She doubled over, dry-heaving. Her stomach was thankfully empty, but if this were to continue, she would taste the unpleasant burn of stomach acid. On the other hand, being punched in the stomach didn't need inventing explanations the next morning, unlike facial bruises.

"You had one fucking job, bitch!" yelled her most beloved man in the world. "When I come home, I expect a meal to be on the table. An actual meal, fuckface! This means meat. What the fuck do I do with raw fish and rice, cunt? Fuck you for making me do this to you."

"Sorry..." mumbled Fubuki. The remainders of her once carefully arranged handmade sushi set were spread across the floor, stepped on. She'll be cleaning them up later.

"And you know what?" He leaned over to her, forcefully lifting her head by the hair to look right into his face. "Nyan-nyan nyan nyan nya nya nyanya nya nyan nyan..." 

Fubuki made an inhuman gurgling noise, stretched out her arm and punched her novelty alarm clock right in the cartoony face, shutting it up for today. She has been rotating the tracks she uploaded onto it, and lately it has been Aqua's cover of the Nyan Cat song. Her frustrated screaming was muffled by the pillow. Why now?! Just ten more minutes! Please! 

Her phone lost charge overnight, and she hurriedly plugged it in. She fell asleep yesterday while reading domestic abuse statistics by region, as one does, and her phone cord wasn't quite long enough. The screen lit up, and she was greeted with three very polite LINE messages. They were a bit terse - the frustration was likely getting to him - but the message was clear, "didn't want to wake you up, breakfast is in the fridge, see you in the evening, have a nice day." He worked an actual day job, and lately she's tried to give him shit about the fact that she earned more than him — she hated doing it but would continue if it got her what she wanted, but he didn't look genuinely offended by it, instead politely explaining that he preferred a stable employment, even if it's not very lucrative or does not have a career path, to being a househusband. He was a librarian at an art school, and Fubuki enjoyed visiting him when he wasn't particularly busy, talking about nothing, reading a textbook, or simply doodling.

She dug into her creamy oatmeal porridge with raisins and cinnamon. It was... serviceable. He has never actually been a good cook, partly for a lack of practice, and Fubuki has always been cooking for both of them. Recently, though, she has been carefully and purposefully ruining dishes — as a result, being slapped across her face, having it shoved into an oversalted, overpeppered mess... did not happen, as he said he understands her job is overstressing her, apologized and took up the duty of cooking on himself for now. He has been making steady progress, listened to her feedback (filtering out the meanness), and she frankly already scarfed the porridge down and set on the banana pancakes, frankly majestically fluffy. It would be painful and counterproductive to tell him they're shit, so she would just say nothing about them, she thought.

Fubuki has had these "submissive housewife" fantasies for a while now, possibly infected by some of her colleagues, and probably should have found a safe outlet for them earlier, before they festered into obsessively watching ryona videos and listening to ASMR roleplay. She briefly turned to resources for domestic abuse victims with the intent to find advice and do the opposite, but frustratingly the ones with any amount of rigor took the opinion that abuse is not caused by the victim altogether. She did discover the model of domestic abuse cycles, the idea that the perpetrators are often mutual and end up provoking each other endlessly. This was not really the fantasy she was going for, but it was too late, she was in it to win it. 

The idea was to push him to a breaking point, after which she would never retaliate and let him feel in control. She felt like it was working, overall, she could see it in the corners of his eyes, even though outwardly he was as nice as always. She whittled his ego down to a knifepoint, with insults, degrading comments, nitpicking, and will soon have the knife rest firmly against her throat. Soon. She could see it in her mind now — he will punch her in the face, hard, and she will lose a couple teeth maybe, and will have to have replacements installed, which he will pay out of his pocket, and...

The issue was that there was little feedback on what parts of her awful behavior he took to heart and what he did not. The most frustrating of her failures was when she tried to withold sex from him with the hopes that he would force herself on her eventually, except she lasted two and a half weeks before climbing on his couch out of her own volition. Her haphazard backup plan involved lots of biting and scratching, but he caught both of her hands, wrapped his fingers inbetween hers, and held her softly throughout. As she cuddled through the night in his warm embrace, she forgot until morning how much she had wanted to be strangled. 

The day droned on forever — albeit she worked from home, she had a lot of prep work for the upcoming merch drive in addiction to the scheduled streams — and, after being done for the day, she took a short nap on the couch. The dream, when it finally came, was vague, but she remembered using makeup to cover up a bruise. She got woken by her shoulder being gently shaken and a kindly voice telling her the dinner is ready. 

It smelled amazing. The chicken was definitely too dry, of which he informed him immediately and he apologized, but the spices were picked well and the stir-fried vegetables as a side were passable as well. They were engaging in small talk throughout and eventually moved on to tea and dessert. Fubuki took a glass of pu'er tea, took a big sip, and...

...spit it out, covering some of the table. It was awful. Rancid. This was a genuine unforced error, maybe he was just bad at making these, maybe the whole batch went bad, but it genuinely felt like drinking old socks steeped in hot mud, ruining most of the impression of the dinner. She said this much herself, though, since she was afraid that her general meanness lately would undermine the intended meanness of the current comment, she chose to yell it at his face.

"And this is how you decide to thank me being the breadwinner for this household?" she yelled. "By trying to poison me?" She thought for a second of pouring the failed tea right on the floor, but the liquid was too hot, so she poured it down the sink. After that, she held the glass down with two fingers on an outstretched hand. "This is what it feels like."

"Fubuki, don't-"

The sound of glass shattering against a ceramic floor was not as loud as she hoped. It was tempered glass as well, so it collapsed into a pile of small glass pellets rather than spewing shards across the floor. It felt kind of cathartic. She wanted to set it on the edge and push it with her tail while looking into his face, but it would be playing too much into "actually Shirakami Fubuki is a cat and not a fox" jokes that grated on her while conveying significant disdain.

"What the hell? Why did you do this? It's just a batch of bad tea! I work hard every day trying to please you, and this is what you do? Do you know how hard it will be to find a matching set now?"

"Don't care." Fubuki took a sharp turn to the door. "I'll be in my room."

"We're not done talking." he said, took two large steps and caught her right by the tail. "You'll stay right where you are."

Finally. Finally, it was paying off. The frustration, the bullying, the demeaning, like a kettle that has been left on the stove for too long. He will finally lay hands on her. She let herself be dragged by the tail and mentally braced for an impact.

It was awful. Nothing even remotely like her obsessive, detailed fetishistic fantasies. Internally, Fubuki felt like she was going to cry, but externally she was actually already bawling her eyes out. This wasn't what she was signing up for at all. She has been treating him increasingly like shit for no reason for months - a very difficult endeavor that gave her much turmoil - with the hopes he would lose his temper, beat her up, then be nice to her as an apology, then beat her up when she does something wrong again... The abuse was the spice she needed in her life to make the niceness sweeter, not this! This... 

didn't even hurt! 

"Who's a bad kitty?" she heard again. 
"Uuu... I'm not a cat, I'm a fox..." she mumbled through tears. 
"No way, dumb kitty. How can you be a fox when you're a bad kitty? Foxes are not kitties, and you're a kitty. Bad kitty, rude kitty, mean dumb kitty-cat." It wasn't an argument that would stand in a formal debate, but he kept backing it up with sound data.

 He purposefully cupped the palm of his left hand to make the noise it made as it repeatedly hit her bare butt sound louder. This also had a downside in that the spanking basically didn't hurt, and honestly that was probably his actual intent. His other hand was firmly gripping the base of her tail, lifting it up and simultaneously holding her in place. This was actually hot and very much appreciated, though Fubuki would gladly lift her tail for this if ordered, as she had in one of her daydreams where she was whipped by a belt, buckle and all. She felt like an idiot. This would never happen now. She knew this for a fact. 

Her husband is a doormat. He will always be gentle with her, no matter what. He has to mentally push himself through hurting her at all - physically, that is, he knows how much mental anguish she gets from cat jokes. What sick and twisted mind does he have, that no matter how badly she treats him he will never take her seriously? Who does he take her for? She, the clear breadwinner of this household, is lying across his lap, talked down to like a baby, and she isn't even being taught the lesson she obviously deserves!

It's so frustrating. It's so...

so degrading...

Fubuki licked her drying lips. 

She could get used to this.