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It was exam week in the devildom. Pure hell, in your eyes. The thought got a wry smile out of you, as you were leaning over yet another thick book of some subject you long forgot the name of in your study session. Diavolo and Lucifer seemed to be even more on your ass about these exams than usual, even going as far as Lucifer asking to check your homework. That was the breaking point for you.
“Lucifer, darling, I am not 8 years old. I will manage,” you turned him down, politely but firmly.
That was about a week ago and your heart still raced thinking back to it, wondering how you got the courage to say that, even going as far as to call Lucifer 'darling' of all things. It was probably the lack of sleep and general exhaustion and stress getting to you, but still. It was bordering on just asking the guy to kill you right this instant.
With a deep sigh, you shook your head, going back to the text in front of you. The letters were blurring, dancing in front of your eyes as if they were mocking you. Squinting at them, you gave it another go, trying to read that goddamned (ha!) sentence for the 10th time. Instead, you felt your eyes slip shut.
The last thing you noticed before you drifted off to sleep was the door to your room opening without a knock (or was there one?) and something being draped over your shoulders.
—
The next morning you awoke with a crick in your neck, back aching and a mark on your cheek from where a folded page of the book was digging into it all night. You groaned as you straightened in your chair, your back making some nasty cracking sounds as you curved it.
“Ugh…” with a small displeased noise you checked your D.D.D. The glaringly bright numbers on it hurt your eyes as you tried to read the time, prompting you to press a hand over them for a moment.
“Huh… I missed breakfast,” you mumbled, once you finally read off the time.
By chance, your eyes landed once again on your workspace, only now noticing the blanket on the chair. It must've fallen off when you got up.
With a small smile you walked over and lifted it, bunching it up in your arms. A wave of quite expensive smelling cologne invaded your nose, pleasantly wafting around you. You knew the smell right away and let out an amused huff.
Deciding to be a bit of a tease, you wrapped it around yourself, securing the simple gray fluffy cloth in front of your collarbone with a knot before heading off to the kitchen.
The plan was to go quickly grab at least some fruit, so you wouldn't go hungry all day. You had more studying ahead of you, which would be mostly unsuccessful if you didn't get something into the gaping hole that you called stomach like, right now.
In that regard, you and Beel were rather alike. You thought to yourself with a small giggle.
Once you reached the kitchen, you were greeted by someone right away.
“Hey there, sleeping beauty. Finally, decided to join the land of the waking?” Satan asked, a teasing glint to his eyes but at the same time, you could see the same exhaustion play around them that you have been feeling the past days.
With an exaggerated yawn and stretch, you reached around him to grab a carrot from his cutting desk. It was already peeled, ideal for instant consumption.
You bit off a piece and grinned at a now slightly miffed Satan.
“Cooking duty?”, you asked, instead of answering to his playful question.
Solemnly, he nodded, continuing to chop a vegetable that you didn't quite recognize. Probably some Devildom specialty. Silently chewing your carrot, you hopped onto the counter right next to him, careful not to jostle him, otherwise not only Satan would lose a finger.
For a while, you watched him work away at the vegetables and throw them into a big pot with already boiling water in it. Subtly, you tried to sniff the air. But of course, Satan was sharp as always, even with exam stress resting on his shoulders.
“It's just soup. Some vitamin-rich stuff. So you and my brothers don't die on me from malnutrition.”
He said that last part teasingly, but you could sense the real worry behind it.
Patting his shoulder, you munched down the last part of your carrot.
“How is everyone dealing with the preparations?” you then asked, after swallowing everything.
Satan let out a soft huff, stopping to look up at you for a moment, judgment clear in his expression.
“What you're really asking is, how is Mammon dealing with it, right?” With one more pointed look at your blanket-clad shoulders, he went back to chopping, now occasionally stirring the blubbering soup as well.
With a slightly defensive frown, you shuffled around on the counter. “Well, the others usually do pretty well around this time, even with the stress. Asmo got his home-spa going on, Levi can play his games,” you lifted your hand up, counting off the brothers. “Beel just eats even more than usual and Belphie sleeps it off, when he does study for once-” that got an amused huff out of Satan.
“And I usually don't have to worry about you or Lucifer, you two are organized as all hell,” you grinned to yourself at that last remark before getting serious again. “But Mammon? He doesn't do well with any of that. Lucifer even froze his Goldie again, so he can't even stress buy anything.”
You frowned softly at the tips of your feet until you heard a sigh from Satan.
“How about this,” he started off, wiping his hands on his apron and grabbing a wooden spoon to dip into the soup, “I set aside some breakfast for Mammon and you since you both didn't come out of your rooms for it.” He ladled some soup on the spoon and blew on it, before offering it to you.
“How about you go to his room, force him to eat something and get him to take a break as well, hm?”
You took the spoon into your mouth, lightly smacking your lips as the liquid filled your mouth with a divine taste.
“I don't know what got into that boy this time,” Satan continued, satisfaction playing around his mouth at your probably awestruck expression, “but he has been studying nonstop.”
You drew your eyebrows together at that. You hadn't noticed that uncharacteristic behavior since you, too, had been studying nonstop.
“Thank you, Satan!” you beamed at the blond, hopping off the counter with one big leap.
“I'll have to go investigate now, if you'd excuse me,” you waved at him over your shoulder, grabbing a tray that you had noticed while Satan was feeding you the soup. It was carefully marked with Mammon's and your name, so you supposed it could only have your breakfast.
Quickly, you rushed off to the rooms of the brothers. Now that you had that tidbit of information from Satan, your interest was even more piqued. Mammon and studying nonstop really did not fit. Sure, he had the determination to do it, but usually, that determination was used for other stuff, like acquiring money and, before recently, also to cling to you in all possible situations.
Finally, you arrived at Mammon's room. Deciding not to be too mean to him for now, you knocked on the door instead of barging in like he usually did.
No answer.
You knocked again.
Waited a few minutes.
Still, nothing.
With increasing worry, you decided to try and open the door after all. The handle pushed down easily and then the door was swinging open. It revealed Mammon's messy room. Clothes were strewn about, covered only by multiple open books. In the center of the mess, on his floor, was Mammon.
He was curled onto himself like a cat, one arm cushioning his head and the other curled up in front of his face. His knees were pulled up to his chest and a part of his back was out in the open, the shirt probably having been pushed up by his squirming in his sleep.
You almost couldn't suppress the coo that threatened to leave your throat at seeing him this soft, this vulnerable. Gently, you set the tray of food down on the floor in front of you. You didn't even want to risk waking him by walking over to his desk to set it down, instead quickly pulling out your D.D.D. And snapping a few photos.
You were so going to set those as your wallpaper.
Satisfied with the short photo session, you tiptoed over the piles in his room, to the desk in the corner of the room. With a soft huff, you set the tray down once more. Before waking Mammon, you picked up some piles of clothes, the ones without books on them, and threw them in the hamper without question.
Then, you collected all the accumulated wrappers of energy bars on his sofa. Those were thrown away, and the empty cups were collected and stacked into neat towers.
Finally, you could wake Mammon. The white-haired demon had been stirring in his sleep for some time now, groaning softly at times while you were cleaning a bit. Probably a bad dream, you thought as you knelt down next to him.
Placing a hand on his forehead, you softly called out his name. It didn't get any reaction from him whatsoever, only the squirming continuing.
So you tried again, louder this time. That didn't work either, so you tried shaking his shoulder gently, now properly sitting down next to him.
He is almost as deep of a sleeper as Belphie, you thought to yourself, sighing gently as you plopped onto your butt next to him.
Deciding that the extreme measures needed to be put out, you put one of your icy cold hands to his neck. That evoked the reaction you wanted to see.
Mammon jumped up right away, almost hitting your chin with his head.
His head swung around, looking around in his room before his saucer-wide eyes landed on your form, and he relaxed.
“Jeez, don't scare me like that! Almost had a heart attack because of ya…” he mumbled, laying back down and closing his eyes.
You gently nudged him, laughing softly.
“Sorry, sleepyhead, but it was really hard waking you. I was gentler at first, I swear!”
As if to show how apologetic you were, you stroked his hair gently, removing it from his forehead. You knew how much he liked that.
As expected, a faint blush formed on his cheeks and he turned his face towards you.
“Well, whaddaya expect when I had like, a total of 4 hours of sleep in the past 2 days,” he mumbled again.
You noticed how hoarse his voice was and how sunken in his cheeks looked.
“Mammon, you look like you're about to die,” you deadpanned, getting up to get the food tray.
“That's it, if you don't eat properly I will force-feed you and if you don't take a nap right after I will make sure you do,” you wanted to sound like you were joking, but halfway through the playful threat, you realized you meant it.
Mammon seemed to get that vibe as well, because he slowly sat up on his spot on the floor, eyes still closed but grumbling something that sounded agreeable.
With a satisfied huff, you got into a criss-cross sitting position opposite of him. Once he opened his eyes and looked at you, something that could be called a tired smirk formed on his lips.
“'s that my blanket?” he asked, amusement clear in his voice.
At that, you realized that you were still wearing the nice smelling blanket cape that he left you with the previous night. Fighting off a blush, you pretended to be busy examining the tray, offhandedly humming your agreement.
Luckily, he didn't keep teasing. He was fully focused on the tray as well now. Faintly, the sounds of your growling stomachs could be heard and you both grinned bashfully at one another. Once you had unpacked all the food, you set one of the bowls down in front of Mammon, who only pouted at you.
Raising your brow, you questioned him silently.
“I thought ya were gonna feed me,” he mumbled, looking away.
You thought about how this exhausted Mammon was way softer and more open with his needs and wishes. It kind of made you feel fuzzy inside, on the one hand wishing that he would be like this more often but on the other not wanting to see Mammon this tired again.
As you put a spoonful of rice into his awaiting mouth, you decided to enjoy it for now, even if it was the result of stress.
That way, you two spent your late breakfast, feeding each other (Mammon insisted after a while, once he noticed that you weren't eating at all) before moving over to Mammon's luxuriously big bed and cuddling up underneath your repurposed blanket cape.