[TL;DR -- Your character is connected to money, and my character abducted her for said money.]

The motel room smelled like someone had tried to cover up cigarette smoke with a pine-scented air freshener and achieved only a new, worse smell. The carpet was the color of something that had once been red, the television was bolted to the dresser with the kind of institutional permanence that suggested the management had opinions about theft, and the window unit rattled with the dedication of something trying very hard to do a job it was never quite built for. It was not, DJ had noted when he paid cash for the key, the worst motel he'd ever stayed in. That distinction belonged to a place in Tulsa he didn't think about anymore, back when he'd been nineteen and new to the idea that there were men who would pay good money for someone big enough to stand between them and whatever they were afraid of, and stupid enough not to ask what that was.

He sat on the edge of the bed closest to the door, elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor between his feet. The room had two beds. That had been a coincidence. He'd asked for a single and they'd given him a double, and he hadn't had the presence of mind to argue, because he'd been standing at the front desk with a woman zip-tied at the wrists tucked under his arm and the only thing keeping him functional was the fact that he looked like the kind of man who did this professionally.

He did not do this professionally.

His phone had four unread messages from a number he'd saved as a dollar sign. He knew what they said. He set it face-down on the nightstand and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

The math was simple. That was what he kept coming back to when the rest of his brain was screaming at him from various directions. The math was simple and the math was why he was here and the math was the only reason any of this made sense. His mother needed a procedure. The procedure cost money. He did not have money; he had, in fact, negative money, because of the kind of financing that came with fine print that seemed to change shape every time he thought he understood it, and somewhere between eighteen months of security contracts and the steadily compounding interest on a medical bill that had started at sixty thousand dollars and was now sitting at ninety-four, he'd found himself in a room with a man who had a different kind of math to offer. Simpler math. One job. One number. Enough to clear everything, with something left over. Enough that his mother would stop apologizing to him for getting sick. She'd been doing that since he was fifteen, since the first time she'd sat across from him at the kitchen table and explained what the hospital had told her, and she'd spent the whole conversation more worried about the look on his face than the thing that was going to kill her. That was the part that had made him drop out. Not the money, not the diagnosis; the way she looked at him and immediately started managing his feelings about it.

He stood. He did this when he needed to stop thinking, because sitting kept the thoughts circling and standing at least gave them somewhere to go. He crossed to the window and looked out through the gap in the curtains at the parking lot: a pickup, a sedan with a cracked rear windshield, nothing that looked like law enforcement, nothing that looked like anything.

He did not look at the hallway outside the room in his mind. He was specifically not doing that. The hallway with the two men he'd left face-down on the floor, which he'd been thorough and clinical about, careful in the way you were careful when you'd spent enough years adjacent to violence to understand where the lines were. He hadn't drawn his weapon. He'd told himself that going in, that the gun was for emergency use only and that his hands were enough, and his hands had been enough, but he was choosing not to audit the memory too closely because the part that came after was worse. She'd been in the room. She'd seen him come through the door and she'd seen what was behind him in the hall and her face had done something that he was not going to catalogue right now.

He turned around.

She was sitting against the headboard of the second bed with her knees drawn up, watching him with the careful, measuring attention of someone calculating how much danger they were in. He recognized it. He'd seen it on clients, worn it himself once or twice. Her wrists were still zip-tied, which he'd told himself was a precaution and which she experienced as something else entirely. There was a strip of duct tape across her mouth that he'd put there in the car, forty minutes ago, which he experienced as something else entirely. She'd asked, in a voice steadier than he'd deserved, where he was taking her. She'd said it the way a person said something when they already understood that they weren't going to like the answer, and he hadn't had anything to give her that wasn't a lie or something worse than a lie, and he'd reached into the back seat and done what he'd done and hated himself for it without stopping. He'd been hating himself for it in a low, continuous way ever since, like a frequency he couldn't tune out, and the forty minutes had done nothing to diminish it.

DJ reached up and pressed the butt of his holstered pistol flat against his temple, closed his eyes. Just. Think. He'd run the scenario a hundred times in the weeks before it happened. None of those versions had included the part where she looked at him like that, through the tape, in the rearview mirror, for forty minutes.

He opened his eyes. Crossed the room to where she sat. Crouched down in front of her so that he wasn't standing over her, an instinct that felt both right and insufficient, and reached up slowly, giving her every opportunity to read his intention in his face before his hand touched the edge of the tape.

"Don't scream. I don't want to put this back on. I just need to know if you're okay, you know, if you need anything..." He trailed off and peeled it back in one motion, because slow would have been worse, praying he wasn't opening Pandora's Box.

--

I wrote this with humans in mind for both of our characters, but if you would prefer fantasy races, any other sci-fi creature, monster girl, or other demihuman/humanoid creature of any kind, that would work as well, so let me know what your preference would be. I am available on Reddit as well as on Discord. I typically write 2-3 paragraphs per post, however that is subject to change according to circumstance and my partner's preference. Any other information you'd like to know about me, including my tastes and sexual idiosyncrasies, can be found on my DPP profile. I also have a list of my past prompts included there. Let me know what speaks to you!

Please don't hesitate to DM me with any questions or comments. I look forward to hearing from you!

-"M"

[TL;DR -- A new insane project is forcing University students to live with another random student of the opposite sex and pretend to be married. Some people take it WAY more seriously than others. Details at bottom.]

Author's Note: This prompt is based on a blatant and unashamed ripoff of the plot of the anime, "More than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers." If you've seen the anime great, let me know and we can talk about it and it could help us shape the RP. If you haven't seen it or you're not an anime watcher, that's fine too. It's not in any way mandatory for this prompt.

[Intro]

The initial reception of the idea for the marriage practicum, as one might imagine, was not overwhelmingly positive. In fact, it was pretty much immediately disregarded as being complete and utter lunacy. There were a wealth of problems inherent with the concept as a whole. First of all, and the thing that almost got the project shot down before it even reached the debate floor, was the inescapable fact that there was an incredible security risk attached to the idea. Having two complete strangers live together, sleep within ten feet of one another, share the same bathroom, each have a copy of the apartment's key, all of it sounded like it was just asking for harassment, rape, murder, and any other slew of horrible things. Then there was the arguable upside for the students-- if a pair got along well enough, there was a chance that the school was spending hard-earned tuition money and donations on some kind of co-ed fuck house. And then the most glaring issue of all: How in the hell were they supposed to be graded? Was there going to be a faculty member assigned to each pair? They'd run out of staff, and run out of hours in the day.

But the solution to the third problem, as unbelievable as it may seem, served as the perfect answer to the first problem as well. A wealthy benefactor from BEAM, an engineering thinktank responsible for some insane products of near sci-fi levels of incredulity, proposed a solution that would cost hundreds of millions but allow for the project to go live. None of the students were clued in on how it worked, but somehow, the little black dot on the wall in the living room of their shared apartment space would track how well a couple got along. It wasn't a camera, in fact it was very decidedly not functioning based on video information because, in the demo before the project went live, they demonstrated that it could track all the information it needed to through a six-inch thick concrete wall. It was some kind of weird monitoring technology that linked up with the thin, stylish wristbands that participants would wear. These wristbands served also as keys to the apartment, but each one was coded individually for a bedroom so that one couldn't enter their partner's private space without permission.

And the information that they collected was ridiculous. Somehow, without the need for any kind of test done by the students, no blood or any other fluid, not even needing to be in place over a major organ or artery, it could track concentrations of neurotransmitters, blood pressure, pulse, body temperature, heart rate, upward ticks of anxiety, excitement, anger, depression, hunger, thirst, desire, repulsion, anything else. All of that data went into one single score, one quantifiable 'grade' that was displayed in real-time on the wall in the living room. Getting along, working together, doing normal husband and wife things would make the score go up. Fighting, arguing, slamming doors, ignoring one another, generally not mixing well together made the score go down. Rumor has it that doing dirty things together also makes the score go up significantly, but that has never been verified or denied by BEAM or by Glendale faculty. All that matters is making it above a passing score at the end of each month, a goalpost that moves and modifies alongside the average score of all freshman class's students in the program for a semester.

One such freshman was Mattias Zertuche, known as Matt by his classmates and Zooch by douchebags and teammates on the football team in high school. Matt is a pre-law student without a single clue what he's actually doing with his life. At 20, he's a bit of a non-traditional student, having taken off a few years to work for his dad's company as a salesman to be able to afford his education without too much debt from student loans. The only thing that he's actually sure about is that he is fully and completely in love with his childhood best friend, Lindsey Decker. Lindsey is also just coming in to Glendale as a freshman, after having taken a few years overseas to 'see the world,' whatever that means. Lindsey and Matt were inseparable all the way up through high school, but were each too afraid to ruin their friendship to ask the other out before they parted ways following graduation. They reconnected when Matt found out she was returning home and planning to get back on her education track, at which point Matt had put in his two weeks' notice and immediately done the same. They planned on being 'married' together for the practicum and using it to catch up, and Matt considered it to be his best chance to finally tie the knot with his old flame.

Except, the pairings are random. Lindsey got paired up with some 24 year old womanizing fuckboy named Derrick, the kind of asshole that looks entirely too handsome standing in the rain with his hair wet, is incredibly polite and respectful to women and oftentimes goes out of his way to make other people's day a little bit better, and has a body that looks like he walked out of a Hollister catalogue. Okay, so he's not a bad guy. In fact he's a great guy. But that just makes things so much worse. That means, as far as Matt can tell, that he's on a timer, and if he doesn't act fast, Lindsey is going to fall for Derrick before Matt can tell her how he feels.

But there's a secret weapon built into the practicum. Provided a couple finishes in the top 25 of all scores for students in their year, they earn the right to decide to part ways with their marriage partner and pick a new person from among the other top 25 couples. Essentially, rewarding the highest performers for being able to get along well with others by letting them find new people that they actually want to be 'married to' instead of just randomly assigned. They're called Tier A, and most of them end up dating or getting married for real after the practicum is over-- or sometimes even during it. While both Tier A and the next 75 couples in tier B both get a grade of A for the practicum, the Tier A performers' grades are weighted slightly higher than an A and therefore serves as the only possible way to get an unweighted GPA above 4.0, which is otherwise the maximum. Since Matt is convinced that Lindsey and Derrick are destined for Tier A, all he has to do is turn himself into another top performer alongside his partner.

And who is he paired with, you ask?

[Outro]

A bit of shameless idea stealing tonight. Even when I'm taking time off of RP, I can't stop my brain from thinking "Hey, that would make a great DPP prompt" as I idly experience things around me. This is one such instance of inspiration striking me like a frying pan in the side of the head.

The idea I have for this RP is as follows: Your character is paired with mine for the marriage practicum, and they are forced to be 'married' to one another for a period of several months. They're complete strangers, but they have a mutually vested interest in doing well. Your character's motivation could be that they also want to pick someone in particular from Tier A, or that they are lovestruck by Matt's charm, or they desperately want that above 4.0 unweighted GPA, or any other reason. As long as they are actively trying to convince Matt to live a married life with them and take it seriously, I'm not bothered by whatever your motivation might be.

And that's sort of the crux of this idea for me: I really love the contrast of Matt being in love with someone else, but slowly beginning to fall for his 'wife' as they spend more time together and feeling like he's being tempted into something he shouldn't be indulging in. They eat dinner together, they talk constantly, they might hold hands, or hug, or kiss, or snuggle, or fuck, or anything else, but the entire time they're doing these things under the pretext that it's just for the practicum. They're not actually falling in love with one another-- right? Right? Matt still loves Lindsey, even after having his soul sucked out by his fake wife... right?

Here are a few ideas I cooked up as possibilities for your character, though naturally it's completely okay and arguably even encouraged for you to come up with something else: She's someone that Matt knows from his past, who is completely different from how he remembers them and incredibly alluring now; She's a mutual friend or maybe even a best friend of Lindsey, and they're doing this specifically for their best girl friend, and definitely not falling madly in love with Matt; She's a few years older and the womanly, charming, seductive, experienced, voluptuous foil to Lindsey's girlish, cute, naive, shy, inexperienced tendencies, which turns out to be exactly what Matt is after; There's an uneven number of students and therefore Matt gets paired up with one of the professors who either really wanted to try it out or drew the short straw but comes to find out that it's more fun than she thought. The key here is that whoever your character is and whatever her motivation is, she wants or needs to perform well and is therefore forced to play ball in this unusual practicum.

I wrote this with a some kind of fantasy race in mind for both of our characters, but if you would prefer humans, any other sci-fi creature, monster girl, or other demihuman/humanoid creature of any kind, that would work as well, so let me know what your preference would be. Feel free to ask for a list of options for my character for you to pick from-- I have several of them ready to go! I am available on Reddit as well as on Discord. I typically write 2-3 paragraphs per post, however that is subject to change according to circumstance and my partner's preference. Any other information you'd like to know about me, including my tastes and sexual idiosyncrasies, can be found on my DPP profile. I also have a list of my past prompts included there. Let me know what speaks to you!

Please don't hesitate to DM me with any questions or comments. I look forward to hearing from you!

-"M"