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The last thing Lucifer expected to see upon opening his heavy eyes was the high ceiling of his hotel room. For several long moments he merely stared upward, tracing the familiar patterns and dangling circus flags above him with blurry vision.
He was home. Safe and tucked far away from greedy cables and awful tingles that set his nerves aflame.
Relief should have followed in the wake of seeing his room and yet what unfurled within his chest was cold dread.
Why? Why was he here?
Charlie had kicked him out, had told him he had fucked things up enough. Then, when he thought he couldn’t get any lower, he’d stepped so eagerly into that stupid trap.
Vox’s trap.
The name alone made his very bones ache.
He hated that he remembered it so clearly. Hated that it lingered within him alongside the memory of metal biting into flesh and electricity burning through veins that had once carried starlight.
Had someone brought him here by mistake?
Or worse, had Charlie simply been too kind to tell them of his banishment?
She always was too sweet for her own good.
A breath quivered past Lucifer’s lips as he attempted to roll onto his side, only to find that such a minor effort felt like a herculean task. The blankets pressed against him with crushing weight, silk turned to lead by nothing more than the weakness of his own body.
Exhaustion pooled in his bones, and a strange hollowness ached within his chest, as if everything vital had been scooped out of him like the guts of a jack-o-lantern and never properly returned.
It was familiar, in a way. Reminiscent of another awakening. Another failure.
Another moment spent staring upward while trying to understand how everything had gone so catastrophically wrong.
Somewhere beneath his skin phantom tingles danced along nerves that remembered too much. His fingers twitched weakly against the sheets.
And he was so tired. So very tired.
Darkness crept back into the edges of his vision and faintly, he heard Charlie speaking, was aware of a gentle hand that stroked through his hair.
“It’s okay, Dad. It’s okay.” She whispered. It was so distant that he couldn’t tell whether he’d actually heard her.
“You’re safe. Just rest.”
The last thing Lucifer felt before sleep reclaimed him was the crushing relief of not having to stay awake long enough to find out if it was a dream or not.
Consciousness was a fleeting thing for Lucifer over the next few days, yet whenever he did rouse it was to a familiar presence, a familiar voice. Charlie was there, talking to him, holding his hand.
Comforting him, assuring him he was wanted even when she wasn’t sure he could hear her.
It helped ease some of the ache in his chest, some of the anxiety that he was doing something wrong by simply existing within the hotel. Sleep came easier after that and his body no longer felt quite so heavy, but he had yet to truly find the strength to do more than open his eyes for a few moments at a time.
On the fourth day, Lucifer awoke to the sound of a tray being set down, his nose taunted with a smell so divine it was no doubt a punishment ordained by Heaven to extend his torment.
“Charlie..?” His voice was dry with disuse, barely creaking past his lips.
“Oh, Goodness, no.” It was followed by a familiar track of canned laughter. “Though I am deeply flattered you would mistake me for such pleasant company.”
Hearing Alastor's voice felt like being plunged into the coldest sea in Envy. The last thing Lucifer had expected was the presence of the Radio Demon. The sheer shock of it had him scrambling upright before his protesting body could stop him.
“Where’s Charlie?” Lucifer rasped, his brows furrowed in a deep glare.
“Running the hotel.” Alastor answered cooly, rearranging some of the silverware on the tray as he did so.
“What about Vaggi?”
“Also running the hotel.”
A confused huff tumbled from the king’s parched throat, sounding rather like a goose honk.
Alastor’s ears twitched at the noise and for one horrifying moment, Lucifer thought he saw the corners of the deer’s smile widen.
Lifting the tray from the bedside table, the sinner placed it on Lucifer's lap with such practiced normalcy one might think this was a daily routine between the two rather than a bewildering act of kindness from a sworn enemy.
Steam curled upward from the bowl, carrying scents Lucifer could not immediately name. Garlic? Pepper? Something rich and savory that made his stomach tight with sudden, desperate interest.
Beneath several thin slices of meat sat what appeared to be some manner of creamed rice, though Lucifer couldn’t say for certain as the entire thing was smothered in a thick reddish-brown sauce that glistened under the light, temptation made edible.
His mouth watered just looking at it and he brought a hand to his lips, subconsciously wiping away phantom drool.
“Did you make this?” The king’s eyes stayed firmly affixed to the food in front of him, warring between his desire to dive right into the meal and denying Alastor the satisfaction.
“With my own two hands.” As if to punctuate his words, the deer wiggled his fingers in a jaunty little wave before settling into an arm chair not far from Lucifer’s bed. “You should eat while you can. I imagine the novelty of my presence will wear off soon and you’ll be struggling to stay awake again.”
Frowning softly, the devil looked towards the sinner. He couldn’t figure out why, exactly, the man had turned up like a bad penny with a gift of a home cooked meal. It reeked of an agenda, and yet Alastor had shown none. No demands, no mockery… not even the banter he was used to.
Had he accidentally fallen into an alternate dimension?
What was worse was that Alastor’s words rang true. Even now he could feel his limbs growing heavy, how his eyelids seemed to stick with every blink. If he didn’t eat now, he’d be using the food as a pillow and regardless of who made the meal it seemed a shame to waste it.
Letting out a soft sigh, Lucifer picked up his fork and began to eat, the ambient static around the Radio Demon spiking as he did.
Smug bastard.
It became a ritual for Lucifer’s days to be filled with sleep – restless dreams and persistent crimson apparitions that came bearing trays. At some point they had all begun bleeding into each other, his mind struggling to heal at the same rate of his body. Reluctantly, the king would allow himself to surface in uneven pieces, consciousness returning to him in thin streams, like daylight seeping in through the gap of closed curtains.
On some days, he would pull himself from the depths of slumber long enough to exchange words with Charlie, to grace her with gentle smiles and affirmations. Other days he simply slept on, ignoring a world that now knew it was his prison and not the other way around.
It’s not like Hell needed him anyway.
Still, there was one sound that never failed to rouse him. A Pavlovian response he surely developed as a result of the delicious meals that were delivered in its wake.
A tray set down on the table, teasing him with the allure of a full stomach, prompted one of his eyes to open begrudgingly.
As always, Alastor accompanied it, smiling down at the devil with all the benevolent intentions of a deer with rabies.
Lucifer had tried asking the Overlord why he was doing this on several occasions, but every time the sinner had jitterbugged his way out of answering the question. At some point he had simply lost the desire to keep asking, especially when Alastor insisted on breaking him out of such wonderful moments of self loathing. Didn’t the man realize he had demons to wrestle that weren’t him?
Sighing softly, the king simply rolled onto his side, putting his back to the Radio Demon and today’s offering.
Maybe if he ignored the sinner, he would go away.
If only Lucifer could be so lucky.
Instead, Alastor merely settled into one of the nearby chairs and pulled out a book, flipping it open as though his presence required neither invitation nor explanation. Soon the only sounds in the room were the turning of pages and the faint hum of static, a combination Lucifer was becoming far more accustomed to than he cared to admit.
“You know, you could just say you're checking on me.” The words crawled from Lucifer’s throat, lined with rust and stubborn sleep.
“I could.” The answer arrived following the rustle of paper, the man having waited to finish his page before speaking.
“So then why don’t you?” Wrapped in a growl, the words burned with the weight of Lucifer’s growing frustration.
“Ah, ah, ahhh,” Alastor tutted gently, glancing at the fallen angel over the cover of his book. “Curiosity killed the cat, you know, and you’ve had quite the brush with death already.”
Lucifer frowned at the wall, steadfastly refusing to face the sinner.
There was no mockery in the statement. No barb hidden beneath it waiting to be discovered.
Somehow that annoyed him more.
“Whatever. Waste your time however you want.” The dismissal was met with a gentle hum and the turn of another page.
At his bedside, the scent of Alastor’s home cooked meal lingered, persistent enough to seduce the devil despite himself, were he not so determined to ignore it.
If the Radio Demon intended to haunt his room, then the king would simply deny him an audience.
Lucifer wasn't certain when sleep came for him, but somewhere between one breath and the next, the rustle of turning pages had given way to soft jazz and static, and that was the last thing he remembered.
Such was the pattern they fell into.
Alastor would arrive each day with a culinary manifestation of temptation and the devil would glare at the tray as though it had personally offended him, waiting for the sinner to speak first.
He never did.
Instead he would simply settle into his chair, open whatever book occupied his interest that day, and leave Lucifer to wrestle with his frustration in silence.
It never mattered if he ate the food or not, the Radio Demon was simply content to read, staying until sleep began to pull Lucifer low and leaving in a haze of smooth, comforting jazz. It filled the empty spaces Alastor left behind, curling through the shadows to drape itself over Lucifer’s thoughts like a blanket.
It was infuriating.
It was intriguing.
And still the king couldn’t figure out why.
Somewhere in those long, dragging days, Lucifer began to pay attention to the books.
They were never the same. Sometimes they were thick leather-bound things with titles half worn away from the spines, while others were thin yellowed paperbacks that looked as if they had been procured from the most questionable corners of Hell. Once the deer had even brought a volume so ancient it appeared liable to crumble into ash if handled too harshly.
Lucifer almost asked about that one.
Almost.
By the eighth day of this new normal, the devil had decided the arrangement had gone on long enough.
His body was healed now, he didn’t need that damn deer darkening his doorway each day with food, and silence, and books that scratched at Lucifer’s curiosity. Especially when he didn’t know what game the sinner was playing.
And he was sure, absolutely sure, that there was a game. Alastor never acted without purpose.
But when the Radio Demon finally came waltzing into his room that evening, the king’s entire plan was thrown out the window in the first three seconds.
Because the book Alastor was holding was unlike any of the others before it.
Its cover was an explosion of barely tasteful vulgarity: a shirtless demon with rippling muscles clutching a woman whose dress seemed to be losing a war against gravity. Around them were enough roses, candles, and strategically placed silk to suggest several crimes against literature had been committed in the novel’s making.
Lucifer stared, trying to decide which was more offensive: the cover art or the fact that Alastor appeared ready to read it in front of him.
Willingly.
“What,” he said slowly, voice thick with disbelief, “the fuck is that?”
A long suffering sigh filtered past the deer’s lips, laden with theatrical disappointment.
“Of course.” Alastor lifted the scandalous paperback high into the air, as though presenting some sacred text to an unworthy congregation. “It would be such lowbrow literature that finally piques that fabled curiosity of yours.”
With all the exaggerated grace of a stage actor succumbing to despair, he collapsed into the armchair beside the devil’s bed, one leg thrown neatly over the other as the book rested dramatically against his chest.
Lucifer stared at him, trying his best to keep his eyes from wandering back to the provocative cover.
“That isn’t literature,” he said flatly. “That’s pornography dressed up in fancy words.”
“So judgmental despite being the literal devil!” Alastor exclaimed loudly, grinning as Lucifer blushed and rushed to explain himself. The sinner simply kept going, ignoring the king’s adorable sputtering.
“And here I thought you, of all people, would appreciate a tale of passion, betrayal, and forbidden appetites.” The book was waved about with each word, punctuating the description.
It made Lucifer grind his teeth, eyes narrowing as his fists tightened against his sheets. “Why are you here?”
That earned him a wicked cackle. One laced with surprisingly genuine amusement.
“Oh, we’ve circled back to that, have we?”
“Yes!”
The deer hummed, tapping one finger against the spine of his book. “I am tragically burdened with free time.”
One of Lucifer’s eyes twitched, and his horns burst free in an eruption of gold and flame, underscoring the irritation that sparked hot beneath his skin.
Alastor’s gaze flicked upwards, his ears perking forward with interest. The fallen angel ignored it.
“That’s not an answer.” Lucifer growled low in his throat, his anger only growing as the Radio Demon simply shrugged.
“It is the answer I’m giving.”
He jabbed an accusing finger towards the book and its lurid cover. “Then why bring that?”
Alastor glanced down at it, as if the object had never done anything wrong in its entire existence.
“Because, despite my distaste for the genre, it is actually quite well written.”
Lucifer barked out a laugh so sharp it hurt his throat.
“Oh, bullshit.”
“Mm.” Alastor flipped it open, skimming one of his scarlet claws along the page. “Political intrigue. A murder mystery. A surprisingly nuanced exploration of grief.”
Lucifer blinked, then frowned. The fire between his horns dimmed slightly as his eyes darted from the book to the sinner’s face and then back again.
“That can’t possibly be true.”
“And yet.” Alastor turned another page. “Here I am, recommending it to you.”
The devil’s stare lingered, his horns beginning to recede as his anger waned.
“Let me see it.” It was a demand, from a king to his subject.
Alastor’s grin widened, his head snapping sideways at an unnatural angle. “No.”
“Excuse me?” The horns were back, the fire between them burning so brightly it threatened to consume the book and Alastor’s eyebrows with it.
“I’ll trade you.”
That immediately put Lucifer on edge. Surely this was not where the Radio Demon revealed his grand machinations?
“For what?” He asked cautiously, wariness growing as Alastor looked him over, slowly assessing the celestial creature before him as if he were some ancient relic to be treated with care and regard.
“A bath.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Lucifer struggled for a moment to process, exactly, what had just been said. Slowly his features curdled into an expression of profound offense.
“A what?”
“A bath,” Alastor offered pleasantly. “Preferably one that involves soap and copious amounts of scrubbing. It has been…”
He looked at his wrist, checking a watch that wasn’t there. “...over two weeks since you last bathed.”
The king’s jaw dropped so quickly it nearly came unhinged.
“It has not,” he immediately protested, cheeks burning gold with equal parts embarrassment and horror.
“I assure you it has.” The sinner closed the book with an audible snap, a single eyebrow raised in Lucifer’s direction.
“That is slander.”
“That is basic arithmetic.” Alastor couldn’t help but snort in amusement, the devil glaring at him with enough heat it was a wonder he didn’t spontaneously combust.
“The only reason you’re still dealing with me,” the Overlord continued, “is because I am the sole occupant of this establishment capable of enduring the smell.”
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Lucifer shot off the bed so fast the blanket tangled around his legs, dragging him forward. His wings tore free behind him in a frantic burst of white and crimson, the angel catching himself by pure instinct and barely sparing his dignity from becoming a greasy splotch on the floor.
“Only because you eat corpses!” He cried and Alastor blinked, as though that were an entirely valid counterargument.
“That is only proving my point, sire.”
A strangled, furious sound somewhere between a gasp and shriek left Lucifer as he wrestled against the urge to wrap his sinburnt claws around the sinner’s neck and squeeze.
As if sensing his impending double death by means of imploding seraphim, Alastor held up the book, giving it a little shake.
“One bath. Then you can read what the fuss is all about.”
Lucifer pointed a finger in the man’s direction, and hissed with such venom it would have killed a lesser demon. “You should be the most hated creature in all creation!”
“Even so,” Alastor’s voice dripped with smug amusement. “I’m still the one holding the book.”
With one final, rancorous glare, the devil tore himself from the tangle of sheets and stormed towards the ensuite, muttering about insane, cannibalistic deer the entire way.
Behind him, Alastor’s laughter crackled through the room like static.
Stepping into the bathroom, Lucifer slammed the door closed hard enough to rattle the hinges. He lingered there a moment, body pressed against the cool wood, trying to smother the hot humiliation and simmering anger that burned beneath his skin.
“Insufferable loudspeaker,” he grumbled softly, shuffling towards the shower while stewing in embarrassment and indignation both.
Still whispering curses in the general direction of the bothersome boogie man in the next room, the fallen angel fiddled with the knobs of the shower, working the temperature to his exact preference before finally stepping beneath the spray.
Heat poured over him like wet velvet, soaking into muscles that had spent the better part of two weeks locked stiff from disuse. Weeks of sweat and sickness loosened beneath his fingers, sliding from his body in murky rivulets that washed down the drain like so much sin.
Lucifer exhaled long and slow.
It felt so good. It felt like his body was slowly uncoiling.
So, of course, his mind had to ruin it all.
Everywhere his hands wandered he found only smooth, unbroken skin. Yet he could still remember the wounds, still envision the shape of the swollen, puckered holes that had been ripped into his body.
His fingertips twitched with phantom sparks, electric ghosts skittering through nerves that still recalled what it felt like to be flayed open.
It wasn't pain, not exactly, but memory. Fresh and vivid enough that the sweet scent of soap gave way to the unmistakable reek of charred flesh. Lucifer's breath caught.
He knew the smell wasn't there. Knew it.
Yet his body refused to believe it, trapping itself inside that prison of angelic steel once more. For one awful moment he could feel it again, those voracious cables burrowing into him, drinking from him in a way nothing in creation ever had before.
The King of Hell, reduced to a battery.
Bracing one hand against the tiled wall, Lucifer lowered his head beneath the streaming water, letting it wash away the grime that lingered in his hair.
It was almost poetic, wasn’t it? Vox had managed to make him the one thing he had never been: useful.
And really, it always came back to that, didn’t it? He was never enough.
Not angel enough for Heaven.
Not ruthless enough for Hell.
Not father enough for Charlie.
Not cunning enough to see Vox’s trap.
Against his chest, the charcoal tips of his claws dug into his skin until golden blood welled upwards like drops of liquid sunlight
His secret, his shame, had been exposed.
For all his crown, his titles and theatrics, he couldn’t even protect himself.
Couldn’t protect Charlie.
Not from sinners, not from the people she loved so dearly, who would strike her down as soon as it was convenient for them.
Beneath his feet, filth and glittering gold spiraled together like watercolor, a fleeting portrait of shame dissolving beneath his heels.
How much of it would Lucifer truly leave behind?
He wasn’t sure how long he hid beneath the warm mist, lost somewhere between his thoughts and the mindless ritual of scrubbing himself raw. At some point his hands had simply stopped, hanging limp at his sides. There was nothing left for him here but the steady hiss of the shower and the ache in his chest.
At least magic spared him the indignity of cold water. The steam clung close like incense, the marble echoing with the endless hymn of falling drops. A baptism by lava, fitting for the Devil.
The warmth still seeped into his skin, easing the ache in his muscles, but there was no point in lingering any longer. Its borrowed comfort had run dry. Time may have become shapeless for him here, but beyond the heat and guilt it marched ever onward.
For one brief, unwelcome moment, he wondered if Alastor would still be waiting for him on the other side of the door.
It bothered him that such a possibility did not fill him entirely with dread. Worse still, that some small, traitorous part of him hoped the sinner was.
With a tired sigh, Lucifer dragged himself from the shower and dried off with more aggression than was strictly necessary, toweling his hair until pale curls stood wild and unruly about his face. Alastor had already seen him half comatosed and pathetic, what was a little scruffiness between king and unwanted caretaker?
Dressed in a fresh pair of pink pajamas the fallen angel steeled himself for whatever fresh mockery awaited beyond the bathroom.
The door creaked open slowly, answered only by silence.
Stepping into the room Lucifer looked around, brows pinched in confusion. He had truly expected to see that ridiculous crimson menace draped across the armchair, grinning at him like a fox in the henhouse.
But there was nothing and the absence of the sinner struck him in a way he could not put a name to.
Or rather, he didn’t want to.
Still, Alastor’s presence lingered in Lucifer’s room in other ways.
For one, the bed clothes had been changed.
Gone was the miserable wreckage of his self-imposed convalescence, their sweat-stained remains replaced by fresh linens, crisp and smooth. The blankets were even folded back at the corners welcomingly, as if hoping to ensnare the devil with the promise of their comfort.
On the bedside table sat a small plate crowded with slices of pear, soft white cheese, dark crackers, and ribbons of cured meat. It was lighter than anything the deer had brought him before and yet Lucifer was thankful for that. He wasn’t sure his stomach could handle anything heavier after what the shower had stirred loose inside him.
Upon his pillow was the object that had started it all.
The book.
That vulgar, silk framed monument to bad decisions sat squarely in the center of his bed as though it belonged there. Beckoning him to slip beneath the sheets to partake of both the food and the sin waiting between its pages.
A fresh pulse of irritation fluttered beneath the devil’s ribs. He never asked for this. Never asked for such consideration and acts of unsolicited domesticity.
It needed to stop.
There was something deeply unsettling about being cared for by a creature he did not trust.
He didn’t want it to stop.
Scowling, Lucifer stalked to bed and snatched up the book. He wanted to throw it out the nearest window.
Instead, he climbed beneath the fresh sheets with a huff, stealing one piece of fruit from the plate before cracking it open.
It was terrible.
Utterly ridiculous.
Within the first chapter alone there had been three longing stares, one scandalous glove removal, and enough dramatic tension to choke a horse.
By the second chapter, someone had been poisoned.
Come the third, Lucifer was beginning to suspect Alastor hadn’t been lying.
The prose was indulgent, overwrought, and embarrassingly compelling. To his mounting dismay, he found himself consuming each chapter faster than the last.
Halfway through a heated confrontation involving grief, blackmail, and an absurdly self-indulgent ballroom scene, Lucifer felt it.
That peculiar prickle at the back of his neck.
Slowly his gaze lifted from the page, sliding across the room in search of the presence he could sense was there.
At the farthest corner of the room, where the light failed to reach and the shadows gathered thick as midnight, something shifted.
A shape crowned in antlers and two criminally fluffy ears.
Lucifer couldn’t help the slow smile that curled across his lips.
“...Have you been hiding there the whole time?”
Two red eyes blinked open, a Cheshire grin splitting across the shadow’s face as it raised one hand to pantomime shushing.
For the first time in two weeks, the king laughed. It was hoarse and small, but it was genuine.
Still smiling, he picked up a piece of cheese and opened the book once more. For the first time in an age, the silence did not feel quite so empty.
The following week passed in a strange sort of peace.
It was brittle. A thin thing, quivering like the first skin of ice creeping over a winter pond.
But it existed, and for now that was enough to lure Lucifer back to his workshop.
It sat high in the tower above his room, tucked away beneath a ceiling reminiscent of a circus tent, decorated with gold trimmed flags that fluttered in a breeze that never died. Scattered gears and scraps of wood littered every surface, half finished ideas left to gather dust where inspiration had failed them.
Long ago, one might have found any manner of clockwork creature here – life breathed into them by the nimble fingers of the Lightbringer. Now, however, it was cluttered with ducks in various states of creation. Some were wingless, others headless, one near completion stared up at him with glass eyes that held the imagined weight of judgement.
That one was quick to be shoved in a drawer.
Usually his workshop soothed him.
It was a place to create. It was a place where the broken thoughts inside his head could become harmless little things with wings and wheels.
Usually.
Today he sat hunched at his workbench, elbows braced against the scarred wood as he stared at his tools like he hadn’t known them for his entire life.
He just wanted to create a duck. Something simple, something familiar.
Yet the tools all felt wrong.
Sighing softly, Lucifer reached for a fresh block of yellow rubber, kneading it slowly between his fingers. Soft and pliant, it yielded beneath his touch exactly as he remembered.
A beak first, then the curve of a head.
His hands were shaping the soft rise of its neck when a tingling sparked through his fingertips.
It crept beneath his skin like a low electrical hum, not unlike Alastor’s static, only stripped of its warmth, its strange familiarity. It didn’t take long for the tingling to sharpen, turning vicious and bright until Lucifer’s breath snagged against the ghost of pain he could not forget.
“Useless.”
Lilith’s voice cut through his skull like broken glass and the workshop warped around him.
A different place, a different time. Still a workshop, but one that would eventually become a prison.
Lucifer sat on the floor cradling a tiny duck in his hands. Around him lay the scattered wreckage of broken toys and twisted creations, a graveyard of bright little failures.
“These things,” she spat, nudging one of the ruined ducks with the toe of her heels. “These ridiculous little distractions. What good are they to anyone?”
She had always known how to twist her words, how to sharpen them enough to make him bleed.
“Or are you simply hiding in here because you cannot bear to face all your failure out there?”
The memory cracked apart, leaving Lucifer trembling in its wake. The rubber slipped from his hands and bounced against the workbench, lost amid the scattered debris.
What was he doing? Why was he even bothering to try?
What good would it do? What was the point of its creation? To…what? To bring joy? As if that had ever mattered in Hell.
His breath came faster now, sweat beading at his temples as he stared at the worn grain beneath his hands like it might split open beneath him.
“You’ve fucked things up enough already!”
It was Charlie’s voice this time. Raw, angry, and far too much like her mother’s.
Even worse, she wasn’t wrong.
That’s what he did best. Fuck things up.
Fuck up Heaven.
Fuck up humanity.
Fuck up his family.
Lucifer Morningstar, Sin of Pride. Patron saint of ruin.
His hand spasmed as phantom shocks raced along his arms, coiling around his biceps like live wires. They burrowed into his chest, beneath skin and bone, into the marrow itself where they burned into him like a brand.
For one horrifying moment, the workbench beneath his hands became steel.
The walls around him became glass.
He couldn’t move. His lungs seized. It was going to take everything from him.
Take and take and take and take until there was nothing–
The workshop door swung open, the knob striking the wall with a sharp thud. With it came a scent, savory and spiced, riding along the perpetual breeze and cutting through the panic like a blade.
A second later came the heavy thunk of a bowl being set down and then a pair of hands clapping together, bright and sharp.
“Well!” Alastor announced loudly. “I never thought I’d see the day a miracle happened in Hell, yet here we are. You’re vertical!”
Lucifer flinched hard enough to nearly fall off his stool as reality snapped back into place.
Just his workshop. Just his rooms. Just the scattered remains of his attempts to put a little light back into the darkness of the world.
Just the smell of something warm and delicious, cooked for him by the delicate claws of a cannibalistic serial killer that seemed to have imprinted on him like some overly enthusiastic nanny.
He looked up at the Radio Demon, sweat still slick upon his brow and eyes dull with exhaustion.
Alastor’s grin sharpened at the sight.
“And freshly scrubbed too! I’ll be sure to let everyone know you’ve picked up on basic hygiene again. Perhaps then you’ll garner more visitors than your daughter and the hotelier!”
The king wanted to glare at the deer, to meet all those snide little jabs with his usual bite of anger. But he still felt cold from the panic that had swallowed him whole moments ago, and right now the promise of something warm to steady himself weighed heavier than the familiar banter he clung to like armor.
Glancing down at the bowl, he tilted his head in curiosity. He didn’t recognize the dish.
Rice. Sausage. Shrimp. A smooth, dark broth laced with flecks of red.
His stomach growled in anticipation.
“What is it?”
“Jambalaya,” Alastor answered enthusiastically, seemingly unaffected by Lucifer’s current mood. “An old family recipe, but no worries! No families were harmed in the making of this meal!”
Canned laughter played for the joke, which the devil pointedly ignored.
Picking up the spoon, Lucifer hesitated for only the briefest moment before taking a cautious bite.
Flavor bloomed across his tongue, all smoke and spice and tangy heat. It was delicious, pulling a low, helpless hum from the king’s throat.
Across from him, Alastor’s ears perked forward at the sound, his grin widening with quiet satisfaction.
With every bite, warmth spread through him, rich with spice and heavy with care he refused to examine too closely.
Eventually, he set the spoon down with a quiet sigh.
“I don’t understand.” The words drifted from Lucifer as he turned, letting his gaze settle upon the sinner.
“That hardly narrows it down.” Alastor leaned against the wall, folding his arms as he raised a brow in question.
Lucifer couldn’t help the amused huff that made it past his lips, but it did little to lift the heaviness from his chest.
“Why are you here, Alastor?” The question was quieter this time. It had never stopped gnawing at him, the need to understand. But now he asked it without anger, without demand. Just a tired wish to know.
For a moment, Alastor simply studied him, quietly taking his measure.
Whatever the sinner saw, it seemed to be enough because his grin softened at the edges, some of the imposing presence of the Radio Demon slipping away with it.
“Because I want to be.”
Lucifer blinked.
That answer unsettled him more than any lie might have.
Shaking his head slowly, Lucifer turned to face him, a faint frown pulling at his lips. “But why?”
Silence greeted him, and for a moment it seemed that was all he would get.
But then Alastor sighed dramatically, throwing in an eyeroll for good measure.
“Because, apparently, no one else in this kingdom possesses functioning culinary standards.”
Coming from a cannibal, the remark should have earned a laugh, perhaps even an exasperated groan. Instead, Lucifer only stared at the sinner before letting his gaze drift back to the bowl.
It wasn’t the truth. Not really. But there was something sincere buried beneath it all the same.
Something that eased the tightness within his chest enough for him to lift the spoon again.
Alastor said nothing else after that, merely lingered like an eldritch gargoyle against the wall, watching to make sure the fallen angel finished every last bite.
He hated how calming it was.
Hated how quickly the panic had drained away, how the phantom aches dulled simply because the sinner was there.
He didn’t deserve this.
This…this kindness. Least of all from a creature like Alastor.
A thought crept through his mind like ivy on a headstone.
He could be cruel.
Cruel enough to send the sinner away. Cruel enough to drive him out for good. Alastor was not a man known for tolerating disrespect, and if Lucifer stopped making this little arrangement entertaining, perhaps the deer would finally lose interest.
Yet the mere thought of it made his stomach twinge.
No doubt because he would lose access to the sinner’s absurdly delicious cooking. Certainly not for any other reason.
When the bowl was finally empty, Alastor stepped forward and plucked it neatly from his hands.
“Well then, I’m sure you have a veritable garden of ducks to catch up on, so I won’t hinder you any longer.”
Briefly, a familiar panic tightened his chest. The thought of returning to the silence of the room suddenly felt unbearable. But more than that…
He didn’t want Alastor to go.
“Alastor–” The name left the king’s lips entirely without permission.
The man paused, an ear flicking in acknowledgement.
For one terrifying moment, Lucifer nearly asked him to stay. The words sat there, heavy and unspoken against his tongue.
Instead he cleared his throat.
“Turn on the radio when you leave, please.”
Alastor turned then, staring at the devil in a way he couldn’t quite decipher.
Silence stretched between them, heavy with the words Lucifer had nearly spoken but swallowed before they could ever reach his lips.
Then, slowly, Alastor bowed. It was low and mocking, complete with a theatrical sweep of his arm and adjusting of invisible coattails.
“As you wish, your majesty.”
A moment later jazz spilled into the workshop, warm and comforting as the door clicked shut behind the Radio Demon.
Lucifer let the music envelop him like a cocoon, closing his eyes as his forehead came to rest against the workbench.
He didn’t try to make another duck.
The tingling never returned.
Desperately, he tried not to think about what it meant.
The days that followed his failed retreat into the workshop slipped past in much the same rhythm as those before them.
Lucifer ate. He slept. He wandered his tower and read books that kept appearing at his bedside, courtesy of an unseen umbral benefactor.
He endured Alastor’s visits with all the expected resistance and none of the conviction.
His days remained duckless.
Sleep had grown difficult in the wake of his breakdown. After weeks of turning to it for solace, its sudden rejection stung deeper than it should have.
Now whenever he closed his eyes, instead of finding sweet oblivion, he found only judgement and failure.
Glass walls. Steel restraints. The hum of machinery feeding on divinity.
And beneath it all were old wounds come to roost beside the new. Lilith’s scorn, Charlie’s anger, the voice of every sinner who had ever laid their ruin at his feet.
By the fourth night…or perhaps the fifth, time gone all wibbly-wobbly again, Lucifer gave up on sleep entirely. He didn’t truly need sleep. It was simply an indulgence he found joy in, like eating or breathing.
With his bed stripped of a comfort he never thought he would miss, the devil rose from the nest of rumpled silk and dreams that had never begun. Barefoot, he wandered the length of his tower, drifting from room to room in search of a peace he knew would not come without the presence of crimson and the soft hum of static.
One step became another, aimless and half conscious until the gleam of brass pulled him from the undertow of his thoughts.
The music room.
On the days that creation failed him, music had once been his recourse. During such times he would seek out his instruments and weave songs from strings, keys, and brass alike, coaxing an intimacy from music few souls could rival.
His collection was impressive, though that was to be expected. The angel had been alive before the universe had learned its first song. He had loved it from the very beginning, discovered in the joyful vibration of a star singing out across the inky blackness in the wake of its birth.
Not music in the traditional sense. But it was music all the same, and it was beautiful.
He hadn’t played in so long, since before Lilith had left him. When Charlie had still been their daughter.
The last time he had touched an instrument in this room had been during the spontaneous little duet with Alastor and that had only been for a brief few moments.
Yet how alive he had felt then.
The memory alone had his eyes drifting towards the golden violin, sitting in the center of the room on a red velvet pillow.
It didn’t call to him tonight, but perhaps something else might.
Drifting deeper into the room, his fingers brushed along the rim of an ancient drum. Its hide worn smooth by age and memory, older than most civilizations. Older than six of the Sins.
Lucifer remembered the first time he had heard the steady beat of percussion. Not from the hands of any living creature, no. The first drumbeat had thundered through the universe when a star began to spin, discovering dance and rhythm in the same breath.
The longer his hand lingered on the drum, the more his palm began to ache.
He moved on.
A piano waited beside the far wall, polished blackwood gleaming beneath the fairy lights strung across the room. Its keys had yellowed faintly with age, softened by centuries of use.
He had composed symphonies upon that bench once. Lullabies and love songs too. Melodies with so much hope in them. Some had been written for no one at all, woven into being simply because he wanted the universe to hear something beautiful. Others had been meant for the people he loved, little pieces of his heart disguised as music.
It was the ghost of who he had once been that drove him away from the piano, fingers twitching against the phantom memory of ivory beneath them.
Next came a silver flute resting in its suede cradle, delicate as spun moonlight. Long ago he had teased songs from it so sweet they had made fledgling angels weep. Once, he had played it in a celestial orchestra, sending notes across the entire galaxy in celebration of the coming Garden.
Now the mere thought of lifting it to his lips made his chest twinge.
One by one he passed them, instruments that had once been beloved. Sacred things he had carried with him through the good times and the bad.
He couldn’t bear to touch them now. They were beautiful. For all their age, their scars, their weathering, there was a sanctity about them that the king did not wish to defile.
By the time he reached an old xylophone in the corner, the ache in his hands had settled deep into bone, electric pulses skittering up his arms with every flex and flutter of his fingers.
It was an ugly little duckling compared to the others. Covered in dust and tarnished brass, its bars worn dull by time and neglect.
Such a simple, unassuming thing.
Why did his throat tighten so fiercely when looking upon it?
Creation had once been his purpose. To build. To shape. To breathe beauty into empty places and fill the sprawling void with wonder.
And now that felt beyond him. Just another thing for him to ruin, to taint with his failure.
With trembling hands he reached out, one claw flicking lightly against a rosewood bar.
A small, pitiful note whimpered into existence.
Then another. Then another.
Slowly, a miserable little melody filled the air, uneven and thin. Barely music at all.
With each note, the shaking in his hands worsened, the tingling growing into sharp stings that wound along his wrists and climbed his arms like live currents.
Lucifer’s hands fell away, filling the room with silence once more. Small beads of luminescence dripped from his chin, pattering to the xylophone below, but he didn’t notice. What was a river of constellations running down his cheeks to a being that had hung the very stars?
Something shifted in the darkness behind him, an umbral shape one shade deeper than the surrounding shadows. A familiar figure the king should have spotted, had he not been drowning in his own anguish. It rippled against the wall, wide maw howling in silent distress before it disappeared completely.
Lucifer stood there, oblivious, hands trembling at his sides, lost in the tides of his sorrow. Would the weight of himself finally become too much to bear?
Then the darkness moved, and still the devil did not notice. It grew and shifted, twisting into a figure that towered above him.
A hand seized Lucifer’s chin, sharp claws biting into the softness of his jaw as his head was wrenched upward with enough force to make him stumble.
“Look at me.”
Lucifer startled hard, breath catching in his throat as the growl beneath those words sent shivers cascading along his skin.
Alastor stood before him, half emerged from the shadows like an eldritch horror dragged screaming from the womb of darkness itself. His grip was iron and it was only then that the king realized his cheeks were wet.
Humiliation struck, hot and vicious, and in its wake the devil turned away, pulling against the sinner’s grip. How could he look at him like this?
That only made the fingers on his jaw tighten more.
“Lucifer,” Alastor rumbled his name, low and rough. “Look. At. Me.”
Slowly, the king obeyed and a shocked gasp escaped his lips at what he saw on the Radio Demon’s face.
Or rather, what he didn’t see.
There was no smile. No grin. No lopsided sneer.
Alastor’s mouth had twisted into something raw and jagged, teeth bared in a shape close to a snarl. His eyes burned bright and wild beneath narrowed lids, caught somewhere between fury and apprehension.
But what made Lucifer’s breath shudder, what made his stomach twist, was the glimpse of the deer’s tongue resting just past his lips.
Heat flooded through the fallen angel, even as something cold settled in his core. The realization lodged in him somewhere between horror and fascination.
Alastor had been about to lick his tears away.
For several long, unbearable moments neither of them moved. The sinner’s hand remained clamped around his jaw and Lucifer simply stood there, dazed and breathless while the molten starlight on his cheeks cooled into pale trails of cosmic dust.
“Why are you crying?” The question came out like broken glass, the sharp edges burrowing uncomfortably into barely contained concern.
How could he answer something so precious with anything but the cold, pathetic truth?
“I’m a failure.” The words slipped out in a hollow huff. “I ruin everything.”
Alastor said nothing, his lips twitching as if trying to return to their usual grin.
“I’m useless.” The king laughed then, bitter and ugly. “I’m…I’m never enough.”
His breathing began to quicken, eyes growing damp once more. The pressure on his chin changed, not gentler but steadier.
That tiny difference undid him. It split something open inside him that had spent millennia refusing to break.
“I wish I’d died in the Fall,” he sobbed, the words cracking apart with his voice. “At least then I would have lived up to someone’s expectations.”
The reaction was immediate.
It started as a low whine, like the whirring of machinery.
Then it grew.
And grew.
Not laughter. Not speech.
It was a bugle. A cry. A screech that was both cervine and monstrous. Primal and ancient. It rattled the very walls with the sheer force of it.
Scarlet dipped fingers dug harder into Lucifer’s jaw as something within the sinner strained against his skin. Bones creaked with the desperate need to shift and stretch. Above him Lucifer watched as antlers splintered and remade themselves, reaching outward like blackened branches.
There, Alastor stood, caught halfway between the Radio Demon and something more, something that tasted of wrath and blood and the promise of violence.
It was the most alarming, most beautiful reaction he had ever drawn from the man. For a moment, Lucifer wondered if the creature before him might devour him whole.
Holding his breath, the king swallowed against the unexpected intensity. It filled in the gaps around them like a storm, heavy with the scent of copper, rotting wood, and the musky odor of wet grave dirt.
His gaze lingered on Alastor’s mouth.
Golden teeth glinted between parted lips, sharp enough to draw blood where they had bitten into the sinner’s own flesh. Tiny pinpricks of red stained the edges, bright and mortal against all that twisting hunger.
Lucifer found he could not look away.
For one wild, breathless second he thought those teeth might sink into him next.
Perhaps that was how his story would finally end, consumed by a creature so much more than it should have been, who had looked at the devil’s grief and answered it with fury.
Then the beast inhaled, deep and shuttering, like rusted hinges forced apart after centuries.
The kind of breath dragged in by something fighting against itself.
Across the room the shadows quivered and with a sound like a snapping branch, the terrible shape of Alastor folded inward. All that monstrous tension collapsing back into the neat silhouette of the well-dressed Radio Demon.
The grin returned but it sat wrong. Too sharp, too forced, like something hastily stitched over a wound.
Without a word, Alastor released him, leaving the angel to stagger against his newfound freedom. His chest heaved as the sinner turned away, acting as though nothing had happened.
Hands clasped behind his back, Alastor crossed the floor with deliberate intent and seated himself at the piano bench, folding one leg neatly over the other.
All Lucifer could do was stare, struggling to keep pace with the violent shift in atmosphere.
When the deer finally spoke, his voice was smooth again, all radio filter and transatlantic accent.
“Do you know why, sire,” he began, leaning forward slightly. “I detested you the moment I saw you?”
Of all the directions the night could take, this was not the one the devil had expected.
Alastor did not wait for an answer.
He turned from Lucifer as if the question had already been dismissed, uncrossing his legs as he settled behind the piano like he had always belonged there. Posture perfect, clawed hands hovering just above the keys.
Not touching. Not yet.
“You lived up to none of your tales,” he spoke lightly, almost conversationally. “You were supposed to be some grand temptation. The father of lies, architect of sin, proud enough to stand against Heaven itself.”
A single finger stroked one of the keys, drawing forth a long, steady note. “And yet here you are. A small, broken man who has convinced himself so thoroughly of his own failure he has stopped attempting anything at all.”
Lucifer’s jaw tightened before he realized it had moved. A retort took shape, sharp and defensive, but it never made it past his throat.
The rest of Alastor’s fingers settled onto the keys and the melody that answered was soft enough to be mistaken for kindness. Long, velvet notes unfurled into the room, warm and low, brushing against one another like careful conversation.
“You fell,” Alastor continued, voice threading through the music. “You suffered. You failed. And somewhere along the way, you decided that absolves you of responsibility.”
Against his palm, Lucifer’s fingers curled. Perhaps in shame, perhaps in anger.
“What responsibility?” The question slipped out before he could stop it.
The piano answered first.
The melody turned on itself, warmth souring at the edges as the cadence bent inward. The notes grew shorter, breaking apart into clipped little protests. They snapped at each other, bickering in bright, sharp voices like discontent siblings.
“The responsibility of getting up, Lucifer.”
Each note rose faster now, bright and barbed, snagging against each other like a ring of briars. They needled and nipped, spitting forth all the venom Alastor kept leashed behind his smile.
“You are the King of Hell, whether you wanted the crown or not. This is your kingdom. This is what you have been given.”
Lucifer flinched at that, guilt churning in his stomach.
“You can hate it, but you do not get to ignore it.” Scarlet claws carved across the keys, dragging from them a frantic, feverish ballad. The notes no longer flowed but collided, crashing into one another, climbing over each other in their rush to be heard.
“You do not get to wallow in it. Not when you possess the power to change it.” The melody swelled, taut and shivering. Still controlled, but only barely. Every note trembled with restraint, as though the instrument itself strained beneath the weight of everything Alastor did not say.
“I can’t change anything,” Lucifer said, the words spoken with such confident finality.
Alastor slammed both hands down and the piano screamed.
Not music. Not melody. Whatever conversation had lived between the notes shattered all at once, collapsing into a violent, discordant wail that tore through the room like a death knell.
The Overlord’s head twisted towards Lucifer, snapping at an unnatural angle as his ears perked forward, listening for something only he could hear.
“That,” he said, with a surprising amount of calm, “is precisely what I mean.”
Alastor stood from the bench, stepping away with the measured gait of something dangerous. Polished shoes clicked softly against the floor as he stalked toward Lucifer, his grin stretched tight with irritation and purpose.
Lucifer straightened, his wings twitching with the sudden urge to manifest and carry him far away. How did he seem so much more dangerous like this than as a half-twisted beast?
“You are a creature of unrivaled power in this realm,” the sinner said, voice as smooth as burnt whiskey. “A being who can bend Hell itself to your very whims.”
Feeling suddenly crowded, the king took an involuntary step backwards, his heel striking the xylophone with a hollow whine.
“That’s not true!” Lucifer snapped, too quickly, like a reflex. “There is nothing I can do about sinners.”
That earned him a sharp, ugly snort.
“There.” Alastor pointed at him as if presenting evidence to an invisible jury. “There it is. A perfect example.”
Closing the last of the distance between them, the Radio Demon loomed over the diminutive monarch, smile stretched too wide to be anything other than hostile.
“You’ve convinced yourself of your own limits so thoroughly you’ve stopped questioning them!”
Lucifer tipped his chin up in spite of the instinct to put space between them, meeting Alastor’s gaze in the gesture filled with a brittle defiance.
“What are you talking about?”
“Have you ever once sat down and considered the shape of your cage? Tested its bars?” The deer’s eyes gleamed with a frenzy Lucifer had never seen in him before.
“I have!” The words stumbled on the way out, rushed and ragged. “You saw. Everyone saw at Vox’s–”
Alastor batted the statement away before the king could even finish it.
“Yes, yes. You cannot physically lay your hands upon sinners to harm them. But have you ever looked at the fine print of your punishment? Have you ever considered the possibilities it did not account for?”
Lucifer’s brow pinched tight, frustration and exhaustion weaving together until thought itself felt heavy.
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say!” The words were barbed, edged with more anger than he had intended.
“Oh, for pity’s sake.”
In one swift motion, Alastor caught him by the waist and hoisted him upwards, wrenching a startled cry from the king. Before he could protest the indignity of it, he was dropped atop the xylophone in a clatter of rosewood and ringing brass, its weathered frame creaking like old bones.
“Then listen,” the deer hissed, stepping backwards like a duelist claiming his paces. “And actually try to understand.”
With one hand folded neatly behind his back, Alastor prowled the length of the room like a scholar preparing to address his class. When at last he stopped, he turned back towards Lucifer, sweeping a finger through the air like a conductor readying a baton.
“You cannot harm sinners. Fine.” He tilted his head. “Use the Hellborn.”
A hollow, accidental note rang out from beneath Lucifer as he recoiled, the bars shifting under his weight like they objected to the thought as much as he did.
“No.” The answer came so fast it nearly overlapped the suggestion. “I can’t just command the Hellborn at will.”
One of Alastor’s ears flicked, both brows raising so high they threatened to float clean off his face. “Why ever not?”
“Because–”
“You are the King!” A clawed finger thrust toward him in accusation.
Lucifer flinched at the title, like it burned.
“The Sins–” Even to his own ears it sounded pitiful.
“Then use the Sins,” Alastor interrupted, voice snapping through the room like a lash. He turned sharply on one heel, coat flaring behind him. “Command them. They are your generals, are they not?”
Surely he had thought of that once. Hadn’t he? His fingers curled, claws biting shallow grooves into the wood beneath him. There had to be a reason he had dismissed it. What had his excuse been then?
“They–it doesn’t work like that!” Lucifer could hardly find his breath to form the words, thick with desperation as they were.
Alastor threw his head back and laughed, sharp enough to cut. All splintered amusement and bitter contempt.
“It works precisely like that.”
If panic had a sound, surely it was the thin wheeze that left the king, something between an exhale and a stutter.
“I can’t ask the Hellborn to throw themselves at sinners.” The words tumbled out of him like frantic hands clawing for something solid to hide behind.
“They don’t regenerate. They can die. Some sinners are stronger than they are. It would be…it would be wrong.” To Lucifer’s ears the words almost sounded noble. He wondered if they would be enough to fool the Radio Demon?
Alastor folded his arms and regarded him in contemplative silence. For one flickering second, the king thought he had ended it.
“Fine.” The word dropped with a terrible weight and Lucifer felt his hope vanish in its wake.
“You do not wish to endanger the Hellborn of the other Sins? Admirable.” The word fell from the deer’s lips like praise but it was merely mockery in disguise. His mouth parted over those golden teeth, smile cutting wider as he delivered the next blow. “Use your own.”
The angel blinked at him, genuinely lost this time. Beneath him the bars of the xylophone groaned, answering Lucifer’s restless fidgeting with complaints of their own.
“My–”
“The Goetia,” the sinner snapped, his patience fraying at the edges. “Your nobility. Your aristocracy. An entire echelon of infernal bluebloods gifted with power, influence, and magic enough to drown cities.”
Alastor surged forward again, cutting off the answer before it could even form. Once more that large, warm hand caught beneath Lucifer’s chin, thumb pressing at the hinge of his jaw just enough to force his face upward, to drag his gaze back where it belonged.
“You created an entire bureaucracy, sire.” Crimson claws pressed inwards just enough to sting.
“You do not wish to command the Sins? To appropriate their people? Fine. Don’t.”
The Radio Demon’s grin grew feral, filled with want and hunger. For violence? For Lucifer? It was hard to tell.
“Bury your enemies in paperwork.”
Lucifer should have looked away. Should have recoiled against the heat and mounting ire. Instead, he sat frozen beneath that touch, pulse nearly choking him as he tried to digest, exactly, the shape of the mortal unfurling before him.
This was not the smiling entertainer nor the careless sadist. This was the architect beneath it all. The thing that made kings kneel and empires sign their souls away in blood.
“Tax them. Audit them. Deny their permits. Seize their holdings. Drag them through hearings, tribunals, inspections.” Every word came faster than the last, each one honed sharper than the one before, driven in like the nails of a coffin lid.
“Your punishment is riddled with loopholes wide enough to march entire armies through!” Alastor leaned in until the heat of his breath ghosted over Lucifer’s mouth, close enough that the air between them tasted of the copper-sweet blood that still lingered between his teeth.
“For the love of your Father,” he snarled, claws tightening just enough to call ichor to the surface of Lucifer’s pale skin but not enough to make him bleed. Not yet. “Stop thinking like an angel…and start thinking like the Devil.”
Lucifer could only stare, heart hammering against his chest.
Because beneath the fever of Alastor’s fury, beneath the heat and madness and sharp edge of his words, there was something far more dangerous than anger.
There was truth there.
Simple.
Obvious.
And worse, some terrible, traitorous part of him had known it all along.
Something shifted inside the angel then. A hairline fracture split the stone of his despair. A faultline running through the certainty he had clung to for centuries: that he was useless, that he could do nothing, that failure was all he could offer.
For the first time in a very long while, the stagnant moat he had built around his heart trembled, as if at last it remembered it had once been a river.
Alastor watched it happen.
He saw it there, flickering behind pale eyes, the war unraveling the king’s doubt. Despair buckling beneath something far more dangerous: possibility.
Slowly, the claws on the angel’s jaw loosened, the hand holding him there beginning to shake.
It was faint at first, a small tremor, but it spread quickly, blooming into a shivering quake that ran through the sinner’s entire body as he threw his head back and laughed.
Bright.
Warm.
Victorious.
And before Lucifer could gather himself, his wrist was captured and pulled.
The xylophone shrieked as he was yanked down from it, the instrument rattling in protest as his hooves stumbled against the floor.
“What–”
But Alastor was already moving.
One hand slid to Lucifer’s waist, the other twining their fingers together, and with a sharp twist of his heel he spun them into motion.
“Aren’t you the serpent?” Alastor sang the words softly, eyes fixed on the devil with such intensity it made the stars he had once hung in the void seem pale.
Their hooves swept over the floorboards, Lucifer missing the first step before being corrected with a firm hand against his back.
“Aren’t you the flame?” The sinner’s voice climbed, warm and rich, his accent and radio filter slipping away to reveal something genuine beneath.
Recognition hit him like a falling star. Those words, Lucifer knew them.
He’d flung them out like sparks in front of a crowd, never expecting to be burned by them.
“Cast aside the weight of guilt and shame.” Alastor spun him hard enough that the room became streaks of shadow and flickering light.
The tingling returned. It danced along his body like the brush of a feather. Different from before, no longer the memory of electric shocks and failure. It was tender, almost affectionate. Like how the darkness of the aether had embraced him when he wove life into its depths.
“Pick up your crown, the stage is lit!” The hand at the devil’s waist tightened, hauling him flush again, close enough for Lucifer to feel the heat radiating from the sinner.
Close enough to smell the lingering hints of rotting wood and wet dirt.
Close enough to forget how to breathe.
Alastor leaned over him, their faces barely an inch apart, enough that a single breath could have closed the distance.
“Aren’t you a living aspect of the infinite?” The final note was softer, caught somewhere between reverence and fury.
Their dance stopped but the sinner kept his hold firm, staring down at Lucifer as if expecting to see galaxies expanding behind his eyes.
Waiting.
Not taking, but asking.
For the first time since the fall, the angel felt something stir within him.
Confidence.
The belief that he was not useless, not broken.
That he could be something.
Maybe even a King.
Lucifer leaned forward, one hand reaching up to catch the front of Alastor’s coat, bunching the scarlet fabric in his fist as though anchoring himself to the sinner might keep the new fire blazing in his chest from fading.
His breath came quicker now, though nothing like before. Not with panic. Not with fear. Each quivering huff swelling with something greater: exhilaration.
It felt like standing at the mouth of creation again.
Like coaxing the first star to bloom within the darkness.
Like hearing how it sang afterwards, filling the universe with vibrancy that wasn’t just light but rhapsody.
Joy and hope, bursting forth as nothing ever had before.
It was everything.
And it was there again, waiting at his fingertips, if only he would reach for it.
How he ached to blaze!
Through it all, Alastor remained silent, quietly searching for something long thought lost. As wonder returned to Lucifer’s face, a rare hint of warmth flickered behind his smile. What a glorious sight it was watching the king rise from the ashes of himself like a phoenix, bright and so terribly alive.
“I want to try.” Lucifer spoke the words like a confession. “But I don’t know how to be a king, not really.”
The admission burned, not with shame, but with honesty.
Then he laughed softly, shaking his head.
“You drive me crazy, you know?” He went on, slowly finding his footing . “From the moment I met you, you burrowed under my skin and never left. You saw the King of Hell and thought it would be fun to poke him.”
The fallen angel swallowed softly, struggling against how vulnerable, how ripped open, he felt in this moment. “I was never really one for temptation, despite what the stories say.”
His sinburnt claws flexed, the tips digging just slightly into the crimson fabric they held, toward the silk and skin hidden beneath.
“The real temptation is you.” The words escaped Lucifer’s lips, something wild and bright unfurling behind his eyes.
“You tempted me to eat. Tempted me to wonder. Tempted me to be curious.” His voice softened and his fingers finally released the death grip they’d had on the coat, letting his palms rest flush against the deer’s chest.
“You looked at the Devil and tempted him into wanting again.”
Alastor merely inclined his head slightly, the tip of one ear flicking gently in response. Deep down Lucifer knew the sinner would never admit to any of it, but he didn’t have to. Not after what he’d seen.
All the little ways he showed he cared.
“Help me,” Lucifer asked in a rush of breath, hand drifting from the sinner’s chest to his slim waist, curling just above the curve of his hip.
For the first time that night, Alastor smiled without teeth - a gentle thing, unfeigned and tinged with pride, so stripped of his usual theatricality that Lucifer wondered if anyone had ever seen him this genuine.
“I will.” Then it was the sinner reaching forward, his hand ghosting along the alabaster curve of the devil’s cheek. “But nothing in Hell is free, sire.”
Lucifer blinked. Then, to his own surprise, he laughed.
Bright and unrestrained. Real and full of a joy he could not explain.
At the end of it all, at the end of the grief and doubt–
Alastor was still Alastor.
“And your price?” The king asked, not a drop of suspicion or ire in his tone. Just a boundless curiosity and quiet acceptance.
The sinner’s eyes drifted lower, tracing the thrumming beat of his heart as it danced at the hollow of his throat.
“Your blood.”
Lucifer stilled.
Not the throne. Not power. Not even a favor.
Something far more intimate.
Gooseflesh prickled along his skin as warmth unfurled deep within his stomach, equal parts wonder and disbelief. Not an unpleasant feeling, no, but one so utterly unfamiliar that it left him momentarily speechless.
How thrilling it was to be wanted by the Radio Demon in the ways that were uniquely his.
“That’s all?” A slow smile curved along the fallen angel’s lips as he turned up his wrist, offering it freely to the man before him.
“For services already rendered.”
Long fingers curled around Lucifer’s arm, warmth radiating from the sinner like a furnace chasing the lingering chill from his bones. Slowly, with unmistakable veneration, Alastor sank to one knee before the seraphim.
His mouth brushed the inside of Lucifer’s wrist, eager breath ghosting over the steady pulse beneath.
“My king.” The words licked along his skin, echoing across his nerves like an oath.
When those wicked teeth sank into his flesh, drawing forth the ichor that had kindled stars and set the bones of the cosmos alight, Lucifer felt something deep within him stir.
And far below, rippling through every ring, Hell answered him the way creation once had: with hunger.