Chapter Text
Donghyuck found the book in his university's library. He hadn’t been studying there, or anything. He was resting up in between his eight a.m. and his next class at eleven, tucked away in a corner on one of the library’s top floors, when he happened to spy it. It stood out, distinct among the rest of the books in the shelves in the dark row where he’d made his nap space.
The book was grubby, old. It looked as though a slight gust of wind might send its cover flying off. Donghyuck squinted at it from his perch on the ground, but he couldn’t make out a single letter of the title. He didn’t even know if it was written in any recognizable language.
Donghyuck did what any reasonable person would do when confronted by a mysterious, ancient tome. He jumped up and daintily plucked it from the shelf.
Eagerly, he cracked it open. He held his breath as a strong waft of the musty smell of old parchment gusted up. As he read the words that were written in crackled old ink across the book’s cover page, Donghyuck started to smile.
‘Magick Moste Potente’, it read.
Donghyuck wondered if the book was some prop from a film student’s final project film. He wondered if it had somehow had found its way onto the shelf. It didn’t look as though it’d been artificially aged, though, Donghyuck thought.
Donghyuck thumbed through it, his curiosity mounting. The paper was thicker than he was used to. It felt grainy to the touch, its edges time-darkened. The words within were legible but only just. The cramped pages were full of misspellings and gnarled, handwritten characters.
Donghyuck turned another page, taking care with the rigid paper, and his breath caught in his throat.
‘Daemones Invokare’, written in a different color from the rest of the text. It was a deep burgundy tone, faded almost to brown at the barest edges of the letters. Almost as though it’d been written in blood. Donghyuck involuntarily shuddered, but he dismissed the thought.
Beneath the Latin, a list of instructions. Donghyuck’s eyes flitted back and forth as he scoured the page. He didn’t know the first thing about Latin, but he knew what demons were. He’d seen his fair share of Supernatural.
Donghyuck was starting to think that, whatever this book was, it was the real deal. Why he’d found an ancient book purporting to be able to help the reader summon demons, he couldn’t be sure. But, a small voice in Donghyuck’s head pointed out, the demon invocation didn’t look like it required a lot of time or effort.
Even if it was futile, it wouldn’t waste more than half an hour of Donghyuck’s time to carry out. Donghyuck had wasted many half hours doing even dumber shit, the small voice added. Donghyuck had to admit that its logic was beginning to make sense.
With that creeping thought in mind, Donghyuck gingerly slipped the book into his backpack. Carefully, right in between his laptop and his chemistry textbook. If nothing else, he thought, he was protecting the book from falling into the wrong hands. Someone with less innocent intentions than he could have found it and summoned up a demon for some awful purpose.
Not Donghyuck. Curiosity wasn’t the worst reason to want to carry out demonic rituals, he reasoned.
All throughout his eleven o'clock lecture, the book weighed on Donghyuck’s mind. Rather than copying the professor’s lecture on elements and valences, Donghyuck spent the period scribbling notes on the supplies the book had listed for the ritual.
He just needed candles, an altar, and some chalk he could use to draw the inverted pentagram. He was pretty sure he could sneak into Renjun’s dorm and steal a portion of his scented candle collection without Renjun noticing. Renjun’s roommate Jaemin would let him in, and he’d never dare tattle on Donghyuck. Donghyuck had leverage on him. He knew secrets.
An altar. Donghyuck scratched the word out, on his notes. A desk would work just fine, he thought. He was too lazy to bother with going to the art store by campus to pick up chalk. He hoped washable marker would work for the rital.
He didn’t really want to be stuck with a pentagram permanently drawn on his dorm’s desk. Donghyuck thought that might not go over well with either Jeno or their RAs.
Donghyuck caught the girl who was seated beside him eying his notes. Her eyebrows has risen nearly up to her hairline, and her hand had stilled in her own note-taking. Donghyuck flipped the page to a fresh sheet, then shot her a look.
He figured it was her own fault she’d gone and alarmed herself. If she didn’t want to see his plans for demon summoning, perhaps she shouldn’t have gone around snooping in other people’s notebooks.
Donghyuck stopped by Renjun and Jaemin’s on the way back to his dorm. Expectedly, Renjun was out and Jaemin was there. Unexpectedly, he didn’t have company.
“Hey, Jaemin,” Donghyuck grinned, as Jaemin opened the door.
He peered around him, looking for a foreign face. Some stranger who’d stick around for a week or two before Jaemin gave them the boot, because he was flawed, and they were too good for him. That claim was a load of shit, of course. The strangers all just lacked certain Renjun-like attributes.
“What are you looking for?” Jaemin asked, sounding amused, “I’m right here.”
Donghyuck let out a short sigh. He ducked under Jaemin’s outstretched arm and into the dorm. As he’d thought, it was unoccupied aside from Jaemin.
He stalked over to Renjun’s side of the room, raising his hand and tapping his chin as he surveyed the tidy space.
“Try it on someone who hasn’t had to listen to you sob for an hour because you got wasted and threw up all over your only pink polo shirt,” Donghyuck frowned. Renjun’s space was too tidy. He couldn’t see any of the candles that he knew, for a fact, Renjun had brought from home, “Where are Renjun’s candles?”
“Ouch,” Jaemin intoned. Though, from his tone, he was more entertained than hurt. Donghyuck heard the dorm door close. A moment later, the sound of Jaemin’s footsteps signalled his approach.
“Candles?” Jaemin repeated, “What do you need Renjun’s candles for?”
Donghyuck dropped to his knees, and started digging through the boxes underneath Renjun’s bed. Hopefully Renjun would forgive him if he noticed anything had moved, but Donghyuck didn’t plan on leaving any traces behind.
“I’m trying to summon a demon,” Donghyuck answered, short.
He stuck his tongue out between his teeth as he reached shoulder deep into a box that already looked promising. He spied bathbombs and incense within it.
“Oh. Right.”
There was a moment of silence. Donghyuck let out a slight sound of triumph as his fingers hit a wide cylinder of glass. He grabbed for it and withdrew it. A baby pink candle, supposedly scented like Summer Sangria. One down, three to go. He reached back in the box.
“Did someone piss you off or…?”
Donghyuck located another candle. He drew that one out too. It was a deep evergreen, Pine Forest scented. It wouldn’t really mesh with the Summer Sangria, but Donghyuck was desperate. He placed it by the other candle, carefully setting it on the dorm room floor. He reached into the box with both hands.
“Nah,” Donghyuck explained, “I just found this really old book in the library and it had a bunch of dark magic in it and, well, you know.”
“I’m not sure that I do, actually,” Jaemin said, slow and cautious.
Donghyuck let out a muted ‘A-ha!’ as he found two other candles. He drew them out of the box, victorious. Cosy Sweater and Vanilla Frosting, respectively. Donghyuck was almost tempted to keep those two after he’d finished the ritual.
He slid the box back under Renjun’s bed, untucking the bed’s comforter when it was snagged and tugged back with the box. He checked that he’d left the area exactly as he’d found it-- minus the four candles. Once he was satisfied that he had, Donghyuck gathered the candles into his grasp and clambered up.
Jaemin was staring at him, his brows lifted in what might have been either concern or confusion.
“Hyuck, are you, like... good?” he asked. His question halted Donghyuck in his tracks, before he had to chance to start for the door.
Donghyuck blinked at him, feeling more than a little dismayed at how quickly Jaemin had jumped to the conclusion that he was unwell.
“I can’t attempt a little demonic ritual without having my sanity questioned?”
Jaemin stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. His gaze was uncertain.
“Finals are coming up. Stress can make you do funny things,” he said.
“Ah. So you think I’m crazy?” Donghyuck accused. He sighed, forlorn, “Maybe I’ll send the demon after you right after I successfully summon it.”
Donghyuck was joking. He was pretty sure he was joking, anyways.
Jaemin pulled a face, “You do that.”
“I’ll figure out a way for the demon to make you tell Renjun how you feel,” Donghyuck muttered as he walked out from their dorm room, “That’d be diabolical.”
“I’m getting shivers,” Jaemin said, in the flattest voice, before shutting the door in Donghyuck’s face.
Donghyuck frowned at the closed door for a beat. He resolved to get revenge, some way or another. He slipped his backpack off his shoulder, carefully laid the candles around so they wouldn’t bump up against the magic book as he walked, then continued on his way.
Five floors up and ten minutes of hastily lighting candles and sketching a massive five point star on his desk later, Donghyuck was ready to begin the ritual. He drew the blinds closed, dimming the room. He flicked the lock on their door, so he’d at least buy himself some time in between the rattle of Jeno’s key and Jeno’s entry. He’d need to throw some books over the pentagram to hide what he was doing, or he’d risk upsetting Jeno.
Donghyuck slipped into his desk chair and cracked open the book. He carded carefully through it until he landed on the ‘ Daemon Invokares’ page once more. Donghyuck wondered whether he ought to play some music. Something dark, ominous. Something befitting the act of demon summoning.
Then, he dismissed the idea as a symptom that all the mixed scents of all of Renjun’s candles getting to his head. Donghyuck scanned the page, looking for the summoning words that had been written in capital letters. He found them, easily. Looking closer than he had looked at the text in the library, Donghyuck noticed that there was something written to the side of the summoning words.
It was a note, its letters hard to read and slanted, as though they had been dashed off in a hurry. Donghyuck craned his head and squinted to decipher the untidy scrawl.
‘do not utter aloud’
Donghyuck’s eyes were caught on the scrawled warning. He found himself unable to look away from it. He thought, briefly, that he could stop and consider the consequences of his planned actions. Then that thought was stamped out, as he reminded himself that there wouldn’t be any consequences for his actions.
Demons weren’t real, magic wasn’t real. Donghyuck was just doing this because he was putting off doing his biology homework, and absolutely nothing would come of it.
Donghyuck straightened his back, cleared his throat, and started reading.
It was a short incantation, but he hadn’t practiced it before lightning the candles and drawing the pentagram, so he had no way of knowing if he’d said it correctly. As Donghyuck spoke, the wisps of flame above all four candles flickered, although the air was stagnant within the dorm.
The light from the window lessened. It was as though a cloud had been blown over the sun, throwing the world into shadow. The room itself, already dim, went even darker.
Donghyuck forged on. With a conviction he didn’t feel, he said the final words.
“Daemon, esto subjecto voluntati meae. Et ad congregandum, eos coram me.”
Donghyuck waited, with bated breath, the magic book still held in his hands. For a moment, the room shifted even darker, the four candles serving as the sole sources of light. The candles’ flames flared up, stretching into inches-tall spires that had Donghyuck leaning back out of the fear of getting burned.
Then, in the blink of an eye, everything went back to normal. The clouds outside dissipated, leaving Donghyuck’s dorm saturated with the sunlight that diffused through the window’s blinds.
The candles’ flames extinguished themselves, one by one, in a clockwork motion. The last flame to go out was the leftmost one. Donghyuck eyed it, uneasy. He followed the subtle curl of smoke from it as it drifted up towards the ceiling, his heart racing from everything that had happened as he’d read the summoning words.
There was a knock at the door, to Donghyuck’s left. Startled, he jumped. He froze, as dread filled him-- an unnatural dark, chilled sensation. Donghyuck peered at the door and inhaled, shaky. Whoever it was had only knocked two times, and no more.
Donghyuck told himself it was probably just Jeno. Maybe he’d forgotten his key, or lost it in his backpack, again. He just kept telling himself that, as he hastily pushed the candles to the back of his desk and pulled a few textbooks haphazardly over the pentagram.
Donghyuck jumped up and strode to the door, both dreading and anticipating opening it and finding out whoever was beyond it.
Donghyuck yanked it open. His breath caught in his throat. The boy on the other side of the door definitely wasn’t Jeno. Donghyuck blinked as he took him in.
He had big black boots on, dark jeans so tight they garnered a raised eyebrow from Donghyuck. Donghyuck’s eyes continued to travel up. He was wearing yet more black-- a black tee underneath a leather jacket. The boy’s eyes, lined with dark, smudged kohl, were narrowed by the time Donghyuck’s gaze finally reached them. His brows, swooping arches, were pulled low over them.
Donghyuck jolted. He realized, with a hot curl of embarrassment, that he’d been caught staring.
“Uh. Hi,” Donghyuck greeted, weak.
He glanced over his shoulder to make sure his demon summoning stuff was hidden from view. For the most part, he was safe. A corner of the pentagram, an eye-catching purple because of the marker he’d chosen, was still visible. Donghyuck would just have to shuttle this guy away before he was any the wiser.
“Can I help you?” Donghyuck asked, keeping his voice neutral. He pulled the door a little tighter in, just in case.
“That depends,” the goth guy said, “Are you Lee Donghyuck?”
Donghyuck wondered if he should lie. He could say his name was Jeno, that Donghyuck was out right then, that Goth Guy should just come back later. He pressed his lips together.
“Yes,” he admitted.
Goth Guy let out a soft sound of disbelief, a scoff. He seemed to take in Donghyuck for the first time. Donghyuck tried not to fidget, as Goth Guy’s eyes flicked over the length of him. He felt distinctly shabby, in his regular old non-skintight jeans, and his regular old t-shirt he’d gotten for free at some university function.
“You’re the guy who managed to complete the invocation ritual?” His voice was odd. There was a note there that, if Donghyuck didn’t know any better, he might think was awed, “Wow. I mean, no offense, but I was expecting someone a bit more… evil.”
Donghyuck blanched as the words ‘invocation’ and ‘ritual’ escaped Goth Guy’s lips.
Panicked, he reached out and grasped the guy’s forearm. Donghyuck pulled him inside the dorm, locking the door behind them.
“How do you know about that? Are you some kind of stalker?” he hissed, his throat seizing up.
He wondered if Goth Guy was part of the NSA or the FBI. Maybe he’d seen Donghyuck take the magic book from the library and he’d gotten curious. Maybe he was a vengeful priest, pissed off that Donghyuck had tried to summon a demon.
Donghyuck froze, once more. He’d only realized then, once they were out of the darkened hallway and into the sunlit dorm, that the guy’s ears didn’t look like normal ears. Instead of cresting in a smooth curve like they should have, they were slightly pinched off at the top, ending in a tip.
Goth Guy had pointed ears. Donghyuck let out a measured breath, trying to tell himself that, though not exactly normal, it wasn’t that weird for people to have pointed ears. Maybe Goth Guy was a cosplayer or a plastic surgery addict. Maybe he’d actually been born that way, or--.
“Dude,” Goth Guy raised his hands in a placating gesture, “Chill. I’m your demon.”
Donghyuck’s heart stopped entirely.
“You’re my what?”
Goth Guy smiled. His lips parted and the corners of his mouth lifted, spreading into a nervous grin. It was then that Donghyuck realized that the tips of his canine teeth were sharpened. They ended in a slight but definite point. Pointed ears, pointed teeth.
Donghyuck was starting to feel lightheaded, as Goth Guy shook his raised hands in a facsimile of jazz hands.
“Ta-da?”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Donghyuck said, dazed, still looking at the guy’s pointed teeth.
He watched as the smile slid off the guy’s face. Donghyuck saw his nostrils flare, before an uncertain expression crossed his face.
“Why does it smell like tropical Christmas in here?” the guy asked.
Donghyuck instinctively shifted, putting his body in between the guy and his desk. On it, the traces of the summoning ritual remained. The candles still had melted wax. The pentagram was still visible, exposing him.
“You’re probably just inventing smells,” Donghyuck said, quickly spinning a cover up, “It might be connected to your delusions of being a mythical creature?” Donghyuck shook his head, schooled his expression into something sympathetic, piteous, “You should see someone about that.”
As much as Donghyuck blustered through it, feigning confidence, he was filled with doubt. Goth Guy seemed to have knowledge he shouldn’t have. He knew what Donghyuck had been doing right before he’d knocked. He certainly looked the part, from all the black right down to his pointed ears and teeth.
“You summoned me with scented candles?” the guy asked, aghast.
He strode forward, past Donghyuck, to his desk. Donghyuck was helpless but to watch, as the guy shoved his textbooks aside. He let out a low cry at the sight of the pentagram drawn in marker on the desk.
“Purple?” Goth Guy sounded almost offended, “Who sets out to summon a demon and decides that purple’s the appropriate color for the occasion?”
Donghyuck bristled. He was still feeling doubtful, but annoyance was starting to settle in alongside his uncertainty.
“Me? Clearly,” he stalked up to the guy, crowding up to him so he’d have to drag his gaze from the mess Donghyuck had made of his desk, “Look, you can’t just barge in here, claiming to be a--.”
“You dragged me in here,” the guy said, his widened eyes flicking up to Donghyuck.
“Semantics,” Donghyuck countered, “How you got here doesn’t matter. You’re here, and it’s time for that to change. I’m kicking you out.”
The guy’s lips parted in shock, exposing the tips of his pointed teeth once more. Now that Donghyuck looked closer, he realized that the guy’s bottom canines were pointed as well. Donghyuck really needed to stop looking at the guy. The longer he did, the more he found that confused him.
“You can’t kick me out. I’m your demon. I’m bound to you.”
“Stop saying that word,” Donghyuck hissed, aggravated. He clenched onto the guy’s leather jacket and tugged him back to the door.
“What? Demon?” the guy asked, stumbling as Donghyuck dragged him to the exit.
Donghyuck let out a strangled noise of frustration. He wrenched the door open, and shoved the guy out. He closed the door in his shocked face. Donghyuck sighed, once the guy was out of sight. He listed forward, exhausted by the wholly unexpected and bizarre interaction.
Resting his forehead up against the cool faux-wood of the door, he pondered if that was the weirdest conversation he’d had with anyone since coming to college. Sure, there was that guy with the pamphlets who shouted things like ‘feminists are witches’, but he thought that maybe Goth Guy took the cake.
He had the ears and teeth, but Donghyuck had to scoff at the ridiculous idea that he was really a demon. For one, demons didn’t exist. For another, even if they did, they wouldn't look like that guy had. Demons were supposed to be horrific, ugly. Goth guy may have had a horrific sense of style, but he definitely wasn’t demonically ugly.
With that thought soothing his unsettled mind, Donghyuck righted himself, and turned.
He froze at what he saw waiting for him, his breath catching in his throat. Goth Guy was standing on their plush dorm rug with his hands shoved in his pockets, looking sheepish.
“‘Sup,” the guy greeted. He had on a small grin. It was lopsided, showing off just one of his pointed teeth.
“Huh,” Donghyuck intoned, “Well. Shit.”
He was starting to entertain the thought that maybe the guy had been telling the truth about himself after all. The teeth, the magically appearing in the middle of Donghyuck’s dorm. The fact that he’d showed up right after the invocation ritual was a bit of a tell, as well. Donghyuck cocked his head to the side, considering him.
He felt an inkling of amusement creep in, overtaking his dread and general confusion. He had a demon at his disposal, apparently-- and not just any demon. A cute demon. The longer Donghyuck thought about it, the closer he came to the conclusion that it was kind of neat.
“Actually,” Donghyuck said, “This might be kind of fun.”
The demon’s nervous smile flickered, his brows drawing together above his eyes.
“Fun?” he repeated, “Donghyuck, I’m not sure you understand what a demon being bound to you means.”
Donghyuck grinned. He swept past the demon, onto his bed, lifting his leg up and crossing it over the other. He looked at the demon attentively, as he perched his hands atop his knee.
“Why don’t you explain it to me, then?”
Donghyuck was cursed. The demon hadn’t said it quite that succinctly. In fact, it seemed like he’d toed around saying it outright and tried to soften the delivery of the news. But it boiled down to the same thing: Donghyuck was cursed for the foreseeable future.
Turns out, you were supposed to have a subject of your invocation in mind as you called upon the demon. Donghyuck had been thinking of nothing beyond the words themselves-- his mind had been almost completely blank. Without a proper channel for demonic energy, it had rebounded on the caster-- Donghyuck himself.
“That’s a bummer,” Donghyuck sighed, plopping his chin onto his palm.
He gazed at the demon. He’d joined Donghyuck on his bed after minutes of Donghyuck pestering him to just make himself comfortable already. He didn’t look comfortable perched atop Donghyuck’s small dorm bed at all, though.
“So are you gonna, like, suck my blood or something?” Donghyuck asked. He wondered if he should be worried about having to wear scarfs when it was barely chilly out yet.
The demon shook his head.
Donghyuck tried to help the smile that rose to his lips, upon seeing the demon’s hair flop about his pointed ears. He couldn’t help it. The knowledge that he’d been cursed hadn’t quite sunk in yet. He was still relishing in the fact that he’d found a cute goth boy with little to no effort on his part.
“I think you’re thinking of vampires?” the demon said, uncertain.
Donghyuck was coming to realize that the demon acted completely at odds with his image. All tentative and shy.
Donghyuck’s smile broadened to a grin, upon coming to that realization. He straightened, tapped the side of his nose, then pointed at the demon. The demon’s eyes widened, nearly crossing as they followed the path Donghyuck’s finger traced.
“I’ve got it. You’ve come to suck out my soul.”
“...I’m pretty sure that’s dementors,” the demon said, after a beat. His gaze was still fixed on Donghyuck’s finger, “You can sell your soul to me, if you’d like. But I can’t suck it out.”
Donghyuck wondered when the demon would realize that Donghyuck was just messing with him. He tried, gamely, to suppress his laughter. The demon was so unexpectedly sincere. Donghyuck’s efforts were futile, though, and a high laugh burst out of him seconds later.
“Oh,” the demon scowled. He reached up and flicked Donghyuck’s finger out from his face. Donghyuck let out another poorly concealed peal of laughter.
“Right. Humans all think they’re comedians,” the demon muttered.
If Donghyuck didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought he heard a pout in the demon’s voice. But demons didn’t pout, surely.
“And, no. This curse isn’t going to be like that,” the demon explained. His tone shifted, more brusque. His brows lowered, and he looked as though he was trying awfully hard to remember something, “I’ll be responsible for turning your luck and your opportunities sour. I’ll make it hard for you to succeed at anything you attempt.”
Donghyuck was still grinning, though it’d gone ironic.
“Bad luck and failing everything? Sounds like the life of the average college student anyways, with or without a curse.”
The demon’s shoulders slumped.
“Donghyuck, you shouldn’t take bad luck lightly,” he said, grave.
Donghyuck couldn’t help but feel he’d disappointed him by taking the news of the conditions of his curse in stride. He shrugged at the demon, apologetic, but not willing to act scared about a supposed curse that really didn’t sound so bad.
The demon opened his mouth but, before he could say a thing, the sound of the lock rattling cut him off.
Jeno. Donghyuck realized, with a jolt, that time had passed quicker than he’d thought as he’d talked with the demon. Hours had seemed like minutes, and Jeno’s last class was long over.
“Shit,” Donghyuck hissed. He wondered if this was the beginning of his bad luck, or if that was yet to come.
It was already bad enough that Donghyuck hadn’t had a chance to clean up the signs of the invocation ritual. One look at the demon, with his pointed ears and teeth, and Jeno would know what Donghyuck had gotten up to in the time he was away.
Oh, he wouldn’t exactly know. But he’d figure out Donghyuck had definitely gotten up to something suspect. And then Jeno would sigh, and he’d look at Donghyuck with disappointment. Donghyuck couldn’t bear that.
“He can’t see you!” Donghyuck was panicking, feeling almost as nervous as he’d felt when the demon had first appeared.
The demon blinked at him, unhelpfully, his lips still parted. As the door clicked open, and Jeno’s sneakers squeaked against the tile floor, Donghyuck surged forward. He clamped his hands over the demon’s ears, covering them.
Jeno’s sneakers stopped squeaking. The door clicked shut, the sound loud in the subsequent silence of the room. Donghyuck winced. He turned to look over his shoulder. Jeno was staring at he and the demon. They probably painted an odd picture, sitting together on Donghyuck’s bed, Donghyuck’s hands stuck to the demon’s ears.
Donghyuck chanced a glance at the demon, before looking back to Jeno. The demon had a dumbstruck look on his face, and his eyes were trained on Donghyuck.
“Hyuck, you should’ve told me you had someone over,” Jeno said, finally, breaking the silence, “Sorry, guys. Let me just pick up a few things and I’ll be on my way”
Donghyuck pressed his lips together, conflicted. It was good that Jeno was leaving, but the fact that he’d come to that conclusion regarding he and the demon was unfortunate. He’d never hear the end of it.
“Oh,” Jeno said, pausing with his backpack zipped open. He slung it off, then stalked quickly over to Donghyuck’s bed, extending his hand, “I’m Jeno, by the way. Donghyuck’s roommate. Nice to meet you.”
Donghyuck’s nerves spiked. Surely, he thought, they were doomed. The demon was going to introduce himself. He’d call himself Lucifer, or Alistair. Satan was a likely option, too. Then Jeno would see his teeth and Donghyuck’s hand would slip off from the demon’s pointed ears, and the secret would be out.
Donghyuck gulped around the sudden lump in his throat, as the demon’s eyes flicked down to Jeno’s hand. He reached out, and grasped it. Distantly, Donghyuck noted that his nails were neatly painted black, matching the rest of his ensemble.
“Mark,” the demon said. Donghyuck barely concealed his choke of surprise, “I’m Donghyuck’s d--.”
“Date!” Donghyuck blurted out.
His mind was reeling from the revelation that his demon was named Mark . There were probably fifteen guys in his chemistry lecture alone named Mark. Quieter, more subdued with both Mark’s and Jeno’s eyes on him, Donghyuck added, “Mark’s my date. Obviously.”
Heat started to rise to his cheeks. Donghyuck wanted nothing more than not to blush at that moment, but the demon-- Mark-- was looking at him with such curiosity. Donghyuck’s hands were on his ears, and his hair was soft beneath Donghyuck’s fingers.
So he couldn’t will the blush down, and he knew without a doubt that his face was likely flushed a bright pink.
“Okay,” Jeno said, eventually, drawing out the final syllable of the word.
He glanced at Donghyuck, his eyes flicking briefly to Donghyuck’s hands on Mark’s ears. Donghyuck blanked. He cast about for suitable explanation for why he’d kept his hands there from the start.
“Mark’s ears are just… the cutest,” Donghyuck said, weak. He patted them. Once, twice, his face burning by that point, “So cute. Can’t stop touching them.”
“Okay,” Jeno repeated, in the same tone.
Mark was staring at Donghyuck as if he had a screw loose. Though Donghyuck wasn’t ready to be judged so harshly by a demon of all things, he wasn’t sure he completely disagreed.
“I’m gonna go now,” Jeno said, haltingly, as he backed up.
Donghyuck squeezed his eyes shut, let out a tight sigh. His fingers were stiff on the sides of Mark’s head. During the whole minefield of conversation with Jeno they’d probably gone clammy, but he was almost beyond caring.
“Alright. I’ll text you when we head out,” Donghyuck said.
He waited until the dorm door had closed before he opened his eyes. The first thing he did was draw his hands off Mark’s ears and into his lap. Donghyuck noted something that made him wonder if his eyes were playing tricks on him. The pointed tips of Mark’s ears were flushed a dusty red.
Donghyuck shook his head at himself. Of course they were flushed. Donghyuck’s hands had probably warmed them up.
“Sorry,” he said, sincerely. He regretted everything Mark had been forced to witness and experience just then, “I’m kinda gonna blame you for that one though. Jeno walking in? Me blanking out and not thinking of a decent explanation? Shit luck, for sure.”
Mark blinked at him. After a moment, he seemed to comprehend what Donghyuck had saying. He let out a sharp sigh.
He reached up and rearranged his mussed hair about the tips of his ears. When he’d finished, it ended up concealing the most flushed parts from view. Donghyuck felt the loss for it. He hadn’t been lying to Jeno about at least one thing, he realized. Mark’s ears were cute.
“See?” Mark sighed, “I don’t even have to intentionally do anything. I just have to be present for the curse to mess up your life.”
Donghyuck didn’t really know how to react to that. Not that Mark’s mere presence made his luck turn bad, but the fact that Mark didn’t seem to want to be carrying out the curse in the first place. His brows were drawn together, and the corners of his lips were tugged down in a frown.
“You’re kind of a bad demon,” Donghyuck mused, “you don’t even seem happy that your curse is working.”
Mark’s shoulders inched higher, and he cast his gaze down. His eyes fell to Donghyuck’s hands, folded neatly on his lap.
“It’s your curse,” he said, after a beat of uneasy silence, “I’m just carrying it out.”
Donghyuck fell back onto his old standby when words and thoughts failed him: good, old fashioned false confidence, “Well. My life’s not messed up. Jeno’s just going to have a little more fodder for teasing me but, other than that, I’m swell.”
“You say that now,” Mark said, his frown deepening. He looked back up, his eyes imploring, “Most people would start looking for a way to break their curse right about now.”
Donghyuck grinned, despite himself. He wondered if Mark’s eyes always looked that bright, if their luster was some demonic thing, or if it was just… Mark.
“Why would I do that when I’m having so much fun?”
The worst part was that Donghyuck was having fun. His face was still burning, and Mark’s prolonged eye contact made him feel prickly all over, but he knew one thing: he didn’t want to break the curse just yet. He didn’t want this to end when it’d only just begun.