#belle has a pink rose in her hair to mirror adam's red roses. as well as sweetness it is a symbol of admiration/appreciation

[fizzy-dizz]

Flower frens!

[idlecreature]

it’s a delicate business, and you know just how to charge me

Jonah doesn’t write. 

Winter lasts an entire year.

Vampire!Mordechai for Jonah Magnus Week! Part 1/Part 2/Part 3

Rating: Explicit

Relationships: Mordechai Lukas/Barnabas Bennett, Jonah Magnus/Barnabas Bennett

Content warnings: Dubcon, Unhealthy relationships, manipulation (hence the dubcon warning), The Lonely, death of an OC, choking (both sexy and unsexy) 

—there is still so much to tell you. I tell you first in my mind and then the effort of writing is too much for me—

The thick, wet cough that drove Barnabas out of Moorland house finally lifts in the night, and Barnabas breathes a little easier. He wriggles as he anticipates leaving his sickbed, but does his level best to enjoy a quiet Sunday morning wrapped in a heavy duvet with the Kempthorne’s dog eating bacon rinds out of the palm of his hand. 

Eleanor Kempthorne primly raps on his door. She balances a sleepy Sampson and a tray piled high with papers over her heavily pregnant belly. “Morning,” she says. “I’ve got your news and your letters - tell your friends to go easy or they’ll exhaust all the postmen in London.” 

“Still catching up after my vacation in Kent,” Barnabas says, taking the tray from her with an appreciative murmur. 

“I’m glad you finally took that vacation, Barny.” Eleanor moves over and sets Sampson down on the bed. The child immediately burrows under the covers and latches onto Barnabas’s side. “The countryside in Kent can be beautiful - shame you went in the dead of winter, with that bad snowstorm! Seven feet of snow, I heard!” 

“Y-yes, that was unfortunate,” Barnabas says. He recalls little but pale days, ice crystals suspended in the air, grasses bleached of all colour, winter roses, and after Mordechai returned barely scraps of anything but the furniture of Moorland as Mordechai took him against every chair and every table. 

Eleanor flops on the bed next to him, frowning as she presses the flat of her palm against his flushed cheek. “You seem brighter today, but you still have a fever.” 

“O - oh, I think I should be well enough to leave soon. I hate to be a burden.” 

She shifts on her side to face him. “There’s no rush, Barny. Would you like to read your mail while I read the Bible?” Her smile dimples. “I’ll make it a silent service.” 

“That’d be appreciated,” Barnabas mutters. They fall into an easy silence as Eleanor opens her Bible and follows her Reverend husband’s elegant cursive and Barnabas does his reading and little Sampson drools on his arm and the dog gnaws on a pillow’s tasselled edge. 

There’s no letter from Jonah. Jonah’s always the first to forgive, and quick to forgive; Barnabas is unsure what to make of his silence, but it fills him with unease. 

“Barny,” Eleanor says, sifting a hand through Sampson’s hair. “John and I have been thinking about ways we could make you a part of the family - and how do you feel about becoming a godfather to Sampson and the new baby?”  

“Godfather?” Barnabas echoes. “I -” 

Eleanor inhales sharply and before Barnabas can flinch away she grabs his hand and holds it against her belly. 

“Do you feel that?” 

Barnabas’s eyes slip closed, and yes, he feels the rhythmic movement, and deeper, as a body waiting to be born shifts like the turn of the earth. Barnabas can feel the baby’s impatience. 

He removes his hand, trying to twist in the bed between the dog across his legs and the five-year-old pinioning his arm. “I don't - I don’t think you want me as part of your family - as an influence over your children. I’m - I’m an atheist.” 

Eleanor studies him, eyes dark and solemn, but not shocked or frightened. “Ah,” she says. “I did suspect. And you know I love you regardless?” Her roaming hand moves from Sampson’s crown to Barnabas’s neck, her fingertips catching across the newly knotting scar. “What’s this mark, Barnabas? It looks like -” 

He slaps a hand over his neck. “Nothing,” he says. He starts coughing emphatically into his elbow, and the scar is forgotten as Eleanor fusses over him and gets up again to fetch him a fresh pitcher of water, lifting sleeping Sampson up and away, the dog following close on her heels, and abruptly, he is alone. 

*

Little Sampson jerks at Barnabas’s arm like a waterspout as they watch Sampson’s mother being put into the ground. 

Barnabas’s body aches with a disquiet pressure that rings like a struck bell through his ribcage and his teeth and all the small bones of his hands. He feels newly aware of each shift of bone under the crushing weight of his flesh. 

He remains stoic. For the little boy’s sake. 

* 

It’s still the choke of winter, and there are debts to be paid. 

Barnabas decides he doesn’t care where Mordechai gets his money. He just wants it. It’s horribly unsentimental of him, but perhaps Jonah was right, and Barnabas’s morals are just gilt-wrapped-guilt, and his goodwill means nothing. It’s the banal truth that the whole of Barnabas’s life is founded on money. The world turns on it. As long as you have enough, you will always be accepted, and you will never be missed. 

Barnabas is someone who has always enjoyed the pleasure of a transaction. And if the particulars involve him standing in a mirrored hallway with a monster opening a vein in his neck, then, well. 

There are many mouths to feed. 

*

—though it was radiant, crystal-clear, one of those days when the earth just pauses, enchanted by its own beauty, and every new bud whispers: “am I not heavenly fair!” it curls up in your belly, the beauty of life! In spite of everything, one cannot but praise life.—

* 

Whenever Mordechai’s in Edinburgh, they meet in somebody’s garden. Someone’s put a lot of effort into making it a nice garden, into a picture of domesticity, with an apple tree and a lemon tree, marigolds and hydrangeas, and red lilies in terracotta pots. It would be a lovely place to spend an afternoon with a loved one. 

Barnabas considers the springtime flowers. They’re nice. Their perfume disguises the heavy tang of blood that always hangs around Mordechai, and that’s also nice. 

“We should get some flowers for Moorland,” Barnabas says, mostly to keep up their one-sided conversation. “Different ones, I mean. Reds and pinks and oranges to liven up the place a bit. And maybe a fruiting tree.” 

Mordechai forgoes a vocal response as per usual, optioning for a shrug that falls like gravity. 

“It could do with a bit of colour,” Barnabas says, trying to goad him into saying something because he’s spent their precious passing afternoon in utter silence and it’s starting to get on Barnabas’s nerves. Barnabas nudges his knee against Mordechai’s thigh. 

“I’m colourblind,” Mordechai says eventually. He’s still looking away, squaring his jaw. “All the men in my family are.” 

“And you’re... proud... of that pedigree?” 

“No.” 

Barnabas sighs, following Mordechai’s dour gaze to the patch of violets. Barnabas knows the flower meanings - he memorised a book of them as a child - but he refuses to think about them. He makes no insistence on prescribed symbolism, only the shapes and the colours that the eye takes and the heart interprets. 

“What does purple look like, to you?” 

“I can’t tell you,” Mordechai says. And Barnabas understands that. 

“What colours can you see, then?” 

Barnabas places a hand on Mordechai’s back, where a doctor might listen to the auscultations of his heart, and massages the bands of hard muscle over his skin at the place where he is not quite human. 

“Blue,” Mordechai says, leaning into his touch. “There is a shade of blue that I find haunts me lately.” And Mordechai presses his gloved hand to the corner of Barnabas’s eye. 

His skeleton stings, hisses, and pain lances down his bones. Barnabas gasps and Mordechai pulls his hand back as if bitten. He looks at Barnabas in open shock. “Did I hurt you?” 

“You - you gave me a fright,” Barnabas says. His heart beats quickly in his chest, and his bones still fizz and tingle. “That’s all.” 

Mordechai keeps looking at him, and Barnabas worries he’s lapsing back into that dreadful apathetic silence. But Mordechai breathes in, and his gaze collects some focus. He looks at Barnabas properly, then. Deeply. Then he says, “Do you think you could ever love me?” 

“I - “ Barnabas says. He wants to bleed into the flowers, into the afternoon. He feels the silver scars under his cravat, their coldness, their weight, like a collar. “Not in this lifetime, I think,” he says, waiting for a flare of embarrassment that doesn’t come. He doesn’t think he’s capable of hurting Mordechai’s feelings. 

“Then put your hands around my throat.” 

“...” 

“Go on.” 

Barnabas wraps his fingers around the vertebrae, thumbs touching together on the soft, thin skin over Mordechai’s windpipe, where the ugly gash of a surgical scar bites into his adam’s apple. 

“How does that feel?” Mordechai asks. 

Mordechai feels cold and dead under his hand, wax-skinned and corpse-damp. There is no thrum of life, no beating vessels that run like roots under his flesh. Barnabas feels like he’s close to learning something about violence and desire, how close they are, how the wires can get crossed. He squeezes Mordechai’s throat, just enough for the vampire to feel the promise of stolen breath. 

“Let me make you immortal,” Mordechai says. And he swallows; Barnabas feels the rolling constriction of his throat. “Please, Barnabas,” he whispers. 

Barnabas drops his hand to his side. “No.” 

Mordechai looks at him furiously, stonily, unrelentingly, but he makes such a small choked-back noise as he wraps Barnabas up in an embrace that offers him little comfort. Barnabas buries his face in Mordechai’s hair, inhaling the scent of blood and frost. It’s Mordechai’s wordless way of showing Barnabas that he means more to him than life. 

*

Mordechai moves in him so slowly, so deliberately, but he’ll still bruise. They take their pleasure from the ransoming of Mordechai’s self-restraint. When he comes, his teeth graze Barnabas’s pulse like a promise, but his jaw does not close. He waits on Barnabas’s word. 

When he receives silence, he is not disappointed. He pulls the blankets up over Barnabas’s shoulders and ducks his head so they’re sharing breaths and Mordechai closes his eyes and feigns sleep, but when Barnabas wakes up, several hours later, Mordechai has dropped the pretence of humanity and lies there, sharp and cold, with his fingers ghosting over the shape of Barnabas under the duvet, trembling like fish’s gills desperately working out of the water and it’s a race to see what kills it first, the choke of no oxygen or the drown of its own blood. 

*

“You look pale tonight, Mr. Bennett,” Mrs. Blackwood says. Another Christmas with the Blackwood family, the same faded paper decorations and the sewing hanging limply from lines across the low ceiling. There’s a new smell, polish and boot leather, brought home by the eldest child’s apprenticeship to a shoemaker. 

“I’m fine, thank you,” Barnabas says as he sips his sherry. He’s sitting in the best seat in the house, right up against the stove, and it’s stifling him, prickling over his skin and wetting his armpits. He doesn’t dare loosen his cravat, though, the starchy collar scratching uncomfortably at the new necklace of barely-closed wounds.

“We’ll get some colour back in the boy’s cheeks right enough,” Mr. Blackwood says fondly. It’s exactly the kind of thing Barnabas might have wanted his own father to say, once, but now it just sounds gauche. He doesn’t want that anymore, not any part of it. 

Barnabas hands his presents to the children: polished toy horses with delicate pink lips and real, curling eyelashes. He barely remembers buying them. 

“And we have a Christmas present for you, Mr. Bennett,” Mrs. Blackwood says when her children have stopped crowing and hold their toys against the candle-light so tongues of orange flick over polished white bodies. 

“Oh, that won’t be necessary -” 

“I must insist,” Mrs. Blackwood says. “Annie knitted it special for you, and she’d be upset something awful if you don’t want it.” 

The girl in question blushingly presents her creation. It’s bright red and clumsily knitted, the cabling loose and uneven, but the wool is soft and warm, and it’s the thought that counts. The thought of any one of the hardworking Blackwoods spending any time or money on him - 

“Don’t worry about the cost, sweetheart,” Mrs. Blackwood says. “It came out of our James’s Christmas bonus. He’s made a lot of shoes this month, hasn’t he! He’s moving up in the world, and we’re so proud of him, and that’s because of you, Mr. Bennett!” 

As she speaks, Mrs. Blackwood takes the scarf and wraps it around Barnabas’s neck. It’s long enough to go around several times. It makes the heat worse, the sweat slicker, pouring out of the reservoir of his body like a spring.

“Thank you, Mr. Bennett,” the James in question says dutifully. 

“Mr. Bennett?” Isabel says in alarm. 

And, oh, good lord, he’s sobbing. He’s sobbing in front of people he needs to respect him, to see him as a Gentleman, and it’s great, whooping gasps that escape him like a crack in a pressure valve, and it’s all he can do but hastily bid goodbye and push away Isabel’s arm and flee that unbearable heat, the den-like house and the cured-leather and the sweet smell of rum pudding and bodies in close habitation and he stumbles into the winter night and the clarity of the cold, and it’s there, after a few minutes to himself, he realises that he doesn’t want to wear any colours that Mordechai can’t properly see. 

Barnabas speeds down Morningside Road, the buildings all endlessly long and featureless dark grey, avoiding every stranger he passes on the street until he comes across a homeless man half-frozen to the pavement under the awning of a business, a newspaper over his face barely stirring with his breath. Barnabas claws off the choking, luridly red scarf and winds it around the man’s neck, tucks the man’s coat around him a little tighter, and pulls off his own gloves and gives them to the man for good measure. The man doesn’t stir. 

Barnabas breathes again after that. 

*

—you know M. Everything is give and take with him. When he is away I miss his companionship. I miss talking with the man but when he’s in London or at the garden we can only agree when we are silent or out of each others sight!!! I miss him. I miss you. I hope you can forgive me, Jonah, my foibles and my rash words and my shame. I take it all back. I lie down at your feet and anticipate your heavy tread.— 

*

The sixth time Barnabas arrives at the doorstep of Moorland house to repay a debt, Mordechai is waiting for him. It’s enough of a break in their usual routine that Barnabas approaches cautiously, curiously. 

Mordechai offers him a compromise in the form of a small silver ring. It’s a sign of Barnabas’s naivety that he thinks Mordechai is proposing, and he laughs in Mordechai’s face. Mordechai flashes his teeth at him and tells him what it really is: a dressing ring in the fashion of Beau Brummell, a man whom Barnabas has always thought himself as being diametrically opposed to in every regard. 

Later, Barnabas takes great pleasure in feeding the ring to Mordechai, watching the glint of metal as it is swallowed, the shiver of it against his prick as Mordechai tugs it gently with his tongue. Barnabas is not as gentle with Mordechai as Mordechai is with him; he likes it when Mordechai chokes, fisting his hand in Mordechai’s pretty curls so he can’t pull his head away, wetting his cheeks and chin with saliva. Barnabas feels the curved piercing bite into the back of Mordechai’s throat, and the catch and pull of his skin must feel like torture. But when Barnabas has found his completion he barely strokes Mordechai before he spills across Barnabas’s hand. 

*

Jonah is always the first to reach out, to reconcile. It’s coming up to a year since they ended that evening with a fight, and Barnabas is starting to believe that after the flames of anger died away, Jonah found that he simply didn't care for Barnabas’s company any more. Barnabas wouldn’t blame him, but it still hurts to lose him. He still sits at his writing desk a little after Christmas and writes a letter with no expectations of a reply, and that, more than anything, makes the yawning pit inside him stretch a little wider. 

—anticipate your tread. I think sitting in that garden has made me a very lonely man. There’s something to be said about watching life unfold and feeling completely separate from it.  But I must end this letter on a better note: they say in April the snows will have melted and even before it is all quite gone the flowers will begin to rise again... 

Please, Jonah, can we be friends again? 

Your loyal servant, 

Barnabas Bennett. 

* 

The cheque comes in the mail, and it is a staggering sum. Enough for Barnabas to set up a proper office, hire a second staff member, open space for another family.

Barnabas wonders what Mordechai will ask of him in return; a sum such as this is a poorly-concealed threat. He could always rip up the cheque. That’s a choice Barnabas could make. 

But Barnabas is certain that this is more than what Mordechai can decently afford, he just doesn’t know whether Mordechai knows that. Mordechai is not a fastidious accountant like Barnabas; he spends his money like he has it in infinite supply, hasn’t noticed Barnabas draining him at all, and Barnabas would very much like to continue with the arrangement until he has taken everything from Mordechai, keeping nothing for himself, of course; he wants to drive Mordechai Lukas into the quagmire of desperate poverty as much, and perhaps even more than, he wants to pull families like the Blackwoods out of it, and he doesn’t think he has the willpower to stop himself until he has Mordechai, Moorland house, and the entire Lukas estate crushed into the ground like pale, bloodless worms. He thinks he could love Mordechai, then. 

Barnabas’s bones sing softly under his skin as he waits for the cheque to clear. 

[mythicamagic]

Body swap: Subayui Oneshot

I got another writing commission from @s-e-kwan, thanks! 

Kou and Subaru swap bodies unexpectedly, with Yui none the wiser. A chaotic few hours ensue, with Yui and Subaru trying to navigate their feelings for one another despite the chaotic turn of events.

Rated T for language

(the pic isn’t linked with the fic I just wasn’t sure how to interpret the Body Swap trope into a pic lolol)

He didn’t exactly understand it.

One minute he’d been walking along the hallway, minding his own damn business, hands buried in his pockets and glaring as Kou friggin Mukami approached- the next he’d been staring at himself.

Subaru blinked, his mirror image looking shocked. He glanced around feeling like he were standing in a different spot. Hadn’t the windows been on his right? Now they were on the left?

“E-EH? Gah what the hell? I didn’t expect it to be like this!” The second Subaru squeaked, only to look down and pick at his torn clothes with distaste. “Well I am wearing the wardrobe of an emo hobo, so I must be Subaru.”

Subaru looked down at his hands dazedly. Huh. Why did they look so damn thin and effeminate? Wait- he was wearing so much jangly crap too! “What’s with these shit accessorises?”

The other Subaru whirled to glare at him. “Hey! I’ll have you know brands pay me tons of yen to wear their stuff on my beautiful body! Be grateful!”

“Your body?” Subaru growled, turning to a window in the hallway. Kou Mukami’s faint reflection stared back with wide eyes.

“WHAT THE FUCK! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!” He burst.

“KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN! AN IDOL CAN’T SWEAR!”

“Oh, hello Subaru!”

The girl who had been occupying his dreams lately walked by, stopping directly in-front of who he now guessed to be Kou. In HIS body.

Kou pointed to himself, red eyes wide and paling to the shade of his hair. “Y-you see me as Subaru?”

“Of course I do, silly.” Yui giggled, before glancing over at the real Subaru and waving. “Hello Kou!”

Subaru felt like he was going to be sick. He stormed up to her, wrapping his pink nailed fingers around her arms. “Yui, it’s me. I’m Subaru, I-I dunno how the fuck it happened though.”

She blinked, rose-pink eyes confused. She turned to Kou for assistance, “Kou’s acting a little strange, are you both playing a game?”

His expression subtly changed, and Subaru didn’t think it were possible, but he sincerely wanted to punch his own body, smash it right in its smug face. “Heh, yeah. Kou’s pretendin’ to act like me,” Kou purred, tugging her free from Subaru’s grip and wrapping his arms around her from behind.

Yui’s face flamed red, but didn’t protest, causing Subaru a whip-lash of emotions. “HAH? You damn liar!” He roared, smashing his fist into the wall. “Get off her, I’ll KILL you!”

Both of them only chuckled, Yui praising him for his wonderfully accurate impression. Subaru was about to try and convince her again when his arm was seized.

“Kou~ we have a photo session booked, you didn’t forget did you?” An older woman smiled, wearing a smart suit.

Subaru bristled. “Hah? I’m not going anywhere with y-“

“KOUUUU!” A hoard of teenage girls started to come running down the hallway toward him. “We heard you’re going to get your photos taken! Take us with you!”

Subaru paled, turning and grabbing Kou’s manager to at least take him the fuck outta there. Kou burst into laughter watching them and the ruckus of the fangirls following, while Yui blinked, glancing up at him quietly.

He eventually noticed, wiping a tear from his eye. “Heh, that was funny, huh?”

“I suppose…it’s just that I’ve never heard you laugh before,” she murmured, expression softening. “I like it.”

Kou blinked, shifting uncomfortably in the sudden silence of the hallway. A thought occurred to him then, and he gaped. “Crap! If he’s doing photos and stuff, he might make me look bad! I gotta go M nek- I-I mean Yui! Be right back!”

Bursting into a sprint, he ran down the hallway, leaving a confused Yui.

“Was he…about to call me M neko-chan?” She tilted her head and after a moments deliberation, decided to follow.

---

By the time Kou arrived in the drama department where the photo session would be held, Subaru had been wrestled into a sequin jacket and flashy gold pants. The situation seemed to have dumb-founded the Pure Blood enough to be tugged and styled, glancing around owlishly.

“Oh, sorry- you can’t be back here. This place was booked for idol Kou, since we had to work around his school schedule,” a member of staff approached Kou, wincing.

Kou blinked. He’d never been looked at that way before, like they’d discovered gum at the bottom of their shoe. “Ah it’s no biggie. Kou is a buddy of mine, aren’t I?”

“Piss off!” Subaru snarled, making several heads turn in the make-shift studio. “What the hell am I doing here?”

“It’s a photo shoot, dummy.” Kou shook his head, sighing. “Just look pretty for the cameras. You’re wearing my face so it won’t be an issue.”

Subaru snarled, before being tugged onto the set. He stood awkwardly under the blazing bright lights, while the photographers loomed around the side-lines with cameras.

“Um, Kou? Maybe relax a bit?”

“I am!” Subaru snapped, scowling.

Kou sighed, rubbing his forehead as he watched the train-wreck.

“Oh wait, hold that look, that’s the one!” Another photographer said, snapping photos the moment Subaru’s expression softened.

Blinking, Kou glanced around, wondering what had made the vampire change, before his attention landed on Yui. Subaru was staring straight at her.

The other members of staff seemed to notice and quickly grabbed her. “C’mon honey don’t be shy,” they soothed. “Wanna be on the front cover of a magazine? Just help our idol out, he must not be feeling well today.”

Yui squeaked as she was pushed, landing in strong arms. Looking up at the dazzling contours of his face coupled with blonde hair and blue eyes, she expected Kou’s signature smirk. Instead, something soft and conflicted stared back.

Her lips parted, heart thudding.

“Perfect!” The cameras snapped.

Kou on the side-lines chuckled. They’d be eaten alive in the real entertainment world if they exposed their hearts so easily.

Sensing something at his side, he glanced up, finding Reiji. “Well, this is unexpected,” the older vampire hummed.

-----

When the staff finally called for a break, Subaru sighed, glancing down at Yui. “So…have you seriously not noticed?”

Accepting a water-bottle from a staff member, Yui took a drink. “Hm? Noticed what?” She sighed, looking down at the pink dress they’d wrestled her into. “I’m really not cut out for this, Kou. I-I’m sorry.”

Gritting his teeth, Subaru couldn’t help but lean in, wrapping his arms around her. Yui squeaked, feeling herself be hugged tightly.

“K-kou?”

“Damn it, I can’t do this shit anymore,” Subaru hissed, pulling away. “It doesn’t matter if you haven’t realised. You’re better off with that guy anyway.”

Her hand automatically reached out as he pulled away, storming off and ignoring the photographers as they called after him.

When Kou stepped up to her side, she gazed up at the pale features she’d quietly adored for so long.

“Subaru?” She murmured, not sure why the name had come out as a question. Everything suddenly felt strange.

Pale lips curved, and the rough hands she was so familiar with took her hips, pulling her in. “Yeah? Heh, you look worried. Lemme fix that,” Kou muttered, red eyes glittering.

Yui’s stomach churned, turning her face at the last second, and causing his lips to press to her cheek. “Subaru, I-I don’t understand- Subaru!” She exclaimed when he roughly grabbed her chin and tilted it back, pressing his lips hard against her own.

Ripping herself away, Yui touched her mouth. “You’re not him,” she murmured, voice finding its strength. “Where’s Subaru?”

Kou sighed, rubbing his bottom lip with his thumb. “Damn it. No good, huh?”

“Please tell me!”

“Alright, alright,” holding up his hands, he quietly led her off-set, running a hand through his hair. “Mn…the person you’re looking at right now is actually Kou! Surprised?” Kou chuckled weakly.

Yui did not share the humour. “H-How?”

“Heh, let’s just say I wanted to see what would happen. Subaru’s brother was curious about the effects and didn’t mind using us as guinea pigs, so he sprayed this chemical into the air earlier. We inhaled it and swapped bodies. Don’t ask how, I’m no good with that magic or science stuff. I just know it lasts for a couple of hours.”

She turned away. “Then I have to find Subaru and apologise,” taking only a few steps however, she stopped. “I don’t know why you did it…but I hope you know you’re fine the way you are, Kou…” the words caused him to glance up, meeting kind eyes, “because, I thought you looked really cool when we first met. And I still think so.”

Kou could only stare after her, dazed as the human raced away. Always chasing Adam.

He sighed, smiling jadedly to himself. “I’ll steal you away from him one day, M neko-chan.”

---

Remaining on the roof, Subaru leaned against the iron bars and closed his eyes. The school bell had rung and students were starting to leave. He wondered if she’d already left with the bastard. He’d found himself in a different part of the school just a little while ago, looking at his hands and realising he’d changed back.

“Subar-! Ah, are you actually Subaru?”

His eyes snapped open as a voice cried out. Glancing at the door, Yui panted into view. She hurried over, still dressed in her pink flowing ball-room gown.

“Yeah. I guess so,” he muttered.

She hitched the strap over her shoulder, misjudging the distance and bumping into his chest.

“S-sorry,” she leaned back, looking determined. “I noticed!”

“I get the feelin’ you didn’t notice jack-shit,” he said flatly.

“Well, Kou eventually told me.”

“Hah?”

“But I figured it out first from his kiss while he still looked like you.”

“HA?! I’M GONNA KILL THAT BASTARD!”

Yui laughed, taking his startled face in her soft, petite hands. Her eyes warmed, imagining how the blonde strands must have given way to white. Her hands stroked over the plains of his face of their own accord, looking at his jaw, nose, eyes and…mouth.

“You’re such an air-head,” Subaru grumbled, cheeks heating.

Reluctantly nodding in agreement, Yui combed her fingers through his hair. “At least you look like yourself again now,” she murmured.

“Tch…always did hate my usual face.”

“Don’t talk like that,” she gently admonished.

Subaru tsked, hands catching her wrists. “How’d you know it was me from something like a kiss anyway?”

“W-well, I know we haven’t,” she stammered, making him raise a brow. “But it’s just, the type of kiss you’d give would definitely be different from that one, it would be like- mfh!”

His mouth pressed to hers, cutting Yui off mid-blab.

When he pulled away, her lashes slowly slid open, expression slightly dazed.

“Like that, huh?”

Yui nodded shyly, words failing her.

“Heh, you dumb idiot,” he chuckled, expression softening a touch as he tightened his arms, bringing her in once again.