citynet | video; @The Seventh Crown of the Seventh Demon King;

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video; @The Seventh Crown of the Seventh Demon King;

[ In media res: there's a video feed sharpening into focus, blobs of silver and pink and purple neon resolving into a staircase leading down to a metal door gleaming clean under the artificial lighting around it. Midnight's standing at the door, looking up at the camera and the person filming with his phone, grinning one of his worryingly unhinged grins. ]

How is it, Kaveh? I'd ask you for my best angle, if I had any bad angles.

[ This conversation does... persist... but as the video continues, it becomes perfectly clear that this terribly disorganized promotion is for a bar of some sort. Midnight makes it clear later when he reclaims the camera, hops onto the bar, and aligns himself in the frame in a way that lights both his face and the sign behind him, a rose-lit confection announcing the name of the bar: Seventh Hell Host Club. ]

That's where we are. Do you see that? My name is Midnight, and this is my host club, Seventh Hell. We're near the southernmost station on Line 1. Kaveh and I have been working terribly hard on this establishment, and all of you have his genius and design sense to thank for this momentous occasion. Please do thank him personally. Make a great fuss about it. Remind him that sleep is a temporary state that he should indulge in more often, preferably with me. Thank you.

[ Kaveh is definitely taking the phone at this point, but later on, Midnight will retrieve it and add a postscript. He is sitting in some sort of underground greenhouse this time, surrounded by mist, glass, flowers, and the glow of sun-tinted halogen lights. Regardless of the promo quality, the greenhouse itself is certainly an impressive feat of engineering. ]

Yes, this is one of several themed rooms here at Seventh Hell. You — yes, you — are personally invited to see it. When? Well, whenever you like, so long as the doors are open, but on the 31st of this month... Ahem.

[ He clears his throat, grins. ]

For the turn of the year, you are cordially invited to Seventh Hell's Grand Opening and New Year's Eve joint celebration. Or something like that, I'll come up with a grander name if necessary. There will be drinks, music, a tour of the premises, games, untold bliss, fantasies, beautiful women, beautiful men, myself among them, possibly fireworks if Kaveh can be convinced that I won't set the place ablaze... You won't want to miss out, I promise.

The doors will open at 6 pm, but come by anytime before then, from now until the New Year, if you'd like to enjoy the premises in relative solitude. Send a message to this account if you'd like to be assured of a bartender, or a friendly face to speak to. If I can't come personally, a host or hostess will be there, ready to welcome you to a night of merriment and pleasant conversation.

So, until then... Seventh Hell awaits you.

[ A wink, and the feed shuts off. ]

[ ooc: Along with normal network replies, current host club employees and staff are welcome and encouraged to reply to this post as though Midnight's included them in an impromptu promotion for the club! You can also use this post for post-promo, off camera conversations with him or anyone else in the host club. Go stupid, go wild, go crazy, threadjack, steal his phone and flush it down a toilet. Honestly, the sky is the limit. ]

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[ There's an old, old story about a young, beautiful Ægir princess who fell in love with a prince of Iberian descent. She made a deal with a Seaborn witch to disguise her fins, her scales, the tips of her pointed ears, in exchange for her voice, nerves afire where her missing appendages should have been.

She found him, danced for him on his birthday. She made him smile.

On the evening of the third day, she slipped out quietly onto the deck of his ship, watched the sun set, and sighed. She slipped and fell to a knee, then collapsed. She landed as a bubble of seafoam on the wood beneath her. She pretended she was something she was not long enough to make her beloved smile.

Midnight passes the bottle to Kaveh, then tucks his head onto his shoulder, noses into blond hair, and breathes in. Alcohol, sawdust, sun. He could drown with him. But first: the burnt nerves, the loss of a voice. ]

I know what drowning looks like. I have been dry land. You aren't there yet, my love.

[ ... Said quietly against Kaveh's hair: ]

I would never kiss you if you didn't want one. You know that about me, right?

[ midnight tucks his head into kaveh's shoulder. midnight is many things, kaveh knows. he is a grating laugh on a video call. he is a hand held in the darkness. he is a silhouette against the backdrop of a crumbling kazdelian manse, he is a hand holding a shove before the light blots out. he is whispered words of love, and the fangs of it. midnight right now is a warm weight against kaveh's shoulder. his face is in kaveh's hair. kaveh's hand lifts. it slides in turn into midnight's hair. it cards through it, the dark murk of the strands there, it finds the tip of his long pointed ears and the skim of his crown.

kaveh thinks, he doesn't feel much like the one drowning right now. he takes a draught from the bottle. it's disgusting, in the sense that these things should be done properly. the bottle ought to be chilled. there ought to be ice to release the flavour, and a decanter to bring out the dept of it. kaveh ought to swirl it in the glass to appreciate the aroma before the taste. there is an order to things, how things ought to be experienced. kaveh drinks from the lip of the bottle. the sticky-sweet scent of the alcohol burns. ]

I know. [ kaveh says, ] As you would know that I won't hesitate to stop you if you do something that I can't accept; for you to take something that I have not already chosen to give.

[ kaveh sets the bottle down between them. ] Do you want a kiss, Midnight?

[ Midnight doesn't reply, simply motions for the bottle, then takes a second drink, then a third. He puts it down. He puts it down not because he doesn't want the whole bottle, but because Kaveh is here. Midnight is terrible at drinking alone.

He does want a kiss. He also wishes, sometimes, that his clumsy attempts to preserve his life had been less successful. ]

I want you to live a life with less pain. Or I would like to know less of others.

[ Neither of these things are answers in the affirmative. He knows that. His lips and throat aren't numb enough for this conversation.

After a long moment of resting his head against Kaveh's hair, he speaks again. ]

Do you remember that story? The bridge, Alhaitham. The river. We buried you.

[ He's driving at his point. This is the only way he can think of to get there without indulging in more drink. ]

[ midnight puts down the bottle. it's kaveh's turn to take it up. he takes a draught of it, and feels in his hands in the chill of it the cold of the river water, the light fall of dirt, the way it filled up like water in an ever-churning well. you could drown in something solid. kaveh has always known that. he had watched it come.

it had been slow. that was what kaveh remembers. ]

I do. [ kaveh says, when he puts the bottle down between them again. he leans into midnight's lean. the two of them and their bodies form a triangle. there is nothing more solid; there is nothing more precarious. ] I was buried.

[ neither of you had a choice in the matter, kaveh nearly says. but what he says instead, is this: ] Go on.

[ No. We buried you. Midnight turns his head to Kaveh, hums into his hair when he presses his mouth to him, curls his hand around his. A wordless apology. If there was another way... ]

I'm sorry, my love. I tried to make it quick.

[ He breathes for a moment. ]

I was... hoping to give Alhaitham someone to hate. Someone he could blame for your passing. I'm inclined toward death in a way few are. It's something I can do quite well.

It's not a part of me I want others to know about. I want to be safe. The sort of person that others have little need to fear. I want others to think well of me. To associate me with only happiness, celebration...

[ midnight kisses a wordless apology into the blond crown of kaveh's head. kaveh thinks - midnight has never needed to apologise. not really. it was the book that put them into this position. it was the city that made it so. but it was kaveh who ultimately chose it, to have it happen, to have it be the only solution, because kaveh couldn't bear seeing the two of them sharpen swords at each other.

this must've been what heartbreak was.

midnight breathes. kaveh listens to him breathe. he remembers the lack of breath in as the dirt swallowed him, as he swallowed the dirt, as his lungs filled and he struggled to not struggle in that darkness, because alhaitham and midnight have enough regrets on their hands.

instead, kaveh turns his memory towards this: a kazdelian manse, the rise two moons above the fata morgana of an uncertain horizon. an architect and a sanguinarch, and a single, stolen mouthful of blood. ]

Help me understand, Midnight. I have the scattered memories of a storybook. I have the pieces of you that I've seen strewn throughout the debris of what this city has left behind. But I want to hear it from you.

[ kaveh's hand curls in midnight's hair. ]

Tell me in your own words what it means to you to be inclined towards death, and why I would think any less of you for it.

[ Midnight laughs soundlessly, amusement on a puff of breath that dissipates exactly one inch in front of his mouth. ]

You debase yourself, and always look upward to others. Even those you pretend to disdain. I cannot imagine a world where you would think less of me, and this is to your demerit.

[ He runs a hand down Kaveh's back. ]

Vampires do not shed their taste for blood. Not once in their long, long years. To do so is a sort of madness... Or mercy. It cultivates a certain mentality, you know. It's a necessity for vampires to think of others, at some level, as property. As "less than". As feeding stock, things to be kept tamed.

And yet we are human. We laugh, we weep. We fight, disappoint ourselves, others. We grow hungry, we experience joy and love... And we experience these things with others, regardless of whether they should be simple livestock or not.

[ Midnight continues to breathe. It's lovely, really, being in a place he built with Kaveh. They've touched every board, floor, fixture here. It's a gift. ]

I'm young, Kaveh. I'm still arrogant enough to believe that my purpose in life is to bring joy to others. But one day, I will look back upon my long, long life, and find no one in it. No one behind me, no one ahead. Just a long string of regret in the form of those I should have never loved. That was a future I expected before. It's a future I won't miss.

For a vampire... No, for a Sarkaz. To die young is a mercy. A gift. The only comfort I have. That I would leave this world before love left me...

But the most domesticated of hounds still howl for their packs. A freshly born fowlbeast still cries to its mother for food, knowing nothing of either.

[ ... ]

When I killed you, I lived the part of me that likes the way you taste, the way you bleed, the way you die. It's nothing so merciful as a separate personality... It's who I am. I simply like to dream, most days, that it isn't there.

[ kaveh remembers. it's odd to do so. this isn't his life. it was never his life. but he remembers - the sarkaz and their pride. the hollowed out heart of kazdel and the celebration of death. the way sarkaz kept their blood and their weapons and their death close, so close, to their still-beating hearts. kaveh knows the context. he doesn't understand it, but he knows it. the diaspora, the destruction of kazdel, the horror and the sorrow. what it's like to be without a home. you build your own homes then, you build your identity so that you couldn't be divested from it, because without it, what did you have?

that is the sarkaz. that is midnight's blood. the pain, divested from the heart.

midnight's hand runs down kaveh's back. kaveh leans into it, the warm weight of it. he thinks of the stolen mouthful of blood, of those last, terrifying moments. ]

I was scared. [ kaveh says, then, ] I was scared, Midnight.

[ vulnerability has never come easily to kaveh, who wears the skin of something braver and lighter over it to compensate. it is a flaw in him. he is a marble statue with a fundamental flaw, carved out of material that shouldn't have been wasted on a bust meant to crumble. kaveh peels that skin from him and lets it rest at their feet. he draws midnight in close, and forces the next words from his lips: ] It was my hands. The nerves in them died. When my father died, my mother's hands never stopped trembling. They trembled for years. She could never pick up a pencil again. Midnight, I was scared, because my hands weren't mine. When you bit into me, I was scared again.

You didn't have Oripathy. I would die if I gave it back to you. Who cares about that life, it was a metaphorical death of my soul.

[ kaveh remembers that his breath had been cold, in the end. he leans into the crook of midnight's neck. he breathes. kaveh is warm. ] I was furious, Midnight, but only for the choice that you made to take it back, to drink it knowing that you will have to drink from another later and think of the moment you chose to drink death. I was scared, but only for the suffering you would have. Midnight, if you didn't fear while drinking, if you enjoyed it the way your biology is meant to, then I'm perhaps a little less afraid, though no less furious.

You are a terrible vampire, Midnight, as you have just told me. If that part of you shielded you, how am I supposed to blame it?

[ kaveh looks. ] For a Sarkaz, to die young is a mercy in part because the other choices are too cruel to bear. Do you still think this now? That one day, you will look back in your life, and see nobody there? Just people that you were not meant to love?

[ There should never have been a need for Kaveh to fear anything while Midnight was there. He picks up Kaveh's hand, kisses it, cradles it to his face, letting his cheek warm his fingers. Happiness is within arm's reach when one is with the Demon King. It's simply how the world should work.

The future is bright and glorious. There is nothing behind. ]

Kaveh. There is nothing there. No past. No pain, no memory of pain. No regret. Nothing to regret. And without any of that... I wake the next day, and the next, and the next.

[ ... The logic to why he's rejected his pain, if not how, should start to make more sense. He had, at one point, made plans to live for a long, long time, preferably with his sanity and moral compass intact. Sacrifices had to be made. The people around him had to be protected. They couldn't one day fall victim to the crumbling of a heart too old, too tired, to bear the weight of its past sins. ]

... I can't say I rid myself of all of the fear, the regret, the disappointment. But I did my best.

[ there it is, kaveh thinks. that's the proof of concept. that midnight is living out the road of nothing. there is nothing stretching behind him, there is nothing before him. there is only midnight. midnight kisses kaveh's hand. he lifts it to his cheek.

there is a fury in kaveh that burns. it threatens to sear through the veneer of his skin. it tastes like oripathy, acrid and heat, and the distillation of a thousand-thousand years' worth of memories down to a singular blood drop. in the history of the world, the bitter has always outweighed the sweet.

kaveh's hand curls against midnight's cheek. his nails rasp. ]

No, Midnight. You did not rid yourself of the fear, the regret, the disappointment, because you can't. There is a Midnight that lives in the fear, the regret, and the disappointment. There is a Midnight that was human through them. If you rid yourself of that Midnight, what do I have left to hold in my hands?

[ kaveh's thumb skims the corner of midnight's mouth. ] Who is it that you are protecting right now?

[ Midnight opens one eye. He doesn't smile. ]

After I killed Vergilius in the house, I still wanted his body. I touched him. If he hadn't struck me, I would have taken him entirely. I learned. I haven't spoken to him since.

[ There is no title, there is no context. Just Vergilius's name. He says it like would Kaveh's, like Netzach's. Like Miss Gebura, were she still here. ]

It's this. Teeth are archaic, inelegant. If I had been proper about the Arts, I would simply take your blood from your veins. I wasn't. I haven't. Oripathy will take me first, and that is a gift.

[ kaveh looks. this is the piece that he had been missing. the first thing he thinks about is daan. of course it's daan. oh, daan. midnight is his patient. vergilius is his love. the context of the haunted house fills in the minute gap there - that vergilius must have gone insane. perhaps midnight as well. no, kaveh realises - because kaveh had asked daan that night to help midnight with his oripathy, and daan had not said a word about who had killed vergilius. this is a separate incident. does daan know?

and then, because he's kaveh, he remembers - the mall, the young man. i ended his life, midnight had said, and that was that. that was all. it wasn't until later, much later, that midnight provided the context that changed the situation to what it was: that the young man had taken midnight's life first. ]

And?

[ kaveh says, into the silence. ]

I'm not sure. Did you want my death at Netzach's hands? You know that already. Heine managed to keep me safe and well, heavens bless him. Or would you prefer a description of my lack of disgust at the thought of Vergilius's body, the way I still want him?

[ ... Midnight sighs. He honestly doesn't understand what Kaveh is asking for. That the young man killed him first strikes him as a non-issue. ]

A death spiral. You have my heart, darling. I want neither of us to die. Especially you, holder of my heart. You will go first, and Alhaitham will be right to shield you from myself, and you making yourself the first. I still cannot love you like he does...

Midnight, I don't need a shield from you. Alhaitham certainly doesn't need anything to hate to get through his day, and I'm starting to think that only thing you need is a shield from me.

[ says kaveh, snapping fang and claw into the truncated syllables of midnight's words. there are those who look at kaveh and his usage of mehrak, and assume that kaveh has offloaded the work of battle to a machine. but what they don't realise is that kaveh has trained with a claymore long before he was granted his vision, that he had chosen the claymore because none of the other weapons available to an akademiya graduate would have made use of a strength requisite to carve empty mountains.

kaveh reaches to drag midnight down by the throat. ]

Tell me about the way you still want Vergilius. Tell me about the way you were kept safe. Tell me about your death at Netzach's hands. Tell me about the details of the gaps in your humanity so that I can fill in what you have not said: Midnight, I also remember the story where I was buried. [ for a moment, the grief: ] And in that story, I wasn't not the one who was lost. You were lost to yourself, and you were lost to me.

[ kaveh bares his teeth. ]

You reacted to stress, Midnight, and you do it poorly. You want to drink people dry until everything in you settles because you're a poor caricature of a vampire after all. I want to drink a bottle dry. It's just that bottles don't happen to be alive. You love things that are alive. So yes, I think I understand where this is all going, and the fear and disgust you're hoping to instill in me by telling a story so poorly that even this city could tell it better in fragmented graffiti isn't the shield you think it will be.

[ Midnight's eyes narrow. His hand reaches for the abandoned brandy bottle, misses. He wouldn't have been able to put it to his lips with Kaveh's head in the way.

He growls, pulls up his hand, puts it on the back of Kaveh's head, and pulls. If this is what the game is, Midnight's perfectly happy to play. ]

You would apologize my way out of a war crime, love. Try this speech again when you can tell the difference between my lust for blood and my lust for you. Perhaps then I would find your forays into my motives a compelling venture, and not the fantasies of a fool spinning tales about men who don't exist.

[ Midnight grimaces, then shoves Kaveh's head to the side, onto his shoulder, reaches more fully for the liquor, and takes a long, soothing pull. When he's done, he doesn't release the bottle, nor shove Kaveh off entirely. He closes his eyes and rests his head back against the wall instead. This was never going to be a pleasant conversation. ]

[ midnight's hand winds into kaveh's hair. he pulls. it is the first time, kaveh realises, that midnight is fighting back. that spark of furious triumph is short-lived.

'try this speech again when you can tell the difference between my lust for blood and my lust for you.' midnight says, and kaveh -

stops. he looks. the great red desert swallows the arrogance of those who walk it and believe that they know it. without the reverence for the dangers, one can press their foot into quicksand, or come across the weakened exoskeleton of a temple long lost, and they, too, will be lost. fundamentally, something has shifted underfoot. kaveh watches midnight drink. ]

What? [ he says, and stops himself.

you are starving.

his hand is still on midnight's throat. he feels it, the swallow of alcohol, the cradel of an unspent sigh. ]

[ Midnight tilts his head to Kaveh, eyes briefly opening. From this position, they are pink smears of sailor's warning dawn. From this position, the light hits Kaveh evenly and not at all. His nightvision finds Kaveh, his expression unshrouded by silhouette.

He rolls his eyes, takes another drink, and closes them again. ]

You did not love your own heart well enough to believe that Alhaitham loves you. Is it so difficult to conceive of a world where such self-aimed disdain has clouded your perception of my own desire for you?

[ Midnight's never once argued Kaveh's constant insistence that his love was insufficient. This was always true. After all, a heart that does not love itself is poorly equipped to handle the task of accepting love. Loving others in return is nigh impossible at that point... The experience, the wisdom to see the love for what it is, simply isn't there. ]

[ kaveh looks. the sliver of pink there is a glancing lancelet, a single, carefully wielded scalpel to excise kaveh down to his core components. suddenly, kaveh realises, he is too sober for this conversation. his hand leaves midnight's throat. he takes the bottle from midnight, and squeezes his eyes shut. he pressed the lip of the bottle to his own. the alcohol burns - it doesn't burn quite enough. kaveh has known oripathy.

he wipes his lips with the back of his sleeve. kaveh pushes the bottle between them. ]

You want me.

[ the incredulity, kaveh thinks, comes unbidden. it is also midnight's proof of concept. kaveh suddenly thinks back to the myriad kisses and the press of midnight's body, the insistence that midnight had already fed. that storybook had unfurled along its pages, two swords drawn against one another, and midnight had said - 'darling, you were the one who called me starved, not i.'

the question of 'why' sits on kaveh's tongue. he looks. ]

But there's that fundamental misunderstanding, Midnight. I want to ask you 'why'. But what I will ask you is this: why should you? Alhaitham was always capable of loving me. He simply shouldn't.

Just as you shouldn't.

[ and therefore the possibility couldn't have existed, because it should not. and therefore there must be other explanations.

kaveh had thought he starved. ]

I once asked you for the time it took for my lip to heal to sort out my love for you. This came part and parcel with that evaluation.

[ Midnight takes the bottle, touches the mouth against his lip. Indirect kisses, careless and unlovely. He is starting to numb. He wishes he could put his hand against the living coals of his heart without it. ]

You look to a future that does not exist, live your life pulling that future into the present. I live in the present, primarily concerned with what exists now. You ask me about shall and should; I only understand what is. If you treat matters of what is with the razor of that which should be, you end with something different from the start. If you tell me not to desire you, I cannot obey. When you can command the laws of gravity to reverse themselves, the "should" and "shouldn't" will avail themselves to you.

[ He drinks. His hand smooths over Kaveh's warm head, cards through his hair. The pain is bearable. All is well. ]

Tell me the next, mm. Rationalization you have for my hunger for you. Not for your blood. For your body. I don't mind. I am patient, filled with limitless understanding...

[ kaveh hasn't loved enough. kaveh thinks of it, and then looks at midnight. ]

I don't understand, Midnight.

[ the words come at the heels of midnight's hand carding through kaveh's hair. each scene put into reverse forms a new connection held together by the glint of dim smoky club light reflecting off of the darkened glass of a mediocre bottle of brandy: midnight's hands in his hair, midnight pulling his head aside, midnight pushing his head against his shoulder. why are they having this conversation, kaveh thinks, suddenly, and that is what kaveh doesn't understand, hasn't understood, until now.

kaveh's hand reaches for midnight's bottle. the scarred lines of his fingers slip over midnight's. he holds the bottle there; he holds midnight there. kaveh is suddenly very, very close. ]

Forget about rationalising it. Forget about the present that you hardly know how to live and the future that you can't seem to stop referencing - forget about it all. No, Midnight, answer me this: did you choose to touch Vergilius in that moment because you knew he would hurt you?

[ because it's vergilius, with a gaze as red as blood spilt across a display of shattered lights, who comes at the pinnacle of a world that produced an indomitable woman like don quixote. vergilius, who may or may not have gone insane. midnight, who may or may not have gone insane. but kaveh thinks - what happened after? after the death and the moment of it, after the city's compulsion and insanity?

why was midnight telling the story so poorly? alhaitham will be right to shield you from myself. ] Are you telling me this now, like so, so that I would hurt you?

You simply cannot seem to stop yourself, my darling. From one rationalization to the other...

[ The laugh is coughed up, empty. The pet name is sour on Midnight's tongue, if only because it breaks his heart to use it. ]

Vergilius told me he was a demon. I wanted to see if that was so. If he was the sort of person who takes the same sort of pleasure in death as a real devil... I wanted a kiss when I saw him again. He did not.

[ His head lists. He tuts. ]

I told him, you know. That he wasn't a demon. Not yet... Ah. He didn't believe me. Still doesn't, I think, but it's no matter. Whatever pleasure he took in killing others is long gone now. Just a man. Just a man...

[ Like Alhaitham, like Kaveh. Just a man. Same as everyone else.

Midnight's eye shifts back to Kaveh's. He's very close. He tastes the brandy on his breath, or maybe it's his own. ]

I tell you this because you asked, my love. And because I promised I would after you shared of yourself. So very much of yourself...

[ because kaveh asked. just that one little thing, kaveh thinks. he is back at the convenient store, two leaden weights in their pocket, and midnight's lofty, flippant tone: and who am i, among others, to hold parts of who i am at such a lofty height of sanctity, the realisation that midnight had only offered first because kaveh hadn't wanted to do it. but there is a difference; there has been a difference. midnight had recited his circumstances with the pale imitation of a newspaper read-out, an academia report on the life and times of a casestudy in another land far, far away. today, there were several different ways midnight could have told this tale. he chose this one.

kaveh, he thinks, isn't wrong. suddenly, he is certain of this. kaveh's eyes meet midnight's. he pulls the brandy to him. through their joined hands, he drinks. ]

Vergilius is a demon because it is enough for him alone to think of himself as a demon, just as you a demon because it is enough that you alone think of yourself as one. [ kaveh says, and lets the bottle go. he does not let midnight go. ] You say that I can apologise your way out of a war crime. I say that you can condemn anything you do as a war crime. As if yearning and loneliness, and a desire to see another echo your pain, is some unforgiveable crime.

[ as if being made soft of mortal flesh and blood is a crime. ]

You wanted a kiss because you are you, Midnight. [ kaveh's weight settles on midnight. he begins to push him down onto the couch, a slow descent of limbs and weight and the soft hush of plush padding.

he says, ] You wanted a kiss because you were hurt, and the only way you can let yourself be hurt is to let someone else hurt you. Tell me that I'm wrong.

[ Midnight allows himself to be pushed down, pink eyes smoldering like a set of flares falling down the maw of a long, deep cave. Kaveh on top of him, pressing him down to the center of the world with all the force of a magnet yearning for its opposite pole. ]

Pain rarely factors into my decisions, love. Why think of it when pleasure is there? I seek pleasure like you seek reasons to throw yourself at a present that refuses to yield your image to you. Your "shall".

[ His eyes are very, very bright. ]

Those I love cannot hurt me. They simply do not have the capacity, just as others, to you, must have every reason to be forgiven. Everyone save for yourself. Those I love cannot destroy me, they cannot undo me... Why would I look to someone I loved to hurt me when it simply cannot be done? I take no pleasure in watching others try. Kaveh... I wouldn't do such a thing.

[ "You cannot hurt me in a way that matters." ]

[ midnight is a small, quiet room.

kaveh looks. and then, because he is kaveh, he begins to laugh. it's not a happy sound. it's a sound that punctuates the scrape of his nails against angled glass, the way he lifts the brandy bottle and shakes it, just so. ]

You say that with such certainty, but who are you trying to convince? You, or myself? Midnight, I've spent my nights with this bottle; I've been drunk enough that I hardly knew who I was and where I was. It was the only way to make it bearable. This is a death spiral, Midnight. I drank to numb it, the pain of it. That's what it's for. What did you numb in order to speak to me of Vergilius?

[ the bottle comes down on the solid wood of the table. it makes a sound much like a struck body. the distribution of the sound is unsteady enough that it is the first sign that kaveh is half-gone.

and then, guilt. ]

It was you who said only the heart, and not the pain. Are you taking it back?

[ Midnight flinches at the sharpness of the sound. He looks at the bottle, the sharp triangles of light clearly demarcating its facets.

After a moment, he rests his head back. After a moment, he puts his hand to the back of Kaveh's head. After a moment, quietly: ]

If we follow the path of your logic, the pain is numbed, and lies with me. If we follow mine, it doesn't exist, and therefore belongs to no one. Either way, my heart was always yours.

[ ... Midnight is now quite done with pretending to be sober. He sighs, closes his eyes. ]

I do not make decisions to harm myself through those I love, darling. As I am sure you do not wish to cause grief to others through carrying more weight than you can bear. But intent only goes so far. It does not bring back the dead. It does not bury sin. As you already know, my love.

video; @The Seventh Crown of the Seventh Demon King;

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cw: suicidal ideation (if you squint)

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cw: description of sexual harassment

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