Chapter Text
It was easy to forget Lucifer’s authority and his immense power that came with it when all he seemed to present was that ridiculous, almost… almost endearing persona. The jokes, the theatrics, the self-aware absurdity of it all made him feel… harmless. Small, even.
He had assumed it was a ploy for Charlie’s affection or at least a performance tailored to a daughter who wanted gentleness from a throne built on fire. He had even wondered if it spoke to the King of Hell’s classification itself; if perhaps Lucifer truly was something softer than the legends suggested.
Oh, how wrong he had been.
The King of Hell was no little thing. And the act was exactly that: an act.
Classifications mattered.
Not because they were sacred, but because they were useful. At least socially. The world was more agreeable with a well placed please and thank you, the right smile at the right moment. Personally, he found them unimportant, arbitrary even but he indulged in them carefully. They were grease in the machinery. You could resist the system, rally against it, even despise it but life was undeniably easier when you fit just well enough not to draw attention. That had always been his philosophy.
Lucifer on the other hand… seemed to be one of the purists. One of those who believed the old rules still meant something. The older sinners thought that way too, clinging to classifications as though order itself might unravel without them. And of course Lucifer as ancient as he was followed them with a rigidity that belied his clownish exterior.
He’d seen the cracks before. Moments when the mask slipped, especially around littles. A shift in posture. A sharpening of attention. Authority making itself known where it had ceased to exist moments before.
It had given him every reason to keep his own classification buried, locked down, guarded as fiercely as possible (as if he hadn’t already been doing that).
Still, he had underestimated how rigid Lucifer felt about such a matter. And maybe that was the point, maybe Lucifer had wanted him to.
In the end all it took was one moment.
And then there was no talking himself out of it. Not even with Charlie’s sympathetic gaze as resigned as it was could help him when the kings clownish facade melted away.
The room had stilled.
Husk went rigid. Angel hovered back, unease finally cutting through his usual bravado. Niffty froze mid-bounce, eyes wide. Even Vaggie (who found classifications strange and borderline irrelevant) stared in open surprise.
“You.”
The single word landed like an accusation. Something old and instinctual twisted low in his gut, a buried reflex clawing its way to the surface.
It was Angel’s fault.
The arachnid twitched nervously in the corner, eyes darting, hands wringing. He’d been chasing a high (any high) and with options running thin he’d taken to shaking out coat pockets in the supply closet, desperate enough to hope something would fall out. And it had. His own prescription. Illegal as hell outside its ring of origin.
And then he’d tattled.
As if it were any of his business. As if he cared.
The urge to laugh bubbled sharp and hysterical in his chest, tangled with something far uglier: something that wanted to maim. He swallowed it down hard.
“Yes?” he said instead.
Smug, as smug as he could manage. His grin barely faltered as his gaze flicked back to the pills scattered across the table where they’d been thrown: white and obvious and utterly exposed.
“Do you know how illegal those are?” Lucifer laughed, but there was no humor in it just teeth. “I’d thought I’d snuffedd out all the dealers in this ring.”
He had.
And those pills weren’t from the Pride Ring.
“Hm. Yes, well, it is quite a marvel that they’d end up in my coat pockets,” he drawled lightly. “Must be a setup. How terrible. Thank you, Angel, for discovering this before it could be used against me.”
His smile widened as he turned it fully on the cowering spider, bright and false and sharp enough to draw blood.
“Ha! I’m not that gullible.” The ex-angels eyes seemed to shine with something dark, “Your secret is out, little fawn.” The King of Hell’s voice bit down hard on the words. “I’d thought I noticed something off about you.” He bit back a growl, “You don’t read nearly as neutral as you think you do.”
His stomach twisted violently.
He was lying. Reaching. Trying to get into his head.
He knew that. He had to know that.
His facade was near perfect.
Near perfect.
But Lucifer was very, very old.
Older than trends, older than progressive views on classifications, older than the kind of lies people told themselves to survive. He knew more about this than anyone; knew how patterns bent under pressure, how masks slipped not all at once but in the smallest, most damning ways.
“Come here.”
The words weren’t loud. They didn’t need to be. They hit the room like a pressure wave, and everyone flinched all the same.
“Hm… no, I’m quite fine where I am, but thank—”
Lucifer’s hand closed around him and dragged him forward with a show of strength that snapped the rest of the sentence clean in half. Whatever traces of the goofy, self-deprecating king had been lingering vanished in an instant. This was not a man playing at power. This was power remembering itself.
“I’m going to clear your system of those awful little pills you’ve riddled your body with,” Lucifer said pleasantly, eyes sharp as cut glass, “and then we’ll see whether this really is some grand setup.”
His heart stuttered, then froze outright.
Regression, actual regression, here, now, in front of everyone. The Radio Demon reduced to a babbling child under the gaze of the entire hotel. The thought alone made his vision swim.
“Or,” Lucifer continued, tone light, almost conversational, “you follow me to my room like a good boy and we have a nice, honest chat about all of this.”
He looked up at him then.
Lucifer’s expression was grave and stripped of humor, and utterly unsettling.
“I—yes, well,” he forced out, voice pitched casual by sheer will, “let’s not waste our dear hotel patrons’ time. I suppose a private conversation would be far more efficient. Good thinking, sir.”
The words tasted like ash.
They did nothing to stop the stares. Husk’s narrowed eyes. Charlie’s bitten lip. Angel’s guilt-soaked grimace. Vaggie’s sharp, assessing silence.
Lucifer patted his cheek.
He very nearly bit the man’s finger off.
“Good choice,” Lucifer said softly.
And then he turned, grip firm and inescapable, steering him away from the room and its witnesses. The chatter didn’t resume until they were gone, the doors closing behind them with a final, echoing click.
The hallway felt longer than it should have.
Lucifer didn’t speak as they walked. Didn’t need to. Each step tightened the coil in his chest, every second stretching thinner and thinner. He focused on breathing. On staying upright. On not betraying how disadvantaged he really was.
At Lucifer’s door, the King paused.
The door opened.
Warm light spilled out, deceptively inviting. It looked like safety. Like comfort. Like a lie.
Lucifer’s hand loosened, just barely.
“Well?” he asked.
Going in felt like admitting defeat. Worse it felt like crossing a threshold he wouldn’t be allowed to uncross. As if whatever walked back out of this room wouldn’t be quite the same as what went in.
He stepped inside.
The door shut behind him and vanished completely, leaving only an unbroken expanse of smooth wall. No way out.
Lucifer’s room was gaudily opulent to the point of absurdity: gold accents, velvet cushions, and worst of all (though not classified as opulent in his eyes) an excessive number of rubber ducks perched on every available surface. It should have been ridiculous.
It might as well have been a torture chamber for how his body locked up.
“Sit.”
Lucifer said it casually, already rolling up his sleeves, turning his back to busy himself with the tea set. Porcelain clinked softly. Steam rose. The domestic normalcy of it all was almost more unnerving than shouting would have been, like this was a routine conversation. Like this was something Lucifer had done before.
“Where’d you get the pills?” Lucifer asked, setting the cups down with meticulous care.
His expression was furious. Controlled, but furious all the same.
He lifted the tea and took a slow sip, more for the motion than the taste. The warmth steadied his hands, gave him something to anchor to while his thoughts scrambled. He wanted to lie. To wrap the truth in theatrics and half-truths, talk in circles until Lucifer forgot the question entirely.
Instead, honesty slipped out, unbidden.
“Not the Pride Ring,” he said. “A connection in Wrath.”
He stiffened.
That hadn’t been intentional.
His gaze dropped to the tea, jaw tightening as irritation flared: at himself, at the magic curling through him, at how easily the truth had betrayed him. Still, he didn’t move. Didn’t react. He simply sat and waited, braced for whatever came next.
“Hm. Yes,” Lucifer hummed. “Wrath has allowances for suppressants. It isn’t the safest ring for littles, but it is heavily regulated.”
Lucifer turned then, studying him with sharp, appraising eyes.
“How young do you regress?”
His teeth ground together, as if clenching hard enough might dam the words before they escaped.
“I haven’t—”
Lucifer blinked.
Confusion flickered across his face, brief but unmistakable.
“You’re a little,” Lucifer said slowly. It was half question, half statement and neither tone allowed for denial.
“Yes.”
Lucifer sighed, dragging a hand down his face. “Then how do you not know?”
His pulse spiked. The magic in the tea tightened, pulling at his chest, threading itself through his lungs and tongue until resistance felt pointless.
“Haven’t regressed,” he said flatly. “Been on suppressants since I died.”
Silence fell heavy between them.
It was true. He’d made the deal before death ever had the chance to claim him and it had secured him connections from the start, kept everything neatly controlled, neatly buried.
Lucifer stared at him.
Then his eyes began to glow, red bleeding into gold, fury finally cracking through restraint. Wings burst into being behind him, unfurling with a sharp snap of displaced air, feathers ruffling as raw emotion surged to the surface.
“Since you died,” Lucifer repeated, voice low and vibrating with restrained wrath.
The tea cup rattled faintly in its saucer.
“You have been chemically suppressing a core aspect of your being for decades,” Lucifer continued, each word measured, dangerous. “Without oversight. Without evaluation. Without consent from anyone who actually knew what the hell they were doing.”
Lucifer leaned down, bracing his hands on the table, wings casting a looming shadow over him.
“And you thought,” he said quietly, “that I wouldn’t notice.”
The air thickened.
“Do you have any idea,” Lucifer went on, voice tightening, “what prolonged suppression does to a little?”
He didn’t answer.
Couldn’t.
Lucifer straightened abruptly, pacing now, wings flexing in agitation. “Wrath’s regulations are meant for temporary use. Transitional periods. Trauma stabilization. Not—” He cut himself off with a sharp exhale, fists clenching.
“This isn’t just illegal,” Lucifer said finally, turning back to him. “It’s dangerous.”
His gaze softened just a fraction but that somehow made it worse.
“And you,” Lucifer added quietly, “have been surviving on borrowed time.”
The room felt smaller.
Lucifer stopped in front of him.
“Finish the tea,” he ordered gently.
There was no mistaking it for kindness.
He didn’t refuse. Not now. Not when, for the first time, Lucifer truly felt like the King of Hell, when the room itself seemed to bow around him, when power pressed down so heavy it left no space for defiance.
Still, irritation simmered beneath the compliance. He’d already answered the questions. Already been forced into honesty. What was the point of finishing the bloody tea?
Lucifer glanced at him over the rim of his own cup, satisfaction flickering briefly across his expression.
“Good boy.”
The words landed wrong.
His stomach fluttered warmly, traitorously pleased and his face twisted in immediate confusion, static crackling faintly at the edges of his vision.
No.
Suddenly, the tea felt like more than a truth serum.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Lucifer said lightly, almost sing-song, “it’s suppression halting tea. Meant to halt suppressing truths, chemicals, classifications—” He paused, eyes lighting with something dangerously close to glee. “—and true forms.”
The world tilted.
A sharp, broken sound tore from his throat, dissolving into a burst of static as he looked down at himself small and soft, his limbs had shortened, proportions subtly wrong, antlers reduced to delicate nubs. Every line of him leaned more deer than demon now, fragile, skittish, unmistakably young.
A fawn.
Exactly as Lucifer had accused.
“I—” His voice wavered, higher, thinner, unfamiliar. “You said you wouldn’t make me regress.”
Lucifer sighed, the sound weary rather than apologetic. “No,” he said patiently. “I said I wouldn’t flush the pills out of your system in front of everyone.” He softened just a touch. “And after our conversation, more than ever, I know you need this.”
His head swam. He shook it sharply, as if that might dislodge the sensation crawling through his bones. This was different. Deeper. Not the fleeting, disorienting slips he’d felt between doses, not the brief moments he could muscle through.
This was total.
“You can’t go on ignoring your nature,” Lucifer continued, voice low and steady. “I sympathize with the identity you’ve forged in avoidance of it but you had to know that eventually it would be forfeit.”
Forfeit.
The word scraped raw.
“Forfeit,” he repeated, growling around it, though the sound came out smaller than intended. “I will return to myself. This— this trickery will not hold me down, regardless of your status.”
Lucifer regarded him for a long moment.
Then he crouched, bringing himself level unhurried. His wings folded in, massive and controlled, creating a sense of enclosure without ever touching him.
“This isn’t trickery,” Lucifer said quietly. “It’s correction.”
A hand hovered near his shoulder, not touching, but close enough to feel the heat of it. An unspoken choice.
“You didn’t lose yourself,” Lucifer went on. “You buried yourself. Chemically. Magically. Systematically.” His gaze sharpened. “And you did it alone.”
Lucifer’s thumb brushed his chin before he could flinch, tilting his face up just enough to meet his eyes.
“You’re not in trouble for what you are,” Lucifer said firmly. “You’re in trouble for pretending you weren’t.”
The pressure in his chest crested, breath hitching as instinct warred with fury, fear tangling with something dangerously close to relief.
Lucifer straightened.
“You will stabilize,” he said. “You will learn what you look like without poison in your veins. And you will not do it by yourself.”
A pause.
“And right now,” Lucifer added, voice gentler but no less absolute, “you are far too little to be posturing.”
The room seemed to hum in agreement.
Lucifer held out his hand.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you settled before the rest of the truth catches up.”
As the last recognizable pieces of himself slipped beneath the haze, one clear thought burned through the fog.
He was going to kill Angel Dust.