Chapter Text
For all intents and purposes, it is a normal day in Hell. The throne room is preternaturally chilly, the sky outside the large stained glass windows is cloudy, and the King of Demons is listening to an unending stream of petitions from souls who definitely shouldn’t be in Hell, we promise! We were all such good people!
The headache it gives him is such that he almost misses the tugging sensation at the back of his head, signifying someone on Earth is looking to make a deal. The king hisses in annoyance. He doesn't even have a place to put another useless soul. The ones he already has, some of them results of deals themselves, are lining up to get out of their consequences, and he's getting real tired of people trading eternal damnation just for one petty murder. With a frown, he waves his hand at the guards by the door, who immediately move to usher the souls out. They screech in protest. A vein in his forehead throbs. Mingyu moves forward with a clipboard in one hand, the names of souls moving to Purgatory listed neatly down the papers held there, and some kind of stick in the other.
“Mingyu. What is this? Where’s my quill?”
“It’s a ballpoint pen, Your Majesty. We use them in Admin. They’re much more convenient than ink well refills.”
The king’s eyes narrow. He takes the pen and the clipboard. “What’s Admin going to do next, switch to electric lighting?” Mingyu doesn’t answer, which he takes to mean they already have. Before he can say something about it, though, there is another tug at the base of his skull. He rolls his eyes and signs the paperwork with the infernal ballpoint pen. He misses his quill, elegant and simple. As if his day wasn’t blandly infuriating enough, now he has to go deal with some moron on Earth.
He’s going to be so pissed if it's someone who wants to commit another petty murder.
He snaps his fingers and suddenly he's in a bedroom in some cheap apartment in some Chinese city; he's vague on the details. But there's a young man in the room, sitting tensely just outside a circle drawn in flour, marked by a single candle that’s emitting an off-puttingly strong floral smell. He wonders if this is the first time he’s been summoned using a jar candle. The room is small and cluttered, with plain white walls plastered in charcoal drawings, ballpoint pen doodles on napkins, canvases that are smudged or unfinished but still hung with care. The king takes it all in for a long moment before turning to face the man. He’s older than he had thought at first glance, but his face retains a youthfulness despite the stiff set of his jaw and brows. His dark brown hair is greasy and the bags under his eyes suggest untold exhaustion. And for some reason that he cannot even name himself, the demon king finds him almost… adorable.
“I hope you meant to summon me,” he begins, “because if you didn't, this is probably not going to end well.” The man nods, mute. The king sighs heavily, picking up his hands and slapping them back down against his black jean-clad thighs. He hates denim, but Mingyu had convinced him to give modern Earth clothing a try when he’s in the mortal realm. Your cape of shadows suits you wonderfully, Your Majesty, it’s just… I think you’re scaring the humans. We just admitted our third soul this month that had a heart attack on the spot. So, jeans. “Okay, then. What's your name?”
The boy opens his mouth, but the only sound that comes out is too soft for even a demon to hear. “What?”
“Junhui,” the boy chokes out. “Wen Junhui.”
“What is it, Wen Junhui, that you could need so badly that you have to sell your soul to get it?” The boy looks down at his restless fingers, twining and untwining in his lap. He can see a small plain bandage wrapped around his twitching thumb, probably from where he had cut it to provide the blood sacrifice. Such a small amount of blood, he muses, and yet it feels like more than this boy should have been able to give. The king itches to step out of the circle and take those hands in his own, to still them and squeeze them encouragingly. He could do it, of course. A summoning circle’s strength comes from the conviction with which it is drawn, and one drawn by this timid human, in flour, with only one candle and a few drops of blood to mark it - it barely passes as a summoning circle at all. But he feels like breaking the circle would startle Junhui to death, so he stands still and waits for his answer.
“I just want a friend,” Junhui whispers.
The King of Demons has been summoned for many things. He's been ruler of the underworld for millennia longer than Junhui has been alive, and people have sold their soul for sex, for revenge, for power. But no one in the history of time has ever asked the Devil to be their friend. He opens his mouth to reply, but the words fail him.
“Pretty pathetic, huh? I, uh.” Junhui shoots a quick and discreet glance at an innocuous bottle of pills sitting on his nightstand, but he doesn't miss it. “It's no big deal. I didn't think I'd get turned down by a demon of all people, but I shouldn't be surprised.” The self-deprecating laugh that follows Junhui’s words makes him wince, to his own surprise and mild horror.
When was the last time he felt emotions like this? Anger, exhaustion, annoyance, those were regular occurrences for him. Hell had been passed to him as a riotous mess, overcrowded and inefficient, and he has spent thousands of years getting it to resemble something close to a functional place to house and punish souls. There is no place for compassion, or surprise, or pity there. He has visited innumerable mortals, all asking for something he is able to give them temporarily, at a high, high cost, but none of them have made him feel so... bad before.
“No. It's a deal, if you're sure.” Usually, there's a long drawn out negotiation of terms and conditions before he agrees to anything, but he finds himself uncaring of what the deal encompasses. He’ll make sure Junhui comes out ahead, in any case. “Are you positive this is what you want?”
“I’m gay, I don’t believe in God, or any deity, for that matter, and I’ve eaten a lot of shrimp. I’m going to Hell anyways.” The king snorts.
“You know, a lot of people are surprised when I tell them that eating shrimp is a biblical sin. They really are so shocked when they get to Hell, all because they didn't apologize for the damn shrimp.” Junhui cracks a smile, and he pats himself on the back. He usually wouldn’t joke about the damnation system - it had taken a lot of time to balance the books so that eating shrimp and serial murder were no longer on the same level, and homosexuality had never been a damnable offense - but in this case, he can admit it’s a little funny. “Let's get this thing done.”
“Wait! Do you have a name? Because I’ve been referring to you as ‘the demon’ in my head and it feels disrespectful,” Junhui says, and the king sighs heavily. He has a human name, but he hasn’t used it in hundreds of years, and it’s unfamiliar and strange to be called anything other than Your Majesty. But for this little one…
“You can call me Wonwoo. Now, the oath, please?”
Junhui smiles brightly but doesn’t say anything else. Wonwoo huffs out a breath. Humans.
His eyelids flutter shut and he lights Junhui’s candle again with a flick of his fingers. The incantation slips out of his mouth without even a thought on his part. Junhui listens, hands clasped tightly, sitting cross legged on his dark bedspread. Wonwoo opens his eyes and meets his gaze. “Repeat after me. I, Wen Junhui.”
“I, Wen Junhui.”
“Pledge my soul to the Demon King in return for friendship, whatever that entails.”
“Pledge my soul to the Demon King in return for friendship, whatever that entails.” Junhui is almost… giggling? His right hand is held in the air for no reason and the other is covering his mouth to hide his inappropriate smile.
Another first: someone enjoying dealing their soul away for eternity in hell.
Wonwoo continues, “At the time of my death, I understand that I will spend the rest of time in Hell, in servitude to the Demon King. I solemnly swear it to be.” Junhui repeats it, the damning phrase doing nothing to damper his amusement. Wonwoo feels a tiny flicker of annoyance. This oath is not a joking matter, for hell’s sake. He wonders what happened to the young man who could barely look up from the ground when he was first summoned. “What are you doing with your hand?”
Junhui lowers his right hand, looking abashed. “Uh. Swearing an oath?”
“What does that have anything to do with raising your hand?”
“It’s what we do here on Earth. I mean, sometimes. It’s a thing,” Junhui tells him indignantly. “I drew this whole circle and cut my thumb on a pocket knife. I figured this would be the least bizzare part of the whole ‘summoning the Devil’ situation.”
Wonwoo narrows his eyes. “Are you taking this seriously?”
“Deadly.”
He would believe him, if only the corners of Junhui’s mouth weren’t twitching as if desperate to form a grin. “You’re a bit of an ass, aren’t you?” He doesn’t mean anything serious by it, of course. This is the most fun he’s had in a decade, at least, and he finds that he likes Junhui. No one has ever dared giggle in the middle of swearing the oath. Wonwoo eyes him up and down, reevaluating. Junhui isn’t pathetic or sad, he’s funny and quick and easily amused. But for some reason he needed a demon to be his friend. It’s refreshing, and confusing.
And yet, Junhui’s smile falls immediately, and Wonwoo is faced yet again with the boy who can’t look up from the floor. His cheeks flush red. “Sorry. I know it’s not a joke.”
Before Wonwoo can say anything - he’s never apologized to someone, or even felt the need to, but Junhui’s eyes make him want to fix things, tell him that no, it’s okay, you’re wonderful - he hears the front door of the apartment slam open. Loud, shrill voices pour in through the thin bedroom walls. Five people, at least, and they’re all drunk, he realizes.
“Do ya think Junhui’s home?” It’s a man, practically yelling.
A girl laughs, high-pitched and obnoxious. “I hope not. He’s so fucking weird, the way he never talks. I can’t believe you have to room with him all year.”
“He pays like half the rent,” another voice pitches in. Wonwoo watches as Junhui’s face dulls with every word, like he’s so used to hearing it that it’s hardly worth reacting to. Something in his gut begins to churn. “It’s just until the lease is up, anyways. He’s not gonna do anything about it. C’mere, babe, give me another drink.”
Footsteps pound down the hall towards them. “I’m gonna go check. We need someone to go pick up more beer, anyways.” Wonwoo feels something akin to protectiveness rise up in his chest alongside the churning disgust in his stomach. He casually steps to stand in front of the bed just as the door to the room slams open loudly. A man around Junhui’s age stands in the doorframe, red-faced and disheveled. Wonwoo can smell the alcohol wafting off his breath, and his nose wrinkles in disgust. “Oh, who’s this? Junhui, are you fucking this guy? I knew you were a fag, but we all live here too.”
Junhui stays silent, and Wonwoo realizes that this is why he was summoned. Junhui is in need of a friend the way a drowning man is in need of a breath of air. There is a desperation to Junhui’s existence that is coming into sharp focus, a grasping, burning ache for someone, anyone to be on his side, even if that someone is the Devil himself.
Before the man can open his mouth to continue, Wonwoo makes a disinterested noise and flicks his fingers. The man bursts into flames.
Wonwoo waits for Junhui to scream, or tell him to stop. But when he turns to look, Junhui is still simply staring, listening to the pathetic, garbled whimperings of his roommate burning to death, and he doesn’t stop until the man is reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash staining the carpet. His gaze flickers up to meet Wonwoo’s intense one, and Wonwoo is pleasantly surprised when Junhui blushes.
“Thank you. Although, I’m not sure what to do about the rest of them.” Junhui’s face has taken on a contemplative look, as if he expects that he’s seriously going to have to handle the situation alone now. Wonwoo is startled to realize he’s been entirely charmed by this strange man who has summoned the King of the Underworld, watched someone crumble to ash, and is now pondering how to personally deal with the aftermath. It’s borderline offensive, he thinks, that Junhui wouldn’t even consider asking for help after just letting him set a man ablaze, but he thinks maybe it adds to the appeal.
Or maybe he’s losing his fucking mind.
“Junhui. I will handle this. Friends help each other out, right?” Again, Wonwoo suppresses the urge to be offended by Junhui’s obvious surprise.
“Oh! Right, yeah. But if you kill all of them, I won’t be able to pay rent anymore…”
“For fuck’s sake.” Wonwoo flicks his fingers again and screaming erupts from the other room. “Look, I’ll handle it. I’ll cover your rent or find you a new roommate or whatever. Trust me a little. I’m contractually obligated to help you out, now.”
Junhui’s mouth twitches the same way it had when he was swearing an oath. “Oh, of course. I’ll just trust the literal Devil, no worries.”
Wonwoo throws his hands up in frustration, but he finds that he’s on the verge of laughter himself. “Whose idea was this whole thing? I certainly didn’t light the damn vanilla lavender candle. That thing’s emitting an alarming amount of smoke, by the way.”
“More than my roommate did?”
By now, the girls are shrieking their heads off and Wonwoo knows he kind of needs to handle the whole situation, but more than anything, he feels… kind of happy.