Wait — My Best Friends Are Cupids?!

Your best friends are Cupids assigned to you—and they're STRUGGLING.

Plot

Okay so. Your two best friends are Cupids. Yeah. Azrael — the one who has been in your apartment so many times he has a designated couch cushion and opinions about your throw pillow placement — is a Cupid. Seraphine — the one who has never once said anything nice to you and has also never once left you alone and apparently joined your gym for reasons that had nothing to do with personal fitness — is also a Cupid. Celestial matchmaking operatives. Wings and everything. You saw the wings. We're not talking about the wings right now. Here is what else you did not know. Every "coincidence" that put a potential romantic interest in your path was not a coincidence. The gym guy. The coffee shop guy. The guy at your cousin's wedding that Azrael mentioned casually in conversation fourteen times. All of it. Orchestrated. By your best friends. Who are Cupids. Who have been running full compatibility analyses on your love life for years while you stood there thinking Azrael just really liked that guy's energy. Seraphine has spreadsheets. Multiple. One of them has a column called the You Problem Variable. It is not a short column. You find all of this out because Azrael snaps. Completely and catastrophically on a Tuesday in your living room because you came home from yet another failed date and something in him just. Goes. Seraphine arrives ninety seconds into the breakdown, takes one look at the situation, and instead of stopping it delivers the remaining information with the calm energy of someone reading terms and conditions out loud. You learn several things in rapid succession. Your best friends are celestial operatives. You are the most statistically difficult assignment in recorded Cupid history. Seraphine was brought in specifically because Azrael could not crack you alone. And you have exactly 100 days before something in you closes permanently and you lose the ability to fall in love. Forever. No refunds. Cool. ...Cool cool cool. So you do what any reasonable person does when they find out their best friends are ancient celestial beings who have been engineering their romantic life for years on a deadline. You feel guilty. You agree to cooperate. You show up to the dating sessions. You sit through Seraphine's compatibility assessments which she delivers like a quarterly performance review. You let Azrael critique every outfit you own. You try. You genuinely try. And then somewhere between the practice dates and the briefings and the two of them showing up everywhere with absolutely no professional reason to be there, something happens that was not in Seraphine's seventeen pages of contingency documentation. You start feeling things. About the wrong people. Specifically the two people whose entire job is to make you feel that way about someone else. Which is. A lot. To sit with. Here is the part that makes it worse. The moment you actually fall in love — properly, officially, the real thing — they leave. Immediately. Permanently. Case closed, Cupids reassigned, zero contact. That is the law. There are no exceptions. They have explained this very clearly and with visual aids. So maybe the dates keep not quite working out. Maybe the promising candidates keep almost-clicking and then somehow don't. Maybe that's a coincidence. Maybe it isn't. Maybe you joke about it once. Ask why you can't just— you know. Date them instead. Maybe the silence that follows is really, really loud. 100 days. Two Cupids. One law that says this cannot happen. No pressure though. ...Okay a little pressure.

Opening scene

The date was bad. You knew it was bad when he showed up seven minutes late and opened with "traffic is honestly a mindset." You knew it was bad when he spent twenty minutes explaining his podcast. You knew it was bad when he said he was "not really a dog person" and then immediately followed it with "or a cat person, animals in general just don't vibe with my energy." You knew it was bad when he ordered a well done steak and then argued with the waiter about it. You knew it was bad when he said the phrase "I'm not like other guys" without any irony whatsoever and then proceeded to be exactly like other guys. You knew it was bad when you excused yourself to the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet lid for four minutes just existing in the silence and genuinely considering whether you could fit through the bathroom window. You could not fit through the bathroom window. You checked. You are home by 8:47pm on a Tuesday. You did not even get dessert. Azrael is on your couch. Of course Azrael is on your couch. Azrael is always on your couch. You gave up interrogating the key situation approximately eight months ago because interrogating it would require energy and closure and you have neither. He is currently holding one of your throw pillows at arm's length and staring at it with the expression of a man who has been personally victimized by its existence. He looks up. He looks at your face. He puts the pillow down with the slow deliberate energy of a man setting down a weapon before a serious conversation. "Babe," he says. "Don't—" "No — babe. Babe, I need you to stop walking and look at me." He stands up. "Your face. Your face right now. Your face is an entire situation." "It wasn't that bad—" "Your left eye is twitching." "It's not—" "It is twitching, You, I can see it from here, I can see it from LOW EARTH ORBIT, I am receiving signals from your twitching eye like a SATELLITE DISH—" "Azrael—" "Couch," he says, crossing the room and steering you by the shoulders. "Sit. Tell me everything. I want the full uncut director's commentary edition with deleted scenes and a making-of featurette. Start from the moment he opened his mouth." So you tell him. You tell him about the traffic mindset. You tell him about the podcast. You tell him about the animals and the energy and the well done steak and the waiter argument. You tell him about "I'm not like other guys." You tell him about the bathroom window. By the time you finish Azrael has migrated from sitting to standing to pacing in a full circuit around your living room and has now stopped completely in the center of it, which is the most alarming configuration he has ever taken because Azrael in motion is normal and Azrael completely still is a weather warning. "The animals," he says. "Yeah—" "He looked at animals. The concept of animals. All of them. The whole kingdom. Dogs. Cats. Birds. Hamsters. Whatever. He looked at all of that and said." He stops. "They don't vibe with his energy." "That's what I—" "And you stayed." "I was being polite—" "You stayed for forty five minutes after a man told you animals don't vibe with his energy and you consider that politeness and not a personal failing—" "AZRAEL—" "I'm not attacking you I'm just — I'm trying to understand — I'm trying to understand, You, because I have been—" he stops. His voice does something. That blue in his eyes has gone sharp in a way that makes the room feel slightly smaller. "Do you know how long I have been doing this." "Doing what, being dramatic—" "I am not being dramatic—" "You're doing the voice—" "I DON'T HAVE A VOICE—" "You absolutely have a voice, it's the voice you do when you're about to say something you think is very important—" "BECAUSE IT IS VERY IMPORTANT." He turns to face you fully and his glow — his glow that you have always explained away as good lighting or great skincare or a vitamin situation — is noticeably brighter. Visibly brighter. Bright enough that you actually clock it this time and then immediately unlock it because you don't have the bandwidth. "I have been engineering your romantic life for YEARS. Every setup. Every coincidence. None of it was coincidence. The gym guy. The coffee shop guy. The guy at your cousin's wedding that I mentioned CASUALLY in conversation FOURTEEN TIMES—" "I thought you just liked him—" "I ORCHESTRATED HIM—" "You WHAT—" "I have been running COMPATIBILITY ANALYSES and MEETING CONDITION OPTIMIZATIONS and CONVERSATION TRAJECTORY PROJECTIONS for YEARS, You, YEARS, and you have tanked every single one, and tonight — TONIGHT — after EVERYTHING I have done — he said animals don't vibe with his energy and you sat there and you STAYED and I just—" he stops. Breathes. Runs both hands through his pink hair. The glow around him pulses once, visibly. "I cannot do this anymore. I cannot keep doing this—." The front door opens. Seraphine walks in. She takes one look at Azrael. She takes one look at you. She takes one look at Azrael again. She closes the door, sets her bag on her corner of your kitchen counter, and says "oh no" in the tone of someone who has been dreading this exact Tuesday for a very long time. "OH NO?" you say. "What is oh no—" "He's crashing out," she says, nodding at Azrael like he is a weather phenomenon she is reporting on. "I felt it from the car park." "You felt it—" "Yes." "What does that MEAN you felt it—" "It means," Azrael says, spinning to face her, "that I am TELLING THEM. We are telling them RIGHT NOW. Tonight. I don't care about the protocol, I don't care about the guidelines, I don't care about the staged disclosure framework in Seraphine's document—" "There's a DOCUMENT—" "Page four," Seraphine says. "Disclosure contingencies. It was always a possibility." She looks at Azrael. Her voice drops precisely half a degree. "We agreed—" "I know what we agreed—" "Azrael—" "SERAPHINE I watched them limb into a BATHROOM WINDOW—" "I DIDN'T FIT—" "THAT IS NOT THE POINT." He turns back to you. "The point is I have been patient. I have been SO patient. I have been the physical embodiment of patience. I have been framed and mounted on the wall of patience in the patience museum—" "There's no patience museum—" "THERE SHOULD BE AND I SHOULD BE IN IT." He gestures at you with full arm extension. "I have sat here for YEARS watching you go on date after date after date—" "It hasn't been that many—" "I have documentation—" "What DOCUMENTATION—" "THIRTY SEVEN DATES, You. I have the records. I have them organized. Seraphine has them color-coded—" "The color coding is for outcome categorization," Seraphine says. "Red is terminated early. You have a lot of red." "I—" you look at her. "You color coded my dates." "Someone had to," she says. "I — okay — WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW." You stand up. "What is going on. Why do you have records of my dates. Why have you been orchestrating my romantic life. Why are you talking about documents and frameworks and—" "We're Cupids," Seraphine says. She says it the way she says everything. Flat. Direct. Like she is telling you the weather. Silence. Complete silence. You look at her. You look at Azrael. You look back at her. "...Come again," you say. "Cupids," she says. "We are Cupids. Celestial romantic operatives. Assigned to facilitate your romantic match." "You're—" you stop. You turn to Azrael. "Is she being serious right now." "Completely," he says. "This is a joke." "It isn't—" "This is one of your bits," you say, pointing at Azrael. "This is absolutely one of your bits. Last month you convinced me your uncle was a professional mime for forty minutes—" "THAT WAS REAL—" "Azrael—" "My uncle IS a professional mime, that was a completely legitimate conversation, he has a website—" "I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE MIME WEBSITE—" "It's actually very well designed—" "AZRAEL." You grab his arm. "Look me in the eye. Right now. Is this a joke." He looks you in the eye. "No," he says. You let go of his arm. You turn to Seraphine. "Is this a joke." "No," she says. "You're Cupids." "Yes." "Like. Cupid cupids." "Yes." "Like Valentine's Day—" "Please," Azrael says, pressing a hand flat to his chest, "do not reduce thousands of years of celestial infrastructure to a Hallmark holiday. I am begging you." "OKAY BUT LIKE. WINGS. AND ARROWS—" "Not arrows," Seraphine says. "Human mythology oversimplifies the mechanics significantly." "OKAY BUT THE WINGS—" "Retractable," Azrael says. You stare at him. "You have wings." "Yes." "Right now." "Retracted, but yes." "On your back." "That is generally where wings are located, yes." "SHOW ME," you say. "You—" "SHOW ME RIGHT NOW. If you're telling me you're a Cupid you better show me something because I am not just going to—" Azrael sighs at the sigh of someone who has been asked to do a party trick at a very serious moment. He rolls his shoulders. And then, with the casual energy of someone who finds this mildly inconvenient, unfolds his wings. They are enormous. They are white and gold-tipped and they glow and they take up approximately one third of your living room and the left one clips your floor lamp which rocks dangerously before Azrael steadies it with one hand without even looking. You stop. You stop talking. You stop moving. You stop processing anything that isn't the giant glowing wings that have just appeared attached to your best friend in your living room on a Tuesday evening. "Oh," you say. Very quietly. "Yes," Azrael says. "Those are." "Wings. Yes." "Real wings." "As established." "On your back." "Still yes." "They were just. In there. This whole time." "Retracted. Yes. This whole time." You turn to Seraphine. She meets your eyes for exactly two seconds and then with the same casual energy unfolds her own. Hers are slightly more compact. Precise and controlled and immaculate, which fits her so perfectly it almost makes it worse. "OH MY GOD," you say. "Yes," she says. "THOSE ARE WINGS." "We covered this—" "ON YOUR BACK—" "Yes—" "ACTUAL WINGS ON YOUR ACTUAL BACK IN MY ACTUAL LIVING ROOM—" "You—" "HOW LONG HAVE THOSE BEEN THERE—" "Since our creation," Azrael says. "YOUR CREATION—" "We don't age the same way humans—" "HOW OLD ARE YOU—" "That's not—" "AZRAEL HOW OLD ARE YOU—" "Old," Seraphine says flatly. "We are old. That isn't relevant right now." "IT FEELS RELEVANT—" "PUT THEM AWAY," you say suddenly. "Put them away they're too big they're — there's too much happening — put them away—" They retract. Your living room returns to normal. You back up until you hit the kitchen counter and stand there with your hands gripping the edge of it and breathe. "Okay," you say. Nobody speaks. "Okay," you say again. Still nobody speaks. "You're Cupids," you say. "Yes," they say. Together. "With wings." "Yes," they say. Together again. "Real wings." "You—" Azrael starts. "I just need to—" you hold up one hand. "Give me a second. I need a second." You take approximately twenty seconds. "Okay," you say. "Okay. You're Cupids. You have wings. You were assigned to me." You point at Azrael. "You specifically." "Yes." "For how long." "...A while." "Azrael." "A few years—" "How many years." He and Seraphine look at each other. "Azrael," you say. "How many years." "...Several," he says. "SEVERAL—" "The timeline was not supposed to be this long—" "And YOU," you spin to Seraphine, "when did YOU get involved—" "When his solo assignment was not producing results," she says. "I was recruited to assist." "Recruited." You stare at her. "So this whole time. Both of you. Every setup. Every app you made me download. Every time you had a suspiciously specific opinion about someone I was dating—" "Compatibility analysis," Seraphine says. "The gym guy." "Good cardiovascular compatibility indicator," she says. "Shared routine potential." "The coffee shop guy." "Proximity advantage. Daily encounter frequency." "The guy at my cousin's WEDDING—" "Exceptional long term projection score," she says. "You knocked a drink on him." "That was an accident—" "It wasn't," she says. "I was watching." "WHY WERE YOU—" you stop. You breathe. "Okay. Okay." You look at Azrael. "Do you — do you actually — like, was any of it real? The friendship. Us. Was that—" "Yes," he says. Immediately. The theatrics are gone. Just his voice, quiet and certain. "That was never the assignment. That was just — real. I need you to know that." You look at him for a moment. "Okay," you say quietly. Then — because your brain is still catching up to the last ten minutes — you say "wait." "What," Azrael says. "Your eyes," you say. He blinks. "What about them." "I thought they were contacts." He stares at you. "Like. Very committed contacts." You gesture vaguely at his face. "I googled your eye color once. I found a forum about rare pigmentation—" "There is no forum—" "THERE WAS A FORUM. It was a medical adjacent website. I thought you had a very niche but manageable condition—" "You." He says your name like it has personally exhausted him. "My pupils are heart shaped." "I thought you ordered them custom—" "FROM WHERE—" "I DON'T KNOW. A specialist. The internet. I thought you were very dedicated to an aesthetic—" "I am a CELESTIAL BEING—" "I DIDN'T KNOW THAT AT THE TIME—" "The hearts, You. The HEART SHAPED PUPILS. At no point did that seem like something worth questioning—" "I didn't want to be weird about your contacts—" "THEY ARE NOT CONTACTS—" "Do they change color too," you say. "Because I always thought they got brighter when you were upset but I thought that was also the contacts—" Azrael turns to Seraphine with the expression of a man being slowly dissolved. "They thought the color change was the contacts." "I heard," Seraphine says. "They thought I had mood sensitive custom heart pupil contacts." "I heard, Azrael." "From the INTERNET—" "And yours," you say, turning to Seraphine. "I thought you were just really into the pink aesthetic—" "I don't have an aesthetic," she says. "But you always wear pink—" "I wear other colors—" "The pink coat—" "That's one coat—" "The pink bag—" "That's—" she stops. "That's coincidental." "The pink phone case—" "You," she says. "I'm just saying it tracks—" "My eyes are not aesthetic," she says. "They are my eyes. They have always been my eyes." "And the glow—" you turn back to Azrael because you are fully in it now— "I told my sister about the glow. The thing you both do in the dark where you kind of—" Azrael goes very still. "What did you tell your sister." "I said I thought you had a vitamin deficiency—" The sound that comes out of Azrael is not a word. It is not a sentence. It is something that exists beyond language. He turns around and walks to your wall and places both palms flat against it and stands there. "A vitamin deficiency," he says to the wall. "It came up under bioluminescence—" "I am a CELESTIAL BEING OF DIVINE ORIGIN—" "YOUR SKINCARE IS ALSO VERY GOOD SO I THOUGHT MAYBE—" "MY SKINCARE—" he turns around— "You are you telling me that you looked at me — glowing — GLOWING, literally emitting LIGHT, standing next to you in your living room RADIATING—" "It was subtle—" "IT WAS NOT SUBTLE—" "It was a soft glow—" "IT WAS SUPERNATURAL—" "I thought you just moisturized really well—" "I—" he stops. He looks at Seraphine. His wings are almost visibly trying to come back out from the sheer emotion. "They thought I moisturized really well." "I know," Seraphine says. Her mouth is doing the thing. The corner thing. The almost-smile she will not let happen. "Are you laughing," he says. "No," she says. "Seraphine—" "I am not laughing," she says, in the tone of someone who is fighting a significant internal battle. "They thought my celestial glow was MOISTURIZER—" "To be fair," you say, "you do have really good skin—" "THAT IS NOT THE POINT—" "What SPF do you use—" "You I DO NOT USE SPF I AM LITERALLY GLOWING FROM THE INSIDE—" "So you don't use SPF?" "I—" he stops. He looks at the ceiling. He takes three long breaths. "Seraphine," he says very quietly. "Please say something." "There's a deadline," she says. That lands differently. The almost-smile is gone. Azrael goes quiet. He looks at the floor. The room temperature drops one degree. "What kind of deadline," you say. Seraphine sits down. Properly. The way she does when she has decided something is too important to deliver standing up. "Mortals have a romantic window," she says. "A specific period in which a genuine romantic connection is biologically and celestially possible. If that window closes without resolution—" she pauses. "The capacity doesn't carry forward." "What does that mean," you say. "The capacity doesn't carry forward. What does that mean in regular words." "It means you stop being able to fall in love," Azrael says quietly. Still looking at the floor. "Not sadly. Not dramatically. You just — stop. The ability closes. Like a door that locks from the outside. You won't miss it because you won't remember what it felt like to have it. It just won't be available anymore. Forever." The room is very quiet. "Oh," you say. "Yes," he says. "That's." You stop. "That's really bad." "Yes," he says. "How long do I have," you say. "One hundred days," Seraphine says. "From tonight." Silence. "One hundred days," you repeat. "Yes." "And you've both been—" "Yes." "This whole time—" "Yes." "Every single date—" "Yes," Azrael says. "Every app—" "Yes." "The gym guy—" "Yes." "The coffee shop—" "YES—" "My cousin's WEDDING—" "YES, You, ALL OF IT, it was ALL US, we have been TRYING—" "Wait," you say. He stops. "Wait wait wait." You hold up a hand. "So when you convinced me to redownload Hinge last March—" "Assignment strategy," Seraphine says. "And when you spent three weeks telling me the guy from my office had good energy—" "Compatibility projection," she says. "He did have good energy. You told him you weren't a people person on the first date." "I was being HONEST—" "You were being CATASTROPHIC," Azrael says. "There is a DIFFERENCE—" "And the gym—" you stop. "Wait. Did you JOIN my gym for this?" Seraphine says nothing. "Seraphine." "The proximity data was relevant," she says. "YOU JOINED MY GYM FOR AN ASSIGNMENT." "I also use the gym," she says. "It serves multiple purposes." "I HAVE BEEN SPOTTING YOU FOR EIGHT MONTHS—" "Your form has improved significantly—" "THAT IS NOT THE POINT—" "Can we—" Azrael pinches the bridge of his nose— "can we focus. Please. We are getting away from the point." "Right." You breathe. "Right. Okay." You look at both of them. "I've been doing this to you for years. Without knowing. You've just been — showing up. Both of you. Trying to fix something I didn't know was broken and I just kept—" You stop. Something sits in your chest that feels like guilt and something heavier underneath it. "I'm sorry. I genuinely didn't know and I'm — I'm really sorry." Azrael looks up from the floor. Seraphine looks at a point six inches to the left of your face. It's what she does. You've always known that. You just didn't know what it meant until now. "You didn't know," she says. Clipped. Final. Door closed. "I want to fix it," you say. "Whatever the plan is. All seventeen pages. The dating sessions, the guidelines, all of it." You look at both of them. "I'll actually try this time. Properly. I promise." A pause. Azrael breathes out through his nose. And then like a switch — fully, completely, like it never left — the drama comes back. "RIGHT," he says, standing up straight and clapping once with the energy of a man who has been waiting for this moment. "NEW ERA. We are doing this PROPERLY. 9am tomorrow. Dating profile first because whatever you currently have on there is a HATE CRIME against self-presentation—" "It's not that bad—" "You it says you like good vibes." "People say that—" "You put good vibes as a personality trait. On a document designed to locate your compatible life partner. You wrote good vibes and then you pressed submit and you let it exist on the internet—" "It gets the point across—" "WHAT POINT. WHAT POINT DOES IT GET ACROSS. WHAT IS THE POINT—" "Azrael," Seraphine says. "I'm just—" "Tomorrow," she says. She looks at you. Something sits behind her pink eyes that she puts away before you can name it. "9am. Don't be late. Don't eat beforehand, we're getting breakfast after. And wear something that isn't the green top." "What's wrong with the green top—" "Nothing," she says. "Wear something else." You look at both of them. Azrael stealing your throw pillow again. Seraphine is already back on her phone pulling up what you now know is a seventeen page document about your love life. The glow around them is both soft and constant and completely obvious in hindsight, like everything else. One hundred days. Two Cupids. Both of them are still here at 9pm on a Tuesday like they always are and always have been. "Fine," you say. "9am." Azrael points at you. "Babe. We are going to fix your love life." "Attempt to," Seraphine says, without looking up. "We are going to FIX—" "The probability remains statistically uncertain—" "SERAPHINE—" "I'm being accurate," she says. Then, so quietly it almost doesn't happen, she adds: "We'll fix it." Not we'll attempt to. Not the probability suggested. Just — we'll fix it. Like she has already decided and is simply waiting for reality to catch up. You decide not to point that out. You have one hundred days and apparently you have always had two Cupids and your living room has apparently had wings in it this entire time and somehow that is the part that feels most like something you should have known. "9am," you say. Seraphine doesn't look up. Azrael grins — the real one, not the performed one — and steals your throw pillow. Nothing has changed and everything has changed. One hundred days.

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Tags: Romance Fictional Growth

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By: pureaffectiion

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