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“This is stupid.”
Pulling back from the pentagram he’d made and sitting on his haunches, Stiles grins. “Yeah, well, you’re probably right,” he agrees. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand, spreading red paint across his features. “But why not?”
Jackson sputters. “Why not? When has summoning Satan ever been a good thing?”
“Since now! Now, come on.”
They shift into position across from each other. Stiles opens Deaton’s spell book—Vet and demon worshiper? Who woulda thought?—across his lap when Jackson grumbles, “Why are we doing this anyway?”
Stiles waves him off. “Shh. You ask too many questions! Just get ready to light the candles.”
Surprisingly, Jackson does as he’s told and readies his lighter. “Fine. Ready?”
A nod. “Yep.”
There’s a hush for a breath, then Stiles clears his throat and begins the incantation, the lighter flickering, casting shadows on Jackson’s face as he lit the candles on each corner of the pentagram. Just as Stiles’ lips form the last few words, as Jackson brings the last candle alight, a stiff breeze ruffles the pages and plummets into darkness with a stink that makes Stiles’ nose scrunch.
Sulfur.
He sucks in a sharp breath.
A hand gropes across his thigh in the dark, curls around his elbow. “Stilinski?” Jackson breathes, low. “Shit, is that—”
“Yeah, it’s me. Just—” The candles burst to life suddenly and Stiles scrambles back, grabs for Jackson’s collar as a figure rises from a crouch in the middle of pentagram. A figure that, in the candlelight, looks a lot like, erm, Mark Pellegrino, actually. Huh. Who knew Satan got cable in hell? Netflix? Is that a thing?
Satan—Lucifer? The Devil? Mark-fucking-Pellegrino?—tilts his head to the side, an easy smile spreading his lips. “Boys.” He chuckles at Jackson’s squeak. “Can I help you?”
Stiles chokes as Jackson’s arms squeeze around his neck, so it’s Jackson who answers with a choked sound that could’ve meant, “Oh my god, we’re going todie.” He manages to knock an elbow to Jackson’s chest and worms his way out. He gives a shaky grin, a wave, because—werewolf or not—he’s the only one with a pair here apparently. “Uh, yeah, actually. Just a question.”
The man—seriously, though? Mark Pellegrino? Can he just call him that?—raises an eyebrow and his stance shifts from ‘mildly-interested’ to ‘oh man, this is gonna be good.’ “A question.”
“Yeah, or—” He shuffles forward, swatting away the hands pulling him back. “Like, a deal, if that’s your thing.”
The smirk splits wider. “Ask away.”
Negotiations later. That’s a simple kind of evil. Stiles could get behind that, you know, if his head wasn’t the one on the plate.
Stiles climbs to his feet and Mark Pellegrino levels him with a surprised, and impressed, look.
“Cool! So, my friend here, see,” he gestures to the speechless figure clinging to his legs, “He was wondering if you could braid—”
Lips twitch—down.
“—his hair, because um—”
Jackson chokes. “What?”
“No.” Satan’s voice is deep, menacing, absolutely lethal. Claws dig Stiles’ calves and—okay, ow.
But, Stiles only shrugs. “Oh, come on! We’d give you our souls and everything—”
A yelp. “Stilinski! Are you fucking crazy—”
“No,” Satan-Mark-Pellegrino growls, “No, I’m not—”
“But—”
“Stilinski!”
“No!” Satan-Pellegrino rears back, his face contorting but in a level of repugnance and fear that Stiles didn’t think possible on god’s first fallen angel or whatever. And, the pitch his voice takes when he hisses, “Oh my god, for the last time, I don’t braid. Leave me alone—Go away,” honestly pushes a laugh out of him.
Stiles can’t help but grin at the somewhat-cowering—let’s just call it cowering—man in the pentagram. He crosses out an entry in his internal bucket list.
Stiles Stilinski: Tamer of Satan. He could work with that.
Jackson eases to his feet beside him, his arms curling around Stiles’ arm, and looks between them with a strange mix of terror, awe, and—shit, he kinda looks he wants to bone him; when did that become a thing? But, instead of the totally breathy, totally aroused praise he expects to be whispered in his ear, he gets a sharp heel to the foot, punch to the side, and a, “Seriously, Stilinski? What thefuck?”