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Satan realizes that something is up when Mammon stops stumbling over his words every time the human smiles at him. He still turns red when she touches his arm - which she does with a frequency that irritates Satan down to his very core - but Mammon doesn’t struggle to talk to her, doesn’t trip over his words when he tells her that actually, the way she has her hair done today is kind of pretty, but she shouldn’t get any ideas, he doesn’t care that much.
This serves to irritate Satan even more deeply, for reasons that he refuses to examine. He’s sure that if he sat down and thought about it, he could figure it out: he’s has thousands of years of practice at sinking his claws into his emotions and tearing them apart to see their gory insides. Without that skill, honed through trial and error, he’d still be stuck in the awful cycle of a temper he can’t control, of teeth and nails lashing out at brothers who generally mean well enough. He knows how to pick apart his anger and give name to it, give cause to it; he could do the same thing with this irritation, perhaps even more easily.
He doesn’t want to, though, so he doesn’t. That’s another trick to keeping his anger beneath the surface: the avoidance of things that will serve to do nothing but make it worse.
Sitting in an empty classroom, playing cards with Asmodeus, Mammon, and the human is, unfortunately, something that is quickly making it worse.
“Mammon, you have a card in your sleeve,” the human says, making a face that twists her nose up into a stupid little crinkle, “and I’m not sure why, considering you were winning before you shoved it up there."
Mammon laughs, full and honest and guileless, but he picks the ace out of his sleeve and flicks it at her; she laughs too, then, a sound he thinks is probably bright as the bells in the celestrial realm. Not that he would know.
Satan’s fingers clench around his cards. Asmo tuts at him, settles a cool hand over his until he loosens his knuckles. The cards are irreparably bent, and there’s still a laugh in Mammon’s voice when he answers their little human nuisance.
“I’m surprised you caught me before they did,” he says. Asmo makes a noise under his breath, indicating that might not be quite true; Satan is further infuriated to realize that he hadn’t realized it himself, because he’d been too busy looking at the way the stupid fucking human shoots sidelong glances at Mammon. “Yeah, I was winnin’, but I could be winnin’ better. ”
Satan waits for the human to point out that’s stupid.
Instead, she tilts her head, makes that stupid nose-crinkle face again, and then lays her cards flat on the table. It’s a winning hand.
“Well,” she says, positively beaming, “you should’ve kept it hidden better, because it would’ve won you this hand.”
When Mammon grins and tells her she ‘didn’t do half bad,’ instead of spluttering at her or yelling about how no one ever beats him at a gamble, Satan slams his cards on the table and stands. Asmo’s hand is on his elbow in a flash; he shakes it off, ignoring both of his brothers telling him to sit down, cool off, are you that sore of a loser?
It’s so fucking stupid, he decides, as he swans his way out of the classroom without a backwards glance. He doesn’t care what’s going on; maybe Mammon is treating her this nicely because he’s planning on devouring her soul the next time Lucifer isn’t looking. Maybe she’s being so kind in return to him because she thinks it’ll keep him from doing it.
(That’s not it - that’s not it, but he’d rather imagine blood and gore right now than anything else.)