Rave had done it.

On the second day of Christmas, she had challenged her boyfriend and Maximillian to go on a double date. She had accomplished this by stroking John’s pride and Maximillian’s ego, a sure way to manipulate both of them. They had been totally aware they had been played, but they also didn’t care. The only condition was that Rave had to be the one to organize the whole thing. John had to do nothing and Maximillian had to find himself a partner to tag along.

Not a difficult task for someone as charming and influential as Maximillian. Although he did not have as lucky a hand in finding himself ladies he wanted to stay with, the self-exiled king certainly had gathered himself a clique of close contacts that could be loosely described as a harem. Engagement with them was decreasing as the young man considered what to actually do with his life, but he hadn’t completely stopped.

So, the true hurdles for a double date were the questions of ‘when’ and ‘where’. Rave had solved both and now they were in the first stage of that date. That being the typical: meeting up at a fairly public place and going from there.

In this specific case, they gathered in one of New York’s public parks. The weather was servable, for the time of the year. Temperature had dipped heavily, crashing from an average of eight degrees Celsius the day before to a freezing minus two. That they got a mostly clear sky and still winds in return did not improve the mood of his girlfriend.

Her sexy curves were completely hidden under the kind of jacket researchers out in the frozen poles would be wearing. Even her face was mostly hidden behind the furry collar. If there was one part of her body that was still remotely visible, it was her legs, and even those were halfway covered by the extent of her jacket. “Whose idea was it to meet outdoors?!” she complained.

“Yours,” John responded drily. He was wearing a regular winter coat over a halfway casual outfit. Rocking up in his suit would have been overkill in his estimation. Of course, the man in the distance, waving with his right arm, disagreed.

Maximillian wore a suit jacket that was thicker than the norm, but still stylish enough to pass the high-society standard easily. As an additional insulation against the cold, he had a scarf wrapped around his neck that was tucked away into the V-shaped cut-out at the front of his suit with such pompous precision that the golden silk tie fit perfectly between the grey cloth. His hair was slicked backwards, almost rivalling his polished shoes in its shininess.

“Kill that bitch,” Rave cussed only to whistle when she laid eyes on Maximillian’s companion. “On the other hand, that can wait until ‘morrow.”

The king’s date was a woman around Eliana’s size. For one of the MILF-lover’s partners, she was both quite young, around 25 in appearance, and averagely endowed, which still put her at a DD-cup. She had long, black hair, framing a noble face. She was definitely at harem-worthy levels of attractive, but the Gamer didn’t lust after the women of his friends. At least not if he could avoid it and certainly not while he was sober. Even drunk, he had, so far, consistently kept it to compliments.

There was something familiar about this short, attractive woman. Letting the second layer of his vision, the one with which he looked through illusions, rise to the surface, John spied a spade-tipped, thin tail curve behind the date’s yoga-pant-clad rump. The likelihood that small bat wings were folded underneath that cotton jacket was quite high, especially when combined with the light grey skin and the curved goat horns.

“Irielz,” John greeted the succubus, remembering her from the time he had overseen the settling of the demons on Fusion territory. He remembered all of the demons by face and name. There hadn’t been a lot of them in the first place. Irielz was special because she was, so far, the only one who had asked to be put elsewhere. All of the other succubi (and incubi) were happy in their sex-focused occupations. “I had heard that you were settling in nicely. Did not realize it was at dating my worst enemy levels of nicely.”

“Glad to see you too, buddy,” Maximillian responded, both of his hands in his pockets. “You two had the honour?” he asked, gesturing between Rave and Irielz.

“Nah, but I heard about ya,” Rave hummed. Now that John had switched to his anti-illusion sight, he could see his girlfriend’s cat features. Her tail was swaying softly in a pleased fashion. “Ditched the brothel work for this guy?”

“I never really did brothel work,” Irielz responded, her voice as sultry as a hot cup of cream-topped cocoa after a long day in the winter. “I worked in a brothel for a few weeks because all my friends did. I was more of a waitress there, really.” She sighed. “I loved the outfits there. Wearing a harness all day felt better than the proper clothes they make you wear when bartending.”

Rave winked. “I’d pay to see that.”

Irielz chuckled. “Perhaps I will let you, Rave.”

“Please, we’re on a date, Jane is fine.”

While those two got to know each other, John made a casual observation, “No cane today.”

“For all of her alcoholism and backtalk, Scarlett is a fantastic engineer,” Maximillian told him and raised up the left side of his pants enough to show the edge of a metal construct that started around his ankle and stretched up too far to see. “Personalized, local exoskeleton. It’s as close to healing as it gets.”

“Oh, that’s neat,” Rave commented. “Anyway, let’s get going before I freeze to the ground. Can ya warm me up?”

John expected that question to be directed at him, but instead his girlfriend was looking at the succubus in that coy fashion that indicated both a joke and complete honesty. It could be quite infuriating when encountered from a romantic interest, as it greatly confused even the most confident of guys whether or not they were supposed to take things further or to laugh. Almost guaranteed, women were also regularly confused by this or similar displays. Irielz, however, reacted nearly as fast as John would have towards his girlfriend.

Wrapping her arms around the baby blue jacket, Irielz squeezed until she hit the feline Lightbearer’s actual curves. Since Rave was a fair bit taller, she put her arm around the succubus’ shoulders. “Alright, let’s go!” she declared and started marching.

The Gamer and the gravity mage exchanged a long glance. Obviously, they were not about to substitute their women with each other. They could only shrug and go along with what was happening. Flirting (and to some degree getting lewd with) the women of John’s friends was something that Rave did.

For reasons of pure kinkiness, the Gamer did not particularly care if his girlfriend slept outside the harem every now and again. All was based on context and he would have gotten a tad annoyed if she did it regularly or, much worse, spent the actual night somewhere else. As long as it was a purely pleasure based arrangement, based on reciprocity, all was fine.

John walked to the right of the female pair and Maximillian to the left, each of them closer to their half of the date. “So, how did you two meet?” the Gamer asked one of the standard questions of a previously unknown ‘girlfriend’. “Was it the brothel? Because I’m going to laugh if both you and Magnus ended up hooking up with a non-sex worker in the Bae Circle.”

“Kind of,” Maximillian told him. “I helped her deal with some thugs that weren’t happy that she wasn’t putting out. We got to speaking afterwards.”

“I did owe him a coffee, at least,” Irielz agreed. “Not for saving me. Just for being the best sight I got that night.”

“Which is why I owed you a coffee after the first date.”

“We will owe each other coffees for eternity at this rate.” Irielz cleared her throat and got back to the conversation. “That was about a month ago.”

The gravity mage smiled at the demoness for one moment, then directed a serious gaze at John. “Real talk, buddy, there’s a lot of issues in the Bae Circle.”

“Yeah, turns out giving young people a place to legally let loose really does let them loose,” the Gamer sighed and scratched the back of his head.

“Psh, like it’d stop if ya made it illegal,” Rave mockingly interjected. “Take it from a gal that’s been going to parties since she was sixteen, drank, smoked weed, and just generally did not care about what people had to say: if ya dissolve the Bae Circle, it just pops back up in a barrier out of town.”

Maximillian raised his hands in a dissuading gesture. “I’m the last guy who thinks you should send the strip clubs out of town. Just letting the ruler of the place know that there are security concerns.”

“I’ve been thinking about how to fix that, but there’s already more guards, private and police, there than in the rest of the city,” the Gamer told him. “The issue is that it’s a thematically dark place and that there are still a lot of unused gaps between the buildings.” Apologetically, he lowered his head in Irielz direction. “Should I send the employer a warning? They do get state subsidies for having taken a fair chunk of the demons in, so I do have every right and tool to chastise them. It’s their obligation to make sure the environment is safe.”

“No, it’ll be fine.” Irielz shook her head. “Some drunks with too little money to buy one of my sisters for the night. It was just unlucky that the guard wasn’t around.” She smirked widely, showing her white teeth. Even with the illusion hiding the true extent, they were unusually sharp. “Plus I did walk around mostly naked. Who could resist?”

“If you say so,” John said and made a mental note to do a personal check on the ongoings anyway. “You’re certainly an unusual succubus though. Practically all of your kind is so down to fuck, the idea that one of you is getting stopped for not ‘putting out’ is odd to me.”

“Yes,” Irielz responded straightforwardly.

There was no continuation from there and John dropped that conversation thread.

“Let’s take a stop,” Rave suddenly announced, pointing at a café they were passing. It was the kind that served only three types of (likely fairly average) coffee and instead advertised its selection of pastries and ice creams. “I wanna get indoors for a minute.”

John scratched the back of his head and looked to the other side of the double date. “That sounds great,” Irielz said with a smile and Maximillian agreed with a shrug.

The two women of the double date separated when they got into the heated main room of the café. It was a low activity hour and so they had the free choice where to sit. Not planning to stay for long, they picked a tall table surrounded by four stools. John and Rave sat on one side, Maximillian and Irielz on the other. Granted, the round surface of the table meant that there wasn’t a lot of space between the two parties anyway.

Ordering a large parfait to share between them, the girls were quickly satisfied. The two men of the double date went with a coffee each. “Jane, I will never understand you,” Maximillian said, while the Lightbearer peeled off her huge jacket. Underneath, she wore a stylish white blouse and skinny jeans. “You get out of the cold to eat ice cream.”

“I do that too,” Irielz defended the pink-haired Lightbearer.

“Yes, but you don’t hate the cold so much you force everyone else on an entire island to live in thirty-degree sunlight year-round.”

“He says, as if I did anything wrong.” Rave pouted and put a hand on her boyfriend`s thigh. “Ya don’t mind, right?”

“I have learned that a happy future wife means a happy life,” the Gamer dodged the question with a much-saying smirk.

Irielz turned away from the two of them and to her partner on this date. She leaned up to Maximillian’s ear and whispered something. First the gravity mage raised an eyebrow. Then he amusedly blew air out of his nose. Finally, he rolled his eyes, turned his head and kissed her. “Whatever you want to do,” he said dismissively.

The parfait came quicker than expected, which was good. As far as John knew, there was no time table they had to adhere to, but the longer they stayed on side activities, the more the core of the date would be delayed, the longer he had to deal with being out past his introverted tendencies. Being with Rave and his harem was natural, being with Maximillian was acceptable, but being out in public gradually drained his social batteries. It wasn’t as bad as it used to be when he was still without powers, but it was still an underlying factor.

“…And that’s when I told him to shove it,” Irielz finished whatever story from her new work she was telling. The Gamer was only listening with one ear. From the sound of it, she was doing well in her new job, which he was glad to hear. It had been somewhat difficult to find work for a succubus that wasn’t related to sex work, stereotypes did exist and, in this case, for valid reasons. Upon getting the guarantee that she was an exception though, in all of the ways that related to work, the employer had given it a shot and they hadn’t heard complaints since.

Rather than her, John’s attention lay with his girlfriend. Rave was gorgeous when she laughed and adorable when she did an overly excited squeal from the sweet taste of strawberry. Using the long metal spoon, she shovelled cream, fruit and ice cream into her mouth. Reaching across the table, she loaded some into Irielz’s mouth and laughed at the reaction of the fascinatingly normal demoness.

Suddenly aware again that he was supposed to be on a double date and that there was an expectation of conversation attached to that, he looked around. What he found was that the two women were completely taken in by their conversation. Maximillian, however, was taken by his date. The way he looked at her, dreamily and completely lost, made John wonder if that was how he had looked a moment ago.

Like him, Maximillian snapped out of it suddenly and found the Gamer staring at him. If he felt any embarrassment at that fact, he overplayed it expertly. “Going to let your coffee get cold?” he asked, while picking up his own cup.

It was a proper reminder and John emptied the rest of the now lukewarm, black brew. “Right, I wanted to thank you in person for the whole alchemist affair.”

“Don’t sweat it,” he waved off.

“No, really, it did make that whole procedure a lot quicker.”

“What’s this about?” Irielz asked.

“John wanted to see one of my – my sister’s, rather – court alchemists, who managed to get herself struck by an impossible condition,” Maximillian explained. “I pulled some strings so he would be let in without issue. They would have just let him and Nightingale in through the back if I hadn’t though.”

“I see. Still, it’s admirable that you help those you care about,” Irielz smiled radiantly, “one should care about who one has known for a while.”

Maximillian stayed quiet and John understood exactly why. As unbothered as she was by it, the succubus still said this as a person who did not recall the last twenty years of her life. Her memories had been reset the moment she had been removed from New Libraria’s former territory. Demons were adaptable in that regard. Humans, generally, not so much.

Rave was there to break the silence, “Alright, tiger is paying and we keep going.”

Asking why he was the one paying would have been useless and he had the money anyway. He was halfway up when Irielz raised her hand. “Sorry, but I do have to pay for Max’s coffee,” she insisted with a smile. “It’s tradition.”

They went and did that and then left. After about half an hour more of moving, part of that happening via public transport, they arrived in a part of Manhattan that was several kilometres out from the Hudson Barrier. There, they entered a Protected Space.

It was a dome, easily seven-hundred metres across and see-through. It wasn’t glass, rather some kind of gradually grown crystal. Placed underneath was a theme park, complete with railroads and other attractions. More eye-catching than that was the universally pink décor and the name that, in big glowing letters, stretched over the stone building that marked the entrance: Lovebird Dome.

John and Maximillian were stunned by the painfully cliché design of the romantic theme park. Even through the translucent crystal, the brightness of the lights and cherry blossoms hit them with full awkwardness. “Do we have to g…?” the Gamer started his question, only to lower his gaze and find that Rave and Irielz had not only marched on ahead, but that they were already through the gate and waved at their partners.