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archived-kin · 3 years ago

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how to bond with your not-so-vengeful spirit

note from kin: this is a sequel to this, but you don’t have to have read it to understand this one! as a reminder, in case you’ve forgotten or haven’t read the first part, you’re the ghost of a human who was accidentally killed by satan while he was on one of his ‘rampages’, and now your spirit basically follows him around everywhere. you can make yourself physical enough to move/touch objects/people, but only satan can see you - for now

this takes place quite a while after the last one ends, so your dynamic with satan has changed a fair bit (he likes you more now and you like him more too, but you also still enjoy making fun of him (though you don’t to do a lot of that here))

fandom: obey me!

character(s): gn!reader, satan, lucifer

pairing(s): satan/reader (it can also be read as platonic though since i don’t think anything too overtly romantic happens)

warning(s): mentions of death (not super graphic, mostly just in passing)

genre: i guess it’s kind of angst?? but also fluff???

“Satan! Satan!”

Your voice floats up from somewhere on the lower floor of the house. At first, he considers ignoring it, but then he pauses, unsure of whether that’s mischief or genuine terror he can hear in your tone. He lowers his book, practically holding his breath in an effort to listen as carefully as possible.

“Satan!”

That settles it. He marks his place and sets his book down as your calling reaches a crescendo. You’re a fickle spirit, but even you couldn’t fake a distress as abject as that. He pulls his jacket more securely around his shoulders, then takes off at a run down the corridor, then down the stairs.

“Where are you?” He hisses under his breath as he emerges onto the ground floor, not daring to speak any louder in case one of his brothers hears him and thinks he’s lost his marbles.

“SATAN!!!!!!” comes your plaintive wail in reply.

He slows down for a moment, looking back and forth in an effort to glean the direction that your voice is coming from. Something resembling anxiety or fear bubbles at the pit of his chest as you call again, this time sounding quieter - weaker, almost. Has something awful happened to you? He can hardly bear thinking about it.

His pace speeds up, and finally he skids around a corner and into the corridor that leads to the kitchen, where he thinks he can hear your voice the loudest. The door to the spare room is locked as usual, but the kitchen door seems to be swinging back and forth on its hinges without any physical interference - a sign that you’re close by.

“[Name]?” He calls as loudly as he dares, stepping into the kitchen and looking around. It’s completely void of any demons, but the light is flickering frantically. You must be around here somewhere.

“I’m here!” He hears you say desperately. “Here!”

“I can’t see you,” He says, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible in hopes that it’ll reassure you a little. “Can you make yourself visible?”

“Visible?” The light’s flickering seems to settle a little. “I’ll… I’ll try…”

Try? You’ve always been able to pop in and out of visibility in the blink of an eye, seemingly without any conscious effort - Satan’s always assumed that it’s a second nature kind of thing. Is there something stopping you from being able to do so as easily as usual?

A long, tense silence follows, during which the only thing Satan can hear is his own, laboured breathing - something moves in the corner of his vision. He turns around so quickly that he nearly gives himself whiplash, then freezes. Your vaguely shimmering form is curled up in a net, swaying helplessly from the ceiling.

This can’t be right - you’re a ghost, you should be able to pass right through that net like you’ve been able to pass through every other physical object you’ve ever encountered. He takes a deep breath and clenches his hands, digging his nails into his palms in an effort to settle the alarm bells rapidly beginning to go off in his head, and looks closer. It looks as if there’s a kind of purple energy running through the net like electricity, leaping from string to string as if it can’t bear to stay on one track for too long.

You attempt to reach through the mesh towards him him, but an invisible barrier seems to stop you. Your entire body fades in and out of view, one moment vaguely opaque and the next nearly invisible, and as he catches a sudden, clear glimpse of your half-transparent face, Satan feels something unpleasant drop into the pit of his stomach. You’re crying.

He’s never seen you cry before. Hell, he didn’t even know ghosts could cry - but what else could those tears be?

“What happened here?” He asks, thunderstruck. You attempt to put on a brave face, but the the way that your voice wavers gives you away.

“I don’t know,” You answer feebly. “I was just floating around, like always, and it came out of nowhere. And now—”

You try to fling yourself out of the net once more, but it holds fast. Despite your efforts, your panic cuts through facade and into your voice with ease. “—now… now I can’t move…!”

There is nothing a free spirit hates more than being kept in a cage. Satan remembers having read that a while ago. He can’t imagine how helpless you must feel right now - reduced from being able to fly about, unbound by any physical law, to being unable to even leave the room. Your anguished expression reminds him of a caged and cowering animal; he feels a horrible pang in his chest.

“Hold on,” He instructs, trying to keep his voice even to disguise the rage rapidly beginning to bubble up inside him - how dare someone do this to you? “Breathe.”

“I can’t breathe, wiseguy,” You mumble with a little of your usual cheek, attempting to pull a face. Your voice lacks real bite, though, and your expression only crumples almost as soon as it comes. “No lungs, remember?”

Satan shakes his head, but inwardly breathes a deep sigh of relief as he pulls a chair over and pulls himself up onto it. If you have the energy to make quips right now, then surely you’ll be alright in the end...

“Do you know who put this here?” He asks, hesitantly reaching forward to touch the net. The invisible barrier that blocked you earlier seems to go up as soon as his fingers get within an inch of the mesh - and he can’t seem to break it no matter how hard he pushes.

You shake your head. “No…”

He tries the first spell that comes to mind, a kind of slicing charm intended to cut through the net, but it only bounces harmlessly off of the barrier - no effect whatsover. He frowns. The fact that this trap seems so infallible already brings to mind a certain suspect.

This is one of those household protection spells; it’s basically the magical equivalent of a mouse trap, intended for things like poltergeists. And it’s a very well-cast mouse trap, at that: no points of weakness, and power constantly running through that acts like some kind of reinforcement. That already takes Belphie out of the equation, since it’s pretty unlikely that he’d expend a portion of his limited energy just to make something like this.

It also eliminates Beel and Mammon, since neither are particularly good at this variety of spell. And Satan doubts that Asmo or Levi would bother to learn it, either...

He’d already begun to suspect it as soon as he saw you, but it’s becoming obvious that Lucifer is the most likely party to be responsible for your capture. Who else would have enough latent magical power and personal immovability to cast such a perfect spell?

Satan feels the corner of his lip curl up in a snarl, but quickly schools his face back into something calmer, not wanting you to think he’s angry at you. He’s only barely holding himself back from charging out of the room to throttle his older brother; the only thing stopping him is the fact that he doesn’t want to leave you alone in here.

To be honest, he isn’t entirely sure when you became so important to him - when you went from being some annoying ghost that just wouldn’t shut up to being arguably the closest thing that he’s ever had to a best friend… ironic, considering that he was the one responsible for your death in the first place. In a strange way, he’s almost grateful it happened - after all, if your ghost hadn’t been somehow tethered to him, your paths probably never would have crossed. And he supposes that there’s a certain selfish comfort to knowing that you can’t exactly die again - he doesn’t need to worry about your mortality.

These days, it feels almost like a piece of him is missing whenever you’re not bobbing just beyond his shoulder, firing little quips at him every two minutes like a one-liner machine gun. It makes something abundantly clear: you’re essential to him now.

He can feel a dull throbbing beginning at the tips of his fingers as he continues to try spell after spell, a clear signal from his body that he’s overdoing it, but he just grits his teeth and persists. You attempt to help, swiping at the net and kicking and thrashing furiously, but it refuses to give way.

Your anxiety only seems to peak as you begin to realise that your chances of escaping the net are becoming slimmer and slimmer, and you pop out of sight entirely for several seconds as you struggle to maintain visibility. The kitchen light flickers so aggressively that the bulb pops, and the room abruptly dims, lit only by the oil lamps hanging from the towel line.

“Calm down, calm down,” Satan murmurs in what he hopes is a reassuring voice. Comforting people has never been his strong suit. “It’s alright.”

You’re shivering, as if you’re cold. Satan knows that you haven’t been able to even feel a breeze for a long time, but even so, he reaches forward as if to try to warm you with his own hands. Not even a full five seconds later, he abruptly freezes.

The kitchen door has been banging itself open and shut for the past two minutes, disturbed by the sheer distressed energy rolling off of you in waves, but now the sound of it colliding with its frame over and over abruptly stops. And it isn’t because you’ve calmed - it’s because someone’s caught it.

And, of course, that someone is Lucifer.

“I see that the trap was successful,” He says calmly, completely ignoring Satan as he levels a glare at him so resentful that it wouldn’t be surprising if a thunderbolt suddenly struck him on the spot.

“What the hell are you trying to do?” Satan asks through gritted teeth as his brother walks further into the kitchen. The door slams shut behind him so forcefully that it sounds as if it’s broken a hinge, but Lucifer doesn’t even flinch.

He’s gazing at a spot a few inches to the left of where you’re actually hanging. In the net, meanwhile, you’ve calmed - or at least stilled - and your narrowed eyes watch his every move.

“There’s a spirit haunting the House of Lamentation,” Lucifer says after a moment, still staring at that spot without even blinking. He sounds vaguely surprised by Satan’s hostility, but doesn’t appear to be paying it too much mind; after all, it’s pretty standard. “According to Beel, it’s been hanging around the kitchen a lot recently.”

You’ve started struggling again, but now that the spell-caster is in such close proximity, the net’s strength only seems to have increased. While Satan keeps his eyes fixed on Lucifer, he does raise a hand just in front of the net, pressing his palm against the barrier, as if that’ll reassure you somehow.

“How does Beel know that?” He asks in the kind of chilly tone that usually sends most of his brothers running in the opposite direction. Not Lucifer, though, of course.

He doesn’t answer the question, instead carefully lifting a hand and passing it through the empty space he’d been looking at earlier. A moment later, he takes a step back, looks Satan up and down, and finally realises what an odd position he’s taken up, “...what are you doing?”

His eyes pass over the chair that Satan’s standing on, then up at his hand, apparently hovering in mid-air for no reason. Lucifer’s smart, Satan’ll give him that - he seems to put two and two together almost immediately. He raises his right hand, then brings it down in one, sweeping motion - and the net abruptly splits down the middle.

You drop like a rock at first, not expecting the sudden release, but quickly right yourself before you hit the floor. Satan catches himself smiling at the relieved look on your face, then quickly pulls it back into a frown. He’s still supposed to be angry at Lucifer, after all...

He feels you tug on the back of his jacket as you drift behind him. After a moment, deciding that it isn’t worth trying to pretend you don’t exist (considering Lucifer’s obviously already aware), he holds his left hand out behind himself; a moment later, your ghostly fingers thread with his own.

You aren’t completely physical - you likely don’t have the energy to make yourself so - but he can definitely feel your touch. It’s feather-light and oddly cool. He squeezes your hand. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he marvels a little at the fact that his fingers didn’t simply pass right through you.

He doesn’t know if you actually felt it, but you seem to have appreciate the gesture anyway. Your other hand pulls gently on a lock of his hair, and he knows you well enough by now to know that that’s your way of saying thank you.

Lucifer watches all of this with an increasing look of revelation on his face. Though he can’t see you, he knows you’re there - he’s almost certain. He can glean as much from Satan’s odd behaviour.

“What is our spirit’s name?” He asks steadily.

Satan opens his mouth, part of him wanting to correct Lucifer with a snarky ‘my spirit, not yours’, then snaps it shut again. A split second later, another tug on his hair lets him know your answer to his unspoken question - it’s alright, just tell him.

He almost wants to ignore you - being the only one who knows of your existence almost makes him feel special, and it’s a secret that he doesn’t really want to divulge. If his brothers were to know you were around, at least two of them would be interested in trying to interact with you, and that would mean you’d have less time for him…

Catching himself, he gives himself a mental punch in the arm. You’re not like some secret teddy bear that he can clutch to his chest for all of time. Besides, he already spends nearly every waking hour with you (not that he has much choice in the matter, since you can’t stray too far from his side), and it isn’t like you’d abandon him completely. He’s still the only one who can see and hear you, after all.

Suddenly hyper-aware of Lucifer’s increasingly impatient stare, he clears his throat and answers, “[Name]. The spirit’s name is [Name].”

“I see.” Lucifer nods, eyes wandering a little, clearly trying to figure out exactly where you are. Try as he might, Satan can’t help but feel a tiny sense of victory at his clear cluelessness. “[Name]... are you able to make yourself visible to me?”

“No,” You say aloud. “I’ve tried, but it’s never worked.”

Lucifer doesn’t show any sign of having heard you, so Satan repeats your answer for you, albeit with significantly more strain in his voice. Despite his inner monologue, he’s still not too thrilled about sharing your existence with someone - especially since it’s Lucifer, who’s the reason Satan started hiding it in the first place.

“Very well,” Lucifer says, choosing a spot just beyond Satan’s shoulder and deciding to look there. He’s actually looking at your shoulder, which is closer to you than you’d have thought he’d be. “Do you have any means of communicating other than through Satan?”

You’re silent for a moment. Then you drift away from Satan - he crushes the little voice in the back of his head that says he misses your cool touch - and over to one of the frying pans on the wall.

Satan turns to watch as you shake your arm out, then attempt to knock on the pan. The first time, your hand passes right through it; the second time, though, you succeed in making a clear bong.

Lucifer’s eyebrows raise a little, and he nods. “That works. Two taps for yes, and one for no - do you understand?”

You look over at Satan and pull a face. Your usual energy seems to be returning. “Whose boss does he think he is?”

He just snorts a little and shrugs. You wrinkle your nose, thinking, then reach over to the pan. Bong.

Lucifer doesn’t look impressed by your attempt at a joke. “Clearly you do if you’re able to respond.”

Satan heaves out a slight sigh, though he finds himself smiling despite himself. Lucifer, meanwhile approaches the pan, keeping his eyes focused on it as if he thinks you might be possessing it.

“Are you a poltergeist?”

Bong.

“A wraith?”

A pause. You look over to Satan; he hesitates, then nods. You fit the definition well enough. Bong, bong.

Lucifer goes quiet for a moment. Then he asks, “Were you human?”

Bong, bong.

“Did you die here in the Devildom?”

Bong.

“In the human world?”

Bong, bong.

“How did you find your way down here?” Lucifer asks, then pauses, remembering that the two of you can only communicate through the pan with yes or no questions. He turns to look at Satan, evidently expecting him to relay your answer.

You’re not giving one, though. You don’t look like you even have an answer.

After a moment, Satan says awkwardly, “They don’t know.”

Lucifer raises his eyebrows again. He looks to the pan once more, then hesitates for a long moment, as if he isn’t sure how to phrase the question.

Finally, he asks, “Did Satan kill you?”

You go rigid in midair. Satan tenses in his seat, straightening up so quickly that it’s as if someone’s just shoved a live wire into his back. The two of you share a look; your expression is conflicted, and his is stricken.

After a moment, your expression smooths out a little, and you give the pan one, decisive knock. Bong.

Lucifer frowns slightly. Then he begins, “Then let me rephrase. Was Satan responsible for your death in any way?”

Satan’s eyes fall to his lap. He knows that the answer to that question is a resounding yes.

He feels almost a little sick. In the beginning, he’d convinced himself that he wasn’t to blame for the ghost following him about like a duckling after its mother - after all, he never intended to kill you. He’d thought of it as throwing a pebble into a lake; the pebble didn’t kill you, one of the ripples did. Is an architect responsible for the person who falls to their death from the top of his building?

More recently though, as he’s come to look on you with much more tolerant (dare he say affectionate?) eyes, he’s realising that he isn’t the architect. He was more of… a construction worker, who swung his crane around without looking, and accidentally knocked that person off balance in the first place.

You, meanwhile, don’t answer for a long while. Then, finally, you knock on the pan twice.

Lucifer doesn’t seem surprised. Somehow, that makes Satan feel worse than he would have if he’d just gotten angry. “I see. When?”

You pause again, screwing up your face in an attempt to remember, then give the pan three taps in rapid succession.

“Three years ago?” Lucifer asks. Bong, bong. “And have you been here since then?”

Bong, bong.

Silence again. Then, “Are you seeking revenge?”

Bong. Satan manages a slightly wan smile as you say aloud, turning back to give him a little grin, “Nah. We’re cool now.”

Lucifer thinks for a long while. Then he turns to Satan. “Were you ever going to tell me about this?”

Satan debates ignoring him, then decides that, if he’s already got one foot in the grave, he doesn’t want to dig it any deeper. He might as well tell the truth. “...no.”

“I thought as much,” Lucifer says with a sigh, and now he just looks disappointed. It hits Satan like a large rolling pin to the head.

You, meanwhile, noting the rather dismal look on Satan’s face, drift away from the pan and back over to him. Lucifer manages to catch the unnatural movement of a lock of Satan hair as you give it a tug; he raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment on it.

He draws a chair and sits across the table from Satan, who’s refusing to look at him. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Satan keeps his eyes focused on his shoes, then replies steadily, “No.”

Lucifer is silent for a moment, and Satan is almost sure that he’s finally set him off, but then he sighs and shakes his head, seeming to concede defeat. Satan almost wants to scream in frustration - just get, ANGRY, you weirdo! Why are you suddenly getting all parent-y and mature NOW?

Unbeknownst to Satan, though, Lucifer was putting a lot more than two and two together when he finally came to terms with your existence. He’s not stupid enough that he hasn’t noticed that Satan seems to be in a much more consistent good mood as of late, despite the fact that he’s been going out and socialising a lot less as well. He’s heard Satan talking to himself, too - no matter how sneaky he thought he was being, there’s just no hiding something of this degree from the people you live with - and at first he’d put it down to something like an Internet friend, but then he’d caught Satan whispering to himself in the common room without a D.D.D. in sight.

And, yes, he did entertain the notion that his brother had just lost his marbles entirely, but he has more faith in him than that, so he’d decided to just be patient and keep watching. Now that he knows of your existence for sure, he’s pretty sure he knows why Satan has suddenly been so much more pleasant to be around.

The older brother voice in the back of his head is a little sceptical - he doesn’t even know what you look like, let alone what ulterior intentions you might have. The more hopeful voice, though - the one that he usually shuts down on any other given day, but one that he’s willing to listen to right now - says that, if you really were a malicious spirit, you’d probably have already done something by now. Three years, and somehow the other brothers only started noticing your presence within the last month… it’s almost commendable.

Satan’s never been particularly sociable - he has acquaintances, but not friends, and he has connections, but not bonds. So, in a way, Lucifer’s glad that he has you, even if it was a rather unfortunate situation that attached you to him in the first place.

He’ll have to properly talk to Satan about it later, just to make sure there wasn’t any other collateral damage, but he’ll give it time. To be honest, he’s not even that angry. All of the demon brothers have killed beings before; it isn’t anything particularly new.

(That’s a whole other can of worms that probably should never be opened.)

He looks at Satan. He’s still staring at his feet, but his tense expression seems to have relaxed somewhat. Even as Lucifer watches, the corner of his lip quirks up into a small smile, and he raises a hand to bat at thin air with a quiet snort.

One of his jacket sleeves pulls itself into the air and drops over his face, seemingly of its own accord, and here Satan actually laughs out loud, exclaiming a half-reproachful and half-joking, “Stop that!”

He seems to forget that he’s not the only demon in the room, and Lucifer is struck by the almost boyish look on his brother’s face as he abruptly turns and swipes at the air. It’s a look that he thought he’d never see again, and yet…

A smile tugs at his own lips, and he silently gets up to leave. He pauses in front of the door, and maybe, if he looks especially hard, he can see the faint outline of a figure matching each of Satan’s movement, wearing the boisterously innocent kind of grin that only humans with their endless optimism for the universe can.

The conversation isn’t anywhere near over, but Lucifer doesn’t feel like continuing it, and Satan clearly doesn’t, either. He steps out of the kitchen without either of you noticing, and goes on his way down the corridor. In a way, he almost feels like he doesn’t belong in there right now.

When the two of you are together like that, there isn’t any room for a third person.

#unedited #tbh i’m not too happy with this one but i couldn’t be bothered to re-do it #might rewrite it one day idk #just needed to finish this so that i could concentrate properly on the next chapter of jtta #i promise the next obey me piece will be better ^^;#obey me #obey me imagines #obey me x reader #swd satan #swd lucifer #satan x reader #fluff #angst #i guess #idk what this is tbh

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