Chapter Text
"Took you long enough!" Lucifer was grinning, turning to meet Alastor at the door with a flourish that Alastor was sure he had planned. Lucifer's smarmy grin was in place, and he had the audacity to give a short, insulting bow, gesturing for Alastor to make his way inside.
Alastor pried his claws from the doorknob - he was sure he had left indentations, but hoped Lucifer wouldn't notice until after he was gone. He felt an invisible barrier at this doorway but pushed himself through it regardless. His heart was hammering, rabbit quick in his throat, and he kept his breathing as slow and gentle as he was able, suppressing the need to gasp in oxygen, to fuel his body to fight or flee.
Lucifer gestured him over to a gaudy yellow couch. "I've got tea ready, although it might be cold now actually haha letmejustfixthat-" and with a snap of his fingers, steam was rising from the spout.
Alastor took his seat, latched to the patterns the steam drew in the air.
He had to be here. Rosie was so busy managing Cannibal town out from under Franklin's shadow, and she wasn't a true caregiver regardless. She had always done her best for Alastor, on the rare occasions he had found himself with nowhere left to turn but her doorstep, but in the aftermath of Franklin's overdue extermination, Alastor's unexpected return, and then the battle between heaven and hell, she had been so time poor.
Husker was out of the question, obviously. Alastor knew there was too much animosity there to trust Husker's caregiving, despite the man knowing his secret.
Which left the King of Hell himself, Lucifer. The being that had torn Alastor's secret from him after a few glasses of bourbon and an unanticipated healing session. Lucifer had weaved another segment of angelic remnant out of Alastor's chest, and Alastor still didn't know precisely what had given him away - the pathetic, mewling whimper he hadn't been able to bite back, the few tears that the alcohol had loosened, the incriminating way he had leaned into Lucifer's touch, just for a moment, before he'd caught himself and jerked back.
Something, any one of those things, all of them. It had given him away, and Lucifer had looked at him with eyes too wide and shocked and only needed to say "ohshit" for Alastor to know he'd understood.
Lucifer was right, with the offer he'd presented the day after - after Alastor had bolted, wrapped himself in his shadow and sped to his room, had strengthened his wards and soundproofing, and sobbed himself to sleep as quietly as he could manage. Alastor needed to drop, and obviously wasn't doing so often enough, Lucifer had said, and why not make use of the only caregiver in the hotel that was willing?
He'd told Alastor to think it over, to discuss with any caregivers currently on his roster, and come find him a few days later to talk over boundaries and plans, if he was interested.
Alastor had considered discussing with Rosie, had even dropped in to have a coffee with her, but she had been so busy, directing multiple lackeys and resolving problems from every corner of Cannibal Town, even while she kept one eye on him. Alastor had considered asking to drop but had known the words couldn't fairly leave his lips. She had asked if he needed anything, intensity in her gaze, and he had shaken his head, had demurred, had taken his leave. She had let him, which was proof beyond anything that as much as she may want to help him, she knew she couldn't give him what he needed, not at this juncture. Possibly not ever, not truly, a neutral herself, working double time to follow the cues of Alastor's headspace that could be more innately followed by the dynamic match.
Alastor had not considered discussing with Mimzy. Husker was right. It wasn't- what they had, on the rare few times they had it...
It had been complicated, had twisted Alastor's insides in a way he still couldn't verbalise. He'd been drawn back to her, again and again, when she would find the time to dole adoration out with abandon. And in the highs, she would bring him down gently and keep him there, and he would come back to himself centred, grounded, finally able to breathe.
But it came with uncountable, unseeable caveats, the focus always petering back out, and Alastor would be left, unmoored, vacant, searching, confused.
He had given her a title, once, a slip of the tongue, mind too foggy to bite it back. Mimzy had laughed at first, then frozen with the realisation of his pathetic sincerity, and had retreated, leaving Alastor plummeting through nausea and blind panic, only to crash into the arms of a startled Husker, the only other caregiver his addled state allowed him to find.
This time, as Mimzy flounced in tailed by loan sharks, had proceeded to uncover her vapidity before the entire ensemble cast, Alastor had quietly accepted it - despite her faithful guarding of his one deepest secret, she wasn't someone he could go to. The transaction was too cold, even for him, and each time they fell into each other's orbits, he seemed to be the one rocketed out into cold isolation, whilst Mimzy journeyed on to dance around someone new.
So there was no-one to tell, no-one to discuss it with. Alastor had sat at his radio desk, staring at the soundboard between spoken segments, weighing it up.
Adam had defeated him. Maybe Adam could always have defeated him. Maybe Alastor had truly overestimated his own strength, stealth, swift manoeuvrability. But standing on that rooftop, Alastor had felt his hands trembling, had needed to grip his cane to keep himself balanced, even before the fight began. When Adam dived towards him, spear in hand, Alastor had meant to slip away, dance behind, sink his claws into the vulnerable flesh of the first man's uncovered neck. But he hadn't moved fast enough, couldn't get his feet to cooperate - he'd caught the flash of light and been unable to unfreeze.
Trembling, reduced coordination, lethargy, fear - all symptoms of going too long between proper drops.
Lucifer offered, and Alastor hated the man, loathed his gaudy tomfoolery, but he needed to face this weakness. Alastor needed to regress, to drift with someone to anchor him, or he would be leaving himself weak and exposed to future attack. And Alastor had always prided himself on facing his own weak points, of finding ways to mitigate and control for them.
"Where do you want to start?" Lucifer asked, seated across from him, leaning over the coffee table in his gaudy yellow-purple-red bedroom, and Alastor fought the urge to flee, to run, to disappear and curl up in a corner and wait for the fear to burn through him. He swallowed, forced his jaw to unclench from his aching smile, steadied his voice with the years of practice radio had afforded him.
"You have to tell me before you touch me," he started, static thankfully absent, although his intonation fell flatter than he had aimed. "I won't call you any titles. You are not to hit me, spank me, or scream at me - if you do so I will ensure I age up and slit your throat."
Lucifer sat back a little, eyebrows lifting, "What? I would never hit a kid, Alastor, that's brutal! Who do you think I am?"
Alastor paused at that, heart rate dropping from sprinting to simply racing. "You would never? Did you never physically discipline Charlie in her youth, not even for major infractions?"
Lucifer blanched at that, eyes widening. "God no! I mean, uh, me no? Ahwhateveryougetmypoint - no! I may be the Devil, Al, but I'm not a monster!"
Alastor stared him down, hiding his own gaze behind radio dials. Lucifer seemed sincere in his horror. If there was one thing about the infuriating little man that Alastor trusted, it was his sickening sincerity.
Good. Alastor released a breath as quietly as possible, subtly pressing his fists into the couch cushions to ground himself. He hadn't wanted to say it, but the reality was, he needed this. He needed to build his reserves back up, needed to be able to keep himself safe again. He'd made the decision to set physical violence as a hard limit, but if Lucifer had pushed it, had been disappointed or disagreeing... Alastor didn't want to think about how far he could be budged.
"I guess I'll ‘extend you that trust’, as your dear daughter would put it," he acquiesced, making sure to bend the 'your' sardonically, just to watch Lucifer bristle. So maybe Alastor trusted two things about Lucifer - his pathetic sincerity, and how easy he was to get a rise out of. "Although I prefer the caveat - trust, but verify." There too, Alastor smiled, carving his grin out too far, letting his neck pop and crack, and his shadow rear up behind him. He called forth what he could of his essence, enough to give the room a shock of petrichor, and bared his teeth.
It was gratifying to see Lucifer flinch, twitch backwards, subconsciously round his shoulders to make himself smaller in the presence of a predator. Alastor felt his smile stretch into something real, felt his pulse actually settle back, just for a moment.
It was all a sham, though. Alastor knew it, and he knew Lucifer would know it too, if he brought the action to conscious thought. The King of Hell's power was at least an order of magnitude beyond anything an overlord could bring, especially Alastor now, in his injured state. But it warmed him, nonetheless, to see Lucifer draw back, to watch his eyes flick down and away, his hands clasp tight in his lap. It grounded Alastor, reminded him of his place in the social hierarchy, regardless of his place if it came to a show of raw power. This little man in front of him, granted the highest throne in the realm, yet unable to fit himself into the role he'd been moulded - showboating, nattering, yet behind it all, believing he was less than.
It made him fun, gave Alastor an easy way in, a way to antagonise a creature that would otherwise be deemed a threat too menacing to intelligently approach.
Three things Alastor trusted then - Lucifer's sincerity, his touchiness, and his deep-seated insecurity, so obvious in his clumsy posturing, his puffed-out chest in pitiful defiance to a world that would always leave him feeling small.
Feeling small. As Alastor did, sometimes.
It was three points of trust too many for Alastor to justify clawing the smallness back inside, locking it away where it would twist and morph into a howling, hollow void of loneliness and desperation, where it could leave him weak and trembling on another rooftop, unable to defend himself from well-signposted manoeuvres.
"Uhh, how old do you usually get in headspace?" Lucifer continued, obviously deciding to try and keep the conversation limping forward. "I haven't really done much caregiving of humans, well not much of any really since, well, ahem, but I looked after Charlie quite a lot, and I think she aged similar to a human, being half-human and all, haha, but I haven't brushed up on the human developmental stages in a while, it really hasn't been high on the priority list-"
Alastor tuned him out, sure he could tune himself back in if Lucifer ever managed to run out of inane ramblings.
He didn't know. Well, that wasn't strictly true. Alastor had been alive in the 20s, when testing had been a privilege, and an oft inaccurate one at that. He'd shown the signs, his mother said, developmental milestones fluctuating, speech often stumbling, and wet sheets occasional even into adolescence (and past it, but, well...). He'd never received an official classification, let alone an official regression range that were more and more common for sinners to obtain in life.
Rosie said he got quite young - his words would stumble away from him, and his control of... certain bodily functions left something to be desired. She'd said, from her observations, that he could range from two years down as far as six months, one of the youngest categories. Alastor had laughed her off when she'd told him, and she must have caught the note of hysteria he hadn't been able to fully conceal, because she had backed off gracefully, had even conceded that Alastor's age could settle higher if he ever acquiesced to pursue a more consistent dropping schedule.
"-so it's difficult to work out the exact ages, you know? Given the whole 'before time began' thing, and how none of us were ever really children-" Lucifer was somehow still prattling on, hands waving to illustrate some concept that Alastor couldn't care to bother with.
"About three," he spoke, cutting Lucifer off with an answer to the initial question. "I hope that won't be too difficult for your royal capabilities."
Lucifer spluttered again. "I helped look after Charlie until she was eight! I did a chunk of the tantrums and continual questions and caregiving to an actual child, and besides, my experience pre-dates human existence! Three-abouts is perfectly handlable."
"Good," Alastor said, although privately his gut twisted. Lucifer would find out soon enough that little Alastor was a very different beast to what little Charlie would have been.
"Great," Lucifer said, "what does 'about three' look like to you? Are you pretty verbal still? What kind of shit do you get into? Oh God, am I going to have to keep you from murdering small animals or something? That's what baby human psychopaths do, right?"
"I suppose time will tell," Alastor answered, double-minded. A part of him enjoyed Lucifer's frazzlement, was please that Lucifer's tendrils of fear permeated even into his images of Alastor's regression. The other part knew he was allowing a false narrative. He was never violent when he was little, not in life and not in headspace. In fact, in headspace he was rather pathetic, vulnerable, incapacitated.
"Would it kill you to be slightly helpful?" Lucifer asked, "I'm going out on a limb for your creepy ass, and you're honestly giving me shitall to work with."
Alastor fought the urge to get up and leave. Fought it desperately. He'd weighed up the options - he'd chosen this course of action - he'd see it through, for at least one session. He pasted on his most irritated smile, glaring.
"I find most people learn best from experience, rather than rambling," he cut back, unable to keep the buzz of annoyed static entirely out of his voice. There was another victorious thrill as Lucifer's face dropped, as his cheeks stained red, but it was tempered by the ever-growing nausea.
"So you'd prefer to just drop and feel it out from there?" Lucifer asked, rallying himself.
"Just so," Alastor replied. He was over talking about it - he knew he couldn't answer more detailed questions the way a typical little could, and didn't want to be stuck dodging them. It was better to set a date and leave now, get a drop out of the way when the time came, then regroup and pick up his pieces afterwards - determine if this could truly be a path forwards.
"... I mean, uh, sure, okay then," Lucifer replied, looking vaguely shell-shocked, "Well, I've got a few hours free now, we could just, uh, jump straight into it!"
"... How do you propose we do that?" Alastor asked, before he could filter and examine the words. He knew it gave too much away - the average little should know how to tip themself into headspace, not delay and deny until physically struggling and then find a hole to hide in. Shit.
But Lucifer didn't seem to notice the implication, simply furrowing his brow in thought. "Well, let me... hmm..." For a minute he looked like he was going to clamber over the coffee table before he seemed to think better of it and walk around it like a far-saner being.
"You said to tell you before I touch you, right?" he checked, "not ask?"
"I'll pull away if you're too abhorrent," Alastor confirmed. He'd walked into this meeting... uneasy - he was self-aware enough to admit it. His worry had abated as he'd found his conversational footing, but now that Lucifer was approaching, now that reality was sharpening again, he felt his heart rate pick back up. It seemed they were doing this right now, not at some ambiguous point in the future. Alastor didn't have the energy for terror, not in the wake of his still-healing injury, of his months of only snatched moments of regression. He held his hands as still as he could, muscles tense against the trembling, but his face felt fuzzy, and reality felt like it was dripping away, hollowing out, greying somewhat at the edges.
"I'm going to sit down by your side, alright?" Lucifer still hesitated. Alastor didn't grace him with an answer - he'd gone through his protocols for this sort of thing (worked out, verbalised only courtesy of Rosie's endless patience) - Lucifer could either abide or he couldn't.
Then Lucifer was sitting next to him, not quite touching; a line of heat simmering in the air on Alastor's right side.
"I'll, uh, start here, I guess," Lucifer hedged, still so fumbling and unsure and Alastor felt paradoxically repelled and magnetised. Lucifer's countenance painted the picture of someone so pathetic - a King that couldn't seem to command respect - but maybe, just maybe, Alastor could extend him the smallest tendril of trust because of it. "I'll just tell you about my day to start us off, hey, kiddo?"
The epithet hit Alastor like a strike to the gut - he managed to quiet the gasp, the even more pathetic whimper, but he couldn't stop his head dropping slightly, shoulders hunching in.
"Woah, hey, you're alright, Al," Lucifer exclaimed, sounding startled, "Jeez, how long has it been since you've properly dropped?"
It had been... It had been... He'd stayed with Rosie a few afternoons, but that had been half-in, half-out. Before that... Seven years... He'd dropped in that time, he knew he had - the memories of it grated at him still. But what did Lucifer consider a 'proper' drop? Pure or impure? Because the seven years, the constraints of the eventual chain around his neck...
Would this be classed as a pure or impure drop?, he thought, in the back of his mind, somewhat hysterically.
"I'm putting my arm around you, okay, kid?" Lucifer warned, and Alastor had a few moments to process and prepare before that line of heat was pressing into his side and burning against his shoulder blades. Alastor couldn't hold back the gasp this time, but he bit his lip to copper to stifle the mewl. He couldn't stop himself shuddering, trembling, retreating inwards, still not wanting Lucifer to see. His fringe flopped over his eyes, giving him at least the illusion of a barrier.
"Woah, hey, shush, it's all good," Lucifer continued to soothe, still sounding somewhat taken aback, "we're just gonna sit here and chat, that's all. Aw, hun, hey, no, it's okay."
Was he crying? He was crying, wasn't he? Alastor felt sick from it. Just a few words, a gentle, mindful touch, and he was crumbling to pieces, miserable vulnerability weeping out of him. He was showing his soft, unprotected underbelly to the creature with the deadliest claws in Hell.
He'd thought it through. He had. He needed to drop. He needed guidance in it. It was the only way to regain his strength, to stop being so pathetic. To stop being so unsafe. But to get there, he had to humiliate himself, it seemed. He thought he'd be able to keep it more controlled...
"I don't want to feel sorry for you, because you're kind of a sick bastard, but holy shit, Al, how long have you been on the edge like this?" Lucifer asked, voice soft, laced with genuine concern.
A sob broke out, shuddering its way through Alastor's tight-clenched teeth. He squeezed his eyes shut against it, wrestled with his stuttered breathing, shame ratcheting through him.
"I- I'm- it's not-" he tried, before cutting himself off sharply, clamping his lips shut. Not even his radio static could mask the reedy, tumultuous quality of it, and if Alastor couldn't control his voice, then he would not be using it.
"Oh, hell, hush, it's alright," Lucifer murmured, and Alastor felt himself being pulled in a bit tighter to his side. "Look, we're definitely gonna need to debrief this cuz fucking hell, but..." he trailed off, huffing. Alastor registered Lucifer's breath shift his hair, and he shuddered, half wanting to pull away, half needing to push closer. It felt like something was crumbling in his sternum, something old and aching and it hurt.
Another sound fought its way out, and Alastor snapped a jittering hand up to press against his lips. They were slick with tears and snot and blood and how had control tumbled away from him so fast? He was floundering falling spinning nauseatingly dizzyingly through a void he couldn't comprehend couldn't find the edges of he couldn't determine up or down or anything but sickening lurching endless falling flight.
"I'm gonna shimmy us down on the couch a bit, get you up against my chest," Lucifer still rambled, but his voice had taken on an assured edge that Alastor wanted to pry back away from him. He couldn't have Lucifer on firm ground, he needed him floundering too, wrong footed. He needed at least that morsel of an illusion of control. But it was slipping away from him too, like his words, his composure, his safety.
"I'm thinking some of this is skin hunger, hey, bud?”
Alastor didn't know where to start with that one. He... Touch was... Rosie knew the words better, had given him some over the years. Averse. Repulsed. Starved. They were too cutting, too stripped bare to look at head-on, so Alastor never had. He just stored away the accompanying protocol, as Rosie taught him, and let the specifics glide off of him, lest they reveal too much.
Besides, his words had well and truly left him, consumed by the concave shrieking cavern in his chest, forcing more violently muffled sobs to wrack through him. Alastor let Lucifer shift him, taking note of the warnings - "shoulders now," "okay I'm pulling you forwards a bit," "I'm slipping a pillow under your arm there" - to at least give his nervous system enough time to acclimate to the ideas before Lucifer moved him. Flinching away from it all would be, at this point, eons beyond too transparent.
"Let's just put your head up here, that's it," Lucifer instructed, and after a moment, Alastor felt gravity shift again, and his head was pressed to Lucifer's chest. It was so warm. A slow heartbeat rumbled through Alastor's ear, his cheek, his mind. He used to lie like this, with his mother, on cooler winter's nights, when he was still young enough for decorum to allow him to huddle up with her under the blankets. He'd listen to her heartbeat, slow and steady and reliable, and lull himself to sleep with the rhythm.
Lucifer's hand was still rubbing firm circles in his arm, and, with a warning, his other hand came to smooth Alastor's hair away from his face, and then to keep brushing through it. It sent hot cold pleasant too much run seek shivers across his skull, down the back of his neck, like Rosie's gentle hands used to, when she had been able to find the time for him, a decade ago, before everything became more difficult, more complicated. Before the esoteric metal against his throat.
Alastor couldn't hold himself back anymore. He didn't have the strength. The chips had fallen, the top stopped spinning, and he'd lost lost lost.
His fingers found their way into his mouth, unspeakably unseemly comfort chasing. He pressed his face against Lucifer's warmth in a final attempt at mufflement, and he bawled.
"Hey, hey, hey, there you go, you're alright, duckie," Lucifer hushed, and the words washed over Alastor like a tidal wave, settling something in his hindbrain that even Rosie hadn't been able to reach, "just let it out, sweetheart. Oh, you poor idiot. No wonder you're such a dic... uhhh... so 'spirited' usually, hey? You're tryna keep all this locked back."
Alastor didn't care what the words meant exactly – the individual connotations were fading in and out. He shuddered and gasped for breath as the sobs ripped through him; he didn't know if it was ever going to stop. He brought his free hand up, gripped at Lucifer's shirt, tried to anchor himself even closer.
"You're pretty young, aren't you, bub?" Lucifer asked. Another sigh, another hum vibrating through his chest. "We really, really need to talk about this, Al, when you're back up again."
Back up again. Alastor didn't know if he ever would be, didn't know how, had lost the path, the map, the light, the bearing. All he could do was hold on and weep.
And when Lucifer started humming, Alastor finally found a rhythm he could latch himself to. With each note, he drifted further from the mottled turmoil, letting it carry him away from the internal hurricane, all the way down to the gentle embrace of unconsciousness.