#bluerayofsunshine

[damienthepious]

9 for Damien/Rilla, 12 for Damien/Arum, or 49 for Rilla/Arum? :D

[THANK YOU!! I did 9 here already, and hopefully i’ll manage something for 49 soon, but in the meantime: 12. “Look into my eyes, what do you see?” Did u request: heckin’ softness??]

~

Eye to Eye [ao3]

“You have spent quite a bit of time looking into my eyes by now, little honeysuckle,” Arum says softly. The swamp buzzes, soft as well, warm muggy air around them as they laze on a bed of moss, and Damien pulls his eyes away from Rilla as she takes some sort of mysterious measurements of the water a few yards away, and then meets Arum’s gaze instead.

“I certainly have,” he agrees, unsure precisely what thread Arum is pulling at today. “I would be content to do so for ages still.” He takes Arum’s hand as he says this, pulling it to his lips to kiss his knuckles, and Arum’s frill flares partway in pleased surprise.

“Gnk- yes, well,” Arum coughs lightly, but he doesn’t pull his hand away. “I- well, I was merely curious- in the time since… in our time together, do you… do you still see in my eyes what you saw that first time, honeysuckle?”

Damien stares at Arum for a moment, surprised, and the monster stares back, mostly patient though his hand flexes nervously in Damien’s grip.

“Something… human, you mean?” Damien murmurs, and Arum nods, wrinkling his snout slightly in discomfort. Damien exhales, letting go of Arum’s hand so he can cup his cheeks instead, and the monster’s chest rumbles lightly with an automatic purr. “Arum… do you still see something monstrous in my eyes?”

Arum flicks his tongue in the air, then glances aside for a moment. “I asked you first, honeysuckle.”

Damien smiles, brushing his thumbs over the scales of Arum’s cheeks. “Satisfy my curiosity, my lily, and I will satisfy yours in turn. Please. Look into my eyes, Arum, and tell me what you see.”

Damien holds Arum’s face in his hands, and Arum lets him, purring softly as he looks at the poet again, as his eyes flick between Damien’s, as he searches that calm gaze.

There is quiet, for a long moment, or what passes for quiet in the swamp: wordlessness, cushioned by frogsong and soft splashing and the hum of heat and insects. Arum exhales, eventually, and leans his face more fully into Damien’s palms.

“Monstrousness,” he murmurs, a note of amused self-deprecation in his voice. “There is a ferocity to you, honeysuckle, that certainly shines through your eyes. Ferocity, earnestness, wit, and- and affection.”

“Love,” Damien says, soft and certain, and Arum’s frill flares just slightly. He still can’t quite match the easy way his poet offers his feelings, but-

“Yes,” he says, and then he lifts his own hand, tilting Damien’s chin up with a subtle smile. “Yes, I can see love. Of course-” he laughs. “Of course, I did not see that in you the first time, honeysuckle. Though there may have been sparks, I suppose.” He pauses, considering his next words carefully. “I think… I think that perhaps… perhaps it was the complexity of you that intrigued me first.”

Damien’s smile widens, grows warmer. “Complexity is precisely the word. When I looked into your eyes… the depth I saw confused me. I did not believe a monster capable of such… such a rich mind, so vivid a personality, nuance and contradiction such as I had only known before in humans. It was, I think, the only way I could reconcile how much I enjoyed speaking with you, fighting with you. I had to think of it as a way that you were like a human, because I could not understand a monster like you.”

Arum wonders if Damien can feel the way his heart is kicking, the way his entire body wants to lean into the poet, to crowd his space and gather him in his arms. “I am…” his voice comes out too rough, and he clears his throat before he makes another attempt. “I am glad, honeysuckle, that you saw me the way you did.”

“As am I, my beloved monster,” Damien murmurs, and then he leans up to press a kiss to the tip of Arum’s snout. “And as I am grateful, every day, that you saw me in return.” He leans closer, arranging himself on Arum’s chest, resting his head on Arum’s shoulder with a contented sigh as Arum holds him close. “Every single day.”

~

[send me a number from this list and a ship and I’ll write a ficlet!]

[acewizard]

@bluerayofsunshine OMG I WOULDNT *DREAM* OF IT IM LISTENING TO EVERYTHING IN ORDER BC ITS ALL S O GOOD LIKE I LOVE THE ONE SHOTS AND SECOND CITADEL (high fantasy will always be my one true love)

Also after two Juno steel episodes I’m usually too emotional for more Juno steel so I need the breaks

[zarla-s]

Hi! I love your skelebros comics, tho your write Sans a bit younger than my hc (not a criticism! your storytelling is wonderful). I also noticed that you did a cute cat comic for anime, and, um, just thought a cat!Papyrus carrying a Sans!kitten around would be a cute image, if you needed a cute image to meditate upon. Anyway, thank you for posting so many wonderfully heartbreaking comics, especially the Handplates and Murder!route ones. Have a great day!

i will meditate on this

[dr-archeville]

I don't know if Raleigh is closer to you than Cary, but there's a Penzey's spice shop in Cameron Village that has a very tasty Garam Masala mix that's pretty authentic. Or you can dry-roast whole spices and grind them in a (clean) coffee grinder. There's lots of recipes for Garam Masala online using that technique.

Raleigh is a bit closer.

Thanks!  :)

[damienthepious]

7 for rad bouquet?

[7. “I’ve missed you” kiss - thank you and sorry this took so long! Also, this quickly became, basically, a sequel/epilogue to Crawling Along The Hours To You. Also! this counts as my offering for LKT this week. Heck yeah.][ao3]

[EDIT: Now??? Featuring art???? by the wildly skillful @damienthepious ??? it’s absolutely stunning and gorgeous and can be found here! I’m still crying about it]

~

Rilla is exhausted by the time she and her escort (who she unfairly wishes would sink into the damned dirt right about now, considering the fact that without an escort, she could simply portal right back to the Keep without interference) finally, finally come around the bend and see her hut waiting for her. She gives as polite a goodbye as she can muster at this time of night (it is nearly four in the morning now, since the moment she recognizes a familiar road, she refuses outright to allow her escort to stop her from powering through the sunset, leaving him no choice but to either abandon her as a charge or just do his best to keep up in the darkness) and when her own door is safely closed behind her she sags against it and exhales all the air in her lungs.

Dilemma: Rilla wants, very badly, to sleep right this instant, to curl up in her own bed and just pass out, but with equal strength she wants to go to the Keep and find Arum at least, and if she’s lucky Damien will be there too. Immediate, much-needed sleep versus comfort for her heartsickness.

The only thing that tips the scales, eventually, is the knowledge that she’s covered knees-down in mud from the road, sweaty with a full day and change of travel, and if she waits until morning she can at least surprise them all fresh and clean and rested.

She sighs again, decides that she’s going to sleep until at least noon, and then she lights a lantern so she doesn’t trip over the piles of research and books in her front room as she wobbles in the direction of her bed.

When she pushes the bedroom door open, though, her bed is already otherwise occupied.

The light from the lantern reveals both her lovers, wrapped up together with her sheets kicked down to the bottom of the bed. Damien curls against Arum’s chest, his hair loose and soft over his brow, and Arum’s arms circle him, their legs tangle together, and Arum’s tail is curled loose around Damien’s ankle, and Rilla has to clutch at her chest for a moment because it feels like her heart is trying to leap from her ribcage to join the pair of them in her bed.

She takes a shuddering, grateful breath, and then she quietly kicks off her muddy boots and her traveling clothes before she blows out the lantern and tiptoes over to join them.

Her bed is smaller than the one they usually share in the Keep, but Rilla is determined, and creative, and too tired to abide by the limitations of the surface area of her mattress. She crawls over the pair of them, slipping her hands in between their chests and gently insinuating herself between them. She’s almost completely managed it before Arum inhales, his eyes slitting open in the dark and his hands finding her sides, pulling her automatically closer.

“Amaryllis,” he hisses, pressing his snout into her neck and rumbling low in his chest. “I thought I was… dreaming.”

“You’ve been dreaming about me?” Amaryllis whispers, teasing, and he growls more distinctly. “I mean, sleeping in my bed and all, that makes enough sense-”

“Honeysuckle,” Arum murmurs, and when he squeezes Damien’s shoulder the knight comes awake gently, and then quickly when Arum continues, “Amaryllis is home.”

“Oh.” Damien wraps his arms around her from the other side, and she laughs lightly as he squeezes her. “Oh, my heart, my love, my flower- oh Rilla, my Rilla-”

“Hey, hey,” Rilla reaches a hand back, because Damien sounds almost tearful. “Don’t work yourself up too much, Damien. I’m home. I’m not going anywhere. It’s the middle of the night, I’m exhausted, and all I want in the world right now is to fall asleep as comfortable as you both looked a few minutes ago. Okay?”

“Of course, my love,” he says in a trembling voice, and her own throat feels tight because- saints she missed them-

“We will return to sleep in a moment, Amaryllis,” Arum says softly, lifting a hand to cup her cheek, “but we have been without you for- unreasonably long, I would say.”

He presses his mouth against her own in an almost kiss, and he nearly melts against her when she softly kisses back. When they pull away for breath he nudges his forehead against hers for a panting moment before he uses his grip upon her to turn her in his arms. He curls along her back, nuzzling against her shoulder, and the new positioning puts Rilla nose-to-nose with Damien. She giggles at the delighted, surprised breath Damien gives, but the laughter subsides into the next kiss, all the intensity of Damien’s longing pouring into her through the smoldering, tender press of his lips against her own. The kiss breaks, and then Damien kisses the corner of her mouth, kisses her cheek, kisses her nose and then her brow and then her cheek again and Rilla snorts with laughter before she kisses him on the mouth one more time, quick and easy and simple.

“Missed you too,” she says against Damien’s lips, squeezing Arum’s hand, and then she sighs. She settles, into her familiar bed and into their familiar embrace, and she is warm and safe and whole in a way she hasn’t truly been since her departure.

~

[send me a number and a pairing from the prompt list here, and I’ll do a short (100-300 words max) description of the kiss!] [all kiss ficlets here!]

[damienthepious]

11 in Angst for Arum, please? :D

[THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME MY LIZARD KISS FIC FOR THE WEEK, BLESS 💖💝💖

11a. “I don’t hold people close. It makes it easier for them to hurt you.” OOF. Alright. I’m gonna post the first few paragraphs here and then link to the ao3, just because this got long and i know readmores on asks don’t work on mobile for some obnoxious reason.]

Different Now

~

“Really? Not even once?”

Arum frowns, not looking at Damien as he carefully, carefully prunes the fronds of a serrated palm that has been growing unnoticed and unruly in a corner of the greenhouse for the better part of a month. “Honeysuckle, the Keep is not meant to house company, precisely. Nor am I meant to desire it.”

“But-”

“I was created for the sole purpose of being the caretaker for my Keep, and the swamp into which it breathes life and magic. I was not built to desire affection or coupling or- romance, however you want to term it.”

“Surely, though,” Damien says, voice wavering with poorly concealed distress, “surely a happy caretaker is a more effective caretaker. And you are-” he pauses, and Arum can practically hear him shuffling through potential phrasings in his head for a moment before he settles on, “quite singularly alluring. I find it hard to imagine that there was truly no one before-”

“It isn’t as if I have been deathly alone my entire life, honeysuckle. I maintained a limited number of friendships in my youth, and I have plenty of professional contacts, and there have been a number of physical-” he rolls his eyes, “encounters with other monsters, but a relationship, such as it were, was never on my list of priorities.”

“Oh.”

[read more on ao3]

[damienthepious]

▼Arum?

childhood headcanon: first off? flower bed. I think we all know how i feel about lil Arum in a lil flower bed. Second off, though- I think that all of Arum’s predecessors probably kept records of their rule over the swamp, and I think that most of Arum’s formative education came from those journals and documents. I also like to imagine that they’re kept in code or at least in private shorthand, and learning how to crack it and developing his own style of obscuring his knowledge is part of his earliest lessons. 

[damienthepious]

4 for mangelo?

Who’s the better cook? Almost certainly Angelo. I feel like Marc is pretty terrible at taking care of himself? He gets lost, he mismanages supplies- I feel like he’s the kind of dude who probably forgets to trim his hair and Rilla has to literally toss him into a chair behind her hut and grab the clippers once a year when he’s gone Too Fucking Far with his hairstyle choices, and the dude probably has not cooked in a kitchen as opposed to over a campfire in actually years. The guy can manage probably very simple food, but if he wants cooking he either has to go to a tavern or to Rilla. 

Angelo, I feel like, is big on family togetherness type things, and I feel like his whole family probably mutually helped out with most chores, including cooking, so he’s probably a decent home cook. He’s probably excellent at big, one-pot meals that’re very rich and filling, and he’s not half-bad at baking too!