Work Text:
The problem with predating the existence of linear time was that it made pinpointing where you were surprisingly difficult to know when you were dreaming.
The difference between existing across time and space in a way that would make a TARDIS jealous and dreaming relied on guessing what would make the most logical sense and the problem was that logic was a very human concept. It didn't always apply in the same way when it came to heaven, hell and all other planes of existence. There was always a different version of normal.
This was probably a dream though.
The beauty of Eden was not diminished in memory. It felt vivid no matter what, achingly so but there was something hell could have that Eden never could: Charlie, his beautiful daughter, a gorgeous and vibrant little soul that hadn't even been a twinkle in his or Lil's eye back then. An effusive, affectionate force of nature that held her hope together with duct tape and force of will. He'd called her naïve once and perhaps that was true, but seeing hell through her eyes had changed how he saw it. It changed how other people saw it. Like remembering the taste of hope after an empty harvest of it for so long.
Big sign that this was a dream was his widdle girl running around laughing amongst the overgrown grass. Not the full grown Charlie that was probably somewhere in the hotel trying to scheme up a redemption for souls who likely wouldn't thank her for it but the little girl he could remember before she'd been carried out of his life. Talk about the subtext rapidly becoming the text. Some subconscious reminder that this was his chance not to let another child slip away from him this time.
”Oh, won't you come with me and take my hand,
Oh, won't you come with me and walk this land.”
The music came into focus so sharply that Lucifer felt himself jolt. There was no longer the distant haze of sound but Charlie singing her little heart out. The sky had turned a hellish red but the gardens still bloomed, roses and daisies. Charlie was still dancing around with her hand clasped tightly in her friend's dark claws as they swayed and laughed.
Wait – friend?
Lucifer jogged around to try and get a better look at the two of them, little dresses like choir robes – hearts with a music trim for Charlie and music notes with what looked like a flower trim for other little one – and slippers, as if they’d been roused from sleep and were now running riot around their personal playground paradise. No matter how close he got, he just couldn’t see the other child’s face but he could make it bits and pieces: dark fingers with blood red claws, red locks that didn’t fall nearly as long as Charlie’s but tinged with gold. Not unlike Charlie’s when she was trying to look like a little edgy teenager and dyed hers. On some level he understood it wasn’t real, he did, but he knew his babies, knew their souls and he wanted to scoop them up and –
Lucifer woke up with a start, the sudden realisation that he could feel movement in stomach.
Dancing, he thought idly. I can feel them dancing.
All the hair on the back of his neck stood up as a warning that he was being watched, but on opening his eyes, it was only Alastor regarding him with some curiosity. In the low light of the lamp, his eyes seemed so much brighter than usual but Lucifer didn’t know if he had the words to explain any of it.
So Lucifer simply reached for his hand and pushed it over his stomach. Whether Alastor was going to be able to feel it was in question; by his rough estimates, he was only half way there and wasn’t that a fun realisation? But that thought was quickly banished when he heard the tell tale staticky whirr and screech of surprise and felt as Alastors hand pushed into his skin, searching out those movements as if they were playing hide and seek.
“Are you crying again?” Alastor asked, not even really looking at him. It almost sounded fond.
Yep, absolutely crying over the whole playing hide and seek with their baby thing, Lucifer was so fucked. “Fucking hormones,” he grumbled in response.
“I’ll be expecting a thank you card for giving you an acceptable excuse for all the blubbering any day now,” Alastor replied, which a) he was an asshole, b) he was such an asshole and c) he was right but he was still a hole of ass (and kind of a lovely ass even if he absolutely knew it). “I don’t believe it’ll be possible to keep it quiet much longer. Even from two days ago, you seem to have ballooned.”
“If you weren’t so damn tall, maybe it would be more subtle.” Lucifer couldn’t even put any heat behind that; tall, mouthy and musical did seem to be his relationship of choice so he was bound to have big kiddos. “We’re going to have to figure out where it’s going to go in here. Maybe move things around, slip in a pocket dimension or just a door to the next room if we can commandeer it, but I don’t know how ready I’ll be to let Sparks out of my sight once I can see more than the light show.”
“We also require names as a matter of some urgency – between variations on spark, DJ and bump, I haven’t found a single thing I feel comfortable yelling!” Alastor shifted over more as the movement seemed to slow down. Maybe they were sleepy.
“Why do you want to yell at our kid?” Lucifer asked.
“I don’t,” Alastor repeated. “However, given Charlie’s tendency towards wandering off into hell, I’m merely thinking ahead. Have you not thought of any names?”
Lucifer hmmed at him because sure he had. Names meant something in hell and names with an etymology like holy or beloved of God were staying the fuck away from this kid. Charlotte was “freedom” and Charlie absolutely embodied that nickname notwithstanding. Then a thought struck him suddenly–
“Did you have a family name you wanted to use?” That would be fine as long as it wasn’t something ridiculous. As if Lucifer wasn’t a ridiculous name, he hadn’t a leg to stand on. “Or – if it’s a girl, whether you wanted to call her after your mother or something like that.”
“I don’t.” Alastor said firmly.
“Yeah, I get that, maybe having a princess of hell named after you isn’t a compliment,” Lucifer admitted. It wasn’t as if Alastor had found some nice girl, gotten married and had a baby. This kid was the result of hooking up with the king of hell who he may have some slightly squishy and love shaped feelings for so maybe he wanted to keep his mortal life away from that. “I’m probably not exactly the kind of person she would have wanted for you.”
“I disagree,” Alastor replied.
“You think your mother – who you have often said was a good woman deserving of the holy afterlife – would be cool with you literally reproducing with the devil?” Lucifer indicated himself. “I’m not exactly take home to mother material.”
“I expect she would have wanted me to be with someone I find as engaging and beautiful as you,” Alastor replied which sheesh way to make a guy blush. “While she may have balked at your title, I believe she would have liked you, the person, simply as you are. You’re going to cry more now, aren’t you?”
“Your fault,” Lucifer said, his voice thick and gummy as he tried to rein it in unsuccessfully. “Shit, I’m like a mucus faucet.”
“Lovely,” Alastor replied dryly, but he did at least think to give him a soft handkerchief to blow into and dab away his reddened eyes. “It’s not a matter of compliments but a matter of weight: to give her my mothers name is to attach some of her history and her burdens to the child. They deserve to find their own path without carrying weight from the world of the living. They’ll have enough weight to carry from hell.”
That was true. As a little prince or princess of hell, there were certain things that came with that title such as the way people would treat them or judge them in a way they wouldn’t a normal child. There would be problems of privacy, of learning to harness power because fuck it he’d really let Charlie down on that front and she was only now learning how to defend herself properly.
“I guess that rules out naming a boy after your father,” Lucifer said without thinking. Oh yeah, let’s open up that can of worms, great idea.
“We could also name it after yours,” Alastor replied shortly. “You certainly yelled for his attention a few times during the child’s conception.”
Lucifer scooted down and pulled the blankets over his head. Never had he been more thankful that he was sure his father hadn’t listened to anyone calling for him, let alone Lucifer doing it, in at least ten millennia. Besides, he was pretty sure he could hear Alastor laughing at him from out there in the uncovered world and that wasn’t too bad.
At least he’d kept his Eyes to himself. Progress, right?
In the morning, Lucifer woke to find himself alone.
Not exactly unusual, Alastor had a more fixed schedule around the hotel than he did but a look at the clock told him it wasn’t even six in the morning. It probably meant that Alastor had decided to do one of his early morning broadcasts and annoy the shit out of the rest of hell with a screaming wake up call. It had been a while since he’d done one of those, but maybe he was in a good mood and wanted to make that everyone else's problem.
As Lucifer wandered downstairs in search of coffee, the place was a ghost town. Maybe Charlie was still asleep or had gone out early, but while Sparky wasn’t taking up as much energy anymore, he was still growing a kid and feeling the energy seepage. Besides, the copper taste had been slowly fading and he was reveling in it. Coffee helped everything except sleep but with Alastor up, he didn’t want to linger in bed.
“Whoa!”
Lucifer turned around to see Angel, looking tired and drawn with mussed up glitter all over him and the smell of – yeah, okay, given what he worked doing, it wasn’t a surprise what he smelled like. “What?”
“You popped, Pops!” Angel smiled at him, surprisingly bright despite the obvious exhaustion creeping into his edges. “You got the belly!”
“Oh,” Lucifer looked down and yeah, as Alastor had noted the night before, his ‘what’s quacking?’ pyjamas didn’t even close all the way anymore. Any hopes someone would write this off as a beer belly were long gone. “Yeah, have you seen Charlie? I don’t exactly grow ‘em small.”
“No shit,” Angel whistled, helping himself to the leftover coffee like it was some golden elixir. Actually, some nights, it felt like one so he wasn’t one to judge that. He’d just put more on for Charlie when she wanted some. “You’re sure it’s just one kid in there? ‘Cause when my ma had twins, she popped real hard and ended up waddling all over the place.”
“Just one spark,” Lucifer said, but even as he said it, he realised that didn’t mean anything, did it? What if the spark was a collective thing? What if there were two in there and that’s why there were two kids in the dream and it wasn’t even Charlie at all and oh shit, what if there’s a fucking litter in there? Do deers have litters? “Actually, I don’t know, hang on.”
Throwing himself into a secondary plane to get a good look with his Capital E Eyes in public wasn’t ideal, but at this point, most of the hotel people had seen them due to the pregnancy mishaps. Funnily enough, no music this morning – maybe the little one had tuckered themselves out last night with all the dancing?
All he needed to see was the shape of them, the real them and not the taste of fried seafood, peanuts and a vague damp, musty smell that seemed to come with them now which who the fuck knew what all that was about.
Oh, there we go, a side profile, but that was – that was eyelashes, the little thing had eyelashes? Oh, and those kind of looked like claws, that could be an issue, but at least it just looked like one little thing, a mash up of little parts on one cute little person with translucent skin who suddenly gave him one hell of a kick to bring him back to his own body.
“Nope, just the one,” Lucifer said with a sigh of relief. He stumbled briefly but Angel grabbed him with one of his arms, letting him steady himself on the spider demon. “She’s got eyelashes, I didn’t know they could have eyelashes already. I don’t think she’s got a working respiratory system but sure, eyelashes, that’s important.”
“They got their uses,” Angel said, fluttering his own probably-fake ones at him. “I didn’t know you knew it was a girl.”
“I don’t,” Lucifer relied, taking a long sip of coffee.
“Then how come you said she?” Angel asked. “You just assuming?”
“I said she?” Okay, look, sometimes Lucifer’s mouth tended to open before his brain engaged. Was that because of the eyelashes because eyelashes weren’t actually a gender thing, had he seen – actually, now that he thought about it, did not see the one thing that usually would be a big indicator of it being a boy between the legs. Could not have grown yet, could have it tucked up somewhere, but – “Oh, I think it’s a girl.”
“You didn’t know you thought that?” Angel asked, handing him his coffee cup. “Sounds like you need it more than me.”
“You should probably be having something that’ll help you sleep,” Lucifer said instead, “You work hard.”
“Emphasis on the hard,” Angel said, flashing him a toothy grin before it just seemed to crumble away like a mask. “I gotta stay awake long enough to wash off this shitstain of a night and I didn’t think I’d make it upstairs.”
“I think Al’s broadcasting,” Lucifer suggested. “If that doesn’t keep you up, nothing will.”
Angel snorted, “Yeah, he doesn’t get me up in the same way he gets you up, so I think I’ll keep my morning scream free. My night was screamy enough.”
And with that horrifying statement, Angel left Lucifer to his wares with the sudden revelation: another little girl.
Was it awful that he was relieved? It wasn’t that he hated the idea of a son, far from it, but he knew at least something about being a girl dad: he knew how to braid hair and play dress up and how to tie ribbons just so. A boy would have been fine too, he’d have learned how to do it, but this was more comfortable. This was familiar, at least up to a point.
Besides, Alastor was definitely better with girls – wait, would Alastor even want to know? Some people didn’t, right? But this wasn’t the kind of thing he could keep an easy secret. Alastor was part bloodhound for secrets so the easiest thing would just be to tell him that he’d seen what he was pretty sure was a lack of anything between the legs that would indicate their kid would be peeing standing up and as such, they might want to start thinking of little girl names.
It turned out this was going to be addressed sooner rather than later as Alastor was in the lobby when he came out of the kitchen. Standing there chatting away to Charlie, they really were both stupidly tall – if this kid was big, he was absolutely going to end up getting shit for it, wasn’t he?
“Hello peeps,” Lucifer interrupted, happy when Charlie seemed to visibly brighten as she noticed him. “Hi honey, can I steal him for a minute?”
“As long as I can have him back for the staff meeting,” Charlie smiled. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah!” Lucifer replied, turning to where Alastor was leaning on his microphone. They only took a few steps before he couldn’t hold it in. “I don’t know if you’d want to know if it’s a boy, girl or something else but I was just checking to make sure it was just one baby and I think I saw – I think I saw what it looked like but I wasn’t sure if you wanted it to be a surprise and maybe I ruined it, I know I can’t keep a secret, so I’m sorry if I ruined it?”
Alastor blinked a couple of times. “I’m sorry, but I do have trouble parsing your ramblings at the best of times – are you trying to say you know what the sex of the baby is?”
Lucifer fought the urge to stick out his tongue. It wasn’t dignified in public. He was the king, god damn him – literally! “Yeah, I think so.”
Alastor tapped his microphone against the floor twice and made a soft little trumpet sound. “Do tell.”
Lucifer grinned. “How do you feel about daughters?”
It was strange to watch a smile become a smile, but in Alastor’s case, there was no other way of describing it. Something about him just seemed to warm instantly at the idea. “A girl?”
“I didn’t see anything between the legs,” Lucifer said. “I mean, I wasn’t really looking, it’s just hard not to when you’re taking in the sights and she absolutely kicked me to stop me spying on her so she definitely takes after you.”
Alastor’s smile never wavered as he bent down to Lucifer’s stomach, “Excellent job, young lady! You deserve your privacy.”
Lucifer snorted, "I don't know how well her ears are developed but sure, boundaries are-"
“I’M GETTING A SISTER?!”
That was the only warning before Lucifer got hit with one of Charlie’s signature tackles from behind and it was only angelic power and Alastor grabbing his arm that kept them both (mostly) upright. Lucifer couldn’t even be mad about it – he was happy she was so excited, chattering on about cute little outfits, teaching her how to do her hair, talking about boys and girls and whatever else she might like but can she at least come out of him before they start with that please? Give him a century or two?
“Was that all you saw?” Alastor asked when Charlie stopped to breathe long enough to be pulled away by her girlfriend, still talking about it rapidly. Yeah, Alastor was right, they were going to have to announce this sooner rather than later. It was a toss up what was less subtle, his stomach or his daughter.
Lucifer thought back to the image in his brain, trying to grab at it before it slipped away. “I saw eyelashes,” he said, remembering what he’d noticed first. “And I think claws too so I’m warning you now, if this kid tries to burst its way out of me like Alien then I am not going to be happy.”
Alastor frowned with his eyebrows, “Why would an alien claw its way out of you?”
Lucifer simply sighed. While he was older than time, Alastor probably hadn’t watched a movie since Charlie Chaplin was still playing in them. They really needed a movie demon to come along and put the television one in perspective for certain people.
“Come on,” Lucifer said, taking Alastors hand and pulling him towards the staff room. “Let’s go get your early morning staff terrorising done so I can steal you for a nap.”
“You can steal me whenever you’d like,” Alastor told him quietly. Far too sincere for this time of the morning, oh, no, not again, oh shit.
Vaggie poked her head around the door just as he realised he could see a lot more than he meant to. Damn it, so much for progress. “You might want to grab some more tissues,” she said. “I’ve counted three eyes in here and unless we want to deal with flood damage again, stop being an asshole.”
“He wasn’t being an asshole,” Lucifer interjected before Alastor could jump in with some colourful retort. “He was being romantic.”
Watching Vaggie’s face turn vaguely horrified at the notion was at least a little funny. “That is somehow so much worse,” she said. “Either way, can you stow it till later? I don’t think saving each other from drowning is a Charlie approved bonding practice.”