Renfaire Fantasy: Harem Life pt 1

    Pulling her knees up to hug them before her, coffee thermos in hand, Kelly examined the calendar in front of her with a pensive look. It was one of those large, monthly planner style things that everyone was using to track their availability. Since returning from the forests of Tionetta with Christine and falling into a more normal routine, everyone was just so busy. Their calendar was clipped up across the enormous whiteboard Emily had been using to jot down what they thought they knew about their magic charm powers, because they had dry erase markers in each of the colors and that made codifying who had what days off from work easier.

    Brian has Sundays and Mondays off, Kelly observed. Emily has Mondays and Tuesdays free. Christine’s days off are extremely irregular, they seem to just shove her hours in at Brite Aid wherever they feel like it. Rebecca works EVERY DAMN DAY unless she specifically requests off, which she usually puts in for Sundays. Stephie works weekdays at her university library, but that doesn’t always mean it’s convenient for us to make a trip out to visit there.

    Kelly herself had just started her second job. Her Dollarydoos shifts here in Seneca were easy and they only were able to provide her with part-time hours; her pay there didn’t cover Kelly’s egregious new spending habits. Now she was also a morning-shift waitress at a family restaurant named Marcy’s, which was the local hot spot for older couples and senior citizens to sit down for breakfast. They were friendly and they tipped well, but because of Kelly’s recent addiction, all of that cash kept disappearing, too.

    I just… I can’t help it! Kelly let out a long sigh of aggravation. It’s future Kelly’s fault. She keeps using Sends to show off cute clothes that are on sale. Even when I decide to be responsible and say no, how CAN I say no?!

    After all, Kelly currently had a boyfriend and four girlfriends now, and it turned out that shopping was her love language. Whenever her personal use money was portioned off from the rest that went towards group savings, it was immediately spent. With so much variety in their personal styles and aesthetics, it was rare for Kelly to NOT find something she thought would look great on someone.

    A baby blue crop zip-up hoodie with adorable butterflies along one sleeve was currently on its way to Stephanie; it had been marked down from twenty seven dollars to fourteen dollars during a fall sale. Brian now had very smart-looking new running shoes with matching athletic shorts for his morning jogs—for a guy with great legs, he had been clueless about how to show them off. Before this, he had been running around town in boring lame gym shorts! Emily’s wide collection of old oversized t-shirts was mysteriously disappearing and being replaced with fitted tank tees that looked sexy as hell on her. Kelly had even grit her teeth in compromise and picked out ones with anime logos on them!

    Still, it is REAL nice to be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor, Kelly mused, twisting in her seat to look behind her.

    The kitchen was separated from the living room in this apartment by just a long countertop, and Christine was at the stovetop making them french toast for breakfast. Her long, lovely legs led up to pale, almost naked buttocks, showing off the white high-waisted thong panties Kelly had picked out for her to wear when being domestic. Aside from that Christine was wearing only socks and one of Brian’s shirts—they had bought an apron for her to wear but she rarely remembered to put it on.

    As always, Christine was rather quiet and reserved, simply standing over the sizzling and steaming skillet with a spatula in hand. Her beautiful silver tresses were pulled into an updo to show off her slender neck; weeks of trial and error had proved that doing so drove Brian ever so slightly crazier for her. The other new addition to Christine’s look couldn’t be seen from where Kelly sat, but Christine now wore glasses with thick black rims. They weren’t prescription and were there entirely for appearances, but Kelly had decided they helped offset the lingering uncomfortable familiarity Brian and Emily had with Christine’s features.

    It wasn’t hard for Kelly to change up Christine’s wardrobe just enough to help distinguish her from the wretched Chloe who she used to be. A good half of Christine’s old clothes were still usable, her previous blouses just needed to be matched up instead with scandalously short skirts, and her prior jeans and slacks now paired with sexy halter tops or ones that showed a healthy amount of cleavage. It was fun dressing up Christine, and out of everyone here Christine was the most obedient and complained the least about Kelly’s directives on how to dress.

    “Hey,” Kelly called over.

    Christine turned, peeking back towards Kelly but remaining silent.

    “Muah,” Kelly mouthed a kiss to tease the girl. “You look cute today.”

    “Thanks,” Christine stared for a moment in confusion before returning to what she was doing.

    “Were you thinkin’ ‘bout practicing magic early?” Kelly asked. “I think the schedule today looks good for that.”

    “If Brian’s okay with that,” Christine responded.

    Practicing magic had slowly somewhat turned into their euphemism for the time of day one of them might drop to their knees to give Brian a sloppy blowjob. The repeated act of conjuring a little mote of magic light to their fingertip for practice always resulted in ‘mananemia’—mana anemia, a word Emily surely borrowed from one of her video games. Being low on magic immediately made a person depressive and irritable, and being in deficit of magic additionally brought about fun side effects like dizziness and horrific migraines.

    All of them had been practicing magic, but just like she’d warned them, they had little to show for it. Brian, Emily, and Christine were muddling through the second magic exercise which involved gathering mana towards a finger to create actual light—just like the extraterrestrial from a certain eighties ‘flick. Kelly herself was practicing on the next stage of difficulty, which was obnoxiously taxing—a little fluffy scrap of pocket lint could be levitated up into the air if she concentrated hard enough.

    Rebecca had refused to join them in practicing magic, because she was adamant about making a point to Brian that the charm magic wasn’t compelling them against their will, while Stephanie wasn’t supposed to be practicing at all while she was living several hours away from them. To everyone’s dismay, Stephanie had several times attempted the first magic exercise anyways, creating specks of ‘secret light,’ and suffering through several days of mananemia in each instance.

    Which makes me SO fucking upset! Kelly pursed her lips. We told her and told her and TOLD HER not to practice on her own!

    Blonde had again appeared in the roots of Stephanie’s vivid pink hair, which Stephanie seemed ashamed of, and they had each spent long hours with her on video calls consoling and scolding her in equal measure. A single attempt had been made at shipping her a nice big jar of ‘magic essence’ so that she could restore her personal reservoir and alleviate the symptoms of mananemia… but, it didn’t work.

    The first of several unwelcome discoveries was that they couldn’t bottle and store Brian’s fluids, because the ‘magic’ in it had some sort of half-life that rapidly deteriorated due to a number of mysterious variables they hadn’t finished pinning down yet. The sure factor so far seemed to be proximity—a jar of stuff kept near one of the girls would remain potent for days and days, maybe even indefinitely. But, being absent from that jar for even as little as an hour could make it completely lose magic potency and go inert.

    The most disappointing discovery however was Brian’s unique charm power… which turned out to be the magic refresh. Everyone had been hoping that waking up suspiciously clean and full of energy and physically refreshed as though they’d just brushed their teeth and showered was a random bonus effect of the harem charm, but it turned out that this was Brian’s unique passive. Stephanie was the first to notice as she was living separate from them and stopped feeling the effects, then one of the rare future Kellys passing knowledge back from further up the grapevine confirmed it for them.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a BAD power, Kelly told herself. Just, we’d hoped for something… cooler? More impressive? Now, it’s basically confirmed that none of our charm powers are suited whatsoever for conflict or combat or whatever. It’s like Emily said—we’re stacked up on SUPPORT powers. They’re each great, yeah, but…

    Magic refresh was actually even more impressive than they’d first thought; so long as they fell asleep while still wearing clothing, those garments would also be as if magically laundered. That effect took them a while to discover, but it had somehow deep-cleaned the grease smell out of Emily’s work polo from Marino’s, which was something conventional washing machines had been completely unable to achieve. One morning they just randomly discovered that it was as if part of her uniform was suddenly brand new again, as if right out sealed pack it had been issued to her in. The area of effect was localized somewhat around each of their bodies as they slept, which turned out to mean clean bedsheets, except in cases where Emily’s test mess—coffee—continued to stain the outer edges beyond where they had physically rested.

    And, instead of washing it afterwards… we just finagled the covers in a different way, slept on top of the stains the next night, and… they were gone, Kelly remembered. Fuckin’ spooky. Convenient as hell, though.

    What was maybe more embarrassing was how rare it was for them to take full advantage of Brian’s charm power. If they were logical and smart, they would make sure each and every night to put on the dirty clothes from the day before while settling into bed. That would mean free laundry forever. Realistically however, that wasn’t comfortable or convenient, and their late-night past-time of having savage amounts of sex until each of them passed out meant that they would just occasionally also have some random articles of clothing cleaned, as an extra.

    “Breakfast is ready,” Christine reported in a small voice. “I set places for us at the counter, but. If anyone wants I can move everything over to the coffee table, instead.”

    “Counter’s cool,” Kelly assured her. “It smells good.”

    With a heave she dropped her legs down off the sofa and stood, then stretched her arms up and out. She felt fucking amazing, and once again she chastized herself for having ever thought magic refresh was disappointing. Kelly had never been a morning person, but the bouncy revitalized feeling she woke up to every day now was absolutely fucking premium, and she wasn’t sure she could ever go back to living without this. Taking another long sip from her coffee thermos, Kelly skirted around the sofa and joined Christine at the counter.

    A brand new set of six bar stools was here—these ones were Rebecca’s contribution—but as usual only three of them were set up at a time, while the others were upside-down and atop the other far end of the counter. Emily was a late-night cook at the nearby pizza place where Brian and some of their friends had once worked in the past, and Rebecca commuted from her grandparent’s place to her noon-to-six shifts at Shady Oaks Assisted Living Center.

    In contrast, Brian and Kelly had to be the early risers of the group. Brian was assigned jobs through Four Seasons, a local temp agency, but those jobs were always the same six-to-two blocks. Kelly was currently doing seven-to-noons at Marcy’s, and then two-to-sevens at Dollarydoo’s, but being part-time at both meant there were a number of random days throughout the week where she only attended one job or the other. Christine had managed to secure her old job at Brite Aid again, working the counter at a pharmacy and general store from eleven to three, but the girl made sure to wake up when Brian did so as to serve breakfast and help out.

    To Kelly’s horror, waking up when Brian did meant five in the morning, because he jogged around the neighborhood before sunrise. She hadn’t ever quite managed to pull herself out of bed at that sort of ungodly hour, but Kelly did pride herself on at least getting up and about in time to share breakfast with them. Their group was finding their stride and making a pretty impressive amount of money towards their collective savings, but at the same time the different schedules and timetables each of them had to operate on was just so endlessly vexing to her.

    “We need to get Brian out of these stupid morning jobs and get him hired somewhere with decent hours,” Kelly complained, not for the first time. “Then, I can drop Marcy’s, for Lucca Italiano. Make bigger bucks. You can work there with me. And we’ll all be on similar-ish hours.”

    Christine nodded, slipping into place upon one of the other barstools but making no motion to start eating before Brian arrived back from his run. In her time with them Christine had shown herself to be very taciturn, which gave her all of the qualities of a good listener—which in turn made her very easy to vent to. Although they didn’t foist all of the chores off onto Christine, Christine was proactive and would take initiative to do them unless told not to. This usually meant Emily was dish bitch, while Kelly sorted and folded all of the clothes, because she didn’t like how anyone else did it. Brian to their surprise enjoyed cooking dinner for everyone, and took care of the bulk of things like bathroom scrubbing, which he didn’t want Christine to be forced into doing.

    Aside from cooking breakfast for them every day and doing semi-performative dusting and vacuuming while wearing lingerie, Christine as their contracted maid or ‘personal assistant’ mostly wound up playing chauffeur for everyone. For such a large, close-knit group they only had Brian’s car and then occasional access to Rebecca’s hatchback, and with Christine’s part-time work being in the middle of the day and within a block of Kelly’s Dollarydoo’s job, it was just convenient that way.

    Emily and Stephanie had pushed for them to put Christine in a chauffeur uniform with gloves and a hat, but buying one wasn’t in the budget and sewing one was too far down on the priorities list with the renaissance faire coming up. Even the planned frilly maid outfit tailored to Christine’s measurements was only half-finished and on the backburner, hanging up somewhere in Stephanie’s dorm. Their collective savings and budget was one of their favorite things to discuss, because high-up on that list right now… was buying a motorcycle for everyone here in Seneca to use.

    Because—then when Steph moves in, someone can ride with her! Kelly daydreamed as she took another sip of coffee.

    Or like, Emily can ride with Steph on her Steph’s bike, she’s light enough that she won’t throw Steph off too much—then, I can ride right behind Brian on a second motorcycle. My body practically wrapped ‘round him as I hold on tight, pussy pressed down and playing kiss kiss with however many fuckin’ horsepower of vibrating engine—Mmm, mmMMmh. Just the IDEA of being able to go around together with them on bikes is fuckin’ hot. Oh, and uh I guess Christine and Rebecca follow behind in a car, putsying along like little old ladies? Should we put Christine at least in some riding leathers or latex or something, and get her on a crotch rocket, too? Hmmm.

    Before she could linger on that thought, however, the doorknob to the apartment jiggled and the sound of someone keying open the lock sounded out—Brian was back.

( Previous, After AnimeCon | Renfaire Fantasy | Next, To be Continued... )

/// This felt strange to write, and skews way more towards time skip exposition dump than I'm normally comfortable with. It basically reads like a recap of the things I didn't want to write out narratively and 'show.' I could have, but should I have? Maybe some bits of this will be worked into conversation or narrative in a more natural way later, and then I'll come back and massage those parts out of this opening bit. But, for now I wanted us to start off on this foot, rather than on a super cold open that begs questions that... don't necessarily have super interesting answers?

Like there's an implied logical progression to how their situation has developed since the After AnimeCon chapters, but not a ton of dynamic changes or character growth happened in that time. Which is why I wanted a timeskip!

We'll see! Mostly just want to get things rolling, have really been itching to get us back to this group.