#then boom. satan is real

[birchbarkz]

i feel like nobody talks about how paranormal rdr as a series is. and its so casual about it. yeah, undead nightmare was dlc, but the strange man isnt and hes literally some kind of god or unkillable supernatural entity. nosferatu threatens to suck you dry and then you can shoot him in the head

[nostalgic-muffins]

trans LEVI💥 trans SATAN💥 trans BELPHIE💥 trans LUCIFER💥

[papirouge]

I hope that in 50 years they'll talk about the self victimizing mass hysteria of middle class White men claiming oppression over a movement they're not even able to define the way they do with the satanic panic

[yabakuboi]

steddie request! pre steddie during a pool day eddie feels cute aggression and bites the back of steve's shoulder and surprises him

It should be ILLEGAL, Eddie thinks, for Steve Harrington to allowed out into polite company, much less in a community pool where innocent eyes could gaze upon him. Objectively, sure, Eddie knows that those little pink swim shorts aren't any more scandalous that what anyone else is wearing today. Ted Wheeler is knocked out on a lounge chair with only a speedo. But it's Steve. And Eddie's doing his best to rehab his image in Hawkins, so drooling after the local Harrington prince wasn't going to help.

Never mind that it was Steve who drug Eddie out into Satan's crack that is Indiana summer in August. He'd made a good case about it, too—something, something, being seen doing good in front of all the moms at the community pool, something, something, Holly's birthday party, yada yada. Honestly, Eddie didn't hear most of it, lost in Steve's stupid, beautiful brown eyes.

What was Eddie going to say? No?? Be for real.

That was how Eddie found himself sat on a deck chair (thankfully one with an umbrella), in his jeans next to a cooler, handing little girls juice boxes and snacks when demanded of him.

Holly Wheeler must befriends with the entire elementary school, Jesus Christ.

Steve himself, in his aforementioned pink swim trunks, was playing as pool jungle gym and had kids crawling all over him. It helped a lot to keep Eddie from drooling after him, but didn't do a lot for Eddie's heart.

Worse than Steve being hot, was Steve being cute. Eddie couldn't take it. He was going to die.

Steve had one of the smaller kids perched on his hip, held safely up out of the splash zone, while the rest of the hoard took turns climbing up onto his shoulders and using him like a diving board, his free hand guiding them safely into the water as they jumped. It looked like hell to Eddie, but Steve was grinning ear to ear, rating each jump with a booming cheer that had all the kids screaming around him with each splash.

"Um, excuse me," snaps a little girl in front of Eddie. He glances down and feels like he's looking at a mini Erica Sinclair, her hands on her hips and scowling. A chilling sight.

"Whatcha need, shrimp?" Eddie sighs, flipping the cooler lid up to take another order. "We're out of red barrels, and our stock of blue is going fast."

She eyes him skeptically for a moment before her little shoulders slump. "Fine, I guess I'll take the blue."

"Here you go," he says, pulling the foil off for her since little wrinkled baby fingers have yet to manage it all day. "Now be gone with ye."

Treating him with another incredibly bitchy look for a third grader, she bounds off just as a shadow appears over Eddie. A wet arm hooks over Eddie's shoulders, just as Steve crashes into the deck chair beside him, too small for two nearly full grown men, the plastic creaking ominously. Steve is practically in Eddie's lap.

"Harrington, what the fuck," Eddie squawks, cold pool water soaking into his clothes because Steve is dripping wet.

"What the language, Munson," Steve says, still grinning, looking at Eddie with those brown eyes. His face is round and a little pink, and he's so close that Eddie can see the faint trail of summer freckles across his nose. He's so beautiful, and he looks so happy and excited to have Eddie's attention. "There's little ears—OW WHAT THE FUCK!"

Eddie opens his jaw and yanks his head back, almost as shocked with himself as Steve. He can taste pool water in his mouth. There's a line of pink teeth-marks on Steve tanned shoulder.

"Uh," Eddie says.

"Did..." Steve starts. He leans back a little, still half in Eddie's lap, to gape down at him. "Did you just... bite me?"

"Y-Yeah," Eddie breathes. "Whoops."

"Whoops?" Steve repeats, brows high on his forehead. "Why the hell did you bite me?"

"You're very bitable." Eddie's going to drown himself in the pool at this rate. "You're too cute. I had to bite you."

He watches as Steve's eyes narrow, watches as Steve begins to suss him out. Eddie's still too shocked with himself to do anything, can't even panic, because he's that much of an idiot and his brain has gone completely offline. Because Eddie bit Steve Harrington and then called him cute, Jesus Humphrey Christ.

Then Steve leans down, slowly, until his face is right in Eddie's, and an insane thought goes through Eddie's brain. I bit Steve Harrington, told him he was cute, and now he's going to kiss me.

Except Steve bypasses Eddie's face and lands his lips against Eddie's neck, where he then tries to take his own pound of flesh.

Eddie screeches.

Distantly, he recognizes what a weird blessing it is that they're at the community pool, surrounded half the elementary school, all of them screeching and screaming and splashing. Everyone is completely oblivious to whatever homosexual nightmare is happening to Eddie right now.

"You're pretty cute yourself, Ed," Steve says into the small space next to his ear. And then he's up and standing between one breath and the next. "We really gotta teach you some manners though," he says, grinning, before he turns and dives into the pool.

"Y-Yeah," Eddie says weakly in his absence. He can feel Steve's spit on his neck, rapidly drying the summer heat, the bite mark aching with promise.

[vintagerpg]

Satan’s been missing for years and some of the substitute rulers of Hell have had it. They’ve taken off to the moral realm for a havoc-sewing vacation. Heaven ain’t having that, though, so they knock on Hell’s door and tell the remaining rulers to drag back the hooky-playing demons or there’s gonna be a war. So Hell sends out some motorcycle- riding demons (the players) to fix things before the whole cosmos falls apart. The year is 1980-something. The game is Hell Night (2022?).

The “game” portion is actually pretty scant, a lightweight thing built for speed and derived from Gavriel Quiroga’s previous games. The vast majority of the book is system neutral source material. You could use any of the light weight D&D-ish systems floating around (Into the Odd, Cairn, etc) but I actually quite like Quiroga’s arrangement. Three attributes: Guts (strength), Style (dex) and Brains (intelligence), augmented by Grit (a luck metacurrency). Roll 2d6, get under the attribute score. Boom. Characters are class-based (Slayers, Reapers, Usurpers, Revenants) and are all structured so they can sit on top of classes from other games and are further differentiated by Edges, Rituals and Relics.

The world on display here is an infernal delight. You might confuse the aesthetic as a riff on Mork Bork, but it really hews to a cut-and-paste look favored by metal and punk bands of an earlier era — this is a nice hardcover book, but feels like a photocopied zine from the ’80s or early ’90s to me. There’s a clear preoccupation with ’80s heavy metal here, both in its cool and dangerous mode and its campy incarnations. Other clear inspirations include Hunter Thompson and the bikers from the film Mandy. Lotta gnarl here, but don’t miss the silliness hiding in the corners. A real surprising breath of putrid, soul-scorching air.

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

pt XVII good omens explained but im in tears at 3:30 am and on sleep meds

Oh it's been a while since we did one of these innit what was the last tine? Jan? Well the Mascot is back with a part XVII because this fandom valentine's day posts wrecked me emotionally and i took the usual sleep meds (we all know how that goes) so I'm here to make bad decisions y;all. Ignore all types or mistakes im not responsible for anything eber it's all the metatron's fault.

there are two entities crowley and aziraphela and they love each othner so much it h8urts ow

heaven has embraced minimalist interior decor and minimalist empathy it was a 2 for 1 offer at bunnings (australian maggots you proud good)

hell has embraced cluttercore with regards to interior decor and projected trauma bunnings was real generous

crowley was once an angel but the angel we knew it not him and that hurts but moving on is must because otherwise disrespect but she made stars and it was pretty just like her

im so tired. aziraphale is still an angel he';s very good at forgiveness whoch is nice but sometimes people dont want to be forgiuven they want to be dead isntead

that was not the setence i intended to write but it's accurate after the final fifteen ahahahahahhahahahahahaha do ihave trauma yes i went to bunnings because i liked hell's projections

the antichrist is very cute and he's good at the law of strraction he tells satan you fuck right off satan you're nOT MY REAL DAD which is so cool you go adam you GO and so then his read dad becomes his read dad there may have ben necromancy involved

anathema and newt are existing and she hit crow,yes bentley but that's fine because it burned to the ground anyway you know whatsw not fine crowley kneeling on the aslphalet and me that's what

nina and maggie veyr cute not yet but eventually because yes fuck lindey linday forgeot her nmae

aziraphale is very cute trauma bitchy bean

crowley is very kind trauma irritation disaster

eyes shutting it's all good but madam tracy has a BED AHAHAH you know what you do on bed it's SEXY THINGS hehhee like like stuff toys

so basically hemon hell are both like crowley azi you fools and then theyre like AAAAAAAAH GABRIEL but it's fine and the second coming is happening but azi is like nina maggie love so muriel is sent down

amd then crowley ad azi are like POOF FALL IN LOVE but nina is like HOHO WHAT THE FUCK nad the demons go WHEEEE and then crowley goes to heaven and then aziraphale goes to heabem and it's a;;; sad

gabriel is naked anc he was nasty first then felll in love with beelzebun then went naked and then back in love so now theyre both in alpha centaryie

that's a triple star system btw alpha a b and proxuma centauri which is the cloest star to earth aside from obviopuw crowley doesnt want to leav e earth far behind mkigkrkgw

boom azi gone all croiing im listening to dont bother from the sounstrack on loop since i started writing this

metatron oat milk evil azi scared crowley mr darcy we're crying yeah

yay all done now asleep jno bepop ya yes blruryry my meds packet looks lime a furry opposoum

anyway

so fucking tired i cannot see what im typing

@howmanyholesinswisscheese help

posting without rsding it through awahoooooooooooooooo

[the-meta-tron]

Crowley ISN'T Lucifer, But...

So today, Neil Gaiman basically killed The Crowley-was-Lucifer theory, which is fine. I thought the theory was fun, but to be honest, it never completely satisfied me.

The most compelling evidence (for me) regarding the theory were two things 1) we see Crowley before the fall, creating the stars and Lucifer was the Lightbringer, and 2) a lot of what Satan/Lucifer is attributed are things we see Crowley doing in the show's flashbacks.

I don't think it was wrong to recognize that the mythology of Lucifer/Satan has connections to what we see in Crowley's character. I just think it's missing some important context.

For example, Crowley is The Snake from the Garden of Eden. We know that for a fact. The Snake tempts Eve to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and humanity falls (aka Original Sin). Satan is never mentioned in Genesis. But over time, the snake is attributed to being Satan.

That doesn't mean Crowley is Lucifer/Satan. It just means humans in the GOmens verse tend to attribute the demonic things Crowley does to Satan over time because they simplify their own history. The same can be true for enacting wrath on Job or showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world (tempter of the Gospels). Those things happen, a demon does them, and later down the line, they are conflated as being done by Satan.

Originally, the word satan just meant "adversary" or "opposer." It was a word that described any adversary to God, sometimes even humans. Over time the concept of satan evolved to Ha-Satan, aka The Adversary, the personification of all evil whom Lucifer and The Devil are often attributed to. So there's actual real-world evidence of these translations of any adversary becoming The Adversary, and anything anyone does that opposes God's plan eventually becomes attributed to Satan over time.

And since Crowley is the one on Earth doing things for most of human history, I'm sure most of the things he does get attributed to Satan in the telephone of human mistranslations and simplifications.

Basically, Crowley is the overworked employee who does all the work, and his boss gets all the credit.

But Lucifer, the angel Satan was before he fell, was Not Crowley, and I think that's important. A lot of people were pointing out that Lucifer questioned God, and Crowley asked questions so badda-bing badda-boom Crowley=Lucifer, but I think that's ignoring or simplifying a lot about Lucifer.

Lucifer didn't just question God or rebel against God. Lucifer wanted to be Above God. (Originally, the concept of Lucifer was a king of Babylon, and the concept came strongly from Sumerian mythology, but he was eventually conflated as the Devil/Satan in theology over time). The Book of Isaiah basically describes the main motivations of Lucifer:

Isaiah 14:14: "I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High"

The Cave of Treasures was responsible for the first and most popular proto-orthodox Christian explanation for why the angels fell. Basically, the concept of fallen angels in the Bible is dubious at best. In a lot of rabbinic Jewish literature, Satan and his satans are still angels and servants of God; they just accuse humanity of wrongdoing and punish them for sins. Christianity really developed the idea that Satan was the enemy of God, and the two of them were the figureheads of Good vs. Evil. And with Satan being conflated as Lucifer and Lucifer being conflated as a fallen angel in the Book of the Watchers and that concept of fallen angels (which in the Book of Watchers notably happened after the fall of man, the angels fell because they had sex with humans) Christianity suddenly needed to explain why all these angels became fallen in the first place BEFORE the temptation of Eve, so the Fall of Man and Original Sin was retroactively preceded by the Fall of Angels, and then they had to come up with Why They Fell.

The two biggest Sins that became popular explanations for why the Angels fell were Pride and Envy. Pride, as taken from Isaiah and attributed to Lucifer The Angel instead of Lucifer The Babylonian King, where Lucifer wanted to be above God and have divinity for himself. Envy came from the Cave of Treasures, where Satan was jealous of mankind and refused to prostrate himself before Adam. Basically, God told all the Angels that Humans were going to be the next big important thing and Most Loved by God. Lucifer got jealous because He was Most Loved by God, so he decided to overthrow God out of envy, and the reason why he tortured humans is that he still is envious of them.

So I think fundamentally, if we look at these proto-orthodox explanations of The Fall, Crowley obviously isn't Lucifer. Crowley never wanted to be God. Crowley never hated or envied humanity. He protects them. He pranks them and tempts them, sure, but without malice.

He just had questions. He was Just Some Guy Angel who wanted to make the stars and didn't understand why it had to all go kablooey in six thousand years. Heaven's institution refused to give him answers (or even let him ask his questions, based on his awe at Job conversing with God), so he went and talked to the other angels who were also disgruntled with management in Heaven but for maybe more selfish reasons (Hey Look, It's Lucifer and The Guys). And because he was unsatisfied with Heaven's system, he ended up hanging out with the wrong people, getting involved in the war, and sauntering vaguely downward. And fundamentally, Heaven is going to punish anyone who challenges the status quo. It doesn't matter why or if they had good intentions.

I kind of don't want to know what angel Crowley was before he fell. Maybe he was high-ranking, and maybe he lost his memories, but ultimately the angel he was doesn't matter anymore. The trauma of the war and the fall stripped the angel Crowley used to be and transformed him into the demon we know now. The demon he is now is the only character we need to know. It is fun to theorize, and the angel he used to be might inform the demon we see now (although I think we have most of the information we need to understand that). But the war, the fall, and his time on earth, I think, inform his character far, far more.

[immasock]

Hello.... I just came back from church and I will worship demons again. Anyway, I just came into mind to Nephalem! Mc, (I love really OP MC) and I was forced to read the bible and another version that's the reason I've come to this conclusion. So like it's between Belith (the most powerful demon king who owns 85(?) demon legions) and Seraphina (the female version of the six winged seraphim) they do the nasty and boom demonangel baby whose raised in an human orphanage because God forbids and Bebelith's (uwu) kingdom opposed. And the child somehow almost terrorizes the entire human race without exposing themselves. Imagine those reactions from the bros + dateables hekhek. I really love the bible sometimes you know...

It’s been too long but my god I’m excited to do this one. I always love your ideas

Nephalem!MC + The Obey me boys

Pronouns: They/Them

The chaos

MC grew up as an orphan, going in and out of foster homes and different adoptive parents. It never lasted though. No one knew why. The kid seemed nice enough, if not a little quiet

Some say it was because they were too quiet. They never talked or bonded with the families. Others say that it was because the other families kept having kids of their own and decided they didn’t need MC anymore

But the real reason? The real reason was because they were actually a little terror

They would start out seeming innocent, sure, but that was all a part of their plan

After about a week though? They would start causing all sorts of chaos.

When MC got sent down to the Devildom, they thought it would be the same thing. They’d be there for maybe a month and then be sent back. But no, that’s not quite what happened

Lucifer:

When MC first came through the portal, he wasn’t quite sure what to make of them

He knew that something wasn’t quite right about them but that would have to be an issue for later

He has things to do

He assigned Mammon to deal with them while he went back to his office to check this “humans” file

Except wait

No

They are, in fact, not a human

Well fuck

This didn’t go like he planned

He immediately tells Diavolo, thinking he’d want to send MC back and get a new exchange student

But no

He wants to keep them

Of course 😑

Lucifer can’t do much else besides just proceed as normal, he supposes

But he does keep an eye on the kid

It’s bad enough that he’s got to be responsible for a child, but a Nephalem?

He’s going to be grey by the time the exchange program is over

Mammon:

He genuinely has no clue

I love him but he doesn’t have the faintest idea

MC walks through that portal and he just assumes they’re just some human

Honestly, he won’t figure it out unless he’s told or if he catches them doing something

Even then, he might just assume they’ve been hanging around Solomon too much

He is, however, a great target for MCs chaos

He’s constantly being messed with

His things go missing, only to show up in random places

Grimm will appear and disappear in front of him

You get the gist

He’s easy to mess with

Which is why MC likes to hang around him

But he doesn’t mind too much

Once he warms up to them at least

He enjoys the company

Leviathan:

He also doesn’t know

But it’s mostly just because he doesn’t care

He’s focused on his games and anime

I get the feeling that he would be all over it if he found out though

Like he would think that it’s super cool

He could absolutely figure it out if he decided to dedicate the brain power to it

But he’s got other things to worry about

He’s also pretty easy to mess with

But be careful

He’s not just gonna get over it quickly like Mammon does

While MC could probably take Levi, I wouldn’t recommend it

Maybe avoid doing anything to his collections

Satan:

He figures it out pretty quickly

He’s a smart demon

MC absolutely fascinates him

He spends a bunch of his free time studying them

Trying to figure out anything and everything he can about them

Well

Until MC decides to be a little shit

Books start going missing and showing back up with writing on the pages

His feather boa is nowhere to be found (Though Mammon and Asmodeus aren’t complaining about that one)

At one point, Satan got turned into a cat for a few hours

Okay he didn’t mind that one all that much but still

It’s about the principle

It’s not smart to mess with him either but oh well

Asmodeus:

Every time I do a child!mc, I say the same thing

He absolutely adores them

He thinks they’re adorable and he can’t wait to dress them up

Maybe not this one tho

He still thinks they’re cute and wants to do little fashion shows with them, but it’s not really going to go how he planned

It’s crazy

Makeup isn’t the right color and the clothes keep changing into other clothes

How weird

In reality, MC just doesn’t like being dressed up so they have to make it fun for themselves somehow

I don’t have much to say for Asmo

Except that he’s gonna be a bit of a good sport when it comes to the chaos that is MC

Beelzebub:

Honestly

He also does not notice that there’s something off about the “human”

He’s gonna be easy to mess with as well

But do be careful

Stay away from his food

We’ve all seen the rampages he goes on when someone touches his food

I think that he would just assume that MC is this fragile little child and so he’d try to protect them

But he’s in for a surprise the first time that someone tries to mess with them

You can imagine that he’s speechless when he sees MC, this small child, absolutely demolish some demon

Doesn’t have to be physically

They could verbally destroy some random demon trying to mess with them as well

Either way, he wasn’t expecting it

Belphegor:

Honestly, this could go either way

I don’t think he’d be able to tell right away

Which is where lesson 16 would come in

But I think that, based on how this MC would react, he’d figure out that something isn’t quite right after that

Like

There’s no way in hell this is some normal human, right?

Not after all that

Once he figures it out, he’d be pretty indifferent

He’d be put at ease that there isn’t a human staying with them

And he’d be more than happy to help them cause chaos

Especially if it’s directed towards Lucifer

Somehow tho

I don’t think he’d be that easy to fuck with

I feel like he’d be unbothered by anything they could do to him

Well

Mostly

Diavolo:

Once again, absolutely loves them

Even before he finds out

Which doesn’t take that long

Obviously

Since Lucifer found out and told him

I feel like he would be 100% on board with any mischief that they cause

Having to do all his princely duties all the time is so boring

He enjoys the entertainment

He would probably also be enamored with them

Wanting to see all that they can do

I dunno I wasn’t able to fall asleep last night so my brain isn’t very creative

He would try and involve them and what they can do in things and events

Most likely

He’s just excited

Barbatos:

He knew first

He just didn’t tell anyone

Because why would he?

I swear, this man lives for drama

He would never admit it but it’s true

Anyways

He doesn’t care either

As long as MC doesn’t cause problems

Which they absolutely will

I feel like his attitude towards MC would be similar to what it is with Dia and Luke

Just another child to look after

He’s fond of them tho

Don’t let him tell you otherwise

Simeon:

I don’t have much to say about him

He might be able to tell

Or he might not

If he does, he definitely does that thing he does where he doesn’t outright say he knows, but he drops hints

Like

He might make a passing comment about how MC is similar to some of the angels he knows

And then a day later say how they remind him of one of the brothers

He would definitely wait for MC to outright tell him tho to actually say anything

He’s respectful like that

Solomon:

He knows

Maybe not right away but pretty early on

He’s also absolutely fascinated

He wants to do so many tests on them

Surely they react differently to his potions and spells, no?

Maybe they’ll love his cooking like the rest of them

That’s what he thinks at least

Or not

It’s been a while since I’ve played but I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew no one liked his cooking but he kept doing it just to take the piss

He’s such an asshole and I love him

[filmbyjy]

BUSINESS PROPOSAL > seventeen! sunoo finds out!

synopsis > being the amazing friend you were, you had helped your friend who desperately did not want to go on the blind date so you went as her. however, you were dumbfounded to find out that the CEO was your friend’s blind date! hopefully, he doesn’t recognise you.

masterlist | previous | next

word count: 0.4K words

a/n: i’m just scarred of adding pictures into my written chapter bc of what happened to chapter 10 T_T

if becoming a CEO was an easy job, just anyone would be able to become one. sunghoon had always never understood why his parents had appointed him as the CEO of a big booming company.

until he was told that his grandmother was sick. she couldn’t continue with workload and heavy responsibility. it was too much for her. you see, sunghoon’s grandmother was a smart lady. she got her university’s degree went to some high end school, graduated with honours and started a company at 30. it was something huge for his grandmother and she wanted to leave it in good hands.

she could have left it with her son but when sunghoon was born. she knew he would be great. not only in life but with business too. you could say she was sort of a psychic because truly sunghoon did excel in leading the company at a young age.

so why was he suddenly rushed to get married to some girl?

well…

“sunghoon-ah, when are you going to get married? you’ve been travelling and doing work 24/7. why don’t you go out dating?” his grandmother asks.

“grandma, i’m only 20.”

that was only one of many times she’d ask that question. she knew he wouldn’t take action so she stepped in and set up blind dates for him.

“did you-”

“no.” sunghoon answers. his grandmother sighs.

but will sunghoon's grandmother ever give up? no! she's a stubborn lady and she lives by it. she won't stop until she sees her grandson smiling brightly (and also get out of the damn office)

and that same night he came back from the first blind date with the supposed 'ahn yujin'. she realises that her grandson didn't look too displeased. hence, she scheduled another date.

little did she know that...this 'ahn yujin' was not the real one. who could predict that sunghoon would ended up falling for you. someone who is hopelessly in love with an unavailable person.

"heeseung, what do i do?? sunghoon knows my name! what if he finds out i'm the one who fooled him? what if he fires me!"

"chill out." heeseung munches on the brownies. "it's not like he has seen your face yet. you hid your face like a coward you are when you saw him!" you snatched the brownies from heeseung, he whines.

"i am not a coward, i just don't want to lose my job because i decided to help my friend!"

"you what?"

you slowly turned your head to the side and spot sunoo. oh no.

"dear cousin...heh. hi!" you nervously laugh.

"you are going to tell me everything from start to end." sunoo folds his arms.

let's hope sunoo doesn't tell on you to sunghoon...

-

taglist[open]: @nyfwyeonjun @nicelicious @duolingofanaccount @viagumi @precioussoulofmine @loves0ft @jungwo-nnie @alpha-mommy69 @jnks6r @ilvsoup @abdiitcryy @deobitifull @yenqa @pshchives @jiawji @ckline35 @chaemmie @kwnshi @sunshine-skz @j4yluvr @nearly-brainless-rae @sd211 @captain-satan @love-4-keum @ce1ight @iwonlvr @jajjajas @shinsou-rii @greenmetalroof @byunappetit @yunji-n @oranshi @mynameisnotlaura @invusblog @msxflower @luvkait @uwudaizy @leeis @sstarrysshit @thathybesimp @outrochimy @adajoemaya @artstaeh @seeuuns @watermelon-sugars-things @ktttwwn @moasworld @sseastar-main @liliansun @stepout-09-15 @aishaishaisha @bwljules @indelicate-macalino @sparklingsjy

(bolded can’t be tagged!)

[daytaker]

5. Othello

(Existing Sucks So) Let's All Be Shadows.

A Satan-centric Nightbringer Timeline Fic (Read on AO3)* *This combines Chapters 7 (Othello) & 8 (Cats & Curses) from AO3.

Chapter Starring: MC, Satan, Mammon Chapter Word Count: ~5.3k Chapter Warnings: Canon-typical violence, Wrath

“If you saw a drowning cat, and you reached out to help it, and it scratched you because it was scared and hurt and flailing around... Would you just let it drown?”

First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Latest Chapter

1 2 3 4 5

I woke up late the next day. After tossing and turning in bed, trying to get the memories of what Satan had told me out of my mind, I’d finally fallen into a fitful sleep about four in the morning. 

I probably would have woken up even later, actually, if it hadn’t been for my D.D.D. ringing on the nightstand by the bed. Half-asleep, I fumbled for the device, and after a few messy attempts, I managed to answer.

“What’s the matter?” I muttered as a greeting, still half-asleep.

“What ain’t the matter!” Mammon’s voice boomed through the speaker. “Listen up, we need ya down here stat! Satan’s throwin’ a fit and Lucifer ain’t here to stop it!”

“What makes you think I can do anything about it?” I groaned as I rolled onto my back. Honestly, the last thing I needed right now was more of Satan’s issues to deal with.

“You ain’t one of us! He doesn’t wanna talk to his broth–” I could hear crashing in the background, and Mammon seemed to pull the speaker away from his mouth and shout, “COOL IT, WOULD YA? I’M TRYIN’ TO GET HELP!”

I rubbed my forehead, already exhausted, but I dutifully climbed out of bed and started getting out of my pajamas.

“Listen, just hurry over, alright?” Mammon had shifted gears and was talking to me again.

“Aye-aye, cap’n,” I sighed, and I hung up.

I stood in my underwear, resting my forearms on the dresser for a few seconds as I breathed. In, and out… In, and out… I could do this. 

Half an hour later, I stood in the front hall of the House of Lamentation. Belphie came running up to me and practically collapsed in my arms. “What took you so long?” he whined into my stomach.

Deeper in the house, I could hear the rumbling and clattering of the house being slowly destroyed, one piece of furniture at a time.

“Where’s Lucifer?” I asked Belphie.

“He’s out sucking up to the future Demon King,” he told me, rolling his eyes. “Mammon’s trying to manage Satan on his own, but he’s doing about as terribly as you’d expect from him.”

“You’re all too hard on Mammon,” I sighed, setting my bag down against the wall and rolling up my sleeves. “It isn’t like any of the rest of you can handle him either.”

“Mammon’s the second-born,” argued Belphie petulantly, his voice tinged with an edge of whininess. “He’s supposed to be stronger than Satan. So is Levi, for that matter…”

I picked my bag up again, and Belphie followed me as I made my way deeper into the house. “What’s happening, exactly?” I asked.

“He’s been on a rampage since early this morning,” sighed the youngest.

“Why?”

“Nobody knows.” He shrugged. “Maybe he stepped on something when he got out of bed. Probably there’s no real reason.” 

I nodded grimly. There was always a reason, though. Maybe not a great reason, maybe not an obvious immediate reason, but there was a reason. Yesterday taught me how little I knew about what’s really going on in his head. 

“So what are you going to do?” Belphie asked. “Are you going to pull something like you did when you first got here? What was it you said… ‘Stay’?”

I grimaced inwardly. “Not if I can avoid it,” I replied. Lucifer would put me through the wringer if I did that again. “I brought something that might help snap him out of it.”

“Is it some sort of cursed artifact?” Belphie tilted his head. “Satan loves things like that.”

“No,”I said, “but that’s good thinking. I’ll stow that away for next time.”

We had arrived outside the door to the observatory, where the volume of the crashing and clattering inside made talking nearly impossible. I gestured to Belphie that I was going in, and he watched me with some trepidation as I opened the door and stepped into the room.

Inside the observatory, Satan and Mammon stood on opposite ends of the sofa, which looked as if it had been chewed up by a pack of hyenas. Mammon was clearly on the defensive, and he was gripping his left wrist with his right hand.

“You’re here!” Mammon exclaimed with relief as the door closed behind me. Satan’s eyes flashed in my direction, and he snarled in frustration.

“Why are you here?” He hurled a lamp across the room. I was amazed that there were still lamps in the house to be destroyed.

“I’m here because Mammon called me.”

Satan looked around the room with bloodshot eyes and snatched up the remains of a painting he’d already trashed. He looked like he was struggling to decide what to do with it. “I don’t want to see you right now.”

His voice was quiet, and tight, and quivering. It was tinged with rage but subdued as if smothered under a blanket of exhaustion. It was frightening.

“Mammon, is your wrist alright?” I asked him, not taking my eyes off of Satan.

Mammon seemed surprised at the question. Through my peripheral vision, I saw him look down at the wrist he was grasping, then back up at me.

“Uh, yeah. It ain’t nothing.”

“Go ask Beel to wrap it up.”

“Eh?” Mammon started, walking towards me. “No way! I ain’t gonna just leave you in here with–”

“Mammon.”

I turned and hit him full on with an entreating stare directly in his eyes. This might be a different time period, but I knew what I was capable of, with or without magic or pacts. Mammon quickly averted his eyes, but he stubbornly stayed where he was.

“...Please.”

He grumbled audibly, but I knew he’d relented. “...I’m stayin’ right by the door.”

I smiled at him gratefully, and as he headed to the door, I looked back at Satan. He was crushing the outside of the broken picture frame between his fingers.

The door latched shut, and an eerie silence descended on the room.

I set my bag down on the ground and folded my arms. Then I unfolded them again. It was probably best not to take a defensive posture.

“...Well?” Satan growled.

Today didn’t feel like yesterday.

Yesterday, I was powerless. Satan was under control and in control, calling the shots, standing in home territory. Today, he was off-balance. He evidently wasn’t expecting me, and he certainly hadn’t planned out any grim revelations to drop on me. As scary as it was to see him angry, it felt less threatening than whatever had happened the day before. I took comfort in that.

“Why are you angry?” I asked.

He snorted disdainfully as if I had just asked him an idiotic question. “I’m the Avatar of Wrath, or did you forget?”

I wasn’t about to let my question get obfuscated so easily. So I repeated myself.

“Why are you angry, Satan?”

“Don’t play stupid!” He finally threw the damaged painting into the ground, snapping the paneling. “Why did you tell Lucifer?” He stormed in my direction, dark energy circling the air around him like a hurricane. He almost walked through me; he surrounded me without quite touching me, somehow, his feet inches from mine when he stopped short, his face close enough to mine that I felt each heavy exhale on my skin. But he was on all sides; he was everywhere. It was his tail, I finally realized. His tail curled around me; never touching me, but putting me in a snare that might snap shut if I made any wrong moves. 

“I didn’t tell Lucifer anything,” I responded coolly. I could feel hot irritation bubbling up inside me, but I swallowed it. The last thing the situation needed was for both of us to lose our tempers. “What, did he say something?”

“Just that I should watch who I talk to about family matters.” His eyes were blazing, and his quivering tail nicked me in the arm. I flinched. “You said you weren’t just loyal to him! You said you were my attendant too!”

“I didn’t tell Lucifer anything,” I repeated more vehemently. I couldn’t tell if this rage of his was rooted in jealousy or a sense of betrayal. “He probably just heard we had tea together from one of your brothers. Is that really what made you so angry? What else did he say?”

“It isn’t any of your damn business what he said!” His tail flicked, and he paced around me in tight semi-circles. “Why do you think I talked to you yesterday?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out, and I haven’t yet,” I said, lowering my voice. “Satan, you scared me yesterday.”

“So you went to Lucifer.”

“So I went home!” I jabbed a finger in his chest. That stopped his relentless pacing, at least. “I went home, Satan, and I was miserable! I actually worry about you, you know!”

Satan’s tail recoiled before the rest of him could. He didn’t look convinced–in fact, he looked more suspicious than ever. But he was no longer quite so close, or quite so ready to lunge at any opening I might offer. His green eyes searched my face silently for a few seconds, then he spoke again.

“Why?”

Ah. There was the tricky part. Why indeed? I couldn’t exactly say, ‘Because I’m from the future and in that time I’ve developed a very close bond with you and your brothers, and I love and care for you, so seeing you in such obvious pain breaks my heart.’ And I didn’t think ‘because I’m your attendant’ would cut it this time either.

“If you saw a drowning cat,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully, “and you reached out to help it, and it scratched you because it was scared and hurt and flailing around. Would you just let it drown?”

I thought I was going to reach him with that. I thought that analogy would somehow click. What I didn’t expect was that Satan would look me straight in the face and respond by asking: “What’s a cat?”

I blinked at him. He stared back at me without blinking once. I considered rephrasing the scenario with a child as the drowning victim, but I was much less confident that Satan would feel like he would, in fact, want to save a child even if it was screaming and scratching at him. 

I rubbed my face in my hands. “...Never mind, then. I just… I worry about you because you need someone to worry about you.”

“That’s a stupid reason.”

“You really want me to tell you that you’re right, and I don’t actually care, huh?” Satan didn’t say anything in response to that. He just looked at me as if challenging me to confirm that he’d nailed it. I couldn’t really tell if he was desperate for me to validate all the horrible thoughts he had about himself or if he was begging me to insist he had it all wrong.

Instead of following up my rhetorical question, I reached into my bag and pulled out a folded board and a box of black and white game tokens. I sat cross-legged on the floor, in an area with relatively little debris, opened the board, and patted the spot across from me.

Satan stared down at me for a few seconds before slowly walking over and sitting down across from me, hugging one knee.

“Do you know how to play Othello?” I asked.

He shook his head no.

The corner of my mouth quirked into a smile. Satan was the one who taught me the game. Now it was time for me to return the favor. Or was this paying it forward?

“It’s pretty simple. We start with four tokens in the middle like this…” I set up the board. “Then we take turns putting tokens on the board. One of us is white and the other is black. You try to surround your opponent’s tokens on two opposite sides, and you switch them to your color. If you can’t put any tokens in a flanking position, you skip your turn. And when the board is full, whoever has more tokens facing up is the winner.”

“It sounds boring,” mumbled Satan.

“Then it should be easy to beat me.”

“At least give me a few turns to figure out how it works. Then I’ll start beating you.”

For the next ten minutes, we sat more or less silently in the observatory, surrounded by wreckage as if the place had been hit by a bomb, carefully studying the board and placing our tokens.

I won the first game. It was the first time I’d ever beaten Satan at a game of Othello. It was also the last.

“I was still getting used to the game mechanics,” growled Satan as he cleared the board. He was annoyed, but not angry, and when he bested me in the next round, he looked hesitantly pleased.

“…You didn’t lose on purpose, did you?”

“Absolutely not. I play to win. You’re going down in the next round.”

That satisfied him. But he won the next round too. And the one after. I guess it was only to be expected. He was wickedly clever.

“Satan?” I asked as we cleared the board and set up for another game.

“Mm?”

“You never said why you had that talk with me yesterday.”

He fidgeted uncomfortably, turning one of the tokens over in his fingers a few times. Black, white, black white. “...I had to tell somebody .”

“Did you…?”

His tail snapped irritably against the floor beside him, knocking the board askew. I rearranged the tokens as he searched for words.

“Yes, I did.” He looked at the board like he was trying to set it on fire with his mind. “Now I know not to tell anybody else.”

“Why did you tell me? Yesterday, you said you wanted to tell me specifically. To see my reaction.”

“And I saw your reaction,” he snapped. His tail slammed the ground even harder. I paused, then started to rearrange the board again. “Now I know not to tell anybody else! I just said that!”

“Was there some sort of way you wanted me to react?”

“I don’t know. Stop asking me stupid questions. It’s making me angry.”

I obliged. Nothing good would come from pressing the issue when he was adamant he didn’t want to discuss it, and it was probably a useful skill for him to identify when he was starting to feel angry if he ever wanted to learn to control that emotion.

Satan had just wiped the floor with me for the fifth time when I looked up at the devastated room around us, then checked the time on my D.D.D. Lucifer was definitely going to expect me to help clean this up.

“...Hey, Satan. Let’s go to the library.”

“What…?”

“Your room is too empty.” I thought about how barren the space felt yesterday. “You should fill it with things you like.”

Satan stared blankly at me, then squinted slightly. “Are you mad that you keep losing?”

I laughed at that, and Satan blushed, scowling. “No. I was just thinking that I don’t want to be here when Lucifer gets back.” I nodded to our surroundings.

That was enough to convince him.

I put away Othello and led Satan to the observatory door. When I opened it, I felt a thump and heard a pained yelp on the other side. Mammon quickly darted out from behind the door, rubbing his nose.

“You coulda warned me you were gonna swing that thing open!” he whined. His gaze darted from me to Satan, then back to me again. “...What the hell did you do?”

“We played Othello,” I said, and my gaze shifted to his wrist, which appeared to be swelling. “I thought I told you to have Beel wrap that wrist for you.”

“And I thought I told you I was gonna wait right out here,” Mammon retorted. “What the hell is Othello, anyway?”

Satan impatiently sidestepped Mammon and continued down the hall. “Come on,” he called to me. Mammon looked at him over his shoulder, then looked back at me, his expression heartbreakingly puppy-like. “Now you’re goin’ somewhere with him?”

Leave it to Mammon to make me feel guilty. I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I’ll check on your wrist then, but it had better be wrapped. Got it?”

Mammon let out an exaggerated sigh, but he nodded.

I patted his shoulder. “Good boy.”

“Don’t call me–”

“Are you coming or not?!” Satan’s voice called from up the hallway.

I gave Mammon an apologetic smile. “Later.”

“You better give me the full 'wounded soldier' treatment when ya get back, understand?” I nodded as I slung my bag over my shoulder and hurried down the hall. Mammon called after me, “I got injured in the line of duty, y’know!”

------

I wasn’t sure how we would be received when we entered the library with a wheelbarrow, but apparently, with Satan’s status as one of the Seven Rulers of the Underworld more or less accepted, he could get away with it. At any rate, the library staff seemed more at ease with the wheelbarrow than they had been last time Satan was here, carrying dozens of books piled one on top of the other in a single precarious stack. 

I stood back and watched while Satan piloted the thing in and out of aisles, tossing books into the bed of the wheelbarrow one, two, five at a time. He was collecting quite eclectic material, too. Novels, spellbooks, medical tomes, astrological works, zoological and botanical indices, and, of course, dozens and dozens of books on curses.

Taking one at random, I perused the cover. “Book of Forbidden Spelles and Hexes,” I read out loud, glancing up at Satan with a raised eyebrow before opening it at random. “A curse to put upon thine enemy which shall in due time render him blinde and tooth-less, a wondrous revenge against sorcerers wielding ye Eville Eye.” Satan smirked to himself as he continued looking through the shelves, and I flipped to another page which was bookmarked. “Septinfermium. A curse of sevenfold agonies to befall thy adversary, amonge these being a scourge of boiles, loss of hair, perturbation of tongue, loss of vigour in the loines, a sickness of sweating, incontinence of bowels, and sanguinity of urine.” I closed the book and looked up at Satan, who appeared to be suppressing laughter. “If I read that right, you’re looking into a curse that’s going to make Lucifer pee blood, crap himself, and turn impotent?”

“That about sums it up, yes. Along with boils, balding, sweating, and stuttering.”

I tried to picture Lucifer under a curse like that, but I found that I simply couldn’t. “You’re actually going to do that?” 

Satan turned to look at me, frowning. “You think I wouldn’t?”

“It’s not that, it’s more…” I hesitated. “...You don’t really think you’d get away with it, do you?”

“I don’t worry about whether or not I’ll get away with something.” He shrugged and looked back to the books on the shelf. “If I did, I’d never do anything. That said, that particular hex is extremely complicated and requires a good deal of preparation, so I don’t plan on attempting it just yet.”

Not just yet, hmm? “Why do you hate him so much? Lucifer, I mean.” I’d heard this question answered a few times, but never from this Satan.

He turned around to face me, yet another book in his hands. He stared down at it thoughtfully, opening it and flipping through the pages without really seeing anything.

“He pretends to be so incredibly responsible and put-together… He lords it over the rest of us. But the fact that I exist at all is proof of how flimsy his pretensions really are.” Satan slammed the book shut. “He’s a hypocrite, and he’s irresponsible enough to create an entire sentient being without any thought as to what kind of existence that being is going to have to endure.” His knuckles were turning white as he gripped the book and stared at its cover. “I never consented to my own creation. But he acts as if he’s done me an enormous favor by shoving me out into the world. Never mind it’s a world where we’re all social pariahs and just about the only emotion I can experience is a mind-numbing rage. And on top of all that, I'm made out of him. It's disgusting.”

Again, Satan was talking about his very existence as if it was a burden; something he would never have accepted if given the choice. It was stirring up all the unpleasantness of yesterday.

“You sound like you hate being alive.” I leaned forward a bit, taking a good look at him.

“I can’t say I love it.”

“Doesn’t anything make you happy?”

Satan smacked his palm lightly with the book in his hand, continuing to stare at it without seeing. “...Not really.”

I hadn’t actually anticipated that answer, so it hit me like a gut-punch. He sounded so earnest and resigned–not even sad, just resigned–that I instinctively raised a hand to reach out in his direction. But what was I supposed to do? Take his hand? Ruffle his hair? Gestures that felt like second nature in one sense seemed out of line here and now. My hand returned to my side, but I still couldn’t accept Satan’s response.

“...I’ll help you figure out how to feel happy,” I said after a lengthy silence. I clenched my fists and met his gaze when he glanced over his shoulder at me in surprise. “That’s a promise.”

Satan looked me up and down for a few quiet seconds before he cracked a bemused smile. “...You’re a really strange demon.”

“Mhm, like you’re one to talk.” I smiled impishly at him, trying to hide how dry my mouth felt. It was strange, but somehow, he looked a little bit different from this angle. Not soft, but softer. It made me want to touch his face.

I didn’t, of course.

Over the next half hour, while Satan kept adding more and more books to the wheelbarrow, I considered my self-assigned task: find something to make Satan happy. Of course, there was an obvious course of action that wasn’t lost on me. I had to introduce this man to cats.

“Are we heading home, then?” I asked Satan as I pushed the wheelbarrow out the library doors. As much as I cared for the guy, I could never accuse him of being too conscientious, and he seemed to consider it a given that his attendant would be the one to roll a few hundred pounds of books along for him.

“What, so Lucifer can lecture me on things I already know?”

I set down the handles to the wheelbarrow and looked at him with what I hoped was a withering gaze. “If you think I’m going to push this thing all around the Devildom, I have some news for you.”

“I’ll buy you ice cream.”

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

Satan looked around as we walked, clicking his tongue as he thought. “I’ll buy you dinner?”

I’ll admit, that idea appealed to me just a little bit more. But now that this had started, I didn’t want to fold without seeing what my options might be. “Dinner from where?” He sighed tiredly, and I slowed down. “It looks like we’re coming to a hill. I’m going to need some real motivation to tackle this.”

“Alright, stop whining,” Satan snapped. He elbowed me aside and took the handles of the wheelbarrow himself before barreling up the incline.

“Oh– hey!” I pursued him, crestfallen. “Wait, does this mean you take it all back?”

“Maybe,” grunted Satan as he pushed the thing forward. “Are you disappointed?”

“A little,” I admitted. I could see him smirk out of the corner of my eye. “Are you laughing at me?”

“Yes,” he replied without any concern. “You shouldn’t test me like that when you have such a sorry poker face.”

I sighed, and he laughed. It was a nice sound. I hadn’t heard it much lately. Not a genuine laugh, at least. So in spite of myself, I smiled.

“Whatever,” he said with a soft sigh as we reached the top of the slope. “I’ll still buy you ice cream, at any rate. Maybe if we can find a table we can play that black-and-white game again.”

“Othello,” I reminded him. “Sure, if you want.”

He seemed to have a place in mind already, so I was content to follow after him until we reached the ice cream vendor.

“I would like to order a double scoop of stewed hell ham with salamander gizzards.” Satan’s voice when ordering was almost painfully formal. He glanced over at me. “What do you want?”

Now, I have to be honest. I’ve never gotten used to Devildom ice cream. I’ve learned to look past the ingredients in most meals, but there’s something so inherently unappealing to a human about “hell newt ice cream” or “demon squid ink sorbet” that I can’t really get past it. Fortunately, most places sell a flavor called blood anise, which is probably the Devildom’s equivalent to human world vanilla, and although it isn’t fantastic, it mostly just tastes like frozen licorice.

“I’ll just have a scoop of blood anise,” I told Satan.

“Any hell beetles to top it off?” cut in the vendor.

“No thanks, just blood anise.”

“No extra charge for stewed toad sauce.”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“We’re having a special discount on black and yellow bile chunks—”

“Are you deaf? Just blood anise!” Satan thundered. For a second I thought he was going to grab the vendor by his collar and shake him, but he seemed to regain control of himself before it came to that. The vendor looked like he’d been shaken though, and he ducked into the stall to prepare the order.

Satan stood with his arms crossed, lips tight, scowling down at the wheelbarrow. He almost looked…embarrassed. When the ice cream was ready, he paid without speaking and carried both cups to an outdoor bistro table, leaving me to roll the books along after him.

“…Was I scary?” he asked me as I set up the Othello board.

“Hm?” I looked up at him questioningly.

Satan dragged a hand down his face, exhaled as if this required all his stores of patience, and spoke lowly. “…That demon who sold us the ice cream. He looked terrified.”

“Oh…” I glanced back at the ice cream stand and Satan snapped his fingers in my ear, startling me back into facing him.

“Stop, don’t look at him!” he hissed.

“You want to know if you were too scary?”

Satan hesitated, tapping the table with one of the game tokens. “…Did I embarrass you?”

I hadn’t expected him to approach the issue from that angle. I shook my head and swallowed a smile. “No. You look like you embarrassed yourself, though.”

Satan’s cheeks, already a little pink, darkened in color as he grabbed his spoon and shoveled a mouthful of frozen stewed hell ham with toad spleens or whatever it was into his mouth. Whoever came up with meat-flavored ice cream deserved whatever horrible thing they inevitably had coming, I decided as my stomach churned. 

“It isn’t that big of a deal,” I continued after a sullen silence on Satan’s end. “You didn’t actually hurt him.”

“Right?” Satan glared down at his ice cream with the same amount of loathing that I felt for it. “And he shouldn’t have been pushy about toppings in the first place. It’s his fault.”

With that out of the way, he placed his token on the board, and the subject was dropped.

We were around halfway through the game when I noticed Satan looking distracted. He kept glancing at something behind me, and when I turned around to look, I saw a tawny cat peeking out from between two buildings. I couldn’t believe my luck.

“Are you looking at that animal?” I asked, looking back at Satan.

“Yes,” he answered. “It looks comfortable in a very uncomfortable place.”

“That’s a cat,” I told him. There was something deeply sad about the fact that Satan was aware of things like hexes, and bowel incontinence, and impotence, but not cats–though it did make some sense. Satan had a natural curiosity for all things esoteric, and he was the owner of a body with anatomy that, presumably, made bowel incontinence and impotence things he might have had some personal experience with, or at least a conceptual understanding about. I didn’t know. I wasn’t in a position to judge. But since cats weren’t animals used in Devildom cuisine, there wasn’t really any reason for Satan to have heard of them before, especially considering he had never even left the Demon King’s castle until a few weeks earlier.

“A cat… The thing you talked about drowning?”

Of course Satan had remembered that bit of what I’d said back in the observatory.

“No–no, not really, I wasn’t actually talking about any real cats,” I insisted. Satan looked at me with what I could only describe as general disapproval. “...I’ve never hurt any cats!”

“You scared it,” Satan informed me with a frown. I turned around to look, and, indeed, the cat was no longer there. It had probably darted back between the buildings.

“How do you know I scared it? Maybe it just got bored!” I didn't like how this interaction was painting me as some sort of cat abuser.

“You shouldn’t be so loud,” Satan said coldly.

“That’s rich, coming from you,” I huffed.

Satan continued to stare at the spot where the cat had been. “I like how its ears looked. They were very triangular.”

My irritation softened a little bit. “You should keep an eye out,” I told him. “Cats aren’t uncommon in the Devildom, though they can be a little wary of people.”

Satan nodded. His interest in the board game in front of us had clearly petered out. “...Are you going to complain about rolling the books back down the hill as much as you complained about rolling them up?”

“Back down the hill?” I asked warily. That just sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.

Satan nodded. “I need to return to the library to find reading material on cats.”

“Can’t we bring these to the House of Lamentation first, then go get cat books?”

“As if Lucifer would let me leave once I show up.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “Well, then, why don’t I take these books to the house, and you can go to the library on your own for…cat research materials.”

Satan was still staring at the now vacant spot where the cat had been. He was frowning. “You need to check on Mammon?”

Actually, it wasn’t until he said it that I remembered I’d promised to check back in on the second oldest. A surge of guilt pooled in my belly. “I just don’t think rolling a wheelbarrow full of books down a hill sounds like a scenario with a happy ending,” I said.

Satan sighed. Apparently he saw the justice in my words, because he looked a little less resentful and a little more resigned when he nodded. “Fine. If Lucifer asks where I am, tell him you don’t know, but I said something about visiting an alchemist’s shop.”

“You had that loaded and ready, huh?”

“Of course. Don’t clean that up yet.” Satan stopped me as I stood and reached out to clear the Othello board. “Let’s finish the game.”

I sank back into my seat and cracked my knuckles. “Are you ready to lose?” I asked.

I lost.

[nyansatan]

Hellooooo! I saw you had requests open! I'm having some serious Satan brainrot all of a sudden and would like to request two things (I'll do them in separate asks).

So for the first one... I always see things about MC being the one who can calm down Satan and everything and I love that... But how about Satan being the one who can calm down MC? I want like something to happen and MC gets pissed. I mean absolutely livid. But Satan manages to calm them down before any destruction happens. Because I just love the idea of him seeing the fuming human and he just like... hugs them or something. It'd kinda be like how Lilo puts the lei on Stitch when he's treating everything up and he suddenly relaxes. MC is so mad they're getting ready to break things and Satan just hugs them and boom, MC's anger is neutralized. At least, that's how it'd be with me lol

Thank you so much for both requests! The Satan brainrot is so real, I can relate. This is an interesting take, I hope this is alright 🩶

No one understood MC's anger. Being misunderstood was the reason why they had been called many things in their life – dramatic, quick-tempered, emotional.

MC was none of these things. Their anger was something that simmered over time as irritation built up until the final explosion. It wasn't as if MC overreacted about small things – small things were the last straw for them. The final thing to tip them off.

No one else seemed to understand that. Until they met Satan.

Satan knew his sin was a curious thing – a quiet force to the point a certain line gets crossed. He understood MC's anger, saw beneath the surface whenever MC had reached their limit.

“I know I have responsibilities just like everyone else in this house,” MC snapped at Lucifer, their hands clenching into tight fists. “I'm still human. I have limits. This time I had to prioritize my chores and duties over my grades. I didn't even get a failing grade, so what's the big fuss?”

Satan watched silently at the exchange between the eldest demon brother and MC. If Lucifer knew how to read MC like Satan did, he would have dropped the issue already. He would have noticed the change in their body language, the tightness in their voice.

Instead, Lucifer crossed his arms, tilting his chin up. “You have not reached your limit. You failed to prioritize. Your shortcomings are my shortcomings. There were steps you could have taken to prevent such results.”

Lucifer turned his back to MC, deciding that the conversation was over. A frustrated noise escaped between MC's lips as they reached for the decorative pillow, lifting it above their head and tossing it where Lucifer stood a moment ago.

To Satan’s relief, the pillow landed against the floor with a thud and went ignored by Lucifer. As much as Satan would have loved to see Lucifer get hit by a pillow, he didn't want MC to get in more trouble.

“I know it's infuriating,” he said in a gentle tone, placing the pillow on its rightful spot. MC fit perfectly in his arms as he pulled them close. “I know you want to scream, to break things. But you mustn't give into that. It will only cause you more trouble.”

“He doesn't understand.”

“He rarely does,” Satan hummed, his hand rubbing soothing circles against their tense back. MC's hands fisted his shirt, their forehead resting against his shoulder. “It's enough that you know you tried your best even if it goes ignored by Lucifer.”

“I didn't even get a failing grade,” MC complained, their voice raising as anger took over them again. Satan hushed them, his hand moving to caress the back of their head.

“He demands a lot from everyone. He isn't targeting you specifically,” Satan gave a soft smile, holding MC's face between his hands. He squished their cheeks together and chuckled slightly. “Come on. Let's go on a stroll together. Nothing calms the mind quite like nature and good company.”

[idiotwithanipad]

A new Ghosts OC

A lot more tragic and dark this time, so fair warning...

(TW: False accusations, Child abuse, Torture, Punishment, Death, Blood, Bodily harm)

"Foul temptress!"

The Lord's harsh voice boomed from the library. The young girl rested on her knees, cleaning out the ash collector of the furnace, her blistered hands trembled against the cold steel.

Sweat trickled down from her hairline as more and more anxiety piled atop the heat from the fire before her, which, compared to her fear, felt more like a warm bath. She had been accused of a horrible crime; seduction. The Lord's son, a boy of 15, was due to meet a girl of noble birth and wed before the month's end.

The son had mistaken a smile and a nod as foul intentions cast upon the young scullery maid by Satan himself. In a burst of outrage, the son had notified his father, and the price would be paid.

Agatha, her real name, was wrenched through the halls and into the basement. A masked man stood slipping on a pair of thick leather gloves. The other man, which dragged her, never even looked her in the eye as he picked her up and threw her upon a wooden table situated in the centre of the dim candle lit room.

Her hands were bound above her head as she tried her hardest to protest and kick for her life.

"Be still, foul creature!" The man restraining her roared in her ear, causing her to cease her thrashing at once and wince.

"By thy holy Father's name, sir, I beg of you, sir. I committed no crime, sir!" Agatha sobbed.

The cold faced man lifted his gaze from Agatha and up to his fellow man, giving a nod and clamping his hands down onto the girl's shoulders tightly.

Agatha watched in horror as a vice was placed at her right foot, two jagged and roughly chizzled stone slabs were placed meticulously either side of her shoeless foot.

Agatha squealed, the gravity of her situation hitting her like a wet bale of hay. The vice was tightened more and more as she felt the cold slabs press against the sides of her foot.

"Agatha Smith, did'st thou commit the sin of sexual gluttony towards the young sire?" The man behind her asked coldly.

"No!"

The man, who Agatha assumed to be a judge, growled towards his fellow man, a word she wished she didn't hear.

"Tight her"

The lever on the vice was turned one full time, causing the slabs to clamp onto her foot harder, painfully and slowly. Her shrill screams could be heard from the grounds.

"Did'st though tempt the young sir?!"

"No!"

"Tight her!"

More broken bones, more screaming, one less foot to walk on. This long winded game of punishment had proceeded for hours, until her feet were limp sacks of muscle and crushed bones. Slabs of concrete and rock had been piled atop her chest, hours later, she still barely breathed, but she was barely conscious.

Blood had, at one point come gargling from her punctured lungs and her badly beaten and fractured skull had to be covered by a burlap sack to avoid further stains on the wooden table.

"Grant thyself as lucky. You filthy, disgusting heathen. Had I my own methods, I would have your tongue pulled with the tongs from thy evil little throat" The judge sneered at the blood soaked burlap sack.

"We shall continue later. Silence thy tongue, with the grace of God, thou shall still be able to walk up the gallow steps come morning"

She couldn't hear him, her suffering had passed. Her tongue had stilled. And her breathing had ceased.

[eddiemunsonbignaturals]

erica sinclair and eddie munson radicalize each other, actually.

erica is a nonconformist not by philosophy, but by nature. she’s too unapologetically herself and too dedicated to the whole and unfiltered truth to be conned by conservatism once she’s old and curious enough to start actually reading history, outside of IPS sanctioned sources.

she learns what mass hysteria looks like— satanic panic. that time in the gym, after munson has to go on the run, when she’s surrounded by ‘sensible,’ ‘responsible,’ educated people who are meant to be her protectors, she witnesses the real grownups of her town decide to hunt down some of the most kind and vulnerable people she knows, just because some blond w a booming voice and and vendetta he can barely justify gets his hands on a mic and confirms their meanest assumptions. no proof, no sense. no truth at all.

erica realizes then just how stupid and easily cowed others can be, how cruel and careless people with means often are, and it infuriates her. she vows to never act on fear, promises herself she won’t be like the sheep in charge.

her know-it-all sass calcifies into what just looks like a blind rebellious streak, but she’s too smart for that. the rebellion matures into a radical politic, the care, the kindness and determination, that she learns from her big brother luke, joined w her own wit and hunger for truth. she decides that justice, that using that unwavering voice for the voiceless, has always been her calling. all it takes is a nudge in the right direction.

eddie munson, without even meaning to be, is that gateway. eddie comes back from hell so scarred but surrounded by friends, and the newest induction into the family shares his penchant for argument and alternative music. metal wakes erica up to anger in art, and then leads her to punk. there, she finds home. erica hones her anger into something righteous, sharper than ever.

as erica learns more all through high school and after grad, the know-it-all in her just gets stronger.

eddie has known he’s different forever, his sense of self is bolstered and buoyed by this fact. he’s against the mainstream, against yuppie vapidity and hate for its own sake. but then, erica asks him harder and harder questions about what he does believe, what he does ascribe to. is it really rebellion, really “counterculture,’ to anything, if you’re only going against it for the sake of being against something? she asks, doesn’t that just make you a different flavor of follower?

erica pushes him to look deeper, at himself and at the world, asks that his sense of righteous justice finds real systemic targets. not just ‘society,’ or ‘the man,’ he starts to read and really listen, starts to kill his heroes and darlings when he realizes how the aesthetics blind him to the damage they can do.

i think they grow up together, and challenge each other in ways only your scariest sibling can, and they both come out better for good trouble

[smol-and-trashy]

Just a Sip, Darling (Obey Me! vore fic)

A/N: Writing in 2nd person is extremely jarring tbh. I kinda wrote MC more insufferable and spicier than intended...oops. Warning: foodplay and semi-unwilling vore. Enjoy!

________________

Your eyes flash open, and you find yourself in a sea of liquid. It’s dark, tepid, and a burst of chocolate overwhelms your senses. Normally, you aren’t one to complain about an abundance of chocolate, but this was almost too much; it was as if someone kept a perfume sampler strip, topped with chocolate, under your nose and refused to move it. 

You aimlessly wade through the liquid. It isn’t very deep, but it’s still mildly uncomfortable to be constantly gasping, trying not to let yourself be pulled to the bottom by the thick chocolate.

You scramble atop the only thing floating in this sea of warm chocolate--you’re grateful it isn’t scalding, but you can’t understand why anyone would get lukewarm hot chocolate. Hot chocolate is in the very name; it should at least be above room temperature. Still, you make it on top of your makeshift raft, and once you look down, your stomach sinks. 

You’re on a cat. 

Not a real cat, of course. But the impact still hits the same. It’s a cute hot cocoa topping; the liquid isn’t hot enough to completely melt it, so the marshmallow kitty still has most of its form intact. You can’t help but feel a rush of embarrassment about the fact that you’re forced to result to using a marshmallow to stay afloat. 

Suddenly, the door opens and the vibrations send waves of cocoa toward you. Bracing yourself, you cling with all you have to the slippery marshmallow fluff as a shadow looms over your hot chocolate lake. 

The ripples finally settle, and you look up to find Satan peering down at you, quizzically. 

The demon was already tall when you weren’t bug sized, but now he’s reached impossible magnitudes. Only his face fills your vision, while the rest of his body isn’t even visible past your limited line of view. 

“Is that you, MC?” His voice booms over you, and you resist the urge to cover your ears--not wanting to lose your grip and slip back into the liquid. 

“Y’know me, just taking a bath, normal human behavior and all. After all, hot chocolate happens to be great for the skin.” Considering the circumstances, the words slip out of your mouth with surprising ease.

 He blinks and you sigh, your quip wasn’t exactly lost on him, but he was likely one of the last demon brothers to play along with your terrible jokes. 

“No, Satan, I’m not okay. I’m literally the size of your thumb. What part of that is normal?”

 Satan quirks a brow. “So, you’re in there because...” He trails off, expecting some sort of explanation out of you, but unfortunately, you find yourself fresh out of those. Instead, you gesture with one hand to your edible raft for the demon to fill in the gaps himself. 

He doesn’t. 

You roll your eyes and push yourself a little further up on the marshmallow, so half your body isn’t sinking into the cocoa. It’s going to be a pain to get these stains out. You halfheartedly think to yourself as you look back up at Satan, who is still waiting for your explanation. 

“You know, just wanted to try a new experience and all.” 

He doesn’t laugh. His face isn’t completely stoic, though. Thoughts tinker behind those green-blue eyes, unwilling to spare even a glimpse. You sigh, figuring Beel or Mammon would have quite the opposite reaction if they found you instead.

A small grin paints his lips. “You are quite cute like this, MC, but how did you get so small? The only instances I’ve read about humans shifting sizes have unfortunately been constrained to the realm of fiction.” You can sense the underlying concern dripping off his words, and you sigh; your answer will only make him more concerned. 

“Don’t remember.”  

“What?” 

“Yeah. One moment, I was studying up on Devildom history and the next, floating in a sea of hot chocolate.” 

He frowns a bit. “I see,” is all he mumbles, but the faint pink dusting his cheeks doesn’t go unnoticed by you. 

You open your mouth, trying to coax him to at least lift you out of your mug prison, but a strangled chortle escapes instead. You couldn’t help it! But the moment his eyes flash back down at you, regret seeps in. 

“Uh, am I going to be stuck like this?” 

“Maybe,” Satan sighs, hands draping over his eyes and he looks back at you. “If this is a shrinking curse, I’ll gather the proper ingredients to reverse it, but if it isn’t... I guess you’ll just have to be patient for now, until we figure out what to do.” He shakes his head.

You groan loudly, sinking further into your mug prison. 

“Hmph. I should’ve gotten Lucifer’s help. If only he were here to help me out instead of the ever-so-helpful Satan --- here to save the day with zero ideas and no clue; really played my gacha odds here.” You murmur under your breath, but it sounds loud enough to Satan’s sensitive ears. 

“Really now?” Satan leans closer to the cup. “Well, if you think so, then maybe I should make life harder for a certain someone if he can’t find you for a little while.” Satan hums, and your stomach drops. He isn’t going to do what you think he is. He wouldn’t! 

Satan plants himself on the chair, and your heart sinks to your stomach; He totally would. 

He picks up the cup and raises it to his lips. You feel a shiver of dread run down your spine as he stares down at you with a smug look. 

Oh hell no--Frantically, you try swimming away, against the current, from the lip of the mug, but it’s no use. 

Satan laughs, “Don’t worry, I would never let anything happen to you, MC.” 

Though, you’d like to beg to differ, with his green-blue eyes shining with obvious mirth. The giant blond was getting a kick out of this. “But might as well teach you a lesson about that mouth of yours, darling.” 

Before you retort, he takes a sip of the cocoa, swallowing half of it, and you, in one gulp. 

You’re pulled deeper into his throat, and it's tight and hot. You can feel the warmth of the hot chocolate as it washes around you. You struggle for a moment, trying to give him a taste of his own medicine before the thick humid heat hits you immediately as you squeeze through the sphincter and free-fall down, with the remainder of the cocoa, into his belly. 

You take a moment to grasp your surroundings. It’s not as disgusting as you would have thought. Sure, it’s sweltering and stinks to the high heavens like old spit, but noxious food odors or the acrid bite of acids are surprisingly nonexistent. Chalking it down to Satan not exactly being human, you try exploring your surroundings, but you don’t get very far.

It’s tight and dark. After a few unstable steps, you manage to reach another wall, though, in the darkness, you aren’t sure which direction you are facing in the first place.

You slump against the curved wall, and idly, your fingers trace the soft surface lined with a mucous-like substance. You find yourself strangely comfortable, soothed by the rhythmic churning of the Avatar of Wrath’s insides and the warmth of his body. An odd combination of annoyance and contentment washes over you as the darkness slowly lulls you to sleep. 

Outside, Satan flips the page of his book while a hand rests on his middle. He sighs, still experiencing nothing short of utter bliss. It was impossible not to notice MC’s subtle movements and even as they rest, their weight serves as a constant reminder of just how close they are. His eyes feel heavy and he yawns, marking his place in the book and setting his glasses down on the bedside table. 

“Rest well, MC~” He purrs, content as he flickers off the light. 

He’ll let them out in the morning, but right now, he wants to savor this moment with his little darling. 

[inkrabbit]

Movie Night (Copia x GN!Reader)

Summary: Copia has always hated scary movies. But when you ask him to watch one with you, he feigns excitement and agrees. Anything to spend more time with you.

Word count: 2,304

He’s always hated horror movies.

How pathetic, right? The Cardinal of a satanic church, working directly under His Dark Eminence, wasn’t the biggest fan of horror movies.

He knew they weren’t real. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was how his paranoia would spike up as he would become immersed in the film, jumping whenever something would flash on screen… or when Terzo would jolt him, a booming “boo!” having made him scream more than once. You would think that, by now, he would’ve learned to just say no whenever the topic of horror movies came up.

So now here he was, getting ready to watch Us with you tonight. You had approached him with such a large smile, proudly holding up the DVD case. “I got it from one of the sisters!” you had told him excitedly. “And we’re gonna watch it!”

He wishes he could say that he put up a fight; that you twisted his arm and begged until he caved. But that wasn’t the case. All he heard was that you wanted to spend time with him and he feigned excitement, telling you how he had been wanting to see it for a while now. He’s glad you didn’t pick up on how he had to force out the words.

“What was I supposed to do?” Copia’s holding one of his rats in his hand, another sitting on his shoulder. “Say no? And miss my chance?”

He had been trying his hardest to spend more time with you. The day he met you in the library, the two of you talking in hushed voices about your studies and his work, well, it had lit a light inside of him. And the more you two crossed paths, the more he found himself falling for you. Your playful words, the inside jokes you two would create and share. You had even started sitting next to him during morning mass, always giving him that sweet smile as you greeted him.

“I’ve already even seen it…” he groans softly, letting his head hang. It was one of the movies Secondo had also borrowed from the sister, claiming that it wasn’t even that scary. After that night, Copia decided that Secondo was a dirty liar and he couldn’t trust him.

When he picks his head up, he notices Biscuit at the edge of his palms, tiny paws reaching out for him. Copia brings him closer, the rat licking his nose and making him smile.

“Grazie, quello piccolo.” He scratches behind the rat’s ears, hearing the soft bruxing. “I suppose it won’t all be bad, right? I mean, I’ll know when most of the scares are coming. I can even act brave!”

And this thought makes him smile, lifting his spirits. He thinks of you being scared of the movie so he’s able to wrap his arm around you; softly coo at you and tell you that he would never let anything happen to you. Maybe if the time is right, he’ll even give your forehead a little kiss.

“Copia!” His head snaps to his door, seeing you standing just beside the frame, knuckles knocking on the old wood. “You ready?”

“Oh, yes, yes!” He slowly gets up, still cradling Biscuit as he gently puts him back inside the cage. He then extends his arm, letting the other rat slowly crawl down from his shoulder to join his friend.

“They’re so well-behaved,” you comment as you watch. “Did you train them?”

“Hm? No, not that.” He gives you a smile as he closes the cage’s door. “Rats are naturally smart animals. Very ah… empathetic, too.”

“They’re cute.” And his heart flutters when he hears you say that. Most of the siblings had turned their noses up at his pets, and Papa Nihil had even scolded him for taking the rats out on a little stroll through the garden. Hearing you actually take an interest in his pets just made him fall for you more.

“P-please, come in!” He stands, a nervous smile on his face as he looks around. Of course everything is picked up. He had been freaking out over it for the past three hours, anxiously waiting for the night to fall. His candles are lit, something you take note of.

“Setting the mood, Copia?” you tease and his face flushes.

“I thought it would be nice.” You give him a smile, nodding your head as a soft “very nice” escapes your lips. He gently takes the DVD from you, popping it into the disc reader as you take a seat on the couch. He’s hesitant, but he finally joins you, making sure to sit enough away from you so that he’s not invading your bubble.

“This is gonna be fun!” He wants to agree. He wants to tell you he’s just as excited as you are, but he remembers flashes of the horrors he had to endure when he watched this with the other Papas. The movie starts and he notices you shuffle closer to him. His heart hammers in his chest but he welcomes it, flashing you a smile. You both relax against the back of the couch, watching as the intro plays. He notices how you’re smiling out of his peripheral and he feels himself melting. You were the definition of beauty to him and your smile always made him feel better.

The movie starts out slow enough, showing the beginning of the main character’s childhood and the fateful night. His hand grips onto his sweats when the first little jump-scare comes up. Truthfully, it’s not even that bad, but he still hates it. He hates how everything is eerily calm and then one quick motion and something is popping out. You, however, seem to be unfazed by it. He envies you.

It moves on to a more happier time after that, showing the main character all grown up and with her own family. It’s a cute thing to see. Copia absolutely loves how the family interacts with each other. Honestly, he had kept himself at ease by thinking of the parents as you and himself. How he would love to have something more with you, take you out of the abbey on trips and dates and make you smile more. He wanted to be close to you and he wanted to be the reason that you were laughing and smiling.

“I like Gabe,” you tell him quietly and Copia feels his cheeks heat up. So you do like silly guys. Amazing!

The movie continues on, the family visiting the beach. Would you like to go to a beach? There was one a few hours away if he remembered correctly. He could get one of the ghouls to drive, or he could even drive himself if you wanted to just be alone with him. He zones out from the movie for a bit, reveling in the fantasy. Sitting on a towel on the sand, or even playing in the water. He wondered if you knew how to swim. Well, even if you didn’t, he would have no problem picking you up and walking you into the water, and he thinks about your legs wrapped around his waist as he holds you. He wonders how your body would feel against his and how it would feel to have your hand run through his hair.

“JASON!” The screaming of the main character snaps him out of his fantasy and he focuses back on the movie. He knows it’s finally getting into it and he dreads the upcoming scenes. But as it plays out, he notices that you’ve gotten that little bit closer to him, your knee brushing against his. He feels his breath hitch in his throat but he doesn’t dare move. The heat slowly seeps off of you and to him and he feels a shiver run up his spine. Did you know what you did to him?

When the first jump-scare occurs, Copia is ready for it. Luckily for him, you’re not and he notices how you jump at the loud crash. He gives you a small smile, raising his arm.

“I am here to protect you, sì, topolino?” The amused huff you let out makes his heart flutter as he watches you lean into his body, his arm wrapping itself around your shoulders.

“My hero,” you tease softly. He loves hearing you say that. He loves the smile you give him. He loves everything about you.

When the other family is introduced, he notices how you scrunch your face up as the mother starts talking.

“I hope this isn’t how the rest of the movie is going to be,” you grumble softly and he chuckles.

“She is very slow,” he agrees. “and her voice is a bit ah… how you say… unpleasant.”

You’re practically laying against him at this point and Copia wouldn’t have it any other way. He absolutely loves it, his head resting atop yours. The movie’s less scary when you’re cuddled up to him, but he does finally jump at one of the scenes and his face heats up when he hears you let out a soft snicker.

“Copia, are you scared?” you ask him with a teasing voice. He lets out a huff as he pouts.

“I wasn’t expecting it!” he tells you, waving it off. But your laughter sends a wave of comfort over him. He looks down at you, taking in your features as you watch the movie that’s still playing. He’s no longer paying attention to it. You’re more interesting than this stupid film, anyway. And after a while, you finally look at him, brows raised in surprise.

“Is something wrong?” Your voice is gentle and soft, genuine curiosity as you patiently wait for a response. If he wasn’t so much of a coward, he would kiss you right now. But instead, his face burns and he gives you a timid smile.

“Not at all, topolino. Just… admiring you.”

“Copia, do you like me?”

He splutters. “Well… sì.” He shifts uncomfortably. Everything feels like it’s too much, too quick. His shirt rubs against his body, making it itch and he feels how the couch has dipped in the part where your hand presses down against it, right against the side of his leg. “You-” He stops himself to let out a soft sigh. “You’re wonderful. It feels like everything with you is just… right. Like I’m safe around you.”

“Oh, Copia.” Your hand cups his cheek, gentle and warm as he leans into your touch. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I was afraid, amore.” He moves and rests his hand over yours. “I thought you wouldn’t see me in the same light, or maybe you had your sights on someone else.”

“The only person I have my sights on is my Cardinal.” He swears there are fireworks that go off in his stomach you lean in to press your lips against his. He’s melting against you, desperately grabbing at you to keep you close. He’s scared you’ll disappear if he lets go, or that he’ll possibly wake up from some dream. This is all he’s ever wanted for so long and he finally has it.

When you finally pull away, Copia chases after you a bit, his eyes lidded and his face flushed. Still, he matches your sweet smile.

“So, this means you are finally mine, sì?” he asks. He tries to keep the desperation out of his voice, but he’s still he’s failed.

“Only if you’ll have me.” You peck his lips again and he groans softly.

“Forever.” Instead of just leaning against him, you decide to sit in his lap. If his face wasn’t red before, it surely was now. He’s slow, almost hesitant but he finally wraps his arms securely around your waist. You two go back to watching the movie, your head resting on his shoulder. He finally feels at peace, and even the movie doesn’t bother him. Nothing could ruin this moment for him.

Until about fifteen minutes later. Neither of you notice it, but Terzo silently enters the room. The movie’s at just the right part where the tension is thick in the air and the two of you are so engrossed in it. Right as the thunderous music plays for another jump-scare, Terzo lets out a roar, gloved fingers smacking down on Copia’s shoulders and making him jump violently as he lets out an unmanly scream and you cling to him for dear life.

“Terzo!” The man is howling with laughter, doubled over as his hands rest on his knees.

“You should’ve seen your face, Cardinale!” he wheezes out. When he takes a breath, Terzo mimics his reaction before going into another fit of laughter.

“You’re a horrible man!” Copia cries, reaching out to smack his arms. “Go away before I decide to tell Sister!”

“Please, I can’t get in any more trouble,” he gets out being laughs. “She’s still mad when I did this to you last time.”

“Out!” With his hands raised in defense, Terzo finally bows out of the room. But a minute later, he’s poking his head back through the door.

“She dies, by the way,” he tells you two.

“Terzo!” You pick up the pillow that’s beside the arm of the couch, throwing it at the man. With one last toothy grin, he finally leaves for good. You lean against Copia with a huff. “I can’t believe him.”

“He is quite the character…” Still, he gives you a smile. “But at least I got to spend most of the night with you uninterrupted.”

“Yeah. It was nice.” You give him another kiss. “Maybe we could watch another movie sometime… and also close the door.”

He lets out a soft laugh. “Sì. And I suppose a lock is in order, too.”

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

pt XV good omens entire season 1: a nice and accurate summary

@neil-gaiman I like to delude myself into thinking you would be proud of this. Are you?

Hello, Asmi here, I present to you a summary so nice and accurate that if you're feeling masochistic, you can just breeze through this to catch up and then directly rewatch season 2 to cry! Which is what this fandom loves to do, so as mascot I'm here to enable you :") Spoilers here, of course, and a lot of chaos.

Episode One! We open with God narrating the Fall of Man and we've got ourselves a Bible AU, east gate angel/serpent forbidden lovers, quite wonderful really.

The serpent (Crowley) now in human form takes the Antichrist and catwalks across a graveyard. Crowley delivers the Antichrist to Satanic nuns but there are several fuckups.

The East Gate guardian (Amoxicillin) and Crowley raise the wrong baby for eleven years with Amoxicillin being a frightening gardener and Crowley being a gorgeous nanny.

They realise the baby is wrong. The real Antichrist wasn't raised by them and therefore owns braincells. He names his hellhound Dog.

Episode Two! Gabriel the angel is an ass, we get some nice witch-burning of Agnes Nutter who made prophecies, and oh yeah the apocalypse is now happening and the horsepeople are out.

Nutter's descendant finds the Antichrist and friends and is hit by Azithromycin and Crowley who are in love. Things happen but what is important is Azithromycin and Crowley stare at each other and also Dog faces off a tabby. Azithromycin lies to Heaven.

Episode Three! Crowley looks gorgeous at Noah's ark, Architecture tries not to listen to her about how shit it all is, boom flood dead.

Lots of romantic flashbacks with Archibald and Crowley, medieval, shakespeare, french revolution etc etc lots of sexual tension, Archibald is in handcuffs, Crowley rescues his books from a Nazi bombing.

Antihistamine gives Crowley holy water, breakup breakup, paintball, sexual tension wall slam, bandstand breakup, it is very sad.

Episode Four! Duck aliens invade earth, the Antichrist possesses children, Crowley and Aripiprazole are incompetent at heroics. Aripiprazole is sent to heaven and everything is on fire.

Episode Five! Crowley is very very sad and Antibiotics reappears and possesses a lady, there is vague hetero sex, Crowley is useless, Antibiotics is the posh gay, everything is still on fire.

Episode Six! Big apocalypse face-off, Crowley's car blows up, no one comforts him, Arsphenamine is now back in his body, eleven year olds kill the horsepeople because Crowley and Arsphenamine are still useless, the Antichrist solves his daddy issues.

Crowley and Antipyretic switch places to survive and then they go out to drink and toast to the world and everyone cries.

THE END! WAHOO!

[I am so, so sorry to everyone who was involved in the production of this show. You deserved better than this summary. But this is what you got. Blame the fandom, I am only a figurehead and mascot.]