Chapter 119: 17.1.5.3
told from gabriel’s perspective. koen is giving deano affection the entire time raziel and gabriel discuss. koen had a crush on deano the entire time they were growing up but didn’t know how to say it. now with the class-j’s getting rid of any inhibitions koen’s crush is on full display. deano is taller than koen
Gabriel watched the spectacle on the floor from his armchair, one leg crossed over the other, his brandy cradled loosely in his fingers. The initial surprise had cooled into a settled, analytical fascination. He had recalibrated a weapon into a pet, and now the pet was, against all expectation, performing a new, unexpected trick. It was messy. It was emotionally noisy. But it was, undeniably, a result.
Koen was a study in relentless, tactile affection. He had not released Deano, nor did he seem to have any intention of doing so. He had maneuvered them so that his back was against the side of the divan, with Deano pulled sideways into the cradle of his legs and arms, effectively trapped in a nest of half-demon. Koen’s face was buried in the junction of Deano’s neck and shoulder, nuzzling, inhaling, occasionally planting a soft, open-mouthed kiss against the skin there. Every exhale was a contented sigh that ruffled Deano’s hair.
Deano, for his part, had ceased struggling.
He was taller, but currently folded like a broken ledger into Koen’s lap, his face a spectacular shade of crimson. He stared rigidly at the ceiling, arms stiff at his sides, as if by not participating he could deny the reality of Koen’s mouth on his neck. Every new kiss or nuzzle made him twitch, a full-body flinch he couldn’t suppress. “Koen, seriously,” he hissed, voice strained. “People are watching.”
“M’not,” Koen mumbled against his skin, the words slurred and warm. His hand came up to cradle the side of Deano’s face, thumb stroking his cheekbone with a clumsy reverence. “Just you. Always just you.” He nosed along Deano’s jawline, a predator inhaling its favorite scent. “You smell like before. Like plans and safe places.” The raw honesty of it, chemical-lubricated and pure, hung in the air between them.
Gabriel took a slow sip, turning the scene over in his mind. The hunter’s legendary single-mindedness had simply found a new target. It was almost elegant.
“Well,” Raziel said, drawing the word out. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, a delighted smile playing on his lips as he watched his celeset endure the affectionate siege. “This complicates the filing. Pleasantly, of course! But administratively, it’s a tangle.”
“Does it?” Gabriel asked, his tone mild. He kept his eyes on Koen, who was now running his fingers through Deano’s hair, utterly fascinated by its texture. “The parameters are unchanged. I have my celeset. You have yours. Their emotional states are stabilized, even enhanced.”
“You injected a targeted memory serum into a J-dosed subject to recreate a childhood bond that has now manifest as… this.” Raziel gestured vaguely at the pile of limbs on the floor. Deano yelped softly as Koen discovered his ear, peppering it with gentle, ticklish kisses. “They’re pinnates now, Gabriel. You know the regulations. Trying to separate them would be seen as causing deliberate distress. An ethical violation.”
“Who said anything about separation?” Gabriel let the question linger. The fire popped. Koen had moved on to simply holding Deano, arms locked around his chest, face pressed between his shoulder blades, breathing him in like a vital elixir. The possessive contentment radiating from the half-demon was palpable, a low hum in the room’s energy.
Raziel’s brows lifted. “You’re proposing a shared custody arrangement? For pinnates? The Committee on Domestic Bliss hasn’t ratified a new pinnate pair in a century. The paperwork is Byzantine.”
“Then it’s fortunate we are the bureaucracy,” Gabriel replied, a sharp edge of amusement in his voice. He finally looked at Raziel. “You enjoy his happiness. I enjoy my project’s stability. The solution is self-evident. We schedule overlaps. Extended visits. A shared calendar.” He shrugged, as if organizing the co-parenting of two domesticated mortals was a trivial clerical task. “It saves us both the trouble of sourcing additional social stimulation for them. They’ll entertain each other.”
On the rug, Deano had gone pliant, a surrender to the inevitable. Koen’s relentless affection was a force of nature, a warm, drugged tsunami that had eroded all his defenses. He’d brought a hand up to hesitantly cover one of Koen’s where it rested on his sternum. It was a small gesture, almost unconscious.
Koen seized on it. He made a soft, thrilled sound and laced their fingers together, squeezing hard. “You’re here,” he whispered again, as if the wonder of it was renewed every minute. “My clever Deano. Made all the good plans. Kept me safe.” The confession was murmured into the fabric of Deano’s tunic, forked by a faint, happy purr that vibrated through them both.
“See?” Raziel said, his tone softening into genuine warmth. “He adores him. It’s rather beautiful, in a primal way. All that ferocity turned to… this.”
Gabriel nodded once, a decision made. “Then it’s settled. We’ll draft the addendum to our custodial contracts. A three-day rotation, to start. Your place, then here.” His gaze returned to Koen, assessing the deep, tranquil bliss. The J-dose was performing flawlessly, intertwining with the returned memories to create this perfect, devoted creature. “It keeps him settled. A focused affection is easier to manage than a general, wandering neediness.”
“I’ll have my scribes draw up the preliminary documents,” Raziel agreed, standing. He glanced down at the pair. “Deano, darling. We’re leaving soon. You’ll see him again in three days.”
Deano’s head lifted from the rug. The flustered panic flooded back into his eyes, clashing with a new, desperate hope. “Three days?”
Koen’s embrace turned to iron. The purring stopped. “No,” he said, the word clear and thick. He pushed himself up, dragging Deano with him, refusing to let go. He looked directly at Gabriel, orange eyes wide and pleading, the pupils still blown from the drugs. “He stays. My Deano stays. He just got here.” It wasn’t a demand, but a pained, confused statement of fact, born from a heart that had just been reassembled and couldn’t bear a piece being removed.
Gabriel held that desperate gaze. He felt the jagged edge of potential distress, the first fissure in the placid facade he’d worked so hard to create. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, his voice dropping into that low, compelling register he used for commands.
“Petal,” he said, the endearment a silken leash. “Look at me.” Koen’s eyes remained locked on his, trembling. “He will come back. You have my word. But he must go with Raziel now. You will be good, and you will wait, and you will see him again.” Each clause was a stone, laid to rebuild the wall of compliance. “Do you understand?”
Koen’s breath hitched. He looked at Deano, his face crumpling with a child’s raw sorrow. He gave one frantic, final squeeze, then loosened his arms, his hands sliding down to clutch desperately at Deano’s wrists. “You come back,” he said, voice cracking. “You promise. You’re my best plan.”
Deano, moved by something older than fear or protocol, turned in the loose circle of Koen’s arms. He cupped Koen’s blushing, freckled face in his hands, forcing him to hold his gaze. “I promise,” he said, and the words felt terrifyingly true. “Three days. I’ll be here.”
He leaned in and, with a courage that seemed to surprise even him, pressed a firm, brief kiss to Koen’s forehead. Then he extracted himself, standing on unsteady legs. The silver chain felt cold and heavy against his neck.
Koen remained on his knees on the fur rug, watching him go, his whole body aching with the loss. He wrapped his arms around himself, a substitute embrace. The happy dopiness was gone, replaced by a quiet, heartsick yearning that filled the space between the fireplace and the door.
Gabriel watched it all, calculating. The emotional stakes were higher now, tethered to this pinnate bond. It was a vulnerability, but also a lever of exquisite control. He had not just a pet, but a heart to hold hostage. He found the prospect deeply, pragmatically satisfying.
“Three days,” he repeated softly to Koen, a reminder and a covenant. The hunter didn’t respond, just stared at the closed door, already waiting.
The silence after the door shut was a physical thing, thick and cold where Deano’s warmth had been. Koen stayed on his knees, arms locked around his own ribs, as if holding his body together. His breathing was too loud in the quiet room. Gabriel watched the line of his shoulders, the tremor in his clenched hands. This was the precipice. The raw, unmedicated grief of a creature that loved too simply and too hard.
“He’s coming back, petal,” Gabriel said, his voice devoid of its earlier compulsion, just a flat statement of fact. It didn’t land. Koen shuddered, a low whine building in his throat. The sound was purely animal, a wounded thing. He rocked forward, his forehead pressing into the fur of the rug. The J-dose was still there, pushing for happy cuddles, but it was smothering under a tidal wave of primal separation anxiety. This was unacceptable.
Gabriel stood, the movement fluid and silent. He went to the walnut cabinet again. This time, the vial he selected was a pale, milky blue. A Class-E. Sedatives and assorted relaxing agents. He’d hoped to avoid stacking compounds so soon after the memory infusion, but the alternative—a distraught, potentially destructive half-demon riding a crash of emotional and chemical imbalance—was far messier.
He approached Koen from behind. The hunter didn’t flinch, lost in his private agony. “This will help the time pass,” Gabriel murmured, not asking. The needle slid into the muscle of Koen’s neck, a familiar sting. Koen gasped, his head jerking up. He looked over his shoulder, orange eyes swimming with betrayal and confusion. “Shhh,” Gabriel soothed, depressing the plunger. “Just a little help to wait. For both of us.”
The effect was not instantaneous, but it was swift. The tension bled from Koen’s frame in a slow, visible wave. The whine cut off. His rigid arms loosened, falling slack to his sides. He blinked, slowly, the sharp edges of his panic dissolving into a thick, woolly haze. He slumped sideways onto the rug, limbs arranging themselves bonelessly. A silly, distant smile touched his lips.
“There,” Gabriel said, standing over him. “Better.”
gabriel had to put koen on class-e xenodrugs (sedatives and assorted relaxing agents) just to keep koen calm while waiting for raziel and deano to return. when deano and raziel do return koen is drugged out of his mind, stupid and giggly, gabriel states it was a necessity. koen is just happy to see deano again, instantly pulling deano into a pile of cushions for cuddling. deano is still embarrassed that this is happening in front of the two angels but cuddling with koen (who thanks to his lineage is basically a walking space heater) is amazing
The three days passed in a blur of chemical twilight for Koen. He existed in a soft, padded room of his own mind. He was aware of Gabriel moving around him, of being guided to a plush bed, of food placed in his mouth that tasted like nothing. He spent hours tracing the patterns in the stone ceiling, giggling softly at nothing. The desperate ache for Deano was still there, but it was submerged, a heavy, fuzzy weight at the bottom of a deep, warm lake. He couldn’t reach it. He just floated.
On the morning of the third day, Gabriel administered a lighter dose. “Company today, petal,” he said, brushing Koen’s ashen hair from his forehead. Koen’s eyes, hazy and unfocused, tried to latch onto the words. A vague, pleasant excitement bubbled up. Something good was happening. He couldn’t remember what.
The day was a series of smeared impressions: the tart taste of something citrus placed on his tongue, the heavy drag of a wool blanket over his shoulders, the distant, melodic sound of Gabriel’s voice dictating correspondence to some unseen scribe. Time had no edges. He existed in a warm, slow river of nothing much.
A sharp, metallic click cut through the haze.
It was the door latch. The sound was a key turning in the fog. Koen, who was lying on his side watching dust motes dance in a sunbeam, went very still. His breathing hitched. Something deep, beneath the milky calm of the Class-Es, twitched. A neural pathway, recently rebuilt, fired a dim signal. Company today. The words echoed in the wool-stuffed silence of his head.
The door swung open. Two figures were framed in the light of the hall. Koen’s orange eyes, pupils wide and dark, slid past the taller, blurry form of Raziel. They locked onto the second, slimmer shape. The fuzzy weight at the bottom of his lake of sedation stirred, then surged upwards, breaking the placid surface with the force of a leviathan.
“Deano,” Koen breathed. The word was a wet, giggly sigh of pure revelation.
He was moving before he could think, which was his default state even without xenodrugs. The blanket tangled around his legs as he scrambled up from the nest of cushions Gabriel had placed him in. He staggered, the room performing a gentle roll, but his regeneration and hunter’s reflexes compensated with a clumsy, lurching grace. He crossed the space in three uneven strides.
Deano had time for one sharp intake of breath, his eyes wide, before Koen collided with him.
It wasn’t a tackle this time, but a full-body engulfment. Koen’s arms wound around him, pulling him tight against a chest that radiated a formidable, demonic heat. Koen buried his face in Deano’s hair, inhaling with a shuddering, hungry sound. “Youcamebackyoucameback,” he mumbled, the words slurring together into a single joyous chant. He was grinning so hard his sharp canines dug into his own lower lip. The Class-Es made everything soft and funny and good, and Deano was here, which was the best, funniest, softest thing.
“Yeah, I— oh, wow, okay,” Deano stammered, his arms pinned to his sides. The embarrassment was instant and hot, flooding his cheeks as he felt the focused attention of the two arch angels from across the room. He gave a weak, half-hearted push against Koen’s solid chest. It was like pushing a warm, affectionate brick wall. “Koen, come on, we’re… people are…”
“M’not people,” Koen giggled, the logic making perfect, drugged sense to him. He leaned back just enough to look at Deano’s face, his own expression one of slack, wondrous adoration. “I’m yours. You’re mine. That’s the plan.” He punctuated this declaration by planting a loud, smacking kiss on Deano’s forehead.
Gabriel observed from his desk, a stylus poised over a parchment. “You see?” he said to Raziel, his tone one of dry practicality. “A necessity. The alternative was three days of that distressing, pining agitation. This is far more manageable.”
Koen wasn’t listening. He was too busy steering a protesting, flustered Deano across the room by the shoulders, his movements a drugged, determined waddle. “Cushions,” he announced, as if disclosing a brilliant tactical discovery. “Soft. Here.” He gave a gentle, insistent shove. Deano’s knees buckled, and he landed with a soft whump in the deep pile of velvet cushions nestled in the room’s corner, a designated lounging spot that now served as Koen’s primary objective.
Koen tumbled in after him, a controlled collapse of limbs and heat. He immediately arranged them, pulling Deano back against his chest, wrapping himself around him like a living blanket. Deano stiffened, acutely aware of the two celestial beings who were undoubtedly watching this entire undignified process. “Koen, for Fate’s sake,” he hissed, trying to elbow the solid warmth behind him. It was like nudging a sun-baked boulder. “They’re right there. Can you just… be still?”
“M’still,” Koen murmured, nuzzling the back of Deano’s neck. His breath was a hot, pleasant tickle. He wasn’t still at all. One hand came up to cradle Deano’s jaw, thumb stroking his cheek with a repetitive, soothing rhythm. The other arm was a firm band across Deano’s chest, holding him secure. “You’re here. This is good. The best.”
And despite the searing embarrassment, Deano felt his body betray him. The tension began to leach from his muscles, drawn out by that relentless, demonic warmth. Koen was like a furnace, radiating a dry, penetrating heat that seeped into Deano’s bones, melting the cold knot of anxiety in his stomach. It was involuntary, this slow surrender. A deep, shivering sigh escaped him. His head lolled back against Koen’s shoulder. It was amazing. It was also mortifying.
Deano could feel the weight of their gazes like physical pressure, a spotlight on every reluctant sigh and helpless shift he made into Koen's furnace-like warmth. The comfort was real, a deep, muscle-melting heat that made his bones feel liquid, but his mind was a scraped-raw mess of exposed nerves. He was a spectacle, and the exhaustion from days of dread and this fresh, seeping embarrassment was a tight band around his skull.
"Raziel," Deano said, the name cracking out of him. He didn't look over, just stared at the stone wall across the room. Koen hummed questioningly against his neck. "I can't do this with you both watching. Just… can you juice us? The Class-A. Right now." He finally turned his head, meeting his owner’s light blue eyes. "Please. I want to be stupid. I don't want to think anymore."
Raziel's expression brightened with immediate, delighted comprehension. "Oh, what a wonderful idea! A shared euphoric state will synchronize you so beautifully." He was already moving, his robes whispering as he retrieved a slim silver case from within them. Gabriel watched, steepling his fingers, a look of clinical interest on his flawless face.
"Administration during emotional peak is noted for deepening placid bonds," Gabriel mused aloud, as if recording a memo. Raziel snapped the case open, revealing two pre-filled injectors filled with a fluid that shimmered with internal, pearlescent light. Deano didn't flinch as the cool tip met his neck; he welcomed the brief sting. Koen giggled when his came, a soft, airy sound. "Sparkles," Koen slurred, already miles ahead in his chemically-altered head.
The change in Deano was a slow, rising tide. First, a heavy, golden laziness anchored his limbs to the cushions. Then the world softened, its sharp edges blurring into a warm, pleasant haze. The grating self-consciousness evaporated, replaced by a glowing, fizzy contentment that started in his chest and spread outwards. Every sensation amplified; the velvet beneath him was a universe of texture, and Koen’s heat against his side became a radiant, perfect sun.
He turned, moving with a syrupy slowness, and looked down at Koen. The hunter was already gone, surrendered to the potent cocktail swimming in his system. Koen lay sprawled, a loose-limbed wreck of bliss, his orange eyes half-lidded and unfocused, a slack, endless smile on his face. He breathed in slow, deep draughts, incapable of anything more than faint tremors of pleasure.
"Hey," Deano whispered, his own voice a low, slow rumble he barely recognized. All his clever plans, all his anxious calculations, dissolved. There was only this. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to Koen's forehead, then the bridge of his nose, marveling at the dusting of freckles there. Koen made a happy, choked sound in his throat, but didn't move, couldn't move. "You're so warm," Deano murmured, the words thick with awe. He shifted, curling his body around Koen's, draping an arm over his chest, nuzzling into the hollow of his throat. He inhaled deeply—the scent was clean skin, hearth-smoke, and something inherently, demonically wild—and it was intoxicating.
Deano became the architect of their affection. He traced the lines of Koen's face, combed his fingers through the ashen black hair, kissed the sharp curve of his jaw. Each touch was a revelation, a point of brilliant, amplified sensation. Koen simply received it.
"Love you," Koen breathed out, the words fuzzy and unmoored from any conscious intent, just another pleasant sensation floating in the air. Deano caught them, holding them in his drugged heart.
"Love you, too," Deano mumbled back, his lips moving against Koen's skin. He didn't analyze it, didn't fluster. It was simply true, a fact in this warm, new world. He settled more heavily against him, a contented weight, actively seeking every point of contact. Koen was his cuddly, immobile space heater, and Deano was the happy vine wrapping around him, soaking in the radiant comfort.
From their chairs, Gabriel and Raziel observed in comfortable silence. The fire popped. The only other sounds were the slow shuffle of fabric and the quiet, contented noises from the cushion pile. "Look at them," Raziel sighed, a smile in his voice. "Perfectly synchronized. No distress, no complicated emotional feedback. Just pure, simple bonding."
Gabriel nodded, his sharp eyes missing nothing. "The pinnate dynamic is self-regulating. This simplifies long-term management considerably." He mentally adjusted Koen's upcoming dosage schedules. Incorporating shared Class-A sessions during pinnate visitation windows showed immense promise for sustained behavioral stability. It was efficient.
Deano, lost in a labyrinth of pleasant touch, had forgotten they were there. He was focused on the steady beat of Koen's heart under his palm, the rise and fall of his chest. Koen, submerged in a deeper chemical ocean, floated in a cradle of passive joy. He managed a slow, heavy blink, his gaze swimming until it found Deano's face. A wider, dopey grin split his features. "Best," he whispered, the word trailing off as his eyes drifted shut again, not in sleep, but in utter, euphoric surrender.
deano mentally exhausted from being embarrassed asks raziel to pump him and koen full of class-a xenodrugs (Induces feelings of euphoria, heightens the sense of touch, and makes the subject sleepy and lazy) so they can be cuddly and stupid together. raziel is more than happy to oblige. the pair is now stupid and giggly together. gabriel and raziel enjoy watching their celesets be so cute. deano is now the one being actively affectionate, loving his cuddly space heater. koen just lies there unable to really move because he’s way more drugged than deano