Chapter Text
“Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
- William Blake
“You’re in hell.”
“That’s a little harsh.”
A blonde man is sitting in the underbelly of Hell; the waiting room that is known as purgatory.
Isagi sighs, and pats him on the arm. Sympathetically, because even though the man must’ve done something to deserve being in hell, Isagi is stuck in purgatory himself and wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone else.
If Hell is ice, is flames and carnage, is pain in its purest form - then purgatory is the crippling anxiety from the woman next door whose rent is six month past due. It’s the dread that makes up the atmosphere outside of the emergency room, knowing that what awaits you inside is out of your control but desperately wishing that it wasn’t.
Isagi has made many jokes to try to come to terms with it. To a car salesman: “You think you hate your job? Mine is in Hell!” To the man who scammed millions of elderly people out of their retirement money, and is almost certainly awaiting a painful testicle-plucking: “Man, I wish we could trade places. At least yours is just a tug, and it’s done.”
Isagi knows that will not be “over”. The torture is never-ending. That is the point of Hell, and he’s the not-so-cheery receptionist who forces sinners to come to terms with their death and following eternity of suffering.
Isagi expects the man to start crying, start screaming, pick up the table with one hand and fling it across the room, screeching like a banshee all the while.
What he doesn’t expect the man to do is not only accept Isagi’s hand, but flip his own arm over and place his own over Isagi’s.
So now they’re holding hands across the table, and the blond man is - is he fucking massaging Isagi’s hand?
“Hello,” the man says. He has a faint European accent that is automatically translated into the demonic languages for Isagi to understand. “My name is Michael Kaiser.”
“And that’s great for you. Could you let go, please?”
Isagi is trying to yank his hand out of Kaiser’s, but the blond is gripping it hard.
“Oh, of course. Wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
Kaiser grins, a wide, eerie smile that only serves to heighten the tension in the room, and holds onto Isagi’s hand a second longer before letting him pull away.
“So,” Isagi continues, rubbing his wrists, “You’re dead.”
“Did I offend you so much as to be considered deceased?”
“No, you - here.”
Isagi takes out a thick file that has popped out of a chute in the corner. Every time he receives a newcomer, a detailed report of their crimes and general wrongdoings pops out. People who are mildly crappy - typical hustlers, scammers, the basement-dwellers who fake hostage situations to steal money - have folders that are typically an inch thick. The real criminals - murderers, gangbosses, traffickers - are written about in dossiers that are about three inches thick.
Kaiser’s file is larger than Isagi’s head.
“Are you a real person?”
“I’m sorry?”
Isagi waves the file in amazement, papers falling out left and right.
“Your file is larger than Charlie Manson and half the demons in here combined.”
“So you’re saying that my size is impressive?”
Alright, well. Isagi could easily see how this guy was the embodiment of evil. He needed to get Kaiser out of here as quickly as possible before he broke the Golden Rule.
Ego (as Satan had decided to call himself, after his favorite sin of pride), had named the rule as such: demons that were not actively torturing mortals couldn’t hurt them (physically).
It was an exceedingly stupid rule, as Ego only enforced it so that the souls would be lured with false comfort before the actual suffering started.
It was exceedingly stupid, and yet the punishment for breaking the rule was having to restart the century of work that Isagi only had one year of remaining.
“You’re in Hell, Isagi Yoichi.”
“Oh.”
“Really, no questions asked?”
Isagi thinks that over. He’d had a perfectly average life; enough to get into heaven if he hadn’t started working at a Ponzi scheme. If he had backed out earlier, perhaps he would’ve gone up there instead of down here, but he hadn’t.
“Not very much.”
“Huh.” Ego sized up the man in front of him (a boy, really). Only twenty-four years old, which was relatively young for humans.
“You were hit by a car,” Ego says, and he expects Isagi to flinch like he was experiencing the crash all over again.
“Alright.”
“Are you not shocked by this?”
“I’m in Hell right now. Logically, my biggest worry should be what my punishment is, and not my cause of death.”
What the fuck - why did this mortal remind him of Noa? Just like the blond robot, Isagi was stone-faced standing in front of the Lord of Hell.
“I have a challenge for you,” Ego proposed, surprising both of them.
“Show me that you are truly emotionless.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, show me that you’re as heartless as you seem to be.”
Isagi frowned. “I never said I was heartless.”
“Well, perhaps that’s the wrong word. Either way, I am intrigued by your nonchalance in front of Satan himself. So work for me.”
“As opposed to?…”
“Endless pain and suffering.”
“Right. But my job would include, then, inflicting the torture that I would’ve been receiving?”
Ego looked down at Isagi. The mortal was still unfazed. No, that wouldn’t do. Ego smiled a smile that was less of a show of amusement than a baring of teeth.
“Did I forget to tell you? You’ll be working in Purgatory for the next thousand years to work off your debt.”
“In other words, I’m going to be a receptionist? Wait - pay off my debt? I can go, you know,” Isagi pointed his finger upwards.
“Yes.” Ego’s mouth twisted in displeasure. “Sadly, I have to set free any of my subjects after the deal is complete. Your time is one hundred years.”
Isagi visibly winced at that.
“Would you rather have the torture?”
“No, I’m fine. Thanks.”
Isagi almost regretted his decision after the first three years of ushering people in and out of Purgatory, and surely did after his first meeting with Michael Kaiser.
"I didn't mean your - you know," Isagi says now, frantically gesturing at Kaiser's crotch.
"Of course you didn't." Kaiser's eyes are tilted up at the edges, as if he's trying to hide a smile. It would be easy enough to fluster this receptionist into letting him go. Kaiser had charmed hundreds of people into bankruptcy or, equally as often, a ditch.
Isagi sighs, and starts picking up the papers. No. This job will become at least ten times harder if the receptionist sees his crimes. Kaiser grabs Isagi's wrist, for the second time in five minutes, and instead of meeting Kaiser's eyes in what should've been a romantic moment, he jabs an elbow into Kaiser's stomach.
"What the fuck!"
"Whoops." Well, that one had been an accident, but Isagi realizes that while he cannot technically break Ego's rule, there is still an element of plausible deniability. He hasn't beaten anyone up since those first three (four?) times, each attempt lasting between ten and twenty years before he snapped. In total, Isagi has actually had one hundred and fifty-two years of experience in Purgatory. He has, quite literally, done one hundred and fifty percent, and he is not going to let Kaiser ruin his ninety-nine year streak of stoicism.
Isagi can still bully him a little, though.
"Right. Well," Isagi keeps sweeping up the papers, not bothering to check if the blonde is fine. He is, probably, fine.
Out of curiosity (or so Isagi tells himself), he looks back at Kaiser. Strangely enough, the subtle tensing in his posture has relaxed, like he'd been expecting Isagi to hurt him and was more comfortable having been hit than waiting for the blow to land.
"Are you a masochist or something?"
Kaiser blinks in confusion.
"How did you know?" It's funny, it should be funny and smooth over the whole awkwardness that has infused the room, but Kaiser suddenly regains the stiffness he'd had earlier.
And Kaiser isn't lying, and the illusion lies in the fact that he's being completely honest. Maybe he is a masochist, and is attracted to guys who hate his guts for a reason; guys that will kick him out before the waters become so murky that he can't find his way out even if he wants to.
Perhaps that's another way of saying that Kaiser falls in love with people who care for him.
In a way, the noticing of a slight change in Kaiser's posture is caring, right? He's not crazy. Love blooms in the darkest of places, and so it would make sense for a denizen of Hell to be his true love.
Kaiser's eyes are glazed over, and he's nodding to himself and smiling. Isagi could walk away right now and the blonde likely wouldn't notice.
He backs away one step. Two. Three, and for some reason that is what snaps Kaiser out of his trance.
"Yoichi!"
Isagi thinks back to where everything went wrong. What possible event in the series of actions he had taken could've been changed, altered by smidgen that would avoid this outcome.
Kaiser is leaning over him, eyes sparkling (with mania, Isagi wants to tell him, but there's a solid fifty-percent chance that Kaiser will absolutely maim him and so he stays silent.)
"You and I are going to have a lot of fun, Yoichi."
It would've been attractive if Kaiser wasn't a worse person than a mass murderer/cult leader. Isagi would've considered letting the blonde seduce him if he had been taken out for drinks, first, or hit on at the bar after one too many shots.
But this was Hell, a rare case in which the prisoners are usually guilty for the crime they're being convicted of, and so Isagi kicked Kaiser in the nuts and ran for the hills.
Ego stepped in.
As in, Isagi had sprinted for the door and been about to leave. As in, Ego had been opening that very same door, and Isagi had collided into his boss and the Lord of Hell.
Kaiser was still rushing after Isagi, and barely stopped himself from crashing into the door.
"Who the fuck are you?"
Ego grimaced. Ah, these uneducated masses. It was his best decision yet to put Isagi in charge of them.
"I'm Satan."
"Oh." Kaiser looked thoroughly unimpressed. "That's it?"
"That's it - what do you mean, that's it? I could make your torture ten times worse."
Kaiser didn't even seem to be listening, instead reaching out for a strand of Isagi's hair to stroke it. Isagi slapped his hand away.
"Ego-san," Isagi apologized, "I'm sorry for crashing into you."
"It's fine."
"Really?"
If it had been anyone else, Ego would've smited them, but he couldn't think of any worse punishment than dealing with Michael Kaiser. The man was notorious, even by Hell's standards, for sending thousands of people into early debts and despair.
"Sure."
Kaiser had managed to wedge his way in front of Isagi.
"Can I ask you something, Satan?"
"No."
"What do I have to do so that I can date him?" Kaiser pointed at Isagi.
"I'm sorry?"
"I mean," Kaiser clarified, "I'll still do the whole torture thing, but I feel like that would cut into our quality time."
Isagi frowned at the blonde. "There is no us, Kaiser."
Kaiser patted Isagi's head with one hand, and with the other made a shushing motion.
"It's okay, darling. I'll take care of the details."
It was too early to deal with these dumbasses. Ego walked away without a word, watching Isagi first yell after him, and then push away Kaiser.
He hummed as he strode off. Another hundred years of work for (although Ego would never admit it) one of the best receptionists in his employment. All he needed to do was sit back and watch the magic happen.