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When she turns thirteen, Grace tries to make a deal with the devil.
Honestly, it’s a bad movie. If Grace had been watching it out of interest instead of out of spite, she would’ve channel flicked ‘til she found some late night cartoons to watch instead. But it’s the type of movie that her previous foster parents would’ve hated, would’ve called sinful and crossed themselves at, so she’d let it play. A motel paid for by the government, the single stop on her way to wherever her next temporary home’ll be, means that the bed’s a bit shit and the reception on the television is spotty but it’s good enough.
Gore splashes against the screen looking more like ketchup than anything else. A fake hand bounces in the background where it hits the floor. After the third uncovered boob flaps its way past the screen, Grace gets the inkling that maybe this movie wanted to be pay per view instead of a horror film. She falls asleep at some point and the sudden blare of a late night infomercial jerks her back awake in the gloom of the so late it’s early hours.
T.V. off, shuffling sleepily around the room, a glimpse of her own reflection scares Grace more than any part of the movie did. Washing her hands in the bathroom, she wonders why anyone would summon the devil in skimpy pyjamas. Now, Grace isn’t too much of a planner. Whether that’s nature or nurture is an argument she was having with her last school’s guidance councillor; no one won and Grace still had to submit her overdue essay.
Not that that matters now, given she’s definitely crossing school district lines with this move.
So she’s not a planner but it still seems short-sighted to summon a devil wearing something you can’t run away in. Where are the jeans and joggers? A jacket? Some… salt? Supernatural creatures don’t like salt? If Grace was planning to summon the devil, the least she could do was be prepared. Bed welcomes her warmly and a couple minutes later she’s out like a light.
Despite it having been an idle thought, it somehow avoids slipping back into the ether from whence it came. She turned it over in the car on the way to her new (temporary) family, worried at it while sitting through awkward dinners with two trying too hard parents and their entirely uninterested seventeen year old kid.
In the far corner of a large backyard, a once beloved treehouse is mostly ignored. Every handful of weeks Jan - call me mum! - stares out the kitchen window and mutters about pulling the whole thing down, one of these days. It’s up there that Grace climbs with a wrinkled sheet of paper she’d printed off at the local library. It’s her thirteenth birthday - an appropriately inauspicious number for her inauspicious deed - and Grace has decided to summon the devil.
Thing is, it’s a joke. Of course it’s a joke. Like Satan’s really gonna show up in a flash of fire and smite her annoying math teacher. But it’s her birthday and if she had to suffer through an awkward party where everyone (including herself) was trying too hard, then she deserves to do something fun. Other kids might hang out with their friends, bike riding or movie watching or hanging out at the mall. Yet another move has left Grace with no friends and less and less returned letters from people who promised to be ‘friends forever.’
Probably there should be a couple more steps in between ‘hanging out with friends’ and ‘summoning the devil’ - or maybe you need friends in order to summon the devil? Either way, Grace doesn’t care. She’s got her kinda lopsided ritual circle drawn, an array of salvaged candles burning merrily (three halfburnt tea lights and two that she’ll have to put back into the candelabra on the dining table), and some maybe latin scratched out in her own looping hand. The whole production ends with an enthusiastic,
“Ave Satan!”
“It is pronounced -”
Grace screams. Scrambles back like a crab, eyes wide, until running into the wooden wall stops both her momentum and her voice. Inside the chalk circle, where before there’d been her sole birthday card and a half-melted chocolate bar as an ‘offering’, was a man. Sitting crosslegged, unwrapping her chocolate, is some oldish blond guy in a singlet and boardshorts.
“That’s mine,” she says, like an idiot. Despite how much she’s trying to convince herself that this is just some guy, there’s a leaden weight in her gut. There’s no way she would have missed someone climbing up here, let alone walking over to the circle and sitting down. Either this guy’s got super speed or…
“Now mine,” is the easy reply and when he looks over at her, Grace feels her heart jump up into her throat. It’s not the weight of that heavy gaze - though, yeah, she also feels pinned by about a hundred anvils - or the fact that this is The Devil and he’s looking at her. It’s the colour of them, the familiar shape. She’s seen those exact eyes before, whenever she’s staring at herself in the mirror and trying to figure out if she looks like anybody else in the world.
“Why do you look like me?”
“Consistency,” is the nonchalant answer. He takes a bite of chocolate then makes a face, frowning down at it.
“So you… always? Look like me?” Drawing his attention back to her was not well thought out, or even her intention, but what else was she supposed to do? He looks like her and that’s - that’s a trap, right? A trick? But that answer…
“I looked like this the first we met, so I donned this form again once I realised who it was tugging at my tail. Few are those who would beg for my attention with a flimsy card and disgustingly sweet chocolate.”
Half a dozen things crowd onto her tongue at once but she manages to bite back the it’s chocolate what did you expect and the you have a tail?!? in order to say,
“We’ve never met before.”
“Are you quite certain?” There’s something knowing in his eyes, something mocking; Grace thinks that maybe he always looks like that. She wonders if she could look like that, with practice. It’s more than just the eyes, after all. His cheekbones, his kinda square chin, the way his brows are darker than the dishevelled blond hair fanning out around his shoulders.
“...Yeah. I’d remember.” No matter what else suddenly feels in doubt, this Grace is sure of. Literal Satan doesn’t exactly have the sort of presence to fade, not the sort of person you meet and five minutes later have forgotten.
“Perhaps I met you but you did not meet me?”
“Um,” Grace blinks. “Is that possible?”
“Certainly.”
“Oh. So… it’s just a coincidence? That you look…” Grace can’t find a way to end that without cringing so instead she just waves a hand back and forth between them. The Devil raises an eyebrow, tilting his head in a manner which should theoretically be very human but absolutely one hundred percent is not.
“True coincidence is quite rare, Grace, and never do I involve myself with such cases.”
Before she can ask how he knows her name, her birthday card is in his hand. Happy 13th birthday is sprawled across the front in hot pink; it says a lot about a foster family, whether they remember how old you’re turning or not. One finger taps at the number boldly printed on the front before flipping it open to reveal the short message inside. These foster parents are a bit overbearing with their attempts to absorb her into the family but at least they’re trying which is… nice, she guesses.
“Would you like to know more?”
“What’ll it cost me?”
The Devil laughs, loud and uneven. When he smiles, Grace can see how sharp his teeth are. Outside, there’s the faint sound of the other neighbourhood kids playing. In the house Henry - don’t call me Harry - is listening to music loud enough to be heard faintly in this distant corner of the garden. Birds are probably chirping somewhere, and cicadas and grasshoppers doing their noisy insect thing, but not in the vicinity of the treehouse. The birds fled with Grace’s scream and the insects can probably sense the predator close at hand.
For a long minute, the only sound is the improbable way The Devil’s unnerving laugh bounces from wall to wall.
“For a simple conversation, I shall take only what has been freely offered. A deal would require… further negotiation.” Never before has Grace truly understood what a ‘menacing glint’ was. She shakes her head, feeling the way her hair is tugged by the rough wood she’s still leaning against. Given she hadn’t thought summoning Satan would actually work, she doesn’t exactly have any request she’s dying to ask for.
“Okay. So talk.”
Another eyebrow raise and Grace winces a bit because, yeah, that was probably too rude for any adult let alone The Devil himself. But man - devil? Demon? …Angel??? - doesn’t pull her up on it, just twirls the birthday card between his fingers for a few moments until it disappears between one blink and the next.
“Must the onus be on myself? It is you who has questions.”
“I already asked!”
“Is that the question which shall bring you the answers you seek? Have I not already said that coincidences are not something by which I can abide?”
“I would’ve thought The Devil would like a bit of chaos,” Grace mumbles, buying time while she thinks of what to ask. If it’s not a coincidence that they look alike, then - then what? Is she really going to ask Satan if he’s her dad? What other questions can she ask, though? Is there some sort of list with keywords that’d lead her to the knowledge she wants? A cheat sheet?
“Humans bring enough chaos to damn all in their path, they have no need of my help in that regard.”
“...Riiiiight. So we look alike for a reason and that reason is…” Grace raises her eyebrows, silently prompting him to finish the sentence.
“Perhaps I shall tell you a story, Grace.” The Devil says that the same way the old grandpa from two foster homes ago used to say something similar. Realistically, he doesn’t look too old. Younger than her foster parents, probably, but if he’s pulling out lines like that he’s gotta be ancient. Like the grandpa from two foster homes ago, face and hands all wrinkled and shuffling along with a walker. Obviously Satan’s old but she hadn’t actually thought about it, until now.
“I love stories,” Grace says and it even has the benefit of being true. She likes them even more when they give her information she’s suddenly desperate to have.
“Many seek to make deals with me but I do not take all comers. After so many centuries, I like that which rouses my interest. Do you know, there are some things people very rarely seek from me. Whether due to superstition, common sense or something else entirely, I shall not speculate. Nevertheless, few indeed seek The Devil's help conceiving a child.”
Something akin to dread begins to slip down Grace’s spine and settle uneasily in her gut. If The Devil notices her sudden discomfort, he doesn’t call attention to it. His blue eyes are fixed upon her; she tries to remember if she’s seen him blink at all, yet.
“I appeared to her in this guise because it suited my purpose. So a human could, indeed, speculate that it is mere coincidence that I have this face. Now imagine, Grace, that all you queried after was coincidence. Would I stop my tale here? Or perhaps I should detail the reasons why I chose this shade of blue or blond, or this set of lips, or - no? You do not wish for such details?”
“What gave it away?” Grace tries to even out the scowl on her face; fails. The Devil laughs again, distinctly at her this time. The Devil takes another bite of chocolate once his laughter has faded away and they’re left in an uncomfortable void of silence; it doesn’t seem any more palatable to him this time than it did the last he tried it.
“When you try, you are as much a chameleon as I, Grace. Not literally.” He winks and then - shifts. An entirely different man sits before her, chocolate in hand. Then another. Another. It’s like watching the world’s quickest and most disturbing flipbook. Facial features in constant flux, never settling on any one shape for more than a heartbeat. Skin and hair and eyes a myriad of colours. It’s nauseating; grotesque. By the time his face settles back into the familiar blond and blue combination, Grace is rubbing her eyes in an attempt to rub out the … she doesn’t even know what to call it. Like a sunspot in her eyes except all she was looking at was him.
“A different personality with every person you meet, changing faces depending on how it’ll serve you. Not as good yet as you will be, but my compliments nevertheless. I mention it because, despite that, you’re quite rude to me. Any particular reason?”
You’re an unnerving creep, she thinks.
You might be my dad.
“Dunno,” she says, shrugging. For whatever reason, The Devil doesn’t press her for an actual answer. Instead he shrugs, too. It’s exactly as human as his head tilt, as whatever he was just doing with his face. Looks kind of like there are too many and too few bones in his shoulders when he does. Grace isn’t great at science but even she can tell that there’s something wrong with the way his pale skin stretches across whatever it is that’s underneath.
“Do I strike you as particularly cruel?”
“Um. No?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“No.” Even though he’s a bit of a dick, and even though she’s heard aaaaall about the evils of The Devil, the guy before her is just… some guy. Weird and inhuman and probably super fucked up, but he doesn’t exactly hit Grace’s standards for being cruel.
“No one is forced to seek my help, nor do I pressure them to accept a deal after they have found me. Humans have their beloved free will, with which they dig themselves ever deeper and deeper. My occasional helping hand is almost negligible, in the grand scheme.”
Even though it’s still bright outside, a sudden shadow steals across The Devil's face. Grace wants to applaud his flair for the dramatic while also scrambling down the side of the treehouse and running until she’s as far away as possible. Unfortunately, her terrified flight from her own poor decision put her opposite the entry hatch - with The Devil in between. All she can do is sit and let him monologue. Hopefully the answers she wants will be in there somewhere.
“When this woman struck a deal for a child, I told her she should speak to her husband about adoption. Very rarely do I speak with no purpose and yet she disregarded this kindness I deigned to bestow her. She wanted her own child, her flesh and her blood, from her very own womb - these are the very words she used.”
“Yeah, I uh. I can already see some problems with that.”
“Clever girl,” The Devil gives her an approving nod and Grace makes an awkward smile back at him. “Would you like to guess which it was that proved her otherwise fair deal to be, in her eyes, little more than a monkey’s paw?”
“Assuming that this story is, you know, situationally relevant, I think we can scratch off stillbirth or SIDS or something. So - she never mentioned her husband. She and her husband wanted a baby but she didn’t ask for his blood and bone, or whatever.”
The Devil hums. Despite being held, despite the heat, it hasn’t melted any further. Lopsided, with two small bites out of it; The Devil takes a third and his lips curl back in disgust.
“From the birthing bed she summoned me, sigils in placenta and spilt blood. Accused me of tricking her, of ruining her life. You were blonde at birth, did you know? A thick head of blonde ringlets; not especially common. Doubly so when both of the supposed parents are brunette.”
“But you did trick her. She mightn’t have asked right but you still know what she wanted. So -”
“Is her own ignorance my fault? She wanted a child so with the clasp of our hands I ensured sperm fertilised an egg -”
Grace can’t help the way her face twitches at the phrasing, though she does her best to keep it locked down.
“But even I cannot make something from nothing. The seed of life had to sprout from some where. Had she cared from where, perhaps she should have specified. And surely it cannot be my fault that her husband hid his sterility from her? What would you have had me do instead, Grace? From where should I have taken the seed? Her husband's brother? His father? Some other unconsenting man, wandering the world unaware of what I’d taken, with no recompense given?”
Another bite of chocolate, this one significantly larger.
“Couldn’t you have made her husband, um, you know… load his gun?” Even as she makes the finger guns, she withers in mortification on the inside. All she can hope is that it doesn’t show on her face the way she thinks it does. The Devil laughs again and she’s almost getting used to it now, the way it hooks into the air and lingers.
“Ah but my dear, that is an entirely different deal altogether. One which she never could have made with the knowledge she had.”
Silence settles between them. In the distance there’s the sound of everyone else’s life continuing without pause. In their bubble of silence, Grace doesn’t know what to say, or do, or think. She picks at the wood grain of the floor, wishing she’d just stayed inside listening to too loud dad rock and struggling with her homework.
Honestly one of her parents being The Devil isn’t even the worst. It’s weird. Really weird. But she can’t really blame The Devil for not raising her. Hell doesn’t seem like the type of place you want a kid hanging around. Plus he’s probably got, like, evil shit to do. That’s whatever - that doesn’t even feel real. None of this feels real. Satan isn’t supposed to be real ; she’d write a letter of apology to her previous foster home if they hadn’t spent eight months being upright pricks about everything.
What’s worse is that one of her parents wasn’t evil or dead or in a bad situation. Married, stable enough to want kids and that’s what stings the most, what’s cutting into her chest like a jagged knife: her mother wanted her. All these years of thinking and Grace figured either her parents were tragically dead or her mum was just some dumb kid in over her head.
But her mother wanted her.
Wanted her enough to make a deal with The Devil - then gave her up anyway.
“I think you owe me child support.” Her voice, when it cuts through the silence, is rough at the edges. It’s only ‘cause she’s so stubborn that she’s not bawling her eyes out; that can come later, once she’s in bed for the night. For now all she does is wipe at her nose with the back of one hand and then shoot another glance at The Devil. Her… father? Maybe? He implied so, at least, but so far The Devil seems like the kind of man who can only be trusted with specifics. Anything less than that gives him too much wiggle room.
“Is that so?” The Devil gives a sharp grin around another mouthful of chocolate. Why does he even keep eating it? Is it just to make sure she doesn’t get any? Maybe - and Grace does feel a little stupid for thinking this, even while she’s thinking it - maybe he’s just happy to have gotten a gift from her? It’s not like she’s been getting him fathers day cards or anything.
…Should she be getting him fathers day cards?
“What does such a thing cost these days, one wish? Two?”
“Don’t forget to account for inflation.”
Another laugh, another bite.
“Do you have a wish, Grace?”
“Yeah, but it’s nothing that I can’t get on my own.” She wants a family. A real family. There aren’t enough words to spin the perfect for her family to life; she’d leave gaps she can’t even see, just like her mother. A monkey's paw waiting to happen.
“How curious. Should I take my leave of you, then?”
“Wait,” she says, even though she’s spent most of this accidental meeting wanting to leave, “wait. Is this, I mean. Can I, you know, see you again?”
One finger taps against the floor, smearing through a line of chalk while he eats the last of his chocolate.
“Call as you like.”
Halfway through the sentence, he catches fire. Goes up like alcohol thrown on a fire and is entirely gone. The words linger where smoke should be. All that’s left is a chocolate wrapper and a scorchmark on wood.
Before Alex proposed, Grace had been really and truly convinced that they were just in a situationship. Think about it: here’s this rich rich guy - the kind of rich where someone claims to be ‘comfortable’ while also wearing a watch that costs tens of thousands of dollars - in his thirties. He’s from a wealthy family, he’s got a good job, he looks like he plays golf on the weekends. No one normal plays golf on the weekends.
What the hell would a guy like that be doing with her?
Not to toot her own horn, but Grace thinks she’s pretty great. She’s fun, outgoing, people say she’s pretty. She’s got a mostly stable job (that she hates) but it pays the bills enough to keep her in one place rather than bouncing around. At the age of twenty seven she has three whole friends which, in her opinion, is pretty fucking good.
That said, what the hell would a guy like that want from her? Apart from the obvious, which he was getting just fine without a ring on it. Sure maybe he’s a little boring but over the years of working an assortment of hospitality jobs, Grace has figured out that rich people are either complete assholes or an absolute snoozefest. Being called only a little boring is an achievement for him and a compliment from her.
It’s not like he was trying to get her to meet his brother, or sitting her down to ‘define the relationship’ or anything. They hang out anywhere from once to a handful of times a week, they do date-like activities, they have fun together, they fuck. It’s exactly the sort of low stakes stability that Grace has lived with for most of her life.
Sure, one day she wanted a huge wedding with the man of her dreams, with a big extended family and plans for kids and maybe some pets and everything would be perfect. But so far her experiences with serious dating have ended with her crying into ice cream while sob-shouting angry lyrics and talking herself out of calling up the old man. It really didn’t seem like some rich boy slumming it was gonna be the one to break that pattern.
And then he’d proposed!
Exactly a year into their… not-situationship, as it happened - at least she’d never forget their anniversary. Staring down at him, she’d done some lightning fast calculations in her head and realised several things in quick succession.
She’s really bad at picking up what were, in hindsight, some pretty obvious signals.
Alex loves her.
Alex wants to spend the rest of his life with her, wants to marry her -
She could love him, if only she pulled down the giant walls she’d thrown up due to thinking this was just a situationship.
She wants to.
She can never, ever, ever tell him about the rest of her weekend.
Which is maybe not the healthiest start to a relationship but Grace knows people have built stronger on worse. If he ever finds out, she’ll simply explain everything to him and they’ll fight about it but, ultimately, Alex will forgive her. Because he loves her. And, by the time they’re standing inside the Le Domas home on the day of their wedding, Grace is deliriously in love with him too.
That boring stability has only grown more and more appealing as she imagines their future together. Pictures the long years stretching out, what a good dad he’ll be to their kids; romantic dinners, large christmases, family recipes. Not that she thinks she’ll get any from Alex’s family, but things that Grace has slowly been collecting over the years. Before she’d cook them for herself - or drop them off to the old man - but now she’s been quietly sharing them with Alex. Maybe she can cook for her new in-laws, if their personal chef doesn’t mind her puttering around the kitchen.
Wandering through the halls of his family home, joking about how sweaty her hands are, laughing about how nervous Alex is. On the drive from the airport he’d asked her every twenty minutes - like clockwork - if she really wanted to do this. Meet his family, get married, the whole shebang. And every twenty two minutes (after he finished his spiel; twenty four if he was especially agitated) she reassured him this is exactly what she wanted.
What does it matter if his dad doesn’t seem to like her much? (A lot, actually, but she’s not thinking about that.) Who cares if her friends don’t like him? (That’s Grace’s fault, she never should’ve told them about The Mistake.) Alex has gone to all the trouble of reconnecting with his family -
And no, Lin, she didn’t pressure him into reaching out to the parents he’s no-contact with. Not even if he misses them, not even if she’d once caught him staring at his mothers contact info until his screen went black. Not even though the worst he’s ever said about them is that they’re a bunch of assholes, that they’re weird.
Not, not like that , Grace, don’t make that face. Nothing happened to me, they’re just… weird. Rich people weird, you wouldn’t understand.
Grace isn’t exactly the type of person to be throwing stones about the level of contact someone has with their family. Sure the prospect of a large extended family was extremely exciting - imagine it! Siblings! Cousins! A mother! (in law) - but she wasn’t planning on pushing. That was all him, once they’d gotten engaged.
Of course we have to get married at the estate, he’d said without any gravitas at all. Like it was a done deal already, a foregone conclusion from the moment he slid that engagement ring on her finger.
So here they are, wandering the halls. Alex is nervous, she’s nervous, and they’re both excited to get married tomorrow. There’s nothing that can put a pin in their enthusiasm, even if Alex’s sixth attempt to get them to leave is getting to be a bit of a downer.
“Alex,” she sighs at him, tilting her head and raising an eyebrow. Whatever reassurance she was about to rehash dies in her throat as someone else rounds a corner behind her and calls out Alex’s name.
“Daniel!” Alex grins, wide and warm, and Grace feels the way she melts at the sight. Her fiance is already moving past her to embrace his brother and she turns as well.
Ice shoots down her spine. Her heart attempts to crawl out of her throat.
Her first instinct is denial. It can’t be - what are the chances, after all? But the look of wide eyed shock on Daniel’s face immediately dashes Grace’s hopes. This really is him - tall, dark and alcoholic.
The Mistake.
What a fucking coincidence. It’s times like this that she knows the old man is laughing at her, wherever he is. The Devil might not deal in coincidences but Grace clearly does. She knows her own face is a mirror to his, probably along with a large amount of horror. The faint silver lining is that Alex misses the moment of recognition, arms already wrapped around his brother.
His brother.
Holy shit, Grace is gonna be sick.
Grace wishes the sex was worse. Not terrible, because that would be equally as memorable, but simply… mediocre. The type of sex that’s half forgotten by the time you’re shoving your shoes on. Not a regret, as such, just an idle acknowledgement on your way home that you would’ve preferred to have spent that half hour brainless in front of the television. You tell yourself that next time a guy rushes through some halfhearted foreplay you’re just gonna get up and leave.
If it were that sort of sex, Grace wouldn’t have remembered him. Maybe she would’ve had that lingering sense that she’d forgotten something, maybe she would’ve remembered him in a week or a month or next christmas when the family’s back together. If she hadn’t remembered, or if she’d at least kept a straight face and pretended not to - but she did, and she knows it’s obvious she did.
All Grace can do is stand there, wringing her hands as the man she’s going to marry tomorrow hugs his brother. Hugs the man she had marathon sex with less than twenty four hours before Alex proposed to her.
It’s. Not ideal.
Grace waits for Daniel to say something. To shatter the future she’s been building for herself., with Alex. How could he not?
But instead he just pulls back from the hug and arranges his face into a lopsided smile. It’s not enough to hide the tightness around his eyes but Alex either doesn’t pick up on it or ignores it entirely. Daniel pats Alex on the shoulder, offers a couple trite words of congratulation, and distinctly doesn’t mention that he’s fucked her.
It’s a blessing she’s not sure she deserves.
“There’s someone I want to introduce you to.” Alex turns and holds his hand out to her. Grace, smile hopefully not as plastic as it feels, takes it and allows herself to be pulled forward. “Daniel, this is Grace. Grace, my older brother Daniel.”
“It’s, uh. A pleasure.”
“It’s certainly something,” Daniel sucks air in through his teeth, scratching at his scruffy beard. “Nice to meet you, mazel tov, all that useless shit. I’m gonna go find something to drink.”
“Daniel -” Alex starts, chiding, but Daniel just waves over his shoulder and disappears elsewhere into the house. It’s the first time Grace has been glad that it’s so ridiculously big.
“Sorry about him, he’s…” Alex trails off. This is where Grace would usually chime in with something along the lines of ‘an asshole’ except that she’s viscerally aware that she’s the asshole.
“No big.” Grace gives the world's jerkiest shrug, pairing it with a tight smile born from the relief that Daniel didn’t spill the beans. Which presumably means he’ll keep his mouth shut forever, and she’ll keep her mouth shut forever, and Alex won’t ever have to feel a betrayal on two fronts. Easy.
…Unless Daniel’s waiting until the ‘I object’ part of the wedding, which really would be a shitty move but she’s heard from Alex that rich people really do love their dramatics. Shit. There goes her plan to avoid him forever and ever amen.
It’s impossible to ignore Daniel at the rehearsal dinner. There’s a bunch of people she doesn’t know whose names she forgets almost instantly, even with Alex muttering things like which state they represent in the senate in her ear. There’s some classy music being played over hidden speakers and enough wine to drown them all and the burning need to impress her future in-laws.
And still, everywhere she turns, there’s Daniel.
Everyone else seems used to him. Okay, that sounds stupid - of course they’re used to him, he’s part of the family. What she means is, they mostly just ignore him. Leaving him to his own devices as he sits in a corner or slowly circles the room, always with a glass in hand. One of the servers appears to be keeping an eye on him, appearing at his elbow any time the bottom of his glass even thinks of making a reappearance.
His wife’s somewhere in the room, too, which doesn’t make Grace feel any better. At least she finally has confirmation that they really do seem to hate each other, which is something. Barely anything, considering the churning in her own gut, but better than nothing.
Once dessert is settling like shit in her stomach, she begs off the party. I wanna get a solid night's sleep before the big day, she says. It’s not quite a lie but it works anyway. Alex kisses sweetly, to a round of aww’ s from anyone close enough to notice, and then Grace finally manages to escape upstairs.
Pausing on the stairwell to catch her breath doesn’t really do anything, to be honest. All it does is give Daniel time to catch up with her; Grace doesn’t know whether she’d expected that or not. His rich people casual outfit is crumpled, there’s what appears to be some spilled liquor on his sleeve, and he moseys up to her like there’s nothing wrong. With those long legs of his, he could race his way up the stairs. Instead he takes them real slow, one at a time and a long sip of his whiskey in between
“What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a shit heap like this?”
“Your other pickup line was better,” Grace says before she can think about it, sweating nervously the moment the words are out. Anyone could walk by and hear and then what would they think? Probably that Daniel’s enough of a dirtbag to hit on his brother's fiance twice in a matter of hours. She’s gotta stop being so paranoid; that will draw people's attention faster than anything else.
“Well my other pickup line wasn’t trying to get the attention of my little brother's fiance. I figure the bar’s a bit lower now.”
“Fuck you.”
“Again? Wow, I am honoured.”
For a full half a second, she considers pushing him down the stairs. All he does is grin at her, looking exactly like he had all those months ago. A bad idea, but a tempting one. They stare at each other for a minute or so; all that tension is just because she’s worried he’s gonna shout their misdeeds to the full crowd of a wedding tomorrow.
“Hey,” Grace starts, voice low and more uncertain than she wants it to be.
“Not here. C’mon.” Daniel jerks his head towards the top of the stairs, now skipping every second step as he goes. Even with the change he still looks like he’s taking his time. Something in the slouch of his body, maybe. Grace opens her mouth to argue that here’s fine, actually, but then she hears it - footsteps. How Daniel heard it before her, she doesn’t know. Dog-like hearing? Some creak or wheeze of this old house that it’ll take her years to decipher? Luck?
Either way, Grace hightails it up the stairs after him. It became obvious almost immediately that whoever it was isn’t following them, if they saw them at all. The close call has made her leery of talking about it in the corridor where anyone could overhear so she follows him all the way back to the single bed room she’s staying in for the night. Sleeping alone the night before the wedding was a tradition she’d been willing to buck but it was an easy enough concession to make, to start off on the right foot with her new in-laws.
All it means to her now is that Alex is gonna stumble back to his big boy bedroom halfway across the house when he finally stops drinking with his rich friends, while she’ll be… here. In this probably antique single bed, replaying her mistakes - just the one big one, really.
“Soooo,” Daniel starts as she shuts the door behind herself. “This is awkward.”
“Yeah no shit. All I wanna know is, are you gonna feel compelled to confess at the objections portion of tomorrow?” Arms crossed tight over her chest, Grace stops herself from pacing by the barest margin. These cute little pumps really aren’t the right shoe for a good back and forth; neither’s the dress she’s wearing, honestly. A classic nude slip dress, the sales assistant had beamed, and then gouged Alex’s wallet for all it’s worth.
“Wasn’t really planning on it.” When Daniel shrugs it’s with his whole body, both shoulders doing their best to hit his ears. Grace feels all the tension unwind from her body, relaxing back against the door in sheer relief. Should she thank him? Would that be weird? Probably.
“Oh. Thanks.” Yep that was exactly as weird as she expected, and he seems very aware of that. Shrugs again. One hand shoved into his jacket pocket, the other cradling a now mostly empty glass of something that looks both expensive and strong that he tosses back as soon as he stops shrugging.
“I mean, I figure if you’re willing to risk marrying in, what’s a little bit of adultery? Not exactly the worst sin.”
“That… makes no sense. Shouldn’t you be more willing to say something if we’re getting married? Not that I want you to! But that’s just a really weird way of looking at it.”
Daniel blinks at her. Looks around the room as though somebody else is waiting in the wings. Back to her with a peculiar look on his face. Grace doesn’t know him well enough to place it; trepidation, maybe, but that makes even less sense than his words.
“You’re just fucking with me, right?”
“That really was more of a one time thing,” Grace says, even if the handful of texts they exchanged before Alex proposed might say something different. It was just a one time thing so whatever nebulous plans they’d had been hashing out don’t really count, right? Right.
“Oh,” Daniel says, peering into his empty glass. “I threw my drink back way too early.”
“Not used to rejection?” Grace says with a very sarcastic amount of false sympathy. Daniel laughs, a sharp bark that sounds more like it was shocked out of him than anything else.
“This might be a surprise, but decades of alcoholism really isn’t the turn on you seem to think it is. You sure Alex didn’t tell you? Maybe you just took it as a really, really off-color joke. If so, you might wanna rethink that.”
Shifting to the side, Grace doesn’t let her own gaze wander around the room, keeps it firmly fixed on Daniel. A decidedly squirmy looking Daniel. Now, Grace isn’t exactly a genius. She had mediocre grades her whole life, didn’t bother with any college applications, isn’t waiting on a MENSA membership to come in mail. She doesn’t get most of the jeopardy questions right.
But she knows people. Even this many drinks into the night she can connect the dots when one brother’s spent the last week trying to convince her that they don’t have to get married, even though he’s the one who proposed. The other, standing before her and looking increasingly like he’s thinking about throwing himself out the window, asked her whether Alex has told her. Said it like she should know exactly what he meant without any other context clues.
“What are you hiding?”
“ Me, ” Daniel splutters, going for another drink. Grace can tell the moment he remembers it’s empty but decides to commit to the pantomime anyway. “Hey don’t look at me like that, I told my wife. That’s not exactly a conversation I’m willing to have twice.”
“So I should go ask Alex?”
“Yep! Absolutely you should! In fact, why don’t you go do that right now and I go find the oldest bottle of scotch my dad has squirreled away and we’ll both have a truly terrible night. Sound good?”
Crossing her arms, Grace leans back against the door with more purpose. Smacking his lips and tapping his glass against his leg, Daniel doesn’t try to move her. He eyes up the wall like it’ll help him get out of this before sighing and moving to sit on the edge of her bed.
“I can’t actually be the one to tell you. Literally. It’s…” A huge sigh that seems to take most of the height out of his spine. Like all the glasses trotted out tonight, his is made of some expensive crystal; Daniel half drops it on the bedside table without care for whether it breaks or not. Then he throws himself backwards, sprawled out sideways on the bed. “It’s against the rules. It’s gotta be Alex.”
“Is this part of the weird rich people bullshit Alex was telling me about?” Staying where she is seems like the safest bet. Not cause she’d be tempted to touch him, or anything! That’d be ridiculous. She’s getting married tomorrow. Just because she knows Daniel eats pussy like he’ll die without it doesn’t mean she’s going to do something stupid. The only reason she’s thinking it is because they’ve holed themselves up in a bedroom and, until a couple hours ago, that was the only context she had for Daniel.
Alcoholic asshole he might be - a distinctly different type of prick than a rich asshole, which she had somehow not managed to pick up from him; maybe it was the crappy arcade that she met him in. The cheap booze in the flask he’d swigged from then offered to her. Had his eyes glazed over when talking to the service staff they’d encountered? If they had, she probably put it down to all the alcohol. He’d been polite enough that she hadn't ditched him on principle; charismatic enough that she’d spent more than twenty four hours straight with him and it felt like the time flew by.
No matter how weird about it she feels now, at the time Grace hadn’t wanted to leave. Had made plans to see each other again, even as they’d been kissing on the sidewalk. Lounging in bed together, chatting and talking shit and just existing had made Grace feel like she’d finally let out a breath she’d been holding for too long. For some stupid reason she’d felt a connection with a guy who was married, whose marriage was bad enough that he’d called his wife in front of her as proof and said ‘you mind if I hook up?’
Honestly Grace must’ve been out of her mind to listen to that entirely surreal conversation between Charity and Daniel and still let him take her to a hotel afterwards. At the time it just seemed… right. Maybe like they were fucked in compatible ways, not exactly normal but well matched to each other. No bastion of stability but something good nevertheless.
Stupidly, she’d even texted her friends about him on the way home. Her agreeing to Alex’s proposal literal hours later had certainly seen several very long voice messages arrive one after the other. So what if she’d been excited and bubbly about Daniel? How cares if she said she felt - it was just the sex. Everyone knows sex can bring a certain kind of false intimacy to it, all those good brain chemicals crossing wires and making fools of people. Grace can’t be held accountable for anything she says while sex addled and, alcoholic asshole he might be, Daniel’s good at sex.
Better than good, maybe. Fantastic.
Which is not why Grace is staying near the door. She has self control. She’s a mature adult with a fiance who isn’t going to make poor decisions just because she’s had a bit too much wine and she’s frustrated with Alex. What the hell is he even trying to hide from her? Why keep asking if she’s really sure about getting married with that concerned look on his face, over and over again, instead of just telling her what his real concern is?
“ Weird is underselling it a bit. Fucked up. Traumatising. Anything in that ballpark suits better than weird.” Daniel’s voice has lost all life, each word limping along like it would’ve rather not been spoken at all. It’s not exactly the kind of affect someone puts on for a laugh; not the kind of voice most people know exist at all. What did Alex say, months ago when she’d asked him if he was certain he wanted to reestablish contact with his family?
Nothing happened to me.
Maybe Grace should’ve asked more questions; maybe Alex should’ve changed the emphasis cause Grace is starting to think the important part of that whole conversation had been the ‘to me’ part. Cause even if Alex is mostly fine with whatever fucked up shit his family has done - and he is, she can tell, even if he’s still chomping at the bit to leave as soon as they have everything wrapped up - it’s clear Daniel isn’t.
Fuck.
It’s easy enough to take a single step, then another. All the way across the room until Grace takes a seat next to him on the bed. Lets herself fall backwards until they’re lying side by side. At least the only pins in her hair are holding her fringe in place; if she’d let the wedding stylist do as she pleased, that simple move would’ve skewered her in half a dozen places.
“It’s insane to me that we’ve hired a hair dresser and make-up artist for tonight as well as tomorrow. Do you know how expensive they are?”
“Considering I did my best to be entirely uninvolved in my own wedding, no.”
“If you think marrying in is this whole… risk, or whatever, why’d you even get married?” Grace asks and then worries Daniel’s going to tell her he was in love with Charity, once. Then she’ll have to lay here and let him complain about how his marriage fell to pieces and give him an awkward pat on the shoulder and it’ll be a horrible way to end an already bad night.
“Someone had to.” He says instead, which is weird, but it’s probably a rich people thing. Marriage, kids, someone to carry on the family name. “I’m the oldest. I take the hit so no one else has to, right? Load of good that did us.”
Daniel creaks a laugh. Grace reaches out and takes his hand and it doesn’t feel familiar, the way she was half afraid it would. She doesn’t know the shape of it blind the way she does Alex’s. It’s just a hand. Daniel holds back; it feels like he’s clinging to a lifeline. It feels like their fingers twine together naturally rather than through any purpose. His hand is so soft, entirely unused to lifting anything heavier than whatever glass is in his hand. That much Grace remembers, at least.
“Wow that really brought the mood down, huh,” is what Daniel says next, after however long they spend in silence.
“Not sure if the mood was ever up, but sure.” Personally Grace had been enjoying the silence. She’s been her very best self since she got here and it’s exhausting, honestly. Add too that the anxiety of the whole mess with Daniel, the blur of meeting a bunch of people the Le Domas’ consider close enough to invite to a rehearsal dinner - it’d taken her approximately three introductions to realise that it was a flimsy excuse to network rather than the family trying to get to know her better. Sitting in silence, running her thumb along the side of Daniel’s hand while he gently scrapes his short nails against her skin was nice. Exactly what she needed. She could probably fall asleep like this.
The type of thing she should be doing with Alex, but he’s being welcomed back into ‘the circle’ after his years away and -
“Wait, are you a cult? Is this a cult thing?” Grace propels herself up on one elbow to look down at Daniel who, very importantly, is not laughing and saying no. Which is the expected result when you half-jokingly (or mostly seriously) accuse someone’s family of being a cult.
“Uhhhhhh.”
Grace flops facedown on the bed, muffling her shout into the quilted bedspread. It means she’s laid diagonally over Daniel to do it but at this point, who cares. They’ve already fucked, a bit of clothed not quite cuddling is not going to be the breaking point.
“I mean. We’re not not a cult.”
“Wow, Daniel,” Grace enunciates into the fabric she’s trying to smother herself with. “Thank you for that elucidating answer. I feel so much better now that you’ve said that.”
“If you look at the checklist for being a cult, we don’t actually tick off that many boxes. More than we should, sure, but you know. Not officially, or anything.”
Heaving herself back onto her elbows, Grace twists around to look at Daniel. He’s staring at the ceiling but tilts his head to look at her. There’s some humour back in his face at least. A wry twist of his lips that makes things seem less terrible. The crows feet around his eyes look more like they’re from laughter than stress, like this.
“Oh, well. If it’s not officially a cult, what’s there to worry about? Not like you’ve got weird ritual robes hanging in a closet or anything.”
Daniel looks back up at the ceiling. Grace groans and returns to swearing into the bedding. Of course they have weird cult robes. Why not! Maybe if they worship the devil her father-in-law will actually like her, given who her old man is. Grace considers asking but, given the way this entire conversation has gone, she’s not willing to make another bad joke only to have Daniel inadvertently confirm it.
“You really should go talk to Alex.”
Wriggling around, Grace manages to mostly roll off of Daniel. Their legs have become tangled instead, where they fall over the edge of the bed. It’s not exactly comfortable but all the surprises she’s gone through over the past couple hours - plus the wine - have left her exhausted. It wasn’t so bad while she was up and about, being social. The brief shock of the Le Domas family being a cult had perked her back up for a hot minute but even that’s draining from her.
“Yeah. You think he’s more likely to spill the beans while drunk?”
Daniel makes a considering noise, then a dubious one.
“I’ll try when he’s hungover. Maybe he’ll tell me the truth if I’m loud enough, just to get me to stop making his headache worse.”
“Smart plan.”
“I’m a forward thinker.”
The house is large enough that there’s no ambient noise from the party floating up to them. Grace listens to Daniel breathe, listens to the house creak around them, and knows she’s going to fall asleep soon. Daniel mumbles something about getting up soon but doesn’t so much as twitch a finger. Their hands are still linked together, resting on Daniel’s stomach, when Grace finally drifts to sleep.
Before the wedding, in the brief moment she had alone, Daniel slid up behind her and asked her if Alex had told her yet. He hadn’t. Not when she’d pressed while they’d eaten breakfast, not while he watched her twirl around in her gorgeous dress, not even when Daniel had dropped by and dropped a couple of heavy handed hints. She’d heard him make a frustrated hiss, mutter a quiet fuck. Then he stepped closer, his chest to back, and she felt the scrape of his beard against her neck. A quick kiss that she’d spent the whole day feeling guilty about it.
Not that it was her fault that Daniel kissed her; the guilt is all about how she’d leant back into him, arched her neck to give him more room to work with. He had to brush her make up off his lips afterwards and darted off outside before the make up artist reappeared to do some final touch ups. A brief moment of weakness that she’s feeling a lot less guilty about now, listening to her new father-in-law give an obviously rehearsed spiel. Grace is starting to think she should’ve refused to get married until Alex told her. Maybe if she was someone else she could just laugh it off as a joke.
Instead, Grace stares at the card machine, and thinks no coincidences.