◖𓈈﹗ ﹙ thirty-nine ﹚
❛ ▬▬ FAKE SMILE. . . ❜
Driving under a relentless rain through the city streets seemed to be one of the things Dean enjoyed as much as the solitary roads accompanied only by the moonlight on his shoulders. The trees swayed in the same way that the hunter's body trembled after hours in the rain. Dean had seen his lips turn purple and his nose reddened; he gripped the steering wheel and occasionally changed the radio station, searching for a song that pleased his ears. Lilith took his hand when the traffic light turned red, momentarily dispelling the cold and warding off any subsequent illness.
"New hair, huh?" they were heading to the motel where Sam and Bobby were staying. "Trying to be an elf? And what about your eyebrows? Did they go out for cigarettes and never come back?"
That made her smile inwardly. Dean was a fool, and she couldn't believe he had seen The Lord of the Rings and then had the audacity to call her a nerd.
"Don't you like it?"
"Nah, it suits you."
"Do you mind if I light a cigarette?" Anxiety was gnawing at her mind. She knew a discussion about demons would soon approach, and there would be little truth to be spoken. Lilith didn't wait for an answer; she opened her bag and rummaged through heroin and other drugs to find the pack of cigarettes. She rolled down the window to let in some fresh air.
"So, you're back... and the drugs," Dean muttered as if he had been granted absolute truth. "Lilith... What were you doing in hell? I saw you, it was you."
"I wanted to see you," she replied, taking a drag of the cigarette and exhaling the smoke out of the window. The lights passed by quickly, and the neon signs with advertisements seemed like a better backdrop than Dean's face.
"How did you do it?" Now, the hunter wasn't beating around the bush or allowing the woman to avoid lying to him.
"Witchcraft."
"Are we going to start with lies?"
Her throat had tightened along with a throbbing and painful headache, desperate to dive into the drug that was in her bag, sheltered and ready, waiting patiently because she was sure she would return with her mouth drooling and her heart racing. She wished she could manipulate time in a way that surpassed the limits of the power of natural witch chrono-kinesis. To be the mistress of absolute time, without beginning or end. She would grab her body by the hair and place it a few years into the future to avoid these kinds of problems with Dean. She would live in a space-time where she was finally happy, or simply repeat the nineteen years of her life before her mother's disappearance.
"I'm not lying, I found a way to pay you a little visit."
"Did you make a deal?" That was his main stipulation. It flattered her that he thought so highly of her.
"No," Dean was about to retort, but Lilith hurried, "I know." She caught him off guard; Dean returned to look at the road, and his hands tightened the steering wheel with power. "I know what you have to do to get out of hell, I know about the torture of souls. I know everything, Dean."
The Impala parked on the side of the street, in a space that was free between some businesses. Dean's hair was still wet, and some drops ran down his forehead to burst at the tip of his pert nose. He ran his hands over his face and then decided to look at her, surely thinking about everything he hadn't wanted to say in the cemetery; he was a good boy, respectful and with enough affection not to ruin her afternoon. Why did his chest ache? Deep down in his mind, he had no doubt about the anger he would have when he returned; he had ruined his friendship with Sam the day he drank demon blood. Lilith was sure of that, only Mom forgave her completely and understood her.
"I don't want to talk about that, please," his emerald eyes filled with water. "You had no idea what you were asking, you shouldn't have asked me to do it. Never. What you did, you drank the blood of the demon that killed my family. It's wrong, Lilith, you shouldn't have done it. You were supposed to stay in college."
"Don't give me that crap, Dean, when you did the same thing. What was I supposed to do? Sit at home and wait for you to rescue my mom? Wait? Look for another plan? Wasn't that exactly what I told you when Sam died? I didn't understand you back then, I judged you and thought you were an idiot."
"I am an idiot," he interrupted hastily, "but you-" he pointed at her, and Lilith slapped his hand away from her face.
"No, I understand you. You were desperate, needy, you can't live without your brother, you live for him. There was no difference between your motives and mine, only your plan worked better: you're here alive, and you have your brother. Isn't that all you wanted?"
"You don't understand what I had to do, you don't understand," Dean tried to avoid the topic without admitting his sins aloud and only made himself more annoyed and angry, with hellfire consuming his soul.
"I told you I would understand and forgive you for whatever you had to do; I don't care, I just wanted you here," she exclaimed defeatedly. She threw the cigarette she had smoked out the window and slung her bag's straps over her shoulder. "Honestly, I thought you would understand me."
"It's not you who should care!" he shouted, hitting the steering wheel. "I care about what I did! It's about what I did because YOU asked me to. You came to me and told me Sam needed me, holy shit... Did you look in the mirror that day?! You didn't look good! For years, I wondered if it was you, if you had told me the truth. You scared me, Lilith. And I-" the words didn't come out; only a tear fell from his green eyes and disappeared quickly. "What do you know about angels?" he abruptly changed the subject.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because one pulled me out of the fire."
"What?!" her heart skipped a beat. "What the hell are you telling me? An angel saved you? An angel saved you?! How do you know? Did it tell you? Did you see an angel? What was it like?"
What she had just heard seemed worthy of a sitcom episode.
"I confronted him," he confessed. "Face to face, he says his name is Castiel, he's a bit perverted, quite voyeuristic."
"Was it an order to get you out?"
"Yes," Dean looked at her suspiciously. "Lilith... Bobby said you claim that an angel..."
"An angel killed her, Uriel," she said firmly, leaving a death sentence.
"And is that true?"
"Do you doubt it?" she shouted. "I saw it! I saw the flames! He was there with my mom under his feet! He killed her on orders!"
"And you know this because...?" Lilith tried to calm down, aware of the arrival of the part of the story she couldn't tell. "A demon told you?"
"It's true."
"Now you believe demons when before you were on my side with Ruby?"
"I saw it with my own eyes!"
The hunter didn't believe her, his face had said it all, letting out a snort and looking at her disdainfully, as if everything she had ever said was a lie. Lilith got out of the car; it was impossible to defend herself or engage in a sincere conversation.
"Lilith!" Dean called out, getting out of the car, his face soaked again. "Come back, Lilith, Sam and Bobby are waiting for us. Lilith!"
"No! That's it! Fine, Dean, I don't feel like talking to you right now," she needed drugs urgently. "See you later."
"Lilith! Come on, get in the car," he insisted, following her a few more steps, but she didn't look back and ignored him. "Amazing, Lilith!" was the last thing she heard.
Lilith entered the first public restroom she found to inject heroin and, after feeling the itching under her skin, she instructed a taxi driver to take her to Dorian's mansion.
The reunion ended up being as apocalyptic as her life had become. She laughed, remembering how desperate she had been to get back into the Impala with Dean driving, and ended up finishing the joke with angels saving Dean. Damn angels! Every day she hated them a little more; the idea of their extermination sounded melodious. She dreamed of that day as frequently as she dreamed of Dean's resurrection. What a hypocrite! She understood the atrocities of soul torture; she studied the philosophy of hell and the rules that exceeded the ruler, the originals made by God -and she understood even more- she would have liked to explain to Dean that those souls had bought their place, some asking for deaths, others sinning out of selfishness, power, and money, a place in politics; few asked for an honorable wish, like Dean's or a humanitarian good. They weren't God, and it didn't seem like God cared either. It was the nature of creation, the reflection of God. Dean wouldn't sit down to think about it, and if he did, he wouldn't listen to her.
He blamed her for wanting him to be on Earth, with Sam and her. He blamed her for wishing something good would come out of everything she did. The sound of his broken heart was so real, she thought she had died. Her heart stopped beating, and the absolute silence dragged her into one of hell's cells. Were her choices that bad? Was she walking through the valley of evil? The impression of good was unfair, pathetic, lamentable, they didn't deserve a single word printed in the Bible. There was no path of good and no path of evil. She had once told Sam that he was the one who could decide if his actions were good or bad. The means would be judged by the results; she put her foot there.
Suddenly, Lilith stopped and contemplated the entrance to the mansion and noticed the number of parked cars. She had forgotten about the family dinner! She ran up the steps like the Road Runner, and when she entered the foyer, one of the butlers opened his eyes as wide as plates and indicated for her to go upstairs as quickly as possible to her room before anyone saw her looking like a beggar, with wet hair, dilated pupils, and dirt on her backside.
"Hello, my boy!" she greeted Prayer, stroking his ears and giving him some kisses on the forehead; he slept on the bed like a king. "How much do you want to bet that Dorian is coming up with a vein bulging on his forehead?"
She stripped off her clothes and ran to the bathroom for a five-minute shower, which, upon finishing, found herself confronted with a group of people and Dorian in the room with his arms crossed and the vein on his forehead bulging.
"I asked for just one night! Just one! Where were you? And now you don't answer your phone?" he exclaimed.
"I'm sorry," Lilith approached and hugged him, but Dorian refused, still angry from yesterday. Lilith groaned. "Dorian, I'm really sorry; I'll explain later. Look, I'm here now, it's not too late. Just an hour, okay?" It was one of those days when she was shattered, and she hadn't stopped crying since her argument with Dean. "I'll be happy, I promise; we'll have a special and beautiful night, just like you want. Please hug me. I don't want to fight." She hugged him tightly. "Dorian," she pleaded, plucking a hair from him.
Finally, he hugged her.
"Please don't take too long," he took her hands and kissed her lips, maintaining his patience. "I love you, Lilith."
"I love you too."
Whether she said it because she needed Dorian to accept what she was doing or because she truly loved him, it was a mystery; that night, Lilith said the words.
The group of people adorned her body with makeup, skillfully applying it to areas with redness and bruises from clumsy steps and some pricks from the furniture in the nocturnal dance that had no idea of its existence. Brushes and gloss returned lucidity to her face and the shine that made her look beautiful, so lovely that the birds would sing around her, and a crown would suit her well. The people worked at the speed of light, threatened with losing their jobs if Miss Arduenn didn't descend the stairs in twenty minutes. They dressed her in a Versace dress divided into two parts and black in color. It left her entire upper and lower abdomen exposed, and a bra barely covered her powerful breasts. The skirt was long and black, simple and beautiful so that the attention would be drawn to the chains crossing her abdomen and those winding around her neck, uniting a golden heart. The dressmakers insisted she remove the necklace her mom had given her, and Lilith barked at them to leave.
She took her express witchcraft box from under the bed and from it a bag with different potions she had made at some point. If she didn't do it, it was impossible to fulfill her promise to Dorian.
"I have to do it, what do you think, Prayer?" The little cat rested among the giant pillows, in the midst of all of them, with only its head and a paw visible. It looked like it had been eaten. "It's just for one night; I really owe it to him. Dorian loves me, and nothing scares him; he doesn't care if I make friends with the devil. He sleeps with a demon and doesn't say anything."
In her hands was a pink potion that would anchor her happiness to a person. There were many happiness potions; most would cause a disaster where she would end up killing herself, but this one lasted a few hours; it was the perfect drug. She placed one of Dorian's hairs, and the potion scorched it. Her happiness would depend on Dorian's happiness; she would do anything to please him and feel happy herself. The difference with others was that she didn't lose her memories; it just transformed pain into happiness, and it didn't turn her into a zombie or a slave. She could still be herself.
"Don't tell anyone I did it, Prayer."
She drank the potion.
Even Dorian believed they had swapped his girlfriend for a shapeshifter. The beautiful girl welcomed Dorian's relatives with a beautiful smile that illuminated her face and made her even more beautiful. She stood by her boyfriend as he introduced her to uncles and cousins from northern Italy, to his grandparents, children of children, and intimate friends of the family considered, in themselves, family. Lilith looked around; children were running around the grand hall, some ladies were speaking Italian very effusively, some gentlemen were smoking Cuban cigars laughing near the fireplace, and the younger ones were gossiping, admiring the ostentations of the mansion, thirsty for curiosity. One of them had asked her if she was a celebrity. Ha ha! Not in the earthly world, in hell they knew her name very well already: "Lilith II" they sang. She was impressed by the number of relatives on her father's side; there were no signs of Barbara, and it was noticeable that Dorian had taken his mother's physical characteristics: her jet-black hair, hooked nose, and prominent lips. The men had slightly lighter hair, and straight, fine noses; the women had prominent foreheads and each had a different hair color, some were brunette, others blonde, and one family was redhead. The only thing they had in common was their height; they were all tall there.
"Mio Nipote!" A man with a pronounced bald head hugged Dorian between his arms and kissed his cheeks twice. "How long, you've grown a lot, the last time I saw you, you were full of pimples and chubby," he let out a bitter laugh. "Look at you now! You've become a real man."
"She's my girlfriend, Lilith," he introduced her. "This is my uncle Giorgio."
"Lili," he mispronounced, but the woman just nodded, smiling, receiving two kisses on each cheek. "Che bella donna, molto bella! Who would have thought that little Dorian, my brother's only son, would end up like this? Che cosa la vita!"
Dorian laughed out of commitment; it seemed like the last thing he wanted to do was laugh in that situation. He had taken a deep breath before and held Lilith tight against him, and that's how he felt his heart racing. Dorian maintained composure for a long time while the employees prepared the table, but his patience didn't last long after a group of cousins his age talked to the hosts.
"Dumbo! If someone had told me that sitting in front of the computer all day could buy this house, I would have stayed with you," said a cousin named Felice, with hair as long as Dorian's and a straight mustache. The rest of the cousins with him laughed. "Well, actually, no, the only thing we wanted to do at fourteen was see the panties of our classmates."
"Who is she?" His cousins continued teasing. They had a better level of English so that Lilith could understand them through their heavy accent. "A friend of yours, I imagine."
"She's my girlfriend."
The boys exchanged suspicious glances.
"Pleasure, miss! I'm Marcelo, the most handsome of this bunch of idiots."
"Lilith Arduenn," she pronounced her name correctly. At her side, Dorian's face had turned red. "I think your father is calling us," she invented to get him out of there; something was wrong.
"Man, no!" His cousins cornered him with hugs and grabbing him by the neck. "We have a lot to talk about! Dorian, we haven't seen you in so long, how did you stop having chubby cheeks and a stomach full of American hamburgers? I'm sure you made millions with the secret, share it with your family."
"Siete degli idioti, lasciate in pace il cugino Dorian!" A lady said, shaking her arms and hitting the cousins with a scarlet scarf.
Dorian escaped from the living room and into the bedroom with Lilith following closely behind. He opened the door almost knocking it down and rummaged through the dresser drawers for a bag of cocaine.
"Dorian," Lilith called, sitting next to him on the bed. "They're immature," she commented tenderly, placing a hand carefully on his shoulder and stroking it with her thumb.
After a few seconds, the cocaine entered Dorian's body, and it took a minute for him to muster up the courage to say something.
"I thought that if they saw all that I achieved without anyone's help, they would leave me alone. Those sons of bitches have been bullying me all my life. They take out their problems on me, I know it, they're a bunch of lazy asses still living off their parents. They're good for nothing. I stole spells and potions from Mom to make them stop, so they would leave me alone, but it didn't matter; when the effect wore off, they would start bothering me again. Damn it!" He yelled, kicking the bed. "I didn't want you to know."
"Do they bother you?" She asked innocently, taking his hands so he knew she was there for him and would listen without judging him.
"Yes, and that my whole adolescence was pretty pathetic. An overweight kid, the girls looked at me with disdain, and I was locked in my room programming twenty-four hours a day." The anger grew, accumulating in his cheeks. "Angry with my mother because she didn't want to give me spells and potions to solve my little problem, and my father telling me that I was a disappointment, not worthy to carry his surname. The whole family didn't bet a penny on me; they said I should study economics; at least I would have a respectable job and a good salary."
"Your life is better now, don't you think?" Lilith moved closer and planted a short kiss on his cheek. "Everything you suffered made you stronger and smarter. Look at you. You're beautiful, inside and out." She kissed his lips. "You built an empire with your e-commerce business and knew exactly where to put your money. And you're a good person; you could leave me; I'm unbearable and a walking problem, we fight as much as we make love; you could have any girl, someone who loves you more than I do, but here you are. If they can't see your worth, it doesn't matter; I do."
"I wanted to rub it in their faces with this stupid dinner," he spat out frustrated. "I feel like a stupid immature, the same fourteen-year-old... I'm not angry with everyone, my aunts have been very kind, and my grandparents are fantastic... just, I don't know, all of this is shit."
"Dorian," she caught his asymmetrical face between her small, bony hands; she smiled poisonously, full of happiness. "Let's enjoy this night; we'll dance and eat very well, and then," Lilith climbed onto his lap and began rocking her hips, "I can be as submissive as you want, I'll do it for your happiness. It doesn't matter what they say; you only have to care about the opinion of those you truly love, and it seems to me that you truly love me."
"Did you put a spell on me?"
Lilith smiled with all her slightly crooked teeth. "No, I didn't need to."
The businessman grabbed her hips with his large, hard hands, so large and hard that they could trap her anorexic waist in full view of everyone. The anger had subsided; the kisses helped build the atmosphere of trust they needed to complete the infatuation of their relationship and move on to the next stage with more meaningful and deeper kisses. Dorian held onto her, fearing she would disappear from his life; his lips moved insistently and needy, and Lilith responded with induced happiness, fake, but real enough to intoxicate them for the rest of the night.
📬！▬ author's note
i made some changes, now lilith arduenn never mentioned the demon lilith in front of anyone.
what do you guys think about dorian? you have no idea how much trouble this character causes me, I don't know anymore if I want him more good than bad or vice versa, it's all very confusing with dorian. I love to write it ajajajajajajajajj