Work Text:
Jo didn’t know what to expect.
The wine glass fell, pouring its contents in a paint-splatter pattern the moment the demon arrived.
He watched it twist midair—a liquid comet, red and viscous, catching the light like it only half-remembered gravity. It hit the floor with a soft, unspectacular clink, a dark bloom spreading across the hardwood like a wound. One candle flickered out. The others bent slightly, like they'd been made to bow.
Something hovered above him—no, floated. Upside down. A figure. A boyish man, arms tucked lazily behind his head, hoodie bunched just enough to expose a sliver of stomach. The room’s half-light caught on the small motion of him rotating, absurdly at ease, like this was just another Tuesday.
Jo sat frozen, cross-legged, hand still hovering in the air like it hadn’t yet received new instructions. The silence rang.
“Valefor?”
The figure blinked. “Oh, I’m not a big shot like that one, unforch,” he said, voice bright and casual. “Name’s Yuma. And if you were hoping for a greater demon, you should’ve followed the ritual to a tee. But I guess you got squeamish and swapped fresh blood for red wine. So, you got little ol’ me instead.”
Jo said nothing.
The apartment around them was cluttered—curated chaos. Brushes sat in jars like pickled instruments. Canvases leaned like confessionals against the walls, all half-finished: deer with too-long legs, too-human eyes, frozen mid-flight or mid-death. Blood tangled in snow. Antlers twisted like wire. One canvas—still unfinished—showed a buck with its own ribs in its mouth.
The demon turned upright with a corkscrew spin, his toes skimming the floor without a sound.
“You used the old edition,” he said, nodding toward the open book on the floor. Treatise to Fading Light, its spine cracked and splaying. “Didn’t think anyone read those anymore.”
Jo couldn’t speak. His thoughts pressed against his ribs like too many birds in too small a cage.
The demon—Yuma—glanced at him. Jo’s cheek felt warm. He realized belatedly he must’ve touched the wine. His hands were too large for his sleeves. His mouth too dry to be useful.
“Okay,” Yuma said suddenly, clapping once. The sound snapped clean through the room. “Let’s make this official. You summoned. I came. Contract time.”
Jo swallowed. It made more noise than expected.
“I’m…”
The word dissolved before it was fully formed.
“Trading romance,” Yuma said, already wandering, toes skimming beside the altar—or what passed for one. “For creativity. How nineteenth-century of you.” He nudged a palette with the side of his foot. “Didn’t even throw in your soul. Smart. Those are harder to resell these days.”
Jo’s gaze drifted to the makeshift altar: a turned-over side table, a single waxy pillar candle, and beside it, folded neatly—too neatly—a letter. The paper had softened over time, corners dulled from being held too long. The ink was just faded enough to be hard to read. Harder to forget.
Yuma crouched next to it and gave a low whistle.
“Never sent,” he said. “You really meant it. And for your best friend, no less?”
Jo looked at him sharply.
Yuma didn’t press further. Just tilted his head, studying Jo like he’d stumbled on something curious at the bottom of a drawer.
“So,” he said after a beat, “you thought I’d be taller. Or horned. Or, like, on fire.”
Jo didn’t answer.
Yuma laughed. It echoed oddly—high and thin, like wind through paper screens.
“Well,” he said, rising again and brushing invisible dust from his hoodie. “Disappointing you is half the fun.”
Then, hand outstretched: “Alright. Once and for all—in exchange for all possibility of romance in one’s life, I, Yuma—Lesser Demon (occasionally helpful, often charming)—am at your disposal.”
Jo stared at the hand.
Behind him, the candle flared back to life with a soft, unprompted breath.
He reached forward and took it.
It was warmer than he expected.
---
Jo woke to the sound of humming.
Not from outside, not from the hallway where someone might be dragging trash bins at a godless hour, but from his kitchen. The notes were wordless—light, imprecise, an accidental song caught on the hook of breath. Something was boiling. The kettle?
He sat up, slow and cold, blanket sliding from one shoulder. The apartment was dim, still locked in that pre-dawn purple. He hadn’t turned on the lamps. The windows glared soft city static. His heart didn’t race, but his ears rang like something should be wrong.
Yuma was floating just above the floor in the kitchenette, toes grazing air. One hand on the stove dial, the other twirling a spoon. He wasn’t wearing pants, just an oversized hoodie Jo forgot he owned. His snaggletooth caught the half-light when he turned to flash a grin.
“You snore,” he said, utterly without shame.
Jo blinked. His voice hadn’t come back online yet.
“I made tea,” Yuma added, gesturing toward a chipped mug already set on the table—Jo’s table, the one perpetually covered in mail and bills. “Don’t worry, I didn’t poison it. Not worth the paperwork.”
Jo shuffled over and sat. The steam from the mug smelled faintly of cinnamon and something bitter he couldn’t place.
“You don’t sleep,” he said, voice still coated in dream-residue.
Yuma leaned back mid-air, spinning slowly. “Demons don’t need to. Also, I got bored. Your fridge is very uninspired. No pudding, no cake, not even a single expired yogurt.”
Jo reached for the mug, fingers brushing warmth. He didn’t remember saying Yuma could stay. He also didn’t remember telling him to leave. It had been four days since the summoning. Or five.
Yuma had simply begun existing in the space—unfurling across the apartment like a trick of light. He’d replaced Jo’s white noise machine with a Bluetooth speaker that occasionally emitted lo-fi remixes of Gregorian chant. He’d taken to moving Jo’s brushes an inch to the left of wherever Jo left them. Not messy. Just wrong enough to be noticed.
(And Jo would notice. In the very Jo way that he was.)
The painting came easier now, though. That was undeniable.
Jo stood by the easel later that day, bare feet chilled by the studio floor, brush in hand. The canvas before him was a study in bone and light—three stags, antlers intertwined, frozen mid-collision. No blood. Not yet. The hooves blurred into mist. One of them looked like it was screaming.
“I like this one,” Yuma said, head tilted ninety degrees sideways. “Very death ballet-core.”
“Don’t touch it,” Jo murmured, not looking.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Yuma replied, already floating too close. He stopped midair beside Jo’s shoulder, chin propped in hand—posture that of a cat on a high shelf.
Jo tried to ignore the way the air warmed when Yuma drifted near. How it seemed to hum a half-tone higher.
“What’s that?” Yuma pointed—not at the canvas but at Jo’s playlist. The speaker in the corner had, at some point, begun playing a song Jo didn’t recognize. Vocals layered like fog, lyrics about darkness spreading like poison.
“That’s not mine,” Jo said.
“It is now,” Yuma chirped. “I remade it. Pain, but make it pretty. You’re welcome. I’m like your personal Spotify DJ. I should get additional compensation.”
Jo exhaled slowly, brush stilling against the edge of the canvas. A strand of hair fell over his eye; he tucked it back.
Later, while cleaning the palette, Jo caught Yuma staring at his hand. Not like someone admiring anatomy, but like someone looking at a locked door and wondering what it would take to open it. When their eyes met, Yuma only smiled—lazy and toothy.
“You’ve got such big hands,” he said, like it was a compliment. Maybe it was.
Jo didn’t answer. He went back to washing the brushes, methodical.
The next day, Jo caught himself laughing.
Not just air from the nose—an actual laugh, full-throated and startled. Yuma had stolen one of his old overalls, the pair Jo hadn’t worn since college. They didn’t fit, not really. Yuma had cut the knees out with kitchen scissors and tied the straps in loose knots over his bare shoulders.
Jo meant to say something sharp. Or at least disapproving. But instead: a laugh.
Yuma beamed. “Sounded like the first time you’ve done that in months.”
Jo’s smile faded on reflex. Not from shame, but from the echo of something he hadn’t meant to acknowledge.
He turned back to his canvas.
That night, after hours of painting, he stepped away to find his overalls rumpled by the bed. One strap was already unknotted.
Yuma floated above the couch, arms behind his head, pretending to sleep. His fingers twitched midair like he was pulling threads in a dream.
Jo knotted the strap back into place.
---
The knock came soft and twice.
Jo wiped his hands on a rag, paint-streaked fingers pressing the fabric damp. He didn’t need to check the peephole. Maki knocked like that—gentle, as if the door might be tired too.
He cracked it open. Maki stood there with two iced coffees, one balanced on the other like an offering. His hair was wet from the rain, curling slightly at the ends.
“I come bearing bribes,” Maki said. “Also, you haven’t texted back in three days.”
Jo stepped aside.
Inside, the apartment was dimmer than usual, the windows steamed at the corners. Yuma floated horizontally above the couch like a ceiling fan that got bored halfway through the motion. He had a Tokyo Banana in one hand and Jo’s copy of Treatise to Fading Light in the other, held upside down. His eyes lit up.
“Oh, this must be the best friend,” he said, rotating lazily.
Jo didn’t react. Maki didn’t see him.
Yuma caught on instantly. “Ooh. That’s interesting.”
Maki stepped in, shaking rain off his jacket. “Place looks… less haunted than usual. That new?”
Yuma snorted. “Actually, more haunted, little dude.”
Jo shrugged, ignoring him. Maki didn’t seem to see Yuma. Which, honestly, was for the best.
He took the coffee without a word, drinking too fast. It tasted like melted dessert. Sweet enough to sting.
Maki wandered toward the dining table, eyes already scanning the scatter of sketch pages, then the canvas propped loosely against the wall. “You’ve been working.”
It wasn’t a question. Jo nodded anyway.
The new piece was smaller, tighter. A doe, mid-turn, her face half-unfinished. Her shadow stretched in the wrong direction, antlers blooming out of it like rot.
“Creepy,” Maki said with a grin. “But it’s so you.”
Yuma floated closer to the canvas, inspecting it sideways. “Jo gave her your eyes,” he murmured, glancing at Jo. “How quaint.”
Jo drank again.
Maki moved into the kitchenette. “You did clean. Sort of.” Then, opening the fridge: “Wait. You actually have food in here?”
Jo muttered something about groceries.
Behind Maki’s back, Yuma began miming every line he spoke with exaggerated flair—pointing at the fridge like it contained a demon portal, pretending to swoon at the sight of eggs.
Jo pressed a hand to his temple.
“Headache?” Maki asked, glancing over.
Jo shook his head. “Just tired.”
Yuma drifted down beside him. “You didn’t tell him about me,” he said, quieter now. “Interesting choice.”
Jo said nothing.
Maki returned to the living area, setting his coffee down. This time, his gaze lingered. “You seem... different.”
Jo met his eyes—just for a moment—then looked away.
Yuma floated behind Maki now, hovering just over his shoulder, mouthing: He knows.
Jo rubbed his jaw. “I’ve just been working.”
Maki nodded slowly, not pushing. He flopped onto the couch and pulled one of Jo’s older sketchbooks into his lap. “Hey, remember this?” he said, flipping to a page—a drawing of two boys on bicycles, one trailing behind, his face half-erased. “You never finished this one.”
Jo didn’t answer.
Yuma peeked over Maki’s shoulder, chin in his hand. “Oh,” he said, quieter than usual. “That one.”
Jo closed his eyes. The apartment felt full and crowded and lonely all at once.
“Hey,” Maki said gently. “Don’t worry about it.”
Jo’s throat tightened. He gave a small nod, eyes still shut.
Yuma tilted his head. “You really care about him,” he said. “How terribly unfortunate.”
Jo opened his eyes.
Yuma hovered just close enough for Jo to feel him—his presence thrumming softly, like a string pulled taut in the dark. “I’m not gonna say anything,” Yuma added, and for once, there was no teasing in his voice.
Jo didn’t reply. He couldn’t.
Instead, he stepped toward the canvas, picked up a brush, and added a single thin stroke—black, against the doe’s throat. Not blood. But it could’ve been.
Maki stood and gathered his things. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said, his smile easy, unreadable. It didn’t ask for anything.
At the door, he turned back. “I’m glad you’re painting again.”
Jo nodded. His eyes never left the canvas.
The door closed behind him.
Yuma floated in the hush that followed, slow and weightless like a mobile in still air. Jo didn’t look at him. He didn’t need to.
He could feel Yuma watching.
And the silence didn’t feel empty.
It felt like something waiting to pounce.
---
It must’ve started somewhere small. A pause. A glance. A shift in temperature no weather could explain.
Jo didn’t notice it at first. He noticed the shadows more than the shape that cast them—the strange silences between Yuma’s usual noise, how the floating stopped, the jokes got slower, and the music changed. Not entirely. Just... enough.
The kettle was hissing. Jo poured the water carefully over a cracked tea strainer, watching steam rise through the mesh like breath from something alive.
Behind him, Yuma sat cross-legged on the floor, spine against the cabinet. He was flipping through Jo’s sketchbook—not the one for public consumption, but the soft one with warped pages and hidden deer. Antlers growing out of ribs. A set of hands cradling something soft and on fire. A sketch of Yuma’s foot, half-finished.
“I thought demons weren’t into tea,” Jo said, not turning.
“I’m not,” Yuma said. “But you are. So.”
Jo paused. He set the kettle down and waited for a comeback, something about humans and their quaint little rituals, but nothing came. Just the rustle of paper. The slight clink of a page flipped too hard.
He turned around. Yuma was frowning, but gently. Like the sketchbook was saying something he couldn’t quite translate.
Jo sat beside him, not close. Just near enough to share the quiet.
There was a strange warmth to this part of the floor. Not from the tea. Not from Yuma either, though maybe he hummed something low that Jo didn’t hear so much as feel. Like a vibration against his ribs.
“Why do you only draw deer?” Yuma asked eventually. Not teasing. Just curious.
Jo didn’t answer at first. Then: “They don’t stay still for long.”
Yuma nodded, as if that explained it. Maybe it did.
They sat like that for a while. No clock ticked. No screen blinked. The city outside did what it always did—moved without asking permission.
Jo didn’t remember when he started drawing Yuma. Not directly, but—his angles had crept in. The arch of his foot. The way light caught his snaggletooth. The fabric of that hoodie, thinned at the elbows. The shape of someone who didn’t quite sit in space the way humans did.
Yuma didn’t ask why.
Jo reached for the sketchbook and turned to a blank page. He hesitated. Then started.
This time, he didn’t draw bones or antlers or shadows splitting at the seams. He drew fingers curled against tile, the edge of a jaw softened in thought, one eye caught in three lines and a smudge. It wasn’t much.
But it wasn’t nothing.
Yuma leaned close to look. Their shoulders brushed.
For a moment, Jo forgot to breathe.
And then Yuma grinned. Not the wide, feline grin. A smaller one. Realer. It felt like finding a warm patch of light on a cold day.
“Well,” Yuma said, stretching like a cat waking up from a sun nap. “This is getting dangerously domestic.”
Jo raised a brow.
Yuma bumped his knee against Jo’s. “Now don’t go falling in love with me or anything, okay?”
Jo didn’t answer.
He just turned back to the sketchbook.
He was bad at promises.
---
Yuma was levitating again—sprawled on his back, spinning slow as a coin losing momentum. The apartment lights were off. Only the flicker of a candle by the sink cast gold onto the ceiling, making shadows dance like they weren’t sure if they were allowed to be still.
Jo stood in the doorway, paint drying on the backs of his hands. The kind that cracked when you flexed your knuckles. He didn’t move. Just watched the slow rotation. Watched the way Yuma’s too big shirt had slipped off one shoulder. Watched how his hair caught the light, soft and directionless.
“I’m bored,” Yuma said to no one in particular.
Jo wiped his palms on a rag and didn’t reply.
Yuma drifted toward him, slow like a thought you didn’t mean to say aloud. When his feet touched the floor, it was with the silence of someone who didn’t have to obey gravity but was humoring it for now.
“Paint something else,” Yuma said, brushing past him toward the studio corner. “Something less tragic. Something pink. Do you even own pink?”
Jo followed without thinking.
He did have pink. Somewhere. A small tube that hadn’t been touched in years. He found it under a palette stained with dried greens and ochres, half-capped and slightly crusted at the end.
Yuma held out a blank canvas. “Here. No antlers this time. Try joy. Just for the novelty.”
Jo sat. He didn’t uncork the pink.
Instead, he watched Yuma sit cross-legged across from him, knees drawn up under his chin.
“You always do that,” Jo said quietly.
“Do what?”
“Act like you’re leaving.”
Yuma tilted his head, that snaggletooth glinting in the candlelight. “I’ll be here for as long as the contract requires.”
“Do you miss it?” Jo asked, not sure what it was. The question came out anyway.
Yuma hummed. “Miss what?”
“Wherever you’re from.”
“The blind eternities?” Yuma smirked. “Not really.”
Jo’s lips twitched, almost a smile.
Yuma looked over, studying him with something too quiet to be teasing. “You think I don’t belong here.”
Jo looked down at the brush in his hand. It was clean. He hadn’t used it all day.
“I think,” he said slowly, “you make it easier to forget I’m alone.”
The silence after wasn’t heavy. It was precise. Like a knife being placed—not thrown—on a table.
Yuma stood and walked toward the window. The candlelight didn’t reach him there, but Jo could see the outline of him in the glass—soft and wrong, like something half-dreamed. The city blinked behind him in muted rhythm. Yuma raised a hand and tapped the windowpane once, twice, like checking if it would hold.
“There are rules, you know,” he said without turning. “The summoning wasn’t just a transaction. It’s a cage. A clever one. You asked for something. You offered something.”
“I remember.”
“You don’t,” Yuma said, still facing the window. “You think you do. But you offered more than that. You just didn’t know what you were giving away.”
Jo stood slowly, his chair creaking behind him. “And what did I give away?”
Yuma turned then. Not smiling. Not mocking. Just—sad, in a way Jo wasn’t ready for.
“The what-ifs, the could-have-beens,” he said. “And the could-be’s”
The last phrase hit like an afterthought, but Jo heard it too clearly.
He crossed the room in four steps.
Yuma didn’t move.
Jo stopped just short, breathing shallow. The candle’s flame flickered behind him, casting both their shadows on the same wall—long-limbed, overlapping, indistinct.
He didn’t plan to. Didn’t rehearse it.
He just kissed him.
Yuma’s mouth was soft. Warmer than expected. He tasted like something floral and bitter, like tea steeped too long. His hands didn’t reach out. But he didn’t pull away either.
When they parted, it was slow. Almost reluctant.
Yuma smiled.
“Thin ice,” he said.
Jo didn’t look away.
He’s already fallen.
---
The croissant was warm. That was the first thing Jo noticed.
Maki had brought two, tucked in a paper bag that crinkled like static in the quiet apartment. The bag sat between them now, on the edge of the worktable, crumbs gathering like snowfall across old receipts and palette scrap.
Jo didn’t reach for it. He’d already eaten half of his. The rest sat untouched, buttery and folded, the middle softening slowly against the wax paper.
“You’ve been working,” Maki said, nodding toward the canvas by the window. His voice was casual, but the kind of casual that left space open for something else. “Looks like you finally got it back.”
Jo looked over. The painting was dry now. He hadn’t meant for it to be. It was just—done.
Not the usual stags, not the deer with melting eyes or the antlers blooming from shadows. This one was more human. Almost a portrait. A boy, backlit in amber, floating slightly above the ground. His eyes were closed. His smile was small and sharp, like it knew something you didn’t. The background shimmered—not glitter, not gloss. Just a kind of light Jo didn’t know how to describe. Like magic pretending to be memory.
“I think I lost more than I got,” Jo said.
Maki paused. The croissant in his hand lowered a fraction.
Jo didn’t elaborate. He couldn’t. The words in his mouth didn’t have shapes yet. They only sat there, heavy as stones, waiting to sink through silence.
The copy of Treatise to Fading Light was gone. Jo had searched the bookshelf three times and then the freezer once, irrationally. No sign. Nothing. It was like it had never existed.
There was no trace of Yuma. No annoying grin. No Tokyo Banana wrappers crumpled near the sink. Even the speaker was back to white noise.
Maki leaned back in the chair, stretching. “Well, whatever it was… it’s working. That painting’s good, Jo. Really good.”
Jo nodded. But his chest felt hollow. Not broken—just emptied.
He still reached, sometimes. In the middle of a joke, when something funny landed and instinct made him look to the side to see if someone else was laughing too. There was no one there. But the gesture lingered.
Like a phantom limb.
Maki stood, brushed off his hands. “Text me when you’re up for lunch,” he said. “Or when you’ve finished the next one. I wanna see it.”
Jo nodded again, slower this time.
After the door closed, the apartment returned to its new silence. Not empty. But changed.
Jo stood and walked over to the canvas, eyes tracing the edges again. The painting didn’t need anything else. Not more color, not more shadow.
Just a name.
He picked up the smallest brush.
Dipped it in the darkest black.
This devilish damage.