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“pi-choo!” Instinctively, Kris sniffled with a backwards tilt of their face, before shaking their whole head out. Normally, allergies only struck them in the spring, they found, but something about the way the wind had blown the autumn leaves past them must have offended Kris’s nose.
“Dude, what the hell, you even sneeze like a dog. Like a tiny little puppy. You’ve got a fuckin’ baby sneeze, man.” Susie elbowed them in the ribs, sending them swaying gently back and forth on the picnic bench they’d chosen as their hangout spot today.
Normally they would’ve gone to say something in response, but instead, they felt a wave of weakness come over their body. Maybe this was the premonition of a cold, instead, and they’d dramatically waste away in bed while poor Susie had to sit alone in class, without a deskmate to kick when she got bored. That would be the worst.
“Hey, uhh, Kris? Is that, uhh… isn’t that supposed to be, uh… inside you?”
A chill settled over their body. Sure enough, where Susie was pointing, there was a floating red, heart-shaped object. Their SOUL.
“…dammit,” they muttered. It wasn’t supposed to just come out, but it was just Kris’s luck to get a defective soul. …Or maybe this was what the doctor had warned them about, if they removed it from their body one too many times.
“Soooo, uh, should we go… catch it??”
Susie’s eyes darted back and forth from Kris to their soul and back again, lips pursed in confusion as it circled the two of them like a beloved pet that had gotten the zoomies. She swatted at it casually, chuckling to herself as it bobbed and weaved under her clawed arm. “Yo, I think it likes me. You got something to tell me, gayass?”
With all the nerve it absolutely did not deserve, Kris’s soul wagged up and down with a vigor it had never once shown. Groaning, they flopped forward onto the picnic table in front of them, making a face as they realized they’d landed squarely into a cobweb.
“Oh yeahhhhh??? You wanna kiss me under the moonlight, huh, Kris’s soul? You wanna make out sloppy style?” She smirked, smushing the human’s face further into the picnic table with a free hand. “Dude, you are so not beating the gay allegations. Or the monsterkisser allegations.”
From the corner of their eye, Kris saw their window of opportunity—with the full brunt of their power, they thrust their arm out to catch their far-too-chipper soul, and then, standing unsteadily by leaning on Susie’s shoulder, chucked the thing down into the lake with a sploosh.
Susie inhaled, her previous bravado vanishing. “Don’t you… kinda need that to live, Kris?”
Exhaling shakily, and clinging to Susie’s jacket for dear life, Kris flopped back onto the picnic bench’s seat.
“…it’ll… come back,” they wheezed.
“Man, you sound like shit right now, Kris. Sure you don’t want me to dive in after it?”
Labored, Kris shook their head. There was no way the SOUL wasn’t going to be a nosy bitch if it could help it.
While they were alone with Susie, though…
“…hey. While it can’t… hear. Love you, Susie.”
With the same warm smile that could blow away any darkness, Susie scoffed at Kris. “Dude, I know you do. You can’t hide shit from me. But, uh, love you too, Kris. What, you wanna kiss about it or something?”
Still clinging to her jacket, glimpsing to see if the SOUL was watching yet, Kris decided they may as well take the plunge themselves.
“Yeah, what… what about it?”
“Then get kissed, idiot.”
It was a quick, chaste kiss, the kind that felt like something had brushed up past their face for a little more than a moment, but the feeling of her cool scales lingered like a soothing balm. Angel, they hoped she didn’t hate them when everything was over.
“Now c’mon, either I’m getting that soul back or I’m tossing you into that lake, capiche?”
Kris wouldn’t have it any other way.