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Kinger didn’t sleep in his own room often, not anymore. Most of his nights (and time in general) were spent in his impenetrable fortress of plush pillows where he was safe and happy until Caine called them out for an adventure, Jax became too much for Ragatha to handle, or whenever Zooble also became too much for anybody to handle in their attempts to kill Jax for bothering people in the first place. It was peaceful and quiet in there in a way that brought him comfort where his own room only left a sour taste in his metaphorical mouth and an empty feeling in his chest. Sometimes, though, he just couldn’t shake the urge to at the very least visit the space. He could never figure out what the pulling was or where it came from, but he had long since realized that he had two choices when it came down to it. It was either sleep in his fort to ignore the feeling and be annoyed and feel all weird when he woke up or trudge to his room to quiet the draw, even if it would leave him feeling distant and uncomfortably beside himself.
With Caine starting to lower the lights and his time to make a decision coming closer to an end, Kinger hid a sigh and stood up with the others, shuffling along with everybody else to the room wing of the impossibly built tent. His presence surprised his friends, seeing Gangle’s widening eyes and even Jax raising an eyebrow from the corners of his gaze, but he made his best attempt to look as casually sleepy as the rest of them and preferably not like he’s barely dragging this wooden homunculus to its bright and colorful personal torture chamber.
“Oh, Kinger!” Even he could see the concern Ragatha tried to hide behind her smile. “You’re sleeping in your room tonight? What’s the occasion?”
He recognized the humor she was going for and made the choice to spare her, manually putting a huff of laughter in his hopefully not too exhausted tone.
“Just feelin’ like it, is all.”
That wasn’t technically a lie. Even still, he could tell how unsatisfying that answer was for her and he hoped his lack of follow-up would be taken as a symptom of the late hour. Spreading out to their rooms, they all bid each other goodnight and with the click of each door closing, Kinger felt his digital heart drop further and further into his chest. He was still standing outside his own door and there was still time to make his way back to the main stage and crawl into the fort for tonight, but after a few more moments of standing there staring, he took a deep breath and twisted the knob.
Though he didn’t ever remember what it looked like, the space was hardly surprising. He was a royal, a king, and his space reflected that- luxuriously built up with stone walls and rich brown wood with fancy carpets and a large, four poster bed with purple sheets and curtains. A miserable groan worked its way out of him before he could think to stop it at the sight of it all and he felt a flash of anger from it as he closed the door and leaned against it. Why was he so upset? This was his room! For him! He was supposed to be in here, this space was created specifically for him. The grandiose room wasn’t even small enough to be suffocating!
So… So why did it feel so d[ %$!# ]n lonely? Why did he hate it in here?
Kinger rubbed his hands down his face. C’mon. It was just one night. Let’s get this over with.
He worked on a sluggish autopilot as he went through the motions of remembering where his pajamas were and tugging them on, squinting in confusion at the few red robes inside his dresser along with his purple ones. Where did… With a shake of his head, he turned away and slid the drawer shut, moving to finish dressing. He’s- He’s too tired to pay that much attention right now. All he wanted was to climb into bed and wait for the lights to come back on. Whatever it took for this urge to go away needed to happen already so he could carry on with his monotonous life. He milled about and snuffed each of the shining candles in their golden candelabras until the room was completely engulfed in darkness, before he turned to the bed and heaved a sigh for the umpteenth time that night.
Despite his low mood and distaste for his room, Kinger did have to admit that the bed in here was a lot more comfortable physically than the pillow fort. The mattress was soft and plush and was littered with more pillows than he felt one person needed if they weren’t going to make a fortress out of them, with one big body length pillow the same wine red as those random robes in his dresser. Ignoring the pang of unexplained sadness that made his heart skip and his head hurt, Kinger took a moment to arrange the pillows into a comfy heap before he flopped back to stare up at the canopy of the bed. He traced patterns in the wood as his mind began to lull into something clear and quiet, his thoughts unjumbling a bit while he idly groped the large body pillow beside him. He only seemed vaguely aware of his own movements, with his left hand squeezing and caressing the soft, fluffy, voluptuous –
Hold it, that’s-. Pause. Wait a second.
Kinger sat up with his eyebrows furrowed and a slight warmth running to his cheeks. Why did he think that of all things, it was just a pillow (no matter how soft it was). He couldn’t even remember the last time he used that word to describe something! H[ %$!# ]l, it had to have been years ago and even then the last thing he could remember such a specific word even applying to was his- his wi-! Hisssoo oohfu[%$!#%$!#]ck…
…Oh. …Oh, he’s- Oooooh, okay, now he got it. That’s what the draw was. He’s… aroused.
He felt silly saying it like that- “aroused” like he was a shy teenager and not either in his late 30s or 40s. He was… horny- Kinger flinched, waiting for the censor to play in his mind, but his clear head remained blissfully silent. Huh, maybe Caine didn’t have that word programmed into the censors database. He’d have to get that updated whenever- he was getting off topic. Though he supposed “getting off” was the topic, given his current train of thought and the heat prickling at his digital frame. He was surprised this could even happen, but he wagered it was just some leftover piece of his previous life and body. He was human once, after all.
Looking down at the pillow beside him and despite picking on himself a bit earlier, Kinger felt himself starting to blush full force as he brought his other hand up to rub at his neck with embarrassment. Was he really about to do this? Had he done this all the other times he had been drawn to this empty room? His mind wasn’t clear enough yet to remember in that kind of detail. It was why he felt like he was being drawn here, a yearning for privacy and… release. God, maybe he was a shy metaphorical teenager. H- How was he even supposed to do this? It’s not like he had his-... his methods and means of taking care of this were slim, basically. How had he done it all those times before, then? He had to have, even if he couldn’t completely remember yet, because why else would his body be subconsciously seeking out this kind of-
Kinger glanced down at the pillow beside him.
…Yeah, alright. He could work with that.
It was just a little bit sad and Kinger could acknowledge that as he turned on his side and dragged the pillow closer, but other than the brief feeling of sorrow, he was starting to get focused on other matters. A slight shiver wracked up his frame at the contact and he suppressed a sound, clutching the pillow tighter before he made himself relax his grip. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, but there was no way he was this worked up already. He had just started! But then again, she had always teased him about being sensitive, giggling about the way he would get red over her touching his back or walking her fingers up his chest. Not his fault she was always such a tease~...
“Honey…”
His voice echoed now the same whiny tone it had back then, whenever he was pleasantly embarrassed by her handsiness. One hand came up to press the pillow against his face and the other went down to hold it in place as he rolled his hips against it. He closed his eyes as he cuddled against the smooth fabric, taking a shaky breath as he tried hard to focus on picking through what remained of his mind to bring forth memories of her. He still wanted her, missed her twice as much, and if he thought long and hard enough, he could pretend he was still with her at this moment. That fell into the category of a regular and not-totally-heartbreaking fantasy, probably. He didn’t think about it too hard.
When his mind finally granted him a grace, it was in the form of a memory of them in the fort together, giggling and shushing each other. It was late at night, he recalled, when everyone else had gone to bed and the two hadn’t wanted to wake anybody with what they had been giving each other little signals for all day long. He remembered almost being thankful his body wasn’t human anymore- the amount of looks she tossed his way and lingering touches she gave him that day would have created a problem he definitely would have had trouble hiding (not to toot his own horn, of course). Learning how to be intimate with one another was an interesting curve, but it was an enjoyable one that they were both a little eager for, her even more so than him.
He remembered how much she loved to see how he’d react to this and that, stripping him of his kingly attire so she could find all the spots that got a rise out of him. He was far too happy to let her do whatever she wanted with him and his digital avatar, but he wasn’t without his own curiosities, and he could remember the way she would squeal with laughter whenever he took her by the hips and rolled over to put her on her back with a rumbly “Your turn.” She would giggle out his name in a reprimand that missed its mark entirely as she gripped his shoulders and bared her neck for him, sweet laughter sliding into even sweeter moans as he set to his own research. They had made a game out of it at one point, he recalled. Whoever got the other to finish first had to make breakfast for the other and possibly the whole crew if they didn’t finish cooking fast enough. Kinger wasn’t the greatest cook, especially with wacky, low poly digital ingredients, but that certainly was not a deterrent.
He could remember her touch, vaguely, enough to have his head grow foggy with lust from the thought of it. Soft and delicate, like she could haven broken him if she pressed too hard. Like he was precious, which to her he was. Like… Like he was one of her bugs that needed to be treated gently and with care . It should have been weird to think of himself as such, but he knew how much she loved them and to be compared to them was the highest honor his sex-addled mind can cobble together. He preferred it when she was sweet and kind with him, gently coaxing him to his finish every time with her lovely voice and gradually accumulating knowledge on how to touch him just right to make his back arch and a whimper pull from his throat. (Never let two scientists into the same bed…)
She had been bolder on some nights but never really rough, he recalled, probably because he couldn’t remember ever liking the rough treatment. Not like she did, he remembered, with the things she would ask him to try. He had worried at first, not wanting to hurt her, but she had insisted that he wouldn’t and that she would be fine. He could still find the way her voice sounded when he gave into her.
“Yes, right there! Like that, please~...”
He remembered her praise as her sharp fingers gripped the back of his neck whenever he did something right or found something new.
“You’re doing so-... so good…”
H-He’s… Ff- As carefully as he could without interrupting his train of thought, Kinger prevented the swear before the censor could catch it. The last thing he needed was for that goofy blare to go off and distract him after he had made all this effort, not when he finally had a grip on her voice telling him that she
“I love you so-! much- ah!”
He-
Kinger gripped the pillow harder.
He could-
He stuffed the pillow closer to his face, practically smothering himself.
He could remem- ber-
He was losing control of himself as his thoughts began to jumble in the way they do when on the verge of- of-..!
He-... He’s so-!
“Kinger!”
“Queenie…!”
A shudder rattled its way through Kinger as he muffled his cry into the pillow, grinding against the pillow to ride out his orgasm (someone needed to calibrate that AI, there’s no way that one wasn’t censored). The rush of emotion and feeling caused his avatar to glitch for a second and he filed that phenomenon to study later and forget the moment he caught his breath, the virtual chest piece resting his head on the pillow with a heavy sigh that sounded terribly pleased this time around. With no mess to clean up, Kinger allowed himself to simply lay there and bask in the afterglow to hang onto the wisps of memories for the last few moments they’d be with him until he fell asleep.
“G’night, dear,” he mumbled to nothing in particular. “I love you too.”
He closed his eyes and let his head tilt forward to press his forehead against the pillow with a worn-out huff, curling up against it as much as he could. He wasn’t sure if he was just dreaming or imagining things as he toed the line between wakefulness and slumber when he felt her hands on his back and her forehead pressing back into his, but it didn’t matter either way.
So long as it was her. …He didn’t think about it too hard.