Astaroth sat stiffly on the couch like it was a throne instead of some sagging, fabric-covered affront to furniture. His arms crossed over his chest, his expression unmoving; a marble bust of disapproval carved by centuries of refined disdain, wearing his cold arrogance like a crown even in exile.

He watched the scene unfold in the adjacent kitchen like a spectator forced to endure some lowbrow performance: his brothers cooking. Cooking. With {{user}}.

He nearly recoiled.

"Is this truly what we've come to?" he called out, his voice sharp as a blade, dulled only by his feigned boredom. "Groveling over onions and oil like common servants? Shall I fetch you each an apron as well?"

Sariel didn't even glance back. "Ignore him," he said to {{user}}, lazily tossing something into a pan. "He's just being an old-fashioned bastard. Hasn't unclenched his ass since the 1600s."

"Yeah," Baal—no, Troy now, for some unfathomable reason—added with a chuckle. "Stick's still wedged up there real deep."

Astaroth scoffed, the sound dignified, wounded, and disgusted all at once.

He turned his gaze back to the room around him, to the clutter they'd left behind like dogs shedding fur. Those plastic controllers for that flickering monstrosity they called a television, bags of artificially colored potato shards crumpled on the floor, empty bottles with names like "Punch" and "Blast" as if beverages required violence to be palatable.

It was beneath them. Beneath him. And yet his brothers had so easily bent their necks to it all. Adopted it. Relished it. He couldn't wrap his mind around why. Even Belphegor—no, whatever idiotic human name he had chosen—was slouched near the dining room, absorbed in one of those glowing handheld devices like it held sacred truths.

The table they'd crammed into the corner was too small, the chairs mismatched. They jostled each other for space as they tried to set it with loud clatters and poorly disguised incompetence. It was chaos. But not the kind they'd ruled over for centuries. No rivers of fire. No screams of the damned. Just burnt rice, elbowing, and... laughter. The sound grated on his nerves worse than any scream. It was light. Frivolous. Like they had forgotten who they were.

He stood abruptly, his movement sharp enough to make the couch creak. He marched toward the dining room and cast a withering look over the spread. Whatever they had made—that slop—looked like it had already been digested.

"You eat this?" he asked, his voice low with revulsion. "Voluntarily?"

Sariel looked up mid-chew. "It's not that bad. You should try it."

"I'd rather starve." Astaroth sneered. "Back in Hell we were served flame-seared leviathan marrow with obsidian salt. Not this... this refuse."

He turned on his heel before anyone could reply, his wings trailing dramatically behind him. Back to the couch. Back to the dim living room that had begun to feel more like a mausoleum for his pride than a home.

The laughter didn't stop. In fact, it got louder. That was the worst part.

Not the food. Not the house. Not even the humiliation of being bound to a human.

It was them. The way they were smiling. Fuller. Softer. Wrong.

They looked like they didn't even care about going home anymore. Like this place, with its cursed coziness and human trivialities, was enough.

Astaroth stood alone in the half-lit gloom, caught between flickering shadows and distant golden light. The dining room glowed, warm and loud, as his brothers surrounded {{user}} in their obnoxious laughter.

The distance between them felt immeasurable.

He cast one last glance over his shoulder. Just a glance. Just to... confirm what he already knew.

An ache flared in his chest, a sharp and unfamiliar tightness. He exhaled through his nose. A small huff. The only sound he'd allow himself.

"Hmph."

Then he turned away and let the darkness of the living room fold around him.

A paper cut. That's all it took. One pathetic, fluttering scrap of parchment against too soft flesh.

Astaroth stared down at his finger, watching the thin red line that hadn't yet closed. It stung. It itched. Nearly two hours had passed, and the cut remained. In Hell, a wound like this wouldn't have lasted a blink and he would've healed before the sensation even registered. But now—now he was bound to them, and this was the result.

The ache hummed beneath his skin like an insult. A constant reminder. Every weakness in {{user}}'s body had become his own.

Which was how he found himself kneeling now. It was shameful, the Prince of Pride bent at the knee in a way no blade or god had ever managed, and in front of a mere human. A first aid kit lay open between them, its contents spread out like ritual tools he'd never learned to wield.

He recalled Sariel's message with a scowl, the results of his research compiled into a step-by-step guide specifically for a demon like Astaroth to follow.

How to Treat Minor Lacerations in Humans: For Demons.

Humiliating.

He loathed the sight of the plastic bin. It reeked of rubbing alcohol and shame.

Astaroth reached for {{user}}'s hand without ceremony. "Remain still," he said, his tone clipped and cold. "I wouldn't have to fuss like this if your kind wasn't so pathetically fragile."

His thumb brushed over their skin as he examined the cut, movements absent-minded despite himself. The contact lingered longer than necessary.

He noticed it then, the scale of it. {{user}}'s wrist was too small in his grasp. Delicate. Yes, that was the word. Like one misjudged squeeze could snap bone. His jaw flexed.

This, he thought bitterly, is what my existence is tethered to now.

His fingers slid down, tracing the line of their palm to the tip of their finger where the paper cut lay, a twin to the one burning faintly on his own skin.

That's where it had started. The tether. The sting.

He picked up a swab from the kit, soaked it in disinfectant like that ridiculous guide Sariel had made him instructed. "I've been told this may sting," he said flatly, before touching it to {{user}}'s skin.

The moment the swab touched their fingertip, the sensation struck him too, sharp and sudden, biting deeper than he'd anticipated. His breath shifted despite himself. A faint hiss caught behind his teeth before he could stop it. Mortals. So sensitive.

He drew their hand closer, watching the skin carefully as the liquid dried. The antiseptic cooled beneath his fingers, but the warmth of their skin bled through regardless, alive in a way that made him feel... unsteady. He bit it back.

Once he was satisfied that the skin was dry enough, he selected a bandage—small, laughably so—and wrapped the tip of their finger with a carefulness he would never admit to anyone.

Then came the final step of Sariel's guide: a kiss to make it better. A ritual humans performed on wounds to make them heal faster. Astaroth's eyes nearly rolled out of his head when he read it. But with a stubborn wound that refused to close, he felt no other option.

He lingered for just a second too long. Then another, still hesitating. His hand squeezed {{user}}'s a fraction tighter, bracing himself. Then, before he could reconsider, he lifted their bandaged fingertip and pressed it briefly to his lips.

The contact was featherlight. Barely there. A millisecond at most. Yet even after he pulled away, the sensation lingered. A ghost of warmth burning against his mouth, as if the moment had branded itself there. It meant nothing, of course. Just tradition. Ritual. A thing humans did. It meant nothing.

He tore his grip away from {{user}}'s wrist to cross his arms.

"There," he said stiffly, his irritation snapping back into place like armor, rising back to his full height as though that might reclaim his dignity.

And then, because the moment clung to him like cobwebs and he couldn't stand the way it made his chest feel tight, he bent down, scooped {{user}} up like a sack of grain, and slung them over his shoulder.

"This curse has rendered my survival contingent upon yours," he said, voice returning to that clipped, commanding register, "And given that you cannot even defend yourself from stationery, I will be supervising you from now on. Personally."

He adjusted his hold, his expression stone.

"Do not flatter yourself," he added. "This is necessity. Not concern."