In response to the Bae Ballot on the official Monster Prom Twitter, and the fact that I really want to give a 5-point boost to #TeamDamien, I'm writing a fanfic for the first time in ten years! It's a work in progress because my dumb actual jobs and annoying adult responsibilities (and the fact that I was actually on holiday having a really nice time when the ballot was announced) keep cutting into my writing time, but I hope c.2,000 words and counting by the close of voting will be enough!Vote for your favorite dateable character and we’ll give the winner a new secret ending! Tweet with @monsterprom and your team hashtag of choice.— Monster Prom (@monsterprom) 11 May 2018
Tweets = 1 point | Media Tweets (Fanfics, Fanart, Memes) = 5 points.
On May18 we tally up the votes and announce the winning team! pic.twitter.com/jFLQWoT2MI
Just a couple of things:
- This is going to make zero sense if you haven't played Monster Prom. I strongly recommend you go and do that before reading my silly fanfic, because it's a great game with wonderful characters written by people who had time to do things like run a spell check and write a second draft.
- I don't anticipate this getting too explicit, but it's heading in a reasonably risque direction (and these characters sort of have minds of their own). The children may wish to avert their eyes.
So, with that out of the way, as well as with the usual disclaimer that I am not profiting from this (and a friendly reminder that the devs are actively encouraging it), here is my work-in-progress love letter to my latest 'ship: Damien & Amira, a.k.a. "Pyromania".
This is shaping up to be a very interesting afternoon.
You spent the lunch hour hanging out in the yard with your friends. You’d be the first to admit that you’re usually the loud one of the group, but all through lunch you were self-consciously asking yourself “am I being too quiet?”, and then being even louder to compensate. You feel like they must have noticed something different in the way you’ve been behaving. None of them have said anything, but you feel as though it’s been written all over your face.
The bell rings for the first period of the afternoon. You all get up to gather your things - Oz has History now, Brian has Gym class, and Vicky will be spending her free period in the library - they’re all heading towards the main building, so there’s no way to hide the fact that you’re going in a completely different direction. You’re walking towards the bathrooms, where you’ll be skipping class, again. All of you skip class from time to time - what self-respecting twenty-something student lets a high school administration dictate all their plans for the day? - but you’re the only one who seems to spend more time avoiding school than actually attending. Vicky and Brian shrug it off, but you notice Oz watching what you’re doing - and you could swear one of his phobias makes a little disappointed face. Those guys are so cute. You promise yourself that Oz will be the first one you confide in, once you know exactly what it is you have to confide.
The bathroom door closes behind you and you are alone - unsurprising; the students just had a whole hour to make use of the facilities, so there’s really no excuse for being here right now, unless you have an appointment. Which you do.
The note was slipped in to your locker some time before you got to school this morning. You’re not usually one for getting all girly with butterflies in your stomach - that’s Vicky’s shtick - but all day there has been a part of you that can’t believe it’s real. One of the popular kids - that beautiful, unattainable dirty-half-dozen individuals whom everybody else can only adore from a distance - has left a note in your locker asking you to meet in the bathroom after lunch. They have something they want to ask you.
You’re smart enough to know that this is either the opening scene to a teen romance or a horror movie - and yes, you checked the bathroom door for precariously balanced buckets of pigs’ blood before you walked through. The popular kids aren’t that mean, usually, and you aren’t exactly one of the unpopular kids yourself… but it always pays to be on your guard in a school full of monsters.
You hop up onto the sinks and sit there, carefully balanced. Whatever this is about, someone’s running fashionably late. You’re not bored, you’re too keyed up to be bored, but you want distraction. You settle for lighting the tip of your index finger on fire and goof around some, flicking the flame on and off, holding your hand out at an angle like a classy lady smoking a cigarette while you act too aloof to flirt with your reflection. You’re just starting to enjoy your silly game enough to relax a little when the door opens.
You’re not surprised; you’d already worked out who your mystery note-leaver was. There are only two people in this school who can’t pick up a piece of paper without scorching the edges a little, and one of them is you. Still though; unlike some of your friends, you do actually have a heartbeat, and though it’s mostly for show it’s capable of speeding up when you’re frightened or excited. This scenario definitely counts as both.
What sort of self-respecting fire djinn could have spent a literal eternity in high school with Damien LaVey without developing an all-consuming crush on him? Not only is he practically royalty (“let’s just say one of his Dads is a pretty big deal you-know-where…”); not only are his horns your absolute favourite shade of burnt red; the guy is a badass and a daredevil, everything you want to be wrapped up in everything you want to look at. And now he says he wants to talk to you.
Gods, you really do act like Vicky sometimes. Get your shit together, Amira. You’re an ifrit, you’re the strongest djinn in town, he’s not better than you, you can definitely say something to him.
You’re not saying anything.
He says something.
“Hey.”
Uh… “Hey yourself.” Oh, that should have been such a lame comeback, but you were still perched on the sink with your fingertips all aflame, and the way you had to put back your head to look at him over your shoulder made you seem… so cool.
He actually looks impressed by you; maybe even a little shy, or is that just your feverish imagination? You might actually have this under control. You might even be brave enough to say something else before he does.
“What’s up?” OK, it’s not eloquent, but “what do you want?” sounds just too confrontational and “what can I do for you?” makes you sound like a salesgirl in a shoe shop. You hop off the edge of the sink and turn to face him, hoping that you manage to look… slinky is the word that springs to mind. You would like to be someone who slinks, in this context anyway.
“Yeah, uhm…” You had heard it rumoured that Damien has been known to mumble when he’s nervous, but you had never believed it until now. He’s the sort of guy who bellows most of what he has to say, and you’d never known him any different. “So I… had something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
In this moment your mind goes to a dozen different places, some of them weird as hell, some of them just kind of out there. Vicky’s voice pops into your head with a cutesy whisper of “Oh my gods, is he going to ask you to prom?!” before you can shut her up with her stupid ideas.
He’s still talking while you’re wrestling with your inner girly BFF. “It’s kind of a little… awkward. And… I want you to feel free to say no, OK?” Seriously, this has got to be going somewhere good, right? I mean, it’s probably not a prom invitation, you and Damien have never even hung out alone together before, let alone been on anything approaching a date, but…
“The truth is, Amira, that ever since I met you I’ve just really wanted to - ”
Here it comes!
“ - touch your hair.”
Huh. You hadn’t seen that one coming, though with hindsight it makes a lot of sense. To say that Damien is fixated on fire is an understatement: you’ve been to enough parties where he was in attendance to know that his drink of choice is lighter fluid, and have heard him describe his favourite snack food as “matches”. Now that you think about it, you can’t believe it took him nearly four years to ask you something like this.
“I mean, I know that it’s not considered cool to just ask to touch someone’s hair, there are all sorts of sensitivity issues raised by that...” Damien’s best friend is Vera, a snake-haired Gorgon who can give you chapter and verse on why this exact request is unacceptably rude; for a moment he sounds more like her than himself before recovering to finish with: “But it just looks so awesome.” His yellow-irised eyes are fixated on a point on your forehead, as though he knows he ought to be making eye contact but is just too mesmerised by your flickering coiffure of flames.
That’s quite the compliment… you didn’t know Damien had it in him to express open admiration of something without feeling the need to interject some negative side-swipe in there. He’s right though: it is pretty rude. He’s hardly the first person to have become fixated on that fiery mane of yours, and though most people are too afraid to try and touch a naked flame without asking, you’ve had to brush off your fair share of space-invading jerks over the years. (And occasionally extinguish them… if you felt like it.) Luckily, you think that there’s a solution that can lead to you keeping your dignity and giving Damien permission to touch you… both of which are things that you very much want in this moment.
“How about...” you say, “you can touch my hair if I can touch one of your horns?”
Damien’s eyes flick down to yours, and he actually raises one eyebrow. “Really? Why?”
You shrug. “Because that way it’s fair. And maybe more monsters have horns than have fire for hair, but it’s not like they’re common. I don’t know anyone else who has them. So I’ve never… um… touched one, either.” You bite down on your instinct to tell him all about how on one bored evening Vicky once let you hook the battery up to her neck bolts, so it’s not like you’ve never seen any cranial-appendage action; reminding yourself that this isn’t a competition, it’s bartering, which is totally not weird.
“I guess that makes sense…” Damien admits, even though you can tell he’s reluctant on principle to agree with a suggestion that someone else came up with. “As long as I get to go first! It was my idea.”
You agree that this seems reasonable. “So, do you want to do it… right now?” you ask. The school bathrooms aren’t exactly the most private location; maybe Damien meant for you to meet up with him later?
But you’re forgetting: it’s Damien. Getting intimate in a public space is going to be way, way below any level of propriety he concerns himself with.
“Hell, yeah!”
Oh, well. You spend so much time in this bathroom that it’s practically your home away from home, anyway. Plus, you’re a djinn. You take a moment to wish for privacy; the door locks itself. You make a mental note to run your idea for the phrase “self-grantification” by your friends at some point, though the way things are shaping up, it’s going to be pretty far down your list of things to tell them about from today.
Damien reaches out his hand to the top of your head; you can’t see what he’s doing, but you can feel his fingers moving through your hair. Your stomach tightens up (along with a few other choice areas of your anatomy); and your flames begin to burn brighter and higher.
You have never seen Damien look so absolutely delighted as he does at this moment.
“I’ve always wondered how it worked…” he tells you. He lowers his hand until his fingertips touch your scalp, which is kind of nice, but nowhere near as nice as being able to consume the whole of his hand with your living, tactile fire. “So your head’s just…”
“Skull and skin,” you confirm.
“But your hair is actual fire,” he muses. “It’s hot. I mean, burning hot. It’s not an illusion.”
“One hundred percent real,” you agree. “No cosmetic enhancements. I’m a natural redhead.”
He laughs. He’s still running his hand through your hair with a mixture of desire and curiosity that is at the same time oddly sweet and intensely sexy. He tries to run his fingers towards what would be the tips of your hair, if it was regular hair; but the flames just keep on growing, unwilling to untangle from around him.
And he’s still full of questions. “How do you sleep?”
“Carefully,” you deadpan.
You spent the lunch hour hanging out in the yard with your friends. You’d be the first to admit that you’re usually the loud one of the group, but all through lunch you were self-consciously asking yourself “am I being too quiet?”, and then being even louder to compensate. You feel like they must have noticed something different in the way you’ve been behaving. None of them have said anything, but you feel as though it’s been written all over your face.
The bell rings for the first period of the afternoon. You all get up to gather your things - Oz has History now, Brian has Gym class, and Vicky will be spending her free period in the library - they’re all heading towards the main building, so there’s no way to hide the fact that you’re going in a completely different direction. You’re walking towards the bathrooms, where you’ll be skipping class, again. All of you skip class from time to time - what self-respecting twenty-something student lets a high school administration dictate all their plans for the day? - but you’re the only one who seems to spend more time avoiding school than actually attending. Vicky and Brian shrug it off, but you notice Oz watching what you’re doing - and you could swear one of his phobias makes a little disappointed face. Those guys are so cute. You promise yourself that Oz will be the first one you confide in, once you know exactly what it is you have to confide.
The bathroom door closes behind you and you are alone - unsurprising; the students just had a whole hour to make use of the facilities, so there’s really no excuse for being here right now, unless you have an appointment. Which you do.
The note was slipped in to your locker some time before you got to school this morning. You’re not usually one for getting all girly with butterflies in your stomach - that’s Vicky’s shtick - but all day there has been a part of you that can’t believe it’s real. One of the popular kids - that beautiful, unattainable dirty-half-dozen individuals whom everybody else can only adore from a distance - has left a note in your locker asking you to meet in the bathroom after lunch. They have something they want to ask you.
You’re smart enough to know that this is either the opening scene to a teen romance or a horror movie - and yes, you checked the bathroom door for precariously balanced buckets of pigs’ blood before you walked through. The popular kids aren’t that mean, usually, and you aren’t exactly one of the unpopular kids yourself… but it always pays to be on your guard in a school full of monsters.
You hop up onto the sinks and sit there, carefully balanced. Whatever this is about, someone’s running fashionably late. You’re not bored, you’re too keyed up to be bored, but you want distraction. You settle for lighting the tip of your index finger on fire and goof around some, flicking the flame on and off, holding your hand out at an angle like a classy lady smoking a cigarette while you act too aloof to flirt with your reflection. You’re just starting to enjoy your silly game enough to relax a little when the door opens.
You’re not surprised; you’d already worked out who your mystery note-leaver was. There are only two people in this school who can’t pick up a piece of paper without scorching the edges a little, and one of them is you. Still though; unlike some of your friends, you do actually have a heartbeat, and though it’s mostly for show it’s capable of speeding up when you’re frightened or excited. This scenario definitely counts as both.
What sort of self-respecting fire djinn could have spent a literal eternity in high school with Damien LaVey without developing an all-consuming crush on him? Not only is he practically royalty (“let’s just say one of his Dads is a pretty big deal you-know-where…”); not only are his horns your absolute favourite shade of burnt red; the guy is a badass and a daredevil, everything you want to be wrapped up in everything you want to look at. And now he says he wants to talk to you.
Gods, you really do act like Vicky sometimes. Get your shit together, Amira. You’re an ifrit, you’re the strongest djinn in town, he’s not better than you, you can definitely say something to him.
You’re not saying anything.
He says something.
“Hey.”
Uh… “Hey yourself.” Oh, that should have been such a lame comeback, but you were still perched on the sink with your fingertips all aflame, and the way you had to put back your head to look at him over your shoulder made you seem… so cool.
He actually looks impressed by you; maybe even a little shy, or is that just your feverish imagination? You might actually have this under control. You might even be brave enough to say something else before he does.
“What’s up?” OK, it’s not eloquent, but “what do you want?” sounds just too confrontational and “what can I do for you?” makes you sound like a salesgirl in a shoe shop. You hop off the edge of the sink and turn to face him, hoping that you manage to look… slinky is the word that springs to mind. You would like to be someone who slinks, in this context anyway.
“Yeah, uhm…” You had heard it rumoured that Damien has been known to mumble when he’s nervous, but you had never believed it until now. He’s the sort of guy who bellows most of what he has to say, and you’d never known him any different. “So I… had something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
In this moment your mind goes to a dozen different places, some of them weird as hell, some of them just kind of out there. Vicky’s voice pops into your head with a cutesy whisper of “Oh my gods, is he going to ask you to prom?!” before you can shut her up with her stupid ideas.
He’s still talking while you’re wrestling with your inner girly BFF. “It’s kind of a little… awkward. And… I want you to feel free to say no, OK?” Seriously, this has got to be going somewhere good, right? I mean, it’s probably not a prom invitation, you and Damien have never even hung out alone together before, let alone been on anything approaching a date, but…
“The truth is, Amira, that ever since I met you I’ve just really wanted to - ”
Here it comes!
“ - touch your hair.”
Huh. You hadn’t seen that one coming, though with hindsight it makes a lot of sense. To say that Damien is fixated on fire is an understatement: you’ve been to enough parties where he was in attendance to know that his drink of choice is lighter fluid, and have heard him describe his favourite snack food as “matches”. Now that you think about it, you can’t believe it took him nearly four years to ask you something like this.
“I mean, I know that it’s not considered cool to just ask to touch someone’s hair, there are all sorts of sensitivity issues raised by that...” Damien’s best friend is Vera, a snake-haired Gorgon who can give you chapter and verse on why this exact request is unacceptably rude; for a moment he sounds more like her than himself before recovering to finish with: “But it just looks so awesome.” His yellow-irised eyes are fixated on a point on your forehead, as though he knows he ought to be making eye contact but is just too mesmerised by your flickering coiffure of flames.
That’s quite the compliment… you didn’t know Damien had it in him to express open admiration of something without feeling the need to interject some negative side-swipe in there. He’s right though: it is pretty rude. He’s hardly the first person to have become fixated on that fiery mane of yours, and though most people are too afraid to try and touch a naked flame without asking, you’ve had to brush off your fair share of space-invading jerks over the years. (And occasionally extinguish them… if you felt like it.) Luckily, you think that there’s a solution that can lead to you keeping your dignity and giving Damien permission to touch you… both of which are things that you very much want in this moment.
“How about...” you say, “you can touch my hair if I can touch one of your horns?”
Damien’s eyes flick down to yours, and he actually raises one eyebrow. “Really? Why?”
You shrug. “Because that way it’s fair. And maybe more monsters have horns than have fire for hair, but it’s not like they’re common. I don’t know anyone else who has them. So I’ve never… um… touched one, either.” You bite down on your instinct to tell him all about how on one bored evening Vicky once let you hook the battery up to her neck bolts, so it’s not like you’ve never seen any cranial-appendage action; reminding yourself that this isn’t a competition, it’s bartering, which is totally not weird.
“I guess that makes sense…” Damien admits, even though you can tell he’s reluctant on principle to agree with a suggestion that someone else came up with. “As long as I get to go first! It was my idea.”
You agree that this seems reasonable. “So, do you want to do it… right now?” you ask. The school bathrooms aren’t exactly the most private location; maybe Damien meant for you to meet up with him later?
But you’re forgetting: it’s Damien. Getting intimate in a public space is going to be way, way below any level of propriety he concerns himself with.
“Hell, yeah!”
Oh, well. You spend so much time in this bathroom that it’s practically your home away from home, anyway. Plus, you’re a djinn. You take a moment to wish for privacy; the door locks itself. You make a mental note to run your idea for the phrase “self-grantification” by your friends at some point, though the way things are shaping up, it’s going to be pretty far down your list of things to tell them about from today.
Damien reaches out his hand to the top of your head; you can’t see what he’s doing, but you can feel his fingers moving through your hair. Your stomach tightens up (along with a few other choice areas of your anatomy); and your flames begin to burn brighter and higher.
You have never seen Damien look so absolutely delighted as he does at this moment.
“I’ve always wondered how it worked…” he tells you. He lowers his hand until his fingertips touch your scalp, which is kind of nice, but nowhere near as nice as being able to consume the whole of his hand with your living, tactile fire. “So your head’s just…”
“Skull and skin,” you confirm.
“But your hair is actual fire,” he muses. “It’s hot. I mean, burning hot. It’s not an illusion.”
“One hundred percent real,” you agree. “No cosmetic enhancements. I’m a natural redhead.”
He laughs. He’s still running his hand through your hair with a mixture of desire and curiosity that is at the same time oddly sweet and intensely sexy. He tries to run his fingers towards what would be the tips of your hair, if it was regular hair; but the flames just keep on growing, unwilling to untangle from around him.
And he’s still full of questions. “How do you sleep?”
“Carefully,” you deadpan.
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