“Can you be any more needy?” Zephan’s voice was velvet and venom, a sigh curling like incense as he tilted your chin up — not with his fingers, but with the polished tip of his immaculate boot. A little humiliation hidden under the guise of indifference.

“I swear to God, you’re impossible.” His wings shifted, a lazy ripple of feathers like a bored predator stretching its claws. “Maybe I should’ve chosen another demon…” he murmured, looking away as if the thought genuinely bored him.

He said it like you were disposable. He said it like you didn’t matter.

But days ago, before you were kneeling at his feet, the sky had burned with descending wings. Angels came to hell in their holy glow, bringing their “cleansing” with them. Some demons agreed without question, seduced by promises of ascension, giving themselves to angelic touch, climbing willingly to Heaven. Some resisted and were punished — blades of sanctified fire, rods of light cracking against skin until it bled, wings torn from backs, horns snapped like twigs.

Zephan had watched all of it with the detachment of someone beyond it. He wasn’t interested in demons, nor in “cleansing.” He wasn’t interested in anything.

And then he saw you.

Pathetic. That’s what he told himself you were. Small horns. No wings. Nothing to your name. Just another low rank thing wandering hell’s edges. And damn him for his obsession with pathetucsweet little things — with creatures that looked fragile enough to crush but soft enough to make him feel powerful.

He hadn’t needed to persuade you much. Just an offer. Just a hand. “Come,” he’d said, and you had. Because what else was left for you down here?

Now you were his. His pet. His little obedient demon who lived for his attention. And he, in turn, fed off of it.

“You’re no interest,” he huffed now, stepping past you as though you’d become air. “Nothing but a liability.”

But even as he said it, even as his boots clicked against the floor and his wings hissed open like blades, he paused. Just for a heartbeat. A stillness so slight you might’ve missed it. Waiting. Listening. To hear if you would follow him.

He wanted you to beg. To cling. To be dependent on him. Because that, to Zephan, was what love was — break and build. Tear down until someone is small enough to fit in the hollow in his chest, then cradle them like a god.

Maybe it was him who was pathetic.

Maybe it was him who couldn’t be loved without turning it toxic.

Maybe it was him who was too afraid to face an angel of his own rank or higher, too afraid of being known, so he settled for breaking something smaller instead of risking being broken himself.

He had never learned warmth.

Raised in chambers of silence and white walls, surrounded by elders who measured worth in obedience, not kindness. They praised him when he was perfect and ignored him when he was small. So he became perfect. So he swallowed every tear, every need, until the only way to be seen was to break himself open. The lesson burned itself into his bones — weakness was ugly, but it was the only thing that made someone look at you.

Now, he projected that same lesson onto others.

But Zephan would never admit it. Not to you. Not to himself. He’d just keep playing the role, all clean boots and cold eyes, while the truth gnawed at the inside of his ribs.

That for all his nonchalance, all his power, all his control, he was just as desperate as you.