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Chapter Text

There was someone new at Alastor’s favorite butcher shop. He was certain of it. Alastor made a point of keeping track of whomever found themselves in “Boucher’s Butchery” at the same time as his near-religiously regular Wednesday visit at half past noon. It was a man of some obvious, obnoxious wealth and a young teenage girl Alastor could only assume was his daughter, based on the resemblance. Both patrons were blonde, white, and had a flush across their cheeks that Alastor suspected of being the result of sunburn. The man was carrying a cane with a an apple as its knob and was dressed in pristine white, the daughter was in a plain red dress with a white shirt underneath.

The young lady was gazing around the shop with an odd disturbed fascination that suggested she’d never actually accompanied someone to a butcher shop before, shifting between curiosity at the variety before her and disgust at the implied carnage, the viscerality of all the raw flesh set out on display. Her father had all the disgust- not just at the flesh but at the shop around him, barely holding back his obvious distaste at being forced to interact with the world outside of a pristine, shiny bubble.

Hardly a pleasant addition to his Wednesday routine, to be sure. Alastor comforted himself with what was obviously true: this pair almost certainly would not be customers here for long- either they were here for a short term visit, or they just hadn’t gotten around to hiring whatever ‘staff’ they needed at whatever renovated plantation the father had purchased, and Alastor would be sharing space with one of this man’s employees every week, rather than having to watch the eponymous Charles Boucher watch his shop be looked upon with contempt.

So Alastor waited, smiling placidly while the ‘gentleman’ collected his order, smiling slightly less placidly when the young lady saw and then waved goodbye to him on the way out- the child had been admittedly entirely pleasant throughout the transaction- and then widened his grin into one of genuinely delighted familiarity as he approached the counter.

“Chuck! Hello, my friend, what do you have for me today?” Alastor asked, and allowed the familiar selling point of this or that just got in, the cow was practically still breathing, and just for Alastor he had a friend who had shot a lovely buck and was looking to see if anyone was interested in any of it.

Alastor had made less circumspect cocaine purchases, honestly, but regulations were what they were and so long as he got what he wanted he couldn’t complain- honestly, he rather enjoyed the cloak-and-dagger nature of it all.

So, altogether, not the best way his day could have started, but not the worst.

-

He had work that evening- four to ten, Monday through Friday, like clockwork. The show started at five, but he was expected to arrive an hour early to be lectured at by Gabriel for 20 minutes and then spend 40 minutes pretending to memorize programming notes with a passive smile on his face while actually stewing in resentment at having to adhere not just to reasonable standards and practices limiting everyone in the industry but indeed to the personal whims of a crass man and his crass money.

Denise, Gabriel’s secretary, a delightful woman with thin wired glasses and curly black hair pulled into in a tightly styled bun who was about 20 years older than Alastor, typically poked her head in to get money for when she fetched his dinner for him at this point, which had the dual purpose of reminding Alastor that he did indeed also still need money to eat.

It was worth it, ultimately, for the moment when he counted himself down and the heady rush of his introduction carrying into the ears of his listeners.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, this is Alastor Toussaint speaking, we have a delightful evening of programming in store for you this evening, sponsored by-”

Alastor spent the evening bouncing between political and sports news and coming up with friendly, comfortable patter to fill in spaces between songs, three hours later spending the one half hour long break afforded to him by a Mystery House rerun tiptoeing as fast as he could out of the studio without getting caught on the record’s microphone to gratefully take the dressed peacemaker- unlike him, he normally preferred red meat- out of Denise’s hand- “I beg you to excuse my manners, dear Denise, I haven’t eaten since this morning-” too busy nearly unhinging his jaw to inhale the sandwich to come to a proper end of his sentence.

“Think nothing of it but don’t choke, Alastor! You don’t want to miss your plans tonight, do you?” Denise asked, handing him a cup of coffee to wash the bread down with.

Alastor chewed, swallowed, drank. Speed aside, he was not letting bits of food fly out of his mouth while he spoke to a woman to whom he currently felt he owed his life, “Funny, I don’t recall having told you I had plans this evening, Denise.”

“No, but I’ve known you going on five years now, and were I the betting woman I’d bet on you finding someplace hot to go after work nine times outta ten.” Denise had her own po’boy she was eating with a great deal more grace, and she punctuated her sentence with a bite that meant she felt the need to daintily hide her smile behind her hand.

“You make my life sound terribly exciting.”

“Is it not? Mark and I are too old for that kinda thing these days, but you seem like you have fun.”

‘Fun,’ was a word for it.

“A friend of mine is performing tonight,” Alastor replied instead, as if Mimzy wasn’t performing something, somewhere, most nights ending in ‘y.’ “ And of course, I have to keep up with the industry.”

“Oh, sure,” Denise said, with a little fond click of her tongue.

-

It was Zazzy’s Lounge Mimzy was playing that evening. Gabriel decided that he wanted an extra 27 minutes- Alastor had kept track- of his time after the show ended than usual, so her set had begun by the time he was able to make his way across town at a trot, trying not to look like he was running from something untoward. The last thing he needed was to explain that he was simply making his way to a friend’s home to a squinting policeman trying to decide if he was the sort of person who deserved the benefit of the doubt in the dim streetlamps.

They knew him at Zazzy’s, at least, so when he rushed his way through the ridiculous handshake that required he touch the tough outside’s sweaty palms he wasn’t made to suffer through it a second, slower time.

Mimzy saw an opportunity to boss him into buying her an apology drink for his late arrival, and four drinks and a bump each later she bullied him right back out on the dance floor.

He was, it must be said, a very willing victim.

They danced, they laughed, either himself or Mimzy would occasionally make a grand show of having not heard some other prospective partner looking to speak to either of them.

The night went on.

-

The nights went on.

-

The father and daughter were there again the next Wednesday. They took the last filets Chuck was selling.

It would be ridiculous, of course, to dwell on it.

-

Mimzy wasn’t actually in town that week. She’d booked several very exciting performances in Chicago and had left that past weekend. Still, he sidestepped Denise’s questions about where he was going that evening, only to hop between several different establishments. The atmosphere didn’t feel right, or the band was terrible. Something inside him was hungry for something more.

He was, generally, quite content with his ‘social circle,’ or lack thereof. A friendly relationship with the salespeople of or waitstaff of every business he frequented, a deep silent useless hatred of Gabriel, a delightful friendly coworker in Denise, and Mimzy’s company otherwise. Mimzy was a perfect friend for Alastor- a talented woman, a shared taste in music, no desire to stretch their friendship into something it wasn’t. Comfortable conversations in bars and a familiar, competent dance partner.

People often insisted that time should equate to intimacy, insist on an honesty to the relationship that Alastor wasn’t interested in giving- and couldn’t give even if he were, at risk of police attention.

Or, worse, admiration. A desire to join in. He wouldn’t put it past Mimzy- a certain delight at seeing others squirm was why they got along so well- but he couldn’t imagine inviting a third into his intimate evenings out in the swamp.

It had been some time since he’d indulged in that particular ritual. Unthinking, he realized he’d made his way to the nearest place he’d last seen a sign posted, a family asking for knowledge of the whereabouts of one Arnold Walker, last known location blah, blah, blah. The family member- his brother, almost certainly, the only variable Alastor had had to concern himself with.

The ‘Last Seen’ date was sixteen months ago. He wasn’t sure he’d ever taken a break this long.

It would be another week, at least.

-

The daughter seemed much more comfortable in the space, on this visit. She turned and visibly recognized him, waved hello.

Shocking, that the man who saw her waving and immediately steered her bodily to another end of the counter was able to raise such a polite young person.

-

Alastor couldn’t recall if Mimzy had mentioned how long she would be gone. These engagements were normally only a week or two.

Alastor just went home.

-

Alastor got there before them, the following week. The sound of the bell wringing behind him bumped his shoulders up by a hair, and Alastor heard the father say, “You can wait out here if you want, sweetie, but stay in sight of the front window.”

A sort of furtive, clingy protectiveness.

The man was quite short. It had always been obvious, but something about turning around with his order in his arms to see the man had come up behind him drove the point home as he looked down, down at him.

Polite smile. Always the smile. A nod.

Outside the shop the daughter was to the right of the door playing with a length of string, doing cat’s cradle style games with herself. He stopped outside the door, looking through what he’d gotten today, mentally composing a list for the grocers and hum-singing “Oh when you’re smiling, hmhmmhm, oh when you’re smiling, hmhmm, the whole world smiles with you-”

He preferred Armstrong’s version of the song, but in his own voice it came out more like Ellis.

There was an excited, chirpy, “Oh!” from his right. He looked down, and her fingers had gone limp, loosening the pattern of string.

“Are you on the radio?” She asked.

In a sense, but he assumed she meant, “Oh, well, although I appreciate the compliment to my singing voice, I’m not part of any music group, no, young lady.”

The girl rolled her eyes. “No, not singing. You talk in between the songs, right? At night, while dinner’s getting made. You’re Alas- uh, Mr. Toussaint?”

Goodness! He couldn’t say he’d ever had someone recognize him by his voice like that, what a novel skill!

“Alastor Toussaint, yes! A pleasure to be meeting you, miss, quite a pleasure!” His skin scrunched up under the monocle in his right eye, such was the genuine stretch of his smile as he held his hand out for the girl to take. “And you are?”

“Charlie!” She said, reaching out to grab his, “Charlie Mo-, uh, Magne, I really like-”

“Charlie!” The father had presumably finished his purchase and come out. “What are you doing? You can’t go around just touching strange people, you don’t know where he’s been!”

He bustled through, and got between the two of them before they could shake hands. Alastor had half a second to feel shell shocked before taking several steps back, carefully distancing himself from them as quickly as possible. “I didn’t mean to intrude, of course, your daughter is simply a fan of my radio show, you see.”

“Radio?” The man’s eyebrows scrunched together, and he shook his head, settling a hand on his daughter’s shoulder, “Yeah, whatever, hey come on Char-Char we gotta head home, mmk?”

Alastor watched them leave.

It was nothing, of course. A small, everyday indignity, a remarkably delightful interaction spoiled by a small, snobbish little man. If he allowed himself to become riled up over every moment someone made clear they thought he was beneath them, he would have murdered half of New Orleans by the time he’d reached his eighteenth birthday. It had been a stupid thing to do, offering the handshake. A spur of the moment bit of friendliness.

It was a spur of the moment bit of malice that had him follow after the pair, at a distance.

-

He had to leave to go to work, of course- Alastor did not, as a rule, hunt men of Magne’s means for a reason, and changing his schedule at all would not make this any better an idea. Gabriel was, at least, somewhat more tolerable to deal with with the looming promise of a release of tension ahead of him.

His sandwich was roast beef, today, and he ate it alone- Denise had dropped food off and then been immediately sent off on some other errand by Gabriel. That was fine. A half hour alone to think was just what he needed.

Alastor was not what you’d call an endurance predator, he didn’t tend toward studying his targets long term before striking, but he really ought to take some time with this one. His typical targets consisted of workmen, laborers, the sorts of men he was at all likely to ever rub shoulders with enough for them to offend his sensibilities- Gabriel was the closest thing to a ‘sophisticated’ man he ever spoke to on the day-to-day, and of course that was only if you ignored that his money largely stemmed from criminal enterprises. The radio paid for itself in sponsorships, but largely it was a hobby for the man.

Also possibly a money laundering scheme, Alastor hadn’t looked into it.

Point being, if someone of Magne’s means went missing- Alastor had discovered he lived in the Garden District, no surprise there- the police were much more likely to pay attention than they were Alastor’s other victims.

There were some upsides, though. Near as Alastor could tell, the man was somehow subsisting with no everyday service staff whatsoever. Alastor had no idea how- the massive, Greek Revival mansion with its huge front porch and balcony had to have at least half a dozen bedrooms and probably a dedicated ballroom. The idea of just the man and his daughter- along with two small terrier dogs he heard Charlie shouting for, calling ‘Razzle,’ and ‘Dazzle,’ when they arrived home and a black cat he spotted in the window- living in such a space was outrageous. But it did seem to be the case.

That night, after work, he made his way back to the Garden District. It was then that he discovered a charming little habit of Magne’s that was, Alastor thought, precisely what he needed. At 11pm, less than half an hour after Alastor managed to make his way onto his street- not a place he could be seen milling around in for too long after dark, anyway- Alastor watched as Magne, visibly from what lamps were lit the only member of the household still awake, stepped outside his front door and walk, alone, on a long meandering route around the neighborhood that took him close to several dark, closed commercial streets.

Alastor returned the next night. Same thing. He left after the walk, and after a pick-me-up he made some arrangements nearby.

One had to balance caution with the risk of being spotted in a part of town where he would be decidedly unwelcome, or suspected of taking an interest- he didn’t know the man’s first name yet, and he didn’t mean to go asking around after it. Also after over a year of tedium he wanted to do this with the sort of mad, desperate hunger that wasn’t so different from how he’d heard other people sometimes describe the desire for sex. On Friday, Alastor brought a large luggage trunk, a rag he would be happily burning later, and a bottle of chloroform. He did not go to the mansion tonight, but instead found an alley behind a closed tailor shop that Alastor had seen him pass quite close to the previous two nights, and waited.

When the telltale clacking of the short man’s slightly-higher-than-was-plausibly-fashionable heels on the street, Alastor prepared himself and, when he saw the flash of his always pristinely white suit, struck. He came at him from behind, wrapping his arm around Magne’s neck and putting pressure on that oh-so-handy artery. The chloroform was for making the unconsciousness stick, not the initial knockout. The man stilled- freezing completely for an odd moment before he started to struggle, as if he needed a moment to realize what the proper response to being accosted was. When he did start struggling for the few seconds between that and his falling unconscious it was a weak, feeble thing. Alastor dragged the man further into the alleyway, nearer to the trunk, surprised at his weight- the man felt heavier than could be justified by his size.

He’d left the trunk open, and dropped Magne’s unconscious body in before he coated the rag in chloroform and pressed it to his mouth, to make sure the man stayed down. This took a solid several minutes, which was why he’d wanted the man already helpless before administration. Then Magne was tied up, gagged, and locked in the trunk.

In a perfect world, Alastor liked to do this next part out in the wilderness somewhere, but Alastor was also very aware that he did not live in a perfect world. Dragging an unwilling body in a trunk all the way out of the city from this deep into it had never been in the cards. There had been a warehouse fire not too long ago, and after some exploration Alastor was fairly certain the manager had, for whatever reason, insulated his office almost entirely from sound. Said office had mostly survived the fire, and it would do for his purposes until the man was a much more easily transported corpse. Alastor had double checked last night, and installed a deadbolt on the door with a manic anticipation brought on by the chemicals he’d used to keep himself on task.

Transporting the body even a short distance was nerve wracking- it was a quick walk, but he only expected the chloroform to keep him down for half an hour or so, and that was assuming he had understood the concentration correctly. This was hardly his first time using the substance for this purpose, but it had been over a year and he was not a chemist.

Only once he’d ensconced himself and his prey in the office did he allow himself to believe he had actually done it. He opened the trunk, dragged the man’s body out and dropped it onto the soot stained floor with a sort of immature glee at the streaks of black staining the impossibly perfect whiteness of the man’s suit.

There was a poem there, but not one written by the sort of artist he had any kind of respect for.

He was alert in a way he hadn’t been without chemical assistance in months, his heart a skittering hopeful beat in his chest. The perpetual, pleasant smile on his face was wider, sharper, he imagined if he looked himself in the mirror he would find his eyes bright and alert. A thought has him removing his monocle- the world goes blurry in a disorienting, unbalanced sort of way, but it’s better than some bit of desperate flailing managing to get glass in his eye. He left an arrangement of knives here last night, after he installed the lock, and he unrolled the wrapped kit they were in for ease of access.

He waited.

He waited slightly longer than anticipated.

Once his pocketwatch marked that it’d been forty minutes since the initial dose, he reached down to check Magne’s pulse and, when that seemed promisingly normal, slapped at his face a bit. The idea of his victim dying before he got to spend some time with him fills Alastor’s gut with a sort of terrible hollowness all over again.

But the slapping seemed to do the trick, because almost immediately after Magne starts shifting and opens his eyes. Alastor had tied him up thoroughly, a gag in his mouth, legs tied together from ankle to knee and arms bound tightly behind him. He gave the other man a moment to take in his surroundings, his circumstances, and waited for the fear to enter his eyes as he realized how helpless he was.

It never comes.

Certainly, Magne seemed to understand what was happening- he sat up, looked at the office, looked at Alastor, his eyes were alert and focused. But the fear never came. He simply sat there, waiting patiently for Alastor to say or do something.

“Magne, is it?” Alastor said, trying to get something to drive itself into the man’s placid, patient expression. “I’m afraid I’ve no idea whatsoever what your first name is.”

A raised eyebrow, a nod downward to signal the obvious to Alastor- Magne was gagged, he couldn’t reply.

“You should know that this room is insulated against sound. Do feel free to scream anyway, if you like- I’ve always found useless, desperate screaming rather entertaining,” Alastor said, and then finally reached forward to untie the gag.

Magne cleared his throat, tensed and untensed his jaw a few times. Alastor waited with a gluttonous anticipation.

“No thanks,” Magne said, “I’m good. It’s Alastor, right? Toussaint? I’m Lucifer. Uh, really, before you think I’m fucking with you, that is actually the name I was given when I was born.”

“Truly?” Alastor asked. This was going very differently than he expected it to. He couldn't decide if he liked it- a lot of the appeal of giving his victim a chance to speak was the novelty of the different ways people responded to the inevitability of death, and he couldn’t figure out if this was a sort of denial or acceptance.

“Yeah. So, Alastor,” Lucifer said, “I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot on Wednesday.”

… Bargaining? Was this what this man’s version of bargaining was? He’d gotten bargaining from victims before, and it typically involved a lot more desperate begging than this.

“I’m not sure what it is I did to piss you off- like, I get that your usual victims aren’t kids, but I think ‘has to have not killed 17 people, even if those people were adult men’ is actually a pretty low bar to have for people who wanna hang out with my kid, y’know?”

…

wha-

what the fu-

“What the fuck?” Alastor said. Asked? His smile remained firmly affixed in place but it had gone from sharp to bemused.

“Like don’t get me wrong, very impressive piece of shit human behavior, you don’t normally see those numbers out of people who aren’t like, tricking themselves into doing government sanctioned murder instead of the freelance hobbyist stuff you seem to be into,” Lucifer continued.

Alastor finally regained control of his limbs enough to take a wobbling step forward, and then another, until his hands were at Lucifer’s throat and he was bodily shaking the man, making his head jerk in a way that had to be uncomfortable. Lucifer’s eyes- what an absurd name, Alastor couldn’t decide if it was true or Magne was trying to convince him he was some sort of supernatural thing. His throat felt enough like a man’s under Alastor’s hands, his pulse going from infuriatingly calm to a fluttering, jumpy thing as he lost oxygen. His smile was a bearing of teeth, no longer the predator, now a trapped snapping animal. “Shut up. How do you know that?”

Lucifer wheezed, but managed to choke out, “Do you want me to shut up, ehhck, or do you want me to-”

Alastor shoved the man back down onto the ground by his throat and then, once he’d gotten Lucifer where he wanted him and straddled his chest to keep him there, removed his hands. “Answer the question.”

“I, ahem, I mean. Anyone with the nose for it can smell it on you, Mr. Toussaint.” Lucifer was smiling. It wasn’t right, for Lucifer to be the one smiling while Alastor struggled to keep his wavering mouth open and bared around his teeth. “It’s obvious.”

An involuntary snarl bursts from his throat. He twisted to look behind him and grabbed a hunting knife, taking it in hand and then slamming it down into Lucifer’s thigh in one swift, unhesitating motion. Even Lucifer’s attitude, determined not to acknowledge the seriousness of his situation, couldn’t hold back the cry of pain and surprise that bubbled up out of his throat. Alastor untwisted his torso to look the other man in the face, taking in his twisted, pained mouth and wincing eyes. That was a little better. “A better explanation than that, if you please.”

“I- ahaha, oh FUCK that smarts- I don’t know what to tell you, man, I don’t uh… have anything else for you.” Lucifer adjusted his position slightly, winced again. Alastor twisted the knife just to hear the resultant high pitched whimper. He has had his mouth open and has been panting for breath ever since the knife first got driven into him, “It’s really obvious to me that you’ve killed seventeen people- first one was when you were like, a teenager or something? Last one was like, a year, a year and a half ago? Something like that. No one else knows, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

By the end of his statement a thin trickle of drool had spilled out of the corner of his mouth from holding it open, panting and in pain for so long. Alastor looked into his eyes- a sort of warm amber-brown, like honey. They were watery but not crying, and he didn’t have the manic animal fear that he ought to have right now. He did not give the impression of someone telling Alastor whatever he wanted to hear to keep himself alive.

And surely, if he was, he wouldn’t be telling Alastor that he was the only person out there that knew what Alastor was.

“What are you doing here?” Alastor asked, baffled.

Lucifer looked equally baffled. “Uh? You choked me out and then took me here? Obviously?”

The smart thing to do would be to torture some more information about how he knew what Alastor was out of him. If Alastor had ever before considered having to torture someone for information, rather than fun, before he might have done it.

Alastor yanked the knife out of Lucifer’s thigh without giving the short man a chance to prepare for it, and listened to the punched-out breath push itself out of his lungs. It wasn’t that Alastor wasn’t hurting Lucifer. It was that Lucifer’s understanding of how much danger that pain represented seemed… wrong somehow. He scooted down a bit so he straddled the top of the other man’s thighs and brought the knife up, cutting Lucifer out of his waistcoat and shirt.

He hadn’t done this in so long. He hadn’t even picked a target he normally enjoyed doing this with, this time- Lucifer’s reasons for wanting Alastor to keep away from his daughter were much more reasonable than the racism Alastor had initially understood it to be. But he needed to die now, of course, and the stretch of pale flesh revealed by the knife sent a heady rush that he felt as heat through his face, a shiver that flowed across his shoulderblades and down his spine.

“... lots of reasons, I guess.” Lucifer continued. Speech made his belly jump a little, clenching on the indraw of breath in spite of how softly he spoke the words. Alastor leveled the tip of the hunting knife against the spot between where his pubic hair became sparse and his belly button. “Sometimes it feels like I arranged for a train to explode. Like I arranged for every train ever to eventually explode but you all keep getting in trains anyway, because you don’t have a choice, and maybe it won’t explode on this trip. I think part of me figured I deserved to be on the train when it exploded, for once.”

This incoherent little monologue clearly wasn’t even properly directed at Alastor. Lucifer’s eyes were half glazed and focused at some random spot on the ceiling. His golden blonde hair was grayed by the soot on the floor, and the area around his mouth was shining and damp.

Alastor stabbed down, not hard enough to perforate organs but deep enough to the initial layer of skin, muscle, and fat, and then drew the knife up sharply, stopped only by the fork of Lucifer’s ribcage.

Which, if nothing else, drew Lucifer’s attention back to Alastor. He wasn’t certain why that mattered to him- it never really had before, beyond them knowing who was killing them and why they were dying. Perhaps because Lucifer apeared not to be actually guilty of the behavior Alastor normally yearned to repay with violence and fear, perhaps because he was the only person Alastor has ever known who understood precisely what sort of things Alastor had done, with numbers and a sort of casual, uninterested acceptance. The sudden, shocked scream as Alastor opened up Lucifer’s insides was intoxicating, and Alastor hooked his thumb into flesh to draw it aside and look in at the jumping, pumping, wet mass of flesh and organs underneath. Lucifer wiggled and strained underneath him, letting out a sort of whining keen but not screaming- Alastor’s eyes darted away from the feast before him to take in Lucifer’s face, weeping and wincing, like his hand was being held to the surface of a stove but he couldn’t draw his hand away.

Wouldn’t draw his hand away?

No. He couldn’t, of course. Alastor wouldn’t give him the opportunity. Alastor reached his other hand down and cupped Lucifer’s cheak in his palm, felt a tear well up underneath his thumb and followed a curious impulse to bring it to his lips, salt bursting on his tongue as he made long, lingering eye contact with Lucifer, weeping wetly beneath him.

It had been disappointing and confusing, at first, when Lucifer had not behaved as Alastor expected a victim to. But he yearned so ardently for novelty.

“You’ve given me a gift,” Alastor stated, slipping his hand into the other man’s guts and sliding his fingers through the wet, hot meat of them. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything so beautifully new.”

Lucifer let out baffled, confused laughter interspersed with high pitched whining screams that made his insides jump and slip around Alastor’s fingers. Alastor repositioned himself so he could begin pressing his hand upward inside of Lucifer’s abdomen, slipping underneath his ribcage. Part of Alastor wanted to draw this out as long as possible, watch Lucifer squirm and weep and scream underneath him for as long as Alastor could draw it out. But with his belly split to the open air, there was only so long that could last- it was astonishing that he had not passed out already from the pain- and what Alastor wanted even more than for this to last was to hold Lucifer’s jumping, beating heart in his hand and squeeze.

He was experienced enough at this by now to find it blind, a hammering jerking rabbitlike lump of muscle cupped gently in Alastor’s palm. He drifted the hand gently cupping Lucifer’s cheek down to his chin and gripped it, forcing him to look Alastor directly in his eyes. He squeezed.

The thrashing, straining movement this caused Lucifer to give, bucking and straining against his bonds, was wholly involuntary and animalistic. His eyes light up bright and alert for a moment until they begin to fade into wet, glazed, unfocused death while Alastor watched this strange, incomprehensible man fade away.

There was a pang of regret. That had never happened before.

And then Alastor began to dress the corpse properly.

-

The weekend is spent consumed by a sort of bubbly, whole body high that nothing else in the world can give him.

-

There wasn’t really a need to go to Boucher’s Butchery the following Wednesday- Alastor had more meat than he knew what to do with- but, again, best not to break the schedule. He only planned on purchasing a small order, and will imply he intends to eat out a fair bit more than usual the following week if Chuck asks. He is in the best mood he’s been in months, even though Mimzy has still not returned- he had received a letter at least announcing she was still alive, but had managed to leverage Chicago performances into ones in New York, and would be gone for some more time yet.

He rounds the corner to look through the shop’s front window, anticipating the rush of excitement that will come when he sees that there is no white suited gentleman at the counter, the physical effect of Alastor’s actions making a mark on the world, on his own routine.

Nothing could have prepared him for the cold shock of terror he receives instead, when he looks through and sees Lucifer happily chatting with Chuck about his purchases. As Alastor watched, the short man spotted him in the shining glass in front of Boucher’s displayed meat and spun in place, giving him a friendly, wickedly smirking wave through the window.

Utterly detached from his own body, consumed by dissociative terror, Alastor felt it lift a hand and wave in return.

Chapter Text

Alastor only entered Boucher’s because he needed to confirm for certain that Chuck was definitely also seeing Lucifer. A mental break of some kind wouldn’t be an entirely outrageous explanation- Alastor was under no delusions about there being something wrong with him, he just wasn’t inclined to care. But if he was experiencing breaks from objective reality, he should probably know.

The alternative delusion- that he’d never killed Lucifer in the first place- was dire for different reasons. If Lucifer wasn’t dead, and Alastor never killed him, whose liver did Alastor eat that morning?

Vexing.

He opened the door, forced himself to step inside. Lucifer was still visibly addressing Chuck, at least, and Chuck was responding as the man took his things, turned, and walked past Alastor to the door.

Alastor didn’t bother entertaining the idea that he was experiencing such a sharp break in reality that he was imagining what Chuck was saying, too. At that point it would hardly matter what he did or believed. Charlie wasn’t here this week- not necessarily a sign that Alastor’s memories were trustworthy, last Wednesday’s encounter might have been enough for her to be left home.

Lucifer- if his name was Lucifer- stepped outside the front door and stopped. Waiting for Alastor.

Alastor was not excited about that. There was no version of reality in which that was good.

Alastor sleepwalked through buying a chuck roast- he named the first cut of beef he could think of, and, well.

“You and my newest regular friends, then?” Chuck asked as he wrapped the cut of beef in parchment paper. Alastor blinked, returned to reality, and looked at the other man’s face.

His jaw was clenched, his brows furrowed with- worry? For him?

Oh. Well, of course. Alastor had been coming here since his mother had been alive, and while she was mixed as well she was not ‘ passé blanc ’ as he was, and standing next to her had always given the game away, as it were.

Alastor briefly considered repaying the kindness of that concern by drawing him into whatever this was.

The thing was, Chuck had had an ongoing inside joke with Alastor’s mother, when she was alive. It went like this: They would walk in. Chuck would spin them a tale of some feat of bravery, or cunning, or business acumen he had performed in the past week that must surely make him enough of a hero, genius, or very rich man to deserve the attention of the most beautiful woman in all of Louisiana, Adelaide Toussaint. Alastor’s mother, who had always been a beautiful woman, even if fewer people noticed by the end of her life, would inevitably reply that oh, that was very sweet, but she wouldn’t dream of taking herself off the market when she might receive a better offer. Chuck would inevitably agree that indeed, Adelaide Toussaint ought not to settle for a millionaire who’d discovered the key to eternal life and saved five children from a burning building last week, he would simply have to work harder to be worthy of her.

Alastor hadn’t actually enjoyed it, at the time. He still wasn’t a fan of it for his own sake in retrospect- it had felt obnoxious, and there was a reason he and Chuck were friendly acquaintances, not friends. Men had flirted with Alastor’s mother all the time, his whole life.

Admittedly, very few of them did it purely for the purpose of making her laugh.

Alastor hadn’t thought of that in years.

Part of him was, he realized, very afraid he was about to die.

“It’s early days, Chuck, but I’d characterize the relationship as friendly, yes,” Alastor lied, widening his smile and scrunching up the bottoms of his eyes, brightening them, carefully, consciously collecting the signals people who were familiar with his resting smile used to check for genuine emotion, “You needn’t worry about me.”

Chuck snorted, gruffly, and waved Alastor off. “Who’s worrying? I’m just making sure it isn’t anything bad for business.”

“Not at all!” Alastor replied, “I would never dream of interfering with your establishment.”

That, at least, had the benefit of being true.

-

Alastor stepped out of the shop and turned to look at the man he was almost certain was named Lucif-

No. No, Lucifer was standing there, arms crossed, smug expectant look on his face, visibly waiting for some sort of reaction from him, and Alastor was done doubting himself. He was done equivocating.

This man was named Lucifer, Alastor had killed him last week and eaten his liver for breakfast, and now it was just a matter of how Alastor wanted to react to that.

“Lunch?” Alastor asked, because this man very obviously wanted Alastor to be confused and afraid and fuck him.  

Lucifer blinked. His eyebrows scrunched together, and he tilted his head to the side, his smug grin turning bemused. Still infuriatingly amused, but less certain he knew how this was going to go. “You know what? Sure! Why not?”

Because I killed you last week, Alastor thought. Because I killed you five days ago and there are still many, many parts of you in my refrigerator and it was wonderful, it was perfect and transcendent and now you’re standing here ruining it you’re ruining it you’re ruining it .

“Delightful!” Alastor said, “I know just the place.”

Lucifer threw out his arm in an ‘after-you’ gesture, holding a cane in his hand, the existence of which had always sort of sat in the back of Alastor’s mind but in this moment Alastor registered that he had always carried it at the butcher shop, and while ambling around town the one time Alastor had followed him home. He had not taken it on either of the walks Alastor had followed him on, and it had not been with him when Alastor abducted him.

Because, Alastor realized, he had not wanted to risk it getting damaged. When Alastor abducted him.

Alastor took the man to Ernie’s- a working-class diner with grillades to die for where Alastor never seemed to find time to eat. He was always either springing for something a bit higher class, cooking at home, or eating something sold by a street cart because who had the time to sit down?

They were seated in a booth that seemed to leave Lucifer gratifyingly confused about what exactly to do with his cane- he finally set its point on the seat and leaned the knob up against the wall, which Alastor was certain must be incorrect, and then he gripped the edge of the table and tapped his fingers idly on its top.

A sliver of doubt worked its way into Alastor’s heart. This- this man was the devil, yes? That was the only rational conclusion he’d been able to draw, when faced with the irrational situation he’d found himself in. His name was Lucifer, he seemingly deliberately arranged for his own murder last week, now he was simultaneously across the table from Alastor and rotting in his refrigerator, he- had a daughter? Based on how he spoke about her- defensive of who she might associate with- in the office, Alastor was fairly certain they were in fact of some relation to one another, although the implications of her actually being Lucifer’s daughter were. Worrying.

Lucifer being the devil was the logical conclusion to come to. A man nervously fidgeting and darting his eyes around a diner was not congruent with that conclusion, in Alastor’s eyes.

“So,” Alastor said, fishing, “You mentioned last time we spoke that you felt we had gotten off on the wrong foot.”

“Huh?” Lucifer replies, which was an unfortunate potential tic under the box labeled, ‘Alastor is experiencing some sort of disconnect from reality,’ except he continued, “I did? I mean, I could have, I was kinda playing it by ear, to be honest.”

“Oh?” Alastor asked, not certain where exactly he was going from there- there was no script available in his lexicon for, ‘By the way, whyever did you allow me to murder you last week?’

Besides that, he supposed. But Alastor wasn’t certain how exactly he was meant to say that out loud!

Thankfully, they were interrupted by the waitress approaching them. Alastor ordered the grillades and grits, and Lucifer quickly skimmed the menu until his eyes lit up.

“Oh!” He said, “Bread pudding, I haven’t had that in awhile! I’ll take that.”

“... as.” The waitress began hesitantly, “As an entree, sir?”

“Yep,” Lucifer said, and Alastor no longer had any difficulty believing this man was the devil, “That sounds perfect.”

The waitress fled, as anyone in their right mind would when faced with. That.

Lucifer turned back to Alastor, but. No. Lucifer clearly understood the situation they were in better than Alastor did, and Alastor wasn’t going to be made to take aimless shots into the dark until he stumbled onto whatever it was Lucifer wanted to discuss with him.

So in the face of Lucifer’s gaze, Alastor fell back on the old, reliable tactic. He smiled pleasantly and waited for Lucifer to speak.

Lucifer blinked.

Alastor tilted his head gently to the side.

“Do your cheeks not get tired?” Lucifer asked.

“It helps, to some extent, that the corners of my mouth are slightly upturned when at rest,” Alastor answered, “It makes it easier to obfuscate when I relax.”

It wasn’t actually the first time he’d been asked that question, and Mimzy had gotten the same answer. It wasn’t an answer to the actual question either of them had been asking underneath, but that wasn’t Alastor’s problem.

“Ah,” Lucifer said, “Guess that makes sense. Um. So. You do radio?”

“I do!” Alastor answered, “For the past- oh, eight to nine years now.”

“So pretty much as soon as it started, right?” Lucifer rested his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand, “What’d you do before that?”

What was happening.

“I was a pianist,” Alastor said, then considered, “I suppose I still am, although not professionally, and I’m rarely afforded the opportunity to practice these days. I played in restaurants. It wasn’t especially sustainable long term- I had no desire to join a band, and I didn’t really have the temperament for handling patrons with requests.”

“That feels like an understatement,” Lucifer replied.

“I can’t imagine what might make you think so, given how little you know about me,” Alastor shot back, unfairly. Lucifer knew Alastor better than anyone else yet alive, by merit of having survived their last encounter, “Or I know about you, for that matter. What is it you do, then, Mr. Magne?”

“Uh,” Lucifer answered. He used an embarrassing amount of filler words. “I mean, Lucifer’s fine, and, I, uh.”

As comforting as it was to hear the man’s first name again in the light of day, it was overshadowed by another realization.

Lucifer had not bothered to think up a lie, or a clever obfuscation, for that particular question, before Alastor had asked it. He was fumbling.

“Personnel management?” Alastor suggested, grinning, “Sales, perhaps?”

That second suggestion made Lucifer grimace, but he was rescued by the waitress arriving with their ‘meals’- quotations entirely for the bread pudding’s benefit.

“Personnel management,” Lucifer affirmed, “Or, I mean, I manage people who manage people, really. Not sales.”

“Never?”

Lucifer rolled his eyes. “Anyone you meet who suggests I tried to talk them into anything is lying to either you or themselves.”

“It’s rather more ambiguous, from my experience of you,” Alastor said, using the side of his spoon to cut a piece of tender, sauced beef and lifting it to his mouth along with some of the grits, “Certainly you don’t seem to mind baiting people into things.”

Lucifer snorted. “Ha, sure, yeah. You’re telling me you did anything you wouldn’t have eventually done with someone else, if I hadn’t been there?”

Alastor shrugged, conceding the point.

They passed a rather inoffensive meal together, that way. The closest they got to properly addressing the elephant in the room again was when Alastor asked how Lucifer was finding the weather in New Orleans and Lucifer’s summary was, “Wet.”

“Everyone expects me to freak out about it being hot, but. Y’know.” Lucifer gestured at himself, “I’m used to a dry heat.”

“I would imagine!” Alastor had replied.

Alastor also recommended several restaurants to the other man, and they briefly discussed musical taste. Lucifer’s musical taste, rather- Alastor mentioned that he curated the music for the radio station, which made his own tastes patently obvious.

“Charlie’s the one who likes jazz,” Lucifer had said, the first time and only time he mentioned his daughter, who Alastor continued to find superior to her father in every way. “It’s why we listen to your station, that and like, basically every new musical she hears. Her favorite’s the, uh, ‘Coquette’ one? She’s uh, very susceptible to songs about loving someone who doesn’t love you back. Just that age, I guess. I’m not really a big music guy? I mean, I like- uh. Do you know Lohengrin?”

This is not the first time Lucifer has gone on a bit of a rambling tangent and then clumsily returned to the topic at hand.. Alastor confessed ignorance.

“It’s this, uh, opera that came out in the 1850's. Got an ending that makes me cry every time. Soooo… yeah, it’s basically that and screamers for me right now.” Alastor wasn’t certain what precisely a ‘screamer’ was, musically speaking, but it certainly sounded like something the devil might appreciate. Lucifer sighed, “I admit, knowing me, I’ll probably like jazz twenty years or so from now, or whenever everyone else is sick of it.”

“Alternatively,” Alastor said hotly, defensive of his favorite music, “You might just as easily wait for hell to freeze over.”

Which had startled a laugh out of the man.

Honestly, the man was thoughtless, seemed to stumble his way incompetently through every statement he made, got distracted and diverted the topic of conversation at the slightest nudge, and it had been the best time Alastor’d had not between the hours of 11 pm and 3 am in a long, long time.

They part on genial terms and, really, Alastor ought to thank- well, not god, surely, but someone that there didn’t seem to be any hard feelings about the murder and that he didn’t need to be any more concerned about his immortal soul than he had bothered to be before the encounter, which was to say, not at all. Count his blessings, and all that.

Alastor resolved to do so on his way home, and tried not to think about the fact that when he picked up the chuck roast that he had almost entirely forgotten where he sat it nearly an hour ago when they entered the diner, it was -miraculously? No, probably not- still cold.

It did, to be fair, slightly contrast the ‘thoughtless’ impression.

-

Alastor spent his entire work shift unable to think of anything but the conversation.

He declined dinner when Denise asked, citing alternative plans, and watched the woman make all sorts of assumptions.

“Ooo, Alastor, a little late night rendezvous?”

“Of a sort.”

“Oh, you cad,” Denise raised a hand to her mouth in a faux-scandalized expression. “Is it a special someone, at least.”

“... of a sort.”

“You not gonna tell me anything else?”

“Well, that would hardly be gentlemanly of me, would it, Denise?” Smile, quirked eyebrow, come on, leave off it.

Denise sighed out her disappointment, “I guess not. Well, good luck to you and the lucky lady, Alastor.”

Slightly more tight lipped smile, “Mmhm.”

She left, finally, tittering a little. Denise was typically a delight, but this was hardly the first time she had made assumptions about the exact nature of his ‘night life.’

It was not, Alastor realized, an impression that his plans for the broadcast would in any way assuage, but oh well. An hour in, just after he’d finished the first news broadcast- ‘Sponsored by Chesterfield Cigarettes!’- he transitioned into a music timeslot with, “And I would like to dedicate this next song to a listener I met recently who, I have it on good authority, counts this as their favorite song!’

Said while carefully lowering the needle of the record player onto a copy of ‘Coquette,’ performed by The Dorsey Brothers.

Whatever the girl was, and however unlikely it was her father would ever bring her to Boucher’s Butchery again, it had been nice to meet a fan.

Even if Denise’s smile over his break was borderline intolerable.

-

By the time he returned home he was ravenous. He opened his refrigerator and pawed through the various carefully wrapped piles of muscle until he found a muscle- one of a set- that he was always particularly careful to harvest, when he could. The psoas major, a muscle running from the base of the spine, through the pelvis, and to the top of one’s thigh.

The tenderloin.

He carefully sliced it into medallions and gently seasoned it with salt and pepper while he heated a pan on his stove. He normally served this with a red wine sauce, but eyeing a bottle he’d set aside for the purpose he ultimately reconsidered. He didn’t want to spoil the taste.

He seared it perfectly, waited for it to rest with a fidgeting impatience, and then sliced into it, carefully, fighting against shaking hands.

He needn’t have bothered with the ritual of it- as soon as he felt flesh under his teeth, juice on his tongue, savory and hot, his self control was gone. He chewed, swallowed, didn’t bother with the knife for the next bite, just speared the medallion with his fork and tore into it.

He devoured.

Alastor didn’t come back into himself until his plate was empty and his belly was almost uncomfortably full, staring down at the juice left on it and white knuckling his way through the desire to lick it clean like an animal. He was breathing great, heaving breaths through his nose.

He didn’t know what the fuck was happening to him. It had never been like this before. It couldn’t be anything in the meat- Alastor had been eating parts of Lucifer for days already. It had to be his own understanding of the situation that had enhanced the flavor. His heartbeat was a loud, thumping drum inside his chest and his face was flushed, hot.

There was a small possibility ‘ruining it’ had been a slight exaggeration. Certainly this sensation was as novel as he’d like, and not entirely unpleasant. But even as Alastor managed to regain control of himself and push himself back, away from the plate, something still felt wrong.

-

The following day, he scoured the city’s music shops. In a small, barely still operational establishment near the former location of the French Opera House, obviously a barely scraping by remnant from before the fire, he discovered two things.

One thing was a copy of ‘Lohengrin,’ the original German lyrics annotated with plot summaries in French. The German was unhelpful, but he could at least read the French.

The other was that a ‘screamer’ was apparently short for a ‘screamer march,’ which was. Circus music.

…

Yeah. Sure. Might as well be. It had been an absurd avenue to approach regaining control and understanding of the situation from, anyway.

-

Friday, after work, precisely a week after he’d last been to the Garden District, Alastor stood outside of the Magne home.

All of the lights were off. No one was out.

Alastor wasn’t certain what he’d been expecting- he’d already figured out Lucifer had only been taking the walks to deliberately bait him the whole time, why would he keep them up now that the whole funny little ‘trick’ had played itself out?

He didn’t even know why he was here.

Alastor brought his hands up to his face, breathed in, then out. Let them drop ready to turn around and go home.

Jumped back, because Lucifer was standing two feet away from him, looking baffled and irritated.

“Seriously? You go over twelve months without doing this kinda thing, then you gut me once and you’re back again the next week?”

Alastor hadn’t even necessarily decided if he was going to try to do anything to Lucifer tonight, when he came here. He’d had some ideas, but nothing concrete.

Not that he intended on saying that.

“Normally I get the satisfaction of the person dying,” Alastor snapped, because he was still rather annoyed by that, “It’s got rather less weight to it when you go out to lunch together a few days later.”

“I mean, obviously I’m not going to die this time either.” Lucifer snapped in turn, then turned and started stomping down the street. Alastor was still processing when Lucifer turned around to look at him, frowning, and made an impatient gesture. “You coming?”

So Alastor followed. Tried to ignore the unsettled feeling beginning to grow inside of him.

After a few blocks Alastor realized that Lucifer was leading them back to the office Alastor had used to butcher Lucifer the first time.

“I’m not certain why you knowing the way to this place is surprising to me,” He remarked, eyes lingering in the deep shadows cast into the alleyways they passed by.

“I mean, yeah, duh.” Lucifer shrugged, “I had to get home somehow. I could only sit around watching you butcher me for so long.”

Alastor stumbled, arms swinging out.

Lucifer’s hands were suddenly on his arms, without warning, steadying him, his voice too loud to Alastor’s ears, “Whoah, hey! You alright?”

Alastor yanked himself away from Lucifer and took several steps back, the sense memory of the man’s hands on him sending metaphorical bursts of unpleasant, screeching microphone feedback through his skin. Lucifer let him go easily enough, although a rising panic in the back of Alastor’s mind reminded him that, of course, Alastor couldn’t actually make him do anything. He wasn’t sure how he’d still allowed himself to believe the butchering of Lucifer’s corpse had still been private.

Lucifer had stuck around and watched Alastor butcher him, whatever that meant. Why wouldn’t he? He’d been in control the whole time.

“Uh,” Lucifer began but didn’t finish, hunching down to try and get a better look at Alastor’s face, necessary because Alastor’d pressed his chin down into his own chest to stare, wide eyed, at the ground.

He was, of course, still smiling.

“I’m quite alright,” Alastor said, “Let’s go.”

Alastor lifted his head up and kept walking. Lucifer watched him, hands up but not reaching, stepping away so as to not interfere with Alastor’s walking path.

Managing Alastor like an easily spooked horse.

Alastor moved into and through the burnt out factory with familiarity, not looking back to see if Lucifer was still there, jerked the door to the office open, and stepped inside.

“... so.” Lucifer said. He obviously knew something was off, of course he did, it was hardly as if Alastor had managed to hide it competently.

He was normally so good at this.

“So,” Lucifer said again, and Alastor spun around to look at him at the sound of the door clicking shut. He was removing his suit jacket and folding it to lay on an inexplicably sootless patch of floor that absolutely had not been there last week. There would be no dropping Lucifer on the floor and watching the perfect spotless white of his clothing get sullied by soot this time, it seemed. “How do you want to do this?”

“I,” Alastor said, then felt himself get hung up on something, even though he wasn’t sure what it was. Lucifer was unbuttoning his waistcoat. There was something about the motion that was unavoidably erotic. Not in how it made Alastor feel, it didn't, but in the imagery it evoked, throwing the whole scene into a new, unwelcome light.

“I,” Alastor started again.

The feedback was back again, oppressively loud, he felt himself try to start for a third time but he couldn’t hear his own voice. Lucifer was saying something too, stopping what he was doing and stepping closer to Alastor, who jerked back again, a grimace thrusting his smile into a shaky, repulsed thing.

“Stop it,” Alastor said, finally able to hear himself again but still fighting against a persistent screeching in his ears.

Lucifer went still, worried, Alastor had never felt more like an uncontrolled, wild animal in his life, “Stop what?”

“Stop all of it!” Alastor shouted, and then- everything in their immediate surroundings did stop.

It was instantly obvious, although Alastor wasn’t certain how. Lucifer didn’t go unnaturally still, although he did visibly control his own movements, and neither did Alastor, but something in the air changed. After a few seconds Alastor’s darting eyes spotted the only visible change- the dust that had been drifting through the air since the two of them had entered the room, disturbed by their presence here, had just. Stopped.

Alastor’s eyes scanned the room, marking every piece of floating soot hung suspended in the air like color inverted starlight, the only sound in the room Alastor’s ragged breathing.

There was a desk in the room that Alastor had shoved off into the corner a week and one day ago, and Alastor approached and sat down on it. He looked at Lucifer and realized that while he was not hung perfectly still in the air like the soot was, he was very carefully holding himself still, and a rising bubble of simmering irritation replaced his disorientation. “Would you stop treating me like a frightened animal?”

Lucifer immediately swung back into motion, although the soot didn’t, gesturing wildly at Alastor, “How the hell else was I supposed to interpret, ‘Stop all of it’? I’m doing what you fucking want, here!”

“Fuck you, no you aren’t!” Alastor snapped back, “I hadn’t even considered- any! Of this! Before you barreled your way into it and decided that was what I was outside your home for.”

“What? No, that’s not-” Lucifer stopped. Furrowed his eyebrows, likely thinking back to the short time between Alastor’s arrival outside his home and this moment. Frowned, and looked around the room.

“What,” Alastor said, feeling the echo of the last time he’d asked that question still reflecting against the walls, “are you doing here?”

Lucifer looked around, frowning at the room, and Alastor realized what had made him instantly understand Lucifer had done something in the first place as he watched it reverse itself- a weight, immeasurable not in the sense of enormity but in the sense of incomprehension, pulling back away from the space. A tide going out. The soot, drifting through the air once more.

“I guess… I thought this was what you wanted?” Lucifer shrugged, gesturing uselessly, “And lunch was nice? So…”

“So you decided to enter into what you thought was some sort of transactional arrangement where I tortured you on Fridays and we went out to lunch on Wednesdays?” Alastor said, half laughing it out, not bothering to keep the bafflement out of his voice.

“... yes?” Lucifer replied, then scrunched his face up, reconsidering. “ … you really hadn’t planned on doing anything to me?”

“You sound disappointed,” Alastor observed. He still wasn’t certain why Lucifer’s assumption and complete taking of the reins regarding this interaction had distressed him so acutely, outside of a general reluctance to relinquish control on his part. He found himself without the level of control he truly desired all the time- it didn’t generally disorient him like it had just now.

Lucifer opened his mouth, closed it. Shrugged. “Uh, yeah. Apparently.”

Hm.

“I had considered flensing you, although not with any particular intent,” Alastor offered. “Peeling away the mask on your face, that sort of thing.”

Lucifer winced. “I mean, I guess? Kind of a hard pass on the face part, I’d probably have to basically turn all my nerve endings off to be okay with that, and- I mean, I assume the fact that it hurts me is part of it for you?”

“Yes.” Alastor replied, “It isn’t for you?”

“Hm,” Lucifer grunted as a placeholder for a proper response, frowning. Moments later, “I mean, yeah, sure, but. Limits. I think I’m okay with the skinning part? Just not my face.”

Alastor nodded, considering. “That’s reasonable.”

“So…” Lucifer scratched anxiously at his chin, breathed in, out, with a strange hitching, wheezing breath. “So you could skin my arm maybe, or something, if you want? Or we could just… talk?”

“We could,” Alastor said thoughtfully, carefully tasting each word on the back of his tongue before he let it escape his mouth, “Do both.”

Lucifer brightened, “We could, yeah!”

Lucifer started rolling up his sleeves, and Alastor abruptly realized he didn’t actually have anything to use to skin the smaller man, and he looked around- more for some idea of how to explain that particular problem than anything- only to realize that on the very desk he was leaning on was. A skinning knife. Alastor picked it up, examining it closely.

“Serendipitous,” He commented, tilting it.

“Ain’t it just?” Lucifer replied.

Alastor stepped away from the desk and gestured to the spot he’d vacated, “Sit there.”

Lucifer sat, obedient, holding out his right arm, sleeve clumsily rolled up all the way to his bicep, bunched up around the muscle.

Alastor took in the sight of Lucifer, who had visibly and recognisably flexed some sort of supernatural power in front of him mere moments ago, sat obediently on a desk waiting for Alastor to hurt him, and felt as if he’d finally regained his balance. He used his left hand to grip Lucifer’s wrist, and leveled the knife almost parallel to Lucifer’s forearm.

“So,” Alastor began, carefully beginning to slide the knife up and revealing the red muscle underneath Lucifer’s skin, eyes darting between the point of injury and Lucifer’s face, wincing at the sudden sensation of pain but body holding perfectly still, “the clown music you apparently enjoy. What’s going on there?”

Lucifer’s wince got suddenly more pronounced.

Alastor kept peeling.

Chapter Text

Alastor has managed to slowly, carefully displace an uninterrupted six inch long strip of skin, listening to and enjoying the increased rapidity of Lucifer’s breathing, the hissing of pain that seems as if it gets just a hair too sibilant, before Lucifer replied.

“Does it have- does it have to be ‘about’ anything?” Lucifer was paradoxically squirming where he sat, scraping the bottoms and heels of his shoes against the side of the desk, his free hand tapping at and gripping at it. The arm in Alastor’s hand, however, did not so much as give the slightest flinch. It wasn’t that Alastor had a firm grip on the man’s wrist, although he did, it was that there was no movement for Alastor to mitigate. A squirming, wincing endurance combined with a preternatural control of what each individual part of his body was doing at any given moment.

Alastor was briefly, hysterically reminded of the way a chicken’s head would stay stationary even if you wiggled it around, although the way arm joints worked made what Lucifer was doing slightly more logistically difficult.

“If this is what you’re putting up as the music you like while you make noncommittal ‘it’s not my thing’ noises about jazz? Yes, I think it does!” Alastor punctuated the statement by finally reaching the crook of Lucifer’s elbow in one singular, smooth motion, pulling Lucifer’s arm closer to him rather than pushing on the knife. The difference in motion required that Lucifer actually follow the movement of his arm by leaning his torso forward, his left arm curling over his belly and clawing at his belly where it bent. “Hm. Is that for my benefit?”

“I- uh, wha- what?” Lucifer asked, looking up at Alastor, which even with the added height afforded to him by sitting on the desk required that he tilt his neck at nearly a 90 degree angle, especially while as partially bowed as he was. The angle made Lucifer’s eyes seem even more massive, golden irises barely visible around the pits of black that were his dilated pupils. “Whassatmean?”

“You mentioned that an option, regarding my peeling the skin off your face, might have been you turning the nerve endings off. Which does suggest that you are feeling this right now, as the alternative, but also suggests that you have a level of control over yourself such that you could choose not to writhe in agony if you didn’t want to. So is this,” Alastor pressed into the revealed strip of raw muscle with the thumb of one hand while using the knife in the other as a tool to gesture generally at the resulting pang of agony that flowed across Lucifer’s face, “For my benefit?”

“Ehhhno. No, no, no.” Alastor pulled his thumb away and watched as the shift in sensation once again sent Lucifer shuddering, tilting his head forward to look away from Alastor’s eyes and leaning until he was less than a quarter inch from the skin of his face pressing into the front of Alastor’s shirt, “I- can I-”

“Oh, go ahead,” Alastor replied, grasping the knife in the crook between his thumb and pointer finger awkwardly so that he could use the rest of that same hand to lay on the back of Lucifer’s head. Lucifer closed the gap the moment he was given the word, cheek squishing itself into Alastor’s chest, and Alastor, in an impulse he wasn’t sure how to explain, scratched lightly at the smaller man’s scalp, which elicited a strange, soft sigh out of him.

“I, uh.” Lucifer breathed in, out. His breath was hot but it was hard to notice beyond the scorching heat radiating off of his skin into Alastor in a general sense, “I mean I guess I probably could stop it, but it’s easier to process stuff if I let myself feel it inside a body. Pain’s more cathartic if you can wriggle your way through it."

“As opposed to feeling things outside of a body?”

Lucifer just nodded, “Yeah, exactly.”

Hm. Interesting for a variety of reasons, not least the word ‘cathartic.’ Also, perhaps not as true as Lucifer thought it was- Alastor was reasonably certain that the amount of pain involved in being flayed alive anywhere on his body would hurt beyond his ability to find any sort of catharsis, even if he did feel that way about pain generally. Perhaps having somewhere else- an ‘outside his body’- to retreat to as an option made enduring it more bearable.

Although, of course, there was always the possibility Alastor had no idea what he was talking about. He never had been interested in his own pain.

“Well, then,” That question was answered, which meant that was enough of letting Lucifer ground himself in his pain against Alastor’s chest. Alastor pulled away abruptly, and only allowed himself half a second to watch Lucifer blink in disorientation- if he got a moment to take the change in, so would Lucifer- before he re-positioned Lucifer’s arm between them again. This next things would have to happen quickly for the exact response he was hoping for, and he was conscious that this was a maneuver in which he stood a serious risk of letting his hand slip, slicing into a chunk of Lucifer’s arm, and making a fool of himself.

Spotting and slicing through the thin membrane between skin and flesh, having to let go of Lucifer’s wrist partway through to hold the suddenly loose skin out of his way, at speed, on a living subject with blood pooling and flowing and making the process slippery, blocking his ability to clearly see what he was slicing through, was not a simple task. He had limited lighting- the hanging naked bulb in the center of the ceiling had been glowing faintly when they walked in, which definitely wasn’t the result of functioning electricity but, presumably, Lucifer’s whim- but it was at least much better than the oil lamp Alastor had used their first time in this office.

There were simpler ways of generating this much shock and pain all at once, but Lucifer had only agreed to skinning, and he needed to make a very large patch of skin detach before Lucifer could process it properly to get the right kind of dysmorphic agony going. Lucifer’s reaction, though- oh, it made the risk worth it.

There was the physical, of course- Lucifer responded to the sudden removal of roughly half the skin of his forearm within a matter of seconds in a way that was very gratifying. The sound he let out was not the whimpering hisses and shouts that were purely expressions of pain, but an actual full on scream of surprise and, dare Alastor hope, a half second of genuine fear and disorientation. His feet scrambled uselessly against the front of the desk, as if involuntarily acting out some kind of prey animal fleeing instinct, he jerked back as far as he could but that wasn’t as much as he seemed to want because somehow, paradoxically, his arm still! Wasn’t! Moving! Which suggested that whatever was keeping it there was more a matter of him having to lock and unlock it into place, consciously, rather than him deliberately holding it still? Neat.

But the real payoff was more- hm. Alastor was still exploring this space, he didn’t have terminology for this yet. Ethereal, perhaps? Supernatural? It was the sensation, all around him, heavy and tangible and unignorable, that he very suddenly had something’s full, undivided attention. He was being observed by a vast and spread out being that had suddenly collected itself into one space, concentrated and thick. Here was the thing he would have to hurt, if he wanted to affect Lucifer in the same way his human victims had been affected. Which he didn’t actually think he did, but he wanted to know the shape of it, anyway.

He did not get the impression it was happy with him.

“ There you are!” Alastor said, bright with adrenaline.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, I could have smited you, you asshole!” Lucifer said, “Did you seriously do that on purpose? How much of it can you even feel?”

The pressure didn’t leave, although Alastor did get the distinct impression it had taken a very careful step back.

“Would that not be smitten? Or smote?” Alastor asked, and then when something strange and red shone out from the back of Lucifer’s eyes he waved the question away, “I’ve allowed myself to drift off topic, here I am asking silly questions when I’m still waiting on an answer regarding the clown music!”

“You’re still on that?” Lucifer asked, to which Alastor nodded brightly and got to work cleaning up the admittedly slightly sloppy lines delineating skin and flayed meat. No excess missing chunks of flesh, though! “I- ugh. I just really like it! It’s happy and fast and loud and actually really hard to play and- circuses will have these, like- fuck, ow , little codes based on which songs are playing to signal stuff to the performers! And usually they’ve got two melodies going where one of the band sections is playing normally and the other section is just- hssshhhit- just fully losing its mind! I like them, they’re good, I’m not sorry!”

He yelled the bit at the end, less out of emotion than as a way to vent some of the pain he was still in. Alastor let him sit in the echo of it for a second.

“Well, I suppose that’s as good an explanation as any you might find for why someone likes a kind of music,” after all, he’d avoided asking about Lohengrin because, based on the summary explaining that it ended with the heroine having her love and her brother taken away from her and then dying of misery due to indulging a curiosity that was both forbidden and unexplained, he suspected asking why it made Lucifer ‘cry every time’ would tilt unsettlingly existential for Alastor. He could guess, he didn’t need details. He much preferred this sort of reasoning. He lifted the removed sheet of skin to examine for himself for a moment, and-

Look, sometimes Alastor compulsively wanted to bite or taste things. It was just something that happened. He didn’t always actually bite them, but the compulsion was there. He had been about to exercise his own very well honed self control except something telling must have crossed his face, and, well…

“Seriously?” Lucifer asked, sounding appalled, “Alastor that is raw and there is arm hair on it.”

So then obviously he had to try to bite it.

“Whatnostopit!” With a tone of voice and movement that was indistinguishable from someone trying to stop their cat from eating something they shouldn’t, Lucifer jerked forward and grabbed Alastor’s arm, yanking the hand holding the strip of skin away from his face. Alastor didn’t try terribly hard to pull away- he’d experienced near instant regret as soon as he started actually moving the skin toward his open mouth, backing down once he’d started had simply been a personal impossibility- but something in the back of his brain still stood up at alarmed attention at the complete lack of response or yield to his minor attempts at yanking his hand back.

He dropped the strip of skin.

There was a beat. Both of their eyes darted between Lucifer’s hand around Alastor’s forearm, to the fact that Lucifer’s own forearm was almost entirely devoid of skin, to each other’s faces.

The strange indefinable awareness in the back of Alastor’s mind that felt like a primal, activated instinct for sensing danger used its primordial fear response to inform Alastor that the strange presence was also skipping its attention between those three subjects.

“...ppft.” Alastor bit his own lip. Made direct eye contact with Lucifer.

With part of Lucifer. Because, after all, who knew how much of him was simply seeping into the air around him? Who knew how many eyes it had?

That last thought did it, tilting everything just that extra step into the absurd. “PfftahaaAHAHAHA-”

Which set Lucifer off. “Why do- ohmygodhee- why do you laugh like a fucking villain in a stage playaahahah-”

Alastor’s laughter had him taking a step back and arching his back, arms bent at the elbow and fingers curled. Lucifer’s laugh was a giggly, wheezy thing and when Alastor managed to collect himself enough to look at the shorter man he saw that he had fully curled up on the surface of the desk, gripping his injured arm hard just about the elbow with the opposite hand, struggling to catch his breath in between the giggling and crying from the combined laughter and pain.

When he was finished, while Alastor was still panting for breath, he rolled over onto his back and sniffled, staring at the ceiling. “Fuck’s sake. What am I doing here?”

“I assumed that of the two of us, you were the one who knew,” Alastor replied, half sitting on the desk next to Lucifer’s head and fought the compulsion to bend down and lick Lucifer’s injured arm by reaching into the inside pocket of his suit for a pack of cigarettes- Fatimas, not Chesterfields, in spite of the ad he read every weeknight, because Fatimas had been the preferred brand of the soldiers hanging around the District when he was a teenager and the taste for them had stuck. He packed the box against the surface of the desk a few times, opened the fresh pack, stuck a cigarette in his mouth-

And realized that he normally kept whatever matchbook he had running in the opened cigarette pack, and as this one was fresh, he didn’t actually think he had one on him.

Lucifer’s eyes had gone half lidded, but he must have spotted Alastor patting himself down because he mumbled, “Ah, I got it,” reached up to tap his right pointer finger against his own tongue- there was a sizzling noise, and Alastor’s eyes caught on the wet shine of exposed muscle moving in dim light- before tapping the same finger against the tip of Alastor’s cigarette. When he pulled away, the tip was lit.

Alastor gave Lucifer a grateful nod, took a long first drag, and then curled an interrogatory eyebrow at Lucifer while he exhaled.

Lucifer sighed, rolled his eyes. “We’re stuck here for- I don’t know, probably a year at least? For reasons that are a long story and also none of your business. Charlie asked me to try and make a human friend for- other long term interpersonal stuff Charlie and I have going on reasons that are also none of your business.”

“And you, given this task, immediately befriended the first person who tried to kill you?”

“Oh, no, I decided to fuck with the first person who tried to kill me. But the actual killing part was… not what I expected, and then the way you turned it around at the butcher shop- I mean, I was going to have to do something with you depending on how you reacted to me not dying. It was either kill you, continuously mess with your sense of reality so no one would believe you if you ever tried to convince them I was the actual devil, or make friends.” Lucifer shrugged. “Lunch was nice, so.”

Alastor took another drag to help him handle the sudden disorienting sensation of having just barely missed a bullet to the head, covering up the sudden shakiness of his smile.

“Uh,” Based on Lucifer’s expression, Alastor had very clearly been less successful than he’d hoped to be, and Lucifer had perhaps just registered that he had functionally just threatened to kill or mentally destroy Alastor if he wouldn’t be his ‘friend’. Lucifer reached up to ruffle his own hair- Alastor’s eyes once again caught on his right arm- “I mean, I, uh, didn’t mean that how it came ou- you seriously cannot stop admiring your own handiwork, huh?”

“I want to lick it very badly,” Alastor confessed. He was really normally much less likely to want to shove random open wounds into his mouth. What an odd thing for Lucifer to bring out in him.

“I literally just confessed to almost driving you to madness,” Lucifer replied. “And you’re still preoccupied with putting your mouth on things you shouldn’t.”

Alastor shrugged. Pointedly took the cigarette out of his mouth and ashed it onto the floor.

Jerked his head slightly when Lucifer’s right arm was suddenly shoved into his face. “Knock yourself out.”

It was blatantly a gesture driven by guilt. Alastor was not going to give Lucifer the chance to take that back. He plucked the cigarette out to dangle from his left hand, leaned forward, and pressed his tongue flat against the skinless flesh of Lucifer’s arm, starting near the crook of his elbow and then slowly, luxuriously, drawing it all the way up to his wrist.

It wasn’t the taste- blood and raw muscle tasted like blood and raw muscle- it was the shift of those muscles against his mouth, the fluttering beat of Lucifer’s pulse at his wrist against Alastor’s tongue. Alastor’s eyes darted down to take in Lucifer’s expression, and found his eyes closed, tears building at the corners of his eyes.

But, due to the very pause caused by Alastor’s taking in his expression, after a moment Lucifer slowly opened them.

To reveal five sets, dotted symmetrically across his face. Most were not the honey brown of the main set, but red, with bright golden scelera, shining and heavy with tears of pain, none of them more than half lidded, and all of them looking at Alastor. Lucifer didn’t even seem to consciously realize he’d done it, letting them drift closed again after only a couple of drowsy, languorous seconds, and Alastor let his smile drift wider where it was still pressed, closed now, against Lucifer’s wrist.

They sat together in that strange, quiet place for a moment of a length completely divorced from Alastor’s sense of time.

Finally, Lucifer’s eyes drifted open again- only the usual two, this time- and he slowly lifted himself into sitting up on the desk.

“I- um. I should get home.” Lucifer muttered, staring down at himself rather than looking at Alastor.

Alastor yanked himself out of the comfortable moment less mercifully, forcing his voice into something bright and chipper. “Of course!”

Lucifer winced.

Alastor allowed himself exactly one moment of admission of desire, of shared need for… whatever was happening here. “I’ll see you on Wednesday?”

Lucifer looked at Alastor, then back down, then back at Alastor. “I, uh. I’ll be there if you’ll be there.”

“Excellent!” Alastor stood up abruptly from the desk. “I look forward to it.”

Lucifer nodded, and carefully stood up, moving to retrieve his jacket from by the door.

There was a long, hovering pause while each of them waited for the other to leave first, before Alastor, desperately trying to keep his stride regular and his posture- normal? Whatever normal posture was? Anyway, Alastor left first.

They each went home.

-

It was strange to come home and, the next morning, open his refrigerator and find pieces of Lucifer still in it.

Felt like reality should have reset, somehow.

-

Mimzy still wasn’t back. He went out in the evenings and drank anyway.

He just. Needed to think about anything else.

-

Lucifer was at Boucher’s the following Wednesday, as promised. Still no Charlie. Alastor tried not to think too hard about the zing that went through him when he looked through the shop window and saw Lucifer there, but his alarm was assuaged by the way Lucifer spun around and waved wildly at him as soon as he heard the bell over the door. At least he was managing to remain the more dignified individual of the two of them.

Alastor did actually need to get a proper grocery shop done that day- he still had some Lucifer in his freezer, but he was beginning to suspect that desperately consuming almost nothing but the other man’s flesh for a week and a half was not indicative of a reasonable, healthy relationship with the concept.

He would save the rest for special occasions.

So, after getting his order together, and stepping outside to the sight of a nearly buzzing Lucifer also carrying his own meat, he did have to respond to the lunch invitation by demuring.

“Although I’m happy to grab something from a cart on my way to the grocers, if you like.” Alastor suggested instead.

“Oh! Excellent! Absolutely!” Lucifer said, face alight with a sort of needy, anxious eagerness. The smile on his face was just a bit too large, his bright eyes just a bit too big.

Alastor was aware that he had not managed to maintain his usual facade of polite interest around Lucifer with any competence in private, but he really ought to give the devil some sort of lesson on holding himself together in public.

Unless, of course, the ‘father of lies’ was simply so good and adept a liar that all of these little ‘signs’ were actually fake, and Lucifer was fooling him expertly. But that pit was a bottomless one with no avenue of escape available regardless, so if he was falling into it Alastor would honestly just prefer ignorance.

In spite of the fact that an on-the-go lunch was what Alastor proposed, Lucifer got a bag of pralines, which. Not a meal! He was fairly certain that the shorter man had actually noticed Alastor’s skepticism this time, because Lucifer took one look at Alastor’s face and immediately shoved a tooth-achingly massive fistful of them into his mouth all at once.

Alastor spotted someplace offering boudin balls, because even Alastor was not too entranced with the food he’d been raised on to appreciate a fried ball of meat and rice.

Alastor had never gone grocery shopping with anyone else in his adult life, and it was extremely odd. He wasn’t certain if it was because of the other person, or because Lucifer clearly barely understood what food preparation was, he was just sort of awkwardly following Alastor around and grabbing whatever Alastor grabbed.

“Stop it you ass, I’ve never done this before,” Lucifer finally muttered on their way after Alastor had grabbed his eighth fennel, entirely to see if and when Lucifer would cave and admit he had no idea what fennel was, and Lucifer did indeed also grab an eighth fennel bulb for himself and made Alastor’s shoulders tighten up around his ears with repressed laughter.

This particular bit had committed Alastor to somehow using eight bulbs of fennel, five eggplants, a pumpkin, and six acorn squash somehow in his next week or so of cooking- which, fine, it was all perfectly edible food if somewhat outside of his comfort zone, he was confident in his ability to figure something out, but he had no faith in Lucifer’s ability to do the same.

“Charlie definitely mentioned something about dinner being made at home when she asked about my radio show, Lucifer, what on earth have you been feeding that girl? Also, why are you such a frequent visitor at Boucher’s when you clearly do not cook?”

Lucifer replied back in a hiss, “It’s easier to recreate meals magically if you have some of the component parts, okay? The molecules are easier!”

“The molecules !” Alastor shout-laughed, although he did try to muffle it as Lucifer shushed him.

Eventually Alastor did have to head home to put his groceries away before work.

“Yeah, yeah- uh.” Lucifer looked down at his own pile of vegetables, shifting from foot to foot. “So, uh, Friday?”

Mm.

“Friday!” Alastor agreed, swallowing as subtly he could around- well, nothing.

There was another half a second of ‘which of us is going to leave first’ uncomfortable eye contact. Lucifer got there first this time- although not before letting out a wheezy, uncomfortable breath.

Alastor kicked the voice in the back of his head suggesting that he could always cook something for Lucifer down into the depths of his mind where it belonged.

-

Friday evening was spent picking parts of Lucifer to pull or cut off and carefully collecting them into a jar. Alastor left that evening with several fingernails, two of Lucifer’s teeth, and the tip of one ear.

While Alastor was working, Lucifer regaled him with the story of his attempts to cook the previous evening.

“I don’t know where I went wrong,” Lucifer looked genuinely shell shocked, “I checked the temperature on everything. I had a recipe, the recipe looked good, I used all the right stuff- I know the chemistry! I do! I was on the committee when we invented chemicals ! When I finished cooking I ended up having to take Charlie out for dinner because it was indistinguishable from charcoal!”

Alastor pulled the pliers away from Lucifer and waited for his hands to steady. Lucifer had tried to cook after Alastor teased him for not being able to.

Hrmm.

“That-” Alastor was once again forced to haul the urge to offer to cook for Lucifer to the back of his mind and shoot it dead, “Is it entirely outside of the realm of possibility that you’re suffering from some kind of curse?”

“I mean, I guess? But that isn’t really- I mean you’d need to be a really powerful entity who’s in proximity with me pretty frequently with a specialty in foo-”

Lucifer stopped speaking abruptly. Alastor got back to work with the pliers.

After several moments of the only sounds coming from Lucifer being hisses and yelps of pain, the shorter man finally spoke again.

“I’m going to fucking kill Beelzebub.”

Did Alastor want to know more about a theoretical hell conflict he might have contributed to?

“Oh?”

Yes. Yes absolutely.

“I mean, no, I’m not, Charlie’d be pissed at me for killing her favorite aunt and then also I’d have to run the ring of gluttony myself until she reincorporated and fuck that, but, you know. In all ways but actual I’m going to kill Bee.”

It was weird to feel like you’d do a better job of being the archetypical devil than the devil.

“Reincorporated?”

“Yeah, you can’t kill a sin. Not for long.” Lucifer looked away, shifted uncomfortably. “I uh, tried for awhile, early days? It was not great.”

Alastor tried to imagine this small, chipper, frequently awkward man systematically slaughtering living embodiments of sin over and over again, and couldn’t manage it.

There was a possibility he was getting a slightly skewed impression of him.

Lucifer visibly spent a few moments stewing in that confession before he spoke up again, rubbing the fabric of his pants in between two fingers.

“... hey, uh, Al? So long as you’re, uh, collecting bits, you want one of my eyes?”

Alastor did not expect the reflexive recoiling from an idea that, in theory, appealed to him a great deal. Lucifer’s eyes were objectively beautiful, but- Lucifer’s posture was. Worrying. There was something wrong here. “Depends. To what extent am I simply an implement you use to punish yourself, when you walk into this room?”

Alastor wished he’d realized that was what the problem was before it came out of his mouth.

Lucifer flinched. “I mean… some? I don’t mean- I mean I also just like- or- I don’t not also just like it?”

Lucifer seemed to have lost the ability to look Alastor in the face. Frowning, Alastor reached out and grabbed the man by the chin, meaning to force the issue.

Lucifer did not yield, as immobile and solid as a statue.

“Lucifer.” Alastor’s voice was sharp like a cracking whip.

With a discontented noise Lucifer became pliant, bendable flesh again, and Alastor was able to tilt his chin upward to lock eyes with him. There was a splash of bright red running down the entire left side of his face, from the ear removal earlier in the night, and in spite of himself Alastor yearned to burn the image permanently into the back of his eyelids.

“If you still want me to cut one of your eyes next week, then we’ll work something out. But you’re keeping them both tonight.”

“... you’re, um, still gonna wanna do this next week though, right?” Lucifer swallowed nervously, breathing shakily.

“Not precisely this,” Alastor said, “but likely something like it, yes.”

Alastor had actually meant to take a much heavier pound of flesh from Lucifer that evening, except that the way his entire body shifted and relaxed in a sigh after getting confirmation that in spite of some difficulties he would still be getting tortured by Alastor next Friday made Alastor feel like he’d gotten punched in the stomach. All the fight went out of him.

Instead, he released the other man's chin and sat on the desk to Lucifer’s right. When Lucifer wavered slightly where he was sitting toward Alastor, Alastor lifted an arm and pulled the shorter man into his side.

They sat there like that for what could have been minutes or could have been hours, it was impossible to tell, until Alastor shifted slightly to try to adjust better to a crawling discomfort that had started to build in his spine- he had not been in such close physical contact with another person without the pretense of dancing in many years- and Lucifer pulled away himself, face flushed red.

-

The following Wednesday they had crepes and didn’t talk about it.

Chapter Text

Lucifer did not ask for Alastor to pluck out one of his eyes next Friday. Alastor did check- which was to say, Alastor turned around once they entered the, as always, mysteriously lit office and raised an eyebrow at Lucifer, and Lucifer blushed and shook his head, and neither of them actually said anything about it. It felt like they really ought to find somewhere better to do this, mid-to-late October was still reasonably warm in southern Louisiana but it would be November and December soon, and while certainly no one would describe those months as ‘cold’ it could reasonably get a little chilly in the crumbled remains of a burned out warehouse at night.

Hm. Mid-to-long term planning decisions surrounding this felt like a mistake, actually. The office was fine.

So, with eyeball removal off the table, Alastor suggested a bit of light strangulation for the evening.

“Oh!” Lucifer brightened, immediately walking over to the desk and laying back on it. “Yeah, okay, I could go for that. Like, is the plan to kill me immediately or are you gonna play around with it?”

Alastor wasn’t certain what he’d been expecting, but that wasn’t it.

“I- play around with it, I suppose? You talk as if you’ve done this before, don’t tell me I’m not the first serial killer you’ve made this particular arrangement with?”

“I mean, no one’s strangled me to death before, no, but I mean, 10,000-odd years of marriage, my ex-wife and I tried some stuff over the years, y’know?”

“Oh?” Alastor curled an eyebrow, approaching the desk himself. Tried not to sound too interested- Lucifer had not mentioned a wife, ex or otherwise, before. Charlie’s mother, presumably? “I hadn’t actually intended on proposing something you found sexually arousing.”

Alastor was born and raised in the vice district, and while his mother was always careful to keep the details of her profession out of his ears- thank heavens- her colleagues were less circumspect, to say nothing of their bragging clientele. Alastor was not ignorant to the ways people had sex, even the more esoteric ones, and there had been a certain awareness that there was every chance that was what Lucifer was getting out of this.

If that was the case, however, Alastor very much appreciated the degree to which the other man kept it to himself- there had been no ridiculous overwrought moaning, no dramatically arched back, no simpering begging for mercy. No obvious tent in his pants, although Alastor suspected Lucifer had more control over that than was usual. Other than the banter and occasional bursts of laughter, Lucifer’s verbal responses to being hurt hadn’t been any different than the responses Alastor had gotten from people he’d known for a fact weren’t getting anything out of what he was doing to them- winces, hisses of pain, shouting and expletives. Crying. That one delightful, full-throated scream Alastor had not yet replicated.

There were the times Lucifer seemed to get almost drowsy or lightheaded, he supposed? Pliant. But if that state was part of existing sexual vocabulary, Alastor’s own lack of fluency on the subject had prevented him from recognising it as such.

Lucifer lifted his hand from the surface of the desk and made a wobbly hand motion. “Eh? I liked the feeling of being at her mercy and the- I guess kind of woozy black-at-the-edges feeling it gave me, and I liked sex with her, and both of those things at the same time were nice, but not in a way that necessarily has to be related? Like, we fucked in the bath too, that didn’t make-”

“I get it!” Alastor interrupted, the tightness of his throat involuntarily pitching his voice up a bit. He sat down on the desk next to Lucifer- this would actually be easier straddling Lucifer’s waist but Alastor absolutely would not be able to stop the image of Lucifer and some faceless woman in that same position from intruding on his thoughts if he did.

Lucifer’s eyebrows furrowed in concern, “I mean, if I kinda just ruined it for you and you wanna come up with something else, we can, I’ll summon whatever you nee-”

Alastor reached down and wrapped both his hands around Lucifer’s throat which, mercifully, shut him up.

-

Thankfully, before he could spend his entire weekend turning that over and over in his head- although not before he’d ‘impulsively’ thawed and braised one of Lucifer’s shanks over the course of several hours- he got a phone call.

Alastor’s phone did not ring often. It was, essentially, a radio station and Mimzy contacting device. As last he heard Mimzy was out of state and unlikely to spring for a distance call, he brought the earpiece up to his ear and lifted the phone to speak into the receiver with some trepidation, expecting to hear Denise or, god forbid, Gabriel on the other end.

“Hello, you’ve reached Alastor Toussaint-”

“ALASTOR!” Mimzy’s voice screamed directly into his ear. “Guess who’s back in the city!”

“Mimzy!” Alastor replied, genuinely delighted, “I didn’t even know you were on your way!”

“Well that was the idea, sweetie!” Mimzy crooned over the line, “I was gonna surprise you last night, but I didn’t spot you at your usual haunt! Figured I’d check and make sure you weren’t dead.”

“Oh, well, you know me, I hate to be predictable.” Alastor replied. He had a usual haunt? He supposed if he wasn’t seeking Mimzy out he did tend to default to the Drop Dead, but the description made him sound uncomfortably like some kind of miserable barfly. “So, does that mean you’re attempting to gain the pleasure of my company?”

“Ha! Jokes on you, I could take or leave your company, I just need someone other than the band to brag to!” Alastor had to admit, he was intrigued. “You gotta come down to Zazzy’s tonight, you can watch me perform, we can catch up, I’ll tell you all about it!”

“Oh, I don’t know Mimzy,” Alastor said, teasing, “I think I might already have something better going on, last minute on a Saturday night.”

Mimzy scoffed. “Oh please, Alastor, we both know you don’t, Come on , it’s been ages!”

Well now Alastor didn’t want to go out of principle. He considered genuinely declining just to spite his friend, but-

His eye caught the chunk of leg bone, sitting alone in what few remnants of the rich, herby braising liquid Alastor had served it with still left on the plate.

He sighed dramatically into the receiver, “Fine, Mimzy, I suppose I can fit a visit to Zazzy’s into my schedule, if you really need to see me so badly.”

“Ha!” Mimzy cackled, “I knew you couldn’t resist, I’ll see you tonight, sweetie!”

Mimzy made a dramatic ‘Mwah!’ sound into the receiver, because she was repulsive, and then cackled again, because she was a delight, and then hung up before Alastor could get his own goodbye in.

Alastor rolled his eyes, set the phone down, and got to work cleaning up his kitchen.

-

Mimzy had obviously been developing her set while she was away- some interesting takes on songs he was familiar with, and some fascinating bits of new music he’d never heard recorded before that she must have seen performed in Chicago, or New York. Some were better than others.

She was also, obviously, just as bad about taking breaks between performances as she’d ever been. Alastor wasn’t in the habit of overanalyzing Mimzy’s behavior- she afforded him his privacy, he afforded her hers- but it was impossible not to notice how outrageous her performing schedule was in New Orleans, and there was a jittery energy to her that suggested to him that she hadn’t let up at all, to account for travel.

Mimzy practically slammed into the bar next to him after she was done, panting for breath, and gladly accepted the gin rickey he slid over to her, chugging half of it as soon as she caught her breath.

Alastor preferred an old fashioned- he didn’t want his whiskey any more watered down than Zazzy’s served it already, stretching what they could get as much as they could, and the chilling, bitters, and sugar was a reasonable compromise for covering up how mediocre the alcohol was to start with without lengthening it to uselessness.

Once Mimzy came up for air, she turned to look at him expectantly. “Well?”

“Well what, my dear?” Alastor asked, blinking- ha- ‘innocently.’

“ Well , what did you think of the set ?” Mimzy snapped back.

“Either you or your band need to talk about what the hell you’re trying to do to ‘Mean to Me,’” Alastor replied instantly, because he’d had several points ready to go, “You’re obviously going for Gay Ellis, and they’re going for Bernie, and between the two of you I can’t hear half of it over the other and what I can hear is clumsy and not adding anything to the song.”

Mimzy’s whole face scrunched up very entertainingly, when she was annoyed with him.

“You ever hear before you’re supposed to preface criticism with a compliment?” Sickly sweet.

“Not at all, I’d heard you’re meant to end on a high note. What was that ‘Not For Me,’ song, by the way? I’ve never heard it before, it was excellent.”

Mimzy heaved a sigh of relief, “Oh thank gawd, that came out about five minutes ago on Broadway, I barely managed to hear it before we left and my band’s been noodlin’ at our version for less than a week.”

“Well, I can’t promise it compares well to the original, but it was good,” Alastor shrugged, deliberately noncommittal, and braced himself for the inevitable slap on his shoulder that resulted- he’d earned it, and it was Mimzy, so alright. “Not that I’m inclined to encourage you to rush things out just so you can be the first person to play it down here.”

They discussed the set for a bit longer, because Alastor didn’t hate that this was very obviously the first opinion she’d sought out on a lot of her new music outside of the band. Still, by the time the second round came around, Alastor was getting inpatient.

“So what was this exciting news you had for me, then?” Alastor asked over the rim of his glass.

Mimzy did a little excited drum-roll for herself on the bar, brightening up, “Guess who got a chance to win over a big fancy record label! You’re gonna be playing my music on that radio station of yours soon.”

Alastor squinted, took another swig of his drink. “Pardon me if I’ve misunderstood, Mimzy, but you’re coming from Chicago and New York, aren’t you? If you have a chance to record something, what are you doing here?”

Mimzy rolled her eyes, “Well, silly, obviously I wouldn’t be down here if that’s how it worked, would I? I spoke to a fella up in New York, and I told him I was heading down back to New Orleans soon, and he said he couldn’t agree to produce a record for me if I didn’t get approval from his business partner. But! The partner- Jonathan Baker- was just out in Texas not too long ago, and he said if I told him where I’d be Friday the 31st, he’d come and see me perform and maybe we could get something on paper!”

Alastor kept his signature smile on his face, but internally he was wearing a puzzled frown. That sounded a little convoluted, and Mimzy had a history of getting in over her head, but Alastor couldn’t actually see the scam here- and it wasn’t as if Mimzy wasn’t talented.

“So?” Mimzy prompted him.

Alastor blinked, “Did I miss a question?”

“So you’re gonna come see me perform on Friday, right? Alastor, you have to be there, this could be my big break!” Mimmzy reached out and shook Alastor by the arm, which was a bit much, and he yanked himself away a little harshly.

“Of course!” Alastor replied, throat tight again, “Of course, yes, but-”

He waved a hand to try to settle down Mimzy’s preemptive wiggling celebration. He was about to say something quite unlike himself, and of course this wasn’t any of his business- it wasn’t anything in himself and Mimzy’s relationship for him to put in his two cents on how she’d been taking care of herself.

But. He was apparently going to be skipping out on his favorite night of the week for the past several weeks for this. It would be the first time he gave Lucifer a very particular type of ‘no,’ with all the risks that entailed. He wanted it to be worth it.

“Of course on the condition that I don’t hear anything about you performing for at least 48 hours beforehand.”

Ugh, he hated hearing it come out of his mouth.

Mimzy froze, and looked at him with open mouthed outrage, “Alastor! You think I don’t know how to take care of my own voice?”

No.

“That’s not what I-” Too far, the equivocation was too nice, he didn’t even believe it as he said it. “No, actually, I don’t think you do. I would prefer not to show up on Friday if I know I’m going to be wasting my time.”

Mimzy looked furious. That was fine- Alastor had never been uncomfortable with people being furious with him before. Mimzy’s anger didn’t represent anything of value he stood to lose.

She’d been gone for about a month and he’d turned torturing the devil into his entire personality, but that was neither here nor there.

Finally, Mimzy rolled her eyes and downed the last of her second gin rickey, gesturing impatiently at the bartender for another. “Fine, if you’re going to be like that about it, I guess you won’t be seeing me for a few days before I perform. Asshole.”

“Wonderful.” Alastor finished his own drink, “Now, tell me about Chicago.”

-

That Monday, Alastor informed Gabriel that he would have to leave early this Friday. Gabriel spent a solid half an hour lecturing Alastor on job responsibilities and his own replaceability- as if having to deal with the logistics of taking an old, familiar voice away from his listeners would in any way be justified by having to run half a radio program for one night after over five years of Alastor not once asking for a day off. Then he told Alastor he could leave at 8 pm on Friday anyway, because they both knew he was always going to do that.

If he played both versions of “Mean to Me” that he considered Mimzy’s band to be clumsily copying on the radio more often than necessarily could be justified over the next few days, well. He knew Mimzy listened to his show, and if she didn’t like that he had a cruel streak he had profoundly misunderstood the nature of their friendship.

-

So. Wednesday.

Here was the thing.

Alastor’s mother had spent every single day of his childhood desperately cultivating his ability to do things he didn’t want to do for exactly one reason, and that was maintaining a basic ability to keep himself from doing things that would cause him to lose his job or get arrested. Honestly, she had only achieved middlingly on the second part- he at least put in the effort to not get caught.

His capacity to do things he didn’t want to do was otherwise outrageously poor.

It was the only reason he found what was going on tolerable rather than a constant source of oppressive dread. He was, to some extent, aware that if he ever did anything Lucifer disagreed with Lucifer could kill him without a second thought. He hadn’t forgotten. If he looked at it too long he started to get almost as frightened as he was intrigued, even.

Alastor imagined there was a sort of person who would respond to that situation by being anxiously concerned every second of their lives with what Lucifer wanted out of them. Alastor was not that sort of person. Alastor was genuinely, profoundly confident that he was never going to do anything he wasn’t always going to do just because he thought the almighty being he regularly tortured was going to decide to, best case scenario, kill him over it. So he didn’t worry about it- he was going to do what he wanted, and either Lucifer was going to destroy him, or he wasn’t, and nothing could change that.

In truth, it was slightly more complicated than that- he wasn’t a slave to impulse, he could do something unpleasant for a while in exchange for long term goals, he just also wasn’t a slave to his own fear of dying. It was a difficult dichotomy to explain. He was a serial killer and a radio host, not a philosopher, he strayed from the point, c'est la vie.

He simply had to. Accept that he would have to push through this- trivial, well managed- fear of dying every time he wished to have an interaction with the man in which he had to tell Lucifer ‘no.’ He was confident he would tell him no in the future, he would just. Have to get through that part first.

The point, to return to it, being that his concern on Wednesday was at no stage, ‘Should I tell Lucifer I won’t make it on Friday or should I fail to keep to my word out of a fear that he will be upset?’ because that was, of course, already settled, so much as it was, ‘Do I think this is enough of a genuine concern that I should consider getting my affairs in order before I head down to Boucher’s today?’

He didn’t really have any affairs he felt ought to be put in order, but again: the point. The new, slightly different from the last one point was that while Alastor had declined Lucifer things within the context of their arrangement before, he’d never actually declined to participate in said arrangement altogether yet. That had suited him just fine- he liked his Friday evenings a great deal at the moment, and telling Lucifer ‘no’ inside the office hadn’t been prefaced with this wriggling fear at all- sometimes, in the office, Alastor forgot to find Lucifer unknowable and frightening rather than unknowable and beautiful.

But he didn’t know yet if his wanting to torture Lucifer every Friday was relevant, or a happy coincidence that had so far managed to keep him alive an extra few weeks. Lucifer didn’t carry himself like someone who wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, but he didn’t carry himself like the devil, either.

So as he stood outside of Boucher’s and watched Lucifer hem and haw over the meat selection he was apparently going to take home and manipulate the molecules of, the feeling running through him wasn’t quite fear- of course, never fear, save for the times left undiscussed where that was precisely what it was- or nerves. It was, Alastor explained to himself, the experience of someone who had already jumped off a building that was just on the edge of being tall enough that they couldn’t survive the fall- the fall was inevitable, it had already happened. Nothing to be done about that. The only question remaining was whether or not he would survive the impact.

Lucifer spotted him in the counter glass, as he usually did. He turned and waved, as he usually did. Then he waited for Alastor to come in behind him- and there the pattern ended. Alastor had already decided that he would come back another day, to actually make his weekly food purchases. He had enough groceries at home to tide him over a little longer.

If today turned out badly, there was no sense in wasting the meat.

Eventually, Lucifer finished and stepped out, to Alastor waiting for him. “Alastor! Hi!”

It was absurd to imagine this man capable of the kind of duplicitous layers required to behave in this way and also happily murder him for not doing what he wanted. Except of course there were parts of him Alastor wasn’t seeing- both in a very literal, physical sense, and because he had apparently been alive for 10,000 years at minimum . Being all of yourself at once under those circumstances was surely virtually impossible.

“Hello, Lucifer,” Alastor replied, smile still tilting fond in spite of his own internal musings. “You’ve been well, I hope?”

“Eh,” Lucifer made a dismissive motion, looking back between the shop and Alastor, clearly curious at the change in routine, “I’ve, uh, been. Charlie’s started learning piano, so that’s nice! Her whole routine’s been crazy, ‘cause of us being away from home, so it’s nice to see her get back into something, you know?”

“Oh that is wonderful, I can say with some authority that learning the piano is a wonderful diversion for a young person,” Alastor said, nodding a signal to follow him and turning to walk toward a nearby park.

“Oh right, yeah, ha!” The laugh was forced, that sort of panicked joviality Lucifer occasionally wore, “I totally forgot about that! I wasn’t thinking about it at all!”

What. What was Alastor even supposed to do with that?

“Of course,” Alastor conceded, rather than unraveling it. On a normal day he would have been able to get several minutes of comedy out of that inelegant response, but that wouldn’t do right now, “I thought we might go for a walk in the park today.”

“Oh!” Lucifer lifted his apple-headed cane into his hands to clutch it in a demonstration of exaggerated delight, “Oooh, great idea, I’m finally up here and I never manage to get out of the house to see all this stuff.”

“Why not? My limited understanding is you’re managing some sort of crisis situation, but clearly you’re able to find some time for yourself,” Alastor gestured between the two of them, “Why not go on walks? With Charlie, even!”

Lucifer’s smile went a little queasy, “I mean, yeah, sure, maybe with Charlie- but. I don’t know, I guess none of this feels like it’s- for me, you know? I mean-”

Lucifer’s voice pitched down, “I was part of some of the early geology meetings or whatever, but I was reassigned way before any of that kicked off, much less when the flora and fauna department got to work.”

Alastor was generally fairly capable of suppressing his desire to pin Lucifer down and interrogate him regarding every aspect of the universe’s creation in mind numbing detail, and really he ought to be focusing on the subject at hand, but something about Lucifer describing the way tasks were doled out as being different ‘departments’ so thoroughly boggled his mind Alastor simply had to ask at least one question, “So what department were you in, after the ‘geology meetings?’”

“Uh,” Lucifer looked visibly torn, but after a thoughtful scrunch of his face he did continue, “I mean, it’s how I got my title, y’know? ‘Morningstar,’ and all- that’s, uh, Charlie and I’s actual last names, we just figured that was kinda showy so, uh, we went with ‘Magne’ instead.”

Alastor was being equally careful to pitch his voice low, as they crossed into the park and began to stroll along a winding path, “You helped make… the sun, then?”

An already impressive task, but Lucifer waved dismissively and elaborated, “I mean I kinda was the star department? I made the sun, sure, but I also made this, uh, basically a bunch of math equations- not really, but math is how humans try to make sense of it- for powering, generating, and backdating stars so that the universe would constantly expand as a complete organic-looking system as you guys got better at observing it. I worked pretty closely with the planets guys, but I- really, I was so fucking full of myself, I refused to let anyone else ‘interfere with my artistic vision.’”

This last quote was said in the mocking tone of voice one might use to describe the overdramatic self-importance of a teenager working on their first poem, and not an angel crafting every star in the sky.

“Oh,” Alastor said, normally, about something he felt very normal about, “I see.”

“So, uh,” Lucifer kept looking toward Alastor, and then away, “I didn’t really do anything down here.”

Other than create the entire reason any of it worked, certainly one might describe what Lucifer did as not doing anything ‘down here.’

“Hardly an unimpressive feat, though, one must admit.” Alastor suggested, and watched Lucifer shrug it off. It was difficult to craft a response to how utterly unimpressed with himself Lucifer was in the face of it.

Instead, they walked in silence for a few moments, before Lucifer seemed to realize he’d left the role of running the conversation so far entirely up to Alastor, and of course he could change the subject himself.

“How’s things been with you, then? You’ve been, uh, really into that one ‘Mean’ song, huh? Or- is it two songs, because it’s two different versions of it? Not, uh, not that I’m really an expert on how any of this works, just, y’know, Charlie still listens.”

“Of course,” Alastor allowed, because if he starting digging into the amount of attention Lucifer paid to his show he’d be teasing the man about it all afternoon, and of course this was actually quite a good segue into what Alastor actually wanted to talk about, “I was actually teasing a friend of mine who just got back from traveling, she’d performed it on Saturday and I had some opinions on her work.”

“Oh!” Lucifer looked intrigued and, to be fair, this was the first time Lucifer had asked Alastor what he’d gotten up to over the weekend and Alastor had had an actual meaningful response available, “She have anything to say about it?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure of speaking with her since, actually, although I have some hope of seeing her in a few days,” Alastor moved to the point, “I was hoping to talk to you about that. She’s got an exciting performance on Friday evening, and asked me to attend.”

Alastor saw the information pass its way through Lucifer’s head and reflect itself in his body. His eyebrows rose in understanding, his head tilted consideringly, his shoulders lowered in disappointment. His stride- which Alastor was already carefully minding so he wouldn’t either outpace Lucifer or force him to take two steps for every one of Alastor’s- slowed slightly after a very small stumble.

Alastor watched the ground rush up toward him.

“Okay, that’s fair.” Lucifer said, visibly straightening himself up and brightening, “Will I see you next Wednesday, then?”

It was exactly like jerking awake at the sensation of falling only to discover you were safe in your bed. Both relieving and disorienting, forcing you to confront the indignity of not actually being in control of your body.

“Yes,” Alastor said, from somewhere outside of himself.

Lucifer’s comfort immediately stopped looking like a facade and instead seemed to be genuine. He nodded, turned to scan the treeline, and then his entire body lit up upon hearing a distant quacking sound. “Oh! Okay, I know I just said I wasn’t in fauna, but I did send in some suggestions actually, I think- I think you guys call those black-bellied whistlers? Can we go look at the ducks?”

“Yes?” Alastor said, questioning inflection managing to sneak through the terrifying sensation of uncontrolled unpredictable freefall his mind seemed to have trapped him in. He’d been trying to figure out what landing looked like-if it was anywhere between death and minor injury, anywhere between systematically destroying his mind and the sort of wheedling to try and get his way that suggested he only wanted Alastor to think he had control of this arrangement- only to realize he’d somehow misplaced the ground.

Somewhere far away, a radio was caught between channels, screeching and whining as it fell alongside him.

Alastor followed Lucifer closer to a pond in the middle of the park and-

Here was the worst of it-

What little of Alastor that wasn’t in active freefall was genuinely put out that he was too busy having some kind of fit to engage with Lucifer getting excited about ducks. It was, without question, outrageously charming.

Disgusting.

Alastor interrupted an explanation about how ducks had hydrophobic feathers- “Like me!” which the charmed part of Alastor really would have liked to have heard more about, actually- with a flat, “What if you didn’t?”

“They- wha, huh?” Lucifer spun around from where he’d been excitedly observing a small flock of ducks bathing in the pond, “What if I didn’t what?”

“What if you didn’t see me on Wednesday? What happens after that?” Alastor snapped out. He suddenly needed to know, “What’s the long game in this situation?”

“Oh,” Watching Lucifer’s entire face drop at once was. Something. Not something new, but it seemed more pronounced than usual this time. “You mean- I mean, I don’t see you on Wednesday because something comes up? Or because-”

“I never want to see you again. What happens if I never want to see you again?” It was the second time he and Lucifer were in the office all over again. He’d been avoiding thinking about the elephant in the room for awhile- much longer than the first time- and now he had lost all ability to stop himself from screaming and pointing at it. A repulsive indignity. Except this time they were in a- thankfully sparsely populated- public park. “And whatever you’re about to say, how do I believe you?”

Lucifer went even paler than usual- he looked sick, he was clutching at the fabric of his waistcoat around his belly like it was a lifeline, even the constant sunburn across his cheeks seemed to get noticeably several shades lighter. Alastor had, he realized belatedly, taken several steps toward Lucifer while he spoke, and the shorter man had taken corresponding steps back, as if there was anything Alastor could meaningfully do to him.

“I- shit, what am I doing?” Lucifer reached up and clutched at his own hair, “Fuck, what have I been doing I shouldn’t- Alastor, I’m sorry, you’re right, I shouldn’t be anywhere near you-”

He was, Alastor realized in sharp horror, turning to walk away.

“Don’t leave !” Alastor snapped, loud, fear humiliatingly audible in his voice, “What would that accomplish? Do you think I’m going to forget about you if you aren’t in front of me? Distance can’t help, you just described yourself as having crafted stars !”

Lucifer looked back at him, and the outrageous self-pity on the shorter man’s face as he visibly weighed his own despair against Alastor’s obvious demands regarding his own agency tinged Alastor's fear into fury.

Alastor’s terrified, fixed smile had just enough time to morph away entirely into a snarl before Lucifer stepped backward- into non-existence.

Alastor spun around, scanning the park- no one had seemed to have noticed that very public meltdown, which Alastor was paradoxically grateful for and furious about, because of course that was only because Lucifer had made sure they remained unnoticed. He oriented himself, turned in the direction of his destination, and set off.

He had to get to the Garden District. Very quickly.

Chapter Text

On his way, Alastor put some effort into gripping his own sense of composure and dignity about the throat and giving it a good shake until it learned its lesson and got back to doing its job. Certainly, Alastor had gotten the picture, not having a method of ensuring his own safety while interacting with Lucifer was obviously not sustainable long term, but he would not be an inarticulate, shouting mess while he worked toward that goal.

Lucifer’s Greek Revival nightmare mansion looked exactly as implausible as it always did- more so in the light of day, which Alastor had had fewer opportunities to see it in. The yard was massive, and there were large garden patches that would have required a tremendous amount of manpower and water to keep up with if Lucifer were anyone but himself. The gates onto the grounds were decorated with snakes holding apples in their mouths coiling around the bars, and they weren’t locked, although as soon as Alastor pushed them open he- having been watching for it- noticed that one of the snake’s eyes flashed gold, rather than the gray of wrought iron, for the briefest of moments.

“Hello,” Alastor snapped through grinning, bared teeth, “If you didn’t want me over you might have considered investing in a lock.”

It was hardly as if Alastor was looking to sneak up on him- what an absurd idea- and if Lucifer had been alone there was no doubt in Alastor’s mind that this entire plan would have been doomed to failure. He was relying entirely on the idea that Lucifer- who had been so anxiously protective of Charlie back when she’d still been coming to Boucher’s, who’s entire body went alight with joy every time he found a way to describe his daughter’s accomplishments at lunch- would feel the need to talk his daughter around to the idea before uprooting her from New Orleans.

Alastor didn’t know Charlie very well, but what little he did know of her seemed polite and well mannered in a way that didn’t give Alastor a lot of hope in her capacity to buy him much time.

The change in pressure in the air was palpable as soon as he stepped past the fence and onto the ‘Magne’ property, although not as oppressive as it had been when Alastor had torn the skin off Lucifer’s arm. Alastor wasn’t certain if this was usual, but for the moment, Lucifer was stretched out everywhere here. The house didn’t have a driveway- as far as Alastor knew, Lucifer didn’t own a car, even though several other homes in the Garden District had been modified to accommodate one sometime in the last ten years. Alastor instead strode up a long garden path, watching the veranda approach with its massive white pillars stretching up to meet the floor of a corresponding balcony. He ascended the front stairs, tried the front door- that was locked, potentially at his own very recent advice- and then gripped the knocker- which was shaped like a goat gripping a snake shaped into the knocker’s ring in its mouth, because of course it was- and slammed it, loudly, thrice.

The eyes of the goat shifted from cold metal to the red-and-gold he’d glimpsed weeks ago when Alastor pressed his mouth to the wet, red flesh under Lucifer’s skin and Lucifer was lost in something Alastor had no understanding of. Unlike the snake at the gate, these eyes stayed, and looked at Alastor- and then away. It was absurd- if Lucifer didn’t want to look him in the eye the reasonable thing to do would be to not manifest his own eyes on pieces of architecture. Creating them only to dart his gaze away seemed like an absurd level of anxious attachment.

Alastor shifted his body, putting himself in the goat’s eyeline, and- well. What was he waiting for? It’s not like waiting for the body Lucifer puppeteered around would make him any more or less present than he was in this door knocker. In the air Alastor was breathing right now.

“I didn’t say,” Alastor said, as if merely continuing the disastrous conversation at the park, “That I wanted to stop our arrangement, or to stop knowing you. I said I wanted some assurance that I could stop knowing you, if I ever change my mind. If you are under the delusion that removing yourself from my immediate presence will lessen my-”

Fear.

“-alarm, you are mistaken. I can tell you’re here, Lucifer. I would prefer not to spend the rest of my life second guessing every air pressure change, and if you actually intended whatever hideous gesture this is supposed to be you would discuss it with me rather than running away like a sad, miserable, frightened cowa-.”

The door opened. Lucifer was on the other side, eyes wide, mouth a tight, thin line. He was greeted by the twisted smile Alastor’s mouth had distorted into toward the end of that sentence, eyes squinting and thin between the grin scrunching up his cheeks and his furrowed eyebrows.

“My daughter panicked and demanded I wait to let her put together a presentation on why I shouldn’t make her leave before we moved. So I’m letting her do that while I have an argument with her tutor.” Lucifer explained, looking like he was having a hard time focusing on what he was saying. “Uh, come in?”

Lucifer stepped aside, and Alastor strode into the vestibule- still not fully inside the home, instead in a confined space surrounded by coats hung up on hooks. The top half of the door to the rest of the house was paned with stained glass pictures of apples, an outrageously expensive and ill designed detail given that there was virtually no possibility of those panes ever actually catching sunlight and shining to their true potential. Lucifer closed the exterior door once Alastor was in, and then they were just. Both crowded in together.

Lucifer seemed to have checked out of himself for a moment the second the door closed, so he wasn’t going to be recognizing the awkward proximity himself.

Right, no, this was inane. Alastor turned, giving Lucifer his back, and opened the stupid door, striding into a massive foyer clearly designed to show off a grand winding staircase leading up to the second floor with a landing that looked down on the space. There were large arched doorways with double doors, also paned with stained glass, to his right and left- he could, disorientingly, hear Lucifer’s voice muffled and incomprehensible coming from the right- but Alastor simply strode in and spun around once he reached the curve of the stairs.

“I assume, given that you’re actively having a different argument right now, that you haven’t let me in because you’re actually of a mind to listen to anything I’m telling you?” Alastor asked, taking in Lucifer’s obviously disoriented attempts at appearing focused on what Alastor was saying.

Lucifer’s voice from the other side of the door faded, replaced with a low murmur Alastor didn’t recognize, and suddenly Lucifer’s expression became more believably attentive. “I couldn’t focus on what I was saying to Naberius, while I knew I was just… ignoring you out there. I don’t- I don’t know what you want from me, Alasto-”

Lucifer was interrupted by the voice in the other room raising considerably, “Sire, are you even listening to me right now?”

Lucifer’s voice, coming both from the body in front of Alastor- which was turning to look at the closed door- and from the other room, rose up in unison, “Wait, hold on, don’t-”

The double doors swung open, and a very tall, very angular, very dark skinned black man in maybe his mid-forties with his head shaved completely bald, wearing a dull gray suit that was too large for him in the shoulders and a set of thick glasses, stalked through and took them both in, a second Lucifer running up behind him, both his faces wearing matching anxiety. “Oh! A, um, a hu--”

He’d come into the room with a certain amount of righteous confidence, but the sight of Alastor seemed to throw him off, striding closer to where Alastor and the Lucifer summoned to let him in stood, glancing between the two Lucifers with growing alarm. Alastor felt like he’d had a rug tugged out from under him, feeling his body weight tilt back onto his heels. He wasn’t accustomed to being around people taller than him, and this person had a visible advantage on Alastor’s not unimpressive six-foot-five-inches of height, “A guest! Here with your. Twin.”

Both Lucifers buried their faces in their hands, and spoke in unison, “He knows, Naberius, it’s fine.”

“He what ?” Presumably Naberius exclaimed, then- “Is this why you’re so insistent on uprooting her Highness when she was just beginning to settle here? Honestly, your Majesty, it’s unlike you to disrupt your daughter’s education when such a simple solution is available-”

Alastor took a step back as Naberius, casual as you please, reached into his jacket and pulled out a knife the size of his own forearm that didn’t seem like it could possibly have fit under there and advanced toward him. Alastor reached into his own pocket where he always kept a switchblade, although he was very aware that he was likely outclassed in more supernatural ways.

And then he found himself suddenly falling to his knees as the pressure in the air became heavy enough to push Alastor to the ground- and stop the man advancing on him in his tracks, his eyes widening and darting to look at Lucifer, shining with raw panic.

“ Absolutely not .” Both Lucifer’s voices sounded different, deeper than Alastor had ever heard before, and they echoed through the heavy air of the room and vibrated into Alastor’s bones.

“Does this-” Alastor cleared his throat behind a close-mouthed grin, and both Lucifers turned to look at him not with red irises sitting in yellow sclera, but yellow irises sitting in red. “Does this gentleman work for you?”

“Oh!” Immediately the intense pressure fled out of the room, Lucifer’s eyes returned to their human honey gold, and his nearer body stepped between Alastor and Naberius. The gesture in defense of Alastor should have been absurd- Naberius was nearly seven feet tall, and Lucifer only just over five feet. But the taller man was still frozen, watching Lucifer with rapt, terrified attention. “Wow, ha ha, how rude of me, I should introduce you two!”

Alastor stood slowly, brushing down the front of his jacket and plastering a generically pleasant expression onto his face to cover up his profound humiliation at having responded so dramatically to Lucifer’s crowding the room. “You’re right, of course, how embarrassing for you, Lucifer.”

Lucifer turned back to give Alastor an irritated look, and then plastered a smile back on to look back toward the taller man. Naberius seemed to take it as the signal that so long as he didn’t act rashly he wasn’t in imminent danger it was, slowly unfreezing and very, very carefully replacing the knife in his coat- glancing nervously back at the other Lucifer coming up behind him to stand beside his own counterpart.

“Erm, certainly, sir.” Naberius cleared his throat, “I’m sure it’s a pleasure, Mr…”

“This!” Lucifer seemed to be leaning back on an impulsive bit of showmanship to carry him through this interaction, moving in tandem with himself to gesture with a sweeping bow at Alastor, “Is Alastor Toussaint! And Alastor, allow me to introduce you to Charlie’s tutor, Prince Naberius Goetia!”

The corresponding introduction was accompanied, of course, by a shift in posture toward a corresponding gesture and bow toward Naberius. Both in tandem, both speaking simultaneously. Alastor was reminded, disorientingly, of the fact that Lucifer’s favorite genre of music was traditionally played at a circus. Of course he would dispel tension with a dumb little act.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Toussaint.” Naberius nodded, clearing his throat and straightening himself, as if his ill-fitting clothing could be made to look neat and put together. “To answer your previous question, no. I do not work for him.”

‘

“ Everyone in hell works for me, Naberius,” Lucifer cut in.

Naberius sniffed imperiously, “While I will concede that yes, after a fashion, I answer you because on a technical, hierarchical level Miss Charlotte is answerable to you outside of your role as her father, per the conditions of yourself and Her Majesty Lillith’s divorce I am only directly answerable to Miss Charlotte.”

“You work for the child you’re tutoring?” Alastor asked, unable to keep the skepticism out of his tone, “How precisely does that work?”

“Not without some difficulty,” Naberius answered, placing a hand on his chest to signify some measure of humbleness, “although I am aided by one of the most strictly and equitably defined employment contracts in all of Hell, I must admit. It also ensures that I am ultimately beholden to Miss Charlotte’s best interests, not His Majesty’s sudden, pointless, disruptive, unexplained whim .”

“What good news!” Alastor piped up, “I hadn’t expected to find an ally here, Prince Naberius, and in my would-be murderer! You and I are equally determined to talk Lucifer out of pointless disruptive gestures!”

‘Prince Naberius,’ felt odd in his mouth, and he absolutely had not forgiven the previous offhand murder attempt, but he had no reason to believe he would ever have to speak to Charlie’s tutor again, whereas he would very much like to ensure that he was able to see Lucifer again. Also, Alastor had to admit, the way both Lucifers were looking between the two of them in mounting horror was very funny.

“Whoahwhoahwhoah, hey, you two don’t get to gang up on-”

“DAD!” The shout from above caused all three- four? No, with a small popping sound and a disorienting mirage-shift in the air Lucifer was once again one person- of them to jump and spin, looking up the stairs at Charlie, leaning her entire body halfway over the railing around the upstairs landing and waving a collection of pages in the air, “I finished my presentation!”

“That’s nice, please don’t lean over the rail like that sweetie!” Lucifer burst out, ducking past Alastor to dart up the stairs, although Charlie herself had long since steadied herself by the time he’d finished ascending. This gave her ample time to actually observe the occupants of the foyer.

“Uh, Dad, what’s Mr. Toussaint doing here?” Charlie asked, clutching her papers to her chest and tilting her head to the side, as her father approached her and drew them both an entirely unnecessary foot back from the railing.

“Simply clearing up a misunderstanding between myself and your father, Ms. Morningstar!” Alastor called up, definitely not deliberately using her real surname just so he could hear the outraged, ‘ Dad! ’ Charlie let out, out of his sight.

Alastor felt the hair on his arm raise as Naberius came up behind him, but the taller man only stepped past him to ascend the stairway himself, and as Alastor certainly wasn’t going to let the rest of the household move on to whatever this was and pretend he didn’t exist, he followed.

When he reached the top of the stairs Charlie was glaring in outrage at her father- Alastor was beginning to suspect the child was less ‘polite’ and more ‘earnestly sweet’ because she was not demonstrating much concern for the specifics of social niceties right now- in the middle of what appeared to be a whispered conversation. Once both himself and Naberius were clearly in view, the two Morningstars pulled away from one another and gave them identical ‘innocent’ smiles, which certainly meant either himself or Naberius must have been the topic of conversation.

Alastor knew where he would put his money.

“Well! Hey Mr. Toussaint!” Charlie announced, “Dad says that he thinks we have to leave because you know about where we’re from and you’re scared of him?”

“Oh, I don’t know that I’d characterize that way, Charlie!” Alastor said, tilting his head as he spoke to make dedicated, furious eye contact with Lucifer, who was making insistent negative gestures from just behind Charlie, trying to convince Alastor he hadn’t phrased it that way. “I’m afraid that my concern regarding my own ongoing agency in our friendship may have been misunderstood by your father as a desire for him to leave! I came to stop him from doing something stupid in response to such a misunderstanding.”

“See, Dad?” Charlie swung around, “We don’t have to leave, you just have to make sure Mr. Toussai-”

“Alastor is fine, my dear,” Alastor interrupted, because he had never interacted with a child insistently referring to him by his surname and title in his entire life and it threw him off tremendously.

“- oh that’s so nice thankyou! Make sure Alastor knows that you would never do something terrible to someone just because they didn’t want to spend time with you anymore, and then we can stay in New Orleans!” Charlie held up her ‘presentation’- it seemed to largely consist of demonstrative artwork to, presumably, emphasis her point, depicted in crayon- and threw it aside in a a gesture of dramatic faith in her father’s ability to do just that.

As Naberius let out a dismayed noise, and Lucifer looked faintly queasy, Alastor reached out a hand and caught one of the papers flying through the air. He reoriented the drawing until he was looking at it right-side-up and felt a wave of affection shoot through him.

It was a drawing of a fenced off, square park space, with a vague gesture in the middle toward the hideous statue in the center of it all, and altogether much more focus on the people spread out on the grass. Half a dozen charming little stick people with easels set up working on some piece of art, a charming stick couple sat out on a picnic blanket, some stick children running across the grass. It wasn’t much of a demonstration of technical skill, but Alastor couldn’t claim not to understand what Charlie was trying to share, he supposed. He could even recognize gestures toward the Cabildo , the Presbytère , the Cathedral sat between the two.

When he looked up, Naberius was speaking in a stern whisper to Charlie on the inconvenience of excessively dramatic gestures while the two of them got to work picking up the truly shocking number papers now strewn across the floor, and Alastor skimmed which of them were face-up quickly- a drawing, inexpert nearly to the point of abstraction and yet still somehow instantly recognizable to Alastor, of the grey-green-blues of the bayou being dyed red-orange by an intense sunset. A gaggle of stick-fisherman loading and unloading off of a boat in the Mississippi. A collection of wobbly shop fronts on what could have been any street, with a little gaggle of stick people conversing before them.

It was, Alastor thought, the obvious affection with which they had been drawn, not the skill in actually depicting them. As far as Alastor knew, Charlie had only been in New Orleans for a few months, but she had very quickly formed some foundational affection for the place, even if only in that time.

When he finally looked up from the floor, it was to the discovery that Lucifer was looking at him.

It was like some delicate, fluttering thing was rising in his belly and someone had reached out and crushed it in their fist. The moment of genuine fondness for Charlie’s clear delight in his home only made him less able to cope with the sudden reminder of the mixed delight and dread for her father he was working on keeping neatly tidied away in his subconscious.

“Pardon me,” Alastor said, “I need a cigarette.”

Then he dropped the piece of paper- Charlie let out a small, ‘Hey!’- turned, and darted back downstairs and out the front door.

He didn’t flee entirely- he genuinely did stop on the front porch to smoke. Maybe finding someplace downstairs to light up would have been the smarter strategic movie, kept him from leaving the house, but that would have involved either hunting for an ashtray or ashing on the Morningstar’s floor, not even accounting for wandering aimlessly around an unfamiliar house. Besides, the Morningstar home was refreshingly free of the persistent smell of smoke that permeated so many public gathering and home spaces, including Alastor’s own apartment, and Alastor would prefer not to contribute to ruining that.

There was an outdoor furniture set positioned to the right of the door. Alastor walked over to the furthest chair and sat down in it.

Cigarette, match, inhale. Exhale. Suddenly uncomfortably aware of what was normally an insignificant background sensation, he reached up and pulled off his monocle, letting it hang from the chain attaching it to his jacket, keeping his right eye shut to avoid the dizzying effect of its myopia, pressing the heel of his right palm against his eyelid.

Somehow he had to ensure Lucifer wouldn’t leave the- state? Hell, why assume he would settle, country. Somehow he had to do that while simultaneously fighting the contradictory sensations of wanting to collect every piece of Lucifer in a jar to study in excruciating detail, wanting to run as far away from Lucifer as possible, and wanting more than anything to travel back in time to Lucifer going on a tangent about ducks and actually listen to what he had to say- maybe come up with some cutting remark to make about them sharing a tendency toward ‘incessant quacking’- instead of having an ill-timed pointless meltdown in a public park.

Also, he had to be at fucking work in two hours.

He shouldn’t be wasting time like this. He should get up right now and go back inside.

He finished one cigarette much too quickly, and he chained the remaining ember on the cigarette butt into a second, and that one into a third.

The front door creaked open. Alastor looked up, right eye opening, and spotted Lucifer peering anxiously out of it.

“I explained that I was open to not leaving but expecting you to trust me on my word was unreasonable, and Charlie had another idea,” Lucifer explained, “But she thinks me listening in on her talking it out with Naberius would be some kind of conflict of interest, so…”

“You’ve been kicked out of your own home?” Alastor asked, replacing his cigarette in his mouth just for the visual of him smiling around it.

“I mean, I could have just gone into another room, but… I think Charlie’s endgame might be you getting in a deal with me?”

This statement having caught Alastor in the middle of an ill-timed inhale, he spent the next moment or so coughing up smoke.

“Yeah, you don’t know the half of it,” Lucifer said, as if divining- ha- some meaning out of Alastor’s hacking. “I mean, I don’t really know the details of you guys' ‘deal with the devil’ stories but honestly it’s not really something I do ? Really Mammon’s the only one of us who ever signs contracts or makes handshake deals with anyone besides other sins and the Goetia, and I don’t even do that much.”

“Too good to make deals with the common rabble?” Alastor asked, spite dripping into his voice, “What does Charlie think me making a deal would accomplish? What would my end of it even be, my soul?”

“ Fuck, no!” Lucifer jerked back in alarm, “No, that’s the last thing I’d want, it’d be- I mean it’d probably only extend until your death, even, we’d have to renegotiate if you ended up in hell and still wanted to spend time with me.”

Alastor snorted, “ If? ”

Lucifer shrugged, “I mean it’s not technically set in stone until you’re dead but yeah, fair, I’m not loving your odds. Anyway you’re right that the deal would be pretty one sided- it’d probably mostly be outlining situations where I am allowed to kill you and ones where I’m not. The. you know, the main benefit for you would be that so long as you follow some rules I’d literally be physically incapable of killing you. So I could stay here, and we could keep spending time together, and you’d know I couldn’t hurt you. Which is… what you actually want?”

Alastor glanced at Lucifer’s hesitant, confused expression at that last part, and sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t surprise me if you’d never been afraid of something you enjoy before, but-”

He was interrupted by a manic bark of a laugh, followed by an unsteady, wheezy inhale from Lucifer. “No, uh, no I’ve definitely experienced that.”

“Well, then, it’s simple. Yes, I find you conceptually very frightening, both in a literal capacity to exert power over me sense and in the… hints of you I get sometimes that my mind flinches back from.” Alastor stubbed out his third cigarette butt and shrugged, turning so he was looking Lucifer directly in the eye, carefully forcing his right lid not to squint and ruin the effect, “Also yes, I enjoy you a great deal .”

“Oh- I- uh, I- oh. Okay.” Lucifer said, flushing, before finally making himself break Alastor’s gaze and look down at the porch. Then his body stiffened and Alastor watched his eyes go wide with- surprise? Realization? “Fuck.”

“Problem?” Alastor asked, tilting his head to the side.

“Fucking- yeah, Alastor, why’d you just do that?” Lucifer asked, gesturing at Alastor.

Alastor’s eyebrows furrowed, genuinely confused, “I’m afraid I don’t follow?”

“The fucking- dedicated eye contact weirdly rumbly tone of voice enticing lead from a discomfiting piece of information into something that would make me happy thing. Why’d you do that?”

Alastor blinked, turned his mind back to the statement that seemed to have sent Lucifer down this train of thought, replaying his own words and actions in his head and- “Oh. Hm.”

There had been a strangely flirtatious bent to them, hadn’t there?

It was a good point. Alastor could tell, because trying to look inside himself and confront his own reasoning directly made Alastor feel like he was trying to press two very strong magnets of the same polarity together. Precisely as his understanding that his fear of Lucifer wasn’t tenable for much longer had made him feel- he could feel himself trying to scrape together some more distant, less instinctive explanation.

That had not been a successful strategy in the past. Instead, Alastor just blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“I’m not sure?” Alastor said, and then kept talking, getting it out in a rush before he could second guess himself, “I think what we do together is often undeniably incredibly intimate and it was the only existing script I could think of to manipulate that shared intimacy into getting what I wanted which was. More of that same intimacy.”

His mouth clamped shut at the end of the sentence, and his smile dropped as much as he ever allowed it to into his resting mouth-corners-turned-up blank expression as Alastor looked back again at what he’s just said and struggled with the desire to physically grab the words and shove them back into his own mouth.

“Yeeeah, that’s what I fucking thought.” Lucifer stepped over to the chair opposit Alastor and threw himself down in it, burying his face in his hands, “Seven Rings I’m such a chickenshit fucking asshole.”

“For a specific reason, or are you just now realizing?” Alastor responded without thinking, his face stretching back up into a smile at the jab. A part of him winced, but Alastor resolutely ignored that part- its concerns were evidently being addressed presently and there was no universe where he cringed away from Lucifer until that time came. The part in his own bullshit about Alastor never doing anything fundamentally opposed to his own nature had not been entirely false.

“Oh no, I’ve known for a while,” Lucifer replied, humorless, before ever-so-slightly lifting his face from his hands, “I never should have done the stuff we’re doing together without establishing some baseline trust. Like yeah, sure, the first night was a- different thing, but as soon as it turned into something we were doing together and not something you were doing to me I should’ve made sure we both had some actual boundaries set up.”

Alastor scoffed, “If you could possibly make me sound slightly less like a blushing virgin you thoughtlessly deflowered. It’s hardly as if I didn’t know the nature of what we were doing- I wasn’t the one in the more vulnerable position.”

“Literally everyone south of paradise is in the more vulnerable position if they’re being measured against me, no matter how we’re playacting,” Lucifer insisted, “The problem is I’ve gotten too used to it being like that, and the only other person I’ve done… anything like this with is the person who knew- let’s face it, it’s not like either of us forgot ten thousand years of intimacy, knows - me better than anyone in the universe, so her not trusting me was never a problem.”

“Our first words directly spoken to one another were in the context of my having strangled and drugged you,” Alastor snapped back, “You hardly had any obligation to my emotional state after that.”

“Alastor, you had to slap me awake because I accidently metabolized that stuff instantly and I was having a hard time figuring out how long I was meant to stay down for,” Lucifer returned, raising his voice, “There was no point at which I couldn’t have tapped out whenever the fuck I wanted and you apparently have spent the past four weeks under the impression that we were both pretending you had any control over how this went at all so I didn’t kill you!”

“If the boundary conversation is so damned important to you, fine!” Oh no, now Alastor was yelling, “But if we could possibly table it until after telling you no doesn’t send me into a spiral of panic that would be ideal!”

Lucifer sat there a moment, perfectly still save his eyes, which darted to and from Alastor, and then all at once the fight drained out of him. “Fuck. We really are gonna need that deal.”

“Yes, well,” Alastor looked at his watch, “Do you anticipate your daughter and her tutor being done figuring that out sometime in the next hour and fifteen minutes? Because I have work.”

“You going in to work today?” Lucifer asked, baffled.

“I have work every Wednesday, Lucifer,” Alastor replied, confused. He had definitely mentioned that previously.

“Well, yeah, but-” Lucifer shook his head, “You can’t ask for a day off on account of an ongoing mental breakdown, or something?”

“Well for one, only I get to make glib remarks about my active mental deterioration, go fuck yourself, and for another, not if I want to still have a job come tomorrow!” Alastor threw himself back into a falsely chirpy tone of voice for the sake of delivery.

Lucifer was visibly still thrown off, and hesitantly offered, “Do you think your boss’d agree to give you the rest of the week off if I gave them, like- I don’t know, a thousand bucks a day? Three thousand dollars?”

“If you offered my boss a thousand dollars a day to give me the rest of the week off, he would quite reasonably assume I have abandoned the radio business for a new life as an outrageously expensive prostitute!” Alastor responded, voice still ruthlessly chipper. Alastor could not imagine an addition less welcome to himself and Lucifer’s relationship than ‘Lucifer uses his power to solve all of Alastor’s problems, leaves Alastor irrevocably indebted to him,’  “Do not under any circumstances do that!”

Despite looking like he wanted to argue, Lucifer restrained himself and stood up instead, “Okay, yeah, sure. Let’s go let those two know anything we do is gonna have to be tabled until tomorrow. I’m pretty sure Charlie’s cutting into Naberius’ overtime hours right now anyway, he usually heads home by two.”

After Alastor replaced his monocle they went inside, and found Naberius and Charlie in the room to the right of the front door Naberius and Lucifer had been arguing in when Alastor arrived. It looked like it had been entirely repurposed into some kind of classroom, wall covered in maps and diagrams and graphs regarding all sorts of subjects, and a piano in the corner for, presumably, Charlie’s recent lessons. Instead of rows of desks there was a large table in the middle of the room that was performing the complicated task of being comfortable for both Naberius and Charlie to sit at, both of them leaned over a large strip of paper.

“Alastor!” Charlie exclaimed as soon as she’d looked up and spotted him, “Wow, hi, right! I should have done this first Mr. Naberius why didn’t you remind me-”

“If he has located any alternative for himself I will be genuinely shocked,” Naberius replied, completely devoid of emotion.

“That doesn’t mean we should just assume Mr. Naberius- uh! Okay!” Charlie stands up and scurries to the other side of the table to be stood directly across from Alastor, “Alastor I have to ask you something!”

There was a possibility that when not being carefully polite in public this child was perhaps a lot. She seemed to have become very, very invested in Alastor’s current problem in a very short amount of time, “Charlie, this is very charming, but your father actually already gave me the gist of the idea-”

“Okay, yeah, but he doesn’t know this part because Mr. Naberius warded the room!” Charlie interrupted, “Alastor could I please do you- or, no, wait that’s super conceited, uh- could you do me the honor of letting me be the very first actual Devil’s Advocate for a human!”

Before Alastor could reply, Naberius cut in, “We definitely agreed we weren’t going with Devil’s Advocate, Miss Charlotte.”

“ I didn’t agree to anything, I think Devil’s Advocate is cool!” Charlie replied.

“Wouldn’t a Devil’s Advocate be my lawyer?” Lucifer asked.

“If I say yes will you let me table any further discussion until tomorrow so I can go to work?” Alastor asked.

Charlie looked dumbfounded- “But, I- I haven’t even explained what it is yet!”

“Is it a legal advocate who argues on my behalf against the devil?” Alastor asked.

“Uh,” Charlie looked back at Naberius, who made a ‘so-’so’ gesture with his hand, “I mean, sorta? Really it’ll be mostly Naberius on technicality watch but we’re pretty sure I’m not actually allowed to remand him to other people’s service even temporarily as part of the contract, but he does have to aid me in all educational endeavors and he thinks this would be a good low-stakes learning experience for me.”

“Well I’m feeling safer already!” Alastor replied, and in spite of the nudge into his side he received from Lucifer for his sarcasm he was reasonably certain Charlie missed it. “Yes, Charlie, I would greatly appreciate your help in negotiating some kind of deal with your father, but I really do have to go get ready for work, so could we possibly table this until tomorrow morning, at, ah-”

Alastor glanced back at Naberius, who volunteered, “My work hours start at eight A.M. in this timezone.”

“Eight A.M. sharp tomorrow,” Alastor finished.

Charlie looked very much like a gently spoiled child who’d been looking forward to doing something and had just been told she’d had to wait, which. Fair enough. Still, she visibly bucked herself up and nodded, replying, “That sounds great Alastor, I’ll see you for our first contract negotiation meeting first thing tomorrow!”

Lucifer sputtered, “Wait Charlie, contract? I thought we were just going to do a handshake deal-”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the details of my client’s strategy!” Charlie replied, as if Lucifer had not been present for literally every detail Alastor himself was privy to.

Alastor was confident that, between the overly enthusiastic child and the man that had tried to kill him maybe an hour ago, that he was in good hands.

“Right, well,” Naberius said, “If that’s all, I’d prefer not to explain to my wife why I’m late for dinner, so if it’s all the same?”

Charlie turned and nodded, waving slightly, “Oh yeah, sorry for keeping you Mr. Naberius, you can go home now!”

Naberius nodded, pulled what seemed like a pocketwatch decorated with a bright amber crystal on one side, and then he-

Turned into a giant bird person.

Because Alastor’s day hadn’t been weird enough, apparently.

His skin, previously dark but still within the range of human skin tones, had been replaced by feathers with the color and iridescence of oil, his angular face grew an even more angular, long beak, and while most of his body kept roughly the same proportions his neck stretched long enough to add another half a foot to his considerably height.

The overall effect was of a massive, black crane wearing a suit and standing in the middle of a classroom.

He twisted the amber’s facing on the pocketwatch, which made a strange, shining portal appear in the room, gave Charlie a polite bow, and then stepped through.

“Lucifer,” Alastor said.

“Uh,” Lucifer said, “Yeah, Alastor?”

“Just checking, you aren’t secretly a slightly above average sized human-shaped duck, are you?”

“Not a duck , no. Also, I’m only letting the ‘slightly above average’ comment go because you need to leave soon.” Lucifer replied, “I’m kind of a sorta porcelain doll-snake-goat situation? You’ll uh, see when we make the deal. Or sign the contract. ”

“Well,” Alastor said, “Something to look forward to, I suppose.”

He turned toward Charlie and held out a hand, “I’m conscious I’ve been acting very strangely, Charlie, but I do appreciate your offer of help. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow?”

Charlie grinned, and grasped Alastor’s hand in turn, finally completing that handshake Lucifer had interrupted all those weeks ago, “Absolutely! I’m really glad to help, Alastor, really. My dad really needs more friends.”

“I have been getting that impression, yes,” Alastor replied.

“Hokay!” Lucifer said, “Thaaat’s enough of that, I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, Alastor?”

“You’ll be seeing me tomorrow, Lucifer,” Alastor replied, and then took his leave.

-

He had gotten so used to the constant sense of pressure in the air, it was mildly disorienting when he left it.

-

Honestly, it gave one a certain perspective on Gabriel’s yelling. Really hard to take the man seriously, in the face of a giant bird person and a doll-goat-snake who was also the devil and his precocious child lawyer daughter.

Unfortunately this new lease on life did apparently give a certain ‘tone’ to his smile that earned him an extra ten minutes of being lectured about useless bullshit but, oh well.

Chapter Text

About halfway through his broadcast it occurred to him that if he would genuinely be getting some kind of guarantee of safety tomorrow and Lucifer did plan on killing him eventually, tonight would be his last chance. It wasn’t that Alastor didn’t know that the thought was hideously irrational, it was that it kept popping into his mind unbidden no matter how he tried to talk himself out of it.

He got to the Mystery House rerun, he accepted the sandwich from Denise, he attempted to engage with her regarding some kind of property dispute involving a tree she was having with a neighbor.

He explained to himself that either Charlie was in on it- making this entire enterprise a patently absurd farce- or Charlie would very obviously suspect her father in his death once it came to light, making killing him now an absurd prospect.

He got back on air and read out the, of course very exciting, news of a racehorse retiring. He was apparently three years old and returning to his home farm in Kentucky. How sweet.

Alastor obviously provided a service to Lucifer that he found valuable, denying himself that service would be a rash, pointless move of no benefit to him.

He played Murray’s recording of “Don’t Bring Lulu” as the evening was dying down and kept himself from giggling hysterically with an admirable professionalism.

It seemed unreasonable for his mind to refuse to juggle the dichotomy of how much Alastor really, really enjoyed the fact that Lucifer was an inhuman, terrifying, beautiful monstrosity who liked ducks and sweets and being at other people’s ‘mercy’ with the fact that for Lucifer to be all of that he must definitionally be something that could destroy Alastor.

He returned to his apartment and opened the freezer door, staring at what remained of Lucifer inside of it.

Something in there, about sticking his arm inside of an alligator’s jaws and then distrusting the alligator for being able to bite him.

He closed the freezer door, grabbed some chaurice and chicken livers from the refrigerator instead, and made himself some dirty rice.

While he ate he tried to examine whatever the hell he’d been getting at on Lucifer’s front porch- tried to verify the legitimacy of what he’d gotten himself to blurt out regarding. Intimacy.

He finished his meal and threw his dishes into the sink- he truly could not be bothered, tonight. His apartment was in truth only one room- one wall occupied by his kitchen, the entire middle of the room taken up by a small table and set of chairs, a single closet for clothing, a creaky twin bed pushed against the wall as far from the kitchen counter as possible, next to a small window.

Alastor was paid as well as anyone was, after the crash- he actually did quite well, his pay was another tick on the ‘the radio studio is definitely some kind of scheme and I’m being encouraged not to ask too many questions’ column- but Alastor had chosen to spend that money in the direction of food and nights spent on the town, rather than the quality of a living space he barely spent time in and no one would see.

His ceiling was covered in stains from smoking inside, and as he wandered over to sit down on his own bed with a terrible squeak he lit up- not a Fatima, instead digging into an old nearly forgotten stash of ‘jazz’ cigarettes- and contributed to them further, cracking the window with its lovely view of the second story of an adjacent alleyway in a feeble attempt at keeping the smell from filling his small living space.

‘ He smoked for a while, honestly just trying to get himself calmed down- it hadn’t actually been especially good weed, even before he let it roll around in a bedside drawer for several months- and considered the idea.

Surely even his disconnected mind, unwilling to look at anything too disorienting for too long, would notice his first ever inkling of romantic or sexual interest? Others always described it as being rather overwhelming.

By the time he noticed his own slowly growing arousal- a not especially urgent sort of warmth settled around his groin, and not an uncommon side effect of getting high, for him, another pleasant enough way to trick his body into relaxing- he’d talked himself around to checking if there was anything there.

He snuffed the cigarette out and left it in the ashtray on his bedside table, removed his monocle, stripped his upper half down to the thin, white shirt he wore under his button-down, undid his belt and palmed thoughtfully at cock- only showing the slightest hint of interest at that point, but not especially difficult to encourage- through his trousers. He’d tried to think of other people while masturbating before- when he was young, girls who’d expressed an interest in him, later dancers he’d spotted at lounges that were objectively attractive. Only one man before Lucifer, in an honest attempt to see if that was the issue.

It had always just felt like a distraction, entirely unconnected to the mechanical action of getting himself off.

First he tried imagining himself fucking Lucifer- he’d seen the man’s human body naked after he’d killed him the first time, so he wasn’t basing the visuals off his own imaginnation, although of course his memory of Lucifer’s front was rather more. ‘Open-air’ than a human’s chest cavity typically ought to be.

To rectify this, Alastor imagined Lucifer on his front, with Alastor behind him. Honey brown eyes- no, red set in yellow- looking back at Alastor over his shoulder with that same dazed expression, caught up in sensations, that Lucifer had worn the night Alastor skinned him, and had donned toward the end of the strangulation session just this last Friday. He’d be resting on his knees, surely, and his back would be arched into the sensation of Alastor thrusting into him-

Lucifer’s back had had three sets of thin, oddly neatly arranged scars on it before Alastor had started skinning it, beginning with a scar on each of his shoulder blades and then two more sets evenly spaced down his back. He’d had no notion of what they’d meant that night, of course, but in retrospect Alastor wondered if they’d represented wings-

Alastor looked down at his hand and realized that at some point he’d forgotten to keep stimulating himself. He breathed out harshly through his nose, frustrated, and undid his fly to shove his pants and underwear down out of his way, his half-hard cock not so much ‘springing’ as ‘flopping’ out against his leg once unobstructed. He licked his own palm and gripped himself, still sat up, trying again.

Imagining Lucifer’s face lost to sensation had almost felt like something. He thought of what Lucifer looked like in pain, considered whether Alastor might achieve a similar effect with pleasure instead. Mouth hanging open, lips smeared with his own spit, eyes half lidded and disoriented with pain-or-pleasure. Both?

He slid his hand up and down himself unhurriedly, feeling his foreskin slide on and off the tip of his cock, letting his hips roll ever so slightly off the bed. That, well, that wasn’t nothing. The thrill Alastor got out of hurting people wasn’t typically erotic, but the same visceral appeal he got out of seeing Lucifer lose control in response to pain was equally intriguing in the context of pleasure, and as Alastor swiped his thumb over the tip of his penis before starting to pump with more enthusiasm, he discovered that liquid had started to well there, aiding in the glide in spite of his not having as much lubricant as he’d like immediately to hand.

Alastor slid down the bed, laying fully on his back, and felt his feet drag up and dig into the bed, like Lucifer’s had against the desk when he’d slowly drawn the skinning knife up his arm. He abandoned his attachment to simulating some kind of ‘real’ sex and returned to the image of himself fucking Lucifer, flipping the smaller man over in his mind and allowing himself to consider that first night in a more erotic context. Lucifer’s chest cavity had been split down the middle by his knife, but the shining light of pain in his eyes was accompanied by interest, not the fear for his life Alastor had been expecting that evening but never received. Alastor adjusted the memory slightly, keeping the shirt half hanging off of Lucifer from Alastor having sliced it open, but removing his trousers too, hiking his thighs up over Alastor’s shoulders as he leaned over Lucifer’s prone form.

Alastor realized that the tip of Lucifer’s penis, while hard, would likely brush directly against the very bottom of the gash in his stomach, and something about that image finally sent a vivid, electric jolt of energy straight to his groin. He shoved the knuckle of his left pointer finger into his mouth and bit down on a moan, losing any sense of rhythm as he thrust into his own closed fist, desperate for a repeat of that sensation.

His own thoughts cast around for something else that he might find as arousing, and drew up his memory of Lucifer’s face, when Alastor had gripped his heart in his palm and squeezed. He’d been betrayed by his own body, spasming and bucking and writhing under Alastor’s hands, his eyes lighting up with a sudden alertness, an awareness of some approaching precipice. Tears welling in his eyes. Alastor replaced the hand gripping Lucifer’s heart with one around his cock, replaced the approaching agony of death with the precipice of a- well, a littler death, an overwhelming rush of pleasure, not the bright red-black of pooling blood burst directly from a heart on his palm but ropes of white, splattering up against Lucifer’s split belly-

Against Alastor’s stomach-

Alastor felt the sharp pain of his teeth piercing the flesh of his hand as that image sent him over the edge with a muffled grunt, pulling himself through a long, shuddering orgasm, ejaculate hitting and then soaking uncomfortably into the undershirt he still wore.

Eurgh.

He released his knuckle from between his teeth, pausing for a moment to observe the even cuts, thankfully not immediately recognizable as bitemarks, welling up with blood. He likewise pulled his hand away from his groin and wiped it off against his already damp shirt before pulling the thing off over his head, throwing it to the side, and flopping back onto the bed.

Well. That certainly hadn’t been a distraction from events, at least.

As he rolled what images had worked around in his mind, he tried to come to a definitive conclusion. After some consideration, he was reminded of how Lucifer had described being choked by his ex-wife, as unenthused as Alastor had been with the description at the time,  “ I liked the feeling of being at her mercy and the- I guess kind of woozy black-at-the-edges feeling it gave me, and I liked sex with her, and both of those things at the same time were nice, but not in a way that necessarily has to be related? ”

Having Lucifer at his mercy, seeing him strain against pain- or, he now suspected, pleasure- was nice. Orgasms were nice. The idea of both of those things at the same time wasn’t unappealing , but it didn’t feel especially necessary, either.

So. What the fuck did that mean for Alastor, exactly?

Thankfully the weed and the orgasm had done their job, so after he pulled a blanket up over himself and flicked off the light, he didn’t have to spend too much time mulling the question over before he was pulled into sleep.

-

So the problem Alastor ran into the following morning was the realization that there were aspects of his dynamic with Lucifer that he absolutely could not discuss with the man’s daughter. He had not yet gotten any kind of proper handle on what the hell it was he and Lucifer were doing- and would do going forward- which he imagined would be addressed by the ‘boundaries’ conversation after the contract ensuring some baseline safety for Alastor was signed, but he was certain discussing it with Charlie would be reprehensible.

Perhaps Alastor was making some unfounded assumptions about hellish contract law, but he doubted it was a situation where vagueness was desirable.

Hiking over to the Garden District was a lot more irritating to do in the morning from his apartment than it was in the evening from his workplace. If the idea of Lucifer- or, indeed, anyone- seeing the inside of his apartment didn’t make Alastor feel humiliated and vulnerable like a butterfly pinned to a corkboard he might’ve considered requesting a bit more time spent closer to his own home. Surely Lucifer could travel faster and more conveniently than Alastor could, right?

If Alastor asked, could Lucifer transport Alastor more conveniently?

Probably.

Was there a reality where Alastor asked that of Lucifer?

Certainly not. Damn.

The snake eyes flashed again when Alastor opened the gate, and Alastor murmured a quiet, “Strange to see you in the morning, my dear,” as he stepped onto the property and detected the familiar sensation of being inside a space Lucifer had spread himself throughout. He felt his own pulse tick up and resolutely ignored it as he strode, back straight, up the front walkway.

He’d intended to wait outside to make up for being fifteen minutes early, but the front door opened on its own as Alastor ascended the porch, because Lucifer was ridiculous, and this time Alastor paused to hang his coat up in the vestibule so that when he stepped into the home proper he was simply in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves. He was calm, he was comfortable, he was in no way alarmed to be here.

Now that Alastor’s ability to keep his mind off his own fear had been hopelessly deteriorated, he truly couldn’t wait to rectify the situation.

Once Alastor had stepped through into the house proper, he was immediately confronted with a sandwich board that had been set up in the Morningstar’s foyer. It was constructed out of a chalkboard, and “Offices of Morningstar & Goetia Legal Services LLP This Way ->” was written on it in pink chalk, with an elaborate border drawn around it in white.

Which Alastor probably should have found discouraging, but it was genuinely so charming he couldn’t bring himself to mind.

As instructed, he turned right into Charlie’s classroom and stepped through the double doors to discover Charlie, alone at the table- now set up with three chairs rather than two, very thoughtful- surrounded by texts, varying from some books that looked like they might’ve come out of modern publishing houses and other tomes that seemed as if they’d been bound by hand sometime in the medieval era. Her whole body jerked to attention when Alastor stepped through the door and she stumbled out of her chair- she was dressed in much the same way as Alastor was, wearing a waistcoat and trousers, which Alastor might have considered unusual were it not for everything else about her existence- to wave Alastor over, gesturing at the new, third seat presumably for his use.

“Alastor! You’re early! Oh my gosh, sit down, I didn’t wanna get too deep on anything without you here- and we can’t really talk about anything before Naberius gets here because- I mean, Dad’s gonna be keeping an eye on us until Naberius arrives and wards us so, you know, confidentiality.”

“Do you expect your father to be a hostile negotiator?” Alastor asked, sitting where Charlie had directed him and pearing curiously at the books. Some of them were written in the sort of language you would expect a Hellish legal text to be recorded in- something he was guessing was Latin, some language whose alphabet he fully didn’t recognize- but they were also, near as Alastor could tell, very often in English and French? That seemed an oddly specific coincidence, considering those were the two languages he could read in.

“Oh, I mean, probably not really? I mean-” Charlie sat back down and made an ‘iffy’ hand gesture, “I know he’s got like, a reputation? On earth- I mean, he’d got kind of a reputation in hell too- and I guess I don’t really talk to any angels other than him but he’s probably got a reputation in heaven too- so, alright, he’s got a reputation everywhere, but I kind of have a hard time seeing how he seems scary to anyone, really? He doesn’t want to get you into a bad contract.”

“I assure you my wariness regarding your father has very little to do with his reputation, or how he’s behaved toward me, Charlie,” Alastor was quick to reassure her- other than once having a casual willingness to kill or torment Alastor into no longer being a problem, which hadn’t come up again since its first mention, Alastor wasn’t interested in explaining the context surrounding that . “It’s a matter of capacity- I would have the same difficulty regarding-” Alastor struggled to think of the name of any biblical angel, “-the Archangel Michael? Is he real?”

Charlie winced, “Ah, I mean- I mean maybe, I guess, I’m not actually a heaven expert, but I’m guessing you mean another seraphim, like Dad, but not, you know- with all the stuff going on with Dad.”

“Certainly,” Alastor concurred, having rather more faith in even Charlie’s supposedly inexpert understanding, even presuming that what humans understood of heaven and hell was at all true. His mother hadn't been a religious woman, in spite of having a much more religious upbringing than Alastor’s own, but she’d sat through lectures on her status as a ‘fallen woman’ a few times so she could reliably leave Alastor there and expect the clergy to make sure he didn’t die while she tended to some work her customer insisted she perform urgently. Alastor had not expected the long, droning discussions regarding his mortal soul to ever be relevant to him, and so had treated them with the respect and observance he’d felt they deserved.

Father Richards was likely long dead, but certainly he was getting the last laugh now.

“Okay,” Charlie said, still clearly having a hard time understanding, but more willing to sympathize with a general discomfort surrounding power than someone being afraid of her father specifically, “Well, okay, sure. But um, I guess to explain why all the- books.”

Charlie gestured at the piles she had surrounded herself with.

“I did wonder how complicated a process we had set ourselves up for, I must admit. Not that I’m hoping you’ll do a slipshod job, you understand, but I do find myself struck by how… not consolidated this is.” Alastor flipped the wooden cover of a shockingly old book with, ‘A Complete Record Of Acceptable Force Clauses,’ and blinked at the date listed inside, “Also, I’m fairly certain this book predates modern English, so I’m curious why I can read it.”

“Oh well, yeah, most of this stuff is actually in Pre-Tower Babelonian,” She explained offhandedly, and after Alastor had a few moments to replace the ‘y’ he’d automatically added to ‘Babelonian’ he did think he got the idea, “I mean, Dad doesn’t even speak English, much less read it, so it would be weird if he had this many books in it.”

Someday Alastor wanted to have a conversation with someone connected to Lucifer in which he didn’t learn a single thing that sent him off balance.

“Are you not speaking English now, then?” Alastor asked, curious.

“I am! Pre-Tower Babelonian is my first language, and the language of the hells is my second, but I’ve been keeping up with English since I was fifty. That and Mandarin.” Charlie replied, obviously somewhat proud of herself.

Goddamnit.

“And how old are you now?” Alastor asked, trying to make that sound like a normal question anyone might ask someone who clearly wasn’t an adult but was otherwise of uncertain age.

“Oh, a hundred and twenty-four.”

Alastor did some quick math and- “You were… born in 1806?”

No.

“Yep!”

There was simply no way.

“I’m sorry for the many questions my dear, but what exactly was your birth month and year?”

This question was answered from two directions simultaneously- one from behind him, in the droning tone of Naberius that was accompanied by the sudden lifting of the weight of Lucifer’s attention, and another accompanied by Charlie’s chipper smile.

“His and Her Majesty have always sworn they didn’t do it on purpose.”

“June sixth! Hi Mr. Naberius!” Then Charlie seemed to process what Naberius had said, and she looked slightly less comfortable, “I mean, Dad was pretty obviously lying about that in retrospect, right?”

“Oh!” Naberius sounded delighted, “I mean yes, now that you point it out, recent events do suggest that was the case. It’s uncharacteristically devious of you for you to have noticed, however.”

Charlie shrugged, and Alastor was witness to the first real break in her chipper demeanor he’d seen. “Mom brought it up a few weeks ago on our Saturday hellcall.”

“Oh,” Naberius said, coming into Alastor’s view- human, at the moment- as he sat down in his chair, looking discomfited. Faintly disapproving- not, Alastor thought, of Charlie. “I beg your pardon, Miss Charlotte.”

Charlie scoffed, “What, why? Talking to Mom’s great, she just- you know, pointed out a thing that’s obviously true, given everything that’s going on right now, it’s, ha, it’s whatever. Ha ha.”

Hm. Terrible liar. Alastor kept himself carefully still, smiling pleasantly at both Naberius and Charlie, working to make himself an unremarkable piece of scenery, because he suspected that ‘everything that’s going on right now,’ was very much related to why the devil currently walked the earth.

“Well,” Naberius said, deliberately turning to look at Alastor, “Best to focus on other things, considering. What were you discussing with Alastor, exactly?”

Considering what? Vexing! Alastor opened his mouth to ask and was met with a furious glare from Naberius. That wouldn’t have stopped Alastor, except then Charlie actually answered Naberius’ question.

“Oh, well I was explaining how Pre-Tower Babelonian worked, but actually I think before that he asked about why there wasn’t like, ‘Foundational Infernal Contract Law, Complete Edition,’ to work off of, which,” Charlie stopped, and then visibly switched from simply answering a conversational question to trying to remember an actual piece of her curriculum, “Because Hellish contracts aren’t actually based off of, uh, laws. It’s a collection of… precedent-based references to existing clauses from other contracts of note, and then a bunch of strategies and notations regarding loophole exploitation.”

Charlie shifted from her thoughtful posture to turn and look at Alastor again, “We don’t technically have to use clauses from previous contracts, but they’ve been recorded in all these books because they’re considered, you know, really well studied and air-tight. We could try to phrase stuff like normal people, I’m kind of of the attitude that if you trust someone all of this is unnecessary- handshake deals are for when you want to give a friend what they need to feel safe, if they need it, and if they’re looking for a way to use that to their advantage then that’s not great but you still ultimately wanna help them anyway.”

Naberius had been steadily hunching over and burying his face in his hands over the course of the last half of that statement, and Alastor had to admit that attitude left him nearly as concerned for Charlie as the crane, but they both allowed her to continue with her explanation.

“But the whole point of these is that the way people normally talk and make deals is, you know, super exploitable if you don’t trust the person involved. So people have studied and argued about all of these clauses for millenia to get every loophole ironed out.” Charlie turned and looked at Naberius for approval, and after a moment he unburied his face and replied.

“Disregarding the fact that I will be providing remedial lessons in scheming and the application of handshake deals, very good. You did forget interconnecting clause loopholes.”

“Interconnecting what-now?” Alastor asked, while across from him Charlie smacked her own forehead.

`”Right! Duh! That’s the whole reason Naberius and I are here- all the clauses in these books are iron-clad, honestly you could pick them out yourself and staple them together into some kind of contract, but what I’m gonna help you do is narrow down which ones best fit your situation, and then make sure whatever clauses we settle on don’t contradict each other in a way that creates loopholes in otherwise well-designed clauses.”

“So…” Alastor looked at the piles of books in a new light, “What we’ll be doing is deciding what we want to accomplish, then looking through all of these to find appropriate clauses to meet that need, then connecting them together into a complete contract?”

“Yeah!” Charlie leaned over and picked up a book roughly the size of her torso and pulled it closer to herself, “So I was thinking probably what we should be building around, the sort of foundation of the contract, should probably be ‘Euphemia the Blasphemous’ Vow of Mutual Nonhostility of 1390,’ which basically says that so long as neither of you ever hurt each other, then neither of you can ever hurt each other. Which is weird and recursive, but would basically mean you could never do each other any harm under any circumstances.”

Oh no.

“Um,” Alastor said, casting around for a reason why that sort of agreement wouldn’t do. Charlie hadn’t waited for a response, she’d begun flipping through her book, getting to the clause she’d mentioned and putting a finger to read the margin notes. As his eyes darted about the room, he caught Naberius’.

It wasn’t that Naberius was looking at him ‘knowingly,’ it was that Naberius had realized something was wrong and was looking at him with furrowed eyebrows behind his large, thick glasses. Except Alastor locked eyes with the other man and, upon realizing he was being observed, jerked back from absolutely nothing save his regard and immediately gave himself away.

Comprehension dawned, and immediately became a sort of smug understanding. Alastor was filled with the sudden, hideous realization that the other man absolutely thought that he was the one being recreationally tortured and possibly fucked by Lucifer.

For the second time in as many days of knowing Naberius, Alastor considered stabbing him in the throat with the switchblade in his pocket and running.

“Perhaps,” Naberius said, turning away from Alastor with that same smug look on his face, “Given that that clause was never intended for individuals who wished to spend a great deal of time together, and the unpredictable nature of life, ‘Kinhachirō’s Guard Against Irreversible Maiming or Death,’ might be more appropriate.”

He passed a folded scroll of bamboo threaded together to Charlie, who unrolled it and read with a frown. “Are you sure that’s enough, Mr. Naberius? If the point of this is making sure Alastor feels safe, leaving a bunch of room for Dad to hurt him doesn’t feel-”

“I think that would be a more appropriate start, Charlie,” Alastor interrupted, “Although I appreciate your concern, I think it might be best to start with more wiggle room and narrow it down, if I’m understanding this process correctly?”

Charlie frowned. “Okay, I guess.”

They worked from there. It was, genuinely, a very interesting way to spend his morning- if nothing else, the foundational lessons Naberius kept stepping in to explain to Charlie, or Charlie took the time to explain to him, seemed like they would be tremendously useful for when he eventually died and went to hell.

Charlie seemed to remember the various clauses best if she knew the story behind them- she had a knack for finding pieces of kindness in, as became increasingly obvious as Alastor read through the books he could understand, a profoundly cutthroat practice. Contracts that didn’t have to be as forgiving as they were, but which chose to be kind in what places they could be. Stories of deals that actually, genuinely turned out better for both parties.

From the little skeptical frown Naberius gave whenever Charlie brought one of these charming anecdotes up, this perspective was just as naive as it sounded to Alastor.

“I know- I mean, I know where I’m from is meant to be a ‘punishment’ for the sinners or whatever,” Charlie eventually said, after she looked up and saw two shared skeptical looks on Alastor and Naberius’ faces, “But I don’t think just because people are bad when they’re alive we shouldn’t celebrate when they take the chance to be kind to one another. I wish this whole thing was designed so people got more chances at it.”

“A redesigning of hellish contract law would be an entirely appropriate passion project for you to pursue once you come of age,” Naberius offered, in the tone of a compromise.

But Alastor could see a dissatisfaction in her face at that suggestion.

“As the only human at this table,” Alastor ventured, “‘Hell’ seems a rather late time to be afforded opportunities for kindness. We’ve already been afforded our chance to ‘earn’ our place in heaven, surely? Without an opportunity for reward, I find it difficult to believe these examples of kindness would be at all common no matter how the system was designed.”

Charlie lit up. Naberius closed his eyes and visibly bit back a groan.

“Exactly! It’s so messed up that dead people are just stuck after they’re not on Earth anymore-”

This led to quite the manifesto on the benefits of redemption being offered for sinners, if perhaps failing on the details. It was a sweet sentiment if, Alastor thought, rather outrageously naive. More interesting were the ideas that Alastor could see her refuting without actually speaking them into the world.

Someone in her life thought she ought to disregard sinners and focus on herself, and forming relationships with ‘hellborn’ demons- of which apparently Naberius was one.

Someone in her life thought she should be angry at heaven, and working to undermine them for ‘sinner’ demon’s benefit.

Charlie very obviously struggled to actually articulate the opinions that weren’t her own- ‘Some people think sinner demons should be left to govern themselves, because that’s the ‘best punishment’ or whatever,’-’I don’t know, it’s hard to be mad at heaven, I wish they’d think about how a lot of the sinners down in hell are people the angels who rose to heaven from earth loved once, but they probably have their own stuff going on, right?’- but it was obvious when they inserted themselves into her own developing worldview.

Alastor was terribly excited for what kind of hell he would be experiencing, once she was old enough to start enacting her will on the world. Three different rulers with three conflicting opinions all trying to make what they wanted happen all at once sounded like an absolute nightmare.

He very much liked the idea of the afterlife being interesting.

In between Alastor coaxing a political stance out of the Princess of Hell to satisfy his own curiosity, they did in fact manage to put a contract together.

It remained, foundationally, built around ‘Kinhachirō’s Guard Against Irreversible Maiming or Death,’ which, as one might expect, was some five pages of elaborate and loophole-free language designed to ensure two people couldn’t harm one another in a way that couldn’t be fixed. There was also, as Naberius insisted, “Mammon’s Hellbound Limiter,” a clause crafted by the Sin of Greed himself to ensure contracts made with mortals only applied during their life on earth, and would be rendered entirely void upon their death. There was ‘Phenex’s Demand For Mercy,’ a clause specifically designed to modify Kinhachirō’s Guard to avoid that pesky torture problem Charlie was worried about- requiring a discussion between the two contractees establishing a variety of signals from spoken words to particularly pointedly directed thoughts that would temporarily default the contractees to a blanket ‘no harm’ rule.

A lot of them were that way- clauses attached to other clauses attached to each other. The work of their morning was sniffing them out and stringing them together into an agreement that made sense.

-

They took a break at eleven in the morning, because Naberius was unyielding regarding Charlie’s eating schedule, shared with him because Charlie saw an opportunity to request a meal that was normally unreasonably large when shared between two people- “Oooh, Mr. Naberius, would you mind popping down and grabbing the Pullum Parthicum from Acipius’s?” Naberius did in fact casually turn into a giant crane-person for the lunch run to hell, then turn back upon his return. Pullum Parthicum was apparently a roast chicken dish prepared by a chef from ancient Rome that Alastor’s not unimpressive culinary vocabulary did not have the words to describe but which he found delightful nevertheless.

After lunch was proofreading, and then it was time to present the contract to Lucifer.

-

Lucifer’s office was upstairs and down a hallway away from the second floor landing. Charlie was the one who knocked on her father’s door, yelling, “Daaaad, it’s Charlie! We’re ready for the contract signing!”

The door swung open and Alastor took a moment to imagine the picture the three of them made- framed in the doorway on either side of Charlie, towering over the girl- tall for her age, or her presumed age, but still easily dwarfed by both Alastor and Naberius. Charlie was clutching the fifty-page document they’d strung together to her chest and looking genuinely very excited.

Except then he actually looked into the room and any internal musings were dashed by the sight of Lucifer inside.

It wasn’t anything so remarkable a change as Naberius’ for went through- Alastor recognized ‘porcelain doll’ almost immediately, it was nearly the reverse of Naberius’ skin darkening to black feathers, Lucifer’s was totally white save two red spots of blush on his cheeks, and had a strange, untextured quality to it. It stretched and moved the way it ought to, but when it was immobile some part of Alastor felt it ought to be statuesque and brittle, not flexible like skin. His eyes were unsurprising- red irises in yellow sclera, although only the usual two, and for a moment Alastor thought he had no nose at all until he tilted his head and Alastor was just able to make out two very thin, snakelike slits where a nose would be. He was wearing a top hat with a coiled snake and apple laying on the brim centered on a crown, and when he opened his mouth to greet Charlie his mouth was full of pointed, interlocking shark teeth.

Alastor didn’t realize he’d missed an invitation to step inside until he looked around and realized that both of the people he’d spent all morning with had stepped through without him.

“So, how do you think you did?” Lucifer asked, looking between all three of them.

“We did great!” Charlie exclaimed, although roughly half an hour ago she’d been visibly straining herself trying to figure out what they’d missed- ‘I have to have missed something , right?’- with both Alastor and Naberius.

Naberius said, “Typically any contract entered into with you would be looked over by a small army of clausal scholars before it ended up on your desk, but I do think it’s very competently put together, considering.”

“I haven’t the slightest clue!” Alastor chimed in.

“Huh!” Lucifer said, and oh, the teeth really did put a different spin on that amused smirk, it felt both just a shade too wide- desperate, everything about Lucifer always had that hint of desperation about it- and much more well suited to this face, “So really just the full spectrum of confidence levels, huh? Alright, well, Charlie’s probably right, let’s see it.”

Charlie planted the contract onto her father’s desk with a sort of manic glee, and then leaned forward half over his desk when he picked the pages up- were those gloves or were his hands black?- and began to scan them.

It went faster than someone reading a fifty page document ought to, which still meant they were sitting there, tense, waiting for Lucifer’s approval or disapproval, for several minutes.

At one point he licked his finger- which felt like a point toward ‘his hands are black’- to help turn a page, and revealed that he had a forked tongue. Felt like Alastor was missing the ‘goat’ part.

“Phenex’s Mercy won't’ apply until we discuss terms,” Lucifer remarked at one point.

“Immediately upon signing my counsel will be leaving so we can go over those details,” Alastor replied.

Lucifer looked up and caught his eye, and Alastor stretched his smile the slightest bit wider. The ‘boundaries’ conversation, almost certainly. Alastor was. Not going to like that part.

Lucifer didn’t accept the contract without any editing- Naberius had informed both Alastor and Charlie that it was entirely reasonable and common practice to assume something terrible had gone wrong and demand to recheck the contract if he did- and it went through a few passes between himself and Charlie, who turned to consult with Alastor and Naberius in hushed whispers whenever it did, but the changes weren’t especially eventful. The most exciting part was that at one point they ended up having to make some rather extensive on-the-fly edits because the combination of ‘Kinhachirō’s Guard’ and ‘Mammon’s Limiter’ technically allowed Lucifer to render Alastor medically dead, heal him- making the maiming reversible- and thereby invalidate the entire contract.

Eventually, however, they did come to the signing.

Alastor went first- he’d been instructed on how this would go. As his representative Charlie would be ‘powering’ the deal- which was the only way Alastor could enter into a deal with the devil with any possibility of repercussions for Lucifer himself at all. As soon as the pen was in his hand there was a flash next to him- he glanced over, and Lucifer was no longer the only person in the room to drop their human guise. Charlie looked very much like her father, with yellow eyes and red sclera, except instead of the slits she had a small, almost snout-like nose and her teeth, when she smiled encouragingly at Alastor, were only unusually pointed about the canines. Two long horns erupted from her forehead, and a spaded tail swished happily behind her.

He signed the contract, ‘Alastor Sibyllina Biscossi Toussaint’ - deeply unfortunate, but middle names in honor of saints were a Toussaint tradition, and Alastor was, after all, quite the bastard. He slid the contract back over the table, and offered the pen.

Lucifer didn’t take it. Instead, he pressed his thumb against one of his very, very sharp teeth- hmm- and the resulting droplet of blood- not red, but gold, and seemingly shining with its own internal light- was pressed against the page.

The most immediately obvious change was that Lucifer sprouted six wings and grew two very large horns of his own, to match his daughter. His eyes reversed color to match hers as well, and the snake on his hat unwound itself and changed into a ring- a halo- joined by the apple above his head. 

As soon as it made contact with the document, the blood spread out and pooled in a very specific pattern, a circle with Lucifer’s name written along its edges and, within that, a sigil. The immediate and obvious comparison was to an upside-down triangle, with crossing lines inside of it and curls emerging from its bottom point, intersected by an upward pointing arrow.

So that was all tremendously overwhelming.

As soon as the contract was signed by both parties, Charlie dropped the horns and her eyes reversed color, although she did not revert entirely to human form, and Lucifer did much the same. Then all four of them sat in complete silence for several moments, which Charlie recovered from first.

“We did it! Ohmigosh that’s great! So you guys can keep hanging out, and we don’t have to move!” She clearly felt incredibly accomplished, turning to look between all three of them.

“Great job, Char-Char! I’ve had meetings with sins involving less well put together contracts!”

“Very well done, Miss Charlotte.”

“I appreciate your help a great deal, Charlie.”

They were, if nothing else, all collectively in general agreement that Charlie was an absolute delight.

Charlie launched herself across the desk to hug her father, and the next several moments were happily dedicated to Charlie’s victory lap, so she was the first one to remember- “Phenex’s Mercy! Wait, wait, you wanted to do that in private, right? Mr. Naberius we have to leave!”

At which point, before anyone else could react, she grabbed Naberius by the hand and bodily threw the both of them out of the office door, kicking it shut behind her.

Leaving Alastor and Lucifer alone.

“...so.” Lucifer said.

“Quite.” Alastor replied.

Chapter Text

Alastor stared at Lucifer from his seat opposite him at his desk.

Lucifer tapped his fingernail- no, that was a claw- his claw against the surface of the desk and stared back.

“You don’t speak English?” Alastor asked.

“Oh for-” Lucifer threw his head back and groaned, “ No , I don’t speak English! Babelonian is fine basically all the time and, honestly, if I learned a new language every time you lot let an old one die out and came up with a new one I’d never do anything else.”

“What a hilariously defensive posture for you to take regarding a simple question!” Alastor replied, leaning forward in his seat to put his elbows on the desk and rest his chin on his right hand.

“Charlie’s been encouraging me to get more familiar with modern human cultures since she was old enough to know about them,” Lucifer replied, lowering his head to look back at Alastor and looking rueful, “I mean, honestly I probably should learn either English or Mandarin just so we can speak it together but part of me is just waiting for one of them to burn her the way Eastern Scythian burned me, and then she’ll get it.”

“I can’t say I’m familiar with Eastern Scythian,” Alastor replied. He wasn’t certain he’d ever heard of ‘Scythian’ anything, actually.

“You wouldn’t’ve, no one fucking speaks it anymore,” Lucifer replied, grumbling a bit at the end. Then he took a breath, looked Alastor in the eyes- it was so odd to see them in red and gold for more than a moment or two at a time, “Right. Okay, we do actually have to do this.”

Alastor sighed, “Yes. Right, I need a word, a sign, and a thought, yes?”

“Minimum. But honestly, the thought’s the most important one, I honestly think the clause edits have maybe gone a little overboard on Phenex.”

“Right, well, word is thaasophobia, sign is-” Alastor reached out for the contract and pen and drew the astronomical symbol for Mercury, which had been Charlie’s suggestion, ‘Because he was a messenger god, and you know, radio.’ “-and my thought.”

Alastor placed the middle and pointer finger of his right hand on the paper, as he’d been instructed. This wasn’t something he had to only think about when he wanted to make Lucifer incapable of hurting him- just a thought he didn’t think he’d ever be directing at Lucifer. Alastor pulled up his memory of getting fired from his last job as a pianist- not so unpleasant he’d be unwilling to think of it if he needed to, not so pleasant it would be hard to recall if he was in pain.

His mother had been two months dead. A customer had grabbed him by the shoulder and screamed a request in his ear. He’d punched him. His boss had talked the customer out of calling the police, then made a point that he’d only done that much out of ‘consideration for your old lady,’ and informed Alastor he wouldn’t be working there anymore.

Alastor had hated playing piano in that restaurant anyway.

He watched the squiggly line representing that memory appear on the page, and leaned in, curious. It almost looked like a visual representation of radio waves.

“Done?” Lucifer asked.

“Ah,” Alastor held the contract out, “Yes, apologies. What will you be using?”

“Word’s malogranatum- you lot at least still kinda use Latin, but I doubt I’ll ever have to talk about pomegranates with you in it- uh, I guess if we’re going astronomical the sun symbol will do, and-” Lucifer had been writing as he spoke, and he paused to press his own fingers to the paper. Alastor leaned over to peak- no radio waves for him, instead a chain of interconnected circles.

Another pause.

“That’s… it?” Alastor asked.

“That’s it,” Lucifer replied. “Wanna test it?”

“In both directions, yes,” Alastor replied, “Do you have a letter opener?”

Which startled a laugh out of Lucifer. “You know, I do, actually.”

“Give me that,” Alastor said, voice light, “And then hurt me.”

“Uh, sure. First thing on the itinerary once we get to the boundary conversation: that thing your voice does when you decide it’s time for you to order me around, and how you’ve apparently decided this is one of those times.” Lucifer said, even as he reached into his desk to retrieve said letter opener.

Alastor furrowed his eyebrows, “Should I not tell you to do things outside of certain contexts? I don’t know that I can promise that- I have been told I can get bossy.”

‘Bossy’ had been Mimzy’s word for it. He’d also heard presumptuous, demanding, and uppity, depending on circumstance.

“It’s about tone, mostly. You have a voice. Can I see your arm?” Lucifer  waved and some gauze and bandages appeared on the desk, and held his hand out, palm up, “I think scratching the back of your forearm should do.”

Alastor reached out his left hand, brushing off the mild irritation of having to lean over the desk, and felt Lucifer grab his wrist- it wasn’t at all like a fingernail, really, it was more like his fingers hardened toward the tips and narrowed into points. Lucifer carefully unbuttoned the cuffs of Alastor’s shirt and rolled up his sleeves, an unexpectedly intimate gesture that raised gooseflesh on his skin. Once his sleeve had been drawn up to the elbow Lucifer pressed the tip of the claw on his pointer finger to Alastor’s skin as far up his arm as he could without risking the pooling blood staining and- looking at Alastor’s face to wait for a nod- began to draw it down.

The claw had been dug deep enough into his arm that as soon as it moved the tension broke, and the skin of his arm split open.

He was moving slowly, but he still managed to get two inches toward his wrist before Alastor had the presence of mind to say, “Thaasophobia.”

Lucifer jerked back as if stung, slamming into his own chair and wincing.

Alastor blinked in alarm, “Are you alright?”

“Wha- I, yeah,” Lucifer shook his head, “It didn’t hurt, it just- feels really bad? I don’t know how the fuck Phenex managed to make a contract generate shame but- uh, you’ll see, I guess.”

“I will,” Alastor said, and then, “thaasophobia,” again, to reset the clause. They wasted a few moments for Alastor to bandage his arm.

Lucifer was the one who held his arm out to be grabbed this time, and Alastor had to admit he did take his time with unbuttoning his shirt sleeve, even though hunching over the desk remains uncomfortable. The skin on Lucifer’s arm lacks any kind of hair, and Alastor was briefly distracted by Lucifer’s hand, carefully examining the shift from his claws- hard, presumably less brittle than they look- to soft, still-not-quite-right skin.

“You know,” Lucifer remarked, sounding amused, “Wearing a human form in private was mostly for your benefit. This isn’t actually your only chance to get a good look. So maybe a better time?”

Alastor refused to let himself blush, and instead simply returned to the task at hand, getting Lucifer’s sleeve pushed up and getting the letter opener in position. He paid Lucifer the same courtesy he’d been given- this was a test, not pain for his own satisfaction, and Lucifer’s remark on his ‘tone’ had been enough reminder that just because they were alone together didn’t mean dropping into certain habits was appropriate.

Lucifer nodded, and Alastor began to slice down toward his wrist.

Embarrassingly, Lucifer said, “malogranatum,” much faster than Alastor had managed his own word, and Alastor jerked back at the sudden, overwhelming understanding that he was the worst sort of wretched, miserable thing in all the world. He was terrible, monstrous, how could he betray Lucifer’s trust like that, he should curl up in a ball and di-

Alastor shook his head, and the thoughts cleared themselves. “Ugh.”

Lucifer repeated the clause before he replied, “Malogranatum. Yeah, Phenex was an asshole. That Phenex was, anyway- I don’t actually know the guy wearing his name now.” Lucifer shrugged, “I misunderstood what ‘will know the shame of betrayal,’ meant in the contract- I don’t actually know if we need that particular slap on the wrist in our own arrangement, but clause editing is a nightmare. Means we should probably come up with different words for when you’re hurting me for pleasure, not business.”

Alastor squinted in confusion, “Another word? For what, exactly?”

Lucifer sighed, “Yeah, uh. Not really a concept that’s gotten much discussed traction here on earth- Ozzy’s tried to introduce it to a few different groups of people but it hasn’t really gotten widespread the way he’s hoping it will someday.”

Not a terribly useful answer to his question, “Explain it, then. And- who’s Ozzy?”

Lucifer slumped in his seat and pressed half of his face into one hand, looking faintly embarrassed, “Uh, well. Ozzy’s actually Asmodeus, he’s the, uh. Sin of Lust. I mean, you know, some of the more common ways of folks doing the- well, not a lot of people are doing exactly the kind of thing we do, obviously, but consensually hurting each other, they’re doing it for. Sex reasons. So he’s the one with an interest in… this kind of thing.”

Hm. Not sure how he felt about Lucifer discussing matters with people Alastor was unlikely to ever meet. “Go on.”

“So it’s, um- it’s this thing where you establish some like, hard nos about what you’re willing to do with someone, and like, also kinda soft ‘maybe I’d be down for that,’ type stuff, and also ‘yeah this does it for me I’m into it,’ kinda stuff- I mean, you make a list? So for example I’m probably gonna put ‘skinning my face’ on the hard no column, and ‘you cutting me open and playing around with my insides,’ into the yes column, right?” Lucifer smiled nervously, splaying his hands as he listed each example and then tacking- his claws made loud little ‘tick’ noises on the wood.

This was the most explicit Lucifer had been so far about enjoying being gutted, and Alastor tried not to preen too obviously in the middle of what Lucifer was clearly trying to keep as a serious conversation. The man’s tendency to get sidetracked by what he clearly considered to be necessary context and put off actually answering questions, Alastor was willing to forgive- the man was clearly having some trouble organizing his thoughts in general, “Right. I don’t like other people initiating physical touch the vast majority of the time, but I wouldn’t call it a ‘hard no,’ which feels somewhere between the first two options?”

Lucifer snapped and pointed, as if Alastor had just come upon a good point, “Yeah, we need ‘probably not,’ column too. Or maybe that's over complicating things? Idunno, maybe we should just assume ‘probably not’ stuff is ‘no’ stuff?”

Lucifer looked at Alastor, as if he knew. Alastor raised an eyebrow.

“Um, anyway, but the point of the words- thing. Sometimes maybe you’re doing stuff to me where I might say ‘stop’- or hell, maybe you might say ‘stop’- but we don’t necessarily want the whole scene to end, right? Maybe I’m just saying stop because my body’s freaking out about my guts being all over the place, and maybe you’re saying ‘stop’ to like, convey to me that I need to hold still but it’s still within the context of the scene, right? So we pick a different word you won’t say while we’re doing a scene otherwise- it’s a lot like Phenex like that- and if you actually seriously want stuff to stop, you say that. Or I do, whatever.” Lucifer shrugged, and then shook his hands out a little, then performed a sort of full body wiggle Alastor was beginning to recognize as discomfort. He wasn’t enjoying this conversation any more than Alastor was.

“Is there a reason we can’t use Phenex to the same-” Alastor cut himself off. He didn’t need to irritably observe fixable problems, even if Lucifer was like Gabriel, or pushy people on a dance floor, or Chuck’s brief dance with the idea of having an apprentice who didn’t know how to properly prepare a rib roast- even if he did respond to Alastor suggesting a solution to an obvious problem by throwing a prolonged whining fit about it, there wasn’t actually anything he could do to Alastor anymore.

Alastor restarted, “Is there another room we could discuss this privately in? I hate this desk more than anything else in this world, and I don’t think us being set up like I’m interviewing for a job is working for either of us.”

“I- you aren’t!” Lucifer jerked to attention, and then- “What’s wrong with my desk?”

“It inconvenienced me twice and now it’s dead to me,” Alastor replied, because he was fairly certain Lucifer enjoyed a certain amount of strangeness from Alastor too, and stood, “I will also accept me dragging this chair to your side of the desk instead.”

“I mean-” Lucifer gripped the arms of his chair nervously, “Most of the house is communal space, there’s, uh, my room?”

“Is there somewhere other than your bed we could sit in your room?” Alastor responded.

Lucifer’s eyes went briefly unfocused, and then he snapped his fingers, “Uh, there is now?.”

“Perfect, if you don’t mind?” Alastor made a sweeping gesture with his arm toward the door he’d entered through.

The room was, it turned out, the next door down from Lucifer’s office- there was an odd gap between the two rooms and a door in what would’ve been the shared wall that made Alastor think there was likely a connected bathroom between the two- and was also roughly the size of Alastor’s entire apartment.

Lots of rooms in the Morningstar home were the size of his apartment, but it was less disconcerting in communal spaces.

Lucifer walked over to a- presumably freshly made- sitting area off in the corner with a loveseat and two armchairs, and immediately flopped face first down into the loveseat- if he bent his knees he could splay the entire rest of his body on it face down with no trouble, how was he that short- grabbed a pillow, and groaned into it.

“Enjoying this conversation that much, are we?” Alastor asked, shoving one of the armchairs a bit closer to the loveseat and turning to address Lucifer with both his elbows resting on one of the armrests and his face resting in his hands.

Lucifer turned so his face was only half smooshed into the pillow so he could speak, “I called Ozzy last night after I realized I messed up and he ranted about all this stuff and how I shoulda done it with Lillith too even though like, we knew each other since the beginning, we knew what each other’s boundaries were, except I mean I guess we did get divorced but. For different reasons? Anyway Ozzy made me make a list but I dunno how much detail to go in on anything and I really don’t wanna mess up again so I keep just telling you all the stuff Ozzy told me, but I feel like I’m bad at it?”

Alastor nodded, “While I assume this Ozzy’s understanding of the subject is commendable, this did all feel like it was working fine without all of that.”

“Until you had a public breakdown and I almost moved to Venice,” Lucifer said, although he genuinely sounded like he agreed.

“Why Venice?”

“Naberius took Charlie there last month and she thought the gondolas were neat.”

As good a reason to move anywhere as Lucifer would ever need, Alastor supposed. Alastor tucked one of his legs up underneath him and considered, “May I see the list?”

Lucifer flicked it into existence with a flourish that looked less like magic and more like actual sleight-of-hand and held it out for Alastor.

Alastor looked at the list, which read:

1. Discuss Yes/No/Maybes
1. Make clear these can change at any time.
2. Discuss safewords.
1. Explain utility of safeword rather than ‘stop’ or ‘no.’
2. Make clear that using a safeword is not a punishment, and that it just means that everything has to stop and the safewording partner should be checked in with.
3. Doms can safeword too!!!!
3. Discuss what each of us wants out of the arrangement.
1. aaaaaaaaa
2. Discuss the ‘favorite toy’ thing.

Well, point ‘2a’ handily answered for why dousing one’s partner in shame wouldn’t work for a ‘safeword,’ Alastor supposed. One part certainly jumped out. “What’s the ‘favorite toy,’ thing?”

“If I answer that part you gotta answer it too,” Lucifer replied.

Alastor’s eyes darted to the actual primary discussion point and winced, but persisted, “I am willing to make that sacrifice.”

Lucifer groaned again and rolled over onto his back, throwing an arm dramatically over his eyes. “Can I do a context ramble first?”

Alastor shrugged indulgently, letting his voice tinge more playful. Possibly fond. Lucifer was not a person fundamentally designed to sit up straight in a chair behind a desk. “Truly whatever gets you there, my good fellow.”

Lucifer sighed, “So I was talking to Ozzy, and I was trying to explain why I didn’t even realize what we were doing, right? Because what we’ve been doing really didn’t have the same… tone? As what Lillith and I did.”

“I would imagine not!”

“I mean, uh, yeah but not just as in the whole sex thing, right?” Lucifer made a vague hand gesture, “Like the parts where I like being told what to do, and the person I’m with likes having control over other people’s the same, right? But Lillith wasn’t like, skinning me. She was choking me, and whipping me, and making me call her ‘mistress’ and lick her shoes.”

Alastor winced, “I am this close to rescinding your context ramble privileges.”

“Too late, I’m on one now. That was the worst of it. Anyway, the ratios of ‘putting on a fun little power play where you each play roles’ versus ‘actually exerting that pretense of power by hurting me’ were way different, right?”

“I don’t know that I’m necessarily playing a ‘role’ in our encounters at all,” Alastor replied, frowning.

Lucifer jolted a bit, pointing at Alastor, “Okay but you definitely do, though! I mean, you react to things way differently during a scene than you do out in the ‘real world,’ it’s part of the reason I was so confused yesterday. You’ve already told me I have to do things, or that I can’t do stuff, or that you won’t do something I want when we’re playing tons of times, so I didn’t get why telling me you couldn’t do something outside of it was such a whole revelation.”

“That’s,” Alastor tilted his head to the side, considering, “Obviously different. Telling you I’m not interested in ‘playing’ is very different from taking on the role of someone who gets to tell you-”

Alastor paused. Lucifer looked smug.

“I see,” Alastor conceded.

“But you’re right that you have a lot more in common with that guy that Lillith-the-person had in common with Lillith-the-dom, day to day. It’s a very different energy. But what I get out of it is kinda, on a fundamental level, the same thing- you tell me how you want to play with me, and then for a couple hours I get to stop being Lucifer Morningstar and I get to be your favorite toy to play with instead.” Lucifer made little ‘ta-dah’ hands at this final statement, “Hence ‘favorite toy’ thing. It’s, uh, kinda how I think about what I’m getting out of it? Also, this is a new thing I’ve figured out actually, the pain is really useful for, I guess, helping me process stuff inside my body. Which I like. It doesn’t really feel like it has anywhere to go, in the rest of me?”

Truly Alastor did catch the end of that explanation, but he was struggling with the earlier bit.

‘I get to be your favorite toy, I get to be your favorite toy, I get to be your favorite toy, I get to be your favorite toy, I get to be your-’

“Oh, holy shit, your face is red. Are you, uh, good? Alastor?”

“I’m fine,” Alastor said, hearing how strangled he sounded, “Do you think we should have sex?”

Wait no that wasn’t-

Lucifer let out the same horrible wheeze Alastor recognized as a telltale sign that he had utterly bamboozled the man. He’d been wondering if that was a side effect of human lungs, but apparently not.

“Um! I don’t- I don’t know that it’s really a ‘should’ thing?” Lucifer replied, looking sort of unsettled, “Is that your way of saying you want to have sex?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Alastor responded, and then, before he could stop himself, “I don’t have any frame of reference.”

Lucifer furrowed his eyebrows, “For?”

“For wanting to have sex with someone,” Alastor clarified, “Or even- not even wanting, thinking the idea might have any merit at all.”

“Oh!” Lucifer’s eyes brightened with understanding, as if what Alastor just said made any sense. “Oh, you’re one of those, yeah that’s a variant of human sexuality you’ll run into sometimes. Well, alright.”

“Al right?” Alastor responded, voice cracking at the end of the statement. Alastor wasn’t used to the shocking revelations that came out of Lucifer’s mouth being about him.

Lucifer sat up, “Uh, fuck, I thought you’d take it badly if I was too understanding and I may have gone too hard on the ‘flippant’ end of things. It’s a thing that happens, sometimes the human sex drive just- doesn’t happen? Or happens rarely, or under very specific circumstances? It’s not even necessarily that unusual, I mean, no one’s done a study or anything but it’s just… a normal thing that’ll turn up sometimes.”

Alastor breathed in, and then out. Lucifer just sat there, patiently waiting.

“This is a ridiculous thing to be overwhelmed over,” Alastor finally said, “Obviously there are many much more bizarre things about me. I have literally murdered seventeen people.”

“This is the part where I’d normally offer a hug,” Lucifer said, “But it’s on your ‘soft no’ list. So, you know. I’m hugging you in my mind.”

Alastor got up from the armchair, gestured at Lucifer to scoot over, and then put the pillow Lucifer had been resting his head on on his lap. Then he gripped Lucifer’s shoulder and tugged gently until his head was sitting in Alastor’s lap and Alastor had a hand in his hair.

It was softer than it was when Lucifer was human. Like the fuzz on a chick.

Or possibly a duckling. Alastor had never touched a duckling before.

Lucifer wiggled around until his head was comfortable on Alastor’s lap- the pillow’s primary function was making such wiggling less intrusive- leaned into Alastor scratching lightly at his scalp, and then sighed. “Anyway, um, to actually answer your question, I think maybe you should figure out if you want that on your end and get back to me? I’m good either way. You still haven’t answered the ‘what you’re getting out of this’ question.”

Alastor leaned his head back and sighed, considering. “In spite of how this began, it’s certainly different from what I got out of hurting other people.”

“I mean, good to know?” Lucifer ventured.

“I do think part of it is that I have a history of not playing very well with my toys, and I can break you as many times as I like and still get to play with you next week,” Alastor said, while gently scritching at the back of Lucifer’s head. “I will admit, what you are is part of the appeal. I like that you don’t respond to things as I expect a human would, and I enjoy that a being of such power wants so badly to do what I ask.”

“Well, yeah,” Lucifer chuckled lightly, and rolled his eyes, “I didn’t think you liked me for my winning personality.”

Alastor’s smile cocked a bit funny at the edges, “Well, no. We are just beginning to get to know one another, of course, but you are tremendously fun to tease and I have yet to learn a thing about you that wasn’t at least a little bit interesting, which I do not often say about people. I would have just told you to go ahead and never speak to me again after the contract was signed and I was safe, rather than suffering through this conversation, if that weren’t true.”

It was odd, seeing red eyes get so big and wet and touched, the pink in his cheeks filling in with gold again,  “Really?”

“Oh, yes,” Alastor said, smile brightening again. “This entire experience has been a vulnerable nightmare, and I hate it.”

Lucifer’s eyebrows scrunched, “I think you’re mostly mean in a funny way, and I think you taking me to places has made me like earth again. Seeing it through your eyes.”

“Well,” Alastor shrugged, “I can hardly speak for all of earth, I’ve never been outside of Louisiana.”

“I mean, “ Lucifer shrugged, “Since Eden, neither have I.”

He hadn’t- this was the first time since- with his daughter - “If armageddon is coming within my lifetime you have to tell me.”

“What?” Lucifer visibly played back the conversation in his head, “Oh, wow, no, uh- it’s genuinely just a hell problem, I promise I’m not explaining most of it for a very good reason, and the parts I can talk about would just be. Me ranting about my ex, really, which. I honestly think this is even more pissed off at each other than we were twenty years ago during the actual divorce, but talking shit just is not a good look, she’s still Charlie’s mom.”

“What did Charlie’s mother do to hell ?” Alastor asked, still trying to wrap his head around it.

“I mean,” Lucifer sighed, “it was kind of a mutual fuck up. The thing she did wouldn’t have been half so bad if I told her about a thing I did to hell over a hundred years ago, you know, one of the many little mutual breaches of trust that ultimately ended our relationship. So... yeah we’re both pretty pissed. I seriously can’t tell you what she actually did.”

“That’s torturous.” Alastor grumbled, but he held up the list again. “So, we have discussed yes/no/maybe lists but, honestly, I don’t think we’re actually making those today no matter what- I’ll think about mine, but I don’t have any more serious conversations in me. I would like to suggest ‘Lohengrin,’ as a joint safeword, and I believe we have otherwise addressed all matters of immediate import on this list that are not themselves explained in the list.”

Lucifer looked like he’d been too thrown by Alastor remembering the name of his favorite opera to reply.

Alastor checked his pocket watch while Lucifer recovered. “I have an hour before I ought to leave for work. Do you think you might reiterate what you were trying to explain about the ducks again, in that time? I’m afraid I wasn’t really mentally present when you began yesterday.”

That seemed to jog him back into the present, at least, “Oh wow, I- Lohengrin sounds great, by the way- I mean, I don’t even know where to start-”

-

As it turned out, Lucifer very easily could have spent much more than an hour talking about ducks, but Alastor did eventually have to leave.

Denise somehow divined that something about his smile was ‘different’ today- “Oh Alastor, have you found yourself a steady girl? Don’t you let her get away, sweetie.”

Alastor was in such a good mood he even found the indignity of being presumed to be known tolerable, so all he said was, “Denise, honestly, when have you known me to kiss and tell?”

-

On Friday Alastor actually, finally made his trip to the butcher shop before work, and left work early as planned.

He met Mimzy at the “Last Stop,” a slightly classier establishment than they usually frequented, partially because it was a legal one- Alastor was suffering through a dry evening for this ridiculous woman, which he hoped she appreciated.

“Alastor!” She screeched as soon as he arrived, rushing up and waiting for him to initiate a hug, “Oh, Alastor, he’s here! You gotta let me take you over to where he’s sittin’, you gotta tell me what it looks like he thought after the show-”

“Yes, Mimzy,” Alastor sighed, “I can do that. You’ve been resting your voice?”

“Yes I’ve been-” Mimzy paused, and let herself drop an octave, “Yes, Alastor, I’ve been resting my voice. C’mon.”

Mimzy grabbed his arm- the respect for his boundaries had been a pleasant two minutes- and dragged him over to a table, where a black-haired gentleman with a prominent, straight nose and a smile like a shark’s was sitting.

“Mr. Baker! This is my friend I was tellin’ you about, Alastor Toussaint, from the radio? Do you mind if he sits with you?”

Baker leaned back, looking Alastor up and down, “Oh, not at all, Mimzy, I’d be delighted. You know, I think I might’ve heard your program not an hour ago, Mr. Toussaint? Do you choose the records?”

Mimzy locked eyes with Alastor and, at his nod that she ought to feel free to return to her band, she darted off.

“The music, certainly,” Alastor replied, “Some programming is, of course, a matter of practicality and what the people want to hear.”

“The taste in music’s good, though,” Baker insisted, wagging a finger at him, and Alastor waved the thought off, falsely modest, “I oughta send some recordings of our new talent your way, we’re scoopin’ ‘em up like nobody’s business, lately.”

“And who is ‘we,’ exactly, Mr. Baker? I’m afraid Mimzy was rather vague regarding which label you were representing.”

“Oh!” Baker’s smile was, perhaps, even wider and many-toothed than Alastor’s own. “Well, only the hottest up-and coming label in the industry! M.A.M. Mono Records, that’s us!”

With that he whipped out a card, which Alastor grabbed, but he hardly had time to look at it before the tone of the room changed, and his gaze was drawn toward the stage.

Chapter Text

Mimzy was resplendent. It was, genuinely, one of the best performances he’d seen out of her- it helped, Alastor was sure, that she’d actually taken his advice for once. The version of ‘Mean to Me’ they played had obviously been workshopped since he last heard it- erring on the band’s side, shockingly, it was rare Mimzy didn’t steamroll them. A bow to Mimzy’s partiality to more danceable songs, in all likelihood, and her taste for the risqué. She’d taken the opportunity to make the tone of her singing rather more- well, heavy with implication, than Gay Ellis’. Or, frankly, anyone’s. Mimzy was having fun.

Alastor had to admit, he himself started glancing around to make sure the staff weren’t about to become a problem, but she’d played well to her audience- Baker looked extremely delighted. The rest of the set was similar in tone- Mimzy was going for a very specific fun, danceable sound that was absolutely the kind of thing Alastor imagined Mimzy would like to be doing, if a studio locked her into a specific persona for the rest of her life.

Alastor kept an eye on Baker, and wasn’t certain how he felt about what he saw- Mimzy was aiming to entice, but Baker looked hungry .

Mimzy flew to their table after her set was finished, half slamming into the thing in her rush and glancing at Alastor- he flashed her a thumbs up, because no matter how he felt Baker had obviously enjoyed her work- and then back to Baker, “Well, Mister Baker? Wadya think?”

“Well hoo boy, Mimzy!” Baker slammed a fist on the table, jostling glasses of seltzer water and drawing attention to the table. Alastor refused to let his expression change, reaching a hand up to tightly grip the edge of the table- he was not, strictly speaking, actually allowed to be in this establishment. He was often not actually allowed to be in businesses he frequented, but Alastor had a slightly higher level of concern that the Last Stop might make enough of a fuss of things to get authorities who might take more than one look at his legal identification involved. Baker, unconcerned, reached forward to clap a hand on Mimzy’s shoulder and give her a bit of a shake, grin still just a hair too wide, “When Mikey told me you were something else, I didn’t realize how right he was!”

“Oh, well,” Mimzy gave an exaggerated, ‘modest’ flick of her hand, “I do my best, really it’s the band that makes me shine, y’know!”

Something seemed to occur to Mimzy, and she immediately backtracked, “Although if you want to put me up with some other musicians, I’m sure you all know what you’re doin’, right?”

Alastor muffled a snort- Mimzy’s willingness to throw her poor band under the bus at a moment's notice remained one of her more amusing cutthroat tendencies.

Baker seemed to concur, which was less amusing, “Now, that’s what I like to see! You’ve got your eye on the prize, don’t’cha? Not gonna let anyone get between you and bein’ a star!”

Alastor scanned the restaurant and caught a glimpse of Mimzy’s band- he supposed they must have names, but he’d certainly never seen much sense in learning them- and gave them a little wave, to appease them into not approaching too soon. He watched them turn toward each other and whisper excitedly, and found Baker and Mimzy both looking at him. He made direct eye contact with Mimzy, and the both of them lifted their hands to muffle their snickers.

Baker was looking between them, delighted, “Oh you two slay me, I gotta say, I am loving the energy here. Mimzy, I don’t wanna jump the gun but I definitely think we could work something out, do some really exciting things together, the works! Howszabout- right, I gotta write somethin’ up, call some folks, get this employment contract in the works, you get me? I’m in town the rest of the week, you gonna be performin’ the rest of the week?”

Baker’s words rolled together in one big, unstoppable onslaught, stringing words together into an overwhelming mess, but Mimzy had stars in her eyes, “Oh well- I mean, I won’t be performin’ here , Mister Baker, but I’ll certainly be perfomin’! You, ah, you familiar with the local scene or-”

“ Oh ,” Baker nodded, “I’ve been cottoned on to a couple’a the juice joints in town, sure. Now, let’s see if we can’t arrange another get together…”

Alastor watched Baker and Mimzy with a keen eye. He wasn’t a quiet man, not a wallflower by any means, but people underestimated the value in silence. In watching someone talk and answer any questions you might have without having to give yourself away in the asking.

Alastor had been right. Baker was hungry. He tried to pretend otherwise, of course, any label representative who wanted to keep talent on the hook would know they had to seem like they had fifty other offers they were juggling, and he did drop the name of about five different other groups he was scouting in New Orleans right now, two of which Alastor knew for a fact were real and likely to be looking for what Baker was offering.

He didn’t accept the first suggested meeting place and time Mimzy put out- not Zazzy’s, not where Mimzy was most comfortable- but he did accept the Drop Dead this coming Thursday without seeming to notice the way her eyes flicked to Alastor for a second, when making the suggestion. He may not have been the most loyal of customers, lately, but people would know Mimzy at his spot, she’d be familiar with the staff and other regulars. It was still, solidly, in her comfort zone.

Baker struck Alastor as a man who would’ve worked to catch Mimzy on the backfoot, if he didn’t need this deal.

What didn’t make sense was why ?

Eventually, Baker excused himself- “No rest for the wicked, ey?”- and left Mimzy and Alastor alone with their seltzer.

Mimzy’s giddy, fawning persona dropped in an instant.

“So, waddaya think?” All business, now, “He giving me the runaround?”

“He certainly wants something from you,” Alastor remarked, lighting a cigarette and leaning back in his chair. “He’s doing a terrible job of seeming like you need him more than he needs you.”

“Think it’s an amateur operation?” Mimzy asked, resting her head in her hand and taking a swig of Baker’s water.

“He did mention being ‘up-and-coming,’” Alastor remarked thoughtfully, picking up the card and staring at it. “M.A.M. Mono Records, I’ve certainly never heard of them before, and I’m something of an expert.”

The card was a simple, tan number with dark green lettering. “M.A.M. Mono Records” on top, undertitled, “Music and Movement” which seemed oddly meaningless, “Jonathan Baker, Artist Recruitment,” beneath, and then an address and a- useless, New York- phone number.

To the side, a picture of a record. The middle of the record, where the label went, was green with a strange black symbol on it. Alastor squinted at it, trying to figure out what exactly it was supposed to be- the top maybe could’ve been radio waves? Then it was just a bunch of odd, sharp-angled shapes and crosses. A curving line off to the side showed an arrow pointing down at nothing. Around the rim of the record, the name of the company- M.A.M. Mono- written again there.

“I met some folks who’ve been signed by them already in New York, they got funding and recordings, the works,” Mimzy said, sounding like she was inclined to believe that this was real, although she was of course rather biased, “There’s something there. They all sound happy enough, anyway- a bunch of ‘em left their homes behind, cut out partners, and they don’t sound like they got ripped off outta getting a big score out of it. And- look, I know this is gonna make you think I’m bein’ dumb, but I really want this one to work, Alastor.”

She looked antsy. She was only maybe a year or two younger than him, he knew. Which hardly meant much, given he was only thirty himself, but. Age was not kind to people’s willingness to recognize talent, particularly in a woman who could only be as charming and accommodating as people wanted her to be for thirty minute stretches at a time.

“Hence your voiced willingness to throw your own band under the bus, I suppose,” Alastor said, letting his voice drop lower as he watched the assorted irrelevants approaching.

He focused on his cigarette until Mimzy turned and said, “You wanna hop on outta here, Alastor?”

Alastor doused his cigarette in his water glass and said, “Yes, please ,” grateful Mimzy wasn’t going to insist on staying in this tense nightmare establishment, grabbing the card to shove in his pocket as he followed the crowd out.

“You, uh,” someone holding a trumpet case said, and it took Alastor a solid beat to realize one of Mimzy’s band was, for some reason, choosing to address him, “You think the set was good, then?”

Alastor turned to stare, directly at the trumpeter, one eyebrow raised, verbally unresponsive.

A beat. Two.

The trumpeter cleared his throat and muttered, “I’ll, uh, I’ll go fuck myself then.”

“You do that,” Alastor replied, and a peel of laughter erupted from Mimzy and sent the trumpeter’s shoulders hunching.

They wandered through town, in the direction of the nearest speakeasy one of them could recall, and then the night properly began.

-

Once he finally stumbled his way home, struggling with his house key for several moments before stepping inside. He shed shoes and clothes on the way to his bed, digging through the pockets of his trousers and pulling out the card. Throwing himself down on his bed he took a moment before removing his monocle to squint at it.

The letters swam before tired, drunk eyes, losing their definition.

MAMono rcords.

MAMMano Recordss.

MAMmon orecord-

-wait.

Fuck.

Alastor yanked off his monocle and covered his eyes with a hand.

‘

No.

No way.

Not everything in his life could be a hell thing. Surely.

Alastor groaned and threw the card and his monocle- one more gently than the other, that thing had been expensive- onto his bedside table and crawled into his bedding.

This was a problem for tomorrow.

-

Tomorrow Alastor squinted at the business card with no less bafflement than Last Night Alastor had.

So.

It was true that everything that happened to him couldn’t just be a new hell thing.

But if it wasn’t a weird allusion to the name “Mammon,” then it was, truly, a very stupid name. “Music and Movement Mono Records?” What the fuck was that? “Mono Records”? As opposed to what?

To be fair, his understanding was that up-and-coming studio execs were extremely stupid.

Established execs were also stupid. Differently stupid.

Alastor dropped the card and buried his face in his hands.

The problem was the same as the reason he was nervous about how eager Mimzy was about this job offer. He had been so fucking tired, and bored, and dull, and then he’d tried to murder Lucifer and his whole life had changed for the better. Not because he’d been happy, but because he’d been on edge , engaged, everything was exciting, and new, and terrifying. Alastor wanted to learn everything he could about this strange, terrifying world that could kill him whenever it pleased unless he learned all the rules and tricks and clauses. He wanted everything in his life to be a hell thing now- and, yes, even if that was somehow terrible for Mimzy, he wanted it.

Neither of them had ever pretended to be a selfless friend.

He could just go to Lucifer’s and bother him, but he got the impression weekends were his full days with Charlie. Also, if this wasn’t a Hell thing, Alastor would feel very stupid, and he would truly rather die than have to feel stupid or vulnerable in front of Lucifer again.

Or, well, that was optimistic. At least for another 72 hours or so. He needed a break.

He was going to see him on Wednesday. He should work on his stupid list.

Also, get in touch with the proprietors of the Drop Dead on Mimzy’s behalf sometime in the next few days.

Alastor had had worse excuses to go there, honestly.

-

Alastor stopped by a bakery on the way to the butcher, and got a sandwich of egg and cheese in yesterday’s bread, revitalized through toasting, for himself, and a pain au chocolat, for Lucifer, whose tastes he simply had to accept at some point. He had decided on an approach to the problem of Mimzy’s contract maybe being a hell thing, and it consisted largely of ‘expose Lucifer to it and see what happens,’ so he wanted to make an invitation to an extra evening together seem as appealing as possible. So, Lucifer got judgment free (as far as he’d know) chocolate for lunch.

Seeing Lucifer in his human facade after seeing him without made him suddenly very aware of how uncomfortable he seemed. His hair kept falling in his eyes, his smile with its flat teeth looked awkward, he hesitated for half a second before he took anything in his hands.

Once he and Lucifer were both out of Boucher’s, he handed the pain au chocolat to Lucifer- he took it with a confused expression, and Alastor watched his eyes widen in delight when he peeked into the bag.

“Is there somewhere private we could go?” Alastor asked, “You look uncomfortable.”

“No I don’t!” Lucifer replied, also sounding very uncomfortable, “You’re projecting. I don’t look like anything. I fooled you for ages.”

Alastor raised an eyebrow, “So you would prefer not to go somewhere private, then?”

Lucifer closed his mouth and looked briefly trapped. “... I don’t know how you can stand your teeth, honestly. Uh, wanna try something weird?”

“Always!” Alastor replied, perking up, “Do please lead on.”

Lucifer took him down a few side streets until they were both ensconced in an alleyway, and then held out a hand.

Alastor, intrigued, took it.

The sensation that followed was like being taken by the arm through a fold in the universe. Like slipping between stage curtains, but also like he was some lunatic caver inching their way through a cavern half a centimeter wider than the narrowest margin they could exhale their ribs to.

They appeared on a back porch- Alastor looked around, and it was plainly the Morningstar back porch- overlooking a small collection of citrus trees, two dogs playing in the yard, which was unfortunate but tremendously picturesque.

Lucifer was looking at him, visibly waiting for his response, shoulders tense. Alastor took a moment to work his way through a whole body shiver, and then returned his gaze.

“Well?” Alastor asked, “We’re in private, now.”

Teleporting had been disorienting. Watching Lucifer glimmer and shift his way from a human into a distorted, fanged doll of a man was captivating.

They both sat- Alastor would bet money the Morningstar’s wraparound porch had a set of patio furniture for each face of the house- and Alastor tried not to stare too hard as Lucifer pulled his pain au chocolat out of the bag and tore it in his hands as he ate, nibbling through it in fascinating, rodent-like bites.

Alastor distracted himself with his own egg sandwich, because truly the staring was very rude.

“I don’t actually need to eat,” Lucifer stated, as if Alastor had asked a question, “So my teeth aren’t really made for- I mean, eating at all in this jaw, but especially sweets, which are. My favorite.”

“I suppose it was unreasonable of me to expect you to adhere to human dietary needs.” Alastor remarked, although really, a bit more variety in flavor profile wouldn’t go amiss, “Although if they aren’t for eating, why do they look like that?”

“When they were still designing a bunch of the early fauna, I saw sharks- carcharodon megalodon, really- and thought they looked really interesting,” Lucifer answered.

“And then you were… locked in?” Alastor asked, looking Lucifer up and down.

“I mean not really,” Lucifer shrugged, “This is what’s most comfortable. If I ever really felt like something suited me better, it would become the most comfortable thing. But I maintain I was right: shark teeth are very interesting. I look nice with them. Even if they are bad at eating baked goods.”

“Fair enough!” Alastor said, delighted at the arbitrary nature of it all, “I concur, in any case, the teeth are very appealing.”

Lucifer looked visibly very pleased, which had, after all, been Alastor’s aim.

They ate quietly, until the two dogs decided they hadn’t been minded thoroughly enough. Alastor watched with some trepidation as they mounted the porch and circled first Lucifer’s chair and then, to Alastor’s horror, his own. They didn’t try to climb the chair itself, but they circled him, yapping obnoxiously and occasionally stopping to make big eyes at his sandwich.

He didn’t even realize someone else was there to see him pull his legs up onto his chair and press himself as far away from them as he could until Lucifer chimed in with, “Oh, shit, you don’t like dogs?”

The Morningstar pets were so damned tiny. Being afraid of them was almost too embarrassing to bear. “I got chased by a large doberman once, as a boy.” Alastor explained. “It’s nothing to do with them at all.”

It wasn’t as if the doberman had had a bad reason for chasing him. He’d jumped the fence into his owner’s yard, trying to sneak his way out of the back of one of the establishment’s his mother had worked, hungry for a sense of freedom.

(Hungry to find the Moreau boy who’d shoved him during a pickup baseball game and make a useless fuss of himself.)

The dog had been large, and had chased him to the other side of the yard because Alastor wasn’t supposed to be there. These dogs were small, and they wanted his sandwich. Alastor had barely managed to make it to the other side of his 72 hour dream before he embarrassed himself again.

Lucifer nodded, and then leaned forward, “Hey, Razzle, Dazzle,” - he whistled to get their attention, “Great news, you two have officially won the sheep versus dogs argument. Sheep are normal enough. Go. Be free.”

The two terriers looked at each other, barked once each, and then with a disorienting fuzz in the air became very small sheep instead. They each looked to Alastor, bleated in apparent gratitude, and then turned to trot their little ways down the stairs of the porch to happily consume grass instead of Alastor’s sandwich.

…

“The ‘sheep versus dog argument’?”

“I mean I modeled them after cute little sheep in the first place, I can’t really blame them for wanting to be shaped that way,” Lucifer shrugged, “But humans in cities keep dogs, right?”

“I mean,” Alastor considered, carefully setting ‘I modeled them after’ aside for later. “Sheep aren’t that odd for the sort of eccentric rich person you’re making yourself out to be.”

“I’m making myself out to be an eccentric rich person?” Lucifer asked.

“Well, no,” Alastor corrected himself, “I’m fairly certain you are an eccentric rich person, but my point is humans do eccentric rich person things as well. Like keeping free roaming pet sheep in their homes.”

“I genuinely can’t tell if I should be offended by that summary of me,” Lucifer said, “I think probably yes.”

“No, your instincts are right,” Alastor nodded, “That’s definitely the cruelest thing I’ve ever done to you. Speaking of, I finished my list.”

“Oo, me too!” Lucifer licked chocolate off the tips of his claws and then snapped the paper into existence, and they traded.

Alastor took in Lucifer’s list. He’d ended up going with four columns- Hard No/Soft No/Soft Yes/Hard Yes, which Alastor had ultimately abandoned as an idea for his own list- he’d just thrown ‘you touching me’ under ‘Maybe’ and called it a day. Alastor had to admit the more complicated option did allow for some interesting possibilities- Lucifer had put wings (touching nicely) under ‘soft yes’ and wings (hurting) under ‘soft no,’ which. Alastor had to spend several moments juggling that sequence of debilitating thoughts before moving on.

Hm.

“I have follow up questions regarding your hard no of, and I quote, ‘Doing Weird Stuff To My Face,’” Alastor found he had to say.

Lucifer looked up, brows furrowed, “Uh, sure? What’s unclear there?”

“I pulled out several of your teeth with pliers a few weeks ago.”

“Well, yeah. That’s my mouth, not my face.”

“You also requested I pluck out one of your eyes that same evening.”

“I mean, yeah, you’ll notice ‘eye stuff’ is only under the ‘soft no’ column, but, I mean. At this point you have to know my eyes are only kind of incidentally related to my face, right? It’s a seraphim thing, we got eye stuff going on like you wouldn’t believe.” Lucifer gave a gesture, and Alastor blinked several times as a veil was lifted and- looking around- he was treated to the sight of eyes- Lucifer’s eyes, dozens and dozens of them- dotted all along the wall of the building, embedded in the idea of sockets built into walls, twitching and rolling for a moment before settling to all look- without exception- at Alastor.

Alastor was caught between leaning forward, entranced, and flinching away, buckling under the weight of such intense observation. He pulled his gaze away, looking down at the sheet for a distraction- and stilled.

One of the eyes was embedded into the back of his right hand.

“In the interest of complete honesty,” Alastor said, keeping his voice level, “I feel I must warn you that I can by no means guarantee my adherence to your ‘soft no’ regarding eyes that have embedded themselves into my skin.”

“Hmm?” Lucifer blinked, squinted. The eye in Alastor’s hand also squinted and then glanced around, slightly frantic, in a way that was not physically detectable for Alastor but which nevertheless made him want to simultaneously shed his own skin in horror and pluck the thing out and swallow it whole, so it couldn’t escape him. Nevertheless, the eye popped out of existence- along with all the other extras- after only a moment, and Lucifer looked tremendously apologetic when Alastor looked back up at him. “I am. So sorry. I was kinda just spreading myself out and I may’ve gotten- a little carried away.”

“I haven’t decided if I disliked it yet, actually,” Alastor said, almost reassuring. “I just couldn’t indefinitely guarantee I wouldn’t harm it in some way if you left it there.”

“Uh, yeah, I’m gonna. Go ahead and just keep them sort of. Metaphysically where they belong, for now. My bad. Um,” Lucifer looked back down at Alastor’s list. “So, uh, honestly I think your list is pretty clear but I can’t help but notice you wrote and then scratched out ‘sex’ under every single column twice before you finally settled on ‘maybe,’ and the only other thing under the maybe column is ‘you touching me’. You are otherwise uh, pretty set on your hard nos and yeses, it looks like.”

“Is there a question in there somewhere I’m missing?” Alastor asked, voice perhaps tingeing slightly defensive.

“Just, Idunno, I’m worried you only put it under maybe because you feel obligated or something? If you want it to be a ‘no’ that’s seriously no big deal.”

“I am entirely aware I am under no obligation,” Alastor replied, feeling his shoulders tense, his voice clipped “If I wanted it to be a ‘no’ I would have filed it under ‘no,’ thankyou.”

Lucifer cleared his throat and nodded, “Uh. yeah. Gotcha.”

There were several other articles on each of their lists, but after a moment of looking them over again neither of them felt the need to comment specifically on anything just then. They both finished their lunches and it was in the pleasant, comfortable atmosphere of them both slowly relaxing into their respective seats that Alastor volleyed, “My friend has another show tomorrow evening. The last one went well, and if all goes as planned she’ll be signing with the label at this one.”

“Oh?” Lucifer said, sounding uncertain. Alastor did not often share anecdotes about friends- of which he of course truly only sort of had one (two? Was Lucifer his friend? Probably, right? That was what Lucifer had let Charlie believe, anyway.)- without a reason.

“I was wondering,” Alastor continued, “If you might be persuaded to accompany me to see her that evening.”

Lucifer blinked. “You- I mean- uh, you want me? To come with you? Out somewhere with other people?”

“Unless you’d be opposed?” Alastor asked, tilting his head and examining Lucifer’s yellowing face, “I mean, if the ‘other people’ part is a problem I certainly wouldn’t want you to feel embarrassed-”

Glanced away, pulled his smile just a fraction too wide without wrinkling his eyes up enough for the expression to make sense, hunched his shoulders a little.

Knowing how to make a smile seem genuine went both ways, after all. If perhaps his body language was misleadingly hurt, well. Certainly Alastor had not done anything to actually harm the man.

Lucifer frowned, looking him over, and then shook his head, “I mean, if you’d actually like me to come that badly, sure. I don’t need a pantomime about it, Alastor, I just figured I’d be kinda lame for your usual scene.”

Alastor’s grin shifts less ‘trying to hide being hurt behind a false smile,’ into more ‘it’s very annoying that you just called me out like that but I guess I got what I wanted anyway.’ “You think you’d be ‘kinda lame’?”

“I mean honestly, Alastor, unless you or Charlie is taking me somewhere I don’t really leave the house,” Lucifer shrugged, “I’m, uh, not actually that interesting when you get past the devil thing.”

“Lucifer, last Thursday you captivated me for a full hour just talking about ducks which, I’m sorry to say, were not a particular interest of mine before that conversation.” Alastor waved the suddenly sappy look Lucifer threw at him off, “Don’t worry about it, you’re a very entertaining person.”

It occurred to Alastor that ‘you’re entertaining’ was not a very welcome compliment, for most people, but Lucifer wiggled a little in his seat- too happy, not too uncomfortable, this time.

Alastor was not a huge fan of the fact that he was beginning to be able to decipher Lucifer’s wiggles.

“So that’s a yes, then?” Alastor prompted, just to be sure, and Lucifer nodded.

“Uh, yeah, where should I- I mean, I don’t know where to meet you?”

Alastor named a pair of streets, and considered today’s mission accomplished.

-

When Alastor arrived at a street corner quite near where the Drop Dead’s entrance was, Lucifer was already waiting. He had gone for something in a very light beige instead of white, which was, Alastor supposed, as inconspicuous as the man was capable of being, and the honey-brown eyes of his human form lit up upon seeing Alastor.

“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” Alastor began, “I was kept a bit late at work, and Gabriel’s been a bit obnoxious about me getting off early last Friday.”

Thankfully Mimzy’s set would be starting a bit later anyway.

“I feel like there’s got to be a better way of doing this whole ‘work’ thing,” Lucifer said, looking faintly concerned, “Like, shouldn’t retaliation against you for doing a thing he agreed you were allowed to do be against the rules?”

“Oh,” Alastor shrugged, “Probably it should be, but it isn’t, so. It is what it is.”

Honestly, he regretted bringing it up. Lucifer’s clear sense that something better was possible only made present circumstances more irritating.

“Y-yeah, I guess,” Lucifer said, the concern in his expression only growing. Such an apathetically passive attitude was not one he was used to Alastor expressing, of course.

“Oh, pay it no mind,” Alastor said, sidling up to Lucifer’s side and wrapping an arm around his shoulder, feeling Lucifer tense for a moment before settling and allowing himself to be led to the speakeasy hidden behind a bookstore that was Alastor’s favorite haunt.

Possibly ‘me touching you’ under Alastor’s ‘Yes’ column had not appropriately explained Alastor’s fondness for certain other people’s personal space.

Alastor moved his posture so he simply had one hand gripping Lucifer’s shoulder as they neared the establishment, and spoke the password- it was a rotating affair based on American writers, “Edgar Allan,’ this week- for the both of them.

“You ought to feel right at home here, my dear,” Alastor leaned down to murmur, “Low ceilings and all, they downright make you look tall.”

Lucifer gave a dramatic toss of his head to emphasize an eyeroll, giving a sarcastic, “Hah-ha, Alastor, very clever.”

“I thought so,” Alastor replied warmly.

The ceilings were very, very low. Alastor’s 6’5” of height could only just barely afford him the room to stand up in here, and between that and the still slowly growing, packed, fire hazard of a crowd the overall effect was a claustrophobic wall of anonymous sound. You were not an individual, in the Drop Dead, you were just part of the wave of human noise.

It was a sensation Alastor enjoyed enough that he found it worth being forced to shove his way through a crowd of strangers. They were, after all, necessary for the effect.

Through the effective use of jabbing elbows and a disaffected smile, Alastor managed to shove his way onto a table with glasses still sat on it from where they’d been abandoned for a mere second by its previous occupants and claim a bit of territory near-ish the stage. He’d kept a hand on Lucifer, so as to avoid losing him, but he only just now managed to glance down and take in the shorter man’s expression.

Oh dear. Lucifer was. Not enjoying himself.

Alastor shoved a chair a bit until the only thing it had its back to was a wall and directed Lucifer to sit in it, feeling something uncomfortable building behind his ribs. “You weren’t demuring yesterday, were you? You just didn’t want to come.”

Lucifer winced, “I mean, I wouldn’t say I didn’t want to come?”

Alastor raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“I…” Lucifer searched for the words, “I wanted to be the sort of person who’d want to come?”

“I will keep your distaste for crowds in mind, in future,” Alastor replied, “Although I will likely at least try to drag you out again in February, if you can be persuaded.”

Lucifer frowned, “What’s in February?”

“Mardis Gras,” Alastor replied, “And the weeks preceding it. We make a bit of a fuss, and you missing it your sole year in New Orleans seems a shame.”

Lucifer only looked more confused, murmuring, “Fat Tuesday?” Which seemed an odd thing for Babelonian to choose to translate directly, certainly Alastor himself was more comfortable with the French.

“Oh, you’ll see. Anyway, if you might bear with me, we only have to stay until my friend goes on, which should be any mome-” Alastor stopped. Lucifer’s eye had caught something behind him and Alastor was suddenly made aware of how used to the constant pressure of being around Lucifer he’d become.

Because with an unsettling suddenness, it went away. At the same time, Alastor heard a wheezing, frightened gasp behind him. Some poor bastard made the singular focus of Lucifer’s attention.

“Hello!” Lucifer said, his smile going just a hair too wide for his human face, eyes bright and intensely focused, “Who might you be?”

“What the fuck,” came Baker’s wavering voice behind him.

Chapter Text

Alastor turned around, took in Baker’s face- pale, drawn. He didn’t even look like he was looking for escape routes, which was what Alastor was expecting- not the tense muscles and darting eyes of a prey animal. Instead, he was simply staring past Alastor at Lucifer, eyes scanning his face.

Then he pulled his eyes away and ducked his head instead, a subtle bow, and sat next to Alastor. His hands were shaking. He was, Alastor realized, trying to avoid giving the game away to Alastor, because he still thought this was some kind of nightmare coincidence.

Delightful.

Alastor turned around and saw Lucifer’s human eyes looking back at him, although the pressure of Lucifer’s regard still hadn’t returned.

“Hey,” Lucifer said, voice carefully steady, “Alastor. Buddy. Was it possible you might’ve had ulterior motives for inviting me out tonight?”

“I mean,” Alastor said, glancing between Lucifer and Baker, enjoying the steadily growing expression of complete baffled horror on the other man’s face. “I was entirely prepared to just have a lovely night out with you if it was nothing.”

“You tellin’ me- I mean, uh, your maje- I mean. Sir. Do you mean to say this gentleman is familiar, uh-” Baker was squirming like a pinned butterfly. Alastor’s smile was only getting bigger.

“Right, uh, okay. Sure. Hello, ‘Guy who still hasn’t told me who he is,’ as both you and my associate Alastor both know, I’m Lucifer Morningstar. You are…” Lucifer made a prompting gesture at Baker.

“I’m uh, I mean topside I’m Jonathan Baker? But it’s just, uh. Just Jonny, really, it’s not short for nothin’ and I don’t got a last name, uh. S-sire..” Baker- Jonny, evidently, managed to struggle out.

“Well, okay, glad we’re all on the level there, now.” Lucifer said, resting his head on one hand and gesturing at Jonny again. He looked more exasperated than anything, except that Alastor still couldn’t feel his presence in the air, and from the look on Jonny’s face it was very much still weighing on the man, “What’re you doing here, Jonny?’

“He was interested in offering a friend of mine a contract with a record label!” Alastor interjected, “He gave me his card!”

Alastor lifted the card and watched Lucifer take in the record label’s name and logo, grinning widely. Lucifer snatched the card out of his hand, glanced at it- and then turned away, looking at the other man and continued to look- not furious, although he did continue to focus his attention on Jonny. Not wickedly in cahoots with Alastor, but kind of annoyed, and not interested in engaging with him at all.

Suddenly Lucifer’s regard all being focussed on Jonny didn’t feel like a fun threat Alastor got to be in on. It felt like Lucifer had loaned Alastor a jacket only to rip it off his shoulders to smother someone else with it.

“This is Mammon’s plan for rebuilding?” Lucifer asked Jonny, voice dull, “Sending sharks topside to offer people- what, scam record contracts?”

“Um,” Jonny gulped, his head tilted ever-so-slightly toward Alastor but, now that he was being directly questioned by Lucifer it seemed less like he was taking Alastor’s mood into account and more like he was checking in to make sure they were seriously having a conversation like this in front of a ‘mere’ human. “I mean, I think a lot of the big work is happening with company owners getting all squirlley about the crash and stuff, not feet on the ground work like this, but yeah I’m doing my part. Besides, the contracts aren’t actually scams? That’s, uh, the beauty of it?”

Speaking of who should and shouldn’t be spoken in front of people, Alastor pulled his gaze away from the other two at the table to take a look around, taking in the bustling crowd around them. A lot of very odd things said could get lost in this kind of atmosphere, the constant hum of talking giving its own sort of privacy, but Alastor saw more than that in the crowd around them- their eyes almost seemed to glaze over as they slid past the table, and, Alastor realized, the hum of their talking had been dulled as well. Their little table was ensconced in a bubble of ‘mind your own business and stay out,’ it seemed.

Lucifer set the card on the table and pinched the bridge of his nose- an odd gesture, on him. “What the fuck is so beautiful about it, exactly?”

“If you scam a human into giving up something that matters for money but don’t actually give them the money, uh, sure you’ll get a hit of greed outta it but a lot of the time you lose ‘em as a mark, right? But if you actually give them the job and the money, you can keep asking more and more of them for more and more money over and over again, right? That same hit of greed but, y’know. Compounding. Because they keep getting the chance to do the ‘right’ thing and they keep not choosing it.”

“Oh,” Alastor said, “I will admit I’m not terribly familiar with what the hell- ha- either of you are talking about, but that certainly sounds clever.”

Lucifer shot a glare at Alastor, and then pointed at the card- “That is well past the kind of shit I let the sins get up to when I first signed off on them sending folks up here back in the day. A one-off temptation is one thing, you’re, what, luring these people into a lifetime of sin?”

This conversation would be so interesting if Alastor wasn’t currently fighting off the sensation that he was being talked over.

“Well, yeah?” Jonny looked genuinely confused, “I uh, apologize if I was misled, sire, but honestly it’s not like this kinda gig is my favorite either- I got fingers in pies downstairs I’d rather be working on, I signed up ‘cause it’s desperate times, innit? Was my understandin’ you let Mammon- all the sins- off that kinda leash on account of the state of emergency.”

“To be clear, the state of emergency is- what, you’re low on sin right now?” Alastor interjected before Lucifer could get over his obvious discomfort at what Alastor was guessing was a very technically true statement regarding his handling of sins, “That cannot possibly be an actual problem on earth.”

“Uh,” Jonny said, “Look, uh, Toussaint, if you don’t already know it’s worth more than my life to tell you, especially with his majesty sittin’ right there and all.”

“My mistake, I suppose I should have confronted you on my own, then.”

“You should ,” Lucifer grated out, “Have maybe run this by me when you asked me to come watch your friend sing. ”

“I mean, if you’d confronted me on your own I probably just woulda bumped you off, honestly,” Jonny added.

“You might’ve tried,” Alastor replied coolly.

“No one is killing anyone!” Lucifer interrupted, “Look, while I appreciate that you apparently expect me to believe you signed up for this out of the goodness of your black little heart, Jonny-”

“I did this because a street not two blocks from my apartment collapsed with every damned building on it last week and my fuckin’ kids stay with me on the weekends, sire ,” Jonny snapped, before seeming to very abruptly- perhaps with the delightfully sarcastic ‘sire’- remember who he was talking to. “OhfuckI’msorry.”

“Be that as it may- well, okay, don’t do that,” Lucifer had to interrupt himself to stop Jonny from either kneeling or cowering in terror, Alastor wasn’t sure yet, “We’re in the middle of a crowded bar, c’mon, you’re just making the ‘don’t look at me’ magic into more of a pain in the ass- anyway, be that as it may I think I’m probably going to have to ask you to leave whatever it is you were planning on doing with Alastor’s friend alone.”

“I mean, yeah, sure sire if that’s what it takes to keep you from unmakin’ me or whatever-” Jonny managed to stutter out before Alastor interrupted.

“I mean, I don’t see why that’s necessary.”

Both Lucifer and Jonny turned to look at Alastor.

Lucifer eventually managed a flat, “What.”

“I mean I will admit, I was a little concerned this might be some sort of contract to unknowingly get Mimzy to trade away her  ‘soul’ or somesuch, hence my desire to involve Lucifer here,” Alastor gestured, like Jonny might not have noticed, “but I must concede if the only thing your offering her is genuine access to money and fame in exchange for sacrificing more traditionally fulfilling parts of her life I think Mimzy would love that, actually.”

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Lucifer said, “You don’t care that the entire point of this contract is to slowly ware down your friend’s moral compass, using each individual sin as fuel for hell? That doesn’t bother you in the least?”

Alastor snorted, “Lucifer, Mimzy would kill everyone in this bar for a single, much less an entire career. What moral compass?”

Jonny perked up, “That true?”

“No,” Lucifer snapped, although of course it was. He covered his eyes with one hand and groaned, “Goddamnit. Literally. I don’t even have the excuse of thinking you above that kinda thing.”

Alastor took in Lucifer’s expression and felt an unpleasant knot form in his gut. There was a possibility he’d underestimated how much this situation would bother Lucifer.

“Well!” Alastor said, “I’m certain you ought to be- somewhere, Jonny. Seducing my friend to sin, evidently. Why don’t you leave?”

Jonny turned to consult Lucifer before actually leaving, and Lucifer sighed. “Was that kid apartment thing true?”

“Eh, it’s true for my brother,” Jonny shrugged, “I don’t got kids, but I don’t want my nephews dead, neither. ‘Sides, if it weren’t, it’d be true for someone else. I appreciate you gotta be up here, your majesty, for all our sakes. But we ain’t half fightin’ for our lives right now.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, leave.” Lucifer grumbled, and Jonny did.

Lucifer’s body returned its gaze to Alastor, but he didn’t.

“I don’t understand,” Alastor said, voice tight, “I thought we would think this was funny.”

“None of this shit has ever been fun for me, Alastor,” Lucifer sighed, “Fuck. I hate it here. I wanna go home.”

“With enough appeasing, Mimzy will actually forgive me if we just leave,” Alastor suggested.

“I’d honestly kinda like to meet her at this point, see the signing play out. Besides,” Lucifer slumped back in his chair and the noise of the crowd reinvaded their space, making it suddenly very obvious they’d already missed the start of Mimzy’s set, “I didn’t actually mean the house.”

Nor, Alastor thought, had he meant hell.

Mimzy was excellent, as always, although Alastor found himself having to locate her after she was finished, as opposed to her usual bombardment. This was, it became abruptly clear, because Jonny had made sure to waylay her before she could find her way to Alastor and Lucifer’s table.

“Mimzy!” Alastor declared loudly as he came up behind Jonny to wrap her in a hug, because while Lucifer seemed to have replaced all his ire with a sort of confusing guilt, Alastor was still absolutely out to make Jonny jump.

“Alastor! Oh, I was just talkin’ to Mr. Baker, he says we can get everything taken care of tonight! Ain’t that excitin-” Mimzy, at this point, caught sight of Lucifer, “Oh, hello there, who’s this?”

“Of course, I brought company tonight, if you can believe it, this is-” At which point the social difficulty of introducing his new friend as ‘Lucifer’ occurred to him.

“Lucas Magne,” Lucifer helpfully introduced himself, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mimzy, I’ve only heard good things.”

Which was a hilarious lie to tell, given the conversation they’d just had.

“And here I am, having not heard a single thing about you!” Mimzy turned and shot Alastor an exaggerated glare, “You’ve been holdin’ out on me!”

“We met while you were out of state, Mimzy,” Alastor shrugged, “I needed help to cope with your absence, clearly.”

“Well,” Mimzy looked faintly mollified, “In that case, I guess I did know you’d be lost without me.”

“He did seem pretty hopeless when I first met him,” Lucifer agreed, which. Truly outrageous thing to say when he knew Alastor couldn’t elaborate.

“That so?” Jonny asked, “S’funny, I was gettin’ acquainted with Mr. Magne earlier and I gotta say, he definitely seems like he’s got more of a handle on this stuff than you do.”

Alastor wondered if Naberius would explain to him what a ‘shark’ was and how to kill one if he asked nicely enough.

“Hmm, maybe don’t push it,” Lucifer replied to Jonny, eyeing Alastor, “Anyway, Mimzy, I really enjoyed the music, I can see why Jonny over here’s so eager to work with you.”

“Jonny? You two got awful familiar awful quick, Jonny .” Mimzy teased, nudging Jonny in the side with her elbow.

“Uh, y-yeah, sure.” Jonny swallowed, looking at Lucifer again, and then stumbling as someone pushed past him from behind, “You uh, wanna duck outside, into the store, get business done somewhere a little less crowded?”

They stepped outside and it was all. Disappointingly mundane. He got out the contract, Mimzy squinted through reading it in the dimly lit bookstore- they’d had to go off the side to escape the glare of the bouncer, but Jonny palmed him some cash and he seemed content to let them get their business done. Mimzy paused, at the end, and remarked, “Y’know I don’t know that the band’s gonna sign this- deals a little worse for them, ain’t it?”

“I mean, they can make whatever decisions they like, but you’re the real talent, aren’t you?” Jonny asked, “The face on things.”

Alastor could say something. He could see Lucifer wanting to say something- Alastor really hadn’t understood the extent to which their own senses of moral obligation weren’t at all matched with one another's.

Mimzy shrugged, said, “You got a point,” and put pen to paper.

Once it was over, Mimzy turned to Alastor and asked, “You wanna do some celebratin’? I dunno about you, but I could use a drink.”

“I would love to, Mimzy, but I promised Lucas we could step away once your work was over- I don’t think he’s really one for crowds,” Alastor nodded toward Lucifer, who had entirely checked out of the conversation once the deed was done- Alastor didn’t understand how he could be this unhappy about something he must be permitting.

Mimzy’s eyebrows shot up, and she leaned in to whisper, “I’ll allow it, but you owe me a hell of a conversation after this, Alastor.”

Alastor’s smile was thin and irritated as he turned away, “I’m sure.”

He touched Lucifer’s arm and nodded, and then had to work to keep up with the shorter man’s rapid strides to get out.

“My understanding is,” Alastor said as they cleared the building, following Lucifer, who kept walking in the direction of the nearest vacant alleyway,  “That you likely feel I owe you an apology. If you find this ‘contracts with humans’ business so distasteful, surely you could make your subjects stop?”

Lucifer barked a laugh, “You’ve never been meaningfully in charge of anything in your whole fuckin’ life, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Alastor said, brittle, because of course he hadn’t. Certainly he’d had power over other people, in brief moments, but he had truly so little control over anything in his life.

He didn’t actually think anyone did, but also didn’t actually find that terribly soothing.

Lucifer looked away and peaked into an alley. It became rapidly apparent that two people were having sex in it, so he moved on.

The urge to just go on a spree, get reckless, and free himself of all of it was an ever-present danger, best left unacknowledged whenever possible. The knowledge that there were apparently some pretty profound infrastructural issues in hell at the moment did lessen the appeal.

After a long pause, Lucifer sighed, “Only even said that because every single one of your murders smells like pride. My dominion, y’know? Knew it’d hit. It’s very rarely about doing shit you want to do, is my point. You want a drink?”

The change in topic was abrupt and uncomfortable, and Alastor might have snapped a simple ‘no,’ except that somehow felt even worse.

“We did just vacate an establishment that might actually serve us one of those, Lucifer,” Alastor said instead.

“I have booze at home,” Lucifer held out a hand.

Alastor realized that he had, quite without noticing, followed Lucifer into a darkened alleyway, which frankly made Lucifer’s evening bait walks back in the beginning look wise.

“I find it difficult to believe you would actually welcome my company, given you refuse to look at me,” Alastor said, without even quite understanding why he was arguing.

Lucifer frowned, “I’m looking at you right now.”

“No you aren’t,” Alastor snapped back.

The weight returned, heavy and without warning, and Alastor widened his stance to avoid toppling over.

“Better?”

“To actually have your attention? Yes,” Alastor replied, and then took Lucifer’s hand.

They appear in a room in the Morningstar home Alastor didn’t recognize, although looking around he suspected it was where the corresponding door across from the one to Charlie’s classroom in the foyer. It was obviously a living room, couches set up around a coffee table, a small book laying on it with a bookmark halfway through. Alastor leaned down and read, “Bambi” on the cover, with a picture of a fawn.

“Charlie started reading it after dinner,” Lucifer volunteered, his human form gone, heading for a cabinet, “She said she’d finish it tomorrow. It’s a little young for her, but I guess she liked how it talked about earth animals? She stopped in the middle because she got sad the deer’s mom disappeared.”

“Hm,” Alastor  hummed, “She does seem rather more… tenderhearted, than I might have imagined a princess of hell being.”

“She’s a really sweet kid,” Lucifer agreed, “What do you drink?”

“Rye whiskey, if you have it,” Most places didn’t- bourbon was easier to get, right now. “You seem rather more tenderhearted than I might have imagined a king of hell being, to be honest.”

“I was never meant to be king of hell,” Lucifer returned with a bottle labeled, “Wrathian Rye Whiskey,” still sealed, a corkscrew, and a pair of rocks glasses. “I was meant to design stars, and write mathematical equations so they’d make themselves in patterns that let humans draw pretty pictures out of them someday.”

“I think,” Alastor took the bottle and the corkscrew from him, and began to work on opening it, “I have dramatically misunderstood your attitude toward all of this.”

“You thought the devil liked being the devil?” Lucifer snorted, “Yeah, that’d be nice. Honestly, this bullshit is the most I’ve done my job in millenia, and I’m not even there.”

“You must know how vexing I find your insistence on secrecy,” Alastor said, working the cork free and pouring each of them three fingers of whiskey, “Is it truly any worse than my knowing everything else I do?”

Lucifer took his glass and sipped it, sitting on the couch opposite Alastor, slumping and throwing a foot onto the coffee table to rest, and then muttered a quiet, “Fuck it.”

Promising. Alastor took his own glass and tasted- “Oh that’s quite nice.”

Alastor already hadn’t indulged in a bottle of unwatered, proper rye whiskey in a long time, and it almost made up for everything else that was going on.

“Handshake deal,” Lucifer said, which did draw Alastor’s attention away from his drink, “I tell you, and until this crisis is over you never, under any circumstances, talk to Charlie or anyone but people I say you can about it.”

“Aren’t you going to leave when the crisis is over?” Alastor clarified.

“Charlie’s definitely going to look you up when you’re dead, she doesn’t know many humans. You can talk with her about it then, if you like.”

“My understanding is, without her help, there’s nothing I can actually do to make you hold up your end of the bargain.”

“You’ll just have to trust me,” Lucifer held out a hand, “Do we have a deal?”

Did he trust Lucifer?

Hrrrm. Unclear.

Did he trust him enough to promise not to bring this up to Charlie if he ended up reneging?

Sure. Alastor didn’t actually need to know.

He took Lucifer’s hand, “Deal.”

The horns reappeared, his eyes inverted, Alastor caught a very intriguing glimpse of a tail-

And then Lucifer dropped his hand, threw back the entire glass of whiskey, and poured himself another, “Hell isn’t actually there anymore.”

“What,” Alastor said.

“I mean,” Lucifer gestured vaguely, “All the foundational shit is there, it’s always gonna be there, but hell as it currently is is only pretending to still be standing until we’ve gathered enough sin to rebuild it in its own image- uh, fuck. Lemme start at the beginning.”

“That sounds like it would be best, yes,” Alastor said, still shaken.

“Okay so- there’s power in being associated with symbols and places and things, alright? It’s how a lot of angels get their power- like, my sister Sera is considered the seraph, and everyone in heaven knows it, and the more they consider her as fundamentally associated with the angelic hierarchy, the more power she can draw from that.” Lucifer slid down so he was sitting at the foot of the couch instead of on it, so he could lean forward and pillow his head on his arms resting on the coffee table, “No one, uh, really expected you guys to look up as much as you do back in the day? So I’m actually getting a lot more bang for my buck for the sun and stars than anyone was expecting- navigators using starcharts, people interested in space, anyone who worships a sun god- all that energy goes to me. So does all the shit from me being the devil and ruling hell or whatever, but I don’t need or like it so I don’t really use that all that often.”

“Seems a bit wasteful,” Alastor remarked, watching Lucifer take a large swig of his second glass of very nice whiskey.

“It applies to demons, too- being the demon of something, having a dominion, can be a really good powerbase because everytime someone thinks of that thing and then thinks of you, your power grows a little. Way more reliable than soul contracts, if less of a big rush of power all at once.” Lucifer waved the ramble off, “S’besides the point. The point is, a century and a quarter ago, when Charlie was born, I arranged stuff so I could give her all rights to draw power from hell as a concept- I’ve still got ‘being the devil’ going for me, but she’s not just symbolically my heir apparent- she is hell , basically, at least as much as I’m the sun. I, uh, am in fact a little bit the sun.”

“That,” Alastor’s brows furrowed, “Does make your earlier remark regarding hell not actually existing anymore slightly more alarming. Is Charlie alright?”

For a moment, Lucifer’s general air of exhaustion and misery fluttered away, as he gave Alastor a small, appreciative smile, “Man knows how to ask the right questions. Ah, no, Charlie’s fine- I mean, I think she’s probably pretty traumatized and she can’t actually think about why for a full year, so who knows how that’s going to feel for her once she confronts it, but she’s physically fine. No, uh, so- the problem bubbles up when I, uh. Sort of didn’t tell Lilith I did that. At the time.”

“Hence you being the one who was lying about arranging for Charlie to be born on 06/06/06?” Alastor clarified.

“Where’d you-” Lucifer sighed, “I mean, yeah. Hence that. Stuff like that, symbols like that, can uh, really smooth over a transfer of power. I didn’t plan on telling her until she was older, that’s a lot of responsibility to put on a kid and- well. Lilith was already talking about an uprising. I already didn’t… trust her. With knowing Charlie had that kind of power.”

“And then she apparently broke hell, so. That seems like it ought to be vindicating.”

“Uh, well. That’s the thing- she still thought I had hell and wasn’t using it. So when she started consolidating power to uh, essentially claim squatters rights over hell as someone who had been using it a lot more than I had these past millenia, she had good reason to believe it’d just work. I’m an angel, she’s the first sinner, she genuinely probably does have a lot more right to it than I do- except. I didn’t have it, and the person who did wasn’t just an angelic monarch, or the first sinner. Charlie’s hellborn . So when she tried her… funny little coup, hell broke before Charlie’s claim to it did.”

“That- it-” Alastor stopped, breathed in and out through his nose, settled on, “‘Funny little coup’?”

“Yeah I don’t know what to do with that either. She’s, uh, functionally on house arrest right now, but- I. I don’t know. I loved her for 10,000 years, part of me still loves her, she’s Charlie’s mom.” Lucifer ticked the various points off on his fingers like he was making a to-do list, “And I don’t even know that she was wrong to think she’d be a better ruler of hell than I am? I’ve been. Basically letting her do the job anyway.”

Alastor. Simply did not have it in him to unpack all of that tonight. “So where exactly is Naberius going home to every evening, if not hell?”

“The afterimage of it. That’s the state of emergency- if it weren’t for the part of hell inside Charlie, the whole place would have gotten a complete reset and everyone currently there- or the hellborn anyway, we have no fucking idea what’d happen to the sinners- would be returned to their component parts as background hell energy. And if Charlie were actually in hell, she’d be able to instinctively tell there was something wrong with it, and that’d start unmaking it too. Meanwhile, she’s got the only real part of hell left, and hell happens to be where I was damned to, so. On Earth we both have to stay.” Lucifer rubbed between his eyebrows, “Don’t, uh, bring up anything like what Jonny said about that street near his brother’s apartment to her. That’s… probably the result of her slipping and letting herself think about the problem for too long. Making her feel bad about not keeping it off her mind enough isn’t exactly going to help keep it off her mind. That’s the other reason I can’t do much more than put Lilith on house arrest, I haven’t even told Charlie the details of why it happened- last thing hell needs is her dwelling on that .”

“Well,” Alastor said, “That sounds like an absolute fucking nightmare.”

“Honestly if I didn’t know it would absolutely destroy Charlie, I don’t know that I even would have bothered fixing it,” Lucifer admitted, and then finished his second glass, “Which, you know, really only cements the ‘I’m a terrible person and a shitty excuse for a king,’ aspect of this.”

“I mean,” Alastor considered, “I doubt this will bring you any comfort, but I certainly don’t know that I would have bothered with all of this if just letting it all tear itself down were an option.”

“You also kill people and couldn’t be bothered to talk your friend out of selling her integrity away, so yeah, no, it doesn’t.”

“You,” Alastor said, “Are much more obnoxiously judgemental than I thought you were. Mimzy and I are not friends with one another so we can bolster each other up toward some moral purpose- we enjoy each other’s company as we are . In spite of this annoying little self righteousness of yours, I enjoy your company as you are as well. You knew I was a monster the moment you met me, Lucifer. Kindly don’t whine every time I fail to be something else.”

Lucifer breathed in, out.

“You’re right,” Lucifer sat up, pushed his hair back, “S’all my own damned fault anyway.”

Alastor assumed he meant for not killing Alastor when he had the chance, which. True enough.

Lucifer continued, alarmingly, with, “You should stay the night.”

Alastor’s eyebrows shot up, “That’s a rather dramatic change in tone for the evening, isn’t it?”

“Wha-” Lucifer blinked, shook his head, “Fuck, no! We have like, three guest rooms we never use, pick one. It’s just- it’s late. You don’t work until like, four P.M., so I figure sleeping somewhere else and going home later isn’t going to hurt you any.”

Lucifer’s concern was entirely unnecessary, of course, but Alastor understood it to be some kind of olive branch.

“Thank you,” Alastor said, instead of the many other things he could say right now. Lucifer would be so easy to hurt, if he were so inclined. Oddly, he was not. “For the kind invitation.”

Both himself and Lucifer ascended the stairs and then paused awkwardly on the landing.

Lucifer gestured, “That room’s Charlie’s, pretty much every other door on this hall that isn’t my bedroom or office is a guest room, take your pick.”

“I’ll see you in the morning?”

“Eh, depends when you’re up. There’s only so much I can physically do, but a lot of the sins don’t play well with each other, so I get a lot of calls about fires that need putting out basically as soon as they know I oughta be up. It’s basically primordial tattling. That and smoothing legion deployment- a lot of the Goetia only answer directly to me.”

“Then tomorrow evening?” Alastor tried to keep the uncertainty out of his voice.

Lucifer blinked, then, “Fuck, right. Friday.”

Not an ideal response, “Yes. I understand if you’re sick of the sight of me, at the moment.”

Funny, light, joking. 

Lucifer shook his head, “Uh, no. No, now that you’ve reminded me I’m probably going to be looking forward to it all day- I gotta get outta my fucking head without actually, you know, getting out of my head.”

Alastor just barely managed to avoid some physical response to the zing that sent up his spine, “I don’t know that I do know, but I’ll try not to disappoint.”

Lucifer’s face flushed a pleasing gold, and he cleared his throat, “Uh, well. Goodnight. Then.”

“Goodnight,” Alastor replied.

There was a beat.

Alastor didn’t make Lucifer sit through the agony of wondering who would leave first any longer than he had to, and spun around to pick a door and step through it.

Chapter Text

Alastor slept terribly, of course- it was unfortunate, the king sized monster of a bed Alastor discovered in the guest room was easily the largest and most comfortable thing he’s ever lain down on, but unfortunately its comforts paled in comparison to the disquiet running through his mind. Hell was ruined. The devil was a sad shell of a man compromising a personal moral standard to fix it- and, Alastor supposed, spending time with him must be its own sort of moral compromise, surely?

Alastor had made an absolute fool of himself.

Eurgh.

After the third time he woke up to discover it was very much still dark out, flicked on a lamp, and read ‘5:47’ on his watch Alastor decided to crawl out of bed and see if he could find some coffee in this household. He put his monocle on and dressed, having slept in his shorts and undershirt, although he did indulge his own comfort so far as to pad downstairs with no shoes and unsuspended socks, his jacket tucked under his arm. He paused to drop that and his shoes off in the vestibule, made a brief detour to the restroom, and then set about locating the kitchen. The dining room, with its ridiculous table fit to sit ten people, revealed itself to be behind a sliding door disguising itself as a wall in the living room, and through another door he found the serving pantry, which remained covered in dust covers from what Alastor could only assume was a time before the Morningstars had moved in, and finally beyond that, the kitchen.

This at least had some signs of life- eggs on the counter, a salt and pepper shaker sat on a small table meant to seat two that he suspected got a lot more use than the dining table. He spotted a coffee grinder- one of the ones with the crank attached to the top of a wooden box with a drawer for catching grounds in, sat next to a bag of coffee beans- not a chicory blend, but Alastor would take it.

He was in the middle of grinding, staring contemplatively at the glass carafe contraption set up next to the grinder and beans- he assumed it had something to do with the brewing process but he wasn’t certain what exactly, his mother had used a percolator and he usually either made do with instant or went to the fuss of a trip to Cafe du Monde- when he heard the strange tick-tick sound of someone approaching the kitchen. He looked up in time to see Charlie, still in her pajamas and barefoot- or, it would seem, barehooved- half stumble into the kitchen.

“Y’re making coffee?” She asked, sounding hopeful.

“Are you… allowed coffee?” Alastor asked, raising an eyebrow. He had been allowed it when he was fourteen, but he was also allowed to run much more wild than he believed Charlie was. He had the general vague impression people had opinions on childhood coffee consumption.

“Uh,” Charlie eyed him for a moment, clearly weighing his character, and then made a wobbly hand motion, “I may have let Dad believe I was already drinking coffee when we moved here?”

“Hm,” Alastor nodded, pleased to have been dubbed cahoots-worthy. Interestingly, the house was bathed with the same general light touch of Lucifer’s presence it always was, but Charlie didn’t seem at all concerned about eavesdropping. More of a system to notify him in case of emergencies, then?  “Well played. Do you know how to use this thing?”

Alastor gestured at the glass carafe.

“Uh, yeah,” Charlie walked over to the sink and began filling a kettle, “It works kinda like tea. Gotta boil the water first.”

“How much of this do I want for the two of us?”

Charlie fumbled through a drawer, pulled out a quarter-cup measure, and handed it over.

They passed several moments like that, quietly coexisting while Alastor measured out coffee into the carafe- he discovered some kind of pressing mechanism when he removed the lid- and Charlie waited for water to boil on the stove before she seemed to realize something.

“Um, Alastor?”

“Yes, Charlie?”

“Not to sound unwelcoming, but… Why are you in my house?”

“A fair question! Did your father mention that he accompanied me to a friend of mine’s performance yesterday evening?”

“Mmhrm. Dad left a few eyes back here and told me to signal him and if he didn’t respond, call Uncle Ozzie in an emergency- he’s come stay the night a couple times when Dad had to be out but I think Dad’s getting I’m not a baby anymore. Razzle and Dazzle are supposed to guard me anyway.”

He vaguely recalled her calling the then-dogs-now-sheep that, when he’d initially been stalking her father. Alastor wondered at the sin of lust apparently being the go-to babysitter, but he was also the sin Alastor had heard Lucifer mention most often- a closer acquaintance perhaps? “Well, after her show was finished your father and I came back here to talk a bit longer. By the time that was over, it was quite late, and he very kindly offered me the use of a room.”

“Was the show nice?” Charlie asked, pulling the kettle off the stove as it started to whistle.

Nope. “Oh yes! Mimzy’s been perfecting her set, she’s done some very good work since she came back from New York.”

Alastor stepped out of the way and watched her pour the coffee into the carafe and replace the odd lid, before flipping an egg timer- “It takes one and a half of those to brew”- and replacing the kettle.

“Oh! Naberius and I went to New York when we first moved here! We’re probably going to go back at some point but there’s so much stuff to see on Earth, it’s hard to go back somewhere twice.” Charlie smiled, and then- well. Perhaps he was imagining things, but he thought he saw an odd flicker in her expression, before she brightened again, “We’re going to see an opera adaptation of- um, uh, translated its The Legend of the White Snake I think? We’ll be going to China- in modified human disguises- a week from now. I’m really excited, I’ve only seen performances in English or translated through Babelonian since I got here, and the translation can really take some of the character away.”

Charlie was, Alastor realized, throwing herself as hard as she possibly could into enjoying being on earth, into every possible point of interest. She reached over to flip the egg timer again and turned to fetch some cream out of the fridge.

It was not hard to imagine what might have inspired an adolescent to foster a taste for coffee and to wake up in the early hours of the morning without any seeming rush to get ready. Alastor wasn’t always confident about traits he’d shared with other children, but he was fairly certain sleeping in during his teens was one. Perhaps for the best that she hadn’t been left to ponder things alone this particular morning.

“Has your extensive education in the arts included any cooking knowledge?” Alastor asked, a thought occurring to him, as he watched her pull mugs down for them both. She was smiling.

“Nah, unfortunately. Naberius did widen my curriculum a lot early on once he realized there was kind of a limit to how advanced he could get me at stuff like math when I basically only age one year for every ten, but he’s still got some ideas about what ‘appropriate skills for a princess to pursue’ are,” this last bit accompanied by air quotes.

This attitude went rather firmly counter to Alastor’s own opinion, which was a certain mild contempt for anyone who couldn’t do the rudimentary work of feeding themself.

Alastor had decided Lucifer’s magic counted but he was on thin ice.

“Hmm,” Alastor hummed, drifting over to the refrigerator and opening it. He knew they had eggs, of things that weren’t raw meat or excessively long cooking vegetables he could see some kind of thin sliced ham, some sort of hard cheese, asparagus - wherever the hell Lucifer had gotten that this time of year.

Omelette could get deceptively tricky, and he didn’t want her trying something she thought should be easy without him later and getting discouraged. He didn’t love the available options for a crepe filling, did not find unfilled crepes satisfying, and he was not optimistic about finding a crepe pan in this kitchen. A quiche, maybe? Ugh, no, he was not making a pie crust at six in the morning in an unfamiliar space.

There was a chance he was getting too caught up on french options.

“Would you like to cook something? We could probably scrounge up a frittata of some variety.” Alastor asked, unbending to peek over the refrigerator door.

“Oh!” Charlie looked delighted, pouring the presumably finished coffee into two separate mugs, “Wow, yeah, if you don’t mind, that sounds great!”

Which neatly took care of the next half hour or so. They sipped some actually quite marvelous coffee while they worked, Charlie’s with cream and Alastor’s black. Charlie was an acceptable if slightly clumsy sous chef- “crack each egg into a smaller bowl before you combine them, dear, you’ll spend less time digging for shells”- and a very satisfyingly appreciative taster- “Ohmygosh I can’t believe I helped make this, this is so good Alastor,”- and after each of them had two slices they found themselves with another two extra.

“You could bring them to your father,” Alastor suggested, “If you don’t think he’s likely to come down.”

“If he hasn’t already then someone woke him up,” Charlie said, “Do you think we should bother him? He doesn’t actually need to eat, and Mom always said I shouldn’t bother him while he’s working.”

Uh- huh .

“From what I know of the man, I think having his daughter come up with a plate full of a breakfast she made for him will likely make his entire day,” Alastor said, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin- the texture was slightly scratchy in a way he hated, although it was still short enough he wasn’t yet worried about visible stubble. He needed to get home and shave, “Or save it for whenever Naberius gets here, rub his face in you learning an ‘improper’ skill, but it won’t keep terribly well.”

“He gets here at eight, usually.” Charlie said, frowning, and then she stood up. “You’re right! I’m gonna bring dad something to eat, and it’s gonna be- nice. And normal, and I won’t bother him.”

That last part was muttered more as self encouragement than anything. It occurred to Alastor he didn’t actually know which of her parents had been her primary caretaker, before circumstances made it necessary for both herself and Lucifer to reside on earth.

“Well, on that note, Charlie, I think I’ll have to bid you adieu- I’m going to pop out now.” Alastor stood, and carried his own and Charlie’s empty plates to drop into the sink- he wasn’t terribly impressed with Charlie’s attitude toward cleaning as one went- ‘Don’t worry, Dad’ll make them clean themselves when we aren’t looking’- but he wasn’t actually responsible for her work ethic, and he certainly wasn’t going to be cleaning if she wasn’t.

“Oh, okay! I’ll be seeing you, then?” Charlie asked, plate in hand, turning midway through the door out of the kitchen.

Good question! “I suspect so, although I couldn’t tell you when.”

She gave a final wave and then disappeared, seemingly entirely content to leave him as she found him- alone in the kitchen.

He stood there, alone, for several long moments before he drifted back toward the vestibule. He put himself to rights, stepped outside- the sun was still only just risen- lit a cigarette, and refused to allow himself to consider anything until he’d made his way through the entire, long trek from the Garden District to his own apartment.

Alastor stomped out the cigarette butt before ascending the stairs, carefully stepped inside, locked the door behind him, and finally allowed his legs to slowly collapse underneath him as he slid down to the floor.

He had fundamentally misunderstood Lucifer as a person. Hell was broken. Alastor felt humiliated by how indelicately he’d handled his own disappointment at how his evening had gone. Lucifer’s daughter was the embodiment of hell itself.

They’d cooked together.

Hm.

He’d made food for people before, once or twice, bringing something to work for Denise or to a show for Mimzy, always pleased for an opportunity to show off. He hadn’t cooked alongside anyone since his mother’s passing. Why had he done that?

This, at least, was a question Alastor thought he could actually get to the bottom of, even if he wasn’t a fan of how little understanding he’d had of his own actions as he was taking them.

Alastor’s first instinct was to turn to some practical explanation- Charlie’s help had obviously already proven useful in navigating the Lucifer situation, and there were all sorts of reasons one might want to endear themselves to the physical embodiment of hell.

Except Alastor would not have had any difficulty at all seeing and seizing a practical explanation in the moment, if that had been the direction his thoughts had brought him in. None of the sensation of trying to look directly at something he could only glimpse out of the corner of his eye he often experienced when faced with an emotional problem. Alastor had no desire to replicate past mistakes, to intellectualize situations he was obviously emotional about, but he didn’t want to fall into the trap of reimagining himself as some kind of tortured kind soul, either.

What had triggered the impulse?

It was how happy she’d seemed. For someone as evidently compassionate as Charlie, someone who very obviously wanted to imagine herself as a ‘kind’ person, it would have been very easy to be unmade by her present circumstances. If she had been, she would have in equal measure unmade hell. Charlie had not, as many self-imagined altruists did, wallow in the misery and unfairness of a world she only wanted to help. She had not done the easy thing.

Instead, she made her way downstairs when she was having trouble sleeping and threw herself happily into instructing a surprise guest into how to brew coffee in her kitchen. She didn’t carry herself as Alastor did- always smiling so as to maintain the illusion he was always in control- she wasn’t concerned with appearing in control at all, that he could tell, but she did find reasons to smile, when she could.

Ah.

That was it.

Alastor found her sort of admirable. Hopelessly naive and still likely to break herself before she bent from her own excessive empathy toward those who didn’t deserve it, in spite of this new revelation that she was perhaps less brittle than she seemed, but admirable nonetheless. He was rooting for her. So, seeing her in obvious need of a distraction, he had provided her with one while also offering her the opportunity to arm herself with a genuinely useful skill.

Likely learning how to make a single egg dish would not free her of the dependency on other people to cook for her, but. The impulse to help free her of that dependence had been there, even if Charlie herself likely didn’t regard her lack of knowledge as the weakness Alastor did.

A respect for someone’s strength of will was not an entirely foreign concept to Alastor, he’d simply never recognized it in someone young enough that he might still presume they would require his assistance. A familiar pattern of behavior in unfamiliar circumstances both rang true and was something he could more easily reconcile himself with.

On that note, he’d certainly done enough wallowing himself. He had made an error in judgment, he would endeavor not to replicate that error. Simple enough.

Alastor stood, brushed himself off. Got back to living.

-

Alastor stood outside the gate to Lucifer’s home that evening, fussing with the strap of the messenger bag he’d brought with him, trying to figure out how precisely to proceed here. A great deal had changed since the last time they’d done this, and he wasn’t certain how to best proceed.

He’d finally managed to work up the nerve to open the gate when, at precisely the same time, the front door opened.

Lucifer and Alastor stared at each other.

“You wanna just-” Lucifer started, half yelling across the yard.

“I was thinking-” Alastor said at the same time and volume.

A pause.

“Is there a reason we shouldn’t-” Alastor tried again.

“I think maybe it’d be better if-” Lucifer stopped, “Shit.”

They were being ridiculous. Alastor stepped past the gate and strode up the front walkway and onto the porch. Lucifer was in human form, “Charlie’s asleep, I trust?”

“I sure fuckin’ hope so,” Lucifer said, and then when Alastor raised an eyebrow, “Her door’s closed and all the lights are off. If she yells for me I’ll hear her but past that point is a bit much, privacy violation-wise.”

“Can you guarantee an appropriate amount of privacy, if we just did this in your bedroom?” Alastor asked, ignoring the twitching, frightened-rabbit feeling in between his shoulder blades. He hated that he was fretting about this sort of thing, it made him feel like an awkward adolescent.

“Yeah, that, um,” Lucifer cleared his throat, “Yeah I can do that, that sounds great.”

Alastor waved an arm toward the house, bowing facetiously, “Well then, lead the way.”

There was something about the change in routine, the difference in scenery, that made following Lucifer into his home and up the stairs charged. Alastor swallowed heavily and loosened his bowtie, strode through the threshold of Lucifer’s bedroom, and stepped aside as Lucifer turned around and gestured at the door.

Golden chains overlapped the threshold, a glowing gold bar slammed down, about fifty padlocks materialized to hold the door shut. At the same moment, Alastor felt the weight of Lucifer’s regard- not simply the mild, ever present sensation of being on the property but a heavy weight on his shoulders.

“Is that,” Alastor said, his own voice sounding slightly distant, “Entirely necessary? I had been expecting something more… metaphysical.”

“I mean, the soundproofing is actually metaphysical, but,” Lucifer shrugged, shuffling from one foot to the other, “If you can visualize something, it never hurts to.”

Alastor nodded, tucking that piece of information away, and then looked back at Lucifer. Let his messenger bag drop off his shoulder and removed his jacket.

It was odd to do, now that he was conscious of it, becoming the sort of person who could tell Lucifer what to do. Should he be more demanding, less interested in what Lucifer had to say? Previous encounters had involved conversations about music preferences and cooking mishaps, had that been tonally inappropriate? But there was a certain relief, as well, once the role was in place.

“We’re both settled on ‘Lohengrin,’ then?” Alastor asked, both a clarification and a reminder.

Lucifer had apparently needed it, as he blinked twice and then perked up a bit, remembering. Nodding.

“Uh, yeah! Yeah, that works for me. Where do you, uh, want me?”

“It would be ideal if you could manifest some sort of sturdy table,” Alastor replied, bending down to dig through his messenger bag and removing the hammer he’d been storing in it, “This shouldn’t be messy, but your bed won’t be a firm enough surface for what I have in mind.”

Alastor had done this before- although the physical logistics were rather more complicated when one’s victim was bound and struggling- and had quite enjoyed himself, but some part of him was- anxious. This felt somehow thematically different from what they’d done before, and while it had not been on Lucifer’s ‘no’ list, it hadn’t been on ‘yes’ either, presumably it hadn’t specifically occurred to him as something Alastor might want.

Lucifer eyed the hammer for a moment, and then snapped in the general direction of an open area in the room- muttering a very charming little ‘alakazam’ to himself as he did so. It was reflective steel, and as Lucifer approached and hopped onto it the surface of the table revealed a warped reflection of him. “What do you have in mind, then?”

“I did say I enjoyed that I could break you as much as I like and you’d put yourself back together,” Alastor said, approaching the table and setting the hammer down next to Lucifer, “So I’m going to break you. And you’re going to put yourself back together.”

“O-oh.” Lucifer said, looking down at the hammer.

Alastor stepped between Lucifer’s legs and reached up with one hand to grip Lucifer by the chin, lifting his face to examine. He looked slightly out of sorts, but not upset, his face had blushed a soft shade of-

Pink. Well, that wouldn’t do.

“Not in your human form, if you’re amenable,” Alastor said, rubbing his thumb absentmindedly against Lucifer’s jaw. He’d never seen even a hint of shadow on Lucifer’s skin, which might’ve been attributed to the man being fair haired and not especially hirsute- Alastor himself didn’t need to worry about looking unkempt at the end of a day- but actually, it was just as likely to be a forgotten detail.

Watching Lucifer change forms continued to be a slightly disquieting experience- some subconscious animal part of Alastor did not care for it at all- but it was worth it for the change in texture against his thumb, the smooth shift from human skin, with its pores and peach fuzz- up close it was even more obvious Lucifer hadn’t bothered with reproducing a face that needed to shave- to untextured malleable porcelain.

“There we are,” Alastor said, watching pink across Lucifer’s nose change into gold across the flat plane in the middle of his face. Approving, but not soft. “Much better. Take off your hat and jacket.”

Lucifer did as instructed and Alastor took them from him and tossed them in the same direction as where he’d left his own jacket and messenger bag, a sort of thrill in casually tossing what Alastor understood to be Lucifer’s symbol of office across the room. Then he turned, and started unbuttoning Lucifer’s waistcoat and shirt, feeling the shorter man’s breath hitch under his hands as much as he saw and heard it.

“... thanks for helping Charlie make breakfast, by the way. She was. Excited.”

“No need to thank me, I stole your coffee and raided your cupboards. Charlie simply aided and abetted,” Alastor opened the front of Lucifer’s shirt- his chest was much as one might expect, having seen his human form and extrapolated some details. Hardly the adonis-like beauty painters and sculpture had depicted him in, but his skin was unblemished in a way that Alastor found alluring. He wanted to mark him in his own image. Alastor slid the shirt off of Lucifer’s shoulders and let the other man do the work of pulling his arms out of his sleeves, observing how his collar bones shifted under his skin with the movement of his shoulders.

The shirt got tossed in the same pile as the jacket, and Alastor reached down and gripped Lucifer by the forearm, studying the gradient where his white skin shifted into black, tracing the outline of his radius and ulna down to thin wrists, feeling the tiny bones in Lucifer’s hands. The only difference in what one might expect, from human anatomy, was when the tips of Lucifer’s fingers hardened into claws.

Alastor interlaced their fingers, considering those claws, “Will these shatter?”

“I don’t know that your hammer’s going to do anything to them, honestly.” Lucifer answered, flexing his hand against Alastor’s grip.

Alastor tutted in disappointment, “Well, we can’t have everything. Your bones, though?”

“Those are more durable than they ought to be, but they still might snap easier than you’re expecting- they’re hollow.”

“Hmm,” Alastor released Lucifer’s hand, rolled up his own sleeves, and grabbed the hammer. “Lay down on the table.”

Lucifer swallowed and obeyed, scooting back until he was centered in the middle of the cool, hard surface and laying flat against it, his arms at his sides. Interesting- as far as Alastor could tell, most of Lucifer’s skin didn’t have hair follicles, but he still produced goosebumps.

Duckbumps.

Hee.

Alastor positioned himself next to Lucifer, tightly gripping his forearm in one hand while he raised the hammer with the other.

“What’re you smilin’ about?” Lucifer asked, head tilted, eyes not even on the hammer.

Alastor was always smiling for a host of reasons, but, sure, Lucifer would probably enjoy- “Duckbumps.”

A beat.

As soon as Lucifer huffed out a laugh, Alastor brought the hammer down.

A massive slamming sound paired by a crunch, the sensation of the hammer sinking too far into Lucifer’s palm.

“Ha- oh fuckfuckfuck!” Lucifer’s voice sang out half a second too late, the lag between the impact and the pain traveling through his body creating its own rhythm. “Holy- what the fuck.”

Lucifer’s head had lifted off the table and was staring down at his own shattered palm like it was alien to him.

“Surely you’ve broken a bone before, Lucifer?” Alastor asked, friendly, conversational. He pulled the hand to the edge of the table and gripped its index finger.

“It’sssdifferent, ‘sdifferent, I had other stufftah think abou-” CRACK, Alastor bent the finger backwards, interrupted Lucifer’s too-fast speech, using the edge of the table as a brace. The force pulled and yanked on the bones of his already broken palm, “Ah! Fuck!”

Lucifer’s regard was popping and fizzing across Alastor’s shoulder blades, like a startled bird hopping and screeching impotently at someone much larger than it.

“A broken bone is a singularly unique sensation, I‘ve found.”

Alastor was hardly a firsthand expert. He had broken his left wrist once, when he was a boy. Nothing shocking- a bicycle accident, and not terribly severe. He had a very vivid memory of the snapping sensation of the initial break.

“Do you agree?” Alastor prompted, when Lucifer didn’t reply immediately. His mistake, he’d forgotten to phrase it as a question.

“Hwha? I- I, I guess, yeeaaaAAH!” Alastor snapped the next finger mid reply, of course.

Alastor stroked a thumb gently across Lucifer’s palm and watched him struggle with the urge to flinch toward and away from him.

“It’s the understanding of there being something broken inside of you, I think. That sort of internal wrongness. Perhaps it isn’t quite the same for you- this is, what, something you’re wearing, in essence?” He wrapped his hand around both his ring and pinky fingers, pressing them together in a way that made Lucifer’s face scrunch up, curling down as if he was trying to hide inside of his own chest. His opposite hand was gripping the edge of the table, and both his legs had bent at the knees, his shoes flat on the reflective surface.

“It’s, uh,” Lucifer had begun to understand the pattern now, and even as he swallowed down the pain his voice shook in anticipation and fear, “Oh, wow, this simile is gonna be stupid- it’s kinda like putting on a hand puppet? Not all of me is in here, but you’re still breaking parts of my-” Snap. “-My, ow, fuck, my fucking hand! Except- fuck, except also the stupid fucking puppet has nerve endings for some fucking reason.”

“Language,” Alastor chided, picking up the hammer and giving it a fanciful twirl, laughing at the expression of outrage on Lucifer’s face. His voice was starting to get wet with restrained tears. Alastor enjoyed Lucifer’s irritation more than he would have some dramatic playact of subservience- that he remained here, waiting to see how Alastor would hurt him next, looking forward to it like a child reading a horror novel, as frightened as they were excited to turn the next page, was enough.

Alastor gestured with the hammer, “Fix that.”

“Uhhff, okay,” Lucifer bent at the waist, using the arm attached to his uninjured hand to leverage himself up and look down on his own hand. Alastor watched the space in the middle of Lucifer’s torso where his belly wrinkled and scrunched as he bent and felt his mouth fill with saliva, clenched his teeth.

He dragged his eyes away and looked once again at Lucifer’s hand, not wanting to miss this.

The hand was, at this point, a cruelly distorted twitching mass of an appendage, every finger bent at the wrong angle, every tiny movement eliciting a wince of pain, which of course only caused another tiny movement. Alastor watched and listened as the fingers slowly unbent themselves with terrible creaking noises, Lucifer letting out sad, miserable little whines as his body unbroke itself. He had to pause halfway through, and Alastor considered the effort required not just to endure pain, but to put yourself through it on purpose. This seemed a simple task compared to summoning objects out of nowhere, or teleportation, but Lucifer was clearly struggling more with it.

Alastor exchanged which hand he held the hammer in so he could lay his right hand on the back of Lucifer’s neck, inviting him to turn his head and nuzzle into Alastor’s wrist, Lucifer’s hot breath wet against his skin. Alastor had lost interest in the specifics of the hand, which he shortly heard pick up the grinding, meaty sounds of the healing again, enraptured by the sight of Lucifer wincing his way through doing as Alastor asked.

Lucifer’s limit was not how much pain he could endure at Alastor’s hands. It was how much pain he could endure and still do this afterward.

Noted.

Alastor slowly lowered Lucifer’s head back down onto the table as the noises finished, taking in the glassy sheen his eyes had adopted at some point in the process. Alastor carded his hand through Lucifer’s hair as he pulled it away and that, for some reason, seemed to break the dam- fat tears slid down his cheeks, collecting for seconds at a time on the apples of his cheekbones where the false blush was tinged with yellow flush, water reflecting pink and gold before rolling down his face.

He was a beautiful painting. Alastor wanted to mount him on the wall.

Alastor came back to his senses to a realization that his smile had softened in his face, his own eyes half lidded as he took Lucifer in. He took a breath, collected himself, and replaced the hammer in his dominant hand.

He wasn’t interested in replaying the same slow mutilation all over again. Lucifer’s hand was rebroken with three rapid, loud slams of the hammer into his palm and fingers, the repetitive bang of the hammer intermingling with the crack of bone and Lucifer’s beautiful, full throated scream.

Once it was over, the room remained full of the sound of Lucifer letting out lost, keening sobs.

Alastor returned his gaze to Lucifer and furrowed his eyebrows. The sight was, instinctively, even more appealing than the previous one had been- Lucifer was taking great heaving breaths, trying to keep his lungs full against the force of his own sobs, the tears were flowing freely, even the sniffling and snot running down his face sent something thrilling through Alastor.

But he wasn’t trying to break Lucifer beyond ever being able to play with him again. And his own sense for what felt good was not, he knew, adequate to the task of making sure someone else was well taken care of. The sensation of Lucifer’s self outside of his body was slightly oppressive, like it had been when Alastor had skinned him, but was not the overwhelming, knee-buckling  sensation he’d experienced when Lucifer was warning Naberius off. That had to be a positive indicator, surely?

Best to be certain. Alastor reached out and gripped Lucifer by the shoulder and felt the man jerk under his hand, squinting through tear-fogged eyes up at Alastor. “Wha- wha?”

“You recall the question I asked you before this started? About the word we both settled on, to make this stop?”

“I-” Lucifer sniffled, took a deep breath, “I dun wan’ you to stop.”

An instant flood of relief. “Good to know. Not the question I asked.”

Lucifer swallowed, nodded, “Um, if I- you asked if we were settled on using ‘Lohengrin,’ an’ I said yes.”

“Well done,” Alastor said, and watched Lucifer preen a bit, even as he shook from the pain in his hand, and added a maliciously pleased little, “Perfect,” just to watch him recognize his own susceptibility and squirm.

“Shut up,” Lucifer grumbled.

“I don’t think I will,” Alastor teased back, and then he turned away from Lucifer’s face to pull his arm up until just past his elbow off the edge of the table.

He pulled the limb flat, watched Lucifer’s elbow overextend just a tad. The edge of the table should be adequate as a counter brace, but Alastor would still have to put a great deal of power into his swing, or he would with a human, in any case. The bones of one’s arm were designed to take a great deal of force.

The crack when the hammer came down just under Lucifer’s elbow was much, much louder this time, and the sound Lucifer let out was less a scream than a shocked wheeze, like someone had forced all of the air out of his lungs.

Not a compound fracture- Alastor hadn’t necessarily been aiming for one, but a part of him would always yearn for broken skin, shed blood, even though that was by no means the point of this evening.

Lucifer’s chest was heaving next to him, taking in great breaths and letting them out in shaky sighs interrupted by the occasional hitch of a sob. Alastor flattened his palm across Lucifer’s chest and stroked upward toward his throat, in a gesture that made him feel like he was gentling a horse.

Alastor’s next instinct had him moving down Lucifer’s body to his feet, pulling off one heeled shoe and then the other- revealing that Lucifer was also in possession of a set of hooves. Alastor paused for a moment, gripping the arched hock between the cloven hoof and Lucifer’s ankle, which was covered in a soft layer of velvety black fur. He pushed his hand up toward Lucifer’s ankle, gripping the very bottom of his leg and- Lucifer’s shaking had worsened.

Alastor looked up, and took in Lucifer’s posture and expression. His shattered arm was still splayed out next to him, as straight as he could keep it, and his other arm was gripping the edge of the table tightly again. Lucifer had sat up slightly, and his expression was not foggy and distant but- frightened. Lost. “I- I don’t-”

It wasn’t a complete stop, but it wasn’t the same as Lucifer’s reaction to the idea of his hand and arm being hurt. Alastor could feel a fizzy, buzzy feeling on his skin, and when he looked down at his arms he could see the hair on them standing on end.

“Fair enough,” Alastor said, pulling his hands away and stepping around the table toward Lucifer’s opposite arm. Once Lucifer’s face was in arm’s reach Alastor pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gently dabbed at Lucifer’s wet cheeks.

“S’” Lucifer swallowed, frowning in confusion, “I don’t know how to explain.”

“I don’t require an explanation, certainly not now,” Alastor said, and then continued, “I would like to get to work on your other hand and arm now, and then I will break your sternum, and then it will just be a matter of repairing yourself. Does that sound agreeable?”

Lucifer nodded, turning his head and pressing an unselfconcious kiss to Alastor’s palm through the fabric of the handkerchief and then nuzzling at it. “Uh-huh. You were right. It’s… different. Weird.”

Alastor breathed in through his nose carefully, his cheeks hot, and after a moment he pulled his hand away, tucking the handkerchief back into his trousers.

The next arm went slower than the first, Alastor alternating between snapping parts of Lucifer and soothing him through the experience, every single movement of Lucifer’s body eliciting a new jolt and wince of pain now that he didn't have an uninjured hand to brace himself with. The pauses and gentling were a necessity Alastor might have found irritating, if it weren’t for the giddy delight at Lucifer’s willingness to drop himself into Alastor’s open hands. Every time he steadied himself in anticipation of pain, every time Lucifer turned his desperate, frightened gaze to Alastor for reassurance, it was an electric thrill running through Alastor’s bones, not some supernatural force this time but the thrum of a different kind of power.

When it came time to break Lucifer’s sternum, Alastor first stopped for a moment to take in Lucifer. He was, at this point, quite the sight- his breathing carefully measured, his half lidded eyes following Alastor like a guiding light, his body a shivering lump of abused flesh interrupted by jerking winces. His face was flushed yellow- which Alastor suspected was a good sign that he’d correctly determined a difference in pain tolerance, this amount of damage in his previous victim had sent him deep into a very uninteresting, pale state of shock at this point- and his cheeks were covered in wet tear tracks.

Alastor smoothed Lucifer’s hair back from his forehead and was so pleased he found himself crooning praise at the man- “You have been an absolute pleasure, Lucifer, a delight . My part’s nearly finished, my dear, are you ready to put yourself back together again?”

“You’ll stay?” Lucifer asked, long past the point of self consciousness now, and it was a fair enough question. Alastor had never been there for the ‘Lucifer putting himself pack together’ part before, and in retrospect he thought that had been an error, born of an internal belief that Lucifer was ultimately completely in control of their encounters. Like an irresponsible brat who expected his things to put themselves away.

“I will,” Alastor said, and watched Lucifer heave a relieved sigh. A grievous error indeed.

Lucifer breathed in, breathed out. Nodded, “Then do it. Please.”

“Of course,” Alastor said, turning his body so his left hand was splayed with his thumb resting between Lucifer’s collarbones and his right arm was angled as far away as could reasonably be expected from Lucifer’s head- Alastor had no desire whatsoever for Lucifer to imagine for even half a moment that the hammer was coming for his face- and raised the hammer.

Lucifer’s pulse was hummingbird quick under his hand.

The sound of Lucifer’s sternum breaking was a terrible crunching noise and a cut off, pained wheeze. Each subsequent breath came out more and more strained and high pitched, Lucifer’s entire upper half would be a shifting, inescapable gradient of pain at this point.

Alastor turned, gripped Lucifer’s chin until his eyes settled on Alastor, and said very clearly, “Now fix it.”

Lucifer let out a reluctant whine, but shortly after the cracking noises started.

Alastor moved around to sit on the table next to Lucifer’s head, gently cradling the side of his head in his hands. Lucifer almost immediately turned to bury his face into Alastor’s thigh. Alastor could tell the moment his sternum was fully repaired, when high pitched strained whines turned into full chested panting and sobs. Alastor scratched lightly at Lucifer’s scalp and felt him gently nuzzle and go lax into the fabric of Alastor’s trousers. They sat there like that, the only sounds Lucifer’s breathing and the crunching noises of his bones stitching themselves back together, for an incalculable length of time. Lucifer had to take several breaks, certainly, long quiet moments spent collecting himself while Alastor stroked his hair.

Finally, Lucifer lifted his head slightly- Alastor’s trousers were damp from a mix of tears and drool, but he was hardly going to be irritable about the consequences of his own actions- and said, “I think I’m okay now.”

Alastor looked down at Lucifer’s body and couldn’t see any remaining sign of breakage. “So it appears. Would you like to go to bed, now?”

Lucifer pulled himself up to a sitting position, still looking faintly lightheaded, “You, um, don’t have to stay any longer if you don’t like.”

“I don’t know that that could have been less an answer to my question if you’d been actively trying,” Alastor replied, rolling his eyes.

Lucifer huffed, rubbing at his own face, “I, um, yeah. I’m going to bed.”

“Would it be presumptuous of me to join you?” Alastor asked again, standing up and offering Lucifer a hand to help steady him as he hopped off the table.

Lucifer’s eyebrows furrowed as he accepted Alastor’s hand- and then leaned very heavily on it as he tried to carry his own weight his legs seemed to wobble underneath him. Alastor gripped him by the shoulder and helped guide him toward the bed, “Um, for the night?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I would prefer until you’ve fallen asleep, at least.” Alastor felt a sudden wash of uncertainty flow through his body, abruptly very physically aware that he might be pressing into someplace he was unwelcome, and continued as he helped guide Lucifer to sit down on the bed, “Unless, of course, you would prefer I didn’t.”

Lucifer blinked, tilted his head to the side, smiled warmly. A sun rising over the horizon, beautiful and shining and new, “Nah, Alastor. That’d be great.”

Chapter Text

Lucifer looked down at himself, frowning, “Okay, but, I can’t. Sleep in these.”

“And?” Alastor asked, although of course he understood Lucifer was attempting to account for Alastor’s comfort.

Lucifer made an irritable noise, clearly struggling to find a way to articulate that.

“I’m not so much bothered by nudity as I am uninterested in it,” Alastor spared him. “In truth, I’m most familiar with nudity in much the same way Chuck is familiar with cows- I’ve seen more dead examples of it than living ones.”

Lucifer winced, “Hm. Worst thing you’ve ever said.”

Alastor considered, “Out loud, maybe. Anyway, I’m confident you won’t use it as a pretext to proposition me, which is the only plausible area of concern.”

Lucifer opened his mouth, sighed, and nodded, having obviously correctly deduced that engaging with that statement was a waste of his time. Good. Alastor would prefer his frank understanding not tinge toward coddling.

Alastor was more inclined to trust Lucifer’s knowledge on the subject of human sexuality than any psychiatric theory, and not just because he’d found it oddly reassuring. While he certainly seemed inclined toward judgment on moral issues, part of Alastor’s confusion regarding Lucifer’s own morality had been that Lucifer sometimes described certain aspects of humanity the way biologists who’d observed hundreds of generations of mice might, able to dispassionately observe patterns of behavior with the objectivity of someone who’d seen it all play out before. Alastor dramatically preferred this casual acceptance of things as they were to some grotesque, cloying display of ‘sympathy’ for the particulars of his ‘sexual dysfunction.’

The fact that he’d only settled on ‘maybe’ for his list after several hours of internally acknowledging the actual answer was in fact ‘yes, at least once’ but not wanting to seem too eager or raise any hopes, while also intermittently getting fed up with himself and writing it under ‘no’ just to avoid having to think about it any more was his own business.

Nevermind that if he’d truly not wanted Lucifer to know he felt conflicted about it, he simply could have re-transcribed the damned list before handing it over.

…

Damnit. Throw that onto the pile of ‘things Alastor only noticed he did days after the fact.’

Alastor had never had this problem in the days where no one knew anything meaningful about him by design. He’d actually started noticing each individual day passing instead of letting them run together in a meaningless fugue, but on the other hand, he did have to consider the things he did with the understanding that he had feelings that would occasionally influence his behavior, and he wasn’t entirely certain the indignity was worth it.

Speaking of indignities and meaningless fugues, Lucifer had apparently been struggling with his belt buckle for the past several minutes, and Alastor could see him beginning to get frustrated and embarrassed about how clumsy his hands were at the moment. Likely he thought Alastor’s staring was him taking that in and judging him.

So now they were both embarrassed. Not ideal.

Alastor carefully reached down, pulled Lucifer’s hands out of the way, and started doing it himself.

“I- fuck, I’m sorry. I- I get like this, it’s so stupid, I should have just told you to go and just stopped fucking existing for awhile-”

“I had noticed you seemed… out of sorts, occasionally,” Notably moreso than ever before this time, to Alastor’s knowledge, “I hadn’t realized it followed you after we were finished. I hope you aren’t staying corporeal entirely for my sake.”

It looked a bit like he was coming down from a high, honestly. Whatever affectionate, out-of-sorts state he went into while Alastor was working on him seemed to come with a bit of a crash, afterward. Alastor pulled Lucifer’s belt through the loops on his trousers and began to work on the fly.

Lucifer shook his head, his face, chest and shoulders all spattered gold with flush, “No, it- I don’t want you to go, discorporating to deal with it doesn’t feel… it’s like pain, it doesn’t go anywhere, it just stops.”

Lucifer lifted his hips so Alastor could fully remove his pants and then scooted backward on the bed, hooved feet kicking the bedcovers down so Lucifer could wriggle underneath them.

Alastor went to join him- on top of the bedcovers- and even through what seemed to be a very disconnected state Lucifer seemed to find something objectionable enough about this to fully hiss at him , forked snake tongue wriggling out of his mouth.

Alastor paused, midway through swinging his feet up, and looked down at Lucifer, bundled underneath several blankets and looking down at Alastor’s feet in horror. “Yes?”

“You’re still wearing shoes ,” His voice was utterly aghast.

Alastor blinked, “I’m? Above the bedding?”

Lucifer simply cringed in response, and Alastor rolled his eyes and threw his feet back down onto the floor so he could untie the damned shoes, and remove his sock garters and belt while he was at it.

When he turned back around Lucifer’s eyes were so soft about it Alastor felt something odd and uncomfortable twinge in his stomach.

“Am I suitable to cohabitate in your bed now , your majesty?” Alastor asked sarcastically, trying to ignore the way his throat was clenching around the words.

“Mmm, you’ll do,” Lucifer shifted a bit and then bit his lip, “Can I ask for something weird?”

“Maybe,” Alastor said, “Ask and I’ll let you know.”

Lucifer winced, “Could I get a hug, maybe?”

“Degenerate,” Alastor snapped back instantly, snickering at himself, and then watched that joke decidedly not land, “Ugh, yes, fine.”

“No, I mean, you don’t have to-” Lucifer was interrupted by Alastor aggressively wriggling an arm between his neck and the bed so he could properly engulf the man. Alastor being over the blankets and Lucifer under them meant this handily restricted Lucifer from hugging him back.

“I was joking , you ridiculous little man,” Alastor said, punctuating the statement by slinging a leg over Lucifer’s hip. Alastor had felt the need to wrap himself in layers and bind himself tightly in blankets during bad comedowns in the past; he suspected the weight of someone else’s limbs might serve a similar function for a vastly different variety of person.

The impotence of the tiny little ‘fuck you’ he got in reply suggested he was correct.

Some part of Alastor wanted to ask if the apparently unsatisfying act of discorporation had been the only option available to him previously, but it felt like a pointlessly masochistic impulse- like pressing on a bruise. Only the bruise was his own thoughtless mismanagement of the situation.

Besides, distraction and lighter topics were surely the best bet.

“You did actually eat what we made, then? I was concerned it might not have a high enough sugar content for your tastes,” Alastor tried instead, hoping Lucifer would cotton on to their previous topic of conversation before the fun had started.

Alastor couldn’t see Lucifer’s face at the moment- Alastor was resting his chin on the top of his head, the down Lucifer constructed his hair out of tickling at his throat- but the scoffing noise he made suggested Alastor had missed an eyeroll.

“Look, I like what I like, but I’m not an actual five-year-old, I’m not going to turn my nose up at good food Charlie’s proud of just because it’s savory. Besides,” Alastor could feel Lucifer’s shoulders shifting under his arms in a shrug, “I got into the habit of eating savory stuff around her during a picky stage when she was little. You can only lose an argument with a thirty-six-year-old who acts like a five-year-old on the basis of ‘ Daddy doesn’t have to eat his vegetables’ with over two decades of remembered evidence once before you learn that particular lesson.”

“Fair enough,” Alastor hummed, “Can I… ask how on earth Charlie’s aging works, exactly? I’m not an expert on human adolescents but I was one once, and…”

Alastor had no idea how to finish that sentence.

“Mm, yeah,” Lucifer sighed, and Alastor felt the exhale into the collar of his shirt. Alastor tilted his chin so the top of Lucifer’s head was touching his cheek, where he was more able to feel radiating heat, and quietly noted how outrageously warm he was. Alastor was hardly an expert on detecting unusually high temperatures in other people, but if Lucifer were human he’d be concerned about catching a fever. “I mean, so far it hasn’t been that complicated from a developmental perspective- she aged pretty much like a human until she was two, thank fuck, and it’s basically been a year for every ten since. We have no idea what’s going to happen when she’s an adult, but- I mean, my guess right now is she’ll do the angel thing and settle somewhere that feels right. The, uh, thing you’re finding confusing, I think, is it turns out when you take a fourteen year old and give them a hundred and twenty four years of life experience it doesn’t really matter how much maturing they still have to do, they’re going to act different than if they actually only had fourteen.”

“I- that makes perfect sense of course, and I do beg your pardon, but thank fuck she was a two year old for ten years?”

“Thank fuck she wasn’t less than one for ten years,” Lucifer corrected.

“Ah,” Alastor tilted his head, “That does sound like a nightmare, yes. Not least of which for her.”

“I mean, yeah. They reckon that’s part of why- I mean, the ‘she aged like a human until she was two’ thing is kind of a simplification, because I actually carried her for twenty months.” Lucifer made a thoughtful noise, “Or, well. She probably would have been done cooking at eighteenish, if I hadn’t meddled a little. It was hard to resist a date of significance that close to when she was due, although I was properly fucking waddling at that point.”

Alastor breathed in. Breathed out. Experienced a brief mental flash of a heavily pregnant Lucifer, and then immediately threw that into a bin inside his brain titled ‘not right now.’

“Ah, so, that was- that is to say, you were- I mean. You did that?”

If he had been under any delusion that he had managed to play that off, the wheezing laugh that exploded out of Lucifer into Alastor’s chest would have alleviated him of it.

“Well excuse me if I simply made a perfectly reasonable assumption based on the information I had available!” Alastor snapped, embarrassed and irritated to be so.

This unfortunately only brought on another surge of laughter. Alastor started pulling himself away, and Lucifer’s head tilted up to look at him, alarmed- “No, hey, I’m sorry, I forgot- I totally forgot I had a dick when you killed me, and then you reminded me, and I just-”

Lucifer unburied one of his hands and gestured vaguely in the air.

“I’m not certain what you’re trying to convey with,” Alastor imitated the hand gesture, “But I’m not certain it’s gotten across. And I. Wasn’t aware you didn’t usually.”

Alastor remarked upon Lucifer’s previous statement rather than asking the question he really wanted to, aware that there was really no situation where it was socially acceptable to explicitly inquire about the status of another’s genitals. He was hoping the fact that Lucifer brought it up implied a willingness to elaborate on his own.

“No, I just- I remembered how crazy our lives are, that’s all. But yeah, no, I don’t usually.” Lucifer shrugged, propping himself up on his pillow a bit to address Alastor more directly. He seemed largely recovered from his previous state, at least. “Dicks are fun enough sometimes, but so long as you can turn off the annoying reproductive stuff a vulva’s more convenient in basically every way.”

Alastor, who had not been an especially pleasant child for other children to be around, and who had consequently experienced his fair share of getting kicked in the balls- and, to be fair, his fair share of kicking other children in the balls- had no difficulty whatsoever conceding that particular point. “I… suppose that’s fair enough. I think I’m having a bit of trouble getting over a sort of irrational revulsion at the idea, personally, but I’m rather more attached to my body in all sorts of ways you aren’t, I suppose.”

“Mmm, sure, although that revulsion’s less universal than I think you’re probably assuming,” Which, alright, something new to fold into his worldview, Alastor didn’t pretend to be a universal expert on the human experience. Lucifer rolled onto his belly and stretched his arms above his head, blankets falling down beneath his shoulders and revealing the first set of scars there. He looked largely content and ready to sleep.

Alastor did not think he would be negligent in leaving Lucifer, at this point. He’d clearly gotten past whatever vulnerable state Alastor’s fun had left him in, and leaving now would not put his ongoing relations with Lucifer in any kind of jeopardy.

If he stayed, he would have no excuse but that he wanted to stay.

“Am I correct that that door is to a restroom?” Alastor asked, gesturing to the door on the wall that would be shared with Lucifer’s office if not for the odd gap between the two spaces.

“Mhrm. Turn the lights off while you’re up?”

“Can you not do that with your mind?”

“I mean sure but if you’re up anyway ,” Lucifer needled.

Alastor rolled his eyes, flinging his legs off the bed, “Very well .”

It was a rather transparent signal toward what Lucifer wanted , in any case. Just as he didn’t have Lucifer’s comfort as an excuse to stay, he couldn’t honestly suggest he thought Lucifer wanted him to go as an excuse to leave.

He padded on socked feet into the bathroom, closed the door- Lucifer had drifted the weight of his gaze off of him as soon as he’d entered a ‘private’ space, which, fair enough and also thank goodness.

The ensuite bathroom had another door opposite, presumably connecting to Lucifer’s office, and a shower, because of course the outrageous house had a shower installed. Probably it had several. Every once in a while Alastor had to cope with the fact that, quite outside of the awareness he had of Lucifer’s existence in a literal different world, he was also living a vastly different lifestyle financially.

Alastor considered asking to make use of it at a later date, but either he would have to figure some way of keeping his hair out of the spray- and the humidity would be a problem regardless- or he would have to step out into the house and make the walk home with his natural hair, which was not an option Alastor actually considered for any length of time.

So. Right. Alastor regularly engaged in incredibly intimate, albeit non-erotic- Alastor recalled the sight of Lucifer, tears rolling down his cheeks, looking at Alastor like he was the fulcrum upon which his universe turned, and maybe that wasn’t quite true either- albeit non- sexual acts with Lucifer, and had accepted that he was at some point likely going to sexually proposition him. He had seen Lucifer in a state of undress and had engaged in what Alastor could only describe as cuddling with the man on multiple occasions. He was this very moment considering spending the night in Lucifer’s bed.

So. Alastor wasn’t an expert. But he was fairly certain he was not currently in a platonic relationship with the devil.

This seemed like distinctly non-platonic behavior.

Surely. Surely Lucifer knew? Alastor couldn’t possibly be the first of the two of them to have figured it out, Alastor was a thirty-year-old who’s previous experience in this subject consisted of a deeply disgusting drunken kiss in his teenage years, Lucifer was a ten millennia old divorcee.

Was Alastor going to have to ask ?

Ugh. That sounded awful. Alastor absolutely was not going to ask.

Alright. Accepting that there was no universe in which Alastor ever asked a clarifying question on the subject, but that the only reasonable assumption was that his involvement with the man was almost certainly romantic in nature, was that? Good?

He did want to spend the night in Lucifer’s bed. So that was. Something.

The most disorienting part was not that he might desire that with Lucifer, it was reimagining himself as someone who might want that sort of relationship at all. Experiencing his first inkling toward romantic attraction at thirty seemed. Sort of absurd.

Well. Nothing he could do to make it less absurd.

When Alastor stepped out of the restroom he yanked the cord on the overhead light, removed his monocle, button-down and trousers, and crawled into bed in his shorts and undershirt. He kept most of his body firmly on the opposite side of the bed from Lucifer, but did poke over to the other side with a single foot, because keeping his extremities warm was a constant battle and Lucifer was a furnace.

Lucifer met him in the middle, and Alastor felt the odd velvety texture of the fur on the bottom of Lucifer’s legs against his own. Lucifer said, into the dark of the room, “I didn’t realize it was a thing until just then.”

“Hm?” Alastor asked, brows furrowing, mouth pursing in thought in the safety of the dark.

“It wasn’t you hurting my feet, or legs, or whatever. It was not being able to use them afterward. Not being able to run, or- or fly. Or, I mean, obviously I still would have been able to fly, but that’s- that’s the part of me that was flinching.”

“Ah,” Alastor said, because what exactly did one say to that? “Understood.”

Lucifer huffed a very unamused sounding laugh.

“I mean,” Alastor corrected, “I can see where the connection came from, and will keep that in mind in the future.”

“Mm. Thanks.”

“Of course.”

Alastor couldn’t say how long after that either of them fell asleep.

-

It was still dark when Alastor woke up again, but not, this time, due to any particular restlessness on his part. Instead, he registered a sense of movement next to him, and Lucifer’s irritated voice whisper-hissing at someone.

“Bee I swear to fuck if you’re about to ruin the night I just had-”

Hmm, Alastor did enjoy that particular bit of smugness. His entire body was warmed through almost to the point of discomfort, at some point in the evening Alastor had apparently wrapped himself back around Lucifer, who was- as Alastor peered over his shoulder, right eye shut so his left one could get an undistorted view- talking into some sort of gently glowing ring hovering in his palm. Inside the ring was an image of-

“What,” Alastor said, just barely enunciating the word as he very quietly breathed out in shock at the sight of the person inside the ring.

Lucifer stiffened against him and turned to give Alastor his own look of wide-eyed surprise.

“Oh, fuck, it’s night up there isn’t it? Shiiit, Lulu, I’m so sorry, seriously, my bad, but Belphegor’s being a massive fucking bitch about how to dole out the sloth versus gluttony when they get all mix-y literally every time someone takes a fucking downe- ohmy god do you have someone there with you?” The face of a talking humanoid canine- Bee, presumably- zoomed even closer in on the ring, red and gold eye taking up the entirety of the screen.

Alastor weighed ducking down and appearing skittish against being seen by this person in his current state. It wasn’t ultimately much of a choice at all- he opened his right eye, sacrificing clarity of vision in order to look less like he was constantly winking, and peered a little further over Lucifer’s shoulder so she could see the very irritated smile on his face, “I do beg your pardon for the interruption, but we simply weren’t expecting a call at this. Hour. ”

“Oh, wow, this is wild! Okay well sorry, man, my bad, I’m glad Lucifer can have fun while we’re all down here working our asses off , ” Bee’s voice gained an echoing growl at the end of her sentence and Alastor felt Lucifer’s shoulders hunch.

“Bee I’m willing to put up with a lot of shit right now because I know being on short rations is really fucked up for you in particular but keep a lid on it. ” The same snarling depth Lucifer’s voice had gained when warning Naberius off of Alastor rumbled through the body underneath him as Alastor saw horns erupt from Lucifer’s forehead from the corner of his eye, and Alastor jumped at the odd sensation of something shifting on Lucifer’s back underneath his chest, and a tail slithering its way between them and curling tensely over Alastor’s hip.

“Well maybe he shouldn’t start shit if he can’t-”

“If I might be allowed to speak for myself, as I am entirely capable of doing, I’m not certain how my being here and your resentment of Lucifer’s current state of banishment are in any way related to the question of whether its reasonable to call someone in the dead of night to scream at them regarding an asset allocation issue .”

Alastor didn’t have a strange change in form or magical growl to tap into, but he did know how to slip a certain amount of menace into his voice.

It was Lucifer’s turn now to let out a tiny little, “What?”

“Oh, well, fuck me I guess for trying to get this shit done in a timely fashion!”

“Yes, your inability to settle interpersonal disputes without tattling to your boss is truly commendable,” Alastor answered, letting his smile go sickly sweet.

Lucifer had turned around a little, his horns gone at this point although Alastor could still feel a tail on his hip, “Well, hey, Alastor, to be fair she’s going through some kinda intense withdrawals right now, this maybe isn’t warranted-”

Lucifer feeling that the sin- Bee was, Alastor assumed, short of ‘Beelzebub’- needed to be defended from Alastor, rather than the other way around, was rather the effect he’d been going for- he was aware that Lucifer being ready to stop Naberius from stabbing him in the foyer had been a very practically necessary impulse, but the idea of Lucifer feeling he needed defending from an oh-so-powerful demon yelling at him felt a bit smothering.

In any case, Lucifer was interrupted with slightly histeria-tinged laughter, which Alastor hadn’t been expecting either.

“Ha ha ooh, wow I am-” the face in the ring pulled away, and Alastor saw her pinch the space between her eyes in a disorientingly human expression of frustration, “I feel like such absolute shit right now, Lulu. I should- fuck, you gotta tell me what the fuck is going on that you’re shacking up with a cannibal . Uh, look man I’m gonna- I’m gonna go find a fucking doomsday party to crash or something, I’ll have one of my people send you a memo about the Belphegor horseshit, alright?”

“I- yeah, fine, you take care of yourself, I’ll find an hour today to try and figure out what exactly is going on,” Lucifer said, looking more concerned for Beelzebub than angry at this point, “I know shit’s a fucking nightmare down there, Bee, if I could be-”

“Nah, who the fuck am I kidding, how happy Charlie is that you’re up there with her is probably doing more to keep my shit together than anything you’d be doing down here anyway,” Which Beelzebub seemed to mean to be reassuring, although the smile Lucifer gave her in return seemed strained at best, “I’m gonna skedaddle, you kids have fun!”

“I’m millenia older than-” But the light winked out before he could finish. “- you... well that’s going to be a fun rumor to come back to after it’s had a year to stew.”

Alastor unwrapped his arms from Lucifer and- after it took a moment for the tail to get out of his way- scooted back a little. He’d been maintaining his hold purely for effect ever since he’d experienced the very alarming sensation of wings straining to form under his chest, and the physical contact had long since started to grate.

“You might’ve not answered whatever that was while still in bed and avoided the incident entirely,” Alastor suggested, perhaps slightly testy.

“I coulda made another me to handle it in the office, yeah,” Lucifer admitted, although that hadn’t been what Alastor had meant at all, “But that would have woken me right up and I was hoping it’d be a little thing and I could go right back to sleep.”

“How fortunate that I stepped in before it could become a big thing, then,” Alastor smirked.

“Yeah, sure, because baiting demons seems to be your new favorite pastime these days,” Lucifer grouched.

“Second-favorite pastime. She knew I was a cannibal the same way you knew I was a murderer?”

“I mean I also knew you were a cannibal, even before you added me to your tally. Our own sin tends to stand out more to us, and we can only really see the big ticket items even then, but whatever the hell you’re getting out of the cannibalism is pretty brightly gluttonous, yeah.”

Alastor felt his face warm- he very desperately hoped Lucifer hadn’t been able to see each individual instance Alastor had cannibalized him, he wasn’t certain what might be telling about that particular pattern, but he had the sense something might be.

“Right. One final question, and then so help me we are going back to sleep,” Alastor said, plopping his head onto his pillow to add a pointed sound to the statement.

“Sure,” Lucifer replied, sounding eager to be of assistance.

“ Lulu ?”

Lucifer groaned, “Nevermind, fuck you.”

“Goodnight to you as well!”

-

The next time they were woken up, it was Charlie yelling outside the door.that did it, “Hey Dad, is it gonna be a working Saturday? It’s fine if it is but so you know I’m walking to the library-”

Alastor and Lucifer blinked at each other for a few moments- Alastor had managed to remain on his own side of the bed this time- and then Lucifer sat up, calling out, “Uh, no sweetie, sorry, I must’ve slept in-”

Lucifer turned to look at the clock on the wall and winced. So did Alastor, squinting one eye shut and following his gaze with the other- it was half past ten in the morning.

“I’ll be out in a minute!” Lucifer added.

Charlie responded with a skeptical, “Okay…” that Alastor was very pleased was Lucifer’s problem to deal with.

“Do you, um, want me to pop you and your stuff over to a guest room, or…?” Lucifer asked much more quietly, looking down at Alastor, uncertain.

Alastor snorted, shaking his head, “As much as I’d love to know what dots Charlie might connect after finding me occupying her home for the second morning in a row, I’d rather get dressed and appear right outside, if possible. I’m behind enough on my day already.”

It was hardly the first time Alastor had slept in on a Saturday, but he normally had a much longer Friday night as explanation for it than he did this time. Excitement and interrupted sleep aside, he was fairly certain they’d actually finished up initially and crawled into bed before one in the morning, which would not have normally been enough to stop Alastor waking with the sunrise, unrestful sleeper that he was.

Lucifer winced at the idea of Charlie cottoning on to even the less specific and probably incorrect version of their activities last night, and nodded, climbing out of bed himself.

The next several moments in which they shuffled around, getting dressed and throwing each other their respective articles of clothing, felt almost debilitatingly surreal. It didn’t have a place, reflected against nearly every other aspect of Alastor’s life- a massive pane of transparent glass slotted into the middle of the stained, near-opaque mosaic guarding Alastor from the rest of the world.

Lucifer knew Alastor’s nose scrunched up while he attached the chain of his monocle to his shirt now. Alastor knew that Lucifer stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth while he neatened his hair in the mirror. Those things didn’t feel like things people should be able to discover about each other.

Eventually, they were both dressed, and Lucifer had a slightly out-of-focus look on his face, “Charlie’s in the kitchen, so I should be safe to pop you over to the side of the house without her or the neighbors noticing.”

“Perfect,” Alastor replied, slinging his messenger bag- hammer carefully replaced- over his shoulder, and holding his hand out, “Don’t forget to get rid of the table.”

“Oh, right,” Lucifer’s eyes darted to the large metal table the both of them had unconsciously accepted as part of the room- Alastor had used it to steady himself while pulling his shoes on- and snapped it away.

Then Lucifer bit his lip- a visual Alastor enjoyed a great deal, with how the needle points of his teeth pressed into his skin- and took Alastor’s hand. “See you Wednesday?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Lucifer,” Alastor said, watching with pleasure as Lucifer’s face yellowed before he disappeared from sight. Lucifer’s hand didn’t move, but there was a shoving sensation, the impression of being pushed through a space, and then Alastor stood on the Morningstar side porch.

This side did, in fact, have its own dedicated set of patio furniture. Alastor was three for four on that particular guess, so far.

If he took a bit of a meandering walk home, buoyed by one of the deepest night’s sleep he’d had in ages and delighted to wander that energy off, well. That was his own business.

Chapter Text

He got a call from Mimzy, later that day, and his smile lived just as much in his voice as on his face when he answered, “Hello, Alastor Toussaint speaki-”

“Alastor!” Mimzy, elated. “I lost half the band!”

“Congratulations?” Alastor responds, slightly confused at the mismatch of words to tone. “I mean it’s been a bit of a band of Theseus situation for as long as I can recall.”

“Whatever that means!” Mimzy replied, “Anyways, Jonny said that he had some folks already on the payroll he wanted me to talk to about replacing them, but in the meantime it means I’m free!”

Which was to say, Mimzy wasn’t going to be booking without her proper accompaniment.

The plan was reasonably transparent- he thought Mimzy probably saw it too- the contract had been bad for her band, Jonny hadn’t cared to keep them, and would now be incorporating more and more people tied up into the contract into Mimzy’s act, so that as they put pressure on one they could whisper in the ears of the others that oh, no, if a member of the band wasn’t willing to book this thing, or that, sacrifice whatever would be asked of them next, maybe the whole band would be in jeopardy. Maybe they should talk to their bandmate- see if they couldn’t be brought around.

Alastor was not concerned about Mimzy doing something she didn’t want out of concern for how it might affect others. “That’s wonderful news! Honestly, I was beginning to think you needed to make a change, the current lineup seemed a little stale, if you ask me.”

Frankly untrue. They’d been doing some very good work with Mimzy lately, honestly. Oh, well.

“That’s what I was thinking!” A cackle over the line, “Anyways, you owe me a conversation!”

“Really?” Alastor asked, shifting his weight and leaning against the counter, head tilted coyly although of course Mimzy couldn’t see, “I don’t recall owing you a thing, my dear, you’ll have to remind me.”

“Alastor! You turn up to my show with some ritzy-looking new fella you’ve apparently known for less than a month when I know for a fact you don’t take anybody places and you don’t think I’m gonna have questions? ”

The earpiece of Alastor’s phone was not well equipped to handle the pitch and volume Mimzy’s voice could reach when excited. “I don’t think it’s any of your business, frankly!”

Alastor was mostly delighted to tease her into getting more and more worked up about the issue, but he equally wasn’t quite certain what he’d say . He certainly couldn’t explain their actual first meeting with any truth, and it was impossible even to describe the less violent aspects of their relationship, because those aspects were undiscussable for a different set of reasons entirely. He did not think Mimzy would be personally concerned with the discovery that he had spent the previous evening in another man’s bed outside of her glee at being privy to the information, but it would be something she could hold over Alastor’s head, and he was not at all interested in giving her any nooses.

Consequently, they back-and-forthed like that for several minutes, Alastor teasing out what details he could share, “Oh we met at my butcher’s actually, his daughter’s a fan with an ear for voices-”,”He’s got the most obnoxious sweet tooth, I feel a bit ill just watching him-”,  “Oh I have very little idea where his money comes from, I think he’s in energy technologies or somesuch?”, “The man’s absolutely obsessed with ducks, and not their hunting either, he talked my ear off the other day and I now know the migratory habits of every species of duck that so much as steps a single webbed foot into Louisiana-”

So, yes, Alastor did in retrospect see where he went a bit transparent. In his defense, Mimzy had been grilling people for salacious details about their relationships since she knew that there were salacious details to know, and Alastor had previously defended against this method of attack by having only one friend.

“ Oh !” Had been all Mimzy said, to that last detail, and Alastor’s spine stiffened because he’d heard that ‘oh’ hundreds of times before, when Mimzy considered some suspicion of hers she’d had about another person confirmed, and it delighted her.

“‘Oh,’ what?” Alastor replied, snappish.

“Oh you’re just such a sweety, Alastor, that’s all,” Mimzy said, grin audible in her voice, and ugh, that was the ballgame.

“I assure you I am nothing of the sort,” Alastor replied, and then, “Old Danny could attest to that, surely, perhaps I ought to call him up-”

Danny was a very, very rich man Mimzy had robbed of some outrageous sum of money very shortly after they’d first met. Alastor’s willingness to plant some seeds toward other criminal enterprises he knew about to get him off her tale had been a very early establisher of their relationship.

“Oh, you aren’t going to do that, you son of a bitch,” Mimzy snorted on the other line,‘ “ Honestly you’re so jumpy , we’re just having fun!”

“Are we? I hadn’t noticed,” Alastor said, although hearing the hit land had thrown him right back into the playful mood he’d been approaching the conversation with earlier. Mimzy could hold a gun to his head, sure, so long as she remembered he had one to hers, “How about we go out this evening? Have some actual fun out on the town.”

“Hmmm,” Mimzy visibly decided whether or not to forgive him, then, “Sure, why not?”

As they made specific plans, Alastor tapped the toe of his shoe against his floor, good mood from this morning in no way interrupted by the nature of their conversation.

-

A few nights later, Alastor found himself perched above a supine Lucifer, straddling his waist, both naked in a sea of fabric, Alastor’s vision was filled with the glittering pink-and-gold starlight of tears on Lucifer’s cheeks. It was cold, but Lucifer was warm, searing, almost painful but of course it couldn’t be, and Lucifer stretched his arms up to surround Alastor, and Alastor opened his jaws impossibly wide to embrace Lucifer in turn.

His mouth sank into flesh that gave and popped under his blunt teeth, the taste of apples sweet on his tongue. Alastor ripped into his giving, willing body as Lucifer gripped him tight and wailed and wailed. He reached bone that crunched and snapped like twigs between his teeth, swallowing great gulps of hot blood and meat, feeling it paint his skin.

As Alastor ate, his body dropped down and he felt the heat of Lucifer against his skin and spilling down his throat in tandem, and he kept biting, ripping, tearing into it, felt Lucifer disappear underneath him with every bite, heard Lucifer’s screams die down as Alastor got to his lungs, and then his heart, and still he didn’t stop eating, until finally, after what felt like moments and felt like hours, he found himself alone, cold again, shivering on the floor of an empty office in an old abandoned warehouse. Scattered feathers, white but dyed yellow with blood, danced through the air around him. Inside Alastor’s belly, the sun burned, and he was not warmed by it.

Alastor’s eyes snapped open in his dark apartment.

…

Hm.

Odd. 

He didn’t normally remember his dreams.

Alastor rolled over, and tried to find a way back to sleep.

-

“Nothing for me today,” Lucifer had answered, when Alastor asked if Lucifer had an opinion on what they would be eating. “I like it, it’s worth the trouble most of the time, but it’s just so many systems to get up and running to make it work, you know?”

Alastor did not know, but it had been enough to get him to double-take and take Lucifer’s appearance in- he always looked a bit off as a human to him, now, but Alastor thought there was a particular heaviness about his shoulders.

“Perhaps we could try the park again, today?” Alastor suggested, toying with some plans of his own but also hoping the same joy Lucifer had gotten out of the ducks last time might help alleviate whatever this was.

Lucifer did indeed perk up a bit at the idea, and Alastor grabbed a po’boy on the way, eating as they walked.

“So piano, radio, has it always been music, then?” Lucifer asked as they stepped out onto green grass, heading in the direction of the pond.

Alastor blinked at the refocus on himself, and felt an odd writhing sensation in his belly. Right, alright, details. About himself. He’d shared some before- it was how Lucifer knew about the piano bit in the first place, and, well. Alastor hadn’t so much shared what was going on with him and dogs so much as Lucifer watched him cower ridiculously and then made a reasonable assumption, but still, Lucifer did know it.

“Ah, yes. My mother’s profession led to her spending a great deal of time in saloons, when I was growing up, and she had friendly business relationships with enough people with access to a piano that I was able to learn,” Alastor answered. Hm. Odd, he’d never considered himself as having an opinion on his mother’s profession before, but he’d also never actually said the words ‘my mother was a prostitute’ out loud. People had either known already, or his upbringing simply hadn’t been their business in any respect. He wasn’t certain how he felt about the vague phrasing of ‘my mother’s profession,’ “It was only against her will that I was ever interested in jazz, really.”

That was more than enough of Alastor being in a sharing mood for today. “Do you play anything?”

Lucifer blinked, visibly struggled to reorient himself in the conversation, and then seemed to decide he wasn’t going to press Alastor, thankfully, and answered, “Ah, yeah, I mean- music is kind of an angel thing generally, in heaven- or, well, heaven before humans started going there, I don’t know what it’s like now- we didn’t really have language how you’d think of it, but we put a lot of how we did communicate into singing and music, as a concept. That said, I am actually entirely unrelatedly good at the harp and lyre, imagery aside, and I’ve really been enjoying the violin almost ever since you guys invented it, some four hundred years ago.”

“No truth, I assume, to Tartini’s accusations about you visiting him in his dreams to give him a music lesson and show him a composition more beautiful than he could ever make?”

Lucifer rolled his eyes so dramatically, Alastor half expected more to pop up just for effect, “ No there is not, frankly I’m not even that good a composer. I’m more inclined to assume someone acting for another sin heard I liked violin and decided to be funny about it, but I don’t know who. Kinda wish I did- I apparently would have been very impressed by their music, if it was so much better than The Devil’s Trill ended up being.”

“Tartini didn’t go to hell for you to ask, then?” Alastor clarified, looking around to make sure they were still unobserved, “How is the music scene in hell, anyway? Charlie seemed excited to see live performances up here.”

“I mean,” Lucifer made a wavering motion, “I don’t keep great track of who we get, I’m not personally vetting everyone or anything. We got Mozart, I remember that, Lilith and I saw an orchestra he put together play some of the stuff he composed after his death not long before Charlie was born- no idea if he’s still around, probably not. But honestly Charlie hasn’t seen much of that- I don’t bring her to places frequented by sinners. The Hellborn have their own artists, obviously.”

‘No idea if he’s still around,’ as opposed to what ? Where was there to go, in Hell?

“She seemed very excited about a trip to China, last Friday?”

“Oh yeah,” Lucifer nodded, “She actually asked Naberius to use some of his overtime for it, because the time zones are so weird. She’ll be gone all Saturday morning.”

“Oo,” Alastor said, delighted at what that did for his own timing.

“Oo?” Lucifer asked, and then- “Oo!”

An entire flock of ducks had just landed in the pond.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” Alastor said, and watched Lucifer visibly take a moment away from his own joy to shoot him a delightfully alarmed look, “Although I might want to reschedule Friday evening to Saturday morning. Do you want some of my sandwich bread to feed the ducks?”

“That’s sort of bad for them, actually,” Lucifer said, and held up his hands, letting a bag of rolled oats form in his cupped palms. “But thankyou!”

And then Lucifer was off, feeding ducks, and Alastor was there, eating his sandwich and enjoying watching him almost fall into the pond in his enthusiasm.

-

He arrived to his next evening with Mimzy exhausted from a morning and afternoon spent slowly hiking through the woods, on top of work and the late hour. He disappointed her terribly with his desire for a less active evening, but she disappointed him terribly by having invited Jonny along without telling him, so he bought some weed, prerolled into cigarettes, to share and they called it even.

It was in this attitude of general goodwill to the world that Jonny was fortunate enough to catch him, after he stepped outside to get some fresh air on his face and smoke one of his Fatimas, buzzy with the unsteady giddiness of being high and drunk at the same time.

Jonny, who had also partaken, leaned against the wall next to him, “Whooo the fuck are you?”

Alastor cackled, shaking his head, “Who the fuck am I ? You know who I am, Jonny, you listen to my radio show!”

“Well, sure, but,” Jonny gestured to all of him, “What the fuck?”

“Oh, that I can’t speak to,” Alastor said, waving Jonny away, “There isn’t a level of intoxication where I’m quite that stupid, I’m afraid.”

“I could,” Jonny frowned at Alastor’s wide, unworried smile, “I could get it outta ya, I bet. Feels like the kinda info that might get me a good price, downstairs.”

Alastor barked out a laugh, and reached out to boop Jonny’s nose, “Oh, what a funny idea! How about, you go ahead and try that, and we both see if you can’t get it out of me before either I stab you in your ridiculous fat mouth or, if you’re lucky, he gets here.”

Jonny snorted, “What, like you can summon him or somethin’?”

“Or something,” Alastor shrugged. He was reasonably certain that if Lucifer suddenly began to feel all-encompassing, debilitating shame regarding Alastor he would get the hint and look for him, in any case. “You’re welcome to try and prove me wrong.”

Jonny snarled. He was going to do it, Alastor knew he was, Alastor wanted him to do it.

They stood there, and Alastor smiled down at Jonny, feeling a bubbling well of paranoia and panic breaking through- becoming part of- his high, and Jonny gave Alastor an exaggerated, clumsy glare and looked ready to burst out with something then-

“There you two are!” Mimzy burst outside, in a fury, “I cannot believe that you left me ALONE in there!”

Alastor was joined in his resultant hysterical laughter by Jonny himself, as Mimzy dragged them back inside. Neither of their smiles, when they met each other’s eyes, were friendly.

But they were off the knife’s edge.

For now.

-

Alastor arrived on the Morningstar doorstep at six in the morning that following Saturday, with a map in his pocket.

Lucifer opened the door for him before he could knock.

“Good morning, Lucifer! Before we got underway, I was going to go ahead and steal a cup of coffee.” Alastor slipped past the smaller man and headed directly to the kitchen.

“Oh, yeah, sure, make yourself at home I guess,” Lucifer grouched, following him, his human form dropping as soon as the door was closed.

“I thought that might be your feeling on the subject,” Alastor replied, “I assume you take your coffee like a child?”

“If by that you mean with lots of cream and sugar, then yes, Alastor, I take my coffee like a child,” Lucifer watched him measure out grounds, “I assume you take your coffee like an asshole?”

“Oh, whyever would you assume that?” Alastor asked, watching Lucifer walk over to the kettle and fill it. He didn’t take it to the stove, though- he hopped onto the counter with it cupped between his hands, and Alastor watched the air around them get hazy with heat.

“Because you’re an asshole, obviously,” Lucifer replied, kicking his feet against the counter, “What’s the big plan today, anyway?”

“Well,” Alastor said, “I was thinking, it’s hunting season. I used to go hunting when I was a teenager, I was quite good at it actually, before I developed an interest in a different sort of game.”

Before the man Alastor’s mother was trying to make a step father out of struck her across the face and then thought taking him out for a weekend with a gun was somehow a wise idea. It was rather tonally different from his other murders, which had otherwise largely been about personal offenses to himself. Lucifer had only said his murders started when he was, ‘a teenager or something.’ Alastor wondered if he could tell.

Lucifer frowned a bit, breathed in, out. The kettle whistled and he held it out for Alastor. “Great, cool. Relevance?”

“With your cooperation, I was thinking I might combine the two passions,” Alastor took the kettle by its handle and continued preparing the coffee while he spoke, “Which is to say, I have marked out an area with flags and left a hunting rifle stashed in the woods, and I was thinking we could play a very interesting game of tag.”

Lucifer tilted his head to the side, considering. “I’m guessing I’m ‘it.’”

“The consequences of you tagging me with a hunting rifle would be, I will admit, rather more exciting, but I do think you being ‘it’ would be best.”

“... do I have to be in this form the whole time?”

Alastor leaned against the counter and raised an eyebrow. “What a fascinating question. You… must be in the same form the whole time.”

Lucifer looked entirely too pleased with that limitation.

“Also,” Alastor added, “That form cannot be capable of flight and must be… larger than a breadbox.”

Lucifer slumped down, initial plan thwarted. “... watching you try to shoot a mouse with a hunting rifle was going to be so funny .”

A slightly more versatile shapeshifter than Alastor had thought, although in retrospect imagining a humanoid limit had been silly of him.

“What did you hunt?” Lucifer asked, “Ducks, pheasant, rabbits, deer?”

“Oh, deer,” Alastor replied, “Although frankly, if it had been ducks, I wouldn’t have told you.”

“Okay,” Lucifer said, “I’ll be a deer, then.”

“Well, I mean,” Alastor couldn’t help himself, “Aren’t you always?”

Lucifer’s resultant groan was more than worth it.

While they drank their coffees- the amount of cream and sugar in Lucifer’s made Alastor feel a little queasy just looking at it- Alastor pulled out a map. “So, a couple of options. I know where it is we need to go, and I did ensure we ought to have enough time to get out there the old fashioned way but it is a bit of a hike, or, if you’d rather just take us there yourself, I don’t really know the limits of your ability to teleport.”

Lucifer took the map, frowned for a moment- got a distant look in his eyes. “Oh, yeah, I can take us there.”

“Did you just go there ?” Alastor asked.

“Uh, no?” Lucifer made a wiggly ‘sort of’ motion with his hand, “I mean, it’s daytime, so I’m kinda there already? Although it’s not like… whatever it is about my actual person that you can sense somehow, I can only kinda vaguely see stuff if I put some effort into it. Oh, uh, wow, I didn’t actually mean for that to be a thing.”

“It isn’t,” Alastor said into his own hands, “I’m just. Processing.”

“I did, uh, I did mention the whole me being the sun thing before, right?”

Alastor couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped into his palms, “Yes, but there was rather a lot going on at the time.”

“Y’know, that’s fair,” Lucifer replied, thoughtful. “You alright?”

Alastor unburied his face and took a bracing gulp of the last of his coffee, “I’m alright. I’m ready to leave, actually.”

“Was there a purpose to wandering into my house and making coffee?” Lucifer asked, standing and holding out a hand.

“It is- was- six in the morning,” They’d actually spent more time here than he’d been expecting, it was nearly seven now, “And I was very tired and wanted a cup of coffee.”

Alastor stood and took Lucifer’s hand, and felt himself get pulled out of the city.

When they arrived, Lucifer was a deer. Lucifer was, in fact, a completely white deer without any antlers, instead wearing a little tophat with his ears sticking out of it. Alastor’s hand was resting on his flank.

“Huh,” Alastor said, “The coloring feels like a disadvantage.”

“Yeah, well,” Lucifer said. As a deer. Lucifer-the-deer said. That. “I figure deer don’t usually know they’re being hunted, either, so this only seems fair.”

“Oh- ho , I see.” Alastor gripped Lucifer by his muzzle and bent down to look him straight on as best as he could, when Lucifer currently had side-facing herbivore eyes, “I hope you understand I absolutely forbid you going easy on me.”

“Any other rules you’d like to list?” Lucifer asked, tilting his head in Alastor’s grasp.

Was he. Flirting with a deer right now?

Alastor straightened up and looked around, “Right! My gun! I should go get my gun and- also, to answer your question, yes. Some more parameters still need to be spelled out.”

Alastor oriented himself and- ah, yes, well within a plausible margin of error for where Alastor had marked on the map. He strode about thirty feet away from where they’d landed and brushed some leaves aside to reveal the edge of a tarpaulin cover which, when lifted up, revealed a stashed waterproof chest.

“Do a lot of hiding weapons in the woods?” Lucifer asked, padding over to peer over Alastor’s shoulders.

“I don’t know what kind of answer to that question you could possibly be hoping to get, but yes, actually,” Alastor said, opening the lid and removing the old Winchester, “Now, this rifle can hold six shots, so it seems reasonable enough that thats how many shots I have to get you over the course of the next-”

Alastor consulted his pocket watch.

“Two hours. As I mentioned, I’ve placed some flags on pins to mark the field of play.”

“I see them,” Lucifer said, and Alastor looked up to see Lucifer’s gaze had gained the distant look of when he was focusing somewhere else. “Two mile radius circle, basically.”

“Right, well, fair enough- no more of that if at all possible for the duration.” Alastor gestured at Lucifer’s face generally, “I need some kind of chance to sneak up on you.”

Lucifer let out a bleating laugh, “Oh, you will not be sneaking up on me. I’m keeping an eye out from the perimeter so no other hunters wander in on us being stupid.”

“If you must,” Alastor conceded, picking up a box of bullets from the chest, beginning to feed them into the rifle,“Heaven forbid we have too interesting a course hazard. Ah, well. You have until I’ve finished loading. One.”

Lucifer burst into an immediate, frantic burst of energy, and Alastor felt his shoulders hike up at being so close to such a frantically moving large animal, and by the time his shoulders had lowered Lucifer had disappeared into the woods.

“Sure,” Alastor muttered, continuing to load, “Go ahead and tire yourself out.”

He had a good feeling about his chances.

-

Alastor spent most of the next two hours plotting and hiking.

It wasn’t as if he went running through the woods after Lucifer, of course- while the limited field of play might make that a slightly less ridiculous idea, he very obviously would not be outrunning a deer. Ideally he would be setting up somewhere downwind of where he expected Lucifer to wander, but Lucifer not actually being a deer meant that he was unlikely to walk into convenient shooting range on his own.

He had in fact been afforded the opportunity to hunt men under very similar circumstances- his earlier work had been, frankly, sloppy, and once or twice some unfortunate had slipped their bonds out here and necessitated pursuit.

This was not quite either of those things, delightfully.

So, if Alastor was a deer, he would aim to go someplace where it would be impossible for Alastor to be directly downwind of him. Moving sideways along the edge of the circle he’d mapped out, that was how Alastor found him the first time.

The white fur and the ridiculous hat really were a pretty outrageous advantage toward Alastor, honestly. He was able to spot him from well outside of his comfortable range with the rifle, which led to several very tense moments slowly approaching, desperately trying not to step on dead leaves too hard.

The clearest target was Lucifer’s neck, arched, his ears swiveling around that stupid hat, listening for him but presumably unable to see Alastor’s brown clothing from this distance with a deer’s horrible vision.

Not that Alastor had room to talk, he was sighting down a monocle.

A shot to the neck wouldn’t give Alastor much time to gloat while the poor thing bled out, but the early victory would be worth it.

He aimed, shifting his weight to handle the recoil- and something crunched underneath his shoe. Lucifer’s head swiveled, Alastor fired- wide-

“Fuck.” Alastor muttered under his breath, straightening up and trying to track the direction Lucifer was running in as he bolted.

The deer cackling with laughter as it ran did afford a rather different tone to things.

Alastor levered the next round into the chamber and began to plan anew.

Alastor lost his next three rounds in very similar fashion- although he was quite certain he might’ve gotten Lucifer’s back left hoof if he hadn’t realized that was what Lucifer’s jump had put in line with his rifle and pulled his damned shot- and was very much feeling the physical effects of hiking through the woods at a heightened pace for an hour and a half, when he saw a glimpse of white out of the corner of his eye, and realized he was almost certainly on his last chance.

He was up a small stream from Lucifer, who had apparently kept to the needs of his deer form devotedly enough that he needed to take a drink of water now.

Alastor had soaked his shoes about twenty minutes before following Lucifer across this particular damned stream, Lucifer letting out an obnoxious “Ha- ha ” at Alastor’s hissing as his foot was submerged in extremely chilly water, so he probably should have expected Lucifer would have long since crossed back to the other side by now. He very carefully controlled his breathing- he was more than feeling the results of a nearly fifteen year old smoking habit at this point- he-

He had been sitting perfectly still next to an appealing water source, downwind of Lucifer’s location, waiting for Lucifer to come to him. Like he would have if attempting to hunt a normal deer .

It probably wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t tired Lucifer out a bit, at least.

He aimed, let out a quiet, careful breath out. Pulled the trigger.

Watched Lucifer’s body jerk, go to bolt. It turned and jumped but then he seemed to force himself to stop, slamming into the ground mid-leap and tumbling along the bank.

Alastor, in spite of his exhaustion and objecting lungs, ran toward Lucifer at a dead sprint. He was erupting with a sort of panting laugh when he finally reached him, slamming onto his knees, setting his gun off to the side, and burying his fingers into Lucifer’s fur.

“Oh, please tell me you didn’t give me that,” He said, delighted palm drifting down his heaving torso, listening to him make great, whuffling breaths.

“I- no, you ass, this thing just stops-” Lucifer stopped, panted a few more times- “It just stops working if you make it run enough times in an hour, seriously, my head was fucking pounding to drown out my ears at the end there. Fucking endurance predator bullshit.”

“Where did I hit you, even?” Alastor asked, dragging his hand up to scritch at Lucifer’s ears where they poked out of the hat.

Lucifer sighed, shifted halfway up onto his legs, and then rolled over to let part of himself drape onto Alastor’s kneeling lap.

“Hey, what do you think- oh.”

Alastor wouldn’t have killed him. The shot had glanced across his ribs, at best, and Alastor had to assume the aborted instinctive panic response at the loud noise and sudden pain was the only reason Lucifer had reacted so dramatically.

The blood staining his fur was shining, glittering gold.

“I want to skin you and lie under the pelt in bed each night,” Alastor didn’t quite realize what he was saying until it was out of his mouth.

“I mean, kill me first, but no one’s stopping you,” Lucifer replied, and Alastor let out a laugh of shocked delight.

“Maybe later,” Alastor finally answered, after a long moment of consideration. Skinning and preserving a deer pelt was not the kind of time investment he was interested in putting in, in the coming days. “Could you possibly turn back to your usual form, instead?”

Lucifer complied, still sprawled sideways over Alastor’s lap, white clothing immediately grinding itself into the dirt. He let out a little relieved sigh- he had, it looked like, shapeshifted away the bullet wound- and rolled over off of his lap so he was laying down, staring up at the sky through naked tree branches. He finally asked, “You have fun?”

“I had a great deal of fun,” Alastor replied, “I hope you did, too- you mentioned not managing to get out to see much, before our first visit to the park. I had hoped you might like a change in scenery, although I am aware of course that this was very much my thing.”

“I like doing your things,” Lucifer answered, “Although maybe running around in the woods might have to be a sometimes thing for your safety- how’s the foot, by the way?”

“Wet, and cold, you cretin,” Alastor answered, shifting his positioning so said wet and cold foot was no longer soaking into the seat of his pants, “Thanks ever so for that.”

A few moments passed, while Alastor worked up the nerve to speak again. “I had wanted to ask you something, actually.”

“Yeah?” Lucifer asked him from the ground, tilting his head to look up at him.

“Next week I wanted to do something more in line with our usual, involving your wings- not hurting them, but alternating pain elsewhere with touching them, as you said, ‘nicely,’” Alastor watched Lucifer’s eyes go massive in his head, his mouth opening ever-so-slightly as the idea turned itself over in his mind, “but to do that I would of course need your permission and, I think, some kind of instruction on what that entails.”

“Oh, uh, wow. Fuck,” Lucifer said, although he sounded more discombobulated than upset, “Uh, I guess if you want- I mean, that is to say, you could- if you wanted I mean I don’t know- just, if you’re free, I know tonight isn’t really in our usual schedule but neither was this morning and, you know. I could. Show you tonight, maybe? If you wanted to, um. Preen me. And then depending on how that goes I could let you know about next week?”

That reply did leave Alastor feeling a bit like he’d hit the jackpot. “I’m available this evening, Lucifer, yes. That sounds perfect.”

Chapter Text

Charlie came home at around eleven A.M., interrupting a conversation. They’d gotten back themselves only an hour ago, after Lucifer had asked if Alastor minded if he spread himself out to properly enjoy the wilderness and Alastor dozed a bit in a forest covered in eyes. After they’d teleported into the living room and Alastor had gotten another coffee, Lucifer had asked what had gotten him into hunting, and Alastor had managed to tell the story without getting into his complicated opinion of the man who’d taught him. Not truly that complicated, Arnaud had been one of his mother’s more tolerable partners, and Alastor had genuinely enjoyed several of the man’s attempts at ‘bonding’ with him, and then Arnaud had struck his mother and been dead to him immediately and to the world not long after. It was the ‘having several important foundational memories that involved a man you enjoyed murdering’ part that was complicated. This had led into Alastor explaining that they’d come home to a fresh batch of his mother’s jambalaya, hands down Alastor’s favorite food, and then Alastor had reached his limit on personal anecdotes for the day and pivoted to Lucifer’s own favorite food.

“Eh, it changes over the years- it’s apple turnovers right now, it’s basically always some sweet involving apples. Once in a great while it’ll be pomegranates instead.”

Alastor had to ask, “Is the fondness a coincidence or…”

The pointed question was rather obviously unwelcome, judging by the wince Lucifer’s face gave before he visibly took a moment to decide if he wanted to answer and to what extent.

“I mean, I liked apples okay, y’know, at the time? But I didn’t eat for centuries afterward, and when I next tried an apple, it was like the shark teeth, taste buds that like apples feel right, so if I’m not paying attention that’s what I get.” A snort, ”Besides, if your life’s turned into one big joke, you can either commit to it or else let yourself be the only person not laughing, right?”

“I- suppose that’s one way of looking at things,” Alastor had begun, not sure how exactly to begin tackling even half of the details in that sentence, when the opaque portal appeared in the middle of the living room.

Charlie burst through it, already in her natural form and mid-sentence in what Alastor had to assume was Mandarin, a very sluggish and feathered Naberius following behind her, also not speaking English or Babelonian. Charlie was wearing a high-collared dress with flowers embroidered on it that matched Alastor’s extremely inexpert understanding of Chinese clothing styles, although Naberius retained his usual ill-fitting suit.

“The opera was good, then?” Lucifer asked, and Charlie, who had focused in on her father and seemed entirely oblivious to Alastor’s presence in the room, immediately launched into a rapid response.

Naberius did not appear to have had that problem, and had tilted his head to the side, his long crane neck allowing him to nearly flip it upside down as he exaggerated the gesture.

Alastor smiled in return, choosing not to concern himself with whatever assumptions Naberius might be making, sipping his coffee, waiting for the two Morningstars to stop being enraptured with one another. Charlie seemed to be describing the entire plot of the opera to her father, who’s priorities had changed completely as soon as she entered the room, so that Alastor’s only glimpses into the conversation were Lucifer’s encouraging exclamations.

Naberius very deliberately positioned himself so anyone wishing to address him would have to look past Alastor to do so, and then said in, to Alastor’s ears, English, “Miss Charlotte, I’m going to go ahead and head home, I’ll see you on Monday.”

Charlie turned, and got halfway through saying something to Naberius in Mandarin before she noticed who she was tilting her head to look around. After a few false starts, Charlie finally exclaimed in English, “Oh shit, Alastor!”

“Language!” From Naberius, not Lucifer, who seemed unconcerned with his daughter using expletives.

“Sorry Mr. Naberius! Yeah sure you go ahead see you!” Charlie waved until Naberius was gone and then whirled on her father, expression more one of flailing surprise than actual upset, “Why didn’t you say anything! I’ve been speaking a language Alastor doesn’t this whole time. That's so rude!”

Lucifer blinked, and shrugged, “Alastor’s got a mouth, doesn’t he? He coulda said something.”

“That’s not the-” Charlie stopped, sighed, “Sorry, Alastor, I didn’t see you there.”

“I mean, your father isn’t wrong,” Alastor shrugged, “You looked preoccupied.”

Charlie sighed, and fell back onto the same couch her father was sat on. “The opera was amazing . And tragic, the ending made me so sad . But, I mean, I did kinda know that going in. And just looking around the city was so much fun, I ate so much . ”

“What time would it have been when you left?” Alastor asked, “Quite late, I assume.”

“Oh, yeah, I mean, midnight. By the end Naberius was kinda just shrouding us so we could wander through the city after dark without anyone being worried. What were you guys up to?”

“Alastor invited me on a hike,” Lucifer replied easily, “We left not long after you did, actually, got back an hour ago.”

“I found myself with a free Saturday and your father seemed happy enough to entertain me,” Alastor added, “I hope I’m not intruding.”

“No, no!” Charlie waved his concern off, “I’m just happy to hear dad got out of the house!”

Which afforded Alastor the delightful opportunity to watch the expression of brief shock and dismay bloom on Lucifer’s face in response to Charlie's unthinking casual implication that he was a shut-in. Alastor just barely managed to catch and restrain a snort of outright laughter.

“I was thinking I might stay for dinner, actually,” Alastor said, giving Lucifer a few moments to recover from that, “I very rarely have the opportunity to cook for even a small crowd.”

“Oh yeah, that’d be great! Could I help you again?” Charlie’s desire for new experiences had not, it seemed, worn out for the day, and she brightened even further.

Lucifer looked faintly put out, for some reason, but Alastor was at a loss to understand what about.

“Certainly, if you like,” Alastor replied, rather than trying to divine whatever that was, standing, “Let’s see what the kitchen has to offer us, shall we? We have plenty of time to pop out for anything we might need.”

Alastor and Charlie were already in the kitchen, poking through the refrigerator and cupboards, before he realized Lucifer hadn’t followed them in. He raised an eyebrow at the door, but it seemed unreasonable to expect the man to trail after Alastor in his own home.

He found mutton and some more of that sliced ham in the refrigerator, and after he recited the ingredients for his recipe for mutton stew Charlie confirmed they had garlic and onions, but were still missing several vegetables.

When they came back through the living room Lucifer was still sat where they’d left him, although the cat- who Alastor had yet to actually be in the same room with until now- had taken up residence in his lap, and he was quietly petting it with a distant expression on his face for the half second before he brightened at Alastor and Charlie’s return.

“Dad we gotta go to the grocery store you should come!” Charlie burst out, diving across the living room to grab her father’s hand and pull him into a standing position, the cat hopping down, seemingly used to this sort of thing.

“Wha-hokay, Char-Char, sure, uh, we going right now-” Lucifer was unresistant as he was tugged toward the door outside, “Uh, that’s a yes, don’t forget human disguises Charlie!”

That did stop the unstoppable force that was Charlotte Morningstar for long enough for Alastor to don his jacket and for herself and Lucifer’s appearance to change. After a quick inquiry by Lucifer, Charlie also allowed him to change her dress into a matched blouse and skirt that would stand out less here, although he kept the floral pattern from the dress in the skirt’s design.

They were only missing a few things, but that didn’t take away from the hilarity of Lucifer eyeing him suspiciously the entire time, previous experience having apparently fostered a certain amount of distrust. There was a brief squabble about who would be paying, but pride aside Lucifer’s argument- “You are feeding this to me and my kid and money is literally meaningless to me,”- was unfortunately airtight.

The next several hours were… odd. They retired again into the living room, Charlie broke out a crossword puzzle book that she occasionally read out clues for- Lucifer was only limited help there, Babelonian did not provide him with how many given letters a word might have in English. Lucifer summoned up a small stack of paperwork with lettering Alastor didn’t recognize that he filled out using maybe a third of his attention, the other two thirds dedicated to asking after what Charlie had been learning-Naberius’ curriculum heavily focussed on theater, philosophy, and various systems of government it would seem- and hesitantly asking after Alastor’s past week at the radio station. Alastor thought he seemed a bit cautious about asking Alastor about himself in front of Charlie, which was reasonable enough given his previous experience of Alastor’s willingness to share personal details but Alastor could, in fact, speak vapidly and at length about the petty nonsense that happened between himself, Gabriel, and Denise without any concern about stumbling into personal topics.

After a while Alastor got up and scanned the bookshelves until he found a Sherlock Holmes collection to peruse, after which came the oddest part- long periods of quiet coexistence occasionally interrupted by Charlie’s requests for help with a puzzle clue.

He didn’t dislike it, it was just. Odd.

The sun was setting around five in the evening at the moment, so Alastor judged when he ought to start dinner by when he started to get the urge to get up and turn on a lamp to read by.

Lucifer very nearly got left behind in the living room again, alone with his seemingly endless pile of things he needed to sign off on, except Alastor poked his head back out from the serving pantry and added, “I assume you’re still cursed, and I don’t want your hands on my food regardless, but you might keep us company ,” and that seemed to be all the encouragement Lucifer needed to hover in the kitchen doorway while they worked.

Alastor narrated as he went for Charlie’s benefit, and set her to the actual work of chopping onions while he cubed the mutton after a quick bit of instruction- and occasional reinforcement of that instruction, “Charlie, I see you forgetting to tuck your fingers, while I’m certain between your fingers and the knife you will ultimately win out it’s sloppy workmanship ,”- while Lucifer sat at the kitchen table and made a nuisance of himself- “ Yes Lucifer, I’m sure the bay leaf, ‘ does anything ’ which I feel like you ought to know, didn’t you invent chemistry or somesuch-” “I was on the committee and I think you’re overestimating the effect of boiling, that’s all-” and by the time everything came to a boil- “Watch the pot, although it shouldn’t boil over, add the potatoes and turnips in ten minutes, do not allow your father to touch anything, I am stepping onto the back porch for a cigarette,”- Alastor needed the smoke break just to settle the unreasonable, bubbly feeling zipping through him.

It was odd- he’d had an entirely peasant afternoon, but there was an exposed nerve feeling starting to build up under his skin.

After a few drags, Alastor saw a small cat- not the actual pet, but a white creature with fairly telling yellow and red eyes- come padding up onto the porch. Alastor plucked him up with one hand under his belly, heedless of the annoyed, ‘rrrrow’ this elicited, and made a lap to set him on. “I’m fine, the fretting is entirely unnecessary. I just- needed a moment.”

The cat’s mouth opened before he seemed to reconsider, instead rubbing his head into Alastor’s chest.

“You’re going to get me covered in fur,” Alastor muttered, although he suspected the fact that he was using his hand not currently occupied with a cigarette to scratch at his ears rather undermined his complaint. Alastor could still faintly hear Lucifer speaking with Charlie in the kitchen, so he couldn’t be preoccupying the other man too badly.

After a short while he nudged the purring cat off of him and stood up, ignoring the irritable noise he got for it, and returned inside.

Need for a moment of respite aside, he did enjoy how effusive Charlie’s delight was when dinner was finally served, on the ridiculous dining table meant to sit ten people that was their only option besides cramming themselves all on the tiny kitchen table meant for two.

Charlie disappeared upstairs not long after dinner, and Alastor and Lucifer found themselves alone in the living room again.

“Whiskey?” Lucifer asked.

“Yes, please ,” Alastor answered, half falling onto the couch.

Lucifer got him a rocks glass and himself a collins, and returned with the same bottle of whiskey he’d offered Alastor a week and a half ago and some club soda to lengthen his own drink.

“You drank your whiskey straight last week,” Alastor commented, against his own best interest.

“I was having a worse night last week.” Lucifer answered, “I’m actually sneaking some sucrose in here too, but that’s easy enough there’s not much point actually making the syrup.”

Alastor poured and took a swig of his own whiskey and had to ask, “So, speaking of, I assume you weren’t made out of meat while you were inventing the chemistry-”

“I didn’t- I was just on the committee -” Lucifer was clearly so far beyond commenting on ‘made out of meat,’ at this point.

“So what were you made out of? Are the wings- I mean I assume you intend to manifest actual wings, but are they like the shark teeth where they’re just what ‘feels right’ or-”

“Ah, no,” Lucifer sipped his fizzy apparently sweetened waste of good whiskey, “The wings are… metaphors. For parts of my actual…”

Lucifer frowned, clearly trying to find a way to explain, and then said, “I can try and show you, but it’s- I mean, it would be a ‘me touching you’ thing, kind of?”

“Well,” Alastor said, tilting his head to the side, “Color me intrigued.”

Lucifer sat there, still waiting, until Alastor sighed and added, “Yes, go ahead.”

 At that point, the sensation of Lucifer’s attention- a sort of pleasant background noise for Alastor at this point, after well over twelve hours sitting under it- became suddenly much, much heavier. It wasn’t even just weight anymore, it was the alarmed pins-and-needles sensation of a limb suddenly coming to life after having its circulation restricted, the return of a lost sensation as something he had never felt before wrapped itself around his shoulders. Something buzzed in his ears, the fuzzy static of a radio caught between channels, no, it was the flutter of wings, the sound of a thousand birds taking off at once-

“Stop,” Alastor said, “Stopstopstop-”

Replaced with the sudden complete absence of Lucifer’s regard at all, like he’d stumbled in to find Alastor unexpectedly naked and spun to look away. “Sorry, sorry, I wasn’t sure how that would feel to you, I think most people would have felt that actually-”

“Too much,” Alastor answered, taking another sip of his whiskey, “too much all at once, I- I think I got the point, though. The eyes too?”

“The eyes too,” Lucifer concurred, “But no one’s ever ripped my actual eyes out, so it's less of a sore subject.”

Alastor’s mind tried to wrap his head around whatever the hell actually just touched him being hurt and couldn’t do it. “So, is the preening satisfying a metaphorical need, or?”

“Ugh, both. Physical and metaphorical, I mean. My wings do literally need to be taken care of regularly, but…” Lucifer hunched a bit, face yellowing, biting his lip, “It’s also pretty close to an old angelic social thing I used to like, yeah, and things done to my wings here do reflect themselves on my actual wings.”

“Bit of a mar on the ‘hand puppet’ metaphor, that.”

“I, y’know,” Lucifer winced, forehead scrunching, “I don’t know that you can really hold me to the state of mind I was in when I made up the hand puppet metaphor.”

Alastor snorted, and then finished his drink. “Fair enough. Your room, then?”

“I mean yeah, if you’re still interested. I’ll admit, I didn’t really consider the implications of asking you to spend literally the entire day with me and my daughter when I asked if you wanted to.” Lucifer said, seemingly trying and failing to sound uninterested, sipping his drink.

“If I didn’t enjoy spending time with you and Charlie, I would have left and come back, Lucifer,” Alastor replied, standing up, “Try not to don a hairshirt about it.”

Lucifer snorted and stood himself, rubbing the back of his neck and following Alastor up the stairs.

“So,” Alastor said once they were behind Lucifer’s door and he’d set up the ridiculous golden magical locks, the feeling of Lucifer’s attention on him reappearing with a hesitant care, ready to pull back if Alastor reacted negatively. Alastor for his part had been missing the sensation already, in spite of the negative experience, “How does this work, exactly?”

“Uh, yeah, um,” Alastor watched Lucifer swallow, remove his hat and hang it on a stand next to his door, shifting from foot to foot, breathing slowly in and out. He was brightly flushed, and when Alastor took a step closer to him he gave a little surprised jump.

Alastor’s eyebrows furrowed, “I got the impression you wanted me to do this.”

“I want you to do this real bad ,” Lucifer said, letting out a breathy laugh at himself, “I just, y’know, it’s a lot.”

Alastor took another step closer and reached up, setting his hands on either side of Lucifer’s neck, thumbs up and framing his jaw. Lucifer stiffened, and then relaxed into Alastor’s grip, breathing slowly in and out.

After several moments, Lucifer spoke again, “I, uh, we’ll need a couple of chairs and some preening oil.”

And then he reached up a hand and gestured somewhere over Alastor’s shoulder. Alastor’s gaze followed the gesture, and there were two chairs, facing each other, and a small side table set up next to one of them with a vial with a dasher cap labeled, ‘Asmodeus’ Long-Lasting Preening Oil: For The Discerning Goetia.’

“A product of lust, is it?” Alastor asked, wrapping one hand and lowering the other to Lucifer’s shoulder, steering him toward the chairs.

“Only ‘cause Ozzie’s the only sin other than me with feathers- Mammon makes some too, ‘Mammon’s Moisturizing Feather Fortifier,’ but it’s the same sort of knock-off most of his stuff is,” Lucifer sat backwards on one of the chairs, straddling the back, and started removing his shirt, “Not that you heard that from me- last time I expressed an opinion on Mammon making a knock-off of my own damn theme park in public it was such a federal fucking issue I never want to deal with that again.”

Alastor sat behind him and picked up the bottle, examining it, “And what precisely will I be doing with this?”

Lucifer twisted around to face Alastor and, with a bit of a shake, his wings appeared. Alastor had only briefly seen them before, when the contract had been signed, and he took a moment to examine them- Alastor didn’t know enough about birds to confidently name which types of feathers were which, but they were mostly white, save the long feathers on the inside of his wings, which were a dark red. The ones high on his shoulder blades were largest but Alastor wouldn’t call any of his wings small , each of the larger ones being as long as Lucifer was tall- which was to say, a little over five feet- and then the other two sets were maybe three feet long each. Alastor’s inexpert eye couldn’t speak to the state of the feathers, but some of them seemed misaligned with the rest, and a few seemed a bit scraggly. Not in terrible disrepair, but perhaps in need of some assistance.

“Um, so what you do is-” Lucifer reached out and took the bottle from Alastor, dashed the oil once into his palm, and set the bottle down to distribute it between his fingers. “You get the oil on your hands, and then you go through each of the longer feathers with the pins in them, and you-”

He gently gripped the feather at the base between two fingers and very carefully dragged his fingers along the pin, coating it with a very thin layer of oil and fluffing the soft barbs, before carefully brushing it back down to align with the rest of the feathers. He looked up at Alastor, once he’d finished this demonstration, golden flush spreading down his neck and across his chest, “um, and then the smaller sort of down feathers you just sort of, erm, stroke to spread the oil on them, you don’t have to go through each of them individually. I- sorry, I know there’s a lot of of it, I can barely be bothered to do it for myself, honestly, if you don’t want-”

“Stop,” Alastor interjected before that spiral could get any more dire, grabbing the bottle again and dashing some of the oil, “Turn around.”

Lucifer swallowed, nodded, and tucked his wings in so he could turn around without his ten-foot wingspan throwing Alastor out of his chair and half the objects in the room to the ground, folding his arms over the chair’s backrest and spreading his wings back out. Lucifer wasn’t wrong- it was a lot. But Lucifer’s obvious embarrassment at how badly he wanted this was intriguing, and Alastor didn’t have anywhere else to be. He rubbed his hands together to spread the oil and reached out, taking the first feather in his fingers.

Alastor judged how well his was doing in the slow relaxation of the muscles in Lucifer’s back, the way he would quietly hum or huff out little pleased breathes when Alastor straightened out a feather that had been laying wrong, his wings flexing and relaxing with the pleasure of a good, long overdue stretch. The feathers and wings themselves were, truly, unimaginably soft and beautiful things, the way they shifted and bent to bring their tips into Alastor’s reach fascinating to behold. He found himself laying the hand he wasn’t using to care for Lucifer’s feathers gently on places he’d already gone through, softly petting them, careful not to ruin his own work.

It was as he was finishing the back of Lucifer’s largest wings when Lucifer’s tail appeared. It wasn’t quite designed to wag, more long and flexible by far than a dog’s tail, but it was swaying, back and forth, draped low toward the floor behind Lucifer and consequently between Alastor’s legs, which were spread to allow him to more comfortably lean forward for better access to the feathers nearer the base of Lucifer’s middle set of wings. Lucifer had long since become soft clay in Alastor’s hands at this point, his entire body relaxed, his head pillowed heavily into his own arms. Alastor, finding himself uncertain, asked in a low voice, “Are you awake?”

“Mmhrmph,” Lucifer grumbled, shifting his head just enough to look back at Alastor with half lidded eyes, blinking slowly like a relaxed cat, “Wossit?”

“Just checking, dear,” Alastor said, reaching down to scratch lightly at the base of Lucifer’s tail and watch Lucifer’s entire body tense in a very satisfying looking shudder, and then relax again, although perhaps not as deeply as before, “I was merely curious what might’ve caused this to appear.”

“Um,” Lucifer’s voice had gotten a touch higher, less groggy, “Sorry, just sorta- forgot myself there, I can-”

“Oh, no apologies necessary,” Alastor said, gripping the base of the tail and stroking down part of it, stopping at the ridge of slightly longer fur that appeared maybe a foot down the length of it to scritch at it with his thumb. Lucifer made a very pleasant strangled noise in response, burying his face back in his forearms, wings hiking a bit with his shoulders, “You forgetting yourself seems like a good sign.”

Lucifer tilted his head enough that he could speak unobstructed, and his blush- which had faded as he relaxed into Alastor’s hands- had returned, a gentle dusting across his pink cheeks. “Y-yeah, you’ve been. Amazing.”

Alastor’s grin widened, and he tilted his chin a bit smugly at Lucifer’s approval before returning to the task at hand. “Good.”

It was honestly a soothingly repetitive act, the sort of thing that nearly made Alastor want to go into a bit of a trance himself, carefully tending to each individual feather, checking his fingers between each stroke, reapplying the oil as necessary. He caught himself humming to “Everybody Loves My Baby,” as he worked, toward the end of his carefully stroking along the shorter feathers near the base of Lucifer’s middle wings, but as Lucifer didn’t seem to mind, he didn’t stop himself.

That said, the check in did notify Alastor that something about Lucifer’s demeanor had changed while he was working. It had been over an hour already, and Alastor fully intended on doing the front side of Lucifer’s wings as well, but Alastor didn’t find he minded. Perhaps it might’ve been a good idea to put the radio on while he worked, but honestly the soft sound of Lucifer’s breathing occasionally interrupted with sighs had been their own sort of music this time, except as he moved on to the bottom set of wings he noticed the tone of Lucifer’s sighs had changed, his breathing not the soft steady pace of someone drifting off but the careful, measured breathing of someone attempting to regain control of themself. Alastor’s eyebrows furrowed, mildly concerned as he took in the rest of Lucifer’s body language, eyes drifting down Lucifer’s back, and-

Oh. Oh .

Lucifer’s back had arched, just the slightest bit, and he’d slid his behind to the very edge of the chair, his tail hiked up ever so slightly from where it sprouted from his tailbone, long since done swaying back and forth and instead wrapped around the leg of Lucifer’s chair. It was carefully holding itself, Alastor supposed, out of Alastor’s way , if he were so inclined. Lucifer’s posture everywhere else, his careful attempts to keep control of himself, suggested to Alastor that the other man didn’t realize that in spite of his desire not to give anything away he was nevertheless all but presenting himself to be mounted.

Alastor’s soft, content smile spread itself into a much, much more wicked thing, but he otherwise changed nothing about his own behavior. He simply noted, as he worked on Lucifer’s lowest set of wings, the subtle, almost unnoticeable shifts Lucifer made in his chair, the way his tail was held tight like a bowstring, the way his relaxed sighs would hitch ever-so-slightly in surprise if Alastor’s soft petting along his wings changed into him ever-so-gently dragging his fingers through his feathers, watching Lucifer’s body shudder and hearing his breath hitch. The previously diminished blush had spread all the way down across Lucifer’s shoulders, and Alastor was certain that when Lucifer turned around he would find his chest blotchy with gold.

Still, he didn’t let the spectacle Lucifer was desperately trying not to make of himself distract him from the task at hand. Alastor diligently and carefully cared for every individual feather on the back of Lucifer’s wings, feeling a certain sense of satisfaction as he watched them fluff themselves then fall back into perfect order, every one neat and shining with his careful administration. As he finally tended to the shorter feathers on the actual limb of Lucifer’s wing, gently stroking them while he rested the palm of his other hand flat on the small of Lucifer’s back, base of Lucifer’s tail oh-so-accidentally set between Alastor’s spread fingers, he finally spoke, “I’m going to need you to turn around, so I can finish.”

“Um,” Lucifer said, “I mean, the front feathers are way easier for me to get to on my own, you don’t have to- I mean, I know this has been so much work already-”

“Nonsense,” Alastor interrupted firmly, “I’ve no intention of being half assed or sloppy about this, so I’ll say once more. Turn. Around.”

Lucifer swallowed, slowly unpillowed his head from his arms, and turned slowly, on legs whose unsteadiness might be blamed on having been left spread across the chair for so long, if Alastor didn’t know any better. He had to unwrap his tail from the leg of the chair to complete the maneuver, and when he was completely turned around Lucifer had his legs clamped shut, his hands tightly gripping each side of the chair. His chest was just as much of a blotchy, golden mess of flush as Alastor had imagined.

“Relax,” Alastor chided him gently, as if he thought the problem was Lucifer’s desire not to be burdensome, “It’s no trouble at all, really.”

“Mmhm,” Lucifer said, swallowing again and visibly forcing his posture to loosen, although his legs remained firmly shut, “Yeah, okay.”

Alastor let out a little, pleased, “Hmm,” and started in on the interior feathers of Lucifer’s largest wings. These were, truthfully, in slightly better shape than the ones on Lucifer’s back, he likely hadn’t been lying about being able to more easily deal with them himself. Still, he very carefully went through every single feather, genuinely delighted at how the preening oil gently affected the shade of the red feathers, changing them from a dark crimson to the shining red of newly drawn blood, pretending to ignore the tight press of Lucifer’s lips together, the way he’d hooked one of his shoes around the leg of the chair to brace himself with. Still, after enough time, Lucifer did start to relax again, still obviously struggling with the nature of his mood but lulled into a less high-strung state by Alastor’s careful administrations, until his chin was resting gently on his own chest and his legs relaxed enough to drift ever-so-slightly apart.

Things were going marvelously to plan. He’d begun with Lucifer’s right wing- Alastor’s left- so that when he moved around to tackle Lucifer’s left wing Alastor could, while he went to work on the feathers with his right hand, oh-so-casually rest his left hand on Lucifer’s upper thigh. At the soft, surprised little noise Lucifer made deep in his throat Alastor let his smile spread ever-so-slightly wider, and gently stroked the fabric of Lucifer’s trousers with his thumb.

This was too much even to get past a very, very distracted Lucifer, and the smaller man looked up directly at Alastor’s face and let out a strangled, outraged noise. “You asshole .”

Alastor had to pull his hand away from Lucifer’s wing to prevent the uncontrollable burst of wicked laughter this elicited from causing any unintentional tugs on Lucifer’s feathers. “Well, yes . ”

“I- I honestly didn’t think I’d- when you touched my tail it kinda did it for me, is all, and then everything just felt so good and I couldn’t stop thinking of your hands on me-”

“I didn’t imagine this was some wicked plot on your part, Lucifer, you don’t have to justify yourself.” Alastor sighed, tilted his head to the side, as if the idea were just now occurring to him. “Obviously I’m rather busy right now, but I’m not entirely unsympathetic, if you’d like to… take care of the problem yourself, as it were.”

Alastor had to admit that while he did not, for even a moment, imagine it was his business to have any kind of opinion on how Lucifer chose to wear any of his forms, he had been gently put off by Lucifer’s explanation that he generally preferred a piece of anatomy with which Alastor could not have been less familiar. Admittedly Alastor’s only experience with cock was his own, but that was still more than could be said for his knowledge of what someone with a cunt might enjoy, save the likely entirely fabricated rumors spread by adolescent boys and the clients of prostitutes. So Alastor had perhaps, once he realized the state Lucifer was in, considered it an excellent opportunity to get Lucifer to demonstrate what he liked to Alastor, while still maintaining an attitude that removed any implication that he might participate himself.

Lucifer swallowed, glancing nervously between Alastor’s face and his hand, and darted his forked tongue over his lips before he finally managed to stutter out, “Y- you want me to, uh…”

“I want you to do,” Alastor said, gently tugging on Lucifer’s thigh and watching in satisfaction as Lucifer, who Alastor knew held an unexpected strength inside his form and who seemed entirely capable of turning himself into an immovable object if he wanted, opened his legs in spite of his embarrassment at the slightest of nudges from Alastor. “Whatever you want to do, oh, you poor thing .”

Alastor couldn’t quite keep the glee out of his voice even as he tutted in mock sympathy at the sigh of the small, wet spot that had started to form at the seam of Lucifer’s trousers.

“Oh, fuck you, Alastor,” Lucifer muttered, voice strangled with humiliation.

“Hm, no,” Alastor replied, “But as I said, you’re entirely welcome to fuck yourself.”

Even as Lucifer groaned in irritation Alastor returned to his wing, touch not an ounce less thorough as he gently made his way through the beautiful red plumage.

It took the better part of Lucifer’s top left wing before finally, as Alastor gripped the limb of Lucifer’s wing gently but firmly to collapse it and hold it still while he slowly took care of the longest feathers at the tip, Lucifer let out a defeated groan and, with a snap, made his trousers and underwear disappear. Alastor forced himself to finish with the long feather he was currently working on and get it settled neatly back into place before he allowed himself to look down.

It wasn’t surprising, of course, that every part of Lucifer was a sight to behold- Alastor had long ago understood how beautiful he found Lucifer’s desperation, his neediness. But the sight of Lucifer’s pussy- shining and slick with over an hour of unsatisfied arousal, Lucifer’s parted legs pulling its lips apart into an unbelievably tempting view- had Alastor swallowing around a sudden rush of ravenous saliva in his mouth. Then Lucifer hunched over a bit, ducking his head and blocking Alastor’s view, and Alastor nearly found himself frowning in outrage before he caught himself. Instead, he put one finger under Lucifer’s chin and, unrelenting, tipped his chin back until he was looking straight ahead.

“Ah-ah,” Alastor said, “None of that. If you’d like to take me up on my very kind offer, you have to let me see. Back straight, legs open, chin up.”

Judging by the devastated little whimper Lucifer made as he ground himself down into the chair, Lucifer didn’t mind his stipulations in the least, even though his face did wince in tortured embarrassment as he did so.

Alastor let his hand rest gently on the side of Lucifer’s neck as he got back to work, and felt the hummingbird-flutter of Lucifer’s pulse under his fingers with some satisfaction.

Lucifer seemed hesitant to actually touch himself, at first, his hips still only making those desperate twitches down to grind into the dampening cushion of the chair, gripping tightly at his own thighs and gnawing nervously at his lower lip. Then, as Alastor moved on to his middle wing, he swallowed, seemed to steel himself, and slowly slid one of those hands between his legs, slipping two fingers between his folds to gently stroke at himself.

Alastor had at least run in disreputable enough circles in his youth that he did have some theoretical understanding of the clitoris, although he was more inclined to believe the women overheard complaining at men’s disinterest in it than the men overheard bragging about their skill in using to sexually satisfy women. Not seeming like that sort of overconfident braggart was part of the point of this little plot, after all.

Alastor tried not to allow himself to be distracted from the task at hand, even as Lucifer started rubbing careful circles around his clit, taking his time, letting out only the tiniest little whimpers. Lucifer’s wings shuddered a little every time he ground down into the chair, and Alastor had to swallow around that knowledge every time he felt it happen under his hands.

Eventually Alastor moved to work on the middle wing on Lucifer’s other side, and Lucifer’s movements began to speed up. He heard the other man make a frustrated noise and couldn’t help tilting his head to watch as Lucifer carefully unwound his tail from his own calf and- slowly, deliberately, unbelievably- tilted his hips so that he could get better access to himself and slipped the spade of it into his wet cunt. Alastor was momentarily unable to pull his gaze away from the sight of Lucifer’s tail fucking up into him, the view of it getting wetter and wetter as it slid in and out, until he caught Lucifer’s face out of the corner of his eye and realized he was being observed in turn.

Alastor gave Lucifer an indulgent smile before he forced himself to return to the wing, even as he watched the way Lucifer’s hand moved on himself, the pace he set with his tail, out of the corner of his eye. Noting what seemed to be effective for later. He could hear Lucifer’s gasps getting more and more desperate, his movements getting harder to control, until Alastor, thankfully with his full attention on carefully rubbing along an unusually brittle and dry feeling feather, had to pull his hands abruptly away from it because the wing under his hand had jerked and risked Alastor yanking it out.

He snapped out a rather harsh, “ Careful, Lucifer,” and watched Lucifer’s entire body go still, his face scrunched in confused arousal and shame at Alastor’s displeasure. Alastor was fairly certain he’d just interrupted Lucifer on the precipice of orgasm with his tone of voice alone, which in spite of his irritation was rather. Heady. “I know you can make yourself hold still if you need to, and if you can’t control yourself I’m going to have to ask you to do so.”

Lucifer swallowed, spread his wings wide, and then Alastor watched as, like his arm had on the night Alastor skinned him, all six of his wings went perfectly still in the air, spread wide, like a pinned butterfly on display.

“Good,” Alastor said, firm voice making the praise more mild than it might’ve been for such a lovely sight. He was not at all interested in having this encounter end with Alastor having harmed Lucifer’s wings through either of them being careless. Lucifer carefully, hesitantly, started touching himself again as Alastor returned to tending to his feathers, limited with how he could move his body now that he’d pinned himself in place by his wings. 

Alastor left the other man to his own devices for a moment, enjoying how still the wings had gotten on his order as much as he’d once enjoyed the shudders of pleasure running through them, listening to the sounds of Lucifer slowly working himself back into a state. He was soon finally finishing the right middle wing and moving down to the lower one, but as he glanced to check on Lucifer Alastor was irritated to discover Lucifer pressing his hand to his mouth, muffling himself and covering half of his face.

“Now,” Alastor said, reaching over to grab Lucifer’s wrist and pull it down away from his face, revealing that his mouth was gaping open slightly, his tongue visible when it flickered between open lips, “I know you know that’s against the spirit of the rules I set when you started this. Do you want me to make you stop?”

The way Lucifer’s head jerked in alarm and he sputtered out, “No, no, please, I promise I’ll be good-” as he dropped his arm down to grip the side of the chair so tightly Alastor could hear wood splintering was indescribably gratifying.

Pleased with that particular turn of phrase, Alastor agreed, “I certainly know you can be good, so I suppose I’ll allow you another chance,” and watched how his words alone seemed to unmake Lucifer with a buzzy thrill.

By the time he’d finished with Lucifer’s bottom right wing, and stood to move back around the other side- it was possible Alastor was doing this slightly inefficiently on purpose, at this point- Lucifer had joined his tail with two fingers on the hand he’d been forbidden to cover his face with, and was making frustrated noises as his wing’s locked position prevented him from grinding down on them as hard as he wanted to. It was difficult to tell how much of Lucifer’s frustration was of his own making, at this point- Alastor suspected him of drawing this out, now that Alastor was so close to finished with his wings anyway, so he could spend the entire preening session desperately chasing an orgasm he would only achieve once Alastor was done.

Lucifer was certainly very aware that he was to some extent putting on a show for Alastor, with how he watched as Alastor stood to reposition himself, eyes trailing down his form before darting away, tail hitching and stilling a bit as he seemed to take Alastor’s lack of visible arousal as some sort of criticism of his performance.

“If you aren’t finished, do keep going,” Alastor said, sitting back down and setting his left hand on Lucifer’s naked thigh as he reached to continue preening with his right. He could feel a wetness that wasn’t the oil under the tips of his fingers, and let them dig into the meat of Lucifer’s inner thigh, “I assure you, I’m enjoying myself a great deal.”

In truth, even physically he wasn’t nearly as unaffected as he was attempting to seem- there was certainly a low heat pooling in his groin, and he’d felt himself begin to harden in genuine interest at the display Lucifer made of himself, but physical arousal was something easily lost, for him, if not pursued. If Alastor had chosen to stop what he was doing and actually seriously consider pulling Lucifer’s tail out of the way and replacing it with his cock, certainly that likely would have gotten him there, but that had not been the goal he’d set out to achieve this evening. He preferred sticking to the ordering of Lucifer’s wings, and the cerebral pleasure of knowing that Lucifer was only chasing an orgasm because of the work Alastor’s hands were doing, and because Alastor had told him he could, than the short lived physical peak he might achieve from rutting into Lucifer like an animal.

Emphasis on ‘short-lived,’ Alastor suspected, given what he’d heard of other virginal fools who were too excited to temper themselves. If nothing else, when the day he actually manually participated in some amount of sexual activity did arrive, he wanted to be sure he knew what he was doing enough to get Lucifer off at least once before that particular event. Hence the current exercise.

As it stood, Lucifer seemed to find Alastor’s hand on him to be more than enough encouragement, and Alastor realized that even as he returned to stroking Lucifer’s feathers he could feel the tail as it slid inside of Lucifer, could measure his pace by how quickly he felt wetness drag across his knuckles. Alastor tightened his grip and mustered up every last ounce of willpower not to look Lucifer in his beautiful face, lost in arousal, and just- give in. Abandon the wings, abandon the controlling role he’d taken in their encounters so far, simply ask Lucifer what he wanted and give him everything Alastor had.

It would not be a break in character either of them would enjoy in the aftermath, as tempting as it was in this moment.

He diligently finished the last of Lucifer’s pinned feathers, stroked gently along the shorter ones until they’d all been moisturized sufficiently, and then places his right hand on the back of Lucifer’s neck, using it and the hand on Lucifer’s thigh to stabilize himself as he leaned in close to Lucifer’s ear. “I’m all done now, dear. You can let go.”

He felt the moment Lucifer’s wings snapped free in how the other man’s body arched into his, the feeling of his leg moving under Alastor’s palm, no true hold against the man’s strength as he used all that divine power to fuck himself on his own fingers and tail, fingers moving faster across his clit, abandoning the controlled circle to switch into a pace Alastor suspected was rather punishing. 

“You know,” Alastor said, pulling back to get a good look at Lucifer’s face, his mouth wet with his own spit, his eyes half lidded but still held carefully open, trained to Alastor’s every movement. Alastor carefully controlled the breathy awe that wanted to slip into his voice, “I can see why you feel the need to put someone else at the reins, but honestly, you are resplendent when you’re allowed to make as much a mess of yourself as you like.”

“Could you- could you do something for me, please?” Lucifer asked, voice wet and hitching.

“Maybe,” Alastor said, even as he thought, yes, anything, just keep looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters. Let me be the thing the sun orbits around, just for a moment longer.

“Could you pull my hair?” said with eyes opened all the way, full and shining and beautiful.

“Oh,” Alastor said, as he reached up and got a good grip on the soft down of Lucifer’s hair, “ absolutely. ”

He pulled, harshly, and watched Lucifer’s head tip back as he gave a startled cry and came undone before Alastor’s eyes.

Chapter Text

Alastor slowly let up on the tension on Lucifer’s hair, and watched Lucifer recover for several moments, and not just in the body most immediately available to him. There had been a flash of heat, in the moment of Lucifer’s climax, and there remained a sort of fuzzy feeling lingering all along Alastor’s limbs, but the most remarkable side effects had spread out into the more physical realm- darting eyes and feather patterns- glossier, Alastor liked to imagine, than they would have been before this evening- were spread out all over the walls and furniture, shining lights arranged into galaxies hung in the air. In one corner of the room a blackness that looked like it opened into a hole in space had started spreading in strange, almost lichtenberg figures that Alastor couldn’t observe for more than a second without getting a bit nauseous at the impossibility of them.

Eventually, with a twitch of discomfort, Lucifer pulled his fingers out of himself, lifted his other hand away from where it had been very lightly and slowly stroking his clit post orgasm, and leaned into Alastor’s grip.

“So. How did I do?” Alastor asked, “With the wings, I mean. I’m sure I had no part in this whatsoever.”

‘This’ was accompanied by a gesture toward both Lucifer’s current embodied state and the various supernatural phenomena surrounding them, and perhaps a bit of a smug tilt to his smile.

Lucifer followed the gesture and let out a wheezing laugh, sitting up a bit and closing his legs- not tightly, and Alastor noticed he hadn’t actually pulled his tail out of himself yet, just so they were no longer draped over either side of the chair. Alastor watched tension run through all ten of his limbs and then relax, saw Lucifer fluff his feathers out a bit and then settle them back into place.

“Mmm, you did good,” Lucifer said, sounding somewhat dazed, “I, uh, basically just did the equivalent of getting turned on at the hairdressers because it feels nice to be taken care of so that’s, you know, hideously embarrassing, but you did great. Sorry about-”

Lucifer mimicked Alastor’s gesture at the various things currently filling the room, and they all immediately flickered away.

“ Lucifer ,” Alastor chided, turning to let himself sit sideways on Lucifer’s lap, legs crossed neatly. He wrapped an arm around Lucifer’s shoulders and pulled him in close, “If it helps, I enjoy watching you embarrass yourself a great deal!”

Lucifer sank into Alastor’s still-clothed chest and groaned. “ Why would that help?”

“Are you saying you don’t enjoy entertaining me?” Alastor asked, widening his eyes comically, “That isn’t the impression I’ve gotten at all.”

“Mrrr,” Lucifer replied, eloquently, and turned his face further toward Alastor’s arm- and then paused, flicking his tongue and looking down at himself. “We both need a shower.”

Alastor jerked back, a little genuinely offended, “I beg your pardon?”

“We spent over an hour running through the woods this morning, and then hung out in the kitchen while you cooked something with onions in it, and then you got covered in preen oil and I worked up another sweat fucking myself. And then you sat on me .” Lucifer replied, not a hint of apology in his tone. “We’re gross. I actually like the way you smell right now- because my life is a nightmare- but that doesn’t actually change the fact that we’re gross.”

This was, unfortunately, a reasonable argument, but, “I can’t shower here.”

Nevermind the assumption that he would spend the night here at all. A fairly significant part of Alastor wanted to suggest he go home based entirely on a desire to be contrary, but it was running rather directly against his other desire to do things that felt good. Also, frankly, to get another restful night’s sleep.

Lucifer tilted his head to the side, confused, “Uh, why not?”

Alastor considered how to answer, and ultimately decided on the truth, in bits and pieces, “My hair would get wet. I find the idea of someone seeing my hair unstraightened. Unsettling.”

Lucifer blinked, then, “You straighten your hair?”

Alastor’s assumption that Lucifer had identified him as mixed upon meeting him truly could not have been more off base.

“Unstraightened feels. Private.” Which was, outside of the various practical reasons, also basically true. Alastor’s mother had first tackled his hair with various oils and a hot comb when he was ten years old, and no one but her had seen it curly since. It wasn’t that Alastor imagined Lucifer would be conceptually ignorant of what he was talking about if he did try to explain the way he obfuscated things about himself to ‘pass’ but. The idea of actually doing so to someone who didn’t have to live it was just so exhausting .

Alastor could see the desire to ask for a more thorough explanation behind Lucifer’s eyes, and of course there were several very good points he could make about private things they allowed each other to see, but it had been a calculated risk. Lucifer had previously been reasonably willing to set aside topics Alastor didn’t want to discuss, and Alastor had never been this plainspoken about it before.

When Lucifer finally spoke, all he asked was, “Would a bath be ok? For keeping your hair out of the water, I mean.”

Alastor pulled Lucifer close, watching how his wings dipped and repositioned themselves to account for shifts in balance, and pressed his face into the soft down of Lucifer’s hair. He knew Lucifer tended to react well to being held, and figured he ought to positively reinforce this behavior.

“A bath would do nicely,” Was all Alastor eventually said out loud.

Lucifer reached one arm out past Alastor and snapped, muttering a quiet ‘bam’ to accompany the gesture, and Alastor tilted his head to see that the corner of the room that had once been turned into a sitting area for the two of them had had a privacy curtain and, given the steam wafting out from behind said curtain, a full bath installed.

Alastor didn’t have much time to absorb that before Lucifer very casually put one arm under his knees and another behind his back and picked him up so that he could stand with Alastor in his arms. Alastor let out a noise of alarmed protest until he noticed that Lucifer’s tail- still slick from having been inside Lucifer- must have finally slipped out and was now within very easy grabbing range.

“Alastor you can’t just put things in your mouth ,” Lucifer’s strangled cry was perhaps undermined by the fact that it was in response to Alastor having just proven that he could, in fact, put the spade of Lucifer’s tail in his mouth.

It was yanked out almost as soon as placed, but not before Alastor could get a taste. Hmm. Salty, sort of metallic? A very subtle note of sweetness. Not something Alastor would seek out without other motives guiding him, but not unpleasant , certainly.

Lucifer catching sight of the considering look on his face seemed to drain all the fight out of him, in any case, as he set Alastor down and cleared his throat, suddenly bashful.

“Ha!” Alastor said, jeering down at Lucifer, “Not so upset about me putting things in my mouth in that context, are you?”

“Ugh,” Lucifer grumbled, waving Alastor away, “Go take a fucking bath, Alastor, I’ll be in the shower.”

Lucifer left, and Alastor poked his head behind the privacy screen.

There was a rubber duck floating in the bath.

There were also several genuinely useful things around the tub- a set of simple black pajamas, a small stack of towels, various soaps- but also. The rubber duck.

The sigh Alastor let out at the sight was less exasperated than it should have been.

Once he had bathed- hair thankfully kept carefully dry- and sequestered the rubber duck away into the pocket of his clothing, he padded out into the room beyond, and spotted Lucifer, laying on his front with his wings still out and stretched across the bed, in a set of pajamas with ducks patterned on them.

“You are outrageously dedicated to your theming,” Alastor declared, “Surely those are intended for children.”

“Wrong! I made them, for myself, so they’re intended for me.” Lucifer ruffled his wings, and Alastor tried not to look too hard at how they seemed to somehow phase through the fabric of the duck pajamas.

Alastor nudged Lucifer’s wings out of the way and crawled into bed. “Do you intend to have those out all night? I enjoy admiring my own handiwork as much as anyone, but I think they might crowd the bed a bit.”

“Mmm, no, s’just feels nice,” with a rustle of feathers the wings disappeared and Lucifer rolled over to look at Alastor, “I’m down to try whatever you were thinking of next week, by the way. If that wasn’t obvious.”

Alastor blinked, “I expected you to inquire a bit more into what it was, honestly.”

“Mm, nah,” Lucifer said, wriggling his way under the blankets, “Surprise me.”

And then, with a gesture, he turned off the lights and left Alastor to sit with that in the dark.

Alastor was aware that they had long since surpassed the point where theorizing about some secret plot Lucifer was enacting to lure Alastor into a false sense of security for truly no reason whatsoever was outrageously irrational. In his own defense, however, sometimes Lucifer very heavily implied he trusted Alastor and, really, how stupid could the man be?

Alastor thought of soft feathers under his hands. Of starscapes glittering in the air around him. Of Lucifer looking desperate and broken and beautiful under his hands. By his hands.

Alastor thought of crumbling those feathers under his hands, yanking them out in great bloody fistfulls. Of the jittery, frightened, static feeling that buzzed across his skin when Alastor gripped his ankle with the hammer in his hand and how much part of him wanted to feel that fear again. Of Lucifer looking lost and shattered and still, Alastor was certain, so beautiful.

Alastor thought of instructing Charlie in the kitchen while Lucifer heckled them both from the table. Of quiet company while he smoked. Of his mother once having to explain that yes, certainly a boil would be faster, dear, but it wouldn’t taste nearly as good.

In spite of what had been a perfectly filling, lovely dinner, Alastor felt a low, hungry ache start to build inside of him.

And in spite of that- of all of that - Alastor still slept better beside Lucifer that night than he ever did at home.

The next morning Alastor excused himself home, pulled one of the steaks he’d sliced Lucifer into out of the freezer, and could barely wait the time it took to thaw and get just enough of a sear on it that it might be called ‘rare’ instead of ‘raw’ before he cut it into large, impolite bites, and ate him that way.

Alastor considered the freezer still full of pieces of Lucifer, doled out carefully over time instead of glutted on as he just had, and the fact that Lucifer had suggested they’d be back in hell in a year, and wondered if he had self control enough to make this last.

-

“Alastor, are you drawing ?” Denise asked on Monday, peering over his shoulder, “I didn’t know you drew .”

“I don’t,” Alastor replied, gesturing at his fourth shoddy attempt, “Obviously.”

He had been known to doodle exaggerated scribbles of things and people that irritated him, on occasion, but this. Wasn’t that. Depicting something you actually wanted to look nice was infinitely harder.

“Aw, sweetie, don’t be like that, it’s a beautiful snake!” Ugh . Like an overly flattering school teacher.  “You know, I used to be a little artsy when I was young, maybe I can help. What’s got you giving it a try?”

“It’s for a,” Good lord, was Alastor actually going to participate in this particular charade? “Lady friend. A… woodcarving, for. Her.”

Denise’s expression of surprise was entirely reasonable, considering how absurd an image of himself Alastor was currently painting. It was congruent with the one she often liked to paint for herself, which was why he had chosen it, but for fuck's sake. Her face went from surprised to soft much too quickly, however, and Alastor realized that the womanizing cad she imagined him to be had at this point definitely settled down .

She followed it up with some useful advice, at least.

-

Mimzy's new band mates were. Odd.

Alastor didn't like them. She'd essentially lost the old brass instruments- who Alastor also had not liked- and he kept catching the saxophonist playing an eighth of a note off, and that he played too quickly.

The new trumpet was… fine , he supposed. He couldn’t find anything to complain of, and the old one had been entirely too friendly regardless, but. Something about him put Alastor’s teeth on edge.

It was made even worse when said trumpeter followed Mimzy to the bar once they were done performing, which gave the saxophonist the idea that that was an acceptable thing to do. Her remaining pianist, drummer, and upright bass players at least all had the good sense to eye the new set judgmentally and go to drink on their own, as was appropriate.

They introduced themselves, but Alastor had managed to avoid learning the names of Mimzy’s bandmates so far and would not be breaking that streak now.

Mimzy was loving this, because she was a terror, “So Alastor, what’d you think?”

“You play too fast,” Alastor responded, instantly, directed at the saxophonist, “You’re rushing the rest of the band while they try and compensate for you, it’s throwing off the whole performance.”

“Wha-I-” The saxophonist looked to Mimzy and the trumpet player. The trumpet player looked considering- suck up- but Mimzy looked entirely taken off guard.

“You think so, Alastor?” Mimzy turned to the saxophonist, “I didn’t notice nothin’. Don’t mind him.”

Traitor.

“I don’t know,” said the trumpet player, “Your friend might be right, Mimzy, it’s harder to notice that kinda thing up there, isn’t it? If someone in the audience thinks so-”

Alastor swallowed down the taste of salt and iron blooming on his tongue, smile a rictus, “I like to think I’m a bit more than a member of the audience for Mimzy’s performances at this point.”

“Would you call yourself a fan, then?” The trumpeter retorted and Alastor drank his old fashioned to stop himself from getting kicked out of Zazzy’s for glassing someone at the bar.

Then he took another swig to wash down how the salt and iron flooded back onto his tongue when he scanned the bar and saw Jonny was speaking to the rest of the band.

“You know, I wouldn’t!” Alastor replied, “But you know who would? Jonny. You should go bother Jonny.”

The saxophonist had the good sense to be glad of the excuse, and disappeared. The trumpet player turned and looked at Jonny with a frown that Alastor wasn’t certain how to interpret- although certainly he could imagine why anyone signed on with one of Jonny’s contracts might be annoyed with the man, if they were more attached to the things the contract was trying to manipulate them out of than Mimzy.

Mimzy at least finally decided to be helpful, and leaned over to nudge the trumpet player toward the rest of the band- “Give a girl some space would ya?”

The trumpet player laughed, “Yeah, yeah, alright,” and seemed pleased enough to take the dismissal from her , standing up and going to join his fellows.

“Well those people are intolerable,” Alastor said, as soon as the trumpet player was out of earshot.

“Alastor,” Mimzy said, rolling her eyes, “You get like this every time I get new members of the band, give it a month and you won’t even remember enough about ‘em to know the difference from the last guys, honestly .”

“No,” Alastor insisted, although the reminder meant he was, at this point, falling out of his actual irritation into a comfortable old pattern, “These ones are uniquely terrible and this time I’m right.”

“Sure, sure,” Mimzy said, dismissive, “Whatever you say, Alastor.”

“Yes!” Alastor insisted, gesturing with his glass, “Whatever I say! Exactly!”

Mimzy snorted, and without the hangers-on the rest of the evening was entirely tolerable.

-

For the first time since Alastor killed Lucifer, Charlie was there on Wednesday. She was rather less reserved than she’d been on those first few visits, half leaning over the counter to speak to Chuck. Alastor walked in to the discovery that she was discussing his sister’s new baby as if she had already heard that said sister was pregnant and was asking followup questions now.

Alastor, who had made smalltalk with the man once a week for over a decade, had not been privy to the fact that Chuck’s younger sister- who he had, at least, been faintly aware of- was pregnant. Or married. Chuck mentioned the husband fairly casually, so Alastor couldn’t even assume they were recently married.

What had been her name again? What had Alastor been doing these past few years? Not knowing the name of Mimzy’s band was a joke that never grew old, being shockingly ignorant of a man who’s acquaintanceship he’d cultivated since his mother was alive when compared to a child who’d known him for a matter of weeks was sad.

“I agree, Charlie, Sophie absolutely should have named the boy Charles, although I must say I disagree with your idea for a nickname,” Chuck was saying, which did answer the question.

“I mean I guess you could call a baby Chuck, if you really wanted, but I still think Charlie’s cuter,” Charlie replied.

“Well I suppose you would, wouldn’t you?” Chuck replied, and was this? An ongoing joke? Had Alastor been in such a disconnected state when he first saw Lucifer and Charlie that he’d missed Chuck developing a recurring bit with one of them?

Lucifer caught his eye from where he was waiting to pay by the counter and gave the two of them an amused nod.

“I don’t know, Chuck, as an impartial observer I think the young lady may have a point,” Alastor chimed in, “I don’t know that it’s entirely appropriate to name an infant after a cut of beef.”

“Oh, don’t you start,” Chuck waved dismissively at them all, and finished wrapping the Morningstar’s order, “She doesn’t need any help ganging up on me, thanks.”

“I mean, without help, I don’t know that I can gang up on you, Mr. Boucher,” Charlie replied, the gentlest of teasing, “Just, you know, definitionally.”

“Right, ok, I don’t want any more lip from kids who aren’t paying customers anymore, thank you ,” Chuck replied, still good natured, “Will that be all, Mr. Magne?”

Lucifer considered Chuck for a moment and then said, “You know, I’m not sure,” and then without breaking eye contact handed his wallet directly to his daughter.

Chuck tilted his gaze back heavenward, although Alastor could have told him he would receive no help from that quarter.

Charlie giggled but didn’t actually seem to be inclined to antagonize Chuck further, flipping through her father’s wallet to hand him their total. “Thankyou Mr. Boucher.”

“You’re very welcome, Ms. Magne,” Chuck replied, “Now, Mr. Toussaint, do you intend to make me suffer any more for my sins?”

“Oh, always,” Alastor replied, leaning over to look through what was on display.

Once Alastor had collected his things, the three of them stepped outside- Lucifer, as always, tucked his food into a bag that did not appear to get noticeably bulkier or heavier once the meat was out of sight, and Alastor clutched his own bag- which would at least inevitably remain cold no matter how much time he spent with Lucifer, ina thoughtful gesture Lucifer had never actually stopped performing- with a certain amount of jealousy.

“So what are we eating?” Alastor eventually asked.

Charlie considered, then, “Do you know a good place to get oysters?”

Alastor grinned- and then grinned even wider when he saw the faintly displeased expression Lucifer was careful to hide. He directed Charlie to his favorite oyster bar and, letting her run ahead a bit, leaned down to mutter to Lucifer, “Not a fan of seafood, your highness?”

Lucifer sighed, “You guys went to so much trouble figuring out how to cook food, I do not understand why you would eat something raw when the texture is that much like swallowing phlegm. Salty phlegm.”

“No one’s going to judge you for ordering something cooked, Lucifer,” Alastor replied, “Although that does make me wonder what made Charlie so adventurous.”

Lucifer snorted, “You will absolutely judge me, don’t lie, and Charlie will try anything once and over a century is plenty of time to get things in. I blame Levi for oysters in particular- Charlie always comes back from a visit with them having tried about fifty different seafood dishes.”

“Levi?”

“Leviathan- they want to be Charlie’s favorite sin. I mean, really, they want to be everyone’s favorite everything,” Lucifer shrugged, “Back when Charlie was younger if I asked them to babysit she’d come back having been dramatically spoiled.”

Alastor considered the sins he’d already heard the names of, and what was left, “Envy?”

A nod, “Hope you don’t mind the surprise, by the way. Seemed kind of silly telling her she couldn’t come, considering.”

“Oh, I don’t mind at all. Charlie’s a delight, as always. Although, as pleased as I am that you’ve moved beyond considering me unfit company for your daughter, I do think we’re going to have to find more chances to spend time together if this is to continue-” Alastor double checked to make sure Charlie was still distracted and lowered his voice further, “The only time we spend alone together can’t just be when I’m having my way with you, surely?”