Work Text:
“Where the fuck. . .?”
Lucifer tossed one of the ornate throw pillows aside, not bothering to look at it as it spun across the sofa and onto the floor like a plush, feathery shuriken. He lifted the cushion, ignoring the wrappers and lone condom he found underneath it. He looked for a long time at the black fabric obscuring the frame below, concentrating as if it held some kind of secret - or if he looked long enough something would appear - before he let the cushion drop into a crooked, half-raised slant. He didn't think to fix it as he turned away, scanning the large but mostly neat room.
It wasn't there. His jacket was just gone.
He had looked under and around and even on top of literally everything - even conjuring a step ladder to see on top of the tall bookcase along the wall. And why would it have been up there, anyway? He hadn't been playing ring toss with it. He'd just set it down somewhere, absent-minded, and now. . .well, now it was nowhere. He wasn't the best at looking for things. Too many items in one place and his brain couldn't seem to see all of them individually. More than once he'd called Lilith for help finding something only for the object he'd been looking for to be sitting right in front of his face. But those were small things, usually. His jacket wasn't so easy to misplace and, besides, the room wasn't cluttered - he was sure he'd looked everywhere.
His arms fell to his sides, his hands raising in placating frustration.
Had he left it in another room? He was sure he'd had it on when he and Charlie had watched that movie about that girl with the long hair or something - Raphael or whatever her name was. He could almost remember taking it off, setting it down, getting comfortable but. . .where?
He sighed aloud, irritated.
Lucifer could get engrossed in a pet project for days but he didn't have a lot of patience for chores and this felt very much like a chore. He didn't understand why it wasn't where he was so sure he'd left it. It made no sense and he began to grow annoyed with himself for taking it off in the first place as he finally stormed off, leaving the room disheveled and ransacked.
He would find it later. His frustration tasted metallic and itchy in his mouth and he wanted his distance from the whole thing. Maybe to forget he'd ever worn a jacket at all so the weird sensation of air on his skin and the feeling of being overexposed would leave him alone.
The hotel was settled now, except for a few sinners talking quietly in the lounge, and Lucifer made his way up the stairs in silence as his frustration began to transform into something more melancholic. He felt the familiar weight begin to push his shoulders down as his steps became heavier and a gray fog began to float over his thoughts. He was tired, suddenly, and not the kind that sleep could fix.
Still - he would give it a try anyway as he headed for his room.
The door opened into a yawning darkness and Lucifer didn't bother to turn on the light as he stepped into the room and closed it neatly behind him, drowning everything in shadow. He felt heavy unbuttoning his vest, like each button was a monumental effort, and when he finally freed himself he let it drop to the floor before starting on his shoes. As he bent at the waist the subtle rustle of fabric stopped him short, a little jolt of confusion and alarm making his fingers twitch. He froze for a moment, considering, before glancing up at the mess of blankets on his bed with a frown. Though he didn't have terrible night vision, he still squinted in the dark as he made out the bright, pristine white of something laid out atop his rich red blankets like fresh snow.
The recognition of his own long lost jacket didn't fill him with the relief it should have.
He blinked, straightening as the jacket shifted just slightly, the metal of the buttons clinking together gently in the dark. He thought at first of an animal - some hellborn creature getting into the hotel and burrowing into the snow white of his clothes - but he knew immediately that wasn't true, even as his mind galloped away with thoughts and ideas of what it might be and how it might look. He was still imagining some furry, scaly thing when his eyes adjusted properly to the dark and he saw the red fur and black tips of two ears poking out from underneath the contrasting white. They were half obscured by the jacket but Lucifer could see the tension in them, was able to tell how they were pinned back just slightly, and he took a small step forward.
Not an animal - not at all.
"Alastor?"
The ears flattened further, almost obscuring themselves completely under the collar.
Lucifer felt a weird pull in his gut as he made his way to the bed slowly, his hand reaching out to rest gently on the lump he could now see under the white fabric. His palm flooded with the familiar, unnatural heat as he felt Alastor tense under his touch, offering no other response. Lucifer could feel him breathing, letting his hand ride the gentle rise and fall of his body, and he let it linger for a moment longer before he gently pulled the jacket away.
He was met with familiar red eyes on his own immediately and Lucifer could feel the furrow of his brow as his gaze flicked over them. Alastor's signature smile was tucked underneath the blanket, hidden from sight and leaving only the rest of his face, and without it Lucifer could read the misery in that look even better than he could have otherwise. It was highlighted, potent, and he felt his chest squeeze painfully with anxious dread.
This wasn't normal.
"Hey," he murmured quietly, his hand rising to hover just above Alastor's warm shoulder. "Is- are you. . .okay?"
There was no answer from Alastor - not even a whine of static - but those eyes watched him with a stormy overcast that made Lucifer's heart sink.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, eyes scanning him as if he could see underneath the layers between them, see the bandages below the blankets and jackets. Would he be able to see blood on Alastor, as red as he adorned himself? His other hand half-raised itself from his side and Alastor's eyes flicked to it, an odd narrowing of his gaze shifting the stormy look he saw there into a new kind.
Lucifer withdrew his hand, letting it fall to his side, letting it be non-threatening. Alastor was strange when it came to touch and Lucifer was very careful to respect the boundary. Even when he felt himself buzzing with energy, his brain flying through ideas so fast he didn't have time to think or consider, he always kept that in mind. Except in the beginning, when they were so very new, he had never slipped up.
But there was suddenly pain on Alastor's face as he watched Lucifer retreat. He could see so much of it when Alastor's eyes rose to meet his, imploring and dark with hurt, and it took Lucifer's breath away, his gut sinking, his heart squeezing itself to a stop.
"Touch me." Alastor's voice cracked on the words and Lucifer felt it like a snap in his bones. "Please."
His hands were on him in a heartbeat, feeling that intense heat under his palm as he let it fall the sparse inches to Alastor's shoulder. His other raised itself from his side, jerking slightly as it hesitated for just a moment, before he tentatively let it rest in Alastor's hair.
It was soft and feathery as his fingers disappeared into a shifting sea of red strands and Alastor's eyes slipped closed, his face disappearing underneath the blankets as he ducked his head. He felt the dry texture of Alastor's antlers as he pushed roughly into Lucifer's hand, shoving Lucifer harder against his skull. Lucifer let himself be led - let himself follow the desperate need to comfort Alastor - and felt his fingers tangle in Alastor's hair, his thumb brushing gently against the sinner's temple.
"Please," Lucifer whispered, his own voice breaking. "Please tell me what happened."
The thin whine of feedback made Lucifer wince, his face screwing itself up in his own anguish.
"I can't -" he pleaded softly. "I don't know what that means."
But it was his only answer and Lucifer scanned the room desperately, like it would hold some other sign for him, some other response.
Like it would somehow tell him what to do.
He looked back at Alastor, his face hidden, his shoulders raised and tense, his ears so flat they were almost invisible.
"Can I -" he asked suddenly, pulling his hands away to lean over Alastor. He placed one on Alastor's other side, hovering above, trying and failing not to put his weight down, even as he leaned up on the balls of his feet.
Alastor tensed underneath him and though they were quiet, Lucifer could hear a few clicks of radio static in the silence. But he didn't retreat this time. After a moment - a long, agonizing moment - he nodded and Lucifer climbed over him, trying his best not to step on him or crush him as he made his way onto the other side of the bed.
The idea of going around never occurred to him.
He landed heavily on his own side and struggled to shimmy around to face Alastor, twisting around with the covers a rumpled mess beneath him. He dug at them until he was underneath, burrowing like the creature he had imagined before, and when he finally settled he could feel the soft vibrations of Alastor breathing beside him, long and deep.
He stared at Alastor's back, watching the rise and fall, and he hesitated once again.
In him was a want so powerful it made his whole body ache - a painful, all consuming and crushing feeling. He wanted to reach out - to touch, to make it better in the only way he knew how, if he could be good enough to do so. His words weren't always right, he knew that, but if he could touch then maybe he could be more clear.
But the more withdrawn Alastor was, the less sure Lucifer felt. He never wanted to get it wrong. Alastor's words didn't match his face, didn't make sense in the context.
He was so confused.
"Alastor," he whispered, raising one hand between them despite himself. "I'm not-"
Without warning Alastor rolled, Lucifer's jacket falling in a heap between them, and closed the distance. Lucifer felt the solid weight press against him, Alastor's thin body settling between Lucifer's open arms like it had been sculpted to fit in the space between them. He pressed against the devil, ducking his head against Lucifer's chest, and his hair tickled Lucifer's cheeks as he buried his face into it on reflex, his arms wrapping around Alastor to hold him closer.
They breathed together, feeling the rise and fall of their rib cages as they slowly, gently, synced into a quiet rhythm. Their heartbeats were fast, loud in their ears, and then - just as their breaths had done - they slowed to match one another's steady pace.
In the dark, Lucifer opened his eyes to a forest of red.
He let the silence stretch in the blackness like long, licorice taffy - before he couldn't stand to hear the noise.
"Alastor," he whispered, and he felt the way Alastor tensed against him. "What happened?"
He needed to know. More than anything else, he had to know what was wrong or else how could he fix it? How could he choke this desperate need to try?
But again there was only a quiet, thin crackle of static.
And though there were no words and though the confusion still danced under Lucifer's skin like a coven, he thought he might have known. The dread he had felt since the moment he had seen Alastor under his jacket bore a ten ton weight on his chest - and he had hoped it was something else. He had wanted it to be something else but - he had known. In the sinking feeling in his guts he had known the reason because his muscles still twitched from that day, his body healed but the memory of his own blood soaking his clothes and the feeling of barbed wires leeching into his bones was visceral and alive.
And he hadn't been tied to a chair for days.
Lucifer hadn't realized - of course not. He would have done. . .something if he had. Anything. Whether he could have laid his hands on Vox or not, it didn't matter. Lucifer would have found a way, if only he had known - there had to have been some kind of way if he had just known. But he hadn't and he felt the jaws of guilt armed with iron teeth closing his throat. He swallowed reflexively around the lump - feeling himself choke - and the teeth only squeezed harder.
"I'm sorry," he croaked, his mouth going dry. "I'm sorry I wasn't there."
He felt Alastor go rigid in his arms, felt the way their breaths - which had worked so hard to become one - began to fall out of rhythm. His heart accelerated and left them both behind, beating behind his chest as those iron jaws of guilt began to chew.
"I didn't know," he pleaded. "I didn't know or I would have been there." There was a prickle of tears behind his eyes and he blinked harshly, fighting them away. This was about Alastor, not him. He didn't get to cry when Alastor wouldn't do it himself. "I would have saved you. I would have stopped it. I would have-"
"Stop."
And on a reflex Lucifer did, his brain always listening for that word, always careful to be sure he heard it when it was said. It was muffled against his chest, buried in the condensed air between them, but he had heard it all the same and it sounded wretched and foul. He was so sorry - and Alastor had to understand.
"But you have to know that I -"
"Stop." This time the word was louder - more harsh - and Lucifer's teeth made a quiet clicking sound as they closed together in his mouth, his vision growing just a bit blurry. "Just. . .be here."
Be here.
He hadn't been there and that was the problem - that was the root of the misery he had seen in Alastor, the wounds he knew wrapped around and through him. The bandages he had dressed Alastor in, the damage he couldn't see - the things Alastor wouldn't tell him. There was something in the way Alastor would stare sometimes, the way his eyes would drift somewhere else and Lucifer. . .was scared. Scared of what Alastor saw when he did that, scared of what he remembered - scared of what Lucifer had allowed to happen.
How could he have been so lost in his own dull, gray world. How could he have hidden away in his own depression? Why hadn't he had the energy to look for him? Why had he ever sent him away that day so long ago now, set the precedent that Lucifer would weather those heavy, suffocating days alone?
How was he supposed to live with it now?
And he swallowed again around a hundred terrible, poorly spoken words. Words that wouldn't come out right no matter how he practiced them in his head. Words that would fumble and fall painfully short of what they should have been, fall into a chasm of mediocrity and he couldn't make them work. He could never say it right - he had never been right. He wanted to apologize again, to throw himself into the fire but he was never really able to burn. Not enough.
The words didn't work.
But he had been asked not to say them.
And maybe that was the answer.
". . .Okay," Lucifer relented, his arms flexing to hold Alastor a little tighter.
And when the silence settled in this time, its weight was not a comfort. He felt it pressing, like pressure squeezing his head and his lungs. This was familiar, the painful need to fill the void around him - to make the suffocating quiet go away with the vibrations of noise. Any noise would do but when Lucifer couldn't find any - when there was none - he would make his own. He swallowed thickly, his eyes darting past the stray strands of Alastor's hair to look at the bed posts, the furniture, the walls.
He felt like he was drowning, so he took an awkward breath.
"I changed a light bulb last week.”
One ruddy ear flicked into his vision, obscuring it for a moment as he felt Alastor shift, almost like he was trying to tilt his head.
"Charlie asked me to switch it out with a - with one that wasn't, well." He paused, one arm unfurling from around Alastor as he made a circling, twirly gesture. "She used the word 'egotistical' but I don't think that's what she meant."
He let his hand drop.
"It was just an apple with wings. That's like - I mean it's not normal, maybe but-" he shrugged, jostling Alastor who was a dead weight under his arm. "I wouldn't call it egotistical."
It would have been egotistical if he had given it a crown. Or maybe if it had been a six-winged duck or even a snake with- with also six wings and a crown around an apple. He could have understood that.
"So now it's boring like the rest of them," he murmured, picturing Charlie's relieved and pleased face in his mind.
He ignored the sour twist before the scene changed and her face became something else.
"And she - uh," he began, feeling his lips pull into a small smile, painful at the edges. "She said that we seem to get along better now. Us - you and me."
She had been warm when she'd said it, her expression so pleased of such a momentous accomplishment from him. "She was so proud that I was putting in effort." He huffed a laugh into Alastor's hair.
He could feel his face do something weird then, his smile faltering as his stomach dropped suddenly as if he were in free fall.
Nothing had ever been so effortless in a long, long time.
"I didn't tell her she was right I just, ya know." One of Lucifer's hands traveled down Alastor's back absently, palm flat to feel more of his unnatural heat.
Behind his eyes, he watched Alastor's mean smile, teeth bared, melt into something else - something. . .not kind. He would never really accuse Alastor of being kind but there was a softness in it now, his own brand of kindness. And when Lucifer noticed it he hadn't really been sure at first. The smile was eternally fixed and it confused him like faces sometimes did - but eventually he could see the difference, see the nuance that lived in it.
Alastor didn't smile at the others like that.
He was - pretty sure.
Lucifer's lips pressed into a thin line as his thumb began to rub an absent circle into Alastor's shoulder. At Alastor's hip where his other hand rested, his fingers drummed distractedly, tapping a nonsensical rhythm into Alastor's prominent bones. His brain started to buzz then, thoughts too quick to catch, memories pointed and painted with the pale light of hindsight.
"Are we-"
"Yes."
The answer was quick, automatic, and Lucifer's fingers began to slow, the rhythm dying a quiet, tuneless death.
Lucifer swallowed thickly, his eyes closing as he released a breath he hadn't been aware of holding.
He could never be certain. Sometimes - sometimes he was. Sometimes he knew what was real and what was in his head but other times. . .
Other times he wondered if he was alone again. Looking like a fool, feeling like an idiot for not knowing better. Unaware and oblivious.
Sometimes - he just had to be sure.
On the inhale, as he let his breath return to his lungs, he shifted and as he did he felt a lump between the two of them, a pressure against his hip. Slowly his eyes opened, his eyes narrowed with confusion, before he heard the soft tinkling of metal against metal and remembered the jacket that still lay between them.
And suddenly the weight of Alastor against him was light and airy compared to the one that slammed into his chest, leaden guilt that made him feel like he wanted to curl into himself and let it crush him. Let his carapace crack and the light he was supposed to bring spill out and maybe it would fix something - because Lucifer never seemed able.
He had been gone for days and Lucifer hadn't noticed. Not hours - not even overnight. He had been drowning in misery while Alastor was being given an overdose of his own. He'd seen the broadcasts when the others were away - pulled them up on the media sites. They hadn't been hard to find, even for him.
Lucifer felt his stomach roll.
In his memories he saw that faraway look in Alastor's eyes. He saw the ripped and torn flesh of his arm, the bruises around his ribs, the way he'd been wary when Lucifer had offered to bandage him. Like he wasn't sure what to trust anymore - like he wasn't sure if he was safe under Lucifer's touch.
Like he had ever been anything else. Like Lucifer would have hurt him or-
He had been told not to speak about it - he had been asked to stop.
But he couldn't help himself.
"I won't say I'm sorry again -" he croaked and Alastor tensed.
"You're doing it right now," he snapped quietly but Lucifer hardly heard him.
"- but I am so. . .grateful that you're here," Lucifer whispered, feeling wretched. "Thank Hell, thank - thank Heaven."
Emily had saved him. Someone had told him that although he couldn't remember who. And if Lucifer could have reached her he would have fallen on his knees and given her whatever she could have wanted from him.
His hands closed into fists in Alastor's thick jacket.
"Just - thank you."
And in his arms Alastor began to shake, a small tremble, and when Lucifer opened his eyes he could see the tiny tremors in Alastor's flattened ears, see the way the soft strands of his hair quaked ever gently.
The pain that squeezed him this time, so deep he thought it would crush something in the core of him, was matched by the way Alastor's grip on him tightened, his hands twisting in Lucifer's shirt.
He thought he might simply break.
With a rustle of sound, a wash of white fell like a blanket over them both, and Lucifer's wings wrapped around them - hiding them away, taking them somewhere else. Somewhere where Lucifer hadn't fucked up - somewhere that Alastor didn't need to hide from him.
"You're okay," Lucifer whispered into Alastor's hair. "I promise."
Empty. What had he done the first time? If he was capable of keeping promises, they wouldn't be there right now, he thought bitterly. The voice was a poison, sinking into his blood, swirling in his veins as it spread its bitter ideas and ugly truths.
But he couldn't afford to hear them now.
"I'll make it okay," he murmured, ducking his head to hide his face as he felt the prickle of claws begin to sink into his back as Alastor held him tighter and Lucifer let them, let them draw blood if it made anything better.
Lucifer would allow his own annihilation if it made anything, at all, better.
They lay like that, covered in feathers, a secret world all to themselves, for countless moments or hours or days. They breathed, shaking together, listening to the rhythms of their heartbeats and the noise in their heads.
Eventually - they slept.
And when time pulled them up and awake, they remained in the bed. And when the threat of suspicion pulled them from the covers, they stayed in the room until their absence would surely be missed.
In the hotel they lived their separate lives together, always nearby, always orbiting one another. And Lucifer, with that poison in his brain, planting twisting roots, began to look for ways to keep the promise he'd made before the poison ate him alive.