Solomon x reader, based on this request. I hope you like it, ๐ anon! I took a few creative liberties but tried to keep the essence of your request. <3
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Returning to the human world came with a period of adjustment. You had justย lived a life of adventure and experienced friendships and family bonds that surpassed anything you had ever known. There was nothing that could compare to it, not even close.
For an entire year, you lived under a roof with seven unruly brothers, all vying for your attention. Waking up to Mammon sleeping on your floor, being dragged into Asmoโs room for an impromptu spa day, quietly reading next to Satan. You didnโt just grow accustomed to it, you relied on it. So when you returned home to your small apartment in the city, you could hardly bear the change.
One day you were waking up to the smell of exotic foods being prepared in a lavish kitchen, the next you were awoken by the damp smell of a very old apartment. You had learned to love the sound of the brothers' petty bickering, laughing to yourself as you eavesdropped on their ridiculous arguments. Now you heard screaming matches and bottles breaking and the creaking of wood.ย
But that was nothing compared to the silence. The silence was unbearable.
No records playing from the music room, no laughter, no Levi screaming at his screen as he got yet another bad ending. Rather than the comforting sound of chaos, there was silence. And it was wearing you down.
You bought new candles for the apartment and told yourself the vanilla scent helped. You rearranged your bookshelf. You made a list of things to look forward to that you had missed while away. Coffee from the place on the corner, the farmer's market on Saturdays, the way autumn was beginning to press golden light through the city windows.
The list sat untouched on your kitchen counter for weeks.
You went through the motions of a normal life. Work was fine. Your colleagues were nice enough. The city was the same city it had always been, full of noise and colour and the kind of human chaos that had once felt like more than enough. It wasn't enough anymore.ย
The messages helped ease the painful longing. They came in at odd hours because none of the brothers had ever quite grasped the concept of time zones, and you suspected they simply didn't care.ย
And then there was Solomon.
Solomon called, rather than texted. He would call and you would sit on your windowsill with your knees pulled to your chest and he would talk about his research, about a new spell that had gone interestingly wrong. He asked about you in a way that was never direct, slipping the question in between other sentences like he was hoping you might answer before you realised you'd been asked. Although he had returned back to the human world as well, he lived just as far.ย
โIt must be a breath of fresh air to be home againโ he would say.
"It's quiet," you told him one evening, several weeks in. "I didn't realise how loud the House of Lamentation was until I wasn't in it anymore."
You could picture him, settled into some chair with his robe draped over the back of it, his expression easy and inquisitive.
"I know how it feels," he said eventually. "Although Luke and Simeon were much quieter, itโs odd not having someone to bounce my ideas off of. Or to sample my recipes."
You chuckled lightly at his last comment. The first sound of happiness since you had returned.
The calls continued, each one a little longer than the last. You talked about magic the way you had during your lessons in the Devildom, him explaining things with the chaos and disorganization of someone who understood a topic so entirely, they forgot how to explain it to a beginner. You would ask questions that were sometimes naive and sometimes not, both of you building on previous conversations until it had become a single, long discussion broken into chapters.ย
He was an extraordinary teacher. Not warm in the way Simeon was warm, not enthusiastic in the way that Levi became enthusiastic about the things he loved. Solomon taught as though he was thinking things through again alongside you, and that your presence in that process was genuinely useful to him.
It was one of the things you had always liked most about him.
A month went by, then another. The apartment was still damp, quiet, and the radiator had begun making a sound like something small and miserable living inside the walls, which suited the general atmosphere. You ate whatever was cheapest and easiest, which was increasingly not much. The exchange program had not exactly left you as they found you, and readjusting to a salary that covered rent and utilities and very little else was difficult. You didnโt think about it much. There were larger things to feel grey about.
It was on a Thursday evening in the fourth month that the knock came at the door.
You were not expecting anyone. You were still in the state of not expecting anyone that involved having your dishes left in the sink and your textbooks open across the kitchen table alongside a meal that could barely be described as a meal. The knock came again.
Solomon looked exactly as he always had. Ageless, composed, and faintly amused by something he was choosing not to mention. He was in his long coat rather than his robe, which was the closest he came to human world dressing. His silver hair caught the light from the bare bulb in your hallway and his grey eyes took in the door frame, the hallway, and then you in a single sweep.
"You didn't tell me you were coming," you said.
"I didn't want to," he replied, which was a perfectly Solomon answer. Honest to the point of being slightly rude without any awareness that this was the case.ย
"Come in," you stood aside, and he did.
He moved through the apartment, paying close attention to everything while appearing to pay attention to nothing. He didnโt comment on the dishes. He didnโt comment on the textbooks, the unfinished meal, or the radiator, which chose that moment to make one of its more expressive sounds. He looked at the window and at the ceiling, where a watermark from some previous tenant's leak had been painted over imperfectly. He looked at the small bookshelf where your Devildom texts were shelved next to your university books. He looked at the meal on the table.
You watched him look at all of it, and you felt faintly embarrassed. Not because you had not been aware of the state of the apartment, you had simply stopped seeing it as something worth fixing. But Solomon seeing it made it noticeable again.ย
He sat down at your kitchen table without being invited, which was also very Solomon, and looked at you.
"How long have you been living like this?" he asked.
"Like what?" you asked, and even as you asked it you knew you were not going to convince him.
"The heating is practically nonexistant," he said in the same tone he might use to observe a spell circle that had been drawn incorrectly. "The walls are damp and cracked. And you've been eating," he glanced at the table, "that."
You sat down across from him and there was a pause you didnโt bother filling. You usually filled silences, it was something Solomon occasionally pointed out as an endearing quirk. You didnโt know how to fill this silence.
"I'm still readjusting to my old life," you said eventually.
"Thatโs not what Iโm seeingโฆ" An awkward pause filled the silence. You opened your mouth to speak. You werenโt sure what you were going to say, really. Scold him for judging your life, sarcastically thank him for his astute observations, orย politely lead him to the door. You already knew it wouldnโt be the last option. Before you could get a word out, he spoke.
"I came here with a proposal," Solomon said, and his voice shifted into something that was slightly more composed. "Your study of the magical arts is at a stage where it would benefit from moreโฆ intensive guidance. You have a natural talent that is currently going to waste in," he paused briefly, "these circumstances. Distractions are not conducive to meaningful progress, and financial and environmental distractions are especially hard to ignore."
You looked at him. He had his hands folded on the table, his expression giving absolutely nothing away.ย
"Wellโฆ I canโt exactly make money appear out of thin air," you said. โAnd I canโt afford to move.โ
"I know, which is why Iโm here to offer you a room in my home. If you want to, of course. You would have proper accommodation, dedicated space for study, access to my library, and be able to continue your studies in peace. Your progress would not be hindered by," the same tactful pause "external stressors." Prick.
You met his eyes. There was something in his expression that made you shift in place. He wasnโt telling you something, wasnโt revealing the entire truth. But this was Solomon, your teacher and friend, the only other human who had been by your side as you learned to navigate a new realm. You trusted him.
He stayed for another hour, making tea using your kettle and the tea bags in your cupboard with an odd familiarity. He talked about the new inscription method he had been developing while you sat across from him. You let yourself be simply in his company, which was something you had not let yourself want openly until this moment. When he left, he paused in the doorway, and he looked at you one more time with those stormy eyes that seemed to uncover every hidden thing.
The door closed and you stood in the hallway for a moment. You opened your D.D.D. and sent a quick message before seating yourself at the table. Something that had been very tightly held in your chest for months released just a fraction. Just enough.ย
Your D.D.D. lit up before you had even set it down.
You had made a mistake, you realised immediately upon sending a brief message to the group chat explaining that you would soon be moving. With Solomon.ย
Mammon: WJAT?? SOLOMON?? YOU CNT BE SERIOUS
Asmodeus: OHH~ I'm not saying Solomon has ulterior motives but I'm absolutely saying Solomon has ulterior motives ;)
Leviathan: this is literally a villain origin story. sorcerer isolates the protagonist from their support network. chapter one.
Asmodeus: also WHY does HE get to have you and we're just HEREย
Satan: If he does anything I would find objectionable, I demand to be contacted immediately.ย
Belphegor: ...so you're going to go live with a weird old man?
Beelzebub: We miss you here. Please eat properly.ย
Lucifer: I trust you are aware of what you are doing. I will say nothing further.ย
You stared at your phone for a moment and giggled before sending back a single response.
You: He's helping me practice magic.
Mammon's reply came in under four seconds.
Mammon: THATS WHAT THEY ALL SAY
You set the D.D.D. face down on the table and went to find a box.
The move itself was not complicated, and you owned less than you had thought. The books were the most of it, and Solomon helped you carry everything through a portal, which you were grateful for.
What you had expected, however, was a house. Solomon lived alone, and there was something about his transient lifestyle that had conjured, in your mind, a modest place. A cottage maybe, with too many books and not enough furniture. The kind of home suited for a scholar because he had never thought to want more than four walls and a desk.
What you stepped out of the portal to face was not that.
The building rose in front of you in a way that felt never ending. Stone like old parchment with ivy climbing up the walls and windows tall enough to walk through standing upright.ย
"You live here," you said breathily. It wasn't really a question. It came out flatter than you meant it to, mostly because your brain hadn't caught up with your mouth yet.
"I do," Solomon said, already walking toward the door as though this were as unremarkable as mentioning the weather. "Something the matter?"
"You never mentioned you lived in a palace."
"It's not a palace." He glanced back at you, amused, the corner of his mouth turning upward. "Palaces have staff. I have several irritable spirits bound to the east wing, and a garden that occasionally tries to eat itself."
"At least itโs honest."
You supposed it made sense, once your mind had room to think about it properly. He had been alive for centuries, outliving kingdoms or even entire civilizations. Of course the house he'd built for himself somewhere along the way would have to be grand enough to hold his history. Still, rationalizing something and standing in front of it were very different experiences.
The inside didnโt ease your shock. Stone floors covered in rugs ranging across the eras, shelves climbing the walls with books from every corner of the Earth. There was an unlit chandelier hung with something that looked like enchanted glass.
"This way," Solomon said, and led you up a staircase that curved wide enough for three people to walk side by side, though it was only the two of you and the sound of your footsteps. He stopped in front of a door on the second floor, one of many along the long hallway.
"This is yours," he said, and opened it.
The room was larger than your entire apartment back home. Which, in all fairness, wasnโt hard to beat. A bed in deep blue linens sat beneath a window that overlooked the garden he'd mentioned, the one that apparently tried to eat itself, though from here it just looked like an ordinary garden. There was a writing desk already stocked with paper and ink, an empty bookshelf clearly waiting for you to fill it, and a wardrobe that seemed just large enough to fit all of your clothes.
You felt a bit overwhelmed, if you were being honest with yourself, and your throat tightened before you could even be embarrassed about it.ย
"This is too much," you said honestly, voice quiet and taut.
"It's just a room," Solomon said. "Rooms are meant to be lived in, and this one was empty. Now it isn't." He said it plainly, like the logic was simple. Maybe it was. "There's a bathroom through that door, and if you donโt like this desk I have others."
"Good." He lingered a moment in the doorway, hands tucked into the pockets of his coat, watching you take it in with an expression that bordered smugness. Satisfaction. "Get settled. We'll start tomorrow."
The days folded into a comfortable rhythm you hadn't expected to find so quickly. Mornings were dedicated to your studies, the human kind, while Solomon tended to his own matters. The afternoons belonged to magic, spent with circles chalked and erased so many times the stone beneath had begun to hold a permanent outline of them all.
He would think out loud beside you rather than lecturing at you, correcting your hand placement with a familiarity that made you wonder how many students he'd had before you, and whether any of them had lasted this long.
"Again," he'd say, breath brushing against the shell of your ear when your circle wavered. You would draw it again, and again, and again until your wrist ached and the lines came easier.
He insisted that you didnโt work in a way that allowed no negotiation. He insisted that it would just become a distraction from what was most important.
"Think of it as a scholarship, of sorts," he told you when you'd hesitantly brought up the idea of paying rent. "Room, board, and my considerable expertise, in exchange for your undivided attention. That is your one obligation."
"That doesn't feel fair on your end."
"I disagree. In the Devildom, your attention was divided seven ways. Someone always wanted something from you, and you always gave it because that's simply the kind of person you are." He paused, something crossing his face before he tucked it away again. "Your full attention is more valuable than you realize, and now itโs mine alone." You dropped the topic after that.ย
He also insisted you learn to make your own portals, rather than relying on his. "You cannot spend your whole life stepping through doors someone else has opened for you," he said on the day he finally decided you were ready to attempt one unsupervised. It went badly and continued to go badly for the next several attempts, some landing you in the wrong hallway, others in what you were fairly sure was a supply closet three streets from where you meant to be.ย
He never once looked frustrated. If anything, he looked pleased by your attempts. Right up until the morning you opened a clean, correct portal straight to your lecture hall. That night he ordered food to the house and celebrated you for your achievement while you both laughed over your failed attempts.
You began leaving each afternoon through your own doorway, and each evening you would step back through it into a house that had somewhere along the line started to feel less like his and more like yours as well.
It was in the second month that you started to notice his habits more clearly, the parts that didn't show themselves in a single afternoon or conversation but only became visible once you'd lived alongside someone.
Solomon worked constantly. You had known that he was dedicated to his craft, but now you felt it. He was in his study before you woke and often still there when you went to bed. Meals happened around him rather than with him more often than not, and you'd started quietly leaving him something small and less distracting. Fruit, crackers, things he could eat without breaking his concentration.
Getting his attention outside the hours he'd set aside for your lessons had become a challenge. You would knock, he would tell you that heโd be just a moment, and that moment would stretch into forty minutes.
You didn't resent him for it, which somehow surprised you. There was something almost endearing about watching a man who had lived for centuries still lose himself so completely in the act of learning one more thing. But you missed him, you realized, even while sitting across from him.
So on the evenings your own studies ran late and you came home to find the light still on beneath the study door, you began, without quite deciding to, letting yourself in anyway.
This time it was nearing midnight when you got back. You'd stayed after your last class to finish an assignment you'd let slip further than you meant to, and by the time you cut your portal home your eyes were heavy and your bag felt like it had gained fifty pounds. The house was dark except for the one line of gold beneath his door. Same as always.
You didn't knock this time. You pushed the door open to find him seated on a cushion, hunched over the coffee table with a candle burning low and a page covered in his sharp, slanted handwriting. One hand steadied the parchment while the other hand scribbled words in a foreign language, murmuring something under his breath that might have been the words of the spell itself or might have just been him thinking out loud.
He didn't look up. "You're back late."
You dropped your bag by the door, gently enough not to disturb the candle, and crossed the room toward him. "You're up later."
"I'm close to something." He still hadn't looked up, his focus entirely on the page.
You didn't say anything else, knowing it would be pointless. You crossed the room quietly and knelt on the floor behind him instead, close enough that your knees pressed into the cushion at his back. Before he could ask what you were doing, you wrapped your arms around him from behind and rested your chin against his shoulder, letting your whole weight settle gently into him.
His pen paused, just barely, a hitch so small you might have missed it if you weren't already used to reading him.
"Comfortable?" he asked, and there was something in his voice that wasn't quite steady.
"Very," you said, and meant it. You could feel the warmth of him through his shirt and the steady rise and fall of his breathing. You let your eyes fall half shut, content simply to be near him after a day that had felt way too long.
He continued writing, and you let your hands slide down from where they'd settled at his chest, tracing along his forearms until you found the marks there, the pacts inked into his skin in symbols. You traced one gently with your fingertip, following the line of it the way he might trace a spell circle. Unhurried. Curious.
You'd seen his marks before in passing, but you'd never really looked. Not like this, not with the patience to let your eyes follow where they wanted to go. So slowly, giving him every chance to shift away or tell you to stop, you slid your hand beneath the hem of his shirt at the small of his back and eased the fabric up.
He let out a small exhale, sounding loud in the quiet room. He didn't stop writing. He didn't tell you to stop, either.
More marks traced up the plane of his back in an array of shapes and sizes. You touched them one at a time, unhurried, memorizing each the way you'd memorize a new spell. Then your fingers found one near the base of his spine and paused there entirely.
You knew that mark, the particular flourish at the tail of the line. It was unmistakably Asmodeus's, and you could recognize it anywhere because you carried one just like it yourself.
"This one," you said quietly, tracing the curve of it, "is Asmo's."
"Mm." He agreed without words. "He insisted on the placement himself. It was either there, or somewhere I wonโt even mention."
"I know." The pen came to a halt between his fingers. "He told me. It was not a small distraction, either."
You let your palm rest flat over the mark, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath your hand, and felt him hold very still beneath the touch.
"You're going to make me lose my place," he said, though he made no attempt to stop you, and his pen had been resting against the page for the last minute or so.
"No," he said immediately, nearly cutting your sentence short. "You're not."
You smiled against his shoulder, tracing the mark a second time, slower. "You work too much."
"I know, and Iโm sorry. I donโt mean to neglect my dear apprentice," he said lightly, almost teasing, as though he were trying to remove some of the tension.
"I miss you. Even when you're two rooms away."
His hand came up then, covering yours where it rested against his arm. He didnโt stop the movement so much as simply hold it there, the two of you still for a moment in the candlelight. "I know the feeling," he said, quiet enough that you almost missed it.
You stayed like that a while, your arms around him and his hand over yours, the candle burning lower, ink drying on the page he'd abandoned. Eventually he set the pen down entirely and turned just enough to look at you properly, and there was something in his expression you hadn't seen from him before. Something unguarded.
"Sit by me," he said. "Not draped over me like an affectionate scarf."
"I'm sure you do." He said as he was shifting regardless, turning enough to guide you around the edge of the cushion and into his lap gently, giving you time to pull away if you wanted. You didnโt. You settled against him, head tucked beneath his chin, and felt his arms come around you.
"You know," you said, tracing one more slow line along his forearm, "you told me my one obligation here was to give you my undivided attention. Something about how valuable it was."
"I did say something along those lines, yes."
"That's a bit difficult to do when you spend most of your hours locked away."ย
You tipped your head back against his shoulder, just enough to catch the edge of his expression. "I've been trying to hold up my end of the bargain. You haven't exactly made it easy to hold up yours."
You felt him laugh softly before you heard it. "A fair point," he admitted. "Though in my defense, some of us find it difficult to abandon three hundred years of habit for anything less than proper motivation."
"And what would count as proper motivation?"
"You're currently sitting in my lap tracing the pact marks on my skin. I'd say you've found it."
You laughed, and he tightened his arms around slightly, like he wasn't quite ready to let the moment end. The candle flickered low beside you, throwing shifting light across the abandoned page. You shifted slightly to look at him, to say something light and teasing, only to find his eyes already on you.
His eyes moved over your face like he was weighing the option of something. Then he reached up, brushing a strand of hair back from your face, fingers lingering at your jaw.
He kissed you then, slow and careful, like he was still giving you every opportunity to change your mind, right up until you didn't. Your hand came up to rest against his jaw, and his hand slid to the back of your neck, drawing you closer with the same unhurried patience he brought to everything he did. Like he had all the time in the world to memorize this too.
When he finally pulled back enough to look at you, his composure had visibly diminished. He looked almost startled by himself.
"Well," you repeated, smiling against the last inch of space between you.
He exhaled something that wasn't quite a laugh, resting his forehead against yours. "I had a whole explanation prepared, you know. For why I asked you to come live here."
"I remember. It was very convincing."
"It was mostly true." His thumb traced idle circles at the nape of your neck. "But not entirely."
"What was the rest of it?"
He was quiet again, and this time you let the silence linger for just a moment, watching the candlelight catch in his grey eyes as he worked toward whatever he'd been avoiding since the day he showed up uninvited at your apartment door.
"I was lonely," he said finally. Plainly. "I have been for a very long time. In a way I stopped mentioning because there was no one left to mention it to. And then you were a thousand miles away in a broken apartment, and I told myself I was simply concerned for your wellbeing." He paused. "I was. But it wasn't only that."
"I missed you enough that it became all I could think about. I told myself many practical reasons for bringing you here. Most of them were true, but none were the real reason."
You reached up and pressed your palm flat against his chest, over the steady beat of his heart. Something about his confession resonated with you, and you knew you had needed him just as deeply as he had needed you.
"You could have told me the truth."
"I've lived a very long time without needing to tell the truth. I'm out of practice."
"You're doing fine so far."
That earned you the smallest smile. "High praise, from my one and only apprentice."
He kissed your forehead this time, and let his cheek rest there after. "Stay up with me tonight. Not for spellwork. Just this."
"Donโt you have a casting circle to finish?"
"It will be fine. It has kept for three centuries, and can certainly keep another few hours."ย
His arms tightened around you, and beneath the humor you could hear something that sounded almost like relief. "I'd rather not be lonely tonight, if it's all the same to you."
You settled back against him, listening to the candle hiss quietly as it burned itself down, and said nothing at all because words were no longer needed.
