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All Swiss had to do was to pretend he’s uninterested. It worked for him before—the flirty aloofness, playing hard to get, the push and pull. It’s fun, especially when people catch on and play along. He knows he can be overbearing, so he tends to let everyone else make their first moves before he begins making his. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; Swiss has a strategy, and he keeps to it, but this evening two things have become abundantly clear: one, is that he’s not as tough as he thought, and two, is that he should have taken them as seriously as he could, when they told him in passing, that Ifrit was hot.
Up until about a minute ago, he had no idea what it felt to have his breath taken away. Then, Dewdrop had triumphantly swung the door open, and in walked Ifrit. He had only heard of him before: a fire ghoul, used to play guitar, spends almost no time in the main building of the Abbey these days. Apparently, very attractive, apparently, Swiss reminds them of him. Yeah, sure, Swiss had thought with an easy arrogance. He’s the first ghoul of mixed elements in this damn Ministry, the multighoul, he’s unique by definition. And yet there he was, picking his jaw up off the floor, watching the most insanely gorgeous bastard he had ever seen follow Dew into the room.
“Mothers and fuckers, please welcome the man, the myth, the legend himself!”
The man, the myth, the legend isn’t very tall, surprisingly, he’s about Dewdrop’s height, but the sheer broadness of him is the first thing that takes Swiss by surprise. The black tank top he’s wearing underneath a leather jacket, — the fact of which is ridiculously sexy in and of itself, — leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination as it stretches across his toned chest and abdomen. To be fair, neither does the tightest pair of jeans Swiss ever had the misfortune of laying his eyes on. His hair is black and shaggy, longer in the back, shaved on the sides and looks so impossibly soft, even if it is obviously styled with product and his eyes are so impossibly blue; Swiss had never seen a fire ghoul with eyes like this before. At least one massive metal ring on each finger and dog tags, he’s wearing dog tags, and Swiss’ eye begins to twitch. But mostly there’s just something about his smile. Something so easy and playful, sharp canines catching on his bottom lip, so boyishly handsome, that it makes Swiss’ heart do disgusting somersaults in his chest.
He has to have Mountain elbow him discreetly before he realizes that Ifrit is looking at him expectantly, still smiling.
“Oh, uh,” Swiss fumbles and embarrasses himself immediately. “Swiss.” He musters a smile that he desperately hopes is attractive enough in response.
“Swiss,” Ifrit cocks his head to the side. “Heard a lot about ya.”
Swiss is about to start wagging his tail, embarrassment be damned. “Oh? What did you hear?”
And instead of a response, Ifrit leans forward, almost imperceptibly, and winks, winks, before turning around to speak to someone else.
Swiss hears Mountain snort behind him through the thrumming in his ears. “Dewdrop owes me twenty.”
“Sorry, come again?” Swiss manages, shaking his head.
“Dew thought you’d manage to hold out for some time. I thought you wouldn’t last a second before losing your mind over him, and would you look at that! I was correct,” Mountain laughs and claps Swiss on the back.
He sways forward with the force of it. “Losing my mind? The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Hey!” The earth ghoul smiles, shrugs and starts making his way to where the crowd in more enthusiastic. “We’ve all been there, s’all I’m saying.”
Been where? Been where?! is all Swiss can think about, as he sits later that night with the fire ghouls by the bonfire on the outskirts of Ministry grounds. It’s a quiet gathering, by fire ghoul standards; quiet conversations, lazy affection, gentle purring surrounds him, all the while he sits and thinks. Dewdrop disappeared from his field of view some time ago, presumably whisking Ifrit away, so Swiss is left on his own. Copia had once expressed concern that Swiss, on the account of him being a mixed breed, is being excluded by the fire ghoul bunch, but he couldn’t be more wrong, bless his cotton socks. Swiss is the man to be around. He revels in attention, revels in being a mood maker and in entertaining others. Being able to make those around him happy and safe is his main mission in life, he’s sure of it. That being said, alone time is valuable. And even with so many ghouls around him, he sits in his own little bubble, nursing a drink that’s tasteless to him, thinking about what in the everlasting hell transpired earlier that evening.
Never in his, admittedly quite short, corporeal existence had Swiss ever felt what he felt when Ifrit had walked into that room. He was flustered. That never happens, he is always the one doing the flustering! Yet there he was, all but drooling at the sight of a ghoul in tight pants and a leather jacket. And Ifrit didn’t even do anything, besides, presumably, just being himself. Fuck, Mountain was right, wasn’t he; he is losing his mind.
He takes one final swig from his bottle when the biggest conundrum of his life sits next to him with a grunt.
“You mind?” Ifrit asks with a smile. He took off his jacket.
Swiss almost chokes at the sight of his arms, massive for literally no reason. “Be my guest.” A good start, at least. “Where’d you lose Dewdrop?”
“Ah, he’s, uh. Mingling. Ya know,” Ifrit scoffs.
“Yeah,” Swiss smiles at the ground.
“You’re not pure fire, are you? Or, wait! Sorry, I didn’t—” Ifrit suddenly stutters and groans. “Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, just—”
“Hey, no, you’re good! Don’t worry about it. Yeah, no, I’m something else too. Don’t know what yet.”
“That’s honestly amazing!”
Swiss glances up to see the brightest, most genuine smile in the world. His breath hitches in his throat. “I mean… Yeah, a little bit, maybe.”
“Not a little bit! You’re the first of your kind, that’s amazing!” Ifrit continues to gush. “Everyone who has ever met you and who will ever meet you will be able to say that you’re the first special kind of person they have ever met. That’s cool!”
“I think you’re cool.”
And just like that, Ifrit’s excited smile turns impossibly sexy. “Oh yeah? Little old me?”
Fuck, Swiss’ head is spinning. “You’re popular around here. So I’ve heard.”
“Have you now? And that’s your verdict? That I’m cool?”
“I think I’ve never met anyone more attractive than you.”
Ifrit doesn’t even give Swiss the chance to register and regret what had just come out of his mouth, before he leans closer and all but purrs: “Well, I think you’re very attractive.”
In his delirious state of mind, Swiss suddenly catches Dewdrop’s eye across the clearing. The bastard smirks and wiggles his eyebrows before his face is grabbed, and his mouth is claimed. Swiss turns to look back at Ifrit. Blue glowing irises sitting in voids of black, his lips curling in a teasing smile, there’s a deep trill resonating from within his chest. His fucking chest.
“So? Where do we go from here, Swiss?”
His name sounds insane, rolling off Ifrit’s tongue like that’s what it’s meant to do. Well. He has Dewdrop’s blessing and, as far as he’s concerned, that’s all the permission he ever needed.
“My room sound good enough to you?”