’t–”
“She sent pictures, Cindy.” He folded his arms imperiously. “You really think I’d believe your mother would make up something like that?”
Sure enough, there in her text messages (which the little fucker had also helped himself to) were shots of her mom’s car, accompanied by assurances that Cindy would be paying for any cleaning needed. Then half an hour later she’d sent a second message. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! WHAT DID WE EVER DO TO YOU, CINDY?! accompanied by a picture of…
“Fuck. You weren’t supposed to see that.” Really, nobody should ever have seen that. Hell, even Cindy knew she shouldn’t have ever done it in the first place, but she’d been so horny, and void and sparkle and need-want, and…
“Well I did. So that’s really you? What am I saying? Who else would it be.”
Her eyes slid down to the ground. “I mean… yeah.”
“Cindy, that’s awful. Are you trying to ruin their marriage or something?”
“No! I mean… no. I wasn’t… I didn’t think…”
She looked at the image on her phone, a picture of the picture she’d sent to her family printer right before leaving the garage. There was a glare off the ink (her mother could never figure out how to turn off the flash), but it was unmistakable. There was a girl who could only be Cindy, her shirt lifted over soft brown tits, tongue dangling out spastically at the very top of the shot. The words FUCK ME were written across her tits. PLS was snuck into the valley beneath them, a huge gob of black goop from the P smudged on her underboob. 
Then DADDY across her tummy.
In hindsight, she supposed that might have explained some of the sneers from Bobby’s neighbors on her way in from the car.
“I was just fucking around. It’s… you know, satire. Like, making fun of the idea that I wanted my dad to beat off to me. Which was absolutely not my fault, by the way!”
Bobby wasn’t distracted, however. “Really? That picture is supposed to show how someone would not want to do stuff to you. With your boobs out. Asking him to… ugh. I can’t even.”
“You didn’t seem to mind when I came in here with that on my body yesterday!”
“How was I supposed to know that was why it was there?! I figured it was another part of this weird, flirty, over-grateful thing you’ve been doing. I felt bad letting you go down on me, to be honest, but I would’ve felt worse rejecting you with all you’re going through.”
The sonofabitch thought he was doing her favors, letting her blow him?! The nerve! “What does any of this have to do with you, anyway? This is my family drama, and it’s over anyway. I’m done with those assholes. If you’re cool letting me stay, then great, I’ll stay. But you don’t get to tell me how to live. Not even if you’re taking me in.”
It was difficult to sound proud when she was on her knees, her towel long since pooled around her on the floor, nipples still diamond hard from the icy water. And because they were always hard lately. 
She tried, though.
“Cindy, it’s not–”
“Drop it. We’re gaming buddies, not friends. Just because I put your dick in my mouth a few times doesn’t mean you get a say in how I live.”
“I don’t think I want to game with someone who’s capable of doing things like that.” Bobby shook his head. “So you know, your mom wanted me to throw you out, but I can’t do that to a… a ‘gaming buddy,’ or whatever you want to call it. You can stay here as long as you need to. But I don’t think I can have all… that in my happy place.”
Her blood froze in her veins. Then it dialed the thermostat down to absolute zero, as cold as the darkness in the dice themselves. 
Not again. Her dice. 
Dice. 
The dice. 
Dice dice dice dice dice die die dice deicide dice die dicicide FUUUUUUCK
“I’ll apologize!” she blurted instantly. Never in her life had she capitulated so quickly, so completely, so totally, but there was no alternative. Salvation itself demanded it. “I’ll make things better. I will. And I’ll mean it.” She could already see his skeptical retort forming. “Not some bullshit apology – I’ll make things right, as right as they can considering how stupid I was, how awful I was, you’re so right Bobby, and my mom is too. I’ll clean up the car, and I’ll explain that my dad had nothing to do with it, any of it, that I was being a stupid little selfish bratty bitchy slut, and I won’t ever do it again.”
“That’s all well and good, but you can’t undo–”
She vaulted into his lap. Good. His cock was hard. Her body was still there, still worth something. Very good. So little of her remained. Cindy wriggled her hips, grinding her pussy against him. She was already so wet just from breathing the dicey air, so it was easy to pretend he had anything to do with it.
“You’re right. You’re so right. Apologies can’t change the past. So true. But I have an idea.” She had no idea. She was blurting out things she thought he might like to hear as fast as she could think them, and nothing more. Her plan, if a stream of consciousness plea of desperation could be called a plan, tumbled from her lips, each step an effort to top the last, to show him she wasn’t that horrible girl who’d done those horrible things, that she could be good, be deserving, be whatever he wanted her to be.
By the time she was done, she actually, for the briefest of moments, wondered if the dice were worth all that.
“You really want to do all that?” Bobby seemed as incredulous as she was.
She nodded, wet hair flying, trying her best to sink his dick inside her through his shorts. “Absolutely. I want it. I deserve it. You have to know I’m serious. That I mean what I say. That I totally absolutely one hundred percent think that you’re right and I was wrong.”
Bobby looked apprehensive, but at last – soon after she clutched at his fat fingers and forced them onto her fat titties – he gave the slightest nod. “OK. But if you don’t follow through, then…”
She was already dialing her mother with one hand, bracing herself for the shame of begging for that judgey cunt’s forgiveness. The other was working at Bobby’s elastic waistband, freeing his cock and trying to guide it inside her. Bobby stopped her at the last minute, but he let her jack him at least, which was better than… something. She didn’t know what. “I will. Please let me, Bobby. Thank you, Bobby. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Bobby. I… Hi, Mom.”
God, she wasn’t sure if she could go through with this. Could she really…? After all, only a few days earlier, during their session… It was one hell of a coincidence, if it was one. Which of course it had to be.
________________
The party’s return to Hypheron was slow going. Slower because the boys thought it was funny to double down on Sintheigha’s offer to serve as pack mule, her encumbrance stretched to its limits. It was hard to imagine any armorer in the city would have wanted the hobgoblins’ grungy armor even before they redecorated it full of puncture holes and blood. Still, the boys insisted it was 10 gold pieces per suit, so they’d loaded her up until a single extra pound would prevent her from being able to walk at all.
Then Andy joked that Sintheigha’s clothes probably weighed a few pounds, maybe enough that they could make her lug a few more javelins (5 silver apiece!), and then the joke became a discussion, and it was finally the NPC Eisheth who offered to carry the javelins in Sintheigha’s stead. Cindy gave Bobby a grateful look, though his NPC didn’t stop treating her like an embarrassment to be seen around. Weighed down by eighteen suits of putrid cured leather, now almost two full levels behind the boys and even the party NPC Bregan, who kept leveling up alongside the rest of the party in spite of not participating in battles on account of her bullshit pacifistic dogma.
With commerce seen to (and Sintheigha awarded her diminutive partial share of the proceeds), it was time to get into the mystery of why Lord Koltron was in league with these goblins. 
Eisheth knew the way to the estate, and provided them a map. It was pretty nifty, really. The map for Koltron’s estate, he’d gotten from some guy’s patreon. Leave it to Bobby to live in squalor but find money to shell out for digital art for their game. Then, he’d taken the map and drawn his own version of it in the sand at the volleyball pit at the park down the street from his apartment, done pretty impressively to scale. That was uploaded to the VTT as a navigable map, so in the end, it created the effect of Eisheth picking up a stick and doodling the estate in the dirt at their camp site. In combination with some reconnaissance (which Sintheigha was allowed to participate in!), the map let them walk their characters around Koltron’s estate to prep for their infiltration on the rendered map.
“So it looks like we have three ways we could try to go in. Four, if you count frontal assault–”
Brent interjected. “Just drop it on the frontal assault already!”
“Fine.” He grumbled, “Princess Perkytits and her stupid daggers probably couldn’t hack it anyways.”
“Anyway…” Cindy quietly nudged him along. It was as confrontational as she’d been all session. She slapped her left tit to make up for it.
“So there’s the sewer access. Classic. But it leaves us coming up in the servants quarters, which means unpredictable foot traffic and farthest proximity from Koltron’s room. And you know Bobby’s got some sewer monster waiting down there on the way in.”
The group laughed. What was a romp through the sewers without otyughs, trolls or giant insects? Ah, the good old days. “Then there’s that gap in the east wall. We have a sense of guard patrols, and we could climb up to the upper levels. Of course there, we have to make it past their checkpoint, which almost certainly means alarms raised, stealth impossible. So from there, it’s smash and grab.”
Then all eyes, both physical and digital, shifted to Cindy, who adjusted herself in her seat and wished she’d worn a bra under Bobby’s t-shirt. Thin fucking fabric made her nipples way too easy to spot. “You guys…”
“We can’t make you do it,” Brent acknowledged with surprising gentility. While he stared at the way Camp ToKenOke was distended across her chest. He had enlarged her feed and zoomed in on them, confirmed by the reflection in his glasses. “But it’s for sure the best shot.”
Andy nodded, though he had only conceded they couldn’t make her do it because even if they booted her from the party, it would mean they’d be stuck with one of the other options regardless. “Your call, Sin.” Or Cin? How long it had been since none of these puds would dare call her anything but Cynthia?
She mulled it over. Again. They were right, was the annoying thing. It was the sort of strategy she wouldn’t have considered when they were playing pre-covid, but suddenly all kinds of lines were being blurred. Plus, if she pulled it off, she might finally catch up in XP and perhaps even regain a measure of respect at the table. Power and autonomy and respect all sounded like fine, novel awards.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
The boys cheered; Bobby smiled indulgently, looking as proud of himself for creating this opportunity for her as he was of her for seizing it. So the group collaborated, got her outfitted as best they could, concealed her weapons, gave her some talking points if she ran into guards. She hadn’t built her character for social encounters, but thanks to the Charisma score they’d forced on her and the decision to invest in Stealth (a no-brainer, considering how little armor Sintheigha wore), she was in decent shape.
And it mostly worked. Per Eisheth’s intel, Lord Koltron didn’t merely maintain a steady rotation of mistresses, one who rotated fairly regularly. This was merely his public façade to allow him to parade out members of his private harem. He was renowned as a patron of the unfortunate, but in fact, many of the young women he “helped” escape to a better life outside the rough and tumble streets of Hypheron were kept in sexual servitude beneath his estate. Not Eisheth’s tale, but when she discovered it, she had been horrified at what she found.
Clad only in what the DM described as a “gauzy, diaphanous, almost ephemeral garment,” subjecting himself to a round of mockery for his overuse of the thesaurus, Sintheigha slipped in over the wall. The climb was easy for her; she was a Strength-based fighter, after all. A Stealth check got her across the yard, dimmed by the long shadows of the setting sun, and an Athletics to the upper level. Being good at anything felt strange. She waited on the balcony for the guard patrol to pass the window, then slipped in behind them. Padding along barefoot, she wasn’t noticed until rounding the corner where, exactly where Eisheth described were a pair of Koltron’s most loyal bodyguards.
She spun the tale they’d concocted, that Lord Koltron had demanded the opportunity to “break in” his harem’s newest addition. “Is this even the right way?” she asked, voice trembling.
Suspicious, they grilled her a bit, which was mostly just the DM giving her an opportunity to use the backstory they’d drafted for her. More thorough than Sintheigha’s actual backstory, honestly. A girl growing up impoverished, thrown into debtor’s prison when her family couldn’t make good on their taxes. From sessions past, she was even able to supply the men with vivid, accurate details of the prison to bolster the story. From there, she was told Koltron had paid off her share of the family debt but she was then to be indentured to him until repaid. Eisheth had said this was a common practice for the lecher. Sure enough, as Sintheigha’s eyes welled up with tears at her trepidation at having to service Lord Koltron, the DM gave her a +2 bonus on her Bluff for thoroughness, another for using the prison details, +2 more for an assist from Skuf’s Bluff check during prep, and finally a +6 for her own real life tears.
It wasn’t hard. All she had to do was think of him taking away her dice, and she started leaking in seconds.
It worked. They showed her to Koltron’s chambers and instructed her to wait, that he would see to her at his leisure. When their footsteps were no longer audible to her ear pressed to the door, Sintheigha set to scouring the place for clues.
After a few failed Perception checks, it worked. Hidden beneath a false bottom in a desk drawer in his study was a sheaf of papers, correspondences between Koltron and the goblin king. Andy muttered his skepticism that goblins were much for being pen pals, but Sintheigha ignored him and kept reading. Bobby said that unless she intended to take them with her, only she could read the documents he’d prepped, and even then she wouldn’t get to keep a copy. (He’d probably allow a Wisdom check later for recollection, gauging from past experience, but little more.) Still, it painted a clear picture. Members of the same doomsday cult, both servitors of the same great old one, something called Nyarlathotep, whoever or whatever that was.
Bobby had muted their feed so the two of them could run the session without input from Andy and Brent. (Meanwhile, aware as ever of the need to keep them happy with her, she twisted her nipples hard and made sure they had something to look at.) Cindy read hurriedly, notified that things were happening in real-time. “Eisheth a human sacrifice, Crawling Chaos, service rewarded, city must burn… I think I got it.”
“OK. Now what?”
“Let’s blow this dicksicle stand, baby.” She and Bobby shared a grin of anticipation.
The extraction plan was pretty good, much as she hated to give credit to Andy. The letters went back to their hiding spot, exactly as she had found them. Sintheigha waited by the door until she heard the patrol nearing, their greaves clanking along the marble corridor. When they grew close, she knocked over an urn from a high shelf, letting it crash loudly to the floor. (She pantomimed the action rather elaborately; stretching like that made Bobby’s tiny t-shirt creep up and treat them to a sliver of underboob. Andy licked his lips hungrily; from the way his hand suddenly darted below the field of the camera, she suspected Brent had screenshotted it.) 
In came the guards, mighty pleased with themselves to have caught her in the act of stealing. How they thought that she thought she could walk out of there with a golden candelabra stuffed into a dress so sheer it showed her pubes, she couldn’t say, but thieving was thieving.
Only, instead of taking her back to the easily escapable harem to await Koltron’s judgment, as she suspected… they dragged her right out of the manor. Worried these men might do something dire, Sintheigha put up a struggle to escape, but unarmed and unarmored, she was easily subdued. Another punch or two and she’d go unconscious and wind up who knew where. The party, waiting for her to escape through a path she’d identified in the gardens near the harem, had no idea she was even taken.
They brought her to the Seat of Justice. Clapped in irons at the wrists and ankles, Koltron’s men escorted her along as they waited in line to see a judge. The process was beyond farcical from a human rights perspective, a sort of assembly line of disposing of the disposable, but she conceded it was the sort of old-timey medieval setting where the accusation of a crime against a lord by an indentured servant required little to no due process. She was before a judge less than an hour after her arrival, her oblivious party members only beginning to contemplate their next step. She was only glad the bored-sounding judge Bobby introduced didn’t probe into her backstory as a ward of the very system he oversaw. No, to him, Sintheigha was only a step above garbage, the entirety of her value in the obvious pleasures of the flesh she was meant to provide to her lord.
In the end, her case was opened and shut within minutes. Guilty. Sintheigha was then given her choice of punishments: either a week in the pillory, or else submission to corporal punishment. 
To be administered by the judge himself, privately, in his chambers.
“You… he wants to spank me?”
It was only then she realized the mic was live once more, the rest of the party let in on it now that it was too late for them to use their metagame knowledge to intervene. Brett and Andy doubled over in laughter as Bobby caught them up. Cindy merely glowered. Spanking. Fucking seriously? Was she a criminal, or a bratty teen in a porno? 
“The pillory, obviously,” she answered defiantly.
But immediately, Andy groaned. “Are we seriously going to have to bail your bitch out again?”
“No shit, man. Sorry, I am just sick to death of ‘let’s save Sintheigha from the consequences of her decisions’ adventures. God, maybe we just leave her there and see if it helps anything sink in.”
Bobby shrugged. “Tell you what. It’s getting late. Why don’t we pause here, you guys can confer – or not – and I’ll have plans ready for next week either way she ends up choosing.”
________________
“Holy fuck.”
“Fuck my mouth and call me Maurie. That’s fucking Cindy.”
Cindy whimpered around her ball gag. That was the least comfortable part of a very uncomfortable outfit. If one could call this an outfit. It had cost her the whole of her last paycheck from the carwash, despite consisting of little more than leather straps and metal buckles, all of which strategically avoided covering anything she might want covered aside from an inch-wide strip of leather from her lower back, over her cunt and asshole, to her waist. 
Surely getting fitted for it would be as humiliating as wearing it in front of the camera, she’d thought. She was wrong. Just as she’d been wrong, taunting her family like that. Bobby was right, and she was wrong. Her parents were right, and she was wrong. Everyone was right, and she was wrong, and bad, and needed to be punished, for her wrongness.
“What the fuck are we even watching right now…?” Brett wondered aloud, his head cock almost horizontal, trying to make sense of his gaming buddy’s predicament. She’d worn some skanky outfits in recent sessions, but this was simply pornographic, no two ways about it. Hog-tied, but with class, was how the creep at the sex shop had described it. Her wrists bound together behind her back, ankles joined as well, then that cord joined to the wrists through a series of connections which somehow made it impossible for her to stand up. She was stuck, bent over Bobby’s gaming table, her ass bared except for a latex g-string that did nothing to contain the moisture dribbling from her pussy, until he decided to use his key to release her. She had no say in the matter. Literally, because with the ball gag in her mouth, she had no say in anything. 
She wiggled slightly to make sure her naked ass was displayed in the center of her webcam’s shot. There. That was better.
“I know, guys. This was her idea,” Bobby explained patiently. “She thought it would show some contrition for certain past misdeeds, and to pay you guys back for agreeing to keep her on.”
Cindy squealed indignantly. She had never said that! And presently she couldn’t say that even if she wanted to. She’d told Bobby this was how she wanted her punishment, something unbelievably humiliating and degrading and painful, to prove she was sincere beyond any doubt. No way she would be bound and gagged for them, to have her ass smacked into contrition in front of them, unless she absolutely meant it. This was the act of a woman who knew she was guilty, knew she deserved to be punished, and submitted herself unquestioningly to judgment.
Pleading for her parents’ forgiveness, literally on her knees (albeit in Bobby’s apartment, idly jacking him off for some reason), had been humiliating. Being made to go over there in Bobby’s ill-fitting t-shirt and shorts that tried to fall down over her hips and flash her ass every six seconds, that had been harder still. Bobby was with her every step of the way, listening to her apologize, debase herself, tell them what a dumb slut she was, an ungrateful bitch, a worthless cunt, implore them to chastise her any way they liked… brutal. What remained of her ego was tatters, where there were even tatters. That their reaction to all that was to say they never wanted to see her again, and then seeing them slowly walk it back after Bobby’s intercession on her behalf… it cut to the soul. Almost down to the dice. Shuffling away with an admonition to send payment for the scratches her dad had put in the paint trying to remove her lipstick, and not to return unless invited… She learned a new level of darkness in her heart. 
If she were still a goth and not some idiot blonde slut like that cheerleading cunt Evelyn, she might have appreciated it on some level.
Still, none of it was as bad as listening to Andy and Brett’s running commentary – or often as not, hisses of commiseration – as Bobby rained down blow after blow on her bare, bulbous behind. She tried to count, but her eyes squeezed shut around the tears, which was too much like her dice not to start working up to a good hard come. She hoped he kept abusing her like this forever.
“Dude. DUDE. Cindy just fucking came in her bondage bitch gear from being spanked! That is some goth-ass shit right there!”
Brett said nothing. When Cindy opened her eyes and looked to where his portrait sat on the monitor, she was pretty sure he was jerking off.
Bobby patted her butt softly, and spoke in the British accent of the judge from the previous session. “Consider your crimes absolved, young miss. Run along now, and don’t let me hear of you being late reporting to your lord for his own judgment.”
He released the gag. First she let out a whimper of relief, but then replied in character. “Thank you, Your Excellency.”
Bobby smiled and leaned down to whisper in her ear as he worked at unlocking her bindings so she could at least stand, move her arms, roll her dice. “I forgive you. And here’s a little something for going that extra mile. Go get dressed, and we’ll get started for real.”
Freed, but still too weak to stand, Cindy’s vacant stare took in the sight of the d6 being lowered to the table in front of her. After a moment, it was joined by the d10, the companion to the percentage dice she’d been given weeks ago.
She came again, another tiny point of light in her black and empty existence. Brett’s camera went dark; she supposed he was coming too.
“I think she really likes those dice, Bobby,” Andy commented in what sounded like an attempt at irony. If he only knew.
Cindy stood up and pulled Bobby’s lips to hers. She would have fucked him right then and there – would have fucked anyone, everyone, really, but especially him – except there were dice, and every minute spent boning her DM was a minute not spent rolling them.
“I think I’ll just keep wearing this, if it’s OK with you boys.” The best she could do. The least they – and she – deserved.