Archive of Our Own ^beta

Alastor, as Lucifer’s observed, is partial to using a French press. He likes to steal a still, tranquil moment in the slow pre-dawn just for himself—or for the two of them, as of late—before all Hell inevitably breaks loose.

It’s not something they get to do all that often. The hustle and bustle gets in the way—laundry, morning group, the occasional hungover guest throwing a demonic tantrum. The works.

More often than not, the French press is set aside in favor of its more efficient, electrical sister. A massive pot put on just as the sun rises, fresh grounds, a loud beep beep once it’s done, a universal alarm clock, and in rushes the eager horde, all clambering for a mug.

It has its perks. It’s funny to watch. Husk, groaning like it’s top-shelf whiskey, nectar on his tongue. Angel, bleary-eyed and begging. This is fuckin’ spectacular. Fess up, coffee Santa, and I’ll make it worth your while, I swear to God, I’ll blow you.

And it is good, absurdly good, Lucifer can attest to that. Alastor and his many, many talents, so many of them put aside in his lifetime to pursue his greater passion of serial murder.

But he’s never a suspect in its preparation, is Alastor, because the machine has an LCD screen and a cable that plugs into a wall socket. Witchcraft. The deceptive little fucker, keeping secrets in the unknowable, impenetrable recesses of his horrible mind.

But sometimes—like now—the two of them do find an instant to spare, a fleeting moment carved out of time, squeezed into their respective schedules before the sun comes crawling over the hilltops to the east.

Lucifer’s coffee is handed to him. He’s half-asleep and unsteady, and his fingers brush Alastor’s as the mug changes owners, and it really is these littlest things, these pockets of warmth—a good cup of joe, Charlie’s birth, the like, et cetera—that make plummeting down from Heaven all worth it.

He takes a small sip, that small, life-changing first sip, and for an instant, he swears he sees the light. He understands religion, as humanity experiences it. The desire to set an offering down on the countertop to appease the machine gnaws at his insides.

The chair across from him squeaks, and the moment bursts; Alastor sits, adjusting the lapels of his prim dressing gown. “Do you make a habit of doing that?” he asks, and Lucifer looks down, following his lofty gaze.

His mug is the culprit, stood just to the left of the coaster, its intended spot, like he’s being contrary for contrary’s sake. Which—he isn’t. He’s barely awake, is all.

Gingerly, he lifts it. There’s a little wet ring on the tabletop.

“I, uh—” He trails off and vanishes the oh, so terrible mess away. “All good.”

“And you make a habit of taking the easy way out.”

It isn't a question, but it sounds like one, and Lucifer’s mug isn’t nearly empty enough to be dealing with Alastor’s snark just yet, this early in the morning, and his ratty pyjama bottoms feel too tight on his hips, like they’ve shrunken in the wash.

“Listen, I’m stuck here for all of eternity. If I can just snap my fingers and un-fuck up my—less egregious fuck-ups, at the very least, why shouldn’t I?” He pauses, then laughs. “Come on, it’s six in the fucking morning, Al. Are we playing twenty questions or something?”

Red eyes narrow, head tilting in endearing confusion. He’s so much more expressive when it’s just the two of them, alone.

“You know what—let’s,” Lucifer decides. They’re both—yappers. Husk coined it, a while ago now, calling Alastor just that—a chronic fuckin’ yapper. Goddamn apt, that was. Lucifer’s no saint either, and he’s short on plans for the morning, for a change. And as much as it pains him to realize it, much less admit it to anyone but himself, he scarcely knows anything about the demon he’s decided to invite into his bed. And his heart. He’s so royally fucked, all around. He’s dickmatized. They really need to kiss less and talk more.

“I am not familiar with the premise.”

“We just ask each other questions.”

“Twenty questions.”

Lucifer snaps his fingers. “Exactly,” he chirps. “See, you’re getting it.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Highness. I was under the impression that was simply referred to as having a conversation.”

“Don’t be boring, Al. I’ll start.” And he goes for it. It’s been on his mind for weeks, poking at his subconscious. “Are you color-blind? Like a deer? Or is—is the monocle-thingy just for looks, is it part of the character, or do you actually need it to see? ‘Cause I thought physical ailments kind of went poof once you got down here. On account of, uh, you know, not being strictly human anymore.”

He bites his tongue. He’s so, so good at digging himself into holes, woe be upon him, revealing how little he truly knows about his subjects as people, as a species, whatever they are, biologically speaking.

“Two questions.”

“Huh.”

Alastor takes a sip from his own mug and sets it down soundlessly on his coaster. He moves so gracefully sometimes that it makes Lucifer self-conscious, like a clumsy child stumbling into walls and corners.

“You asked two questions. Pick one.”

Lucifer doesn’t want to dig any deeper. That’s—he’ll save that particular investigation for later. “Fine. Are you color blind?”

Alastor’s radiant smile goes a smidge tighter at the edges, teeth bared in immediate annoyance. “Somewhat.”

Lucifer’s eyes go wide, brows careening up in surprise. He hadn’t expected Alastor to be forthcoming, let alone honest. “That must suck,” he says, then waggles his fingers up and down Alastor’s ensemble. “Explains a lot about your—”

“My what.”

“Your—never mind. Your turn.”

“My what?” Sharp, insistent, digging his heels obstinately into the ground.

Lucifer cringes. “You look very—eye-catching,” he says delicately. “Conspicuous.”

“Ah,” says Alastor. “Good.” The goddamned attention whore. “I’m perfectly aware I’m wearing red, dearest. I’m not hopeless.”

“Yeah, yeah. Your turn,” Lucifer repeats. And he’s then struck with a wave of anxious, anticipatory nausea. “Please, no heavy-hitters,” he rushes out.

Alastor clicks his tongue, plays a staticky clip of disappointed boos courtesy of an unseen audience. “And here I was so looking forward to asking what the final straw was for your wi—”

“Al, please.”

“Making up commandments as you go along. How very typical. Very well. Everybody else watches television, but I’ve noticed that you never do. Why is that?”

Lucifer blinks. Not what he expected. “I, uh, I don’t know. I don’t have the attention span, I guess. And everything on there is just a whole load of shit, anyway. Rumors and lies on the news, day in, day out. Gratuitous violence, straight-up porn, take your pick. I don’t know. It’s pointless. Empty, you know, hollow.”

Alastor preens like he’s won something, the wicked gleam in his eyes disrupting the serenity of his otherwise pleasant expression.

“You have beef with the television man. Yeah, we know,” Lucifer says. “Do you actually keep up with modern media and pretend you don’t?”

“Yes.” Alastor’s smile grows very small and self-satisfied. He takes a delicate sip of his coffee. “Verosika Mayday is a fantastic talent as far as contemporaries go.”

Lucifer’s jaw goes slack. He sets his coffee down with both hands—on the coaster—to keep it from teetering and spilling in his unsteady grip. “No way. Shut the fuck up. This is quite possibly, actually, the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life. Thank you.”

“You're very welcome, dear. Nobody will ever believe you. You could be taller if you wanted to, couldn’t you? You’re a shapeshifter.”

Lucifer’s excitement deflates, bursting like a balloon run through with scissors. Charlie used to do that, when she was younger, once her birthday parties were over.

Always a jab at his height. “Yeah,” he says flatly. “I’m accustomed to—this. It’s my original—first—whatever you want to call it—form—body. Changing it all the time would just throw me off. You don’t think shapeshifting feels weird? It’s like having to learn to walk all over again. And that aside, of course, it’s nice to, uh, be underestimated sometimes.”

“Devious,” Alastor says.

“Oh, you know. Comes with the job description. How do you, uh—” On a whim, he decides to keep pressing, pulling on that thread, the most fascinating bit of information he’s managed to wheedle out of Alastor thus far. “How do you—if you don’t watch TV, where do you, you know, find things out? Listen to music?”

“Please, some things are for me to know and everybody else to keep guessing about. Keeps them on their toes,” Alastor drawls. The fucking ego on him. “Records, darling. Radio shows. Surely you didn't think mine was the only one.”

Lucifer nods, disappointed, but relatively unsurprised. Not as exciting a revelation as he’d hoped for.

“And the internet,” Alastor adds.

And then he stands, unbothered, as Lucifer’s eyes go wide and bulging once more, like fucking saucers—and he knows he must look stupid, very stupid, sputtering, too stunned to formulate anything resembling a sensible response, but he can’t bring himself to care.

Alastor adjusts the fastening of his robe. Behind him, his eerie shadow friend busies itself, collecting Alastor’s now empty mug and setting it down in the sink.

“This game is dull. And I’m afraid I’m quite busy today. I’ll see you tonight, darling.”

━━━

Lucifer, strictly speaking, isn’t staff, though that fact does very little to dispel the residents of the hotel, guests and actual staff alike, from treating him as such. He’s on the dinner rotation, he has—not that he needs one—a master key, he even signs for deliveries out back, coerced into doing so by a certain eight-legged sinner on account of I just did my hair, pops, and it’s so fuckin’ windy.

One big, happy family.

It goes hand in hand with a handful of perks, he supposes.

One, the staff kitchen is much less crowded. Two, he’s under no obligation, technically, to participate in rehabilitative group exercises. And he gets invited to all of the über-exclusive shindigs. His favorite—lasagne night. His least favorite—Monopoly.

“Oh, hey, Smiles is here.”

Lucifer looks up from the game board. Alastor, gone all day and well into the afternoon, strolls in through the front door drenched very nearly head-to-toe in blood. In the minuscule space between heartbeats, Lucifer’s stomach drops, but in the next instant—that’s all it takes—he knows without a shadow of a doubt that not a single droplet of it is Alastor’s own.

“Making a mess,” says Niffty, bless her twisted little heart.

“Wouldn’t want that, would we,” Alastor says amiably. Shadows swarm like hornets, and when they dissipate in an eerie burst of green light, he’s squeaky clean, shoes shined, not a button out of place.

Niffty whimpers, disappointed.

“Another time, dearie,” he tells her.

He steps around their semicircle on the lobby floor, maneuvering gracefully to avoid fingers and toes and game pieces, and sinks into the couch at Charlie and Vaggie’s backs. He crosses one long leg over the other, his microphone across his lap, and says nothing at all.

The hair at the nape of his neck has curled against his suit collar in loose, frizzy waves. Lucifer wants to twist his fingers into it. He’s struck with the sudden childish desire to flip the board, quit, and scamper over to Alastor, hug him, bury his face in the crook of his neck and just—be held.

“You playing?” he asks instead.

“I’ll pass, thank you. Is that my mug?”

Lucifer glances down. It’s on the floor next to his cards. It very much is Alastor’s mug, pale pink and corny as Hell. Oops. Abandonment issues, he self-diagnoses quickly. Codependent tendencies. Is he being possessive? All of the above. “Shit, yeah. Sorry.”

“No harm done,” Indecipherable tone, strangely warm.

Not the reaction Lucifer expected. Needs deciphering, he decides, and tucks it away into one of the many nooks and crannies of his cavernous mind.

“Are you just going to watch?” Vaggie demands. She shoots an uneasy look at Alastor over her shoulder.

“Yes, my dear. I thrive on chaos. Do carry on.”

“Yes,” is Angel’s immediate assent. “Carrying on. It’s my turn.”

With that, he thrusts them all back into the game. Lucifer promptly tunes it out; he’s not the most active participant. Instead, he watches Alastor watch the moving pieces on the board—and then the air shifts and Alastor meets his eyes, and nobody is paying attention, and his smile goes rounded at the edges, almost fond in its mellowness.

Voices thrum in the background, volume rising and dipping. Charlie presents a get-out-of-jail-free card and waves it emphatically in Angel’s face, then flicks it at him for good measure. And Lucifer thinks he might like to stop time, if he could, and live in this moment for a little while longer.

Admittedly, it’s his own fault for falling out of practice. With people. He’d isolated himself and forgotten how to act, what to say, what was fair game, and what earned him wide eyes and raised brows. He’s—slowly regaining the hang of it. He’s relearning the riveting feeling of feeding off group energy. He’s missed it. The conversations, the clashing points of view, the bickering, the legion of ideas being bounced around, how bright it all is, how warm it makes the hollow space in his chest.

“—isn’t that right, sir?”

Lucifer blinks. “Huh?”

Vaggie looks anxious. Such a sweet girl. She’s so wary around him for reasons that thoroughly escape him. She’s looking at him so expectantly—wait, fuck. “I’m so, so sorry. I zoned out. What were you asking?”

She goes ruddy gold around the ears. Gently, she clears her throat. “I was saying, this,” she says, and motions to a facet of Angel’s sprawling real-estate enterprise, “reminds me of the zoning laws around the Arch. You know, in the cloud park behind the City Hall. Up in—you know.”

Lucifer blinks. Says nothing. He stares at Vaggie, watching her grow increasingly antsy. He doesn’t mean to make her uncomfortable. He—he chokes down the rushing onslaught of memories rising up like bile, not now, not now, okay, there we go—and promptly bursts out in a bark of disbelieving laughter. “They’re still on that? You’re fuckin’ kidding me.”

She laughs too, small and relieved. “No, sir. Last I checked—well, it was a few years ago now. Very much still on that.”

“On what?” Angel demands, aggressively protective of his flimsy plastic skyscrapers.

“Ah.” Lucifer wipes a tear from the corner of his eye. “You wouldn’t get it. It’s been ages. I can’t believe it. Oh, that’s hysterical.”

Vaggie seems to glow with pride, her oh-so-obvious attempt at bonding a resounding success. Which is—they do share common ground. Lucifer, scatterbrained as he can be, hadn’t realized that until now, until it was pointed out to him in big, bold, capital, goddamn neon letters. Well. He has several complaints to make about Heaven. They’ve been collecting dust for millennia. And now he’s being offered a shoulder to cry on, someone to listen, someone who’s lived it, who actually understands.

Charlie, surreptitiously, is looking between the two of them, a painfully wide smile adorning her sweet face. And yeah—an added bonus if Lucifer’s ever seen one. If getting along with his future daughter in law makes Charlie as happy as she looks just now, if it makes her smile burn brighter than the surface of the sun, Lucifer is elbowing his way to the front of the line and becoming Vaggie’s new best friend. Her confidant, her therapist, whatever the Hell she needs, he’ll be it, he’s there.

“Okay, assholes. Playing favorites. Not cool at all.” Angel drawls, rotating his tiny silver figurine between long, slender fingers in contemplation. His tone drops, something melancholic, when he continues. “Ha. Do you guys ever think about how we’re all, like, literally in Hell? We’re actually in Hell. It ain’t nothin’ like they tried to tell us it would be. We’re sitting criss-cross-apple sauce in some fancy-ass hotel playing Monopoly with the fuckin’ Devil. Neutral term, no offense meant, daddy-o. It’s fuckin’ wild, ain’t it?”

“None taken,” Lucifer says. He works up a weak smile, bordering on bashfully self-deprecating. “I’m not very good at it. I think I’ve gone bankrupt.”

“No, you are not,” Angel confirms. “And yes, you have. I’m buying out your last condos. Playing Monopoly with the fuckin’ Devil and wiping the floor with his sorry five-foot-nothin’ ass. If Molly could see me now, she’d laugh herself sick, I’m tellin’ ya.”

Husk, beside him, huffs in unsubtle amusement, understanding, in on something the rest of the group does not appear to be privy to. Well. Not cool at all. Rampant hypocrisy all around.

“Right, okay, fork ‘em over,” Angel demands. Lucifer purses his lips and relinquishes the remainder of his immortal possessions without much of a fuss. He couldn’t care less, truth be told. “Go cozy on up to your beau, while I fuckin’ destroy the rest of yous.”

Alastor stiffens infinitesimally. It goes mostly unnoticed.

He doesn’t like to be referred to as Lucifer’s anything. He’s a solo act, first and foremost. And the only thing he despises more than being treated like the Devil’s personal attack dog, a mindless lackey, are public displays of affection—unless, of course, they serve an underlying purpose, something evil and unscrupulous. Because they make him vulnerable. They make him human.

“Shove over, beau,” Lucifer says. He steps around the board beside Charlie and Vaggie and squeezes in between the armrest and Alastor, delicately breaking that cardinal rule. Alastor, graciously, allows it.

Lucifer resists the resurgent urge to curl into him. He’ll save that for later, when they’re alone, the clinging. For now—Alastor’s very warm. The sharp tang of ozone clings to his hair, his clothes; whatever he’s gone and done to end up dripping with blood and viscera took a unquestionably massive toll on his powers.

“You okay?” Lucifer murmurs as soon as the game—Angel, if fingers are to be pointed at any one person in particular—kicks up a ruckus once more.

“Peachy,” says Alastor.

“You look tired. I can smell it on you.”

Alastor’s lips curl, smile going sour. “I am perfectly fine.”

“Fine,” Lucifer concedes; Alastor’s in no mood to divulge his secrets, clearly. “Would you like to order food and hole up in my bed—my bedroom? My room? You know what I mean.”

“Order food?” Alastor says it like it’s something foul stuck between his teeth, a plague on his very existence. The silly, pretentious twat.

“Yeah. Yeah, you can pick out whatever you want; there’s a list you can go down, see what’s available. And someone brings it to you in, like, thirty minutes. Unless they get murked along the way. You know, shit happens, this is Hell. But then you get your money back, at least. Well, most of the time. There’s this app—”

“I’m familiar with HellDash, Lucifer,” Alastor interrupts, impatient, and Lucifer gapes. The—all right, then. “And—absolutely not. But you’re welcome to join me in the kitchen to rustle something up from scratch while this lovely company is otherwise occupied. And afterwards—” He licks his lips, eyes on the undone collar of Lucifer’s crisp white shirt, and oh, yeah, yep, that’s enough to get Lucifer hard, apparently, “—we can hole up in your bedroom for dessert, if that suits you.”

“It does,” Lucifer says, too quickly. He gathers his limbs to scramble up and over the back of the couch. “Yep, yes, it does. Let’s go. Bye, everyone!”

━━━

Though he’s mostly abandoned his reclusive ways and come to live in the hotel full-time, Lucifer’s yet to get around to relocating his primary workshop. The makeshift one in his top-floor room pales in comparison to the one he’s spent millennia cultivating in his palace—millennia of trinkets, of tinkering, glue stains, paint stains, holes scorched by wayward magic into the furniture, the tapestries, papers strewn about in every conceivable crevice.

A non-issue, the latter, until Charlie asks him to dig out Heaven’s initial invitation for a get-together, the one that jumpstarted everything, in a way, that led to Adam’s delightful demise, to the hotel getting wrecked and rebuilt, to the wretched bellhop becoming Alastor, his Al, what the fuck. A non-issue in theory only, because he can’t find the fucking letter anywhere. He knows it’s somewhere. He’s a hoarder, always has been, always will be. It’s somewhere.

Alastor emerges from behind a filing cabinet, silent as a shadow. There’s a small scroll between his fingers, the paper emanating a very familiar, particular glow.

“How, in the name of all that is holy, did you find that? Where was it?”

“Bottom row, sixteenth drawer.”

“Ah, junk drawer.”

“This place is a pig sty, Highness.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m getting something to drink. I should have some coffee stashed away somewhere. Coffee?”

“That would be lovely.”

“Excellent. Back in a jiff.”

Painfully aware of his klutzy tendencies, Lucifer portals his way back, stepping into the workshop just past the room’s threshold, two mugs balanced precariously in his fallible hands.

Alastor is at the bench-top by the windows, inspecting the little ducks Lucifer’s begun to model after the hotel staff. A project mostly since abandoned. He has bigger fish to fry these days. He—should finish it. Hand them out. Little gifts, mementos. Alastor’s first, of course.

There’s a concentrated frown, very nearly akin to a pout, on Alastor’s face. He’s holding his tiny duck counterpart gingerly between the sharp tips of his claws, rotating it, thoughtfully, delicately, in a way Lucifer’s trivial knick-knacks are rarely treated, like it’s something precious.

Heaven gave him the boot and he fell hard on his ass in a crater of black ash and crimson-red silt, but now he’s one of barely a handful of lucky people—if even that many—that get to see Alastor like this, completely unguarded. Alastor as Alastor. Funny, God’s checks and balances. The perfect equilibrium of all things, in the end.

He makes his way over to the windows to set both mugs down on the desktop, and as he does, the arbitrary question worms its way to the forefront of his mind.

“Hey, Al?”

It’s been there for a while, the question, floating about in his head, in the limitless, cosmic space between his ears. Something about the moment makes him want to choke it out.

He gets an inquisitive hum. Alastor prods idly at the little deer-duck’s antler with the tip of his fingernail.

It’s just curiosity, innocent and genuine. Alastor can be—particular. About intimacy. And he’s—yet he’s sticking around. And Lucifer wants to make sure—fuck. It’s harder than he thought, putting it into words. That he’s done right by Alastor—something of that ilk. He wants to ask, but he doesn’t want Alastor to freak out. A fine line. He takes a bracing breath and walks it.

With a very casual sip of his coffee, he clears his throat. “I know you’re a prude and all, and I’m nowhere near insecure—don’t get the wrong idea, rat bastard, okay—but work with me here, will you.” A little pause. “How do I measure up?”

He regrets his phrasing as soon as the words tumble off his tongue. He feels it in the marrow of his bones, the impending jab at his height. That, or a dry look from Alastor, a blunt declaration that Lucifer is, in fact, coming off as incredibly insecure.

Instead, Alastor hardly blinks. He glances over at Lucifer briefly, before returning his attention to the little duck.

“Pardon?”

Lucifer shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his ears growing hot. “You know, in the sack. In the touchy-feely romance department.”

Alastor sets the duck down and picks up the little model microphone beside it. Lucifer hasn’t gotten around to attaching it properly just yet.

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.”

Lucifer blinks. Clears his throat again. “Yeah, what do you mean, you wouldn’t know?”

“I wouldn’t know, Lucifer,” Alastor repeats pleasantly. “I haven’t slept with anyone else. Consider yourself exceptionally lucky.”

Lucifer inhales a lungful of coffee. He sputters and spits, swerving to the side in a desperate, last-ditch effort to avoid coughing it up all over Alastor’s coat.

It’s a partial success. He gets it on Alastor’s shoes. Mostly the floor. He feels the coffee in the back of his airway, tingling, burning, and pinches the bridge of his nose, desperately blowing out.

When he looks back up at Alastor, the bastard is amused. If maybe, possibly, delicately alarmed by Lucifer’s histrionic reaction. 

“Alive counts, you know—when you were alive,” Lucifer says weakly, even though he knows, he knows, that Alastor’s answer is bound to remain unchanged. And Alastor is no liar; he’s a manipulator, he obfuscates the truth, warps it, but he never lies.

The realization comes crashing down on Lucifer like the fucking hotel on extermination day.

“I’m aware.”

Well, fucking great.

Lucifer—he can be domineering. In the bedroom. He takes charge, because it’s what he prefers, most of the time, and he was operating under the assumption, until now, that Alastor simply liked it that way, but was too prideful to say it aloud.

Lucifer gets that, he gets pride. Too proud to say he appreciates Lucifer taking the lead. Because it’s been a while, because he’s out of his depth, whatever. Happy to just lie back and enjoy whatever it is he’s roped into. Quiet, composed, but responsive in a flurry of other ways—the twitching of his ears, belly going taut, muscles tensed, a lovely crimson flush across his cheeks. Flustered, but pleased. His body betraying the depth of his reactions, his sensitivity to the smallest things, like—like he’s never done them before. He’s never been touched like that before. Fuck. Oh, fuck.

“Surely that’s not a surprise.”

Lucifer blinks. Alastor’s staring at him, head cocked to the side. “No, hold on. Excuse me—hold on—” He fumbles with his words. He takes the handkerchief Alastor holds out to him and dabs hastily at the corners of his mouth, the wet stain down the front of his shirt. His chest feels uncomfortably tight with sudden, seizing panic. “You never said anything.”

“I wasn’t aware I was required to.”

“Hold on. You—yeah, you should have said something. You could’ve—fuck, Al. There’s a difference between, I don’t know, inexperienced and virgin.”

“Is there?” Alastor’s head tilts further, vertebrae cracking. “How would that have changed anything?”

“I don’t—I don’t know. That’s not something you just leave out. Shit. I could’ve—did I hurt you? I could have hurt you. You wouldn’t have said anything anyway, bastard, would you have? Fuck.”

Alastor blinks at him, bemused. Lucifer’s concern escapes him. Of course it does. He’s out of touch with his body, in that way, with the intricate rituals of taking someone to bed. The trust required. The weight every touch, every kiss carries. As though all his physical body has ever been to him is an inconvenience, a malleable meat sack he occasionally lets Lucifer fondle and stick his dick inside of.

He can be a bit dense sometimes, in that respect. He’s—no. He’s just—not a romantic. Not in the slightest, not like Lucifer is. Not a single romantic bone in his eldritch body. That's all it is.

He’s lucky it’s as endearing as it is, his doe-eyed, clueless blinking.

“Sorry,” Lucifer says. “I’m freaking out. I’m freaking you out.”

“I assure you, I enjoyed myself just fine. I always do,” Alastor finally says, delicately, a merciful attempt at fishing Lucifer out of his spiraling thoughts. “When have I ever shied away from pointing out your—shortcomings?”

And there’s that punchline. Better late than never.

“Right,” Lucifer grumbles.

“Your concern is duly appreciated, but unnecessary. I’m perfectly fine, Lucifer. Get out of your head.”

It’s blunt, but he likes that about Alastor. Harsh, but well-meaning, his words of advice. And effective, more often than not.

Lucifer can’t help it. He’s anxious. He flips out. It’s in his nature. His bottom lip trembles and he bites down on it hard. Finally, he nods. “I’m out. Shit. Shit. Okay. I guess, in hindsight, not knowing took some pressure off me, no?” He laughs, and hates that it still sounds a little bit hollow, hysterical. “If I’d known I was deflowering you, you can bet I would have been weird about it.”

“Weird,” Alastor echoes uneasily.

If he’d known that not only was Alastor merely tangentially intrigued by the concept of sex, but that he was entrusting Lucifer with something so precious, he thinks he would have panicked, majorly. Performance anxiety. Shaking hands and clumsy mishaps. Oodles of awkward laughter. He’s the type to giggle when the tension gets thick enough to cut. A million and one does this feel okays, are you comfortables that would have sent Alastor running for the hills.

“Gentle,” he says aloud.

Alastor’s nose scrunches up in immediate distaste. He’s at his limit, hanging on to the conversation by a fraying thread. Too many raw, bleeding hearts out in the open for his liking, and not the fun kind.

“My point exactly.” Then, after a moment: “So I didn’t do anything wrong.”

It’s not strictly a question. An attempt at reassuring himself, more than anything.

“I came back for more, didn’t I?”

“Ha. That you did.”

Alastor says nothing more; his expression mellows into something perfectly neutral. But there’s a tension in his shoulders, still, that Lucifer’s been learning to read.

It’s understandable, he supposes. Personal preferences aside, it’s only natural for Alastor to be uncomfortable discussing the sort of things that fell under the blanket of taboo back when he resided upon the earthly plane, topics best whispered about behind locked doors, behind a demure, raised hand. Old habits die hard, and all that jazz.

But Alastor isn’t, as Lucifer’s come to notice, embarrassed by his relative inexperience. A pragmatic approach. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it. A brand new experience, right place, right time, right person, and you keep going if you like it, give it up if you don’t. Practice makes perfect, and everyone has to start somewhere at some point in their lives, whether it’s finger-painting or sex. Just like that, Alastor had felt an abstract interest, and had allowed Lucifer to take him to bed to sate that clinical curiosity. Admirable, his stratagem, all things considered.

And Lucifer knows he’s good. He can admit that now, the panic having subsided. He’s a giver. He didn’t disappoint; he never does. Alastor would have told him. Said it right to his face—learn to use that dick of yours before you bring it anywhere near me again, darling—and dematerialized.

“You’re in your head again,” Alastor points out, not unkindly. “I assure you, it was perfectly adequate.”

“Oh, sure. Says you and what point of reference, exactly?” Lucifer laughs, and the tension dissipates like smoke. He—fuck—he really likes that about Alastor. “I’m fucking amazing and you know it, and I know it and—several people know it.” He pauses. “You’re itching to call me a whore. I can feel it, you prude.”

“I would never,” Alastor insists. “A harlot, maybe.”

Lucifer makes a face. “Well. Well, you’re not wrong.” It’s true. He’s easy. “In a way. I am temptation. I invented that shit, thank you very much, and you’re all very welcome.”

He stares at Alastor for a little while longer, all warm, comfortable affection. So, so simple with him, are all things. Then, with a small shake of his head, he huffs and looks away, out at the greyish-red clouds outdoors. “What’s next, Al, you’re going to tell me I was your first kiss, too?”

“No,” Alastor says, “you were not.”

Blunt and to the point.

And Lucifer—feels a pang of inane disappointment. He says nothing. He focuses on the texture of the wooden bench-top beneath his bare, gloveless hands, and pictures a faceless figure curling their fingers around Alastor’s jaw, beckoning him forward, guiding him in and smoothing away all the nervous tension, pressing their lips to his.

All right. In all fairness, perhaps Lucifer is one insecure, jealous motherfucker. He would have liked to be the one to steal Alastor’s first kiss, so what. And frankly, he would be lying to himself if he said he didn’t suddenly find the entire concept of Alastor’s inexperience absurdly hot, and holy shit, not the time and place to be arriving at that conclusion.

“I need to glue the microphone on,” he says quickly, snatching the little prop from Alastor’s idle hands. “If you were a duck, would you hold your microphone like this, or like this?”

━━━

If Lucifer were a more reckless individual—which he is, in a way, but not quite the right way—he would venture out into the Hellish plane in search of an answer to the age-old mystery—of what amount of drugs it takes, precisely, to knock an archangel of his caliber on his ass.

He can’t get wasted, which is infuriating enough as it is. Buzzed, maybe, if he clears Husk’s bar out, every last bottle. A far cry from blackout drunk. It would have been nice, getting blackout drunk, when Lilith slipped through his fingers.

It would—it would set a bad example, though. The drugs. For Charlie. For the guests vying for rehabilitation. An all-around bad time, if they ended up finding him dosed out on the lobby floor in a puddle of vomit. Niffty might enjoy the vomit, maybe. Cleaning it. Maybe.

The thing is—Lucifer wants to sleep. So badly.

But he can’t. He crashes just after one, and wakes just before two, and the night is pitch black, and he has a kink in his neck and a pounding headache, and Alastor isn’t next to him.

He was out on business when Lucifer retired for the night, and his side of the bed doesn’t look like it was slept in during the tiny sliver of time that Lucifer was gone to the world. Sometimes—Alastor skips the whole sleeping thing entirely and hangs around the hotel like a restless spirit. Which, Lucifer supposes, he is, dead and in Hell.

He whines, digs the heels of his palms into his puffy eye sockets, and tumbles off the side of the bed. A clingy kitten following its owner everywhere, is what he is, stumbling off in search of Alastor’s staticky presence.

Unsurprisingly, he finds him in the kitchen. Cooking, of course. Little black apron, sleeves rolled up, overcoat off, and his tail on display. A fucking wet dream.

Lucifer slinks over to him and unabashedly plasters himself against Alastor’s back, smushing his face between his shoulder blades, arms around his trim middle.

Alastor, of course, doesn’t startle. He knows it’s Lucifer, had sensed his meandering presence the moment he’d left the bedroom and its wards. They’re attuned to each other, apparently. Well, it’s that, or—nobody else would have the balls of steel it takes to big-spoon Alastor completely unannounced.

“Is something the matter, Highness?”

Lucifer could probably fall asleep like this, standing up. Alastor is warm and soft, and the kitchen smells cozy, like coming home, dim lights and rising steam.

“Come to bed.”

“The rice wont finish itself, I’m afraid.”

Damn him and his stubborn nature and his habit of dallying about in the kitchen late into the night whenever he’s not in the mood for sleeping—which is most of the time. Damn him.

Alastor doesn’t like being bothered. Understandable enough. He has his particular ways and he prefers silence, soft jazz and quiet humming, to the inevitability of Angel sticking his curious fingers into every pot and pan to taste-test, should Alastor decide to cook in the daytime.

“You can finish tomorrow,” he laments, helpless to stop himself. “Just leave it.”

“Absolutely not.”

Lucifer grumbles. More of a whimper. Something of that nature, sleepy and pathetic. “You know Highness is improper, by the way?”

Alastor hums, unperturbed. The muscles in his back shift as he leans over for the pepper grinder. It’s inexplicably nice. Lucifer nuzzles more forcefully between his shoulder blades, again cat-like.

“I’d have thought you’d be all about propriety, Al,” he points out. “It’s Majesty. There’s a whole—hierarchy type of shit.”

“I assure you, I know that.”

“Didn’t they lop the heads off people who talked shit about their betters where you’re from?”

“Louisiana? No, Heavens forbid.” Alastor sounds amused. “They hung people, Highness. And certainly not for any disrespect towards the monarchy. Historically, we didn’t like the monarchy very much, where I’m from. You might want to look into the Revolutionary War.”

Lucifer grumbles again. Alastor reaches out, puts the pepper away. He’s so solid and real and tangible in Lucifer’s grasp. Everything else feels hazy, dreamlike, and his head is pounding, but Alastor is real.

“A shame, that,” he mumbles finally. Then: “Your stupid rice smells good.”

“I should hope so.”

Whatever that means. Fishing for compliments. It’s unbecoming, Al. Or something. He’s sensitive to smells. Could be that. He wouldn’t be cooking up something that smelled like shit, God forbid.

Lucifer yawns and Alastor twitches infinitesimally against him. That must be why he’s so good at eyeballing ingredients. Throwing things together. When it’s right, it smells right. No, it’s—no. That’s not it. They’re his mother’s recipes. That’s it. He knows them by heart. Your son’s a freak of nature, madam, but he does your cooking justice. You should be very proud.

“Do you mind?” Alastor chirps. Lucifer blinks, peels his eyes open. He doesn’t remember closing them. “I’d rather you didn’t fall asleep on me, sire. You’re impeding my range of movement terribly as it is.”

Lucifer’s been told once or twice that he smells like a dying fire, smoldering embers. He wonders, idly, if that bothers Alastor’s keen nose. He might ask. Later. Alastor smells—clean. He never smells like anything in particular, really. Blood, sometimes, and something sharp and incontrovertibly Alastor when he pushes his powers to the extreme.

“Lucifer.”

He whines, displeased, but unwinds his arms from around Alastor’s middle nonetheless, lets them drop to his sides with a dull smack.

Immediately, he misses the warmth. The inimitable, comfortable intimacy of a body pressed flush against his. He’s a needy, pathetic thing. Convenient, he thinks, that Alastor and his sadistic proclivities enjoy such forlorn displays of weakness and failure.

“Yeah, yeah,” he slurs. “I’m going. I’m gone.”

He takes a swaying step back. On a whim, he doesn’t leave. He looks up, up at the back of Alastor’s head, and decides to—

“Hey, Al?”

Alastor half-turns, and Lucifer goes for it, plastering both palms to the sides of Alastor’s face and hauling him down to his height for a kiss, a quick, fleeting smooch. To his credit, Alastor barely stumbles, and he doesn’t nag at Lucifer when he’s let go, and not a single droplet of stock drips from his spoon throughout it all, how the fuck.

Satisfied, Lucifer spins on his heel and wanders off to slump into a chair at the end of the long dining table. It’s a nice table. Just big enough for staff dinners. The guests have their own space, shoo.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Alastor glance at him over his shoulder. A flicker of surprise, there one moment and gone the next, at the fact that Lucifer’s apparently sticking around. Surely their bed—their?—is more comfortable than some squeaky, stiff chair. But he turns back to his work all the same, seemingly happy to tolerate Lucifer’s lingering presence.

“Any big plans for tomorrow, Highness?”

A little hum, the metallic swoosh of a knife being drawn. Some idle conversation against the warm backdrop of sultry, tinny jazz.

“Today,” Lucifer nitpicks. “It’s fucking two. I’ve been, uh, negligent. I’m going down to Lust later. Been a while since I’ve left my usual stomping grounds, no?”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Fuck you, Al.”

“I would inquire if you need an escort, but I’m afraid I’m unable to oblige given the destination.”

“You would inquire if the Devil needs some run-of-the-mill overlord to be his bodyguard.”

“Precisely.”

Lucifer snorts.

The pompous, reckless idiot. Alastor and his endless reserves of energy—now, maybe, Lucifer muses, Alastor’s taken the illicit substances route himself. Enough to put a pep in his step, permanently. Micro-dosing, or something, Lucifer wouldn’t know.

Not that the particulars matter. Lucifer’s grown to love that about Alastor, the thrill he inspires. (Love—?) He’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, he’s interesting, capable of making the most mundane of things brighter, more vibrant, more inviting. Tantalizing, even. Scandalous, at times. He’s a bolt of lightning across the empty sky of Lucifer’s damned existence.

“No.” Lucifer sighs finally. He folds his arms on the tabletop and rests his head overtop, right cheek smushed into the fabric of his pyjamas. He yawns, wide and unmannerly, jaw creaking. “No, I should be fine. I haven’t spoken to Ozzie in years, though. It’ll be awkward as all Hell, but I’ll be fine.”

Through half-lidded eyes, he watches Alastor. Growing fuzzy. Tail twitching. He’s so absurdly fucking hot.

Dishes clinking, water running. A can creaks—Alastor’s opening it with his claws. Ha, take that, can openers. You’re not needed in Hell. Lucifer one, Earth zero.

And he’s humming, still. One of his favorites. He hums it a lot. Lucifer likes it, that one. He can’t remember what song it is, exactly, what it’s called, but he likes it. His eyelids are heavy, and he lets them drift shut. Limbs heavy as lead. It really does smell good, the rice.

━━━

With a lithe waist beneath the greedy curl of his palms, and the clean, salty tang of sweat-damp skin on his tongue, it takes Lucifer longer than it should to realize Alastor has gone completely still underneath him.

He pauses, hums quietly to himself where his mouth is pressed to Alastor’s bare navel. He feels the gentle vibration of it in his fingertips.

“Al?”

Nothing.

Slowly, he lifts his head.

At his sides, Alastor’s hands are curled hard into the bedsheets, tears in the linens from the vicious points of his claws. Chest rising and falling too quickly for Lucifer’s comfort, shallow and faint. Eyes blank and unseeing, fixed up on the ceiling.

Ah.

It happens. Shit. It hasn’t in a while, but it happens.

“Hey.”

It’s—a lapse in Alastor’s perfect, unshakeable control, this thing they’re doing, that they have been doing. He lets Lucifer kiss him, and his heart pitter-patters too loud, too hard, jackrabbiting in his chest. He lets Lucifer strip away his infinite layers and lay him out like a lamb on a sacrificial altar, and his pulse races, breath quickens, blood rushing south. It’s just physiology. And sometimes it’s fine, perfectly fine, but sometimes it seems to make Alastor want to crawl out of his skin—his own reactions, his pleasure, his body doing so, so many humiliating—in his eyes—things without his express permission. He gets overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. He shuts down completely.

So—it happens. It’s happened before. Freezing up, melting into the shadows, leaving Lucifer off-balance to face plant into the swiftly cooling sheets, leaving him alone in the bedroom with his dick hard and leaking in his hand to finish himself off—assuming he’s in any mood to do so after seeing the dead look in Alastor’s eyes. He’s not. He never is.

In little increments, Lucifer picks himself up to sit back on his heels. Hands off, for now.

“Alastor?” he tries. “Hey, Al, come on. Come back to me.”

The first time, Lucifer had panicked. He'd gone looking. It took a while. Alastor isn’t an easy man to find when he doesn’t want to be. Lucifer had confronted him. Bad decision. He’d been in a state. Fragile, shaken up. Testy, uneasy, all of the above. Best left alone. One shattered window later, they’d talked it out. Space, he needs space.

Lucifer gives him space. Hands off. But Alastor isn’t responding. Jaw tight, stiff as stone, his breathing faint as a whisper, like he can’t get enough air into his lungs. Ears folded back, flicking, shoulders raised, curling in on himself in a subconscious defensive stance. All coiled tension, readying himself to bolt.

Painfully slow, Lucifer moves to hover over him, still crowded between his parted legs. Careful not to make contact, not just yet, not there.

He bites the bullet and skims his fingertips, feather-light, just above Alastor’s elbow. A familiar, grounding gesture, he hopes. A last-ditch resort.

But the moment he makes contact, Alastor jolts.

He sucks in a violent breath through bared, gritted teeth, sharp as daggers, and his claws curl around Lucifer’s wrist in a punishing grip, too quickly for him to react, too quickly, nearly, to be human.

Lucifer flinches, but does nothing. He doesn’t react; he allows himself to be pinned in place. For Alastor’s sake. Don’t fucking spook him.

He waits for a hint, a tell, anything, but nothing comes.

“Alastor?”

“I—” Alastor blinks. His voice is muddled, tight with sudden panic, riddled with static. “I don’t—let go of me, please.”

“Sure, Al.” Lucifer nods slowly, just once. “You’re holding onto me. I’ll get off you as soon as you let me.”

A gasp of a breath rattles in Alastor’s chest. Red eyes flick down to the offending hand; Lucifer feels his fingertips going numb. Alastor stares at him, at his hand, unblinking, uncomprehending for an instant, before his grip loosens and his fingers uncurl one by one.

Trembling. He’s—

“Alastor?”

Their eyes meet. A flash of distress. And before Lucifer can do much of anything, before he can rear back and scoot off the bed, before he can think to haul the sheets over Alastor or fetch him a robe to restore some modicum of comfort, anything, anything to soften the tempest—Alastor’s shadow rises up like tar, pitch-black, to swallow him whole.

It drags him down through the bed, out of sight, and leaves Lucifer alone amidst the mess of sheets, wishing desperately he could follow.

━━━

Alastor doesn’t come back until the following evening.

He pauses at Lucifer’s door, hesitant, and Lucifer feels it from inside the room, that jarringly uncharacteristic trepidation. He means to knock—Alastor doesn’t knock. It’s as much his room now as it is Lucifer’s.

He’s gearing up for some sort of apology, and Lucifer knows how much it takes for Alastor to apologize for something, for anything; he knows that because he’s the same, and it’s laughable, really, how similar they can be.

But Alastor has nothing to apologize for. That’s the thing. He hasn’t done anything wrong. He doesn’t owe Lucifer anything, not here, not when it comes to this.

He’s just—it’s not the best way to deal with his discomfort. Not the healthiest, Charlie would say.

Alastor says stop, simple as that, and Lucifer stops, of fucking course he does, and they spend the evening otherwise occupied, and it’s fine. It’s fine. That’s how it could be. Should be. They forgo any awkward conversations that Alastor so obviously expects in the wake of his second thoughts. None of that. They cool off in silence. They talk about something else. There doesn’t have to be any tension in the air.

Lucifer crosses the length of the room in four long strides and throws the door open before Alastor even has the chance to raise his hand. He doesn’t want Alastor to feel like he has to knock, for fuck’s sake. The thought makes him nauseous.

Alastor blinks at him, something horribly frantic beneath his composed exterior.

Lucifer exhales, and says nothing, and reaches up around Alastor’s shoulders, yanking him down for a vicious bear hug.

Are you all right—he doesn’t ask. He thinks it, but he doesn’t want Alastor to bolt. He squeezes harder when Alastor goes stiff as a board, and he stays silent even as his bones itch for a reaction, any reaction, and he prays to the Heavens that don’t ever fucking listen that he hasn’t just put his foot in it, that this was the right thing to do.

An eternity later, Alastor relaxes, piece by piece, limb by limb. Lucifer feels the familiar whirl of magic as his microphone is vanished away, then the soft press of Alastor’s palm at the small of his back. Lucifer understands. A three in one: thank you, I’m fine, now please let go.

He peels himself off and takes a step back. Lungs lighter; he can breathe again.

“Excellent timing, by the way,” he says. “I was just about to run myself a bath. Care to join?”

Tentative agreement leads to Alastor with his head tipped back against the lip of the tub, swathed in a flurry of pink bubbles, and the little deer-duck, all finished now, watching from beside the faucet.

Lucifer, for a change, is the one wearing clothes, if only an undershirt and briefs, ankles crossed around the front leg of a little stool. He runs his sudsy fingers from the nape of Alastor’s neck up the curve of his skull in rounded scratchy motions like he used to do for Charlie a long, long time ago.

After a moment, Alastor peels one eye open. Heavily-lidded, red as Hellfire, unbelievably pretty, damn him. “Forgive me for assuming; I was under the impression that you were the one intending to take a bath.”

“Semantics. I’ll join you in a sec.”

“Absolutely not. There isn’t nearly enough space.”

Lucifer snorts. He’s perfectly capable of magicking the bathtub bigger with the slightest snap of his fingers—but there’s hardly any fun in that. “We’ll manage,” he insists. “I’m short, remember?”

With his head between Lucifer’s all-powerful hands, Alastor smartly stays quiet. No quips. Good boy.

Gently, Lucifer carries on, scrubs the velvety-soft fur—even when wet, what the fuck—at the base of Alastor’s ears. Alastor’s eyes drift shut, and he leans hungrily into the touch, the quirk of his smile small and serene.

One down. Alastor, gradually, is becoming more comfortable with casual, affectionate physical contact, Lucifer muses, the kind that isn’t meant to lead anywhere, the kind that just is. It’s a win. Another one of Alastor’s particulars he’s seemingly learned to work with.

It’s a small victory, certainly one that warrants celebration, but it’s not enough. Lucifer wants to learn them all; he wants to understand them and become one with them, and he wants Alastor to feel unconditionally comfortable with him given the nature of their budding—something—and not like he needs to fucking knock.

“So—we never finished our game,” he says. It just comes out.

“What game?”

“Twenty questions. We got up to, like, five.”

“We’ve exchanged many questions since then.”

“Not officially.”

“Is some higher power keeping score, pray tell?”

“Just me.” Lucifer pauses. One of Alastor’s ears twitches infinitesimally against Lucifer’s fingers crawling up the shell of it. “Is this okay?”

“Is this one of the official questions, my dear?”

“Don’t be a prick.” And it’s nice, knowing that no matter what transpires between them, what they become, what they come to mean to each other, the resurgent violent impulse to grab Alastor by the antlers and punt him through the nearest window never quite goes away.

It’s been a while, really, since they last engaged in any sort of objectively unpleasant physical altercation, throwing each other about with concussive force. Little by little. Charlie, he’s sure, is proud of their progress.

Alastor hums. “Yes, it’s fine.”

“You don’t mind?”

“I would not hesitate to remove your hands from my person if I minded.”

Which—is true. It wouldn’t hurt to take a page out of Alastor’s book, really. Lucifer, sometimes, when he reaches a boundary—he forces himself to cross it. Anything to please whoever it is he’s crossing it for. Or else—they’ll hate him. They’ll leave him.

But Alastor just—doesn’t. It ends where he says it ends. In life, and in sex. He’ll start off enthusiastic about the whole thing, usually, but sometimes, by the time his legs are open and Lucifer’s inside him, it isn’t doing anything for him anymore and he wants out, he doesn’t want Lucifer’s hands on him a second longer, and he says so, and that’s that.

If only he stopped running.

Lucifer’s well-acquainted with Alastor’s preferences. More or less. He knows his tells. When he’s engaged, when he’s not into what they’re doing all that much, not the way Lucifer is.

He wants to come, sometimes, and other times, he’s perfectly content to lie back, half-hard and only fractionally interested, and let Lucifer finish. And it was off-putting at first, sure, Alastor’s less-than-active participation on the occasions he couldn’t care less and Lucifer still wanted to get off and he wanted to help Lucifer get there out of the goodness of his awful, blackened heart. But they’ve made it work. They talked about it, pat on the fucking back right there.

And then, scenario three—the sex is pleasant enough one moment and abhorrent the next—Alastor doesn’t force himself and Lucifer gives him a wide berth, but not wide enough, because he runs, and Lucifer wants to ask, he wants to talk, to plead, but all he’s left with are dissipating tendrils of shadow and the acrid smell of ozone.

Baby steps. They’ll get there.

He’s beamed back down to the bathroom by a small sound, Alastor clearing his throat. When he speaks, it’s like there’s a cheese grater lodged in his throat, tearing his vocal cords into bloody shreds with every word. “I can be—finicky—Lucifer, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t coddle me.”

Lucifer blinks. He’s talking. They’re talking. “I am not coddling you,” he says quickly, softly. “I am asking after your wellbeing. Alastor, shit, I’m being considerate. That’s what people do with friends, with—whatever we are.”

Alastor’s lips move; he mouths the word back to himself. Friends. They’re not friends. His eyes are open but blank, fixated on the deer-duck, expression unreadable.

“You don’t like people touching you, Al.” It’s not a question. “Forgive me for trying to respect your boundaries.”

Alastor continues to bore a hole into the deer-duck. He shifts in obvious discomfort, sinking an extra inch beneath the surface of the water, soaking the ends of his hair.

“I don’t mind it when you touch me,” he says finally, without much affectation.

“Sometimes you do.” And Lucifer isn’t trying to start a fight, he isn’t trying to be a smart-ass, or corner Alastor in the tub, of all places. He—fuck—he wants Alastor to understand it’s okay. He doesn’t have to disappear and if he does, when he does, he doesn’t have to fucking knock when he comes back. “And that’s fine. You can be—finicky. Your boundaries can change, you know. You can change your mind. If you tell me to stop, I’ll stop, and we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. We can put our clothes back on and you can go, I don’t know, read a book. I’m so happy to just—spend time with you. However you’re comfortable. Fuck, I sound like Thursday therapy. Just—talk to me, Al, please. Quit fucking running away, and talk to me when something is wrong. And if you want to be alone—just tell me. Just a heads up. Don’t vanish on me, please.”

There’s a resounding boom from the lobby downstairs. The walls tremble, the bathwater rippling. Not a great sign. Always something going on. Welcome to Hell. But, fuck that—they’re in the middle of something. The hotel is still standing, and that’s good enough for the moment.

Lucifer’s mouth curls into a snarl and he strengthens the wards around his rooms, muffling all sound. They’ll cross that bridge when they come to it, assuming the bridge—the lobby—is still standing when they do.

Alastor seems to think much the same. “That extends to you, Highness,” he says plainly.

“Oh, fuck you, Al, I know it does. I’m working on it. On myself. I’m fucking working on myself.”

“Very well,” Alastor concedes after another long, contemplative moment. He’s letting Lucifer’s words marinate, rolling them between his fingers, trying them on for size. “Thank you for your concern. I understand you mean well, but I really am fine.”

“Stay,” Lucifer whispers. “Next time, if—stay, please.”

Alastor says nothing. It’s not a no. It’s closer to a yes than a no.

Lucifer leans down into his space, cradling his head in his soapy hands, and presses a small kiss to his temple.

“Pinky promise?”

Alastor exhales, and he seems to deflate, limbs going lax. “Pinky promise,” he says in his real voice, no bitterness, no inflection, nothing but the bare truth. “Shall we head downstairs, darling?”

━━━

Lucifer isn’t aware of the special guest prancing about the hotel grounds until he sees her with his own eyes on his stroll back from the kitchen with his little cup of apple sauce.

He cowers behind the doorframe, one part caution, one part latent antisocial tendencies, and clutches his spoon tightly in his fingers.

She’s with Charlie, being shown around. She looks sweet, albeit deadly. Dark eyes like coal pits, her hair perfectly coiffed, smiling wide as a shark. Lucifer knows—well, he suspects—that there’s only one person it can be, and he ducks out of sight, quick as he can, before he catches her attention, before she peels the flaps of his chest back and lays bare the deepest depths of his still-beating heart.

Inevitably, their guest seeks Alastor out.

Lucifer expected as much. And he’s curious, but he’s wary, and while he’s excellent at warding rooms, it’s not nearly as easy to conceal his own presence without outright magicking himself invisible—and he doesn’t like the incessant itch that accompanies that particular trick.

So—he goes creeping again.

He finds them out on the balcony of the topmost floor, through the heavy, ornate set of French double doors leading out from the corridor between his rooms and Alastor’s.

A little round table, four ornamental chairs, wrought metal, painted white. Very quaint. Vintage. Alastor must have conjured them up especially for this occasion.

Lucifer slinks to hide behind the draped curtains bracketing the doorway. Alastor, as it seems, is well into telling a story, regaling his guest with a tale of his latest exploits. Whiskey in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other, smoke curling like a serpent, reveling in the sound of his own voice.

Which, admittedly—he’s lovely to listen to. This late into the evening, his showmanship dims and his accent slips at times, on and off, and his crackly radio filter with it. It’s not so much a byproduct of the alcohol as it is his apparent degree of comfort in current company.

Still, it’s a curious thing. Lucifer wonders, idly, just how much brainpower Alastor consciously puts into maintaining the performance at all times. Lights, camera, mask on. It’s all very curated. Very intentional. Or—whether it’s reflexive, at this point, as simple as putting one foot in front of the other.

And the lady friend—she’s very tactile. Around Alastor. Nobody is tactile around Alastor. She laughs at his punchline and jabs him in the shoulder, a rough, intimate camaraderie, and Alastor doesn’t mind. Not only that—he seems thrilled, enamored with her, pupils dilated, a pleased little sound escaping him in response to her easy affection.

And Lucifer—

He shudders. He’s about to dethrone the Sin of Envy. He’s learning new things about himself. Every day is a school day. Alastor may be territorial, covetous, but Lucifer, as it turns out, can be one jealous motherfucker given the right incentive, the right circumstances. And here are said circumstances. Alastor, in the simplest terms possible, is his.

Alastor—whose smile, in the present moment, is vibrant, painfully genuine, his glee almost childlike.

Insecurity burns like a furnace between Lucifer’s ribs. He feels uncomfortable, unable to gauge—he can’t pinpoint the dynamic. Whether Alastor sees the woman as just that, a friend—or a maternal figure, or some unconventional—domestic partner. Bright, senseless panic prickles at his lungs. He wonders if they have always just been—this. Friends. He squints. He can picture it, he supposes, something more—

“Hold that thought, Al, sweetie,” Rosie says suddenly, interrupting Alastor in the middle of another no-doubt titillating anecdote; Lucifer had stopped listening to the particulars. She turns in her seat, and the chair legs screech against the balcony tile, and Lucifer’s heart drops to his feet. “Come on out, your Majesty, don’t be shy. We don’t bite—not very hard.”

“Speak for yourself,” says Alastor. His smile has dimmed. He follows Rosie's gaze to the doorway where Lucifer is hiding. Well. Doing a shit job at hiding. “What is it you want, sire? I’m afraid I’m terribly busy.”

“Oh, Al, don’t be like that,” Rosie chides. “Come on, come over. It’s hardly good manners to keep a girl waiting.”

Lucifer, cursing himself, steps out from behind the curtain. He’s such a fucking wreck. Socially speaking. Among other things. He adjusts the line of his collar and makes his way over to their little table—and promptly trips on a loose tile, which, fuck that tile, they just rebuilt the entire fucking hotel, what the fuck.

“Hi,” he says, righting himself. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be—it’s nice to meet you, officially. I’ve heard many great things.”

Rosie dips her head in greeting, holding out her hand daintily for him to kiss, and he does, and he notes, in the back of his mind, that for all of her politeness, she doesn’t stand and curtsy, not for powers that have yet to ingratiate themselves to her—and he can see, immediately, why Alastor adores her. “Oh, likewise, your Majesty. Alastor, goodness me, stop that scowling.”

Alastor, still scowling, conjures Lucifer a drink. Peachy-orange, garnished with a pink flower and topped with a curly straw. Wordlessly, he slides it to one of the unoccupied spots at the table, straight across from Rosie.

The air, Lucifer notes, has gone decently thick with sudden tension. He’s tipsy, Alastor is, but certainly not drunk. He’s being difficult for the sake of being difficult. He’s uncomfortable. Unprepared—perhaps, is a kinder word—to entertain the both of them, struggling to reconcile his rapport with Rosie with that which he maintains with Lucifer. It’s not a case of shifting his personality. He compartmentalizes things. And until now, Lucifer and Rosie have been kept separate, lines clearly demarcated.

Well, Lucifer’s gone and blurred them, stirred up a mess. Too late now.

He sips his drink, slurping at a perfectly average volume. “So—how did you two meet?”

“You’re up to fifteen questions, Highness. Do you really want to waste one on that?”

Rosie’s brows knit together as she looks from Lucifer to Alastor.

“We’ve, uh, been playing twenty questions for a while now,” Lucifer explains, a warm blush curling at his cheeks. “It’s silly.”

Rosie chuckles. She invades Alastor’s bubble again, poking at him playfully with the pads of two fingers. “Sweet boy. Don’t mind him; he’s just shy. This one doesn’t count, Al. He’s clearly asking me, dearie.”

Sweet boy. She must know another Alastor, not this guy, the scourge of the Pride Ring. This Alastor, the one Lucifer knows, is a proper nutcase, no two ways about it.

“As all people with excellent taste do, your Majesty, Alastor ended up in my quaint little corner of town eventually. Wandered on in, new in Hell, fresh as a daisy, and one thing led to another. He’s quite the talker. A fellow gossiping harpy. He’s so darling, isn’t he?”

Alastor’s smile grows increasingly tight, pulling at his cheeks. He stubs his cigarette out on a conjured ashtray and vanishes the butt into thin air.

“Interests aligned, I presume?” Lucifer laughs.

“Au contraire, Majesty. Men with an appetite are a dime a dozen. Men with class—a bit harder to find.”

And that, Lucifer cannot refute. Bloodlust aside, Alastor is the very pinnacle of propriety.

“If you’ll pardon us for just a minute,” Rosie goes on. “We’ll just finish where we left off. Sweetheart, you were saying? The deal in Serpent territory?”

Alastor’s gaze peels away from Lucifer and returns to Rosie, and it’s like a switch flicks and he’s back to his self from minutes ago, upbeat, vivacious—but Lucifer doesn’t miss the subtle tension in his shoulders, just barely there, the earlier whimsy now forced into every word.

Lucifer zones out for a moment, inadvertently giving Alastor a modicum of privacy to resume his and Rosie’s tête-à-tête. He tunes them out. But he observes. Takes notes in the back of his mind. They finish each other’s sentences. They have the same appalling, morbid sense of humor. Neither shies away from eye contact; they have that in common, too. Lucifer, personally, doesn’t like that. He’s working on it, sure, but as it stands—the more people are in a room, vying for his attention, the more he tends to become fascinated with the carpeting at his feet.

He goes a bit crosseyed staring at an indeterminate point between the pair, his jaw slack. Frozen in place, idly sucking at the end of his straw.

When he hears his name, he blinks and jerks upright—and there are two pairs of eyes on him, expectant, curious, and Rosie is mid-sentence, commending Alastor on such a prize catch. A handsome fella, Alastor, attaboy. You don’t aim low, do you, dearie?

Lucifer snorts, rejoining the fray. “Let’s be honest—if climbing the social ladder was his intent from the get-go, he might not have started by telling me to go fuck myself the first time we met.”

“Oh, that’s nothing, your Majesty. That’s how he shows affection.” Rosie squints at Lucifer, scrutinizing but not unkind. “But I must admit, you really are even easier on the eyes than ol’ Al’s told me.”

Alastor’s head whips around with a bone-chilling crack of his neck; he glares daggers at Rosie. The silence is oppressive.

Lucifer blinks at Alastor in surprise. “You think I’m attractive?” It just comes out. Because—that’s never been Alastor’s thing, per se, has it. Attraction, in the most basic meaning of the word.

Alastor’s glare mellows, morphs into confusion. Concern, genuine, for Lucifer’s apparent numerous mental deficiencies.

Lucifer flaps his hands like he can somehow take it back. “I just mean, like—you don’t—you know.”

“I have eyes, Lucifer.”

“I know, I know—it’s just—”

He trails off, pathetic. His gaze flicks to the side, feeling Rosie’s eyes on him. She looks at him, really looks at him, and something in her black eyes tells Lucifer she’s entirely too perceptive. No one person should have all that power—and that’s coming from him.

She clicks her tongue. “Come now, your Majesty. You can have the most gorgeous steak on your plate: rare, mm, or medium rare, maybe, if the mood strikes. Doesn’t mean you’re going to eat it if you're not hungry. You can—and you can still enjoy it, of course. You don’t have to be hungry for that, now do you? But at the end of the day, it’s still a gorgeous steak, doubtless, no matter what you do with it.”

That’s one way to go about a metaphor. “Not sure how I feel about being compared to a steak on Alastor’s plate.”

“Enough nonsense, Rosie,” Alastor interrupts, terse. He doesn’t like being talked about like he’s not in the room, that much is evident. Much less the topic. He gets tetchy when anyone tries to put him in a labeled box. He’s too much of an individualist for that. “The invitations—tell me, how is that coming along?”

“Oh!” Rosie gushes. “Yes, yes. Lucifer—may I call you Lucifer, Majesty?—you simply must come. Alastor, I certainly hope you invited your sweetheart to my little soirée—no? Alastor. You must come, Lucifer. The Saturday after next. We’re having a little picnic, a little fundraiser. Oh, goodness me, the prestige—royalty on the guest list.”

“Our dear Charlie is already coming,” Alastor points out.

“Oh, shush now. You should want him to come. You’re officially invited, Lucifer, don’t you listen to him. The invitations! Right, right. The printing press is still down.” Rosie clicks her tongue. “Should be up and running in two days, I’m told. Until then—”

Alastor’s undivided attention is a daunting thing, like the very needle pinning a butterfly to its board. He angles his body towards Rosie. He listens, he cares, he’s courteous, and Lucifer is self-aware enough to know how rare a quality that is in a man these days.

It’s no surprise women flock to him. Niffty. His little blonde friend whom trouble follows like a shadow. Rosie, of course. Even Charlie adores him. There’s something uncannily safe about him, the laundry list of everything he's dabbled in that’s landed him in Hell aside. He was—in a sense—a vigilante, topside, in his own twisted understanding. A self-serving, power hungry narcissist, certainly, a sadist at times, and all-around wreck of a human soul, but at the end of the day, he seemed to only hurt those he truly believed deserved it. 

“—but, you know, Al, sweetheart, it’s come back, that light. That pretty smile of yours hasn’t quite reached your eyes until recently, if you catch my drift.”

Lucifer flushes, tuning back in. Vocabulary drying out. He stammers, manages nothing of value.

Alastor does: “Please keep your observations to yourself in unsavory company, Rosita.”

And there it is, his vocabulary. Lost and found. “Unsavory?” Lucifer echoes in a bad imitation of Alastor’s melodic accent.

“Hush now, Alastor. I’m happy to see my dear friend happy. Can’t a girl be happy for you? And speaking of happy, our dear Velvette pulled through with the online advertisements. Now, I know you’re not a fan, dearie, but we are raising money for the cultural center, and you know how sorely we’re lacking third places in this community. Her little online reach isn’t little at all. Power is power and power is money, and we need money.”

“You—isn’t that one of the Vees?”

“Yes, yes, but don’t you worry about Alastor’s delicate sensibilities here, Luci, dear—may I call you Luci? He takes issue with the method, not strictly with Velvette herself. The gal is quite all right."

“I thought you had beef with the Vees.”

“I have beef,” Alastor says delicately, “with Vox. Tangentially, with Valentino.”

“That you do,” Rosie agrees—and maybe this is it, Lucifer’s in. Not now, but one day. If Alastor won’t tell him the salacious backstory, perhaps Rosie will. “Speaking of, darling, a whole blackout? He’s getting worse.”

“Is he—what’s getting worse?” Lucifer needles.

“Oh, goodness, you don’t know? There’s this rag, this tabloid. Horrible, disreputable affront to the art of reporting, and I say this as an ol’ gossip. They got a picture of the two of you—just standing together, is all, nothing sleazy, but we both know how particular dear Alastor is about his personal space. And Vox knows that, too.”

She says nothing more, and Lucifer, expecting a continuation, an explanation, glances at Alastor—but Alastor looks just as puzzled.

“I’m afraid I fail to see the correlation,” Alastor admits. “The blackout—”

Rosie’s expression softens.

Lucifer blinks. And it clicks. “Back up. The television guy. The picture box fella you complain about all the fucking time—he has a crush on you? He saw us standing next to each other and got so jealous he blew his circuits? That’s what this has been this entire time?”

Rosie hums, thoughtful. “It oscillates between that and wanting to murder him, I believe. An unfortunate,” she pauses delicately, “psychosexual fascination.”

“Obsession,” Alastor corrects. “Pardon—sexual?”

“Oh, yes, he is down bad for you, sweetheart.”

Alastor stares at her, unblinking.

It takes all of Lucifer’s willpower to stifle a laugh. All of Hell and then some seems to want in on whatever Alastor’s got going on, and no one has come as close as Lucifer to getting it. He is, quite literally, getting it. He’s good. He’s so fucking good. He’s unmatched. And Alastor—sweet boy—shit, maybe Rosie was right all along—doesn’t realize it half the time, stringing his potential paramours along through no fault of his own, flirting with his charming, playful tone when he thinks he's fighting.

Lucifer feels the inane urge to hug him, pet at him, protect his virtue. There, there, I don't mind. I think your occasional bouts of cluelessness are absolutely precious.

“I’ve been accused of a great many things, most of which I admit I am guilty of, Rosie, but sexual deviancy has never been one of them,” Alastor says cautiously, tentatively. “Do you mean to tell me that whenever I so much as breathe in Vox’s direction, he becomes so aroused it shuts down half the Pride Ring for however long it takes to get his servers back up?”

“Oh, no, no, sweetheart, I would never accuse you of such a thing. Well, yes, but you’ve done nothing untoward intentionally. This little crossing of wires is very much on our dear Vox to figure out for himself.”

“Well, let’s not hold our breath.”

Rosie titters. “Oh, you comedian, you. I could just eat you up, you know that?”

A chill runs down Lucifer’s spine at that, synapses firing, igniting some visceral, baser instinct. A warning. Run. Predator. Run. Rosie, despite her exceptionally amiable personality, has a menacing air about her, something much colder, much more calculated than Alastor's own.

Alastor, to his left, doesn’t seem nearly as concerned by the potential threat, smiling serenely.

“Don’t you worry, Luci, darling,” Rosie reassures him, quickly catching on to his trepidation. “I wouldn’t dare deprive our little afterlife of this most vibrant character. I assure you, I didn’t mean that literally.”

“She did,” says Alastor pleasantly.

“Oh, maybe I did, but I wont. You’re too much fun, love.”

“That he is.” Lucifer coughs out a laugh. “That he is.”

━━━

For all that Alastor galavants about in the kitchen, for all his forays into violent cannibalism—he’s entirely too thin, like he eats, but it never does take. With his fingers intertwined with Lucifer’s own, pressed up over his head into the mattress, his ribs jut out like ragged, little rocks, asking for a shipwreck. And on his hands and knees like this, like now, with his head bowed low and his tail twitching against his back, the bones of his shoulders protrude and his hips are so slim, pointing out from beneath his skin, and his sharp angles become so, so much sharper with every lurch of his body, tensing, seizing up.

Lucifer hums at him, mouth pressed up against the hollow of his throat.

He knows Alastor is enjoying himself perfectly, his every motion synchronized with Lucifer’s own—but there’s a mental block there, up there, still, a stubborn, wholly unintentional refusal to lose himself. He’s too present. Too many thoughts in that horrible head of his. Even this he treats like a performance, curated, rehearsed to perfection. He’s breathing hard; it’s controlled, almost measured, and Lucifer feels it when he winds his hand around Alastor’s waist, down to his ribcage, and presses his palm there, plastering himself close and holding him to his chest.

“Relax for me, will you,” he murmurs, turning his face fully into the crook of Alastor’s neck. He can command respect when he wants to. When he’s unafraid of the reactions, the repercussions. He doesn’t—not usually—it’s not his thing. But when the need comes, and it does, when Alastor needs him to take over, it’s second nature, easy as breathing. And Alastor, the power-hungry bastard that he is, delights in it. He shivers and preens, when Lucifer treats him like this. He’s got the King of Hell himself wrapped around his little finger, at his beck and call, and he loves it, loves to see Lucifer unravel just for him. “I’ve got you, Al, come on.”

Alastor shudders. Against his belly, trapped between them, Lucifer feels Alastor’s tail twitch, so indiscriminately honest.

“That’s it. That’s good, sweetheart,” His voice drops. “Al, look at me. Come on, look at me.”

Lucifer moves his hand from Alastor’s ribcage and brings it up to the opposite side of his head, guides Alastor’s face around towards him, buries his fingertips in his hair, at the base of his ear, in that mess of downy, soft fur.

Alastor flushes—it’s so easy to get him like this—and a spark of heat burns white-hot in Lucifer’s gut. So easy to fluster him, catch him off guard. Such a charming, suave creature when he’s toying with Lucifer on his own terms—but a single droplet of his own medicine, and he short-circuits, ears flattening, his body squeezing hard around Lucifer’s cock.

Alastor turns to him as much as he’s able, pupils dilated—a sight that will never get old, not ever, not when the Earth cracks in two, not when Hell collapses. Sweat beading, hair mussed, so gorgeous, curling where it’s damp at his temples, at the base of his neck, errant strands sticking to his forehead.

“So good,” Lucifer tells him, and it’s at the tip of his tongue, good boy, it is, but he bites it back, because it’s patronizing, and Alastor doesn’t like to be patronized—but he thinks it, very, very hard, and he presses a kiss to Alastor’s shoulder, the smattering of discoloration there, white freckles like stars in the sky. “You’re doing so well for me, Al.”

He drags his nails back and forth at the base of Alastor’s ears, up against his antlers. Soft, unspoken praise. Pushes his hair aside, kisses away a rivulet of sweat curling at the nape of his neck, and his hair smells like blood, blood and something green, pine, the forest, something wild.

Lucifer doesn’t have the words to give to the feeling, the bright, cosmic pleasure that getting to do this brings him. It’s not particularly often that they do, that Alastor feels inclined to allow it to go quite this far. But when he does, it sends Lucifer into orbit, how good it is, stomach coiling into knots, Alastor so pliant, so responsive underneath him.

He doesn’t seem to mind the current arrangement of roles. They’ve tried it all out by now, of course they have; Lucifer’s been blessed with both sets of equipment, lucky him. Tentative, baby steps. The deciphering of preferences. Enlightening, for the both of them. It’s taken them back to where they started, really. Lucifer likes to give, and Alastor prefers not to have to do any of the particularly dirty work.

He reciprocates as much as he’s comfortable with. He’s fond of coaxing new sounds from Lucifer’s throat, new reactions, never before seen. He’ll touch him, kiss him just behind the ear, mouth at his pulse, the slightest scrape of teeth; he even forgoes breaking skin on occasion, content to focus solely on Lucifer’s pleasure, happy to bend over and let Lucifer take it from there.

He’s—complicated. But he’s not impossible. He initiates, but the moment things spiral out of his explicit control, he takes a back seat. He’s hardly timid—God forbid, he’s all teeth—but he becomes reserved, almost, when he gives up the reins, shoulders hunched inwards, making himself smaller, ducking his head like he’s prey, like he’s on the wrong end of a hunting rifle—and he’s—Lucifer wants to hold him in a way that he knows Alastor would hate, tell him until it takes in that stubborn skull of his, that this is something he’s doing with him, not to him.

It’s simple physiological release, yes, a bright little burst of pleasure, an interval, an interlude, and then back to life as they know it; but it takes no small amount of trust all the same, despite Alastor’s valiant attempts at pretending otherwise, that it’s all casual.

Lucifer’s thoughts keep spiraling back to the question at the center of it all. Alastor must be getting something out of their arrangement. Something, anything, whatever it is. He keeps coming back. Something—something, surely. They’ve talked about it, in passing. Naturally. Consent requires communication, a little, at least. Alastor’s new to this—he’s learning things about himself as they go. Lucifer’s his shiny, brand new toy. They should—at length—Lucifer should ask—

“Fuck, Al, you feel so good.” He feels his eyes rolling into the back of his head, chest tight, fingers tightening in Alastor’s hair. He can touch, but he can’t pull, and it takes fucking everything he has to resist doing just that. “Fuck, fuck.”

He gets a sweet, staticky hum in response, self-satisfied and appreciative. Alastor shifts, pushing back against him, and Lucifer whimpers like a bitch at the feeling.

He picks himself up, just so, just enough to slide a hand between their bodies, and he curls his fingers around the base of Alastor’s tail. Gentle, reverent. He can touch here too, now, but he can’t pull, either; Alastor isn’t one for subtle acts of degradation, not like he is. He threads the fur between his fingers, thumbing at the base in a tiny back-and-forth, and it’s as delicate a thing as Lucifer’s wings, he knows that, and he hears the sheets tear under Alastor’s nails, and the way he tenses around Lucifer is fucking unholy.

Alastor’s head droops forward even more, just short of unnatural, a puppet with its strings cut. The nape of his neck bared, his spine jutting out against the lithe line of his back in little nubs. He’s beautiful. Elbows on the bed, claws deep in the bedsheets, and he’s trembling, and Lucifer feels that first hot wave cresting deep in his belly, nearing the precipice, rocks crumbling over the edge as he loses his footing.

His hips jolt, erratic, and Alastor goes taut all over, and Lucifer resists the immediate impulse to wrap his hand around Alastor’s cock to help him out; it’s off-limits, more often than not, and it definitely is today, and Lucifer thinks, hysterically, that he would die if the roles were reversed, that he would be sobbing, begging, begging to be touched—

He presses his knuckles to Alastor’s hip, flattens his hand out, splays it over the base of his stomach, lower, lets Alastor rock into the touch at his own pace, if he needs to.

“Inside—can I—” he manages.

Alastor nods, a sharp jerk of his head. His breathing comes in ragged little pants, the kind that mean it’s good, and Lucifer’s learned the difference between that and when he’s overwhelmed, and now is good, he feels good, Lucifer is making him feel good. He loves him. He really fucking loves him.

He shoves his face back into the crook of Alastor’s neck, messy and uncoordinated, lips on his pulse, and he tastes the violent rush of it on his tongue, between his teeth; he’s alive, he’s so alive in Lucifer’s arms like this. And he doesn’t always come when they do this, but he’s close now, Lucifer feels it, and he murmurs his name, lost in a gasp, and Alastor’s head tilts. He looks back at him, looks at him like he wants to eat him alive, and it’s Alastor, it’s no empty threat, and it shoots through Lucifer like a bolt of lightning, and the last vestige of stone crumbles underneath his feet.

━━━

Ten minutes into a group game of two truths and a lie—it inspires honesty, camaraderie, creativity, said Charlie—led, in her absence, by Angel Dust—this is gonna be fuckin’ hilarious, Charlie, thank you, I love you, he said—Lucifer realizes he can’t breathe quite right.

He’s on the sofa with a sketchpad, observing the dozen or so sinners sprawled in a messy circle on the carpeted lobby floor from a safe distance. He’s—he tries to remember if one of them said something, anything at all. He’s mostly tuned them out, but—a trigger word, maybe, something that hit too close to home, sent his subconscious into a disorganized collapse. But he can’t remember. He can’t remember anything, suddenly, and his charcoal pencil creaks and splinters in two in his white-knuckled grasp.

And then there are eyes on him. Too many pairs. Various degrees of confusion, of curiosity. Angel’s blatant concern.

“I—” he starts. He sucks in breath through clenched teeth, and his lungs don’t expand all the way. So he grins, all false nonchalance. “Sorry. Ignore me. I forgot I was supposed to do—something—urgent.”

He doesn’t bother with a neat portal; he dematerializes with a nervous laugh in a flash of gold and reappears in his bedroom, and throws up the wards, and he doesn’t make it the five steps to the bed before his knees give out. He curls up at the foot of it, the cherry oak sturdy at his back. Real, tangible. What the fuck is happening to him.

He wracks his mind—what it was he heard, if he heard anything at all. Because he can’t fix it, this, he can’t fix himself, if he doesn’t know the root fucking cause, what exactly it is that makes him—an archangel, for fuck’s sake—whimper like a panicked little puppy afraid of a bout of thunder. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t—his right hand creeps up his opposite shoulder and down the back of his shirt, prodding at the slits where his wings hide.

Impulsively, he tears it off, the shirt, up and over his head. Easier access. His hands are shaking. A button pops loose and rolls somewhere, someplace, gone forever.

He unfurls his wings, and for a moment, he wishes he could tear them clean off. He fucking hates this, he hates everything about this, about himself, he really fucking does sometimes, and he reaches for the uppermost wing, takes a feather between his fingertips and scratches at the base of it in a morbidly soothing back-and-forth until it itches, until it starts to feel disgusting, he’s disgusting, and he tightens his grip and he pulls, and it hurts and he grits his teeth, but when it comes loose, the feather, it comes with the sensation of bright, fleeting satisfaction, a perfect moment of clarity.

It eases the burning in his chest. He lapses into a trance. The pain is—nice. The scratching. Until something gives. He’s bleeding; distantly, he knows this. The feathers coming out, root and all. Having something to do with his fingers. The pain is distracting. He likes that. Sharp bursts. With each pinch, breathing becomes easier.

He’s going to hate himself so much more in an hour, half an hour, when the impulse to keep going wears off and he feels filthy, overwhelmed with the sensation of his skin parting, peeling, bleeding. It’s not enough now, and it’ll be too much, soon, inevitably. He knows—and he can’t stop. He can’t bring himself to stop.

And then Alastor is there, in his field of vision. Crouched down on the ground in front of him, cupping Lucifer’s face in the palm of his hand. Hands. He’s holding his face in both hands, tilting his head up to look at him.

He says nothing. He pulls Lucifer’s hands back down into his lap and stares at him with blood-red eyes and a barely-there smile, something akin to worry in between the lines. He holds his gaze until Lucifer’s eyes focus enough to see clearly, to see him, until his breathing steadies. Maybe it’s a moment, maybe an hour.

He smells something—Lucifer turns, a twitchy jerk of his head. There’s a tray on the bureau by the entranceway. Tea. His latest favorite: lavender and valerian. A necessity. The local nervous wreck. And that means—Alastor must have come in, seen him in a state, and gone down to kitchen to throw it together despite his hatred of the smell, gone out of his way, brought it up for Lucifer. Because he cares.

And it’s gone, the urge to tear himself apart. In a fucking flash. He folds his wings back. He feels cumbersome. Heavy and wrong, his limbs feel all wrong. Like they’re not his, and he doesn’t want them there, and he wants to take a hot shower.

“I’m sorry. I’m okay,” he mumbles. His tongue feels clumsy. “Thank you for the—thank you. I’m sorry, Al. I didn’t mean to—”

“You’re bleeding.”

There’s golden blood behind Lucifer’s nails, drying a ruddy-brown.

“You’ve made quite the mess of yourself.”

“I—yeah.”

Alastor stands, and Lucifer misses the warmth immediately.

The lights are switched on in the bathroom, the dim ones, the two sconces bracketing the mirror. Alastor comes back, crowds into his space and pulls him up to his feet by the wrist, drags him along. Back to the bathroom. He reaches past the pane of glass and turns the shower head on, letting the pipes warm up.

It—works. It works, when he does this. He manhandles Lucifer, and there’s nothing quite as effective as that to snap him out of an episode. Guiding him through the motions of existing with just the right amount of determined aggression.

Alastor leaves again. He will be back. Lucifer knows this.

He peels the rest of his clothes off in the meantime; it’s what Alastor expects of him. Wordless instruction. It feels like sluicing off a filthy, soiled body-suit, a layer he doesn’t need anymore.

Naked, he sits down hard on the shower floor and tilts his face up into the spray of hot water. Not too hot. Hot enough. His back stings—sharp, little pinpricks. He doesn’t look back down until he hears Alastor reenter.

Sans coat, shirtsleeves rolled up. He has Lucifer’s steaming mug with him. He closes the door behind him, leaves it open a crack for the steam to escape. Sets the mug down on the lip of the sink. Sits down on the closed toilet seat, facing the shower.

And it’s only then, when he does that, elbow braced on the toilet tank, his head falling heavily to rest on a curled fist, that Lucifer realizes just how awful Alastor looks.

Dark under-eyes, darker than usual. Tension lines across his face, jaw tight and expression pinched.

Just perfect. A migraine day. And when it’s finally time for his long day of wrangling everyone and everything in the hotel to end, Alastor comes back not to a peaceful, dark room where he can crawl under the covers and press an ice pack to his splitting headache, but to this. Just Lucifer’s fucking luck. Alastor’s hurting and he’s tired and Lucifer is acting like a child Alastor needs to take care of on top of everything else.

He barely sleeps as it is. He needs to. Lucifer doesn’t. But Alastor—he goes days without, and you can never tell, looking at him. Not at first glance. There are tells. He zones out. Idle show tunes, staticky, garbled. A haunted, gaunt tension in the cracks of his perfect mask.

And when he’s exhausted beyond a certain limit, no longer thinking straight, and something, someone—Lucifer—angers him, he becomes confrontational. Lucifer, for one, is a crier. Helpless, irritable, frustrated—he cries about it. But Alastor, contrarily, in that state, tosses all rationality out the window—he can and he does cause a scene. Testy turns into volatile turns into antlers stretching, limbs snapping, eyes black. A souvenir from Alastor’s stay up in the living world, maybe—so scared of becoming prey that he gets ahead of the curve, becomes the predator. A precaution. Preventative measures.

And eventually comes the breaking point. The debilitating migraines. Too much rage on too little rest. Alastor shuts himself away. He slams the lights off, pulls at his hair like it might ease the strain. Presses the heel of his palm to the spot right between his brows like it’s something physical, the pain, that he can force clean out of his skull.

Is that how you died? Lucifer had asked once. The reaction was explosive, of course. Hey now, down, Bambi. Just a question. You’re hurting. It’s just—just a question. A sardonic laugh, fangs bared. So perceptive, your Majesty. Nothing gets past you, does it?

“Headache?” he asks now.

“Do you want your tea?” Alastor offers in return.

Don’t ask stupid fucking questions you already know the answers to, Lucifer. Yes, yes, he knows. Just a habit. Just striking up conversation.

Lucifer nods. He scoots forward on his bare ass and reaches out for the mug with both hands.

The spray of the shower hits his back now, and it aches, and it feels good, like some kind of twisted penance.

He’s making a mess. Water everywhere. Nothing he can’t fix with a snap of his fingers once he’s done being a big baby.

He takes a sip and the tea warms him from the inside out, and he sort of—he wants to cry.

He bites back the urge, and instead makes a weak attempt at diffusing the tension. “Have I ever told you that you’re a really sweet guy, Al?” A faint huff of a laugh. “You’re like a live-in nurse sometimes.”

“Once or twice, cher. I never claimed to be anything less than a perfect gentleman, mind you.”

“The cannibalism,” Lucifer points out.

“Dinner won’t serve itself.”

“The serial murder.”

“Just a hobby.”

“And they deserved it, yeah?” he asks, parroting Alastor’s own rhetoric back at him. Because Alastor doesn’t do remorse. What’s done is done, and cannot be undone; no use dwelling on it.

“Precisely.”

“Look at you. Judge, jury, and executioner.”

Now—Alastor is perfectly aware of the state of his soul, to a genuinely disconcerting degree, as far as sinners go; Lucifer’s snippy comments roll off him like water off a duck’s back.

He runs a hand through his hair, and however brief the moment, he looks startlingly different with it pushed out of his face. A handsome stranger. Too quickly, he leans his head back on his palm—like it weighs too much to keep it upright any longer.

After a moment, he hums, distant. “I got sick quite a lot, when I was young,” he says abruptly, unexpectedly. Eyes gone unfocused, mind suddenly somewhere far, far away. His free hand is in his lap, claws digging little holes into the fabric of his pants. “My mama took care of me. That’s—I suppose that’s what this feels like.”

Lucifer’s fingers tighten instinctively around his mug. “I appreciate it,” he tells him. Because Alastor needs to know, he needs to hear it, again and again, and especially now, when his guard is down and he’s actually listening. Because he’s not here for redemption, he isn’t a good person, not even close, but that doesn’t mean he’s inherently evil. He isn’t. And Lucifer wants him to understand that, for whatever misguided reason. “Thank you, Al. I mean it, I really do.”

Another idle hum. Acknowledgement, maybe. He looks absolutely wretched, on the verge of nausea.

“Will you—you should sleep tonight.”

Alastor nods, slow and sluggish, still looking off into some indeterminate mid-distance. “I will certainly try.”

The accent drops. He’s so nice to listen to, unfiltered, undistorted. It’s almost unbecoming for someone with a reputation like his to sound so comforting. It’s a nice voice, Alastor’s own, reedier than Lucifer’s. And the way he calls him darling, sometimes, warm and rounded, makes Lucifer go weak in the knees. He can just about picture it—

“What did you look like—alive?” he asks. His mind is all over the place; it just tumbles out. And he’s—making small talk. He’s attempting to pull Alastor out of his head while he’s stuck here, with him.

“Am I not to your liking at present?” A spark of amusement flares to life behind Alastor’s half-lidded eyes, curiosity piqued. “Come now, sire, do you expect me to believe you haven’t snooped?”

“Who do you take me for?”

“The Devil.”

“Ha. Yes, well, humanity seems to have a horribly skewed perception of the Devil. No, Al, I havent snooped. Give me some credit here.” Lucifer stares him down, teeth bared in a devious smile. “But get talking, mister, or I will.”

And it startles him still, without fail, how comfortable, how at ease he’s come to feel around Alastor. Safe around the notorious Radio Demon. Safe, him, the Devil, almighty. They’re nowhere near on equal footing, and Lucifer seems to need Alastor to feel safe. He—no. Not safe, per se. Wanted. Taken care of. Like he means something. That’s what he needs. That’s what Alastor—

“Not much at all to write home about, Majesty. Dark hair, dark eyes. I suppose my teeth weren’t quite as sharp. A bit less invulnerable, all around, as it turned out. But not all that—different.”

Lucifer cocks his head. “Tall, dark, and handsome.”

Unimpressed, Alastor lifts an eyebrow.

“The way your hair curls, when it’s humid, is that—”

“Yes.”

“How old were you, when—”

“I am not an ant to be scrutinized under your magnifying glass.”

“Yes, you are. I am the big, bad Devil they warned you about in Sunday school. Get talking,” Lucifer repeats, canines bared, and he really, really likes this senseless banter of theirs. Fuck. He feels whole. The urge to cry returns with a vengeance, tears pricking his eyes, a burning sensation behind the bridge of his nose. He’s so ridiculously fucking happy, naked on the floor of his shower with his raw, self-inflicted lacerations across his back and his serial-killer sinner making him tea and keeping him company.

“Thirty-seven.”

Lucifer blinks water out of his eyes and looks at him, scrutinizing him like an ant under his magnifying glass, humanizing his features. It’s probably—accurate. For mortals. Humans. At the rate they age, at near-forty, Lucifer thinks, he isn’t exactly sure, Alastor might have had smile lines, or flecks of grey in his hair, even, and the thought of the latter makes Lucifer’s head spin.

“How about—” He clears his throat, abruptly changing the topic. “Tell me about your mother?”

Alastor freezes up, eyes going dead. “No.” He falters. His mouth opens and closes, and for a moment, no sound comes out. “No, not—”

Lucifer nods, urgent and rapid. “Okay,” he acquiesces. “Not—” That’s okay that’s okay please don’t leave please don’t leave me I didn’t mean it I won’t bring it up again.

“Not now,” Alastor concedes. “I will. I—”

Lucifer exhales hard through gritted teeth. He gets it. He’s not one to judge. He practically invented—daddy issues. So to speak. Handed them down to his Char-Char, and now she’s romancing the only other fallen angel in the pits of Hell. There’s a seat in Thursday therapy with his name on it, and he really should stop flaking.

“That’s—yeah. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry, Al. I’ll be quiet now. We should go to bed. I just—she sounds lovely. You really make her sound lovely.”

Alastor’s eyes are far away again, glazed over. “She was,” he says quietly.

━━━

Over the scope of a few days, the weather steadily takes a turn for the worse; egregiously hot, even by Hell’s standards. It’s Lucifer’s divine punishment, surely.

And Alastor, old-habits-die-hard Alastor, doesn’t have anything resembling air conditioning in his room. His tolerance for humidity is abnormal. He’s in Hell, and he’s still not fucking hot enough. The bayou air in his bedroom is as still and stuffy as the scorching air outside, and Alastor is snoozing away, and Lucifer, he fears, is slowly dying.

He’s flat on his back, star-fished out, hogging most of the bed space, clad in nothing but briefs, and it’s still too much. The things he does for—for Alastor. Come on. A ceiling fan. Anything.

Alastor, asleep and oblivious, does nothing to ease his plight. He’s curled up on his front like a newborn fawn, arms around his pillow. Pretty smattering of white freckles across the bridge of his nose, the high points of his cheeks, a shadow of a smile on his lips. He’s in a neat set of pyjamas, pressed black silk, smooth like he’s gone and ironed them, long sleeves and long trousers underneath the bedcovers he’s wrapped up in. Somehow not boiling alive.

Where he hugs at his pillow, his sleeve is rucked up to his elbow. Alastor’s skin—fur—it’s complicated—fades from a sickly, undead greyish-brown to black at his mid-forearm, tapering off into crimson claws, and it really is very disarming that a creature that looks—and is—as dangerous as he does can be so unequivocally adorable in the hazy morning light.

Unspeakably gorgeous—but insane, clinically insane, it’s one hundred fucking degrees, Alastor, you lunatic.

“Your panting will wake the whole hotel, sire.”

Lucifer blinks and turns his head.

Alastor’s eyes are closed, but his smile is sharper now. “Have you considered you might be going through menopause?”

“Al, I’m going to strangle you. They’re not gonna find the body. They’re not gonna be able to prove anything. I swear on everything that is unholy, if you don’t shut the fuck up.”

Red eyes peel open slowly, almost reptilian. It’s made less intimidating by the pillow creases across his cheek, eyes puffy with sleep. “Goodness me,” Alastor says dryly, “I was under the impression that the Devil could just wave his hand and command the temperature to drop.”

Lucifer opens his mouth, then closes it. He—yeah. He can do that.

He looks away from Alastor, cheeks burning, and waves his hand, dispelling the worst of the sweltering heat. He leaves the room just warm enough for Alastor’s sick liking.

“There you go, angel.” Alastor yawns, jaw opening just a couple inches too wide to be considered strictly normal; feedback squeals, and Lucifer grimaces, feeling the pitch of it in his teeth. “Well, don’t you just look fetching.”

Lucifer turns back around and follows Alastor’s line of sight up to his own head. Goes crosseyed. He’s—still half asleep. Uncoordinated. Unthinking. He can’t see the crown of his own head. Duh. He lifts a hand to his hair and prods at the tufts standing upright, poking out in every conceivable direction.

“All you do is make fun of me.”

“Now, wherever did you get that silly idea?”

Lucifer frowns. He squints at Alastor, the little particulars of his expression. “Oh. You mean it. You’re flirting. You’re calling me cute.”

“I did not say that.”

“You think I’m attractive.”

Alastor’s nose twitches in a tiny scrunch. “Could be worse.”

“Careful, Al. If you keep charming the pants off everyone like that, soon enough they’ll be calling you—” He trails off, distracted momentarily by the buzz of a text message. He shouldn’t, he knows, but he barrels on ahead anyway, pure obstinacy. “—the Heartbreaker Demon.”

Alastor’s expression cracks. “You’ve utterly ruined the moment.”

“I—yeah,” Lucifer admits. “That was bad. Where the fuck is my phone?”

“That was me.”

Alastor turns, sluggish and loose-limbed, and reaches for the little drawer in his nightstand, and like the lovesick fool that he is, Lucifer misses his undivided attention as soon as it’s gone.

That attention Alastor now directs at his phone, unlocking it with a practiced swipe up. Touch screen and all. Lucifer’s suspected as much, but seeing it firsthand is jarring down to the marrow, like running recklessly down a flight of stairs and expecting one more step, one more, but it’s not there, and your foot falls through the air, your heart lodging in your throat.

“Rosie?” he hazards a guess, all casual. Nobody else, he surmises, is clued in. He’s pretty certain the rest of Hell still corresponds with Alastor via fucking carrier pigeon, should they have need of his services.

“Rosie,” Alastor confirms, wire-rimmed glasses perched upon his nose, magicked out of thin air. He looks very dashing.

He scrolls, frowns at the block of text, emojis interspersed throughout. There’s a picture too, and Alastor taps to enlarge it, and his frown deepens, and then it’s gone before Lucifer can get over himself just enough to gauge its contents. And then Alastor is texting back swiftly, like a fucking natural, like he’s been doing it his whole life. Whole un-life. It looks alien. It’s fucking bizarre. If the masses caught wind of this, there would be pandemonium.

He clicks the screen off when he finishes, and the phone is placed back in its place with little fanfare. Most normal thing in the world. Just another Tuesday. Just the famously technologically-challenged Radio Demon shooting his bestie a quick text.

And then—Alastor makes to get up.

Unacceptable. Lucifer lunges, inhumanly fast, wrapping his arms tightly around Alastor’s midsection and drawing him in like an overgrown teddy bear. Politely, he ignores the involuntary squeak that escapes Alastor’s throat, and throws a thigh up around Alastor’s hips too, for good measure, preventing any and all attempts at escape.

He’s a simple guy. He likes being the big spoon. He likes his partners tall and lanky and he’s got the advantage of wide, very fucking mobile hips to wrap himself around them like a serpent, never to let go. And Alastor’s hardly complaining—it’s a sign of mild irritation, his staticky grumbling, more so than any sort of genuine discomfort.

With the arm that’s more or less trapped underneath Alastor’s weight, Lucifer pets at him, the soft patch of fur on his chest—his summer coat, currently—that Alastor despises and Lucifer adores with a passion that burns brighter than the sun in the sky. 

“Your ears twitch a lot in your sleep, you know,” Lucifer tells him. “You seem to like it when I scritch them. And you flip through radio frequencies, did you know that?”

Alastor tenses.

“I think it’s very cute.” He nuzzles his face into the back of Alastor’s neck, all needy and lovey-dovey, lest he take the words the wrong way. “I’m just gonna harass you for five more minutes. Give me five minutes.”

It is, still, very much a hot-and-cold, roll the dice and see where they land type of affair, Alastor’s approach to affection. He leans in sometimes, a house cat asking to be petted, then changes his mind in seconds, minutes, returning to his bubble, his precious personal space. And sometimes, he’s perfectly content with Lucifer clinging to him all throughout the night. A little at a time. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Now—five minutes. Uncustomarily involuntary, but Lucifer’s on a sappy, sentimental roll this morning, and Alastor, if nothing else, typically enjoys being the center of Lucifer’s attention.

“Hey, aren’t you worried about your television fella?” he asks after a while, out of the blue.

Alastor makes a small, displeased sound. “I have it on good authority that there’s absolutely nothing in that little rectangular device he can trace back to me.”

“Not that he would think to.”

“Precisely.”

“Can I have your number?” Lucifer asks.

“Scandalous, your Majesty. Are you asking me out?”

“Maybe. Would you care to join me for breakfast? I cook a mean pancake.”

To Lucifer’s delight, within minutes, they’re downstairs.

He rests his chin in the cradle of his arms on the tabletop and watches Alastor work. Sweet iced tea for Lucifer, the Southern way (And he’s really grown very, very fond of it. He needs to rustle up a game plan, organize a day trip down to Alastor’s old stomping grounds on the mortal plane, see where the magic happens. And it would only be fair, he thinks, to show Alastor where he hails from in turn, though the Heavenly Host would most definitely blast him full of arrows the instant he set foot on Peter’s bridge, and Alastor would be bleeding from every orifice within five minutes of breathing sanctified air—so maybe, no, not that.) and coffee for himself, hot and black as ever despite the heat. One single, delicious—allegedly, insofar as black coffee can be delicious—portion courtesy of his dearest French press.

It’s early enough, again, that nobody is around to bother them. Another peaceful, perfect moment pulled out of time. The air is tacky, moist, but almost chilly in the windowless space, in comparison, at least, to the rooms upstairs.

Lucifer presses his cheek to his forearm. A pink feather from the cuff of his dressing gown sticks to his lips and he sputters to dislodge it, and Alastor glances at him, momentarily, before turning back to his task.

He collects their respective vessels onto a tray, his mug and Lucifer’s tall glass, and slides it fluidly onto the table between them.

And he sits, all sharp edges and long, graceful limbs, and Lucifer cannot believe it, sometimes, that in such short a time, he’s become so helplessly enamored with a simple mortal soul, one of the countless dead in his realm. An overlord, certainly, and formidable at that, but a human all the same, objectively ordinary.

Somehow.

It’s baffling.

Let alone the fact that he’s become enamored with anyone at all. His gaze slips down to his wrist, his hand. He didn’t think it was possible, that it ever would be, not after—

“Do you mind that I still wear this?” he blurts, and he regrets it as soon as it’s out, but there’s no way to take it back. He sits up, immediately anxious. “Silly, I know—but I can’t—I don't know why, but I can't find it in me to take it off.”

Alastor’s eyes flick down to the ring in question, unreadable. “Not my choice to make.”

He reaches for his mug and takes a tentative sip, the steam clouding up his monocle. When he sets it back down on a coaster on his end of the table, it doesn’t make a sound.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Lucifer says—to himself, but Alastor hears. Of course he does. He’s right there. And he doesn’t look at Lucifer. “Al—I shouldn’t have—”

Nothing. He gets nothing more, and it becomes unbearable, until finally—

“I’m sure it has not slipped your attention,” Alastor says slowly, curating his words, “that I don’t make a habit of sharing.”

Lucifer nods, a single erratic jerk of his head. “Noted,” he croaks, and twists at the ring with clumsy, shaking fingers. He laughs, and it’s a reedy, anxious thing. “I guess she has her claws in the both of us.”

That’s—he hopes that’s an okay thing to say. He’s really putting his foot in it. He’s flying too close to the sun. He doesn’t want—the last thing he wants is for Alastor to take offense and throw a fit and go running, leaving him behind. Or worse yet—be forced to leave, yanked away by the chain around his throat.

Lucifer can’t interfere in deals. He refuses to engage in any of his own, and as for those that are brokered in his Kingdom—he can’t dissolve them, he can’t change them, he can’t surmise any greater details if the information isn’t plainly divulged to him. Such are the results of handing humanity the gift of free will. Go wild, kiddos. And he can’t even fucking ask, not here, not now, because Alastor can’t tell, her immutable threads sewn through his lips, keeping him quiet, keeping Lucifer in the dark.

But to his abject surprise, Alastor’s response to his thoughtless blabbering isn’t outrage. “Was that your twentieth question?” he says instead, perfectly conversational. “If I mind being the other woman?”

The tension breaks like thawing ice on a sunny spring day, creaking slowly, then collapsing all at once. “Oh, what the fuck, Al. You’re such a dick. Are you still keeping score?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No. And hold your horses—you said you weren’t. What the fuck. Are you picking and choosing which ones are part of the game?”

“I am.”

“Oh? Based on what criteria, pray tell.”

“How much each answer satisfies my curiosity,” Alastor explains with a dainty flick of his wrist, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “If it teaches me something about you that I didn’t already know. And vice versa, I suppose.”

“It’s really not that serious. Usually, it’s like, what’s your favorite color, that sort of thing.”

“I’ve never been known to half-ass anything, Highness.”

“How many do you have left?”

“One,” says Alastor. “Surprisingly, we’re equally matched.”

“And I don’t have any. Anymore. Assuming the—what I asked.”

“That would be correct.”

Lucifer nods, just once. He plucks his iced tea off the tray and takes a massive, bracing swig. It’s perfection. He needs to meet Alastor’s mother and shake her hand, thank her for all her recipes and remedies. And for Alastor, he supposes.

But first, he needs to—bite the bullet.

“What’s your final question, then?”

Alastor’s breath hitches, a small jerk of his chest. He’s nervous, too. He’s—Lucifer doesn’t understand why he’s nervous. But before he can dwell on it, Alastor clasps his hands together neatly in front of him, chin up, eyes bright. He’s nervous, yes, skittish—as always when it comes to this, to talking, to baring his heart—but he’s never been one to back down from a fight.

And fight he does. He goes straight for the fucking jugular.

“Very well. I’ll kill two birds with one stone, if you don’t mind. To answer your question, I am not trying to replace—her. I think you still love her, but not the way you used to, and I think the ring you wear means nothing now. What has been broken cannot be rebuilt, not anymore. That is my answer.” He pauses, eyes flicking away for an instant before he forces them back to Lucifer’s. “You have a claim over me, and I like to think I have one over you in turn, so my final question, Lucifer, is just that—what exactly is it that you want from me?”

And Lucifer knows. He knows. The ring is a relic and his marriage is a relic; it’s a bridge they crossed together, the two of them, but Lilith chose to double back and return the way she came. She left him, she left Charlie, and she burned the fucking bridge down on her way out. He knows it’s over and he’s known it for a long, long time, and—

“Whatever you’ll give me. As much as you’ll give me. I know it’s—the ring—I know. Alastor, I am yours, completely,” he says; it comes tumbling out like it’s waited ages to be set free.

He pauses, taking in the novel look on Alastor’s face. He’s gone still, and in all the time Lucifer’s known him, he’s never seen him look quite so astonished. Like he hadn’t expected quite that—that depth of—fuck. Surely he’s known. He must know, how much he means to Lucifer. And if he doesn’t—Lucifer needs to tell him, immediately, desperately, how madly he’s grown to care. He isn’t stringing Alastor along. He isn't fucking with him. He wouldn’t do that. He’s throwing all of himself into this, every fiber of his celestial existence.

“Alastor,” he says urgently. “I need one more question.”

“Permission granted,” Alastor murmurs a moment later. Nearly completely inflectionless, perhaps wary, perhaps—if Lucifer had to select a single, unfathomable word to describe it—hopeful.

“I am yours,” Lucifer repeats, and it comes out watery, and his throat feels too tight. “And I want—I do want you to be mine. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m so sorry if anything I’ve done has led you to believe otherwise. I need you, Al. Please—tell me if that’s what you—can you tell me what you want from me in return? I really, really want us to be on the same page. Spell it out for me like I’m a little kid, please, a really stupid little kid.”

Alastor blinks at him with wide, beady eyes, and a barely-there smile on the verge of vanishing completely. He’s trembling.

Lucifer’s insides roil like hurricane waves. He thinks—Alastor is going to make him toss the ring. Melt it down. Burn every last portrait of—every last family portrait in the hotel, in the palace. He’s possessive and he’s distrustful and he will demand proof, for the sake of his inner peace, surely, that every word Lucifer has just spoken is nothing short of the unmitigated truth.

And Lucifer—he will. He’ll do it all, he decides immediately, if he has to. To keep this. He'll do anything to keep this.

But Alastor’s smile snaps back into place so suddenly it gives Lucifer whiplash. It’s warm, amused, his expression alight.

And it’s not that he’s not taking this seriously. He’s—he is. He is. He understands. Lucifer realizes it with a jolt—Alastor understands. That Lucifer means it, everything he’s said, more than he’s ever meant anything, but that he needs space, too, he needs to heal, and Alastor knows that, he knows him—

“The same. Whatever you’ll give me, Lucifer. As much as you’re able,” Alastor says finally, softly, and he smiles and it’s the kind of smile Lucifer only gets from him when they’re alone, the two of them, the kind that’s for his eyes only, the kind that makes his chest ache and his eyes burn, the kind that makes waking up every morning to a crimson sky and the lingering tang of sulfur more bearable; a gentle, wordless take your time, I’ll wait. “But before that—I believe I was promised pancakes.”