#avenwrites

•  The clocks are almost never synced up. You have no idea how he manages to keep track of them all, each unlabelled and seemingly always operating on a different time, repurposed as stop watches and timers and then back to keeping track of time zones across the realms.

• His room smells a little different every time you visit. There's always a faint smoky undertone, mixed with parchment and the old yellowing books that fill his bookshelves. Still, it's almost always overshadowed with whatever chemical he played with last - thankfully he keeps the more unpleasant and dangerous ones (sulphur, mercury, the hundreds of unnamed plants and substances he makes use of-) contained, both out of consideration for you and to Simeon who despairs at the mess and clutter that no amount of cleaning is ever enough for.

•  You run one hand across the deep button tufted leather, sleek and red, and less comfortable to sit on than you had initially expected. Not uncomfortable, per say, but there's a grounded firmness only found in unused furniture. (Solomon later confesses later that you are, in fact, the only one to really use it. Solomon is rarely one to rest, and he'd picked whatever he thought might seem welcoming for guests. He doesn't get many.)

•  Crackling fire, bubbling, simmering liquids, concentrated fluids that drip-    drip-    drip-     down into empty glass.

• He lets you help, sometimes, when he can trust that he can keep you safe, guiding you through the specifics bit by bit, shaving thin curls of some gnarled root into cauldrons, cutting up plants and peeling rough skin off strange fruits. It's an arduous and particular process, and Solomon ever-lighthearted, becomes remarkably critical, picking and choosing at each ingredient and transferring each piece to its proper place.

•  He always has something new to show you, even when he invites you to hideaway in his room from everyone else provided you 'don't expect him to be a good host', he just can't help but get...distracted. Boyish, eager for feedback and admittedly needy, he can only spend so much time tinkering before he feels the need to show off just a little. Once, silently tapping your shoulder to show you dried, ashy seed pod heads on twirled stalks, pouring bright blue kernels into the mortar. He picks up the pestle - just as old and well-loved as its partner - and carefully, carefully, splitting the seed in two, and you watch as it crackles and pops, keening like a firework as it sputters multicoloured sparks and flickers of light.

•  They'd offered to soundproof his room when he'd first joined - an offer he appreciated, but not one he ever accepted. The artificial silence that came with that sort of thing gave him headaches, he'd said. Listening faintly through the walls of the Purgatory Hall, you can't help but just...find it more homely. Footsteps in the hallway, students bickering outside the darkened windows, little things like that, and - on days where you're lucky - faint singing. His temporary home is alive.

He wants to be taller. [He wants to be above those he loves, those he fears, not in arrogance, but in dignity. A presence too large to be ignored.]

He wants to be bigger, older, wiser. [He wants to be trusted like the others are, with bigger conversations, with pieces of words and threads that he only catches in endings, between footsteps and closing doors. He doesn't want to be shielded. He hates Atlas and his single burden. He will do it himself, or with them.]

He's scared sometimes, when something - unplaceable, something he can never put into words - changes in Simeon. [It's gradual, and maybe one day Luke will look back and find that the signs were there much longer than he thought. But he isn't that old yet, and for now he fears the unspoken shift, the one that doesn't change anything in the way Simeon speaks, or acts, or moves, yet digs into Luke's skin all the same.]

Fear makes him falter, always. He wants to be steadfast but he can't just yet, regressing a few steps back and snapping empty bites at old threats. [Simeon chastises him for his judgements, comments towards those unlike him, and it's familiar. Simeon seems "normal", again, rather than the strange, forlorn version of his elder that Luke doesn't like, and can't recognise.]

His freckles fade during his first year in the Devildom. He misses the sun.

He grows a few inches during his second year. [And it's not enough for him, not when it's only noticeable because of the way Simeon seems to shrink into himself lately, the distance between them growing and shortening all at once.]

He trusts the people he loves, the people he respect. [He trusts they have his best intentions at heart. He couldn't cope with anything else. The thought never crosses his mind. His faith is more than he knows.]

There was worry in being sent away, at first. [Is he trusted enough to spread his wings, or is he just unneeded?]

He's a good kid. A good student. A good angel, forthright and faithful. [People he loves, people he respect, tell him so. And yet the praise worries him as much as it comforts. He doesn't want to be coddled (insincerity). A good kid, sure, but will he ever be a good adult?] 

[Of course, it is here his youth shows - he doesn't understand yet that neither are they.]

It's reassuring, somehow, that he could let himself die with you. You love the brothers, Diavolo, Barbatos. You love the angels. But they will outlive you. Somehow, you feel like they couldn't die, not properly, even if they wanted to, like Mammon could bleed out and go cold and be found the next morning wedged between the folds of a stranger's wallet, looking over the shoulders of stock brokers and investment bankers. They're like the old gods, you think to yourself, and wonder where that leaves you. Their strength comes from worship, just like any other. And sometimes worship is arrogance. Every act of wrath and greed and sin is worship, devotion, and every action is a demonstration of that faith, unwilling or otherwise.

To make a pact, then, is to take back some of that power one has given. Dividends.

He would die with you. Not for you, never for you, he's far too proud for that - any situation where he can save you, it will be you both, together. He's selfish like that. Have you sobered up yet?

Solomon, like all humans, is never satisfied;

He hammers away, and forges himself a new heart. A tinkerer. Another cog in his strange, strange machine. He turns back time. His soul is in pieces. Alloy.

He burns his fingers in the kiln, searing sigils into his body

He tugs at the threads, and only smiles when it comes undone.

"After 200 years or so, humans begin to forget," And so, though he's beaten age, beaten death - for now - Solomon still loses to the mind. Like many things, it's cyclical. He knows, and he knows, and he learns, and he grows, but he never gets any wiser, not really. He's equal measures frustrated and entertained at the prospect.

He remains awkward. He loves. He loves and loves again.

You lie across the sofa in his room, old manuscripts and scrolls he'd lent you sprawled across your chest and on the table next to you.

"...You're a Theseus' ship," His eyes flit to meet yours, expression blank, almost surprised for a moment before a smile tugs at his lips.

"You were thinking of me?" You purse your lips, far too familiar with this particular tone of voice.

"I was." You stare up at the ceiling. His eyes don't leave you.

"Explain it to me." He turns his chair towards you, crossing one leg over the over, hand against his chin in contemplation. But you know it already, you want to say, why bother, when you already know? But you know that's not why he's asking. It's the same as your magic lessons - like the one you were studying for just now, before you interrupted yourself. Are you being taught? Is he asking to see how much you’ve learnt? Or is he trying to learn something himself?

Barbatos is an observer, a people pleaser, a people watcher. Nothing surprises him, not exactly, but that certainly doesn't mean he's someone who can't be entertained.

It's boring, to know everything. But even so, Barbatos explains, is there not joy in reading a story once read? Is a film unwatchable after the first viewing? Of course not. And while he makes an effort to keep himself in the dark - he was told to, after all - Barbatos has spent too long seeing too much to not predict the present.

It's a natural consequence, then, that he is a lover of potential. Branching paths and possibilities.

[And so he serves Diavolo. And so he makes a pact. And so he watches you.]

He's hard to read. More so than Satan, you think. Less so than Solomon? Hard to say. What are you supposed to expect from someone capable of bridging the gaps between timelines, someone who has control over time itself? It makes it so hard to tell what about him is 'real', and what isn't.

There's just something about him that feels...artificial. Even having grown used to the supernatural capabilities of demons and angels, Barbatos has a persona so meticulous that it only feels fabricated.

He dislikes dirt. He dislikes imperfections, being unable to fulfill his duties. He likes cleanliness, punctuality. Cookie-cutter preferences that border on common sense.

It's hard to say. For as open as he presents himself to be to questions and requests, you find it difficult to imagine that saccharine smile would give way to anything helpful in this regard.

[You remember reading something about how a natural disaster is never evil. The earth does not tear itself apart out of cruelty. The ocean does not swallow bodies out of spite. It just is. Yet humans seem to find purpose in the goodness, in luck. You wonder if Barbatos is like those forces. Not moral, not immoral. Just being.]

It feels....complicated, to be the object of so many people's affections. Only a handful of the people you've met during your stay in the Devildom even bother to maintain some sort of secrecy about their feelings towards you. The handful becomes smaller, often.

Barbatos is...different.

He's not possessive, at least not in the way the others are. It's subtle, and you cant tell if it's unnerving or not. Little things, like the slight glint in his eyes when he takes the words right out of your mouth, answering the questions he'd asked you himself with accuracy that borders on unsettling. It's always accompanied by an air of pride, completely devoid of the insecurity that hides behind facades of elevated self confidence, instead carried by the idea that this is simply a given. He knows you best, he knows what you want, what you need, what's best for you, always, even if you don't. It doesn't matter if you agree or not, he knows he's right.

You suppose it makes sense, for someone capable of rendering time obsolete.

At the same time, there's something sweet about it, probably. There's something pleasant about the softness in his smile when he checks in on you, tea already brewed and ready, comfort food that he just knew you needed prepared as a side. After being thrown into the Devildom with so little support, so little regard for you, the poor, weak human at the mercy of all these unknowably powerful figures, the unquestioning, immaculate care Barbatos provides is relieving and tempting all at once. Sweet, just like the treats he brings you.

[You ignore him, once, and the expression you catch in the panes of spotless glass feels unfamiliar.]

It's only after extensive time in his company, that you notice that Barbatos doesn't blink. Well- No, he does, but he doesn't need to. It wouldn't surprise you if he did it purely to keep those around him comfortable.

You make a game of it for yourself at some point, counting 1, 2, 3, 4- Blink. 1, 2, 3, 4- Meticulous, predictable and precise. It makes you uneasy. Such an uncanny valley of a person. You know better than to consciously treat him badly for it, but you don't doubt that something in your subconscious nags at you that something is wrong when you're with him.

You wonder if he's aware of it, and if part of his 'service' is the self-satisfaction in proving his ability to be pleasant.

[He lives to serve. Willing pawn, no, catalyst. He stops at nothing to help those he judges as interesting to push past the impossible.]

[You are potential. There is allure in shaping you into something truly special, even if you are only human.]

Somewhere, between all the insults, the arrogance and the threats, you finally realise what’s going on here. In his own strange, messed up little way, Lucifer is afraid of Mammon.

He catches you on the stairs again. Maybe if you knew less, if you were more ignorant of your position, of the things he’d done - maybe then you’d be afraid. It’s funny how that works. You can’t help but think of it as a little ironic.

“You’re scared of him.” You say, and you’re so sure of it that you don’t even consider what a mistake voicing it could be. “That’s why you treat him like that. That’s why you treat all of them like that.”

He offers you tea from which you’ll never wake. Cyanide or nightshade? You’ve always been more partial to almonds, you say, and trace the rim of the cup until you’ve said your part.

“You expected kindness from a demon? How naïve.” “No,” The scent of almonds is nearly dizzying, the tea is far too sweet. “You’re wrong. You have no idea how human you sound.” Or maybe, “This is the most human you’ve ever been”? 

"I will never, ever think of you as perfect. That is my curse and my comfort unto you."

I won’t let you ignore me. I won’t be locked away. You can’t trap me out of sight. You can’t tear the feeling I leave in you from your body. I won’t let you. I’ll be obnoxious and I’ll be loud and I’ll be unforgettable, and if you kill me I’ll make sure the blood stains. 

Your words spill from your mouth with anger you can’t quite contain, the kind that grows and keeps going, fragments of spells and invocations that Solomon had drilled into you weaving into your sentences, air crackling with blueish, arcane energy.

“I said I’ll listen with patience and silence, but you’ve got some nerve to actually continue.” And you continue. And you continue.

I’m driven by urgency you couldn’t understand. I love and I hate and I judge out of need, with drive you cannot possibly have. You, a being untouched by age and time the way I am, couldn’t understand. I will not be forgotten. I will leave marks that will outlive me. My body will have rotted into the dirt long before you understand, so think hard, Lucifer.

my tone in more edited writing often ends up sounding a bit. melodramatic and over-think-y, but i dont really perceive luke as a sad character! he's someone incredibly resolute, and even if his surface level opinions seem harsh, they're brittle and easy to break through. i think luke worries too much about being fragile, when that fragility can just as easy become /flexibility/. i believe this flexibility built on his foundation of genuinely strong morals will make him - already makes him - incredibly strong as a person. 

i do think there's some inevitable heartbreak that will happen - luke idolises too much for that to not be the case - but i don't think there is much that is unsurvivable for him. part of why i'm so irritated by a lot of the excessive infantalisation and chihuahua jokes about him is that like...he is the character who has received the most development in obey me. like he has changed a LOT throughout the story, and while i won't spoil anything there is a clear arc, and even WITHOUT that luke is already incredibly up there so far as strength in character (as a person, not as a literal character). the jokes just feel...so misplaced, i guess? like he's not some over eager annoying brat that wants everyone out of the way so he can take over, he's genuinely eager to learn, and his hostility to demons is completely understandable and the reasons he has for fearing them (being evil) is literally something a lot of the demon cast take pride in for a good chunk of the plot. 

admittedly i think a lot of my frustration also comes from chihuahuas being notoriously mistreated and boiled down to accessories (hence why theyre often aggressive and yappy. theyre small, their needs arent being met and they cant defend themselves any other way) because i sure do lack the parental/older sibling urges needed to feel like...protective or genuinely attached to luke in any sorta way. he's like bottom 3 on my list of charas to care about and thats not out of dislike, just out of apathy. but i also cant stand for slander and hypothetical injustice (/lh) so im gonna complain!!!

ANYWAYS if nothing else i think. lukes belief is important. like he really trusts that people like micheal and simeon are good, and will be good and keep that strength. by that same virtue he can have a similar confidence in himself, not arrogance, mind, just. yeah. hes good. he knows that!! he needs to learn to be better since the racism isnt ideal but yknow-

speaking of learning hes REAL determined like!! hes genuinely happy to keep working and trying. he doesnt want to be coddled because he genuinely wants to know and be better.  like. he DOES think like a child. he wants to grow up so fast, but he has so much time, so much more than most, but if he has all the time in the world then why not NOW? (course, waiting is easy for patience, simeon, someone who hasnt let time move for himself in centuries)

i think theres a sorta. inevitable conflict with simeon and luke coming whether solmare mentions it or not but like. dynamic wise. because simeon refuses to see change in others unless they dont let it be ignored, he needs everyone to be within his perception of them and the role hes assigned them in his mind. but luke is someone who WILL change, and is changing, and simeon can only infantalise him for so long before it genuinely becomes a problem, especially when it’s balanced/offset by the way that him and luke very much begin playing the roles of a struggling parent and over eager child. while luke is strong, and good, and genuinely skilled, he also needs time to be none of those things. everyone does, but it’s especially important for child development, even if said child is over a thousand years old. 

Because he's kind, he wishes he could have saved them both. Wouldn't that have saved them all? 

He doesn't think about it hard, he just misses her. Maybe if he'd been taller, he thinks, marking off the same line on the doorframe for the 50th year over, ignoring any questions of why. If he'd been stronger (he lifts three of his brothers at once, and feels almost satisfied), if he'd fought harder (he can match Raphael when he throws a javelin, now, even if he hasn't fought in centuries), maybe if he'd flown faster (he stretches past the ache, the tingling, burning pain that comes when the scar tissue down his back is strained. Sweat rolls down his shoulder blades, dripping on to the insect-like, spindly membranes of his new wings). 

 Maybe if he was better, it could have been him instead. He's swallowed breakfast before he even realises.

[Anchor, or maybe just dead weight. Are you grounded or are you trapped?]

He's a child at heart; messy hair and sticky fingers and stains spilt on to his clothes, he builds his body bigger and bigger to protect his swelling heart, two sizes too big no matter what he tries. He's only a child. He's only so, so old. He can't wrap his head around the world the same way his brothers do. He doesn't really want to, either. He doesn't look skyward. Isn't it enough? Isn't everything he needs right here? 

She doesn’t use brushes unless they’re part of the product. 

Unfamiliar with makeup or not, her process is…a unique one. These days, it’s one she lets you observe, regularly growing bored of her assigned room and pushing her way into yours instead. She comes and goes like a stray cat, and like any unguided human, you leave that door open for her, and feed her interest. 

It goes two ways. There’s something curious about how she puts it all on, dipping her fingers into a thin white paste that she spreads across her face - foundation, presumably, but from the horror on Asmodeus’ face when he walked in the other day, it isn’t a normal kind. She tells you she made it herself, rolling her eyes as she cites how far away her cave is from everything else, and how annoying some of the Devildom shops are. You don’t have any reason to argue. You’ve seen stranger things down here, even if it should maybe worry you a little that she warns you not to touch it when it’s still in the jar like that.

You watch as she smears pigment across her eyelids, a powdery, vibrant substance that she blows into your face when you ask what it’s made of, turning away again to drag jagged lines of eyeliner into points, cleaning the neon yellow of her fingernails on the lapel of her uniform.

She’s an artist, albeit an unconventional one. 

“-How do you decide what you draw?” It’s not a question you think very hard about, absentminded as the study period drags on, and on, ink words trailing off into nothing on the page as you’re distracted by the uneven doodles she scrawls across her worksheets and up on to her arms, sat backwards on the bench in front of yours. 

“Hah?” Her eyebrows quirk upwards, pen tip stopping halfway through another cracked heart symbol on her wrist. You tilt your head to the side slightly, silently emphasising your question, opening your mouth to repeat it just as she stands, leaning forward to catch your face in her hand, hold still, nails digging into one cheek in a way that’s not quite painful, just noticeable. You hold your breath, eyes scrunched shut ‘til she pulls away, lightly slapping your hand away from your face when you instinctively go to touch where she’d drawn. “Like that.” She says, curtly, and it takes you a moment for you to understand that that’s her answer. “I don’t. It’s not like there’s any special meaning behind any of it.” 

She sticks her tongue out at you, piercing that you didn’t even know she had flashing dully in the light before she drops the pen on your desk, and with that she’s gone, leaving you to study alone. You don’t get much done, and when you check later, the heart she’s drawn on your cheek is uncharacteristically shaky. 

You can’t quite find it in yourself to wash it off, and when she sees you the next day she sputters something about humans not even being able to clean their own faces, trailing off into grumbles when you offer to get rid of it now, if it bothers her.

“-I just liked it, is all,” You tug at the sleeves of your uniform, flustered thinking about how it had all made your face burn, having spent too much time overthinking if she’d noticed, felt the heat through her fingers, or written it off as just another human thing.

For whatever reason, she drops the topic there, huffing about how humans always make things so weird.

Then again, artists are inherently unconventional, to some.

Today her face is bare. She’s in your room again, mouth and fingertips stained with the juice of some strange Devildom fruit that smells like blackberries and drips down her wrist in faint streaks of purple. 

“What, did you want some?”

She catches your eye and leans in close, close enough that you see how dark her eyes get when she looks at you, crinkling as her face splits into a crooked grin. Your eyes flit away for as long as you can drag them away. The bowl is empty, save for the dark, reddish black liquid that just barely covers the base, and later you’ll lament letting her use it, because the stain doesn’t leave for weeks, and replacing it to avoid Lucifer’s irritation is one thing, but the reminder of today is another. 

You don’t know how long it takes. It feels like forever, and far too short, her pupils blown out and glassy in a way that makes you dizzy.

(You’re embarrassed every time you think about it, distracted and bashful at the thought.)

“Oh,” You breathe, touching your lips with shaky hands, staring blankly when you pull away and your fingertips shine with tinted fluid. Her eyes don’t leave your mouth til you let out a thin laugh and she bristles, catlike. “We match-”

“And that’s enough to make you happy?” She’s placated as quickly as she was wary, scoffing as she leans on her hand, hiding her expression between her fingers, elbow digging into her thigh. “Are all humans that easy to please?” You only laugh again, bite in her words missing you entirely. Her face is red. It has nothing to do with the berries.

Like all artists, she has a sort of…signature. Something that marks her works as her own.

Once she gets a taste for it, she makes it a habit. 

She’s as unpredictable as ever in her appearances, but you can’t help but think that she’s around a lot more now. Her makeup changes, and you see her with actual branded products sometimes, though the powder she uses as eyeshadow never does change. Even so, the notes you lend her come back with a little skull and crossbones next to your name, and more days than not you find her in your room, complaining when you come back late or have to leave early, leaving trinkets in your pockets, taking a strange sort of mercy on you by leaving you as an exception to her usual traps.

Hearts and skulls and bones and flowers you don’t recognise.

You can’t help but feel that she only spares you because she leaves you with a whole different kind, though, like now, your hands bunched up by your sides as she straddles your legs, tilting your head back slightly as she uses her other hand to work whatever magic she feels like for the day, a small collection of palettes and products on either side of you laying open on your bed. You open and close your hands around the covers, finding it hard to stay still for so long. 

She’d told you off for fidgeting, once, threatening to tie up your hands if you couldn’t hold still, quickly thinking better of it and muttering some sort of excuse, don’t you dare overthink that, snapping the palette in her hand shut and slipping it in her pockets before she slips off of you, stalking out of the room, red-faced. 

She’s gone for a week before you find her again, catching you at the entrance of the colosseum, acting as though nothing had happened.

“-you even listening to me?” You’re snapped back into the present and she cuts you off again before the apology can even leave your lips. “Don’t bother. Just…hold still.” She says, as if you staying put will change anything about the way her hand shakes slightly, as if her eyes don’t keep dropping down to your mouth and back again, as if she isn’t just waiting to make a mistake. It’s as good of an excuse as any, really - if she’s already screwed up, what’s the harm in really ruining it with her mouth?

…It’s not like you’re complaining, though.

She brings you sweets and snacks as apologies, and thank-you’s, and sometimes for no reason at all. There’s always some excuse, some reason why she didn’t buy them just for the two of you to share, but you’re happy to indulge her white lies if it means she’ll keep coming to see you, even on the days where she won’t eat herself, having ‘accidentally’ bought something she hates but knows that you love, oddly peaceful as she watches you instead.

She brings more chaos into your everyday, somehow. It’s a feat that leaves you breathless in more ways than one. 

You can’t remember when it became normal for her to lock your arms together, grab your hand and lace your fingers with hers, when it became everyday for her to let her head fall in your lap and complain about the brothers, about angels, and Solomon avoiding her latest trap. You grow used to catching yourself in the mirror and seeing lipstick stains and skull tattoos in pen, and when you give her one in return, thoughtless impulse, she comes back again and again, insisting you go over it just one more time, so it doesn’t fade.