#this is for ailem but you can enjoy it also.

[ceilingfan5]

for you

“It’s you!”

“It’s me.” Kravitz grins from the computer and does a cute little half wave like he always does when they do video calls, and Taako’s heart aches.

He’d give anything to be with him right now, to kiss his stupid handsome face, to flop against him and feel the warmth of another living body that just so happens to care about him very much.

But things are the way they are, and it worked out that their relationship has to go through just a bit of temporary long distance. Short. Brief. There’s an end in sight, no matter how far away it feels. No matter how nauseous Taako gets when he looks at the countdown always running on his phone. No matter how badly he wants to reach through that screen and pull him out and squeeze the breath out of him.

“What’s on the menu tonight, babe?” Taako says, like he’s not writhing in melancholy about the whole situation.

“Funny you should say menu.” Kravitz grins mischievously, and then shares his screen. “Have you ever heard of Cooking Simulator?”

“Already fear is chilling my bones.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Cooking Simulator does not load very well, or fast, and the menu music is fucking deafening, though certainly boppable. It’s kind of silly and kind of charming with a touch of motion sickness thrown in for texture.

“Soooo,” Kravitz draws out. “Love of mine. What should I make you for dinner?”

Taako laughs.

“A burger?”

“Coming right up!” Kravitz calls, and he clicks into the Confectionary kitchen.

“Great sign. Like. Incredible. Super.”

“Have a little faith! You don’t-” Kravitz interrupts himself laughing. “You don’t know- I could be a great cook in the digital sphere, you- you don’t know!”

Taako knows.

Immediately they are met with some issues. Like meat. Meat issues. There is no ground beef in the bakery kitchen. There are no burger patties in the bakery kitchen. There is no chuck, no roast, no turkey to stuff in the blender. The closest thing Kravitz can find, as he whips nauseatingly around the enormous refrigerator stuffed to the gills with eggs and butter and raspberries and entire blocks of baker’s yeast, is bacon. He clicks on the relatively large mound of bacon, which he gets to do individually per bacon slice, and both of them crow with laughter-

“It’s- so fucking small-”

“It looks like a bandaid!! Bacon bandaid! How many- Krav- How many of those constitute a burg?”

“Gonna say six,” Kravitz says confidently, because there are exactly six in the fridge, and he would have to order more otherwise. He immediately adopts and maintains a stupid accent, which doesn’t quite stay in one single wheelhouse, but does make Taako split his sides. “Sounds, um, sounds like a proper uh, patty to me.”

“You’re a monster.”

“You asked for this!”

Taako protests, but Kravitz just laughs, and proceeds to throw the bacon in the blender, along with an egg, for, you know, cohesion, and also flour, for reasons Taako daren’t and caren’t discern. This does not work out.

“Nothing a good attitude can’t fix! Honestly, Taako-” Kravitz snickers and takes the mixture to the mixer, slamming it in and setting it to stun and letting it rip. “You’re gonna love this. This burger’s gonna be so good you’re gonna cream your jeans.”

“Not my jeans!”

The bacon mixture inexplicably becomes a dough. Kravitz carries on and slops it in the oven, in the closest burger shape he can approximate--a little heart shaped pan.

“There are fuckin- there are round-”

“It’s romantical. Don’t unromanticize this for me.”

The heart pan also gets a dough treatment (twice)--“It doesn’t even look like it baked!!”-- and then they’re off to the races. Certainly not horse races, maybe...corgi. Or lizard. Or drunk bicyclists. Because next, well. Next is a problem.

“Kravitz, if you touch that mascarpone, I swear to fucking god-”

“Can’t have a borger without cheese!”

“You explicitly can! KRAVITZ! DO NOT MIX THE MARSCAPONE AND THE CREAM CHEESE!”

“I’m sorry, do you-” Kravitz can barely breathe for laughing. “Do you see cheddar? Some fine- some fine fucking parm-a-sin? Some respectable a-saw-jee-oh?”

Taako is literally fucking crying, and wheezing, and screaming (fuck his neighbors). He cannot abide by this. Kravitz. Kravitz, he cannot abide. This will not be abidden.

AND YET.

“You know what we need?” Kravitz asks, slopping the heart-shaped layers on the cake. Burger. Beef confection. Fuck, it isn’t even beef. Lord above. Christ on a bike. Ring ring. He’s coming through. And he’s blasted.

“Wh-” Taako gasps for breath. “What do we-”

“KETCHIP.” He grapes the bottle of red food dye with force.

“I-”

“Kechpup.” Kravitz slowly rotates the bottle onto the burg.

“Nooooooo!”

“Catstup.” Glowing pink light suffuses their crime. This is not Taako’s idea of what red dye should do to an object, but the game has its...limits?

“I want a divorce.”

“Kep. Spup.” Kravitz chucks the bottle across the digital kitchen, where it bounces off entirely respectable fictional equipment. He paps the top “bun” onto the disaster.

“There. We- We did-” Taako wipes tears off his faces and groans. “We did it. We done did it.”

“I think we should frost it,” Kravitz decides. He pulls out the piping gun and angles for the frosting dispensers on the wall, holding it aloft.

“Time to suckle,” Taako wheezes, and both of them are so lost in the sauce the call almost drops when the laptop falls off Taako’s couch. It takes seven full minutes for either of them to speak complete words at each other, and even then, the nonsense begins again. It takes even longer for Kravitz to actually retrieve and lovingly dispense the frosting, and their sin is done.

“There.” Kravitz picks up the plate with their burger and admires it.

“God, my jeans,” Taako says, voice hoarse from laughing like a buffoon. “Something’s happened.”

“Called it.” Kravitz whips the camera around a few times, and then chucks the burger onto the display area, where it entirely falls apart. “Let’s go to the pizzeria.”

“Great. I want sushi.”

“SUSHI??”

So maybe their call lasts well into the night, and maybe Taako’s bothering the neighbors, and maybe the couch is incredibly empty with only his ass curled up on it, but that love is still there, and still strong, and still absolutely fucking ridiculous. Some souls just match, even if they’re far away.

[ceilingfan5]

au where taako is the dragon and kravitz is the prince (reverse paper crowns, bay bee)

listen im incredibly tempted by this. you monster

especially since ive been playing w/ prince krav/assassin taako

first of all, i love paper crowns so much. and second of all, listen. royalty aus are TASTEY. but you know what. fuck royalty

on the one hand it would be insane to do a thing i already did (and with another person @ maggie HEY <3) but flipp'ed. on the OTHER.

listen full disclosure im playing w this with ailem and we have some THOTS

here are some of them. im not sure, like. it feels like there are some discreet aus bein smuched here. HRMM

1. okay okay okay. taako WAS a dragon. he (youngish) got cursed to not be anymore...huge distress. (maybe at this point he also got separated from lup, who was also humanized???) and he went looking for someone to break the curse and they convinced him he needed either like. a certain amount of gold or murders to do the trick and he's like. seems legit. and got trained to assass. you know, the verb,

2. this seemed like a legitimate strategy for a bit. but also like. woof. shit was rouff. poor guy. and like. he didn't know things could be a Lot Better bc he was used to orphan dragon twin life, which was goodish but not the same as good human life? he did Multiple Homicides. maybe let's go with the gold model. he's goin for gold lol. theres a price on his non-scaly head. anyway. he's out there. getting older, struggling to be a person. like most of his attention is on going back to being a dragon and he's like. so mad he has to have a human form and so fucking alone and shit sucks so bad. (meanwhile lup has ended up learning to be human with the castle death cleric/mortician/ ????? death, the, the fucking rq. who is also kravs loving mentor. because i want to take down the monarchy. im fully stealing this from ailem whomst i love. regardless lup is getting trained up in like. synonym for necromancy. barry is there. i know,)

3. taakos getting itchy he's like. gotta be dragon gotta find lup gotta get this over with. what is The Highest Bounty. (guess. too late it's the prince) so he's like coolfine. coolcoolfine. i'll get a castle job. BOOM BODY GUARD, istus, captain of the guard, clocks him immediately but is also like. this bitch is gonna feel loved for the first time and melt. no one can resist sweet sweet kravitz. this is great and safe.

4. you know the rest. taako bodyguards. krav falls in love. taako realizes he's been in love. there's tension. there's kissing. like so much kissing. theres, you know this, there's bed sharing. why WOULDNT i. taakos like hey, listen, the monarchy sucks actually, and krav, is like. woah. too true. i didnt super wanna rule anyway, shouldnt someone the people trust and pick do this. krav would much rather be kissing taako instead of doing politics, shouldnt someone like. fully trained and invested do the fucking job. honestly, listen. you know i love to romantacize, but woof, there is no such thing as royalty that is good. if we're getting realistic. LISTEN. i love the dream as much as you do. but if you start doing the math it's an nightmare. anyway raven and istus and taako and lup and barry are like fuck the system shake shit up and krav is like. oh neat sure

5. there's drama. there's kisses. there's much more than kisses in explicit detail, trust me. there's political intrigue without getting too nastey. there's Events and Parties and probably, listen. you asked me. you came to me, on this night of my day off, but also like a week ago. there's a masked ball and theres a long, long and intimate scene. maybe multiple long intimate scenes. this is my court and you're jingling in it. anyway they take down the monarchy and get taako his gold to lift the curse and he gets to be dragon again and so does lup (there's a whole. parallel plot there) and taakos like SICK. still gonna stick around w my boy in wherever we go into hiding during the full ass revolution so he doesnt get got, but also like. i can be the real me when i feel like it. and control my own destiny and enjoy hugs and sweets and blowjobs also. this is the life. no one could have predicted this.

god damn it. i do not need to write a long fic. i do not need to write a long fic. i,

[ceilingfan5]

also for that meme: 5, 22, 34!!!

5. What’s the fic you’re most proud of?

honestly im proud of different ones for different reasons! my first published fic makes me happy because i went and did the damn thing and was brave, branching out from what felt safe at the time (constantly role-playing with my now ex) to a place where strangers could look at and COMMENT on my work! i think my fic with the most kudos is one of my opm fics that i reread now and laugh about how silly it is, but im still pleased that so many people enjoyed it and cheered me on to grow! im really proud of Little Shop of Horny because I really admired ailem @honeysweetcorvidae and wanted to write with/like them and getting to roleplay that and then PUBLISH that with them was so thrilling! im super proud of paper crowns because it's my longest work, but i think maybe im most proud of sticker stars because it's the biggest thing ive written entirely by myself and i feel like it's pretty cohesive and solid!

22. Do you listen to anything while you write?

i simply cannot, it distracts me too bad. sometimes i can manage rain sounds MAYBE. but i can't even do like, piano music or spanish guitar really quiet, i've tried. music with words? im done for. thats kind of why ive gotten into drawing! i wanted to be able to do things and create at the same time!

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of.

maybe the ground beef section from sticker stars ch 5? i remember it came out of nowhere and i just laughed to myself about how fucking funny i am

They weave between shops and duck into a maze of alleys, and as soon as the clusterfuck of jackasses comically run past without seeing them, they both sigh in relief. Kravitz can hardly breathe, and not just because he wasn’t expecting to run after eating all of that ravioli. He can’t believe he did that. He can’t believe he said those things. He can’t believe it’s been documented for the whole world to see and inevitably going to blow up and people are going to ask him questions about it and every day now is going to be like this, being swarmed and photographed and screamed at? Usually he hides from the press, and now he feels like he’s been paraded around naked in front of them.

“Hey, breathe,” Taako says, squeezing his hand. Kravitz hopes he hasn’t been trying to crush Taako’s in his for this whole experience. “Put your head between your knees, or whatever. C’mon.”

Kravitz nods and obeys, and Taako lets go of his hand only to gently rub his back. Kravitz doesn’t get what he’s done for Taako to deserve this, but he appreciates it more than he could possibly articulate. The dirty stone wall is cold behind him, and there’s a grocery store ad blowing around on the pavement. $3.29 a pound for ground beef. Is that a good deal? He doesn’t cook. Taako cooks. But does he buy his own ingredients? Would he know?

“Three twenty-nine,” he says, breathless, “Beef.”

Great job. Knocked that one out of the park.

“Huh?” Taako says, charitably.

“S- Is that-” In through the nose and out through the mouth. His head is starting to pound from this position. He straightens up and feels dizzy, and he bumps into Taako. Taako steadies him, bemused, a weird twisted expression on his face.

“You good, dog?”

“Stellar. Is that good? Good price for beef?” He tries keeping his tone casual. It is not, get this, working very well at all.

“Uh, yeah?” Taako puts his hands on Kravitz’s shoulders, holding him onto the planet. Kravitz should write him a thank you card. He is very much feeling like floating away and never coming back, and he sort of has some shit to do in the coming weeks that would be made much more difficult by becoming a low-orbit satellite. “Yeah. Why, you want some? You gonna turn into a werewolf on me? We just had lunch.”

“No, it’s-” Kravitz gestures at the ad, which is blowing away. He frowns. Taako’s going to think he’s nuts. He feels nuts. He can’t believe this is the day he’s having. “I can’t believe I proposed to you.”

“You did an incredible job, by the way. Great work saving your panic for private.”

“Thanks,” Kravitz says, feeling like Taako’s tricked him into smiling. “It’s one of my top marketable skills.”