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Taako rolls over in bed to look at the clock. Oh, three in the morning, perfect. He must have been woken up by Lup and her boyfriend doing their bullshit again. They know he has trouble falling back asleep, can they not warn him when they're going to do this stuff?
Grumbling to himself, Taako throws back his blankets and rolls over to sling his legs over the side of the bed. He isn't quiet about it as he makes his way down the hall towards the dim light of candles in the living room. He stands at the end of the hall, staring at the all too familiar sight.
Furniture has been pushed out of the center of the room, leaving a wide, clear space of wooden flooring that has been covered with chalk runes in a magic circle. Perched around the room are lit candles, the only light offered in the darkness. Kneeling on the floor is his twin sister, dressed like she just got home from work and if this is really the first thing she did, if she didn't even shower first, Taako is going to have to have a talk with her about priorities–and then there’s Barold, her boyfriend of however fucking long, and he looks like he just rolled out of bed so yeah, they just did this first thing. Taako almost wishes they’d just go back to fucking all the time instead of this weird hobby Barry picked up and dragged Lup into.
“What is it tonight?” he asks as he shuffles towards the kitchen, hesitating with his hand over the light switch. “And can I turn on a light to get a drink or is that going to ruin your little nerdfest?”
Lup huffs. “You have dark vision.”
Taako rolls his eyes as he gets a glass of water, drinking it before filling it back up as well as a second one. He takes the second into the living room with him, handing it to Lup when she looks up. She gives him a grateful smile before gulping down half and elbowing Barry to take the rest.
“So,” Taako drawls. “What spooky business are we up to tonight?”
“Summoning.” Candlelight flickers off Lup’s face, makes her excited grin look wicked. “Luce hooked me up with a legitimate summoning spell. Swear to the gods I’m gonna marry her.”
Barry coughs, like he's choking or clearing his throat. Lup laughs and smacks him on the back.
“You can’t say shit if you haven’t proposed yet, Barold,” Taako says in a smug, reprimanding tone. Barry doesn't look at either of them, just stays bent over the notebook before them, fidgeting with his glasses. Taako and Lup don’t bother to hide their snickering. Everyone knows Lup and Barry are going to get married, Lup’s just decided it won’t be until Barry asks her “properly” because for all she loves him, she also loves watching him sweat and trip over himself.
“Anyways,” Barry says finally, clearing his throat loudly as he wipes his glasses. “It’s a low level summoning spell. We’ve been collecting a lot of information for this and we’ve even got a specific being in mind-”
“Bar. Barry. Barold. Look at me. Look. At. Me.” Taako sips his water, staring unimpressed at his brother-in-law-to-be-someday. “I asked. You answered. Summoning, gotcha, that’s all I needed. You gonna be making a racket with this shit or can I get my snooze on?”
Lup and Barry lean in, having a quick whispered conversation. Taako sighs and leans back against the doorframe to the kitchen. If they’re having to talk about it, that means they have no clue. Great.
“Alright,” he interrupts them, rubbing his temple. “I’m gonna go back and put on my headphones and try to sleep through this. You tell whatever does or doesn’t show up to keep it down, because if I have to come back out I’m banishing all three of you to hell.”
Taako pushes off from the wall and starts back down the hall when Lup calls out to him.
“Can you put some wards up?” Lup asks, waving a hand at the one already on the front door. “Just in case?”
Taako resists the urge to throw down his glass of water because that’s just a mess he’d be forced to deal with. “Lup…” he says, voice dropping as he marches back towards her. “If you bring the cops down on us…”
“That’s why we need the wards!” She’s on her feet in an instant, pulling scraps of paper out of a false book tucked amongst Barry’s old science textbooks. “You’re better with them than I am! Remember how I almost set the place on fire last time I did a full set?”
Water sloshes over the edge as Taako exchanges his drink for the paper wards. “I’m going to have words with Lucretia about what she’s enabling here,” he mutters, shuffling around the house to slap the papers on walls, enchanting them to create a bubble around the house.
Lucretia, of course, had made the wards for them; they were made of a special paper for casting spells and she had inscribed them with the property to hide the use of magic. All Taako (or Lup, or Barry, but usually it was Taako) had to do was pour enough energy into them to activate the spell and they’d link up to create a barrier over the space. Lucretia did a lot of things like this to support Lup and Barry’s escapades and she was really close to being on his shit list for how far she went.
Once he has used up the wards handed him and can feel his own magic stores basically depleted, Taako slumps back into the living room. “You owe me,” he says and ignores whatever they say in reply as he goes back to his room, pulling headphones on to listen to music before falling back to sleep.
---
Thick blue curtains hang in the windows, allowing only so much light through. Taako’s room swims in the blue light and in his dreams he’s swimming, he’s in the ocean, he’s got his surfboard and he’s riding the waves and there’s Lup building a sand castle with Barry and Magnus and Julia playing volleyball against Killian and Carey and Lucretia under an umbrella drawing something and then he’s awake, sitting up in the blue light.
“Not even noon yet,” he mutters, judging from the brightness of his room. He finds his headphones where they’d fallen off and tangled in his sheets in the night, tossing them to the foot of the bed as he recalls why he needed them in the first place.
Right, the summoning.
Taako opens his door and can smell breakfast. At least one of them didn’t sleep, then, or has woken up early; Lup, most likely, because Barry knows better than to try to actually cook anything. Whatever the case, they didn’t give him any peace, they aren’t gonna get any from him.
“Hey there, demons! It’s me, ch'boy!” he bellows as he makes his way down the hall. He’s grinning from ear to ear until he reaches the living room and breathes out a “well shit”.
“Oh, wonderful. Another of you.”
Standing in the middle of the circle is… a demon, as far as Taako can guess. He’s not exactly versed in this shit, he doesn’t go around trying to find demons and ghosts like his sister. Which maybe he should rethink, because this demon is not hard on the eyes at all. He’s tall and lean, purple skin practically glowing against the stark black and white of his suit. His black hair is twisted in dreadlocks, pulled back from his tall, curved horns and face where red eyes glow - literally glow, that one isn’t a trick of the light. He has tall, black-feathered wings drawn in tight against his back and a spade-tipped tail that flicks irately as he flexes his hands, sharp black claws looking ready to tear into something.
“And only one of you?” Taako says as he takes the demon in, not bothering to hide his appraising gaze. “Pity.”
“I see you’re gonna be no more reasonable than the other one,” the demon huffs and this time Taako is paying attention and he barks out a laugh at the affected accent.
“What is that voice!” he wheezes, slapping his leg. “Holy shit, say something else! Is this what all demons talk like?”
“I- What's wrong with how I speak?”
Lup appears from the kitchen, holding a spatula in one hand and grinning brightly despite the bags under her eyes. “Holy shit, what is that voice?” she asks, laughter crackling in her voice. “You were not talking like that this morning.”
The demon jerks back, shoulders up to his ears as blood rushes to his cheeks. “I’m talking exactly how I always have.”
“Is it Taako?” Lup asks, eyes shining as she grabs her brother. “Taako, holy shit, I think you flustered my demon!”
“I’m not your demon!” he snaps, and he’s lost the accent, sending the pair back to hooting and hollering.
“Where’d the Cockney go?” Taako asks, trying for smooth but messing it up with his laughter. Lup is clinging to him for dear life at this point, her laughter and exhaustion nearly knocking her off her feet.
The demon fixes them both with a withering glare, though it’s undermined by how his tail curls around one of his legs and he’s balled his hands up into fists. His face is the red shade Taako would have expected a demon’s skin to be. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, trying to come up with a reply but finding nothing.
“Okay, okay, let’s get you back to whatever you’re cooking in there,” Taako laughs, dragging Lup with him into the kitchen. Lup goes along willingly, letting Taako pour her into a chair at the kitchen table while he takes over the pancakes.
“This guy for real?”
He gives the batter a stir, unsurprised but pleased that the consistency is correct, spooning a dollop into the pan. As it sizzles he turns to look over his shoulder since he’s gotten no response. Lup is face-down on the table, snoring. He sighs. He’s going to eat all these damn pancakes, those fucks.
He leaves Lup to sleep at the table once the pancakes are done, splitting them between two plates. Balancing the plates on one arm, he snags the butter, syrup, and utensils with his free hand and sidles back to the living room.
“You want some pancakes, handsome?” he asks, setting things down on the coffee table where it’s crammed against a bookcase.
“I can’t leave this circle,” the demon says, gesturing at the undisturbed chalk lines. “And, please, I have a name.”
“Well, thug, hit me with it.”
He sighs. “It’s Kravitz.”
“Alright, Kravitz. You can just sit on the floor like the rest of this household and help me with these pancakes.”
“I don’t need to eat.”
“But you can, and trust me, you’re gonna wanna eat these.” Careful not to smudge the chalk, because he doesn't know what is up with this situation but figures keeping a demon contained is probably a good idea, he hands over one of the plates and the utensils.
Taako settles on the floor with his own plate, close enough to pass the butter and syrup without stretching but not so close he has to worry about the chalk. He watches as Kravitz butters each pancake, carefully stacking them, and then coats them thoroughly in syrup. The syrup pools on the plate and Taako’s half tempted to smack the container out of his hand before the syrup runs over.
“Think I gotta cut you off there,” he says as he snatches the bottle, pouring what he considers the proper amount on his because fuck, the pancakes aren’t just a vehicle to get the syrup in your mouth.
Kravitz frowns but cuts into his pancakes, careful of the dripping syrup as he lifts the bite to his mouth. His eyebrows lift slightly and he looks up at Taako, who doesn’t even bother hiding his smug smile.
“I told you. Perfect pancakes, light and fluffy. Not too sweet… though looks like you’d rather they be sweeter, huh?”
He ducks his head, tucking into the pancakes. Taako wonders just what kind of demon they summoned that can be so handsome and so bashful all at once. He figured a demon would lean towards one of two extremes in the looks department, but he kind of figured they’d be harsher in personality. He feels like if he tried he could have this one a flustered mess in a handful of words.
Maybe if he sticks around long enough he’ll have to give that a go.
“Why are you sharing these with me?” Kravitz asks as he drags a bite of pancake through the syrup on his plate. “I won’t be swayed by food, no matter how good.”
“Mm, I think I could change your mind about that. I just can’t eat all these pancakes myself.” Taako adds a little more syrup to his own pancakes, but he can’t stomach as much as usual when he’s watching Kravitz with his pancakes just drowned in it. “Lup can make more when she wakes up, pancakes are the least she owes me when she’s doing this bullshit in my house.” All three of them were paying rent on the place, but that meant it was a third Taako’s and he should have some input on whether or not demons were getting summoned in the house. “Why are you still here, anyways?”
Kravitz frowns, setting his fork down. “You didn’t take part in summoning me?”
“All I did was make sure the government hopefully didn’t find out about this,” Taako says, waving a hand at the wards that were starting to fade and peel from the door and walls. “Slept through whatever ceremonial junk they did to get you here.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” Kravitz says, pushing the plate away suddenly, eyebrows drawing down in frustration. “This summoning circle is meant for much lesser demons, not emissaries of the Raven Queen. How you lot were able to drag me up here without highly skilled magic users is beyond my comprehension. I shouldn't be able to be summoned in the first place.”
Taako frowns when Kravitz mentions magic users and stands up, flicking a wrist to levitate everything behind him as he stalks into the kitchen. He lets the plates with their unfinished meals crash into the sink, effectively jolting Lup awake.
“Shit!” is the first word out of her mouth as she jumps, knocking her chair over as she gets to her feet. “What happened? Did he do something?!”
“You!” Taako bears down on her, nostrils flaring, hands fisted in his shirt. “I–you–you just–your magic!”
Lup musters what energy she can to pull herself up and straighten her shoulders to face her brother. “Listen, Koko-”
“Mm-mnn, nope. Lup? Do not.” He whips a hand up to point at her, accusatory. “I knew you were going to be using magic but this goes so far beyond what we agreed on. You summoned some, fucking, archdemon or something!”
“Is everything okay-oh.” Barry steps into the room in his pajamas, glasses askew as if he’d been in a hurry. They must have woken him. “You've, uh, met our guest.”
“Listen,” Taako says tightly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just… No, you know what, I got this.” He slides past them back into the living room, where Kravitz is sitting cross legged on the floor still. “You, Kravitz. Look, I don't mean this as rude as it sounds, but go back to hell or whatever. They're done, this whole thing is over.”
Kravitz frowns, wings ruffling as he stands. “That would be lovely. Unfortunately, I can only leave once I’ve completed the task I was summoned for. I’m stuck in this circle because your sister would not give me a task.”
Taako exhales sharply through his nose. “Lup! Tell your buddy his task is to get out of our house!”
Lup pokes her head over Barry’s shoulder, ears drooping. “Kravitz, can I tell you to just go back wherever?"
“No. You have to give me a proper task for the ritual to take. Otherwise, I’m stuck here. I can’t be banished the way this ritual would normally allow because I’m not the type of demon this circle is meant for.”
“Alright, so we just give you something real easy to do and you can go.” Taako looks around the room and then at Lup and Barry. The two of them still look dead on their feet and really he should get them to go to sleep for real. His first instinct is to put some food in them, though. “I’m gonna make a proper breakfast even though you chucklefucks don’t deserve it. Lup, invite the demon to breakfast.”
Lup and Barry both brighten at the mention of food and Lup marches over to face Kravitz. She puts her hands on her hips, standing up straight. “Kravitz,” she says in an authoritative tone. “Your task is to eat whatever Taako makes.” She looks over her shoulder, giving Barry a thumbs up which he returns.
Kravitz doesn't look as relieved. In fact, as he drags a hand down his face, he looks impossibly more exhausted. “I don’t know if you’re just stupid or playing me for a fool,” he sighs, stepping out of the circle to sit on the couch. He slumps into it, burying his face in his hands.
Lup and Barry trade frowns while in the kitchen Taako gets out what he needs to cook, unaware of the conversation in the other room over the noise of moving pots and pans around.
“What do you mean?” Barry asks as he and Lup approach the couch, sitting on the opposite end from Kravitz with Lup basically in Barry’s lap.
“You told me to eat whatever he makes.” Kravitz waves a hand idly towards the kitchen. “You didn’t specify a timeframe. I have to eat whatever he makes for as long as he lives. ”
Lup cringes, ears drooping. “Oops."