Chapter Text
Lucifer had learned plenty of lessons over the years, willingly and otherwise, everything from all the angelic power in the universe wouldn’t fix your phone if you dropped it down a sewer drain to throwing caution to the wind and going against the rules of Heaven didn’t usually work out in your favor.
There was one key rule that first really came into play when Charlie was a toddler and made an unexpected return when Lucifer came to stay at the hotel and his daughter learned a lesson of her own about his lack of preference for pajamas. That rule was: never underestimate the usefulness of a locked door.
That lesson wasn’t the only reason he was heading back to the palace to pull down the shades again and make sure the chairs were on the tables, but it was well worth keeping in mind.
With the palace wards torn, Lucifer could have portaled directly inside. He’d punched through them earlier like a baseball tearing through a practice net and left a gaping hole in his wake, wider even than he normally would have made for only himself since he’d dragged Alastor through after him. The ragged edges of his own protective intent weren’t going to hurt him, but a sinner demon, even one traveling alongside him, didn’t need any loose threads catching when they stepped between, like getting tangled up in some dangling unholy jellyfish tentacles.
Yeah, he could have pushed through and right back into his workshop, but it would have frayed the ripped edges even more, given him extra damage to repair. Better to come out at the front gates and give himself less to tape over when he got there.
Lucifer didn’t linger at the foot of the stairs, heading up to the main doors and as he did, he wondered idly what the demons on the street thought of his recent comings and goings. It wasn’t as if he’d hidden his presence at the hotel, it was all over Hell by now that he was no longer holed up in the palace based on the text messages he was ignoring.
Once upon a time, in a memory that felt a very long way away in both distance and years, the King and Queen appearing at the palace gates whenever they returned had been part and parcel of the whole Royal show.
He and Lilith would manifest before the masses in an elegant swirl of glittering golden light before ascending the wide staircase hand in hand, a lavish performance of their shared power and might. They’d cut a hell of a figure together, he knew; each stunning in their own way, and anyone who looked at them would surely have seen the yin and yang of Hell’s society, a matched pair of lush blondes, beautiful and perfect.
Then that glamour was ripped away, from Hell and from Lucifer himself, and only left reality behind.
Reality right now was Lucifer here on the steps, alone, the mighty King of Hell hoofing it up the too-long flight of stairs and hastily slipping inside, right through the unlocked front door.
He wasn’t naïve enough to believe no one noticed him constantly popping up like a demonic gopher at the palace entrance; if he’d gotten nothing else out of today, it was a stern reminder that in Hell someone was always watching.
Come to think of it, might be worth catching the news tonight just to see what was being said about his outing downtown this morning. His outing and the different company he was keeping these days; about the only thing Alastor and Lilith had in common was height.
Chances were that every detail was already out there on someone’s Sinstagram, right down to what their personal donut order was. Odds were more difficult on whether or not there was a picture of the two of them kissing and Lucifer wasn’t sure how he felt about that; if he’d had time to think of it before that unexpected kiss landed, Lucifer would have cracked the lens any camera in their radius that tried.
Privacy was a hard-won commodity in Hell for anyone no matter their rank and not hiding his relationship with Alastor didn’t mean he wanted anyone setting up creepy shrines in their closet to them. Denizens of Hell couldn’t actually summon him, but it still gave his heebes the jeebs. Worship was never high on his list, he left that for more Heavenly hosts.
Well, if nothing else, there was also a very high chance that no one could get a clear photo of Alastor and that would have to do.
Whatever pictures might exist out there of the two of them, there was one thing Lucifer knew for certain: they weren’t going to be posed and perfect. His own bright hair wasn’t any kind of match to Alastor’s black-tipped crimson, the bright red of his suit almost clashed against the deep pink trim of Lucifer’s and their kiss on the streets of Hell was nothing like the practiced brush of lips he’d always given Lil out in public.
Like the photograph Charlie kept of the two of them, it had the flavor of real, a candid slice of their lives frozen in time and that left Lucifer torn. He didn’t want that picture to exist but if it did, he wanted a copy. It would be a hell of a lot nicer on their wall than another picture of a damn clown.
The sound of the closing door echoed around him as Lucifer stood in the foyer, glancing around at the stillness. Nothing had changed since this morning; there was a mark through the dust on one of the cherub statues where Alastor had run a finger over it, the hallways echoing just as loudly with his footsteps.
This was his fourth trip here in recent days and somehow each one managed to hurt a fraction less. Like a lingering wound finally beginning to heal.
Strange, really. For all that he’d lived here for so long, called it home and the nostalgia was thick as were the memories, some of the pain was lessened.
When he’d brought Charlie here last week, he hadn’t wanted to take her on a palace tour, had even thought maybe he’d never be ready. Now he thought maybe he could, the ache of memory was softened, its sharper edges blunted. Alastor was to thank for that, whether he’d meant it or not. Helped varnish over some of the more painful places, leaving bits and pieces of himself around the palace like a carelessly strewn sock.
Lucifer’s last memory of the garden wasn’t of Lilith anymore, but of them. Of braiding Alastor’s hair and learning more about him, something deeply personal no matter how reluctantly it was shared. The throne room was no longer the place where he was expected to hear selfishly whining petitions for hours at a time, it was where Alastor sassed him about the uncomfortable chairs, where they made love on that throne and Alastor was so achingly beautiful, his hair in braids and his eyes sparking with temper as he ordered Lucifer to come inside him. His workshop was where answers to so many questions on both sides of the equation were slowly pried loose.
Of course, whenever Lucifer got one question answered, two more seemed to crop up and take its place, a damn hydra whose heads were made up of mysteries, but hey, he still had an answer. Gratitude was a hard sell for Lucifer at times, but that was something to be grateful for.
But that was enough of all that, it was time to get to work, Charlie was expecting him for dinner prep.
Now that he was inside, Lucifer didn’t bother holding back and portaled straight to his workshop, right where the wards were originally torn.
Not that he technically needed to be there to repair them; if the hole only let demons into his workshop, this wouldn’t have been as much of an immediate issue. It was one thing to steal from the palace kitchens, another entirely to steal directly from him and not too many demons were going to be that bold right out of the gate.
Of course, he would have thought the same thing about someone being daring enough to put a listening device right into his bedroom, so what did he know.
Nah, fixed the wards wasn’t as simple as patching an actual hole. The wards weren’t a physical thing, at least not on this plane of existence. It wasn’t like he was going to dig out an enormous crochet hook—
(or was it knitting, he could never remember)
—-and get to work weaving up the hole.
Well, he could, and if there had been an audience, he might have done it for the lolz. Charlie probably would have watched in wonderment, those eyes so like his own wide with awe, and fuck yeah, he’d show off a little. Sin of Pride, baby, he had his moments.
There just wasn’t much fun in showing off for only himself.
But that wasn’t why he was here at the door to his workshop and he knew it, his mental train of thought on the verge of careening off the rails. Fuck it, it wasn’t as if this was the first time he’d ever tried to compartmentalize his emotions.
He was worried, damn it, and it was getting more and more difficult to keep that fear to himself.
He could set his worry for Alastor on one corner of his mental desktop, box it up all secure and tight, keep it out of the way while he tried to deal with the rest of the world coming in past it, but it was still there, knocking around right in the corner of his vision. Shoving his worries away didn’t keep Lucifer from wondering what Alastor was doing, if he was all right.
(please be all right)
It’d been days since Alastor had been called away on one of his secret outings, the first time since the challenge his unnamed dealholder called him away. Lucifer might have more insight into Alastor himself but he wasn’t much closer to figuring out his deal or his dealholder than he’d been at the beginning, and the bitch of it was, he still didn’t have a good way to find anything out.
Only now letting him go was worse, it was so much worse; he’d seen Alastor hurt and he’d seen him afraid, seen him tender and broken and hiding his care for others. Standing back while he went off doing fuck knew what was getting more difficult every time. Something was going to happen, Lucifer knew it. Prescience was more Alastor’s schtick than his, but he didn’t need precog to feel a pressure cooker dial coming up to its limit.
There had to be a way around Alastor’s limitations and, well, Alastor. Even without the deal holding him back, Lucifer doubted he’d be lining up to ask for ‘a tad of assistance, won’t you, chum?’
Yeah, not happening.
What he really needed was a do-over plan. Lucifer could do plans, he was good at plans! Results might vary but plans, that was at his skill level.
First, he’d give the hotel a good once over for listening devices. Alastor hadn’t directly asked for help with it, but he’d suggested it, that was asking adjacent. Next, figure out a way to deal with Alastor’s…uh…deal.
As plans went, it was a little on the thin side. Pretty slim, really, downright skinny, but hey, it was a start.
But before all that, he needed to finish this.
Lucifer stood in the doorway of his workshop, looking in. He’d been in here alone for a long time by most standards. Before that, his last real argument with Lil was right here in this room and he was not thinking about that.
And now?
Now this room held the photograph Charlie paused to look at. The worktable was where he’d created a small silver comb with a crest of undying roses. This was the chair he and Alastor sat in together only a couple hours ago.
A couple of his tools were still laying out on his worktable, left out from sculpting the hair comb he’d given Alastor. He wasn’t normally messy with them, usually they only ended up scattered around in the final moments of creation when all efforts and frustrations burst into delightful fruition. He’d mostly lost that somewhere along the way; the satisfaction that used to come blazing to life in the instance of completion was barely a spark with every new duck, if even that much.
The last real explosion of it came with Charlie’s birth but it’d been so overshadowed with pain and exhaustion it was hard to remember properly. He hadn’t felt it again until he’d designed a monocle case with a sort of guilt-driven frenzy. But the hair comb…
Lucifer picked up the slender sculpting tool, twirling it absently through his fingers. He didn’t technically need tools at all, he could form and shape with his hands alone. There was something about a tool, though, using it as an extension of himself. Tools helped with finer work, helped guide the picture in his mind’s eye into reality.
He set the tool back on the worktable with a soft click and looked around. There was a lot in this room that was an extension of himself.
When he’d left before, all he’d taken was clothes, everything else was pretty much left behind. His room at the hotel was still fairly impersonal and that was his own fault. It wasn’t as if anything or anyone was stopping him from redecorating, except himself.
Some internal voice inside him wanted to be sure that it was worth packing up and hauling all his precious possessions halfway access the Pride Ring. That voice in the back of his head, so fucking much like Sera, demanded proof that it wouldn’t be a waste of time, that he wouldn’t fuck things up with his daughter yet again, that he wouldn’t be back here tomorrow surrounded by unpacked boxes and an endless cycle of tea and ducks.
Silly, really. Even if things went south, if there was one thing he had, it was time. He was already in Hell, there was only so much further down he could go.
That was all fine and candy-dandy but if he waited much longer, Alastor was going to claim all the prime bedroom real estate. Lucifer wasn’t going to object to entire bookshelf radio collection so long as he got a little of his own space.
And besides, it wasn’t all ducks, thank you very much. There was plenty he’d like to take along and no better time than now. Lucifer mentally reached out to collect his teapot, its trunk frozen in a perfect spout. His cups came along with it, a few of his best tools from the workbench, a toy train that had been Charlie’s when she was a child, and his model of the Rings of Hell. They would be lovely displayed alongside whatever radios Alastor wanted, all of them showcased with little Al, the skeleton duck.
(And oh, he wanted that, the absurdity of it all, his gewgaws nestled in with Alastor’s knickknacks, they were going to have this, they were keeping it, he was going to prove Alastor wrong about that)
He also chose a few pictures of Charlie; adorable baby ones and pre-teen and her goth phase, all to show Vaggie in that uniquely parental embarrassment ritual. He left the ones with Lilith behind; maybe later he’d collect them for Charlie and Alastor might be understanding enough about those in his workshop, what with her being Charlie’s mom and all, but Lucifer suspected there might be strenuous objections and possible violence about any suggestion of his ex-wife overlooking their bedroom.
That was fine; it wasn’t as if Lucifer wanted a glamour shot of Vox hanging over the love seat.
He secured everything in a little dimensional pocket, each nestled into their own cushion of unspace to keep from knocking into each other.
Then he packed up the chair, that chair, the one he sat in with Alastor in his lap. Fuck it, it was a good chair and there was room for it back at the hotel. He had plans, ideas, he had ambitions for this chair. Opportunity would knock again and having Alastor sitting in his lap was a worthy goal, bare this time with his thighs spread over Lucifer’s and his ankles hooked around the chair legs. Maybe with his back to Lucifer, yeah, that would be even better. The temptation of his mouth surrendered for all that lovely smooth skin on display, the soft fluff of his tail within easy reach, and he could use a new bow, something in a rich, satiny green this time and—
Okay, his dick was starting to question where it had gone wrong this afternoon to be subjected to this sort of torture thrice over. Time to settle down and get to the actual task at hand.
The wards around the palace were the work of thousands of years. Demons changed, powers changed, shields eroded over time and needed to be shored up, rebuilt and reinforced.
Layers and layers of wards crisscrossed over the entire grounds like an enormous metaphysical mosquito netting. Laid out with mathematical precision, sandwiched one on another on another, and earlier Lucifer tore through all those layers as easily as Alastor’s antlers tore through their bed canopy.
This was just a repair, sewing the edges together to seal up the hole he’d created until he had time to come back and make a better job of it. Power was one thing and Lucifer had plenty, but you couldn’t bludgeon your way into a proper set of wards, the same way you couldn’t complete a sketch by slamming charcoal against the paper. Weaving together wards was as much an art form as hand-making lace and it took time.
For right now, he was just going to close up the hole, patch over the ragged edges and get back to the hotel to help make dinner. It’d be ugly, but it would work in the short-term and anyway, something strong enough to tear through his repairs was going to need a hasty direct confrontation, anyway.
He settled in, closing his eyes on this plane and preparing to open others to get a good look at the damage he’d caused.
That was when he felt it.
Footsteps echoing through empty hallways. A presence that shouldn’t be here, a sense of strange and unwelcome.
There was someone here, someone uninvited, and Lucifer didn’t even think. He let go of the restraints on his demon form as he tracked them through the hallways, blood-red dropping over his vision, his tail curling around his feet as he prepared to portal directly in front of them.
Either it was a looter who deserved an extreme pants-wetting experience for trying to make off with the silverware, or it was someone else. Maybe someone who’d been listening in on things that no one else should have heard and as blasé as Alastor had been about their sex being broadcast out to parts unknown, as much as he’d joked about doing it himself, Lucifer knew him better than that, knew how intensely private he was.
(he was sorry he’d missed the tantrum, Alastor was always glorious in his fury)
Whichever it was, Lucifer hoped they could feel the slowly growing heat of his wrath, that were already afraid without even knowing why.
He was about to have a tantrum of his own.
tbc