Lucifer's wife ♡

Vil had never before discovered that another person could infiltrate geography.

Yet somehow you managed it.

The city looked different now, though the changes were difficult to explain. They lived in the strange invisible layer beneath ordinary life where memories attached themselves to locations and transformed them quietly over time.

Every route contained detours. Every neighborhood carried associations. Every familiar place seemed to contain some version of you waiting patiently inside it, tucked away inside old conversations and impulsive decisions. The entire phenomenon should have annoyed him considerably more than it did. Instead, he kept showing up.

Summer certainly didn't help matters. The season seemed determined to stretch every evening beyond its natural limits.

The air remained warm enough that nobody felt particularly obligated to go home, music drifted through open windows, restaurants spilled onto sidewalks, and people lingered in places they normally would have passed through without a second glance.

The entire city felt younger during those months, and somehow you felt younger with it. Not immature, but animated by a restless sort of energy that made ordinary plans difficult to maintain and impossible to predict.

Vil would receive a text asking whether he was busy.

The answer rarely mattered because twenty minutes later he would find himself somewhere unexpected.

One evening it was a rooftop. Another evening it was an outdoor movie screening where neither of you watched the film because the people sitting behind you kept providing dramatically more entertaining commentary. Once it was a night market three districts away that apparently contained a vendor selling fruit shaped like animals.

Moments like that accumulated quickly over the course of the summer, and an unreasonable number of them seemed to involve food in one form or another.

Vil eventually concluded that half of your personality revolved around acquiring snacks under increasingly questionable circumstances.

The theory gained considerable support one night when he arrived at a crowded street festival and found you standing beside a game stall holding three stuffed bears and a can of soda somebody had apparently given you for free.

"How long have you been here?"

You glanced up.

"Thirty minutes."

Vil looked at the bears, then the soda and then the bag of snacks hanging from your wrist.

"Explain."

"I won the first bear."

"And the others?"

"The second bear was lonely."

"That does not answer my question."

"The third bear belonged to a child."

Vil stared.

You stared back.

The festival lights reflected in your eyes. Music drifted across the crowd from somewhere farther down the street. The smell of grilled food hung in the air. Around you, people moved between stalls in shifting currents of color and noise.

"The child gave you his bear?"

"He respected my vision."

Vil laughed despite himself and the sound surprised both of you.

The evening continued in the same direction most evenings spent with you eventually took. One plan became three completely unrelated plans.

A conversation about festival food somehow transformed into an argument about whether raccoons possessed social hierarchies.

Somewhere along the way the two of you crossed half the city without either of you remembering making the decision to do so. Time behaved suspiciously around you. Hours disappeared with such efficiency that Vil occasionally wondered whether you were secretly stealing them.

By midnight the festival had begun thinning out.

By one in the morning the two of you were sitting on a stone wall overlooking the river, sharing a carton of strawberries purchased from a vendor packing up for the night.

The city shimmered across the water, reflections stretching and breaking apart whenever a boat passed through the river. Music drifted faintly from somewhere farther down the waterfront, blending with distant conversations and the occasional burst of laughter carried by the warm night air.

You handed him a strawberry in the middle of your story and Vil accepted it without interrupting you, the exchange occurring with such practiced ease that he only noticed it afterward.

At some point during the summer the two of you had developed an alarming amount of confidence in each other's habits. You already knew which foods he liked well enough to order for him.

He knew which desserts you claimed to enjoy despite abandoning them halfway through every single time.

You could identify the expression that appeared whenever he was about to start judging a stranger's outfit from fifty feet away. He could predict with near-perfect accuracy whether a conversation was about to become genuinely interesting or whether you were preparing to waste twenty minutes of his life with a theory involving raccoons, conspiracy, or both.

You tossed the leaves from another strawberry into the almost empty carton before leaning backward onto your hands and looking out across the water. The festival lights still glowed in the distance. Your bears sat beside you in a small plush council. One of them was wearing sunglasses that it previouslydid not possess.

Vil chose not to ask.

The answer would almost certainly make the situation worse.

"You know," you said eventually, "I think we've become annoying."

Vil turned.

"We?"

"Us."

You gestured vaguely between the two of you.

"We spend an unreasonable amount of time together."

"You called me yesterday."

"You answered immediately."

"You sent eleven messages."

"You replied to all of them."

A grin slowly appeared on your face that Vil distrusted on principle because that look usually meant you had reached a conclusion.

"You like me."

Vil nearly choked on a strawberry.

Across the river, lights shimmered against the water. Music continued drifting through the warm summer night. Beside him, you looked entirely too pleased with yourself.

The worst part was that you were already laughing before he had managed to answer. The confidence suggested you had reached this conclusion weeks ago and had been carrying it around purely for entertainment purposes. Given your personality, that seemed entirely plausible.

"I don't know why you're so entertained by your own nonsense."

"You didn't deny it."

"I did."

"You absolutely didn't."

"I implied it."

You looked delighted.

Vil could feel the smile threatening at the corner of his own mouth and immediately fought it on principle. The effort lasted approximately three seconds.

"There it is."

"There what is?"

"The face."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"The one you make when you're losing."

Vil turned toward the river.

Somewhere over the past few months you had developed the deeply irritating habit of seeing straight through him whenever it suited you.

The realization probably should have unsettled him more than it did. Instead, he found himself looking forward to those moments, storing them away alongside your messages, your stories, and the endless stream of ridiculous observations you scattered throughout his days without apparent effort.

Beside him, you nudged his shoulder with yours.

"You're thinking too hard again."

Vil glanced over and saw you smile.

The same smile that had followed him through half the summer. The same smile currently waiting for him to admit something. The same smile he had spent months pretending wasn't becoming one of his favorite sights in the world.

For once, the effort felt unnecessary.

The festival lights painted shifting colors across the river. Music drifted through the warm night air. Somewhere farther down the waterfront, a group of strangers cheered loudly at something neither of you could see.

The city felt alive. It was the sort of night that seemed determined to continue forever.

Before you could say another word, Vil reached over, caught the front of your shirt between his fingers, and pulled you toward him.

The kiss lasted only a few seconds—just long enough to steal the next sentence directly from your mouth. When he finally leaned back, your expression had gone completely blank. The silence that followed was perhaps the most satisfying silence Vil had experienced all year.

For the first time since meeting you, you seemed genuinely speechless

Then he reached into the carton, stole the last strawberry, and ate it before you recovered enough to stop him.

Your outrage arrived immediately afterward.

The summer carried on around you, bright and loud and full of music, while Vil laughed hard enough that he nearly dropped the strawberry halfway through escaping your attempted revenge.

And he found that he didn't mind that you're in every fond memory of his, because he wants you to be in every fond memory after this.

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