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"My goodness... Why thank you."
"I'm honored you would say that, ____."
"Hearing you utter such praise is always delightful."
"Hehe. Shall we seal that promise with a kiss?"
"Such a confession makes all my work worth it."
"I love you," you say, face buried in the crook of his neck, fingers clawing into his shoulders for dear life.
He pretends not to hear you, but the next time his lips are on yours, there is no longer a hint of a smile interlaced with them.
"Do you remember anything of your personal life in the human world prior to coming here?" He asks as if checking off a to-do list.
You don't, and it doesn't strike you as odd at all.
"I love you," you let slip from your lips for the umpteenth time. There is no expectation behind your words, not a hint of a plea. It sounds most like an impersonal reminder. Like the morning mantra of someone determined to live out their days dedicated to the same routine.
For millennia to come, you muse. For millennia to repeat, he knows.
The whole wide world around you proves nothing but a microcosm of the feeling that engulfs you when he takes hold of your hand, and leads you to your breakfast.
"It's because of Diavolo, isn't it?"
He curls his lips in an apologetic smile as he closes your door after stepping behind it, letting you gauge the answer yourself. The logical conclusion to come to is that he'd obviously just avoided mouthing a yes, yet for some reason, a suspicion creeps into your head that it's something unmentioned entirely.
"I love you," you do not give up.
"It's something far more important."
You love him, and you know exactly what his words are referring to, but are too helpless to grasp the meaning behind them. Of course there are things far more important than Diavolo in this world, but to hear him say that?
"On what scale?"
"Myself on one, and a sand particle on the other."
So, you are not worthy, you think, or you would like to do so, but the way his hands lay on your waist as if he's handling the single most precious thing in all of existence and the way he ardently pushes his tongue into your mouth as if he will drop dead if he doesn't worship every millimeter of it this instant leave you wondering otherwise.
He deifies you. Your mind wanders off into the direction of what a beautiful sand particle he must make. Whatever he means, you claim both your right to feel proud of taking his position in the comparison and his body as yours to recce.
Maintaining temperance in day-to-day is an afterthought. He doesn't let himself slip once until he's absolutely sure you're alone with no mathematical possibility of being walked in on, and even then he keeps the masks you let him wear—because in their place, his gloves drop to the floor as his cold skin makes contact with yours, and suddenly you can't remember anything other than his demon blood rushing through your holy veins. You ignore the sinking feeling in your chest that something about this is very wrong. He knows better.
He cannot resist you. You tell him you love him, and he avoids the topic like a broken record, yet there can be no doubt remaining on either of your lips nor tips of your fingers as they make it their most prioritized task to not leave an inch of your bones unmarked by your mutual reciprocation. Maybe that's all you really have to do, you like to think, but the tea he prepares you each morning is nowhere as refreshingly bitter as the notion of real life never having been so lenient.
Sometimes as you're about to fall asleep, you find yourself, perhaps, hallucinating a You have a mission to complete in his sweet voice so clearly even though you've never once actually heard him say it. Sometimes something in your mind adds a You've brought this upon yourself, but it's not spoken in a tone of blame whatsoever—rather, just his usual playful scolding, as if all he refers to is being about to tickle you. He's never tickled you. He cannot bear to hear your laugh.
You do not feel whole. You feel a drastic part of yourself missing, but perpetually you manage to shrug it off to mere drowsiness, because the concept of such a physical state is so alluringly, unreachably human.
You find yourself in the past. The Barbatos of that age acts like he meets you for the first time, but there is something behind the unexplainable lack of glint in his eyes that leaves you, with no evidence to back up your hypothesis, utterly certain that it can't be the case. He's taken on a slightly new (or, maybe more accurately, previously existing) personality of the embodiment of pettiness, and when you and Solomon find out why exactly it is that he detests your companion so, you don't believe it for a fraction of a second.
You do not know that Solomon follows you in each and every timeline—ruining and crashing the principles of cosmos itself for the sake of his ambitious sorcerer's ideal of protecting humanity, because to him, you always were and always will be emphatically human—and neither does he.
Barbatos knows better. Barbatos doesn't tell you he loves you.
In the mirror, there rests an inviolable ball of light. You know exactly where you've seen it once before—or, no, much more than that—the form your friends Lucifer and Simeon saw the copycat bogeyman take (ah, how blasphemous of it), names so tragically irrelevant across the grand scales of all multiverses you've ever ruled over.
If nothing else, it brings a smile to your face. They really should try looking behind themselves one of these times.
You are no longer pure, and you feel no remorse for it. It's all your fault. All the result of your selfish desire to experience the wonders of being alive alongside the peculiar creations you've once cast out. You're beyond hypocrisy, yet nobody exists to reprimand you for it.
Barbatos stays by your side without you ever asking.
It's the end of the world. You know now. You've known so many times.
You still love him. You still tell him you love him.
Nobody informed you how loud the process of the universe's cessation would come to be, but it appears expected in retrospect. You look at him and his loyally unilluminated eyes, and you swear you've never witnessed a sight more wonderful. He parts his lips in a motion that mirrors your confession, just like you've watched him do as a final farewell of each ending without skip, yet never have been granted the luxury of it being accompanied by his unequivocally intoxicating voice. You're beyond grateful he allows himself such a thing at least at this singular mournful point, before everything comes to a halt and reset, before he has to once again meet the human you, in all your sanctified obliviousness, and take mental note of your debut in the newborn timeline, the count of which has already been lost even to him.
One of these cycles you'll figure it out before it's too late. He believes in you, and he trusts you, and even though it always takes you a while to know for sure, you willfully requite it without himself ever saying a single thing aloud.
...Because he knows there would be no going back if he did. And the world needs going back, he reminds himself each time he almost opens his mouth to answer you—even though if it were up to him, he would not need as much as a second of hesitation to be sure that each and every eternal recurrence he would choose you. He knows your duty is to choose the world, and he knows he cannot betray it—cannot disappoint you.
You let yourself ponder that, perhaps, you wouldn't mind too much either. The world's rules are made up by you, and you are obligated to no one to keep them intact. You are not sure why after all these retries, you still let him believe you wish for him to choose the world as well. A certain moment shared in a cafe springs into your mind—human you told him then, What's wrong with thinking about yourself for once? And the shock painted across his face appeared as natural as the first time you'd said the same thing. He never quite expects you to keep repeating it, and ceaselessly, he replies in almost a whisper, I wonder if it would be all right for me to live how I like. You tell him it's up to him to decide. He pretends to genuinely mull it over, but as mild regret washes over you, you remain aware that ultimately, he always chalks it up to your lack of memory. You order another piece of cake that he pays for, and you do not miss the unmistakable yearning shadowing over his solemn expression, yet you are fated to not yet know then what it means.
You believe in him, and you trust him, and you make sure to voice it as much as your feeble lifetime allows for. This gamble is the single most fun thing you've ever experienced in it, after all—what will come first, the chicken or the egg? Will this fragment of your omnipotent soul ever be able to turn things around before your lover for once in his own sempiternal life allows himself the grave sin of egoism?
You sincerely hope that, in however many more myriads of instances of time-turning, he'll feel exhausted enough to commit himself to the latter.
"I suppose it stands as proof that you chose well bringing this human here, Lord Diavolo."
You can't quite explain it, but as excitement and petrification mix inside your heart upon finding yourself in this entirely unfamiliar to your perception realm, the small man in butler uniform standing before you has the face of someone you feel you could one day love.