Chapter Fifteen #2
He hesitated. She saw him do it. And for the first time since they’d started talking about this, he searched for his cigarettes. The cigarettes that definitely weren’t cigarettes at all, but most likely some kind of demon-calming drug.
Though he seemed to reconsider after a moment.
Probably because he saw her expression, waiting without judgment.
“I punish evildoers so wicked Hell cannot wait for them,” he said, all in a big tumble. Then he winced. As if he still thought it might be a little far for her anyway. Much to her amusement.
“And that’s supposed to be horrifying to me.”
“Well, I do it with a big hammer. It’s pretty gruesome.”
She fake fanned herself with her hand. Made her face as pretend scared as she could get it, all big eyes and lip biting. “Oh no, not gruesome. However will I cope with such a thing.”
“I can’t believe you’re being funny about this. These are human beings.”
“So they’re not that guilty of bad stuff then. Actually, Satan is just super strict about these things. You end up with one too many parking tickets and your head gets caved in by a seven-foot-tall horned hottie with a big hammer.”
“Don’t say it like it’s sexy .”
He threw up his hands, his face the very definition of aghast.
Though there was a gleam in his eyes when he did it.
And the outraged breath he let out had just a hint of delight about it, around the edges.
Like he was appalled, but somehow secretly pleased at the same time.
She’d let slip a bit of desire, still burning despite everything that had just happened, and he’d caught it.
Even if he couldn’t quite believe it.
“You just saw what I looked like,” he said, incredulous.
And she knew just how to reaffirm what she’d said, without pushing it too hard. “That simply slipped out. I didn’t mean it. Despite how factual it is.”
“Factual? My demon form is the color of a tomato.”
“Yeah, but tomatoes are delicious.”
“Not when they’re massive body shaped, they’re not.
Then it’s just weird.” He leaned forward, tilted his head almost conspiratorially.
Like, hey, you can level with me, it’s fine .
“I know it’s weird, okay? I might not understand everything about humans, but I have grasped what they find attractive, and it’s not that. ”
“Is it also not biceps like buses?”
“That—you—you’re saying it like it’s good on purpose.”
“It’s not that hard. Here, I’ll do it again: those thick thighs save lives.”
She knew as soon as she said it that this was too much.
He rocked back in his chair. Mouth hanging open, eyes like moons.
Even though she’d kind of curbed herself quite a lot there.
Her still soupy-with-desire brain had wanted her to say way more, and about a lot of other things she’d accidentally seen.
Because honestly she’d tried to keep her eyes high up as he made his way into the house and disappeared into his bathroom.
But unfortunately, his sudden huge height had made judging how high up her eyes needed to be pretty tough.
She definitely hadn’t quite gotten it right.
Things had been glimpsed around his tattered pants.
Big things. Big things she couldn’t stop thinking about.
So, really, he’d gotten off pretty lightly.
Even if he didn’t seem to think so. “Jeez, this is just… this is really not the way I imagined this going,” he said, in a hushed sort of voice.
“I mean, it’s weird enough that you seem to like me like this.
And that you’re okay with me like that .
But finding it in any way appealing ? I just don’t know what to say. ”
“Try simply accepting it.”
“I want to. But gosh, honey.”
Not kid anymore , she thought. Honey now.
And that made her want to say more dangerous things.
But luckily, something else about what he’d said came to her. It pinged in her head, like a lightbulb going on. “Do you say stuff like gosh because you can’t say God ?” she asked, and oh, the sheepish look he gave her. “Wow, you can’t. That’s so weird. And cool.”
“It’s not cool. I can’t speak the name of the Lord with my forked tongue.”
“Wait, you have a forked tongue ?” She leaned forward to try and get a look. “How forked? Like, just a little bit?”
“That’s not the important part here. That’s not…
it’s not literal. I’m cursed. The light of heaven will never shine upon me.
I dwell in darkness, condemned to destroy the souls of those who offend the face of they who embody goodness,” he said, and she didn’t know what she liked more.
That his voice went just a little bit weird and demony and sonorous when he started to get all biblical about it.
Or that what he was saying definitely suggested something pretty neat.
“The way you say it makes it sound like god is nonbinary.”
“Well, of course they are, there’s not really any such thing as gender.”
He crumpled his face up like come on, now, a fool would know this .
But truthfully that just made her even more gleeful about it. “Wow, okay. Oh, that is awesome to hear. Tell me other silly things humans invented,” she said, chin already in her hands before she’d even finished speaking.
He just shook his head at her, however, half laughing as he did.
“I think probably you should focus on the I’m terrible and damned part. Not even just damned. I was born of Hell. I am Hell. There are no demons who aren’t. We are all made of only evil, set to do our evil work.”
“Because you punish people who stole a penny candy when they were five.”
“Okay, just so we’re clear, I get that you’re being ridiculous on purpose now,” he said, one hand pointed at her for emphasis. He was wrong, though. Or at least, not entirely right.
“I’m really not. You just still haven’t told me what these evildoers did to deserve being pulverized. So I have to fill in the blanks. I have to make my own scale of whatever weird godly justice there might be.”
“Or you could just accept I’m bad.”
She gave him a look over the top of her glasses.
And he tried to get out of it, he did. He put out a finger, and pushed them back up the bridge of her nose.
Shook his head as if to say, You’re barking up the wrong tree here .
Then when that didn’t work he sighed and got up.
Went to the refrigerator, and snagged a carton of milk from the door.
Then took a swig, just before he spoke in a way that made something else click in her head.
The way he’d drunk that same stuff at dinner.
How he’d told her it didn’t really agree with him.
In part she knew because he’d clearly popped into his demon form when he’d dashed to the bathroom.
She was even starting to suspect that he’d popped into his demon form because of everything getting a little heated.
But now she could see there was more to it.
That he had seized on the dairy thing because the dairy did affect him.
And she had a good theory as to why. Milk acts on him like alcohol.
What you’re seeing here is him having a stiff drink before he confesses , her mind informed her.
And honestly, that was almost as cool as the words he came out with after he wiped his mouth. “The crime has to offend even the dark heart of a demon,” he told her, in a pained sort of way.
So she made sure to crack a joke.
“Then I guess we’re talking about double parking outside Mott’s.”
“I got mad about that one time . And I didn’t drag anyone to Hell over it.”
“Who have you dragged, then? Serial killers?”
He got a glass then. Two glasses. Poured out what was probably the equivalent of shots, and handed one to her. Before he seemed to realize that was silly, and it didn’t work that way for her, and downed them both.
“Serial killers are really just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Oh god. I can’t even think what would be worse than them.”
“Good. And I want it to stay that way. I don’t want it to weigh on you.”
“Yeah, but are you sure that it’s the weighing on me that you’re worried about?
” she asked, as he sat and poured another shot.
How drunk does it get him , she found herself wondering, when he downed that, too.
Though she didn’t think it could be that effective, considering how uncomfortable he now looked.
And how clearly and adamantly he then spoke.
“If you’re trying to suggest the evil of humankind started making it hard for me to do my duty, or even want to think about those duties, to the point where it got difficult for me to get out of bed in the morning, and had me hitting the bottle hard enough to make me pass out in a fountain, and caused deep disturbances in my emotional well-being, well, you’d be wrong.
I’m fine, actually, better than fine. I totally don’t enjoy maintaining human form in part because ninety percent of my thousands of years of horrifying memories fall out of my head and now barely even return when I slip into my demon body,” he said.
He even managed to get some withering attitude in there, and seemed satisfied once he was done.
But then he clocked the heartbreak all over her face, and cursed himself. “I said too much then, didn’t I.”
“Just a little and very harrowing amount.”
“Honestly, honey, I’m not that emotionally devastated.”
“I’d probably believe that if you hadn’t just chugged half a carton of demon alcohol. Because that’s what that is, right? Like, you’re just getting sauced right in front of me because of the torment your life puts you through.”
He looked at the glass still in his hand. “This much just takes the edge off. For about five minutes.”
“My god, did you drain a herd before the fountain thing?”