So much has happened I don't really know where to begin. I just got back from Carnival a few days ago. My cubes arrived after forever. My dad got food poisoning from the classic sodas I gave him at Christmas (I feel really bad about that). I picked up learning 日本語 again. I'll start with Carnival because it was most important.
Carnival
Day One
I left work at the time I expected and got to listen to about half of We Are Legion (We Are Bob), Bobiverse Book 1 on the way. It was a really good time. I really found myself getting absorbed into the book and when my foot inevitably began to hurt from pressing down the pedal the whole time it didn't hurt as much. At Breezewood, I got 3 donuts for me and 3 donuts for Fef, picking for her a Sour Cream donut because I know she loves sour cream, a Blueberry Cake donut because I already know she likes it, and a Cruller because it seemed like something she would like. I got myself the usual Boston Cream, which I ate immediately, and a Strawberry Frosted. I don't remember what the last one was. Probably a Chocolate Cake donut.
I had been planning for a while to knock on Fef's door and surprise her by not announcing my presence beforehand. I got pretty lucky in this case. I followed someone into the building, which I knew would be easy since I still look like a college student. The potential issue that I came across that resolved itself was when I got into the elevator. I just happened to be waiting with another student, and when we got in they asked me for the floor I wanted. I told them, they scanned their ID card, and pressed both buttons. If that person hadn't been there, or I had gotten on first, things could have gotten awkward for me since I couldn't press any buttons. I proceeded to Fef's room as expected, and was happy to find that my plan had succeeded! She was indeed surprised to just see me suddenly there. She began packing her things and told me that I arrived just in time. She was just about to head to bed early because she was tired.
The hotel room was great! It had a nice carpeted floor, an interesting couch, a kitchen, a separate bedroom, and a dial for temperature control. I remember other hotels being digital and resetting the temperature on me after a few hours. Not this one! I could set it to warm and it would stay warm all day! The kitchen came with a full refrigerator/freezer, microwave, utensils, dishes, sink, and dishwasher. Everything was of pretty nice quality too. It was all so much better than the place across the street from my friends, and cheaper! I still can't believe it. The next time I go back, I'll definitely be staying there again. Though there was the small issue of the bathroom door not closing, and having to go up two different elevators to get to the room, those problems were easily overlooked.
Like most of the first nights we spend together after a while, neither of us got a lot of sleep that night. We talked and kissed for hours. She actually wound up getting horny and wanted to do something about that. We decided that we'd wait for the next day to see what she wanted to do, to make sure that she wasn't disassociating and that doing something about it wouldn't be harmful.
Day Two
The next morning, we did something about it, almost accidentally. She wasn't hurt and seemed to be happy that it happened. It makes me so happy that I can be so close to my favorite person! We decided to make a change to how we talk about that kind of activity. We decided to use the work "flirf" instead. The idea being that there are connotations attached to the other word that could possibly be triggering, so using a light, fun-sounding word instead would help keep the happy frame of mind. It seemed to work, or at least not be a problem, since we were able to continue talking about it after the fact with no issue. Unfortunately, Fef didn't get to stick around long because it was Wednesday and she still had class, so I drove her to campus. She said she'd be redoing the pink in her hair and that she'd be done around 10-11.
I spent the rest of my day trying to work remotely. I had issues with everything. Logging in, accessing drives on the VPN, remembering to set my Slack status, remembering to send the morning and evening status updates to everyone I was required to, and even just having a stable internet connection. It was all an issue. I wound up setting alarms the next day for the status update emails. I switched from using the hotel wifi to tethering my laptop to my phone. And eventually I stopped having issues logging in because I already was, or knew what I needed to do.
Since I drove Fef to campus, I didn't have much time for lunch. I ordered Chinese food from GrubHub, one of the things I miss most about CMU. I wound up not being able to finish the meal, a rare sight back in my college days, and saved the rest for later.
As my work day went on, I found it increasingly difficult to keep my eyes open. I guess 4 hours of sleep will do that to you. I made good progress though, and the rest of the work day went off without a hitch, going way better after I made the switch to tethering. I took a small break when I was done to mentally recuperate. Frosty pinged me and inquired about dinner plans. I agreed to meet up and go to Quiznos and headed out, bringing some of my new cubes, and my old Magic cards. I wasn't that hungry, but I'll take any opportunity to hang out with my friends. The lack of hunger also allowed me to be adventurous and I tried a sub with lobster in it. It wasn't bad at all. I talked Frosty's ear off about cubes and JoJo and we headed back to his place where we played cards and were eventually joined by Gordon.
As the night wore on, I began to get more and more concerned about Fef. I'm pretty sure everyone around me realized that I wasn't just tired like I said I was and that I was really more concerned about something else. I sent Fef a few messages, but when she didn't answer I got more and more worried. Bad thoughts swirled in my mind from her never wanting to talk to me again because maybe flirfing violated her trust in me to her being injured. Eventually, I decided that I should head out because I just wasn't having fun anymore. I announced that I was headed out, and Frosty lent me his umbrella, since it was now thunderstorming.
When I got to the basement of the building, I considered going directly to Fef's room on campus to see if she was okay. In the end, I wound up ignoring my feelings and going with the logical thought that she was most likely fine and her hair dyeing was just going on (much) longer than expected, so I headed back to the hotel. Plus that would mean that I could grab my car, drive it back to campus, and when we headed back Fef wouldn't have to go through the rain.
That twenty minute walk was one of the worst experiences of my life. I've never been in a thunderstorm like that. The lightning was so close I could feel it. The rain was spilling all around my little umbrella and soaking through my shoes. The dark was only punctuated with the occasional bolt of light or car passing by. I had to maneuver my way through streets that were unfamiliar to me, trusting blindly in my gps. The longer I walked, the more sure I became of something really bad happening with Fef. Every thunderclap drove a primal fear deeper into my heart. And by the time I had finally climbed that long, cold, dark hill back to my hotel room, I didn't waste any time getting into my car and getting back to campus. I didn't go back to my room and switch out my clothes like I had planned. While I did sent a couple of messages during my walk to Fef in a desperate attempt to find her okay, I didn't send any after I could see the building. I sped back... and she was fine.
Her room was full of voices as I approached and I think Anna let me in. I said hi to Fef as soon as I could see her. She seemed surprised to see me. I really felt inappropriate being there. She was just in a bathrobe that didn't go past her thighs. The room was full of non-males, and though most of them knew me, it still felt like I was invading on something that I would never be invited to. It didn't really matter though. I was so relieved to see her. Though I would still be on-edge until we were alone together. That turned out to not be for hours however. Still, I made the best of it and had a good time talking with Anna. She made a joke about how only half a keyboard couldn't be useful, and I joked back that it just made things more difficult but was still doable. We settled into a game where she'd give me a challenge phrase to paraphrase with the available keys. It was quite fun and it passed the time well.
After that game ended, Fef emerged from the bathroom and it was Ren's turn to get their hair bleached. During this time, Fef replaced the battery in the copy of Emerald I gave her. It was pretty neat watching her do it. There was some tension as she pried the prongs off the battery, since if she made one small mistake it would ruin the cartridge. While she was working on the prongs, I went and moved my car to make sure it wouldn't be towed. I came back and she was still working on it. In the end, she got the battery out, the new battery in, taped it down, put the case back together... and found that she had lost the screw. I got down on the ground with my flashlight app to help her find it. We probably searched for ten minutes before we were joined with Anna and Sonia. About a minute after I gave up the search, Fef found it using Sonia's magnet! Fef put the game back together, booted it up, and it worked just like new!
Ren was done their bleaching shortly after that and Fef hurried them out of her room. Shortly after that, she packed her things, put on clothes, and we headed back to my hotel room. I was still really shaken up by the bad thoughts and my walk through the thunderstorm. When we got back and got into bed, all I wanted was for her to hold me. She did, and I was soon asleep.
Day Three
We both woke up at around the same time, but Fef was up before me. She was so smiley and bouncy that I couldn't help but grin, despite the searing sun in my eyes from when she opened up the blackout curtains on me. We ate the last of the donuts and I began my work. She didn't have any classes today since carnival had technically started! We talked a lot about Pokemon and things happening on Twitter while I'd wait for things to happen work-wise. Talking with her always makes my work so much better, and all the more so when it's in person and not through IM.
When it got to around the time I'd have lunch, she asked me when my lunch break was. I told her it was whenever I wanted it to be and asked her if she was hungry. Her response was that she was feeling in a flirfy mood. That caught me off-guard before I realized that was probably why she kept readjusting her pajama shorts while she'd walk around. I quickly set my status to "@LUNCH" on Slack and we headed to the bed. We were cleaned off and showered about forty-five minutes later. I then drove her back to her dorm so that she and Ren could finish the dyeing part of dyeing their hair.
I made a mistake on the way back to my hotel. Google maps decided that my most likely next destination was the hotel I stayed at the last time I was in Pittsburgh, for whatever reason. I assumed that the top suggestion would be my hotel and went with it, all the way there, where the traffic wound up being so bad that I didn't budge for a full light-cycle. Eventually I gave up, made a U-Turn into the oncoming traffic's lane, and left. I made it back to my room about fifteen minutes later than I should have, but no one at work would have to know that. I could always play dumb and say that I just forgot to set my status away from "@LUNCH" for a little while.
As soon as work was over, I headed out of the building and away to Christophe's place for DnD. I arrived a little later than we initially planned, but I was at least able to alert him that that would be the case earlier in the day. I got to work on making my character, which wasn't so bad since Craig still wasn't done with his either. The campaign would be us going through an cave/dungeon system to blow up a critical point to with the Shantine/Fialta war. After hearing what archetypes everyone else had already picked, I wound up going with an explosives expert. I also wound up suggesting for a couple background points having explosives in my chest that might go off whenever I take explosives damage. Christophe agreed with it and wound up expanding on the idea by suggesting to me that my character would be possessed by a demon and to keep it from taking me over, I was inputting a code to keep the explosives from detonating at a regular interval of about two minutes.
The rest of the game was the usual fun for one of Christophe's sessions, and my character had some really great moments. One of those moments was when Sean was completely unable to deal any significant amount of damage to three enemies so my character stepped in and took them all out with a "dusting" of grenades. Of course, I then had to deal with something else as it turned out one of those enemies was possessed by an angel, which then body-hopped and tried to take me over. I successfully passed every will save thrown my way while my character was huddled in the corner, foaming at the mouth and the other players were deciding what to do with me. While they were deciding, they were also trying to open a door. As soon as my saves were done, my character gets up and opens the door for them that they had spent several rounds failing to open. Of course, I accidentally took explosive damage, so I had to perform another save to keep myself from exploding instantly, which I managed to pass.
The climax for my character was after we had reached the point in the dungeon that we wanted to blow up. I started steathily placing the explosives while the other players were fighting. All was going swimingly until Anderson's inevitable betrayal (since his characters 9 times out of 10 wind up betraying the party). His ice climbers threw a pickaxe at me, killing me instantly. Christophe gave me a 1 in 6 chance of exploding because of it, which I actually rolled! The explosives in my chest were compounded by all the grenades and other explosives weapons I had on my body, plus the heavier ones that I was planting. The explosion took out most of the enemies, most of the structure nearby, and completed our objective. Everyone in the party left alive now had to get out as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately for Sean, his character had fallen off a small bridge and couldn't get up. The demon in my body jumped to him and asked him for permission to take over to save his life. But Sean being Sean shut down the request without hesitation (ever hear of roleplaying, dude?). Luckily for him, however, an NPC that was his friend came and helped him along, but as he was assisting Sean, a pillar fell on him, crushing his legs. Sean performed a heal check to save his life and rolled a natural 20. Christophe explained this feat by saying that the demon jumped from Sean to the NPC, so we can expect to see some interesting events from this character in future games. Overall, I really enjoyed the game and it makes me wish that I could stand to play over the phone so I could continue to experience them.
Now that the game was over, we all headed outside and talked for a little while. There was a light rain, so we stood underneath the overhang in front of Christophe's apartment building. While we were talking I asked Fef how her hair dyeing went, but it turned out she was still doing it with Ren, so I tried to talk as long as possible and I wound up making plans with Christophe to get lunch the next day. I walked back to my room and tried to work on the drawing I had started making for Fef, the one with her OC playing on a GBA. I couldn't bring myself to work on it though because I was so tired and I just wound up watching YouTube videos and browsing Tumblr while trying very hard not to pass out. When I could take it no longer, around 1:30 AM, Fef said that Ren was leaving and I could head over.
When I got there, Fef wasn't quite ready to leave yet, since she was still letting her hair dry a bit and was in her bathrobe. Having traveled there, as well as being able to talk with her, woke me up enough that I wasn't about to fall asleep anymore. After about an hour, I think, slightly less because I was getting worried about having to move my car, she started changing and getting ready to leave. So much had changed from the first night, when I had to stand in another room for her to check her skin. Now she was comfortable being topless around me while she put on clothes. We headed back to the room and went immediately to bed, talking very little since it was so late. But I got to turn off my alarm since I didn't have work the next morning, so that was a huge plus!
Day Four
The next morning, I woke up horny and decided to initiate flirfing, which Fef was receptive to, but not as enthusiastic as the previous two times. When it was over, I could tell something was wrong because she was staring off into space with a frown. I asked her what was on her mind, probing to see if she was feeling bad about flirfing. Her response was that she didn't like how her hair had turned out, that she felt it was less bright than previously. I couldn't really imagine it being brighter though, and said as much, but it didn't dissuade the thought. I spent some time trying to comfort her, suspecting the entire time that I had fucked up by initiating the flirfing when she hadn't felt like it first. Eventually she said that she just wanted to spend some alone time in her room, so I drove back to campus and I dropped her off.
While I was wondering what I would do with my time, I checked the group Discord and found that most everyone was on campus to look at the booths and such. I sent them a message while they were planning to get lunch, and joined them. I wound up not being able to park in the Morewood lot, so I went down to the museum and parked there. We met up and went to Little Asia, where we got seated in the very back of the restaurant, tucked away from the rest of the paying customers. This did give up the opportunity to be louder than we would normally have been, and even played some YouTube videos on our phones.
From Little Asia, we headed to the booths. They had already gone through some of them, and the selection this year was rather limited, so we were done relatively quickly. The two booths I had the most interest in were one that was marketed on the outside as 90's Cartoons, and one that was themed with Samurai Jack (this being the year of its return, a booth with it as the theme is not surprising). The 90's Cartoons one was mostly The Powerpuff Girls (50% basically). It was really well-painted on the inside, and they had the PPG theme playing on loop. The rest was Dexter's Lab and then Rugrats, with a collage of other cartoons at the very end. There was also a VR "game" that they had made that was barely anything at all, and certainly not worth the wait, but the rest of the booth was fun. The Samurai Jack one was very creative with using varied materials to give it the look they wanted. For example, they used solo cups as shingles for the roof, and had a paper mache Aku. There was nothing at the end to punctuate the booth, and it felt like it kind of just ended.
So after that we stood around for a while, trying to figure out what to do. We moved into the shade by Tepper and sat down at one of the tables to continue trying to figure it out. I polled Fef to see if she wanted to get involved, but I couldn't get a positive sign from her, which I took to mean that she wasn't interested in that at all. So while I was considering abandoning all my other friends, they say that they want to go back to Chris's place and drink while watching Ponies. I'm obviously not interested in doing that, aside from the Ponies part, but Fef even more so, so I decide to break off from the group there and headed over to Fef's room.
While I was approaching the side door, I noticed that the hammock was open. The hammock was always something that Fef wanted to do with me, and while we didn't once, I wasn't really satisfied that we had actually been on the hammock together. So, when she opened the door for me, I suggested going over to it. She agreed, we cleaned it off, and soon we were lying down together. The sun wasn't on us, and it wasn't warm out, but it was nice to look up at the tree and talk just a little bit.
It was a bit chilly, and I think that was why Fef had us move back inside after a few minutes. We talked and cuddled on her bed for a long while. We talked about a lot of things, from cartoons to our relationship. After enough time had passed, we started to get hungry, so I suggested that we order food on GrubHub, to be delivered to my hotel room. Since there was now a time pressure, I was able to convince Fef to get up much more easily than before. We headed back to my room and watched some of Season 4 Spongebob on her laptop interspersed with some Pokemon while we waited. Eventually we got our Chinese food, which was just for her. I was going to heat up mine from the refrigerator, but I never wound up getting hungry enough. We just kept watching Spongebob and playing Pokemon until we went to bed. I also occasionally played with my cubes a bit.
Day Five
Fef had to talk to Dr. Fisher that morning, and didn't feel comfortable doing that in the hotel room, so I drove her back to campus. From there, I drove back to the hotel room and started coordinating the rest of my day with other people. I didn't necessarily want to watch the episode of MLP in club that day, since I'm way behind, but I wasn't sure what else I'd do with that time. I made plans to head over to Gordon's apartment to prepare for the campaign that he was running. Pat also wanted to prepare there, and I offered to drive him, but he was just getting seated at Pamela's. After about half an hour, with no word from him, I left for Gordon's.
I had a bit of an issue getting into the building. I went to go park in the lot adjacent to the building, but was met with a gate that wouldn't let me in without a card. Luckily, someone else with a card pulled up behind me, and the gate read theirs, giving us both enough time to get in (though they did honk at me). While I was looking for a spot, I noticed that there were signs up everywhere threatening to tow me at my expense if I wasn't authorized to be in that lot. I quickly glanced around at the other cars, found most of them to have passes, and asked Frosty for help. He tried to take me to the people in charge of the building for a temporary permit, but it turned out that they weren't open on weekends, so we left to go park in the paid public parking a block further down.
After trying to figure out that for a while, and pushing Frosty's time limit, I finally got into the building and went to Gordon's room. He offered me a place to sit and some freshly-made chocolate chip muffins. With all the time I wasted trying to park, Pat entered only a few minutes after me. We prepared our characters, then I offered to drive everyone to campus for club, since we were also transporting a large baking dish that Frosty had prepared with an apple treat. Once we were on-campus, I wound up joining them for club and watched the episode after being assured that it wouldn't spoil anything for me. The episode was pretty enjoyable time, even though I don't remember what it was. I'm sure I'll remember it when Fef and I eventually watch it together down the line.
After club, we went to Quiznos, and I got some small generic sub. I wanted to get a breakfast sandwich, but despite there being no limit posted on their menu, they said it was too late in the day for me to order breakfast foods. After we ate, we headed back to my car and we went back to Frosty's room for D 'n' D.
For Gordon's game, I played a stoner Elf character that carried around the bong-mug from Cabin in the Woods. I wound up doing some very silly things, like jumping into a chair (thanks, JoJo's!) and leaping out a window instead of just walking down the stairs. I think my character wound up injecting some much needed comedy-relief into the dark murder-mystery story. This doesn't mean that my character couldn't be serious when needed and I think I finally managed to strike a good balance so that the team didn't immediately think I was worthless like they usually do when I go for these kinds of characters. The night wound up closing without us concluding the story, so we decided that we'd pick it up sometime after the school year.
After that I picked Fef up and we were both exhausted, so we went right to bed.
Day Six
The next morning, we woke up and neither of us had anything much to do, so we decided to go out for breakfast. We considered Pamela's but decided against it since we usually got sick of it after a while. Fef suggested IHOP. I checked and there was one not too far away by car. I hadn't been to one in over a decade, but I thought it would be fun and agreed to go. When we got there, the place was pretty busy. I prognosticated a 15-minute wait, which was proven accurate. Since the inside was a bit loud (and definitely cramped), we decided to walk around outside. That didn't last very long and we quickly perched ourselves on the outside benches. Fef pulled out her gameboy, so I wrapped my arm around her and watched her play some Ruby while we waited. After about 12 minutes, we were invited inside to take our seats.
We sat in a booth in an area that wasn't too loud, and was near the kitchen. We looked over the menu and immediately found myself frozen by choice paralysis. There were so many delicious-looking choices! There was the cupcake pancakes, the red velvet pancakes, and so many more. However, it was pretty clear from their descriptions that they would all be incredibly sweet. Fef was expressing some interest in the cupcake pancakes, which came with cupcake icing on top, but wasn't sure if she wanted something like that. Will a little bit of nudging, she decided to order it. I eventually decided on some chocolate chip buttermilk pancakes. This was something a bit different for me since I don't usually go for chocolate chip. I definitely didn't want the "normal" version of the pancakes though, which was a LOT more chocolatey. We both ordered it with eggs, sausage, and a hashbrown to help offset the sweetness of just pancakes.
While we waited for our food, we talked and Fef told me about the flavored syrups. The butter pecan one is her favorite, but she also likes the strawberry one quite a bit. Our food arrived, and I started sampling the flavors. Butter pecan was definitely my favorite, with strawberry right behind. I didn't really care for the blueberry one, but it was better than I thought it would be. The original maple syrup was exactly what I expected. Fef worked her way through her cupcake pancakes, which she really loved.
When we were done eating, we got to talk while we waited for the check. It wound up taking so long to come out that we started to feel weird about taking up a table when there were still people waiting in line, so we just paid in cash and left, just as if we had gone to Pamela's. Our next stop was CVS, where Fef picked up some medicine, then we went to Target. I got to pick up some things that I'd been needing for a while, like Q-Tips and a nail clipper. Fef grabbed a box of Tim-Tams and some cheesey pretzels.
We went back to the room after that, where we continued watching Spongebob and playing Pokemon.
The Flirfy Parts
#1
When Fef and I got back to the room the first night, we changed for bed and I took a shower because I do that at night now. We got in bed and started talking about things. While we were talking, we'd occasionally kiss. The kissing naturally evolved into making out for brief sessions and talking would resume. At some point I rubbed her belly, which I knew she enjoys and she said she wanted to say something but didn't know if she should. I said it was fine, whatever it was we'd talk about it. She didn't want to say though, so I didn't push. I rubbed her belly again because it seemed like fun and she definitely still enjoyed it. She said again that she wanted to say something, but didn't know if she should. I again said it was okay and this time she agreed and told me that she was getting really horny, and that rubbing her belly was making it worse.
Since she had made it clear before I arrived that she didn't want to do anything sexual, I said that we'd have to wait until the morning to see if she still wanted to do it. But that didn't mean we couldn't keep making out and keep rubbing her belly. I could see her getting really worked up when I rubbed her belly and that was turning me on too, but I stuck to my guns and it didn't go much further than that.
We turn over back and forth while talking in bed a lot. A couple of times when I was spooning her, I was worried that she could feel me pressing up against her, but she didn't move away from me or say anything, but I was banking on her either wanting me there, or not feeling anything through the clothes. While she was spooning me, she wrapped her leg around me a couple of times, which I really like even when it's not motivated by wanting to flirf.
The next morning, I woke her up when I started moving around in the bed. So, we made out some more, and I rubbed her belly a bit because she wanted me to. I still wanted to wait until she had really woken up and a lot of the day had passed before we committed to making each other flirf. She kept kissing me all down my body, to which I gladly reciprocated. After doing that a couple of times, she wanted to 69, and I agreed, since I could tell her when I was close, and I can't remember if she had ever flirfed from that alone. It seemed like a safe way to mitigate the feelings. She got on top of me for it and I propped my head up on a pillow to easily reach her vagina. She was already soaking wet from all the foreplay and I could already taste it before I did any real work there. As I licked her between the lips and played with her clitoris, she was making of lot of noises that I could feel through her mouth, more so than I can remember her usually doing. After only a minute or so of us pleasuring each other, she made a deeper longer noise and suddenly a lot more fluid was running down my face (and into my eye).
I briefly expressed my surprise that it had happened, since I was trying to avoid it, and Fef told me "Honestly Lan, you should have expected this would happen." I laughed and agreed, then she jerked me off, we kissed some more, and we proceded to clean up and shower. I now lamented not bringing my toys, which I had purposely left at home because we weren't supposed to do anything like this.