Chapter Text
Lucifer wakes with a start, nausea and a sense of general unease falling over him. He attempts to remember what he was dreaming about, but it fades in and out, then leaves him all together. He sighs deeply, summoning a glass of water. He slowly sips at it, letting himself wake up and cool off. As the nausea fades, he can't seem to shake the growing feeling of restlessness. Lucifer sets down the glass on his bedside table, and lays his face in his hands, groaning in frustration. 'This's gonna be a long night' he thinks to himself, before dragging his body from his bed and walking to the bathroom attached to his room.
Looking in the mirror, Lucifer notices just how exhausted he looks, his face paler than usual, eyes slightly baggy from many prior long nights. He does his best to rinse the sleepiness from his face, before stepping back into his room and checking the time. A duck shaped clock hanging on the wall displays the time digitally, 2:21am. Too early to start the day, but too awake to try to wrestle himself back to sleep. Anxiety slowly begins to creep up Lucifers spine, followed by the slow melancholy of a depressive episode, attempting to worm its way into his brain. He decides to step outside the confines of his increasingly clostrophobic room.
As Lucifer steps into the corridor outside of his room, he attempts to shake his mind into recognition. It's been two days since he moved into the Hazbin Hotel. Originally his plan was to move in as a strong showing of support for his daughter, but over the last two days he's slowly realized that its become more of an escape. He spent so long stuck in that castle of his, all alone. Feelings of abandonment slowly building up walls he didn't know he could build, after Lillith left. He couldn't bring himself to remove the ring just yet though, she hadn't explicitly said it was over, right? Other feelings of animosity, aimed mostly at himself, for doing essentially the same thing to his beloved daughter, Charlie, who was so sweet and forgiving. If she asked, he'd give her the world, but he was so unsteady in his own convictions that he had no idea how he'd ever prove that to her.
Slowly, he walks closer to the middle of the corridor, where a third room exists. His room is on one side, and that overly cocky radio sinners room is on the opposite end. They'd been fighting non-stop over these last two days, it was almost like the petty demon was constantly stalking him. Seeking him out wherever he went, just in the hopes of getting a rise in him. He seemed to revel in the disappointment on Charlie's face, every time Lucifer got a stern talking to for falling into the demons traps. Lucifer was sure that by this time Alastor must be asleep, or, at the least, very hopeful, as he steps into the sitting room in between their respective sections. Charlie had insisted that they have one common room for the two of them, she really expects them to make up and get along.
Lucifer stands in the middle of the room, unsure of what he should do. He was hoping that the short walk here would ease his restless mind and body, but now he's just itching to do more. Move more. To let his mind sink, and to forget where or who he is, just for one night. Without even thinking, he feels himself moving furniture. By the time he comes back to himself, he sees all of the furniture that had been neatly organized through the room now pressed against the walls, all but one piece. An old phonograph, sitting just off of a wall. He approaches the phonograph, intent on the idea of making something work, anything to calm himself. He finds himself picking up a music track, one he's not sure if he had ever listened to or not, not that it really matters. He places the large record on the phonograph, and gently grabs the cue handle, settling the tonearm into place, allowing the song to play.