"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me".
[Jesus Christ (Luke 19:27)]
*beep beep beep beep*
The shrill cry of the phone alarm pierced the darkness of the room, as it's annoying beep and buzzing vibrations broke the comforting embrace of sleep that he found himself in. His first instinct was to lash a tired, angry fist and smash the offending piece of technology with a crushing blow. How many times had he awoken from his past life, and now this new one, to the sound of the damn beeping of cellphone alarms? The phones down here even had a louder, more obnoxious quality to their alarms; sounds that almost broke glass and cracked teeth.
Yep, this sure was Hell, alright.
Cracking a sleep encrusted eye, he lazily fumbled his arm behind him towards the nightstand where the accursed object lay, and clumsily setting the snooze button before retracting his arm to the comforting warmth of the blankets. Even in hell, in the afterlife, outside the realms of mortal logic and reason, 5 in the morning was still to fucking early for someone to be up and about. He eased himself back down onto the pillows, trying to return to the realm of dreams that he had been dragged from, tossing and turning slightly to find his previous comfortable position, without disturbing the furry companion who joined him in his bed.
Cracking an eye again, he observed the unconscious hellhound snuggled into his side, her chest rising and falling in tandem with cute little snores she emitted from her muzzle. He smiled a soft, tired smile at his bedmate, as he stretched out an arm to grasp her waist, bringing her closer to himself. The hellhound snorted a bit at the contact, a small grin of her own forming upon her muzzle, as she sleepily basked in the warmth of the cuddling.
He nuzzled his face into the erratic plumes of her hair, so soft and puffy and comfortable; adjectives you wouldn't think to associate with a creature spawned from the depths of the underworld. And yet, she somehow managed to fit all those things quite well.
He could feel himself drifting back to sleep as he snuggled into his bedmate. In these moments, he could ignore the need to get up and head to work. Maybe he could call in sick and just enjoy a day to himself for a chance; spend the day with his girlfriend and go out and do something. Or maybe just lounge in bed all day, it was the after life after all, and it's not everyday that you get to sleep in with an angel in your arms-
*beep beep beep beep!*
"SHUT THAT FUCKING THING OFF GODDAMNIT!"
Well, maybe not quite an angel.
Now fully awake, he moved a tired hand to rub the sleep from his eyes, hitting the alarm again, before placing a small kiss to the back of the hellhound's head.
"And good morning to you too, Loona," He murmured tiredly, releasing his hold over the irate hellhound and stretching his arms out with a loud yawn.
Loona groaned irritably, mostly from the loss of blissful warmth from her boyfriend's hold, and reached out an agitated paw to grasp his arm, placing it back around her.
"And who gave you permission to leave this bed?" She mumbled, "Five in the fucking morning is too early to do shit, so lay your ass back down and hold me."
He chuckled a bit at his profane bed mate, nuzzling her again whilst escaping her grasp.
"In any other circumstance, I'd gladly heed the call of this morning's warm embrace, but alas, work calls me, and I must heed it's siren call."
Turning around and squinting a red, angry eye in his direction, she snorted in response.
"You talk really stupid sometimes, Amsterdam."
He chuckled again, slowly removing himself from the comfort of his bed whilst his furry companion buried herself deeper into the covers.
"What can I say, love," Amsterdam replied, Loona blushing a deep crimson at the name given to her,"I guess I'm a poet deep down inside."
"Seems like a poor choice of words, to me," she grumbled in reply, peering at the half naked visage of her lover.
"Heh, figured you'd say something like that."
Finally released from his surprisingly soft bed, Amsterdam stumbled to his sore legs, still feeling like jelly from the previous evening's amorous activities.
"Fucked you that good, did I?" He heard his lover's voice pipe up from the bed.
Turning towards the voice, he observed Loona as she sat up in the bed, a sly smirk adorning her white muzzle, staring at him with a cocked brow. She held the blankets in her paws, tauntingly covering just above her perky breasts. Amsterdam knew that just below that Hellion silk, his lover's naked body lay, calling him, taunting him, begging him to return to her.
"Look who's talking, you can't even get out of the bed."
"I can if I want to," She huffed, laying herself flat upon her back and observing the semi nude visage of her lover,"I just don't want to get up."
Shaking his head, he shuffled himself towards the master bathroom, planting himself in front of the mirror. Instead of a demonic being, staring back into Amsterdam's face was the reflection of a human man. Appearing in his late twenties, the man was brown of skin, with dark hair and brown, coppery eyes that turned a deep hazel in the Pentagram's morning light. Various tattoos of different styles covered his body; from his forearms and shoulders to chest and legs. Back when he was alive, he put no small amount of cash and pain into the works of art that adorned his body, and yet powered through it all the same. If his body was his church, he figured, then his tattoos would be his stained glass.
When he took this form, sometimes, he would forget that he was ever dead and damned to an eternity to the pits of Hell, though the form he wore was only a ruse. While most sinners who have come to be in the underworld revel or despair in their new otherworldly forms, Amsterdam preferred to don the human disguise that all demons possessed most of the time.
The form reminded him of what he lost.
What he once was.
What he knew he would always be.
The form was him, once, when he still had a mortal heartbeat and a mortal life. A life he selfishly squandered. And now, he was paying the price.
Turning on the shower and peeling off his boxers, Amsterdam waited for the water to chill before dipping into the cold water to shock his system awake. He knew Loona wasn't a fan of cold showers in the morning, besides the ones to deal with her frequent hangovers, so he did not expect her to join him inside. Besides, it was a Monday morning, the most accursed of days, and she didn't have to go to work for a few more hours. It would've been selfish of him to assume she would.
He closed his eyes, feeling his muscles clench and release under the cold morning water. Showers, it seemed, were never right here in hell. There was never a relaxing warmth or happy medium, just two extremes that one would have to try get used to.
But that was just the way it is in hell. One doesn't get sent there expecting comfort or temperance. Hell is a place of punishment, of torment.
Then how did he get so lucky in the end?
Though life here was different, he was not surprised that it was so similar to life back in earth. There were businesses here! There were jobs, bars, clubs and houses. There was war, peace, days and nights. There was love, and friendships and even marriages, in some twisted hell-like fashion.
Being damned to an eternity, he would've expected to be tortured by demons day in and day out, until reality ended.
But instead, he worked, paid a mortgage on a house, and had someone he cared about in his life. Fuck, he had more friends down here then he ever had back up there. In an almost maddening thought, he actually felt…happy here. The one feeling he would never associated with being confined in hell.
Maybe this was his own twisted version of heaven or paradise, he would muse upon every so often.
After thoroughly scrubbing the dried juices and other filth from last nights activities, he turned the water off, dried himself and changed into the work clothes he laid out yesterday evening.
"Another day on the grind," he murmured to himself, zipping up his fly and walking back into the bedroom.
Turning back to the bed, he noticed Loona had drifted back off to sleep again, her light snores filling the room once more. Shuffling as quietly as he could, he sat back on the bed, lacing up his work boots and carefully grabbed his backpack at the foot of the bed.
Doing one last minute check of his belongings he'd need for the day, he made sure to grab the pistol he had placed in his nightstand drawer and sliding it towards the back of the waistband of his work pants.
In hell, violence and death were not just a common occurrence but a daily fact of life. Most new souls learned quickly to obtain a weapon of some sort to deal with the daily turf wars and all around chaos that came with living in Pentagram City, and Amsterdam was no different.
His very first day here nearly ended in his death, and he swore to never be unprepared for situations like that again.
After one last double check, he carefully crouched down and placed a kiss upon his girlfriend's cheek, giving her hair one last soft stroke.
"Have a good day, love," He whispered to his sleeping companion, finally rising from the bed and grabbing his keys, making his way towards the bedroom door to leave the room.
"You don't have to go."
Amsterdam halted in his footsteps, turning to look towards the bed again. Loona had sat upright in the bed, the annoyed look that usually adorned her face faltering into a shy, almost vulnerable, gaze as she stared at Amsterdam.
It was a side that she very rarely showed, even to Amsterdam. Loona always was his tough little firecracker, quick to anger and other extreme forms of emotion. Yet the look she gave him, soft, almost pleading in a sense, keeping him in place.
"I know you hate this job, Dam. Sometimes I don't get why you even bother going to it. It makes you unhappy."
"Loona, I-"
"I know what you're gonna say," She said, cutting him off, "And I know we have this argument all the fucking time, but I'm serious about this! You come home beaten up and tired everyday, you get so little sleep, and then wake up at this ungodly hour to jump back into the shit again and again!"
Amsterdam sighed, dropping his backpack onto the ground and moving back towards his distressed girlfriend. Kneeling at the bedside, he reached out his hands to grasp her velvety paws within his palms, an action she hesitated at first, but shyly reciprocated. She ran her furry digits through his fingers, playing with them slightly, fixing her lover with a concerned gaze with her red eyes.
"Where's this coming from, Loona," Amsterdam asked, a soft tinge to his voice.
He saw her eyes fill with a hesitation that he was unused to seeing, causing a sharp bite of concern to well in the pit of his stomach. She averted her gaze at his inquiry, unconsciously
speeding up the movements of her fingers with his.
"He scares me, Amsterdam," she replied, reaching a paw up to cup his cheek, "Lucifer may be the King of Hell, the boss of all of us, but he's dangerous. I….I just don't like the idea of you working for him."
"He's my friend, Loona."
"You're his servant Amsterdam!"
She tore herself from with a snarl, a fierce look upon her muzzle has she agonized over her boyfriend's choice of employer.
"He doesn't give a fuck about you, me, or anyone else in hell besides his closest family, and maybe not even then that! Goddamnit Amsterdam, I'm fuckin' terrified that one day you're not gonna come home from one those missions he sends you on! And if that happens, I…I don't know what I'd do…."
Reaching out, Amsterdam cupped Loona's face in his hands, capturing her gaze and bringing it back to meet his own.
"Babe, I'm not gonna die. I know you don't trust him; fuck, I know most of hell doesn't trust him. But, he did right by me when I first came here. Call it honor or whatever, but I'm obliged to work for him, to repay what he did for me, but I know that I won't die, Loona."
Loona slowly raised her paws, placing them over the hands that grasped her face and peered into her lover's eyes. If there was one thing that she hated, and yet so reverently, loved about her boyfriend, it was his ability to sound so confidently sincere when he spoke, especially when it involved things that concerned his safety.
He was an idiot, she knew, but he was her idiot.
"I'll be free of his service, Loona. I promise you. We just need to hold out a little while more."
She saw the confidence, the sincerity in his eyes, when he spoke those words, and she felt a washed in his truth. Before meeting Amsterdam, Loona had often been able to see the bullshit in the words of various others that just wanted her for her body. She learned the tell tale signs of lies and mistrust, and the first red flag was always in the eyes.
His eyes were different. Deep, amber pools that held no malice or ill will towards her. Just an affection that she had hardly ever known besides her father, Blitzo's. Though Lucifer scared her for her boyfriend's safety, Loona felt enough faith in him to trust in him; at least a little bit.
Tilting her muzzle up, she connected her lips with his, bringing him into a firm, yet loving kiss, pouring as much affection into it as she could. Amsterdam eagerly returned the gesture, stroking the soft tufts of her on her cheeks in comforting assurance.
Breaking the kiss, she connected her forehead to his, closing her eyes and enjoying the closeness she felt with her lover.
"Alright dipshit, I'll hold you too that promise."