#i do NOT trust tenma to make me eggs

[tigirl-and-co]

IT’S ARRIVEDDDDDDDDD 

also it’s like 3x bigger than I thought it was gonna be lmao

BUT IT’S HERE

[grinningchaos]

Terminal

Jeff rasped out a cough as he set the shotgun at its place to the side of the crudely nailed boards. Jesus, it was dusty in here, but that’s the way it was. This was his goddamn sniper nest, and it was the best vantage point in the whole house, and--

What the fuck was that buzzing noise?

“Ahhhh, shit.”

Jeff frowned as he scrolled through the little boxes on his too-bright phone screen. What’d that say? Adrian what? Was that a text, or a missed call, or…?

He grumbled another curse and unlocked the thing on the third try.

The small, red numbers hovered over the green box on the bottom left. That meant a call, not a text. That meant Adrian tried to call him, but Jeff was too busy focusing on keeping the house safe from three-foot-tall vampires to hear it. At least Adrian left a voicemail.

“... I think.”

Between fumbling with the phone and descending the attic stairs, Jeff almost fell and cracked his head more times than was comfortable, but eventually he made Adrian’s voice blare out of the fuzzy cell phone speaker.

“Jeffrey?  Jeffrey.  I’ve rung you thrice, mate, what’ve you done with yourself?  Once you get back to the flat, could you be a dear and fetch me some ingredients?  Doctor Tenma’s birthday was last week; someone’s got to bake him a cake!  We’ll need eggs, milk…”

Jeff shook his head and let the list rattle on as he opened drawers, looking for paper.  Magically, there was no paper in the whole fucking kitchen, so he grabbed a Sharpie and scrawled it on his arm.  Eggs, milk…  What else?

“... and some baking soda from the larder.  Please just set it out for me, and I’ll do the rest.  Oh, and please be certain Shiv does not muss the flour.  He’s already put three of my curtains out of sorts, and I’ll not be having more destruction -- ‘Get the priest, he’s possessed’ is still not funny.”

Jeff cracked a grin.  It was kinda funny.

“Right, then.  Cake, curtains…  Sorted.  I’ll be home in just a bit!”

“See ya later, bud,” Jeff said to no one, setting the phone down on the counter and shuffling toward the fridge.  Eggs, milk, flour…  Why Adrian didn’t just pull a premade cake out of Fridgerine was beyond him, but hey, his cake.  His rules.

“Dude.  Iitl.  Lemme have the baking soda.  Fuckin’ move, man,” Jeff grumbled, nudging at the incubus with a broom.  Was he gonna have to climb up the shelves again or--?

What the fuck was that hissing noise?

“Left side’s more crooked than you at fifteen… Did you use a level check or an anvil on a plank for the exterior of this place?”

Slowly, Jeff took his foot from the bottom shelf and glanced behind him at the silent kitchen.  He’d… He’d just heard that, right?  Alertness sharpened Jeff’s eyes as much as it could as he stepped back into the open, scanning the edges of every blurry shape.  No movement, nothing he could see, but…  What was that?

Wait, shit.  When was the last time he slept?

“Blackwell, c’mon.  You tell the kid to get shut-eye, but you let yourself start hearin’ shit.  Get the rest of the cake on the counter and get your ass to bed.”

Even so, Jeff didn’t keep his back to the open larder door for long.

More words trickled up. Curled around floorboards and rose until they reached Jeff.

“People are going to think only I could create something so abhorrently opposing God’s canon of order. Not sure if I should thank you for the publicity or sue you for defamation.”

Jeff didn’t need to feel the ice water splash in his stomach to know whose voice that was.

The flour slammed down on the counter, and part of Jeff was grateful it came in bags instead of something more fragile.  This was the worst thing his head had done to him in a good few months, and he wasn’t fucking having it.  He barely checked the ingredients against the scribbled list on his arm before striding to the nearest bathroom and swinging the medicine cabinet open.  Where did he put that prescription shit, huh?  He didn’t steal it for nothing.

“‘F you could stop fuckin’ with me, that’d be great.  I was almost having a good day.”

The next sound ascended like the huff of a bothered bull, not even words. The floor seemed to rattle, only for a second, at sensing this displeasure.

Quickly, Jeff popped back three or four of the small white pellets, swallowing them dry and leaning on the sink. If he gripped the porcelain, they’d work faster, right?

“That’s how it’s going to play, then.” The twisting words gave no specification as to whether ‘it’ was Jeff or the situation.

Maybe he needed to get out, Jeff mused.  Maybe a little fresh air would wake him up.  He had been up in the nest all day; maybe there was some kind of mushroom spore or biological shit in the dust up there fucking with his head that Adrian could tell him all about when he got home.  Then the pills could work, and Adrian could make his cake, and Jeff could stop hearing Satan’s voice in the floor.

Satan’s voice in the floor could sense the flight risk. There was merciful silence for a few moments.

But then the words were replaced with a soft mewl.

Instantly, Jeff froze, one hand on the front door.

“Serial killers tend to start with small animals, don’t they. Cute guy.”

“...  Shiv…?  Where ya at, buddy?” Jeff croaked, beginning a slow advance through the house.  There were only so many places Shiv liked to be; he’d find him, and he’d find him soon.  But he wasn’t at the window, and he wasn’t on the chair, and he wasn’t on the second step…

This was all in his head.  It had to all be in his head, because otherwise…

A second mewl, softer than the first. Up from below.

“Aw.”

Reality dropped in Jeff’s chest like lead, and he instinctively looked up at the basement door.

“...  Are you…  You’re here?”  The words were almost childish, but Jeff couldn’t come up with any more.  One wrong word, and Shiv was done.

“I’ve been here longer than you know. Been pursuing some company.

“What can I say? Strays are drawn to me.”

Some part of Jeff found it almost funny that Satan was literally downstairs.  Funny in an “I got mugged right after a hit” kind of way.  The basement doorknob was colder than he remembered.

Shiv is down there, Blackwell.  If you don’t move, he’s not gonna be much longer.

The basement door made a strange distant creak of an echo as he plunged down into a different kind of dust.

A low imitation of a laugh came up along the stone walls, muffled by condensation on rock and hollow like a call to the bottom of a desperate well. A third mew, thin and questioning.  Careful footfalls fell on the soft parts of the basement floor in an attempt to make his footsteps echo just a bit less.

The right side of the third staircase creaked like a bastard, but hugging the wall was the only way not to trip on the softened wood. Jesus, it was dark. That wouldn’t have been such a problem if the stone walls didn’t make every sound more than it was, or if it didn’t feel like the world’s dampest subway system. Jeff muffled a cough into his sleeve and kept hugging the wall, eyes wide and ears straining.  With this place becoming less like a basement and more like a cave every second, he had no choice but to slow, to lead himself along with uncertain hands. Especially not now that the passageways were only wide enough for two of him at most.

Another mewl, weak even for Shiv.

His back pressed into the cold, wet wall, and he panted at the mouth of the narrowest hallway yet. The small room he’d paused in didn’t give him much to work with, but he managed to find a rock just heavy and blunt enough to do some damage. His shoulders scraped both walls as he staggered through the corridor.

It opened into the largest room Jeff had seen in what must’ve been hours. Easily the size of the living room and empty but for the dim lanterns that greeted him and the white flash of Satan’s grin.

“I always thought it was funny,” the Prince of Darkness chatted with a chuckle that suggested an old joke. “You’re the muscle. The scary one. And you’ve got that little hairball.” His eyes gleamed cold and no smile reached them; they were drinking in the power just stripped away, in the fumble just made. Made you look, made you look, his eyes said. Dare you to look away.

All at once, Jeff heard just how hard he was breathing. He felt his hands tremble, in fear or in anger or in just how cold this big room was. In short bursts, his eyes darted from Satan to other dark corners, but still the only white thing in the room was that wide, awful smile. The long, narrow corridor stretched out behind him, too long now to be anything but a bottleneck.

“...  Whadda you want from me?” came the airless growl.

“That’s not very polite. Am I not the guest?

“I was just looking for company, like I said.” He held out empty hands and stepped forward, but only to the edge of the latticework containing him.

“None of you here laugh enough anymore. It was funny, wasn’t it?” His smile fell at its edges and stopped being a smile. “You were never told about me being down here, were you. It’s your sugarcube’s doing, you know.”

“... My what?”

Jeff’s eyes strayed downward, taking in the markings at Satan’s feet. Chalk, maybe paint. A circle so large Jeff was surprised he hadn’t noticed it before, peppered with markings he didn’t think he’d be able to recognize, even up close.

Adrian.

“...  He’s been keepin’ you down here…”

But why? He and Satan had a weird relationship, but Adrian wasn’t about to keep him down here for kicks, was he? His chin lifted, and he locked eyes with the Devil.

“...  Nah.  He trapped you down here.  Makes sense; easier to handle the less people know.”

Satan blinked in the dim light, and the corners of his eyes finally wrinkled in a secret smile.

Right he was.

“You’re rather trusting, for… well, whatever you’d call yourself. Someone who casts a shadow of his own over the house, let’s say.

“I’m sad you don’t share his curiosity, though. That’s what got you here, really. Here in this life, and here in this basement. Curiosity and... desperation.” He tongued the last word like he was savoring it.

Jeff’s eyes hardened, and his fists tightened, but he didn’t look away.

“...  Yeah, well he ain’t given me a reason not t’ be,” he continued to growl, letting the chill of Satan’s tone roll off his spine as best he could.  “It ain’t desperation, anyway.  ‘S called survival.”

“Survival!” he has echoed back. “That’s absolutely not what rested on his mind in dealing with me. One would say it was an agreement made against survival,” he mused as he went on. “It wasn’t a deal made for you or your husband’s sake either, so don’t flatter yourself.

“You’ve never even questioned why he did it, have you? Why he scooped a multiple murderer out of a final repose?”

“Don’t really matter, does it?” Jeff spat back before he could stop himself.  “He got his reasons, I got mine.  Two, three years and he ain’t called the cops on me yet, so fuck if I think that’s worth some trust.”

The cold eyes glinted as they turned to the right, then back to Jeff. It was an idle tic. “No, no, just dated one… It matters because it involves how you interact with me. How you ought to respect me. If it weren’t for me leading him into infatuation, you’d be on ice, Blackwell. He made the deal because he was afraid of losing connection with me.”

The words came out more demanding than the Devil meant them; were he asked later, he’d say it was just a matter of shaking old chips off his shoulders. Filling space. Grinding someone down. Finding cracks in the soldier’s armor.

“But you consider him a brother, don’t you. Despite starting out as his piece in a bet. I know deception.”

Blood pounded in Jeff’s ears, following the wake of Satan’s echoes, but his breath steadied by the moment.  His free hand flexed.  Almost deliberately, Jeff broke eye contact just long enough to survey Satan up and down in his lattice prison.

“Good thing ‘e came to ‘is senses, then, huh.”

The ruler of Hell rolled his neck in an uncomfortable silence.

“... Do you ever wonder if your first brother went to Heaven?

“Or do you think he’s mine too?”

The words dropped like rocks against the stone. No echo.

Jeff barely felt his lips prick back over his teeth before he was right in that lattice with the Devil. One hand grabbed fabric.  The other hand swung once, twice.  His eyes spat fire, itched for blood like they never had before.  Like the past forty-something years were all just practice.

A falling sensation, and he hit the opposite wall, sliding to the floor.  A heartbeat later, he was up again.  He dragged his sleeve across his mouth.  Blood.  He ran back in, both hands free and swinging.  One hit.  He just needed one hit.  He needed Satan down on the ground.  Even possessed people bled.

Once more, he connected with a wall, but he was up faster this time, aiming low.  But Satan knew his game now.  Every swing seemed to miss by more and more air.  It was his fucking luck he’d lost the rock, too.

Jeff lunged on a risk, and bit the paint.  He rolled, and got back up.

Swing after swing met nothing or fabric or stone.  Clawing hands and jabbing elbows only connected with mirages.  How the fuck was he so fast?

Right, some distant part of Jeff thought as his head bounced against the stone.  He’s Satan.

His shoulders trembled as he sat up.  He racked out a bloody cough and rolled onto his side, onto his knees.  One heave proved that they wouldn’t support him anymore, and so he fell unceremoniously to the wall.  Slumping, wheezing, against the stone, Jeff fixed Satan with a wild stare.

“...  Whadda… you want… from me.”

Satan straightened his shirt collar, looking almost comical in his fastidiousness to such detail while the whole suit had a splatter or so of blood across it.

“All that, and it’s the same question?

“I’m not sure what else I expected.”

He stepped confidently across and out of the smudged and broken lattice with a small pat-down of his sleeves, stooping only enough to wrap a fistful of old cloth around his hand and drag the killer up. Up so he dangled, just barely, above the floor.

“It’s not what I want from you. It’s you that I want taken from him.” The bloodied corner of his mouth twisted up like Jeff was a child that had said something charmingly stupid.

Understanding washed over Jeff like a cold shower.  His swollen eyes bulged, and his bloody knuckles pulled with the last of his strength at the hand hoisting him in the air.  His legs kicked weakly, a last-ditch effort against becoming a tool against his own brother.

As he exhausted himself back to wheezing, he stared Satan down and squared his jaw.

“...  We ain’t lost to you yet.”

Another cough racked Jeff’s lungs, and he spat the blood as hard as he could.

The Devil didn’t even blink. Blood in his eyes and on his face didn’t stop him in the slightest (despite how it burned? A manifested form had its limitations, he supposed).

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he enlightened as he turned, dragging his mortal cargo over the latticework that had started giving off angry crackles of disturbed energy. An overabundance of spiritual energy, concentrated over years and years, hissed and charged the air like static before a lightning strike. Bloodthirsty movements of one mortal and careful observation by the immortal paid off, in Satan’s mind, as he gave a cool look down at the hole opening in the stone, at the fog that started seeping up.

“There’s no more ‘we.’ And you are very lost indeed.”

His eyes flicked back up to Jeff, just for the sake of knowing the last look in those eyes. The hole yawned and snarled and bared more teeth of fog and untold horrors, awoken by just enough supernatural energy to pass the tipping point… from keeping one demon in to letting one human through.

He paused another moment.

“Pray.” He was grinning, despite himself. He couldn’t help it.

Jeff’s eyes flicked back to Satan’s, unable to communicate anything but the fear of the absolute unknown, and despite himself, he followed orders.  Any words he tried to speak aloud caught on the blood still in his throat, but his mind screamed.

Zalgo!  Zalgo, tell me you can hear me.  Babe.  Baby, please.  Say something.  I’m in the basement.  I’m in the flat, in the bottom of the basement.  Zalgo?  Zalgo!!  Zalgo, answer me, I need you!

Jeff found himself mouthing words to Old Prayers, thinking over every hymn at once, trying to reach any trace of his husband-- his god.  His neck craned.  His mind ached.  Any sign of reply, any movement past the fog slowly consuming the room.  Anything.  Anything?!

Can he even hear me?

That single, desperate thought dragged Jeff’s eyes to Satan’s and kept them there, swirled with horror and confusion at what was bottom line fucking impossible.

Satan’s grin diminished like he was trying to look less overtly smug with himself, his shoulders shrugging a little in their fine, blood-speckled cloth. “It’s what I do.”

Now that he had finally shattered that stubborn spirit, he let go of the serial killer.

Jeff fell too far and too fast.  Every instinct he had told him that he should have stopped falling ages ago, but there shrank Satan, and the hole, rushing away from him like a station from a bullet train.  Soon enough, the fog obscured any opening he fell through, but he didn’t need that for it to feel final.  Like being thrown away.  Like waking up to a one-way ticket he didn’t buy.

I should’ve grabbed the edge, I should’ve prayed harder, I should’ve…  I…

Satan regarded the fog clouding the room with mild disdain. It rang of blasphemy to him, useful as it was.

Having a manifested form made cleaning up his attire much neater than what seemed fair. A few flicks of his arms and the blood lined the stone slabs like so many drops of condensation. He stretched his arms sorely over his head before he crouched by the alarming, hungry hole in the basement floor.

“‘Dreadful thing,’” he muttered in practice to himself as a few waves of his hands drew all the blood back into order, into lines that fulfilled the damaged lattice once more. “‘All those crime rings… The debtors and the cutthroats were pushing. Closing in. I did what I could, and what I always do: I offered a way out.’”

He cleared his throat. “‘I’m so sorry… It was a dreadful thing to see happen.’ Mmn.”

The basement continued to crackle angrily for a minute or so after the hole re-closed, containment lattice restored, but the Devil paid it no mind. He was preoccupied.

“‘I offered what I thought was best for everyone. He made the choice to run more than willingly. And he can be free this way. After all… all those murders… He knew how they weighed on you so.’ There’s a good one… ‘None of you asked for these tribulations.’”

Yes you did, he hummed inside his head. Yes… you did. And I deliver.