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Six months.
Six months since Lucifer returned home, after helping Charlie rebuild and reopen the hotel.
Six months since his joking-but-not-joking, “You could always ask me to stay,” and Alastor’s, “Why would I do that?”
Because at some point while the hotel was being rebuilt, glares and arguments turned into them being the only two still awake at four in the morning, reluctantly coexisting at the bar. Lucifer because his head was too loud and Alastor because...well, he never really said. But he did listen. To Lucifer talk about the loudness and the sadness and ducks making everything hurt a little less. Had he really been so wrong to think that meant they were some approximation of friends? One night he actually fell asleep with his head on the bar and woke up in his bed. Almost like someone had put him there.
Why would I do that?
Lucifer tears his gaze from the window and lets the thick, heavy curtain fall back into place, blocking out the reddish light that perpetually reminded him he was so far from home. He hadn’t expected anything, not really. Maybe hoped a little, foolishly. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Throw the dart at the same target a million times knowing the game is rigged. He’d said it first, hadn’t he? Sinners were the worst.
And yet, it wasn’t Alastor he held at fault for the disappointment that had seeped through his skin and settled in his bones that day. Lucifer had seen that blank, perhaps somewhat pitying expression before, and who could blame the guy? Lucifer was too much – too loud, too obsessive, too happy or too sad but never anything in between that might make him less exhausting to everyone he got close to. Of course Alastor wouldn’t be the exception after all these years.
“He had stupid hair anyway,” Lucifer mutters, and kicks a rubber duck out of the way as he returns to his workbench. He picks up a tool and his phone starts blaring, Charlie’s contact picture lighting up the screen. Charlie! She called more often these days (and so did he, even if it was only every couple months) but he still got a rush of excitement. She wanted to talk to him, on purpose, okay, he had to be cool. He’s been getting way better at this. He clears his throat and answers the call with a laid-back, “Hey there, Chaaarlie.”
“Hi, Dad.”
She’s been crying. Lucifer is on his feet in an instant, hearing that crack in her voice. “Charlie? Are you okay?”
Stupid. Of course she’s not okay or she wouldn’t be crying. See, this is why she always tries to call Lilith first.
“It’s Alastor, he’s hurt. Dad, it’s really bad. Please...please help him.”
Alastor may not have asked him to stay, but Lucifer goes running back to his side all the same. He tries to look composed when he appears at the hotel, for Charlie’s sake if nothing else, but he can tell by the expressions surrounding him that really bad wasn’t an exaggeration. He follows Charlie upstairs to Alastor’s room. She wipes her eyes as she walks in, leaving the door open for Lucifer to follow, and the whites of his eyes turn crimson as soon as he sees the unconscious figure laid out on the bed.
The demon is paler than even his usual ashen tone, his clothing torn, red fabric turned a darker red by the slow ooze of blood. One of his antlers is broken, and what remains is a splintered mess, and there’s a cut at the edge of his ear on the same side. His lips were pulled into a smile even in sleep.
“Can you give us a minute?” he asks Charlie. She nods, and once she’s gone and the door closed, Lucifer brings a single fingertip to Alastor’s chest. A faint golden glow emanated from that one point of contact before fading. Alastor was unchanged, his skin no more lustrous, his wounds still weeping with thick, slow blood. He would need more than that little bit of Lucifer’s power to heal. It likely couldn’t be done all at once, and Lucifer lets his hand fall back to his side. Useless. He could broker a deal for his daughter to meet with heavenly officials but he couldn’t heal one hapless sinner.
He gives Alastor a final look before stepping out of the room. “It’ll take me time to heal him. Days, at least. Maybe weeks.”
“He ain’t safe here,” Angel pipes up. He must have come upstairs behind them. “Word’ll have gotten around by now that he’s hurt and the hotel is the first place other Overlords are gonna come lookin’ to get a piece of him. We can put up a nasty fight, but if enough of them show up?”
“We may not be able to hold them off without your help,” Charlie admits. “And you can’t guard the hotel and heal him. Dad…”
“I know.”
Alastor was going to throw a fit when he woke up, but Lucifer still goes back in that room, and rolls up his sleeves before lifting Alastor in his arms. He’s lighter than Lucifer expected. Colder than he should be, too. Despite how much the bleeding had slowed, he’d clearly lost more blood than he’d been able to regenerate so far. Lucifer turned and found Charlie, Vaggie, Angel and Husk all crowded together to look through the doorway, with Niffty on Husk’s shoulders, her eye wet with tears.
“I’ll take care of him. I promise,” Lucifer says with an easygoing smile, wanting to reassure them, especially Charlie. “Don’t even worry your pretty heads about it. Be back before you know it.”
He opens a portal and steps through before he can give any real thought to how bad of an idea this was. Not only was Alastor unlikely to cooperate, but having someone in his home? He hadn’t shared it with anyone since Lilith. He didn’t enjoy his solitude, exactly, but he was accustomed to it. The thought of having someone else there was jarring enough without it being a demon who would probably rather snap his other antler off than be imprisoned with only Lucifer for company.
The gilded halls welcome him home with the same desolate silence he expects, but for once, that’s not what he dwells on as the portal closes behind them. He carries Alastor to a spare room and lays him down. “You look terrible,” Lucifer informs him, brushing himself off like it will get rid of the bloodstains now marring his vest. He takes it off with a sigh and drops it over the back of a chair. “How’d you get yourself into this shape anyway?” he asks, summoning a pair of scissors. He cuts through the layers on Alastor’s upper body and peels them away to expose his wounds. His magic was more than capable of such a task, but he would need to conserve as much of it as possible to heal Alastor.
There were multiple wounds, in addition to the scar that ran diagonally across his chest from his fight with Adam. It was now bisected by another slash in the opposite direction, and he had two stab wounds in his lower abdomen. One just above his hip and one almost right in the middle of his stomach. They should have closed up already… unless they, like the only wound to ever scar Alastor in the afterlife, were inflicted by angelic steel. It wasn’t common in Hell but far from impossible to obtain. No wonder Alastor’s regeneration could only do so much.
“Woo buddy, you made someone real mad,” Lucifer says with a chuckle that’s too loud in the otherwise quiet room. That’s one of his problems, he’s always making noise. Whistling, talking, tapping his foot, it drives people mad. But Alastor doesn’t get a say right now so ha .
He has to heal one wound at a time, noticing Alastor’s brows pulling together in the closest thing to a grimace his sleeping face can manage, with that permanently affixed smile. ‘Healed’ might be a generous term for the state those wounds are in after Lucifer is done. They’re closed, but still red and raw and angry. Hm. That’s...not ideal. Alastor’s body needs to finish the healing process, but there’s no way it can in his current condition. He needs something to get his regeneration going again, stronger than the damage the angelic steel has already done.
The only option he could think of was a bad idea of a truly epic magnitude. But Lucifer Morningstar didn’t reside in Hell because he had a history of making good decisions, and he stays true to form as he brings a claw to his own neck and drags it across the skin, opening a thin cut. He sits on the edge of the bed and leans down over Alastor. The angle isn’t quite right, so he slips a hand under Alastor’s head and brings it up so Alastor’s lips meet the small trickle of golden blood forming a rivulet down Lucifer’s neck.
At first, there's nothing.
Then Alastor’s hands come up to Lucifer’s shoulders, his lips fastening to the cut, and began to consume him.
His claws lengthen, sinking right through Lucifer’s shirt to grip his shoulders, his sharp teeth digging in and widening the cut to something more grisly that bled faster between his cold lips. Lucifer braces a hand on the headboard, the other still on the back of Alastor’s head. It was now less to support him than to rip him away when it became necessary. Lucifer makes a strained sound as Alastor drank his blood down in long, greedy pulls. Those lips start to warm against his throat.
“Alright, alright,” he says, tugging at Alastor’s hair.
Alastor lets out an inhuman snarl with an undercurrent of static, pulling Lucifer down further, and Lucifer finally has to forcibly wrench him away. His blood drips from the corner of Alastor’s mouth but at least Alastor’s eyes are open. They look a little drunk, which is to be expected, especially if he’s never had angel blood. Lucifer eases his head back down and Alastor’s hands fall from his shoulders. The demon wasn’t coherent enough to question his surroundings yet, his eyes already losing some of their lucidity as exhaustion crept over him again.
Lucifer slides his hand from underneath Alastor’s head and leans back, looking him over. The wounds are still present but they look less inflamed. “Go back to sleep,” Lucifer says, the words coming out softer than he intends. Alastor’s blinks are growing longer and longer, and when they finally close and don’t reopen, Lucifer stands from the bed and brings a hand to the side of his neck. It comes away clean. Good, already healed.
At this rate, he’d have Alastor out of here in no time.
He checks on Alastor every couple hours. His skin has started to regain some of what little color it had, and when Lucifer rests the back of his hand on Alastor’s head, it’s no longer cold. Still cool, but improved. The sun is coming up when Alastor finally starts to stir and opens his eyes. Lucifer is sitting next to the bed, he’d pulled a chair up and...okay, he’d come to check on him the second time and never left. He was just looking out for Charlie. For whatever reason, she was attached to this pain in the ass.
Alastor’s ears laid flat against his head, his eyes making an attempt at predatory but his body language that of a cornered prey animal. “Where am I?” he asks, the ever-present filter over his voice sounding weaker than usual.
“My place,” Lucifer says cheerfully. “You got beat up.” He doesn’t even try to stop sounding cheerful to say that. “And I was the only one who could help, so you are welcome.”
Alastor pulls a face, trying to sit up and then making a pained sound. Lucifer puts out his hands in a gesture for him to stay down and Alastor glares at him. “Well I’ll be leaving now, thank you.”
“You’re not ready to leave, your wounds aren’t going to get any more healed than they are now without me. So unless you want to be a helpless invalid for the rest of your afterlife, you’ll keep your very poorly mannered ass in that bed.” Lucifer says the whole thing like he’s at the circus introducing the next performer, and the tone only seems to infuriate Alastor more. Good.
“Where are my clothes?” Alastor asks, showing a hint of discomfort about his naked upper body.
“They got shredded by whoever decided they didn’t want you in their book club anymore,” Lucifer says, and wishes he could enjoy the way Alastor actually looks upset about the state of his clothes, but he can’t. So instead he reaches over to the dresser and holds up the red fabric he’d folded there. “But tada! Good as new.” He needed to conserve his powers to an extent but cleaning and repairing some clothes took little more than a thought.
Alastor stares at the coat, shirt, vest and bowtie that are all good as new, his ears tilting forward. “You fixed them.”
“Sure did. Want your shirt? I’d appreciate you holding out on the rest so I don’t have to fight it every time I check your wounds.” He poses it like Alastor has a choice to make the demon more cooperative.
“Fine,” Alastor hisses. Lucifer helps him sit up, then guides Alastor’s arm into each of the sleeves, ignoring the snap of, “I do not require your assistance,” that Alastor offers instead of thanks. Once he’s done, he steps back and lets Alastor attempt to button it himself, but the demon’s hands are still too unsteady.
“Want me to help you with-”
“Absolutely not.”
Now that Alastor is out of the proverbial woods Lucifer doesn’t feel the need to stay at his side, so he returns to his own room to sleep and checks on Alastor the next morning. The shirt is still unbuttoned but pulled together in front of his chest, his fingers loosely curled around it to hold it together, even in his sleep. Lucifer sighs and gently pries those fingers open and moves Alastor’s hand aside. He buttons the top half of the shirt, leaving the bottom half undone for easy access to Alastor’s wounds. The one on his chest was obstructed but it was the most shallow and needed the least care.
Lucifer nudges Alastor’s shoulder. Nothing. Notta, not so much as a twitch. It wasn’t a surprise that he was still sleeping heavily, given the shape he’d been in just a day earlier. “Al,” Lucifer says, giving another small nudge and red eyes finally open. “You need more blood.”
Alastor stares at him blankly.
“Oh, you don’t remember. I gave you some blood. My blood, to help along your recovery. Soooo…do you want me to just kind of lay over you again? That’s what I did before, you weren’t awake yet.”
“No.”
“Okay. Then how would you like to do this?”
“I’ll come to you,” Alastor says, matter-of-fact, and sits up, or tries to. He sways in place, his hands moving to grab the bedding on either side of himself for balance.
“Woah, easy. Let’s try this,” Lucifer says, and moves the pillows so he can climb onto the bed and sit behind Alastor, his back to the headboard. He drags a claw over his wrist and brings it around to Alastor’s mouth. Any complaints Alastor might have lodged about their position are forgotten as he grabs it and brings it to his mouth, hungrily running his tongue over the cut before starting to suck. The blood must hit him the way a strong drink hits humans, as he sags back against Lucifer, his grip briefly slackening on Lucifer’s wrist before tightening again.
The weight of Alastor leaning back on him is almost pleasant, like half of a hug, even though he has to turn his head to keep his face from getting his face pressed against Alastor’s back. A gasp shudders from his lips as Alastor’s tongue coaxes more blood from the wound that’s already trying to close. He lets him get all he can from the thin cut, only withdrawing his wrist once the skin has mended. Alastor makes an unhappy sound but lets go of it.
“Can you please get away from me now?” Alastor asks in his most cordial radio-host voice.
And that doesn’t hurt. Really, it doesn’t.
Ha. Stupid games. Stupid prizes.
Two days later, Alastor is able to get out of bed, and Lucifer finds him in the kitchen, long black tendrils spread out from his back and opening every cabinet and drawer in the place. He turns to face Lucifer with a look of pure disdain on his smiling face. “Do you possess anything that isn’t nauseatingly sweet?”
“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” Lucifer says. “No, not really. But, y’know, if you had just asked instead of ransacking my kitchen like a burglar, I could have gotten something you would eat.”
Alator makes a vague hmph sound, retracting his black tendril-tentacle things. “Well. I’m hungry. The more decayed the meat, the better.”
Gross.
Lucifer forces a smile, his eyebrow twitching. “I think I’ve got some bacon.”
And so they found a rhythm. Alastor didn’t gripe for Lucifer to get away from him as soon as possible after drinking his blood, and stopped complaining that the meat Lucifer cooked for him wasn’t roadkill. The wounds were recovering well but Alastor was still weak, and remarkably, he hadn’t started pressing to return to the hotel yet. Lucifer hated to admit he wasn’t looking forward to that day. As prickly as Alastor could be, it was comforting to have another soul under the same roof as him, even if it was a damned one.
The fifth day Alastor was there, Lucifer started to feel the effects of how much blood he’d been losing. While Alastor was feeding from his wrist, his vision started to dance with dark spots, and before he knew it, went black altogether. He only had a moment to lament that Alastor would probably sink his teeth in and drink him dry before he woke up.
But he actually wakes up with his wrist back at his side, and no trace of the thin cut he’d opened. More surprising still, Alastor was leaned back against him, slid down far enough that his head was against Lucifer’s chest and his ears were tickling Lucifer’s neck. He was so still. He was...asleep. Lucifer blinked. Alastor had gone to sleep on him? A fluttering erupted in his stomach, watching the even rise and fall of Alastor’s chest. He supposed Alastor hadn’t had the energy to push him off the bed when he passed out and resigned himself to using Lucifer as a substitute for his pillows. Though the bed was big enough that he probably could have just laid next to him instead.
Don’t read into it. He hates you.
Lucifer closes his eyes. He couldn’t very well rouse the sick demon from sleep to get out of bed, so he supposed he could stay like this until Alastor woke up. That was okay. As he drifts back off, he notices that Alastor feels warmer than usual against him, almost feverish. How strange.
Alastor was gone when he awoke again. Lucifer had a moment of panic, until the demon emerged in clean clothes with slightly damp hair. He was particular about what he liked to wear, so Lucifer had simply created several sets of the same clothes for him.
“Are you alright?” Lucifer asks, noticing the faint sheen of sweat clinging to Alastor’s face.
“I think I need more of your blood.” Alastor’s voice is strained as he climbs onto the bed.
Lucifer tries to raise his wrist, but he’d given his blood too recently, he was too weak. He was trying to force it upward when Alastor crawled over him. “Al?” Lucifer nearly squeaks, and then Alastor’s teeth are in his neck. He yelps, his hands flying out to grab whatever is within reach, which ends up being Alastor’s waist. Alastor was straddling him, laying over him, drinking from the wound he’d created with his sharp teeth. He didn’t think Alastor realized how intimate their position was. Lucifer’s heart beat a little faster, one of his hands drifting to the small of Alastor’s back. This was the most physical contact he’d had in years. He closes his eyes, letting his head fall back against the headboard. It felt good. Good enough that he felt a little guilty for enjoying it, given Alastor’s condition, but seven hells, it had been so long.
Alastor stops before it becomes too much. And then instead of moving to let Lucifer get up, he shifts to lay between Lucifer’s legs with his head on Lucifer’s stomach, and goes to sleep. Lucifer blinks, his hands hovering where they had been resting on Alastor’s waist. He slowly lowers them to Alastor’s head. Tentatively, he rubs his ears, and they’re soft like velvet.
They continue like that for two more days. Sleeping together, with Lucifer never daring to call attention to it. The more feverish Alastor became, the clingier he got, even allowing Lucifer to lay flat instead of sitting up against the headboard, silently dropping the pretense that it was something that just happened after Lucifer gave him blood. Lucifer laid down and Alastor curled up to him. It felt natural, easy. Lucifer stroked Alastor’s newly healed antler as the demon slept. As much as he’d come to enjoy these quiet moments, he needed to figure out why Alastor was seemingly sick after his recovery had been going so well. His fever was getting worse by the day.
So the next day, he slips away to start doing research. When that yielded no results, he reached out to Zestial, the oldest and wisest of the Overlords. He didn’t mention Alastor by name but he roughly explained the situation and Zestial, for once, had no insight on the matter. Which left Lucifer with his last and least favorable option.
Not many entities in Heaven would speak with him. He could get the ear of the officials when needed, as he’d done when he organized a meeting for Charlie, but he needed to talk to someone in an unofficial capacity. Someone who wouldn’t ask him to elaborate on the vague details he was going to provide.
But he and Saint Peter had always got on well, and good old Peter relayed his question to someone who could actually answer it, and soon Lucifer learned what the issue was.
He was killing Alastor.
The knowledge sat heavy on his shoulders, his breath coming fast and shallow. His blood was a slow poison, like a low dose of angelic steel. It had bolstered Alastor’s healing capabilities but now that he was ingesting more than his body could break down, he was rejecting it. Lucifer laughs through the lump forming in his throat. Of course he was killing him. Of course the only way Alastor would suffer his presence and accept his touch was because he was dying of poison.
At least his wounds were healed, and the weakness that had been lingering would probably subside once the angel blood was out of his system. Lucifer hauls himself to his feet and makes what feels like a long walk to Alastor’s room. When he walks in, Alastor is already awake, and shifts as if to make room for Lucifer to join him on the bed. It’s because of the fever. He would never want you near him if he was in his right mind.
“Al,” Lucifer says, his voice low.
Alastor’s ears laid back, sensing the difference in Lucifer’s town from what he’d gotten used to. On the defensive before Lucifer even gave him a reason and woo boy was Lucifer about to give him one.
Lucifer sits next to him on the bed. He didn’t know how to sugarcoat this. “My blood is poisoning you. It was helping you in the beginning, but your body can’t break it down fast enough, and it–”
Something hits him in the chest. Not metaphorically – a black tentacle hits him in the chest and sends him sprawling on the floor. When Alastor speaks, his voice is distorted, his eyes flashing. “And you thought, why not keep it going just a little longer? Isn’t that right, Your Highness?”
“What? No, Alastor, I would never–”
“Were you really that starved for attention that you would poison me with your precious, holy blood?”
Lucifer crumpled, still sitting on the floor. “Al.”
Alastor stands, snapping his coat up from the dresser, either unaware or uncaring that his hooves were still bare. “Let me out of this place. Now.”
He was still sick. He’d probably be weak for a couple more days until the blood was out of his system.
But Lucifer had a lifetime of experience being unwanted, enough to recognize it, and he could feel the icy divide yawning between them like he’d ripped it open with his own two hands. He opens a portal that would take Alastor to the hotel.
Alastor steps through without another word, and the portal closes behind him in a flash of golden light.
Lucifer’s eyes mist as he stares at the empty bed, and he whispers far too late, “I didn’t know.”
How dare he?
Alastor paces the floor, his body thrumming with static, his antlers extended and his tentacles thrashing behind him. He was still sweating. He still felt ill . All because that winged fool poisoned him for...what? So that he would be so delirious he craved touch like a simpering, pathetic human? To revel in his weakness and laugh at how far he’d fallen? As if Lucifer Morningstar could laugh at anyone fallen. Alastor runs a hand over his face, pulls at the stitches that uphold his smile, snapping them only for them to mend themselves immediately.
When he stepped through that portal and found himself in the hotel lobby, much to the surprise of Charlie, who’d been standing at the bar talking to an unfazed Husker. She peppered him with questions and he answered them all with a smile – yes he was fine, he was feeling much better, and so on. He withstood the interrogation, all so he could come process all of this in peace, in private. If anyone ever found out what he’d reduced himself to within the walls of that palace he would be ruined. Just the memory makes disgust break out over his skin like a rash.
The only thing he still can’t figure out is why the angel confessed. Guilt, perhaps. Or because the loss of blood was weakening him, too, and the jig was up. Whatever the reason, he’d made a fool of Alastor and that was something he could never forgive.
Even if, as he lay in bed that night, it felt too vacant and smelled too little of apples and honey.
Alastor sometimes forgot Hell was intended as an eternal punishment until moments like these.
“Dad!” Charlie says, throwing her arms around the man who’s comically shorter than her. “Thank you for coming. I just wanted you to see how much better Alastor is doing! And it’s all because of you,” she says, positively beaming.
Lucifer’s smile is stiff, his posture uncomfortable. “That’s...yep, that’s great, sweetie. He looks great. I mean not great, like that, I just mean better than he was. You know.”
She doesn’t give a second thought to his rambling, she’s clearly used to it, but Alastor stares the tiny bastard down. The last time he saw Lucifer, he was in a fever-induced haze. Everything had been soft and fuzzy around the edges. Now that he was seeing him clearly, there was something off about him. He didn’t traipse about with his usual prideful, almost smug demeanor, wasn’t twirling his dumb little staff (not to be confused with Alastor’s very cool staff) and his eyes were...dim. This wasn’t the visage of a man who had claimed victory over a demon he’d despised from the moment they met.
For the first time in this lifetime, Alastor questions himself. Could he have been wrong, two weeks ago when they last saw one another? His face pulls uncomfortably, as it always does when his smile would fall if it could, but is held up by the unbreakable stitches. Charlie leaves them to ‘catch up,’ or as she is so transparently attempting, to make them be friends. As far as she’s concerned, they parted on as amicable of terms as one could expect, given their history.
And that leaves just the two of them, in the same lobby where they first met, and Alastor craves the simple hatred of those days. Before it became gnarled with whatever this was.
Lucifer twists his staff in his hands, then nods. “Alrighty. Well, I should be going.”
“Wait.”
Lucifer turns around from where he’d raised his hand, likely to open a portal. He lets it fall back to his side. His eyes are inquisitive, but not hopeful. Alastor had done a fine job snuffing that out when they last saw each other.
“I think it is possible that I was mistaken.” Every word feels like coughing up a lungful of broken glass. “I think perhaps you did not mean to harm me with your blood.”
Lucifer stares in silence for a moment. Then, “Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it?” Alastor’s ears twitch irritably.
“What do you want me to say? I tried to tell you that I didn’t know and you didn’t even give me the chance!” Lucifer’s voice cracks, and he takes a step closer. “You just decided, at the first chance you got, that those days we spent together didn’t mean anything.”
Alastor tilts his head. They didn’t mean anything. Moments, memories, only had the meaning they were given. The meaning that Alastor allowed them to have. Yet those fleeting hours in his state of delirium had changed him. He no longer slept as well in his empty bed, and sometimes when he feasted on his preferred diet, he found himself longing for cooked meat served on a too-white table. He wonders, for the first time, if Lucifer had also been suffering the side effects of their brief time together.
“I changed my mind,” Alastor says simply.
They both know he won’t apologize. It goes against his very nature, and in the silence that follows, he realizes with polarizing clarity that he wants forgiveness anyway.
Lucifer opens a portal and walks through it.
For a long moment, Alastor is trying to understand the heavy feeling in his chest. It was a strange, foreign sensation, like there were new stitches but this time inside him, pulling his black heart down to his stomach.
Then he realizes the portal is still open.
It wasn’t what they had before. It was different, the edges sharper, but the pieces were starting to fit back together. Alastor was actually lucid as they ate at the head of the unreasonably long table, or standing at the kitchen island. He sat in an armchair with a book in Lucifer’s workspace while Lucifer sat on the bench making something duck related, probably. They were coexisting, together, on purpose. Alastor still slept at the hotel but Lucifer kept stopping by and leaving his silly portal open, and Alastor kept following him through it, every time. At one point he didn’t, just because he’d irrationally started to feel like a dog expected to follow its owner without question.
Lucifer didn’t show up for a few days after that, and when he did, he didn’t say anything about it. But he’d looked sad as he left, and it wasn’t until the portal started to close that Alastor realized the angel had assumed Alastor had no more desire for his company. So he’d hastily stepped through it and then given Lucifer a thorough talking-to for not holding the door for him, so to speak. And he didn’t care about the way it made Lucifer smile. That would be preposterous.
They went like that for more than a month before, one otherwise unremarkable night, Lucifer quietly asks, “Do you want to stay?”
He did want to stay.
Rather than returning to the room where he’d been while he was recovering, he finds himself following Lucifer to the king’s own chamber, and it would be a grand affair if not for the mess. Clothes strewn haphazardly, a couple rubber ducks on the floor, dozens of framed photos but none of them lined up with each other. Alastor toes his shoes off and lets his hooves settle on the plush carpet. He didn’t remember feeling so out of sorts when they did this before, but now his skin feels all prickly and strange as Lucifer unbuttons his vest...and shirt...and oh, dear, Alastor might have misunderstood the question.
Lucifer was rambling about something but quieted when he turned and saw Alastor’s ears laid flat on his head. “Al? What’s wrong?”
“I believe I will retire to the hotel after all,” Alastor says, taking a step back.
“Oh. Okay. Sure, I can send you back, but...did I do something?”
Oh, silly man. Forever thinking he was doing something wrong.
Alastor’s prey instincts were spooked, his tail tucked tightly against his body, but he tries to sound chipper. “No, I simply do not wish to spend the night in the capacity you have requested.” It comes out very radio, very fake. Even for someone who always speaks through a filter.
“Huh…” Understanding dawns on Lucifer’s face and his eyes widen, his hands coming up in front of him. “No! I didn’t mean like that. I mean, if you wanted to, that would be fine, but I just meant to sleep. Really. Pinky promise.”
“Oh.”
Lucifer smiles gently. “I can still send you back to the hotel if you want.”
“No. That’s alright.”He feels quite the fool now, for causing such a spectacle, but Lucifer had never stripped to sleep when they had shared a bed before. Alastor supposes the man is more comfortable in his own space or maybe even more comfortable around him than he was previously. Lucifer turns to pull down the blankets and Alastor’s eyes light on the six markings on his back, dark crescents where his wings would manifest. He considers how sore his tail is after being pinned under the waistband of his pants all day and asks, “Do they hurt? Those slashes on your back.”
“Not really.” Lucifer smiles and gestures for Alastor to get in first, giving him his pick of where to lay in the massive bed. “They’re sensitive, so it would hurt if someone grabbed them too hard or something, but I don’t really notice them otherwise.”
Lucifer was telling him how to hurt him. He...trusted Alastor, it would seem. Alastor lays his coat and vest across the top of the dresser, making a mental note to keep a pair of pajamas here if this was going to be a regular occurrence, and gets into bed. He doesn’t sleep without clothes even when he’s alone. Lucifer gets in next to him, pulls the blankets up, and extinguishes the lights with a wave of his hand. Then there’s darkness and silence but also apples and honey and why does the angel smell like home ? Not in the way his mother’s kitchen did, but in a new, strange way he wasn’t familiar with.
“Would you like that side of the bed to yourself?” Lucifer asks carefully. They both know if he came out and offered contact that Alastor would refuse on personal principle.
Alastor considers it (he doesn’t, but he acts like he does) and after a few beats, he answers. “No.”
Lucifer sidles up next to him, laying his head on Alastor’s chest, the inverse of how they’d slept before. It’s nice. The weight of him, and his smell. It doesn’t make him itch like touch often does. Before, the haze of weakness and fever hadn’t allowed Alastor to overthink, but now he almost wished it would return. He feels like he’s splitting his chest open, prying his ribs apart and asking to be stabbed in the traitorous, fickle organ hammering against his breastbone.
Something prodded at the back of his mind. Lucifer’s words, If you wanted to, that would be fine.
He didn’t...but he didn’t hate that Lucifer would be fine with it if he did. Despite Alastor’s previous assumptions that Lucifer had kept feeding him his blood to keep him weak and complacent, Lucifer had never imposed affection on Alastor, never asked anything of him. He’d only taken what he knew Alastor was willing to give. That was a first – affection without expectations, something Alastor had never found even in his human life. His urges for more than fleeting affection came sporadically, far too infrequent to satisfy anyone with normal needs. He brings an arm up to curl around Lucifer’s narrow back. Was this what it was like to be enough for someone?
The following days were almost surreal. He convinced Alastor to get a phone, even if it was an old rotary dial one, so he could call if he wanted to come to the palace and Lucifer didn’t happen to be coming by the hotel that day. Alastor knew how to get to the palace, but it would raise far too many questions among his fellow Overlords if he started casually showing up on the King’s doorstep.
About two months after the first time Alastor slept with him in his bed, they were sprawled there in the late evening, Alastor sitting up against a mound of pillows with a book and Lucifer’s head in his lap. He was stroking Lucifer’s hair while he read and Lucifer was refusing to move a muscle in case it was subconscious and movement would make Alastor realize what he was doing. Alastor keeps pajamas there now, and Lucifer politely pretended he hadn’t seen Alastor’s tail sticking out of his sleep pants the couple times he’d kicked the covers off during the night and Lucifer had woken up first.
“Charlie is terribly curious why I keep coming here,” Alastor says, turning the page of his book.
“She’s asked me, too.”
“What have you told her?”
Lucifer’s stomach churns. He knows Alastor wouldn’t want anyone to know about whatever this is. The softness, the affection, and most of all that it was with him. “I’ve been making excuses. Don’t worry, I know you would rather die again than have anyone know you’re hanging around me on purpose,” he jokes.
“Precisely.”
His shoulders sink. He walked right into that one, but it still hurt. By social standards Alastor had no reason to not want to be seen with him, he was royalty, but on a personal level? They hated each other on sight. Alastor wouldn’t want to admit that he’d changed his mind, that he had come to enjoy the company of the man he’d detested so much. Lucifer was loud and too fixated on things he was passionate about. He was...embarrassing. Lilith had told him as much.
He moves off Alastor’s lap and lays on his actual pillow. Some naive part of his brain had been thinking about what he’d do if Alastor contradicted him and said he was okay with their friends, and in Lucifer’s case family, knowing about them. Whatever them meant. Lucifer had started picturing dinners at the hotel, no more lame excuses for why Alastor kept coming to the palace.
He’s ashamed of you.
Lucifer can recognize when he’s spiraling, but he’s powerless to stop it. It was like trying to empty out the ocean with a bucket.
A while later, the light goes out, Alastor having tugged the pull chain on the lamp since he can’t just magic it away. Then there’s warmth against Lucifer’s back. His eyes open in the darkness, and a thin arm lays over his waist. This was new. They cuddled but Lucifer was usually the one to initiate, or at least make himself very obviously available for Alastor to curl up to. He doesn’t know why it makes him tear up as Alastor’s chest settles against his back. He wraps his arm over Alastor’s, tentatively lacing their fingers together, which isn’t something he’s ever done but it feels right. Alastor feels right.
A tear slips from Lucifer’s eye onto his pillow. It was a painful sort of comfort, a rose with all its thorns, making him bleed every time he brought it to his face to breathe in the sweet scent. A beautiful thing that couldn’t help but hurt him. He was starting to think he might love roses.
The next day, he doesn’t go to the hotel. He can’t face Charlie and smile and lie when all he wants to do is tell her that Alastor makes him happy, and he doesn’t care what they are or aren’t, the labels don’t matter. So he sits at his work bench and makes the same thing over and over again, until it piles up on either side of him and some spill under his feet. Ducks with short, black antlers. When his hands ache, he goes out the double-doors to the back of the palace, where a massive fountain sits in the center of a stone terrace. It’s lined with flowers in vivid reds and yellows.
It’s nearly dark out when the phone rings. He answers, already knowing who it is from a glance at the screen. “Hey there.” Good, he sounds cheerful. That’s what he was going for.
“Bring me there.”
For someone who was so old-fashioned and polite, he didn’t think he’d ever heard Alastor say please. Rising from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the fountain, staring into the water, he waves a portal open and Alastor walks through it. The demon blinks at his surroundings. He’d seen most of the inside of the palace, but he’d never been on the grounds. Lucifer smiles at him in the fading red light.
“I told Charlie,” Alastor says, the three words following each other so closely that they nearly become one.
Lucifer’s breath is arrested in his throat. “Told her what?”
“What I’ve been coming here for. That I’ve been coming for you.”
Warmth stings Lucifer’s eyes and his caught breath is suffocated by a lump forming in its place. “Why?” he whispers.
“Because...I like being here with you more than I like being able to control what people think.”
Lucifer steps forward, and Alastor’s ears lift, tilting forward. It was an open, interested gesture, Lucifer had learned. The way Alastor said it...he didn’t sound ashamed of Lucifer. More like concerned about his reputation, probably the implications of an Overlord keeping company with the King of Hell. Possible favoritism and all that. Especially since the last time he was in the media, it was because he got his ass handed to him. Hell needed to know he was powerful in his own right and that he hadn’t just situated himself on Lucifer’s coattails. Now that he had a clear head, Lucifer could see that plain as day, and felt a pang of guilt for assuming the worst. He of all people knew how bad that felt.
He doesn’t realize he’s reached for the lapels of Alastor’s coat until the fabric crumples between his fingers.
But he knows what he’s doing when he pulls Alastor down and kisses him.
He’s felt a fall like this once before. Plummeting down from the highest peak, his wings clipped, no idea what waited for him at the bottom. Alastor tasted of rye and forest and if Lucifer shattered every bone when he hit the ground, so be it, because at least this moment would be immortalized in his memory. He knows the whites of his eyes are red when he releases Alastor and stares up at him. Alastor stares back, blinking, and...with a faint tinge of pink across his face.
“Sorry I didn’t ask first,” Lucifer says softly.
“It’s fine.”
Lucifer’s eyes widen. No distortion, no static...was that Alastor’s voice ? He didn’t know Alastor could speak without the filter, he’d assumed that was just how he sounded.
“Can I do it again?”
They woke up tangled together. Clothed, Alastor in his full set of pajamas and Lucifer in red and white striped sleep pants. They hadn’t done anything more than kiss but Lucifer still felt fulfilled in a way he hadn’t experienced in so long that it nearly felt foreign. He runs his fingertips along Alastor’s arm. Alastor still appeared to be asleep, but the touch evoked a faint swishing sound. Lucifer sat up a little and peaked over, and oh stars, Alastor’s tail was wagging. It wasn’t long enough to wag like a dog’s but it twitched from side to side and Lucifer’s heart was going to fucking explode.
He settles back down, brushing a lock of red, black-tipped hair out of Alastor’s face. The demon’s brows pull together, then he blinks his eyes open until they come into focus. He clearly assesses the fact he’s awake, finds that conclusion lacking, and tucks his face into Lucifer’s neck to go back to sleep. Lucifer grins, his arms wrapping around Alastor’s slender body.
Heaven help him, he was falling in love.
Alastor starts reading out loud to him, fiction from when he was alive, but not nearly the oldest text Lucifer had ever heard. He can’t say he possesses a deep seated love for murder stories but he likes hearing Alastor’s voice. And Alastor seems to enjoy reading aloud, he’s good at it, though perhaps it’s to be expected since he was best known for his radio show. He’s also a fantastic cook. Lucifer has been learning to share the kitchen, since Alastor gets the occasional hankering to make Cajun food the way his mother used to make it, and he would talk about her while he cooked. Everything he made was too spicy but Lucifer ate it anyway, because it seemed to make Alastor happy when he did.
They’re eating one of those very meals when Lucifer’s phone rings, and a name lights up the screen that hasn’t done so in years. He slowly swipes it and brings it to his ear, wondering if someone is playing some kind of elaborate prank. “Lilith?”
“Hello, honey.” There’s no warmth to the nickname, there hasn’t been in a long time.
Alastor’s ears press back toward his head, his smile looking almost twitchy. He puts his spoon down in his bowl and folds his hands in his lap.
“I just wanted to let you know I’m coming home,” she says, her voice deep and smooth like wine. It used to be something Lucifer could get drunk on and now it only threatened to drown him. “My living arrangements have changed, so I’ll be moving back.”
“Oh.”
He’d dreamed of getting a call like this. If he’d gotten it a year ago, he would already be laying a trail of rose petals from the front door all the way to the bedroom they’d once shared, though they hadn’t been sharing it anymore by the time she left. Now all he could think was that his heart and his home no longer felt empty without her. Charlie would be ecstatic, but he didn’t feel...anything.
She informs him she’ll be arriving tomorrow, and they say stiff goodbyes before he lays the phone down on the table. “Lilith–”
“I heard.”
Silence unfurls between them like a cavity being torn open in the ground, creating a vast divide. “She didn’t exactly ask,” Lucifer says with a nervous laugh. He knows it might be a little awkward.
“I understand.”
Lucifer’s smile falters. He feels like he did something wrong. Should he have told her no? He was in shock to have heard from her at all, and Charlie would be devastated if he prevented her mother coming home from...wherever Lilith had been. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Of course.”
In hindsight, Lucifer should have pressed harder, should have realized they weren’t on the same page about this. But he thought Alastor was just uncomfortable spending time together the way they did with her in the palace, and that was understandable. They went to bed and when he kissed Alastor goodnight, Alastor kissed back with the strangest sense of urgency, clinging to Lucifer in a way he never had before. Hands ended up in hair, and running down backs, and Lucifer was even allowed to touch the bare skin where his pajama top separated from his waistband before the kiss finally broke.
Alastor curls up to him to sleep and it feels like everything is going to be okay.
But Lucifer wakes up to an empty bed.
He gets up and searches, but Alastor isn’t anywhere within the walls of the palace either. Tightness starts to constrict Lucifer’s chest as he returns to the bedroom and picks up his phone. Even as he taps Alastor’s contact, dread rolls heavy in his stomach, blossoming into his lungs like the thickest smoke when he hears the automated recording:
“I’m sorry, the number you’re trying to reach is no longer in service.”
Stand-in. Temporary replacement. A warm body in the interim.
Alastor drops the arm he’d just torn off a sinner who’d made the mistake of looking at him for too long. The arm lands on top of the other limbs he’d ripped off, which are piled on top of the sinner’s still-twitching torso. The head is somewhere further down the sidewalk. He can’t even bring himself to eat the meal in front of him. Broken up into nice, easy to digest pieces, the blood still fresh and warm. But he had no appetite.
Lilith.
His wife.
Who was Alastor compared to the woman Lucifer had known since the beginning of Hell? The woman he’d ruled with.
Alastor leaves the pathetic heap of viscera and walks away, blood still dripping from his claws. He tugs a handkerchief from inside his coat and wipes them off. He’d only been at the hotel long enough to destroy that damned phone, not yet in the mood for Charlie’s incessantly bubbly personality and her father’s eyes. She was probably going to be skipping with happiness that her parents were reuniting. A snarl pulled at his face but couldn’t manage to pull down the upturned sides of his mouth. Lilith. Lilith. Lilith . It bit into his skin, burrowing into his organs, circulating in his bloodstream.
At least now he can focus on rebuilding his image. Too many demons, especially Overlords felt comfortable talking about how ‘the mighty had fallen.’ He needed to remind them why they feared him, and that he was still not to be trifled with. It was strange that such matters had hardly crossed his mind as of late – he’d climbed a mountain of bodies to obtain this power, and he’d been letting it slip without a second thought, blinded by golden light. How despicably...human.
The days turn to weeks, in which he masters disappearing whenever he hears the telltale sound of one of Lucifer’s portals opening. One day he’d seen the tall figure that followed Lucifer through. Dark lips, dark dress, piercing eyes and blonde hair that fell in the softest of waves over her shoulder. He’s seen the pictures in the palace, he knows what Lilith looks like, but seeing her in the flesh – even from a distance – was even more nauseating. The two of them looked right together. Matched in beauty and power and everything that mattered.
Months pass and before Hell knows it, it’s Extermination Day. The angelic army is led by a figure even more wrathful than Adam. She’s vengeful and filled with so much malice that she would blend seamlessly with the demons whose blood she came to spill. Lute is more organized than Adam, lacking the charisma that made others follow him so willingly, but what she lacks in that she makes up for in the fear she evokes from her soldiers. The hotel’s defenses are well beyond what they’d been the last time they fought there, when Adam’s blood soaked into the battlefield he’d created and birthed the wrathful angel now descending on them in a flurry of wings and blades.
“They changed how they fight!” Vaggie calls out as she drives her spear through the chest of a soldier who managed to nick her on the arm. “Lute must have trained them not to fight so recklessly, they’re wearing light armor and protecting their weak spots. Be on your guard!”
Her warning couldn’t have come at a better time, as it gives Angel just enough time to step back from the head-first attack he’d been about to wage on an approaching angel. It would have worked six months ago but the angelic army had learned it wasn’t invincible, and had become all the fiercer of opponents for it. Given how easily his barrier had been shattered last time, Alastor instead focuses his energy on targeted defenses, using his tentacles to knock angels from the sky when they get within striking range, leaving them open to be finished off.
They were gaining ground. Even with the angel’s new and improved tactics, the residents of Hell had been perfecting their skills for just as long, and they were twice as well armed as last time. The last Extermination had left a wealth of angelic steel on the grounds of the hotel and they’d paid a handsome sum for Carmilla to re-purpose it into weapons they could use the next time the angels came.
Charlie’s scream split the air through the din of clashing blades and colliding bodies. “Alastor!”
There was a single blind spot in the defenses his tentacles provided, and Lute had come straight for it. Since his tentacles covered so much ground, no one was near him, certainly not close enough to intercept the sword coming at him faster than light. He couldn’t recall any of his tentacles fast enough to intercept it. His staff wouldn’t do anything against angelic steel, he had a scar across his chest to attest to that.
Red envelops his vision.
He thinks it must be blood, his own blood, until he realizes he’s still standing. There’s no pain. No wounds. He smells something burning.
The red moves, and the red belongs to the feathers of Lucifer’s six wings, which lower and allow Alastor to see once again. Lucifer is standing in front of him, fire still hovering above his palm, Lute screaming on the ground from the burns now covering an entire side of her body. One of her wings is entirely singed off.
Lucifer turns to face Alastor, fully transformed, his wings and horns and tail all on display. He’s beautiful. His eyes are solid red, but when he blinks, his irises and pupils have returned. “Are you alright?” he asks. His wings beat softly, holding him just off the ground, eye level with Alastor.
“Fine.” He sounds so much more unfazed than he feels as emotions crash over him in tumultuous waves. Pain, longing, gratitude. Something deeper and warmer that he doesn’t dare examine.
Lucifer smiles at him, and that smile carves a moment of peace through the roar of battle, casting them into an almost gentle silence before it all comes rushing back. He soars upward with a strong beat of his wings and it’s not much of a battle after that. With Lute immobilized, most of the remaining angels flee. A couple of them grab Lute and flee with her, and Alastor tries to slap them right back out of the air, but he’s used too much of his power. His tentacles have retreated, and he can no longer manifest them. He sighs as they disappear through the massive portal they came through.
He makes himself scarce in the aftermath. Everyone is hugging and checking each other for injuries and he wants no part of that, thank you very much. He retreats to the roof, a rare breeze blowing his coat around his body. The new hotel roof was a commodity all its own, a rooftop garden that reminded him far too much of a stone terrace and a fountain and a man who made him realize his long dead heart could still feel something.
At least he left this Extermination unscathed, unlike the last one.
“Al.”
He whirls around to see Lucifer lowering himself to his feet, his wings tucking in once he’s on the ground. “What do you want?” He hates how much he sounds like he cares about the answer.
“You left.” Lucifer says it like an accusation at first, then his red sclera return to their normal color, and he repeats it with a crack in his voice. “You left me. And if I hadn’t finally gotten here, you could have died.” He stabs a finger against Alastor’s chest, right over the smaller slash that ran the opposite direction of the one Adam had given him – one of the wounds Lucifer had treated, when all of this started. “I may not have felt right telling Lilith she couldn’t move back in, but we could have gone somewhere else. If you’d just talked to me. You acted like everything was fine and then I woke up alone.”
Alastor’s head tilts, and he tries to focus on making sense of Lucifer’s words rather than the anguish in his voice and the answering sadness that rises in Alastor when he hears it. “I was under the impression Lilith was coming back to you,” Alastor says.
Now it’s Lucifer’s turn to process the words, and his face goes slack with shock. “You thought we were getting back together?” Then his expression turns pained. “You thought I was just going to drop you? That after one phone call in years, I’d cast you aside for her?”
Alastor looks away. Of course he’d thought that. He knew Lucifer thought fondly of him, somehow, but he couldn’t fathom why the angel would choose him and their brief fling over the woman he’d pined for ever since she walked out the palace doors.
“She had a deal with Heaven. She moved back in so that she could try to keep me from the fight when the next Extermination happened, give the angels an advantage. And there was a time when that would have broken my fucking heart. But it couldn’t, because my heart’s already been in pieces since the day I woke up without you and couldn’t even call to ask why. Every time I came to the hotel, you avoided me so thoroughly that I started to think maybe you just didn’t want to be in the middle of it if Lilith was pissed that I moved on. Whatever your reasons, it was obvious you didn’t want to see me. So I stopped trying.
“Until I finally got away from her and told her to be out of my fucking house when I got back. And saw an angelic blade coming for your throat. Do you know how fucking scared I was, Alastor?” he yells his tail lashing, the only part of his transformed body that remained. “I didn’t think I was going to make it. I thought you were going to–”
He turns away, but not before Alastor sees the tears gathered in his eyes. Alastor moves without thinking. One moment he’s standing frozen with his arms at his sides, then they’re around Lucifer, his chest pressed against the angel’s back. He feels Lucifer’s shoulders shake.
“I didn’t think you would want to continue our...activities, if the person you preferred came back.”
Lucifer turns in his arms and looks up at him. “Well you could have said that. At least I could have told you how dense you are for thinking I want anyone but you.”
Alastor’s mouth trembles. It almost hurts, how tightly his lips pull against the stitches, and he doesn’t realize they’re showing until Lucifer reaches up and rests his hand on Alastor’s cheek. In his emotional state, his stitches had manifested, and he knows his eyes have probably changed as well. Lucifer runs a thumb over the corner of Alastor’s mouth and there’s the quietest pop.
Then there’s acid green thread blowing away in the wind, and Alastor’s smile falls.
The holes close immediately in the absence of the stitches, and Lucifer stares at Alastor’s face, his eyes fading back to their usual appearance. His smile falls, his lips pressing together. Then he pulls Lucifer up into a trembling kiss. Lucifer wraps his arms around Alastor’s neck, his tail winding around Alastor’s leg. He’s missed this. Missed Alastor and his radio voice and stupid hair.
They part and the sides of Alastor’s mouth are just barely curled up. It was as though he’d forgotten how to smile on his own. Or perhaps he’d never had the chance, and Lucifer’s heart both swells and aches at the thought that Alastor may be truly smiling for the first time.
“No more leaving,” Lucifer says, holding Alastor’s face in his hands. “Not without telling me why.”
Alastor sniffed. “Well, quit misleading me into thinking you’re just a high pillow, good for nothing lug.”
Lucifer is pretty sure that if he translated that mouthful of nineteen-twenties alphabet soup into modern terms, Alastor would be calling him an asshole. “I’ll do my best,” he says, not trying to hide his grin.
He’s the one to pull Alastor into a kiss this time, up on his tiptoes, practically hanging from the demon’s neck. Alastor’s arms go around his waist, lifting him so that Lucifer is standing on his shoes. He hated to think that the past months of longing and pain could have been so easily avoided, but that was one upside to their eternal damnation – they had all the time in the world to make up for it. And he intended to spend as much of that eternity with Alastor as the demon would have him for.
Some Amount of Eternity Later
“Okay Dad, how do I look?”
Lucifer wipes his tears. “Oh, sweetie. You look perfect.”
He offers her his arm, and she takes it. Getting marriage legalized for sinners was pretty easy when you were the King of Hell, and when she asked for his help, he couldn’t have been happier to make some new rules. Her suit was white with red trim, her eyes heavily lined in black, and she was ethereal. The doors opened and he walked with her to the music. He had offered for Alastor to walk with them; the demon had shifted at some point from treating Charlie as his own just to irritate Lucifer to actually caring for her, but Alastor politely declined so Charlie could actually have intact pictures of her being walked down the aisle. He is, however, standing in the front row. Lucifer looks at him and his heart grows six wings of its own.
Alastor has his hair up, and he’s wearing most of his usual attire, but with a black suit jacket in place of his usual coat, his bowtie absent in favor of a simple collar chain. A circular ruby on each side, connected by two thin black chains. Lucifer had given it to him. Vaggie waits at the altar, her dress long with a sweeping cathedral train that stretched out behind her. She has tears in her eyes as she stares at Charlie and the two exchange the most tender of smiles.
When he gives Charlie away, he kisses Vaggie’s cheek, knowing he couldn’t be putting his little girl in better hands. He steps back and takes his seat next to Alastor as they say their vows. He lets his hand rest on his knee, palm facing up, and Alastor takes it. A little routine they’d developed so holding hands was always optional in case Alastor wasn’t feeling touchy.
The reception is a grand affair, and once all the important dances are out of the way, everyone takes to the floor. Lucifer and Alastor were both accomplished dancers and passed their share of songs doing footwork that would make the most twinkle-toed of demons jealous. But as the night winds down, they’re simply swaying in place, Lucifer’s arms draped over Alastor’s shoulders and his hands clasped loosely behind Alastor’s neck.
Lucifer rests his cheek against Alastor’s chest. “I love you.”
“I know, dear.”
“Good.”
The first time he’d said it months ago, Alastor had been all manner of distraught that he couldn’t say it back. But he hadn’t simply fled and left Lucifer to make his own conclusions about why. He’d stayed, and they’d talked. Alastor didn’t understand love. He didn’t know if it was something he could feel, but it made him happy that Lucifer loved him, and that was enough for both of them.
“I...think I love you, too.”
Lucifer’s head snaps back to look up at Alastor, who was blinking at him with big, uncertain eyes. He’d never expected to hear it said back to him and he was okay with that. Perhaps it was that acceptance that had allowed Alastor to figure it out on his own time, and it seemed that he’d reached the conclusion he might could love after all, and he loved Lucifer.
“You know...marriage is legal for sinners now.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Lucifer laughs and kisses him deeply; he’s already way ahead of himself where that’s concerned but Alastor doesn’t have to know that. At least, not until Lucifer finds a ring.