Archive of Our Own

I went to the rock to hide my face

But the rock cried out: no hiding place

There’s no hiding place down here

There are a few things that Alastor can say are true:

Hell is forever.

Television was a terrible mistake.

He should be dead.

That last one is no mystery and anyone who witnessed his disastrous fight with Adam knows it, too. Struck by a holy weapon, with the intent not to maim, but to kill. A single poorly choreographed step, and that should have been it—this is Alastor, saying goodnight to you from Pentagram City.

Somehow still very much in Hell, Alastor unwraps his bandaged chest to take a fresh look at the damage. A deep gash, wide enough to fit a hand in, all the way down to the stark white of cracked ribs. It’s likely only Adam’s lack of anything resembling technique that saved Alastor from being cleaved in two.

And wouldn’t that have been an unedifying way to die.

It’s been days now and the wound still shows no signs of healing. His attempts at probing it with his own power, to try to knit himself back together, have resulted in nothing but more pain and a somewhat unsettling golden glow around the ragged edges of his torn flesh. At least it isn’t hemorrhaging blood by the pint anymore. It simply . . . is.

But if this is what Alastor has to work with, he’ll find a way. Obscure it all behind a smile and carry on until a better option presents itself.

In the meantime, there’s a hotel reconstruction awaiting his return.

To Alastor’s utter lack of surprise, inspiring change in Hell is going to take a bit more than a battle that he would editorialize as could have been worse, and the hotel quickly settles back into familiar patterns.

“What we need to do,” Charlie says, all bright-eyed, galvanized enthusiasm, “is show the skeptics that our methods really do work.”

“What’s with the ‘our’ shit?” Husker asks, propping his cheek on his fist. “The big plans are your gig, princess.”

Charlie doesn’t so much as falter. “But it’s our hotel and we’re going to show them.” She claps her hands once. “And I know just where to start!”

Alastor, standing near the wall and subtly resting his weight on his repaired microphone, feels the corners of his smile tighten. This is the opening pitch to a group exercise if ever he’s heard one. Entertaining, to be sure, but only from a reasonable distance.

Charlie has not been keen on reasonable distances lately.

His instincts are validated a beat later when she announces triumphantly, “Bonding!”

“‘Bonding?’” Angel repeats over the rim of his glass. “But not the fun kind?”

“We’ve been through so much together,” she continues, as though he didn’t cut in, “but there are so many things we still don’t know. So it’s time for some, well, some quality time!” She beams at them and reiterates, “Bonding.”

If Alastor slips away now, dissolves into the wallpaper while everyone is focused on Charlie and her particular brand of madness, there is a chance that he will be able to evade whatever torment she’s dreamed up for them. But just as he’s considering making a break for it, Lucifer—a too-comfortable fixture at the hotel these days—locks eyes with him from the opposite end of the bar and says, “Don’t even think about it.”

Alastor directs a smile straight at him, showing off his teeth. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I see you plotting your escape.” Lucifer levels a finger at him. “And it’s not gonna happen. Nuh-uh. Not on my watch.”

“Why, I must admit myself flattered,” Alastor says, pressing a hand to his chest and regretting it immediately. But the show must go on. “To be the object of such exalted interest.”

Lucifer rolls his eyes. “Interest? Please.”

It’s not quite as strong a reaction as Alastor was aiming for; he’s off his game. But before he can try to needle Lucifer a bit, to see if he can dislodge a more amusing response, Charlie jumps back in.

“Great timing, Dad!” She looks from Lucifer to Alastor and then back again. “I’m putting you and Alastor together for the bonding activity.”

To which, as one, Alastor and Lucifer say, “What?”

“It’ll be fun!” she says, as Angel and Husker do nothing to hide their laughter. Alastor will have to address that later. “And you’re both so important to everything we’re doing here—I really want you to get along.”

Sometimes, Alastor thinks that Charlie Morningstar might have a sadistic streak hidden under all that sunshine.

“Char—” Lucifer starts to say.

“Please?” Lucifer visibly deflates in the face of Charlie’s hopeful smile—and it will never cease to amaze how someone so weak-minded can get away with calling himself the King of Hell—but then Charlie is rounding on Alastor, too. “You’ll do it, won’t you, Alastor?”

Lucifer is glaring at him over her shoulder, clearly willing Alastor to refuse. To turn Charlie down and make himself the villain of the day, giving Lucifer an easy out. And so Alastor spreads a hand wide, palm up, and says in his most jovial radio voice, “Oh, I don’t see why not.”

Lucifer looks Alastor dead in the eye and mouths, Fuck you.

Alastor smiles back, with cheerful malice.

The gaping chasm in his chest wall chooses that moment to twinge violently, likely bleeding into the fresh bandages he wrapped around himself that morning, but he still has a hand on his microphone and tightens his grip, grounding himself until it eases up. It could be seconds, it could be minutes, and through it all his smile never slips.

But when he looks across the room again, to where Lucifer is mirroring him, hands on his apple-headed cane and back to the wall, he finds the man’s gaze still trained on his face. And by his expression, he may have seen more than anyone was meant to.

An unfortunate development, but . . . well.

Alastor will just have to burn that bridge when he gets to it.

“So, Charlie,” he says brightly, “what is this new plan of yours?”

“Adam really did a number on you, didn’t he?”

“Pardon me?” Alastor looks at Lucifer askance, making a show of tilting his chin down at a dramatic angle to do it. Lucifer bristles, as Alastor had known he would, but it isn’t enough to derail him.

“You’re hurt,” he says bluntly. They’re alone upstairs, in the neutral territory between Alastor’s domain and Lucifer’s, which is for the best because an audience would make this conversation intolerable. “I heard about what happened—holy energy straight to the chest. Which should have killed you, by the way.”

Static crackles in Alastor’s voice when he says, “Silly me, I hadn’t noticed.”

“The wound won’t heal on its own,” Lucifer adds, ignoring him. “Demonic power will just make it worse.”

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Alastor says, stomping down a flicker of unease at the reminder of his failure to do more than staunch the bleeding, “but I’m perfectly fine.”

“Sure you are,” Lucifer says with easygoing sarcasm. “Being hobbled by a sloppy douchebag wouldn’t exactly fit your image as the big, bad ‘Radio Demon’”—the air quotes are, in Alastor’s opinion, a bit tacky—“would it?”

“Your concern is touching,” Alastor says with a toothy smile. “But quite unnecessary.”

“It’s not my concern.” Lucifer jabs a finger at Alastor’s chest, but stops just shy of touching him. There’s a hint of a gold flush around his ears, which would be more fun if Alastor’s skin weren’t crawling with his desire to exit this conversation. “Don’t get the wrong idea, asshole. If it were up to me, you’d be subjecting someone else to your creepy schtick, literally anywhere but here, but Charlie cares about you. No idea why.” He shakes his head. “If you keel over, it’ll upset her and I’m not having that.”

“Well, isn’t someone vying for father of the year.” Alastor lets his smile grow, well past the boundaries of what could ever be construed as friendly. “Trying to make up for lost time, are we?”

“Yeah, you can fuck off.” Lucifer cuts a hand through the air impatiently. “Just don’t come crying to me when the wound you’re pretending doesn’t exist festers and you end up bedridden.”

Horrifying thought, that, but Alastor would sooner throw himself off the top of the radio tower than say so. Instead, he leans in, looming over Lucifer’s slight frame and bringing their faces close together. He has to ignore the sharp pain of broken ribs grinding against themselves—that’s a problem for later, or never—to say, “Intriguing! Tell me, how much time do you spend thinking about me in bed, hmm?”

The extra color in Lucifer’s white face is back with a vengeance and Alastor allows himself a thrill of triumph as Lucifer snaps, “Don’t flatter yourself.” When Alastor laughs at him, he sighs and pulls a sheet of paper out of his pocket, looking down at it. “We’re supposed to be bonding—did this count? Can we call it good? No, Charlie would figure it out. Never mind, forget that idea.”

Alastor cants his head to the right, looking at Lucifer sideways. “Do you make a habit of having discussions with yourself?”

“It’s more productive than having them with you,” Lucifer shoots back. “So, bonding.”

Alastor reaches out to pluck the paper from Lucifer’s hand, holding it gingerly between his fingertips to see what exactly Charlie has tasked them with. It’s a short assignment, which would be excellent if it weren’t also extremely specific.

“Hmm.”

“My girl knows who she’s dealing with,” Lucifer says; in Alastor’s peripheral vision he can see a proud grin spread across his face. “She wasn’t taking any chances.”

Alastor skims the page again in search of an exploitable loophole. “So it would seem.”

This is absurd. The obvious answer is to simply refuse to participate, shove the sheet of paper back into Lucifer’s hand, and return to his own space, where he can nurse his throbbing ribs away from a gaze that’s more knowing than he’d like.

There is nothing compelling him to take part in any of this.

“Come along, then,” he says, turning on his heel and setting off in the direction of his room. Familiar territory, to keep this exercise firmly under Alastor’s control and not allow Lucifer to gain the upper hand. “Let’s get this over with.”

“. . . Seriously?” Lucifer appears at Alastor’s side, and there is some small satisfaction in Lucifer being too short to catch up gracefully without a display of angelic power. “I was expecting you to put up more of a fight.”

“What’s the point?” he says lightly. “Charlie is a remarkably persistent young lady.”

“She is at that,” Lucifer agrees, the pride back in his voice, though Alastor is pleased to note that he’s forced to hurry to keep pace with Alastor’s long strides. He’s very nearly at a jog.

It’s the little things.

They reach Alastor’s room and he lets them in, offering Lucifer one of the two chairs in front of the fireplace and claiming the other.

“Well, then,” Lucifer says, resting his hands on the head of his cane, between his knees. He’s looking at the bayou, lip curling, but he seems to think better of commenting on Alastor’s taste. Alastor is almost disappointed. “We’re supposed to be asking invasive personal questions, because apparently that’s how you become . . . friends.”

The disgust in his voice is a perfect reflection of Alastor’s feelings on the subject. And here they thought they had no common ground.

“No fewer than three questions each.” Alastor crosses one leg over the other with extreme care. “I read the directions.”

Lucifer snorts. “I’ll start, then: where did you come from originally?” He looks over at the bayou again, for some kind of emphasis, then adds, “Before you decided to take the generous gift of free will and use it to land your ass here for eternity.”

Alastor narrows his eyes, smile hardening. “Do you really intend for me to believe that you don’t already know?”

It’s one of the more uncomfortable facts about Lucifer Morningstar: the wealth of knowledge at his fingertips. Knowledge of all of them, the sinners condemned to existence under his neglectful purview. It’s a stark reminder of power Alastor could never hope to touch, and something he prefers not to examine too closely.

“Well, I could, but—” Lucifer breaks off, seeming to consider what he wants to say. “Look, Al—I can call you Al, right?—it’s like this: I have access to all of it, every single thing that every single one of you ever did in your miserable fucking wasted lives. But I choose not to know any of it consciously, unless I have a really good reason to. It’s . . . it’s a lot. Too much.” He laughs and it cracks around the edges. “Can you imagine? It’s bad enough out there as it is.”

“And you’ve chosen not to know anything about me?” Alastor is a little insulted. “I’d have thought my importance in your daughter’s life would constitute an excellent reason.”

“Eh.” He waves an ambivalent hand. “I’ve had a lot on my mind. So are you gonna answer the question, or what?”

It is a profoundly unsatisfactory explanation. But the assignment from Charlie is very direct and so Alastor says crisply, “New Orleans. It’s in Louisiana, in—”

“I know where New Orleans is,” Lucifer interjects. “I am actually familiar with the earthly plane, believe it or not.” He flashes a smile. “My, ah, involvement in the development of humanity does mean something, you know.”

“Then I think it’s time for a question of my own,” Alastor says. “If you were given the chance to do it all again, would you still see us given free will?” He pauses fractionally. “Even knowing what we’ve done with it?”

“Okay, wow, not pulling any punches, huh?” Lucifer lets out another shaky laugh. Then he hesitates, for a moment that stretches on for so long that Alastor begins to doubt he’s going to answer, task from his daughter or no. But Alastor waits him out until he sighs, resigned, and says, “Yeah, I would.” His lips quirk up to one side. “Even knowing what you’ve done with it.”

Part of Alastor wants to pick at that—Lucifer is the father of lies—but they’re playing by Charlie’s rules here and, looking into golden eyes, Alastor thinks he actually means it.

Lucifer, Alastor is beginning to suspect, may be out of his fucking mind.

He leans back in his chair, and it takes all of his self-control not to wince when a stabbing pain shoots all the way down his sternum, leaving a burning in its wake. He is loath to admit it, even to himself, but Lucifer might be onto something with his warning that this is as healed as he’s ever going to get on his own.

But if that’s the case . . .

No, best not to think about that right now.

Unfortunately, Lucifer’s attention is still fixed on him, with a single-minded focus that reminds Alastor somewhat of Charlie. Like father, like daughter—in the most inconvenient way possible.

“That’s gotta hurt,” Lucifer says, and it’s difficult to tell if he’s mocking Alastor or ineptly trying to sympathize with him. “Adam sucked, but he had a lot of power.”

“I’m fine,” Alastor says shortly. “Next question.”

“You’re not,” Lucifer says, “but whatever. Do you regret any of the sins you committed?”

“No.”

Lucifer’s eyebrows meet his hairline. “That was quick.”

Alastor gives Lucifer a sharp smile. “I know my own mind.” He sighs airily. “There will be no redemption journey for me here, so don’t bother worrying your little head about it.”

“I guess I should have expected that.”

“Yes,” Alastor agrees, “you should have.” But the ball is back in Alastor’s court, so to speak. “How did it feel to fall from Heaven?”

Lucifer’s face tightens, but his voice is flat, affectless, when he says simply, “Bad.”

Alastor smiles viciously. “Eloquent.”

Lucifer picks their assignment up off the arm of his chair and brandishes it like courtroom evidence. “The rules say we have to answer honestly. They don’t specify a level of detail. Be happy with what you get.”

The lack of specificity on length of answer is likely because Charlie had known they would never agree to participate otherwise. Alastor shrugs. “Fair enough.”

Lucifer sets the sheet of paper down again, leans forward with both hands back on his cane, and says, “I’ve got one for you: how did it feel to discover that Hell is real and your fucked-up choices condemned you to it?”

It’s not a question Alastor had anticipated and it catches him somewhat flat-footed. He has to take a moment to think, casting his mind back to the very beginning, changed but somehow still so very much the same, forced to immediately reconcile with what had happened to him and decide what he was going to do with it. What he was going to become. Waking up in Hell as a deer of all things had certainly been something. A little cosmic joke played on a man who in life had fashioned himself into a very particular sort of hunter.

And who was taken out by a much more mundane one.

“Confusing, for a day or two.” He meets Lucifer’s gaze. “But I’ve always been adaptable.”

Lucifer makes a scoffing sound. “It’s not hard to see that you’re down here for a reason.”

“Aren’t I just.”

“You really don’t give a shit about the condition of your soul, do you?”

Alastor gives him a slowly unfurling smile. “Is that your final question?”

Lucifer looks him over with a strange expression, eyes wide open and unblinking, a slanting tilt to the set of his mouth. And then he says, “You know what, sure.”

It’s an interesting choice, asking a question he clearly knows the answer to. If Alastor weren’t half-distracted by the aching in his mangled chest, he might interrogate that, pull threads to see what unravels. What game Lucifer imagines he’s playing, with Alastor for an opponent.

As things are, he lets his smile broaden into a mocking grin and says, “I have much better things to think about.” Lucifer hums, but otherwise lets that pass without comment, so Alastor says, “And I believe that makes this my question.”

He makes a show of thinking it over, even though he knows what he wants to ask, the question ready and waiting on the tip of his tongue. It’s the principle of the thing, really; the day he gives up on style is the day Hell can count him out once and for all.

And then he tosses the question into the air between them, like a stone dropped in a pool of still water, to see what ripples form.

“Do you truly believe in dear Charlie’s vision?”

“As a matter of fact,” Lucifer says, this time with no hesitation at all, “I do.”

He lifts his chin and, for a single crystalline moment, Alastor can see it: the angel who defied Heaven and set all of this into motion, millennia ago.

The angel who thought humanity deserved better than a walled garden and ignorance.

The wound begins to fester.

This is not a surprise, per se, but it is inconvenient.

It also means Lucifer was right, which is a thousand times worse.

“What to do,” Alastor says aloud, studying the wound in the mirror and poking at the raw edges with a tentative fingertip; it comes away stained dark by sluggish bleeding he has decidedly lost the fight against staunching. The skin has taken on a peculiar cast over the past few days, a sickly yellow that sets alarm bells ringing in the back of Alastor’s mind.

The yellow, he can see, is spreading into the surrounding tissue. The accompanying pain is excruciating.

Three and a half weeks since the battle and he’s not sure how much more he can take.

Demons are not meant to survive a concentrated hit of holy energy. He has, in his own way, defied the natural order of things, and that means something—surely, it must—but not enough.

It won’t mean anything at all if he dies in the end, anyway.

What a fucking waste.

A knock on the door jolts him out of his spiraling thoughts and he begins rewrapping that day’s bandage, laying the radio voice on thick as he calls out, “I’m a bit busy at the moment, I’m afraid.”

“No, you’re not,” Lucifer’s voice says through the door. “Open up.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Alastor mutters, lapsing into his real voice in a fit of pique.

“I heard that.”

Briefly, and more than a little madly, Alastor is tempted to tell him that he didn’t hear anything. But he crushes that absurd impulse before it can take root and tucks the end of the bandage in so he can put his shirt back on. Just in case Lucifer decides that manners are for lower orders of being.

He opens the door to find Lucifer waiting, minus jacket, ridiculous hat, and cane. Alastor looks down at him with an unwelcoming smile. “Can I help you?”

“Nope,” Lucifer says easily, popping the p. “But I can help you. Are you gonna let me in?”

“I don’t—”

“Need help,” Lucifer cuts in. “Yeah, so you’ve said, but we both know you’re lying. So get out of the goddamn way and let me in.” His eyebrows raise. “Unless you’d rather I brought Charlie and the others into this? Because I can do that if—”

Alastor grabs Lucifer by the arm and pulls him through the door, closing it behind him.

Lucifer grins up at him. “Have to say, I was starting to think you actually were going to hold out until you dropped dead. Not that I’d care, but, you know.”

“I can’t imagine why your wife left you,” Alastor says. “Truly, a mystery for the ages.”

For a moment, hardly more than a second or two, Lucifer’s expression shifts, darkening, but then he seems to shake himself out of whatever malaise threatened and he says, “You’re not going to distract me that easily. Let me see it.”

Alastor takes a step back from him, imposing more space between them. “This really isn’t necessary.”

“Alastor.” Lucifer’s voice hardens, authoritative and commanding in a way that Alastor has not heard from him before. “I’m not fucking around here: show me what Adam did to you. Now, please.”

This is hopeless; Lucifer isn’t going to let go of his conviction that Alastor needs rescuing.

Pathetically, Alastor does, in fact, need rescuing.

“I will,” he says slowly, “if you do something for me in return.”

Spin it around, that’s the way, until it looks like something else. Alastor doing Lucifer a favor by allowing this, by playing into his desire to be a hero in front of his daughter, or a savior, or whatever else it is he thinks he’s doing.

Lucifer sighs and rolls his shoulders back. “What do you want? Name it.”

Alastor smiles in victory. “Nothing too taxing. Just answer a question, that’s all.” His smile broadens, all teeth. “Why does this matter so much to you?”

“You’re important to Charlie,” Lucifer says. He shrugs expansively. “I wish you weren’t, don’t get me wrong, but here we are.”

“But that’s not quite right, is it?” Alastor shakes his head. “Or, no, perhaps it is, but not in the way you want me to understand it.”

Lucifer’s lips thin. “I’m doing this for my daughter. She’ll be heartbroken if you die, for reasons that escape me, but more than that, the guilt will crush her. You and I both know that flashy little showdown with Adam was your thing—Charlie didn’t make that call—but if it kills you, she’s going to internalize it as her fault and I’m not letting you do that to her.”

Alastor leans back against one of the chairs in front of the fireplace—it’s the one Lucifer sat in the last time they were together in this room—and shifts his weight to put the least amount of pressure on his ribs.

“Projecting a bit, hmm?” When Lucifer just looks at him, he lifts a hand in half a shrug. “It’s obvious—you’ve spent millennia wallowing in guilt, viewing all of our nasty little impulses as your special burden to bear.” He bares his teeth in another mockery of a smile. “Poor little fallen angel.”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Lucifer snaps, and it’s so very satisfying to finally get a rise out of him. “Without me, none of you would have the capacity for any of the shit you do.”

“By that logic,” Alastor says dismissively, “we may as well blame God, for all the good that would do us. Guilt is a waste of time. My choices are my own and I’m not giving credit for them over to you.”

Lucifer stares at him for a few seconds, then laughs. “You’re out of your mind, you know that? Absolutely psychotic, even by Hell’s low standards.”

Alastor smiles back at him. “They do say that like calls out to like.”

Lucifer laughs again and drags his hands down his face. “So are you going to let me help you now? Or is the plan to keep doing whatever this is until you collapse, because I can see it coming any minute now.” He drops his hands. “I’m good to wait, if that’s how you want to play this. It’ll make it easier on me, anyway.”

As much as Alastor would like to keep dragging this out, to make it as frustrating for Lucifer as possible, the reality is . . . he’s right and Alastor isn’t going to be vertical for that much longer. He sighs and circles the chair to sit down in it instead. And then he unbuttons his shirt with fingers that he refuses to let shake, to reveal the bandage already spotted with dark blood.

Lucifer draws a sharp breath through his teeth and drops down to one knee in front of the chair. As though it’s nothing to kneel, no concession at all, which may say more about his true power than anything else he’s ever done in Alastor’s presence. He starts to reach for the bandage, then pauses. “May I?”

The thought of someone touching him so intimately makes Alastor want to climb out of his own skin, but there’s nothing for it. He nods shallowly and Lucifer nods in return, then carefully undoes the wrapping. All the while, Alastor keeps his gaze trained on the bayou, on moss-draped trees recreated from childhood memories, and when the pain spikes sickeningly, pretends he’s somewhere else, far away.

“Fucking piece of shit,” Lucifer mutters.

“Your bedside manner could use refining.”

Lucifer snorts. “Not you, for once. Good thing he’s already dead, am I right?”

Alastor looks down, but Lucifer’s attention is on the wound, leaving Alastor to study the golden waves of his slicked-back hair. So clearly an angel, for all the demonic trappings he carries around. As he watches, Lucifer pulls off his gloves before extending a hand to skim his fingertips along the gash, not quite making contact, and Alastor chokes on air as everything, including Lucifer, glows.

“Sorry, sorry!” Lucifer pulls his hand back and the light fades. “There’s a lot of energy trapped here and it’s trying to take over everything around it. So, you know, the rest of you.” He tilts his head back so they’re looking at each other. “I’m gonna level with you: I’m amazed you’ve been walking around like this. If anyone asked me, I would have said it wasn’t possible.”

“Adam wasn’t as good as he thought he was,” Alastor says, a bit stiffly.

“Hey, when you’re right, you’re right.” Lucifer flashes him a quick smile. “I can heal this, but it’s going to hurt like hell. No pun intended.”

Alastor raises his eyebrows. “Do I have a better option?”

“You could just die,” Lucifer says, though he almost sounds apologetic about it.

Alastor sighs through his nose. “Just get on with it.”

Without another word, perhaps worried that Alastor will rethink his capitulation, Lucifer reaches out again, fingers splayed wide, and then, very gently, rests his hand over the widest point in the wound, just barely touching Alastor’s skin. Pain makes sparks flicker at the edges of Alastor’s vision and he closes his eyes, breathing slowly and biting down on his tongue to keep himself from making a sound.

He won’t give anyone that satisfaction.

But it hurts. It hurts like nothing else ever has, not even dying in the woods and waking up in Hell. It hurts like it’s trying to tear apart the tattered remains of Alastor’s soul and Alastor’s only regret is that he wasn’t there to see Adam go down.

And then . . . the pain doesn’t stop so much as retreat, back into the realm of the tolerable. He opens his eyes to the sight of Lucifer, glowing the same gold as the chasm marring Alastor’s torso, wings on full display, and Lucifer could take up so much more space, if he wanted to.

Curious, that he does not.

The gash is very slightly narrower than it was when Lucifer began. Alastor half-wishes he knew how long ago that was, but time has turned to molasses, stripped of all meaning.

“I have a better idea,” Lucifer says before he can ask why he stopped. “Or, well, a mitigating idea, to make this more bearable.”

“What is it?” Alastor asks, and is grimly pleased that the words come out steady, though his voice lacks all of its usual radio timbre.

“Oh, don’t look like that.” Lucifer grins up at him. “I have a feeling this is going to be right up your creepy-ass alley.” When Alastor only looks at him, smiling tightly with his mouth closed, Lucifer uses the claw-like nail of his right thumb to slice the palm of his left hand open, so that blood begins to collect on the surface of his skin like molten gold. And then he holds that hand up, closer to Alastor’s face. “Here. This will help. Both of us, actually, so don’t be shy.”

Alastor stares at him, even as he instinctively leans closer, almost close enough to taste. But he forces himself to focus. “Do you have any idea what—”

“As hard as this seems to be for you to believe,” Lucifer says, cupping his palm so the blood doesn’t spill, “I am not a total moron. Angelic blood hits demons like a drug and it will make healing this easier for me—not to mention a hell of a lot more pleasant for you.” His lips quirk into a strange smile. “Go on, Al. We both know you want to.”

He does. Oh, does he ever. He can smell it, sweeter than honeyed bourbon, and his mouth waters with sheer want.

And he would so hate to be rude.

He curls his fingers around Lucifer’s slender wrist and lifts his hand to his lips, to lap up the blood pooled there with the flat of his tongue before pressing his mouth to the open cut and sucking hard. Lucifer takes another breath, a sharp little intake of air, but Alastor is too distracted to do more than vaguely note it. The blood is thick, rich, and the pain in his chest immediately fades into the periphery of his awareness, blotted out by a glimmering wave of something like euphoria.

He’s tasted the blood of lower orders of angels before—fallen cherubs and the like—but it was nothing like this.

For a moment, as he swallows a second mouthful, everything is beautiful.

But then the hand is removing itself from his fingers, effortlessly, as though Alastor has the grip of a child, and Alastor hears himself laugh breathlessly. Every instinct claws at him to grab the hand back, to tear into Lucifer’s flesh with his teeth, to take.

“You look better already,” Lucifer is saying, voice low and amused as the cut on his palm heals perfectly clean, like it was never there at all. “That good, huh?”

Alastor closes his eyes and licks traces of blood off his lips, shoving down reckless longing and riding the wave of exhilaration. His voice is low, too, and all too human when he murmurs, “You have no idea.”

There’s a note of what sounds like genuine curiosity in his voice when Lucifer asks, “How does it feel? I have no way of finding out for myself.”

“Mm.” Alastor opens his eyes halfway, smiling down at Lucifer, and if it’s a bit less artful than his usual standards, who’s to know? His mind is moving quickly now, thoughts effervescent, sparkling like champagne bubbles, and the most concrete comparison he can draw on is, “A bit like cocaine, but infinitely better.”

Lucifer tilts his head; he seems almost . . . confused, but surely the King of Hell is familiar with the concept, if not the practice. Clarity comes a beat later when he says, “That seems more Angel’s style than yours.”

“Oh, heavens, not now.” He flicks a hand. “When I was alive.”

He hadn’t often done things that way, but every now and then a bump of cocaine had heightened the experience, rendering the act of murder sharper and brighter, the blood that tiniest a bit more vibrant, the steps of the dance that much more of a thrill. A little something extra, to keep it from falling into dull, uninspired routine.

Lucifer eyes him skeptically for a few seconds before he says, a bit dry, “Well, I guess some recreational drug use was the least of your problems, wasn’t it?”

The implications of that cut into Alastor’s blossoming high. “And here I thought you didn’t enjoy looking into the lives of sinners.”

“I don’t.” Lucifer settles down cross-legged on a plush red cushion conjured out of nowhere. “And I didn’t do a deep dive into your life, if that’s what you’re worried about. I had a pretty good idea about you—the sadistic glee you take in devouring your fellow condemned kinda gives it away—and I wanted to see if I was right.” He extends his hand toward Alastor’s chest again. “How many people did you kill, anyway?”

Even after all these years, Alastor doesn’t have to think very hard to tell him, “Twenty-three.”

“Twenty-three,” Lucifer mutters, though he nonetheless presses his hand once more to the wound. This time, buoyed by angelic blood, the pain is a muted thing, with none of the nauseating immediacy of Lucifer’s first attempt. “Why did you do it?”

Alastor sinks deeper into the chair, letting his eyes fall closed. This is a bit harder to dredge up from the depths of his memory, the feelings of the short candle flicker of his life mostly lost now to time, eclipsed by greater things.

It occurs to him that he has been dead significantly longer than he was ever alive.

“It made life a little less boring, I suppose.”

“You killed twenty-three people because you were bored.”

“I killed twenty-three people because I could.”

“Serial murder, recreational drug use, and radio,” Lucifer says. “You’re really . . . you’re really something. Not sure what that something is—not sure I want to know—but definitely something, all right.”

“The recreational drug use accompanied the serial murder,” Alastor tells him pleasantly. Those were good times. “And very occasionally the radio.”

“Charming.”

“I’m also an excellent dancer,” Alastor adds, opening his eyes to watch Lucifer continue putting him back together. Almost casually, as though there is nothing noteworthy about any of this and it’s how they typically spend an evening.

“Oh, well, can’t forget the dancing,” Lucifer says. “Heaven forbid.”

“Haven’t you heard?” Alastor smiles down at him. “I’m a man of many talents.”

Lucifer scoffs. “You are the last man I should be allowing anywhere near my daughter, is what you are.”

“You worry too much,” Alastor says breezily. “Dear, sweet Charlie is perfectly safe with me.”

“Why don’t you try that again, with maybe one-tenth the creepiness?” Lucifer turns his wrist strangely, hand dragging across Alastor’s skin, smearing blood. It sends a bolt of white-hot pain straight through the middle of Alastor’s chest, wringing a gasp from him. “Sorry, shit, this is a little, ah, tricky.” A brief pause, then, “I don’t even know why I’m apologizing, this is your own damn fault.”

Alastor forces himself to settle back down in the chair, closing his eyes again to focus on the warm buzz, the thrum in his veins and rhapsodies dancing around the edges of his mind. It makes the next spike of pain smoother to ride out.

“This would have been a lot easier a week ago,” Lucifer continues, with a hint of a scold. “Every day you pretended this wasn’t a problem made it exponentially worse.” When Alastor doesn’t respond, he sighs. “Look, I get it, you can’t show any signs of weakness down here. It’s Hell. I know. But come on, Al, who am I going to tell?”

There may very well be a valid point in there, but, “I am not in the habit of confiding in others.”

“Funny, I got that,” Lucifer says with a laugh in his voice. “It’s a good thing I’m here, is all I’m saying, or you wouldn’t have made it to the end of the week. Although, seriously, you shouldn’t have made it this far on your own in the first place. So . . . well done, you.”

Alastor’s chest is hurting again, sickeningly, and the high from Lucifer’s blood isn’t quite enough to offset it. He would kill—do a lot worse than kill, and regret none of it—for another taste. But when Alastor opens his eyes to look, the wound Adam inflicted on him has closed to a thin line, with the far ends healed over completely, leaving white scar tissue behind.

“It’s a mistake to underestimate me,” Alastor says, voice fainter than he’d like.

Lucifer must hear how wrung-out Alastor is, how close to losing his grip on composure, because he says, “I’m almost finished.”

“I’m fine,” Alastor says, and he feels like a broken record, saying the same thing over and over again, but there really is no other acceptable response.

“You will be.” Lucifer looks up with a cocky grin. “Have a little faith: I’m the best there is down here.”

Maybe he is, at that, because it isn’t much longer before the shreds of Alastor’s flesh finally knit back together completely and Lucifer is settling on his cushion with a dramatically heavy sigh.

Alastor looks down at the scar, starkly white and flat, like it’s been there for years, and the absence of pain is so sudden and startling that he isn’t sure how to feel.

“It’s passable.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lucifer waves him off with a smile. Now that he’s no longer focusing his energy and attention on patching Alastor up, though, he looks tired, lines of tension around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. “For the record, we’re never talking about this again.”

“Ah, finally a point where we can agree.” He gives Lucifer a smile of his own, then relaxes back into his fading high before he loses it entirely. “Lovely.”

The other residents of the hotel have been talking about him. They don’t do it when they think Alastor can hear, but he is aware of it nonetheless. Despite having no idea how precarious his situation was, no knowledge of how close he came to checking out permanently, they all wonder if something has happened.

What can Alastor say? Not dying has done wonders for his mood.

Of course, now that his demise has been postponed indefinitely, there is the ever-present concern of his constrained circumstances. But one thing at a time.

The thought has of course occurred to him that there may be loopholes and provisos very nearly within reach. Such as, say, a more powerful figure on the board. He had thought Charlie might be the answer, with a bit of guiding and mentoring, manipulating her into forging a sense of familial attachment to him. She is so very eager to shower everyone in her vicinity with love and Alastor has always been a deft hand at drawing people into his orbit, when it suits him.

Then Lucifer decided that he wanted to try being a real father on for size and laid waste to Alastor’s plans.

Although, really, how was Alastor meant to know that Lucifer would actually show up? The main reason Alastor had such an easy in-road in the first place was Lucifer’s utter failure to be an involved parent. He hadn’t even known where Charlie was and she told him about the hotel herself.

It had stood to reason that the pattern would hold.

Now, not only has the pattern failed to hold, but Lucifer has further complicated everything by saving Alastor’s life and expecting nothing in return. Worse, by allowing Alastor to position the whole debacle as a favor Alastor bestowed on him and carrying on like it never happened.

But perhaps . . . perhaps this is an opportunity in disguise. A different sort of in-road presenting itself for Alastor’s consideration.

This is Hell, after all, and power always will out in the end.

“Hey, Alastor?”

“Charlie!” Alastor says, turning on his heel in a swirl of coat to smile at her. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She smiles up at him, falling somewhere between pleased and awkward. “Can we talk? It’s nothing bad!” she adds quickly, waving her hands. “But I haven’t been able to catch you alone in a while and this seems like a good time, so . . . are you free for a few minutes?”

He lets his head fall to the side and Charlie looks back at him, her smile taking a turn for the hopeful. Then he shrugs. “Certainly, my dear! Lead the way.”

She leads him into the parlor—and it is nicer than the first attempt, he will grudgingly admit, with furniture that might conceivably tempt a person to sit and stay a while—where she sits on one of the sofas and he lays claim to an armchair. He sets his microphone to the side and crosses his legs, lacing his fingers together against his kneecap.

It feels good to move freely again.

“Thanks for sitting down with me,” Charlie says, with almost aggressive cheer.

“There’s no need to look so nervous, sweetheart,” Alastor says, a whisper of a laugh track in the background. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, no, it’s not—nothing.” She shakes her head. “It’s more, um, personal . . . I guess?”

“A personal matter!” That’s much more interesting and he leans in with a broader smile. “Do tell.”

“It’s not about—” She cuts herself off again and then squares her shoulders to ask, more decisively, “Did something happen between you and my dad?”

Alastor’s smile thins. “Come again?”

“You and my dad,” she repeats, twisting her hands together in her lap. “I just thought, after the bonding exercise, that things were maybe better between you two. I mean, you talked and that’s progress, right?” She looks and sounds like she means it, which is a . . . unique conclusion, he will give her that. “And I’m super proud of both of you for taking the activity seriously! But the past few days it feels like something is different.”

“Hmm,” Alastor says. “I can’t imagine what.”

He knows exactly what.

“It’s just that he hasn’t been talking about you,” Charlie says. “Like, at all.”

It’s news to Alastor that Lucifer was ever in the habit of talking about him. He’s long been under the impression that the man prefers to ignore his existence until forced to do otherwise, seething with resentment that Alastor has a place in Charlie’s innermost circle.

“Very curious indeed!” he says. “But if something happened, no one has had the decency to tell me about it.”

Charlie’s shoulders were slumped, but she perks up somewhat at that answer. “So you didn’t have a fight?”

“After you expressed how important it is to you that we get along?” Alastor tilts his head with another toothy smile. “Certainly not.”

“That’s what he said, too,” she says. “But I kind of thought he was lying, so I just wanted to make sure.”

Fascinating that Charlie’s interpretation of current events is that Alastor and Lucifer had a fight. While Alastor was, to be fair, somewhat fucked up at the time, he doesn’t recall any fighting involved in his and Lucifer’s last encounter. All in all, it had been an unexpectedly pleasant evening.

“I assure you, my dear,” Alastor says, “there has not been a single fight.” He holds up a hand. “You have my word.”

“Oh good,” she says on an exhale, and everything about her telegraphs relief. “I know change is hard, so maybe that’s it?”

Alastor is not inclined to the sort of change to which Charlie is referring, and so really wouldn’t know, but he’s hardly going to tell her that. Instead, he gives her another smile and says, “Maybe so.”

Alastor is a man of a few very specific vices. Indulging in curiosity happens to be among them—some might call it nosiness, but that’s a bit reductive—and this is how he has come to find himself in the novel position of seeking Lucifer out.

If Lucifer’s behavior where Alastor is concerned has changed, Alastor wants to know exactly why.

He finds him in the hotel kitchen, making a cup of tea, and materializes out of the shadows close behind him to say, “And here I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.”

Lucifer visibly startles, and Alastor gives the back of his head a malevolent smile.

Teacup in hand, Lucifer turns to face him. “Oh, I’ve just been busy, you know how it is.” His voice is overly chipper and Alastor narrows his eyes slightly, though his smile doesn’t move. “Someone’s gotta keep this place standing!”

“Funny,” Alastor says, “it seems to me that Charlie has things well in hand.” He tilts his head sharply. “It’s such a shame when parents lack faith in their children.”

“Hey now.” Lucifer pokes a finger in his direction, stopping before making contact, the other hand tight around his cup. “I have nothing but faith in her! If anyone can pull off this sinner rehabilitation thing, it’s my Char-Char.”

Alastor can’t quite stop his smile from tightening. “That’s not what it looks like from where I’m standing. But I suppose your perspective may be somewhat different, down there.”

It’s not a particularly clever jab and yet that’s when something interesting happens: the stupid smile drops off Lucifer’s face and he says, “We’re not doing this here.” As the words form, a portal opens in the empty space beside him and he steps through it, looking back over his shoulder to say, “You coming?”

“Oh, I suppose,” Alastor says with a shrug, and steps through after him into what appears to be Lucifer’s room. An unfortunate choice of setting, decidedly outside of Alastor’s control, but he doesn’t think this is the prelude to Lucifer killing him.

Saving his life would have been a bit of a wasted effort, if he’s wrong.

Before he can do much more than take in the ostentatious white-gold-red aesthetics, though, Lucifer is rounding on him with a snarl. “I don’t understand you at all.”

Alastor blinks at him and has no idea where to go with that.

But it seems Lucifer isn’t finished. “I spend two weeks strong-arming you into letting me help you and we finally put that to bed”—Alastor refrains from calling out the word choice, but only just—“so I thought you’d want a little space. Charlie’s always talking about ‘healthy boundaries’ and—and whatever, but apparently that’s wrong, too. Are you just contrary for contrary’s sake?”

No one has ever phrased it quite that way before, but Alastor can acknowledge, “Perhaps a bit.” When Lucifer huffs out a disbelieving laugh, Alastor’s smile widens. “So this bizarre little flight of avoidance has been for my benefit? How . . . sweet.”

“Well, yes,” Lucifer says, like Alastor is the one being obtuse. “The other night? When I had to touch you to heal Adam’s carnage? You looked like you wanted to shed your skin and then burn the hotel to the ground to hide the evidence.”

It’s more insightful than Alastor had given him credit for at the time and he can feel his jaw tense with the revelation that he was observed that clearly.

“It was a lot.” Lucifer is still talking. Of course he is. “Even I thought it was a lot, okay? And you really don’t seem like the kind of guy who wants to be reminded of that time you almost fucking died. I was trying to be respectful.”

But Alastor isn’t the only one who has been seen and he’s reached his limit.

“No, you weren’t.” When Lucifer opens his mouth to argue, Alastor bares his teeth in an icy smile. “You don’t want to think about it. It has nothing to do with me.”

“Fuck you.”

“You keep saying that,” Alastor says. “One might start to take it as a request.”

“You started it,” Lucifer snaps irritably, color appearing in his face, and that is more telling than any of the words coming out of his mouth.

“Is that what this is?” Alastor asks, letting his head tilt all the way to one side. “I allowed you to heal me, for sweet little Charlie’s sake, and you think it means something?”

Lucifer’s hand slams down on the back of a chair, in the same color scheme as the room. “Doesn’t it?” he says with a vicious twist to the words that Alastor might have been proud of in his place. “I saw you, you creepy, fucked-up asshole. You think you were hiding from me while I was piecing you back together and you were high off your ass? You’re good, but you’re not that good.”

“We had a deal,” Alastor reminds him. He pitches his tone light, with the resonance of a quality radio broadcast, both hands around his microphone. “I allowed you to heal me in exchange for an explanation as to why you wanted to. More to the point, I distinctly recall an agreement not to speak of it again. Or is the King of Hell not bound by his word?”

“That last part wasn’t a deal,” Lucifer points out. “The terms were satisfied. And you sought me out, anyway.”

He is, regrettably, correct.

“Charlie asked me if we were fighting.” Alastor spreads one hand out wide. “I assured her to the contrary, but I would hate to be accused of lying.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Lucifer mutters. Then he sighs and says, somewhat tightly, “I wasn’t trying to make the situation worse.”

Affable, with a touch of jazzy background music for flair, Alastor says, “What situation? You said it yourself: the terms were satisfied.”

There is something else happening here, though. Something has shifted between them, indelibly, and now they have to redraw the lines of demarcation. And both of them seem to be failing to do that with any alacrity.

Complications upon complications.

In truth, Alastor has never been in this position before. It feels as though he is meant to be owing a debt, as though Lucifer has done something for him that must be repaid, but Lucifer clearly took Alastor’s impromptu deal at face value and intends to allow it to rest.

Except he is not allowing it to rest at all.

Lucifer laughs. “You look like you want to tear my throat out with your teeth.”

“Mm, don’t tempt me.”

Lucifer goes a bit golden again, the color creeping all the way into his cheeks now. “I mean, if you’re into that—who am I kidding, of course you’re into that—it . . . could be fun? Maybe?”

Alastor blinks. Before he can think it through, he hears himself say, “Are you propositioning me?”

“What?” Lucifer drags a hand down his face. “Proposi—who says things like that?”

“I do, of course!”

Lucifer looks at him over the top of his hand; his face is more than a little golden now. “I’m just saying, I was kind of distracted last time and didn’t really take in the full experience. But you seemed like you were having fun, with that part, anyway, and it—”

So Lucifer is propositioning him.

“Hey, you know what,” Lucifer redirects abruptly, “good talk, but let’s just forget this. You’re good, I’m good, everything is good here, so moving on!”

Alastor looks at him for another moment, letting the silence stretch out too long, before he says cheerfully, “By all means, my good man!” He leans in closer, looming. “I would so hate to make you uncomfortable.”

“Right.” Lucifer drops both hands to his sides and meets Alastor’s gaze, somewhat forcefully. “Well . . . great. Glad we cleared that up.”

“Hmm,” Alastor says. “Indeed.”

Some time later, gathered with the others in the parlor to listen to Charlie wax poetic about the ostensible benefits of ‘group talk therapy’, Alastor studies Lucifer and contemplates.

The revelation that Lucifer has developed some nonsensical interest in Alastor, carnally speaking, is abstractly intriguing. Unlike murder, gossip, and the occasional foray into illicit substances, sins of the flesh have never been among Alastor’s vices. Even when he was alive, the idea of pursuing a relationship for sexual purposes was foreign to him.

But there can be many reasons to do something and, given that Lucifer’s ham-fisted attempt at a proposition had involved Alastor getting to take his teeth to that unblemished angelic flesh, there may be some potential here. Possibilities worth pursuing.

Would it be such a bad thing, really, to see where that opened door might lead?

Lucifer must feel Alastor watching him, because he looks over and their eyes lock. Alastor, fingers laced together under his chin, winks.

It’s worth the effort when Lucifer turns his attention pointedly back to his daughter, a hint of color climbing up the sides of his neck.

“I’ve been giving your proposition some thought.”

It had taken a bit of work, the man clearly not wanting to be found, but Alastor has successfully cornered Lucifer in the upstairs corridor, far from prying eyes and ears.

Lucifer, who looks up at him and says, “My what, now?”

“Your proposition,” Alastor repeats in his slickest radio voice. “From yesterday! Surely your memory isn’t that bad.”

Lucifer isn’t looking at him now, but rather at some point over his shoulder that seems to have suddenly become fascinating. “I thought we agreed not to talk about that again.”

“Funny,” Alastor says. “That’s not the conversation as I recall it.”

“Did we really need a permanent agreement?” Lucifer’s gaze is on him again, albeit with some confusion. “I didn’t think you were interested.”

“Did I say that?”

“. . . No,” Lucifer says. “But it was sort of implied. By, you know, you not actually giving me an answer?”

Alastor gives him a wide, mostly pleasant smile. “I had to think it over!”

“We really don’t have to keep talking about this,” Lucifer says. He looks embarrassed; it’s very satisfying. “It was an impulsive decision.” He laughs. “I make those sometimes.”

“What a shame,” Alastor says. “I thought the idea had potential.”

Lucifer is looking at him with extreme skepticism now and, in the interests of fairness, Alastor hasn’t exactly given anyone the impression that he would ever be receptive to physical advances. In fact, he’s gone to some trouble to give the impression that he would sooner chew off his own arm. That impression is not wrong. But sometimes, past precedent needs to be reevaluated in light of new developments.

The way Lucifer had held out his bleeding hand, as though it were the most natural thing he could possibly do, and the casual ease of the conversation that followed. And while Alastor would prefer to go straight to Lucifer bleeding and skip the sex entirely, there’s no reason they can’t do both. It’s only fair.

Hell is defined by unequal relationships. And Lucifer, who once numbered amongst the Seraphim, has power Alastor never will. So much the better, then, if their relationship develops along a different trajectory.

But this is getting tedious, so Alastor cuts to the chase: “Do you want to fuck or don’t you?”

Lucifer chokes on nothing and it’s delightful.

“Are you sure?” he wheezes and Alastor rolls his eyes.

“Perfectly.”

“O-okay . . . then,” Lucifer says, like he’s no longer sure what’s happening here and can’t decide how he feels about that.

“Excellent.” Alastor steps around him to set off in the direction of Lucifer’s room—he’s not getting that kind of mess all over his sheets—and it’s his turn to call back over his shoulder, “Aren’t you coming?”

“Yeah!” Lucifer says, too loud. “Yeah, I’m right there with you.”

Alastor has always liked taking control of things that technically do not belong to him. He’s collected quite a few souls that way and it is in a similar spirit of potential ownership that he lets himself into Lucifer’s room and turns to face him, already reaching for his own tie.

Lucifer, the door closing decisively behind him, is looking at Alastor like Alastor has not so much gone off-script as thrown the script away entirely.

“And you’re really sure about this?” he says, voice a bit thinner than usual.

Alastor raises his eyebrows. “You’re not?”

“No, I definitely am,” Lucifer says. “I’m just having a little trouble figuring out how we got here.”

“If I recall correctly,” Alastor says cheerfully, undoing the tie and setting it aside on the top of the dresser, “you harassed me into allowing you to save my life, we enjoyed a bit of casual bloodletting together, and then you asked if I might be interested in doing it again.” He throws in some jazz to finish with, “And now here we are!”

It seems that, with his summary of events—or possibly the musical flourish—Alastor has finally pushed Lucifer to some kind of limit because he crosses the space between them to twist his fingers in the front of Alastor’s shirt and haul him down into a kiss. It’s firm, closed-mouthed at first, and Alastor thinks it might be an experiment, to see what he’ll do.

The answer is part his lips, though he otherwise doesn’t move, and allow Lucifer to slip his tongue into Alastor’s mouth to explore. It’s wet, a little messy, and certainly not bad.

It improves tremendously when Lucifer deliberately nicks his tongue on one of Alastor’s front teeth and smears the drop of blood, hot and sweet, across Alastor’s tongue in return.

Alastor hums into Lucifer’s mouth, and snakes his fingers under Lucifer’s jacket to curl around his waist. He’s gratified when Lucifer shivers in response, one hand coming up to bury itself in Alastor’s hair and pull him closer, the other still tangled in his shirtfront.

“What do you like?” Lucifer says, breaking away from the kiss, but holding Alastor in place with strength he doesn’t look like he has. “I want to fuck you—I really want to fuck you—but if you don’t—”

“That’s fine.”

“Good,” Lucifer says, voice very low, before a flashy little display of angelic power strips them both and he uses Alastor’s brief moment of surprise to push him toward the bed and down onto it.

Lucifer is already getting hard, and it’s always fascinated Alastor how easy other men are. But when Lucifer reaches down for Alastor’s cock—not hard at all, as Alastor could have predicted had Lucifer thought to ask—he pushes his hand away before he gets there.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” he says, with a staticky smile.

Lucifer’s brow furrows. “You don’t want me to . . .”

He trails off uncertainly and Alastor decides to be charitable, to keep this moving in the right direction.

“I don’t like it.” His smile widens and he takes advantage of Lucifer’s hesitation to flip their positions, sitting astride his thighs and looking down at him instead, his hair falling around his face. “Just let me enjoy this my way, hmm?” He considers him for a moment, the flush of color high in his face, his cock still hardening, despite his confusion, curving up toward his stomach. And he says, “I think I’d like to ride you.”

Lucifer’s cock twitches. “Oh,” he says on an exhale. “Oh, yes. Yeah, let’s do that.”

It takes a little negotiation, but they end up with Lucifer sitting upright against the frankly excessive number of pillows at the head of the bed. It’s the perfect position for Alastor to take over his lap, knees braced against the mattress and arms looped around Lucifer’s neck as he sinks down on his cock as slowly as he can.

“You . . .” Lucifer grabs his hips, eyes rolling back when Alastor takes him a tiny bit deeper, then stops again. “You absolute sadist.”

Alastor dips his head to catch Lucifer’s lower lip between his teeth, hard enough to break skin and lap up the blood that comes to the surface in the seconds before the cut heals. And isn’t that an interesting little challenge. “I believe you’re the one who accused me of being in Hell for a reason.”

Lucifer laughs into his mouth. “You—ah, Alastor, fuck—you definitely are.”

“Good, is it?” Alastor asks in his sweetest voice, like a garrote dipped in honey, as he rolls his hips to drag another stuttering breath from the depths of Lucifer’s chest.

This time, Lucifer moves to meet him, thrusting up as Alastor pushes down, and Alastor takes a sharp breath of his own as their bodies press together, flush, for the first time. Lucifer is bigger than his small frame might suggest, but not uncomfortably so, and with Alastor controlling the pace, it’s good.

Just the way he likes it.

But Lucifer tragically hasn’t lost all of his powers of observation. “You’re still not . . . hard. Am I”—his voice cracks when Alastor grinds down on him in retaliation for continuing to talk—“doing something wrong?”

“No.” Alastor had closed his eyes, but opens them again. “I’m enjoying myself perfectly.” His voice takes on a bit of reverb as he adds archly, “If you’re not, we can always stop.”

“No, no!” Lucifer’s sharp nails dig into Alastor’s hips, holding him down. “Just checking!”

“No need to worry,” Alastor says, as he leans closer to bite Lucifer’s lip again, though this time the skin stays intact. “I’ll tell you if you disappoint me.”

“I’m sure.” But his eyes flicker demonic red as he thrusts up into Alastor, harder than before. Then he says, “Here, I can—” He lets go of Alastor’s hip and offers him his left hand, turned gracefully to show the smooth white expanse of his wrist. “I can keep the wound open, if I want to.” The red is back in his eyes and, oh, he likes that, too, doesn’t he? “Go for it.”

Well, then. Far be it from Alastor to turn down such a gracious invitation. The fingers of one hand still curled around the back of Lucifer’s neck, he takes the offered arm in his other and runs the flat of his tongue from the crease of Lucifer’s elbow to his wrist, tasting his skin. Subtle, soft, almost sweet, and it’s all too easy then to give in to temptation and sink his teeth into flesh the color of bone china.

This time, it splits as readily as tissue paper and golden blood spills into Alastor’s mouth. It’s hot—lush—and a tingling washes over him, everything coming into sharp relief as it hits his system. With more than one source of stimulation, he is getting hard now, but it’s a tertiary concern, somewhere behind the blood on his tongue and the pleasing fullness as he eases up off Lucifer’s cock to plunge back down.

Lucifer lets out a little gasping moan, hitching in the back of his throat, and claws sink into Alastor’s hip as Lucifer pulls him down again with a rasping, “Yeah, like that.”

Alastor laps at the torn skin. It’s bleeding sluggishly, Lucifer’s body seeming to rebel against this kind of damage, but the gash doesn’t knit back together and Alastor gets another shallow mouthful out of it. His entire body sings.

Lucifer lets go of his hip to cradle the back of his head, pulling him in closer to press his face into Alastor’s hair, his wrist trapped between them, squeezed by the odd angle so the bleeding picks up. Alastor scrapes Lucifer’s skin with his teeth, smiling into it.

“You’re so tight,” Lucifer says, the words slurring together, close to Alastor’s ear, and the blood must be hitting Alastor hard because he shivers. “You really li—fuck, Alastor. Do that again.”

Alastor laughs against his wrist and flexes his hips in another smooth roll that drags an obscene noise from Lucifer’s parted lips. They’ve got the rhythm now, moving together, and it’s all so much better than Alastor thought it would be.

So good that, when Lucifer comes a few minutes later, he wouldn’t have minded it lasting a little longer.

Reluctantly, he releases Lucifer’s arm and leans back, licking his lips with a satisfied smile. Lucifer looks almost dazed, color high in his cheeks, trembling as he starts to soften inside Alastor. The wound from Alastor’s teeth has already vanished.

“Good?” Alastor asks, running his tongue across his front teeth to chase the last of the blood. Waste not.

“You really have to ask?” Lucifer says, shoving damp hair back off his forehead. “You?”

“Oh, I feel fantastic,” Alastor says, and means it. Everything is glittering, effervescent, and he lifts himself off Lucifer to flop down on his back beside him instead, with a little laugh he can’t quite hold back. “Delicious.”

Lucifer laughs, too, sinking down onto the bed at his side and propping his cheek on a closed fist. “You sure you don’t want me to . . .” He hesitates, but it seems he’s finally caught up with the program that there’s no need for delicacy here. “You didn’t come. Do you want to?”

“Not particularly.” Alastor turns his head so they’re looking at each other. The mixture of cooling come and lube starting to drip down his thigh is going to become extremely unpleasant very quickly, but for another moment he can let it be. “It’s not necessary.”

“You’re . . . you know what, I have no idea what you are,” Lucifer tells him, but then he leans over to press a quick kiss against Alastor’s mouth that Alastor allows. “But as long as you liked it.”

“Very much so,” Alastor says, bringing his jaunty radio voice back out. “It’s not every day I get that sort of treat.”

Lucifer snorts. “That would be your takeaway here.” He pauses. “We can do it again sometime, if you, you know, want.”

“You did seem to enjoy yourself,” Alastor says. But his tolerance for lying in a pool of bodily fluids has expired and he sits up in a slow unfurling of his spine. “Perhaps next time we’ll be a bit more adventurous, hmm?”

“I’m not sure I even want to know what that means,” Lucifer says. He must have realized that Alastor is about to get up, though, because then he says, “Hang on, let me clean up the mess.”

Even as he speaks, it all vanishes, leaving their bodies and the sheets cleaner than when they got there. Pristine.

“I suppose it is the least you can do,” Alastor says. And without the mess, it really isn’t such an imposition to stay a little longer—Lucifer clearly wants him to and Alastor doesn’t have anywhere better to be—so he lies back down.

“Angelic powers do have their perks,” Lucifer says amiably. He falls silent for a few seconds before changing tracks. “You know, for someone who doesn’t seem to like sex, you’re surprisingly good at it.”

“Who said I don’t like sex?” Alastor asks, closing his eyes to enjoy the last of his high.

“You don’t want me to touch your cock and you didn’t come.”

“Your point?”

“Those are kind of the basics. Foundational, you might even say.”

Alastor opens his eyes and turns his head again to find Lucifer studying him with an unholy amalgamation of intense focus and bafflement. “I wasn’t aware that there were rules I was meant to follow.”

“There aren’t!” Lucifer protests. “I’ve just never been with someone who didn’t want to finish.”

“It was exactly what I wanted, as I wanted it,” Alastor says. “Your assumptions are hardly my problem.”

Lucifer considers him for a few seconds. “No, I guess not.”

“If you’re worried that I secretly hated it and will never say yes again,” Alastor says, “I would like to remind you that I have never once hesitated to make it clear when I hate something about you.”

“All right, fair enough,” Lucifer says on a laugh. “I’ll give you that one.”

He catches the blankets with his foot and, no doubt aided by a bit of magic, covers both of them. It seems he’s decided that Alastor really is staying, which makes Alastor want to leave, but he still feels exquisite, even better now wrapped in high thread count sheets, and so he doesn’t.

“Don’t get used to this,” he tells him.

“Definitely not.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.”

Lucifer falls quiet at that—blessedly so—and Alastor is on the verge of dozing when he speaks up again. “I didn’t know you had a tail.”

Alastor opens his eyes to slits, smiling hard. “And if you ever mention it to anyone, I will tell your daughter about all of this in excruciating detail.”

Lucifer winces. “You really are in Hell for a reason.”

Alastor hums agreeably. “I’d recommend keeping that in mind.”

Lucifer huffs out another laugh and silence falls again. It’s a vast improvement on making conversation and Alastor rolls onto his side, facing Lucifer rather than away, and tucks his face into one of the overly abundant pillows. He doesn’t sleep often—he doesn’t really need it—but it’s nice to drift in that in-between space for a while.

Don’t get used to this.

It’s a reminder both of them would be wise to heed.

“So, are you ever going to tell me why?”

Lucifer’s mouth is hot where he has it pressed against the nape of Alastor’s neck, breath stirring the ends of his hair, and hotter still when he starts to kiss his way down his back, one vertebra at a time. Despite the pointed nature of the question, he seems much more interested in exploring Alastor’s body, a state of affairs Alastor has no present objections to.

“I enjoy it,” Alastor says, shifting slightly to rest his cheek more comfortably on folded arms. “Why else?”

“I believe that.” He’s reached the dip in Alastor’s lower back and lingers over it, tracing abstract patterns with the tip of his forked tongue. “But you don’t strike me as a one-reason kind of guy.”

It’s the fourth time they’ve done this—if the time Alastor cut it off ten minutes in and left entirely counts—and the first that Alastor has allowed Lucifer to really touch him without bloodletting to facilitate the proceedings. It’s not doing much for him, but he won’t complain if Lucifer wants to fuck him this way.

Maintaining the delicate equilibrium they’ve established. Lucifer likes touching him, Alastor doesn’t really mind when he does, and he’ll get his before the evening is out. A pleasant time to be had by all.

“I might ask you the same question,” he says idly.

Lucifer is smiling; Alastor can feel the curve of his mouth against his skin. “I enjoy it.”

“That’s not very clever,” Alastor says, throwing one of Lucifer’s early digs back at him, more casual than barbed. He just can’t be bothered.

“But it is true.” Lucifer’s hands are on Alastor’s ass now, squeezing, though he does avoid his tail. It only took one round of immediate and unyielding rejection for him to internalize the message that the ball of fluff Alastor has been saddled with for eternity is off limits. “I want to fuck you.”

Alastor hums. “I’d assumed as much.” He lifts his head just enough to wave a permissive hand before returning to his indolence. “Have at it.”

Lucifer nips the knob of bone at the base of Alastor’s neck with sharp front teeth. “You say the sweetest things.”

“I’m a hopeless romantic, what can I say?”

Lucifer snorts, as suddenly slick fingers press against him, then up and in. Alastor sighs and relaxes into the stretch and pressure, closing his eyes.

“How is it?” Lucifer likes to hear him talk, though Alastor suspects he would deny it if so accused. His fingers withdraw, then push back in, twisting dexterously.

“Acceptable.”

“There’s that romantic streak again.” Lucifer’s voice is dry. But he’s growing accustomed to Alastor’s detached relationship with sex, which is likely why the next thing he says is, “But it’s great for me, thanks for asking.”

Alastor laughs. “Oh, I don’t need to ask.”

“Uh huh.”

Lucifer’s cock is much bigger than his fingers and, when he decides to move things along, Alastor adjusts his position to make it all a little easier. He’s only ever really been interested in other people’s pain.

“You’re always so tight,” Lucifer says in a low rasp, claws digging into Alastor’s hips.

“I almost never do this,” Alastor reminds him. “Don’t you feel lucky?”

“Yeah, shame about that personality, though.”

Lucifer is all the way inside him now and he goes still, breathing heavily. Alastor takes a deep breath of his own and lets it out slowly, relaxing around him. And the truth is that it is good. Somehow, in some cursed and forsaken way, they’re a halfway decent fit.

Lucifer is moving now, pulling most of the way out and then easing back in, and Alastor sighs lightly. “I can take more than that.”

Teeth scrape down his spine, though not hard enough to break skin. That’s Alastor’s hobby. To his immense satisfaction, Lucifer’s voice has gone a bit reedy when he says, “I know what you can take.”

Alastor supposes he does, at that, with everything else that has transpired between them. But he likes how easily he can make Lucifer’s control slip and, on the next thrust, pushes back to meet him with a flexible roll of his hips that wins him a gasp. He grins triumphantly and is not surprised when Lucifer slips an arm around his waist to pull him up onto all fours.

“You,” he says breathlessly.

“Me?” Alastor pitches it coy.

“You.”

“Riveting conversation,” Alastor says, then takes a sharp breath through his teeth when Lucifer uses their new position to pull all the way out and then thrust back in, faster and deeper.

Lucifer presses his mouth against Alastor’s back in an open-mouthed kiss. “You like that?”

Alastor snorts. “Don’t be boring.”

“Don’t even”—they’re getting it right now, as they inevitably do, moving with instead of against each other—“try to say you’re bored.”

Alastor laughs, though it stutters a bit, half-obscured by static. “Don’t bore me and I won’t have to.”

One of Lucifer’s hands lets go of his hip to reach around and cover his mouth instead. Alastor grins into it and then catches the fleshiest part of his palm between his teeth, biting down until the skin splits and he gets a taste of blood on the tip of his tongue. Lucifer laughs a stuttering little laugh of his own, but doesn’t keep the wound open for Alastor’s convenience.

Alastor bites him again in retaliation.

There are, in his experience, far worse ways to spend an evening, and after, when they’re lying next to each other in the middle of Lucifer’s ridiculously large bed, the stillness between them is . . . agreeable.

Then Lucifer decides to vary up his routine. At odds with how confident he is touching Alastor under other circumstances, he reaches out now with caution. When Alastor doesn’t recoil, he wraps an arm around him in a loose hold, and Alastor knows he’s doing it that way deliberately, to facilitate escape if Alastor changes his mind.

“I should have known you’d turn into the cuddly type sooner or later,” Alastor says, just barely resting his forehead against Lucifer’s shoulder, though he keeps his hands to himself. He does have limits and they are rapidly approaching.

“And yet here you are.” Lucifer is rubbing small circles between Alastor’s shoulder blades with the pads of his fingertips. “Letting me do it.”

“Best not to push your luck, then, hmm?”

While sex with Lucifer has so far been entertaining enough, Alastor isn’t sure how he feels about being held like this in the aftermath. He’s far too tall to really be held—certainly not by someone as diminutive as the man attempting to do it—but when Lucifer noses Alastor’s ear aside to bury his face in his hair with a warm sigh, it’s not an uncomfortable experience.

“You can bite me,” Lucifer says, voice muffled, “if you want. You didn’t really, when we were having sex.”

Alastor considers it briefly. The want is there, but without urgency, or at least not now. Sometimes anticipation can be its own reward.

“Mmm.” He closes his eyes and stays where he is. “In a moment.”

Lucifer makes a soft noise of assent, or perhaps simply acknowledgement, from the nest he seems to be building in Alastor’s hair. “Whenever you want. I sure don’t have anywhere else to be.”

He’s still rubbing Alastor’s back.

Time goes on, as it inevitably does, even in Hell. The hotel picks up new residents every week, some of whom seem genuinely interested in one day checking out, as rumors of success spread like a disease. Charlie’s methods may or may not actually be what’s working, but the effort is certainly there, alongside no shortage of ebullient zeal, and maybe that’s what it really takes, in the end.

Alastor and Lucifer continue to do whatever it is they’re doing.

But the weight of Alastor’s deal drags at him, as every part of him begs to slip its shackles, to be free. As he remains and remains and remains, doing his part for a cause that means nothing to him, feeling as though the walls are getting just a little bit closer with each passing hour.

“You made a shit deal, didn’t you?” Lucifer says one day in bed, resting comfortably on Alastor’s chest. “A really shit deal.”

Alastor looks down at the top of his head and, briefly, considers melting into shadow and fleeing.

He says, “How long have you known?”

“I think I’ve always known.” Lucifer shifts so he can meet Alastor’s gaze without lifting his head. “Just not consciously at first. You know how it is with me.”

Lucifer smiles up at him then, with all the brilliance of the Seraph he once was, in that timeless time before he chose to create a world where men like Alastor thrive. Where men like Alastor can exist at all.

“Tell me about it.”

And Alastor does.