The Roles We Play
A Donovan's Door Collection
Feeling flush with accomplishment and the alcohol’s warm, soothing effect, Hayato mixed himself a little something. See, he thought as he took another deep and satisfied sip, this socializing thing wasn’t all that hard. He didn’t need Peter to have a good time. He’d done just fine on his own.
He turned, when he felt a tap on his shoulder, just in time to avoid the crowd of conga-ing costumers gyrating to some oddly mixed song that sounded strangely like French reggae. Stumbling a bit as a few of the line’s more enthusiastic — if not most coordinated — members bumped into him, Hayato felt a pair of hands cup his, steadying him and his now sloshing glass.
“Careful.”
He secured his grip on his glass as he looked up to see the costumed Zatanna in front of him, her blue eyes smiling — maybe even laughing — at him. The curve of her darkly painted lips seemed somewhere between a smirk and an invitation. Hayato pondered which it could be even as his gaze slipped south, idly tracing the deep vee of her pearl white vest that — while not exactly canon-accurate — lay tantalizingly tight over black lace-covered breasts.
“Mix me a potion?” she asked, calling his gaze back up to her grinning face.
“Sorry,” he mumbled over the loud, culturally eclectic music, blushing at how he’d been caught ogling, as he set his glass aside and wiped his wet hand against his jeans. Maybe that was enough intoxication tonight.
She just continued smiling, seeming oddly and mysteriously omniscient. “Make me a drink?”
“Uh, sure,” he said, flustered by that gaze. Not knowing what else to do, he turned to start mixing again. His neck prickled as he felt her watch him, her gaze assessing while he grabbed and combined this and that. At first, he thought that she was judging the drink but, the more he mixed, he didn’t think so.
She was watching him. Not his hands, as the others had, trying to figure out formulas and recipes. She was watching him. The whole of him. And waiting. For something. Something Hayato couldn’t even begin to guess at.
It was as if she knew him. As if, with so much familiarity from her, he really ought to know her.
But he didn’t think he did.
He was sure he would remember a girl like her. With clever, blue eyes that shone sharply with thoughts he could see but not decipher. Like him, she had a very angular face, sculpted in shapes that should have seemed wrong but somehow, together, were stunning. Riding that line between gaunt and gorgeous, the sharp planes of her nose and cheeks, her brow and chin, were as alien as they were alluring.
Long, dark curls framed her face and flowed down her back and over her shoulders, caressing her body as she leaned against the counter.
Though he tried — so very hard — not to, his eyes kept drifting to her breasts that were now propped up on her forearms as she rested against the back of a chair. He wondered if she’d done that on purpose. If her arms, that encased and displayed, were a deliberate attempt to draw his gaze down. Judging by her knowing grin, he thought yes.
“Hayato,” she said, tilting her head as he handed her the drink concoction — some grab-bag of booze that he couldn’t have recreated to save his life, “right?”
He looked up a little sheepishly.
So she did know him.
He nodded, unsure if it was ruder to ask for her name now or pretend like he knew it. Not much for names, he didn’t normally pay much attention, if he could help it. He always figured that sort of thing tended to work itself out in the normal run of things, linking memory and importance in a completely organic way.
And, looking her over again — Hayato was almost sure — if he’d once known this girl’s name, he would have made a point of remembering it.
“Halloween is the best time of year, isn’t it?” the magician continued, leaning a bit more forward on the chair to reveal the deep vee of her cleavage.
Those pale, round breasts were beautiful, rising — just a bit — with every breath as they pushed against the tight fabric of her vest. He knew it was rude to stare but, try as he might, he couldn’t look at her without staring. “Sure,” he said on a deep swallow as he forced his gaze to focus on hers.
“There’s magic in the air this time of year,” she said breezily, even while studying him as if she could read his every thought, as if she could witch out exactly where his mind had drifted. “One night a year, we all get a chance to be someone else. To be something else.”
Hayato thought about that. About the magic in not being yourself.
Except he liked himself.
He was honors pre-law at the college of his choice. He’d been on the Dean’s List every semester. He was a National Merit Scholarship Winner, a National Collegiate Scholar, and the youngest member of an elite study group for law students.
He was on track. He’d been preparing for this, working his ass off, for as long as he could remember. Why would he want to give that up, even if just for one night?
“With a little makeup and a wig,” she mused, “you can step out of your life and into one of your own imagining. With just a wardrobe change, it’s like being given license to do all the things you normally wouldn’t. It’s like identity alchemy.”
Hayato nodded and shrugged, not really sure what to say. To be honest, Hayato hadn’t had all that much experience with girls outside a classroom. Mostly fumbled fits made in library reading nooks or someone’s dorm room bunk bed. And, while he’d certainly enjoyed himself and — God, he hoped — they’d enjoyed themselves, he wasn’t altogether certain he’d even know what to do with a girl like the magician, who was almost too pretty to look at, much less touch.
“You just can’t beat that,” she sighed almost wistfully.
Not that he was planning to touch her or anything. Hoping, sure. Fantasizing, oh yeah. But she’d only asked him to make her a drink. She was a sorority sorceress and he was an undergrad in a secondhand hat; he couldn’t even imagine what she would want with him beyond a little bartending.
He watched as she tipped the red solo cup back, draining the “Love Potion #9” in one long drink. Even over the party’s strange soundtrack of German punk rock, he heard the definitive crunch of the cup’s plastic as she all but slammed it back on the table. “I want to show you something,” she told him, her face a bit tight but determined. “Upstairs.”
He blinked. Upstairs? “What?” he asked blankly, sure he’d heard her wrong.
“Magic,” she told him, answering a question he hadn’t actually asked but was pretty sure he liked the answer to. “I want to show you some magic.”
Hayato had to blink for a moment, his brain adjusting to hearing the vaguely porno phrase outside the fantasy. It was weird. Even in the real world, the words sounded like fantasy. Scripted and a little stilted, she’d said them as if she didn’t really mean them.
He wondered what that meant.
Then she held out her hand to him, the gesture so much more convincing than the words.
His gaze swept over the long lengths of her legs, lifted and shaped by the tall heels on her feet, and up the swell of her slim hips. He swallowed hard at the way the tight vest clung to her waist, soft and sweetly curved, before framing — hugging — those breasts.
Meeting her pretty, blue eyes, he saw the briefest flicker in her gaze — a quick break in character. He reached out, that look making him take her hand. There was something so familiar in that look. An uncertainty that he knew well and wished she didn’t.
He watched that crack in her confidence close as her small hand gripped his, tugging him through the party crowd and up the stairs, and wondered why that would make him feel so much better.
Hayato swallowed hard as the scent of booze, sweat, and over-stimulation struck him. Seeking that surety again, he held tight to her hand and focused on the magician as she snaked her way through the space, sometimes seeming little more than an arm almost swallowed by the mob and a bouncing top hat.
They wove through congested hallways, squeezing tight to couples who’d congregated in and out and around the bedrooms. Some of the doors were wide open, revealing rooms overflowing with too many conversations and even more people. Some doors were shut, quiet dens — pockets of conspicuous silence — or muffled murmurs — music or moans — hidden behind the wood and walls.
They stopped in front of a door, shut and silent. Hayato held his breath as she turned the knob. Letting his hand go, she stepped into the room, flicking on the light. She turned, a dramatic, almost dance-like pivot, with her hands spread in ta-da as she took off her hat in one smooth motion. Standing just inside its entrance, she looked at him, left lingering in the hallway. “Come in.” It was almost a command with just a trace of question touching the performance.
He stepped into the room, the door shutting behind him. He gave a small laugh and shuffled a bit on her carpet as she reached into her hat. “Don’t tell me there’s a rabbit in there,” he said.
She pulled out a box of cards and waved them at him. “Much as I love a classic hat trick, pretty sure a bunny violates house rules,” she said as she sat down on one of the room’s beds.
“So you actually do magic?” he asked, a little impressed. He’d figured it was just a costume and a line.
“Of course,” she said, an obvious look on her face, as she gestured for him to join her on the crimson comforter covering her bed. “I told you, I’m a fan of magic.”
Hayato looked around what he assumed was her half of the room as he sat down. C.S. Lewis sat spine-bent and well-read next to Tolkien on her bedside. Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey sat stacked on her shelves. Kelley Armstrong kept Kim Harrison company as their corners peeked out from under her bed. And strewn and stuck alongside all those were biographies of Houdini and David Copperfield and how-to books on classic illusions and close-up magic. They were everywhere, tucked away like treasures among her textbooks.
“So what are you going to do?” he asked, nodding to her as she shuffled the deck. “Do I pick a card, any card?”
“Mmm,” she said as she dealt out eight cards, four in front of him and four in front of her, “sort of.” With a flick of her hands, she shuffled the rest of the cards. “We’re going to play a game.”
A game? “Okay,” he said, even parts wary and intrigued. “What kind of game?”
She flipped the top card in the deck and flashed the eight of hearts. “Basic high card, low card,” she said. “Beat my card,” she said, flipping the next to reveal the jack of spades, “and I’ll take something off.”
He swallowed hard as his gaze shifted south. He liked those rules. “And if I don’t?” he asked.
“Then you do,” she answered simply.
That was a magic trick?
Looking at her, sitting cross-legged across from him, her soft thighs parted and her posture welcoming.
Yeah, maybe it was a kind of magic.
“Sure,” he agreed, shifting to mirror her position on the bed...
Check out this Donovan's Door Collection filled with stories that explores roles, identity, and pleasure.
Witness some of this series' favorite characters' first forays into kinks, from bondage to bargaining. Explore the thrilling joys and sometimes intense complexities of power dynamics, role play, and negotiating games in this collection of short stories.
Join these kinksters as they discover who they are, both within and together, both in-scene and out.
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