Oh. The smile's really hot now. Okay.

"Yeah?"

Eden looks at him thoughtfully for a long moment.

Then: "—Before we get into that, I should explain a few more things. What do you know about demons' true names?"

"...not a lot," he admits. "Just that they stick if you hear them."

"Not necessarily, actually," he says. "They're not made of sound and language like human names, first of all, and they also don't universally stick—I don't know the exact proportion of summoners who've ever kept a name, but it's probably not more than half. And the crucial thing about demons' names is the way they facilitate understanding. If you learn a demon's true name, then for as long as you hold it, you know that demon's intentions toward you, the true meaning of whatever they say to you, and you can communicate with them across any distance. But you won't necessarily have the name forever; they often fade as soon as you lose contact with the source. If you do end up keeping the name forever, it leaves an infernal mark on your soul that anyone with enough mystic discernment can read. I keep modified summoning circles throughout this house that offer my name to anyone who stands in them, and I encourage my guests to use them whenever they like, as long as they understand the risks."

He nods through the explanation.

"...so I guess it'd be good for me to know yours."

Not exactly a great life decision to get a demon's name possibly stapled to your soul forever, but when has he been any good at those? 

"It definitely has its advantages. Do you want me to show you to a circle?"

"Are you gonna change your mind someday and let me run off into the sunset?"

"Forever is a very long time. Who knows what the next century will bring? But I haven't let anyone go yet."

"...yeah, if I'm gonna be here for a century I definitely wanna know."

He slides out of bed and stands up.

Getting out from under the blanket will reveal that he is wearing a very comfortable pair of underwear, and nothing else.

Eden leads him out of the room and down a soft white hall decorated in a similar style. The floor is light grey hexagonal tiles, rough stone smoothed down well enough to walk on comfortably, no two of them exactly alike. As they proceed around the curve of the corridor, the tiles gradually darken to a medium blue-grey, until the corridor meets a wider one with tiles in all different shades of blue. The T-junction of the two hallways is capped with an alcove big enough to stand in, and the floor of the alcove is a single piece of flat black glass inlaid with a spiraling pattern of silver runes.

"There you are," he says, gesturing to it.

...oh. Ok. He can be mostly naked around this guy. He hopes he looks ok.

He follows him down the hall, and stops short at the alcove.

...this is kind of exciting.

He steps onto the glass.

For half a second there's nothing, and then—

—It feels like falling, or like flying. Like rising into the night sky and reaching out to gather a chilly double handful of stars. Demons are traditionally associated with heat or fire, but this one feels cold and silver-black and vast. A river of liquid moonlight spilling across the fathomless darkness of space. A raven's wing spreading to cover the sun and mantle the earth in its shadow. A cool breeze on an early winter morning, stirring the year's first few flakes of snow. A drink of pure cold water on a hot day.

When the sensation begins to fade, knowledge unfolds in its place.

Every word Eden has said to him has been true. This demon does not lie to his captives; that wouldn't be fair. He considers this—resurrecting someone, keeping them in his home, sometimes hurting them—a very intimate relationship, which he must approach with complete emotional honesty or not at all. With Z in particular, he's being thrown a little off-balance by the lack of fear, but he's intrigued by the novelty and wants to see where it leads.

It's breathtaking. Gorgeous. His soul clings to it.

When it stops, he's somehow ended up kneeling on the floor.

Intimate...that's weird, to start all at once, but it's better than just being pulled up and then thrown away. And sometimes hurting them – he doesn't know how bad, and doesn't know how bad he could take, but he can definitely live with that.

(He maybe shouldn't like having thrown him off balance, but fuck it he totally does.)

Eden offers him a hand to help him to his feet.

He takes it and pulls himself up.

"...I'm kind of honored. You take this really seriously."

"—aww," he says, genuinely touched. "Yes, I do. Thank you."

He grins.

"So, how do I, uh–call your soulphone?"

He laughs.

{Like this.}

The voice doesn't quite speak in words, and isn't quite heard by his ears; it seems to come up out of the name, tasting of starlight. It's fairly straightforward to figure out how to send something back.

{oh. huh. hi.}

He's having a lot of cool synesthetic experiences today.

"So!" he says. "Now that the important prerequisites are in place—"

(his name reiterates that it is very important to him that anyone he keeps captive must be offered a fair chance to understand him as thoroughly as possible)

"—would you like the grand tour, or shall we return to the subject of threatening you?"

"I dunno. How grand is the tour?"

"Reasonably grand. I've put a lot of work into this house."

"Might as well get to know the house I might run screaming through."

He's not feeling quite as secure as he sounds.