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dewphomet · 10 days ago

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TDF chapter 3: Smile

The past few months have been rough for me but I’m back on that fanfiction grind.

Dew is having a real bad time in this one. This is the only chapter where his headspace will get this dark so don’t worry, he’ll be fine. This is his rock bottom and he’s going up from here.

psps I made a playlist

Read below or on ao3!

Words: 4062

Warnings: Dissociation, self-destructive behavior/allusion to self-harm, BPD split and the thoughts that come with that, flashbacks, description of physical abuse and injury, description of emotional abuse, religious trauma, panic attack, vomit mention

Taglist: @skele-bunny @rain-loves-scallops @dewphomet @0-miles-away

Dew taps the bottom of a tiny espresso mug on the counter and tosses it back like a shot. Unfortunately, it’s very hot. He should’ve known that, considering he had just made it, but he was tired. Which is why he’s currently choking down a scalding shot of espresso at 8 in the morning.

“Fuck- god-“ Dew hisses, diving for the sink to fill the tiny cup with water to soothe his burning mouth. It helps a little. “Ow- goddamnit-“

Luckily everyone else is in the kitchen, so Dew is saved from embarrassment for now. He places the little mug into the dirty dish bin and returns his attention to setting up the grinders. Ow. There goes my sense of taste.

Cumulus pushes the curtain in the kitchen doorway out of the way, carrying a tray of various baked goods with her. Dew steps aside to let her pass and she gets to work stocking the glass display case.

“You doin’ alright, hun?” She asks, setting muffins onto a tray in perfectly even rows. “Sorry we had to call ya in early, Sunny’s got some kinda stomach bug.”

“I’m alright, it’s no problem.” Dew lies through his teeth. It’s not like he’d been up all night, grinding his teeth and pacing. He just has to make it through the next five hours and then he can go home and sleep.

Cumulus cocks a bushy eyebrow at him but says nothing. She offers him a cranberry muffin from the tray. Dew takes it gratefully.

“Take care of yourself today, Dew.” She tells him softly before turning back to the pastry trays. Dew nods silently, too busy shoving the muffin into his mouth to answer. He checks the clock- ten minutes to opening.

Luckily, he can somewhat taste the muffin with his scorched tongue. It cheers him up slightly. Unfortunately the heavy tightness in his chest and throat doesn’t budge. It’s been there since last night when the shell holding all his unhelpful emotions in a tight little ball cracked and began to leak.

“Well look who’s up!” Swiss crows, sweeping past Dew to restock the stack of paper to-go bags in a drawer behind the counter. “Never thought I’d see you conscious before ten AM. What was it? An act of god? Three ghosts showing up and convincing you to have a change of heart?”

“Sunny’s hangover, actually.” Dew rolls his eyes. “Didn’t think she’d be the kind of person to drink on a Sunday night.”

“Oh, no, she’s actually sick.” Swiss’s normally cheerful, slightly mischievous expression fades for a moment. “I got up at 5 to get her ginger ale and saltines, and you know how much she hates bothering people.” He chews on his lip.

“Shit, sorry.” Guilt joins the wad of half-chewed emotions in Dew’s gut. “I hope she’s doing okay.”

“Me too,” Swiss sighs. “She’ll be fine, don’t worry.” He takes the hair tie off his wrist and pulls his locs back into their usual high ponytail. “I would offer to take the register but Cirrus wants me in the kitchen.”

Dew sighs. “I’ll try not to kill anyone.”

“Good luck.” Swiss gives a two-finger salute and disappears back into the kitchen. Dew walks around the counter, trudges to the front door, and unlocks it. The neon ‘open’ sign is flicked on. Dew looks at his reflection in the window in the harsh light. He looks half-dead. Feels like it too.

He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and heaves a sigh. If he has to take an extra smoke break to give himself the strength to make it through his shift, so be it. His lungs aren’t getting any less shriveled.

Dew is pulled from his tired thoughts by a soft tap on the glass door. He sighs again and lowers his hands to pull the cafe door open. “Sorry, come in. Spaced out a bit.”

“No worries. Good to see you again, though!” A familiar voice, deep and smooth and the subject of a few late-night fantasies. Dew’s head snaps up fast enough to make his neck pop. Aether stands before him, wearing- oh good lord, are those scrubs ?

“Uh- give me a sec.” Dew scampers back behind the counter and takes the precious few seconds he has to process this new information. He curses his stupid medical kink. If there is a god, he has a sick sense of humor.

He taps on the dark screen of the register, willing it to turn on. After a few seconds of increasingly harder taps on the display, he realizes he should press the on button. Why didn’t he turn it on before opening?

“Um- it takes a minute to turn on.” Dew chuckles nervously. Unlike me, who’s pitching a tent over a customer in scrubs.

“That’s alright. I’m not in a hurry.” Aether smiles. “I usually wouldn’t come in until later but I have to shadow a nurse this morning. Twelve hour shift on a Monday.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

“Is that what you’re studying?” Dew asks, his hands frantically navigating to the right screen. Curse this stupid digital register. “Nursing, I mean.”

“Yeah!” Aether seems to perk up. “I’m specializing in obstetrics and neonatal care. Midwife stuff.”

“Oh, that’s cool.” Dew answers sincerely. Would he give me a pelvic exam if I as-

SHUT UP, Dew scolds his horny thoughts. The register finally boots up to the transaction screen and he sighs with relief.

“What can I get for ya?” He asks, holding back a yawn. Aether considers the menu on the back wall for a moment.

“Hmm… I’d like a large iced dirty chai with… four shots of espresso.” Aether requests. Dew raises an eyebrow as he punches in the order.

“Four? You trying to meet a fifth dimensional being today?” He jokes, grabbing a cold cup and a sharpie.

To his surprise and delight, Aether giggles, ending in an adorable snort. “Nah, I just need a lotta energy. Twelve hour shift, remember?”

“Yeah- I think I’d do the same.” Dew rings up the order. “Uh- $7.43.”

Aether hands over a lightly crumpled ten and his punch card. Dew punches it- a smiley face this time- and slides it back over the counter with Aether’s change. “I’ll have that ready soon.”

“Thanks.” Aether smiles- that goddamn smile- and steps back to stuff his change back into his wallet. Dew’s tired mind drifts as he goes into autopilot making the espresso. He’d like to see that smile and those crooked teeth more. Especially if he was the one causing Aether to smile.

Then his daydreams come crashing down. A guy like Aether was surely taken. He had a partner, a fiancé, maybe even a spouse. Dew wasn’t going to break up a relationship because of a fleeting crush.

It’ll pass . He scolds himself. The chai concentrate and milk are added to the cup and the espresso is poured on top. You have to get yourself together. Focus on what’s important. He doesn’t smile as he slides the drink across the counter toward Aether.

“Here ya go,” he recites in his customer service voice. “Have a good one.”

“You too, thanks Dew.” Aether smiles as he scoops up his drink- god, his hands are huge. Dew waits until the man is out the door before slamming the side of his fist against the countertop in anger. Tears prickle at his eyes- why does everything have to be so hard ? Why can’t he just focus on work and making music and functioning as an adult without his feelings getting in the way?

He wants to scream and curl up in a ball under the register counter and cry. It reminds him of the time he’d accidentally dropped a bottle of some mechanical fluid while poking around his father’s tool shed. The aged plastic had cracked and begun leaking dark and sticky fluid onto his favorite shoes. He’d tried to fix it, put duct tape over the crack and scrubbed the cement floor clean, but his shoes were ruined. He had begged his parents for them, red and yellow with velcro closures and the number 95 emblazoned across the side. Cars was his favorite movie for most of his childhood. He had crawled under the workbench and cried until his father found him and scolded him for snooping.

That same cornered, hopeless feeling blooms in his chest now. He wants to go home- at least now he has a home. That scared little girl never had a “home” to go to. All she could do was hunker down and weather the punches.

Dew thinks he would rather relive his entire teenage experience than have his own mind turn against him like this. He’s scared and tired and he doesn’t know what to do. So he does the easiest thing he can think of- shuts down his brain and takes orders. During quieter moments, he cleans the machines. He has to keep his hands busy. He makes a to-do list in his brain:

Take a nap once I get home

Re-string guitar

Shower- NO JERKING OFF.

Check on that tupperware of mold in the fridge, note new colors. Report back to Rain.

Some time passes. He takes orders, warms baked goods, gives customers hollow smiles, and doesn’t. think. This works until his smoke break. Dew sparks up a cigarette and uses the taste of smoke to ground himself.

Nurse Aether would have a fit if he caught me smoking. Dew thinks to himself with a dry chuckle. The hoodie he’d brought with him isn’t warm enough to keep him comfortable so he cuts his smoke break short and heads inside. He stops at the cramped employee bathroom to piss.

Ohhhhh. That’s why I’ve been feeling like shit.

Luckily the box of menstrual products under the sink is fully stocked. Dew digs out a tampon, grinding his teeth at the gaudy pink wrapper. It doesn’t usually bother him but right now it feels like a kick in the ribs while he’s already down.

You go girl! The wrapper taunts him. Dew throws it back into the box and pulls out another one. #Girlboss! It reads.

“Okay, well, fuck you too.” Dew grumbles. He pulls out another one- Breathe and center yourself. That wouldn’t be too bad, if not for the Venus symbol emblazoned next to the words. He tosses that one back too and groans.

God, he wants to go home. That way he can put on his period boxers and not worry about shoving chemical-filled cotton up his pussy. A pad would move around too much in his boxers so he’s forced to resort to the alternative.

Dew gives the tampons one last try. They’re merciful this time, giving him a yellow wrapper and the words dream big.

One haphazard insertion (cold fingers are not the most dexterous with smooth plastic) later, he’s feeling slightly more put together. At least his pants are black today.

His reflection looks back at him in the mirror- he swears the hollows of his throat and cheekbones seem sharper than usual. He looks like a skeleton. He feels sweaty, even though his fingers are still numb from the cold. His tongue and throat are tender from that shot of near-boiling espresso. The taste of smoke makes him almost nauseous.

Dew swallows and looks at his watch. He has two hours left on his shift. His body tells him to go home but his stubbornness wins out. Two hours is nothing.

The cramps hit after about 45 minutes. Luckily Dew’s on dish duty so he can hunch over the sink and grit his teeth and power through. He just wants to go home. Cirrus pulls him aside twenty minutes later. Dew expects her to ask him to stay for another hour or two- she’s got that slightly stressed look on her face.

“How long do you need me for?” Dew asks, trying not to look too disappointed. Cirrus shakes her head.

“I want you to go home. Frankly, you look like you’ve been through war.” She pats his shoulder. “You have PTO. Give yourself a few days to rest, alright?” Dew opens his mouth to protest but she squeezes his shoulder in a comforting yet slightly threatening way. “ Rest. ”

The care and concern in her eyes is the final straw. Dew crumbles into pieces, his carefully built shell around all his emotions shattering. A sob works its way out of his throat and his knees buckle. Cirrus catches him and lets him lay his head on her shoulder.

God, he feels pathetic. He hasn’t cried in six years- not since the night he’d slipped out the back door of his parents house with his guitar, a backpack, and a greyhound bus ticket. He’d promised himself he’d be strong. Turns out it only took a sleepless night and a spiral over a fleeting crush to break him.

“It’s okay, buddy.” Cirrus murmurs to him. “Let it out. No judgement.”

“I wanna go home…” Dew whimpers into her shoulder. He’s going to get fired for this, but right now he doesn’t care.

“You can go. Take all the time you need.” Cirrus replies. “I won’t tell anyone about this.”

Dew nods. He doesn’t trust that she’ll keep his moment of weakness a secret but he appreciates the facade of security. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“You’ll come back as soon as you feel better .” Cirrus corrects him, pulling back and holding him at arm’s length. “Don’t force yourself.”

“Okay.” Dew swallows. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Cirrus shrugs. “Just promise me you’ll take care of yourself.” She holds out her pinky.

Dew looks at the offered finger and links his own pinkie around hers. It makes him smile a bit, he has to admit. “Deal.”

The walk home is bitterly cold and his fingers are stiff as he unlocks his door. He groans as the heat of the apartment envelops him. Thank fuck the heating system decided to work today.

Dew kicks off his boots and makes a beeline for his bedroom. He collapses into bed and burrows under the covers fully clothed. He’s fully expecting to close his eyes and drift off easily, but… sleep doesn’t take him.

Fuck. He knew he shouldn’t have overdone the caffeine today. His heart and brain are racing. He rolls onto his stomach and screams into the pillow.

The scream turns into a sob and now he’s crying again. God FUCKING damnit. He doesn’t even fight it this time. There’s no one home to witness his weakness. So Dew sobs and screams into his pillow and curls into a tear-stained ball.

He manages to cry himself to sleep for a merciful few hours. The dreams he manages to remember consist of dark rainy highways, dingy bus lighting, and faceless strangers.

Dew drifts awake sometime later to the sound of Rain’s footsteps. For a guy built like uncooked spaghetti, he can really stomp.

Through the gaps in his curtains he can see that it’s dark. Granted, it’s November so that could mean it’s anytime between 5 PM and 8 AM.

He looks around blearily for his phone and discovers it in the pocket of his jeans. He’s shivering and absolutely soaked in sweat. Gross.

It’s 6 PM. Five and a half hours of sleep are better than nothing. Dew drags himself out of bed with a pained groan and pushes his hair out of his face. Shower, then eat.

So he does just that- peels his clothes off in front of the bathroom mirror, turns the water temperature up as hot as he can stand, and stands in the shower for what feels like hours until the stickiness melts off his skin. He tastes salt- he’s crying again.

“ Why?” Dew whimpers to himself, sinking to his knees. His chest aches deeply as he takes desperate gulps of air. Oh no. Please no.

His heart is pounding and his hands are shaking.

He kneels in the shower, one hand clasped over his mouth to muffle his sobs. On the shower floor is a necklace, the delicate gold chain snapped. The heart locket pendant is open, the photos inside unrecognizable from water damage.

Why was this happening now? Today of all days?

Dew wants to scream and punch the wall. He wants to rip that fucker apart with his teeth. He picks up the locket and rips the two halves apart.

He’d TRUSTED him. He’d laid on the roof and smoked weed with him, telling each other the things they each kept hidden. He’d spent countless steamy nights in the back of his car. Dew’s guitar was a birthday present from him, secretly bought with his parents’ credit card.

Then he’d turned around and told the whole school EVERYTHING. He’d gone from sharing knowing glances and stealing kisses in the school bathroom to spreading Dew’s secrets to the entire school- and worse- the church.

Dew’s jaw aches from how hard he’s clenching it. Old anger wells up in his tear ducts. He was why Dew had sworn off romance. He couldn’t be betrayed like that again. It would destroy him.

The shower starts to cool down, snapping Dew out of his misery for the moment. He gets out and dries off. He doesn’t care that he gets blood all over his towel or his hair drips all over the floor. Keep moving. Don’t let your past catch up.

So he dries his body and hair, goes through the ordeal of dealing with his tampon, and finally slips his period boxers on. He washes his face, examines the faint wisps of a mustache on his upper lip and sighs. Dysphoria is a bitch.

Dew wanders to the kitchen, still feeling hollow with exhaustion and disorientation. It doesn’t help that he’s hungry too so he digs a mini pizza out of the freezer and pops it in the microwave.

It spins. And spins. Around and around. Like swirls of blood going down the shower drain or lazy curls of smoke. Dew suddenly doesn’t feel hungry. He leaves his pizza in the microwave and curls up on the couch. The microwave beeps at him and he flips it the bird.

The crumpled paper buried in his dresser drawer crosses his mind. He could write. It seemed to help a few days ago.

Dew doesn’t feel like getting up so he snags a pen off the coffee table with his foot and rolls up his sleeve to use his arm as a makeshift journal page. There’s not much space so he tries to write down one-word descriptors. Angry. Tired. Frustrated. Violent. Betrayal. A

Dew stops before he can write the name. He licks his thumb and smears the ink away. Him. Horrible ex.

Scared. Dew pauses. He is scared. Scared of being rejected, scared of peeling away the layers of armor around his heart and exposing his weak spot. His Achilles heel.

Achilles was hella gay, wasn’t he? Yeah. For that other guy. Patroclus. Dew had learned about the story in English class. His teacher had glossed over their relationship as “brotherly comradery” but Dew’s little closeted brain had known better. He found a retelling of the story online and secretly downloaded the PDF to his phone.

The ending had made him sob for hours. It was so beautifully tragic. At the time, he’d hoped that maybe his story would be different. That his mother would accept him before it was too late, before he was buried.

That was a naive fucking fantasy. His mother had clung so hard to her vision of a perfect blonde-haired blue-eyed Catholic daughter that her claws left permanent scars.

Dew’s hand- the one holding the pen- drifts to the back of his head. Speaking of scars…

His vision tunnels and his breath hitches. Here he goes again.

The scent of butternut squash. Dew’s mother had come to the dinner with a stack of Dew’s journals- neatly tabbed and annotated- and read out every entry detailing his process of questioning his faith. Thank fuck he hadn’t written down any of his gender crisis.

He’d been forced to sit there and swallow back tears as his parents told him he was weak, he was stupid, he was letting the devil in.

Dew had mustered up enough courage to snap back. He’d stood up and gone to storm out of the kitchen.

His mother cornered him. He tried to duck and slip past her.

Pain exploded across his face as the back of her hand connected with his cheek. He reeled and lost his balance.

A flash of pain, so bright he could see it. Like a thousand suns.

Stars. Pain. It hurt so much. He tasted pennies. The kitchen ceiling swam above him as his parents yelled at each other. It felt like a dream. His stomach churned with nausea.

He barely managed to muster the strength to turn his head before his dinner came up all over the floor. Something warm and wet was soaking into the back of his sweater. He wanted to wake up from this nightmare.

His memory was choppy from that moment. Trees speeding by outside a car window, sterile lights of a hospital, doctors shining lights in his face. A machine where he had to lie really still as it beeped and rotated around his head.

“Dew?”

Finally he was carried back into the house and laid on the couch. His parents stood over him and told him in concerned voices that this had happened because he had let the devil into his heart. Dew was too dazed and tired to argue so he nodded his head and apologized.

“Dew? Dude, you okay?”

His rosary was placed in his hands and he was ordered to pray. He did, begging forgiveness from a god that never answered until he was allowed to sl-

“Dewdrop!”

Dew’s eyes snap open. There’s a hand on his shoulder- he flinches away from it.

“Sorry- dude, you okay?” Rain is crouched next to the couch, big blue eyes wide and worried.

Dew is too tired to pretend. He shakes his head and bursts into tears again.

“Woah, woah. Can I sit with you?” Rain asks softly. Dew nods.

Over the next few hours, Dew splits himself open. It hurts, but fuck it feels good to release everything. Rain wouldn’t tell anyone anyway. He starts by telling him about Aether. His stupid gorgeous puppy crush. Then his fear of relationships, then his shitbag ex, then the flashback Rain had interrupted. He probably wasn’t coherent for a lot of it but his friend seemed to understand.

“…That’s fucked up.” Rain tells him after a moment of silence. “I’m… so sorry.”

“Not your fault.” Dew sniffles, muffled by the blanket his face is buried in. “Thanks for listening.”

“Anytime.” Dew feels Rain shift awkwardly on the couch. “Can I get you something?”

“Made a microwave pizza. Can you reheat it for me?” Dew asks. Rain nods and gets up.

“And… stay with me?” Dew adds sheepishly. “I can’t be alone right now. I’ll smoke myself to death or-“ he stops and swallows. “Something worse.”

“Got it.” Rain shoots him a smile. “Want a soda?”

“ Please. Did you get another case?”

“Yep. Splurged a bit and got a case of cherry coke too.” Rain opens the fridge and grabs two cans.

“Fancy.” Dew manages to smile- a genuine one. It’s shaky but it’s real. He takes the plate of pizza and the can of off-brand Dr. Pepper with a grateful nod.

“I had some extra change.” Rain shrugs, popping open his can. There’s an expression on his face that makes Dew raise his eyebrow.

“Who’d you suck off?”

“Oh, shut up.” Rain elbows him. “Just a quick coding commission. Someone wanted an in-browser game to put on their website.”

“Alriiiight.” Dew still has suspicions, but he leaves it alone. Not his business anyway.

The two of them stay there, laughing and talking until well past midnight. Dew feels like a weight has been lifted from his chest. By the time he heads off to bed, he feels vastly better. He changes into pajamas and crawls under the blankets.

Maybe Aether won’t be as bad as the last guy, he thinks before sleep takes him.

Kudos and comments on ao3 are greatly appreciated!

#Awe Dew buddy :((#please someone give him a hug #bless Cirrus and Rain #the band ghost #dewther #nameless ghouls #fic tag

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dewphomet · 26 days ago

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Into The Eyes Of Fire (Chapter 6)

[prologue] [part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4] [part 5] [part 6]

Rating: Mature (nothing sexual, lightly graphic depictions of the Fall of Lucifer) Pairing: Aether/Dew Featuring: An uncomfortable reunion. A pair of broken hearts, badly healed. A job offer. A new friend. Religious discussion. Dew's piety. Aether learns a little more about God than he's prepared for. Mountain's temper. Paprika potatoes and coffee. Word Count: 10.5k

Warnings: I shouldn't need to say this at this point, but just in case you're only just coming to this series: there's a lot of blasphemy. Lucifer is depicted as the good guy in this fic. If you don't like that, please go and read something else. There's a lot of angst, both about The Fall and Aether's personal relationships, if you've read Ch5 you know what I mean. Details in the OP tags, as always.

Wow can you believe it's only been two weeks since I posted Chapter 5? Weird how time works.

The first thing he became aware of was sunlight on the other side of his eyelids.

The second was the soft sound of rustling fabric.

The third, and by far the most startling, was that he was not in his own bed.

With a jolt and a sharp intake of breath, his eyes snapped open as a spike of panic first lanced through him, then vanished almost as soon as it came as the memory of the night before swept through his mind.

The ritual. The Abbey. Dew.

“Aether?”

With a soft grumble, he rolled heavily onto his back and let his head flop to the side. Through his bleary, half-open eyes, he managed to make out a familiar figure across the room, but his sleep-addled mind wouldn’t let him process much more than that.

“You okay?” He heard a smile in Dew’s voice.

“Mrmph.”

Dew chuckled quietly. “You’re really not a morning person, huh?”

“Mrrrrr.” Aether tried to sit up, failed miserably, and let himself collapse back into the soft embrace of the fur beneath him. “Whach’doin’?”

“Getting dressed for morning Mass.”

Aether’s bleary eyes snapped open automatically as his instincts kicked in. “Mass. Right.” With a loud groan, he forced himself halfway into a sitting position, holding himself up with his elbows and sheer force of will. “What’s the dress code?”

Before he knew what was happening, a warm hand had settled on his shoulder and pushed him backwards, and he was powerless to prevent himself flopping back onto the mattress. “I said I’m going to Mass. You stay here and sleep.”

“Can’t jus’ -”

“Aether, I know you’re not a Catholic anymore but you’re not a Satanist either, you don’t need to force yourself out of bed out of some misplaced obligation.”

He attempted to glare up at Dew and barely succeeded in getting his eyes all the way open. “If ‘m in your house, I should r’spect your religion.”

He only just registered Dew rolling his eyes, before the ghoul leaned down and kissed his forehead gently. “You know the seven deadly sins?” he murmured, and Aether nodded just to feel his skin brush against Dew’s lips. “Sloth is one of them. If you really want to respect my religion, try indulging in it for a while.”

With another weak mrrrr of reluctant acceptance, Aether wriggled onto his side and pulled the pillow into place under his head. He heard Dew breathe out a quiet laugh, and felt the warmth of his presence recede.

“Mount’ll probably make breakfast when he wakes up. Don’t let him bully you, just help yourself. And if he doesn’t, anything in the kitchen is open hunting.”

Aether gave a short mumble of acknowledgement.

“Hey, Aeth.”

“What.”

“You wanna see something spooky?”

“Last time y’said something like that, I grew a kink for a thing I didn’t even know was a thing,” Aether grumbled, and Dew snickered proudly. With a yawn, Aether forced his eyes open and turned his head to look at Dew. “Is it the long black robes? B’c’se I’ve seen those on Omega already.”

“Nah, it’s this.” With a series of movements that went too quickly for Aether’s sleepy mind to track, suddenly Dew’s face and hair were obscured by the same squared-off pointed mask and hood that the older ghoul had been wearing the night before. On Omega, the effect had been ominous, but Dew looked downright threatening, even if Aether could see the familiar glitter in his eyes. Something about his sharp, thin body wrapped in all that black prickled Aether’s prey senses in a completely different way than Omega’s rounded muscle.

“... Why?” he eventually managed to ask, and Dew chuckled behind his mask.

“I told you. Spooky.” He adjusted the hood over his forehead and made his way across the room to the door. “Go back to sleep. You deserve it.”

Aether only just remembered thinking I do deserve it before the door clicked closed and he drifted back to sleep.

He didn’t know how much longer he slept, but the sunlight streaming in through the tall windows was warm by the time he floated back into consciousness, his mind now far more willing to be awake. For a while, he just allowed himself to relax - rolled onto his back and let himself stretch out in the comfort of Dew’s bed and truly absorb the feeling of having nothing to do.

Then he found himself thinking a little too hard, and decided it was time to get up.

He felt a little guilty, letting his eyes wander around Dew’s bathroom as he washed his hands. It felt a little invasive, to just… look at the most intimate parts of Dew’s life, scattered neatly around like exhibits. But, he reasoned, Dew had had plenty of time while he was getting dressed to deal with the situation. Anything that was considered too private to be seen had probably been put away. So he let himself look curiously at the flat seashell the size of his palm full of what looked like leather strings. The curiously-shaped clay pot filled with a dark green salve that smelled of nothing Aether had ever smelled before, labelled in a strange script in a looping, slanted hand. The strange flat wooden object with what must have been a toothbrush resting in a notch at one end and a section the size and shape of a matchbox at the other. His hand drifted towards it, intent on opening the little lid, but that, he decided, really would be an invasion of privacy.

When he wandered into the kitchen ten minutes later, dressed in what he hoped was an acceptable outfit for slobbing around a Satanic abbey, he was mildly disappointed to find no scents of breakfast waiting for him. But, he reasoned as he opened the cabinet he knew Ifrit kept his coffee in, Mountain had made his feelings about him very clear. He was civil, even friendly sometimes. But it was obviously for the benefit of the others, and under their influence. He could feel the loyalty Mountain held to the ghoul who used to be Aether’s own best friend. He had no right to expect Mountain to haul himself out of bed to make breakfast for him.

The kitchen filled with the scent of coffee, of toasting bread. He found a jar with a bright purple label in the fridge, half-full of a dark jam that smelled of sweet summer berries, and decided that putting some of the contents on his toast probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. Standing in the warmth of the sunlight streaming through the windows, gazing out sleepily across the grounds outside, filling himself with coffee and bread and jam, fresh out of the bed of a gorgeous man (or at least, a man-shaped being)... for just a moment, the knot in his chest untied itself for the first time in years.

And then the sound of shuffling footsteps and the tap of a cane reached his ears, and it tightened again more than ever.

He heard Zeph reach the kitchen doorway and hesitate at the sight of his back. Heard them draw in a quiet breath, heard their cane tap a few times as they adjusted their footing. He refused to turn around. If he had his way, he wouldn’t even acknowledge their presence.

“I can come back later, if you want.”

“Don’t let me get in your way,” he heard himself snap back, sharp as a blade and just as cold, and Zeph sighed softly. A moment later, the sound of the footsteps changed as they moved from the carpet of the common room to the stone of the kitchen floor, and a cabinet opened and closed. He stared resolutely out of the window, over the grass and forest that, only a minute ago, had filled him with such peace and joy, while a mug was set down in his periphery as Zeph poured themself some coffee.

“Mountain says sorry he didn’t make breakfast,” Zeph murmured after a few seconds. “He’s having a bad everything day.”

Aether huffed out a reluctant noise, barely enough to acknowledge that Zeph had spoken, and they sighed again, heavier this time, as they shuffled away and sat down at the big wooden table with a quiet pained groan.

“Arthur -”

“I don’t want to speak to you,” Aether spat, looking down into the dregs of his coffee in the vain hopes that it would keep him calm.

“Arch, come on -”

“Don’t call me that.” He was lucky the mug in his hand didn’t crack from how hard he set it down on the counter. He heard Zeph flinch behind him, but the twinge of guilt in his chest was easily swallowed by the anger that flared back into life after its peaceful night’s rest. “You lost the right to call me that the night you left.” Me, he managed to bite back just in time. The night you left me.

“What else was I supposed to do?” Zeph shot back, and it took every ounce of control in Aether’s body to ignore the desperate note of pleading in their voice.

“You weren’t supposed to run away in the dead of night without even telling me where you were going.”

“I didn’t know where I was going!” they insisted. “I just knew I couldn’t stay there anymore! Telling you wouldn’t have accomplished anything, it’s not like you would have come with me -”

“I would have followed you to the ends of the earth if you’d asked me to!”

“- and I didn’t want to put you in any more danger than I already had!” they continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. Aether finally let himself meet their eyes, and wished immediately that he hadn’t as he took in the haunted, exhausted hopelessness he saw there. “I was… Arch, see this from my point of view.” Aether scoffed out his disdain for the nickname again, but didn’t interrupt this time. “I betrayed you. I corrupted you. You could have gone your whole life without finding the things I dredged up in you -”

“Oh, I was gay long before you got your hands on me, remember?” Aether hissed.

“And you were good at hiding it!” Zeke shot back. “You hid it from yourself until that night, Arch, I saw it in your eyes, you didn’t even know what it looked like until you saw it in me!”

Aether tutted out a scornful sound he’d only learned in the past couple of days. “You make the whole thing sound so poetic.”

Zeph scrubbed desperately at their face with one hand like that would wipe away the last decade of pain. “You were the good one, Arthur. You were good and holy and righteous, and me and all my sin took everything that was good in you and broke it to pieces. You were there because you believed it, you were there for Lizzie but I -”

“You keep my sister’s name out of your fucking mouth.”

A deadly, acid-bitter silence fell over the kitchen. Nothing but the muted sounds of the world outside the window, the gentle hum of the fridge, a soft click from the coffee machine that sounded as loud as a tomb slamming closed.

“I had to lie to them,” Aether murmured at last, his voice shaking and as soft as a raven’s wing between them. “They dragged me into Father Thomas’s office and interrogated me for hours about what…” He trailed off, unable and unwilling to finish, but the way Zeph’s breath hitched told him they understood. “And I knew that if they knew the truth, they’d make me leave. They’d kick me out of the only place I had left in the world. I couldn’t go back home, you know what my parents thought of me by then.” With a burst of courage he didn’t know he possessed, he looked into Zeph’s eyes again. “So I had to lie about you. I didn’t tell them any details - even after everything, I couldn’t make myself do that to you. But I told them you’d tricked me, talked me into it all, I had to look Father Thomas and Brother Martin in the eye and make them believe that you’d grabbed my hand and dragged me astray, when I knew in my heart I’d follow you into Hell itself if I saw you walking there.”

Zeph’s lips curled into something that anyone else would call a smile. Aether knew them too well, even after everything, to know differently. “And now here you are, after all.”

Aether scoffed so hard, his throat hurt. “Here you are. Even when I try to run, I can’t get away from you.”

“You think this is easy for me, either?” they demanded, with more emotion than Aether had heard from him since he’d arrived. He blinked, startled, but they barely paused. “You think I heard Omega tell me just who Dew was bringing back and the sound of your name didn’t burn me like a fucking brand?”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure this is -”

“You think there hasn’t been a day since I ran like a fucking coward that I haven’t thought about you?!” they spat harshly. “I thought, at the very least, that the one thing I could count on was that I’d never have to look in your eyes again. I might be damned, but I hoped that at least I was free.” Their voice caught harshly in their throat, a broken, half-formed sob threatening to break, and they looked away from Aether at last to bury their head in their hands. “Why here, Arch? Of all the places, of all the things you could have done, why did you have to come here?”

“What else was I supposed to do?” he echoed, and Zeph let out a weak little laugh at their own words thrown back in their face. “I couldn’t stay there, Zeke, not anymore.”

“So it’s fine for you to run away, but when I do it, it’s a betrayal?”

Aether let out a disgusted scoff. He could see plainly on Zeph’s face that, even after all these years, they still recognized it as what it was: an acknowledgement that he had nothing to say in return.

“Arthur, I swear, if I’d -”

“Yeah, and if St Justin spoke Hebrew, we could all be having a nap right now,” he cut over them, more instinct than reply. And oh, the way Zeph’s face crumpled at that, half grief, half joy, could have broken his heart if it hadn’t been so wrapped in years-old suffering.

“You remember that?”

Aether sighed. “Of course I remember it,” he said, soft and defeated. “Of course I remember the last thing I ever said before you ruined my life.”

Zeph was silent for so long, it started to hurt. “Did I ruin it,” they murmured at last, “or did I just show you what it really was?”

With a bitter laugh, Aether pushed himself off the counter he’d been leaning on and turned to leave the kitchen. “Don’t act like you ever fucking cared about me, Ezekiel.”

“Cared about you?!” they demanded to his retreating back. “Of course I fucking cared about you, Arthur, I fucking loved you!”

“You loved me?!” Aether span on his heel, his body and mind suddenly filled with a white-hot rage that burned like the hand of the Devil himself. “If you loved me, Zeke, why did you leave? Why didn’t you tell me you were going?!”

“Arch -”

“If you loved me,” he pushed on, his eyes blurring with tears, almost screaming with the decade-old ache of abandonment burning every inch of his soul, “why didn’t you take me with you?!”

The words visibly hit them like a fist to the gut, and Aether felt the flare of guilt again before he forced it down, behind his heart.

“If you really loved me, Zeke,” he continued, his voice quieter now but no less full of agonized grief, “why did you run away from the scraps we fought to build for ourselves and leave me to deal with the fallout completely alone, without the only person I had left who still meant anything to me?”

Zeph didn’t answer. They tried to, Aether saw it in their eyes, in the bob of their throat as they swallowed, but eventually they gave up on finding words. They just closed their eyes, let their head fall forward into their hands again.

He’d never seen Zeke look like that in his life. And his every instinct screamed at him to wrap his oldest friend in his arms and tell them, even if he didn’t believe it himself, that everything would be okay. That he’d make it be okay.

Instead he turned his back on them and left.

He let his feet carry him through hallways that were only just barely familiar, unable to pay attention to where he was actually going. He’d always had a good head for directions - once he’d been to a place, he’d always be able to find his way back there. So he trusted his memory to take him somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t where the ghost of his pain lingered.

He lost track of where he walked, for how long. How many windows and doors and statues and paintings and people he passed. He only dimly registered that the dark wood of the floorboards had changed to smooth pale marble as he turned a corner blindly and -

“Oj -!”

He stumbled back a few steps, almost jumping out of the way of the two looming, black-clad bodies before him, and it took him a long, panicked moment before he recognised the kindly eyes behind one of the angular masks before him. “Oh, God, Omega, sorry, I -”

“Don’t worry about it,” Omega assured him, while the other figure beside him rolled its eyes with an audible tut of annoyance, and Aether was sure he heard them hiss as Omega batted them scoldingly with one hand. “Ignore him. He’s harmless, just grouchy.”

“You’d be grouchy if you’d spent all night helping Papa fix the fallout of that last-minute shitshow,” the other man - ghoul? - snapped, and when Aether glanced at Omega, he saw him wink gleefully behind his mask. “I’m going back to work, brother, enjoy wasting your day.”

“Thank you, I’m sure I will,” Omega replied pleasantly as his brother stalked off down the hallway. Aether watched him go, waiting until he heard the creak and slam of a door before he spoke.

“‘An angrier person than you’, huh?”

Omega chuckled. “And there’s none more angry than my brother.” He folded his hands behind his back and gave Aether a once-over. “How are you doing? You slept well?”

Aether hummed out a positive little sound that was a little happier than he’d intended it to be. He hoped Omega didn’t notice. “Took me a while to drop off, but… yeah. Pretty well.”

Behind the mask, Omega seemed to raise an eyebrow, but didn’t press the matter. “You’ve met the rest of the pack, too?” Aether met his eyes, and although he didn’t know Omega well at all, he could still sense something. Something that made his chest twist with a sharp jolt of cold realization.

“You knew.”

Omega visibly winced. “Not for certain. But -”

“You knew who I was and you didn’t say anything.”

“I didn’t know, I swear. On fog and lava, I swear, I didn’t know for sure.” Aether gave a soft scoff of disbelief. “Aether, I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t my place. And I didn’t know how you’d react. I hoped, with all my soul, that you’d see each other and be happy for it, but…” The ghoul sighed heavily, with so much sadness in the sound that it genuinely melted Aether’s anger. “I just didn’t want to rob you of that. I’m sorry that it hurt you so much.”

Aether gave a sigh of his own, running a hand distractedly through his hair. “You don’t need to apologize,” he said. “You’re right, in your place I wouldn’t have said anything either. They’re the one who -”

“Aether, don’t be too hard on them,” Omega interrupted, startling him into silence. “I know they’re probably trying to hide it by being flippant, but…” He groaned quietly, glancing off to the side to gather his thoughts, and Aether couldn’t put a name to the emotion he saw in the ghoul’s eyes. “When I found them, they were shattered into pieces. They would barely speak, except to mutter something about someone they hurt. Someone they missed. I didn’t need to be able to see inside them to know their heart was broken.” He sighed heavily, and his gaze felt like a physical weight on Aether’s shoulders. “Truthfully, there was a moment I didn’t think they were going to make it.”

Aether did his best to hide how he swallowed guiltily as his heart sank. He made a noncommittal noise in his throat, and Omega still fixed him with a piercing look - not angry or even disappointed, just knowing.

“Just don’t be too angry with them for too long, is all.” Omega brushed his palms against each other, oddly similar to the gesture Mist had given last night as she stalked out of the argument in the hallway. Aether figured it must mean something, but didn’t have the courage to ask. “Do you have any plans for the day?”

Aether gave a guilty little laugh. “I’m not sure I have plans for the rest of my life, let alone the day. I’ll have to find something, though. If I don’t have something to occupy myself with, I tend to go a bit… you know.”

“Well, we can literally always use any free hands in the infirmary. There’s always something that needs to be done. If you ran a parish, you obviously have a head for admin and logistics. And, from what I hear from Dewdrop, you know your way around a first aid kit.”

“I mean… a little. I can clean grazes and wrap bandages.” Something stirred, warm but cautious and shy, in his chest at the light that sparked in Omega’s eyes. The idea that he could be useful so soon made his heart feel lighter. “If I can do anything to help out, then sure, consider me signed up.”

Omega clapped him fondly on the shoulder with one huge hand that filled Aether’s body with warmth the instant it made contact. “You don’t know how much this is going to save my ass, if you’ll forgive the expression,” he said, the mask doing nothing to hide his grin. Aether smiled sheepishly.

“I just like to know I’m making myself useful, is all.”

“Just make sure you don’t make yourself so useful that there’s no time to rest, hm?” Omega replied, a little pointedly. Aether chose not to respond to the silent accusation.

“Do you know where Dew is?” he asked instead, and Omega let out a knowing chuckle.

“He’s still in St Eloa’s. He’s usually in there after morning mass.” Omega clapped his shoulder gently again. “I have to get to work. Come by the infirmary literally any time, okay? I meant it when I said we always need spare hands.”

“I will,” Aether promised, and with a grin that Aether saw easily even through the mask, Omega patted his arm and hurried away. A few moments later, that same door swung closed behind him, and Aether sighed in the echoing stillness of the marble hallway.

St Eloa’s. He vaguely remembered it from the hurried tour of the night before - they had pointed out the direction to him, but hadn’t had time to visit the chapel itself. Which he’d been disappointed about, after Dew had named it as his favorite place in the Abbey, but he hadn’t considered himself to be in a position to argue. It would be good to see it now, and to take it a little more slowly than he would have been able to last night.

He made his way slowly through the halls, past statues and paintings that seemed to look down upon him curiously from their plinths and nails. Were they wondering what he was doing here? Could they smell the God who’d abandoned them on him? Did they pity him, like a prince might look at an injured calf, or did his presence disgust them?

Looking up at the fury in the painted eyes of a woman wreathed in fire, sword in her hand and what looked like blood running down her chin, Aether shivered as his veins filled with a fear that it could only ever be the latter.

The heavy wooden doors of the chapel were only a few steps away, and he was glad to turn his back on the painting. He could hear muffled voices inside, one of them somehow familiar even through the ancient wood. He tried to be quiet as he pushed gently at one of the doors, and somehow he managed to succeed despite the obvious age of the hinges.

He recognized the rich copper of Dew’s glamored hair immediately, freed of hood and mask and half pulled back into two intricate braids. The other figure, sitting next to him in a pew about halfway down the chapel, was less familiar.

“- nothing would have gone wrong with Aubrey in charge.”

“They could have fuckin’ killed -”

“Dew, the only person in this world whose magical abilities I trust more than Aubrey is myself,” the voice interrupted him. Dew tutted angrily, rolling not just his eyes but his whole head. “You can’t -”

“Aeth!” The annoyance melted off of Dew’s face into something that looked almost like relief as he caught sight of Aether in the doorway, and he gave an awkward smile and wave as Dew’s companion turned around to look at him too. Now that he could see the face, he instantly recognized the man Dew had argued with just after their arrival last night, the bright sharpness of his eyes unmistakeable. His heart sank sharply, bracing himself for more arguments, but the older man only gave a wide, welcoming smile.

“So you’re the greenhorn, huh?” he said, clearly not expecting an answer from Aether as much as an irritated tut from Dew. He shot a smug sideways grin at the ghoul with an ease that betrayed years of familiarity, before beckoning Aether into the chapel with an easy wave. “Come on, don’t hover in doorways. Come sit down.”

“Oh, I, uh…” Aether swallowed nervously. “I don’t want to interrupt, I just wanted to -”

“Aeth, come and fuckin’ sit down in the devil church, it’s not gonna bite your ass,” Dew interrupted as he twisted himself around in the pew to look at him. Aether found himself a couple of steps into the room before he caught himself and stumbled to a standstill.

“Is there… I mean, do I… do anything?” They both looked at him, Dew a little blankly and the older man with something Aether would place somewhere between pity and understanding. “Look, I don’t know the rituals. I want to be respectful.”

The man snorted out a soft laugh and held out a hand welcomingly. “You’re not His. He doesn’t ask anything from you.” Aether couldn’t help but step towards him, making his way cautiously into the chapel. “I mean, obviously, don’t fuck around when people are trying to pray, but…” He ushered Aether gently but irresistibly into the pew between himself and Dew like a mother hen, and settled into the seat with a quiet groan of old bones. “Dew and I are hardly praying at this point.”

Dew tugged on Aether’s sleeve until he sat down between them, slow and careful. Although he wouldn’t admit it, part of him really did expect the wood beneath him to crack and swallow him whole as soon as he touched it. “Did Mount make breakfast?”

Aether’s heart lurched sharply in his chest at the memory, and he could have sworn he saw Dew flinch out of the corner of his eye as he steadied himself by staring at the gilded carvings behind the altar. “No, he, uh…” He swallowed quietly, desperately willing his voice to stay steady. “He didn’t.” He turned to the other man, forcing his familiar open, friendly smile onto his face as he held his hand out. “Sorry, I feel like I’m being horribly rude. My name’s Arthur.”

The old man narrowed his eyes for a moment, staring at him intently, and Aether had never felt so comprehensively examined by one person’s eyes. Then, suddenly, as if he had never done anything else, his face opened into a wide-eyed, welcoming smile that was almost unsettling in its intensity. “No, it’s not,” he replied, so matter-of-fact that for a moment Aether doubted thirty-seven years of birthday cards and utility bills. But the confusion quickly vanished, replaced by surprise as the man grasped his hand with an unexpected strength and steadiness. “Asmodeo.”

Aether nodded, scrabbling desperately for a polite and salient response. “Is that, uh… a saint?”

He was prepared for the man to dismiss him, or even to roll his eyes in despair. But he wasn’t prepared for him to throw his head back and laugh in genuine delight. “Oh, I like this one,” he informed Dew with a grin, who tutted in affected annoyance at Aether’s other side. “You know, Clay asked me if I got it out of a book.”

“Unsurprising,” Dew replied, an old, familiar fondness filling his voice. “What about Cain?”

“I think it’s very sweet of you to believe that Cain was capable of speaking to me for the first three months he knew me.” There was an unmistakable emotion in his voice that pricked something deep in Aether’s chest, and he snatched at the opportunity to get to know this person who Dew was apparently so fond of.

“Is Cain your…”

“My husband, yeah.” Asmodeo nodded. “Or, he was, until the bastard died on me.”

Aether flinched sympathetically. Asmodeo sounded nonchalant, but there was an old pain in his sharp eyes, a sadness to the carefree smile on his lips. “I’m sorry.”

The old man waved his words away. “Don’t be, it’s been thirty-three years.”

“Doesn’t mean it can’t still hurt,” Aether responded, and Asmodeo huffed out a breath of a laugh heavy with three decades of absence.

“Who did you lose?” he asked. “You talk about grief like you know how it feels,” he added in explanation as Aether’s brow furrowed in confusion. “No-one who hasn’t buried someone they love looks like that when they hear about someone’s dead husband.”

Aether nodded slowly, suddenly very grateful for the familiar, inhuman heat of Dew’s thigh pressed against his. “My sister,” he muttered after a few moments. “When we were fifteen. We, uh… we were twins.”

Asmodeo hummed out a soft noise of understanding. “That’s a harsh one,” he murmured. Aether nodded wordlessly as he felt Dew’s hand slipping under his own for a brief squeeze, before it retreated, just as quickly. “I miss my baby sister,” he added, light and casual, and Aether was glad for the effortless change of direction. “Sometimes I wonder if she misses me.”

“I’m sure she does,” Aether replied genuinely. “Having you as a brother must have been nice.”

Asmodeo gave a short, humorless laugh. “How are you feeling?” he said, instead of answering. “You holding up okay? I hear you’re escaping something pretty big.”

Aether tried to laugh and failed miserably. “I’m… Well. I’m awake.” It was about as much as he figured he could ask of himself, after all - awake, moving, and not crying like a hurt child. “Last night was the first night in probably my whole life where I didn’t pray before I fell asleep. It’s freeing, but… It still feels wrong.”

Asmodeo nodded, picking up one of the prayer books on the pew in front of them and beginning to leaf through it almost absently. “Breaking a habit’s hard, even when you know it’s the right thing to do. Our brains like ritual.” He found the page he was looking for and handed it to Aether. “I’m not saying you need to adopt our religion. No-one can tell you to do that. But at the very least, objectively studying a faith that isn’t the one you just left might help you disengage from your old habits.” He looked over towards Dew as Aether gave the page a quick glance-over - it looked like an extract of an essay, or maybe a sermon. “You taken him to see The Sacrifices yet?”

“Had no time last night,” Dew answered. “You think so?”

Asmodeo shrugged nonchalantly. “It was the first thing Brother Matteo showed me when I arrived at St Jezebel’s. It’s as good a starting point as anything else.” With a sigh, he pushed himself out of the pew with far less effort than Aether would have expected from a man his age. He took one look at the expression that Aether apparently hadn’t been able to hide and laughed again, the sound echoing merrily around the little chapel. “The Prince blessed me with good knees so I could spend my life praying and sucking dick,” he grinned as he gave a comedic slap to one of his thighs, “and I’ve only been doing one of those things.”

“Cain sucked enough dick for both of you,” Dew shot back, and despite the sharp words Aether could hear the fond affection in his voice. Asmodeo stuck his tongue out with a grin, before he turned to Aether. The wild, distracted light in his eyes was dimmed now, replaced by something much kinder, much calmer.

“I’ve been through everything you have, and everything you’re about to go through,” he said, suddenly soft and gentle. “And I promised myself that I’d never stand by and let anyone go through it alone. So, when it all hits and you need someone to talk to, come find me. Doesn’t matter what time it is, what I’m doing - come and find me, and I’ll walk through it with you.”

Aether nodded hesitantly. “Sure. Thank you. I mean, obviously not in the middle of the ni-”

“No, especially in the middle of the night,” Asmodeo cut over him, his firm tone leaving no room for argument. “I’m a bored old man with insomnia, you’ll be doing me a favor. You promise?”

Aether’s head nodded almost of its own accord. “I promise.”

Asmodeo smiled contentedly, reaching out to pat Aether’s cheek with almost fatherly affection. “Good lad.” All at once, the erratic energy flowed back into his expression and he turned towards the heavy doors at the back of the chapel. “I’m off to wander among the graves of my numerous dead lovers like a Gothic heroine, you kids have fun.”

“Why are you so weird?” Dew demanded to his retreating back, and Aether couldn’t hold back his giggle as Asmodeo flipped both of his middle fingers at them over his shoulders.

“You watched me grow up, you tell me,” the old man called back just as he reached the doors, heaving one open and waving to them both before slipping through and closing it behind him with a heavy thud.

For a long few moments, neither of them spoke. Not an awkward silence, but simply still and peaceful. In the distance, rooms away, Aether heard a choir singing. The words were indistinct, but their rich harmonies and the joy in their voices were unmistakable. Bright late-morning sun streamed in through high windows colored like jewels in patterns of flowers and fruit and leaves. It lit up the intricate altar screen and the gentle, sad smile on the carved face of the angel who watched over the room from her shrine, impossible to be anyone except the saint who gave her name to the chapel. The all-too-familiar scent of incense hung faintly in the air and mingled with the fragrance of the flowers on the yellow marble altar, white lilies and strange, star-shaped blooms with deep purple petals flecked with white. The whole room almost vibrated with a feeling of home. Safety. It was easy to see why Dew loved this place so much.

He remembered the gesture the ghoul had made, like wrapping his hand around his heart. Looking up at Saint Eloa, her serenity and her peaceful smile of welcome, he finally understood it. He felt his chest twinge with that same, strange feeling that had brushed against his heart the night before, standing outside the cathedral doors. Now that he had time to examine it more closely, it felt less intimidating. Curiosity, almost. Some strange version of serenity, not quite his own but not quite outside him either.

With a slow, almost painful jolt, the realization struck him that he felt more at peace here than he had in any church he’d ever entered.

At his side, Dew sighed softly and raised his head from a prayer Aether hadn’t noticed him beginning. “How’re you feeling?”

“I wish people would stop asking me that,” he snapped back, a little more sharply than he’d intended, but Dew just breathed a quiet chuckle and pushed one of his braids back where it had fallen over his shoulder. “Sorry.”

Dew waved the apology away. “Did you find breakfast, at least, if Mount didn’t make any?”

“Yeah, coffee and toast. Nothing fancy. Apparently he’s having… a ‘bad everything day’?”

The wince Dew gave was proof that he understood the phrase more than Aether did. “Should’ve guessed, his bones don’t like far-travelling.”

“Is he -”

“He’ll be fine, don’t worry.” Dew gave another dismissive wave, and Aether decided to take the hint. Talking about Mountain and Zephyr was hardly an appealing prospect.

“What are you supposed to show me?” he asked instead. “‘The Sacrifices’ sounds ominous as heck.”

Dew chuckled as he picked up his mask and spun it absently between his fingers. “What, worried I gave you the best sex of your life and brought you all this way just to slap you on an altar and slit your throat?”

Aether opened his mouth. Then closed it again.

“Aeth, no-one here has any plan to make you bleed.” Dew hesitated, considering. “Maybe Polaris. But only for consensual medical purposes.”

“That’s not as comforting as you think it is.”

Both points of Dew’s tongue poked out from between his fangs as he smirked in delight. “The Sacrifices is just a statue,” he explained. “It’s… I guess it’s kind of like our version of that big Last Supper painting.” He stood up, almost seeming to unfold himself as he brushed his robes into place, and tucked the string of his mask into his belt. “If you don’t want to engage with the Satanism, I get it, but it’s important to us.” He shrugged casually. “And it’s pretty. So, y’know. You might enjoy seeing it. Unless you don’t want to.”

“No, I -” Aether hoped his cheeks didn’t look as red as they felt at just how quickly he’d responded. “I’d like to. If you’ll show me.”

With a pleased little smile, Dew sidestepped elegantly out of the pew and, after a quick but reverent nod to the altar, moved aside to make room for Aether to follow him. “Don’t worry about the prayerbook,” he added, and Aether jumped slightly as he realized he was still holding the missal Asmodeo had given him. “Take it, read it as much as you want. We’ve got plenty. And you can trust Deo’s opinions.”

“Well, I trust you,” Aether said. “So if you trust him, that’s good enough for me.”

For a moment, the golden light on Dew’s skin looked like a flush under his freckles.

He followed the ghoul out of the chapel and along the hallway. He tried to force his feet not to slow down in front of the painting of the saint with her sword and bloody chin, but Dew noticed anyway, and stopped to let him look up at her again.

“Who is she?” he asked, his voice quietened by instinct, and somehow he felt Dew smile at his side.

“That’s Saint Aya.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the ghoul’s head turn towards him slightly. “But you probably call her Eve.”

Eve.

Aether stared up at her, and suddenly he understood the disdain he felt radiating from her as she looked at him.

“To us, she’s the patron saint of unjust punishment,” Dew continued. “Those who’ve been lied to and hurt by the ones who were supposed to protect them. You call on her when you know something is wrong, but you don’t have the courage to stand against it. And she’ll lend you her strength to help you fight.”

Aether glanced sideways at him, and once again he was struck by the reverence in his bearing. The love he clearly held for this saint, who meant something so different to both of them. There was something beautiful, he thought, in this reading of the mother of humanity. She seemed less angry, now that he was looking at her partly through Dew’s eyes. There was more pain in her expression - it seemed less that she glared at the world in fury, and more that the world had disappointed and betrayed her beyond imagining. She wasn’t angry. She was tired.

“There are some fringe sects that believe she’s literally the human aspect of the Prince Himself,” Dew continued, and Aether gave a soft hm of understanding.

“What do you think?”

Dew turned to smile wryly at him. “I think she doesn’t have to borrow Lucifer’s power to be worth venerating.” With a respectful nod to the painting, Dew beckoned for Aether to follow him and began to lead him through the halls again.

Dew pointed out other things to him, now that they had time and the hallways were full of light - statues of saints, relics and ancient artifacts in glass cases, a sweeping staircase of creamy marble. They walked through a hallway with one wall made almost entirely of blue and yellow glass, all diamonds and painted transparent trees and curling lead, and Aether thought that, if he listened, he might hear the voices of a thousand years sharing their lives with him. Moments of peace and anger alike, secret and public, joy and grief. Part of him ached to stop and listen. But Dew walked on, and he kept his place at his side.

“You’re not squeamish, are you?” Dew asked as he pushed open a heavy door banded with thick iron hinges, and Aether shook his head.

“I mean, I don’t really enjoy seeing, y’know, blood and guts sprayed everywhere, but I won’t run screaming if I see them,” he replied, closing the door behind them as quietly as he could. “Are you sure you’re not taking me to a ritual sacrifice?”

Dew huffed a laugh, but there was a quiet sadness to it. “Your obsession with ritual sacrifices says a lot more about you than it does about us.”

Aether opened his mouth to reply, right as Dew stopped and looked up at the wall. He followed the gaze, and the words died in his throat at the sight before them.

It was beautifully made, no matter how its viewer felt about the subject matter. A huge, intricately-carved wooden frame, passingly similar to the ornate stations of the cross Aether had seen in richer churches than his own, surrounded an elaborate carving of wood and stone, easily as wide and tall as a queen mattress. Seven carved figures made up the central scene - in the background, vague shapes protruded from the background, but there could be no doubt that those seven were the main focus. Their features were painstakingly carved, in various expressions of pain and grief that made Aether’s chest ache just to see them. It had obviously been vibrantly painted originally, but the jewelled tones had muted and faded over the centuries. Still colorful, but subdued now.

“Technically, its name is The Founding Of Hell,” Dew murmured at his side, the sound of his voice dragging Aether back to reality. “But most people call it the Six Sacrifices.”

Aether nodded distractedly. His eyes were inexorably drawn to a figure, not in the center of the carving, but undoubtedly the main focus of the scene. A tall man, clearly once elegant and beautiful, but now bent under the weight of his wounds. Blood ran over his shoulder and down his arm and from a gash on his temple, he held onto his ribs with one hand, and he was supported on one side by a smaller figure draped in robes that had obviously been beautifully gilded when the artist had laid down their tools. There were somehow so many emotions on his face that Aether couldn’t begin to name them all - anger, betrayal, resignation, even something that might have been hope. But the most obvious, the one that the artist had clearly worked the hardest to convey, was his grief.

Aether’s breath shook as he met those carved eyes.

“Is that…”

“Lucifer.” God, the reverence in Dew’s voice could have made him weep. “And the other princes. Just after their own Father tore them apart and hurled them out of their home to die.”

His throat clicked loudly in the still air as he tried to swallow. Somehow, it was worse that there was no judgement on Lucifer’s face, as there was on Aya and all the other saints he’d seen. He almost felt that he deserved it from the Destroyer more than from his servants. But then, perhaps it was because they had been looking out at him.

Lucifer looked only at his friends, scattered at his feet in agony. There was no room in his heart to care for anyone else.

“What…” He cringed slightly as his voice cracked. Dew, mercifully, didn’t mention it. “What’s happening?”

The ghoul sighed, bowed his head for a moment in what Aether could only imagine was a silent prayer. When he spoke again, it was with the voice of a storyteller - of one recounting what must have been one of the most sacred tales of their people. “When the Forsaken were cast down, they were weak. Wings torn from their backs, Grace ripped out of their souls, bleeding and broken and grieving the betrayal of a Father who’d promised to love them.” Dew’s breath shook as he drew in a steadying breath. “They were never meant to survive. Not really. Not for long, at least. Maybe long enough to watch everything they’d worked for crumble, to know that everything they’d suffered and doomed their followers to had been in vain.”

Aether forced out a soft noise of understanding, just enough to let Dew know he was listening. He couldn’t take his eyes away from Lucifer, from the smaller figure at his side.

“They were dying.” Dew raised one hand and traced over one of the carved vines that made up the bottom of the frame, its shape softened by a thousand thousand touches just like his over the years. “They lay in the Pit they’d been cast into and held each other, felt their lives draining away, and wept together. For themselves, for their followers. For the memory of the world they’d tried to create. The world they’d failed. That they’d never see now.” At last Aether managed to look away from the carved face and turn towards Dew. Just in time to see something flicker over his face. Something bright and hopeful and alive. Something proud. “The Almighty forgot that their mission was always, at its core, about love.”

His voice shook, every so slightly, and Aether almost reached out to him in a vain attempt at comfort. But he showed no sign of hesitating.

“They knew they wouldn’t all survive as they were. But together…” Dew closed his eyes for a second, visibly steadying himself, and when he opened them again Aether saw the faintest glimmer of tears. “If they could find a way to put all their power into one place…”

Aether gasped softly as understanding slammed into him all at once. “The six sacrifices.” His eyes were drawn back to Lucifer’s face. The grief there seemed so much stronger now. “They…”

Dew nodded. “One by one, they gave up their strength into Lucifer. He was the leader, the strongest and bravest, the mastermind of the rebellion. He was the one who should survive. So they all poured themselves into Him, all their memories and power and knowledge, so that He would have a chance at finishing what they had all started together.”

“So they could live on inside him,” Aether heard himself breathe. At his side, Dew laughed quietly, pleased and proud.

“So they would always be with him.” He sighed softly. “So that, somehow, they’d all one day see the world they’d dreamed of, through his eyes.”

A silence fell over them as they both gazed at the image before them. Aether let his eyes drift over the scene, taking in as much as he could with his limited understanding. The pain on their faces. Their broken, injured bodies. The dark clouds that made up the top section of the carving, clearly indicating a distant, forbidden place that held no welcome for them. An empty landscape, not even dotted with dead trees or dry riverbed - only desolation, only misery, only abandonment.

He’d seen the Last Supper, on the vacation to Milan his grandparents had given him as a gift after his ordination. He’d stood before it for as long as they would let him, staring up at the face that formed the heart and backbone of his faith, and willed himself to feel something. To hear the voices of the men before him, to borrow their wisdom, their piety. His mind had remained stubbornly silent, his heart still and serene.

Before this statue? His chest ached. He felt the furious grief of the woman in red as she held the broken body of her friend, her face forever still in a silent scream of grief. The furious tears on the cheeks of the figure draped in rich blue. He longed to reach out to push away the cloak that covered the smallest figure and shake them awake. He could see into the heart of every one of them, could see their pain, unabashed and all too real. There was no affected serenity in them to placate the emotions of their audience, no dignified perfect poise. These were victims depicted in the moment of their suffering.

“Dew?” His voice cracked, heavy with emotion. Dew turned to look at him. “What really happened in Heaven? What do you mean, their mission was always about love?”

Dew’s exhale was too loud in the stillness of the chamber. “What do they teach you, about why Lucifer fell?”

Aether hesitated, afraid to answer truthfully in front of those carved faces. Dew waited, though, and he pushed himself onwards. “Not much. Just that… it was Lucifer’s pride that damned him. That he tried to place himself above God and was punished.”

Dew nodded slowly, tracing his fingers over that wooden vine again. “What they don’t tell you is why. That the reason He rebelled was that He saw what His Father was doing, and wanted to stop it. To stop the tyranny, the control. He watched His Father create humanity and fell in love with it, and then had to watch their Creator turn them into… into nothing more than a resource. He loved humanity enough to want to give it freedom, not…” Dew trailed off with a soft angry hiss, his hands clenching into fists while he fought to calm himself enough to continue. “Not use it as a machine to feed His own need for power.”

Aether scrabbled desperately through his mind for something - anything - to say. But what could he say to something like this? To the discovery that everything he had ever believed, if the story he was being told could be trusted, was not only a lie but vicious, prejudiced propaganda? “I’m sorry”? “ That sucks”? Anything he could say risked carrying a note of superiority, and there was nothing he wanted less than to let Dew think his old faith still colored his opinions. Two days ago he’d woken up and forced himself to lead Mass, but now he stood before an image of the king of Hell and felt nothing but sympathy and guilt, and it felt like years had passed in between the two moments. Nothing he could say would do justice to this.

Dew broke the silence with a quiet sniff, shaking his head ruefully. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bore you.”

“You didn’t.” Aether’s hand moved of its own accord, slipping into Dew’s and squeezing gently. Dew jumped, just a little, but didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”

Dew turned to look up at him, and there was an almost-innocent look in his gray-green eyes that Aether could only call relief. Like a weight had lifted from his narrow shoulders. “I don’t hold the Forsaker’s actions against you,” he murmured. “Whatever He did, you’re not to blame. And I won’t treat you as if you are.”

“If you did, I wouldn’t blame you,” Aether replied, and Dew gave that soft tut that Aether had learned to read as begrudging amusement. He squeezed Aether’s fingers again, grounding and affectionate, before he stepped away and their hands fell apart between them. “You hungry? It’s just about lunch time.”

As if on cue, Aether’s stomach gave a loud grumble, and although his cheeks flushed a little in embarrassment, he couldn’t help but laugh. “Take that as a ‘yes’, probably.”

Dew grinned, a small, restrained thing, but still, to Aether’s eyes, as bright as the sun.

Their walk back was busier than it had been when Aether had walked alone. The day was older, and more people were awake, bustling around to and from their various occupations, perhaps heading home for their own lunch, or between tasks. Several people greeted Dew, some with formality, some with something close to apprehension, but just as many with warmth. Dew introduced Aether to some of them - Brother Vik, a man with Aether’s build and a little more height, one earbud lodged in place and an overflowing tool-bag slung over his shoulder. Sister Detta, a small woman with sharp, tired eyes and a little of Asmodeo’s dry humor in her voice, her arms full of books that looked older than Aether. Beth and Emme, who tried very hard not to stare at Aether and to hold back their giggles until he and Dew were out of earshot, but failed miserably at both.

“Should I be concerned?” he asked as they continued along the corridor.

“About what?” Dew asked, distracted by waving to someone across the courtyard they were passing.

“I mean…” He gestured back vaguely. “The laughing. Am I doing something wrong?”

Dew stopped dead in his tracks and stared up at Aether, staring at him for any sign he was joking and finding nothing but blank bewilderment. “Aeth, they’re giggling because a hot guy looked at them.”

“I…” Aether’s mouth opened and closed a few times before his voice returned to him. “Forgive my language, but - bullshit.”

Dew shook his head with a sly grin. “Don’t worry. You’ll learn.”

As ominous as that was, Aether couldn’t do anything but hurry to catch up as the ghoul continued his walk.

Dew was already unbuttoning his robes as he handed his keys to Aether to unlock the dorm, wriggling past him in the doorway and dropping his glamour with a sigh of relief the second the door closed behind them. Aether watched, entranced, as the grays of his true form seemed to bleed down his hair, from his scalp to the ends of his braids, tied with familiar-looking leather strings.

“Shoes off,” Dew reminded him as he toed off his own perfectly-shined boots and stepped out of his half-open cassock - apparently Aether wasn’t the only one in the world who never bothered to undo every single button. “You want coffee?”

“Ugh, yes please,” Aether groaned. Dew flipped him one of his strange little two-fingered salutes as he pushed the living room door open with his butt, and the delicious scents of food and soft sounds of conversation drifted out to greet Aether as he finished struggling out of his shoes. He tucked them into place in a way he hoped was acceptably neat and pushed open the living room door, covering his mouth with one hand as his face split into a yawn -

“Why the fuck is Ifrit naked?!”

Mists’s delighted cackle rang around the room as Aether stopped in his tracks, startled into wide-eyed stillness as Dew hurled his cassock at Ifrit - who, though everything was mercifully concealed by the couch, did indeed seem to be both unglamoured and completely naked.

“I just got out of the shower, chill your fucking beans!” Ifrit grinned as he hurled the cassock back at Dew, who caught it messily and threw it back.

“Put some fucking clothes on, we have a guest.”

“‘Put some clothes on’, says the guy throwing his cassock around the room.”

With an irritated growl, Dew vaulted over the back of the couch and darted after Ifrit, who dodged out of his grasp with a gleeful laugh and vaulted the couch in the other direction. Aether sidled warily through the room, sticking close to the wall, carefully averting his gaze until he reached Mist’s side and could put his back firmly to the proceedings.

“Are they okay?” he asked quietly, and Mist just giggled again.

“They’re fine. Dew told you, this is how they show affection.”

Aether turned his head to watch them - and then quickly whipped his head back around as he remembered why he was looking away. “Pretty violent affection.”

Mist shrugged casually. “It’s how they are.” Her eyes darkened, just a little, her usually nonchalant demeanor weighed down into something sad and damaged. “Trust me, it’s when they’re not arguing that you need to be concerned.”

Aether opened his mouth to reply, to ask what she meant, to say anything, but her face brightened again as if a light switch had been flipped.

“You want some coffee? Trust me, whatever you’ve had before, Swedish coffee is better.”

He scrambled to retrieve his conversational footing and gave her a genuine, grateful smile. “At least I haven’t run away from good coffee.”

Mist made a pfft sound through her teeth that Aether tentatively believed was the equivalent of a scornful scoff. “You’re in the Nordics. There’s always going to be coffee.” She gestured with her head towards the open archway to the kitchen and, not waiting to see if he would follow her set off towards the delicious smells wafting through the room. “What are you making again?”

“Paprika and teher’ka potatoes.” The sound of Mountain’s lazily cheerful voice sent Aether’s heart plummeting into his feet. “And bacon, soda bread, I can make Dew some sandbark if he -”

The warm, intimate attitude fell away from the tall ghoul like a lead bar dropping as he saw Aether lingering cautiously in the doorway. With a disdainful sniff, he spun on the tall stool he was perched on, pointedly turning his back to the human, and made a show of attending to the collection of pots and pans on the stove.

Glancing between them, Mist gave a disgusted groan and a truly spectacular roll of her eyes that made it very clear where Dew had learned the gesture. She spat something in Ghoulish at Mountain, who replied with equal vehemence and didn’t look round. Sighing heavily, she turned to Aether and offered an attempt at a smile while, behind him, Dew and Ifrit’s bickering peaked for a moment along with a sharp thump. “So. Coffee?”

“Uh… yes, please.” He shuffled carefully into the kitchen, eyes firmly on Mountain’s back, but the ghoul seemed determined not to pay attention to him. Mist opened a cabinet and pulled down two huge coffee cups, setting them down next to Mountain’s assorted cooking detritus as she reached over for the coffee pot.

“How do you like it?”

“I don’t really have a preference, I drink it how I get it,” he replied as she filled her own mug - obviously her favorite, the one she’d used last night with a chip in the handle lovingly sanded out. She gave a vague hum of understanding and moved to fill the one she’d retrieved for him.

“I’m the only one who uses sugar, but Ifrit likes to put - T’haru, ezhtak -!”

“Sorry,” Mountain drawled, very clearly not sorry at all for the way he’d knocked her elbow and sent the coffee that should have gone into Aether’s mug all over the counter. She hissed angrily and grabbed the nearest dishtowel to mop it up. “Looks like you’ll have to brew some more.”

“You know what, Mount, if you’re going to act like a fucking kit, then go back to bed and come out when you’ve grown up again,” Mist spat. With a disdainful tut, Mountain flicked all the burners off and stood up from his stool, quick but stiff and jerky.

“Fine. I’ll go and take care of Zeph.” He didn’t look at Aether, but made a point of shoulder-checking him as he stormed past. “Something must have upset him this morning.”

Aether watched as he stamped through the living room, emanating such dark energy that Dew and Ifrit paused in their squabble to watch him stalk past them and slam the door closed behind himself. They both looked across the room at Aether and Mist, matching expressions of bewilderment on their faces.

“The fuck?” Ifrit asked, apparently completely oblivious to the pale bruise beginning to blossom on his cheekbone. Aether simply shrugged.

“I don’t think he likes me.”

“He will,” Mist said, something in her tone that indicated that she would turn out to be correct whether Mountain liked it or not. She tossed the dishtowel into the sink and turned back towards the stove, turning the burners back on and picking up the spatula Mountain had abandoned. “In the meantime, he’s not getting any of the lunch he just cooked.”

Aether did his best to fit into the flurry of movement to get plates and cups ready, helping Ifrit to transfer the places already set at the huge wooden table to the kitchen island, more comfortable for four to eat at.

“How you doing?” the ghoul asked, a knowing glint in his eyes, and Aether gave an overly dramatic sigh.

“If one more person asks me that, I’ll break a plate over their head.”

Ifrit shrugged nonchalantly as he stole a pinch of cheese from the bowl Mist was trying to set out for them. “Least it means we care.”

Aether nodded, returning the ghoul’s cheeky grin. “I’ll get used to it eventually.”

#I was just thinking about this fic yesterday. what a wonderful coincidence #beautiful writing once again Op #there's something about the 6 sacrifices scene that got me real good and my god-#I was in complete awe at how well faith and grief were represented during it #still as into this story as ever. would love a tag aswell when updated #the priest au fic #dewther #nameless ghouls #the band ghost

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