Young Writers Society

God faltered, glancing back to give Cornyx an incredulous look.

"I don't think you'd want to do it," he said. "It's not your style, not your job, and definitely not how you'd want to spend your free time."

He'd just offered, then been declined, and he certainly wasn't going to push it. This wasn't his agenda--this was Dean's. If Dean didn't want him around because he didn't like him, then that was his own prerogative. The demon regarded him somewhat owlishly for a couple moments, then shrugged.

"Alright," he said, and then went to go grab his suit from the closet, assuming that he'd just leave.

Runi groaned.

She knew they had tensions, and she knew that this wasn't exactly the conversation either one had been expecting. But Cornyx was offering his help, and God definitely needed it, so neither one of them was going anywhere until she got to the bottom of this.

"What exactly do you need?" Runi said, grabbing onto God's sleeve and blocking the doorway so Cornyx couldn't get by. "I know Cornyx better than you do, and I think you should take him up on his offer if he's giving it."

God let out a groan of his own; it quickly transitioned into a sigh.

"...I need help getting into a place," he said. "It's a gay bar, and the ghost I'm tracking down likes preying on couples. I thought it would be a good idea to go with someone else who was magically inclined and would actually enjoy the bar part, but..."

He trailed off, then winced as he was probably reminded of his hangover.

(Who knew God could get a hangover?)

"What we did last night was a mistake," he said. "Neither one of us knew who the other person was, we got more intimate than either one of us would have been if we weren't wearing those stupid masks, and it was a stupid idea for me to come here in the first place."

It was stupid. The entire thing was stupid. Last night, the things that had been said, the things that had been shared. Alcohol always got him into trouble--ceaselessly, every time--and he knew it and he'd still gone and done it. At least he hadn't hit anyone or done anything illegal but he knew he very well could've.

He grabbed his suit, then took his hat off, hanging it in the closet. "For once, we find ourselves in agreement. Of course, we could both absolve ourselves of responsibility by pretending to forget about it and attributing the entire thing to inebriation, which I, for one, am inclined to," he said. It was hard to tell whether or not he was joking. He sounded serious, but the sentiment was almost...comically cliche. "That being said, I would rather hunt a ghost than repeatedly walk into the back of this closet wall hoping that it'll teleport me home, so it seems that the real lapse in your judgement was in assuming I wouldn't rather than asking if I would."

This concluded, he disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door to change, leaving Dean to contemplate that without his presence.

...God had just a few questions about what Cornyx just said - namely the whole literally going into the closet bit - but he ignored them. Something told him it was a good idea to not kick this gift horse in the mouth.

"We'd have to act like a couple," God said. "Can you handle that?"

A better question: could God handle that?

He paused.

"...Then again, you did make a good angel that one time..."

Could he handle that? He almost found himself offended that Dean thought he couldn't. He might've been hungover, but that didn't mean that he couldn't play his part, regardless of what that part was. And of course they were a couple--hadn't that already been implied from the fact that the ghost was only targeting such pairs?

"I'm frankly offended that you think I couldn't," Cornyx replied, re-emerging in that impeccable white suit of his. His collar was up and his tie was partway around his neck as he evened it out to tie it. "I made a good angel because I'm good at imitation. I'm a changeling. Pretending to be something I'm not is something I have literally been doing since the day I was born. So! Are you going to sit there and continue to question my ability to 'handle' things or are you going to have some Advil and stop looking like you have the hangover you do so that we can go?"

God just gave Cornyx a look.

Cornyx, apparently, hadn't caught onto the subtext that Runi got about a minute into the conversation. She awkwardly cleared her throat as she looked back at him - stepping aside so God could enter the room if he wanted to.

He didn't move.

"Um, Cornyx?" Runi quietly said. "I don't think you being able to act is the problem..."

One look at God confirmed her guess.

"Both of you are trying to ignore last night, and pretending to be a couple probably is going to make that difficult," she said in one quick breath.

Subtext. Right. He was usually pretty good at keeping up with it at this point, but apparently the hangover and the other things surrounding dealing with Dean tripped him up. At least Runi said it. He internally kicked himself for missing it--it was stupid, and now he'd put everyone else in an awkward situation just because he was incapable--but it was what it was, so he just took it in stride and tried to promptly fix it.

"Last night is over and done with," he said. "After today, I'll hopefully be gone back to my world and you, Mr. Dean, will never see me again anyways. Regardless, I think we're both capable at this point of living such a lie and leaving last night well alone, in spite of what that lie is."

Runi didn't say anything in response. All it took was long look at God's face for her to realize that Cornyx's idea of forgetting the previous night wasn't going to work with at least one of the two. She knew that look - it was the kind of hopeless, pining look she had always hidden around Nissam. Cornyx thought he could move past whatever happened last night, but God had clearly fallen head over heels for "Cain".

"Problem solved, then," God stiffly said. "The bar doesn't open for a few more hours, so I'll head back to my hotel room to change into something a little less...formal. I'll be back later."

And, with that, God was gone.

Cornyx visibly relaxed once Dean left, going and closing the door behind him. Thank the lord it was over. Which was ironic, now that he thought about it, but he pushed that aside; it wasn't the point.

"I shouldn't have agreed to that," he sighed, leaning back against it. Why even had he? Boredom? Wanting to help? Some desire to fuck with Dean? He preferred to think the latter, or perhaps the first one. The second...well. That was a thought to be avoided. "Last night was stupid. Drinking was stupid. Enormously stupid."

Runi gave an awkward smile.

"You didn't know who he was last night," she hesitantly reminded him. "So if you enjoyed it, maybe it wasn't a mistake?"

Maybe it wasn't a mistake.

If it wasn't a mistake, that implied that last night had meant something. Anything. Something so simple as enjoyment of it brought with it things that he wanted to avoid. If he'd liked last night--and it therefore wasn't a mere fluke--then on some level, he liked Dean.

"It was a mistake," he said, and his tone didn't leave much room for argument. It had to be a mistake.

Runi frowned. She wasn't going to press the conversation further, but she just had to get in one last point before they changed topics and activities.

She walked in the kitchen to make Cornyx and her some breakfast. Pancakes sounded good, especially when she had some chocolate chips in the fridge she could throw in.

"It's okay to love people," she said. She kept her gaze focused on the ingredients as she got them out. "I...I loved Nissam. There's nothing if you like God - I think it's just a matter of figuring out how you want to ignore those feelings."

The Winter King. Fearless, merciless, ruthless, draconian. A heart of snow and an empire of ice. Intelligent as the crows whose voices haunted his recollections, silent as the falling flakes, swift and unrelenting as the frost-kissed storms. Who'd slain an Archangel and two Princes; who'd overcome Heaven, civil war, rebellion; who rose above the mere soldiers, the last dragon, a god among man- and demonkind.

The line between the man and the facade was a thin one. The face he wore was not his own, yet crafted of his own flesh; the words he spoke, not his heart's, but wielded by his own voice. The voice of the boy and the beast and the man who'd become everything the world condemned them to be and thought they could never achieve. Defied the sentiments of men much greater to seize the throne and the crown and the subservience of all those who now knelt in his presence.

Ruler, prisoner, criminal. Dragon, changeling, human. Prince Thaalajahar, Cain Tanner, Cornyx Blackthorne.

His dark eyes fell to the ground, faintest edges of frost gracing his fingertips, and he stepped away from the door to follow Runi. She'd known him as the half-child. Now, the world saw him as the beast. Dean certainly did.

"Love is for men, Miss Runi," he answered softly, glancing back towards the threshold behind which Dean had disappeared."Not monsters. Not tyrants."

He tightened his tie, shimmying it to his throat, and then straightened out his button-down, reining in the momentary flash of melancholy to replace it with keen apathy. "May I be of any assistance in the kitchen?"

"I'm good," she reassured him. Part of it was because pancakes weren't hard to make, but it was also because she didn't want to be a bad host - he was the one staying at her place. "Thanks for the offer, though - the pancakes should be done in a few minutes."

As she turned on the stove and started mixing the chocolate chips into the pancake batter, she snuck a glance over at Cornyx. She didn't know a lot about the Bible, but Cain was the name of that guy who had to walk the Earth for eternity. Right? She had seen enough Lucifer to learn that about the Bible.

She wanted to argue with Cornyx about the whole not human and not deserving love speech, but she knew she wouldn't get anywhere. Maybe hanging out with God later would get him to change his mind?

"...So," she slowly started, "where did you get the name Cain from?"