Xard was quite surprised when he saw the outfit waiting for him in the dressing room—mostly surprised with how normal it was. Pajamas weren’t even on the list of what he was guessing it’d be. The fact that it covered basically all his skin was the most impressive part of all, a complete flip from his near-nude state.
He also had to thank Valen that they weren’t gold and red. That had been his first intuition regarding clothes after she mentioned her love for Fiends. Since she herself was color coordinated, he’d anticipated her inflicting it on them as well. Instead, the pajamas were dark gray with red stitching, quite close to the colors of his combat outfit. So in a way, he still matched her expectation of him.
The clothes were well made and quite soft so he eagerly put them on to cover up. Somewhat disconcertingly, though, they fit perfectly, only rivaling Mallea or a professional tailor. That meant Valen somehow knew his exact body size and shape. The word ‘fan’ didn’t begin to describe her. ‘Stalker’ was starting to seem more like a fitting label.
While Xard felt the matching slippers were a bit excessive, and not really something he’d ever use, there was a note explicitly telling them to wear everything provided. He wasn’t in the mood to put up a fight. Nitpicking pointless demands would only make it take longer, and they still needed to hurry this along so they could make sure Ahvra was alright. Hopefully, she wouldn’t ask anything too demanding…
The confusion increased when Xard stepped out through the second door and into a quaint living room. It was much smaller than he’d grown used to these past two years, but his perspective had been skewed a bit. The room actually reminded him of the house he grew up in, and he almost expected to see his parents sitting on the couch and watching the TV that was on in the background—bouncing a logo as it waited to be used.
Instead, Drim was already sitting there, his nose deep in a book. He was wearing a black polo and plaid green and black lounge pants. The outfit alone aged him up a bit compared to what he usually wore. To complete the look, he had on a pair of reading glasses. Fiends certainly didn’t need them, so it was undoubtedly Valen’s doing.
There was a slight twinge in Xard’s heart. He got a momentary glimpse of what a life together would look like, coming home to him every day. It was a rather pleasant thought, yet it felt impossibly distant at the same time—an annoying array of emotions. But now he was starting to get an idea of what Valen was going for.
“Oh, sorry,” Drim looked up from the book. “She baited me with a rare novel, and I was going with the flow before I knew it. I’m stealing this, Valen!” Drim closed the book, shouted to their currently unobservable observer, and then set it aside. He then got up and joined Xard at inspecting the room.
It was pretty basic, and there didn’t seem to be anything absurd besides the cameras obviously watching them. But what drew their attention were the photographs sitting on one of the shelves. It depicted what should look like a fairly happy family of three—mother, father, and a somewhat familiar looking daughter all taken as the daughter grew up. However, the mother’s face had been cut out of all of them.
“Is this you, Valen?” Drim asked the open room, knowing their captor would hear them. The pictures were almost certainly her, but the girl in them had a sizably different build and air about her.
“Yes, that’s me,” she answered. “It was crazy how quickly I shed the pounds once I became a Fiend. Who knew murder would be the best diet plan. Would have done it sooner if I knew about that perk. Then maybe he’d still be around too.” Xard guessed she had to be referring to her father, even though it was the mother cut out.
“So you killed your mother after she did something terrible to your father, then?” Xard deduced but asked for confirmation.
“Your questions are boring me now!” Valen was losing patience. “Do some more scenes for me, and I’ll answer whatever you want. This day is about you two after all, so forget the decor. It’s just some stuff that was leftover from our family home, and I wanted to get the feeling just right. Now get to relaxing!”
“You two just need to sit on the couch together and watch TV. I’ve already picked out something for you. That’s it, just a nice quiet intimate evening after a long day. I thought about putting candles to help set the mood, but that felt a bit overboard.”
The two boys sat down on the couch as instructed and the TV screen changed without them doing anything. A few moments later, the title card for a generic horror film appeared before the movie started fast-forwarding.
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“I’m not gonna make you guys watch the whole thing,” Valen informed them. “That’d take too long, and my goal isn’t to try your patience, or my patience for that matter. Ah, here we go.”
What followed was a fairly typical scene of the main character hiding from a killer as they stomped around and wrecked the place. Through stealth and a few tricks, the main character managed to escape, just barely, with their life. Overall, it wasn't a bad scene, doing a good job on building the tension and horror without relying on cheap thrills like jump scares. But still…
“Seriously! No reaction from you guys at all?!” Their captor was distraught at her foiled plan. “I wasn’t expecting you two to jump into eachothers arms from terror, though I may have been hoping for it, but you two didn’t so much as flinch!”
“Oh, were we supposed to?” Drim clearly hadn’t followed the thread. “Sorry, Kada shows us stuff like this all the time so we’re pretty numb to it, I guess.”
“Plus there was the incident very recently where he had to deal with actual ghosts in a haunted mansion,” Xard added. “After that, I doubt these films will ever have nearly as much effect.”
“Really, why haven’t I heard about that job yet?!” The two boys heard scribbling over the speaker. “One spooky haunted mansion fic coming soon. I hope I can get some chapters out before everyone else finds out about it. This is gonna be great! Gah, I can picture it already! But wait, I'm getting off track. Since the horror film didn’t work, it’s time for the backup. If not fear, let’s try inspiration!”
The men were now forced to watch the ending of a war tale. It was the final fight of a single soldier who had to defeat an entire enemy platoon so that he could get home. While a touch unrealistic, it was still enjoyable and presented in a way that the events could have been plausible.
“This is just our daily life…” Xard elaborated when Valen complained again about a lack of reactions.
“Yeah, I think I was in about three similar situations just last week,” Drim had to stifle a yawn that started to leak out, trying not to be rude.
“Fine then!” The movie changed once more. “If fear and inspiration don’t work, then we’ll just have to resort to tragic sadness! This is my last gambit. When you’re bawling in tears, just remember, you made me do this! And spoiler warning, the dog dies at the end!”
“Well, maybe if you told us what you were looking for, we could help you out,” Drim suggested after he and Xard shared a look that they really didn’t want to have to endure that movie.
“I just want some intimacy!” The speaker newly blew out from Valen’s ranting. “Just some closeness, a nice shared moment. A little gesture that says ‘hey, I’m glad you’re here with me as we experience this together.’ That shouldn’t be crossing the line, right? The chemistry between you two is great already, even when you two were fighting. But right now it’s not even like trying to get oil and water to mix. I can’t even get the caps off the bottles!”
“Okay, I think I get it,” Drim suddenly scooted over on the couch. He then wrapped his arm around Xard’s shoulder and pulled him in close. Xard suddenly found his head resting on Drim’s shoulder, his whole body now leaning against him. Maybe it was just the abruptness, but his heart started to flutter and he felt his face blush. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
“Oh Cosmos, yes!” The cameras placed around the room started zooming and adjusting themselves—a symphony of shutters clicking echoed around them. The two boys didn’t move for several minutes besides a little shuffling. Xard couldn’t help adjusting himself a bit to get more comfortably, but he immediately regretted it, since it just led to several more squees.
But they eventually stopped, and then they just heard scribbling again, meaning Valen was most likely writing something. “Can we move now?” Xard asked. He wasn’t particularly eager to move, but his anxiousness was swelling with each passing second.
“Oh, uhhh, sure,” it seemed Valen had gotten lost in her own little world and forgotten she was supposed to be some grand mastermind for a moment. “You guys can go ahead into the next set of changing rooms while I finish writing down my thoughts.”
“Wait a second,” Drim’s voice suddenly got more serious after the two boys separated from each other. “I believe you owe us an answer, Valen, since we completed your task. How did you become a Fiend?”
“Nnnnnnnngh, fine,” she reluctantly agreed. “It’s not that interesting. Most of it happened while I was away at college, so some of the information I got second hand, but the outcome was all that mattered anyways.”
“Basically, my dad caught my mom cheating one day so he filed for divorce. He was all set to win most of their stuff in the proceedings, but then my mom came out with some zjik allegations about him with forged proof. This led to him getting arrested and sent to prison with not a soul who believed him except for me.”
“That… uhh… he didn’t last long in there and took his own life after just a few weeks. So because of that, I snuck up behind my mother one night, stabbed her in the neck with a screwdriver, and she choked to death on her own blood. And now you know how I became a Fiend. Let’s move on!”