Chapter Text
The room was warmer than he’d expected it to be, despite the chill outside, with a heavy atmosphere that bore down on his thin shoulders and nearly had him curling into himself. Tabi swallowed, trying to force the tightness in his throat to vanish so that he might be able to truly concentrate on the man sitting opposite him.
Daddy Dearest was a giant in the music industry, even after his retirement from the stage just a few years earlier, and he could feel all of it looming over him now that those glinting red eyes were boring holes in his skull while the purple-skinned demon waited for a response.
‘Shit…’
“Sorry, sorry, I was…” he tried, then bit the inside of his cheek. “…could you repeat that?”
Making a sound that Tabi hoped was a snort of amusement, Daddy smirked and leaned forward. “I said, I’m looking forward to seeing what you bring to the table. When I saw your stuff online, I thought ‘that kid is gonna do well with the right hand guiding him’, so when you agreed to come see me, well!” The ex-rockstar tilted his head to one side and widened his smirk. “The question is, what name do we put on your employment contract, kid?”
Tabi blinked. It couldn’t be this easy, could it? Just like that, he was being offered a job? In a new country? Part of him was screaming to take it slowly so that he didn’t ruin anything, but just as the idea of simply standing and running out of the room began to sound very appealing, a red-taloned hand pressed lightly down on his shoulder, drawing his attention to the other demon in the room.
“Relax, hon, we just wanna be sure to get the ducks in a row, is all.” Mommy Mearest’s voice was like honey, and Tabi felt some of his nervous energy bleed away as the words settled in and her hand trailed down his arm. The popstar demoness hummed, propping herself up on the edge of her husband’s desk. “It’s completely normal to be nervous at your age. This is a biig opportunity,” she continued, earning a shy noise from him.
Daddy’s smirk morphed into something he saw whenever the older musician was on television, a warm smile that almost felt like it was directed straight at the viewer; it stoked something inside him that burned away the rest of his apprehension. “Tabi,” he blurted out. “Just… just Tabi.”
A pen materialised on the desk, and he watched the document Daddy had laying in front of him be slid across the polished wood. Feeling braver than before, the teenager shifted to look over the pages. The words started to swim the longer he tried to read them, so he just swallowed again and grabbed the pen, locating the line he knew he was supposed to sign on, and scribbling something resembling his name onto the paper without allowing himself to overthink it any further.
He wanted this.
It was a chance to have the life he’d dreamed of for years… and there was no way he was going to pass it up.