The red kind, flecking his vision and staining his immediate surroundings. The smarmy voices of fire sprites singing clouded his eyes with the color as they raced along singed flesh, animated not twenty minutes before. Where they danced along skin mortal and mortus, tickling the nose of decay and eating away his kin, they kissed his eyelids, all tinkling laughs and murmurings of concern at the purple in his skin, waxing vitreous in its pallor. He couldn’t blame them. It was in their nature, and they looked so happy. Asides that, they did not choose to light themselves. They did. Seventy-eight days, he hadn’t been outside.  It showed in his sunken cheeks, the swelling in his joints, the bruises that bloomed beneath flesh and struck rot into the marrow of his bones.  With every passing of small burning fingers to his skin, did the symptoms lessen; color returning to his cheeks and blood from the wound coalescing to tuck itself neatly back into his vessels, flesh stretching like fingers over the bullet wound to bind over the lesion. Funny, that. The very creatures whose element brought nourishment to his emaciated body engulfed his kindred, soon to be mere ashes and bone, though They hadn’t stayed long enough to see it. They had only stayed to light the pyre, temporary relief flooding their guilt-stained auras before they had to flee, for The Whites were coming.  He heard it, crawling through the floorboards.  Panic.  Decision. Scruples like marbles, lost beneath the armoire. Ere of the execution, he had wished for this.  He had wished to be outside, wished for the elements, wished to be alone, wished for the earth beneath his bare toes. Now, now he wished to be back in that horrible place, bedridden and under house arrest, with Nagorny and Mummy hovering, bruises wrapping purpled fingers around his lungs. He could almost hear it. The Fates laughing. House of Special Purpose indeed.

Yours, Ren.

Batting his eyes playfully at the male, he grinned, dimples forming in his cheeks, his expression turning almost theatrical. “You mean it? I get to have Teddy all to myself for a date?” He held a hand to his chest, seeming a tad too touched by the gesture, though it was in jest. “Yes, yes, yes. Where are we off to?”

Lifting his eyes to the tow head at the question, his cheeks dimpled in a smile. “This is a pleasant surprise, Sehun.” Pursing his lips, he nodded, eyes aglimmer.”A date would be lovely. Where would we go?”

"A date?" Viridescent irises glimmered with playfulness, pleased at the inquiry. Proffering his arm to take, he bowed slightly, doffing an inexistent cap. "It would be an honor."

A brow raising at the announcement, he casted his eyes about in search for the individual that the terms were tied to. Vision falling upon a somewhat familiar face, the visage handsome, to say the very least, he offered a smile. “Very well, I guess we’re wedded, then?”

Raising his eyes, a grin pulling at his lips, he chuckled, having recognized the mien of the male requesting such brazen a request. It was the bookkeeper that he had encountered, the one who found so much pleasure in shelving. “Fancy meeting you again.” He chuckled, gesturing to a chair pushed up against the wall. “Please, take a seat.” Lighting upon his lap weightlessly, he slung his forearms over the male’s shoulders, hips starting to lightly grind down, fingers playing familiarly among chestnut locks. “What strange circumstances we find ourselves in, do you not agree?”