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Cor didn't usually hear Ardyn when he came to visit. It was always in the deep of night, between one and four in the morning, when the streets of Lucis were nearly empty and the moon shone bright.
Sometimes, he awoke to find the fridge left partway open, or a bit of jam smeared across the floor. Sometimes, there was a note scrawled in black goo across the kitchen tile that said something like, 'thank you' or 'the waffles were very good.'
But when he heard the strangest creaking sound and woke at three in the morning, it wasn't the fridge door, or the slide of goo across tile. It was the sound of his dresser drawer being pulled open.
He laid there a whlie longer, thinking he may have imagined it, and was halfway back to sleep when he heard it a second time, followed by the scrape of goo along ancient carpet. It traveled out the bedroom door and down the hall, accompanied by a very distinct daemonic humming—a delighted hum that echoed with the screams of a thousand cursed creatures.
Cor leaned up on one arm, opening his eyes. In the dimly lit bedroom, he could just barely make out a black shape in the hall beyond.
"Ardyn?" he asked, still dazed from sleep. As his vision cleared and the beast turned, Cor saw that he was... wearing something. And there was a gooey grin on his face that stretched unnaturally wide.
He was wearing... he was wearing Cor's clothes.
"What..." Cor sat up. "What do you think you're doing?" It came out snappish, but he wasn't all that mad, just... very, very confused.
"What does it look like I'm doing, my dear Marshal?" Ardyn purred, his voice echoed by the hundreds of daemons that made up his form. "I'm trying on your clothes. And what a fascinating experience this is!"
He'd put on one of Cor's blue tank tops, and it fit him surpringsly well. The jacket, on the other hand, was slowly sliding off his shoulders and arms, dripping with sludge.
Cor smacked his forehead. "Ardyn, you're going to get them covered in goo!"
"No I'm not," the beast said, turning up his nose derisively. "My 'goo' as you call it, will simply fade away once I take them off. Let me have my fun, Cor. I'm fascinated in these human things of yours. I've never understood why you don't all just walk around naked, but I think I'm starting to see the appeal."
Cor sat there, shirtless in bed, jaw slack, glaring at him. "I could have gotten you your own clothes, you know! All you had to do was ask, and here you are stealing mine!"
"Not stealing," Ardyn corrected. "Borrowing."
"Okay, fine. Borrowing. My point still stands."
Ardyn stared at him a long moment, those empty eyes boring deep into his own until he glanced away. "You would do that for me?" The beast asked at last. "Buy me... clothes?"
"I mean," Cor shrugged. "I don't see why not." But he already knew that he was about to get himself into something else he might regret.
Ardyn was giving him that grin again. And then the beast said, very proudly, "Wonderful! I have a list."
Cor groaned.