Work is just too stressful for me to keep up with this hobby AND work on my book. I don’t have enough energy outside of work to do both. Fortunately, busy season at my work is a finite thing; as soon as it slows down again, I’ll be back. I’m sorry to everyone I’ve plotted with; I’ll be here in small amounts, but plan on me coming back full-force once my work has quieted down. It might be a month or so. I will post status updates to let everyone know I’m not dead.
I am lowkey working on Sentinel again. Also don’t expect much activity there (yet), but I have plans for him.
Hello friends!
Just letting everyone know that I didn’t die, haha. Work has been very rough and I’ve been exhausted and I might be working on a comic with a certain artist BUT I have been missing rping something fierce so I hope to come back here full-force soon.
My Kuja muse has been picky as of late, though. I am considering unveiling a new muse for a humanoid nova dragon to see if a new muse helps. Thoughts? Interest? I’ll post more about him after.
Whether that blonde gentleman had believed her or not, he seemed very interested in the fact that she was a goddess of love.
“I know a guy who really wants to learn about love!”
And so, she was here. Presumably. She had been given directions on how to reach a strange desert palace where the mortal in question – Kuja – was said to live, but she didn’t know the way that well. So she just asked Zidane to describe Kuja’s place instead; she was pretty good an envisioning such things. Usually.
She was a bit hesitant as she appeared in what looked to be a study of sorts, but upon seeing a lone occupant in the room busying himself with one thing or another, she brightened.
This had to be him, right? Although it was difficult to see a resemblance between him and his so-called brother. Perhaps they were more emotional brothers than blood bothers? Either way, she was excited to help him understand love. Even if he would be a little resistant, as she had been warned.
“Excuse me!” She had to get his attention, as his back was currently turned and her arrivals were always so quiet. “I apologize to appear so suddenly without announcement or invitation, but I’m looking for a gentleman by the name of Kuja.”
The book in his lap snapped shut. If he hadn’t been comfortable on his lounge bed in the Sanctum, he would have reacted on a destructive level to the sudden voice--to the sudden presence that he didn’t recognize. People didn’t just teleport here. He’d spent a great many years weaving the intricate barrier spells around the palace, that he could erect whenever he didn’t want visitors. And they were very much in place tonight.
Yet this woman--whoever she was--had just manifested as if it was just smoke and mirrors. For a long, thoughtless moment, he was just furious.
...Then his curiosity won out, and he wanted to know who this was before he killed her.
His eyes pointedly sized her up, from her pretty, but plain dress to the kind, but human face. But she didn’t feel like a human. She smelled like magic, the air felt charge just for the addition of her presence. Light seemed to behave differently around her. He began calculating the amount of mana necessary for an absent effect like that and a chill went down his spine.
Could he get away with attacking her?
Could he win?
“Who are you? Why have you come?” he asked, ignoring the way she already knew his name. They’d never met, he would remember a feeling like this.
Who sent you to kill me? He had no shortage of enemies on this planet. But never once had he suspected any of these miserable maggots of Gaia would have the resources to summon something so powerful. Because that’s what she had to be, right? A summon. Some kind of twisted human god.
He began calculating for battle. A quiet string of angles, the spacial dimensions of the Sanctum around them. Cast times, and damage output, and what could possibly be the weakness of a creature so strong.
It was nothing short a cruel joke to be met with someone who wore your own image. The very image that you’d cultivated and polished until it was was as close to perfection as anything was ever going to be in your eyes.
And then, lo and behold, there is another perfection, right in front of you. Without explanation or warning or reason. Oh, yes, there were differences. Crimson differences at that. More feathers, less frills. But Kuja knew well his reflection when he saw it.
No echo can sway me from all that I cherish
I heed not her plea, and so here I perish
He was silent, feeling strangely moved and small all of a sudden. This must have been how Narcissus felt when he fruitlessly tried to kiss the pond. Not quite knowing what to do and with his composure quickly fleeting, Kuja simply turned back to his pile of books and slunk over his divan. The welcome embrace of the cushions, and the fragrant tea which he’d all but forgotten prior helped set him back at ease. The strings of his heart loosened their strangling hold.
“Yes, perhaps you’re right…” he muttered over the rim of his teacup after a generous sip. “I’ve been cooped up in here far too long; the mirages are crawling inside and my own subconscious has come to tell me to get some air. Hilarious…” How indignant. He, of all people, was going mad!
He glanced up again to find his doppelganger hadn’t gone anywhere, still standing there, tangibly opulent in candlelight. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, least of all to myself, but would you terribly mind coming back after I’ve made some progress? Insanity is the last thing I need right now… I promise you’re free to have me as you wish once I’ve secured my place in power, mm~?”
█▐ Of all the little things he’d expected; all the reactions Kuja could have thrown at him, this was not one Axol had considered. He had expected to be hated, or feared, or loved. He had expected rejection, as the only contact he’d ever had was with their mutual creator, and that had been much the same. No, you’re wrong, get out. He learned by example.
But this was...strange.
He watched Kuja for a long moment, his eyes unfathomable. He watched how the other genome threw himself back to his work, willingly wishing this visitor was a figment of some distorted imagination.
For a moment, Axol was afraid that he was. What was reality? How did he know he had a place in it? But the dragons knew him. The dragons marked him as real. Kuja’s fear was an easy excuse for a truth staring him in the face.
Come back later. As if he were at the whim of this Genome that he’d been quietly guarding for years. He didn’t like that thought, did away with it immediately. Decided, instead, to move. Thinking about it would win him nothing, and his thoughts tended to be unruly, slippery things. Better to feel Kuja’s pulse, or his blood running, than to think about why he existed.
He prowled like the beasts he’d taken his name from, his strides ate the ground between them and suddenly, abruptly, he was so close to Kuja that their noses nearly touched. This close, his scent was overwhelming. This close, their features--doll-like, identical--were almost too much to bear.
His long tail whipped at the air behind him, betraying his agitation.
“I am not you. And you--” His breath whistled between his teeth. “You belong in Treno.”
“You’re either crafiter than I am, or a blissfull idiot, and I don’t know which and that is nearly impossible to do. So I commend you for that, at least. But now I’m without wine and this is a problem.”
He does so, without actually looking up from the book in his lap. “I told you, just let me levitate all your tools and life would be infinitely easier, sugar.”
❛ They’ve started living on their own, you know. Like, sorta self-sufficient. I don’t really get it myself, but they’ve figured out how to keep on living for themselves. ❜
[ @claireverie | continued, next morning from here ]
♥ ;;
The night had scratched some itch he’d been steadfastly ignoring for too long. He knew it, she knew it. There had been more than just a few minute’s release between her thighs, and there had been far more than one night of passion in her screams. Something had culminated last night.
He spent some time thinking about it, long after her breath evened out to a steady sleep. He was Genome, he had fine-tuned his own vessel’s functions to average out at about two hours of sleep a night; he was well rested after a short nap. She, however, would sleep until dawn.
It was plenty of time to think on it.
But, strangely, he found he didn’t want to.
Strange? Of course he didn’t want to. Thinking about why this was more than just a one-night ordeal meant thinking about why she had quarters in his palace, about why she had a space that was hers, about why he missed her when she left. All of that was a tangled mess he’d rather leave alone, and he was good at leaving it alone. So he tossed this emotional revelation, like the others, on the great pile of nothing, it’s fine in his head and left it.
He was very, very good at ignoring it.
He was less good at convincing himself to extract himself from that bed, however. He had work he could be doing, and if this didn’t mean anything, he should be having no trouble tending to it. But Hikari had fallen asleep pillowed on him, her head resting against his arm and their legs still tangled beneath the sheets. Getting up meant moving her.
His tail twitched, and lightly wound its way around her wrist. He glared at the traitorous thing, as if it were responsible for his entire current predicament.
Finally, at a loss as to what else he could do besides just wake her up, he got indulgent. It was dawn by that point, technically. Perhaps a little early to actually be up for a human, but after he spent the night not thinking about it, he was feeling a little...adventurous.
Honestly it’s what she got for falling asleep naked in his bed.
He ran his knuckles down her collar bone, idly at first. No real aim to the gesture, just self-indulgent and idle. He traced the outline of her shoulder, let his fingers wander down to her breast. Played with one pink nipple, gently (didn’t want to wake her, did he?), until it was standing.
His curiosity wandered. As gently as he could, still trying to keep her asleep, he slid out from under her. Catlike, graceful, he pulled down the sheets with his tail and moved around her until he was above her. He laid a feather-light kiss to her clavicle, the space beneath her breasts, her naval. And finally the tender skin protecting her clit.
And maybe if he snuck a little tongue in on that one, it was just curiosity, right? How heavy a sleeper is she? He was allowed to do this now, he presumed. And there were just so many questions to answer. Like how loud did she scream, if he ate her out?
Send in ✿ for my character’s reaction to being fondled by yoursSend in ☀ for my character’s reaction to yours exposing themselves
She wasn’t in the habit of barging in on him while in his room. Her space was still largely separate from his, though some time ago she would have thought it remarkable that she would come to acquire her own ‘space’ in his fortress. She had become something of a permanent fixture in his life – permanent enough, it seemed, to warrant her own chambers.
Used to wandering the halls at her will, she hadn’t thought twice before pushing his bedroom door open; after all, she had been inside plenty of times, especially of late. Ah, yes – just the thought of the most recent nights had her hand stilling on the knob for a fraction of a second, the time it took for her heart to right itself in her chest. Ever since a testing, gentle kiss in his workspace, when the moon was high and blanketed by clouds and nothing was visible outside the reaches of a flickering candle… Never had she thought he would react as he did, as if he had been waiting for her to make a move. His hands on her neck and waist the last few nights were fervent, exasperated, impatient with a passion finally unleashed.
Pushing her bangs off her forehead, she blew out a breath, willing the harsh blush at her cheeks away. Palm flat on the door, she pushed it open without another thought. ❝Hey, Kuja? Where’s the–❞
Kuja’s smirk grew cat-like, fierce and hungry and playful when he felt that hand on his ass. It goaded him onward. His fingers slowly began pulling Zidane’s trousers open, inching toward freeing him. He began moving bodily against the man beneath him, giving him just a little friction, daring Zidane to hold him down with that hand on him.
He got two fingers inside, and judged that preparation enough. He wanted something bigger, and fingers just weren’t cutting it.
“Only if you promise to wreck me,” he sing-song crooned. “Think you’re up to the challenge, dove? I don’t want to be able to walk.” He turned his head, and laid a line of suspiciously delicate butterfly kisses down Zidane’s jaw. “I won’t settle for anything less.”
There was, of course, a threat there. Kuja only played games when there was a challenge, a catch. Even with Zidane so newly returned to him, he was still looking for that thrill. Even if the threat was an empty one.
He smiled, lips on skin and breath gently stirring the hairs at the base of Zidane’s skull. His fingers settled on those lean shoulders, fingertips dancing along ripples in his muscles.
