[ Master Post ]
Title: A Pain in the Ass
Fandom: Nicoverse
Characters: Lucian ♂, Belphegor ♀
Rating:Â M (L3 N0 S2 V0 D0)
Warnings: Butts. Blasphemy; expletives; a little bit of blood; ridiculous amounts of butt-pinching; come on, it's got the Lord of Licentiousness in it, were you expecting PG?
Notes: Lucian and Belphegor have a really weird, really long relationship. Lucian's just happy to have someone to talk to who's been there for some of the things he remembers. If you're wondering why Belphegor is female, here, it's because he's been summoned, and summoning Belphegor results in a beautiful young woman. Illustration for this is the next post.
The whistle broke Lucian out of his thoughts, a few steps from the shop where he usually stopped for coffee, on his way to the white-lighter occult shop, where he performed minor acts of illusion and sorcery for the amusement of the patrons. As his eyes lifted from the street in front of him, he saw a voluptuous young woman leaning against the window of the coffee shop, holding a paper cup out to him.
"Black and sweet, just like you, right, Sparkles?" Her bronze skin shone wetly, without a drop of water on it, and her aquamarine eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled saucily.
He stared dumbly at her, frozen on the sidewalk, hands crammed in the pockets of his oxblood leather pants. "Who—" As soon as he began to voice the question, he knew. Belphegor. "Peggy?"
"In the flesh, big boy! I heard rumours you'd been hanging around here… wherever 'here' is. Or at least I heard rumours, and guessed they were probably about you. You leave a mark, you know?" She gestured again with the cup and he took the last few steps to claim it from her, throwing an arm about her shoulders in half a hug.
"You're all dressed up!" Lucian dropped a kiss on the top of her head, obviously not referring to the t-shirt and jeans she wore, but the fact that she was a she. "What did they call you for?"
"Oh, you know how they are, invention this, orgy that." Belphegor flicked one hand dismissively and groped Lucian's leather-clad backside with the other. "I like this one. You should keep it."
"I've had it since nineteen fifty-four. I'm enjoying it. It fits well." He took a deep breath and a sip of the coffee. "What about you? This is a new look."
"You haven't seen me since the seventeen seventies. I hope it's a new look! I'd hate to think you saw me twice in the same thing!" She laughed and tugged at his free hand. "Where are you going?"
"Oh, some hippy magic shop, up the street. Marta keeps me like one of her cats — worth the trouble as long as I keep people coming back and buying things." He gestured with the cup. "You want to come? I'll let you explain how you know me, if anyone asks."
"Does that mean I get to make up stories about us being rebellious teenagers in the Arabian desert? Oh, wait… I don't have to make those up." Deciding this was an excellent idea in a matter of seconds, she started up the street, hand still gripping his.
"We were hardly teenagers." If he had blood, it might have darkened his cheeks.
"Oh, I don't know, what was I, sixteen hundred thousand years old?" Belphegor grinned up at him, bumping his thigh with her hip. "It's got a sixteen in it!"
"Deity of licentiousness and invention, right — you had no purpose until the dying breeds were born. I forget how young you are, when we live so long. I was a few hundred million years old, when we met." Gazing down at her, from the corner of his eye, Lucian almost looked embarrassed.
"Old fart. No wonder you were always so mopey and contrary. 'Ohhhh, my endless life of tragedy! Ohhhh, everything changes so quickly! Ohhhh, my dad kicked me out of his kingdom!'" She made a rude gesture with her free hand, and he doubled over laughing, coffee sloshing over his fingers.
"I was not that bad!"
"Oh, you were. You came out of it, by the time we caught up in Avila. Sorry about fading out on you, like that, by the way. Cultural ripple. Nobody remembered what to do with my name for a little while, there." She shrugged.
Straightening up, he licked coffee off the back of his hand. "I was a little absorbed with my siblings. Dad was having one of his moments."
They stepped to the side, turning seamlessly, to let a man and his dogs pass. The man barely minded them, but the dogs went wild. Belphegor subtly shook her head and kept walking, and Lucian kept pace with her. Silently, they moved in perfect time, until the dogs were far enough behind not to be an interruption.
"I heard about your little brother, obviously. He's kind of a big deal, still, isn't he? I keep seeing bad translations of his name on things."
"You have no idea. And now, it's like nobody actually listened to what he was saying. I liked the kid, even if he was a little crazy. He had some good plans, even if his perspective was a little limited."
"You mean he liked your dad," she teased.
"There is nothing likeable about my dad! It's all a sham!" Lucian gestured sharply with the coffee, but managed not to spill it on himself, this time.
"Suuuure, Sparkles. You love him anyway." Belphegor nudged him with her hip again.
"Shut. Up."
Delighted, Belphegor danced a circle around him, as he continued up the block, jabbing pointed fingers into his ribs. "It's true, and you know it, because it is a fact!"
"Don't you need to go inspire someone to build a better vibrator?" Lucian sighed, nudging her with his elbow.
"Teledildonics is the future!" she crowed. "But, no. Nobody's got me until it's daaaaark." She drew the word out and wiggled her fingers.
"Right. Because you're a demon, and demons couldn't possibly come out in daylight." Rubbing his face just made him look even more tired than he usually felt. "Why is everyone convinced you're a demon?"
"Because I just used 'teledildonics' in a sentence, and meant it. It's a sex thing. Sex equals demons. What's your excuse? I mean, hello, demons, daylight, Lord of Light…"
He huffed out a laugh. "Dad doesn't like me. His worshippers are pretty much omnipresent, even if they're not that persuasive any more. It's memetics. Somebody said it, somebody else wrote it down, and now everybody's heard it and they just accept that it's true. Why doesn't the truth catch on like that?"
"People don't like the truth, Sparkles. It's not really working in your favour." A sound slap across Lucian's backside echoed down the street. "I'm liking the leather. That's a fine sound, and I've heard a lot of fine sounds out of you."
He bit his tongue, washing a lingering comment about Gabriel and sound out of his mouth with the last of the coffee. Don't talk about your siblings to the children of other Greater Lords, and all that. "You finally caught me in the right place, at the right time. I've worn a lot of leather, you just keep missing it."
"Don't tell me that. You'll never get rid of me." Grinning lecherously, Belphegor stuck a hand into Lucian's back pocket.
"Yes, I will. One of us will get called out for some stupid thing, and we won't see each other for centuries." He smirked down at her. "Works every time."
"A precedent is not a certainty." She pinched him.
"No, but I'll place my bets on the evident trend. Certainty is only absolute in the past-tense."
"Oooh, talk nerdy to me, you sexy thing!" Belphegor purred, leaning unsubtly closer. "No, really, I like the voice you took, this time. So smooth, with just a little bit of a rumble. You really are irresistible. Every time, but this time's even better."
"You are such a pain in my ass, Peggy." Lucian draped an arm around her shoulders and laughed into her hair.
"I am one hundred percent certain I have a much better relationship with your ass than that."
"That was the ass I had last time. I've got a new ass, now, and you're a pain in it." He poked her in the side with one finger.
"You want me to kiss it better, big boy?" Had there been any question of Belphegor's status as the Lord of Licentiousness, that grin would have obliterated it and left nothing but a smoking crater.
Millions of years and a difference in species had left Lucian largely indifferent to Belphegor's charms, in exactly the way humans weren't. Watching that power switch on, though, he wondered, not for the first time, if that was what it was like to look at him. The beard was an excellent choice, regardless of Gabriel's persistent opinion, and he was glad he'd kept it, if it kept him from doing that to people, accidentally.
Still, he had always enjoyed Belphegor's attentions, in all the Lord's many forms. "Better for me or for you?"
Belphegor looked shocked and offended. "You say that like I'd have to choose between the two! Better for everyone involved. I'm an equal opportunity improver of circumstance."
"Queen of Lechery," he fired back.
"Mother of Invention!" she retorted, shrugging defensively with her free arm.
"And what improved circumstances are you inventing around your lips and my ass?" One of these centuries he was going to learn to stop questions like that, before they left his mouth, but he'd never been very good at not asking questions.
"You sure you want me to answer that in public, Sparkles? I think I might get us both arrested for indecency." She sang the last few words like a rope-song.
Lucian took a deep breath and silently thanked whatever force had protected him from the devastating power of his own mouth. A smile curled the corners of his mouth as he tilted his head down, resting his lips against the top of Belphegor's ear. "Later. You should answer me, later. Find somewhere a little less public, and demonstrate these improved circumstances to me."
She squealed with delight, yanking her hand out of his pocket to clap excitedly. "I get to demonstrate?" The glowing glee on her face cracked, suddenly, replaced with squinting suspicion. "I get to demonstrate to you on you, right?"
"Would I offer you anyone else?" He smiled beatifically.
"I know you, Sparkles, and I know that's not an answer." Her finger found the space between his ribs, again.
It became increasingly apparent to him how deadly those jabs would be, if he were made of flesh. "Yes, you can demonstrate on me. I'll probably even let you get away with most of it, as long as you can keep enough honey in me to make it worth my while."
"I could make it worth your while without the honey."
"Yes, but without the honey, you'd be left with a pissed off archangel and a pile of sand that used to be the ass you're so interested in improving the circumstances of," Lucian pointed out.
"You really think I'm going to push you until you burn?" Surprise was writ as large as her eyes, upon her face.
"I've learned never to underestimate the damage when you and my ass are in the same sentence, the same post code, the same kingdom." He snorted. "I'm pretty sure my ass counts as a fetish, with you, by now. You've liked every one I've let you anywhere near."
"You just keep taking a good thing and making it better! Any reasonable individual exposed to your asses would be just as fond of them as I am!" A fondness punctuated with another pinch to the ass in question.
Lucian surrendered to the cackle building in his chest. "You're incorrigible."
"And you're one of the eternal incarnations of beauty. Beauty, licentiousness, what were you expecting to happen, cake and dancing?"
"I think we did that, one time. Those idiots with the secret society for summoning demons, and the horrifying cake and the really bad wine? And they all thought I was the boss, so I let Mephistopheles do all the talking, since he was the only actual demon in the room, while we sampled the cake and the servants?"
She looked deeply contemplative for a few moments. "Was that the one where you made those guys get naked and waltz with the goats?"
"There, see, you do remember!"
"I remember Mephistopheles being so horribly confused by the whole thing. He was so young, then." A gleam of something that might have been sympathy lit Belphegor's eyes, for a split second, and then it was gone. "I'm sure we set him straight about the natural order of summonings."
"Straight is the absolutely last word I would use to describe anything that went on that entire weekend," Lucian drawled. "But, there was both cake and dancing."
"Oh, I don't know, maybe the — Kitty!" Belphegor swooped forward, scooping up the cat that sat in the open doorway of the next shop. "Do you still have the cats, Sparkles?"
"Put Johann down, Peggy. He's not equipped to be distracted by you." Lucian looked amused as the cat smacked a paw against Belphegor's lips. "And if you mean 'have cats' like 'have syphillis', then yes, I still have cats. They're everywhere, when they want to be. I don't know what I've done to get a day off, but I'd do it again, if I knew."
"How can you not like them? They're so cute and fluffy!" Belphegor hugged the cat defensively.
"And loud and deadly. You spend twenty thousand years being followed around by hordes of them and tell me how much you appreciate their fluffy cuteness." Despite this, Lucian reached out and scratched Johann's ears. "Isn't that right, you fuzzy little terror?"
"If you know his name, that means we're here, doesn't it?" A mischievous smile crept across Belphegor's face. "Is there a bathroom?"
"Of course there's a—" He didn't get the chance to finish the sentence.
Johann yowled and bounded off into the shop, to take up residence on a bookcase, taking a piece out of Belphegor's hand with his claws, in the process.
"Ow!" she cried out, winking at Lucian and grabbing his hand, tugging him into the shop, as she held up her bloody other hand. "Excuse me, is there a bathroom? I just need to clean up a little."
A sturdy woman with salt and pepper hair and moon-touched rosy skin stood up from rearranging tarot decks in a glass case. She cast a pointed look at Lucian, who shrugged and tried to look virtuous, shocked at these aspersions.
"She met Johann," he explained. "Marta, Peggy. Peggy, Marta."
"Uh-huh. You make sure you leave that bathroom as clean as you found it." Marta looked anything but convinced, as she pointed toward a door in the back. "Don't think I don't know, Lucian. I've been her age, and I'd have been just as inclined."
"Now, Marta, you know all you have to do is ask." Any attempt at innocence went out the window, as Belphegor dragged him toward the back of the shop.
Marta snorted expressively and went back to her tarot decks, muttering something that involved the phrases 'grew out of that' and 'twice your age'.
"Is she?" Belphegor whispered, closing the door behind them. "I can't tell…"
"She's … fifty-something? She might be a little older than this shell. Definitely older than it looks. But, no, she's not older than me." He leaned against the wall, next to the sink. "Few things are, in this world. Most of them left. I don't have that option."
"Oh, you're not missing much. Except me." The blood was gone from her hand, and there was no sign she'd ever been scratched, as she pinned him to the wall. "You miss me, don't you, Sparkles?"
"You and a handful of my siblings. The world is empty, without you." He tilted her chin up with one finger. "That's not me being dramatic. Do you know how few of the Lords will even see me?"
"To Sheol with them." Her hands wandered up under his shirt, taking in every curve of his constructed flesh.
He rested his forehead against the top of her head and laughed. "Sheol. Can you imagine? All the Lords descending upon Sheol…"
She snickered. "You know, for a man who can turn his entire body into a sex organ, you are really hard to distract."
"It's because I'm not a man," he muttered into her hair. "Also, you keep saying things that are much more distracting."
"Mmm, so I should stop talking and —"
That was when he lost track of the conversation, and he just let it go. Fifteen minutes. He could let her do whatever she wanted for fifteen minutes. She talked him into twenty, without saying a word.
