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It was a beautiful night at the Octavinelle dorm. The sea was a rich, dark blue and was brought to life by the delicate shine of the occasional bioluminescent deep sea critter.
It was on nights like that that Azul couldn’t sleep.
He got out of his bed and walked over to the windows. It reminded him of the night sky… perhaps like the one he had seen on that fateful, yet terrifying, night at the Scarabian dorm, when he had to fight against his long lasting crush.
He felt bad, looking back at that awful night with such longing… It was the night Jamil nearly died. But the side of Jamil he saw that night, from his plan, to the overblot, to the talk when everything was finally over… The fact that so much that Azul speculated about the vice was true and that they now shared the bone chilling experience of an overblot made Azul feel closer to Jamil, even though he knew that would never happen.
That night his heart ached. It cried out to another he knew would never answer. So Azul did the one thing that could comfort him in these nights.
After walking all the way to the Monstro Lounge, he reached his office and turned on the light. He sat at his desk, pulled out a paper and a pen and started writing.
Azul loved to write. Before he just learned and perfected it in order to make his contracts, but as he associated it with good changes in his life, it became a comforting activity.
Azul just started writing. Initially he pictured a marriage document as he had seen some rather recently, so he started off writing as much as he could remember. But this didn't last long as his mind started to wonder.
His brain had been taken over by Jamil. He kept on playing back the interactions, all the glances he stole during class, all the times he tried to convince him to join his dorm, knowing damn well the answer would be a resounding no, the times he would try to casually help him with the pesky side effects of the overblot, always receiving a small, translucent "thank you" along with a saddened expression that made his heart pang.
Their time at the Masquerade, at the red carpet, seeing each other on their birthdays, all those memories flooded his mind and the pen slid across the paper, like all the words cascaded from his heart onto the parchment.
At the end, he was left with the two lines reserved for him and his business partner’s signatures.
He decided to sign it. Just to fantasise about a future he dreamed about every now and then. Suddenly, he imagined Jamil's signature next to his.
He felt adrenaline rush through his veins at the thought of Jamil signing the paper. Suddenly, all he wanted in life was to have Jamil's signature on that contract. But in his sleepy, love drunk stupor, he thought the best way of getting Jamil to sign it was covering the whole thing with a yellowish tape that matched the colour of the paper well enough.
But then he looked at the signature line again. He couldn't make Jamil sign that. That would make the paper valid. He couldn't shackle Jamil to himself like that. He couldn't believe how selfish he was being.
He finally calmed down a bit and stared at the paper again. His words were almost all covered aside from the two signature spots. At the end, he took another piece of tape and placed it carefully over Jamil's line. If Jamil was to sign it, it wouldn’t be valid. The vice had fought so hard to be free and here Azul was, trying to take that away…
After that whirlwind of emotions, the housewarden was feeling exhausted and finally went over to his bed, falling asleep nearly instantly.
The next morning, he regretted staying up that late, as he was now running on about four hours of sleep. The morning classes went as usual, but this time something felt different.
He had the feeling someone was staring at him. It wasn’t too odd, as he always had the occasional unhappy customer. This until he subconsciously glanced at Jamil who was sitting right next to him and their eyes met. Jamil quickly looked away, scribbling something on his notebook. Azul followed suit. He did sneakily stare at him a few more times and took note of his expression. He expected him to look somewhat angry or displeased, but Jamil’s expression was completely null, much to his surprise. He could have sworn he even saw some color on his cheeks…
Right after class, he was taken by surprise once more by Jamil, who said he wanted to talk to him and dragged him by the arm into an empty classroom. Turns out he was interested in a contract. A small one, but a contract nonetheless. He just needed help getting a few rare materials for a project, so they quickly agreed on the terms of the contract and Azul rushed to his dorm and quickly made the contract. Now he just needed him to sign it.
But before he could leave, Jade and Floyd burst into his office with a terrified looking Heartsbyul student between them. Turns out he was a first year and who had accidentally knocked over a stack of expensive plates. Azul then sat back down, placed Jamil’s contract on the table and proceeded to address their newest provisory worker. Once his contract was done, the student left rather shaken.
“Well, I have some business to attend to, I’ll be back in a bit…” his voice wandered off as he looked for the contract that wasn’t on the desk anymore. Jade, who was standing by the desk, looked around a bit, then bent down and picked up a contract.
“Here you go” he said, sporting his usual smile. Azul never trusted that specific smile, but he was already late for his meeting with Jamil, so he headed over to the Scarabian dorm.
—
It took longer than he expected, but eventually Jamil heard a knock on his door. Upon opening it, a familiar obnoxious face appeared along with a flowery greeting. Jamil sighed as Azul presented him with an odd looking contract. ‘I will leave you alone’ it said at the top. At the bottom there were two lines: one for Jamil to sign and another one for Azul, already filled with the octopus' signature. But there was a weird gap between "will" and "leave".
Upon closer examination, it was pretty obvious that there was a strip of white tape on that gap, hiding the word. As a matter of fact, the whole paper was covered with the white tape. This didn’t look anything like the contracts from Azul he had seen before, but the signature line did have Jamil’s name written underneath. This was beyond weird, so Jamil swiftly ripped the paper from his hands, closed the door of his room and stood there, with his back against the door, investigating the paper. He could hear Azul saying something on the other side, but he stopped shortly after, so Jamil ignored it and started peeling off the tape.
The first hidden word was "never"
‘I will never leave you alone’ it read. Jamil scoffed. What on earth was even that.
But then he started peeling away the rest of the tape, and the tone of the contract changed completely.
It was a marriage contract.
About half of it was legal stuff. Jamil guessed they were things he'd find in an actual marriage document. But the rest was more... personal. It was almost incoherent and rambly, a nearly unhinged stream of conscious love confession, a serenade created by the world's most enamored man.
The words were so unpolished, but also so... Azul-like.
Every part of him told him to crumble the paper and throw it at his face, to tell him to get away from him. But Jamil knew that Azul wasn't the only insane one. He knew that deep down his own feelings reflected Azul's. So he picked up a pen...
But as he went to sign, he noticed the paper had another piece of tape over the part where Jamil would sign. Peeling it off, he found that it wasn't hiding anything. What was the meaning of that? Why would Azul put the tape there too? This infuriated Jamil for some reason, so he ripped off the tape completely and signed the paper.
Opening the door again, Azul was still standing there. He smiled again and was about to ask if everything was alright with the agreement. But before he could say anything, Jamil shoved the contract to his chest.
“Next time just ask normally” he mumbled, face red, looking both angry and embarrassed, before closing the door again.
Azul stood there for a second, his brain trying to understand what just happened. Then he looked down at the paper, only to find that messy, incoherent manifesto he had written the night before, with all the tape ripped off, including the bottom one. In its place, there was Jamil's signature, completed with a tiny heart on both "i"'s. His brain had stopped working completely. He could have sworn he had thrown that god forsaken paper away.
Oh Great Seven, Jamil read the ENTIRE speech, Azul needed to burrow himself in a hole right now. But Jamil had signed the contract. With hearts and everything, and was blushing when he gave it back. Could this mean he liked him back? Were they together now? What did this all mean?
Meanwhile Jamil wasn’t doing much better. He remained with his back against the door, breathing heavily. Then he slowly slid to the floor and pulled his hood tightly over his burning face. He felt happy. So, so happy, but oh lord what had he done. Neither of them knew what to do, but at least they were seemingly on the same wavelength on something.
Later on that night, they both finally gathered the courage and talked over the phone. They ended up spending the whole night going over their feelings and, at last, Azul went ahead and made a proper dating proposal. They also decided to leave the marriage contract for another time. For now, they wanted to revel on this new chapter and to explore their new relationship.
This was something fresh for the both of them. For the first time in a long time, they felt relaxed, as if they had all the time in the world. In each other, they found comfort. They found freedom and they found grounding. They found their best selves.
In each other they found love.