#so the gm(?) from Friends at the Table

[stellamancer]

okay i am finally home and i can ramble about adrien.

he is just!! baby. he was kicked out of his villiage as a child for taking in a violent plant monster as a 'pet' (he rescued it as a seedling and it's more his best friend than a pet)!! he nearly died in the woods afterwards!!

he has so much trouble talking to people because he is constantly afraid of failing to meet the expectations people have of him because as a child his father expected and wanted him to fulfill HIS dreams and ignored anything adrien might have actually wanted. no one takes him seriously!! and while he can't speak clearly most of the time, he's pragmatic and has good battle sense!! all he has ever wanted was to have friends who were patient enough and kind enough to accept him (and his violent murderous plant dog bestie)!!!

coughs.

[spaceofentropy]

I've rewatched season 4 of Stranger Things not that long ago and it still drives me up a wall how the Duffers and their writers' room managed to write Eddie as (almost) the perfect prototype of a shitty, toxic DM. I've been roleplaying and occasionally GameMastering for the past 22 years (give or take). I've played with good GMs, mediocre GMs, terrible GMs, stellar GMs. And Eddie Munson, for how he's written in the show, is a shitty GM, holy fuck, folks!

1 He scares his younger players into doing what he wants. The first time I saw season 4, my brain went "Feels like they're setting him up as the new human baddie of the season, feels like they're gonna pull a Billy-with-switched-plates on us..." because Eddie is introduced as seen through Dustin and Mike's eyes, and those are scared eyes. Not scared as in "he's gonna hurt me", but scared as in "he's volatile, unpredictable, and he's gonna make my life literal hell". Like a bully. Like he's not a hero or a good presence for those two kids. And then...

2 Eddie refuses to move that fucking D&D session. Which... WTF, man, what the fuck! You don't want to know the number of times my groups and I had to postpone a session because too many people couldn't be there because life! The way we played with one or two players less, knowing that M. would use his brother's character for combat, that while E. was away his character would conveniently get bonked in the head and pass out for the duration of that session! But it's an important day, I hear you say. It's the end of the campagin, you say. Then... dude! Since you've built to that session for months, it's the culmination of your whole campaign, you want YOUR PLAYERS to be there! It's a big day for the whole group, not just for the DM! What's the fun in having one of the main characters in the story being absent?! Which leads us to the fact...

3 Eddie demands that Dustin and Mike find him a replacement player. On your big fucking day when your campaign ends you DON'T want a random player to sit at the table and risk to have to decide the fate of the whole story (which, coincidentally, is exactly what ends up happening, how fun...)! You want YOUR players to be there for the grand finale! How can a rando appreciate the way you bring all the storylines to their conclusion? How can a rando know why that tiny detail that ties back to the second or third session is important? A rando can't! Bringing in a rando is just bringing in an arm to swing dice, at this point in a campaign. You've built to this session for months, then it won't kill you to wait for a week or two longer to play it! (And this ever-important session happens just before spring break, there are weeks and weeks left before school ends. They can fucking wait for Mike to come back from California and Lucas to not have basketball games! Which, oh, look at that...)

4 Eddie knows he's forcing two of his younger players to ditch their friend's big game, and he doesn't give a single fuck. D&D is clearly the best, superior past time ever, in Eddie's eyes, and fuck anyone who thinks differently. Fuck anyone who dares put anything above D&D. Sadly, Dustin and Mike are not old enough or emotionally strong enough to ditch a bad GM, not when he has painted himself in their eyes as their saviour from being high school loners and pariahs, so fuck their great friend Lucas, I guess?

5 Eddie's an elitist piece of crap to Erica. Saying "Oh, you play D&D? What level is your character?" is not only inherently stupid in D&D terms (you can create a 17th level character from scratch, tailored to the sole purpose of playing with a high level group, it's... it's a ttrpg, not a fucking videogame where you have to grind all the levels! Ghaaaaaaaaa!), but also the equivalent of going "You're wearing a Metallica t-shirt? List 5 of their songs!" on her. The kind of thing where you look at the tool in front of you, flip him the bird, and leave with a "Go get fucked by balrog, dickwad!"

In all of that, the problem is the shitty writing. I know that thematically and symbolically it's so juicy to have Lucas, who's been torn between the jocks and the nerd, stay with the jocks while he his nerd friends LITERALLY replace him with his sister. Oh, it's so tasty to have the Sinclair siblings throw the deciding ball/die in their respective games and win everything for their teams. I can almost hear the Duffers orgasm (sorry for the horrid image!) at the idea of it all, typing it down and then going to their editor asking for the alternating cuts, the parallels, and then, oh, the stark difference between Lucas' face falling because none of his friends is present on his big day and Erica being cheered on by these older guys she just met! And that shot when the basketball team leaves the gym and Lucas sees Erica so seamlessly incorporated in his other group of friends, so angsty, right? Right? You get it, audience, right? He's sad! So sad! *nudge nudge wink wink*

It's such lazy writing. It feels like paint by number and also unfaithful to the characters, and to Erica in particular. She may not love her brother to pieces, may not have been enthusiastic at the idea of watching a boring basketball game, but I can't see her having a single reason to go play one D&D session to close a campagin she knows nothing about with a group of older strangers (who treat her like crap), when up until this point she's been a closeted nerd.

And we all know that the D&D session must be there because we can build up Lucas' dilemma and introduce an audience who knows nothing about D&D to the concept of Vecna. (As one of my friends said when Vecna came up in the show, "Vecna? Again!? Haven't we already killed that squirrelly third-rate spellcaster at least once a decade for the past 40 years?!")

And you know what? It's double shitty writing. Because if it weren't for Joseph Quinn good performance, I probably would have ended hating Eddie all the way to the end of the series and not given much of a fuck about his death! Because, as I said, I actually disliked him for a good chunk of episode one. My first gut reaction to Eddie Munson was "Nope! Stay away! Bad guy! Shoo, shoo!"

You've written this guy as an asshole who can't be arsed to postpone a fucking D&D session; who thinks he's better than everyone else; who walks on the tables where other people are eating (EWWW!); who scares his youngest minions and forces them to do his biddings; who doesn't give a fuck if he's forcing said minions into ditching their friend; who treats a middle schooler like pure crap... And no, I don't think it's a matter of "oh, the guy has so many nuances", just... Fuck that guy! The guy the Duffers wrote is a shitty GM that I wouldn't want to play a single session with. I don't give a single fuck about the fate of the guy who leads the Hellfire Club. He's selfish and crappy to everyone. The guy who interacted with Chrissy, on the other hand? Yeah, I give many fucks about him. Just... keep him away from young, impressionable players that might learn from him how to become toxic GMs in the future! 😬

[prokopetz]

The Gremlin Game Designer's Creed

Rules are toys, and the process of rules-mediated play consists of smashing their faces together like little girls making their Barbies make out. Unless a rules module is explicitly intended to be enacted solo, it should present a generous surface area for other rules to bite into. The most elegantly self-contained piece of rules design is, collaboratively speaking, also the most useless.

The principal function of "player characters" as discrete collections of mechanical traits is to furnish each player with an assemblage of shiny things to show off to other players. Mechanical abstraction is well and good, but if you abstract away the act of curating one's collection of shinies, player engagement will suffer.

The GM, if present, is a fellow player. Ensure that they have their own toys and shinies to play with. The failure of a game to provide these is often a major contributor to why nobody wants to run it!

The most effective way of encouraging players to do what you want is to make a number go up. This applies to both to rewards and to misfortunes; a number counting up to disaster a much more visceral motivator than a number counting down to zero.

Crunch is good. The defining feature of tabletop roleplaying is that rules produce stories. The act of interpreting the outputs of the rules and the act of telling the game's story are the same activity. Be mindful of what kinds of stories your rules want to tell; you may find that their opinion on the matter differs from your own!

Actually assembling your game's rules is as much a process of discovery as it is of invention. In the course of designing and playtesting, you may find that your own game has rules that you didn't know about. Where did they come from? It is a mystery.

Randomised outcomes should be made mandatory with care and restraint; randomised outcomes should be made available with delirious abandon. As far as is practicable, players should always have the option of asking the dice what unhinged bullshit should happen next. Corollary: lookup tables are your friend.

Players don't need your permission to depart from the rules as written; granting it is arrogant. By the same token, however, it should never be unclear to players whether they're departing from the rules as written. Let the thought process behind what you're writing hang out for all the world to see; folks will be rummaging in the game's guts anyway, so give them easy access.

If your game has a default setting, explain it as little as possible, but always let the rules and presentation reflect it. Seeing an entry for "poorly made dwarf" in a table of player character backgrounds will fire a group's imagination more strongly in three words than a chapter stuffed with worldbuilding lore could in ten thousand.

You don't need to be good at naming things as long as you're good at puns. Wordplay, alliteration and rhyme may also serve in this capacity, as, in a pinch, may a well placed dick joke.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Get Hunted by a Monster in the official Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook for only $5! Slots limited.

Alright, so there’s a bunch of slots on the hunting tables in the Eureka rulebook that never got filled. Many of them, we planned for, others, we didn’t because a whole bunch of the Kickstarter backers never submitted anything.

So now we’ve got all these empty slots for hunting table submissions, and we don’t want the monsters (or us, food costs money) to starve, so we’re selling them off.

What are the Hunting Tables?

If you’ve been following us, you probably already know that sometimes the PCs in Eureka are monsters that eat people. Often, this is one of the few ways they can restore their missing Composure, something that normal PCs restore just by eating and sleeping. If they need Composure, and can’t find anyone to eat in the immediate vicinity, they can go on a Hunt.

The GM rolls on the most relevant Hunting Table to provide the monster with an opportunty to satisfy their hunger.

If you pay for one of these slots, you can be on that table, or your friend, or your OC, or whatever you come up with, with your own little scenario for monster PCs to encounter and maybe come away from a little less hungry.

Email us at anim.contactus@gmail.com if you’re interested, and we’ll take payment after we’ve screened your submission for anything bigoted. You can submit as many as you like if you’re willing to pay $5 for each and there’s still slots available.

Submission guidelines under the cut.

For every $5, you will be allowed to submit 1 entry to be placed in the Hunting Tables in the Eureka rulebook. If you don’t know what the Hunting Tables are, you can find them in The Supernatural chapter of the rulebook. Refer to the table of contents. You can get the beta version of the rulebook here for free at this time if you need to take a look.

For a brief description of what the Hunting Tables are, they are a series of random encounter tables that the Narrator will use to determine who, or what, a monstrous investigator may encounter when they are prowling the streets looking for victims.

What we need from you is the person or persons’ name(s), a brief visual description of them, where they are, what they are doing when the monster PC sees them, and any other guidance you can offer to the Narrator to help them portray this person.

Keep in mind that your entry may be edited for grammar, spelling, clarity, and anything else we may need to do to fit it into the tables. If your entry is too far outside the tone, themes, or setting of Eureka, you may be asked to revise or the entry slightly edited to fit.

The entry will be sorted by us into the following categories based on your description:

Mundane or Supernatural

Urban, Town, Rural, or Wilderness for entries that seem right for Ambush Predators, and Nightclub/Bar, Gay Bar, Hobby Shop, or House Party for entries that seem right for Social Predators.

That being said, when writing where the person is, be more specific than “in an urban area.” If you say something like “walking down the sidewalk” we’ll know to put that entry in the Urban category. If you say “sitting on a bar stool at the counter”, we’ll know to put that entry in the Nightclub/Bar category. The more specific information, generally the better, though we may cut down entries that are overly long.

Your entry could be a character representing yourself, someone you know, or an original character, and can be a supernatural character so long as it fits within the guidelines laid out for supernatural characters within the rulebook. However, we do ask that you avoid any famous real people(unless you yourself happen to be that famous person), and avoid copyrighted characters. Also, please avoid offensive stereotypes.

[artsninspo]

FORGIVELESS - I - NOT IN THE DARK ANYMORE 🌒

Full Masterlist

RIO MASTERLIST

I - Not in the dark anymore

Author's Note: Record scratch … I was working through some writer's block when this concept came to me. Instead of letting it pass here it is. I can promise part two because it’s already outlined.

Pairing: Rio X Reader

Word Count: 2K

Warning: Mature themes and mentions of cheating.

Summary: What is supposed to be a romantic date night with your husband quickly descends to a night of nightmares after meeting a charismatic entrepreneur named Rio with what you perceive to be an uncanny insight on your current situation.

Rio scans the floor of his newest business endeavour. He’s been successful at counterfeiting but now he needs new ways to wash his money. His bars had been doing so good he decided to move into the restaurant business. While notoriously fickle he didn't have the same financial restraints as other new owners. It only took him six months to find his foothold in the industry and now he had one of the city's most in demand establishments for special occasions. Looking around he spots a gentleman who was in the last time he’s stopped by to check on things. Looking across from the man he sees you sitting all done up. He needed strong attention to detail in his line of work. It was a safety precaution but your body language brings the situation into full view. Sitting back he looks under the table only to have his suspicions confirmed. The other woman had her foot up halfway to your dates crotch under the table.

“Table twelve seems familiar” he mutters to his general manager.

“Ahh, he was with a different girl. Excellent tip” His GM responds and Rio takes another look locating the ring set on your left hand. You were the wife.

“Decline all his reservations moving forward. I don’t care how well he tips. Only friends should be here that often.” Rio says watching closely. He had his principles in business and in life. There were simply some things men didn't do. Bringing their girlfriends to the city's best restaurants before their wives was top of mind. 

“Done” the GM says as Rio makes his way into the back to look at the accounting. Everything needed to be in perfect working order for things to work. The restaurant would be a stepping stone to more. Food had never been a passion of his but he could sell an experience to people who wanted to pretend for a few hours. Besides, it had cost him virtually nothing and turned a huge profit every week. He steps out tucking his weekly take home pay behind the bar, walking around it to be served a drink. You're in his perfect line of sight. He watches you reach for your husband as he gets up, throwing cash down onto the table and kissing you goodbye. He watches you sigh and watch as he leaves. Shaking his head he turns back to his glass. 

“Hey can you give the waiter this. I was sitting over there” Rio hears turning to you.

Fuck, shes bad.

His thoughts run the gamut as he looks you over. Thinking back to the other woman he rakes through his memory for her. She had nothing on you besides maybe being slightly younger.

“Thank you” hears cluing back into the conversation you're having with his bartender.

“I’ll have the third course brought to the bar” the bartender says with a smile. 

“Perfect” you nod, sending him a smile.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Rio asks, looking you over. Turning, you are startled by a second by the handsome stranger wildly underdressed for the establishment.

“My husband took care of it thanks” you smile, making him do the same. He’s handsome.

“My husband took care of it” He mocks, chuckling to himself more amused than anything else. “Where is he?” Rio says bringing a glass to his lips.

“Something came up at work” you respond.

She believes the lie too. Rio smiles to himself looking up at the clock, “What, does he deliver babies? Is the hospital short staffed?” 

“No, he’s a consultant with a global clientele. You know time zones” you explain.

“Time Zones couldn't keep me off my wife on a Friday night if she looked like you.” Rio comments. Your cheeks burn at the forward implications just as the third course is placed in front of you.

“Compliments of the chef,” the server smiles.

“Thanks” you smile. It looks great. 

“Is it good?” Rio asks after a few minutes.

“Mhm” you nod weary of the flirtatious stranger. 

“Which time zone clients do I have to thank for this?” Rio asks, pointing between the two of you.

“Japan” you respond.

“To Japan” Rio raises a glass. “Rio, by the way,” he says, holding out a hand.

“Y/N” you respond, shaking his hand.

“Y/N you’re too trusting” Rio says stirring the pot.

“If you want to keep this pleasant please don't disrespect my marriage” you respond and Rio raises his hands.

“Boss, can I get you anything?” the GM says as he sees Rio at the bar.

“Good thanks,” Rio nods.

Looking at him suddenly his simple attire makes sense. Simple and all black was classic and understated in spite of the black tie dress code. Clearly no one was sending him home and the restaurant's food was never on delivery menus. Owner. Not a service professional. You nod to yourself impressed with his accomplishment. 

“You own this place?” you ask and he nods reluctantly.

“A few more lowkey spots around the city as well”

You offer cordial conversation.“Congrats, the food is good and it was hell to get reservations”

“Not for Y/N, not anymore.” he smirks and you shake your head. Rio laughs a little, he can't remember the last time he had to try so hard. Clearly you’d signed up for a lifetime of attention and here he was taking up for your husband's shortcomings.

“How kind” your tone is laced with sarcasm.

“I’m not kind, when you realise your man ain't shit you should eat good and stay fine. Do it here where I can see it. If you need to hire someone to beat his ass on your behalf come see me and I got you. I know people.” he says so cavalier it's off putting. There’s no more smirk and you feel slightly queasy in your stomach.

“That’s not funny” you frown.

“I don’t think so either but there’s a very short list of things that could make me leave you at the table. Work isn't one of them, Love” he mutters. Deep down you know he’s right. Something isn't right with your husband James. Recently work has taken precedent. His promotion has been taking all of his attention leaving very little to you. To make matters worse you moved here away from your family, friends and support system to be his. He’d been reluctant to have you move and has put very little time into helping you adjust to the move along with spending quality time. Work has affected all facets of your life including his libido. It was why Rio was practically foaming at the mouth with dilated pupils at the sight of you. It was a three hour process and special creation to set the mood for the night but James hadn’t reacted how you wanted him to. Japan had been at the forefront of his mind. He’d checked his phone more times than you found necessary before getting a call. He spent five minutes in the washroom before coming back and telling you he needed to rush to the office. Reaching forward you wave for the bartender.

“I've lost my appetite. Please thank the waiter” you smile standing from the bar stool. He nods and Rio rises at the same time. His hands go into his pockets following you out as all the staff bid the ‘boss’ goodbye. You hand the valet your ticket first and yet somehow Rio’s G-Wagon appears before your car. He smirks, having made an impression. When your car rolls around Rio gets the door after the valet gets out.

“I’m at the Clique most weekends. Sevens bar during the week, in case you need a man handled. Drive safe, Love” he says once you're in the driver's seat and buckled in. You wonder why you havent told him to fuck off yet until you see an eerie honesty in his eyes.

Your drive home is in complete silence with the exception of your signals and the natural sounds of the road. You feel too unsettled to relax. Once in your house you have to stop yourself from walking a track across your living room rug. You take a bath which does not work to settle your nerves. You brew valerian root tea when all else fails and there is still no peace. You lay in your marital bed tossing and turning until you hear the garage. It’s after three in the morning. You contemplate your options and hear James coming up the stairs ten minutes later. You slow your breath and close your eyes pretending to be asleep. The door opens and he enters walking straight into the ensuite bathroom. Silent tears roll down your eyes. He gets in bed without giving you any affection allowing your mind to run wild. Your alarm wakes you at 7am and you head downstairs to prepare his breakfast for his day ahead. Saturday mornings and afternoons are for golf and client relations. You throw something together quickly and head upstairs to find him in the shower. You spot his phones on the nightstand and grab his personal device.

You try a few passcodes when his work phone starts buzzing. Forfeiting his personal device something drives you to check his work phone. You unlock the phone from memory and scroll through his messages. There are client names you recognize, all with flags attached to them. A message from Japan comes in and you open it only for your stomach to fall.

You scroll for what feels like forever screen recording quickly as you make it up to three weeks. Heartbroken you airdrop yourself the evidence before breaking into his personal phone with new conviction. You nearly drop it when you see nudes and explicit messages. Your hand is trembling as you hear the water stop. You delete your screen recordings from the work phone, locking both devices and laying them as they were. Your hearts in your ass, your eyes stinging as tears threaten to fall. You walk into your office screaming into a pillow. Unable to act like all is well you stay put in there. James shouts you a goodbye before leaving. You pull up the security footage and scroll as far back as you can see. Your only consolation is he hasnt brought the whore back to your home. Still, it doesn't erase the intimacy of the messages. It doesn't erase the deceit and callousness of his lies and actions. It doesn't erase your heartache or the fact that he’s been lying heartlessly for months. Doesn’t negate the truth of his libido being well and intact, not for you but for her.

You sit for hours in a daze ignoring your daily routine before deciding to head to the spa. Heading upstairs you take off your rings, unable to wear the gifts from such a low down asshole. A manicure, pedicure, sauna and a full body massage doesnt bring you any reprieve. You still feel terrible as clarity dawns. You get the full picture of his betrayal. The pain is too much. Eight years together, five married and this is what it's come to. The visual of his mistress pleasuring herself is etched into your mind, along with the messages between them. Worst of all was the most recent. The mistress thanking your husband for blowing you off to care for her needs. Sitting in the lot of the spa after hours you punch the steering wheel before leaning into it and honking until you’ve stopped screaming. 

Anger wins. Visualising James in the hospital brings you more peace than everything else you've tried. Looking in his eyes pretending to be shocked and concerned while being the root of his current predicament is the kind of sweet karma that allows you to exhale for the first time in hours. Hospital visits because you got him fucked up for his indiscretion. After years of being whatever he wanted whenever. Without even a heads up or him expressing any discontent. Blindly trusting him when he’s been in another relationship. Bystanders look in shock as you pull out of the lot burning rubber with one destination in mind.

Club Clique, to see a man named Rio. 

Author's Note: thanks for reading, this one will be a little fast paced and unhinged. Very toxic because from what I can see that's what you all enjoy most. Rio being messy was my favourite part! Like, Comment, Reblog and interact with the poll.

NEXT CHAPTER

All my love,

xoxo

[indierpgnewsletter]

There's Other Kinds Of GM Advice: Theatricality versus Transparency

(This first appeared on the Indie RPG Newsletter)

I find that broadly there are at least two kinds of GM advice – and they have a very different philosophy underpinning them.

The first kind of advice aims at all costs to maintain verisimilitude. It’s a solution that you can implement without breaking the players’ immersion in their characters. This can just be stuff like Matt Colville explaining that if your players are taking too long discussing plans, guess what, orcs attack! We’ve all probably played a game where people were going in circles and not able to decide what to do. If it looks like we’re not able to decide, we’re probably going to be relieved if the GM makes something happen to break the deadlock and prompt us back into the action.

(Historically, this kind of thing was taken to egregious lengths like Gary Gygax saying if players start acting uppity, have a rock fall on their head. It’s mostly gone now but reddit tells me that Cyberpunk Red which came out relatively recently still says something similar.)

The second flavor of advice involves breaking character and talking to your players directly. I know “talk to your players” is a mantra repeated so often that autocorrect suggests it as soon as you type the letter t. At its worst, this advice is vague and unhelpful. We’ve all considered talking frankly to people in our lives, we just find it awkward and hard and annoying. But, but, but – at its best, just describing the problem as you see it and escalating it from a character discussion to a player discussion will make it go away instantly. Like magic. (If you’re not sure what that means: In a previous issue, I discussed Jason Tocci’s excellent advice on escalating conversation in this way.)

And since the theatrical flavour of advice has the weight of history on its side and transparent advice keeps getting boiled down to mantra form, I thought I’d write down some examples of situations and some alternative ways to handle them:

Situation 1: The players are marines discussing whether to dive into the alien lair and recover their stolen engine (their main goal) or go and see if another missing team of marines is okay. There is only 45 minutes left and this is a one shot.

Theatrical: The other marines suddenly come on the radio and say, “hey we’re okay, please complete the mission.”

Transparent: “Hey, folks. There’s 45 minutes left. If we don’t do the alien lair now, we won’t be able to do it at all. Is that fine?”

Situation 2: The players are low-level fantasy nobodies who have a famous wizard friend. They’re about to tangle with some medium-level bad guy and decide to call in their wizard friend.

Theatrical: When the players try to contact her via a telepathic phone call / spell, she sounds breathless and says she’s busy doing something way more important like fighting a dragon.

Transparent: “Hey, folks. If we get the wizard in, she’ll absolutely make this fight a cakewalk. We won’t even need to roll initiative really. Is that what you want? Or would we rather have a fun fight?”

Situation 3: The players were having fun exploring when they meet a cool NPC (an android! an elf! an android elf!) who has this interesting backstory with an urgent, earth-shattering hook. They go along with the android elf because it seems more important but immediately look like they’re having less fun.

Theatrical: Narrate how the android elf meets a group of other android elves and have the elf say, “Hey, now that I have these folks helping me, you can leave it you want!”

Transparent: “Hey, folks. Talking to you as players here, do we want to stick with this whole android elf plot here? It does mean that we won’t do any open-ended exploration. Which would you prefer?” If they want to ditch the elf plot, you could just retcon it entirely or do the theatrical solution.

All of these situations have happened at my table. They’re all relatively low stakes and I think whichever way you handle it, it’ll probably be fine. But that said, some situations absolutely work better when done transparently so if you’ve never tried the transparent way, give it a shot. If immersion matters a lot to you, try it at the end of the session.

/End

PS. The theatrical options often still require the players to willingly suspend their disbelief and go with it. If a player didn’t play along, they might just say “I thought their radios weren’t working, otherwise we could’ve just contacted them before. Why can they suddenly contact us now?” or “Oh, the wizard is fighting a dragon right now. We can totally wait. There’s no reason we need to fight the bad guy right now.” And sometimes I can’t shut off that part of my brain either so I won’t judge. But if there’s a way to sidestep that situation even coming up, I’m going to take it every time.

[mikethinkstwice]

Just finished my first playtest of my wild west horror game, and my biggest takeaway is this:

It is equally important to be good at communicating your rules as it is to have fun an interesting rules.

Now, this is an obvious token of advice that any game designer worth their salt should be aware of, but it's not until I sat down to playtest that I understood the GRAVITY of it.

Because my poor players, my dearest friends who were willing to take time out of their day to understand my game and play it through, read the rulebook up and down multiple times. And each and every one of them came to the table with a sheepish admittance of guilt that they didn't understand the rules.

But they shouldn't feel guilty for that, that's MY fault as a communicator of the game's rules. See, I initially wrote the rules of my game for myself, as a designer. I made a step-by-step list of the procedures between the GM and the Player. But to someone that isn't a designer, my rules were described in a way that was positively USELESS.

My point is, it's very difficult as a game designer to communicate your mechanics to non-designers without hands-on demonstration. But you don't have that luxury when selling that game to strangers once the playtest is over. It's a skill you have to develop, a skill where you need to view your game from the perspective of someone who has never encountered it before. That's difficult.

Now, once the Players understood the mechanics, they actually got really into my game. And for that I'm very proud, and even more so relieved. I was worried I would have to rewrite my rules from scratch because the game wouldn't be fun.

Turns out I will be rewriting my rules from scratch, but not because the rules were bad, but because my communication was bad!

[txttletale]

Do you have recs for combatless rpgs? sorry if someones asked this ! im getting into ttrpgs now and its just pretty hard to find anything non combat focused ?

i recommended wanderhome (melancholy animal roadtrip), dream askew (queer postapocalyptic survival), microscope (collaborative worldbuilding), and crescent moon (kids learning and growing in a fantasy land) in resposne to an ask earlier today. other great rpgs that aren't combat focused include:

chuubo's marvelous wish-granting engine: i'll level with you, if you're just getting into rpgs this one might be A Lot because it's quite mechanically complex. but it's a beautiful game about having ghibliesque coming-of-age adventures in a surreal dreamy world.

nobilis is by the same person (jenna moran, a genuine game design pioneer and genius) -- it's about being godlets, the living embodiments of concepts from the concrete to the abstract. you might find yourself fighting in this game, but it's unlikely to look anything like 'combat'.

brindlewood bay, which is about being elderly women investigating murders.

pasión de las pasiones, a pbta (powered by the apocalypse) game about doing ridiculous romance drama shit based on telenovelas

monsterhearts, about teenaged monsters having weird drama and exploring their sexuality. think buffy or twilight, but queerer

pigsmoke, about being professors at a college of magic and competing to see who can publish the best paper (yes, really)

the girlfriend of my girlfriend is my friend, about... i mean i think the title makes it pretty clear! being gay and poly and kinda broke

it's been a long, long, time, about two people who used to date, their relationship, their lives after it, and their reunion

sagas of the icelanders, about being viking settlers in iceland during the saga period and playing out quasimythical dramas

hieronymous, about being a bunch of sinners making your way across hieronymous bosch's garden of earthly delights

thousand year old vampire, a solo journalling game about being a vampire and living through long stretches of history

blow up hamlet, where your table performs hamlet while changing the plot and improvising new plot beats at semi-random

slugblaster, about being rowdy teens hoverboarding through interdimensional rifts in the spirit of 90s teen movies

woo! that's a fuckin' lot of ttrpgs, but i wanted to give a lot of suggestions because i think it's so important for people getting into the hobby to understand the breadth of games out there and how far from the popular image created by D&D they can go! there are two-player and GM-less and even one-player games on this list. you can do anything! the world of rpgs is so fucking wide and beautiful. good luck and i hope you find something that speaks to you!

(oh, also, my game, most trusted advisors -- about being the untrustworthy privy council to a dipshit king and falling over each other's nested dipshit schemes -- has no combat in it. just saying!)

[voxofnox]

Alexander Ward has irrevocably changed my brain chemistry

The way he makes characters is just. So. Fucking. Good. Jasper, Isaac, and Edgar, and all of his characters are so unique and detailed and fit into their worlds and stories so perfectly.

Alex never tries to make the ‘good’ decision or aims for the ‘best’ outcome. He goes for what will be interesting. He goes for what will serve character and narrative. THAT IS SO GOOD IN A PLAYER. So often (speaking as a GM) players will try to delay the inevitable, or try to twist a situation into having the best outcome. But if the amount of times Jasper threw himself in front of danger even when his friends told him not to, or how excited Alex was at the prospect of playing a character who dies, Alex doesn’t do that. Character and narrative above mechanics.

He also never misses with his acting. The dude’s a creature actor and you can see it in how physical he gets. From throwing himself onto the table as Edgar to Isaac’s creepy ass smile to Jasper’s everything, Alex is fucking phenomenal at portraying character even when he isn’t speaking, even when he’s just sitting and listening to other people in a scene. Also I know Alex has said that he has no idea how a character will sound until he opens his mouth but his voice work for his characters is also really good.

Basically Alexander Ward is a delight to watch in the TTRPG actual play space and if y’all are just finding him after Candela I highly recommend watching LA By Night and New York By Night.

[morinuu]

LISTWN TO ME I JUST READ YOUR TAMAKI ANGST AND YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE SO FICKING GOOD??

A she falls but he falls harder

Reader finally gets over it and stops coming, moving on and focusing on herself, and he notices and starts realizing how he took her for granted

And then its him that's loosing his mind and shit like that. Dude. Dude. I'm loosing my MIND you write so well

first of all ty for the compliment >< so glad u liked it im blushing and giggling!! secondly im not sure abt the reader completely abandoning tamaki's side (i love being delulu), but i do have smth else in mind that's kinda similiar n i hope its satisfactory :3 i changed only a minor part from the og :P i wanna make this a small series..... maybe like 3-4 parts.. anw this is pt 1

☀︎｜tamaki x female reader. almost 4k words. continuation of this. ure sick, yamada hinata & aoko r just some ppl i made up for the plot, tamaki's pretty stupid n emotionally unintelligent, lots of feelings and background information, y'all r childhood friends, there's like one 4th wall break but i thought it was kinda funny so i kept it

you weren't a fan of february.

allergy season was your absolute worst, the wheezing and coughing sucking the life out of you as you struggled to change out of your clothes to get the day started. you didn't sleep much, interrupted constantly by your sore throat aching and squeezing.

sure, it's just hay fever to everyone else, but for a young woman who carried around an inhaler, it's hell. well, almost hell.

what was truly hellish wasn't the fatigue or the sneezing, but your mum dragging you back in the house and forbidding you from going to school until you're well enough to study again. how were you supposed to keep up with chemistry class if you skip?

not that your parents cared for your grades; they knew you could just enter whatever field you wanted with the connections your family held, but it felt nice to be awarded for working hard.

after your personal maid let out a small "pardon me, miss" and carried you back to bed, you realised that the feeling your soft quilt hugging your cold limbs would never be beaten by the jacket you desperately clung on to warm yourself in p.e - which just so happened to be your first period that day and you were dreading it.

"i'll be making you some tea, miss. would you like to breakfast now?" your maid's quiet voice addressed you, hoping you'd just sleep the illness off as you usually did so she could rest too.

to be fair, you weren't a very easy master to please, so could you blame her?

"i'll breakfast la-" a cough and some wheezing "-i'll breakfast later, bring some english breakfast with a slice of lemon." you said nothing else, instead focusing on calming your throat that seemed to intensify in soreness. "a pastille too."

"understood my lady, i'll be right back." she bowed and excused herself from your room, ignoring your groans of annoyance as you buried your face into the pillow.

"damn it." you muttered and extended your hand to grab your phone from your bedside table. unlocking it with the passcode (because you weren't in the mood to lift your head and let your phone scan your face) you squinted as the light mode of a social media app hit your eyes harshly, forcing you to use muscle memory to lower the brightness to its minimum.

you scrolled through, liking your friends' private posts and decided to message one of them.

yn.spam: gm dude, i cant come to school today cus im sick. can u do me a favour n tell aoko to give me her notes? she never looks at her messages.

with your phone back on the table to wait for a response, you lied back comfortably and closed your eyes, because as much as you wanted to watch something on netflix or play a video game, you didn't want to make things worse for yourself.

you grew impatient for the cup of tea your maid was brewing, rotating between wheezing, checking your phone and staring at the ceiling. it seemed like the seconds weren't passing by at all.

soon enough, your maid comes back with some fancy tray carrying a kettle, your favourite mug (the one your daddy drank from when you were a little girl before your parents divorced), a tiny plate with some lemon slices and a small box of pastilles as throat medicine.

you didn't thank the woman when she helped you sit up, nor when she stayed by your side to make sure you didn't choke between coughs and burnt yourself with the hot liquid. just as you took your first sip, your phone lit up to show your friend's response.

thatguyhinata: Ayooo gppd morning. Sry to hear tht. Sure if I see her I'll telm her.

the irises in your eyes rolled upwards at the boy's typos that irked you every time, completely ignoring how he didn't wish for your recovery.

yn.spam: thanks yamada

you never used any of your circle's first names, which your mum always found weird.

'you sure these are your friends, darling?' she would ask often, and your response would always be the same:

'yeah mum. leave me be.'

only tamaki had ever felt close enough to be called by his first name.

after swallowing your medicine, you dismissed the older woman standing over you and pulled your quilt over your quivering form again.

"gods, please let this be over soon."

...

well.

...turns out, you gotta be much more specific with what you ask of gods, because they might not have the same understanding of the word 'soon'.

here you are, three days later, with your allergy having been combined with a virus that'd been going around, intensifying your asthma symptoms and raising a high fever, making your mother and doctor ban you from walking into ouran.

halfway throughout the day, you realise what had been completely slipping your mind while your lungs were occupied inhaling abnormally.

"i have an appointment today!" you exclaimed with wide eyes, raising from the bed like lazarus from his grave.

"...?" the new maid next to you didn't say anything, she was clearly concerned. after some seconds of you overthinking something, she spoke up. "you have no other doctor's appointment today, my lady. he just left 10 minutes ago."

you shook your head quickly, ignoring the dizziness brought by your fever "bring me my phone," the girl was puzzled "now!"

bowing a quick apology, she rushed to your desk and handed you your phone with both hands, not daring to look up. you disliked new maids; they were inexperienced and annoying, but scolding her would have to wait.

"damn it, damn it, damn it!" you murmured under your breath and tapped furiously on your phone, trying to find where the hell you'd written kyouya's business e-mail address.

you had it saved as every other client of the host club had, but you had never actually used it, not once.

you never missed an appointment, and always booked the next one tete-a-tete with the black-haired manager. if you became a no-show without prior notice, wouldn't that look bad? would it annoy kyouya and he wouldn't accept you in the club again?

well no, but you had the habit of overthinki-

'would it annoy tamaki?'

you groaned and murmured to yourself - had you deleted it? maybe it was in your notes app and you erased it? was it on your old phone from a month ago?

"find an e-mail for me." you ordered the maid who looked up at you perplexed, but carried out the order nonetheless.

the girl was embarrassed when she found out her master was asking for a host's email, wanting the earth to swallow her when she dialed the ouran academy's number. 'the stuff i do for money..' she thought and prayed her family never found out.

it wasn't a long process to retrieve the address, but what was, was the rant hitting the maid's ears when your overthinking about what to write left your mouth at incredible speeds.

"should i say i'm sick? but he already knows that- he's in my class! maybe tell him to give my time to another girl? no wait, he would do that anyway... or after i apologise, i'll say that, like, something came up- but that's not believable enough... ugh!" you buried your face in your pillow and, unbeknownst to you, your new maid's eye was twitching in annoyance.

she understood now why your personal maid took the week off just when you got sick - not that she understood how and why your mum allowed it though.

(it's because you can be insufferable and she gets it.)

"my lady, may i help?" the girl let out, clearing her throat when you lifted your head from the pillow. "i can write the e-mail myself, please focus on resting."

after some convincing, you gave in.

and so 10 minutes later, back at ouran, kyouya's phone let out a ting! with your full name on the notification. he'd already guessed you wouldn't show up to your appointment considering you hadn't come to school in three days, and already had someone to fill your place but left it for the last moment in case you did show up.

why? well you were ln yn, and it was painfully obvious you were smitten with his best friend, though he could say it was a bit different from the rest of the clientele.

probably due to the fact that you'd known tamaki for much longer than kyouya had. and yet tamaki didn't seem to have the same fascination with you.

he remembers when he first met you, when he'd heard that you were spoiled rotten and weren't even planning to enroll in ouran until tamaki did. you simply transferred to be with the boy.

literally everyone knew of ln yn's almost freakish obsession with suoh tamaki, except for the victim himself.

so imagine his surprise at the strictly professional e-mail he'd received from you, where not a single mention of your host was included. weird.

after glancing at the french boy in the seat next to him eating his bowl of some-sort-of-commoner-convenience-store lunch, kyouya quickly typed a response and informed the next girl in line that a spot was open 'for tamaki's hosting services at 15:35'.

"one of your appointments cancelled due to a personal issue. we'll have someone else fill it." kyouya told tamaki, just as stated in the e-mail, even though it was pretty clear you were sick, and he couldn't figure out why you'd lie.

"hm? oh, okay!" the brunet smiled and went back to devouring his meal, not thinking much of kyouya's words.

kyouya pondered if he should tell him the client was his loyal friend yn, who would never skip out on seeing tamaki, but he stopped himself, curious as to how it would all play out.

eh, if the twins could have fun, so could he.

"oh! haruhii! daddy's here!"

the hours passed so slow you were almost convinced time was frozen when you weren't glancing at the clock on your laptop.

the drama you'd been watching started to lose its interest after presenting the third plot twist in a row, annoying you with all the plot holes it left gaping.

sipping on your green tea (you'd been drinking tamaki's recommendation, pomegranate, only to throw all of it in the trash when you heard he gave the same advice to haruhi), you paused the show and sighed in absolute, tyrannical boredom.

by now you'd normally have finished your classes and walked to music room #3, your favourite among them all.

you'd be welcomed by a host and walked to a sofa to wait for your appointment, ignoring any other girl in the waiting area trying to pick a conversation with the middle child of the ln family.

and soon enough you'd be approached by your one and only taking your hand in his and kissing it to greet you, with his blue eyes staring up at you innocently like a man in love; a look he gave to any woman nowadays, it was second nature to him.

you got lost in them so often, he sometimes dared to ask you if you didn't enjoy his company and that's why you spaced out so much.

preposterous.

you? disliking tamaki? how could he think that after all these years you spent playing together, with you transferring to his school for his sake, swallowing your pride and becoming the client of a host for him?

truly an absurd notion.

currently, however, you weren't in the host club. you were just a girl with a bunch of germs crawling everywhere around her room, unable to go out and see the man of her dreams kiss her cheek and tell her to 'get well soon'.

speaking of, your mum grew increasingly concerned when she noticed the lack of communication between you and tamaki. you were always attached to his hip like some sort of koala, and the fact that you hadn't reached out to him to inform him of your illness personally so he could visit you made her worry.

but it was only natural that you'd suspect you were being an annoyance to tamaki once you began to notice his eyes shift from you to the newest host a couple of months prior. he'd been a petit brunet boy. a first year who was friendly and of lowly origin. you didn't think much of it.

at least not until the day hikaru asked if you could fetch something he forgot in the back room, completely ignorant to the fact that haruhi had come to the club early that day to ask for another uniform because she'd been accidentally thrown water at by two classmates of hers being stupid.

so when you opened the curtain and saw a small-sized girl with only her panties on desperately trying to hide herself from you, it didn't take more than a couple of seconds to put two and two together.

tamaki wasn't fascinated by the commoner errand 'boy' turnt host.

he wanted her.

you closed the curtain, giving the girl her privacy back and muttering an curt apology, "sorry." before deciding that hikaru would have to get his things himself.

neither haruhi nor you spoke about it again, and she never snitched to the host club about your discovery of her sex.

you liked to pretend it never happened, and that it never changed anything. but just like with tamaki, pretending doesn't go anywhere. the hints were there. his furiously blushed face when he stared at her, his protection of her when the twins teased her, his demands for kyouya to do things for haruhi because she'd like it, not even because she'd asked - well, the stage of denial didn't last long.

shortly after came anger. pure, unexplainable rage and envy. the fourth of the deadly sins was soon rushing through your veins like a drug you couldn't get clean from. 'why her?' you would ask in your rampages.

you couldn't figure it out, and you couldn't ask anyone either, because as infuriated as you were, hurting haruhi by revealing her identity wasn't on your to-do list.

not because you were a good person, god no.

rather, if tamaki knew you hurt his precious daughter - you barfed - like that, who knows if you'd see him again?

and so came the bargaining stage, with your rage never leaving your blood stream, of course. being petty was always one of your main personality traits, one that tamaki would often point out.

what did fujioka haruhi have that ln yn didn't?

'nothing.' you muttered to yourself.

nothing.

nothing?

could you be absolutely sure?

you didn't see her much outside of the club, and there were a couple of times you'd heard the hosts hung out together.

maybe they had a moment? or two, three?

perhaps it was high time you stopped bothering him. perhaps then he'd realise you were the one.

that's why your texts to him had much lessened, coming to a complete stop after roughly two months of your self-doubt and insecurities getting the best of you. so did your occasional visits to his house for studying. you'd even stopped wearing the perfume he got you as a birthday present last year, even though you couldn't find another scent that fit your tastes the same way.

despite your attempts at catching his attention, the bubbling fury in your chest rose once again when you realised that maybe tamaki didn't care about you at all.

he texted you as much as you texted him, he hung out with you only when you asked, and when he came closer to you and noticed the change in your scent, he went: "different perfume, princess?"

and while normally you'd be ecstatic at him noticing, your happiness was immediately destroyed when "the other one was a little old fashioned, good thing you moved to something more fresh."

why couldn't he say what he would have said had he been in an otome game, something among the lines of: 'did you wish to match mine?' or something cheesy like that? ...was your scent not to his tastes?

'did he forget his skills from hosting or what?' you whined.

consequently, now that you were sitting around doing nothing to reach out to tamaki or any of your 'friends', your mum couldn't help but take her phone in her hands to call her friend hitachiin yuzuha.

back in the pink room that is the host club, today's rendezvouses seemed to be going by awfully quickly for tamaki.

in the couple of minutes of break he had between the end of this rendezvous and next the one to come, he quickly found his phone from his back pocket and went over his schedule sent by kyouya.

your name had been crossed out and replaced with another one he recognised, another regular guest of his. he raised his eyebrow at that.

he lifted his head and looked for the shadow king.

"hey, kyouya?"

"hm?" kyouya didn't bother to look up from his laptop, furiously typing god-knows-what.

"why's yn's time gone?" he asked innocently in a curious voice that had you heard, you'd be swooning over.

"i told you, she cancelled due to personal business," his answer was straight-forward "although it's probably because she's ill."

ah, that makes sense, you were the one that cancelled.

wait, huh?

"what do you mean she's ill?" his eyebrows furrow a bit and he cocks his head to the side like a cute dog who doesn't understand anything its owner says.

"what do you mean, 'what do i mean'? she's been absent since monday because she's not feeling well, and she won't come today either. pretty simple." kyouya finally looked up at tamaki with a strange expression on his face. "has she not told you?"

tamaki shook his head a bit, "uhm.. no, not really." and tapped his phone again to check his messages on multiple social media apps to make sure he wasn't missing anything. his emails were empty too, only some spam from a newsletter page that he never bothered to cancel his subscription from.

"how do you know?" he questioned kyouya, but before he could answer, "no wait, don't answer that, you creep. of course you know." he sighed.

after some seconds of quiet thinking, "why didn't you tell me?" tamaki continued his questioning.

"everyone already knows, my lord." an awfully familiar voice butt in making the french boy turn his head around, resting his hand on his waist.

the voice belonged to kaoru, who had his arm wrapped around his twin's shoulders. seems like they also just finished with an appointment.

"what does that mean? who's 'everyone' and why am i not included?" tamaki crossed his arms, feeling kind of left out.

"that guy hayato or whatever who hangs out with yn and her friends was telling someone and we overheard." hikaru shrugged in unison with his doppelganger.

honey's soft voice entered the chat. "you mean hinata-kun? yn-chan's friend? yeah, he told me when i asked where yn-chan is because i thought she forgot to bring the candy she promised." he quickly grabbed a piece of cake from the fridge near where kyouya had been sitting and left the room swiftly.

huh, how convenient for him to enter for the plot.

"and why's it that you two evil bastards didn't bother to tell me?" tamaki exclaimed in disbelief, pointing a finger at the both of them. how could they? his precious childhood friend was sick at home and he didn't know?!

"sorry milord-" kaoru announced with his shoulders still raised, "-but you're always talking to yn-" hikaru joined, "-how were we supposed to know you're not asking her about her well-being?" they delivered the finishing blow together.

what were these lame jerks insinuating? 'not asking about her well-being'? what did they know? just as he went to respond with his usual barking, he stopped himself to instead text you on his own for the first time in a while. not that he noticed.

the twins looked at their king with a confused and weirded-out expression on both their faces, before glancing at each other and shrugging again, already disinterested. kyouya had long gone back to his work and so the twins walked to an empty sofa in an almost isolated area of the club, lying on top of one another to give a nice view to whichever client was into it.

about six minutes of pure silence passed between the two before kaoru's phone buzzed; a text from his mum.

the twins read the text simultaneously, with hikaru raising an eyebrow at its contents. they looked back at the slender boy texting you on his phone at the other end of the club, confused about his behaviour.

"seriously...?" hikaru quietly asked kaoru, referring to the text, only to be met with the other's puzzled expression.

as for the half-and-half boy, his fingers were anxiously tapping kyouya's table and awaiting your response to his message.

tamakiii ♥♥♥♥: Hey darling! Is everything alright? I heard you didn't come to school because you're sick. I thought you just didn't feel like coming. Why didn't you tell me?

he didn't know you let out a deep sigh at his text, even if it was three days late. it gave you hope - false hope. that he'd started to pay attention to you again. maybe being distant worked-

tamakiii ♥♥♥♥: want me to come over?

the question felt natural to him, you always visited his home but seldom did he ever visit yours. since you were sick, it made sense that you wouldn't come over this time.

yn>.&lt; : arent u busy rn tho lol

your name on his phone had obviously been put there by you, his choice of emoji had been party hat for some reason.

"be serious, what does that even mean, tamaki?" you'd asked him one day during a break from your studying in his room.

"you don't like it..?" he pouted like usual and you rolled your eyes.

"here. that's better." you handed him his phone back with a new 'yn >.<' as your contact name.

tamakiii ♥♥♥♥: I can just come after club activities.

wait, he was actually coming? after two months of your only contact being through your rendezvous? it worked?! it actually worked?!

you thought of how to answer him.

at your lack of fast response, tamaki thought of ways to help you feel better through your illness.

'aha! eureka!' tamaki's head echoed.

tamakiii ♥♥♥♥: I'll bring some commoner snacks we can enjoy too! Commoners have incredible food to help alleviate illness!

tamakiii ♥♥♥♥: What are you even sick with, anyway?

of course.

commoner food, of course.

haruhi's food.

yn>.&lt; : lol no its fine i dont want u to get sick. ill just c u at sxhool yn>.&lt; : school* yn>.< : doc said its just a cold but yk w my asthma n shit

tamaki was thoroughly disappointed with your response, what did you mean 'you didn't want him to get sick'? you'd never cared if you caught his cold.

his heart raced with worry, and he decided he would stop by anyway. knowing his next appointment was approaching, he speed walked over to the newest host.

"haaaaruuhiiiiii!" he waved his hand to her and her two clients, smiling widely with all of them smiling back at him.

"yeah? what is it, senpai?" haruhi looked up at him from her armchair.

"sorry to intrude-" he runs his hair through his locks - an action that you told him the ladies would swoon over, "-but i was wondering, do you have any recommendations for commoner food that sick people can eat?"

"...are you serious?"

[catgirlforeskin]

"even the most gentle suggestions that trying out other games could be good." ^ .... ?? "We should round up everyone who still likes DnD 5e and hold their faces down into hot coals until the smell of charred melting flesh suffocates our noses! Who’s with me!" "an rpg so alien to the design philosophy of DnD that hearing it makes cr fans’ heads explode into tf2 gore giblets" & you keep saying that you'd give people a list of other ttrpg's to play... and you don't. you just shit on stuff and whine. i don't even like dnd anymore because all the manuals are "big" but insubstantial and wizards of the coast are greedy and making the game worse.. but it doesn't mean you have to be rude to the people who still enjoy it.

You’re right, we don’t have to be rude to people who still enjoy 5e. We have to kill them

I’ve had several posts about other systems to play, usually as answers to asks I’ve gotten, if tumblr search worked better you could look on my blog quite easily. But for posterity’s sake…

Crunchier games:

-most similar to DnD 5e: Pathfinder 2e. All rules free online, extremely popular

-faster, high stakes cinematic combat with more flexibility in setting: Mythras

-apocalyptic survival exploration with good gun-based combat: Twilight 2000 4e. Easily reskinned for other settings that keep the same thematic core

-people will get mad if I don’t mention Lancer, it’s a mech game, I just think it’s okay personally.

Pf2e and Lancer are combat as sport while mythras and t2000 are more combat as war (explainer here)

Lighter Games:

-OSR: Old School Renaissance, this is a school of RPGs based on original DnD and adventuring with fragile characters defined by gear instead of abilities who should always fight dirty and creatively, trying to outwit opponents instead of engaging head-on. Mausritter and Dragonbane are my current favs, but there’s hundreds of games in this genre of all different kinds of themes. Favors GM rulings over written rules⭐️Great for people who already play 5e in a much more freeform style⭐️

-PbtA: Powered by the Apocalypse, a school of RPGs based on Apocalypse World. Strong mechanical support for collaboratively making your story at the table. ⭐️Great for people who prefer roleplay and narrative⭐️. People often recommend Dungeon World because it’s similar to old dnd, personally I just think it’s okay. Current fav is The Sword, the Crown, and the Unspeakable Power for Game of Thrones feeling stories, Fellowship is good for LotR style fantasy. Hundreds of games in this genre and the subgenre Forged in the Dark (FitD) for games based on Blades in the Dark. Current fav is Rebel Crown.

Closing thoughts:

-Umm suck me off :)

-Free League Publishing makes a ton of rpgs and pretty much all of them are good, I highly recommend anything they do. FIST is a fun osr and pbta hybrid. Riddle of Steel and its successors are cool rpgs trying to simulate real sword fights unfortunately mostly made by reactionary dipshits. There’s tons of unique rules light stuff outside of OSR or PbtA design space as well, go on the various rpg subreddits, go to rpg blogs, go to itch.io and explore. r/rpg is a great resource and I’ve learned about so many good systems from it.

-I hope this one shows up when searching my blog for rpg posts in the future so silly people don’t go “you never recommend games you’re just a HATER!” I love to hate but it’s slightly more fun to play good rpgs with friends than it is to be a hater online. Oh my god I didn’t even mention GMless games, good lord uhhh check out Quiet Year and The Zone okay love you all bye bye I want 100 5e player scalps xoxo

[maximumzombiecreator]

Seeing your post about improv theatre vs. D&D culture and the amount of skill in "humility, vulnerability, and ability to share the spotlight" that improv theatre requires. And realizing that every single good ttrpg I've played over the years had a table full of people that had that skill. I have a post about it half-written, but I'm still boggling over the idea that there are so many people coming from the D&D side that have so much contempt for the other players. (And the GM is a player, from that perspective, IMO.)

It can be contempt, and certainly sometimes it is. I think most of the time it's fear. Despite what tumblr may have told you, cringe culture is not dead, and the fear of being cringe has a deep hold on a lot of players. It has a deep hold on the culture in general, just look at the profusion of bathos in mainstream movies. For whatever reason, we treat sarcasm, detachment, and cynicism as neutral, and so they create a great suit of armour against being cringe.

Improv is exposure therapy for being cringe. There's just no way to get into improv theatre without being deeply embarrassing so many times that you learn to deal with it. But TTRPGs have a lot of opportunities to hide from embarrassment. To some extent, that's why some groups are playing TTRPGs at all. The rules provide protection. They're not playing pretend, they're playing a game which is normal and socially acceptable.

So you end up with players who are constantly protecting themselves. They make a character whose personality is a one note joke or pun. They refuse to learn NPC names and give them snarky nicknames. They constantly undercut the tone of the scene with quips and jokes. They mistreat NPCs to show that they don't actually imagine them as people. Anything to signal to the table that they're not taking this seriously, that would be cringe.

This is mostly stuff I try to talk to my players about in session zero. One thing I always say when I'm GMing is that I am committed to being the most cringe person at the table. I will not be outcringed. And I do this because I am a profoundly ridiculous person, but also because it carves out space for the players to be cringe too. And once people are comfortable enough at the table, secure enough that they won't be judged, often they can learn how great it can be to roleplay with that humility and vulnerability. Other times they'll quit the table and talk to their friends about how cringe I am for my full commitment to the inner life of a sapient hedge.

Either is fine with me.

[baddywronglegs]

Please will you tell Tumblr the story of the spider head hat?

Oh yeah, this is how I got into TTRPGs.

While at uni, a friend correctly identified me as the kind of nerd who would enjoy TTRPGs so brought me along to a game at our uni's wargame and RPG society.

I think we were just before the 5e boom, so D&D itself wasn't big and the games running at the society were mostly Warhammer 40k and Call of Cthulhu.

So my first game was Call of Cthulhu.

The setting was I think frontier-era America; of the members of the party I remember, my friend who brought me into the game was an enormous Scottish dentist, someone I never saw outside of the game was a priest, I think native to the area we were as he was the only one with a clue what was going on around us, and me, a shipwright who wanted to make an ocean-going airship, I think? It's hard to remember that bit in detail because such trifles do not survive first encounter with Call of Cthulhu.

The first thing I remember was us camping for the night and our GM asking us to make Listen checks. I was the only one to pass and did so with huge success, everyone's happy, the new player's getting good rolls.

The GM looks worried for me.

She asks me to make a Sanity check. People stop smiling. I roll. It is bad.

The GM leads me out of the room to talk to me in private. We leave a hushed table.

"So in the night, before you fall asleep you hear a beautiful singing coming from the woods. Compelled by the music, you get out of your tent, and you follow the sound of the music into the trees."

"Ah. OK."

"Can I have your character sheet please?"

"OK..."

We re-enter the room. The GM has my character sheet in her hand. There are omens at play here. What there isn't at play here is me.

Come the morning everyone realises the new person's gone so set off tracking me into the forest.

Good news! They found me! I was even alive!

Bad news! The singing was giant purple spiders with humanlike intelligence and apparently a taste for insomniac shipwrights!

Our brick shithouse of a dentist leaps on the back of one of the spiders and begins wrestling it, hoping to be out of reach of its ability to attack him as long as he can stay on its back.

Player A: "I'm going to try shooting the spider"

Dentist: "Please don't, I'm on it, if you miss you'll hit me and I don't like being shot"

Player A: "That's OK, I didn't miss."

Dentist: "Well thank fuck for that."

Player B: "I'm going to shoot it too."

Dentist: "Are you fucking kidding me?"

Eventually, mercifully un-shot, the dentist managed to wrestle the head off the spider. He didn't actually kill it in doing so but it's fine, player C shot the head in his hands and it stopped snapping at him.

Silence fell. Calm reigned. The GM told me how much sanity I had lost. It was more than the rest of the party had ever lost combined. I learned not to listen so hard in future.

The dentist looked at the GM, a giant spider head still in his hands.

"Can I wear its head as a hat?"

The GM sighed. "Make me a San check"

Dice noises. "Fail!" He said that word with such glee.

"You lose one sanity, but you also turn the whole spider's exoskeleton into a suit of armour. It has the same stats as leather but also poisons anyone who touches it with their skin, and anyone you meet while wearing it has to make Sanity checks."

And that's why I love TTRPGs.

[evlynmoreau-blog]

The Dreamer

Back to my Signalis TTRPG (thanks for the encouragements)

This part is about setting up the bioresonant dreamer who was experiment on by AEON and who is causing the reality breakdown.

The dreamer is a gestalt unit and their memory prompts are determined by their planet of origin. The GM and possibly the players will use these prompts to explore the dreamer memories, kind of like the first person memories of Arianne.

Another conflict that could be explored if the GM want to bring back parts of Arianne is that the dreamer could be slowly merging with her memories laced into the recovered signal, one of the things at stake could be to find out if the dreamer will remain themself or get rewritten into an Arianne persona (kind of like Isa, in a way).

The GM can pick or roll the origin of the dreamer.

Busan (The Sun card)

Running through the busy and opulent city street, notice an EUSAN ship fly toward the spaceport.

Being assigned as a guide to a young EUSAN diplomat, they look so stern

Visiting an art museum, the EUSAN diplomat is awestruck by the display of culture, your hands touches

In the diplomatic suite, the EUSAN diplomat look for spying device, then show you a EUSAN tarot deck

Hiding from imperial troopers in a locker, the EUSAN diplomat holding you tightly

The bright light of the sun, viewed from the window of the EUSAN diplomatic craft leaving Busan

Vineta (The Tower card)

Sitting on the roof of a ruined building, watching fragments of the moon burn throught the atmosphere 

Playing on makeshift docks with friends, suddenly you slip and splash into the water 

Helping the EULE units distributing food to starving gestalt workers

Watching STAR units drag something out of the water, you have a scary premonition

Alert siren, people running to shelters and battle stations, being separated from a friend 

Traveling in a fast skimmer over the waves, smiling as you approach the hovering EUSAN spaceship  

Kitezh (The Lovers card) 

Preparing your farm for the sandstorm, noticing a small EUSAN craft crash in the distance

Walking through the red sandstorm, dragging the wounded EUSAN pilot in a brancard

Inside your farm bedroom, taking care of the recovering EUSAN pilot, they notice your divination sand mandala

Working the field, the EUSAN insist on helping you even if they did not yet fully recover.

Climbing and fixing a dusty radio antenna with the EUSAN pilot, watching together the patterns of the Kitezh dunes.

An EUSAN spycraft land near your farm, your friend tell you to hide but too late their masked robotic units saw you.

Rotfront (The Moon card)

Arriving at the meteorological station, meeting your new coworker, she offer you some warm coffee.

Taking ice samples at night, hearing eery cracking of the ice, imaging a dark shape moving under your feet

Clear day, taking some reading outside, your coworker laugh and start a snowball fight with you

Looking for your coworker in the snowstorm, seeing her silhouette in the distance, the ice crack, the shape…

Waking up at the meteorological station, red painted ration chips left for you on the table, it is mondfest day

A STAR unit is interrogating you, while another one is looking at sketches of red eyes and a strange creature

Heimat (The Star card)

Entering the Heimat university hall, feeling small and lost, bumping into another student

Studying astrogation charts with your new friend, talking together excitingly about astronomy

Looking at star charts microfilms, your notice your friend reading a Penrose Program pamphlet  

In your bedroom suddenly having an inspiration, frantically scribing astrogation calculation

Military parade in the street, moving through the crowd to meet your friend, both of you excited

Rainy day, a crumbled Penrose pamphlet in your hand. You watch the long trail of a starship leaving Heimat fragile atmosphere

Leng (The Death card) 

Walking out of the space shuttle with other political prisoners, noticing the cold stars above

Being stuck in a malfunctioning elevator with another gestalt unit, she slip you a note

A gestalt unit fall down due to fatigue and exhaustion  

Predicting safe wall code while your friend note them down, someone else is doing the lookout

Sneaking into the radio room, the radio suddenly start playing music

In the interrogation room, the light glitches, a Storch tell you that you have been selected for transfer

I may rework some of those, not certain if the prompts need to be less specific or not.

[mendeshoney]

take me back to eden (part 1/2)

A/N: well I had an idea about andrei and as per usual @pyotrkochetkov​ @smileysvech​ bullied supported me until it was finished. as you can see, this story is going to be posted in two parts, so keep your eyes peeled! title is from “take me back to eden” by sleep token

Summary: Andrei’s retired, Assistant GM of the Carolina Hurricanes, and a little lonely, so he decides to be a little like Edward Lewis. 

Pairing: andrei svechnikov x f!reader

Part 1 Word Count: 22,144

Warnings: nine year age gap, older man x younger woman, basically “pretty woman” with andrei, love at first sight(Ish), he falls first, she falls too, he falls harder, sugar daddy vibes, angst, fluff, smut, penetration, finish inside, unprotected sex

September

The Premiere Suite at The Mark Hotel.

So…this was it. 

Immediately after swiping the key card and letting himself into the suite, he goes about unpacking. Quickly, he puts his belongings away in the bedroom of the suite, before moving back into the living area, heart pounding with every step.

He’d bought a bouquet of red roses along with a crimson red vase, and he stores the vase in a cabinet in the little kitchen first. He moves further into the room, setting the roses on the coffee table before grabbing the ice bucket and heading down the hall to fill it. When he gets back, he places a bottle of champagne in the ice bucket, and rests it beside the roses, accompanying it by placing two champagne glasses down next to the bucket. 

He heads back into his room, pulling out the little blue box from Tiffany’s in his leather duffle bag, tucking the box into the pockets of his pants, then heads back into the living area, examining the space.

This was enough, right?

Enough to prove that either he wasn’t new to this (which he was) or that he was capable of being a gentleman (jury’s still out), he wasn’t sure.

He’d never done this before, never had to, never needed to, and never thought to.

At thirty two, officially retired from hockey and now serving as Assistant General Manager of the Carolina Hurricanes, Andrei had his fair share of ex girlfriends, previous one night stands, former friends with benefits, and the like in his youth. He’d thought he’d been close to true love once before, but that crashed and burned in flames before he even realized he was standing in the ashes of the aftermath.

Too focused, he’d been told. He was too focused on hockey, on this sport, and it wasn’t enough, so she left. And now, he couldn’t exactly deny that she had been wrong.

Lately, he was far too busy and much less interested in anything other than working to even consider the possibility of anything more. Working for the team that had given him the chance to live out his childhood dreams was where his heart, mind, body, and soul were focused, and he poured his all into it every day.

But sometimes, some days, he could admit to himself that as much as he liked being alone, he did feel lonely in the quiet corners of his office and in the solitude of his bedroom. 

“You need a Pretty Woman,” his brother had told him almost a month ago.

“A what?” He remembers saying, balancing his phone between his shoulder and ear as he typed out an email.

“You know the movie? With Julia Roberts?” Evgeny said, as if that was supposed to mean something to Andrei. “The one mom used to watch all of the time.”

“The prostitution one?” He said, vaguely recalling it now. He mainly remembers trying to make as much noise as possible with Evgeny so his mother would relent and allow them to change the channel to watch cartoons or hockey.

“Da,” his brother had said, “It could be discreet, maybe a little more your pace.”

Andrei had all but rolled his eyes and shot it down, calling his brother an idiot before confirming that he’d be home for the holidays and hanging up.

Then two days later, he was out to dinner with a few of the players on the roster during a preseason dinner, and overheard a couple of veteran players on the team chatting with a newer player about helping him find a date to their eventual Canes Bash, the renamed organizational casino night. 

“It’s worth a shot,” one of the veterans, Mason, had said. “You said you’re out of options, that’s an option.”

The newcomer, Eli, looked extremely skeptical. “But isn’t that like…illegal? It’s basically prostitution.”

The veteran players had shushed him, leaning in closer and lowering their voices even though Andrei could still hear them. 

Eli was sitting to his immediate right, for fuck’s sake.

“It’s an escort service.” The other veteran, Olly said from his spot across from Eli. “They’re based out of Manhattan but have employees all over the country. They serve high profiled clients and work with the utmost scrutiny. You have to submit pay stubs to even prove you can afford one of their employees and both parties are required to sign an NDA.”

“Why does it sound like you’ve ripped that right from their website?” The rookie questioned, skepticism still present in his tone.

“Because maybe we’ve used it once or twice,” Mason shrugged. 

“You have?” Eli asked, and Andrei could tell he was starting to slowly lean into the idea.

“It’s simple,” Olly assured him. “When you register yourself on the website, you fill out an application and basically create an account with them. You have to sign the NDA before your account can be official. Then you submit your pay stubs and a copy of your ID or passport. If those clear, then they do a thorough background check on you, more thorough than a government job, even, and if you pass the background check, they send you a questionnaire to fill out that helps them understand what you’re looking for, but it also lets them know if they’re the service you’re looking for, or if you should take your interests elsewhere.”

“Yeah,” Mason chimed in. “If they believe they can help you, they ask for your availability where you’d like to meet, and then once you pick a city, day, and time, they set up a meeting place, all expenses paid by the service. It’s like a consultation.”

“What about the girl?” Eli asked. “Do I get to pick her?”

“They select them for you based on your questionnaire answers.” Mason said, “But they’ve never set us up with a bad pick.”

“Yeah,” Olly chimed in, smirking. “Remember the blonde bombshell I brought to the team Christmas party last year?”

Eli’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “She was an escort?!”

Olly and Mason shushed Eli once more, though no one else at the dinner table seemed to have been paying any attention to them.

Hockey players have certainly heard, and discussed, far weirder and far worse.

“Did you just watch ‘Pretty Woman,’?” Andrei had teased, and laughed at the stricken expressions on Mason, Olly, and Eli’s faces.

“Uh yeah,” Mason had said nervously. “It’s a classic.” 

Andrei nodded, “It is, it’s a great movie.” Then turned his body as if he was tuning into the conversation the head office was having to his left.

To be fair, he should technically be involved in this conversation anyway, since it is his job, but instead, for some reason, he keeps an ear trained on the rest of what the boys to his right are saying.

“Look, do you wanna go for it or not?” Mason asked, “If you do, I can send you a referral link, or you can just use my name when you apply. It speeds up the time between application and your first meeting.”

Eli made a hesitant noise. “I don’t know. What if I don’t like the girl they picked? I can’t bring a weirdo to the Canes Bash.” 

“That’s what the initial meeting is for.” Olly explained. “The consultation, remember? First visit is free, and then the only payments you have to worry about are for bookings once you get to the first date and beyond. If you like the girl, you tell her what you need her for, and if she agrees to work with you, you book everything moving forward through the website. That way you’re not spending money up front.”

“It’s no strings attached before you even solidify anything.” Mason said, then nudged Eli. “So what do you think? Are you in or what?”

There was a pause, and Andrei sensed Eli’s lingering hesitation, but still, the rookie persisted and said, “Yeah, why not? Fuck it. I’ll do it. What’s this thing called again?”

“Daughters of Aphrodite,” Olly said with a dreamy air to his tone. “Unofficially, that is. Aptly named, but it would obviously raise some eyebrows. So officially, their business name is Eden.”

That night, after Andrei went home, he found himself opening up his laptop as he lounged in bed, looking up “Daughters of Aphrodite” online. He’d found nothing but tellings and retellings of the goddess of love, so he took a chance and searched up “Eden” instead.

Sure enough, there it was. He hesitated all of two seconds before clicking into the website, and didn’t think twice about filling out the application. True to Mason and Olly’s word, he had to sign an NDA before his account could be created, and submit a copy of six months worth of paystubs, his identification, fill out paperwork to commit to and then actually go for STD testing, and when they asked if he’d been referred to the service by anyone to expedite his application process, he listed Olly’s name, figuring Mason probably would’ve lent his referral to Eli instead.

And now, three weeks later, here he was.

In Manhattan, at one of the most expensive hotels in the city, moving into a suite for the weekend.

About to have a consultation…with an escort.

If the consultation went well, his plan was to take this person to a nice dinner, and maybe go out for drinks afterward. Eden had footed the bill and booked the suite for the weekend in case they decided on other activities, but Andrei wasn’t going to hold his breath.

He still wasn’t sure if he was going to stick around, let alone if this other person would be interested.

As he looked around at his little set up, part of him felt like maybe this was too much, but he couldn’t just show up here with nothing. They had his pay stubs, knew his income, knew he was a high profile client using their services for a reason.

Sugar daddy. 

That was one of the things on his questionnaire, asking if that’s what he was looking to be. 

He hadn’t said yes, but surely it wouldn’t be inappropriate to provide his incoming date with…well, some sugar.

Besides, it was just roses, champagne, and the diamond tennis bracelet from Tiffany’s sitting in his pocket. 

Before he could start pacing, Andrei removed his tie and his blazer, resting it over the back of the chair at the desk in the room before loosening the top few buttons on his dress shirt, then unbuttoning and rolling the sleeves up to his elbows. He raided the mini bar, pouring himself a shot of vodka, downing it, then pouring another larger serving, one he could sip at to calm his nerves.

He sat in the lounge chair, scrolling through his email to re-read the instructions one more time.

“...after checking into your hotel and arriving at your room, feel free to take your time settling in and getting comfortable. Once you’re ready, please text the code “5683” to the following number, and we will notify your date for the evening that you’re ready for them. They should arrive no later than twenty minutes after you send the directed code.”

Andrei felt a sweat start to break out on his back.

He texted the code not long after he finished unpacking, which was about ten minutes ago.

She could get here at any time, and it wasn’t until Andrei realized that, that he began to panic a little.

He had no idea what this woman would look like, no idea how old she was. He said he wouldn’t agree to anything more than a couple years older than him, and nothing more than ten years younger than him, so he knew she was somewhere in that range. 

But what if she wasn’t his type? What if he wasn’t her type? Even if he was a client, Eden made it clear that the girls were in control, that they had the agency, so what if she decided to break it off the second she saw his face? What if there was no chemistry? What if -

A soft pattern of three knocks on the door broke him from his thoughts, and he cursed to himself. 

She’s here.

Resting his glass on the side table near his chair, he gets up, strolling to the door and checking his appearance in the mirror before answering.

Not his best, but not his worst.

It’s a consult. He reminds himself. Doesn’t have to be anything more.

He takes a deep breath, flipping the deadbolt and twisting the handle, breath caught in his lungs as he opens the door and -

And…

And…

Fuck.

Oh fuck.

This…this is…

It has to be a joke.

There’s no way a woman this beautiful, a woman this perfect, is working for a service like this.

Now he understood why Olly got so dreamy when he said the service was called “Daughters of Aphrodite.” 

Because if this woman were anything other than a demi-god, daughter to the most beautiful creature in the world, he would surely think he was living in an alternate reality.

Fuck, the woman in front of him could be Aphrodite for all he cared.

God damn, ona krasivaya. She is beautiful. 

She should be on a throne somewhere, modeling on a beach, walking a runway, hell, in a house baking cookies for her husband and children because…because…

This woman should be someone’s wife. Someone’s girlfriend. Someone’s partner. 

Not an escort here in a ritzy hotel suite with him.

“Um…hi. Andrei, right?” 

He blinks.

God and her voice.

Your voice.

You.

Your…everything. 

No, it’s you’re, definitely you’re, because you are everything. 

“Shit,” Andrei hears you curse under your breath. “Um, ty Andrei Svechnikov? Vy govorite po-angliyski?”

He blinks again, like an idiot, because wow he was not expecting that, and now he’s harder than a rock in his dress pants. Granted, your pronunciation isn’t the best, but it’s damn near perfect, and he crumbles. 

“Yeah,” he hears himself say, mentally patting himself on the back for not letting his voice crack, “It’s me. I’m Andrei.”

You smile softly at him and he feels like his heart just jumps right out of his chest and lands at your feet, screaming “take me love me accept me please.”

“Hi,” you say. “It’s nice to meet you. Is now still a good time?”

He nods, too dumbstruck to say anything else. His whole body buzzes in response the more you speak to him, and he swears any second now a flying baby in a diaper is going to swoop in and stab him in the butt.

“Yeah,” he says after a second. “Now is still good.”

“Oh okay,” you say, nodding slightly. Then, when he doesn’t move, a soft laugh leaves your lips, a laugh that he swears sounds like little bells, and you tilt your head to the side. “May I come in?”

Idiot.

He laughs too, hoping it doesn’t sound too nervous, and nods, stepping to the side. “Yes yes, I’m sorry, please come in.”

You cross the threshold, passing by him and he gets a whiff of your perfume, the breeze left in your wake chilling him to the bone.

“Almaznyy,” he hears himself whisper, watching you wander further into the suite. 

Diamond. 

A living and breathing diamond.

He swears a string of curses to himself as he shuts the door behind him and flips the deadbolt, then thinks better of it and flips it back. No one else but him has the key to this room, and he doesn’t want you to think by flipping the deadbolt that you’re trapped here.

Although, he wouldn’t mind if you trapped him in here.

He follows after you, finds you staring at a photograph blown onto canvas on the wall just shy of the coffee table.

The coffee table currently holding your roses. 

Shit.

He rushes to the table, grabbing the bouquet and turning towards you. He catches the way your eyes roam over the canvas, over the flowers and shadows, and he smiles a little.

“Interested in art?”

You shrug absently with a hum, your eyes still locked on the photograph, a fond and knowing look on your face. “Somewhat. My mom used to paint, and my brother got me into art as well.” Your body turns toward him first, followed by your head as you say “I’m not quite as good, but I dr- oh.”

You pause, smiling widely at the roses in his hand, and Andrei takes a chance, stepping closer and eliminating some of the distance between you two. “These are for you,” he says, “As a thank you.”

“They’re beautiful,” you say with an awestruck smile, taking them and cradling the bouquet in your arms. “Thank you.”

This image of you would be seared into his brain for the rest of his life, he swears. 

“I have a vase for you to put them in, if you’d like.” He offers. 

“How considerate,” you say. It sounds teasing, but the smile on your face is sincere. He holds out his hand, nearly regretting it when you blink at it for a second, before your hand lands in his and - 

The electric bolt that runs up his arm when he finally touches you can’t be a coincidence.

Especially not when he looks at you, wondering if you felt it too, and judging by the shy look that suddenly crosses your features, you definitely did.

Not only that, but fucking hell your skin is soft.

So soft, better than silk or velvet. 

He has to contain his excitement when he laces your fingers together, and you give him a reassuring squeeze as he leads you to the kitchen. He pulls the vase out of the cabinet and starts to fill it with a little water at the sink while you lay the roses down, gently removing the twine and then the brown packaging from around it.

Andrei finds himself quickly reaching for your hands after putting the vase down on the counter, not wanting you to prick yourself on any thorns. 

“Let me please, almaznyy,” he says. You smile, eyebrow raised in confusion at what he’s called you - and god if he was going to survive this night he’d have to work to not make you do that as often - but you don’t move at all when he comes up behind you, keeping an inch between your bodies, arms on either side as he works the roses apart, inspecting the stems for thorns.

He didn’t pay anything astronomical for them, but they were a rare type of crimson red rose, and he paid enough to hope that they didn’t have thorns on them. 

Thankfully, they didn’t. When he raises his hand to lift a couple into the vase, yours move to grab a couple of more. Together, the both of you arrange the two dozen roses into the vase, and almost naturally, you let out a happy little sigh as you relax backward, body gently pressing against his.

It’s a ghost of a touch, but he can tell you fit perfectly against one another.

“They really are beautiful,” you say, then turn your head to look up at him, lips curving into another brilliant smile. “Spasibo.”

His heart spasms. 

That was five.

Five smiles in the span of about five minutes.

He was prouder of that than he was any record he set during his career.

With a smile of his own, he takes a step back, watching you turn and lean against the counter a little, and holds out his hand once more. This time you take it without a second thought, and follow him as he leads you over to the couch.

You both sit next to one another, you sitting a little sideways to face him, and he gestures to the champagne. “Would you like some?”

“Sure,” you say, and now all Andrei wants to do - on top of making you smile - is keep you talking.

He needs to hear more of that pretty voice like it’s the last he’ll ever hear on this earth.

As he expertly pops the top and begins to pour a glass, he asks “How old are you?”

It’s a jump from the first question - or questions -  he wanted to ask, the main one being “What is your name?” which he was told explicitly in his instructions email that he was not allowed to ask. 

The Daughters of Aphrodite could only offer their names to the clients if they decided that they wanted to - or if their clients had earned it - and the clients could not ask under any circumstances. It was part of the point that the women held the agency here. 

His other questions fell along the lines of “Are you married?” and “If you’re not married, are you available for a summer wedding next June?” Both of which he also did not ask.

He’d get the answer to all three eventually…he hoped.

“I’m twenty three,” you respond, accepting the flute of champagne from him. “My birthday was a couple of days ago.”

His heart hammers in his chest. 

Nine years. 

She’s nine years younger than you, his brain screams.

Eden sure cut it close with this one.

“Happy belated birthday,” Andrei says, turning a little in his seat to face you. As he does, the corner of the jewelry box in his pocket pokes his thigh. He reaches into it without a second thought, relieved when he brings it out and sees that the little white bow is still in excellent condition as he holds it out to you. 

“I didn’t know it was your birthday, obviously,” he begins, “But I saw this and wanted to buy it for you, so maybe it was meant to be.”

He winces internally at his choice of words, but then a bashful smile breaks out on your face, and you place your champagne flute down on the coffee table, taking the gift with gentle fingers.

Six smiles! 

Hell yes.

You pause before pulling the bow, looking up at Andrei with a little furrow in your brow.

His heart kicks in his chest, demanding to be let out, demanding to comfort you and ease whatever just made you pull that face. “What is it?”

“This is just awfully nice of you, and I didn’t get you anything.”

Two things run through his mind in that second and he’s blurting them both out before he can stop himself or think of any consequences. “I wanted to, you deserve it. And I don’t need anything in return.” then “Your other clients don’t get you anything?”

You fucking idiot. He curses himself. He didn’t even think of the fact that you’ve probably had other clients, that you’ve been around other men, and his blood starts to simmer, this unexpected feeling of jealousy twisting his stomach uncomfortably. 

But you don’t even blink, just shrug your pretty shoulders and say “Not really, no. Well, not at first maybe, not at the consultation.”

Okay.

He was not going to think about the fact that other men had gotten to have a consultation with you or that some had also made it past the consultation with you. He was not going to picture a beautiful being like you entertaining the likes of fuckers like Mason, or Olly, or Eli.

God.

What if you’d been with them? What if you knew Mason or Olly? What if Eli had already applied and maybe even gotten a consultation before Andrei could have? What if you had a consultation scheduled with Eli next? What if -

“And they usually don’t get me roses,” you add softly, fingers still brushing against the bow. 

“Then they’re idiots.” He deadpans.

You lift your head up at that, blinking at him, and he worries he may have upset you, but then you laugh, a little loud, melodic and sudden, and his heart soars.

“Open it,” he says gently, gesturing to the box with his chin. 

Your fingers finally pull the bow off and gently lift the lid, removing the carefully folded tissue paper to reveal the tennis bracelet nestled inside. 

It’s a platinum bracelet, designed to resemble vines curling around the wrist when fastened. Within the leaves on the vine are round brilliant and marquise diamonds, though he doesn’t think they can hold a candle to you. 

His actual diamond.

Almaznyy.

Almost as if the marquise diamonds can hear him, they twinkle a little in the light in protest at him when you manage to lift the bracelet from its little cushion.

He thought it was fitting - vines, Eden, garden of Eden.

Oh god, now he thought it was stupid.

Why would he think getting you a bracelet reminding you of your employment was a good idea?

“Oh, Andrei,” you coo.

And god if he doesn’t fall in love with you right then just based on the way you say his fucking name.

“Do you like it?” He asks.

You nod emphatically, looking up at him. You look a little dazed, the disbelief present in your eyes. “I love it, it’s beautiful. Would you help me put it on?”

“Of course, almaznyy,” he murmurs, reaching forward to take the jewelry from your hand. You hold your wrist out, and with nimble fingers he secures the bracelet to your wrist. He indulges himself a little by letting his fingers graze along the skin, before grabbing your hand again, lacing your fingers together and resting them on the couch cushion between you. 

“It looks beautiful on you,” he says truthfully, eyeing the way the bracelet sits on your wrist, how it looks so perfect next to his rolex, and how they punctuate your joined hands. 

“It fits like a glove.” You say, voice full of wonder. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it in my life.”

The boost to his ego is instantaneous and he can’t help the smirk that crosses his lips before he smothers it with a smile. “I’m glad you like it.”

You smile, seven, eyes looking him over for a second. “Is that what you need me for? Someone to shower with roses and pretty jewelry?” There’s a teasing lilt to your voice, and Andrei feels himself go red.

For a second he managed to forget about the circumstances surrounding your presence. For a second, he managed to convince himself this was your third date. For a second, he managed to convince himself you already belonged to him.

Not in a nefarious way. People never belonged to other people, he always believed that. 

But god dammit if he didn’t already belong to you. 

“I um,” he fumbles, doesn’t really know what to say.

You scoot closer, unlacing your fingers and resting your hand on his arm in a comforting gesture. “It’s okay, Andrei. I’m here for a reason, aren’t I? I just want to help.”

Well fuck.

Now he doesn’t want to tell you. How can he possibly tell you he overheard players on a team he’s supposed to be helping to manage talk about your company? And how could he say that he figured it would be a good quick fix to ease the loneliness he felt some days? 

Especially on the days when he realized most of his friends and former teammates were either getting married, already married, some with kids, and he still felt like he was lost in the ocean, treading water for some unknown reason, and that as much as he wanted that all for himself, he just didn’t have the time?

“If it helps,” you offer, “I can kind of guess.”

Andrei blinks. “You can?”

You nod, suddenly growing a little shy as you admit “I kind of Googled you?”

He laughs then, the small tension that had built in the room starting to break. “Oh? Find anything interesting?”

You smirk, dragging your hand down his arm and lacing your fingers back together. “I did. Admittedly I don’t do it with all of my clients, but your name sounded familiar, so I looked you up.”

“And?” He teases, leaning in a little. “Do I live up to Google’s expectations?”

You snort a little - so fucking cute - and a small smile graces your lips again as you try to find the right words to say.

Eight. Fuck yeah.

“You’re a busy man,” you begin, looking down at your joined hands. “You’ve got a lot on your plate. You might not be the general manager, but you’re someone that your organization trusts, and that puts you in a precarious position. Because you can speak to and for the team, and be the middleman between them and your administration in a way that hasn’t been there for them before. The team is your life, you spent your whole career there, so it’s understandable, but that doesn’t leave you much room for anything else. That must be pretty lonely for you.”

Andrei’s dazed, and a little fucking pissed that the most he’s heard you talk this evening is because you’re talking about him, and he makes a mental note with himself to change that as soon as possible. 

“You need company.” You finish, rubbing your thumb in comforting circles on the back of his hand, and Andrei feels the anxiety begin to seep out of his body. “I’m happy to give that to you, Andrei. Whatever that may look like.”

His eyes coast up to your face, skepticism in his gut, but your face is completely sincere, not a sliver of doubt or humor. He swallows, nodding. Instead of confirming your suspicions, he turns your hands around, rubbing his thumb on the back of your hand now. “And you? What do you need?”

You blink at him. “Me?”

He nods again, “Yeah you, almaznyy. What made you want to do this?”

“Eden?” You clarify, and Andrei nods again, squeezing your hand gently. “Well, as you can probably imagine, it’s good money. It helped put me through college, since I was putting myself through school. I actually stopped once I graduated. I put most of what I earned into savings, and thought that would be enough to live a normal life while I worked a normal job. And I had that for a few months. But then I…” your voice trails off and your brow furrows again, like you’re trying to figure out how much to say.

You can tell me everything. He wants to tell you. I won’t judge, I just want to know. 

“I decided I wanted something different,” you finally say. “Something more, so I came back to Eden. They welcomed me back, and now they’re helping me make sure I get what I want.” 

“What is it that you want?” He asks.

You shrug. “What does anyone want these days?”

It’s cryptic, and Andrei doesn’t pry any further, no matter how badly he may want to. Instead, he squeezes your hand and asks “Well, what do you need from me?”

You raise a brow, surprised by his question. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, how can I help you? To get your something different?”

You smile a little, but it’s not like the others, so he doesn’t add it to the count. This one is more…considering. Like you’re assessing if the sincerity in his voice is actually there, or if he’s just playing his part. “You already are,” you eventually say. 

He watches as your eyes continue to examine his face, looking for…well, he doesn’t know exactly. But he’s content to sit there and let you do whatever you want. As far as he’s concerned, you can do whatever you want. And he also uses the opportunity to etch you into his memory, every inch of you, just in case. 

“But this is for me,” he says after a moment.

“I know,” you murmur with a smile before casting your eyes down to your joined hands. “And it helps.”

Nine. 

He swallows. “Are you lonely too?”

You purse your lips, shrugging. “Isn’t everyone?”

Cryptic again, but then you’re looking up at him, and there’s this…it sounds cliché, but there’s this twinkle in your eye, and he feels his pulse skyrocket in his veins. 

“Why the gifts, Andrei?” 

He feels his heart sigh dreamily when you say his name. “What?”

You gesture down to the bracelet on your wrist with your eyes, before flicking them back up to his face. “The bracelet, the roses. I love them, don’t get me wrong. But…why?”

Andrei shrugs. “It felt…” he searches for the right words. “Appropriate. I don’t know.”

There’s a look of consideration on your face. “You’ve never done this before, have you?”

He shakes his head, suddenly…shy. He’s immediately transported back to his first year as a rookie, how uncertain everything seemed, and how lost he felt more often than not. He remembers stumbling through English, feeling awkward trying to get to know his teammates and make friends, to get people to like him.

He wants you to like him. 

He knows in his gut he’s pretty much got a crush on you at this point, which is insane, considering you met…maybe twenty minutes ago? Thirty?

And he doesn’t really know how these things are supposed to go…at all. When he tells you as much, you giggle a little, squeezing his hand. “That’s okay, we can take this slow.”

He nods. “Slow is good.” Then, “How about dinner? Would you like to have dinner with me?”

A dazzling smile crosses your features before you say “I’d love to go to dinner with you,” and he beams. 

Ten. Ten smiles and dinner. Hell yeah.

~

October

Andrei glances down at his phone, smiling at yet another picture of Luka, Evgeny’s newborn baby boy and his second child. He was born a few days ago, but given Andrei’s duties with the team, he couldn’t be there for Evgeny and Sara. 

He’d sent presents of course, and his mother had taken the liberty of sending Andrei hundreds of photos so far, and Evgeny clearly felt comfortable following in their mother’s footsteps, sending Andrei at least twenty pictures a day. 

Evgeny was just as bad when Mila, his two year old daughter, was born. Photos every day that eventually dwindled down to weekly, then monthly as she got older.

In the photo Evgeny had just sent, Luka’s chubby newborn body was swaddled in a blanket and donning the light yellow baby hat Andrei had sent them. 

Andrei: Milyy i tolstyy

Cute and fat.

Evegeny sends back an angry face emoji.

Evgeny: Ne nazyvay moyego rebenka tolstym

Don’t call my baby fat

Evgeny: pridurok

Dickhead.

He chuckles to himself before pocketing his phone, casting his eyes back up. 

He watches from the stands as the players skate down the ice, running through drills in preparation for the first home game of the season later this week. Right after that, they were immediately on the road, heading to play the Rangers over the weekend.

A weekend where he’d get to see you.

He grabs his coffee cup from the holder in front of him, taking a large sip as he catalogs every player, assessing for strengths, weaknesses, who needs help, who can work on what. He looks for the holes in their plays, looks for the ways they can improve, looks for anything and everything that the team needs.

“Skyler’s looking good,” Andrei notes. “Role of ‘Captain’ suits him.”

From beside him, sipping on his own coffee, Coach Brind’Amour nods. “Yeah, he’s enjoying it.”

Technically, he’s not Coach Brind’Amour anymore.

These days, he’s the General Manager, but Andrei’s known him too long and respects him too much to call him anything but ‘Coach.’

Skyler, Coach’s son, is about the same age as Andrei, but started with the Canes a few years into Andrei’s career. The two of them became quite close, but whereas Skyler’s career continued, Andrei’s had to stop. 

There wasn’t anything he could do about it now.

“What are you seeing?” Coach asks him, gesturing to the ice.

Andrei smiles a little. “Probably the same thing you are.”

“They’re a good team, need a little more work.” Coach confirms.

Andrei hums a little. “They’ll be ready.”

They both eye the banners in the rafters. 

2024 Stanley Cup Champions. 

2027 Stanley Cup Champions. 

2032 Stanley Cup Champions.

The last one makes Andrei feel a little bittersweet, and he tears his eyes away.

“They can do it again,” Andrei confirms. “We made sure the additions to the team would see to that, not prevent it.”

“Now you sound like me,” Coach teases. 

Andrei laughs, and shrugs. “You were right most of the time.”

“Most?!” Coach cries, incredulous. He shoves Andrei playfully, and they share another laugh before directing their eyes back to the ice. 

They watch the rest of practice relatively quietly, a few other people coming to sit with them now and again as practice goes on, talking to them about upcoming meetings, home opener preparations, player contracts, the list goes on.

Andrei contributes his opinion when he can and when asked, still getting used to his new role. A couple of times, Coach shouts something down the stands so the new head coach or the captain can hear, and even encourages - and manages to convince Andrei - to do it once as well, noting a spot that needs work with a couple of the defensive pairs.

After practice, he and Coach head into the locker rooms to talk to the new head coach and give the players some words of encouragement. 

At one point, he notices Olly looking at him from out of the corner of his eye, and when Andrei spares a glance at him, Olly looks away, almost like he didn’t think he’d be caught.

Strange.

On the way out, Andrei tells Coach he’ll catch up in a second before he stops by the player’s stall. “Looking good out there, Oliver.” 

Olly looks up, surprised to see him there. From next to him, Mason giggles, bending down to fiddle with the tape on his socks. “Thanks Svechy, I appreciate that.”

“You two feeling good about the home opener?” He asks, gesturing his chin to Mason and leaning against the wall next to the door.

“Yeah man,” Mason answers, eyes on his skates now. “Feeling great. You think we’re ready?”

“Did it last year,” he answers. “Looked great in pre-season. Who says hurricanes can’t strike twice?”

They both grin at that, and then Andrei nods at them, dismissing himself.

When he steps into the hallway, his phone buzzes with an email notification, and his heart nearly skyrockets out of his chest when he sees the subject line.

“Booking Confirmation Details - Eden Hospitality.”

He curses silently to himself, nearly jumping in the air when there’s a tap on his back.

It’s Coach, who laughs at Andrei’s red face, and Andrei quickly locks and pockets his phone. 

“Sorry Svechy,” he says, “Didn’t mean to scare you. You coming to the meeting upstairs?”

“Yeah,” Andrei says, sighing a little in relief that it was just Coach Brind’Amour. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Another long, nearly painstaking hour later, Andrei’s finally back in his office.

It’s a cozy space, not as large as the General Manager’s office, or the coach’s office, but it’s decent enough. There’s many photos of his journey with the Canes along his wall, and pictures of his family on the wall closest to his desk. His desk is L-Shaped, and it allows him to face his office door, a couch along the wall, two chairs in front of his desk, and a shelf and mini stall for his gear in the corner. 

Checking his schedule on the calendar on his computer, he’s instantly grateful to see he doesn’t have to do anything for another hour and a half, so he pulls out his phone and brings up his email, clicking into the confirmation from Eden.

“Thank you for choosing Eden Hospitality for your booking purposes!

Your reservation beginning this Saturday, October 17th at The Mark Hotel in the Premier Suite is confirmed. Please note that any and all reservation changes must be made within 48 hours of the arranged date. Proof of payment is attached to this email in a reviewable and downloadable PDF. 

We also wanted to confirm we received your latest copy of blood testing for STDs, and thank you for your compliance with our booking policies. As a reminder, this will need to be done prior to every booking request to ensure booking can be completed. Failure to comply will result in termination of your account with Eden Hospitality. Attached is also a copy of your companion’s recent blood testing, for your reference. 

Check in as per usual at the front desk, and feel free to either leave your bags with the front desk, or you can head on up to your room. Please feel free to text your companion to arrange a time and place to meet, should you wish to meet outside of The Mark Hotel.”

His heart catapults out of his chest when his phone buzzes in his hand with a new text message.

“Almaznyy,” the name reads, and a kilowatt smile crosses his features. He opens your text thread with one another, his smile growing impossibly large as his cheeks heat.

Almaznyy: You miss me that much, don’t you?

Andrei: Almost every second since I said goodbye to you last month

The dinner date had gone incredibly. Wonderfully. Stupendously.

(That last word was one Skyler had taught him.)

The chemistry the two of you shared was…literally off the charts. It felt cosmic, fated, almost, just so naturally right that Andrei drove himself paranoid the more he thought about it, because he wanted to know if you felt it too.

You had spent the night, but nothing intimate had happened other than the two of you holding hands as you laid on Andrei’s bed and talked for hours until you both fell asleep. When Andrei woke up, you were in the kitchen, freshly showered and changed and making breakfast on the stove, a fresh pot of coffee already brewed. 

Eden had held your bags at the front desk for you as per consultation protocols, since the Daughters of Aphrodite weren’t required or expected to stay past the initial consultation if they’d made their decision or come to an agreement with their client, but if they chose to stay, their belongings weren’t far away.

The fact that you had chosen to stay made him happier than you’d ever know.

You didn’t unpack like he did, but your things were in a weekender bag in the corner of his bedroom, and though he didn’t want to admit it - mostly because he didn’t want to get ahead of himself - he quite liked seeing your toothbrush next to his on the bathroom counter.

Almaznyy: Well maybe I missed you a little bit as well

Andrei: Really?

Shit shit shit, he didn’t mean to press send on that. He didn’t want to unsend it either, but now that it was out there -

Almaznyy: Yes really, I had a wonderful time with you

You sent a heart emoji with that last message.

A heart.

Alright, now he was just outright blushing, and he folded his arms onto his desk before burying his head in them like a lovesick fool. 

In fairness, he’d had a wonderful time too.

After eating the delicious breakfast you’d made, he took your hand across the kitchen island and offered to take you out to do whatever it was that you wanted. It felt appropriate, felt good, knowing he could do that for you.

You took him by surprise when you asked if you could go to the Bronx Zoo. He half expected something a little more…well, he wasn’t sure exactly, but the zoo hadn’t been it.

He complied, of course, and the two of you got dressed. You in jeans, a light sweater, and sneakers, and him in black jeans, a white long sleeved shirt, sneakers, and your new bracelet that you hadn’t taken off since he put it on. You both took an Uber there, and spent most of the morning and early afternoon wandering around, looking at every single animal exhibit, some of them even twice, and taking pictures along the way.

Andrei took more than a few…hundred…pictures of you on his phone. Most of them were candids, some videos of you looking at the different animals, making faces or cooing at them from the viewing windows, and others of you just…being around him. 

(He locked about ninety five percent of the photos in a private album on his phone, just in case.)

After that, you took him to your favorite lunch spot on the Upper West Side, and then to your favorite book store in the city. 

For dinner, he insisted on cooking for you, so you went to Whole Foods, giggling when he pushed you around on the cart as you grabbed all the necessary items for Beef Stroganoff. 

You helped him while he cooked, though he would’ve been much happier if you had just sat on the stool, looking as pretty as you did, sipping your wine and letting him just…cater to you. 

You praised him over the dish, in which he immediately texted his mother about afterward to thank her for insisting on teaching him at least that, to which she just replied “???”

That night, the two of you fell asleep talking again, your hands linked with one another under the sheets.

The next day, you played tourist. Checking out the Natural History Museum, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, got lunch in Tribeca, and then went to the driving ranges at Chelsea Piers. You had dinner together at Prime Catch in Hell’s Kitchen, and spent the rest of the night talking again, until you both fell asleep, this time, with you in his arms. 

So yeah…it was pretty wonderful. It didn’t even matter that he didn’t get the chance to kiss you, he just had so much fun being with you, being around you, that he didn’t care about what happened next, or what didn’t happen.

It had been tough to say goodbye to you, especially when you left him with a little wave, a kiss on the cheek, and a “see you soon, Andrei,” but he managed to contain his excitement for the next time.

At least, until this very moment.

He composes himself, sitting back up and grabbing his phone.

Andrei: I had a wonderful time too

Andrei: What do you want to do this time?

He feels like a teenager again, waiting as the seconds pass for your response, and when it comes, he’s pretty sure he wants to squeal with excitement.

He doesn’t even know how to squeal.

Almaznyy: I’ll let you choose, where would you like to take me on a date?

~

This was definitely a date. 

Your fourth date, technically. And you said ‘date,’ so he planned for a ‘date’, but as he waited for you as the seconds ticked by, he was worried it wasn’t enough. 

He waited on a bench in front of the Met wearing a dark baseball cap, a gray sweater, bomber jacket, jeans, and sneakers. It was a little chilly out in Manhattan, so he held two of the small, blue signature New York coffee cups in his hands, one with coffee for him, the other with hot chocolate for you.

His knee bounced up and down with nerves, eyes scanning the crowd, looking for any sign of you approaching. 

Eventually he sees you emerge, a large scarf wrapped around your neck, covering up your white knit sweater. You’re wearing black jeans and sneakers, your little black bag on your shoulder and in your hand are…

Two blue signature New York coffee cups.

As you get closer, you spot him on the bench, glance at his hands, and then the both of you are laughing by the time you reach him.

“Great minds think alike.” You tease, sitting next to him. “Is that hot chocolate for me?”

He nods, gesturing with his chin at the cups in your hand. “That coffee for me?” 

You nod too with a smile, and he shakes his head. “That’s some serious telepathy.” 

“I’m pretty sure most people call it chemistry.” You tease, “Here, you drink the coffee I got you, and I’ll drink the hot chocolate you got me.”

You place the excess cups next to you, then exchange the designated cups. He watches as you take a sip of your hot chocolate, smiling when a happy sound crosses your lips. 

“How are you, almaznyy?” He asks, reaching a hand out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind your ear, his hand dropping to his lap unceremoniously.

“Good,” you say, nudging his shoulder with yours. “And you, Andrei?”

“Good,” he nods, “A bit busy, but good.”

You nod, taking another sip. “You have a game tomorrow night, right?”

“Mhm,” he manages through a sip of his own coffee. “Have you ever been?”

“To Madison Square Garden? Or to a hockey game?”

He shrugs. “Both.” 

“I’ve been to both,” you say honestly. “Couple concerts and I think two games?”

“Would you like to come?” At his question, you turn your head to look at him, surprise lining your features. Andrei just shrugs. “I’d be upstairs working for most of it, but I know a guy, if you want to go. ” He adds with a small smirk.

You hum, tilting your head to the side a little. “If you’d like to have me there, sure.”

“Would you want an extra ticket or two to bring friends?” He offers. 

“If you can swing it, and if it’s not too much trouble,” you say. “I think my roommates know someone on the Rangers, so they’d probably like to come.”

“You just let me know how many people, and I’ll take care of it,” he swears, leaning closer as a breeze comes by. 

You bury your nose in your scarf, shivering a little, and Andrei frowns. Immediately, he’s putting his coffee down beside him and pulling off his jacket, draping it over your shoulders. When the fabric rests on you, you turn to look at him, a warm smile on your face.

“You sure know how to woo a girl, don’t you, hotshot?” You tease, then reach for his hand, squeezing it. “Thank you.”

“Of course, almaznyy.” He says, squeezing your hand in turn, resting your joined hands on the bench between you. You’re both silent as you finish your initial drinks, and now that your other drinks have gone cold, Andrei tosses them both in the trash nearby before standing, tugging on your still joined hands a little to get you to come up with him.

You take him by surprise when you stand, releasing his hand and wrapping your arms around his waist, burying your nose in his chest. His hands are immediately falling on your back, rubbing up and down in a soothing pattern. “What is it?” He murmurs.

“Missed you a little, I guess.” You say honestly, voice slightly muffled by his sweater. “I had a lot of fun last time.”

“So did I,” he admits. “I missed you a lot, too.”

You hum, the noise vibrating against his chest. “What are we doing here?”

Andrei looks up at the Met, then back down at you. “You said your family liked art, and you told me that you liked to draw. I thought…” his voice trails off as he hesitates. 

Was this too personal? 

“Thought what?” You press, gently rubbing his back. 

“Thought you might like to teach me a thing or two. About art.” He eventually says. When you look up at him, there’s an iridescent beam and goofy but excited tilt in your smile, and his heart hammers in his chest.

You gave him that smile a lot last time.

He was more than thrilled to see it again. He didn’t think he should start counting them, not this time, but he definitely would keep this one in his pocket for later.

Gently, he untangles his arms from around you and grabs one of your hands in his, squeezing once. “Ready to go in?”

You nod, still smiling from ear to ear as you trail after him into the museum.

~

Almaznyy: In the lexus level suite with my friends

Accompanied with the text is a selfie of you smiling from ear to ear in a Hurricanes beanie, his bomber jacket, and a Carolina Hurricanes hockey jersey underneath. You’re holding up the peace sign, the bracelet he gave you twinkling in the light.

Andrei: On my way 

He grabs two security guards and an MSG employee, asking if they can escort him down to your suite.

They guide him quickly through back halls and to an elevator, where after a short ride, he arrives at your level and is promptly escorted to your suite, where they fuck off to the other side of the hall so he can have some privacy.

He opens the door to a barrage of giggling that almost immediately ceases when he steps in. 

Your eyes lock on one another almost instantaneously and it’s like his world narrows down to just you.

He’d be embarrassed if it weren’t for the fact you said you wanted to be here, that you were excited to be here and share this with him. 

Your friends are sharing knowing looks with you from where you’re all standing at the buffet spread, but you ignore them, offering Andrei a soft smile and almost immediately going to embrace him, wrapping him in a tight hug as you murmur a “hi” into his chest.

Andrei laughs, dropping a kiss to the top of your head, murmuring his own “hi” into your hair as he wraps his arms around you.

It’s been less than a few hours since he’s seen you last - having left you at The Mark earlier in the day so he could prepare for the game, and you headed into the West Village to join your friends in getting ready for the evening - and he still felt your absence like a gaping wound in his chest.

When you pull away, you take his hand, leading him over to your friends.

“Girls, this is Andrei, my boyfriend. Andrei, these are my friends Tiffany, Katie, Cee, and Maya.” 

His whole world screeches to a halt as one word rings in his ears.

Boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

“H-hi,” he stutters, “Nice to meet you.” He holds a hand out as he greets each of your friends, who greet him in turn.

“Thank you for letting us tag along,” Maya says.

Cee tacks on “We really appreciate it.”

“Of course,” he says, brain still playing catch up.

Did he imagine it? Or did you definitely call him your boyfriend?

“It was nice of you to get this suite all for us.” Tiffany adds, eyes darting around the space that’s definitely meant for at least a dozen people.

Katie nods in agreement. “We hope it wasn’t inconvenient.” 

Andrei shakes his head. “No, it was my pleasure. Is everything okay so far?”

“Fantastic,” you assure him, then turn to your friends. “Can you guys give us a minute?” 

They all nod, sharing knowing looks once again before grabbing their plates and drinks, heading toward the front of the suite and out to the seats, getting ready to watch warm ups.

You turn to Andrei then, a sheepish smile on your face. “I’m sorry that I introduced you as my boyfriend, they just…my friends don’t know that I work at Eden, or what I do. They still think I work at my last job. I thought it would be easier.”

His every instinct says he should frown, or that he should be sad, but he also understands.

And also really, really likes the way you make the word “boyfriend” sound. 

Even more so, he likes the way it makes him feel.

But…in reality, he’s not that, no matter how much he would like to be.

Or at least, he’s not that yet.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I get it, it’s alright.”

You scrunch your nose. “Are you sure?”

Andrei shrugs, “I mean I would do the same if I was in your shoes.” If I knew your name, he wants to add, but doesn’t. Would that be okay with you?”

You give him a shy smile and nod a little. “Yeah, that would be okay.”

He feels a little out of place then, but then his eyes coast down to the jersey you’re wearing beneath his bomber jacket. He tugs on the logo at your torso, gesturing with his chin. “Where’d you get this?” 

“Made a stop downtown at the NHL store after you left earlier,” you say, offering him a cheshire grin. “Picked it up.” 

His eyes narrow playfully. “Who’s jersey is it, almaznyy?”

You shrug, tugging the bomber jacket closer, covering yourself up a little. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see later.”

Andrei makes a move like he’s about to scoop you up, when there’s a knock on the door and one of the security guards he came down with pops his head in. 

“Sorry to interrupt, but they’re calling for you in the locker rooms, Mr. Svechnikov.” 

“Give me a minute and I’ll be right there.” He promises. The guard steps out, shutting the door, and this time, Andrei does scoop you up, and you laugh gleefully, throwing your arms around his neck as he spins you around.

When he puts you down, he bends his head to tell you to have fun, to text him if you need anything and that he’ll come see you during intermissions if he can.

But then you take him by surprise, dragging your arms from his neck, trailing them down his chest, and gripping his tie in one hand, yanking him down the rest of the way as you rise up on your tippy toes and kiss him.

You’re kissing him.

This is your first kiss.

Yebena mat'. Holy shit.

It takes his brain a second to catch up and for his body to follow suit, but when it does, he’s got his hands on your waist and he’s pulling you closer, pressing his lips against yours firmly as he follows your lead, his entire world flipping on its axis in the process.

He doesn’t want this to end, has never been less interested in a game of hockey, ever, in his life, because all he wants right now is to take you straight back to The Mark and kiss you till the sun comes up, kiss your lips, your neck, your collarbone, trail those kisses down your stomach and -

You pull away, eyes glazed over a little and still lingering on his lips. On instinct, Andrei licks them, and your eyes flash, tracing the movement of his tongue.

“I um…” You start to say, but Andrei leans down and kisses you again. It’s chaste, not nearly enough of what he wants to do, but it’s enough for now.

“I know,” he murmurs. Because he does. “Later,” he promises.

Based on the look in your eyes, you know he’ll keep it.

~

It’s later on during the game that Andrei feels a tap on his shoulder, and he tears his eyes away from the ice, looking to where Coach is pointing. 

It’s the jumbotron, and there’s some kid dancing free and wild, people in the stands cheering him on or dancing along with him, but behind him, Andrei’s attention is stolen.

Because there you are, dancing with your friends, looking so wild and free, and a smile creeps up on his face. Then, that’s when he spots it.

Your jersey.

The seven evident on one arm, the three on the other. 

Your friend Maya grabs you and makes you do a little twirl, and then the “SVECHNIKOV” emblazoned on your back is on the screen, and the camera zooms in tighter on the child, blowing up your image along with it. The Canes fans cheer at the sight of his jersey, some people even standing, and it does something to his insides.

His jersey.

You’re wearing his jersey.

And he never cared about shit like that before, not really. Most of the wives and girlfriends never actually wore their husband or boyfriend’s jersey unless it was for some charity event or a coordinated effort in the playoffs. 

And you’re not his wife, or his girlfriend (yet), but he suddenly feels…

He feels completely less lonely. Feels less like he needs Eden’s services, and more like he just needs you.

Andrei feels like a boyfriend. A proper one. Yours.

“They still love you, buddy.” Coach Brind’amour says, and Andrei laughs, playing it off.

“That’s cheating,” he admits, gesturing to the screen, where they finally move onto another person. “That one was mine.”

Coach’s eyebrows raise a little. “The girl in the jersey?”

He nods, suddenly sheepish. He did say he was going to introduce you as his girlfriend, and you said you were alright with it, so he tells Coach “Yeah, she’s mine.”

“Well shit, Svechy.” Brind’amour teases. “About damn time.”

Yeah, he thinks to himself. I know.

He pulls out his phone then, shooting off a text.

Andrei: You little sneak

The three dots pop up, then disappear, then pop up again before your message comes through.

Almaznyy: You like it? 

Andrei: I never thought I’d say this in my life, but I’ll like it better when it’s on the bedroom floor

Almaznyy: I think that can be arranged

~

Andrei’s bouncing off the walls with anticipation as the elevator ascends to your hotel suite.

The Hurricanes won the game, and while he’s excited for the team, he’s also pretty fucking excited for himself.

It’s like your kiss broke the dam within him, destroying all of his restraint and hesitation. He’d been shaking with anticipation as every second passed between the second he left your suite to the very second he’d been able to get back to you once he was done playing Assistant General Manager. 

That’s something he’d never thought he’d say in his life.

He was fucking ecstatic to have this job, to be given a job for the team he’d stuck with since day one, a team that had given him everything. 

But this? You? 

This felt like a once in a lifetime kind of thing, and he wasn’t going to waste another second away from you.

A part of him felt bad about you saying goodbye to your friends so early, but this was his time with you.

Technically, as twisted as it made him feel, he paid for it…so…

When he finally unlocks the door to the suite, you saunter inside ahead of him, stripping off your shoes, socks, his jacket and your beanie, dropping them to the floor. His heart pounds harder in his chest, watching as you turn your head over your shoulder just slightly, enough so that he can see the mischievous smile on your face before you unbutton and unzip your jeans, dropping them to the floor and stepping out of them, sauntering ahead toward the bedroom with a flick of your hair behind you.

“Yebat’,” he groans out loud. Fuck. 

The sight of your bare thighs hidden beneath his jersey is the last thing he sees before you round the corner, and the image of those thighs wrapped around his head tents his pants in a second and propels him forward, stripping off his tie and suit jacket and kicking his shoes and socks off as he goes, leaving them in the same trail as your belongings.

When he gets to the bedroom, you’re sitting on the edge of the bed, all jersey and bare thighs, and the smile that spreads on his face is wide and bright.

“Posmotri na sebya,” he murmurs. Look at you. 

He steps in front of you, inches between you now, and takes in the way your eyes track him as he gets on his knees, placing his hands beside you on the edge of the bed and leaning forward.

You spread your legs a little to let him settle between them, and Andrei closes the distance, pressing his lips to yours as he shuts his eyes, losing himself in the feel of you. He feels your hands drift up his chest, gathering the material of his shirt and pulling him closer.

He feels your thighs bracketing his torso, then they’re wrapping around him, ankles locking behind him and he bites down on your lip a little, a small pleased sound leaving your mouth that reverberates in his body.

“C’mere,” you say between kisses, and he rises up, places his hands under your thighs as he moves the two of you up the bed, resting you against the pillows and slowly placing his weight on top of you.

“Almaznyy,” his own voice sounds far away to him, probably because that’s where he feels like he is. 

He feels like this is too good to be true, like this is all a dream and he’s going to wake up any second and feel like the last month that you’ve been in his life has all been an illusion.

Everything’s moving so fast, and he just…he’s suddenly worried that you might not be on the same page.

It makes him pull away, just a fraction, and you make a small noise of protest, trying to pull him back to you. 

Andrei smiles, catching your hand and kissing it. “It’s okay,” he says. “I just…” He pauses, swallowing past a lump in his throat.

You tilt your head, taking in his expression. “What is it, Andrei?” 

He shakes his head - partly out of disbelief that this is happening, and partly because he’s worried this is all in his head. “I don’t want to do something you don’t want. I don’t want to do anything if you don’t want it too.”

“Andrei, Andrei look at me.” You implore, framing his face with your hands. “I’m here, with you. Not because I have to be, not because of this job, I am here with you at this moment because I want to be, okay? I want this. I want you.”

It’s exactly what he needed to hear, but suddenly the words are too much to bear, it feels like something he doesn’t deserve. 

“What do you need?” He pleads. If he can know what you need him to do, maybe he’ll feel better about deserving this moment with you. “Tell me what you need here, what you need tonight, what you need from me. What can I do, almaznyy?”

“I just need you,” you coo, pulling him back down to you for another kiss.

“Is that all?” He presses, resisting for just a moment to look you in the eyes, so you can see him, so you can understand.

He’s asking about tonight and beyond, asking about what he can do to help you get what you need out of this arrangement, to make this more than a contractual obligation.

“Just you, Andrei,” you repeat, meeting his gaze straight on.

“If we do this…” he begins. “If we do this, then…”

“I know,” you insist. “I still want it. Do you?”

Andrei shakes his head, smiling at you. There’s…he can’t put it into words. 

The draw he feels to you is…otherworldly. 

And you’re beneath him now, in his jersey, his last name on your back, four dates under your belt, and you’ve got the most insane chemistry together, and he already likes you so much that he worries it would scare you if you knew how badly he’s wanted you since that very first second.

“You don’t get it,” he insists, bending his head a little, rubbing his nose against yours gently. “The things I want…if we do this…” he says again, finding your eyes. “If we do this, there’s no going back. Do you understand? If I touch you, I can’t go back.”

You nod, “I know. I don’t want to go back.”

You’re still not answering his question, not really, and he knows that.

“You can tell me you know,” Andrei breathes out, still a little dazed that this is happening. “You can tell me anything.”

You smile at him, nodding and murmuring “I know,” before pulling him down to kiss you again, and he feels it, feels the way you try to communicate to him through your lips, pressing your body against his, that this - here and now - is mutual.

And that’s going to have to be enough. 

This time, there’s no more waiting, no more hesitating, and he kisses you back full force, pressing his hips to yours and pushing you into the mattress. His hands wander up the jersey, feeling the lace material at your hip and on your ribs and he needs to see it. 

You must read his mind, because you’re reaching between the two of you and grabbing at the jersey, pulling it up and over your head, and all Andrei sees is black lace.

His cock throbs painfully against the zipper of his pants, and he meets your eyes for just a second, asking permission, and you’ve barely nodded before he’s bending his head, sucking the skin of your exposed breast into his mouth and groaning at the taste of you, the feel of your skin beneath his tongue.

You gasp a little, back arching and he winds his arms around you, pulling you impossibly closer as his name crosses your lips in a dreamy sigh.

“Say it again,” he demands, dragging his teeth over your skin as he switches to your other breast, pressing his palms against your back. “Say my name again, almaznyy.”

“Andrei,” you breathe out without hesitation, “Feels so good.”

He sucks your skin into his mouth, flicking his eyes up to gauge your reaction, and when he finds you already looking at him, his pulse skyrockets, and your hips move, grinding your core against his clothed abdomen.

Freeing one hand from behind you, he brings it forward and between your bodies, trailing his fingers over the lace and down toward your core, pressing gently against the lace, a moan escaping his throat before he can stop it when he feels how wet you are.

“This for me?” He murmurs quietly, trailing his tongue in the valley between your breasts, playing with the hem between your legs.

You nod, breath coming out in heated pants. “Only you, Andrei. Just you.”

Only you.

Just you.

He lets those words ring in his ears, lets the syllables settle in his bones and cloud his mind when he presses his fingers at the fabric and tears, ripping the black lace thong from your body before stuffing them in his pocket and shuffling down the bed.

You’re sitting up on your elbows, looking down your body at him as he parts your thighs, his large hands digging into the flesh as his eyes take in the one place he never imagined he’d be lucky enough to see in his life. 

“Trakhni menya,” he nearly croaks. Fuck me.

Your glistening pink heat stares at him, inviting him closer, calling to him, and he answers the call without a moment’s hesitation, leaning forward and burying his face between your thighs, dipping his tongue into your dripping center and sucking.

The sound of his lips and mouth working against your pussy fill the bedroom quickly, obscene and loud noises echoing off the walls. He eats you unabashed, unashamed, and unrestricted. You thrash against his mouth as pleased moans and whines escape your throat one after the other.

Your hands fly into his hair, nails scraping against his scalp and tugging the tresses between your fingers, pulling him closer and pushing him away all at once. His lips barely detach from your skin when he pulls away to take a breath, not wanting to be too far from his current task, not wanting your skin and your taste so far from him ever again.

He sucks your clit into his mouth and your back arches, nearly tearing your hips away from him and he moans out a little displeased sound, pulling you closer and bracketing his arms across your belly, keeping you locked against his mouth. 

“Andrei,” you pant again, desperation in your tone, “Please, please I’m so close.”

He quite likes the sound of you begging.

“Come,” he commands, murmuring against your clit. “Come for me, I want to taste you.”

He sucks your clit into his mouth, hard, and he keeps his eyes on you, your face, and your body, gauging for the little tells he wants to memorize, store in his memory for the next time he gets to do this with you, and the next, and the next, and the next.

You go silent all of a sudden, heaving breaths stopping as your orgasm hits and your mouth falls open in a silent cry, brows furrowed and eyes shut tight while your grip in his hair tightens, thighs bracketing his head as your body shakes through your orgasm. The taste of you floods his mouth and he groans in delight, savoring every drop happily as he continues to lick and suck until you’re all but forcing his head away, giggling and delirious.

“Andrei please,” you breathe, “Please just come here.”

He obeys, crawling up your body until he’s close enough and he bends his head, accepting your kiss and massaging his tongue against yours, sharing your release. He lets you unbutton his shirt and push it off his shoulders, lets you pull his shirt over his head before he unhooks your lace bra and tosses it aside, and then you’re completely bare for him.

“Let me see you,” he pleads, sitting up and back on his haunches just so he can look at you.

You preen under his gaze, back arching slightly as you stretch, a cheshire grin crossing your features as his eyes roam over you, trying his damndest to commit the sight of you to memory.

“Ty takaya krasivaya,” he praises. You’re so beautiful, allowing his admission to linger in the air and one of his hands to wander up your calves, your thighs, before it settles on your waist, the other hand unbuckling his belt with deft fingers.

“Spasibo,” you say almost shyly, sitting up and then reaching out, unbuttoning his dress pants and then lowering the zipper.

The corner of his mouth ticks up, his expression curious. “What did I say?”

He watches with bated breath as your hands dance on the waistband of his boxer briefs, and one of your shoulders lifts in a small shrug. “I think you called me beautiful,” you respond, eyes slow as they drag up his body and toward his face.

Andrei leans down, playfully suspicious when he says “And how did you know that?”

You shake your head, dragging that beautiful bottom lip between your teeth before bringing your eyes back down, dipping your fingers into his waistband. “Lucky guess.”

Andrei doesn’t believe that for a second, but his protest dies in his throat the second your hand dips into his underwear and wraps around his cock, grip firm as you tug a little at the base of him. 

A loud but pleased groan echoes out of him and his head tilts back, nearly going cross eyed as you tug again, and his hand shoots out, circling your wrist gently as he shakes his head. 

When he manages to focus again, he raises his head and looks down at you, the furrow in your brow and pout of your lips damn near breaking his heart.

“Did I not do it right?” You ask, concern lacing your tone.

He reaches a hand out, thumb smoothing the furrow in your brow before dragging over your lower lip. Your tongue darts out, licking the pad of his finger before you gently suck his thumb into your mouth, and chert voz'mi, damn it if his cock doesn’t throb painfully in your grip.

“Almaznyy, I don’t think there’s a single thing you could do to me that wouldn’t be absolutely right, or feel fucking amazing. But I need this first time with you to last more than forty five seconds, okay?”

Understanding crosses your features, and a pleased smile makes its way onto your lips. “Oh,” you say, a little dazed, almost surprised, and it baffles Andrei right back.

How could you not possibly know how you undo him? How could you not know that you rattle his very existence in the best way? He feels like it’s so obvious now, like there’s no way he’s been playing it as cool as he’s believed this entire time. 

He smiles at you, voice teasing when he says, “Yes, ‘oh,’ almaznyy. It’s you, it’s what you do to me.”

“You do it to me too, you know.” You say. The response is almost immediate and your words go right to his heart.

Again.

He rises from the bed then, dragging his pants and boxer briefs down his legs before he kicks them off to the side, then he’s climbing back on the bed and settling between your legs. Your hands frame his face once more when you pull him to you for a kiss, a kiss that quickly turns from innocent and reassuring to desperate and needy, soft and open mouthed as his tongue massages against yours, you opening up beneath him almost automatically, like you’ve done this together a dozen times before.

There’s a moment where he expects to be jealous, to think about the times you could’ve been like this with other people, but the moment never comes. 

Because deep down, and based on the way your body comes alive under his touch, the way you respond to him, the way the two of you move like your bodies know each other inside and out already, Andrei knows, he just knows that neither of you have ever experienced something this perfect in your entire lives. 

“Condom?” He asks between kisses, trying to work through his mental checklist. “Do you want me to put on a condom?”

You barely even hesitate when you say “No, I’m clean. I know you are, too. I want to feel you. Is that okay?”

God. “It’s more than okay, almaznyy,” he assures you, pressing a gentle kiss to your lips. “I want the same.”

His cock slips against your pussy where you’re soaked for him all over again, and you both moan, grinding against one another as you make out until the need for one another just becomes too much to bear.

“Ask me,” he says, nearly begging. Because as right as this is, he still needs to know that you want this too, and that he’s not just imagining things. “Ask me for it.”

Your voice is syrupy when you ask “Please Andrei, please put it in. I want you so badly. I want you, just you, Andrei, no one else and I - oh my-” 

Your words are cut off as you gasp on an inhale, mouth open in another silent cry as your back arches, hips tilting just so that Andrei has to focus, has to keep his hips still as he focuses solely on the way you flutter around him and squeeze as he pushes in just an inch. The look on your face, the way your body reacts has him nearly roaring with satisfaction, with pride, his mind going blank as two words run through his brain on a loop. 

Ona moya, he thinks. She’s mine, she’s mine, she’s mine.

You’re his. You belong to him, and he belongs to you. There’s nothing else in this world that makes sense.

“Breathe, almaznyy,” he pleads, dropping his head into the crook of your neck. “Need you to breathe, need you to tell me if it’s too much.” 

Your head shakes, frantic, and your next inhale is deep, gathering enough air in your lungs to steady yourself, and he rises again, eyes scanning your face desperately, needing you to be okay.

Your eyes lock almost instantly, and the look on your face is pleading, your words articulating the desperation behind them when you say “More, Andrei, please. Pozhaluysta.”

He curses, cock throbbing when he pushes inside another inch, and your hands fly to his ass, nails digging into the flesh of his cheeks as you try to pull him closer. “I know, I know,” he assures, “I’ve got you, almaznyy.”

“I’m so close again already, Andrei.” You murmur, tilting your head up and speaking the words against his jaw. “Please, just wanna feel you. Want you all the way inside.”

The way your words affect him feel nearly criminal, and he almosts debates grabbing his tie from out in the living area of the suite or your torn thong from his pants on the floor and using either of them to gag you, keep your mouth shut and stop him from blowing his load before he’s ready.

“Okay,” he says instead, trying to ease your desperation as well as his own. He pushes inside a little more, and when you nod, pleased mewls spilling through your lips, he keeps going until he’s seated all the way inside, can feel his balls pressing against your ass cheeks, and you both let out a satisfied groan.

“Khoroshaya devochka,” good girl, “taking me so well,” he praises, and you nod, eyes glazed over in pleasure.

“For you,” you say, all breathy. “Just for you.”

His hips stutter, causing him to pull out and push back in just a fraction, but it’s enough that your eyes flutter. “What did I say?” He asks, and watches in amazement when you give him a lazy smile, eyes still lost in the way he’s making you feel.

“You said I was a good girl,” you say, though it comes out slow, and Andrei nods, dropping a kiss to your lips, dragging your bottom lip between his teeth as he pulls away and pushes up on his arms.

“I did,” he confirms. He drags his hips backward until just the tip of him rests inside of you, and then he pushes forward, burying himself back to the hilt. The moan that echoes across the walls buries itself in his mind as he catalogs the sound.

He starts to fuck you in earnest then, hands resting on the backs of your thighs to keep you propped open and spread for him, allowing him to watch the way his cock disappears inside of you, the way you take him over and over, his cock glistening with your arousal everytime he pulls out. The sounds your bodies make are probably obscene, but they sound like perfection in his mind, and he keeps at it, his eyes locked on your face to gauge your reactions, to make sure that he’s not giving you anything but mind blowing pleasure.

It’s all you deserve. He’ll give you nothing but the best, and if it’s not to your standards, he won’t stop until he gets it right, until he knows everything you like, until his legs burn and his jaw aches and he knows every single way he can make you come until you see stars and your voice is shot from screaming his name.

“Andrei,” you breathe, hands fisted in the sheets. “I’m going to come.”

He nods, “Do it, almaznyy. I want to see. Let me see you.”

“Want you to come with me,” you plead, and he feels his balls tighten at your plea. 

Your bodies know one another, he’s certain of it now.

“I will,” he promises. “Need you to come first, need to make sure you come first. Come for me and I’ll give you anything and everything, I promise.”

Your pussy flutters around him again, and he drives his hips forward, focused on fucking you until your flutters turn into a near death grip as you squeeze him, back breaking on an arch as his name crosses your lips in ecstasy, body shaking as your orgasm rocks through your body.

Your arms shoot out as you yank him down, and when you kiss him, when he swallows your cries as your release drips down his cock, he can feel a tight knot form at the base of his spine as his orgasm hits him like a freight train.

His arms shake as he keeps you open to him, cock throbbing as his orgasm pulses inside of you, filling you to the brim as he claims you from the inside.

“Ty moy,” he says as his orgasm begins to calm, pressing the words into your hairline. “Tol'ko moy.”

You’re mine, only mine.

“Andrei,” you say, his name sounding like a plea and a confirmation to his words all at once, and his heart hammers in his chest. 

If you only knew, almaznyy. He wants to say.

But his name on your lips is enough for now.

It has to be.

~

November

He wakes up hard. 

Images of you run through his brain from his dreams into his waking life and he sighs, reaching for his phone on his bedside table.

There’s a text there from you, telling him goodnight after you got off the phone earlier, and though it’s late - or maybe too early in the morning, he’s not sure - he calls you anyway, figuring he could just leave a voicemail, and a surprised bolt of joy blooms in his chest when you actually answer.

“Thought you were asleep, malysh.” You say, and Andrei can hear your smile through the phone.

“I never should have taught you that word,” he teases. He’d taught it to you the morning after your first night together, after he’d pressed the word into your neck while he fucked you from behind.

“Why not?” You feign hurt. “You get to call me something cute, why can’t I?”

What he really wants to call you is your name, but he knows he can’t ask, and since you still haven’t offered, it’s probably because you don’t feel like the two of you are in the right place for it.

You’ll get there, the two of you, he’s sure of it. He’s waited this long, he can wait a little more.

“You’re just going to use it to torment me,” he says, sighing as he leans back against his headboard.

You hum to yourself. “Well you’re clearly tormenting yourself if you’re awake right now. What’s going on?”

He shrugs even though he knows you can’t see him. “Ya skuchayu po tebe,” he says. “Kazhdyy den'.”

I miss you, every day.

It’s only been a couple of weeks, but it feels like months in his mind. Especially now that he’s had you in his arms, now that he knows what it sounds like when you say his name when he makes you come, now that he knows what you taste like, how you feel beneath his hands and body, it’s like he’s got a craving he can’t satisfy and he can’t help but want more, even if it leaves him feeling starved.

“Oh Andrei,” you coo, adoration in your voice. “I miss you too.”

His heart stops and he takes a deep breath, clutching his phone tighter. “How do you know what I said?”

“I have my ways.” You say cryptically, and he can hear your mischievous smile through the phone.

“Have you been taking lessons?” He inquires. It’s possible, given how much you understood that night and so far.

You giggle, “What’s making you miss me so much?”

He’ll accept your change of subject…for now. “Can’t get enough of you.” He confesses, “I can’t stop thinking about the last time I saw you.”

“I can’t stop thinking about you either,” you say. “Or that night.”

Andrei feels butterflies in his stomach followed by a wave of sadness. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you again,” he says honestly. “We’re in the height of the season now, and we’ve got a decent stretch of home games coming up, so it’ll be hard to get away to New York.”

“We don’t have to meet in New York, you know.” You say. “I can always come to Raleigh.”

He blinks, bolting upright so quick it almost makes him dizzy. “You can?”

“Yeah, Eden allows it so that we can travel wherever we need to. You don’t have to always formally book dates and times unless it’s based on your schedule.” You say. “I can always come to you, I just thought that…”

Your voice trails off, and Andrei frowns. “Thought what?”

You hesitate, and he feels it form a crack in his chest. “I thought you needed something more discreet, and that you liked being in Manhattan for the secrecy, so I never mentioned anything else. Plus, you always booked for The Mark Hotel, so…”

When you don’t continue, he swallows a lump in his throat. “I didn’t really know that. I guess I didn’t fully understand the booking parameters. Plus, I thought it was easier for you.” He winces at his word choice. “Not because of Eden, or anything, but because it was where we first met? So I thought it would be more comfortable for you..”

“No I understand, Andrei, I do.” You reassure him. “But I can come to you, if you’d like. If that’s what you want, or what you’re comfortable with.”

“I’d love that.” He says almost immediately. “I would love to have you here.”

~

You arrive in Raleigh two days later, Andrei picking you up from the airport. You’d offered to take an Uber since Eden would be footing the bill, but Andrei didn’t like that idea. 

You were his girl, his companion, and he’d take care of you himself, thank you very much.

He parks in the garage and waits for you at baggage claim, hiding beneath a baseball cap and his reading glasses just in case any fans recognize him. It doesn’t help that despite the fact that he’s retired, he knows his face is still plastered at the terminal exit as passengers come out and take the escalators down toward baggage claim.

Thankfully, you don’t make him wait long. He spots you coming down the escalator, wearing sweatpants and a baggy shirt Andrei recognizes as his own, a flannel tied around your waist and a duffel bag hanging off of one shoulder, your bracelet glittering in the fluorescent lights of the airport.

You spot him just as quickly, and Andrei enjoys the way the smile that stretches across your lips forms almost immediately. 

Andrei’s moving before he realizes, and he ends up at the bottom of the escalator just in time for you to step off of it, and then he’s hauling you into his arms by your waist, your own wrapping around his neck as he lifts you a little and spins you around, careful to move you both out of the way in the process.

Happy giggles spill from your lips as he presses kisses all over your face, grinning from ear to ear when he sets you down on your feet.

“Hi, almaznyy.” He greets quietly, arms still secured around you.

You rise on your tiptoes and press a kiss to his jaw, greeting him with an equally soft “Hi, malysh.”

He takes your hand and leads you over to the baggage claim area for your flight, choosing a spot close to the belt but far enough away from other passengers that he can still have you all to himself.

“How was your flight?” He asks, thumb rubbing the back of your hand.

“It was good,” you say, resting your head against his arm. “I’m just happy I’m here.”

“So am I, almaznyy.” He says, pressing a kiss to your forehead as the buzzer goes off and the belt of the baggage carousel starts to move.

You point out your suitcase after a few minutes and Andrei insists on grabbing it and taking your duffel from you, carrying both so the only thing you have to worry about holding is his hand in yours.

You make it out to his car and he makes sure to get you inside safe and sound before he places your things in the backseat, despite your protests of your suitcase messing up his leather interior.

He could care fucking less about that. All he cares about right now is that you’re here, in Raleigh, that he’s about to take you home for the first time, and that according to the confirmation email he got after you got off the phone the other night, the ticket Eden helped you arrange to Raleigh was a one way ticket. 

Meaning you were here for as long as either of you wanted, with no clear plans to send you back, and he liked that a lot.

He also liked that your suitcase felt heavy, meaning you probably packed for a long time.

All things that made Andrei feel like he should probably get a gift basket for Olly and Mason as a thank you for not being able to keep their traps shut at that dinner, maybe talk to Coach about getting them more ice time, maybe negotiating more money in their next contracts.

You held hands the entire drive to his house, your bracelet and his Rolex glinting in the sunlight from where they accompanied one another on his center console, and when he finally pulled into his garage and shut off his car, he felt a sudden rush of excitement fill his veins, and excitement he’d only felt whenever he got his day with the Cup. 

It was that initial feeling of him being able to carry it over the threshold into his home that made the victory feel surreal, and as he wheeled your luggage and carried your bag, holding your hand as he guided you inside his home and over the threshold, he realized this feeling, bringing you home, was better than any Cup championship he’d experienced.

It wasn’t even close.

The only thing that could possibly come second flashed in his mind, and images of him being able to bring you over this threshold in a white dress, layers of tulle flowing like a waterfall over his arms, and then not long after, being able to escort you over the threshold as you held a bundled up baby in your arms.

It seized the breath from his lungs so quickly he nearly choked. 

He’d never given so much thought to a god damn doorway before.

Oblivious to his predicament, you trail behind him as he leads you to his bedroom, eyes roaming over the expanse of his home, taking in every last detail.

“I’ll give you a full tour once you’re settled in,” he promises. “I just want to make sure you get comfortable first.”

“Okay,” you agree, voice soft in the mid morning hour.

When you finally get to his room, he lays your suitcase down on the bench at the foot of the bed, placing your duffel bag next to it. “You can sleep on whatever side you’d like,” he says, gesturing to the bed. “Feel free to make yourself at home. Bathroom’s through there,” he points to a door near the closet, “Fresh towels are already out for you. Would you like something to eat? I can make you lunch.”

You shake your head. “No, I'm okay for now, I ate a little on the plane.”

“Are you sure? Can I get you anything else?” he asks.

You shake your head again with a small smile, tilting your head toward the bathroom. “I’m sure, Andrei. Do you mind if I shower?”

“Of course not, feel free. I’ll uh…I’ll be in my office just down the hall, there’s something I have to take care of anyway.”

He closes the distance and drops a kiss to your lips, squeezing your waist in his hand before he leaves, wanting to give you space to yourself, to feel comfortable in his home. 

Oh god. 

You’re in his home.

His actual fucking house.

He can’t seem to get over that as nerves begin to settle in, tossing his hat to his desk once he’s in his office, running a hand through his hair.

He hasn’t been this nervous to bring someone home ever. He’d been so excited just to see you again, to have you here that it wasn’t until now that he worried what you’d think of the space, if you’d find it comfortable and homey and welcoming.

With a sigh, he pushes his glasses further up his nose as he opens his laptop, bringing up his emails and sorting through some of the things he needed to take care of for the team, welcoming the distraction even though it made him feel uncomfortable to think of anything but you for longer than a millisecond. 

Especially when you were down the hall, in his bedroom, in his shower, naked. 

The same shower he’d jerked off in thinking about you this morning, and last night. And the night before.

“O Gospodi, chto zhe ya nadelal,” he mutters to himself. Oh lord, what have I done?

He spends the next fifteen minutes willing himself to focus on the emails in front of him, tasks for him to finish up, people to respond back to, people to reach out to at the behest of the team owners and Coach Brind’amour. When his emails clear, he shuts his laptop and pulls out his phone, busying himself with responding to texts from Evgeny about the upcoming holidays, getting back to Evgeny’s wife, Sara, about potential Christmas presents for his brother, and his parents, checking in on them both.

It busies him enough that when you finally walk into his office - wet hair still dripping a little and body dressed in a baby pink spaghetti strap sundress, the only jewelry on you being the bracelet you never take off, your bare feet padding onto the carpet - he doesn’t notice at first. 

That is, not until you’re on the other side of his desk, knocking your fist playfully on the wood.

Andrei’s head snaps up from his phone, and he leans back a little in relief in his chair when he notices it’s you, a lazy smile spreading across his face. “You almost scared me there.”

“Sorry,” you breathe out in a laugh. “I believe I have an appointment with you, Mr. Svechnikov?”

He’s confused at first, until he sees the way your eyes twinkle mischievously, and he smirks. “Is that so?”

You nod, clasping your hands behind your back. “Mhm, I believe you’ve been expecting me, and I know you don’t like it when I’m late.”

Andrei places his phone back in his pocket, then folds his hands across his abdomen, resting his elbows on the armrest of his chair. “What is it you’re meant to be meeting with me about?”

“Don’t you remember? I’m your new assistant,” you say, releasing one of your hands from behind your back and trailing a finger on the other side of his desk. “I’ve been hired to help you and ensure your daily needs are met.”

“You’re a little underdressed to be an assistant, aren’t you?” He asks, tilting his head curiously.

You look down with a small pout, then back up to his face. “You don’t like it?”

“Hmmm, it’s hard to tell. Why don’t you come around the desk and let me see?”

He backs his chair up a little as you round the desk and then come to stand between his spread legs. Andrei pretends to deliberate, raising his hand in the air and twirling his finger before saying “Turn around, let me see all of you.” 

A shy smile works its way onto your face as you do a little turn, his cock immediately growing hard as he observes you taking slow steps to complete your circle before facing him once more, clasping your hands in front of you. “Well?”

“I think,” Andrei says, scooting his chair closer to you before his hands make their way to the backs of your thighs, thumbs rubbing at your skin. “That you’re perfect.”

“Why thank you,” you murmur, reaching a hand out and cupping his cheek. “You’re very sweet.”

He shakes his head a little. “If you knew what was going through my head right now, you’d disagree.”

“Well, what’s going through your head?” You inquire, rubbing your thumb over his cheekbone. 

“Why don’t you hop up on the desk and maybe you’ll find out?” He says, punctuating his statement with a light slap to the backs of one of your thighs. You gasp a little, leaning into him, and Andrei smiles, tightening his grip on your thighs as he stands, and you jump a little into his arms, your arms winding themselves around his neck as he backs you both up two steps, setting you down onto the wood of his desk gently. 

“I always have a lot going on in my head when it comes to you,” he admits, reaching up to grab your hands, kissing the backs of them before bringing them down to your lap. “I just don’t want you to…I guess I just don’t want to scare you away.”

“Skazhi mne,” you encourage, voice soft. Tell me.

Andrei’s eyes flash. “Tell me where you’re learning Russkiy.” He demands.

You giggle, “What’s going on in your head?” You ask him instead, and he narrows his eyes a little.

One of these days he’s not going to let you change the subject, but for now, he plays along. “I think about you sometimes,” he admits, circling his fingers around the bracelet on your wrist, pads running over the diamond studded vines. “I think about you on this desk, like you are now.”

“And?” You press, tracking his every move with your eyes. 

He hesitates to say more, unsure of how far to go with this, unsure of what he should reveal and what would be too…scandalous. 

“What about me on the desk, Andrei?” You ask, reaching a hand out to trail down his abdomen, resting on the waistband of his jeans.

He shakes his head, cheeks heating as his face goes red. He’s too ashamed, feels like he shouldn’t have been thinking such…dirty things about someone as pure as you. “I can’t, almaznyy. I-”

You surge up then, pulling his waistband at the same time and kissing him, hands traveling up his abdomen and to his face, where you pull his reading glasses off and set them on the desk next to his phone. Then, you take him by surprise, placing your hands firmly on his chest and shoving him back down into his desk chair. 

“I think this is where I, as your assistant, can help you articulate those thoughts.” You start, his favorite cheshire smile of yours creeping onto your lips. “Since it’s my job to make sure your needs are met, and to anticipate any future needs.”

“Are you sure about that?” He asks, well aware of how hard he’s breathing. 

You nod, and without another word, spread those glorious legs of yours to reveal your bare pussy.

Andrei’s breath catches in his throat. “Almaznyy,” he breathes, the word coming out like a pained sound.

“Malysh,” you say, voice teasing as your hand, the one donning your bracelet, comes forward and runs down your stomach and to the hem of your dress, pulling it up to bare yourself to him a little more.

He doesn’t know where to look. He wants to look at your face, wants to watch your facial expressions, but then he also wants to watch your hands, memorize the way you touch yourself so he can mimic the movements later, and he wants to keep his eyes locked on that little piece of heaven you’ve got between your thighs.

“Will this make it easier for you to tell me what’s on your mind?” You ask, trailing your fingers down and collecting the wetness already gathering, dragging it back up to circle your clit.

All he can do is nod, too entranced by your ministrations. He can feel his mouth start to water, watching one of the spaghetti straps of your sundress start to fall off of one shoulder, and good lord -

He reaches out, rubbing the hem of your sundress between his fingers. “Ty golaya pod etim plat'yem, krasavitsa?” 

Are you naked under this dress, beautiful?

Your brow furrows as your fingers continue to move in deliberate circles, and Andrei memorizes the pattern, tucks it away in his brain for later. “I don’t…I didn’t understand all of that,” you admit.

He smirks, but doesn’t repeat himself. He doesn’t know if he has the energy to think in just one language, let alone two right now, because all of his focus is directed on you and your body. 

“Boleye,” he pleads. More.

Now that you seem to understand, because you part your legs a little wider, scooting more toward the edge of his desk as you continue touching yourself.

Andrei rolls his desk chair a little closer so you can place your feet on the armrests and essentially bracket him in, giving him the perfect front row seat to everything going on. He reaches for his jeans, unbuttoning and unzipping them before he’s reaching inside his boxer briefs and pulling out his cock, giving it a rough tug to ease some of the pressure. 

Your pupils blow out wide as you watch him, and he jerks his chin at where your fingers are moving up and down your pussy now, where he can see the digits glistening from his vantage point.

“Move your hand.” He orders, and you do, prepared to move it to the side to rest on your thigh, but then Andrei’s making a small “tsk” noise, and your hand hovers in the air for a second. 

“Give it to me,” he says, holding one hand out while the other strokes his cock in slow movements. You place your hand in his and then he’s bringing the arousal coated digits to his mouth, sucking them between his lips and massaging the pads with his tongue, cleaning away your wetness and swallowing it down with a pleased rumble in his chest.

Your fingers leave his mouth in a soft ‘pop’ when he pulls them out, and he brings both hands to rest under your thighs, pulling you just a little bit closer to the edge, allowing his desk chair to also roll forward until there’s practically no space between you both, and then he’s bending his head, lips latching onto your pussy and sucking hard.

A surprised moan crosses your lips and Andrei’s hands hold you steady as you thrash a little, clearly not expecting him to just dive in so eagerly. Your hands slam against the desk behind you, using them to try to prop you up and keep you steady, and Andrei’s eyes are glued to your face.

He managed to learn what you liked best that first night, having the privilege to have taken you four times that night, insisting on tasting you every chance he got. He knows now that you like it when he turns his head just a little, tilting it so it’s nearly sideways and taking your labia and clit into his mouth and sucking, licking across the center of your cunt and teasing it as if he’s making out with you.

So when he tilts his head and does just that, taking you into his mouth the way you like, his name spews from your lips in a breathy sigh, and your arms shake at your sides.

Eagerly, he laps at you and moans in satisfaction when the taste of you and smell of you overwhelms his senses, having also learned that you like hearing him, like hearing how much he’s enjoying you and how excited he is to get you to come on his tongue. He doesn’t exaggerate the noises his mouth makes against you but does nothing to lessen or quiet them.

It’s his fucking house, and you’re on his fucking desk, at the mercy of his lips and tongue and spread out by his hands, so he’ll do whatever he god damn pleases. You can cry out for God for all he cares, it’s just the two of you in this room, and the only ‘God’ to answer your prayers for more is going to be him. 

“Andrei,” you moan, turning his name into a plea and dammit does he love that, too. It’s a sound he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to. “Pozhaluysta,” you beg. Please.

You don’t have to beg, he wants to tell you. You don’t have to beg me for a goddamn thing. I’ll give you whatever you want. Just ask me and it’s yours, I’m yours. 

Instead, he just nods, pressing his tongue against you in the way he knows you like and spreading your thighs apart, pressing against the back of them to expose you to him more so he can feast on you properly.

It’s messy, wet, and loud, and Andrei couldn’t give a single fuck, not when you’re so close, your arousal dripping down his chin and your thighs are pressing up against his palm, shaking as you get closer and threatening to squeeze his head between the strong muscles.

“Can I come, Andrei?” You ask, syrupy sweet and desperate and his cock throbs in response.

He nods, brushing his nose against your clit as he does and you jolt, body nearly shaking in relief when his lips circle around your clit and he sucks in the pulsing rhythm he discovered had you coming in no time time, his tongue lapping at you and drawing you closer to release.

When your orgasm hits, your whole body shakes under his touch, and your arms fall out from under you, your back landing on his desk and then arching up, pressing you further into his mouth. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t back away, doesn’t do anything until you’re pushing at his head, and whining at the over sensitivity.

“Please malysh,” you beg, shaking against his mouth as he continues to lap at you. “It’s too much.”

“I’m a little busy, almaznyy,” he murmurs against your clit. “I’m cleaning up my assistant.”

You laugh through heaving breaths, fingers descending into Andrei’s hair and gripping the strands tight in your fist, tugging a little. He relents, pressing gentle kisses to your skin as you sit up, and then you’re fisting his shirt in your grasp, yanking him upright and kissing him, slipping your tongue inside his mouth and chasing the taste of yourself on his tongue.

You take him by surprise in the next second, shoving him back down in his chair and then licking the palm of your hand, wrapping it around his cock and twisting.

He hisses, hands gripping at your calves. He’s too sensitive and far too hard to be able to handle your touch. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to handle it, especially not now that he knows every inch of your skin and how it feels against his.

“Almaznyy,” he warns through clenched teeth when you twist your first over the head of his cock, squeezing and swiping at the bead of precum on his tip with your thumb. “Stop teasing.”

“Is that an order, Mr. Svechnikov?” You taunt, squeezing the head of his cock once more. 

A low groan leaves his lips, and he has half a mind to reach up and wrap his fingers around your throat, but instead, all he can do is hiss out a pained “Yes,” and then you’re using your other hand to reach out, yanking him a little closer before scooting all the way off of his desk and sitting right on his cock, taking him to the hilt in one go.

The gasp that leaves you both simultaneously is loud and echoes around his office, probably even down the hallway, and he can barely gather enough air in his lungs before you’re rising up again and then dropping down, and it feels like he’s going to burst at the seams.

“Oh my god,” he says, the words feeling like they’re being punched out of him as you slowly start to bounce on him. He tracks the way both of the straps of your dress hang off of your shoulders, the way that the bottom part of your dress is still raised from where he’d pushed it up earlier, and the bounce of your tits beneath the neckline.

He reaches out, tugging the neckline down and freeing them, and then you’re moving, sitting up a little taller, thighs bracketing his as you keep your pace bouncing on his cock, arching your back just so that when Andrei leans forward, he can easily suck your nipple into his mouth, laving his tongue over the bud while sucking your skin, hoping a hickey blooms there for him to admire later.

The moans spilling from your lips tell him you enjoy it, so he continues, switching to the other side and giving you teasing licks before he mimics his previous ministrations, sucking hard enough to hopefully produce matching marks.

Your hands find their way into the longer hair at the nape of his neck and tug so he’s looking up at you, and Andrei sees the way your glassy eyes take in his fucked out expression, sees how it spurs you on, your mouth dropping open in an ‘O’ everytime you sink down on his cock till he’s balls deep, then raise yourself up on your knees.

“Khoroshaya devochka,” he praises. Good girl. “Take it from me. Make yourself come on my cock.”

Nodding, you speed up just a little, thighs tightening on either side of his, and Andrei’s hands go to your ass, gripping the flesh and helping to move you up and down his length, keeping his eyes on your face to watch you, waiting for the way your eyes start to roll in the back of your head and waiting for the beautiful flutter of your pussy on his cock to let him know when you’re going to come.

“Andrei,” you whine, your grip in his hair loosening a little. “I’m so close.”

“I’ve got you,” he swears. He means it in every way possible. “Take what you need.” He punctuates his statement by burying his face in your neck and sucking on that sensitive spot he found last time, and it has you clenching around him in seconds, crying out as you pulse around him, body seizing as your orgasm washes over.

He has to take control then, gripping your hips and fucking you through it the way he knows you like, and it’s not long before he’s following behind you, pressing you down onto his cock as he pushes his pelvis upward, sealing the two of you together as he fills you up with his come, pulse hammering so hard in his body he can feel it in his ears.

As your orgasms subside, gently, he rubs up and down your back, pressing kisses to the nape of your neck and collarbone, happy to just sit here with you on top of him until you’re ready to move.

Eventually, you speak, voice a little raspy when you say “I think I need another shower after that.”

Andrei laughs, slowly standing and wrapping your legs around his waist, still fully seated inside you. “I think shower sex sounds like an excellent idea.”

~

The longer you stay with him, you two start to develop the beginnings of a routine together, and Andrei finds himself clinging to it like a lifeline.

In the mornings, you’re usually up first, wandering to some part of his massive house and drinking a steaming cup of tea or coffee, and it feels a bit like a game, Andrei wandering after you through his house to find where you’ve situated yourself for that morning. You usually only drink half of whatever you’ve made that morning, and when he finds you, he drinks the rest, still warm, before he takes your hand and drags you into the shower.

The first morning he did it, you pushed him to the built in shower bench and sank to your knees, took him in your mouth until he saw stars and came deep down your throat with a loud groan, repeating “Almaznyy” over and over until you took pity on him and released him from your mouth with a soft “pop,” the water trailing over your face making you look like a damn goddess. 

He came within like…five minutes, that first time. And though you clearly loved it and reveled in the effect you had on him, he would rather each time with you last longer than ten minutes, so he decided he wouldn’t let you take him in your mouth for a little while, especially if it meant saving what he had left of his pride and ego.

Sometimes, he would put you on the shower bench and get on his knees, burying his face between your thighs until you begged him for mercy. Other times, he pressed you against the tile wall, burying himself to the hilt and finding solace with you under the warm spray, filling you to the brim before fucking it deeper inside of you. 

Then, he’d wrap you up in one of his big, fluffy towels and dry you off, pressing you against the bathroom sink and kissing you until your stomachs rumbled. After getting ready for the day, he’d drag you out of the bathroom and to the kitchen where either you or him would make breakfast for the both of you, and then he’d either go to his office and work for a bit, or get dressed to head to the arena. 

If he stayed home to work, you’d either sit quietly with him in his office reading a book or sketching in a worn journal, earbuds in and playing music. He’d worried you’d be bored, but you assured him you were used to having to occupy yourself with things to do. That statement made him worry even more, but since you seemed to be fine, he didn’t push.

He’d work until there was nothing left for him to do, and he’d wait for you to either finish the chapter you were reading, or finish up the sketches in your journal. He had been tempted to ask you to see them, but given the way you hunched over your journal, like you’d been protecting it, he left it alone, figuring you’d share them with him if you wanted to. 

You’d spend the rest of the day together either making lunch, going out to eat, or with Andrei taking you around the Raleigh or Durham areas on little dates. So far, he’d taken you to the science museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art, taken you on a pedal boat ride in Pullen Park, brought you to Drive Shack where you both surprisingly and unsurprisingly kicked his ass, given you’d pretty much done the same when you brought him to Chelsea Piers, and just last night, he’d taken you to Rush Hour Karting.

He’d been there when he was a rookie in development camp for the Hurricanes, and he hadn’t been back in quite some time. It was nice though, to head back and make new and equally as happy memories there with you. You kicked his ass in a couple of laps, and since you’d raced with other people, there had been a round where a sixteen year old practically wiped the floor with everyone else, and it had made you and Andrei laugh a little when he’d been ready to boast about it until he saw Andrei’s face and freaked out, asking for a picture.

Those days where he could work from home and just be around you, taking the rest of his day to spend time with you, bring you anywhere and everywhere and spoil you silly? Those were beginning to be his favorite kind of days.

On the days he would go into his office at the arena, though, there are still particular advantages.

Andrei leaves his black card behind, insisting that you take it and make use of it as you need or see fit. 

The first morning he left it for you, he took it out of his wallet and put it down on the kitchen counter as he was heading out the door, and you just stared down at it, brow furrowed and lower lip jutting out in slight confusion.

“What is this for?” You had asked, holding it up in the air.

“For you,” he said, like it was obvious. “For you to use?” 

You pursed your lips, placed it back down on the counter and slid it back to him. “No, it’s okay.”

He frowned, ditching his bag by the door and rounded the counter to you. “I want you to have it, malyshka,” he insists. 

Your face scrunched up. “I know this next statement is going to sound weird, considering my job, and the circumstances of our…uh…relationship, but I don’t want your money, Andrei.”

“I understand, almaznyy,” he assured you. “But I don’t want you to spend your money. Not while you’re here with me,” he said, then tucked the card back in your hand. 

You stared at it for a second, then looked back up at his face, a small frown still on your lips, and Andrei couldn’t help but laugh. He reached out, smoothed the wrinkle between your brows and cupped your face in his palm. He pressed a kiss to your forehead, and then looked down at you with an amused smile. 

“How about this,” he began, “Since you’ve appointed yourself as my assistant, why don’t you take care of a few tasks for me?” He gestured to the card in your hand with his chin. “Use the card to pay for them.”

A small smile crept up your face, and you tilted your head at him, intrigued. “And what tasks would you be referring to, Mr. Svechnikov?”

“I think you need a new uniform,” he said, keeping his tone playful. “Why don’t you go and find something nice to wear around our…home office.” He punctuated those last words with a wink, smirking when you giggled. “Whatever you like, whatever the price. Get yourself some office supplies while you’re at it too, hm?”

“Oh I see,” you said. “This is a company expense, is it?”

“More or less,” he nodded, dropping another kiss to your forehead. “But I want to see everything you buy when you buy it. Send me pictures so I can see, understand? ”

You agreed with that gorgeous cheshire smile of yours. “I do.” 

And god if all the blood didn’t rush straight to his cock, picturing you in white as you say those words to him in another life, another time.

When he heads to the office, he purposefully takes his red Lamborghini to the rink, leaving you the safer options of his Mercedes or his BMW to use to go and complete your ‘daily tasks,’ and Andrei waits like an impatient teenager for those texts from you to come through. 

He’s saved every single picture, and thank goodness he has, because the second he gets home from work, it’s like the two of you are instantly pulled together like magnets. No matter where you are in the house, he gravitates to you, and you go at it like rabbits until one of you gets hungry, or until you’re begging him for relief. The lingerie sets barely make it ten minutes without being absolutely torn to shreds.

Though he wasn’t sure where you’d bought them, he had half a mind to march into the store and demand to know why their fabrics were so flimsy.

He's torn the first few either at the waist or right down the crotch, and one of them he all but snapped the strap of the garter belt off, the strap basically now hanging by a thread. The only things that have managed to survive after your first couple of weeks with him are a baby pink lace set complete with garter belt and stockings, and the same set, but in crimson red.

“You’re doing it on purpose,” you accuse through heavy breathing later that night, eyeing the fallen scraps of black lace among the black satin dress on the floor. The only thing that had managed to survive tonight was your thigh high stockings, which Andrei found himself running his fingers over now, your legs draped in his lap.

“What do you mean?” He questions, thumbing at where the lace of your stockings met your inner thigh.

You shivered a little, but didn’t move away from his touch, “You’re ripping them on purpose so I have to buy more, and that means I have to use your card.”

He smiles, dancing his finger over the spot inside your thigh that he’d made red by rubbing his stubbly cheek against it as he licked at you for a blissful thirty minutes. “You caught me.”

“If you wanted to be a sugar daddy you could’ve just said so.” You say lazily, stretching your body out. You probably don’t mean for it to look so seductive, but Andrei’s hypnotized nonetheless.

“I didn’t want to be,” he says honestly. “But you changed my mind a little.”

“I figured,” you murmur, casting a glance to your bracelet. “But you like it, don’t you?”

“Like what?” He asks, tugging your legs and maneuvering you until you’re straddling him again.

“Providing, spoiling, ” you purr, wrapping your arms around his neck. 

“I like it when it’s you.” Andrei clarifies, tilting his chin up so he can press little kisses along your jaw. “Even if I have to fight you on it a little.”

“I don’t want a sugar daddy for money,” you drawl, pushing his hair away from his face. 

He stares at you, confused. “Isn’t that what they’re for?”

“If I’m gonna have a sugar daddy, I want him for sugar.” You explain, “Not money.”

“Ya ne ponimayu, chto ty imeyesh' v vidu, detka.” I don’t understand what you mean baby.

You roll your eyes playfully, pulling his chin up and kissing him softly. He moans into your mouth, hands resting on your waist and bringing you closer. You tease him with your tongue running over his bottom lip before you pull away, sitting back a little. 

“That kind of sugar,” you say softly, running your thumb over his bottom lip. 

It takes him a few seconds, but then it clicks, and he flashes you a cheeky grin. “Well I’ve given you plenty of that, too, haven’t I?”

You shrug, reaching between you to grab his stiff cock and bring it back to your pussy, slipping him back inside of you and sinking down slowly, “A little more wouldn’t hurt.”

He’s immediately scooting back against the pillows and then his hands are on your thighs, anchoring you to him while you ride him, beginning your fourth round of the night.

~

After a few weeks of you staying with him, you approach him in his home office one day as he’s about to get off of a call. There’s an apprehensive look on your face as you linger in the doorway, clearly not wanting to interrupt, but he waves you inside anyway, gesturing for you to sit on the couch against the wall. 

You obey, waiting patiently until he’s hanging up and placing his phone beside his computer to stand from your seat and approach the other side of his desk.

“What can I do for you, almaznyy?” He asks, leaning back in his chair. 

“It’s probably a silly question,” you preface, “But I figured I would ask just in case.”

He nods, folding his hands on his stomach. “Okay.”

“I uh…me being here isn’t interfering with your holiday plans, right? I don’t know if you do anything for Thanksgiving since you started living here, but since it’s in a week or so, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t overstaying my welcome.”

His brow furrows, mouth turning down into a frown. “You’re perfectly fine,” he assures. “I used to go to my coach’s house, but I haven't in years.” He pauses then, guilt suddenly coursing through his veins. “Am I…I’m not keeping you from your family, am I?”

You shake your head almost immediately, a strange look crossing your features. “No you’re not, we haven’t - I mean, we don’t celebrate. Haven’t in a bit.”

Andrei nods in response, but the guilt is still there, suddenly eating at his insides.

He’d been so wrapped up in you, so happy with your routines and the little corner of the world you’d managed to carve out for yourselves that he didn’t even think about the fact that he could’ve been keeping you away from your friends and family.

Or that he’s technically been keeping you away from his friends and family, too.

His mother’s been living with Evgeny the last couple of years, moving in to help Sara with their two year old and three month old babies, and his dad’s still back in Moscow, mostly by choice to help with Andrei and Evgeny’s grandparents. Evgeny and Sara sort of know he’s been seeing someone, but he hasn’t divulged much more, and he has no idea what you’ve been sharing with your family in turn.

Plus…he’s probably keeping you from other clients, which isn’t his favorite thing to think about, at all, but he can’t ignore the circumstances of how the two of you met, or how you came into his life. 

So as much as it pains him to say it, he doesn’t want to be like the beast keeping you locked in his castle against your will, so he takes a deep breath, and says “Almaznyy, if you need to go home, or if you need to go back, then-”

“I don’t,” you interject. “I’m good here.”

Oh…okay…

“No one’s missing you?” He asks. “You don’t have other clients?”

“I’m good here, Andrei,” you repeat, this time a little softer, rounding the desk. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Of course I’m okay,” he assures you, reaching for your waist and pulling you into his lap. “I was the one who asked you to be here with me. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want you with me.”

You nod, body relaxing into his embrace. 

There’s another sharp pain in his chest, and he rests his head resting in the crook of your neck, breathing you in. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

He can feel you tense for a second in surprise. “For what?”

“I didn’t think about…other people. I didn’t mean to be selfish, but I was, and I’m sorry.”

“Oh Andrei,” you murmur, wrapping your arms around his neck, fingers scratching lightly at the base of his scalp. “I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty. I just…I didn’t realize how long I’d been staying here with you, and when I did, I knew I needed to check in. That’s all.”

“I like having you here,” he confesses. “It feels…”

“Natural,” you finish for him. “I know, I feel the same.”

You both settle into a small silence, Andrei content to just hold you for a second, to stay in this little bubble with you he’d built before he’d been forced to remember the two of you weren’t actually alone in this world together.

“What about Christmas?” He eventually asks you. 

You nod. “My family does celebrate it, kind of. But I would have to go home for that.”

“I would too.” He confirms. “We technically celebrate Christmas twice. Once for western Christmas on the twenty fifth, and again in January for Russian Christmas.”

You lean back a little, brushing his hair away from his face, bracelet glinting in the sunlight filtering in through the window. “Guess we’ll have to make the best of this next month or so.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, leaning up to kiss you softly. “I guess so.”

A pang of sadness hits him, already not looking forward to having to let you go.

~

Read Part Two Here.

[ryanthecomic]

ZONA: THE PAFL RPG

For the past few months me and my brother were working on a tabletop rpg system based on Parties are For Losers, just for fun, and then we started trying out some graphic design adjustments, putting some cool images from the PaFL MVs and then boom, holy crap, we had an decent looking book, turns out that came out some time ago and i never did make a tumblr post on it, so here we go!

A Tabletop RPG system based on already popular RPGs such as Call of Cthullu and Ordem Paranormal, we made ZONA share a lot of horror adventure mechanics from CoCthu, such as the six-sided die being the only you need to actually play the game, any proficiency just means you get yet another die, some threats are not supposed to be brawled through, like the anomalies. Anomalies, Mutants, Powers, Artifacts and everything that you could find in the Zone is possible in your adventure, the book has only been tested in quick 3 session campaigns which is when this system works best, since there is no way to progress your character without artifacts and/or special equipment. Zona is the type of book you pick up when you want to play spontaneously with your group of friends, but if you wish to add a very rudimentary sense of character power progression, there is a "Level Up?" section in the book where you can adopt to your campaign, making your characters *just a tiny bit* stronger!

Choose between 3 classes for your character, each with certain strengths and weaknesses, there is a tutorial along the book that will teach you how to make your character! If you choose to be a mutant, you will have access to a whole new feature called powers, your character has 6 points they can spend to make a power for themselves, that they'll use in the campaing, this power can either be an offensive power that deals damage and effects to enemies or an utility power that grants you bonuses when rolling for checks, healing people or even creating structres like ice walls or earth structures. Lets explain powers a bit more in this post, since the book will teach you how to make a Mundane Character.

These 6 points will be spent this way: Dmitry uses 4 points to make a 004 mutation called "Maximum Output Teleknysis", an offensive mutation that deals 1d6+4 paranormal damage to up to 5 creatures, and moves them in a direction he chooses until they hit a wall or get out of sight (very strong i know, but that is the point.) since its a 004 degree mutation, when using this power, Dmitry spends 4 humanity points (Read the book to understand this better!) Due to choosing a 004 power, dmitry also gains a mutation trick, which is Teleknysis, he can lift objects as if he could reach them with his hand, but since it's a trick, he wont be able to lift anything that he normally couldn't with his body strength alone. That leaves him with 2 points, which he will spend to make new uses for these powers of his.

If Dmitry exerts himself too much and goes beyond humanity's border, he will start to go insane, all the effects on the insanity table is made with the solely intention of retiring your character from the campaign, either making them crazy or just plain right losing them to the GM.

Thank you to everyone involved in the making of this book and making their drawings and assets available, you can download ZONA and check out the people who made this work possible in this link: https://ryanthecomic.itch.io/zona

Glad to be of use once again for the PaFL fandom!