Chapter Text
They say it’s lonely at the top, and while that certainly wasn’t true for Lucifer, it was often exceedingly boring. This was especially true when the Living World was in peril. Humans can be finicky little things, their will almost as fragile as their bodies. Tap the glass on their terrarium and they panic. Set their world on fire and their morals burn with them. And well, five years into an admittedly hellish economic crisis, it was raining men.
Now, you might think the Devil would enjoy mass tragedy, but have you ever considered the paperwork? And oh, the monotony of it all! Soul after Soul with the same old sob story, pouring in, weary and worn. There’s nothing to take from someone who’s lost everything, no fun in breaking someone who’s already broken. All that’s left is pity, some for the incoming denizens and even more for himself.
”You look like you’re falling asleep, my swan.” The dulcet tones of Lilith’s voice were a welcome embrace after a day filled with the desolate drones of demons he couldn’t care less about.
”I spent the whole day wishing I was,” Lucifer complained, topping it off with a theatrical wave. “My dreams are more compelling than most of the sorry Sinners who come to see me. Did you know they’re calling this the Great Depression? I’m going to have a Great Depression if I don’t get some fucking variety in here!”
Lilith chuckled softly, rolling her eyes as she took her seat beside her husband. “Ever the drama queen,” she chided, carding her hand through his hair as she spoke.
Lucifer leaned into her touch. “Bless you, my love, for putting up with my nonsense.”
“We’d both be doubly Damned if I didn’t,” she answered in kind, planting a kiss on his temple. The two shared a laugh, then a kiss, then another. And soon enough, they were in each others’ arms with considerably less clothes than they’d started with.
“I missed this,” Lucifer whispered. The butterflies that seemed to have died of boredom during his morning meetings were now alive and well, dancing in his stomach.
Lilith smirked. “Missed me?” she teased. “Or missed this?” Her hand wrapped around a certain appendage, punctuating her statement with a squeeze that teetered on the edge between pleasure and pain. Her fingers flexed around him, nails poised against tender flesh: a threat and a promise all at once.
“Speak the truth and you’ll be rewarded.”
“Both,” he confessed with a hiss, and Lilith’s grip eased. “I missed you… missed your voice, your lips, your touch…” The words were spoken between kisses, full of love and lust and want. “And I missed… the feeling of flesh beneath my fingers. Missed the fire in my veins and the thrill of it all.”
“Good boy,” she crooned, and dear, sweet Holy Hell, was he rewarded. Several hours of mind-blowing sex and at least twice as many orgasms later, they were summoning wine and chocolates, lounging on the throne room floor.
“Lilith! My love, my dream, my symphony!” Lucifer said with a flourish, more than a bit tipsy at this point. “Your name is the sweetest thing to ever cross my lips. Your kiss, more intoxicating than the finest of wine! Your- Fuck!” In his over animated gesturing, he’d managed to spill the contents of his glass, not noticing until some of it had somehow wound up in his hair.
Lilith erupted into a fit of giggles, nearly spilling her drink as well, but had the presence of mind to steady the glass with her magic.
“What about my fuck?” she teased, running her fingers over sticky, stained-red hair.
“Mmm… Fuck…” was all Lucifer could manage as he melted under her touch.
“Ah, such a way with words you have.”
Lucifer gasped, bringing his hand to his chest in highly exaggerated offense. “You once asked me if it hurt when I Fell from Heaven!”
“And you said it was the best one-liner you’d ever heard,” Lilith fired back, vanishing the wine from her husband’s hair before pulling him onto her lap and into another kiss.
“Well, it was when you said it…” He pouted, nestling into the crook of her neck. He paused for a moment, ghosting his lips over his wife’s skin and breathing in her scent before lamenting, “It’s gotten a bit oversaturated lately.”
Lilith hummed and took a drink in response.
“You too?” he asked her.
“Mhmm.”
“How do you normally respond?”
Lucifer leaned back to watch as Lilith pulled the glass from her lips. “I tell them I can’t have Fallen from a place I’ve never been,” she said with a sinful-sweet smile.
“And that under my touch…” Lucifer felt a single, dagger-sharp nail drag up his spine as she spoke. “Pain and pleasure are entwined in ways that make angels sin and demons pray.”
“Fuck,” he breathed as his whole body shivered. “Holy Hell, Lili, that’s…” Lucifer searched briefly for the right words to tell his wife how incredibly sexy that was before deciding that the best way his wine-fuzzy brain knew how to express it was to kiss her.
Lilith kissed back, laughter muffled by both of their mouths. “And you?” she asked, “How do you respond, oh silver-tongued serpent?”
“I leave,” Lucifer said, burrowing once again into the space between her neck and shoulder. His tone was a stark contrast to Lilith’s – none of the flirtatious teasing or playful annoyance. He sounded completely and utterly through with it all. Lilith simply wrapped her arms around him and waited, as if she knew that wasn’t all he had to say. She was right, of course.
“I can’t stand these idiots throwing themselves at me with all the originality of a skipping record,” he complained. “The living have lost their faith and the dead, their resolve. Bodies and Souls, praise and devotion, everything from first borns to the Goddamned kitchen sink offered up for the simplest favors. The stench of desperation is a turn off.”
Lilith hummed softly. An affirmation at first, but when Lucifer didn’t speak further, it stretched, morphing into a melody. It was a familiar tune; one he couldn’t quite place, but he was certain it was Lilith’s own work.
All of her attention was on her husband, the wine glass forgotten as she wrapped him in her arms. One hand tangled in his hair and drifted down to the nape of his neck while the other traced circles and curves over his shoulders and back.
He was so lost in those sensations – the softness of her song, the gentleness of her touch, the comfort of her closeness – that he barely noticed the thrum of magic or the silk of sheets as she teleported them both to the master bedroom. Nor did he fully notice her shifting their position so that they were both lying down, his head tucked against her breast rather than her shoulder. The kiss she pressed to the top of his head was muted, distant, like a memory of a dream.
“You’ve given me much to think about,” she said, and maybe she said more; he couldn’t be sure, the way reality was fading in and out around him.
“Sleep well, starlight,” was the last thing he heard before the world slipped away entirely and Lucifer fell into the best sleep he’d had since the stock market crash of 1929.
The first sign that Lucifer needed a break was the fidgeting. A restless leg bouncing under his desk, tapping fingers he couldn’t still. Then, he started losing his place on the page. Finding a sentence here or there that didn’t make sense, only to realize that it was because he’d skipped the previous line, reading and rereading the same paragraph three times because it wouldn’t stick. When the words started swimming around the page and the letters blurred beyond comprehension, he gave up.
“Fuck,” he muttered, rubbing his temples and pressing spots into his eyes. He was trying to resist the very tempting urge to knock the entire stack of Contracts to the floor and light it on fire, which would free several hundred Souls and make them someone else’s fucking problem, when he heard someone open the door to his study. And there was only one someone it could be.
“Lili!” Lucifer bolted towards his wife, practically throwing his chair out from under him in his haste. By the time the chair hit the ground, he was standing in the doorway with Lilith, arms wrapped around her waist, holding her tight.
“Lilith, my wife, my Queen,” he began, his words spoken in a tone that can only be achieved through millennia of melodramatics. “Love of my life and mother of my child, save me from this bureaucratic wasteland!”
Lilith waited, listening to his monologue with a patience that can only be achieved by loving someone throughout their millennia of melodramatics.
“I’m still processing payments on the ‘33 Contracts, and a few of the bastards from the ‘32 Living World Deals actually died before I got around to theirs, which means I have to send collections after them and hope they’re not in fucking Purgatory. Do you know how hard it is to collect from Souls in Purgatory? Of course you do – but really, I’ve got a better chance of beating Micheal in a fist fight…”
He went on like that for several more minutes before finishing it off with, “I’ve got enough red tape to strangle myself with, and I think if I spend another minute in this office, I’m going to just that!”
Lilith smiled and bent down to kiss the crease between his eyebrows. “Well then,” she said. “It’s a good thing I’m here to get you out of this office.”
“Really?”
“Really,” she confirmed. “And out of the palace, too.”
The smile that graced Lucifer’s face would probably have looked more at home on an angel of the not-yet-Fallen variety. It was bright and beaming, filled with awe, not for God or humanity, but for his amazing wife and her impeccable timing.
He released his grasp on Lilith and took a step back, offering her his arm. “Shall we?”
“We shall.” Lilith took her husband's arm, but it was she that led the two, her magic shrouding them in a gentle blanket of fog.
The ground changed beneath their feet as they walked, stone palace floor giving way to polished hardwood. Lucifer could hear the chatter and din of a crowd eating, drinking, talking, and laughing. There was music playing as well, a live band if he wasn’t mistaken. Lilith’s magic began to dissipate, and Lucifer realized that even without the silver haze obscuring his vision, the lighting there was fairly dim.
As Lucifer took in their surroundings, Lilith continued forward. She led Lucifer to a smartly dressed bat Sinner behind a hostess station. Betsy was her name, according to the tag on her lapel.
“Reservation for two.” Lilith said to the rather distressed Betsy. The bat looked on in stunned silence, blinking wide eyes as if she wasn’t sure whether or not they were sending her brain the right images. The three of them stood there for a beat before Lilith added, “It’s under Phosphorus.”
Ah, of course. Lilith had used a pseudonym. That would explain why this maître d’ was acting a bit batty. Lucifer really couldn’t blame her. He’d probably be a bit bewildered too if he got an unexpected visit from Hell’s ruling couple while working customer service.
To her credit, Betsy seemed to put the pieces together rather quickly, picking her jaw up off of the ground and jumping into a pre-rehearsed welcome speech. She skimmed over some notes before grabbing two menus and asking the couple to follow her. Her ears flicked this way and that, following various noises as she led them through the restaurant.
It was a nice place, though not one Lucifer would’ve expected his wife to choose. The band was in line with her tastes, yes, but the atmosphere wasn’t. The floors and any wooden furnishings were stained red, the walls lined with a mess of paintings, posters, and photographs, and the glasses, dishes, and silverware didn’t seem to match. Lilith had clearly planned this evening in advance, must’ve had her reasons, but Lucifer hadn’t a clue what those reasons could be.
When they reached their reserved table, Betsy began to fret again. “I can move you to another table, your Majesties,” she said, wringing her hands as she looked over their current arrangements: a small, unassuming booth situated at the back of the dining area. “We have a private dining section down the hall.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Lilith assured her. “I chose to reserve this table, specifically. We’ll be able to enjoy the band while maintaining a perfectly fine amount of privacy.”
“Oh, by all means, then. I’ll let the fellas know they’ve got two more VIPs in the audience, tonight.”
“Give them my compliments as well, from musician to musician,” Lilith said, in a soft, comforting tone that Lucifer had dubbed her ‘don’t scare the masses’ voice. “I can already see their talent. And there’s nothing quite like a live performance.”
Betsy beamed. “I’m sure they’ll be happy to hear it. A server will be with you shortly.” She placed their menus down, bowed, then turned on her heel and left.
Lucifer waited until Betsy was out of earshot, then turned to his wife. “They’re good and all, but their vocalist can’t even begin to compete with you.”
“Oh hush, Luci, you’re biased.”
“Ab-so-lutely.”
The server that came to take their orders was nervous, but definitely not surprised to see Lucifer and Lilith, so Lucifer guessed Betsy had warned the poor Sinner beforehand. Lilith and Lucifer each ordered the house special and some prohibition-style moonshine that the server recommended, along with an appetizer to share.
As soon as the server was out of sight, Lilith slid across the booth towards her husband until they sat pressed together – shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh – and placed her hand on his chest.
“Tell me, my swan,” she said with an impish grin. “What do you get the man who has everything?”
“Uhh…” Lucifer thought for a moment, then made a sort of all encompassing gesture to the restaurant they were currently seated in. “A dinner date?” he answered, unsure. Lilith laughed.
“So that’s a no then…” Lucifer tried for several more moments to puzzle out what Lilith was getting at before she decided to make things even more confusing.
She leaned somehow even closer, placing her lips just beside her husband’s ear. Then softly, as though it was a secret, she said, “You get him a challenge,” and kissed him on the cheek.
At that very moment, something Lucifer could only describe as ‘controlled chaos’ broke out. The dim lights flickered and the buzz of radio static filled the air, despite the fact that no radio had been playing. Some patrons seemed nervous – a few even left, cursing or praying under their breath as they made their way to the back exit – but the band didn’t miss a beat.
“Ah, Betsy!” said a voice from the front of the house that sounded like it should be coming out of a radio, itself: loud and tinny with a Transatlantic accent. “Pleasure to see you again, sweetheart!”
“And you as well, Mister Alastor,” Betsy replied, happily. “We have your usual table available, of course…” The two demons continued to talk, but Lucifer didn’t catch another word of it.
“Lilith,” he hissed. “Is that the fucking Radio Demon?”
“That,” Lilith said, playing with Lucifer’s hair and looking incredibly pleased with herself. “Is your challenge.”