Chapter Text
Oh, geeze! One more thing. I wanted to offer special thanks to CursedCatJoules for being an amazing beta reader. I also want to thank EternalScout , alternatemarvel, and LGWonder for helping me get through this monster, as well as the amazing mods for the event. Without them, this fic would ABSOLUTELY not exist. :)
Act 1: Identification of an Endangered Species
Charlie has spent the past two days feeling like a net full of butterflies. She feels like she could burst into a flutter of wings and impossible colors at any second.
Her dreams are coming true.
It's happening.
It's real.
And it's all the more incredible because she was at her lowest low just a little while ago.
Right before the big battle with Vox and the other Vees, Charlie had felt like farmers must feel during a drought. She'd watched everything she worked for wither on the vine, helpless to do anything but clench her fists and grit her teeth.
Then, just when things had seemed the most hopeless, Hell had come together the way her mother had always promised it would.The pieces had all come together in the uncanny way of dominoes falling down.
Sir Pentious was redeemed, and now all Hell knows it.
The exterminations are over. Charlie's people won't be murdered in the street once a year.
Heaven has come to their sides with folded hands and an offer to HELP.
Vox, who had seemed unbeatable mere days ago, fell from grace with meteoric speed that made even her dad whistle in disbelief.
Charlie takes all of that as proof that something bigger than any of them is at work here. This feels like destiny, like the grand purpose she's always believed that she had.
And now, most impossibly of all, her mom is coming back. No, Charlie doesn't know exactly when. No, she doesn't know why Lilith left in the first place. All that matters is that she finally called. Her mother had promised, in that magical, musical alto of hers, that she would explain everything once she was away from 'nosy walls,' whatever that meant.
(She'd also told Charlie not to tell anyone that she was on her way back. That was inconvenient as fuck, but the fact that her mom trusted her with secrets, her and no one else, makes Charlie's heart beat faster. Her mom sees her as someone trustworthy. She sees Charlie as a potential co-conspirator and not a child. It means she respects her, right?)
Lilith will be so happy to see how far Hell has come. Charlie can't wait to show her the viral videos sinners took of the day that Hell learned its strength. She can't wait to show her the way those sinners helped each other.
(Charlie thinks she will probably leave out a few things that might sour the moment - like the look on Vox's face when he was snarling at Alastor at the end, on top of a weapon with her mother's name. Charlie has never seen something like that in person, and even now, she doesn't have words to describe the spiders-in-the-stomach feeling that messy moment gave her. She doesn't know why it was so hard to watch or why it still haunts her so much.)
Anyway, all of those details are just cake-decorations. The important thing is that Lilith is coming back. Lilith is SO good at all of the things that Charlie is still fumbling. She knows how to command a room, how to quell disrespect with a single raised eyebrow. She is strong in ways Charlie can only dream of.
Maybe Lilith can teach Charlie a little of her own brand of…what did Rosie call it? Oh, right, moxie. Lilith has moxie. Maybe Charlie can become more like her through exposure - maybe she can really study the pitch of her mom's voice, the tilt of her head, and cultivate a little of that power for herself.
(Not that Charlie wants power! Or she does, but only to help people! She's learned that much, at least, from Alastor; power is currency down here, and getting people to listen to you is expensive. How is she supposed to save people who won't listen to her?)
And maybe…
Well.
Okay. Charlie knows she has Issues with a capital I. Maybe Alastor wasn't completely off base when he'd joked that Charlie was trying to overcome her 'daddy issues' by fixing everyone else.
(She doesn't have daddy issues, Alastor. She has broken family issues, which are close, but not the same thing.)
Charlie had some…expectations about her dad that she's starting to realize aren't true. She'd thought of him as distant, bored, and uncaring.
He isn't!
He's just…odd and easily distracted.
Charlie had also thought that he and her mom split up in a cold, clinical sort of procedure. Lilith had acted as if their separation was mutually decided upon and beneficial. She'd made it seem as if the two of them were done with each other.
Lucifer clearly doesn't feel that way about it.
Lucifer LOVES her mother; Charlie no longer has any doubt. He loves her so much he can't even think about her without his eyes welling up and his voice threatening to crack.
He loves her SO much.
Surely if Charlie's mom realized how much her husband still loved her, she'd change her mind about the whole separation thing. You don't just walk away from someone who loves you that much. Their separation was probably a misunderstanding - fuck knows Charlie is no stranger to those.
Charlie has already decided she's going to help fix this. Sure, it seems like a tough thing to do, but it can't be harder than redeeming a damned soul or defeating a whole crew of supercharged overlords who were wielding her dad's powers like a bludgeon.
Step one, she figures, is getting her dad ready to make an ah-maze-ing impression. Charlie's mom needs to see what she first loved about him when she gets here.
Her dad is just…in a little bit of a rut right now, that's all.
Maybe it isn't such a little rut.
Or maybe it is, in the way that the Grand Canyon is a 'little rut.'
Charlie can admit to herself that her dad wasn't doing exactly great BEFORE the whole being-kidnapped-and-used-as-a-weapon thing. He had, at best, a questionable grip on reality and a tendency to wander around the hotel in a bathrobe, and the less said about the mountains of ducks, the better.
Lucifer also hasn't really warmed up to the other hotel residents the way she'd hoped he would. Before Vox, the King of Hell had moved through them like a projected image, technically occupying the same space, but on an entirely different plane of existence.
After the battle, he moved through them like a spy in hostile territory, when he moved through them at all.
Charlie gets it, she thinks. He's a little shaken up, and he's always suffered from depression (not an eternal state of aggressive self-pity, mom, but she understands why it might have looked that way to the action-oriented Lilith).
Lilith likes bold creatures. Her favorite sinners were always audacious, impertinent, and a little wild.
(Fuck, she'll probably like Alastor an uncomfortable amount. That'll be something else for her hotelier and her dad to fight about.)
ANYWAY - future aggressive musical arguments are a problem for future Charlie. Present Charlie has to help her dad get his groove back before her mom shows up.
She just knows that if her mom sees him at his best…
(It would make him so happy to have her back. He's so lonely. He tries to hide it from her, but he's so lonely.)
Lucky for him, he's got his amazing daughter in his corner. All he needs is a little encouragement. She just KNOWS that if she can get him out of the hotel, get him to have a little fun, he can shake off the weight he always seems to be struggling under.
They can all be happy again. He just needs a little push and a lot of support, and Charlie is great at both.
Act 2: Ducks are Natural Foragers
Lucifer is making pancakes.
He’s standing in the Hazbin Hotel’s staff kitchen in the predawn bleakness, wearing his most comfortable clothes as he puts ingredients so familiar he barely has to think about measuring them into a mixing bowl.
It’s his first real stint in the kitchen since The Incident That We Do Not Think About - the one where that crazy TV-faced sinner trapped him in a box, tortured him, and then used his powers to blow the gates clear off of Heaven and vaporize a bunch of sinners.
That was nearly a month ago at this point, Lucifer thinks. He didn’t keep the best track of time for the first day or two. He spent the whole of it quivering under a mountain of pink blankets and silently praying that he hadn’t HALLUCINATED that Charlie had let him come back.
(She acted like it was a foregone conclusion, him being allowed back at the hotel. Of course Lucifer would come home with her, why would he think otherwise, that’s crazy talk.)
And really, Lucifer is just doing fine with all that. A-okay. Peachy keen.
(What is Heaven going to DO, fuckity fuck, they’re not going to take that laying down no matter WHAT Charlie’s cute Seraph friend says, FUCK -)
He’s handling it like a champ.
He’s even, y’know, leaving his room like Charlie keeps hinting that he should.
(She let him back in, she hugged him. He’s not going to fuck that up by being pathetic. He’s NOT going to give her another reason to give up on him. He means it this time, he won’t.)
His hand slips a little while stirring the batter, and some of it flicks onto the counter. He sets the mixing bowl aside and scrambles for a dishtowel before he can forget about it and leave a mess in the kitchen.
That’s the key, yep. He just has to be vigilant, has to keep from drifting off at the wrong time, has to keep from…
(You’ve fucked things up for me enough, she snarled at him over her shoulder.)
Yeah.
That.
He never wants her to say that to him again.
Lucifer looks down at the dirty dish towel in his hands and mentally curses himself for not using a paper towel. What do you even do with a dirty dish ragl? He’s always just magicked them clean before. Now, though, he’s not sure he wants to go slinging his powers around, not when the gaping holes on his arms and chest have only just fully closed, not when he still remembers the awful feeling of them being yanked out of him…
Lucifer crams the towel into the trash can with both hands and hides it with a wadded up cardboard box.
Fuck.
Okay. Little setback. No big deal. No one will ever know.
(A nightmare version of Charlie kicks his bedroom door down, brandishing the sullied cloth. THIS WAS MY FAVORITE TOWEL! She roars through gritted teeth and tears and flames. HOW COULD YOU?!)
“Breathe through it,” he reminds himself, going back to frantically stirring his batter.
He’s fine.
He’s going to make pancakes for his daughter and her girlfriend. They’re early risers.
(I’ll come back for you, Charlie’s girlfriend said, and she didn’t. It’s okay. She definitely meant to).
Those girls work so hard.
(She would have come back. Right?)
That’s why he’s in the kitchen this early in the morning - because the girls get up early. It has nothing to do with the fact that he’ll encounter fewer sinners at four in the morning.
It’s not that he’s trying to avoid them.
(Fuck yes he is.)
It’s just that he can’t help but feel like some of them are staring at him the way dingos stare at human babies.
(Some of them KNOW. Sure, Sinnerman with the Ratings didn’t come right out and say ‘you can’t hurt sinners’ in front of all of Hell, but there are a few of these fuckers smart enough to figure out that cowardice handn’t stayed his hand, and…and it never mattered before. If someone found out his little curse secret, it wasn’t even useful information. What could those little pests do to him, anyway? What could ANYONE do? Well, one of the useless fuckers has figured out a way to hurt him now, and where one could, others could.)
He’s probably just paranoid.
Anyway, he’ll be back to his old self in no time, and if some of these douchebags want to try their luck then, he’s happy to let them embarrass themselves. He just…yeah, he needs a little time first. He just needs to get his feet under him again, needs to be able to call on his powers without feeling like he’s choking on them.
He’s going to make these pancakes.
He’s going to have them out and ready by the time Charlie and Mag…uh…Mary…Charlie’s girlfriend come down here.
(She would never have come back for him.)
He’ll meet them and Charlie will see that he’s up and out of his room like a functional adult, and then he can be back IN his room by the time most of the hotel has started to stir.
He’s not going to be a bother.
He’s not going to be a mess.
He’s not going to exasperate his girl by being a basket case.
(Maybe she’ll let him stay a little while longer.)
“Why good MORNING!” chirps a radio voice, and Lucifer’s shoulders immediately wince up almost to his ears in nails-across-a-chalkboard irritation. “If it isn’t our reclusive monarch in the flesh! And so snappily dressed.”
Fine, so Lucifer is making pancakes in his oversized pink sweater and pajama pants. He had it in him to fight ONE battle today, and it wasn’t getting dressed. Thanks for being a TOOL about it.
“Fuck off, red guy,” Lucifer says without looking at him.
He can hear the obnoxious swish-swish-swish of the asshole’s coat as he saunters across the kitchen. “Gracious, what kind of manners are those?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Lucifer says, “do you prefer sign language?” He flips him off, still without looking.
Alastor lets that one go by without swinging.
He strolls, rolling his feet, to stand next to Lucifer, where he leans one bony hip against the counter. Lucifer can see the red blur in his periphery and he wills himself not to fuck up stirring, spill batter, or do anything ELSE to give this stupid loudspeaker something to squawk about.
“Did you need something?” Lucifer asks.
“Is that a step-stool?” Alastor asks with what sounds like genuine delight.
Lucifer feels his face fall straight into a scowl with a nigh-audible thump. “So what if it is?” he asks. “I built this place for CHARLIE, so all the counters are Charlie-height!”
“How altruistic!” Alastor says.
Then the fucker leans down as if to whisper a secret to him. The fallen angel feels warm air on the side of his face as Alastor says, “Except that your daughter has, to my knowledge, never cooked a single thing in her very long life.”
Lucifer wills himself not to puff in indignation even as he puffs in indignation. “Well, how the fuck was I supposed to know?!” he blusters.
“Well,” Alastor says. He stands up straight and starts ticking ways off on his fingers like the unrepentant asshole that he is, “there’s parental involvement, paying a modicum of attention, outright asking…”
“Rhetorical question, transmittors-for-brains!”
“You could have asked me,” Alsator says, putting a hand to his own chest with a theatrical flourish. “After all, I’ve taken such an interest in Charlie - I feel that I know the girl so very well at this point.”
“Alright, THAT’S it,” Lucifer says, wheeling on Alastor and brandishing the spatula at him in a way that flicks batter onto the backsplash (fuck). “Curse or no curse, I’m about to punch you into another ZIPCODE.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Alastor says. His red eyes are wide, lit up like they really only ARE when he’s harassing someone (usually Lucifer) - fucking cat with a mouse, sadistic freak of a -
Then Alastor leans down slightly, hands behind his back, to grin in his face.
The problem is that he also…looms, kind of.
And Lucifer is at the corner of the counter, so he feels…a little bit boxed in.
He’s not sure how this ends in him jolting so violently he almost topples right off the step stool. He doesn’t know why he’s halfway climbed the counter, his wings poofing out like he's some kind of silly BIRD trying to make itself look bigger.
Fuck.
He can hear himself breathing much too fast.
Fucking shit.
His face burns with shame on top of the panic. Lucifer GETS that he’s being punished, okay? He broke creation, home-wrecked the first two marriages on record, and invented the accordion. He’s got some bad karma coming his way, but did that eternal punishment HAVE to include making an ass of himself in front of ALASTOR, of all people?
“Whoops, slipped a little bit there,” he mutters, frantically tucking his wings back into their pocket dimension, brushing imaginary dirt off his sleeves.
He forces himself to take a slow, deep breath.
He glances up warily, expecting to see a smug, satisfied, I-knew-it grin on Mr. Bellhop’s face.
Instead, he sees - well, the closest he can compare it to is the face of someone who’s accidentally knocked something off a shelf and broken it.
Alastor’s eyes are a little wider than normal.
His ears have gone flat back in what looks like alarm.
“...s-sorry,” Lucifer stammers, reflexively.
What the fuck is he apologizing for?
He just wanted to make pancakes for his kid like he did back when she used to like him! He’s not the one who had to go all creepy-sinner and LOOM at people!
Alastor looks as awkward as Lucifer feels. “No harm done,” he says, which seems to be as reflexive as Lucifer’s apology.
They stand there staring stupidly at one another for several beats.
Then, much to Lucifer’s consternation, the sinner takes a step back, then another, leaning deliberately back against the counter. “Your skillet is overheating,” he says loftily.
Lucifer feels something unclench in his chest, like a sort of keyturn, and he can breathe again. “Fuck you, it’s supposed to be this hot,” he mutters, because yeah, if Alastor is going to rally and act like that never happened, then so is Lucifer.
Lucifer petulantly drops a dollop of butter into the pan.
“Glad to see healthy eating is so high on his majesty’s priorities list.”
Lucifer rolls his eyes in such an exaggerated way that it’s a wonder he doesn’t sprain anything. “And if I used cooking spray or olive oil, you’d say I’m not a real chef. No, no,” And here he imitates Alastor’s obnoxious trans-Atlantic, “real cooking involves lard and only lard! It’s the proper way.”
Alastor deer-snorts at him. “Charming,” he says dryly.
“Hey, just holdin’ up a mirror.”
“Oh no,” And that’s Charlie’s voice from over his shoulder, sounding wary and a little disappointed. “Are you two fighting already?”
Of COURSE she would come into the kitchen when he's acting like a child.
Fuck.
Lucifer feels his knuckles go white from grasping the pan handle so hard.
“Fighting?” he yelps, almost half an octave too high. “Ha-ha, no, we…”
“Not at all, my dear!” Alastor says with a little flourish of his microphone. “Your father was just showing me how to make flapjacks the northern - and I still maintain, the inferior - way.”
Lucifer doesn’t know what’s worse: that he’s apparently so damned pathetic that even the notoriously sadistic Radio Demon is bailing him out from secondhand embarrassment, or how pitifully grateful he is for it. “And I maintain you’re not allowed to say that until you’ve tried one,” he says, brandishing a spatula in Alastor's direction.
“What’s to try? A proper flapjack is flat, tasteless, and only edible when piled with something that completely masks its flavor.”
“Okay, blasphemy like that definitely belongs in Hell,” Lucifer says. “I can see how you got here.”
Alastor just gives one of those annoying hmmms of his.
It’s almost their normal cadence. It’s just maybe not as sharp as usual.
It could possibly pass for friendly bickering if you’re optimistic enough and willing to squint a little, like Charlie clearly is.
“Oh,” she says, quiet and maybe even pleased.
Okay, Radio-guy, Lucifer thinks, maybe I won’t put cyanide in your pancake.
He plates the pancakes carefully (in his mind, a plate clatters to the floor, and ImaginaryCharlie’s face falls nigh-audibly into exasperated disappointment).
They’re going to have breakfast.
It’s going to be great.
And then he’s going back to his room where he (for the moment) belongs.
Alastor is not having a very nice morning.
It had started in such a promising way. He’d encountered the King of Hell in the wild - a very rare occurrence indeed since The Incident(™) - and his ears had perked up at the promise of some light antagonism to go with his morning coffee.
Why, the opportunity had all but been handed to him on a PLATTER - or, if you like, on a hilarious little stepstool. That one was really putting the ball on the tee for him, no mistake.
He’d…well.
He’d missed antagonizing Lucifer. The huffy little thing was just so easy to rile up. Pulling his pigtails was the sort of low effort, high reward entertainment that Alastor thrived on.
The man had thrown a rubber duck at him, for fuck’s sake! Alastor can’t get that anywhere else. He can safely say that no other being in Hell would attempt to repel the notorious Radio Demon with a bath toy, especially not after his last little property-destroying tiff with Vox.
Lucifer hates Alastor, certainly - but he hates him in a toothless, familiar sort of way that’s a welcome change from the homicidal, obsessive way that most people hate him. The devil perhaps wants to set Alastor on fire more often than an ordinary person would find restful, but he does not, Alastor thinks, want to put a chain around his neck and make him sit at his feet like an exotic pet, doesn’t want to -
(Vox makes eye contact with him from the bed, and that shark grin is a promise, every slap of skin on skin is an accusation that makes Alastor’s nerves itch.)
No, surely not.
Anyway, the Lucifer he found in the kitchen this morning seems much smaller than the other one, the one Alastor knew before Vox’s little tantrum. The bags under the fallen angel’s eyes are pronounced, unconcealable even with the other man’s multi-step beauty routine.
Even seemingly recovered from whatever fright Alastor gave him (which the Radio Demon wasn’t stung by, for fuck’s sake, even if HE hasn’t done anything to the man), Lucifer is still all but tiptoeing around the kitchen to set out his breakfast offerings instead of taking up space with his usual peacock-strutting.
(Alastor has seen this before. This reminds him of something, but what?)
The plates rattle, just slightly, when Lucifer sets them on the table. That must mean the man’s hands are shaking.
He keeps glancing at Charlie like a dog that expects to be kicked.
(His mother. It reminds Alastor of his mother the morning after his father had been on a bender.)
What is this?
Vox and his machine didn’t do this.
Alastor glances around the table for any clue as to how this new and troubling development has managed to pop up to ruin Alastor’s perfectly uncomplicated fun. No help comes from Charlie, who is still smiling, chatting animatedly at her paramour about…something, Alastor doesn’t care what.
Vaggi, as she’s calling herself now, looks rather uncomfortable. She’s listening to Charlie or, bless her sickeningly loyal little heart, she is trying, but her gaze keeps drifting to Lucifer.
The former exorcist bites her lower lip subtly, the way she does when she’s feeling guilty.
Interesting
With her usual approach to conversation - that is to say, with all the tact and subtlety of a buffalo careening through a supermarket - Charlie turns to her dad, who is retreating to his own seat. “It’s so good to see you up and around again,” she says.
Lucifer’s shoulders relax infinitesimally - goodness, Alastor doesn’t remember the man being so tense. “Oh, uh - yeah, that’s me,” he says, grinning awkwardly down at his plate. “Bounce right back! Like I always say, the show must go on.”
“Yep! That.” Charlie turns in her chair, her lanky form folded up with enthusiasm. “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about!”
Lucifer pauses, his recently-cut pancake halfway to his mouth. “You, uh…wanted to talk to me?”
He sounds pitifully hopeful.
He sounds like this is something he’s been waiting for.
“Uh-huh,” she says. Her wide, yellow eyes sparkle. “I’ve been thinking about how we all just survived something really difficult, and - well, I think we need to celebrate that.”
Lucifer slowly lowers his fork back to his plate, pancake untasted. “Celebrate, um…”
“Not dying!” Vaggi says, plastering a wide, tooth-clenching grin across her face. Ah, toxic positivity - what a veritable well of entertainment THAT is! “We’re celebrating the fact that we did not die.”
“Oh, that’s a…that’s a great thing to celebrate.”
“We’re going out,” Charlie says.
Lucifer’s eyes go from wary to alarmed. His fork falls back to his plate with an audible clatter that he doesn’t even seem to hear.
“Out?” he ventures.
“Yes! All of us, the whole core crew - well, not Angel, he’s…he’s not back yet, but everyone else!”
“Out there,” Lucifer clarifies. He points to the window.
“Yes!” Charlie says, punching one fist into the other palm decisively - and Alastor blinks. No mistaking it, Lucifer flinched at the sound.
What is happening?
Alastor looks at Vaggi again, but the former exorcist’s shoulders have hunched up in discomfort that Charlie, bless her stampeding heart, has not noticed. “I thought it would be great if you’d come with us!” the princess finishes with a tiny waggle of jazz hands.
Lucifer looks like the sort of animal that has got its leg caught in a snare; he looks as if he would cheerfully gnaw off one of his own limbs to escape this conversation. He laughs, high and strained. “Wow, Charlie, I, uh - don’t know if that’s such a -”
“Dad,” Charlie says. “This is your kingdom. These are YOUR people as much as mine - they need to see you, and you need to see them!”
“I…no, I really - honey, I can see them just fine from the window…”
“Dad!”
He jerks again as if shying away from her audible disappointment. He would have spilled his coffee if Alastor had not reached over and steadied it.
(He’s not being helpful. He’s just in the splash zone.)
And Charlie somehow doesn’t notice.
“I know you’ve been…through some things, but you have to get back out there, okay? I know mom would want you to.”
Charlie looks down at her plate, almost shyly - a strangely hopeful little smile on her face. She fiddles with her fork. “If…you know, if she should just happen to come back, I…I know she’d be impressed. That is, she would be if you made the effort.”
Privately, Alastor thinks that Lucifer did not look this pained when he hauled himself out of the rubble with a slew of new, bloody wounds seeping through his pretentious ringmaster coat. The expression he’s got on his face is less a smile and more a panicked rictus. “Sure…sure, Char-char. I’d uh…love to go out and celebrate with…with you and your friends.”
Charlie gives her father a wide, beatific smile that highlights her angelic half…for all of a half a second. Then, she turns her considerable enthusiasm to Alastor in a way that makes his ears reflexively flatten out to the sides. The girl has a certain, too-eager sort of charm, but she is very MUCH at times.
“You’re invited, too, Alastor!” she says. “You’ll come, won’t you?”
Ugh.
Going out with this crew sounds a bit like herding a bunch of socially-inept, mentally-damaged cats into a vet’s office. It’s bound to be messy, loud, frustrating, and someone may very well lose an eye in the process.
“Oh, an old thing like me would just hold you kids up!” Alastor deflects.
“Please, Al?” Charlie asks. She takes one of his hands in both of hers before he can retreat to a minimum safe distance. Something in her smile reads as strained, as complicated.
(We could be partners, Vincent says to him what feels like a million years ago, his smile a thing that could crack Alastor open.)
“You’re a really important part of our little family here,” she says.
Alastor can see Vaggi very clearly rolling her eyes over Charlie’s shoulder.
In the end, that’s what decides it for him: pure spite. “In that case,” he says, “I would be delighted to come. You know how much I hate to miss a party, ha! Though I DO hope you’ll be exercising some taste in finding us a proper place? I’m allergic to subwoofers.”
He expects Lucifer to protest, or at least to roll his eyes like dear Vagatha did. Instead, Alastor can see Lucifer settling into a sort of dissociative stare, gazing off into the middle distance of the dreadful kitchen wallpaper like a man contemplating his own execution.
“Oh, uh - right! We want everyone to have a good time,” Charlie says with an enthusiastic nod that thumps her heavy braid against the back of her chair, beaming at him like he’s handed her the world with a bow on top.
That would normally have Lucifer breathing fire in Alastor’s general direction, but the fallen angel seems not even to hear it.
His red slit pupils are barely pinpricks in his oversized eyes.
Alastor wonders if the man has suffered some sort of aneurysm…if drool will be next, or uncontrollable twitching.
“Vaggi, let’s do it tomorrow, okay? Tomorrow’s Friday. People go out on Fridays, right?”
Vaggi smiles in a small, warm way she can’t seem to help. “Uh, yeah, babe. People go out on Fridays.”
“Okay, tomorrow, then! Oh, this is going to be so great. It’s just what everyone needs!” Charlie gushes, popping up to her feet in the puppy-going-for-a-walk levels of excitement that always makes Alastor shrivel a little internally. “Come on, Vaggi! Let’s go tell everyone! Oh, and call a club! We should book a table, right?”
“Whoa, Charlie, take it easy, there’s no fire -” But Vaggi is half-laughing as her girl takes her by the wrist and hauls her out of her seat. The fallen exorcist snags her orange juice as she’s pulled out of the kitchen like a balloon being tugged along after a sprinting child.
Alastor looks down at the table - at the untouched food slowly cooling.
There’s a tiny blue vase in the middle, he notices, with a cheery yellow flower freshly placed in it. The napkins have all been neatly folded.
There’s a tickle somewhere in the base of Alastor’s brain - a brief sputter and spark of a time before a bullet tore through, something he thought it took with it.
(It’s a kitchen, small and ragged, lit by oil lamps and candles. The shabby tablecloth is freshly washed and pressed - or it was, before it slid off the table, before Alastor’s father pulled it with him when he got up to storm out of the room.)
Lucifer doesn’t look at any of the remains of his unappreciated attempt at breakfast.
He is looking at his own, shaking hands that hover over his untouched plate.
And something wrong settles into Alastor’s chest like the first crack in a mirror.