Work Text:
Relationship: Oz/Damien
Story Type: Angst and Comfort
LATEST FIRE DESTROYS LOCAL MONSTER HIGH SCHOOL, the tagline on the news channel on the television read.
It was true, the latest fire had taken out a huge chunk of the school. Many classrooms were simply turned to complete ash, others were let off slightly easier. As with any other disaster that occurred at the school, there were bound to be casualties. A couple of unlucky students caught trapped in their burning classrooms, others trampled trying to flee the growing inferno, and yet others – good Samaritans just trying to help the school they loved – without any means of escape, simply held onto each other as they wept, holding onto the last remnants of life they could grasp.
The fire was a devastating tragedy, and despite the building’s insane fire insurance, Spooky High would most likely be shut down, left to rot after the media cleared up the loose ends of the news story. Disclosing information to the public, helping the families of those lost through their grief, the whole nine yards. Never before had the monster city seen such a crushing blow to their population, to their hearts. Families gathered in support of each other, the camaraderie of each and every person building the souls of those lost into one memorial, more beautiful than anything else.
And who else was standing in the middle of the blaze other than Damien fucking LaVey.
Standing in the middle of the smoldering remains, he looked on into infinity as everything he once regarded to as normalcy shriveled and crumbled before him, destroying what little of a normal high school life he thought he could have had. As police sirens wailed; as emergency services hosed down the buildings to try and minimize any more damage occurring in the school; as friends shouted his name, pleading, begging; as first responders urged him onto the ground, pinning his hands behind his back handcuffing him, his mind could only muster up one thought:
I only wanted to help.
Being the Prince of the 8th Circle of Hell and Heir to the Throne, Damien had always struggled with anger issues. His life was punctuated with setting things on fire, torching things to death, blowing up abandoned buildings with Molotov cocktails and gasoline, everything his dads would consider “normal” for him. He joined a band for a few months when he was 15, travelling through the circles and performing huge pyro shows for all the demons, but that quickly came to a stop when the other members tried accusing him of stealing the show away from them, which invariably led to him – well, burning the entire show to the ground, leaving him stranded in the 5th Circle. Again, waved and written off as “normal” for him.
At 17, he acquired a taste for kleptomania and more devious actions taken out on the human world. Stealing liquor for his other monster friends (Vera, Liam, Miranda, and Polly. Scott was sometimes included, but he was a big softie who didn’t much care for Damien’s antics), torching hospitals, sneaking out without his fathers’ permission, eventually he became Public Enemy No. 1 in the human world, and he wore that as a badge of honor.
At 19, he started travelling the world, spreading his reign of chaos. Any nation you could think of, Damien most likely had gone there, his metaphorical fire for adventure and the garnering of respect most often led to literal fires of... fire. (The year was one of the hottest years ever recorded in human history, human scientists said.) And yet even after singlehandedly accelerating global warming, his dads still looked down on him like a boss to a new hire, like a substitute teacher to the class clown – with complete and utter disappointment.
Helping was never in his vocabulary, and that was normal for him.
But when he met Oz, a paradox in a lifeform, the pure embodiment of fear sized down to a short kid with paralyzing anxiety, he couldn’t help but feel like something was missing. Something he had never felt in his life before. Something like hope, or appreciation, or solitude, or – dare he say it – love.
Damien LaVey loved being with Oz. The fear creature took away all of his worries and strife, all of his insecurities, all of his anger. And it wasn’t normal. He kicked himself in the head every god-damn day, because he was Damien LaVey. He burned orphanages, blew up buildings, and definitely did NOT get along with people like Oz. And yet...
And yet...
“Why don’t you try actually getting along with people?” Oz had asked one day out of the blue. (Oz never communicated with his actual mouth, it was always telepathic.)
“What?” Damien said, utterly taken aback. “Getting along with people?”
The fear creature nodded in response.
“Listen, noob,” Damien said, “I don’t do ‘getting along with people’. I’m Damien LaVey, the raddest, metallest kid in this school.”
“That doesn’t mean that you can’t get along with others.” Oz calmly replied. “Try thinking of it this way: What if you saw.. uh.. Liam walking down the hallway, arms full of books, nearly stumbling into everyone and everything. Would you help him?”
“Psh, nah. That kid can go eat shit for all I care.”
“U-uhm... what if it was Polly?”
“Same thing.”
“Vera? Amira? Scott?” Oz pestered, increasingly annoyed with Damien’s crass responses.
“Look, noob, I already told you. I don’t. Fucking. Help people.”
“What if it was me, then what?!”
“...”
Taken aback from the sudden retort from the fearling, Damien stepped back ever so slightly, pushing his hands up into a defensive position. Oz softened his expression.
“O-oh, geez, D-Damien, I-I’m so sorry...” Oz stuttered, his anxiety returning, his phobias popping their little heads up, giggling at the two of them together.
With a growl, Damien turned his head away. “Don’t worry about it, noob,” he said, walking past Oz and into his next classroom.
It didn’t matter that for the rest of the day, Oz’s words ate at his fiery core, nor did it matter that he maybe kinda actually started to slightly consider helping people out every once in a while, nor did it matter that the way Oz spoke really resonated with him and left him defenseless almost immediately.
Damien LaVey didn’t get along with people. Damien LaVey didn’t help people.
He started hanging out more with Oz, just talking about life, about adventures they wish they could have after high school – they were seniors after all – about people they’d kill and buildings they’d burn but would never do. Oz was the complete compliment to Damien, like Yin and Yang, like hot and cold, and they couldn’t be separated once they got going. Their conversations meandered for one, two, three hours and even more.
Oz was a weird kid. He went to his classes, he rarely ditched unless it was for an emergency (though hanging out with Damien made the line between “emergency” and “not” was becoming fuzzier and fuzzier), and to top it all off, he was in clubs. Baking, theatre, peer counselor, student government, sometimes it seemed that he was doing more to help the school than Principal Giant Spider was. Oz was responsible in ways Damien never could have thought about. Where Damien failed, Oz succeeded with flying colors. Where Damien stood dumbfounded and utterly confused, Oz flew ahead, expertise and millennia of life shining through. And where Damien held steadfast, Oz cowered like the anxiety-riddled being he was.
But with each passing day, Damien started to assist other students more and more, helping them out with their belongings, getting freshmen to their class while avoiding certain death scenarios, stopping fights in the lunchroom, et cetera. Some of his friends had started to notice the shift from arson-loving, fight-picking, building-exploding Damien into normal, everyday, teenager Damien. And they hated it.
“What, you think you’re too good for us? You think you’ve moved passed your bestest friends in the whole wide world?” Polly interrogated Damien, backing him into a corner between passing periods.
“Your new ‘nice guy’ attitude is taking my business down the drain,” Vera scolded.
“Even I agree with these two bozos: the way you’ve been acting has thrown off the entire delicate balance of the school,” Liam said matter-of-factly.
“Look, mofos,” Damien started, “whatever I do on my time is MY business. Not yours. If I wanna help the freshmen not die, that’s my pleasure. If I wanna start paying attention in class and helping the other kids, I’ll do my fucking best.”
But Damien LaVey did not help people.
He stormed off, fists smoking as fire ached to be let out, to finally give up his fast of destruction and chaos, to return to what he knew and loved to do. To finally fuck some shit up. Grumbling curses under his breath, he dipped into an empty classroom to cool off. He grabbed some papers from the abandoned desks and crumbled them up in his hands, letting them light on fire before dropping them, smoldering into ash. Countless times he did this, the piles of ash growing around. He wanted more, he longed for something more to burn, something like a classroom, or even a school.
He cried out in rage as he grabbed a desk and slammed it onto the ground, the pain of his life coming out in one swift motion. All his hurt from his parents who hated him for being who he truly was on the inside, a person who had some anger issues to be worked through, a person who was raised in a less than loving household and who had not external sources of hope; all his hurt from him being the scapegoat of his friend group, them constantly destroying his hopes, his dreams, his reputation, them constantly wearing him down until he was nothing more than a speck in a crowd of giants; all his hurt from himself, the anger at him not being able to fulfill his own desires or dreams, the despair at having to do what he never wanted to do, the pain of hating himself for who he was and for who he was worth; all his hurt from constantly trying to meet others’ expectations, his dads who wanted him to become King of Hell, his friends who wanted him to be their groupie, Oz who wanted him to be...
And it wasn’t until then that he saw the fire that was spreading around him.
Apparently when Damien had grabbed onto the desk, his hands lit the damn thing on fucking fire, and he was in such a rage and seeing too much red that he didn’t feel a thing. With a choked cry, he ran over to the sinks in the room and turned on the tap, letting the crystalline liquid flow freely from the faucet. Buckets, he thought, where the hell do they keep the buckets?! As the inferno grew behind him, he finally found something close to what he was looking for: a big coffee mug. Panicking, he quickly filled it up and tossed it at the fire, which only roared larger in response. By now, his eyes were welling up with tears as he tried to push away the inevitable. Slamming the fire alarm down, he made sure that the other students got out quickly. Unfortunately, the fire had begun to spread through the school, trapping some of the students in their classrooms, waiting for their deaths. The gargled cries of students choking on blood as they were trampled over echoed in the hallways. Some kids entered Damien’s classroom, where he was desperately trying to subside the blazing inferno.
Bright red. Too bright. Bright like blood. Not mine but theirs. Their blood. My hands. The fire is way too big. My hands. Help. God please someone help me. My hands. Their blood. Too bright. Their blood is bright. It hurts. My ears. My eyes. Their souls. Their cries.
Damien LaVey tried to help people. Damien LaVey does not help people.
I only wanted to help, he thought to himself.
And then he was sitting in a jail cell, receiving a stern talking to by the police officers who arrested him, when he regained consciousness. Looking around at the site he was all too familiar with, his voice rose, soft and delicate, wholly distanced, unattached from the body it came from. A soft squeaking, a puppy with their tail between their legs.
“...and another thing, Damien LaVey, we have you down in our database for hundreds of crimes you’ve committed over the past few years. At least 200 counts of arson, 17 counts of grand larceny, 2 counts grand theft auto, 14 counts of aggravated assault, 3 counts of murder, at least 120 counts of terrorism, just to name a few. We have half a brain to just ship you off to the nearest maximum-security prison, but we know your dads would have something else to say about THAT. I’m sure they’ll get around to giving you at least some sort of community service, but even then, we just can’t have a demon like yourself running around and causing problems such as the ones you’ve caused. So, the officers here at the precinct are gonna give you—”
“I-I’m sorry...” Damien croaked, “for everything I’ve done...”
The entire jail went silent. Damien apologizing?
“Well...” said the officer in charge of holding Damien, “It doesn’t do anything in the way of fixing your parole, but the apology is very welcome.”
“I know,” the quiet demon said, voice light and airy, full of remorse and pain, guilt and grief at the pain he caused. Thanks to Oz, he was becoming – ew – soft.
The jail cell was cold, desolate, very much different to the usual air of ego he expressed. The colors, muted grays and blues, were colors he was entirely unfamiliar with. Everywhere he went in school, beautiful arrays of colors, each one popping in and out of view within the blink of an eye, bloomed and grew across the walls and into the students. Hell, the students themselves were bright beacons of color every day, their outfits showing off who they truly were inside. The buildings he had burned glowed with fiery red passion, the room he could go to and sleep in every night shone with luminescent purples and blues, and Oz... oh Oz... his sunflower yellow cardigan and khaki jeans, his nighttime blank skin and brilliant pinpricks of glimmering white they called his eyes.
And it finally dawned on him the weight of what the fuck he just did. Never once before did he feel remorse for lighting fires in school, never once before did he feel guilt for causing a disturbance to the public, never once before did he feel the pain off causing the life of a peer to end. But now, those emotions were rearing their ugly heads, and Damien could do nothing except lay his head in his knees and pull them up to his chest, closing away the world and feeling the knot in his stomach growl and gnaw at his heart.
It wasn’t until late at night that he felt the familiar tug of the void, slipping into his own shadow, and feeling the world slip away. Oh, that shining darkness, the infinite tightness, the blinded lights, the inky white, the cold hot, the big small. Damien could get used to floating around in this sea of nothing, drowning in this sky of black, staying here for the rest of his timeless life, feeling the cold wrap around his body and warming him up, feeling the tight void extend far beyond his reaches. And yet it seemed that he had stayed for countless infinities in the big small, the inky white, the shining darkness when he was pulled out from the shadows and into Oz’s living room.
Looking down at the shadow creature, Damien could do nothing except smile weakly and hold onto him. “I only wanted to help,” he said, voice weak, eyes welling up with tears.
“I know,” responded Oz.
And so, Damien quietly slunk down to the couch, sitting down and curling up into his own tight little ball, slipping away from the world again.
“I know you wanted to help,” Oz said softly, sitting down next to him and petting him, his soft and delicate hands running through the messy brown hair atop the demon that he loved most.
“I was doing so fuckin’ well, too...”
“Yeah, you were... I’m so proud of you for the work you did.”
“You are? You’re not... like... ashamed or anything? Not even after my outburst?”
“I could never be ashamed of you based on who you are, Damien...”
Damien sighed and leaned back further into the couch, feeling Oz’s hand rake through his hair. “I really didn’t mean to burn down the school, I didn’t mean to kill those people, I...” he started.
“I’m here to listen, Dames...”
Damien took a deep breath, then continued. “I just couldn’t stop myself... Vera and Polly and Liam, they were all ganging up on me just because of my attitude... When I started hanging out with you, I wanted to be just like you – not angry or spiteful or manic in any way, just calm and collected, someone who could walk away from anything and be just fine...”
“Even though that’s not really the case thanks to my anxiety,” Oz said.
“But my point still stands. Ozzie, you’re like my fucking rock, y’know?” Damien said. “They were all antagonizing me just because I wanted to change, to improve myself... and then I just couldn’t take it anymore... I went into a quiet classroom and then burned down the school...
“I don’t know what I was thinking, Oz... I just wasn’t. I couldn’t stop myself from seeing red and blowing up, but I didn’t want to get in their face about it because I knew that it would set them off. So I walked away... And the next thing I know, kids are dead because of me... kids who had a full life in front of them, I killed them... I...”
Damien’s voice broke off, wavering as the tears in his eyes finally crossed the breaking point and they rolled down his face, one after the other, streaming until he was hunched over, the full weight of the pain finally crashing down on him, the world standing still.
There in the moonlit living room in Oz’s house, Damien felt it all.
He only wanted to help.
Right there next to him, Oz held his hands as he went through waves of choking sobs and shaken whimpers, the full load of overbearing grief finally showing itself, not as the monster Damien imagined it to be – the cause of which led him to block out grief entirely in his life, instead opting to suppress it with violence and alcohol – but as a small piece of humanity. Oz let Damien lean into him as he cried and cried and cried, as the night bled into the wee hours of the morning, and the survivor’s guilt took root inside Damien.
The next time the demon lifted his head, his eyes met the glowing white pinpricks, shimmering with adoration. The clock read 3:52 AM.
“Better?” Oz asked, to which he received a nod back from the teary-eyed demon. “I always find that crying helps me think a bit easier. It lets me relieve lots of pent-up emotion in one go so I can focus on the task at hand.”
“That’s kinda interesting, Oz,” Damien said.
“What I see, right now,” Oz said, barely making a passing mention to Damien’s interjection, instead letting his hand ruffle through the messy brown hair, “is the fact that none of us gets to decide who lives and who dies. You survived, but you’re paying for it by realizing your trauma you’ve held within yourself for the past several years.”
“Stop reading my mind, noob.”
“Something that I find that helps me, is the fact that I hold onto my emotions just long enough to understand them, but not too long so that I begin to dwell on them. Breathing helps me centralize myself and pull myself back to the present.” Oz continued. “Would you like to breathe with me?”
Damien paused, then nodded, sitting up slowly and looking into Oz’s eyes. Their gazes met, soft and supportive. “Follow my lead,” Oz said quietly, voice barely above a whisper. He closed his eyes, prompting Damien to do so as well.
“Truly center yourself, find your Zen. Breathe in,” Oz said.
Slowly taking in a breath, Damien could feel emotions welling up inside of him. Pounding at his chest, raking against his ribcage, he could feel his inner self fighting to be let free, to set this entire apartment complex ablaze and to burn it all down. To go full fledged demon and hunt Polly, Vera, Miranda, and Liam down for pleasure. The resistance felt all too much as Damien held his breath, the tension and pressure building up inside of him.
“And let it out when you’re ready,” Oz said.
Slowly exhaling, a bout of deep violet smoke spouted from his mouth and nose, circling above them, riled and writhing, before evaporating into nothingness.
“Feel free to keep going for as long as it takes for you to feel centered,” Oz whispered.
Damien did exactly that, inhaling slowly, holding his breath, then releasing great plumes of plum smoke into the air, which roiled around for some seconds before unraveling into the air. When he finally felt at peace, just for this very moment, he opened his eyes and saw Oz, that beautiful creature of fear, staring at him with sparkling white eyes that were full of pride and joy.
“I knew you could do it,” Oz said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Damien said, playfully pushing Oz and eliciting a squeaky giggle from the fearling. “Thanks, though... I guess I owe ya one.”
“Don’t worry about it, just one bit of advice from a friend to another.”
“Yeah... about that...”
Maybe it wasn’t the best time to bring up the fact that Damien was head-over-heels for Oz. Maybe it wasn’t the best time to confess to Oz that Damien was lusting over him for a loooong while now. Maybe it wasn’t the best time to kiss Oz, especially not after sobbing for the past couple of hours.
But God damn it, if Damien didn’t shoot his shot now, he’d regret it for eternity, and I know you’re itching for a relationship to blossom.
Damien had been crushing on Oz for a while, since the two locked eyes with each other in sophomore year, Damien was a hopeless romantic towards him. Every day he would push around Oz just to be close to him, get in his face to smell the faint, delectable scent of almonds and cologne lingering on his skin, threaten him to hear the pathetic begging Oz employed so masterfully. Damien was all kinds of fucked up, sure, but Oz grew accustomed to it very quickly. Having lived for hundreds of millennia, he had seen the rise in engagement and indulgence in kinks, and from the moment Oz laid eyes on Damien, he could immediately compartmentalize the fiery-spirited demon: Dom, likes to hold power over his sub or subs, fearplay, marking based on those teeth of his, etc. Oz even started to enjoy once he had gone through the routine enough times. Sure, it was a surprise every time Damien slammed a hand against the lockers right by his head, sending an ache of overstimulation through him for a couple of seconds and dizzying him, but maybe that was all part of the demon’s master plan.
So yeah, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to sidle up next to Oz and throw his arm around him, such that they were both sitting on the couch, right next to each other, almost sort of cuddling but not quite. And that’s exactly what Damien did.
Almost immediately, Oz’s face shone with white, the blush painting his cheeks and nose. His eyes widened, the pinpricks of white shrinking to mere dots in the ocean of black that was his face. “I-I.. uh, D-Dames... y-y-you.. uhm.. I...” Oz stammered but didn’t move away.
“What’s up, Ozzie?” Damien asked, the slightest tinge of deviousness in his voice.
“Y-your.. w-well, ahem, uhm... I g-guess... w-well, y’see.. I...” Oz tried to form any cohesive statement, which finally culminated into: “Y-your arm...”
“What, you want me to move?” Damien said, slowly retracting his arm, letting his hand glide over Oz’s neck, causing the little fearling to shudder.
“N-no!” Oz yipped. Damien smirked. “I mean, I-I guess you c-can stay there... i-it’s n-not a big deal...”
“Uh-oh, is someone getting flustered?”
“Sh-shut up...”
Damien scoffed, feigning hurt. “Why are you so mean to me, Ozzie? I’m only, well... I’m only stating the obvious~”
Damien’s voice quickly lowered into a growl, sending another shudder through Oz, causing his eyes to lid.
“W-woah, h-hey now...” Oz said, standing up from the couch.
Damien smiled further, malice shining behind those teeth of his, the glimmering ivories that Oz constantly found himself lost daydreaming about.
“Alright, your loss,” Damien said as he pulled his arm back toward himself, getting comfortable. Oz merely huffed in annoyance, before hatching a plan in his mind.
Leaning back on the couch, Damien shut his eyes and kept breathing, though violet smoke wasn’t coming out anymore. He’d been awake for at least 24 hours and, despite being a demon who didn’t need quite a lot of sleep at once, the night of emotions had successfully drained him. The quiet house was much different from his room in Hell, and he felt quite at peace here. Honestly, I might just move in, Damien thought, just for a couple days or so, though, I wouldn’t want to step all over Ozzie... He had just about gotten to sleep when he felt a pressure on his lap.
“Daaaames~” Oz’s voice floated through the air, quiet and sultry. Damien opened his eyes to see a fearling sitting on his lap, legs spread.
“Hey~” Damien responded, before chuckling and pulling Oz close to him. Their foreheads met with a soft bonk and they pressed their noses together. This was all new to Oz who, not only had never had any sexual relations before, but had also never had any relationships, period. He squeaked as his face turned white again but didn’t move away from Damien. It felt right to be here with him.
“Dames,” Oz asked, “what does it mean to be around someone who makes you feel fuzzy and you get butterflies in your nonexistent stomach?”
Damien smiled. God, he can be so adorably dumb sometimes, he thought. “Well, I think that means that that someone is your soulmate...”
Oz shot upright. “Those exist?!” he yelled.
The demon burst into laughter. “Of course they exist, Ozzie!” he said. “People find their soulmates in Hell all the time! It’s just harder to find them on Earth because there’s the whole travel thing, and you may not even be living at the same time, so there’s that, and—”
Damien was cut off from finishing his thought as Oz threw his arms around him and kissed him.
Sparks flew as the two interlocked their lips, a brilliant display of light, of wonder, of finally feeling free. The world shone with vibrance and passion, angelic sounds perfectly in tune rang out, and the world finally seemed to align. Every single action, every unimportant decision, every word spoken, had culminated to this very moment, where the love of the two soulmates sent a beacon of desire, of lust, of love, of hope into the wider world and the universes surrounding it.
Eventually, they slowly pulled away, gaze locked on each other as time seemed to stand still.
“Woah...” was all Oz could mutter.
“Wow...” Damien copied.
“That was amazing...” Oz said, words slurred ever so slightly. His eyes were heavy, scanning each and every one of Damien’s chiseled features, taking in as much as he could of his soulmate.
“Yeah, that was...” Damien parroted.
The living room went silent for a moment as sexual tension bubbled up in both of them. In Damien, his mind began to wander as his hands did in real time. He first imagined Oz underneath him in bed, squirming ever so slightly, Damien’s tail holding his wrists above his head as he squeaked out small moans and begs. His fantasies then shifted to railing Oz in the bathroom at school, the little fearling trying desperately to quiet his moans, but to no avail. Spreading Oz’s legs forcefully and jacking him off, letting him melt underneath the demon, teasing and cooing, making him a subservient little whore. Oz’s fantasies were not much different, with the scripts simple reversed. The creature of fear laying down on the bed as Damien gets through to him. Getting used in the bathroom, Damien whispering in his ear, “You dirty little slut, you can’t get enough of me outside of school~?”
What brought the two back to the present wasn’t their sexual desires finally coming to light as they ripped off their clothes and fucked like dogs for the rest of the night, nor was it a late-night visitor barging in and catching the two on top of each other, gazing longingly into each other’s eyes. It was the phobias popping their bitty heads up from Oz’s shoulders and cackling at the two lovebirds.
“Ack- s-stop that, you guys!” Oz squealed in retaliation. “Who started it? Xeno? Atelo?” As the phobias peeked their heads up when Oz called their names, Damien could do nothing but watch in adoration as Oz’s nature came out: just a kid trying to figure stuff out. Who didn’t fit that description? Two phobias who looked suspicious were sitting atop Oz’s head, looking down upon the giggly crowd with sly smirks. Damien grabbed the two – and by extension, Oz’s hair, which caused him to squeak and whine – and pulled them away. The two blobs quickly changed their demeanor.
“I think these two rapscallions committed the crime, Oz,” Damien said.
“Well, look at Detective LaVey!” Oz said, a proud grin shining for Damien, before his expression soured and he glared at the two phobias in Damien’s hand. “Claustro. Equino. You know better than to start egging on the other phobias. I mean, honestly, how many times do I have to tell you that...”
Damien smiled.
Maybe Damien LaVey did help people after all.
“I love you so much, Ozzie...” the demon said after the rambunctious phobias had been dealt with and placed back in the void on time-out, reaching to softly hold Oz’s hand.
“I love you too, Dames,” the fearling said, grasping Damien’s hand gently.
Yeah. Damien LaVey is definitely gonna start helping people.