The demon occasionally murmurs a heartfelt compliment—tasty, pretty, sexy, biteable.

He gets distracted, at one point, biting Z's thigh pretty deep and then spending a while licking out the wound.

He's surprisingly cuddly for a seemingly literal demon in plausibly literal Hell inflicting definitely literal torture on a helpless victim. When his hands aren't busy holding some part of Z in place for his teeth, they're generally petting him or trailing claws lightly across his open wounds.

The tongue gets him a little more awake – he pants and squirms while it's in the wound, pushing his thigh up into his mouth.

This is...

...this is really nice.

It's not like it wouldn't be horrible for a normal person – but just having somebody paying this much attention to him is nice. Touching him, saying nice things about him, doing things he likes...

(His eyes are a little wet, and not for the right reason at all.)

And then, with Z's blood-drenched body cuddled against him, he nuzzles the back of Z's neck and kisses it and bites it and wraps his hand around Z's cock.

He makes a little noise, halfway between a moan and a sob, choked off halfway through.

And it sort of...keeps happening.

He bites and licks and strokes, surprisingly gently for how much pain is involved.

He can feel the teeth in his neck, holding it in place.

How deep is he in, that it feels somehow comforting?

He just sighs it out when he comes, this time, makes little unsteady crooning noises into the dark, head swimming from the inescapable burn of the open cuts, shaking in the grip of some possibly-literally-demon from possibly-literally-hell and somehow feeling more cared for than he has in...how long? A long time.

The demon kisses the bite in the back of his neck and hugs him.

"You're gorgeous," he murmurs. "You're fucking amazing."

What a stupid time to cry.

Well, the demon thinks it's an excellent time to cuddle him while he cries, so there.

Can he turn himself and face the torture demon who cut him up while he cries? Is that a thing he can do? Because fuck it, why not, he wants to put his face on a shoulder and there's a fucking shoulder.

He can totally do that. And get snuggled and petted and nuzzled and hugged. Why do all the coziest verbs have double letters?

They're good verbs. Good activities. Helpful.

After a while, he calms down enough to stop making noise. He's just breathing a little oddly into his shoulder.

Pet pet.

"You're real cute, y'know. I'm a fan."

He peers up at him cautiously.

“...you’re a really weird labyrinth monster,” he says, voice a little wobbly.

"Sure am!" he says brightly, and kisses Z's forehead. "So, what are your opinions on fire?"

“...haven’t tried a ton of it—I feel like you’re not totally on board with the whole...not killing me thing...”

He looks down at himself.

There's a whole lot of blood.

But—

When the demon runs his hand down Z's chest, over several places that have been clawed and bitten and generally mauled in the last couple of hours...

...none of it hurts?

There's just unbroken skin, with blood on it.

...hey, what?

He reaches down and tries to part a spot where, just a minute ago, he’s very sure there was a cut.

There's still a cut there, but noticeably less of one.

"Told you I'm not gonna kill you," the demon says fondly.

He starts to giggle like a kid who’s just been left totally unsupervised with a box of Sharpies.

The demon laughs.

"You're the cutest."

“Fire! Fuck yes! I wanna try fire next!”

The demon begins to glow, a deep fiery light that seems to come from his bones and radiate out through his flesh, centered in his hands but extending up through his arms.

He grabs Z and kisses him aggressively. Everywhere his hands touch, flesh sizzles.

—well, fuck.

He screams into the demon’s mouth, and his body jerks and twists in his grip. It’s amazing — but the overload of sensation is intense, it hurts so fucking much, he isn’t capable of doing anything else.

When he's pretty well covered in handprints, the demon releases the source of the heat but keeps groping him and trailing bites and kisses over his body.