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Lucifer blinked down at the ring glittering under the light of the chandelier, then up at Alastor’s face. Alastor’s face, which was decorated with an open smile, his eyes sparkling from the flickering candles all around them. Lucifer kept waiting for the mirage that was in front of him to waver and disappear, but Alastor stayed where he was, down on one knee before him.
Kind of like-
Almost like he was-
“What?” was what came out of Lucifer’s mouth after a long moment of stupefied silence.
“Lucifer,” Alastor began, his tone smooth and sombre. “These last few years spent by your side have been the most entertaining I can remember.”
Lucifer felt his shoulders go slack. “Huh?”
Alastor went on, “Though I have only lived a fraction as long as you, I truly believe I can envision the rest of my immortal afterlife with you in it. I think I’d even miss the occasional rubber duck quacking waking me up in the middle of the night.”
Lucifer’s brain was a tumbleweed rolling aimlessly about the wasteland of his head. “You what?”
Alastor laughed softly under his breath, reaching forward to take Lucifer’s hand. “I am asking you, my dearest Lucifer, if you will break your divorcee status by marrying me.”
Marry me.
The words rattled around in Lucifer’s skull, finally shocking himself out of the still spell that had fallen over him. He blinked rapidly, shaking his head and taking half a step back. Out of everything he’d been expecting from this night, this was not on his list of imagined possibilities.
Alastor poisoning his food to make him burp sparkly confetti? A tried-and-true prank. Alastor waltzing him right over to the fireplace to throw him in with the burning logs? A natural course of action for one such as he. Bombarding him with cheesy knock-knock jokes over the entirety of their dinner? A treat, in all honestly.
But this?
No. Lucifer had not seen this coming.
“You…want to marry me?” Lucifer asked, trying to puzzle it out even as he said it.
Alastor inclined his head, the blackened tips of his hair brushing his shoulders. The points of his dainty antlers were pointed right at Lucifer’s heart.
“I do,” he replied evenly.
Anger, sudden and hot, lashed through Lucifer as the pieces all fell into place. So, this was the game, huh? Alastor must have caught onto how much he wanted to get married again, though Lucifer had thought he’d hid his feelings on the matter a little better. Apparently not. Now, on their anniversary of all things, Alastor had concocted the perfect prank to get Lucifer’s hopes up—flowers, a romantic dinner, slow dancing—only to pull the rug out from under him and laugh in his face.
“Got you!”
He could practically hear Alastor’s mad cackling echoing from their last failed Halloween party.
“I get it,” Lucifer said slowly. “You’re fucking with me.”
Alastor’s ear twitched. He tipped his head back to look up at Lucifer, his smile spasming slightly on his face.
“I- Come again?”
“You must think you’re sooo funny,” Lucifer went on, drawing his hand back from Alastor’s grip. He pinwheeled his arms around at the lobby, the candles placed carefully across every surface. “Putting in all this effort just to mess with me? Well, let me tell you something, mister; you’re not getting me this time. I can see right through you.”
Alastor watched him silently as Lucifer ranted, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints, his smile a frozen rictus grin. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting to have his ruse called out. Well, Lucifer was sorry to rain on his parade, but he wouldn’t be made a fool of tonight.
Slowly, like a puppet being pulled up by its strings, Alastor rose to his feet. He snapped the box containing the ring shut and frowned at Lucifer.
“You…think I’m joking?” Alastor asked.
His voice gave Lucifer pause. It wasn’t the Aw, shucks! chagrined tone a prankster having their bluff called ought to have used. Everything about Alastor was oddly still and quiet, his body seeming to half phase into the shadows around them as he regarded Lucifer without blinking.
Lucifer, however, knew that if he let a crack of weakness show, Alastor would pounce on it in an instant, and he’d be torn to shreds. So, he swallowed his misgivings and powered on.
“Of course I do,” Lucifer snapped back. A huff of a laugh escaped him as he said incredulously, “You really expect me to believe you’d ask me to marry you?”
Something shifted in Alastor’s expression. His smile stayed fixed in place but shutters fell over his eyes. He rose to his feet and took a long step back, away from Lucifer. He slipped the ring box back into his pocket and dropped into a shadow without a word. Lucifer watched him slither up the wall and disappear in puzzled silence, having the distinct feeling he was missing something.
Movement to his left caught his eye and he glanced over to see Niffty darting from her spot near the fireplace, her viola abandoned on the armchair.
“Alastor!” she called out, her eye pinned to the spot he’d vanished from.
She threw a nasty look at Lucifer over her shoulder before dashing up the stairs faster than he would’ve thought her little legs capable of carrying her. Lucifer watched her go, his confusion only growing as he was left to stand alone in the middle of the candlelit lobby.
Suddenly, the kitchen doors burst open behind him. Lucifer spun around to see Charlie and Angel collapse onto the carpet, Charlie’s horns out, fangs bared in a vicious growl, and her tail wrapped around Angel’s neck. Angel squeaked and clawed at the red appendage constricting his throat, his eyes rolling back into his head. Behind them, Cherri and Husk poked their heads through the door, silently observing while Cherri pointed her phone at them.
Charlie’s snarl vanished as she whipped her head up to stare at Lucifer, her horns instantly retracting and her eyes returning to their usual butter-yellow.
“Dad!” she called out, racing over to him. Her tail disappeared and Angel flopped, face down into the carpet, dragging in a stuttering, wheezing breath. Charlie stopped in front of Lucifer, her eyes filled with concern and darting all across his face. “What happened? I couldn’t hear what was going on but I saw Alastor leave. Is everything okay?” She gasped, her eyes filling with horror and hand flying to her mouth. Between her fingers, she asked, “You didn’t say no, did you?”
Lucifer blinked at her, a coldness beginning to pool in the soles of his boots and climbing higher, up his legs, nipping at his skin and seeping into his blood. With numb lips, he asked, “What’re you talking about?”
Now Charlie was frowning. “What do mean, what am I talking about? I saw Alastor get down on one knee. I know he proposed! But what happened?”
The coldness shaped into a hand that gripped Lucifer’s heart in a fist, squeezing until he thought it might burst. He had to materialise his cane into his hand to lean on for support as he panted at the ground. The pattern on the carpet was beginning to swim, visions of Alastor’s detached eyes flitting through his head.
“You mean,” Lucifer breathed, “He was- He was being serious?”
Charlie sounded confused as she asked, “What do you mean-?”
She cut herself off and when Lucifer stared up at her, she looked as panicked as he felt.
“Dad,” Charlie began evenly. “Please tell me you knew it was a real proposal?”
The beat of silence that passed between them was confirmation enough, and Lucifer watched in agony as Charlie’s mouth fell open in an astonished O.
“Dad!” she began, but Lucifer was already moving.
He turned on his heel, throwing his arm out and summoning a portal at lightning speed. “I gotta go!” he yelled, clutching at his hat as he leapt through the portal.
The last thing he heard before it snapped shut behind him was Angel’s voice groaning. “Anyone got a—hrrk!—lemon drop?”
Lucifer stumbled into a tuck and roll across his and Alastor’s bedroom, losing his hat along the way. He jumped to his feet, whipping his hatless head around wildly, but Alastor was nowhere to be seen. A searching probe of magic confirmed that he wasn’t anywhere in their rooms, his unique power scent entirely absent.
“Shit,” Lucifer cursed, throwing open another portal into Alastor’s old rooms across the top floor.
As Lucifer reached his hand out, he detected wards cast across the room’s perimeter, a spell meant to block unwanted visitors from entering. Wards had always been more of a symbolic gesture in Lucifer and Alastor’s relationship, a clear sign to say go away. Of course, Lucifer could break the wards in an instant, but it was the message that was important. Alastor didn’t want to see him so badly, he’d put up a very clear sign shaped in an upturned middle finger.
Lucifer chewed his lip as indecision fought within him. He had to talk to Alastor—needed to fix his colossal fuck up so Alastor could stop being mad at him. But then, if he broke his wards and entered his private rooms without permission, Alastor would be mad at that too. Truly a lose/lose situation. Lucifer deliberated for a moment before deciding he’d be a loser, so long as he didn’t lose Alastor, and stepped through the portal, trampling the fuck you wards on his way through.
“Alastor?” Lucifer called out as he stepped onto the dewy grass of Alastor’s bayou.
The portal zipped shut behind him, leaving only the sound of chirping crickets and the gentle rustling of leaves. The sky above reflected the night on Earth from whatever place Alastor had created this bayou to look like. Every time Lucifer stepped foot in there, he was reminded of his own days on Earth long, long ago.
“Alastor?” Lucifer yelled again as he began stumbling through the thicket of trees, pushing aside branches and crushing weeds beneath his boots. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know! Would you please just-?“
He faltered as his magic latched onto Alastor’s power scent, drawing him to take a right turn. Lucifer did, breaking into a sprint as he followed after the trail his magic was pulling him down. His desperation mounted with every step, his breaths coming in and out of him in wild puffs as he approached a break in the trees.
Alastor. He needed to see Alastor. Needed to explain himself—that he loved him, wanted to spend the rest of his immortal life with him, wanted to marry-
Lucifer burst through the gap in the trees and tripped straight over a cliff. He squawked as he fell, slipping into his duck form before he even registered what was going on. Luckily, it wasn’t a very steep cliff, and he landed in the water below with a soft plop! Cool currents washed over his slick feathers as Lucifer kicked his way back up to the surface with webbed feet. He poked his head out of the water, shaking some droplets from his bill, when he heard a voice speak behind him.
“Quite an entrance.”
He whipped his long neck around to see Alastor standing in the waist-high water. He was still dressed in his fancy black suit, some strands of hair slipping free from his hairpin and sticking to his damp face. His eyes were still hooded and subdued as he regarded Lucifer coolly.
“Alastor!” Lucifer exclaimed, changing back into his regular form with a poof of golden smoke. He waded through the water (much higher on him than it was on Alastor) until they were only feet apart. “There you are-“
“You shouldn’t be here, Lucifer,” Alastor cut in, turning his shoulder on him just enough to glare at Lucifer over. “I thought I made that quite clear.
Lucifer could apologise for the wards later. Right now, he needed to make Alastor understand.
“I’m sorry!” Lucifer cried, throwing himself the last few feet through the water to wrap his arms around Alastor.
Alastor made no move to hug him back, simply stood there, allowing Lucifer to pin his arms to his sides and nuzzle into his shoulder. Lucifer tipped his head back to stare up at Alastor, whose mouth was barely upturned in a smile, his eyes fixed on some point far in the distance. Lucifer just squeezed him tighter, trying to impress his thoughts on Alastor through touch alone.
“I thought- I didn’t realise you meant what you were saying!” he blabbered, spitting some stray swamp water out of his mouth.
Alastor glanced down at him sharply, his lip curling back from his mouth. “You really think I would joke about something like that?”
Yes, Lucifer thought instantly.
“I- Maybe?” he said aloud. When Alastor’s snarl intensified, he scrambled to add, “I just mean, you took me by surprise!”
“Yes, well,” Alastor barked out around a laugh, his eye twitching almost imperceptibly. “It was supposed to be a surprise. A pleasant surprise.”
“So, you can understand my suspicion,” Lucifer shot back, his voice mumbled against Alastor’s shoulder.
A breath hissed out from between Alastor’s teeth as he turned away to glare out into the trees some more. Lucifer’s heart seized in his chest like it was…attacking him or something. He resisted the urge to shift into an octopus so he could hug Alastor tighter and settled for squeezing him harder with his arms.
“Alastor, I’m sorry I ruined your proposal. I’m an idiot! A moron! A fucking nitwit!”
“Degrading yourself?” Alastor murmured. “You’re really trying to get into my good graces now.”
“If I’d known you were serious, I-“ Lucifer choked on his own words as images began flashing through his mind. An alternative version of tonight where he hadn’t royally fucked everything up, where he’d listen to Alastor’s planned little speech as he popped the question, had said yes like a normal person, and allowed Alastor to slip that ring onto his finger. The wave of yearning that washed over him was so strong, he could’ve drowned in it. He shook his head and forged on. “Of course, I want to marry you. I can’t imagine wanting anything more in this moment.”
Alastor went still in his arms, the only signal that he’d heard what Lucifer said being the twitching of his ear. Lucifer felt the vibrations of his voice rumbling in his chest before he heard him speak, quiet and airy.
“It sounds to me like…you want to ask me something?” Alastor commented.
Lucifer blinked, droplets from the swamp still dripping down from his hair. “Huh?”
Alastor’s head turned slowly round on his neck, like some creepy carnival game, until his glowing red eyes were peering down at Lucifer in the darkness. A grin was slowly beginning to stretch its way across his cheeks again, wiping away that solemn expression with something more characteristically Alastor.
“You’re expressing sentiments of wanting to marry me,” Alastor went on. Lucifer eased his embrace enough for Alastor to snake an arm free to roll his wrist in a loose gesture. “Typically, when people have such sentiments, they ask the object of their affection a certain question.”
The impish grin he aimed Lucifer’s way made the pieces slide together in his head and he let out a weary groan.
“Really?” he asked, hanging his head to thump it against Alastor’s chest. “You’re gonna make me do this?”
Alastor let out a tinkling laugh and it was like a balm to Lucifer’s skin just to hear that merriment from him again, even if it was at Lucifer’s expense.
“I’m not making you do anything,” Alastor corrected. “Simply reminding you of how these practices are usually performed. You really ought to know all of this. You were married before.”
Lucifer sighed as he dropped his arms from Alastor’s trim waist and stepped back. He supposed this really was the best case scenario, considering his dunderheaded behaviour. So, he spread his wings out and lifted himself from the water with a single flap, using a sprig of magic to dry himself out instantly. He allowed a little heavenly light to shine from him, just to make the image all the more dazzling as he gently lowered himself back to the water’s surface. Another dollop of magic allowed him to kneel down on the water as though it were solid ground, putting him at eye-level with Alastor, who watched on with a placid smile.
“Alastor,” Lucifer began, projecting his voice enough to fill the entirety of their little clearing. “Since the day I met you, I couldn’t stand you.”
Alastor let out a high-pitched hum. “Buttering me up already, I see.”
“Just let me finish,” Lucifer hissed, and Alastor held up a relenting hand, so he cleared his throat and continued. “I couldn’t stand you. You were everything I’d always hated about sinnerkind: self-interested, devious, sadistic. I couldn’t understand why Charlie had decided to let you into her life. But then I got to know you better, and I saw other sides to you. How courageous, and thoughtful, and funny you are, and I started to understand. I understood because I found myself falling for you.”
And it had been a far greater fall than even his descent from Heaven, his love for Alastor dragging him to depths of emotion he hadn’t realised himself capable of feeling. For so long, he’d been trapped in the prison of his mind, his own misgivings about himself leaving him in a paralysed limbo, unable to turn back but unwilling to move forward either. Having Charlie back in his life had opened up his mind to new possibilities, but having Alastor had opened up the soul he hadn’t known he still possessed to the idea of a future.
“Now,” Lucifer said, his words beginning to get clogged up in his throat as the sting of tears burned his eyes, “I can’t imagine my life without you in it. I don’t want a life without you in it. So, Alastor…will you marry me?”
Alastor’s cheery smile had changed throughout Lucifer’s speech. His lips closed and his eyelids hung low, his expression softening into something Lucifer rarely got to see on him, but always cherished when he did. A genuine smile, nothing put-on or masking about it.
“Well,” Alastor said, the radio filter slipping from his voice. “I had anticipated turning you down and making you grovel some more, but after a speech like that, how could I say no? Yes, Lucifer. I will marry you.”
Lucifer’s heart sprouted wings of its own, taking flight in his chest and doing looping flips around his ribs. His face felt like it was going to split in two with how hard he was grinning, and he pounced, tackling Alastor in an embrace and kissing him silly as they both collapsed back into the water.
Sometime later, after they’d celebrated their new engagement in the pond, Lucifer and Alastor dragged themselves onto the grassy shore, lying down in their sodden clothes and staring up at the starry sky visible between the canopy of willow trees. Lucifer had his head tipped onto Alastor’s chest, fingers stroking over the pulse of his heart. Now that he knew they had eternity before them together, he felt tempted to stay there with Alastor forever, just the two of them and the moonlight.
“I suppose I ought to give you this,” Alastor said after a long stretch of silence, bar the cicadas chirping all around them.
Lucifer lifted his head up to see Alastor reach into his damp suit jacket and retrieve the little box of black velvet from his pocket. He propped himself up onto his elbows and snapped the case open, displaying the ring once more. Lucifer hadn’t taken a good look at it the first time he’d seen it, as he’d been more preoccupied with his self-imposed surety that Alastor was taking him for a ride.
Now, he examined the ring closely, watching at Alastor plucked it from the box. It was a band of metal, black as obsidian, wrapped over with a film of smoked glass. As Lucifer watched, he saw that what he’d taken for a pattern was actual smoke moving beneath the glassy surface. It wafted round and round, the occasional flicker of red, like a fork of lightning, pulsing through it.
“It is imbued with a piece of my magic,” Alastor explained as he took Lucifer’s hand. “This way, even when we are apart you will always have me with you. A thread tying you to me.”
Lucifer allowed him to slide ring onto his finger, feeling the metal shift to perfectly fit. He held his hand up in the moonlight and felt the faintest pulse of warmth against his knuckle, a minute trace of Alastor’s power scent brushing against him.
“Alastor,” Lucifer said softly, bringing his hand down to cradle against his chest. “It’s- I love it.”
Alastor preened at this, grinning wide. “As I thought you would. And don’t worry, I won’t mention that you proposed without a ring.”
His smug smile and laugh made Lucifer pout. Lucifer snapped his fingers and an instant later, a ring poofed into existence on Alastor’s finger. It was a match to the one Lucifer wore, though his ring was shaped out of gold, the smoke beneath the glass white and fluffy as a midday cloud, golden light rippling through it like a sunbeam. He slipped a shaving of his power into the metal and felt that piece of himself slip away, the pulsing of Alastor’s ring filling the crack.
“There,” Lucifer said with satisfaction, leaning back on his elbows as Alastor blinked down at his hand. “Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.”
Alastor hummed in agreement, the golden shine of the ring reflecting off of his eyes. He looked over at Lucifer, pushing himself up into a sitting position as Lucifer did the same. Arms reached out wordlessly as they curled around each other, twining together like a couple of vines. Lucifer pressed a kiss to the corner of Alastor’s mouth as Alastor breathed out a laugh.
“I suppose we’d best go inform the others of the news,” he said. “We left quite a mess, I’m sure.”
Lucifer winced as he thought of Charlie’s aghast face. He’d have to do some mighty fine explaining with her.
“Eesh. Yeah, you’re right.”
“We should explain it loudly,” Alastor went on, “so Niffty can hear us. You upset her quite a bit, I’m afraid. She may, in fact, be planning to hunt you for sport.”
Lucifer blinked as Alastor laughed at his stupefied expression. Hopefully, Niffty would give him a chance to explain himself and smooth things over, particularly since she was likely to be at their wedding and he wanted to make a good impression with his in-laws.
That alone was almost enough to comfort him against the thought of being stabbed in the neck with a needle in the dead of night. They were engaged. Alastor was going to be his husband.
For the first time in eons, Lucifer thought that Hell really wasn’t such a punishment after all.