shiny new world

[mrsparkle]

Sadde's running.

Not for any particular reason, just because it's faster. He's been meaning to go to one of the capitals for a bit and now, he supposes, is as good a time as any.

And eventually he's not running anymore, because he's close enough to civilisation that someone might spot him. Not that he wouldn't be able to notice them by scent before they saw him, but still. And as he makes his way to the Norway capital at this more leisurely pace, he notices the tiny, shiny key. He walks towards it and picks it up and immediately notices just how magic it is. He can tell by the way the key feels like things, and different things depending on where it is.

He verifies that what the key feels like is consistent in absolute location by waving it around a bit and seeing that the same place always feels the same. "Huh," he murmurs to himself.

He straightens up and thinks. The first obvious thing to try is seeing whether it opens any doors - a universal skeleton key sounds like the kind of thing a magical key could be - but the second obvious thing can be tested right there and then. He pushes the key into thin air with some purpose, as if he wanted to unlock an invisible door, and then turns it, et voilà, the faintest of door-shaped outlines appears before him.

He locks the door, and it disappears. Unlocks it again, and there it is. So he pulls it open and sees-

Comments

[mrsparkle]

"Superspeed, superstrength, don't need to breathe, don't need to sleep, don't age, unless someone can disable me and set me on fire I'm pretty indestructible, supersenses, incredibly enhanced cognition, perfect recall, very fine precision over every movement, never needing to actually sit down or rest at all, being preternaturally beautiful."

[from_scratch]

"Please don't try to flirt with me until I've had longer to think over the magical vampire love thing."

[mrsparkle]

"Okay."

...he's not just been hurt by a wave of despair and depression. Nope. Not at all. He's completely 100% not crushed.

(It's so good he has this much control over his muscles and body language.)

(...well, he may have gone completely still, there.)

"It, uh, really is symmetrical, for what it's worth. Like, even when one of the people in the relationship isn't a vampire, the magical thing seems to, er, filter pretty well."

[from_scratch]

"I mean, no offense - I just - don't know you that well. To want to go full speed ahead on that or for that matter to expect with implicit trust that you're telling me the truth."

[mrsparkle]

"Right. Of course. That's entirely reasonable. I'm not totally in control of my emotions right now, the lots of extra room in my brain and the unfamiliarity of the mate bond are a bit hard to process. What the not-in-love-with-you me would've said, I think, would be that of course we shouldn't go full speed ahead, and you have all the time in the world to think it over, and you're naturally free to say no and decide it's not for you."

[from_scratch]

"I appreciate that. Uh, I don't know how this works, would you rather I contemplate this somewhere where I'm not, I don't know, tantalizing you, or do you want to come to my house where nobody will be startled if you demonstrate undemony traits in public?"

[mrsparkle]

"...I would very much prefer to be around you as much as possible. Also-" And his skin becomes slightly less pale, more like when he was human. "Vampires sparkle under sunlight, this was my personal magic at work to make me look less vampirey. I didn't list that 'cause I don't exactly see it as an unqualified superpower."

[from_scratch]

"You might get someone stopping you to ask for your cosmetic secrets if you do that around here and they'll expect you to be able to tell them exactly what to embed in their skin," Cam says.

[mrsparkle]

"Well, I don't particularly mind having to explain I'm not a demon, really, I'm a different thing, but doing that several times in a row is bound to get old fast."

He's looking at Cam's face, and- well, he looks like a lovestruck puppy.

[from_scratch]

"Well, that and - we've got an equilibrium here that involves everybody being really indestructible and all contests being evenly matched and no permanent harm being done if someone drops someone else in a black hole, I don't know that the reaction you'd get would be universally friendly."

[mrsparkle]

"What kind of unfriendliness are we talking about, here? I would definitely not survive a black hole, and I'm not at all certain I'd get to any of the afterlives if I died."

[from_scratch]

"I mean, I've never been holed, and it'd take a real antisocial type to hole you here in the center of Hellish civilization where a lot of people are in the middle of doing things and wouldn't like to be interrupted by a black hole. But it's a thing now and then. I just don't recommend letting on that you aren't a demon. My shuttle's over there, let's just go hide you in my house."

[mrsparkle]

"Okay," he says, having seriously conflicting emotions about visiting Cam in his house aaaaah while at the same time Cam is not in love with him aaaaaah.

[from_scratch]

Cam pilots the shuttle away from what proves to be a large rectangle with some irregular patches of gold between the cities and plantful areas.

[mrsparkle]

"...um."

[from_scratch]

"What?"

[mrsparkle]

"Hell looks really weird. That is so not a sentence I'd ever expected to ever utter."

[from_scratch]

"Hell is very tacky. We can all make anything on a whim and getting rid of it is a lot harder and there's no incentive to recycle. One day someone wanted to make an enormous plane of gold. Now a lot of demons hang out on it. There are some planets nearish by but mostly it's the plane of gold."

[mrsparkle]

Sadde's eyes are on Cam's but he's also watching his lips moving and thinking about just how kissable they are and part of him idly thanks the gods of vampire magic that his brain is so good at multitasking, if he were human he'd probably not have heard a single word Cam said.

That is such a great face.

"How does gravity even work, there?"

[from_scratch]

"Normally. There's math behind the plane of gold but I don't have it memorized."

[mrsparkle]

...a thing occurs to Sadde. It took this long to occur because he's been focusing on other things, but now he notices another part of his brain has been insistently trying to tell him this thing. That part is now all the parts, and the thing is: Cam is shirtless. He should really be devoting more attention to this fact than he's been.

"So the plane of gold is actually large enough to generate its own gravitational field? That's actually really cool."

(Thank the gods of vampire magic that he can see Cam's shirtless glory without having to actually look at it.)

[from_scratch]

"Yeah, it's a big plane of gold."

Cam lands on a little tiny planetoid with mysteriously Earth-normal gravity. There is a house on it.

[mrsparkle]

"...black hole inside it?" he guesses.

[from_scratch]

"Yup! I don't like having close neighbors who can suddenly make architectural additions at any scale." Cam lets him in. The house is cozy and attractive and not tacky at all.

[mrsparkle]

"Your house is pretty cozy and attractive and not tacky at all," he comments.