Chapter Text
Lucifer should have known better.
Aww, Ami - are you dizzy?
Wires bite into his skin, and his feet, bound almost together at the ankles, struggle to stay under his body, instinctively trying to avoid another nasty collision with the floor. He can’t SEE - that’s by design - and it’s fucking with his balance.
Lucifer wasn’t built for the dark.
Not even ten thousand years of desperate adaptation had completely erased that fact.
But the dark is where he is now, and what makes it worse is that he has no one to blame but himself.
Lucifer should have known better than to HOPE when he saw his little girl’s face light up his phone screen. He’d all but dived to answer it, holding it between his hands like something precious as he prayed internally, desperately, for just one more chance. For one more moment in the light.
He’d known all along that his attempt to fix things with his girl were doomed. He’d known that his daughter would get sick of him, would become exasperated with all of the things he couldn’t help being, all of the things he couldn’t do. He’d known it in the deep, instinctive way that wild birds know to fly south.
Some things are built to leave, and some things are built to be left. With his clipped wings and poor coping mechanisms, he knows which one he is.
Lucifer was almost as greedy as he was prideful, though. He’d wanted to do things for his girl, wanted to spoil her a little, wanted to tuck a few extra smiles into his pocket for the inevitable return of the dark rooms and cobwebs and quiet.
Every dad, deep down, wants to be his little girl’s hero once in a while. If that’s a sin, it’s the least of his sins, and he’s not sorry.
Spin him again, Voxie - let’s see how well he dances. All those wings, he’s like a little mariposa…
Charlie hadn’t been the one who called him. Of course she hadn’t. He should have known better. He knows the look she gave him before she told him to leave. He ‘s seen that look all over the varied, perfect faces of Heaven.
He saw it on his wife’s face right before she’d slammed the door on their relationship, literally and figuratively.
(Maybe he did know better. Maybe walking into this was easier than facing the truth.)
Charlie is done with him.
She’s done.
(Maybe these assholes have finally found a way to kill him. Fuck knows he’s never managed.)
The cables wrapped him up the minute he stepped through the portal. They pinned his arms, his wings, his legs - living, electric, and as much a part of that TV-headed asshole as any flesh-and-blood pieces. There had been jolts of electricity, painful even to him, lines of fire across his back and his wings, and the three of them standing over him laughing -
Such a pretty little thing.
They’d yanked him upright by the cables. Pulled his hat off, slapped him until it got boring for them.
He doesn’t even bruise - where’s the fun in that?
They’d yanked a blindfold over his eyes and twirled him around like a puppet, spun him across the tacky tile floor on stumbling feet and shoved him from one of them to another, disoriented and dizzy, falling as often as he didn’t.
He tried to relax into it.
(It’s like a cat playing with a mouse - the more you thrash, the more interesting you become.)
Sometimes they’d kick him. Sometimes they’d pick him back up.
Sometimes they’d throw him into a table or a desk, hold him there, pinning him like a rabbit held by the back of the neck as they touched him, pinched his waist, commented on how fucking TINY he is, like that’s in any way original.
Sometimes they deliberately trip him so that he stumbles into something breakable. He’s pretty sure a coffee table breaks under him at one point.
He wishes he could tell them they’re wasting their time. They can knock the wind out of him, sure, but they don’t have the raw strength to do any permanent damage, at least not that way.
A hand grips his face from where he was laying in the wreckage of some piece of furniture or another and yanks him to his fee. The pressure makes the blindfold he’s wearing suddenly stifling over his eyes. He feels as if he’s in a BOX. It’s too tight. It’s claustrophobic. He’d claw it off if not for the cables biting into his wrists, his arms, his legs. That hand jerks his face left and right as if examining it under a light. For all he knows, that’s what’s happening. He tries not to react, instinctively going limp.
The laughter is background noise. It’s nothing new.
None of this is new.
Heaven will go pretty damn far in the name of divine retribution, too. It’s amazing what people will do to you if they think you deserve it.
He’s jolted out of his thoughts when the hand that had been gripping his face slides up into his hair and digs in, twisting the strands around long, clawed fingers. It forces him up on his tiptoes and he feels hot breath on his face in a slimy sort of way that makes him very sure it’s all just smaug and pink smoke.
Fuck, this is disgusting.
Here’s how things are, Papi. You can’t do shit to us.
That hand gives his head a vicious little shake for emphasis. Then he feels the thumbnail of a different hand press against his lower lip, and he has to fight the instinct to pull back.
Trying to get away will only encourage them. This.
You can’t bite, can you?
That thumb presses against his teeth next, and Lucifer reflexively clenches them. He hears the indulgent chuckle that follows, and it takes every ounce of self control he’s ever honed to keep his shoulders from hunching up when he feels a slimy-ass TONGUE flick down the side of his face.
But that doesn’t mean you have to behave. I think you need a little more incentive for that.
Don’t damage him, Val - that voice is coming from farther away, accompanied by the distinctive clinking of ice in a glass.
Oh, Vox, you know I’ll keep the gloves on. I’m just reminding his majesty here that there’s nothing stopping us from going over to his brat’s shitty hotel and murdering her pitiful little friends in front of her. Oh, we can’t touch HER - your twink friend saw to THAT - but he left some loopholes big enough to drive a truck through.
(His what now? His twink friend? He doesn’t have…what is he talking about?)
And it’s not just fear that tickles down the back of Lucifer’s neck, but a humiliated kind of resignation.
They have him.
Even if they didn’t have his body pinned down with wires and cables, they’d have him all the same. They all but have his heart in their horrible, bloody hands. And he, powerful as he is, ancient as he is, is completely impotent to do anything but snarl empty threats, if he even feels inclined to do that.
It would just give them something else to laugh at.
He feels his face heat under the blindfold.
What’ll it be, Papi? You going to be good for us?
His face and neck feel like they’re on fire - and he doesn’t know why he’s stalling. This is a foregone conclusion.
(Does it matter? Does it really matter? She doesn’t want him. No one does.)
Ah, there you are. Still with us?
He’s sure he’s disassociated his way through worse.
Such a pretty blush. Maybe this is just what you wanted, hm? Were you just shy?
This is Hell. Lucifer has been here for ten thousand years. This is just the sort of thing that HAPPENS, the price of the free will that he thought was such a good idea.
He almost doesn’t care. It’s not like it has to have any kind of meaning attached to it, anyway. His body isn’t HIM any more than his coat or boots are him.
It doesn’t have to mean anything if he doesn’t let it. Doesn’t have to be any different than a popsicle or…or whatever else you’d voluntarily put in your mouth.
He parts his lips, obedient and hating it, and he’s rewarded with a lightening of the pressure on his head, with a gentle rub of that thumb on his lower lip before it dips in.
It tastes like salt and cigarettes.
My, my, are you a natural? Or is this practice?
The thing is, forever is a very long time. It’s a long time to sit in dark rooms by yourself, a long time to hover your thumb over a screen to see if anyone’s read your messages. It’s a long time to hold old memories to your chest and torture yourself with wretched, stupid hope.
He’d waited so long for his little girl to call him.
He’d passed days and weeks and years hoping for a chance, just one. This time, he had promised himself, this time he wouldn’t fuck it all up. He wouldn’t. He’d be supportive, he’d listen, he’d do BETTER.
He hadn’t done better.
“You’ve fucked things up for me enough,” she’d snarled at him, wreathed in flame.
Her mother had said something similar, once upon a time, still dusty from their tumble from Heaven.
The hand gripping his hair has relaxed now. The nails skim his scalp in a way that’s almost gentle, and that’s worse, so much worse…
He’s suddenly grateful for the blindfold. The humiliation of getting his face fucked by that stupid moth’s creepy-ass hand is nothing. The humiliation of tears threatening the corners of his eyes, though, that might be fatal.
Aw, look how well you’re doing. Do you like that?
He doesn’t.
‘Like’ isn’t the right word, not for any of this.
Those fingers scritch teasingly through his hair, which is mussed up now, curling ticklishly against his neck, sticking to his face. It’s like holding an ice cube to a bee sting, a sort of agonizing relief. Because this is awful. But it’s not the burning ALONE, it’s not -
Fuck, he wishes this was over.
Everybody knows how pretty you are, hot stuff. Who knew you’d be so easy, too?
Lucifer wishes he could clamp his teeth down. Wishes he could nip this fucker’s thumb right off at the joint and spit it back in his smug face.
Lucifer feels a sharp blow land across his face. The slap is a surprise, more disorienting than actually painful.
That’s the real absurdity of his situation. Helpless as he is, he’s still not sure these three can finish the job. Maybe whatever weapon he’s meant to power can, but he’s not betting on it.
Growling is rude, Papito. We aren’t going to have that.
Reminding you again not to damage him, Val.
Now, Voxie. You get to play with yours. I ought to get to play with mine.
MINE isn’t integral to the fucking plan.
Pfft, a fallen angel can take more than this. Besides, he was just about to apologize. Weren’t you, little reyito?
Fuck, this is hard. He doesn’t remember this being so hard.
“Sorry,” he says. The word burns his mouth.
He’s almost proud of how dead he sounds.
Good boy. Now was that so hard?
He hears the creak of a chair - the moth freak must have sat down - and the cables yank him forward like a ragdoll. He hits the floor on his knees and swallows the reflexive yelp - he’s not hurt, but the cold jabs unpleasantly through his knees.
He knows what’s coming next.
He forces himself to breathe slow - not to try to pull away, not to recoil, not to flinch.
Play dead, he tells himself. Play dead, don’t react.
Spindly fingers yank his tie loose with deceptive care. They pluck delicately at his collar before they undo a button.
He feels his knees nudged wider apart with a booted foot, feels the sole of a shoe pressing indelicately against his inner thigh, almost stroking.
…it still hurts less, he thinks, than an eternity without…
This is nothing.
The hand in his hair is almost gentle this time, coaxing him forward.
He can feel eyes on him. He can still hear the TV fucker’s glass clinking.
(For a moment, he’s in the audience chamber of Heaven, his hands chained, a collar around his neck. Everyone is whispering, mumbling, pointing, and there are eyes, eyes, EYES…)
He can hear a zipper being undone.
(He’s buried under a seething mass of sinners, and the air smells like smoke, and they can’t do much to him, of course, but fuck if they aren’t trying, and he can’t get UP. He’s SMOTHERING under the writhing, desperate press of their bodies, their scent is burning his nose. “LILITH,” he gasps, reaching blindly, instinctively, and she takes his hand…)
She’ll never take his hand again.
She’s…
She isn’t coming back.
Now baby, you just keep this in mind: your performance better be good. I expect you to put in some effort, not just provide a hole and let me do all the work.
Thank fuck she isn’t coming back. She’d be so upset with him - upset with him for losing his head, for destroying Charlie’s dream with the same unerring precision that he’s always managed to use to destroy his own, for -
For letting sinners do THIS to him.
(Morbidly, he wonders if Charlie will ever find out, and he hopes not, he hopes. Then again, he’s not sure she would care if she did know. Could she be MORE ashamed of him than she already is?)
Whatever. With his eyes covered, he can’t see them watching - with his eyes covered, it could be anything in his mouth, don’t think about it, don’t.
He’s got this.
He thinks he has this.
And then a familiar voice cuts right through his disassociation.
“Hmmm. Do you really mean to tell me that you have an entire DEPARTMENT of paid sex workers at your disposal, not to mention a long-term partner, and you still have to go through THIS much effort to get someone to blow you?”
That’s Alastor.
FUCK.
What is that condescending fucker doing here? Damn it all, is he WORKING with these guys?
How did Lucifer not see it?
How does he NEVER see these things until it’s too late?
Lucifer feels something like panic lodge in his throat as he instinctively tries to scoot away, but Valentino’s hand keeps him still.
He can’t BREATHE, suddenly.
Because being degraded by a bunch of nobody sinners he doesn’t even know, that’s one thing, but having it done in front of someone he KNOWS, someone who might tell CHARLIE, someone with that level of vicious mockery programmed in as a default…
Oh, Alastor will never let this go. He’ll SNEER about it, make snide comments any time he sees him, he…
Lucifer can’t.
He can’t, this is -
He can’t.
He thrashes without meaning to in something like cornered animal panic. Valentino gives his hair a punishing yank in retaliation and pulls him forward. “No one asked you, cervito,” he says.
“I’m just saying it’s quite SAD, really,” Alastor continues in a tone so aggravating that it raises the hairs on the back of Lucifer’s neck. “Someone as purportedly desirable as yourself shouldn’t hurt for company.”
“Oh, FUCK you, you obnoxious red twink,” Valentino spits out, especially vicious.
“Maybe you’re not as hot as you think you are. Should we take another poll?”
Lucifer feels the air go out of his lungs when Valentino all but flings him away. He hits the floor on his side, briefly disoriented from being blinded and from the near hyperventillation. His chest can’t EXPAND right under the wires. “You want to fucking join him, you red-haired piece of - “
“Ha! Point of fact, I don’t.”
Lucifer can hear the distinctive rustle of Alastor doing that obnoxious leg-cross thing he does. “That must REALLY irritate you,” Mr. Bellhop adds. “The fact that no one in this room would put your cock in their mouths without being literally forced to take it.”
Lucifer twists his head, rubs his face against a raised shoulder enough to slide the blindfold up past one eye.
And yeah, that’s Alastor all right.
He’s….
He’s tied to an office chair, and somehow making it look like it’s his fucking idea. The obnoxious shit is lounging indolently, one leg crossed over the other, his head back on the backrest like he’s luxuriating in the experience.
He also looks like shit. His coat’s open, his shirt too, and Lucifer’s eyes are briefly, horribly drawn to the jagged wound on the other man’s chest, at the dried blood, old and new, on the ruined fabric.
Did…
Did these fuckers do that to him? Or is that from…has he been…how long has he HAD that?
And how long has he BEEN here?
“Don’t let him bait you, Val,” the Tv-headed prick says, every inch bored disinterest. He’s scrolling his sinstagram feed across the room.
Valentino wheels on him like a viper. “Oh, like YOU’RE one to talk.”
“Well, it’s different with us,” Alastor says brightly. “After all, Vox and I are such old pals.”
Valentino visibly bristles.
“Why, if you’d known us back in the day, it’d make so much more sense.” Alastor yawns like a cat, showing too many teeth, and then pastes the cheshire grin on to cement the analogy.
And Lucifer, laying awkwardly on the cold tile with his arms pinned behind his back, has a horrible moment of realization.
Because he thinks that obnoxious fuck is…
“I KNOW all I need to know, and that’s that you’re a pathetic-ass TWINK who doesn’t know he’s old news.”
“Ha! Even at my worst, I make more headlines than you do.” Alastor’s eyes are bright and savage above his grin. “See please, the entirity of this week.”
…is he pissing these dickwads off on purpose? Is he…
…is he protecting him?
That’s insane.
That’s….why would he do that?
Does he not realize that Lucifer is…that he’s not…
He’s damaged goods already; he’s not worth this.
Lucifer tries to catch Alastor’s eye from the floor. He gives his head a subtle shake. Not worth it, he tries to convey with the one eye he has out, don’t do it.
Alastor sees it, because that creepy fuck sees everything, but he doesn’t INDICATE that he does. He looks up at Valentino with his most irritating grin, and he looks…
He looks TINY next to him. When Valentino crowds close to Alastor’s chair, he dwarfs the other demon, and Lucifer feels a sharp stab of something like alarm.
These guys can’t hurt Lucifer. Not really. But he doesn’t know if the same is true for the Radio Demon.
Does Alastor REALIZE that Lucifer isn’t like Charlie, that it isn’t a matter of pissing him off enough - that there’s nothing he can do?
Lucifer is brought back to the present when Valentino backhands Alastor across the face - it’d send his wheely chair rolling across the office if the moth-demon wasn’t standing with a foot on one of the wires. The chair jolts like a fish on a hook.
“HA!” Alastor cackles. “That all you’ve got? Why no WONDER you have such a hard time keeping your employees in line.”
The next backhand turns his head and sends a spatter of blood across the tile.
Alastor laughs, not just with his mouth but with every speaker in the room.
“Getting a little hot under the collar? Why don’t you hit me again? I’m sure THAT will fix everything. Ha ha ha! That’ll show me.”
Valentino winds back to do just that.
And Vox catches his wrist. “Enough, Val,” he says in the put-upon tone of a man telling his son to pack his toys up and go to bed. “He’s getting to you. Take a lap.”
Valentino hisses a breath in and lets it out, his shoulders tense. He’s already visibly bristling at the condescension. And Lucifer sees what Valentino sees - he sees Alastor, behind Vox, grin broadly and mouth “good boy” at him.
All proverbial Hell breaks loose shortly after.
Lucifer can only watch as it escalates - the three Vees snarling at each other like rabid raccoons, Alastor egging them on with the cheerful abandon he used to use to destroy hotel game nights, only much more focused, more cruel than Lucifer remembers.
And of course, he pays for that. Lucifer closes his eyes, one behind the blindfold, one not, so that he doesn’t have to see the way Alastor’s shadow writhes with every shock, even though Alastor himself never once drops his smile.
“Very productive meeting, chums,” he chirps as the other three stalk off, the frigid silence between them almost like another presence in the room. “Always nice to catch up.”
The door slams so hard that one of the paintings falls off the wall and thunks on the floor.
In the long silence that follows, Alastor turns his head and spits.
A tooth hits the floor and tumbles.
Why…
Why the fuck did he do that?
“They DO like to hear themselves talk, don’t they?” Alastor asks him brightly.
“So do you,” Lucifer says.
He wonders if he can sit up without looking like an idiot, tight as the cables are wound around him, or if he’s ahead to just lay here like a netted pigeon.
“Hm. Maybe. But I have more interesting things to say.”
Why did you do that?
“How long have you, uh…with the whole ropes in a chair thing?”
“Oh, nearly a week now,” Alastor says with a dismissive ragdoll flop of the head toward his left shoulder. “I’m bored to tears, obviously, but what can a fellow do?”
…there is no way.
“A week?” Lucifer asks. “You’ve been here for a WEEK?”
“Hmm. Well, not like I have access to a calendar - or reliable daylight. But yes, a week, give or take.”
“Fuck. I didn’t know.”
“Ha. You, not knowing what’s going on in your own kingdom? Now there’s a surprise.”
“Look, if I kept track of every fucked-up think you assholes did to each other, I’d lose what little sanity I have left.”
Alastor raises a brow at him. “Small loss.”
Fucking Hell, he’s MISSED this guy.
“I didn’t want you to quit,” he says.
Alastor gives him an oddly out-of-sync blink. “Well, you could have fooled -”
“I thought we were playing,” Lucifer says.
He means it to sound dismissive. Not…
Not what it sounds like.
“....we mostly were,” Alastor says.
“Like you play with them?” Lucifer asks, tipping his head toward the door where the Vees have left. Like you deflecting from something tender with your sharp-ass teeth, like you protecting yourself? He doesn’t ask.
“No.”
Alastor lets his head flop the other direction, and his shadow obediently darts across the room, rummaging in a desk drawer. Lucifer almost can’t believe it when the thing comes back with a box of cigarettes and a lighter, like a dog fetching slippers.
“....I’m assuming there’s some reason it can do THAT but not untie us?” Lucifer asks.
He’s aware that he must have a very sour expression on his face. Under the circumstances, he would like to think that’s forgivable.
“I’m afraid the little deal I made with my old pal came with its fair share of restrictions,” Alastor says. “I agreed to be their prisoner and join their little team. But teams share their resources.”
His shadow lights a cigarette for him, delicately places it in his cut, bleeding mouth. “Also, these are that insipid moth’s, and I had my partner here take the liberty of putting a few empty cartons in Vox’s coat pocket earlier, so…”
Lucifer can’t help the sound he makes - not quite a laugh, not quite a snort. It’s a sound of pure incredulity.
“I’m sorry, where are my manners…did you want one?”
“What’s that gonna cost?” Lucifer asks. “My soul? News flash, I don’t have one.”
It’s Alastor’s turn to snort, but the speakers punch out a barely-audible laugh track.
“It’s on the house,” he says.
“Sure,” Lucifer says.
The shadow darts toward him, dog-playful, and it helps him upright, even going so far as to drag him back against the desk so he can use it as a makeshift backrest. He lets the shadow put the thing in his mouth, doing his best not to think in the immediate past tense.
“....Does anyone know you’re here?” Lucifer asks finally.
Alastor gives him an odd look. “Lucifer, there have been talk shows. There have been podcasts. There have been news interviews. There was a literal. Parade. Everyone knows. Every single person in Hell.”
That can’t be right.
“Does Charlie know?”
“Of course she KNOWS, silly bird. We made eye contact across the studio the day Vox brought me in. The thing is, I’m of no use to her anymore, and the dear girl knows it.”
“Charlie isn’t like that,” Lucifer says.
“Ha! Where have you been? She’s exactly like that. Nothing matters to her as much as proving to all of Hell that she’s worth something. There is no one and nothing that she won’t sacrifice…”
“That’s not Charlie.”
“No matter how much she cares for anyone, she doesn’t care for them as MUCH as what she wants. She’s a ruthless little thing under the glitter and the rainbows, Lu. Just wait. You’ll see.”
“You shut your fucking mouth,” Lucifer says, and the horns briefly threaten his hair.
“Or what, your majesty. You’ll smite me? I see where dear Charlie got her inability to face facts.”
God, this motherfucker. He’s LYING.
(She asked him for a favor, that first time she called.)
Lucifer wants to choke him.
(She let him build her new hotel, didn’t object to being rescued from reporters…)
He wants to set him on FIRE.
(He’s not right about her, he’s not, he ISN’T - and if he is, fuck, it’s not her fault. Charlie’s perfect, she IS, it’s just that her parents fucked her over so hard it’ll take her a while to find her way. She’s - )
“There are no friends in Hell, Lucifer. There’s no family, either. You should know that better than most.”
Lucifer wants to smack him across the face and untie him from his stupid chair and take him home. He wants to show him that…that someone cares enough to come find him. That all his bristly bullshit aside, Lucifer knows damn well what he saw earlier, and…
And he didn’t have to do that.
No matter what the fuck he says, there’s a bloody tooth on the floor and a fresh track of blood down his mouth, and he didn’t have to do that.
The silence stretches long enough to be uncomfortable. Lucifer squirms and fidgets and huffs, his fingers twitching with boredom and circulation loss, and Alastor’s shadow helpful hangs around to help him puff away at the cigarette which is, at least, settling his stupid rabbit heart back down to something like a normal rate.
“I’m not even going to ask what your twisted-ass plan is,” Lucifer says finally. “I know you won’t tell me.”
“Hmm,” Alastor agrees. His shadow removes the cigarette from his own lips so he can blow an indolent puff of smoke. “That might be the smartest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
Lucifer knows just as well that Alastor’s plan, whatever it is, probably doesn’t involve saving HIM. Fuck, he might not feature in it at all, or he might just be one of the things that Alastor intends to step on, on the way to wherever he’s going.
“But, look, this plan of yours, I…”
“I’m liiiiistening,” Alastor sing-songs.
“If you make it out of this alive, which…hey, you’re the horse I’d bet on in this race, for whatever that’s worth…will you just…”
This is hard.
Swallowing his own bile earlier might have been easier.
“Will you tell her I’m…”
“Spit it out, Lu.”
“Just…” he turns his head slightly, pressing his forehead against the cool metal of the desk. It’s mercifully grounding. “Will you tell her I’m sorry? For…pretty much everything, actually, the whole…for….for every moment of her life when she needed…when she needed somebody I wasn’t.”
“You want me to clean that up for you?” Alastor asks dryly. His ears are flat out to the sides of his head.
“Please,” Lucifer says.
It comes out easy and small in the oversized room.
“I’ll take it under consideration,” Alastor says. “But you’d owe me a favor.”
Lucifer nods, drawing his bound legs up to his chest. It’s cold in here. He misses his oversized sweater and his warm blankets and his oversized bed. He misses his stupid duckie nightlight and his piles of ducks and his Bel plushie.
He misses the illusion of being safe and liked and wanted that those campy little things gave him.
“Put it on my tab,” he says, letting his forehead rest against his knees.