Archive of Our Own

Kabru scrolls through his phone.

On his laptop screen, the cursor blinks against the open document. The only words he’s managed to add to his thesis in the past hour are, “Flamela, et. al.’s research suggests that,” and he tries to convince himself he still remembers where he was going with that sentence.

He swipes past another overly-edited video of a tourist exaggeratedly eating coin bugs but pauses to watch the first few seconds of a self-proclaimed “ghost hunter” hissing “holy shit, holy shit, holy shit” as she shakily films what looks like the ghost of a goldfish.

This is valuable research. His thesis is about trauma reactions to monsters, after all.

The goldfish ghost turns to look at the camera with its bulging eyes and the “ghost hunter” shrieks and drops her camera.

Kabru scrolls to the next video.

This one doesn’t have nearly the same level of theatrics, but it still makes Kabru pause. The man in the video is an average sort of handsome, and Kabru lets his eyes trace the man’s jawline, without paying much attention to the video itself. In the corner of the screen, the view count ticks steadily upward, which Kabru suspects is at least somewhat related to how well the man’s chest fills out his shirt.

“ – but monsters are still an important part of the ecosystem,” the man says, and Kabru’s ears finally tune in.

Briefly, Kabru considers scrolling past. The guy doesn’t particularly look like a “save the baby griffins” type, but Kabru supposes looks can be deceiving, and he’s not really in the mood to hear the same five monster-lover talking points yet again.

The top two buttons of the man’s shirt are undone, and Kabru can’t quite muster the motivation to scroll to the next video.

“One of the main reasons carnivorous monsters attack people is because adventurers kill more monsters than they need to,” the man continues, and Kabru lets out a little snort. “This disrupts the food chain and depletes the monsters’ natural food source.”

Kabru’s about to move on, when the man adds, “Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t defend yourself.”

Kabru’s thumb hovers over the phone screen.

“It’s best to avoid killing monsters when you can, but that’s not always possible,” the man says. There’s a look in his eyes that makes Kabru sit up a little straighter. “Monsters aren’t your friends. I know a guy who thought he’d managed to tame a Kelpie, but it was actually just waiting for him to let down his guard enough so it could eat him.” The man pauses, then adds, “We had to kill that one.”

The tone of voice he uses sends a shiver down Kabru’s spine, and he finds his eyes glued to the video for a different reason than before. Most people who defend monsters, he’s found, know shit about them. They live in sheltered cities, far away from any actual dungeons, and the closest they’ve come to seeing a real monster is in an Elven-made VR game.

They’ve never died from a basilisk’s fangs in their throat.

Kabru taps over to the comment section of the video. Normally he avoids them, but this might actually be relevant to his research. Are there other people who have actually been attacked by monsters and still agree with this guy? Is it some sort of trauma response, or –

wait lol isn’t this the dragon dildo guy

Kabru blinks at the top rated comment.

He reads it again.

Then, he navigates to the video creator’s profile.

He’s not sure what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a sea of thumbnails featuring decidedly explicit looking toys. He finds his eyes glued to an image of a bulbous, fleshy stick, which is apparently supposed to be a replica of a wyrm dick. A wyrm dick.

The profile description helpfully states: I’m Laios and I rate the anatomical accuracy of monster sex toys.

Kabru beings to regret not just working on his thesis, like he was supposed to.

Instead of going back to his document, though, he taps on a video. The wyrm video.

“Hi, everyone,” the guy – Laios – says. He smiles at the camera, but Kabru’s eyes are glued to the toy in his hand. “There have been a lot of requests for more dragon videos, so today I’m reviewing a wyrm toy made by – ” He picks up the discarded packaging to check the label. “ – Monster Mate.”

The dildo looks, frankly, grotesque. It’s a purplish brown color and must have been made with at least some magic, because it looks far too fleshy – and uncomfortably slimy – to be silicone or plastic.

“Now, the first thing we have to talk about is the size,” Laios says. He holds up the toy, fist firmly gripping the base of it, and Kabru has to resist the urge to shift awkwardly in his chair. “I went over this before in my red dragon video, but they’re much bigger than most people realize. I bought the biggest toy the website had listed, but as you can see, it’s not nearly to scale.”

Kabru blinks. The toy is thick enough that Laios’s fingers can’t even wrap all the way around it, and the length is nothing to sneeze at.

“Adult wyrms are generally between fifteen and nineteen meters long,” Laois continues, “so an accurate model would probably have to be about this long.”

He holds his hands apart to indicate the size and Kabru has never found a mental image more unappealing.

“Which is pretty small, once you think about it,” Laois goes on. He leans in a little closer to the camera, probably unconsciously, and there’s a glint in his eyes that makes Kabru a little uneasy. “Proportionally, dragons have fairly small penises. Actually, I’m using the term penis, but dragon genitalia are more similar to the sort of hemipenises that sea serpents and quetzalcoatls have, except that dragons have one protruding organ instead of two dual ones – ”

Kabru checks the time stamp on the video and is mildly alarmed to find that they’re barely a third of the way through. Laios seems to add ten new facts about dragon penises to the video with every second that passes. Before today, Kabru hadn’t even known that dragons had penises, and he’d been more than happy with that.

“ – but other than the scale, it’s actually pretty accurate,” Laios says, breaking Kabru from his thoughts. Laios is focused on the toy now, instead of the camera, and he pumps the toy in his fist. It makes a wet noise, loud enough for the camera to pick up, and Kabru feels a sudden, uncomfortable heat in the pit of his stomach.

Laios takes his hand off the toy and shows the camera his slick palm, and continues, “Wyrms secrete a thick liquid which acts as a barrier against the poison gas they produce, so that it doesn’t get absorbed back into their skin.” He rubs his fingers together, testing the feeling of the secretions. “I think this is just normal lubricant, but they’ve got the consistency right.”

Kabru is ninety-nine percent sure that the self-lubrication is not for accuracy.

“I will say, though, it’s one of the messier toys I’ve tried,” Laios adds. As if that weren’t obvious from the lube dripping down his fingers. “If you want to try a dragon with a similar texture but don’t want to deal with as much clean-up, I’d recommend trying the eastern dragon toy I reviewed in my last video. Like this toy, it’s not as big as it should be for complete accuracy, but it’s a lot better than most of the ‘dragon dildos’ you’ll find online.”

He says the words ‘dragon dildo’ with clear distaste, as if he actually thinks that people who buy monster sex toys care about the anatomical accuracy of what they’re fucking themselves with. Well, people other than him, at least.

Kabru glances at the video view count.

… most people are watching this video ironically, right? Like he is.

“ – messy can be good, though,” Laios says, and Kabru’s brain screeches to a halt. “Wyrms tend to have a low fertilization rate, so their natural secretions allow them to mate for longer without pulling out. In order to properly recreate the wyrm mating cycle, you should use this toy for about an hour on a rainy day in early spring.”

Kabru is a mature adult and can honestly admit that he’s probably had more sex than most people. His face still flushes hot. He is suddenly, uncomfortably aware that he’s watching this video on a Tuesday afternoon, and he’s supposed to TA a class in – he checks the time – about an hour.

Then again, judging by the lighting in the video, Laios is filming in broad daylight, too.

Briefly, Kabru wonders how far in advance Laios tests out the toys, before making a review.

“I’d definitely recommend this model for anyone interested in accurate dragon toys,” Laios concludes, “and I’ll probably be reviewing more toys from this manufacturer in the future. But I still think my favorite dragon toy is Playful Beast’s green dragon one, both for accuracy and for – ” Laios’s cheeks go slightly pink “ – personal taste.”

Kabru stares.

When the algorithm suggests he watch the green dragon review next, he lets it run.

---

This is research.

Extremely relevant research.

Or, at least that’s what Kabru tries to tell himself when he gets the notification that Laios has uploaded a new video.

He glances over at his bedroom door. He can hear Rin banging around in the living room, in a way that suggests she’s doing her kickboxing exercises, and it would be best not to disturb her. At least it means she’ll be occupied for a while, so Kabru puts his headphones in and then taps on the video.

“Hi, everyone,” Laios greets the camera. “I know my last video was a little different than usual, but we’re back to toy reviews this week. I’ve received a lot of requests for it, so today I’m reviewing Monster Mate’s kraken vibrator.”

He holds up a thick, reddish white tentacle, and Kabru’s throat feels suddenly dry.

In the past week, Kabru’s watched every single one of Laios’s sex toy reviews.

For research purposes, of course. His area of study is human psychological reactions to monsters, and although technically his thesis is specifically about trauma responses, he’s not entirely sure this isn’t a trauma reaction of some sort.

“I don’t normally review vibrators, because the movement is usually inaccurate,” Laios continues, “but a lot of you recommended it for the spell quality, and I have to say, it really does move like a kraken.” He squeezes the base of the tentacle, and it starts twisting around in his fist, and he adds, “The grip isn’t as tight, but maybe that’s because the only kraken I’ve encountered was pretty angry at the time.”

It’s morbidly fascinating, the way Laios talks about monsters. Just as in the first – non-sex toy review – video Kabru had watched, Laios doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the danger of monsters, and although he rarely states it explicitly, it’s clear a good portion of his knowledge about monsters comes from seeing them up close.

Kabru might not have proof that Laios has monster related trauma, but there’s only one way to see a monster up close and live to talk about it. Violence breeds trauma, doesn’t it?

“I know when I said I’d be reviewing this, some people told me the size wasn’t accurate,” Laios says. He’s not really holding the toy anymore, so much as it’s wrapped itself around his hand. “But I actually think it’s really well proportioned. Although it’s true that overall krakens are pretty big, their tentacles are narrower at the tip. This could maybe be a little thicker at the base, but the way it starts out thin and gets thicker is accurate.”

Hypersexuality can also be a symptom of psychological trauma.

Kabru knows that just by theorizing about Laios, he’s overreaching. It’s not like he knows Laios. He’s just watched a few (or a lot) of Laios’s videos. But normal people don’t review monster sex toys online, do they?

“I think the texture is pretty good too,” Laios continues. He squeezes the tentacle and it pulses in his fist, the color fluctuating between red and white. “I wasn’t really sure which firmness to get, so I went with medium, but soft probably would have been more accurate. The attention to detail with the coloring is amazing, though!”

Laios’s eyes shimmer with excitement, and Kabru shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

“See this?” Laios asks, indicating the red and white pattern pulsing across the toy. “Male krakens create various color patterns across their skin during mating in order to attract females, and then when one gets close enough, they use their shortest tentacle to deposit a sperm packet onto them.” Laios pauses, then adds, “Although apparently it’s pretty difficult to distinguish the sex of a kraken just by looking at it, so most krakens will stick sperm packets on any other kraken that gets too close, regardless of whether that kraken can actually produce eggs.”

This, Kabru thinks, is probably the weirdest part of Laios’s reviews.

Somehow, despite reviewing some of the kinkiest toys that the internet can produce, the way Laios talks about them is almost sexless. It’s all about accuracy and recreating mating patterns, and sometimes Kabru wonders if Laios even uses the toys for their intended purpose.

But then Laios will make an innocuous but damning comment that erases all doubt from Kabru’s mind.

“The one disappointment is that this toy doesn’t actually deposit sperm packets,” Laios continues, and Kabru desperately resists the urge to grind his palm between his legs.

There’s a loud banging on his bedroom door and he nearly jumps out of his skin.

“What?” Kabru snaps. He hopes the annoyance in his voice covers its hoarseness, as he hastily exits out of the video. His face feels too hot, and his fingers unsteady, and he curses himself for feeling so wrongfooted by a video that’s probably closer to a nature documentary than porn.

“We’re going out for dinner,” Rin announces, from the other side of the door.

Kabru blinks.

“I’m working on my thesis,” he yells back.

The door swings open, and Kabru resists the urge to hide his phone. The video’s not even open anymore. Instead, he slides down in his chair, and tries to look like he’s been hunched over his laptop for the past hour.

“You’ve been working on your thesis all week,” Rin huffs. She marches across the room in large strides, and Kabru wills the incriminating flush on his face to recede. “You need to get out of the house.”

“I’ve been having trouble with this section,” Kabru protests, which is true enough.

Rin narrows her eyes at him. She flicks her gaze to the open word document, full of half-finished bullet points, and then looks back at Kabru and says, “Fine. Then we’ll go somewhere that will help you with your thesis.”

Kabru laughs awkwardly. Rin’s not the type to joke, but maybe she’s trying something new.

Before Kabru can ask what Rin means by that, though, she’s pushing him out of his chair and herding him from the apartment. He barely has time to grab his wallet before she has him out the door, and briefly, he finds himself wishing that he hadn’t suggested she pick up a hobby for stress relief. Or that he’d at lest suggested something like cooking instead of martial arts.

It’s not until they’re in front of the restaurant that Kabru realizes what Rin meant about ‘helping’ with his thesis.

If he had a gold coin for every time someone told him he should try Senshi’s, he’d be a very rich man. They seem to think that because his research is related to monsters, he must actually be interested in them, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Senshi’s Dungeon Diner may be different from most of the tourist traps peddling monster cuisine for shock value, but Kabru would be happy to live his life without taking even the smallest nibble of monster.

The mere thought makes him queasy, and he says, “Rin – ” but she just gives him a narrow-eyed look and pushes through the door.

Maybe this is revenge for the time he’d gotten drunk and kissed her – and forgot that he still had an illusion cast on him that made him look like a merman (and not the attractive kind).

Kabru hesitates in front of the restaurant door.

After a moment of indecision, though, he sighs and follows Rin. Maybe he can feign a stomachache and they can leave before he has to actually eat anything. Depending on what the food looks like, he might not even have to use his acting skills.

“One for dinner?” someone asks, as Kabru pushes through the door.

“Two, actually,” Kabru says. He plasters a friendly smile on his face as he looks over at the waiter –

– and then freezes.

“It’ll probably be about a twenty minute wait, if you want a table,” Laios says. There’s a black apron tied around his waist, and his shirt sleeves are pushed up to reveal his forearms, and all Kabru can think about is the tentacle toy snaking itself between his fingers.

Laios didn’t upload that video right before coming to work, did he?

“ – if that would be okay with you?”

Kabru realizes that both Rin and Laios are looking at him expectantly.

“That’s fine,” Kabru says, with his most charming smile.

Rin doesn’t give him any suspicious looks, so it must be a good enough answer. Laios leads them over to two seats at the end of the bar, and Kabru manages to get up onto the tall barstool without making a fool of himself, but he has to bite his lip to keep from laughing as Rin has to hop to get up onto it.

She glares at him, and he politely pretends not to notice the pink on her cheeks.

“Here’s the drink list,” Laios says, leaning over to hand Kabru a sheet of paper. He’s taller than Kabru would have guessed from the videos. “The food menu is on the chalkboard over there.”

He points at the wall behind the bar, and Kabru follows his finger.

“All of our ingredients are locally sourced from the dungeon, so our menu changes daily, based on what we’re able to catch or harvest,” Laios explains. “I’ll give you a moment to look over the menu, but I’ll be back to answer any questions you might have.”

“Thank you,” Kabru replies, once again trying for charming. He smiles at Laios, which has the added benefit of letting him focus on something other than the horrifying menu.

He watches Laios leave, but when he turns back to look at Rin, he realizes he probably shouldn’t have.

“Keep your pants on,” Rin huffs, and buries her face in the drink menu.

“You dragged me out here to cheer me up, didn’t you?” Kabru asks, and this time the smile tugging at his lips is more genuine. “I’m feeling cheered up.”

Rin huffs, but Kabru can tell she’s pleased.

The challenge now is the menu.

Rin’s monopolizing the drink menu, so Kabru turns to the chalkboard instead. He scans it for anything that might just contain normal ingredients, but even the plant based dishes have things like mandrake in them. He struggles to keep a neutral expression as he goes further down the menu, past the tentacle gnocchi, mandrake and basilisk omelet, and mandrake kakiage.

He’s definitely not eating basilisk.

Hopefully the drink menu is normal.

“You know, it was your idea to come here,” Kabru says, once Rin has passed off the drink menu to him and is instead eyeing the dishes listed on the chalkboard. “We could just get drinks.”

Not that the drinks are too much better, now that he’s taking a look at them. How did they even manage to get orc-made wine?

“I’m having the gnocchi,” Rin says. Kabru wonders if she’s trying to spite him.

Before he can reply, though, a voice says, “Excellent choice!”

Kabru only barely manages not to jump, and when he glances over his shoulder, he finds Laios behind him. Laios jots down something in his notebook, and asks, “How about you?”

I’m good, is what Kabru wants to say, but instead he manages, “What do you recommend?”

He regrets the question as soon as he asks it.

“All of Senshi’s dishes are delicious!” Laios exclaims. His eyes brighten in the same way they do when he’s talking about a particularly accurate dildo, and Kabru hates that he knows this. “But I’d personally have to recommend the living armor!”

Which was number one on the list of dishes Kabru did not want to eat.

“I’m partial to the grilled living armor, but the dwarf-style stir fry is also really good,” Laios continues, and it’s hard to tell if his cheeks are flushed with excitement, or if it’s just a trick of the pub lighting. “It has a really nice, subtle flavor. We don’t have it on the menu often, but we managed to hit the mating season just right this year, so – ”

Kabru doesn’t manage to catch anything Laios says after the word ‘mating.’ It rattles around his head like a loose screw, which is actually not a bad descriptor for it. Laios’s videos have probably warped something in his mind, if the mere mention of monsters mating is enough to have him staring like an idiot and trying not to think about how Laios had looked while describing kraken sperm transfer.

It’s not until Laios beams at him that Kabru realizes he must have said something in agreement, and Laios is off towards the kitchen before Kabru can find the words to cancel the order.

Rin looks at him like he’s an idiot.

He resists the urge to bury his face in his hands and wonders how he’s supposed to pretend to enjoy chewing on a hunk of metal. Is it even possible to eat living armor?

Before he can start devising a plan to sneak out the bathroom window, though, a chilled pint of ale appears in front of him.

“It’s not on the house,” the bartender announces, poking a finger in Kabru’s direction. For a moment, Kabru wonders what a child is doing running the bar, before he realizes that the man is a half-foot. “But you look like you need it.” The bartender pauses, then adds, “And it goes well with living armor.”

“Thanks,” is the most Kabru can manage.

---

Kabru is drunk.

Or maybe not quite drunk.

Tipsy, at the very least.

He collapses onto his bed face first when he finally makes it back to his room, and he tries to ignore the heat on his cheeks. He tells himself that it’s from the three pints of ale he had, but a small voice in the back of his mind reminds him of his relatively high alcohol tolerance, and how he still can’t get the image of Laios out of his head.

It doesn’t mean anything, not really. He can’t stop thinking about Laios in the same way he can’t stop thinking about monsters and trauma – morbidly fascinated, even though the deeper he digs, the more painful it is.

He’d spent the whole night at the restaurant trying to catch Laios’s eye, but the only time he’d managed to talk to Laios was when Laios had brought their food over, and even then, it hadn’t really been a conversation. Instead, it had been a good five minutes of Laios explaining living armor physiology, while Kabru tried to figure out if he could push his food around his plate so that people wouldn’t be able to tell that he hadn’t eaten any.

Rin had stared at him until he took a bite.

It was stupidly delicious.

He’d eaten the whole thing and sort of hates himself for it now.

Kabru rolls over onto his back and digs his phone out of his pocket. He taps around on it for a few moments, until he has the video from earlier back up on the screen, and then hits play.

“ – deposit sperm packets,” video Laios says. He’s wearing a different shirt than he was at the restaurant, Kabru observes absently, which probably means this wasn’t filmed today. “I know some of you don’t like messy toys, but I think it adds to the realism.”

Before he can think better of it, Kabru slips a hand into his pants.

“It’s also waterproof!” Laios adds excitedly. Kabru’s alcohol-sluggish thoughts meander, and he wonders if Laios’s coworkers know about the reviews. He wonders if Laios had given even a second thought to uploading a tentacle vibrator review before clocking in for his day job. Laios continues, “In fact, the instructions say to immerse the toy in water regularly to recharge the mana. If you let it dry out too much, the spell will die and it’ll turn white, just like an actual kraken.”

In the video, Laios prattles on about the toy, and an image slowly develops in Kabru’s mind: Laios lying in a bathtub, his legs spread and knees hooked over the sides of the tub, the tentacle pulsing in his hand as he –

It’s not until he’s come that Kabru realizes the video has ended.

“What the fuck am I doing?” he mutters to the ceiling.

---

The reason this has gotten out of hand, Kabru decides, is because he hasn’t gotten any answers.

Laios is an anomaly. His interest in monsters is clearly not just intellectual curiosity and he claims to love monsters, but he’s completely fine with killing and even eating them. He has some sort of sexual attraction to them, but in his videos, he only ever talks about the toys in terms of their accuracy, and Kabru still knows next to nothing about why Laios finds monsters attractive.

Kabru has a whole list of questions he’d ask Laios if he could – but that’s just the problem. He’d gone back to Senshi’s a few days after the first time, in the hopes that he could catch Laios’s attention and have a proper conversation, but the diner had been just as busy as the last time. Kabru had sat at the bar and nursed a pint of ale for as long as he could, but even as the dinner rush had started to wind down, whenever he’d tried to catch Laios’s eye, Laios would be busy with something else.

Eventually the bartender had started eyeing him suspiciously and he’d been forced to close his tab and slink out before he was kicked out instead.

Which leads him to his second option.

Kabru braces himself and then taps on the livestream link.

“ – a lot of you today,” Kabru hears, as the video starts.

Laios smiles at the camera, and Kabru’s heart rate increases. It’s probably just nerves.

He looks away from Laios’s face and then pauses as he notices the background. Normally, the only thing in the background of Laios’s videos is a bland white wall, but today’s camera angle reveals more of the room. Past Laios’s shoulder, Kabru can see part of a bookshelf, crammed full of books and nick-nacks. He can’t quite make out the titles on the spines, but he’d bet ten gold that all of them are about monsters.

Laios shifts and the camera angle moves too, and for a moment, the frame is filled with a burnt-orange color. After a moment, Kabru recognizes it as a blanket, worn and slightly rumpled – but there’s something lying on it.

 Something that looks suspiciously phallic.

Kabru wonders if Laios just finished filming a review, or if he’d just finished… the testing phase.

The camera readjusts so that Laios appears in the frame again, the bookshelf behind him, and Kabru realizes with sudden clarity that Laios must be sitting on his bed.

“ – can get started,” Laios says. Kabru tries to shift his focus back to Laios and does his best to ignore the heat on his cheeks. “So recently people have been sending me illustrations of their own original toy designs, and I thought it might be fun to review them together.”

Laios pauses for a moment, squinting at this screen, and Kabru can hear a mouse clicking.

“If I can figure out how to pull them up,” Laios says, half to himself.

A wave of comments pop up in the corner of the screen, and Laios glances at them, and says, “Like this?”

He clicks around for a few more seconds, and then a browser window pops up on the screen. He manages to minimize it enough so that his face is still visible in half of the screen, and Kabru tries not to notice as the comment section goes from IT tips to… well.

The first design is of a merman dildo, and a lot of people would like Laios to review it. Or would like to help him review it.

“This one was submitted by – ” Laios checks something on his screen. “ – fishsticks.”

Well. Kabru’s certainly seen worse usernames in Laios’s comment section.

“The art for this is really amazing,” Laios says, as he zooms in on the image.

‘Amazing’ is certainly a word for it, Kabru thinks. There are sketches of the toy from four different angles, and the margins are crammed with measurements and notes. The other half of the image is an illustration of a merman with a painfully erect cock, rendered in lovingly detailed color, and Kabru doesn’t even want to think about how long it took to draw.

“To be honest, though, I’m not sure I’d ever be interested in reviewing a merman toy,” Laios continues. The confession catches Kabru off guard. “Merman penises aren’t really any different from tall-man ones.”

That’s… actually pretty true, now that Kabru takes another look at the design. If it weren’t for the full merman drawing, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell the toy apart from a normal dildo.

The chat erupts with more comments – many of them trying to change Laios’s mind – but Laios doesn’t even glance at them as he continues, “I know some manufacturers sell versions that are blue and scaly and try to market them with images of more fishlike mermen, but the two types of mermen are actually completely different species. The ones with skin on their upper half birth live young and reproduce in the same way that tall-men do, but the ones with scales lay eggs, and the eggs are fertilized directly.”

Kabru glances at the comments again. Very few of them seem to actually care about merman reproduction. Kabru likes to think he shares the sentiment, but in a very different way.

“Full points for accuracy, though,” Laios adds. He clicks around on the screen for a few moments and brings up a new image. “Next we have a submission from Kay.”

Kabru’s heart rate increases, and his palms feel a little sweaty.

He really should have thought this through more.

It had seemed like a good idea a few days ago. He hadn’t had any luck getting Laios’s attention at the restaurant, and he’d tried commenting on a few of Laios’s videos, but he hadn’t gotten a response. So when Laios had made a post announcing a livestream where he’d review toy designs submitted by subscribers, Kabru had drawn something up without a second thought.

Now, he’s having many more thoughts about the decision. He’s a passable artist, but the design looks like a child’s scribbling in comparison to the previous one, and looking at it now, he can’t imagine why Laios would choose to review his design, when there must have been so many better ones.

“I love this design!” Laios exclaims.

Kabru blinks down at his phone screen.

“Even among monster fans, barely anyone knows about living armor,” Laios continues, excitement clear in his voice. “Most people just think that the armor moves because someone’s cast a spell on it, and they never realize that there are actually colonies of organisms living inside!”

Laios zooms in to examine various spots on the image as he prattles on about the biology and lifecycle of living armor, and Kabru feels his face heat. All he’d managed to draw was a crude sketch of a sword hilt with tentacles coming out of it. There are a few extra notes in the margins, based on what he could recall from the lecture Laios had given him during his first visit to Senshi’s, but he hadn’t realized that knowing about living armor was that unusual. He'd thought all monster-obsessed people knew about it.

“I wish someone would actually make this,” Laios says. He bites his lower lip and his cheeks flush a little pink, and Kabru’s throat feels suddenly dry. “I’d love to try it out.”

Before Kabru can think better of it, he opens up a DM, and types: If I made a living armor toy, would you test it out?

He hits send.

---

Kabru stares at his computer screen and tries to resist the urge to check his phone.

The cursor in the open document blinks back at him accusingly.

He switches to an article he has open in one of the other browser tabs and reads a paragraph about CPTSD symptom clusters for the third time. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t absorb any more of it than he did the last time, but at least it saves him from writing and then deleting another sentence in his thesis.

His phone vibrates, and he snatches it up so quickly he nearly knocks it off the desk.

Cithis posted a new story! the colorful ad banner tells him, and he slumps forward onto the desk with a sigh. He lies there for a moment, with his cheek pressed up against his keyboard, and then taps around on his phone to bring up his DMs with Laios.

I can’t wait!! reads the last message from Laios. The time stamp is from two weeks ago.

Kabru stares at the message for a long moment, and then closes the app again.

It had taken him a little more than a week to figure out how to make the living armor toy. He’d been able to scrounge up a cheap sword from a nearby salvage shop, and he’d managed to remove the blade from it without slicing anything open. The cleaning and sterilization hadn’t been that bad either and the whole process had actually been going pretty well, until he’d gotten to the part where he had to actually make the living armor tentacles.

Most of the online sources he’d found had suggested using some basic animation spells, or even making a modified familiar. Although he isn’t particularly talented when it comes to magic, he’d passed all of his required courses in undergrad, so making a bit of silicone move on its own hadn’t seemed like it would be too difficult.

He’d spent a few frustrating days trying to make it work before he finally went to Rin for help.

She’d given him a suspicious look, but thankfully had not asked what the tentacles were for, and instead just wrinkled her nose at his casting technique.

In the end, it had taken him a week and a half before the toy had finally been ready to ship to Laios. However, he’d made the mistake of not paying for tracking, so he has no idea if Laios has received it and is ignoring him, or if the postal service is just driving the package around the city in circles. He’s beginning to suspect the latter.

Kabru drags himself upright again and focuses back on his computer screen. Maybe it would be better if Laios ignored him. He has more important things to focus on, after all.

His phone vibrates again, and he resists the urge to look at it.

He deletes an unnecessary ‘however’ from the last sentence of his thesis and adds a comma to a different sentence.

His phone vibrates a second time, and he sighs and goes to silence it, but he freezes when he looks at the screen and sees Laios’s name.

It’s here!!

Do you have time to talk?

Kabru texts back, Sure, so quickly that he barely even registers himself doing it. It’s probably the most pathetically desperate message he’s ever sent, and he stares in a numb sort of horror as it’s immediately marked as ‘read.’

The next time his phone vibrates, it’s with an incoming call. Kabru nearly drops his phone and manages to accidentally hit the ‘accept call’ button in the process.

Who the fuck thought adding a call function to this app was a good idea?

“Kay?”

Laios’s voice is a little rough, probably from the low audio quality. It makes Kabru’s breath catch in his throat.

“Laios,” Kabru replies. Out of habit, he plasters his most charming smile on his face, although it’s not as if Laios can see it through the phone. “Did you get the living armor toy?”

“It’s amazing!” Laios blurts out.

Kabru’s long grown accustomed to people praising him for all sorts of things: his looks, his manners, his intelligence. Or, at least he thought he’d grown accustomed to it, but something about Laios’s voice makes his face flush hot, and he sits up a little straighter in his chair.

“The texture of the tentacles is perfect!” Laios continues, excitement clear in his voice. “They’re just soft enough so that they’re not rubbery, and you even recreated that weird clamminess! You’ve actually encountered living armor before, haven’t you?”

“Just once,” Kabru manages. He decides not to mention that the texture has been forever burned into his memory, after that painful hour he’d spent slowly choking down the living armor stir-fry Laios had recommended. It had been delicious, but the cognitive dissonance had nearly done him in.

“Using a sword hilt was a really interesting idea,” Laios says, and Kabru wonders if he’s touching the toy now. He tries not to think about Laios playing with the tentacles. “Normally colonies of living armor mate by holding hands – or, well, the suits of armor look like they’re holding hands. I haven’t been able to find any explanations of how they actually reproduce, expect that they lay eggs.”

“I didn’t realize that,” Kabru replies. He keeps his tone mild, but he clenches his free hand in a fist against his thigh. Did Laios just call to complain about the accuracy?

“I like the sword hilt, though,” Laios assures Kabru. The excitement hasn’t left Laios’s voice, and Kabru unclenches his fist again. In fact, he’s just about to relax back into his chair, when Laios asks, “So how do I use it?”

Kabru blinks.

“Sorry?” he says. Maybe he misheard.

“Well, normally the toys I buy come with instructions,” Laios replies, and it really shouldn’t surprise Kabru that Laios is the type of person who actually reads the manuals that come with his monster dildos.

“I – ” Kabru starts. His voice comes out a little rough, and he clears his throat before trying again. “I used a modified familiar spell, so it should react on its own. It’ll come out if you get close to the sword hilt – ”

“It’s a familiar?”

Laios’s voice is blunt and a little cold, and it brings Kabru up short.

Something occurs to Kabru, and he quickly says, “It’s not a real familiar. I just used some basic material manipulation spells which are often used to create familiars, in order to get the movement right. It’s not sentient or anything like that.”

“Oh,” Laios replies, and Kabru can hear the relief in his voice. “So you’re moving it with your magic?”

“No!” Kabru blurts out. He grimaces, then adds, “Well, sort of. I cast the spell, but I’m not controlling it.”

“Could you control it?” Laios asks.

“No,” Kabru says again, just as quickly. His face feels hot, and he tries to ignore the thought of what might happen if he could control the toy from this distance. Laios doesn’t even know who he is. That would be creepy.

“Oh,” Laios says, and this time he almost sounds disappointed. “Could you walk me through how to use it, then?”

Kabru’s mind supplies another set of very unhelpful images, and he shoves them down.

He swallows, and asks, “Are you holding it?”

“I’m holding the hilt,” Laios answers.

“And some of the arms have come out?” Kabru confirms. He valiantly doesn’t ask Laios where he is or what he’s wearing.

“Yes,” Laios replies. “Just a few centimeters, though.”

“Do you know how to transfer mana?” Kabru asks, although he already knows the answer. Laios had mentioned in one of his videos that he knows some basic spells, including healing ones, and mana transfer is the basis of most of those. Sure enough, Laios makes a noise of confirmation, so Kabru says, “Transfer a little bit of your mana to the living armor.”

Laios goes quiet for a moment, but then he takes in a sharp breath. Before Kabru can ask if it worked, Laios blurts out, “It’s big!”

Kabru’s face flushes hotter.

“Is it,” he starts, a little awkwardly, “too big? I tried to get the scale right.”

“Oh, no, it’s still within the natural range,” Laios replies. He sounds a little distracted, and Kabru wonders if he’s touching the tentacles now – or if the tentacles are touching him. They’re controlled by a heat-sensing spell, and when Kabru had tested it out, the living armor arms had wrapped around his hand and between his fingers, as if they had been trying to cover as much surface area as possible.

Something occurs to Kabru, and he says, a little sharply, “Don’t transfer too much mana to it.”

Laios goes still on the other end of the line. Kabru can’t see it, but he can sense it.

“It’ll burn out the spell,” Kabru explains, smoothing the sharpness out of his tone. “Just… touch it for a while.”

“Alright,” Laios replies, and Kabru hears him shift. There’s a soft squeak in the background which might be bedsprings, and Kabru tries to ignore the image developing in his mind: Laios lying back on a bed, phone on speaker and lying on the pillow next to him, and one hand gripping the sword hilt while the other is slowly enwrapped in curious tentacles.

“How does it feel?” Kabru asks, before he can stop himself.

Laios makes a considering noise, and says, “I’m not sure. Usually toys just react when you touch them. They don’t – ” His voice hitches and Kabru’s heart pounds in his chest. “ – don’t seek you out.”

“It’s heat-sensing,” Kabru explains. He shifts his position in his chair a little awkwardly, crossing his legs and trying to ignore the heat pooling low in his stomach. He hesitates, then says, “Try bringing it up towards your face.”

Laios doesn’t reply, but Kabru hears the faint sounds of sheets shifting, and then Laios lets out a choked little sound, and gasps, “It likes my neck.”

“Your skin’s warmer there,” Kabru replies, and he can imagine this too: the arms of the fake living armor sliding over Laios’s neck, tracing the tendon there and exploring the line of his jaw. Maybe one of the arms would make it all the way up to Laios’s lips, and into the warmth of his –

A wet sound, like someone smacking their lips, breaks Kabru from his thoughts, and in a somewhat muffled voice, Laios says, “It tastes like plastic.”

“You’re not supposed to eat it!” Kabru huffs. He crosses his legs tighter and tries to ignore the voice in the back of his mind pointing out that this means the tentacles are in Laios’s mouth, sliding over his pink tongue and trying to go deeper in search of more wet heat.

“I just licked it,” Laios replies, and he must have pulled the toy away from his mouth, because his voice is no longer muffled. “Where else should I try?”

Kabru hesitates, thinking over his options, and then says, “You could try your chest.”

He mentally begins to prepare an explanation about how the heart is the warmest part of the body, and he’s not sure if the spell will react more strongly to close surface heat, like Laios’s neck, or if it’ll be able to tell that Laios’s core is actually warmer. Not that it would actually be able to get to Laios’s heart, but this might make Laios’s chest interesting to it.

“Okay,” Laios replies without question, and Kabru hears more shuffling around – including the bedsprings. His heartbeat quickens as he wonders if Laios just took of his shirt.

Then, Laios lets out a breathy little, “Oh,” and then, “It likes my chest.”

 He sounds a little giddy, like he does when he talks about his favorite monster toys, and he bites back another soft sound as the tentacles do whatever it is they’re doing to his chest. His breathing is heavier now and audible through the phone speaker, and Kabru wants nothing more than to see what Laios looks like in this moment.

“What should I try next?” Laios asks, breathy and excited and –

And it probably doesn’t even occur to him that there’s a real person listening to him right now. Just like how he barely seems to notice that half of his subscribers are only there to fantasize about fucking him with a dragon dildo and couldn’t care less about whether it’s the right color and texture.

Kabru’s really not any better than them.

“I have to go,” Kabru says, abruptly.

“Kay?” Laios asks. The delicious breathiness of his voice, low and a little rough, might have been enough to distract Kabru, if it weren’t for the name.

“The rest should be pretty self-explanatory,” Kabru continues. “You can message me if you have any other questions.”

With that, he ends the call and goes to take a cold shower.

---

Kabru enters the bar and resists the urge to grimace.

“Kabru!” Pattadol exclaims. She looks just as panicked as she’d sounded when she’d called Kabru twenty minutes ago, and Kabru can see why.

“Are you old enough to be in here?” Cithis asks with a smirk. Her normally elegant posture is a mess as she lounges on the bar stool and when she reaches for her glass, she nearly knocks it over. Her skin is too dark to see if her cheeks flush, but her drunkenness is obvious in the brightness of her eyes and the clumsiness of her fingertips.

“Kabru!” Fleki chirps and bounces off of her stool. The redness of her cheeks is much more obvious, and she trips as her feet hit the floor, but Pattadol manages to catch her with an undignified squeak. “Kabru, do you know where to get the good stuff around here?”

Fleki is a foreign student doing research on the use of hallucinogenic drugs as a coping mechanism by formerly incarcerated people. Theoretically.

Behind her, visiting Professor Mithrun Kerensil is face-down on the bar counter.

“Please help me,” Pattadol mouths over Fleki’s shoulder. She looks close to the end of her rope.

Kabru deeply regrets offering to help the Western Elven cohort get situated while they’re in town for the research exchange program.

“Where are Otta and Lycion?” Kabru asks, as he glances around the bar.

Pattadol looks like she really wishes he hadn’t asked that question.

“Otta left with a cute half-foot,” Cithis answers helpfully. Her smirk widens and she manages to take another sip of whatever is in her cocktail glass without spilling it everywhere. She swallows, and adds, “I don’t know where Lycion disappeared to.”

Kabru decides that it is not his fault if Lycion turns up naked and hungover in front of the student services building tomorrow morning. He’s just a Ph.D. student, not an elf wrangler.

“I’ll call a cab,” Kabru sighs, and Pattadol gives him a grateful look.

It takes ten minutes for the cab to arrive, and another fifteen to wrangle everyone into it. Mithrun is as heavy as a rock when Kabru tries to drag him up from the bar counter, and he thinks he catches a glimpse of Pattadol attempting to strangle Cithis when she tries to order another drink, but he can’t say for certain.

Eventually they’re all secured in the back seat, although the cab driver looks like he’s regretting letting them into his car. Kabru waves as Pattadol gets into the passenger seat, and thanks every deity he can think of that there are only four seats in the cab.

Then, he starts the walk home.

It’s a little past one in the morning, but many of the bars are still bright. Kabru had been about to go to bed when Pettadol had called him, and he’d yawned all the way to the bar, but now he feels wide awake. The struggle of dragging Mithrun to the cab has gotten his blood pumping again, and the smell of dwarf-made whiskey clings to his tongue, and briefly, he considers ducking into one of the bars and getting a drink himself.

He stops abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk.

The lights are still on in Senshi’s Dungeon Diner.

Kabru hesitates. It’s been a little over a week since Laios had called him to ask about the living armor toy, and they haven’t talked since. Or, rather, Kabru hasn’t. Laios had sent him a couple of short messages thanking him for the toy, but Kabru had just liked one and hadn’t given a real response.

It’s just a lot to process. He’s lost count of how many times he’s woken from a nightmare about that day on Utaya, monsters with their claws to his throat, ready to rip him apart. For a long time, even just seeing videos of monsters was enough to make him vomit.

But then he’d made a monster sex toy and nearly gotten off on talking Laios through how to use it.

It’s confusing, to say the least. And maybe a little scary.

Kabru steps towards the diner door and pushes it open.

“Last food order’s already passed,” the bartender calls across the room, as Kabru steps inside. He’s the same bartender as before, and he eyes Kabru, and adds, “We close at two.”

“Can I get a drink?” Kabru asks, as he walks up to the bar. He plasters his most charming smile on his face, which doesn’t seem to sway the half-foot much.

“The bar next door is open until four,” the bartender says. He pointedly scrubs at the bar counter with a rag, but when Kabru makes no move to leave, he sighs, and offers, “You can have one drink.”

“Thanks,” Kabru replies, with another smile, and sits down on one of the barstools.

“What do you want?” the bartender asks.

“Surprise me,” Kabru replies.

Behind him, there’s a loud crash.

Kabru turns to look over his shoulder, and then freezes.

“Sorry,” Laios says, as he picks up the chair he’d tripped over. The tips of his ears are red, and Kabru finds his eyes glued to them, as he wonders if Laios had flushed red like this during their phone call. When he manages to tear his eyes away from Laios’s ears, though, he realizes that Laios is looking at him.

Laios looks away hastily.

“Here,” the bartender says, and Kabru tears his gaze away from Laios. Apparently he’d spent enough time staring at Laios for the bartender to choose something for him, and there’s a glass of golden-brown liquid sitting on the counter in front of him. “It’s a pretty good ale. Ogre-made.”

“I’ve never had anything Ogre-made before,” Kabru says. He picks up the glass to take a sip.

“It’s pretty had to get without a connection,” the bartender replies, with a smile that probably means he’s just sold Kabru one of his pricier drinks.

It’s good, so Kabru’s not about to complain.

The bartender goes to talk to the two other customers at the far end of the bar, leaving Kabru to sip his ale. Kabru savors a few more mouthfuls, but then curiosity gets the better of him, and he sneaks a glance over his shoulder. Laios is still behind him, bent over to wipe down a table, and Kabru has to force himself not to stare. He’s been staying off of social media since the phone call, and this is the first time he’s seen Laios in more than a week.

It’s the opportunity to ask Laios all the questions he’s been wanting to ask, but he suddenly can’t remember any of them. He turns back to his ale and takes another sip.

“Hey, uh,” Laios says, a little abruptly. “Are you Kay?”

Kabru turns around so quickly he nearly gives himself whiplash.

“Sorry, if I’m wrong,” Laios continues. His face is flushed red, and it should be an unattractive color on him, but it makes Kabru’s heartrate speed up. “Your voice just sounded – ”

“Kabru,” Kabru interrupts. Laios blinks at him, and he quickly adds, “My actual name is Kabru. You can call me Kay if you want, though.”

Laios’s face melts into relief, and then into excitement.

“I didn’t realize you lived in the area,” Laios says.

Kabru’s cheek twitches and he tries to keep a straight face as he thinks about the number of times he’s hung around near the diner, in the hopes of ‘accidentally’ running into Laios.

He hesitates, then says, “I’ve actually been to this diner before. You took my order.”

Laios blinks at him.

“Sorry,” Laios replies. The smile on his face has turned a little awkward, and briefly, Kabru wonders how many people he’s had the same conversation with. “I’m not very good with faces.”

But you recognized my voice, Kabru almost points out. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe Laios just has a better memory for voices. Instead, before he can think better of it, Kabru blurts out, “There’s something I want to ask you about.”

“Sure,” Laios says simply. “What is it?”

Kabru hesitates, then asks, “Why do you like monsters so much?”

“Monsters are just fascinating!” Laios answers excitedly, and Kabru can already tell that this is going to be the long version, not the short one. “They have so much biodiversity, and they adapt to their surroundings in such interesting ways! There’s also so much we don’t know about monsters, even after decades of studying dungeons, and – ”

“Sorry, I meant – ” Kabru interrupts. His throat feels too dry. “I meant why are you attracted to them? And not – ” He searches for the right word. “ – people?”

Something dark passes over Laios’s face.

Laios looks away, scratching awkwardly at his neck. He’s quiet for a long moment, then says, “I know a lot of people think monsters are scary, but sometimes I think people are the scary ones.”

Oh.

They’re the same, Kabru realizes, as he studies the tense set of Laios’s jaw. Even though they’re the exact opposite.

“Am I scary?” Kabru asks, and it makes Laios turn to blink at him.

“No,” Laios answers honestly. “You like monsters.”

He says it as if there’s some sort of correlation between the two.

“I hate monsters,” Kabru retorts. He says it firmly, but not unkindly. “But – ” He feels his face heat. “ – I like you. And I watched all your videos because I wanted to know why you like monsters so much, but I still don’t really get it.”

“You watched all my videos, and you made a living armor sex toy, but you hate monsters?” Laios asks. He stares at Kabru incredulously, and Kabru feels his face grow even hotter with embarrassment. Laios wrinkles his nose, and adds, “And you’re here? At Senshi’s?”

Kabru kind of wants to strangle him.

“I made the toy, and I came here because I wanted to get your attention!” Kabru snaps. “I just wanted to talk to you!”

Slowly, Laios’s face turns a fascinating shade of red. He opens his mouth and closes it again, and then opens it –

“It’s officially closing time!” the bartender announces. “You lot have five minutes to close out your tabs!”

Kabru bites his tongue to keep from yelling something back. Instead, he forces a smile, and says, “I suppose that means me.”

Before he can get up to go talk to the bartender, though, Laios blurts out, “Do you want to come over to my place and talk more?”

Kabru stares at Laios.

There’s no way Laios means it the way it sounds, but Kabru desperately wants to say yes. He wants nothing more than to go home with Laios and push him down onto those awful orange bedsheets, to kiss him until neither of them can think straight, and then make Laios show him exactly how much he likes those monster toys of his, but –

But. It’s two in the morning and he knows that that’s not what Laios is offering. And he does actually want to talk with Laios more at some point, but it should be at a time when he can actually appreciate the conversation.

“Sorry, I really should be getting home,” Kabru says, and for once the apologetic smile he gives Laios is genuine. Laios’s face falls, so he quickly adds, “Could I get your number, though?”

Laios perks up again.

On the rest of the walk back to his apartment, Kabru thinks about how warm Laios’s fingers had been when he’d passed over his phone for Kabru to add his number.

He really wants to do more than just talk with Laios.

---

This is probably a bad idea.

Instead of turning around and leaving, though, Kabru knocks.

The door swings open almost immediately, and Kabru comes face to face with Laios, who is wearing soft-looking sweatpants and a worn t-shirt, his feet bare against the wood floor. The round neck of the t-shirt has been stretched out, and Kabru catches a tantalizing glimpse of Laios’s collarbone.

“You’re here!” Laios exclaims. He beams at Kabru, and Kabru realizes that coming over was definitely a bad idea. “Come on in.”

“Thanks,” Kabru replies, and steps carefully into the apartment.

“Sorry, there’s not much room,” Laios says, navigating between a basket and a pair of boots. Kabru takes off his own shoes, but then hesitates in the entryway, unsure where to go.

The apartment is smaller than he’d expected. It’s one room, and it takes barely two steps to go from the door to Laios’s bed. The room is divided up somewhat by the bookshelf at the foot of Laios’s bed, and there’s a short chest of drawers that gives Laios’s space a little privacy from the entryway, but it’s still in full view of the door, and briefly, Kabru wonders if the people walking by in the hallway can hear Laios when he films his videos.

Or when he prepares for them.

A glance at the other side of the room reveals a small desk and table, some shorter bookshelves, and another bed, and before he can think better of it, Kabru asks, “Do you have a roommate?”

“My sister,” Laios answers.

Kabru stares. He can’t imagine stashing an entire collection of monster sex toys in a room he shares with a sibling, much less filming reviews of them in the same space.

“She doesn’t really live here anymore, though,” Laios continues, which Kabru supposes is… better. “She spends most of the time at her girlfriend’s place.” Laios glances at Kabru in a way that Kabru’s not entirely sure how to interpret, and adds, “She won’t be home today.”

If Laios were anyone else, Kabru would think he were being propositioned.

Thankfully, he understands how Laios works now, so he smiles and says, “Can I see your collection, then?”

Laios’s face lights up, and he asks, “Which do you want to see first?”

Before Kabru can say, Surprise me, in lieu of, I don’t really care, Laios pulls a drawer open to reveal more sex toys than Kabru’s ever seen in one place, outside of a sex shop. He thought he’d been prepared for it, but something about seeing a pile of silicone tentacles and grotesquely shaped cocks makes him almost break out into a cold sweat.

Laios looks back at Kabru, and the smile slips off his face.

“Sorry,” Laios says, with an awkward little laugh. “Maybe we shouldn’t – ”

He starts to slide the drawer shut, but Kabru stops him with a hand on his arm.

“No,” Kabru replies, with more confidence than he feels. His heart thumps in his chest, but not with excitement. “I want to see.” He pauses, then adds, “But maybe start with something more normal.”

Laios looks like he wants to asks what ‘normal’ means, but instead he nods, and says, “You can take a seat while I find something.”

Kabru glances at the bed, and then at the wooden chair on the other side of the room.

He drags over the chair.

After a few minutes of digging around in the drawer, Laios makes a triumphant noise and pulls out a large, dark red toy. He hands it over to Kabru and says, “I haven’t reviewed this one yet.”

It’s actually… not that bad. Kabru peers down at the toy as he holds it tentatively in his outstretched hands. It’s a dark red color and the shape is a little different from tall-men, or elves, or any of the other species Kabru’s had experience with, but the fleshy texture is pretty much the same. It begins to warm up and harden in Kabru’s hands, which probably means it has most of the standard sex toy enchantments, and if it weren’t for the bulbous lump at the base, Kabru would almost think that it were just a somewhat stylized but normal toy.

“It’s a dire wolf,” Laios explains. He has no qualms about sitting on the bed, and the bedsprings squeak softly underneath him. “So it’s basically the same as a dog’s, except bigger.”

“Why are dire wolves classified as monsters, instead of just animals?” Kabru asks. The thump of his heart has turned from anxious into something else, as he watches Laios sit back on the bed, and the weight of the toy in his hands makes him wonder what it would feel like to spread Laios’s legs and thrust it inside. He clears his throat, and adds, “It’s not like they use magic.”

“That’s actually a common misconception,” Laios replies, and then launches into an explanation of how dire wolves absorb mana from dungeons in order to prolong their lifespans.

It’s really not that different from watching Laios’s videos, except for in all the ways it is. Laios pulls this toy and that toy out of his drawer and explains them all while Kabru watches him and nods along. The toys end up spread out on Laios’s bed for comparison, and somehow Kabru ends up on the bed too, sitting on the edge next to Laios.

The sheets smell faintly of detergent and sunlight from the open window – and Laios, which Kabru knows from how closely they’re sitting together, as the toys cover more and more of the bed’s surface area. Laios’s fingertips brush Kabru’s thigh occasionally as he reaches for a toy, and every so often he pauses an explanation to give Kabru a shy little glance, like he’s surprised to find Kabru still there.

It makes Kabru want to kiss him senseless.

They’re about halfway through Laios’s collection, when Kabru abruptly asks, “Have you ever had sex with a real monster?”

Laios blinks at him, and says, “No. That would be unethical.”

“What if you encountered a monster that had our level of intelligence and could consent?” Kabru presses. He curls his fingertips into the bedsheets. “Would you?”

A splotchy pink slowly colors Laios’s cheeks and the tips of his ears, and in a low voice, he mutters, “If I could.”

Kabru blinks at him.

“If you could?” Kabru repeats.

“I’ve never actually had sex before,” Laios admits, and for a moment, Kabru wonders if he misheard. “The last time I tried to ask someone to have sex with me, he slapped me.” Laios pauses, then adds, “Apparently he likes my sister.”

Laios brings a hand up to scratch awkwardly at the side of his neck, now flushed as red as his face, and Kabru realizes, suddenly, that Laios is avoiding his gaze.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” Kabru blurts out.

It’s the most inelegant proposition he’s ever made.

“Yes!” Laios replies, and Kabru all but smashes their mouths together.

It’s wet, and a little awkward, and Laios is not a particularly good kisser. For obvious reasons, Kabru supposes. Kabru’s far past the point of caring, though, when he’s spent the past hour listening to Laios talk about his favorite sex toys.

It gets better the longer they kiss for. Although Laios may not have much experience, he picks up on what to do quickly enough, and he makes a sweet little sound when Kabru bites at his lower lip. Kabru bites him again for good measure, and when he leans into it, Kabru wonders if part of what draws Laios to monsters is the fangs.

Kabru’s neck is beginning to get stiff from bending up to reach Laios, though, and after a few more wet, open-mouthed kisses, he pulls away.

Laios blinks at him in confusion, and Kabru almost leans back in to kiss him again.

Instead, Kabru puts a hand on Laios’s chest and pushes him down onto the bed. Laios goes with it, but grimaces as he ends up on top of some of the toys still laid out on the sheets, and he reaches a hand underneath him to shove them aside.

One of the toys falls to the floor, and Laios shoots back upright to retrieve it.

“Ah,” Laios says, once he has the toy in hand, and he looks cautiously at Kabru.

“We should probably clean these up, so none of them get damaged,” Kabru says, and a relieved smile spreads across Laios’s face.

Kabru’s had sex interrupted for worse reasons.

It takes a while for Laios to put away all of his toys. Laios seems to have them arranged in a very specific way, but Kabru can’t make heads or tails of it, and he just passes Laios toys from the bed. However, when he hands over the living armor toy, Laios pauses.

He looks at the toy for a moment, and then at Kabru, and says, “You could finish showing me how to use it.”

“Get back up here,” Kabru replies, too quickly.

Laios smiles that awkward, excited smile of his, and scrambles back up onto the bed.

This time when Kabru pushes him down, there’s only the bed beneath them. Kabru sets the living armor toy aside for now and leans down to kiss Laios again. Laios responds eagerly and brings his hands up to clutch at Kabru’s shoulders, and Kabru’s heart beats faster as he feels the warmth of Laios’s palms through his shirt.

He kisses Laios a few more times, before pulling back. He straddles Laios’s lap and then slides his fingers up under the edge of Laios’s shirt, and when Laios doesn’t protest, he pulls Laios’s shirt up to expose his chest. Laios tugs it the rest of the way off, and Kabru takes a moment to admire the meat of Laios’s pecs and the contour of his arms.

Laios’s nipples are hard against the cool air, and Kabru leans down to drag his tongue over one of them. Laios’s breathing hitches and he brings a hand up to tangle his fingers in Kabru’s hair, urging him on. Kabru takes the encouragement for what it is and sucks at Laios’s nipple some more, and then, recalling how much Laios had seemed to enjoy it when they were kissing, he bites.

Laios makes a delicious sound which is far more muffled than Kabru was expecting, and when he looks up, he finds Laios with his hand over his mouth.

“Don’t do that,” Kabru huffs. “I want to hear you.”

“The, uh,” Laios says slowly, his face flushed, “walls are pretty thin.”

Kabru stares at Laios for a long moment, and wonders if this is how Laios tests all his toys: desperately trying to keep quiet while the neighbors mill around their kitchen on the other side of the wall.

“Well,” Kabru replies, “then I guess they’ve already heard all of your reviews.”

He slots a thigh between Laios’s legs and rubs it up against the bulge in Laios’s sweatpants, and this time, Laios doesn’t quite manage to cover his mouth in time.

Kabru doesn’t hear anything through the wall, so hopefully the neighbors are out.

Next, Kabru picks up the living armor toy. He transfers a bit of his mana to it and the five tentacle-like arms pulse and grow out of it. They reach for the warmth of Kabru’s fingers first, and it makes an unpleasant shiver run down Kabru’s spine, and it must disrupt the spell, because the arms retreat. Kabru takes in a slow breath and then tries easing his mana into the toy again, but this time he brings the hilt over toward the bulge in Laios’s sweatpants.

As expected, the heat-sensing spell reacts to Laios, and the arms slide against the front of Laios’s sweatpants, searching for a route to Laios’s skin.

Laios makes a choked sound, and when Kabru glances up at him, he finds Laios looking down at him with wide, dark eyes. His lips are red and bitten and his mouth hangs open slightly as he watches Kabru and the toy, and almost before Kabru can register what he’s doing, he tugs down Laios’s sweatpants and pushes the toy directly up against him.

“Kabru,” Laios gasps, and his hips buck as the tentacles wrap around his cock.

Oh, Kabru thinks, a little dazedly, as heat pools low in his stomach.

This is why the thought of fucking Laios with a monster sex toy doesn’t repulse him like it should.

He controls the monster.

Kabru tugs Laios’s sweatpants the rest of the way down his thighs, and Laios helps kick them the rest of the way off. Then, when Kabru brings the toy back near Laios’s hips, he shifts it slightly lower. Some of the toy’s arms go back to Laios’s cock, but one slides down to prod curiously at Laios’s hole, and Kabru watches Laios squirm against it for a moment, before asking, “Lube?”

“Top,” Laios manages, “left drawer.”

Kabru lays the sword hilt down on Laios’s stomach and gets down off the bed to go rummage through the drawers. Thankfully the lube doesn’t take long to find, but when he looks back over at Laios, he’s gasping out ragged breaths as three of the fake living armor’s arms squeeze at his cock, while the other two press at his hole.

“How did you do this last time?” Kabru asks, as he comes back to kneel between Laios’s spread legs.

“I prepped myself beforehand,” Laios says around heavy breaths, and Kabru pauses.

He blinks at Laios and says, “Before you called me?”

Laios looks decidedly shifty.

“Were you trying to have phone sex with me?” Kabru sputters. “I thought you were just oblivious!”

“I wasn’t really trying,” Laios mutters, and then bites his lip to suppress a moan as the tentacles clench around him. “But I was excited about the toy and most of the people who message me seem to… want that from me.”

“I – ” Kabru starts, then cuts himself off. “I didn’t think you were interested.”

“I’m interested now,” Laios says, looking at Kabru with pupils blown wide, and Kabru’s throat suddenly feels too dry.

Kabru hastily uncaps the lube bottle and squeezes a generous amount onto his fingers. Then, he presses them against Laios’s hole.

It doesn’t take much effort to work Laios open. It makes sense, Kabru supposes, considering the size of some of the toys Laios reviews, and Kabru’s barely gotten his fingers inside Laios before one of the toy’s arms is sliding in alongside them. It pulses against Kabru’s fingers, warm and fleshy, and Laios must feel it too, because he rocks his hips, fucking himself on Kabru’s fingers and the toy.

Kabru uses his free hand to grab the sword hilt from where he’d left it lying on Laios’s stomach, and he brings it closer to Laios’s hole. The other tentacles are finally drawn to the warmth of Laios’s insides, and they crowd in next to Kabru’s fingers and the other tentacle, until Laios is biting back another moan.

Kabru finally drags his fingers back out of Laios and uses his lube-sticky hand to guide Laios’s legs a little further apart. He watches in fascination as Laios squirms, torn between shying away from the tentacles and bearing down onto them.

The sight makes Kabru flush with heat, and he takes his hand away from Laios’s thigh to rub at himself through the stiff fabric of his jeans, finally unable to resist the urge to touch himself.

Apparently Laios is nearing his limit, too, because he rocks his hips and clenches down on the toy. His cock lays heavy against his stomach, wet with precome, and Kabru experimentally transfers a little more mana to the toy, making the tentacles swell inside Laios.

Laios’s spine goes rigid, and he comes with a bitten off moan.

Kabru watches as Laios comes down from his orgasm, his flushed chest rising and falling with heavy breaths, and his cock softening against his stomach. After a few moments, though, Kabru carefully pulls the toy out of Laios and tosses it aside.

Then he says, “I’m borrowing your leg,” and straddles Laios’s thigh.

He can feel Laios’s eyes on him as he ruts against Laios’s thigh, but he can’t muster the energy to be embarrassed by his own desperation. It doesn’t take long before he’s coming in his pants, the sensation of it sending shivers through his whole body as the pleasure rushes through him.

He’s still coming down from the high of it when he feels Laios shift underneath him, and he blinks as he finds Laios’s face right in front of his.

Laios kisses him, soft and brief, and then asks, “Are there any other toys you want to try?”

“Buy me dinner,” Kabru says against Laios’s lips, “and I’ll try all of them with you.”

Laios smiles, pleased and surprised, and Kabru kisses him again.