Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Demons — Demon who can't read
"This sign can't stop me because I can't read!" Iquillur says loudly and belligerently.
"That sign?" Kiraxxos hisses back. "The wordless iconography No Entry sign, that you clearly understand perfectly is telling you to keep out?"
"Yep, can't read it," Iquillur says, marching through the marked door.
"And I know you can read!"
"Well, nothing more recent than Babylonian." Iquillur sniffs. "Honestly don't see why they needed to keep inventing new ones. What was wrong with it?"
"You're going to get us sent to Inhuman Resources! Keep your voice down—"
Iquillur puts her nose in the air. "You are such a goody-two-shoes."
"Fine! Why don't you go and do your fun breaking and entering without me if I'm such a killjoy—"
Iquillur grabs her wrist as she turns to go. "I can't read anything more recent than Babylonian," she says through gritted teeth. "I need you to tell me which thing is the incident report we're stealing from Crimson Belharizaa's desk—"
"You're stealing from their desk," Kiraxxos says. "To cover your ass."
"I need your help," Iquillur says through gritted teeth. "Happy?"
"Extremely no," Kiraxxos assures her. "I spent two centuries trying to get them to take me seriously over here just because I'm a succubus, and then you transfer in from Lust and you've piledriven every last stereotype about vapid sloppy horny vermin back into their heads in six months flat—"
"Well you can't have made that much of an impression on them, then," Iquillur says nastily, and grabs her wrist again. "No. No. I'm." She makes a tortured retching noise. "Sorry."
"You're fucking not at all," Kiraxxos seethes.
"No, but I'm willing to fucking grovel." Iquillur digs her heels in. "Please. It's not going to help the ol' image if I get sacked, is it?"
Kiraxxos snarls, but allows herself to be dragged further along the restricted corridor, lit only by the eye-hurting arcane glow from the empty sockets of wall-mounted skulls.
Crimson Belharizaa, Gullet of Hopes, has a spotless beige office filled with filing cabinets. Their intray is lined up with geometric perfection on their desk, along with a blotter, spotlessly unused coaster, reading glasses, and a single pen.
"Well, go on, do your thing," Iquillur says, waving at the intray.
"You could just learn Latin, you know," Kiraxxos snaps, starting to leaf through it.
"Yeah, but by the time I'm fluent they'll only have changed all the paperwork again, to fucking Anglo-Saxon or something, won't they?"
"How do you even do your job," Kiraxxos says crossly.
"Told 'em I'm dyslexic and need accommodations," Iquillur says, digging her toes appreciatively into the carpet. "They fished a soul out of one of the old fire ponds way out on the back fields and I've got my own, like, desk-toy pitchfork to poke it with if it won't read the paperwork out to me."
"I hate you so much," Kiraxxos says, and freezes. "Wait, can you hear—"
"Oh shit, they're coming! Quick," Iquillur looks around, "you hide under the desk and I'll...pretend I'm here for a legit appointment?"
"In their office at the end of the no entry corridor?" Kiraxxos hisses furiously. "Oh I hate you get over here—" and she hastily jams the reading glasses on her face, slams Iquillur down on the desk with a hand tight on her throat, and starts saying in a loud, bad but recognisable imitation of Crimson Belharizaa, "I have your performance review right here, Miss Iquillur, and it's very disappointing. It's so disappointing that I'm going to have to punish you very harshly—"
"Shit, seriously?" Iquillur mutters, then pitches her voice up hastily as the doorhandle turns, ripping open the top few buttons of her blouse. "Oh, boss! I'm so sorry, I did my best, honest! I'll do literally anything to make it up to you!"
"Hack," Kiraxxos says under her breath, talons raking up Iquillur's thigh. "Anything, Miss Iquillur? I can think of a few suitable ways to improve my assessment—"
"Oh shit yes right there," Iquillur says, wide-eyed and in a strangled, startled, embarrassingly sincere voice, as Crimson Belharizaa steps into their office.
"Really," Kiraxos sniffles, staring at her feet. "This is all my fault — it's a dreadful breach of professionalism — it's just been so long since I've worked with another succubus, and Iquillur finds managers with glasses so sexy—"
"Back in Lust, I'd just have propositioned a hot manager, you know?" Iquillur says, staring at the ceiling. She chews the inside of her lip. "Of course you can't do that here, so haha, Kiraxxos was, was helping me. To not fuck up my professional development. Here. By letting me work out my illicit hot stern boss thing? She's actually—" Iquillur clenches her fists so hard behind her back that blood starts dripping off her talons— "she's actually trying to protect me, because I totally talked her into using your actual desk. Like she said, it's been a long time. I pretty much took advantage of her."
"I am writing you both an Employee Performance Report," Crimson Belharizaa says, "for...uniform infractions. And I think we'll leave it at that, on the understanding this absolutely never happens again. Clear?"
"Yes boss," Iquillur says to the ceiling.
"Extremely clear, thank you," Kiraxxos says to the floor.
"Dismissed," Crimson Belharizaa says.
"Come near me again and I'll straight-up murder you," Kiraxxos whispers, right up in Iquillur's face in the corridor outside, and storms off.
"What can I do for you, Iquillur?" Crimson Belharizaa says from behind her desk, looking over her reading-glasses, a week and a half later.
"Well, boss, it's like this," Iquillur says, grimacing. "...It's Kiraxxos."
"Hm," Crimson Belharizaa says encouragingly.
"Succubi aren't really built for being on their own for two centuries," Iquillur says. "She's — look, the collapsed shelves in the stationery cupboard? Slammed me right up against 'em. The downstairs break room, I wouldn't — I wouldn't use that counter for lunch prep ever again, that counter's seen things, if you know what I mean. The thing that mysteriously happened to the big photocopier—"
"Hm," Crimson Belharizaa says, still encouragingly.
"Boss, she's gonna fuck the pelvis right off me," Iquillur says, and shifts uncomfortably, in a way that's extremely literal and physical. "Can you ask her to — like. Could you circulate an EPR about not fucking at work? Because I'm really trying to keep up with my paperwork, but she's—"
"Here's the thing," Crimson Belharizaa says benevolently, hands clasped on their desk. "Kiraxxos has a massive chip on her shoulder. She's so afraid of not being taken seriously, and she works five times as hard as anyone else to make up for it. It makes her incredibly driven, she's so valuable to the operation here. But you're right, succubi are social, and there comes a point where they just unavoidably suffer for being isolated."
"I think she might fuck me to literal death, boss," Iquillur says.
"Good managers meet the needs of their staff." Crimson Belharizaa steeples their many fingers, maintains eye contact with Iquillur, and leans back in their chair.
"...Oh that's why you hired me," Iquillur says. "Fuck, and I really thought it was my great CV."
"A masterwork of the fiction genre," her manager says genially. "I enjoyed it a lot. Was there anything else?"
"Can I expense lube?" Iquillur asks glumly.
"Absolutely not," Crimson Belharizaa says.