$30 1 character b/w sketch
$45 2 character b/w sketch
$60 3 character b/w sketch or 1 character colored
$75 2 characters colored
$90 3 characters colored
+$15 increments for every character thereafter
CAN DO:
furries/anthros
animals
humans
shipping
OCs
WILL TRY:
mecha
vehicles
NSFW on a case-by-case basis, feel free to ask. Writing comms are also welcome, please DM for inquiries and we will hash out details and prices.
I lost my job not too long ago; thankfully I found a new one but it's going to take awhile for my first real paycheck. I'm not in any dire straits but I could use the money in the meantime, so any help is very much appreciated. We are looking at a turnaround time of 2-4 weeks from commission date.
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: ダンジョン飯 | Dungeon Meshi | Delicious in Dungeon
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Chilchuck Tims/Laios Touden
Characters: Chilchuck Tims, Laios Touden
Additional Tags: Inspired by Stardew Valley, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Animal Death, Ableism, Fantasy Racism, Realistic Depictions of Ranch Practices, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Dysfunctional Family, Dark Comedy, Explicit Language, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Canon-Typical Violence
Summary: Chilchuck inherits the family farm and it's proving to be a lot more trouble than it's worth. Luckily, his old man's last farmhand is still around to help ease him into his role.
OkOk, so I know you’re currently in the middle of writing who knows how many more dunmeshi fics, but have you considered Tall-man x Tall-man Chillchuck and Laios yet? Maybe for a quick little drabble or something? I feel like that could go somewhere maybe.. If not this is just me rambling 😔, so feel free to ramble back and have a good day <3
oh anon. you found me juuust as i was raring up to procrastinate. you are in luck.
CHILAIOS/656 WORDS/TALLCHUCKXLAIOS/CONSIDER THIS BREAK THE LOCK CANON
“Okay,” Chilchuck said, his voice deeper and rougher than Laios was used to. “What’re you staring at?”
Laios blinked. “You, obviously.”
“But aren’t you used to this shit yet? Do I look different now that you’ve changed back?”
Laios cocked his head. The changeling effect had worn off for Laios a few hours ago, but Chilchuck was still a tallman. Maybe because he was lower to the ground, he got a larger payload? Laios had made extra sure they’d scrubbed everything off him, so it was only a matter of time. Laios didn’t like to think about the possibility Chilchuck never changing back, but with his taller stature returned he could properly appreciate the differences. Chilchuck loomed over Laios as a dwarf and was still taller than him now. His cheekbones were higher, his face stretched along a taller jaw, stubble emerging so soon after a morning shave. Yet, besides the slightly sunken and tired look, Chilchuck’s eyes were still the same; pitch dark in low light, amber-brown in front of the fire, intense when met.
“You do,” Laios said, “but you don’t. I keep noticing little things.”
A blush rose on Chilchuck’s gaunt face, scratching at the nape of his neck. “Well, don’t get too invested. It’s gonna wear off soon.” He rubbed the pressure point on his temple. “Hopefully.”
“It will,” Laios assured him, and scooted closer. “But it’s fascinating… I wonder how the changeling spores decide what form to change someone into?”
“I guess whatever’s funniest,” Chilchuck said with a wry grin. “You saw Izutsumi.”
“I don’t think you’re funny looking, though,” Laios frowned, his eyebrows pinching together. Chilchuck pshawed at him and put a hand on his face when he got close. Laios pushed against it and wriggled, an over-affectionate dog held at bay.
“It’s supposed to make me look freakish to everyone else, so I die alone, right?” Chilchuck said. “Half-foot to tall-man makes sense. I’m twice the size of the biggest guy in my family. Imagine if I came home to my kids like this when they were young.”
He frowned at that, the dark humor sucked out of it by frank darkness. “And an elf to a half-foot,” he went on, trying to wipe the annoying concern off Laios’ face, “That’s gotta be a nightmare. We’re the lowest of the low to them, right?”
“Chilchuck.”
Laios was back in Chilchuck’s space, having evaded his hand, or Chilchuck had let him. It didn’t matter. Chilchuck’s hand found Laios’ shoulder but he didn’t shove. Chilchuck hated being observed so closely, but he made endless exceptions for Laios.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. Chilchuck honked out a laugh. “I’m serious!” Laios barked, and Chilchuck petered out. “I mean it, Chil.”
Chilchuck rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s a shame, since you’re never gonna see this face again.”
Laios held his face and turned Chilchuck to face him, to kiss him. Their faces fit together unevenly even though they were the same size now. Laios scratched his fingers through Chilchuck’s stubble and nuzzled their noses together, did that creepy thing where he opened his eyes to watch Chilchuck as they kissed that always drove him crazy. Laios reached up to touch Chilchuck’s ear, finding a nick in his ear that Marcille could never fully heal all the way, and Chilchuck grumbled as he felt—something like it, it was doing something for him, but maddeningly dull compared to his memory.
“That’s just it, Chil,” Laios breathed. “Seeing you like this, as cool as it is…” he grinned sadly. “I miss you as you are.”
When Laios brought up his other hand to cup Chil’s head, there was a rush of something electric. As he drifted back into reality, he was engulfed in Laios’ warm shadow, and they couldn’t easily interlock their hands. Chilchuck gripped the broad gap between Laios’ middle and ring fingers, and thanked the stupid mushrooms for letting them fit together properly again.
in which chilchuck tries to get some but ends up a sucker to his caretaker instinct once again
i just wanted to write something where chilchuck unironically indulges laios' hyperfixation, lol. im folding this into something larger but it kind of stands on its own for now, so here.
“Hey,” Chilchuck slurred. An arm crawled around Laios’ shoulder, stirring him from his reading. “What are you doing up? It’s my shift.”
“Just research,” Laios replied cheerily. His eyes were drawn back to the book and away from Chilchuck, something that elicited a soft huff of irritation. “I’ll still be good to take over for you. I’m kind of wound up, you know? Couldn’t sleep.”
“Yeah,” Chilchuck snickered, his hand brushing across Laios’ chest with just a bit too much pressure to be purely friendly. “I’ve been wound up, too.”
Laios met Chilchuck’s lascivious gaze with concern. “Are you starving yourself again? You wouldn’t have such bad insomnia if you ate well.”
“I got wine, there’s nutrients in that,” Chilchuck giggled, giving Laios’ tit a fond pat. Laios smelled the drink on his breath and the hair on his neck stood on end.
“On an empty stomach? Chil…”
“What you getting worked up for? I’m fine. I know what I’m doing.”
Laios’ brows furrowed. Chil stared up at him, waiting for him to back down, and the smug smirk only widened when he didn’t.
“You gonna force-feed me or something? I didn’t take you as into that kind of thing.”
“Knowing how depraved you are, you’d enjoy it if I did.”
Chilchuck scoffed. “Oh, yeah, you’re one to talk—”
Laios closed his book. “You’re being reckless,” he declared, in that know-it-all leader tone. Rarely used—Laios hated using it—but terse enough for Chilchuck to tilt his head and shut his mouth for a minute. Not long enough.
“Being a little tipsy doesn’t mean my eyes and ears don’t work,” Chilchuck groaned, pulling away and slumping onto the next step up from the one he was perched on. “It’s not my job to fight them anyway. All I gotta do is throw the bottle at your head and I’ve done my part.”
“I’m not talking about the party, Chil.”
Chilchuck shrunk away from Laios and crossed his arms.
“When did you become such a nag?” Chilchuck groaned. “I’m older than you. I know my limits.”
Laios turned from his seat on the floor, rising on his knees, invading Chilchuck’s space. He braced his arms on either side of Chilchuck’s lap.
“Do I have to say why?” Laios rumbled. “If you don’t want me to care, stop making passes at me.”
Chilchuck clucked his tongue. “Didn’t have to hit on you to get you to take a few quills to the back for my bony ass.”
“So much for never talking about that again.”
Chilchuck grinned. Laios’ eye twitched, knowing that Chil knew he’d taken the bait. Chilchuck reached up to cup Laios’ face; Laios let him, unfortunately.
“You can relax, big guy,” Chilchuck said, and the softness in his voice made Laios deflate all at once. “I got by just fine until you hired me. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I want to believe you,” Laios murmured. Chilchuck could feel the muscles of his jaw working as he spoke, the weight of his heavy tallman skull in his palms. “I do. But you don’t know—"
“I’m fine,” Chilchuck asserted. “What’s got you so…?”
He stopped, bit his tongue. Laios looked up at him with those insufferable, upturned puppy dog eyes, deep amber in the low firelight, and he remembered. Chilchuck let out a long-suffering sigh, stroked up his cheek into Laios’ hair and scratched his scalp.
“We got this,” Chilchuck said. “It’ll be alright.” Laios slumped forward into Chilchuck’s lap, thick jaw slamming down onto his legs like a harpsichord lid, and Chilchuck squawked. Laios turned his face into the loose-fitting, threadbare slacks Chilchuck normally wore to bed, sucking in a long breath that made his back rise and then letting it all out through his nose. It reminded Chilchuck of Leed’s wargs after a good dinner, resting their big, wrinkly heads on any friendly knee and whining for attention.
Chilchuck scratched at his sideburns. He knew propositioning Laios would be risky in the dungeon, but this wasn’t the kind of disaster he’d envisioned if it went wrong. His hand came to rest on Laios’ back, and he rubbed it along the length of Laios’ spine. Laios’ broad body sunk that much further into his lap. Chilchuck’s calves were going numb, but he held deathly stll, as if he’d scare Laios off. As if he didn’t want to scare Laios off and get out of this mess.
“We’ll find Falin,” Chilchuck said. “We did it before, and we’ll do it again.” Neither of them believed it, really, but it was a nice thought. Maybe if they chanted it enough a spell would be cast. No mana sickness yet; they’d have to keep at it.
“I’m pretty confident about that,” said Laios, muffled in Chilchuck’s legs. His breath puffed warm on his thighs in short, controlled breaths. “But if we do and we don’t get her, if the Mad Mage takes care of us, then—it’s not just Falin, anymore.”
Chilchuck’s breath caught. His fingers curled in Laios’ shirt and tugged fitfully. Laios didn’t budge.
“She used to be all I had, you know.” Laios hugged Chilchuck’s pins-and-needles calves, which further trapped him but also returned some level of blood flow. Small blessings. Chilchuck wished he were dead. “That was fine. It was—better that way. Less to worry about. Then I found a nice girl, and I proposed—"
“Wait, what?”
“—she was so cute, so nice to me, but when my father said Falin would have to leave, I couldn’t just leave my little sister to rot somewhere, so—I broke it off. It didn’t matter, if I could earn enough money and Falin would be okay—”
Try faking a heart attack. You have the plausible deniability. “He… sent Falin away?” He was dimly aware of Marcille and Falin having met at magic school. “You were supporting her?”
“—but I didn’t even—need to. She was happy where she was. And I still—I still dragged her here, let her get eaten, let the Mad Mage take her. What kind of brother—”
Chilchuck gripped the back of Laios’ skull and pulled at his hair, not enough to move him, but enough to shut him up. He let go and ruffled it instead, soothing out the tension in his scalp. Laios melted, limbs melting to the stone tunnel floor.
“I see why you’ve been so wound up,” Chilchuck said. “You’ve just been sitting here and spiraling. Are you even reading that book?”
Laios squeezed Chilchuck’s legs to his chest. “Not really. I’m looking at the words but I’m not… retaining anything.”
That’s bad. “Let me see it.” Laios looked up at Chilchuck with confusion, then distrust. “Please?” That only confused Laios further, but he lifted the worn old tome from the floor for Chilchuck to take.
“Dragons of the Eastern Archipelago,” Chilchuck read out. “Another cookbook, eh?”
The jocular tone whiffed right past Laios’ ears. “It’s… not really research,” he admitted. Chilchuck thumbed through the pages—there were many detailed technical sketches of long-bodied, short-limbed dragons with horsehair and deer antlers, strange boggling eyes and stretched lips. More impressionistic doodles filled the margins, with scrawled-circle eyes and jagged teeth, little flared scratches of the broad side of a pencil representative of dragon fire. Their fat snake bodies had wobbly, uneven sides and sloppily looping scales—but some were a little more distinguishable as a dragon than others.
“Ah.” Chilchuck cleared his throat. “Nothing wrong with a little light reading, I guess.” He tried on a smile. “The, uh, pictures are nice.”
“I kept telling Falin that long don’t breathe fire,” Laios said, voice tight, “but she kept saying it would be cooler if they did.”
“That’s what they’re called? Longs? Seems kind of on-the-nose.”
That managed to get a laugh out of Laios, but it sounded more exasperated than anything. “It’s just one of the native words used for them, but it’s not Shuro’s language, apparently. The word he uses is ryu.”
“I haven’t seen anydragons other than red and green. Maybe it’s just the dungeons I’ve been to.” Chilchuck said. He winced, realizing he’d just stumbled over a lecture topic, but Laios stayed folded across his lap, seemingly having gotten comfortable there, and stayed quiet. The silence made Chilchuck’s hair bristle. Chilchuck nudged him, knuckles against Laios’ temple.
“C’mon, man, I set you up. Go on.”
“Now you’re just making fun of me.”
“Seriously, Laios. I really want to know this time, and you’re gonna sulk about it?”
Laios turned up from his lap to read Chilchuck’s face, though he never seemed to be able to get it right all the other times he’d attempted it. Chilchuck heaved a melodramatic sigh and patted Laios’ head, an action that lowered his hackles. It really shouldn’t have worked that easily, but Laios closed his eyes and hummed.
“There are… so many kinds,” Laios said dreamily. Dread began to creep in on Chilchuck’s charitable mood, but he’d talked himself into a corner. “They’re super adaptable. Pretty much anywhere you have a dungeon or an ecosystem robust enough to support one, you can find a dragon.”
“I’ve, uh, heard about white dragons. Furry ones, kind of like these guys, but with wings and the stocky body type. Never seen one, though, so it could have been bullshit.”
“Oh, they’re real. Pretty common up north.”
“Do they really breathe ice? How does that work?”
“Basically, yeah. It’s super-cooled air. They have huge lungs and a fuel organ like a red dragon, but instead of burning the waste matter inside, it liquefies it into a kind of slurry—” Chilchuck grimaced, but Laios was already talking with his hands and not measuring Chilchuck’s enthusiasm. “—that undergoes a rapid chemical reaction when exposed to the air the dragon exhales.”
“Huh.” Chilchuck absently stroked the back of Laios’ neck. Laios squirmed, but didn’t complain. He slipped out of his kneeling position to sit flatter against the wall, head still flopped over Chilchuck’s lap but looking outward toward the fire. The angle looked uncomfortable, so Chilchuck dropped a step lower, letting Laios slide over just a bit more, lay more solidly in Chilchuck’s lap. Laios’ ears had turned red. “Y’know, I always just figured magic did it. I never knew any of the biology until I met you.”
“You wouldn’t be wrong for thinking that way,” Laios half-shrugged. “They wouldn’t exist without some kind of mana source, so they’re still a product of magic. But to sustain the kind of huge, complex bodies dragons have on mana alone would starve the ecosystem, so they have to develop organs and bones to keep them upright and moving to serve their purpose.”
“To destroy whatever enters their lair?”
“To survive.”
“Same as the rest of us, then.”
Laios hummed. Chilchuck’s wrists had begun to hurt from holding the book, so he propped it up on the crown of Laios’ skull. He didn’t seem to mind.
“So what’s this big pearl they keep drawing the long dragon with?” Chilchuck asked, even though the answer was right beneath it, indicated helpfully in a list of figures.
“Oh, that’s an egg, believe it or not.”
“No kidding.”
“Dragon clutches start out pretty big, but because of how demanding the hatchlings are, most of them don’t survive to adulthood. Some species of dragon choose a ‘favorite’ out of their eggs to focus on and raise instead…”
Chilchuck smiled into the palm of his hand as Laios rambled, flipping through the book to keep his eyes open as Laios talked, listening as the spaces between words grew and his tangents unspooled, dissolving into dreamlike nonsense. The weight of Laios’ head got heavier in Chilchuck’s lap until the static crept back in, but Chilchuck had no intention of moving him anymore. It was well past the scheduled watch shift change by the time Laios began to softly snore, but Chilchuck didn’t rouse him.
Self indulgent chilaios gamer au drabble. This takes place during Laios' first visit out to Chilchuck. They're in a long distance relationship.
tw: combat ptsd, sexual references, child abuse, the author's vaguely disguised attempt to cope
---
Chil had claimed he'd wanted to keep things loose and relaxed on Laios' first trip out, but after a lazy afternoon spent rolling around on the couch on landing day Laios had shaken off the jet lag and seemed a little nervous. Happy, definitely, hopefully, but restless, bouncing his leg when Chil didn't have a hand on his thigh. Laios crept around the house like he was terrified to break something, even with frequent assurances that he could treat the place like his own. Chilchuck knew it would be weird for a day or two while they both adjusted, and maybe Laios needed something else to focus on other than Being A Boyfriend In Real Life.
"How's this, huh?" Chilchuck beamed, gesturing grandly to the rows and rows of overpriced, booze-stained game cabinets. "Everything's expensive as shit out here, but we have great arcades."
"We have Dave & Buster's on the east coast, Chil," Laios said. He held a blank expression for as long as it took for Chilchuck to frown at him.
"But I've never been," Laios laughed. Chil softened. "And I don't think we have them this... large."
"It's a little intense, right?" Chilchuck looked up at Laios, bumped his side with his elbow. "There's, uh, some shooters in here. Just so you know. It's all goofy alien and zombie shit, but if it's too much, we can hit the restaurant and leave."
"I figured," Laios shrugged. "I can kinda hear 'em already. It's alright. The sounds aren't realistic enough to set me off."
"Really? Even with the--the fake guns and stuff?"
"Those things look like Super Soakers to me," Laios chuckled. "And most games use, like, cannon sounds. Same with movies. They don't sound like the real thing. I'm kinda desensitized to it now, it's hard to avoid."
"Makes sense. But say something if it's too much, okay?" Chilchuck elbowed him more intensely, making Laios flinch to protect his tender kidneys. "I'm serious! I want you to say something. Don't sit on it."
"I will," Laios said. "Thank you, Chil."
Chilchuck fit his hand into Laios', who squeezed it, and led him around the machines so he could have a look. He wanted Laios to pick something out, but he had a feeling he'd have to pull the trigger first. All he could think of right now, though, was the opportunity to stand next to him. They had until midnight, the games could wait.
"So you've never been to an arcade? Not even, like, Chuck E. Cheese?" Chil asked. "I find that hard to believe."
"Nah. I've played cabinets before; there was a dinky little game section in the pizzeria we got to go to if our grades were good. It had, uh... House of the Dead and some dinosaur racing game where you smack the buttons really fast. I think we ended up breaking it, actually. We really liked that one."
Chilchuck grinned. "Yeah, I bet."
"Oh! And DDR!" Laios exclaimed, pointing out the flashing rave lights and scuffed metal dance pads. "My dad never let us play it, though. Too fruity."
"The dancing, the music, the everything," Laios sighed. He watched balefully as two skinny teenagers gripped the guide rails, their sneakers squeaking and stomping on the arrow inputs as their legs flailed to the frenetic beat of Love Shine. "But you know how it is with kids. Falin saved up her allowance and snuck out to Wal-Mart and got one of those shitty fold-up plastic mats so we could play it on the PS2." He smiled, rubbing a thumb over Chilchuck's knuckles. "When Dad would go out fishing on the weekends we'd pull it out from between her mattress and the box spring and we'd fight over whose turn it was to play. I was trying to save up to get one of my own so we could compete, but, uh. Dad caught on."
"Oh, Jesus," Chilchuck groaned. "I'm sure he was very reasonable about that."
"So reasonable," Laios laughed. "He cut it up with scissors while we watched."
"Huh!?" Chilchuck's eyes boggled out of his head.
"Hey, he told us not to do it," Laios shrugged. "We went against him. We knew it could've happened."
Chilchuck's eyebrows furrowed. "I get that, but... it's a toy. Falin bought the damn thing... it's not gonna make you... even if it did why would it..."
Laios looked down at Chilchuck, stewing in his righteous rage. "Hey, it's okay. It happened a long time ago, it's nothing worth--"
The moment the teens stepped down from the pad, jelly-kneed and sweaty, Chilchuck tugged Laios towards it hard enough that it nearly dislocated his shoulder.
"We're playing it."
"Chil!" Laios laughed. Chilchuck swiped his points card through the slot like he was trying to pull rent money out of it.
"Pick a song," Chil insisted. "Pick your favorite."
"I don't even remember the name!"
"Then we're going through the list."
Given that he'd only ever watched his girls play it, Chilchuck fared surprisingly well, but by the time they'd found the song Laios liked in his youth (some obnoxious Eurobeat song about cartoons that Puckpatti had also liked) Chilchuck's emphysema was starting to act up and Laios had sweat in his eyelashes.
"I would've dressed lighter if I'd known they had DDR," Laios said, fanning himself with a brochure and pulling off his flannel overshirt. "We gotta come back here before I head home..." He blinked down at Chilchuck, doubled over and wheezing. "... or maybe not."
"Nope," Chilchuck gasped. "We're coming back."
Laios hummed, stroking Chilchuck's back until his breathing evened out.
"You don't have to do that for me, Chil. You've done so much already."
"I want to. You're a guest, I want you to have fun, and... and I'm never gonna get the opportunity to kick your dad's ass, so I just have to undermine all of his hard work in raising you wrong."
Laios snorted. "It's for the best. I don't think you would win. That guy used to bench 300 before he slipped a disc."
"You've never seen me when I got something to be real mad about," Chilchuck insisted. He straightened himself out and pulled the sweaty backs of his pants out of the fold of his knee to dry. "And I have lower center of gravity. I could suplex him."
"Chil."
"Don't Chil me. You'd love to see it."
"I would," Laios admitted. "Do you wanna get something to eat? It'll give you a chance to sit down."
"That... that would be nice, yeah," Chilchuck breathed.
They took their time walking towards the glass panes that served as a partition between the arcade floor and the sit-down eatery. On the way, they passed a claw machine, the classic Sega UFO Catcher filled with knockoff plushies. Laios paused at the window, smeared with sticky beer fingerprints and cracked from a few heated gamer moments.
"Aw, they have a Winged Lion in there," Laios chuckled.
"Oh, really?" Chilchuck stepped back to look. Poking out between a lumpy Kirby beanbag and some wall-eyed Sonic the Hedgehogs was a horned lion with little felted wings, sporting a Dungeon Delvers tag on one floppy ear. Each of its many eyes was closed in a serene smile, little fangs poking out of rounded whisker pads. "Damn, that's crazy. Looks legitimate, too, judging by the tag."
"I didn't even know they made those," Laios said.
"They were really popular back in the game's heyday," Chilchuck said. "I think they're starting to churn out merch again now that the game's been updated." Chilchuck looked between Laios and the plush. "Do you want it?"
"Oh, that's okay!" Laios said, waving his hands. "I-I could just look for one on eBay or something if I really..."
Chilchuck squinted. "Laios. Do you want the plushie?"
"I don't want to waste your credits! And I'm a grown man!"
"That's not a 'no'."
Laios bit his lip and looked away. Chilchuck waited for him to crack, but all he got was terse silence.
"Well, if you're worried I'm gonna blow all our credits trying to get it, don't," Chilchuck said as he whipped out his card. "I'm the best there has ever been at claw games."
"C'mon, Chil, they're all rigged," Laios said, hopeless.
"Sounds like bad sportsmanship to me," Chilchuck sniffed. The UFO catcher sang a cheery tune as the credits processed, coming to life. The joystick clicked as the lock came off and Chilchuck twirled it around, trying to get a feel for the responsiveness. "Also, I have three girls," he said, more seriously. "If you want to get away from one of these without some kind of nuclear-grade tantrum, you learn how to get good at 'em."
Chilchuck maneuvered the claw arm directly above the lion plush, patiently waiting for it to swing to a stop.
"The UFO catchers are a bit tricky because they only have the two tongs on the grabber," Chilchuck continued, "I prefer the smaller three-prong claws, they're more reliable, but the general strategy is the same. You want to look for a pinch point. On the Winged Lion, obviously, it's his fat head."
Laios came in close to Chilchuck's shoulder to watch. Chilchuck wiggled the arm back and forth in minute adjustments until he was satisfied.
"He's got those horns... they look flimsy so I don't think it'll be much of a problem, but since he's sitting at a crooked angle I think I gotta put a little English on it anyway."
Chilchuck swung the claw back and forth and hit the button. The tether continued to swing pendulously as the claw lowered. Laios held his breath, his mental calculations all pointing to failure, only to gasp as the grabber snatched the lion around the throat. The tether briefly went slack and the claw threatened to slip, but as it rose, the Winged Lion came with it. The claw ferried the lion to the chute; as it crossed the threshold, the plush slipped. The two grown men cried out in anguish, startling a few families around them; luckily, the lion landed halfway over the rim of the plastic chute, and the plushie's fat head was enough to tip it into the hopper.
"No way," Laios gushed. Chilchuck smugly retrieved the plushie from the door, having to tug a little bit, and held it out to Laios. "On the first try? You're going to get us kicked out for cheating the house!" Do you count cards too?"
"Just take the damn thing. Now you can't turn it down without being an asshole. You're welcome."
"Thank you," Laios said, hushed and reverent as the lion was pushed into his hands. The minky fur felt cloudlike under his rough fingers. The mane was fluffy like the hair on the plastic horses Falin always wanted but never dared ask for, and would likely need care to stay soft. The wings had wires in them to allow for posing. It even had an extra set of oversized paws behind the first.
Chilchuck turned the tag in his fingers, looking at the front and back. "Oh, wow. This might be a first edition."
"Wait, like this is part of the original run?"
"The copyright says 1999," Chilchuck said. "The new ones have serial codes on 'em to verify."
"How'd it end up in a SoCal arcade, then?"
"Beats me. You'd have to take it to an appraiser, but you could probably get some good money for that thing if it's real. I saw a mint condition Red Dragon going for around two grand."
"Two grand!?"
"That was after a few months of bidding," Chilchuck shrugged. "It would be worth a shot."
Laios looked down at the plushie's stitched eyes, curled in a cat smile.
"Nah," Laios said, hugging it to his chest. "This guy's staying with me."
ok but what if chilchuck goes back to his wife. and laios knows he's going to. and as shit gets real in the dungeon they realize more and more that their lives are veering in different directions and that they can't go down the same path together. It's for the best, they say. For Chilchuck, for his family, for the kingdom. It was never going to go anywhere, anyway. They still share a kiss before Chilchuck returns home, for luck, they say. Laios walks him to the newly reemerged dock and watch as the boat comes in. Laios' pelt billows gently in the sea breeze, and Chilchuck realizes how long his neck is, how wide his shoulders are, without his armor to shrink behind. Laios is smiling, but Chilchuck doesn't believe it for a second.
"I'll be back soon," he says, as if that makes anything better. "Still gotta bring my brats around or Marcille's never going to stop hassling me."
"Of course," Laios chuckles. "Whenever you're ready. I'll be waiting."
Chilchuck looks up at Laios, tries to harden his expression, puts his hands on his hips. "Don't be waiting up forever. You've got a lot going for you here. You don't want to miss out."
Laios nods. His smile is closer to exasperation now, closer to what Chilchuck was expecting. Needing, maybe.
"I know," Laios says. "Just saying. Door's always open."
Chilchuck clucks his tongue. "A king should have a castle more secure than that."
"I can't imagine the locks being more elaborate than the dungeon's," Laios shrugs. "You could always let yourself in."
"Yeah," Chilchuck grins. A loud call rings out over the crowd on the pier from the prow of a ferry, one of the few that survived the kingdom's rise sudden rise from the sea. Chilchuck hoists his bag on his shoulder, stumbling under the weight.
"Be seeing you," Chilchuck says, awkwardly. "It's been... it's been an adventure, I guess."
Chilchuck holds out his hand. Laios takes it, able to completely fold up Chilchuck's in a cage of tight fingers, squeezing just a pinch too tightly before it goes clammy and slack. Classic Touden handshake.
"It has," says Laios, the king. "Thank you for everything."
Chilchuck dawdles until the captain gets shirty with him, then climbs aboard. Laios plays at leaving, but rather than following his entourage back to the castle grounds, he lingers at the top of the steep hill that runs carts down to the shoreline and watches as the boat shrinks into the horizon.
It's for the best, he thinks, because the hurt is duller when it is deserved.
