Archive of Our Own ^beta

Banhammer believes the only suitable explanation for his current circumstances – curled over himself in fetal position, fat tears rolling down his face and burning his lower set of eyes, choking and practically sobbing around the air filling his lungs – is that he escorted himself to his own assassination.

How he got to such a state is… well, frankly irrelevant! But just because it’s irrelevant doesn’t mean the tale won’t be shared. It started with a request. A small, simple, totally doable request—

“Drive me to the store, will ‘ya?”

Banhammer’s leaning against Medkit’s small, humming fridge, situated in the other demon’s apartment as if he contributes anything to its wellbeing besides consistently kicking the doors off its hinges every time he visits.

Medkit sits curled over at the tiny dining table serving as an island in the kitchen, a plethora of papers before him, a pair of thin, square glasses sitting on the edge of his nose bridge. His narrowed eye slides over to Banhammer when the silence that’s been encompassing them for the past few minutes is broken, gaze carrying the frustration of a man who hasn’t paid his taxes in time as well as the usual, perpetual fatigue lining his face.

He looks pitiful. Banhammer soaks the sight up like a starved man in a Sahara Desert. Except the starved man is making fun of the fellow starved man by his side even though they’re knees deep in the same predicament. Banhammer has tax papers sitting on his own desk back home, scribbled and wrinkled and nearly torn in half; the deadline is also tonight.

“Do what now?” Medkit reiterates with a disdained scrunch of his nose and brows, rubbing a hand over his forehead. Banhammer shifts where he stands at the blatantly hostile tone he’s receiving, bored gaze wandering before slowly, carefully, meeting Medkit’s. Who knew tax season could make even a wanted criminal sass a prison warden? He sure as hell didn’t.

“The store.” Banhammer pushes himself off the fridge and walks up beside Medkit’s chair, leaning over his work with hands planted flat on the table. His actions earn him a threatening glower. Banhammer ignores it in favor of squinting at the awfully high numbers on the papers. “Forgot I didn’t have any eggs at home. That was the whole reason I went and came over here too! I came here looking for eggs and bacon and got some damn… what the hell are they called… some damn candy or something! Can’t ‘ya learn how ‘ta feed yer’self so you can feed me as well?”

“I don’t remember being responsible for your hunger. The store is not far. Walk there.”

“Why the hell would I walk when there’s a perfectly good car with ‘yer name on it? C’mon, it won’t even take that long!” Banhammer nudges the smaller demon with his hip, though apparently, he sorely miscalculated the amount of power behind the movement because Medkit goes skidding in his chair with a loud screech, whatever words he was about to spew shifting into a flagrant expletive. Woops.

“Banhammer.”

The undertone of a very pissed demon laces Medkit’s voice. Banhammer blinks down at Medkit as the other demon drags a hand down his face and lets out an aggravated gust of air, grinning sheepishly when his narrowed gaze flicks to him.

“…Yeah?”

The silence drags on as they stare at each other. Banhammer regrets the fact he’d taken off his blindfold earlier in order to rifle through Medkit’s pathetically bare-boned pantry.

“Er, well… you could hand me ‘yer keys and I take myself over there?” He says slowly, straightening up to shove his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, and he witnesses in all its glory the shift of Medkit’s expression, how his eyebrows tick up from the former look of irritation and settle into blatant disbelief.

“Ignoring the fact I’ve only ever seen you take the bus to go somewhere, what makes you think I’d believe in your capabilities to operate a vehicle? Specifically, my own personal car? You should already know my answer to that question. Be quiet and let me do my taxes.”

“Be quiet—!” Banhammer splutters indignantly as Medkit drags the tax papers and laptop closer to himself and snatches up the pencil. “Meds, come onnn! It’s not even a five-minute drive over there! We’ll be in and out before ‘ya know it, and maybe we could fill up this pantry of ‘yers while we’re at it! Don’t that sound nice?”

Medkit’s typing grows aggravated, the furrow of his brows deepening with each passing second. “I think silence would sound even nicer.”

Banhammer considers making a ruckus, mouth opening and closing with unsaid words and then, an idea pops into his head. It’s… frankly not the smartest tactic to convince someone to drive him somewhere during the last day of tax season, but he’d be damned if he didn’t let his curiosity win. Medkit’s a pretty stoic guy; ain’t it true that the more stoic they are, the more ticklish they get? People laugh when they’re ticklish, right? Medkit’s gotta have some kind of ugly guffaw in that chest of his.

“I’m serious, Meds. ‘Yer gonna regret it.”

“I’ll take regret over the IRS at my door.” Comes Medkit’s short, clipped answer, already used to the threats Banhammer throws around willy nilly. Banhammer’s brows twist up into a tangle of exasperation, his hands fidgeting in his pockets as he comes to terms with the stupidly childish thing he’s about to commit to.

“’Yer… ‘yer gonna regret it.” Banhammer reiterates like an idiot, and he instantly hates the unsure pause in his own words. What the hell is he unsure about? How Medkit’ll react? How does someone even tickle another demon? He’s seen people do it before – he has – so it shouldn’t be too hard, right? Just… just wiggle his fingers on Medkit’s sides. Yeah, sure, he can do that.

But then the silence draws out, and Medkit’s not saying anything, typing away at the keyboard without so much as a glance, and Banhammer starts to feel stupider by the second. His hands feel tacky with sweat. His mind keeps replaying all the instances he’s watched someone get tickled as if having a tactic for the whole thing will increase his chances of succeeding. Deities above, he’s never even tickled someone before.

Shifting on his feet, swiping at the tip of his nose, Banhammer steels himself and squints down at Medkit. “Are ‘ya taking me to the store or no?”

The murderous intent coming off Medkit in drones can freeze Banlands twice over.

Banhammer purses his lips as Medkit’s annoyed, low-lidded gaze bores into him, one thick brow quirking up in response. The stare doesn’t unnerve him nearly as much as the idea of attempting to tickle another demon – he’s gotten worse looks directed at him before – but not even that can stop him fromt trying.

“Alright, you asked ‘fer it!” Banhammer bellows, stomping up before Medkit even so much as flinches and shoving his hands right into his sides. Immediately, he wiggles his fingers, shakes his hands up and down, even going as far as to shove them up Medkit’s covered armpits, and its only when he does that that smaller hands shoots out and grabs his wrists, squeezing hard enough for it to hurt.

Banhammer’s owl-eyed gaze snaps up to Medkit’s face, buzzing with anticipation at the mere possibility of a smile, maybe even a chuckle—

He gets neither.

Medkit stares down at him with the most listless face known to mankind save for the confused, heavily annoyed downturn of his eyebrows. Deities above, is that disappointment Banhammer sees as well? What the hell.

Banhammer’s never wanted hellfire to emerge from the ground and consume him more than right now.

“…why ain’t you… what the hell am I supposed ‘ta—” He splutters uselessly, jerking back when Medkit pushes his hands away and slowly raises to his feet. His eye is terrifyingly bright. His hands come up to his sides, curled at the edges and locked and loaded.

They stare at eachother for a moment. Banhammer gets the vague feeling he’ll regret his entire existence upon this universe if he doesn’t get the hell away right now—

Before he himself even knows it, Banhammers swiveling around and booking it across the livingroom, screaming the vilest of curses at the fact this damned apartment only has two other rooms as he grips the door threshold and swings himself into Medkit’s dark bedroom. Without wasting a beat, he slams the door shut and locks the door, heart thumping in his chest, adrenaline pumping through his veins as the slow creak of Medkit’s footsteps echo outside.

The question of why the hell is he running flashes in his mind as he stumbles back into the room and hits the back of his calves against a bed, but the thought is quickly abolished. His instincts have never failed him before. But now what? Does he just sit here until Medkit settles down and goes back to his taxes? How much patience does the demon have? Can he survive a two story fall—

The door creaks open.

Banhammer’s heart drops to his shriveling balls.

“I thought you would remember one important factor regarding the entirety of my apartment.” Medkit murmurs flatly as he pushes the door open all the way, illuminated by the amber light hitting his back. Banhammer nearly chokes on his own sharp inhale, scrambling atop the feeble bed in favor of getting further away from whatever hells spawn was descending upon him.

“…The locks don’t work.”

And then Medkit’s striding further, his fingers curled in front of him with the obvious intent to grab, face perpetually deadpan, and Banhammer nearly pisses himself.

“Hey, hey, hey, time out! We can talk this out, okay!? Maybe my methods were a littleeee uh, uhhhh—!” He splutters while scrambling further up the bed, back pressed against the wall, and Medkit matches his retreat stride for stride, stepping up on the bed and staring down at him.

“Meds! Come on, Meds, this doesn’t haf’ta—”

Medkit lunges, and Banhammer immediately grabs his wrists, fighting off the attempts to reach for his sides as if a knife were about to be stabbed instead of mere fingers. It works for a few moments, and then Medkit’s tearing his arms free with one strong yank, and his hands immediately go to Banhammer’s sides.

His horribly sensitive sides, Banhammer learns in a split second as a jolt wracks through his body, the instinct to curl into himself overwinning the rational thought of – well – shoving Medkit off. A cut-off scream of expletives turns into an uncontainable guffaw, loud and deep-throated and entirely not like him.

The fingers pause the same second Banhammer slaps a hand over his mouth to suppress the sounds coming out of him right now, unused to the sensation of laughter being, quite literally, dragged from his lungs. But before he even has a chance to catch his breath, those hands are back on him with a renewed vigor, and he’s laughing from his belly all over again.

“St—stop!” He gasps out, leg kicking out in feeble hopes of connecting with Medkit’s stomach. “Meds, quit— ah, wait that hurts..! it feels weird—”

By sheer chance, his foot connects with Medkit’s hip, and Banhammer takes the chance and runs with it, kicking Medkit off the side of the bed with what little strength he can conjure, the other demon landing with a thump and a hissed groan. Then, gasping and choking on air, Banhammer scrambles off the bed towards the door, one hand gripping his aching side. His leg, however, decides to get caught on the bedsheets, and he goes tumbling onto the floor.

Everything gets worse.

Medkit’s warm hands all over him. Wriggling across his waist. Dragging up his sides. Yanking his shirt up to further worsen the assault and tickle his bare skin.

It’s when hot tears and snot are running down his face, practically crying from how overwhelmed he is, and his lungs are shriveled and dying that the assault stops, and he’s left gasping and curled up on the floor. His head and sides hurt. He can’t move his sides.

He slumps into the floor, cheek pressed against cold wood, hands covering his disgusting face as he tries and fails multiple times to regain his composure. He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like this at all. His entire body is hurting right now all because someone stuck their fingers on his sides and wiggled them around. That was the ugliest damned laugh he’s let out in months.

When he finally gets the gall to look up, he kind of expects the smug uptick of Medkit’s lips on his otherwise neutral face. The unspoken ‘Look what happened’ oozing off of him in waves. A short huff as he moves away and goes back to his taxes.

Instead, he finds himself staring straight up at a flushed Medkit, the other demon still straddling his side, hands still stuffed under his shirt and frozen centimeters away for his skin. His widened eye stares down at Banhammer, flickering between his face and lower still, and his chest labors with heavy pants from where he was formerly wrestling with Banhammer’s writhing.

Banhammer doesn’t like the way he’s looking at him. Not with the way he feels his own face heat up even more.

“Screw you.” He warbles out despite the snot and tears running down his face, only to embarrass himself further with how pathetically wobbly his voice is.

And, as if to defy all odds, Medkit’s pointy ears somehow grow even brighter with teal, his lips twisting up with an emotion Banhammer can’t figure out. When his fingers graze against Banhammer’s bare skin again – a touch that has both of them flinching – Medkit jerks away and returns his hands to himself, looking somewhat lost as he stumbles to his feet.

Banhammer, viciously sniffling and utterly humiliated, yanks down his shirt and reaches behind himself to aggressively stuff the swaying, bear-like tail of his – which had escaped the confines of his sweatpants – back into its pouch, ignoring the way Medkit’s eye snaps to the appendage and lights up with far too much interest before the expression is quickly dampened.  

“…I’ll be in the kitchen.” Medkit murmurs quietly, running a hand over the small hairs on his forearm, and Banhammer grunts in reply, for once not caring for the way Medkit seems to be running off.

They don’t talk about that particular instance. Not when Banhammer slinks out of Medkit’s bedroom and excuses himself with the reasoning of taxes being due. Medkit glances at him, studies him for a moment too long, and simply hums when he announces his departure. The indifference stings for some stupid reason, and that makes Banhammer much more uncomfortable than the fact he has taxes waiting at home for him, so he snatches up his jacket and stomps out without a goodbye.