Chapter Text
The year was 1980.
The sun had set over the Utah desert and a chill was carried in by a low, whistling wind that smelled of dust. Heinrich Faust raised his chin haughtily against the cold.
Some distance from him, seated on a rock with his leather-booted ankle across his knee, Mephistopheles glanced blankly at him, then returned his gaze to the neck of his guitar. Faust prickled at that glance, expecting a rebuke: Go get a coat, idiot.
I don't want a coat, he planned to respond. I'm atoning for my war crimes. See, look how self-deprecating I've become. I mock myself - what do I need you for?
Everything, apparently, he imagined Mephisto responding - a low enough blow that Faust would feel justified in striding to him, seizing him by the collar, dragging him down into the dust. He'd put his own dirty boot on the devil's chest and push. Mephisto would like it, the perverted bastard. The sight of his erection pressing at his jeans would be reason enough to crouch over him, to stroke a finger over his cheek, to take his lower lip gently in his teeth, breath hot on his face - and then to release him, to step back, to sneer down at him: What do I need you for?
And then to lie sleepless and wanting in the motel room a few hours later, hardly in any position to ask for more. No, that wouldn't do at all. God, even in his fantasies he couldn't find satisfaction.
Mephistopheles plucked out the opening to 'Wish You Were Here,' his fingers skilled and precise against the friction of the strings - attributes hard-won, for a being with little native creative power. Nothing was so difficult for Mephisto as art, and thus no task had so much of his attention - a challenge to spice up the drone of his endless life, to bring his focus off the flat horizon of eternity and into the details of the moment. Faust knew how many hours the devil had put into that guitar. It was not love, he knew, the care and pleasure with which he stirred those strings to sound. It was tactic, strategy, psychological necessity. But he pretended to love it. He wore a leather jacket like a proper hard rocker; he collected cassettes, stacks of the little plastic boxes overflowing the El Dorado's center console. Anyone would take him for genuine in his enthusiasm. Only Faust knew better.
The devil hummed vaguely - did you exchange / a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage - and his downcast eyes drew Faust's attentions to his eyelashes, beautiful against his cheeks. Everything about Mephistopheles was beautiful: his muscular shoulders, which his recent preference for tanktops rather indecently exposed; his fae hair, around whose long black locks a hellish crown sometimes wound; the solemn crease between his eyebrows, hinting at his true age despite his almost unlined face; even the empty black pits of his eyes had an impersonal desolation in them not unlike the current desert night. It had been centuries since Faust thought of that beauty in terms of temptation; he'd learned, since then, how direly Mephisto's isolationist little nation had been slandered by Christian propaganda; now he only thought with a smirk of God Almighty giving Mephistopheles a good gift. I'm sorry I made the universe for humanity and not for you, my son. But at least when you visit you will look sexy as hell.
Thirty-seven years since they had last been intimate. Thirty-seven years since Faust had plummeted from his moral high ground; since the wild godlike confidence that had allowed him to fuck the devil senseless backstage in the Wagners' opera house went up in the ashes of the genocide Faust had been too power-drunk to notice. Among the several patches on Mephisto's leather coat was an yellow triangle, overlaid with an upside-down pink triangle to make a star. There was also a patch that read FCK/NZS. It was annoyingly arousing to imagine himself as the object of that imperative. As though he didn't wake from nightmares of yellow stars with the cold nauseous certainty that never, in all his unnaturally long life, had he been more utterly damned.
Mephisto shifted his guitar to bend down and grab the half-empty can of beer by his boot; took a vigorous swig; raised it to Faust, a question. Faust shook his head, irritated that the devil could make so masculine a gesture when Faust knew perfectly well he'd sang at a club in full drag three nights before. (He'd snuck in to catch a glimpse of his routine, loitering in the doorway like a homophobic fire alarm and giving several queers the fight-or-flight response. Unseemly for a lord of Hell, to prance about in heels like a teenage girl. Unseemly for a lord of Hell to have legs, good god.)
Thirty-seven years was a long fucking time.
Taking another long sip, Mephisto met Faust's gaze over the can and wiggled his eyebrows as though he knew exactly which gutters the doctor's mind was in. Faust stood up abruptly. "It's late," he said, curt. "Let's go."
Mephisto, exaggerating, swiveled his eyes from side to side as though looking for the impetus of this departure. Then he pursed his face into a 'who knows, life's weird like that' expression, brushed off his jeans, and went over to the driver's side of the car, not because he was irresponsible (he was) and not because he didn’t trust Faust with the El Dorado (he didn’t) but because Mephisto driving drunk was a physiological impossibility.
"You taken a vow of silence or what?"
The devil swiveled his eyes again in Faust's direction like a silent movie actor and shrugged.
Cold air rattled through the vents while the engine warmed up, then steamed the windows. Faust, old man that he was, turned on the radio and found a station playing Dean Martin. The devil tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat and pushed the car to a very reasonable eighty miles an hour.
Faust thought about how he could throw his pride to the wind, move his hand a foot to the left, slide it up the inside of the devil's thigh and distract him into breaking more than the speed limit. Instead, he said, "Do you regret what you did in Germany?"
Mephisto took both eyes off the road to stare him down.
He'd expected the devil to say, I'd do it again, for you. "Oh, that's right, you're not talking. You're being a child."
Mephisto made a smug face, and it was a mark of how well they knew each other that Faust could hear him say, clear as day, Age is second childhood.
"Oh, I get it, you think I've been taking you for granted. Have I been ignoring you, Mephisto? Poor you."
The devil grinned at him, switched the channel to the hits, and took a sharp turn off the highway.
When they stopped in the parking lot of the first motel, sputtering neon mixing with streetlights on the concrete, Mephisto didn't turn the engine off. Instead, he locked the doors with a click.
Faust, who had been mulling over the idea of requesting One king bed, thank you, from the receptionist, demanded, "What are you doing?"
Mephisto turned to him fully and crossed his arms, surveying him with an expression of mild curiosity.
"What?"
Mephisto tilted his head as though considering several options. Then he reached across the center console and took Faust's hand.
"Good god, man, unhand me," said Faust, imperious. "You think I want to hold your hand?"
Mephisto weaved his fingers into Faust's, watching his face with comedic intensity, like a kid sneaking a cookie and waiting to get caught.
"You're ridiculous," said Faust. "Get off me."
Mephisto stared at him, then brought the hand to his mouth and rested his lips against the doctor's knuckles, wide eyes on Faust's unblinkingly.
"We're done here," said Faust, unlocking his door manually and yanking his hand away before his body could betray him. His knuckles seemed to vibrate where the devil had touched them. He stepped out into the frigid air.
Mephisto followed him closely into the lobby and stood right against him as he checked in at the front desk, so bold as to let his hand rest on Faust's waist.
"Two beds, please," said Faust to the receptionist, savagely.