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There is, so to speak, a predicament.
Suffice to say that given the fact that they are in hell of course there is always a predicament, and as far as life in hell goes Alastor truly isn’t in the position to be the person complaining, but there is a predicament that he faces. It’s to absolutely no one’s surprise that the subject of the said predicament is Lucifer himself. Because what else could possibly fray the most powerful sinner in hell?
In reality, it’s a thing behind closed doors, both in the literal sense and the metaphorical sense. So maybe it isn’t a predicament at all but it is a thing that’s on his mind and it is something that has begun to disturb the so carefully built routines and plans that he has set in place. Both for himself, and those around him.
It’s the kind of predicament he thinks about now, standing outside Lucifer’s door while he waits for it to be opened. He’s only mildly concerned about the stumble and crash he hears inside.
“Alastor!” Lucifer practically yells, and this too, is a part of said thing— “Come on in!”
To think that six months ago this type of greeting would have crowded his head with thoughts of traps and schemes Lucifer might have set specifically tailored to harness his demise. All things considered, from the day Lucifer pulled him down by the collar of his shirt, and kissed him right there in the middle of his room in the most ridiculous duck printed pants known to mankind, they’ve had a good thing going.
“Charming as ever,” Alastor winks, brushing past him.
“Charmed as always,” Lucifer winks back, and the door clicks shut. “How was your day?”
“It wasn’t unlike any other day,”
“You had a meeting with the rest of the overlords today,” Not a question, as always, because Lucifer is in fact the type of lunatic to listen when he tells him what he has planned for his day; and then follow up on it when the day’s over. Alastor hums, watching Lucifer primly sit himself at his desk, completely ignorant of the bed, which exists for their use, and the couch which Alastor himself had pragmatically decided to seat himself in.
Paperwork, he’ll say, paperwork, he’ll do. It’s a whole bit.
And that, Alastor supposes, is his predicament. There’s no arm wrapping around him, Lucifer doesn’t plant himself soundly to his side, he just stands there, and grins like he’s the happiest bastard in all planes of reality and goes straight to talking. Not that Alastor hates these conversations, they are one of those precious little pieces of his existence that he will kill a man to keep in place undisturbed. And it’s not like Lucifer doesn’t touch him at all, it’s there. On the sides of his face when they kiss, a steady weight on his lap when he settles himself there on particularly slow nights, and well, in acts of passion, which isn’t saying much, given Alastor’s own moods and whimsies around the topic. So really, there isn’t anything to think of at all.
It’s just that maybe, just maybe, he wants Lucifer to claw onto him, dig into his flesh, sew himself there like some gold winged accessory Alastor would never be able to take off and then stay like that. Preferably to the end of eternity. Right up until the universe turns back into dust.
And then some.
Not that any of these treacherous thoughts will ever be voiced out loud as long as Alastor is in possession of his soul and his senses.
He has not drunk a drop of alcohol in weeks.
“Let me guess, you didn’t pay attention,”
“Mmm, More so that there wasn’t much to pay attention to,” Alastor corrects. “They say punish the Vees for their crimes, I say this is hell, we’re all actively being punished as is, yada yada,”
Lucifer chuckles. “I mean if anyone were to punish the Vees, it’ll have to be me,”
“Oh?”
“Listen, harming a sinner is out of the question but baby I am the king of hell,” Lucifer grins. “I am not barred from passing a bit of divine judgment,”
A good point. Alastor huffs. “You angels make no sense,”
“Part of my appeal don’t you think?”
“Never let it be questioned that you are the personification of pride,” Alastor rolls his eyes.
“You love me,”
“What was that I said about talking to the mirrors?” Alastor asks, pressing his back to the cushions of the couch in what he hopes is an inviting way, following Lucifer, who’d made the excellent choice to join him. He’s so utterly impressed he even gives him his hand unprompted. He’s rewarded with a kiss to his hand, one to the back, one to his palm because Lucifer is a gentleman like that, always a gentleman for a good five seconds before he makes his mouth useful elsewhere. It’s a battle long lost to keep the fondness away when Lucifer takes Alastor’s hand and guides it to the side of his face. “Hello,” he says, feeling the soft give of Lucifer’s cheek.
Lucifer leans into the touch.
“Hi,”
He wants to eat him alive, in a completely non-cannibalistic way. It’s maddening.
“You promised you’d actually let me finish work today,”
“I did nothing,” Alastor says, putting absolutely no effort to take his hand away from Lucifer’s face, or to remove Lucifer’s own hand placed around his wrist where it was drawing small circles into his skin. For all thoughts and purposes they might as well consider it glued in place. He smiles a bit wider. “By all means, get your head out of the metaphorical gutter,”
“Hush,” Lucifer chuckles, and lets go, settling back into the remnants of his work.
And really, you’d have to smite him from existence before anyone got him to stop his whole practice of prattishness in lieu of flirtation, and it hurts his own mortal pride to be sentimental— it gives him quite the acquired taste for violence; but what they have is good. All parameters in consideration Lucifer is a perfectly adequate, actually, a complete dream for a partner.
He’s thoughtful, communicative, patient to a fault. He’s never let Alastor’s own sharp inclinations in act nor in mood phase him, takes it all perfectly in stride, smooths his edges, soothes his aches, tends to all the places where he’s cut open by his own mind or another, matches him strike to strike. Alastor can recount several thousand creative insults they’ve hurled at each other, together or not together, he also could tell with the utmost confidence that none of it had ever been at his expense.
And Alastor, well, he tries to keep himself worthy of said care.
It’s quite unlike him, yet this whole relationship has a tendency of being in a state where he keeps surprising himself.
He’s used to being feared, loathed, respected, envied, among others, just as much as he is used to being afraid, or angered, or pained, or hurt, or triumphant, or ecstatic, by his own volition. If he feels something, Alastor prides himself in the fact that he feels it because he allows himself to. Because he chooses to. It’s like he picks an emotion out of the thousands laying in front of him, wears the smile that matches it, and that will be the emotion that he expresses. Carefully curated. That’s how you keep your friends safe and your enemies guessing.
Lucifer, unbeknownst to himself, has wreaked havoc in the careful organization of his parts and holds him right there, feeling big, undefined, damning feelings, and makes it feel alright.
He’s always been a greedy man.
But this time for the sake of his own fragile composure; he’d rather not find out what it would mean to take more than he is given; lest it all slip away.
Because it’s good. It really is. It’s just that it’s the type of good that makes you want everything and nothing at all.
So if Lucifer doesn’t want to touch him more than he has to, given the arrangement they are in, then sure. If Lucifer’s averse to certain types of touch, if there are boundaries there, then great. Boundaries are encouraged even. Hell knows he has his own complicated jumble of yes and no that Lucifer navigates with the precision of a skilled acrobat.
It’s just that the touch never comes. Not in the full force he wants it to. And he doesn’t know why, or what Lucifer might be thinking when he reaches, because Alastor sees him reach sometimes, and then decides not to.
✨▪️✨
In true angelic fashion, it takes Lucifer an approximation of maybe eight seconds past their first kiss to ask for exclusivity. And back then, it’s a big ask. Lucifer’s hair is mussed, his mouth still in half a shape of a kiss, there’s not a single finger’s width of space between their bodies, because Lucifer, for all his personality is amusingly small in size, and this requires either an uncomfortable level of bending from Alastor, or the maneuver of limbs they’ve found themselves in, wrapped up around each other where all angles meet in a pleasant center.
“I can’t— not like this- I–” Lucifer had begun. Alastor had thought then and there that that would be the stop, the end, one feverish slip of their collective judgment off the high of a triumph against heaven itself. Much rather, a return following what in a faraway corner of his own unassuming mind he had humored the thought that maybe when the angels struck Lucifer in the chest with their spear, and the whole town erupted in heavenly light that it would be the last time he’d see him.
But there he was, nails digging into Lucifer’s bare back; waiting to be told to let go because somehow he wasn’t going to release him on his own, now that he’d got his hands on him. “Alastor…”
“What?” he’d asked, betrayed by the way the static filter of his voice had cracked.
“We’re never doing that again unless this will just be you and me,”
And that had been that. Since then, they’d just… been. No one else was given a second thought. This was theirs, to build, to figure out while Lucifer came back full force to take on hell as its king, and Alastor went back to the overlords and the hotel, just to make sure order was once more in its place.
Lucifer’s ring had been taken off by then. Neither father nor daughter speak of it, just in quiet acknowledgement that Lilith was no more a part of what they had, and would not be a part of what they would build. The day he took the ring off, Lucifer had shown up at his door with takeaway boxes Alastor would recognize to be straight from cannibal town, looked him dead in the eye and said “I think we should make us official,”
And Alastor had tugged him inside and kissed him square on the mouth without another word.
They make no effort to tell anyone. They make no effort to hide it.
Just, one of those things that happens.
Alastor’s not quite sure who knows and who doesn’t.
It’s the same door that Alastor opens now, it’s far too early in the morning for Lucifer to be anywhere nearly as energetic as he is, and Alastor himself has barely picked out which suit piece goes with which for the day. “Ready to go?” Lucifer mutters into a kiss, pulling him out of his room and into the dreadful outside world.
“Bowtie,”
“Aw but you look good like this,” Lucifer pouts. “Very sexy. Roll up your sleeves,”
“This isn’t about how much or little you have to get through to undress me, I have important work to do,” Alastor swats away his arm; pretends to be fussy when Lucifer makes it a job to tie his bow for him.
It’s still quiet in the morning. A slow lull as the drunken and hungover nightlife bleeds back into the crevices of the city which Lucifer crosses to embassy meetings while Alastor runs errands for the hotel thrice every week on the other side of the city, which means Lucifer ends up making a forty minute detour every time they take this road, just to walk him to Zestiel’s towers. Alastor hates it. He loves it. There’s a certain appeal to comfortable silence.
Alastor notes how Lucifer doesn’t take his hand.
And it’s there again, his predicament. Because Lucifer’s not averse to throwing a jealous fit if anyone breathes incorrectly in Alastor’s direction, neither is he being stopped right now to brush away his hair out of his face, right there in the middle of the street. So it can’t be that he’s embarrassed to be seen with him like that in public.
“Are we still on for dinner tonight?” Lucifer asks, bumping against his shoulder.
“No- wait, I mean- yes,” Being difficult is unfortunately something that is built into him. Lucifer only smiles.
“I’ll pick you up from Rosie’s by six,”
“Time is a scam here,” Alastor begins, completely blocking out Lucifer’s indulgent laughter. “And I’m perfectly capable of coming to Lexi’s on my own,”
“Very capable I’m sure,” Lucifer agrees. “But I like walking with you, here—” he says, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Your hair…”
And Alastor lets him fuss about it, though they are both more than capable of putting the hair that the wind has swept up back into place by nothing but a snap of the fingers; only because it ends with Lucifer’s thumb brushing over his cheek. If anyone has a problem with this public display, on technicalities, it should be him. Unlike Lucifer’s status, which is a given, he has a reputation to maintain. “It’s getting long,” Lucifer murmurs, tugging at a strand of hair which falls right up at Alastor’s chin. They could kiss, if Lucifer leaned up, or if he himself leaned down.
Neither happens. Alastor absent-mindedly cups his hand over his before he inadvertently pulls back.
“I’m thinking about growing it out a little more,”
“Oh?”
“It’s just a thought,”
“You’d look pretty with long hair,”
“You just want hair to pull,”
Lucifer’s grin grows impossibly wider, which is telling something, given the permanency of Alastor’s own smile. “Among other things,” he winks. “I’d like you either way though, hair or no hair,”
“Your lack of standards is quite concerning,”
“You should speak for yourself,”
“I have better standards than you,”
“Do you now?” Lucifer asks, and this time Alastor is rewarded with a kiss on the cheek. It’s nothing but a fleeting, fluttering, typically dramatic brush of lips against his skin, but his ears ring with static the rest of the way to Zestiel’s, where Lucifer sends him off before he promptly steps into a portal to the other side of town.
He never did take him by the hand in the end.
✨▪️✨
Living in the hotel does not make it any easier.
Being the quote-unquote happiest place in hell, though Alastor respectfully disagrees alongside anyone else who has been to disco district; the place is infested with romance. And for the most part, he’s completely unaffected by it. The severity of the amount of romancing within the hotel walls had in fact, completely been out of his radar for the better part of his commitments here. It didn’t matter that Charlie spent half her time discreetly holding hands with her girlfriend and the rest of her time openly doing as such. It didn’t matter that Cherri Bomb spends her time engrossed in a cross dimensional telephone Pentious invented for her, lounging on the couch, redemption far from her mind. He had hardly noticed that Husk now alternated between serving drinks at the bar and wrapped up in AngelDust, idly listening to whatever nonsense he was showing him on his phone. He doesn’t even know when Nifty had shifted from manically laughing on her own to manically laughing with that plankton looking fellow they’d welcomed to the hotel.
Because romance was romance, and he had no personal inclination or revulsion to it; he supposes they all do, at the end of the day, need company. This is hell afterall. He had supposed companionship was but a small mercy one could hope for.
And now he’s in an entanglement on his own, wondering how it all came to this, patience thinning and sure half of them see right through him in spite of his smiling every time Lucifer slips into a slot next to him and carries on like their proximity does not have any cosmic effect on his existence.
“What’s on your mind?” Lucifer asks, covering his hand over Alastor’s when his tapping on the table doesn’t stop.
“Nothing, just restless. Hell has become, so to speak, boring,”
“I’m personally happy that we’re not fighting heaven every other day,” Charlie chirps in, from her entirely privileged spot in her girlfriend’s lap. “Maybe you could join us in our activities sometime? It’s very fun,” she says, showing off a truly colorful wrist. “We made friendship bracelets today,”
“Sweetheart I don’t think Mr. Creepy McRadio is the type to like sitting in a circle talking about his feelings,” Angel says, and he’s really just trying to be helpful but he sees how Husk immediately puts a defensive arm over his partner and lock him in a death stare like he would trade his soul again just to stop him from killing angel then and there and maybe, just maybe, it is a problem.
“Yes, I find cannibalism much better suits my taste, as far as expression goes,” he affirms, bar the fact that he hasn’t consumed a soul for the length of his whole thing with Lucifer. Charlie grimaces. All is well.
He tries to focus on the idle chatter of the room that allows him to fade into himself again, tries to ignore Lucifer, who remains worried and by his side in his peripheral vision. He can feel himself faltering, the itch to tap his fingers on the table returns, his vision blurs and the noise numbs and this, this is not a display he can afford in public. There’s that hand on his own again, and that, is so to speak, his last straw.
“I’m going out,” he spares Lucifer the explanation if only just to save him from staying up all night wondering, and to save himself from having to explain his whereabouts tomorrow, and makes a graceful exit into the shadows.
Out, means the quiet of his radio tower, which they’d built right next to the hotel. The controls of his barely used studio, ironically reflecting the lack of controls in his own life these past few days, stare back at him mockingly. The last broadcast had been months and months ago, some wayward sinner who had thought it fit to deface the hotel and threaten his authority. Now it’s just silence. Just there, where he can easily take and use them, wrench everything to an order that he creates, but at the risk of threatening whatever he’s made for himself elsewhere.
He ignores his chair and seats himself against the wall, and scrubs his hands over his face. Hurtling through a million different emotions in a split second is decidedly exhausting. He lets himself breathe. Counts it, in, out, in, out. He’s seen this exercise around the hotel before. It’s peaceful, when he’s alone. He doesn’t feel too much. It’s stable.
Nothing’s more disarming than keeping someone around, without a necessary purpose except to feel.
He’s entirely unsurprised, however, given the nature of his life as of late, that a portal opens up before him, and his own heart steps out of it, and regards him with an indiscernible look on his face. “Alastor?” Lucifer asks as he wrestles a smile back onto his face. “Honey?”
“Friendship bracelets got boring for you too?” Alastor chirps. He makes space next to him. “I do wonder sometimes if the princess uses this hotel just to live up her whims and fancies and not for the purpose of redemption,”
“Oh hush,” Lucifer says, joining him on the floor, the pristine white of his suit be damned. “I made you one,”
“Of course you did,” Alastor says, but gives him his hand anyway and watches a mismatched mix of red, white and black slide into place over his wrist. He ignores the heart shaped charm that dangles from it. The whole thing is far too bright and colorful for his tastes, the ducks are an especially silly addition which he doesn’t know what to do about, but the whole thing screams Lucifer, and a part of his brain that had definitely short circuited the day Lucifer had kissed him first prompts him that this way he’ll have Lucifer with him at all times. His chest certainly does not contract into a pinpoint when Lucifer kisses him on his wrist.
“I know it’s not exactly your taste…”
“I’ll wear it,”
The happiness that blooms over Lucifer’s face is worth the embarrassment he’ll eventually have to face when the others see him wear it. He’s distracted from the rest of himself and his unlikely issues as he turns his wrist over and studies it. That’s the other strange thing. As much as there is stability in his lonesome, over time, he’s learned to find stability in Lucifer and all his little things. So much that he doesn’t necessarily like the numb kind of stable that the nullity of all human contact gives him anymore.
And Lucifer, he stays. That should be enough. It’s not. And it’s now definitely a problem.
“You know, I see what you’re doing,” Lucifer says, when Alastor can’t keep up his grin to its maximum capacity anymore.
“I’m not doing anything,”
“Alastor,” Lucifer says in that way that he does when he’s really not joking. Alastor sighs.
He squints “I don’t know what to tell you,”
“Well you haven’t heard me yet so I don’t know what there is to say,” Lucifer says, nudging into his shoulder. “And I know smiling is your whole thing, but, you see, sometimes…” he says. “Sometimes I wish you would stop smiling when you don’t want to. I wish you would one day feel comfortable enough to set aside the show and tell me what’s going through your mind,”
And there he goes, as easy as that. He has a problem, and says it out loud, and leaves it at that like there’s no reputation ruining, life threatening consequence attached to it. And they’re at a point of their relationship where Alastor can’t bring himself to deny Lucifer anything. If Lucifer wants something, he’ll turn over hell just to bring it to him. Because he knows he’d never be asked for something he isn’t willing to give him, and he wouldn’t cross the lines he’d set in place just for the sake of it.
It’s something that comes with being a wonder of a boyfriend thing.
“Well that’s quite a big ask, don’t you think? How do you know if this all isn’t a side effect of being here?”
“Alastor I’ve had you in my bed I know that’s not true,” Lucifer rolls his eyes.
Ah. That convenient detail.
“I’m your partner,”
“I’m aware,”
“I’d like to be there for you when you’re going through something,”
And maybe Alastor would be a little more convinced if Lucifer did so much as hug him. But he just remains next to him, that expectant look on his face, hands firmly on his knees. So he kisses him, because he knows that this much, he’s allowed to do, and because as expected, Lucifer puts his hands to use and holds him, even just for the duration of the kiss. “I love you, do you know that?” he whispers into his mouth, and Alastor kisses him again, just to shut him up; because this too, is something he’s allowed.
“I can’t promise you this, all at once,” he says, pressed up against him, hidden where he wishes he could hide away every day. Setting aside everything that characterizes him here, it makes him feel naked in a way that makes it difficult to look him in the eye. He’ll take what he can get. “And I can’t— not all the time I…”
Lucifer’s hand is a pleasant weight against his neck. “I know,”
“But I’ll try,”
“Yeah?”
Alastor nods. “For you, I’ll try anything,”
And it’s the closest he’s ever gotten to repeating Lucifer’s honesty back to him.
✨▪️✨
The thing about this whole touch debacle that bothers Alastor the most is that Lucifer finds it so easy to touch, hug, shake hands, generally be physical in a way Alastor has never been comfortable with. Not that Alastor averts himself from touch all together, there’s nothing more satisfying than striking a deal with a handshake, and he’s always been a gentleman to offer his arm to a woman, greet them with a hug and a kiss, he was raised with manners, all things considered. Alastor just doesn’t get the point of speaking with arms thrown around each other, especially not with strangers. Now, small talk, he understands. It’s a concept he can make his peace with, though he doesn’t necessarily agree. He wouldn’t go the distance of combining that with physicality. The compulsion to touch isn’t something he has in abundance, so he gives it sparingly, ceremoniously, with purpose.
He knows for a fact that Lucifer doesn’t share the same sentiment.
King of hell as he might be, Lucifer is still devastatingly an angel in all fundamentals of the word. He finds things pretty, he calls everything remotely fluffy cute, he cried the first time Charlie hugged him goodnight. Touch is simply a way he expresses himself.
Which had overthrown his initial hypothesis that maybe Lucifer had a thing against touching sinners, which admittedly would have been an easier reality to live in, a reasonable reason to drive himself to madness, to be mad at Lucifer, and be mad at the world— unlike this sad reality of not knowing why, and without having the means to find out.
He’s distracted enough in this spiel of thought that he startles when Lucifer presses a kiss to his neck, having somehow materialized into bed while Alastor had been thinking. Immediately, Alastor feels the mattress shift. “Sorry,” Lucifer says, which is ridiculous considering what they’d done to each other before Lucifer had left the bed. “Not okay?”
“No, I mean- yes, it’s not unwelcome,” Alastor corrects himself, rolling over to face him. The gap between their bodies is entirely too offensive. “I was just surprised,”
Lucifer hums, leaning in for a kiss Alastor’s more than happy to indulge. He likes this, the state they fall into when they fall into bed together, when the deed is done and then it’s just them, kissing and kissing for no reason than to kiss, and hands quiet down the insistent static and the destructive voices in his head. Having Lucifer like this, wrapped up all around him, stroking down the sides he’d held down, pressing into his chest, tangled into his limbs, the entire aftermath, it’s his favorite thing about the whole ordeal of having sex.
“I’m gonna go get dinner started,” Lucifer says far before Alastor’s content to let go. “What do you want to eat?”
“Between the choice of pancakes and waffles?” Alastor rolls his eyes. “Or have you suddenly opened the third eye of culinary skill,”
“Oh shut up with your all in one recipe,”
“Don’t insult my mother’s Jambalaya,” Alastor fights back, bodily dragging him down to another kiss because it’s a time he can get away with anything, right now. He hums in triumph when Lucifer settles onto him again.
“You have to admit its nice of me to offer you the choice,”
“It’ll be a lot nicer if you stay and snuggle instead,” Alastor mutters, dramatic flair and everything to hide how much he wants it to be true. He’ll take starvation if it means that Lucifer stays here, like this. He’s a cannibal; he can eat him if he gets too hungry, though he’ll have to figure out how to find an angelic weapon before he goes about the task.
To his horror, Lucifer says “Okay,” and settles right there, and there’s the crashing realization that he told him that, aloud, to his face. Lucifer kisses him on the cheek. “We’ll let someone else cook,”
“Yeah, that’s good,”
He’s maneuvered to his side, and Lucifer’s too short to bracket around him, so he unfolds his wings, and pulls Alastor into it, soft and warm and effectively blocking out the dim light in the room. Lucifer turns him over and tucks him into his chest then, like he’s changed his mind and yes that’s better than before, he thinks as he’s effectively trapped in a feathery cocoon. Alastor hasn’t been more comfortable in his entire existence.
He will commit any type of sin in the book if it means he never has to move. He never will move. Nothing can make him.
He’s about to drift into a very contented sleep when someone is audacious enough to knock on the door. He feels the cocoon opening.
“No,”
“Honey,” Lucifer chuckles. “Time to eat,”
“You don’t make decisions for me,”
“No, but you should get something you before you go to bed,”
“I’ll put something in you,” Alastor threatens, locking Lucifer’s arm back around his waist. Lucifer who, for some reason, finds this amusing.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” he says, pressing a theatrical kiss onto his mouth, and for all his protesting, Alastor knows Lucifer’s wings are delicate things, and can’t bring himself to do anything to hurt him, it had taken him months to give him the liberty of at least touching them before they found out that Alastor had a specific liking to sleeping in it.
Not that it stops his grumbling when he does let Lucifer pull away. “Yes dear? Yeah Alastor’s in here with me. No he doesn’t want to speak to Velvette,”
Maybe he does want Lucifer to be making decisions for him.
“Dinner sounds great. No I’m not making him overwork I’m not his boss,”
Alastor snorts to himself, pulling on the clothes that had effectively been scattered on the bedroom floor.
“What are we doing together? Good question,”
Alastor halts.
“Sweetie you know… Alastor and I are together right? Yes in the You and Vaggi way, yes I do love him. Very much. What are these questions?,”
He swears his heart stops. It’s one thing that they aren’t necessarily hiding their togetherness, but Alastor hadn’t imagined Lucifer would be so brazen about the fact, and he certainly hadn’t expected that matter-of-fact tone.
“No you can’t call him dad. Not without his explicit permission. We’ll be down for dinner in a minute. ‘Kay Love you too sweetie,”
If Alastor ambushes him tooth and claw the second the door is closed he is not to blame. If they take a half hour to get down stairs after Lucifer promised his daughter a minute, that too, is not his fault. And when they do make it down the stairs, to the dinner table, no one seems to have that much of a problem with it. The spider’s wolf whistling is far too easy to ignore. Alastor pleasantly ignores that starry look in Charlie’s eyes, and the flabbergasted back and forth way her girlfriend was looking between them, as if she expected them to combust at any given moment. There is a knowing amusement in leaving their anticipant faces unentertained, surrendering nothing of the relationship that was their own. Alastor has always been one for mystery. Lucifer, for his part, only flashes him a brilliant smile before he tucks in.
He hooks their ankle around him under the table.
They don’t talk about it.
✨▪️✨
The bad thing about the whole of the hotel staff knowing, is the consistent feeling of benign watched. Husk’s pornstar is currently one question shy of one too many inappropriate questions regarding the bedroom, which Alastor can’t answer without giving himself away. Vagatha, Vagine, whatever her name is, takes one look at him one day, huffs and says “I don’t buy it,”
He’s been squeezed into a hug by one overenthusiastic Charlie, who has yet to stop babbling about how she’s so happy and how her dad looks a lot happier, the second being the only comment Alastor pays any mind to, and about how they are so cute together and that he doesn’t have to be shy if he wants to sit a little closer to Lucifer. “Wink wink” she says, and Alastor might just kill her if he didn’t want to continue his entanglement with her father.
Because, at the end of the day, there is some truth in their fascination. Skepticism, more so. Save for the one time Lucifer slipped up and called him “honey” in the middle of a conversation, to the everyday eye, there was nothing. They sit separately, they work separately, they function separately. They are proximate, always circling around each other, always exchanging ideas, but there’s nothing, except Lucifer’s word and his own confirmation that they are in fact, a pair.
And as all problems in hell go, this too, ends up in the bar.
“Thought I’d never see you here again,” Husk comments, sliding over his drink. It’s definitely not one to be gulped in one go. “Slow down,”
“I don’t recall you being able to tell me what to do,”
“No but now your fucking the king of hell and newsflash, I’m more afraid of what he’d do than you,”
“He wouldn’t do a thing, he's a big sweetheart,” Alastor rolls his eyes, tugging at the leash he still conveniently has in his possession. Nothing too much, because he hasn’t angered him to the point of pulling him into the pocket dimension of his deal just yet. “You should place your fears on your immediate threats,”
Husk grunts at the slight tug, but returns to his work as if nothing had happened. He’s reasonable like that. “Never thought I’d see the day you unironically called someone a big sweetheart,”
“Trust me, no one did,” Alastor sighs. He traces the rim of his glass, taking Husk’s advice of slowing down nonetheless. There will be no dark secrets revealed tonight. It’s nice, the low jazz, and the accompanying silence. Lucifer’s gone to his palace for the day. He can return to himself in peace until he comes back. A break from all his thinking, seeing that that seems to be all he does these days.
“You’re not happy,” Husk points out. Him and his typical bartender turned therapist tendencies. Alastor drinks.
“I’m not unhappy,” he says, hand unconsciously gravitating to his wrist. He’s grown a habit of playing with the charms on Lucifer’s obnoxious little gift at times. If Husk notices, he doesn’t speak on it.
“That doesn’t mean you’re happy,”
“I fail to see your reasoning,” Alastor says.
“Look man, I don’t mean to pry,”
“Then don’t,” Alastor snaps, tightening his grip on the leash. It’s a warning. One more word out of him and he will crush his soul to smithereens.
“Just saying, if you have baggage, better talk about it. If you got a good thing going, might as well get it out there if it’s bothering you enough to break your sober streak,”
“I didn’t stop drinking for Lucifer,” Alastor huffs, because really, that’s the only defensive thing he can expect himself to say. He doesn’t know when his warnings began to lose its bite so much around his minions— but he’s too exhausted to set it right. Husk only hums, and goes back to cleaning glasses. “Hey I was right when I said you two needed to bone,”
“I am not dealing with this today,” Alastor huffs, knocking back the rest of his drink because he’s not wrong. Back when his nights at the bar had been entirely to vent his hatred for Lucifer, Husk had been the one to look him dead straight in the eye and say “Y’all need to fuck and get over it,”
Husk’s got the brand of the burn of his chain to prove it. Alastor is starting to think that this chronic unfiltered commentary was not by lack of his own fault but was yet another trait of insolence. He heaves a sigh, tugging at his hair once. If someone like Husk could catch on to his torment, then perhaps it was a sign that it was time something was done about it. But how to tell him, Alastor can’t for the life of him fathom. “Hey, I want you to touch me more,” doesn’t seem to cut it. And he hardly thinks he’s ready for a discussion.
“Look if he loves you, stop glaring at me I’m not saying he doesn’t, he’ll hear you out,” Husk says. “But by all means, drink until you forget, I ain’t gonna stop you. Refill?”
“No,”
Husk shrugs, turning his attention instead to Angel Dust, who had walked through the door. And Alastor’s helpless to watch him slip out from under the bar to kiss him, as if he hadn’t been at the precipice of his soul being destroyed a second ago, gently taking him by the hands and leading him into a hug. Alastor wonders if its performative, just to prove a point, tightens Husk’s leash again for good measure, and slips into the shadows to the noise of Angel Dust’s profanity chasing after him.
He appears in Lucifer’s room, it’s as comfortable of a place as he’d find in spite of his refusal when Charlie had offered to shift his things to Lucifer’s room for him. It’s good to have his own space at hand when he needs it. He thinks about all the fundamental ways his relationship could change if he does have this conversation. He thinks back to when Lucifer asked him to talk about things that bother him, and then bore with him when he hadn’t found it in himself to do as he’d asked. Surely, he wouldn’t offer if he minded. He hopes.
He crashes onto one of Lucifer’s cushion riddled couches and lets himself drown. Silence might just be his favorite sound.
“Alastor?”
Silence is definitely preferred. Alastor tries to control the squeezing feeling in his chest and throat. “About time you got home,” he says, raising a brow at his partner, who might as well be his ex at the end of today. Lucifer, oblivious, smiles.
“I was looking over some of the city plans,” he says, kneeling in front of his face. He brushes Alastor’s hair out of his face. “You alright?”
“I need to talk to you about something,” Alastor says, propping himself up against the cushions. He’d hoped Lucifer would sit with him. Apparently not.
“Would this have to do with why Angel Dust is waging war against you downstairs?” Lucifer chuckles, but sits down on the ground, cross legged like he’s a child ready for a bedtime story.
“If he thinks he can war against me,” Alastor scoffs.
“Murder later,” Lucifer says pragmatically. “What’s on your mind?”
“I–” Alastor begins and this time, really tries, pushing away the magic that he’s used to keeping his voice and his face a perfect shield of himself. Lucifer immediately straightens up. “I don’t know how to say this,”
“Try me,” Lucifer says, slipping his hands into his. It feels like a lifeline. It’s easy. This is what he wants. He loathes that this is the length that he must go to have it. He fidgets, looking down at their joined hands.
“I’ve noticed that you don’t really… touch me,”
Lucifer’s grip slackens. Alastor can feel himself spiraling. “What?”
“This,” he picks up their hands to Lucifer’s eye level. “It’s- look I know it’s stupid but- you- I feel…”
Lucifer’s back on his knees. There’s worry written all over his face. Alastor squeezes onto his hands. He might die if he lets go.
“I feel, sometimes, that we only touch when we’re having sex, or kissing, or in crisis,”
And there it is. Too late to take it back now.
Lucifer makes a pained little noise, and no Alastor does not tear up. He’s the radio demon. He doesn’t cry. He goes on a ramble. “And it’s- it’s completely fine if this is a boundary, actually it’s preferred if it’s a boundary and nothing else if you’re not exactly physical like that but I need to know, Lucifer—”
“Alastor,”
“I just want to know if holding and being held is not a part of this, and if I’m overthinking because I’m pretty sure I’m going mad but I just, I want to know? Okay? If I’ve done something or- or if there’s something you want me to change, or if there’s a reason why I’m exempt from your usual… ways..”
“Alastor no,” Lucifer shakes his head. “No to all of that,”
“Then why?”
And then it’s just them, and the shake of Alastor’s breath and he hates hearing it on himself while Lucifer fishes for an answer. Thinking is good, Alastor figures. Hopes that the thoughts are of Lucifer realizing an unconscious act, and not the kind of thinking that would be him attempting to figure out how to let him down slowly. He spares himself the pain and looks away.
“Alastor I’d crawl into your skin and never come out if you’d let me,” Lucifer says then, in all seriousness.
“Why not do it then?” he asks, making the mistake of looking at Lucifer. Lucifer, who looks like he’s a second away from crying, and has begun holding onto him like he might have the resolve to let him go.
“You were never comfortable with it,” Lucifer says, a helpless little laugh slipping past him. “You’re not exactly the touchy type of person, you know? And you only really touch people out of courtesy and I… I thought, seeing you anyway have your reservations about intimacy, even at the level I’ve been asking of you so if it might be too much, and I can go without anything if It means I get to have you, I’d give up anything, so… I figured I won’t pressure you into anything you don’t want.” he shrugs, training his head towards the ground. “I’d rather have you with me at a distance than lose you all together, is what I’m trying to say,”
And now, Alastor can’t stop looking. He blinks once, twice, thinking it might clear his vision or his head. Neither works. This can’t be the answer. This can’t be a torture of his own making. Lucifer was the one to kiss him first, take him to bed first, ask him out, ask him to be official, everything. He’s not the one with relationship experience out of the two of them. He’d always assumed Lucifer would take initiative, if there was a next step to take.
“Maybe I assumed you would know when I agreed to this that it meant I wanted everything that came with it,”
Lucifer shakes his head. “That’s not how this works, darling, if there’s something you want, or don’t want, how am I supposed to know if you wouldn’t let me know? We know what we know because we tell each other things, don’t you think?”
It’s a good answer.
Alastor thinks about it and comes up with nothing smart to say. “You’re stupid,”
“You like me like that,” Lucifer says, his grin returning full force, and that tense knot that had buried into his chest and tormented him finally releases. He stares at Lucifer, waiting for him to climb onto him, full body slam and maybe flatten him out of existence while he’s at it, suddenly far too exposed and far too stubborn to bring up his walls again. His hands are restless at his sides.
“So,”
“Ask me,”
“Lucifer,” he says. It’s meant to be a protest. It’s clearly not taken that way.
“Yes baby?”
“I hate you,” Alastor says, and promptly knocks Lucifer flat on his back, taking the initiative his so-called partner refuses to take. Lucifer’s laughter is muffled into his shirt, he’s sure he crushed something, and Lucifer grabs onto him a little too hard. The couch is right there, and there’s a bed at hand, and they are on the floor. It’s ridiculous. It’s everything he’s ever thought of having. “Never let me go,”
“Nope you’re stuck with me like this till the end of time,” Lucifer agrees, wriggling his way out just enough to breathe. Alastor prefers him at a kissable position anyway.
“That’s a long time,”
“We can make it work,” Lucifer says like he can see the future, and Alastor really wouldn’t be surprised if he could, just knows that he’d be willing, if time ended and looped and repeated itself, to do all this all over again.
“This has been bothering you a lot huh?” Lucifer asks, and he’s so gentle, hand slipping into his hair, zero protests even while being actively crushed under a guy a foot taller than him. Alastor huffs. He’s not proud of it.
But he supposes he can afford the vulnerability now, seeing as the first attempt worked so well. Or maybe it’s that being held like there’s no version of reality where the contrary would be true makes him a lot braver than he actually feels. “I thought maybe that this would be asking for too much,”
“Alastor,” Lucifer says, directing him to look him in the eyes. “Nothing’s too much. Not with you, not ever. You should know that,”
“Okay,”
“I’m gonna carry you around like a backpack, forever,”
I’ll love you forever. Alastor thinks, but snorts instead, settling back into his chest, taking in a breathful of Lucifer, and feels himself going boneless under his touch. It’s a good arrangement. Slightly uncomfortable, probably better done in bed, but he’ll never move. If that’s meant to happen, Lucifer will have to make him. He’ll sleep like this, perfectly content. Not that he’d ever be caught saying it aloud. Ever.
“Can you promise me one thing though?” Lucifer asks, one childish argument and a short trip to the bed later; his nose pressed to the crook of Alastor’s neck. Alastor hums.
“Will you be there in bed with me tomorrow morning?”
It’s a reasonable thought to have. Alastor’s wrestled down multiple sobered up realizations of just how small he’s made himself feel, for such a simple solution since he’d gotten his answer. “I didn’t have a plan to leave,” he says anyway. He doesn’t think he can let this go, anyway.
With that answer, Lucifer seems content.
✨▪️✨
There’s a predicament at the hotel.
Given that it is hell, there always seems to be one. This one, in particular, Alastor enjoys, because he’s the cause, and not the object. It happens at breakfast. Alastor’s down early, because he’s on cooking duty, and Lucifer’s being a little slow. Alastor hears the clinking of the table being set behind him. The kiss the chef apron is still the most ridiculous thing he’s had to wear.
And then there’s a firm arm around his middle, the sound of choking, and Lucifer, pressed against his back. “Mornin’ Bambi,”
“Morning,” Alastor presses back into his chest, smiles a secret not so magical smile at the expectant look on Lucifer’s face, and maneuvers himself just enough to lean down and kiss him on the mouth.
There’s more choking in the background. Someone definitely spits out their coffee. Someone else, definitely Charlie, squeals. But then again, Alastor wouldn’t know as he spins back around to watch the food.
Anyone could choke at any time. This is hell, afterall.