Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“You know, if you think about it–”

Lute shoots Adam a glare that tells him exactly what she thinks of the inner workings of his head right now.

Adam looks away with a grimace that will never be a grin no matter how hard he tries. “Maybe I should stop thinking for a while.”

“That implies that you were thinking in the first place,” Lute growls.

“I’m always thinking.” He tilts his head back to peer at the ceiling. “I’m just not always thinking smartly.”

“Oh yeah? Then tell me, genius, what were you thinking when you fucking handcuffed me to yourself?”

Adam tenses up.

Lute didn’t expect that to happen. Shame, bravado, or an attempt to weasel his way out of receiving his well-earned blame, absolutely. But this, the way that his head dips and he angles himself subtly away? This isn’t how he’s supposed to respond to a simple jab. She’s angry, yes, but he’s taken far worse from her with a laugh and a grin. For him to be acting this way now…

It wouldn’t be happening if there truly was no thought behind his actions.

Lute wants to be angry. She has every right in the goddamn world to be angry. After over a month of taking steps with no way to tell if they are right or wrong, this is firmly, definitively, and completely his fuckup. If they’re anything like they used to be, it’s her responsibility to call him out on it.

Staying angry would make this so much easier.

The world isn’t easy. It isn’t kind. There is no anger to be found when she asks, “Adam, what were you thinking?”

His shoulders slump with a heavy sigh. He looks at her for an instant, making that defiant eye contact that she has missed so dearly, before he’s looking away again. This time, when he tries to shift farther away, it is undeniably out of shame. The confines of their handcuffs prevent her from putting more than a few more inches in between them.

“You aren’t going to like it,” he grumbles.

“We’re handcuffed together and you lost the key,” Lute flatly says. “What the fuck could you say that I’ll like less than that?”

Adam, the biggest loud-mouthed bastard she has ever met, the breath of exuberance and energy and life that kept the heart of her being beating for so very long, doesn’t say a word.

His body speaks for him. His leathery wings tuck in against his sides. The effect is different without any feathers, but Lute recognizes the tight squeeze that she only ever saw when he was at his very worst. She is absolutely certain that his feathers would be puffed up to three times their size if he still had them. A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye draws her attention to his tail. It starts to curl around him, spaded tip twitching furiously, only for Adam to jerk it down sharply when it comes close to brushing against him.

There was a time when Lute would see this and know exactly what he is thinking. The fact that she cannot now makes her want to scream.

She can’t scream. She can’t yell at him, regardless of how much she wants to. He has put her through immeasurable grief over the past couple of months, yet she cannot muster any of the anger that he so surely deserves. She also doesn’t know what he needs. She doesn’t know how to make this mess any better, and if she were to try, she would almost certainly fail.

It seems like everything is something that she can’t do these days.

She tries anyway.

Adam flinches when her fingers brush against his arm. That flinch makes her throat tighten worse than any noose could hope to accomplish. The urge to speak is counteracted by the understanding that if she were to try right now, she would produce nothing of dignity. She settles for persistence instead, laying her hand flat against his arm. She has settled a few inches away from where the sleeve of his blotchy black shirt ends, right on top of the scales that she has tried so hard to avoid.

It’s odd. The texture is strange and alien. She supposes that if things were different, if she were different or he was, that she might be used to it by now. But regardless of how much she wishes she could step into that world, if only for a moment, things are the way they are and will not be changing without an active effort.

The feeling of scales beneath her hand, on Adam, is odd. They are unholy by nature. He is now unholy by nature, and the contact makes it impossible for her to forget that. But…

They aren’t cold.

Lute probably should have noticed that sooner. She and Adam had shared a bed only the night before and he had been perfectly warm. Yet it is only now that she realizes that insignificant yet striking detail. Snakes, serpents, and reptiles of all sorts are cold to the touch.

Adam is not.

“Tell me,” she says. “Whatever you’re scared of, I promise that things will be far more uncomfortable if you refuse.”

Adam lets out a breathy huff. “That’s reassuring.”

“You’ll get reassurance when you aren’t acting like a giant fucking baby,” she says, running her hand up and down his arm ever so slightly. “Now tell me.”

Adam clenches his jaw. She can see him struggling to find the right words in his head before he finally grinds out, “I was trying to get you to interact with everyone else. Fucking… I don’t know… talk to them and see them as people and shit.”

Lute drops her hand. She doesn’t mean to. She doesn’t notice that she’s done it until it’s already too late. Those being the key words: “too late.” She pulls her hand in closer to herself and takes in a breath deep enough to hold back the thing threatening to ride up her throat. “Thing,” another key word. She doesn’t know if it’s disgust, confusion, betrayal, anger, or simply a continuation of earlier hurts. All she knows is that it is something she can’t let out, and that is enough for her.

“Why?” she asks as steadily as she can. Which, in her opinion, is pretty damn admirably steadily.

“Why.” Adam scoffs and rolls his eyes. “I dunno, maybe because staying locked up in your room all day isn’t good for anyone, nevermind the biggest go-getter bitch I know? Or maybe because you fucking live here now and won’t be getting any better options? Or, I dunno…” He trails off, the bit of bite that he had conjured up dying as quickly as it came. His tail tries to twist up onto the bed. This time, he lets it curl around him rather than forcing it back down. “I wanted you to give them a chance instead of just hating everyone.”

There are so, so many things that Lute is tempted to say in response to that, and she knows, with an unwavering certainty, that every last one of them would make this worse. All save for one thing, which is the only thing that she really needs to say anyway.

“That still doesn’t answer my question. Why didn’t you talk to me about it?”

“Because I didn’t want to remind you that I’m a fucking sinner!” Adam snaps. He snaps, but he does not sound angry either. His tone, coupled with the way that he rakes a frustrated hand through his hair and remains turned away from her, is far, far worse.

He sounds hurt.

That’s…

It’s beyond unacceptable. It’s Lute’s nightmares dragged out into the waking world, void of the physical damage of that night and every night that followed it, but cutting through her like a knife all the same. That same knife cuts through him as well, except she is suddenly, acutely aware that it is her hand on the handle.

She wants to mend his wounds, but how can she hope to do so when she is the one inflicting them?

How can she take the first steps in that direction when she doesn’t even know how to stop fucking cutting?

The obvious answer is to figure out how to move it all. Shift closer to Adam. Lift a hand. Reach out. It’s obvious. Being obvious should also make it easy. It doesn’t, because nothing is ever fucking easy these days, and by the time she finally gets the mangled mess that is her body to cooperate, the door to Adam’s room is slamming open.

“Adam,” Lucifer hisses, the strained, exasperated, awe-stuck sound of someone who thought he had seen it all and then managed to uncover some new bullshit. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t let Lute go and handcuff you to an elevator to the bottom of hell instead.”

Adam looks Lucifer directly in the eyes and sneers, “You’d miss me.”

“It’s an elevator. You’d be back.”

“Which proves my fucking point. You’re too much of a pussy bitch to get rid of me for good.”

Lucifer Morningstar, the man who beat him into a literal crater and had to be physically stopped from killing him, narrows his eyes.

Adam stares at him with the unwavering confidence of a man who thought it was a good idea to get up from said beating and go on a rant about his balls in the middle of a battlefield filled with people who hate him.

Lucifer turns his attention to Lute and asks, “Do you want him to do some community service? Say the word, I’ll put in a good word with Charlie and have him cleaning up trash in the doomsday district for the next five days.”

Adam lets out a hiss of strangled fury. It earns him a smug look from Lucifer, which is abruptly cut off when he points at him and shouts, “I’m going to take one of your fucking ducks, and I’m not going to tell you which one, and I’m going to hide it in the skankiest, most cum-stained nightclub I can find!”

Lucifer points back at him and shouts, “I’ll turn your guitar into a replacement duck!”

“Don’t you fucking…”

The arguing continues. It’s full of simple, straightforward words, easy to process and keep track of. They all wash over Lute like absolute gibberish. All she can focus on is the way that the threats and insults are slung. They’re overdramatic, angry, and… fond. Warm instead of burning, needling instead of stabbing. There’s a sense of comfort in Adam’s theatrics. She knows, because it is the same comfort that he expressed around her for so long, the one whose presence she has so sorely missed.

If it were only that, it would only hurt.

It’s not only that; if it were, Adam wouldn’t be angled so clearly away from her. His eyes wouldn’t be locked on Lucifer so unwaveringly. The smile playing at his lips would be far wider, as it always is when it is natural, and it would be shared with her.

Lute knows, with a sinking, dreadful certainty that isn’t too dissimilar from what she felt when she first woke up after, with shoulders so light and aching that she knew something had to be wrong but a head too drugged for her to know what, that she will not be able to ignore what happened here. She’s not sure that she can ignore anything anymore.

Adam is trying his best to ignore her though. By the looks of it, he is doing an excellent job.

“Can you please uncuff me?” Lute asks in a snarl that shatters the banter like an axe through a pane of glass.

Adam stills. Shifts. She’s sure that he isn’t looking at her, the ex who hurts him at every turn, so she doesn’t look at him, either.

Lucifer chuckles awkwardly. “Oh! Sure, sorry, I should’ve– I’ll just get rid of that now, huh?”

He snaps his fingers.

The handcuffs disappear.

Lute mutters a quiet, “Thanks,” and hurries out the door.

*

Lute doesn’t know what she did wrong.

Except she does.

Except she doesn’t.

She has ideas of what she might have done wrong, but she doesn’t know if any of them are true or she’s actually made a far worse error. In the event that any of them are correct, the fact remains that she doesn’t have any clue how to fix them. She would doubtlessly find a solution if given time, but…

What if she doesn’t have time?

She’s already been relegated to the status of ex. Although she doesn’t know precisely why, hence the impossibility of fixing it, she knows that she deserves it. Adam’s pain is damning regardless of the cause.

Lute became an ex without knowing how or when. How much further might she fall if she stands around and waits for things to correct themselves? She likes to think that Adam still considers her a friend, whatever else she may be. But how long would it take her to go from friend to acquaintance? How far is the drop from acquaintance to exorcist?

What does exorcist mean to Adam now that he’s… whatever he is now?

Lute needs to fix this, but she doesn’t know how. She could figure out how if given time, but she does not have time.

Which means that she needs help from someone who doesn’t need time.

She knocks on Vaggie’s door because that’s where her instincts send her.

When she opens the door and asks, “What’s wrong?” Lute finds herself staring at her like a fucking idiot, because she knows damn well that Vaggie isn’t going to be able to help her with this. She’ll try, but the level of empathy and understanding that she needs right now is beyond her.

Frankly, it would be easier if she didn’t know who she needed. But no, the universe could never be that kind. Lute knows exactly who she needs to talk to, which is how she knows exactly how much this is going to suck.

“Lute?” Vaggie asks, brow furrowing in concern that is going to get far, far worse. That or she’ll look at her like she’s been killed and replaced by a creature from a shitty sci-fi movie.

That would probably be preferable to what’s about to happen.

In a voice so strained that it sounds like she’s been gargling sandpaper, she says, “I need to speak to Charlie.”

“Ohmygosh!” The Princess of Hell’s exclamation sounds from behind Vaggie. It’s arguably a squeal, but the way it bursts out makes it sound like a supersonic frequently.

A moment later, Charlie is gently shoving Vaggie aside to beam at her. “How can I help you, Lute?”

Heaven has abandoned her. Lucifer would doubtlessly make things ten times worse. There is no one and nothing for Lute to pray to, so she will have to settle for cursing Adam for putting her in this position.

“I need your help.” Lute clenches her real hand as hard as she can. She clenches her prosthetic so tightly that her bones would break if it were flesh and blood. “With emotions and shit.”

Charlie’s face lights up like she just said that she wants to be her best friend. Fuck, with the way she works, maybe she did.

Lute only gets a split second to swallow in regret before the Princess grabs her by her forearm and tugs her into her bedroom. “Of course!” she exclaims. “That’s what I’m here for, to help the residents of the Hazbin Hotel! Even if you’re not… You know…”

A sinner?

Looking for redemption?

Someone who will ever be allowed back into Heaven under any circumstances?

There are several ways to end that sentence. The way that Charlie’s smile strains gives no indication as to which one she was about to say. Lute can practically see the gears in her head turning as she tries to find a way to end it that won’t offend her, as if she isn’t already aware of all the options.

Lute is not a kind person. She has never been a kind person, nor does she ever plan to be. However, if there is one person other than Vaggie who has earned her kindness, it is Charlie. For the sake of being kind, or as close to it as she can come, she says, “It’s okay if you can’t do anything.”

“No, no, don’t think that way!” Charlie keeps her hand on her arm as she guides her over to the bed. “I’ll try my best, and if my best isn’t good enough, I’ll try better until it is!”

Charlie has earned Lute’s kindness. Looking at her in a way that implies that she could pass for an escaped circus clown is not kind, no matter how true it may be. As such, she averts her gaze as she sits down with a muttered, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome! Now, before we go any further, is it okay if Vaggie stays in the room?”

Lute heistates. The way that Vaggie lingers at the edge of the room cannot be called awkward. It’s sort of impressive, given the circumstances. It demonstrates a significant amount of self-control. She dearly wants to focus on how impressive it is, for if she doesn’t, her thoughts will drift toward why it’s possible in the first place.

She tries. She fails.

Vaggie is able to stand there while Lute fidgets in place, shame written across every inch of her person, because she’s gotten used to seeing her in uncomfortable, vulnerable, and humiliating positions. How could she ignore something like that?

By throwing herself into a conversation that won’t leave her with room to think about anything else. She returns her attention to Charlie and says, “It’s fine. I doubt she can do anything to help, but no harm will be done by her staying here.”

“I don’t know, Vaggie’s really helpful about a lot of things!” Charlie chirps.

“Not with things like this,” Vaggie mutters.

“Weeee don’t know what this is!”

Lute frowns. The Princess still sounds chipper. Far too chipper, even for her.

They both know exactly why she’s here.

How long have they known? Did it only occur to them when Adam dragged her to the lesson with their wrists bound to one another? Have they known this was coming since he dragged her to their doorstep? How much writing on the wall has she missed whilst others read it clear as day?

It wouldn’t be hard to figure out the answer.

She refuses.

Lute wraps her arms around her middle — not quite hugging herself, but coming dangerously close — and looks down at her lap. “Adam said that he pulled that stupid stunt because he wanted me to see the sinners as people.”

She has to stop at that. It’s a struggle to keep herself from scowling, making any noises of derision, or giving any other outward indication of how ridiculous she finds the notion, but she manages it. With how frequently she’s been scraping the bottom of the achievement barrel lately, maybe she should consider that impressive on her own end.

Arguably impressive, but still not good enough. She has to force clenched teeth apart to continue, “When I asked him why the fuck he didn’t just tell me, he said that he didn’t want to remind me that he’s a sinner.” Lute isn’t hugging herself, but her fingers have begun to dig into her sides painfully. She forces herself to let go before looking up at Charlie and demanding, “What the fuck does that mean!?”

The Princess looks stunned. Lute wants to tell her that she’s shocked to hear the nonsense that left Adam’s mouth, but she is not a good enough liar to convince herself of such a thing. Her warm yet infernal gaze is fixed too firmly on Lute for her to be finding fault in anyone else.

“What do you think it means?” she hesitantly edges.

“I don’t know!” Lute feels a jolt of pain along her back where limbs that no longer exist ache to stretch out. It forces a flinch out of her, and although she pulls herself together quickly, it’s already too late by then. Vaggie has taken a step forward and Charlie is looking at her with the bleeding heart concern that she was told her kind is utterly incapable of.

“Are you okay?” Charlie asks. “If you’re in pain, we can stop and—”

“No!” Lute fists her hands into the bedsheets. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t you think we know you too well to believe that by now?” Vaggie asks.

Yes. She doesn’t know how it came to this, can’t hope to pinpoint when real vulnerability began to sneak in with forced weakness or how it got past her attention, but she knows damn well that they can tell when she’s lying. It’s not unlike being skinned alive, a razor’s edge of understanding that slips beneath her skin and peels back what few defenses she has left.

But.

If they can tell when she’s lying, maybe they’ll listen to what she’s saying.

“It doesn’t hurt too much,” she says. “Having this conversation is more important to me.”

Charlie shifts from foot to foot, considering, but still visibly uncertain.

“Define ‘too much’,” Vaggie commands.

Her shoulders are stiff. The ache in the muscles of her upper back makes her feel as if they may contract and begin twitching. There is a pain that extends beyond them, belonging to wings that no longer exist. She knows that there is a chance that the pain in her shoulderblades will lessen if she rolls her shoulders, but there is an equal possibility that it will make them hurt more. The phantom wings, on the other hand, will only leave with time.

It’s painful in a way that is distinctly above average, but she had felt far, far worse.

“Six out of ten,” she grits out.

“Six out of… Lute, that’s bad,” Charlie says.

Vaggie takes a step back. It’s likely that Lute wasn’t supposed to notice the way that the tension drains from her shoulders, so she pretends that she didn’t.

“That means she’s being honest,” Vaggie says. “If she says she can keep going through a six, but then I believe her.” Her eye meets one of Lute’s and narrows sharply. “But if it gets any worse, you will tell us and we will take care of it.”

“Fine,” Lute sighs. “Can we continue our actual conversation now?”

Vaggie and Charlie's expressions make it clear that they do not, in fact, think it's fine. However, they relent after exchanging a short, thoughtful look.

"Okay.” Charlie sits down next to Lute carefully. “Can you think of a reason why Adam might be uncomfortable with your… feelings… toward sinners?”

Lute’s arm twitches. It could be to throw itself in the air or clench her hand into a fist. She doesn’t know what the impulse is, for it doesn’t get far enough for her to find out. A fresh jolt of pain races up her arm and through to her shoulders the moment the muscle moves. This time, at least, she manages to keep her discomfort from showing on her face.

“Would I be here if I could?” she growls.

Vaggie shoots her a warning glance at her tone. Lute ignores it outright.

Charlie isn’t quite able to hold back a grimace. That, for whatever reason, is far harder to ignore.

“Well, Adam is a sinner. Do you think that might have something to do with it?” The Princess speaks in the slow, pacifying tones which one may use to speak to a toddler or an unstable moron.

She’s going somewhere with this, Lute knows. Charlie keeps her promises better than possibly anyone she’s met before. She said that she was going to help her, which means that she’s saying this shit because she thinks it will be helpful.

Nonetheless, Lute’s first thought is that it would be immensely satisfying to punch her in the jaw. Then she’d have to address her with some degree of respect.

Her second thought is an active effort to temper that initial impulse. Charlie isn’t trying to be disrespectful. Furthermore, Lute isn’t in a position where she can afford to lash out at her in the event that she were. She’s looking at her like she’s a sad little thing who’s missing something obvious because, in her mind, she is.

That is, of course, blatantly untrue. It needs to be untrue. She cannot be anything but wholly and undeniably correct when she looks at the Princess and, with all the conviction that she can muster, asks, “Why? Adam isn’t like the rest of them. He knows that.”

He must. He must know it and he must be. That night at the bar was a fluke. The queer conversations and friendly interactions she’s seen between him and the sinners are a result of him having been stuck here for so long. His warped appearance is nothing more than a particularly appalling illusion. The smell of smoke that lingered as he held her is a horrendous trick of fate that has been forced upon him, a fluke, a mistake. It is not at all indicative of what he is.

Besides, he held her and it felt the same. He held her and she slept well for the first time in ages. Isn’t that indicative that he is still good? She is still an angel, for all that she has been tossed aside. Doesn’t her love mean that he cannot be a demon?

Lute knows that she is right because she must be. She must be right because if she is not—

There is no need to consider the implication if she is not. She is right, and that is all that matters.

She is right, so there is no reason for her to feel like her heart is crumbling to ash when Charlie softly asks, “Why? What makes him different, Lute?”

It’s so obvious, isn’t it? It’s meant to be so obvious that she doesn’t need to say it. He is different because she loves him. He is different because she would not love him if he wasn’t. He is different because he’s Adam, and Adam can’t be one of the things they slaughtered year after year.

She would never hurt him. Lute hurts sinners and she would never hurt him. Thus, he cannot really be a sinner. He must know that. He must. He must.

It’s so blindingly obvious, so very simple, that when Lute tries to explain it to Charlie, she can’t find any words to explain it. But she must say something, for silence would be akin to admitting that she is right. So she says the only thing that she can, hoping that it will convey everything it needs to, as it must.

“He’s Adam.”

Charlie smiles sadly. Lute does not like the look of that smile. She does not like the care with which she takes her hand and gives it a gentle squeeze, fingers warm where she’s always expected them to be cold, although she cannot explain why. “He’s different to you because he’s Adam. How is he any different from other sinners, Lute?”

That one is an easy answer. It’s genuinely easy, so simple that no one can misunderstand her. It is, perhaps, what she should have said in the first place, before Charlie could think to ask that disgusting question.

“Adam’s the first man. He was an archangel who served as head exorcist for countless years. A couple of years in Hell doesn’t mean anything compared to that,” Lute says.

It’s convincing. It’s compelling. It’s all that needs to be said to settle this matter and move on to the subject of Adam’s irrational behavior.

Charlie doesn’t look convinced.

“Yes, but he was a human soul first,” she says. “What if he hadn’t gone to Heaven? If he’d gone to Hell the first time he died, how would he be any different from the other sinners?”

Lute yanks her hand away from Charlie’s with such speed that one would be forgiven for thinking that her palm is laced with poison. It might as well be. “That’s a stupid fucking question. If Adam had gone to Hell, then—”

“You would hate him,” Vaggie interrupts, flat and matter-of-fact in a way that can’t be anything but wrong. “You would have hated Adam as much as you hate every other sinner if he had been one from the beginning. You would have killed him during the extermination.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Lute snarls.

Vaggie meets her gaze. She is stony and unwavering, but not angry. “Prove it, then. Tell me why you would have spared him if you didn’t already know him. Give me a reason to believe that you would have done exactly what I did.”

…She can’t.

Lute wishes that Vaggie would be angry. If she were angry, then Lute would be angry at her in turn. That anger would consume her, leaving no room for the yawning, icy abyss that she can feel opening up inside her chest, expanding through her limbs and threatening to consume the entirety of her being.

Vaggie has the decency not to look smug.

Lute wishes she didn’t. She would be able to get angry at smugness.

“Adam’s not as stupid as he looks,” Vaggie continues. “He knows you wouldn’t have given him a chance if things were different. The problem is that you won’t fucking change. You’re still on your bullshit, and that tells him that you’re still the same exorcist who would slaughter him without a second thought if you weren’t deluding yourself into seeing him as an angel.”

Lute jumps to her feet. It sends a fresh bolt of pain through her shoulderblades, but it’s easily drowned out by her shout of, “Shut your fucking mouth!”

“Make me,” Vaggie says. “I’ll apologize if you can give me one reason to think that you wouldn’t.”

She can’t.

She needs to.

There aren’t any.

There must be.

She would never hurt him. She would have let Anastasia tear her beating heart out of her chest before she would plunge her sword through his.

There was nothing in the world that could have made her spare any other sinner, even without the threat of death hanging over her head. There is nothing that could do so, were she thrown back into the body of the Lute who had never met Charlie Morningstar and was inarguably in love with an angel.

How would she have known he was him if she had never met him?

What would have made her spare him if she hadn’t known?

The nothingness inside her chest provides all the answer she needs.

Lute doesn’t remember deciding to sit down. One second she is standing. The next, she is on the bed once again, Charlie’s hand wrapped around hers. Her fingers are still warm.

“I would never hurt him,” Lute says, although she knows that the better word is begs. This, at least, needs to be true. If nothing else, she needs this to be believed.

Charlie gives her hand a gentle squeeze. “He knows that. Adam’s not scared of you, Lute. But I think it probably hurts to know that you would if you saw him a little differently. I also think…” Charlie’s hand loosens during her pause, only to tighten once more when she resumes speaking. “He might be worried you’ll stop caring about him when you realize that he isn’t different from the other sinners.”

Lute’s heart is beating. Her lungs inhale and exhale. She can hear her pulse pounding in her ears. So many signs up life, yet it feels like everything inside of her has come to a dead stop.

“Will he stop thinking that if I give those crackheads a chance?” she asks.

They must know that she still loves him. They must, for no one else in the universe could get her to do such a thing.

“It might help if you stopped calling them crackheads,” Vaggie mutters, low enough that she can barely catch it.

“I think it would help a lot,” Charlie says, drowning her girlfriend out in spirit if not volume. “It’s also pretty socially awkward for you to hate all of his friends.”

Lute is able to limit her scowl to a small disgusted twitch of her lips. It’s enough for her to count it as a triumph. “Are those sinners really his friends?”

“Unfortunately,” Vaggie sighs.

“Yeah! Adam’s made a lot of progress with people skills!” Charlie chirps. “I think having him around has been really good for Angel Dust’s growth, too. He’s helped him a lot. I’m pretty sure he knows Adam better than anyone else in the hotel by this point.”

Lute narrows her eyes.

*

Everyone who calls the Hazbin Hotel home – excluding her up until this exact moment – is gathered in the lobby. Lute doesn’t give a shit. They look like they’re getting ready for some sort of activity. Lute couldn’t care less. She’s looking for one sinner and one sinner alone, and the second she spots him, everything else is background noise.

It is a simple fact that Lute doesn’t know the name of a single sinner in this hotel other than Adam. She suspects that everyone knows it. Up until very recently, she didn’t care if everyone knew it. She doesn’t like the way that thinking about it makes her skin prickle now. She likes the sneaking suspicion that yesterday’s conversation is what made this change even less. Fortunately, she doesn’t need to think about it for very long. She may not have bothered to learn any of the sinners’ names, but it’s easy enough to infer which one of them is Angel Dust based on what Charlie said. Lute is certain that she is correct.

If she isn’t, she’ll come up with a reason to have planned to march up to the crackwhore from the start.

For his part, the sinner doesn’t look especially surprised by her approach. If anything, he radiates the determined resignation of a soul who has accepted the inevitable and resolved to make the best of it.

Lute doesn’t know what to make of that, but she doesn’t like it.

Based on the way that he looks between them with wide, increasingly panicked eyes, Adam is in the same boat regarding the both of them.

That sucks for him.

Lute all but shoulders him out of the way as she moves to stand in front of the crackwhore. Adam starts to say something, but unfortunately for him, this isn’t his time to talk. Before either he or the sinner he has allowed into his company can say a word, she demands, “What’s Adam’s favorite movie?”

It’s a simple question, given that he always tells the exact same lie when asked.

Indeed, she hears Adam suck in a sharp, alarmed breath before hurrying a few feet away to assure everyone, “The Godfather. My favorite movie is The Godf–”

“Everything Everywhere All At Once,” the crackwhore says without an ounce of doubt or hesitation.

Lute’s eyes widen.

“No it’s fucking not!” Adam desperately lies to the snickering room.

His voice is nearly drowned out by Charlie’s exclamation of, “You should have told me! That’s my favorite too!”

Lute straightens her spine, looking the crackwhore up and down before pushing, “Who’s his favorite ac–”

“Michelle Yeoh,” he interrupts. “He doesn’t like watching it around people ‘cause he’s scared that he won’t be able to keep himself from crying during the scene with the rocks with googly eyes.”

“You can stop fucking talking now!” Adam screeches.

“It’s okay, Adam, you can be honest with us,” Lucifer says, voice trembling in poorly contained mirth.

“How do you know that?” Lute asks.

It’s meant to be a demand. She’s meant to be sharp and intimidating and unyielding, a being who strikes fear into the hearts of sinners even though she no longer strikes through their hearts. But Lute is no longer what she is meant to be, nor will she ever be again. The question comes out frail and hesitant, the plea of a lost girl looking for someone to tell her where the world went wrong.

She hates it.

She hates the way that the room goes quiet, from Lucifer’s ribbing to Adam’s protests and everything in between.

Most of all, she hates the way that the crackwhore’s features soften in undeniable sympathy. “Y’know it’s been two years, right?” he asks. The words themselves sound like they should be mocking. The way that he says them is anything but. “I know it ain’t a drop in the ocean up in Heaven, but down here, a lot can change in two years.”

A lot, including the people who Adam trusts and cares about.

A lot, including the way he sees himself.

A lot, including him.

Two years have passed. Two years for Adam to start seeing himself as a sinner and acting accordingly, because he is.

Two years have passed. Two years in which Lute has remained exactly the same, from her feelings for Adam to her feelings for sinners.

Two years in which those feelings have gone unchanged, and a little over a month in which she closed her eyes to how they clashed, unwilling to be anything but blind until he got hurt.

Got hurt. That’s another lie, isn’t it? Adam’s been hurting. He’s hurting, she’s hurting, she loves him and hates what he is, he probably can’t separate what he is from him, and all she can fucking do is make things worse, but apparently the fucking crackwhore can help?

He starts to reach a hand out to her, words of concern clear on his lips.

Because he cares about Adam.

The crackwhore knows Adam because he fucking cares about him, and Adam cares about her, so the crackwhore is prepared to treat her like he’s someone she cares about, as if she wouldn’t cut him down in a heartbeat if things were different.

Lute abruptly turns around and stalks out of the room, her words of departure a lie that she knows they can all see through.

“I know that.”

*

Lute finds excuses to stay alone for the rest of the day.

Charlie stops by to ask if she’s alright. She accepts it when she says that she is, although she knows that this lie is as transparent as the one she said earlier.

Vaggie stops by and makes her watch an episode of some show she’s started with her. That’s tolerable. She can be alone with Vaggie as long as it’s only for an hour.

Adam never shows his face. His absence reeks of outside interference and she doesn’t know if she’s grateful or furious over it.

Night falls. Many hours after, Lute falls asleep.

She has her nightly nightmare. It’s Anastasia telling her to kill Adam the demon, not Adam the angel dying in her arms as she screams for him to stay.

A burst of pain in her shoulderblades wakes her up before she can find out if she kills him or saves him this time.

Lute looks at the ceiling. The wall. The shapeless shadows that mark the dresser and bedside table and what few things she has left on top of them. Tonight, the curtains are drawn shut tightly enough that she cannot make any of it out in any great detail. That is fine. She would not be able to truly process it even if she could. What matters is that she is focusing on anything at all, distraction void of any thought anchored in her present reality.

When she does manage to think about something other than the pain, the nightmares, or the shapeless strain that is trying not to think about them, it is that she has been laying there for a long time. With that, she knows that she’s ready to move. It’s not that the pain has vanished or even faded. That could take anywhere from minutes to hours longer. She has merely adjusted to it enough to separate her mind from the throbbing ache. She has enough control of her body to sit up, shift her legs over the edge of the bed, and rise to her feet.

Her footsteps are near silent as she slinks down the hotel hallway. They were clumsy and loud the first few times she made this walk, waking everyone whose door she came too close to. She had been a shaking, whimpering mess at the time, her composure torn out with her wings and yet to come anywhere close to regrowing. Now, she has learned to hold in her cries along with everything else that she can’t bring herself to say.

This walk had been unfamiliar and treacherous in a way that stretched time to its breaking point those first few times. Now, it is so familiar that she reaches her destination in under a minute despite the agony wracking both her flesh and a place far deeper.

The familiarity is horrible. The relief that the walk has become easy is worse.

There are countless things that Lute doesn’t want to think about. Several of them have bitten her in the ass lately. Others she thinks it is quite reasonable to want to forget about. She would not feel relief over something that is soon to be irrelevant. Yet even when she tries not to think about something, there are times when she cannot help but feel it.

The relief is something that she cannot help but feel.

She would not be relieved about something that will soon be irrelevant to her.

Lute pauses in the bathroom. The sleek white tiles are cold against her bare feet. She can feel the tiles. She has to focus to feel them past the pain though. It is a scream ringing through her back, one that she has learned to live with, but not tune out. She is able to get herself moving again, but it is difficult.

Her legs are less steady than they were a moment ago. It’s probably because of the pain.

Her hands tremble as she takes her pills, too weak to do much more than take the edge off when her shoulders are this bad, but also too weak to keep her from turning to them when it stops. It’s not because of the pain.

Lute should probably take a little while to envision a future wherein this is her future. She doesn’t know how long it takes for injuries from angelic steel to stop hurting, or indeed, if they ever do. Setting aside the fact that her wings will never grow back, it is impossible to ask Vaggie how it will feel five years from now, for that would require that she work up the nerve to do so. It is impossible to ask someone who is more than five years into recovery, for she can’t think of anyone alive to ask.

She should probably sit down to think about it. The ability to function through her misery does not negate the toll that it takes on her body. The longer she pushes through, the worse her exhaustion will be later on. Stopping to sit on the toilet while she waits for the pills to kick in might save her from sleeping in too horrendously late.

Lute puts the pill bottle back in the cabinet and walks out of the bathroom with her head as empty as she can manage.

Even when she does not want to think about something, there are times when she cannot help but feel it.

When she does not think, she cannot think to stop herself from acting on what she feels.

She doesn’t realize that she isn’t going back to her room until she finds herself standing in front of Adam’s door. Her hand is already lying on his doorknob, trembling. Her hands tremble, goosebumps run across her skin, her eyes burn, and although she cannot manage any solid thoughts, she knows all of the reasons why she shouldn’t open the door. She knows all of the reasons why he might not want to see her, let alone in the middle of the night. They are, after all, one in the same.

She also knows that she won’t be able to make it back to her room.

Lute’s pride may be a beaten, bloody thing these days, but she’s still too good to lie down and nap on the fucking floor.

Adam might have every reason in the world to despise her now, but if his persistent attempts to hold in every horrible thing that he must feel for her tell her anything, it’s that he still cares too much to send her away when she’s in such a miserable state.

Which means he’s going to see her like this, because when she shut off her mind and allowed her heart to take the lead for a short while, it brought her straight to him.

Lute hates having a heart.

She wonders if he does, too.

She opens the door. It’s getting harder to step quietly, but she still makes her best attempt. For a moment, she allows herself to hope that she may be able to avoid waking him. His bed is absurdly large for one person. If she can lie down for a little while, she can get her shit together and leave without him needing to find out that she was ever here.

Her hopes are dashed with a groggy, “What the fuck?”

Adam sits up and turns his bedside lamp on before she can give herself the push to muster any sort of reaction.

She flinches back at the sudden burst of light.

He, in turn, squints at her in befuddled irritation that promptly gives way to a concern that she most certainly does not deserve. “Lute? You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” she mutters, looking off to the side.

Maybe she isn’t above taking a nap on the hallway floor. She’s already fallen so far, what’s one more step down?

“Sorry,” she says, stepping back as steadily as she can. The effort makes it feel like iron beams are scraping against the muscles of her calves, her knee, and everything else that is keeping her upright. “I’ll g–”

“Don’t you fucking move.”

The next thing she knows, he’s wrapped an arm around her shoulders and is guiding her to the best.

His touch is gentle enough not to invoke further pain in her shoulders. She already knew that he is capable of it, of course. He always has been, regardless of whether or not she would have been believed if she tried to say it back in Heaven.

It’s surreal for him to be capable of it in this form.

…In this form?

No, that’s wrong. Adam is still Adam, regardless of how much his appearance has been warped. She wouldn’t still love him if he wasn’t. Lute isn’t that delusional, regardless of what he may have convinced himself of.

The surreal thing is that he would care to be so gentle when she has reacted the way she has. It’s surreal and absurd that he would care at all if he truly thinks that she will turn on him at any moment. Because that’s what he thinks, right? At the very least, he’s been thinking that she wouldn’t want anything to do with him once she got it through her mind that he really is a sinner. At worst…

Lute isn’t aware that she’s sitting on the bed until Adam says, “Holy fuck. Should I get Vaggie?”

Lute looks up to blink at him blearily. “What?”

Adam hesitates. He shouldn’t be hesitating. She can think of a hundred reasons why he might be.

Lute almost pulls back when he reaches toward her face. She shouldn’t have to make an effort not to. She hates that it feels like an achievement when she doesn’t.

He cups her cheek in his hand and runs a clawed thumb under her eye. Once again, it’s gentle despite the menacing appearance. Possibly more gentle than he was as an angel. It’s another addition to the list of things that deserve further thought. For the time being, she doesn’t have room in her head to do anything more than acknowledge it.

“You’re crying, baby,” Adam murmurs.

“Oh.” That’s right. She can feel it now, a chilling moisture on her cheeks, barely strong enough to be noticed beyond the pain in her back when she actively looks for it.

Lute raises a hand to wipe it away. It ends up lying on top of Adam’s instead, flesh and blood, allowing her to feel the subtle pattern of scales and the warmth that lies beneath them. Unthinkingly, she curls her fingers around his hand. To hold on or just to feel him, she doesn’t know. Either way, she doesn’t want to let go.

He drops his hand after a moment. She can’t bring herself to grab it again.

“How often does it hurt this bad?” he asks.

Lute frowns. A frown, different from the grimace she’s been wearing. Something that portrays emotion and intent, not an involuntary response to pain that she ought to be strong enough to push away. It’s an expression that’s rarely caused by anything good, but the world has gone to shit and she’s a shadow of the person she should be or could be, and so it feels good to frown.

“I didn’t tell you what hurts or how much,” she says.

Adam frowns back. Again, a display of intent. The intention, she suspects, is to display displeasure. He needs to actively try to display displeasure because he is also trying to obscure something else.

Lute stops her train of thought there. She does not know where she will find herself if she figures out the answer to the only question it could be leading to, but she already hurts so much. He already hurts so much. If it will lead to more hurt—

Adam sighs. “Fuck, Lute. Is this you thinking I’m a moron, or do you want me to lie through my teeth so your pride doesn’t get bruised?”

Lute narrows her eyes. “I’ve lied to protect your pride plenty of times.”

“You didn’t lie when I was trying to pull some stupid bullshit. Also, my pride got smashed into smithereens by Lucifer fucking Morningstar. Every dipshit in this hotel ritualistically dances on it on a regular basis. So like, maybe don’t follow my example?”

“I’m not ‘pulling some stupid bullshit’.”

Her voice is tight and strained as she says it.

Adam narrows his eyes too quickly for her to have a chance to hope that he didn’t see it.

Lute narrows hers back.

She could say that it’s because her pride has also been completely and utterly obliterated. It would be believable. Adam’s always been prone to making tactless comments, and considering recent events, that’s tactless as fuck.

But it’s not the worst he’s ever done. He might not realize it if she sells it well enough, but he also isn’t the same Adam who’s done worse. If she makes him think that he upset her, he’ll feel bad. If she makes him feel bad…

…It will be more of the same.

Maybe they can continue as they are for a little while longer. If she has not already lost him, then there is a chance that they can maintain this song and dance until she feels ready to move on to the next step. It’s a gamble that hinges on one very large ‘if’. If the ‘if’ is true and some part of him is still hers, then she can keep the already broken ruins of her pride from enduring further cracks. If it isn’t, then it’s already too late and she has nothing left to lose anyway.

If the ‘if’ is true, it won’t be forever. More of the same will see the divide between them grow deeper and deeper until one day, she’ll try to look his way and realize that he’s lost forever.

She’ll be hurting him either way.

They don’t both need to be in pain.

Lute looks down at her lap for the sake of looking away from him. It’s almost a twisted sort of relief. Even if they were human rather than demonic, she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to look him into the eyes to say this.

“Angelic steel does lasting damage,” she whispers. “The injury’s healed, but sometimes my shoulders hurt. I’m used to it.”

“Lute…”

Her shoulders try to tense, only for her traitorous muscles to force them to relax lest they make a bad situation worse. That tenseness still finds a way to express itself, taking root in the edge with which she says, “I need to get used to it, Adam. This isn’t going to go away for a long time, if it ever does. I won’t be able to function if I break down every time my back starts hurting. I may be a cripple, but I’m not going to let myself become a fucking invalid.”

Silence.

There are few times when Adam willingly keeping his mouth shut is a good thing. This is certainly not one of them.

At least he isn’t shutting up because she hurt his feelings. If he is, then that is well and truly his own fucking malfunction. Lute would be saying the exact same thing if he were still an angel and his brains must have been sucked up to make his horns if he doesn’t know that.

“Is it always this bad?” he eventually asks.

It’s the exact same thing that he would have said if he was still an angel.

He knows. This much, at least, he knows.

She’s able to look him in the eyes again. They’re worried in an open, bleeding sort of way that she’s only seen a very few times, but she’s seen it enough times to know how to handle it.

She can recognize that open, bleeding worry despite being set in eyes that have seemed so alien for so very long. She sees him clearly enough to manage a shaky smile despite it.

“Frankly, sir, I don’t think any amount of pride would keep me from complaining if it was.”

Adam blinks. She recognizes the startled surprise that flashes across his eyes as well. As she should, as she should have, as she must. They’re the same eyes, regardless of if they look a little different. Her eyes are the problem, for if she’s only starting to realize that now, she must have gone blind.

It is her own fault and flaw that she struggles to continue looking at him as he says, “You called me…”

“You still are, right?”

Adam looks away instead. She can barely make out the way that he tries and fails to smile. “Hate to break it to you babe, but I’m pretty sure Niffty stabbed all the authority out of me along with my divinity.”

Lute grabs his hand. “You’re still Adam.”

“Am I?”

He still won’t look at her.

Lute doesn’t know how to find the words for an apology as big as the one she needs to give.

The obvious solution is not to try at all. Lute leans forward, her back screaming every inch of the way, and wraps her arms around Adam. She ignores his surprised squawk in favor of pulling him as close to her as she can. She feels the absence of feathers on his leathery wings, the scales where her arms brush his, and the brush of his horns against her neck where his head leans against her shoulder. Most of all, she feels him, real and present and alive.

“You are.”

“Fuck,” Adam rasps, wriggling out of her grasp with such gentleness that she has to let go. “Don’t pull that shit when your back is killing you, you fucking dumbass. Just…” He lays a hand on her shoulder, still looking away, but not quite as distant as he was before. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll be here if you need anything.”

She needs him to stay with her.

They feel like the hardest words in the world to say.

If he hadn’t already said he would, she thinks that she might actually say them.

Lute lie down slowly. Twisted though she is, she finds herself somewhat grateful for the agony in her back. It gives her an excuse for her slowness. Without it, Adam might think that it’s because she’s hesitant.

No. He would know that it’s because she’s hesitant. More than hesitant; she’s so caught up in her own head that she doesn’t have any idea what to do around the man she loves more than anything in the entire goddamn universe. He would know, and while he wouldn’t call her out on it due to the present circumstances, she would know that he knows. It would become one more thing to hang in the air between them. As it is, he merely suspects. It is not a comfortable state, but still one that is far more tolerable than the alternative.

Adam’s bed is softer than she had expected anything in Hell to be. All of the beds in the hotel are. It had struck her on the first day when her haze of pain, anger, and grief had cleared up enough for her to notice such things. She has gotten used to it since then, of course. The tenseness of her body is what makes the gentle embrace of the mattress stand out to her.

This mattress is the exact same as the one in her room.

There are a dozen reasonable explanations for why this one may be more comforting than the one she left behind. She’s lying on her side where she had been on her back when she woke up. The painkillers are kicking in. She’s no longer reeling from the psychological torment that her physical weakness pulled her away from by waking her up.

She isn’t ignorant enough to believe that any of them are the actual reason.

Adam looks down at her for a little while. She can’t bring herself to look at his face despite wanting to. There are too many things that could hurt if she were to look. Worse, there is a chance that she will see something that will make her feel better. If she did, it might be enough to heal her. But if not…

She’s already miserable enough tonight without allowing herself to hope, only for it to get dashed upon rocks that she laid into the ground with her very own hands.

Lute feels the bed shift. She involuntarily shifts with it, more aware of the slight dip forward than she would be under other circumstances. It makes her breath hitch, only to be slowly, quietly released when it isn’t followed by any discomfort.

Good. There shouldn’t be. Lute cannot allow herself to be some fragile, breakable thing. She cannot allow herself to react to her environment like one. Hell may be full of terrible, vile things, but mindreaders are very few. They will not judge Lute by the confines of her mind, but by the image she presents. As long as she looks strong, then she will be perceived as strong, regardless of how much has been taken from her.

If enough people think she’s strong, then maybe one day she’ll be able to believe it once more, too.

Adam turns off the bedside light and lies down beside her.

She doesn’t want to be strong right now.

He’s hesitant in wrapping his arm around her shoulders. She knows he’s hesitant. He certainly knows that she knows. After all, he doesn’t have any excuse to be faltering in the face of a crippled angel. She is in physical pain and vulnerable in every possible way. He doesn’t run any risks save for…

Lute is not weak. It would be a lie to call her strong. The worst of the damage from extermination day may have healed, but the inactivity of the past weeks have left her body in a condition more feeble than she has ever experienced in her entire existence. That does not make her weak, for weak things cannot hurt anyone.

Lute waits until Adam’s arm is secure over her shoulders to press closer against him. He makes a surprised sound, but shifts just enough to make it easier for her without pulling away.

It’s like the night before and it isn’t. Again, Lute finds herself noticing every similarity and difference. He smells different, but the warmth of his body is the same. His wings lack feathers, but the new one that he cautiously wraps over her fits the same as the old. It does not provide the same warmth, but once she yanks her mind away from the gnawing absence, its presence provides the same security that it always did.

There is nothing familiar about the tail that wraps around her ankle. She’s hardly looked at it in her time at the hotel, but Lute has seen enough to know what she would find if the lights were on. It is a thin whipcord of a thing that she never would have imagined fitting Adam if she hadn’t seen it for herself. The sleek red scales covering it make it look like it ought to be cold. The thought of it touching her is one that would have doubtlessly made her skin crawl if she’s allowed herself to consider it.

The thing that brushes against her skin is perfectly warm. There was never any chance that it would be anything else. Nothing about Adam has ever been cold. Not to her. Not even when she has given him all the reason in the world to be.

More importantly, the tail curls around her ankle with a slow, creeping caution that she never would have wanted to see from him. Not around her. She doesn’t know if he’s scared of how she will react to this reminder of his unholiness or is unaware that he is doing it. Such knowledge would require an awareness of his new biology that she has staunchly avoided.

She wishes she hadn’t now. If she knew whether or not the gesture was conscious, then she would know the perfect way to respond to it. As it is, all she can do is turn to the most likely option.

Lute forces her crawling skin to still, relaxes her muscles as much as she can when the ghost of angelic steel still whispers softly across her back, and leans in to him.

Adam tenses for a second. Just a second. As second, then it as if everything is as it has alway been, as if there may still be hope for them. He cants his head forward to press his face gently against the crown of her head, easily moving past the place where her halo will never be again.

His tail stays where it is.

Lute closes her eyes and lets the rest of the world melt away.

She loves him. She could never not love him, angel or demon.

The world melts away and time goes with it. The noise in her head and thrumming in her heart does not. Everything twists and churns within her, an expanse so vast that it can only be called everything. It drowns out her body’s demands for sleep and keeps her anchored into this tenuous, surreal reality.

Adam’s breathing is steady. He could very well be asleep.

His head is tilted forward and her hair is dry. If he were sleeping very deeply, he would probably be drooling.

Lute is glad that her eyes are closed. It makes it easier to keep them dry.

“Adam?” she whispers.

He hums in response.

“When did I become an ex?”

Adam tenses. “What are you talking about?” he asks.

There’s no way that he doesn’t know.

He isn’t going to answer unless she says it.

Lute doesn’t know if it’s a sign of how far she’s come or how far she’s fallen that she says it.

“A few weeks ago, the cr— Angel Dust called me your ex. You didn’t correct him,” she whispers, broken but not weak. If she were weak, she wouldn’t be in this situation. “When did that happen?”

It takes a long time for Adam to answer.

It rarely means anything good when he has to think about his answer. In the past, it meant that he had gotten into some bullshit and was trying to come up with a way to weasel his way out or that something was seriously wrong. Since the past became something well and truly unreachable, she has found it to be an indication that whatever he says next is going to hurt.

This time is no exception.

At least she’s prepared for the feeling of a dagger of her own creation slipping in between her ribs.

“Isn’t that what you want?” Adam asks.

“What?” Lute breathes.

“Come on, ba— Lute. Don’t pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Do you think I’d be asking if I didn’t?”

“If you were trying to be nice.” His voice is soft and fond in a way that should fill her chest with warmth. If he were happy, it would. But he’s not happy. No, Lute is meant to be the broken one between them, but in that instant, he sounds like he has been shattered into a million pieces. That, in turn, makes her feel like her ribs are flaking off into countless splinters, drilling inward to stab her heart and lungs with all the ruthlessness that she deserves.

Lute’s mouth is dry and tastes like sawdust. She tries to focus on that. “I’m not. Adam, I’m genuinely asking. What are you talking about?”

“…Fuck,” he whispers. “I don’t know how you can’t… fuck, yeah, okay, I do. You don’t fucking get it.”

His grip on her shoulders loosens. She feels him start to shift upward, only to pause before he can make any real progress.

“Are you sure you want to talk about this right now? While you’re all hurt and shit?”

“I’m going to be hurt for a long time, Adam.” She reaches out to lay a hand on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t.”

“…Fine. But we’re keeping the light off.” He relaxes back into the mattress. His arm stays wrapped around her shoulders.

His tail pulls away.

Lute’s heart, ravaged and ragged, tries to jump into her throat.

“My feelings didn’t change, if that’s what you’re asking. I still… you didn’t do anything wrong, okay? This is all my shit.”

Lute already knows that he’s keeping the light off so that she can’t see him. The roughness of her voice makes her wonder if he’s leaving them off for a reason other than the one she originally thought.

“What’s your fault?” she whispers.

The wing lying over her pulls back. It’s a small, subtle motion that Lute couldn’t have missed if the entire world was crumbling around her. “I’m not the guy you want, Lute. You’re looking for an angel. I’m just a filthy fucking—” His voice hitches. Only for a second, but that second is far too long. “You have standards. I get it. You don’t wanna hurt my feelings or whatever the fuck, but you don’t wanna fuck around with a demon either. This is me letting you know that you don’t need to say it. I mean, it’d be a shitty fucking conversation for both of us, right?”

“…You think my feelings are… you think I’m fucking around with you?” Her lips are numb and her mouth tastes like sawdust. The tang of salt lurks in the back of her throat. She focuses on the sawdust.

Adam yanks his wing and arm back abruptly. “Fuck, okay, rewording. I’m not trying to imply you’d fuck a sinner or anything gross like that, okay? I know you’re better than that. That’s why I’m saying you wouldn’t. I meant… fuck, I don’t know what the fuck else I can say. I know you had feelings for angel me, and I know you don’t have feelings for demon me, and I didn’t want to imply that shit either. ‘Cause like, that’s worse, right? A fuck is a fuck, you can use ‘em, lose ‘em, and get on with your life. Doing it with a sinner isn’t good, but you can do it and get on with your life. Actually lo— feeling shit about one is Vaggie territory, and I know you aren’t actually—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Lute rasps.

He shuts up with the speed and obedience that one may expect a sinner to obey an angel’s command.

She hates it.

“That’s not your fault,” she says.

She feels him shift in place across from her. It moves him farther away from her, a few centimeters that may as well be miles upon miles.

“I mean, fucking obviously,” he says. “I didn’t want this to happen. But I’m still the dumbfuck who got his ass killed and did all the fucking… sinning… so that’s still on my—”

“It’s my fault for making you feel that way.”

The shifting comes to a sudden stop. “The fuck do you mean? I feel the way I’m supposed to feel. I know I’m a scumbag, but I’m not going to make you pretend you’re okay with me.”

“I’m not pretending!” Lute snaps, raw and ragged. She moves to sit up, only for a fresh jolt of pain to send her leaning back down into the bed with a pained hiss.

Adam, for all of the horrible bullshit that he’s spewing, lays a gentle hand on her shoulder and asks, “You okay?”

“No, because you’re being a fucking moron,” she hisses. “I still love you, Adam!”

It takes a long time for him to respond.

She knew it was going to take him a long time. That does nothing to lessen her loathing for each and every passing second.

“You don’t get it,” he finally says, soft in that same way that threatens to shatter her. “You love the Adam from before. You aren’t going to get him back.”

“I’m not—”

“No, it's your turn to shut the fuck up. You don’t fucking get it!” This time, when Adam releases her and pulls back, it’s more than a few centimeters. The distance is colder than ice. “I’m not going to go back to being the guy you want. I’m all different inside, and I fucking, I can’t—”

He doesn’t pause. His voice seizes, forcing him to stop where she can feel him struggling to push on. Lute yearns to interrupt, but the tremor before he got cut off drives her to wait until he can keep going.

The next words to leave his mouth are more defeated than anything she’s ever heard, every new word worse than the last.

“There’s no redemption for fallen angels. You know that, right? They throw you out of Heaven and that’s it, you’re fucking done. Maybe Charlie isn’t totally hopped up on her own redemption bullshit and I can redeem myself. Get nice and shiny and holy again. Be an angel again. But then I’ll be an angel. They don’t just let angels throw themselves down into Hell, Lute. Charlie’s snake friend would be here if they could. If I go back, I’m fucking gone, and you’ll be—”

He gets cut off again.

He isn’t sobbing.

She knows better than to think that his eyes are dry.

He eventually finds his voice again, if only in a whisper. “I’m not worried about you. You’re a tough cunt and Hell isn’t as bad as I always said. You’ll find a way to be happy in this shithole. Fuck, I— Goddamnit Lute, I am. I fucking like it here. I fit in better here than I ever did in Heaven, so I guess I’ve always been a fucking—”

He cuts himself off with another ragged, painful breath. However, he gets speaking again quickly this time.

“I’d stay if you wanted me to. I want you to know that, if you fucking… care at all. I don’t give a fuck that you can’t go back to Heaven. I still love you, too. That’s why I’m not going to ask you to pretend that you aren’t disgusted by me. If I stay with you, I’ll stay like this. You’d be stuck with a fucking sinner. Forever.”

The only thing telling Lute that her heart hasn't stopped is how much it hurts.

That's the first time he's actually said he loves her.

It's the first time he's said he loves her, and all she can bring herself to do is whisper, “You really think I’d rather not have you at all?”

“Yeah?” Adam chokes out. Like it’s obvious. Like he can’t understand why she’s asking such a thing.

Because he can’t. Damn her to hell two hundred times over, he can’t fucking comprehend that she still loves him.

To drive the point in further, he continues, “I don’t have the fucking words for how much I appreciate you being there for me, but you were ride or die for an archang–”

No. She can’t do this. She won’t let him do it anymore, regardless of whether he forgives her or not.

“I’m ride or die for Adam,” Lute snaps. “That’s you. I’m ride or die for you, and I want to be with you, angel or demon. You stupid fucking–” She sits up with a wordless snarl of frustration that turns into a demand of, “Turn on the light.”

He obeys without a word. She doesn’t give him a chance to say a word. The moment he turns his wary, befuddled gaze to her, she grabs him by the collar of his shirt and pulls him into a ferocious kiss.

The first thing she notices is that he doesn’t respond.

The second is that tears are running down her cheeks.

For once, she doesn’t mind him seeing. If there’s a chance that it will make him believe her, she wants him to see. Lute pulls back to take in his shock, his hope, his pain, and croaks out, “I love you, Adam. If I can only be with you if you’re like this, then this is exactly what I want you to be.”

“Babe…”

“Please,” she breathes. “Please believe me.”

He shakes his head, then tilts it back with a tremendous sigh. “I do, you stubborn cunt. I know better than to think you’d lie about this shit. But you… you fucking…”

“I what?” Lute reaches down to grab his hand in hers. It’s so much larger than hers and so much more fragile now. She squeezes it as gently as she can.

Adam looks at her for a second. Just a second. Another dagger through her heart, he has to look away to say, “I’ve seen the way you look at me. Who can fucking blame you? I’m an ugly bastard. And I going to stay and ugly b–”

“Don’t you finish that fucking sentence.” Lute lets go of Adam’s hand in favor of laying her hands on his cheeks. She turns his head toward him and pushes herself to take him in. The scales, the slitted eyes, the horns, the insecurity that she’s seen so many times, but never wanted to see aimed at her.

She keeps looking at him as she leans in for another kiss.

This time, he reciprocates.

It isn’t long. It isn’t deep. But he responds, and although he is the one to pull back, he also wraps his arms around her and pulls her closer to him.

She thinks it sends a fresh pang of pain through her back. Maybe. She really doesn’t give a damn.

Lute wraps her arms around Adam’s neck and buries her face in his shoulder. He doesn’t comment on the tears soaking into his shirt. She doesn’t say anything about the way she can feel him tremble.

Eventually, Lute turns her head enough to be able to say, “I’m sorry I haven’t done better. “It’s going to take me a while to adjust. But I will. I’ll be okay with the horns and the hooves and all your other demon crap. I’ll talk with the fucking sinners and try to see them as people. I’ll do anything you need me to if you’ll give me another chance.”

There’s quiet again, but this quiet is different. It’s marked by the sound of Adam’s heartbeat and the gentle rise and fall of his chest. It’s broken by a gentle sigh and him leaning forward to rest his chin on the crown of her head. “You don’t need to take chances. I’m not going anywhere unless you want me to.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“Then I won’t.” Adam lowers his face against her hair with a huff. She can barely make out his grumble of, “Now will you please go the fuck to sleep? I don’t want to deal with you being a tired cunt in the morning. And your back’s still shit. That’ll make you an ultra-cunt.”

Lute lets out a strained, rasping huff that would be laughter if he had a little bit more energy. “I’ll try to control myself as long as you don’t hog the blankets.”

Adam scowls dramatically. “Bitch, that’s your bullshit.”

“Mmm. No. I don’t think so.”

“Now you’re a bedhog and a lying cunt.”

“You’re delusional.”

She lies back down slowly. Adam pulls the blankets back for her before she has to try to wriggle beneath them. She wants to protest for the sake of her pride, but the exhaustion weighing down on her and remaining whispers of pain in her shoulderblades make a more compelling argument. She lets him pull the covers over her, and a moment later, he turns off the light and takes his place beside her.

He wraps an arm and wing around her before her anxieties have a chance to rear their shameful heads. Lute takes it as an invitation to wrap one of her own arms around him, pulling him closer rather than putting in the effort to continue moving herself. With a low, incomprehensible grumble, he scoots closer and tightens his grip on her, nuzzling his face into her shoulder.

She wonders if Adam has any idea how cold her bed has been over the last three years. She wonders if, in a world where she is able to find the words, she could ever hope to convey how his absence seeped into every aspect of her life. The big moments were glaring, but the little things, the bickering and inane conversations and annoying interruptions that reminded her that there was more to life than work and duty, were haunting.

Caught in a world somewhere between awake, asleep, the past, and the future, Lute whispers, “Adam?”

He gives a sleepy hum in response.

“I’m sorry.”

It takes a while for Adam to find the words he’s looking for. She knows he’s searching for words, for the silence is filled by his tail snaking over and wrapping around her leg.

In the end, he settles for, “I forgive you.”

*

The next morning, Lute willingly participates in Charlie’s exercise.

She tries to remember everyone’s names this time.