#natanweek2017

He buries his insecurities under false confidence and flawed ideologies. He tries not to think about what he would (not) have done if he hadn’t amassed so many supporters in Heaven.

Sometimes, he wonders if he’s really a leader or if he’s become a follower, too, just like the rest of them. He doesn’t know if he’s acting off of his own beliefs or off of what they expect from him anymore. His motives have become jumbled over the years and he would claim he’s too indifferent to pick them apart, but that’s a lie.

(He’s afraid.)

He grips his illusion so tightly sometimes he even deceives himself, but only sometimes. Inevitably, he has to face what he is and is not and stamp down his self loathing when he’s in anyone’s company save for his own.

After all, he’s got a leader to play.

It’s almost an effortless gig with humans. He’s equal to if not worse than the dreaded monster under the bed, only he’s one who will drag you down to hell for eternal suffering. He takes comfort in how easy it is to scare them. They make it all too easy to slide into his role, to play it up, to be the monster they claim he is.

He cringes away from the word internally, it reverberates throughout every deadened part of him, shaving off another piece of his soul. Does he even have one anymore, or does he just share the ones that rage inside of him, screaming and clawing and fighting for control of his body? Is it even his body anymore, or is it theirs?

Hell is his own eternal suffering, his punishment for being the very thing he fears the most. Despite what humans think, he’s no more the lord of hell than he is the lord of chocolate chunk brownies, but a vessel for it, hollowed out and filled with all those as vile as he is.

But he lets them think what they want. It’s easier that way, and it’s handy in keeping them away from him. After all, his hatred for them is what got him here in the first place, wasn’t it? Even now, that was something he maintained, something he could confidently say was his own.

Natalie was an exception.

She was the exception.

To everything.

She was everything he wasn’t and couldn’t be. She didn’t cower before him, or before anything else. He had always thought that courage was the absence of fear, but she proved him wrong.

She had fears. She just wasn’t afraid to face them.

“It’s like, growth or something,” she had told him once, and left it at that, smiling and laughing all the way. He hadn’t really gotten it then, just staring at her as if she had a screw loose. The more time he spent with her, though, bound to her by a contract and maybe a little bit of something else, the more he understood.

There was nothing brave about facing something you weren’t afraid of. Bravery was her, standing unwavering before Hell even as it fed off of the bitter tang of her fear, ready to pull him back into his body at any cost. Bravery was her, staring into the face of Death himself with a shuddering breath, and jumping to reassure him that things would be alright.

Bravery is her, opening her arms and heart to the Devil and bracing for rejection.

Except there isn’t one because he’s still a coward and even though he knows turning her away would be what’s best for her, he knows it won’t be what’s best for him. He’s terrified of what rejecting her would mean.

He’s had a taste of what it means to be loved — genuinely, wholly, irrevocably — and he can’t bring himself to end it here. He doesn’t know what will become of him, wretched beast that he is, if he did otherwise.

Even this short taste of something other than suffocating loneliness, than crippling self loathing, has made him feel alive in a way he hasn’t in a long, long time. It’s selfish and it’s cowardly but that’s who he is, that’s who he’s always been.

It’s not until they’re laying together, under the stars in some cheesy teenage romance-esque fashion that he doesn’t actually hate as much as he claims to when they first climb onto her roof, that he realizes his newfound definition of courage isn’t complete.

“You know,” Natalie starts, and he would have begrudged the loss of their peaceful silence if her voice wasn’t so soft, like she’s got a secret to impart to him. He can’t quash his own curiosity. There’s a pause and he gets impatient, turning to look over at her.

She’s staring up at the sky, and there’s a thoughtfulness on her face that’s uncharacteristic. She’s not ever one to think about what she’s going to say. She speaks first and deals with the consequences later, so watching her turn her words over in her head is a strange experience in and of itself.

“Well? Spit it out, kid.” An ironic smile turns up her lips because he can hardly call her that anymore without slighting himself, not with the things they’ve done and do, but that’s an argument for another day.

“I was just thinking…”

“Don’t hurt yourself.” She laughs and hits his arm, before reaching down and fumbling until she finds his fingers in the dark. She twines them together and he lets her.

“Jerk. I was just thinking about — and don’t run away now — love.” She tightens her grip on his hand and he narrows his eyes at her, and she’s still not looking at him but she laughs again anyways because she knows him well enough to sense his glare.

“And?”

“And… I think loving someone is the bravest thing anyone can do, you know.” There’s something in her tone that has him tensing. He’s never talked to her about his cowardice, but there’s something there that suggests she knows. It wouldn’t surprise him if she did, she’s always been able to read him better than anyone else, but it’s disconcerting nonetheless.

He stays silent and she finally turns to face him.

“Don’t you think?” she asks, softly. “You have to open up your heart and that’s scary. You’re, like, giving someone a piece of you. It’s like… I dunno. Maybe all I’m trying to say is that what… what we have isn’t for the weak hearted.”

She smiles brilliantly at him and her eyes are bright in the moonlight and he is frozen. He can only watch as she raises up onto her elbows to look down at him.

“It’s not for cowards,” she says, and if he’d thought the topic a strange coincidence before, all doubts were wiped away at her vehemence. She leans down and brushes her lips against his, and it feels like she’s breathing life into him.

She pulls away and her smile is still in place, but she doesn’t say anything else and she doesn’t prompt him for a response, either, which he’s grateful for. She lays back down beside him, resuming her stargazing.

“I’d die for you, you know,” she says then, and any rational thought he might’ve had fizzes over like champagne. He can only stare at her, with her mouth so wide she can fit the crescent moon in her smile and the gleam in her eyes and her rosy cheeks and strands of hair falling in her face--

Jesus Christ, alcohol is really not a good look on her.

When they get home, he gets her settled into bed, tucks her hair behind her ear before he retreats to his beanbag chair. Nothing unusual between friends, he reasons, but even to himself it’s a strikingly hollow excuse. There’s a new, unwelcome ache in his chest, burning softly underneath his skin.

He sits quietly until the sun rises.

She gets back home late from her date with Jericho, but he’s fairly certain that the only reason her cheeks are bright pink is because of the biting cold outside. Still, he feels nauseous, like someone’s chained him to a church pillar and left him there to rot for a few days.

Some newly archaic side of him feels a need for retribution, regardless of the fact that the only thing that creepy-faced shitstain has done wrong is want to be close to Natalie. Has been alone with Natalie. Has maybe tried some things. With Natalie.

His hands clench automatically, his mind briefly entertaining the thought of crushing that asshole’s feeble arm between his fingers.

For a moment, he's tempted. He's done plenty worse for lesser crimes.

“It’s freezing out there,” she says, unwinding her scarf. “We should make cocoa or something.”

They do, and then do it again because Natalie manages to swap the sugar for salt the first time. She puts on a movie and they drink their hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and caramel and he manages to force the thought of her and Jericho to the back of his mind.

He doesn’t even know why it bothers him so much.

At first, he doesn't realize what's happening.

Blood blooms out from a hole in his stomach, and he looks down at the wound in confusion, the amber of his eyes reflecting sickeningly in the dark liquid. He feels it soaking the back of his sweatshirt. Natalie, he realizes numbly. It must be Natalie’s wound. His hands come up to touch his neck, and they’re wet and smell like iron and he feels his stomach clench, more blood spilling out of it as his muscles contract.

He needs to go. He needs to go right now.

And suddenly, he’s there.

“That hurt, you asshole,” he snarls at the man, slamming his elbow into his face.

There’s a hurricane swirling underneath his skin, ready to burst through the seams of his flesh and unleash itself on this man, this piece of shit that’s saying that he’s the new Satan, Jesus, right now there’s nobody in this world that he wants to kill more--

“I’m gonna rip you apart,” he says, fists clenched.

“Lucifer!”

He’s not used to his brother being the voice of reason, but he looks over and sees him leaning over Natalie, who’s in tears. In pain.

He feels his rage drain out of him like rainwater.

“You’re late.”

The words are flashing through his mind again and again and again, an unforgiving reckoning scratched into his arm. The cuts are pretty deep. She might have scars. His head pounds harder in his skull.

Her face keeps bubbling up in his mind. Her rosy cheeks, her tipsy smile. Her laugh at his hot cocoa mustache and the light feeling in his chest. Her face, rain-soaked and contorted with pain.

“I’d die for you,” she had said.

He grits his teeth, hitting the wall of the building with enough force to crack it.