#oh the 'pretending not to notice how she feels' line is borrowed straight from skulduggery pleasant

[catsafarithewriter]

You asked for prompts so - 1. “Is now a bad time to tell you that I’ve summoned a demon in the kitchen again or should I wait until after you’re done talking on the phone?” Muta to Baron in the bureau. And 2. "When you're here I don't feel so lost" Persephone to Louise. Do your thing :)

A/N: I’m probably gonna do both cause I have ideas for both, but for now let’s go down the “demon summoned in kitchen” one again, with wildly different vibes, and also because @tcrmommabear sent me this song (E.T - Katy Perry, slowed) to see what it would prompt, and the two are working together nicely. 

x

PROMPT: Is now a bad time to tell you that I’ve summoned a demon in the kitchen again, or should I wait until after you’re done talking on the phone?”

x

Baron lowered the phone. “Again?” he echoed. “When did you summon a demon the first time?”

“Uh, never?”

“It wasn’t a demon,” Haru piped up from the other end of the phone. “His name was Vincent and he didn’t appreciate you messing around with portals you don’t understand.”

“He had horns!” Muta hollered back.

“He was a goatman!”

Baron pinched the bridge of his nose. “Muta, why don’t you just show me this alleged demon you’ve brought into our kitchen?”

“Oh, I’ve gotta see this,” Haru said. “I’ll be there in five,” and she hung up. 

“How did you even summon a demon in the first place?” Baron asked. 

“Alright, so you remember when we went to the spirit festival last summer and there were these stalls selling apparently cursed chopping boards?”

“No.”

Muta paused. “Huh. I may not have told you about that.”

“You bought a cursed chopping board?!”

“I thought it was false advertising! Like zero-fat food or easy-to-assemble furniture! It’s not my fault they were telling the truth!”

“… Fine. And what makes you so sure it’s a demon… oh.” He halted at the doorway. 

Above the kitchen counter, a creature of nightmares and death clattered. 

It didn’t resemble a demon in any of the more western ideas of demons and the underworld, but there could be no doubt about it that this… creature had been dragged up from some hellish domain. 

It was built from bones and decay, multiple skulls swaying for dominance along what could possibly pass for shoulders on the beast, spheres of light glimmering inside the eye sockets. The rest of its body was an ever-shifting, ever-pulsing amalgamation of ribs and bones and limbs bound together in a weeping darkness. 

It only took up the extent of counter to ceiling, but that was enough. Too much. 

Heads turned to Baron as he approached. Jaws slackened in the likeness of smiles. “Well, well, well,” it wheezed, and its voice was the sound of twigs snapping, wind whistling through dead branches, a hundred voices screaming from afar. Its words echoed in upon itself. “What can I do for you, Baron?”

Baron inhaled sharply, the only outward sign of shock he allowed. “How do you know my name?”

“I know all about you. All of you.” The heads shuffled, another skull - one of a bear - rising to the front. “I can see into your very soul, your essence. Do you think such a paltry thing as a name would be hidden from me?”

“And what are you?”

“Does it really matter?” it hissed. 

Baron tilted his head. “I suppose not. Muta, did you receive any instructions on how to deal with your cursed chopping board when you bought it?”

“Don’t ya think I would have brought it up by now if I had?”

The creature laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “The contract you have me bound by demands I grant one wish. Do that, and I shall be gone.”

“Fine then. I wish-”

Baron motioned sharply before Muta could finish. “We don’t know what kind of forces we’re playing with here.” 

“Are you sure?” The creature shifted, its form angled towards Muta now. “I can grant you anything. Is there truly nothing you would ask for? Nothing in all the world that you would want back? Renaldo Moon, you lost so much that night, so much I could return to you.” 

Baron glanced to Muta. His friend’s old name sent alarm bells ringing through his mind. “Muta…”

“Hush, Creation,” the creature crooned. “Don’t speak of matters you know nothing about. Do you really think he would eat a lake full of fish on a whim? Do you think so lowly of your friend that you never thought to ask what really happened that night?” 

“Shut up.”

The creature’s many heads swivelled back to Muta. “What did you say?”

“I said shut up. Butt out. Yer think I’m stupid? Yer think I’m really gonna wish upon some bone freak? Yer really do have nothing but air in those skulls, do ya?”

The bear jaw snapped shut. The heads shuffled again, this time an owl skull taking precedence. Huge eye sockets, over half the size of the skull, focused on something behind them. “Then the crow Creation. Surely you have something you want?”

Baron and Muta looked back to see Toto arrive, dipping his head through the doorway. For a long moment, Toto didn’t say anything. Then, “The cursed chopping board? Really? I told you it was a bad idea, puddingbrains.”

“Yeah, yeah, just think of a way to get rid of it, beaky.”

The bony beak of the creature curved upwards, an impossible smile along its face. “Toto,” it whistled, its voice a slightly different tenor, but still like nails on a chalkboard. “There are things you want. I know there are things you want. Wish, and it shall be granted.”

Toto tilted his head to the other two Bureau members. “Has it already tried this with you two?”

“Jus’ me so far.”

“Did it do as badly as this?”

“You laugh and you joke and you throw yourself into the Bureau, never stopping long enough to think back to the past,” the creature continued, undaunted by Toto’s indifference. “But the past is always there, always haunting you, always one step behind you. You think I can’t see that? One wish, and I can give it all back to you. I can return the lives that you were unable to protect. I can give you back your home.”

Toto was silent for a long moment. 

“My home is here now,” he said eventually. Quietly. “These are the people I protect.” 

The creature observed him, only the clattering of its bones supplying sound. The light within its eye sockets dimmed and the owl skull sunk down. A feline skull took its place… or almost feline, anyway. The proportions didn’t quite rest properly in its form, its outline shifting between feline and… something else. Those empty eyes turned to Baron, changing focus as easy as breathing. “Your companions look to the past, whereas you, Baron, you… are all about the future. I can respect that. No looking back for you.” 

“I have watched you try your tricks twice before. You have nothing left to surprise me with.”

The skull shifted into a smile, shimmering between forms. For a moment, it looked nearly human, and then it was back to feline and Baron could have believed he missaw. 

“Such bold words for one who buries his desires so deep,” it purred. It lowered its head and Baron saw the light within its eye sockets was golden. “Your companions may yearn for a missing piece of their past, but you yearn for something you haven’t even lost yet. Tell me, Creation, how is the human? Are you still torturing her by pretending not to notice how she feels?”

Baron took a step back. “I don’t know what-”

“Don’t you? That’s funny; your companions do.” Multiple heads flickered towards Muta and Toto. “Don’t you?”

Both looked away. 

“Tell me, Baron,” the feline head continued, “what do you think is keeping you at bay? Is it her mortality? Yours? Tell me why you lie to her, to yourself, again and again. How long will this merry little dance go on for? A month? A year? A lifetime? You may have all the time in the world, but it is ticking on for her. Tell me, Baron, and I can wish it all away.”

“You talk too much,” Baron growled. 

“And you talk too little.”

The seconds passed, and even the clattering of the bones were silent. 

“She has a life,” Baron said softly, “and it is not my place to intrude.”

“A human life,” the creature translated.

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Baron turned on the creature. “That is not my decision to make.”

“No,” it said, unaffected. “It’s hers.” And it nodded to the frozen form at the door. 

“Haru-” Baron breathed. 

“Is it true?” she interrupted. “Is that why you’ve kept quiet all this time?”

“Why don’t you wish and find out?” the creature crooned. 

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Haru snapped. Her gaze shot back to Baron. “Is it true? Baron.”

He was still, so terribly still. “Haru-”

“Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He slowly met her eyes. “Because you are mortal. You deserve the chance for a mortal life.”

She strode to him, closing the space between them in three quick sharp steps. “Don’t think I should be the one who gets to decide that?” she asked. “What do you think I’ve been doing all this time?”

“You may come to regret your decision.”

“You mean regret you.”

“Regret letting your mortal life pass you by. I am eternally aware you are a guest in our world; it would be presumptuous to think we do anything but borrow you.”

Haru stepped away as if stung. “Is that what you think of me? A guest?”

“Eventually, you will have to return to your human life.”

“But if that were not the case?”

The creature clattered, its form shifting with the unspoken potential. Baron glanced to it out of the corner of his eye. “Do not wish anything you’ll come to regret,” he said. 

“I’m not talking about wishes,” Haru retorted. “I’m talking about us. If my mortal life was not something you had to worry about, if I were like... like you, would things be different between us?”

“Yes.”

Haru’s eyes narrowed, but whatever she had to say was swallowed by the unearthly laughter of the creature. “There you have it,” it purred, its voice reverberating in on itself. “He admits it. But you - we - can change that. All it takes is just one little wish-”

Haru snarled and rounded on the creature. “I wish you’d crawl back into whatever gutter came from!” she snapped and turned back to Baron even as the creature hissed and curled in upon itself. “How can someone so smart be so stupid?”

The rest of the Bureau uneasily eyed the space where the creature had occupied. Faint smoke curdled from the chopping board but, other than that, there was no sign it had ever existed. 

“Baron!”

He glanced to the chopping board and then back to Haru. “I thought-”

“What? Did you really think I was going to listen to anything that home-bought demon had to offer? I’m angry, not dumb. But you... I cannot believe how much time we have wasted because some idiotic notion of what a mortal life should be has numbed you into a state of emotional constipation!”

“What?”

She huffed and stepped back up to him. “I choose you. I chose you a long time ago, and I will always choose you. I guess the only question left is if you choose me too?”

Baron didn’t - couldn’t - answer immediately. “Yes,” he whispered. “Always.”