#bazz-b

"I'm always awake love. I sleep in shifts, like a dolphin."

"You do not sleep like a dolphin."

"You don't know that." He still hadn't opened his eyes or acknowledged what was happening below his waist. You pressed your hand flat against his stomach, just above the sheet line, and felt every muscle there tighten at once. His breathing didn't change, which meant he was controlling it on purpose.

"Kisuke."

"Hm."

"Are you going to address this?"

"Address what?" He opened one eye, and looked down. "I'm a man in his own bed in the morning. Everything happening right now is within normal biological parameters."

"Normal biological parameters."

"Yup. Completely standard."

You dragged your fingers down from his stomach, tracing the line of hair below his navel, and stopped right at the edge of the sheet. Both his eyes were open now.

"Are you conducting an experiment now?" he asked, intrigued.

"Maybe."

"You don't have a control group."

"Don't need one." You tugged the sheet down an inch. His hand shot out and caught your wrist, but he didn't push it away. He just held it there, your fingers still pinching the fabric. You could feel him measuring your heartbeat.

"Your heart rate is elevated," he observed.

"And so is something else."

That managed to finally crack him as a grin pulled across his face, not the fan-hidden shopkeeper version but the one that showed his teeth and creased the corners of his eyes.

His grip on your wrist shifted and he pulled your hand under the sheet and pressed it against him and his breath left in a rush that he couldn't disguise as anything other than what it was.

"Okay," he said, voice stripped down to nothing. "Let's continue with this experiment, I'll follow your lead."

"First time for everything."

"Don't get used to it." But his hips were already lifting into your hand and his fingers were already in your hair and he didn't take the lead back for a long time.

Isshin Kurosaki

Something poked your lower back. You were half-asleep, curled on your side, and Isshin was pressed against you the way he always slept. His arm was heavy over your waist, his face was buried in your hair, and something was very insistently pressing against the base of your spine.

You shifted your hips backward, just to confirm. The pressure increased. Isshin made a sound into your hair that was halfway between a snore and a groan and his arm tightened around you.

"Isshin."

Nothing.

"Isshin."

"Mmrgh."

"You're poking me."

A long pause. Then his arm retracted and he rolled onto his back so fast the whole bed shook. You turned over to look at him and he was staring at the ceiling with a blank expression.

"That was... my knee," he said.

"That was not your knee and we both know it."

"It could have been my knee. You don't know the exact position of my knee at all times."

"Your knee is not in the middle of your body, Isshin."

He rubbed both hands over his face and exhaled a loud and long sigh. The sheet was doing nothing to help his case. You propped yourself up on your elbow and watched the flush run up his neck and across his ears until it almost reached his hairline.

"It's morning," he said into his hands. "This happens in the morning. It's a medical thing. I'm a doctor. I can explain the whole process if you want. Blood flow, hormones, there's a very boring diagram--"

"I don't want the diagram."

He spread his fingers apart and peered at you through the gap with his eyebrows raised. "What do you want then?"

You pulled the sheet down to his thighs in one motion. His hands dropped from his face. The flush had reached his forehead now and his chest was rising and falling too fast for a man who'd been asleep thirty seconds ago.

"Oh," he said quietly.

You swung your leg over him and settled in his lap and his hands grabbed your hips immediately, fingers pressing into your skin and jaw going tight as his eyes locked on yours.

"We don't have to," he started, and his voice cracked on the second word.

"I know we don't have to."

"The kids are--"

"At school. It's Tuesday."

He stared at you. You ground down against him slowly, and everything on his face rearranged. The embarrassment burned off and what was left was the version of Isshin that remembered exactly how to take charge of a situation.

"Right. Tuesday," he repeated, and his grip on your hips tightened and he sat up underneath you so fast your breath caught. His mouth was on your throat and his hands were pulling you flush against him.

Shinji Hirako

You woke up because Shinji was laughing in his sleep. Little huffs through his nose, his mouth twitching at whatever was happening behind his eyelids. He was sprawled on his back with one arm flung over his head and the other resting on his stomach, his hair wrecked across the pillow in every direction.

The sheet had migrated south during the night and was bunched around his upper thighs, which was how you noticed the situation before he did.

You watched for a moment. Considered being polite about it. Decided against it.

You poked him in the ribs. Hard.

He flinched, swatted at your hand, and didn't open his eyes. "Five more minutes, if the house isn't on fire, I don't care."

"The house might not be on fire, but your crotch is."

One eye opened. He looked at you. A slow, disoriented blink. Then he looked down at himself and the extremely obvious state of things, and the grin that spread across his face was completely unapologetic.

"Well good morning to me~" he said.

"You're not even a little embarrassed."

"Why would I be embarrassed? This is a compliment to you. You should be flattered."

"I've been awake for thirty seconds."

"And already making an impact. Look at you miss over-achiv--errrreee" He yawned while stretching his arms over his head, his back arching off the mattress, doing absolutely nothing to address or conceal himself.

In other words, he knew you were looking and intended on going you a full show.

"You're ridiculous Shinji," you scoffed.

"You're still looking though~"

"Kind hard not to."

That landed differently than you expected. His grin stayed but his eyes narrowed, and he turned on his side to face you. His hand found your hip under the covers and pulled you toward him until your body was flush against his and there was no sheet or distance between you.

"Hi," he said, face inches from yours.

"Hi."

"You wanna help me with this or you just want to keep pointing out the obvious?" his face was millimeters away now.

"What if I want to keep pointing out the obvious?"

"Then I'm gonna lose my mind, because I'm about as patient as you think I am." His hand slid from your hip to your lower back, pressing you into him, and his mouth grazed your jaw. "Which as we both know, is not much."

You hooked your leg over his hip and he groaned against your throat, performance be damned. His fingers dug into your back and his hips rocked forward.

"Oh, are we improvising now?" you said.

"Mm, shuddup."

"Just pointing out the obvious."

He pulled back enough to look at you with a heated look.

"Well," he said. "There goes my patience."

Kensei Muguruma

You woke up on your stomach with Kensei's arm pinning you across the lower back. He slept like a barricade, heavy and immovable, and most mornings you had to physically shove him to get enough room to breathe.

But this morning when you shifted against him you felt something firm against your hip, obvious and undeniable.

You turned your head on the pillow to see that he was still out of it. Face half-buried in the mattress, jaw slack, breathing deep. Kensei asleep was one of the only times his face fully relaxed, the permanent scowl smoothed out into something almost peaceful. You rarely got to see it.

Buuuuuut.

You also rarely got to see him at a disadvantage.

You pressed your hip back against him, slow and deliberate and his breathing hitched. His arm tightened across your back and you did it again, putting more weight behind it. A low rumble started in his chest, not quite a growl, not yet a groan.

"Keeeenseeei~" You kept your voice quiet.

His eyes opened. It took him about two seconds to register the situation, his jaw clenched and he pulled his hips back from you immediately, putting an inch of distance between his body and yours.

"Don't," he said. His voice was rough with sleep and something more heated.

"Don't what?"

"Don't make it a thing."

"I'm not making it a thing, it already it is."

You rolled over onto your side, facing him. His arm was still across you but his hips were angled away now, as if that single inch of space was going to save him. You could see the tension running through his shoulders, his neck, the way his hand had curled into a fist against the mattress.

Kensei embarrassed was Kensei angry, and Kensei angry was Kensei who wanted to put his fist through a wall. Or you, ideally.

You reached over and put your hand flat on his chest and he looked at it like you just placed a live grenade there.

"It's fine, Kensei."

"I know it's fine. I didn't say it wasn't fine."

"You're scowling."

"I'm always scowling."

You rolled your eyes, "You're scowling more than usual then."

His jaw clenched while you slid your hand down from his chest to his stomach, feeling every ridge of muscle contract under your palm before you traced the edge of his 69 tattoo with your thumb.

"You don't have to make it more of thing," he said again, quieter now, going with your logic.

"What if I want to make it more of a thing?"

He looked at you and his scowl cracked. It wasn't quite a smile, but it was close enough. His hand uncurled from its fist and landed on your waist, gripping hard enough to dimple your skin.

"Then get over here," he said, "and stop teasing me about it."

You closed the distance and pressed yourself against him and felt him exhale like he'd been holding it since he woke up.

His mouth found yours, rough and graceless, and his hand dragged you in by the back of your thigh. Whatever control he'd been performing dissolved the second your hips met his.

Rojuro Otoribashi (Rose)

You woke to the sound of humming. Of course you did.

Rose was on his back beside you, eyes closed, one hand conducting an invisible orchestra above his chest, fingers moving through the air in slow arcs. The morning light caught all that blonde hair spread across the pillow and made it look like something out of a gallery.

He was composing again. Probably had been for an hour.

What he had not noticed, apparently, was the sheet.

It was draped across his hips in a way that made the whole situation extremely obvious, and he was either genuinely unaware or so lost in whatever symphony was playing in his head that his body had become irrelevant background noise. Knowing Rose, it could have been either or both.

You propped yourself up on your elbows and looked as he kept humming. His conducting hand swept through a crescendo and you reached over and laid your palm flat on his stomach, just below his navel.

The humming stopped.

"Oh, good morning love." he said, eyes still closed, voice carrying the faintest vibrato.

"Morning... Love? You have bit of a situation."

"I have many situations. I'm a captain and a musician. Situations are all part of my work"

You exhaled a long sigh, "Rose. Look down at yourself."

He opened his eyes, lifted his head, and looked. He paused. Then he let his head fall back against the pillow with a sigh that somehow managed to sound melodic.

"Ah, I see... Well. The body is an instrument, and instruments don't always wait for the conductor's cue."

"Did you just... compare your penis to a musical instrument?"

"Everything is music if you listen closely enough." But his voice had lost its airy quality, because your hand was still on his stomach and your thumb had started tracing a slow line back and forth below his navel.

His conducting hand lowered and came to rest on top of yours. Not guiding, not stopping. Just holding.

"You could ignore it," you offered.

"One could ignore a thunderstorm. One could also ignore a Beethoven overture... It would be a profound waste in both cases."

"You're always so dramatic."

"I prefer passionate." He turned his head on the pillow to look at you, his eyes were focus on you. "You're not moving your hand."

"No."

"Are you planning to move it somewhere?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"Whether you stop comparing yourself to a cello."

He laughed and his hand closed around yours and guided it down beneath the sheet.

His breath caught when your fingers found him, a sharp intake through parted lips, and his eyes fluttered shut and opened his mouth in a gasp, his free hand fisting the pillow beside his head.

Ryuken Ishida

You opened your eyes at 5:02 AM because Ryuken's side of the bed was still occupied. That alone was unusual enough to wake you. Most mornings the sheets were already cold by the time your alarm went off, his side made with military precision.

But today he was still here. Flat on his back, one arm across his eyes, breathing evenly. The sheet were pulled to his waist in that precise way he did everything, edges straight, fabric smooth.

Although it wasn't smooth enough to hide what was underneath.

You looked. Probably for longer than you should have. Then you rolled onto your side and said, "You're still here..."

"I'm aware." His arm stayed over his eyes. His voice was flat and clipped.

"And you're--"

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to." His arm came down from his eyes and he stared at the ceiling. His jaw was tight and a muscle in his cheek was working. He looked like a man trying to perform surgery on his own composure.

You slid across the mattress until your body was against his side. He didn't move toward you, but he didn't move away either. You rested your hand on his chest, over the pressed undershirt he wore to bed.

"It's natural, Ryuken."

"I'm aware of the physiology. I am a doctor."

"Then why are you acting like you've been caught doing something wrong?"

His eyes were sharp and guarded when he looked at you, but his pupils were wide in the low light. He held your gaze for a long moment, then looked back at the ceiling.

"I am not accustomed to... being seen like this."

The sentence landed in the quiet room and stayed there. You understood what it cost him. You didn't push it. You just moved your hand from his chest down to his stomach, slow enough that he could stop you if he wanted.

He didn't.

"You don't have to do anything," you said. "I can just--"

"Don't patronize me." But his hand had come up and closed around your wrist, and instead of pulling you away he held you there, fingers tight, thumb against your pulse.

You turned your wrist in his hold, laced your fingers through his and brought his hand to your mouth before kissing his knuckles, one at a time, and watched the muscle in his jaw finally release.

"Come here," you said.

He rolled toward you stiffly, but his hand found your waist and his forehead dropped against yours. You reached between the two of you and touched him through the fabric and his whole body jerked once.

Jugram Haschwalth

You weren't sure what woke you at first.

Jugram was sleeping beside you on his back, perfectly still, perfectly composed, even in sleep. His hands folded over his stomach and his hair arranged on the pillow as if he planned its placement before closing his eyes.

Then you noticed the sheet.

There was a subtle elevation across his lap that did not match the flat, controlled lines of the sheets on top of him. You blinked at it. You blinked again.

Jugram Haschwalth. The Grandmaster, the man who ironed his cape and aligned his boots at right angles before bed... was lying with an erection pressing against Wandenreich-issued bedding like a quiet act of mutiny against his own discipline.

You bit the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing.

His eyes opened suddenly, like a switch being thrown and immediately fixed them on you.

"Why are you laughing," he said.

"You well--um...drawn your bedroom sword it seems."

The silence that followed was profound.

His gaze held yours and then, with enormous control, shifted downward. He observed the situation the way he might observe a battlefield irregularity, with calm assessment and absolutely no visible reaction. Then he looked back at you.

"This is merely a physiological occurrence."

"I know what it is, Jugram."

"It requires no acknowledgment."

"And yet here it is. Being acknowledged."

His jaw tightened by a fraction and you rolled onto your side, closing the distance between you before resting your chin on his shoulder. You could see the faintest color along the tops of his cheekbones.

Jugram Haschwalth was blushing. It was so subtle that anyone else would have missed it entirely, but you had spent enough time studying this face to know what his neutral expression looked like, and this was not it.

"It'll pass," he said to the ceiling.

"What if I could help it pass faster?"

He went quiet as though he had been caught without a plan.

You laughed softly and put your hand on his chest. His breathing stayed even but his pulse didn't, you could feel it jumping under your fingers, and the contrast between what his body was doing and what his face was doing was almost unbearable.

"Jugram. Look at me."

He did, looking at you the same way a person looks at someone they still can't quite believe chose them back.

"You could ask," you said.

"I don't ask for things."

His hand came up from his side and cupped the back of your head. His fingers threaded into your hair and held there, firm and deliberate. He pulled you down and kissed you, and it was nothing like the rest of him. It was deep and his teeth grazed your bottom lip.

When you slid your hand down his stomach and under the sheet he inhaled against your mouth and his hips lifted to meet you before he could stop them.

Askin Nakk Le Vaar

You were lying on your side, half-awake, watching the early light cut a stripe across the bed, when you noticed the sheet was doing something architectural over Askin's lap.

He was flat on his back, one arm behind his head, the other resting on his stomach, still asleep. The sheet tented upward with a frankness that bordered on comedic.

You stared at it for a moment. Then you reached over and flicked it.

His eyes flew open. "Ow. What. Why."

"Good morning to you too babe."

He blinked, looked at you, looked down at himself, and then let his head fall back against the pillow with a groan. "Ah. Right. That."

"That," you agreed.

He rubbed his jaw and stared at the ceiling. "You weren't supposed to be awake for this part. I had a whole system. Get up, handle it, come back, make coffee, maintain the illusion of dignity."

"Illusion's gone, sorry."

"Yup. Completely shattered. Thanks for that." He glanced sideways at you, one eye half-open, that stray strand of hair stuck to his cheekbone. "I could still go handle it... Bathroom's right there."

"You could." you agreed again.

"That would be the reasonable thing to do."

"Absolutely."

"Or."

"Or."

"Or," he said again, quieter.

"Or," you said, and neither of you were finishing the sentence. His throat moved when he swallowed. Your hand was already on his stomach.

"Somebody has to finish saying it," he murmured.

"Ooorrrr I could just do this." You slid your hand below the sheet and his whole body went taut, his breath leaving him in a rush as his hand grabbed your wrist but not to stop you.

"That works," he managed. "--That works too."

He pulled you over him, both hands on your hips, and when you pressed down against him the sound he made was something he would have let anyone else hear. His mouth found yours, slow and unhurried, his thumb tracing the curve of your hip.

"You're so fatal," he murmured against your lips.

Bazz-B

You woke up with Bazz-B's leg shoved between yours and his arm pinning you to the mattress. He was taking up most of the bed space at a diagonal, his face mashed into the pillow and mohawk crushed flat on one side. He was still out, his breathing heavy and body was slack.

But something between your thighs was not slack at all.

His hips were pressed flush against your leg and the situation was extremely, undeniably, clear. You shifted slightly and felt it press harder and his hips rocked forward on instinct, a slow, unconscious grind that made your breath catch before your brain was fully awake.

You laid there for a moment. Considering your options.

"Bazz."

Nothing. His arm tightened around your waist and he mumbled something unintelligible into the pillow and pushed his hips forward again. Your teeth sank into your bottom lip.

"Bazz." You shoved his shoulder. He grunted but didn't wake up. His hand slid down to your hip in his sleep and gripped it and pulled you closer against him, which made the whole situation significantly worse. Or better. Depending on perspective.

"Bazz!" You pinched his arm hard enough to leave a mark.

His head jerked up. "What--W-What's happening--"

"You're grinding on me in your sleep you idiot."

He blinked. The disorientation lasted about two seconds before awareness caught up. He looked down at the position they were in, his leg between yours, his hips pressed against your thigh, his hand gripping your hip.

"That's not--I was asleep!"

"I know you were asleep. That's why I woke you up!"

"So... I'd stop?"

"So you'd do it on purpose."

He stared at you before his gaze dropped to where his body was still pressed between your thighs, then back up to your face.

"Yeah? Is that what you want." he said. Slower this time.

"You heard me."

His fingers pressed into your skin, pulling you tighter against him.

"If you're messing with me," he said, "I'm going to be pissed."

"When have I ever messed with you?"

"Constantly. All the time. It's like half our relationship."

You rolled your hips against his one slow, deliberate grind. The groan that came out of his throat was raw and his eyes went half-shut as his fingers dug into your hip.

"I'm not messing with you," you said.

Lille Barro

Lille's room carried a specific kind of stillness, ordered and absolute. He was beside you on his back, eye closed and breathing measured. Even in sleep, Lille Barro looked disciplined.

You noticed the sheet first. It was pulled tight across his body and tented at the hips, and it took you a moment to reconcile what you were seeing with the man lying next to you. Lille Barro. Was lying here like any other man on any other morning.

You didn't touch him. You just looked, chin propped on your hand, and waited.

His eye opened and glanced at you.

"You've been watching me sleep again..." he said.

"For a few minutes."

His eye moved to the sheet and than back to you. His expression remained exactly the same.

"Even the divine inhabit a body," he said simply.

"Lille."

"I am merely contextualizing--"

"Lille." You put your hand on his stomach and his sentence died. Under your palm his muscles pulled tight and his breathing hitched for exactly one beat before he corrected it. You could almost see him recalibrating, reasserting control, building the wall back up brick by brick while your hand sat on his bare skin and made it all pointless.

"You do this," you said. "Every time. You talk about divinity and purpose and context. And the whole time your heart is going like this." You slid your hand up to his chest and pressed down. His pulse was hammering.

For the first time his composure thinned enough that you could see something underneath it.

Confliction. With part of him that believed he was above this and the part of him that wanted you to move your hand down lower.

"I am not accustomed to--" he started.

"I know."

"My purpose has always been singular. His Majesty's will. The execution of--"

"I know, Lille."

You leaned over and kissed the crosshair mark over his left eye and he stilled. You kissed his cheekbone. The bridge of his nose. The corner of his mouth. Each one deliberate. Each one placed with the kind of precision only he would understand.

His hand came up and caught the back of your head. His fingers threaded into your hair and held you there, your mouth a breath from his.

"Show me," he said. Quiet. Almost inaudible. "I do not know to be selfish. Show me."

You kissed him. His mouth opened under yours and his hand tightened in your hair and when you slid your hand down he exhaled against your lips like a man surfacing from deep water. His hips lifted to meet your touch and the rest of his composure didn't just thin, it dissolved.

You guided his other hand to your body and he followed your lead with the same focused precision he brought to everything, learning you the way he'd learned the rifle, thorough, intent, and unwilling to miss.

Cang Du

You woke because the room was cold and Cang Du didn't radiate heat when he slept. He barely radiated presence. He was on his back, perfectly still, the sheet folded across his waist with a neatness that suggested he hadn't moved once his sleep. His face was blank, his breathing silent.

But the sheet, neat as it was, couldn't lie.

You looked at the subtle tension in the fabric across his lap. Then you looked at his face. Nothing. He could have been carved from the same iron his body produced. You had no idea if he was awake or asleep, because with Cang Du, there was often no difference in the expression.

You put your hand on his forearm and his eyes opened. No surprise. No disorientation. Just a narrow look fixed on you with the same flat calm he used in everything.

"You're awake," you said.

"I have been awake for some time."

"How long?"

He paused. "Approximately forty minutes."

You stared at him. Forty minutes. This man had been lying perfectly still in the dark for forty minutes, refusing to acknowledge his own body, with the same stubborn discipline he brought to everything else in his life.

"Cang. That's absurd."

"It is not absurd. It is discipline."

"Okay, that's just sad."

You moved closer. You put your hand on his chest flat over his heart. His skin was cool, but his pulse hammered under your palm, fast and hard, the only part of him that couldn't hold rank.

"You could have woken me up," you yawned.

He looked at you. The flat calm didn't crack but something shifted behind it. His hand came up and rested over yours on his chest, pressing it down. His fingers were cool and rough and exact.

"I would not know how to ask," he said.

Seven words. From a man who barely spoke five words in an entire day. You felt the weight of them settle in your chest.

You leaned in and kissed the scar on his lip. He inhaled through his nose, sharp and controlled. You kissed the corner of his mouth. His hand tightened over yours. You kissed him fully and for a moment he was rigid and still, and then something gave way and he kissed you back with a crumbling restraint.

You pulled the sheet down and his jaw clenched. You touched him and his eyes closed and his head turned into the pillow and the sound he made was so quiet you felt it more than heard it.

TAG LIST [message if you would like to be added!]: @disturbyakuya

You had no idea for how long you'd been staring into nothing when you heard a knock on the door. The deadline was tomorrow, and you hadn't even started.

"Huh? What? Who?"

"How's the cake going?" Bazz-B said from the doorway.

You sighed. You always did want to see him, but...

"No peeking, Bazz. It's against the rules."

"I'm not peeking! Just asking! Honest!" he said, and went to the fridge and got himself a canned soda. "Not like there's much to see, anyway."

He was right, of course. There was nothing on the table except for the ancient Quincy cookbook you had found in the archives. It was thick, dusty, and smelly, and now it was full of your colorful paper bookmarks.

"You don't know what to make, huh", Bazz said.

"What... what are you talking about? Of course I know what I'm going to make!"

You looked away and felt warmth in your cheeks all of a sudden. Bazz noticed, and his grin widened.

"Come on, you can tell me. What's the problem?"

Could you? Could you really tell him, or anyone in the whole castle, for that matter? When did any of you ever look out for each other, or help each other out?

"It's just..." you began, running your thumb over the bookmarks, "all of these recipes are so old. Surely His Majesty has tasted each of them already."

"So?"

"So, I wouldn't want to bore him!"

"It's His Majesty we're talking about, any old classic cake will do, trust me."

Except, of course, that was probably not what Bazz himself would go for. That was your dilemma - you knew all too well that His Majesty preferred traditional things, but what could you possibly make that would also prove interesting to a guy like...

"Bazz, if you were the King of the Quincy, what kind of cake would you want?"

He began to laugh.

"To be honest, I don't really have a sweet tooth."

"... Oh..."

"If I were King... I'd want something... I don't know. Fun!"

He pointed towards the unlit candle on the table, and shot a tiny flame at it. In that moment, your eyes lit up as well.

"Bazz! You're a genius!"

"Haha, what?"

"No time to explain, I have to get started on it right now, so if there's nothing else you want from the kitchen...?"

He smirked.

"Well, there was something else, but you're obviously busy, so I'll just be on my way. Good luck with your cake!"

What in the world could he possibly want? And why did it matter that you were busy? Did he want something... from you?

Regardless, right now you had work to do.

.

(One sleepless night and one busy day later)

You took in a deep breath and wheeled in the enormous cake, made up of multiple smaller cakes. It was pentagonal in shape, with blue marzipan stars around the sides... and completely white in the middle.

You cleared your throat and announced to the crowd:

"Your Majesty... this cake holds a truth we Quincy all know... With your permission, I would like to ask Sternritter H to assist with revealing it."

"Very well", His Majesty said. "Bazz-B, assist if you wish."

Bazz was there in an instant, his eyes wide with excitement, warming his palms together.

"What do you need me to do?"

"Please, can you shoot a flame at the surface of the cake? Just a small flame will do."

"What?!"

The crowd was murmuring, and even His Majesty had raised a brow.

"Go ahead, it'll be... fun!"

He looked at you with a confused smile, and then he pointed his finger towards the cake. You nodded. His finger lit up and he shot.

The surface of the cake caught fire, and the first triangle of the pentagon began to burn away, revealing beneath it...

"The sealed King of the Quincy", Bazz read out loud; the text was written in blue icing.

After it finished burning away, the second one caught flame as well. You faced him and recited the next verse.

"Over 900 years, he shall recover his heartbeat."

Bazz nodded and grinned. You wondered if he was thinking it too. It almost felt like a...

"Over 90 years, he shall recover his intellect."

... like a vow... not just any kind of vow...

"Over nine years, he shall recover his power."

All you needed now was a blessing.

Bazz then turned to the King himself, and you did too.

"And over nine days, he shall recover the world", His Majesty finished, and clapped his hands slowly.

All the others began to applaud as well, but you only had eyes for Bazz, who was smiling at you. He looked so in awe, and you couldn't believe it had all gone so perfectly.

.

It was incredible, barely a crumb was left! His Majesty enjoyed it, and most importantly...

"Need a hand with that?" Bazz said.

"Sure, thanks, Bazz - and thanks for the idea, too."

"No need to thank me, the idea was yours", he winked.

He pushed the cart all the way into the kitchen for you.

"How do you even know about baking trends from the world of the living?" you asked. "I thought you didn't have a sweet tooth..."

"I do like sweet things, I just don't crave them. Well, that's not really true. There's something sweet I'm really craving right now..."

He seemed very pleased with himself, and when you looked in the same direction where he was looking... you understood why. The two of you were standing right under the mistletoe.

"Ah, so that's what you wanted yesterday!"

"I mean, only if you want it too."

You didn't reply, you just wrapped your arms around his neck, and right away you were surrounded by his pleasant warmth. His kiss was a celebration, you could feel the joy and passion in the pressure of his lips against yours. You weren't sure how or when, but the two of you had started moving, like a slow dance.

"Do we really have to go back, Bazz?"

"Ugh... Yeah, we kinda do..."

You shrugged and smiled, and then you kissed him again.

.

.

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Thank you @whatshernameis for requesting, thanks to everyone who reads, and have a wonderful rest of the holiday season!!!! 🥰