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Lucifer tracked Alastor’s aura like a bloodhound would a scent.
He watched, or felt more accurately, as it moved. A bob of energy on the other side of the hotel. Alastor was in his room, Lucifer assumed. He’d been there since Charlie and Vaggie lugged their bags downstairs, packed and ready for their meeting with Heaven.
Lucifer scowled at the shadows.
He felt it when Heaven’s portal opened several floors beneath his feet and focused on the aura across the hotel to distract himself as it closed a second later. He let out a shaky breath, praying that Charlie would be safe.
No, the irony wasn’t lost on him.
He waited until everyone was gone before making his move.
Charlie’s friends left for their night-out immediately after the portal closed, and only a few minutes passed before Alastor left his room.
Lucifer waited a few seconds to make sure they were alone before twirling his finger. A sparkling red portal etched into the air, opening and closing so quickly that by the time Alastor realized he was no longer in the hall, it’d already unstitched itself from existence, leaving behind nothing but a few sparkles that flickered and faded.
Surprise flashed across his face, eyes blinking hard to adjust to the sudden darkness, and Lucifer snorted under his breath. A fluffy ear twitched in his direction and Alastor’s expression fell into its default setting: lidded eyes and a lazy smile.
“Do you make it a habit to sit in dark rooms by yourself?” He asked.
Lucifer snapped his fingers and all the lights flashed on at once. Alastor’s eyes tightened, part-way to a squint, but he didn’t break eye contact. Not even to blink.
Creepy bastard.
Small talk wasn’t a talent of Lucifer’s, so he didn’t bother beating around the bush.
“What are you doing here?”
Quirking an eyebrow, Alastor gave the room—and old, dusty study Charlie hadn’t utilized yet—a once-over
“You know, I’m not entirely sure,” he said, disturbing the dusty floor as he circled the sheet-covered couches and tables. “I could’ve sworn I was outside my room just seconds ago.” He leaned forward on his cane. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”
“You know what I mean,” Lucifer hissed, pushing up off the wall he was leaning on to stalk closer to Alastor, who rolled his eyes and continued his walkabout. “I’m not in the mood to play Heaven’s games. Why did they send you?”
Alastor stumbled, eyes darting to Lucifer, before he smoothed himself out and flashed an innocuous smile.
“Can’t say I know what you mean,” he dismissed, as if only half-interested in their conversation.
“Don’t even try it,” Lucifer warned, mirroring Alastor’s walk. The air smoldered around him as he growled, “I know you’re an angel.”
Alastor threw a smirk over his shoulder. “Oooh. Is that the devil’s idea of a pick-up line? Unoriginal. And a little cliche coming from you.” He shook his head. “I’d recommend running it by a friend next time. That is, if you still have—”
Lucifer snapped his fingers and Alastor went up in a pillar of flames.
It disappeared with a muted snuff a second later, leaving behind someone both familiar and unfamiliar. Alastor stared back with stunned, wide-eyes, his monocle replaced by a pair of large, round glasses, and his hair no longer pink-black, but a dark brown. Where his suit was once various shades of red, it was now a light baby-blue, accented with gold around the lapels and hem. Long, fluffy ears still sat atop his head, but his antlers now circled them, forming the shape of a white glowing halo.
Lucifer crossed his arms.
It took Alastor longer to recover this time, unraveled in a way Lucifer’s never seen before, as his eyes darted from his glove-covered hands to the golden glint of his dress shoes. His ears twitched, his shoulders crept up to his face, and the large white wings behind him curled inward.
Then, in an instant, his shoulders relaxed, his ears turned forward, and he clasped his cane—now white and gold instead of black and red—behind his back.
“It’s rude to undress someone without their consent, you know,” he said, still smiling, but it wasn’t as disturbing and didn’t reach so far up his face, like its sharp edges had been filed down.
More…human.
Lucifer glowered, face flushing. “That’s not what that was.”
“Wasn’t it?”
"No, I—you—what are you doing here?” He repeated hotly. “What does Heaven want?”
Alastor sighed and sat on the covered armrest of a couch, legs crossed.
“I wasn’t lying before,” he sniffed. “Heaven didn’t send me. Nor do I have any intention of harming Charlie or this hotel.”
“Uh-huh,” Lucifer said, unconvinced. “Then why are you here?”
“For a good time!” Alastor replied, thick with showy enthusiasm. “And to satisfy my own curiosity, of course. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go up there.” He gestured upward.
“What do you—who wouldn’t—” Lucifer shook his head and reiterated again. “Why are you here?”
Alastor let out an exasperated breath. “As I said, I’m curious about—”
“No, why are you here. In Hell. Why aren’t you, you know” Lucifer jabbed a finger at the ceiling, “up there?”
Alastor stared for a long moment, as if debating whether to answer.
Lucifer crossed his arms. If Alastor thought he was leaving this room without explaining himself, he was in for a rude awakening. Charlie wasn’t here to play peacemaker this time.
As if coming to this conclusion too, Alastor sighed and rested his knitted hands over his knees.
“Because it was boring up there,” he answered bluntly. “There was nothing to do. I couldn’t exactly kill Winners, so human flesh and gutting carcasses was off the table, and the colors, ugh,” his nose curled, disgusted, “everything was so bright. I desperately needed a change of scenery.”
Lucifer squinted, fist pressed to his chin as he pulled and twisted Alastor’s words apart, searching for logic, but all he got was a nonsensical jumble of letters. His confusion must’ve shown on his face because Alastor sighed and got off the armrest.
“Here’s a question for you,” he said, spinning his cane as he circled Lucifer. “Why wouldn’t I want to be here?”
Lucifer’s eyes snapped away from the long, sleek primary feathers of Alastor’s wings sweeping across the wood. “Uhhh, is that a trick question?”
“An honest one,” Alastor chirped, stopping so close to him Lucifer could feel the prickle of holy energy emanating from his being. The same energy he’d felt when they first met. At the time, he assumed it belonged to Vaggie, who he’d immediately clocked as an angel—a real nice girl, though. Very sweet to his daughter—so imagine his surprise when it moved away from her presence, heading off one direction while she went the other.
It didn’t take long to track it back to Alastor. Holiness couldn’t hide in a place like Hell, which was why Lucifer was positive his brain had malfunctioned. There was no way that creepy fuck was an angel.
Unfortunately, he’d been wrong before.
“I’m sorry, let me just, let me make sure I’m hearing this right,” he said, pressing his hands together. “You’re asking me why you wouldn’t want to be in Hell?”
“Correct.”
“Um, have you been outside lately,” he demanded, gesturing wildly at the window across the room. When Alastor gave him an unimpressed look, he strode over and flung it open, inviting in a warm, sour breeze that stunk of an incoming acidstorm. “You can literally hear screaming from here. Oh, and would you look at that, there are already two buildings on fire!” A faint boom. “OH! Make that three.” He laughed, a strained, wheezing sound that edged toward deranged. “It smells awful, it looks awful, everyone who lives here is awful. It’s just…it’s all awful. Why would–who would ever–what kind of question…?”
Alastor hummed, joining him by the window. “It is a bit of a shit-show, isn’t it?” He mused, smiling so fondly Lucifer did a double take.
“Uh, yeah,” he said avidly, “That’s my whole point.”
Alastor leaned on the windowsill, dropping his chin on his interlaced fingers, and inhaled through his nose. He let it back out with a pleasant sigh.
“It’s really not so bad,” he said.
“Not so bad? This is eternal punishment for the damned. Punishment. It’s not supposed to be a good time.”
“It’s not perfect,” Alastor shrugged, unbothered, “but it’s far more interesting than Heaven. I had more fun my first day here than the entirety of my time up there. I wouldn’t dream of going back.”
Lucifer frowned, looking him over from the top of his ears to the bottom of his fancy shoes, searching for the lie. Waiting for Alastor to turn around, point at him, and laugh, because this had to be a joke.
A moment passed.
Alastor didn’t move.
Slowly, Lucifer leaned against the windowsill too, searching for whatever had enamored the other man. Unsurprisingly, he found nothing. He glanced back at Alastor, still skeptical, but a little...intrigued.
“So,” he intoned, slow and dubiously. “If you started out in Heaven, how’d you end up down here, anyway?”
“Oh, I stumbled across Adam and his bloodthirsty pigeons during one of their yearly holidays. It was the first time I saw an actual weapon up there and, well, like draws to like,” he gave Lucifer a cheeky, side-ways grin. “Once I realized where they were going, I figured I’d pop in and see what all the fuss was about, and oh,” he pressed a hand to his chest with a dreamy sigh, “the sheer envy alone should’ve cast me from Heaven. Never had I seen a place so perfect.”
“Perfect?” Lucifer repeated in disbelief.
Alastor hummed.
“So, you…what? Decided to stay? Just like that?”
He deflated with a heavy sigh. “No. Heaven would’ve noticed. Besides, one doesn’t just waltz among sinners with these silly things,” he ruffled his wings and gestured flippantly at his halo.
“So, how’d you do it?” Lucifer asked, surprised by his genuine curiosity.
“It took a year or so to figure out how to mask my appearance, and a lot of good behavior before the warden softened her security,” Alastor grumbled the last bit and Lucifer snorted. He’d never likened Sera to a warden, or Heaven to a prison, but the way Alastor spoke with such inarguable confidence shook hands with a deep prickly part of him that couldn’t help but nod in agreement.
“But once the Extermination rolled back around, I took the opportunity and never looked back,” Alastor said, his sour smile replaced with a self-satisfied grin.
Lucifer hummed, looking out at the city again. Despite the clouds, the glow of Heaven’s orbit was still visible. Hazy, but there. He pursed his lips and tapped his fingers against the windowsill.
“So, you really enjoy being here? No regrets? No desire to return? For anything?”
Alastor followed his eyes to the white glow in the cloud and for a split-second his face softened. “Only one,” he murmured. “There’s someone…” he hesitated, eyes flickering to Lucifer hesitantly. “There’s someone very special to me up there.”
“Oh,” Lucifer looked down, tapping his finger a few more times. “Wife? Husband? Estranged lover?”
Alastor barked a laugh. “HA! Oh, no. Nothing of that sort.”
“Ah.” Lucifer waited for him to elaborate.
He didn’t.
“You know, it’s kind of…nice having someone else down here who knows what it’s like. Living up there, I mean,” Lucifer admitted, gesturing loosely at the clouds. “There’s Maggie, of course, and she seems like a real nice girl, but I don’t think anyone here knows about her yet. Oh, uh, you did know about Maggie, right?”
Alastor snorted, propping his chin on his hands. “I’d be a fool not to. Now that’s a ticking time bomb I can’t wait to see explode.”
“Uh-huh,” Lucifer narrowed his eyes. “And what about Charlie?”
Alastor shrugged. “Who am I to intrude on others' business? I am but a mere observer.”
“Right. Sure.”
They descended into a silence that wasn’t uncomfortable as Lucifer expected. The steady sizzling of the rain was strangely comforting, despite the humidity tingling his skin. They’d have to close the window before the fog rolled in, but for the moment, he enjoyed the peace.
Then Alastor stood and stretched his wings, humming in delight as the joints popped. “It’s been a while since I stretched these ol’ things. They’re probably due for a preening.” He curled one forward to examine the crooked feathers and tsked. “Well, that won’t do. Do higher being’s have to deal with this nonsense too?”
Lucifer rolled his eyes. “Uh, yeah, we do. Not as often as you guys, but we still have to take care of ourselves, ‘higher being’ or not.”
Usually in a group. Preening was a communal activity, to help with hard to reach feathers, proper cleaning, and joint massaging so their wings didn’t lock up. Heart aching, he forces away memories of laughter and gentle hands.
“Wonderful!” Alastor turned on his heels, striding to the door. “Then you should know how to straighten them properly. Let’s go.”
Lucifer whirled around. “Wh-what? Excuse me?”
“I can’t get all of them myself. Now come on, chop, chop, we only have a few hours before the others return. I have piquante in the fridge, you can have some so long as you don’t spill on the bed. Oh, we’ll do this in my room, if you don’t mind. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that you don’t leave evidence behind, however small!”
Lucifer balked, mind reeling to catch up with Alastor’s rapid-fire words. When it sank in, he pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. The audacity of this guy. Assuming Lucifer would agree. That he’d follow at his beck and call.
A smile cracked his face and he chuckled quietly, shaking his head again.
“Fine, but this pee-kant stuff better be good.”
“Piquante,” Alastor corrected him, head popping back in the doorway. “And it is divine.” He disappeared. Then popped back a second later. “Oh, and you should consider referring to Vaggie by her proper name. The poor dear’s too nervous to correct you.”
“Her name’s been Vaggie this whole time???”
Mortified, Lucifer raced after Alastor’s cackling laugh.