Chapter Text
“Are you my new roommate? Good luck.”
Ace turned to look at the stranger.
He smiled. “What, are you planning to keep me up every night or something?”
The stranger shook their head, slightly, looking torn between being amused and pitying Ace. “No, but our landlord is a total asshole. He lures you in with low prices and then hikes up your rent once you get settled and can’t leave.”
As if that wasn’t exactly why Ace had chosen this area.
You see, Ace was a demon.
A low-ranking one, of course, he didn’t have any special powers or anything, just some basic immortality – which meant an eternity serving his asshole boss.
At least his job was pretty easy. He was a demonic middleman. He would find a person who wanted a leg up in life and, using his extremely rich boss’s funds, get them what they wanted. And, in return for damning someone to eternal Hell, he would avoid The Consequences Of His Actions! Everyone wins! Except for the people he damned, the money they earned wouldn’t do much against the hellhounds…
Ah, whatever, they deserved it.
And he needed an out, so…
It simply be like that sometimes.
And, if it had to be like that, then he was glad to be from the Greed ring.
He couldn’t even imagine how hard the Pride ring guys had it…
But for him? In this economy? He could usually just choose the first guy he saw.
Hence why he was bothering to talk to this random human.
“Well, are you willing to help me move out, then?” Ace asked, leaning against the doorframe.
The human shrugged. “If you pay me, sure, I guess?”
“You won’t do it for free?” Ace said, feigning hurt.
“Well, we aren’t even really friends, much less help you move friends, and I gave you that warning for free, so… no.”
“You don’t think we’re friends?!” Ace gasped. His poor heart couldn’t take any more devastating blows.
“What’s my name?”
Well. That’s unfair.
Ace squinted at them.
“You look like a Tiffany.”
“Okay, one, no the fuck I don’t, how dare you. Two… call me Yuu,” they said, hand out to shake.
Ace took their hand, smiling. “Ace.”
Tiny teeth sank into his leg.
Ace’s eyes fell to the floor.
There was a cat. Biting him.
“OW?!” he said, even though it didn’t really hurt. He was more offended than anything, really.
The cat dug in further at his protest, as if his ‘pain’ had somehow encouraged it.
“OHMYGODS,” Yuu yelped, kneeling to dislodge their cat’s teeth from his leg. “He’s usually really sweet, I’m notsurewhyhe’sdoingthisohmygodsohmygods…”
They finally managed to pull their cat off of him. The cat was giving him the evil eye.
They gave a nervous laugh. “Grim, honey, you can’t just bite people, you know this…”
The cat looked at Ace as if he were a particularly foul litter box. Utterly beneath him.
Ace looked down at the blood slowly leaking from the fucking wounds in his leg.
Not that he minded that much. The blood wasn’t even his. He was holding it for a friend, you know? But still. Rude.
“... how about! I leave Grim in my room! And make us dinner!” Yuu ‘apologized’ (in quotation marks because they did not, in fact, actually apologize).
Just under an hour later, Ace stared at the first home-cooked meal he’d ever been given, more than a little out of his depth.
He, slowly, twirled the pasta around his fork. Because he wasn’t a heathen.
He brought it to his mouth.
Holy fuck.
Were all home-cooked meals this good, or was Yuu the next up-and-coming MasterChef contestant?
If they were all this good… maybe this was why humans loved their mothers so much…
Further investigation was required. And not just because Ace wanted more home-cooked meals. It was only… mostly because he wanted more home-cooked meals.
Yuu set a third plate on the edge of the counter.
“Who’s that for?” Ace asked, wondering whether he could steal it.
“The ghost,” said Yuu. Casually. As if that was a thing normal people said.
Ace paused.
“The… ghost?” he said, slowly.
He did a cursory scan of the apartment. If there was a ghost around, it was so faint that he couldn’t detect its soul. And if it was that faint, then Yuu certainly shouldn’t have been able to feel it.
Also. Ghosts don’t eat? Because they’re literally dead?
Ace opened his mouth. Thought better of it.
Opened his mouth again.
Filled it with more pasta. Because the pasta was good. The pasta made sense. All hail Satan.
Possible schizophrenia aside, Yuu was, quite possibly, the perfect man.
(Or, at least, they were as close to being the perfect man as a not-man could be.)
They cooked every day, and made sure to make enough for Ace. A demon’s heart is quite literally in their stomach, so this was big.
But they were just… a decent roommate in general. They were neat, but not to an annoying degree or anything. They made sure to tell him ahead of time when they were going to have people over so Ace could avoid them. They even introduced him to shows they thought he’d like (his favorite so far was The Office, they were just like him for real for real).
Really, Ace almost… liked living with them. Which was new. Usually, his roommates were assholes. They’d never take out the trash, or smoke weed without opening the windows first, or invite people over and have them stay until 3 AM on weekdays even though he had work in the morning!
Yuu wasn’t like that. They were… nice.
And their soul… was a soft, a gentle thing that he couldn’t lose.
He was from the Greed ring, after all, wasn’t it natural that he might want?
As for his job – which he could not risk losing, he was not going back to Hell, thanks – he… really wasn’t sure what he should do.
He supposed he could change targets? The person in the apartment above them should go to Hell. He was always practicing dance routines in the middle of the night as if there weren’t people below him who could have wanted to sleep (not Ace, Ace couldn’t sleep, but that wasn’t the point). And he was pretty sure he saw him hanging out outside their window before, like a fucking creep.
He’d have to stage a proper meeting for them. Maybe they’d run into each other on the stairs?
For now, he was just going to enjoy the domestic bliss he got with Yuu for as long as possible.
It was perfect.
… almost perfect.
If only their cat didn’t want him dead.
He literally couldn’t even die, but he was pretty sure that its attacks wouldn’t work on a normal human, either, so what the hell was it even trying?
Ace squinted at the cat.
The cat glared back at him from its eternal spot in Yuu’s lap.
Something about it… bothered him.
And not just because it hated him, and no one hates Ace Trappola, thank you very much, though admittedly that was a huge part of it.
It just… didn’t feel quite like a cat?
It seemed to have a soul? And everyone knows cats are soulless.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later that he figured it out.
(In quite possibly the worst way possible, because of course that was just his luck.)
One day, Ace came home from work early, his ears still ringing from his boss yelling about a ‘lack of progress’...
There was a man in his house.
A man was eating their leftovers. Wearing little more than a pair of boxers for decency’s sake. Not that demons really cared about decency, but he had to admit – after a few weeks of living with Yuu, who always made sure to be fully dressed when outside of their room, seeing a mostly-naked man on his living room floor was a little jarring.
Slitted, catlike eyes glared at him.
Wait a minute.
“You!” Ace said.
The shifter huffed. “Yeah, it’s me. Now, get out of my house. The human’s mine.”
“Yours?!” Ace said, beyond offended.
“I found ‘em first,” the shifter said.
“Well, I found them second,” said Ace.
Grim didn’t seem particularly impressed.
Ace crossed his arms over his chest. “They only like you because they think you’re an ‘itty bitty kitty cat’. At least they like me for me.”
“They think you’re a human, and I don’t know what you are, but you definitely aren’t a human,” Grim pointed out.
Damn! He was hoping he wouldn’t realize that…
“I was a human,” Ace grumbled. “That’s close enough.”
“And I can be a cat, that’s close enough.”
Ace opened his mouth to argue that demons were closer to humans than cats were, meaning he was lying less, only to pause.
A small smile began to creep across his lips.
“Actually, if you want me to leave Yuu’s soul alone, maybe you should just pay me for it.”
The shifter eyed him warily. “I don’t have a job.”
“Nor do you need one! I have enough money, but I would appreciate a soul… I was aiming for Yuu’s, but…”
Grim squinted at him.
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
Ah. Shifters were such simple creatures. Ace loved them.
He pulled Grim into his room and started drawing up a contract.
The door swung open.
“Hey, Ace, what do you want for din –...?”
Yuu stared at the occult symbol on the floor. At the half-naked person beside him. At the sigil Ace was drawing in his own blood.
“...”
“...”
“...”
“This is on me. I should have knocked,” Yuu decided. “I’m gonna go hang out at a friend’s house, text me when it’s safe to come back.”
And then they silently closed the door.
“... Yuu thinks I’m a Satanist, now,” Ace said, accusatorily.
“Aren’t you, though?”
“Well… yeah! But they’re not supposed to know that!”
Grim huffed. “Whatever. Contract time, let’s get this over with.”
Ace finished writing the terms.
The shifter signed it without hesitation.
“Now go away.”
Ace grinned. “Hm? Why would I do that?”
“Because you fucking said you would?”
“I said I wouldn’t try to steal Yuu’s soul anymore. I never said I’d leave.”
Grim proceeded to try to maul him.