Chapter Text
Could you not be on dinner duty more?
Look at this amazing meal you’re missing because you chose to work!
Too bad you can’t enjoy this hot off the stove~
“Tch,” Lucifer muttered, putting his phone away as he walked toward the front doors of the house. There were more messages from his brothers, that he wasn’t going to bother reading since he had no doubt they all pertained to the dinner he’d missed. He’d had his phone muted, except for emergency contacts, while he worked, wanting to get through as much of it as he could, and he’d only turned them back on while on the way home.
He regretted it now that he’d been flooded with texts and images of the meal Cadence had made in his stead.
Some of them he knew were innocent enough, honest praise that they were glad that he’d picked Cadence to make the meal. But the majority of them he knew it was pokes at him not being able to enjoy it.
Pushing open the front door, he heard the little scurrying of feet as the little D’s scattered from the entrance way before it was nothing but silence. He stood there, one hand on the closed door, and listened. Normally he didn’t like it when the house was this quiet. It generally meant that his brothers weren’t here. Had some of them taken advantage of him coming home late to sneak out? He wouldn’t put it past Mammon and none of the others were going to bother trying to stop him. Cadence could have if she’d ordered him to and actually meant it, but so far as he could tell she was avoiding doing that.
What was the point of making pacts if she wasn’t going to try to command the demons she had at her disposal?
Lucifer shook his head. He’d figured out fast that trying to guess what was going on in Cadence’s head was a waste of his time. There was simply no way he would get it right. It was best if he just continued keeping tabs on her and tried to control the damage as much as he could.
His mouth twisted as his stomach cramped. He hadn’t bothered with food while he was working, using the work as a distraction from the hunger. There was no distracting himself now. Especially not with the reminder of the meal he had missed.
Nothing to do about it but eat. Hopefully Beel had been sated enough that he could find something in the kitchen to throw together for his own dinner. He was sure there would be food but whether or not it was going to be actually decent was still left to be seen.
Lucifer paused as he reached the kitchen. The door was open and he had a clear view in at the table. And the two people seated across from each other at it. Beel wasn’t a surprise. Even with dinner long over, he had come back for more. But what was Cadence doing here?
He watched for a moment, trying to figure it out. The pair of them weren’t talking, his brother eating and her reading a book in front of her. She had her chin propped in her hand as she lazily turned the pages. If all she wanted to do was read, why hadn’t she stayed in her room? The kitchen wasn’t exactly the best place for it.
He frowned as he stepped into the kitchen. “What are you two doing?”
Cadence looked up and Beel tossed him a glance. “Welcome back,” she said quietly.
His brother echoed the greeting, albeit with a little more mumbling as he was still eating.
“That wasn’t an answer,” Lucifer said dryly. “I can see what Beel’s doing but why are you here?”
Cadence hummed softly and he watched as she pushed a covered dish in his direction. “Guarding this.”
Lucifer’s frown deepened. “What is that?”
“Your dinner,” Beel said before she could. “Caden said we had to save you a plate since you weren’t there to have it with us. Mammon thought it was a dumb idea so I came in here to help her keep it safe.”
He blinked slowly, looking at the pair of them. They were guarding his dinner?
“I just figured, if you had to stay to keep working, you wouldn’t take time to eat,” Cadence said, lifting the cover off to reveal a plate of food identical to the one his brothers had sent. “I thought it would be nice for you to come home to a meal that you didn’t have to make.”
He’d only asked her to cover his dinner shift, had promised to make it up to her when she’d agreed so easily, but what was he supposed to do about this? As sharp as she could be, it was easy to forget that she did things simply to ‘be nice’. The concept of someone else doing something for his family without any thought of how they could benefit from it was still foreign enough to catch him off guard. But he’d never forget the puzzled look she’d given him the first time he’d asked what her price was.
“Price for what? Being nice? Lucifer, I know you’re demons but is it really that hard to understand that I don’t want anything back?”
Yes, it is, Cadence, he thought, moving into the room. He chose to ignore the smile that bloomed on her face as he shrugged out of his coat and settled on the stool beside hers. But he still saw it.
“It’s really good, Lucifer. You’re lucky Caden made so much of it because everyone had seconds,” Beel said, pushing off his chair to head toward the fridge. “She even got me to put a spell on the plate to keep it warm for you so it would taste the same as what we had. Do you want something to drink?”
What was the point of going to so much effort if she didn’t want something in return? She’d already made several pacts with his brothers, had gotten a dinner out of him for the abyssal way he’d treated her, and still she did this? He slanted a look at Cadence and saw that she’d returned to her book. “Does the chef have any recommendations?”
“It’s meant to go with a white wine,” she said without looking up.
“Did you serve that to the others as well?”
Cadence snorted. “No. I let them do what they wanted. I know better than to put alcohol on the table with them.”
Most likely because once they had a glass or two, some of them would try to get her to drink as well. Demonic alcohol and humans did not always mix well and he was glad that she was taking his warnings into account. “White wine then.”
She flashed him a faint smile but her focus was clearly on her book.
He didn’t look away from her immediately. He had been tired of looking at names when he’d finally chosen hers to be the second exchange student. With Solomon being the other, he’d figured a nice, normal human would be a good thing to have as a counterpoint. But Cadence had shown him that there was no normal where humans were concerned.
Starting on his meal before it went cold, Lucifer nodded at Beel as he set the wine glass down in front of him and took his seat again. But his gaze was drawn to the book. It only took reading a few lines over her shoulder to realise that it was part of the curriculum. For next month. “Getting a head start?” he asked mildly.
She hummed. “Everything has a bad habit of going sideways in this place. I figured if I had the time to read, I might as well.”
“And this month’s?”
“Already done and synopsis written so I won’t forget.”
He got regular reports from the faculty on how the exchange students were faring with their classes and they’d all said the same thing about her. Cadence took her studies seriously, even if they were completely new to her because they were rooted in the Devildom, and was doing very well in all of her classes. She wasn’t afraid to ask questions no matter how simple they seemed and he’d seen her when she was studying in the music room. She was determined when it came to school and he….
Lucifer paused before the next bite. And he what? Was proud? He had no reason to be proud of her, she wasn’t family. Yes, he’d chosen her to be here but that didn’t mean anything. She was under his care so her successes would reflect well on him. But he knew himself well enough to know it wasn’t that and that he didn’t want to think about what it could be.
The silence in the kitchen wasn’t oppressive as it fell completely over them; in fact it was quite the opposite. Beel was always good company and Cadence’s quiet presence was oddly comforting. Other humans he’d been around had loud and annoying auras, so much poured into it because of how shortly they lived. Yet Cadence was a silent, blank spot beside him. Everyone had noticed it that first time they’d ‘lost’ her. She didn’t give off an aura that was easy to find and it made him wonder all over again just how ‘normal’ she was. Asmo claimed she had deeper magic than Solomon but she hadn’t done anything to give them that impression. There wasn’t anything that should have set her apart from any other human on the street and yet she had snared four of his brothers already.
Sipping at his wine, he looked at her again. She was making notes on a small pad of paper beside her as she read, her handwriting crisp and clean even though he knew she was only going to rewrite them. Who was this little human that could move his brothers the way she had? Who was this little human that fascinated him-
Lucifer slammed that thought down before it fully formed. That was simply asking for trouble he did not want or need. She was only going to be here for a year. He wasn’t so foolish to think that there would be anymore than that and she was….
Cadence sighed suddenly and stretched. “I’m going to finish this in my room,” she said, packing up her things. “I hope you liked the meal, Lucifer.”
“It is well done, Cadence.” It was just as good as every meal she had prepared for them so far. Better somehow. “Give some thought to what I said.”
The corner of her mouth kicked up in her crooked half smile and she looked at Beel. “Thanks for helping me,” she said.
“Do you want to take some custard with you?”
She laughed and shook her head. “I learned my lesson with you and custard but thank you. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
Beel said his goodbyes and Lucifer nodded. But he froze in his seat as her hand slid along his arm as she passed him. One stroke, from shoulder to elbow, with just enough pressure for him to feel it. He barely moved but his gaze shifted, following her out the door. What was that? Why had she done that?
He’d seen her absently touch his brothers, small presses of her hand to them. He’d seen all of them light up every time she’d done it. But she’d never done it to him. He didn’t spend as much time with her and he kept his respectable distance. He didn’t give her much of an opportunity to get close. He hadn’t wanted the same kind of familiar intimacy that touch suggested. All that and more ran through his head when he saw her do it to anyone else but not him.
So why did he suddenly feel like he’d been missing out on something?
“Do you not like it?”
Lucifer looked to see Beel giving him a confused look. “I already said that it was good. I wasn’t lying. Cadence is a good cook.”
Beel shook his head, his mouth pulling down in a puzzled frown. “No not that.”
Lucifer returned his brother’s frown. “Then what?”
“Her touching you. You got this funny look on your face when she did it. Kind of like you ate something that didn’t taste the way you expected?”
Of course Beel would relate it back to food. But he hadn’t realised his brother had been watching or that he had made any type of face in response to her touch. How did he answer that though? He already had enough lies and secrets on his plate where his brothers were concerned; he didn’t want to add to it.
Beel sighed and went back to his meal. “She does it a lot,” he said around a bite. “Have you noticed? I think it’s because she’s warming up to us. Properly. She’s kinda like you.”
Lucifer snorted. “How is Cadence remotely like me?”
“She doesn’t really let people in. Or she does but it’s just on the surface. No one really knows a lot about her, she’s good at deflecting the conversation, and-” Beel paused, dark eyes flicked up to Lucifer before back down.
“And?” he prompted when his brother didn’t continue.
“People are scared of her because they don’t understand her,” he muttered.
“People are scared of me because of who I am, Beel, and they should be.”
“Also because they don’t understand you,” he insisted. “You’re not scary all the time.”
He wanted to ask how Cadence was even remotely scary when she was barely over five feet tall, but he’d heard the story of what had happened with the lack of coffee one morning. She had snapped as hard as Satan and put a certain kind of fear into his brothers that he admired.
“And she’s lonely.”
Lucifer paused in eating to look at his brother. Beel had said it so quietly, as if the words had slipped out unbidden. But was it because it applied to Cadence or that his brother thought it applied to him? “I’m not lonely. I have all of you and Lord Diavolo,” Lucifer assured his brother.
The look Beel gave him cut into him. “You don’t really let us in either, Lucifer. Not anymore.”
There was nothing he could say to that.
Beel gave him a smile and shrugged. “I think you two would get along really well if you spent more time together,” he said, finishing what was on his plate.
“We all live in the same house.”
“Yeah, but you don’t do things with her. You really should. She’s actually fun when she opens up and she’s really good at cooking. She made me these cookies the other day that had this frosting on them that tasted like candy. She won’t tell me how she did it but she promised to make more.”
Lucifer smiled faintly. Of course she was winning Beel over further with her cooking. But listening to Beel talk about her made him realise that he was right. He did barely spend any time with her. What time he had had mostly been spent either apologising or explaining things to her. Or threatening to end her life.
His mouth flattened before he smoothed his expression out. The whole point of this exchange program was to build bridges between the realms. How were they supposed to do that when he wasn’t building anything with the student living under the same roof as him? But what was there to do? The one time he’d taken her shopping he’d seen how much she’d balked at what he’d spent for her. “What is she even interested in?” he mused.
“Lots of things. Satan said he took her to an art showing at the museum and she loved it. She plays games with Levi. Her and Mammon are devouring every series Levi gives them. Asmo takes her shopping and we go looking for new places to eat. She really liked that horror movie night we had too.”
All things very keyed to his brothers or them as a group, but what of his interests would line up with hers? Rolling his wine glass between his hands, he thought about it before smiling. Opening night was coming soon. Perhaps he could interest her in another dinner and a show this time. She was always holed up in the music room to do her homework and had started actually playing music for them to hear so they knew she was in there. Perhaps….
“Are you going to finish your meal?”
Lucifer gave Beel a dry look. “I’m not going to waste the effort that went into keeping it safe.”
“Could always ask her to cook it again for you. Or something else. She said she’d make cheesy omelettes again on her next breakfast shift.”
She’d definitely won Beel over...and he wasn’t opposed to having more of her cooking.