#hespherus jones

[ladyinbooks]

I'm so so excited that i get to send you regular asks again!!! Lol!!!!

So!! I miss my hess and dan and would love if you just rambled about anything related to them a bit! Anything!!!

Yay! Thank you, lovely anon! ❤️❤️❤️😊

Ohhoho. Hess and Dan. Let's see...

I have a fond headcanon that after the events of P2P (like, quite a while after...) Dan does return to his day job. Hess throws an absolute tantrum about it (because of course he does), but this doesn't work on Dan. At all.

So, Dan goes back to the Met, and for the most part is extremely relieved that he's generally treated like any other copper. He does his beat, he hangs out with his fellow officers and quietly breathes a sigh of relief that he gets to be normal.

Except.

There is a weirdly high number of demons casually congregating in the London area. Most specifically, they are congregating in Dan's borough of work. It takes him all of six weeks to work out that this is Hess's doing, but there's not much he can really say about it, because actually the demons are being quite efficient at suppressing other problems in the locale.

Which means that, somehow, Dan has his own weirdly protective little group of demons who have started to do things like tackle petty crime; put a stop to unauthorised demonic activity and even help solve murders.

The Chief Superintendent is, naturally, delighted by this turn of events, and decides that it would be great to turn these 'volunteers' into an official initiative.

Which is how Dan ends up as the human liaison for the Met's first ever Department of the Criminal Occult.

Hess is, of course, thoroughly delighted by this turn of events. Because now he has even more henchmen demons around keeping an eye on Dan.

[witchyficbindery]

Path to Paradise

Dan shivers, can't help himself. Dumb, animal fear, and he wants to bare his throat to it. “What are you – ”

“I promised,” Hess whispers. “I promised. But just this, alright? It'll be like it never happened.” He slides a step nearer, the pressure of his fingers hard and greedy. “It won't matter.”

After the apocalypse doesn't quite happen, Daniel Waters is just trying to return to his nice, quiet life. What he gets instead is a new neighbour. Hess is friendly, charming and working with demons. He's also strangely familiar.

There are gaps in Dan's memory, but that doesn't seem to matter. They say the devil always looks after his own, and apparently?

Well, apparently Dan belongs to the devil.

72,552 words / 348 pages

Original work by @ladyinbooks

Cover art commissioned from @pangolin2b-commissionopen

It is FINALLY time to share my bind of Path to Paradise by @ladyinbooks! This is an original work on AO3 about the man who fought the Beast and his demons at the apocalypse and the gaps in his memory after. This was the first original work I read on AO3 and I NEEDED to bind it! The typeset is inspired by illuminated manuscripts because I wanted to be dramatic and biblical with this antichrist story. The case is covered in brown faux leather with gold foil details. I also tried speckled (sprinkled ?) edges for the first time for the vibes. I’d definitely like to give it another try sometime! The cover art of Dan and Hess was commissioned from the incredible @pangolin2b-commissionopen!

[ladyinbooks]

Hi ! You have no idea how glad I am to see you again on my dashboard (and how feral I get every time).

That last ask about what their last meal would be had me thinking too, and now I'm stuck wondering what will happen when Dan becomes an old man. Like, will Hess age with him or will he not physically change ? And what happens after?

Or maybe Hess will wait until Dan gets his first few grey hair no the ones from the war don't count and then stop his aging process, because the silver reflects the morning light and makes the colours more bright.

Awwww, thank you lovely anon! ❤️❤️🤗

So Hess won't age - perks of being the Antichrist, I suppose! - however what Dan hasn't realised yet is that, well, he now has some of the Antichrist's soul in his body. Which means...

Yep. He's not ageing either...

I mean, Hespherus Jones is just not going to let Daniel Waters leave him, no matter what the circumstances. Death? Old age? Pfft. Not if he's got anything to do with it!

(But I do love your idea of Hess allowing just a few little grey hairs to grow for Dan. It's proof, I think. We are here. We made it. We live.)

[ladyinbooks]

The first time Hess loses his temper - really loses it - Dan tries to stop him from hurting people. Dan fails (for a number of reasons). Both of them have to live with the consequences of that.

Please tell us more 🥺

Ohoho lovely anon - this is the mini sequel that I will one day(!!!) write for P2P.

I won't go into too much detail, but I have a very, very specific scene for this, and I have for an awfully long time. It was actually an element that I wanted to include in P2P, but it wasn't the right time for this particular plot development, and as much as I desperately wanted to write it, I knew it wouldn't be the right fit for the narrative.

Without getting into specifics, Dan sometimes forgets that Hespherus Jones is, in fact, the Antichrist. And as the Antichrist, Hespherus Jones is an incredibly powerful and dangerous man, who is utterly fixated on exactly one thing.

And it doesn't take much for the Antichrist to deal with those who would harm that one thing he loves most in this world.

[ladyinbooks]

I was rereading P2P and The Slow Road Down (because I’m a sucker for Hess’ perspective) when it occurred to me, does Dan ever regain the first memory Hess wiped of Hess killing the woman in Maidstone? Would it make much of a difference if he did at the end of the everything?

Ohh lovely anon, I so very desperately want to write a fic where Dan actually does remember that incident, and I know that in order to do it justice we're probably looking at about 50k there, because it is a lot to unpack what happened in Maidstone. (Not least the fact that Hess knew before he died that he was a potential Antichrist; that he'd already messed with Dan's head; and Dan would have to confront the idea that maybe the image he has built in his mind of a perfect 'before' Hespherus Jones was not, in fact, true and Hess was not that perfect.)

I think it would make a difference in the sense that Dan would have to confront some uncomfortable truths, and I do think it would make him hesitate more in the end stages of P2P. However. I also think that although the route would be slower, Daniel Waters is destined to save Hespherus Jones in every universe (and sometimes more than once).

They would have got there.

Eventually.

[ladyinbooks]

Hess absolutely approves.

[ladyinbooks]

I highkey miss Hess and Daniel 😭 What are they up to right now? Just wondering if there are any new developments or stories about them?

Now for the insane question:

What happens if you throw Hess and Samiel into a locked room? 👀

Lovely Anon, I miss them too! ❤️ (And I really need to finish up the half-written AU sequel and the mini P2P sequel, both of which have been sitting on my hard drive for, ahem, two years.)

As for what they're up to right now...

I think Hess is currently decorating the Christmas tree (and enjoying himself thoroughly), while Dan is utterly appalled that the literal Antichrist thinks Christmas is a wonderful time of year. They are also squabbling over the last mince pie, and Angus the puppy is trying to eat wrapping paper (and being firmly stopped).

In the background, Abi has been delegated to In Charge Until the New Year, and Hess has threatened to string up anyone who disturbs him by their entrails (everyone believes him; they all saw what happened last Christmas when Beelzebub accidentally broke one of Hess's sets of tree lights). Hess has also made it widely known that if any heavenly forces attempt anything at all, there will be a literal angel corpse at the top of the Christmas tree. (Dan knows none of this. Yet.)

What happens if you throw Hess and Samiel into a locked room? 👀

Hehe, I love this question! I think Hess would probably develop some kind of immediate crush (if only of the 'OMG I desperately want to recruit this dangerously competent man to my cause' variety). Samiel would be... grudgingly impressed, I think, at the lengths Hess would go to for Dan. I actually weirdly think they might come out of it as friends, albeit both of them think the other is just very slightly too odd. 🤣

Or would they kiss? 🤔

[ladyinbooks]

Hii😊 hope you are doing great!!

Just wanted to say that I miss Hess and Dan🥺 in the meantime I've been reading path to paradise for the trillion time. Never get tired of it!

Hello! 🤗 I'm doing well, thank you! (Ridiculously busy as we roar towards the end of the academic year, but soon - soon there will be leave and then there will be writing! 😎) I hope you are doing wonderfully too! ❤️

Oh my gosh, what a lovely message. Thank you! I can't believe you've read P2P so much (and I'm honoured you have! ❤️❤️❤️) You know, I miss them too. Periodically, Hess comes along to gnaw on my brain as I think about the P2P AU, and the last oneshot (post-P2P) I have planned for them. Is it terrible I miss their toxic, toxic ways? I mean, it's such fun writing things like:

Hess: Dear diary. Today he only tried to kill me twice! I think he may be in love with me! :D

Dan: Dear diary. Today I only tried to kill him twice. I think I may be in love with him. D:<

Hmm. I've got itchy P2P writing fingers this evening @eklastuff - so if you want to send me a prompt, I think I could squeeze a little ficlet in sometime tomorrow! 😊