+ my mc is the heroine, so the pronouns are feminine.
Milk helps put souls to sleep. Mouths like to drink it hot. White that once clouded clear glass with twists of steam slithers down throats and pours into stomachs. It’s been that way since old times and the dawn of history, perhaps—a tradition in many households.
As a general rule, children love their nightly pint of hot milk. As grown-ups, many of them cherish it. The liquid had followed them, after all, flowing behind them into good ol’ dull adulthood.
Now he, normally he never needed silly methods like that. No ‘sleep-helpers’ for him, thanks. His organic chemistry championed the slumber department.
Just not that night.
In those star-flecked hours, he just couldn’t sleep.
Dry flakes of milk dotted the glass to his right. Under the lamp’s light they had looked like a blueberry mix: violet freckles, lavender stars, purple planets.
Even with his head in her soft lap, her fingers in his uncombed hair, and the exhaustion slowly glazing the inner chambers of his veins, he couldn’t make himself doze off and away.
Maybe his body would not surrender to sloth because of her presence.
He wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, but his brain was as alive as an electric wire is: a curly leech pulsing with its own sort of glimmering currents and glistening life. There was an entire galaxy in his mind. A milky way.
Something was flicking blurry nightmares at his soul.
His tired eyes watched. Fake planets moved lazily above him, in a perfect circle, almost as though they were doing their own ritual. The ringed one in the middle had to be the oracle. No one knew anything about the little magical meeting. It was amusing; even still objects can do things they want.
He thought of fairy dust.
His head was spinning. He felt dizzy. Not physically. Something inside him was twirling around itself, spiralling. Would anyone understand? If he tried explaining. Would they know what he meant?
One hour, two hours, three. After each other they passed. He could hear her soft breaths. His fingertips pressed against her cheek. Pillow-soft. Someone else would’ve compared it to a marshmallow. A dent formed between her brows. His skin was cold.
Counting stars was too romantic. Rosy. He was in a black mood. Back to the classics: he began to count sheep.
One pink sheep, two pink sheep, three...
Everywhere in the universe, creatures resort to many of the same things, it seems.
It wasn’t that late when the answer came to him. He hadn’t ever lost it, not really. He hadn’t even needed to look. It had been there all along, the thing nagging at him. It crawled to him by itself, on its own hands and feet. It was a fear.
Again he remembered that, years from now—hopefully many, many years from now—on a sleepless night like this, he would be yet another insomniac lying in his bed or on the floors.
Alone.
That night he just couldn’t sleep well. He dreamt of fading stars and planet collisions.
Hot milk helps put souls to sleep, does it? Fuck hot milk. It didn’t do shit, did it?
+notes: I honestly didn't want to log in, but I like to post fics the day I write them on 'cause I don't write dates down next in my notes and instead use Tumblr as a sort of accurate timeline to keep track of when I wrote something/last wrote anything at all my AO3 dates have mostly not heard of accuracy (transl.: since I'm somewhat writing again now, this may very well be repeated).
Anyways
*quietly sneaks u 100mg of existential horrors*
+ my mc is the heroine, so the pronouns are feminine.
As he gazed at the starry night that hung over him, he remembered how one melody tinkled in the summer breeze. It was soft, sweet—a lot like seeing stars twinkle in the midst of blazing sunlight or watching her dainty studded earrings glitter—a lullaby in his ears.
When he was a child that dwelled in the skies above, many a times he descended to the world of humans, to the world that stood in the middle between hell and heaven—but never had he seen an ice-cream truck or heard it sing; it was an urban legend to him.
She had told him about it once, not too long before he saw it for himself. In his mind, the truck was a sort of magic, a form of curiosity. The truck sold rich ice cream, but were they magical, those icy delicacies? What kind of spells would the creamy frost cast? Was the truck itself enchanted?
The human realm bounced with pleasant surprises, glimmered with them. He knew that and a lot more, yet about the ice-cream truck he didn't know much—he didn't know anything at all, actually—but he wanted to. He so wished to find answers to that simple mystery and take a bite out of the bright scenery.
So when the truck hummed that adorable tune again one sunny day, all it took for him to rush out the door and towards the singing vehicle were a few words of encouragement.
White metal. Dots and stripes. Pops of colour. And the cherry on top? A comically huge ice-cream model.
He smiled at the memory. How endearingly absurd a sight!
Under the summer sunshine, children in their colourful clothing surrounded the truck like popsicles. Back then, he thought that their excitement melted into his own, just like his happiness melded with theirs—and now he was sure it was true. How could he have ever loathed all humans and desired to curse them with harm?
He would never forget how small hands stuck to the metal and little fingers pointed at charts painted with pictures of frozen desserts. The innocent energy had made him happy, but all he wanted in that moment was ice-cream—a popsicle, a biscuit, and a cone.
And when his tongue licked cold sugar that first time, the sweetness spread from it all throughout his body. There was no magic, but that was okay. She was waiting for him, not too far away. That was way more than enough.
He would never forget how she sat on the edge of the swimming pool, legs dangling into cyan water. It was mysterious, how even underwater her skin still held its pale complexion and didn't really drink in the hint of blue. It was really pretty, too.
And most of all, he remembered their shared ice cream and her lips on his, cold like the ice-cream they held, sweet like syrup.
Drowsiness began to tug at his lashes, gently so. Soon he would fall asleep with a soft chuckle to himself—they had wanted to sneak a kiss before his oblivious twin came along. Soon he would drift into the realm of dreams, thinking that even if the ice-cream weren't magical, it didn't matter, because she was there. Yet, it was indeed magical, but only because she sat by him.
+note: I've had this idea for a while, but I've been uninspired to write for quite some time; it feels nice to write again. Belphie's fascination with the ice-cream truck and the moment he and MC shared the ice-cream he bought from it during the brothers' visit to the human world (season 3 of Obey Me!) were my muses for this piece. I really miss summer, too, so that was probably reflected here as well.
+fun fact: this is my second time writing about Belphie since I first started playing the game years ago.
+ warnings: angst, mentions of blood, death, violence and implicit flashbacks.
+ my mc is the heroine, so the pronouns are feminine.
Color jumped into fire and burned crimson, leaving her to stare at a dry world through a battered film.
After his arms crushed her in their embrace, the world became cold and pale; it hummed static whispers ever so frightening, and cracking bones shrieked in the silence.
Life, too, was suddenly a movie from an old cinema, a classical time. Left behind was a kiss of red, like a rose glowing under steel skies, its petals the color of flesh and blood gushing through tight veins. And she could only silently watch through the mist, forever cursed to stay still—like a ghost unable to tear its bloodshot eyes off and look away.
The rose was especially beautiful—sickeningly ominous and haunting. It seemed to suck any residue of color with greed, its bright glow feeding on glory, quieting weak breaths little by little until the timeless gaze of death was all that remained.
Nothing had changed since that night; everyday, every second of night and day, terror gnawed at her brittle bones. Yet another bout of memory, yet another attack of vivid sensations and eerie symphonies—relentless cracking, merciless burning, endless tearing.
Memories of his smile possessed her. The smeared blood on his handsome face robbed her of rest and breath. His existence warded slumber off her weary eyes. And, as though it were her destiny to feel every single bite terror took out of her bones, he never left her side.
The demon's gentle presence always clotted the blood in her heart, and her heart would pound like a maniac in response, all in vain attempts to escape. Murderous rage had melted into heavenly peace in his eyes—an ocean of omen; and in the tender embrace of that ocean, she could only wonder in fear: was she a soul locked in a cage? Was she part of a grand play on a dark theatre, or the helpless protagonist of a tragedy, destined to court death in the end?
In that gray world, she constantly felt as though the messenger's visit neared. Her spirit was defenseless as it waited to drown in blood. And in that tragic play, he might as well have been the end itself—a devil feigning remorse until he one day decided that he's sick of the light; so all of a sudden, sweet warmth would turn into bitter cold, and the guardian angel staying by her side would finally feast on her soul.
Would it make sense for a demon to become a devout angel, after all? Would he not choose the shadows once more?
And she couldn't turn back anymore. The movie had captured her mind, captured her eyes, and she couldn't look at anything else now, destined to forever gaze.
It's the same unchanging tale of a thousand pasts, retold in a new present for all to hear—humans choking in the clutches of devils and falling to their knees, defeated in the victorious face of evil, in yet another roman holiday.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Belphegor (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Main Character (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Mammon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Beelzebub (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)
Additional Tags: Ghosts, belphegor apologizes, Lesson 016 Spoilers (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Canon-Typical Violence, No beta we die like lilith, Horror, Mammon Needs a Hug (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)
Summary:
The dead never really seem to leave, and the living cannot possess the walls in which the dead inhabit. This was something Belphegor had come to learn since his time in the attic.
