Work Text:
The hotel is quiet when Lucifer gives up on sleep and slips out onto the balcony. The ornate railing is cold under his shaking hands, and a chill wind winds around his ankles and settles like snakes over his shoulders. He breathes in the sharp scent of imminent rain and holds it like it might neutralise the fizzing in his veins. For the last week he’s felt lighter than air, thrumming with energy in a way he hasn’t for a long time. He grips the rail. He’s finally doing something that matters, creating things, fixing them. Things are supposed to be good, or at least better, but the fission of anxiety is only becoming deeper and he’s no closer to figuring out why than he was two days ago.
He breathes out. In again. It doesn’t help. His heart beats a shade too fast.
Dark red clouds coalesce in a darker sky, heavy and watchful. It’s the sort of weather that only manifests when there’s been bloodshed by the hundreds, and only dissipates when the fragmented souls are absorbed by the environment. That it’s still here is. . . concerning, to say the least. It should have disappeared days ago.
He shifts his feet, readjusts his hold on the railing. He can see only the outer limits of Pentagram City from this angle, where the small buildings trail off and the forest takes over. Several pinpoint lights shine amongst the far-off trees, one flicking on and off, on and off, like a warning.
He shifts his feet. He used to wander the halls of his estate on nights like these, but the hotel doesn’t have the same sense of emptiness, the guarantee of being alone. He’s run into Husk at the bar two nights out of three, and tonight just- He can’t do it. Sleeping here feels like he’s left the door open and the windows unlocked. Anyone can knock on the door at any time, for anything. Not that they have, but after thousands of years of knowing only Lilith, and later Charlie, might disturb him, the possibility is unsettling. It’s good, staying at the hotel. It’s so good. But he- It’s not easy. He wants to fall back on old habits, to walk until he’s too tired to think and the sky lightens in a facsimile of dawn, but he doesn’t want to risk running into anyone in the halls, and going too far away into the wilderness feels dangerous so soon after Heaven’s gone eerily quiet. He wants even less to return to his estate.
He presses his lips into a line. His latest project lies half-assembled in his little workshop down the hall. He could throw himself at it again, but if he hadn’t been able to figure out what was going wrong when he’d been fully awake, he stands no chance now.
Lucifer swings his legs over the railing and leans forward with only his heels on the brass edge, holding the rail loosely behind him. The ground dips far below, greenery sprouting up around the base of his tower and spilling out across the hill where the blood had been thickest. Sparse pale flowers glow faintly in the shadows, and lanterns staked at hip-height gently dim and brighten like the slow breathing of the restful, red light barely suffusing the ground.
Charlie had set them up on the second morning of rebuilding, before the cobbled paths had gone in, before the hotel’s second floor had been more than scaffolding. Memorial lanterns, she called them, supposed to comfort the second dead and ease the transition from being to nothing. Lucifer’s found they equally comfort the living.
The wind howls up the cliff, and a thin sapling bends and folds under its own weight, draping itself dejectedly across a path. He recognises the stones Charlie had placed around its base, the glittering red leaves Lilith had been so fond of. It’s the only thing Charlie’s actively planted, and whatever is keeping the rest upright, whatever is feeding them and making them grow so fast, it’s not affecting this one. He lets out a breath. It doesn’t look broken, but he can fix it if it is, and either way he can stake it like he has the others. Charlie wouldn’t want it to be the only plant that dies, and as much as it brings back memories, neither does he.
He unfurls his wings. They catch in the wind, and with a lurch he grips the railing in a white-knuckle hold. What if someone in the fringes of the city sees him? What if a news drone spies him on camera and paints his image all over Hell? They-
He swallows, and forces himself to relax, to let the tension out of his shoulders and ease his grasp on the rail. They may have been speculating viciously about the hotel since the extermination, not that he has a point of reference from before or even much or a reference after, but so far he’s been able to hear the whirring little motors before they creep even halfway up the driveway. And, he thinks, he could use the extra parts. It’d be handy if they’d throw a transceiver his way, too, but until he can get the rotors to play nicely with the ducks, he’ll make do.
Still, it wouldn’t do to be caught in less than his best, even if it is pushing two in the morning.
He sighs, and with a snap of his fingers turns his pyjama shirt into a dress shirt and his trousers into breeches and boots. He foregoes the waistcoat and tailcoat, and leaves his hat on its stand. It may be cold, but if the gently biting wind wakes him up fully that’s as good in his books as finally managing to get to sleep. He rolls up his sleeves and lets the wind take him down into the garden.
His feet settle in the red grass and he folds his wings back. The plants are young and growing fast, filling up the zen-maze of garden beds, whatever Charlie had meant by that. It doesn’t look much like a maze from above, and even less so with his boots on the ground. The paths meander and twist with no sharp turns, few dead ends, and no objective centre. He tries not to look too closely at the leafy bushes and spindly plants as he makes his way to the slanting shed at the back of the hotel, but when the lanterns brighten he can’t help but notice there’s more teeth in the leaves than yesterday, more spines in the trunks and black eyes staring from the hearts of flowers. Another eye blinks open with an unsettling pop and fixes on him as he retrieves a stake. He shivers and closes the door on it with a click. There’s no thoughts behind those eyes, no being doing the observation. It shouldn’t be as unnerving as it is.
The bones are worse, he thinks. Half-buried ribs curl like claws, knuckles and fingers scatter the gardens like stones. A few plants are staked with femurs. Hellborn, Charlie had told him when she’d first started setting this up. The cannibals had picked them clean before anyone could put names to the bodies, and a mass grave hadn’t felt right. This doesn’t feel much better, but they carve more names into the cobbled paths as people from Cannibal Town confirm more missing, and it’s something, at least.
Lucifer stakes the plant. It’s not broken, just too tall and thin to hold itself up. In the week and a half since the others started growing, it’s become a reedy shoulder-height. Weak, but not dying. He lets himself look at the others. Some of them are dying, strangled by those too close together. They need replanting, and trimming, and watering, and- He can help with that. Charlie’s been busy, but she likes the garden. He can make it a little more alive for her.
He rolls his shoulders and gets to work.
He’s most of the way around the back of the hotel, pulling weeds by the fistful and throwing them off the cliff, when the sound of humming drifts towards him. It’s slow and resonant, swinging to the faint strains of disembodied slow jazz and keeping time with the beat of hard-soled shoes on the path. The irritating static underlay is unmistakable.
Lucifer digs his fingers into the ground and shuts his eyes with a grimace. Damn him. He glares at the ground. What’s Alastor doing here? He could have chosen to take a midnight stroll anywhere in Hell, why here, where Lucifer is trying to be- To be zen. Chill. Cool. At the very least relaxed. He pushes himself up, dusts his hands, and takes quick stock their relative positions. Alastor won’t have seen him – he’s somewhere on the east side of the Hotel, out of sight, and quiet for Lucifer is a far larger range than most people, which puts him maybe forty meters away, maybe more.
He ducks towards the wall, and considers slipping away entirely. He could do it. Sure, he’d have to make a quiet dash for the cliff and step over the edge like he’s trying to drop a pin perfectly vertically, but by the time he unfurls his wings to catch himself he’d be far enough away that Alastor wouldn’t hear a thing. The forest canopy below would hide the light of a portal, and he’d be back in his room with no-one the wiser.
He purses his lips. In all the time he’s been here, Alastor’s never done anything for the hotel that doesn’t also benefit himself. If Lucifer leaves, he’ll never know what’s going on. It’ll eat away at him until whatever Alastor’s planning blows up in their faces.
He presses his back to the wall and risks a glance. He can just about make out Alastor, hands clasped behind his back and eyes glowing the same deep red as the lanterns. He doesn’t have his staff – hasn’t since he reappeared two days ago – and he surveys the garden like he’s looking for something, the methodical back and forth sweeping of his gaze like a searchlight. Shadows float and follow him, eclipsing the lanterns in streaks and alighting on the sides of bushes and the trunks of saplings like he’s the centre of a hurricane.
“Do contain yourselves.” Alastor’s voice is lilting, quiet. “We don’t have all night.”
All night for what? Lucifer narrows his eyes, and retreats a little as Alastor moves. What the hell is he doing? He’s notoriously tight-lipped about his own thoughts, let alone plans, and Lucifer hasn’t been able to kick the suspicion that he’s not as invested in the wellbeing of the hotel as he likes to appear. And sure, Lucifer hasn’t tried particularly hard to convince himself otherwise, but if he finds out Alastor is a legitimate threat to Charlie’s dreams, he’ll throw him out himself. He’d be more than delighted to show him the door if he-
A shadow threads by like a fish just under the water’s surface and settles nearby, lying back in the grass like stargazing is possible. Lucifer pulls himself back behind the safety of the hotel and stares at it for an uncomprehending moment before adrenaline sparks through him like lightning. Shit. Fuck. He glances back around the wall, but Alastor hasn’t noticed. He hurriedly makes a shooing motion at the shadow.
“Go,” he whispers, quieter than the wind, but the shadow merely raises a finger to its lips and returns its grinning face to the sky. “Go on. Leave.”
The shadow mimes a zip and a key, and flicks it into the bushes. Well fuck. Lucifer leans against the wall, hand over his racing heart, and takes a deep breath. He takes one moment, then two, to pull himself down from high alert. The faint sounds of clocks ticking in the hotel and leaves rustling far below in the forest under the cliff become soft around the edges before fading to nothing. He blinks the shimmering quarter-wavelengths of light out of his vision, and it’s more manageable now. He can’t see heat glowing faintly off the still-warm ground anymore. He tilts his head against the wall and tunes his ears to the music, the footsteps tap-tapping down the path.
He stays quiet, and when it feels like Alastor has turned away – when the humming dips a little quieter with no footsteps to mark the distance – he inches just far enough past the wall to see. If Alastor’s scheming against the hotel, if he’s destabilising foundations or- Or making the plants poisonous or cursing this particular section of the garden or whatever the hell he can do, Charlie needs to know. She shouldn’t trust him as much as she does, and if Lucifer can help her understand that it’ll be worth it. Getting caught is a surefire way to ensure no-one will ever know. He can’t take that risk.
He narrows his eyes. Alastor’s paused, looming narrowly over something Lucifer can’t quite see without sticking his head out further and giving himself an extra two feet of height. A plant? The twisted remains of a Hellborn? Somebody carved a name half a millimetre off centre in one of the stones? The memorial lanterns dim, but before Lucifer can blink a little extra light into his eyes, he hears:
“Well that simply won’t do, now will it?”
He startles, a little, and draws back on the off chance Alastor’s talking to someone else Lucifer can’t see. The lanterns begin to brighten, and with a wave of his hand Alastor conjures a- A watering can? Its coppery-gold finish glints in the red light, and its handle curves smoothly from front to base. It’s nothing like the ones in the shed. Lucifer’s never seen it before. Alastor tips it over the plant – must be, unless he’s watering the bones – and for a split second Lucifer expects something black and acidic to pour out. Something poisonous and vile and if he’s trying to sabotage Charlie’s garden-
He blinks. It’s water, clear and cool. By the time Lucifer’s swept up his thoughts, Alastor’s watered the neighbouring plants, too. He stares, and watches as the man swaps the watering can for a trowel. He’s still humming, still casting his eyes out across the garden like he’s expecting someone, but he’s- Gardening. Lucifer leans back. It has to be a plot, somehow. He watches Alastor move to another part of the garden, watches as he twirls a hand and waves a ground-running plant over a stolen, eerie green arch, right where Lucifer had planned to grow Charlie’s favourite hell flower. He wrinkles his nose in distaste, but- It’s so mundane. It’s-
Is this what Charlie sees in him? Buried under everything, a man who waters plants in the dark of night and helps them grow? Lucifer doesn’t think so, but a sliver of doubt worms its way under the layers and layers of suspicion even so. He shifts his feet to get away from it, but it’s settled in now. If he weren’t so anxious and sleep-deprived, he might have called it charming. Despite himself. A little.
Alastor’s head snaps up like he’s heard a shot and suddenly all bets are off.
“There you are.”
Lucifer ducks away. Has he been seen? Alastor’s still turned half away, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know. If there’s one thing Lucifer’s learned it’s that Alastor’s very good at keeping his reactions under wraps, and this? This is child’s play. This is as easy as hearing something and as simple as not turning around to check. He stares at the shadow. He opens his mouth to hiss did you tell him? but thinks better of it. The shadow gives him a thumbs up, whatever that means.
He hears a faint, static-laced laugh and swivels back to see Alastor smiling at the air with none of the alertness of before. He’s holding the trowel loosely in one hand. It’s odd. Disarming? Maybe that’s the point.
“No, of course not,” he says lowly. Lucifer inches back, but Alastor’s not talking to him. It should be a relief, but it just makes his suspicion skyrocket. “I can’t imagine what it must be like, but you’re not gone yet. You can still get off the proverbial train. What do you say?”
Lucifer blinks. He’s not- Is he?
Alastor holds a hand out to the air, and after a moment of patient nothing the faintest flicker of green light emanates and another shadow joins Alastor at his feet. He smiles at it. “A very wise decision indeed, Candice.” He raises his head. Lucifer ducks back, feeling sick. He’s making deals with them? Of all the awful, coercive things to do, approaching people on death’s final door and offering them a semblance of existence in exchange for- For what? Eternal servitude? He hadn’t specified the terms.
“Now, do you know where your sister is?” Alastor waits silently, but there’s a thread of impatience in his eyes, in the way he rocks ever-so-slightly onto the balls of his feet and back, like he wants to keep moving. Lucifer holds his breath.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Alastor says at long last. “Is there anyone else?”
Lucifer feels himself sneer. Of course he’s not here to garden. The sinner does nothing without a reason, and ‘caring for something’ is so far out of his playbook it may as well be a foreign language. Something unpleasant curls in his stomach. Disdain, maybe? Disgust? Anger? He’s bitterly disappointed with himself for even remotely thinking he might be here for a more positive reason, for believing in the impossible again. The doubt shrivels up and metamorphoses into contempt.
He’s so focused on it he doesn’t catch Alastor turning until he’s already in motion. Lucifer reels back, presses a himself to the wall like he could step right through it, but he’s not fast enough. Alastor freezes, and the peaceful jazz gutters and scrapes like a signal misaligned, before it returns slightly louder. They lock eyes. Lucifer feels his wings unfurl in preparation for a fight that’ll be over and done with in seconds if it happens at all.
For a brief moment Alastor’s eyes are wide, but with a blink he’s back to his usual mask of neutrality.
Lucifer can count on both thumbs the number of times he’s seen Alastor caught off guard. Neither of them were times he’d been snuck up on. He’s off his game.
Alastor’s smile turns razor sharp. “Spying, Lucifer? I must admit, I didn’t think my estimation of you could get any lower.”
Lucifer folds his wings back and steps out of the shadows of the hotel. He glances down the hill. The parts of the city he can see over the growing garden are too far away to see him in return.
“That’s rich coming from someone scraping the bottom of the barrel!” He conjures his cane, plants it on the path and leans forward on it. It’s comforting, having it with him. He doesn’t have to think about where to put his hands. Alastor narrows his eyes at it and he narrows his eyes right back. “What’s that about, huh? Losing your touch? Can’t get a regular sinner to agree to your outrageous terms so you take advantage of people who don’t have any other choice?”
“Ha! I’m sure you’d like to think so.” Alastor examines his nails. “But no, I’m afraid they do still have a choice. That would be your doing, wouldn’t it?” His smile sharpens. “It’s why we’re all here, after all!”
Lucifer freezes, smile fixed in place. Anxiety crawls under his heart, digging for the familiar sense of unease. A mistake, that’s all, and too impossibly large to think about now. He pushes it down and looks pointedly around the garden. It’s really rather beautiful. “Yes,” he says thoughtfully. “Here. Why are you still here? Surely you have better things to do than hang around a dream you don’t believe in.”
Alastor’s smile widens. “I’ve never pretended to ‘hang around’ for the dream. You on the other hand, are doing an excellent job.” A studio audience claps and cheers. “Well done.”
He feels his chest constrict, and he hates how even this praise, as mocking and derisive as it is, can get to him. “I’m not pretending-”
“No, of course not. You merely undid a lifetime of believing sinners can’t be redeemed in the span of one and a half months! It’s quite remarkable. A real ‘one-eighty’.”
Lucifer bristles. “At least I’m trying, you insufferable ass.” And sure, some days it’s bloody hard. Some days he slams into the wall that is Heaven and falls back into believing it isn’t possible. He’s met two, maybe three sinners who aren’t wholly awful – or weren’t, given the memorial in the parlour – but the rest of them are as violently unapologetic now as ever. Maybe even more so. “You’re just taking advantage.”
“Of course I am! The entertainment is top notch! And-”
“And the souls?” Lucifer delights in cutting him off. He gestures at the garden, at the shadows watching on the periphery of their conversation. “Why are you making deals with the dying?”
Alastor laughs. “Why does anyone do anything! Why are you poking around in the middle of the night! Why must these souls be left to disappear when there’s a bright alternative just waiting for them!”
Lucifer stares him down.
Alastor regards him coolly back. “Because I know them.” Know, not knew. The distinction feels important, but Lucifer can’t help but feel it isn’t the whole answer, isn’t really an answer at all.
He thins his lips. “And I suppose the power’s just a bonus, then?”
“Of course! Only a fool passes up pennies for pounds, after all.” He lowers his voice. “And you’d be surprised how many people fear losing themselves to oblivion.”
Lucifer grimaces. He- Yeah. That at least he can understand. “How many?”
Alastor cocks his head. “How many what?”
“Souls, you bastard. How many people here have you shackled for eternity?”
Alastor’s smile sharpens. “Oh, I haven’t quite finished counting yet.” He turns on his heel.
Lucifer sneers at the back of his head. “That’s not an answer,” he says, and doesn’t bother rearranging his expression to be more pleasant by the time he’s caught up and fallen into step. He swears Alastor is walking a shade faster than before, but he’s not going to let this go. Not yet.
Alastor side eyes him. “Must you tag along? I don’t see that it’ll be particularly insightful.”
“You’d be surprised,” Lucifer drawls. He taps his cane as he walks and belatedly realises Alastor’s adjusted his music to match their footsteps. Huh. He brings his cane down a little early on the next step and smirks when Alastor’s eye twitches. “So why-”
“One moment.” Alastor holds up a finger and side-eyes the bony roots of a particularly toothy sapling. He diverts towards it, like Lucifer is of no importance whatsoever, and Lucifer bristles as he follows. Like a magnet, or a star pulled inexorably into orbit. “Ah, there you are!” Alastor says to thin air, but Lucifer knows what to look for now, and Alastor’s tracking something with his eyes, reacting in all the tiny ways anyone would when having a conversation with someone tangible. It’s disconcerting, knowing something – someone – is there and being unable to see them. Lucifer sifts through several wavelengths of light, frowning, and still can’t see it. Them.
“I’m glad you’re still holding on. Have you reconsidered?” Reconsidered, like he’s done this before. Maybe he has, every night when the hotel is asleep. Maybe he slips out of his eerie little radio tower and night after night, convinces the dead not to die.
Lucifer opens his mouth to interject, but- Alastor is right, as much as he hates to admit it. He gave them free will, and he’d- Well, he’d be a hypocrite to take that away. But the question of ‘eternal servitude versus oblivion’ feels uncomfortably like ‘accept our decisions or fall’, even if death had never truly been on the table for him, and- He bites his tongue with a grimace. If they voluntarily choose servitude over oblivion, who is Lucifer to tell them no? Even the dead don’t want to die.
This shadow, it turns out, certainly doesn’t. The faint green light flares and fades, and it’s only because Lucifer is trying to watch the shadow through Alastor’s reactions that he catches the man exhale, silent and short, like a minor weight has been lifted. There’s no other indication of anything amiss, and if it weren’t for all the other things he’s noticed, he might have easily convinced himself he’d imagined it.
But Alastor had never really answered the question, had he?
Lucifer steps pointedly into Alastor’s path the moment he starts walking, and when the man sidesteps as smoothly as if he’d expected something like this, faint irritation on his face, Lucifer jabs his cane into the empty space and stops him short. There’s wide garden beds to either side. Alastor’s going to have to step into the mud if he wants to get away without looking like he’s running.
Alastor looks narrowly down at him. Lucifer meets his gaze evenly. Once he’s sure Alastor isn’t going to disappear, he plants his cane sharply on the ground.
“Alright, what’s going on?”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
Lucifer regards him. This isn’t just a power grab. Alastor admitted it himself – these souls are pennies, they’re weak, and they don’t offer much at all. There’s something else, and Lucifer doesn’t for one moment believe he’s doing it out of some genuine shred of compassion. That silent exhale? That feels real, or at least realer than anything Alastor’s offered so far.
“So you’re telling me this doesn’t have anything to do with you disappearing for a week?”
He’s not expecting a reaction, but- There, the smallest twitch of an eye before Alastor rolls them like he’s never heard anything more preposterous. “Ha! Of course not. Although I must admit this sounds remarkably like concern.” He narrows his eyes. “Particularly unwarranted concern,” he says lowly.
Lucifer manages to keep the sneer off his face, but it’s still a ways off being anything close to friendly. He’s never been very good at letting things go. “Oh I think there’s warrant. Personally, I couldn’t care less if you disappeared forever, but Charlie seems to think you hung the stars and if there’s something wrong and it ruins this hotel for her-”
“There’s not,” Alastor interrupts darkly, but the shadows swarm too closely to believe him, and he hasn’t answered the question.
Lucifer thins his lips. “What happened?” he asks, and- It comes out too gently. He grimaces. It’s not- He doesn’t care, but Charlie had told him Alastor had been fighting Adam at the time, and it hadn’t been hard to weigh conclusions based on that – that Alastor had run, that when it came down to the wire he’d decided the hotel wasn’t worth his life. They hadn’t found a body in the days following – not that it meant much when the cannibals had been picking everything clean, but they hadn’t even found bones – and Husk had informed them all from the bottom of a bottle that he was still very much under contract.
But Lucifer hadn’t even considered that Alastor mightn’t have run, right away. That he might have been hurt instead. And Lucifer can pretend all he likes that Heaven can’t hurt him anymore – and physically it’s true – but that’s not the case for everyone else.
Alastor’s freezes momentarily, like he’s not sure what to do with- With whatever that was. He narrows his eyes, whole expression turning sharp like he’s calculating the most painful way to carve the heart out of this conversation. He folds his hands behind his back, and that’s another thing, isn’t it? The microphone, missing from the whole, dramatic picture.
“Oh, nothing of import I assure you.” He waves a dismissive hand, and between one moment and the next he’s jovial, smiling like Lucifer’s missed a joke. “Am I to understand Charlie didn’t inform you of the plan?”
Lucifer scoffs. Of course she had. She’d given him the broad overview a few days before the extermination, before she’d known whether the cannibals would help, or whether angelic weapons could be secured, or- Or any number of things. It had felt a lot like watching her hold onto a lightning rod in the middle of a thunderstorm, with no idea when or how hard the lightning would strike and no way to stop it striking at all. Heaven reaching down to finish a ten thousand year-old job, to snuff out Hell forever, all because he- He shakes his head sharply. Even if he hadn’t handled it well, Alastor disappearing? Very much not part of the plan.
“The plan,” he says, a little more forcefully than intended. He’s overcompensating, he knows, for the influx of too-recent memories. He feels his throat close up just thinking about it, about how close he came to- “Was for you to stall Adam. Charlie was never supposed to-”
“Is that what you think?” Alastor leans forward, just enough to emphasise a point. “Or was she just saying that so you wouldn’t interfere?”
“She wouldn’t-”
“Wouldn’t what?” Alastor ticks his fingers down. “Lie to you? Sneak around? Do something without your knowledge? Tell me, do you remember the day she first asked you to stop by the hotel?”
Lucifer did. Of course he did. The memory was as vivid and bright as any star, knowing that she wanted him around even a little, that she wanted to know him at all- Sometimes he still couldn’t believe it. He felt a creeping sense of unease. “Yeah, what about it?”
“Did you know she didn’t ask for your help until there were no other options? She spent all night trying to figure out another way just to avoid involving you.” Alastor cocked his head. “I do wonder if this is why.”
It’s a little like being stabbed, the spike of adrenaline that drops shrapnel in his stomach and fizzes in his veins, that sends his heart racing faster than it had been on the balcony even though it feels the same, has the same root. His throat feels dry, and the air is too thin, and he has to fight to keep his feet planted on the ground and his wings folded. Because-
Because that’s it, isn’t it? The thing keeping him awake. Charlie not needing him, not wanting him around. After the hotel opens, that’s it. He goes back to his estate, and Charlie takes her dreams to the skies. He clamps his hands atop his cane to stop them shaking and dredges a smile up from somewhere.
“I don’t see how that has anything to do with why you’re here now,” he says, and his voice is steady enough, he thinks, but he doesn’t have enough air in his lungs and Alastor notices anyway.
“We’re more than capable without you, you know! Charlie and I ran this hotel marvellously before.”
Lucifer opens his mouth to retort, but- He’s right, isn’t he? Alastor’s been here longer than Lucifer’s even known about the hotel. Maybe it’s what Charlie wants, to return to a style of management with people who aren’t constantly at each others throats. Even though he’s not really managing anything right now, anyway. He’s helping. As much as he can, but it can’t make up for the months of not knowing, the decades of absence, and-
Lucifer swallows. Wheezes. He feels incandescent energy simmering under his skin, waiting for direction, and- And who the hell does Alastor think he is to put himself between Lucifer and his own daughter? He knows damn well Charlie wouldn’t have put him up to this – she might not need him around soon, but she’d never hide behind someone else – and Alastor’s been doing this song and dance from the first godawful moment they met.
He grits his teeth and doesn’t bother holding back the tide of anger. He’s done taking shit from this smiling freak. Every time he walks into a room there’s another joke at his expense, another barb, another slight. A good day is when he doesn’t see Alastor at all, and he can damn well make that happen.
His wings snap out, unbidden and large. He feels fire in his throat, the telltale weight of horns snaking back upon his head. Distantly, he’s grateful he chose not to wear his hat. Much more immediately, he wants to throw Alastor through a wall or into the shitty green arch. His fingers twitch. For an electrifying second, he genuinely considers doing it.
Alastor’s eyes flit across his face. His expression changes, turns from smug to- To the barest hint of doubt, there and gone in an instant. He shifts his feet, puts one slightly in front of the other and subtly drops his centre of gravity like he’s preparing to run, or- Or to take a hit. It brings Lucifer up short. Shadows coalesce around Alastor’s feet like oil, and he-
Charlie had been beside herself in the week Alastor had been gone. She didn’t sleep the whole first night, and then she’d- She’d set an extra place at the makeshift table in the bones of the new kitchen, and kept setting it, and kept an eye out for any signs of shadows, and thrown herself into rebuilding the radio tower, and- And she’d smiled with such relief, when he’d returned.
Lucifer can’t pretend to even remotely understand, but he won’t throw away this one, bright point in his life. Especially not for someone like Alastor. He lets the energy go with a sigh, and the garden darkens until the only lights remaining are the lanterns. He folds his wings back and smooths out his hair with half a thought. He feels played. Baited and out of step.
Alastor rocks back on his heels, entirely too smug. The shadows disperse, no longer swarming but rarely straying too far. It’s almost protective. Lucifer is entirely unsure whether it’s Alastor controlling them or whether they’re doing it themselves out of some misguided loyalty.
“Are you quite done?”
But perhaps it’s not loyalty. Perhaps they’re doing it because if he dies so do they. He wonders again how many there are, whether he truly wants to know.
He steadies himself on his cane. “For now.”
Alastor smiles a saccharine smile. “Then let me give you a word of advice.” He conjures a trowel just to knock the tip of it against Lucifer’s chest, leaving the barest smudge of dirt. Lucifer scowls. “Don’t try to be someone you’re not. As amusing as it is to watch you flail so pathetically out of your depth, you’re a liability to the success of this hotel. Your best recourse is to leave.”
Lucifer scoffs. “Coming from someone who couldn’t stick around to help us rebuild, that doesn’t mean much.”
“If you care about Charlie at all-”
“Like you’d know anything about caring.”
Alastor narrows his eyes. “Don’t be so quick to assume you know anything about me,” he says lowly.
“I know exactly as much as I need to,” Lucifer hisses. “You-” He stops. There’s something whirring softly at the fringes of his hearing. He turns his head a half-second before Alastor and spies something drifting through the air like a drunk kite, beady camera glinting underneath a canopy of propellers. A drone. He blinks. The rotors are identical to the three on his workbench, waiting for a fourth. The chassis is too, he notes with pleasant surprise, which means it’ll likely have the right capacitors, and-
Alastor narrows his glowing eyes, and between one second and the next the drone sparks and crunches like a beetle in a metal press. It cracks against the ground, shards of plastic catching the light as they splinter across the cobbled path, trailing shadows. A single, unbent propeller wobbles and spins before upending itself in the dust.
Lucifer stares at it. He feels a little like his own hope has been crushed to pieces instead, but maybe there’s something left to salvage. He reaches through a portal and scoops its mangled form from the ground like an injured bird. It fits neatly in the palm of his hand, and he can tell at a glance it’s been utterly fried. The exposed wiring is faintly smoking, the chassis warm to the point of burning.
He grimaces. So much for that project, for now. “You fucked it.”
Alastor blinks. “I what now?”
“Look at it! Do you even know how to react to something without resorting to violence?”
Alastor sneers. “Would you have preferred I let them film? Of course, it wouldn’t have been a problem for me – they can’t get a clear photo no matter how desperately they try – but for you, especially dressed as you are-”
“What’s wrong with how I’m dressed?! You’re the one wearing a full suit at two in the morning!”
“Two forty-five.” Alastor eyes the bottom of the hill like more drones could be incoming at any moment. “Time has certainly crawled by since you interrupted!”
Lucifer presses his lips into a line and bites his tongue. The drone cools slowly in his hands, its spying little camera shattered and fried almost beyond recognition. He finds himself begrudgingly grateful that in the split-second he’d been distracted, Alastor had destroyed it. He’d rather have a hundred unsalvageable wrecks than see the news report derisive speculation as truth – on him and the hotel both. He’d rather have a thousand, even if it means that particular project has to languish for the foreseeable future. He wonders what Charlie would do in this situation.
Maybe it had been self-interest, or maybe not, but either way-
“Thank you.”
The music skitters and resumes. Alastor looks at him like he’s gone mad. Maybe he has. “Whatever for?”
Lucifer just gestures with the drone. “No news drones are good news drones,” he says as cheerfully as he can manage.
Alastor’s smile tightens. He looks down the hill. “Loathe as I am to admit, on that we can agree.” He claps his hands together, entirely too cheerful once more. “Well! This has been an enlightening diversion, but I’m afraid I must be off. These poor souls can’t save themselves, after all!”
Is that what he think he’s doing? Saving them, in some twisted, underhanded way? “Do they consider themselves saved?”
Alastor laughs and turns to leave. “I’d have to ask! Cheerio!” He looks over his shoulder. The dimming lanterns only make his eyes look brighter, more sinister. “And don’t forget, the grand opening is three days from now! Best get all your. . . ducks in a row.” He gives a smug little wave, and vanishes into shadows.
Lucifer stays in the garden a while longer, watching the shadows clear out. Now, without the jazz playing like a whisper in the air, it just feels silent. Empty. He takes a breath, and- He’s calm, he realises. He can’t pinpoint when it happened, but his heart is steady, and all his nervous adrenaline has burned out. Perhaps not enough to sleep, but it almost doesn’t matter, this close to morning. He’s tired enough to try.
A strange feeling settles in his stomach, and he thinks that maybe, possibly, he can almost glimpse whatever it was that Charlie saw in him. Like a far-flung dream, or a mirage, liable to vanish in an instant, only present when one is out of their mind.
He closes his eyes for a long moment, before letting the glittering fire take him back to his room. The wind blows the curtains inward, framing the still-brewing storm, and as he grasps the balcony door he glimpses Alastor winding through the garden far below, talking with the dying like old friends and shaking hands with empty air, the faintest green light flaring and dying in his palm.
Lucifer lets out a breath, shuts the door, and finally goes to sleep.