Work Text:
In obedience to the Emperor, you smoked weed.
Well, not obedience, per se - it was not a direct order. Several days after the Saint of Duty was found in the incinerator, the Prince Undying lightly suggested you chill the fuck out.
The Emperor, Ianthe, and you were seated at the dining table, eating a somewhat midday meal.
"You know, I am deeply sorry about what you both had to witness the other evening. Not, um, the Saint of Duty, Harrow," he said in response to your confused look. "Before that." He let this sink in. Ianthe let out an involuntary giggle. You went from confused to mortified. "Not that it's not -- well, perhaps not perfectly natural." He paused to press his lips together and look away, as if trying to decide how to continue. "Listen, girls, it's a long myriad. And I'm just saying, you have to find a way to relax." He looked at you, and you felt like a small animal under a floodlight. "You especially, Harrow."
Ianthe blinked twice. "Lord, I have been telling her--"
"It doesn't even have to be sex," he interrupted, possibly a little panicked by the way blood had stopped flowing to your face. "I have other -- um, methods."
"Oh, I am dying to know what that means," Ianthe said.
God led you and Ianthe into one of the greenhouses, behind the kitchen. You had never been back here, disgusted as you were by most fresh things. But he stopped near an appliance that resembled a toaster oven, and removed a tray of small green plants from it.
"This is cannabis. It's an ancient medicine from the time before the resurrection - I grow my own, it's the only plant of its kind left in the system, to my knowledge."
Baffled, you both watched as he removed a few of the plants and placed them in a toothed metal container. He twisted it back and forth as he talked.
"It's a mild relaxant, it will calm your brain down a bit. I like to smoke some and have a bath."
Dimly, you wondered if this would be a terrible idea, given your infirm relationship with your reality when sober. But you supposed it would be easy enough to remove the toxins from your body as you had with the wine, if necessary.
God was packing the ground up plants into a glass object, oblong and apparently hollow. He held it up to his mouth.
"So you're going to light it here," he held the flame against the packed plant, "and inhale the smoke." This last part was somewhat muffled as he held the object in his mouth. He removed it and appeared to be holding his breath, eyes closed. Then he exhaled, smoke emerging from his mouth and nostrils, eyes still shut.
You took this opportunity to look at your lyctoral sister, who looked completely thrilled. When you looked back at God, he was proffering the object and lighter. Ianthe took it first, and excitedly ran through the motions he'd just demonstrated. She coughed when she exhaled, looking somewhat pained and as embarrassed as she was capable of.
"Oh, that's alright; everyone coughs the first time. It's a new sensation," God assured her.
Without knowing quite why, except that saying no to the Lord Emperor still felt massively difficult, you raised the same contraption to your lips. You fuddled feebly with the lighter, unsure of the mechanism, and then God gently took it from you and lit the grounds. You inhaled, shocked at the sensation, and lifted your finger from the hole on the side as he had.
You had no idea what to expect. At first, there was nothing but the smoke entering your lungs, a strange sensation to be sure. Unlike Ianthe, you were smart enough to adjust your thorax and alveoli to receive the smoke and then expel it. You breathed out slowly, not wanting to jar your sinuses. God looked on approvingly. There was a twinge of something downshifting in your brain, but it didn't seem to last.
"Okay, well, I don't want to put a damper on your party, so to speak," The Lord your God said. "You can take this - and this," he handed you the metal canister, "and go have fun. No resurrection beasts due tonight, haha!" He waved as Ianthe led you away.
All the way back to her quarters, she chattered about something - the Third House had a drug culture, but nothing like this, and she had heard of something similar from the fourth and fifth, but to receive it from the actual emperor! - and so on. You followed her into the rooms, because what else were you going to do?
She sat on the bed and you stood in front of her, and she lit it again. She inhaled, and then passed it to you, embers still smoking. You inhaled again, and this time felt that shift again, going even deeper and lasting beyond a second. Definitely, there was something beginning to affect you.
Ianthe's murky eyes took on a hooded, languid quality. She was moving even slower than her usual serpentine manner, and then suddenly she was in your space. Close as she had been the other evening, when you had both been intoxicated, a disturbing pattern you noted in the back of your foggy brain.
Her hands ghosted over your painted skin. "Doesn't this get uncomfortable, dear Harry?" she murmured distractedly.
Abruptly, you realized how stiff and straight you held your body. Was it always like this?
You relaxed, and almost fell over, having loosed your knee joints overly. Your muscles suddenly felt like so much pudding.
Ianthe had bridged the gap between you and was doing some strange nuzzling motion to your neck. It was -- nice -- tickling, strange, and a little silly, but also nice. For a moment you entertained the idea, of letting her touch you, of touching her back. It was difficult to imagine what it might be like. The barest idea you had came from half glimpsed dirty pictures.
In the end, it was not even necessary to rebuke her. Apparently you had been still and unresponsive longer than you realized, off in the world of your thoughts. She pulled away and leaned back on her hands.
"You really do make a girl start to wonder if she's doing something wrong," she pouted.
You furrowed your brow, and wiped a smudge of paint from her hairline. She parted her mouth wetly as you did, and when you were done, she said, in that low voice, "Tease."
You didn't know what to make of this. You never did. Somehow, though, the chemical that had entered your bloodstream was creating a sort of barrier against your thoughts, and all stressors that might've been cataclysmic before were simply bouncing off and away. You turned and left. You didn't see a need for goodbye.
When you arrived back in your room, you felt the urge to lay down. You considered the bed, but ended up spread on the floor, arms and legs akimbo. The cool polycarbonite beneath you felt excellent on your loose muscles. You stared up at the ceiling lights and, for once in your life, thought about absolutely nothing. Not even a recursive thought of, 'this is so peaceful,' entered your mind. You blinked your eyes, and breathed, and lived.
After an amount of time that could've been five minutes or five years, doing nothing got a little boring. You sat up and grew a bone stud into a wad of osseo. You stretched and pulled it, playing with it. You formed a ring, then collapsed it, then a flat panel. A cube, a miniature tibia, a tiny copy of the longsword by your side. You felt as though you were a child again, although you had never been able to manipulate the bone on such a granular level as a child. Weensy constructs, you giggled to yourself, unsure of where the thought had come from.
Abruptly, the Body came into your field of vision. She crouched before you, looking more on the side of kind and alluring than dead and rotting. She definitely still looked dead, but that's what you're into, you little freak. She reached for you as Ianthe had, but this time, you reached back without hesitation.
Perhaps it was the altered state of cognition, but her touch felt real. Her hand on your cheek was cold and comforting, and she parted your legs to kneel between them. She leaned forward. I took this opportunity to politely check the fuck out and sink back down to the bottom of your consciousness, to give you some privacy and so I could contemplate smoking weed myself if I ever had access to a body again.