hii im posting this old fic for asmo, it was for his bday but i put it off cause i wanted to keep editing it and before you know it its been over year of it just sitting untouched 〒▽〒
so i decided to just post it without a reading over it again
its pretty light hearted and silly, its an AU where Asmo is literally a queen and reader is one of those passing merchants (probably)
reader is gn here and yep thats it!
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Queen Asmodeus's Birthday
This was the first time you'd actually be present during Asmodeus's birthday. You heard about previous ones in passing during your travels, but now you'd get to experience all the hoopla in person.
You observe yourself in the mirror and smooth the front of your outfit down. It wasn't something you would usually wear on a day to day basis, but today….what the Queen says goes. Like any other day really, but now wasn’t the time to be contrarian. If any day needed to go smoothly, today was that day. So after one more look, you exit your room.
Making your way down the hallway you dodge several servants handling last minute preparations. You head downstairs and weave your way through mingling guests.
When you enter the grand banquet hall--not to be mistaken with the regular one--you whistle to yourself. It always looked nice but today it was at exorbitant levels of presentation. The long tables, the walls and even the ceiling seemed to be covered in the Queen's favorite shades and flowers. Everything was so flowery and pink.
Your eyes fall on the “Esteemed Guests” table and you make your way towards it.
"Hey guys." You greet the group of brothers. You nod at a few faces you weren’t quite familiar with, but they must be important to the Queen if they were at this table.
Before the brothers can say anything you interject. "No need to comment on the outfit. I know," you smile.
Several of them shut their mouths.
You take a seat at the head of the table, Asmodeus's spot. His chair was quite literally the center of attention. In the middle of the room it sat, the most immaculate and eye-catching. It was almost gaudy to be honest. And from here, you'd be able to see him from anywhere in the room.
“So…when does this start?” you ask.
“Hopefully he comes out within the hour,” Satan answers.
You’d think he was exaggerating if he wasn’t currently reading. In all this noise, you weren't sure how.
Lucifer sat back with his eyes closed, probably thinking of work, while Mammon and Levi talked (or maybe they were bickering) about something. Beelzebub frowned while rubbing at his stomach and Belphegor’s head was laid on the table.
Even though they seemed indifferent about being here, you knew they wanted to keep their brother happy. And anyways if they missed today they wouldn’t hear the end of it until his next birthday.
By the time his Majesty is formally introduced to the hall, an hour must have passed and Beel looks visibly famished. He gently nudges Belphie awake though.
“Ah, the star finally appears,” Solomon says. You had met the sorcerer for the first time today but he seemed decent from the conversation you had. Mostly everyone at the table seemed a bit perturbed by his presence though.
Anyone standing around moves quickly to sit down so as not to be chewed out by other guests for blocking the view.
All attention turns to decorative stairs at the front of the room as the Queen appears. Slowly rose petals magically start falling from the ceiling. Everyone watches as Queen Asmodeus gracefully makes his way down, his (very expensive) skirts following down behind him.
Mammon sits back crossing his arms and says under his breath. “He does this every year…”
You wonder if anyone outside his brothers would ever grow tired of it though. You swear you could see tears glistening in some of these guests' eyes.
You manage to catch Asmo’s eye and he winks at you.
The whispers amongst the guests go silent once Asmodeus begins talking to his closest family, friends and allies.
"Thank you for gathering here to celebrate this special day--my birthday. Seeing everyone's lovely faces smiling for me makes me so happy!"
You hear a couple of dreamlike sighs among the crowd.
"I’m excited for the fun to start so please everyone enjoy the food. The festivities will start right after.”
There’s cheers and Beel’s face brightens as servants file in with various dishes.
Asmo makes his way towards his seat waving and talking to people along the way.
"How'd you like my entrance MC? Wasn’t it perfectly befitting for someone like me," Asmo asks by the time he finally makes it to the table.
Most of his brothers look exasperated but you grin. “It was very Asmodeus-like. You look really amazing by the way. Your dress is very beautiful.”
He smiles at the compliment. “Not as beautiful as me though, right?”
“Heh, of course.”
Satisfied with your answer, Asmo rests a hand on your shoulder.
"Thank you all for coming. I hope you all brought presents ❤️"
Lucifer smiles, already prepared with his gift, "Happy Birthday Asmodeus."
“I didn’t skimp out this year so you better be grateful,” Mammon says.
All the brothers take their turns passing their presents for Asmo to open and gush over. And these were no simple gifts. These were items the average person could only dream of having but apparently this was nothing too hard for these brothers to acquire.
You watch Asmo brandish the beautiful sword Santa had given to him. You had never seen anything like it before. Where did he even find that? Maybe you should inquire with him about it later.
During the rest of the dinner, you see a shift in Asmo’s demeanor from fairly pleased to absolutely bored. Finally, he stands and clinks his glass with a fork to get the room's attention.
He takes a drink and raises his glass high. "Let's get this party started!"
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It had been 3 hours so far. The beginning of what would definitely be a way too long party.
You hadn't seen the Queen since dinner as he was mingling with the endless party guests.
How many people could one person remember off the top of their head?
Escaping the noise would be impossible even if you wanted to. You could hear Queen Asmo's subjects singing, dancing and lighting fireworks through your room window when you made a quick stop for the restroom.
You take a bite of your kebab, waving at someone you don’t remember the name of. Galavanting from room to room to keep yourself entertained in this overstimulation fest.
Maybe you'd go back to the 'bathing room'. It was always interesting there.
Suddenly, you find yourself wrapped in a warm embrace and surrounded by the scent of fruit and alcohol.
“Darling I haven’t seen you in so long.” Asmo says dragging out the end of the statement.
“It’s only been a few hours though.”
“Might as well been years.”
You roll your eyes but pat his arm soothingly. “But you’re enjoying yourself right?”
He hums. “Everyone is here for me, adorning me with gifts and praise. I’d say it’s within the top 3 best birthdays!”
“...Isn’t a good chunk of your usual days filled with that though?”
He rests his head on you. “It’s different though.”
Before you can ask more, several people approach you two to talk to the Queen. Asmodeus hooks his arms with yours before you can walk off though.
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“Asmo, please let me go. Keeping up appearances for this long is killing me.”
“But I don't want you to disappear again!” He nuzzles into your arm and you let out a sigh.
“Can we at least take a break?”
“Are you trying to get special private time with the Queen?” Asmo gives you that stupid innocent smile that was rarely innocent.
“Er, I mean it would be nice…” You hadn’t been able to spend much time with him these last couple days since he was so busy.
“Okay since you’re one of my favorite guests I’ll give you special attention. But you owe me!”
And with that Asmo drags you away to his room.
As soon as you’re behind closed doors you flop on his soft bed. Even with the sounds of a party as background noise, you’d be able to rest your eyes.
“Wait, did you invite me here just to sleep?” You feel the bed dip beside you.
You mumble incoherently before turning your head to look at Asmo’s pouting face. You couldn’t help smiling at his expression though.
How did he do it? You probably looked very disheveled right now but there sat your Queen completely perfect as always even though he’d been all over the castle today.
“Hmm, has my beauty stunned you~?” Asmo’s lithe fingers trace a pattern on your cheek.
“Maybe…” you sigh and get up from the bed. “That reminds me. You said I owed you and I haven’t given you your birthday present yet.”
You beacon him towards his dressing table and retrieve the small box. You planned to give it to him this morning but he wasn’t here. So you left in his room hoping he would find it on his vanity before the day ended but inwardly scolded yourself for the choice when he eyed you at the dinner being the only one closest to him who hadn’t given him anything.
“Happy Birthday!” You hold out the gift to him with a small smile.
Asmo’s eyes widened a bit. Was he actually surprised? His expression turns pleased as he takes and carefully opens it.
“It’s beautiful…” He carefully pulls out the silver necklace and holds it up. It was adorned with several small jewels but the main star was a deep red painite that sat in the middle.
“And it’s very unique.” The merchant in you was screaming for giving away something this rare for free. But making sure Asmo was pleased with his present was much more worth it.
You help him put it on and watch as he admires himself in the mirror.
“So you like it right?”
“Of course I love it!” Asmo stands, grabs your hand and leans in to press a kiss to your lips. “I might have to show you how much I love it. You always know what to get me…”
You lean in hoping for another kiss but Asmo places a finger on your chin to stop you.
“After the party. I want to take my time with you….” He gives you a quick squeeze and leads you out of the room before you can complain.
----
The next day when you wake up in Asmo’s arms to the sound of people being unusually loud through his window. That couldn’t be what you think it was.
You stare blearily at the ceiling. "When does everyone stop partying exactly?”
Asmo yawns and cuddles into you. “Hmm, usually in several days.”
“...How are you sleeping through this?”
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oooooo please tell me (who knows nothing on the subject) about orv swap au
hehehe. hehehehehehe. hehehehehehehhehehehhheheheh <- guy who is so normal
the premise of orv swap au (name has yet to be finalized) is this: what if kdj and yjh swapped narrative positions (reader <-> character) but very little else? what if a video game player enters a time loop to save his favorite character from dying over and over again and also to end the apocalypse?
admittedly it's not super fleshed out yet (a lot of the changes this premise would introduce are still not hammered out yet) but here are some points under the cut (novel spoilers ahead!)
orv swap au starts with pro gamer yjh who feels :/ abt his job, but hey, it pays the bills. despite (or maybe because of) his relative popularity as a pro gamer and networking with the agency/sponsors/people to impress, he's kind of isolated in a way that's detrimental, a facade of someone he's not whenever he's on camera
something to play around with is the idea of agency? maybe this yjh doesn't feel like he has any and has his hands tied between the lifestyle and being under public scrutiny and not having enough of a support system to leave everything behind. maybe he doesn't know what else he would even do. maybe he's aimless and drifting with nothing to hold on to.
his favorite video game is what i've been thinking of as World's Hardest To Play Indie Game (not based on difficulty but just on the experience of consuming it) a boring, exposition heavy, player-hostile, poorly designed, slightly buggy mess of a barely-playable game: twsa, a game that was not finished upon release and experiences with sporadic updates every now and then.
the ending tree to this game is so convoluted its insane. also theres no save states so if you die (very likely) u restart babeyyy.
twsa (video game) does have multiple endings, all of which happen when kdj, your main character, dies. some are farther into the apocolypse than others, some paths require meta knowledge of future events or character actions or items or whatever. the "true ending" is either analogous to the original 1863: kdj makes it to the end at the cost of everyone he loves, or hsy's modified 1863: kdj makes himself enemy of the scenario to secure a way out for the kimcom remnants.
there's branches on the choices tree where everyone dies and everything sucks and is bad forever and theres choices to make where kdj gets to make a family and they don't really get to settle down but they can get pretty close to it among the ruins of the apocalypse. through all his testing, yjh finds that these endings are nice but peter out - to get to the end of the apocalypse yjh has to claw his way there inch by painful inch, through betrayal and sacrifice, and he still cant fully get past it
i originally wanted to finagle a yoohankim 3 way swap but i couldn't figure it out. swap aus are a lot easier to work with when they're even numbers, at least to me, so this au features a ysa who is a video game company employee by day and by night she really has become god this time (and also a terrible indie dev). and this is how jungdoksang can still win !!!!
also yjh's coworker from Real Life hsy :) i haven't decided if she's like an employee for the same agency, or if she's someone else in the gaming circles that yjh interacts with sometimes (in my heart theyre in like some sort of discord server together), or something like that but she's around. whatever she does she is twitter cancelled for something. to me.
the only other character swaps are lsk and yma. yma is yjh's estranged sister (in broad strokes there's a vague bad parent situation going on here) (they used to be close until they drifted apart and slowly started hating each other [there is an abyss between them that neither of them can bridge]) (he feels that she betrayed him and threw him under the bus so he left [maybe he gets kicked out]) (she feels that he abandoned her to whatever situation they have going on [he didn't even try to take her with him]) and he has to find her when the apocalypse starts. yjh older sibling to yma gives us a whole different little dynamic to explore from kdj ysk (there's different levels of responsibility and guilt and blame when you're talking siblings that are soooooo interesting to me. sorry that i see any set of siblings and immediately try to figure out how to make them worse)
lsk is kdj's mom who appeared into existence at some point with kdj and they were both just adults. that's weird isn't it. oh well. i guess she can become a transcendent later too for funsies
everyone else stays in the same configuration of Real Person vs Character to me this is a very important aspect
this point has no precedent with the swap, nothing particular that would change to cause this, but it would be so funny if lgy was a little gamer boy who is an avid yjh hater. hates that guy. shows up to competitions to boo him. tunes into yjh's silent no-mic speedrunning streams to mald in chat but yjh +mods don't ban him bc its kinda funny.
anyways the apocalypse starts when yjh and his coworker/fellow gamer hsy are on a train to twitchcon and lgy is also there (also headed to twitchcon) and he brings bugs because he likes them but also to sabotage yjh specifically. its just funny if this happened. you understand
instead of having reader-related skills and abilities, yjh's skills are video game player based! he gets flavor text insight on people, location, and items, things like that. notably, he has the ability to reset, to bring himself back to the beginning of the apocalypse
orv swap proper follows yjh as the Player of the Game (Consumer of the Narrative) who lives hundred of lifetimes in this ruined-world-become-reality "replaying" [read: time looping through] the game to reshape it to save his fave character from self implosion (kdj with no dissociation is very prone to dying. all the time.). to revisit the idea of playing with yjh and the idea of agency, of creation, the only way to get past the apocalypse is to go off the beaten path, to choose options that weren't even there in the game. when in space, at his darkest point, yjh becomes a writer. in this story, at his darkest point, he has to become a creator too
please do not ask me how the epilogues go i dont know how the epilogues go (i don't want to throw yjh back into a train for milennia after he Just went through a thousand resets so i'm sending kdj for that but i havent fully planned how or why)
anyways, hope that helps!!! :)
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