Work Text:
A cold breeze breathes over your bare arms, goosebumps raising the little hairs on your skin. The night beyond the cracked-open planetarium window is illuminated only by the light of unfamiliar stars, the leaves on the forest edge nearly black, rustling ever so slightly in the wind. The room is dark; you didn’t bother to turn the lights on when you finally decided to quit trying to sleep, and there’s barely enough light for your human eyes to see the furniture. It’s slightly brighter by the windowsill where you sit, one pajama-bottomed leg resting on the frame, your arms around it, and one leg dangling, bare foot resting comfortably on the tile floor.
You aren’t fully sure how long you sit, body desensitizing itself in the cold, before you hear the door to the room open. You keep staring out of the window, wondering vaguely which brother had stumbled into your sanctuary for the night.
“I didn’t expect to find you here.” It’s Lucifer, his voice low and quiet and something you can’t quite identify.
“I couldn’t sleep.” You turn your head, seeing him in his normal outfit. You’d vaguely anticipated pajamas on him as well, considering the lateness of the hour.
Your head is full of snow, soft and light.
“Aren’t you cold?” He gestures towards you, at your tank top, and his face slowly swims into view as he approaches. He stops at the back of a plush loveseat, gloved hand resting on the blanket folded on the back. “It’s freezing in here.”
The breeze comes in through the window again, as if to emphasize his point, but you just shrug. You’ve stopped wanting to shiver at this point. “I’m alright.”
Lucifer sits on the loveseat, graceful and silent, and you turn your head to gaze at the dark treeline once more.
Your eyes try to see patterns in the blanket-like darkness, looking for figures peering out of the trees. If you dwell on them for too long, you’ll convince yourself that something is watching you, so you look back up at the stars, aching for familiar constellations among a foreign sky.
“I like to come here when I can’t sleep as well.” His voice cuts through the silence again, and you decide that the adjective you’re searching for is gravelly. His voice is gravelly, like he’s been up for too long. He probably has. You hear him shift. “It feels separate, less chaotic than the rest of the house.”
“I usually find stars comforting,” you say, your own voice sounding distant to your ears. Your body doesn’t belong to you right now. “But they’re different here.”
“The Devildom exists in a different plane than Earth. Your planet, your solar system, are somewhere completely different.” You feel like you may have known that. It feels alien enough. “The Celestial Realm exists in a similar plane. The stars there are nearly the same as Earth’s, but mirrored.”
You picture Ursa Major flipped around, and give a not-quite-laugh. The two of you are silent again.
The cold lives in your bones.
Eventually, you turn your head again, looking at the seat next to Lucifer. “It feels lonely,” you murmur, not just talking about the stars.
“Would you like to sit?” Lucifer gestures towards the seat you’re staring at, and you wonder when he took his gloves off. “I promise I won’t bite.”
You smile, just slightly, and nod. Standing feels like quite a task, your limbs unfamiliar, but you make it, feeling like you’re wading through water. Lucifer is holding the blanket from the loveseat in one hand and stretching out his other in invitation.
Pausing, you close the window, flipping the lock.
Lucifer wraps the blanket around your shoulders when you sit, pulling you against him, and you press against him fully. The heat from his body bleeds into yours, and you begin to remember your body. “Better?” he asks.
You nod. You don’t know what to do with your hands. They’re not yours. You sigh, squeezing your eyes shut, but you feel no more real, so you open them again.
Lucifer grasps your shoulder harder, just by a fraction, and reaches out his other hand. Another invitation. You take it. You’re unsure if you’ve even seen him barehanded before. His fingernails shine darkly, and you can’t tell if they’re black or some other dark color. His skin is soft, not baby-smooth but clearly used to being protected by another layer, and his fingertips have already begun to grow cold. You wonder if that’s why he keeps them covered.
He squeezes your hand, gently, and you squeeze back. I’m here, he says. I know, you say.
You fall asleep, tucked into his side, head pressed into his chest, lulled by the steadiness of his breathing and the warmth of his body against yours.
You wake up to your morning alarm, under the weight of your own comforter in your bed, and you briefly wonder if you simply dreamed of the planetarium last night. Of Lucifer opening up by a fraction.
But, as you sit up, you see the blanket from the back of the loveseat folded over one of your own chairs, and a note sits on top.
I can teach you some of the constellations in our sky, if you’d like. -L
You smile.