Chapter Text
A walk home under the starry sky is the perfect way to end a date. But this isn’t a date.
Well, it’s only a date as far as Jimmy is concerned (especially seeing as it was his idea to walk her home). Heloise is far more concerned with something else- namely, the fact that Jimmy is proving to be nigh-unbreakable.
She isn’t sure why tormenting him is so hard, but it is . It’s not like she isn’t trying. Tonight alone, she’d set him on fire three times, and he bounced back almost immediately each time.
What Heloise is sure of, however, was that this is really screwing with her assignment to torment him, especially seeing as:
- Lucifer had promised her a significantly less miserable, ahem, ‘residence’ if she was successful, and
- She was selected in the first place because she’s supposed to be good at torturing people.
Right now, though, her confidence in that skill is more than a bit shaken.
“After you,” he says, holding the door to her own house open for her. Heloise walks through, though she sticks close to the doorframe. She won’t go inside just yet; if she wants to maintain the charade, she has to let him stick around a little longer.
Jimmy leans on the door. Faintly, Heloise can see him blushing. “I had a really great time tonight.”
Her eye twitches. “You did?” It comes out less like a question and more like a wince.
“Uh-huh!” He nods. “We had that nice walk in the park-”
Where I got you chased by a pack of grugly beasts.
“And then we got dinner at that place where they cook your order in front of you…”
I bumped the table so some would fall on you while it was still cooking. During both courses.
“And the movie we saw was awesmazing! I don’t normally like horror movies, but I’m glad you picked it. It was so immersive! ”
Probably because the characters came to life and chased you around the theater.
“The shooting stars we saw on the walk back here were really pretty, too.”
Those were firecrackers that I set up to hit you. And they did . You made a wish anyway.
“So yeah,” Jimmy finishes. “I had a really great time with you tonight.”
And there’s still worse that I did to you tonight.
“Really?” Heloise asks, through gritted teeth shaped into a fake grin. “Even with some many… accidents ?”
Jimmy shrugs. “I’m okay now, and we still had a lot of fun together.”
“So no sustained burns, or injuries, or mental scarring?” She’d settle for a scraped knee at this point- anything that would prove that she got to him.
“Nope!” He says, cheerfully, shaking his head. Then, concern awashes his face. “Why? You aren’t hurt, are you?”
Despite her shattered hopes, something inside her softens at his worrying about her. Something she does her best to push deep, deep down, desperately trying to ignore the way it makes her stomach flutter and her face burn.
“No! No, I’m completely fine. Just peachy. Everything is great !” Heloise answers with a nervous laugh, too quick to be natural. “Tonight was great . I had a great time with you.”
“Great!” He giggles, his grip on the door loosening as he moves one hand to his pocket. A moment passes. They’re looking at each other, and a thick tension of some kind develops within the atmosphere.
Shut it out, shut it out, shut it out!
“Well, goodnight then,” Heloise says, breathlessly, moving to shut the door. She’s nearly successful, but Jimmy stops her, holding it just barely open.
“Wait! Sorry, it’s just…” he stammers. The blush on his face is a bit darker now. “I know you aren’t supposed to tell people, but when I wished on that star earlier, it was to do something like this with you again. Do you think it could come true, even though I told you?”
He’s smiling so sweetly at her and her tongue feels like sand in her mouth.
“Sure,” Heloise says, faster than the heat rushes into her ears, faster than her stomach drops to her feet. His grin widens, and it looks like he’s about to say something. She slams the door on him. His fingers got caught, but he pulls them out easily enough.
Through the door, she hears a muffled “Ow!”
The one thing that really seems to have caused him any sort of pain, and she didn’t even do it on purpose. Strange, how these things work.
She slides down, back against the door, her heart beating in her chest at breakneck speed, loud enough that she can hear it.
“Night, Heloise!” Jimmy says, a bit louder than his whine from moments earlier, though still muffled through the wood of the door.
“Goodnight,” Heloise whispers. She doubts he could hear her. He might have even already left.
Every inch of her body burns, and the realization that she’s getting attached makes it even worse. The pleasant tingling she got when he smiled, when he laughed, when he looked at her- it was all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Heloise isn’t supposed to like Jimmy. That’s not what she’s here to do. But instead he’s giving her feelings that she shouldn’t have and has no clue what to do with. It’s boiling within the pit of her stomach and bubbling over up into her throat, coming out before she even has the chance to try and choke it down. It’s awful and exhilarating all at once.
Maybe she should know better than to grow fond of a target. Maybe she should be blaming herself for doing so despite her better instincts.
He caught me off guard, Heloise rationalizes. It’s his fault.
It’s Jimmy’s fault that she’s screwing up her mission, it’s Jimmy’s fault that Lucifer is going to make her ‘life’ in Miseryville a total nightmare, and it’s Jimmy’s fault that every time she thinks of that gap-tooth smile of his she gets a warm, fuzzy feeling inside…
Stay focused!
In a twisted way, that almost helps- if she’s mad at him, if she can shift the blame, give herself a motive, tormenting him could, in theory, be a lot easier, right?
The sense of relief she gets doesn’t stop her whole body from burning, but it’s something. She’ll love him and she’ll hate him and it’ll be fine as long as no one finds out about the former. She can get the job done.
Heloise takes in a long sigh and looks up at a nearby clock. It’s nearly ten; she should go to bed and rest up to get the energy she needs for a whole new day of attempted torture tommorow. Usually, she doesn’t go to sleep until much later, but this whole ‘date’ with Jimmy- and everything it awakened- has left her feeling exhausted.
It was sort of funny, in a cruel way; that Heloise was only able to feel so alive once she died, all over a boy.
Feeling alive sucks, Heloise decides.