Invisible friend (part 1)

Demon x fem!reader || SFW, curse, soulmates, angst

All your past memories had him in them. As long as you remembered there was a shadow on the edge of your vision, a big red shadow that had horns and wings, and made you shiver at the thought of looking directly at him.

When you were little, everyone laughed and said you were so cute for having an imaginary friend, but as you turned older, people started to treat you weirdly, like you were crazy when you mentioned the big demon in the corner of the room. So you stopped saying anything about him, or to him, and tried to ignore his presence most of the him. From that point on, he always looked sad, but he never disappeared. He kept being there through all your puberty, and weird collage years.

He always protected you in a weird way, grunting if something felt wrong and even going as far as fighting someone who accidentally tripped you. The other person couldn’t see him, just felt how a weird presence pushed him to the ground. He broke his nose in the fall, and you had to apologize even thought nobody knew what really happened.

But things didn’t end up there. He was particularly bad with your possible boyfriends. He scared them all away, moving stuff in your bedroom, pushing and pulling stuff, basically making it seem like you were cursed or haunted. Everyone ran scared from the haunted girl, the witch… It hurt, but you got used to it.

Until you got tired of being alone. Your life felt impossible, and you needed answers.

So you confronted him. It wasn’t your best idea in the big scheme of things, but you really needed to know why was he there. Maybe he was a ghost and you needed to help him. Maybe he was a demon sent to kill you. You didn’t know what he was, but you wanted him gone. You were tired of having him always following you, always present in your life, always scaring everyone away before you could have any kind of companionship.

“How can I make you leave?” You finally said asked one day, not expecting him to answer because he never talked to you since you were little.

And to your surprise, he answered: “I can’t leave.” He was staring at you so intently that you felt your skin erupt in goosebumps.

“How come you can talk now?” You asked, confused.

“I could always talk, but only when you talk directly to me,” he explained as if it was obvious. It did make sense that he talked to you when you were little but didn’t anymore when you started ignoring him. That made you a tiny bit sad, he must have felt so isolated… Because of you. Fuck. Were you the demon in his story?

“And why are you here?” You tried next, wanting more than anything to get some kind of answers to your incessant questions. Why was he there? Why couldn’t he leave? Why did you feel pulled towards him? Why did he make your life impossible? The questions were endless.

He looked at you, his hand scratching his chest like it hurt to talk about it. “It’s a curse,” he finally explained.

You weren’t expecting that answer, all your self-doubt coming at you at the same time, your whole body hurting and your soul almost crying. “What?” You felt numb.

“I committed a very bad deed to a human and somebody cursed me to take care of another. To take care of you,” he confessed, like it pained him to say it out loud. You blinked fast, trying really hard not to cry. Why did his words hurt so much? Why were you feeling like the air in the room was not enough to fill your lungs? How were you drowning as you stared at him?

“So I’m your curse. Being tied to me is a curse,” you whispered, the pain of his words hitting you so deep and so hard that the air left your lungs in a rush. It shouldn’t be like that, you wanted him gone, why did it hurt so much to know he didn’t even want to be there?

“Yes,” he said curtly, making you gasp and a tear ran down your cheek. “But no,” he added, making you look at him in confusion. “The deed… What I did… I left her, and she died.”

It felt like the only thing you could say was: “Who died?”

“You,” his answer was barely audible, but the impact of that single syllable hit your solar plexus like a brick. Your heart raced as you stared at him.

“What? But I’m alive.” You tried to make sense of what he was saying.

He looked at you with such despair in his eyes that you felt tears falling down in response to his anguish. “Not you you, past you.”

That made no sense. You already lived? You were a reincarnation? Did you even believe in reincarnation? What was he saying? Did you know each other before?

You had so many questions that if felt overwhelming. “I need more information,” you finally said.

“I... You…” He was clearly struggling to explain, but you didn’t say anything, just stared at him until he took a deep breath and continued. “We were together in your past life. We were partners, soulmates if you will… Whatever you want to call it. But one day…,” his voice broke down, but he continued. “One day I left our house and when I came back you were dead, they poisoned you because of me. Because of who I was, and because of how much I loved you.” You stared at him in shock, not capable of understanding all that he said, too much information to process. “And the curse came to be.”

All what he said was too little, you lacked the context and the understanding of everything he went through. You lacked the reason why you seemed to love him in a past life. Everything felt too much and too little at the same time, but in a way, it made sense. His presence in your life, the calmness he carried around you, the way he kept you safe… It made sense how attracted you were to him even when he made your life impossible for so long. Because he loved you in silence as you ignored the red shadow in the corner of your vision. He was there for you, and you didn’t even remember who he was.

“Would you tell me about it? About her? About us?” You almost pleaded after a beat.

He smiled at you sadly, nodded and started to talk.

He talked about your shared past like it was his most treasured memory. He talked about you (but not you) with such reverence and love that you felt insecure and pleased at the same time. He talked like he knew you, but to you he was just the presence in your life, your invisible friend and later your nightmare. To you he was just a demon, and to him you were everything. You felt like you were a goddess in his eyes, but at the same time the idea of you he had was not coherent with your own personality.

By the time he finished, his eyes were filled with unshod tears and his breathing was ragged.

You were the demon in his story.

And that realization hurt a lot more than you expected, a lot more than you wanted to accept. He meant so much to you, but it didn’t even come close to how much you meant to him. And even then, he was cursed with you. You didn’t know what to think, but you knew his presence in your life was about to change forever.

And it did.

It changed for the best. You started talking to him more, and he always answered. He helped around and started being the perfect roommate. Since his confession, he was so caring and charming, he smiled and made you laugh, he transformed into someone you could love, someone you used to love apparently.

It was still so weird, but you couldn’t stop yourself from feeling everything so intensely around him. You still wanted to find hookups, but he explained he couldn’t let you do that, and it was fucked up but so sweet at the same time. And at the end of the day, you didn’t mind it that much.

He always excused himself to the living room when you slept, so you used those precious tiny moments to get all your pent up sexual frustration out. Sexual frustration to which he was contributing a big deal. To nobody’s surprise… you were falling for him. And if you were completely honest with yourself, you would accept that you had already fallen.

“Who cursed you?” You asked one random afternoon.

He stood there without saying anything for a long time, and then he said the last thing you were expecting: “I did.”