Human Vices

The first thing Asbel became aware of was that his head was resting against something hard. As his senses gradually returned to him, the second thing he realized was that he was completely naked. Now very much awake, he sat up abruptly despite the sharp pain of protest that came from his neck.

"Asbel!" Sophie called out, sounding oddly annoyed as she knocked on the door. "Are you in there?"

"Y-yeah!" Asbel stammered, standing up and reaching for a towel. "I'll be right out."

"Your mom is upset, you've been in there all morning," she said warningly.

"I'll only be another minute," he said, vaguely aware that he sounded like a young girl tending to her hair in a hurry.

Asbel glanced around the bathroom in confusion as he climbed out of the bath tub. He didn't remember waking up early and he certainly didn't remember deciding to take a bath. The Lord of Lhant never took baths – unless it as an accidental one that involved him slipping and falling into a body of water. Regardless, he was busy with his duties to the town and always showered to save time.

"Lambda?" Asbel inquired quietly.

Unsurprisingly, no response came. Lambda had taken to napping during the way when Asbel was at his "most mind-numbingly boring," as the entity put it. He got dressed quickly, but when he reached for his coat, he knocked a candle off of the edge of the sink. His eyebrows furrowed as he stared at it for a long moment.

What in the world?

When he looked around, he saw several more candles burned down to pool of wax in the holder. Even more confused than before, he gathered them all up and hid them within the towel. He could leave them for the maid in an inconspicuous place where no one would be suspicious.

Then again, he wasn't even entirely sure what he was hiding.

Sophie regarded him strangely when he finally exited the bathroom, her gaze immediately falling to the lump towel in his hands. He simply smiled at her before dashing down the stairs to dump the evidence for the maids. With any luck, they would just think that he got exceptionally bored and gathered up the candle holders that needed replacing.

The rest of his day went deceptively normally. He carried his routine out with few problems; the normality should have calmed him down, but in a way, it only made him more confused. It was later in the afternoon, a time of day when Lambda most certainly should have been awake, when he inquired after his headmate again.

"Lambda, did you do something last night?" he asked quietly, unable to shake the habit of addressing him aloud.

Asbel drummed his fingers against the desk when silence greeted him. He spun his quill between his fingers for a few moments before he stood up to look out the window. As he waited impatiently to hear from Lambda, he decided to take a less accusatory approach.

"It's alright if you did, I'd just like to know," he said, waiting several seconds for a response. "It's fine if you wanted to do something with my body, it'd just be nice to know."

"…Asbel?" Lady Kerri asked, concern clear in every word. "Are you talking to someone?"

Asbel whirled around in surprise to see her standing in the doorway with a cup of tea. He had no idea how she entered so silently, but he was absolutely certain that he didn't hear the door move. Or at least, he was absolutely certain that he wasn't paying enough attention to hear the door move.

"Mother!" he exclaimed, trying not to think of how miserably awkward his words must have sounded. "I just…was talking…to myself."

"You might want to rest if you're overdoing it," she said, frowning as she set the tea down on his desk.

"Thanks," he said lamely.

He plopped down in his chair and rubbed his forehead tiredly. His neck still ached a bit from sleeping with his head lolled against the edge of the bathtub for an unknown amount of time. He was starting to suspect that he slept there through the entire night, though he still had no recollection of the event and no inclination as to where the idea came from.

The day marched on, with all the routine dullness of lordly duties. Asbel could remember having dinner with his mother and Sophie with a pleasant minimum of uncomfortable conversations. The last thing he remembered was walking into his office, alone once again.

However, he blinked in confusion when he suddenly found himself standing in front of the general store. He had absolutely no recollection of leaving his office, never mind the manor and strolling halfway across the town to go shopping. He couldn't even remember needing to buy anything. He was turned away from it, facing the road that led back to Lhant Manor. He had a brown paper bag in hand and glanced over his shoulder at the shopkeeper.

"Is something wrong, Mr. Lhant?" the man asked, looking a bit concerned.

"Ah, no," Asbel said, forcing a smile. "Thank you."

He hurried down the path back to the manor quickly, dropping the smile he used to hide his bewilderment as soon as he turned back around. As confused as he was, the last thing he needed was to make the townspeople doubt his capability to function from day to day.

He opened the bag once he was out of the shopkeeper's line of vision and reached inside with a frown. A glass bottle rested inside, filled with a bright pink liquid. He squinted as he looked at the label and couldn't help but read it aloud.

"…Bubble bath?"

As soon as he uttered the words, Asbel felt himself being pushed from his own subconscious.

Asbel had no idea how much time elapsed between his departure from the general store to when he started to regain consciousness. He guessed that it had to be some hours, since it was already dark outside the window.

Generally, when Lambda was in control, Asbel did not struggle to regain control. Lambda had become relatively tolerable, save an obsession with apple pie and a firm determination to never let Asbel remain in control when apple pie was served. Since Asbel still had control over his body for the majority of the time, so he tried to let Lambda be on the few occasions that he seized control.

This was not one of those occasions.

Asbel's body went from completely relaxed, this time with a strange waterproof cushion behind his head, to sitting up abruptly in confusion at finding himself in an unfamiliar place. He was in the bath again, but it evidently wasn't late into the night. The water was still warm and filled with mounds of bright pink bubbles. Elsewhere in the room, there were candles set up to provide some calming, low illumination.

"What in the world?" Asbel demanded, looking around the bathroom.

"I need this,"Lambda said, voice perfectly serious as it resounded in Asbel's mind.

"Since when do you take…bubble baths?" he asked, lifting a handful of the strawberry center bubbles.

"Do not question me, human," Lambda said, though even his scariest tone had little effect when the tub was full of pink bubbles. "I have simply found myself enjoying one of your species' human vices."

Asbel stared at the mounds of bubbles for a few moments. It wasn't destructive behavior, per say. It just wasn't what he expected, though he guessed that it was going to be an expensive habit, given the completely empty bottle of bubble bath that sat on the floor.

"Alright, but…you can't just leave me in here," Asbel said. "The water was freezing by morning. And all the bubbles were gone."

"I don't like cleaning up," he said irritably.

"You're going to have to," Asbel retorted. "Sophie needs to wash her hair in the morning."

"Audacious, demanding human. Give me control back."

Asbel slumped against the back of the tub. He shook his head slightly, glad to at least have an answer for the reason behind his blackouts. Lambda wasted no time in returning to the forefront of his mind.

"Human vices," Asbel remarked as he started to slip away from consciousness.

"Shut up, human."

So this was for another of the pairing + quote ask memes on Tumblr. A brilliant soul asked for Asbel and Lambda with the quote "I need this."

...And the rest spiraled out of control from there. 8D

This was the best request ever. I clapped like a seal when this one came in.

Hopefully "headmate" didn't sound too awkward, I couldn't exactly call him a roommate.

Thank you for requesting! 8D I hope this met your expectations of derp and complete Asbel humiliation.