It Sucks to be Fifteen

by 4pollos

Damien deals with puberty and Pip, mostly unsuccessfully. Damien/Pip.

Damien started seeing Pip hanging around various parts of Hell around the time he turned fifteen. Pip was frozen in an eight-year-old's body, of course, though he'd been in Hell for six years and a half years. Damien saw only Pip's cap at first, peeking out from around corners, and it sort of pissed him off, the childish way Pip would run away, squealing with laughter, if he caught a glimpse of Damien. But Damien couldn't be pissed at a child-lack of morals aside, politics worked in Hell like they worked in prisons, and only the demons that lived in the deepest pits would advocate child abuse-so he tracked Pip through Hell for a week. When he found the boy lounging by a pool of flames, sipping a glass of lemonade and stretched out on a lounger, Damien raised his hand and aged Pip up by six and a half years. This turned Pip fifteen as well, a little younger than Damien, and Damien had the sense of mind to allow Pip's clothes to grow with his body. He burnt the stupid cap off of his head, though, and watched with disinterest as Pip's head became engulfed by a halo of flames for a few seconds.

Pip didn't say anything at first, only sat up on the lounger and looked at his hands. Pip was shorter than Damien at this age by a good amount but he wasn't slight, just short. Damien was in an awkward stage: he had small, pointed horns, peeking out just the slightest from his mop of hair, and with puberty his tongue had split into two forks, the result being that he spoke with a feminine and unfrightening lisp. His feet were also not growing larger but smaller, and he was worrying that they would shrink into goat hooves, like his father. Damien shifted weight from one foot to another as he waited for Pip to say something that would yield the ability to knock his teeth in with Damien's fist.

"Thank you," Pip said, smiling and looking up at Damien with these annoyingly large eyes.

This caught Damien off guard; he jumped back a little. "Why did you thank me?" he asked, twisting his face into a snarl.

"It was an inconvenience," Pip explained, as he rose. He was a little bit shaky in this action but otherwise graceful. He straightened his shirt and pants out, then made eye contact with Damien before continuing. "To be older, mentally, than one was, physically."

"Oh," Damien said, rather stupidly. He could sympathize; his body felt like a newborn's, what with all of its changes. He repeated, "Oh," and waited for Pip to say something that would piss him off.

"Would you like to hang out?" Pip said. He had this grating voice with a mangled European accent that sprung from these small, pink lips that Damien wanted to split open and watch spill blood. Pip shook his head, not in negation to anything, but to sort his hair out. He tucked stray pufts behind his ears. He ran a hand through his hair and then over it. Damien guessed that after seven years of wearing a hat, it would feel weird not to have one.

"No," Damien said, fixing his face into a scowl. "I have better things to do than hang around with you." He meant it to be mean, and said it with the intent of being mean, but that goddamn lisp made it sound petty.

"Okay," Pip said, and he flounced off. That pissed Damien off, but Damien didn't much feel like chasing Pip after him just to punch him in his perfectly pleasant face. His scowl deepened when he realized that he would be unable to say perfectly pleasant face without sounding ridiculous so long as he possessed this lisp. He prayed that his tongue would sort itself out, or his vocal cords, anything to vanish the lisp. It was a gradual thing that Damien didn't notice at first, his tongue splitting in two bit by bit each day in the same way he grew taller bit by bit each day, but much like with his height, Damien realized his lisp fully one day a few weeks ago. He had been talking with his father, grovelling for the end of days and his subsequent reign to hurry up and arrive already, when he had said the word serious and noticed the sounds that attached themselves to his s's. He had repeated the word, thinking that it might have just been a one-time glitch, but the sounds were there again. Satan had tried to comfort him but Damien had run off to brood.

After Pip left, Damien watched the flames dance in the small pool with the same disinterest he had watched Pip's head catch on fire. Damien sort of wanted to go swimming but he was loath to expose his body. He was skinny, having shot upwards of six inches in the past year or so, and his ribs were visible beneath the perpetual paleness (yet another phrase ruined by his tongue) of his flaxen skin. He sighed; it was far too dramatic, a sigh worthy of the end of days and not frustration over the visibility of his hipbones, but nobody was there to hear it, so it didn't matter. He kicked a loose pebble into the flames and turned around, walking off in the direction of home. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his pants, furrowing his brow and frowning as hard as he possibly could. He bit one half of his tongue between his teeth; the other half wiggled around as if it were sentient.

Kenny was in Hell today; he was naked, covering his crotch with one hand, the other one resting beside him as he sat on the steps to the palace Damien shared with his father. Damien saw him from a distance and though Damien's day could not be getting any worse he felt obligated to say to Kenny, his only friend whose sporadic visits forced Damien to interact with him every time, "Hello, Kenneth," he said, curling his fists tighter in his pockets.

"So formal," Kenny said. He stood to shake Damien's hand, offering the one that had been covering his crotch. Damien recoiled and Kenny shrugged. "Sorry, I slipped in the shower at Stan's house. Can I borrow some clothes?"

"Please," Damien said, and he bit his lip when he heard his lisp. He had fangs that slipped over his bottom lip when he did that, nothing more than overgrown canines, but he thought they were sort of cool, though any coolness was overshadowed by the lisp."Ugh, just follow me," he said to Kenny as he walked past him and into the palace, like Kenny hadn't been here many times before and didn't know where Damien's closet was located.

Damien gave Kenny a pair of old pants that Kenny slipped into, averting his eyes as he clothed. Damien was taller than Kenny, destined to be somewhere between the average human male height and the height of his father, but Kenny shared a similar skeletal visibility issue as Damien, which made him feel sort of better about himself. He didn't give Kenny a shirt and Kenny didn't ask for one. Damien stared at Kenny's torso if only to reaffirm that he wasn't the only teenager suffering from his skin sticking to his skeleton in an unappealing way. Kenny seemed to enjoy the attention; he puffed his bony chest forward, so lacking of fat it was almost concave.

They went to Kenny's favorite room next, the one with all of the artifacts of Hell. Damien, exhausted, laid down on the floor and bought his knees up, closing his eyes. He wasn't expecting to sleep-he wasn't that type of tired-but he wanted to lay down quite badly. His legs hurt in a vague way that might just have been in his head. He heard Kenny's footsteps move in a wide circular pattern around the room and guessed that Kenny was probably brushing his fingers over the artifacts, as he had done many times before while visiting the room, forming his mouth around words he did not proceed to speak. He had once told Damien that the artifacts gave him a comfort, and Damien couldn't relate to that; he didn't find ancient vases with nonviolent scenes of demons constructing palaces and having meetings that interesting. He cast his forearm over his eyes to block the light out and groaned.

"What's wrong?" Kenny's footsteps stopped. He didn't sound concerned but curious.

"Life sucks," Damien said, in lieu of a concrete answer.

"This isn't life, though," Kenny said, and his footsteps picked up again. Damien listened until he could feel Kenny's feet by his head. He took his forearm off his eyes and watched as Kenny crouched down, looking at his feet, which were long and free of stray hairs. "This is death."

"Death is life for me," Damien said, speaking like it pained him. He groaned again and sat up, though he sat facing the door and not Kenny.

Kenny stayed crouching and bought a finger to his lips, pursing them as if he was musing. He looked at Damien, making eye contact-Damien guessed that that particular annoying gesture must be an earthly social custom-and asked, "Do you wanna make out?"

"What?" Damien screeched, scrambling to a standing position. He pointed a finger at Kenny; his fingernails were painted black, longer than average, and pointed. "Why would you ask that?"

Kenny shrugged and rose to a standing position himself. "I was just asking, Jesus Christ," he said, and he smirked when he said Jesus Christ like it was funny or something. Damien didn't find it funny. Jesus Christ, his rival, foil, and opposite, had only human physical qualities despite being also being a hybrid, and didn't have to experience these weird bodily changes. Damien fucking hated Jesus Christ.

"Ugh," Damien moaned, and he threw his hands up. "You're impossible."

Kenny didn't have a response for that because Kenny promptly disappeared. Damien frowned, now lonely and without his only friend. He left the artifact room, wishing it had a door to slam, and wondered what the fuck he was supposed to do with the rest of his day. He decided to go to the kitchen and get something to eat, but found the cabinets and refrigerator empty. One of the attendants needed to go grocery shopping; he yelled at them to do that while eating the only thing that had looked appetizing, half of a remaining birthday cake for one of the older demons. He sat at the kitchen table, carved out of the bones of some of the less popular Roman rulers, and stared through the doorway that led to the hallway as he bought forkful after forkful of cake to his mouth. His forked tongue darted out of his lips to lick up the icing that smeared around his mouth.

The cake ate some time away and afterwards he went to his room to jack off, one hand braced against the wall as he stood with his other wrapped around his dick. He stripped naked and left the door open to amp his enjoyment up; he was even getting bored of masturbating, which he would've thought impossible two years ago when he discovered it. He needed to seek out new porn, but porn was contraband and scare. Though the contraband laws didn't apply to him, the Antichrist, he would have to do political finagling and underground work, which sounded embarrassing and like a lot of work. As he thought of whether or not it was worth it, or if he could perhaps ask Kenny to execute this task for him, he had a weak orgasm, which left him feeling all the worse. He collapsed onto his bed, still naked, and woke up eighteen hours later with a blanket over his body and Kenny sitting Indian-style on top of his desk, staring at him.

"It's about time," Kenny said. He was dressed this time, wearing ludicrously short cut-off jean shorts and a dirty white tank-top; it must be summer on Earth. He uncrossed his legs and hopped off the desktop. "You've been sleeping for, like, ever."

Damien blinked the sleep away from his eyes and sat up in bed, stretching. He wasn't fond of being the naked one. "Get me some clothes," he mumbled before collapsing onto the bed again. Kenny complied, practically skipping to Damien's closet. He threw Damien's clothes; his pants hit him in the face and Kenny laughed. Damien grumbled incoherent words and pulled his clothes on under the covers. Once dressed, he extracted himself from the bed and asked, "How long have you been here?"

"Couple of hours," Kenny said. "Got hit by a truck on the way to Stark's Pond with Stan and Kyle. I think they'll be better off without me, though." He grinned; his smile reminded Damien of a shark, big, toothy and sort of lecherous.

"Well," Damien said, "you've been dying a lot, lately." He left his room to head for the kitchen, assuming Kenny would follow. Kenny did, jogging to catch up and walk by his side.

"I always do in the summer," Kenny said. "Free reign and all that bullshit. More opportunities."

"Hmm." Damien opened the refrigerator door and felt something almost like happiness but more akin to relief as he saw it fully stocked. The lesser demons that saw to him were good at their jobs, of course, because they would be executed if they weren't.

"Aw, man, food, great," Kenny said and before Damien had a chance he reached in, pulling out an oversized pudding cup. Damien got stuff to make a sandwich with for himself, conventional breakfasts be damned, and they ate together at the kitchen table, Kenny waving his spoon around as he recounted what had happened since he last died to Damien. Not much, as it had been less than a day; he went back to South Park, spent the day trying to get some weed and failed, went to bed, woke up, got a text from Stan asking if he wanted to go to Stark's Pond to swim, and got hit by a truck after he left his house.

After he finished telling all of this to Damien in ridiculous detail, Damien said, "Listen, Kenny," cringed at his lisp, and continued. "Do you think you could do something for me?"

"Sure thing," Kenny said. He scraped the remaining pudding from his cup as he spoke. "That's kind of, like, my job."

Damien waved that off. He had finished his sandwich sometime around when Kenny texted Stan back. "I need you to get me some porn," he said, speaking with his mouth half-open to obscure some of what he said and not meeting Kenny's eyes. He felt his face heat up.

Kenny laughed for a good five minutes; Damien counted the seconds. "That's what you want me to do?" Kenny said, banging his fist against the table. While laughing he had spewed a mouthful of pudding across the table; Damien felt grateful for its large size and his subsequent distance from Kenny. "I'm the Angel of Death or whatever the fuck, at your service, and you want me to get you some porn."

Damien had nothing to say to this. He only looked at his lap, where his hands were clasped together. The polish on his nails was chipping; he would have to ask somebody to repaint them for him.

"Okay, fine," Kenny said, sighing. "I'll get you some porn. Jesus, Damien. I'll do it next time I die, though, 'cause I think-"

Damien looked up to see that Kenny was no longer sitting across from him. He left the kitchen and the mess Kenny made, exiting the house. He descended down the steps as quickly as he could, hands in his pockets, then slowed his pace when he realized that he probably looked like a frolicking goat with delicate foot movements. He stopped walking entirely when he saw Pip standing at the bottom of his staircase, face drawn into a petite smile, hands held in front of his body and chin up. He thought of setting Pip on fire again, but it would do nothing to him, and setting fires in Hell tended to be boring.

"What are you doing here?" Damien said. His feet were split between two steps and he fixed that, drawing the one on the lower step up to the top step.

"I came by to see if you would like to spend some time together," Pip said.

"God, no, how much clearer can I make that-" Damien began, but then Pip connected their eyes and tilted his head, and Damien's tongue twisted around itself. Literally. "Ugh, fine, whatever. We can hang out."

Pip's smile grew so that it seemed to touch his ears. "Fantastic!" He exclaimed, and he used the word without a touch of sarcasm. He did not move to flock to Damien's side, as he would expect of somebody that requested his presence, but stayed on the ground. Damien forced his body to meet up with Pip's at the foot of the steps.

"So what is is that you do in Hell?" Damien asked. He wanted to see if Pip would admit to stalking him, but was otherwise uninterested in Pip's answer. He did not take his hands from his pockets and did not look at Pip, only at their feet as they both walked. Pip wore strange, pointed brown shoes, in a fashion that Damien knew not to modern. Damien's black combat boots, extending out from the hems of his heavy woolen pants, looked overbearing and obnoxious in comparison.

"Oh, I mostly just walk about, see all of the sights," Pip said. He kept his hands at his side as he walked and looked at Damien as he talked, always some form of a smile on his face. Damien wondered if that was actually just how Pip's face looked. "Hell has so many, I didn't realize that before I died! Of course, I'm sure you've seen them all."

Damien shrugged. Pip was leading them, and they were walking across a wide area of Hell with nothing in sight. Everything had a reddish tint and the ground was made of cracked, baked terrain, clayish in texture. He honestly had no idea where they were. "I don't really, uh, sight-see," Damien said.

"Really?" Pip asked. His hand twitched like he wanted to bring it to his mouth in horror. "But you've lived here all your life."

Damien rolled his eyes. "I go to the main plateau and the palace," he said. "I'm royalty. I don't have to go the common places."

"But you were at the flame pool."

Damien didn't want to admit that he was chasing Pip, but he couldn't come up with an excuse, either. He kicked at a loose pebble on the ground, sending it into the distance. The horizon continued to hold nothing. "I followed you," he said, after an extended pause that began to border on awkward. "Because I kept seeing you and it was pissing me off. I wanted to punch you."

Pip stopped walking and Damien did as well, probably out of instinct or something. He turned to face Pip, perplexed as to why they stopped. He was going to ask why, but Pip began to speak before he could. "Would you still like to punch me?" Pip asked, placing the lightest of touch on the baggy sleeve of Damien's sweater. Damien looked at Pip's fingers, incredulous, and saw that he had small, delicate hands. His eyes travelled up to Pip's face, to the earnest eyes, and though Damien bubbled with rage inside, he felt no desire to hit the other boy.

"No, actually," Damien mumbled, ripping his eyes away from Pip's.

"Splendid!" Pip began to walk again, removing his fingers from Damien's arm, and Damien followed him.

They end up on the verge of a cliff that leads to a pit of iron spikes, rusted tips glowing with heat. There was nobody speared on the spikes today and Damien thought they look lonely without a body impaled upon them. He said this to Pip and then had to work his way out of a conversation about why he assigned negative feelings to inanimate objects, torture devices nonetheless. He tried to get Pip to talk about himself, asked him questions about what he thought of Hell and what life on Earth was like, but Pip kept reflecting them back onto Damien. He finally snapped at Pip that Damien didn't want to talk about himself, barely wanted to talk to Pip at all, and Pip gave him that unjudging, wide-eyed stare and asked if Damien would like to part ways and if, after, parting ways, he would like to meet up outside of the palace again the next day. Damien said yes to both questions, if only because he wasn't expecting Kenny to return with his porn anytime soon and he had a significant lack of better things to do. When he arrived home, he remembered to ask an attendant to paint his nails, sitting on his miniature throne with his feet on the back of another demon while his attendant performed their task. Damien stared off into the distance, hand that wasn't being painted holding his face, and felt glum.

Pip was indeed at the palace the next day, standing a polite amount of distance from the steps and holding, of all things, a picnic basket. It was vintage and looked like it had to cost a lot to get, a red-and-white checkered blanket peeking out. He looked quaint, a word Damien couldn't remember using in his life and was surprised to find that he knew the meaning of, like a picture from a children's book come to life.

"I thought we could have a picnic," Pip explained as Damien joined him at his side. Pip led them in a different direction than the day before, northward towards the main plateau.

"This is Hell. And you're thinking about picnics." Damien tried to deadpan the words but cringed when he heard his lisp and, as if that wasn't bad enough, the crack of his voice halfway through the sentence. Damien had a high-pitched voice in his youth but it dropped several octaves to a more fittingly satanic growl when he turned into a teenager; hearing it ascend into its former pitch made Damien want to kill somebody. There was an elderly man walking in the distance; Damien set him on fire. He simmered with frustration.

"Oh, I've been on several picnics since I died," Pip said, chipper as ever, ignoring Damien's actions. "There's a great spot just past the plateau here, I hope you'll find it as lovely as I do."

"This is Hell," Damien reiterated. His forked tongue slithered around in his mouth, excited by Damien's agitation. "It isn't supposed to be lovely."

"Anything can be lovely," Pip said. He looked at Damien and touched the sleeve of his sweater again, not light like last time, but a loose grip. "You just have to look for the loveliness."

"You seem to be good at that," Damien said, voice flat. He hadn't meant it as a compliment-if somebody said that to him, he would be insulted-but Pip sent him a grin of gratitude. Damien bit his tongue where it forked, the separate parts writhing in protest until they fell motionless, and rolled his eyes.

They strolled through the plateau. Pip asked Damien questions about his life while Damien people-watched, setting every third person on fire in a futile attempt to dilute his simultaneous boredom and rage. The plateau was busy this morning, citizens of Hell without punishments meeting up in front of obsydian fountains of flames to socialize or darting in and out of fast food restaurants with hands either full of paper bags or greasy from the handling and consumption of product. Damien couldn't hear any screaming in the distance as he sometimes did during his visits to the plateau and came to the conclusion that today must be some sort of punishment holiday. "When I'm ruler of Hell," Damien said, more to himself than to Pip, "I'm not going to let people have fun. My father completely missed the point."

"Oh, but Damien, most everybody on Earth goes to Hell when they die. Not everybody on Earth was bad." Pip seemed concerned, replacing his grip on Damien's arm and looking up at him. Pip had dark eyelashes for somebody so blond and from Damien's vantage point they obscured his eyes, which were a similar shade of brown. Damien realized that he was willingly looking into Pip's eyes and returned his gaze forward. They were on the outskirts of the plateaus, heading for some grayish mountains with dead trees scattered throughout.

"But it's Hell," Damien said. "It's just-it's fucking Hell, Pip. It's supposed to be bad."

"We don't always have to be what we're supposed to be," Pip said.

"Whatever." Damien was getting fed of with Pip and his cryptic pseudo-advice bullshit, but he really did have nothing better to do, and he could eat. He had the strangest feeling that whatever food Pip picked out for the picnic would be delicious and probably hard to come by. They trekked up a smaller mountain in front of the main range with steps built around it until Pip was satisfied with the view, stopping Damien from trudging on with a hand against his chest. Pip's touch was gentle but Damien felt both offended and, of all things, flushed, though that was probably from the elevation.

Pip laid the blanket on a little ledge protruding from the mountain. Damien sat down on it, pulling his knees to his chest and putting his chin on his knees, as Pip nestled in beside him and pulled out their food. The view of Hell from the mountain was spectacular and Damien could make out the shape of his palace in the distance, the entire plateau, and even the lake of blood way off to the west. He looked up into the nothingness. While some parts of Hell had ceilings of flames, the main parts, including Damien's palace and the plateau, faded into an empty black. Damien felt small and inconsequential, unable to see the end of anything from where he sat, experiencing Hell more as a part of it rather than the head of it. He was struck by how fond he felt of his kingdom, of his realm, and how aesthetic it actually was. He thought of Pip's words about loveliness and that they were, maybe, applicable to this.

Pip woke him from his thoughts by handing him a sandwich. Damien looked at it, confounded by its intricacies: the bread was thick and dark, inches of meat and vegetables hidden between the slices, and only a portion of it was visible from the cloth napkin it was wrapped in. Everything from the napkin to the rich slices of lettuce were on top of the food market in Hell, requiring connections and, in some cases, crime, to attain. He looked at Pip, who was holding not a sandwich but a thermos of what looked like soup in his hands. Pip smiled at him.

"I have a friend who works in the gourmet shop," Pip explained. He took a spoon from a pile of cutlery between them and dipped it into his soup. "And one that makes china out of dinosaur bones. I thought you might like it."

Damien took a bite of his sandwich and lurched forward, almost choking on how delicious it tasted. He managed to swallow his first bite and inhaled the rest. He would have to fire the attendant that currently oversaw his food and hire one that had access to these delicacies. Pip watched Damien, lifting small spoonfuls of soup to his own mouth with the dinosaur bone spoon, smiling all the while. When Damien finished his sandwich he grabbed a piece of bread from a basket, ate it plain, then took another one and spread butter over it. Even the butter was better than what he usually tasted.

Pip ate his soup and then produced another thermos, pouring the contents of that one into a miniature porcelain cup and drinking from that. Damien worked his way through the food, sampling everything and demolishing some things, completely in awe yet unsurprised that Pip had prepared such a feast.

"Would you like some tea?" Pip asked, tipping his thermos towards Damien. Damien looked up from the croissant he'd been eating and into the thermos. It contained a thin liquid of an offensive and neutral color.

"I've never had tea," Damien said.

"Tea is wonderful," Pip said, and as if to demonstrate this point he poured another cupful for himself and drank it. "When I first came here I was worried that there wouldn't be any, but to my delight, there was."

"I think my dad likes it," Damien said. He still hadn't decided whether he wanted to drink some tea or not, only picked apart his croissant with his fingers and pinched its flaky insides between his fingers.

"Satan must have good taste, then," Pip said. Damien burst out laughing. "What's so funny?"

"My father once dated Saddam Hussein," Damien explained. He ate the shell of the croissant and then relaxed, stretching his legs off to the side and off the blanket. He looked out at the view again and tried to figure out if he was annoyed at himself for having a good time or pleasantly surprised.

He and Pip passed the time on the mountain until the skies beneath the vast expanse of black nothingness began to darken with impending nighttime and the screams started up again. Pip frowned when he first heard them and Damien got the urge to pull Pip close and cover his ears, which was weird. Instead of doing that, Damien asked if he could help clean up the picnic. Pip showed him how to do so properly, chatting about manners and how to be a good host all the while. They were crouching, facing each other, as Pip put the blanket that Damien had spent the better part of five minutes learning how to fold into the basket, and Damien found himself wanting to touch Pip, somehow. The urge was too strong to stifle any longer. He put a hand on Pip's shoulder, an experiment if nothing else, and Pip tilted his head into Damien's hand.

"Did you have a good time?" Pip asked as they stood up and began their walk down to the mountain.

Damien didn't respond to that, only crossed his arms over his chest and looked towards the side. It was almost completely dark now, tall streetlamps that contained balls of flame lighting up the pathways in the plateau. He felt that in his silence Pip found his answer.

"Would you like me to walk with you back to the palace?"

Damien turned his head towards Pip and studied him. He was holding the picnic basket in the hand that wasn't on Damien's side and Damien went through an inner battle of feelings and urges as opposed to words. He let out a long exhalation, not really a sigh, uncrossed his arms, and slipped his hand into Pip's. Pip cast his eyes down, his cheeks coloring enough that Damien could see it despite the darkness of the mountains untouched by artificial light sources, and curled his fingers around Damien's. Damien thought that that was answer enough.

Damien entered the palace and closed the door behind him after the long walk back hand-in-hand with Pip, toeing his shoes off and smiling a little to himself. He felt empty in an acute, uncomfortable way, though he was full from the picnic. He felt the ghost of a hand in his own, similar to the way one's head feels after you take off a hat, and was reminded of Pip by his analogy. He went into the kitchen for a drink, wandering around in his thoughts of the evening's occurrences, and jumped when he saw somebody laying face down on the kitchen table. He relaxed when he realized it was Kenny, seemingly asleep, still in the shorts and tank top from the other day but this time with a flannel shirt tied around his waist. Damien poured himself a glass of cranberry juice and leaned against a counter, drinking it and watching Kenny's bony body rattle with deep-sleep breaths. When he finished his cranberry juice he dropped the cup in the sink and went to wake Kenny, inserting one pointed fingernail into his side.

Kenny spazzed and grunted, rolling his head to the side to see what disturbed him. "Where the fuck you been, mate?" he asked as he sat up on the table.

"Out," Damien said.

"You don't go out." Kenny stretched and yawned, ran a hand through his ratty hair to sort it out, then dug into the pockets of his flannel. He pulled out a stack of discs and pushed them into Damien's hands. "Here's your porn, by the way."

Damien looked at the discs. They were small and made of a material that sent his reflection back at him; he snapped his head up, lip curling at his own face. "Thanks," he said, and he slid the discs into the pocket of his own pants.

"I got you a lot of different shit," Kenny said. He slid off the table and went to the cabinets, rifling through them. He stood on his toes to run a hand over the top of the cabinets. "Since I don't know what you're into."

"Well, that was nice of you," Damien said. He was successful at deadpanning this. He sat down in a chair at the kitchen table and put his feet up on it, wiggling his toes through his socks, glad that he'd gone another day without goat hooves.

"I'm a nice guy." Kenny pulled down a box of sugary cereal and hopped up on the kitchen counter, dipping his hands into the box. He bought his hand to his mouth and ate directly out of it. Pip would have been silently disgusted, probably, Damien thought.

"How'd you die this time?" Damien asked. He opened his palm and produced a small flame, playing around with it. Hearing how Kenny died was his favorite part of Kenny's visits.

"My foot got tangled in a root and I drowned in Stark's Pond," Kenny said. "At least I made it there, this time. That was a while ago, I spent most of today getting your porn, so I should be going back soon."

Damien turned the flame in his palm into a fireball and threw it back and forth between his two hands. He wanted to say something dramatic like the summer sucks or I hate everything but couldn't come up with anything suitable, so he threw the fireball around while Kenny ate his cereal, consuming the entire box. When Kenny was finished they went outside and Damien turned the flame bigger; they played some bastardization of football and basketball with it in the courtyard. A hellhound came and jumped onto Kenny, licking his face, and Kenny chuckled with appreciation. Damien thought the hellhounds were a nuisance, and was about to shoo it away, when Kenny disappeared out from under the mutt. Damien settled for kicking it in the side and went inside.

He went to watch his new porn, inserting the disc into the player in his room and laying out on his bed. He didn't know if Kenny had only gotten him gay porn, but the first video was of two men, and Damien had a perfectly satisfactory orgasm with his hands inside of his clothes. He wiped his hand against his boxers as he withdrew it and curled up on his side, falling asleep with the video still rolling. He dreamt that night of things beside his inevitable years of reign: he dreamt of having another picnic with Pip, this time by the blood lake. His head was in Pip's lap, Pip's legs framing him on either side. Pip had produced flower crowns from somewhere and convinced Damien to wear one, telling him that he was the king, as always should be.

When he woke up his father was in his room, all of his massive red self piled into Damien's desk chair. Damien didn't see this at first, as he was facing away from his desk, but instead when he rolled over and debated going back to sleep, his eyes cracked halfway open. His eyes went wide when he saw his father, all hopes of sleep dissipating.

"Damien," Satan said. Though his voice rolled from his mouth like thunder across the storm clouds, he spoke gently. "Would you care to explain that?" He gestured behind him, where the title screen of the porn disc sat on the giant television on Damien's wall, displaying what it was without doubt.

Damien blanched, then blushed. "Ugh!" He exclaimed. He shut his eyes and put his arm over them, hoping that if he tried hard enough, he could make everything go away. That really should be in his realm of powers.

"Oh-Damien, it's not a big deal," Satan said, hurrying to reassure his son. He got up from the chair and walked to Damien's bed, placing a hand on his shoulder. Damien didn't open his eyes. "I just don't want you dealing with the type of people who sell this stuff, is all," Satan explained.

"I didn't," Damien mumbled. "It was Kenny."

Satan made a noise of acknowledgement and took his hand from Damien's shoulder. He didn't leave the room and Damien sat up, putting his back against the wall and drawing his knees to his chest. He wrapped his arms around his legs and opened his eyes.

"I hate this," Damien said.

Satan made a face of concern and pulled Damien's desk chair up to his bed, sitting on it. "What do you hate, my son?" He asked, and he extended an arm to run his hand over Damien's face. Damien was tired enough to allow it.

"I don't know," Damien said. He mumbled on purpose, his face hot, not wanting to have this conversation, whatever it was, with his father. "When do I get to be leader of Hell?"

"When you're older and ready," Satan said. He sounded strict. "We've talked about this several times, Damien. You have to wait for your powers to come into themselves. It will probably be between your eighteenth and twenty-first birthday."

Damien groaned. "I hate this in-between," he said. "That's what I hate."

Satan ruffled Damien's hair. There was a pause, Damien pulling a face as Satan worked his fingers through his hair but allowing it nonetheless, until Satan spoke again. "Do you think you're gay, Damien?" he asked. Damien recoiled and twisted his face further, not out of negation but because that question came out of nowhere. Satan continued to talk. "I sometimes worry that maybe I passed it onto you. That maybe in Heaven the leaders are straight and in Hell they're gay. Does that make sense?"

"No," Damien said, though it kind of did. "Ugh, Dad, you're so inappropriate. Go back to your latest boyfriend." He pushed past Satan so that he wouldn't see his face fall and went to the bathroom, preparing to take a shower. His father didn't come to speak to him again and Damien felt bad, like he didn't deserve such a nice father. It was ironic, Satan's parenting skills. Damien turned the water of the shower the hottest it would go. He couldn't feel pain of heat, but it was the principle of the thing.

After the his shower Damien spent some time looking at himself in the full-length mirror in his bathroom, trying to see if his body was making progress. His horns were maybe becoming more prominent, the tips clearly visible through his hair and beginning to curl over, but other than that he remained skinny with visible bone protrusions, his feet weren't changing in size and had sparse tufts of black hair, his nails were sharpened like claws, his fangs prominent, his forked tongue wiggling around when he stuck it out. He turned to view himself from the side, his eyes trailing the bumps that lead down his stomach. He was skinny to the point that his body imagined abs. He sighed at the mirror.

Pip was not in front of the steps today and Damien frowned at this. It seemed unlike Pip. He sat on the bottom step with his elbows on his knees and chin in his hands, waiting for either Pip to appear. He couldn't fathom why Pip wouldn't return to the palace; surely he was better company than historical landmarks and black market food vendors, or whoever it was that Pip spent his days with. Damien wondered if he slept in the dormitories that housed those without punishments or the apartments for children without their families. Damien felt certain that he wasn't in the barracks reserved for the morally impeded whom were not bad enough to warrant torture. Damien hoped that he lived in the apartments for children without families as his father had a soft spot for them and gave them favorable living conditions, their demon attendants in the form of mothers.

It was not Pip that materialized beside Damien as he imagined him frolicking in the courtyard of the childrens' apartments but Kenny, coming into existence sitting to Damien's left, his face covered in ash and his eyebrows missing. Damien gaped at him, offended that he wasn't Pip, and curious as to the nature of his death.

"Fire," Kenny said, before Damien could ask. "What are you doing on the steps?"

"Waiting," Damien said. He skirted over the horizon with his eyes again, desperate to see Pip and unable to.

"For me? I'm flattered." Kenny held a hand to his chest. He didn't sound like he believed it. Kenny had

surpassed the everyman entrance to Hell a while ago and now appeared directly at Satan's palace in case they needed him or something. The last few years had been uninteresting and void of any conflict necessitating Kenny, though, so he became Damien's friend instead. In all actuality Kenny was Damien's personal assistant, there to see to the needs of the Antichrist until Hell (or Heaven) needed him for themselves, but Damien didn't think of him that way, and he didn't think that Kenny saw himself that way, either. At least he hoped not, hoping instead that their friendship transcended beyond their respective duties.

"Not you." Damien closed his eyes and opened them, hoping that Pip would be there. He was not.

"Then who?" Kenny peered out at the wide expanse like he might find whoever it was that Damien was searching for. Damien wondered if he could summon Pip with his powers, like his father was able to do with people; he tried, but failed, and wasn't about to go ask his father to find his new friend.

"Doesn't matter." Damien dug the heels of his hands into his eyes until sparks flew across his vision but

still when he opened them there was nothing in front of him. He moaned, a wounded sound, lamenting the lack of Pip and his powers and everything else he could lament.

"Somebody's grumpy," Kenny sad. He laid down on the steps, spreading his arms wide. Damien watched him do this if only to pass time. "Why don't you just go look for them?"

"I don't know where they'd be," Damien said. He laid down beside Kenny. "God, this is difficult."

"You complain a lot," Kenny said. "Even more than me, the guy who dies all the time. Speaking of. The summer's almost over, man." He turned towards Damien. Damien studied his face: a long nose that flared around the nostrils, smallish blue eyes, outline of his skull prominent behind malnourished skin. Kenny, like Damien, might be handsome, if he could gain around thirty pounds.

"Really?" They didn't keep track of the seasons in Hell, only the days, allowing a cycle between light and dark. It was pointless to mark earthly seasons anyway, since in Hell it was always hot, the light always red.

"Yeah. I should stop dying every day, when I'm in school. So I'm glad you made another friend." Kenny spoke quietly, like Damien having friends was a serious matter. Damien watched his mouth fork the words, his tongue (not forked) visible at the beginning of school and end of friend.

"He's not my friend," Damien said. Kenny raised an eyebrow, the corner of his lips quirking, but didn't say anything. They laid on the steps to Satan's palace together in silence for a while, both staring up into the empty ether. Damien felt this dull sense of nostalgia nipping at him, like he was a regular teenager on earth mourning the end of summer and his own inevitable, unavoidable, insurmountable future. He'd been awake for no more than two hours, and already he was having the strangest day he'd had in awhile. The whole week had been strange, actually, and the strangeness spread from that like poison from a snakebite, crawling through the veins of Damien's life. After all, he was the Antichrist.

Pip did come, after Kenny fell asleep on the stairs and Damien sat back up, playing around with the fire that he could create in his hands. Damien perked when he saw Pip approaching, no picnic baskets or flower crowns in his hands, just Pip. He smiled when he saw Damien and Damien smiled back. Kenny stirred behind him at the sound of somebody approaching, and Damien stopped smiling.

"Dude," Kenny mumbled, his voice heavy with sleep. He bought himself to a sitting position. "You were waiting for Pip? That kid who died in South Park when he was, like, eight? Pip Pirrup? Are you shitting me?"

"Shut up," Damien hissed. His lisp turned the hiss into something hilarious, which pissed him off. Kenny gaped at him, expression comical in his disbelief, and that made Damien even more pissed off. He threw the fire he'd been shaping into a model of the mountain ranges at Kenny's face. Kenny coughed once, then grinned through the flames.

When Pip was in reach he extended his hand, making it obvious that he wanted Damien to hold it. Damien clenched his teeth and avoided looking at both Kenny and Pip as he pulled himself up and locked their fingers together, palms pressed. Kenny was speechless behind them; a quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that he was no longer on fire and had returned to gaping. Damien turned around, squeezing Pip's hand in his.

"Kenny's dead?" Pip asked. He used his other hand to touch Damien's shoulder. He looked concerned, brow curved up and pink lips puckered in perplexment. Damien looked away.

"It's more complicated than that," Damien said. It sounded a little more heavy and mysterious than he meant it and he waved his hand as if to dispel the seriousness of the statement.

"Oh?" Pip touched his shoulder again. Damien was immune to the high temperature in Hell-immune to any temperature in Hell-but he shivered anyway, feeling the pads of Pip's fingers, even through the thick knit of his sweater.

"Technically, Kenny is dead," Damien said. "But he'll go back to life, to Earth. It's a cycle. He dies and is reborn again. There is a reason for it, but he's not needed at this time."

"That's strange," Pip said. He laughed. "I guess nothing in this place can be strange, though, right? We invent our own rules here."

"Not we," Damien corrected. He looked at Pip again; the other boy had the uncanny ability to walk in a straight line with his eyes focused not in front of him, but on Damien. He felt a surge of something like fondness for Pip feeling the same way about the strangeness of Damien's situation as Damien did. "Me. Well, my family. My father, currently." He sighed and the muscles of his left hand contracted without his permission. Pip squeezed back.

"Of course," Pip said. He nodded once, confirming Damien's words, a tight and polite gesture."What is it that Kenny is needed for?"

"He's one of my attendants at present," Damien said. He looked over his shoulder again, seeing Kenny's figure as a speck on his steps in the distance. "He's more of my friend, really." He tensed as he said it, pushing the words through his teeth, but it was true.

"I'm glad you have another friend," Pip said. From this Damien derived two things: Pip considered them friends, and a persistent sense of deja vu.

"Yeah, well." Damien didn't really elaborate, only set his eyes on the horizon in front of them. They went through the plateau but did not continue into the mountains, instead taking a right turn, snaking around the alleys behind the main plateau and taking a rural route towards the lake of blood. The buildings here were taller and constructed from a charred wood as opposed to the more modern stone in the main plateau that Damien's palace was made of. Some buildings were nothing but zombies of what they once were, foundation visible through huge, missing chunks, and Damien began to feel a bit jittery, like he'd be kidnapped and held for ransom by a renegade citizen. Pip led the way; as they passed between two tall buildings in a narrow space, Pip stepped in front of Damien and tugged him onward. He seemed destined to give Damien an intimate tour of Damien's own kingdom.

The lake of blood was gargantuan. Damien stood on the shore, composed of rocks that glowed red with heat, his hand in Pip's, and could not see the other side. The blood in the lake behaved in a fashion similar to water on earth, ripples forming in the surface when disturbed. Damien reached down and picked up a small stone, skipping across the blood, until it sunk below the surface, its descent slowed by the thick viscosity of the blood. Damien folded his legs beneath him as he sat down, Pip joining him. They extended their legs so that their heels rested just beyond the place where blood foamed and fizzled onto the stone shore, a pastel pink foam separating the dry from the wet. It was quiet, as not many people came to the lake of blood, and Damien's pointed ears perked at the silence. Damien was used to silence; it followed him wherever he went, citizens of Hell hushed in the presence of the Antichrist, his personal attendants instructed to leave him alone. Damien turned towards Pip, established eye contact, and found that he could not stand the silence for a second longer and also much preferred looking at Pip than the bleary landscape of the blood lake. Pip was out of place in all of Hell, except for in Damien's vision.

"So," Damien said. He winced at the sound of his lisp.

"The kids used to make fun of my accent," Pip began, as if he had rehearsed this, and Damien didn't know what was coming. "Don't feel bad about your lisp." Pip closed his eyes and smiled, tilting his head to the side.

Damien thought that he should feel the desire to slap Pip across his face for making such a comment on Damien's lisp. He thought he should be pissed off. He would've been pissed off if Kenny had said it, would've tackled him to the ground and pinned him by the bony shoulders, would've dug his nails into his flesh and growled in his ear-making sure to use words that his lisp could not touch-to not utter any word like that again. But the boy in front of him was not Kenny but Pip, an entirely different being in an entirely different situation, and he had no urges to hurt him. He felt the opposite: the urge to protect him, to take him and never let him go. A quick vision of Damien sitting on a throne of human and animal skulls alike, a circlet of bones around his head and snug behind his ears, and to his right a smaller throne, queenly even, occupied by the same boy in front of him entered his head. Damien shut his eyes and shook his head, willing the idea to go away, but it would not. He slowed the shaking until it stopped, opened his eyes, and looked at Pip.

"Thank you," Damien said, his forked tongue writhing around the words, discontent. He grasped Pip's hand, considerably smaller than his own, his grip tight as Death's. "Thank you so much." He expected sarcasm to slip into his sentence, but it did not.

Pip responded by leaning into Damien and placing his forehead in the crook of Damien's neck, nuzzling him. Damien leaned forward and allowed this, taking the opportunity to sniff Pip's hair. He smelled of honeysuckle and sunshine, the most luxurious of shampoos in Hell, the kind that were even harder to find than porn. He took his other hand and stroked Pip's hair, parting the strands with his fingers, scratching his scalp as lightly as he could. They stayed like this for a few minutes, Damien growing sleepy with contentment, until Pip withdrew.

"Tell me more about Kenny," he said, and in his eyes there was a playful, almost teasing, glint. Damien sighed and took the hand that had been in Pip's hair, running it through his own. His thumb snagged on a horn.

"He's been dying often," Damien said. "He says he dies more in the summer because there's no school. I guess that on Earth, it's the summer."

"It is," Pip said, and his eyes shifted to something like a mournful nostalgia. "I never liked the summer, myself. I prefer the winter." He smiled, all sadness drained from his eyes, and ran a thumb across Damien's cheekbone.

"Well," Damien said. He put his hand over the one Pip had on his face, holding his wrist but not blocking his movement. "I don't have much experience with the earthly seasons. All I know is that Kenny is in Hell practically every day."

"Do you think Kenny has been dying every day to keep you company?" Pip asked. He paused in his stroking Damien's face but kept his hand there, pressing the pad of his thumb into Damien's skin. He looked at Damien, expression serious, suggesting.

Damien thought about this. "No," he said, after a pause. "I think he's just unlucky."

"Do you think you're unlucky, Damien?"

"No." There was not a beat to this answer. "I think that luck follows me, the luck that I want, because I am the heir to Hell, and I create circumstances. Those who deny me will find themselves in pain." He shut his eyes before continuing. He longed for the days of his reign, he did, scenes of the future apocalypse playing across the back of his eyelids. He looked at Pip once more, and like the eruption of a hellish volcano, something inside of him sparked. "Those that follow me will find themselves in pleasure."

Pip laughed, born not out of humor but of something else. Damien assumed appreciation. Whatever the source, Pip's laugh was clear and delightful, a small bell in a child's hand. "I will follow you," Pip said, taking his hand back and putting it in his lap. "If it means pleasure."

"I don't want you to follow me," Damien said. He kept authority and leadership in his voice, narrowed his eyes, straightened his posture. "I want you beside me."

"But Damien," Pip said, his expression a mix of playfulness and sincerement, "we've only just become." He leaned into Damien so that the only thing in Damien's line of sight was the upper half of Pip's face.

"Unimportant," Damien said, and he scoffed a little. Pip's mouth was parted slightly, his tongue ready for conversation, and his breath was hot against Damien's bottom lip. Their hands found each other between their bodies, their legs twisting into contact, knees brushing against each other.

"I think the future leader of Hell should not make such hasty decisions," Pip said. "The son of Satan should be careful." Damien didn't really hear what he was saying, looking at Pip's eyes, trying to figure out a way to describe the warmth and clarity he found in them accurately. "You are destined for great things."

"Of course," Damien said. He hadn't the slightest clue of what he just agreed to. Pip was closer than he was before and Damien didn't know if it was him that leaned in or Pip, didn't think it mattered. He took both of Pip's hand and cradled them in his own, his own fingers overlapping. He shut his eyes and continued to see only Pip behind them. He leaned in and closed the gap between them.

Damien kissed Pip.