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“Hey, Ralsei, is your room up there too?”
“Um… Yes! It still needs to be cleaned, though.”
Having left Queen to do… whatever it was she did in her room, Ralsei looked down the long, empty corridor. This late at night, there wasn’t a peep to be heard, beyond occasional muted murmurings from within the room he’d just finished constructing. Just quiet darkness lingering around periwinkle walls that tapered into black the further down the hall he looked. So much space for him to create the room of his own that he’d lied about earlier.
Ralsei had the sudden urge to hit himself. What had he been thinking? The Lightners were sure to expect a room of his own, now. He had none, nor would one serve a purpose. He didn’t need sleep, no use for a bed. Nothing to write things down upon, for memory was adequate enough. A lasting mark, no matter its ephemerality in the grand scheme of things, would be a symbol of pride far beyond his means. At most, his pride stretched no farther than the corners of his lips with their cute fang-points and the lashes of his pastel pink eyes expertly adorned with eyeliner. That was as much as he allowed himself, if he were feeling particularly generous.
Okay. He could make this a one-and-done thing.
Quietly, high on his tip-toes, Ralsei walked down the hall. The blue torches, indigo floors, and periwinkle brickwork faded and faded until all that was left was a black canvas near the end of the wall (but not at the very end, lest it ultimately need to be removed for the sake of a more important pers– important Darkner). It was far away enough that, at a glance, nobody would care to see it unless they walked all the way into the darkness of an empty hall. But who would be so absurd as to seek out a place where nothing awaited?
First things first, a door. In imitation of the process he used for the rooms belonging to the other inhabitants, Ralsei closed his eyes and placed a palm to the blank wall. Imagine an entrance way that screams ‘Ralsei.’ Like Kris’s plain but welcoming door, or Susie’s, bursting with energy from its sharp angles and carefully-placed crown. Or like Lancer’s entrance, rigged to splat in different directions when one crossed its threshold, or the wide sliding doors to Queen’s room. Something his own.
Magic surged from Ralsei’s fingertips, and…
When he re-opened his eyes, all that awaited him was a perfectly generic door: frame cut with precise ninety-degree angles, colored in a pastel hue matching his robe, its surface utterly featureless. Well, that was to be expected. It didn’t need to do anything other than serve the barest function.
So why the little twinge in his gut?
Ralsei opened the door, listening with a diseased satisfaction to its generic click. All as it should be. Within was a blank expanse, all black, no corners to be found. It needed a little life to it. So, like he’d offered to Kris and Susie’s rooms, he etched a brickwork pattern into its floor. Pastel green again, for it was his color. A strange pattern emerged from the gaps in the lines, spaces he’d failed to fill creating a shape he didn’t quite understand. Filled with points at odd angles, but symmetrical enough to look deliberate. What was it? A castle, maybe? Whatever it was, the sight made Ralsei a bit queasy, but that wasn’t an issue. He’d only be in here again at most one other time. If the Lightners still maintained a shred of interest in him.
What else, what else? Oh! A window! That part came even easier; within moments, a green rectangle popped to life in the wall, two translucent fabrics acting as curtains that swayed in a nonexistent breeze. Two windows stacked on top of each other in a basic facsimile of what one might see in a normal Lightner home.
Hold on. It looked crooked. Ralsei stepped back. The right end of the frame for the lower window was below the left end. And the curtains, their ends were jagged, as though something had raked its claws through them in silent protest. He couldn’t deny it looked ugly, but… Well, who else would see it? Nobody who could reasonably expect much more of him, that was for sure.
Ralsei looked around himself. The expanse of darkness now had walls. A ceiling. A floor. A window. It checked every box he could think of. Beds were to accommodate Lightners’ sleep, so he didn’t need one; wardrobes and drawers were for different outfits, but Ralsei had little need for those too. A fridge? How silly. He didn’t eat. Creature comforts were a rung above him.
And yet, with a heave, Ralsei found himself stricken with a sudden tightness in his lungs. The Lightners’ rooms were so personalized, meticulously crafted down to the finest detail. He would’ve drowned in his own shame if he’d forgotten to leave Kris a bite of the moss they seemed to enjoy so much, or if Susie didn’t have the spikes she adored everywhere Ralsei could put them. If, if they remembered their prior interest (perhaps ‘they’ was a stretch; it was nothing more than a single off-the-cuff remark of Susie’s, far from her sharpest or most insightful, those grabbing concepts that ensnared the mind), they would be disgusted.
Pushing against a wave of desperation, Ralsei frantically searched for anything he could call his own. Anything ‘Ralsei-like.’ A plush? No, Kris had pretended to give their winnings at the carnival game to Noelle. A special item? Those were all utility-based things he might need on the journey ahead, not remotely so special as to be enshrined in a useless little box as a marker of who he was.
He ran down the list, searching for answers. Not one in his mental banks. His head throbbed sharply. The Lightners would never want to see something so pathetic. It was enough to shock him that those wonderful beings paid glances and common questions to one below a creature.
Instead, Ralsei rushed from the room, once again being reminded of its painful paltryness as it shut with that same generic click. He ought to wipe the room from the walls, shunt its form back into the formless, and pretend to have his room somewhere completely different in the building. He could fabricate another stairwell and forestall Susie’s interest, truly just her own, and say his room was up there.
He closed his eyes and pressed his hand to the door, pressing down those same twinges and aches and willing it to vanish. His magic responded with a weak crackling in his palm. The door remained.
“Come on… work with me, please,” he muttered to himself, pressing further down on the pains until he was sure they had gone, regardless of their lingering phantoms.
Another strengthless spark.
The dams broke all at once, a tsunami of twinges in his roiling gut and repeated throbbing burns in his head and bile crawling up his throat blocking all thought until he pulled himself away from the door. Fine. The room could stay. For a brief moment, he considered blocking it off behind a solid wall to conceal the evidence, but that only further enraged the symptoms. He couldn’t bear for it not to be seen, even if never to be opened.
So he opted for a weak strand of pink warning tape across the hall and called it a night. He might as well set up for the next batch of Darkners to join his town.
“I don’t care what the reason is. Me and Kris are gonna fill it up. Wall to wall.”
Flipping his way through the worn books, desperation masked under an air of idle curiosity, Susie’s words lingered on Ralsei’s mind. The worries of the moment faded into subconscious tests of pattern recognition should his eyes scan anything to be destroyed; gnawing at his stomach, nausea set in. That desire, that undeniable desire… Why did it have to inflict itself upon him so deeply?
He glanced over at Kris and Susie, engaged in idle conversation in front of an old couch. They seemed to be debating whether or not to add it to their collection of things they were planning to add to his room. The thought warmed his heart. The thought made him want to throw up. What farce was it that ‘Ralsei-like’ things were decided by others than him? He didn’t even possess enough of a self-image to come up with ideas. At best, he could discern like from dislike when confronted with a candidate, but upon any attempts to dream up his own, his mind went frustratingly blank.
The two of them seemed content with taking the couch cushions. Ralsei wanted the whole thing. But who was he to decide?
Over the course of their adventures, Ralsei watched as Susie amassed a huge pile of things she’d barely managed to cram into her inventory. From items of furniture she could barely pick up long enough to stash, to unique little trinkets here and there. All for the sake of something ‘Ralsei-like.’ He wouldn’t deny, he did quite appreciate a few of the knick-knacks (a rack for his extra scarves to fit on would be a blessing to have, he realized, for it could also lessen the burden on the party’s armor storage), but none of it felt right. Each and every item would be funneled into a room he didn’t use, built to suit unnecessary needs and appease wants that he still wasn’t sure were wants. He found himself trapped in a feedback loop where every little useless thing Susie showed off to him with an infectious smile made him agree to add it to the collection, hoping that it would be the last so he could stop his gut from turning with that nausea, but knowing that every ‘yes’ was positive reinforcement for Susie to continue adding. Few things could assuage him. He just had to trust in her judgment, unless she made a particularly severe error that made the way Ralsei rankled his snout tell the tale more than words alone could.
Kris began to join in on the proceedings, too; every now and then they’d disappear from his and Susie’s sides, then come back, prodding him on the shoulder and pointing towards some interesting thing they’d found hiding inside a shelf or behind some narrow crevice. Their art of detection was much more subtle than Susie’s, whose method often came down to grabbing whatever wasn’t effectively bolted to the floors, though their enthusiasm was not much lesser. It seemed her influence had rubbed off on them in this way, too.
Watching the two of them break off at slow moments to grab whatever they could get their hands on left Ralsei uncomfortable, an extra layer of heartburn on top of his nausea. Why couldn’t he simply be like Kris? Why couldn’t he stand himself up, choose something he wanted or dream up some idea, and feel nothing but joy in effecting it into reality? That should have been his prerogative, for it was his room they were decorating.
Instead, Ralsei simply stood back and watched, fearing that any decisive action would make him vomit.
“Alright, Ralsei, you ready?”
Behind her, he nodded anxiously. “I suppose…”
Susie grinned. “Then here we GO!”
With a little chime, Susie’s inventory emptied all at once, sending the contents of her metaphysical pockets rocketing in every direction. Books and plushes got flung at the ceiling; wooden furniture banged on brickwork and stone, rattling like a furious snake all the while; two couch cushions launched themselves into a wall and rebounded straight at Susie with enough force to knock her over, slamming her into the ground with no time for Ralsei to escape from beneath her. At least his fur was soft enough to protect her from any head trauma upon hitting the floor. Something squeaked loudly. A bitcrushed explosion noise boomed (how’d that get in there?). The sound of coins ricocheting against metal made Ralsei’s ears ring, even as he clamped his hands down tight to protect his fragile eardrums. And all the while Kris stood behind them, watching the chaos and looking smug as the shrapnel glanced harmlessly off their armor.
“Ow…” groaned Susie, rising to a seated position and rubbing her knee.
Wrenching an eye open and taking his hands off his ears, Ralsei piped up, “Are you alright?”
She laughed. “Yeah. Worth it.”
The sound of metal boots on the stone floors announced Kris’s movements. Chuckling, they stepped past her, kicking the various debris out of the way to open up the center of the room.
They turned to face him and Susie, a single word escaping their mouth. “Heads.”
BOOM!
Another deluge of items flew out around them, crashing every which way and sending various small items whizzing over Ralsei’s head. Healing potions shattered; axes narrowly missed vitals and got embedded in walls; swords clattered; scarves fell from the air like autumn leaves. A game controller, part of the previous round of debris, was launched into the air, collided against Susie’s shoulder with a loud thwack, and dropped right into his lap. As he tucked it under his hands, Susie ducked down to the ground before she could be any more of a target, and all throughout, the rebounding shrapnel tinked harmlessly off of Kris’s armor, sounding like hail on thin metal gutters. From where he lay, Ralsei could barely make out their expression: a wide smirk, eyes alight with mischief.
“Kris, you dumbass!” shouted Susie from her position on the floor, “Why the hell’d you empty your entire inventory?! It’s gonna take forever to clean this up!”
They shrugged. “It was all or nothing.”
She pushed herself to her feet. “You could’ve done one at a time.”
“But where’s the fun in that?” they countered, laughing, as they extended a hand and pulled Ralsei up. Before him was a truly massive pile of random stuff, so much that he only then realized how much gathering he hadn’t been privy to. He could hardly call what was left a “room;” it was much closer to an overfull storage closet.
“Goodness, you two… You didn’t need to go to this extent,” said Ralsei, trying to figure out a place to start. He kept the controller grasped firmly in one hand, however; his fluff sparked with a comforting desire he’d avoid losing if he could help it.
“You kidding?” guffawed Susie. “‘Course we did. I said I was gonna fill it ‘wall to wall,’ you know.”
He lowered his head. “I know, I know…” he said behind a wistful rictus. His gut twisted with nausea. “It’s… going to take a while to sort through all of this. Where am I supposed to put everything?”
That cowed Susie a little. “Uh… hm. Didn’t think about that.”
Kris laughed. “Weak,” they taunted, then launched themself forward onto the pile, landing with a heavy clatter. Various trinkets and a couple armor pieces slid down the pile, rattling all the way down.
“Oh, you wanna call me weak, huh?!” challenged Susie. “GERONIMO!” Without hesitation, she flung herself straight into the pile, arms forward in what appeared to be an unexpectedly accurate swimmer’s dive. Objects rained down on her in a massive shockwave, more things spilling down to the floor and pooling around Ralsei’s feet. She came to rest half-buried inside, covered under a nightstand, a sword (sheathed, mercifully), a tattered blanket, and an array of his spare scarves.
“Ow.”
“Susie, are you alright?!” exclaimed Ralsei as he waded through the colorful debris. He readied a healing spell without delay, but was stopped when muffled laughter escaped the mound in which Susie’s head was entirely buried.
“I’m fine,” she called out. “C’mon! Join us! It’s comfy!”
Ralsei looked at her with skepticism. “I… I doubt it,” he said sincerely.
“Dude, you’re all fluffy ‘n shit, you won’t feel a thing!”
He turned to Kris for help, meeting their gaze with tired eyes. They simply stared down at him impassively. “Join ussssss,” they hissed eerily, raising a beckoning hand.
“...I’ll give it a try,” he replied cautiously. Backing up to the door to clear enough space, Ralsei activated his levitation magic, then blasted himself through the air, careening frictionlessly into the huge pile of stuff right next to Susie. Instead of being propelled inside, however, he landed with an anticlimactic splat.
Susie was right; he didn’t feel much of anything. He lay limply on the slope of the pile, processing the feeling. The controller in hand was, the more he came to think about it, something he could prove to himself he liked; the memory of playing the games with her and Kris, the sweet taste of freedom with which he’d momentarily been graced by a world that never seemed to grant him anything. The chances of him ever having a chance to use it were slim indeed, and yet… he couldn’t bring himself to let go of it.
He rolled over on his back, facing the empty ceiling. It took a while for him to cut through the anticipatory silence. “Susie, this controller… did it come completely by itself?”
“Mmph,” she rumbled from beneath the pile, having sunk into it further and further. She spit something out of her mouth. “Blegh. Uh. Not sure. Why d’you ask?”
“Well…” Ralsei felt heat rise in his cheeks. What an embarrassing request he was about to make. “I was wondering if… we could play any more games with it. That would be nice.”
Kris nodded, before a realization seemed to hit them. “Susie. Girl. How do you not remember if there was a console?”
She pried herself out of the heap, sputtering. “I dunno, man! There’s a lot here! You expect me to have kept track of all of it?”
“Just how many Darkners did you steal all of this from?” muttered Ralsei, carefully reaching up for the scarves he could see on the top layer. He figured that re-stashing the proper items into Kris’s inventory would be a good place to start.
“You really think I know the answer to that?!” she barked.
“Some questions weren’t made to be answered,” said Kris, nodding sagely. They accepted the spare scarves back into their inventory one by one from Ralsei’s hands as he rummaged around the pile.
Ralsei pulled out a sword and passed it off to Kris. “How are we supposed to find anything in here? It’s a mess.”
“Pshaw. It’s easy. Watch this,” said Susie, finding her footing on the pile. She leaned over, clearly looking for something she wasn’t having any luck finding. “No, wait, just gimme a sec,” she added before anyone else could interject, clearly stalling for time.
Kris took the chance to mess with her a bit. “You look like a hoarder, chief,” they commented dryly.
Primly putting a hand to his lips, Ralsei laughed softly. “Hehe. She is a dragon, after all. The look suits you, Susie!”
“Hey!” she exclaimed, rummaging through the piles intently and sending more items skittering down the hill for Kris and Ralsei to pick up. “That’s stereotyping! Not all of us hoard! Racist.”
“I-I’m doing no such thing,” he asserted, flustered but trying to gather his composure. He knew she was joking, but it still felt like a heavy accusation. “R-Remind me, what do you do every time Kris tries to take one of your items without a replacement?”
She stiffened momentarily, then shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I can’t still hoard, moron. Now, if you don’t shut up and help, I'll lock you in here and make you do all the sorting yourself.”
Oh, perfect. Ralsei skipped up towards her, looking to make eye contact. Kris’s eyebrows raised in anticipation. He felt himself reddening, but he pushed forward, trying to keep his throat from tightening and cutting him off.
She glanced at him, and that was all he needed to go for it. “Does that mean I’m part of your hoard too, Susie?” he sing-songed.
“Wh– Uh– I– I guess?” she sputtered, face turning red. Ralsei forced an innocent expression, hoping she’d play along. She seemed to mull it over for a moment.
“...Yeah, sure, fine,” she said finally, standing to her full height on the pile, head just below the ceiling. “Heh. Alright. It’s like those old, dumb fairy tales. This whole room’s my hoard, and you’re gonna be my hostage, the pretty… little…”
Ralsei felt himself blush bright red. “The pretty little… what?” he questioned lightly, desperately trying not to lose his composure even as his face burned. Every time he tried to meet Susie’s eyes, her gaze darted away from him.
“Nothing!” she exclaimed, stepping down a little on the pile.
“You were going to call me pretty, weren’t you?” he teased, stepping down the pile after her.
“Uh– I mean, uh…”
He got closer to her face, pushing himself to be as tall as he possibly could without losing his balance. “Come on, you can say it, Susie! I don’t mind!”
Behind her, Kris made their way to the door. “Nope! No way!” she denied, stepping further down the pile. To her dismay, that meant her and Ralsei were constantly face to face as he gently pursued.
He batted his eyelashes. “So you won’t say I’m pretty?”
Another step down. “Yup,” she said through gritted teeth.
He pushed himself closer, plucking his glasses off his face to show off his pink irises. “But you do think I’m pretty.”
Step. “I never said that!”
Step. “But you do think so.”
Step. “I, uh…”
Step. “Yes, Susie?”
Step. Her boot hit solid ground, and the moment the thud rang out, she bolted for the door. To her chagrin, and to Ralsei’s glee, Kris darted out of the room before her and slammed the door shut.
“KRIS! Open the door!”
“Thank you, Kris!” he called past her, stepping down onto the floor. Swept up as he was, he didn’t think about what he was doing as he got closer.
“I don’t mind being in your hoard, O powerful dragon,” he taunted, smiling up at her devilishly. “Just say the word~”
Susie sputtered, letting out a series of grunts that vaguely sounded like half-formed syllables to denials Ralsei knew she couldn’t make sincerely. It was absolutely adorable, and Ralsei couldn’t help but feel a little pride for how adept he was at flustering a girl twice his size.
She fell silent. Ralsei looked at her innocently, though he couldn’t hide a twinkling of unabashed mischief from showing on his lips. Eventually, finally, she caved.
“...Arright, fine, I’m taking you hostage, pretty little prince! HEAR THAT, KRIS? STAY OUTTA MY HOARD!”
Ralsei collapsed into her, hugging her side tight. “Oh no! Won’t some charming knight come to my rescue? Heavens, what shall I do?” he sighed dramatically, chuckling.
“Have fun in there,” he heard Kris’s voice say. He felt himself blush a little more, impossibly.
Their footsteps faded down the hall, leaving Ralsei stuck to Susie’s side. He laughed, and as he did so, a certain tension faded from his gut. “I knew you thought I’m pretty.”
“Yeah, yeah, you got me,” she admitted. “So, uh. Want any help sorting through my vast riches?”
No response.
“Ralsei…?” She said tentatively. A quiet sniffle emitted from beneath her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m… I’m fine, Susie,” he replied, stepping back from her. One of her hands landed on his shoulder, keeping him from getting too far. “I– haha, I–” He sniffled.
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” she asked, so quietly that it made Ralsei’s heart skip a beat. Somehow he managed to forget how needle-sharp her tenderness was.
“I-It’s nothing, I just… haha. I didn’t expect to feel this way,” he said quietly, looking up at her.
“About what?”
“About… all of it,” he said, waving a hand at the massive hoard behind him. “I didn’t think… I’d have anything. I put my room as far out of sight as I could, I made it so empty, I… I thought I was just doing it for you, made myself think I was, but… oh, there’s simply so much.” He wiped vaguely at the corner of his eye as he babbled. “There’s– There’s so much, I don’t know what to do with it because only choosing like I was doing before would take so long and I still asked for more and you didn’t even question it, just dove right back in and tried to find the thing I wanted even though I think you’d remember something like that and, and…”
Susie crouched down to him. “It’s alright,” she whispered. Another needle in Ralsei’s chest. He had to stop himself from begging for more. “I really don’t remember, dude, but… if you want something, we’ll get it for you, ‘k?”
He felt he’d burst into tears at any moment. “O-Okay,” he strained. “I just… I didn’t think I could even really want like that before y-you got all of this stuff. All this time it’s been like I could only choose between things and, and the fact that you don’t question it for a second and make jokes like it’s all fine is just, just…”
“You really liked being my hostage, huh?” joked Susie quietly, tentatively raising her hand from his shoulder and looking towards his head.
He laughed. “Don’t say it like thaaat,” he whined. “I just liked knowing that… you didn’t think any less of me. For being greedy.”
Her hand sank softly into his hair, tousling it. “God, you’re so weird,” she soothed. “Dunno if I can call you pretty all the time, but… if it makes you feel that way, then I’ll say it. As much as it takes.”
“Can’t let me ruin your tough girl aesthetic, hm?” he prodded, pushing his head further into her hand almost desperately.
“Not a chance.” She tousled his hair a moment longer before pulling away. The instant felt terribly long, leaving Ralsei to wonder if it was long because his sense of time was so poor, or if he was so pathetic that he couldn’t help but long for something the moment it left him for fear of never getting it again. But this was Susie; if he asked at the right time, she might listen.
“So,” she began, stepping to the rim of the hoard and pushing stuff around with her boot, “A console? We did already play on one of those.”
Ralsei moved a few feet to her side, crouching down and sorting through the objects individually as he put his glasses back on. “Yes, but when we were playing that adventure game together, and… I got to be ‘player one…’ I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.” He picked up a couple loose Silver Cards and carried them over to the door. “I imagine there are other games I’ve yet to try.”
“Oh, dude, tons,” replied Susie, kicking a sword away. “Dragon Blazers, Super Smashing Fighters, tons of good stuff. If you really want something you’ll impact, I’ve heard good stuff about Matter Consequence.”
“What’s that one about?” Ralsei nabbed a spare scarf, soft and in a comfy viridian color, and draped it over his shoulders.
“Aliens ‘n shit. Dunno much else.” She found a desk leg sticking up from the debris; with a bit of heft, she pulled the whole desk out and set it down in the middle of the room. Ralsei took the chance to place the spare controller on top. “There’s also Minecrap. It’s a classic.”
“How does it work?”
She chuckled. “You run around in a world full of blocks and make stuff with ‘em. Whatever you want. Pretty simple, but I bet you’d like it.”
Ralsei chewed on his lip. The idea of that much freedom was overwhelming to the point of being oppressive. “...I think that might be a bit… much, for now.” Getting his mind off of it, he contemplated the scarf. It wasn’t one of his old items. Either she or Kris must’ve picked up a spare along the way that wasn’t worth equipping. “Susie? Would you… hold still for a moment?”
“You aren’t gonna get all up in my face again, are you? I might be a little teased out,” she said frankly.
“Only for a moment, if that’s alright with you.”
She hesitated, turning to face him. Ralsei watched as she read his expression carefully, looking to see if she might be overwhelmed.
“Alright, what is it?”
Ralsei stepped forward, pulling the spare scarf off his shoulders. “I wanted to give you this,” he said, reaching up and winding it around her. To his pleasant surprise, Susie complied without a word. She stood completely still as she watched his hands dance around her, fingertips an inch away from her collarbone, until he finished with a quick knot.
He pointed at his own scarf, bright pink, and at the collar of his robe, a soft green. “Now we match!” he concluded, clapping his hands together happily.
Susie looked down at her scarf, fiddling with its ends. He’d tied it over her shoulder, in a similar style to his. A momentary dismay crossed him when she began to unwind it, but only for that moment; instead of taking it all the way off, she merely undid the knot and shifted the length around, leaving more of it unwound before tying the knot behind her neck. The lengths of the scarf flowed down behind her, looking almost capelike.
She grinned eagerly, striking a heroic pose to show off the scarf behind her shoulder. “There we go! How’s that, Ralsei?”
“Looks great, Susie! Really makes you look, er… bad, er...”
“Say it,” she goaded.
“Oh, but I really shouldn’t–”
“Say it.”
He sighed, chuckling and shaking his head. “It makes you look…” His throat tightened, and Ralsei found it at least mildly funny that he could let himself be so selfish while swearing was still so rough.
He coughed. “...bad-ass.”
A heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder. “THERE YA GO!” roared Susie proudly. “Always knew you had it in you!”
Burying his face in his scarf, Ralsei hid his furious blush, embarrassed. “Susieeee,” he whined.
She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “‘S’all I wanted. Thanks, dude.”
He laughed. “Best of luck hearing me ever say such obscenities again.”
“What, afraid of looking like a dumbass in front of Kris?” she teased. “Don’t worry. They were right next to you during that stage performance. When we were playing Tenna’s music, remember…?”
“Oh no,” he whimpered.
Susie grinned maniacally, baring her yellow teeth. “Oh yes. They heard every word.”
He pulled his scarf further up his face, burying himself as far as he could under it until only his eyes peeked over the top. “Don’t remind me…”
“Listen, if you get to be all flirty and shit, I get to never let you live that down. Deal?”
“...Deal, Susie,” he answered smallly. Quietly, he was thankful he’d buried himself so deeply in the scarf; his own grin at the prospect of flustering her more had stretched his fangs wide with an uncharacteristic glee.
Little by little, he got his expression under control again and pulled his face out of his scarf. “Goodness,” he began, observing the pile, “We’ve still made hardly any progress sorting through my things. I ought to make a closet for myself.”
“Smart thinking.” She paused. “Wait, what happened to it being my hoard?!”
“You brought all this stuff for me, did you not?” He chuckled. “You meant for it to belong to me. So it's mine.”
“Well, then I, uh, take back you being my hostage! No hoard means no pretty prince either!”
“You can’t take it back now that you’ve admitted to it, Susie!” he sing-songed malevolently. “Your hoard will just be the things I don’t want in my room!”
She laughed. “What kinda dragon accepts sloppy seconds for treasure?!”
“The kind that gets flustered by how pretty her captive prince is!” He grinned, relishing her stunned expression. "Now, let's get to work, shall we?"