Lightbearer

by L.C. Davis

“Like I said. It’s a love story, and you know how all good love stories start.” The blank look on his face tells me he doesn’t have a damn clue. Guess the boys down south have all the fun. “With a meet cute,” I add. “Love--or in this case, hate--at first sight?”

In short, he was like a boner generator on legs. [Mr. Curtis, please. The facts.]

Better try again, I thought. Second time’s always the charm. “Hi, Devil Daddy,” is what came out, and I smacked myself in the face. “I mean...cock. Fuck! I mean fuck. Not you...me. Wait, that’s not right either.”

It must have been a slow day in Hell, because I think he was actually enjoying our little repartee. Or maybe he just found my arrogance amusing. Probably the latter, in retrospect.

“This Hell,” he said in a deliberate, mocking voice as he held the left cane up, and then the right. “This your world. In between is big space. Demon no cross. Need human vessel to transport energy.” My face burned with embarrassment and irritation, but I was mostly just pissed that his condescension was turning me on. Then again, maybe it was the tight leather pants. Or both. The whims of my dick always had been an enigma.

“I’m just not sure you understand what you’re agreeing to.” “I’d be your bitch,” I said with a shrug. “I’ve had worse gigs.”

“You know. Bowchicabowwow?” He blinked slowly, like a cat who’s just witnessed you eating cheese out of the bag at two a.m.. “Excuse me?” I sighed. “You know, how sometimes when an underworld demon lord loves a lightbearer very much and they wanna make a little army of the infernal damned…”

“Because Architects can only be souls who possess divine energy,” he said slowly, like his patience was strained more with every word. “Since you are obviously not an angel, you must be a bondservant.” “A what?” “A mortal whose soul has been dedicated to the divine.”

Steve Buscemi?

“He has two modes. Hopeless incompetence and mad genius. There is no inbetween.” “Aww. You think I’m a genius?”

“Good boy,” he chuckled, pressing in gently. I was already hard, but my dick felt like a searing rod underneath the sheet, hot and tense with need. “My, you’re tight.”

It didn’t even matter if I was an experiment. A prop. A plaything. As long as he kept playing with me, as long as he kept pushing the right buttons, as long as he didn’t fucking stop.

I kissed him again, because I needed to. Because the warning didn’t matter. I didn’t want him to leave me, and not just because it felt like he’d hollow me out if he pulled out now. I wanted him like this, inside of me, part of me, all of me, for just a little bit longer. Or forever.

I’m coming for you. Four little words, but they’re the most meaningful ones I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ve given up on trying to decide if my feelings for Apollyon are as fucked up as I fear they are. Either way, they aren’t changing.

"So, I guess I don't get to tell you you’re going to be an aunt with a banner or anything.” She raises an eyebrow. “Assuming the thing that comes out of you isn’t a three-headed dragon.” “You say that like you wouldn’t love it if it was.”

“I told you, there’s nowhere I can’t reach you.”

“That’s the best part of having siblings,” I laugh. “Half the time, you want to kill each other, but you’d kill for each other, too.”

She’s still having trouble adjusting to my otherworldly pet, but if I have to put up with her being the wicked witch of the northeast, she can learn to tolerate my hellhound.

“Serving you on his behalf has been my greatest honor. I could ask for nothing more.”

In a moment, he takes in everything. My body, my mind, my soul. That intangible, unknowable thing that lingers even when my mind has gone to sleep and my spirit is empty. In that moment, he knows me, better than Apollyon. Better than I know myself. Better than anyone ever has or ever will.

Life is pain and guilt and all the ugly things we try to push away to make room for what makes it worth living.”

“Oh, Levi,” he murmurs, pressing his forehead to mine. “If there is one thing I’d stake my life on, it’s your stubbornness.”

“I’m sorry. I just can’t. Not for this world, not for anything.”

Death is the arms of a mother welcoming you home off the bus, wrapped around you so tight you forget all the painful words and broken promises. It’s the voice of a lover swimming into your ears and burrowing so deep it settles within your veins. It’s the feeling that lasts as long as it takes to shiver, the paper-thin separation between your soul and body that becomes a seam capable of splitting them both, if it could only last long enough.

Because the only way to truly live forever is to live on through the people you love.

I took every night I ever spent here for granted, but never again.

He snorts a laugh, running his claws through my hair. I missed that, too. I missed everything about his touch. Starved for it.

Pain doesn’t seem so bad after an eternity of nothing ever changing. Nothing ever bringing pain or joy or anything else that makes life both exhausting and worth fighting for until the bitter end.

It still doesn’t seem possible that this is anything other than a dream, but fuck, if it is, I don’t want to wake up. Not this time. That’s how I know it’s real.

The demon is mine, and I’m his, and it’s the sweetest deal I’ve ever made. One I’d make all over again.

Technically, it’s the end of our story--but that’s the thing about a romance, the thing that makes it different from every other kind of story. The end is just the beginning, and as for the most important part? Yeah. They lived happily fucking ever after.