A Demon's Fall to Grace

Ninth Encounter

Salazar woke alone the next morning with the feeling that he had just missed his angel leaving. He wrapped his arms around the other man's pillow and inhaled his scent while basking in the fading warmth. It was a familiar scent, but one he couldn't place. It seemed natural and wild, but as the little demon had spent almost his entire existence in a city, he couldn't remember what it was or where he had smelled it before. He rolled over into the warmth left behind by the angel, and snuggled deeper under the covers while clutching the pillow tightly to his chest.

Though he dozed for a bit surrounded by that smell, he woke a bit later, and decided to actually get up this time. Dragging the pillow behind him, he padded his way into the kitchen to see a note laying on the counter. Yawning, and rubbing his eye, he could almost hear the sound of Malachi's voice as he read it.

'Good morning sleepy head. I had to run out for a bit, duty calls. There's some yogurt and strawberries in the fridge if you get hungry. Make yourself at home, and I'll be back later.'

Salazar thought the yogurt odd, but it grew on him quickly. The strawberries however, were a different story. He loved the taste, but the seeds kept getting stuck in his teeth. Malachi came back to his apartment to find a fiercely concentrating demon trying to remove the offenders from the fruit, one tiny seed at a time.

After a week of Salazar waking up in the angel's bed, the demon began to find a routine. He knew when he woke up alone that he would find a note, and easy to fix and eat food waiting on him. The little demon always greeted Malachi with a smile when he got home, and the two of them would curl up next to the fire as the angel read to him until he fell asleep. The angel never mentioned the pillow that always wound up downstairs that was held in the hands of a sleeping Salazar every night as he was carried to bed.

One such morning he woke to a grinning set of blue eyes above him. "Wake up, I brought you something."

The only mornings he left the pillow behind were the days he woke up to Malachi being home, so he groggily made his way downstairs behind a smiling angel, and let out an eep as he was once again lifted onto the counter. He suspected Malachi did this to bring them closer to each others' eye level, or maybe the angel just liked it?

"I got a couple of different types of apples for you to try."

He held up a slice of something white with a green skin on the end, but when Salazar tried it he nearly spit it out.

"Too sour?" The demon nodded. The next white slice had a yellow skin, but it was far too sweet. "Alright, last one." Salazar was skeptical, but tried the red skinned one anyways.

"It's delicious. It's not too sour, it's not too sweet. It's perfect."

Malachi went back to chopping up the rest of the red apple while chuckling something about Goldilocks under his breath. "There are many different kinds of red apples in the world for you to try, as well as many apple dishes. I'm going to South America today, I'll see what I can find while I'm down there. There is sandwich stuff in the fridge for lunch, I might be a while." He slid the saucer of sliced apples to the happily munching demon, and smiled as he left to get his camera equipment. Once complete he returned to the kitchen, kissed Salazar on the forehead, then disappeared.

The little demon wound up covered in sticky juice, so decided to try and take a shower by himself. He had watched the angel do it enough times, so thought he could probably figure it out. The first spray of cold water made him squeak, but he quickly turned the other knob to make up for it. It took some fiddling, but soon had hot water running down his back.

He would never tell Malachi how cold he always felt, but the hot water seemed to help. He hadn't noticed the fact that he didn't feel quite as cold as he used to when he first came here, but it was still chilly to him. The nights spent absorbing the angel's heat, snuggled in blankets, the time spent gazing into the fire beside that same warm body, the warm drinks, the hot showers, all had had an affect on the demon's body, but the feeling of loneliness and unhappiness is what had had him so close to being frozen. As those emotions, along with the depression slowly melted away, so too did his frozen heart and soul.