Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shadow Milk leaned against a bulletin board cluttered with half-torn flyers, some for philosophy club debates, others advertising therapy goats and free smoothies. His arms were crossed, a toothpick hanging from his mouth like he thought he belonged in a noir film. He didn’t. It was just the awkward lull between lecture blocks at the Citadel of Runes and Knowledge University, and the hall still smelled like burnt coffee and poster glue.

His gaze stayed fixed on him.

The angelic disaster down the corridor.

Pure Vanilla Cookie.

There he was, radiant in that infuriatingly soft, innocent way. Laughing with White Lily like life was some endless pastoral dream. His golden hair shimmered under the overhead fluorescents like he’d just stepped out of a shampoo ad. That stupid white cardigan hung over his shoulders like a holy relic. His laptop was probably alphabetized. His notes were definitely color-coded. Even his laugh, gentle, melodic, absurdly likable, made Shadow Milk want to throw his philosophy textbook into a trash fire.

“Ugh,” Shadow muttered, chewing harder on the toothpick.

It wasn’t fair. Pure Vanilla was everything Shadow wasn’t, sunlight to his stormclouds. Professors actually called him “a sweetheart” and meant it. He brought extra pens. He cried during Of Mice and Men. He played piano at the winter showcase. And everyone adored him.

Even he had adored him. Once.

Back when things were different.

“Shaaaadow Milk~!” Eternal Sugar’s voice sang like static-choked jazz as she approached with Mystic Flour, Burning Spice, and Silent Salt in tow. People instinctively stepped aside for them. No one messed with the Beasts.

Shadow didn’t look at her, though he felt her cold hand on his shoulder, the kind of touch you give a favorite blade before a kill.

“What?” he muttered, still watching that golden menace.

“You’re staring again,” she teased, brushing imaginary lint from his sleeve.

Behind her, Mystic Flour’s eyes scanned the hall like a surveillance camera, Silent Salt unscrewed a mystery vial, and Burning Spice grinned like a threat with legs.

“Want me to trip him again on the stairs?” Burning offered. “I still owe you from when you hexed Cheese’s laptop during finals.”

“No,” Shadow said, though the thought was incredibly tempting. “He’d probably fall like a saint. All graceful and tragic. Everyone would cry and start a scholarship fund in his name.”

Eternal Sugar giggled and looped her arm through his. “You could just talk to him. You used to, remember? Back before you started hissing at sunlight.”

“I don’t hiss. I glare.”

Mystic Flour finally spoke, monotone. “You are emotionally compromised. This is inefficient.”

“I am not!” Shadow snapped.

The rest of the Beasts said nothing, which was worse. They had decided. And maybe, maybe they weren’t wrong.

Shadow slouched deeper into his hoodie and chewed his toothpick like it owed him money.

Down the hall, Pure Vanilla looked up.

Their eyes met.

Just for a second.

Then Pure Vanilla looked away. Politely. Gently. He hated it.

“God,” Shadow growled. “He even ignores people like he’s doing them a favor.”

Burning Spice cracked his knuckles. “Want me to throw a rock at him?”

“No,” Shadow said.

But this time, he wasn’t entirely sure.

—————

Later, in the shaded courtyard outside the student union, the Beasts gathered at their usual haunt, a crumbling stone bench under a half-dead tree, surrounded by cracked pavement and a perpetually broken water fountain.

Perfect. No birds. No cheerful acoustic music. Just the distant sound of someone stress-crying over midterms and the faint smell of burnt resin and vending machine snacks.

Burning Spice climbed the tree like a gargoyle and started shouting at passing freshmen. “Hey! Move along, sunshine brigade! This bench’s got bad karma!”

Silent Salt began pouring his newest liquid concoction into the fountain’s murky water.

Mystic Flour sat in eerie stillness, fingers folded, eyes cold and calculating.

Shadow dropped onto the bench with a sigh, pulled out his phone, and stared at the still-empty message thread with Pure Vanilla.

“You wanna meet up?”

He hovered. Deleted it. Again.

Eternal Sugar leaned in, reading over his shoulder. “Just send it, baby bat. Or I’ll go flirt with him myself.”

Shadow glared. “Try it, and I’ll lace your iced coffee with cayenne.”

She only smirked, unwrapping a lollipop. “So dramatic.”

Across the courtyard, the student union doors creaked open.

Pure Vanilla stepped out, sunlight catching his hair like a halo. White Lily still talked beside him, but he wasn’t listening. Shadow could tell.

Because for the briefest moment…

He looked toward their bench.

Not at the others.

At him.

And then he smiled. Just barely. Just for a moment.

And then he turned away.

Shadow Milk’s chest fizzed like shaken soda and unspoken things.

“God,” he whispered, soft this time.

Burning Spice glanced down. “Rock-throwing offer still stands.”

“No,” Shadow muttered.

But this time, maybe.

—————

Pure Vanilla Cookie sat down gently at the marble-topped table beneath the pergola. The dappled sunlight cast soft patterns over his neatly folded lunch. The courtyard air was warm, filled with the scent of lavender and overwatered roses, and yet he couldn’t relax.

He could feel eyes on him.

Across the cracked tiles and dead hedges, like some lurking shadow behind glass, Shadow Milk was slumped on that bench again, surrounded by his personal monsters. The Beasts. Eternal Sugar twirled her lollipop like a dagger. Burning Spice barked at freshmen like a rabid dog. Silent Salt was pouring something questionable into the fountain. Mystic Flour sat still as death, watching with that lifeless, analytical stare.

They looked like a band cover for emotional instability.

“They’re looking over here again,” White Lily muttered, gently peeling the skin off her orange slice with surgical precision. “Shadow’s practically burning holes through your skull.”

“I noticed,” Pure Vanilla admitted.

He didn’t want to, but he always did.

He had learned to feel him, even from a distance. That cold presence, like an ache just under his ribs. Heavy with something unspoken.

“What does he even want from you?” Hollyberry scoffed, ripping open her protein bar with her teeth. “The drama. The glares. It’s exhausting. I say we throw a chair at him.”

“You always say that,” Golden Cheese said flatly, not looking up from her compact mirror, applying a golden colored eyeshadow. “You also said that about the cafeteria lady.”

“She was hoarding the good jellies.”

“Can Mystic Flour stop staring?” Dark Cacao asked. “I mean, really, it’s rude.”

White Lily arched a brow, slicing her orange cleanly in half. “Mystic Flour stares at everyone. I think it’s how she breathes.”

“She doesn’t breathe,” Golden Cheese deadpanned, still adjusting her headband. “I’m pretty sure she’s just a sentient mannequin in a skirt.”

“Eternal Sugar isn’t much better,” Hollyberry sighed. “She just smiles at you. Now there’s nothing wrong with a smile, but it’s creepy smiling all the time.”

“Please, don’t get me started on Silent Salt,” White Lily groaned.

“At least he moves,” Dark Cacao muttered.

“Oh, Burning Spice is awful! He somehow ruined my computer during finals week,” Golden Cheese complained.

White Lily gave a sharp hum of agreement. “They’re pests. Stray magic and unchecked ego. The Academy should have expelled them ages ago.”

“They’re not even real cookies,” Hollyberry added, loud enough for the courtyard to hear. “They’re just… stitched-up nightmares pretending to be students.”

Pure Vanilla barely heard her.

His eyes had drifted again. To him.

Shadow Milk hadn’t moved. He never did, not really. Just lounged there like a curse someone forgot to lift, ankle hooked over his knee, hoodie pooling around him like spilled ink. The only sign of life was the occasional flick of his toothpick, tapping rhythmically against his fangs. His monsters howled and jeered, but he… just stared.

At him.

Always him.

Pure Vanilla’s grip tightened around his fork. He wasn’t sure when he’d stopped eating. Or breathing.

His friends were still talking, listing grievances, sharpening their resentment into a polished weapon, but their words felt far away. Like wind through a stained-glass window. All sound, no shape.

“…Vanilla? Pure Vanilla Cookie!” White Lily snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. 

Pure Vanilla blinked, startled back into his body. “What?”

“You spaced out,” White Lily said, inspecting him like a cracked teacup. “Again.”

Hollyberry snorted. “He’s been like this all semester. All Shadow has to do is look his way, and boom, Vanilla’s in a trance.”

Golden Cheese glanced up from her mirror, finally interested. “It’s actually kind of sad. Like watching a moth fall in love with the bug zapper.”

“It’s not…” Pure Vanilla started, but the words felt thin in his mouth. He pushed a piece of lavender shortbread around his plate instead.

“Not what?” Dark Cacao asked. “Not obsessive? Not unhealthy? Because I can tell you right now, there’s nothing normal about a guy who never blinks and travels with a walking plague circus.”

White Lily leaned in slightly. “Did he do something to you?”

“No.” The word came too quickly.

Golden Cheese rolled her eyes. “Ugh. It’s always the quiet ones. I bet he did some kind of creepy memory spell. Or maybe you two made some forbidden pact under a blood moon or whatever.”

Hollyberry cracked her knuckles. “We should confront him.”

“No,” Pure Vanilla said, too fast. Too sharp. “Please don’t… I just- UGH!” A rock hit his face, right above his eye. He reeled back with a startled gasp, clutching his forehead as pain bloomed in a hot, sudden pulse. The entire courtyard froze.

“What the…?” Hollyberry leapt to her feet, already scanning for the source. “Who the hell just threw that?!”

Pure Vanilla’s hand came away with a smear of buttercream colored jam, his own.

Across the cracked tiles, Burning Spice was doubled over laughing, shoulders shaking like a volcano about to erupt. Eternal Sugar was clapping daintily like it was a theater performance. Mystic Flour didn’t move, and Silent Salt blew bubbles into the courtyard fountain with a straw made of bone.

And Shadow Milk?

He was already standing.

Still slouched, still soaked in dark nonchalance, but standing all the same. The toothpick was gone, his hands shoved into his pockets like nothing had happened, but his gaze… his gaze…

It was storming.

Angry

“Dude,” Burning Spice wheezed, “it was barely a toss.”

“I said no,” Shadow Milk growled, low and sharp. “Do you know what that means, or is your skull too fire-damaged to hold the word?”

“Oooooh,” Eternal Sugar whispered, eyes glittering with interest. “He’s mad.”

Hollyberry was already halfway to the center of the courtyard. “You want to start something? Let’s go, you little reject–”

“No!” Pure Vanilla called out, standing abruptly. “Just… stop. Please.”

Jam dripped down his temple. It wasn’t serious. Just messy. Embarrassing.

He didn’t want this.

He didn’t want a war in the courtyard.

Shadow Milk was already walking toward him.

Slow. Deliberate. Dangerous in that casual, careless way. Like a nightmare that knew it didn’t have to run.

“Should I get the Headmaster?” Golden Cheese asked, already pulling out her phone.

“Don’t bother,” White Lily said sharply. “They’ll all get detention, and Shadow will just like that.”

Shadow Milk stopped three steps short of the pergola. The sun cast hard shadows beneath his eyes, making them look darker than usual, two ink blots threatening to bleed.

He looked at Pure Vanilla’s face. At the buttercream trail. At the way his hand trembled ever so slightly as he lowered it.

Then, slowly, Shadow raised a hand and took a napkin from his hoodie sleeve and offered it.

No apology. No explanation. Just… a gesture. Silent. Intimate in its strangeness.

Pure Vanilla stared at it like it was a bomb.

“I told him not to,” Shadow said. Not defensive. Just stating a fact.

“Yeah, and?” Hollyberry barked. “Your little mutt did it anyway.”

Shadow tilted his head. “And I’m apologizing.”

Pure Vanilla reached out and took the napkin.

“…Thank you…” he smiled softly. 

Shadow’s expression didn’t change.

Not really.

But something behind his eyes flickered, like the tip of a candle shivering just before it steadies. He gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. Then dropped his hand back into his hoodie pocket like he hadn’t just crossed some invisible line no one else had dared to touch.

“No one touches him again,” Shadow said flatly, turning his head just slightly, just enough for the Beasts to hear him. “Got it?”

Burning Spice muttered something under his breath and Eternal Sugar giggled, twirling her lollipop like it was a knife again. But no one argued.

Not with that voice.

Not when Shadow Milk looked like he might snap the sky in half if Pure Vanilla bled again.

Shadow Milk walked back to the Beasts. 

Pure Vanilla slowly dabbed at the cut with the napkin, his cheeks flushing faintly, not from pain, but from something warmer, heavier, something that clung behind his ribs like fog.

The silence stretched around them like elastic.

“Are you seriously blushing?” Golden Cheese asked, her voice sharp and scandalized.

“I’m not,” Pure Vanilla said too quickly.

White Lily’s gaze narrowed like a magnifying glass over ants. “You let him get that close.”

“He brought me a napkin,” Pure Vanilla said, as though that somehow explained anything.

Hollyberry looked from him to Shadow Milk and back again, jaw tight. “If this turns into some tragic forbidden enemies-to-lovers storyline, I swear I’ll fling myself into an icing vat.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Dark Cacao muttered.

But Pure Vanilla wasn’t listening anymore.

He looked back up. Caught Shadow Milk’s gaze again.

It wasn’t a glare this time. Not a smirk. Just a quiet, unreadable look. Studying him like a poem no one else could decipher. His shadow stretched long across the courtyard as he turned and walked back to the bench, monsters parting for him like a tide.

Pure Vanilla still held the napkin in his lap.

He didn’t move.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t notice when the jam stopped dripping.

The wind rustled the pergola vines above.

And far across the courtyard, Shadow Milk finally sat again, like a nightmare settling back into its nest, and watched him.

—————

Advanced Magic Theory & Applications– Block 6

The room smelled faintly of crushed chalk, melted wax, and someone’s poorly masked anxiety. Rows of tiered seats arched like a spell circle around the center podium, where the professor, a figure cloaked in whispers and ancient fabric, hovered, faceless, ageless, and unwilling to learn anyone’s name.

“Today’s lesson,” the professor rasped, “is Resonant Pairwork. Magic that exists in tension. In conflict. In fusion.”

Several students glanced up from their notebooks.

Pure Vanilla Cookie didn’t. He was already writing the date at the top of the page in precise calligraphy. His penmanship could win awards. He underlined the topic. Resonant Pairwork. That didn’t sound… ideal.

“You will not choose your partner,” the professor continued, voice curling around the room like smoke. “You will be assigned. You will create one spell. Together. No solo casting. Fusion only. Two signatures. One outcome.”

A pulse of pale violet light shimmered across the room.

Names floated above desks, swirling in tendrils of magic before crystallizing.

And then Pure Vanilla saw it.

His name.

And right beside it, glowing, flickering, taunting. 

Shadow Milk Cookie.

His heart stuttered. Then tried to pretend it hadn’t.

A breath hitched in his throat, soft, barely audible.

No. No no no. It’s fine. It’s fine. He adjusted his cardigan, smoothed his sleeves, tried not to look. Tried not to beam.

He failed at both.

From across the room, Shadow Milk looked up from his sketchbook. Or maybe it was just a pad he used to draw eldritch eyes and failing grades. Either way, he locked eyes with him. And grinned. Barely.

Pure Vanilla turned away, a stupid smile on his face, laughing giddily to himself. 

White Lily tilted her head first. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t have to. The single raised brow, the quiet, calculated glance between Pure Vanilla’s face and the floating name pairing said it all.

Hollyberry wasn’t so subtle. “You have to be kidding me,” she hissed under her breath. “Tell me this is a prank. Tell me you have a concussion. Vanilla.”

“I don’t,” Pure Vanilla murmured, still staring at his notes even though his quill had stopped moving. “It’s just a partner assignment.”

“Oh yeah?” Golden Cheese whispered harshly from the row above. “Because you’re smiling like you just got asked to prom.”

“Look at him,” Dark Cacao grunted. “He’s actually happy. This is what losing looks like.”

“I’m not happy,” Pure Vanilla lied. “I’m composed. Calm. Academically flexible.”

“You’re glowing,” White Lily deadpanned. “He hasn’t even spoken to you and you’re glowing.”

“I am not.”

“You just highlighted your name with pink shimmer ink,” she added. “Which you only use on birthdays and finals.”

“It was already in my hand.”

Hollyberry leaned forward on her desk, voice low and dangerous. “Vanilla. Do you even remember what he did last semester? The lock spell in the greenhouse? The cursed vending machine? The prank call that gave Golden Cheese that existential crisis?”

“I still see teeth in dreams,” Golden Cheese muttered, shivering.

“He’s not that bad,” Pure Vanilla mumbled, barely audible.

White Lily’s pencil almost cracked from how hard she was gripping it. “You’re defending him?”

“No. I’m just… not blaming him.”

“I swear to the Witches above,” Hollyberry said, rising slightly in her seat like she was preparing to lunge across desks, “if he so much as breathes on you weird…”

—————

The classroom reeked of crushed chalk, old wax, and somebody’s barely concealed fear sweat.

Shadow Milk hated it here.

Tiered seats curled around the center podium like some pretentious altar. The professor stood dead-center, cloaked in spellrot and forgotten memories, face hidden, presence barely tethered to this dimension. The kind of entity that gave pop quizzes and existential dread in equal measure.

“Today’s lesson,” the professor hissed, voice like static in a haunted cathedral, “is Resonant Pairwork. Magic that exists in tension. In conflict. In fusion.”

Ugh. Fusion. The worst word. Shadow slouched further into his seat, arms crossed, sketchpad open in front of him. He was halfway through doodling a demonic duck devouring a pile of administrative paperwork when the words “You will not choose your partner” landed like a slap.

Of course.

Of course they wouldn’t get to choose. This was the Citadel of Runes and Knowledge, where autonomy was a myth and half your grades were based on surviving other people’s spells.

A pulse of violet light rippled through the air like someone had cracked a magical glow stick. Names hovered above heads, twisting in lazy spirals before locking in place.

Shadow looked up.

And there it was.

His name. Shadow Milk Cookie.

And beside it, glowing like a personal joke from the witches. 

Pure Vanilla Cookie.

A beat passed. His sketchpad slipped slightly down his desk. The demonic duck stared up at him in judgment.

“…You’ve got to be kidding.”

He looked across the room.

And there he was. All stupid golden light and gentle cardigan folds, pretending to be surprised, pretending not to smile like an idiot. Adjusting his collar like this was a baking competition, not a cursed group project. His cheeks had already flushed faintly pink, and he was doing that thing where he laughed quietly to himself.

Witches.

Shadow barely noticed Eternal Sugar lean in from the next row, whispering, “You’re paired with him? Ooooh, you’re gonna be so normal by the end of this.”

Burning Spice cackled. “Or we’re all going to explode in a fusion disaster. Fifty-fifty.”

“Don’t poison it,” Shadow muttered, standing.

He could feel every eye on him as he started down the stairs. Every step was casual. Loose. He didn’t even look like he was moving with purpose. But inside, everything was fizzing. Sharp and bright. Like he’d swallowed stars and they were clawing to get out.

Pure Vanilla noticed.

Of course he did.

His stupid calligraphy pen paused mid-word, his entire aura shifting like a deer realizing it was being watched by something that didn’t need to chase to kill.

Shadow liked that.

He stopped in front of his desk, letting the silence stretch like a rubber band.

“Hey, partner,” he said, letting the words drip slow.

Pure Vanilla looked up like he’d rehearsed being calm but forgot the lines halfway through.

“Hello,” he said.

That one word held too much breath.

Too much hope.

Shadow’s grin flicked up, just a twitch of fangs. “So… wanna come over to my house to work on the project later?”

He could feel the ancients staring from where they had moved. 

Pure Vanilla froze.

His heart skipped. Then tripped. Then sprinted into his throat like it was trying to claw out of his mouth.

Shadow Milk was talking to him.

Standing right there. At his desk. Looking at him like a slow-moving eclipse. Voice low, teeth just barely showing, every syllable like it was dipped in velvet and sarcasm.

And oh no, he was smiling. Not a smirk, not a sneer, an actual smile. Tiny. Dangerous. Gorgeous.

Cool. Say something cool. Academic. Professional. Normal.

“I… I can bring my notes,” he blurted. “For the project. I have, um, multiple sets. Diagrams. Color-coded. I made a preliminary resonance map, just for fun.”

Shadow just stared at him. Slowly raised an eyebrow. “You mapped our resonance?”

“I mean not our resonance, just… like… general pairwork resonance between types and… oh witches,” Pure Vanilla whispered, immediately burying his face in his parchment.

Shadow laughed. Low and sharp and delighted.

It did not help.

Pure Vanilla peeked out from behind his notes, cheeks glowing pink like a sunrise made of panic. “Are you sure about your house? We could meet at the south tower lounge,” he offered, clearly trying to recover. “Or the amphitheater courtyard? Or.. or the arboretum, if you prefer a natural setting? I know it’s noisy, but-”

“My house,” Shadow said. Lazy. Certain.

Pure Vanilla blinked. “Your… your house…”

Shadow tilted his head, like it was obvious. “More privacy. Fewer eyes. Fewer rules.”

“O-oh,” Pure Vanilla breathed. “Okay. Yes. Yes. That’s totally fine. I love houses. I mean, I don’t love your house. Not that I don’t! I’m sure it’s-”

“Vanilla,” Shadow interrupted, grinning wider, “breathe.”

Pure Vanilla made a small noise that sounded like a teacup cracking.

“Just bring your notes, I’ll take care of the rest.” And Shadow Milk walked away

He just turned and walked off like he hadn’t just set Pure Vanilla’s entire nervous system on fire.

Pure Vanilla sank into his seat like it was quicksand. His hands were visibly shaking. He clutched his quill like a weapon and then, slowly, started doodling little stars and hearts around Shadow’s name on the assignment parchment.

White Lily stared at him from the next desk over. Unblinking.

“You’re sparkling,” she said flatly.

“I’m not,” he whispered, trying to hide the parchment behind his sleeve.

“You’re sparkling and humming,” she added. “Vanilla. You’re literally humming.”

“I’m just academically enthusiastic,” he whispered. “About… pair magic.”

“Dear witches,” Hollyberry sighed. “We’ve lost him.”

From across the room, Shadow slid back into his seat, flanked by the Beasts. Eternal Sugar was bouncing in her chair. Burning Spice was trying not to laugh out loud. Mystic Flour’s pen hovered ominously over her notebook, as if deciding whether to predict doom or mass delusion. Silent Salt adjusted the mask covering his face. 

But Shadow Milk?

He just tilted his head, glanced once more at Pure Vanilla, who was now hugging his spellbook to his chest like it contained romantic poetry, and smirked.

Oh, yeah.

This was going to be fun.

Chapter Text

Pure Vanilla wasn’t sure when “Sure, I can come over for the project” had become “Hiking across town at dusk with a binder full of magical equations and a heart full of ridiculous hope,” but here he was, on the outskirts of the tainted forest district, beneath a bruised-purple sky, walking the crumbling sidewalks of a neighborhood so forgotten it didn’t show up on the standard school maps.

The streetlights here flickered like haunted candles. The wind howled like it had unresolved trauma. There were no other students. Just creeping ivy, cracked stone, and the occasional crow that looked legally dead.

He stopped in front of the house.

If it could be called a house.

It looked like a Victorian manor and a pocket dimension had a falling out halfway through construction. Twisted spires. Iron-barred windows. A crooked weathervane shaped like a scythe. The door was painted black, not trendy, matte black. Absorbs-light-itself black. The kind of black that had opinions.

He clutched his bag tighter and took a breath. You’re just doing a project. Nothing else. Just academic collaboration. Group work. Equal partnership. That’s all.

His heart disagreed.

He knocked.

Candy Apple Cookie poked her head out first. Her eyes were huge, glowing faintly like twin cursed doll marbles, and her pink hair stuck out in several static-charged directions.

“Ohhh,” she said in a sing-song voice. “It’s the pretty one.”

Pure Vanilla flushed. “I… I’m here to… Shadow Milk invited…”

“Vanilly,” she said sweetly, grabbing his wrist and yanking him inside before he could finish. “We know. Come in, come in. You’re late.”

“I’m seven minutes early-”

“You’re late to destiny.” She giggled and slammed the door shut behind them.

The interior of the house was worse. Predictably worse. Bookshelves full of teeth. Enchanted light orbs flickering in time with someone’s erratic heartbeat. A stuffed jackalope head wearing a graduation cap. The faint smell of sulfur and sugar cookies.

It felt like a fever dream. 

On the couch, there was a cookie in a black leather jacket, purple t-shirt, and black sweatpants reading a book. 

“Sapphie! Look who’s here!”

Black Sapphire didn’t look up from his book.

“I can smell him,” he said flatly, flipping a page with a nail painted like obsidian. His voice was low and unimpressed, like someone reading a war report over breakfast. “Smells like lavender hand cream and barely repressed feelings.”

Pure Vanilla froze in the doorway. “I beg your pardon?”

“He’s complimenting you,” Candy Apple said brightly. Her twin buns sparked with static. “That’s just how he talks. Wait until he says he’s going to hollow you out and use you for potion jars. That’s how he flirts.”

“I don’t flirt,” Black Sapphire said without looking up. “I issue warnings. Calmly. In advance.”

Pure Vanilla clutched his binder closer. “That’s… very… respectful?”

“Sure.” Candy Apple grinned and spun on one foot. “Now come on! Shadow Milk’s waiting for you in his room!”

That shouldn’t have made Pure Vanilla’s heart do a double somersault. But it did.

“His… room?” he echoed, voice going higher than intended.

Candy Apple’s grin widened like she’d just won a bet with a demon. “Mhm! Don’t worry, it’s not cursed. Anymore.”

Black Sapphire snorted behind his book. “It’s emotionally cursed.”

Candy Apple stuck out her tongue. “So is your diary.”

Pure Vanilla was trying very hard not to melt into the antique floorboards. “I thought we’d work in a… study or something?”

“Oh no,” Candy Apple chirped, already dragging him down the hall by his sleeve. “Sapphie and I get the ‘study.’” She threw finger quotes so sharp they could sever fate. “You get the lair.”

The hallway stretched like a spell gone slightly wrong, too long, too narrow, walls lined with portraits that blinked. Some wept. One whispered run. Candy Apple skipped past it cheerfully.

At the end stood a door. Black wood. Twisting runes. Slightly ajar.

She stopped and gave him a mock-sweet smile. “Have fun, Vanilly~”

Before he could even answer, she vanished into the shadows like a cursed ballerina, giggling.

Pure Vanilla stared at the door. Breathed. Braced. Knocked once.

“It’s open,” came the low reply from within.

He nudged the door open.

And froze.

The room looked like the inside of a spellbook someone had set on fire and then kissed better. Candles floated midair, dripping wax onto nothing. The walls were painted a shade of midnight that didn’t exist in the natural color spectrum. A massive spell circle took up half the floor, etched in chalk, bone dust, and something that shimmered like regret.

Books were piled like towers. Crystals hummed on floating pedestals. A single potted plant in the corner looked terrified.

And there, kneeling over the circle in a hoodie and fingerless gloves, sleeves rolled and a pencil in his mouth, was Shadow Milk Cookie.

He looked up.

Witches…

Pure Vanilla felt his pulse abandon ship.

“You came,” Shadow said, like he hadn’t been checking the time every five minutes.

“I said I would,” Pure Vanilla replied, but it came out breathless. Ridiculous. In love.

Shadow leaned back on his heels, watching him like he was made of spell components and good dreams. “Binder?”

Pure Vanilla blinked. “What?”

“You brought your binder, right? With all the boring, perfect, completely over prepared stuff you were going to use to carry me through this grade?”

“Oh. Yes! Yes, I brought… everything. All six sections. Color-coded. There’s even a glossary,” he added, handing it over like an offering.

Shadow took it, flipped through the pages absently. Then he whistled low. “You alphabetized the ingredients list by magical volatility.”

“I also included a second version sorted by ethical controversy,” Pure Vanilla murmured.

Shadow looked up. “Of course you did.”

For a moment, they just stood there. One of them too much chaos, the other too much hope.

“Come on,” Shadow said at last, gesturing to the summoning circle. “We’ve got fusion work to do. Let’s see what happens when you pour sunlight into a storm.”

Pure Vanilla sat beside him, heart thundering louder than the ley lines. 

“So… what spell do you want to do?” Shadow Milk asked. 

Pure Vanilla flipped through his notes. “Well, I specialize in healing magic, you specialize in-”

“Manipulation magic, I’m aware,” Shadow Milk said. 

Shadow reached over and plucked one of the pages from Pure Vanilla’s neatly tabbed binder, holding it up to the candlelight like it might betray secrets it hadn’t before. His fingers brushed Vanilla’s, and it was barely a touch, but to Pure Vanilla, it might as well have been a lightning strike.

“You know healing and manipulation can create feedback loops, right?” Shadow said, voice dry. “Might make something unstable. Dangerous.”

Pure Vanilla’s eyes lit up like that was the best news he’d heard all week. “Yes. But if we anchor the signatures correctly, if we alternate magical output in precise ratios, it might create a sustained flux field. I did some simulations.”

“Of course you did.” Shadow smirked, setting the page down. “Tell me, Vanilly, what happens if the spell reacts to us instead of the other way around?”

Pure Vanilla swallowed. “Then we… uh… we harmonize. Or we detonate.”

Shadow laughed, quiet, rough, the kind of laugh that sounded like it hadn’t seen daylight in years. “Romantic.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Pure Vanilla said, face already flushing pink.

“You sure?” Shadow’s grin widened. “Because you’re blushing like a mad man with a tea set.”

“That makes no sense.” Pure Vanilla mumbled. “I don’t even have a tea set…”

“You seem like the type.”

They both turned toward the circle. Pure Vanilla sat with his legs tucked politely to the side, his notes laid out like a prayer altar. Shadow sprawled across from him like a cat in a trap it had no intention of escaping.

“What if,” Shadow said, plucking a quill from the air like it had always been his, “instead of healing or manipulating, we tried rewriting?”

Pure Vanilla blinked. “Rewriting?”

“Reality. Just a little. Temporarily. A cosmetic illusion layered over the self. One that requires equal tethering from both of us. You know… to test if we can actually fuse our magic without it exploding in our faces.”

“You want to test our compatibility… by crafting a spell that rewrites our appearances?”

Shadow leaned forward, and in the flickering candlelight, his grin looked wicked and half-feral. “Come on, Golden Boy. Don’t pretend you’re not curious what I’d look like in one of your cardigans.”

Pure Vanilla made a sound. It might’ve been a squeak. It might’ve been a prayer.

“I… well, yes, hypothetically, I mean academically, this would be a fascinating case study in projection layering.”

Shadow tilted his head, his voice dropping. “Vanilla.”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to try it?”

Pure Vanilla nodded too quickly. “Very much.”

They joined hands. It wasn’t necessary for the spell. But neither of them pointed that out.

The circle pulsed beneath them. Light flared. Something ancient stirred.

Then nothing. 

—————

Shadow Milk opened his eyes to see Pure Vanilla next to him. 

He was pale, his normally long blonde hair now faded into a beautiful cobalt, like moonlight reflected in stormwater. It fell around his face in layered, imperfect curls, his usual soft clothes had shifted into asymmetrical layers of velvet black and indigo, his collar half popped like a delinquent,

“Whoa,” Shadow breathed, feeling butterflies in his stomach. Odd

Pure Vanilla then woke up, his eyes half-lidded with smudged, dark liner that made them look… dangerous.

Shadow’s heart fluttered. “You’re… you look like me.”

Pure Vanilla arched a brow. “Congratulations, you passed basic visual recognition. Want a star sticker?” Fangs. He had fangs. Why was that hot???

Shadow’s jaw opened. Then shut. Then opened again. “You sound…”

“Hot?” Pure Vanilla offered. “Yes. I know. This voice really works when it’s not threatening to summon bone serpents.”

Shadow blinked fast. “Vanilla, you’re making jokes?”

“The spell must have backfired, I mean, look at you compared to me,” He smirked, brushing a stray curl from his face. “Though I have to say, being emotionally repressed and fashionably doomed suits me.”

“What do you mean…” Shadow Milk trailed off as he say himself in the mirror, his cerulean hair was now a sparkley pastel streaked with gold and white. Shadow brought a hand to his head, brushing his fingers through unfamiliar strands. 

His dark hoodie had been altered, white, embroidered along the seams with soft, golden runes that glowed faintly when he moved.

His gloves were gone, and his cyan and cerulean had golden flecks in them. 

Shadow let out a shriek, an actual, high-pitched shriek that no version of him, past or present, had ever made, he felt hot and dizzy, and fell back like a collapsing star.

Pure Vanilla caught him one-handed, still smirking. “Easy, Sparkles. Wouldn’t want you to bruise your newly purified aura.”

At that exact moment, Candy Apple kicked open the door with the energy of a gremlin sensing chaos, Black Sapphire following behind her. “Did someone scream like a choirboy in a haunted-” Candy Apple skidded to a halt, eyes going comically wide as she took in the glittering disaster before her.

Black Sapphire stopped just behind her blinked slowly. “…Did someone cast a makeover montage while unsupervised?”

Shadow Milk sat up with the dazed look of a man who’d just been kissed by a rainbow and then punched by his own aesthetic. “This isn’t happening,” he muttered, running his hands down the gold-stitched sleeves like he could rub the purity off. “This can’t be happening.”

“Oh, it’s happening,” Pure Vanilla said, now lounging on the edge of the summoning circle like he belonged in a haunted magazine spread. “And I have to say, you wear inner peace like a panic attack.”

Candy Apple clapped her hands like a delighted gremlin. “You look like an angel who joined a boy band!”

Shadow whipped toward her. “This is a curse. A divine punishment. I look like I give inspirational speeches at glitter therapy.”

“You sparkle when you breathe,” Black Sapphire deadpanned. “I’m going to be sick.”

“You’re going to be sick?!” Shadow gestured at himself, frantic. “Do you have any idea what this is doing to my reputation?”

Pure Vanilla tilted his head and gave him the slowest, most unimpressed blink he could manage. “You mean the reputation of someone who once set the alchemy lab on fire because the cauldron ‘disrespected’ him?”

“I stand by that!” Shadow cried.

Candy Apple practically vibrated. “Okay but like. Vanilly. Look at you!” She spun around him. “You’re broody! You’re eyelinered! You’re giving ✨mystery✨!”

Pure Vanilla examined his dark nails. “It’s the existential dread. Really brings out my cheekbones.”

Black Sapphire scowled. “I don’t like this…”

Shadow was still staring into the mirror like it had personally betrayed him. “I look like I’ve experienced character growth.”

“You kind of have,” Vanilla said with a shrug. “Or at least you look like you donate to charities and journal before bed.”

Shadow groaned and flopped backward onto the floor. “Kill me.”

Candy Apple leaned over him, sparkles dancing in her eyes. “No way. You’re too pretty now. I wanna see what happens when you try to cast manipulation magic like that.”

“Oh witches,” Black Sapphire muttered. “He’s gonna sparkle mid-curse.”

“I’M GONNA SPARKLE MID-CURSE,” Shadow wailed.

“It seems they swapped not only appearances, but personalities as well…”

Candy Apple gasped like she’d just been handed front-row tickets to the magical apocalypse. “Wait. WAIT. You’re right. They did a full identity swap! This is like that time I drank that potion labeled ‘DO NOT DRINK’ but with more eyeliner and soul-searching.”

Black Sapphire crossed his arms, frowning harder. “This is bad. If their personalities shifted along with their magical frequencies, their core resonance might destabilize the longer it holds.”

“Meaning what?” Shadow asked from the floor, looking alarmed and still extremely sparkly.

“Meaning,” Sapphire said flatly, “you might start actually thinking like him if we don’t reverse it soon. You’ll be complimenting strangers, turning in your homework on time, and, witches forbid, feeling your feelings.”

Shadow whimpered.

Pure Vanilla, now the physical embodiment of controlled chaos, tilted his head lazily. “Honestly? Doesn’t sound so bad.”

Everyone stared at him.

“What?” Vanilla said with a smirk. “Maybe I want to skip smiling through pain and go straight to menacing silence and morally ambiguous spellcraft.”

Shadow stared up at him like he was witnessing a holy event. “You sound like a dream.”

“Correction,” Vanilla replied, brushing invisible dust off his indigo sleeve, “I sound like you. With better posture.”

Candy Apple squealed. “Okay this is officially my new favorite timeline.”

Shadow pushed himself upright, golden curls bouncing softly. “We need to reverse this. Right now. I’m starting to care about things. Like… astrology. And moisturizing.”

“You should’ve been doing that anyway,” Black Sapphire muttered.

“Don’t lecture me,” Shadow snapped, then immediately gasped and covered his mouth. “Oh no. That wasn’t even sarcastic. That was… constructive feedback.”

“Vanilla,” Sapphire said cautiously, “do you feel different?”

“Hmm.” Vanilla stood, stretching like a cat who had just learned tax fraud. “Not really. I feel… expressive. Unapologetic. Free of pastel guilt and floral self-loathing. I might write poetry in someone else’s blood.”

Shadow looked faint. “That was a joke, right?”

“Probably.” He winked.

Black Sapphire rubbed his temples. “We’re all going to die.”

“Nah,” Candy Apple said, swinging her legs off the bookshelf she’d climbed onto. “Worst case, they stay like this forever and become the new campus power couple. You know, chaos prince and sparkle saint.”

Shadow glared at her, cheeks pink. “We’re not a couple.”

Vanilla smirked. “Not yet.”

Shadow’s soul nearly left his body.

“I can’t deal with this.” Black Sapphire left the room, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

Candy Apple flopped dramatically onto the nearest armchair like a cat-shaped firework. “He’ll come around.” She shrugged. 

Shadow buried his face in his hands. “This is a nightmare. I look like a motivational spirit guide. People are going to ask me for life advice. And I might give it.”

Vanilla crouched beside him, chin in one hand, expression wicked. “You’ll be fine. Maybe your newfound wholesomeness will finally balance out all that repressed yearning you keep pretending isn’t there.”

Shadow peaked between his fingers. “What repressed yearning?”

Vanilla raised a single, perfectly arched brow. “Do I need to recite your little monologue from summoning class? ‘He’s like a sunrise made of guilt and good intentions-‘”

“That was a metaphor!”

“Sure, Sparkles. And I’m a balanced breakfast.”

Candy Apple let out an unholy snort of laughter. “OH. MY. WITCHES. You’re feral now. I LOVE IT.”

Vanilla gave her a smug two-fingered salute and rose to his feet, the movement fluid, theatrical, and completely unlike his usual decorum. He turned on his heel and began to pace around the circle like a villain with tenure.

“Alright,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back. “Spellcraft theory: if our resonance signatures synced enough to trigger a full aesthetic and behavioral overlay, then it stands to reason we’ve created a temporary tether of self-perception.”

Shadow blinked slowly. “…That sounded like me.”

“Exactly. And it felt amazing.”

Shadow curled into a smaller ball. “I’m losing my edge.”

Candy Apple plopped down next to him, beaming. “Or maybe you’re just rounding out. Gaining emotional depth. Inner peace.”

“I hate this,” he whispered.

“No you don’t,” Vanilla called without turning. “You just think you do because you’re not used to being soft without it hurting.”

That silenced the room.

Shadow blinked. Once. Twice. Then, very quietly, he said, “That… was weirdly profound.”

Vanilla turned back, smiling like the cat who got the entire coven. “You’re welcome.”

“…I liked it better when you cried during class presentations,” Shadow mumbled.

Vanilla’s grin widened. “Well. I like you better with glitter in your eyelashes.”

Shadow sputtered. Candy Apple made the sound of a kettle boiling over.

“ANYWAY,” Vanilla said, clapping his hands once. “Before I decide to commit an act of dark romance poetry, we should probably figure out how to undo this before we actually become each other forever.”

“Fine,” Shadow muttered, slowly rising, still glowing faintly like a depressed seraphim. “Lets try doing what made us this way.”

Vanilla tilted his head, considering. “You mean holding hands and aggressively fusing our magical identities while suppressing years of unresolved tension?”

Shadow turned a charming shade of cherry blossom. “I meant casting the spell again.”

“Right. That too,” Vanilla said, far too innocent for someone wearing eyeliner sharp enough to wound.

Candy Apple sprang to her feet, hands clasped. “Oooh! Are we doing the circle thing again? Because I want front row seats to the magical re-awkwardening of Pure Vanilla Cookie!”

“It’s not awkward,” Shadow mumbled.

“It’s so awkward,” she and Vanilla said in eerie unison, then glanced at each other.

Vanilla smiled. “Look at that, Sparkles. We’re already syncing.”

Shadow groaned. “Kill me.”

“No,” Vanilla said, stepping into the center of the summoning circle again. “We’re going to fix this. Not because I miss floral tea and scheduled empathy, but because if I’m in this body any longer, I’m going to start brooding unironically, and I don’t think I can recover from that.”

Shadow joined him in the circle, fidgeting with his sleeves like they were too wholesome for his own wrists. “Fine. Let’s do this before I start humming lullabies.”

Black Sapphire, now cautiously returned to the room with a cup of emergency chamomile, sighed. “You two are impossible.”

“And yet,” Candy Apple whispered, eyes gleaming, “they’re soul-synced disasters destined to destroy each other or fall in love. Maybe both.”

Shadow and Vanilla exchanged a brief, electrically charged glance.

“No pressure,” Candy added brightly.

“Okay,” Vanilla said, rolling his shoulders. “Focus on your core. Picture your original self.”

“I’m trying,” Shadow said through gritted teeth. “But every time I do, I feel like complimenting your posture.”

Vanilla smirked. “It is fantastic.”

Shadow narrowed his eyes. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Oh, immensely.”

They joined hands, again, still not strictly necessary for spellcasting, still absolutely happening.

“On three,” Vanilla said. “One… two…”

“Wait,” Shadow cut in, biting his lip. “What if… what if it doesn’t work?”

Vanilla’s expression softened for the first time. “Then I guess you’ll keep being warm and approachable, and I’ll keep being devastatingly charming and feared.”

“…Okay,” Shadow said quietly, eyes wide. “Cast it.”

The circle flared to life again, golden light meeting dark indigo in a chaotic whirl of petals and static. The air shimmered. Magic howled. The whole tower seemed to inhale. 

Then…

Nothing.

Candy Apple blinked. “Did it work?”

Black Sapphire adjusted his glasses. “They look the same.”

“No it didn’t work!” Shadow whine, flopping onto his bed, and screaming into a pillow

Vanilla frowned, looking down at his still-dark sleeves, still smudged liner, still slightly villainous aura. “Okay. Plan B.”

“There’s a plan B?” Black Sapphire asked, very tired.

Vanilla raised a finger. “No. But I’m making one up right now. Improvisation is part of the curriculum.”

Candy Apple gasped. “Ooooh! Does this mean we get a makeover montage montage?”

Shadow’s muffled voice echoed from beneath the pillow. “If anyone puts glitter on me again, I will hex the next five generations of your houseplants.”

Vanilla leaned over him, tapping his foot lightly against the side of the mattress. “C’mon, Sparkles. You’re the one always saying chaos is just an unscheduled opportunity.”

“I say that about disasters,” Shadow snapped, lifting his head. “Not emotional crossdressing and soul-swapping with my academic nemesis-turned-midnight fantasy.”

Everyone went quiet.

Shadow blinked.

Vanilla blinked harder.

Candy Apple inhaled like it was the first breath she’d ever taken.

“…Midnight fantasy?” Vanilla asked, voice low and dark with way too much smug silk in it.

“I MEANT NIGHTMARE!” Shadow blurted, going scarlet, sitting bolt upright like he’d been electrocuted by shame. “NIGHT. MARE.”

Vanilla’s grin returned. “Oh, I heard what I heard.”

Candy Apple made an extremely undignified wheeze and collapsed off the armchair with a thud.

Black Sapphire turned around, left the room again, and slammed the door behind him.

“Okay okay okay okay!” Shadow flailed, grabbing at the sleeves of his cursed hoodie like they were responsible for his moral downfall. “This is fine. This is fine. We’re fine. We just need to cast a reversal spell. You know. Like logical people.”

Vanilla, now sitting cross-legged on top of Shadow’s desk like a morally compromised deity, rested his chin on his palm. “Or we could wait a few days. Let things… settle.”

“Settle?!” Shadow shrieked. “You want me to just exist like this? With feelings?”

Vanilla raised a shoulder. “You sparkle when you’re upset. It’s adorable.”

Shadow made a sound so high-pitched it could shatter diamonds.

Candy Apple, somehow now balanced upside down in the curtains, giggled like a possessed wind chime. “You’re already married. You just haven’t noticed yet.”

“We are not-!”

“We are absolutely-”

“-not anything, Vanilla!”

Vanilla only winked. “Sure, Sparkles. Keep saying that. Maybe the glitter in your aura will believe you.”

Shadow screamed into the pillow again.

Vanilla just leaned back, smug and chaotic and still alarmingly attractive. He muttered under his breath, “Best. Curse. Ever.”

Chapter Text

They stayed up all night.

All night.

But found nothing. No counterspell in the grimoires, no resonance disruptor in the spellbooks, no magical failsafe hidden in the footnotes of “Advanced Thaumaturgy and Emotional Collapse.”

Now they were in Shadow Milk’s car, driving to school.

Vanilla was reclined in the passenger seat like a vampire who’d decided to audit life science for fun, dark eyeliner smudged perfectly, one leg kicked up on the dash like he owned the vehicle. He was sipping a canned coffee like it owed him something and watching the sunrise like he was personally judging it.

Shadow, now wearing oversized sunglasses to disguise the cosmic-level glow radiating from the sparkle in his eyes, clutched the steering wheel with the desperation of a man one motivational quote away from emotional implosion.

At least they were dressed like normal, the hair and makeup being an acception. 

“You sparkle in direct sunlight,” Vanilla said, not looking at him. “Like a cursed lawn ornament.”

“I will drive us off a cliff,” Shadow muttered.

“Do it,” Vanilla whispered. “Maybe then we’ll swap back on impact.”

A pause.

“Was that a threat,” Shadow asked slowly, “or a flirt?”

Vanilla smirked and sipped his coffee. “Yes.”

Shadow groaned and banged his forehead lightly against the wheel at the next red light. “This is unbearable. I’m going to walk into campus and someone’s going to ask me if I’m leading a meditation circle.”

“You could,” Vanilla offered lightly. “You have the vibe now. You look like you’ve forgiven your parents and made peace with the moon.”

“I’ve done neither of those things!”

Vanilla shrugged, gaze fixed out the window. “Your aura says otherwise.”

“I hate that you know that.”

“Mm.”

They lapsed into silence, the kind that clung to the inside of the car like leftover incense and poor decisions.

Eventually, Shadow sighed and muttered, “Did you really mean it? When you said being me didn’t sound so bad?”

Vanilla didn’t answer right away. Then, softer, “I did.”

Shadow blinked.

“…Oh.” His cheeks felt warm

Vanilla glanced at him, just briefly. “You were right about one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

Vanilla leaned his head back against the window, a faint smile playing on his lips. “You do look like a motivational spirit guide. And yet, somehow, I still want to kiss you stupid.”

Shadow Milk made a sound, like the squeak of a mouse, missed the turn, and nearly drove into a bush.

Vanilla took another sip of coffee, completely unfazed.

Best. Curse. Ever.

——————

The two walked down the hall, getting weird stares from everyone who saw them.

“Look, don’t tell anyone about… us switching personalities. Act like your old self to the best of your abilities,” Shadow hissed, clutching his hoodie strings like a rosary. “We can’t let anyone know about this.”

Vanilla raised a perfectly shaped brow. “You mean lie to everyone we know and pretend everything’s fine while silently spiraling?”

“Yes. That’s called ‘being in school,’ Vanilla.”

Vanilla sighed, slouching against a row of lockers like he belonged in an indie coming-of-age film. “Fine. I’m just going through a ‘dark phase’ and you’re experiencing a ‘spiritual awakening.’”

“That’s not far from the truth,” Shadow muttered.

“Exactly.”

A student passed them in the hall and immediately did a double take, whispering something urgently to their friend. Two more paused, staring openly.

“Okay,” Shadow said, voice dry. “That’s the fourth person who’s looked at me like I just offered them a healing crystal and a freshly baked scone.”

Pure Vanilla laughed, and Shadow Milk thought his stomach would fall to the floor from the amount of butterflies he was feeling. 

“Pure Vanilla?”

They both turned.

It was White Lily, calm, radiant, a vision in a white blouse and dark green skirt, she barely concealed her concern. Her hair shimmered like petals in the morning light, and her brow furrowed the moment her eyes landed on him.

“You’re here early,” she said carefully, gaze sweeping over his dark eyeliner and golden, faded cobalt hair like she was trying to determine if this was a phase or a possession. “And… dressed like a poet who’s lost faith in the stars.”

Vanilla smiled, lazy and sharp. “Just embracing the void. You should try it sometime.”

Her expression didn’t shift. Not immediately. Then she blinked. Once. Twice. Like her entire soul was buffering.

“…Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he said smoothly. “Just reevaluating my relationship with light and innocence.”

White Lily stared at him for a long beat, then turned her eyes, slowly, to Shadow.

Who smiled. Actually smiled. It looked like a nervous beam and probably radiated serotonin.

White Lily’s face did not hide her horror.

“Shadow Milk!” A gruff voice yelled. “Is that you?”

Shadow Milk froze. Not Burning Spice, anyone but Burning Spice. Okay, maybe not Eternal Sugar, but still. 

He strode down the hall like a steam-powered war machine. He stopped in front of them, narrowed his eyes at Shadow, and frowned like he’d just discovered someone had put out a fire.

“You… smell like vanilla,” Burning Spice said, voice heavy with suspicion. “And peace.”

Shadow swallowed, hard. “I… it’s a new body spray,” he lied, very poorly. “Limited edition. Enlightenment Mist.”

Pure Vanilla choked on a laugh behind his hand. Shadow shot him a glare so sharp it could have popped balloons.

Burning Spice sniffed again and leaned closer, squinting. “Are you wearing… lip balm?”

Shadow flinched. “No?”

Burning Spice pointed. “Your lips are shiny.”

“Hydrated!” Shadow yelped. “I mean… hydrated with hatred. And sarcasm.”

Burning Spice looked deeply unsettled.

“Are you feeling okay?” he asked. “You’re glowing. Like, actually glowing.”

“Yup! Totally good, just… experimenting with… gold and glitter and… “He gagged. “Witches, I’m gonna be sick.”

Pure Vanilla grabbed him, and shoved him to a garbage can. 

“Thanks ‘Nilly.”

“No problem, Sparkles!”

Burning Spice and White Lily looked at each other, then back at the pair.

Burning Spice looked like he was trying to decode advanced calculus with a crayon.

White Lily looked like she was mentally drafting a full intervention plan. With handouts.

“What,” Burning Spice said flatly, “is going on.”

“Absolutely nothing,” Shadow said too fast, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his annoyingly radiant hoodie. “Just a normal morning. No curses. No identity crises. Just some mild glitter-induced nausea.”

“Glitter-induced-” White Lily began, then stopped herself. She turned to Vanilla, who was now examining his black nails like a bored vampire on break. “Did you cast something?”

Vanilla shrugged, entirely too calm. “No.”

“You’re both acting off,” White Lily said slowly. “And by off, I mean one of you is smiling like… that, and the other is being vaguely tolerable.”

“Rude,” Shadow muttered.

“Accurate,” she replied, without missing a beat.

Burning Spice crossed his arms, muscles bulging slightly under his jacket. “So, are you like… dating now? Or something?”

Shadow turned so red he nearly matched the lockers.

“NO,” he squeaked.

“Not yet,” Vanilla said with a smirk and a wink.

White Lily gawked at Pure Vanilla’s attitude.

Burning Spice, who had gone completely silent in the background, suddenly muttered, “If they’re not dating now, they’re going to be married by finals.”

Shadow turned bright pink again. “Can you stop saying that?! ”

“I will,” Vanilla said lightly, “as soon as you stop looking at me like I hung the stars.”

“I don’t-! I mean-!!” Shadow flailed and promptly tripped over his own shoe.

Vanilla caught him by the wrist, fluid and cool, the gesture so practiced it looked choreographed. “Careful, Sparkles.”

White Lily looked at them. Then looked at the heavens. Then looked very seriously like she wanted to lie down in the middle of the hallway and astral project to a better timeline.

“I uh… guess I’ll see you later, Vanilla…” White Lily muttered then quickly walked away.

Burning Spice then did the same.

“Oh my witches, that was so bad…” Shadow Milk muttered.

Vanilla tilted his head, watching their retreating backs. “That could’ve gone worse.”

Shadow gaped at him. “Worse? White Lily thinks I’ve been replaced by a celestial life coach and Burning Spice thinks I’m in a relationship with you. ”

Vanilla blinked slowly. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Shadow groaned and slammed his forehead against the nearest locker. “This is my reputation we’re talking about. I’ve spent years cultivating the perfect image of gloom and barely contained magical chaos. I can’t be seen blushing in public.”

Vanilla laughed. “You just tripped over air and let me catch you like a swooning damsel. I think that ship has sailed, crashed, and been turned into an angsty sea shanty.”

Shadow groaned louder. “We need to fix this. Now. Before someone else sees us and thinks I’ve discovered self-worth.”

“Too late,” came a new voice from down the hall.

They turned to see Espresso Cookie approaching, looking tired, judgmental, and two seconds away from reading them both into another dimension.

He stopped a few feet away, eyes flicking over Shadow’s glowing skin, then Vanilla’s eyeliner, then back again.

He sipped from his travel mug, utterly deadpan. “Did you two… fall into a cursed hot spring of self-discovery or something?”

“No,” Shadow said at the exact same time Vanilla said, “Yes.”

Espresso raised an eyebrow. “Right.”

There was a long, deeply awkward silence.

Vanilla smiled faintly. “Would you believe it’s a high-level experimental empathy spell?”

Espresso looked unimpressed. “Would you believe I don’t care?”

“Great,” Shadow said quickly. “Then we can just forget this ever happened and go about our day like nothing’s wrong.”

Espresso took another long sip. “You’re glowing. And not metaphorically.”

Shadow covered his face with both hands. “I hate everything.” he whined.

Vanilla patted his back like he was soothing a small, sad animal. “Don’t worry, Sparkles. You’re handling this surprisingly well.”

“That is not reassuring.”

Espresso turned to walk away, already pulling out his planner. “If you two kiss in the hallway, I’m dropping out.”

“We’re not going to kiss in the hallway!” Shadow shouted after him, horrified.

“Mm,” Espresso hummed. “Not what it looked like earlier.”

Vanilla smirked and leaned in just enough to brush his shoulder against Shadow’s. “He’s not wrong.”

Shadow made a strangled noise that was half protest, half nervous breakdown.

And somewhere down the hall, Espresso muttered, “I need stronger coffee.”

Shadow turned to Vanilla, eyes wide, hair slightly frizzed from stress. “We have to fix this. Before I start journaling.”

Vanilla’s grin was slow, wicked, and way too fond. “Too late. You’re halfway to enlightenment already.”

Shadow shoved him. Lightly. But didn’t move away.

And as the bell rang, they started walking toward class again.still glowing, still cursed, still very much not fine.

——————

Shadow Milk had managed to avoid the rest of the Beasts until lunch block.

He sighed like it physically hurt and trudged into the courtyard, glowing faintly and praying no one would notice. That hope died immediately when-

“I told you!” Burning Spice shouted from his perch on the dead courtyard tree, pointing accusingly like he’d just caught Shadow trying to hug a puppy.

Shadow flinched. “Told them what?”

“That you were going soft!” Burning Spice crowed, sliding down from the branch with all the subtlety of a war drum. “And now look at you, glowing! That’s like, the opposite of brooding.”

Shadow collapsed onto the stone bench beside the others, pulling his hood down over his cursed radiant face like it might hide him from the universe.

“I’m not soft,” he muttered. I’m temporarily suffering from an unscheduled magical personality inversion. Very different.

Eternal Sugar, perched cross-legged on the bench’s backrest, tilted their head and blinked slowly. “You smell like sunlight and vanilla.”

“That’s trauma,” Shadow groaned. “Vanilla-scented trauma.”

Mystic Flour blinked once. “Are you wearing mascara?”

“No.”

“Your lashes are fluttering,” She said emotionlessly.

“I’m stressed!”

Silent Salt raised a slow eyebrow from his usual seat at the edge of the fountain, expression unreadable as always, but even he gave him a once-over like he’d grown daisies out of his skull. It looked like he wasn’t speaking today.

Burning Spice crossed his arms. “Okay, but you let him catch you this morning. Like a damsel.”

“It was gravity,” Shadow growled.

“Shadow Milk, what is…” Eternal Sugar’s voice drowned out as he saw Pure Vanilla walk into the courtyard, to the Ancient’s table.

Witches, this was annoying, soon he’d probable space out like Vanilla always does. 

He’ll start thinking of the long, flowing golden-cobalt tresses that are probably softer than silk.

The sharp pointy fangs he now had, so sharp, they could break skin.

That smirk that showed a glimpse of those fangs.

“Shadow Milk!” Eternal Sugar shook him.

“Huh?” He looked over. 

“You were zoning out,” she said, eyes narrowed with interest. “And smiling. Like... wistfully. That’s a new low~”

“I wasn’t smiling,” Shadow snapped.

“You were,” Mystic Flour confirmed, voice flat as ever. “It was disturbing.”

Silent Salt held up a notebook. On the page:
You looked like you were composing a love sonnet.

Shadow flailed. “I was not composing anything! I was just… thinking about strategic vulnerabilities! His fangs are sharp! That’s a threat!”

“Since when did Pure Vanilla have fangs?” Mystic Flour asked.

“Speaking of fangs, where are yours?” Eternal Sugar asked.

Shadow’s hands flew to his mouth. “What?”

“Your fangs,” Eternal Sugar repeated, examining him like a lab experiment with a personal vendetta. “Usually you're one angry poem away from biting someone, but you have no fangs.”

Shadow Milk Cookie let out a screech. 

——————

Witches, this was not Pure Vanilla’s day.

After another incident with White Lily, where she cornered him in the hallway like an exorcist with a grudge, hissing soul-purification chants under her breath, Vanilla had spent the morning ducking behind statues and moving between broom closets like a criminal evading divine judgment.

He skipped every class with the Ancients he had. The old him would’ve cried into a syllabus for missing even one. But now?

He was on canned coffee number six and hadn’t made eye contact with a single professor. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t care. Didn’t blink.

Eventually, lunch arrived. And with it, obligation.

The Ancients’ table loomed like a shrine to disapproval. If he didn’t sit there, Hollyberry would roar, White Lily would astrally project into his dorm, and Dark Cacao would probably initiate disciplinary prayer.

So he went.

He walked into the courtyard like a storm cloud in slow motion. Hair pretty. Eyeliner perfect. Expression unreadable. If serenity and menace had a child, it would look like him.

But his gaze flickered across the stone courtyard, and there, bathed in faint golden glow, was the reason he was falling apart like an expensive spellbook left in the rain.

Shadow Milk Cookie.

He looked like something Vanilla had no right to think about in public.

Vanilla averted his gaze, jaw tight, and sat at the Ancients’ table like a curse had dragged him there.

Across the courtyard, Burning Spice, loud, chaotic, and five seconds from combusting, was yelling something about Shadow “going soft.” Eternal Sugar looked like they were trying to diagnose him with vibes. Mystic Flour was asking if he wore mascara, which, honestly, fair.

Then Shadow’s glow dimmed. Only a little. Just enough to cast a long, wistful glance across the courtyard.

Vanilla met his eyes.

Oh no.

Shadow looked away fast, like he’d just been caught doodling little hearts around Vanilla’s name.

Vanilla blinked slowly. Oh no, again.

He quickly walked to the Ancients table and sat down.

“Witches,” Dark Cacao muttered, setting down his scroll. “White Lily wasn’t exaggerating.”

Golden Cheese leaned forward, squinting. “Did you join a death cult or just lose a bet?”

Vanilla took a slow sip of coffee. “I’m fine.”

“You missed three classes,” Hollyberry said, voice hard. “That’s not fine. That’s suspicious.”

“This is my villain era,” Vanilla said calmly.

“He’s been like this all day.” White Lily sighed. 

Pure Vanilla rolled his eyes. “You act like changing things up is a bad thing.”

“You’re wearing eyeliner,” White Lily said, ice in her voice.

He smirked. “Am I?”

“You dyed your hair,” she snapped. “You’re radiating dark magic. Your aura looks like it lost custody of its optimism.”

“I reevaluated my relationship with light,” he said. “We’re on a break.”

Golden Cheese snorted, but even she looked wary now. “That’s… not normal behavior.”

Dark Cacao’s eyes narrowed. “What happened, Vanilla?”

Vanilla shrugged. “Call it… growth.”

“No,” Hollyberry said, voice sharp. “This isn’t growth. This is sabotage. Your whole presence feels wrong.”

White Lily’s hands were folded in her lap, but her expression screamed intervention. “Are you being influenced?”

Vanilla didn’t answer.

He looked across the courtyard.

Shadow. Hood up. Glow fading. Eyes twitching. Mystic Flour had leaned closer to examine him like a dissection project. Eternal Sugar was now gently poking his arm with a crystal fork.

Vanilla looked back.

“No,” he said, voice calm and empty.

“You’re lying,” White Lily said.

“Shadow Milk’s always been creepy,” Hollyberry muttered. “He and his little beast gang think they’re untouchable.”

“I don’t know what you see in him, Vanilla.” Dark Cacao sighed. 

Before Vanilla could reply, a shriek split the air, and Shadow came sprinting across the courtyard like a meteor with a hoodie. The Beasts were behind him in full chaos formation.

Burning Spice yelling. Eternal Sugar floating. Mystic Flour jogging like it was part of a ritual. Silent Salt keeping pace like a secretary from hell.

Shadow skidded to a halt in front of the Ancients’ table and grabbed Vanilla’s jacket like it was a lifeline.

“Vanilla!” he hissed. “We have a problem!”

Vanilla didn’t blink. “Add it to the list.”

“I… I have no fangs.”

Silence.

“You’re serious?” Vanilla asked, already grinning.

“Yes I’m serious!” Shadow yelped. “They’re gone, and now I look like I do tarot readings for toddlers!”

Vanilla let out a breathless chuckle. “You smell like bergamot and regret.”

“I feel like bergamot and regret!”

Golden Cheese howled with laughter. “This is incredible.”

White Lily, however, was not amused. She stood, jaw tight, eyes cold.

“What are you doing here, Shadow Milk?” She asked. 

“Oh, hi White Lily!” Shadow said brightly, beaming. Actually beaming, startling everyone, including himself. “GAH-! What the hell was that?”

“Sparkles, did you just smile?” Vanilla asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I- No… Maybe?!”

Pure Vanilla had to cover his mouth with his hand to keep himself from laughing

White Lily stepped around the table. “You shouldn’t be here. This is the Ancients’ table.”

Shadow blinked. “What, is that a law now?”

“It is,” Dark Cacao said grimly, folding his arms. “Unspoken. Obvious.”

“I just found out my fangs were gone,” Shadow said, hands flailing. “You think I care about seating politics right now?!”

“You never care about anything,” Hollyberry snapped. “Which is exactly why no one trusts you.”

Eternal Sugar finally caught up, gliding to a stop with a smirk. “Jealous much, sweetheart~?” She winked. 

“Of what?” Golden Cheese said, eyes narrowed. “Your floating? You’re not the only one with wings.” 

“Of our relevance,” Mystic Flour added coolly. “Your group name is ‘The Ancients’, you sound like old people, but ‘The Beasts’ sounds like we’re dangerous, feral, and possibly banned from five kingdoms,” Mystic Flour finished calmly, pushing her glasses up like she’d just won a debate.

Golden Cheese stood. “You are banned from five kingdoms.”

“That’s a marketing success,” Eternal Sugar said with a dreamy smile. “Fear is brand loyalty.”

White Lily’s eye twitched. “This is exactly the problem. Your entire group is unbalanced, uncivilized, and-”

“Actually…” Shadow said, a bit quieter this time, rubbing the back of his neck. “They’ve been really supportive lately.”

Every head turned.

“What the fuck, Shadow Milk?” Burning Spice’s jaw dropped. 

Shadow blinked. “What?”

“You just complimented us,” Mystic Flour said flatly. “Voluntarily.”

“I…” He hesitated, looking confused at himself. “I don’t know! I’m sorry!”

Eternal Sugar let out a dramatic gasp, placing her hand over her chest. “You just-”

Shadow huffed and looked at her. “Don’t make it weird.”

Vanilla had to cover his face with both hands to keep from laughing.

“But… but you’re Shadow Milk!” Golden Cheese said. “You don’t apologize! You don’t even care!”

“I know!” Shadow cried, sinking to sit beside Vanilla without even asking for permission, like the chaos had just… left him. “But now my insides feel like soup! And not even the violent kind!”

“You used to hex people for breathing wrong,” White Lily said, voice sharp.

“I still can!” Shadow protested. “I just… haven’t wanted to. Today. Yet.”

Vanilla peeked out from behind his hand. “That’s progress.”

“And you!” White Lily snapped, turning on him now. “You’re enabling this! You’re skipping class and dyeing your hair and walking around like someone cursed you with eyeliner and emotional complexity!”

Vanilla sipped his coffee, calm. “I told you. Growth.”

Shadow tilted his head, gaze lingering on him. “…I like your eyeliner.”

Vanilla blinked.

“Seriously,” Shadow said, quieter now. “It suits you.”

Vanilla stared at him.

A full second passed.

Then two.

Shadow, perched beside him like a moody cat who had just remembered how feelings worked, flushed under the attention. “Not like- I mean- it just looks good, okay? I’m not flirting. Or maybe I am. I don’t know anymore. My entire personality is missing and you’re wearing it like cologne.”

Vanilla didn’t blink. “And you’re sitting like me.”

“Because I am you right now!” Shadow hissed under his breath. 

“You’re doing great,” Vanilla said dryly, sipping his coffee. 

Shadow shot him a look. 

“…Okay,” Mystic Flour said at last. “No offense, but what the hell is happening between you two?”

“Nothing,” they both said at the same time.

They looked at each other.

Vanilla blinked once. Slowly.

Shadow blinked back.

“…Is this a bit?” Hollyberry asked, brows drawn.

“No,” said both of them.

“Yes,” they corrected. Then “No,” again.

White Lily looked like she was about to astrally combust. “You two are acting weird. Like your souls went through a laundry cycle together and came out the wrong sizes.”

“I’m just having a good day,” Shadow said.

“And I’m just tired of being predictable,” Vanilla added.

“That’s all,” they said together.

Shadow tried not to smile.

He failed.

Vanilla noticed.

He smiled back, his fangs visible. 

Shadow’s face felt like it was on fire.

White Lily slammed her palms onto the table. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you two, but I will find out.”

Shadow and Vanilla, looked at her, and in unison said, “Good luck.”

And then, Vanilla passed Shadow his coffee. Shadow took it without flinching.

And the courtyard descended into chaos.

Chapter Text

As soon as Shadow took a sip from Vanilla’s coffee, his lips touching the exact place Vanilla’s had, Burning Spice screamed loud enough to make three birds drop from the sky.

“OH MY WITCHES THEY’RE SHARING DRINKS??!”

Mystic Flour muttered something under her breath. Silent Salt blinked. Eternal Sugar let out a swoony sigh, immediately conjuring a heart-shaped bubble that popped over their heads.

The Ancients went rigid, like they’d just witnessed a prophecy unraveling in real time.

“You’re sharing?” White Lily gasped, aghast.

“Coffee,” Shadow said, deadpan. “Calm down. It’s not an engagement ring.”

Vanilla raised an eyebrow. “Should I get one?”

Shadow nearly choked on the sip.

“What is wrong with you?” He hissed, or… tried to, without his fangs, it sounded weird. 

Vanilla didn’t even flinch. He just leaned back in his seat, sipping the remainder of his drink like he hadn’t just sent Shadow into cardiac arrest.

“I’m serious,” he said smoothly, voice laced with that new, dangerously unbothered confidence. 

Shadow stared at him, wide-eyed, spluttering. “You can’t just say ‘should I get an engagement ring’ like you’re asking what flavor scone to order!”

“Vanilla Scone?” Eternal Sugar offered dreamily.

“No one asked you!” Shadow snapped, voice cracking halfway through, cheeks flushed crimson.

Burning Spice was on the ground. Actually on the ground. Rolling in the courtyard like the physical embodiment of third-hand embarrassment. “I CAN’T HANDLE THIS. THIS IS TOO MUCH. I’M JUST A GUY.”

White Lily’s hand twitched on the table like she was resisting the urge to smite something. Her lips parted, then closed again. Her left eye twitched.

Then she stood.

Dead quiet. Dead serious.

“No,” she said flatly. “No. I’m not letting this happen. Not in my lifetime. Not while my soul is still anchored to this mortal plane.”

Dark Cacao exhaled like he was about to call for backup. “This has gone far enough.”

“Far?” Hollyberry slammed her water bottle down. “It went off the rails three eyeliner pencils ago!”

Golden Cheese stood as well, pointing her spoon like a dagger. “You’re telling me our healer is skipping classes, drinking shared beverages with the King of Brooding Tumblr Posts, and is smiling about it?!”

Vanilla sipped the coffee again, unbothered. “You’re being dramatic.”

“I’M BEING DRAMATIC?!” Golden Cheese roared. “YOU… YOU’RE SMIRKING! Like a Beast!”

Hollyberry jabbed a finger at Shadow, who still hadn’t stopped glowing a soft, betraying gold. “This one once replaced the alchemy class’s safety goggles with evil-seeing eye charms!”

“I’m sorry,” Shadow muttered.

“You cursed four plants and a hamster!” White Lily snapped.

“I’m sorry…” he repeated. 

Vanilla placed a hand in front of him, calm, composed, coffee in hand like a sword. “But he’s not the one overreacting right now.”

White Lily looked like she had tasted vinegar. “You don’t see it, do you? You’re unraveling. You missed healing practicum, ignored Ancient protocol, and you’ve dyed your hair. Darker. That’s symbolism.”

“Thank you,” Vanilla said coolly.

“IT WASN’T A COMPLIMENT!”

Dark Cacao stood now too, tall and grim as a war statue. “You are not yourself, Vanilla. This influence is unacceptable. The Ancients are held to a higher standard. We are legacy. Discipline. Light.”

Pure Vanilla rolled his eyes and blew them a raspberry. 

Hollyberry stood and slammed both hands on the table. “You’ve been corrupted! You’ve let that one get inside your head!” She pointed at Shadow like he was an ancient plague.

Shadow looked mildly offended. “I’m not that contagious.”

“You are a walking emotional infection,” Golden Cheese snapped.

“And somehow,” Eternal Sugar said dreamily, “still more charming than three out of five Ancients.”

“I heard that!” Golden Cheese shouted.

“You were meant to,” Mystic Flour muttered.

Meanwhile, Silent Salt nodded sagely, holding up a sign that read,

Let them date. Or perish.

“We’re not dating!” Shadow buried his head in his hands. 

“Yet,” Vanilla smirked. 

“Stop that!”

Eternal Sugar conjured a second heart-shaped bubble and made it sparkle violently just to spite the ancients.

“Why are you like this?” Hollyberry barked, rounding on Vanilla. “What happened to you, huh? You used to meditate every morning with flower water and a sunrise. You wrote positive affirmations on your tea bags. You cried when someone stepped on a caterpillar!”

“Now I feel like hexing people who annoy me.” Vanilla said calmly.

“You’ve been influenced,” White Lily hissed. “I knew it. He’s gotten into your head. Like mold.”

Shadow raised a hand. “I’m right here.”

“WE KNOW!” all four Ancients shouted in unison.

Vanilla, still sipping the dregs of his coffee, glanced at the Ancients with the air of someone politely enduring a toddler’s temper tantrum.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing to our reputation?” White Lily continued. “We’re supposed to radiate purity, Vanilla. Not… make heart eyes at the emissary of emotional instability.”

“I’m sitting,” Vanilla said coolly. “And sharing coffee. This is not the end of civilization.”

“It is when the coffee has lip print overlap,” Golden Cheese snarled, gesturing with unholy fury.

Shadow covered his face. “I didn’t mean to put my mouth where his mouth- UGH! DON’T MAKE ME SAY THAT ALOUD!”

“Oh no,” Mystic Flour murmured. “He’s spiraling.”

“I AM NOT!” Shadow Milk buried his head in Pure Vanilla’s shoulder. 

“Jeez, Sparkles, ever hear of personal space?” Vanilla rolled his eyes, wrapping his arm around Shadow Milk anyway. 

White Lily’s hand twitched toward her spellbook like she was seriously debating whether to cast an emergency cleansing ritual right there on the spot.

“We need to fix this,” she said, voice tight. “Undo whatever curse has been placed on him.”

“Or at least exile Shadow Milk to a volcano,” Golden Cheese added.

“I’d prefer a stylish oubliette,” Hollyberry muttered.

But Vanilla stood, gently pulling Shadow up with him, still cradling his coffee like the world hadn’t just imploded around them.

“You can’t exile what you never understood,” he said calmly. “And Shadow Milk is… surprisingly good company. Once you get past the hexes and chronic eye contact.”

Shadow blinked. “That was a compliment, right?”

“It was something,” Vanilla said, smirking.

White Lily’s voice dropped to a whisper of pure ice. “This is a threat to everything we’ve built.”

Silent Salt held up a new page.

Good. It was boring.

Vanilla turned with a final wink. “We’ll see you in class. Maybe. If we’re not suspended for emotional misconduct.”

And with that, the two walked off, Vanilla calm and defiant, Shadow still looking like he’d just been hit by an accidental love spell.

The courtyard buzzed with stunned silence.

——————

“That was so weird,” Shadow Milk sighed as they made their way into the library. 

They made their way to a corner, one Shadow insisted was far enough from everyone to count as neutral territory, and one Vanilla secretly liked because it had the best lighting for dramatic spell annotation.

Shadow flopped into the chair like it had insulted him personally. “They’re gonna kill me.”

“They’re going to try,” Vanilla corrected.

Shadow blinked up at him. “That’s not comforting.”

Vanilla just shrugged, finally finishing the coffee and setting the empty can down with the delicacy of someone laying flowers on a grave. “You’re durable. I believe in you.”

“That’s rich coming from the person who pretty much just told the Ancients to their faces that you didn’t care.”

Vanilla smirked. “I’m expanding their horizons.”

“You’re burning their horizons to the ground.”

“They need the vitamin D.”

There was a long beat of silence.

“…Did you actually mean the engagement ring thing?” Shadow asked suddenly, voice quieter than before.

Vanilla looked at him, head tilted.

“No,” he said, and Shadow let out the tiniest breath of relief.

Then Vanilla leaned closer and added, “Not yet.”

Shadow made a sound that might’ve been a scream. Or a wheeze. Or his soul detaching from his body.

“You’re cute when you get like that.”

“You used to do that same thing before this stupid spell.”

“So I was cute before we switched?”

“Yes-! No-! Stop confusing me!” Shadow whined. 

“What’s confusing?” Asked Vanilla. 

Shadow blinked up at him, eyes wide like a startled deer caught in a teleportation circle.

“You,” he said finally. “You’re confusing. You used to talk like a textbook. You’d blush if someone said anything about me. You wore socks with suns on them. Now you’re…” he gestured vaguely, helplessly, at all of Vanilla like it was an unsolvable equation. “You’re this.”

Vanilla raised an eyebrow, utterly relaxed. “This?”

Shadow gestured harder. “You’re hot. And smirking. And saying ‘not yet’ like you didn’t just break the universe and expect me to be fine with that. I hate this spell, under any other circumstances, I could play along with you, but I’m so emotionally on whatever you say, I become a mess!”

“That’s cute.” Vanilla said sweetly. 

Shadow made a strangled noise andburried his head in his arms on the table, like a swooning prince in a bad play.

Vanilla watched him with mild amusement, propping his chin on his hand like this was the best entertainment he’d had all semester.

“I used to know things,” Shadow continued. “I used to be cold and terrifying and emotionally unavailable. And now I… now I blushed when you called me cute, and I’ve been glowing for twenty minutes, and I think I hallucinated your voice calling me ‘darling’ in the hallway earlier-”

“You didn’t,” Vanilla interrupted, unbothered. “That happened.”

Shadow made another noise. It might’ve been a sob. Or a laugh. Or the sound of his self-concept imploding.

“Stop doing this to me,” he moaned.

Vanilla sipped the last of his coffee. “I’m just sitting here.”

“You’re sitting here with that face and that voice and that… thing you do where you look at me like you’re fond of me or something!”

Vanilla tilted his head, feigning innocence. “Maybe I am.”

Shadow looked like he was going to dissolve into mist.

“I swear if you keep doing this I’m going to- I don’t even know! Curse myself? Confess to something I didn’t do? Kiss you?!” He froze. “Not that I- I mean not that I want to- not that I-!”

Vanilla leaned forward slightly, eyes glinting. “Would it help if I kissed you first?”

Shadow’s soul visibly left his body. “What is WRONG with you?!”

Vanilla chuckled, absolutely delighted. “You’re adorable when you spiral.”

“I’m not spiraling! I’m malfunctioning! There’s a difference!”

“Sure,” Vanilla said, far too pleased with himself. “One sounds more romantic.”

Shadow groaned. “I hate you.”

Vanilla shrugged. “You sipped my coffee.”

“You passed it to me, I didn’t think it meant anything!”

Vanilla smiled, soft and smug. “It meant something to me.”

“Stupid…” Shadow Milk muttered.

Chapter Text

I've been thinking, because so many people are reading this, and expecting so much from this silly little fic, I should have an upload schedule so that I can have a good amount of time to make the chapters the best they can be, and so you guys know when to expect a new chapter. 

So, this fic will be updated every Friday, starting this Friday (because I have a day off of work, and I can add the final details then).

Also, I've been getting more fan art, thank you TokuYuuWrap for your amazing drawing
(Link here: https://bsky.app/profile/kastel3l.bsky.social/post/3lsvjzpfst22p)

So I was thinking maybe opening a discord server to give updates about new chapters (because ao3 emails about my updates an hour after I upload them for some reason) and for people to post art if they want? idk, to me, it sounds like me being greedy and selfish, and asking too much of people, and I also can't monitor everyone's chats or posts all the time like I can here (Vanilla Eclipse readers probably remember what happened last time when I let guests comment...)

It will probably depend on what you guys want, so let me know.

I'll see you all on Friday :D

Chapter Text

Inside Shadow Milk’s house smelled like old magic, blueberries, and maybe regret. The chandelier above him sparkled with crystals shaped like icicles, none of them matching. A single candle flickered on the table, even though no one lit it. The grandfather clock in the hallway ticked backwards.

Shadow sighed and set his bag down, carefully removing his suspiciously clean boots. The floor beneath his socks was cold. The kind of cold that probably had opinions about his emotional growth.

“Black Sapphire? Candy Apple?” 

No response, they probably stayed after school. Good, they wouldn’t be here to witness a meltdown if he had one.

He wandered to the kitchen. A pot of tea had already brewed itself. He poured a cup with trembling hands.

“This is fine,” he told the haunted walls. “I’m fine. I’m just… soft now. Temporarily. I can handle soft.”

The chandelier chimed in disagreement.

Shadow padded upstairs to his room, which had also changed since the swap, this part of the house was connected to him personally. Gone were the chaotic piles of spellbooks and dark rune scrawlings. Now the bed was made with a gold-trimmed quilt. The desk had a lined planner titled “Your Bright Future” and his pencils were stored in a floral tin marked “Kindness is Power.”

He sat on the bed. Then flopped onto it.

Then screamed into a pillow.

“I hate this spell,” he muttered, kicking his legs weakly like a cursed Victorian orphan.

He groaned and rolled over, hugging a pillow shaped like a bat with tiny stitched fangs. It used to be ironic. Now it was… weirdly comforting.

His voice was small, barely a whisper.

“I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.”

The room didn’t answer.

Shadow exhaled shakily and sat up, clutching the bat pillow to his chest like it might stop him from unraveling. His reflection in the dark mirror across the room stared back with unfamiliar eyes, rounder, softer, lined in sparkly blue instead of coal black. No fangs. Just lip gloss and nerves.

He didn’t hate it.

That was the problem.

“I said one nice thing today,” he told the mirror. “One. And it felt like… like setting my soul on fire. And he laughed.”

He didn’t say who he was. He didn’t have to.

The teacup on his nightstand clinked against the saucer, without being touched. A little swirl of steam rose like a question mark.

Shadow narrowed his eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m allowed to fall apart.”

The cup stilled. Accepting.

He got up slowly and wandered to the bookshelf, trailing fingers along the spines of old grimoire tomes and cursed diaries, all things that used to ground him. Now, they just felt… heavy. Like costumes for a role he wasn’t sure he still wanted to play.

A torn scrap of paper peeked out from one of the volumes. He pulled it free and unfolded it carefully.

It was one of his own notes, written in furious, jagged ink. Pre-swap.

“Feelings are distractions.
Stay sharp. Stay cold. Stay alone.”

Shadow stared at it.

Then, very gently, he folded it again, and tucked it into the floral tin with the pastel pencils.

He turned back to the room.

“…I don’t think I want to stay cold,” he admitted, voice cracking.

The chandelier flickered in what might have been approval. Or judgment. He couldn’t tell.

“Ugh,” Shadow muttered, flopping back on the bed. “I’m going to die surrounded by throw pillows and compliments.”

The shadows curled around the baseboards, quiet and patient.

And this time, when he pulled the quilt up to his chin and shut his eyes…

He didn’t fight the softness.

He just let it hold him.

——————

“Shadow Milk?! OH NO SAPPHIE HE’S DEAD!”

Shadow Milk opened his eyes to find Candy Apple and Black Sapphire next to him. Shadow groaned into his pillow. “I’m napping, not haunting.”

Candy Apple shrieked again, this time with relief, throwing herself dramatically onto the foot of the bed. “You’re breathing?! But you were under the blanket, and the candle downstairs went out by itself, and you didn’t answer when we knocked, and-!”

“Because I was asleep.” He sat up slowly, clutching the bat pillow like a lifeline. His voice cracked. “Can a warlock not collapse in peace anymore?”

Black Sapphire tilted his head, arms crossed, unimpressed. “You usually sleep upside-down in the attic like a sad gargoyle. This is new.”

Shadow flinched. “It’s the spell.”

Candy Apple narrowed her eyes and crawled up beside him like a nosy cat. “The spell made you nap like a baby bird in a therapy cocoon?”

Shadow buried his face in the bat pillow with a muffled scream. “I hate this. I am unraveling. He gave me his coffee today and I drank it. That’s mouth overlap. That’s intimacy.”

“Was it hot?” Candy grinned.

“Emotionally, yes!” Shadow shrieked. “He told me he’d kiss me first. First, Candy!”

Black Sapphire sat down on the edge of the bed. “Did you want him to?”

Shadow froze. Slowly peeked out from the pillow.

“I don’t know,” he said softly. “Yes. No. Maybe. I wanted… him to mean it.”

The silence that followed was unusually gentle.

“He did mean it,” Candy said, uncharacteristically quiet.

Shadow stared down at his hands. “I’m not supposed to be someone you mean things to. I’m supposed to be shadowy. Cryptic. Possibly cursed.”

“You’re still all of that,” Black Sapphire said. “You just… glow now. And you say nice things without throwing up. It’s fine.”

Candy Apple leaned over and patted his forehead like she was blessing a confused feral creature. “I think you might be in love.”

“I’m going to hex myself into a rock,” Shadow groaned.

“Too late,” Black Sapphire muttered. “You’ve got feelings. Might as well feel them.”

Shadow fell back against the pillows with a long, dramatic groan. “I am going to combust.”

“Do it quietly,” Candy said, curling up beside him. “We’re staying tonight.”

“What? Why?”

“Because last time Eternal Sugar fell as hard as you for Hollyberry, a love spell exploded in a five-meter radius,” Black Sapphire said, pulling the blanket back up over him. 

Shadow sighed. “Fine.”

He shut his eyes again.

——————

Pure Vanilla closed the heavy oak door to his single-suite dorm, technically a “heritage residence,” practically a gilded shoebox.

The lock slid home with the crisp click of good manners. Everything else in the room stayed exactly where centuries of tradition said it should. Perfectly ironed sheets, a desk squared to the wall, sun-motif curtains that filtered moonlight into a polite glow.

It was nauseating.

He wondered what Shadow Milk was doing tonight. 

He took off his immaculate black heeled boots, tossed them toward the wardrobe, and missed on purpose. One landed upside-down against an heirloom tapestry. Good. Let the saints judge him.

The new, cobalt-tipped strands of his hair brushed his cheek as he crossed to the mirror. Fangs glinted when he smirked, dark liner made the blue and yellow of his now sharper eyes look almost venomous.

“Terrifying,” he told his reflection, and winked.

Across the room sat his pristine study desk. Labels read Ethics and Healing Theory in tidy calligraphy. He opened the Ethics folder, dragged out a sheaf of neatly copied incantations, and, very calmly, tore them in half. The rip echoed like broken porcelain.

That felt… satisfying. A small part within him screamed, but he ignored it, and flopped down ok his king sized bed. 

“Ugh… it’s too bright in here.” He groaned looking around the cremé and pastel yellow room. 

He stretched across the bed like a cat lounging in the ruins of its owner’s favorite shelf. The throw pillows were arranged by shade, sunshine to daffodil, and he punched one just to spite the symmetry.

“Better,” he muttered, eyes tracing the gentle arc of ceiling frescoes depicting various healing miracles. “Worse.”

His gaze wandered to the small dresser tucked under the window. A crystal-frame sat atop it, showing a rotating gallery of enchanted class portraits. In most of them, he was smiling, bright, beaming, painfully sincere. In one from just a month ago, he was hugging White Lily during the Academic Awards Ceremony. She’d been crying.

He let out a grunt of repulsion. She’d been such a bitch lately, all the ancients had, actually. 

Ugh…

“Shadow’s probably wrapped in a blanket cocoon,” he mused aloud, voice low and amused. “Pouting. Sparkling. Having an identity crisis because I smirked too hard.”

He chuckled, soft and sharp. “I was flirting,” he admitted to no one.

The confession sat warmly in the air.

For a moment, he let himself picture it again, Shadow glowing under the library skylight, cringing at his own accidental compliment. The softness hadn’t dulled him. If anything, it made him more… more expressive, more breakable, more…

…kissable.

Pure Vanilla let out a laugh. 

“He’s gonna lose it if I call him darling again.”

A beat.

“…I’m absolutely going to call him darling again.”

The wicked satisfaction that purred in his chest at the thought was new. So was the way he could want something, someone, without folding into embarrassment about it. The old Pure Vanilla would’ve written an essay about appropriate behavior by now. This one?

This one wanted to see Shadow Milk blush again.

He tilted his head to the side, eyeing the window where moonlight painted quiet streaks across his hardwood floor. He could almost feel the tension from earlier. Shadow’s flailing, his sputtered compliments, the way he’d curled into Vanilla’s side like gravity was personal. And the best part? Vanilla hadn’t even done much. Just… existed, a little smugly.

And Shadow had practically melted.

Pure Vanilla bit the inside of his cheek, fighting the grin stretching across his face. No use pretending. He liked it. All of it. The chaos, the softness, the teasing power. The way Shadow looked at him now, like he was a threat and a wish.

“…I’m doomed,” he whispered into the silence, giddy and dazed.

The chandelier flickered again.

Vanilla rolled onto his side, clutching the closest pillow like it might whisper advice. “He told me I looked good in eyeliner,” he said aloud. “He meant it. He hated that he meant it.”

His smile softened, even as his heartbeat refused to calm.

“I want him to mean it again.”

The admission hung heavy in the air.

Then, slowly, Pure Vanilla pulled the golden comforter over himself and curled into the sheets with a quiet sigh. 

——————

Shadow Milk wanted to kill himself. The amount of rumors that had spread around yesterday was too many. 

God damn it, where was Pure Vanilla?

The moment he stepped into the hallway, the stares hit him like hexes, whispers skittering down the lockers, sideways glances, giggles that exploded into full laughter the second he passed. Someone had taped a sign to his back that said “Flirts in Sparkles.” It had glitter on it.

He ripped it off and crushed it in his hand. “I am going to unmake the entire freshman class,” he muttered. “But that would be so mean-! I HATE THIS STUPID CURSE!”

“Shadow!” a too-chipper voice called.

Eternal Sugar floated toward him with a delighted smile and a dangerous twinkle in her eye. “You’re glowing again today,” she purred. “Did your crush look at you in a meaningful way?”

Shadow’s heart immediately betrayed him. “I- No! Shut up! I don’t have a crush!”

“He’s defensive.” Came Mystic Flour’s monotone voice, who had appeared without warning. 

Silent Salt held up his notebook. 

Definitely about a boy. Probably tall. Probably blond.

“I hate all of you,” Shadow whimpered, practically vibrating out of his skin. “I don’t glow on purpose!”

“You don’t glow when he’s not around,” Sugar pointed out, dreamy. “Coincidence?”

“It’s not like he gave me his coffee or called me darling or stood too close like he wanted to-” He stopped. Mortified. “I mean, he did, but it didn’t mean anything!”

“SOFT LAUNCH OR FULL RELATIONSHIP?!”

The shout came from above.

Shadow slowly tilted his head up to see Burning Spice hanging over the second-floor railing, cupping his hands like a town crier. “WE DESERVE TO KNOW!”

Shadow’s entire body lit up like a cursed lantern. “I’M GOING TO COMBUST-”

“Hey, Sparkles.”

Shadow whirled. His breath caught. “N-Nilly!”

Pure Vanilla was there, just there, like he’d materialized from thin air, calm and smirking in that awful way he did now. His fangs showed. And his eyes were focused only on Shadow.

Shadow Milk felt weak in the knees 

“Oh witches- I mean- hi!” Shadow flinched, clutching his bag strap like a lifeline. “I wasn’t- I didn’t-”

Vanilla took a step closer. “Rough morning?”

Shadow nodded, then shook his head, then nodded again. “Everyone’s being weird and I think someone enchanted my bag to moan when I open it and I hate how good you look and-” He clapped both hands over his mouth.

Vanilla raised an eyebrow, amused. “What was that last one?”

“Nothing!” Shadow squeaked, now trying to back into a wall. “That was… that was the haunted hallway air. I didn’t say that.”

Vanilla just smiled, slow and devastating. “You think I look good?”

The entire hallway looked their way. 

“No, you look hideous!” Shadow paused. “I’m sorry, that was so mean! You look amazing, hot, sexy- OH MY WITCHES YOU DID THAT ON PURPOSE!”

“I didn’t do anything, Sparkles, that was all you.”

Shadow let out a noise like a tea kettle possessed by shame.

He turned away and buried his glowing face into his sleeves. “I am going to eat drywall. I am going to dig a hole behind the potions lab and live there with the worms.”

“Pure Vanilla, what on Earthbread was that?” White Lily stormed down the hall, Golden Cheese and Dark Cacao next to her. Hollyberry seemed to be absent, no one noticed the knowing look and silent chuckle Eternal Sugar did. 

Pure Vanilla didn’t flinch.

He turned lazily at the sound of White Lily’s voice, one arm draped over his backpack strap, posture full of a kind of regal indifference that would’ve horrified the old him. His cobalt-tipped hair shimmered under the hallway lights like some kind of quiet rebellion.

“What was what, Lily?” he asked, voice pleasant with just enough bite to be dangerous.

White Lily’s eyes narrowed. “The scene. The flirting. The…” Her gaze flicked to Shadow, still glowing and hyperventilating into the sleeves of his oversized sweater. “…the sparkling.”

Golden Cheese crossed her arms. “Seriously. You’re an Ancient. You’re supposed to model composure, not… whatever this is.”

Dark Cacao grunted in agreement. “Stirring up rumors with an unstable magic user, have you no shame?”

“He’s not unstable,” Vanilla said. His voice wasn’t raised. It didn’t have to be. The hallway seemed to tilt around him.

Shadow peeked out from his sleeves in disbelief. His glow flickered, unsure.

White Lily folded her arms, trying to recover. “We’re only saying this because we care about you. About your image. Your alliances. If this is some kind of temporary fascination, you need to be careful.”

Vanilla smiled. But it didn’t reach his eyes. “You think I care about image?”

“I think,” Lily said tightly, “you’re not acting like yourself.”

Vanilla’s fangs glinted.

“Maybe you never knew me.”

The silence that followed cracked down the hallway like thunder.

Shadow flinched like the silence had slapped him too.

Nobody breathed.

Even Sugar’s wings had stopped fluttering.

Vanilla didn’t look away from White Lily. He stood there, radiant and sharp, wearing rebellion like it had been tailored just for him. “You all loved the version of me who never said no. Who smiled through everything. Who let you talk about duty and destiny like those were more important than joy.”

Golden Cheese stepped forward, brow furrowed. “That’s not fair. We trusted you to represent-”

“Represent what?” Vanilla cut in, smooth and deadly. “A history I didn’t write? A legacy I didn’t choose? I’m tired of being the symbol you need me to be.”

“You’re acting like a child,” Cacao rumbled.

“Says the group that is getting mad over me flirting,” Vanilla said, smiling without an ounce of humor.

There it was. The crack in the marble.

And it spread.

White Lily looked like she was about to argue. But she didn’t. Her mouth opened… then closed. Her eyes flicked again to Shadow, who still stood glowing and shell-shocked, sleeves bunched at his face.

“This is vaguely familiar…” Shadow Milk muttered.

“Don’t be dramatic.” Mystic Flour said flatly from behind him.

“I am the definition of dramatic right now!” Shadow hissed back. 

Meanwhile, Vanilla hadn’t moved. He stood like a fracture in the architecture of expectation, like the kind of chaos that wore pressed collars and turned quietly to flame.

“I’m not going to apologize,” he said. Calm. Lethal. “You all keep asking me to be him again. But he was exhausted. He didn’t breathe unless someone told him he could.”

White Lily’s jaw clenched. “So instead you’re clinging to-”

“Careful,” Vanilla interrupted, eyes glinting.

There was venom under his voice now. Sugar’s wings twitched again. The air smelled faintly like ozone and blooming nightshade.

“You don’t get to talk about him like he’s a phase,” Vanilla said. “He glows when he’s happy. He flinches when you raise your voice. And the only thing he’s ever asked me for is to not lie to him.”

He turned toward Shadow, and the look on his face gentled like dusk after a storm.

“And I won’t.”

Shadow made a choked noise like a bubble trying to escape a sink.

“Witches take me,” he whimpered. “He’s saying that in front of them. I can’t feel my knees.”

“Sit down,” Mystic Flour advised.

“No, this floor has absorbed so much drama today it’s basically sentient.”

“Then faint dramatically into someone’s arms,” Eternal Sugar offered helpfully, already conjuring a rose petal cushion midair.

“I will,” Shadow hissed, gripping his sleeves tighter. “If he looks at me one more time like I’m a poem he memorized.”

Vanilla, as if summoned by pure spite or maybe affection, turned back to him.

And smiled.

Shadow promptly stopped functioning.

He swayed like a houseplant left too close to a forbidden sun.

Eternal Sugar leaned forward, watching him like a concerned aunt. “He’s going into lovestruck shock.”

Mystic Flour squinted. “Nope, he’s just lovestruck.”

“Shut up,” Shadow groaned, slowly sliding down the lockers. “I want to disintegrate in peace!”

Vanilla watched him with a deeply fond, deeply evil expression. Then, slowly, he walked over. Every step echoed like the foreshadowing of a pivotal chapter.

He crouched beside Shadow, who was now curled up like a traumatized starfruit. “Sparkles.”

“Don’t,” Shadow whispered. “If you say something kind I will evaporate.”

Vanilla leaned in, just enough. “You smell like blueberries and panic.”

Shadow let out a long, defeated scream into his sleeves.

Vanilla leaned a little closer, voice low and amused. “You’re not denying you like me.”

“I loathe you,” Shadow mumbled into cotton. “In a very… complicated way.”

Vanilla chuckled, brushing a strand of cobalt-tinted hair back. “I ‘loathe’ you too. In a… deeply romantic way.”

Shadow made a noise.

“Oh no,” Sugar whispered to burning Spice. “He’s going to combust for real this time.”

“Catch him,” Mystic Flour deadpanned.

“I can’t , he’s all glitter and chaos!”

Vanilla, still crouched beside the emotionally wrecked warlock, reached out and plucked a stray sequin from Shadow’s sleeve. “You have sparkles on your collar.”

“Because you did this to me!” Shadow shrieked, flailing weakly. “You personality-thieved me into a kindness vortex and now I accidentally like you!”

“Aw,” Vanilla said softly. “So you do like me.”

“I will hex your shoelaces together every day for the rest of your life.”

“You’re adorable when you threaten me.”

“STOP BEING NICE TO ME, I CAN’T TAKE IT!”

Vanilla crouched beside him, maddeningly composed. “Sparkles.”

Shadow peeked through his fingers, somewhere between crying and combusting. “What.”

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to my eyeliner.”

A wheezing sound escaped Shadow, unbidden and unholy.

“Shadow Milk?”

“What?” he gasped, mortified and still glowing like an emotionally unstable lantern.

Vanilla didn’t answer immediately. His gaze had shifted, no longer teasing, no longer smug. Just… focused. Sharp. Quiet. Dangerous in a way that made Shadow’s breath catch.

“Come with me.”

Shadow blinked. “What? Where?”

“Somewhere less cursed,” Vanilla said. Then, softer, “Somewhere that doesn’t belong to them.”

He stood, offering his hand.

Shadow stared at it like it might bite him. “Is this a kidnapping?”

“It’s a rescue,” Vanilla replied, deadpan. “Now get up before you faint into another dramatic monologue.”

Shadow groaned, but he took the hand.

The hallway murmured like a cauldron of gossip. They ignored it.

Vanilla led him through a side door, down a lesser-used stairwell, past storage closets and stained-glass windows that shimmered faintly with protective enchantments. Shadow’s heart wouldn’t stop trying to claw its way up his throat. His fingers were still curled in Vanilla’s.

“Where are we going?” he asked in a breathless panic-whisper.

Vanilla turned a corner. “Somewhere quiet.”

That “somewhere” turned out to be the disused observatory above the east wing, locked to students without permission, dusted with forgotten spells and old echoes. Vanilla took out his key he had as a student council member, and unlocked the door, which creaked open like it hadn’t been touched in years. Starlight spilled through the domed glass ceiling, fractured by webs of ancient rune-carvings.

Shadow stepped in. The door shut behind them. The silence fell.

It was beautiful. Cold. Lonely. Safe.

“…You brought me to a tower?” Shadow whispered, voice shrill. “Are you planning to shove me out of it after everything?!”

Vanilla laughed, warm and rich and far too fond. “No. But if you try to jump out yourself, I will float you back down.”

Shadow huffed. “I hate you- no, that's mean, I love y- ARGH!”

Vanilla turned to him, face bathed in starlight, eye  liner catching the gleam like war paint. “That’s cute.”

And before Shadow could speak, before he could glow or shriek or back into a telescope, Vanilla stepped in close, so close, and kissed him.

It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t for show. It was everything else.

Shadow’s mind went blank.

He made a soft, startled sound, like his soul had slipped sideways, then melted forward into it. His fingers found Vanilla’s cardigan lapel. His magic fluttered around him like static-charged moonlight. He kissed back, dizzy, cautious, then not cautious at all.

Pure Vanilla’s hand rose to cup his cheek. Gentle. Grounding. Like he wasn’t trying to ruin Shadow Milk, just hold him steady while everything else fell away.

Shadow didn’t know how long it lasted. Only that the stars didn’t laugh, the room didn’t judge, and for the first time all day, no one was watching but him.

When they finally parted, Shadow staggered back a step, breath caught somewhere between a sob and a shriek.

“…Why,” he whispered, eyes wide. “Why did you do that?”

Vanilla looked at him with the kind of softness that made his knees weak. “Because I wanted to. And because I meant it.”

Shadow clutched his hoodie like a shield. “You have no idea what you’ve done to me.”

Vanilla smiled faintly. “I think I do.”

“I’m in love and I hate it,” Shadow confessed, dramatically throwing his head back toward the sky.

“I know,” Vanilla said, brushing a thumb across the corner of Shadow’s mouth. “You’re doing great.”

Shadow stared at him like he was the most dangerous thing on Earthbread.

Then grabbed his collar and kissed him again.

Harder this time.

Vanilla made a soft noise of surprise, and kissed him right back.

Their mouths were a mess of tongue and teeth, soft moans filling the tower like a secret spell no one else would hear. It was desperate now, messier, breathier, the kind of kiss that tastes like every unsaid thing between them. Shadow’s hands curled into Vanilla’s cardigan like lifelines, pulling him closer, needing him closer, as if distance itself had become unbearable.

Vanilla kissed like he knew exactly what he was doing, and Shadow kissed like he was terrified of how much he wanted it.

Somewhere behind them, the observatory door sealed itself with a faint click. Runes shimmered faintly along the arch, casting soft silver shadows that fluttered like wings.

Vanilla broke the kiss first, just barely, breath ghosting against Shadow’s lips. 

Shadow slapped a hand over his own mouth like that would stop another kiss. “You’re a menace.”

“You love it.”

Shadow glared. “You’re lucky I’m too gay and overwhelmed to curse you right now.”

“I’m counting on it,” Vanilla murmured, pulling Shadow Milk’s hand away, and kissing him again.

This one was slower. Softer. Less chaos, more care. The kind of kiss that didn’t ask for anything but the moment.

Shadow melted.

Melted, and then swayed forward, resting his forehead against Vanilla’s as their lips parted once more.

“…If we die from this spell,” he whispered, voice small and wrecked, “I’m going to haunt you. With glitter.”

Vanilla’s eyes crinkled. “Promise?”

Shadow exhaled a laugh that sounded too much like surrender. “Witches help me, I do like you.”

Vanilla’s smile was blinding in the starlight.

“I like you too, Sparkles,” he said, brushing his thumb across Shadow’s glowing cheek. “More than I should. And definitely more than they’d approve of.”

Shadow nodded slowly. “So we’re doomed.”

“We’re doomed,” Vanilla agreed. “But I wouldn't change it for anything."

Chapter Text

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Chapter Text

Shadow Milk couldn’t look at Pure Vanilla the same for the rest of the day after their kiss.

Every time he tried, tried, to glance at him across the classroom, in the hallway, even in the reflection of a potion bottle, his brain short-circuited. His thoughts didn’t form coherent sentences anymore. They were just one endless loop of he kissed me he kissed me he kissed me followed by static, then an emotional scream.

Vanilla, of course, was infuriatingly fine. He strode through the halls like he hadn’t just kissed the everloving soul out of the disaster of a warlock in the observatory. His cardigan collar was immaculate. His eyeliner had only smudged in that unfair, intentional way. And worst of all? Every time their eyes met, he smiled.

Not just any smile.

That smile.

The I-know-what-your-soundtrack-sounded-like-when-you-melted-in-my-mouth smile.

Shadow was ruined.

In Advanced Magic Theory, the professor was going over the project that started this whole mess, but Shadow was hardly paying attention. 

Because how could he possibly focus when Pure Vanilla Cookie was sitting two seats ahead with the calm, devastating poise of someone who knew exactly what he’d done?

Shadow was a mess. A haunted, flustered, glowing mess.

His notes were incomprehensible. He had written “kiss” four times in the spell diagram margin. Once, he caught himself doodling Vanilla’s name inside a heart and had to physically crumple the parchment before it hexed itself into a love letter.

Vanilla, meanwhile, sat there radiating composure. Legs crossed, chin on hand, nodding politely at the professor like he hadn’t dragged Shadow into a sealed observatory to make out under ancient starlight.

Every so often, he tilted his head slightly. Just enough to glance back at Shadow.

And smiled.

Shadow’s heart flailed.

He choked on his own breath and immediately knocked his ink bottle over. It spilled across his notes, bleeding through half the assignment and dripping ominously onto the floor.

Mystic Flour, sitting beside him, didn’t look up. “You’re going to die of yearning,” she said flatly.

“I’m going to die of humiliation!” Shadow whispered-shrieked, blotting frantically with his sleeve.

“I’m pretty sure that’s what yearning is,” Eternal Sugar chimed in from the row ahead. “At least, the fun kind.”

“None of this is fun! It’s a full emotional catastrophe with eyeliner and smirks! And did you see the way he looked at me during lecture warm-up?!”

“I saw,” Sugar said dreamily. “We all saw. I think even the stained-glass windows saw.”

“Great,” Shadow hissed. “Now the architecture knows I’m in love. Wonderful. Maybe the floor tiles can gossip next.”

At the front of the room, the professor was conjuring a floating model of soul-weave theory. Behind him, Vanilla was smiling again. Slowly, knowingly. His fingers tapped lightly against his chin. Casual. Calculated. Cruel.

Shadow tried to look away. Couldn’t.

Vanilla winked.

Shadow exploded in light.

The entire back row startled.

“Witches, not again,” someone muttered.

“You’re glowing again,” Burning Spice pointed out helpfully.

“I’m going to combust,” Shadow moaned, slumping over his desk. “Right here. I’ll become a romantic ghost and haunt him with love notes written in spectral glitter.”

“He’d probably enjoy that,” Sugar said.

Shadow groaned into his arms.

The class droned on. Shadow tried to regain his composure. He failed. Every time he closed his eyes, he could feel the memory of Vanilla’s hands, Vanilla’s voice, Vanilla’s mouth.

By the time the lecture ended, Shadow was a ruined, glowing wreck of romantic devastation.

He bolted out of the room like it was cursed, because at this point, everything felt cursed, and tried to make it halfway to the vending machines before-

“Hey, Sparkles.”

Shadow froze like a bunny spotting a hawk. Slowly, slowly, he turned.

Vanilla was leaning against the corridor archway. Same smirk. Same infuriatingly relaxed posture. Same unfair face.

Shadow squeaked. “No. Not again. I need at least three hours of emotional downtime before any more eye contact!”

Vanilla raised a brow. “Downtime, huh? Sounds like someone can’t stop thinking about me.”

“YOU DID THAT!” Shadow accused, pointing. “You kissed me in a tower and now my brain’s a mess and I can’t even do magic without drawing hearts instead of runes!”

Vanilla walked toward him slowly, like a threat. “Do you want me to stop?”

Shadow backed up against the wall like a cornered animal. “I want you to stop asking me that!”

Vanilla stopped right in front of him. Close. Too close. Again.

His voice dropped. Soft. Terrible. “Because you don’t want me to stop.”

Shadow made a broken little sound in the back of his throat. “I am going to combust into dust and be carried away by the wind of love.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Vanilla whispered, smile wicked. “It’s almost like you’re in love.”

Shadow stared up at him, eyes wide and shining. “I am. And it’s the worst. Thing. Ever.”

Vanilla leaned in just slightly. Close enough for only Shadow to hear.

“But it feels kind of good, doesn’t it?”

Shadow’s knees gave out. Right there. Right in the middle of the hallway. He slid down the wall like a love-struck puddle of emotional instability.

Vanilla crouched beside him, utterly unfazed.

Shadow just sighed, glowing like a bioluminescent confession.

“I hate how much I love you.”

“Cute.”

“Shut up!”

Pure Vanilla sighed. “So, how long did Black Sapphire say we had until we feel the full effect of the spell?”

“No specific time, but I’d have to guess 72 hours at most…”

Pure Vanilla hummed thoughtfully, brushing a strand of his cobalt-tipped hair behind one ear as if they weren’t crouched in the hallway of a magical university while his emotionally unstable boyfriend glowed like a cursed lantern fish.

“So we’ve got… maybe three days until we switch completely.”

“Nilly, I need to switch back, I can’t be… this for the rest of my life!” Shadow groaned. 

“I think it suits you.” Vanilla smirked. 

“Jump off a bridge- No, don’t! That’ll- ARGH KILL ME!”

Vanilla laughed, that terrible warm laugh that sounded like honey and doom. “You’re very passionate when you’re unraveling.”

“This is my new villain origin story…” Shadow hissed, clutching dramatically at his chest like he could physically hold his feelings in.

Vanilla tilted his head. “Then I hope I’m the tragic love interest who dies dramatically at the end.”

Shadow shot him a horrified look. “Don’t say that! That’s how romance novels start!”

“You’re the one who confessed in a whisper and fell down a wall,” Vanilla said lightly. “I’m just adding structure to the narrative.”

Shadow made a sound like a kettle boiling over. “The narrative is that I need to bury myself under seven feet of emotional shielding and never speak to you again until we find a way to reverse this spell!”

Vanilla reached out and plucked a stray glitter-particle from Shadow’s hoodie, inspecting it like evidence. “And yet here we are. On the floor. Again.”

“I didn’t choose this floor! It ambushed me! Like your face!”

Vanilla leaned in. “You’re very kissable when you’re panicking.”

“DON’T!” Shadow barked, covering his face with his sleeves. “You can’t keep kissing me whenever I have a magical meltdown!”

Vanilla smiled. “But you kiss back.”

Shadow screeched like a cursed violin and practically flung himself backward in a flustered burst of sparkles. “That was ONE TIME. Okay, maybe two. Possibly three. But those were isolated emotional weather events and it all happened at the same time!”

Vanilla leaned back on his heels, looking far too smug for someone who’d just been declared a Category Five Romantic Disaster. “So… library restricted section?”

“No! Absolutely not!” Shadow said immediately.

“Courtyard?” Vanilla asked.

Shadow moaned. “If I die because of you, I’m going to haunt your tea leaves.”

Vanilla helped him up again with infuriating ease. “Make it spooky.”

They started walking, a glowing stormcloud and his serene, pastel hurricane.

“You’re lucky I like emotionally complex men with eyeliner,” Shadow muttered, hugging his hoodie.

“I am emotionally complex,” Vanilla agreed. “And you like my eyeliner.”

Shadow shoved him weakly. “Shut up.”

Behind them, several students who had been pretending very poorly not to eavesdrop immediately started whispering like their lives depended on it.

“…Did he just say boyfriend?”

“Shhh! They’ll hear you-!”

“Too late. He’s glowing again.”

“I swear he gets brighter every time Vanilla looks at him.”

“Don’t look at them directly. It’s like staring into an eclipse but gay.”

Shadow heard everything.

Of course he did. Because fate hated him, the walls were whisper-conductive, and Pure Vanilla Cookie, demon of his destruction, winked like he’d planned the entire hallway ambush just for this.

Shadow ducked his head, hoodie nearly swallowing him whole, and hissed under his breath, “They’re whispering.”

“They always whisper,” Vanilla said too calmly, brushing an invisible speck of lint from his perfect lapel. “We’re captivating.”

“I’m combusting in real time,” Shadow hissed. “This is a public mental breakdown, not a romance novel!”

“Could be both,” Vanilla murmured, then leaned in slightly, voice dropping like honeyed sin, “You’re very poetic when you’re unraveling.”

“Stop saying things like that!” Shadow whisper-yelled, smacking his own forehead like it might reboot him.

More whispers fluttered down the corridor like cursed snow.

“Did you see that look Vanilla just gave him?”

“I felt it. Like a magical slap to the heart.”

“They’re going to kiss. I can feel it in the ley lines.”

“Do we… cheer? Or hide?”

“We’re going to be academic gossip for centuries.” Shadow whined, grabbing Vanilla by the sleeve and yanking him around the corner. 

Vanilla followed like it was a casual stroll and not a flight from magical paparazzi. “You’re very cute when you’re in denial.”

Shadow whirled on him, eyes wide, glowing, doomed. “You kissed me under ancient starlight in a locked tower. I haven’t stopped glowing since! My notes are cursed with hearts, my soul is screaming, the third-year girls are probably writing fanfiction!”

Vanilla laughed. “Not my fault you can’t control the glowing.”

“YES IT IS!”

——————

Hollyberry slammed her hand on the table in the courtyard for the third time in ten minutes. “I demand to know what the hell is happening between those two!”

“Lower your voice,” hissed Dark Cacao, arms crossed and jaw clenched like a granite statue undergoing emotional erosion. 

“Something obviously happened,” Golden Cheese said, touching up her eyeshadow, before turning to the others. “Do you think it has to do with the Advanced Magic Theory Project?”

“Yes!” White Lily exclaimed. “That has to be it! Shadow Milk bewitched him!”

“You’re talking about the guy who almost killed Burning Spice for throwing a rock at Pure Vanilla.” Eternal Sugar said as the Beasts walked by.

“Shadow Milk would never want to hex Pure Vanilla, he’d kill himself before hurting him.” Burning Spice added in. 

“No one asked for your opinion,” Golden Cheese rolled her eyes. “Get lost.”

“What a creative insult.” Mystic Flour rolled her eyes. 

Silent Salt held up a notebook page. 

No one asked you, Cheez-it Chicken. 

As the Beasts started laughing, the Ancients started to get upset. 

“Real mature,” Golden Cheese snapped, flipping her mirror compact shut with an aggressive click. “You know what? Let’s not pretend this is some harmless little romance. Something dangerous is going on.”

“Oh, yes,” Eternal Sugar said dryly, crossing her legs with the elegance of a provoked banshee. “‘So dangerous.’ Shadow Milk’s love aura glows approximately ten feet in every direction and his biggest threat is tripping over his own feelings.”

White Lily leaned forward, hands braced on the table like a prophet unraveling. “You don’t understand. This isn’t just… flirting. I’ve been monitoring the aura shifts around them. Something's changed.”

“I felt that,” said Dark Cacao grimly. “The wind itself was humming with… romantic disaster.”

“You’re just mad because you don’t understand love,” Sugar shot back.

“I understand battlefield strategy,” Cacao growled. “Which is what this is turning into. An emotional ambush. With excessive eyeliner.”

Hollyberry huffed. “Oh, for the love of cursed relics, just admit it. They’re in love. It’s loathsome, chaotic, and it’s happening whether we like it or not.”

“I refuse to accept that as the official diagnosis,” White Lily said, flipping open her annotated Spell Shift Log. “There has to be an external trigger. Maybe some kind of mutual enchantment? Mirror-bonding? Sympathy spell gone wrong? A pact under duress?”

Silent Salt flipped another page.

Or, and hear me out, they’re gay and stupid.

There was a long silence.

“…Valid,” Mystic Flour muttered.

Golden Cheese was visibly vibrating. “You all think this is cute?! This is a magical security hazard! What if they’re leaking chaotic energy every time they make eye contact?!”

“Then maybe it’s the first good thing to come out of that tower of denial Vanilla’s been living in,” Hollyberry growled. “He used to blush at the mere thought of Shadow Milk, now, he’s got more emotional repression than a sealed crypt. I say let him have his sorcerer meltdown boyfriend.”

White Lily gawked at her. “No, no, no, there has to be a logical explanation! Maybe it was an accidental soul tether! Maybe they fell into a dream realm together! Maybe they merged brains! I refuse to believe Pure Vanilla would willingly indulge in hallway flirting!”

Salt’s notebook lifted.

You’re in denial.

“Shut up, cryptid!” Dark Cacao snapped.

“Don’t take it out on Salt,” Mystic Flour said. “He’s the only one here with emotional literacy.”

“There must be a way to prove this is magical contamination!” Lily said, wild-eyed.

“You mean love?” Sugar offered. “The kind with forehead kisses and mutual tea anxiety?”

“I will curse you,” Golden Cheese snarled.

“I will ship you,” Sugar sang.

Just then, the courtyard rippled with a pulse of glowing light.

Everyone looked up.

Through a distant archway, Pure Vanilla and Shadow Milk were walking across the lawn. Shadow’s hood was up, his glow barely contained, trailing faint stardust in his wake. Vanilla walked beside him like a calm center of gravity, occasionally nudging him gently when Shadow visibly started panicking again.

They paused.

Vanilla looked at Shadow. Said something.

Shadow threw his hands over his face.

Vanilla chuckled.

Shadow shoved him. Gently.

Vanilla leaned over. Whispered something.

And kissed his cheek.

The courtyard erupted.

White Lily made a noise that could only be described as a dying spellbook catching fire. “That wasn’t a cheek kiss. That was a declaration of emotional warfare!”

Golden Cheese shrieked, “That was PDA! IN THE SACRED COURTYARD!”

Burning Spice simply stood, arms raised to the heavens like he was summoning divine vindication. “AND THUS THE PROPHECY IS FULFILLED.”

“They’re holding hands,” Mystic Flour pointed out calmly, sipping from her teacup like she hadn’t just watched their two most powerful classmates collapse into magical gay chaos. “That’s new.”

“They’re not just holding hands,” Dark Cacao muttered, eyes narrowed like a seasoned war general watching an enemy flank unravel. “They’re doing the thumb rub. That’s intimacy-level five.”

“You memorized levels of hand-holding intimacy?” Eternal Sugar asked, eyebrows raised. “Honestly, I’m surprised.”

“Oh, stars preserve us,” White Lily gasped. “The soul-weave field around them is intensifying. It’s like they’re… harmonizing. Emotionally.”

Silent Salt’s notebook read, now written in sparkly purple ink,

I told you, they’re gay, stupid, and aether-bonded.

“WE DON’T KNOW THAT,” Lily shrieked. “We need a full psychic scan! An aura cleanse! A sacred vow-breaking ritual-“

“You need a nap,” Mystic Flour said.

Golden Cheese was already rummaging through her bag with manic intensity. “Where’s my compact? I need to wipe my memory. I can’t live in a world where Pure Vanilla, Pure Vanilla, is kissing in public like some smirking heartbreaker!”

“Yeah,” Hollyberry muttered, cracking open a soda like it was a war ration. “Honestly, I thought he’d be the one fainting dramatically.”

“Wrong again,” Sugar said cheerfully. “Turns out Shadow’s the fainting type. Real swoon and sparkle core.”

“I’m starting to think we misjudged everything,” said Mystic Flour, adjusting her skirt. “We assumed Shadow Milk was the brooding danger. But no. It was Pure Vanilla. The whole time.”

“An apex predator in pastel,” muttered Burning Spice.

Meanwhile, in the distance, Shadow had just tried to teleport away mid-panic, but failed. The magical disturbance briefly lifted him two feet off the ground in a sparkle-tornado of mortification. Vanilla calmly reached out and pulled him back down.

And smoothed his hair.

“…He smoothed his hair,” said White Lily, hollowly. “He’s tamed the chaos...”

Across the lawn, Shadow was glowing so brightly he was attracting moths. Real, enchanted moths. One landed gently in his hair. He didn’t notice.

“I hate this,” Shadow whispered. “I hate how you smile at me like I’m something good. I hate how my magic curls when you get close. I hate how your hands fit around mine like a prophecy.”

Vanilla tilted his head slightly, then leaned closer and murmured, “You also hate how much you like it.”

Shadow made a noise halfway between a sob and a squeak. “Why are you like this?”

Vanilla blinked innocently. “I’m just encouraging emotional vulnerability.”

“You’re weaponizing it!”

Vanilla smiled.

Shadow let out the softest, most defeated groan known to love-struck warlocks. “You’re evil.”

“Only for you.”

“I knew you were worse than me.”

They stopped in the shade of an archway. Shadow finally looked at him. Really looked.

“…What if the spell never wears off?” he asked, voice quiet now. “What if we’re like this forever?”

Vanilla shrugged. “Then I guess we figure out how to be like this. Together.”

Shadow blinked once, then twice, like he hadn’t prepared for an answer that felt like safety.

“…You’re serious?”

Vanilla leaned in again, soft and steady, hands warm as he brushed a thumb along Shadow’s cheek. “I’m in love with you, you idiot. Of course I’m serious.”

Shadow made another strangled noise and practically collapsed into Vanilla’s arms.

“You good, Sparkles?”

“No… I’m gonna die, why do you say stuff like that?” Shadow Milk whined. 

“Would you rather me lie?” Vanilla asked innocently, like he wasn’t currently cradling the personification of magical emotional distress in a public courtyard under full sunlight.

Shadow’s voice was muffled in his chest. “Yes. No. Maybe. Say something boring. Say something emotionally neutral that avoids the subject, like ‘the library is closed on Tuesdays.’”

Vanilla hummed, resting his chin lightly on top of Shadow’s head. “The library is closed on Tuesdays.”

“See? That’s better,” Shadow sniffled, wiping at his face with his sleeve. “Cold. Unfeeling. Devoid of affection.”

“And yet,” Vanilla whispered into his hair, “you’re still glowing.”

Shadow whimpered. “Stop using my bioluminescence as a barometer for my emotional state.”

“I can’t help it,” Vanilla murmured. “You’re like a magical mood lamp. With anxiety.”

“I was a shadow warlock,” Shadow hissed. “I used to be scary! Mysterious! People trembled when I entered the room!”

“You still make people tremble,” Vanilla said sweetly. “It’s just from secondhand embarrassment now.”

Shadow let out a scandalized gasp and slapped a hand over Vanilla’s mouth. “How dare you! I am on the edge of a complete emotional unraveling and you’re cracking jokes!”

Vanilla kissed the palm of his hand.

Shadow screeched and flung himself backwards into the stone archway. “THAT’S NOT FAIR. YOU CAN’T JUST… THAT’S A WAR CRIME.”

“Love crime,” Vanilla corrected, smiling like a soft apocalypse. “Same casualty count, though.”

“I’m going to explode. I’m going to ascend into the aether and become a tragic legend whispered about in magical therapy circles.”

“Too late,” Vanilla said, reaching out and straightening the collar of Shadow’s robe like it was normal. “You’ve already got a fan club. There’s a girl in Enchantments 101 who is writing a fanfiction about you.”

Shadow paused. Blinked. “How do you know that?”

“I have excellent research skills.”

Shadow groaned and dragged both hands down his face like he could physically erase the last five minutes. “We’re going to die like this. Together. With matching grave markers that say ‘Too Emotionally Stupid to Function.’”

Vanilla leaned in again. “We could get a joint tomb. Yours can say ‘I warned him,’ and mine can say ‘Worth it.’”

Shadow slapped him. Gently. With both hands. “I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“I hate how much I love you.”

Vanilla smiled again. The terrible, gentle kind of smile that made Shadow feel like a poem left out in the rain. “You’re very romantic when you’re suffering.”

“I’m always suffering!”

“And yet somehow still adorable.”

Shadow gave up. Physically slumped into Vanilla like his spine had been replaced with melted taffy and starstuff. “This is your fault. I was emotionally stable before you.”

“No, you weren’t,” Vanilla said fondly. “You just wore it better.”

“Stop flirting with me in the middle of my identity crisis.”

“Sorry,” Vanilla whispered, not sorry at all. “You’re just very flirtable when you’re in crisis.”

Shadow made a long, low sound of anguish and buried his glowing face into Vanilla’s shoulder. “Tell no one about this.”

“They’re watching right now.”

Shadow stiffened. “What…?”

Vanilla casually turned his head. “Hello, courtyard.”

Shadow Milk screeched. 

Chapter Text

As soon as Pure Vanilla got to his dorm, he got a text from White Lily. 

Lily: We need to talk. Urgently.

Lily: It’s about Shadow Milk.

Lily: This is not a request.

Lily: The other Ancients and I will be at your dorm soon. 

Vanilla stared at the screen, then at the door, then sighed like someone already regretting every life decision that led to this moment.

Vanilla stared at the screen, then at the door, then sighed like someone already regretting every life decision that led to this moment.

He didn’t even get to sit down before the knock came. Not a polite one.

BANG BANG BANG.

The kind of knock that came with moral judgment and possibly a lecture in ancient dialects.

Vanilla opened the door to find White Lily front and center, arms crossed, eyes wild with a mix of panic and thesis-grade conviction. Behind her stood Dark Cacao, Golden Cheese, and Hollyberry, looking like the Council of Doom had arrived to discuss his love life.

They all pushed past him like they owned the place.

“You’ve been compromised,” White Lily said before he could offer tea. “And we’re going to fix it.”

Vanilla blinked. “Is this an intervention?”

“Obviously,” Golden Cheese snapped, already setting down a suspiciously shiny mirror that was probably enchanted. “We’ve reviewed the signs. Shadow Milk’s erratic emotional behavior and sudden glowing. And your public affection and hand-holding.”

“I told you,” Lily said, pacing like she was prepping for a magical tribunal, “this started the moment you got partnered with Shadow Milk. And now? You’re under some kind of emotional manipulation spell. Don’t try to deny it.”

Vanilla folded his arms. “I’m not denying anything. I’m just… stunned by how quickly you all turned into investigative therapists.”

“Shadow Milk is dangerous,” Cacao said darkly. “He hexed White Lily freshman year to turn into a frog whenever she heard her name.”

White Lily dragged Pure Vanilla to his bed. “Sit down, Vanilla.”

Vanilla smirked. “No.”

White Lily blinked. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean no,” Vanilla repeated calmly, folding his arms tighter. “I’m not letting you drag me into some magical interrogation when you’re all operating on theories stitched together with rumors and collective panic.”

Golden Cheese narrowed her eyes. “So you are coursed.”

“I’m not cursed,” he said, “I’m enchanted by him. There’s a difference.”

“UGH,” Cheese groaned, nearly knocking over her mirror. “He’s doing it on purpose.”

Hollyberry, who had been examining Vanilla’s book shelf with casual interest, let out a low whistle. “Damn. He’s really gone, huh?”

“I am not gone,” Vanilla said, though the light blush dusting his cheeks said otherwise. “I’m… aware. And consenting. To all of this because he makes me happy. Because when he smiles at me like I’m the only stable force in his life, I feel like maybe I don’t have to be perfect all the time. And maybe that’s okay.”

“…Oh my god,” Golden Cheese whispered. “You’re in deep.”

“Has he touched your soul?” White Lily demanded, as if accusing someone of academic fraud.

“No,” Vanilla said, slowly, “but he did kiss me under starlight, confessed he liked my hands, and nearly cried when I said I liked him back. So if this is a spell, it’s the most tragically beautiful one I’ve ever seen.”

There was silence. Long, stunned, soul-cracking silence.

White Lily, looking one breath away from starting a thesis on emotionally-induced magical feedback loops, hissed through her teeth. “Vanilla. He’s Shadow Milk Cookie . The same Shadow Milk who soul-bound a chair to a professor. The same one who talks to cats more than people.”

Vanilla tilted his head. “He doesn’t talk to them. He just lets them sit on his lap while he reads grimoires.”

“That’s worse!” she cried.

“I think it’s sweet,” Hollyberry said.

“Thank you,” Vanilla sighed.

White Lily groaned. “Okay. Fine. If you refuse to let us de-glamor you, test your blood for potions, or interrogate Shadow Milk directly, then at least let us ward your room against romantic influence.”

“No,” Vanilla said again, softer this time. “If he ever walks in here, I want him to feel safe. Not watched.”

Cheese made a soft gagging sound.

Pure Vanilla sighed. 

“Look, I’ll tell you all what happened tomorrow with Shadow Milk and the Beasts.” He said sternly, glaring at White Lily. 

“Fine…” Lily muttered after a beat of silence. “But you better not be fucking with us, Vanilla.”

“Me?” Pure Vanilla gasped, pressing a hand to his chest in mockery. “I would never!”

—————

Shadow Milk paced around anxiously. Pure Vanilla just texted him saying that they were gonna explain what happened to the Ancients and Beasts tomorrow. 

As soon as he was told he sent his group chat a quick message and immediately turned his phone off. 

His room was dim, lit only by the blue glow of an orb hovering over his cluttered desk. Books lay open, pages fluttering from the breeze of his anxious pacing. His hoodie had been discarded hours ago, his sleeves rolled up, hair messier than usual from running his hands through it a dozen times.

He kept muttering to himself under his breath.

“They’re going to hate me. They already hate me. What if they think I did it on purpose? What if they think I cursed him? What if they think I tricked him into the kiss- oh witches, the kiss! They’re going to think it was a trap, or a hex, or-”

He stopped, pressing both palms flat to the wall as if he could slow his heart by absorbing the cold from the stone.

“I shouldn’t have kissed him,” he whispered, eyes squeezed shut. “I should have waited. I should have run away before he did it. I should have… witches, he looked at me like I wasn’t broken. And now he’s going to stand in front of everyone and defend me, and they’re going to tear him apart for it…”

His voice cracked at the end.

There was a gentle tap at his window, one of the night crows he always left snacks for. Shadow blinked at it, then whispered, “Not now. I’m panicking.”

He rubbed his face with both hands, slumped down into the chair, and curled in on himself.

“Oh this is a disaster!” He whined. 

He rocked slightly in the chair, arms wrapped tight around his knees like he could physically hold himself together. His magic sparked around him in tiny nervous flares, wisps of light that fizzled out before they reached the desk.

“I should’ve never let myself get close,” he mumbled, voice hoarse with self-loathing. “Not to him. Not to anyone. I always ruin it. I always-”

He stopped mid-sentence when a soft knock came at the door.

Shadow froze.

No one knocked on his door. People avoided it. Like it was cursed. Which, to be fair, it had been. Once.

He hesitated, stood up slowly, then peeked through the peephole with the suspicion of a haunted raccoon.

“Shadow Milk?” Candy Apple and Black Sapphire were outside his door with a cup of tea. 

Shadow blinked. Hard.

He opened the door a crack, squinting at the two Beasts like they were part of some fever dream his anxiety cooked up.

“Why are you here?” he asked flatly, voice hoarse.

Candy Apple lifted the teacup like it was a peace offering. “Vanilla told us you’d be spiraling. And he’s right. You’re absolutely feral when anxious.”

Black Sapphire nodded solemnly. “He said to tell you he’s fine. Also, and I quote, ‘tell him not to combust, I’m handling it.’”

Shadow stared. Then, slowly, he cracked the door open a little wider. “…He really said that?”

“He really said that,” Candy confirmed. “Also, ‘Don’t do that thing where he paces holes into the floor and recites tragic poetry in Latin.’”

Shadow opened the door fully, defeated. “…Fine. Come in. But don’t touch anything cursed. Or glowing.”

Candy Apple stepped in cheerfully, her skirt jingling slightly with tiny bells. “No promises.”

Black Sapphire followed, more cautious, eyes scanning the chaotic state of the room. “This is worse than last time. There’s a whole constellation drawn on your floor.”

“It helps me think!” Shadow snapped, then slumped back into his chair. “I’m sorry. I just… I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I don’t want him to get hurt because of me.”

Candy set the tea down on his desk. “Vanilla knows what he’s doing. He’s not stupid. Unfortunately.”

“And he’s choosing you anyway,” Black Sapphire said, settling on the windowsill. “That has to count for something.”

Shadow Milk buried his face in his hands. “It counts for everything. That’s what scares me.”

Candy Apple placed a warm hand on his shoulder. “Then don’t screw it up tomorrow.”

“I already have,” he mumbled. “They’re going to interrogate him. They think I enchanted him.”

“Technically…”

“That was both of us, and it was an accident!”

“So just explain that,” Black Sapphire said. “What's the worst that could happen?”

Shadow looked at them like they’d just asked him to eat fire.

“…You want me to walk somewhere with all the Ancients and the Beasts, explain that I accidentally swapped personalities to the Ancients golden boy in the middle of an emotional breakdown, and then kissed him? That’s the plan?”

Candy Apple sipped her tea. “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds worse .”

“It is worse!” Shadow hissed, dragging both hands down his face. “Hollyberry is going to challenge me to a duel. Golden Cheese will drag me to Magical Ethics Council. Cacao is going to glare until I dissolve. And White Lily… White Lily is going to write a three-hundred-page dissertation against my existence.”

Black Sapphire shrugged. “She already started drafting it, probably.”

Shadow let out a noise that sounded somewhere between a groan and a scream. “And Vanilla. He’s going to stand there with that look . That soft, terrifying look like he believes in me . And I’m going to fold like laundry .”

Candy Apple grinned. “You’re hopeless.”

“I’m in love ,” Shadow whispered, scandalized.

“…Yeah, that’s what we said.”

He curled into himself again, muttering, “I shouldn’t have kissed him.”

Black Sapphire raised a brow. “He kissed you .”

“…I let him.”

Candy sighed dramatically. “Witches help us.”

Shadow peeked at them through his fingers. “What if they make him choose? Between me and them?”

Black Sapphire leaned back on the windowsill, looking thoughtful. “Then I think we’ll all find out just how dangerous Pure Vanilla Cookie really is.”

Shadow blinked.

Candy Apple nodded. “That boy has fangs . And if he thinks you’re worth it, the Ancients better get ready for a speech that’ll rearrange their soul architecture.”

There was a long pause.

Shadow exhaled shakily, his voice barely above a whisper. “I really hope so.”

Candy handed him the cup of tea again. “Drink. Rest. Tomorrow’s going to be a mess.”

“And you need to look somewhat alive,” Black Sapphire added. “At least not like a crypt gremlin.”

Shadow rolled his eyes, but took a sip. It was chamomile. Sweet, warm, and laced with something calming. Probably illegal in three provinces.

He closed his eyes. For a moment, just a moment, the panic in his chest quieted.

“…Thank you,” he said, barely audible.

Candy smiled. “Don’t thank us yet. Tomorrow, you’re facing two cliques of magically volatile overachievers with personal vendettas and excellent memory.”

Shadow groaned again.

Black Sapphire cracked his knuckles. “And we’ll be there. If it explodes, at least we’ll all burn together.”

“…That’s not comforting.”

—————

Shadow Milk stepped into the courtyard like he was walking into a trap.

Because, honestly, he kind of was.

The Ancients stood on one side like they were hosting a magical inquisition. White Lily had her arms crossed with enough force to crush bone, her expression sharp with paranoia and thesis-grade suspicion. Golden Cheese stood beside her mirror, applying even more makeup to her already caked face. Dark Cacao was silent, posture grim and unreadable, while Hollyberry leaned casually against a column, arms folded, not armed, but radiating judgment like it was a weapon all its own.

On the opposite side of the courtyard stood the Beasts, Mystic Flour with her faintly glowing grimoire tucked under one arm and her third eye open, watching everything. Eternal Sugar stood unnervingly still, her long hair wisped down her back as she hovered over the ground. Burning Spice perched on his tree, while Silent Salt just leaned back against the fountain wall, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, and disturbingly quiet.

And there, standing perfectly centered between both factions, was Pure Vanilla Cookie.

His cardigan fluttered slightly in the breeze. His expression was calm, too calm. He stood with his hands folded in front of him like a saint in the middle of a bar fight.

Shadow Milk nearly turned around and walked right back to the dorm.

But then Vanilla looked at him.

One glance. Warm. Steady. Brave.

Shadow's lungs tightened like his ribs were closing in.

He took a shaky step forward, then another.

No one said a word.

Until he was close enough for Vanilla to reach out and take his hand, right there in front of everyone.

And he did.

Vanilla’s fingers curled around his with effortless confidence.

"You came," Vanilla murmured, the words soft enough to knock the wind out of him.

Shadow let out a laugh that was more breath than sound. “Would’ve combusted if I didn’t.”

Golden Cheese cleared her throat like a gavel slamming down. “Now that we’re all here-”

“Let me say it,” Vanilla interrupted.

Golden Cheese narrowed her eyes but fell silent.

Vanilla turned to face everyone. Ancients. Beasts. Judgment incarnate.

“You all have questions,” he said calmly. “Suspicions. And I don’t blame you. But if you're here to accuse Shadow Milk of manipulation, possession, or coercion, then you’re wasting your time.”

White Lily’s eyes sparked. “Vanilla, he bound himself to you. Do you even realize what that means ?”

“He didn’t.” Pure Vanilla said.

Shadow Milk nodded.

“Then what in the witches happened?” Dark Cacao grunted.

“Love!” Candy Apple shouted as she ran into the courtyard, Black Sapphire behind her. 

“And a magical mishap that made the two swap personalities, which will take full effect in… lets say 48 hours.” Black Sapphire smiled.

“What?”

Chapter Text

“ What?” White Lily seethed.

Black Sapphire, entirely unfazed by the ancient fury aimed his way, adjusted his coat collar with the air of someone very used to chaos. “Let me dumb it down for you. Shadow Milk and Pure Vanilla were partnered up for a project, I’m sure you’re all familiar with that? Well, when Vanilla came over, they tried a spell that combined both of their magic, and it caused this disaster.” he stepped back, and bowed. “You’re welcome.”

“I knew it.” Mystic Flour put away her grimoire. “Of course you two idiots would do something like that.”

White Lily’s glare could have melted steel. “Why would you try a fusion spell? Do you know how reckless that is? That kind of magic requires months of calibration especially between two mages with unstable emotional profiles!”

Pure Vanilla had the nerve to look calm. “We calibrated. For about twenty minutes.”

“That’s not calibration!” she shouted, nearly throwing her backpack on the ground.

Burning Spice groaned from his perch in the tree. “Can someone please just tell me if anyone’s dying or if this is just an ‘accidental soulmate ritual’ gone wrong?”

“Oh, it’s worse than that,” Black Sapphire said brightly. “They created a partial merge field. Their magic touched , and now it’s tangled. A mess of identity bleeding, aura inversion, and emotional mirroring. It’s basically a magical hangover with feelings.”

“Can you two even cast alone right now?” Eternal Sugar asked quietly, staring at them like they were ticking time bombs.

Shadow Milk shifted, visibly uncomfortable. “Sort of. My magic doesn’t… feel like mine. It’s too dark and edgy.”

“And mine’s lighter,” Vanilla admitted. “It’s more reactive than usual. I think we’re compensating for each other without meaning to.”

“Oh, for the love of witches,” Hollyberry muttered, rubbing a hand over her face. “This is like watching two emotionally repressed deer get stuck in a soul trap.”

“ We’re fine, ” Vanilla said, and his voice was calm but firm . “Yes, the spell went wrong. But no one’s dying. This isn’t some manipulation. It was an accident, and we’re dealing with it.”

“You’re holding hands,” Dark Cacao pointed out.

Shadow quickly dropped Vanilla’s hand. “Reflex.”

“Cute.”

“STOP THAT!” Shadow Milk snapped, his voice cutting across the courtyard like a spell gone wrong. Everyone turned.

He looked visibly on edge, hair frizzed, face red, his expression stuck somewhere between panic and embarrassment. “This isn’t some romantic comedy! It’s not cute! It’s a magical crisis!”

“They really did swap…” Silent Salt whispered.

“Look at them. They’re echoing each other’s magic signatures. And posture. And tone.” Eternal Sugar cooed.

“They finish each other’s sentences now,” Candy Apple added unhelpfully. “I caught them doing it the night they swapped. Twice.”

“I wasn’t finishing his sentence,” Shadow snapped. “He just… he paused too long and I filled it in out of reflex.”

Pure Vanilla’s lips twitched like he was trying very hard not to smile. “It’s a side effect. Not a habit.”

“It’s gross, ” White Lily said. “And dangerous. Magical merge fields can permanently damage you mentally if not reversed properly.”

“Then we’ll reverse it,” Shadow said, clearly trying to hold on to his last shred of dignity.

“Have you even tried a separation spell?” asked Hollyberry.

There was an awkward pause.

“...Define ‘tried,’” Vanilla said carefully.

“You didn’t even try,” White Lily hissed.

Shadow shrugged helplessly. “We got distracted.”

“By what? ” Burning Spice barked, incredulous.

Vanilla coughed lightly. “It was… a long conversation. Emotionally charged. There was a moment.”

“Oh no,” Golden Cheese muttered. “They kissed, didn’t they.”

“WE-” Shadow started, voice cracking like a broken hex.

“In the observatory, yeah” Vanilla smiled. 

White Lily’s hands curled into fists as she tried to stay calm. Her white nails digging into her palms. 

“You what?”

“Teehee, oopsie!” Pure Vanilla mocked. 

White Lily’s eye twitched.

“Teehee?” she echoed, voice dangerously low. “Oopsie?”

“You’re really not helping,” Shadow muttered to Vanilla under his breath, who just shrugged like he hadn’t just casually confessed to kissing his magical merge partner in the middle of an identity crisis.

“Wasn’t trying to,” Pure Vanilla said sweetly.

“Oh, they’re doomed,” Silent Salt muttered. 

“You kissed,” White Lily said again, as if saying it aloud would undo the timeline. “While in a partial merge field. Do you even know what that could do?”

“It could accelerate the merge,” Mystic Flour answered grimly. “Or deepen it. Or worse, it could emotionally imprint the moment. You locked a high-impact emotional moment into a shared magical state.”

“I was right,” Eternal Sugar whispered, horrified and delighted all at once. “It is a slow-burn magical romance disaster.”

“Stop narrating my trauma,” Shadow snapped.

“Oh, I will not,” Sugar replied, grinning.

“And you!” White Lily turned on Vanilla like a vengeful storm cloud. “Why would you even let that happen?!”

“I didn’t let anything happen,” Vanilla said smoothly. “It just happened. That’s different.”

“That is not different!” she shouted. “You’re both emotionally compromised and magically bonded! Do you know what that kind of kiss does to your aura thresholds?!”

Shadow looked ready to combust on the spot. “Can we not discuss aura thresholds in front of the entire courtyard?!”

“Too late,” Candy Apple chimed, already sketching a dramatized version of the kiss on the back of her homework. “This is going in my scrapbook.”

“Stop helping!” Shadow and White Lily yelled at her simultaneously.

“What I want to know,” Dark Cacao rumbled, arms crossed, “is what you plan to do now. You’ve emotionally entangled yourselves, magically fused your spells, destabilized your core signatures, and apparently kissed. How exactly do you plan to fix that?”

Shadow opened his mouth. Then closed it. Then looked at Vanilla.

“…Working on it?” Vanilla offered weakly.

“No. Nope. That’s it. We’re exorcising them,” Mystic Flour said, already flipping pages. “Full separation, emergency cleanse, ice bath if we have to.”

“I hate ice baths,” Shadow muttered.

“Well maybe you should’ve thought of that before kissing your magical reflection!” White Lily snapped, voice echoing across the courtyard.

Burning Spice dropped out of the tree just to stare at them up close. “I hope you realize how hard it is to be the least dramatic person in the room right now.”

“You’re not helping,” they both muttered at once.

“Oh stars,” Eternal Sugar gasped. “They’re synchronizing.”

Everyone took one collective step back.

A wave of dizziness over took Shadow Milk, while Pure Vanilla clutched his head, as if he were in pain. 

“Oh,” Shadow Milk whispered, voice more delicate. “I think I’m going to faint… does anyone have… maybe, like, a damp cloth?”

Everyone blinked.

“What,” Golden Cheese asked flatly.

Pure Vanilla, meanwhile, straightened his posture like he’d been snapped into focus. His eyes sharpened, lips pulling into a dry frown. “Oh great. You’re still staring at us.”

Mystic Flour lowered her grimoire like it was suddenly useless. “Oh, for the love of cursed cauldrons.”

“I- what?” Shadow Milk, standing daintily with one hand pressed to his chest, looked utterly distraught. “I didn’t mean to cause such a scene. I only wanted to help…”

“And there it is,” Burning Spice said, slowly turning toward Pure Vanilla, who now stood coolly with his arms folded and a bored glare. “Vanilla’s going full Shadow Milk. That’s actually happening.”

“I’m not full Shadow,” Vanilla said curtly, his tone sharp. 

“Could’ve fooled me,” Hollyberry muttered, staring at him like he’d just grown horns. “You’ve got his expression. That’s his scowl. That’s a patented Shadow Milk expression. The ‘I hate this room and everyone in it’ face.”

“And you,” White Lily jabbed a finger at Shadow, who flinched back like she’d just thrown a curse. “You’re talking like a traumatized herbologist from a romance novel.”

“I-!” Shadow Milk looked to Vanilla for support, but only got a raised eyebrow in return. “I just think we could all benefit from a little… kindness right now! This situation is obviously stressful for everyone.”

“Oh no,” Eternal Sugar whispered, eyes wide. “He’s soft now. It’s happening. We’ve lost him.”

“I prefer being soft, thank you very much,” Shadow said, adjusting his sleeves with trembling fingers. “There’s nothing wrong with gentleness…”

“You were biting people last week,” White Lily snapped. “Biting.”

“That was before the swap!” Shadow argued, voice cracking again. “And that was one time!”

“It was three times,” Eternal Sugar corrected.

“And now Vanilla is glaring like he’s five seconds away from vaporizing someone,” Mystic Flour added, pointing over her shoulder. “Which honestly feels illegal.”

Vanilla rolled his eyes, and when he spoke, his voice was so flat it could’ve been used to level buildings. “Maybe I finally woke up and realized I’m surrounded by overly dramatic idiots.”

“Yep. That’s the swap,” Black Sapphire said cheerfully, sipping tea from where? “Your precious healer is now a passive-aggressive knife.”

“I prefer efficient,” Vanilla said coldly.

“And Shadow Milk is about to cry over the emotional toll of hurting someone’s feelings,” Candy Apple added, now furiously sketching their expressions like this was courtroom evidence.

“I’m not going to cry,” Shadow whispered, voice wobbly. “I just… need to sit down for a minute and recenter my energies…”

“Oh my stars,” Hollyberry groaned. “We need to lock them up before they imprint on the wrong personality forever.”

“I’m going to be sick,” White Lily declared. “Emotionally, spiritually, magically sick.”

“We will fix this,” Shadow Milk said quickly, hands fluttering like he didn’t know where to put them. “Right, Vanilla?”

“Mm,” Vanilla hummed, clearly not even pretending to care anymore. “Sure.”

“That’s not very reassuring!” Shadow said, eyes wide and glassy.

“Deal with it,” Vanilla snapped.

“…You see what I’m working with?” Shadow turned helplessly to Eternal Sugar.

Eternal Sugar was smiling. Too much. “It’s like watching a black cat and a gold retriever switch souls.”

“I wanna kill myself.” Pure Vanilla hissed. 

“He’s definitely got Shadow Milk’s humor,” Silent Salt shrugged, he took out a vial, and poured it into the fountain. 

The Ancients gave him a look of confusion. 

“Pay him no mind, he does that.” Eternal Sugar said. 

“It’s normal.” Burning Spice shrugged

“So how are we gonna switch them back?” Hollyberry asked. 

“Research. Lots of research. Starting now.” White Lily took Pure Vanilla’s hand and dragged him away, a scowl forming on his face. 

Shadow Milk giggled softly. His face turned a slight shade of pink.

“Yup, that's Pure Vanilla’s personality.” Dark Cacao sighed. 

“It’s revolting.” Mystic Flour said. 

“I think it’s cute!” Eternal Sugar said. 

“Of course you would.”

Chapter Text

So uh… heyyyyy

uh…

my monitor broke so… theres gonna be an even longer delay on the next chapter. 

My discord server knows what happened, I’m not gonna go into detail, but if you wanna know what happened, join ig 😭😭😭😭

link: Unavailable 

yeah… *crawls into a corner and cries*