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slowd1ving · 2 months ago

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INAMORATA . *࿐ SUNDAY, MOZE NSFW

“Think of what it could have been, Think of all the suffering, Nights of crying, wondering, Tell me what awe you’re in?” Deception comes second-nature to incubi; twisting serpents lay dormant in their flesh. This is truth. It is also true that for a wayward incubus, it is particularly hard to disguise one's demonic nature in the presence of an angel and an irritatingly sharp human. You don't recommend it at all, actually. I MADE IT BEFORE MIDNIGHT!! halloween babyyy!!! anyways I promised to deliver a halloween fic and I did :3 this idea lowkey came to me in a dream and I think it's singlehandedly the freakiest shit i've ever written edit: see I knew I was rushing to post when I forgot art creds Moze drawing by @ma_mori74 and sunday is by @nai_pizx pairings: angel sunday, human moze + incubus m reader (+ some foxian jiaoqiu) warnings: nsfw, male reader, voyeurism, lowkey stalkerish moze, mentions of death/hell etc, religious imagery wc: 16.1k

HONKAI STAR RAIL MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

. *࿐

Tinny music crackles in your earphones that knot haphazardly at your chest, almost in sync with the subdued spark from your lighter. The song isn’t particularly good (neither is the weather: a drizzle that always seems to drip from a perpetually ultramarine sky), but any shitty song would do to liven up the ambience of the smoking area in this particularly bleak corner of the campus.

It’s blue, you note boredly. The smoke, that is, mingling with the vapour wisps of condensed breathing. There’s a certain meaning to be found in standing outside in subzero temperatures, finding peak entertainment in the clouds produced from your mouth as if you were some child. You just haven’t quite found it. Meaning, that is.

You’re sure there’s one or two bad songs about it, if you scroll through the playlist enough.

Inhale. Bitter menthol washes over your tongue–you’ve long gotten used to the flavour. Of course, the glaringly red car that slows down on the road in front of you also helps in forgetting to appreciate any new notes of the stick between your lips, but you digress.

A window rolls down. The street-lamp glowing a frigid lazuline flickers precariously. You exhale, watching the smoke trace shapes over the bloody car—some boxy shape that could totally be used as a muscle car. These things happen simultaneously. These things also wash the murky taints of calculus from your mind and instil some form of amusement into your week.

If you don’t count maintaining your cover at a human university as being thrilling enough to regale anyone with.

Brusquely, a hand sticks out into the drizzle to wave at you—self-consciously, you wave back with a question clouding your mind. Though, it is almost immediately answered when street-lamp strains a bit more and you finally see the outline of an acquaintance you met while hauling boxes into your new dorm room at the beginning of the semester.

A tentative alliance, more like, with the both of you sniffing something off about the other.

“Yo, Jiaoqiu,” you greet back after he beckons you closer. His glasses are slipping off his face, and your hand itches to push them back up.

Of course, it perhaps doesn’t hurt in establishing closeness by being guts deep in him just a week ago.

“You’ll be there for the Film Fair, right?” he murmurs. You can’t possibly miss how his eyes flick to your lips briefly: how his pretty throat is wrapped tight with a scarf tonight to protect from both the boreal chill and prying eyes, how his glasses can’t seem to hide his incandescent gaze on the marks on your body, barely hidden by the loose shirt draped over you today.

He was on the culinary course, he’d told you a week ago, but you could’ve figured out that much from the exquisite breakfast he’d cooked for you in the morning: one you didn’t need to eat. Instead, the sanguine flesh of berries had ended up being smeared on his skin alongside the mellow cream—you could’ve surmised his degree from the divine taste of his body, easily. That, in your opinion, had been your best meal for a good while yet.

“You want me there?” You take another drag of your cigarette, watching him watch you. In his eagerness, your keen eyes pick up on the glamour disguising his fluffy ears starting to wane; and unbidden, a memory rises to mind of a night much like this. Those same ears, pressed flat to his head, with that lilt of his voice sounding far less confident.

A friendship is forged with a good fuck, you wisely conclude.

“Yeah, duh,” he breathes, and the vapour coming out of his mouth mingles with the smoke pouring from your own.

Or two.

“Send me the details,” you smile, a slanted one that mirrors your lax attitude. “You still have my number, right?”

Of course he does.

“Yeah, I do,” he clears his throat, almost shaking himself out of a stupor that he never noticed he was in. There’s a tense dance occurring between both of you constantly, and unfortunately for him, he can never quite outpace you. It’s present in the regretful line of his mouth as he glances at the time on his phone, the lingering gaze that traces your being, and the downturned mirage of his ears—as if he forgets that you can see through his glamour. “I’ll see you.”

“See you,” you return, savouring the rich scent of energy that exudes from him—one he can never mask, for he cannot himself tell that it even exists.

As the cherry-red Mustang—or whatever car it is—rolls away, you stroll back to the smoking area to appreciate the remnants of your cigarette: something you hadn’t been able to due to all the distractions, as you’d like to put it.

But all is not well.

Instead, you resume your road-and-cigarette-smoke watching only to discover another pair of eyes meeting your own from the shadows cast by the lamplight across the street. With the prussic overcast to the sky, you once more don’t recognise the figure afore you initially; until a car drives past and its glaring headlights reveal him for all but three seconds.

Moze.

You think you’ve seen him around Jiaoqiu several times—perhaps enough to rationalise that they are indeed friends, forged with something a bit more innocuous than a one-night stand.

But regardless of how you stand tangentially with your mutual buddy (or fuck-buddy in your case), the common threads that bind you also included that as of this year, he is your roommate. And classmate, too, in perhaps one of the most obscure classes to ever be known to man. If you had less of a spine, you might’ve waved—but as it stands, the wintry chill between the two of you suits you just fine. If anything, the fact that he hasn’t beaten you up for sleeping with his friend leaves a positively amicable aftertaste in your mouth.

Absent-mindedly, you stub the cigarette into the already-bleak wall, leaving a rather abstract trail of ash behind. His nose wrinkles in distaste, but you ignore it.

Is it a sin for an incubus to be any more addicted to human creation? Wow. You really should’ve been a philosopher.

Well, any more than it is being an abomination, you muse one final time, almost ruefully.

Almost.

. *࿐

This ill-fated relationship begins as it does ordinarily—by the two of you both taking an elective nobody else takes.

Well, more accurately, it begins the morning you see a poster for the strangest night class you’d ever seen.

Humans and their machinations.

This is truly a special version of hell.

Fragile wisps of breath condense in the autumn chill as you carefully read the poster pasted on the bulletin—formal black and white typeset, so painfully tasteless amongst the vibrant leaflets nestled around it. Though, the size eight lettering and bland format soon becomes the least of your irritations as your eyes wander down.

“What a joke,” you scoff incredulously, a bit too invested in your human persona to truly grasp that you’re losing the plot. Just a bit.

Really? ‘Identifying and Apprehending Olde Monsters in Our Midst’ was granted approval to be introduced as a new class, whereas the Cryptology course had been defunded and subsequently discontinued? The thought burns your mind, your soul, your very being.

“How stupid,” you mutter, swiping open your phone.

The irritation surges, until it gnaws and bites at the cartilage of your sternum in a desperate attempt to free itself from the confines of your chest.

“Really, are they crazy?” you shake your head, typing your name right onto the form that finally materialises.

You may be loyal to your Cryptology elective, but it’s not like it ultimately makes a difference.

A class is a class, and your tenure in the human world relies on your ability to assimilate into this stupid place.

. *࿐

You lied earlier, by the way. The piddling number of students in ‘Identifying and Apprehending Olde Monsters in Our Midst’ is not two, but three. Your moody roommate (whom you barely saw yesterday), you (who, as an incubus, really shouldn’t be here) and the distinguished Sunday (who is also weirdly out of place but in the opposite way). Honestly, he probably knows this too—glancing at the way your clothes are never weather-appropriate and always tousled as though you were wrestling in bed for a nap (given your nature, you probably were doing some form of wrestling), whereas his own shirts and slacks are always immaculately pressed and ironed. He’s even got a damn overcoat for every day of the week, for fuck’s sake. Honestly, you’re half convinced the guy’s running some cult.

Regardless of how mismatched the Professor’s three students are, the bigger problem is how awkward the lecture hall is when the damn chairs outnumber the students. You can barely concentrate on Professor Hopkins’ droning on selkie characteristics when you, Sunday and Moze are arranged artfully in an equidistant triangle from one another. Any more civil person would perhaps sit next to one of them to make the air a tad bit warmer, but you’re not even a person.

You’re a demon.

You think you can afford to be uncivil.

Or at least, it’s the very bare minimum of rudeness you should maintain. You’ve suffered enough askance looks from both of them (which they never seem to level at each other) to comfortably assume that they have some sort of problem with you that they’ve formed a business partnership over. Shaking hands, all for the pursuit of disliking you more efficiently.

During the next lecture on kelpies, it’s the same story. Even the damned coordinates of the triangle are the same, thus when you stride in a minute before the Professor, you make the creative decision to shift one chair to the left to ruin whatever coordination they’ve got going on. It doesn’t deign a glare, but you can feel the air grow even frostier. Amused, you stop paying attention to the information you could probably recite in your sleep, and instead decide to just people-watch the three sad individuals before you.

There’s Professor Hopkins—perhaps one of the most insane people you’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. He’s human through and through: reeking of such a scent that would put most madmen to shame. Alas, this madman is perhaps one of the most unrecognised in the realm of mortality—considering only three people are taking his class, and a solid third is the very thing he is lecturing the dangers of. You’ve met your fair share of people who believe in monsters, but you’re amazed every time you walk into the elective: both by his zealousness and by the fact this class even got approved.

What a strange world the human world is.

There’s Moze. Over to your far left, and one row up—the perfect place to observe the whole hall, but also the perfect place to look like a weirdo considering there are only three students and one stout little teacher yelling his wee lungs out at the front. You don’t actually know why he’s taking this class, considering his other class is something on forensics. Or something. You’re not exactly on amicable enough terms to interact with him, but you’d hoped that you had a somewhat sane roommate.

It’s somewhat hard to hold onto that hope when he shoots you that look whenever Hopkins starts speaking. Actually, you can’t exactly see the look considering he’s behind you, but you can feel the white-hot stare pierce your back: rolling energy tainted with suspicion.

Perhaps it was stupid to disguise yourself in an institute of higher learning where one would hope its students had an ounce of critical thinking.

But you’re choosing to ignore his glare to protect your own peace. The only person who’d ever believe his deductions would be the madman lecturing now. Or not even him, since you’ve been such a model student—already knowing so much about these creatures of the night.

Then there’s Sunday. You’ve perhaps had half an interaction with the man, earning a polite, utterly distant ‘thank you’ as you arrived before him for once and held the door open behind you. Impeccable manners, straight-A student, and perhaps the most confounding. Your suspicions of him running a cult are only confirmed when you overhear he also studies Theology.

He’s polite. Very polite. A bit too polite, so much that it honestly creeps you out more than any eldritch stuck in hell does. Because, why be that courteous to someone if you’re not planning on sacrificing them? However, you’re half convinced that behind those eyes, he’s planning some elaborate exorcism that nobody apart from himself knows about. And maybe you now.

It’s unnerving.

Up close, the flow of his energy is human—too perfectly so. There’s never any malice, or anger, or even boredom that taints the low thrum running through his vessels. Yes, the base is undoubtedly mortal, but with none of the complexities that make up the average human experience.

He regards you with a similar look to Moze’s—fixing you with a stare that appears to be figuring you out and picking you apart. A scrutiny that should fall under its very own brand of suspicion, one that makes the heat under flesh and sinew only increase—for you don’t think you’ll be able to predict his next move, not if you can’t ever read how he truly feels.

Or maybe that is how he feels—and you don’t know if that’s more terrifying.

Unfortunately, these three profiles suggest your lunastic of a professor is the safest to be around, since the ebb and flow of zealousness pretty much remains consistent for each lecture (seriously, they approved this guy?). He poses a far lesser danger to you (the one who took this elective for fun) than the two other students (who took this elective for nefarious purposes, you’re sure). And he actually likes you; despite him conservatively eyeing the attire you wear in subzero temperatures, you’re a pro at his essays!

Alas, your propensity for avoiding your classmates has not worked out for you, you miserably conclude.

. *࿐

You should’ve stuck with your regular dinner of passively absorbing peoples’ horny thoughts like some weird fucking sponge.

You really should’ve, and now you’re cursing yourself as you morosely shovel what appears to be some inscrutable form of soggy college food past your stony lips. The food isn’t the problem, though any self-respecting college student would probably be wincing and picking at it rather than dispassionately taking bite after bite like you are. It’s a bit disheartening to know your cover could be blown from how you seem to truly appreciate the cooking, but in another life you’d argue your soullessness befits the statistics analysis you’re half-reading, half-doom scrolling past.

But the differential equations aren’t the fucking problem either.

The problem is the man sitting across from you. Or more accurately, across and one seat to the left, because apparently he’s gracious like that.

You thought nothing of the flash of soft, dove-grey that you saw from your peripherals at first—nor the fluttering scarf that brushed ever so slightly by your bare shoulder. You were, after all, too preoccupied with clicking and unclicking your pen in irritation at the thick stack of paper by your tray. A bit too preoccupied, but you look up and suddenly you’ve got a cult member all up in your face with way too many slices of raspberry cheesecake on his plate.

That’s what you notice at first, then you look up and it’s fucking Sunday of all people, resembling a word problem a bit too much with how many pieces are on his plate.

You disguise your shock. You hope it’s successful, but judging by his soft cough of surprise, you don’t think you are. Mind racing, you turn back to your own plate and equations, connecting some dots far better than others (judging by the mindless scribbles on the sheet). Just to check, you observe his energy fluctuations a little longer—they’re still as incomprehensible as ever.

Inordinate amount of food. Emotions you can’t read. A penchant for ignoring the finer points of human assimilation, such as staring at others a bit too fucking much.

“Do you need something?”

Quit staring.

Of course, you keep the quiet part quiet.

You’re sitting opposite an angel, after all.

Well, opposite and a seat away.

When you finally look back up, his usually cold gaze is even colder—you wish you never said anything, even if it’s making your concentration in statistics flounder. With bated breath, you pray it’s simply because he doesn’t like you, not because he’s about to possibly exsanguinate you—then you laugh at yourself because you’re a demon, therefore no god will listen to your prayers. No matter how earnestly you try, nobody will hear your plea.

No demon would knowingly provoke an angel like this, or at least you hope they wouldn’t. But you’re not most demons—you don’t actually want to be sent back down to hell.

You hope that small fact erases whatever suspicions he has.

“No,” he finally replies. His voice is strangely soothing, but you know that angels are never depicted as the temptation your kind are painted as. And as your eyes flick to your surroundings, you notice that some of the people sitting nearby are glaring daggers at you for even breathing in his presence. You half wonder if he’s recruited them into his cult already. “Professor Hopkins told me to notify you that we’ll have a group project briefing for the next lecture.”

“Right.” And he couldn’t send an email? And this was important enough to break your silence for? And this merits your staring? The words, though poignant, die down on your tongue, but you’re sure he can feel the vexation contributing to global warming, just a little. Angels are unable to discern the rich nuance of lust and love, but even a plant would wilt from the shockwaves bursting from your tension headache. “Message duly noted.”

He does not leave like you’d hoped. His fork instead cuts deep into the raspberry cheesecake, and you watch it bleed out on his plate.

He’s no longer staring at you, but you know he is just as keenly aware of you as you are of him.

. *࿐

It’s not like you can avoid your damn roommate either, because that would probably raise more questions than you’re comfortable answering.

You’re thankful Moze’s quiet, though that gratitude is somewhat abated by him in general. He’s too quiet, and in contrast anything you say will be far more incriminating. And while he stays in his room most of the time, you can’t help but notice he seems to hang around on the living room couch a little too often whenever you stumble home late at night: reeking of a perfume not your own with kiss-bitten lips and a satisfied smile on your face. Like some fat cat licking its chops after a particularly gratifying meal.

Except you’re avaricious, and you come to the dorm often enough to recognise the pattern.

Not tonight though. Devil forbid you whore yourself out on a respectable Sunday evening (it’s totally not because the angel named thusly will know somehow, spotting the faint shimmer of tattoos, horns and a tail materialising in a brief mirage). Somehow.

On Sunday you rest. Or more accurately, you study from home—glasses carefully perched on your nose, pen substituting a cigarette as you teeth at it with canines a little too sharp to be comfortable. You can’t be expected to be biblical about it—for good measure, you crack open a bottle of red wine with it, drinking straight from the bottle as you stare down the thick pack of proofs that are due tomorrow morning.

It’s not hard to imagine why so many humans in hell become overseers, rather than good, hard-working demons.

Humans can simply be more evil and still convince themselves that this is for the better.

It may be foolish to display your vices sprawled in the living room armchair, but you blame both the wine, the record player you brought, and the sensuous ambience you’ve carefully curated in the space. Is it a sin to do work in an environment that makes your heart pump just a beat faster?

Well, the seriousness of your crime is weighed against the salient fact of the matter: that you’re trying to avoid your roommate, not maximise your chances of encountering him.

What a pickle.

You, like the hard-working demon you are, would prefer to not fail your degree and thus decide prudently to remain where you can wallow in both languor and academia. With cherry wine staining your lips, and the flicker of a warm cedarwood candle perched on the coffee table, it’s no wonder you’ve settled into a strange rhythm. Or maybe it’s something in the air, like the doleful sounds of old records you’ve collected throughout the years—ones you’ll always regretfully dismiss as replicas, but who knows?

What a pickle indeed.

Tonight, the roles have switched. At around ten, you hear the almost-silent glide of keys in your lock, and you brace yourself for the maelstrom that Moze’s presence will inevitably bring. Like clockwork, you scrutinise the flow of energy that you can dimly feel—only to be completely blindsided when you feel a distinctly familiar one beside it. Two presences that are much too observant, but one that’s withdrawn and almost curling in on itself, whereas the other flows with ease.

Brusquely, the door is shouldered open. You lock eyes with the Moze who prowls in, the Moze who is uncharacteristically gazing right back at you, the Moze who still for the life of him can’t soften that guarded expression that casts deep shadows onto his eyes. Then, despite yourself, your focus shifts to the one behind him—Jiaoqiu.

The waves radiating from the Foxian seem to expand on seeing you, and almost immediately the taste feels warmer as you absorb it—a perfect consistency you know he’s feeling as an embarrassed prickle beneath his skin. Even if you weren’t an incubus, you could put two and two together from his slightly parted lips, the peony gently brushing over his features like watercolour, and his tentative steps into the dorm.

He murmurs your name in surprise, and perhaps that’s the most conversation these walls have ever heard since you and Moze became roommates.

“I didn’t know you and Moze were rooming together,” he begins with that soft cadence of his. Subconsciously, you sit a little straighter—keenly aware of him, after learning the signs of his body so well.

But before you can reply, Moze answers for you—the most you’ve ever heard him speak.

“Didn’t get round to telling you.” Each word is heavier than you can comprehend, tainted with a bluntness that suits him. It makes your gaze snap back to his face, and you swear the corner of his lip twitches upwards before he turns to you to talk. “Hope you don’t mind me having him over for a bit.”

“It’s fine. I like him,” you shrug, and the corner resumes its neutrality once more. Not like you see it—you’ve turned back to your work as if there isn’t a gnawing hunger slowly uncoiling under fragile dermis, as if you can’t smell every speck of desire and bashfulness slowly undulating within Jiaoqiu. You do like him, and not just as a meal. His tongue cuts sharp, beneath his fumbling, clumsy touches that seem so graceful when not encumbered by sheets.

You just hope you won’t die of starvation before you wrap up the calculus. That would be an embarrassment for the ages.

Alas, you don’t actually end up finishing your work. The sanguine liquid pooling into your mouth may not be enough to intoxicate you, but you can feel a pleasant warmth buzz through your veins. Of course, there’s warmth from that and warmth coming from sitting close to two heated bodies in a tipsy screening of some horror movie you’ve never seen.

Calculus can wait another day. When Jiaoqiu stumbled from Moze’s room with a sweetness on his breath and a tight grip around your wrist, you gladly let yourself be rescued by the surprisingly strong Foxian. He led you right back in, and you were practically floored at how easily you just… stepped into the space, with Moze simply eyeing you rather than that cautious glare he so often wore.

The Foxian pushed you into soft carpet, and you could feel Moze’s body tense up as your side collided with his own—the floor space was just about large enough for three guys to sit, but he made no move to move, thus you attributed it to the buzz he felt.

It’s dark.

It’s dark, and you’ve got your reticent classmate on one side of you, and the acquaintance-or-not on your other, practically curled up into your body with how he’s draped himself.

Naturally, you don’t end up paying attention to any of the movie—some flick you think you saw a century ago. Sure, the screams are totally realistic, but who can blame you for being distracted? You’ve got the object of your avoidance on one side, and then someone you think is deliberately pushing himself into your ‘hungry’ radar.

You would be quite partial to imploding, but unfortunately that is not a power you possess.

But despite all your gripes, this is nice in its own, painfully ironic sort of way.

. *࿐.

Of course you don’t end up stealing a kiss outside the building—Moze taking the opportunity to clean the bathroom obsessively while buzzing from the liquor, while you walk Jiaoqiu out.

Of course you don’t mean to, but you’re drunkenly complaining of the professor for your statistics module, and he’s merely gazing. When the sun’s long gone to its slumber—and the only light available is the halo around your head from the flickering streetlamp—who can blame him for the way his eyes drink your pout in, the way he’s getting lost in the way you smell? Menthol cigarettes and something sweeter, something his nose picks up that could be caramel but could also thrum deep in your veins to intoxicate others.

He cuts you off when it gets too much for him, right when you push your glasses up to continue to ramble comfortably.

“—every lecture, I swear—mmph—”

You swear up-and-down you weren’t planning this; you’re taken completely aback as he surges, pressing you up against the rough brick of the building. He’s warm, you think deliriously—with his hand cradling your cheek and his other nestled in the back of the loose pullover you’re wearing, you’re warmer than you’ve been in weeks.

It’s not desperate, but you can feel the build-up of emotion behind it: taste the cherry on your breath, the tequila on his. Alcohol may have prompted this, but even a fool could savour the heavy yearning on his tongue.

“Jiaoqiu,” you mumble, but he merely tilts your head, nipping at your slicked lips with an eagerness he only seems to display when it’s the witching hours. He’s shorter than you, yet tonight he’s the one caging you in an inescapable lock—so hungry, so avaricious and naturally, you oblige, raking your hands in his pink hair.

You taste blood. You taste life as you feel his steady pulse against your body, lust as he groans and melts into your touch, desperation as he entwines his arms around you with the sole goal of pressing himself into you even further.

You are equally insatiable, gradually feeling the vivid colours flow from his tongue onto your own.

You are equally gluttonous, but your work isn’t going to finish itself and you’re quite a good demon, if you do say so yourself.

You are equally voracious, and perhaps completely degenerate, yet still you wistfully and regretfully ease your lips from his—though your hands remain white-hot on his body.

It’s enough energy to get through the rest of this day and then some. It’ll do. It has to do.

“I’ll see you at the Film Festival,” he murmurs, but the two of you know the encounter between you both will be sooner—a clandestine encounter between sheets, in fact.

He’s walking home, so you watch him disappear into the night—and when his small figure is swallowed up in the void space between street lamps, you watch a little while longer.

Unbeknownst to you, someone else has been watching this entire time too.

*࿐.

Film - demons, seduction, succubi and incubi, you scrawl in your notebook, already feeling a healthy dose of apprehension, amusement and mild horror at Professor Hopkins’ chosen group project.

“...due a week from now. Since there are only three of you, why don’t you boys work together?” Clearly, he is impervious to the chill that still lingers between you and your fellow classmates—the triangle is still at its maximum area, and you don’t envision it changing any time soon. Horror upon horrors, he then adds something that makes you shiver in your seat. “I’ll play it as our department’s submission for the Film Festival.”

Once more, you wonder how the department was approved in the first place.

Then, the thought slips your mind as you first lock eyes with Sunday, then Moze only a minute later. I’m screwed. You don’t think you’ve ever been on such a tightrope before: wildly cartwheeling your arms back-and-forth while dangling over a fatal precipice. You will not survive this—not the research on incubi, nor the actual group project.

You can only pray your two intelligent classmates do not put two and two together for once. After all, you’re the mathematician out of this mismatched trio. Any semblance of hope you had at making it through the year is slowly dissipating.

*࿐.

“…edit it documentary style. It’s professional, organised, and will suit the Professor’s tastes.” Sunday’s mellifluous voice washes over you as you sit in the campus library with your classmates, desperately trying to look engaged.

It does not work.

Sunday’s fountain pen wavers in the air and turns on you, and your heart jolts and skips past a few beats—it looks far too close to a weapon for your liking, and you would not trust an angel with a dagger for the life of you. Or without the dagger. He does not inch it closer, but it’s rather an unconscious mirroring of his thinking that betrays that he’s about to scold you for falling asleep. You’re thankful for the table that separates the two of you, but you fear wood can only do so much to counter flames of divine punishment.

But before he can lecture you, Moze beats him to it. And for the record, you don’t know how he ended up sitting right next to you, and you’d like to complain.

Leaning across his chair, he gets unnecessarily close to talk to you, and it’s not like whatever he’s saying is important.

“Do you have anything to add—” and here his leg ghosts up against yours, but you don’t flinch. At least, you don’t think you do. “—or did you not get enough sleep last night?”

His voice is low—enough that there’s an undercurrent of tension without him even trying. You choose not to reply directly to him; instead, you look at Sunday once more, and you swear you feel a spike of irritation from the angel. But, surely not, right?

Mulling your words over, you carefully select a sequence that won’t land you a one-way ticket back to hell. There’s a certain trick to this, you see—and that’s crossing your fingers and thinking of an escape plan in the event you fail, or the shameless cowardly demon approach. It may not land you a spot among the Lieutenants, but it sure is better than being skewered by some angel.

Especially one named Sunday. You disguise your grimace.

“Uhh,” you wrack your brains, before settling on the first thing your mind falls upon—yesterday night, all cozied up with Jiaoqiu. Fuck. “A horror movie.”

You can feel Moze’s stare burn into dermis, sizzle a bit, then singe your very bones.

“That’s an— unconventional idea,” Sunday coughs, and you remind yourself that angels are way meaner than you’d expect.

“If you think it’s ill-founded, then I would like to remind you our professor’s maturity doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll enjoy an orthodox style,” you argue, suddenly remembering that angels are also ill-suited for debates and ‘gotchas’, and also that incubi can honey their tongue to saccharine degree.

Fuck. You’ve really spent too much time in the human realm.

Before Sunday can get a word in, you keep talking, desperate to look enthusiastic to discuss incubi and possibly give yourself away. “If it’s being entered into the Film Festival, a mockumentary or a horror film could be both informative and entertaining. Or even a silent film.”

“It’s succubi and incubi,” Moze mutters. “If there were more people I’d bet there’d be one group submitting porn.”

You stifle a cough, but you don’t think you did it well.

“What, with Hopkins as the intended audience?” you glance at him, and see the traces of laughter on his mouth, and suddenly your own feels somewhat dry. Just a little.

“Yeah, imagine,” he matches your airy tone—and the proximity forces your heart to lapse. Just a little.

Sunday’s glare bores into both of you. “Can the two of you take this seriously? We are absolutely not doing that.”

If you ever forgot he was an angel, this is a poignant reminder. Should you squint, you think you can see a faint halo around his head, but that could also honestly just be the library light causing the incandescence.

“Yes, which is why we should do horror or a mockumentary,” you interrupt. This is the only fight you’d ever attempt with an angel, and boy do you deserve a medal for it like the humans do. “The topic isn’t particularly… uh… safe for work, so horror would convey the right message that we investigate in each class, while still having space for detail. Think something like found footage horror films or something.”

“You raise a good point,” Sunday deliberates—if there was anything good to say about angels, it would be that they are gracious with their concessions. Some concessions. “Fine.”

Fine.

With glee, you save the moment to brag about when you next visit downstairs. I got an angel to agree with me.

But simultaneously, you compose your face, knowing the next item on the agenda will inevitably be the very topic of the proposal.

Suddenly, you no longer feel the glee of just a minute ago.

Oh shit.

*࿐.

The most abject misfortune in your long life, it should be duly noted, does not in fact occur that particular night.

It occurs the next night. Perhaps it was too much to ask for when you pleaded for just this year: uninterrupted, normal, uninterrupted. It might’ve stemmed from you spamming omg on social media too much, but it’s not like you could realistically use any other alternative without getting flagged as suspicious. Call it a habit caused by humans, or whatever.

Disregarding the blasphemy, the day starts normally, and gives you hope (ill-founded, you know). Like all mornings, you begin with breakfast, a coffee and a cigarette outside—and a quick dose of Moze’s early-morning glare. As with all days, you ignore it—but there seems to be something underlying beneath its surface. Something deeper, as if he’s trying to figure you out; as though his eyes are meticulously stripping away your dermis with forensic precision, paring away sinew from your bones and finding the interweaved remnants of your blackened soul.

It’s a Friday, with exactly one morning lecture on probability—then a project research session with Hostile and Hostiler in the comically empty lecture hall.

Or Hostile and Slightly Less Hostile.

Or even Awkward and then Tentative Teamwork.

The bowl of cereal from this morning does nothing to suppress the ravenous feeling that’s slowly taking over your mind. It would be fine if you didn’t have a morning class, but alas nobody ever seems to hear your prayers as you sit through two hours of quite possibly the most onerous yammering you’ve ever heard—and you’ve heard the Avatar of Pride yap.

Every day your hypothesis seems to be proved right—humans would do a fine job running hell.

But no one will ever listen to the humble incubus, you muse as you sling your books onto your bed and pick up the folder you’ve compiled on incubi, succubi and demons of seduction. It’s detailed, but everything is neatly cited and completely untraceable to your brains specifically. If you rang up your friends and falsified a few sources along the way, who could possibly be able to tell?

Strewn within the sheets is some inaccurate information. If they correct you on it, it’s all well and good, but perhaps even better if they gain some misconceptions along the way.

You don’t mind cheating a little in academia, if the subject is idiotic enough.

And if your perfectly perfect human life stays intact because of it, you don’t mind being a little unethical with your information practices.

Just a little.

Irregardless of your questionable academic ethics, you’re beginning to feel light-headed by the early afternoon. Some would say it’s karma for defiling the sanctity of this fine learning establishment, but you know full well it was the measly kiss you’ve had as a proper meal—something insubstantial and far too light to count as a true dinner. Jiaoqiu was more of a snack, and already you’re reminiscing over the flavour of his lips.

Really, you should be a gourmet.

…It’s also becoming increasingly clear that your thoughts are veering substantially off-track, though who can blame you when your head is beginning to throb and your mouth is becoming more parched by the minute.

You don’t think it’s ever been this bad before, but then again you’re one of the oldest of your species—your full maturation is only moons away. Or more. Or less. It’s hard to conceptualise the time of the underworld when you’re on the surface.

Tonight, your skin will likely burn like molten rock, reshaping and rekindling you into a form better than yesterday’s. Hunger will only intensify the process, making it far more painful. And you are hungry, with a body practically screaming at you to absorb some emotion. Anger. Hatred. Misery. All of these are copious in this highly pressurised environment, but these are fleeting on your tongue—bitter and grainy and not worth the effort of satiating yourself with.

The clock is only ticking forward. You can’t not make it to your project meeting—that would for sure rouse the angel’s suspicion, and you cannot afford that. Not tonight. Not any night, actually, if you can help it.

You don’t want your time here to end.

With each step towards the door, your ribcage feels like it’s about to swallow you whole—so insatiable it might’ve been easier for you to be labelled as an Avatar of Gluttony instead. Not a lot of sand remains in your hourglass, though you’re not stupid.

There are contingencies for times like these.

Jiaoqiu has class, you wrack your brains. If there’s anyone…

It would probably be the Avatar of Lust who’d be able to help you—you think you’ve seen her several times around before, feeling the familiar ‘fingerprint’ of demons amidst a crowd of human energy.

The walls are far too grey as you roam the halls. At some point, you think you start seeing the people you pass morph into a singular identity, filled with the same struggles, crises and misery as everyone else.

It’s barely enough to sate the throbbing that beats in tandem with the seconds—a dull ache that only grows more poignant with time. If you tried, you could probably manually take your mind and crack it like a pomegranate to quell the pain, but alas you haven’t quite figured that one out yet.

There.

“Wow, you look a mess.” Bleary-eyed, you watch as the colours coalesce into a faint figure, but it may just be delirium. Her cold hands brush across your face and tilt it from side to side, and you hear her whistle lowly at the heat from your skin.

You think you’re delirious.

“Most definitely are,” the woman shrouded in purple replies. Can she read minds? “Poor little incubus, babbling his little heart out. So, what will it be? I can bring you the finest strains of human joy and wreckage, or I can send you straight back from whence you came for your metamorphosis. Pretty boy, I could even get you set up for the night with a few humans.”

Her words merge and plume into smoke in your brain.

“Got a meeting for a group project right now,” you slur. Your sluggish register of your surroundings makes it impossible to sense the faint, familiar energy so far off in the distance. It’s a soft dove-grey, and utterly neutral—so removed from the filth of the human realm that you’d stop and admire it any other day. “Could you make this go away for a bit? I’m screwed if I don’t.”

“Oh?” Lust bursts out in a too-loud peal of laughter, slamming her hand on the wall behind her to stabilise herself. You wish someone would do the same to your head. “I see. I’ve heard the rumours, but I didn’t think you’d be this deprived.”

She doesn’t make any sense, you note wonderingly, but strangely her giggles make you slightly more reassured.

“I make all the sense,” Lust informs you. “What a rude little demon you are. But don’t worry—”

Her nails dig into your skin, and you feel the air grow slightly colder, as if some equilibrium has finally been disrupted. Or maybe you’re stupid, and you’re finally succumbing to whatever this process will require.

But she glances behind you, and brings your face closer to hers a brief second later. “—I just found somebody very interesting to help you out, and I barely need to do anything to help you.”

“What?” you mumble. The strange feeling you’re getting from the distance is growing stronger. Just a bit, but you don’t really think it matters.

What truly matters is that your group project meeting is only twenty minutes away, and you’re barely holding on to the wisps of your sanity that still linger.

“You haven’t been very helpful,” you add, but then her eyes roll exasperatedly and Lust kisses you with all the weight of a butterfly. You don’t think you’ve ever kissed anyone this casually, as though it’s the absent-minded brush of powder across one’s nose, or the faint tap of blotting lipstick. She tastes like the rich last bite of cake, and she pulls away with the speed it typically gets eaten with.

“Uh, thanks?” you mutter perplexedly, for the emotion of other demons simply doesn’t satiate incubi the same way other species’ do, but it is appreciated nonetheless. At least, it temporarily soothes the faint pounding of hands against your cranium like an Ibuprofen does a head-splitting migraine. She’s still close to your face, and you can see a self-satisfied smirk slowly unfolding under that maraschino gloss—all pink and conniving.

Lust. What a strange woman she is.

“I think you’ll be fine,” she whispers one last time, before traces of bergamot and vanilla seep into the candy-tinged air. She really doesn’t make any sense, you drowsily reaffirm, but before you can ask her to elaborate on her cryptic message, something vice-like tightens around your wrist and wrenches you from Lust’s clutches.

You’re being dragged, practically, by something attached to a soft pearl-hued glove. A hand. No, a person. No, an angel whom you were so careful to not touch—who is now gripping onto your arm as if you could possibly run away.

It takes you precious few sand grains to realise the true gravity of the situation.

Shit. Shit shit shit. To make matters worse, your lucid thoughts are limited to only one section of your brain—the rest are all struggling to keep up with his fast pace.

“What’s wrong?” you ask the wall of grey before you, and for a brief moment you think you see the flash of a halo in the dim hallway. You think you can feel the impenetrably icy wall of his composure crack, just a little.

But that’s impossible.

Angels aren’t subjected to the sorrows of human experience.

“Sunday.” You say his name for the first time, tainting the angel’s identity with a tongue that has been coated by filth and sweetened with the most saccharic honey. “Sunday.”

He casts a long look over his shoulder, one that reflects his usual disapproving stare. Without looking, he easily fits the key into the ‘Identifying and Apprehending Olde Monsters in Our Midst’ lecture theatre, and you must remind yourself once more that this is the most simple of child’s play to a being like him.

“It is time to work on our project, is it not?”

Can he feel your fever? Can he feel the tense energy that you’re struggling to control?

Your eyes slip past him onto the clock, which still indicates a good ten minutes remain until the pencilled slot. “Almost. Moze’s not here, either.”

His grip tightens, minutely. “He’ll join us later. I’ve asked him to purchase some film and get a better camera from the Media department.”

Then, he lets you go abruptly as though burnt—you’re left clutching your folder and with a profoundly confused expression on your face.

“Right,” you mention awkwardly, rubbing at your wrist and wincing at the painful feverish heat you’ve been emitting. There’s still that awful dry feeling in your mouth, but you’d rather keel over and die rather than give yourself away in front of an angel. “No time like the present, am I right?”

“That truly is the principle we should strive to embody.” Sunday’s voice grows muffled as he carefully rummages around in the cupboard at the front of the auditorium—you take the opportunity to both pat your back for diffusing the tension, and place your folder neatly on the large table that also loiters at the front. You’d normally take your seat at the back of the lecture hall, but tonight the eve grows dark and the only light is the harsh fluorescent one that shines from above and casts only the table in a clinical ambience.

“We can start slightly earlier,” he murmurs, closer than you anticipated, standing right behind you as you sink into the swivel chair by your research. You fight back a scream at his sudden appearance—the unexpected pop-up of an angel never bodes well, after all.

“That’s… not a problem,” you smile, ignoring the pounding headache that seems to have decided to make itself known once more. “Do you want to compare research first to make sure we’re on the same page?”

“Naturally.” His voice is slightly lower than it normally is, and you attribute it to the lull of the lecture hall and its secluded location within the building. Even on the most busy of days, you never actually see anyone walk past the glass windows that panel a strip in the door—you swallow nervously at the thought of being sequestered here with an angel. “Is it alright if I record the behind-the-scenes process of our progress?”

“Like to bolster the found footage feeling, or using it to bolster the mockumentary?” you probe, trying to conceptualise his earlier ramblings of sending Moze off for a better camera. He appears to notice the puzzling expression you sport.

“There was a rather grainy camera in the cupboard here. We should record with both to compare the texture,” he explains, and you accept it with relative ease.

After all, angels can’t lie. “Alright.”

He murmurs something under his breath, a low ‘perfect’ before he’s setting the camera up to capture both of you.

Perfect.

The word lingers in your mind. You don’t quite know why.

*࿐.

“....incubi are thought to feed on the life force and emotions of their victims, and may also cause sleep paralysis. They are male demons who seduce their victims, particularly women, and have sexual intercourse with them,” Sunday pauses. You’re acutely aware of his knee brushed up against yours, how he monitors your face and notes between reading out whatever he’s written in neat, looping handwriting.

He’s warm. He’s warm, but you’re scalding to the touch: feverish and more than somewhat delirious. Sunday’s words fade in and out like the two of you are underwater; you can only curse at Lust for misleading you, as help is nowhere in fucking sight. Instead, she’s doomed you to be stuck with an angel scrutinising every move you make.

“That’s what I got too,” you mumble, shuffling your sheets to find the relevant information. Your glasses slip down your nose, but before you can push them up, a pale glove gently slides them up your face—and you startle. “Ah, thanks.”

“No problem,” he smiles, yet it doesn’t reach his pale eyes. “Did you get any more information?”

“Not that I can think of…” you trail off, mind going blank at the most critical time. “Sorry, I’m a bit under the weather tonight.”

“Don’t worry,” he chuckles, but there’s something that’s sharper than usual in the cloud of energy surrounding him. Something off in the angel masquerading as human, in the computer designed by the creator. “I’ve already got some ideas on how to portray these ideas in the film.”

There’s a slight sheen on your face—half nerves, half the fever that’s consuming mind and body at a ferocious pace. With glazed eyes, you can only nod.

“Poor thing,” he hums, sympathetically distant in the way only angels can be.

Something’s wrong.

The cold back of a gloved hand touches your forehead tenderly, like if he were cradling the divine metal of his weapon.

“Didn’t get enough emotions lately?” he asks condescendingly, and you freeze.

“What?” you squint up at him through the lenses, still trying to play it off—but really, you’re attempting to process what he said.

“I’m joking,” he smiles once more, but there’s something awfully false in the curl of his lips—something wrong and twisted in how his hand shifts to cradling your face in his palm. Still so gentle, but now with a terrifying sort of control that was not there a mere second ago.

“Right,” you mumble, peering up at him with wide, hazy eyes. It’s no longer the fluorescent lighting that’s hurting your eyes—but rather the emergence of a halo behind his head that you force yourself not to react to. That would be a dead giveaway.

You can barely breathe. No longer does oxygen circulate through your vessels—there is only the thick undercurrent of tension you swallow, only the suffocating grasp he has on you, both physically and mentally.

Too close. He’s still smiling like nothing’s wrong, as though you aren’t a filthy demon and can still be forgiven if you merely clasp your hands like the humans do and confess your sins.

Hell is filled with humans like these.

“It must be so hard…” he breathes. A soft, gloved thumb strokes your cheek, feather light, but you barely feel it over the hummingbird thrum of your heart and mind beating in sync. Like trapped prey, you’re honed in to each and every move; and like trapped prey, you’re wondering why the executioner chooses to trace the path of the arrow over your body.

Your tongue is leaden.

There is nothing you can say to save yourself.

“It must be so hard being a demon,” he purrs with that quiet, lenient tone of his.

A feather brushes past your cheek; the angel’s wings have now unfurled.

An Archangel.

You pray your end is quick.

His hand moves up, and with demulcent grace, he thumbs the ridged edge of the horns that spiral from your head, ones that you didn’t even notice had appeared.

Your mouth opens and closes, but embarrassingly the honeyed tongue you so valued has failed you with your neck on the line.

“Now, now, you didn’t think you’d get away with it, did you?” he soothes, and you feel each and every ministration the Archangel delivers to the manifestations of your otherness on your head.

This only feels more cruel—a disturbing mercy to grant a prisoner about to be executed.

“I…” the sinner closes his mouth, already knowing it’s futile.

“You,” Sunday repeats, tilting his head. The halo tilts with him—large, unblinking eyes interspersed with smaller ones, all honed in on you. They’ve all got the same psychedelic quality, and in any other life you may have been fascinated with how they gaze so earnestly at somebody’s soul. But not tonight.

Tonight, they’re the eyes that will see through you and judge the very mettle intertwined with sinew and flesh and blood.

“Please kill me quickly,” you murmur. Perhaps the Archangel will grant you a final mercy that’s never afforded to even the most pious of humans. The uncertainty of death is infinitely long—grain upon grain upon grain of sand. If your soul burns up in those divine flames angels so like to use on your kind, you’re not sure you’ll even regenerate back in hell.

His hand pauses—it’s settled on top of your head now, brushing past the hair and merely resting upon it. He’s not looked away from you all this time: watching how your eyes grew wide with denial, with fear, and now how your eyelids lower with the weight of resignation. What a heavy burden, he may be thinking, but you wouldn’t know for it’s impossible to guess what an angel thinks, and an Archangel specifically.

Your breath catches in your throat.

Slowly, experimentally, his gloved hand bows your head far enough that you’re forced off the chair and onto the ground with your knees scraping the frigid linoleum. Like this, you’re a sculpture of repentance: hands desperately clutching each other, lips open in what appears to be grief, and perhaps the anguish of the unknown that resides deeply in each pupil. Of course, if you were human that would be one thing, but on your head lie two jagged horns, sweeping the ground is a long tail, and inked across your arms and lower back are constant reminders of your sin.

You are an abomination masquerading as human, gazing up at the being who holds your lengthy life in his hands.

There’s a painful sort of irony in this situation.

You can’t even beg for your life.

“Poor little lamb,” he repeats, with an empty sort of pity in his eyes. Empty, for what you’re finally feeling rolling off him in waves isn’t pity, nor sympathy, but something that makes you believe you’re truly hallucinating. Maybe the shock made you go mad.

He leans down to examine you, and the wings that flutter—nestled in dove-grey hair—brush carefully over your face, with softness you still remain puzzled by,

Bitterly, you smile at him—a wretched thing, tasting acerbic and of your birth on caustic brimstone.

“There’s no point in dragging this out,” you mutter, too tired from the pain of your growth and the exhaustion of fear to prolong this any longer.

There’s a sudden jolt of irritation in the tranquil waves emanating from the angel, and you’re starting to think that maybe that first emotion you felt from him wasn’t a hallucination.

You glance up finally, and the expression on Sunday’s face is mired by shadow with a faint flush beneath it: like he’s the one besieged by a fever and not you.

“I could help you, you know,” he breathes, and it’s then you’re able to finally put a name to the feeling clouding whatever the hell was going on with his energy waves.

Lust.

There’s also something so painfully ironic about this—the emotions you’re absorbing from an Archangel are enough to snap you out of your trance. In fact, their purity and abundance are hastening your transformation—he’s aiding you, and the very fact makes you quiet.

“You won’t survive even if I don’t kill you, demon.” His gaze is cold, but he’s entrancing.

You focus your attention on his legs spread in the chair—the pressed and meticulously ironed grey slacks he wears in particular. They’re soft, wool-blend, worth several thousand easily. Imbued within each strand is the intrinsic scent of him: the bergamot, the vanilla, the faint vestiges of cake. But beneath that is a clean scent—not quite the fragrance of fresh laundry, but one that seems to perfume the air with sunlight.

He’s an Archangel, you remind yourself.

“Go on,” he goads, voice all breathy. An Archangel far too used to authority, who’s currently cradling your life in glove-covered hands.

“Sunday,” you murmur, trailing a finger along the neat crease in his slacks. While he stares down at you stonily, there are monumental cracks in his composure that you detect—the tensing of his thighs, and the sudden spike in vitality from your readings. “You really wanna make a mess of these?”

His face flushes a more delicate pink, yet to his credit the angel doesn’t waver at the implication.

“They can be cleaned, can they not?” He’s pristine. Without a doubt, you ruining the almost sacrosanct cleanliness of Archangel Sunday signals a shift far too corrupted.

You swallow, resting your hands right where each thigh is plush with muscle. He’s watching: every move carefully documented, every sin filed away, every blasphemy to be recited at the confessional. The first wrinkle in his clothes by your fingers marks the irreversible transgression you’re about to commit. The camera, too, silently records this clandestine affair.

(“Will your creator see this?” you want to ask.)

(More importantly: will he forgive you, Archangel Sunday?)

You wet your lips, tasting the residual cherry gloss that lingers on the flesh. He keeps vigil: taking in how your tongue darts out, how you lower your head until your cheek is a mere breath away from his thigh.

He feels it, the hot air slowly being blown onto the muscle—as evidenced by the further hues decorating his energy. A twinge of impatience now taints the otherwise unsoiled intensity; it causes far more marvel in you than you would’ve thought.

Every minute shift of hands against fabric is distinctly felt. You know this—you see it in his slacks growing a little tighter, in how his chest briefly stops its rise and fall.

Sunday is no better at playing an angel than he is at playing man.

Pointedly, you peer upwards as you let your mouth finally osculate the fabric. Once soft, grey and perfect, they are now stained and mired—an ever-tangible reminder of the decision of two non-humans in this lecture theatre. You hope the camera captures the small, strangled noise Sunday lets out—something halfway betwixt cough and splutter, approximating to a gasp.

Kiss after kiss you press to his thighs, inching closer and closer to his half-hard dick: so agonisingly slowly you can hear his teeth grind in frustration.

“Incubus,” he breathes in a horrified sort of fascination. “You’re doing this on purpose—ah—”

You easily cut him off, letting the heat from your mouth linger on his hardon as you gradually unzip his slacks: tooth by tooth, until the poor man practically shivers in his seat. No, you forget. Archangel. There’s an Archangel whom you’re scraping your knees for—whose undiluted energy is allowing for you to safely undergo your maturation. This situation is ludicrous—only spotted in the most sordid of underworld printings, and even then you’d be hard-pressed to find something as blasphemous as this.

His fingers wrap tightly around your horn, and you suppress a groan at the frigid sensation. Maybe if you were a better man, you’d keep your composure and remain sluggish for him to get used to every new sensation.

But you are neither better nor man, so you ignore the thought. Instead, you increase your pace, just as he so desperately wanted. Hooking his briefs down, you take a moment to appreciate his hiss as the cold air hits him, followed only by how pretty his dick looks in the fluorescent light: flushed the same delicate pink cast across his features, trimmed neatly and already a drop of pre is pressed against the very tip like pearls.

“You’re evil,” he gasps as you experimentally twist your hand, and the length of flesh twitches. You smile.

“You think?” You finally speak, gently circling the flushed head with your thumb.

His amber eyes glare down at you like two suns, and that is perhaps the warmest you’ve ever seen him. Those boreal fingers practically fracture your horn as he squeezes, and you glare back.

“Taking advantage of a defenceless demon,” you chide; every syllable is accompanied by the motion of your hand as it begins moving up, then back down again. Sunday bites down on his lip, clearly attempting to stifle the sounds that would no doubt emerge when you speed up. “How shameful, Archangel.”

“Mmh–” Sunday shuts his mouth, and the camera takes it all in: how you lower your mouth to the head, licking the salt from his skin and the pre, and how he squeezes those slacks around your shoulders—fuck. There’s heat crawling all under your skin like millions of fire ants.

You move deeper, rocking yourself against the floor to quell the ache in your lower stomach: sucking and using your hands at the base to elicit more of those sounds from him. He tastes like rays of light on a cold winter morning: a clean energy you can’t help but swallow eagerly, ravenous for this stupid, misguided angel. Your hands roam his thighs, the smooth curve of his waist, and finally settle right where it begins curving into his plush ass: gripping the fat tightly as you continue taking him down your throat.

“You were born for this, weren’t you,” he mutters, and you can hear his wings flutter and rustle at your ministrations. His low voice forces your eyes shut, but it’s not just that. Gazing at the long strings of precum that are leaking down is beginning to stir unbearable warmth in your chest, while your breathing is slowly becoming more laboured as you choke on his girth. If anything, you’re the one getting off on this: tightening the muscles in your thighs to keep feeling that dull ache in your gut.

He notices.

Of course he does; those hawkish eyes that shine from his face and from his halo are attuned to every little move you make, every little sigh that leaves your nose.

“How shameful,” he mocks, echoing your previous words. Adjusting his leg, he presses a polished shoe against your bulge, and you moan around his dick.

Fuck.

He rocks the sole onto you, hard; you can’t help but grind up into the impeccable leather, already feeling a damp patch growing on the front of your pants. Each sensation is only exacerbated by the lack of airflow caused by his fat cock in your mouth—amplifying your senses to a dizzying, heady state.

You’re gazing with teary eyes right up at him, and you swear he throbs in your mouth; but the thought leaves just as quickly when his hand comes to cradle the side of your face, wiping the salty liquid away with a gentle thumb and bringing it to his own lips to taste.

“You want to get off too, huh?” he coos sympathetically: a pink tongue darting out to lick his thumb clean. In tandem, his foot presses even further down, and you can feel the frigid linoleum press up against you.

“Ah,” you choke around his dick. No words dribble from your lips, but Sunday feels the plea regardless. Those gloved hands of his pull you off his length with a pop and retract just as quickly. He grabs your arms as if he were handling a ragdoll—sitting you up on the desk in front of him as though you only weighed that much—and you need to remind yourself that he is not human, he is something far superior in strength and agility.

It’s also aptly demonstrated in how he handles the buckles of your pants: deftly and expertly opening each clasp with monstrous speed, before tugging on them until they pool on the auditorium floor.

You shiver.

“Go on,” he encourages. “Since you so clearly can’t focus, why not entertain me?”

Why not entertain me?

“What?” you mumble, but he levels you with a stare that feels far more sadistic than anything you’ve faced before. You’re not faced with a human, nor the warmth of your fellow demons—but rather a damn Archangel that’s making you feel more exposed than ever.

“What?” He’s the picture of innocence, though he’s got his dick in his own hand now—keeping his hand slowly moving as he speaks, and your eyes hone in on the motion. You can’t help but focus on it, how it looks against the pearl-white glove, how it tasted in your mouth. “You’re desperate, aren’t you?”

His words and the crude tone behind them stir a coiling tension in your stomach; you can only stare at the sudden change.

Angels, too, can be deceptive.

“Go on,” he repeats, tilting his head. “Here’s your opportunity.”

Damn it.

Hesitantly, you pull down your boxers: exposing your cock that’s slowly been dribbling precum in your pants, exposing everything to the angel. Heat rises to your face, but his eyes on you also make the heat pool at your gut; you can’t help but slip a hand down your body to wrap around your dick, so desperate to be attended to.

The effect is immediate. With a hand already slicked wet, the tight grip you have on yourself, and the voyeur who’s watching each and every one of your moves with his pairs of eyes, it’s apparent you won’t last long. You gaze at him, embarrassed, with a face sheened with sweat and eyes clouded with lust on your own.

“Sunday,” you bite out—the fist he’s making clenches ever so slightly, and you think his breath hitches.

He reaches over for the camera, tilting it towards you and capturing each and every expression, every single moan you let out as you succumb to the soothing rhythm of getting yourself off.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, and you feel your abdomen tighten. “But you can hold on a little longer, right?”

Your eyes snap wide open as a slick, gloved finger trails the curve of your ass and around your hole; Sunday’s expression is of utmost concentration as he records each minute detail.

“What—ngh,” you whine as he probes just the fingertip in; the glove has been dampened by his precum already, but still feels so powdery and dry as it slowly enters deeper. He’s cold, and his fingers are downright glacial; the sudden change in temperature has you tightening around the digit as your hand flies to steady yourself on his shirt.

So close.

You can feel his breathing fan across your face; it’s shallow and reeks of lust, the kind that’s always the most dangerous.

“Keep going,” he hums, gradually pumping the finger in and out until it’s almost completely covered with the wet precum leaking from your tip and down your cock. The burn in your abdomen is indescribable—you can barely focus on the simple, mindless motion of up and down, when he’s so close like this, when he’s pressing another finger right in and stretching you out with ease that belies his inexperience.

In. Out. In. Out. You can barely breathe with the pace that he’s setting, seeming to deliberately miss that particular spot inside you that would end this oh-so-quickly.

The camera captures it all: the oozing, non-human precum that trails and coats his gloves, the careful scissoring motions he’s doing to ease you open, and the desperate heaves of your stomach as you fight off the tightening of your abdomen.

“Sunday, please,” you moan, and you jolt as his fingers pull out and the same damp hand wraps around your tail to bring it to where he was just mere moments ago. Sluggishly, you barely register what’s going on until he opens his mouth—and his proximity makes his words reverberate and coalesce in your sternum, tightening your very chest.

“I won’t do it all for you,” he croons, but he’s setting the camera on the desk next to you and adjusting his gloves once more. Your scaly tail is further pushed in, and the strange sensation forces your eyes back into your skull. What the fuck? The Archangel uses your own tail to get you off, and the conflicting sensation between your legs and inside you is hurtling you towards an orgasm you don’t think you’ll ever forget.

But he’s not done.

His wet hands trace up your sides, bundling the shirt you’re wearing until it’s at your neck. “Open wide.”

Blearily, you do as you’re told; fabric is shoved into your mouth as he uses you to hold your own shirt up, while he appreciatively hums at the metal pierced through your nipples. Cold, slick hands massage your tits, and even with the thick wad of material in your mouth you can’t help but moan loudly.

“So sensitive,” he mutters condescendingly. His thumbs brush rough circles against the pierced nipples, and involuntarily you feel your legs tighten around his waist. He’s callous with his motions; it’s slowly growing overwhelming for you, what with the tail stuck inside you, your hand still moving, and now his hands stimulating the tender skin around your chest.

It’s not until you look down that you see his dick rubbing up against your own, and the sight almost makes you let go right there and then.

“Mmph–” you groan as he lowers his head to your chest, rubbing one areola affectionately while his tongue swirls around the other.

With the hand now freed up in place of his mouth, he presses both your dicks together tightly, just barely moving his hand for the minimal amount of friction.

You think that makes it worse.

Tears leak from your eyes uncontrollably, and the tautness in your stomach feels as though it’ll claw out by itself if you don’t let go.

You move your tail just a whisper—it’s growing unbearable, just how overwhelming the rush of stimuli is. Sunday’s teeth graze your tit in such a way you desperately grit down on your shirt to not cum right there and then, but it’s growing impossibly hard when the motions of both his hands speed up: stroking you both in such a way that rubs precum everywhere and feels like fucking heaven.

You mewl as he bites down on the flesh, hard, leaving a throbbing mark as he laves his tongue right over it.

“Please,” you babble incomprehensibly through the fabric. “Sunday.”

His gaze meets your despairing one.

“Poor little thing,” he whispers, which only blows air over the saliva-slicked area and forces even more tears from your eyes. “Go on.”

He wrenches his hand particularly tightly, and you wail—a choked, garbled thing that comes right from the chest. Your back arches as your orgasm washes over you and blinds you for a brief moment: mind completely blank with only the purest form of pleasure hazing it, scalding robes of white staining your shirt, his shirt, and ending up on your face.

“What a mess,” he murmurs, rocking his hand as the waves hit you with full force.

“Ah—” you sob out as he continues through the waning ebb and flow: your legs twitch around him, and you’re sure he can feel the shallow, heaving breaths you’re taking to desperately cope with his continued movements. Your tail slips out from between your legs, and the sudden exit is followed by even more white dripping down your legs and onto the desk.

“There, there,” he coos. “That wasn’t so hard, was it now?”

He peels off the ruined gloves and tosses them to the side, tenderly wiping away the tears that streak your face—you’re still reeling, still feeling the aftershocks of intense, mind-ruining pleasure.

What the fuck?

He handles you like a proper lover—an absurd scene between lowly incubus and overmighty Archangel—settling his hands on your waist in something that could almost resemble an embrace. Some bastardised, corrupted version of one, anyway.

He’s not your lover.

He’s not even his own person.

You meet those deceptive eyes: as old as you, yet far more lonely.

“Is it my turn now?” he asks, a smile curving on his face like it truly was nothing that you witnessed in his amber gaze.

The Archangel, true to his inquiry, lulls in his movements: body freezing in both motion and temperature, while he tilts his head in a silent question. Do you want to continue?

The nature of an incubus is simple. Every act of consuming energy inevitably makes the incubus far more alluring, while it naturally replenishes whatever fatigue the demon has.

In the case of consuming an Archangel’s energy…

Well.

Suffice to say, it only fuels your libido.

In response to his question, you wrap a scorching hand around his dick; now a furiously flushed red, with a desperately leaking tip that’s practically begging for attention.

“Not like that,” he says lowly, and it’s not until he’s lifting you with strong arms and sitting you on his spread thighs that you vaguely realise what he’s doing. “You’re nice and stretched out now, right?”

Those long fingers of his trace the slope and dip of your waist, rubbing small circles in wait of your response.

This can’t be Sunday’s first time, you instead wonder; those piercing amber eyes of his make you feel the blushing violet instead. His heavy gaze burns where it lands: taunting and prickling your skin with a nervous fire that further kindles the one that revived in your stomach mere moments ago.

“Need something?” He tilts his head, and the taunting smile stretching on his face brings up the words you spoke all those days ago.

You scowl. “Shut up.”

“I think—” he trails off, lifting you partially out of your straddle with ease. Even as your mind goes blank, you feel each and every sensation that fires within your neurons. “—you have a problem with being honest with yourself.”

“Stick to your theology degree, angel,” you bite out, looping your arms around his neck to stabilise yourself and your racing heart. You quit breathing, momentarily. There’s something hard pressed onto the bottom of your thigh, imprinting stiffly and hotly into the flesh like some brand; naturally, you squeeze your eyes shut. Waiting. Anticipating Sunday’s movements, just as he anticipates yours.

“Which psychology is studied in,” he returns, goading you. He’s got his hand underneath you now, adjusting himself but still not pushing the engorged head in. Your frown deepens. “What, no please?”

“You can’t seriously be lecturing me about manners right—ah—”

Your sharp nails dig into the muscle of his trapezius as he cuts you off by stuffing the tip right in; he groans low in his throat at how damn tight you are, but also the feeling of poignant pain that’s beginning to sting across his shoulders.

You think you can smell the faint coppery scent of blood, but you only half-feel bad.

“You have a damn problem in not listening—hng–to others,” you pant. He’s tightened his grip on your ass, kneading and squeezing so tightly as he struggles to control his own breathing. The two of you linger in the lull for precious few moments; it seems time has capriciously stopped for the pair washed in fluorescent light, so desperately entwined yet ever at odds with each other.

“And you think you’re any better?” he counters. If you were more lucid, you’d be able to properly understand the tension in his arms and how he leans fully back on the chair, letting those wings brush past your body and practically engulf the two of you.

You shiver.

“Yes,” you hiss indignantly. “I actually—fuck—

You paw uselessly at his chest as he slams you down, and your sore throat lets out a choked out wail at the sudden sensation of being filled to the hilt—stuffed so full you almost feel him in your throat.

Each vein, each stupid ridge is vividly felt with every motion—his chest urgently rising and falling, your own spiralling into a sweat-slicked display of ecstasy, and his face. It contorts into the basest expression you’ve seen yet: flushed, mouth half-open, with a burning gaze honed right onto your own.

He looks like sin itself.

Sunday’s losing his composure, fast (you are too).

“Fuck—oh, shit, Sunday.” Imprecations cascade from your lips like waterfalls as the angel begins his movements, building up from a slow roll of his hips to accustom both of you to the sensation.

Like this, with his face mere inches away, you can’t help but stare a little at his face—honed in on his soft lips that wobble despite his struggle to keep his composure.

You wonder what they taste like.

Tea? Raspberries? Salt, like your own?

His lust-stricken gaze darkens somewhat as he appears to look over your shoulder briefly, but you’re too lost in the way he’s rocking himself into you to notice. But you do notice when his soft hand slides up your spine and cradles your nape. You do notice when he pulls you down so his breath mingles with yours–as he searches your eyes for any signs of discomfort and finds none.

“The fuck are you planning?” you murmur, and this time he actually lets you finish speaking before he cuts you off. Except, this time, it differs from his usual modus operandi. One moment, you’re staring intently at the angel beneath you; the next, he’s capturing your open mouth with his, and the effect is instantaneous. You moan into his mouth upon tasting him: not quite placing the saccharic flavour, but he’s fucking divine.

He’s languorous with his motions—to any outsider, it would look like he’s done this a thousand times and still wishes to savour the rest, pulling you so you’re finally flush with his chest.

You’ve never kissed an angel before.

You may not even be alive right now.

It’s only natural, then, that your eyes flutter shut and your head tilts to kiss him more deeply to relish in this final mercy. He’s biting at your lips, and the iron tang of blood combined with your dick rubbing against the soft material of his shirt begins the slow spiral into maddening pleasure.

You cannot see. Your eyes are shut, thus the only semblance you have of the visual situation is the light shining through the blood vessels in your lids; not the way Sunday isn’t looking at you, but glaring at the door far behind you.

Practically on cue, it opens, and you hear the clatter of wood against wood—someone stumbles in, then abruptly freezes in place.

Eyes blown wide open, you attempt to pull away from Sunday, only to have his hand keep pressing firmly against your neck to keep you in place while his mouth begins exploring lower down your neck.

The person behind you doesn’t leave like you expected.

“Ignore him,” Sunday breathes against your neck, and it’s then you look to your left and see your roommate shrouded in the shadow not reached by the clinical lighting. He’s holding a camera and film, and clearly fell into the room—judging by his hand steadying himself on the desk, and from what you can see, the dishevelled look on his face.

What you miss, concealed by the darkness, is the deep red flush that mires his face, and the straining hard-on against his pants.

“What the fuck?” you attempt to sit up, but Sunday’s next words make you freeze in place just like Moze. “Moze?”

“Did you enjoy the show?”

The question is quiet, but Sunday’s soft voice makes it carry across the auditorium regardless—and despite its polite form, the cadence beneath it hides a frightening sort of irritation. No surprise like you might’ve thought, but exasperation.

“What are you talking about?” you mutter, but it’s hard to concentrate on your roommate when Sunday’s busy thumbing your slit.

“He’s been watching for the past few minutes. I was wondering when he’d reveal himself,” he sighs, less bothered than you would’ve thought—what with the horns coming from your head, and the wings and halo sprouting from his own body.

Moze is human.

He’s human, so you finally turn your eye to him and watch him make his way closer, until you can easily identify the most prominent emotion that radiates from his body.

Lust.

You swallow. Despite the new information, you’re not a mind reader. You can’t tell exactly what Moze is thinking as he sits just a few seats away, irritably tapping a finger against the camera he’s holding.

“You’re early,” Sunday comments, making sure to sit up so Moze has a full view of how well you’re taking him—and the angel doesn’t miss how you tighten around him.

“Did you plan this?” Moze’s voice enters the hall for the first time this evening, and Sunday definitely doesn’t miss how the low reverberations make you practically flutter against him.

“So what if I did?” the angel replies boredly. “It’s not like you haven’t figured out who I am. And it’s not like you weren’t eagerly lapping up what was going here when you were watching us through the door.”

Moze stays silent, but you swear you can hear your roommate’s teeth grind as he shifts in place—and this time, his bulge is prominent in the blinding lights. The sight, though Moze doesn’t hear, makes you whimper quietly in Sunday’s ear; the angel’s eyes turn to you, each and every pair.

“What a slut,” he murmurs, and you shiver at his tone: so crude, so mocking. “You just can’t stop, can you?”

You moan as he tightens his grip around your weeping cock and slowly begins circling a stiff nipple with his other hand. On your back, you can feel a burning stare, and the knowledge that Moze is getting off on this only makes you feel it deeper in your gut.

“You’re lucky he’s all hard at the thought of someone watching,” Sunday coos, and through your hazy thoughts you barely work out if he’s talking to you or Moze. His thumbnail presses right onto the side of the head—which makes you almost fucking writhe—before you flop onto his shoulder in a daze.

Sunday goes quiet as he focuses on moving; it seems he’s said all he’s needed to say to the man, and you really don’t mind having an extra energy source to draw such salient waves of lust from. With that being said, you take the opportunity to sit back up and gaze at Moze while Sunday’s moving his pelvis beneath you—only to find that he’s already staring at you.

He’s pretty like this, you realise, dazed. His pupils are almost completely blown out as he takes in every inch of you; there’s hardly any hints of opalescence left in those eyes. Deep cerise coats his cheeks, and he’s almost trembling as he keeps vigil of the scene afore him—with hands that desperately crack the arm rests, intensely avoiding his lower body.

His breathing is in tandem with your own. Shallow. Fucked-out.

Those pretty eyes of his flick up to meet your stare directly, and you tighten around Sunday; he’s hissing and digging his nails into your waist once more as he manoeuvres you. As if to distract you, he slams himself deeply in—and you fucking buckle as you sob out a moan, blearily watching while the man at your side picks up the camera he came late because of and looks through the viewfinder.

“Perfect,” he breathes.

The coil in your stomach tightens with each flash.

“Fuck,” you sob; the harsh tug of Sunday is gradually overwhelming you, and the quiet snap of each photo numbs your mind. You know Moze’s getting each shot in detail; his meticulous nature comes through in the way he murmurs ‘just like that’ and ‘beautiful’—syllables that only contribute to the heat you feel in your body, spreading effortlessly throughout your face.

Any train of thought is cut off when the angel’s lips brush against the junction of your shoulder, and he bites. Sharp pain will undoubtedly be followed by a deeper bruise, but in that moment the ache makes the wave of pleasure increase twofold.

“Sunday—ah,” you groan, knotting your hands in his grey locks. “Please.”

You don’t quite know, in the end, why you’re begging.

You don’t, but when Sunday pulls back with his soft mouth stained red and a hazed look in his eyes, you think you’ve got it figured out.

Snap.

Blinding white goes off behind your eyelids as you slam your lips desperately into the Archangel’s. He tastes of iron, of an intrinsic saccharine flavour that nobody else could possibly replicate.

Snap.

With each roll of his hips against yours, you feel him lazily pressing up against that spot inside you—inch by inch, building up on slow pleasure that trickles viscously through you like honey.

Snap.

You lock eyes with Moze, and the intense look he wears while he gazes at you feels like he’s parsing through the layers of dermis, sifting through the nerves and sinew, and finally exhuming your bones and tendons. It’s quickly driving you past the brink, everything about him is. His laboured breathing, the way his eyes remain honed on you despite the faint agony tainting his deep lust.

Snap.

“Right— there,” you choke out. Moze’s still staring, absorbing each minute detail: the sheen of sweat on your body, the way your torso and legs tremble as you attempt to keep it together, and perhaps most poignantly the expression on your face as you stare at him.

Snap.

“Perfect,” he repeats, and it’s this particular version that finally pushes you over that precipice.

You sob out as your vision blurs, pawing uselessly at Sunday’s chest. His hands are firmly back on your hips, letting you rock the waves out—uncaring of the white ropes that ruin his shirt, or perhaps savouring them instead. Or perhaps he’s not paying attention. After all, you hear him swear for the first time since meeting him, and a mere moment later you feel spurts of heat leaking into you.

He shudders. By the god you don’t pray to, this angel groans so sweetly as he comes—that fact alone has you twitching around him.

More.

He still hasn’t softened, but that isn’t enough.

By chance, or maybe the best timing of your life, your eyes land on your roommate again—his eyes, too, meet yours through the screen on the camera.

Snap.

“Moze,” you whine, and the camera ceases in its photo-taking and filming. Well, except for an image of you looking so sweetly at him as you call his name out.

“What?” your laconic roommate murmurs, standing and casting his shadow over the two of you.

What a joke this is: a human watching an entangled demon and angel, and being completely captivated by it. There’s a buzz in his veins tonight—some from an awe-ful sort of fear at having his conjectures confirmed—but most of it is from the object of his desire finally within his grasp. An insufferable idiot, he may add, but one he cannot help but be captivated by.

Maybe he’s the fool, reaching for the moon, but tonight he no longer feels so foolish.

Your clawed hand fists his shirt, and he swallows: stone-still, watching with bated breath for your next move.

What will you do?

He gets his answer when you drag him down: tasting of blood and that inexplicable caramel sensation you always seem to carry. Your tongue is hot against his—impatient enough to keep your mouth open, but he is too. His hands, cold from the biting wind and the frigid irritation he’s been building within, fly to cradle your face.

Moze has enough sense to memorise this feeling of your lips on his, moaning and twining a lazy hand around his neck.

He thinks he feels a particular angel glaring at him, but it's none of his business, really.

“He’s not enough?” he mocks when you pull back, poignantly aware of the front of his pants ever-so-slightly brushing against you—how he fucking bites down on any sound attempting to escape his mouth.

“Don’t you want me to help you out?” you slur your words, clearly dazed from getting fucked by his stupid classmate. Yes, he wants to say, but he feels like some damned second place prize. Your hand brushes his crotch, and he bites his lip—hard—until the skin breaks and warm blood runs down his lips.

“Shit,” he hisses. Moze’s self-control is normally iron-hard, but it’s been so incessantly worn down today by two certain idiots that he can’t help but let the damned thing snap. Within moments, his hand is deep in your hair, tugging as he nips at the flush of your lips—letting copper entangle you two together in something he hopes can twist your fates together forever, even if he ends up in hell for it.

“Ah—Moze,” you groan, and it really doesn’t help his situation: dick pressed against your side, painfully hard due to a combination of factors that all have you (in bold, capital letters) written all over them.

He can’t help it. He really can’t.

He can’t help it when you pump him from base to shaft with hands far warmer than his—he can’t help stealing your lips away from the angel you’re still fucking riding. He can’t help it, either, when you gaze at him like that—he just has to press his tip against your ass. You’ve been complaining about it not being enough, haven’t you? What’s the problem?

There’s a mutual agreement between human and heavens for just this night. That being, to make you spiral into a mess.

Thus, Moze doesn’t baulk at the thought of sharing this night—not when you’re sinking down on both of them, not when the added tightness makes his head black out for a moment. Fuck.

That’s all his brain is clinging to.

How fucking good you feel—how warm your back feels pressed to his chest. He’s desperately trying not to bust, doing so by biting over the mark in the juncture that damned angel left. If you ever think of the man in front of you, you need to think of him too.

This is far better than any stupid porno—astronomically so than fisting his cock and imagining you in his hand’s place.

Moze buries his face in your shoulder, letting his hands roam around your body—supple skin that yields beneath his greedy fingers. His hands find your nipples, rolling and twisting the peaks to hear you let out sounds far louder than what he’s heard so far. That little fact makes him smile despite himself.

On the other side, Sunday’s grown accustomed to how your breath hitches when his finger scrapes past a particular vein on your weeping cock, how your pupils dilate just a little more when he squeezes particularly tightly. No, he’s grown accustomed to you—all the small tells of your body. It’s why he endures the arrogant human across from him, for all humans deserve grace.

They do not know better.

It’s just for tonight, he rationalises. If he wants to successfully remain undercover to achieve the goal of his operative, he must not do anything to draw attention. That’s why he’s helped you out, nothing else.

Angels cannot lie to others.

It doesn’t mean they cannot lie to themselves.

Despite Sunday’s heart that skips a beat whenever you look his way and all you see is him, he doesn’t acknowledge the racing thrum of the organ. In fact, as he’s sucking and licking marks into your skin as a reminder of this—of your sin—he reminds himself that he’s doing you a favour.

He’s doing the rest of the pitiful humans a favour as well. The more he takes up your attention, the less time you have to seduce them.

Actually, this is probably the most rational solution for getting one of the oldest incubi under control.

Good job, Sunday.

A plethora of broken imprecations are forced out of your mouth as they slam into you—when one slips out half-way, the other nails your prostate, over and over and over. You don’t think you’ve ever felt so full—not by any other demon, and certainly not by any human.

This counts for your mind too—stretched tight by what seems to be an eternity of satiation, and perhaps on the verge of breaking. You’ve forgotten the name of your project, the class you’re in, and why you’re here in the first place; and these broken trains of thought are interspersed with the quiet flash of the camera as it captures your fucked-out state.

“Please.”

It seems to be a permanent fixture on your lips, though you still don’t know what you’re asking for. No, you do know—more.

More, as streaks of white stain your thighs and drip onto the cold linoleum floor. More, as your lips bleed from the number of times you’ve been kissed, and kissed them yourself. More, as you wind up on the outskirts between consciousness and unconsciousness.

You’re barely lucid—having gone through a metamorphosis safely—but they seem to be more insatiable than you are. The energy store that pulses behind your heart has never experienced such satiation; in your drowsy state all you can focus on is the drunk high you’re getting off this.

It’s well into the night now, and perhaps the only thing that fully snaps you back into consciousness is the feeling of something wet laving away the mess between your legs—Moze. His tongue is warm as he clears the salt and white globs from your thighs, and when he sees those eyes of yours finally focus on him, he leaves a chaste kiss pressed against the side of your leg: continuing while you drowsily stroke the strands from his sweat-slicked forehead.

Only then are you aware of the warmth at your back: the angel behind you holds you fast to his chest with wings that envelope the two of you in a damn cocoon.

And finally, beside you and displayed on the laptop on the desk, is a video file paused with the name across the title bar:

The Catching of the Incubus.

*********

There has long existed a pact between a certain human boy and a pink-haired Foxian. Well, it’s not truly a pact, but more like a casual agreement that’s never been broken: the exchange of emergency keys, for the two trust the other will have his back.

It’s used today, when Jiaoqiu’s looking for the culinary textbook he left the last time he came around, a mere week ago. He may have been frustrated with himself for it, but there’s something about coming to Moze’s dorm that he looks forward to each time—and if he said the incubus that lives in the room opposite the reticent man’s, he wouldn’t be lying.

In any case, nobody’s home.

Jiaoqiu quietly slips his shoes off, checking first the living room. Nothing. Your room? Also nothing, though he lingers a little longer and takes in the burnt caramel scent that pervades the space—one that’s only gotten stronger, it seems.

Moze’s room it is.

The first thing he sees is the thick book, neatly aligned on Moze’s dresser with a meticulous pile of forensic texts. The next is two cameras, tucked away on the shelf behind it. They’re just sitting there innocuously, but Jiaoqiu’s curiosity is piqued. The man seemingly never takes interest in things other than crime scenes and keeping everything tidy, so the Foxian carefully picks up one and turns it on.

These Succubi Suck, the file reads, and he’s immediately hit in the face with unedited footage of what appears to be the most slapdash mockumentary he’s ever seen—clips and retakes and bloopers in a long reel that he skips through amusedly, gazing at your face a little too long when you’re speaking.

This is their film submission? He whistles lowly, impressed by the quality despite only having three people in your class.

He’s about to turn it off, when he spots the only other file that remains in the camera, something something incubus.

Just like before, he presses the fast forward button—

The Foxian’s face suddenly heats up, and he presses a hand to the lower half of his face.

Oh.

*࿐.