Chapter Text
You stretched your arms, and actually got up from your seat, trying to relieve some of the stiffness from your joints. You had been studying for what felt like hours for midterms. Despite popular belief, Satan was actually a terrible study partner. He hoarded all the books, and refused to let them out of his room. Which of course meant that you were forced to study in his room. Assuming that he didn’t kick you out for a transgression at some point. At this point, Mammon had been banned from your midterm study sessions for asking too many questions.
You can’t say that you disagree with Satan, honestly. You’re much more focused without Mammon there, but after a few hours of grinding, you definitely felt restless.
“Pssst,” you mock whispered.
“I suggest that if you value your presence here, you do not attempt to gain my attention that way again. Ever,” Satan responded nonplussed.
“You want a snack? Because I’m getting hungry, and could use a moment to stretch my legs,” you said, ignoring his dire warning. You enjoyed tweaking Satan’s nose (to an extent, you still valued your life though). Also, you were not about to give into his high handed ways. Satan, like Lucifer, tended to want things on his own terms. Satan, like Lucifer, would have bristled at the comparison.
“I suppose refreshments are in order,” Satan said, closing his book. “A walk would not be amiss either.”
You grinned at the blonde, you just gave you a stern look back. Both of you headed to the kitchen hoping that Beel had not ransacked it bare. You were in luck, there were two packages of chips left. Satan put the kettle on for tea, and you kept poking around the cabinets for hidden stores of snacks, since each of the other brothers seemed to keep hidden caches of food all around the kitchen in a typically futile effort of finding it later. Nine of out ten times though Beel found it before any of the brothers was able to retrieve them, like a bloody bloodhound. You stopped when you reached the cookie sheets, and a wave of nostalgia overcame you. Back when you were a wee sprat, you had once upon a time used your mom’s cookie sheets to slide down the stairs in the house. For a split second, you were standing in your mom’s kitchen in grubby jeans, skinned elbows, about to start another one of your adventures which your parents swore shaved decades off their lives and gave them premature grey hair.
And you stilled, a giant lightbulb going off. Who are we kidding? It was more like a gigantic air raid siren, flashing red lights and a wailing BEE-RUU BEE-RUU repeatedly. You held up a cookie sheet and inspected it for a moment, with the same speculative air that would have made the six year old you proud.
“Thinking about baking?” Satan inquired amused as he brewed the tea. What a strange human you were. He was fascinated by you, since you seemed to toggle between an orderly mind that he certainly appreciated and a chaotic energy that rivalled Mammon’s schemes, which Satan was definitely on the fence about.
“Not at all,” you said distractedly. It looked big enough. Admittedly, the last time you had tried this you had maybe been six years old, and decidedly smaller in proportions.
Satan looked at you quizzically, and you just gave him your most shit-eating grin, which starting to have an almost Pavlovian response on the brothers you were currently living with, as Satan immediately perked up to full alert and gave you his undivided attention. “I have an idea.”
This seemed to give the blonde a pause. At this point, your chaotic nature was well-known, and while most of the time Satan enjoyed your antics and hijinks solely because it seemed to irk Lucifer so much, he also knew that there was the potential for a lot of damage to any bystanders of your plans. In this particular scenario, he was mainly worried about his own hide.
You walked out of the kitchen without saying another word. Satan decided to follow you, stuck between curiosity and trepidation. You stopped right in front of the top of the foyer stairs. You looked down and decided that you could probably survive the crash without breaking your neck. You hoped.
“Please tell me you’re not considering what I think you’re considering,” Satan, said with a note of warning, his eyes flitting between you, the stairs and the cookie sheet clutched in your hands.
“What do you think I’m about to propose?” you said, cocking your head as you envisioned your potential trajectory. Do-able until you hit the landing, where you will probably just crash straight into the wood. Unless...
“I think you’re about to slide down these stairs using a cookie sheet,” Satan deduced.
“Does it ever get boring being right all the time?” you asked, genuinely curious.
“I cannot in good conscience allow you to do this,” Satan said. “For one, you could injure yourself. Second, this seems incredibly unwise.” This would be absolute folly. He could already see the dire results, and he would likely be held responsible for being unable to dissuade you from your course of action, keeping you safe, and/or allowing it to even occur.
“Wait, wait, have you ever done this?” you turned to him.
“Of course not!” Satan looked mildly insulted. Really? Whatever possessed you to think that demons would slide down stairs on cookie sheets? What kind of ill-conceived notion was that?
“Huh! So you’re telling me that as an immortal being that is bigger, stronger, definitely has a higher pain tolerance, and can’t die from such a paltry injury, you or your brothers have never attempted this?” you asked, pointing out all the problems with Satan allowing you to go through your scheme.
“When you pose like that, it does seem incredibly ludicrous that we have not,” Satan admitted, since none of these were considerations for a demon. Who also happened to have access to magic. It just was so…. Childish. “Particularly Mammon, if we’re being honest,” he mused. Why hadn’t it occurred to at least one of them? Mammon did seem like the most likely candidate for such a ludicrous idea.
“I used to do this as a kid, until my mom yelled at me for ruining her cookie sheets,” you admitted. A wave of nostalgia hit you for home, thinking of your childhood and your mom. You missed her, and the longing was a physical pain. You wish you could hug her, smell her hair, and have her gently scold you before she made you your favorite plate of food, telling you that you were studying and needed to keep your energy up, and how are you supposed to do that with just snacks? You needed real food.
It must have shown in your face because Satan’s gaze softened. “You really want to do this?” he asked.
You shrugged, trying to dispel the longing you suddenly felt for your mom. “It’s just harmless fun. I mean, I’m bigger than I used to be, but I was hoping you might put a charm on me to prevent me from getting seriously injured.” You bit your lip.
Satan sighed, torn between alleviating your homesickness and being responsible for your safety. However, you did bring up a good point. He could charm you so that you could not injure yourself. Looking at you clutching a cookie sheet, and looking at the stairs with longing, he made up his mind.
“Fiiiiiine,” he said slowly.
You squealed, and impromptu hugged him, causing the blonde to blush slightly. He took the cookie sheet from your hands, muttered a short incantation on it, and handed it to you. He raised his hands and waved them over you, muttering another incantation and your skin prickled at his vocalization. He then turned toward the stairs and said another incantation, which rounded the corners on the landing on the corner, so it resembled more the curve of a slide than a box.
“Okay, I think I got it. I put a cushioning charm on the cookie sheet, I put a defensive charm on you so that you just slide on any obstacle you encounter, and I rounded the corner of the stairs landing so that you don’t crash into the landing but slide onto the foyer floor,” Satan explained.
You put the cookie sheet on the top stair, sat on it, and then turned around to give the blonde a look. “One last favor, can you give me a push?” You batted your eyes at him.
Satan chuckled and gave you a push. You screamed WAAAARGGGG, as you slid down the stairs faster than you expected. You definitely would have crashed against the landing if he hadn’t curved the edges. Despite that, the cookie sheet still slid from underneath you, and you ended up in the middle of the foyer, laughing your ass off.
“Yuki, are you alright?” Satan rushed to you, patting at you to make sure that you were still unharmed.
“Those charms are a genius,” you said with a laugh. “It was great. You should give it a go!”
Satan looked at your sparkling eyes, your smiling mouth, and how you seemed to radiate happiness. “Maybe I should.”
“Well, I want to do it again but this time belly down,” you said running up the stairs.
“In that case, I definitely should go next,” Satan said with a smile, getting into the swing of things. He took the cookie sheet from your hands, sat on the top of the stairs. Giving you an expectant look, you wrinkled your nose, and pushed Satan down the stairs.
“Eeek!!” Satan screamed as he slid down the stairs. He managed to take the corner quicker than you did, which meant that he ended up bumping against the other set of stairs as he skidded on the foyer’s floor.
You raced down the stairs, just as the blonde picked himself up from the foyer floor. “My turn my turn my turn!” you chanted as you grabbed the cookie sheet in one hand, and Satan’s hand with the other to take him back up the stairs.
“What is Devildom is going on? I thought I heard someone screaming,” Levi said peering down the hallway.
“Levi, check this out!” you said as you laid belly down on the cookie sheet. “Now gimme a push Satan!”
You can’t tell if your scream is louder than Levi’s panicked yell as he watched you plunge head down the stairs. He raced over where Satan looked complacently DESPITE HAVING JUST PUSHED YOU TO YOUR DEATH DOWN THE STAIRS. Levi then saw that you’re in the middle of the foyer floor on top of a cookie sheet, laughing hysterically.
“OMG YUKI YOU NEARLY GAVE ME A HEART ATTACK!” Levi yelled at you.
“Whatever Levi-chan. You gotta try this!” you said picking yourself up from the floor, and racing up the other set of stairs.
Levi turned to Satan, who was just looking enormously smug in Levi’s eyes. “Don’t worry. I charmed the cookie sheet, the stairs, and Yuki. They are perfectly safe,” the blonde demon smirked at his older brother.
“Satan is a champ,” you cooed as you slapped the cookie sheet at Levi’s chest. “I’ll ride with you if you don’t want to go alone.”
“Who is making all that racket? You woke me up from my nap,” Belphie paddled to where you were all congregated.
“Belphie, watch watch!” you thrilled as you forced Levi to sit down on the cookie sheet, and then basically cuddled him from behind to fit both of your asses on the cookie sheet. It was a tight squeeze. Levi was blushing horribly and stammering, and you just nodded at Satan, who gleefully pushed both of you.
Belphie watched for the two seconds where Levi screamed like a banshee, and your tinkling laugh as the two of you slid down the stairs. He quirked an eyebrow at Satan, who just smiled ruefully at the youngest demon.
You and Levi ended up in a pile on the floor, and the cookie sheet was looking worse for wear. You held up a hand to help Levi from up the floor and he looked a little disgruntled at you. “I’m not sure I forgive you for that,” he said, his orange eyes gleaming.
“Levi-chan, you’re my first two-fer on a cookie sheet. You wouldn’t want anyone else on that adventure, would you?” you said with a broad smile.
That seemed to pacify the Avatar of Envy. “Well, when you say it like that, clearly not.”
“Do you still have that Dev-Pro?” you asked, referring to the Devildom version of Go-Pro.
Levi brightened. “Sure do. Let me guess you want to film yourself sliding down?”
“Bingo!” you said, shooting Levi a gratified smile.
“It’s in my room, let me go get it!” Levi chirped back, headed toward his room once he made the top of the stairs.
“Want a turn?” you turned to Belphie with the cookie sheet.
“Pass,” Belphie said with a lazy smile.
“Lazy,” you shot back.
“You know, there’s other stairs in this house. I think the stairs from the attic are longer than these,” Belphie pointed out.
***
Lucifer returned to the House of Lamentation, which was strangely silent. There was an abandoned cookie sheet on the foyer floor, which he picked up and put back into the kitchen. As he made his way through the house, he started to hear muffled yelling. Tracing the noise back to its source, he found Belphie, Beel, and Levi down by the attic stairs except Beel was wearing an orange helmet, with a cookie sheet between his hands, and Levi while also wearing a purple helmet was typing furiously on his phone.
Lucifer was about to ask about what was happening, when he heard whoops and yells, with Mammon slid down the attic stairs on a cookie sheet but with a yellow helmet on his head. He moved quickly from the bottom of the stairs to yell CLEAR up the stairs. He heard you yell out GERONIMO and appeared also with a helmet on your head with a DevPro attached, sliding belly down on a cookie sheet. Once you made it down the stairs, you got up and handed your helmet to Levi, who took the DevPro off your helmet, and you and your brothers huddled around the camera watching the film. Satan made his way down the stairs and was about to hail all of you when he finally noticed Lucifer standing there observing everything.
“Uhhhhh,” Satan cleared his throat.
Lucifer’s patience ran out. “What is the meaning of this?” he thundered, as you and his brothers whipped your heads up from your huddle to look at him.
“Lucifer, I can TOTALLY explain,” you said to the very disapproving face of the eldest demon brother.