AU Box

[lovesuwithknives]

Because I can't leave that Abstract Button alone, here's a bunch of AUs that roll about in my head that I figured I'd plop in here to see if anyone wants to bat them about.

Warnings apply for pretty much everything: smut, body horror, violence, nonconsensual science, cosmic horror, pregnancy, gender-switching, and probably more.


Wizarding AU
or
Harry Potter And The Contrived Fanfiction Plot

Is it Marauders-Era and you not only have to deal with them but this weirdo new Defence Against The Dark Arts instructor? Or, even worse, is this during the books and you have to deal with all of that plus this weirdo new Defence Against The Dark Arts instructor? What on earth was Dumbledore thinking? This man looks like he just crawled out from under the floorboards of Voldemort's own goddamn house. He makes Snape look trustworthy. But boy does he know his stuff. And all kinds of other stuff. So what's Professor Azwel really about?


Cthulhu Mythos AU
or
The Call Of The Thing On The Living Room Floor Of The Witch-House Of The Terrible Old Man With The Silver Key To The Challenge From Beyond The Wall Of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Terrible things are afoot in New England in the 1920s. Fish-people and cultists and schlubs having horrible dreams are everywhere. Things are colours that don't exist. A squiggly symbol that scares the bejeezus out of you is scrawled on random surfaces. And what's that awful tekeli-li sound that rides the wind of an evening? What are those faceless flying creatures silhouetted against the moon? AND WHY IS AN EIGHT-FOOT-TALL BUG MAN THING CLAIMING HE'S RANDOLPH CARTER? Nobody knows except a strange mystic from Europe who calls himself only 'Azwel' and seems to know an awful lot about and awful lot of things. Things man (or woman or bug) was not meant to know! Do you follow him to the hilltops or into the cypress swamps or wherever else he says the horrible tomes direct him or do you do the smart thing and run screaming into the night, trailing As as you go?


Domestic Fluff
or
How I Married A Mad Alchemist

Ah, wedded bliss. Family life and home sweet home. Is there anything like it? Probably not. You are Mr. Or Mrs. Azwel. His first name is a secret he just might someday tell you. In the meantime, you now live in a big sprawling house with either three or seventeen cats (never any other number), a plethora of alchemical paraphernalia, and a husband whom you have to tempt out of the lab to eat. But he's wealthy. And he loves you more than anything. He just... has a very unconventional way of showing it.


Sex Slave
or
Fuggit, I'm Running Out Of Titles.

a Did you get bought from the sex slave market by this odd, mysterious nobleman who only goes by one name? How will this 'Lord Azwel' even treat you? Only one way to find out, as he's bringing you home to his mansion full of books and alchemy. Oh, my.

b You're looking for that special sex slave. Well, this fellow is certainly eye-catching, all big and manly, windswept and interesting. Watch out, though, the owner says he's a bit mad, too clever by three quarters, and was sold to him as punishment for some crime nobody will disclose.


Experiments? Oh My!
It can be any time, really, the aim is the same. This strange genius who calls himself only 'Azwel' has you locked up in his laboratory. He has a mission, you see, and that mission is to extract a very, very specific kind of energy from you. It can only be collected during orgasm. Oh, but he's terribly clever at getting people to that state....


Vampire AU
a Blaaaaaa! A mysterious alchemist who never goes out in the daytime has moved into that spooky castle. And at the same time there's tell of a mysterious fiend roaming the streets at night, ravishing nubile young maidens and... whatever the young gentleman equivalent may be... and draining their blood! Can anyone draw the obvious conclusion between these nocturnal shenanigans and that weird Count Azwel?

b You vampire, you! You've somehow gone and caught yourself a nosy alchemist who insists on being called only 'Azwel.' His fault for trying to investigate your castle/house/apartment/yurt/whatever, I suppose. Now what will you do with him? My, but he's a robust-looking fellow who'll certainly serve as a ready food supply....


Girl Genius AU
Explosions! Terrible mad science! Toothy monsters with cheesy accents! Giant switches actually labelled 'MUAH HA HA HA HA HA!' Gleeful destruction! Exclamation marks! Just what have you gotten yourself into walking into the midst of Mechanicsburg in a random era ruled by Azwel Heterodyne The Madder Than Usual?

Pet Person AU
a Who doesn't like a big fluffy kitty? A... really big, fluffy kitty. Even though he prefers to wear clothes, one can see just how fluffy Azwel is by his purple hair and beard, soft grey ears with purple tufts, and giant, fluffy purple and grey tail. Oh, but he'd make a lovely companion, if you can get him to stop chewing on you. His love is pointy, after all. His claws are so long they don't retract all the way, making him even pointier. But he's clever and just listen to that rumbling purr!

Oh, and one other thing. There's a very good chance he'll be in heat. And even if he's not, he's still very libidinous. Sorry about that.

b Are you the kind of pet person Azwel's looking for? He's after someone who can assist in his work and not push things off of shelves or knock things over with a wagging tail. A companion to curl up with on cold nights. A sexual partner. Is it you?

Sex Cult AU
There's a heady smoke in the air, a mist swirling grey-white under the full moon. A hypnotic drumbeat plays. Cloaked and hooded figures surround you, bear you along to the stone altar under the tall trees. They start a slow, circling dance and a low, sonorous chant slips into your hearing. At the altar stands another figure, clad in elabourate robes. He reaches up with beringed hands to remove his hood, revealing his face, long purple hair and beard surrounding pale features and a gaze that draws you in. He bids you step toward him. The ritual has begun.


As an added bonus, request Rule 63 of any of the above and hey, presto, Azwel was always a woman!


Got any other ideas? Feel free to throw them at me. ^.^

Comments

[wildphase]

Felicity doesn't really have a problem with the marriage. She's always known she was going to be expected to marry for status and money and not for love. She's the oldest daughter in a wealthy family with important connections that span centuries, the kind of power and influence that doesn't always come with land and titles, but gets spoken of by those who have both. She's grown up pawn and player both and at least her father's choice for her isn't repulsive.

But what he is, if she's honest, is too unpredictably attentive. She'd always presumed that she would marry some brutish man who would want to fuck her for some combination of pleasure and heirs and had, in preparation, become adept at conjuring the former and studiously preventing the latter, but who would mostly not care for her otherwise.

Azwell is... none of those things, really. Certainly, he seems to appreciate her sexual education well enough, and she has no complaints in that department of him but he's unpredictable. When he's working on something, she can spend days alone on end, tending to her own affairs, but when he decides he's done down in his laboratory, he actually cares about her, what she's doing, where she's going or who she's with. If it were just controlling, she could work around it, but he seems to really care and she's not totally heartless. She doesn't want to be shrewish to someone who's actually kind to her. But he needs a distraction, something to keep his attention when he comes up for air that will keep him if not disinterested in her, at least splitting his attention.

And it just so happens that she has a dear little brother who also just so happens to have a penchant for the alchemical and magical and who also has just gotten into some kind of scandal back at his fancy pants wizard school or whatever it was that he was doing.

"My brother's been expelled from University," she says over dinner one of the evenings where Azwel has come up from the laboratory, "I was thinking he could come and stay with us for a while while Mother and Father sort things out with the Dean." She's not really asking, though she does keep her tone mild enough. She'll give him a chance to agree on his own before she bargains for it.

"I think you might like him," she's betting he'll more than like him, "He's been studying magic."

Carden knows what she's like, knows that there will be some kind of scheme, if she's sending word that he can come stay, but surely it's a choice he'd make over going home to his parents. Azwel is, as usual, the unpredictable card on the table.

[lovesuwithknives]

This unpredictability is clearly a family trait, as any member of the house's small staff would attest, as they apparently have all lived and worked in this house for longer than anyone can remember. It's why his only surviving sibling, his sister, Elena, took off one day for parts unknown, only thinking to write home and let everyone know about it after the fact. They're used to sometimes preparing meals and other times fleeing the kitchen; to preparing the place for guests at a moment's notice; to midnight supply runs and impromptu furniture moving and bouts of 'I can't believe I forgot to plant these!' But none of them, from the cook to the housekeeper to the gardener, have ever voiced any inclination to leave, and for much the same reason that Felicity herself has encountered. The whole family, down to Azwel himself and the innumerable cats, care more than is typical or, indeed, is proper for a family of such standing.

So everyone weathers the eccentricities and is thankful there are no children about right now to make things even more chaotic.

Then again, her family might have words for the both of them, seeing as how they've been married for this long and there's not even a hint of anything resembling children forthcoming. It doesn't seem at all a priority for him--he hasn't breathed a word about it. That alone is significant, given his tendency to wax voluble about just about anything else.

Except at mealtimes, that is. Strangely, whenever they take a meal together he is content not to lead the conversation, instead listening happily to whatever she has to say, as though eager for someone else's thoughts to fill his head instead of his own.

So when she brings this up he pauses, then grins an amused grin. "Oh? Dare I ask what happened?"

[wildphase]

"He destroyed some property," she says with a shrug, "It must have been something intentional, since I doubt they would have expelled someone who just messed up some kind of magic. I hear at least one teacher died," she says it with absolute nonchalance, but then, it really doesn't matter to her that someone died somewhere.

Besides, she always knew Carden had it in him.

But she does want to paint a very specific picture of Carden and him being a hooligan and murderer isn't it.

"They were probably torturing bunnies or something. Or other children. Or something of the like. He's not normally the violent sort but he's a Weatherford," she shrugs slightly, with a coy little smile, "We don't do things by half measures."

[lovesuwithknives]

Azwel's eyebrows go exploring his hairline for a moment, which is always a sight. Really, he could take off bottle tops with those things. But he doesn't look shocked--if anything, he looks impressed, which is further demonstrated by the brief laugh.

"Goodness, I can see why he'd want to lie low here, then! I look forward to finding out his side of it! I take it he's already on his way?"

[wildphase]

"Give me a bit of credit. I did want to at least ask you first," and then she grins mischievously, "But I do already have letter inviting him written and sealed to be sent immediately. I'm sure he'll agree rather than have to stay at Mother and Father's, though, so I also already took the liberty of preparing some rooms for him." Listen, she's learned very quickly that, as much as she doesn't always like having her business poked into, she does actually like Azwel, and he has an appreciation for her wit and sense of tactics.

It's why she's gifting her brother to him instead of slowly poisoning his tea or something. Besides, they'll be good for each other, she's sure of it.

"I imagine in truth it will take the better part of a week. But I'll make sure you're notified when he arrives.

---

Notified and conspicuously absent when he arrives, as a matter of fact. She just happens to have gone out to town the day he arrives with a trunk and a small suitcase on the steps of the manor and is let into the mansion proper, a servant scampering away to announce his arrival.

He's a bit small in the large entryway, dressed in nobleman's travel clothes he seems just a bit uncomfortable in, a sort of shrinking, shy air to him in an unfamiliar place, particularly finding out he's about to meet his sister's husband before his sister, or perhaps just the servants to shuffle him off. Nothing about him looks dangerous in the slightest, nothing about him suggests that he's been expelled, apparently for killing at least one person on purpose, though surely there must also be a story about why he's expelled and not arrested.

But power lies layered on him in a way he seems wholly unaware of, simmering just under the surface...

[lovesuwithknives]

"Touché!" he chortles.

It is, indeed, a fortunate thing that they've come to this kind of an accord--she really is enjoyable in her own way. Plus, not having his tea poisoned is a fact for which Azwel is eternally grateful. He's not perfected a universal remedy yet.

"Thank you, my dear. I do appreciate a bit of a warning."

---

So when Carden does arrive, he'll find everyone... if not exactly welcoming, then at the very least completely unsurprised. A few cats pad silently about, sniffing at his luggage. One of them saunters up to him with a small meow, rubbing its head against his ankle.

It's not long before said husband walks in, and hopefully Carden's been given a bit of a heads-up beforehand, otherwise he'll come as quite the shock, the big weirdo that he is. Between the ritual scarring, the attack eyebrows, the too-plentiful long wavy hair and beard and the robes, he looks like something that should have a thick accent and absolutely no understanding of present social norms. Instead he grins and puts out a hand to shake. "Ah, you must be Carden."

[wildphase]

He's reached down to skritch the top of a tiny cat head and, if the cat seems amenable, he'll even scoop it up. He's not exactly a natural with animals in general, but he's a wizard and cats are just kind of aligned with a lot of magical things to the point where they generally like him.

Carden has, of course, been given absolutely no warning whatsoever about Azwel from Felicity, so his eyebrows raise in obvious shock when he first comes barreling in. She'd said he was "a bit eccentric', that's all, so he's expecting... something... but not this.

"Uh, yes. A... pleasure to meet you, sir," he takes the hand, semi on autopilot. He's been raised well enough, even if he's already developing a very wizardly quirk of getting straight to the matter at hand, sometimes. Right now, he's thrown completely off any sort of "game" he might be said to posses and is really pretty much just staring. It's only prior high-society training that's moving him along at all.

[lovesuwithknives]

Oh, the kitty likes you. You is good hyoomin. When it's scooped up it starts to purr loudly.

"Bah, you're family, you can call me Azwel," Azwel replies. Another cat, sitting atop Carden's trunk, meows as though in agreement. "Besides, Nimue likes you. You can't be all that bad."

Then he notices Carden is sort of staring and tilts his head. "Are you all right?"

[wildphase]

Nimue liking him is generally a bigger problem than just having cat hair on his luggage. In this time and place, though, it gains her some petting, even while he's still holding the other cat. He'll be covered in them in a few more minutes if nature is allowed to run it's course.

"Uh you're... not really what I was imagining," there's that more wizardly directness, "But then I imagine neither is Felicity when she's described to people who have never met her, either," he smiles, a little stiffly, but mostly he's just still kind of nervous.

(That and his subconscious has noticed all of the things about Azwel that Felicity has been hoping he would notice. His conscious thoughts haven't caught up yet, though.)

[lovesuwithknives]

There will be a lot of cats about, yes. Get used to waking up covered in fuzzy little purring hot water bottles every morning.

"Usually she isn't, that's true. But curiosity compels me to ask what you were imagining?"

Oh, yes. His subconscious is picking up all that magickal radiation of Azwel's. It's an overabundance of life and swirling with Order and Chaos.

[wildphase]

He opens and closes his mouth a few times, but nothing comes out,

"Uh... my sincerest apologies, but I'm very much aware that there's no way to answer that where I don't sound like an absolute ass," he's flushed nearly to the tips of his ears and it's not just with embarrassment, "regardless of whether any of my speculations are correct or not." He looks like he'd very much like to just drop through the floor, thank you. "Regardless, I'll be careful to reserve any judgments, good or ill, until I actually know anything about you." He bows slightly, flustered.

[lovesuwithknives]

Blink. Blinkblink.

"So very diplomatic!" Azwel laughs the delighted laugh of someone genuinely tickled by something. "Touché, sir! I can't play fairer than that, can I?"

He's an odd one, this Azwel, but so strangely personable.

"At any rate, there's not much to be learnt in the foyer. Come with me, see the rest of the house. I'll have someone bring your things to your rooms."

[wildphase]

Carden flushes further, vaguely pleased even though he can't honestly tell if he's being complimented or made fun of. He sets down the kitten that has been curled in his arms and nods, stepping forwards to follow.

"I have to admit, I'm interested to see the house. Felicity mentioned that she very much enjoyed living here and I'm curious why she would have said so. She never mentions anything without a reason." Azwel is already learning that Carden is all of the honest Felicity isn't. It's hard to know if that's natural or some kind of defense mechanism from childhood. Either way, he's very trusting, perfectly willing to follow a strange man around his house while the only thing connecting them is conspicuously absent.

Not that there's any reason to believe Azwel would do anything to him of course, simply that there's an inherent risk to being alone with powerful men in their houses, regardless of their temperament.

[lovesuwithknives]

Inside the house the first thing that becomes abundantly clear is that apparently this house has been lived in for several generations. Paintings line the walls, some new, many very old. The floor, while clean, is shiny and faded from the tread of countless feet. Alcoves and niches hold vases or small statues from a wide variety of times and places.

But the thing that manages to overshadow that is the lights. Instead of holding candles, the wall sconces hold small glowing orbs surrounded by odd arrays of lenses and mirrors, all connected by rods and gears and pulleys. They magnify the light from the orbs until it's almost as bright inside as it would be outside on a sunny day.

"Well, I'd hope it was me that she enjoyed, but I'll admit a great deal of it is down to the house," Azwel chortles. "It's been in my family for ten generations and each generation has added rooms or various innovations. The lights are my contribution."

With eyes as nearly colourless as his are, it makes sense he'd need a lot of light.

He doesn't leave Carden much time to take in this odd lighting system before he sweeps on. "Now, let's see... there's the library," whups, walking past it too fast to do more than glance in through the doorway, "The solarium, and we'll come back to that in a moment," goodness, that's a lot of plants, "the kitchen, but no-one is allowed in there at this time of day on pain of a rolling pin to the head." Good to know. He continues, showing the lavish dining room and an honest-to-god ballroom before making his way to the stairs.

"Right, upstairs is all the bedrooms, and below-stairs is the servant's quarters and the laboratory, which I'm certain you're going to want to see, yes?"

woo, timeskip

[lovesuwithknives]

The most surprising thing about the time that's gone by (besides its doing so in the first place--temporal physics is on the list but Azwel hasn't got there yet,) isn't so much that the house is still standing. It has weathered far more volatile of populations than this, after all. Rather, the surprising thing is that this unorthodox arrangement has gone on for as long as it's done as quietly as it's done.

A large part of it, of course, is that such things don't often come up in everyday conversations. Not a lot of places to put By the way I've been sleeping with my wife's brother in discussions of, say, finances. While discretion might not be the better part of valour for Azwel, it is, on occasion, useful. A lie of omission is scarcely a lie, at all.

More to the point, though, they all get on surprisingly well, mainly because the house is large enough that any given person can go for days without seeing anyone else save for the occasional housekeeper. Mind you, Azwel doesn't. But he could.

Even before Carden had shown up, he spent a great deal of time in the laboratory. Now that he's got company, of course, it's considered something akin to a rare bird sighting when anyone spots him elsewhere--the Greater Purple-Crested Cackulax outside its natural habitat. People with binoculars and pith helmets and serious expressions have noted it in little spiralbound books.

Very few people ask what's going on in the lab. They've learnt not to over generations of Azwel's family. Not because of any punishment, you see, but because the answers just aren't worth the possible aneurysms that might result from trying to process them. And so it is that nobody but Azwel and Carden know about the latest foray into the study of animal magnetism (after the previous experimentation left Azwel covered in hamsters stuck to him like plastic letters on a refrigerator)--namely the distillation of traits.

Don't ask how traits can be distilled. Azwel can render a sandwich to its constituent liquids and still make it taste like ham on rye. With onions. And a smidge of mustard.

Perhaps he shouldn't have left this latest one next to the Essence Of Cheeseburger....

Re: woo, timeskip

[wildphase]

Carden is probably actually the more cautious of the two of them, at least left to his own devices. He's the most cautious of the three of them as well, the one that's still a little bit askance at this whole situation he's gotten himself into. That hasn't stopped him, mind you, and there's doubt on whether it's even really slowed him down. A single meeting with Felicity had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to him that this was a set up and had been from the beginning-- he'd been gift-wrapped for Azwel and the only thing that irritates him about the whole thing was how well Felicity knew him and how easily he'd been manipulated.

But again, none of that was stopping him, it just left him often being the more reserved party, a little harder to draw into bed, typically in need of a small amount of convincing. But, in the laboratory as well as the bedroom, once he's decided that it's time to throw that caution to the wind, there's no finding it again.

This, however, is actually an accident, pure and simple. He sets a book down a little too hard on the table for the small vial-- the cheeseburger one, something as volatile as their current experiment is too precious to be easily knocked over-- and when he goes to catch it, he bumps the other one and then has to try to catch it. But then there's the other vial to deal with too and... look, he's never been the most graceful of people once things start to go wrong and he ends up face down in a puddle of the broken vial's contents.

He knows enough to know to not panic, to try to assess the situation, to get cleaned up and to clean it up and to find Azwel, but for some reason what he's ending up doing instead is immediately slinking under the desk to hide, a tail that he hasn't noticed yet puffed up like a bottle brush.

[lovesuwithknives]

He might be hiding under there for a few minutes. A small timepiece ticks away before the door opens. Azwel steps in and stops, a little puzzled. Odd, hadn't Carden just been in here?

"Carden?" He blinks, then spots the puddles. They've sort of blended into a bizarre mix that smells good on too many levels. He crouches down, taking a closer look. "Oh, I do hope no-one ended up touching... this... stuff?" He trails off as he spies the other and, more specifically, spies how he's hiding under the table and even more specifically than that, spies the tail.

His expression is unreadable for a beat.

Then, in classic Azwel form, he grins. "I'll be good and ask if you're all right, first."

[wildphase]

"I'm fine," he answers automatically, before he amends it to, "I think I'm fine." The several minutes have given him some perspective on what's happened to him, but the smells and sounds of the rest of the laboratory have been too overwhelming for him to make it out from under the table.

"There's a lot of new stuff going on," he finally reports, knows they'll get to the details later, "Enhanced smell and hearing, but that's probably expected, all things considered," he still hasn't explained the table really, though, "Seems to have come with new instincts too, though, and those are proving... difficult to wrangle."

He's not aware that sentence is prophetic, not yet. Even so, if there's an offered hand, he's able to take it, seeming much more comforted now that Azwel is here.

[lovesuwithknives]

"Ah. Good."

He does, indeed, offer a hand to pull Carden to his feet. This stuff will need cleaned up soon, but... it can wait. He looks the other up and down with a keen eye, even though that grin hasn't left his face.

"I had meant to test it on myself, first," he muses. Typical Azwel--in the interest of having a subject whose baseline characteristics he's absolutely certain of, he thinks nothing of what his self-experimentation might mean to anyone else. He tilts his head slightly, then shrugs. "Far be it from me to stop an experiment once it's begun... however it may have begun! Now--can you put words to what these new instincts might be?" He finds he's watching Carden's new tail as it swishes behind him.

[wildphase]

That's a look that usually sets Carden to squirming under normal circumstances, but with everything else he hardly seems to notice. His eyes are still darting around nervously, but Azwel's seen enough of Carden's typical nervousness to mark that this is a lot more like he's trying to observe everything all at once.

"Everything smells and sounds different and anything frightening at all makes me want to run or hide," his ears twitch and swivel to go along with it which is, quite frankly, adorable. "You help though," he observes with a head tilt that says he's observing it as he's talking about it. "It's interesting," he adds, "because it's clearly something on top of my conscious thought?" he's not sure if that makes sense, "I know rationally that there's no reason to hide under the table, but I also couldn't make myself come out until you got here, either."

Another thing to file under "rational vs. instinctive": if Azwel's hands get anywhere close to those ears, Carden does a full bodied head-bump into his hand, seemingly without knowing he's even done it.

[lovesuwithknives]

At some point Azwel's fingers do stray to those new ears, initially to see where hair ended and fur began, to lightly probe and explore and watch reactions. When Carden busses his head against his hand, pushing forward like that, Azwel's other arm instinctively curls around him.

That's when the effect hits him, wicking in through his nose like a pheromone, undetected until a subtle change washes over him. He finds all he wants to do is touch Carden--not even in a sexual manner (yet), but just to pet his hair and hold him and sort of melt into that warmth.

"Hm, well, it's good that you're finding me relaxing, because I'm not entirely sure I want to let you go," he says quietly. His tone is contemplative, wrapping his mind around the words as he's saying them. But there's an undeniable warmth that the younger man's keen hearing would catch, a sense that whatever else this transformation has done, it's drawing Azwel in. And he isn't putting up even a hint of a fight.

[wildphase]

Carden still has entirely too much new everything to fully comprehend what's happening right away. He was scared before and then Azwel was there and Azwel "smells" like warmth and safety and so there was no problem coming out from under the table if he was here. And the hand on his ears has him purring immediately, without a thought, but it's mostly just warm and comfortable. And then he's pulled close and that's even better, has that purring noise thrumming deeper in his throat and his tail curling in lazy sways behind him.

"Then don't," he answers back and his tone has gone low and warm, too, his hands clinging and he still doesn't fully recognize what this feels like, but he does recognize that something seems off. "Mmm... did you... do anything else with that stuff?" it's not a coherent question, not really, but he tries anyway, even as he's kind of rising up on his tiptoes a little, trying to get that hand that's settled around his waist just a little lower, without realizing it.

[lovesuwithknives]

"No, I don't think so," Azwel murmurs in reply. What all did he do with that solution? He rummages a little lazily in his memory, too distracted to notice how Carden is shifting against him, how they end up pressed flush against one another.

"There may have been some kind of unforseen reaction from it blending with that other solution," he muses. "Though essence is usually inert." His hand rests comfortably in the small of the other's back. "Hm, it'll have to be repeated, of course, but... that can be done later. Right now, I want to focus on the present and why I feel so... warm." He's not complaining in the slightest.

"And how are you feeling?" A beat. "Besides overwhelmed by your senses?"

[wildphase]

Carden can be convinced (sometimes quite easily) into being shameless, but he's not usually particularly forward. Even his flirting is usually more cerebral than physical. Azwel is very familiar with subtle (and not subtle) ways to rile Carden up and a hand on the small of his back is an excellent way of getting him to melt even when everything is normal, but that melting doesn't usually look like him arching with a heated purr clearly trying to get that touch lower, preferably right above his tail. It's technically probably not much different than a cat responding to scritches, but he's not a cat and the motion is much more suggestive and sexual, particularly coupled with a deep, rich purr.

"I feel fine," he answers back, "Good even. A little warm, yeah, but nothing bad." He rubs his face against Azwel and adds, "You smell good. You can keep touching my ears if you want to, it feels kind of good." He does actually realize that he's having a totally normal conversation while he's all but pushing his ass into Azwel's hand, but everything's still tumbling end over end so quickly in his head that that just isn't information that his mind has caught up on.

[lovesuwithknives]

They are very touchable ears, the fur soft and fluffy, and Azwel's fingers rub and scratch lightly behind them, right at that little corner, more out of habit than anything else. Having lived with actual felines for years will do that.

The purring rumbles right into his chest and he gives a contented sigh. They say listening to purring gives one a sense of well-being and he certainly believes it now.

"If we keep this up, I'll be too relaxed to continue with questions," he says, making no move whatsoever to let go. In fact, his other hand does move downward, fingers gently curling.