Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Alastor can admit, in the silence of his own head as he walks away from the first official overlord meeting since the Extermination Day that Wasn’t, that Charlie MIGHT have been right. He probably should have stayed home. 

Not that he’d tell the girl that under pain of torture - that kind of hand-wringing and fretting wasn’t the sort of thing that should be encouraged in anyone, least of all the Princess of Hell. 

“Al, I just have such a bad feeling -” 

“Of course you do, darling - it’s a meeting of the overlords of Hell. By definition, no good can come of it” 

“What if they” - she made an inarticulate gesture that reminded him painfully of her father - who was, by the way, sitting across the parlor from them, pretending to sketch, pretending NOT to listen, even though Alastor saw him roll his eyes far too often for a man  who was simply sketching rubber ducks. “What if it’s some kind of -” 

“Charlie, dear, the overlords of Hell are like starving wild dogs.” He gave her a pat on the head in sharp contrast to his words and then permitted it when she angrily swatted his hand away. “It’s always at least BORDERING on a trap. I intend to go anyway.” 

“You don’t HAVE to!” 

“Oh, but I do. One, if I don’t go, they’ll assume weakness, and we can’t afford that. Two, these lovely little social gatherings are a veritable FOUNTAIN of useful information. Remember, we’d never have learned to kill angels otherwise.” 

There was information, all right. Here is what he’s learned: the other overlords know about Pentious. 

Alastor is not sure HOW they know – who told them – but he has his suspicions. Either way, the ruling powers of Hell now KNOW about that silly snake-man getting into heaven, and it all just feels a little too convenient to him.

His steps sound too loud and too fast in his ears. He takes a breath, forces them to slow. He forces himself to walk like a man who isn’t watching his own back, like someone who isn’t running. 

It feels like one of those cheesy horror reels that had started playing toward the end of his human life. The streets are dark, but not empty – never empty at night in Pentagram City. Things are always crawling in the dark here, like the squirmy mass of creatures you find under rocks, many-legged and writhing and wretchedly alive.  

Alastor doesn’t know if he finds it more delightful or disgusting – like much of Hell, it somehow manages to exist squarely between those two extremes and is reluctant to tip in either direction. 

He hears it before he feels it – it travels down his ears, the hairs at the nape of his neck, his fingertips, a sensation of STATIC that resolves itself very suddenly, very close behind him, pressed up against his back in hard, familiar lines that he can feel through that tacky, Reagan-era suit that hack insists on wearing. A hand clamps on the outside of either of his biceps, holding them tight against his body, and the hairs by his right ear stand up from being too close to a screen. Vox’s voice is all soft stereo and honey when he says, “Hey there, Al. Long time no see.” 

He does not let himself shudder, does not let himself try to wrench away, does not let himself do anything to indicate SURPRISE to suddenly have Vox pressed up against him. His smile is sharp as a knife. “Odd, it hasn’t seemed that long to me.” 

Vox laughs, low and dangerous, and Alastor doesn’t react to that either, forcing his body to obey, to project nonchalance. I am in control. Like it’s HIS idea that they’re standing here, like this – say, my good man, is that a mic in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? – like it’s beneath his notice. 

“Come on, don’t play stupid. You knew this was coming.” 

Alastor sighs theatrically. “I figured it was about time I was subjected to another blatantly mediocre sales pitch.” 

Vox’s fingers dig into his arms, almost hard enough to puncture fabric. “You have some nerve, pal. Mister Radio Demon, always gotta talk big – but you want to hear a secret?”

The prickly, static feeling at his ear is almost unbearable. “I kinda think talking is ALL you can do right now.” 

“Hm,” Alastor says, and he hopes what Vox hears is bored. “ That’s an interesting theory. Tell me more.” 

On the exhale of that statement, he sends black tentacles shooting out of his back, but Vox is GONE – as Alastor knew he would be. He dematerializes only to reappear in front of Alastor, a few strides away, crackly and electric and smug. “Getting slow, old timer,” he says, and the backstreet pulses as if with surround sound. 

Swing and a miss! Says Alastor’s patently unhelpful hindbrain. Bottom of the ninth, and the score is Vox 1, Alastor ZERO! Looking bad for the home team, folks! 

“Just making sure you remember how to stay on your toes, Voxie,” Alastor sing-songs, folding both hands on the mic in front of him. “You tend to get complacent in that silly tower of yours.” 

Vox laughs again. “You know, you’re so pathetic lately, you don’t really deserve this offer – but what the Hell, I’m in a good mood today.” 

“As ever, I wait with bated breath.” 

“Now is that any way to talk to a guy who just went to bat for you?” That grin, the made-for-tv one that oozes trust me, “I mean, the other overlords, we put it to a vote, and surprise surprise, the collective was VERY okay with a problem like you just turning into a missing ad on a milk carton – I mean. In light of everything.” 

Vox’s grin is shark-wide now. 

“Well, then isn’t it lucky that I have an old pal like you to look out for me,” Alastor drawls.  

Vox hums, and Alastor feels that hum around him, feels it coming through his shoes – the man always did have the most insufferable predilection toward SPEAKERS. “Oh, don’t look so sour, Al. It’s a Hell of a deal.” 

Vox walks, slowly pacing the back street, the suspiciously empty back street. “You can keep right on staying at your tacky little hotel with your drippy little princess and your brand new sugar daddy. You can pal around with the other losers – but you report to me. You tell me everything. ” 

You belong to me – he can taste the echo of it in the air. 

“I see,” Alastor says. “And in return?” 

It’s rage that crackles through Vox’s screen, through his speakers, through the bedrock of Pentagram City via the crisscrossing wires that have, over the decades, imbedded like veins through this whole wretched, breathing environment. “In return, I don’t cut you up into little pieces, stuff you in a garbage bag, and drop you off on the hotel porch like a little lapdog that got hit by a truck. See? I told you it was generous.” 

“Hmm….let me think…..no.” Alastor’s smile is all charm and teeth. 

“Your loss, bitch.” 

Alastor feels more than he sees the wires come out of the ground, the walls, reaching for him. His own dark shadows and tentacles spring up, but not as many, not enough, fuck, his powers never HAVE been the same since that stupid chain and Vox has home field advantage  – 

The back street seems to explode in light – Alastor hisses instinctively, shielding his eyes with an arm, it burns. 

“HA! Didn’t see that coming, did you, you slick motherfucker? Been a lot of changes since you’ve been gone, lot of UPGRADES…” 

Flood lights, Alastor thinks, feeling a faint, grudging surge of something like admiration. It’s not as if he CAN’T use his powers in bright light, but he’s strongest in twilight, in darkness, and Vox knows. He knows because they talked about it, back in the distant past where Vox used to have a beer and he used to have a rye, back when they used to sit a little too close at the bar so that their thighs almost touched beneath the polished wood. 

The lights burn down from so many directions that neither of them casts a shadow. There’s nowhere to run. 

The bases are loaded, but it’s still anybody’s game! his stupid hindbrain supplies. 

He barely jumps left in time to avoid having a stray coil wind around his right leg. His teeth are too big for his face, but he fights the impulse to become larger – size is not his friend here. Size will make him slow, make it easier for Vox to wrap him up, pull him down. 

“Looking pretty nimble there, fossil!” It’s like the walls are jeering at him, pulsing with Vox’s energy. 

“And YOU still move like you have lead feet – or maybe that’s just in the toys you sell the children!” 

Fuck you. You do NOT get to be what ends me. I won’t have it. 

A wire wraps around his wrist and yanks. His back hits a wall with dizzying force. His face feels too hot. It’s probably bleeding. 

You aren’t worthy of killing ME, you talentless, mediocre piece of shit. 

He realizes the danger a millisecond too late, wires and cables surging out of the wall, wrapping around his limbs, his waist, his throat, and he claws at them -. 

A static pulse, and then a hand grips his jaw like a vice and shoves. The back of his head hits the bricks, and the world swims – he can hear the buzzing in the lights, he thinks, or the buzzing’s in him, or the buzzing is the AIR – 

Vox’s body, up against his, slotting in, familiar and much too warm through that glaringly ugly striped vest. “Aw, baby, don’t be mad,” he all but purrs. “You did pretty good for a pet. That’s what’s going on, right? That’s why you’re fighting like a pussy? You finally let somebody put a collar around that scrawny neck of yours. Who was it?” 

Vox grinds against him, and he can feel bile behind his teeth, is torn between choking it down and doing the world of footwear a favor and splashing it all over Vox’s shoes. 

“Let me guess – his royal shortness? Seriously, it’s not a good look, Al.” 

Vox slams his head against the wall again, presses against him harder, he feels his stupid ribs creak. “You should’ve come to me first.” 

Alastor feels something sharp against his ribs, sharp and cold even through the many layers of fabric, like Vox has been keeping the steel in a freezer, and he knows what it is. 

“You recognize angelic steel when you feel it, right? I don’t have to explain to you what’s happening right now?” 

No, but you will anyway. You can’t help narrating, can you, chum? 

“Because I could just, y’know, rip you to pieces – but this little baby can make it so you stay gone.” 

He has to get out of this damned alleyway – out from under these lights. He has to – 

The knife digs in just under his arm, barely a pinprick, but it feels like being burned with a lighter. “Focus, asshole – I’m talking to you.” 

Ah, Vox – center stage, a captive audience, and you STILL aren’t the center of attention. How sad for you. 

Alastor lets his body go slack against the wires that hold him, lets his head loll forward. 

“Oh no, princess, you don’t get to pass out yet. Seriously, it’s like that silly hotel made you forget how to have fun.”  

Alastor lets his face – just his face – elongate into something crocodilian and buries his teeth into Vox’s shoulder down to the bone. He can hear the crunch. 

And Vox shrieks, equal parts rage and surprise, because of course he does. Whatever Vox’s past was, it did not include back alley knife fights. But Alastor’s did. 

The cables on his wrists go slack for just long enough. He yanks a hand free, settles it on Vox’s wrist, and twists them in a way that’s so far buried into muscle memory that it’s soul-deep. 

He has the knife in his hand now. The first cut slashes down Vox’s forearm, long way, and when he instinctively steps back, the second slash is aimed at his throat – too shallow to kill, damnit, but the blood spatters hot across his face and he feels ALIVE again. 

The next slash severs the cables that hold him to the wall, and he rolls clear, panting, one knee in the dirt. 

“What the – fucking OW, did you just BITE me you LUNATIC?!” Vox gestures at his shoulder. “Who DOES that?!” 

And there it is, dizzying – that mix of indignation and shock and a million years ago, it seems like, he was pulling Vox by those blue-tipped fingers, the both of them too drunk by a mile, out onto the club floor – “ No, no – hey, I can’t DANCE, you lunatic! –“ 

Alastor laughs. He tells himself that he sounds crazier than usual by design, it’s a strategy.  He meets Vox’s eyes and runs his tongue down the length of the blade. “Oooh, tasty. You always did give the best presents, Voxie.” 

Vox lunges at him. The next cut is a deep one as Vox twist away and Alastor mirrors his steps, two forward, one back - 

“Here now, follow along, it’s not HARD.” 

There are wires EVERYWHERE, but Alastor is manic, twirling the knife Vox was stupid enough to pull out like a tiny shard of light, and whenever he cuts one, it and Vox both hiss – 

The multicolored lights are spinning too fast – shit, they really ARE drunk, but the arm around his waist is steady, strong, and Vox is trying not to look at him, and his smile has something fragile in it that Alastor wants to dissect, wants to take apart and put on his WALL…

Vox, half-laughing, “What the fuck, Al, you can’t just say shit like that out loud!” 

“Hush, you like it.” 

His hand is too low on his back, but for once, Alastor doesn’t care – the room doesn’t spin so fast when he lets his forehead rest against Vox’s shoulder, and he’s…for once, for a moment, maybe…  

The crack of the gunshot itself hurts. The sudden eruption of fire and ruin in the place where his left knee used to be is secondary. Alastor stumbles, half expecting to hit the club floor, a little surprised to feel the sand and cracked cobbles of that filthy side street instead. 

Vox blows indulgently on the barrel of the gun. “Ya know, in retrospect, I probably should have led with this – but what can I say? You’re cute when you think you stand a chance.” 

Alastor doesn’t speak. He snarls, all fury like a wounded animal. The second shot imbeds in his hip. He is distantly aware that it hurts just as much as he remembers, being shot. It’s been a long time, but that’s the sort of thing that the soul never forgets. 

“Val will be so disappointed,” Vox says. His smile takes up the whole of his screen. “I think he was really kinda hoping I’d bring you home for a visit. You’d really hate what we’ve done with the place since you’ve been gone.” 

Alastor switches his grip on the knife as if to throw it. He makes sure Vox sees it, slow and deliberate. Please be as stupid as I think you are. 

Vox laughs again. “Seriously?” he asks. “That’s SERIOUSLY what you’re falling back on?” He crackles with raw power – cables surge around him, some whole, some cut and frayed, but each one ready to intercept a silly little flung knife, even one made of angelic steel. “I mean, I admire a go-getter, but this is just SAD. I tell you what.” He holds his hands out wide. “Take your best shot, you piece of shit. Let’s see what you can do.” 

“Gladly,” Alastor says. And he throws the knife, not at Vox, but at a transformer box that has been crackling ominously on one of the nearby power poles for a while now. 

It’s a bit of an experiment. How will a demonic powergrid and pure angelic steel react to one another? And the answer, as it turns out, is rather like a menthol dropped into a coca cola bottle. 

Vox screams, his screen glitches, and then everyone ELSE screams as every electronic device for three blocks all but explode in the feedback loop, and half a dozen street lamps burst in a shower of decidedly rainbow-sunshine-colored sparks and glitter.

Then the pride ring goes dark with an audible garage-door sound, and Alastor falls backward into the shadows – 

“Are you SERIOUSLY running away again, you fucking PUSSY” – Vox’s voice is so heavy with distortion that Alastor almost can’t make out the words, but then, he doesn’t need to. Vox is patently unoriginal in his response to prey escaping his incompetent, grasping fingers.  

It happens kind of a lot – you’d think the poor bastard would have caught a clue by now, but Alastor is just as glad that he hasn’t. 

He tries to tell his powers to take him somewhere safe – outside pentagram city, somewhere far from electricity, far from wires and fiberoptics and drones. But when he blinks his eyes back into being, he finds that he’s on a surprisingly shiny white floor, in a gauchely-decorated little circus room with a suspicious number of rubber ducks strewn about – that he can probably only see because a handful of them are glowing in the dark, as if any person in this or any other plane of existence would want a little bo peep duck that glowed a faint neon pink.  

He gives his shadow a look that he hopes conveys the entire length, breadth, and implication of What the Hell is THIS?! 

His shadow shrugs, unrepentant. It’s all right, Alastor already understands the problem. It’s his own fault. His first thought was safe, and this was the last place he felt… that… since…

“You got no one to blame but yourself if I step on your feet.” 

He thinks his face is still bleeding. 

He thinks he might be crying. 

He tells his powers to take him anywhere else, but they just….sputter, and he is still here – surrounded by oddly judgmental bath toys, with light fixtures that are full of Vox and fireplaces that are full of Lilith, and hallways that are full of people who claim to be his friends . 

Alastor does not want friends. Friends are dangerous. They crawl inside you, burrow in like maggots and leave holes in you, make you trust them, make you complacent and soft and then they – not like enemies. Good, reliable enemies that you know how to handle, know to keep at arm’s length, know not to give your back to or to trust past what serves their own self-interest. When your enemy tries to hurt you, tries to kill you, it’s never a SURPRISE – it’s expected, almost courteous. How kind, when people do exactly what you expect them to. 

An enemy might kill you, but a friend can ruin you. 

This doesn’t get to ruin me. Do you hear me? It doesn’t. You don’t. None of you. Not Lilith, not Vox, not whatever fuckwits Heaven sends down here, NONE of you. 

He can hear someone in the hallway, muffled and clumsy. “Jesus fuck, what IS it with this place, it’s always something – Hang on, Char, I’m getting the lanterns, NO, honey, I love you, you should NOT be around candles, light NOTHING –“ 

Shit. 

Alastor closes his eyes, gathers every ounce of his strength, and WILLS his powers to pull him anywhere, literally anywhere, that isn’t this stupid room. 

The door opens, and Lucifer Morningstar, King of Hell, Formerly First Among the Stars in Heaven, trips over him and goes sprawling into an inconveniently-stacked pile of very squeaky rubber ducks. 

“Ow,” his noble majesty huffs, his voice muffled in the pile of his own poor coping mechanisms. 

Alastor keeps his eyes closed and this time, wills the ground to swallow him up. Wills himself to spontaneously combust in a puff of absolute mortification. I should have let Vox shoot me again, he thinks

“Aw, shit, why is the floor wet – if those stupid pipes have sprung a leak again, I’m going to – oh, hey, what –“ 

The silence that settles around them is almost physically painful. 

“Dad?” That was Charlie’s voice from a flight or two down the stairs. “Are you okay?” 

“Fine, Char!” Lucifer’s voice, Alastor notes, does the same thing as Charlie’s  when she’s trying to convince the people around her that Everything IS Fine when anyone with an iota of sense could spot from HEAVEN that it wasn’t. “I’m fine! Just a minute.” 

Then his voice drops to nearly inaudible. “You fucker, if you’re dead in my room, I will….I will…” 

Alastor rollshis eyes when he feels Lucifer check for a pulse. “Or you could just ask if I’m consc-“

“SHIT you’re awake!” Lucifer holds up his fingers between them and snapped them, and his fingers lit with a soft glow that illuminates – well, Alastor isn’t sure what, exactly, but probably the kind of bloody mess that more resembles road kill than a respectable hotelier. 

“Your powers of observation –“ Alastor feels the too warm, too fuzzy, skin tickling sensation that warns of a near blackout and digs the claws of one hand violently into the forearm of the other. What had he been saying? 

“What the Hell happened to you?” 

“Hell happened to me,” Alastor says flatly. “Now if you don’t mind -” If you don’t mind, what? Kindly go away and let me finish whatever I’m doing here? Alastor isn't sure where he had been going with that one. 

“Fuck,” Lucifer mutters, clearly paying him no mind. He is not wearing his coat or hat - he rarely does around the hotel these days - but he is rapidly struggling out of his vest, even as Alastor feels something flickering over his skin like static

Every hair on Alastor’s body stands up in reaction as he tries to shove away from - 

“Stop MOVING, dumbass, stop it, I’m trying to - ” 

“Don’t DO that!” Alastor fairly snarls in his face. 

“I’m trying to HEAL you, you absolute - shit, but it’s not working. WHY is it not working?” 

“What’s not -” the world spins crazily and Alastor finds himself on his back as the erstwhile ruler of Hell yanks his coat back, visibly blanches, and then shoves the wad of balled-up vest into the absolute wreckage of his left hip and torso and leans his full weight onto the wound. 

Alastor is fairly sure he’s never made a sound like that in his life  as he tries, mostly successfully, to swallow the scream. 

“Dad?” That was Charlie’s voice again, a little closer. 

“Charlie, honey, I’m gonna need you to bring me a belt and a light!” Lucifer’s voice is so close to sing-songy it is genuinely macabre. Blood is spotting its way onto his shirtsleeves. 

“A belt and a….dad, did a fuse blow up here? Something smells burnt.” 

Alastor reaches blindly until he catches hold of one of Lucifer’s wrists, squeezes it hard. “She does NOT need to see this,” he hisses. 

“Buddy, you have no idea how much I agree with you right now, but you are bleeding WAY too much, and if I move my hands -” 

“Who DIED and put YOU in charge of -” 

“Hey, YOU are in MY room, bleeding on MY rug, asshole, so YEAH, at least until the HEMORRHAGING ends, I get to be the boss of you!” 

“Who are you talking to?” Charlie asks in her ‘I am slightly concerned that my father might be insane’ voice - and Alastor closes his eyes in resignation. 

“You are so useless,” Alastor says to Lucifer, his eyes still closed, “that it’s almost impressive.” 

Through the awful, cottony brownness that is swallowing him whole, he can distantly hear Charlie’s scream. 

Chapter Text

Hell, 1958 

The extermination came almost six hours early. No one was prepared. 

“Fuckin’ Hell,” Vox says as they pick their way back to their side of town. “Is there some reason we have that stupid-ass clock in the middle of the city if it’s NEVER right?!”

Alastor hmms at him indulgently. “You’re just angry that it’s analog instead of digital.” 

“Damn right I am,” he says, skirting a hole in the pavement the side of a Packard. “Might as well be a sundial, CHRIST.” 

It was a near miss for them – nearer than it should have been. They’d been dodging debris and exterminators, ducking from alleyway to alleyway. Vox, Alastor already knows, deals with near-misses and relief by bitching excessively. 

It’s weirdly nice. Alastor can feel the coils in his gut unclenching, because Vox bitching is NORMAL. It means they’re both – it means they’re fine.  

“Maybe Heaven likes to be unpredictable,” he suggests. 

“Well, Heaven can kiss my ass – how is the FOUNTAIN on fire? Nevermind, I don’t wanna know.” 

Alastor fights a snicker and mostly swallows it. They are neither one of them in much shape to critique anything right now – Vox sporting half a coat and a suspicious amount of blood on his vest, Alastor doing his damndest not to limp, as his left calf is more pulp than muscle. He has been in Hell for about twenty years now, has spent that time shoring up power and skills and fuck, it had still been too close. 

When they get to the building they’d very recently moved into together – what, Vox was new here and Alastor has a hard time keeping roommates – they find that the power is out to the entire block. 

Vox’s reaction is predictably spectacular. 

“Fuckin’ CHRIST can NOBODY in this plane get their SHIT TOGETHER! WHY are backup generators such a FOREIGN-ASS concept, I KNOW there are patent-office people down here, it’s HELL, this whole PLACE is basically a fucking PATENT OFFICE. HOW has no one fixed this? Oh, no, let’s just REVISIT THE STONE AGE every fuckin’ year, let’s just –“ he kicks a can, which bounces off a wall and then, neatly off the side of his head.

“SHIT,” he snaps, and then, “Stop LAUGHING, you asshole!” 

Alastor can’t, and he wouldn’t if he could. He is wheezing, leaning against a half-melted fence for support. “You were dodging angelic spears an hour ago, and what gets you, Vox? A tin can.” 

“Oh, fuck you,” Vox says. 

And it’s a surprise hit from the Southpaw, Cambell’s Tomato! 

“Go on, go on, get it out of your system,” Vox says, but a grin is spreading helplessly across his face. 

He’s on the ropes, friends! What a night! What a performance! 

“Just casually waiting on you to remember the ELEVATOR doesn’t work and we live on the sixth floor.” 

“Oh, yes,” Alastor says, wiping a tear away. “I seem to recall someone wanted a VIEW.” 

“Pffft, yeah, like it’s my fault the ground floor floods every other week.” Vox tilts his head at Alastor. “You gonna make it? That leg looks like shit.” 

Alastor waves him off. “Oh, I’ll manage,” he says – and then blinks as the world tilts crazily, as Vox sweeps him up in a bridal carry and starts up the stairwell. 

“You and that ego of yours,” Vox says mildly. 

Alastor catches an arm around his shoulders for balance, which steadies him physically. Mentally, he’s still reeling. “You’re not going to carry me up six flights of stairs,” he says. 

“Why not? You’re all limbs.” 

For reasons beyond him, he feels his face heat. “This is REALLY unnecessary.” 

“Uh-huh. And I woulda been dead how many times today if not for your freaky voodoo shadow bullshit?” 

“Purely incidental, old pal,” he says. “I was saving ME. You just happened to be standing close enough to benefit.” 

“Uh-huh,” Vox says again, maddeningly. His smile is fondly exasperated and smug in equal parts as he continues up the stairs, never a trip, never a falter. 

“I think all that stereo is starting to affect your hearing.” 

“Ouch. Those are fighting words, Al. Watch yourself, I WILL drop you.” 

Alastor will never be able to say what possessed him – but he kicks his good leg up and sing-songs, “No you woooon’t.” 

Nothing in his life or unlife prepared him for Vox to suddenly tighten his arms and say, in an oddly rough tone he has no frame of reference for, no hope of understanding, “No. I won’t.” 

___________________________________________________________________________________

Lucifer is glad that the water in the hotel still works even with the power out. He doesn’t REMEMBER making sure of that when he was rebuilding this place, but he’s grateful to his past self all the same as, sleeves rolled up past the elbows, he scrubs the blood off his hands and tries not to think in metaphors. 

Angel Dust is in the kitchen with him, likewise scrubbing blood out of his fur. “Never knew you were so good with your hands, Short King,” he jokes, and Lucifer smiles in spite of himself. 

“That’s what she said,” he says. 

There is a moment of silence in the kitchen, and then Angel whoops. “Aw, Christ, you have NO idea what a fuckin’ relief that is – how I of ALL people wound up at a hotel with the biggest prudes in Hell is a question I ask myself on, like, the DAILY.” 

The lanky sinner shoves at his shoulder lightly with a free hand, and it feels – fuck, when was the last time, not counting touching father-daughter duets, that somebody just put their hand on him like that? Like he’s just, you know, a PERSON getting touched by another PERSON, like he’s – 

Wow, he REALLY needs to get ahold of himself, because even by his standards, this is just SAD. 

“Do we have any idea who did that to him?” he asks, squirting another judicious burst of dish soap onto his hands – the water has long since stopped running red off his fingers, but he can still FEEL it there. 

“Eh.” Angel shrugs elegantly and hauls himself up to sit on the counter. “I mean, Smiles ain’t exactly mister popular down here, so it’s anybody’s guess – smart money’s on Vox, though.” 

“Vox?” Lucifer asks. That’s a new name down here, or at least new by his standards. 

“Yeah, big-shot CEO? Has a television for a head?” 

Unbidden, Lucifer hears it in the back of his mind – Voxtech. Trust us. The low-grade hypnosis so few people seemed to be able to suss out laced through every word, not-so-subtly encouraging people to buy spy drones or soap opera subscriptions or some other brain-scrambling bullshit. 

“Oh,” he says, “ That guy.” 

“Yeah, he really has it out for Mr. Radio Demon,” Angel says. 

“Why? I mean, aside from having met him,” Lucifer says. 

Angel laughs again. “Wow, y’majesty, don’t hold back or anything,” he says. “But I dunno why – they got old beef or something. Vox is also one of the few people around who CAN fuck Smiles up that bad, from what I can tell.” 

Fucked up was, in Lucifer’s not-at-all-professional-opinion, putting it pretty mildly. 

“Charlie, this is WAY past what we can – this isn’t a TV drama, honey! We can’t just slap some gauze on this and call it done, there’s….fuck, there’s probably ORGAN damage, there’s –“ 

“Dad, we are NOT taking him to a hospital! Do you KNOW how many people want him dead?”

He can admit that he’s often guilty of looking at Charlie and seeing his precious little baby girl and not the grown woman she actually is. He was unprepared to see her charge into the room, yanking her suspenders off, and kneeling in the rapidly-expanding puddle of gore in his bedroom to try to fashion a tourniquet around Alastor’s ruined leg. He had wondered numbly who had taught her to do that – was it in one of her therapy seminars? 

“Can’t you do anything for him?” 

She had looked at him, her face streaked with tears and a smear of blood where she’d angrily swiped the back of her hand across her leaking eyes. Charlie had, he’d remembered then, always been like this, had always been bringing home some wounded, horrible creature that she had seen as NEW FRIEND and everyone else at the palace had seen as RABID HELL RACCOON. She’d been so lonely, the kind of lonely Lucifer understood, as protecting her from what Hell WAS also meant protecting her from, well, most social interaction. He’d hoped she’d somehow grow out of it, but now here they were, with the grown-up, escalated, probably-needs-to-be-resolved-with-a-lot-of-therapy version where she looks at a vicious, slimy, double-dealing sonofabitch like Alastor and thinks “family.” 

He’d hated that for her, hated to see her cry over arguably one of the worst people ever ™.  

“I’ve been TRYING. It isn’t working.” 

“What do you mean it isn’t – “

“Whoa, whoa, Charlie, Short King, where’s the fire? What’s all the yelling up h– Oh my fuck, that is a LOTTA blood.” 

As it turned out, Angel Dust knew a thing or two about triage – “ Mafia family, short king, this is up there with learnin’ how to ride a bike” – and it hadn’t taken long, once they’d gotten some light, to figure out why Lucifer’s healing abilities weren’t doing anything for Alastor. It was because the shrapnel, the oddly glowy shrapnel that had peppered his gaunt body, was angelic steel in tiny, splinter-thin fragments. 

“Oh, fuck me. You see? This? This is what I’ve been talking about. You give ‘em free will, and what do they do with it? They make HOLLOWPOINTS out of PIRATED DIVINITY!” 

“Not now, Dad. Angel, if we….can we get this OUT of him…if….”

“Fuck, Charlie, I dunno.” The spider-demon had been running his hands compulsively through his own hair, using one of his spare hands to hold the flashlight over Alastor’s hip, his leg, and the myriad of deadly sparkles that still caught the light even under a thin layer of skin. “ Normally the LAST thing you wanna do is go yanking out bullets or fragments, you just want to get the bleeding to stop, but…but those –“ 

“They’re poisoning him,” Lucifer finished. “And yeah, okay, in THEORY, I can heal him if he’s not, you know, a walking mass of angelic SHRAPNEL.” 

Lucifer would be the first to admit he didn’t have a high opinion of sinners. Hell, it wasn’t a SECRET.  Lily was the people person, and he was the ‘what the fuck have I done, why are they EATING each other’ person, and that suited him fine, because he’d never gotten close to a sinner and not immediately regretted it. 

Angel Dust had surprised him tonight. The guy had jumped right in, no questions about what was in it for him, and there was no mistaking the compassion on his face, the real worry as he’d come back to the room with knives, with a bowl of hot water, rags, antiseptic. 

“Hey, Charlie, Short King and I can probably handle the cutting part, but we’re prob’ly gonna need you to hold him down. He’s pretty out of it, but he could really hurt himself if he starts thrashing.” 

Lucifer blinks as a glass of something blood-colored is suddenly held in front of his face. 

“Here,” the sinner says, not unkindly. “You look like you need this.” 

Lucifer takes it and takes a long pull of what turns out to be cherry brandy. He lets out a relieved sigh as it burns its way down into his gut. “Yeah, thanks. I DID need that.” 

He takes another sip and rolls the pleasant burning sensation around in his mouth for a second before he swallows. “So, you don’t mind my asking…” 

“Oh, sure, you get the family rate, but it’s still cash up front,” Angel says, crossing one impossibly long leg over the other. 

It takes Lucifer an embarrassingly long moment to realize what the other man means - ALL of his social skills are rusty, but the vulgar flirting muscles have especially atrophied. “Oh, no can do,” he says, PRAYING that the man’s joking. “The accountants will have my head if I spend anything on ‘recreation’ after they had to pony up the cash to insure this place.” 

Angel laughs again, and Lucifer feels absurdly relieved. Read it right. 

“You’re a breath o’fresh air, short king. What was it you were gonna ask?” 

“Has the bellhop got you on the hook for something? Why’d you jump in like that? We both know it’s not his winning personality.”

He is not prepared for Angel’s smile - a little sad, a little broken, as he suddenly fiddles with something on the counter. “Okay, yeah, Smiles is absolutely a prick, don't get me wrong - but we’ve been through some real shit together here, and he ain’t never blinked, so if that don’t make him one of ours, I don’t know what will. And besides…” 

Angel’s shoulders hunch forward, just a little, and Lucifer is taken aback at this, at this gift he’s being given, this moment of real being handed to him with the same generosity as a glass of brandy - here, you look like you need this. 

“Smiles has known what I was - am - pretty much from the jump, and he ain’t never - look, people with me, they go two ways. Either they want a piece in the not-good way, or they’re, like….completely disgusted.. And you know what he ain’t ever done? He ain’t ever rubbed my face in it. He don’t treat me any different than anybody else here - “ Angel laughs, more quietly this time. “Okay, well, minus Charlie, but we all know she gets special treatment.” 

Lucifer stands there with his glass in his hand and his throat tight, and there are so many parts of that spiel that rankle him.  “What you are?” is what he ultimately  asks. 

“A coked-up, dick-sucking hoe who sold his soul to the most fucked-up pimp in Hell,” Angel says. “And don’t you dare look at me like that, that’s EXACTLY what I’m talkin’ about.” His hand curls into a fist on the counter. 

“No,” Lucifer says, “you have my faces mixed up. That’s not how I’m looking at you.”

“Then how are you lookin’ at me?” Sharp and hurt and defensive. 

“Fuck, I’m looking at you like you shouldn’t even be here,” Lucifer says, and Angel flinches. 

“WOW,” he says, “Just….wow, and here I thought we were all good. That’s a whole new level of -” 

“In HELL,” Lucifer clarifies, because fuck, he always does this, he always says the wrong FUCKING thing and then he can’t FIX it- “You shouldn’t be in HELL.”  

You could hear a pin drop in that blasted service kitchen. 

“Oh,” Angel says. 

They stare at each other for a very uncomfortable moment, and then Angel laughs, this time a small, self-deprecating sound. “Wouldn’t go that far,” he says, “But thanks, anyway.”

“Now let’s rewind to the part where Charlie gets preferential treatment,” he says. 

Angel snorts audibly. “She gets away with shit with Smiles the rest of us’d lose a limb for,” he says. “Well, except for Nifty, I guess.”  

And wasn’t THAT just something to chew on, because there were a lot of reasons that a confirmed sonofabitch like Alastor would let someone get away with some casual familiarities, and most of them were bad. 

“Case in point, she’s bravin’ those chompers of his to take him some tea he probably don’t want,” Angel says with a casual shrug, and Lucifer is at least encouraged to see him expanding a little, taking up space again. Maybe he hasn’t completely fucked this whole new thing between them  up beyond all repair already, though he figures it’s a matter of time.

“I think I’ll just go up there and - “

“Nah, short king, ain’t no secret the guy don’t like you,” Angel says with a grin that is, again, too soft from a guy who was sent to Hell for, as near as Lucifer can tell, purely self-destructive tendencies. “Best finish yer drink and keep a low profile, huh?”  

“Yeah,” Lucifer concedes. He takes another sip of brandy to illustrate how well he’s behaving himself. No ill intentions here, no deceit, no siree. 

“Okay then. Good chat, I’m gonna go take a shower.” Angel grins at him. “Don’t forget what I said about the family rate, okay?” 

Lucifer snorts. “Not that I’m asking for any REASON, but do you give a senior citizen’s discount?” 

He can hear Angel laughing his way to the stairwell. 

He doesn’t belong here. But Lucifer does. He sets his empty glass on the counter and transforms himself into a mouse - time to see what all this “preferential treatment” looks like up close and way-too-personal. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Alastor’s leg throbs in a way that thrums every nerve in his body, coming and going in waves on a sea of tingly, dizzying brown, alternating between sharp and soul-aching and then a manageable level of dull pain. 

“Relax. I’ve got you.”

He knows that voice, echoing down his brain from over fifty years ago – knows the familiar tingle on his skin.

“That’s right. Let me take care of this.” 

It’s the alcohol, obviously. That’s why his brain doesn’t seem to want to stay in his body, why it wants to drift away on the currents of muted feelings like a balloon someone’s let go. They’d been…sitting in the dark, surrounded by candles, waiting for the power to come back on, and Vox had been trying to heat up some kind of soup ( Not one fucking WORD, Alastor, I swear to Christ) on an incense burner that neither one of them remembered getting. 

It had been….it was weirdly comforting. The candles, Vox ranting a blue streak about prehistory and back-up generators. They’d given up on food, settled for a few fingers of whiskey, and set about patching themselves up. 

“Let me take care of you.” 

The hands that had been holding his aching leg across Vox’s lap until it could be properly bandaged are now rubbing soothing patterns, inside his knee, up his thigh. He should – he should definitely put a stop to that, but it seems like so much EFFORT. 

“You’re so damn stubborn, you know that?” 

The words are unmistakably fond, impossibly far away.  They seep into his skin, burning all the way down, and now gentle fingers are unbuttoning his shirt, slow and sure. 

“You put on a good show, Al, but we both know you want this. The signs are all there, all the time, but you fight it because you fight everything. ”

A hand smooths over his belly, and there’s a muted, fluttery surge of panic, but it seems so far away. The panic is all the way back there where his body is. It’s not worth paying attention to. His brain is so removed, in this nice, fuzzy space where things don’t hurt nearly as much, and if he drifts back, he’ll have to deal with….with this, with whatever this is, and he’s so tired.  

If he doesn’t respond to it, doesn’t notice it, then it’s not happening, right? It’s not real. 

That’s right. Just like that. 

He feels the static tingle of a tongue swipe against the side of his throat and tries to make some kind of protest, but he knows whatever sound comes out of his mouth is nowhere near words. 

God, just look at you. 

Why can’t he talk? Why can’t he feel his fingers – fuck, what did he drink? 

Shh, easy. First time’s always the hardest, but I promise you’ll like it. 

No. No, this isn’t alcohol. This is – this – 

You know you want it. You’ve wanted it for YEARS. 

One hand unclasps his belt, and he idly wonders how long you have to practice to get that maneuver down. Which is a question that has no place in this, this suffocating –

Trust me. 

This is HIM, this is his HYPNOSIS, it’s - 

Alastor comes up swinging, half blind, snarling. 

“Whoa! Al, omigod, Al, stop you’re gonna hurt yourself!” 

He stops. Because that is not the voice he expected to hear. He blinks hard, blinks the brown out of his eyes and digs his fingers into blankets – where IS he? 

“Charlie?” He ventures, then coughs, because that was – that was his voice, just now. When he speaks again, it’s with his radio filter. “Charlie, dear, what are you doing here?” 

Because his brain is in a condo in the business district, and while he will concede that his memory is SPOTTY right now, he is almost sure that there should be no Charlie here among the knockoff décor and the smell of burnt wax. 

“I live here.” Her voice is warm, careful. 

He takes several slow, deep breaths, still blinking the panic film out of his eyes. The room he sees is not the traces of the condo in the back of his brain that are trying to paint themselves over everything. Vox would never have tolerated the tacky string lights or the piles of rubber bath fowl or the absurd, outdated curtains. 

Fuck.  

“Can you – Alastor? Can you name me five things you can see right now?” 

“Darling,” he says. “If you bring your self-help books within a hundred yards of this situation, I will not be responsible for my actions.” 

“Phew – yeah, you’re back. You really had me worried.” 

He feels the mattress depress on his left side – bed, he’s in a bed, under an absurd number of blankets. He is distantly surprised that the hotel HAS this many blankets. He wonders where she found so many. He blinks again and peers around at the mile long stretch of mattress, the Victorian canopy, the…good lord, there are a lot of ducks in this room. 

“Fuck,” he says out loud this time,  falling back against the absolutely ridiculous array of pillows. Who could need this many pillows? 

“You’re in dad’s room,” Charlie continues. She’s balancing a tray on her legs. “We didn’t think it was a good idea to move you, so – yeah, here you are. Do you want some tea? You should try – “ 

He should feel much worse than he does. How did they manage this? 

More to the point, WHY did they manage this? 

“Charlie,” he interrupts her spiel on the virtues of chamomile and rehydration. “Silly girl, have you absorbed nothing I’ve ever told you?” 

“Did you at some point mention hating tea?” she asks, deliberately obtuse as she adds a little sugar to a cup, pours the hot liquid in. It occurs to him that she got that from her father, the impulse to dodge arguments by pretending not to notice them. 

“You still owe me a favor, darling,” he says. “You should have wiped the ledger.” 

“Oh, that. Yeah, okay, PROBABLY, but you passed out pretty quick. Not like I had much chance to get a word in edgewise.” 

“You could have waited for me to be more receptive.” 

“Al,” she says, shoving the tea at him like a fencer with a rapier. “Save it for a rainy day, okay? Besides, I couldn’t risk you dying. I have way too many questions.” 

“Hm,” Alastor says, and he hopes she can HEAR how unconvinced he is. 

“Drink your tea,” She says, and her expression is so impossibly soft that he looks away, he can’t TAKE it. 

He sips his tea. Because it’s his idea, not because she told him to. 

“So the meeting didn’t go well?” 

“I can hear an I-told-you-so from two hundred yards away and buried underground, Miss Morningstar.” 

“Sorry, I’m really TRYING not to say it. Who did this to you?” 

“Oh, no one important,” he breezes. 

“Vox, then,” she says. “I thought he didn’t usually go to the meetings.” 

“He doesn’t. Didn’t this time, either.” 

Charlie nods and then gives him a VERY pointed look. He sighs and takes another sip of tea. 

“How are the other overlords –“ 

“They won’t say boo in any case, dear. There’s not a person at that table who isn’t afraid of him.” 

“Even Carmine….Zestial?” 

“Darling, he is a horrible, modern upstart who offends every sensibility they have and doesn’t even pretend to respect decorum or tradition. Do you really think they wouldn’t have wiped him out of existence by now if they COULD?” 

Charlie makes a frustrated noise of agreement. “Okay,” she says,” I’ll give you that, but why the sudden flip….why gun for you now? “

“Because they know about Pentious,” Alastor says, and then sighs when Charlie flinches. “It was a matter of time, darling, and we needed to know how much they know. Well, they know everything.” 

“Fuck,” Charlie says. She kicks off her shoes and leans back against the headboard with him. “Was it just Vox?” 

“Oh, he heavily implied that it was with unanimous consent of the sovereign overlords,” Alastor says. 

“FUCK,” Charlie says again, sinking partway into  the pillows. She looks over at him. “Do you think he was lying?” 

Irrationally, Alastor is proud of her – that is not a question she would have asked before she met him. “He’s at least stretching the truth,” he concedes. “Though now we have the trouble of sussing out who supported his move, who simply knew about it and decided to see what happened, who didn’t know about it, and who knew about it but didn’t approve. Sorting through that mess will take weeks, if not years.” 

“What about Rosie? Do you think –“ 

Alastor sighs and closes his eyes. The tea cup is warm in his hands, warm and familiar and fuck, he hates this part of it, this part of the dance, this part of Hellish politics. “I’d like to think not, but you know I can’t trust that. It’d take a bigger fool than I am not to realize there are more disadvantages than advantages to opposing that flat-faced hack right now.” 

He keeps his eyes closed because he knows Charlie is giving him THAT look – that one he has no words for, the one that lives somewhere between pity and grief and concern. He sips his tea again, before she can remark on the fact that he isn’t drinking it. 

“Should we be ready for him?” 

Alastor feels his smile curl into something weary. Ready for him? He’d eat every one of you alive, Charlie, and then he’d pick his pixelated teeth with your bones. The only one in this building who could be READY for him is your idiot father, who would first have to NOTICE that we were under attack before we were all messily MURDERED, and I frankly don’t like our chances.  Out loud, what he says is, “Oh, darling, don’t worry about him right now. He’ll be curled up in his tower for at least the next few days.” 

She touches his arm and he allows it. “That’s good, right? You said the other overlords were afraid of him. If you hurt him that bad –“ 

“If I hurt him that badly, they can’t completely count me out of the game yet, no. I imagine there would be several of them on the front lawn right now, otherwise.” 

“You think they’d be willing to cross dad like that?” It’s not disbelief from her, it’s a genuine question, and he sighs. 

“They don’t know your father,” he says. “He is a non-entity to them, a creature that hides in his palace and, for all they know, is afraid of them. Oh, we both know it isn’t true, but it’s what THEY believe. Most of them have never met him in person. They know only what they saw on the news. They have no reason to think that if they pounded on the door and asked nicely, that he wouldn’t shove me out like trash waiting for pickup.” 

Alastor also had no reason not to think so, but he doesn’t much fancy a very Charlie-flavored speech about how they were all family here, how that would never happen. She believes that. He has no doubts that she believes every word, but the best liars have to sell the lie to themselves first. 

“Al, he wouldn’t do that,” she says. 

“This isn’t about what I believe,” he says, even as he thinks, you have no idea how glad he’d be to be rid of me, darling. “I’m just telling you the way they’re thinking.” 

She gives him another sad, uncertain look, but she forges on. “So, they’re not on the front lawn, but you don’t know who wants you dead and who’s just OKAY with you being dead?” 

“Exactly.” 

“Or who might help Vox if he decides to come for us once he’s recovered from whatever you did to him?” 

This part hurts his pride more than bullets ever could. This part hurts, and it comes out of him like a tooth being pulled. “Charlie, darling – he doesn’t need their help. He doesn’t even need for them not to interfere. It’s just more convenient if they don’t.” 

“Oh, God, Al. Are you sure?” 

“Sometime in the last few decades, and especially since I’ve been gone….yes, I’m sure.” 

They sit in silence. He remembers to drink his stupid tea. 

“This is….this is all on account of you backing us, isn’t it?” 

“None of that,” Alastor says, waving a hand. “You know I only do what I WANT to do, and overlord politics are inescapably dull compared with your little passion project. Next question.” 

“What changed with them? What’s really pushing them to pick a side?” 

“Heaven won’t like this, Charlie. We’ve talked about it. You and your father have talked about it. The other sovereign overlords are afraid that Heaven will decide to raze this already-pathetic, miserable realm of existence to the ground and start fresh. They are willing to give up the comfort of established order to keep that from happening.” 

“So what, they nail you and maybe us to a big ol’ cross, and everything’s forgiven? The Heaven problem goes away and they can go right back to buying up every soul in sight? ‘Here you go, Heaven, we promise we’ll be good, let’s just FORGET that there’s another way?’” 

“You always did have a gift for summary, Charlie.” 

“Fuck,” she breathes for a third time. Then, he feels her cheek on his shoulder as she leans against him, and he thinks he has never felt so completely flummoxed by anything in his entire miserable existence. “I didn’t think this would be so hard.” 

“Changing the status quo is always hard, my dear,” he says. “The status quo is the status quo precisely because a lot of people are VERY invested in keeping it that way.” 

“You leave that to me for now, okay?” She gives his non-teacup-hand a gentle squeeze, leaves her cheek on his shoulder. “You just work on getting better. Dad did what he could, but he said if he did much more to your body, he might kill you.” 

Alastor blinks, because he can’t have heard that right. “What now?” 

“Dad has some healing powers. He says it’s nothing like his brother Rafael’s, but he’s got, you know, he can do something - or at least he could once he and Angel got the shrapnel out of you.” 

Her face is briefly haunted, and he notices that she isn’t wearing her usual suspenders over her dress shirt. 

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says, because he IS, for some stupid reason, sorry. 

She looks up at him like she might actually start choking him. “You -AL! You’re sorry I had to SEE that? You got SHOT.” 

He waves her off. “Oh, it’s hardly the first time, doubt it will be the last, ha! I’m more concerned about what I owe your father for an angelic house call.” 

“Don’t worry. He was doing me a favor, Al. Not you.” 

That aches inside him in a way he can’t explain. “Darling,” he says, “You should never burn bridges for free.” 

“They’re my bridges, I’ll burn ‘em if I feel like it,” she says. 

They sit in silence again for he doesn’t know how long. 

“Al,” she says finally. “After the extermination, the one where Adam died –“ 

Ah, so this is it, finally. This is the fight where they hash out why he abandoned her in the middle of the most important battle of her young life. He has been preparing for that mentally for a while now. It’s not like the poor girl is any GOOD at having real fights. He will just have to hold out long enough for her to apologize (despite having done nothing wrong), and then he will accept her apology (despite having done things wrong), and the entire business can finally be done with. 

 “Yes?” he says. 

“He hurt you, didn’t he?” 

Alastor blinks. “Charlie, it was a fist fight. By definition –“ 

“I mean, he hurt you badly. That’s why you were gone so long.” 

He has lost control of this conversation as surely as a man wandering out too deep in a river he thinks he knows too well might lose his feet in the current. “I’m a sovereign overlord of Hell,” he says blandly. “Believe it or not, I DO sometimes have business that does NOT involve check-ins or room service. I just lost track of time.” 

She squeezes his hand again and doesn’t argue with him, but he knows damn well she doesn’t believe a word of it. He’s not even completely sure he wants her to, given as the alternative is her thinking that he is, at best, a coward. 

It shouldn’t matter what she thinks. 

When did it start to matter what she thinks? 

“Al, we would’ve helped you.” 

Alastor sighs internally. As terrible as Charlie is at having REAL fights, he may arguably be worse at having THIS kind of fight. He can trade insults with flat-faced corporate leeches or superior-without-reason weapons dealers all day, and never a barb will truly touch him, but he doesn’t know how to - he can’t do THIS. 

“Which I will keep in mind,” he says carefully, “in the unlikely event I ever need your help.” He peers down at her, as she peers up at him, and then he sees….

“What the FUCK am I wearing?” he asks. 

Charlie grins up at him, and he is relieved, at least, to see that the girl does have SOME sadism buried deep inside her, because that is definitely a trace of glee. “Your shirt was wrecked,” she says. “And you were all bloody, and we didn’t think you’d want to sleep shirtless, so we borrowed one of dad’s…” 

“Why are there DUCKS?” he asks. 

“Because we thought they looked cuter on you than the little hearts?” 

“Congratulations,” he says. “This is the worst thing that anyone has ever done to me.” 

“Well, I AM the princess of Hell. I have expectations to live up to,” she delivers in a posh accent.  

“I hope your father is prepared to heal third degree burns, because I am going to have to burn this and possibly my top layer of SKIN off to feel clean again.” 

And Charlie laughs at him. She is one of only a few people he has known in his life or his unlife - one of the few he could count on one hand and still have fingers to spare - who can laugh at him without making him want to stab her. 

“Al, go to sleep,” she says. “I promise, I will take the Duckie Pajama Incident with me to my final resting place, wherever THAT is. Just finish your tea and sleep this off.” 

She gets up and walks to the door., and damn him again, he misses her presence already. He’s not some bedraggled feral cat that’s gotten its first taste of indoor living and spends the rest of its life pawing at glass doors and begging for scraps, this is NOT who or what he is.  He does not need people to sit with him in the dark to make sure that it doesn’t turn into static flashes, angelic spears, writhing wires, or bullet wounds. 

And even if he DID need people to sit with him for that, it would not be Charlie’s responsibility. This isn’t her fight, not her problem. 

“And try not to be YOU-levels of paranoid, okay?” She continues.  “Believe it or not, nobody wants to hurt you here.” 

She closes the door gently behind her. 

Nobody wants to hurt you here. 

Lucifer loves his daughter. He loves her deeply and completely and with every part of him that still remotely works, but he has to disagree with her there. 

He looks down at the demon sleeping restlessly in his bed, and he weighs the virtues of just picking up a damned pillow and - 

And what? And, and, and. He can still see his daughter’s tear-streaked face in the candlelight as they cut back Alastor’s shirt and revealed the open meat of his left side - can still hear the broken, involuntary sounds she’d made as she knelt on Alastor’s arms and cupped his face in her hands to keep him from thrashing hard enough to give himself yet another concussion on the hardwood floor. 

“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod -” 

“Easy, Charlie. I know it don’t look good, but these overlord types are made outta pretty stern stuff. No way is this what takes this guy out, trust me.” 

“Why is there so much blood in his HAIR?” 

“Wait, what now?” Angel reached past Lucifer and his mostly-unsuccessful efforts to stem the bleeding from Alastor’s side. The sinner carded his fingers through the sticky, matted strands of Alastor’s hair and then drew his hand back because, apparently even mostly unconscious, that was the sort of thing that would lead to a near-loss-of-a-hand as Alastor’s teeth snapped. 

Angel whistled, looking at the dried blood on his  fingers and then at Alastor. “‘Cause whoever shot him damn near split his skull, too.” 

“Shit, shit, and….and his mouth is -” 

“Oh,” Angel said with grim pride, “Betcha that ain’t his. At least our guy got a few licks in, huh?” 

“Cannibals,” Lucifer had muttered. Because fuck, you give ‘em free will, and you expect there to be a few bumps in the road to enlightenment, sure,  but one of those bumps should not be EATING each other, CHRIST. 

Lucifer looks at Alastor’s body in his bed and suddenly longs for the feral hellbeasts that Charlie used to bring home, because she honestly stood a better chance of taming one of those rabid Hell-raccoons than she does of domesticating whatever this guy is. 

Sure, Alastor puts on a good show - one of the best Lucifer has seen, in fact. He lures you in with the sound-effect bits and the cheesy radio numbers and the jazz hands, but under the surface, and not very FAR under, there is this, the kind of guy who buys up souls like monopoly squares and fights other sinners for territory like a wild animal. 

And Charlie, bless her poor, optimistic little heart, loves him. If he doubted it before he spent the last half an hour clinging to one of the curtains as a mouse, then he doesn’t doubt it now. Charlie LOVES this guy in the unreserved, reckless way that only Charlie loves people, and the question is not whether or not Alastor will hurt her, but when and how - by getting himself killed in a reckless back-alley fight, by betraying her when it’s convenient, by the thousand, casual cruelties that sinners inflicted on each other on the daily. 

Lucifer can find one bright side here in all this horrible, complicated bullshit, and that is that Charlie has Vaggie. By some act of mercy that Lucifer knows he does not deserve, Charlie is not the kind of girl who is attracted to dangerous, unfairly-attractive older men with complicated pasts, because Lucifer  and his depression and his withdrawal and his complete lack of anything resembling human parental instincts had really teed THAT ball up for someone like Alastor to take a swing.  No, Charlie has more sense than her old man - given the option of something passionate and dangerous, she had instead opted for warm and safe and steady. 

So yeah, he’s aware that this could have been a LOT worse. It still doesn’t make it any easier to watch her cosying up to one of the most vicious bastards in Hell like he’s her poor, sick granny. It doesn’t make it any easier to know she owes a monster like this guy a favor .  

“Fuck, I shoulda let you bleed out,” Lucifer mutters, slowly easing down to sit beside the bed. He buries his face in his hands for a moment. 

Lilith used to listen to the guy’s radio show. She used to laugh in the shocked way that you do when you know you should feel bad for laughing - almost every one of the guy’s jokes, when it WAS jokes and weather forecasts instead of, you know, the unceasing screams of the damned - was the kind of thing that made your conscience cry. 

Why, I haven’t been that entertained since the stock market crash of 1929! Ha ha ha….so many orphans.

Watch yourselves in the business district today, sinners! A fine officer of the law called in just a little while ago to report that a woman had shot a man for walking on the floor that she had just mopped. I asked him, “Have you arrested her yet?” and he said, “No, what kind of fool doyou take me for? The floor is still wet!” 

“I think you’d like this guy, honey,” she’d said, sprawled out on their bed in just a white button-down shirt, her loose hair fanned across the sheets. 

“I can’t even believe you’re listening to that shit,” he’d told her. “We aren’t suffering enough down here? You gotta add puns to the mix?” 

She gave him a look that made him feel…less-than. “You used to be fun, Luci,” she said. 

“Awful hard to maintain a joyful demeanor in Hell, Lily,” he’d said, fiddling with the beak of his latest attempt at tinkering-through-his-crushing-existential-dread. 

Lilith had heaved a gusty sigh and turned onto her side, and Lucifer had taken a moment to appreciate the S-curve of her body through the thin, white cotton. Lilith was beautiful, had always been beautiful; even before the fall, before he’d been…before that kind of want was a thing he could feel, she’d caught his breath every time he looked at her. “But don’t you see? That’s exactly what he’s doing.”  

“Yeah, pretty sure the guy was a murdering bastard before he died, and he’s only gotten worse after.” 

Murder wasn’t a thing before he’d given Eve that stupid apple - before he’d - fuck, he’d meant well. He really had. 

“I don’t know what you see in sinners like that guy.” 

The grin she shoots him - upside down now, from where she’s shifted on the bed - is pure mischief. “Well,” she says, “he’s got a lovely voice, don’t you think?” 

“I see what you’re doing there, and it’s not going to work. I’m not falling for -” 

“Oh, honey, falling is your specialty - and anyway, I’m being completely honest.” 

Of all the souls in existence, he had to fall madly in love with the one who thinks he’s hot when he’s blind jealous. Lucifer started his relationship before there was such a thing as couples therapy, but he is very sure that this is the kind of thing that would be labeled ‘unhealthy’ - not that the occasional threeway (or fourway) with random hellborn entities wasn’t already so far into the realm of probably-fucked-up that the rest of the stuff just kind of paled in comparison. 

“No sinners, Lily,” he said in a weary voice, turning back to his ducks. 

He feels her hands settle on his shoulders, feels the warm press of her against his back. “You used to want me to have nice things,” she purred in his ear. 

“That’s playing dirty, Lily,” he said. 

“Tall, pretty sinners with sexy radio voices are nice things, Luci.” 

Sitting on the floor, with his back against the bed, Lucifer takes a moment to bury his face in his hands. There is no longer a Lilith to press against his back and put her arms around him - to goad him into action when his instincts, since the fall, have always been to keep his hands out of things, to do no more harm. 

He feels adrift and alone and useless, and he hates it. 

“To recap,” he says to a little pink duck. “Everything is awful, I don’t know how to protect Charlie from loving people she shouldn’t, and of all the fucking sinners in Hell, she had to adopt the one my wife thought had a sexy radio voice .” 

Alastor’s face appears, upside down, in his field of vision, as the sinner has leaned off the edge of the bed. “Your wife what now?” 

Lucifer shrieks involuntarily, all six of his wings popping out and fluffing up in shock, and Alastor falls back onto the bed, literally cackling, and oh, this. fucking. guy. 

Lucifer takes a deep breath and rolls up his sleeves - he can practically hear the ding-ding-ding in his head - looks like we’re doing this. “Very funny, asshole,” he says. “Now you and me, we’re gonna talk.” 

Chapter Text

It takes Alastor an embarrassingly long time to stop laughing at him – which is not a thing that Lucifer has had HAPPEN to him in recent memory.

“Ya done?” he asks, feeling his face pull into a mou of displeasure that, Lily assured him MANY times, is not dignified.

“Forgive me, your imperial majesty,” Alaster snickers, one hand across his eyes. “You look like an electrocuted pigeon.”

Lucifer feels his feathers fluff in indignation which, he realizes, is NOT helping the whole not-an-electrocuted-pigeon-fuck-you image he WANTS to project.

“Does anybody but YOU laugh at your jokes?” Lucifer asks, folding his arms.

Alastor is laying back on the bed, his hand still over his eyes, the buttons not quite lined up on his shirt, one much-too-pronounced hipbone clearly visible under the rucked-up hem.

That looks….that is…and Lucifer wrenches his eyes away from it, because NOW IS NOT THE TIME.

“Well,” Alastor says, thankfully UNAWARE that Lucifer was awkwardly staring a hole in his skin not a second ago, “not everyone does, but that could just be because it goes over their heads.”

Lucifer presses his lips together. He is….rusty. He’s rusty and off-balance and it has been YEARS since he’s had someone around for long enough to laugh in his face, to make short jokes at him while wearing his clothes in his bed while looking like the cover of some soft-core porn magazine (seriously, this fucking guy).

The people of Hell were afraid of Lucifer once – and with good reason. That was when his shame and grief and the raw, sharp-edged shock at going from a paradise in blue tones to a world made of red and sulfer had manifested in manic activity. There had been attempts to escape. There had been construction efforts, rehabilitation attempts, efforts to corral the chaotic, twisted, battered souls that had started trickling into his realm. He had tried a thousand frantic ways to fix it, to prove that he hadn’t ruined everything, not forever.

Those early failures had been followed, sometimes, by fits – tantrums, Lily had called them – that left large stretches of landscape marginally more scorched, and even the few old souls who had somehow fallen with him had found places to hide and to tremble. They’d left him feeling more ashamed than when he’d started, left him withdrawing into workshops and empty halls to lick his proverbial wounds, to stop making it worse.

“Holy fuck, you’re obnoxious,” is what Lucifer says out loud.

Alastor turns lazily onto his side to face him and grins that ridiculous grin of his. “Bet you really regret not smothering me with that pillow about now?”

“How’d you know I was thinking about it? Is that a common reaction to have around you?” he asks.

“Hmm,” Alastor says. “Does your daughter know you’re up here contemplating murder?”

“Being in close quarters with you would make Mother Theresa contemplate murder, so – yeah, probably.”

“Hmmmmm,” Alastor says again, and Lucifer feels his eye twitch – well, THAT was a mistake, now the bastard is going to play the game of ‘how long can I draw out these hmms without being wiped from existence.’

Sinners. Literally the worst.

“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment,” Alastor says at last. He leans back into the sea of pillows like a cat who knows it has taken your seat and is, as a result, taking up as much space as possible.

“Of course you are,” Lucifer says. Then he sits down on the edge of the bed, because edgelord isn’t the only one who knows how to keep people off-balance. “Now what’s this shit I hear about my little girl owing you a favor?”

Ha, point for Lucifer he thinks grimly. He catches the shifty bastard’s eyes widen behind that dumb grin of his and mentally buffs his nails on his shirt.

Alastor recovers quickly, damn him. “Oh, forgive me – did you want to know what our deal is about?”

“Nah, I’m just shooting the shit – of COURSE I want to know.”

“Well,” Alastor says. He leans in slowly, very slowly, and folds his hands on his lap. “Charlie owes me a favor for…”

Alastor leans closer still, as if he’s going to whisper it.

Lucifer reflexively leans closer as well, holding his breath.

Alastor takes a deep breath of his own, waits a beat. Then, “None of your business,” he sing-songs.

Lucifer has never, in his entire existence, wanted to punch someone in the face so badly. He sits back slightly, takes a deep breath, and thinks, with resignation, Point smarmy Radio bastard. “I kind of think it IS my business, Allison.”

Alastor raises a brow at him. “That isn’t my name.”

Lucifer would like to blame his bantering time with Angel. He really, really would - except Lucifer is just like this and almost always has been. He gives the Radio Demon his best peer up through his mussed-up hair, puts a free hand on the other side of the guy’s legs for balance, and grins. “Oh – you want to hear me say your name? You’re gonna have to be a lot nicer to me to get THAT, Alyssa.”

And Mr. Big-shot Radio Demon apparently flusters like a teenage girl. Clears his throat, goes to straighten a tie he doesn’t have, flattens his ears, and fuck, how is one of supposedly the scariest overlords in Hell this cute?

“Hmm – be that as it may,” Mr. Radio-guy says, crossing one leg over the other beneath the blankets. “I don’t go disclosing the terms of my friendly agreements to just anyone.”

“Yeah, Alberta – I’m not just anyone. I’m her father.”

“Then it’s time you act like it.”

“Excuse me? That would be why I’m up here threatening you.”

“Ha! This is your version of threatening? I’ve been in greater fear for my life among pet store budgies.”

“Pal, you are SERIOUSLY lucky my girl likes you, or you would be a smoldering pile of –“

“It’s your fault, you know,” the sinner says, reaching out and of all the fucking audacious things, poking Lucifer right in the middle of his chest.

“No way, nope. A LOT of shit is my fault – including the existence of fuckheads like YOU, but nobody held a gun to your head and made you –“

“Ha! Holding guns to my head is, believe it or not, hilariously ineffective.”

“Oh,” Lucifer says grimly, “I believe it. You have the self-preservation instincts of a drunken lemming.”

Alastor flips a hand at him, all pish posh and shit, and Lucifer again finds himself grappling with the impulse to choke the life out of the guy. “You weren’t here,” the sinner says. “She’d have offered up her soul if I’d asked for it. As they say, how do you like them apples?”

“I’m not to blame for you being an opportunistic piece of shit,” Lucifer says, even as he feels his blood chill.

“No, but you ARE to blame for not teaching the girl anything of how Hell works – assuming you know yourself.”

“Lilith left with her when she was still playing with DOLLS, you asshat. That’s a LITTLE YOUNG for a full briefing on ‘how not to get scammed by smarmy overlord bastards looking for’ – “

“I,” Alastor says, leaning into his space again – Lucifer is aware that his own eyes went fully red some time ago, and he grudgingly has to admit that the guy has guts, “have been teaching her as best I can, despite someone giving her an utterly unrealistic view of how this blasted, infernal nightmare of a realm operates.”

Unwillingly, he remembers what the Radio Demon told his daughter. Charlie, dear, have you absorbed nothing I’ve ever told you?  You still owe me a favor. You should have wiped the ledger.

“Don’t do anything for free,” Lucifer says quietly.

“Ever,” Alastor says. “It would’ve made a poor lesson if I said one thing and did another.”

“Oh, right, this is all out of the goodness of your heart. Tell me another one.”

“Ha! And I was beginning to think you had no sense of humor. I’m in this for myself, your majesty. I’ve never made any bones about it – not to Charlie, not to you.”

Lucifer raises his eyebrow at the sinner – the sinner who is sitting in his bed, the buttons slightly askew on the borrowed pajama top. He can see the edges of bandages beneath the shirt. He remembers the barely-audible noises Alastor made while they cut into him with tiny knives, choking down sounds of pain even when barely conscious.

“How’s that working out for ya?” Lucifer asks.

Alastor shrugs, somehow graceful despite the duck print and the pillows and the excess of blankets. “I came here to be entertained,” he says. “On that front, it has been a success, as I have not been bored for a moment since I arrived.”

“Liar,” Lucifer says.

Alastor raises a brow at him, prim and subtly affronted. “Go on,” he says. “Explain your rationale for this unjustified slur on my character.”

Lucifer snorts. “I went to the SAME damn seminar on ‘things not to do in front of the new guests’ that you did. You were bored. I was bored.”

And is that – fuck, is that the pursed-lip look of someone who is trying not to let that nasty, snarly smile of his turn into something else? “I have no idea what you mean,” Alastor says. “I was riveted…”

“The WALLPAPER was bored,” Lucifer continues with a flail of his outside hand. “There was a SLIDE SHOW!”

That lip-purse again. “Just because SOME divine beings lack an attention span…”

“Alice. I know they say that slide shows are a tool of the devil, but they aren’t. They are not. Not even I would come up with something that miserable, and I designed the accordian.”

And Alastor laughs. It’s a real laugh, Lucifer would put money on it, and he doesn’t know WHY it was so important to him that he make that happen. He is about ninety percent sure he still hates this guy, but after who-knows-how-long alone in a palace full of rubber ducks and shitty memories, even lousy, daughter-stealing, condescending asshat company is better than no company.

“It is SLIGHTLY possible that Charlie was attempting to punish us for that little tiff we had in the kitchen the day before,” Alastor concedes.

“Attempt successful,” Lucifer says. “I mean, I’m not SORRY I threw a pot at you. It was the highlight of my day, and I will throw things at you in the future. I’m just going to try harder to keep her from finding out about it.”

“Hmmmm – honestly, same. It’ll work better if certain parties can refrain from using such LOUD projectiles.”

Alastor leans back against the pillows once more, and he’s looking at Lucifer again like a cat looks at some idiot that’s going to try to move it, and…

…and Lucifer doesn’t want to move him. At least, he doesn’t want to move him out of his bed. What he WANTS to do is to slide his hands up under his shirt to see if he flusters again.  He wants to push him down in that (alright, excessive, he knows it’s excessive) stack of pillows and press very wet kisses to his throat, down his chest, to the too-pronounced crease in the guy’s abs, fuck, did he ever eat?

Weirdest of all, in addition to some gratifying squirming, what he really wants from this guy is for him to keep right on being a pain in the ass, making jokes at his expense, being completely fucking irreverent, at least until his breath starts to hitch.

What the fuck.

What the Actual. Fuck.

“WELP, that’s enough social interaction for one night,” Lucifer blurts, rapidly turning away from the bed to throw a quilt with unnecessary force at the couch. “Especially with you, douchebag.”

He can feel Alastor staring at his back.

“Not going to tell me to get the Hell out of your room?“ he asks.

Lucifer snorts. “Yeah, no. No walking for you. I do good work, but you should still stay off that leg for a while.”

Alastor plucks at the top blanket, suddenly looking….very uncomfortable. Because it seems like while Mr. Radio Demon is perfectly okay with stretching out on his bed when he ISN’T supposed to be here, he’s less skeezy, antagonistic confidence when he’s actually allowed to be somewhere.

And isn’t THAT fucked up.  

“I’m not dealing with another ‘we’re all family’ exercise from Charlie if I let your arrogant ass fall down the stairs or something,” he offers like the world’s most backhanded olive branch. “Just stay put, all right?”

Alastor snorts. “Be that as it may, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve slept on your couch.”

That was true. Hell, less than a week ago, Alastor had been up here (per Charlie’s request) to go over the financials with him. Point of fact, the guy had chucked the last credit card statement at him.

(It had been a little like taking a flung mackerel to the face, and it had taken Lucifer clean off his feet.)

The guy was an asshole, sure. But he was also good with numbers, and the two of them had run through he didn’t know how many potential ledgers to, if not turn a profit (yeah, that was never gonna happen here) to at least keep the place from hemorrhaging funds. And at some point, when Lucifer had glanced over, he’d realized Alastor had nodded off on the sofa.

So okay, it was POSSIBLE the guy was putting more effort into this place than he let on.

Lucifer had covered the guy with one of his many, many spare quilts, and he’d let him sleep, balled up on his sofa, until he was done sleeping. It was a perfectly NORMAL thing to do – Lucifer had no idea why they’d both been so awkward about it the next morning, why neither of them had ever said a word about it since.

“Huh-uh, injured idiots get the bed. The couch is FINE. In my own ROOM,” Lucifer says, MAYBE playing up the bitching for the other guy’s comfort, sue him.  

Alastor blinks at him owlishly. “IS it a bed? More of a province, surely –“

Lucifer huffs. Because Alastor’s got him there. While technically furniture, that bed should have at least two zip codes. “Hey,” he says, “I used to need the space.”

He chances a glance over at Alastor as he attempts to battle the quilt and throw pillows into some kind of submission – and THAT is definitely a different look on Mr. Radio Demon, isn’t it? Only it’s not the fluster from earlier, which Lucifer was half-expecting (hoping? Was he hoping?) to see. No, this looks a lot more like…the not-good kind of nerves.

Alastor’s eyes have started to dart around like he’s cataloguing his exits.

Huh. Lucifer isn’t sure he likes that. Sure, it’d be NICE, maybe, if the guy would show a LITTLE bit of well-deserved awe when Lucifer is threatening to reduce him to ATOMS, but he’s not sure he wants –

No, he definitely does not want.

“That was a long time ago,” he adds – feeling his way, like in a dark room. He doesn’t know what put that look on the guy’s face, other than it definitely not being good, whatever it was, and….and he’s not sure what will make it go away.

“Well,” Alastor says, and it sounds like him, like him exactly, no trace of the falter from a moment ago, “I suppose it’s a relief to hear that reports of your degeneracy were not COMPLETELY exaggerated.”

“Eh, if you’re damned already, might as well have some fun with it,” Lucifer says, unconsciously quoting Lily. He finally settles on the couch.

Alastor snorts at him, and it’s so close to the sound that actual deer make when they’re aggravated that he’s hard-pressed not to snicker. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t see the appeal.”

Lucifer waves him off. “Hey, forgiveness is the OTHER side of the glowy circle in the sky, pal,” he says. “It’s not really my schtick anymore.”

This time, the radio demon’s (unnecessarily long, fuck, he knew he was going to be obnoxious about that) hmm sounds vaguely approving as he settles onto his side with his back to Lucifer. “Good night, your majesty.”

“Good night, asshole.”

It takes Lucifer a very long time to get to sleep.

Because what. The. Fuck.

Lucifer is no stranger to intrusive thoughts. Hell, his brain is more “intrusive thought” than gray matter and always has been; his constant stream of “hey, what if’s” had earned excessive eyerolls from the more serious angels long before they’d given him the boot, literally, and from a frankly unnecessary altitude.

Okay, but hear me out, what if the white birds could also swim?

What if the super-tall-neck thing had spots? Wouldn’t that be neat?

What if the humans could decide for themselves?

(Yes, it does always come back to that, and yes, he is planning to die mad about it. Thanks for asking.)

It’s just that men weren’t usually his thing. Sure, men had happened. Men were inevitably going to happen when you were married for a ridiculously long time to a very persuasive woman whose most persistent kinks were voyeurism, novelty and boundary-pushing.

(She’d gotten bored with him, he knew it, he knew - stop it.)

Lucifer tightens his fingers in the stupid quilt and takes calming breaths.

It wasn’t like he’d hated any of it. Plenty of the hellborn that Lily had met in her early days of hellish networking were uninhibited, enthusiastic partners, and Lily knew what she wanted. He’d heard enough people complain about never knowing how to make their partners happy that he had sense enough to be grateful for direct instructions.

It was easy. No thinking required, just do what Lily said, just follow the breathy purrs of her voice in his ear and feel safe in the knowledge that his own (catastrophically cursed) decision-making wasn’t going to play any part in the next few hours.

So no, he hadn’t hated it. And if sometimes in the sweaty, skin-cooling aftermath he felt weirdly adrift, felt…well, that was when Lily would wrap him up in her arms, and – and they had some of their best mornings together, after nights like that. Mornings where she would smile at him from the breakfast table, all warm light and golden hair, that hungry, chaotic spirit inside her sated for the moment, and they were happy.

(He thought they were happy.)

So yeah, anyway, veering away from THAT traumatic miasma of self-doubt and regret, the point was, while he didn’t HATE sleeping with men, he preferred women, and he always had. Sex with men was bizarrely complicated and inevitably kind of awkward, whereas women were….well, easier. Softer.

Alastor was neither easy nor soft. The man was all sarcasm and sharp teeth and pointy elbows. Fucking him would probably feel like rutting on a split-rail fence, and getting fucked by him was probably right up there with riding a bike down a cobblestone street.

Nope. No sir. Not remotely appealing. No thank you.

So why was his stupid, defective brain suddenly supplying him with very vivid, very unwanted thoughts about feeling the guy up? Which is, you know, fucked up on multiple levels, real sex just shouldn’t HAPPEN that way. Sure, it’s fun in theory, (at least, when it’s not featuring a sinner whom he frankly hates), but it should probably be preceded by a, “Hey, what are your thoughts on my licking you,” conversation.

At the BEST of times, that was a weird conversation to have.

Having a conversation like that with Alastor (in some alternate reality where that would EVER happen) would be, Lucifer can already tell, the breathing definition of a nightmare – maybe not exclusively because the asshat had perfected the weaponization of social awkwardness.

It was possible, just possible, that Mr. Big Scary Radio Overlord had some trust issues.

Yeah, Lucifer had fixated on the whole “daughter owing sadistic overlord a favor” part of that conversation, but –

He hurt you, didn’t he?

Al, we would’ve helped you.

They have no reason to think that if they pounded on the door and asked nicely, that he wouldn’t shove me out like trash waiting for pickup.

The other overlords have no reason not to think that, but it occurs to him now that Alastor also has no reason not to think that. And hey, if Charlie wasn’t so attached to the guy –

That is not – that’s not a great feeling.

Lucifer prods at it curiously, like probing a loose tooth with his tongue.

Alastor has been here a lot longer than Lucifer has – and that frankly sucks to admit, but it’s true. He’s been here, fighting side by side with the ragtag little group of sinners that Charlie has adopted, sitting with them in the parlor on game night, and giving advice on the messy shoots-and-ladders-esque boardgame that is overlord politics, and frightening off loan sharks and worse with his presence.

And he doesn’t trust a one of them – not as far as he can throw them.

Don’t worry, Al. He was doing ME a favor, not you.

It said something probably-not-good about Alastor’s previous relationships with people if he’d sooner bleed out in the dark surrounded by rubber ducks than call out to a whole hotel full of people who are supposed to be his friends. Alastor had WILLINGLY lain in the dark bleeding when the people who should have wanted to help him, should have gathered him up and fussed over him and cared for him were only a few feet away. It would’ve been one thing if he’d passed out, but no – he was laying there, conscious and wrecked for who knew how long. It either hadn’t occurred to him to call for help, or he’d weighed the pros and cons and decided on nursing his own angelic bullet wounds, thanks.

Lucifer had originally written that off as the guy’s overinflated ego, but maybe…

As exhausting as it had been to be alone, Lucifer wonders how exhausting it must be to be surrounded by people who you thought were only waiting on an opportunity to do you harm.

“He’s my friend, dad.”

Charlie, firm and sure, her eyes blazing during one of their, uh, more spirited chats about her bellhop and his total aversion to anything that would normally make someone a good person.

“Great, Char. That’s great. Does HE know that?”

Something unsettling and sad and much too old for his daughter’s face flitted briefly in her expression. He wanted to THROTTLE that creep for putting that look on his daughter’s face.

“Not – I don’t think he does, no.” Her shoulders squared then, and she looked him dead in the eye. “That’s why he needs one so much.”

 Lucifer looks over his shoulder at his bed. Alastor seems to be sleeping – in any case, his back is to Lucifer, and his sides are rising and falling slowly.

He thinks about the man’s hand closing on his wrist. She doesn’t need to see this.

Lucifer doesn’t understand. He doesn’t. But there has to be some middle ground between keeping an eye on the shifty sonofabitch and having him think that Lucifer would willingly serve him up to his enemies on a platter just because he can. That is just….that is not a mindset that is remotely healthy for them coexisting in the same space for the forseeable future.

“Looks like you and me have some work to do, bellhop,” he says, turning back to face the back of the couch.

Alastor eyes the invitation in his hand as if it might actually explode. It looks innocuous enough, even pleasant, written in a graceful cursive script that had fallen out of favor at about the time that keyboards were invented.

“I don’t got no use for those things, honey – they’re just not personable.”

“Is that from Rosie?” Charlie asks, peering around his stiff body as he stands in the foyer and rereads the invitation for the fourth time.

“It is.”

“What is it?”

“It’s an invitation to tea,” he says.

“Oh, that – that’s good,” Charlie ventures. “Right? She invites you out to tea all the time.”

“She does.”

“Sooooo…..maybe she wasn’t in on Vox trying to kill you?”

“Maybe,” Alastor concedes. “Let’s hope. At the very least, it may be that she didn’t approve of it.”

He does hope. The alternative is that this is a trap, but for reasons of not having to pry Charlie off his person like an overly-concerned starfish in order to get out the door, he won’t be saying that.

If he doesn’t go, then he is afraid. If he is afraid, he is weak, and they will come here.

“Vaggie and I are going to the business district to pass out some papers on the hotel – do you want one of us to go with you instead?”

And Alastor smiles, because the poor thing really does think that would be a help and not a hinderance. Charlie is arguably one of the strongest beings in creation. He’s seen traces of that, obviously, but she doesn’t know either her own strength or how to use it. Vaggie is the exact opposite. She’s a tough, experienced fighter and aggressive to the point of foolhardiness, but she doesn’t have the power to go toe to toe with sovereign overlords – especially not sovereign overlords that had armed themselves with angelic steel. Having either of them along would buy him little advantage, and it would in fact complicate his escape if he needs to make one. Alastor can move through the shadows himself, but the distance that he can travel with a second person is dramatically shorter – feet instead of meters.

“Relieved as I am that my harping has produced some caution in you, Charlie, it IS just a jaunt to Cannibal Town. I’ll try to avoid being maimed by any stray cannibal children on tricycles.”

Charlie rolls her eyes at him.  “Just try not to get shot again, okay?”

“No promises,” he sing-songs as he twirls his mic.  

He’s on his way to the door when he has the strangest impulse.

The strangest, STUPIDEST impulse.

He wonders if he should tell the Devil he’s going to be leaving the hotel unattended for a while.

Why would he do that? The silly bird is up in his workshop, probably still fiddling with either an exploding bath-bomb duck or with whatever strange magic he’d put on the city’s power grid to get it back online, and –

And Alastor has spent two days in the man’s bed, watching him putter around like a senile old inventor in a tinker shop. He’s watched him debate the merits of different wiring structures with a rubber duck, watched the pile of crumbled-up sketches growing ominously behind him as he tossed rejected design after rejected design over his shoulder. He’s watched the man not always notice at first when Charlie would come in to ply Alastor with tea and make sure that the two of them hadn’t killed each other.

Lucifer is not always with them. The man drifts, exists miles away when he’s in the same room as you, just like a radio station that fades in and out of focus even when the radio isn’t moving.

It is possible – it is just barely possible – that this isn’t a byproduct of his not caring about his child so much as it is the man’s nature, a holdover from when he was just light and hope and possibility flitting from flower to flower in a garden where no harm had ever existed.

Alastor does not think the man is a good enough actor to fake the very genuine-looking shame on his face any time he realizes his daughter has been in the room for any amount of time and he hasn’t noticed.  

He is an insipid, sad little creature – but Alastor has yet to see anything malicious in the way he behaves around Charlie, no matter what Lilith had to say about it.

And he had been…kind, there was no other word for it, to his unexpected houseguest. Alastor had been prepared for biting mockery when he’d come around the next morning – and yes, certainly, Lucifer had delivered a few light insults about his winning personality just leading people to shoot him.

He’d also brought him coffee and stayed out of his space. Asked if he needed anything (all right, with a mocking bow and a waiter’s notepad, but he’d ASKED), offered him a battered book of crossword puzzles to pass the time. Brought a radio up from Alastor’s room without being prompted and set it on the overly-cluttered nightstand.

“In case the, uh – quiet was getting to you. Or to drown out me thinking out loud. Whatever,” Lucifer had said, looking anywhere but at Alastor.

Certainly, he was just doing it to get into his daughter’s favor, but if that was the case….then perhaps, if he were prompted, might he keep an eye on the place while Alastor was gone? Perhaps he might focus for an hour or two?

Perhaps he might even appreciate the nudge?

No, Alastor is being silly. Charlie’s melodrama and desire for everyone to work together is polluting his thought process.

He is either going to meet his old friend for tea, or he’s going to have a horrible tiff with the bloodthirsty upper crust of the pride ring, and either way, he will handle it himself, exactly the way he always has. 

Much to Alastor’s relief, he is NOT immediately beset by crackling electricity or angelic steel when he shows up at Rosie’s Emporium. She hugs him like she always does, maybe a little harder, and he exhales in something like relief. Looking at her smiling face, he thinks, It would upset me to have to kill you.

His relief is short-lived, because it becomes very clear to him as soon as they sit down to tea that something is very not-right with the Overlord of Cannibal Town.

“So, how are things going at that little hotel o’yours? Still a fixer-upper? You know, my Frank used to love those little home repair projects…”

Alastor blinks. Frank couldn’t change a lightbulb without carefully-outlined steps and perhaps a corner coach. Rosie had regaled him with tale after tale of how Frank was the least handy man she’d ever married, and that made for quite a spread of candidates.

“Ha! That’s one of the few times I wish I hadn’t’a eaten him.” She smiles fondly, pouring tea. “When something starts to drip, I think, ‘damnit, where’s Frank,’ even after all these years.”

She did not in fact eat Frank. She’d tried, but he’d tasted, in her own words, like tobacco smoke and failure.

“Well, as it turns out, the devil is a fair hand at minor home repair,” Alastor says dryly, even as he thinks, What are you trying to tell me, Rosie?

“Oh, is he? And how are YOU doin’ with short, blonde, and handsome? Are you two still at cold war levels o’hostility, or are you warmin’ up?”

“That’s an interesting question,” Alastor says dryly. “I wasn’t aware you were keeping tabs on our ongoing, bizarrely-musical feuds.”

Rosie laughs. “Honey, it’s the hottest gossip in Hell,” she says. “And besides, I’m in the market for a new man – mayhaps you could introduce us?”

Rosie is not in the market for a new man. She has announced to him, many times, that she’s happy with the occasional cannibal pool boy, and what would a black widow like Rosie want with a man she couldn’t eventually eat, anyway?

“Rosie, darling, I would never inflict that man on anyone I actually liked.”

What is happening here?

Her hand is shaking as she pours his tea.

Now that he’s paying attention, he can feel a faint static crackle at the roots of his hair, distant and benign for now.

“Oh, now Alastor, I’m sure he’s not that bad. You two just got off on the wrong foot, and I know you – you’re awfully stubborn about these things.”

“Me? Stubborn? Never.” He plays it up, dramatic and full of radio laughter, but he’s dialed his senses up to a five on the four-scale.

In the TV display across the street, he can see the occasional, faint spark of blue that might or might not be his imagination. If he listens hard enough on the radio frequency, he can hear the faint buzz of a Vox drone somewhere in the vicinity.

Trap, he thinks, grimly, but that doesn’t feel right.

He’s here. He’s alone. Why the Hell wouldn’t it have sprung by now?

Rosie reaches across the table and settles her hand on his. Her eyes are kind. “Honey,” she says, “I think you’ve been spendin’ too much time at that place.”

What are you telling me, Rosie?

“Lookit you! You’re so tense all the time.”

He can practically hear what she’s really saying, which is, Oh, good, you’re finally catching up, stringbean.

Alastor sighs dramatically. “Ah, the weight of responsibilities,” he agrees. “I must admit, it DOES become a bit…much at times.”

“You know what you need? You need some time to just kick back and relax. How about you stay for dinner? There’s gonna be live music in the gazebo tonight, and you never could resist…”

He ignores what’s coming out of her mouth, because that’s all useless – he can hear what she’s really saying. It’s a distraction, silly. I’m supposed to keep you here for as long as I can.

He feels his blood run suddenly cold, but Alastor has been at this game too long to let it show on his face. He smiles indulgently and sips his tea. He knows that someone wanted him out of play – now he needs to know why.

Is someone planning to attack the hotel? That seems petty and annoying, but not worth the effort when Lucifer can wave a hand and put the bricks back where they were. Certainly, they might want to murder a few of the residents, send out a loud-and-clear warning: You are not safe there, these people can’t protect you. It would damage recruitment, but is that really worth the risk?

No, this is Vox’s game, Alastor is sure, and that flat-headed cretin would never do something that direct as his opening move. He didn’t get to be where he is by waving a red flag in front of the proverbial bull, or at least not for so little gain.

“Maybe next time you can bring that princess o’yours along, too – she could use some time off from all that runnin’.”

Charlie. It’s Charlie.

It is frankly embarrassing how hard it is not to jump to his feet like a pointlessly-dramatic extra in a two-bit play. Because no, he WILL NOT have this. He’s put too much work into that optimistic, naïve fountain of untapped potential to let….let unnamed, unknown things happen to her, but he can’t be RASH. He COULD abandon the game and run out the door like an idiot, surely, but Rosie is too valuable an asset to burn, especially in a game with these stakes.

Alastor is not an idiot. Rosie is not doing this out of the goodness of her black little heart. There may have been some overtones of sentimentality in the old girl’s thought process, but this is also a practical move on Rosie’s part. She doesn’t dare directly oppose Vox, and who the Hell could blame her, but she’s seen firsthand what the Princess of Hell might be capable of – and she knows how Alastor is when someone takes something that he considers to be his. It’s a tightrope that Rosie is walking, but she’s keeping a foot in either camp, which is, sadly, as close to an ally as he has right now.

“Oh, that silly girl,” he says with an absent wave of his hand. He needs an excuse to leave – one that will let Rosie try her damndest to stop him, one that will satisfy whoever is watching them enough to leave her be for now.

The radio in the parlor flares to life, recycling an old weather forecast.

“She’s out and about today, seeking new recruits for salvation.”

And it looks like acid rain for the afternoon! The radio blares. Take cover, sinners, this one’s going to be a real face-melter!

Alastor sighs gustily. “And ten to one, she’s forgotten her umbrella – it’d be her own head if she didn’t have it bolted on, you know. Gets it from her father.”

He stands. “I best go bring her one before she manages to get herself singed – she has an interview tomorrow.”

Rosie tries to stop him, because of course she does; he’ll give the lady this, she’s a Hell of an actress. Then again, it’s very hard to get this far into overlord politics without a flair for the dramatic arts.

Alastor doesn’t miss the faint flash of gratitude in her eyes as he ducks out the door and starts walking, with forced calm, back toward the hotel. Don’t worry, dear, you will absolutely have the chance to make this up to me.

He hums to himself as he often does, walking slowly and casually and very clearly toward the hotel.

When he vanishes into a puddle of shadow at a crosswalk, it could just be that he doesn’t feel like waiting for the light.

In truth, he is breaking for the business district, flitting from dark alley to dark alley like a scrap of song on the wind.

The real problem here is that he has no way of FINDING Charlie quickly, outside of old-fashioned looking. Alastor flat refuses to carry any electronics with him – and forget what anyone at the hotel routinely insinuates, it is not because he has a patent aversion to anything invented after 1931. No, it pays NOT to keep electronics on you when you have an old pal capable of popping out of them at very inconvenient times.

He would give his left arm for a damned rotary phone right now.

He steps out of the shadows on yet another side street and all but physically collides with Angel.

“Whoa, smiles, where’s the fire?!” The lanky sinner asks, tipping his ridiculous pink glasses down his nose. “You about gave me a heart attack.”

“Ha! Fancy meeting you here!”

Angel gives him an odd blink and jerks his thumb behind him. “Just got off work,” he says.

Alastor can see the start of a black eye under the left side rim of his glasses.

“Dickbag back there’s been real antsy lately – you musta shook ‘em up pretty good.”  

Right, the moth – the overlord who owns Angel’s soul.

“What are you doing on their side o’town, anyway? You LOOKING for a fight?”

“Their side of town? Why, you’d think they would have put up SIGNS,” Alastor says – ignoring the VOXTECH billboard directly over their heads.

Angel looks at Alastor, then at the giant billboard, then back at Alastor. "Your sense o'humor is real problematic, you know that?" 

Angel doesn’t own his soul. More to the point, he OWES his soul to one of Vox’s ridiculous sycophants. He can’t be trusted.

We’ve almost got it, Smiles, almost done -

He CAN’T be trusted, but Alastor is short on options just now, and he decides, just the once, to roll the dice. “Just bringing our dear Charlie an umbrella,” he says. He is not holding an umbrella. “You know she never remembers one.”

Angel quirks an eyebrow at him. “It ain’t raining,” he points out.

“Well, you never know,” Alastor says with far too much brightness.

He can see the moment Angel catches on. “You, uh….know where she is? Want me to give her a call?”

“Oh, would you?”

Angel shrugs. “Hey, I got the family plan. May as well use the minutes.”

He pulls out his phone and dials. They listen to it ring.

Angel’s brow creases. “She ain’t answering.”

Fuck.

“Want me to help you look for ‘er?” Angel asks. There is a slight edge to his voice now.

“No, my good man, I’m sure I can handle this…though maybe her father might be able to give some hints to her whereabouts? If you should happen to get ahold of him, ask him if she mentioned which area…”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll see what I can do,” Angel says, his eyes wide.

Yes, this frankly IS bad enough to warrant asking the devil for help. Thank you for noticing.

“Always a pleasure, Angel,” Alastor says, and he steps back into the shadows.

Chapter Text

Lucifer is not having a good day. 

Depression manifests in different ways for different people, and his - well, his is often just being so fucking tired he can’t stand it. Every single thing seems insurmountable - the walk to the shower, picking out clothing, making himself coffee, DRINKING the coffee once he’s made it. 

He is currently sprawled facedown on his rumpled bed. He is wearing actual pants and roughly half a sleep shirt, as he managed to get one sleeve off, stare in despair at a closet full of POSSIBLE shirts, and had to rest. A half-full cup of coffee is sitting on his nightstand, slowly but steadily moving from “lukewarm” to “curdled.” 

He can get up. He knows he can. It’s just that he can also close his eyes, burrow back into the warmth of the pillow, where nothing can - nothing bad happens to him in here. 

Out there, past his piles of ducks and equally-shameful piles of laundry, there is a hotel full of sinners - okay, not FULL of, but there are more than there have ever been, most of them small and ragged and frightened. When he walks into a room, they stop talking. Conversation sputters out and dies. They freeze like opossums in a flashlight beam, and he sometimes wonders if they’ll hiss at him if he comes too close. 

He is the biblical devil. They expect him to be awesome and wily and sinister. He does not think they are prepared for what he is instead. 

Not that he especially WANTS to get close enough for them to suss out his unfortunately non-awesome levels of personality. He doesn’t. And here, in the safety of his oversized bed, he can be honest with himself as to why. It isn’t JUST that sinners are violent psychopaths who will always disappoint you, no. It’s that every single one of these sinners, if you get close enough to see it, is damaged in gruesome ways. You don’t get into Hell by leading a life full of sunshine, rainbows, positive affirmations, and good decisions (which is the beauty of Charlie’s plan - that some souls wind up in this shithole strictly from a lack of those things). 

The truth is, that’s on him. All of that is on him. You get close enough, you start to hear about how someone got beat by both parents, how someone else was relentlessly tortured by schoolmates, how someone else, on the streets and hungry and alone, had shot something into her veins to take the edge off, and had - 

Yeah, it’s not a great thing to realize that, if it wasn’t for you - you, specifically - those same people might have never existed, or they MIGHT have lived out their days in a balmy garden, watching bumblebees lazily flit from flower to flower, and while they might not have been free, they would have been safe. 

Past the door to his bedroom, there is also the double-edged sword that is Charlie. Charlie is his little girl, and he loves her more than he has loved anything since he fell from Heaven. She’s Lilith’s fire and his own hopeful joy, which is something he has not seen since Eden. 

She is also a stranger and a grown woman, and Lucifer is not….is not great with people. 

They’ve skipped right over the stage where he would have been her father, the person she looked up to and trusted and believed in, straight to the part where she realizes he is a (very) flawed and fallible person who gets lost on the way to the grocery store because he saw a neat light thingy he had to oogle at, who forgets what day it is and can’t remember anyone’s name, but who can recite the elements like the world’s most sing-songy physics teacher. 

He knows why Lilith took her away from him. He knows. He’s not even sure he disagrees - 

For fuck’s sake, do you WANT her to hate living here, to hate her life the way you do? Do you WANT her to waste her years hiding in the dark with the cobwebs, painting DUCKS? 

Charlie is wounded by other peoples’ unhappiness - he’s seen it for himself. His own bone-deep, unshakable misery would cut her, he knows that, he KNOWS. 

He draws his top layer of wings over himself like a blanket and tells himself, firmly, that she would NOT be better off without him. She wouldn’t do better with a distant father who, while too far away to give her things like affirmation and love and protection, is also too far away to weigh her down with the sheer mass of his own fucking issues. 

He had been up before her yesterday and had decided to make her and her girlfriend coffee. He’d gotten as far as filling both cups when he realized he didn’t know how Charlie or Vaggie TOOK their coffee. Standing alone in the kitchen, the magnitude of his ignorance hit him, along with a veritable tidal wave of guilt. There was so much he didn’t know about his own girl - whether pink was still her favorite color, if she still kept a battered, stuffed koala on her bed. If she still liked to sing along with the radio or if she remembered dancing on the tops of his shoes, or if she had learned to like crusts on her sandwiches, or - 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” And that had been Alastor, directly over his shoulder. “Are you stuck?” 

Lucifer had jumped guiltily, his wings whooshing out in an involuntary flail. “Will you put a BELL ON or something, FUCK,” he’d snapped.  

The bellhop narrowly avoided getting smacked in the face with a wing. He’d wrinkled his nose and given Lucifer the kind of look you give a piece of gum on your shoe. But he’d also rolled his eyes and pulled a notecard and a pen out of his pocket, rapid-scribbling something. He’d reached into a drawer, produced some scotch tape, and attached the notecard to the splashboard directly behind the coffee maker. 

Charlie: Claims two teaspoons sugar, but is lying - at least three, and a quarter cup of frothed milk, pinch cinnamon or cocoa powder if available.

Vaggie: Asks for black. Is also lying.  One teaspoon sugar, splash of oat or almond milk. 

Angel and Husk: Good taste is wasted on them - they will either shot it or pour in enough alcohol to kill a moose, anyway.  Aim for volume. 

He’d stared at that stupid little notecard for an embarrassingly long time as Alastor, behind him somewhere in the kitchen, pulled down a bean grinder and a french press, because of COURSE he was THAT way, but…

“Thanks,” Lucifer had said, and it came out low and hoarse and not anywhere NEAR as antagonistic as it should have. Because yeah, it was all snark and aggression, but it was also - Jesus, how pathetic did you have to be for a guy like ALASTOR to take pity on you? He almost didn’t care. Because yeah, that was a backhanded slap-in-the-face of a lifeline, but a lifeline is what it was. 

Alastor had muttered something about just avoiding a traffic jam in the kitchen and had, no mistaking it, cravenly fled - because the man just didn’t seem to know what to do with non-antagonistic interactions. 

Maybe he really HAD just intended to flaunt his knowledge of everyone’s preference in Lucifer’s face as another example of “Why I Am Better Than You, the Fucking Thesis-Length PAPER” - but if even the universe’s most unfriendly hotelier was going out of his way to unstick him when he started doom-spiraling in public places, then that was frankly a terrible sign for Operation: Pretend To Be A Functioning Adult.

Maybe getting up can be a tomorrow thing.   

Through the curtain and blanket of wings, he hears his cell phone ring with the circus theme song that had seemed like a WAY better idea when he’d chosen it than it turned out to be in practice. 

Blindly, he reaches for it. His fingers close on it, and he manages a less dramatic but still passable, “Heeeeey, bitch!” 

The voice is not what he expects.  “Short King? Hey, we got a situation.” 

Lucifer blinks, because that is not his daughter. That is Angel. “What kind of situation?” 

“Well, okay, I don’t wanna  -” and that is definitely a wheeze “Don’t wanna alarm ya or nothin’, but, “ the sound of someone laying on a car horn and Angel yelling a FUCK OFF, “Smiles is in the business side of town, and he’s acting dodgy as fuck.” 

Lucifer takes a moment to translate that mentally. “Smiles is Alastor?” Because sometimes he needs to confirm these things. 

“Yes!” 

“That guy’s always dodgy as fuck.” 

“Yeah, he’s….shit!” More car horns honked angrily. 

“Yes,” Lucifer agrees cheerfully. “I think so, too.” 

“No, I mean - YES, but also SHIT, he’s fast.” 

“Why are you chasing Alastor through the business district?” Lucifer asks - because that is definitely a parade that no one asked for or wanted. 

“Because he’s acting dodgy as FUCK, as we established, an’ he’s lookin’ for Charlie, who ain’t answering her phone. ” 

A chill starts in the back of Lucifer’s skull and goes all the way down his arms to his fingers. “What?” 

“And okay, yeah, it’s HELL, the cell service ain’t always the most reliable, but - I know Overlord politics ain’t your thing, but if Smiles is running around THIS side of town in broad daylight, I figure it’s more than just a fritzy service plan, you get me?” 

“I’ll be right there,” Lucifer says. “I can’t portal directly to you because I don’t know where you are but I can probably get close. Flag me down if you see me.” 

Living at that crazy hotel has given Angel a bit of an appreciation for the ridiculous, and whatever the Hell he’s doing right now definitely qualifies as fucking ridiculous . 

He is chasing an overlord - a really messed-up, shadow-hopping overlord - through some of the worst neighborhoods in Hell, while wearing a pink frilly coat, glitter sunglasses, and four inch heels. Because fuck his life, that’s why. 

Angel has participated in his share of Hellish turf wars, and his life BEFORE that was just as filled with bullet-dodging and sidestreet sprints. He thinks he’s a qualified expert in the field of bolting pell-mell down an urban landscape, and so he can say with some authority that Alastor is on a whole other funhouse-mirror level of unnecessarily hard to keep up with. 

The guy is bolting from shadow to shadow like a frog hopping lily pads, and it’s all Angel can do to keep him in sight. He probably couldn’t manage THAT much if the guy’s little shadow buddies weren’t occasionally leaning out of crevices or from behind trash cans to give him a helpful point in the right direction now and then. 

Angel doesn’t know what he’s done to earn shadow-buddy helper status, but he is NOT questioning it. The only thing he’s questioning is whether or not his lungs will hold up long enough to - 

As he pops into an alleyway, he very nearly TRIPS over Alastor - he stops with both feet together, frantically windmilling his arms. The overlord is on the ground, kneeling in a puddle of red coat and a faint sheen of gold…

“Fuck, is that - “ he whispers. 

Alastor just nods, moving aside enough for Angel to see the tattered-looking white hair, the bloody feathers, and that is Vaggie, limp and still against a filthy chain link fence. 

Angel drops to his knees beside Alastor, reaching forward to touch her face, feeling briefly sick with relief when he feels her breath on his hand. “Smiles,” he says, “please, for the love of fuck, will you start talking?” 

“Ha! I am quite sure that no one in the history of Hell has ever wanted me to talk MORE.” Alastor’s smile is as much a jacked-up mask as it ever is, but his eyes are darting everywhere, hyper-alert, and whatever it is he expects to see, he is NOT sharing that information with the class. 

Angel feels the intense urge to slap the radio filter right off the guy - but that’s not fair, he didn’t do this, and much as he hates to admit it, time at the hotel and Charlie’s incessant therapy circles ARE making some headway on “healthy places to carry our anger,” or whatever. “What’s HAPPENING,” he snaps. “Let’s start with what the actual FUCK is happening right now?” 

“I don’t know,” Alastor says, and it doesn’t feel like a lie. Above his fixed smile, his eyes are much too manic to be deceptive. 

“Who did this to her?” 

“Excellent question! I don’t know for sure.” 

“Smiles…” 

Alastor just shakes his head and gestures to the other occupants of the alley, both dead. They aren’t loan sharks or thugs, NOR are they any of the local overlords’ heavies, as near as he can tell.  Both of them were, before they met a grisly end probably at the end of an angelic spear, fairly normal-looking sinners. 

One of them has a gaping red hole in his chest that probably was not the result of a spear. There are shrapnel holes in the walls. 

Did that fucker have a BOMB inside of him? 

An angelic dagger lays on the ground by one of their hands, among discarded, crumpled fliers for the hotel. 

The other sinner has a gun next to his partially-severed hand.

Angel feels a fuzzy sensation he hasn’t experienced since life, since the day he found his brother dead. It’s a horrible place to be, where things are obviously happening around you, but it’s like watching a tv show, just distant pictures and sounds. “Where’s Charlie?” he asks. 

“No idea,” Alastor says. He stands, twirls around as if he’s fucking DANCING, and yeah, that slapping urge is back, but…”No additional sources of blood that I can see, no footprints leaving this place. No, no, everyone who FOUGHT here is STILL here.” 

“Ya sure?” Angel asks.

“No! But as sure as I can be.” 

Angel looks down at Vaggie’s slack face, and his heart does something he can’t stand. “Why would Vaggie NOT have been with Charlie? She never lets that girl outta her sight.” 

“You’re asking the wrong fellow, chap. I suppose she’ll have to tell you when she comes around. Any luck getting ahold of the devil?” 

“Yeah, he’s on his way, I’m s’posed to flag him down if I -” 

“Well, best hurry and get his attention, chum. She doesn’t have long, otherwise.” 

Angel swallows what feels like mud out of his throat, and he slips his arms under Vaggie’s limp body. He’d never normally MOVE somebody this chewed up, but he doesn’t dare leave her in this alleyway, either - and the only thing that can save her is in the sky somewhere above Pentagram City. 

“Okay,” Angel says, “Sure - what about -” 

“Oh, you leave that to me,” Alastor says. His eyes are black and red, and the shadows around him move, and Angel remembers what he often forgets when the guy is making jazz hands while explaining the benefits of freshly-ground coffee. 

Unconsciously, he takes a step back. “Be careful, okay?” he says. “How are we gonna find ya once Vaggie’s…” 

“Oh, you’ll figure something out, I’m sure.” Then Alastor is gone - and Angel knows that this time, he will not be able to follow him. 

The gun that was laying by the hand of the dead sinner is also gone. 

Angel can feel Vaggie’s blood soaking his shirt and his overblown feathery coat as he stumbles out of the alley and looks at the sky, hoping fervently for something nobody in Hell has any business hoping for: white wings and light. 

This is a nightmare. Charlie is absolutely sure. 

In the dark behind the dumpster, she clutches her own arms and shakes. She takes a deep breath, holds it, counts to four, releases. 

As long as she’s counting, her breaths won’t speed up and choke her. As long as she’s counting, it doesn’t have to be real, this didn’t HAPPEN. 

She presses her forehead to her knees. Four in. Four out. 

Five things you can see. 

The backs of her knees. The filthy, stained side of the dumpster. A single, discarded tin can that probably contained tuna. A dead rat. 

Blood. So much blood. Blood on her trousers, blood under her fingernails. 

Oh my God. 

She doesn’t dare look out from behind the dumpster. 

Oh my GOD. 

She gags a little, when she realizes what the copper-tang taste on her tongue must be. Someone else's blood. In HER mouth.  

Somehow, she has started rocking back and forth and that noise - is SHE making that noise? 

She hears the crunch of footsteps coming closer, and reflexively, she scrambles backward, clutching the torn edges of her shirt, God knows where the buttons went, when did - 

A shape appears, silhouetted in the space between the dumpster and the wall, and the sound she makes was probably MEANT to be a scream - 

“Why, Charlie dear! You look an absolute mess. No, this won’t do at all. You’re meant to have standards.” 

A familiar red coat, still warm from the body it was on a moment ago, drops over her shoulders. “There,” he says with his usual smile. “You’re a vision.” 

Charlie damn near chokes on her own voice. She tries again. “Al?” 

“Who were you expecting, darling? The milkman?” 

“Al, you shouldn’t be - I….I’m not - I might -” 

Alastor sighs theatrically. “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.  If you’re about to have a noble moment of ‘you aren’t safe around me, I’m a monster’ with ME, of all people, I’m going to have to check you for a head injury. Besides, you’ll find me a little harder to decorate an alleyway with than those up-and-comers you must have dealt with a few minutes ago.”

He crouches down to one knee, and offers her something in the palm of his upturned hand. 

It’s one of her shoes. She’d wondered what happened to it. 

“Also, Cinderella did this better - you’re going to have to come up with your own bit, you know. I can’t abide a copycat. Absolutely won’t have it.” 

Somehow, Charlie is now holding onto him like a bizarre, very-red life raft, which she should not be doing. In the first place, she’s sure that she’s smearing blood and alley grime all over him, and in the second - Alastor dodges even friendly touches the way a normal person might dodge water balloons full of vomit. He’s only JUST gotten to the point of desensitization where she can put a hand on his arm sometimes without him pulling a tightrope contortionist act to avoid it. 

Also, Charlie is strong. She knows this from numerous traumatic instances when she was younger, where she learned that squeezing people too hard is Not a Good Thing ™ - she’s probably hurting him with how hard her arms have gone around his waist, with how hard she must have collided with his shoulder. She’s a little surprised she didn’t bowl him right over, big scary overlord or not. 

“There now. I know you’re glad to see me - who wouldn’t be? - but this is a little ridiculous.” 

He’s tense under her arms - sort of like a big, scary dog that isn’t used to hugs but is somehow putting up with it - but he isn’t shoving her off and back into the refuse, which he absolutely WOULD do, wouldn’t he, if he didn’t want - if he wasn’t -

He smells like vintage cologne, and irrationally, she thinks of when she was a little girl, when she would jump at her father and he would laugh and catch her in his arms -  

The alleyway erupts in blinding white light. Charlie’s first, hopeful thought - Dad! - dies on her throat when Alastor hisses and pulls away from the brightness like it’s physically wounding him, and she can hear voices in the alley - 

“Fuck, what a mess - “ Low and rough, not someone she recognizes. 

“We knew it was gonna be, but Christ.” 

Charlie does not completely understand what’s happening, but she knows it’s bad. “Al, what -” 

He lets go of her and leans back on a heel, and then he throws her shoe like a fastball. One of the lights above them shatters into sparks and shards, raining down on the dark shapes in the alleyway, who curse and scramble…

“Sorry, friends, not today,” Al says under his breath. He wraps his arm around Charlie’s waist so suddenly that she reflexively punches him - oh, God, today, everything about today, it’s AWFUL - and then they fall back into one of the most disorienting moments of Charlie’s life. 

The shadows swallow them whole. 

Cold and dark and dizzy and FALLING - 

They’re in the stairwell of a building Charlie doesn’t recognize - which dashes any hopes she had that she was just going to open her eyes at the hotel. 

Alastor is leaning against the wall. His breathing is as ragged as hers, and there is a trickle of blood coming out of his nose. 

“Omigod, I am SO sorry, I didn’t mean -” 

He catches her wrist when she reaches toward his face. “No, no, that’s just the magic,” he says. 

Charlie can hear muffled voices and thumps outside, someone yelling “Spread out!” 

“Don’t have another one of those in me, darling - we’re going to have to do this the old fashioned way. Come on!” 

Then he is running up the steps, all but bodily dragging her along until her legs catch up. 

“Al, why are we running?” 

“Why, because they’re chasing us, obviously!” 

She nearly faceplants as they round a landing - it’s only his iron grip on her wrist and his forward momentum that keeps her from crashing into the steps. 

“Are they overlords?” 

“I’m sure some of them are - not sovereign overlords - ha, aren’t that many of us left - but the bureaucracy of Hell is as complex as it is boring.”

Her lungs are burning, and her shoeless foot keeps slipping - her hooves are fine on grass, but smooth concrete is NOT ideal. “Since when do you run from -” the vision of Alastor murdering loan sharks on the front lawn of the hotel is still vivid in her mind. 

“Rule one of surviving Hell - someone who is THAT eager to fight with you is either an idiot or knows something you don’t.” 

She tries very hard not to think of what she’d seen when they’d pulled Alastor’s coat back a week ago - the flayed open skin, the purple slickness of muscle. 

They round another landing. She’s lost track of how many flights now. 

Down far, far below, she hears the distinctive crash of someone kicking in a door. 

“Al, I can’t -” her voice is barely a gasp, no louder than her desperate breathing. 

“Yes, you can.” 

She grasps desperately at a railing, using it to pull herself along. Her vision swims brown. “I’m going to -” 

“No, you are not. Keep up!” 

The stairwell flares, unexpectedly, to life - naked bulbs swinging, suddenly bright, pulsing with sparks as they brighten far beyond their intended wattage. 

“I see ‘em!” 

There is suddenly a door in front of them - rooftop access, access to another floor of this awful building, Charlie doesn’t know. 

Alastor puts both hands on the railing and leans over it like he’s an extra in a musical. “Dooo you though?” he singongs. 

A gunshot rings out, nearly deafening Charlie - she flinches from the sound, which echoes across the walls - 

Alastor avoids the bullet deftly, pulling himself away from the railing with snakelike speed. “Well, that’s just rude,” he says. Tentacles of shadow rip the door from its hinges and send it cartwheeling down the stairwell behind him. “Answers whether or not they have angelic weapons, though - mark a check in the ‘yes,’ column."  

He pulls Charlie out onto the rooftop, under the bright red clouds of Pentagram City, to the sound of cursing and screaming behind them. 

Lucifer flies out of a portal above the business district, and is immediately hit in the face with the fetid combination of Hellish heat and unregulated exhaust fumes. 

Yep, smells like ingenuity. 

He really hates it here. 

The business district is one of the largest districts in Pentagram city, block after sprawling BLOCK of sinners and concrete and literal dumpster fires, and his little girl is out there somewhere without him when she might NEED him. 

If she is in trouble - if something has happened to her, if someone has even IRRITATED her, if someone has SPAT ON HER SHOE,  he resolves, they are going to pay for it in the hellfire and brimstone kind of way. But first he has to find her. 

He backfalps like an oriole, squinting, turning. It’s pushing into evening now, and the streets are crawling so that the surface of Hell looks a little more like an especially slovenly ant hill (fuck, he helped CREATE ants, and ants would never tolerate this level of FILTH, what is WRONG with these people?) - when did the city get so big? Even during what seemed like yesterday, when he had agreed to the eterminations in exchange for the safety of the hellborn and his daughter, it had been smaller, more contained, and not the sprawling miasma of vice down below. 

He spots a flash of incongruous white and sparkly pink and dives for it. 

He recognizes Angel a flap or two later. And that he’s holding a body. 

Oh God no. 

The tall, lanky sinner all but falls to his knees in front of him like a twisted parody of worship, and he recognizes the tumble of gold-streaked white hair in his arms with a mixture of relief and guilt and  new fear, because that is not his daughter in Angel’s arms, but it’s also not someone he can stand the thought of losing. 

“She ain’t doing so great, short king,” Angel says, his voice breaking. “I - I don’t think she has long unless there’s somethin’ you can do.” 

Then Angel raises his head to look at him, and for the first time, he sees genuine fear on the man’s face. Lucifer already knows what Angel must be seeing: the many eyes that have opened across his body, the horns, the fire blazing between them. 

Somewhere behind them, a car crashes into a lamp post. Off to the side, someone screams - and here on the sidewalk, a battered, crack-addicted porn star is offering a wounded angel up to the devil himself. 

“Give her to me,” Lucifer says, and holds out his arms. 

Angel scrambles to comply, and then remains kneeling on the sidewalk, teetering on broken high heels. In the back of his mind, Lucifer wonders at what he’s seeing from this sinner in the same way that he wondered at the spirals of new galaxies in a time impossibly far away; Angel and Vaggie get on about as well as two wet cats fighting under a blanket, but with this many eyes open, he can see what was hiding beneath it, right there the whole time.

That is love, as simple and humble as a button, without any of the flavors of sin that sometimes stick to it; no trace of greed, no trace of lust, no trace of envy. Angel loves his daughter’s girlfriend like she’s his sister. That love has grafted onto the familiar pathways in the poor man’s brain, because there WAS a sister once, because he’s already pre-primed to wrap around a certain kind of person like a protective blanket. 

And this, this is why Lucifer doesn’t make with the Many Eyes ™ thing very often. You always, always see something that threatens to break you. 

Lucifer gathers Vaggie’s body into his arms and closes his eyes, resting his forehead against hers, heedless of the city around them, the passers-by, the audibly clicking cell phones. Well, the lookie-loos can sit on those damn things and rotate for all he cares right now; this will take concentration. He can only hope he’s got some muscle memory working with him on this one. 

 Giving what healing he can to a sinner is a delicate balance, mostly as sinners and angels are incompatible in a lot of very fundamental ways. 

A sinner is made of blood and memory and poor coping mechanisms - but an angel is made of light. He closes the eyes on his face, but not the eyes on his wings, as the very first command ever given, from so far back it shakes the foundation of time, echoes unspoken through the filthy streets of Hell, and the two of them flare like the filaments of a lightbulb. 

Let there be light. 

Then the light fades after he-doesn’t-know-how-long, and Vaggie gasps in his arms like someone who had been drowning and has broken the surface. 

“Oh, thank fuck,” Angel breathes on the sidewalk. “Thank fuck, I was NOT lookin’ forward to breaking that news to Charlie.” 

“Charlie,” Vaggie mumbles, dazed, hanging as limp from Lucifer’s arms as a tablecloth. Then, her eyes snap open - yes, eyes, two of them - and she flails so hard that someone less strong than Lucifer might have dropped her. “CHARLIE! Oh no. Where…?” 

She looks around herself, dazed, and Lucifer sets her on her feet, but he doesn’t let go of her yet, half fearing she’s going to run straight out into traffic like a panicking guard dog. “Hey, little lady,” he says, “take a breather. That holy light stuff really takes it out of ya.” 

Vaggie, clearly not the listen-to-reason-after-a-near-death-experience type, rounds on Angel, even though she’s still leaning against Lucifer for balance. “Angel, where’s Charlie?” 

“Dunno, toots,” Angel says. He gets to his feet with affected nonchalance, and Lucifer wonders for the millionth time why that’s such a crucial part of social interaction - hiding how much you care about someone, because God forbid they see it, God forbid they ever know . “We were hopin’ you could tell us. What happened?” 

“We were passing out fliers,” Vaggie says. “Talking to sinners the way we usually do. More people were interested than usual, and these…” her eyes narrow dangerously. “Those fucking cabrones. Where are they?!” 

“They jumped you, didn’t they,” Angel says, probably for expediency. “They said, hey, we wanna go to the hotel,’ and Charlie told you to go on ahead with ‘em while she finished up with the last coupla fliers.” 

“Yeah,” Vaggie says. She clutches the sides of her head. “FUCK, how was I so stupid? They didn’t LOOK dangerous, but…” 

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Lucifer says. As the foremost expert on beating yourself up for other peoples’ bad decisions, he could say that it was not a great way to stay upright, productive, and outside of your bedroom.  

“But I LEFT her out….ugh, we have to go find her.” Vaggie takes a step and stumbles. “What if -” 

“No, no, not you,” Lucifer says. “I’m telling you, holy light kicks like a mule. M’surprised you’re still upright.” 

Vaggie rounds him him with steel in her eyes. “I’m FINE,” she snaps. 

He is reminded so painfully of Lilith that in nearly takes him out at the knees - reminded  of Lilith right after the fall, when she slapped his shaking hand away from her bleeding face, when she picked herself up with the sort of strength that had not been in woman’s original blueprint and snarled at the sky that had spat them out. I’m FINE, Lucifer, you don’t have to CODDLE me! 

“Uh huh,” Lucifer says. And then he retracts his arm and steps away, which is nearly enough to send her toppling over. Fortunately, Angel steps up immediately, and yeah, Lucifer doesn’t know how to tell the guy this, but no one is going to keep buying his nonchalant act if he keeps diving to catch people like they’re cartwheeling into a ravine when they’re really just looking at a slight tumble onto the sidewalk. 

“Think you two can make it back to the hotel?” He asks as his six pairs of wings stretch toward the sky. Two flaps carry him off the ground. 

“I’ll get ‘er there,” Angel promises, one hand on either of Vaggie’s biceps, even as Vaggie says, “No, you can’t - WAIT! I’m coming with - ” 

Lucifer flaps harder, letting the ground fall away behind him, and pretends not to hear. 

Alastor stops running so quickly that Charlie full-on collides with his back. 

“Ow - holy shit, WHY!?” she snaps as she stumbles backward. 

Alastor doesn’t answer. He’s gone as stiff as a cat that’s spied another cat on its porch. She half expects him to puff up and hiss. 

Charlie leans around him dubiously, and - oh. 

That’s Vox. The CEO of Voxtech, the voyeurscope guy, the guy who shot Al a week ago, THAT guy. 

Hilariously, Charlie’s first thought is, He looks really different on TV. On air, he’s always crisp and polished and rehearsed, and while he reads about as trustworthy as a used car salesman, sure, he also seems about as dangerous as one. 

What he is on television, the pre-packaged, non-threatening smultz and fast talk, is not this - this electric creature, sitting casually on the wall around the edge of the roof and smiling at them like a shark. The air crackles around him, literally crackles, and his left eye - 

Alastor’s fingers around her wrist tighten enough to hurt her - he jerks her sharply. “Don’t look at him,” he whispers through smile-gritted teeth. 

“Now what kind of greeting is THAT for your old pal?” Vox asks. His grin, impossibly, widens. 

“Why, as soon as I SEE an old pal, I’ll be sure to give him a proper salutaiton.” 

Vox laughs. “Man, you are NEVER gonna step outta the twenties, are you? I really teed up that middle finger for you.” 

“Yes, very impressive, you have the same sense of humor as a twelve-year-old basement dweller,” Alastor drawls. “I wonder if you’ll still feel as clever when you’re existing as sadly-scattered atoms - honestly, Vox, this is idiotic even by YOUR standards. Why are you attacking the Princess of Hell? HOW do you see that ending for you?”

“Awww, are you worried about me?” Vox’s chuckle is….Charlie can feel it. She can feel it through her feet, in the air, in her bones. “I didn’t know you still cared.” 

There’s something about the way he’s talking that makes her…it’s making her REALLY uncomfortable - more uncomfortable than being confronted by an overlord on a night like this would normally make her. Like, the guy should be threatening to rip them into little pieces or offering them a deal or he and Al should already be trying to murder each other, but something in his tone…

“I just don’t want to be standing too close to you when you splatter, you ratings-obsessed imbecile. Minimum safe distance, all that?” 

“Oh, right, I keep forgetting - you pimped yourself out for your own version of  ‘angelic security.’ And people say MY methods are skeezy.” 

Charlie makes an involuntary little hrk sound -because on the first level, ew, and on the second level, shit, is that what people really think? Do people NOT Vox think that buttoned-up, proper-to-a-fault, frankly-prudish ALASTOR is putting out for her dad (ew, ew, GOD WHY) in exchange for what, for protection? Al, who barely flashes wrists or ankles, who even sleeps in full sleeves and pants? 

Is THAT what people are saying? 

Alastor doesn’t flinch, though, outside of tightening his fingers on her wrist in a way that VERY clearly says shut the fuck up and let me handle this. 

“You must tell me - what’s it like being the most revolting person in Hell?” Alastor asks in his radio interview voice. “Does it come naturally, or do you work at it?” 

“Eh, ya know, I try to be modest, but some of it’s hard work and some of it’s talent.” 

Vox’s head tilts to the right, and he goes into his made-for-television voice. “And what about you, Mr. Radio Demon? What’s it feel like being the biggest joke in Hell? ‘Cause I got a brand new news bulletin for you at seven -  Those aren’t MY guys down there, Al. And they weren’t my guys your little princess turned into kibble in that alley, either.” 

Charlie can’t help but flinch; that’s still too near to not cut. She had only meant to defend herself, to stop them from…

And then she’d opened her eyes wrist deep in what used to be them, and she hadn’t remembered doing it. 

“This is someone else’s party -” Vox continues saliciously.  “This was someone else’s ambush. I’m just crashing it.” 

“Which you have to do,” Alastor says mildly, “as no one invites you anywhere. I wonder why that is?” 

Vox stands up from the wall and stretches lazily - and as if on cue, the people they were running from in the stairwell finally (and wheezily) stumble out into the light only to nearly have a multi-goon pileup in the doorway. 

Apparently, while they knew they were chasing SOMEONE, it hadn’t occurred to them that they’d wind up blundering directly into a standoff between two of the most notorious demons in Hell. 

“Hey, we’re in the middle of something -  do you guys MIND? ” Vox asks. The last word reverberates through what feels like most of the pride ring. Even without looking at him, Charlie feels the pulse of a command through her gritted teeth. 

The goons in the doorway aren’t so lucky. They freeze to a man, their eyes vacant. 

Charlie is dutifully not looking at Vox’s face, but she still gets the impression of a wink that makes every hair on the back of her neck stand up. “Neat, right? You do nice work, by the way, honey,” he says. “Little messy, but I will be HAPPY to give you some notes later.” 

That gets a reaction from Alastor that nothing has yet - he physically moves, just slightly, to be more clearly between them. 

Charlie barely notices Al’s movement, but Vox’s raises his brows. “Weeeeell, lookit that. Did I call this wrong? I mean, I feel like I should say she’s too young for you, but hey, you go, old man!” 

Okay. Charlie has had about enough of this. 

“Oh, FUCK you….you Katie Killjoy knockoff ! I’m not going to be THREATENED  by JAY LENO with a TELEVISION for a head!”

Both overlords stare at her as if SHE has sprouted a second head. Alastor’s ears swivel slightly back, then forward again. Vox’s finger is still lifted as if he’s about to say something, but he has entirely forgotten what. 

That’s okay. Charlie is just getting started. 

“I fought an INVINCIBLE EXORCIST ARMY, you corporate ASSHOLE. You think I’m scared of you?” She can feel her demon aspect starting to shift and has to fight down the rush of panic at the feeling of horns and fire…

(Wrist deep in viscera, WHAT DID I DO?)

“Huh,” Vox says after a beat or two. Then he smirks at Alastor sidelong.  “No, you know what? I get it. She’s cute .” 

Charlie decides she might actually be good with some gory retribution at this point in the night, and she will deal with all that trauma LATER. Right now, she’s going to stab someone. 

She calls her trident to her hand - and then shrieks as something grabs her ankle and TRIPS her, and the sound of a gunshot rips across the roof. 

One of the drooling goons lowers his smoking gun, and one of Alastor’s shadow tentacles unwindes from her ankle.

“Hey, guys - as long as you’re her,” Vox practically purrs. “I just need you to hold her still for a second, that’d be…. really helpful .” 

That horrible reverberation through the ceiling and the air. 

Charlie rolls to her feet and puts her back to Alastor’s. They caught her flat-footed once. It won’t happen again. “Let’s fuck them up” she says. 

For once, Alastor doesn’t scold her for her language. 

Alastor has enough time to wish that Charlie was anywhere else in the entirety of Hell before he and Vox are engaged in a horrible sort of dance on the rooftop. 

It’s not the first rooftop they’ve danced on. Hell, they used to dance pretty often - on rooftops, in messy parks, in their living room that was too small for dancing. 

Now, they’re like THIS, and Alastor, well, he would feel a lot better about the nigh-constant murder attempts if he could blame all of it on Vox being an asshole, but that - that isn’t true. 

In the space between dodges and twists, he has time enough to face the fact that he may - MAY - have helped drive the man to this. Heaven knows it isn’t the first time he’s made a man crazy, but it might be the most dramatic. 

You don’t have time for this. Focus. 

“I have to ask again,” Alastor asks, narrowly avoiding a swipe of pure, sizzling electricity, “how you think you’re going to survive this.” 

“Oh, I like my chances,” Vox says. He is too fast to follow, flitting from one side to the other in bursts of static and lightning. It is only Alastor’s ability to follow his frequency that allows him to anticipate the next place of danger. 

“Even if you’re lucky enough to win this fight,” Alastor says, “ you don’t know the Devil at all if you think he’ll let you survive a moment past when he sees what you’ve been doing to his daughter. Antagonizing the most powerful being in Hell? You’re dumber than you look, which is QUITE a feat, by the way.” 

“Aw, but Al - I’m not antagonizing him,” Vox says. He is very suddenly MUCH too close, and a jolt runs through Alastor like a physical blow. 

“Al!” He can hear Charlie shriek from across the roof, even as he manages to wrench his body away from the point of contact, a bit like flinging yourself from an electric fence. 

Alastor hazards a glance her way to make sure the silly thing hasn’t gotten herself stabbed by being distracted. The girl is holding her own, but barely - it’s better than he could have expected. Charlie is powerful, but she is, at the best of times, reluctant to HURT anyone. She’s holding back more than usual tonight, damn it, damn it all to, well….to here. 

“And I’m not doing JACK to his daughter,” Vox continues, so cheerful. “What’s that you’re always saying - perception is reality?” 

Alastor doesn’t understand yet, but he spent too long with this man, spent too many hours drifting along the same signals, not to be able to see the rough shape of it, and - 

“YOU are!” Vox laughs, and the next blow is too close for comfort, leaves bloody tracks along Alastor’s side. “Or that’s what his little girl is going to tell him, anyway. This was all a big, fucked-up plot from the notorious Radio Demon who lured her off by herself…* 

The reverberation on his voice is thick now, powerful. “Or at least - that’s what she’s going to tell him, once I get a few seconds alone with her.” 

He’s hit with another eyeball-shaking, tooth-cracking volt of electricity. He stumbles, just barely, and he feels Vox’s hand slide around his back - fuck - the other man’s hand clamps around his wrist, hard enough to bruise, he’s sure, and…

And they’re doing a series of waltz-spins across the roof, while Alastor clenches his eyes to avoid accidental eye contact that he can’t risk, turn after dizzying turn - 

“Don’t worry, pal. I won’t hurt you TOO bad. After all, I gotta leave something around for the Devil to scatter into fertilizer.” 

Vox stops moving so quickly that the sudden stop is as disorienting as the turns were, and dips him low, practically throwing him over a hip, stopping him just above the roof. Alastor’s eyes are still firmly closed - with his powers as they are, he can’t risk it, he can’t - 

“Tell me it’s brilliant, and I might see my way to making sure you’re unconscious when he kills you.” 

Alastor doesn’t need to look to know the man’s face is entirely teeth and strobing eyes. 

“Well,” Alastor says, furious at how winded he sounds. “It seems you’ve thought of everything.” 

“I’m pretty good at that,” Vox says. “Learned from the best, am I right? Or I guess you used to be the best.” 

“Oh, Vox,” Alastor says. He lets himself relax in the other man’s arms, lets his outside arm go limp and trail against the rooftop. “I have a little news broadcast just for you.” 

“Yeah? Hope it’s a short one - you’re not exactly rich on time right now.” 

Then Alastor slips his hand into the back waistband of his pants, pulls the gun he lifted from the scene earlier loose, and fires it straight up into the smug fucker’s central body mass. 

“I’m still the best.” 

Chapter Text

Vox’s scream echoes through Alastor’s body on the level of atoms and blood vessels as he falls to the roof under a spatter - not enough, fuck - of blood. 

“Oh, you SLIPP- zk -ERY zrk hr zz old-timey zzh PRICK.” 

Alastor’s shadow-tentacles drag him along the roof until he is standing upright again. He chances opening his eyes. 

Vox isn’t even on the ground. He’s standing, partially doubled over, one hand clutching his side as electric blue blood wells up between his equally blue fingers. A few inches further left and the bullet might have killed him on impact, but this wound glanced off the outside of his body. 

Well, shit. 

Vox sizzles and glitches and is GONE. 

Charlie stumbles back toward him. “Fuck, yeah!” she cheers, pumping her free hand in the air even as she wields her weapon, currently shield-shaped, to knock another one of the insufferably persistent, brainwashed goons halfway across the roof. “You sure showed -” 

You never really notice, if you spend a lot of time in a city, just how many screens there are. Not until they suddenly glitch blue and red and ANGRY. 

“Wouldn’t go that far, dear,” Alastor says, clicking the hammer back again with his thumb. 

The gun in his hand is an old-fashioned six-shooter - because he couldn’t have been fortunate enough to get something with an actual clip, oh no. He had three bullets to start with. He is down to two. 

“Hooooly shit,” Charlie half-whispers, utterly forgetting to block the next cretin from surging forward. Alastor casts the man aside with a tentacle, even as he admits to himself, finally, that this might POSSIBLY, be a TINY bit more than he is going to be able to handle. 

“Okay. This is fine. This will be fine. What now?” Because of course, despite the fact that the city around them is thrumming with the sheer power of another overlord’s aggravation, Charlie SOMEHOW thinks that Alastor will know what to do. 

Alastor wants desperately to tell her to run. To demand it of her, even - he could do that. The problem with that is that these assholes really aren’t here for him, and her running away is only going to remove any protection he can give her from the equation entirely. 

One of the advertising banners on the side of the building next to them is suddenly made of a repeating blue eye.. Alastor barely looks away in time to avoid the familiar, staticky stab to the brain, but he can feel Charlie go ramrod stiff next to him. 

Fuck. 

Somewhere off to the right, a light is flaring, impossibly bright, impossibly warm - nothing in Hell has that kind of radiance outside of the distant, lit globe of heaven. 

Very nice, Lucifer, Alastor thinks bitterly. Quite lovely, very literally brilliant, now kindly GET THE FUCK OVER HERE, I am RAPIDLY losing control of this situation! 

“Hey, sweetheart. Your dad’s real bad at hide and seek.” 

The reverberations are brutal. 

“Charlie?” Alastor asks, his voice barely a whisper. 

“Shh, Al, the important people are talking - am I right, Miss Morningstar?” 

Charlie doesn’t answer. 

That honeyed, gentled, made-for-tv voice thrums around them from a blimp screen, from an electronic billboard, from the subwoofer of an obnoxious vehicle down on the street. “How about you let me take you sz-zrk away from all this? Come on. Oh, and the rest of you bozos - keep the dickhead with the antlers busy, will you?” 

Charlie starts to walk forward - not smoothly, like Vox’s victims usually do, but like a sleepwalker. Nonetheless, she takes another step. Another. 

No. Absolutely not. 

Alastor half-lunges toward her and then has to pivot rapidly as he sees a gun point at him from the corner of his eye. The crack rings out, and he presses himself close to the rooftop, prepared to move again. 

And he is losing Charlie, one inexorable step at a time. 

“You know, princess,” Vox says. The full of his attention is on her. His eye pulses, and under the honey, Alastor can hear the strain in his voice, just how MUCH of his power he’s having to put into this. “If it was anybody else with you, I’d have you kill them for me, but one of the few things I actually admire about your facilities manager is that he just doesn’t give enough of a shit about you NOT to kill you back.” 

Alastor makes another effort to get across the rooftop, but there are just too many bodies in his way - even impatiently chucking moron after moron over the side of the roof is not going to be FAST enough, and - 

And he can’t let Vox leave with her. He’s seen what’s left of people lately after they’ve spent a few days in the bottom room of the tower, a room outfitted with walls of screens and the sort of sound systems pimps probably drooled over - and what Vox can’t accomplish with hypnosis and persistence alone, he can probably do with some of the dozens of appalling, mind-altering drugs they mass-produce in that wretched place. 

No, if Vox leaves with her, there might not BE a Charlie to recover, and he cannot HAVE that. 

Alastor is self-aware enough to know that whatever parts of him were ever meant to be human had been assembled wrong. He knows he does not feel things correctly. The selfless kind of love he’s seen from the hotel residents again and again, he doesn’t understand that, he’s never felt it. 

But Charlie is his. And Vox can’t have her. He’s a little surprised at the INTENSITY of that feeling - like he’s a food-aggressive dog snarling over a biscuit - but there it is all the same. 

He knows what he has to do. 

Alastor’s next gunshot shatters the main screen Vox is speaking through. Useless, ultimately, as his eyes reappear on half a dozen others, even reflecting on polished windows - “You are zz such a BITCH sometimes, you know that?”

But it diverts Vox’s attention for a split second. 

Alastor vanishes into the shadows at his own feet. Then he reappears next to Charlie just long enough to half-tackle her into another puddle of darkness. 

They don’t reappear so much as tumble into the stacked garbage bags of a nearby alley, with him taking the brunt of the fall and Charlie landing mostly on top of him, as limp as a dead fish. They roll to a messy, ungainly stop. 

Alastor wonders if there really is a tooth-aching F sharp playing throughout the pride ring, or if that’s just the prelude to an eye-gouging migrain. 

Then the pain stabs him right between the eyes and he knows for sure. 

“You are NOT paying me enough for this,” he murmurs, sitting up. 

Charlie doesn’t respond. She is staring at the sky with wide, glassy eyes. 

Alastor rolls them both down the pile of trash to the side nearest the wall so that it will hide them from immediate view and gives her a light shake. “Darling, I really need you to not be like this right now.” 

He hears the zap-scritch sound of Vox materializing somewhere in the alley and has to resist his urge to bang his head off something. Does that box-headed cretin NEVER give up? 

“Oh Aaaaaaalastor…come on, I know you’re around here soooooomewhere…”

Alastor closes his eyes and tries to reach for the shadows, but the pain behind his head trebles, and it’s a struggle not to retch. 

Well, so much for voodoo magic. I suppose we’ll have to stick to the familiar path of trying to beat one another to death with whatever blunt object comes nearest to hand. 

“I know you couldn’t have gotten faaaaaar - don’t you remember? You told me all about it after our first extermination together.” 

Alastor does remember. He does. 

“You can’t make much of a jump with a passenger - and it really takes it out of ya, I figure. Even with a scrawny little nothing like her.” 

He’d pulled Vox through the shadows with him more than once that night, and had spent most of the next day prone on the couch with a wet towel over his eyes while Vox brought him painkillers and ice water and grumpy reprimands about pushing himself too hard. 

“Speaking of which, buddy - if you were finally gonna decide you were straight, you could at least have held out for someone with actual tits.” 

He is going to shake that smug, vulgar bastard like an etch-a-sketch as soon as his damned LEGS work again. 

Vox sighs. “Always gotta do things the hard way, huh? Okay.”  

Then the bastard whistles like he’s calling a dog. “Here princess!” Another whistle. “Come here, girl!” 

Alastor feels an unpleasantly INTENSE surge of indignation on Charlie’s behalf - which he is distracted from immediately, as he has to shift his weight to pin Charlie against the alley floor. 

Well, no denying it, this has definitely gotten away from me a bit. 

Maybe more than a bit. 

Charlie is STRONG. 

Even with a dominant position and years of nasty grappling experience, he’s barely keeping her down, and even with the constant din of the pride ring, Vox is going to HEAR them any second…

“Oh - shit.” 

And Vox sounds….genuinely shaken for a fraction of a second. 

The alley is getting brighter, brighter….

“Eh, well, it’s not EXACTLY like I planned it, but it’ll do. Goodbye and good riddance, ya nuisance.” 

Then Vox is gone, and the light is getting brighter. 

Alastor has exactly enough time to register two things. 

The first - that increasingly bright light is Lucifer. 

The second - oh, this does NOT look good, does it. 

Then a being made of brightness and wings and eyes is standing in the alley before him. 

Alastor grew up in the deep south - grew up with a mother who dutifully dusted her boy off, got him to shine his shoes, and dragged him to Sunday school every Sunday and Wednesday (not that it had saved her, had it, not that all that piety and devotion had ever earned her anything but a series of black eyes and poverty, not even a fucking bus seat she didn’t have to give up). He’d heard the stories of men like Saul, who had come across an angel along the road and been struck blind, had fallen on his knees and clutched up fistfulls of the earth and begged those shining, impossible creatures not to hurt them, not to unmake them, please.  

Alastor had always thought those stories kind of overwrought - even as young as seven, he wasn’t the sort of boy who was awed by much. 

He gets it now. 

The creature made of light and rage fists one hand in the front of Alastor’s shirt. The next thing he knows, he’s on his back a good several meters away, and the thing is kneeling over him, eyes and teeth and horns and fire. 

Its voice shakes the pride ring. EXPLAIN YOURSELF!

Alastor reminds himself that this being who is pinning him to the ground like a butterfly stick-pinned to a board is NOT an unknowable and awesome creature. This is an idiot who will go on for hours about the virtues of different kinds of pancake flour. This is a man who creates little bo peep ducks and still boils water for tea in a kettle and gets lost on the way to the bus stop and…

THIS HAD BETTER BE GOOD, DEMON. 

The creature - LUCIFER - fists its hands in his shirt and half jerks him off the alley floor. He reflexively clasps his own hands around the devil’s wrists, and the glowing white skin burns like a brand, scalding his palms. 

Alastor doesn’t let go.”This isn’t…” that thready, weak sound is NOT his voice. Alastor will be damned all over again before he is COWED by a man who PAINTS  LITTLE FRILLY APRONS on DUCKS. 

He swallows once, hard. “This is not what it looks like.” And he bites his own tongue before he can add your majesty. 

And then help comes from an unexpected source. 

“Dad! Ohgod, Dad, no!” 

There is a clattering, scrambling sound and Charlie is beside them - and Alastor has a moment to wonder how she managed that, how she shook out of a hypnosis that deep so quickly. The poor thing should have been a vegetable for at LEAST another hour or two. 

“Charlie, dear, that is close enough. Don’t touch him,” Alastor says, managing to keep his voice not just level but borderline singsong lilting - fine, Charlie, I’m fine. We’re all fine here. Please don’t do anything insane.   Because as strong as she is, half of her is her mortal mother which means that half of her can probably burn in this kind of light, this kind of white-hot fire given form. 

And the devil….blinks, that same confused expression on his face from when Alastor wrote him that silly note about coffee preferences. 

Lucifer will never be able to say later why he didn’t destroy Alastor on sight when he entered that alleyway - why his first, awful instinct to burn him right out of existence wasn’t the one that he followed. 

Because when he enters that alleyway and sees the infamous radio demon pinning his bloody, struggling daughter to the ground, when a closer look reveals her torn clothing and glassy, vacant eyes, something in him snaps. 

HIs little girl loves everyone. She will open her heart and her home and her bank account and the full might of her power to anyone with either the guts or the sense of entitlement to knock on her door. Lucifer has always known that would end badly. He’d always carried it around inside him, a certainty of future sadness - sooner or later, she was going to get hurt. 

Lucifer had just hoped it would be more the credit card fraud kind of betrayal than a nasty tumble through several dimensions into a crater you made with your own body. 

Even at his most pessimistic, he’d never imagined that it might be something this fucked up. 

Charlie is stronger than almost anything in Hell, even if she DOES have the tendency to hold her powers in so tight she’s on the verge of strangling them. Loan sharks, turf wars, even most of Hell’s overlords would have a hard time REALLY hurting her, or at least, that had been true a hundred years ago….and Lucifer’s deal with Heaven had kept her safe from the only thing she REALLY needed to fear, as far as he was concerned.

So, while these demons were bound to disappoint her, and while they might keep on not changing when she gave them chance after chance, when they ultimately fell back into addiction or violence or whatever vice they carried around on their ruined souls like a brand, the odds of her suffering REAL harm at their hands was negligible. 

This is so much worse than anything he’d ever imagined, and Lucifer has a detrimentally INTENSE imagination. Charlie, as near as Lucifer can tell, regards Alastor as sort of the weird uncle she never had and, all right, maybe he stands a LITTLE closer to possible-father-figures than Lucifer is entirely comfortable with. 

That makes all this - a betrayal like this - so much worse. 

And Lucifer can’t make it not have happened. He can’t erase it, can’t rewind, can’t undo it. That’s the bitch about time: for all the power Lucifer has, it STILL only flows in one direction. 

Lucifer thinks of his daughter bringing this man tea. Of her leaning against his shoulder. Of her tear-streaked, determined face as she wound her suspenders around his thigh again and again, the wreckage of her expression when she held him down, her fucking VOICE, the gentleness in it as she talked to him while they cut the shrapnel out. 

Almost worse than the pain of that is the guilt - because Lucifer had gone soft on the guy. Sure, he wasn’t going to be writing him holiday cards or anything, but he hadn’t thought…

Fuck him, does he SERIOUSLY never learn? 

Lucifer was like Charlie once - what felt like, or what may actually have been, a million years ago now. He had been happy and reckless and saw POSSIBILITY everywhere he looked instead of ashes and ruin. That was before the people he loved the most in the world sliced his wings from his body with sharp-edged flames and cast him into darkness, turned their backs on him without so much as a, “Hey, how are you these days? Are you still doing the whole ‘screaming in agony’ thing, or have you mostly scabbed over?” 

And somehow, because he’s an idiot, because that silly little part of him is OBNOXIOUSLY hard to stamp out and smother, he had thought that Charlie’s jacked-up friendship with a cannibalistic overlord might ultimately be a GOOD thing for his kid. That it might give her a more realistic view of just how horrible these guys were without breaking her completely. 

So okay, Lucifer can admit it - some of that is on him, but if there’s one thing that hundreds and thousands of years of being pissed at himself had taught him, it’s that being angry with YOURSELF doesn’t get you anything. 

He doesn’t remember whether he smacks Alastor as he did Adam or if he grabbed him by the scruff of the shirt and threw him - he doesn’t remember crossing the alleyway. The next thing he is fully aware of, he is kneeling over the man, one knee deliberately placed on the inside of his elbow, and - 

“Dad! Ohgod, Dad, no!”  

And Lucifer blinks with dozens of eyes that slowly fold back to just two. 

“Charlie, dear, that is close enough. Don’t touch him,” Alastor says  in a singsongy lilt, and what. the. fuck. 

First, Alastor shouldn’t be able to form WORDS right now. He shouldn’t be doing much at all besides pissing himself and begging incoherently for mercy, to save his own worthless hide from a good old-fashioned 1400’s-stye SMITE. 

Second, Charlie is frantic. Her eyes are wide and terrified - not of him, but of what he might do - and her hands are held out like she means to stop him, but the smell of burning sleeves and palms has brought her up short. 

Of course. Because there’s nothing you can do to Charlie that will make her decide that your soul isn’t worthy of existing, worthy of change, of a second chance. “DON’T YOU DEFEND HIM!,” Lucifer snarls, “Don’t you DARE. There is NO fucking excuse - ” 

“Charlie, you have to breathe.” And that is Alastor, still pinned beneath him. He can feel the demon shaking, but his voice is all in a steady radio pitch like he’s doing a fucking toothpaste commercial. 

To her credit, Charlie is TRYING to breathe - she is clutching Alastor’s coat closed over her chest and all but spitting the words out. “Dad, it wa….wasn’t…they set….they set him  u-up, he wasn’t HURTING me, he…” 

And now his daughter is crying. She is SOBBING and hiccoughing, and… 

And Alastor shoves him aside like he's just a piece of furniture that happens to be in his way and goes to her. “Now darling, you are going to make yourself sick. Enough, enough, I’m fine, everyone is fine, just a little misunderstanding, ha!”

He seems to stall out once he gets to her side, clearly uncomfortable, clearly at a loss as to what to actually DO with someone who is having a top grade mental breakdown outside of giving her the world’s most awkward pat between the shoulders. And he gives Lucifer a look that is very clearly, “Play along or so help me GOD, Lucifer.”  

“What the FUCK is going on,” Lucifer asks darkly. 

Charlie not at all subtly shifts so that she is between Lucifer and Alastor. “One of th….the other overlords, he -” 

“Hush,” Alastor says. “No. We’re not having this until you’ve had a hot shower and a truly STAGGERING amount of bourbon.” 

Then he turns to Lucifer. “I’ll make you  a deal.” 

Lucifer can’t stop the harsh, incredulous bark of a laugh that comes out of him. 

Alastor flinches, but only slightly - and Lucifer has to admit to himself that he is grudgingly impressed at the fucker’s audacity, even if he is absolutely going to wipe him from existence as soon as his daughter gives him a clear shot. 

Alastor continues. “You take us back to my room at the hotel, and I tell you everything I know about this entirely regrettable evening.” 

“That seems uncharacteristically straightforward for you,” Lucifer says flatly. “What, not going to insist on amnesty in a creatively-worded way that will keep me from ever doing you harm in your petty little mind?” 

Alastor’s ears perk up. “Of course not, I would never - would that work?” 

This. Fucking. Guy. 

“Dad, he was JOKING, that was a JOKE -” *Charlie throws her free arm out as if to make herself a living wall between the two of them. “He’s just LIKE this, he doesn’t MEAN it!” 

“I’m like what now?” Alastor asks. Charlie whacks him in the stomach with her free hand without breaking eye contact with Lucifer. 

And Lucifer….takes a deep breath. Pops his neck to either side. And when he speaks, he knows he sounds…calm. Reasonable. Just….maybe also a little too snakelike. “Sure, sinner. I’ll make you a deal.”

Lucifer takes a step forward, and he holds out his blackened hand. “I will take the three of us back to your room. Then, I will ask questions - that you will answer truthfully, without any of your usual, dodgy bullshit. And so help me father, if you can’t make a case for yourself, I will wipe your miserable soul not just from this plane of existence, but from the living memory o f every. wretched. creature. who ever knew you down here. How is THAT for a deal?” 

He knows that the shadows around him are suddenly slithering and filled with slitted eyes and forked tongues. 

And Alastor - laughs. Just a short HA, but what the fuck, that is not the usual reaction to…all this. “Didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, my good man! I will answer any questions you have completely truthfully that pertain to tonight’s incidents, and only until midnight. After that, our deal is complete.” 

“It’s so cute that you think you’re in a position to bargain.” 

Alastor snorts. “Quite the contrary! I am in the PERFECT position to bargain because I have nothing to lose, my good man! If you’re planning on blowing me into cosmic dust either way, there’s nowhere to go but up!” His grin sharpens. “But then you’ll never know what I know, will you?” 

“....you smug son of a bitch,” Lucifer says. And he can’t quite hide the admiration in his tone, which is, under the circumstances, really fucked up. 

Charlie sniffs again, miserably, and Lucifer aches. “Please, dad? I’ll - I’ll explain, too, I just -” 

He could hear the unspoken addition: I want to go home. 

He is going to burn this entire fucking landscape to the ground, he swears to EVERYTHING - but first, this. 

“Done,” he says. He extends his hand again, and Alastor takes it, and the sheer force of it, the green tendrils and skulls, the serpents of brilliant gold, dance in the air around them. 

He draws a circle in the air, and the edges glow golden. Alastor’s room is warded, he can’t help but notice - taking a moment to admire the handiwork before bypassing it completely. Then he steps aside, making a deeply ironic, courtly bow. “You better pray to whatever the fuck you pray to that I like what I hear, or you’ll wish I’d left you to rot with the rest of this trash.” 

“Well,” Alastor says, “You aren’t going to like it. Nothing I can do about that.” 

“I already know most of it,” Charlie mutters. “And I don’t like it.” 

“Then it’s unanimous!” Alastor says, as he herds Lucifer’s daughter through the hole in the air as if he does this kind of thing all the time.

Lucifer follows. 

He closes the portal behind him. 

Lucifer fully expects the demon to make some kind of run for it as soon as he’s through the portal. Instead, the first thing Alastor does when they get through the portal is rummage in a linen closet, shoving a fresh towel and a floor-length robe at Charlie. “First order of business for you, dear, is a hot shower and at least three shots.” 

Charlie takes the offered towel and robe with the air of someone who is fighting a rolling retreat against a total nervous breakdown. She clutches the towel to her chest and looks uncertainly between Lucifer and Alastor. 

Alastor says, with a confidence he can’t possibly feel, “It will be fine, darling.” 

“That’s what you said before you fought Adam,” Charlie says.

Alastor’s smile twitches slightly, because Charlie clearly has him there  - whatever happened in that battle had absolutely not been fine.  

“I promise not to kill him while you’re in the shower,” Lucifer says in the spirit of cooperation. 

“Oh, bad move, chum,” Alastor mutters at him sidelong, like he’s whispering his lines to him at a play. “Bad move, we are aiming for CALM.” 

 Sure enough, Charlie rounds on him and Lucifer has to nearly cross his eyes as his sunshine and rainbows daughter is suddenly shaking her finger in his face. “You don’t lay a HAND on him, you understand? I MEAN it, Dad. You ask him whatever questions you want to ask, but if it wasn’t for Alastor, I -” her face crumples briefly, but she swallows it down and replaces it with a stern glare she MUST have gotten from Lilith. 

“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.” And there’s Alastor again, turning his daughter around and steering her toward the bathroom. “Your father and I fight like cats and dogs, that’s nothing new. We haven’t managed to kill each other yet, and we aren’t about to now.” 

He all but shoves her through the door and closes it before he rounds on Lucifer. 

And Lucifer….says nothing. Because he needs a minute, because what the fuck is going on here? 

Alastor ignores him completely….flicking his deer-ears until they both hear the sound of running water. Then, he crosses the room toward Lucifer in three strides and hisses, “Angel and Vaggie. Did you find them?” 

Lucifer blinks again. “I…did.” 

“Did she survive?” 

“She did.” 

The taller demon heaves a visible sigh of relief and walks over to the dry bar in his room. “Well, thank heavens for that.”

Lucifer raises an eyebrow at the demon’s back. “Yeah, touching - I’m pretty sure you hate her.” 

“Oh, I assure you, I do,” Alastor says. Then he tips his head toward the bathroom. “She does not.” 

And it occurs to Lucifer that Charlie doesn’t know. Charlie is operating under the happy delusion that Vaggie made it safely home with a new peck of sinners and has been anxiously waiting for her, safe and sound in the parlor. Part of why Alastor was so adamant on getting Charlie out of the room was so that he could find out what had happened and possibly run some interference on it before Charlie found out.

Point smarmy radio bastard , Lucifer thinks with resignation. “Okay, asshole. My turn to ask a question. What the FUCK did I see out there?” 

“What you saw,” Alastor says, “is exactly what you were meant to see.” 

Lucifer’s eye twitches. He is so. Done with this right now. “What happened after you found Angel. Give me the bullet points. Don’t leave anything THAT I WOULD CONSIDER IMPORTANT out.” 

“Well,” Alastor says. “I found your daughter in an alleyway, after she made people-jelly out of a group who apparently ambushed her in the same way they got dear Vaggie. That accounts for the ripped shirt, the bloody fingernails, and the first of Charlie’s panic attacks tonight.”  

Lucifer clenches and unclenches a fist, but he doesn’t interrupt. Not yet. 

“While I was convincing her that she wasn’t going to snap and murder me, a group of derelicts showed up. Ask me whose men they were if you like - I don’t know, and that answer won’t change. Either way, they came prepared with flood lights and angelic weapons, so we ran.” 

Lucifer does interrupt this time. “Since when do you have the goddamned sense to run away from ANYTHING?” 

Alastor pours something into the cocktail shaker and shakes it aggressively. “Not a good tactic to get into a fist fight on a rescue mission, you know. Too great a chance of your proctectee taking a stray bullet, and…anyway, I had a bad feeling about it.” 

“I see. And why not use your freaky shadow powers to take you two straight back to the hotel?” 

Alastor is muddling something in the cocktail shaker now as if it is the most interesting thing in the world. “Because my powers don’t work that way. I can pull myself through shadows. Taking a passenger is….not only difficult, but dangerous. Even when I risk it, I can’t take them very FAR.” 

Lucifer purses his lips and nods - magic and its bizarre constraints are nothing new to him. “Go on.” 

Alastor turns enough to put a hand on his own chest, wide eyed. “Oh, may I?” 

“You really WANT me to kill you tonight, don’t you?” 

“Honestly, if it puts an end to this blasted headache, you can kill me as many times as you like. At ANY rate, while we were running from THEM, we encountered my least-favorite newscaster on a rooftop.”

“So you got my little girl caught between you and some other shitty demon’s pissing contest?” Lucifer asks. 

And Alastor…sighs. “No, that would have been much better. It wasn’t me he was there for.” 

“I find it hard to believe that even one of you overlord types is THAT fucking stupid,” Lucifer says. 

And Alastor….raises a brow at him. “It damn near worked out very well for him, actually,” he says. “And while I wouldn’t admit it to that square-headed imbecile if someone set me on fire, it WAS kind of brilliant.” 

“Are you saying he went to all that trouble to set you up?” 

“No, no, pish posh, even I’m not that vain. No. He wanted Charlie. Getting me killed was at best third or fourth on his list. Regardless, he has….he has hypnosis powers, I don’t know how much you know about that. He put her under and he told her to come with him.” 

“And that WORKED?” Lucifer asks incredulously. “That shouldn’t have worked.” 

“Yes, that’s the bit that’s bothering me, too,” Alastor says - right before he takes a bracing gulp of something probably undiluted by mixers.  “What matters is that it DID work.” 

And Lucifer…can’t argue. Because the stipulations of the deal they made were that Alastor tell him the truth, so the truth is what he’s telling, or at least he’s telling him what he BELIEVES to be true. And yeah, maybe there’s a reason Alastor didn’t try to haggle over that condition when Lucifer added it. Maybe he knew damn well Lucifer wouldn’t believe anything he said otherwise. 

“What would have happened if she had gone with him?” 

“Ah - are you asking me to speculate? As otherwise, the answer will be a straightforward, ‘I do not know.’” 

Alastor turns and offers him something faintly steaming and smelling of honey and cayenne. 

And Lucifer takes it. “What the fuck, are you seriously this old? Is this a hot toddy?” 

“Assuming that was rhetorical,” Alastor answers, and his ears half-flatten to the sides of his head, his expression very much that of a man eating a lemon. He hates this, Lucifer realizes suddenly, he hates this SO much more than he’s letting on. 

And who wouldn’t hate it? Giving up that much of your autonomy, answering questions you don’t want to answer to a guy you don’t even like (okay, fuck, maybe justifiably) because the alternative is oh, he doesn’t know, a painful, violent erasure. 

“I…am asking you to speculate,” Lucifer says, wrapping both hands around the warm glass. This time, he deliberately does not phrase it as a question. 

When he starts speaking again, Alastor’s tone is ... .resentful, which also makes sense. When he’s not compelled to tell the truth, he will cheerfully call everyone in that wretched tower an over-hyped, clout-chasing example of mediocrity at its okayest, but… “Vox’s powers are like nothing I’ve ever seen. Hypnosis is fairly common down here, but his degree of control and sense of subtlety is….problematic. If he could put her under, he could brainwash her completely, given the time, the access to enough screens and speakers, and when all else fails, injectable drugs. My best guess? She would have come back to us almost her normal self, with some inane story of where she disappeared to, but he would have owned her as surely as if she’d sold her soul to him. He could keep her coming back to him to renew his control, to report on whatever he wants to hear.” 

 Alastor rests his hands on the counter, digs his nails slightly into the finish. “He told her to come to him, and she was trying. I managed to get us off the roof and into the alley, but I almost couldn’t hold her.” 

So that explained what Lucifer had seen in the alley. 

And….and fuck it all, this poor man. 

Lucifer will be the first (and loudest) to admit that Alastor isn’t an easy person to like. He’s prickly and abrasive and hateful, and he never met someone else’s wound that he thought couldn’t be improved with salt and lemon juice. 

But he’s also a person who so aggressively keeps everyone else at arm’s length that he’s practically strung up barbed wire around himself for a five foot radius. He doesn’t tell anyone here where he’s going or when he’ll be back. He crawled up in a hole somewhere to sleep off an angelic chest wound, and he would cheerfully have bled to death in a pile of bath toys before he asked for help. 

The original hotel guests - and lately, Cherry - have grown accustomed to Alastor the way people in old houses get accustomed to ghosts. They no longer jump when he is around, they no longer regard him with obvious, constant unease. They maybe even have a certain fondness for him in the same way that they might have developed a fondness for the way the old stairs of the original version of this place had creaked; one of the many, imperfect features that had made the place home. 

It was only Charlie and Nifty who ever seemed happy to see him. 

Charlie always notices when Alastor comes into the room. Each time, she gives him a smile, a wave, an enthusiastic “come over here and join us” gesture that he always, always ignores. But after Vaggie, Alastor is the first person that Charlie shows drafted new ideas to. It’s him she sits down with before an interview so that he can play bloodthirsty talk show host to her determined philanthropist. It’s his advice she asks whenever she has to play hellish politics. 

Somehow, Lucifer knows that if he asks Alastor directly why he went to all that trouble, why he’s currently wearing half the alley sludge in Pentagram city, why he has tracks of blood down his nose and across his side, why he is currently playing twenty questions with the King of Hell, he will say something like, “I’ve put too much effort into that girl to let Vox get his slimy claws into her.” And the tragic thing is, he will believe that to be the truth. 

The actual truth - just how much he cares about her - that has snuck up on him, and he is nowhere near ready to face it.  

Lucifer takes a bracing sip of his still-scalding drink. Takes a very deep breath. “I am -” 

“Don’t say it,” Alastor says. His back is to Lucifer again. “If this is an apology, you don’t owe me one. The scene was set very well. Anyone would have thought the same.” 

All right, if the asshole doesn’t want an apology, he won’t get one, but - “Then let me see your hands.” 

Alastor looks over his shoulder at him and blinks. “Come again?” 

“Let. Me see. Your hands,” Lucifer says, speaking very slowly, as if to a small child.  

Alastor’s ears swivel uncomfortably, and when he turns to face Lucifer, he doesn’t miss the way the taller man puts his hands behind his back. “What for?” 

“What, you weren’t afraid of me breathing fire in your face, but a little show and tell freaks you out?”

Apparently, yes. Yes it does. Because Mr. Radio Demon backs up so fast he blunders square into the table he’s been mixing drinks on, and the cocktail shaker rattles ominously. 

“What are you on about?” Alastor asks. 

Lucifer summons his cane just so that he can fold his own blackened hands on it for effect. “I’ll tell Charlie you have blisters,” he warns.  

Alastor makes a very sour expression. “And whose fault is that?” he asks waspishly - but he holds his hands out, like a bratty child who has to demonstrate to his mother that he has washed his hands. 

It is exactly what Lucifer expected to see - the skin sickly shiny in the joints, but raised into puffy blisters along the palms and the raised spots on his fingers.  “There,” Alastor asks, “Satisfied?” 

Lucifer catches his hands before he can withdraw them - wrapping his own around the backs of Alastor’s. “Not yet,” he says. Then, he closes his eyes. 

Healing a body full of bullet wounds is messy, difficult business - but a few minor burns should only take a second. 

The light flares gold, and the flesh of his hands is back to being smooth red and black, with none of the sickly white. 

Alastor yanks his hands back from Lucifer’s - rather ironically, as if he’s been burned and not as if he’s HEALED from a burn - “What the Hell did you do that for?” 

Lucifer is saved from having to answer when Charlie emerges from the bathroom looking less frazzled but impossibly tired. Her hair is loose and wet, and her eyes are swollen, as she must have used the cover of the shower to have a good cry. 

Lucifer can practically FEEL Alastor tagging him in, as the other man hands Charlie a second version of what he made Lucifer. “There, drink that, you’ll feel better.”  

Charlie takes the drink in her hands and looks between them uncertainly. 

Lucifer takes a deep breath and does his best to shove all the impotent rage he’s feeling somewhere else. He can deal with all that later. Right now, his daughter needs him.  He lets his wings unfurl again and sits next to her on the bed. “It’s all right, Charlie,” he says carefully. “Your bellhop and I made up - I still hate the guy, but I don’t want to set him on fire.” 

Alastor snorts. “I still very much want to set your father on fire, but I currently lack either a lighter or the energy to do so.” 

Charlie breathes out a shaky sigh of relief and then leans against Lucifer’s side - he lets his nearest set of wings wrap around her outside shoulder in a curtain of protective feathers. 

“Now, if his majesty has no more immediate questions - I should go talk dear Charlie’s paramour down from storming the pride ring.” 

Charlie sits up straight. “Why would Vaggie want to -” 

Alastor is already fleeing the room. “Best of luck, chum!” he calls over his shoulder as he ducks out into the hallway and slams the door behind him. 

And….okay. Lucifer can concede he maybe deserves that. 

Charlie rounds on him. “Did something happen to Vaggie?!” 

“Okay, honey, let me take it from the top - and for fuck’s sake, drink that, you’re going to need it.”

Chapter Text

When Alastor reaches the bottom flight of stairs, he descends squarely into chaos, as he expected he would. 

“Toots, for FUCK’S sake, just settle down!” That is Angel, who has two sets of arms wrapped firmly around Vaggie’s right leg and has let his body go limp on the floor as a flesh-and-blood ball and chain. 

With as many feminine mannerisms as the man has adopted, Alastor is a little surprised that he doesn’t realize that telling a woman to settle down has never, in the history of Heaven or Hell, actually worked. 

“THE HELL I WILL!” Vaggie roars. She is somehow making decent progress toward the door despite all the interference. “It’s been WAY too long, and you chucklefucks want to sit around the parlor playing BOARD GAMES?!” 

“Nearly dying ONCE tonight wasn’t enough for ya?” Angel persists. 

“Look, if the boss and the actual devil can’t handle whatever’s out there, the best YOU can do is get in the way.” There’s dear Husker, making a solid go of wrestling Vaggie’s spear from her. He’s trying to be reasonable, bless his bitter little heart, but anyone with an iota of sense would be able to spot from Heaven that Vagatha is in NO state of mind for reason right now. 

“Yay, yay, we’re gonna stab! Stab, stab, stab!” Nifty cheers as she pirouettes through the parlor with a knife that someone should definitely take away from her as soon as possible. 

“I’m ready!” Cherri declares as she bursts into the room from the other side, a satchel of almost-certainly explosive devices slung over her shoulder. “Let’s go WRECK these fuckers!” 

Alasor takes a moment and closes his eyes against the parlor lights, rubbing his aching temples with both sets of index fingers. Cherri and Vaggie meeting one another is, in Alastor’s humble opinion, the worst thing that has come of this absolute train wreck of a hospitality venture, and it seems like the sort of thing that someone should have had sense enough to prevent. . 

“THAT’S what I’m talking about!” Vaggie exclaims, pointing at Cherri with her non-encumbered hand. “Now why don’t the rest of you dipshits either step up or get out of the way?” 

“Hi, Alastor!” Nifty sing-songs.

Fuck. 

Every eye in the parlor turns, very slowly, to him. He is briefly taken aback to see two eyes staring at him from out of Vaggie’s head. 

The silence stretches on for an unnaturally long moment. Alastor plasters his widest grin across his face. “Not to worry, chums, everything is -” 

And then everyone is yelling at the same time. 

“Whoa what the fuck happened to YOU?” 

“Where’s Charlie? Is she okay, did anything h-” 

“Boss, what the FUCK were you doing in the business district? Are you TRYIN’ to start some shit you can’t finish?”  

“Ooooh, did you have a good time with a bad boy? Why didn’t you invite -” 

Alastor’s headache kicks up from a five to an eight on the richter scale, and his already-frayed patience snaps entirely. “Would all of you KINDLY SHUT UP!?”

It works a treat, except now everyone is staring at him as if he might eat them. 

He belatedly realizes that he is twice his usual size and his antlers are brushing the wall of the stairwell. He draws a deep breath in through his nose and focuses on assuming a more person shape. 

“Wow, Smiles,” Angel says, removing his (cracked) sunglasses - much more at ease with the display than he should be. “It’s been a minute since you went full glitchy-ass voodoo monster on us.” 

“Fuckin’ Hell, boss,” Husk says at almost the same time, staring intently at his face, and Alastor resists the impulse to slap a hand over his nose, over the fresh trickle of blood that he can feel tickling his upper lip. 

Vaggie, meanwhile, is undeterred - her rabid loyalty is normally the sort of thing that Alastor can appreciate, though he’ll never tell her as much. It’s just that he could do with less of it right now - especially when she yanks her spear from Husks’ grasp and levels it at Alastor from across the room. 

It's more for emphasis than an actual threat, but Alastor has about reached his limit on people pointing deadly weapons at him today.

“Where the FUCK is Charlie!? I swear to FUCK if you had ANYTHING to do with this -”  

Or Alastor thinks that’s what she said. 

His vision has narrowed into the light dancing on the edge of that spear. He can hear his heart beat unnecessarily loudly in his ears. 

He is not going to turn into a two-story tall monster in the lobby. He is not going to choke the air with voodoo symbols and green strobelights. He is NOT going to eat Charlie’s girlfriend to stop her pointing an angelic spear at him, he is NOT going to disembowel everyone in the lobby just to make all the noise stop, he is not. 

He is not. 

He can feel his head snapping too far right in a sort of nervous tic.  

Are they still talking? 

The edge of the spear glitters bright and sharp and - 

“STOP,” Husker snarls, with more authority than Alastor has heard him use in a while - not since the kittycat’s overlord days. The bartender puts one of his paws on Vaggie’s spear and shoves it down toward the floor. “Fuckin’ CHRIST, are you BLIND or STUPID? That redheaded sonofabitch is a PAPERCUT from a tri-state killing spree, and I AIN’T fixing that damn wall again. Now ALL of you, fuckin’ COOL IT for a minute.”  

Husker stalks over to the bar in the ensuing, shocked silence, rummaging for a rattly bottle of pills and a glass of water. He brings both straight to Alastor, shakes a couple of pills into his hand, and shoves the glass of water at him. 

Alastor eyes the glass. Takes a deep breath. Showtime. And then he smiles as close to normal as he can manage and says, “What the Hell is this?” 

Husker folds his arms and glares down his kitty nose at him somehow, despite Alastor being taller than he is. “It’s WATER, ya fuckin’ alcoholic.”

“When that man calls you an alcoholic, it’s time to re-evaluate your life choices,” Vaggie mutters to Cherri, who nods solemnly.  

Alastor wrinkles his nose. “Ick. Are you trying to POISON me?” But he shots the pills and most of the glass and WILLS it to work fast, because these people are impossible, and there is no clear exit in sight. 

“Now what. About. Charlie.” Vaggie growls through clenched teeth - though she displays sense enough not to lift the point of her spear from the ground again. 

“She’s here, my dear. Right here at the hotel! Had a bit of a jarring night, but she’ll be right as rain in no time - ah, ah, ah, none of that!” He puts a hand on Vaggie’s face and shoves her back out to arm’s length when she starts to bolt up the stairs. “If you go her way with anything but the calmest of energy, you are going to undo a lot of hard work and possibly cause a lot of property damage. Her nerves are a little…fragile right now.”  

Angel comes to the rescue again - Alastor can’t help but notice that the poor fellow is still wearing his stained coat, and his high heels aren’t any less broken. He isn’t any less spattered in sticky, drying blood in shades of gold. “Al, did something happen to her?” 

“I will summarize the situation for you if everyone promises to stay. Calm,” he says. 

No one stays calm. 

Alastor does his best to explain, using the least inflammatory language possible. He gives the roughest, vaguest sketch of what happened that he can.

Ten minutes later, his room is full of people. At least a third of them are crying, they are ALL talking at once, and he thoroughly regrets every decision he’s made in the past sixteen hours, starting with the part where he rolled out of bed this morning. 

He makes his way toward one of the chairs by the fireplace and sinks gratefully into it, effectively washing his hands of the socio-emotional tornado that is tearing its way through his living space with no regard for self-discipline or sleep schedules. 

(Charlie and Vaggie are holding on to each other for dear life, and they are BOTH crying - Charlie with an eruption of tears, Vaggie through clenched eyes, and how does no one else feel like they’re intruding on this? Worse, ANGEL seems to have caught the sympathetic tears from those two, and even the Devil, whom he should be able to count on, theologically, to be an impassive dick, has watery eyes.) 

Alastor starts a little when someone clears his throat beside him and he squints sidelong at Husker. The former overlord is avoiding his eyes, but he has a worried crease between his brows and thrusts a wet washcloth at him with as little grace as he possibly can. 

“Ain’t dealing with one o’your headaches,” he mutters. “You’re enough of an asshole without one.” 

Alastor takes the cloth without a thankyou, puts his elbows on his knees, holds the cold cloth in his palms, and presses his eyes into it. He thinks he has never been so pathetically grateful for anything in his life. 

He doesn’t know how long he sits there like that with the general din washing around him like surf breaking around an especially stupid crab. 

It takes him almost a full minute to realize that everyone has STOPPED talking (though there’s still an uncomfortable amount of sniffling going on). 

Oh no. 

He peers up dubiously from his towel and tries not to squint. Sure enough, everyone is looking at him expectantly. “Sorry, what was that?” 

Cherri Bomb has sat herself down on the bed behind Vaggie as a sort of an if-needed backrest. “I said, how the fuck did you know to get your ass to the business district?” 

“Oh,” he says. “I was tipped off.” 

“By…Rosie?” Charlie ventures, pulling her face out of Vaggie’s damp shoulder and more-damp hair. . 

Alastor snorts. “Don’t ever say that out loud again - any of you. We are PROBABLY fine in here, if certain ethereal entities haven’t broken the warding completely -” He casts a sidelong glare at Lucifer, who shrugs unapologetically.  “She went out on a very thin limb for you, my dear, and that’s a splendid way to wind up dead.”  

“Wait,” Vaggie said. “She knew that somebody wanted to hurt Charlie, and what, she ASKS YOU TO TEA?” 

“It’s not as straightforward as you’re making it,” Alastor says. 

And Angel….nods. “It’s gettin’ bad out there, Vags,” he says. “I know you guys don’t exactly get out much, but I ain’t never seen Val so jumpy. Velvette, neither. And what little I see of Vox….he ain’t been himself.” 

“Still - the whole Pride ring is going straight to shit, and that lady invites you to a tea party? And what, in between serving trays, she says, ‘oh, by the way’ - ” 

“Yeah, about that,” Lucifer says. The man has one hand on his tacky apple cane, and is examining the fingers of his other hand, and Alastor - Alastor chances a quick glance at the clock in his room. 

Eleven thirty. 

FUCK. 

He supposes it serves him right for literally making a deal with the devil, no matter the circumstances. 

“Any particular reason you were out wandering the streets of Pentagram City by yourself  less than a week after one of the other overlords flat out TOLD you they were gunning for you?” 

Fucky you, Lucifer, Alastor thinks, even as he’s almost relieved. He’s surrounded by wibbly bleeding hearts - at least the devil isn’t so stupid as to squander the only chance he’s likely to have to get verifiable information out of him. 

“Because Rosie invited me out for tea,” he says. And every word of that is true, you absolute clown.  

“Uh-huh,” Lucifer says, still examining his nails. “Why’d you accept? Really.” 

I hate you. 

“Well, that’s...multifaceted,” he admits finally. “I thought it was either going to be her trying to smooth things over after that ugly little attempt on my life, or it was going to be a trap, and either way -” 

Charlie chokes on a sip of her (second) hot toddy. “You thought your FRIEND was setting a TRAP for you, and you WENT?!” 

“Of course I went,” he says, feeling his ears swivel a bit in dismay. OBVIOUSLY he went, who wouldn’t have gone?  

“I don’t know which part of that is more fucked up!” Charlie snaps, waving her free hand. “You don’t just WALK INTO TRAPS! We could have -” 

“You could have argued with me about it for twenty minutes, insisted on coming along, and then made very inconvenient hostages, that’s what you could have done,” Alastor says, because his head HURTS, he did NOT think out his timeline well, and he is out of patience. 

“That doesn’t mean you have to go!” Charlie is not the least bit phased by his waspishness. In fact, she is building in volume now, bright and radiant and furious. “You don’t HAVE to fight every demon in Hell BY YOURSELF just because they ASK!” 

“Do you think they won’t come here?” Alastor asks. “Do any of you REALLY think that? It’s a chess game, Charlie. They don’t want to give me home field advantage because they’re not IDIOTS, but if they can’t coax me out, they WILL find another way. ”

“Not to mention,” Cherri adds casually, “that’s as much as sayin’ you’re scared of ‘em, and those fuckers are like pirhanna.”  

Alastor waves a tired hand in her direction. “Yes,” he says, “and that.” 

“Hm.” And that’s Lucifer again, looking at his nails still. “The Bird’s Opening. You don’t seem like the type.” 

Because of course that obsessive lunatic would have an alphabetic knowledge of chess strategies, including one that focuses on an aggressive offense as a means of defense. 

“Oh, fuck off,” Alastor says (to the literal King of Hell). “Not that it matters, as that was a tip-off, not a trap.” 

He can feel Husker giving him an odd sidelong look, which he ignores. 

“I”ll give ya that,” Cherri continues carelessly - she seems much more mellow about this than most of the long-time residents, but as an up-and coming overlord, the girl has a better grasp of the ins and outs of it than most of the people in the room. “But why not call for reinforcements once ya knew what was happening?” 

“Fuck.” And that’s Angel Dust. “He did. He had ME call. Smiles, is that…it was because Vox woulda picked your voice up, isn’t it? You figured he was behind it, and he’s so fuck-all obsessive about you that you knew he’d hear YOU, but I might slip under the radar.” 

“Well,” And that’s Lucifer again. “I have some very bad news for him on the power-grid front. But before we get into that, is there anything we should be worried about with Charlie here? Any side-effects we should look for?” 

Alastor sighs. “She did come out of that trance faster than expected. It could be that she’s that strong, it could be that her biology is that different. It could be a feint on his part, hoping that we’d be so relieved to get her back that we wouldn’t ask questions. I’d suggest putting someone on her for at least the next forty-eight hours who we can be REASONABLY sure hasn’t had any unnecessary exposure to insipid talk shows or social media.” 

He keeps his eyes down, but he can imagine the look on Charlie’s face. This is the first time the poor girl has faced something like this - the fact that she might not be able to trust her own mind, her own body, that she might be carrying something corrupted inside her. 

He wishes there were some other, kinder way to tell her, but that isn’t the Hell they’re living in. 

And then Charlie, dear Charlie, who doesn’t have an ounce of guile or manipulativeness in her body, inadvertently sets up the game point. Bless her heart, it’s entirely an accident; the girl doesn’t have the right temperament to do it deliberately.  “If he can do that to me - can he do it to anybody? Carmine, Zestial -” 

She looks across the room and meets Alastor’s eyes. “You?” 

Alastor’s grin tightens so much he actually feels one of the back molars crack. “Don’t be ridiculous, darling - that imbecile? No.” 

He knows, damn it all, that Charlie hears what he isn’t saying, and he does not make eye contact. She’s not an idiot. She heard them talk, she saw the waltz-turns with his eyes suspiciously clenched shut. She’s not quite enough of a cynic, he thinks, to get the full, shitty conclusion out of the data points she has, but she’s probably got the nebulous outline of it. 

Lucifer, though, missed all that. He missed the manhandling and the oddly-personal insults and the absolutely wretched things Vox had to say, and - 

Husk is slowly backing away. He’s always had a knack for avoiding nasty fallout, and he is eyeing Alastor like something that might produce shrapnel when it explodes. 

For the first time since Alastor shoved Charlie into his bathroom, the devil looks conflicted - like he doesn’t want to keep going, but feels like he HAS to. 

“You seem to know an awful lot about this,” Lucifer continues, deceptively casual. His hands have tightened on his cane, and no mistaking it, there are traces of regret in his expression, but he is still asking. “His powers, I mean.” 

It takes everything in Alastor not to let his ears pin in alarm - not to glance at the clock to see how much time he might potentially be able to stall through. 

“I get the whole ‘know your enemy’ idea, Allison, but this is….this is a whole other thing, isn’t it?” 

“Dad,” Charlie warns from the bed. 

“It’s just a harmless question, honey,” he says. “Right, Albert?” 

“DAD,” Charlie says, “That is ENOUGH.”

No one in the room misses how overwrought her reaction is  - to them, she’s overreacting in his defense, a naive girl made hysterical by a terrible night. But she’s the only one who saw what happened on the rooftop, she’s the only one who heard it, she’s the only one who has started to understand, in a dim, probably-too-optimistic way the minefield that her father is unwittingly starting to drag them all across. 

“This is between me and the bellhop, Charlie,” Lucifer says, firmly but not unkindly. “Answer the question, Al. How do you know so much about his powers?” 

Alastor closes his eyes, and vividly pictures punching the King of Hell square in his stupid mouth. Then he exhales and opens them. “I know his powers as well as I do because I helped him figure them out,” Alastor says. “Satisfied?” 

And now everyone is REALLY staring - especially Husker, who has fluffed up like he’s been blow-dried at a pet salon. “Since when are we TALKIN’ about that fiasco? Normally just bringing it up gets you going on about removing ORGANS - ” 

“Husker, shut up,” Alastor says, because he does NOT need help making this situation worse than it already is. 

And Husker does, but Alastor can see the wheels turning, God FUCKING damn it. 

“Satisfied?” Lucifer continues. “Nope! Not yet. Before tonight, did you know that he could do something like that to Charlie?” 

Alastor grits his teeth into a much SPIKIER smile. “Before tonight, I was operating under the pleasant delusion that he couldn’t.” 

“Uh-huh, okay. So when you were helping that freakshow figure out his powers, did he ever, I don’t know, practice on  -” 

“DAD,” And dear Charlie makes a good go of standing up, but Vaggie pulls her back down, confusion all over her sharp features. 

“Charlie, you shouldn’t -” she starts

“Stop PUSHING him like that!” Horns are threatening at Charlie’s hairline, rage making her radiant in a way that her boxy tuxedos do not - even in a borrowed bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. “If it wasn’t for Alastor -” 

But the devil is unfazed, and more….focused than Alastor has seen him. “He doesn’t WANT me to go easy on him,” Lucifer says. “Freaks you right the fuck out, doesn’t it, Allie? Besides, this guy was willing to brave me wiping him out of existence what, half an hour ago? You REALLY think I could SCARE him into this?”

Lucifer’s eyes meet his, and Alastor feels…seen. Understood, maybe, in a way that is both PROFOUNDLY upsetting, and possibly kind of a relief. “You think he offered to answer questions honestly just out of the blue? Nah. He knows we need to know, he just can’t fucking talk about it without a little mystic assist. He was hoping on some level I’d be able to figure out the right questions to ask.”

The gape-mouthed residents are regarding this like the world’s most awful tennis match. 

“Am I right, Al?” 

At least, they all are except for Husker - who is starting to look - Alastor doesn’t know what that look is. 

“Assuming, again, that that was rhetorical,” Alastor says. 

Lucifer shrugs. “I’ll give you that one,” he says. 

“Wait just a second,” Husker says - as, damn him, he’s always been a little too good at reading a table, at seeing all the games that were really being played beneath the chips and the cards and - 

“Shut UP, Husker,” Alastor grinds out. 

But as he has been entirely too lenient with Husker since the literal day he took his contract (he likes it, he’ll admit it, he likes how irreverent and cranky…and genuine, and…), Husker does NOT shut up. “Is this some kind of fuckin’ DEAL?” 

Unfortunately for the hotel at large, saying the word “deal” in front of Vaggie is a bit like waving a red flag in front of a bull at this point. She rounds on Lucifer, concern in every line of her stricken expression. 

How touching. 

“He made a DEAL with you?” 

Lucifer blinks, giving his daughter’s girlfriend a kind of startled look. Then, he smiles a very odd smile - like the one Alastor’s mother had on her face when he had been very young, when he had held up his pocket knife on the way home and promised to protect her from robbers. “Oh, honey,” he says, putting a hand awkwardly behind his own head. “No - well, I mean, yes, but I’ve kind of been doing this for a WHILE…” 

“HE made a deal with ME,” Alastor says. 

“Right - that. Exactly.” 

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t see the FUCKING DIFFERENCE!” Vaggie snaps.

“HEY!” Angel snarls, demonic reverberation underscoring his voice - which was not probably on anybody’s bingo card today. Alastor blinks when he feels the tattered feathers of Angel’s pink coat brushing his leg as the spider demon is suddenly standing against the side of his chair, one of his upper arms over the back of it, not touching him, not quite close enough to make him flinch. 

There’s no mistaking it for anything other than protective. What is happening right now? 

“You shut the fuck up with that tone, Vags. Maybe YOU don’t care that you’d be dead in an alley if Smiles had popped in even five minutes later than when he did, but maybe the rest of us do. That’s not even MENTIONING what coulda happened to Charlie. That flat-headed freak coulda walked RIGHT OFF WITH HER, and none of the rest of us woulda known WHAT happened or WHERE she was!” 

Vaggie visibly falters, and Alastor, who is used to watching his opponents for signs of weakness and indecision, sees it fighting in her - the fear, the relief, the resentful gratitude, all warring against her core belief that Alastor is up to No Good™, that every seemingly-decent thing he does is really just a ploy to make them trust him, or an effort to preserve an asset for his own later use. 

The poor thing is right, of course - that’s the tragedy of it. She is right about him. He is not here for good reasons, He did not save Charlie out of the kindness of his heart. And if he has to pile up every single person AT this hotel in a messy stack of corpses in order to slip his own leash, he is prepared to do so. 

The fact that he’d RATHER it not come to that - that he wants more for it not to come to that every goddamned day, somehow - is not relevant.  

Meanwhile, Angel has the floor, and he shows no signs of letting up on the gas pedal now. “I am at that tower FIVE FUCKIN’ DAYS A WEEK, overtime every other weekend, and you have no. goddamned. idea. what those freaks are capable of. You think I got it bad? I make ‘em MONEY - so I don’t get fed to the sharks, or shot repeatedly as a fucked-up office pin-the-tail-on-the -donkey kinda thing, or, I dunno, brainwashed and have a fuckin’ BOMB put inside me, though I guess THAT’S a thing I gotta worry about now…” 

Alastor chances a glance at Husker from the corner of his eye and then promptly looks away, as even he isn’t enough of  a sadist to enjoy the gutted expression the fuzzball is trying to hide behind a growl. 

“And the guys they’re doin’ all that to? They don’t even hate ‘em! They just….NOTHING them. Like, they’re not PEOPLE to them, they don’t fuckin’ matter. This guy, though - “ Angel bumps his hip lightly against Alastor’s chair. “This guy, they hate. I dunno why, and I don’t NEED to know, but I can tell ya they ain’t fakin’ it. You MENTION the Radio Demon in that tower, and Vox breaks a FLOOR, and Val sets somethin’ on FIRE. Shit, Mr. CEO was so happy when Al went missing after that whole fight with Heaven that he and Val were fuckin’ swing dancing in public lobbies for Velvette’s sinstagram. I didn’t even know that uptight fucker COULD dance.” 

Well, that was information that Alastor isn’t sure he wanted or knows what to do with. 

“Anyway, my POINT is….SOME of us know what you were riskin’ even BEING in that part of the city, and we appreciate it, even if SOME PEOPLE fuckin’ suck at showing it.” 

Alastor should laugh it off, of course. He should say something about it not being much of a RISK if he’s being hunted by MORONS. 

He is one of the most feared and infamous demons ever to walk the streets of Hell. He doesn’t need anyone to stand up for him - least of all not someone this battered and broken and fundamentally helpless against the Vees, against the biblical devil, against all the bad decisions that put Alastor here in the first place. 

Why doesn’t his voice work? 

“Kid, kid, come on, enough of that.” Husk is now physically pulling Angel away from Alastor’s chair. “He ain’t used to that, you’re gonna give him a rash.” 

Alastor chances a look Charlie’s way. While most of the residents just look somewhere between shocked and confused - or, in Cherri’s case, like she wishes she had a tub of popcorn - Charlie’s eyes are watering again, something fundamentally wounded in her expression. 

It’s a look Alastor knows well. 

She is remembering the feeling of being small and helpless and hearing her parents fight through the walls. 

He feels an anchoring ache deep in the center of his being. He understands. He has long since developed emotional callouses where hearing others fighting is concerned, but he remembers a time when he had not. 

“Swing dancing, you said?” Lucifer asks, very quietly, in the resounding silence that follows.

Of all the inane things to  - no, wait. 

Alastor presses the damp rag back over his eyes hard with the heels of his hands - and, miraculously, finds his voice. “I think it’s time all of you were somewhere else,” he says in his "thank you listeners, time to sign off" voice, pure static and cheer.  

You could have heard a pin drop in that damned room. Again. 

And Lucifer nods. “This is between us, like I said. Leave us to it. We can all regroup tomorrow morning and see what we’re gonna do about all this.” 

Alastor can read the mutiny in Charlie’s expression. Oddly, he sees a similar look on Husker’s face.

Is there something in the water here? Why is everyone behaving so oddly? 

“He wasn’t wrong,” Alastor says after a tense moment. “There are things someone here needs to know. I’d just as soon MOST of you don’t hear it.” 

That seems to be enough for them - they filter out slowly in ones and twos. Husker goes last, shooting Alastor a peculiar, hooded look that seems to say, “Ask me to stay, and I stay.” 

Alastor does not ask. 

“Kind of a dramatic bunch, aren’t they?” Lucifer asks once the door closes. 

Alastor closes his eyes and presses them back into the now-lukewarm cloth in his hands. “Well, they’re young yet, most of them. Emotionally, if not physically.” 

“For what it’s worth, I’m not enjoying this.” 

“Good,” Alastor says. “I hope it makes you as miserable as it’s making me.” 

Lucifer snorts. And then Alastor can hear him moving - can hear him kneeling down in front of his chair to put them at closer to eye level. “When was the last time he put you under?” 

And Alastor…sighs. “Seven - almost eight years ago now, that I know of. I’m almost sure that’s accurate. I don’t think he’s gotten me since.” 

Lucifer just nods. “And that is….longer than we have to worry about for him still being able to control you?” 

“The last time I spent much time around him, that was true. His control dims over time - decays like uranium, that’s the phrase he uses. Before you ask, he couldn’t hold me for long. I had a few tricks up my sleeve for shaking it off - but he wanted me to sign on with him and his Team of Mediocrity, and I very nearly did.” 

“Sorry,” Lucifer says, and he sounds like he means it. “You know why I had to ask.” 

Poor thing, Alastor thinks. You’re right to ask, but you’ve guessed the wrong puppeteer - and I can't tell you. 

“And I’m guessing you two had your big city-block destroying fist fight right after that?” 

Alastor just nods. "As soon as I got control back, things….escalated quickly,” 

“Was that the first time?” 

“The first time what?” 

“The first time he hypnotized you.” 

Oh no. Fuck no. Absolutely not. 

Fer Christ’s sake, will you STOP THROWING CANDLES?! It….fucking hell, it got AWAY from me. Is that so hard to believe? 

“That isn’t relevant to our deal,” Alastor tries. 

His stupid hands are tightening on that stupid towel so hard that water is leaking between his fingers, tight enough that tiny, red threads of blood are starting to join it  - and he doesn’t notice until Lucifer puts a hand over them. 

It takes everything in him not to jerk his hands away at the touch as if he’s being burned again. 

“Easy there, Allison,” Lucifer says quietly. “I think your hands have been through enough for one night. You’re right, I don’t need to know all the, what’s that the kids are calling it these days. The tea?” 

Alastor feels a warm, almost dizzying relief sweep through him in pins and needles like a limb waking up. It is SLIGHTLY tempered by the fact that Lucifer is now looking at him as if he’s something that might break if he handles him too roughly. 

He is still running a thumb soothingly over the back of one of Alastor’s hands. 

For fuck’s sake. 

“It’s ancient history,” Alastor says, deliberately taking his hands back and settling them in his lap. “We had been estranged for…some time before that, so I can pretty safely say that I am no more psychologically compromised than I was at any other point in my afterlife. 

“That’s an interesting choice of words - estranged.” 

Alastor narrows his eyes. “Isn’t it just.” 

“You were…friends?” 

“I thought so.” Alastor looks FIRMLY at the wallpaper over Lucifer's shoulder. 

“Okay, I won’t ask about that, either.” Lucifer inhales deeply, then exhales. “So, let me see if i understand the timeline. You met him when he was new to Hell?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then you…were working together for a while after that?” 

“Correct.” 

“You parted ways under less-than-friendly circumstances?” 

Alastor snorts, vividly recalling the way the curtains had gone up when a candle flew past Vox’s head, the way the walls reverberated with the static feedback. “One might call them that.” 

“Then a few decades later, he comes to you with a pitch, and when you don’t take it, he tries to hypnotize you?” 

“Yes.” 

“Okay. So let’s back up to the part where you guys were friends, or whatever. That was when you were helping him with his powers?” 

“It was.” 

“....how did you do that?” You have a wide range of skills…voodoo, creepy tentacles, daughter-stealing, being the biggest asshat I’ve ever met….but no hypnosis.” 

Alastor tears his eyes away from the middle distance for long enough to look at Lucifer’s upturned face. It is too close to his own, too BRIGHT - even in Alastor’s dim, swamp-green room, he glows like a moonflower on a clear night. 

For no reason, for no reason at all, Alastor wants to touch the skin of his cheek with his fingers, to hold that light in his hand the way he had, as a child, cupped fireflies, gentle and mindful of their wings. 

“I took him to someone who would know,” Alastor says. 

He can see the dawning pain on Lucifer’s face. He’s seen similar from men he’s stabbed in the gut - first the shock, then the confusion, then the dawning realization that you are in pain, and that the pain might kill you. 

Alastor wishes he could enjoy it even half as much as he thought he would, but there’s nothing glorious about it. “I took him to an audience,” he continues, “with Her Majesty Lilith Morningstar, the Queen of Hell.” 

Alastor sits by himself in the dark for a very long time after Lucifer all but stumbles out of the room, feeling hollowed-out and wretched and…and alone. 

Normally, when he feels like that, he just sleeps it off like an inconvenient hangover, but his head is still throbbing angry spikes of white behind his eyes, and it feels like his head might just FALL OFF if he so much as tries to lay down. 

That leaves him here, with all the thoughts he doesn’t want. 

Alastor doesn’t often MIND being alone. He’s spent most of his unlife this way, and most of his living life, too. He never learned family properly, as his kind, sensitive mother suffered from the sort of crippling depression that had sapped her strength so many evenings that it left her listless, and his father was - well. Alastor didn’t get his capacity for sadism out of thin air, now did he? 

 He was flippant enough in his oddly-musical first confrontation with the King of Hell - they DO say that the family you choose is better, but Alastor hasn’t found that to be true, not in his hundred-odd years of existence. His attempts at NOT being alone have Not. Ended. Well. 

Someone like Alastor can’t really allow himself to have people - or at least, not the kind of people you can go to at night, not the kind of people you can allow to touch you, the kind of people you can rest your head against. 

He can’t have people that way. But he CAN, in the quiet, sleepless spaces, ache for it. 

Contrary to the impression he gives, Alastor doesn’t MIND touch. It’s what comes after that he’s not a fan of. He’s never understood the impulse that so much of humanity has, the one to chase arousal, especially with another PERSON present. He doesn’t understand how such a powerless sensation - like going downhill without brakes, and someone else with a hand on the wheel - is remotely enjoyable to anyone. Worse, he can’t imagine why anyone would want someone else to SEE them that way, quivering and needy and ridiculous. 

The problem is, it’s very hard to touch someone - hard to sit curled up against their sides, hard to take their hands, wrap your arm around theirs when you’re walking down the street - without broadcasting to them in bright neon, unspoken letters that you also want them to put their tongues in your mouth or shove their hands down your pants. 

Having a tongue in your mouth that hasn’t at least been cooked to medium rare is, texturally, a nightmare. It’s like gargling a warm slug that is making every effort to escape. And the hand-down-the-pants thing usually leads to the out-of-control, frantic feeling he hates so much. 

The catch-22 of it is maddening. When Alastor gets his figurative (or literal) claws into a person, he becomes as selfish and possessive and snarly as a fisher-cat over a deer carcass…but he can never bring himself to do what’s necessary to KEEP them. They get restless and frustrated, and then they either push him toward those hateful things, or they start looking elsewhere for them, which a jealous creature like Alastor can’t abide. 

No, it’s best to nip all that silliness in the bud - best not start down that path of codependency and broken glassware and aching holes in his psyche. 

It’s best to keep the people whose company he enjoys more than others at arm’s length if he wants them to stick around. If they get too close, then his constant hot-and-cold bullshit, his endless mixed signals, his wild vacillations between “don’t ignore me” and “leave me alone for five minutes, you needy bastard” will turn them into the kinds of people who want to shoot him in back alleys. The kinds of people who want to see him atomized by semi-divine beings. 

Alastor knows this isn’t ALL his fault - no, Vox was always unstable, always had a horrible temper, always thought that things he wanted should belong to him, lived by “if first you don’t succeed, make a better pitch.” 

But he was also brilliant and dependable and gruffly protective - and weirdly selfless, when it came to success. He didn’t just want to win. He wanted his…people to win with him. He wanted to pull you up the side of the mountain with him to enjoy the view, and rub it in everyone else’s faces along the way. 

Alastor was his person once. 

“What the fuck is WRONG with you?! Do you get a kick out of this shit or something?!” 

They used to be able to have whole conversations with just eyerolls and blips of morse code through their shared frequencies. . 

“Is it some kind of sick GAME, you - Jesus fuck, I’m having a full-on sexual identity crisis - that you have been ORCHESTRATING, by the way, thanks for that -  and for you, it’s just TUESDAY!” 

Would it - fuck, would it REALLY have killed him to just suck it up and - 

“ You’re seriously going to sit there and pretend you don’t know EXACTLY what you’ve been doing?” 

He did. He did know. He just liked how it felt, and he didn’t know how to stop. 

When Alastor gets home and shakes the acid rain off his umbrella, the first thing he sees is Vox looking….very unVoxlike. Vox is one of those stoic man’s-man types that came into fashion around the turn of the century, too swaggery and masculine for the blues, no sir. He’s all about bluster and action and rage-as-the-only-viable-response-to-trauma. 

That’s a modern kind of mindset. 

Alastor is from the roaring twenties and then the subsequent plunge into a global depression - a time where it wasn’t that uncommon to see grown, strong working men sitting on the sidewalks with their hats in their hands, tears streaming down their soot-stained faces as they wondered what to tell their hungry families. 

In Alastor’s mind, progress isn’t always a good thing, but you could never tell that to Vox. 

Except that Vox is just sitting at the kitchen table right now, slumped over his elbows with a hand on either side of his ridiculous head. Hellish biology always gets you in the end - it’s just part of the eternal dues you pay. You might wind up as a fluffy kitty cat or a ridiculous deer man with little hooves and a fluffy tail, or you might wind up with a television for a head, and the worst of it is, no matter how long you live here, you can never QUITE put how stupid you look out of your mind. 

“Rough day at the office?” Alastor asks as he crosses the kitchen. It’s mostly rhetorical. He can tell from the half-full coffee maker and the lack of briefcase that Vox went nowhere near an office today. 

Vox doesn’t look up. “Yeah,” is all he says. His blue fingers press a little harder against the outer shell of his head, threatening to crack the casing. “These fucking interns - where do they FIND these people?” 

Alastor understands. At least, he understands enough. Whatever griefs you lived with up top don’t die with your body. If anything, Hell can intensify those feelings, dust them off the shelf and freshen them up, especially on certain days of the wretched, infernal year.

Alastor leans against the back of the chair and wraps his arms around Vox’s waist loosely. He settles his right hand on top of his own left forearm and his chin on the other man’s shoulder. And Vox sighs and leans back, just a little, a small enough angle for plausible deniability. 

This is a mistake. Alastor knows that. He knows damn well he is ruining everything, doing shit like this, because sooner or later, one of two things happens, and he hates both of those things. Either Vox will get the Wrong Idea ™ and make everything horribly awkward, or he will take it at face value and it will last exactly as long as it takes for  him to find someone…else. Maybe one of those silly interns he’s always complaining about, maybe that new blonde news anchor who always wears pencil skirts that look painted on, and Alastor will be resentful and unreasonable and petty about it. He will say passive-aggressive things when they go out to dinner together, and he will pretend not to care when they get their own place and leave him alone in this tacky condo. 

Alastor knows this because he’s been on this ride a few times now. The hop-on and drop-off points are as familiar as the bus routes he used to have to memorize to get to work. 

Even before he came to Hell, Alastor never quite managed to hold anyone without consequences. He doesn’t have high hopes for bucking that trend in the literal place of eternal punishment. 

“Who is it?” he asks out loud, mostly to drown out his neurotic inner monologue. 

“Who is what?” Vox asks in the bored-nothing-you-are-saying-is-interesting voice that has always been the man’s first line of defense, but on the table, the thumb of one of his hands brushes over the ring finger of the other repeatedly, like it’s soothing an ache. 

Alastor almost says, “With tells like that, you ought to stay away from poker tables,” but he doesn’t. What he says instead is, “How long were you married?” 

Vox stiffens, just briefly, in his arms. 

“No, I haven’t been snooping. You just aren’t as subtle as you think you are.

It takes a few seconds, but then Vox relaxes - practically slumps - back against him, huffing out a defeated sigh. “Fuck you, Alastor, you don’t know everything.” 

“Hmmm.” 

Vox gives up a moment later. “Fifteen years,” he says. “And try not to gloat about being right, asshole.”  

One day, Alastor will learn not to ask questions he doesn’t want the answer to - because that nameless woman had him, had fifteen years of him, and there is no way to make her give them back. 

(Fine, all right, he KNOWS he’s insane and unhealthy - no one needs to point that out. He’s in Hell for a reason, thank you.) 

“I’m sorry,” is what he says out loud, because he IS, just not for - well, not for what he should be sorry for.  

And Vox apparently isn’t the only one with tells. “Al, are you seriously getting territorial over a woman who has been dead for twenty goddamned years? Are you that much of an attention-seeking bitch?” 

But Vox lets one of his hands settle across Alastor’s forearm, his thumb worrying over the sleeve the same way it was worrying over his ring finger a minute ago. 

“No, who would do that? Would I do that? Never.” 

“God, you’re a fucking mess, you know that?” But there’s warmth there, he’s not imagining it. 

“Says the man who deliberately moved in with a serial killer to save on rent.” 

“Touche.”

They sit there together at the kitchen table, and they watch it rain until it stops.  

This…this is intolerable. 

Alastor is not going to give that bastard THIS much space in his head, let him simper around his room like a deranged ghost. Alastor refuses to be haunted by anything, much less the rectangular Spirit of Terrible Screenwriting. There is no reason AT ALL to be thinking about him, not now, not ever, outside of how possibly to stab him.  

Maybe a walk around the hotel will clear his head. Alastor exhales heavily, starts to stand - 

And then falls right back down into his seat as the fireplace suddenly blazes in shades of lavender and chartreuse, and the Queen of Hell herself walks into his room in a magnificent, towering fury. 

Fuck. 

Chapter Text

“Wait. How the fuck do YOU know the Queen of HELL?” 

“Darling, I know everyone!” Alastor says as he hauls Vox bodily through the mad press of wayward souls that is downtown Pentagram City. It’s a bit like trying to swim upstream, if the stream is made entirely of singed, broken people and refuse. 

“Aaaaand yet that answers nothing!” Vox grumbles, now and then casting a wary sidelong glance at some of the…less human-looking creatures that go by. 

“No, it didn’t! Well spotted, you!” 

Vox is still new to Hell, still adjusting to the experience of processing distance now that his face is flat - it’s just quick thinking on Alastor’s part that stops him walking square into a light post, and then overcompensating into traffic. 

“Fuck, I hate this,” he mutters, going to rub at his eyes and then wincing when his hand bounces off his screen again. 

“It’s Hell, Vox! You aren’t meant to like it.”  Alastor threads his arm through Vox’s to prevent further mishaps. “But I imagine you’ll like it BETTER when you stop turning everyone you get a little techy at into a zombie.” 

“And this queen lady can help me do that?” Vox asks. 

“”She’s a very talented magic-user, Also, her powers seem to work a lot like yours do, chum. It’s her voice that does it, not her eyes, but since both appear to be some kind of wave-based…” 

“Great. You have NO idea if she can help me do that.” 

Alastor is still trying to decide how he feels about how QUICKLY this box-headed demon has started to have his number - to read between his lines. “Hmmm,” he answers. 

“Al, is that a fuckin’ night club?” 

“Mmhmm!” 

“....what the fuck is the Queen of Hell doing at a NIGHT CLUB.” 

“Why, she runs it!” Alastor says.  “She’s a woman of the people, or that’s what the papers say. The whole production is a front, mind you. It gives her an excuse to get out of the palace, sing a few songs to keep up appearances, and then have seedy meetings in back rooms with the REAL degenerates.” Alastor tips Vox a wink. “Like me.” 

“Why does everything in this place sound like a ripoff of a mob film?” 

“Because Hell doesn’t observe copyright laws.” 

“Great. And you met this lady how?” 

Alastor smirks. “Open mic night.” 

And Vox looks at him like he’s sprouted another head. “You SERIOUSLY think you can get an audience with the Queen of Hell because she likes your singing voice ?” 

“No, darling, because I play a mean piano, I can pick up songs by ear, and I’m one of the few people around she trusts to back her up on any kind of piece with vocal improvisation.” 

Vox looks like a man who has realized his brakes don’t work. “Life isn’t a musical, Al.” 

“Well, down here it is. Best start working on your pitch.” 

“My pitch is fine. It’s my ability to suspend disbelief that’s going to take some work to….hey, Al, wait, I think the line starts back there.” 

‘“Silly thing, I don’t stand in lines.” Alastor tips a casual wave to the bouncer, who steps aside for him. “Now listen - this is important. When you meet her, she’s going to seem….flighty. Effervescent, even. Charming. But that woman can turn on a dime, and she is one of the most dangerous creatures in Hell. It’s ‘yes, your majesty,’ ‘no, your majesty, and for fuck’s sake, keep your eyes on her face.” 

“Yeah, that’s one of my personal strengths, right there,” Vox says, so flatly, “This is gonna go great.” 

“Well, there’s a bright spot here, chum. She’ll let you get away with a LOT if you can make her laugh, so if you just keep that expression on your face -” 

Vox’s expression flattens further. “Al, I’m not sure this is necess -” 

“You froze a bus driver this morning.” 

“Yeah, but I’ve only done that like, twice this week.” 

“And a barista YESTERDAY morning. I thought there was going to be a riot when the line stopped moving - which would have been fun, but only AFTER we got coffee.” 

“Well, the dumbass burned the foam.” 

“Stop trying to get out of this and turn on the charm, Voxy.” 

“Ugh.” 

Alator raps on the door to one of the back rooms - one long, two short. Another very LARGE sinner opens the door and gestures him forward, and he goes, all but towing Vox like a water skier. 

Nevermind his inconvenient nerves, this is for his own good. The man has so much potential. When Alastor first felt someone new tapping into his frequencies, he had made it a point to track them down. He wasn’t sure what exactly he’d expected, but the level of raw ability that Vox has without a single soul to his name  - he hasn’t seen that in a long time, possibly ever. 

Well. Barring himself, of course. 

They are now in her office - a velvety, purple toned room, with enough soundproofing to allow meetings to be conducted in a building with a permanent, throbbing base, and Lilith sweeps in. 

She is, as always, a vision - her hair floats around her as if she is under water, and her lavender eyes reflect every fractal of light in the room. She is wearing a dress that is both low-cut and high-slitted - Alastor has always suspected magic is involved in keeping the thing on - and Vox, predictably, freezes like an especially stupid deer staring down an oncoming eighteen-wheeler. 

With an internal sigh - men, honestly - Alastor throws his hands out. “Why your majesty! You’re looking positively marvelous as always.“ 

And Queen Lilith Morningstar grins at him. “Oh, cut the shit, Alastor, we both know you don’t swing MY way.” 

“Ah, but you know how I appreciate aesthetics.” He bows, sweeping and low, yanking Vox down with him by the tie. 

Lilith laughs, bright and brilliant, because though she protests, she loves this game - and a large part of staying on her good side is knowing how to play it well. . 

Alastor straightens, and as he does, he notices that there is a new addition to her majesty - a tiny creature she is balancing on her right hip and in the crook of her right arm. He blinks at it dubiously. It blinks back with impossibly large yellow and red eyes. 

The child, if that’s what the poor thing is, bears an uncanny resemblance to a caterpillar, as it is mostly made of eyes and its body is rolled up in a blanket. 

Alastor has never liked children. 

“And who is your friend?” Lilith asks, turning her eyes to Vox. 

“His friend is….speechless, your majesty,” Vox says in that smooth made-for-tv voice. “Your posters don’t do you justice.” He tips his eyes to the floor, and puts one hand over his chest. 

Because nerves aside, Vox is every inch the showman, and he can pull it together when the lights go up. 

“Ooooh, interesting,” Lilith says. She smiles like a cat watching a mouse on the kitchen floor. “And why have you brought him to me, Alastor?” 

“Well, your majesty, his powers are…a little unruly, but they seem to fall under your purview.” 

Lily’s eyes are bright when she turns back to Vox. “Show me.” 

Vox blanches slightly. “Your majesty, I - would not presume to - ” 

“Show me,” she says. And this time, she puts command in her voice.

Vox looks up, meets her eyes, and he does. 

Lilith smirks. “Not bad,” She says. “A little clumsy, honey, but nothing I can’t work with.” 

Then she turns her attention to Alastor. “But it’s going to cost you.” 

Alastor expected nothing less. “I am as ever at her majesty’s service.” 

Lilith snorts audibly. “Lay it on a little thicker,” she says. 

And then Alastor is….is…

Is holding a goddamned child. 

“Wait, what is happening?” he asks as dread suffuses his entire being. 

And Lilith loops her arm through Vox’s, making his stupid screen look closer to pink than blue. “Well, if I’m going to spend some time coaching your friend, I’m afraid I’m going to need a babysitter for Charlotte.”

Alastor opens his mouth, but all that comes out is a helpless pop of static. 

“I hadn’t meant to bring her to work today, but I can’t very well leave her with her father. He’s having one of his fucking moods. ”  

Alastor understands fathers and moods. He nonetheless has to resist the urge to hold the squirming thing out at arm’s length to get it as far away from himself as he physically can. “But, your majesty….while you realize I am ALWAYS willing to serve your, ah, whims? I’m just not sure that…” 

Lilith waves him off. “Oh, don’t worry, she’s very sturdy - and she could frankly use some positive male energy in her life, since her father can’t be bothered to notice she exists most of the time.” 

Alastor blinks. “Madame,” he says, “I am very literally a serial killer.” 

“And her father is a mopey recluse, so that’s a step up. At least serial killers have some damned initiative.”

“Surely there is someone more qualified - “ 

“She likes music!” Lilith calls over her shoulder as she pulls Vox into the back room - who seems MUCH less reluctant to be dragged now that he’s gotten a good look at that dress, but Alastor supposes he can’t really blame him. 

He looks down at the bizarre little caterpillar he’s holding. 

It looks back, sucking on its tiny thumb. 

It (she) is absolutely disgusting, and Alastor will not be told otherwise. She is squirmy and squishy and oddly animated in the crook of his arm -  but he sits down at the baby grand Lily keeps back here. His free hand starts on a bouncy rhythm that the mealworm - ahem, the princess? - watches with rapt attention. 

“If you cry, I will eat you,” he tells her. “Do not test me.” 

She is watching his hand on the piano and coos quietly - in….in the right key? 

Alastor sighs. “I suppose you DO like music,” he says. 

The mealworm coos again, this time in what sounds suspiciously like a raised third, harmonizing without words. 

Well, far be it for Alastor to deny a live studio audience, even if it’s a revolting one. 

Hey, America

Let's turn it up

Yeah, check out our style

'Cause you know you're never fully dressed without a smile…

Alastor scrambles out of his chair in order to bow - the queen has many moods, some of which are tolerant of disrespect, but this is not one of them. “Your majesty!” he says, his head throbbing at the sudden, spiraling lights, the reverberations that fill the room. “Why, what a pleasant surprise! What brings you to this unworthy sinner’s -” 

“Oh, cut the shit, Alastor,” Lilith says. There is no playfulness now. Her violet eyes blaze with cold fire. “What the HELL do you think you’ve been doing down here?” 

Alastor….is a mess, and he knows it. He is still covered in alley grime, he has no idea what happened to his tie, and his shirt sleeves have long since been rucked up to his elbows. His hair is probably anything but tidy. 

He feels as raw and exposed as a nerve with so many layers of armor missing, and with a dragon pacing and snarling around him made of wrath and lavender fire.  

“Why, I was keeping an eye on your daughter - exactly as instructed,” he tries.  

Lilith backhands him across the face. It’s nowhere near what she’s capable of, but it turns his head a full ninety degrees, and the previous pain in his head is now like a sentient thing clawing at the inside of his skull. 

He feels another trickle of blood tickle his upper lip, and it is only by a sheer act of will that he doesn’t touch it, doesn’t try to swipe it away. 

“By what METRIC does letting her draw the LITERAL WRATH OF HEAVEN constitute keeping an eye on her?!” 

“Well, in my defense, I watched her do it the entire time?” 

Lilith steps very much into his space, grabs him by the front of the shirt, and yanks him in, pulling him around by the collar like a disobedient puppy - an odd echo to what her husband was doing a few short hours before. “Be flippant with me one more time, Alastor,” she says. 

Purple flames dance around her horns. 

Alastor swallows, taking a moment to put on the proper persona. Lilith is angry and dangerous - a wild creature that might watch you go by or might rip your guts out with its teeth, but she is not his father. She is not one to beat someone strictly to make herself feel strong, but only as a means to an end, a way to stamp out resistance beneath the glitter of her no-doubt expensive heels. 

She is cruel, but she can be managed. If Alastor hits the right notes, she probably won’t hurt him. 

Much. 

“Your daughter is a very determined woman, Lilith. She comes by it honestly, doesn’t she? It’s not as if her mother got as far as she did by doing as she was told. And besides, no one thought this would work.” 

Lilith’s scowl depends, but she releases his shirt, and Alastor feels his heart rate ratchet down a few notches - this isn’t a hopeless situation, not at all. Alastor has an advantage here. The one thing his father ever taught him was how to handle a situation like this - how to become pliant and endure and wait when a dyed-in-the-wool sadist gets you between their teeth and starts to shake you. Reacting makes them hungry, and tears make them angry. Whimpering  or pleading makes them feel as if you deserve to be hurt worse, as if you’re asking them for more - but they soon enough grow bored with tossing a stuffed doll around the way a cat grows bored with a mouse once it dies.  

Lilith holds the power for now - just like his father.  HE had been insurmountably stronger than Alastor, but Alastor had been smarter. And in the end, Alastor had fed that wretched man to the gators piece. by. piece.  

He looks at the queen of Hell and imagines taking a saw to her lifeless body, removing the limbs for easy transport. 

One day, darling. You aren’t the only monster in this room. 

“Well, it did work,” Lilith says, dark as thunder. She folds her arms, taps a manicured nail on her bicep. “And Heaven is - “ 

Heaven is on the brink of rending itself asunder, my lady? Maybe they aren’t so different from those of us cursed to live our wretched lives in the mud after all. 

“Troubled,” Lilith finishes. “Some of them are happy, of course. They’re the silly ones who still think we’re all meant to sit around together and hold hands.” 

The fire in her eyes is blinding. 

“But the powerful ones, the ones that matter - they are not pleased.”

Alastor swallows. 

He must play this carefully. 

The Lilith he first met, the one he had spoken to (and gradually been charmed by) at the club, had been near feverish with a desire that Alastor understood too well. She needed to hurt the ones who had hurt her, the ones who had sliced her person with their swords, who had maimed him and broken his spirit and left him a useless, sad thing that Lilith did not want or recognize. She lived with that need eating the core of her, the seething hatred for the ones who had cast her out for being what she was and not some silly puppet for an uncaring creator, a servant to a man who was not her equal. 

Alastor swallows again. 

“Might this be a good thing, though, your majesty?” 

Lilith shoots him a baleful look over her shoulder and snaps her fingers. Alastor fights the urge to clap a hand to his neck when he feels the chain tighten around it. “Do not patronize me, demon.” 

Alastor forces the edges of his smile to relax. “If it is still your desire to war with heaven…” 

He feels himself pulled off his feet and barely gets his hands down in time to avoid bouncing his face off the hardwood slats. Lights dance in front of his eyes, and he wonders what will happen if he faints at her feet like some pitiful little goat in front of a lion. 

Lilith has no use for toothless, pathetic things. She might just snap his neck and be done with him, might eat his soul like popping a bright red cherry into her mouth and tie his coat into a bow with her tongue as if it were a cherry stem. 

“Do NOT speak so carelessly,” she snarls. But she does not refute his claim, so it was worth the near-collision with the floor. He is playing this right. 

“Perhaps, if there is division - “ he chokes once, steels his voice, “Then there is also opportunity.” 

Her foot strikes his ribs and he takes it the same way a bench does, rigid and uncaring. 

“I don’t think much of an OPPORTUNITY that puts my daughter squarely into the sights of the cruelest minds in heaven,” she says darkly. 

But she does not tug his chain again, does not bury the pointy toe of her shoe into his side a second time. 

“We don’t always get to pick the cards in our hand, my queen,” he murmurs from the floor. “Just how to play them.” 

Lilith laughs, sharp and merciless. He manages not to flinch. 

“Oh, of course YOU would reduce it to a game, you wretched thing. You couldn’t possibly understand the stakes, as you have never loved a thing in your life, and I doubt you could now if you wanted to.” 

Alastor cannot even be angry, cannot even appropriately rise to that barb, because it’s only the truth. 

“I have waited too long,” she continues, “worked too many years behind the scenes, swallowed too much pride sidling up to those monsters to let anyone bring them to reconciliation. They do not deserve forgiveness. They do not deserve peace.” 

Alastor does not dare look up, but he can hear the clicks of her shoes across the floor as she paces. “And they will not have my daughter, Alastor.” 

That possessiveness, at least, he does understand. 

For no reason at all, he thinks of Charlie taking stumbling step after step toward Vox. Leave that alone, he tells his stupid, wounded brain. Leave that alone, it doesn’t belong here. 

Lilith loves Charlie. Charlie owes him a favor. He cannot ALLOW it to become more complicated than that. 

It isn’t more complicated than that. 

The chain around his neck loosens and fades mostly from sight, if not from his mind. He stands slowly and carefully and doesn’t inhale too deeply around the burn in his throat or his side. This is nothing. He has inflicted far worse than this before, on beings who were not as strong-minded as he is. He is different from them. He will survive. . 

Lilith sighs and sits on his sofa, her affect suddenly that of the weary, disappointed parent. “Oh well,” she muses, mostly to herself. “You can’t help it, I suppose - you shouldn’t punish a cat for bringing you dead birds, now should you?” 

For once in his life, Alastor has sense enough to remain quiet, sense enough not to bristle. 

She pats the sofa beside her. “Come on, darling,” she says. “Let’s see about sorting out the damned mess you’ve made.” 

He crosses the parlor trying not to look like a child who has been tasked with cutting his own switch to be beaten with. He sits on the edge of the sofa and, when guided, lays back so that the back of his head is resting on her lap as if it were a pillow, and the backs of his legs drape over the arm of the sofa. 

She begins stroking his ears as if he is a puppy, and the sensation is perfectly that of having spiders crawl across his skin - but she is in the kind of mood where she may punish him for the wrong sort of reaction, so he digs his nails into the velvet of the fabric and tries to think calming thoughts about removing her fingers one. by. one. With his teeth. . 

“All right, Alastor - here is what we’re going to do.” 

Vaggie has known from the very start that she does not deserve Charlie. 

She didn’t deserve the kind hands that pressed clean gauze to her face; she didn’t deserve the sheer roll-of-the-dice fortune that Charlie’s compulsion to help people after the extermination had lead her to the alley that Vaggie had crawled into to bleed to death, maimed and wingless and dizzy. 

She had not deserved for Charlie to pick her up in her arms and carry her somewhere safe, where there were warm showers and freshly-washed sheets and tea in silly pink cups. 

She hadn’t deserved for Charlie to bounce onto the bed with her like they were children having a sleepover, offering an array of DVDs and snacks with the charming shyness of someone who’s only ever read about having a best friend before now and desperately wants to try it. 

At first, Vaggie had thought that she didn’t deserve her because she had been weak, because she was a failure. She had failed in her mission to protect the souls in heaven from the swelling ranks of the damned.  

Later, she came to realize that it was also because she was a murderer. 

Vaggie knows that she doesn’t have a lot to offer. An exorcist’s life is exterminations and training for exterminations - fun does not come naturally to her, nor does downtime, nor do nonviolent social interactions. 

She latched on early to the one thing that she COULD do for Charlie - she could protect her. Charlie trusts everyone, trusts her position and strength to keep her safe, even when it isn’t going to. Vaggie is happy to fill in where position and strength won’t get the job done. If protection and support are all she has to offer her girl, then she’s damn well going to give ALL of it - she’s been all in from the start. 

Up until tonight, she was operating under the pleasant illusion that she was at least doing a good job of THAT - barring the whole war-against-heaven and death-of-a-resident debacle, but no one was doing especially well THAT day, and - 

Anyway. Tonight, her girl is battered. She has bruises on her face, around her wrists, her eyes are swollen from so much crying, and Vaggie wants to kick the shit out of everyone in Hell, starting with herself. 

How could she have BEEN so fucking stupid? 

“So….two eyes, huh? That’s new.” Charlie says, a ghost of her usual cheer. 

“Yeah, the other one popped out when short king healed her,” Angel supplies. How he is not falling end over end down the stairs given the state of his heels, Vaggie doesn’t know. 

Charlie squeezes Vaggie’s hand. “It looks nice.” 

Charlie KNOWS how upset she is, she knows, and she's trying to lighten the mood, despite how hard Vaggie failed her tonight. Fucking SHIT, Vaggie is going to start crying again if she isn’t careful. “Glad you like it, babe.” 

“And what’s wrong with havin’ one eye?” Cherri drawls - and Vaggie is pathetically grateful when it makes Charlie laugh. 

“It looks great on you, Cherri,” Charlie assures. 

They have made it as far as the parlor together - it’s the place where they should break off and go their separate ways to their own rooms, and it’s probably telling that no one makes the first move toward doing that, all of them scuffing their feet and looking everywhere but each other. 

That is, everyone but Husker. The bartender is never in a good mood, but he’s been seething all night, ever since he first caught sight of Alastor on the stairs, and it feels like he’s winding up for some kind of eruption. 

“You good, kitten?” Angel finally ventures, and it’s like pulling the pin on a grenade.  

“NO, I’m not fucking GOOD!” he snaps. Then, Husker rounds on Charlie with a bristle that Vaggie does not appreciate. “What was the deal?” he asks sharply. “The one your old man made with the boss, what was it?” 

Vaggie feels the man’s tone settle under her skin like a splinter, and she bristles back. “Is this REALLY the time to ask about that?” she asks, edging between him and Charlie more out of reflex than a conscious decision. 

“Whatever it is ain’t our business,” Angel says. “Ain't’ NO good come out of sticking your nose in somebody else’s paperwork, if you take my meaning.” 

“Yeah, well, given as that shady fucker OWNS me, I’d say it IS my fuckin’ business.” 

Vaggie has never seen so many of Husker’s teeth at once - he’s actually snarling. 

“Start talking, or I’m going back up there myself,” Husk continues. 

“Yeah,” Angel says, unfazed, “that would NOT be a good idea.” 

“It’s….okay, I’ll tell you,” Charlie says miserably. She sits down on one of the parlor sofas and is looking at none of them, picking the edge of the robe with her fingers, idly worrying at a loose thread. 

And okay, maybe it IS necessary. Vaggie isn’t naive enough not to realize how serious it could be - someone like Charlie’s dad having a deal with someone like Alastor. She was more than half worried that had been Alastor’s endgame all along, and….

And why wasn’t Charlie saying anything? Maybe it - maybe it was worse than she thought, maybe  - “Honey, I - I know this is hard, but - what did your dad promise him?” 

Pick, pick, pick go Charlie’s fingers at the thread. “That if he didn’t answer any questions Dad had honestly and to his satisfaction, that he’d wipe him not just from existence but living memory.” Her laugh is nothing like Charlie’s normal laugh, brittle and sad. "I think he could've done it, too." 

That - that can’t be right. 

Vaggie had been warned over and over again, in her prior life as an exorcist, about the Legions of Hell and the Devil - all of which seemed more and more like bullshit the more time she spent down here. Most sinners were awful, certainly, but they were no threat to Heaven - just miserable, frightened souls who wanted to get by. And Lucifer…

Vaggie had accepted months ago that Lucifer wasn’t what she’d been taught to fear her entire life. Sure, he was powerful - effortlessly, casually powerful in a way that was objectively terrifying. But he was also the only…well, the only man she’d ever met who wasn’t outright hostile to her. Was it even possible that absentminded, gentle Lucifer, who had to be prodded often to keep up with conversation and never remembered where his keys were, and couldn’t get her name right for WEEKS - 

“And he fuckin’ SHOOK on that?” Husk interrupts her spiraling thoughts, looking equal parts horrified, angry, and disbelieving, and what the fuck is that guy’s problem? It’s not like Husk LIKES Alastor (or, arguably, any of them except for Angel and Nifty). He’s made no bones about that from the start. It makes no sense for him to be this…this…

Defensive?

“He didn’t have much choice, Husk,” Charlie says. Her fingers are still going pluck-pluck-pluck at that thread. “Dad was kinda…unreasonable at the time. Al managed to negotiate him down to only answering stuff about what happened and only until midnight, but - I don’t even know how he managed to get that much.” 

Pluck-pluck-pluck 

Then, very quietly, “I hope he’s okay. I shouldn’t have - I wish - fuck. I’m going back up there.” 

She starts to stand, but Angel catches her shoulder and gently guides her back down. “It’s okay,” he says. “We’ll catch up with Smiles later, but whatever they needed to talk about, he didn’t want us hearing. That can be more fucked up than going through it in the first place - havin’ other people watch you do it, or hear about whatever it is.” 

Husk, if possible, bristles more and folds his arms, looking away. 

“Why don’t you tell us why your dad lit into him like that?” Angel asks - and Vaggie’s heart does it again, that clamping thing, because there’s something gentle and hesitant in Angel’s expression that chills her to her core. 

“What did Alastor tell you?” Charlie asks. 

“Uh, - that some guys jumped you, you wrecked them, then more guys came. While you were running from those guys, you two ran into DVR-for-brains and he tried to run off with ya, too.” 

“Wow. Al should give lessons,” Charlie says - again, so woodenly. “I bet you Katie Killjoy wouldn’t own me on interviews so bad if I could talk around the truth like that.” 

Charlie closes her eyes as if steeling herself for a blow, and Vaggie feels the sudden urge to pick her up in her arms and take her STRAIGHT back to their room before her girl can hurt herself. 

“I didn’t just wreck those guys in the alleyway,” she says. “When they attacked me, I…I blacked out or something.” She is speaking with her eyes closed, her hands clenched white-knuckled on the robe. 

“When Al found me, I was hiding behind a dumpster, covered in….what was left of them.” 

Vaggie’s mind refuses to acknowledge what those monsters could have been doing that would have made Charlie forget herself like that. Charlie realizes her full demon aspect when someone is hurting her friends. She is MUCH less capable of defending HERSELF. 

“He….gave me his coat.” Her voice is choked with unshed tears. “And gave me my shoe back. I don’t know where he found it.” 

Angel has sat down on the couch beside her - has wrapped one of his lower sets of arms around her. “Whatever you gave ‘em was too damn good for ‘em,” he says quietly. 

Charlie’s breath hitches once, but she squeezes his hand and keeps going. “Then the lights came on - it was so bright, and there were people everywhere, so Al pulled me through the shadows with him…” 

“He did fuckin’ WHAT?” 

“I know, Husk. I know.” Charlie’s eyes are now tightly closed, and she’s holding on to Angel’s wrist. “He got a nosebleed right after. He started pulling me up a stairwell, and when we got to the top, Vox was there waiting for us.” 

Angel’s arm tightens around Charlie more protectively. 

“Al told me not to look at him. Which made sense. One look from him, and the guys who were chasing us went all…” Charlie shudders, hard. 

“He told them to bring me to him - I g-guess so he could make me look at him. Then he and Alastor were fighting, and it was….it was…. awful.”  

Everyone is having an awful time now, Vaggie can’t help but notice. Everyone in the lobby just looks gutted, except for Husk, who looks…

Who looks like he wants to break something. 

“Al shot him.” 

And Angel laughs. “That’s right!’” he says. “He picked up a gun from where those guys got you,” he adds to Vaggie. “Fuck, he SHOULD give lessons!” 

“I’d take ‘em,” Cherri says. “NOBODY crosses television-head and lives to tell about it these days.” 

“But he didn’t get that great of a shot, ‘cause Al’s eyes were closed, and I…I let my guard down, and…and he got me. He was on every screen in the…” Charlie shudders again, this time like she’s going to be sick, and Angel holds her tighter, and Vaggie is going to fucking KILL that box-headed…

Vaggie swallows past her impossibly-tight throat. “Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ASK him to brainwash you.” 

And Charlie goes right on, like she doesn’t hear her. “It was like…it was like the brown space right before you faint. I could still hear things. I just….I couldn’t see, and when he told me to come with him, it just seemed like…like sure, why wouldn’t I, and then my body started walking toward him by itself, and I couldn’t…” 

Her breath hitches again, and Vaggie goes to her, kneels in front of her and takes her hands. 

“I don’t know how he got us out of there. I’m…I think he might have pulled us through the shadows again, fuck.” 

Tears are running down Charlie’s face again, and Vaggie hates it, she HATES it, and she can’t make any of it not have happened. 

“And then we were in an alley, and I could h-hear Vox again.” 

Charlie becomes very small, curling in on herself. 

“He told me to come to him. And Al….he wouldn’t let me go. He’d hidden us, I think, he was pretty much sitting on me, and then, next thing I know, there’s this light…”

Vaggie knows exactly the light she means. It’s the same light that wrapped around her battered soul and body not more than a few hours ago and burned the pain away. 

She is an angel. She is a fallen angel, but that doesn’t affect her capacity to withstand cosmic radiation in the form of divine light. 

For the first time, she wonders what it must be like for a sinner, wreathed in shadow and blackened by sin, to stand in that same light. 

“I could blink again. And I could start to see, and dad was…was this…I’ve never seen him like that. Not even with Adam.” 

She doesn’t have to tell Vaggie. You rarely see true archangels in Heaven - they keep to themselves, but when they do make an appearance, it’s accepted practice to get on your knees and avoid eye contact. 

“You know what the really messed up thing is? I don’t even think Alastor’s mad about what happened. I mean, he c-could’ve….I don’t think I understood just how much more powerful some of the other overlords…and then instead of, I dunno, ‘Thanks for risking your life to save me from a guy who REALLY has it out for you in the CREEPIEST way possible,’ he gets blown across an alleyway and nearly wiped out of existence, and then he has to make a deal to get out of THAT alive, and he’s not even mad.” 

Husker throws both hands up in the air. “Well of course he ain’t MAD, that fucker don’t have sense enough to be pissed off about shit like this! His expectations for people are fuckin’ SHIT. Did you not notice during that flamin’ disaster with Mimsy? He knew damn well she only showed up so he could protect her ass from something, and he didn’t give a flying fuck.” 

“Ey, Capitan Buzzkill - doesn’t that strawberry twink own your ass?” That’s Cherri again, and Vaggie is, for the hundredth time that day, grateful that Cherri has joined them. It’s nice to not have to be the one asking the awful questions ALL the time. “The fuck do you care if he takes a bad deal?” 

Husker stalks over to the bar, apparently out of a need to busy his hands with throwing things onto shelves harder than strictly necessary. “His deals are my deals, so YEAH, I tend to want to keep track of those. ‘Least this one’s all over by midnight.” 

“Which means it ended like…minutes ago,” Vaggie says. “So let’s…let’s all just worry about this tomorrow, all right? Once everyone’s up, we can figure out what to do - didn’t Lucifer say something about that? Meeting up?”

There are murmurs of assent all around, except for from Husk, who is still all but throwing things behind the bar, but Vaggie couldn’t bring herself to devote any more energy to that sourpuss and whatever the fuck his malfunction was tonight. She just desperately wanted to get Charlie back to their room where she could feel SAFE for a few hours, even if this was Hell, and feeling any kind of safe was just an illusion.

She is immensely relieved when no one contradicts her, when they all start to go their own way toward their own rooms. She puts an arm around Charlie’s waist as she guides her up the stairs. 

It is four in the morning, and Alastor is finally getting his walk around the hotel. 

He should be sleeping, now that Lilith has left, only he doesn’t think there’s any hope at all of his hypervigilance easing up enough to close his eyes in there - no, too much worry of the Queen of Darkness just popping back in and saying “Oh, and ANOTHER thing.” 

Alastor pauses in the hallway he’s walking through, because breathing too fast is not dignified. He is too old, too jaded, and too established in Hell for panic attacks, thank you. 

He keeps walking. 

Lilith’s plan is nerve-jarringly simple. She intends for all of Hell to know that SIr Pentious was redeemed (how, even in second death, is that man ruining Alastor’s ability to have a peaceful cup of coffee, HOW?!). Heaven is already desperate for a new contract, a new DEAL, a new treaty for how to move forward, but no one up there seems to be able to agree on what it should SAY. Lilith intends to stall that agreement as long as possible, with Alastor doing the same down here. 

And then she intends for Heaven to betray them. She intends for the exterminators to return in force despite there being no clear reason for it. Then, she will appear, wrathful and magnificent as only Lilith can be, to direct the denizens of Hell to fight back. 

“And what of the higher angels you’ve mentioned, Majesty? Lucifer was hardly the only archangel in Heaven.”

“Lucifer will fight them,” she says with total confidence. 

“You’ll forgive me - he doesn’t seem the type.” 

“If I am in danger, genuine danger, he will fight,” she says. There is no waiver in her voice, no trace of doubt. “If Charlie is in danger, he will fight harder.” 

“You believe he can defeat the entirety of the Heavenly pantheon, then? Gabriel, Michael, Uriel…” 

Lilith waves a hand. “He doesn’t have to win,” she says. “He just has to hurt them badly enough that we can finish them.” 

“He may not survive that, majesty.” 

Lilith snorts - she can make even that sound musical. “He died years ago, Alastor. He withered away and dried up, he is GONE. This will be a mercy, giving his body a chance to follow where what passes for his soul went centuries ago.” 

It’s too straightforward, too simple, but Lilith is a being of passion and wrath, not of petty meticulousness and deceit. 

It might work, anyway. 

Alastor’s role in this is simple enough. He is to do his utmost to sabotage any peace talks between Heaven and Charlie until he hears otherwise from Lilith. He is to do the same with the hotel’s efforts at redemption; which is funny, really. They have no more idea how redemption works than Heaven does. Alastor wouldn’t know where to properly START with sabotage. 

He is also to keep Charlie safe when the fighting starts, up until the moment where he is to make sure she is in the right place at the right time, like a caged kitten being used at a dog fight.

He is essentially to provide her with a front row seat to her father’s violent, prolonged death. . 

The worst of it is, it would never, ever occur to Charlie that Alastor had a role in making that happen. The poor, silly thing thinks that he is her friend, that he is looking out for her. 

It’s a horrible mistake to make, the first several times you make it. Alastor feels a rough sort of sympathy for her. She’ll learn, if she lives long enough. 

He is…not looking forward to that, the moment when she inevitably finds out what he is, what he’s been doing. 

Alastor stops walking, realizing with a start that he’s outside Husker’s room. He wonders why his feet, normally such a trustworthy part of his body, have betrayed him by bringing him here. 

There were plenty of times, after he and Vox split, that the poor kittycat would wake to find Alastor sleeping his armchair or sitting on the floor with his back to his bed, when he would startle the poor thing into a wing-frizzing, back-arching, hissing moment of indignity. 

“What the FUCK you creepy BASTARD, people don’t fucking DO this!”

“Ha! I do.”   

“Were you WATCHING ME SLEEP? Fuckin’ CHRIST, I am BEGGING you, get CABLE, take up KNITTING, get a fuckin’ HOBBY!” 

“I already HAVE hobbies! They are currently murder, and bothering you!” 

Dear, bitter, hateful Husker - the one person Alastor is fairly sure will never leave him, if only because he physically can’t. 

Alastor wonders if he still has an open chair in his room. He entertains the idea of braving a worsening of his headache to slip under the door, to snag a few hours’ fitful sleep curled up under one of the inevitably ratty blankets under the pretense of making him jump. 

It’s a silly idea, really - for two reasons. The first, Husker would be about as much use as a wet chicken in ACTUALLY providing any kind of safety right now; the sorts of enemies Alastor has these days are laughably out of Husk’s weight class. The second is, it is CONCEPTUALLY possible that Husker has gotten over himself enough that the room won’t be empty, and that’s a whole realm of awkwardness that Alastor wants no part of, please and thank you.

It’s not as if he needs protection, anyway. He is MORE than capable of taking care of himself. He just…

Fuck. 

He just needs sleep. A few hours. He needs sleep and for his head to not throb like this, for his stupid, caved-in ribs not to feel like a brand under the skin. He’ll think more clearly after that. 

Alastor keeps walking. It’s just to clear his head, obviously - not out of any prey-animal instinct to keep moving when there are hungry jaws around. 

He finds himself thinking of the sofa in Lucifer’s room - or even the bed, ridiculously broad thing that it is. That is a fireplace that Lilith won’t pop out of, might not be ABLE to access, even; Alastor is a capable magician, but even he has been impressed at the level of warding in the devil’s part of the hotel. 

“Hey, bellhop - what are your thoughts on the color blue?”

Alastor blinks hazily up at the absurd Victorian canopy. Where in the literal Hell is he? He hasn’t seen a canopy that ridiculous since - 

“Oh, sorry - I thought you were already awake.” 

Alastor turns his head to squint dubiously over at the source of the voice and therefore the source of his irritation. The silly bird is perched at a workbench, his buttermilk hair an unkempt, fluffy disaster around his face. He looks as if he started the transition from pajamas to real clothes and then forgot what he was doing partway - knee high boots and white pants, paired with a wholly unbuttoned,  eye-gouging teal pajama shirt that, inexplicably, is covered in flamingos. 

“You look ridiculous,” Alastor points out, because it is just POSSIBLE that Lucifer is unaware of this fact and might, if it were brought to his attention, get his life together. 

“Look who’s talking,” Lucifer says with a grin over at him. 

Alastor patently refuses to reach a hand up to see what his OWN stupid hair is doing, refuses to acknowledge the indignity that is the duck-shirt that HE is wearing. “Well, you’re the only one of us CHOOSING to look this stupid,” he says. 

“Oh, fuck you,” Lucifer says, but he sounds almost cheerful. He tucks his oversized sketchbook under an arm and picks up two cups of still-somewhat-warm coffee, making his way over to the bed. “Plenty of people are into all this.” 

He strikes a bit of a pose on the way to the bed, leaning into his right hip - aware of how ridiculous he is and owning it in a way that is not at all charming. 

“Yes,” Alastor says blandly, “There ARE a surprising number of blind people in Hell.” 

“Talk like that won’t get you coffee,” Lucifer says, sitting on the edge of the bed and, despite his words, offering him one of the cups. 

Why has he brought him coffee? 

Alastor eyes the cup dubiously, takes a not-at-all subtle sniff. 

Lucifer snorts. “I’m not trying to POISON you. I’m trying to make life easier for ME, since I’m stuck with you and I get the feeling you’re an even bigger bitch with caffeine withdrawal.” 

Alastor rolls his eyes. Because of course Lucifer isn’t going to POISON him - there are much less obvious ways to kill someone - but he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of mind-altering drugs. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Lucifer says with a wry grin. He takes a sip of his own coffee, then reaches down like a magician and switches cups with Alastor. “Now get over your whole little paranoia thing, I have serious questions.” 

Alastor takes a sip of the damned coffee, swallows thoughtfully. “On the color blue?” 

“On aesthetics, you philistine.” 

“Well, you obviously need all the help you can get with that.” 

“Drink your coffee faster - I need you to be less of an asshole right now.” Then he turns his sketchbook to reveal the rough (but skilled) lines of a pavilion on some of the blander real estate behind the hotel. There’s a privacy fence, the barest outline of fairy lights, some manicured shrubbery. 

“What do you think about blue?” 

Alastor thinks of crackling electricity and clawed fingers, stripes on a tacky suit…that’s what he thinks about blue. He wrinkles his nose. “Too jarring,” he offers. “You know it would clash with the landscape.” 

“Yeah, you aren’t wrong, but maybe clash in a good way? This whole fucking place could use some contrast…” 

“Maybe something more in the purple family,” Alastor suggests. “It could still offer some contrast without being quite so jarring.” 

“Huh. Maybe.” And Lucifer stays sitting on the edge of the bed, turning the pencil in his hand to purple with apparently just a thought because he was obnoxious that way. “Maybe purple and orange? Push the spectrum in both directions?” 

Why is Lucifer talking to him like this? 

Why is he sitting on the bed with him, sketching and chattering as if…as if he somehow enjoys having him here? 

Alastor wonders what the Hell Charlie could possibly have threatened this man with to get this kind of behavior out of him. 

“You know…that’s not bad,” Lucifer muses, tilting his sketchpad enough that Alastor can see it. “I guess even a tacky piece of shit like you has to be right about color theory ONCE in a while.” 

“High praise,: Alastor says, dry as the Sahara. 

Lucifer grins at him, sudden and unexpected. “Your hair is WRECKED,” he points out, as if that is in ANY way helpful. 

“Die in a fire,” Alastor says piously. He takes another sip of coffee. 

“Ha! Al, I’m the devil. If I’m going to die in anything, it sure as fuck isn’t gonna be a fire.” 

It’s a stupid thing to think about. 

It’s not as if Alastor can just pop in - the warding is, in the first place, too good. He’d have to…ugh, KNOCK, which would necessitate a conversation along the lines of “Hello! So sorry to bother you, but I’m suddenly afraid of the architecture in my room. May I borrow part of yours?” 

No, that would be intolerable. He cringes just thinking about it. 

In the second place, as on-edge as Lucifer is, with the memory of what looked like Alastor assaulting his daughter still hovering around in his hindbrain, he’s as likely to disintegrate him on impulse as he is to acquiesce to having an unwanted guest curled up on his couch. 

As Alastor does not, in fact, own Lucifer’s soul, there might also be questions about his unexpected presence that Alastor isn’t in any way prepared (or permitted) to answer. No, best bury THAT impulse all the way down where he keeps that unfortunate memory of the time he and Rosie drank entirely too much tequila and tried their hands at show tunes.

 There’s no help for it. Perhaps there’s a closet somewhere out of the way where he can…

Alastor’s ear flicks at the distant sound of a violin - or he thinks that’s what it is. There’s something more-than-string in the sound of it, too mellow and sweet to be a material instrument. 

Alastor finds himself drifting toward it like a rat following a piper. He hopes this is a choice, hopes it hasn’t caught him in the ways that Lilith’s songs and Vox’s swirling eye have failed to.  

When he reaches the right room - a lounge, he thinks, one of the random, underused socializing spaces in this hotel full of antisocial works-in-progress - he pushes the door open silently with a trembling hand.

The devil is playing the violin with his eyes closed. He has stripped off his coat, his vest - he is walking aimlessly as he plays, his path taking him from velvet blackness to rose and gold tinged moonlight through the stained glass, each color reflecting from his angelic glow. 

Alastor catches his weight on the doorframe, suddenly weak in the knees as, entirely unwillingly, he imagines a sky choked with wings and the pure, perfect light of angelic steel. 

He will be part of what kills this man - the one walking alone in the dark, the one that is not playing a song so much as a concentrated pulse of grief and regret into the uncaring blackness of Hell. 

He…

He doesn’t want to. 

Chapter Text

“HOW COULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN?!”

Lucifer presses his face more firmly into his folded arms amongst the broken pencils and crumpled papers on his drafting table. 

He knew she wouldn’t take it well. 

The door to his workshop all but flies off the hinges, bouncing off the wall as Lilith charges into the room, her eyes blazing violet. “Tell me I heard wrong, Lucifer!” 

“Lily, I -” 

“ TELL ME it isn’t true!”

There’s a pleading note in with the anger, now. He almost can’t bring himself to look at her, almost can’t bear to see that level of horror, that level of disappointment, on the face of arguably the last thing in creation that loves (loved?) him. 

(Again) 

“Lily, I didn’t have a choice.” He sounds as tired as he feels.

“BULLSHIT! You don’t give the gift of free will only to not understand the concept of CHOICE!” She picks something up - a duck-themed alarm clock from the look of it - and hurls it across the room with enough force to shatter it on one of the walls. “There is ALWAYS a choice!” 

“You weren’t there! You didn’t hear -” 

He doesn’t know if he means at the Heavenly Embassy a few hours ago or hundreds (thousands?) of years ago, when they’d first pulled him, bloody and bewildered, in front of the all-seeing eyes of Heaven. He had pleaded his case, his hands open in supplication, dripping his own blood while she was kept outside on the other end of angelic spears, pacing and raging like a tiger in a cage.. 

He knows that she thinks he did not try hard enough. She thinks he cringed and stammered and begged. He has never had the heart or the strength to tell her what happened instead. 

“And whose fault was that?!” She rages. Another object, this one a half-finished doll, meets the same fate as the alarm clock. "Who AGREED to a meeting that I COULD NOT ATTEND?!"

“Lilith, it wasn’t exactly a brainstorming session! They told me -” 

“YOU SHOULDN’T LET THEM TELL YOU ANYTHING! You’re the most powerful being in Hell, Lucifer. ONE of the most powerful beings in creation - THEY ARE AFRAID OF YOU! YOU should be telling THEM how it is, not slinking around your workshop like a whipped DOG.” 

“It was the only way I could protect you. Fuck, it was the only way I could protect Charlie, Lilith. The choices were exterminations or an all-out war. The only reason they aren’t murdering EVERYONE down here is they don’t want to risk the casualties. I could…” He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “It was the only thing I could use for leverage.” 

Lilith’s eyes blaze hotter. “I will NOT be made a hostage in your tragic little story, Lucifer. I did not ASK you to protect me. I have NEVER asked you to protect me. I don’t NEED your protection - THEY do!” 

She gestures with one elegantly opera-gloved arm toward the window, toward the streets of Pentagram city. “You helped to MAKE them this way, you asshole! You can’t bring yourself to guide them, you can’t be BOTHERED to help them be better, fuck, you won’t deign to NOTICE them most of the time  - the LEAST you can fucking do is stop those glowing, witless BRUTES from using them as PINCUSHIONS!” 

“I can’t STOP them, Lilith! For fuck’s sake, do you NOT remember what happened last time?” 

Lucifer remembers. He remembers hot pain such as no mortal soul can understand, as a mortal soul would have been obliterated on contact. He remembers the phantom pains shooting up his spine and the blood in his eyes - he remembers looking over just in time to see them flinging Lilith, Lilith who had no wings, from the heavenly platform. 

He remembers wrenching himself away from one of his brothers, one of the people who he had thought loved him - leaving a fistful of bloody feathers in his hands as he’d flung himself after her. 

He remembered all the yards of pain that were his remaining wings, cut and broken and impossible to straighten fully as he’d caught her flailing body and pulled her close to him, as he’d struggled to level their plummet into something more like a glide. 

When they hit the ground, the air filled with red dust, and a crater bloomed underneath them - the very first meteorite marring the moonlike surface of Hell. 

He barely remembered that landing. He did remember being shaken awake, feeling her tears on his face - squinting up through the unfamiliar, red haze of his new eyes to see her kneeling over him, clutching him to her chest as red and gold blood mingled on his once-white robes, on her once dewy-clean skin. 

He remembers trying to flex his wings, feeling the phantom pain through his body, only to look to the right and see a sad, featherless stub, still bleeding in sluggish pulses. He remembers turning onto the burning sand and vomiting for the first time in his existence. 

And Lilith - Lilith, who had held him, had cried over him, had held him in her arms night after night and tried her damndest to kiss the phantom pains from his back when he woke, flailing and screaming, in the too-tight confines of their sheets - looks at him as if she can’t stand the sight of him. 

“Coward,” she says, quiet and cold and defeated. 

She pulls her ring off her finger in one quick, angry motion, and Lucifer’s throat swells shut. 

“I’m done with being the thing you hide behind. Find a different excuse to burrow into a hole.” 

She throws the ring at his head, turning on her heel and vanishing out the door in a swirl of purple flame and drifting, golden hair. 

Lucifer shudders his way out of the past when a piano trill, fragile as a dewdrop, joins him on a climb up the scale. He stops playing, his wings involuntarily startling out, casting shadows on the wal thatl he somehow manages not to flinch away from - the outspread feathers coming together in a judgmental canopy over his head is a little too near to the memories he’s been drowning in not to cause his heart to skip. 

Then, he blinks. There is Alastor, sitting on the piano bench, looking - well. 

Looking as if he’s had his ass kicked by half of Hell and then you. That’s what he looks like. 

Alastor’s velvety reds and blacks are a jarring contrast to the cotton-candy hues that the stained glass have painted onto the rest of the room. Still coatless, he’s wearing just his shirt and pants and a bruise that is slowly but surely starting to eat the left side of his face. His eye is nearly swollen shut on that side, and Lucifer hastily averts his own eyes, finding a spot on the wall to stare at as he wills his stupid fucking wing feathers to unfluff. 

“I’m telling Charlie to put a bell on your uniform,” he huffs after a moment. 

Lucifer’s voice sounds tinny and unnatural in the room, vying with the echoes of the not-song he’d been playing. 

“It’s hilarious that you think she can tell me what to do.” 

“She’s the Princess of Hell,” Lucifer says. “She’s literally the boss of you.” 

Alastor snorts. “Have you seen that girl try to give orders?” 

Lucifer raises an eyebrow at him. “Then explain how you got roped into improv night.” 

Alastor’s ears flatten slightly in annoyance. “Too much rye, not enough self-preservation.”

“That’s like….a constant thing with you? The no self-preservation, uh…thing.” 

“Yes, you’re terrifying,” Alastor says blandly - absently running his fingers down the keyboard in a minor scale. “How could a mere mortal creature like myself -” 

“Okay, you don’t have to -” 

“EVER so DARE as to…” 

“Wow. Just….wow, way to make my concerns feel validated, you absolute asshole. I -”

Alastor mock-swoons across the piano bench, the back of one arm draped dramatically over his eyes, one foot ballerina-pointed toward the ceiling. “Forgive my impertinence, your imperial majesty, please have mercy on my unworthy SOUL…” 

Lucifer raises a brow. “Ya done there?” 

Alastor sits back up, resting his hands over the keys. “Were you?” 

There is a faint note of challenge in his voice. 

Lucifer comes to the uncomfortable realization that his wife had probably REALLY liked this guy. Alastor has never, from what Lucifer can see, met a fight he didn’t want, and he sure as Hell didn’t mind fighting up a weight class. Fuck, if Lucifer had a quarter this guy’s audacity, she would probably still be…

Still…

He clears his throat, settling his violin back against his cheek. “Don’t feel bad if you can’t keep up,” he says. 

Alastor’s answering hmmmmm is dripping with “unimpressed.” 

It’s been a while since he had an audience. Feeling absurdly shy for absolutely NO reason, he closes his eyes and goes back to playing. There’s no real meter, no real key, just long clear note after note that defies the conventional constraints of clefts and progressions. 

He is surprised when, after a moment, the piano joins in - following his violin up and down the register, sometimes adding notes, and other times, providing much-needed stability in the form of bass chords against the thready upper range of Lucifer’s instrument. 

“How did you meet her?” 

“Open mic night.” 

“....yeah, that tracks.” 

The words are glib enough, but the music is nothing but grief and regret, and it feels a little… fuck, it feels a little bit like exhibitionism, and Lucifer would know. It feels like taking off his clothes and letting the least sympathetic sinner in Hell catalogue every single one of his flaws in his meticulous handwriting, probably to publish in a fucking book later or broadcast as a “Ten Embarrassing Facts about the King of Hell” segment on his Satan-cursed radio show. 

“Did you….know her well?” 

“Not as well as I thought I did.” 

Do you know if she’s coming back? 

Lucifer pauses, mid draw of the bo, because no, there are no circumstances where he’s willing to ask ALASTOR a question like that - and that’s enough gruesome musical oversharing for one night, fuck, why is he like this? “Why don’t you lead for a while?” 

“Hm….do you play actual songs, or is it all just stream-of-consciousness melancholy?” 

“Okay, point one, fuck you. Point two….* Okay, it actually HAS been a while, hasn’t it? “If you start simple, I can probably catch up.” 

Alastor raises a brow at him, flexes his hands, and then they suddenly dance across the keys like a pair of possessed spiders…

Lucifer fights the urge to grin. Because he’s not encouraging this fucker. “Rachmaninov isn’t simple even by angelic standards, you absolute bag of dicks.” 

“Hmmm….my mistake.” Before Alastor, Lucifer would not have known that you could make an eyebrow raise drip with that much condescension, especially when you were working with the mother of all black eyes turning your face into one of those half-drama masks, but here they are. 

The radio demon flexes one hand, and it taps out an obnoxiously familiar, frankly insulting melody. 

Da-da-da….bada badapup a …

“Is that….is that Heart and Soul?” 

DA-DA-DA…bada badapup -... 

“You said simple. This is simple.” 

DA-dum….Bada bada ba pum! 

“Oh my Satan, I want to punch you so much that it’s actually kind of impressive.” 

“Do you always want to punch people for doing exactly what you told them to do?” 

Lucifer banishes his violin back to the pocket dimension where he keeps it. “I do when they do it JUST to be an ass. Move over.” 

“And what if I don’t?” Alastor is still merrily tapping out the world’s most obnoxious melody with just his right hand. 

This guy. Seriously. 

Lucifer wonders what kind of cross-training exists for eyeballs, because he can already tell that if he keeps rolling his eyes that hard around this prick, he’s going to sprain something eventually. He puts a hand on Alastor’s side and physically slides him a few inches down the bench to make room before sitting beside him. 

“Don’t you have your own instrument?” Alastor snips - pretty damn loftily for someone who is playing on a lobby piano. 

“Yeah, and I’m not gonna defile it with this fucking abomination of a song,” Lucifer says. 

It’s been a minute, but his fingers remember - adding a bit of a ragtime backbeat on his end of the piano. 

“Hmmmmm,” Alastor says, there’s that impossibly long hmmm again, “You outright stole that from the Muskrat Ramble - you are fooling no one.” 

“I am RIFFING on it, you twat. Also, I’m the King of Hell - are you seriously trying to get on my ass over a little recreational plagiarism?” 

Alastor’s left hand joins the right, as that simple, obnoxious melody starts to transform into something more…interesting. “Don’t trivialize such a serious crime.” 

“Don’t change the KEY on me.” 

“Ha! Keep up.” 

Lucifer shoulders Alastor lightly - the bastard annoyingly doesn’t miss a beat - so that he can get a hand in between Alastor’s hands on the keyboard. “Is everything a fight with you? Asking for a friend.” 

“Nonsense! You might be the only person in Hell who has fewer of those than I do.” 

There’s no reason to move back apart, is there? He won’t be able to reach the keys if he does. “Yup, straight for the jugular. Every time. For an unhinged serial killer, I gotta tell you, you’re awfully predictable.” 

Alastor gasps in mock-offense. “Those are fighting words, my good man!”

“Everything is a fighting word with you. You could make OATMEAL a fighting word.” 

There’s a radio laugh track as his only response to that, and okay, this is - 

This is really nice. 

And Lucifer could flat slap himself for thinking that, because he can’t think of a faster way to wreck a good thing than by noticing you have it. That kind of phrase is right up there with “what else could go wrong,” on the ol’ cosmic scale of “how to trigger bad karma.” 

Lucifer removes his fingers from the keys, popping his knuckles and sighing. “Okay, I’ll give it to ya, bellhop. You’re a passingly decent piano player.” 

“What a lovely compliment, highness. I wish I could say the same.” 

Lucifer rolls his eyes. Again. Lucifer can safely say that his eyeballs have never gotten such a workout, and he used to live at the chest level of the most beautiful woman in Hell. “You’re exhausting.” 

“I kno-ow,” Alastor singongs as he eases off the piano bench - and no mistaking it, that’s a wince as he straightens, expertly hidden. 

Fuck it all. 

Lucifer finds a spot to stare at on the piano this time. He would…he WISHES he could say that he hadn’t meant to hurt him. Sinners are fragile, mortal things, and Lucifer….well, Lucifer isn’t. Accidents can happen, but that isn’t this, that wasn’t - 

He had absolutely meant to hurt him, insofar as there was any intention in his body aside from undiluted rage. He doesn’t REMEMBER exactly what he did. It’s all lost in a red haze from the moment he entered that alley and saw - 

Saw what he now realizes was his brainwashed daughter grappling with the fucked-up, defective bastard who was pinning her down for her own good. 

Damn it all to here. 

Lucifer clears his throat. “So, should I be flattered that you’re choosing to be down here pissing me off when you could be back in your own room, taking a hot shower, maybe popping a few advil….sleeping like a normal person?”

Fuck, he’d been aiming for nonchalant - he thinks he came uncomfortably close to flirting instead. 

“Hm, it has very little to do with you, except insofar as when you built this place the second time, you gave it a little more…personality than most sentient life would find strictly necessary.” 

“Ah - your room’s acting up?” Lucifer asks - because making obedient creations was his Father’s thing. It’s not Lucifer’s fault that the hotel version two may be ever-so-slightly alive and thus comes with its own set of….charming quirks. 

You know. It’s got character. Or something. 

(So what if the closets keep eating shoes, and the pipes are moving closer to being able to replicate Carol of the Bells every day? There’s no rent! You have to accept some eccentricity in order to not have rent, like some people accept living too close to airports. )

Alastor presses the heel of his hand to his forehead. “Something like that.” 

“Well, if you need a shower, you can use mine,” Lucifer says. 

Alastor gives him one of the odd looks that people often give him, and fuck, is “use my shower” a euphemism these days? He can’t keep up with them. “Platonically,” he adds, both hands up. 

The look gets worse. In fact, Alastor is looking at him as if LUCIFER is the one who should go lay down somewhere for a while. “Why would I not have thought you meant platonically?” 

Lucifer feels his face heat uncomfortably, and he is suddenly very glad that the two of them seem to be alone down here. He doesn’t want any innocent bystanders to witness his attempt at socializing and die of secondhand embarrassment. “I dunno, I just - it’s the lingo, you know? I never know if I’m saying something that actually means something else, what’s INNUENDO now....” 

“Please never say the word ‘lingo’ again - let’s start there.” 

“No promises. Offer stands. Seriously, I’ve about got the thing tamed - I’ve been bribing it with bath salts.” 

Alastor looks pained in a way that seems to have nothing to do with his obvious headache or whatever is going on with his ribs. In the tone of a man who knows he’s going to regret asking, he says, “Why does your shower want bath salts?” 

Lucifer shrugs. “Damned if I know. I’m crazy enough to bribe my shower, Albert; I’m not yet fucked in the head enough to have a conversation with it.” 

There’s that laugh track again, and fuck it all, even THAT sounds weary. Lucifer eases off the piano bench and, without thinking (because if he thinks, he OVERTHINKS, and this is harrowing enough as it is) he puts a hand out to steer Alastor toward the elevator. He realizes at almost the last moment that casual touching after, say, punting someone across an alley is probably a no-no, so he winds up hovering his hand awkwardly a bit out from his back, steering by proximity. 

The fact that Alastor doesn’t push back at all for arguably the first time in their acquaintance, though, that he doesn’t fight him immediately, tells him he’s possibly on the right track here. The guy might just need a little external prodding to wind down after the literal night from hell. 

The hot water feels like a miracle when it first hits his body. Alastor sighs, tipping his head back into the spray, closing his eyes, and it would be very relaxing, really, except that he is goddamned doing it again fucking-shit-fuck WHY. 

“No thank you, you bizarre little man. Good night.” 

Would that have been so hard to say? 

He tried. He REALLY tried, but the words dried up in his mouth - because the silly bird went ahead and offered him what he’d been trying to scheme his way into only an hour or so ago; a place to sleep that his blasted hypervigilance would be willing to accept as “safe enough.”  

All right, so strictly speaking, Lucifer had not offered to let him SLEEP here. He’d just offered him a more tractable shower than his own (admittedly rebellious) one, but Alastor has enough of a sense for the King of Hell to suspect that, if he passes out on some piece of furniture, that he won’t wake him and tell him to leave. 

That knowledge has lodged in between his ribs with the familiar tenacity of shrapnel. 

As much as Alastor would love to blame the devil’s tolerance on guilt over the near-murder earlier, he’s beginning to be afraid that Lucifer is just that way - that is to say, lonely to the point where it is an obvious, exploitable disadvantage, and also an unfortunately soft touch. 

That makes a certain amount of sense. Charlie sure as fuck didn’t get all of her crippling compassion from her mother. 

“Why Alastor, darling, you look an absolute mess.” 

He slumps against Lilith’s desk, relief battling with nausea. His shadows brought him here, but it cost him dearly, and now the room is swimming in his vision like a world viewed through a water glass. “Apologies for not meeting my usual standards, my queen.” 

She puts a hand on his back, gentle and grounding and utterly heedless of the blood on his coat. “Poor thing, who did this to you? Did things finally come to a head with your box-headed friend?” 

“I’m afraid so.” 

“Hm - made you an offer you had to refuse?” 

Alastor swallows the first two things he wants to say and just nods. 

“I see. And then you came to me?” 

“I…apologize for the intrusion.” 

“Oh, you know I’m always happy to see my favorite radio host.”

Why does the sympathy in her voice sound….something sounds not right, something is….wrong. 

“Besides, you didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Strictly speaking, that isn’t true. Alastor did have other places to go, though not many. There are a few of his thralls who would have put him up out of obligation, or there was Rosie, but the problem with them…the problem with the souls he holds in thrall is that they want him dead, and the problem with Rosie is that t if Vox could do this to him, then…

He could not bring this problem to her. Not when he is unable even to HELP her if it brings trouble to her doorstep. 

“I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” he agrees, quietly. 

“Of course I’ll help you, darling,” the queen says. “We’re old friends, after all.” 

There’s no mistaking it now, she sounds almost - pleased. 

“But I have to tell you -  you probably should have taken HIS offer, Al.”

Alastor feels a chill settle into his blood as his stupid deer-ears pick up the sound of every door in the room locking one. By. one. 

“Because I’m about to make you a worse one. It’s not personal, honey. It’s just that a good babysitter is SO hard to find.”  . 

Fucking Hell, fuck, does he never learn? This shouldn’t be happening, he shouldn’t BE here -

He shouldn’t be flaunting his own incompetence, his own weakness in front of a creature that is capable of unmaking him on a whim. And he shouldn’t be antagonizing said powerful being more than usual by seeming to put things on offer that he has neither the ability nor the inclination to provide. 

If the goal is to not give anyone the Wrong Idea™, then a reliable starting place might be “do not stand naked in their living space,” shower notwithstanding. “Do not find excuses to SLEEP in their damned room,” might also make the list, as well as, “when possible, try not to goad them into pigtail-pulling contests on piano benches.” 

Alastor is willing to admit that….whatever that was in the parlor, that got away from him. He didn’t MEAN it. It was exhaustion, or his frankly-disturbing compilation of head injuries today, or - 

Fuck. He just needs to sleep this off. When he wakes up, he can insult Lucifer’s curtains or something and they’ll…everything will be back to normal. 

(Or as normal as it can be when he’s going to be a part of the next really bad thing that happens to Lucifer). 

Alastor turns the water off and steps out of the shower carefully - his hooves have never been especially reliable on wet tile, and he refuses to face the awkwardness of a potential fall when things are already so tense. 

(Charlie is going to be so…) 

He dries himself off with an absurdly fluffy towel that is patterned like a giant beach ball and then slips into the pajamas that Lucifer conjured for him with an absentminded wave of his hand, like people just DO that, just magic clothing out of thin air - 

(....disappointed. Is there a word stronger than disappointed?) 

He catches sight of himself in the mirror and can’t help a rueful sort of smile, touching his cheek below his swollen left eye. He leans toward the glass a bit to examine it, can’t help but think of the number of days he saw his mother come to breakfast with her hair half-heartedly brushed over one side of her face to hide the angry reds and purples. 

(Look, Ma. We match). 

He is not going to be sick. Lucifer is NOT going to hear him retching through the bathroom door, he is not doing this. Alastor takes a deep breath, runs his fingers through his damp hair to tidy it some, and steps out into the suite. 

Lucifer looks up from where he’d been fiddling with a sketchpad on the couch and blinks owlishly. “Fuck, you’re skinny.” 

Alastor stops walking mid-stride. “I’m what now?”

Lucifer winces. “Sorry, that - just popped out there. I meant I conjured those things you’re wearing about two sizes too big. You look…wider with the coat.” 

Alastor feels his ears flatten. “So which is it - I’m too skinny, or I look fat in my coat?” 

Lucifer groans and flops back on the sofa. “Well, great. Since I’ve already put my foot in my mouth up to the KNEE, I’m gonna skip the pleasantries and just ASK -” 

Alastor feels his eyes widening in alarm. Surely not. SURELY not, not this soon, he hasn’t sent THAT many wrong signals, has he? The King of Hell is NOT about to proposition him with charcoal smudges on his fingers and half-wrapped in a circus-tent-patterned quilt. Not even Alastor’s life could be that fucked up.  

“Are you gonna let me fix that eye without making me go ten rounds with you first?” 

Wait, what now? 

Lucifer gestures at….well, all of him. “Your whole eye….face thing you have going on. You gonna let me fix it?” 

“You have a problem with my face, too?” Alastor deadpans.  

Lucifer picks up a throw pillow, presses his OWN face into it, and screams a very muffled scream into the gaudy fabric. 

There’s no particular reason for Alastor to find that as funny as he does, but the laughter startles out of him until he leans against the dry bar for balance, and he doesn’t even bother dodging the second throw pillow that Lucifer halfheartedly chucks in his direction. . 

“That depends,” Alastor says, wiping a tear from the corner of his non-swollen eye. 

“On?” Lucifer prods, removing the first throw pillow from his face. 

“What does it cost?” 

Lucifer blinks at him. “Cost? Why would it COST anything? I’m the one who broke it. Least I can do is put it right.” 

Alastor blinks. Because that’s a fair enough assumption, honestly - Lucifer would have no way of knowing that this wasn’t his hand’s doing. “Everything costs something,” Alastor says. He makes his way across the room to sit on the sofa with the regal idiot. 

“Right,” Lucifer says. HIs voice suddenly sounds very weary. “Never do anything for free.” 

“Precisely.” 

“Can’t we just call it penance or something?” Lucifer asks. 

Alastor snorts. “Looked at another way - would I accept the precedent of you being allowed to throw me into walls in exchange for fixing whatever happens as a result?” 

“People like you are the reason I typically only talk to rubber ducks,” Lucifer says, rubbing the bridge of where his nose should be. “Why don’t you tell me what you’d be willing to do in exchange for letting me fix your face?” 

“I’ll make you coffee tomorrow,” Alastor says, half joking, because surely Lucifer is going to propose something a bit more substantial as a favor and then - 

“Done.” 

Or he really is just an idiot. 

“Should you be doing that?” Alastor asks. 

“Doing what? Having coffee?” Lucifer asks. He sits up and pats the sofa beside him. “Come on, you’re gonna want to sit down for this.” 

“You already exerted yourself with Charlie’s paramour earlier - wouldn’t want you to sprain your divinity or whatever else can happen from an over expenditure.” 

“Sprain my div….” Lucifer just shakes his head. “At worst, I’ll need to sleep it off, which hey, works better than melatonin.” 

He looks at the spot on the sofa beside him pointedly. 

So does Alastor. It’s odd, that sofa cushion somehow feels as threatening as a bear trap under some moss. He sits down on it trying NOT to look as if he’s braving a minefield and folds his hands primly on his knees. 

Lucifer offers him a hand, palm up. 

“You are, of course, joking.” 

“It works better if I can touch you.” 

“I am not holding your hand.” Alastor says, pouring all of the considerable scorn in his thin frame into the last three words. 

“Fuck’s sake, I’ll bring you a corsage next time, all right? The sooner you stop being a pain in my ass about this, the sooner we can sleep.” 

“FIne,” Alastor says. He sets his hand in Lucifer’s with what he hopes is a very VISIBLE amount of bad grace. “Do it, then.” 

And then the light creeps up Alastor’s arm, over his shoulders like a warm and blinding ocean that he is sinking into. He closes his eyes, clenches them, and it passes over his face like warm rain. 

“Boss, can I have a word?”

“Of course, Husker! Why, I’m so generous that I’ve already let you have six!” 

Alastor is in a good mood, then - and he should be, the blood freshly washed off from the latest victim in the Radio Demon’s relentless social climbing. There won’t ever be a better time. Husk takes a bracing shot of rye and says, “It’s about your flat-faced stalker.”

Alastor rolls his eyes in the dramatic way that only he ever does. “Husker, if he’s a stalker, he’s the laziest one in the history of Hell. We live in the same apartment.” 

And isn’t THAT exactly the goddamned problem. “Look, I know it ain’t my business…”

Alastor pats him twice on the cheek, and Husk bristles. “And knowing is the first step, sourpuss.” 

“...but that fucker is trouble.” 

Alastor laughs. And that’s never going to stop making his fur bristle, that fuckhead laughing at him like he’s his own personal comedy act. “Of COURSE he’s trouble, kitty cat. He’s an up-and-coming Overlord of Hell. Not a lot of ‘nice boys with good families’ in THAT candidate pool, now are there?” 

“Not THAT kind of trouble, fuckface,” Husk says. 

“YOU were trouble when I met you,” Alastor continues cheerfully. He helps himself to a sip of Husk’s drink, just because he can. “And look at what lovely manners you have now!” 

Okay, yeah, bastard. Rub some salt in THAT wound. 

“You’re a riot, boss,” he says in his flattest tone, ‘but you KNOW I don’t mean like that.” 

“Like what, then?” Alastor puts his elbow on the bar table between them, rests his chin on the back of his hand, and blinks at Husker in deceptively benign interest. 

He’s pushing the guy’s patience, he can tell; an ACTUAL conversation with the radio demon is always going to be more like a high-stakes poker game than Husk is comfortable with. A lot of staying in the game is knowing when to fold, but he thinks he can hold out for another round or so without catastrophic losses.

Husk takes a deep breath. “You seriously don’t see the way he looks at you?” 

That is a slow, startled blink from Alastor -  but the world doesn’t turn into a raucous of green voodoo symbols and doom, so there’s no call to immediately start covering vitals, at least. “Husker, that’s just his face. No need to be judgmental, hm?” 

“NOT like that. Fuckin’ Christ. The way he looks at you, ESPECIALLY when you ain’t lookin’? I don’t mind tellin’ you, it creeps me right the fuck out. I swear, every time I stand within three feet o’you, he gives me this look like he’s mentally removing limbs .” 

Alastor, predictably, waves him off. “Oh, Husker, it’s Hell. What’s a little recreational disembowelment between friends?” 

“He ain’t MY friend,” Husk says. “And he ain’t yours, either. Fuck, he ain’t that far off from keeping your nail clippings in a jar, if I got the feel of it right.” 

“Husker, Husker, Husker…you worry too much.”

Husk isn’t too surprised to see Angel walking down the halls in the almost-dawn hours. Angel seldom manages to sleep the whole night without the assistance of some kind of not-doctor-recommended sedative. Husk waves to him absently from the floor in the hallway by Charlie and Vaggie’s door, pausing in his game of solitaire. 

It’s a mistake to engage the kid, honestly, as he’s probably just giving him false hope. Husk isn’t a complete idiot. Angel likes him. He likes him in a simple, hopeful way that doesn’t belong in Hell and certainly shouldn’t be directed at a guy who doesn’t own his own soul, but the kid looks so ragged. 

“Hey, Whiskers,” Angel says. He puts his back to the wall and slides down beside him. “Smiles got ya on guard duty?” 

“Somethin’ like that,” Husk says. In truth, Alastor didn’t TELL him to do this. Alastor rarely TELLS him to do anything, and that’s the fucking problem, isn’t it? 

It isn’t kindness. Husker knows that. No, it’s one part practicality and one part sick amusement. The practicality is in not leading the souls he owns to such outright resentment that they make it their afterlife goals to destroy him, and the amusement, well - Husk guesses it’s a bit like reality television. How will Husker fuck himself over next? Find out on tonight’s broadcast! 

“Oh - he said ‘someone oughta do it,’ and someone is you?” Angel ventures. 

Husk sighs and takes a pull from the bottle at his side. “That’s a little closer.” 

An expectant silence passes between them, and Husk hands the bottle to Angel so he can take a generous swig. 

“So what’s had you bitin’ everybody’s head off tonight?” Angel asks. 

Husk snorts. “I don’t suppose you’d accept ‘too fuckin’ sober for this shit’ as an excuse.” 

Angel just holds up the bottle and raises both brows. 

“Fair enough,” Husk says. 

“Is this some kinda fucked-up stockhome’s shit?” 

Husker laughs. “Probably,” he says. “But look, you don’t belong to somebody this long without gettin’ all tangled up with ‘em, I don’t think. You…after a while, ya just know too much.” 

Angel takes another pull from the borrowed bottle. “Like what? Go on, Whiskers. I’m all ears.” 

“I went with him on some of his…business ventures, guess you could say,” Husk says. “He’s a horrible, scheming, conniving sonofabitch, kid, but I’ll give him this much - that fucker only punches UP unless somebody makes themselves his problem. He took on some real heavyweights back in the day, powerful overlords who should have killed him half a dozen times over.” 

Husker takes back the bottle to take another swig. “Guess I got a little caught up in the show, if I’m bein’ honest. The boss puts on a real vaudeville act when he’s on his game. There’s always somethin’ going on backstage, somethin’ up his sleeve, some crazy-ass scheme on the backburner.” 

Another swallow, and Husk feels it burn down the back of his throat. “Somewhere along the line, I guess I started to root for the guy a little. The fuckheads he was cutting up had that and more coming, and I can’t say it was ever boring, watchin’ him work.” 

“Stockholme’s,” Angel says with a knowing nod, taking the bottle back. 

“Eh, maybe.”

They sit in silence for a few long minutes until Angel says, “That don’t explain jack, ya know.” 

“What would Valentin do if you talked to him like I talk to the boss?” 

Angel blinks at him slowly, seeming to mull it over, and visibly losing a little color. “Look, just ‘cause I got a contract so shitty it makes yours look nice by comparison don’t mean it ain’t still fucked up.” 

Husk shrugs again. “I was an overlord myself, remember,” Husk says. “Ain’t like i was some innocent bystander to all this buyin’ and selling bullshit. I put myself at the table, and outta the two of us, he just cheats better.” 

“All that’s just to say - I guess I just know the guy too well to fall for the bullshit the rest of you are buying. He’s fuckin’ strung out or some shit. Tired.” 

Angel looks over at him. “Mister Jazz Hands and Big Band Music?” 

“Hey, you didn’t see him bef-” 

“Mister song-and-dance battles with the most powerful fuckers in Hell?” 

“Look, he don’t -” 

“THAT is what tired looks like?” 

“...Yeah. It is.” 

“Fuck,” Angel says with feeling. 

“You’d understand if you’d met him before. And he -...” Husk swallows. He’s gone this far; he might as well say it. “Before that fight with all those fuckin’ exorcist angels?” 

Angel blinks. “Yeah?” 

“He told me to do what I wanted - but it might not be the worst idea to get outta dodge. He told Nifty the same, but that little murder machine wouldn’t miss a fight if you paid her.” 

Angel leans away from the wall to look at him as if Husk has slapped him. “Wait, he - he told you that you could leave?” 

Husk shrugs. “Could be he knew damn well I wouldn’t. Could be he hoped I would. Who can say with that asshole?” 

“Fuck,” Angel says. “That’s…” He leans back against the wall. “That’s a mindgame and a half. I ain’t never had to worry about that shit with Val. He’s the most transparent dickbag in hell.” 

Husker grunts in assent. “Gives me a headache for sure.” 

“It’s almost like he didn’t think we were gonna win. Which, ya know, given the amount of grandstanding and ‘oh, it will be no trouble, darlings’ that fucker was throwin’ around -”

“Yeah, that was a fuckin’ act. He knew it’d be a cluster at best.” 

“And he told you you could leave,” Angel muses. He draws his knees up to his chest, wrapping his middle set of arms around them. “Why didn’t ya?” 

Angel is very deliberately not looking at him now, and Husk sighs, another nail almost audibly pounding into his own coffin as he says, “Like I said, I only just got used to you guys.” 

And Husk doesn’t resist at all when Angel scoots toward him, when the much-taller spider-demon somehow balls himself up small enough that he can lean against his shoulder.

Alastor shakes his head out he doesn’t know how much later, random gobs of yellow and orange floating in his vision as if he’s been dazzled by a spotlight. 

“Well,” he mutters. “That was certainly something. Could we aim next time for an option that doesn’t torch my retina?” 

There is no snarky answer, but there is a solid weight against his side, surprisingly heavy for how relatively small it is. 

His first, awful thought is, Oh, fuck, I’ve killed him - how am I going to explain that to Charlie? 

Then a faint snore muffles its way through Alastor’s sleeve, and Alastor groans internally, because this might arguably be worse. His battered sense of self has no protocol for the King of Hell having fallen asleep against his shoulder like a child up past his bedtime. 

Alastor supposes two dramatic healings in one night - especially a sleepless night filled first with worry, then with rage, then with horrible, anguished (ick) feelings about one’s ex-wife - are a lot even for an ancient, powerful being like Lucifer. It was also a night filled with socialization which, as far as the King of Hell is concerned, might be MORE draining (especially, Alastor can admit, if any of said socializing is with him). 

This is not a good development. 

“Honestly,” Alastor says quietly. “Must you vex me at every possible turn?” 

Clearly, Lucifer must. HIs soft breathing disturbs the mussed, buttermilk hair that’s fallen halfway across his face. Alastor finds himself fighting with the strange impulse (that he in no way follows through on, because he is not, in fact, that kind of psychopath) to brush it out of his face. 

A coal pops in the fireplace, and Alastor jumps guiltily, his heart rate probably spiking in the 200s, because of all the things he doesn’t need, Lilith catching sight of something like this is the clear front runner. He is not sure how the woman would react to his sitting on a couch with her unconscious husband and playing with his hair, but he imagines it would be the emotional equivalent of fire and brimstone. 

Even if Lilith cannot bear the sight of him, even if being around him wounds her with all of the things that he used to be and will never be again, Lucifer is hers in her mind, and Alastor is frankly standing a little too close to him for someone who wants to keep breathing. 

Fortunately, the fireplace remains a fireplace. She won’t come here, he tells himself in the tone of parents reassuring their children that the monsters in their closets can’t get them as long as the nightlight is on.

He has no idea if that is the truth, but he NEEDS it to be true. 

Alastor closes his eyes and lets his head thunk lightly against the back of the sofa. He wonders when the last time was that he had someone sleep on him (box-headed, betraying ex-roommates notwithstanding). Not since the war, surely, when they’d slept back to back or shoulder to shoulder in the trenches to keep from slumping over into the cold mud. That had been entirely practicality, of course - just a matter of not drowning in sludge or being walked-on by rats, and nothing at all born out of a want for reassuring warmth, for needing to hear a heartbeat to drown out the distant sound of shells or the faint weeping from the med station. 

He wonders why it is that men can never seem to seek that sort of comfort without coming up with an excuse for it first. 

He should get up. Move to a different piece of furniture. He should ease the other man down on the cushions and find his own spot. 

He will, in a minute. In just a minute. 

His arm has somehow settled over Lucifer’s shoulders because it was awkward, keeping his arm against his side that way. The silly thing sighs and settles an arm around his waist, which is another troubling behavior that Alastor is going to have to put a stop to. 

And he will. 

In just a minute. 

Chapter Text

Lucifer’s first thought, when he starts to wake up, is that he really needs to invest in some softer pillows. The one that he’s currently wrapped around is warm enough, but it feels a little bit like cuddling with a bag of pointy sticks.

He opens his eyes reluctantly to see, not the ridiculous canopy he keeps over his bed, but a bower of shimmering white and red feathers - when was the last time he slept with his wings out? He honestly can’t remember. Lily likes his wings well enough as a visual, but less so as a thing in her bed; he tends to flap when agitated, and no one wants a mouth full of feathers on top of morning cottonmouth. There’s also the danger of suffocating, and being too warm, and all told, it’s just better if he keeps them tucked away. 

“Mmh - sorry, Lil,” he murmurs, moving his wings a bit to see if he’s buried her in them. 

He is a little taken aback at the amount of red he sees. Red isn’t Lily’s favorite color, but it’s not unheard of for her to wear it to bed. He sits up slowly, blinking the sleep film away, trying to remember if it’s some special occasion he doesn’t….fuck, he never remembers things, maybe he really should get a planner or…

He parts the last of his flight feathers to get a better look. 

That isn’t Lily. That is… 

“AAH!” Lucifer shrieks involuntarily, scrambling backward, his wings flaring out like a startled chicken’s. 

Which, if he looks back on it, he can probably earmark as the exact moment that his morning went to Hell. 

As it turns out, screaming almost in the face of someone as hyper-vigilant as Alastor is not a great way to wake him up out of a dead sleep. The radio demon’s eyes snap open all black around the scleras, his antlers expanding like nightmare tree branches as every radio in the hotel starts blasting a bizarre mix of static feedback, tortured screams, and improbably enough, Heart and Soul. 

The distant screams from various other parties in the hotel, who are no doubt experiencing their OWN versions of a horrible wake-up, mix with Lucifer’s startled squawk as Alastor, half-jolting into a larger form, tries to scramble away from him. He claws his way up the back of the couch like a rabid squirrel up the side of a box. Unfortunately, Alastor’s rapidly-expanding body comes with rapidly-increasing weight, which flips the couch, launching Lucifer and all of his wings squarely back into him catapult-style. The two of them go end-over-end across the duck-littered floor to a chorus of tortured squeaks and a renewed boom of feedback. 

“WHO DARES?!” Alastor roars, all teeth and impossibly-sharp-limbs and he would probably be absolutely terrifying if not for the sudden sparkle of a purple bath-bomb duck as it explodes too near his hair. 

His now very-glittery antlers threaten to rend the wall paper as they ricochet off one of the walls. 

“WHOA, captain OVERREACTION can we TAKE IT DOWN a notch?!” Lucifer yells to be heard over the static and the bath-toy squeaks. He irritably bats a voodoo symbol that comes too close to his face. 

“DAD!” The door slams open, and that’s a whole new LEVEL of nope, as Alastor’s oversized, too-toothy head snaps in the direction of the door like a viper, and Lucifer knows a fight-or-flight response when he sees one, oh, SHIT. “Dad, are you…” 

“Fine, sweetie, back away slowly!” He singsongs, tackling Alastor from the side, as the two of them go tumbling again in a riot of impossibly-stretched limbs, spiky antlers, and flailing wings.

“Just a misunderstanding!” he continues as they bounce off the side of the oversized bed next, toppling the nightstand in their wake, and adding the shrill blare of an old-school wind-up alarm clock that has been jolted into vengeful wakefulness to the already-deafening din. . 

“What the fuck?!” his daughter exclaims - fortunately still from the doorway. Lucifer wants her nowhere near Alastor until the latter is a lot less toothy and a lot more rationally aware of where he is.  

“Just some morning calisthenics, honey! Nothing to worry about!” Lucifer barely dodges a snap of the teeth and his back hits the side of the bed with enough force that the canopy slides right off its rack and onto both of them. If he thought Alastor was hard to hold onto before, the sudden confinement of the heavy fabric REALLY sets him off - it makes the whole situation a bit more reminiscent of trying to contain a wild raccoon in a blanket than Lucifer is entirely comfortable with. 

"Cabrón hijo de perra what even IS this?!” 

Lucifer can’t SEE the angelic spear that his (hopefully) future daughter-in-law is brandishing, as he is currently battling his way through the voodoo-green chaotic underside of a Victorian canopy gone eldrich horror tent, but he can FEEL it like coming rain in arthritic bones - he can feel it in the answering ache in his back and wings. 

“Fuckin’ Hell, it’s like armageddon on animal planet in here!” 

“Ha! Pay up - they’re finally tryin’ to kill each other!” 

Lucifer manages, by main determination, to get a solid grip on one of Alastor’s arms and force it up behind his back, narrowly dodging another snap of the teeth as he pushes him to the floor - because yeah, he could smack the guy down if he really felt like flexing, but the memory’s too fresh of smelling Alastor’s burned skin as he gripped his wrists, and…okay. 

If you squint, this whole debacle might KIND of be Lucifer’s fault again. 

“Yeah, if you all could keep GENERATING MORE CHAOS, that would be REALLY helpful!” he bellows through the fabric. 

“EVERYBODY OUT, fuckin’ CHRIST, give ‘em some space!” 

He can hear the general thumping and bludgeoning of Husk forcing them all back out the door and slamming it behind him. No bones about it, if Charlie isn’t paying that guy yet, they need to start, and he needs a raise. 

Flapping furiously with his upper set of wings, Lucifer manages to dislodge the canopy so that Alastor can see, even as he puts his full back into keeping him pinned to the ground. “Easy, bellhop, it’s way too early to try killing me - you don’t need that kind of disappointment before breakfast.” 

The voodoo symbols and greenness, which had been strobing around the room like the world’s least-fun disco lights, peter out abruptly, even as the radios in the hotel belatedly stop screaming. The body underneath him elastic-snaps back into a person shape (and isn’t that a feeling), and then Alastor is giving him a baleful glare over one shoulder. 

“What. The actual fuck. Is wrong with you?” He says in his crisp trans-atlantic annunciation. 

Alastor’s bangs, still aggressively glittered purple, have flopped into his face. He is breathing hard like a horse run off its feet, and Lucifer has to resist the urge to give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder or rub to the back or something, as he just suspects that will not. End. well. 

“That’s not a list we have time for,” he says. “You done trying to eat me?” 

“That is yet to be determined,” Alastor says with an impressive amount of dignity for a very glittery man being pinned face down in a pile of scattered toy ducks, with a rogue alarm clock still tottering and weaving around them, bumping repeatedly into his side. 

It occurs to Lucifer that Alastor should, by this point, be loudly demanding that he get off him, that he let him up, that he unhand him or something equally dramatic - but it seems that Alastor doesn’t do that. He didn’t do it in the alley. He isn’t doing it here. His default, when he realizes that he can’t fight his way out of a situation, seems to be hateful, resentful acceptance. 

Lucifer is willing to admit that there is a great deal he doesn’t understand about human souls, but he understands this. This is what happens to people when they have made demands like that in the past only to have them mockingly sing-songed back in their faces or ignored. 

Lucifer experienced something very similar a long, long time ago, and to say he’s not over it would be an understatement.  

He eases up the pressure on the other man’s arm so that his fingertips are no longer brushing up between his shoulder blades. “Can it at least wait until after coffee?” he ventures, keeping his voice steady in spite of all the reasons it doesn’t want to be steady. “You owe me coffee.” 

And Alastor….sighs into the floor. “I do owe you coffee,” he concedes. 

Very carefully, Lucifer removes his knee from where it had been between Alastor’s legs and takes the rest of his weight off him - and when he is not immediately bitten, knee walks a few feet away to flop onto his back. 

“That’s more exercise than I usually want in the morning,” he says. 

“You started it,” Alastor says loftily, still facedown in the canopy. 

“Yep. And I finished it, too.” 

Alastor lifts his head enough to glare at him more directly - then a very odd expression passes over the other man’s face that fills Lucifer with dread. No one should look that GLEEFUL after a wake-up that DISMAL. 

“What?” He asks warily. 

“Why sire, your wings look especially lovely today.” 

Lucifer blinks. If there’s a backhanded compliment OR a veiled insult in there, he hasn’t caught it. “....Thanks,” he ventures warily. 

“Your hair, as well. It’s a bold choice, but it suits you.” 

“Bold…choice?” Lucifer looks over at one of his wings and there it is, the herpes of decorations - streaks of shimmery pink glitter through the feathers, and his hair has almost certainly suffered the same fate. 

“Charlie will be so pleased. It’s her favorite color, you know.” 

Blindly, Lucifer reaches out to his side until he finds one of the scattered throw pillows. He pulls it over his face and, for the second time in twelve hours, screams into it to the sound of a sinner’s borderline hysterical laughter. 

Charlie has not bitten her nails since she was a teenager. 

She is very afraid she is going to start it up again. 

“Easy, toots,” Angel breezes from where he’s lounging at one of the bar stools. “It’s all quiet up there now.” 

“Which either means they’ve reached a truce, or one of them is dead,” Vaggie mutters. SHE has not put her spear away - but Charlie would have expected nothing less. Every time Alastor has one of his giant-scary episodes, Vaggie winds up clutching that thing to her chest for a little longer. 

That is because Vaggie is afraid of Alastor. She just hasn’t realized it yet.  

It makes sense if you think about it. Vaggie spent most of her life in heaven believing that there was nothing in hell that could really harm her. Then she had her wings pulled off and her grace stripped. Once she healed, She had to face the uncomfortable realization that there were creatures in Hell capable of ripping her into confetti if they were so inclined. 

Alastor is the first of those beings that she ever met up close and personal. He breezed right through the front door and looked down at her spear and moved it aside with an index finger and a radio-feedback chuckle. 

Charlie thinks that Vaggie would probably feel a lot better if she could admit that to herself instead of burying it under aggression, but even Charlie can recognize that Vaggie is nowhere near ready to have that conversation, and Alastor….well, Alastor already knows. 

Husker just snorts. He’s behind the bar, having de-bristled some after herding the lot of them down the stairs. “It’s not a thing. The boss is always a little on the tetchy side when he wakes up, that’s all.” 

“Tetchy? TETCHY? We must have different dictionaries, Husk, because my definition of TETCHY isn’t two stories tall and TRYING TO EAT CHARLIE’S DAD!!” 

“I’m not surprised,” Charlie says quietly. “He had a bad night. I AM a little curious about what he was doing in dad’s room this early, but -” 

“Yeah,” Husk says in a tone that Charlie can’t quite place. “I was wonderin’ that myself.” 

As if on cue, Charlie hears footsteps on the stairs and looks up to see….

She involuntarily claps both hands over her mouth. Even she is not sure if it’s to stifle a giggle or a gasp of unadulterated horror. 

Her dad and Alastor are coming down the stairs - Alastor having detoured to get dressed, from the look of it. He’s foregone the coat, but he’s buttoning up his vest as he descends the stairs. Lucifer is still wearing pajamas and disastrous bedhead, all six of his wings trailing behind him in a state of puffy aggravation - but that isn’t what catches Charlie’s eye. 

It’s the glitter. 

Alastor’s cherry-red hair has a definite purple sparkle to it. Even his antlers look like they’ve been glue-dipped in glitter paint like a deer ornament, and her dad….her dad is wearing both the most sour expression in Hell and more bubblegum-pink glitter than a seven-year-old’s homemade birthday invitation. 

“Holy fuck, you two look like you got keelhauled behind a Mardis Gras float,” Angel says with the childlike glee of a man who never met a survival instinct he couldn’t ignore.  

“Why, as a subject matter expert on Mardis Gras,” Alastor says, tying his bow tie with a flourish, “....you are exactly right!” He executes a graceful twirl at the base of the stairs, arms spread out. “I think it rather livens up the parlor, don’t you?” 

Lucifer’s left eye twitches. Twice. 

“Um,” Is all Charlie manages. She looks from Alastor to her father and back again. She keeps her hands over her mouth, because she can feel the grin starting to spread. 

Vaggie drags her non-spear-wielding hand down her face. “Do either of you assholes want to explain what all that was about? Half our new guests are hiding under their damn beds, and I think my ears are still bleeding.” 

“Oh, just a silly misunderstanding,” Alastor breezes, waving the question off. “We startled each other, no harm done.” 

“Gee, wonder how that happened,” Husk muses in a tone of one who is in no way wondering how that happened, and Charlie is torn between wanting him to share with the class and wanting him to drop it as quickly as possible, because - 

Because this is better than she was expecting last night. Fuck, she was sure last night BROKE something fundamental between her dad and Alastor. She’d accepted a while ago that they were probably not going to be fast friends any time soon, but last night - 

Husk puts a garnish on a glass and slides it down the bar, where Alastor catches it with the ease of many repetitions. “You’re a saint, Husker,” he says, taking a long drink from the straw.

“Is that a bloody Mary?” Vaggie accuses. 

“It is! Well spotted, you.” Alastor takes another long, weaponized sip.

“It is seven in the morning” Vaggie says. “How are even you drinking this early?” 

“Practice, my dear! DECADES of practice.” 

“Hey, can I get one of those?” Lucifer asks. 

“Bar’s closed,” Husker deapans, folding his arms. 

Lucifer’s eye twitches again. He wordlessly gestures to Angel, who is somehow holding a cosmo. Husk smirks unrepentantly, and yeah, Charlie probably needs to figure out what’s up with that at some point. Right now, she’s too busy being relieved that her dad and Al can be in the same room without voodoo death and angelic light - or, possibly worse, a lot of failure to make eye contact and shuffling of feet and cataloging of exits. 

“So, coffee?” Alastor suggests, moving toward the kitchen with his trademark sashay. “We will probably need some sort of caffeinated fortification to start untangling the last 24 hours or so.” 

“Yup, and there’s my cue to make myself scarce,” Angel says, shotting the rest of his cosmo. “Not that I wouldn’t love to bore myself to tears listenin’ to you guys doing your debrief-in-the-not-at-all-fun-way, but the less I know, the better. Besides, I got work in a few hours.” 

Charlie feels the familiar gut-punch of it, as Angel walks away. He isn’t wrong. He belongs to one of the people who was possibly involved in trying to…to kill her and Vaggie? Charlie isn’t even sure what the endgame was, but whatever the case, if Angel is in that tower and they ask him questions, he will have to answer. 

That might actually be the least invasive thing that would be asked of him today, and that - fuck, there HAS to be something that Charlie can do about that without making it worse. There has to be. 

“You coming, babe?” Vaggie asks. 

“Yeah,” Charlie says. “Yeah, let’s do this.” 

By the time they have everyone settled in the conference room they’ve commandeered for this purpose, Lucifer is a little concerned that the twitch in his left eye might be permanent. Between Alastor’s weaponized alcoholism, Vaggie’s meticulous setup of holy-fuck how are they still using dry erase boards here, Husker’s staring at him as if he want to set him on fire, Nifty’s occasional manic cackles and offers to make him “even prettier” while brandishing dead bugs as if they’re crown jewels…

There are two things making this remotely bearable. The first is that Alastor held true to the informal agreement (not a deal!) that they made and provided him with coffee. That he did so with a flourish and a bow unfortunately increased the intensity of the way that Husk was glaring at him to the near ignition levels and nope, Lucifer isn’t touching that this morning, not with a ten foot pole. Whatever the fuck is up with those two, it’s not his business. 

The other is the way that Charlie is visibly trying not to laugh out loud at the two of them being so ingloriously covered in glitter, which - okay, yeah, Lucifer is still not thrilled about, but he has better sense than to try to magic away something as tenacious as glitter before caffeine.

“Let’s run it from the top,” Vaggie says. She judiciously uncaps a dry erase marker and waves it at Alastor. “The first event is you getting an invitation to Cannibal Town. Right?” 

“Depending on how far back we’re going, yes,” Alastor says. 

“So that Rosie could tell you about someone wanting to hurt Charlie?” 

“Nonsense, dear. It was set up so that Rosie could make sure I was nowhere near Charlie. She just used it as an opportunity to tip me off.“

Vaggie stops writing mid-word and stares over her shoulder at Alastor. 

“I usually make it my business to be in the area whenever you two are providing people with kindling and cigarette paper….I mean, fliers. It’s hard to be properly entertained if you can’t see the show, after all.” 

“We never see you,” Vaggie points out. 

Alastor smirks into his glass. “Hmmm,” he says. “Then you must be REALLY bad at this. Worse than I thought.” 

Of course, Vaggie bristles. And Lucifer isn’t sure whether he wants more to throw his coffee cup at the guy or stand up on his chair and yell BULLSHIT at the top of his lungs, because fucking Hell, he’s managed to deflect them right past it, hasn’t he? 

Because Satan FORBID anybody acknowledge the damning truth under all that snark: that Mr. Radio Demon lurks around in the shadows when his daughter is out distributing fliers in Hell in case she NEEDS him. 

“ANYWAY,” Vaggie continues, having visibly counted to ten. “That means that Rosie would know who set this up.” 

Alastor shrugs. “Overstatement, darling. She would have one point of contact for one of the several people potentially involved,” he says. “Not that she’ll give it to us.”

“Fuck, I don’t even know what to do with that,” Vaggie mutters, finally just writing Alastor goes to Cannibal Town at the top of the whiteboard. “Next thing were the sinners that Charlie and I ran into. Were they somebody’s guys, or were they brainwashed?” 

“Or both,” Alastor suggests. He takes a maddeningly audible sip of his bloody mary. “As they are all very conveniently dead, there’s no way to know, now is there?” 

Lucifer’s eye twitches again. HE takes a bracing (and equally loud) sip of his coffee. 

“They had angelic weapons,” Vaggie continues doggedly,”not to mention the actual angelic shrapnel bomb one of the fuckers had inside him. Do we know where they got them? If we can trace the weapons, we can figure out who they bought from..” 

“I don’t know right offhand where the arms came from, but I can hazard some guesses,” Alastor says. Then he pulls a pistol out from who knows where and, with no reaction whatsoever to the fact that half of the people in the conference room nearly jump out of their skin, begins to disassemble it with the practiced skill of someone who has broken down a LOT of guns. 

Lucifer watches his cherry red fingers expertly remove the cylinder from the barrel, and the urge to throw something at him is back. 

“The base model is a Carmine weapon,” Alastor says. “Obviously. The bullets, though, those were something else again. Unmarked, and…unique, I believe.” 

“How long have you had that on you?” Lucifer asks. His voice comes out pretty bland, so he’s not sure what causes everyone in the parlor to give him all of their wary attention.  

“Since I lifted it from one of Vagatha’s assailants,” Alastor says. He takes another prim sip of his drink. 

“Are there any BULLETS left in it?” Lucifer asks. 

“Just the one.”  

“DID YOU HAVE THAT ON YOU WHEN I NEARLY KILLED YOU?!” Yelling isn’t usually his thing - so much so that Nifty squeaks and claps her hands together with glee, and Charlie halfway startles off one of the other couches. 

Alastor smirks into his drink. “Maybe.” 

“You FUCKING idiot!” 

“Now don’t go thinking I like you, your majesty. In the first place, you weren’t going to kill me. In the second, I’m saving it for a rainy day. Besides, you’re hardly an exorcist. I didn’t know what it might do.” 

Lucifer also doesn’t know what an angelic hollowpoint would do to his system - he likes to think he would have seen it, would have been able to stop it in the air, or barring that, that it would have just stung a little, but even he isn’t THAt filled with hubris, especially - 

There is something really wrong with that bullet. 

“Can I see that?” he asks. 

Alastor smirks and holds the bullet up between his second and third finger. “I don’t know, can you? Does the King of Hell need bifocals?” 

Lucifer closes his eyes and inhales slowly. 

“Al,” Charlie chides gently. 

“Fine, but he should learn to speak more precisely. He’s royalty, after all.” 

Alastor passes it over to him. As soon as the bullet makes contact with Lucifer’s skin, it begins to glow faintly - at first, a gentle flicker like a firefly, but then brighter, brighter…

Lucifer drops the bullet back onto the coffee table with an audible clatter, and it’s all he can do to not hiss like an aggravated goose as the phantom pains start up his back. His wings spasm reflexively, which has the unfortunate side effect of scattering pink glitter across the back of the couch and onto Husker, who just looks pained, and Nifty, who giggles in the unhinged way that only Nifty does. 

“Dad?” Charlie asks, wide-eyed. 

“Fine, honey,” he says. “But that - that’s new.” 

Alastor’s eyes glitter. “Is it now? That’s good to know.” 

“What’s new, sir?” Vaggie asks. 

“That’s just angelic steel. They’ve…I don’t know, refined it somehow.” 

They’ve refined it in a way that is disturbingly reminiscent of flaming sword in terms of purity. How did they manage that? 

“Have they? Well, give us sinners this - we are INDUSTRIOUS,” Alastor chirps. And he picks that bullet back up off the coffee table, pops it back in the cylinder, and - 

“Hey,” Vaggie says, “Who says you get to keep that?” 

“I do,” Alastor says. “One, I’m the best shot in the room by a comfortable margin.” 

“Which in NO way makes me feel better about you having a -” 

“Two,” he says, “it has become increasingly evident to me that I am the only person we know who EVER has the FAINTEST grasp of what’s going on.” 

“He should keep it, Vaggie,” Charlie says quietly. 

Vaggie huffs, but she deflates quickly enough. “Fine,” she says. “Fuck, I know I’m gonna regret this.” 

She shakes her wings out (and Lucifer notices with a little stab of regret that they are now sporting their own faint sheen of glitter right along with her hair, Christ on a stick, it’s SPREADING) and continues. “So, Carmilla Carmine manufactured the gun. That seems like a good place to start. If she’ll tell us anything she can about -” 

“You are, of course, joking,” Alastor says. 

“Al, if Miss Carmine can tell us - “ 

And for the first time Lucifer’s seen Alastor, he seems genuinely VEXED. “You want to have a private meeting, I assume?” 

“Well - yeah, that’s what I did last time,” Vaggie says. 

“Now, I wasn’t there - but I’m going to assume she locked the doors and threatened to shut you up permanently?” Alastor asks, sugar-sweet. 

“Well, yeah,” Vaggie says.

“Darling, I cannot believe I have to say this, but you cannot just arrange a meeting with someone who may have tried to have you killed a few days prior without a VERY solid exit strategy in case she was involved. I promise you, if she was, then you won’t leave that meeting alive.”

Charlie’s brow creases. “We have no way of knowing that Miss Carmine was involved,” She says slowly. “She DID help us before. She taught Vaggie how to kill exorcists.” 

And now Alastor is laughing. It isn’t an especially NICE laugh - Lucifer would most categorize it as an oh-fuck-I’m-surrounded-by-idiots-and-we’re-all-going-to-DIE  laugh, which, hey, more than a little insulting.

“Care to share with the class, Albert?” Lucifer says. 

“Taught you to kill exorcists! Of course she did!” Alastor dabs at the corner of his eye with a handkerchief. “When the entire reason she was hiding it in the first place was out of a desire NOT to draw the wrath of Heaven down on her insipid little family! HA! You lot being able to murder exorcist angels neatly drew their attention away from her entirely, now didn’t it? No investigation necessary. Fuck, do you think I would have sent you to her if I hadn’t KNOWN she’d be acting in her own best interest?” 

Vaggie takes a moment to go over that new information - and to her credit, the girl is quick enough that assimilating the new facts, mentally vetting them and finding them valid, takes only a few seconds. “FUCK,” she says with feeling, “If what we’re doing here makes Heaven MORE likely to attack us, it’s no longer in her best….okay, shitlord, you might have something there. There’s nobody that lady wouldn’t kill if she thought they were a threat to her daughters.”  

She drags both her hands down her face. 

“So - you think Carmilla was a part of what happened last night?” Charlie asks. 

“I have no reason not to think so,” Alastor says. 

“Do you have any reason TO think so?” 

“Outside of the obvious fears of heavenly retribution, her weapons being on scene, and the fact that she has never liked me? No.” 

“But SOMEONE else was involved?” 

“That’s what Vox said,” Charlie says. 

“Unless he was lying,” Alastor points out cheerfully. “There’s always that possibility.”

“I could always go ask him,” Lucifer says, “since he’s the only one we know for sure was in on this.” 

And by ask him, he absolutely means reduce him, his ugly-ass eyesore of a tower, and anyone standing too close to him to a pile of ash. 

For once, everyone gets the subtext - and they are all looking at him with varying degrees of wariness, except for Alastor, who actually looks….kind of alarmed. 

“Don’t you dare,” is what he says out loud. 

“The Hell do you mean ‘don’t you dare’?” Lucifer asks. 

“Because it’s too damned easy,” Alastor says. 

“Yeah, Alice - one of the benefits of angelic power is that sometimes shit gets to be easy.” 

“Not this,” Alastor says. 

“You almost sound like you’re worried about the guy, Al,” Lucifer says. “Is there some reason you DON’T want me fixing it so he fits in an ash tray?” and okay, judging from the round table of reactions, he maybe shouldn’t have put it like that, because Husker audibly snarls and Charlie flinches and Alastor looks…

Well, he looks like he’s about to go for the jugular. 

“Ask yourself this question, your majesty,” Alastor says with the perfect inflection to make it sound like you fucking asshole. “How did they find out about that ridiculous snake man getting into heaven?” 

Lucifer blinks. Because that is an excellent question. 

“Where are they getting this much divine material? Angelic steel has NEVER been easy to come by, and I’m no expert, but the amount of divinity I feel in these rounds lately seems….excessive.” 

“You think Heaven is backdoor dealing with overlords,” Lucifer says. 

“I am damned near sure of it. I just don’t know the contact point, and I regrettably lack a working knowledge of Heaven’s end of the bureaucracy. But I assume there are people up there with the knowledge of how to harm even you?” 

That last bit is saccharine-sweet and okay, Lucifer can concede he started this but still - what a dick. 

“If they ARE back-dealing with heaven, then I can’t see how squashing a gnat like Vox is going to hurt us any. One more obnoxious bastard out of play.” 

Alastor slams his glass down on the table so hard that the handful of pencils and pens briefly seem to levitate. “Of course you don’t! You ARE an angel, after all.”  Then he whirls on Vaggie. “So! Vagatha -” 

“Not my name - “ 

“When Miss Carmine was so graciously teaching you to kill angels - what did she say?” 

“To use angelic steel. Obviously.” 

Alastor’s candy-red eyes glitter knowingly. “What else?” 

And then Vaggie looks - well, that’s an odd look on her face. Lucifer thinks it can best be described as “dawning worry.” 

“Angels fight like they’re unafraid of harm. They leave themselves open with every swing. They…fight with reckless abandon. And this is what you’ll take advantage of.”

“As I thought,” Alastor says. Then he rounds on Lucifer again. “Just because I call that man an imbecile every day and twice on Sundays doesn’t mean he IS one. He would not risk this if he didn’t think he had something on hand to deal with you, and I’m not willing to gamble on his being wrong.”  

“Your concern is touching and all, Alberta,” Lucifer says dryly. “But I’m hardly an exorcist, and -” 

“We can’t afford to lose you,” Alastor says flatly. 

The eyeroll is reflexive, maybe a little bit of a defense mechanism, geeze, how long has it been since someone CALLED him on risk-taking and - “Fucking please, the day I let a cretin like BOX - “ 

“MY PRESENCE is no longer enough to protect this place,” Alastor says in the same chipper radio tone he uses to announce the weather. “They’re more afraid of Heaven OR Vox than they are of me - which is stupid of them, but there it is. With you gone, we frankly won’t last long. Make no mistake, watching you reduce that hack to ashes is on my bucket list, but we have to be smart about this.” 

It’s objectively fascinating to see the range of different reactions to Alastor’s candid statement. Vaggie looks alarmed, no way around that. Charlie’s gone all wibble-eyed (so that’s what that expression is - Lucifer has the same one, and he’s had it described to him before, but this is his first time SEEING it). 

Husker has a look on his face like Alastor just announced he has terminal cancer. 

“Fine, bellhop,” Lucifer says. “We’ll do it your way for now, but don’t expect me to wait long. What do YOU suggest?” 

“I still have a few channels open,” Alastor says. “Let me check them. A tower that big, there are always going to be SOME leaks.” 

“A few days,” Lucifer says. 

“A week.” Alastor says back. Because he’s THAT kind of guy, isn’t he. 

“Five business days,” Lucifer says, just to be a pain in the ass. 

“Done.” 

Angel is on his way out of the tower at the end of his shift when Val, in an increasingly-rare moment of camaraderie, slings one of his middle sets of arms around his shoulders. “Oh, Angie baby. Don’t run off yet. It’s been forever since we got a chance to catch up.” 

Go fuck yourself, Angel wants to say - but he can feel the subtle tug of pressure around his neck and sighs instead. “Sure, Val,” he says. “Could use a fuckin’ drink after that last scene.” 

“Aw, you looked beautiful, Ange,” Val says. 

“Yeah, but that Rocky guy is dumb as a box of rocks - seriously, Val. He had two lines. TWO. And one of ‘em was just,” Angel makes finger quotes, “Moans excessively.” 

Val snorts. “Hey, it’s so hard to find good talent in this town. You know how it is.” 

They aren’t going to Val’s office. 

Angel resists the urge to dig his heels in as Val pulls him onto the elevator, fighting down the cornered animal panic as they go up floor by floor. 

And then Val leads him through the ornate doors into Vox’s office. Angel has never been here before, has never seen it, but fuck if the guy doesn’t redefine grandstanding, from the massive desk to the conference table to the wrap-around aquarium with glowing, grinning sharks drifting by. 

“Uh, Val - what is -” 

“Relax, baby,” Val purrs. “Just a drink with management - hey, you’re moving up in the world!” 

That’s when Angel catches sight of Vox- no coat, no vest, just his shirt sleeves. Angel can very clearly see the outline of a bandage through the fabric. 

Vox grins at him the way he grins at newscasters. He throws his arms out. “Angel Dust! Just the demon I wanted to see.”

Angel is struck, briefly, but just how much the guy reminds him of Alastor. The showy way of talking, the creepy intensity - even the way they gesture with their drinks.  

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…

Angel puts on his best seductive rasp. “Hey, Val - you didn’t tell me it was a private show. I’d have worn somethin’ a little nicer.” 

When in doubt, distract and deflect. 

Unfortunately, Vox just smirks. “No, no, nothing that formal.” He sits down on the edge of his own desk and takes a long sip from his amber-colored glass, rattling the ice cubes around absently. 

He is looking at Angel in the exact way you look at a bug you’re planning to squish.  

“Uh, it’s normally cash up front, then,” Angel says. 

Val puts a hand on either of his shoulders and shoves him down into the office chair that sits in front of Vox’s desk. 

“I just want to talk,” Vox says. He hooks a foot in the armrest of the chair Angel is sitting in. “Is that so strange? I can’t want to have a conversation with one of Vee industries biggest earners?” He pulls Angel’s chair forward with his foot until Angel’s knees konk against the side of the desk. 

“Don’t damage him,” Val says. He’s still standing directly behind the chair, and his hands on either of Angel’s shoulders are pinning him to the seat. 

“Well, let’s hope I don’t have to.” Vox says. He sounds almost jovial. “I mean, Angel - you’re a reasonable guy, aren’t you?” 

Angel can feel the sweat starting to bead under his collar. “Uh, that depends -” 

“That’s great. See, there’s something I need you to do for me.” 

“I don’t suppose it’s got anything to do with the, uh, radio demon?” Angel ventures. “You want me to spy on him or somethin’?” 

Not that he WOULD, exactly, but sometimes playing dumb and agreeing to shit will get you out the door, and Angel is ALL about that life right now. 

Vox laughs. “Wow, you sound so precious about it. What, you think you owe that smiling freak anything? Take it from me, he’s using you, Angie. You and everybody AT that silly hotel - I just don’t know how yet.” 

Angel grips the arm rests, wondering if Vox can hear his heart thudding from where he’s sitting, if Val can feel it through his hands. 

“He’s not your buddy, Angel. I dunno what kind of Kum-ba-ya  shit those hotel bitches have been putting in your kool-aide, but -” Vox is unbuttoning his shirt. 

Val, predictably, wolf-whistles. “You sure you don’t want to take him for a drive first, papito?”

“Can it, Val, you know I don’t do pay-per-view.” 

“Aw, but you know I live in hope.” 

Angel can see it now as Vox’s shirt parts - the electric blue blood on the bandage, the spiderwebs of veins and bruising, the clear evidence of a bullet wound. 

“I used to be his friend, you know,” Vox says, all easy conciliation and it makes Angel’s skin crawl. “Look what he did to me.” 

“Lot of that goin’ around, ain’t there?” Angel grits out, and then immediately curses himself. 

“Right, you’re going to be difficult about this,” Vox sighs. 

“Nah, boss-man I’m just….like this. So you, uh - you want to make some kind of deal?” Angel ventures. 

“Suppose you could get your soul back?” Vox asks. 

And the bottom drops out of Angel’s world. Because…fuck, of all the awful things he had expected from the minute he realized where he was going…this might be the worst. 

Could he do that? Could he do that to Charlie, to Vaggie, to the people who have been so good to him, just to undo his own fuck-up? 

Could he do that so that he never again has to - 

He feels tears stinging the corners of his eyes and angrily blinks them away. “Are you offering?” Angel asks, all fake nonchalance. 

Vox just laughs. “Fuck, no, I just wanted to see if you’d take it.” 

This motherfucker, Angel thinks. Out loud, he says, “Then what kinda deal ARE you offering, boss-man?” 

Vox smiles. He shifts his foot onto the seat of Angel’s chair, brings him even closer. “Oh, Angel. I’m way past the deal-making phase in my life.” 

He puts a hand on either of the armrests, caging him in. “See the problem with DEALS is that, in theory, I’m supposed to give you something.” 

Angel starts to scrabble backward, but he feels Val’s hands on either side of his head. “Look into his eyes, there’s a good boy,” He purrs. 

“This way - you’ll just do whatever the Hell I ask you to for free.” 

Chapter Text

The streets of Pentagram City are pitching back and forth like the deck of a ship, and Angel is frankly not wearing the proper footwear to navigate that kind of bullshit. Val had him wearing the pink boots today, and part of what makes them great for dancing is the lack of tread - good for spins and slides, not so great for whatever slow-motion earthquake assholery has taken over Penegram city right now. 

He stumbles over fuck-knows-what, catching a lamppost with two sets of arm for balance. It’s embarrassing how little it helps, and he swears, the lights are spinning - like his own private, shitty carnival. Even more fucked up, the Pentagram City crowds seem to be weathering their newly-mobile landscape with no stumbles, looking at him as they go by like HE’s the fuckin’ weirdo for needing to grab a mast in the storm. 

There’s something really familiar about those looks, actually. 

They remind him of the look on his brother’s face when he found his stash for the third….fourth time after he was supposed to quit? That mix between pity and disgust and - 

Fuck. He’s high. The realization settles into his gut like a rock hitting the bottom of a sack. 

He’s REALLY high. Not the fun kind where you laugh with your friends and forget about shit. The scary kind where you wake up in a gutter somewhere if you’re lucky, where you vomit in the cab on the way home if any of ‘em will even STOP for you. 

Objectively. It’s been a WHILE since he was this fucked up - especially since…

Since he’s been clean, really clean, for almost - 

But it always ends up like this, doesn’t it? He has the best fuckin’ intentions, but it’s like GRAVITY, like he does the work for weeks, and then he just BLINKS or somethin’ and - 

This isn’t the time to think about that. This is….he isn’t safe here. He needs to get home, but…fuck, it’s like he’s never seen this street before. The signs have all gotten switched around. 

He needs….fuck it all, he needs someone to come get him. 

Fuckin HELL, Anthony, how many goddamn times do we have to DO this? 

Angel clenches his eyes and wills his brother to shut up. He’s not even HERE, he’s - he’s somewhere else, anywhere else that doesn’t involve Angel. He fumbles in the pocket of his coat for his phone, breathes out a shaky “thank fuck,” when he finds it. 

Still clinging to the lamp post for dear life, he thumb-swipes the screen into wakefulness, squints at his contacts….and stills. 

There are little photos by the names. 

Charlie’s face, beaming and hopeful, stares up at him from his screen, and his sister’s face dances behind his eyelids, her eyes puffy as she shakes him back into consciousness, as she screams, Anthony, tell me, tell me what you took! ANTHONY! 

He bites his lip and nearly drops his fucking phone. 

He can see it already. He can hear it. The disappointment, and then maybe after that, the part where they - where they just accept he’s LIKE this. The part where they give up. 

Fuck, he can’t. He can’t. This isn’t his first bad trip. He can just…he can handle this. Sure, and none of them is gonna be fooled whenever he rolls up to the hotel later tomorrow or the next day, but maybe he can spare them this part, the part where he’s still got fresh holes in his arm, or the part right after, when the shakes - 

Maybe they won’t see how MUCH a disaster he is. Maybe he can even play it off as something he did because he felt like it, maybe…

Salutations, sinners! 

“Smiles?” Angel murmurs. He looks around - because the ghosts of his family and past failures, that’s familiar enough territory for bad trips, but what’s Smiles’s voice doing in his hallucinations? 

And it’s another dismal day for the stock market, folks! Why, I haven’t seen numbers this bad since ‘1929! If you own stock in Marmon industries, Voxtech, or I.M.P, those values have bottomed out so fast that they’ve developed their own GRAVITY! 

Angel stumbles forward, pitchy sidewalk be damned. Someone bumps into him and moves on, cursing, but he resolutely keeps staggering until he catches himself against a display window. 

There is a small, tombstone radio merrily blaring away. 

Traffic report - no jams to speak of, unless you’re looking at an elevator to a ledge, in which case there’s a bit of a backup…BUT if you see anything horrific, feel free to call it in so that I can FAIL to announce it! The number is…

Fumbling his phone twice, Angel types in the number. 

Alastor blinks as the call-in light flashes in his radio tower. 

How bizarre. No one EVER calls in. A quick glance assures him that his mic is no longer live, and then he flicks the switch. “Hello, caller number 1! How can I help you this hellish evening?” 

The voice that comes through the receiver is barely a croak. “Smiles? Hey, am I on air?” 

Alastor blinks. “No. Did you want to be?” 

He hears a very muffled, “Oh thank fuck,” and the distinctive sound of someone sliding down a wall and into some very clattery trash. “I….heh. I know what I’m asking. WHO I’m askin’. But I need a favor.” 

Alastor blinks again. He looks down at the switch by his fingers and for some odd reason, has to resist the urge to flick it off. “I’m listening, my good fellow.” 

“I….Val made me…” Angel clears his throat, sounding wrecked. “He gave me somethin’. I dunno what it was, but I’m pretty fucked up, and…and I need someone to come get me.” 

Alastor feels his ears twitch. “With the understanding that you are not currently in your right mind, assuming that you ever are - there are plenty of people at this hotel who would come get you for free. Why would you call me?” 

Angel’s voice becomes smaller. “Because I don’t - they can’t…,” he takes a shaky breath, and then his voice is muffled. Alastor can picture him speaking into his own folded arms. “Does it matter? I know what I’m offerin’ - ain’t that good enough for ya?” 

Ah - that, Alastor understands. He remembers well the long sleeves in the summer, remembers hiding the body of the raccoon he’d beaten into a pulp with a ball bat from his mother, who would have, for reasons Alastor still does not understand, cried and held him and wondered what she’d done wrong. 

He understands the impulse to protect others from what you are. 

He also understands that the odds are better than even of this being another trap. He sets his elbows on the counter and briefly digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. If it IS a trap, he wonders if Angel knows, or if he’s just the strung-out, unfortunate bait - wonders if he should be more despairing at the man’s obliviousness or impressed that, if he does know, he chose to call Alastor over any other potential innocent bystanders. “Well,” he says, “You know I never turn down a chance to collect a favor. Where are you, chum?” 

“I…” He can hear stifled tears in the other man’s voice before he swallows them. “I dunno.”

Ah, this brings back memories. Alastor survived the service, which means that he also survived the aftermath - a dearth of unemployed, traumatized former soldiers with heaps of undiagnosed PTSD and vanishingly poor coping mechanisms. 

“Tell me what you see,” he urges. 

“Uh….my shoes?” 

“Keep going. Any shops, signposts - especially ugly statues that stand out?” 

“There’s, uh….a green arrow sign next to a neon martini glass? And uh…there’s a car in the road that’s on fire?” 

“Good enough,” Alastor says. “Stay right where you are. It’ll just be a minute.” 

Alastor flicks the switch with his left hand. He still has the heel of his right hand pressing into an eye. 

Unbidden, he hears Charlie’s voice. You don’t have to fight EVERY DEMON IN HELL all BY YOURSELF just because they ASK!

In this case, though, he thinks he does. He has some idea of what he’ll find when he goes out there, and… 

And he handles this sort of thing himself. He always has. He has no plans on changing that any time soon. 

He switches the feed to the pre-recorded show and heads down the stairs. 

Convincing Charlie to lend him the limo (and her remaining little dragon creature to drive it) was a surprisingly easy feat. The poor girl still feels bad about last night, which is not a productive use of emotion - but he’ll scold her for that sometime when he’s not using it directly for his own benefit. 

If this is a trap, they would expect him to arrive by shadow. When they see the limo, what they will expect to come out of it is either Charlie or Vaggie or both. It’s not much of a surprise, but he’s done more with less. 

When in doubt, keep them guessing. 

“Stop here, there’s a good fellow,” he advises the dragon….thing with a tap of his microphone on the roof of the vehicle for good measure. It’s a little less than a block from where he thinks Angel is; the poor man couldn’t give him much of a description, but Alastor has been walking the streets of this city for a hundred years since his death, and he knows them the way he knows the patterns of the veins in his hands. 

He is not immediately beset by angelic steel or malicious drones when he steps out of the vehicle. He makes a show of nonchalance, brushing imaginary dirt off his sleeves, and then he starts up the road. 

He can hear the muffled sounds of a commotion in progress as he nears the spot where he thinks Angel is, and he groans internally. What the fuck is it NOW? 

He steps into the alleyway, his eyes automatically adjusting to the dark, and the scene is set thus: 

Angel Dust, curled in on himself, sitting against one of the walls with his knees pulled to his face and both visible sets of his arms wrapped around his legs. A long coat that seems to be made of black satin is mostly obscuring him from view. 

Idiot 1, a shark-faced demon with an unfortunate overbite. Roughly three Angel Dusts wide at the shoulders. Currently looming over him with one hand resting faux casually on the bricks. 

Idiot 2, a hammerhead variety that looks vaguely familiar to Alastor. He is as tall as the first, but lankier. He’s already undoing his zipper, though whether out of some exhibitionist kink, hopefulness of putting it somewhere, or possibly to take a piss on Angel’s shoes, Alastor isn’t sure - that is filed under the “in a very short moment, it’s not going to matter anyway” section of his brain. 

Idiot 3: Also a shark (definitely a theme here, isn’t there) - size difficult-to-determine as he is kneeling in front of Angel, a hand on his arm, giving him the occasional rough jerk like he’s trying to shake him awake. “Oh, come on, baby,” he’s saying, “Ain’t you glad to see us? You don’t want to hang out with us no more?” 

Alastor looks at his shadow on the wall and tilts his head slightly toward the street lamp behind them. His shadow, cackling in silent glee, slithers past him, and the light goes out. 

“What the fuck?” Idiot one asks. 

Alastor smiles slightly. “Sorry, there, chums! I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” 

“Well, you ARE, you son-of-a…” Idiot two starts to round on him, then stops dead, his too-far-set eyes widening in recognition. “Oh, shit.” 

Ha, what a coincidence. These fellows ARE familiar - Alastor has disemboweled them before. These are the few loan sharks who managed to escape the hotel lawn without being devoured. 

Clearly, they have learned nothing from the experience. Alastor will have to try a little harder to make an impression this time. 

He feels his grin stretch past the parameters of his face as his body grows. 

Angel laughs shakily into his legs when he hears the familiar static feedback and screams - and the less pleasant, visceral sounds of crunching and wet. It’s laughter tainted with hysteria, but laughter is what it is, which is either a sign that he’s nowhere near coming down off his high yet, or a sign that he’s even more crazy than he thought he was. 

Objectively speaking, he should be terrified right now. He’s seen Alastor whip out his whole Radio Demon schtick a few times in broad daylight; he can admit that in the dark, all the dramatics are a lot more pronounced. And sure, the first time he saw it - the first time that poor bastard Pentious came cruising along in his airship to take the mother of all beatings as Alastor failed even to put down his fucking coffee - yeah, Angel will admit it, his knees were knocking together a little bit. 

Spontaneous demonstrations of Alastor’s freaky-ass powers have never really bothered him since then, though. Fuck, most of the time, Angel enjoys the show. Sure, Al’s a monster; he’s a bona-fide Sovereign Overlord of Hell that even the other Overlords keep a wary eye on. 

The thing is, it’s Hell. The place is FULL of monsters. And maybe it’s nice to have one on your side every now and then - nice for once to have that kind of power standing between you and those OTHER monsters, even if only incidentally. 

Angel figures he’s about like one of those little parasitic creatures that attaches itself to the sides of sharks, or one of those chirpy little birds that lives on rhinos; Alastor might not necessarily care for him, might not even register he exists most of the time, but as long as Angel doesn’t make too much of a nuisance of himself, he can enjoy the moments of peace that a deterrent like Alastor can provide. 

And anyway, Alastor won’t hurt him - at least, he won’t hurt him just for existing, he won’t hurt him unless Angel makes it necessary. Angel clocked that right away when Sir Pentious fought Alastor twice and escaped with, at worst, broken bones; when Pentious’s egg boys traveled downtown with Alastor and came back none the worse for wear.  

He clocked it when Alastor didn’t either crack him across the face for offering to suck his dick, OR knock on his door later, in the dark hours of the morning, to take him up on it. 

The alley grows quiet, and it’s only a moment later when he becomes aware that Alastor is on one knee in front of him. “Sorry about that, my good man! Just a little trash to take out.” 

Angel peers up blearily from his knees. There are briefly two Alastors, which slowly, in kaleidoscope fashion, merge into one and then tilt vaguely sideways. 

“You look an absolute mess.” 

“Kinda a comfort zone for me,” Angel says, his voice coming out mumbled and clumsy. 

“And that’s enough self-deprecation out of you, sir!” Alastor says, still in that incongruously radio-host cheery voice. “Can you stand?” 

Angel nods, his tongue feeling too thick for his mouth. “Yeah, uh-huh.” 

He wills his legs to cooperate, but the damn things just kick out gracelessly like a baby fawn trying to find its feet. 

Alastor’s brow furrows, and Angel looks away. He puts his hands on the wall to try to claw his way upward, but then the world tilts, and he finds himself half-collapsed against Alastor’s chest. 

Sorry, is what he means to say. 

“You got awful pretty hair,” is what comes out instead. 

“One of THOSE trips, then,” Alastor mutters, mostly to himself. And the next thing Angel knows, Alastor is guiding one of his upper set of arms over his shoulders and picking him up. 

Angel did not have “getting princess carried out of an alley by the radio demon” on his bingo card for the day. “Guess it’s gonna be a pretty big favor I owe you, huh?” Angel says wryly, tucking himself into the other man’s shoulder. 

“Believe me, I’m putting every bit of this on your tab,” Alastor says. “With interest.”  

“Yippee, more debt,” Angel says. “You just remember I ain’t still got a soul to barter.” 

“It never slipped my mind.” 

Angel recognizes the limo and is seized by a moment of stark terror. “Wait, hold on, Smiles, hold on -” 

Because if Charlie and Vaggie (and oh god Husk) if they see - 

He tries to claw his way free, which was, on the best day of his life, probably going to be unsuccessful, and today, he figures it looks a little like one of Nifty’s bugs in its death throes. “I don’t want, they can’t - “ 

“Relax, my good man. No one’s in there but me.” 

Angel isn’t sure how Alastor manages to open the car door outside of “freaky tentacle bullshit,” and he doesn’t ask, focusing on doing one of Charlie’s dumb breathing exercises to calm down. 

Alastor helps him slide into the bench seat, then closes the door behind him - Angel tips over immediately, burrowing into his coat as the lights by the windows melt in kaleidoscope swirls. 

To say that Angel looks like death warmed over would be an insult to cadavers everywhere. Alastor sits beside him in the back of the limo, crossing one leg over the other, plucking imaginary lint from his sleeve as he tries not to look. 

“Yer a standup guy, Smiles,” Angel mumbles sleepily into his folded arms from somewhere under the abused coat. 

“Yes, why I’m practically a saint,” Alastor says flatly. He prods one of Angel’s limbs dubiously with his microphone. “Stay awake.” 

Angel makes an indiscernible, grumbly noise into his arms. 

“Do you know what he gave you?” 

This grumbly noise sounds vaguely negative. Angel shifts to shrug with a pleathery-sounding series of squeaks, and Alastor feels a brief, unnecessary surge of temper.  

It’s possible that this has nothing to do with him. Alastor will concede that his, what do the kids call it these days, his main character syndrome (which is not robust so much as titanic) might be acting up. As far as he’s concerned, either everything IS about him, or someone has made an oversight as it SHOULD be about him. 

Maybe that insipid moth decided to do this for the sheer Hell of it. Goodness knows it wouldn’t be the first time; Alastor and his insomnia are well acquainted with the absurd hours of Angel’s returns, looking various shades of awful. 

He certainly looks awful now. Without his usual grace and posing, he looks gaunt instead of slim, too many bones sticking out of too many places, with bruises on his wrists and glazed eyes. 

Maybe this had nothing to do with Alastor - but given that he and Vox had their little tap dance on the roof not 24 hours prior, it can’t help but feel like a deliberate slap in the face, a “look at what I can do” as a schoolyard bully pulls the arms off another child’s teddy bear. 

Alastor could have told them how futile that was. Angel is nothing of his; he’s no matter at all to Alastor. Of course, the attempted disrespect makes his long-cold blood boil a little, but he’s always been sensitive to insult, and - 

(He does not think, not even for a second, of Angel’s arm across the back of his chair, of him standing between him and the King of Hell as if that would be of any use to anyone, as if Lucifer could not have brushed him aside with a gesture and a needless, showy Alakazam)

Fortunately, they’re not far from the hotel - it’s a short trip. Alastor gets out of the limo, taking a moment to feel it out with his shadows; there’s no one around. He opens the door on Angel’s side, and then promptly jumps back to avoid the sudden splash of vomit as Angel catches himself on the door of the vehicle and heaves like a cat hacking up an especially tenacious hairball. 

“The things I do for this place,” Alastor mutters. 

“M’sorry,” Angel says wretchedly from the limo door. “Sorry.” 

It’s such a contrast to his usual belligerence in the face of being scolded for his actions that Alastor assumes it must be the result of some during-life trauma that Angel only lets slip out during weak moments - and as such, it’s none of Alastor’s business. “None of that, now, chap - no harm done,” he says, his radio filter set to ‘aggressively cheerful.’ “Come along, time to go inside.” 

The shakes have started, Alastor notes with some dismay - it’s only a quick intervention on his part that leads to Angel landing in his arms instead of face-first into the new mess on the roundabout. 

“Clean that up, there’s a good fellow,” he says to the dragon creature, who regards him with such an unimpressed look that Alastor is briefly reminded of his first impromptu performance with Lucifer on the latter’s first visit to the hotel. 

“Y’know, Smiles, yer awfully strong for a strawberry twink.” 

“High praise,” Alastor says flatly. His shadows shield them from any of the hotel windows as he cuts across the yard to one of the service entrances. 

“Not as high as me,” Angel says with some authority. His right hand digs almost painfully into the fabric on Alastor’s left arm. He can feel the tremors, can hear the faint chattering of Angel’s teeth. 

“No, my dear, you are not wrong.” 

Alastor dearly wishes he dared just shadow transport them to a safe place to wait this out, but the unpleasant memory of last night’s blinding headache makes him veer toward one of the elevators instead. “Time to use your legs, there’s a good man,” he says as he sets Angel down on the ground, though still with his arm around the spider’s waist for balance, and one of Angel’s arms slung over his shoulders. 

“Heh, usin’ my legs is a personal specialty,” Angel slurs, even as he slumps against Alastor like so much dead weight. 

“Lovely,” Alastor says. He feels his right eye twitch.  

“Aw, you think so?,” Angel says. He somehow goes even more boneless in Alastor’s grip, and Alastor has to quick-readjust to keep the spider-demon from melting onto the floor. “You say the sweetest shit.” 

“Credit where credit is due,” Alastor says blandly, even as he pushes the up-button a little more frantically than he would like to admit. Fuck it all, there can’t be that many people living here, why are these elevators so SLOW? (Well, aside from having been built by the world’s most absentminded, duck-obsessed architect, but as far as Alastor is concerned, this entire building has been milking that excuse for long enough, and it’s time to step up and show some improvement.) 

Like a mercy from above, the elevator finally dings its arrival, and the door opens. Alastor bodily hauls Angel into it with him as the door closes. It unfortunately closes on the corner of Angel’s coat, which stops them moving forward abruptly enough that Angel thumps against him, his free arm clutching at one of Alastor’s coat lapels for purchase as if he’s clinging to a tree for dear life in a flood. 

Alastor presses the button for his floor. Angel’s room is too close to the other residents, whereas no one ventures up to the top floor for fear of getting caught in the crossfire of whatever petty turf war Alastor and Lucifer are engaging in at the moment. 

Angel loops an arm over his shoulders - one of his hands, that was in his lapel, is now smoothing the front of his shirt apologetically. Unlike with someone who is drunk, throwing up has in no way helped Angel's situation; his movements are clumsier, his eyes more vacant as whatever’s in his system works its way through his blood. 

Then, Angel’s forehead thunks against his collarbone. “So, about that favor I’m gonna owe ya.” 

“No sense worrying about that now - you have the rest of your afterlife to work that off.” 

“It’s just - I was wonderin’ if you might want me to start now.” The words are hard to make out, so slurred together. 

“Ah - no, that won’t be necessary.” 

Why the FUCK is this elevator so SLOW?

“‘Cause I got some ideas…” the hand that was smoothing the rumpled front of his jacket slips past the lapels, brushing over the top of Alastor’s shirt to the small of his back. 

Alastor retreats instinctively, which would probably have worked better if he wasn’t supporting almost all of Angel’s weight. His back thunks gracelessly against the side of the elevator and Angel has to clutch at him again for balance. 

“Ah - no. Never going to happen. As I told you -” 

“Yeesh, sorry,” Angel says. The hand on his back, however, does not move. “It’s just, I didn’t think ya meant it. Plenty o’ people fuckin SAY that when there’s witnesses - ‘ew, gross, wouldn’t hit that if I was on a ten-year dry spell and my genitals were literally rebelling’ or some shit, but as soon as nobody’s watchin’...” 

The elevator door dings open. Angel yelps and halfway CLIMBS him like a startled cat, and Alastor peers around him to see the King of Hell, standing in the door of the elevator slack-jawed. “What in the unholy HELL are y - no, nope! My bad, I’ll take the stairs…” 

He starts to back away, his hands in the air. 

Alastor reaches past Angel and snags Lucifer by the front of his garish candy-striped vest and yanks him into the elevator by main force, because he needs an adult at this point, and this is the closest thing available. 

Lucifer flails comically as he’s yanked into the elevator. “Oh, what the fuck, this is NOT how you invite someone to a threeway!” 

Alastor feels his face flush with a combination of mortification and sheer rage. “HOW do you look at THIS and think -” 

“There’s a threeway and nobody invited me?” Angel slurs. He nearly falls backward OFF of Alastor, and it’s only a well-timed grab and a stagger that prevents the man from concussing himself on the wall of the elevator. 

And Lucifer….blinks, clearly registering “high as a kite.” He takes in the long coat, the thigh high pink boots, the flashes of almost-nothing under the coat, and then he is giving Alastor the kind of look that you give a guy in your neighborhood when you find out he’s a registered sex offender. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Alastor says. “His degenerate boss shot him up with something, and this is frankly beyond my capabilities to handle.” 

“He don’t want me to blow him,” Angel mumbles, sounding absurdly put-out by the whole thing, and Alastor sees Lucifer’s expression muddle its way into something like understanding. 

“What can I say,” Lucifer says to Angel, not unkindly. “Some people are actually allergic to fun, and I’m afraid our bellhop might make the list.” 

“Right, sexual assault and vomit splash zones certainly fit my definition of a good time,” Alastor mutters under his breath - which, fortunately, Angel seems not to hear. 

“Y’want me to blow you?” Angel asks Lucifer. “I dun want you t-feel left out, Short King.” 

“Ah-ah, you know what I said about the accountants,” Lucifer breezes, no trace of a fluster. He takes one of Angel’s hands and pats the back of it. “I appreciate the offer, though. Definitely the best one I’ve had today.” 

“Y’damn straight it is…” Angel’s head lolls so far to one side that Alastor briefly wonders if his neck is still intact. 

“Oi, that’s gettin’ worse,” Lucifer says. 

“Fortunately, sinners can’t die a second death by overdose,” Alastor says. “Though I imagine by tomorrow he’ll be wishing otherwise.” 

“Does Charlie know?” 

At that question, Angel briefly jerks like an electrocuted frog, blindly thrashing, and Alastor grits his teeth and stumbles to keep his balance. “No one is telling Charlie, will you stop that?!” 

And then the worst thing happens. 

The worst POSSIBLE thing. 

Angel quivers in his arms, draws in a shaky breath - 

Alastor’s ears pin in alarm. Please God no. 

- and he muffles a sob into Alastor’s shoulder. 

Lucifer is not sure he’s ever seen such a strong visual example of what “instant regret” looks like on a person as he is seeing right now. Alastor has gone completely rigid, his ears flat to his head, dials for eyes, and the entire elevator is slowly filling with a particularly shrill B flat. 

Lucifer bites his lip. Because there is nothing funny about this. Angel is GENUINELY suffering, and Lucifer LIKES Angel, and Lucifer is an ASSHOLE, but…

Alastor’s dial eyes slooooooowly shift over to glare holes in him, and Lucifer can’t help it. He buries the borderline-hysterical laughter into his sleeve. 

“S’not funny, asshole,” Angel muffles into the rapidly-dampening shoulder of Al’s coat, and - okay, that’s fair enough, really. 

“I’m not laughing at you,” he reassures. “I’m laughing ‘cause Alberta here is bein’ all precious about being exposed to actual emotions.” 

Angel sniffs again, sounding at least a little mollified, but Alastor is still staring at Lucifer as if he means to rip his head off and use it for a kickball, so - all told, he should probably sleep with one eye open tonight. He’s not sure if even Alastor can find a way to kill him, but he figures Mr. Radio Demon is willing to give ‘er the old college try at this point. 

Mercifully, the elevator door dings again. 

Getting Angel out of the elevator proves to be quite a feat in and of itself - there are frankly too many limbs trying to go in too many directions, and Angel has unfortunately gone from being a solid to a liquid, prone to melting to the floor at every opportunity. It finally comes down to Alastor getting his hands under Angel’s top set of arms and Lucifer picking up either of his legs, and the two of them carrying him down the hallway like a carpet. 

“So, your place or mine?” Lucifer breezes. 

There is an offended blurb of static, but then, reluctantly….”Yours is probably better for this. More surfaces.”

“Definitely a bigger bed,” Lucifer agrees. 

That offended blat of static again, and a huff. 

“You’re such a prude,” he says. “Angel’s right.” 

“Uh-huh,” the sinner mumbles, nearly out as he hammock sways between them. “And it’s a cryin’ shame, too.” 

Alastor fumbles, and Lucifer chides, “Don’t drop the patient, Alice.” 

“Oh, fuck you.” 

Pulling this guy’s pigtails should either be harder to do or less fun than it is, Lucifer decides, but that in no way stops him from doing it. “Hey, as we established, *I* am not the one who’s gonna be an obstacle to makin’ that happen…” 

“Hey, you’ll fuck Short King and not me? What gives?” 

“I’m not fucking ANYONE,” Alastor snaps with another eerie feedback punctuation.

“Which might explain why you’re such a grouch,” Lucifer says. 

There is a brief silence punctuated only by radio pops and blurbs. 

“Short King’s got a point, tall dark and creepy,” Angel points out judiciously. 

“One more word from either of you, and I am throwing you both out a window,” Alastor says. 

In eerie unity, Lucifer and Angel manage to say, at the same moment, “No, you won’t.” 

In spite of the fact that two minutes in Lucifer’s presence invariably makes Alastor’s blood pressure spike far beyond what should be possible for a man whose heart is technically no longer required to beat, Alastor will admit to himself that he is relieved the other man has stepped in. 

It leaves him free to pour himself a couple of fingers of rye at his monarch’s cluttered dry bar to calm his nerves as Lucifer takes over the fussing - guiding Angel to the bathroom where he runs him a hot bath, magicking up sleep clothes, helping him pry off the second-skin thigh-high boots that the baby powder had long since been sweated out of, eventually batting Angel’s hands out of the way and doing it himself. 

He’s fondly patient in the manner of someone who’s used to taking care of people after they go a little too wild on a night out. 

Alastor feels his nose wrinkle a little as he watches the King of Hell turn his own covers back to help Angel, still barely mobile, into it, experiencing a sudden feeling of nausea when he remembers waking up in that same bed. But surely Lucifer hadn’t done this with him, had he? He didn’t half-haul him up to sit on the mattress, then scoop his legs up with an arm and - 

Alastor finishes his rye in one shot. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss, and he’s leaning into that tonight. 

“He’s okay for now,” Lucifer says quietly as he comes up to his side - and grins like the smug sonofabitch he is when he sees the second drink sitting out by itself. “Aw, for me?” 

“And may you choke on it,” Alastor says. 

“You need a gag reflex to choke, April,” Lucifer breezes. 

Alastor closes his eyes and spends a moment vividly imagining that he has broken his glass on the table and is using it to stab Lucifer squarely in one of his stupid snake-pupil eyes. 

“Wow. That is a look. Anyway, we should probably take this in shifts. When this turns, it’s gonna be ugly.” 

Alastor hmms a quiet agreement. 

“You don’t mind my asking - how the fuck did he talk you into this? Don’t tell me Mr. Radio Demon is suddenly into charity work.” 

Alastor shakes his head. “He called me,” he says. “He told me that he would owe me a favor if I came to pick him up.” 

And now the King of Hell is giving him a look that can best be described as….

“I guess I should be used to being disappointed at this point,” Lucifer says wryly. 

“Disappointed?” Alastor asks. 

“It’s not like he made you shake on anything before he was pulling BULLETS outta you,” Lucifer says. 

“That’s his own fault,” Alastor says mildly. “You wouldn’t have caught me doing the same.” 

“Why would he DO that? He has friends here - obviously not you, ya douchebag, but -” 

“Why do you assume that a deal only works one way?” Alastor asks, more nonplussed than angry. 

And Lucifer….pauses. “What now?” 

“He didn’t call his friends because he doesn’t want them to know. He’s been clean for almost three weeks. They had a….thing about it. A token or some such, a gold star on the chart…now he’s so high that he can’t find his way home, and given the nature of whatever it is they made him take, he’ll have to start from zero on the withdrawal front.” 

“He has to know he can’t keep that from them,” Lucifer says. 

“In its entirety? No, of course not. But he doesn’t want them to know how bad it is - likely due to some trauma he has relating to his time before death.” Alastor shrugs. “I’ve known my share of addicts of various kinds, so I can hazard some guesses. He’ll want some assurance that I won’t go blurting to your lovely daughter or, more likely, Husker.” 

Lucifer swishes his drink quietly for a moment before he takes a bracing sip. “So - your deal is, you bring him home, you don’t tell anyone how bad it was, and he owes you a favor?” 

“Something like that,” Alastor says vaguely. 

He hopes it will fly right over Lucifer’s (ha!) head - but no, of course the obnoxious bastard smells blood in the water. “I thought you overlord types were awful specific about deals.” 

Alastor finds something fascinating on the bar to study. Is that a smudge? Can’t have that, buffing at it with fingers. “We are.” 

“You agreed to the terms already, right?” 

“He…hasn’t shaken on it yet,” Alastor says. 

He can practically HEAR the brow raise. 

“He’s in no condition to negotiate,” Alastor says loftily. “It seemed unsporting.” 

“Wait, so you haven’t…” 

“Not YET,” Alastor says, hating how testy he sounds. 

“Huh. Well, you already brought him home, and clearly Charlie is GONNA find out at some point….what happens if he decides he doesn’t want to owe you a favor after all? Supposing he WON’T shake on it?” 

It’s not as if that hasn’t occurred to Alastor already. He’s been worrying at it like a scab for most of this absolutely miserable night. It’s just that…he doesn’t…he prefers to make deals with people who have DECIDED to…

“He will,” Alastor says blandly. “That is a man who has been betrayed I don’t know how many times, your majesty. He won’t want to rely on just my word to keep me quiet, and he also knows that backing out now will make me less likely to respond in the future.” 

“But what if he DOES back out? You gonna let that happen?” 

“I…” Alastor clears his throat. “I don’t know.” 

He hates how tired he sounds. He hates it. 

“What do you want a favor from Angel Dust for, anyway?” Lucifer asks. “I mean, you clearly aren’t interested in his, uh….workplace talents. You’d have to be a Hell of a lot more oblivious than I am -” 

“Which would frankly be a feat -” 

“ - stop being a dick, I’m making a point here - you’d have to be more oblivious than I am to realize that anything remotely sex-related makes you go all busted dail-up connection.” 

“Oh, you never know,” Alastor says. “Perhaps I’ll need my own emergency pick-up one day.” 

There is something in Lucifer’s expression now that he can’t read. “You really think you have to COMPEL people to get them to help you?” 

Alastor blinks again. “Of course,” he says before he can think better of it. “Either you have to compel them, or you have to give them something - and sometimes it’s more than you want to give away. How else does one do it?” 

“That…look, it….it doesn’t have to be like that.” 

“It does,” Alastor says with finality. “It’s how I stopped you from killing me, isn’t it? I offered you something you wanted.” 

“Al…isn’t there anybody you’d…if you were really in some kind of trouble, isn’t there anybody you’d just trust to help you?” 

“No,” Alastor says. “And don’t look at me like that - I’m not the defective one for having actual sense. You’re the one who’s suffering from dangerous delusions.” 

From the corner of his eye, he sees one of Lucifer’s hands slowly start as if he’s going to rest it on his arm. It pauses partway, clenches. “Look, Al, I get that I’m maybe not the…best person for this, all things considered, but…”

“Why, what a refreshing break in your usual hubris.” 

“Stop trying to sidetrack me by being an asshole. I just -” Lucifer drops his hand. “What happened?” 

“What happened when?” 

“Something made you like this,” Lucifer says. “Someone really fucked you over, didn’t they? That’s why you’re - “ 

They hear a sudden cough, flail, and thumb behind then, and then the sound of retching. Alastor has never in his afterlife been so relieved to hear the sound of a mess being made.

“Aaaand there it is,” Lucifer says. “Okay, guess we’re putting a pin in this and relocating to the bathroom. I’ll get Angel, you get some blankets? It’ll be like the world’s shittiest sleepover.” 

“I’m also bringing the rye,” Alastor says.

Lucifer doesn’t even try to argue with him. 

Chapter Text

“Fuck, how has he got anything left IN him?” Lucifer asks as he makes a dive to keep Angel from face planting into the side of the toilet. Lucifer manages to get his arms under Angel’s shoulders and lift him enough to get him above the bowl before the spasms start, but it’s a near thing. 

“That never ceases to amaze me on nights like these,” Alastor says. He still has a glass of rye in one hand, the smug sonofabitch, even as he reaches forward with the other to hold Angel’s hair back from his face. “The sheer volume of fluid that a human body can contain.” 

“Not your first night on a bathroom floor either, huh?” 

“Oh, far from it. Mimsy alone put those into the double digits.” Alastor takes another bracing sip of rye, though his hand never falters in Angel’s hair. 

Lucifer wracks his brain for a moment to try to place the name - fuck, he is SO bad at names, but in his defense, he has been alive since the literal dawn of time. People come, and people go, and the names all stay, bouncing around in his brain like a 1990s screensaver. 

It’s at least a welcome distraction from feeling Angel’s too-thin body convulse against his. He can feel the man’s shoulder blades digging into his chest. 

“The, uh -  the girl with the sparkly dress and the loan sharks?” he ventures at last. 

“Why, the very same!” 

That was the one that Alastor had told to leave because she was a danger to the hotel. When he’d done so, he’d had an expression on his face that Lucifer couldn’t identify, and he didn’t just think that was his normal social awkwardness acting up. Whatever had passed between Alastor and his old dance partner in those few seconds had been…complex. 

She also had the rare distinction of being someone that Husker seemed to hate more than Lucifer. 

“Was she - uh, were you two -” 

‘Choose your next words carefully, Duckie.” 

Lucifer blinks - because Duckie is a new one. “Friends?” he ventures at last. 

Alastor gives him an odd look over Angel’s back. “What is your obsession with that word?”

“Just tryin’ to get a feel for it, that’s all.” 

Alastor rolls his eyes. “When it suited her,” is what he says. 

That was as depressing as it was honest. “And you were okay with that?” 

Alastor shrugs elegantly (the asshole does everything elegantly, doesn’t he? Probably fucking TIES HIS SHOES elegantly) and takes another sip of his rye. “I knew what she was. She knew what I was - even in life. Sometimes, you do the best you can.” 

“Well, that’s not - Ugh, no -” Lucifer has to readjust a little when Angel goes boneless again, pulling the sinner back against his own chest as he all but oozes back down to the floor. “Steady there.” 

Angel doesn’t respond - at least not verbally. His thin frame shakes less intensely than before, but that might not be a sign that he’s doing better so much as a sign that his body is too exhausted to have tremors properly. Lucifer can feel every single vertebrae in the man’s back. Shit, this whole group could benefit from some kind of regular meals that weren’t loan sharks or popsicles.

“Fuck, I think he’s getting worse.” Lucifer starts to lower the guy back down to the makeshift nest, only to be brought up short as Angel clutches at him blindly, digging his fingers into his shirt.

“He probably is,” Alastor says. 

Lucifer feels the heat of him behind his back as Alastor reaches past him to settle a blanket over Angel for the fifth time. That’s been the pattern of the night - they ride out the latest round of sick, get him down, get him settled, get him almost warm enough that his teeth don’t chatter, and then Angel blindly claws his way free, retching, and they repeat the process. 

Twice now, the poor guy’s had some kind of episode where he thrashes and reaches blindly, calling out for someone named Molly in between clawing at the air. Those wretched panics seem only to be resolved by either Lucifer or Alastor pinning the man’s arms to his sides and holding him until he calms down - kind of like you burrito a cat to give it medicine. 

“Explain to me again why I can’t just wipe that stupid tower off the face of the Pride Ring?” Lucifer asks. He  starts to lean back, only realizing when his back bumps against Alastor’s chest that the radio demon hasn’t moved away yet. “Sorry-” he starts - flusters, really, feeling his face heat, shit, why is he always so CLUMSY around this guy? 

Alastor talks right over his internal (and somewhat external) bumbling. “Frankly, nothing would make me happier. I might borrow a tub of the popcorn Angel and Husker always seem to have on hand. I would ENCOURAGE you to do so, were it not for the fact that I feel like they’re all but turning cartwheels trying to get you to do just that.” 

“Which I keep telling you -” Alastor hasn’t moved his hand. It’s on the tile just to the right of Lucifer’s hip as the demon looks over his shoulder at Angel, leaving Lucifer mostly enclosed, and it’s - it’s nothing, it’s stupid, this is not a problem for him, nope, “ - isn’t going to fucking matter .” 

“Don’t be so sure,” Alastor says. “And anyway, it’s in our patient’s best interest that you give me a little more time.” 

“Go on, Allison - tell me why.” 

“A lot of overlords have conditions in their contracts these days. In the event of their deaths, their contracts often pass to a specific next party. It’s LIKELY that Valentino’s contracts pass to Vox, but I don’t KNOW.” 

“I see.” That is…new. It used to go without saying that if an overlord killed another, then all the contracts in the former’s possession went to whoever killed them. 

Lucifer is not sure he likes how many “new” things there are in Hell, how many things he’s missed. 

Alastor’s hand is still just outside his hip. Which is…normal. Totally normal, yep. 

Lucifer feels a single bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck and stick somewhere in the vicinity of his collar. 

Would a normal person lean back right now? Would a normal, functional person who is around people all the time, who isn’t….would a person who isn’t HIM read that as an invitation to take up that seemingly-offered space between Alastor’s arm and his body? 

No, that’s crazy. That right there is the kind of thing that could get a guy mocked right off the face of Hell. THAT would earn him ridicule so epic that he would retreat back to his palace to cower for a few hundred more years behind the ballistic protection of rubber ducks and old family portraits. 

What the fuck is wrong with him? 

At the best of times, if Alastor were given the option of having a colonoscopy or spending an evening with Lucifer, it would be a tough call which way the guy would go. After the past 48 hours, Lucifer has no questions about where he places in THAT contest, and it’s a step or two below the sterile lubricating jelly. Between the manhandling, the deal-forcing, the accidental heart-attacks, and the GLITTER (yes, he tried to magic it away, and yes, it failed miserably, thanks for asking), well, he can safely say he isn’t making Alastor’s List of Favorite People any time soon. 

Which is perfectly fine, as Alastor is not making LUCIFER’S List of Favorite People, either. He’s arrogant as fuck, he could turn a WALK TO THE MAILBOX into some kind of pissing contest, and he has such breathtaking trust issues that he feels like he has to extort favors out of people to protect himself from being taken advantage of at some undefined point in the future. He’s pushy and rude and unapologetically mean, and if Lucifer WAS going to lose his damned mind enough to put his socially-awkward ass out there again to face the inevitable sting of repeated rejection, and if he was going to lose his mind AGAIN enough to do so with a sinner, it sure as Hell wouldn’t be with a guy who thought rotting deer was an appropriate morning snack or who tried to steal his damn daughter at every opportunity, or - 

(or who cared for Charlie enough to risk being vaporized to go to her side when she was having a panic attack , fuck, that has nothing to do with anything, now does it?) 

No, it’s just his stupid body that’s the problem. He’s been alone for so long that any need for touch had faded into the background like hunger pangs will if you ignore them long enough, but now it’s caught enough of a whiff of warmth that it remembers that it’s starving. Alastor simply has the misfortune of being the one thing in the hotel that doesn’t read like a potentially-adoptable child to him.

(Well, minus Husker, but Husker appears to be solidly in the overprotective, snarly auntie category of his brain more than the potential-for-touch category)

“Are you quite all right, your majesty?” the smarmy bastard asks. 

No. Nope. Not okay. Not even in the neighborhood of okay. Okay? Never met her. 

“Peachy,” he says out loud. He tries (gently) to extricate the front of his shirt from Angel’s clutching hands and blinks when he hears the sound of the glass being set down. 

“You could help, ya know,” he points out. The bitching is mostly reflex. He’s not expecting Alastor to do anything USEFUL besides sip rye and watch him struggle to get his shirt back.