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Rome in upheaval is a beautiful place. All that fluttering purple, the hushed conversations in Vatican courtyards... the drawn faces... nerves, all nerves...
Lucifer likes it.
It's a bit like that August of 1503, when change was in the air. Only now it's May, and the city is sweetness and blossom and balm, with La Famiglia Cristiana and the Osservatore Romano screeching at the top of their lungs that nothing, nothing is wrong. Celibacy really was one of his more inspired ideas, if he says so himself.
He folds the newspaper and puts up his legs, wriggling bare toes on the rattan. "You all right?" he calls back over his shoulder.
Just a minute ago, Jeshua still sat there, shadows under his eyes, his stellar tan gone sallow. "If you'll excuse me," he'd said. He looked none too steady on his feet.
His feet, his feet. Lucifer could write poems about his feet. Long-toed, perfectly arched. Even clean you can still taste the sand and the salt, with a hint of nard and hair. He remembers what they looked like on that fateful day when blood and piss pooled around the insteps.
"Yeah," comes Jeshua's croak from the bathroom.
"You're lying," Lucifer singsongs and stretches. The sun is warm on his pale legs. He closes his eyes and rests his head and softly smacks his lips. If he weren't this restless, if wandering weren't part of his sentence, he'd be happy to stay like this forever, with Perfection by his side. "On the rag again, are you?"
"What?" Jeshua's voice has that certain tinge of hysteria.
Yup, on the rag for sure, and the implications are sending shivers down Lucifer's spine, a luxurious blend of pity and excitement. He turns his head to blink into the murk where Jeshua is propped against the door jamb, holding himself like he's about to retch.
"That bad," Lucifer gently says.
Jeshua shakes his head but doesn't answer and Lucifer knows it's the blood; Jeshua hates when it bubbles in the corners of his mouth.
Taking his legs off Jeshua's chair, wiping newspapers aside, Lucifer rights himself and pats the seat - "c'mere, come" - but Jeshua tarries. Likely still debating with himself, wanting to know the why, the wherefore, the what has he done to deserve this, to have his leash pulled like a dog... "Seriously," Lucifer offers. "Come, sit. You look like shit."
And he does. His hair is limp and stringy. Wrapped in that old ratty bathrobe Lucifer stole from Yalta's Livadia Palace back in '45, he looks like a character out of Dostoyevsky. A rough El Greco sketch, executed in pallor and grime. When Jeshua walks over, it's with these slow, careful steps, arms clutched around his chest. If the whole thing weren't so amusing, it would make Lucifer very angry indeed.
But then he's always known - known it far longer than Jeshua, in fact - that the Name has a mean streak.
"Sit, sit," he croons, making a fussy gesture. "Lemme see."
Gingerly, Jeshua lowers himself. Then he keeps still, head cocked like a nervous horse.
Lucifer can't help it, can't help licking his lips, and it might very well be a forked tongue that tastes the air. "That," he says after a while, "looks fucking disgusting." Great fuck, it does. It's a miracle the lamb is breathing at all. And Lucifer doesn't know why he so resolutely pries the sodden towel out of Jeshua's hands; he has nothing to bandage the mess with. He tries newspaper and fails, gets blood and lymph everywhere, and curses Longinus to Hell and back. "Jesus. Don't you have any, I don't know, sanitary napkins or something? As often as this happens?"
Jeshua's eyes are shut. His nostrils quiver. "His name wasn't Longinus," he wheezes. "Nobody knows what his name was, or what became of him."
With one hand, Lucifer scrabbles for a cigarette and lights it. With the other he dabs at the ugly, gaping hole. "Well I know that," he snaps. "It was a metaphor. Vile military oppressors and redemption and that. But he just did his duty, didn't he? And you were dead. So this fucker-" he jabs, taking an angry drag, "could-" jab, "well-" jab, "stop bleeding already."
"Pass me a cigarette." How tired Jeshua sounds. "And stop poking me."
"Fine." Lucifer sits back and shrugs. "Just trying to help." He looks aside and thinks he can hear the flies. The carrion birds overhead. Soon it will start to rain. "They should have broken your legs for good measure," he mutters, his own mean streak welling up.
Right. As if smashing a bit of bone would have kept the damn thing from rising. The flies are growing louder now, cranking up a deafening buzz. Foreheads scorched by their helmets, the soldiers are eating dust. The wind picks up and earth gets into his eyes. Up on the cross, Jeshua shouldn't be conscious, but he is: he sings to himself, sounding like a broken lyre with one string left.
Enough, enough.
It is done.
Shaking his head as if he had water in his ears, Lucifer reaches up and pulls gauze and tape from the air. "Enough," he snorts. "I've had it. You're insufferable, you know that? Lift your arms."
Jeshua makes a mewly, confused noise. "What?"
"Up. I'm taping you up. You're wasting relics."
"Ow!"
Lucifer smirks. Yeah, ow: just wait how the gaffer tape is going to feel once he rips it off. Probably going to lose a nipple or two. For now, the pressure is working wonderfully, though. "There. Better, no?"
"Mhnm," Jeshua says.
Oh yeah, better. At least he can breathe without sounding like a lonesome whistle. And the cigarette smoke doesn't ooze out, either; that just looked fucking ridiculous. Smug, Lucifer watches Jeshua relax, watches as he slides down the seat. Pain-taut joints go pop, muscles ripple with a purr, and Jeshua's eyes drift shut. First he keeps his knees closed like a Catholic School girl, then they gradually fall open. His hands fall open, too, scab flaking from his wrists.
What a relief that must be, to forget who you are. To forget the end now and then.
With a sigh, Lucifer picks up what's left of the paper and resumes reading. After a while he bends down and lifts Jeshua's feet and places them in his lap to pet them. Damn, could he get used to this.
He weaves his fingers between Jeshua's toes and yawns, squinting into the sun. Lucifer likes Rome in upheaval; it's so full of possibilities. And ordering the centurion to make sure Jeshua was quite, quite dead was one of his more inspired ideas, if he says so himself.
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