‘If I Were Jokaste And A King Maker, I’d Have Chosen Kastor Over You Too.’

"You often said how excessively lavish everything is in Vere," Laurent says, "yet I find Akielon men to be similarly excessive."

Damen peers at him from his position on the bed, on his front as he cradles his head with his arms. "How so?"

Laurent picks his nails as he hums, "the statues."

Damen directs an amused gaze at Laurent's prone form by the window's ledge. Expect Laurent to nitpick everything.

Shaking his head fondly, he explains. "Multiple have been commissioned to depict Akielon men in their glory."

Laurent snorts, as sophisticated as one can be when doing something unappealing. "How predictably vain."

An amused breath passes Damen's lips before shifting himself on bed. Now, he lays on his back, gazing up at the ceiling.

Teasing, he says, "I prefer Kings' monuments showing them in their glory rather than those sly ouevres mostly hidden in unfrequented annexes."

Laurent rolls his eyes. "Of course you do. But not every art is made to have the public's eyes set on them. They contain messages that aren't easily expressed in words, so they show it instead."

Damen hums contemplatively. "No, the public aren't always the audience" he agrees, "But they're still made to be appreciated by someone nonetheless."

"Then what of the others?" Laurent asks. Damen twists his head to face Laurent, but his lover is looking out the window.

"What others?"

"The pieces that show unusual subjects unlike your glorified Kings." Damen pauses but, unnoticed, Laurent continues. "I saw you looking at one, a statue of a woman crying on her knees, in the gardens earlier. What of pieces like her?"

Licking his lips, Damen answers. "A message, as you've said. She's mourning for her husband before she was turned into a fountain by a God who heard her sorrow."

Laurent's brows rose at this. "How miserable."

Damen nods. "It is. It was commissioned to warn men of a wife's pain if they become careless with their own life."

Laurent nods in understanding, of what, Damen does not know. "And did it?"

He nods. "Some have had practiced caution since."

Laurent diverts his gaze to him, his eyes gleaming a beautiful blue from the moon's light., like water under night's glow.

"But you don't perceive it as a paragon of a mourning wife," Laurent says with a steady and firm gaze.

Damen smiles, shaking his head. "No, not really."

Exhaling, he closes his eyes. "When I looked at her weeping face. I imagined her mourning of another's death rather than her husband's," he quietly admits, "I thought of the life she could've lived and desired it to be her reason for crying. I appreciated her tears."

Laurent pushes himself away from the window and walk towards Damen, who doesn't move when he felt Laurent's shadow covering him, nor when a firm hand pressed on his chest.

Laurent drapes himself over Damen's chest, rising and falling under him.

"What's her name?"

Damen's chest expands with his inhale before he releases it, loud in the quiet of the night. "Egeria."

NOTES: excuse this since everything is rushed. But I just had to contribute something because Damen is lovely, duh.

headcanon that while Dazai happily flirts with people and finds it amusing, when that energy is matched and they flirt back his brain just shuts down.

Definitely happened with Chuuya when he asked to sit in his lap or made a joking response or something and Dazai just stared blankly at him, he literally never recovered from it.

Sacrfice!Damen & Demon!Laurent design

how they comfort e/o.

Do you sometimes read a fic writer’s work, and just… thank all the gods this person managed to get obsessed with the same fictional people you did?

When you overestimate your abilities:

But then remembered art is your passion:

this is mah sheit, people's art is mah drugs y'all

The blood never truly washes off. By this time, Voldemort had stopped trying.

Ladies, gentle men, and everything in between I present to you yet another idea born from the depths of my mind an extremely tiring day. This one has been bouncing around my poor head for a little over a week and at long last I know how to word it in a way that makes sense. Hopefully.

So we all know that Dazai doesn't particularly like dogs. Some people think it is do to some kind of trauma. I am not one of those people. Not everything to do with a person or character is linked to a past experience sometimes that's just how they are. Personally I don't think Dazai has any experience with a dog that traumatized and made him hate them. I just think he has never liked them.

Now sometimes people who don't like dogs will accidentally and to their shock come across a dog that completely steals their heart and they absolutely love. They won't like any other dog. They aren't suddenly a dog person but they would gladly kill for that one specific dog. This idea stems from that.

I'm thinking this would most likely happen a few weeks to about 2-3 months after Dazai leaves the Port Mafia. So he's alone and in hiding. One day he goes out for groceries, because food and bandages, and there's this group of kids in an ally, they're maybe a year or two younger than Dazai would be at the time, and are surrounded a small creature. Dazai doesn't think much off it till he hears whining from the animals followed by what sounds like someone intentionally harming it.

Dazai, against his better judgment, decided to get involved. He scares these kids off and finds a small red nosed pitbull puppy that is a few months old. She is easily less than a year old. She's banged up but not hurt so bad that he need to take her to the vet. Once more against his better judgement he brings this puppy back to where ever he is staying at the time. He plans to only keep her around till she is finished healing then take her to an animal shelter.

It takes him less than a week to decide to keep the puppy. He then proceeds to name her Ember. Ember becomes the only exception to his hatred for dogs. Fat forward to him joining the agency and Ember now has separation anxiety because he barely left her alone for the last two years. He bring Ember with him to the agency every day. Ember, being the sweetheart she is, learns rather quickly how to do things that protect Dazai while in the field.

Throughout the time he is with Ember he starts to do better mental at least marginally because she is reliant on him being alive to survive and he doesn't want his puppy to die. Essentially Ember is his unofficial emotional support animal.

Due to that him meeting Atsushi would probably go different. Possibly him walking Ember or something like that.

Later on when he reunites with Chuuya officially during the Guild arc he naturally brought Ember and that would be the first time Chuuya meets her. Ember instantly loves him which is good because Chuuya also adores her.

Dazai uses that as an excuse to spend time with Chuuya because "Obviously I can't deprive my sweet Ember of time with her second favorite person". Somewhere along the line they start unofficially dating and about a week after dead apple would have taken place they make things official and Dazai moves into Chuuya's place.

Ember is very happy with that development because that means more time with her favorite humans.

Also Ember has a wonky ear due to what happened when Dazai found her. It's nothing bad it's just wonky and makes her look like an adorable little dork.

I was so hyped by this fanfic to draw about Laurent courting Damen but didn't want to assume what would happen between them. That's why I focused on how would Auguste, who probably has abandonment issues, react to it.

I probably won't post the following pages since I'm lazy :P hope you enjoy tho.

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anyway damen is not even an unreliable narrator. he's just A Character experiencing and observing things and assuming and drawing reasonable conclusions according to those experiences and observations and most of the time he knows and realizes More than what others want him to notice. if you want a delusional liar for a protagonist literally look at laurent. he has like three hundred disorders