“if you manage to best me in combat, i’ll allow you to strike me. three times—i won’t strike back.”
that’s what your husband, naoya zen’in, told you, lifting three fingers as though he were granting alms. the curl of his mouth made it plain this was no challenge, only ridicule. “c’mon, i know you hate me.”
yet here you are now, sitting pretty in his lap, cashing it in.
the crack of your palm against his cheek is music you’ve rehearsed only in fantasies, and boy oh boy, reality does not disappoint. you know there will be hell to pay later (your petty bitchass husband never lets anything go) but right now, against all reason, it feels worth every ounce of future suffering. his elegant nostrils flare, yet he doesn’t flinch.
“wasting your chances already,” he jeers. the brief flicker of pity you might have felt vanishes. such staunch arrogance and wounded ego only makes winding up again that much sweeter.
his head jerks sideways at the blow, and when he turns back, that feral grin is still present; promising that you’ve just inked your own death warrant. palm stinging, and for the first time—when, even if only momentarily, you step out of your own vitriolic lens and view him through the warped mirror of naoya’s own narcissism—you see him with startling clarity: how striking he is, cheekbone flushed pink with your handprint. aristocratic features squandered on a rotten soul, but beauty nonetheless.
“that’s two,” he hisses, “one left. make it count.”
smiling sweetly, you oblige and draw your hand back for the final strike… only to feel something, ominously hard beneath you.
oh. oh. what a fucking loser.
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