Chapter Text
Alastor was not himself.
Lucifer watched him quietly our of the corner of his eye from where he sat at his desk, moving his hands absently so it wasn’t terribly obvious that he was watching his lover like a fucking creep.
The Radio Demon had fallen into odd fits like this in the months since their trial at the hands of Lucifer’s well-meaning but horribly misguided siblings. Sometimes in the evenings, Alastor would wander from one side of the room to the other as if he was looking for something. It was never idle…always starting at their closet before his nose would crinkle and he would find his way over to their armoire. Then he would open the door of it and stare into the depths almost blindly. Usually at that point he would reach in and rummage before he’d pause, pull back, and then return to his armchair as if he’d never gone through the odd ritual at all, face closed off and sullen.
The King knew perfectly well what he was doing. He was searching for Camille’s favourite night-dress because it was nearing her bedtime.
A bedtime that had never existed in reality because she had never existed in reality.
Lucifer hated the ritual not because it was a reminder for him, but because he knew with crystal clarity that it was a struggle for his partner. Alastor hated not being in control of his faculties for a start. For another thing, it must have been misery incarnate to find yourself trying to take care of a daughter who simply wasn’t there…to be reminded anew.
He watched as Alastor peered into their closet before turning to begin his trek to the armoire.
It hurt too much to watch.
Bracing himself, Lucifer’s fist curled on his desktop and he gave up the charade of work, “Alastor, sweetheart, you’re doing it again.”
His lover paused halfway across the room like he’d been slapped, ears alert.
Lucifer let out a little puff of breath and twisted in his seat to look at the taller man, “Habibi…”
But Alastor was already closing off, a flash of dismay flickering across his eyes before the armor came up (much to the king’s frustration), “There is nothing to discuss, Lucifer.”
Months of this.
Months of Alastor tripping over the dusty cobweb-remnants of false memories and refusing to ever talk about his slips in reality. He refused to acknowledge the moments he rose early to awaken a daughter who wasn’t there for breakfast, only to startle when there was no nursery adjoining their room. He utterly shut down whenever he caught himself accidentally speaking Camille’s name in casual conversation.
Months of Lucifer trying to get him to open up only to be met with the most brutal resistance. It was like the beginning of their relationship all over again…secrets and defensiveness and more walls than Benin.
Lucifer wanted to strangle his siblings. Sure, they’d proven that Alastor truly loved him, but at the cost of the man’s hard-won peace. It was like they were strangers all over again, only this time it was worse because Lucifer knew what was troubling his lover. He just couldn’t pry it out of him…could only watch as the stubborn Sinner suffered in silence as if missing a daughter he’d never really had would just go away if he avoided the subject hard enough.
But it wasn’t going away.
It wasn’t going away and instead of moving on, Lucifer got a front row seat to Alastor’s little aborted rituals, his bitter stretches of contemplative silence.
“I’m tired of this, Al,” he said quietly, not giving up this time, “Watching you wander back and forth while you look for her pajamas…watching you go to wake her up for breakfast…watching how you panic sometimes when you think you can’t find her.”
Alastor’s burgundy stare shuttered and his perpetual smile went sharp at the edges in a way that told the king he had Stepped In It, full capitals.
“Well!” The Sinner chirped too brightly to be anything but vicious, “If you find it so tiresome, perhaps I shall simply take some time in my own quarters. I should dearly hate to inconvenience His Majesty, after all.”
Father damn it.
Lucifer’s face twisted into an expression of frustration and he reached for Alastor’s bicep as the man attempted to brush past him on the way to the door, “Hold on, habibi. We’re having this conversation whether you like it or not because I love you, you stubborn ass, and I’m also tired of you struggling without talking to me.”
He felt the way the lean muscles under his hand bunched and rippled while Alastor probably seriously debated the wisdom of actually attacking him just to break the hold.
The Fallen didn’t flinch, holding firm with an unwavering stare.
Alastor jerked at his grip and it achieved nothing, “Unhand me, Lucifer.”
“Be still,” Lucifer said firmly, letting a bit of his Great Otherness creep into his tone, “If, after we’ve talked this out, you want to walk out of that door then you’re free to do it. But I am worried about you and I don’t think ignoring this is helping you.”
In his grip, Alastor remained tense like a little bird preparing to fly. The Sinner’s crimson eyes were utterly closed off and unapproachable. More than that, however, was the exhausted tension pulling at the corners of his mouth where green stitches were beginning to flicker in and out of sight. Father, but Lucifer had let this go on for too long…
“Please…” he pushed, giving his lover’s bicep a little squeeze, “Let me take care of you.”
His lover didn’t relax, but he did at least speak though he turned his head away so he didn’t have to look at Lucifer any longer, “...What do you want me to say, Lucifer? You know perfectly well the sort of madness I find myself possessed by.”
“...I don’t though,” Lucifer said gently, giving his arm a tug to pull him closer, stroking over the soft inner place of Alastor’s elbow with a thumb, “I really don’t. I know you still look for her…for Camille…but I don’t…Alastor, I have no idea what’s going on up there. Do you have false memories from any other part of the trial still? I need to know, sweetheart, because Azriel promised me this wouldn’t happen.”
“Everything else is gone,” Alastor murmured, finally pulling his arm free and folding both across his chest, walking a few feet away to stare pensively into their fireplace, “Well, not gone perhaps, but certainly not real. I remember it the way one remembers scenes in a dream.”
Lucifer didn’t pursue Alastor, giving him space so long as he kept talking, “Well, that’s good at least. I’d be fucking terrified if you’ve been living in a half-reality for months without telling me.”
“And you?” Alastor deflected.
The king shook his head slowly, face rueful, “Al, it was never as real for me as it was for you. I knew the whole thing was a test from the beginning so I never sunk as deep down into it as you did.”
They really had never discussed it like this.
Alastor’s eyes narrowed and he looked over from the dancing flames to pin his lover with a cutting stare, “And how long was it for you?”
“Hours, maybe,” Lucifer said truthfully, “Sure, the simulation filled me in on details of our ‘lives’ depending on choices I made during critical moments, but I didn’t feel like I was living it in the same way. But you…”
“Every second of carrying her. Every last moment of the years spent raising her. I remember her first word, her favourite colour, all of it. She was…Lucifer, I can remember the way her face looked when you couldn’t come to read her a story at bedtime,” the tall stag said, his voice gone ever so slightly hoarse as the static around him buzzed.
Lucifer’s heart missed a beat.
He’d known perfectly well that Alastor had lived more of the test than he had, but that his siblings had put the poor man through that much was…well.
Unkind didn’t begin to cover it.
He didn’t think they’d done it on purpose either, that was the shit part of it. Angels as ancient as his siblings frequently didn’t understand the pure suffering that came of all the many experiences that made mortals…well…mortal. They’d seen much of it over their long millennia, but not up close…not the way Lucifer had. To them, all the little tragedies of a human life were just part of the grand design and they didn’t comprehend how it felt to actually endure them. Producing children was so deeply personal to human souls…an intense period of physical change, uncertainty, pain, terror, triumph, and bonding spread out over months and years of an already short life.
Alastor had lived that in his head, every last day of it…for nothing.
Surrendering his place at the desk, Lucifer came to stand next to his lover in front of the fire, “Habibi, you should have told me.”
“And what?” Alastor bit at him, arms tightening across his chest, “We rush to replace the ghost in my head?”
Lucifer had promised once that a real child of their own was a possibility once they’d both had time to recover from the trials…once they’d had time to think and settle.
Only, they weren’t recovering. They weren’t settling.
“Only if you decided a real baby was something you actually wanted, you intractable menace,” Lucifer sighed, reaching to grip his lover’s shoulders before smoothing his hands down along tense biceps, “No, you should have told me so you weren’t dealing with all of this shit alone. We’re meant to be partners, habibi. You’re not an island and I should have been with you for all of this.”
That seemed to take some of the bite out of his Sinner.
Alastor’s shoulders slumped just a hair and his eyes took on a hint of the lost quality Lucifer remembered from an imaginary parapet, “...You could have done nothing, you fool. She only lives in my head. Not yours.
Lucifer shook his head and gently tugged until he had unknotted his lover’s arms, sliding down until Alastor’s fingers were tangled in his own, “I could have listened, stubborn. I’m listening now. How are you feeling? Like…be specific.”
His stag seemed reticent for a moment before his eyes closed, “Lucifer, I am at my wit’s end with this. I have grown weak. I chase shadows in my own mind to mother a child who never was…and I do not know what hurts worse - that I have gone certifiably insane or that the daughter I remember so clearly isn’t real.”
Rubbing at his knuckles, Lucifer spoke so softly, “First of all, you’re not insane. You’re a victim of divine meddling. You were meant to believe every second of the simulation and that’s a hard thing to shake. The fact that you made it this far is a damned testament to what a stubborn prick you can be when you put your mind to it. Second…what do you want to do about it?”
“I take it that summoning your siblings so that I can use their wings as wall decorations is out of the question?”
Lucifer snorted at that, cheered when his partner’s savage humor glittered through the distress. He kissed the knuckles of his right hand, “Pretty sure it is, yeah. What’s next on the list?”
His levity fell flat, however, when that lost expression returned to Alastor’s sparkling sanguine eyes, “...I’m afraid I don’t know, dear. If I knew what to do, I would have banished the ghost of a child we never had ages ago. It certainly isn’t as if I seek her. She simply…manifests in my mind like an impulse. I spent three years learning how to be a mother to a little girl…three years. I am unsure how to unlearn the habit even if it wasn’t real.”
The Devil looked up into that face he loved so well and he searched for any answer, “...My brother, Raphael, is a healer. The first healer. The healer who imparted the wisdom to train all healers who came after him. He also feels guilty about involving you if what Az told me is any indication. I could hunt him down to see if there’s anything to be done about your memories.”
Alastor mulled over that, the fight leaving him when he made no attempt to draw his hands away, “Is that even something your sibling is capable of?”
“Won’t know until I ask and I know Azriel would listen if I called for them,” Lucifer said with the quality of a shrug, feeling bold enough to pull his lover into an embrace, “But it has to be your decision. This happened because someone else decided to intercede in your existence and I won’t do it to you again.”
To his great relief, Alastor allowed himself to be wrapped in strong arms, though he didn’t seem quite ready to meet his lover’s eyes as he said, “I am unsure if I trust your siblings with my head after their last bit of meddling.”
“That’s fair. What other options are there, then?”
To this, Alastor said nothing at first, lost in thought once more while he no doubt explored what avenues were left to them.
Lucifer puffed out a breath and reached up to push the scarlet fringe away from his Sinner’s forehead, “Well, if you’re not comfortable with my siblings having a go at your skull, there’s always the option you really didn’t want to hear.”
Alastor brushed his hand away and leaned back, glaring narrow-eyed at him, “Lucifer Morningstar, you are talking about a baby, not a pet. You cannot simply replace one when the other dies like a rabbit.”
The Devil shook his head, “I’m not…Alastor, that’s not what I’m suggesting. I would never. What I mean is this…you clearly enjoyed some part of being a parent. It’s the only part of the simulation that stuck with you like this. I know whatever child we have won’t be the girl you remember. But I’m wondering if your head is only clinging to Camille because some part of you misses being a mother. It’s just…keeping the only thing it has.”
The stag relaxed a little bit in his hands and Lucifer reeled him down to kiss his forehead, “None of this is your fault and I hate that these are choices you have to make. But they are yours. We can try and find Raphael, we can give it more time, or we can try for a real baby. I can’t force you to do anything, but I’m worried about you.”
The Radio Demon let out a shuddering sigh, “Do you know what I truly wish, Lucifer?”
“Tell me.”
“I wish for my afterlife to be the way it was before your fucking siblings interfered. I wish to be the man I was that night - drunk in a damn jazz bar with no greater concerns for my evening. I want my afterlife back,” he growled, finally pulling away and putting a hand to his brow.
Lucifer watched him, holding his breath and fearing his next words. Something felt wrong.
Alastor slashed his hand through the air after a long moment, eyes flashing, “And why are my only options to do with you? Your family? To Hell with that! I am the Radio Demon! I lived and died without you. I attained Overlord status without you! How dare you assume I cannot save myself!”
“Al…”
But the Sinner was already off without him, fully surrendering to his black mood, “Perhaps you are the problem! You and your whole damn family! Perhaps the answer is to simply be on my own. Maybe I will exorcise the ghosts of what your siblings did to me if I’m not trapped in your territory day in and day out!”
Lucifer’s heart seized and the room around them went very still. Alastor was panting in the wake of his outburst, standing like an island in a tempest sea.
When the King spoke, his voice was so, so soft, “....Is that really what you want?”
Alastor didn’t seem to know what to do when Lucifer didn’t raise his voice…didn’t yell…didn’t rise to his manic anger.
His eyes darted from one side of the room to the other before he turned his back on the man he had sworn he loved only a few months past, “Are you going to stop me?”
“I…no, Al. No. I don’t…of course I don’t want you to go, but…habibi, I don’t own you. If you think being around me is making it worse, then…” Lucifer gestured limply with one hand, “...I want you to have what you need, even if it’s not me.”
The tense knot in Alastor’s shoulders released like a puppet with cut strings. He finally turned his gaze to Lucifer and for a time without time they stared at one another. Lucifer knew well the look written large across his face - the kicked puppy expression of tragic acceptance. If Alastor wanted to walk, he wouldn’t stop him but fuck he didn’t want him to leave. Alastor however…well…he looked oddly stricken - like he wasn’t sure what to do now that he hadn’t managed to start a fight.
Lucifer knew it was what he’d been hoping for. Alastor had certainly improved over their time together, but for big things…times where he felt his control slipping…he still chose to pick fights as a reflex. It was easier to yell, scream, and lower other people to feel powerful again than it was to confront the uncomfortable fact that he felt weak.
“Lucifer…”
“I’m serious. No hard feelings. Al, my family really fucked you up and they had no right to. They might have thought they were doing it for my benefit, but I never asked them to. I…I’ll miss you so much if you choose to go, but if you really think it will help break up whatever is happening in your head…”
Alastor’s lips twitched and static rose around him, “...I don’t know if it will, dear. But I don’t know what else to do.”
The Devil swallowed and nodded slowly, “...Do you really think this will help you?”
“Lucifer…” the stag sighed heavily and finally buried his face in his hands, the momentary nervous energy that had filled him bleeding away when his lover refused to rise to his bait, “I don’t know. I simply refuse to be ‘saved’. I refuse to be beholden to the very same angels who ruined me like this, and I refuse to entertain the thought of a child just to ‘fix’ whatever is wrong with me.”
Lucifer nodded shortly though his throat felt thick with emotion, “...Okay.”
His lover looked hard at him, then looked away once more, folding his hands tight behind his back, “It isn’t forever, my dear. I simply…Lucifer.”
The Radio Demon tipped his head to the wood-paneled unit by their sitting area and a soft song began to play, one designed to soothe (the closest to an apology for an outburst he would allow himself), “...I am not opposed to considering children with you. We discussed it after I woke and I wasn’t lying when I said we would think about it. But if we’re ever to be fair to any child, we can’t simply treat them as a band-aid to slap over our problems.”
The King allowed a sad smile to crease his face, finally following after his lover to rest a comforting hand at the small of his back. He knew perfectly well why this whole thing was such a big deal to Alastor. It had taken a long time to finally learn enough of the other man’s history to understand the breathtaking cornucopia of trauma that formed the complicated mosaic that was the Overlord’s psyche, but he’d gotten there eventually.
Alastor had been an obligation.
Born in the American South in a starkly patriarchal society that valued the word of a God so utterly lost in translation that there was no saving it, he had been expected. It didn’t matter if you were too poor to afford a child, your duty to God and Country was incomplete until you’d continued your bloodline, and it was rarely the woman’s decision about when it was meant to happen. That had been the sort of family Alastor had been born into - the sort where he’d been an assignment and, eventually, a burden to the father that had insisted on his existence.
Of course he was terrified of doing that to any child they might produce.
Of course.
Lucifer leaned in to kiss his shoulder tenderly like a soft farewell, “We have time, habibi. Do you want help packing?”
Like an apology, Alastor leaned down to murmur against the top of his hair, “...Please, dear.”
~*~
Alastor’s Shadow chittered and hissed at him as they walked back into the long-abandoned radio tower that marked the heart of the Overlord’s territory from a time long before he’d joined the Hazbin Hotel. It was an archaic museum piece from the wild years before he’d fallen into the Devil’s orbit…a time when all he’d had to worry about was vicious reprisals from his lessers and not…not whatever had happened to him recently.
He dropped his traveling valise on the floor and refused to look at his Shadow, instead shedding his coat and handing it out to the opinionated beast, “Cease your fussing and hang that up, would you? There’s a good boy.”
His Shadow merely frowned and pointedly dug its claws into the fabric of his coat, making little holes in the bespoke fabric.
Alastor rolled his eyes and walked further into the antique parlor that had once been the heart of his domain when he’d still been a bachelor, “Or throw a tantrum, then. Do as you will.”
The extension of his own soul frowned in a way he never could and slithered across the old boards of their home until it was tugging on its master’s pant leg. Alastor sighed and pulled his leg away, pretending that the awful little beast wasn’t just reflecting his own displeasure back at him without inhibitions. It wouldn’t do to look at his unhappiness so openly.
“Don’t be difficult,” Alastor snapped.
His Shadow hissed at him, but he ignored the creature in favor of walking back into his bedroom to see the state of things. It was simple busy work.
When he’d departed his home territory for the Hotel, he’d put every ward he knew up on the place for the express purpose of having a bolt hole to return to in case things with the princess went ‘tits up’ as Angel Dust was so fond of saying. He knew without even looking that his linens would be clean, his remaining clothing would be hung up as he’d left it, and what few tchotchkes he’d left behind wouldn’t have moved even a millimeter. He knew even the scent would have changed.
But busy was the word of the day so he wouldn’t think too hard about all the things this home was missing.
There would be no evening drinks or spirited debates with Lucifer once the evening came.
There would be no furnace-warm body waiting for him in the bed, ready to sink heat into his bones.
There would be no nattering conversation over breakfast for him to pretend to ignore.
There would be no Hotel work to indulge in and no curated chaos to revel in throughout the day.
There would only be a house he’d not lived in properly for years and whatever the fuck it was he did to keep his Overlord status…which wasn’t much these days. Alastor had made such a grand showing during his early years in Hell and kept so little actual territory that there wasn’t really much he needed to do to maintain appearances. Oh of course he’d settle down soon to start writing a few radio scripts for the upcoming broadcasts he’d need to conduct from the studio he still had here (after all, it could hardly be the heart of the Radio Demon’s territory without one). Maybe he’d even do a bit of light menacing to remind himself who he’d been before this whole everything with Lucifer.
He sighed and listened to the hollow click of his shoes as he entered into his bedroom, the curtains drawn tight to keep out the red light of Hell’s sun and the bedding neat as a pin.
Just as anticipated, not a single thing had moved.
Old hunting trophies that hadn’t made their way over to the Hotel still hung on the walls without a single speck of dust on them, and every book he owned still sat exactly as he’d left them. These were his favourites…the pieces he’d paid a pretty penny to have smuggled from his one-time home on Earth and too precious to move with him to Charlie’s little pet project. His old radio sat at his bedside like a loyal soldier simply waiting for his eventual return.
As Alastor stood looking over the remnants of a life he’d lived long ago, his traveling valise skidded in the door to slam against his shins (no doubt propelled by his highly irate Shadow who simply lacked the ability to be normal about anything). He rolled his eyes and reached down for the handle, blinking when he noted the force of its recent trip across the floor had popped one of the clasps open. Goodness, but his Shadow knew how to throw a strop when it wasn’t getting what it wanted.
From within, he spied an unfamiliar flash of yellow.
Squinting, the Radio Demon reached down and released the other clasp, allowing his valise to pop open. Within, there were all the sundries he’d bothered to pack for what might well end up being an extended separation from his lover…and one thing he didn’t expect. Sitting there atop his favourite night shirt was a little yellow duck wearing a tiny white top hat. It was a simple thing, and rather tacky at that, but Alastor reached down to carefully cradle the little monster in his claws.
A parting gift from Lucifer, surely slipped in there while he was distracted…a way for his ridiculous paramour to say “I’m here” without intruding on his business.
Foolish thing.
Why did it twist his guts to look at the ridiculous rubber toy?
Alastor set it on his bedside table and resolved not to think too hard about it for the time being, if only to spite his Shadow (who was watching him unkindly from around the door frame like a little Peeping Tom).
The point of this little adventure was to be without Lucifer, after all. Perhaps his mind was still wrapped up in memories of his phantom daughter because too much of his existence with the King was similar to the final ‘years’ of the simulation. Aside from the frankly mad window dressing of the scenario, it had been rather close to how his relationship with the Devil had run its course - they’d fought at first and he’d had to be won over, but once he was, Lucifer was so achingly respectful of him. They shared rooms, a similar power dynamic, and even their relationship with Charlie was almost identical to the one from his long dream. Maybe his brain was just filling in gaps between like things?
He sincerely hoped that was it. He couldn’t spend the rest of his afterlife chasing ghosts, especially not if Lucifer truly hoped for a child.
Ugh, how utterly daft this business of children.
A hundred years ago, he would have laughed in the face of such a thing before visiting severe physical harm on anyone who’d bothered to suggest it in the first place. Imagine! The Radio Demon with a baby on his hip.
And yet…
The problem was that he hadn’t just imagined it. For all intents and purposes he had lived it…lived through a sort-of reality where he bore Lucifer a little girl and the man had been good as gold to them both. He could still feel the same fierce swell of pride he had in the simulation when he ‘remembered’ the look on Lucifer’s face when she’d been born. He’d looked at Alastor like he was the most singular creature in all the world - profound, profane, and powerful. That was to say nothing of the pride Alastor had felt when their false child had spoken her first words, taken her first steps…
The Radio Demon pressed a hand to his face.
No, having a baby…an actual baby…wouldn’t be the curse he’d always feared it would be when he was a younger, wilder soul. He knew for a fact that Lucifer was a doting father who wouldn’t expect him to blunt his teeth if they had a little one of their own. He knew for a fact Lucifer would never ask him to change. He knew for a fact that some long-dead mortal part of him he had thought buried in the mire of Louisiana had truly enjoyed caring for a small soul that he had made.
But that just made the success of this experiment even more important in the long run. Alastor refused to even flirt with the idea of putting himself through all of that again…of putting a child through having him as a parent…if he couldn’t banish the specter of Camille. Whatever baby they made deserved the right to be their own individual rather than a pale echo of a soul that only existed in the vault of Alastor’s head. He wouldn’t accept anything less. He wouldn’t force a child to grow up the way he had, struggling under the yoke of expectations they couldn’t hope to meet and had never asked for besides.
Sensing his turmoil, his grumpy Shadow finally gave up on its bad mood and slithered across the floor to him. It draped over his shoes and tugged at the laces with a claw.
Alastor looked down with a lofted eyebrow, “Gotten over ourselves, have we?”
A stupid question to ask, really.
What was his shadow but the raw expression of his deepest thoughts and feelings? It was upset about being parted from Lucifer in a way he couldn’t allow himself to be.
He reached down to card his claws through the umbral manifestation of himself and hummed, “Don’t look so glum, now. This is temporary. We’ll be back where we belong in no time…”
~*~
Lucifer had never realized how long a week was until he was forced to live it alone. Sure, after nearly eight years without Lilith he'd become familiar with the feeling, but re-learning loneliness without Alastor by his side had been its own special Hell.
Alastor had yet to return to the Hotel, his duties shuffled around to others while he sorted out his head. There hadn’t been so much as a peep outside of the regularly scheduled broadcasts that Lucifer listened to slavishly from beginning to end. He knew the schedule by heart after all, and for the duration of the show he could almost pretend that his lover was still in their quarters. It was the only bit of normal he got these days.
He’d forgotten how quiet his world was without the constant soft hum of Alastor’s static. Even when the man wasn’t speaking (and boy did he talk a lot), the Radio Demon just had this sort of…presence.
Lucifer missed it.
It was well past supper time now and most of the other residents were ensconced downstairs having a movie night for some ‘bonding’. He’d begged off politely and pretended not to see the worried look Charlie had shot him as he made his way back up to his own space.
Honestly, his daughter was a dreamer, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew something was up. He and Alastor had never told another soul about the trial they’d been forced to endure, but she’d seen the way the two of them were just a little bit off in the days that followed. She’d seen how much quieter they were at first and she’d definitely noticed Alastor’s strange shift in habits as he grappled with the echoes of Camille. Then suddenly her hotelier was taking an indefinite sabbatical without her father (their relationship hadn’t been secret around the Hotel for at least a year at this point) and said father was doing a solid mope about it.
She hadn’t pried yet, but it was only a matter of time, really.
So here he was up on top of his tower and staring like a kicked puppy at what he could see of Alastor’s old transmitter set-up from across the city.
Pathetic.
With all that taken into account, the flare of Angelic grace pinging his senses like sonar at his back was really the last thing he needed right now.
Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Lucifer said blithely, “Really not in the mood, Az.”
“...I wasn’t going to say anything,” his youngest sibling said in that inoffensive, hushed voice of theirs.
“Just checking in, huh?” the King drawled, making sure he sounded as unimpressed as he felt.
“Yes,” Azriel replied, not coming closer.
Honestly, Lucifer didn’t really want to be angry with his sibling. He’d never quarreled with Az the way he had with Michael. Hell, once upon a time, Azriel had been the baby of the family, wide-eyed and purposeless when the first Humans had been wandering Eden. Oh, they’d been crafted for a purpose same as any of the others, but until the first mortal soul required a shepherd, they’d just sort of…existed. They’d been a lonely little angel in the beginning, confined to the Holy Palace where Lucifer and his siblings had dwelled, and Lucifer had taken pity on them.
Death was never meant to be known before it was time, so they’d never gotten to see Eden when there was still an Eden to see. Lucifer had brought them back plants and stories from the garden whenever he’d had occasion to visit and the way his baby sibling’s eyes had lit up with true wonder…
But that was a long time ago.
Sighing, Lucifer rocked forward and back on his heels, trying not to be angry. Azriel had been one of his only allies in the trial, after all, “I’m not ready to see you yet.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?”
He heard a soft swish of Azriel’s stole rubbing against their coat in the hot night air as they strolled forward to stand at their brother’s shoulder, “...Because I’m worried, Luci. You’ve been alone a lot lately.”
“Spying?” Lucifer said with ill humour.
“No. Just seeing. I’m everywhere, Lucifer. Everywhere all the time. I notice things. I know you said you wouldn’t want to see any of us for a while, but I can’t help but see you. Just you.”
Lucifer gritted his teeth.
“Yeah, well, surprise. When your partner’s family threatens your existence, you don’t really want to hang around,” he bit out.
Azriel was silent for a time and Lucifer chanced a glance at them. He noted the way his youngest sibling’s pearl-pale features were pinched with unhappiness. He saw the way narrow hands knotted together in front of the little angel’s stomach while they chewed on that information. Of all his siblings, Azriel had always been the most in-tune with their emotions…more empathetic than logical. Had this been eating them up?
“...Did he leave you?”
The king closed his eyes and prayed for patience before replying, “No. But he’s not well either, Az. You told me the trial wouldn’t fuck with his head. You promised me, but now my lover is so rattled by what you and the others did that we’re…living apart for a little bit.”
Azriel’s eyes widened and they spun on their heel to stare directly at him in that weird way of theirs…physically blind, but not in any way beyond that, “But, Luci…”
“Why is it happening like this?” Lucifer cut them off, firm but not harsh.
“I don’t…” Azriel reached up to fiddle with their dangling earring, “Explain to me what’s happening.”
“You told me none of this would stick with him the way it is, but Azriel he’s haunted. Most of it happened the way you said…he woke up and everything felt like a dream to him…but he keeps forgetting that our daughter wasn’t real. He gets lost in his head and goes looking for her,” Lucifer said, recalling the startled look on Alastor’s face the first time he’d slipped like that.
Making a frustrated sound, Lucifer finally turned to regard his sibling, “And who the fuck thought of making a test like that?”
“...Uriel designed it,” Azriel admitted softly, their downy white curls drifting in the wind, “She wasn’t trying to be cruel, but…you know how our sister works.”
Indeed Lucifer did.
Uriel was by far the most logical of all the Archangels from their Father’s first flock. If Azriel was the beating heart of them, Uriel was the brain - highly analytical and brutally organized just the way she’d been made. She was the lorekeeper of Heaven, the mistress of all its written and spoken wisdom. Her library was vast and her mind had been crafted for the specific task of minding it. She had a tendency to see all of existence as a complicated puzzle and was, at best, confused by emotional displays (disdainful at worst).
But Azriel was going on, “She studied Alastor’s profile for ages and she reasoned that he was selfish and self-serving. She insisted that a lust for power and a need for personal autonomy to the detriment of all others would be weak spots to exploit. So…”
Lucifer pinched his sinuses, “So she built a scenario where he had next to no personhood and designed a conceit to take his bodily autonomy away.”
“...The weirder parts were Gabriel, to be fair,” Azriel murmured, “But yes, you’re correct.”
“Was he ever meant to win that stupid test?” The Devil said with dripping incredulity, “Because, surprise, every human hates being treated like a slave and an incubator.”
“It’s why Gabriel and Raphael helped me sneak in. We love our siblings, but we know…we know sometimes they forget that not everything is a battle to be won,” Azriel said, not bothering to refute the truth of their brother’s statement, “The odds were stacked against you.”
“They were, but Alastor beat them anyway. He’s more than Uriel’s stupid little profile gives him credit for.”
“I know,” his sibling soothed, “I was with him when he walked his road into the next life.”
“Yeah, well…thanks for the help and all, but he’s a mess right now, Az, and you guys sticking your noses in did it to him,” Lucifer bit out and then forced himself to take a deep breath, “...Sorry. I know you and Raph probably just got pulled along for the ride, but…it’s unfair. Alastor and I were doing great. I know he’s a fucking psychopath. I know everything that he is, and I already knew that he loved me. That stupid test just confirmed something that was none of your business and I already knew.”
“You’re right,” Azriel said reasonably, reaching up to gently twist their earring again, “You’re right. You said he’s fixated on the child?”
“Yes, and we have no clue how to fix it. He doesn’t want Raphael anywhere near him to try and heal it and he thinks living with me is just…encouraging his head to keep the patterns the stupid test built in. So…trial separation to see if it snaps him out of it,” Lucifer admitted, going to the edge of his roof and sitting down to let his feet dangle in the open air.
He could practically hear the wheels in Azriel’s head turning behind him and he could envision the way his baby sibling’s nose was crinkling in thought. At last, the Angel of Death joined him at the edge of the roof and sat, lamb ears laid out flat and hooves swinging, “...You know…the simulation wasn’t real, but there’s something we might not have accounted for.”
“And what’s that?” The Devil asked tiredly.
“You and Alastor were in a false world while your physical forms…such as they are…slept. However, you yourselves were not false constructs. The manifestations of his soul-stuff and your remaining Grace interacted…entwined.”
“You mean we had sex,” Lucifer huffed.
Rather than blushing or turning away, Azriel just nodded, “That too.”
“So what’s the theory then?”
Might as well entertain his sibling since he sensed they weren’t going away until the conversation was had. Father above, but Lucifer was sick to death of ‘hard conversations’ these days.
“Simply this: You know that Sinners don’t necessarily have ‘real’ bodies. They can be torn apart, they can bleed, and they feel like flesh, but what they are is a soul made manifest. It’s why they appear as they do…a reflection of all the turmoil in the most fundamental parts of what makes them…them. It’s part of why they can’t reproduce with each other. There’s nothing really genetic there to build with. We’re much the same in that we appear as flesh, but are not built from the same clay as Father’s other creations. Our forms are an extension of the Grace that formed us.”
“Okaaaaay?” Lucifer said, wondering where the point had gone in all this.
Azriel held up a finger, “Think on it, brother. If there’s no real difference between Alastor as he exists in the current reality and Alastor as he existed in the false reality, then what you two did in there is as real as if you’d been in your own bed in the here and now. Your essence entered into his own. It wasn’t his true body, but it’s…hm…a bit of sympathetic magic perhaps? Since one was merely a crystallization of the real thing…or a fragment.”
“Wait…” Lucifer said, staring hard at his youngest sibling while he slowly caught up with the facts as they were laid out, “Az. Are you suggesting I actually got him pregnant in that stupid simulation?”
“A little.”
“Az, I know you guys don’t get out much, but there’s no such thing as ‘a little bit pregnant’,” Lucifer valiantly resisted the urge to pinch his sinuses again.
His sibling tilted their head thoughtfully, “At least enough to blend your Grace with his own core self and imbue the Universe with a new soul.”
Lucifer took a deep breath.
Another.
He really felt he was the very image of calm when he managed to say, “So you’re telling me that my partner’s brains didn’t get turned to swiss cheese by that stupid and dangerous stunt you all pulled, but instead he’s being literally haunted by a real potential soul?”
“Precisely,” Azriel informed him primly and really Lucifer would very much like to scream now, “He recalls her so clearly and attempts to care for her because she is on the cusp of existence. What you two managed to will into existence remembers being cared for.”
Yes, screaming really did seem like the most logical course of action right now.
Yes indeed.
“Azriel. I need you to listen to me very, very carefully,” he finally ground out, mind going a million miles an hour while he thought through everything he’d been told, “If this is true, then I need to go and be with Alastor. But first, I need to know it’s true. Do you have any way to prove this theory of yours one way or the other?”
His sibling offered him a shy smile, “Lucifer, you are the Star of Morning and the Fire of Creation. If anyone could create an improbable soul, it is you. Moreover…you are master of every soul in your dominion. You need only focus.”
Lucifer dragged his hands down his face and growled into his palms, “...This is batshit, you know that? You do know that. You have to know that, Azriel. Certifiably fucking bonkers is what it is.”
“It is unprecedented, yes.”
“Super helpful. Gold star, you.”
He tried to ignore the way his youngest sibling’s cherubic features creased into a familiar sort of tired smile. Father…in that moment the Angel of Death looked so much older than Lucifer remembered. He let out a puff of breath and relaxed his shoulders, trying to clear his mind despite the terrifying new information he was suddenly grappling with. Alright. So his sibling believed there was a new soul that they had made here in Hell, huh? Father damn it.
Closing his eyes there on the roof of the hotel that was so much more lonely without his prickly, bitchy, egocentric lover haunting its halls, Lucifer sunk deep into the well of his power and extended out beyond himself in a way he didn’t often allow himself. Tapping into his Grace like this was…it felt…it was too close to the untethered well of Self he recalled from his halcyon days before the Apple and the Fall…so close he could taste it. It hurt to live in that sense memory of wilder days and bluer skies beneath a newborn sun, but today? Needs must.
So he delved deep within and flowed outward like a rising tide, reaching out to every soul within his misbegotten kingdom. They lit up against the thing that counted as his brain, pinging like radar in his skull. He was always aware of them on a latent level even when he didn’t reach into the well of his power, so it was easy to parse out the ones that were familiar…old…insignificant. It was like sorting through a hay bale for a needle that might not even be there. From one end of the Pentagram to the other he scanned, slowly nudging up against the boundaries of Alastor’s territory inquisitively.
His examination had the gentle quality of an apologetic caress…as if he regretted even this small violation of his lover’s requested privacy.
Then he felt it.
It was small…faint as a distant star amidst the brighter lights of souls far more aged and established, but it was real and it was new. It felt crisp and bright like a radiant moon on a snowy night high up above the castle walls. It was warm like long evenings spent before a crackling fire in an imaginary castle. It sounded like the rustling of paper dolls in tiny fingers. Lucifer gasped and let loose the reins on his power, the whole spiritual array falling away from him while his golden eyes went wide.
Sensing the newfound softness in their brother, Az finally reached out to touch his hand, “Lucifer?.”
Lucifer took a deep breath, “...There’s a new soul. It…she’s not much of anything yet, but….”
“But she is real?”
The Devil looked at their sibling, glowing with a faint radiant light against the gloom of Hell, “...Yeah.”
Then he looked to the skies while he slowly digested what the fuck he was going to tell his already-tormented lover, “Yeah.”
“And what will you do, brother?” Azriel asked, voice no more substantial than a final breath and blind-not-blind eyes glinting.
“...I have to go to him. Father, he must be half-crazy by this point. Camille is lingering near him which must mean he’s still possessed by the memories of rearing her and he won't understand why it’s not going away,” Lucifer could hear the tension in his own voice, “He’s been through enough, Az.”
“I’ll leave you to it then, brother. And I am sorry for intruding on your peace despite a promise to the contrary. I won’t do it again. I just…you looked…well,” Azriel replied and eased back a step towards the edge of the roof.
Lucifer watched him go and took a moment to swallow his not-inconsiderable pride before offering his sibling a few words before they parted, “Thanks, Az. I do actually appreciate this. Al…Alastor’s going to need it. Also, can I ask you not to take this back to the others?”
Spreading their wings against the sky, Azriel merely gave them a tender expression full of understanding, “Death isn’t meant to be known, brother. I have my secrets.”
And then they were off, lifting into the air…before the little shred of their spirit that could be spared melted away into the pockets between reality.
Lucifer watched them go before spreading his own wings and rocketing into the air.
He had to get to Alastor.
~*~
Alastor sat at his old kitchen table with his elbows propped messily across its antique top, spindly fingers knotted tight into his hair. A tumbler of whiskey sat forgotten at his elbow and a dying cigarette hung limply from his right hand. He held it at a loose angle, keeping the dying cherry away from his tangled fringe while the burning tip of it slowly issued forth a blue-grey plume of pungent smoke.
A week.
An entire week alone save for his shadow and it wasn’t better yet.
He’d spent a week without his partner out of desperation and it had gotten him nothing more than sleepless nights and fruitless rituals.
Alastor was a covetous, jealous man who never gave up a single thing he didn’t have to and the very idea that he’d spent a week isolated without the safety and comfort of the King of Hell in his bed was galling. It was unacceptable, especially considering he’d gained nothing from it.
As it stood, the stag was reaching the end of a fraying rope.
The first day had been fine, taken up with unpacking his valise and settling back into a place that hadn’t really been his ‘home base’ in years while ignoring his pouting umbral simulacrum. He’d slept at an appropriate hour (though not well) and he’d had some hope that his pattern-shift really had broken him free from the remnants of his waking dream. He’d been restless all night, deeply aware that his back was, for once, unguarded without the sturdy figure of Lucifer tucked up tight behind him.
But then near dawn he could have sworn he heard a soft ‘maman’ from down the hall…the whispered plea of a child in the wee hours of morning. Running on instincts he never should have had, Alastor rose from his bed (rumpled from tossing and turning) and threw on a robe over his nightclothes. He folded his arms over his stomach and, half-awake, padded out of his room to go and see what Camille needed. She was still getting used to not sleeping in the quarters he shared with Lucifer and…
Alastor paused in a hallway that didn’t go to a child’s room.
…And there was no Camille.
His spine went cold as his mind cleared and he remembered that this hallway only led to the den and nothing more. The heavy beat of his heart had picked up, but he’d schooled himself quickly to composure and turned his steps towards the kitchen. It was only the first night. A little slip didn’t mean anything yet. A minor setback and nothing more, surely.
It had not, in fact, been minor.
Night after night Alastor woke to the sounds of a soft voice drawing him out of troubled dreams, begging for what comfort he could offer. Night after night he lay down in a cold bed and woke early to ensure a daughter he’d never really had got her breakfast on time. Night after night he felt a little bit more of his sanity slip as he found himself searching for a missing stuffed toy so his made-up daughter could go back to bed without waking her ‘father’ because Lucifer did fuss so. Night after Night Alastor’s desperation grew as he swore he could smell the scent of roses and feel the bite of snow against his nose when he lay in a bed that shouldn’t have felt as big as it did.
Night after night, he put off sleeping for longer and longer to protect what was left of his mind.
Tonight he was trying a new experiment…that being not sleeping at all.
After he’d caught himself padding down the hall the night before to watch a Lucifer who wasn’t here right now tuck in a daughter who had never been here at all, Alastor resolved that more extreme measures were needed. He needed to utterly shatter anything resembling a pattern. Before he went to bed, his instincts drove him to care for his daughter and when he woke they did the same. So he reasoned then that if he refused to sleep, it would break the cycle he found himself locked in and then maybe, just maybe, he could return to a place he privately called home with the man he’d forged a relationship with.
It was how he found himself half-hunched over his unused dining room table, smoke curling to the ceiling and drink untouched while he tried to remind himself that he really shouldn’t be smoking because it was bad for Camille…
Alastor let out a violent hiss and dug deeper into his own hair until his claws cut his scalp.
He refused to live like this.
Alastor had been many terrible, wicked things over his long life and afterlife, but broken had never been one of them. Oh, he’d been accused of madness many times over the century and some change he’d existed (and there was likely some credence to that), but never this passive sort of lunacy. What would he do if this continued? He refused to go back to Lucifer so the man could have a front-row seat to his mental decline and Alastor utterly rejected the notion of being seen to lose his mind by his fellow overlords. What was left to him then?
If he was doomed to be a madman and a pitiful figure, then what even was the point?
Alastor let out a shuddering breath and unwound his claws so he could take a lingering drag of his dying cigarette, hating the bitter vegetal taste of half-lit tobacco.
His ears flickered when the bright tang of Lucifer’s magic rippled over the back of his tongue, tangible in that unique way of his. It was both Infernal and Divine indivisible and Alastor stared through slitted eyes when the flickering shape of a portal spiraled into life in his den. He had told Lucifer not to pursue him. He had needed his time away from the man who was not a man. He certainly didn’t want to be seen now when he was little more than a half-exhausted wretch.
The portal before him widened in a flickering ring of sparkling scarlet and gold, uncaring of his distress.
Distress? Goodness. How far had he truly fallen if he would consider himself something so frail as ‘distressed’?
His narrow-eyed glare must have been at full toxicity by the time Lucifer’s polished black boots stepped through because the Devil honest-to-God paused at the sight of him.
“I thought,” Alastor drawled through an exhaled wisp of smoke, “I was explicit about my wishes.”
Rather than play the part of the wise man he truly wasn’t, offer his mea culpa, and depart Lucifer stared at him with something akin to wounded dismay. Golden eyes roved over his lean form, surely taking in every starved dip of him and the bags steadily taking up more and more real estate beneath his eyes. He was definitely seeing the rumpled state of the suit Alastor hadn’t taken off last night before he’d retreated to brood at the kitchen table.
“Habibi…” the Devil breathed.
“Leave,” Alastor said shortly, in no mood for a conversation.
But Lucifer didn’t listen, standing his ground like the king he had learned to be over his years courting a Sinner who would tolerate nothing less from him.
“...You still hear her, don’t you?” Lucifer murmured.
Alastor hissed and looked away sharply, bringing his cigarette to his mouth for another drag, “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about, dear. I merely realized I rather enjoyed the peace and quiet that I lost after I agreed to go steady with you. It really is quite refreshing and I would be gratified to return to it.”
There. Bite at him. Snarl at him. Wound his already scarred soul and send him running.
His harried brain reminded him of another time he’d tried to push this man away rather than suffer and how little good that had done him. Flashes of grey stone, warm hearths, and the stink of roses clouded his head.
Then, just as now, Lucifer didn’t budge.
“Alastor, I know. I know you still…” the king cut himself off and closed his eyes.
Alastor’s glare took on an edge of warning.
Lucifer shook his head and slowly walked over to the table, taking a seat and studying his lover, though Alastor refused to look head-on at his scouring gaze, “Al, please. I’ve missed you this week. I’ve missed you and I know Camille is still here.”
“You know nothing,” Alastor spat, rising sharply from the table and snuffing his cigarette in one smooth motion.
His lover shot him a long-suffering glance and what could Alastor do but harrumph and stalk towards the kitchen doorway?
“Please don’t walk away, sweetheart. Please. Listen…I have an answer. I know what’s going on and I know how to fix it. I never would have violated your privacy like this otherwise,” Lucifer said sotto voce, eyes bruise-tender, “I just…this is going to get worse the longer you avoid me.”
Lucifer here to save the day again, was it?
“We’ll just see about that,” Alastor huffed, his shoes thudding against the antique hardwood of his floor while he beelined for any room that didn’t currently contain a fallen angel he was desperately missing.
Lucifer pivoted with his movement, reaching out to grab his arm at the elbow in a firm but painless grip, “You can still hear her because she’s real, Alastor. She’s been haunting you every step of every day because we made her.”
When his hand closed on Alastor’s elbow, the Sinner whirled at the imposition, baring his teeth and eyes flashing whirling radio dials in a warning before the words sunk in. He was only seconds away from burying his fangs into the Fallen’s flesh and taking a chunk out of sheer frustration, but the declaration halted him. His smile was still an ugly, monstrous thing stretched too wide across his face and his eyes refused to return to normal, but his stomach gave a terrible lurch. He barely registered the full shape of what he was being told at first.
His mouth didn’t move when he spoke this time, his voice slithering out from the radio by his table while his locked jaw flickered in luminous yellow like a transistor, “...What did you say?”
The Devil didn’t release him, face a queasy mix of hopeful and grave, “When we were together during the trial, we kindled something. Al, baby, you’re not insane. You are literally tethered to a potential soul. You’re not clinging to a memory, she is clinging to her mother.”
Alastor jerked against his lover’s arm just to have something to do with himself.
No dice.
“Madness,” he said sharply when he failed to free himself, standing there adrift in his own damn kitchen while one of the oldest creatures in existence bluntly informed him that down was now up, “You know as well as I that ghosts don’t exist, you desperate little cretin.”
Lucifer shook his head, “She’s not a ghost, habibi, because she isn’t a dead soul with a full life behind her. She’s an unborn soul waiting for life to start.”
Some wild, terrible part of Alastor that had grown too used to having gentle hands and a soft voice around a small creature with his hair was raw at the very idea. His fingers flexed on his free hand as if seeking little fingers to hold tight and he forced them still once more. The hope was too much and the Radio Demon did not accept hope’s false promises. He wouldn’t be so craven, so weak…
“She was a projection, Lucifer. Nothing more. Now let me go. You’re making this process more difficult for both of us.”
Apparently at the end of his patience, Lucifer used his grip on his lover’s elbow to reel him in, promptly putting the taller stag over his shoulder and carrying him back to the kitchen table. Alastor’s aural aura let out an offended shriek of feedback, but the King of Hell didn’t so much as twitch while he struggled, thumping his ass right back down into the seat he’d vacated. He twisted the chair around so the back of it was braced against the table, then penned Alastor in by grabbing the wood to either side of him. Sometimes the Sinner forgot his lover’s enormous strength until he was caught in the jaws of it.
“Alastor, stop,” Lucifer rumbled with the force of a thunderclap, “And listen.”
Alastor’s ears pinned back and he hated himself in that moment for giving in to his damned cervine prey instinct, falling utterly still in the face of a greater predator.
Satisfied that he wouldn’t try to run or lip off again, Lucifer locked him with an unblinking stare, “When we had sex in the simulation -.”
“You mean when you bred me like a mare,” the Sinner rallied enough to bite back.
Lucifer snorted, but he was done with indulging Alastor’s desperate need to deflect and hide, “Fine, if that’s how you want it. When I fucked you in the simulation, some part of our actual presence was…ah…present. The pregnancy wasn’t real, but the spark of a soul we forged was. The simulation gave her just enough of a taste of something like reality that she stayed with you because you were all she knew. When it ended and our false world ceased to be, she attached herself to you. You’re not living out your memories, you’re trying to live out hers.”
What did Alastor say to that?
What was he meant to say?
He was thoroughly penned in now and had nowhere to run or avoid this utterly flaying conversation. There wasn’t even an option to use his shadows to escape (Lucifer had a nasty habit of canceling out his magic to keep him from avoiding their little discussions. He did it rarely, but it was still a weapon in his arsenal). Of course, even if Lucifer didn’t stymie him, his own Shadow would. The wretched thing had been curled up around one of Lucifer’s legs since he’d entered the homey cabin and Alastor was sure it would turn traitor given the slightest provocation.
More than that…did he want to run?
Lucifer’s hand released the edge of the table behind him to reach up and cup his cheek, sternness softening, “...We’ve been doing an awful lot of fighting lately, Al. I’d really…really love it…if we could just talk for once.”
Alastor gritted his teeth, trying to bite down on his waning desire to fight, “...What do you even wish me to say, Lucifer?”
A thumb stroked over the sharp bone of his cheek, “...How you’re feeling, for starters. I mean, I wouldn’t mind an ‘I missed you, Luci dear’, but I’ll take what I can get.”
Ridiculous man.
The Radio Demon inhaled deeply as an echo of memory stole across his senses, reminding him of a snowy confrontation on a high tower on a night that had never functionally happened…another night where a stubborn man with warm hands refused to allow him to run. He struggled against the feeling squirming in his guts - tried to make his heart a closed fist, tried to make it a stone inside his chest. It was the only way he’d survive.
But Lucifer’s eyes…
Alastor yanked his face out of Lucifer’s grip and looked away, trying to gather his thoughts and flee as far as he was permitted. His lover allowed him that much, knowing he could only be pushed so far.
The stag was breathing heavily and the Devil didn’t move back, but he also didn’t pursue him further now that he had him more or less caged. At his back, Alastor’s shadow oozed up from the floor in the bare millimeters between the chair back and the table, wrapping its claws around the back of its master’s seat. It let out a little croon and nudged the side of the Radio Demon’s head, urging him to say something.
The Sinner shoved its face away and ignored its annoyed hiss as he tried to gather words.
He swallowed thickly and tried to ignore the there-not-there feeling of small fingers wrapping around his like a phantom limb. Camille hated when her parents argued…
Alastor gasped weakly and his fingers trembled around nothing as he finally found his voice, “You can see I’m not well. Why ask?”
“Because I love you, I’ve missed you, and I’m worried about you,” Lucifer said before letting his face fall into a boyish, cock-eyed grin, “And I know better than to assume. Always bites me in the ass. So please…tell me what’s actually going on for you.”
“Here you are to save me yet again…” Alastor sighed out, voice garbled with heavy static and resignation.
Lucifer shook his head, “Habibi, I already know where that head is going and no, don’t do that. Don’t. You aren’t weak just because I love you enough to take care of you.”
“I grow tired of being sheltered under the auspices of a benevolent master,” Alastor snorted, still not ready to let the bit of resentment out from between his teeth.
His lover snorted, “Me? Your master? Alastor, even in the simulation where I was supposed to be the boss of you, you still ran the entire show. People were terrified of you. I’m not your master, buddy, I’m your partner. I just…happen to be kinda sorta uniquely tied to Hell in a way that let me figure this out. That’s it.”
Alastor slid his narrowed gaze back to his lover and found the man watching him, expression entirely open.
It was unfair how beautiful the Fallen Angel was when he looked at the Radio Demon like that, skin glowing and eyes bright.
Finally, the honesty that had been stewing in the Sinner’s guts bubbled up and forced its way past the razor-edged gates of his teeth, “I am…tired, Angel. I’ve barely slept without your presence and I wake with her voice in my ears. I’ve been so sure I’d gone mad that…”
He exhaled, knowing Lucifer would lose his mind if he fully expressed the thoughts that had been consuming him. It would only make the man hysterical.
Lucifer reached for him once more, sensing that his welcome hadn’t worn out, “But you’re not mad and I’m here now. I promise. Sorry, baby, but you don’t get to push me away again for awhile, poor you.”
Stubborn little beast.
Alastor watched him pensively, “And what happens next, then?”
“Whatever you want, Al.”
It was the stag’s turn to snort now, his fine crimson eyebrow lifting incredulously, “You come into my home and inform me that I am tied to the unborn soul of our daughter and act as if I have a choice in what happens after that?”
Lucifer’s hands abandoned their previous positions to grip his so tight Alastor was sure he could feel his bones creak, “You will always have a choice with me, Alastor. We’ll figure it out, whatever you feel like the right move is. Just like in the test, nothing happens without your say so.”
“Even when you feel the need to manhandle me?” The Overlord replied archly just to make a point.
The Devil winced, but didn’t let go of his hands, “...Okay, so maybe I’ve got to put my foot down sometimes…”
“So I see,” Alastor quipped but pointedly made no move to withdraw his hands from his lover’s grip, “For now, pet…I feel this is too large a choice to make when I suspect neither of us has slept well in a week. We are going to go to bed and when we wake up we’ll have a deeper conversation about what comes next. But we are staying here. I’m unprepared to be seen by others at present.”
Soft lips pressed to his forehead, “Whatever you want. Vaggie’s covering your hotel duties right now and nothing’s blown up while you’ve been gone. We’ve got time to figure it out.”
~*~
Safely ensconced in his bedroom, curled up near the wall his bed abutted with Lucifer’s reassuring weight guarding his back once again, Alastor’s glowing eyes flickered open sometime towards midnight.
Goodness, he must have been truly exhausted to sleep the entire day and half the night away.
He slowly gathered his thoughts and tried to determine what had roused him from sleep this time. Aside from the unending clamour of the city just beyond his territory, the room was quiet and still. Only Lucifer’s heavy breathing broke the silence while they both lay together, giving the stag’s brain plenty of time to parse through what had disturbed him.
There at the corner of his consciousness was a soft tug he’d grown more and more familiar with, the psychological equivalent to tiny hands pulling fitfully at his nightshirt in the midst of a howling snowstorm. On any other night, the sensation would have been a source of vexation, but armed with new information Alastor only sighed. Whatever remained of the Camille he had been raising was seeking comfort. There was nothing there to touch or soothe or care for, not really, but there was something aware enough to long for the comfort of a mother.
A mother.
Alastor huffed out a breath before willing a nearby radio on, playing a remembered version of a lullaby from an entire world away. He felt as that thing tethered to his psyche began to calm and came to terms with the phantom weight curling up against his stomach.
A mother.
The Radio Demon had promised Lucifer he’d think seriously about children of their own, but what did that actually mean in the reality of Hell? In this reality, Alastor was no lifemate, no Queen, no royal consort. He was the partner of the king, yes, but he held his own seats of power entirely separate from the auspices of the crown. He had his own enemies who wouldn’t curb their tongues or tempers just because he was carrying a child the way they had in the long dream, no. They would circle Alastor like ravening wolves if he found himself with child and asking Lucifer to protect him would only make things worse.
And yet…
And yet their little Camille’s soul was real and it needed a home. What would happen if Alastor decided he had no wish to carry her in reality? Would she eventually find a new mama? Or would she just fade away…?
A chill ran down his spine at the thought and his ears pinned back.
Carmine eyes flashed wide in the gloom when a hand reached out for his face and Lucifer spoke, whiskey-rich and deep as dreams, “...Habibi…?”
In the private solitude of the bedroom, Alastor let grudging honesty fall from his lips, “...Camille was lonely.”
Golden eyes softened in the dark, “...Poor kid. Explains the radio. I remember that song…”
“Do you?”
“Mmm yeah,” Lucifer said, reaching out to rest his hand on Alastor’s hip, “I remember details from the test…it just wasn’t as real for me. This song? I remember this song.”
“I’ve been smelling roses,” the Overlord admitted.
“All the time?”
Alastor shook his head, feeling the way his hair caressed his cheek against the pillow, “It follows her, I think. We spent so much time in the rose gardens…”
He lost the words, but Lucifer was there to rescue him, “Sounds like right now she’s just…reminiscence and almost.”
“Reminiscence and ‘almost’,” Alastor repeated.
“Yup.”
“I suppose that’s succinct enough,” Alastor hummed and tried to ignore the amused chuff his lover let out at his side, the way the thumb circled over his prominent hip bone.
“Lucifer…” he broached, feeling free to be a bit more genuine here in the close safety of his private place with one of the most powerful beings in creation attending to him, “If we decide the time isn’t right…what will happen to Camille?”
The hand on his hip paused for a second before returning to its slow revolutions over flesh and bone and sinew, “...I don’t know, baby. I’m the spirit of creation, but once a thing is made, I don’t have much control. We made her ‘real’, but I don’t know what comes next. She could stick with you because you’re all she knows…”
“Or?” Alastor asked sharply.
Lucifer shrugged with one shoulder, “....Something tells me you’ve already thought about the ‘or’, Al.”
Alastor swallowed and turned the radio up a notch with his will, leaning in closer to his golden-haired fallen angel, “It will be dangerous.”
The king’s face was shocked for just a moment before he caught back up and slid his hand over Alastor’s hip to hook the small of his back and draw him close, “Tell me what you’re thinking, Alastor.”
Now or never, the Radio Demon thought as he prepared for total honesty.
Now or never.