i love lofties and aincest

“Don’t cry.”

Executor brushes past Wanderer, sparing him little more than a glance as he forms a perfectly made spear in his hands, creation magic shining at his fingertips. His visible eye hardens in determination, his pose filled with confidence, so unlike Wanderer’s own as he stares down the demons in front of them.

“I’m--I’m sorry--!”  As he swipes furiously at the tears on his cheeks, he wishes, more than anything, that he could be like Executor, free of doubt, of anxiety, of nervousness, and made only up of a single minded determination towards the mission. Ishmael’s power radiates off of the other celestial in waves, holy energy crackling through the air, temporarily suppressing his own decaying purity.

Executor merely looks down at him, where he’s half-curled upon the floor, clutching his bandaged hand pathetically to his chest before turning away, the ends of his coat flaring with the motion and trailing after him as he dashes into the mob of monsters, decimating them with systematic precision. Shards of broken light reform and unmake themselves into infinite weapons, dissipating into nothingness once their purpose is served and the demons lay lifelessly upon the ground.

That was how Executor always did things--neatly, quickly, and without ever leaving any loose ends.

The celestial frowns down at him, the white in his hair and skin fading to human colors and his feet fully touching the ground once more. “What are you still doing on the floor, Wanderer? Is it a comfortable place to nap?”

Executor wipes his bloodied gloved hand on his coat in disgust before tentatively offering out to Wanderer, his gaze focused determinedly elsewhere. “Yes, my hand is filthy, but no more than your own, so take it.”

“Um, yes! Of course--thank you!” Wanderer had long grown used to Executor’s unusual way of pairing his help with his biting insults and puts his hand in the other’s, using it as support as he stands on shaky legs. “I mean, no, it’s not a good place to nap, but, I wasn’t exactly napping there, I just…”

Executor waves his hand, hauling Wanderer to his feet. “I understand--no need to continue on with senseless explanation. Still..you shouldn’t have run off like that Wanderer. Look where that got you. I know you only have one eye to use properly now, but you can’t possibly mean to tell me that you did not see a rather large pack of demons right in front of you. Or that you didn’t expect to run into any here, in Feita, the demon infested country.”

“N-no, but...I just...I wanted to test my strength, that’s all!” He fiddles with the bandages on his corrupted hand, avoiding Executor’s probably furious gaze. It wasn’t as if he had meant to get into so much trouble, he was just so tired of Executor always having to come save him, of being unable to control his own power well enough to fight like he used to. “I just...wanted to be useful.”

“Well, you weren’t,” Executor states bluntly, before his face softens into an expression of gentle exasperation. He runs his fingers through the bangs over his eye, a nervous tick that Wanderer didn’t think Executor even knew was there. “I mean..just...haven’t you learned that you don’t need to do everything alone? You don’t need to journey alone, you don’t need to fight alone--you aren’t alone. I’m here for a reason, aren’t I?”

“And what...what exactly is that reason, Executor?” Wanderer is almost afraid to ask, because thinks he might know the answer. But he has to know. The other celestial had found him, praying fervently, uselessly at Ishmael’s shrine, begging for her to respond, to do anything to convince him that she was still watching over him. When Executor had stepped out from the shadows, a dim glow of holy light emanating from his presence, he’d thought Ishmael had sent him as her sign. But that hadn’t been it, according to Executor--he was supposedly doing this out of his own free will rather than out of duty to the Goddess, and Wanderer couldn’t understand why.

“We’ve--we’ve been at this for months, and the Goddess still hasn’t responded to me, and the corruption just keeps spreading, and I know you still have your own mission to restore the El, so why do you keep helping me? Why do keep wasting your time on me?”

Executor turns his eyes upwards, before exhaling loudly, moving closer to Wanderer and using a too-long sleeve to wipe away the tears that Wanderer hadn’t realized were there. “And why do you keep wasting your time on this kind of talk? What, am I such an evil being to you that the idea of me helping you because I want to help you is completely inconceivable? I’m helping you because, well--I mean, because you look really pathetic, and it’s hard to ignore you with those stupidly watery eyes of yours--you know, this discussion is getting kind of weird.”

Executor removes his hand from Wanderer’s face and Wanderer finds himself missing the warmth as the other celestial folds his arms. “Look, the point is, you’re stuck with me and I’m stuck with you, and that’s that. So stop crying about it already, okay? That’s...the last thing I want to see you do. Now, come on--I’m covered in demon blood and it’s starting to stick and become disgusting. I want to wash it off.”

The other doesn’t wait for his response before walking away a bit more quickly than usual, a suspiciously pink tinge coloring the back of his neck and ears. Wanderer stands still for a long moment, blinking at the celestial’s back, a strange feeling of lightness filling the bottom of his stomach.

“W-Wait for me, Executor!”

Wanderer stares at his reflection in the lake, distorted by the ripples in the water, but clear enough for him to see just how far gone he really was. His eye is disgusting, a mess of tainted, dull green colors, the skin on and around the eyelid stained with Henir’s mark, and he’s learned from experience that no matter how hard he scrubs at it, even until his fingernails bleed, it won’t go away.

“The water isn’t that nice to look at, is it?”

Executor stands behind him, a roll of fresh bandages in his hands.

“It’s for you, yeah,” Executor hesitates before taking a seat on the grass beside him. “I mean, I can heal whatever wounds the both of us get with Ishmael’s power, so...it’s not like this is for my paper cuts. Also, if I fall into this water, I am blaming you.”

Wanderer doesn’t know exactly what to say to that, so he simply bites his lip, planning to turn his attention back to his grotesque appearance, but grabs the back of his hood, stopping him in his tracks.

“You’ve been paying a lot of attention to that eye, and...it’s distracting! For you! Not for me, of course. So, I thought...if you don’t have to look at it, you might not think about it as much, right?” Executor holds up the bandages, his expression unusually unsure. “Because, well..you already have those bandages on your hand, and it would be weird if you covered up your eye with your hair, because then you’d look like me, and then...just--do you want it, or not?”

Wanderer is surprised that Executor noticed at all his recent obsession with his corrupted eye--either the celestial paid more attention to him than he had thought, or Wanderer was just far too obvious. He smiles gratefully at Executor, his good eye shining in gratitude, and the other shifts his gaze away, tugging at the loose strands of hair that frame the side of his face.

He reaches for the bandages, but Executor pulls away.

“No--I mean--you’d just mess it up--I mean….just...let me do it, okay! It’s easier...and it’s probably hard to see yourself clearly in that water anyway, what with the way it keeps moving and all…unless you really want to do it yourself, that’s okay, too, I guess..”

Wanderer retracts his hand, moving closer to Executor, who makes some kind of strangled duck noise in his throat but doesn’t move away, busying himself with unwrapping the bandages. “I’m sure that you’ll do a better job than I will, Executor. So...if--if you really don’t mind! I’d...like you to do it.”

Executor is mostly silent as he works, only speaking to instruct Wanderer to turn his head which ever way as he  gently wraps the bandages around the left side of Wanderer’s face, and constantly checks Wanderer’s expression for any sign of pain. He arranges the bandages neatly before tying off the ends and snipping off the part attached to the rest of the roll.

“We’ll probably have to replace them every so often, so you’re going to have to look at your eye occasionally, but...it might be better, this way. At least you’re not going to be focused on your reflection every time we stop by anything that could even remotely be considered as a mirror.”

Wanderer carefully reaches up to prod gently at the bandages around his eye, the slight weight of the soft linen around his face somehow comforting. It was certainly better than walking around knowing that his corrupted eye was exposed to the entire world.

“So? How is it?” Executor looks almost nervous as he shifts before him, his hands fluttering over the grass as if looking for something to keep busy with as he waits for a reply, and if Wanderer didn’t know any better, he’d think that Executor was almost afraid of his response.

Wanderer blinks, leaning over the water again to look at himself and it’s almost strange not to feel the familiar twinge of disgust in his stomach as he sees his own reflection.

“It’s--It’s good! I mean...really--I like this...a lot better than it was before.”

Executor huffs softly, picking himself up off of the ground and dusting the bits of grass stuck to his coat away. “It’s...It’s not such a big deal! And don’t stare at it for so long, either; the whole point of me doing this was so that you wouldn’t spend all your time looking at yourself! A-Anyway, it’s just a few pieces of cloth on your face! Don’t get so happy about it…”

Wanderer smiles anyway, something within him enjoying the way it causes Executor to turn away, rubbing at the back of his neck in embarrassment. For all his qualities, the other celestial was really quite terrible at receiving praise.

“Thank you, Executor,” he says again, loudly enough for Executor to hear, but softly enough so that he could pretend like he hadn’t heard it and continue on without having to awkwardly fish for a response.

He trails after Executor as usual, leaving his tainted reflection in the lake behind him, and looks forward to the day, some time in the future, that they can both return to this spot and watch the waters still.

Wanderer is, with increasing frequency, lost in his nightmares, dreaming of the cold face of a Goddess he can barely remember and of the seemingly endless void that tore his essence apart and marked him for eternity. He wakes with his heart in his throat and ice in his veins and remains coiled in terror, until Executor’s soft hands and tired voice arrive to return him to reality once more.

At least, that is how it should be.

When he awakens this time, caught between the thin boundary of waking consciousness and sleep, he lashes out against the presence near him, against the hands binding him and the words of sickly sweet promise of pain in his ears.

“Get away from me!” he shrieks, his fingertips burning with foreign power that belongs neither to him nor to Ishmael. His hand hits something soft and warm and very much not the invisible demons he’d thought he’d been fighting, and before he can stop himself or even attempt to reign his newfound power in, he hears a soft yelp of mingled pain and surprise as the source of the noise is launched away.

Executor.

Wanderer opens his eyes slowly, blinking the world into focus, one hand pressed fervently against his corrupted, pained eye.

Executor watches him warily, his expression unreadable in the dim light of their fire, one hand pressed to the wound at his neck. The wound that Wanderer had made, he had done that, to Executor, who had never done anything but try to help him. He covers his mouth, backing away from Executor, horror rising within him and an entirely different, more real kind of fear replacing the one induced by his nightmares.

“I’m sorry--I’m so, so sorry!”

Executor visibly relaxes, his guard dropping as Wanderer’s apology--meaningless as it is, since the damage had already been done--echoes through the clearing. He shakes his head, wincing as the motion disturbs his fresh injuries.

“Don’t be. I think I was a little too rough in waking you up, this time--it’s not your fault, Wanderer, so don’t go off and wallow in your virtual swamp of self-pity like I know you’re going to.” Executor’s voice is uncertain, lacking its usual bite, and it only serves to further unsettle Wanderer.

“But it is! It is my fault--how can you say that it isn’t when I’ve literally just hurt you?”

“Well--you weren’t thinking! You were half asleep, and besides...it won’t happen again, right?” It’s unlike Executor to be so unsure about something, and Wanderer knows that the other is lying, simply to make him feel better.

He doesn’t need it.

“I already hurt you, Executor, I’m already corrupt, I’m already getting more corrupt, and we both know where this is going!” Wanderer digs his fingers underneath the bandages at his eye and tugs them downwards, showing the terrible growth of Henir’s influence on him. “I’m...I’m losing, Executor...I…”

Neither of them exactly know what happens to those who lose themselves to corruption entirely, who stray from the path of the Goddess and never return, but Wanderer feels terribly, absolutely certain that he will find out for himself.

“Wanderer, you know I won’t let you become like that in the first place! You are staying with me, and we are going to find a way to help you, and--”

“No! That’s not enough!” Wanderer shakes his head furiously, clutching his hand, still covered in Executor’s blood, tightly to his chest. “You have to promise me, Executor, because you’re the only one who I can trust to do this! You’re the only one who’s strong enough! Please...promise me that you’ll kill me, if I’m beyond saving, if I lose myself completely to Henir’s power. I can’t...I would rather die, than hurt you again.”

He doesn’t want his life to end, exactly, and he definitely doesn’t want Executor to be the one to do it, but this is how it absolutely has to be. His hands tremble at their uncertain future and his stomach tightens nervously, but, strangely enough, his tears have stopped. Knowing that he’d have someone to take care of things if it all went wrong is almost a relief.

Executor is silent, dropping his gaze for only a moment, but when he looks back up, his eyes are filled with resolve.

It burns.

His eyes sting and his throat feels constricted and he hates this feeling with a passion, but he doesn’t know how to stop it. Executor rubs at the corners of his eyes with his free hand, his other hand preoccupied with holding the blade pointed at Wanderer’s--or whatever this thing was that Wanderer had become--neck.

The being makes a faintly amused sound, his corrupted fingers coming up to push the celestial weapon away, his expression shadowed by his overgrown bangs. “No, Executor. That’s not how it works, anymore.” His middle finger taps lightly against the cold blue and the sword shatters into nothingness.

Executor forcefully swallows the lump in his throat down, forcing himself to move backwards until he’s pressed against the wall, his heart fluttering rapidly in his chest.

“I promised, you, Wanderer--you made me promise. Don’t--don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

The things tilts its head, a smile tilting the corners of its mouth upwards. “Apostasia. I am Apostasia, now, and so, you have no more promises to keep to me. And I have nothing to promise to you. Such silly obligations mean nothing in the long run, anyway. Besides--would you actually do it, Executor?”

He can’t.

His creation magic sparks and dies at his fingers, unable or unwilling to deal the killing blow, and when he looks at Apostasia, all he can see is the Wanderer that used to need his help, that used to look up to him as a blessing, that used to want nothing more than to become pure once more. This was a different being, a different power altogether, but it was still Wanderer, in essence.

Apostasia suddenly crosses the distance between them in the blink of an eye and leans in closer, until their heads are almost pressed against each other, his corrupted fingers brushing against Executor’s cheek and cupping his face, tilting his head up. Executor shuts his eyes, but makes no other move to resist, his body growing pliant in Apostasia’s arms.

“You feel like her--Ishmael. You are her celestial, after all.” Apostasia’s hand trails down from his face, coming to rest over his too-quickly beating heart. “But I would like to think that you are mine, more than hers.”

He is, he always has been, ever since he’d found Wanderer crying over Ishmael’s shrine all that time--weeks, months, years?--ago and Wanderer had looked up at him with his stupid, helpless eyes, and Executor had slowly but surely found himself in love with him, the corrupted crybaby.

Apostasia’s lips brush against his ear and he shudders at the sensation, pressing himself more tightly against the other, his fingers curling into the fabric of Apostasia’s thin clothing.

“Yes,” he barely manages to whisper in response to Apostasia’s unspoken question, all of the words that need to be said and everything else in between somehow condensed into that single agreement.

It feels oddly like drowning, somehow--his hands flutter uselessly against Apostasia’s back and his lungs burn for air that he does not need and it feels like too much of nothing and everything all at once. Apostasia is unusually gentle with him, holding him as if he’s made from glass that might shatter if handled too roughly, his lips moving from Executor’s own to the tears on Executor’s cheeks.

“Oh, Executor,” Apostasia murmurs into his neck as he claims him in a way that neither Ishmael nor Henir ever could.

“Arme!” Erblu frantically grabbed Arme’s arm in an attempt to stop him--he couldn’t allow him to obey the word of Ishmael any longer. “I know you’re devoted her, but...blind faith is just as bad as no faith at all! Please, Arme, think about what you, yourself, really want!”

Arme clenched his teeth, shrugging off Erblu’s grip as he steeled himself further. Ishmael’s word was law, and he would not allow his own feelings to interfere. “My desire is to follow Ishmael. Whatever she wills, I will dutifully carry out.”

Arme bowed his head towards Ishmael’s shrine, where the goddess herself hovered above the surface.

“Arme, please..” Erblu inhaled sharply as he saw the determined, cold look pass over Arme’s face like a mask. “Ishmael is...Ishmael is a fifteen year old GPS! She’s bound to be wrong sometimes!”

“Turn right,” Ishmael the GPS announced, and Erblu hurried to reach over and seize the steering wheel before Arme could actually “turn right” on the completely straight road they were driving on.

“Ha!” Anpassen shouted triumphantly from the backseat of the car, where he was squished between Wanderer and Executor. “I told you that she’d get to right turn number fifty before we got to Phoru Land! Pay up, Wanderer!”

Wanderer looked sadly at his palm, which held little more than a few quarters--a dismal result of playing too many rounds of “I Bet You Something that Will Most Likely Happen Will Happen and You Will Lose” with Anpassen. Executor, on the other side, made a noise of disgust and dug around in his pockets for a bit, extracting a five dollar bill from its depths, thrusting it in Anpassen’s face, barely sparing either of them a glance from where he was staring out of the window.

“Here. Take this and stop robbing Wanderer. You’re literally taking a candy from a baby.”

Anpassen’s acceptance (“I knew you liked me, Executor!”) drowned out Wanderer’s feeble cry of protest (“I-I’m not a baby!”) and caught the attention of Erblu, who had been attempting to block them out for the past hour in favor of reading the map that Arme refused to acknowledge the existence of.

“Now, now...don’t fight, okay? We’re not going to get to Phoru Land any faster, even if you do spend the whole time bickering. Let’s just get along!” Erblu smiled at them, a truly herculean feat for one to perform as Anpassen threw the bag of chips at Executor’s head, most likely in an attempt to get his attention, and Executor promptly responded by nearly tossing Anpassen over the seat and into the trunk.

Erblu sighed softly, realizing there was no hope for the boys in the back, and turned his attention back to the much more pressing problem. “Arme,” he said, gently laying a hand on the steering wheel to stop Arme from driving any further on this obviously wrong road. “Arme, why don’t we stop for a bit and ask for directions? From a gas station, or something?”

The entire car suddenly went silent, the peanut gallery staring at Erblu in clear horror, frozen in place as the words left his mouth. Out of the corner of his eye, Erblu could see Anpassen’s frantic head shaking and hand gestures that implored him to stop, but this was honestly getting more ridiculous than Erblu could tolerate.

“What.” Arme finally stated, more than asked, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as the car ground to a halt. He turned frigid blue eyes upon Erblu, who swallowed nervously.

“I said--”

“I heard you. You are saying that Ishmael is wrong. That she is not to be trusted!”

“That’s not it at all! Not...exactly, at least. I just mean that...I mean, we can use someone else’s directions to...to help Ishmael tell us where to go, hm?” Erblu put up his hands in a placating gesture, delicately reaching forward to lay a hand on Arme’s shoulder, who merely glared at him, his body tense with anger.

“Ishmael does not need help. I do not need help. We do not need help.”

“I-I need to go to the bathroom,” Wanderer piped up in the back.

Erblu seized upon this opportunity, presenting it as a flimsy excuse to convince Arme to drive their forsaken souls to the nearest sensible person. “You see! Wanderer really needs to go, so we should go to the gas station! He can...do this thing, and we can--”

“No. Obviously, you think me some sort of fool, Erblu. You think I am blind to your trickery? Wanderer can go find a bush! A gas station and directions are absolutely not necessary. Ishmael has never been wrong before!”

Executor sighed audibly in the back, and Erblu deeply suspected that he, like every other person in this car save Arme, was recalling the many, many times they had been led astray by the ancient GPS.

“E-Exactly, and that is why I am asking you to use Ishmael to find us the nearest gas station, so that we may ask for directions to Phoru Land!”

Arme merely turned his face away, his foot pressed to the gas pedal once more, and Erblu knew they were about to drive off into endless lost oblivion again, a fate he would not allow to befall himself and the others.

Erblu strengthened his resolve, his fingers tightening around the map. “Arme…I’m sorry, but this had to be done.”

With great effort, Erblu wrested Ishmael the GPS from her stand and tore her from the car, tossing her out the open window.

“You have arrived at your destination,” Ishmael’s dying cry echoed through the air as she hit the dirt, her glass screen shattering upon the impact.

“Oh, shit.” Anpassen whispered in the back, slinking down in his seat. Erblu would have to tell Anpassen to put a quarter in the swear jar later, now was clearly not the time.

He’d never seen Arme exit the car so quickly, the normally composed businessman kneeling on the grass by his beloved Ishmael’s side, uncaring of the grass stains on his usually pristine clothing. He gently scooped the GPS up, picking up the largest shards of glass and placing them inside of her hollow frame, staring blankly at the empty shell of his former beloved GPS.

Executor shifted his gaze away from the horrified Wanderer and Anpassen and down at Arme. “I think you broke him.” The boy unbuckled his seatbelt with a sigh of gentle exasperation, pushing open the door and going to stand above Arme. “Maybe you should have let him down a bit more...gently.”

Erblu had to admit, he felt a little guilty now, but he was certain that his decision was right. He opened the map resolutely, staring hard at their destination, Phoru Land, the place of magical dreams, the place which seemed so far away from them now.

Anpassen leaned forward to join him, giving him an unimpressed look. “You don’t actually know where we are on this map, do you?”

“Well....no.”

“Um. Can I go to the bathroom now? Please? I really, really have to...” Wanderer’s feeble voice carried through the back, his uncovered eye looking pleadingly between them.

Anpassen let out an unnaturally girly shriek, falling out of the car in his scramble to escape. “Not on me, not on me! If you’re going to go, do not get it on me!”

Wanderer’s face turned bright red as he glared indignantly at Anpassen. “I didn’t mean now, now! I meant--”

“You said now!”

“It’s okay, Arme, I’m sure you’ll find another one….there are plenty of GPS-es in the sea. At the very bottom of the sea,” Executor remarked, taking the broken Ishmael from Arme’s hands.

“Nothing can replace Ishmael! How dare you besmirch her name like this?! Give her back--!”

Erblu let out a groan, his head falling against the dashboard with a soft thump, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cellphone with the other. After a few rings amongst the various shouted conversation from outside the car, Erblu finally heard the blessed click on the other end of the line.

“Uh, hello? It’s three in the morning, you know.”

“Yeah, Apos? This is Erblu--please tell me that offer to babysit the kids is still on the table. And can you include Arme in that, too? Wait, no--don’t hang up, don’t hang up--!”

This time, Executor is the one standing awkwardly outside of a locked door, with Apostasia’s overly-large jacket draped over one arm and a plastic grocery bag filled with cartons of ice cream in the other. He knocks on the door with the slightest of hesitance, as he hadn’t exactly told Apostasia that he would be coming, and wasn’t sure if he interrupting something or not.

At the time, he’d figured that asking Apostasia for his address was enough of a hint of his visitation, but now, right in front of his apartment room, Executor begins to reconsider.

For a long-enough-to-be-uncomfortable pause, there is no response or any sort of sign of life from behind the other side of the door, and Executor begins to doubt that Apostasia is in his apartment at all, until the door finally cracks open and Apostasia pokes his head, and only his head out, much like a prairie dog popping its head out of a hole.

“Uh, hi,” Executor starts awkwardly, the weight of Apostasia’s confused stare already pushing whatever confidence he thought he had down. “I brought...your jacket. And some...ice cream.”

Apostasia only blinks at him and Executor is so caught up in his own embarrassment--that he thought he could just come here and what, spend time with this guy in his own home when they’ve only met twice--that he almost misses the soft question.

“...Strawberry?”

It takes Executor a second to realize that Apostasia is staring at his bag of ice cream, rather than at him.

“Huh--? Uh, yeah...there’s some...strawberry in here. Some chocolate, too…”

The door is fully opened so quickly that Executor can’t help but jump in surprise. The look in Apostasia’s eyes is suddenly quite intense as he steps aside in what is presumably a gesture of invitation for him to come in.

Apostasia’s apartment is neater than what Executor had expected from a man who would walk around in the rain in the middle of the night without an umbrella, but he highly suspects that the state of the place has less to do with actual tidiness on Apostasia’s part and more to do with the fact that there is barely anything inside the room.

There’s not even a bed, just a worn looking couch in front of a ridiculously expensive looking TV and a single table with a single chair near the already built in and apparently unused kitchen appliances. Executor chooses not to consider the lone umbrella stand with the two hundred dollar price tag still attached to it in the corner, hosting nothing but a suspiciously pink and rabbit-patterned umbrella.

He awkwardly places the jacket that he’d folded and washed the day before on the table, before opening Apostasia’s fridge to place the ice cream in. Executor thinks that he might have stared a bit too long at the single, half-empty box of frozen chicken nuggets that composes the entirety of the contents of the fridge.

He hadn’t thought it was possible for him to feel pity for someone simply by looking at their home, but Apostasia, as usual, was defying all his expectations and breaking all his self-established rules.

“S-so, yeah...I’ll just leave these here, and thanks for the jacket thingy yesterday, and...I’ll be going...now?” Executor prepares himself to leave, only to be faced with Apostasia, who had somehow silently snuck to the fridge while his back was turned and is holding out the carton of chocolate ice cream to him with an expectant look in his eyes.

“O-oh. No, I really can’t..,” he attempts to protest, hating how weak his refusal sounds.

Apostasia nods in apparent understanding, and Executor is foolish enough to believe

that he is free to go for about half a second, until Apostasia turns and rummages about in his drawers and produces a spoon, tilting his head in a pleading manner.

Well then.

It wasn’t that he actually wanted to spend more time with Apostasia, but he had bought the ice cream with his own money, so it was probably only fair that he got to eat some of it himself.

Right?

He regrets his decision not ten minutes later when Apos drags him and the ice cream to the couch and turns on the television, flipping to a nature documentary of all things. Apostasia happily curls up on one end of the couch like an overgrown puppy, and moves the pillows on the space next to him away, looking back at Executor when he’s finished.

“Seriously? We’re watching this? Do you not have like, cable? Or something decent to watch?”

Apostasia frowns deeply, his eyes betraying mild hurt and Executor tries not to feel bad

“I like it,” is all he provides before turning his attention to the animals on the television

and opening his strawberry ice cream carton in what appears to be an almost sulky manner.

Executor has to cover his mouth to stifle his laugh as he takes a seat next to him. “Fine, fine, I guess it’s not so bad…” He opens his own ice cream carefully, watching the deer on the screen happily eat grass as the narrator announces their impending doom by method of approaching predator.

“Why is this so entertaining to you? Isn’t it obvious that they’ll just get eaten?”

Apostasia shakes his head insistently, drawing his bare feet up onto the couch like a child, an action that looks quite odd with his ridiculously long legs. “They will survive…”

Executor highly doubts the accuracy of Apostasia’s prediction, but the other’s dull green eyes are so fixated upon the deer that Executor decides to let him face the harsh truth on his own. Instead, he attempts to change the topic, in hopes of softening the blow so Apostasia’s deer dreams or whatever won’t come to such a terrible end.

“Don’t hog all the strawberry ice cream for yourself! What if I want some of it?”

Apostasia frowns down at his somehow already half empty carton, then looks back up at him, as if considering the merits of sharing his precious snack, before taking another scoop of the ice cream and holding out his spoon to Executor.

“This is your spoon! I’m not eating off of that…”

“But why…? It’s okay. I’m not sick…”

Just as Executor is struggling to comprehend how a person this ridiculously out of touch with his common sense could exist, Apostasia takes advantage of his distracted state to shove the spoon, ice cream and all, into his mouth.

The ice cream is cold in his mouth, but his face is burning for impossibly stupid reasons that he would like to pretend don’t exist, and he quickly swallows the strawberry lump, busying himself with the rest of the chocolate ice cream and avoiding Apostasia’s gaze.

“Was it good..?”

“Yes,” he replies, without thinking, as his mind has evidently taken leave from his body, and the corners of Apostasia’ mouth turn up ever so slightly, even as he hugs the strawberry ice cream carton closer to him.

“I still want the rest…”

“Y-You can have it!”

“Good…”

Executor quietly resolves to himself that he’ll leave as soon as the ice cream is gone, but soon finds himself caught up in the struggle between the deer and the lions and has to mentally shake himself out of it every few minutes and remind himself that he, Executor, is not into nature documentaries.

Apostasia does his weird half-smile, half-blank expression thing whenever a particularly small and tiny animal appears on the screen, before shifting his gaze to Executor, and Executor cannot bring himself to ask what that is all about, mostly because he both knows and dreads the answer.

But at least Apostasia was smiling, as best as he could, and something about that was oddly enough for Executor to stay.

Finally, after some time, five or six episodes later, a commercial break pulls Executor from the dangerous mire of his newfound addiction to these stupid shows, and he turns to Apostasia, ready to leave, but Apostasia is, unsurprisingly, asleep, leaning his head into his side of the couch.

For someone who claimed to dislike sleep, this man certainly slept a lot.

Executor rolls his eyes, turns the volume on the TV down, and pulls the blanket, possibly the only one that Apostasia owns out from underneath the cushions of the couch and puts it over the other, seeing as it was the least he could do to repay the favor he still owed Apostasia from the other night at the coffee shop.

As he cleans up the cartons of ice cream on the table, he realizes that Apostasia was right, in the end.

The deer got away safely after all.

It is not until he is startled awake by Apostasia’s quiet whimpers that he remembers what the other had said about his reasons for disliking sleep.

“H-hey, wake up…” Executor tries, gently placing his hand on Apostasia’s shoulder and trying to wake him from whatever nightmare he was having.

Apostasia jerks at the contact, his own hand lashing out and grabbing Executor’s wrist with surprising force, enough to actually hurt. He struggles to pull his hand away, but Apostasia’s grip is too strong for him, and he finds himself being tossed to the floor like a some kind of rag doll as Apostasia sits up.

Executor cradles his quickly bruising wrist to his chest, looking up at the other in hopes for some kind of explanation of whatever just happened, but the look in Apostasia’s eyes is faraway, looking to some unreachable, unknowable place and his breathing is almost as panicked as Executor’s own. He wants to reach out to him again, or to at least sit next to him, but isn’t sure of how the man will react if he moves.

“Are you...okay?”

Apostasia flinches at the question and his gaze snaps to him, his eyes traveling from whatever expression is on Executor’s face to the fingerprint bruises on his wrists that are large enough to be visible, even in the dim lighting, to the floor that Executor is half lying on.

Executor notices Apostasia’s eyes widen at the sight of the bruise and tries to hide it, but the other grabs his hand again, this time more gently, and inspects it.

“I mean...you didn’t mean to...don’t blame yourself or anything…”

“...No.”

Before Executor can stop him, Apostasia hurries away from him and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him as he goes.

The door is locked, of course, but that doesn’t stop Executor from trying to open it, hoping that Apostasia isn’t doing something idiotic in there. “I-it’s stupid to hide in your own bathroom! C-Come out of there already!”

“Go away!”

It’s the most emotion he’s ever heard in Apostasia’s voice and it’s enough to give him pause. Still, he refuses to leave things like this.

“I hurt everything I touch. I don’t know why I thought things would be different with you. Go away,” Apostasia repeats, his voice dulled down to his usual emotionless monotone once more, but Executor can hear the tremble in it and resolves himself to stay, already planning to text Erblu in the morning that he couldn’t come to work.

“Well...bad news for you! I’m sitting here until you decide to come out!”

There is no response from within, but Executor hears soft shuffling noises from the other side that imply that Apostasia is, at least, still alive and moving. Executor lays his head against the wall and closes his eyes, curling up close enough to the door so that he’ll hear it if Apostasia decides to come out. Despite his concerns, it’s far too late at night for him to stay awake much longer, and there’s nothing more he can do besides speak to the brick wall that was currently the unresponsive Apostasia or break the man’s door with force he did not possess.

So he allows himself to return to sleep, and wonders how it must feel for Apostasia, who will probably remain awake for the entire rest of the night. He thinks of dark circles underneath dull green eyes and an expressionless face and promises somewhere inside of himself that he’ll change that, someday.

But perhaps, that idea, too, is just a dream.

Executor very much wants to say that he’s surprised when Apostasia returns the next night, some hours after closing time as usual, but he can't, and nor can he deny that a part of him was hoping to see the other man again as well.

He’s locked the door this time, so Apostasia stands outside of the shop, thankfully dry on this clear night this time, clutching Executor’s pink bunny umbrella in his hands as he waits, or rather, expects to be let in. Executor briefly considers leaving him outside, but, upon seeing the look on Apostasia’s face, which was somehow reminiscent of that of a very large and sad dog, decides to fish out the keys.

Before he can ask exactly what Apostasia is doing back here, the other holds the umbrella out to him, tilting his head in a way that Executor interprets as a gesture of supplication. Apostasia is trying to return this most definitely unwanted pink bunny umbrella to him.

“Uh, I don’t want it...you can keep it, really!” Executor tries to push the umbrella back to Apostasia, but the man is both taller and evidently, much stronger than he is, and is quite adamant about giving him the cursed object. “I have other umbrellas anyway, and it’s not even raining today!”

“No,” Apostasia insists. “Bunnies belong with other bunnies.”

What?

Executor pulls away, self-consciously tucking his two longer strands of hair behind his ears and curses himself for not cutting them off when he’d had the mind to. He knows that he’s blushing, as well, and he hates it, and why did everyone have to say that his hair reminded them of stupid rabbits?

“But I like them…” Apostasia mumbles, reaching out and erasing Executor’s failed attempt to change his hairstyle, his fingers lingering in his hair for a bit too long and it is a true testament to the fact that something is definitely wrong here when Executor finds himself unable, or unwilling to stop him.

“W-well, I don’t! They make me look weird, and I was planning to cut them off anyway…” Executor looks away, folding his arms across his chest, oddly missing the warmth of Apostasia’s hand on his head. He really doesn't have time for this, anyways. His final exams are coming up in less than a month and the amount of information Executor has in his head about his schoolwork is about the same as the amount of common sense Apostasia must own.

“Anyway! I have stuff to do, so if you just came to give back the umbrella that I don't want, then you can go.”

Apostasia nods slowly, as if processing his words, before turning away and going to make himself comfortable at the same table they’d sat at yesterday. He settles himself in the seat, placing the bunny umbrella and two single dollar bills on the table before looking up at Executor patiently.

“Fine, fine.., “ he grumbles. “You know, you should really stop drinking coffee so late. You’ve probably already screwed up your sleeping schedule beyond repair…” But he makes the drink anyway, the same dark-black coffee Apostasia had seemed to enjoy last time, and finds himself sitting at the table again with the other.

Apostasia stares into his cup, swirling the liquid around with one of the cheap plastic coffee stirrers. “I don’t like to sleep…so this is good…”

“Well...you’re a weird one. You don’t like sleeping?” Between his classes and his job, Executor would quite literally kill a man, preferably the man beside him that did not enjoy sleeping, for a single extra hour in bed.

Apostasia shakes his head more stubbornly, the expression on his face settling into something more like a pout and Executor forces himself to look away and ignore whatever sort of foreign feeling was uncomfortably making itself known in the bottom of his stomach.

“No...I don’t like it when I have dreams...”

He frowns at his coffee with some of the most emotion Executor has seen on his face before drinking some of it, his hands wrapped around the cup like a drowning man to his lifeline.

“Oh. Sorry,” Executor apologizes stiffly, before realizing that he has actually apologized, something he rarely does to people. “S-so...you’re staying here again, then? Because...I have stuff to do.”

“Stuff…?”

Apostasia seems genuinely interested, tilting his head curiously as he plays with his coffee, poking the bubbles with his plastic stirrer, and Executor finds himself involuntarily answering him, rather than brushing him off as he’d like to do.

“Like...I’m still in school, you know! I have a life outside of what you see here. And I need to do this…um, I’ll be back.”

Executor awkwardly shuffles away to where he’d stuffed his backpack behind the coffee bean containers, pulling out his greatest foe--the dreaded and despised Calculus homework that also happened to be a few days late.

When he returns, Apostasia is on his phone again, similar to the previous night, but this time, Executor can actually see what’s on his screen, and, quite frankly, the result does not surprise him.

“Rabbit videos,” he remarks plainly, setting his homework papers and textbook down on the table.

Apostasia nods. “Bunnies are nicer than sleep.”

Executor isn’t too sure how to respond to this comment, and instead buries himself in his work, figuring that he has about three or four hours to finish it before he passes out and that Apostasia should be content with watching his bunny videos until then.

It isn’t until he runs into a particularly despicable problem filled with variables that he’s sure aren’t even letters in the alphabet that he realizes that he’s become Apostasia’s new source of entertainment, as the man has been watching him the other time.

Apostasia stares at his paper blankly, before slowly moving himself closer to Executor, until he’s practically squishing Executor into the wall with his own body. While this particular night and this particular man made Executor do things he would normally never do, there was still a line, no matter how thin and tiny it may have been, and Apostasia had essentially crossed it by a mile.

He’s about to shove the other away, either verbally or physically, but Apostasia simply takes the pencil from his hand and scribbles a lone number underneath the question he’d been trying to solve for the past thirty minutes. Executor takes his paper back, examining the answer a bit too closely, and to his mingled horror and amazement, the answer is actually correct.

“What.”

He turns to look at Apostasia, ready to demand an answer, but the motion makes him realize the sudden closeness of Apostasia’s face to his own and flusters him into silence. Apostasia blinks his dull green eyes rather owlishly at him, before patting his head in what Executor interprets as a gesture of pity.

“I-I’m not stupid, okay!” He protests, feeling rather stupid.

“No. You’re nice.”

The comment renders Executor quite speechless for a moment, and Apostasia takes the opportunity to shift away from him again. Oddly enough, Executor finds himself missing the gentle weight of Apostasia’s body against his own.

“H-hey, wait! I, like...need more help,” he latches onto Apostasia’s collar, feeling his face burn as the man looks at him in confusion. “So, like...come back here.”

Apostasia actually obeys him, his expression lightening into something that seems almost happy. “Should I...explain it?”

After a night of being called a bunny and being practically snuggled by a man he’d met the day before, Executor’s pride is essentially at an all time low, and he is in dire need of help on this worksheet. Also, a part of him very much likes the sound of Apostasia’s voice, and with how little the man usually spoke, this seemed to be rare opportunity to hear more of it.

“U-Um...yeah. If you can.”

Apostasia is a surprisingly skilled and patient teacher, but Executor has to admit that he is a terrible student, as he finds himself more focused on the sound of Apostasia’s voice and the feel of the other’s chest pressed up against him than on what Apostasia is actually trying to say, and in the end, he thinks that the other man eventually gives up and simply starts writing the answers with their work down.

“Read this later,” he says, before handing the pencil back to Executor. “You can do the rest…”

Executor examines the rest of the pages left in his homework and discovers that Apostasia is right--the problems are essentially the same as the ones Apostasia had shown him how to do. He decides to do them tomorrow, as a quick check of his phone reveals that it’s practically an hour past midnight, and he really wants nothing more than to lie in his own bed and sleep.

Executor turns to thank Apostasia, and to also kick him out of the shop so that he could go home, but Apostasia is actually asleep himself, his head resting on his arms and a peaceful expression on his face. He reaches out to shake him awake at first, but his hand stops as he suddenly remembers the “dreams” Apostasia claimed to dislike. The other man always seemed so unresponsive and emotionless, and Executor finds himself wondering how much Apostasia actually slept.

“You sure are sleeping peacefully now...so much for those ‘bad dreams’ you claimed to have,” Executor mutters, but it's not as much of a complaint as he’d like it to be, and he finds his hand moving from Apostasia’s shoulder to the top of his head. Apostasia’s absurdly long hair is softer than he thought it would be.

Executor settles himself back in his chair, flipping to a new page of the book to copy problems off of, occasionally turning his attention to the sleeping man beside him whenever Apostasia shifted in his sleep or mumbled something incoherent about bunnies or whatever.

He didn’t mind staying up that much, anyway.

Later, in the morning, Executor wakes, unsure of when he’d even fallen asleep in the first place, to find himself lying on the hideous green and gray couch that Erblu had bought and placed in his store in a delusional decorating frenzy, a coat that is too large to be his covering him like a blanket.

The room is empty, the coffee cups from the night before have been discarded, and Executor’s books have been neatly stacked on one of the glass tables near the couch.

As he sits up, the coat falls away from his shoulders, and Executor holds it up to examine it closer, its color and size confirming his suspicion that it was, indeed Apostasia’s, but the other man, along with Executor’s pink bunny umbrella is gone.

He’d return it to Apostasia the next time he came, whenever that was.

Executor begins to gently fold the large coat in order to fit it into his backpack, but as he does so, a scrap of paper falls out of one of the pockets, and despite himself, Executor’s curiosity leads him to reach down and unfold it.

The handwriting is the same as the one plastered all over his math homework, and it’s nothing more than a string of numbers, as well, but the sight of it makes him feel like he’d just drank the hottest coffee in Erblu’s store--oddly and pleasantly warm inside.

He haphazardly shoves most of his papers into his backpack with little care, but carefully tucks Apostasia’s phone number into his own pocket and makes his way outside. As he steps outside the door and locks it until Erblu can return to take over, he feels the beginnings of what is probably going to be a light rain shower against his skin.

He cannot keep Arme here forever, he knows.

They are certainly both celestials, both born from the same call of the same Goddess in a separate time, they are both Ainchase Ishmael, the being of light sent down to Earth with a sole, guiding purpose in mind, and they both have fulfilled that purpose, to the best of their capabilities.

But he is not Arme–he will never be Arme, the version of him that could look upon Ishmael’s most beautiful creations and cast them aside, the version of him that wants nothing more than to return to the Goddess’ side, with his mission fulfilled, finding nothing else left to remain for on this world.

He will never understand Arme’s desire to simply disappear. He cannot understand it, but he cannot ignore it.

Arme casts his eyes towards the goddess every night, kneeling by the window when he must believe that Erblu is asleep, and gazes heavenward, a sense of longing painting his face with a wistful expression. He mutters quietly under his breath, his normally strong voice dimmed to a faint whisper, praying for something Erblu wishes he didn’t know.

Erblu has long learned to turn away from this rare display of vulnerability, to keep his eyes shut and his breathing steady as Arme leans his head against the cold glass of the window and questions his purpose once more, his reason for continuing to remain on this human world. Most nights, Erblu bites his lip and holds his tongue and swallows the questions he wants and dreads the answers to.

But when he finally returns to the relentless tug of sleep, he dreams of the first time he saw snow in this human world.

He and the El Search Party were in Hamel, layers upon layers of white erasing their footprints from the floors of the Frozen Temple. The purple-headed mage shrieked when the wind crashed into them with full force, wrapping her arms around herself in a protective gesture, shouting something utterly incomprehensible into the gale, and doubt flickered in Elsword’s eyes, as if he was considering turning back.

The snow was their enemy, the sleet underneath their shoes delaying their progress and hindering their ability to effectively fend off the hideous demons that lurk within the area. The cold seeped into their bones and slowed their blood and robbed their hearts of any desire to continue on.

Arme later told Erblu that he thought that it was beautiful, a rare statement from the more cynical celestial.

He had liked the cool sensation of soft ice against the skin that did not belong to him, the way it hid any sort of demonic taint under a cover of gentle white.

But most of all, he had admired the way that the snow fell, roaring and furious and passionate when it first came from the sky, whipping up a hurricane of terrifying beauty, but when it touched the ground, it evaporated, like it had always meant nothing.

Erblu shivers underneath his blankets when he thinks of the snow, of the conversation he’d had with Arme shortly after. It’s a strange sort of sensation, different from the external cold he’d begun to feel since fulfilling his duty and slowly becoming human. Instead, it is a hollow chill that starts from somewhere within his chest and slowly leaks through his veins, one that only dissipates when Arme returns, at last, to their bed, quietly slipping underneath the covers and running a gentle hand through Erblu’s hair.

This process–the departure and return of Arme’s presence from his side–has become a habitual routine at this point, with little variation from one day to another.

And yet, every night, Erblu worries that there will not be a next.

Arme never appears more alive to Erblu than when he fights, slipping between his enemies with the grace of flowing water and quickly dispatching them with the deadly force of Ishmael. His eyes, a cold, wintry blue are sometimes calm, sometimes filled with hate for the corrupted beings he kills, but they are always illuminated with the light of life.

Erblu can see it, the noticeable difference in Arme between when the other releases his Spiritualism form and when he returns.

When Arme’s feet return to the ground and his wings dissipate into faint shards of light and his eyes return to that dulled shade of monotonous normalcy, he always appears more tired, the normally perfect posture of his human form weighed down by flesh and bones and blood that is not his own.

Erblu wonders if Arme is tired of him, as well.

Arme’s eyes are distant at first, looking somewhere above Erblu’s head, but eventually, he focuses his gaze on him.

“You’re hurt,” is all he says, placing his gloved hand on Erblu’s shoulder and turning him more towards him, quietly examining the bleeding wound on his upper arm.

Erblu smiles reassuringly, covering Arme’s hand with his own and summoning an Eid with his free one. “It’s just a tiny cut! I can heal this in a second!”

But Arme only frowns, his fingers tense beneath Erblu’s own as his eyes regain that faraway, utterly lost look in them that terrifies Erblu to the core, and makes him wonder how long he has before he loses Arme for good.

“You got hurt,” Arme repeats, slipping his hand out from underneath Erblu’s and Erblu tries not to reach out and catch  it. “So I wasn’t strong enough to protect you this time. But I was before. I know that I was.”

Both of them have always known that Ishmael was initially the sole source of their power, and while Erblu managed to reach out and bond with the already existing source of power in this world to create his Eids, Arme always has and always will rely entirely on the Goddess to provide him with his strength.

With the completion of their missions, the Goddess no longer had reason to provide them with power, especially considering their decisions to remain in the human world rather than to return to her side, and as such, Arme was left with the power he possessed at the moment of his choice–power that was rapidly waning with every day that past.

Erblu, at least, has his Eids to rely on, and he cannot imagine how Arme must feel, to know that a part of him that he deems so vital to his being, his ability to exterminate threats to the peace of this world and protect the will of the Goddess, will soon leave him.

But when Arme touches Erblu’s now healed arm and turns away from him, in a subtle request to return, he thinks he can, in fact, understand how Arme feels.

Perhaps it is the same emptiness that Erblu himself feels without Arme.

He has taken to praying to Ishmael himself, recently, if the Goddess is even listening to him anymore, now that he is infinitely more human than celestial. He prays for an impossible fantasy, wishing for Arme’s happiness and Arme’s presence all in the same breath.

He does not deserve either of those two things, he knows, but he continues to try, resting in a field of grass and allowing the sun to warm his face as he shuts his eyes and murmurs his desires.

“You are so strange, Erblu,” Arme comments, his face as serene as ever as he sits with his back pressed against the trunk of an aged tree, its branches reaching towards sky. He cannot hear the words that Erblu repeats to himself, and Erblu is grateful for the way that the wind swallows his selfish desires in its embrace. “True, it is…pleasant here, but I fail to understand why you enjoy such close proximity with the ground and the dirt.”

There is a small, futile, yet persistent spark of hope in Erblu’s heart at Arme’s words, that perhaps Arme actually enjoys something in this human world, that maybe he would stay for this, if not for Erblu.

Erblu laughs lightly, knowing that Arme would never be able to truly differentiate between his genuine and forced emotions. “Well, it’s more comfortable than that tree you’re leaning against, anyways. Besides, the grass is soft!”

Arme does not respond, merely blinking his deep blue eyes, and Erblu lets out a heavy sigh, covering his face with his hands as he feels Arme’s aura shift in concern.

He cannot lay in this open field, facing the heavens himself, and lie to himself or Arme any longer.

“Do you hate me, Arme? I know you hate it here, but do you hate…me?”

He has surprised Arme with his question, and Arme shifts uneasily beside him, his face as unreadable as ever, and Erblu very much wishes he had never been bold enough to ask in the first place, as much as it had to be done.

But he cannot take back his words anymore than Arme can take back his decision to remain in the human world with him.

“No, Erblu. And I do not ‘hate’ it here, either. It is not the world to which I belong, but it is bearable. And thus, I will tolerate it. Perhaps I wanted to leave, in the beginning. This world is cumbersome and my human form still does not feel as if it is my own. However…you do. And as long as I have something to lay claim to in this world, I will not abandon it.”

Arme’s admission is quiet and vague, and delivered without much emotion, but it’s enough for Erblu to realize what Arme is trying to tell him–he’s had more than enough time to get to know Arme, after all.

And now he knows that he will have infinite futures with which to understand Arme, as well.

Perhaps it is still wrong of him to want to have Arme stay with him, to be happy that Arme would choose him over what may have been his true place.

At first, Executor is so busy mopping the floor that he almost doesn’t notice the faint chime of the bells against the door as the soaking wet stranger lets himself through the door Executor thought he had locked, glancing around absently before making himself at home at one of the tables in the corner, tracking wet and unfortunately muddy footprints on the floor Executor had just cleaned.

For a second, Executor actually believes that the sleep-deprivation from working the night shift at Arme and Erblu’s stupid coffee shop and studying for his college classes by day has gotten to his head and that he is truly, really hallucinating, because one, the store was clearly closed, and two, what kind of person went walking out in this heavy of a rain without any sort of umbrella or coat?

He blinks a few times, waiting for the hallucination to disappear, but the man only stares back at him, watching him like some kind of silent gargoyle.

“Um,” Executor finally tries after a few too-long moments of staring. He carefully positions himself behind the counter, just in case the man happened to be one of those crazy serial killers from Anpassen’s worthless collection of horror movies. “We’re closed, if you couldn’t tell from the sign hanging on the door or the fact that most of the lights are out.”

The man doesn’t move, but follows the direction of Executor’s pointer finger to the door, his gaze lingering on the exit for a brief instant before it returns to Executor once more. His stare is uncomfortably intense, and Executor finds himself unconsciously shifting underneath the man’s dull green eyes.

“O-Okay, maybe I forgot to lock the door today, but the point still stands! You can’t stay here.”

“...Coffee.”

The man’s voice is surprisingly deep, and even as quiet as it is, Executor feels an odd sort of sensation shoot up his spine at the sound of the one word.

“Uh, wh-what?”

He only receives a frown in return, as the man tilts his head curiously, examining Executor in a way that probably should have totally creeped him out, but didn’t.

“Okay, well, yes, we do have coffee, but--”

Executor stops himself as he sees the man is no longer listening to him and is instead staring at something on his phone with the greatest enthusiasm his seemingly emotionless face could muster, as if he had already settled their conversation with his single word. The most infuriating part about it all was that Executor actually found himself moving to the back, his hands making the requested coffee entirely without the permission of his mind.

His newest and most annoying customer doesn’t look up when he rather roughly delivers the coffee to him, but reaches out and grabs Executor’s wrist as he’s turning to go, causing Executor to accidentally let out a barely contained shriek of surprise. The man stares at him rather forlornly, before patting the chair next to him with his free hand.

So he was going to sit down and have coffee with a potential psychotic murderer in the middle of the night. Executor is quite certain at this point that his life has turned into a true horror movie, and that he is the unsuspecting, foolish victim that always dies first due to lack of common sense.

Knowing that he would probably regret this later, Executor awkwardly perches himself on the proffered chair.

“So...are you going to pay for that? At all?”

While the barely two-dollar price of the coffee is rather inconsequential to him, Executor has appearances to keep up, and would like to maintain at least a tiny semblance of control over the situation he finds himself in.

The man blinks at him absently for a long moment, before finally nodding and releasing his grip on Executor’s wrist in order to dig around in his pockets, presumably searching for money, and Executor is ready to tell the man to forget it when he finally produces a twenty dollar bill and pushes it towards Executor, looking at him expectantly.

“...Okay, yeah, Arme can be a tightass with his money, but he’s not that greedy. This one cup of coffee is like, two dollars. Less than that, actually. This is a twenty.”

Perhaps the man couldn’t read letters or numbers--Executor wouldn’t be too surprised, judging from the way the man evidently could not understand that the shop was closed.

“The rest is...the tip.”

“An eighteen dollar tip?!”

Executor finds himself at a loss of words as the either very stupid or very rich man only nods, nudging the money even closer to Executor. He deeply suspects that this is either a poorly planned prank, an all-too real hallucination, or a ploy to kidnap him and toss him into the human trafficking industry.

“You don’t even know my name, and you’re giving me free money?”

It takes an embarrassingly long while for Executor to realize that the man is looking pointedly at the nametag pinned to his shirt and he hurries to unpin it, shoving it deep into his pocket.

“Okay, I don’t even know your name, then.”

Clearly, this was not a piece of information that Executor would be receiving any time soon, as the man merely picks up his coffee and shuts his eyes as he takes sips of the creamless, sugarless, black coffee that Executor made with the intention of getting the man to leave in disgust.

Unfortunately, life never seemed to work out that way for him, as the man just happens to be the first person he’s ever met that actually seems to enjoy completely black coffee.

“Apostasia,” he finally pronounces after a long period of coffee drinking in utter silence, as quiet as ever, and stands up, taking his empty cup along with him.

“H-Hey, wait!” Out of some irrational obligation to care, or perhaps by demonic possession, Executor maneuvers himself in front of Apostasia, stopping him from walking outside just yet. “Just...stand here. Don’t move!”

Executor returns to the back, digging around for the stupid bunny-patterned umbrella that had been collecting dust in their inventory ever since Erblu had tried to give it to him a few months ago and Executor, of course, had reacted in a rather displeased manner but at the same time, couldn’t bring himself to throw it away entirely.

At least it would actually have a use now.

“H-here…”

He shoves it into Apostasia’s hands, studying the floor so that he won’t have to deal with whatever stupid look the other is probably giving him.

“You can’t just go walking around in the rain without an umbrella! You look weird like that!”

Apostasia’s fingers curl around the umbrella as he experimentally opens it, gently touching the smiling cartoon bunnies on the pink fabric before looking back up at Executor.

Before he can register what is happening, there is a gentle weight on his head as the man’s hand gently rubs the top of it, his fingers ruffling Executor’s hair in all the wrong directions.

It isn’t until Executor is shoving Anpassen’s half-conscious body into Wanderer’s trembling arms while tossing a few spears flimsily projected from his rapidly-depleting creation reserves onto the ground in the hopes that the morbidly obese demon the color of a bruised blueberry would kindly stop chasing them and impale itself, that he begins to understand exactly how bad their situation is.

Executor makes a mental note to never listen to Anpassen again whenever he declares that they are fully prepared to take on a particular dungeon.

As they wildly backtrack through the uncomfortably hot cavern, the ground shaking beneath their feet with every step the demon behind them takes, Executor grabs onto the back of Wanderer’s shirt, dragging both him and Anpassen into a tiny sanctuary that is essentially nothing more than a cave of thin rocks, where he can only hope they would be safe, if only for a few minutes, from their pursuer.

“A-Anpassen won’t wake up…” Wanderer’s nervous fingers are tangled in the fabric of Anpassen’s clothes, wearing holes into his precious jacket and his visible eye is alarmingly too close to tears for Executor’s taste.

“I can see that,” he snaps, trying to block out the sounds of the roaring demon that were steadily becoming louder and closer and to figure out exactly how they were going to get to safety in one piece.

Wanderer only whimpers softly in response and cradles Anpassen’s body closer to him, and upon more careful inspection, Executor can see that Wanderer’s distress, for once, is actually legitimate and not a product of the other’s relentlessly overbearing anxiety.

Anpassen is actually bleeding.

While their forms on this realm were essentially human, they were still supposedly much more durable than that of a normal being’s, and the fact that Anpassen had actually taken hard enough hits to his brainless head to make him bleed is more concerning than Executor would like to admit to himself.

Of course, neither he nor Wanderer were in the best condition either, and Anpassen, the one in the supposed role of the healer, had somehow decided it would be a logical strategy to place himself firmly between Wanderer and the demon’s attack.

“What...what are we going to do…? Do we have to go back out and--and fight that thing?”

There is real fear in Wanderer’s eyes, but aside from the mix of terror and worry written across Wanderer’s face, Executor is struck by how much faith Wanderer is placing in him, that if he ordered Wanderer to fight the demon again, the other would go.

And Executor knows then that something within him has changed, probably for the worse, as he finds himself hesitating to consign Wanderer to death, something he once would have done to the twisted creation of Ishmael without a second thought.

“No. We are not going to do anything. It’s your fault that Anpassen is like this in the first place, so you are going to get him out of here. I am going to...distract it and catch up with you later. It looks stupid, even more stupid than the two of you combined, so it’s probably already forgotten that it has three targets instead of one.”

“B-By yourself?! I can...I can go…” Wanderer mumbles, the credibility of his words significantly dulled by the tears on his cheeks and his increasingly tight grip on Anpassen’s coat, as if it was some kind of security blanket.

Obviously, he dislikes the idea of running into the open area and offering himself on a silver platter to the demon, but somehow, he finds that, as pathetically emotionally and physically weak and corrupt as he finds Wanderer, he dislikes the idea of Wanderer being mercilessly devoured by the demon even more than he does himself ending up in that situation.

Wanderer would probably trip over his own incompetent feet and mess things up, anyway.

“Yes, and lead us all to certain death, most likely. Not only do you have the bare minimum amount of control over your abilities, you are rather useless when it comes to being separated from Anpassen. You follow him around like a baby duckling follows its mother…”

“I-I don’t!” Wanderer denies, but then looks back down at Anpassen, who is beginning to regain some semblance of consciousness, his green eyes dazedly looking between them in confusion. Wanderer’s expression becomes relieved as his mother hen finally awakens. “Ah...Anpassen, help! Executor is going to--”

Executor can already hear the Anpassen’s protest against his admittedly foolish plan in his mind and sincerely contemplates returning Anpassen to sleep with a another blow to head as he silences Wanderer with a glare.

“Fine, you can either take Anpassen away from here, or you can sit here like the worthless lump I always knew you were and let him die, along with yourself.”

“Wait, what--?”

He doesn’t wait to hear the rest of Anpassen’s confused mumble before he steps outside of their hiding place.

The demon, he notes, has torn up a large portion of its temple in its vengeful attempt to find them and has luckily situated itself opposite of the exit of the temple. He thanks Ishmael for this small blessing, that at least something today is in his favor.

Executor shatters his pendulum, and allows the familiar comfort of his celestial form to wash over him, temporarily erasing the pain and the burden of his human body. Already, he can feel the limits of his power, the duration of his time in this form significantly shortened by the loss of the energy he’d already used.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he can see a blur of green and black, fleeing towards the exit.

The monster lifts its head and turns toward him, sensing the influx of energy in the air. He barely has the time to wonder how something so large can move so quickly when the demon is upon him, its claws destroying one of the few remaining layers of rock in the temple that had the great misfortune of being too close to him.

The floor is a patchwork mess of lava and cracked stone, his creation magic is just about gone, and Executor firmly believes he no longer has the right to call his counterparts foolish, as this is potentially the most idiotic thing a celestial as ever done.

It’s certainly doomed to fail, wastefully self-sacrificing, and disgustingly, uselessly, human.

“I’m not going near that thing! It’s huge!” Anpassen forcefully shoved Erblu forward, towards the monstrous creature that towered in front of them, its gaping maw ready to devour the both of them in an instant. Erblu made some sort of strangled noise of refusal in response, stepping out of the way and leaving Anpassen exposed to the monster once more.

“A-ah...well, you know...I don’t really want to face it either,” Erblu tried, smiling imploringly at him in a way that made Anpassen quite sure that Erblu was going to abandon him here, to be destroyed by the creature.

“You’re older! It’s your responsibility to deal with threats like this! Isn’t this why we have Mut?! To defend ourselves?”

“Exactly! So you can take Mut and kill it!”

Erblu pushed the red flyswatter into Anpassen’s hands once more, and he sincerely considered knocking Erblu out instead with it and leaving him behind with the freakishly huge spider. At least it would be so busy with Erblu as its victim that he could escape safely.

“N-no! How can you do this to your own little brother, Erblu?”

“Well, we can’t leave it here...and I don’t want to go to sleep with that thing around. And you know how bad I am at things like this...that’s why I’m trusting you to handle it!” Erblu’s cheerful answer was accompanied by a deceptively friendly pat on the head, but Anpassen knew the truth behind it.

“But--But I…” Anpassen wiped his palms on his shirt, petrified by the spider’s sinister stare.

Erblu sighed. “You’re right...I shouldn’t be making you do this. But you can’t make me do it either! We should just find someone else to do it.”

“Erblu, it’s one in the morning. No one is awake at this time!”

As if by some miracle sent from Ishmael herself, suddenly,  they heard footsteps from outside of their door. Erblu immediately perked up, dashing outside into the hallway before Anpassen could stop him to remind him that he was still dressed in only his stupid cat shirt and his boxers.

“Excuse me!” Erblu called cheerfully to whatever poor person was returning to their apartment at this hour. Anpassen poked his head around the doorframe to get a better look, only to find his older brother being stared down by a rather bemused looking blue-haired man.

“Hi, sorry, I know it’s really, really late, but there’s a gigantic spider in our place and we really need to get rid of it!” Erblu blurted out, evidently still unaware of his rather rumpled appearance.

“You need me to kill a spider,” the man replied flatly, his blue eyes showing a surprisingly small amount of confusion as he appraised Erblu. “And this is why you have rushed outside to meet a stranger in your underpants.”

“Oh--well...I was in a rush…” Erblu replied somewhat sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

The man stared for a minute a longer, his expression revealing nothing, before finally sighing and setting his briefcase on the floor. “Where is this ‘gigantic’ spider?” he questioned, evidently disbelieving of Erblu’s accurate account of the insect.

To their great horror, as they turned back  to the apartment, savior in tow, they discovered that the hideous thing had migrated to the outside, and was currently inhabiting their doorknob, its eight hairy legs moving in tandem as it freely explored their beautifully painted exterior.

“This is...nowhere as monstrous or large as you described it. And you could not deal with this yourselves?”

Erblu laughed nervously, holding out their loyal flyswatter to him, but the man merely shook his head, rolling up the sleeves of his suit jacket.

“I do not need something like that to kill this. Wait here.”

“Y-you’re leaving us?” Erblu asked, his eyes pleading with the man not to leave.

“Only to get something from my room.” The man dug into his pockets and produced a set of keys, which he used to unlock the door to his own room right across from theirs. Anpassen didn’t know how he’d missed having this guy as their neighbor this whole time.

Their savior returned not five minutes later, time which he and Erblu spent staring rather fearfully at the spider and wondering what kind of weapon was being retrieved from inside the other room, with nothing in his hands but a paper towel.

Before he or Erblu could voice their legitimate concerns about this man’s safety, the man forcefully crushed the spider with nothing but the thin paper towel standing between his hand and the insect and Erblu and Anpassen both let out small shrieks of mingled horror and amazement. The man ignored them, neatly wrapping up the remains of the spider and stepping inside of their apartment to discard the bundle in the trash, before washing his hands at their sink.

“Th-that was...uh,” Erblu appeared to be at a loss for words.

“Good night,” the man replied as he brushed past them. “And put some more clothes on next time.”

“Next time--? Um, right! And hey, wait,” Erblu scrambled to catch the other man’s arm, who turned to him, his expression as blank as ever. “I never did catch your name...and since we’re neighbors and all…”

“Arme. And you are…?”

“Erbluhen--but you can call me Erblu. I mean, everyone does, it’s not like it’s a special nickname or anything, I just happen to prefer it…”

Anpassen tuned his brother’s ramblings and whatever this “Arme’s” response was out, figuring that Erbluhen was probably trying to subtly ask Arme out for dinner of some sort, more than ready to return to the dream he’d been having before Erblu’s scream had woke him up.

Unfortunately, life never worked out that way for him.

“Uh, hey, Erblu? Our door doesn’t….work anymore,” Anpassen interrupted, secretly wishing he could have watched his brother embarrass himself some more in front of the guy that Anpassen was almost 100% certain Erblu had a crush on.

“...Ah.”

“Here.”

Anpassen caught the pillow that had been thrown at his face, awkwardly looking around the small bedroom of their lock-destroyer’s little brother, who seemed quite unamused with the situation as a whole, his single visible green eye shining with annoyance.

“You need a blanket, too, right?”

Before he could reply, said object was already being tossed in his direction.

“I assume that you’re sleeping on the floor, since the couch is taken by your brother and I’m not sharing my bed with you just because my brother thinks he needs to put copious amounts of force into everything he does.”

Anpassen sat on their thankfully carpeted floor, smoothing out the blanket between his fingers. “It would have gone better if he’d used Mut the flyswatter like we offered…”

“You mean if you had used your own flyswatter to solve your own problems.”

“It’s not like I didn’t try! Besides, it was Erblu’s idea to drag you guys into this…”

“Not just him,” Executor replied, distaste evident in his expression as he ran a tired hand through his hair, briefly uncovering his left eye before the soft-looking strands fell into place again. “You wouldn’t be here in my room if you were normal people, but evidently, Arme has taken a leave of his senses and found something redeeming enough in Erblu to let him stay, and you are just here by association, I suppose.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Anpassen let out a heavy sigh, before laying down, staring at the darkened ceiling. The floor honestly wasn’t as uncomfortable as he’d thought it would be, but he missed his bed nevertheless.

“Get in,” Executor ordered, almost too quietly for Anpassen to hear.

“Uh, what? I thought you didn’t want me--”

“Don’t touch me and don’t squish me. But it would be a selfish move to make you sleep on the floor. Besides, you are not as bad as I initially perceived you to be.”

Anpassen decided he would take that as a compliment, trying not to look too suspiciously happy as he slipped underneath the blankets. Executor turned away from him almost immediately, choosing to face the wall, in a gesture that probably was meant to tell him that he should shut up and go to sleep.

“Well, good night,” he said out loud, against his better judgement--he’d always been bad at keeping his thoughts to himself.

There was a long pause, long enough to give Anpassen the time to worry about whether or not he’d be kicked off the bed again, until--

“It is essentially morning at this point, but yes, good night all the same.”

Anpassen couldn’t help the smile that spread over his face at the other’s words as he slowly fell asleep.

The day had not been completely ruined by the spider after all, it seemed.

“I-it’s fine, really! The lock isn’t a big deal...and you were nice enough to let us stay with you guys, too. I can call someone to repair it tomorrow.”

Erblu smiled at Arme, hoping to disguise the fact that he was actually quite worried about how they were going to manage to pay the repair fee on top of all their unfortunately late bills. The other said nothing, stirring the instant tea he had made with a spoon and looking at a spot somewhere to the left of Erblu’s head.

Arme pushed the tea across the table, towards Erblu. “This will help to calm your nerves, which are, as seen by your dramatic reaction to the feeble spider, quite excitable. I would also recommend seeing an exterminator.”

Erblu took the warm cup in his hands, licking his lips nervously.  “Well...I don’t need one of those if I have you to get rid of bugs for me, right?”

“If you wish to sustain more property damage, then yes, I suppose you are correct.”

“That’s a small price to pay for getting rid of things like that.”

And to see you again, he silently added.

Arme looked at him for a long moment, and, perhaps it was only in Erblu’s imagination, but the look in his blue eyes seemed softer, somehow.

“This is my business card,” Arme stated flatly, handing Erblu the white slip of paper. “Call me tomorrow morning with the repair information for your lock, and I will compensate for the damage.”

With that, Arme disappeared into his bedroom, leaving Erblu alone on the couch.

Erblu turned the card over in his hands, tracing the neatly printed numbers with a finger, a familiar, yet unique happiness fluttering in the bottom of his stomach. While it might have been out of mere obligation to repay Erblu for the damage done upon their door, the fact that he now had Arme’s number still held true.