Chapter Text
"Do you think modeling is nothing but looking pretty?"
Sandalphon had a scathing retort on his tongue, the twitch of his brow and the scowl on his lips all gearing up to unleash it. If he could just ungrit his teeth for two seconds, he could mouth off to the feathery haired princess who lorded over him.
Then his heel snagged on a stray crack and for the fifth time in the past hour, he stumbled face first to the ground.
"I don't think I need to tell you how the clothes you're wearing are worth more than you'll ever see in your life," the other model said from above, heels clicking against the floor. The sound was infuriatingly steady, demonstrating how one should walk in heels. How Sandalphon, for the past hour, couldn't.
"Then why don't you shut up and not say anything at all?" he spat.
"Because I can't understand how you're still like this after so long. You're holding up the shoot." And then as a soft aside that she knew he could hear, "What was Lucifer thinking with you?"
Sandalphon wished he knew. Back when Lucifer first hauled him to a photoshoot for his lost shoes, Sandalphon had been in awe of everything. It was organized chaos of stylists and cameramen and models all working on separate deadlines, but somehow never colliding. As an outsider, he'd feared whether one step would intrude on the hectic path of someone else, and he imagined he followed Lucifer in the fashion of a drunken bumblebee.
He'd taken everything in as both his first and last glimpse behind the scenes of the fashion industry, committing the most important parts to memory. Fashion had never been a particular interest of his, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime (not to mention shouldn't be happening to him) chance.
He handed Lucifer a water bottle that another staffer had passed to him when the shoot was finished, and the model took it gratefully.
"The shoot was more lively because of you," Lucifer said eventually, half the water gone. Sandalphon's brow scrunched up. All he remembered was somewhat aimlessly poking his nose into various parts of the shoot, and tripping over equipment a handful of times.
"Is it because of the light I knocked over? I was more careful after that." As in, he found a stool to sit on and refused to move until it was time to leave. The light hadn't been damaged, but that didn't mean something else wouldn't be. The price of the mistake intimidated him more than anything.
Lucifer only laughed, then shook his head. "No, not at all." Sandalphon looked for an answer in the other's stare, but all he saw was a weird blend of reverence and relief. "Just having you around made the atmosphere more bearable. You've never been to one of these, have you?"
"Obviously. If I knew shit about fashion I'd have seen through your corny nickname immediately." It had been too obvious, looking back. Lucy's "dressing down" was still leagues above anyone in a local Skybucks, and his innate charisma wasn't normal for a reason. His career was built on captivating others through a camera; it stood to reason that the real thing was even more stunning. Lucy had always been a step above everyone else.
"You even spelled it wrong," Lucifer recalled, chuckling as Sandalphon huffed. "That's how I knew you didn't recognize me at all."
"Was it that funny?" he grumbled as he snatched a nearby face cloth and held it out briskly. A staff member had called him out for sitting around doing nothing, so he was instructed to provide the small comforts for Lucifer. Water, check. Facecloth, check. He wondered when the complimentary massage factored in.
Lucifer took it and dabbed at his face. "No, I was happy. It felt like a personal nickname."
"Yeah well, I know better now," Sandalphon mumbled. That caused Lucifer to blink at him.
"You aren't going to call me that anymore?"
"Of course not. Do I look like someone who can call a world famous model familiarly?" It was embarrassing just thinking back on.
He convinced himself it wasn't disappointment he heard in Lucifer's soft, "Oh, I see."
That didn't explain why Sandalphon was still walking in heels though. Not his custom-made boots, which hadn't seen the light of day since he received them, but actual heels. The kind models wore that others openly gawked at.
It turned out, there was a reason normal people didn't wear these. The population would be reduced to stumbling dominos if too many people had shoes this high. Plainly, everyone couldn't reach model level.
Sandalphon himself hadn't even reached it, nor did he exactly plan to. It hadn't been his plan to return to a photoshoot that coincidentally landed on his day off, but like so many other things, his plans couldn't resist being pulled into the orbit of Lucifer's.
First it was attend another photoshoot "if you're available," then it was a shortage of staff, and now it was the shortage of an entire model.
Sandalphon was getting paid, it was worth it, but if anything was making him earn his money it was the soreness of his feet from these fucking heels.
"Mika! How is he doing? Ready to go yet?" The voice of a production staffer carried over the buzz of on site chatter.
Michael stared down at Sandalphon with a raised brow. "Are you ready yet?"
If his inability to refuse Lucifer weren't enough, the spite Sandalphon felt for a seasoned model who actually knew what the fuck she was doing drove him to his feet.
"I don't think it fucking matters if I am." He threw her words back at her. "We're holding up the shoot."
Skybucks found Sandalphon ungracefully collapsing on a table and groaning the next day. His head didn't lift from the table even when a chair scraped against the floor across from him.
"So it either went really bad or—" Gran cut himself off and Sandalphon could visualize the sincere and stupidly pinched way his face got when he was concerned. "Um, did it go that badly?"
His co-worker only knew the bare minimum, delivered over the phone with a curt "Cover for me I have to fill in for a model" followed by Sandalphon hanging up. The kid was too much of a pushover to say no, and too polite to press for details. In other words, way too easy. Sandalphon had a monthly quota of how often he took advantage of that.
"Fuck heels," he muttered into the crook of his arm.
"Oh? But didn't Lucifer himself say you looked good in them?"
Apparently he let that little detail slip in during his random assaults of personal issues he sometimes unleashed on Gran. Sandalphon just grumbled some more. "Fuck walking in heels," he amended.
"Ah, they made you do that?" Gran sipped his drink with an obnoxious slurping sound that grated on Sandalphon's ears. Normally he'd snap at Gran to cut that shit out, but Sandalphon was feeling extra irritable.
He straight up smacked the cup away, sending it skittering across the table. Miraculously it didn't spill nor splatter on the floor, but Gran's face looked like it was him who'd be slapped instead of his drink.
A stab of something like guilt made Sandalphon wince inside. Damage control was never his thing. "I got talked down to and fell on my face more times than I could count," he confessed. Jerking his head to the side, he refused to make eye contact as he held out some cash he had on him. "Put this in the register and make yourself one of those syrupy death traps."
Gran was weird about making expensive items for himself without compensation, so this was basically treating him. An apology veiled under pride and cash that only an idiot like Gran would take to heart.
Sandalphon didn't bother to call him out on it though; he'd get a lecture in turn about how Gran saw through his pretenses and appreciated his heartfelt apology and that just wasn't it. Sandalphon wasn't that soft, and fuck Gran for thinking so.
All the evidence he needed was on his coworker's face though, a thousand watts and all teeth. "My break ends in ten minutes so I'll have to make it quick, but is there anything else you want to tell me before I go?"
No, Sandalphon's mind supplied. "Yeah," he said.
Gran perked up.
"Your name tag's upside down."
In his hurry to fix it, Gran missed Sandalphon shuffling out the door.
Sandalphon's life consisted of very little, simple routines. He had a favorite kind of cereal he didn't stray from in the morning, a bland job that supported him well enough, and a solid base of three outfits he cycled through regularly. Oftentimes he'd complain about the monotony of his life, his lack of direction, but without actively seeking his supposed divine purpose there was no one to blame but himself. Opportunities didn't fall from the sky, so to speak.
It was infinitely more terrifying when they waltzed through the door, he found.
Suddenness was the biggest problem, he concluded weeks after his first shoot with Lucifer. The opportunity that wasn't supposed to happen happened, and it came attached to one person in the timeframe of less than a month. Modeling wasn't a thing Sandalphon could do, or really wanted to honestly, but apparently saying no to blue eyes framed by soft blond hair was even more impossible.
It was insane how familiar he became with the fashion scene because of this one weakness.
The one spread he filled in for didn't skyrocket Sandalphon to fame; he'd been an extra that simply complemented the main model, Michael. His reputation was to the level of staffers not eyeing him suspiciously when he walked around, and a practiced ease navigating hectic sessions.
Nowhere near the level of:
"Sandalphon, come with me to Paris."
Sandalphon dropped his marker.
"Huh?"
Lucifer smiled, and he tipped down his sunglasses.
"The usual. It's alright to put down 'Lucy' like you used to."
He'd lost track of how many times he'd clarified that he couldn't, if only for his own pride. Lucifer didn't mean it maliciously, Sandalphon knew, but he was airheaded in a way that drove him to drag a nobody barista into his glamorous life without a second thought.
The cup bore "Lucifer" like it always did, and when Sandalphon passed off his drink, Lucifer thanked him before leaving the parting words, "I'll be back in three days; I hope you'll consider Paris then."
"I've considered it."
Three days later, and Sandalphon took his break at a table with Lucifer sitting pristinely across from him.
"Have you?" There was polite curiosity and hopeful anticipation mixed in the model's tone.
"I've considered, and it took me two seconds to reach a conclusion." Sandalphon leaned on the table, and began ticking off on his fingers. "Paris sounds nice, I searched up pictures and it almost looks fake. It's that pretty." One finger. "That's all."
Lucifer patiently waited for a continuation that Sandalphon didn't have.
"...so you'd like to go?" he asked, missing the point.
Sandalphon sighed, and wondered how this man made it so far in life. Or maybe this was his privilege speaking, sitting atop the modeling world.
"Yes, I'd like to go just like I'd enjoy the life of a millionaire if it was offered to me. But neither that nor this is realistic. I have shifts to work, a job, a life—" and here Sandalphon let loose his frustrations with a dramatic hand wave, "You didn't tell me anything besides Paris! Who would say yes to an offer out of the blue?"
Lucifer looked genuinely stunned. "I can take care of that. I'll make up for the lost salary, and any other expenses will already be handled."
He really thought it was that easy. Admittedly it did handle the brunt of the issue, finances, but there was more.
"What about time and date? How am I supposed to consider a trip when I don't even know how long it'll last or when I'm leaving?"
"In four days, and then a week in Paris before we return."
"I don't drive."
"I can pick you up."
"I don't know French."
"I'll translate the important parts for you."
"You won't have time."
"There will be translators as well."
"My boss will never agree to this."
"Should I talk to him as well?"
"No, I will, never mind."
Sandalphon wanted to tear out his hair. It just wasn't this easy to manipulate the world all in favor of letting him take a joy trip to Paris. He hated the monotony of his daily life, how predictably aimless it always was, but he wasn't comfortable with the rapid shift it was taking either.
"...I realize my request was sudden, and I hadn't considered you wouldn't want to go."
The unexpected admission halted Sandalphon. Lucifer's normally serene expression darkened to something between regret and disappointment.
"I don't want to trouble you, so if you'd rather not I won't pressure you further."
Sandalphon's irritation ebbed, and more than that he found an inexplicable urge to walk Lucifer through their complications rather than gloss over it with anger like he usually did. If anyone else was sitting across from him, he thought he might grouse that his break was over and stormed off to the back room for the remainder of his off time.
"You trouble me more than you know," he began, and frowned at the way Lucifer seemed to stiffen. "But I still go along with you, so it's not anything new. This time too, I'll go with you."
"You will?" Lucifer's disbelief told Sandalphon more than he needed to know. At least this high class model had the capacity to reflect. He could work with that.
"Yes. Just remember I'm not anyone special; you have to lower your standards to a commoner's before you start suggesting trips out of nowhere."
Lucifer smiled, and he laughed like he'd heard an inside joke Sandalphon wasn't privy to.
"But that's exactly what makes you special, Sandalphon."
And before he had a chance to ask what the hell Lucifer was on, the other kindly informed him that his break was up and that he'd message the barista later tonight with the details of the trip. Sandalphon could send his official response after reviewing it all and clearing the time with his boss.
The plane ride fucking sucked, for all the wrong reasons.
The day before departure, Sandalphon's throat itched and he sneezed a few times, but those were all symptoms he was used to brushing off without a thought. It wasn't until he was stuck in a cramped space—which admittedly wasn't all that cramped because it was first class—that everything got worse before it got better. The redness of his nose and the nasally quality his voice took on made it impossible to pass himself off as healthy, and Lucifer stupidly insisted on tending to him himself.
Sandalphon both loved and hated the attention. And he especially hated how the cliche question of if he had a fever was actually legitimate but still false, because it went down the longer Lucifer spent away from him.
He warned the other that he'd catch his cold too and to just leave him alone, but of course Lucifer didn't listen.
Which was how after the plane ride from hell, hell followed him through the gate in the form of a bedridden Lucifer and a handful of people knowing it was his fault. It'd been a few days into their Paris trip, which consisted of luxurious hotels, on the scene shoots, and a lot of feeling out of place for Sandalphon.
As much as Lucifer sounded excited about having him here, Sandalphon felt from day one that there wasn't really a place for him. If he wasn't trailing behind Lucifer like a lost puppy, he wasn't doing much of anything besides hiding behind a face mask and trying to cough discreetly.
So when Lucifer told him to go ahead to the planned location without him, Sandalphon was immediately adverse to the idea, pushing aside how his own cold had subsided.
"What am I supposed to do there? I'm the reason you're like this, so the least I can do is—"
"Listen to my request. Go there in my place, please."
Sandalphon didn't know how much good he'd do, and he wanted to point out that any staffer could inform the rest about Lucifer's condition, but it was hard to deny a sick person their whims. Especially when it was a sick person Sandalphon was already inclined to give in to.
"Lucifer caught a cold, but he should be better soon."
The director gave him a weird look, stress still knotting his face.
"We've known that since this morning. What I don't know is where the hell his replacement is. I was told he hand picked the model, but no one has showed up and we're an hour behind schedule."
Sandalphon felt sorry for the poor soul that has to fill Lucifer's shoes. The term in itself was a contradiction; there was no replacement on earth that would do Lucifer justice.
He was just about to leave, his errand finished, when a another man stalked over into their conversation.
His gait oozed the lazy confidence of any top tier model Sandalphon had ever witnessed, and he thought for sure this guy was Lucifer's stand in. Good for them, the show could go on, and he could leave. If it wasn't Lucifer, he had no reason to watch this shoot.
"I can't believe our fated first time is being interrupted for such a tacky reason. Teary eyed and bleary from sickness could be a concept in itself, couldn't it?" The callous, dismissive tone was enough to set Sandalphon off, but the underlying perversion seeping into the guy's words almost made him shiver in disgust. He'd never found a human being so distasteful so quickly. Turning to go, to his displeasure Sandalphon could still hear him mouthing off.
"He's left me with some nobody called Sandalphon." The man clicked his tongue. "The name doesn't even roll off the tongue, how could he ever hope to take Lucifer's place?"
Sandalphon froze.
"What did you say?"
Lucifer's own words echoed in his head.
Go there in my place, please.
Lucifer hadn't been talking about running an errand. He meant to literally take his place and be the main model.
"Didn't you hear me, little virgin?" Sandalphon colored, and the dark haired man looked mildly intrigued. "I've never seen you before. Who're you?"
Sandalphon didn't want to say. He wanted to curse at Lucifer, lecture him about how this—this!—was what he meant about communication and consideration for his commoner status. He couldn't expect Sandalphon to suddenly take his place with no clear warning.
Jaw tight, Sandalphon pushed by both of the men and growled just in earshot, "Lucifer's hand picked replacement."