#darksidebar

He was in the process of drawing the circle on the ground when he let out a frustrated groan. Lucifer had said something about finding another way. That Anima was... more dangerous than Pride knew.

And honestly? He didn’t doubt it. But Lucifer gave him too much credit. He was missing a part of himself since the loss of his crown. He wasn’t... all together. And he could feel it. Prying at the back of his mind. As if Stan were there, poking a needle into his core. You’re not you. You’re a shell. 

Pride shut his eyes. And finished the circle. There was no other way. Whether or not Anima found it prudent to blow the whole damn world up wasn’t his business. He could take Jasper. Go somewhere else. He was only half human. Pride could make it work.

...Somehow.

He didn’t realize it, but he’d lit the candles that he’d set down around the circle, staring into the dead eyes of the goat he’d stolen. 

At least the damn thing couldn’t be “avenged” if the world got swallowed or eaten or something. 

Standing back up, Pride just... waited. This was it, wasn’t it? All he had to do to summon whoever it was? If there was some kind of incantation, he couldn’t remember it. 

[Txt] : Yes, I googled shitty pickup lines.

She did not, in fact, google that. She said the first thing that came to mind that would be funny. She gambled on it and she won. Score one for the home team.

[Txt] : Would you like to go on a real date with me. I promise to be good. Or, I promise not to be good. I don’t know. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle.

   Cute was being kind. Inoffensive might’ve been more accurate. Still, the offer was flattering, even if in Riley’s experience, dates were usually excuses to get her alone. That wasn’t any sort of self-adulation; it was just facts. Would trade it in a heartbeat, but no point in musing over what couldn’t be again. There was a cute babe to tease. 

@darksidebar

[txt]: Cute. 

   Twice a week was the best she could do; and that wasn’t her being coy, that was Riley keeping an eye out for the safety of any would-be partners. Not a whole lot of studies being done on long-term effects of feeding, but more than that, and people had a tendency to get... Weird around her. What she did to their heads to get into their pants was bad enough; coaxing an affinity into a full-blown addiction, while perhaps useful for a proper business sex demon, was nothing Riley wanted on her conscience. 

   Course, that reasoned argument didn’t do much to quell the Want boiling in her belly. 

@darksidebar

   The first reaction was to yelp, not out of any real sense of pain, but simple, primal reaction. Frankly, most of the injuries Riley took were far more serious (like being stabbed or shot), or far more annoying (like stubbing her toe). Second was to worry; though the daily ritual of tucking and binding her tail had been polished by repetition to a mundane pinnacle, it didn’t hide the protrusion of her tail to the touch. That fear of exposure wilted as she turned and took in who, exactly, had done it; agitation swiftly hidden behind a mask of the above-it-all amusement she favored.