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The key with Lucifer, well with anyone really, was that he was most honest when he was caught off guard, which is why Alastor doesn’t bring it up until months later, after countless evenings sharing a drink and exchanging barbs at Husker’s bar, a single handshake free from demonic power, and the word truce. It’s only now, once Alastor has plied Lucifer with two drinks and Husker has retired for the evening, that he mentions it.
“This can’t be it,” Alastor says, gesturing at Lucifer with a lazy hand. Lucifer starts to puff up indignantly, eyes glittering with anticipation of what he believes will be another verbal spar, until Alastor adds, “This can’t be the extent of your power.”
Almost immediately, Lucifer, owner of Hell’s most useless poker face, starts to sweat. “What makes you say that?”
Watching Vox gleefully replay the moment his weapon had blown off Heaven’s gates for literal hours had given Alastor plenty of time to reflect. That was an incredible display of power, far more incredible than anything Lucifer has shown thus far, and as someone who deals in secrets, Alastor needs to know why.
Alastor sips his whiskey to hide the smug turn of his smile. “Vox’s recent failed plan was useful for one thing—” and a few others, but Alastor is not as cavalier with his secrets as Lucifer is, “—and that was to show that you are singularly powerful enough to destroy the gates of Heaven.”
“Okay,” Lucifer blusters, looking wildly around the employee lounge like he’s hoping Husker will suddenly reappear and rescue him from the conversation. When they remain stubbornly alone, he turns back to Alastor and takes a bracing swig of his drink before snarking, “And?”
Two drinks then, Alastor confirms, is all it takes to strip Lucifer of his wit.
“Angelic steel, wasn’t it?” Alastor drawls, swirling the liquid in his glass leisurely. He hasn’t had this much fun toying with Lucifer in quite a while. “The same thing that Vox captured you with. Seems to me like if you had any control over your strength whatsoever, then you could have easily escaped that little machine he had you trapped in.”
“They’re…they’re called the pearly gates,” Lucifer says, which theoretically could have been convincing if Alastor hadn’t seen Carmilla Carmine herself scavenge the angelic steel before the real battle had even begun. “Or, uh, some even call them the golden gates.”
“So what is it?” Alastor interrupts, breezing past Lucifer’s pointless attempts at deflection. “Did Heaven somehow put another clause in your punishment that meant you couldn’t even escape sinners? Or did you just not care enough to try? Did you hope that sinners would die if someone was pointing the gun and firing it for you?”
“It’s not like they wouldn’t deserve it,” Lucifer mumbles.
“No,” Alastor says, drawing out the vowel deliberately. “It isn’t that. You were undeniably tortured and you’re no masochist.” A shame, that part. “Not even that pathetic excuse of a first man caused you to bleed.”
Alastor has sat through enough of Lucifer’s incensed ramblings about how, in his eyes, every sinner’s true sin is that they proved that Lucifer was wrong about free will all along. It goes against Lucifer’s very nature to let a mere sinner embarrass him the way that Vox had.
“Yeah, well, Adam was definitely not all he was cracked up to be. And he was a terrible father. Did you know I met his son? A lot of issues, that guy—”
Alastor tunes out Lucifer’s babbling, tapping a rhythm against the bar top with his left hand as he considers the situation. For as much as he’d planned for it, Alastor hadn’t expected that Lucifer would put up this much of a fuss. He’s been remarkably open ever since they came to an understanding that they’re both singularly responsible for protecting the hotel against different realms. The sinners crawling out of the woodwork to try their hand at fighting Alastor, believing it was possible to defeat him after they thought Vox had done so, have, in their odd way, brought them closer together.
Lucifer had been hesitant at first to have Alastor be the one to confide in, but they are far more similar than they are different when it comes down to it.
Alastor’s hand pierces the obsidian bar top as the thought comes to him, four jagged claw marks marring the otherwise smooth surface. He must emit a truly atrocious amount of radio feedback based on the way Lucifer snaps his mouth shut.
“You’re owned,” he says, furious with himself that it took so long for him to realize. Part of him wants to throw the entire wretched bar out the window at the way Lucifer seems to shrink in response to his rage. “You’re owned and you didn’t think to tell me?”
Lucifer grins sheepishly, making half-hearted jazz hands as he sings, “Surprise.”
Alastor hasn’t made an error like this in decades. Owning another’s soul is so commonplace in Hell that there isn’t a sinner on the street who doesn’t belong to another in some form. Lucifer is a prisoner here just as much as any sinner, if not more so; Alastor shouldn’t have disregarded the option just because he’s a fallen seraphim.
In his defense, he hadn’t known that angels had souls thanks to some very clear misinformation he’d received during Sunday mass as a child. Shows how useful that entire endeavor had been.
“Who is it?”
“Uhh.” Lucifer frantically twists his ring around his finger, a harmless nervous tic that suddenly seems incredibly incriminating.
Alastor snatches Lucifer’s wrist, holding his hand up to his face to get a better look at the gold band around Lucifer’s smallest finger. It looks like nothing. A facet of Lucifer that is so much a part of him that it’s like he was thrust into creation with it already on him.
“I see,” Alastor says, dropping Lucifer’s hand.
It all comes back to Lilith, doesn’t it?
“Brings a new meaning to ‘the old ball-and-chain’, am I right?” Lucifer jokes, as if the words aren’t quite literally bringing tears to his eyes.
Of all the theories that Alastor had conjured up regarding Lucifer’s shackled power, this one had never crossed his mind. And Lucifer has the gall to suggest that sinners are the cruel ones.
“Your wife really hates you, doesn’t she?”
Lucifer flees in a swathe of red. All for the best; Alastor isn’t exactly in the mood for his company anymore either.
Lucifer hides from him for a good part of the next day. Alastor, of course, knows that he’s hidden himself away on the roof, but he waits until mid-afternoon to show himself.
“We have to break your deal,” Alastor says, taking great pleasure in the fact that his sudden appearance makes Lucifer jump.
“Leave me alone,” Lucifer glares, stabbing his apple-tipped cane into Alastor’s chest.
Ha! He’d like to see Lucifer make him.
Alastor brushes Lucifer’s cane away with his staff and pats Lucifer tauntingly on the head. “Oh, come now. If we’re meant to protect the hotel, then you need to have all of your power. I’m only thinking of what’s best for Charlie.”
Lucifer bats his hand away. “Please, let’s not pretend you care about anyone other than yourself.”
Alastor raises an eyebrow. Lucifer hasn’t been quite this vitriolic in some time now. “Still upset with me then?”
Lucifer digs into his pocket and throws a duck at him. Alastor dodges with a cracking bend of his neck. “Yes! You’re mean!”
“Well, yes,” Alastor concedes, righting his head above his shoulders again. “But in this case, I was simply being honest. Something you clearly haven’t been with yourself for…decades, shall we say?”
Alastor hasn’t slept a wink in the hours since Lucifer’s revelation, and he’s left with far more questions than he thought possible. Did Lilith own Lucifer’s soul for the entirety of their marriage? Was it woven into their vows, binding them together for eternity? Or was it earlier than that? Has she owned him since before their fall? Before Eve had first tasted the sweetness of the apple?
He will find out. But he won’t ask now, not when doing so would only make Lucifer run away again.
Lucifer deflates. “It hasn’t…been that long.”
“Mhm,” Alastor hums disbelievingly.
Lucifer meets Alastor’s sharp gaze with his own. “You can beat any sinner in Hell with the power you have now, right? And I can fight anyone else in Hell and in Heaven. It’s fine! Just don’t go getting yourself captured again and we won’t have a problem.”
If Lucifer is hoping Alastor will rise to the bait, he’s sorely mistaken.
“Anyone?” Alastor asks, leaning down so that Lucifer must look him in the eye. “I can’t imagine that Lilith would put in the effort to own your soul and allow you to keep the ability to hurt her.”
He knows he’s hit his mark when Lucifer freezes. “She wouldn’t,” he whispers, clenching a hand in the fabric at his chest. His breathing starts to hitch, a panic attack in the making at only a mere suggestion.
As a rule, Alastor doesn’t often smoke in front of others now that it’s out of fashion, but he pulls a cigarette out of his lapel and lights it, taking a brief pull before sliding it between Lucifer’s lips. He doesn’t need to tell Lucifer to breathe, not when Lucifer’s pained eyes rise to meet his.
Come now, he wants to coo as he tilts Lucifer’s face up by his chin. This is hardly becoming. Don’t cry. Take all that I have to offer instead. He says nothing, only fixes his eyes on Lucifer’s lips as they wrap around the filter with intention.
Only once Lucifer has taken a full drag, Alastor asks, “Do you really believe that?”
“I—”
Lucifer cuts himself off, taking the cigarette out of Alastor’s fingers to hold it himself as he sucks in the smoke. He shuts his eyes like it’ll stop Alastor from speaking.
“And what about Charlie? Lilith convinced you to sell your soul to her. Who’s to say that she won’t do the same to Charlie? It is suspicious that she contacted Charlie for the first time in nearly a decade only after she’s started to ease the tensions between realms, isn’t it? The tensions that Lilith herself encouraged.”
Lucifer’s hands start to shake so hard that he can no longer keep the cigarette between his lips. Alastor moves to take it from him and hold it like before, but Lucifer knocks his hand away, eyes snapping open in a very real, visceral fear that has nothing to do with Alastor himself.
“She gave up on you,” Alastor says, letting his voice drop lower as he moves in for the kill. “She doesn’t trust you, Lucifer. Why do you still trust her?”
“Okay!” Lucifer shouts, a hand coming up to cling to Alastor’s coat. The cigarette falls to the ground, ashes dropping as it rolls, and Alastor watches it glow as Lucifer rests his head against his chest. “Okay. I get it. Teach me how to break a deal.”
The library in Lucifer’s palace is the most gorgeous display of architecture that Alastor has seen on Hell and Earth, lit only by stained glass windows outlining the turret ceiling, and after spending the last several days steadily making his way through the seemingly never-ending bookcases, he can confidently say that he is sick of the place.
Especially since Lucifer is of no help whatsoever, even after Alastor tried goading him by inquiring about whether or not he was literate. All Lucifer tends to do is wander aimlessly through the aisles, disappearing for hours at a time, or stare into the fireplace in the armchair by Alastor’s side. Once, quite memorably, Alastor had been paging through a book, coat discarded for the evening, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, and Lucifer had watched him unblinkingly for an hour straight.
He does, however, keep Alastor’s coffee cup full as he spends each evening scouring through Lucifer’s extremely powerful tomes regarding Hell’s hierarchy and the deals therein. That’s not entirely nothing.
Alastor is fully aware that a not insignificant part of his ire is due to Lucifer’s misplaced fondness for Lilith. In the most kind terms he can think of, Lucifer is like a dog waiting for his master to return, desperate for any kind of affection that he’s willing to be left out in the cold for however long she deems necessary.
Part of Alastor wonders if Lucifer’s fealty is about Lilith at all or if she’s the only one he believes could care for him. If anyone will do.
“A new deal to override Lilith’s? Charlie maybe?” Alastor muses to himself, paging through the book in front of him.
“No,” Lucifer cries, manifesting out of nowhere to throw himself across the desk where Alastor has stacked the books he’s read this evening. “I don’t want her knowing about this.”
“Ugh.”
Yes, more secrets between them is a fabulous idea.
“Don’t ‘ugh’ me.”
Alastor doesn’t bother giving a response to that, flipping through several more pages while Lucifer stares at him with wide, beseeching eyes.
It’s bizarre. Everything Alastor has read so far indicates that Lilith’s departure from Hell should have broken any deals she had in this realm. Then again, Lilith is a creature outside of traditional definitions, and Lucifer is the only one of his kind.
Alastor can feel his hands want to creep into his hair as his frustration mounts, and only Lucifer’s presence by his side stills his hand.
As Lucifer slides off the desk to fall sideways across the plush armchair, Alastor glances at him without turning his head from the tome in front of him. Lucifer has finally stopped staring at him to fiddle with his ring, eyes shining with something wholly dissimilar to how he had looked at Alastor earlier.
“I don’t know why you even wear that thing,” Alastor says, letting his frustration at their situation color his tone. “Why keep a reminder of your owner?”
Lucifer bristles at the disdain as if Lilith is somehow worth defending. “It’s nothing worse than what you’ve done before.”
Alastor grits his teeth. “Tell me, does Lilith need you even after she’s left you? No? Then in her boundless kindness she surely would have given you your freedom, yes?”
“I—that would make sense. Yes.”
Alastor narrows his eyes, smelling blood in the water. He’s gotten far too familiar with that cagey tone as of late. “Take it off then.”
“What?”
“Oh, come now. It’s just a simple request,” Alastor says, turning in his chair so they’re facing each other. His smile edges precariously close to a sneer. “Take off your ring.”
“Stop,” Lucifer says, knees drawing up towards his chest.
Alastor grips the armrest next to Lucifer’s knees and barely resists the urge to loom over where Lucifer shrinks into himself. His next words are filled with buzzing static. “Take. It. Off.”
“You don’t think I haven’t tried?” Lucifer cries, looking as if the words pain him.
Prior to thirty seconds ago, there hadn’t been a single moment during which Alastor had thought Lucifer tried to remove his wedding ring. Every time he spoke about Lilith, it was so unbearably pathetic that Alastor had to tune him out just to save his sanity.
Alastor snatches Lucifer’s wrist, uncaring about how the action draws their faces so close together that he can feel Lucifer’s startled exhale. The ring is plain. Far too plain for something so powerful. When Alastor tugs on it, it doesn’t move. All of the twisting that Lucifer does, all of that fidgeting, and Lucifer’s ridiculous wedding ring won’t come off.
“Points for creativity,” Alastor says with disgust, dropping Lucifer’s wrist with a flick of his fingers. He crosses his arms and sinks back into his chair.
Credit where credit is due; Lilith is a masterful owner, and Alastor has underestimated her twice now. Chains are usually only manifested during displays of subjugation; it’s no wonder that Lucifer is so depressed, considering that he has to look at a constant physical marker of his own inadequacy.
A thought crosses Alastor’s mind. It’s asinine, but then again, he knows who he’s dealing with.
“You have gotten divorced by now, haven’t you?”
“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
This time, no amount of self-control could keep Alastor from reaching for Lucifer’s throat. “You what?”
“I’ll make a call!”
Seventy minutes later, after Lucifer has taken a trip to discuss the legalities with Satan of all sins, Alastor no longer has to strangle Lucifer for his idiocy.
“Guess she, uh, guess she took care of that before she left,” Lucifer says as he shuffles back into the room, shoulders slumped.
The glass of whiskey and comfortable seat by the fire have done wonders for calming Alastor’s mood in Lucifer’s absence, but that crestfallen tone reignites his ire quickly. “Good. Remember? This is a good thing.”
“Right,” Lucifer agrees unconvincingly.
It’s no wonder Lilith convinced Lucifer to agree to such an abysmal deal for his soul.
“While you were gone, I found the solution to our little problem.” He pauses, watching the discordant emotions play across Lucifer’s pale face. “You need to get married again.”
Lucifer looks stricken. “I don’t think she would take me back.”
“You shouldn’t want her back,” Alastor snaps, letting his shadow smack Lucifer on the back of the head the way he has been wanting to for quite some time now. “You need to marry someone else. It’s the only way to overwrite her claim on you.”
Lucifer hums, pursing his lips as he steeples his fingers together. “I’m guessing it can’t be one of those ‘I-choose-myself’ moments?”
“If you were capable of it, perhaps.”
“Fair point,” Lucifer concedes with a sigh. He clenches a hand at his chest and starts to pace. “But who down here would I be able to marry? I can’t just pick a random sinner off the street and I definitely can’t choose a hellborn.” Lucifer laughs and it sounds mildly crazed. “Oh yeah, that’ll look real good. Not desperate at all. I’m already not the most popular guy in Hell. I can’t downgrade like that. My wife was…everyone thought she—my wife was hot. Who could replace her?”
Instead of pointing out exactly how heartfelt a review that sorry statement was, Alastor raises his eyebrows pointedly.
Lucifer gives him a once-over. “A little full of yourself there, aren’t ya, Al?”
“Do we not already have a partnership of sorts?” Alastor says, twirling Lucifer into the chair opposite him with a corporeal shadow. “Hell’s Overlords consider me second only to you already. I know the secrets you won’t even tell your daughter.”
“You’re not exactly well-liked either,” Lucifer says. “Hell wouldn’t want you as a ruler any more than they want me as one.”
“Who’s going to know?” Alastor points out airily. “And, really, what other options do you have? The only people you know are Charlie, her girlfriend, and sinners whose souls I own and am not willing to give up any time soon.”
If what he expects is coming ends up being true, he needs all the souls he can get for when Lilith returns. Marrying her ex-husband won’t exactly take him off her radar, but as of now, it’s his only viable option. Despite Lucifer’s assurances that Lilith will simply adore Alastor because she loves all sinners, Alastor is not nearly as naive. Contingencies must be made. He can work on twisting things to his benefit in the future once he’s ensured that he will have one.
“Okay, well—”
“And let’s be honest,” Alastor coos mockingly. “You like me.”
Lucifer’s cheeks turn bright gold as he sputters. “Like I’m gonna trust you to make a deal any better than the one I’m in.”
“It wouldn’t be my deal,” Alastor breezes. “This needs to be part of Hell itself. Do you not have a minister on speed dial?”
Satan, when Lucifer summons him, is not exactly a minister, but he is the closest thing to one in Hell, and if his rulings are legally binding (as much as anything can be called legal here) then he’s the one they need.
Alastor questions the logic of having the embodiment of Wrath preside over a court of law, but he supposes that it is Hell.
Satan is a draconic creature so massive that he barely fits inside the confines of Lucifer’s library. He radiates heat, lava flowing through his arms and up to his wings. His two sets of eyes fix balefully on Alastor for barely a second before moving to where Lucifer is rocking on the balls of his feet.
“Him?” Satan asks, voice dripping in condescension.
“Yup,” Lucifer chirps through an awkward smile. He clumsily hooks an arm around Alastor’s elbow and leans into his side. “He’s, um, he’s the one.”
Alastor’s grin doesn’t falter as Satan gives him a once-over so dismissive that it would have been more polite to spit directly in his face.
“You can’t be serious,” Satan says in a drawl not entirely unfamiliar to what Alastor often heard during his time on Earth. “A sinner? Have you truly sunk so low?”
At his side, Lucifer stiffens. “Excuse me?”
“First Beezelbub and her hound,” Satan huffs, flames spitting out of his nostrils. “And then Asmodeus with his imp clown. When you contacted me for the first time in nearly a decade, I thought it was a sign that you were ready to return to your former glory, but I see now that I was mistaken. I will not preside over this joke.”
The silence that follows is suffocating.
Alastor knows Lucifer is no stranger to barbs, not after many months with Alastor as his main source of companionship, but there is nothing close to amusement underlying Satan’s words.
“I think you forget who you’re talking to,” Lucifer says through a humorless laugh. He unwinds their arms, straightening up as his horns expand and his tail grows. As he continues, his voice rises. “I’m your king. This isn’t a request, it’s an order, and you will do as I say.” Lucifer flies up to Satan’s snout, allowing the full majesty of his wings to expand as he bares his teeth in a mockery of a grin. “Or try to challenge me again. Let’s see if it’ll work out for you this time.”
They hold each other's gaze with twin glares, and Alastor almost thinks he will witness a truly entertaining fight until suddenly Satan deflates, smoke pouring out of his nostrils in a jet of steam.
“You always did like the leggy ones.”
Since it would be an amateurish oversight to try to create a new bond in a place made for the one they are trying to break, they hold the wedding ceremony in the hotel. More specifically, in the upper level of Lucifer’s room.
Alastor hadn’t given much thought to what Lucifer had sequestered up the iridescent stairway, but he’s surprised to find that it is, in fact, an altar. Lucifer, he realizes, must come up here to pray.
It’s no wonder that Lucifer still clings to the memory of Lilith’s love; he apparently still does the same for his Heavenly Father. Alastor can’t imagine that there’s a more delusional being in existence.
“We tell no one,” Lucifer hisses at him as Satan compels them to hold hands as he speaks the marriage rites over them. “This is between you, me, and Satan.”
Alastor raises an eyebrow as if the alternative never crossed his mind. “Of course.”
Upon mutual unspoken agreement, they will not exchange rings. It’s a mortal trend, not one required by scripture, and to be quite frank, rings have left a sour taste in both of their mouths at this point.
Lilith, of course, will find out soon enough. The breaking of soul ownership is nearly a physical thing, and he has no doubt that one as powerful as this will create a ripple that Lilith will feel deep in her core. Depending on how she reacts to this knowledge, their marriage might not be a secret for very long.
“You may now kiss your betrothed,” Satan intones.
Lucifer’s eyes widen, like he somehow did not anticipate this turn of events, and under other circumstances, Alastor would tease, but he can’t have Lucifer changing his mind over something as simple as a kiss.
The squeak Lucifer lets out when Alastor leans down to press their lips together is something he will certainly ridicule him for later, however.
It is fine, as far as kisses go. Alastor lingers anyway, waiting for some kind of confirmation that the ceremony is complete, perhaps, when suddenly Lucifer jumps back with a hiss.
On his finger, his ring burns a molten orange, like it had been plucked directly from a forge. Lucifer scrabbles at it with his other hand, but as the color brightens from orange to yellow to white, it stubbornly refuses to come off.
If there were any remaining doubt about whether or not Lilith intended to keep Lucifer chained to her even after she disappeared, it’s obliterated as hot tears stream from Lucifer’s eyes.
“It’s not enough,” Lucifer gets out through pained breaths. “Why is it not enough?” He looks at Alastor like he’s begging to be saved.
“The union will be complete once you’ve consummated the marriage,” Satan drawls, unconcerned, as if he couldn’t care less that Lucifer is clawing desperately at his own hand.
“Consummate,” Alastor repeats blankly.
Beads of sweat start to drip down Lucifer’s temple as he pulls ineffectually at his ring. “Now,” he gasps. “It has to be now.”
He banishes Satan with an impatient wave of his hand before he clutches Alastor’s lapels just long enough to teleport them downstairs to Lucifer’s garish bed.
Alastor blames the brightness of Lucifer’s room for how easily Lucifer is able to climb into his lap; there isn’t a single spot in the room that would allow for his shadows to materialize.
When Lucifer tries to kiss him again, Alastor snarls, fisting the roots of Lucifer’s hair to keep him at bay.
“I never agreed to this.”
“Please,” Lucifer begs, tears carving paths down his cheeks to his bowtie. “I’ll do anything. I’ll—I’ll make a deal.”
It’s the desperation that shocks him. Just how much is Lucifer willing to agree to?
With his other hand, Alastor pulls back the sleeve of Lucifer’s coat, marveling at how the heat from Lucifer’s ring seems to have spread, creeping up his arm and turning the black skin as white-hot as the metal on his finger. A quick touch to the glowing skin confirms that it’s blazing.
The heat seems to spread to his core, avoiding the rest of his fingers and the majority of his palm. Alastor doesn’t know if this would kill a seraphim if it spread to his entire body, but one thing is certain: Lucifer would be of no use to him writhing in pain for eternity either.
“Once,” he hisses, pulling Lucifer’s coat off with one hand to wrap it around his burning forearm. When that does nothing to stop the heat radiating through the fabric, he shrugs off his own coat as well. “You will tell no one of this. You will not try to reciprocate what I do to you tonight. And if Lilith ever tries to kill me, you will stop her.”
Lucifer’s nodding before Alastor finishes speaking, and while Alastor had anticipated Lucifer to hesitate after hearing that final point, he doesn’t. “Deal. It’s a deal. Please.”
A rush of darkness fills the room for a brief moment as the deal writes itself into being, and usually Alastor would linger on the rush of power, but one look at the heat creeping up Lucifer’s bicep spurs him forward.
Consummation is a very specific word to describe a variety of acts. All of those acts do have one very particular thing in common. Then again, the whole thing could be a sham that Satan made up on the spot so that he could tell Lucifer to get fucked in so many words.
Either option is equally possible as the other, and Alastor doesn’t have the time to search through Lucifer’s library again to find the real answer.
Releasing Lucifer’s hair and arm to peel open the front of Lucifer’s slacks, Alastor takes hold of Lucifer’s cock. It’s soft, although Alastor hadn’t been sure if it would be until that moment. It’s ingenious; if overwriting Lilith’s claim on him is contingent on his ability to climax, she has practically ensured that it won’t be possible.
If they both need to—well. Alastor is clever; he can figure something out if it comes to that.
“It’s too bright,” Lucifer whines, shooting a glare up towards the glimmering chandelier so fiercely that it sputters out, leaving Lucifer’s burning arm the only light in the room.
The darkness is welcoming. As much as Alastor is loath to admit it, he’s wildly out of his element, with Lucifer clutching at his shoulder and Alastor’s own hand around Lucifer’s cock.
Something about the darkness seems to soothe the burning in Lucifer’s arm as well, because he stops twisting his arm like he wants to rend it from the socket.
Alastor doesn’t know how to describe the look on Lucifer’s face as he strokes his cock. It reminds him of how Lucifer had said, don’t you think I haven’t tried, but in reverse, like he’s learning to place his still beating heart in someone else’s hands.
“Al,” Lucifer grits out. “I don’t know if I can—”
“You will,” Alastor interrupts. He takes Lucifer’s face in his free hand, digging his fingers into the back of his head until Lucifer meets his eyes. “I need you alive and I need you whole. You will not fail me. Isn’t that right, my dear husband?”
As expected of someone who hasn’t received affection in what must be decades, Lucifer melts into Alastor’s touch even as pain still creases his brow. “You need me?”
Part of Alastor wants to object—he makes it a point to need no one—but, well, that is what his traitorous mouth said. And for the time being, it’s true. Only because the power will stay fully in his hands and Lucifer won’t understand the real reason as to why, Alastor admits, “I do.”
“Okay,” Lucifer agrees and then leans forward to press their lips together with a desperation that matches the pain on his face.
Alastor allows it, Lucifer’s cock starting to thicken in his hand as their lips slide against one another. He resists the urge to bite and add a little blood to make this more enjoyable for himself, but he can’t have Lucifer’s aversion to pain stopping them here. The heft of Lucifer’s cock fits better in his hand as it fills, and it’s only as Lucifer strokes both hands over Alastor’s ears that Alastor realizes the heat that had been spreading up Lucifer’s arm starts to recede.
It’s working, he thinks viciously. Soon enough, Lilith won’t have a single claim left.
It will all belong to him. Lucifer will belong to him.
Alastor draws Lucifer in closer with a hand around his waist, letting his avarice lead him as Lucifer opens his mouth for his tongue. In response, Lucifer groans and starts rolling his hips into Alastor’s fist.
Alastor pulls back to run his teeth along Lucifer’s neck. “By the end of this, you will be mine forever,” he says, feeling Lucifer’s breath hitch. “And I will never let you go.”
Lucifer lets out a whine, spilling over Alastor’s fingers so abruptly that Alastor lets out a crackle of static.
“That was fast,” Alastor remarks blithely as Lucifer slumps against his chest. Oh, Alastor, I can’t. Tell me you need me too. How dramatic. The liar.
Lucifer doesn’t move as he admits, “It’s, uh, been a while.”
“Clearly,” Alastor says, letting his shadows search through the room for something to clean his hand with when it seems Lucifer has no plans to move anytime soon. He pats Lucifer jauntily on the back with his free hand before tossing him unceremoniously off his lap to sprawl across the mattress.
Alastor gives a thankful nod towards his shadow as it brings him one of Lucifer’s discarded pajama bottoms to wipe his hand off on. Once clean, Alastor lolls his head onto his own shoulder as he looks at Lucifer, feeling his smile soften at a job well done.
Lucifer looks fully ravished for all that Alastor had barely touched him. His hair is a mess, sticking up in odd spots even though Alastor doesn’t remember placing a hand in it. His vest had somehow come undone, exposing the rumpled white shirt beneath it, untucked at the bottom where his spent cock lies shamelessly exposed. He’s looking at Alastor softer than he ever has before.
Lucifer reaches for him, to do what exactly Alastor is not sure, but he finds himself curious enough to want to find out. The coats that Alastor wrapped around Lucifer’s wrist slide to the bed as he places his hand on Alastor’s forearm.
The sound of Alastor’s pained hiss is drowned out by the involuntary screech of static as he yanks his arm away, but not before the ring brands a mark three layers deep into his skin. He’s used to heat—in Hell, in life—but the ring burns hotter than anything he’s ever felt before. It glows orange in the shadowed room, and Alastor cannot fathom the pain Lucifer had been in when it was glowing a searing white.
As he glares at it, the burn starts to spread up Lucifer’s arm once more, and Lucifer yelps as the torture begins anew.
Well, it seems Satan wasn’t using a delightful bit of wordplay after all.
Alastor scowls, bracing himself above Lucifer before he can start whining at him. A quick kiss to Lucifer’s lips does nothing to slow the spread up his arm, and so he wraps his hand around Lucifer’s cock once more, gratified when the action causes it to recede.
“Your wife is testing my patience,” Alastor growls.
“Ex-wife,” Lucifer corrects, right hand burying itself into Alastor’s shirt collar.
That, at least, eases the boiling rage in his gut. Approvingly, Alastor says, “That’s right,” and strokes his free hand down Lucifer’s cheek.
As Alastor pulls back briefly to roll up his sleeves to the elbow, Lucifer traces over the scars on Alastor’s forearms with his eyes. There are questions in the gaze and Alastor isn’t interested in answering them, particularly now that there’s a fresh burn scar added to the tableau, so he gives his fingers a suggestive waggle to make Lucifer blush instead.
Alastor had noticed Lucifer’s fascination with his hands over the past few days, particularly when Alastor would lick his thumb to be able to turn a stuck page. Keeping his hands to himself must have been quite the ordeal for someone with such poor impulse control.
Now, Lucifer looks at him like he aches.
Alastor’s shadows search the room gleefully. They haven’t been able to manifest on the rare occasions that Alastor has spent time here, and he gives them their freedom to snoop once one of them deposits Lucifer’s apparently well-used bottle of lube in his open palm.
Alastor gives the nearly empty tube a pointed look. “And here I thought depression typically lowered libido.” In truth, Alastor had expected his shadows to return to him empty-handed because, for all of Lucifer’s boasts during his battle with Adam, he is one of the least lascivious of the hotel residents.
Lucifer splutters at the insinuation that he’s been doing nothing more important with his time than touching himself like a deviant. He doesn’t, however, deny the accusation.
“Should I be flattered?”
“It has nothing to do with you!” Lucifer protests, even as he rapturously watches Alastor slick up his fingers.
Alastor makes sure his smile shows every single one of his teeth as he croons, “What was it you called me again? ‘The One’?”
Lucifer groans and yanks on Alastor’s lapel, angling for a kiss to presumably stop him from speaking, but without the imminent threat of his arm burning itself off, Alastor doesn’t humor him. He’s done enough kissing today to fill his entire afterlife. On top of that, he’s had a rather frustrating last few days, and conversations with Lucifer are always entertaining.
It doesn’t end up mattering because the moment that Alastor slides his fingers between Lucifer’s legs, Lucifer throws his head back against the pillows on a moan.
“We’ve hardly started,” Alastor notes with no small amount of mirth.
In response, Lucifer groans miserably and spreads his legs wider.
Then again, Alastor muses, if his fingers fulfill the requirement of penetration, they could be nearer to the end than he expects. After guessing incorrectly twice so far, Alastor doesn’t dare assume.
“Can two women get married in Hell?” When Lucifer shoots him a confused look, he adds, “It’s relevant.”
“Of course,” Lucifer says, voice straining. “Why wouldn’t they?”
As a treat, Alastor gives him another finger.
Lucifer cries out as the finger breaches him, and he writhes, wrist straining beneath Alastor’s other hand. His neck arches as he presses his forehead against Alastor’s thumb, and Alastor’s eyes are drawn to the ridge of tendon down his throat.
Alastor finds Lucifer’s pliancy extremely satisfying, how he allows Alastor to take the lead and in return does nothing more threatening than lie there. Perhaps, under other circumstances, Lucifer would act differently, but as it stands, his overwhelming shock at being wanted for the first time in what must be at minimum decades has kept him docile.
The deal they made at the beginning of this must be quite frustrating for him, forced to plead for the pleasure he so desperately wants to demand and take.
Perhaps Alastor had been hasty in demanding that this only occur once.
Alastor compels one of his shadows to touch the ring on Lucifer’s finger, and even though it doesn’t reel back in pain, the ring stays stubbornly attached to Lucifer’s finger. Really, Alastor thinks with mild curiosity, does Lucifer need to come again? If sexual satisfaction were a requirement for a binding marriage, then he’s personally aware of far too many illegitimate unions.
He shifts, drawing closer to better see the conflicted play of emotions on Lucifer’s face as he slides another finger into him.
“Alastor,” Lucifer groans, sliding his hand along Alastor’s lapel to curl around the back of his neck. His other one remains prone in Alastor’s grip. Around Alastor’s hips, his thighs tremble.
”Are you holding yourself back for me?” Alastor asks, stroking along Lucifer’s inner walls. Lucifer’s only response is to scrape his nails along the back of Alastor’s neck and lift his chin in a false show of defiance. “Go on. Show me that this isn’t all for nothing.”
He pistons his fingers in and out of Lucifer’s hole quickly, reveling in how Lucifer’s eyes blow wide. With each thrust of Alastor’s fingers, Lucifer’s cock bobs against his stomach. Their breaths pass back and forth, and when Lucifer arches, they are so close that his lips brush against Alastor’s chin. “Close your eyes,” Lucifer says frantically as he starts to glow.
It’s pure white, reminiscent of the light that had flashed before his eyes as he’d died. It’s that, more than the command itself that convinces Alastor to do as he’s told.
Even through his eyelids, the light is nearly blinding as Lucifer comes apart around him, clenching around him so tightly that, for a brief moment, Alastor thinks that he will never be able to remove himself from Lucifer’s body.
As the light slowly fades, Alastor hears the unmistakable sound of Lucifer’s wedding ring clinking as it falls to the ground. He opens his eyes as Lucifer lets out a sigh of relief so profound that he sags bonelessly against the mattress.
He’s as debouched as Alastor has ever seen him, covered in the thinnest layer of sweat that only makes his skin gleam like polished marble, a faint golden glow to him as his blood settles just beneath the surface.
“You probably didn’t need to close your eyes,” Lucifer admits with an easy grin. “I just…that hasn’t happened in thousands of years. I wasn’t sure if it would hurt you.”
Perhaps he shouldn’t be, but Alastor finds himself deeply shaken by the knowledge that Lucifer was thinking of his safety during what seems to be his best orgasm in millennia. “Best to err on the side of caution,” he agrees, sliding his fingers out of Lucifer.
At the motion, Lucifer seems to come back to himself all at once, and his cheeks turn a brilliant gold as he sits up and straightens his clothing. On instinct, he starts to reach for the spot where his ring used to be, and when he remembers it’s not there, seems lost at being unable to fiddle with it.
Alastor watches as Lucifer finds his old ring, discarded on the floor. He stares at it forebodingly, like it has just as much power over him as it did when it was bound to his hand.
“Destroy it,” Alastor says.
“What?”
“It’s simple, isn’t it?” Alastor continues. “I’ve found a solution to your problem. Now show me it was worth it, my dear.”
And with a tiny wave of Lucifer’s hand, flames engulf not only the ring, but the entire floor.
Lucifer panics, rising from the bed to try to put the fire out with his feet like he’s immediately forgotten how much magic he possesses.
Alastor lets his grin pull at his cheeks at the display of raw power. This is turning out exactly as he had intended.
Realms away, Lilith smiles. All according to plan.