Summary: She asks Sebastian some questions.

Knowing Sebastian is a demon doesn’t make her run.
It makes her curious.
At first, the questions come cautiously, like she’s afraid of stepping on something fragile.
“So,” she says one afternoon as they walk through a quiet park, fingers brushing his sleeve, “is there, like… a hierarchy? Or are demons more of a ‘chaos free-for-all’ situation?”
Sebastian blinks.
“…There is a hierarchy,” he replies after a beat. “A very strict one.”
She hums. “Called it.”
He watches her from the corner of his eye, expecting fear to bloom eventually. It never does. Instead, she tilts her head, thoughtful, like she’s filing the information away.
Another day, curled together on her couch, she traces idle patterns into his glove.
“Do you sleep?” she asks.
“No.”
“Ever?”
“No.”
She frowns. “Then what do you do when I’m asleep?”
Sebastian hesitates.
“…I listen,” he admits.
Her eyebrows lift. “That’s either very sweet or very creepy.”
“I assure you, I remain perfectly still.”
She snorts, then goes quiet for a moment. “You don’t have to watch over me all the time, you know.”
“I know.”
He still does.
The questions evolve as the days pass. Less surface-level. More careful.
“Have you ever cared about someone like this before?” she asks one night, voice low, not looking at him.
Sebastian’s fingers tighten slightly around his teacup.
“No,” he says truthfully.
That answer makes her inhale sharply, like it matters more than she meant it to.
Sometimes she tests the boundaries—not maliciously, just curious.
“If you wanted to,” she says once, “could you read my mind?”
“Yes.”
“…Do you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you deserve privacy.”
That one makes her smile so softly it almost hurts to see.
There are moments where the demon slips through the cracks—not in power, but in difference.
He doesn’t flinch when a dog growls at him, but the dog whines and hides behind her legs. He reacts a fraction of a second too fast when a car honks too close. His eyes darken when someone raises their voice at her, something ancient and territorial flashing beneath the surface.
She notices all of it.
“You’re holding back,” she says once, bluntly, as they sit on her fire escape watching the city lights.
“Yes.”
“From what?”
Sebastian looks at her then, really looks at her. “From becoming something you would no longer recognize.”
She swallows. “…Do you think I’d be afraid?”
“I think,” he says carefully, “that I would be.”
That honesty settles between them, heavy but warm.
She never asks him to change.
Never asks him to be less.
And one night, half-asleep, curled into his side, she murmurs, “Thank you for trusting me.”
Sebastian freezes.
Trust is not something demons give lightly.
He looks down at her—at the human who knows what he is and chose to stay anyway—and something inside him shifts again, dangerously, irrevocably.
“…You are most welcome,” he whispers.
And for the first time since the truth came out, he realizes the questions aren’t pulling them apart.
They’re pulling them closer.