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Diavolo tip-toed around an obstacle course made up of hundreds of sleeping, snoring, drooling demons. There wasn't a room in his castle that wasn't currently housing an unconscious gaggle or two, and he was taking every pain he could to avoid waking even a single one.
They were passed out on chairs.
Under tables.
ON tables.
In closets.
On every bed, every staircase, in open drawers of every enormous dresser.
There were empty bottles and fallen decorations everywhere, and the exquisitely carpeted floors were littered with puddles of vomit and brightly-coloured confetti.
This party only happened once in a thousand years. Every citizen of the Devildom, right down to the lowliest imp, deserved at least one celebration a millennium – and now that the party was over, they all deserved to sleep it off unbothered, too.
Always the last one standing, this was usually the time the Demon Price finally retired for the evening. (For the rest of the weekend, usually.) He would do his final rounds, making sure that nobody yet wanted for anything, then slip away to bed.
Tonight was different. Tonight, he was looking for something.
Or, rather… for someone.
When he finally found her, she was sleeping on a mahogany pool table with Mammon's jacket draped over her shoulders and the white-haired demon himself curled up under the table, drooling on the carpet. Even asleep, the tip of his thin tail was wound protectively around one of her ankles.
Chewing anxiously on one of his claws, Diavolo looked around while he wondered who he might be able to ask for help.
Barbatos had the night off.
Belphegor and Leviathan had been snuggled together in Beelzebub's lap, and all three of them snoring in unison, since they'd split five bottles of Demonus between them.
Satan was passed out on the front lawn. He had blood on his claws, a table leg in one hand and was missing a shoe. (So far, he'd won the party.)
Asmodeus was the only one who'd managed to secure himself a bed, and had immediately shared it with… well, anyone. And everyone. Now that room was a veritable orchestra of contented snoring, and smelled a little funny.
Lucifer, always the second-last man standing, had tried to take a shower and ended up passing out in the bathtub, instead, almost an hour ago.
Diavolo frowned, and fretted, and winced as he chewed his claw down past the quick. He couldn't leave her here. Who knew which of the hundred thousand demons on the property might wake up first? They'd all been cordial and controlled at the party, but what if one woke up half-drunk in the middle of the night with a serious case of the alcohol-munchies? How cordial and controlled would they be at the first light of dawn, when they were hungover and irritable?
“Ok,” Diavolo murmured to himself, “no problem. You got this. Just… be gentle. Nice… nice and easy,” he breathed, as he eased his massive arms underneath her knees and armpits and picked her off the table.
She weighed nothing at all. Barbatos had made some coconut meringues one time that had been more air than cookie – well, she felt more air than human. He was certain, absolutely certain, that if he held her too tightly, her fragile human body would crumble into dust just like the first four meringues he'd tried. Frowning nervously, he held her awkwardly at arm's length and tried his best to keep her head propped up with his wings so her tiny neck didn't snap in half.
He watched her with wide, worried eyes all the way up the stairs, and couldn’t stop thinking about the baby bird he'd once found up in the human world when he was just a child, one that he had been so excited to care for – until he'd hugged it too hard, and its little head had fallen off. It had been up to Barbatos to explain to his devastated young Master that demon princes were terribly powerful beings, and needed to be very, very careful with lesser creatures, lest they hurt them by mistake.
Diavolo checked a half-dozen rooms on the highest floor, but even the most exclusive real-estate in his castle had already been claimed (and vomited all over).
There was one room, and only one room, he was sure would be empty. Without any better options, he frowned, let himself into his own bedroom, and gingerly laid her on the bed.
On one-eighth of the bed, that is, since that's about all the space her tiny body took up.
“Mmmmmmmm…” She smiled in her sleep, apparently relieved to be somewhere more comfortable than a pool table, and snuggled happily into Diavolo's elegant silk bedspread.
Thrilled with himself for getting this far without waking (or breaking) her, Diavolo tiptoed into his ensuite and quietly closed the door so he could transform without the standard eruption of magma and hellfire bothering her. He changed into his bedclothes, brushed his teeth, then glanced out the door.
She looked so delicate, curled up like a sleeping rose in the smallest corner of his enormous bed. The rising and falling of her breaths seemed so small. Her skin looked so fragile in the filtering moonlight, like the thinnest porcelain.
Diavolo stood at the other side of his bed, fretting self-consciously, before he took the very edge of his bedsheet between his fingernails and slowly… slowly… slowly lifted it up.
She didn't stir.
Trying so hard not to jostle the mattress that he kept having to remind himself to keep moving, he slid one leg… slowly… under the covers… then the oth-
She mumbled something, and rolled over.
Diavolo backpedaled in such a flustered panic that he crashed onto the floor and froze there, hidden behind the bed, holding his breath and listening.
He didn't exhale until she started quietly snoring again. He waited another minute to be sure, listening the whole time to his heart hammering in his chest, then peeked nervously over the edge.
She was hugging Mammon's jacket, and smiling in her sleep.
So relieved he could have melted into the floor, Diavolo tried, again, to sneak into his own bed. It took him three minutes and four mini heart attacks, but he finally succeeded. As ready as he was to sleep off his own case and a half of firebrand wine, though… he couldn't force his eyes to close.
His heart was beating too hard.
Every time she moved, it skipped a beat.
He couldn't tune out the lullaby melody of her breathing.
He just laid there, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling with his hands folded chastely in his lap and trying not to breathe too hard, until she suddenly rolled over and brushed up against his arm.
His eyes opened as wide as dinner plates. He went rigid. He stopped breathing, and didn't remember to start again until he started getting dizzy. He couldn't focus on anything except the tiny patch of his skin that was touching hers, and all the little goosebumps that were tickling their way up his arm.
It was all he could feel.
She was all he could feel.
…he'd never been this close to a human before.
Her hair smelled like cinnamon, and even if he lived another ten thousand years, he would never forget it.
Her skin was even softer than it looked.
Her eyelashes were flickering, and he wished he knew what she was dreaming about.
Maybe, if he was very, very careful not to squeeze too tight, he could… get a little closer…?
He swallowed the massive lump in his throat, sidled up against her, then froze and held his breath and immediately regretted his decision because he was much too strong to ever be able to hold something so fragile without hugging it too hard and accidentally-
She frowned in her sleep, felt her way up his thick, trembling arm… then sighed softly, and smiled. “Mmmmmmm…” She wrapped an arm around him, pulled him in tight, and snuggled up against his chest.
Diavolo carefully… so, so carefully… wrapped his arm around her delicate shoulders, laid his cheek on her head, and blamed the dampness welling in his eyes on the sweet smell of cinnamon.
She never woke up... and he never fell asleep.