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Where you were going or how fast hardly mattered to you. All you wanted to do - needed to do - was to get away. Somewhere, anywhere, that was not the classroom with all those eyes staring at you, judging you, waiting for you to fuck up, so they could laugh at you, pick you apart with their gazes alone.
The ragged breaths you were gasping in made your lungs burn, and your heart felt as if it was about to burst through the ribs caging it inside of your chest. You could barely feel your legs as you kept propelling yourself forward to god knows where, ignoring your body begging you to stop, to just let yourself sink to the floor and fill your lungs with precious air. But you couldn’t stop, not with your brain screaming at you to keep running.
Suddenly, your world was thrown even more off balance than it had already been, your mind struggling to catch up with the unexpected collision. Something was gripping your upper arm and your waist, and it was the only thing holding you upright at the moment, because your knees had given out.
Being shaken and a voice shouting your name jolted you out of the stupor you had been caught in, and you finally glanced up to see a somewhat hazy, though familiar face, wearing a frown, red eyes piercing through you. He must have been attempting to get your attention for a while now. Blinking a few times, you tried to bring your surroundings back into focus, to orient yourself.
“Sorry, Lucifer,” you wheezed, trying to withdraw from his grip; all that did was make you even more aware of just how much your head was spinning, how you were unable to stand on your own legs. He carefully lowered you down on the stone tiles and knelt in front of you, the hand on your arm sliding to your wrist, wrapping his fingers around it. Your pulse was thumping frantically beneath the cool leather of his gloves, and you distantly wondered at what point your body would reach its limit and shatter in his hold, bursting into thousands of pieces.
“Look at me,” Lucifer said sternly when you wouldn’t stop staring at his hand, wide-eyed. “You need to breathe properly. Slowly.”
Grateful to have something to focus on that wasn’t the panic-addled urge of your brain to run away, you willingly obeyed his command and looked up at him. Perhaps it was just your mind playing tricks on you, but his eyes seemed to be softening, although his voice didn’t lose its authoritative quality. “In… and out. Follow my rhythm,” he instructed you, taking ever so slightly exaggerated breaths for you to mirror.
It took a few moments of the unusually gentle coaxing, but eventually, you were breathing more steadily and your pulse returned to a healthy pace, the suffocating sensation retreating. The fog clouding your senses gradually dissipated, and he let go of you, sitting back. After giving you a moment of silence to gather yourself, he asked, “Are you feeling any better?”
You nodded, starting to feel a bit awkward about the situation. Lucifer was one of the last people you’d wanted to see you like that. “Yes, thank you.”
“Good. Now, care to tell me what that all was about?” he questioned firmly, albeit not half as harshly as you expected him to be.
Chewing on your bottom lip, you considered your words for a few seconds, fidgeting with your hands. He was always so well put-together and perfect; surely he would judge you if you explained to him what had happened, maybe even get angry. “I’m not good at holding presentations,” you finally started to explain sheepishly. “It makes me really nervous. No matter how much I practice before or how much I prepare myself, it just never goes well. I forget what I should be saying.” You shrugged helplessly. “I start to panic. And then I run away.”
“You struggle with holding presentations?” he repeated incredulously.
Feeling shame wash over you, you scrambled to explain yourself, a knot forming in your stomach, “I know, I know, it’s stupid, I should just pull myself together, practice more, and-”
Lucifer frowned, raising his hand to cut you off. “That is not what I was trying to say. I’m simply confused as to why you have not made me or anyone aware of this issue. We could have found a different way for you to complete the assignment.”
Surprised, your eyes snapped up to look at him, and you searched his face for any signs that he was making a joke, but there were none. “Are you serious?”
He huffed, sounding somewhere between amused and exasperated. “Of course. I am not one to joke about such matters.” He rose to his feet, holding out his hand towards you to help you up. You accepted, and you quickly found yourself upright again - maybe a bit too quickly, because you would have fallen right back to the ground if it hadn’t been for him steadying you. Once you were standing securely, he released you and stepped back, reestablishing a respectful distance. “Do you wish to resume your classes or would you prefer to return to the House of Lamentation for today to recuperate?”
“Am… am I allowed to just… skip the classes?” you asked in disbelief. The blatant astonishment in your voice gained you an odd look from Lucifer that you couldn’t quite decipher.
“Yes. I imagine that this must have been rather exhausting, no? Surely, resting after such an experience would be wiser than forcing yourself to attend the rest of today’s classes,” he argued as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe.
You stared blankly at him for a few seconds before nodding slowly. “Yeah, I guess.”
An awkward beat of silence passed between the two of you, and he cleared his throat. “I will escort you back, then.”
“What? But Satan was supposed to bring me back today… and aren’t you too busy anyway?”
He stiffened slightly at your reaction, straightening up more. “Unlike you, Satan is not free to ‘skip’ the rest of his classes today. As for my workload, you need not concern yourself with that. I assure you, I am fully capable of managing that myself.”
“Right. Yes. Sorry,” you mumbled, your face heating up.
He dismissed your apology with a wave of his hand. “No matter. Shall we go, then?”
With a nod, you started following him as he turned around, walking back towards the House of Lamentation. The walk was uneventful, aside from some stiff small talk you engaged in. Back inside, Lucifer addressed you again, “I assume you will be fine on your own?” When you nodded, he continued, “I shall go to my study now. I still have paperwork to tend to, but I shall also see to it that your needs will be accommodated in the future. If there are any other issues you have not mentioned yet, anything else I should know, now would be the time to tell me.”
His eyes bore into yours, making you shift uneasily. “There is nothing else,” you eventually said, lowering your gaze to escape the intensity of his. “Just- just the presentations.”
He hummed thoughtfully, regarding you with a furrowed brow. “Alright then. If that changes, inform me immediately. And I hope, for your sake, that you are telling the truth. I do not take kindly to having things hidden from me.”
“That’s all there is,” you promised earnestly, working up the courage to look up at him again. “I will tell you if something is the matter. And thank you for your help. Really.”
At that, Lucifer relaxed a little, seemingly pleased with your response. “Off you go then. Get some rest.”
You nodded and made your way up to your room, eager to finally be alone and curl up in bed. Closing the door behind you and kicking off your shoes, you crawled under your heavy blanket, sighing in relief at the familiar comforting weight. For some time, you were simply lying there, thinking about what had happened. If anyone had told you that Lucifer would end up helping you like that, you would have laughed at them. While you didn’t know him well after just a few weeks in the Devildom, you knew enough to assume he would react negatively to an emotional display like that. Or at least you thought you did.
Two light knocks on your door startled you, and you scrambled to get up, opening it to reveal Lucifer standing in front of you. He regarded you for a moment before clearing his throat and pressing a steaming mug into your hands. Accepting it, you wrapped your fingers around it, feeling the warmth seeping through the material. “I’ve read that humans like to drink tea to relax,” he said, looking at you intently.
For a while, you didn’t know what to say, blinking wordlessly at him. Then, you smiled at him, a tingly sensation spreading through your chest. “Thank you. That’s really nice of you.”
An odd expression flickered across his face briefly before he schooled his features back into their naturally neutral state. “Of course. Make sure to get proper rest tonight. Should you need anything else, let me know.”
Giving you one last nod, he walked away, leaving you to close your door and sit down with the mug in your hands. You took a careful sip from the hot liquid, savoring the slightly sweet flavor on your tongue.
Perhaps Lucifer wasn’t as bad as you had thought him to be.