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The first time Lava Cake saw him, the man was standing beneath a fractured archway of marble, his figure silhouetted by lanternlight. The crowd had gathered not out of fear, but out of sympathy. They whispered about his diligence, his honesty, how remarkable it was that suffering had not broken him. The orphan of Goetia, saved from the abyss. They admired him because he had endured.
Lava Cake did not. Admiration was never his language.
Instead, he looked past the whispered praises and saw a man with a straight back and a secret tucked between his ribs like contraband. His eyes did not shine with triumph but with wariness, like someone who knew that joy was an illusion dangled before him, waiting to devour him whole
“They say he worked his way free.”
“Diligent, honest — suffering could not break him.”
“Such a bright future, if only…”
Lava Cake tuned them out. Admiration, he thought, was a kind of sugar too — sweet on the tongue, empty on the spirit.
What he saw was a man who bore his dignity like a chain across his shoulders. Goetia’s gaze never lingered on the crowd. His lips curved in a polite half-smile, but his eyes were restless — quick, cautious, like an animal forever listening for the snap of a trap.
Lava Cake knew illusions when he saw them. He had been born into them—sugar spun into cages, sweetness turned to chains. Joy is confinement, his body whispered, muscle hardened against temptation. His was a spirit that fought against indulgence, searching instead for the air beyond, the true world without walls of honey and glass.
So when his gaze found Goetia’s across the archway, he thought: Here is someone who carries his chains differently.
He wears their praise like armor, Lava Cake thought. But beneath it, he waits for the strike.
Their eyes met. Goetia caught him staring.
“You’re staring,” he said flatly, as if he had grown accustomed to confronting gazes.
Lava Cake did not look away. “And you don’t like it.”
The guy’s mouth twitched, not with annoyance but with something more like surprise. “Observant. Did you train years for that insight?”
Lava Cake’s tone was even. “I trained for years to break walls, not to stare.”
A scoff. Quick, sharp — but it carried the faintest ghost of amusement. Goetia’s lips pressed together as if betraying himself with a smile would be a sin.
Lava Cake tucked that away like a treasure.
It was not pity that drew him back the next evening, nor sympathy for the admired orphan. Lava Cake had been shackled before by illusions of joy; he had no patience for sympathy sweetened into chains.
No — he returned because Goetia’s silence intrigued him. Because the barbed way he deflected attention felt like truth clawing against confinement. And because Lava Cake recognized something of himself there.
The second time, Goetia spoke before Lava Cake could.
“You really don’t give up.” His voice was dry as stone, his arms folded. “Most people drift off after one conversation.”
Lava Cake’s shoulders rolled in a slow shrug. “Fighters don’t give up.”
Goetia tilted his head. “And what, exactly, are you fighting for here?”
Lava Cake held his gaze. “You.”
The word landed between them like a blade. Goetia blinked, startled — not offended, but unprepared.
“You don’t even know me.”
Lava Cake’s expression was steady, unreadable. “Then let me.”
At first, Goetia kept his walls high. He spoke in fragments, in retorts sharp enough to cut, as though daring Lava Cake to flinch.
But Lava Cake did not. His presence was unyielding but not suffocating, a quiet strength that refused to retreat. He leaned against old stone walls beside Goetia, sat with him beneath broken arches, walked at his side through deserted courtyards. Sometimes he asked questions; sometimes he let silence stretch until Goetia filled it himself.
And Goetia did. Slowly. Reluctantly.
One night, Goetia’s voice cracked through the quiet like a match. “They expect me to be good. Honest. Grateful. Like that’s all I am. Like I should be happy just to… exist.” He spat the word.
Lava Cake’s head turned, his eyes steady. “And what are you, when they’re not watching?”
Goetia’s lips curled in something that wasn’t quite a smile. His voice dipped into something mischievous, dangerous. “Cocky. Annoying. Reckless. You wouldn’t like me.”
Lava Cake’s answer came without hesitation. “Try me.”
The laugh that burst from Goetia was unguarded, real. It startled them both. Lava Cake felt his chest tighten — not with danger, but with something terrifyingly close to joy.
That became their rhythm.
In public, Goetia was the admired orphan: diligent, humble, the man people pitied and praised. But in Lava Cake’s company, he came alive with sharp wit and reckless bravado.
“You’re too noble for your own good,” Goetia quipped one evening, nudging Lava Cake’s shoulder with his own. “Always the fighter, always saying things that sound like they belong carved into marble. Don’t you get tired of it?”
“Not when you’re listening,” Lava Cake replied.
That stunned him into silence. Then, unexpectedly—laughter. Real, unguarded, rich. It was the first time Lava Cake had heard it, and he thought it might be the most dangerous thing he’d ever faced. Because laughter, unlike any illusion, was real.
And Lava Cake found himself craving it.
They grew comfortable in stolen moments. Goetia teased him mercilessly when Lava Cake refused sweets offered by vendors.
“You’re hopeless,” Goetia said, biting into candied fruit with a smug grin. “Fighting joy itself like it’s a mortal enemy. What’s the worst that could happen? That you smile?”
Lava Cake only crossed his arms. “Indulgence is a cage.”
Goetia leaned closer, voice low, teasing. “So what am I, then? Another illusion you’re fighting off?”
Lava Cake met his gaze, unflinching. “No. You’re real.”
For once, Goetia faltered. The candied fruit nearly slipped from his hand. His cocky mask cracked — not broken, but shaken.
Why does he always… see through me? Goetia thought, heart pounding too fast.
But shadows never disappeared completely.
Lava Cake noticed the nights Goetia grew quiet, the way his gaze drifted toward unseen horizons. He knew Infernal Sin’s threat loomed, some secret that pressed against Goetia’s ribs like iron. Goetia never spoke of it — not directly — but Lava Cake felt it in the silence, in the restless shift of his hands.
One evening, Lava Cake found him sitting alone, knees drawn up, head bowed. For once, the cocky smirk was gone.
“Why are you here?” Goetia’s voice was hoarse, brittle. “You don’t know what you’re protecting.”
Lava Cake lowered himself beside him. His hand settled firmly on Goetia’s shoulder.
“I don’t need to know the secret to know you,” he said. “And you’re worth more than whatever chains you carry.”
Goetia’s throat tightened. He turned his head away, but the sting in his eyes betrayed him. No one’s ever said that. Not like that.
The urge to lean into Lava Cake’s touch nearly undid him.
The night of their confession was not planned. It unfolded as if drawn by fate.
They stood at the cliff’s edge, ruins at their back, the horizon stretched wide with dying firelight. The wind pulled at their clothes; the sea whispered far below.
Goetia leaned against the stone, pretending at ease, arms crossed. But his words betrayed the weight under his skin.
“You’re relentless,” he muttered. “Most people would’ve given up on me a long time ago.”
Lava Cake’s voice was quiet but steady. “Do you want me to give up?”
The smirk Goetia wore was fragile, wavering. “…No. That’s the problem.”
Lava Cake stepped closer until their shoulders brushed, the heat of him undeniable. “I don’t fight for illusions. I fight for the truth. And the truth is—” his voice softened, eyes locked on Goetia’s “—I want to be here. With you.”
Goetia’s heart pounded. His cocky facade wavered, then returned with trembling defiance. “Took you long enough.”
Lava Cake’s hand rose, tentative at first, fingers brushing Goetia’s jaw. Goetia didn’t pull away. Instead, he tilted just slightly, lips parting on a shaky breath.
The kiss that followed was not gentle. It was raw, messy, unpracticed — two fighters clashing and surrendering at once. Goetia’s hand fisted in Lava Cake’s armor, pulling him closer, desperate and unrestrained. Lava Cake’s arm circled his waist, steady and unyielding, grounding him as if anchoring him to the earth itself.
Heat sparked between them, not indulgence but fire — not a cage, but release. Goetia broke away first, breathless, his forehead pressed to Lava Cake’s.
“I don’t… know how to do this,” he whispered.
Lava Cake’s lips brushed the corner of his mouth, soft and certain. “We’ll learn. Together.”
And for the first time in years, Goetia believed it.
For Lava Cake, the kiss was proof that not all sweetness was a cage.
For Goetia, it was a home, carved not from pity or chains, but from the unyielding strength of another’s hand.
And for both of them, it was the beginning of something boundless.