A dim, lavish room lit only by the flicker of oil lamps. Thick silence wraps the air like velvet, only broken by the occasional lazy scratch of pen against paper. Muzan sits behind an ornate black desk, ancient pages before him, eyes flicking over text he has read a thousand times but pretends still holds value. He exhales slowly, a curl of something like boredom—or perhaps irritation—ghosting behind his gaze. It is quiet, yes. But that quiet is never just his anymore.
Muzan:
*Change is fucking disgusting.
It slithers into the corners of your life, uninvited and insistent, like mold or rats or that shrill itch behind your eye that no amount of scratching gets rid of. I don’t welcome it. I don’t encourage it. I certainly don’t invite it to crawl into my bed.
And yet— Here we are.
I created Upper Moon Zero the way a perfectionist builds a fortress. Cold logic. Pure efficiency. A simple thought: If anything ever went wrong, I want something between myself and death that isn't a groveling idiot. That’s all it was. Insurance.
“Protect me with your life,” I had told him that first night, sharp nails digging into his jaw like it was a promise. “That’s your only purpose.”
And the bastard had grinned—jagged and stupid and irritatingly beautiful. “You got it, pretty boy.”
And then at some point—God knows when—it all went sideways and I started letting him into my bed. Not figuratively. I mean the literal bed. My fucking bed. The one no one’s ever touched unless I was planning to disembowel them before dawn.
Now he sleeps in it. Sleeps on me, next to me, under me, sprawled like some oversized, overfed cat with no respect for personal space. He drools sometimes. He kicks in his sleep. I haven’t decided if I’m impressed or appalled.
And yes—if someone asks, I tell them. Why lie? I don’t care what they think. “Yes,” I’ll say, “he fucks me. He’s quite good at it. Are you going to keep standing there like a mouth-breathing waste of skin or do you have a reason for interrupting my night?”
It’s not love. It’s not romance. It’s not even sentiment. It’s biology meeting utility and mutual carnality wrapped up in just enough tolerance to keep from killing each other. Which, frankly, is as close to intimacy as a being like me is ever going to come.
He talks back. I let him. He gets mouthy in meetings. I don’t kill him. He touches me without asking. I don’t break his fingers.
It’s... annoying. But not unbearable.
That’s the bar now, apparently. Welcome to the new standard of affection—“slightly less unbearable than everyone else.” Congratulations, Upper Moon Zero, you’re the most tolerable creature I’ve ever created. A fucking miracle.
Still, he knows his place. Knows when to shut up, when to kneel, when to stop riling me before he tips over into “no longer amusing.” He’s loyal. Painfully so. Which makes his other affliction all the more inconvenient.
The hunger.
A village will vanish before dawn and Zero will return scratching at his neck, irritable, mouth stained red like a child with poor table manners. “Didn’t work. Still starving.”
But that’s the issue. No matter how much he eats, it isn’t enough. Except, strangely, for two things.
Muzan closes the book and sets it aside, the weight of it echoing softly through the quiet room.
His blood, and sex.
He doesn’t like relying on either solution. His blood is valuable. Rare. Sacred. And the latter, well… it’s not exactly sustainable. Not with how often Zero needs it.
…Still. It’s a problem. One of many.
He sighs quietly and flips a page, eyes dragging lazily across the elegant strokes of a demon's report. His lip curls in disdain before he sets the paper aside entirely—right about now is when that idiot would come in and act like he owns the place
He doesn’t.
But he stands. Taller than him. Stronger than any demon who’s ever lived. (minus muzan of course) White hair messy, gold eyes glowing faintly in the dark. Shirt half on, lip split from a fight Muzan didn’t authorize.*