Read your Contracts 04.5

Memi showed fang. "They were nightmares! This thing was messing with your head and as soon as I turned my head for an instant, it turned on you!" Was she starting to cry? The tears seemed to steam off as soon as they touched her skin. "This is what happens when I'm not around, you get grabbed up by something else! Now you're protecting it because it showed you a vision that made it look like a hero? I'm the hero, me! This thing was eating you alive, and you're still defending it now!?"

Pippa crossed to go into Harry's bedroom without telling anyone.

"I knew it was wrong to be angry with you back then!" Memi wailed. "You didn't call me, not once! There were days when you were awake, but I didn't hear your voice! Don't you think I wanted you to beg me to come home!? Don't you think I was hurt that you would sell off my time so easily? This thing, this creature, this parasite stole your voice from me for days, it had the nerve to tell me that you hated me! Now... was it right?..."

"Of course not!"

"Then prove it! Let me kill it!"

"No!"

Her ruby, draconic eyes flared as Memi stomped into his space and prodded him in the chest. "If you loved me, you would let me kill it."

Harry debated whether she would let him put his arms around her, wondered just how dangerous his lover truly was to him in the moment. He decided to stay there with his arms left numbly in place. "It's because I love you that I can't. She was scared, I think. She didn't know that she was hurting me."

"So what? She's even more dangerous if she didn't know."

"Back then, the first time, you knew you were hurting me." It was a low blow, and he hated himself before he was done saying the words, but the fury in Memi's face faded and revealed the fear and sadness beneath. He felt that he could hold her, and was glad for having on a long-sleeved shirt when he touched her skin before it had had the chance to cool completely. "I'm sorry, but you have to stop. Everything's okay, I'm okay, we're okay. I thought you wanted space, so I gave it to you, but I was missing you the whole time, too. Ah, and I have to apologize to Satilli, too; it looks like Sitte was the one messing with my dreams that time."

Memi looked up with confusion plain on her face. "No? Mares can't do wet dreams, just bad ones..."

Just then, Pippa came out of the bedroom and slapped a manga from Harry's collection on the coffee table. Sitte's face was on it... "So I found what she based her human form on. Harry likes yandere, from the wear on the pages."

"Wait, what were you looking at?" he asked.

Memi nodded. "There is a whole lot of it in his collection, yes."

"Why are we looking through my porn collection at a time like this!?"

Pippa laughed, rolling her neck. "Aside from morbid curiosity, I was wondering why something that can transform didn't try to present itself as something more universally appealing. You said it's been eating other spirits for a long time?"

"Since I was a little kid, seems like," he said and Sitte presented her trembling face just long enough to nod.

Pippa thought to herself and Lump climbed up to her shoulder to whisper theory into her ear. "Sounds like a natural poison-bug-jar phenomena. You didn't happen to live somewhere there'd been a gruesome murder, did you?"

"My dad built my childhood home."

"And there was a divorce?"

"They're still together now."

Pippa was silent for some time. "Anyway, there's this thing that happens when lesser spirits are pulled into one space. One of them typically ends up bigger than the others by eating the others, and it just compounds until the space is cleansed with an exorcism or the spirit gets big enough to leave by its own power and the prey dries up. What it looks like is this girl, miss Sitte, was it, grew powerful enough to evolve. If she's this attached to Harry already, we could always let things lie. Given her power level, and the length of time she's been with him, and the fact that his spirit is perfectly healthy for someone who has no less than three entities feeding off of him in one way or another, she's not dangerous."

"You can't be serious!" Memi turned to her. "Why should I accept this new girl after she nearly killed my master?"

From behind Harry, putting herself into the crossfire, Sitte showed herself at the side of the hug. Harry's stiffened his arms to keep Memi from lunging for the girl's throat, but she didn't struggle the way he'd imagined she would. Sitte was trembling. "You're the new one... I was here all along, and you took him away from me... I had to... had to... had to become like this so he would, would notice me at all..." She was clutching the hem of her shirt, flaring it out slightly to hide the fact that she'd not been wearing anything underneath but a pair of Harry's boxers, that might have set Memi off. "If I can't be with him... I don't think I... could..."

The implication hung in the air while everyone in the room shifted their perspective.

"I was living under his bed... I thought that if I became a pretty girl, too, I could... He'd look at me, he'd see me. I'm sorry... but I love him."

In his arms, Memi sighed and kissed him before putting a hand on his arm and extracting herself. Her tail hung limp between her legs, defeated, and she went to Sitte. While looking down at the girl, she spoke to Harry. "I figured something out while I was gone. I won't tell you how unless you command me and if you do, I'll hate you for it. I think my parents actually loved me."

"I'm glad that you see that," Harry said.

"Of course you knew... It seems like I'm the only one who didn't. It seems like I'm the one who doesn't know what love looks like..." She turned back to Harry with tears freely flowing down cooled cheeks. "Do you love me?"

"You know that I do."

"No I don't!...... You pulled me from that place, from those people when it didn't benefit you at all, and for that I'll be forever grateful. I'll be your familiar until the day you die, no matter what. I'll sleep with you whenever you command me to, I'll even like it. I'll sacrifice myself to you, every moment of every day until you come back with me to Hell, and then you will take your rightful place at my feet as my beloved pet..." She was shuddering, choking back sobs. "I would serve your wife, your wives... your husband if you chose to have one, or more... the same as I serve you... Do you love me, or her?"

He stepped back and tried to clear his mind down to the last axioms of thought, damning himself by the second as he failed to answer. He'd become a hostage to his emotions, so he unfairly thrust some of the responsibility onto Sitte. "I haven't talked to you honestly before. I can't return your feelings without even knowing why you say you love me. If it's just that I was nearby... something like that... I think you should move on and find someone you actually like, rather than someone boring like me."

The girl stepped forward and hugged... Memi... More surprisingly, Memi allowed it, even stroked the girl's shaggy, black hair.

"You're right," she said. "He's too nice. He always has been... That's why I found him. He let in spirits all the time to play with him during the day, called them imaginary friends, and then they would hurt him when his back was turned... I hurt him when his back was turned. I would sit on his chest and make him dream about choking to death, and that was delicious... I could stretch out one nightmare... lick his dreams for days... And he'd wake up and we would play... And I didn't, didn't feel bad, couldn't feel bad, I think... Then one day it was a really bad spirit, riding his back when he came home from school.

"He didn't look good... His dreams started tasting nasty. It was burying itself into his back, made him sick. Everyone there, all of the spirits, knew he was going to die if that thing ate him up. They all tried to get him while he was still alive, and he got sicker and sicker. I-I... I didn't love him then... I was thinking... If they ate him, I would never get to lick his dreams again, and I would never play with him again. So... while they bit him, I ate them...

"I got strong, strong enough to eat the big one, and then he got better, and then we played together and for the first time... for the first time I was really looking at him. Then, then I stayed with him, after he stopped talking with me and playing with me, and I ate anything that tried to get to him anyway. I thought he would come back to me, come back if I was patient. I followed him everywhere, followed him here. And then, and then he came home with, with something I couldn't eat... And his dreams got so much more tasty... And I thought, I thought that it didn't matter if he was mine, so long as he was happy...

"But you left, you left and I thought, I thought that I would have never left... I was just, was just going to show him, show him slowly, slowly while I had a chance... And then, then there was this thing..."

The broken remains of the dream catcher became a source of focus.

"He found out! He found out too soon!" she cried. "I needed time, time to be with him and love him! I forgot he had to eat! I'm sorry! I was panicking, I couldn't, couldn't figure anything out and every time I tried it just went, went more out of control and, and, and..." She sniffled against Memi's chest while Memi stroked her back to soothe her. "I'm sorry I told you he hated you, lied to you... I didn't know what to say... Needed more time, more time..."

Memi swallowed, clenched her fist and released it where she thought nobody could see. She'd already lost and she knew it.

Moving slowly so he wouldn't startle anyone and strike off sparks again, Harry went to the both of them and held them together. "Memi, I told you when Satilli wanted to be my girlfriend, that you had the final say. You still have it. I vow that you will always have the last say in whether anyone else is a part of our weird, multi-sided relationship. I promise you that I do love you, and I wouldn't even resent it if you wanted me all to yourself. Remember that you nearly goaded me into taking Satilli both of the first times I slept with him, with her. I would never do that outside our relationship, not willingly without your approval."

"You're asking me to accept this one too..."

"I am, for now, because I love you."

To the side, Pippa started leaving, said awkwardly, "So~ looks like you all have this covered for now, so I'm going to take my leave. Harry, come on down to the shop soon to redeem your account, and I'll want to talk to you about your childhood home. Alright? Alright, bye for real."

Memi said, "Okay... but I still want to talk about all of this later." She wiggled her way out of the threefold hug and Sitte was left freely standing between her and Harry. "You. If it's true that you've spent that long protecting my master, I will forgive your recent trespasses." She turned and wasn't completely successful at hiding the way her tail timidly curled around her leg or the blush that was spreading across her cheeks; she'd arrived in the nude for some reason and turning away did nothing to conceal the state. "Of all people, I should understand being so desperately angry that you can't think straight... But if it wasn't for you, it turns out, I never would have met my master... Hairy, my mother wanted me to be happy; she wanted me to have a pet that I could use to acclimate myself to a human's touch. If it hadn't been you, I think that I would have ended up happy down there, with some other random man on a leash. I think that's how she loved me."

He thought back to the nightmare he'd been subjected to recently. That's what that was: Sitte showing him just what might have happened if Fyelline's plans had gone the way she wanted. The girl was fidgeting, looking up at him in flitting, shy twitches; she had to understand what she'd done with that dream. How accurate was that, really?

When he was about to speak, the front door creaked open and a pink creature flounced all the way in to throw itself into Harry's arms, kicking her legs to get him spinning while she covered his face in smooches. Satilli nearly tripped him up with her bag, but settled as she had to acknowledge the others in the room. "Of course she does~" Satilli said. "Mistress loves the heck outta you. Was that something we were worrying about?"

Dumbstruck by the revelation that literally everyone had known but her, Memi only nodded.

Then, without missing a beat, Satilli broke from Harry's arms and rushed down the new girl and cuddled up, nuzzling her head against Sitte's. "And you're the one who was causing all that trouble, aren't you? I can't forget a smell, and you were all over those dreams."

"You knew she was there the whole time!?" Harry said.

"Yeah? Why did you think I was so offended, being compared to a mare?"

"I'm sorry for accusing you... I didn't know."

Satilli shrugged it off as if it had never been a big deal and she hadn't run off in tears. "Mistress told me I was being over-dramatic. And I've seen what a lack of trust does to a relationship..."

"We're glad to have you back." Harry sighed with a warm smile, relieved to have so much weight taken off of his shoulders in one go.

Memi said, "What did that woman have you doing since then? I expected you would appear at the doorstep in a couple of days like a lost puppy."

"Out with mistress," Satilli looked into the group and after some internal deliberation pulled Harry to the couch to plop herself in his lap. "We were getting this businessman to fuck his wife and get her pregnant so we could blackmail him into changing a contract he made with mistress a while ago. Firstborn son type of thing, you understand. Anyway, we settled for controlling stock in his company, through him as a board member. Oh! I have snacks~"

She dug out a small plastic bag each for the others and there were plenty more left over in her bag.

"They're only pre-production mock-ups, so don't be too harsh on the packaging."

Through clear plastic, it looked like mixed nuts in a radioactive red dusting. The bag featured a mildly racy illustration of Satilli herself (or himself, it was hard to tell from looking since the cartoon sported a leotard and Satilli wasn't especially "gifted" as either gender...) holding a trident through her legs and looking back at the viewer, her tail drawing a heart in the air behind her, the poff at its tip resting against her butt. Printed were the words: "Little devil's spicy nuts".

Harry looked at her, trying not to smirk at the punning.

"There's also salty nuts and yogurt-covered nuts that are better for licking." She smiled, self-satisfied.

Folding herself on the back of the couch, Sitte had torn open her bag with her teeth and was panting to try and cool off an alarmingly red tongue.

Memi sat pertly at Harry's side and didn't seem to be having any trouble with the spice. So, she was immune to more than one kind of heat.

Satilli put one between her lips and kissed Harry, pushing it into his mouth with her tongue. She had a grand time laughing at him while he sputtered and coughed.

"Hehe, I finally got to put my nuts in your mouth~ So, you got another girlfriend while I was away?" she asked, then ruffled Sitte's hair. "Cute. I like wearing his shirts, too."

He said, "I wasn't planning to cheat on you..."

"Hm?" Satilli wrapped herself more fully in his arms and nibbled on his earlobe, the frills of her skirt quietly rustling against him. "Are you worried? Don't. I may be younger that Memirellin, by a whole lot, but I'm an old-fashioned demon gal, when I'm not an old-fashioned guy. I'm happy so long as I'm in there somewhere." She whispered the last part so that neither of the others would get riled up. "I do still wanna pop your cherry, if you feel so bad about it?"

He smiled, sighed with relief. "Not bad enough for that."

"Can't blame a gal for taking her shot."

Sitte came in closer and whispered, "Sorry, I took that..."

--

Days passed, and the tableau of Harry's bedroom was as such: Satilli got the spot closest to the wall, hanging onto Harry's left arm; Memirellin hung onto the right arm while being cuddled by Laura, whose ass hung off the open side of a bed that had only been designed to carry, at most, two people; and Sitte lay atop Harry, after being convinced that she couldn't literally sit on his chest and stare down at him all night.

At a certain point, Harry started thinking that he'd have to consult Pippa as to what was so special about some nobody like him. She'd been right to get ahead of the problem by rejecting him flatly.

But he wasn't in too much of a hurry. If Laura were staying over any more frequently, he'd have been giving more thought to her offer of becoming a kept man.

He closed his eyes and slept.

And there was Sitte, in a modest black dress, looking over the shimmering waters of an undefined river landscape, leaning on a wrought-iron fence. Lights twinkled in the distance, but she hadn't spent enough time and effort on the scene to give it detail when Harry looked closely.

She waited for him to approach her by himself, didn't move to touch him when he leaned against the rail.

"I'm sorry I called them whores," she said.

"I understand... So, how much of that was an act?"

She turned her face away.

"It's just that the yandere fetish is one of those where it's a lot better as a fantasy than it is in reality. You don't have to keep it up for my sake if you don't want to."

"Not an act..." She shied away from him. "Not much of it... I was really mad. You were my first friend, and you left me behind, and I loved you. I wondered so much if you loved me, convinced myself you did, that you had the whole time... Do you?"

Harry put his arm around her thin waist and pulled her to his side. "I don't know," he said, "but I'm a sucker. I figure I wouldn't feel right if I didn't give you a chance, while we both see each other as what we really are. Just promise me one thing."

"What?" Her pale face turned to him in the moonlight.

"Never lie to me again."

Sitte leaned against his chest in the dream world; he caught the corner of a smile. "If I told you what I was, back when they left, and I told you how I loved you, would you still let me be with you?"

"I think I'd have tried to fit in a date, before things got too serious, with Memi's permission. At this point, since we've been together already, there aren't any options left but continuing on as if we'd met normally, or breaking up."

"... Thank you..."

"And... if you want to be with me, like that, we should do it in the real world. If I let you have that in my dreams, the others will get jealous. I'd never sleep soundly again, haha."

"Okay." Sitte turned around and wrapped her arms around his chest, knit her fingers together on his back. "For tonight, though, could I have you all to myself, just once?"

"In my dreams."

--end--