Chapter Text
“It’s not too tight, is it?”
“Nope, all good.”
“Wait, how does this knot go again…”
“You take the ends of the rope, loop it over and then under this bit here, now pull it through— yeah, like that.”
“Hrrmph…” Lumine grumbled to herself as she fiddled with the length of rope in her hands, trying to keep the darn thing from tangling in on itself as she looped and knotted it around Heizou’s torso. “These hands were made for slaying monsters, not tying finicky little knots! Whose stupid idea was this?”
“You’re the one who said you wanted to try a more complicated harness,” Heizou laughed, “And you’re doing fine, don’t stress yourself out. This is supposed to be fun, remember?”
It was a golden Saturday afternoon in mid-May, the kind of day that any respectable citizen would spend soaking up the last vestiges of springtime before the arrival of summer’s intense heat. A day for a leisurely stroll through the scenic Inazuma countryside, or resting beneath a tree with a good novel in hand.
Yes, that is what a respectable citizen would do. However, for Shikanoin Heizou, this was a more enjoyable way to spend such a beautiful Saturday: kneeling on the floor of the Traveler’s secret playroom, taking refuge from the tiresome expectations and pressures of daily life for a few hours with a good old-fashioned bondage session.
“Maybe I’d feel more motivated if you wore the bunny suit,” Lumine pouted, flipping the page in the tutorial book laying by her side.
“That shade of red didn’t look right on me. You don’t want me looking all washed out in your glamour shots, do you~?”
“Tsk, so self-absorbed,” she teased, reaching up to pinch his cheek. “As if anything could detract from this face.”
“Even if you flatter me, I’m still not wearing it. Besides, you’d have to undo all your hard work, and you’re almost done.”
Lumine just stuck her tongue out at him and continued working in silence, a frown of concentration on her face as she wove the ropes, forming a decorative pattern across his body. Over, under, a loop here, a tug there; gradually her frustration eased as the rope harness took shape.
Heizou kept still and let her focus, feeling his own tension melt away under the comforting tightness of the ropes. For all that she liked to complain, Lumi’s shibari skills had really improved over the past few months.
Before they met, he used to do this alone in his cramped bedroom, praying none of his neighbors or coworkers would suddenly come knocking as they were sometimes wont to do. After he and Lumine had been friends for a while, he’d invited her over to his place for dinner one evening, sans Paimon — no ulterior motives at all, honest! She’d taken a sneaky little peek in his closet, and after delivering her a stern lecture on privacy, well… One thing led to another and the evening ended with Heizou tied up.
Yeah, that first time had been pretty painful.
Their offbeat relationship snowballed from there. Fast forward to present day, and he wasn’t sure he even knew how to decompress without getting tied up anymore. All the conventional relaxation methods had simply stopped working.
His coworkers definitely thought they were dating, or at least sleeping together, but in truth they hadn’t even kissed. And yet, their mutual hobby necessitated a level of trust and intimacy that went beyond the bounds of normal friendship. It didn’t quite satisfy his occasional pangs of longing for a real lover, but it was nice in its own way.
Above all, he felt so safe with Lumi. She understood him.
“Woohoo, it’s finished!”
Heizou’s attention was drawn back to reality at the sound of her joyous shouting. He glanced down at himself, admiring the Traveler’s handiwork. “Oh, well done! See, I knew you’d pull it off.”
“Come check yourself out!” She said, already tugging him to his feet and dragging him across the room to a large mirror, snatching her Kamera up along the way.
Heizou studied his reflection and couldn’t help being entranced. “Hot damn. Lumi my dear, you’ve outdone yourself again,” he said, tracing his fingers along the patterns in the rope, feeling it dig into his flesh. “Almost a shame no one else is ever gonna see this.”
“I know, right? This pattern really highlights your grabbable little waist and cute butt,” Lumine said, zooming in on said features through the Kamera lens as she circled him like a vulture.
“Hmm. On a scale from Ruin Guards to Anemo slimes, how cute would you say my butt is?”
“Anemo slime, for sure,” she tilted her head, “Why is the butt cuteness scale measured in monsters though?”
“Well, you wanna give it a firm smack, don’tcha?” He wiggled both his butt and his eyebrows at her.
Lumine grinned. “…When you’re right, you’re right. Permission to smack?”
“Granted.”
SMACK! -100 HP.
As soon as he got back to his own home, Heizou flung aside his clothes into the laundry pile and flopped onto his futon, not even bothering to turn on a single light in the house. Resting on a soft surface allowed him to bask in the usual post-shibari drowsiness, and yet, though his muscles felt limp and relaxed, something was nagging at the back of his brain. Try as he might, rest would not come.
Damn it, why did he still feel all wound up? Were their — admittedly tame — sessions losing their potency? Would he have to keep dialing up the intensity until nothing but the most extreme of the extreme did anything for him?
He glanced at the closet where he kept his private erotica stash and kink paraphernalia. Maybe he just needed to fall back on an old favorite fantasy and ‘rough up the suspect’ a little bit?
His body felt so heavy that the closet might as well have been in Mondstadt for all the effort it took to cross the distance. Groaning as he rose to his feet again, he finally lit his bedside lantern and went to browse his novel collection for something that might do the trick.
Hmm… Now what was he in the mood for?
Wholesome childhood friends developing a Master/pet relationship? Always a classic, but tugged at his heartstrings more than it turned him on.
That one with the vampire twink and his traumatized human boyfriend was pretty great, but he wasn’t feeling up for a slow burn, and skipping to the juicy part was downright disrespectful.
Angsty lesbian hate-sex between an evil sorceress and the plucky chosen heroine? …Maybe.
Oh, who was he trying to fool? He reached for the most well-worn book on the shelf, one he’d read so many times that he could have easily recited the words in his head… The one where the genius detective gets outwitted and inevitably bent over by a charming outlaw.
Ahem. It just happened to be his favorite because it had top-tier writing, and for no other reason. If it also happened to be super easy to put himself in the protagonist’s shoes and indulge in a convenient delusion of getting plowed by a sexy criminal, who could blame him? And if, in his vivid imagination, that sexy criminal always ended up having white-blond hair, eyes like an autumn sunset and a carefree smile that turned his knees into jelly, that was his own business, thank you very much.
With the book in hand, he crawled back under his blanket and got cozy, diving back into the familiar prose. Was it necessary to start from the beginning for the sake of a masturbation session? Perhaps it was strange, but he liked having rituals for these things. Even though he knew the story by heart, he never got bored of it. In fact, far from being bored, reading it still got him flustered every time.
That outlaw was just… so dreamy.
These characters wasted no time establishing the sexual tension. They were verbally undressing each other right from chapter one, and their unresolved lust got thicker with every page, until it culminated in a first time so heated that he could swear the book itself was radiating warmth — though it was likely just his own body temperature rising.
He slipped a hand below his waistband, gripping himself with just the right amount of pressure. Reading with one hand wasn’t the easiest activity, but he had plenty of practice. The important thing was not to get the pages dirty.
Although the characters’ first time together was hot, it held no comparison with his favorite scene later in the book. It was the difference between curiosity about a new flavor versus craving more of something you’d already gotten a taste of and becoming ravenous for it.
Not that he’d know what that was like.
Heizou’s hand moved a little faster, imagining it was someone else’s instead. He set the book aside and clamped his free hand over his mouth, both to muffle himself for the neighbors’ sake and for the extra immersion. The idea of being held down and forced to hold back his moans made it feel even better.
That’s what He would have done, if he were there…
What who would have done, Heizou? A voice inside Heizou’s head, soft as a spring breeze, taunted him. You can’t stop thinking of me, can you? Look at yourself, humping your own fist and pretending it’s that book that’s getting you so hot and bothered. What difference does it make if you silence your cries? They would fade on the wind long before they traveled far enough for me to hear. No one’s listening, yet still you refuse to let my name pass your lips?
Oh no, not now. A whine tore from Heizou’s throat, and he slipped two fingers into his mouth, sucking eagerly. Phantom whispers spurred him on, That’s right, get them nice and wet. You’d love something more than fingers in that sweet mouth of yours, wouldn’t you?
Poor, desperate little deer. You’ve been trying your hardest to uphold your ideal of justice, but your heart’s deepest desire is to be on your knees for me. Wouldn’t it be nice, not to have to strive for anyone’s praise but mine? To be fawned over, to be punished in the ways that matter.
You know I would take such good care of you…
“Nnh…” That was all it took. With a choked cry, his orgasm swept through him like a tornado, and he quickly reached for a nearby cloth to catch the mess. He felt like melting into his sheets as the tension ebbed from his body.
Returning to his senses, he watched his semen soak into the maple leaf pattern on the handkerchief he’d grabbed and a pang of guilt stabbed him in the chest. “Damn it, I told myself I’d quit doing this.”
His illusory fugitive laughed at him as he drifted off to sleep.
That night, as if his mind were eager to thrust him further into the abyss of escapism, he had a dream.
The details were fuzzy around the edges, as dreams tended to be. A whisper of skin, a hot mouth fastening itself to his. The cold edge of a blade at his throat, the feeling of being pinned to the mattress by the rough hands of an unseen stranger. No matter how he tried to yell for help, his voice evaporated into the dark, and struggling felt like moving through syrup.
He jolted awake in a cold sweat, still shivering from the intensity of the dream. It wasn’t his first dream of the sordid sort, not by a long shot, but that one felt way too real. A telltale stickiness told him sweat wasn’t the only side effect of his sleepy-time rendezvous.
…Shit. Did he seriously get off from that? None of his daytime fantasies had ever veered into such non-consensual territory before. No, no, he was just sexually frustrated. That had to be all it was. There was no way he would enjoy it in real life.
By the time the day’s work was done, he’d almost put it out of his mind. Chalked it up to a one-off thing — a consequence, perhaps, of staying up too late reading something too spicy for bedtime. Nothing more than a byproduct of his stress mingling with his overactive imagination.
Until the dream repeated.
And repeated.
And repeated.
The particulars were slightly different every time, but the effect it had on him remained the same. After the seventh night of wet dreams in a row, he was so tired of re-washing his pajamas that he resented the need to wear them at all. At this rate, his dream journal was going to become an erotic novel penned by his own hand.
Things couldn’t go on like this. He needed to call in reinforcements.
It wasn’t until another week had passed that he found the time to drop by Lumi’s Teapot again, and the dreams still had not stopped — if anything, they’d gotten worse. Boy, the lingering vertigo caused by the teleportation was rough when one was already sleep-deprived and wracked with anxiety. Tubby barely stirred from her nap to welcome Heizou into the Realm, and he made his way to the basement.
Lumine snapped her fingers in front of his face with a slight frown, setting down the bundle of scarlet rope. “Are you sure you wanna do this right now? You look exhausted.”
“I’m fine, just haven’t been sleeping well,” he said, keeping his tone light yet refusing to meet her gaze. “Which is why I hoped you could help me relax.”
“Help you relax, or help you avoid talking about your problems by literally gagging you?”
“Hey, we don’t have to use the gag today—”
“Shikanoin Heizou. Tell me what’s distracting you, or I’ll never tie you up again,” Lumine said, crossing her arms and staring him down.
“Tch.” He put his face in his hands, letting out a groan that lasted a good five seconds. “Alright, alright. I’ll tell you, but you’d better keep it top secret, understand?”
“Of course, my lips are sealed! I won’t tell a soul, not even Paimon,” she promised, placing a hand over her heart.
“Good. If you told Paimon, I would have no choice but to deep-fry her, and then we would all be left with no mascot.”
“We still have Klee.”
“…I don’t think I need to say this, but if you tell Klee, right to jail, right away,” Heizou deadpanned.
Lumine snickered and rolled her eyes. “Duh. Cross my heart and hope to die. Now quit stalling and spit it out! You have my full attention.”
Heizou sighed and sprawled himself across the green velvet chaise, which Lumine had placed in the playroom for the specific purpose of being sprawled across. He clutched a fluffy pillow to his chest for moral support as he began to vent his recent frustrations to the Traveler’s patient ears. “Okay, so the situation is like this. Every night for the past two weeks, I’ve been having this really vivid dream, over and over… And I’m beginning to suspect that I won’t get any peace until it becomes a reality, but… Mngh.”
“Aha! I get it. They’re spicy dreams, huh?”
A tint of red stained his cheeks, and he nodded. “As expected of my partner, you catch on quick.”
“You’re not usually in such a tizzy about that kinda stuff though. I mean,” she gestured broadly around the playroom, “considering this is how you like to unwind. Must be some super extra spicy dreams.”
“It’s not the spice level that’s bothering me,” he grumbled, “There’s more to it than that.”
“Is it something… illegal? Immoral? Dangerous?”
He curled up into a ball around the pillow he was hugging and drew in a long, shaky breath. Lumine kept quiet, leaned forward and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, which he reached up and gave a little squeeze in return.
“It always starts with me tied naked to a bed, blindfolded, gagged, ears plugged… Left alone at the whims of an unseen stranger with an arsenal of devices at their disposal, unable to do anything but lie there and endure whatever they decide to do to me,” he said, shivering at the memories, “The specifics of the ordeal are different every time, but suffice to say all of it would get the perpetrator’s ass kicked in a heartbeat under normal circumstances. And my waking brain knows I should be horrified…”
“But deep down, you love it and can’t stop thinking about it and wonder if you’ve finally lost your marbles,” Lumine deduced.
“…Yeah, that’s a way to put it,” he said, hiding his face in his emotional support pillow.
“And it’s up to your dutiful rope buddy to help you scratch this itch without getting yourself killed or otherwise traumatized.”
Heizou sucked in a sharp breath and nodded again. “Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy what we do together. But my intuition is telling me it’s not enough anymore. It’s like… snacking on rice crackers when your body is screaming at you to eat some meat.”
“Okay, so what is it that you need ol’ Rice Crackers here to do? Just find someone who’s in the market for a good sturdy fuck toy?”
“Please, someone trustworthy, Lumi. Despite what my nocturnal indiscretions may suggest, I don’t have any real desire to get torn apart by a sex-crazed maniac.”
“Got it. So first I find a trustworthy volunteer, and then they use you like a fuck toy.”
“…Say ‘fuck toy’ one more time.”
“Fuck toy.”
“Thanks, Lumi.”
Sweet, sweet, reliable Lumine. He was going to owe her big time for this one, but he had faith that she’d be able to help him solve his problem, as unreasonable a request as it was. He would have done the same for her. With that weight off his chest, the rest of their get-together continued as usual. She asked him a heap of questions about his preferences, boundaries and expectations while she practiced another complicated rope design on him. With every answer he gave her increasingly personal questions, he could see the gears turning in her head.
Once she’d run out of questions and received satisfying enough answers, she gave him an impish smile that told him she already had a plan brewing.
This was gonna be fun.