Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sock absentmindedly flicked a crumb off of Jonathan's desk, annoyed at the rules surrounding his form for not the first time.

At first, when he had plunged a knife into his chest, he had simply assumed nothing would follow. The idea that there was an afterlife - Hell, specifically - had just never held much weight in his mind. He'd given it a cursory glance, sure, his odd hyper-fixation on guts, blood, and terrorizing any small animals within his grasp had led people to assure him that he belonged there, even at a young age. Then, when he'd woken up covered in blood with his parents’ bodies at his feet, his beloved knife glued to his hand thanks to his midnight carnage, he figured he may as well test their theories. What else was there to do?

Waking up in Hell, however, wasn’t much of a shock as he thought it would be. What had shocked him was the tall ginger man that greeted him, told a few horrible jokes, and offered him a job. One where he would pose as a demon, terrorizing the unsuspecting living. And, if he were to do anything, life or death, he assumed it may as well have to do with murder - even if only barely. In truth, the concept of being a demon sounded pretty cool at the time.

If only he had known when he took the job that Jonathan Combs didn’t remotely care about being haunted, and barely blinked at him when he learned of his supposed position as an unholy pest, and, had called him a ghost.

For some reason, that word stuck out in his mind, and it ended up continuing to bother him when he had a rare moment of alone time. ‘Ghost, Ghosting,’ he pondered, spotting another crumb and flicking into his assignment’s floor. He was unsure why it bothered him - he’d been called much worse by other people, but the idea now that he was see-through nagged at his mind. He'd always been loud, thanks to his personality - and his colorful wardrobe - and the idea that he was invisible stung in an unexpected way.

Resting his head on crossed arms, he slumped further into the chair somehow. It’d been nearly 2 months since the pair had met, and he felt as though he hadn’t remotely made a notch in the chain that was Jonathan’s mental health. When they were together he felt odd and strangely light. A sense of companionship always seemed to overcome him, and he tended to go from impish suggestions of, “Hey! You should jump in front of that guy’s car! I bet you’d die fast and he’d be pretty shocked - you may even get to keep the tread marks!” to “I bet you couldn’t fit 20 Oreos in your mouth at once!” and his ultimate goal would be temporarily forgotten as his counterpart would snap back, annoyed but with a slight smile on his normally aloof face, instead of hiding under his clunky headphones like when they first met.

Getting an idea, Sock’s head shot up, and quickly he was silently rushing over to the bedside drawer, hovering over unwashed clothes that hadn’t made it to a hamper and comically searching for the MP3 player that had been left behind while Jonathan and his mother went shopping. While he purposefully avoided provoking Jonathan in front of his mother, that wouldn’t stop him from causing havoc while he was left alone. Ask for forgiveness, not permission, etc, etc.

He hoped Jonathan liked Weird Al.

Chapter Text

Sock didn’t consider himself an early riser - just never a habit he had found himself breaking into when it was a required function of living - but he prided himself on showing up in Jonathan’s room the moment the clock struck 6:30.

In the beginning, he had just done it in an attempt to piss off his counterpart as a small bit of payback for the first few days when he hadn’t realized he could simply float through walls. Popping into the room unannounced, jumping on the bed repeatedly until he woke up at the crack of dawn seemed like a fantastic way to steadily get on the teen’s nerves.

And it did work for a short while, in all fairness.

Though, after about a week or two, like all of Sock’s quirks, it barely phased him - seemed to become routine, even. Sock had launched himself onto the bed near the blonde’s chest, jumping and rambling about whatever form of grotesque death he could think of and had only gotten a weary, slow, blink in response before the covers were shuffled off and he zombie walked down the hall, leaving Sock aghast as he left the room.

It had left Sock with that odd feeling in his chest again.

In response to that the next day he intentionally waited for him by the bus stop, and didn’t bother breaking into his room to wake him up. Jonathan was about an hour late for school and was seething most of the day afterward, but he probably shouldn’t have been using his personal demon as an alarm.

Currently, he was vaguely paying attention as he followed Jonathan to the store, listening as the other huffed down the street. Sock’s focus was regained, however after a particularly forceful kick sent a pebble into a street sign with a clang. Moving to hover shoulder to shoulder next to him, he turned to get an eyeful of angsting teen.

“Oh, c’mon, Jonathan. It’s not so bad,” he pipped up, taking notice of the way his back tensed quickly before the shock was hastily shrugged off. “Detention is the least of your worries - I’m pretty sure Halstead wanted to strangle you.”

“And who’s fault is that?” Jonathan shot back in a hushed breath as they passed someone on the sidewalk.

“Yours?” came his amused reply, and that comment earned him a glare that surely would have dropped him dead if he hadn’t already dropped. “You really shouldn’t disrupt class Jonathan; it affects others’ learning.”

He chuckled at the way Jonathan hunched even more in an attempt to hide his embarrassment, and quicked his pace.

Jonathan’s mother was a nurse at a local hospital, and more often than not, when one of the pair was awake, the other was asleep, due to the odd hours she worked. Most Fridays saw Jonathan walking to get some sort of snack - usually the premade deli sandwiches; Sock was sure the employees knew his first name by now - with Sock in tow.

He had been forbidden from being alone in Jonathan’s room after the ‘Weird Al Incident.’ It had taken Jonathan a solid day to fix his ruined playlist. Very much worth it on the demon’s end.

However, now it meant that trying to search through Jonathan’s things for secrets, thoughts, personal items, and whatever was locked in the closet metaphorically was near impossible, because the teen never let his demon wander far out of sight - when it could be helped.

The shutting of a car door knocked him out of his thoughts again, and he looked around to take in the scene. Calling Grateful Foods a store was only half right - it was a strange in-between of a gas station and a small marketplace. Throwing a cheerful smirk at his companion as they made to enter, he pipped up with a, “What? You aren’t going to open the door for me?” that Jonathan didn’t bother responding to.

He’d slammed the door a little harder than what was needed, and one of the cashiers lifted their head to watch what appeared to be a singular 17-year-old to them stomp down one of the isles.

Sock hummed cheerfully as Jonathan trekked to the cold section of the store, delighting in the slight pink that still covered the guy’s ears. Must be pretty annoyed then - though he’d gotten sent to detention several times in the span of Sock knowing him, this was the first time he had continued to look uncomfortable about it. He grinned wider, a new sense of determination filling him.

He let himself flow through the back of the freezer itself, grabbing the cheap pizza box Jonathan had reached in for, and leaning over it to show his cat-like grin.

To his credit, the shock of his demon suddenly appearing and grabbing the box in his hands didn’t send Jonathan stumbling back, but he could hear the slight intake of breath and saw the way his eyes momentarily widened.

“Hey there, lover boy, come here often?” Sock teased, jokingly dragging a finger down the box in a flirtatious manner. Jonathan’s brows twitched, and the brief glimpse of nerves was gone and replaced with the usual detestation that was normally plastered on his face.

Then it was Sock’s turn to be surprised. Jonathan’s hands crunched the soft cardboard they were holding and tore it out of his grasp stormily.

“Would you cut it out with that bullshit?” He hissed between his teeth, trying to not draw attention to what was surely going to turn into an argument with an invisible party. Passing the abused box into his other hand, his counterpart raised a pointed finger at his chest, and Sock fought the urge to move backward. “What, exactly, is your goal here?” Normally docile eyes were sharp as ice, and Sock could almost feel the heat from the finger in his direction. “I get the whole . . .” He watched as Jonathan gestured with his free hand before it returned to its position near his chest, threateningly inching closer to meeting with his sweater vest.

“I . . . um,” Sock stumbled, unsure of how to go about responding.

“But, really? Are you like, what, trying to embarrass me to death, or something? You aren’t very threatening - for a demon,” Was muttered angrily at him, and he could feel the muddy, uncomfortable, shockingly cold sensation of Jonathan’s finger invading his chest.

Since Sock had died, relearning how to interact with the world had been a challenge, in other words.

His first real moments back among the living had been awkward, and highly embarrassing. Some things came easily, like standing on the ground beneath him or setting at one of the old school desks. Things got a bit dicer when trying to grasp other things - he’d phased through the bottom of the bus more times than he could count, and apparently even dead jumping off a staircase and onto the second floor still hurt pretty badly. Eventually, he did adjust to how his “body” interacted with the world, and he no longer had to put extreme effort in when he wanted to do something, it was just second nature.

In simple words, inanimate objects were easy, if not a bit annoying at times. Easy-peasy, no trouble at all.

The difficult part came when trying to touch other people.

He’d first encountered this one faithful afternoon in Jonathan’s math class, kicking his feet cheerfully as he sat atop the desk next to Jonathan, smiling as he watched the guy fill in his assignment sheet. It had been a pretty uneventful day for the pair so far, Sock had yet to successfully agitate his counterpart, though he had tried. Watching as Jonathan’s face went from uncaringly apathetic to outright frustrated, Sock’s grin widened to show his teeth and he gently shifted to kick the leg of Jonathan’s desk, meeting an annoyed glare when he succeed in gaining his attention.

“You should totally get up and pull the fire alarm when she’s not looking - would get out outta this prison for sure,” Sock teased and nudged Jonathan in the side again.

Without prompt, or even making eye contact with Sock, Jonathan reached over and through Sock to reach the desk, and pushed it over.

Instantly he was thrust back into a dark and stifling room, with the sound of a ceiling fan turning slowly the only noise in the dim room quickly followed by his own rapidly increasing, frantic breathing. There was some sort of sludge on his hands and halfway up his arm that had once been warm at some point but was now becoming cold and difficult to move, but as Sock became more aware of his surroundings he quickly realized where he was.

He was in his parent’s room, the fan, the scattered bedspread, the old painting his father had made that his mother hadn’t allowed him to put in the living room, surrounded by blood.

But it wasn’t his parents.

Feeling sick, and swallowing in an attempt to rid some of his panic, he finally looked down and took notice of the wooden handle that was firmly implanted in his chest. With rapid sparse breath and shaky hands, he slowly reached to grab it, as if he were to pull it out.

And then he opened his eyes to lock eyes with Jonathan, missing the note of concern that graced the high schooler’s features. He could still feel the deep twisting stabbing cold from where the knife was, and the stress had his vision slowly going blurring.

He had left soon after that, leaving Jonathan to his own devices.

Snapping back to his current reality, he saw Jonathan looking uncharacteristically nervous, slowly pulling his figure out of Sock’s form with a pop. Silently, the teen shifted the somewhat forgotten pizza box in his hands and slowly began to trek toward the cashier.

Sock stood, floated?, there in a stupor, staring off into the distance, filled with an indescribable tense emotion. It wasn’t quite pain, for the most part, he just felt cold, and weighed down.

He didn’t know how long he’d been there, and when he turned back around the store seemed closed down, with the sky outside being streaked with black and deep purple.

He slowly turned and left for Hell, not bothering to see Jonathan again. It wasn’t like Sock was doing a very good job as a demon anyway, one night off the clock wouldn’t get Mephistopheles on his case.

Chapter Text

There was something very wrong with Sock.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been here, sitting on a cold, solid stone floor, surrounded by tall walls that resembled an old hotel he and his parents had been to once, knees up to his chest, hugging and gripping his newly formed tail so tightly he’s sure it would hurt if he could concentrate enough on any other part of him other then the dripping, bloody hole that cut through his abdomen.

Thinking about it made the room spin, and his eyes go blurry. He couldn’t hear anything, but he could feel his off-kilter breathing, it shaking and rattling in his chest, moving his legs, and making his fingers grasp ever so tightly onto his tail… his tail?

How long had he had one? Forcing his watery unfocused eyes onto his left hand he made himself look at it.

The longer he looked, the more he could slowly make out more and more details - what he thought was pure green was an odd gradient of a ghostly pale green at only the tip of a triangular-shaped point that faded out into a bright red.

He couldn’t bring himself to shout, though he thought to. Of running to Mephistopheles and begging, pleading to help him. Maybe even demanding, sharing some choice words about modifying his body without his input or even the go-ahead.

Instead, the room started to spin again, and he felt almost weightless, the corners and colors around him beginning to swirl together.

The tail, or his, didn’t move and stayed obediently in his now open-palmed hand.

His unwavering stare didn’t seem to affect it, either.

As a matter of fact, recently, everything seemed to have become more real as of late.

Sock had died. Was dead.

As dead as the deer his dad hit when he was little. Its blood and pain created a horrific and beautiful spider web of gore and shattered glass along the Honda’s windshield and hood. He remembers his mother’s gut-wrenching scream, and wishing he could reach out and gently explore the still-warm streaks of what was a once-living animal.

As dead as the young fledgling bird that he had accidentally fallen on one summer morning when was outside, playing tag with Jojo. It had been a steep hill, and he recalled her hands planting firmly on her back and pushing. He had landed back first onto a small nest of tiny sticks, his voice and breath caught at the brief feeling of crushing and crackling bones, and the exiting of breath.

As dead as the squirrels he’d chased and then held until their eyes bulged and they stopped moving and felt the tiny pops of their minuscule skulls and jaws cracking, feight blood dribbling down his similarly small, young fingers. He’d heard his father blame the odd number of discarded, broken brown bodies on some sort of stray dog when his mother pointed it out.

As dead as the older cat that Jojo owned. He had been a rescue, and he’d seen how much love and care went into taking care of it. He didn’t want to hurt it, he only remembers reaching out to pet it. Its fur was much softer than a squirrel's. Even covered in blood.

As dead as his mother, her eyes glossed over staring lifelessly at the ceiling, blood still pouring down her arm and bedsheets, slowly drip, drip, drip, dripping onto the floor. Her hand reaching toward where her husband would be lying, the tears in her eyes that didn’t get to fall holding an unexplainable betrayal -

He hiccuped, tears threatening to show themselves and he slowly moved his hand to the gaping wound in his chest.

Knives were cold, especially after being in a pocket on a cold October night.

They continue to be cold long after you stab yourself so deep that you don’t feel pain, you only see stars.

He remembers his knees failing him and slipping and falling into a damp shallow grave, one he’d carved himself. He’d choked and struggled, and weakly tried to pull the knife out, to let him bleed out faster, to end the feeling of life and warmth and feeling itself ooze out of him and into the compact dirt below him.

He’d gotten it out, and held it up, his arm stiff, the moonlight catching it and glinting it with shiny streaks of Sock’s self.

He’d tried to cry out, to hold onto his chest and his favorite sweater, feeling as if his heart slowly could not continue to perform the very action it had been since long before he could remember.

He remembers that even lying there, slowly preparing for eternal nothingness, he had liked how it felt on his hand. And how it pooled around his hand that had long since dropped the knife, still reaching for it, for comfort.

He was dead, and he was a monster.

A living, breathing monster. A demon. Long before he died.

The room was getting darker, and Sock slowly slumped, feeling more than hearing the tail slip out of his hand and land on the floor, his back slipping along the wall of the corner he was in until he was lying on the floor, breathing.

The ceiling was pretty - it sort of looked like light.

Why? Why had he done it? He honestly hadn’t wanted to - he had empathy, he’d loved Jojo like the sister he’d never had, he adored his parents and how they’d never made him feel weird, or wrong, even though he was – there was something, very, very wrong.

He loved them, he still currently, loved them. Why did he hurt them? Why did he want to do such terrible, inhuman things? He simply couldn’t help himself.

Because he wanted to? Because he liked it?

He knew the answer, and scared him.

Suddenly sober, he slowly and shakily got back onto his feet, nervously contemplating what he should do next. The shock of his sudden realizations and memories still made him feel gross and sick (could demons throw up?) but he was slowly coming to terms with his new reality. The one he was shoved in his face every time he’d physically interacted with his charge, or maybe even just talked to him.

The boy was not nice to Sock, not by a mile - despite Sock’s cheerful and polite demeanor. He made rude comments, snapped often, and if Sock was being honest he wasn’t sure he’d like him remotely if he was still among the living.

But Sock wasn’t among the living, ‘Not by a long shot…’ and the longer he spent around Jonathan the more he found himself enjoying the time they spent together. It wasn’t quite like having a friend of course, friends didn’t want each other to kill themselves, (at least not the good ones). Sock would much prefer Jonathan’s guts spewed out on the side of the road, and Jonathan would very much like it if Sock vanished just as unexpectedly as he appeared.

This has probably been the best few days - weeks? seriously how long had he been down here - of his boring, apathetic, sandwich-loving life.

Speaking of, he thought, a sudden new anxiety filling him as he scrabbled in the old hall, gripping the sides and nearly slamming his face into the stone below him after his boot caught a particularly large crack.

“Crap,” He muttered, running frantically towards the exit, trying to remember how to navigate this weird, hotel and trying to get to the surface. “Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap-”, beginning to take in the situation before him. Oh, please, please let him get to the surface before Mephistopheles figured out he’d taken an unintentional vacation in a random hall.

He’d managed to get to what looked like an office, only a hallway, but he could hear others speaking, and the sounds of people working and going about their lives. He skidded to a halt, and worridly held onto his scarf as he tried to act as normal as possible.

He totally did not leave his assignment all by himself for an undetermined amount of time! Perfectly normal, an entirely good demon simply walking back to continue pestering and haunting!

With his heart pounding in his chest, eyeing the other office doors, and seeing a group chatting enthusiastically amongst themselves, Sock ran fast first into someone’s chest. He stumbled back, hands moving to hold his nose and his back landing uncomfortably hard onto his tail.

“Oh, woah there, hey now you didn’t get hurt didya? Just a little dinged?”, a familiar, cheery voice called out, and at the same time, he felt hands lift him easily by the armpits and set him back onto the ground.

Sock snapped up to make eye contact, to see Mephistopheles’s cheesy grin, and reached forward to whip some invisible dust off Sock’s shoulder. Sock tensed, and his boss must have sensed his upset because he let his hand linger on his shoulder.

Sock broke eye contact to stare at the ground. He wondered if Mephistopheles looked like everyone’s dad, if that was just how everyone saw him, or if it was a series of coincidences that led the man before him to look like a smoother, more sleek car-sales man version of his father.

Eventually, Sock dared a glance up at the man during their awkward silence, expecting a gare, or disappointment, maybe even just a laugh at him. Or maybe he’d look neutral, maybe he expected Sock to fail and that was the point of him being in Hell.

Instead, confusingly, he saw a tired, concerned, almost parental expression. The man leaned forward, placing a second hand on his other shoulder and leaned forward, so that only Sock could hear his words.

“There isn’t a deadline, remember?” The man said softly, almost sounding amused, patting him, “There’s no need to rush - you haven’t done anything wrong, Sock.”

Sock felt himself begin to shake, and looked back down at the floor, attempting to forcefully will himself to hold it together in front of not only Mephistopheles, but an entire office floor of people.

When he raised his eyes back up again, he was met with a soft smile, and another pat on the shoulder. He was about to open his mouth when he was gently hip-checked towards a specific hallway.

“Elevator is that-a-way, level 35 should take where you wanna be,” he said, his usual smile returning to signal their confusing encounter coming to a close. Sock slowly and sort of awkwardly backed up more to the hallway, keeping his eyes on his boss. The smile never faltered, so he continued his movements and eventually turned to continue down the hall at a normal pace, his heart feeling lighter in a way that was difficult in his mind to explain.

He began jogging this time, his mood infinitely lighter and his excitement slowly returning to him, the weird feeling of despair and horror beginning to fade away and the idea of getting back to his job, a new purpose, and his horrible acts in life did not weigh on his current one.

“Just so you know!” an amused voice called back to him, instantly halting and turning around, “Now might be a bit of a bad time, but who knows! Learn your processes,” and with that, his boss turned and walked back into his office, leaving a still very confused Sock standing in front of the elevator.

Bad time? Wasn’t “bad time” sort of Sock’s entire job?

Confused, again, he walked into the elevator and clicked on the floor he needed.

Oh, oh,

‘He’d just been teasing me,’ he thought, taking in the dark and calm living room of Jonathan’s house. The lights were all off, but a few windows had the curtains moved aside, allowing for a pale beam of moonlight to entire the room, lighting up a good chunk of the couches and a side table.

He felt himself sort of stumped, it was sort of oddly beautiful, the bare normalcy to the scene before him, and he was almost overwhelmed with feelings of: I really should not be here, nope, not at all.

But… he had made the effort to get here after all. It wasn’t like Sock needed to sleep, and he had already busted in at the crack of dawn, and what could be more annoying than getting woken up at - Sock floated and tilted his head to read the time on the microwave - 3:45 am.

Gently, and quietly - he wasn’t sure if Jonathan’s mom would be able to hear him? The rules were a bit difficult to grasp - floated towards the stairs and allowed his body to flow through the ceiling, and through the floor. He gently raises and flows through Jonathan’s door and into the room.

The first thing he noticed was Jonathan’s slow, rhythmic breathing.

It was soft, and barely above a whisper, but it made Sock’s heart catch in his throat.

It was just so…

Normal.

Serene.

Without even realizing it, he had to catch himself from reaching out, and pulled himself back, to float above Jon’s sleeping form.

He’d ditched his typical gray hoodie, having tossed it over his desk chair, and was wearing some sort of white tank top.

Sock swallowed his spit and nervously gripped his scarf. He’d never seen him without some sort of scowl or grimace on his face, or at the very least a furrowed brow or two. In his sleep, Jonathan looked nothing like that - his expression perfectly content.

There was a slight bruise over one of his eyes though, and with nothing but gentle concern reached out and turned the blonde’s head, barely touching him.

That was definitely a back eye - not fresh, but still there enough to tell that was there. Had Jonathan gotten into a fight? That seemed very un-Jonathan-like, but he supposed it was possible.

Had Jonathan been hit? Caught off guard somehow? Mugged?

‘What in the world-” He’d thought when in his sleep his charge reached out and touched his wrist.

It scared Sock so bad he almost screamed, but he slapped a head over his mouth last minute and then held it there when he nearly started laughing. What he gets for not moving his hand away fast enough, too distracted.

Eventually, he finally took in that Jonathan was gripping him - not hard, it didn’t hurt - and gently holding his wrist. His expression remained content but he could’ve sworn he saw him smile.

There was no horrible, thick mud. There was no panic. There was only him, silently floating over Jonathan as he stayed there, letting his wrist (hand?) be gently held.

His hand was cold, though it didn’t at all feel uncomfortable. Or did it, because his chest was racing now, heart going a mile a minute? It should be uncomfortable. Why was he just. Letting the boy hold his hand?

Why was he ok with it?

He moved his head and turned to take in Jonathan, really take him in for perhaps the first time, and realized, that maybe, from this angle, Jonathan was almost… pretty.

‘Gross,’ Sock thought. ‘Gross, gross, gross,-” and he awkwardly attempted to get the hand off him, to pry himself away from gentle fingers and the face that in that moment did not hate him.

He needed this guy to die, and if Sock was stupid enough to get his first-ever glimpse of feelings it would not affect him! It was momentary insanity, and they would immediately go away as soon as Jon woke up and realized that the damn demon was back.

Jonathan would hate him, Sock would love annoying him endlessly, and all would be right with the world - no more weird late-night hand-holding.

He finally managed to gently and very not smoothly set the hand back onto its owner's chest, where it was then retracted under a mess of blankets.

With a final shiver, and a pointed not glace at Jonathan’s direction, he floated back to the couch, and out of the room.

Chapter Text

This is going to be rewritten! Once the rewrite is done this current version of the fic will be archived.