Villain, 95

There Are A Lot of Reasons Someone Might Annoy You

Ao3 Link

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“This is going to be really fucking annoying,” Sam grumbled, picking at his shirtsleeves. He shouldn’t have had to be dressed already.

“Yeah. But we kind of brought it on ourselves,” Henry reminded him.

“You can just say I brought it on us.” Sam sighed. “It’s fine. It’s just James, at worst he’ll pout at us and complain about how he thought we were friends. I knew trying to kill him was a mistake.”

“Then why’d you let Cassiopeia try it?” Henry asked, in the same neutral voice he’d been using the whole time Sam had been complaining about this.

Sam managed to tear a hole in his sleeve, and fixed it with Chaos. “Because she would have anyway.”

Henry took Sam’s hand away from his sleeve, holding it. “I think if you’d told her to back off, she would have.”

The room was so quiet. Derek and Todd weren’t here yet.

“Well?” Sam asked, after a minute. “Aren’t you going to tell me the deep inner reason why I didn’t do it, then?”

Henry kissed his forehead. “I think you’re a literal god and I don’t think you should need me to tell you why you did the things you did.”

Sam glared at him. “It’s what you’re good at, though.”

“I guess. You’re really good at telling me what I think. Why don’t you tell me what bullshit you think I’m going to say?”

“Stop treating me like a child,” Sam growled.

The door swung open. “We’re ready,” Derek said, stupidly chipper.

“You’re also fucking late,” Sam told him. “Let’s go.” He pushed Todd through the portal.

“Hey,” Derek said, standing on the threshold. “When we come back I’d like to talk about Levi. I have an idea to help him get used to the castle faster.”

“Whatever,” Sam said, pushing Derek too. Then he went through with Henry. James’s garden was stupidly hot as usual. “It’s great to see you again,” Derek was saying. “Hey, that house you were building over there is finished! And your house got so much bigger, holy shit.”

“Language,” Ron told him. “We had some renovations done, and James’s cousin lives across the river now. You’ll probably meet him later.”

“That’s so cool,” Derek said.

“Whatever, it’s just a house,” Todd muttered.

Weird as it was for Todd to be right about something, he was. “Come on,” Derek said, voice getting farther away. “Let’s go look around it!”

Sam let them go, standing there with James for just a minute. Then James decided to start talking, like he always did. “Hello, Sam.”

“Hi,” said Sam. There was no reason to make this easy for James. He probably wanted Sam to grovel and apologize or something.

“Let’s talk about why you tried to kill me.” James’s voice was calm.

“No wonder you don’t have any friends,” Sam snapped. “If that’s how you start a conversation.”

“I have enough friends to know that friends don’t try to murder each other.” He always managed to sound patronizing.

“Clearly we have different types of friends.”

“Clearly. Would you like to explain yourself?” James asked.

Ugh. Sam should just kill him. He probably could, now that he had his divine power. James wouldn’t be expecting that. “Not particularly.”

“Do it anyway.” Some of the calm left James’s voice.

Okay. Sam was going to kill him. He was tired of the way James talked, the way he acted like he was better than Sam, the way he acted like he barely cared that Sam had tried to murder him. He reached through his medium, ready to strike.

And stopped. Henry wasn’t saying anything, just standing there. Sam sighed. “A lot of my friends aren’t very nice people. Most of them were my father’s friends before they were mine. Cassiopeia wanted your stone, and she was going to try and take it from you whether I told her to or not.” That should satisfy him.

Or not. “But you did tell her to.”

“Yes, because acting like I have the power to dictate their actions is how I maintain that power in reality.” Sam wasn’t sure that made sense, but it fit into the narrative he’d fed James about needing help wrangling Solomon’s stupid friends.

“But if all you’re doing is acting,” said Ron, who Sam liked even less than he liked James, “you have no real power.”

Sam reached for his medium again. Maybe he’d kill Ron, at least. “I don’t trust you two not to be a threat to me someday,” Sam said. Fuck it, he’d just tell them the truth. “No matter that we’re allies now, I don’t think you plan to be in the long run.” There, there it was. James and Ron wanted to pretend they were all fucking friends, but they weren’t and Sam knew that.

“Neither do you,” said James, tone sharp. “And that’s fine. Were you lying when you told me you wanted to banish all the demons from the world?”

“No. I’ve been taking steps to do that.” Sam almost told them about Clan Cween, but he wasn’t going to spill any more information than he had to.

“Very well,” said James. “I had hoped we could be proper friends, but if you don’t want to be, that’s fine. I would like to make a promise to you that I won’t be your enemy for as long as you’re trying to banish the demons.”

Like that would mean anything. But could Sam fight James and the demons at the same time? One of them was a much more obvious threat. And James would help him, probably. It would mean he’d have to tell Cassiopeia and the rest of them to fuck off, though. Which he could do. Which he would do. He was their king. “Fine. I can accept that agreement.”

“A pact,” Ron said, out of nowhere. “Let’s make a pact.”

Huh. So he’d learned a little bit about sorcery. “Like we do with demons? Fine, if that will calm you down.” A pact wouldn’t have any effect on a human, it only bound sorcerers to demons. He held out his hand.

James took it. “There will be no violence between us or our clans until all the demons have been banished.”

“Agreed,” said Sam.

As soon as he said it, something pulled its way out of him, a tug on his divine power, latching onto James. “What did you do?” Sam snapped, pulling back.

“Nothing,” said James. He just sounded confused. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Sam insisted. His hand was tingling. “You…took some of my power.” That sounded weak and stupid, he shouldn’t have said that. But James had. Not in a measurable way, but he had. It was like making a sorcerous oath. But it shouldn’t have been. Those had to be with another sorcerer, and they had to be reciprocal. He didn’t have any of James’s power on him.

“No, I promise I didn’t.”

He fucking had, though. “What happened?” Henry asked, before Sam could yell.

“Don’t know,” Sam said. Shit. “It felt like making a real pact. I guess it was a real pact.” How, though? Was James’s stupid forest magic so alien that…but, no. It hadn’t been Sam’s sorcery that had reacted to that. It had been his divine power. What the fuck had happened and how was Sam supposed to figure it out without talking to Hadrina?

“You don’t have to sound so angry,” James said. He no longer sounded confused, just smug. “Since presumably you weren’t lying.”

“I…” Of course Sam had been lying. But he was fucking stuck now. Now he couldn’t have killed James even if he wanted to. At least not without repercussions that he couldn’t predict. “Fine, whatever. Maybe you could tell me what you’re doing to help get rid of the demons.”

“You sat here last month and told me you didn’t need help,” James said. “Would you like help?”

“I…” Goddammit. “I fucking hate you, you know.”

“I know,” James said, even as the air grew thick. “I’m glad we’re finally being honest, Sam. Would you like to stay for dinner?”

What the everloving fuck was wrong with him? “Do I have a choice?”

“Of course.”

“Then no.” Now James would force him to stay.

“Good, I didn’t want you to stay anyway. I’ll send Derek and Todd back at this time tomorrow. Goodbye.”

That was a dismissal, clear as anything, and it felt like a slap. But Sam didn’t care. He wanted to leave, now.

“Whatever. Fuck you.” Sam felt particularly juvenile as he walked through the portal, and particularly like he was fleeing. In the castle, he flicked his hand at the door and broke it off its hinges, just to hear the sound of the crash. It wasn’t very satisfying.

“How did you make a pact with a human?” Henry asked him.

“I don’t know.” Sam tore his sleeve off his shirt, then tore the other one. That was a better sound, a longer and more satisfying one. “I don’t fucking know. He fucking…he didn’t even trick me. Ron did. I don’t know how. It wasn’t my normal power. It was the new one, the divine power.”

Henry sighed. “Is there a way to find out why it happened without talking to Hadrina?”

“No. Unless Derel wants to be forthcoming,” Sam muttered, tearing his shirt totally off. “Fuck.” He let out a breath. “Whatever. It’s not like I promised him anything important. It’s just fucking annoying.”

“It’s kind of what you wanted though, isn’t it?”

Sam tore Henry’s shirt in half for that. “I’m not in the mood for you to tell me what I’m thinking.”

“But I’m so good at it.”

“I’m fucking serious, Henry. You can tell me all about how I secretly didn’t want to fight James because I’m afraid of him or because he’s what I’d have been if I’d grown up somewhere better another day. He and I aren’t going to fucking be friends no matter how much you want it, and if you try to tell me it’s a good idea to try I’ll kill someone.”

“Yeah, okay,” Henry said, helping Sam out of the remains of his shirt. “I think we should go spend some time with Tobias.”

“Who the fuck is Tobias?”

“Your new cockwarmer. Giacomo replaced Darius a while ago, remember?”

Oh. “Fine, but I’m going to piss in his mouth. And then you are too.”

“Whatever you want. After that maybe you should go hang out with Delilah.”

Sam shrugged, walking out of the room. “Only if I’m not still angry or horny. Goddamnit, I always forget how much James pisses me off.”

“Yeah, I know,” Henry said, rubbing Sam’s back. “He’s a piece of shit.”

“All the more reason to banish all the demons,” Sam said. “The faster we do, the faster we can kill him.”

“Tell me what you want to do to him.”

“Well, after today I’m definitely going to start by raping Ron to fucking death,” Sam began, tearing the rest of his clothes off one piece at a time. “While James watches, obviously. I’ll rape him the normal way but in between sessions I’ll use that staff of James’s, the one he likes to tap on the floor…”

His cock was nice and hard by the time he found the privy hole Tobias called a mouth, and after a few hours in there he felt much better.

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