Double or Nothing

“Manager, I'm fucking bored,” Sakura mutters, knees drawn up to her chest as she sits on the hotel bed. She's staring out the window with a pout as the rain crashes against the glass fiercely, a brutal reminder of her canceled schedule that you were supposed to take her to.

Your back is towards her, just mindlessly scrolling through your phone as you try to waste the hours away. “And what do you expect me to do about that?” you grumble back as you turn towards her. “ And don't sit with your shoes on the bed. Either take them off or hang your feet off of the bed.”

She grunts, kicks her feet off the bed and lets them hang there, letting the rest of her upper body crash into the mattress and spreading her arms like a starfish.

“You’re a buzzkill.”

“I'm professional.”

“I wish I brought my switch,” she sighs. “Then I could at least play some Silksong right now.”

You tap a deck of cards you fished out of your bag. You always carry a pair. “We could play some cards?”

Her head tilts upwards and her eyes glitter towards you. “Like, poker?”

“Err, no,” you respond curtly. “We'd need chips for that. Something to bet, and this place doesn't seem to offer complimentary peanuts or anything.”

She looks on the verge of complaining again, head dropping back, kicking her feet again. And then kicking her feet slower, and continuing to slow like processing power is diverging from her muscles to her filthy ideas until they fully stop and she shoots upright.

“I know! Strip poker,” she exclaims full of vigor. “Since you wanted me to take my shoes off anyways, you might as well earn–”

“Absolutely not,” you cut her off. “There’s nothing professional about me beating you in strip poker.”

She sighs, dramatically, performatively. “God, you suck.”

You shrug, because if sucking at being entertaining is what it takes to take your job, you'll gladly stay boring forever.

“Wait,” Sakura says as she squints at you. “You really think you would win?”

You nod and grunt. She squints, not convinced.

“Prove it,” she says.

Some silence follows. You consider it, against better judgement. She feels you wavering.

“Nobody will ever find out you had to strip nude for me. Won't leave these walls. My lips are sealed tight.”

“You're barely wearing anything as it stands. I'll clean you out in like 4 or 5 rounds?”

She laughs like that excites her, and maybe it does. “I’d like to see you try. I've got a world class poker face, on account of being a world class idol.”

And that was all the convincing you needed to shuffle the deck and let her cut it.

Her “great poker face” cracked about ten seconds into the first hand. You didn’t even need to look at your cards to see the way her nose scrunched if she had garbage. Predictable. Almost pitiful, like a baby animal that doesn't know it's some predator's meal yet. You won the round easily.

“Alright, take off your shoes,” you smirked, giving a playful roll of your eyes.

“One shoe. And double or nothing,” she refutes with a cheeky grin.

This brat. “You’re kidding.”

“You scared?”

You roll your eyes more annoyed this time but just nod and shuffle the cards again.

Same story this round. Scrunching nose, garbage hand. Yours wasn't amazing either, but you were willing to let her off the hook if she won this one.

She didn't. She played terribly, and grumbled as she kicked her shoes off. The silver lining was that she could now at least pull her knees up to her chest.

The next round started with a clean slate of debt.

“You sure you want to continue this?” you ask out of some misguided sense of chivalry.

“Scared your beginner's luck will run out and you'll get laughed at by me for having a tiny dick?”

She deals the cards this time. Says something about not trusting the way you shuffle them. Ridiculous accusation with how you use a wash shuffle, but if it makes her feel better, so be it.

Hands are dealt, and the flop is laid out. She forgot to burn cards, but you let it slide.

Sakura already looks panicked. Her foot twitching and kicking, she decides to change both cards and suddenly looks alive again.

“Take off that jacket, asshole,” she gloats, before seeing her three of a kind get wiped out by your flush.

You don't bother hiding your smirk, that kind of energy is for during the rounds.

Her grin disappears, grimacing, looking at you like a sorry excuse for a world class poker face, and asks: “Double or nothing?”

“Oh, so that you'll take off both your socks instead of just one?”

“That's right, you fucking feet fetishist. But don't get your hopes up because I'm going to win.”

She doesn’t. Socks join her shoes on the floor.

A next hand is played, and some higher entity must have taken pity on her because your own three of a kind didn’t stand a chance against the straight flush she pulled out of her ass.

She cheers like she just won SOTY, demanding you to remove your suit jacket. The thought of taking off one shoe crosses your mind, but you humor her nonetheless. You tug it off, throw it at her, and she beams like she thinks this is the start of a comeback.

“I told you I'd start winning,” she says, smug and cozy and infuriatingly adorable, before immediately losing the very next hand played. She stays in her pattern, doubling the ante.

It never works. One foul swoop takes care of her sweater and her shorts.

The revelation that she wasn’t wearing a shirt under her sweater was shocking, but not as shocking as how big and beautiful her tits looked in her matching white underwear.

“You’re enjoying this way too much, you perv,” she accuses.

“Would you rather I looked disinterested?” you shoot back.

The right corner of her lip lifts in a mocking expression as she begins to shuffle for a new round.