We Fill This Empty House
Fandom: The Demon's Lexicon
Pairing: Seb/Anzu
Spoilers: To the end of book 2 (written pre-book 3)
Length: 2215
Summary: Anzu reached out a hand, fingernails like talons, to beckon him closer. "Three times I call him. I call on Sebastian."
Notes: Thanks to eternal_vows and nyn17 for reading through it and altogetherisi for beta-ing.
It started because Anzu was always there. He was there when Seb was left alone in the house with Celeste's 'don't break anything' echoing in his unappreciated ears. It was like he was a dog. A dog they had brought to their house and trained to do tricks.
Even Jamie got more attention. Jamie with the demon mark burned into his face making it very clear that he was a fucking spy and should be sent straight home, but no it was 'so sorry about your mother, Jamie' and 'Why don't we go somewhere private so I can teach you some spells, Jamie.'
Seb never got taught any spells. He just got shut up with the cleaning, the silence and the demon.
"You missed a spot," Anzu said.
Seb swore at him and caught the damn spot with the damn duster. Anzu chuckled so he swore at him again, and then at the magicians and Jamie and the whole world for good measure.
"Touchy," Anzu said. "Feeling a little left out, are we?"
Seb threw the duster at him. It passed straight through a hole in the centre of Anzu's body and stuck - burnt down to a single stick - in the far wall. "Oops," said the demon, looking down through the hole. "Don't know my own strength."
"I hate you!" Seb found himself shouting. He wasn't sure who he was yelling at more, the demon who had killed because of him or the magicians who had fucked his entire life up then left him to clean up after them. "I hate you I hate you I hate you!"
Anzu sat back in his circle and laughed. "Come in here and say that."
Seb stormed out. Later on, he watched through a crack in the door as Gerald stepped down into the summoning room, glanced around distastefully and cleaned the whole place with a flick of one hand.
Anzu stared directly through the crack at Seb. "Some people," he said. "Are just unappreciated, wouldn't you say?"
Seb turned on his heel and ran up to his bedroom as Gerald sighed, "Have you gone mad now too?"
On the stair, Jamie looked at him with concerned eyes even as the sparks from all the magic Seb couldn't do danced around his fingertips. "Are you okay?"
He was beautiful and caring and considerate and Seb had loved him once. That was before they came here, before Jamie was the golden boy and all his morals somehow vanished into nothing. Seb had always believed Jamie was the proof that he could be better. Now he knew that Jamie was more evidence for Gerald's casual claim, 'everybody falls.'
Seb hated him so very very much. He pushed him to the floor, ran into his room and tore up every page in his sketchbook letting the scraps fall to pieces all around him.
*
Anzu was gone the next day. Seb sat in the summoning room for a time - walked back and forth through the empty circle - but no magician showed up to summon him and the room stayed empty.
Gerald was in the reading room Seb discovered, when he finally gave up on waiting. The sandy haired magician glanced up when the door opened, his eyes staying on Seb long enough to establish that no one important was waiting and not a moment more.
"If you're here," Seb said. "Can I go out?"
Gerald turned a page and made a note on the paper beside him.
"I haven't been outside in a week," Seb said. "You've all been doing top secret magician work and it's just been Anzu and I."
Gerald looked up with a long aggravated sigh. "Sebastian, I'm trying to work. Get out of here."
Seb closed the door as quietly as possible and took that as permission.
There was a pub Seb knew two tube stops away. It was a tiny shithole with filthy windows and glasses that hadn't seen a cloth in years, but the man on the bar never asked for ID and the house beer tasted of piss, but was cheap enough that Seb could buy lots of it.
If he downed the pint quick enough, he barely had time to taste it. He also got drunk a whole lot quicker.
When he started to explain to the barman that all his problems were Jamie's fault, and the magicians should let Seb help out with more spells because maybe he would be better if he was just allowed to learn - the man stopped serving him.
Seb passed the empty pint glass from hand to hand as the light through the windows changed from 'grimy and dim' to 'grimy and dark.'
He was just starting to think about heading back - Celeste would be home by now, ready to shout at him for not getting her permission, for treating Gerald like he had authority. Gerald would act like he'd authorised it because he wanted to seem like he had authority and later on he would explain that he hadn't meant his remark like that.
Gerald's low explanations were infinitely worse than Celeste shouting. Gerald could sound disappointed and deadly as the same time, and afterwards he would summon a demon into every summoning circle, locking Seb in with them all night.
If all the circles were full, there was barely enough space to stand, let alone lie down.
A hand landed on Seb's shoulder, jolting him out of his thoughts and back into the pub which was filling up with all the clearly underage kids trying to show how grown up they were with their piss beer and their big talk about the 'ladies.'
Seb shrugged the hand off. There were tables in the corner, let this kid find his own seat. So Seb was too weak - too useless - to do magic without the backing of a demon. He still had a killer right hook. He almost hoped the kid started something, it would be nice to finally fight something he could hit.
The hand touched his shoulder again and Seb spun around, raising his fist to slam it into -
A young man stood behind him, short blonde hair, a chiselled jaw and a small smile which was surprising considering Seb was one inch from punching him in the face. The man's smile only grew when Seb let his arm fall, lighting up his face. He was gorgeous. At least twenty five and so far out of Seb's league it hurt, but gorgeous nonetheless and Seb found himself stammering. "Do you want me to move?"
The man didn't say anything, just tilted his head like a bird as though Seb was a puzzle he wanted to figure out.
Seb lifted his wallet off the counter, ducking his head so he wouldn't have to meet the stranger's eyes. "I'll move."
The stranger caught his hand, holding him still as he tried to slip off the chair. They kissed without a word of introduction. Seb didn't take him home. There was an alley out back and it was dark.
The man was totally silent as he fucked Seb so hard it hurt like hell just to walk home.
Seb tried not to think about what that might mean. He slipped into the house without a word and there were no consequences. No one had even realised he was gone.
The next day he didn't bother asking, he just left at nightfall and followed the path. The man was waiting outside, hair shimmering gold in the shadows.
Seb looked into his eyes to see two black pits. "Anzu," he said.
He'd known, he supposed. He'd always known.
The stranger grinned, teeth glittering like diamonds.
*
By the third day, the alley felt almost comforting. After two weeks it felt positively like home, a welcome fucking respite from the rest of the fucking world.
Anzu's stolen body didn't look quite so beautiful now, but the magic that poured out from him as he tried to hold it together made up for that. It brushed across Seb's skin like hoards of tiny fireflies, hundreds of thousands, enough to drown in.
"You're not going to last much longer," Seb said, even though Anzu couldn't understand him. "Are you?"
Anzu pinned him against the wall and reached for the clasp of his trousers.
Seb tried not to think about screwing a dead man.
*
He got drunker and drunker in the bar the day after and when Anzu didn't arrive he took the tube back across town and sat in the summoning room watching Anzu's circle, arms clasped around his knees.
There was a faint popping sound just before Anzu reappeared. He had taken the form of the man, back at the start of the fortnight. Back when he was fresh and beautiful.
There was a slight hook to his nose and two golden wings coming from his back, but they were just Anzu. Seb opened his mouth, then realised that he had no idea what to say. He couldn't acknowledge what they... he should never have... he would be killed if anyone knew.
Anzu grinned, his teeth sparkling as flames caught around the edge of his circle. "Hey, lover."
Seb ran.
*
He went back the next day. Everyone was out, buying the groceries or hunting down the goblin market or other such things Seb could not be trusted with.
"So not lover," Anzu said, as though there had been no break in their conversation. "What do I call you then?"
Seb clutched the doorframe blindly with one hand. "Sebastian."
Anzu's lips curved into a grin and all Seb could think was I know what that tastes like. "I call on Sebastian," the demon said with a smile. "I call on the one who everyone screws around. I call on the one who does a fair amount of screwing around himse-"
"I'm already here."
Anzu reached out a hand, fingernails like talons, to beckon him closer. "Three times I call him. I call on Sebastian."
An exorcism means naming the demon and commanding it.
He took a few steps forward, closer to the flames and the circle and the demon who was not smiling at him. "You can't call on a human," he said, as though he hadn't just obeyed Anzu's command. "That's not how it works."
"So you can have me but I can't have you?" Anzu grinned a wicked grin. "Funny, it always seemed like it was the other way ar-"
"Shut up!" Seb shouted, clamping his hands over his ears. "Shut up shut up shut up!"
One of these days Seb was going to rub the speaking lines off Anzu's circle. Then the demon wouldn't be able to say anything and Seb could just... could just...
It occurred to him that if he had stayed upstairs he wouldn't have been able to hear Anzu either. He didn't leave.
"So," said Anzu, clapping his hands together. "Do you want to know his name? The body? Jamie always wants the names and everyone knows how you want Jamie so I thought -"
"I'll send you away."
"And someone will call me back with very little inconvenience to anyone. They might send you away, though. After all, I'm so much more valuable than you. So much more... powerful."
Seb let out a cry of rage and frustration and god only knew what and slammed the door on his way out.
There was no oven in the house and he was too tired and confused to have any handle over his sporadic-at-best magic so he ate baked beans cold and tried to bottle his emotions.
Jamie came home and saw him sitting on the kitchen counter with his head in his hands and the empty can of beans on the side behind him. "Seb?" he called uncertainly. "Seb, are you okay? I was just out with Gerald, he was showing me the adventurine circle. You know, the big one made of stones. We left you a note... are you o-"
Seb slid off the counter and punched him in the face before he could ask again if Seb was fucking okay.
He didn't even crack a joke. He just clutched at his nose and said a surprised little "Ow."
"Yeah. Fucking ow." He stormed past him and went upstairs, slamming his bedroom door and not telling Gerald that his pet could well be bleeding to death. He used to be in love with Jamie, back before Jamie was a liar and a hypocrite, playing nice with the old school bully to sooth his conscience when he fed people to demons.
Anzu was a demon. The face he wore was the face of a now-dead man whose body Seb knew intimately but who he had never met. Anzu tricked and mocked and was never tried to be anything more or less than what he was.
Seb painstakingly gathered all the pieces of his sketchbook - all the drawings of Jamie back when he was something to aspire too - dropped them in the metal bin in his room and used a match to set them on fire.
Then he went back upstairs. The magicians could lie and trick and leave. It didn't matter, Anzu was always there.
Pairing: Seb/Anzu
Spoilers: To the end of book 2 (written pre-book 3)
Length: 2215
Summary: Anzu reached out a hand, fingernails like talons, to beckon him closer. "Three times I call him. I call on Sebastian."
Notes: Thanks to eternal_vows and nyn17 for reading through it and altogetherisi for beta-ing.
It started because Anzu was always there. He was there when Seb was left alone in the house with Celeste's 'don't break anything' echoing in his unappreciated ears. It was like he was a dog. A dog they had brought to their house and trained to do tricks.
Even Jamie got more attention. Jamie with the demon mark burned into his face making it very clear that he was a fucking spy and should be sent straight home, but no it was 'so sorry about your mother, Jamie' and 'Why don't we go somewhere private so I can teach you some spells, Jamie.'
Seb never got taught any spells. He just got shut up with the cleaning, the silence and the demon.
"You missed a spot," Anzu said.
Seb swore at him and caught the damn spot with the damn duster. Anzu chuckled so he swore at him again, and then at the magicians and Jamie and the whole world for good measure.
"Touchy," Anzu said. "Feeling a little left out, are we?"
Seb threw the duster at him. It passed straight through a hole in the centre of Anzu's body and stuck - burnt down to a single stick - in the far wall. "Oops," said the demon, looking down through the hole. "Don't know my own strength."
"I hate you!" Seb found himself shouting. He wasn't sure who he was yelling at more, the demon who had killed because of him or the magicians who had fucked his entire life up then left him to clean up after them. "I hate you I hate you I hate you!"
Anzu sat back in his circle and laughed. "Come in here and say that."
Seb stormed out. Later on, he watched through a crack in the door as Gerald stepped down into the summoning room, glanced around distastefully and cleaned the whole place with a flick of one hand.
Anzu stared directly through the crack at Seb. "Some people," he said. "Are just unappreciated, wouldn't you say?"
Seb turned on his heel and ran up to his bedroom as Gerald sighed, "Have you gone mad now too?"
On the stair, Jamie looked at him with concerned eyes even as the sparks from all the magic Seb couldn't do danced around his fingertips. "Are you okay?"
He was beautiful and caring and considerate and Seb had loved him once. That was before they came here, before Jamie was the golden boy and all his morals somehow vanished into nothing. Seb had always believed Jamie was the proof that he could be better. Now he knew that Jamie was more evidence for Gerald's casual claim, 'everybody falls.'
Seb hated him so very very much. He pushed him to the floor, ran into his room and tore up every page in his sketchbook letting the scraps fall to pieces all around him.
*
Anzu was gone the next day. Seb sat in the summoning room for a time - walked back and forth through the empty circle - but no magician showed up to summon him and the room stayed empty.
Gerald was in the reading room Seb discovered, when he finally gave up on waiting. The sandy haired magician glanced up when the door opened, his eyes staying on Seb long enough to establish that no one important was waiting and not a moment more.
"If you're here," Seb said. "Can I go out?"
Gerald turned a page and made a note on the paper beside him.
"I haven't been outside in a week," Seb said. "You've all been doing top secret magician work and it's just been Anzu and I."
Gerald looked up with a long aggravated sigh. "Sebastian, I'm trying to work. Get out of here."
Seb closed the door as quietly as possible and took that as permission.
There was a pub Seb knew two tube stops away. It was a tiny shithole with filthy windows and glasses that hadn't seen a cloth in years, but the man on the bar never asked for ID and the house beer tasted of piss, but was cheap enough that Seb could buy lots of it.
If he downed the pint quick enough, he barely had time to taste it. He also got drunk a whole lot quicker.
When he started to explain to the barman that all his problems were Jamie's fault, and the magicians should let Seb help out with more spells because maybe he would be better if he was just allowed to learn - the man stopped serving him.
Seb passed the empty pint glass from hand to hand as the light through the windows changed from 'grimy and dim' to 'grimy and dark.'
He was just starting to think about heading back - Celeste would be home by now, ready to shout at him for not getting her permission, for treating Gerald like he had authority. Gerald would act like he'd authorised it because he wanted to seem like he had authority and later on he would explain that he hadn't meant his remark like that.
Gerald's low explanations were infinitely worse than Celeste shouting. Gerald could sound disappointed and deadly as the same time, and afterwards he would summon a demon into every summoning circle, locking Seb in with them all night.
If all the circles were full, there was barely enough space to stand, let alone lie down.
A hand landed on Seb's shoulder, jolting him out of his thoughts and back into the pub which was filling up with all the clearly underage kids trying to show how grown up they were with their piss beer and their big talk about the 'ladies.'
Seb shrugged the hand off. There were tables in the corner, let this kid find his own seat. So Seb was too weak - too useless - to do magic without the backing of a demon. He still had a killer right hook. He almost hoped the kid started something, it would be nice to finally fight something he could hit.
The hand touched his shoulder again and Seb spun around, raising his fist to slam it into -
A young man stood behind him, short blonde hair, a chiselled jaw and a small smile which was surprising considering Seb was one inch from punching him in the face. The man's smile only grew when Seb let his arm fall, lighting up his face. He was gorgeous. At least twenty five and so far out of Seb's league it hurt, but gorgeous nonetheless and Seb found himself stammering. "Do you want me to move?"
The man didn't say anything, just tilted his head like a bird as though Seb was a puzzle he wanted to figure out.
Seb lifted his wallet off the counter, ducking his head so he wouldn't have to meet the stranger's eyes. "I'll move."
The stranger caught his hand, holding him still as he tried to slip off the chair. They kissed without a word of introduction. Seb didn't take him home. There was an alley out back and it was dark.
The man was totally silent as he fucked Seb so hard it hurt like hell just to walk home.
Seb tried not to think about what that might mean. He slipped into the house without a word and there were no consequences. No one had even realised he was gone.
The next day he didn't bother asking, he just left at nightfall and followed the path. The man was waiting outside, hair shimmering gold in the shadows.
Seb looked into his eyes to see two black pits. "Anzu," he said.
He'd known, he supposed. He'd always known.
The stranger grinned, teeth glittering like diamonds.
*
By the third day, the alley felt almost comforting. After two weeks it felt positively like home, a welcome fucking respite from the rest of the fucking world.
Anzu's stolen body didn't look quite so beautiful now, but the magic that poured out from him as he tried to hold it together made up for that. It brushed across Seb's skin like hoards of tiny fireflies, hundreds of thousands, enough to drown in.
"You're not going to last much longer," Seb said, even though Anzu couldn't understand him. "Are you?"
Anzu pinned him against the wall and reached for the clasp of his trousers.
Seb tried not to think about screwing a dead man.
*
He got drunker and drunker in the bar the day after and when Anzu didn't arrive he took the tube back across town and sat in the summoning room watching Anzu's circle, arms clasped around his knees.
There was a faint popping sound just before Anzu reappeared. He had taken the form of the man, back at the start of the fortnight. Back when he was fresh and beautiful.
There was a slight hook to his nose and two golden wings coming from his back, but they were just Anzu. Seb opened his mouth, then realised that he had no idea what to say. He couldn't acknowledge what they... he should never have... he would be killed if anyone knew.
Anzu grinned, his teeth sparkling as flames caught around the edge of his circle. "Hey, lover."
Seb ran.
*
He went back the next day. Everyone was out, buying the groceries or hunting down the goblin market or other such things Seb could not be trusted with.
"So not lover," Anzu said, as though there had been no break in their conversation. "What do I call you then?"
Seb clutched the doorframe blindly with one hand. "Sebastian."
Anzu's lips curved into a grin and all Seb could think was I know what that tastes like. "I call on Sebastian," the demon said with a smile. "I call on the one who everyone screws around. I call on the one who does a fair amount of screwing around himse-"
"I'm already here."
Anzu reached out a hand, fingernails like talons, to beckon him closer. "Three times I call him. I call on Sebastian."
An exorcism means naming the demon and commanding it.
He took a few steps forward, closer to the flames and the circle and the demon who was not smiling at him. "You can't call on a human," he said, as though he hadn't just obeyed Anzu's command. "That's not how it works."
"So you can have me but I can't have you?" Anzu grinned a wicked grin. "Funny, it always seemed like it was the other way ar-"
"Shut up!" Seb shouted, clamping his hands over his ears. "Shut up shut up shut up!"
One of these days Seb was going to rub the speaking lines off Anzu's circle. Then the demon wouldn't be able to say anything and Seb could just... could just...
It occurred to him that if he had stayed upstairs he wouldn't have been able to hear Anzu either. He didn't leave.
"So," said Anzu, clapping his hands together. "Do you want to know his name? The body? Jamie always wants the names and everyone knows how you want Jamie so I thought -"
"I'll send you away."
"And someone will call me back with very little inconvenience to anyone. They might send you away, though. After all, I'm so much more valuable than you. So much more... powerful."
Seb let out a cry of rage and frustration and god only knew what and slammed the door on his way out.
There was no oven in the house and he was too tired and confused to have any handle over his sporadic-at-best magic so he ate baked beans cold and tried to bottle his emotions.
Jamie came home and saw him sitting on the kitchen counter with his head in his hands and the empty can of beans on the side behind him. "Seb?" he called uncertainly. "Seb, are you okay? I was just out with Gerald, he was showing me the adventurine circle. You know, the big one made of stones. We left you a note... are you o-"
Seb slid off the counter and punched him in the face before he could ask again if Seb was fucking okay.
He didn't even crack a joke. He just clutched at his nose and said a surprised little "Ow."
"Yeah. Fucking ow." He stormed past him and went upstairs, slamming his bedroom door and not telling Gerald that his pet could well be bleeding to death. He used to be in love with Jamie, back before Jamie was a liar and a hypocrite, playing nice with the old school bully to sooth his conscience when he fed people to demons.
Anzu was a demon. The face he wore was the face of a now-dead man whose body Seb knew intimately but who he had never met. Anzu tricked and mocked and was never tried to be anything more or less than what he was.
Seb painstakingly gathered all the pieces of his sketchbook - all the drawings of Jamie back when he was something to aspire too - dropped them in the metal bin in his room and used a match to set them on fire.
Then he went back upstairs. The magicians could lie and trick and leave. It didn't matter, Anzu was always there.