Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Alastor’s mother had supported Prohibition.

It comes to mind, sometimes, when Alastor is inventorying bottles upon bottles of the hotel’s liquor.

He hadn’t inherited her aversion to alcohol, but he understands it. Throughout Alastor’s childhood, his father’s regular binges on rum — a cheap and plentiful liquor, in those years before the ban — put  the man in a nasty and belligerent temper with an inclination to lay hands. Bruised and shamed, Mama struggled to feed them on what money remained.  

(On Alastor’s ninth birthday, his father bought a Winchester 1894 rifle. Things were easier after that. A widow had more freedom to work.)

By the time Prohibition passed, Alastor was only twenty-one and already moving up in the world. He had enlisted in the Great War passant á blanc, and then used his wartime radio experience to get a respectable job at the broadcast station. He had moved Mama in with him in New Orleans — pretending she was his housekeeper, given the white neighborhood where he rented — and had been so proud of the tidy little home he was able to provide.

The very next day, she’d found his stash of expensive smuggled whiskey and poured out every last drop.

‘You gotta be careful, honey,’ she’d said, sunshine bright in the kitchen window, her hand warm against Alastor’s cheek. ‘You’ll put the Devil right to you.’

Alastor thinks of what she’d said, and watches the Devil saunter over to the bar and help himself to a bottle of apfelwein. His dear Mama probably hadn’t meant it so literally.

Lucifer’s bottle transmutes to a glass with a flick of a fine-boned wrist, and he hops up onto a barstool, one leg crossing over the other to swing merrily. He deliberately catches Alastor’s eye.

“So,” Lucifer’s smile spreads across his face, shark-like and mean, and doesn’t reach his eyes at all. “Looks like a reeeal important job you got there. Did you run out of toilets to unclog?”

Alastor very deliberately does not grip his clipboard tightly enough to snap it. Insufferable.

It is an important task, actually; albeit for reasons that he doesn’t particularly care to share with Lucifer.

“Oh, I don’t expect his Majesty to understand my responsibilities,” Alastor cants his head to the side with a sickening crack of his neck, grin plastered on. He notes with a scathing eye that Lucifer’s boots can’t reach the ground from the barstool. “Auditing is just one of the many tasks I perform for the hotel!”

Lucifer wrinkles his not-nose, eyes flicking down to Alastor’s shoulders, his waist for some reason, before huffing. “Really? An asshole probably trying to cheat my daughter is the one who’s supposed to find assholes probably trying to cheat my daughter?”

Alastor keeps his grin fixed solidly in place. While these little audits are ostensibly for Charlie’s benefit, to preserve her generous-but-not-infinite inherited wealth, Alastor has his own interests in the bookkeeping.

The truth is, even before accounting for Niffty and Husk’s time, Alastor is bankrolling at least half of this little venture’s running costs — and while Alastor has amassed a certain amount of wealth, most of it isn’t pecuniary. Alastor’s fortune is in a complex web of souls, favors, and deals. He is careful to make a show of wasting resources in front of others, with supplies and temporary workers casually appearing and disappearing in flashy poofs of shadow — but while the shadows transport such things handily, their cargo does not materialize from nothingness. 

This means that when Alastor replaces several bottles of whiskey, he does so to the doubtless delight of an imp two circles over — with that, her ledger with Alastor is finally clean. He’ll need to indebt another liquor smuggler soon.

Alastor keeps his mental ledgers meticulously, but that’s really not the sort of mundane concern he needs others associating with him — especially not Lucifer. Alastor must project success, but not the effort it requires.

He can’t be seen to care.

“But of course!” He instead exclaims with a grin and a flamboyant wide-flung arm. “Dear Charlie still struggles with negotiating, so procurement — and inventory — fall to me. No one would dare try to cheat me. Well.” Alastor pauses before grinning even more brightly. “That’s not strictly true. But it’s always entertaining to catch someone trying!”

Lucifer snorts. “I guess if you were completely useless, she wouldn’t bother keeping you around, would she?”

That’s not at all how Charlie thinks. “People do tend to notice the rare occasions when I’m not around.” Alastor hums, smile razor sharp. “For others, unfortunately, absence is much more typical.”

Lucifer’s grin skews nastily. “Yeah, everyone was wondering where the fuck you went when I was beating off Adam for you.”

A pause.

That should have been a glancing blow to Alastor’s currently battered ego. How fortunate, instead, that Lucifer hasn’t bothered to socialize at all in the last century. Alastor raises an eyebrow. “And why, exactly, is his majesty attempting to provoke me this fine morning?”

“Why the fuck not?” Lucifer rolls his eyes, and then leans forward with a hard stare. “I don’t like you. I don’t like you near my daughter, you’re a violent manipulative freak —“

…Oh, so they’re doing this right now, then.

“— I know who you are, I know what you do, I know how you operate —“

“So you have heard of me.” Alastor dismisses his clipboard into the shadowy ether.

“— and if you touch a single hair on Charlie’s head, I’ll  rip off your limbs and give what’s left of you to your little television friend to piss on.”

Alastor leans back a moment, and finds himself somewhat disappointed. He had thought a certain amount of détente between them to be understood, for Charlie’s sake. Now Lucifer is not only trying to provoke him — and failing at that piece, by-the-by, because somehow the devil himself doesn’t know the difference between idiom and innuendo — but also issuing uninspired threats against Alastor’s person.

It would be more alarming, perhaps, if Alastor believed Lucifer would actually risk his daughter's displeasure by causing him harm. If the King of Hell meant to act, he wouldn't be wasting time on this little 'shovel talk.' It’s all rather underwhelming.

But very well. If Lucifer seeks to shatter their fragile truce with this petty squabble, so be it. It just means Alastor is free to talk back.

Alastor’s nothing if not good at talking.

“HA!” He throws his head back and laughs. “Ha ha! My, I believe someone is overcompensating! Where has that paternal instinct been all this time?” He tilts his head just slightly further than a strictly human musculoskeletal system would allow, all faux curiosity. “Because I’ve been here for a while now, quite literally broadcasting my presence, and this is the first I’ve heard of your majesty’s displeasure!”

“Well, you’re hearing it now, asshole —” Lucifer throws his whole body into his movements as he makes a finger-pinch motion at Alastor “—and I’m this close to deciding that wrecking you is worth making Charlie upset.”

Alastor decides to give that statement exactly the response it warrants and leans forward on his microphone, both hands resting on top. He waits, smile beatific, blinking.

Lucifer narrows his eyes, and looks Alastor up and down. “Are you even taking this seriously?”

And if that isn’t the funniest and most infuriatingly hypocritical thing that Lucifer had ever said in his presence, Alastor didn’t know what was. All evidence points to Lucifer treating his relationship with Charlie with a decided lack of seriousness. Alastor would never claim to know much about fatherhood – it wasn’t exactly a relevant concept for him – but a man doesn’t have to be a train conductor to know that a locomotive shouldn’t be off its tracks. Lucifer and Charlie’s relationship had clearly derailed some time ago, and Alastor refused to put that issue at Charlie’s feet.

The fact remains that just by being present, Alastor — who is an objectively bad person, albeit one vindicated enough to own it proudly — has been the better father figure since he and Charlie first met without even trying.

And that is objectively hilarious.

And as Charlie’s superior father figure — ha! — Alastor considers it both a duty and a pleasure to ensure the other party knows that this state of affairs is entirely his own fault.

“What do you know, I’ve been taking it seriously!” Alastor gestures wide and animated, eyes wide and grin manic. “I've introduced Charlie to my personal connections, provided her with meaningful allies, and given her the considerable investment of my valuable time — unlike other less available parties —”

Lucifer snarls.

“Taken altogether, I’ve given an astonishing quantity of support! And more importantly, some real stability. Charlie knows how to appreciate someone who shows up from the start,” Alastor is grinning furiously and it is pulling on his stitches. “And not just at the end.”

Lucifer has no right to look so deliciously upset, given that it’s the truth, but it’s Alastor’s experience that men born to status despise nothing more than accepting accountability. Whether for melancholia or chronic distraction, the man has done nothing with all his ‘pure angelic power’ for millennia — but now that his actions finally yielded consequences, he’s upset that Alastor is pointing it out.

Riotously funny stuff. Those born to power are all much the same, really.

There’s a pause. Then, Lucifer’s returning laugh is oddly flat, both bitter and brief. “Wow. You really think you can replace me.”

That statement speaks far more to Lucifer’s fears than anyone’s intentions; it’s not Alastor’s style to undertake tasks he knows he won’t excel at.

“Replace you? Ha! Ha hah! Oh, no, of course not!” Alastor meets Lucifer’s gaze, half on a laugh. “I merely provided — and you didn’t!”

The world is full of discourteous, self-important trash that believe themselves above accountability. Alastor loves nothing more than to prove them wrong. To do so to Lucifer, whose rank and power usually place him so far above the rest of Hell and any real consequence, is immensely satisfying.

Eyes wide and grin defiant, Alastor goes for the throat. “I'm not here to replace anyone. Who was there to replace?”

Silence extends for several seconds before it is made clear that Alastor has miscalculated. In one moment, Alastor is leaning against his microphone, chin high, glancing down his nose through heavy lidded eyes.

In the next, Lucifer has Alastor on the ground. Right there, in the dirt.

It is almost explosive, a concussive wall of force that Alastor scarcely registers until after he’s already been floored. The weight on Alastor is the weight of a thousand eyes, the weight of a strength incomprehensible and complete. He’s on his back; the effort to remain at least up on his elbows is the most he can manage. Alastor feels the muscles in his back spasm, nerves grating from the strain and humiliation alike; the edges of his mouth are stretched to tearing, teeth bared.

Alastor pushes against what binds him, breathing wildly, going nowhere. Lucifer is the one in control.

“You provided, huh?” Lucifer is snarling, words Alastor struggles to focus on. “And what is it you’re gonna provide that I can’t now? Protection? Resources, connections, raw power?”

Agonizing and slow, Alastor tilts his head up; the bones in his neck grind under the pressure, and when he forces his eyes open, Lucifer is there, full demon form. He’s wearing a grin too — an obnoxious shit-eating grin that is simultaneously incandescently furious.

Alastor perhaps hadn’t understood what it meant that Lucifer Morningstar was once an archangel, the Star of Morning, the Lightbearer. But now Alastor’s being pressed under the weight of a thousand eyes — all the strength he’s built, the power he’s carefully collected, his deals and favors — it all means nothing if he can’t move, he is powerless —

He meets Lucifer’s gaze as evenly as he can when every instinct and muscle want to curl into a pathetic miserable ball. His shadow is not nearly as controlled — it writhes like a snake on hot asphalt, edges curling, phantom limbs popping, shrieking in inaudible frequencies.

Alastor tries to speak; horribly, horrifyingly, the first thing to come out is a croak.

“So what is it you're providing?” Lucifer leans in. “Well? Fucking tell me, asshole.”

Alastor seizes, and still can’t move but he bites his words out anyway, forcing them through clenched jaw and spasming diaphragm — his manic grin fixed in place. “Ask… her.”

A tiny line appears between Lucifer’s eyes.

“Dad! DAD! STOP IT!”

The weight suddenly releases, and for a split second the lack of weight is a euphoria, limbs floating, body light, mind spinning in a hypoxic daze of relief. Alastor coughs wetly, wheezes in exactly once — and cuts his next gasp of breath off with a click of his teeth, shadowstepping a careful six feet away — away from Lucifer.

The shadows render his clothing clear of detritus, his skin clean, his posture immaculate. The pain remains.

His tendons feel like they’ve all been stretched past capacity, his head is throbbing, his sinews ache. The tight grip on his microphone is all that keeps his hands from shaking violently. It’s the second time in as many weeks that this has happened — angelic power forcing Alastor down onto his hands and knees in the bloodied dirt, claws scraping in reflexive constriction, teeth grit in a rictus — the filthy taste of powerlessness in his mouth —

“Alastor!” Charlie careens towards him, a picture of worry, which would perhaps be less embarrassing for them both if he weren’t so unsteady.

Alastor holds out a hand to stop her, before she bowls him over and shows everyone exactly how off-balance he is, and makes a show of brushing off dust. “I’m fine, my dear, don’t you worry a single hair on that darling head of yours.” He taps one finely tipped claw on her nose. “I’ll have you know I’m quite durable.”

His skull twinges. His chest throbs. He feels like a bruise. He needs to leave, soon, before the mask cracks too badly.

Charlie, of course, chooses the least convenient moment to be perceptive for once. She whirls around, all accusations and big betrayed eyes. “Dad! What did you do?!”

What Lucifer had done was physically attack Alastor for daring to tell him ugly truths he didn’t want to face.  

Static pops loudly in the air.

And somehow, on top of everything, Alastor’s been put into a position where silly, sweet, naïve Charlie Morningstar feels the need to protect him. 

This is unacceptable.

Alastor controls his breathing, assuming the most aggravatingly haughty mask he has.

Moving forward, Lucifer will be trying to get rid of him. This little altercation has made that perfectly apparent. And the ugly truth of the matter, one that Alastor can ill-afford to bury or misconstrue, is that Lucifer had made a valid point. Resources, connections, protection, incomprehensibly raw power…? Now that Lucifer has decided to be involved, Alastor is outclassed in areas where he’d been invaluable.

Alastor isn’t entirely without cards to play. The goodwill that all of Alastor’s resources and expertise — borrowed or not — during the hard early months of the hotel had bought was significant. Charlie is much too loyal to throw Alastor out now, not when Alastor has been a significant reason this venture hasn’t folded.

But Alastor must maintain his position at the hotel. He doesn’t have a choice. And Alastor isn’t about to allow the thing protecting Alastor’s position at the hotel to be Charlie and her good opinion.

Which means he’s going to have to be smart about this. Careful. Alastor hasn’t always been powerful, he’d had to work for it, Alastor still works for it, and he’s prepared to put in more work now. Lucifer is going to have to work if he wants to shift Alastor. Does Lucifer have it in him, really? To the best of Alastor’s knowledge, Lucifer hasn’t put in any work for his power or his position in centuries.

The much-vaunted King of Hell may beat Alastor on power and resources, but not on will or drive or focus. And Alastor isn’t an incompetent, bumbling fool.

Alastor knows himself, he knows he is a creature of selfish hunger and violent impulses. He is well accustomed to managing it, his worst urges lying somewhere on a spectrum between starving animal and white-hot seething rage.

And he has never desired anything more than to put Lucifer Morningstar in his place.

“He’s still standing and everything! I wasn’t trying to do anything permanent.”

“Why were you trying to do anything at all?!”

Lucifer is failing to calm down Charlie because he’s an idiot who still doesn’t understand his own daughter. Unfortunately for Alastor, Lucifer’s abysmal EQ doesn’t make him any less of a threat.

“He’s fine!”

“Dad, did you even look at him?”

Lucifer looks — Alastor smiles tightly and drums his fingertips in his microphone —

And then Lucifer keeps looking, for several seconds too long. It’s a look Alastor has seen before. He looks at Alastor’s face, but then across his form, assessing, evaluating. Up and down, heavy-lidded eyes catching on not-the-usual parts of him, pupils briefly twitching in size.

Instead of appraising a demon unbowed, Lucifer is appraising the taper of Alastor’s shoulders to his waist.

Instead of glancing at a weapon well-wielded, Lucifer’s glancing at the way Alastor’s claws handle the microphone rod with perverse interest.

Instead of recognizing a threat, his eyes flick down to Alastor’s long legs for a heartbeat before turning back to his daughter.

Those born to power really are all the same.

Alastor’s skin crawls in disgust and impotent rage. He looks at the ground where Lucifer had pressed him not even a minute before, straightens his spine, and waits for the earliest opportunity to flee that won’t look like he’s fleeing.

‘You’ll put the Devil right to you,’ Mama had said. She’d been right.

𐡸𐡷

The next day doesn’t begin too terribly.

“OK, so,” Charlie is practically vibrating with excitement, crumpling several packets of paper to her chest. “I have THE most AMAZING idea.”

Alastor highly doubts it.

The standard hotel staff and singular permanent guest are gathered as usual — with varying degrees of interest and skepticism — in the lobby lounge. Angel Dust is lounging on one of the couches, Husk and Niffty on another, Vaggie is on the floor with her back to a sofa, with Charlie standing in front of everyone.

Alastor, having plastered on the most amenable smile he could muster, is already settling in for the show. He doesn’t normally participate in the hotel’s redemption-adjacent activities, but it isn’t exactly unusual for him to stand in the rear and offer sparkling commentary — so he stands in the back, hands resting on his microphone.

Lucifer, notably, has yet to arrive.

Charlie hadn’t looked surprised when the clock ticked over and Lucifer had yet to appear; perhaps Lucifer has always felt that other people's time is less important than his own. He’d been informed of the gathering, of course — Charlie did insist — but despite a stated emotional investment in Charlie, Lucifer’s not yet shown up. He had been as prompt as his first arrival for the first few sessions, but tardiness is proving to be something of a trend.

Alastor would usually bristle at that sort of disrespect, but frankly, His Majesty’s royal absence is doing wonders for Alastor’s mood. He’s often heard that there's a benefit to keeping one's enemies close. Alastor is of the opinion that whatever advantages it offers, it’s not worth the significant downside of having to keep anyone close in the first place.

Charlie fumbles slightly as she searches for the right sheet.

“I was thinking the hotel could host…” Charlie pauses, and when she finally finds the page she’s looking for, she pulls it free with a dramatic snap and proudly brandishes the page towards the assembled group. “A self-help conference!”

The paper is yet another of Charlie’s hand-drawn attempts at a poster, with a rudimentary drawing of the hotel. Unicorn and star stickers are haphazardly strewn across the service, mingling freely with the cluster of stick figures. If Alastor looks closely, he can see one of the red crayon figures has a set of antlers.

Charlie, eyes wide, breathlessly awaits a response.

Vaggie takes pity on her first, with a coaxing smile. “…Wow, babe.”

It is all the encouragement Charlie needs. “It’ll be good because what if people just don’t want to come and stay here because they have other things going on? We can give them the tools they need to help themselves! And of course, some might come for a seminar and decide to extend their stay?”

Alastor smiles blandly. He doesn’t think that likely. If sinners don’t want to stay at the hotel despite the significant benefits of free room and board, plus his not-inconsiderable protection while on hotel premises, a few presentations are unlikely to make a better case. Yes, Charlie has effectively made food and space and relative safety available to any Sinner, all for the low low cost of their pride — the problem is that in the Pride Ring, pride is a cost most demons aren’t willing to pay.

Alastor accepts a few papers from Charlie as she hands them out, and immediately regrets it as she continues, “AND! I’ve got seminar outlines for all of you to present to the attendees!”

Alastor arches an eyebrow at the packet he’s been left holding, and — in an applaudable display of restraint, if he does say so, himself — does not immediately incinerate it. He may be willing to absorb a certain amount of damage to his image and reputation, but this particular farce is toeing the line of what he’ll accept.

“… ‘Pride and Prejudice and Demons: Admitting You're Not Always Right’?” Vaggie flips through her outline dubiously.

Husker throws his stack of papers down and pours himself a glass of an alarmingly green drink. “Sounds better than ‘Sin and Tonic: Growing Relationships Through Active Listening’.” He downs it like a shot.

“ ‘Lascivious Lust or Asmodeus Affection: Recognizing Toxic Relationships’?!” Angel Dust flings himself back onto the couch, one pair of arms crossed indignantly, the other gesturing rudely. “Am I supposed to believe you just randomly gave this one to me? This is bullshit.”

Charlie is both eager and entirely sincere when she steps up to Angel Dust. “Angel, it’s not an attack — you’re the best person for it! You have more exposure to the topic — you can speak to it with authenticity and make it more meaningful!”

“Wow, OK, awesome.” Angel Dust jabs at least three pointer fingers at her. “Here’s a topic for you, Princess, to speak authentically about and make all meaningful and shit. You can do one called ‘Devil’s Little Angel: Overcoming Your Emotionally Crippling Daddy Issues’—”

 Alastor wouldn’t term Charlie’s relationship with Lucifer as emotionally crippling per se, but he knows an emotional weakness when he sees one. It weighs on her in predictable — exploitable — ways. These have only become more clear with Lucifer’s presence — Alastor can see the exact shapes of Lucifer’s neglect, and the impressions those shapes have left on Charlie. Angel Dust, whose survival has rested on his ability to read the emotional wants and desires of others, has no doubt seen the same.

“Hey!” Charlie clutches her packet more closely, looking wounded. Her eyes flick to the doorway and back, to the seat where Lucifer should be sitting —

Vaggie, devoted guard dog that she is, immediately sniffs out Charlie’s burgeoning emotional distress and straightens from her position sitting on the floor.

“—but it’s not an attack! Like you said! You’ve just had more exposure to the fuckin’ topic—”

Vaggie glares at Angel Dust.

“—don’t tell me she don’t, her daddy issues are so bad, she’s ended up literally dating the only other fallen angel in hell—”

Vaggie drops her papers and stands up.

Angel is sprawling provocatively on the couch, extremely pleased with himself and grinning widely as he flings his arms out expansively, “—even her daddy’s got daddy issues, that shit runs in the family, it’s legitimately a good idea—”

Husker starts drinking from the bottle. Vaggie looks seconds from punching Angel Dust in the face. Niffty is pressing her big, bright eyeball directly on the sheet of paper, tears welling at the contact.

Alastor watches all of this with wickedly amused eyes and a bright, anticipatory grin. My, my. Charlie really ought to learn to control a room better.

Still, though. Out of the corner of his eye, Alastor sees as Charlie begins to visibly wilt, tears building in her big, soulful eyes — and, well. That’s that  then. It has been marvelously entertaining up to this point, but the specific quality of the chaos and din is perhaps beginning to get tedious.

Besides, if Charlie is ever going to learn how to command attention like she ought, she may as well learn from the best.

Alastor takes a few long strides into the center of the lounge — and releases a loud, cacophonous nails-on-chalkboard shriek of audio feedback. It squeals horrendously loud, the discordant vibrations screeching in skulls and under nails, and everyone in the lobby ceases everything to instead cringe in place. The reactions — the shuddering, the hands over the ears, all of it — are delightful. Alastor lets the piercing squawk continue for several extra long, unpleasant seconds, soaking in their delicious twitches of discomfort.  

And when he graciously allows the noise to cease, everyone’s eyes turn to Alastor — who of course has been grinning comfortably through the entirety of it — as he basks for an extended moment. And now that he has everyone’s attention —

“What an idea!” Alastor claps his hands enthusiastically. “I do love a party!”

Charlie removes her hands from her ears with an aggrieved look. “It’s not a party —“

“But it is! A party with…” Alastor glances down at his packet of papers, smile twitching, “…lectures! Goodness, why I would never have thought of such a thing!” The following ‘Because it’s idiotic’ is heavily implied. His head tilts, his neck cracks. “We will be providing catering, I hope? I just can’t imagine Sinners showing up for nothing.”

Vaggie — who Alastor believes still refuses to smile with him on sheer principle alone — pushes her hair up out of her scowling face in what doubles as an exasperated gesture. “They’re supposed to want to show up for the seminars.”

“Yes, yes,” Alastor waves her off, “Nothing and seminars will draw in crowds, I’m sure. But a good meal is so much more persuasive!”

Vaggie, flatteringly, actually considers this. She has been slightly more accepting of Alastor of late — likely because he’d actually “stuck his neck out” for Charlie, as it were. Alastor dares wonder if a success here might even win a bit of Vaggie’s stubbornly withheld goodwill too. Vaggie is so very near to Charlie’s heart, after all.

“I mean, it doesn’t seem like too big an ask?” Charlie is clearly thinking out loud. “People focus better on full stomachs. And, the hotel has a kitchen.”

Alastor raises one eyebrow at his stack, and turns. “Charlie my dear, while Niffty is a more than adequate chef for the hotel’s current —” non-existent “ — capacity, a larger crowd may strain her abilities. We are all aware that my experience presenting material on my radio broadcast makes me a superior orator, but in this I may be better utilized in arranging and implementing the catering.”

Charlie looks over at Niffty. Niffty, having abandoned her packet on the floor, is presently jumping up and down to dust a window that she is too short to otherwise reach. “I…guess you might be right.”

“Of course I am! And, since I will be otherwise occupied, you might want to find someone else to present," Alastor checked the title again before offering her the paper between his forefinger and thumb, “‘Envy Management: How to Stop Coveting Your Neighbor's Bigger Pit of Despair.’”

Husk snorts. Good man, good man.

"So.” Alastor points with his microphone. “Vaggie, my dear, why don't you whip us up a seminar schedule for our front ballroom and dining room?”

Vaggie glances at Charlie to check, then shrugs before heading up the stairs to the back offices.

“And Charlie, once that schedule is done, why not add it to your charming flyers? If it won’t fit handwritten, you might get them printed up somewhere with — actual typography.” A proper printshop would hopefully sidestep potential issues with Charlie's darling but decidedly unserious attempts at advertising. Alastor pauses a moment to think. “Mmm. And perhaps an emphasis on the free food.”

“Right…” Charlie trails off, thinking.

Alastor, having set up the barest bones of a plan, steps back to let her step forward again.

“…OK!” Charlie puffs herself up, draws herself tall, and raises an adorable fist of determination. “Ok, we can do this!”

The others will fall in line behind her — Charlie’s still nascent ability to inspire loyalty is something she has yet to harness very well, but it is there. And Charlie is often unrealistic, but she isn’t entirely unreasonable, especially when it comes to operating the hotel — Vaggie will rein her in where Alastor doesn’t care to.

For a moment, Alastor even hazards to think that things are progressing quite well.

And then the door bursts open.

“Heelloooo!” sings Lucifer Morningstar, bright and noisy and smiling ecstatically. “Charlie! Sweetheart!”

Alastor feels something inside of him tense and twist, the animal parts of him, the parts of him that hell had twisted into a prey animal, hyper-aware and hyper-vigilant — the reminder, the memory, of pain and powerlessness and being rendered entirely immobile, incapable in the face of an entity older and greater —

The rage, when it closely follows, is a relief. How dare he. 

Things had been going too well, apparently.

Charlie and Lucifer embrace, with Lucifer cooing something appropriately sentimental, and the sour nauseous hot feeling in Alastor’s gut roils.

“Oh ho ho, a shindig,” Lucifer is saying, leaning back onto his heels and waving his cane. “Well, why don’t you let your dear old dad help out a bit?”

Almost as one, the rest of the hotel glance over and look at Alastor.

Alastor does his best to look his most affably charming, his smile vivacious, but that seems to make the others more nervous.

On the one hand, everyone turning to Alastor says excellent things regarding how well-established he is here. Lucifer sees that too; he looks like he’s swallowed something disagreeable. On the other hand? Alastor’s advertised his animosity towards Lucifer too clearly and lost any benefit of the doubt. If he wants to maintain the upper hand here, Charlie can’t see him instigating anything.

“Goodness, we were just wrapping up some preliminary planning,” Alastor says smoothly, forcing his gritted teeth to relax, settling himself into the wingback chair with a practiced air of refined insouciance, “What a pity that you weren’t on time to participate.”

“…Ahah, I’m a busy guy!” Lucifer’s voice is higher pitched than normal as he adjusts his ludicrous overcompensation of a hat. “I’m an important guy! With like, super important things to do! And I’m here now, so.”

Alastor looks down his nose, supremely unimpressed. If Alastor had ever been so disrespectfully late to a family event, his Mama would have given him a talking to. Alastor is also busy with important things, but Alastor knows how to prioritize. How can Lucifer claim that his daughter’s projects are important to him, and then show up so late that the meeting is nearly over? A gentleman takes accountability for his mistakes – unless, apparently, you’re the King.

That whole ‘I’m a busy King’ line probably works better on people who haven’t seen the ducks.

Alastor clears his throat delicately. “I believe I speak for most of us,” Heavily implied, of course, is that Alastor is not included in most, “When I say that the Hazbin Hotel is thrilled to have the support of our most recent sponsor.”

Alastor knows his eyes are telling a vastly different story than the rest of him and can’t bring himself to care. “And I’m sure no one has to warn such an astute businessman of the dangers of excessive outside interference in a business’s affairs.”

Lucifer snorts. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I’m not merely a sponsor,” Alastor bares his teeth, “I'm a partner!”

Lucifer is also trying to look affable, but Alastor has much more practice — Lucifer looks wonderfully annoyed.

“Are you sure you want to get too involved?” Alastor leans forward. “It would cut into all the, ah, important things you just mentioned.”

“Somehow, I’ll manage.” Lucifer rolls his eyes and then tries to ignore Alastor, addressing Charlie alone. “So what’s been decided already?”

“Oh! Yes! Um,” Charlie says slowly, with good intentions Alastor is sure, “Most everyone will have a presentation. I’ll be going and doing some printing, Vaggie is doing the scheduling and organizing, Alastor’s going to be handling facilities and catering—“

“I can do that!” Lucifer spastically interjects, his smile manic, before coughing and adjusting his delivery. “I mean — ah, Sweetie, you could let me do the catering for you?”

Alastor clenches his microphone’s handle slightly too tight.

Distractible imbecile.

And Alastor stops, and considers.

…That’s a key thing about Lucifer, isn’t it? Lucifer is very distractible. He’s late even when it matters to him. He’s prone to strange fixations and obsessions. Alastor was always of the opinion that actions spoke louder than words, and Lucifer’s actions seemed to prioritize his ducks over his own daughter. Alastor unfortunately believes the man when he says he loves Charlie — but Lucifer does nothing but get in his own way.

Lucifer gets so lost in his own little angelic head that he can’t bother focusing on the things he actually cares for. Lucifer clearly loves Charlie, but not enough to actually reach out to her. He comes eagerly when she calls for him, and then can’t be bothered to stay. His melancholia, as they’d called it in Alastor’s day, shouldn’t be Charlie’s problem — but Lucifer had made it as much.

When taken in combination, these are things which make him not just unreliable as Charlie’s ally, but disappointing as her father. Lucifer is here right now, true — but given both his melancholia and his distractibility, how long will Lucifer be here, really?

How long until Lucifer abandons Charlie once more?

'Trust a man like you'd trust the Devil,' his Mama had sighed, 'Only with things you can stand losing.'

“Charlie, kiddo, come on! Let your dear old dad handle that instead.”

Alastor glances at Charlie. She is looking back and forth between Alastor and Lucifer nervously, attempting to balance her father’s desire to help with keeping Alastor happy – and it says something  that she would place a friendship of less than a year on equal standing to her own blood. She knows her father better than she lets on. Right now Charlie is still cautious around him, waiting for him to leave again. She’s still braced for it. If Lucifer waits to leave until after getting her hopes up, Charlie is going to be… inconsolable.

…It’s not that Alastor actually cares. Not that. Of course not.

It’s one thing to let Charlie fail, or to teach Charlie a few important lessons, but she is painfully immature for her centuries — Alastor’s would put her mental age in her early twenties. She still has emotional limits. Losing her father again might actually break her.

Viewed in a certain lens, Lucifer is far more of a threat to Charlie than Alastor. Oh, the irony. As for Alastor, he just hasn’t sunk this much time and effort and investment into Charlie just to let her get broken down by this half-wit.

“You know I can get things from the other rings for you — when’s the last time you guys had some of the good stuff from the Gluttony ring, eh?”

He just needs to keep Lucifer distracted enough so Alastor doesn’t lose ground, keep Lucifer from giving Charlie too much hope, and wait out Lucifer’s current level of interest until that little blond featherbrain of his malfunctions and sends him off to some other irrelevant hyperfixation. 

But how is Alastor going to do that? Alastor has so much to do, so little time, so few resources. His options are so limited —

“And you know I’d really like to help out more around here!”

Lucifer thinks Alastor can’t stop him. He thinks Alastor has his hands tied, at least presently tied by the fact that dear, naive, sensitive Charlie is in the room. Lucifer thinks he can just continue to drip venom into Charlie’s ears, and that Alastor will do nothing about it.

We’ll see about that.

Alastor needs to distract him until he loses interest in the hotel, like all his other little projects.

Like he’d lost interest in Lu-Lu World after foreseeable setbacks, like he’d apparently lost interest in Charlie the first fucking time. All Alastor has to do is—something—

Alastor has to do something—

And Alastor suddenly recalls, with perfect clarity, the day before — Lucifer’s eyes glancing over Alastor’s frame with interest, giving up the intimidation of eye contact to indulge in a base, selfish enjoyment of Alastor’s appearance —

“Come on, he’s a cannibal. What does he know about good food for people who don’t like eating people?”

Alastor crosses his legs with as much flair as he can manage, leaning back in his seat to put the long lines of his body on display. “Oh, I’m sure I can satisfy all manner of appetites,” he purrs, before ever-so-slightly lowering the register of his voice, leaning into the rasp of his natural vocal fry. “I have so many of my own, after all.”

Alastor’s voice in death is unchanged from in life, a somewhat nasal tenor. What could have been an unfortunate flaw — nasal tenors are not typically associated with power projection — had proved a blessing for Alastor in his craft: higher-pitched voices transmit with more energy, more clearly and efficiently, within the limited frequency ranges of his era. His voice had, and still has, a natural clarity in broadcast. On top of that naturally-given advantage, Alastor had developed a specialized skill set — articulation, intonation, breath control, vocal range — all in service of being clear, expressive, and easily understood. Alastor knows exactly how to speak in a way that communicates his desired meaning.

The desired meaning here is sex, unfortunately, but needs must.

The effect is gratifyingly immediate — which is good, because as far as Alastor is concerned, he has quite abandoned subtlety and he’s not sure what he would have done with a lack of response. It would have been insulting. As it stands, Lucifer looks away as though looking at Alastor was akin to touching a hot burner. He freezes and stares into space for a half second, before whipping his head to stare wide-eyed and panicked back at Alastor.

Alastor lounges, luxuriating in the sensation of a ploy going according to plan. He is very carefully not looking at Lucifer, delicately toying with the stick of the microphone, walking his claws up its length.

(Angel Dust and Husk also do a double take, Husk with a look of horror, and Angel Dust with a look of much the opposite.)

It's for the best that Vaggie had stepped out; it all goes entirely over Charlie’s head. “Dad, I think Alastor is going to be fine. He’s even cooked for us before — normal food, not cannibal food — and it was really good.”

Lucifer doesn’t say anything in response to Charlie’s compliments of Alastor, and that’s half the battle, right there.

Alastor only flicks his eyes to Charlie for a heartbeat. “I admit, I do have particular preferences —“ but he glances back at Lucifer and lets his smile reach his eyes. “But I’m really quite flexible. Eager to please, even, given the right incentives.”

There’s a long pause.

(Husk makes a vomiting noise. Angel Dust is wide eyed, on the edge of his seat.)

Alastor’s grin widens. “Culinarily speaking, of course.”

Lucifer’s eye twitches. “…of course.”

Charlie is beginning to realize she’s missing out on undertones to this conversation, but doesn’t quite connect all the dots. “Dad, would you… maybe want to work with Alastor?”  

Alastor begins tapping his microphone against the corner of his sly, closed-mouth smile.

Lucifer inhales —

Alastor snaps his teeth, perilously close to the tip.

— and Lucifer suddenly chokes on his own spit, coughing. “What? I mean, no. No, no thank you.”

Delightful.

“Oh my stars!” Alastor swung his lanky legs around with as much fluidity as he could summon — all that cervine grace was good for something — and leapt up in a single economical movement. “I wouldn’t dare tie up your father in such a way — not unless he asked nicely.”

Lucifer is turning a truly astonishing range of colors.

(Angel Dust is wheezing.)

“It looks like I’ll be remaining a solo act —” Alastor shrugs but can’t suppress a shark-like smirk, “But if he really applied himself, I’m sure his Majesty could find some way to contribute where all parties involved enjoy themselves.”

A pause. Alastor stretches.

“In any case, it looks like my work is cut out for me. Tata, chums!”

As Alastor saunters out the door, he takes a coy look over his shoulder — Lucifer looks outraged. Frustrated.

And his eyes are trained on Alastor’s figure.

Alastor laughs at him, reedy and manic, grin shark-wide, and faces back forward as he leaves.

He’ll take the little victories where he can get them — particularly when they involve making an ass of Lucifer.

Though the plan moving forward is… somewhat unclear.

What is the plan? Hope that he can continue distracting the King of Hell, an inhuman creature of immense power who once defied Heaven, with vague insinuations of sexual favors? What’s Alastor to do next, shake his tail at him? Lucifer Morningstar can’t be so lacking in restraint.

Then again — Alastor spends a brief moment musing on it all, the distractibility, the melancholia, all the hells-forsaken ducks — perhaps Lucifer is.

It’s perhaps a bit unfortunate that he’s added yet one more thing to his loaded plate. His deal. His obligations to the hotel. His abilities are still regenerating. His resources are a bit stretched. And now this, protecting Charlie not just from physical threats, but from the inevitable disappointment from her own father?

Having to resort to manipulating lust is always distasteful; all of that overly-physical sexual nonsense never stopped being ridiculous, not in life nor death nor everything that came after. Alastor’s not seen fit to drag himself through the motions of it since that idiot picture box ruined things.

But as it is, Alastor hadn’t needed to even touch the man. His vocal talents alone had done all the work. With a bit of finesse, Alastor can keep it that way and set the other man off-kilter without ever performing a sex act; a well-executed proposition alone would take up plenty of room in that man’s limited attention span.

Perhaps that’s the plan, then.

He’ll just… proposition Lucifer Morningstar. Sexually.

Alastor wrinkles his nose, but the idea is viable.

The fact that a proposition occurred will stay in Lucifer’s featherbrained head. Alastor can adapt if necessary, but for now, this is the easiest and most convenient path. Surely, not even Lucifer Morningstar is pathetic enough to accept a proposition from a man he hates.

Surely.

𐡸𐡷

It isn’t unheard of for Alastor to review and triage maintenance notes while sitting in the lobby; he has always preferred to perform hotel tasks where people can see and appreciate his labors. The hotel needs to be in better-than-typical condition for the upcoming conference, so it’s all very ordinary when Alastor spends the morning settled into a lobby chair with a mug of strong coffee on the side table, sorting and reading and compiling notes, humming merrily.

Except for the fact that Alastor isn’t wearing his coat.

Alastor had carefully tailored his image as the Radio Demon to project the sort of person he always wanted to be, finally achieved in death. He is self-aware enough to acknowledge that this is not an image he crafted to be appealing, so minor adjustments must be made for the task at hand. He has it on reasonably good authority that his vest and shirtsleeves emphasize the taper of his shoulders to waist quite nicely.

Going without the long coat also exposes his tail, however, and that is a double-edged sword.

His tail is stubbornly expressive; it communicates all the things a prey animal would want to tell the herd — all the things a savvy predator might take advantage of. Alastor prefers to keep his tail covered for good reason. Alastor also understands, however, that his tail draws attention to his rear end — a baffling part of the body to find aesthetically pleasing; Alastor can’t claim to understand it, but it seems popular enough.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter, given that he’d caught the ridiculous man’s eye with no effort whatsoever, but a thing worth doing is a thing worth doing properly. Sex is too much of a mover and shaker in the economy of hell to avoid all discourse entirely, but it’s far enough outside Alastor’s bailiwick that he is preparing for a challenge. He always has loved a performance, but this had to be a performance to catch the attention of the most powerful creature in hell or on earth.

So here Alastor is, costumed to best advantage on a fully dressed stage, ready to put a century’s worth of manipulation skills to the test.

Husk is characteristically blasé, and Niffty’s bright “Good morning sir!” is chipper as ever, which is good; for once, Alastor doesn’t want attention drawn to the little drama he’s organizing. It doesn’t go entirely unnoticed; Charlie makes a few oblique comments. “I’m glad you’re feeling more comfortable around everyone these days,” she says brightly.

While bursting her sad, naive little bubble could be amusing — Alastor would, in fact, feel much more comfortable buttoned-up in his usual fashion — he decides to refrain from doing so; he pats her on the head instead and she beams brightly back at him. Silly girl.

At the very least, luck is on Alastor’s side when Lucifer re-appears — the lobby is empty save for Alastor.

Alastor is casually bent over the bar reaching for supplies to make his own drink when Lucifer teleports in. Alastor hears the man enter, but doesn’t bother looking over until he’s finished his pour.

When he does, Lucifer is looking at Alastor, but he is not looking Alastor in the eye.

Lucifer’s eyes are trained on Alastor’s tail.

Alastor has little control over what his tail does unless he is consciously exerting will over it, so he typically covers and ignores it. Now that Alastor’s attention is brought to it, it is flicking playfully, betraying his engagement in their little game. Forgoing the jacket was apparently the correct, albeit a disconcerting, decision to make.

It’s true that Alastor does not, as it happens, count sexual interactions among his many diverse interests. He does, however, enjoy being appreciated. So the way that Lucifer’s throat clicks, and those bright eyes trailed slowly across Alastor’s form, from his tail to hovering around his shoulders and his waist and down his long legs, before snapping up to Alastor’s knowing gaze with a vaguely mortified expression —

It is perhaps a little bit gratifying, on top of the base satisfaction that comes with preparations going according to plan.

“Enjoying the view, Your Majesty?” Alastor doesn’t have much bass in his voice to speak of, and his preferred frequency band tends to flatten the highs and lows of his voice, but he compensates with tone and timbre as smooth as his favorite whiskey.

The look on Lucifer’s face is exquisitely horrified, and that is definitely gratifying.

Mocking Lucifer would defeat the purpose of this exercise, unfortunately. Alastor instead turns away and pretends to be wholly engrossed in his drink. “The others have already left for the day, unfortunately — you should consider coming back later.”

Reverse psychology. Alastor smirks as Lucifer approaches the bar, and pours him a second glass.

“None of that ‘we here at the Hazbin Hotel’ crap once you’ve got me alone, huh, jerkass?” Lucifer grouses crankily. Alastor pointedly takes a sip from the second glass he’s poured before handing it to Lucifer.

“Given that we are alone, surely we can find more interesting things to discuss?” He manages to keep it smooth enough, glancing from under the corner of his eyelashes. Playing coy like this grates against Alastor’s brain, but he mentally shoves that annoyance down out of sight.

“Interesting things, huh? Is that what they call this these days?” Lucifer has a hand curled around his drink but isn’t drinking it. He doesn’t pretend to mistake Alastor’s meaning, and is giving him a look out of the corner of his eye. “You do remember that I kicked your ass like two days ago, right?”

…Somehow, Alastor has to pretend he wants to have sex with this man.

“I assure you, it was an unforgettable experience.” Alastor can only disguise so much resentment. “You can imagine why one might pursue a less uncomfortable method of relieving tensions?”

Lucifer leans back, and again, he flicks his eyes up and down Alastor’s frame. Alastor smiles as benignly as he can — which isn’t terribly benign, admittedly.

“…Uh huh.” Lucifer responds, slow and dry. He hesitates, opens his mouth, looks around the lobby and closes it, then says, “You know what, we’re not doing this here.”

“A pity.” Alastor shrugs, and raises his glass to Lucifer as he sinks into the shadows, winking before he falls out of sight. “Perhaps later then. I do have work to catch up on.”

Alastor re-constitutes himself outside the door to his office, because he has it warded from teleportation directly inside —

— but this apparently does not apply to Lucifer Morningstar, King of Hell, Fallen Archangel, with more power than he clearly knows what to do with. Lucifer materializes in a swirl of red magic in front of Alastor as he opens his office door. “ No. We are dealing with this now.”

Alastor arches an eyebrow.

He’d expected a bit of a longer dance before an actual confrontation, for some reason. Longer than thirty seconds of conversation, at least.

But this works to Alastor’s advantage.

Alastor will extend a lascivious offer, which Lucifer will of course decline — Lucifer is many things but he can’t be completely stupid — and anytime in the future Lucifer tries to talk to Charlie for too long, Alastor will make innuendo until Lucifer leaves.

Alastor closes the door behind himself without turning his back on Lucifer, and for the theatrics of it, he locks the door with a pointed click. “Please, do come into my office, Your Majesty,” he says silkily, letting his smile spread wide across his face.

“Yeah, whatever.” Lucifer’s eyes are glowing especially brightly in the dimly lit office. “So, you gonna tell me what the fuck you think you’re doing?”

“I believe I’ve made that transparent.” Alastor crosses the room, turning on the banker’s lamp on his desk.

“You do realize I invented seduction, right?” Lucifer demands from behind him, exasperated. “Like, temptation is kind of my thing.”

Alastor turns around, leans against the desk, and leaves his eyes half-lidded as he tries for enigmatic. “Do you know, I’ve met your sole competition from that time period! It’s not the ‘flex’ you seem to think it is.”

Lucifer makes an interesting noise that is a cross between a snort and a snarl.

This is all rather less sexual and much more entertaining than Alastor had been anticipating, really.

He watches with interest as Lucifer paces up one length of the room, and then back again. “Sinners like you always want something from me — power, wealth, souls, influence, notoriety — and you’re not the first to try to use sex to get it.” Lucifer stops, and makes very deliberate eye contact. “You know damn well I want you away from my daughter, so there’s room for terms, here. What do you actually want to get out of this? I’m warning you now, I will know if you’re lying.”

Doubtful. Alastor is an excellent liar.

He prefers the truth, though — truth is such a wonderfully flexible thing! — so he tilts his head to one side and speaks brightly and honestly, grin wide. “While all of those things are tempting, riding your admittedly well-tailored coattails isn’t my style. I don’t care to get them from you. I won’t be leaving the hotel, but you may at least rest assured — the only thing I am presently seeking from you is your attention.”

Watching Lucifer’s face during this little explanation is incredibly interesting — Alastor can’t recall seeing a man have that particular awe-and-horror reaction to a simple answer since the trenches north of the Somme. Lucifer recovers quickly, to his credit.

“…You want my attention.” Lucifer repeats it slowly, as though tasting the word. He paces the length of the room, again, twice.

Alastor’s eyes follow him as he walks. He wonders if Lucifer is self-aware enough to realize that his attention is, at any moment, a rare and rapidly diminishing resource.

He’s already considering how to respond to the rejection — a gentleman respects a ‘no’ without undue anger of course, his Mama wouldn’t have it any other way, but perhaps an especially gracious acceptance would aggravate Lucifer more —

Lucifer looks back up at Alastor, looking awfully haughty for a man wearing lifts. Haughty, and intrigued.

“Tell me then, Sinner,” says Lucifer, gaze trailing back down to take in Alastor’s frame for the first time since they entered the office. It lingers on Alastor’s shoulders, unpadded by his coat. A smile slides onto Lucifer’s face with ease. “What does having my attention look like to you?”

…. That is not a prelude to a rejection. Alastor blinks at Lucifer, brows raised, smile frozen.

What.

…By the seven hells.

Lucifer Morningstar is actually considering having  sex with Alastor.

Is Lucifer an actual idiot? Is he so pathetically desperate for coitus that he’ll take the most convenient opportunity that presents itself? Impossible. He could announce himself on the street and a dozen prospective bedmates would present themselves. Alastor had admittedly presented himself on an especially convenient platter, but only because he’d thought Lucifer would find it distracting, not an actual option.

The plan. There’s no time to adapt the plan.

He needs to scare Lucifer off, just in a way that doesn’t seem like Alastor’s trying to scare him off.

Alastor knows he didn’t conceal his surprise entirely, but that’s fine. Surprise is acceptable. He lets his grin go positively wolfish — a deliberate concealment of the queasiness in his belly.

This part, Alastor is… perhaps slightly less confident in. He is hardly a naive blushing flower — after nearly a century in hell, he has some idea how the sexual drive in others can overlap with more familiar drives like hunger and predatory instinct — but an idea is no substitute for experience, experience which Alastor doesn’t have.

But it’s never more important to project confidence than when you’re uncertain, so Alastor shows his teeth like a starving wolf, a shark’s wide grin. ‘A gentleman always asks,’ Mama always said, and he has no better rulebook, so he raises a hand while positioning it to snap. “A demonstration may be in order?”

Lucifer crosses his arms and nods tightly.

Alastor snaps his fingers.

Lucifer freezes in place, eyes twitching, as Alastor’s shadows slowly spiral up his booted calves and around his hips, wrapping his chest in a serpentine facsimile of an embrace. Lucifer narrows his eyes in response and surreptitiously tests the shadow ropes. They’re not there to bind — for the moment — and they give easily to Lucifer’s subtle pressure, but Alastor maintains their insistence.

Alastor leans back further against his desk, crossing his arms and ankles. He’s aware that some find this titillating, but surely not Lucifer Morningstar of all creatures. Surely this is too demeaning, too degrading, for Lucifer to ever countenance. If anyone ever tried such a thing with Alastor, he’d rip them to shreds — the loss of control, the imposition, would be untenable.

“You consider yourself an entertainer, I quite like being entertained —” Alastor muses. “An outsider might see potential for compatibility.”

Lucifer catches a tentacle between finger and thumb; Alastor hums and allows it to be manipulated without resistance as Lucifer’s wrist twists it this way and that for inspection. Without specific direction, it writhes like a bloated earthworm. Alastor knows what they feel like in this form — smooth like exposed muscle, no discernible temperature, pulsing like a heart — and can’t recall a single person that didn’t find them off-putting.

Lucifer only raises his brows, though, and gives it a brash grin. “Bold!” He runs the other hand along the length, like he’s stroking an animal. He grins up at Alastor like they’re sharing a joke, a dangerous one. “You do realize this is an incredibly risky assumption about my tastes?”

“I have no idea,” Alastor murmurs demurely, “Why you’d think I’m catering to your tastes right now.”

At his behest, the shadow tendril that has been receiving Lucifer’s attention pushes past to loop around the back of Lucifer’s neck and the base of his skull, curling slyly to rest at the corner of Lucifer’s mouth, the blunt end of it tap-tapping there as though asking a question.

This is supposed to be scaring Lucifer off.

Lucifer’s eyes widen, pupils blown.

…It doesn’t seem to be doing that.

Alastor inhales, exhales, and inhales again, and tightens the other coils’ pressure on Lucifer by an oh-so-subtle amount.

Lucifer is watching Alastor, gaze glittering. He draws the blunt tentacle around and to his lips with a single finger, like he’s lifting a lover’s chin for a kiss — but the kiss he offers the shadow is filthy. He takes it into his mouth whole, down to the throat, and on the upstroke he leaves so much saliva behind that a string of it stretches and pops between his lips and the shaft. Lucifer pulls away, but his long forked tongue still spirals around the tip for a moment longer before withdrawing with a curl.

His eyes stay on Alastor the entire time, glowing bright gold — and then Lucifer closes them, back subtly arching, as he leans into the caress at the nape of his neck.

Alastor’s nostrils flare.

How degrading.

How demeaning. How debased.

The excessive fluids are disgusting, the insinuation is unsanitary, the usually too-vague phantom sensations that Alastor receives from his shadow appendage are moist and cooling stickily.

It should be repulsive.

Alastor thinks it would be, were it literally anyone else in Hell.

But it isn’t literally anyone else in hell. It is Lucifer Morningstar.

The reality of what it is Alastor is doing right now hits him like a sledgehammer. Alastor — a mortal, a Sinner not even a century dead — is debasing Lucifer Morningstar, a creature that predates time and stars.

Lucifer should be furious. He should be ripping Alastor’s shadows apart with all the power and light of the Star of Morning, striding out the office door with confidence befitting the creature who defied all of Heaven. Alastor’s plan had hinged on this, the fact that surely, the being who warred with heaven to secure the free will of humanity wouldn’t be willing to subject themselves to the perverse whims of a low Sinner.

Yet by all current indications, Lucifer Morningstar might be. Willing, that is.

Against all sane and reasonable judgment, abandoning dignity, decorum, and the Sin he personifies entirely, Lucifer Morningstar is standing in Alastor’s office, letting Alastor do… do filthy, repulsive things to him.

…It almost looks like submission.

Alastor leans in, eyes widening, nostrils flared.

For some reason, he is breathing through his mouth to get more air.

Alastor feels his eyes widening, sclera blackening, his skeleton popping strangely — it pulls on his injury; Alastor ignores it — his control over his shadowy un-limbs is meticulously unchanged. The tendrils apply firm, even, suggestive pressure over Lucifer’s clothes, only just beginning to slide and squeezing with an undefinable eagerness that had been lacking only a moment before.

Lucifer Morningstar, who once defied God, who could tear his shadows to shreds — he could tear Alastor to shreds — is letting Alastor pet him like a dog.

Lucifer opens his eyes languidly, glancing at Alastor out from under his lashes, and then blinks, straightens somewhat, demeanor shifting. “Uh. Wow. That’s a look.”

Lucifer is wide-eyed, stunned and stunning, wrapped in Alastor’s dark grasp.

Is this what all the fuss is about? Does this explain the societal preoccupation with sex, why everyone hell and earth alike seems to obsess over it unceasingly? No wonder, then, that Alastor has never been interested. He’s always been different and particular in his tastes —

Lucifer Morningstar shudders.

— nearly impossibly particular.

Lucifer raises one finger, and uses it to point at Alastor. “Gotta admit, I was like 90% sure you were bullshitting me —”

As easy as breathing, almost without bidding, another shadow writhes into existence and loops loosely around a thigh, sliding up-up-up almost to the groin .

“WOW. OK! So —“ Lucifer’s voice briefly goes up an octave. “So we are NOT bullshitting then—“

All that power and he acts so pathetic, all bombastic bluster and false bravado. He looks pathetic, all delicate waist and wrist and neck — and suddenly the petite nature of the man takes on a fascinating new context. He looks so fragile, when he’s the least fragile being in hell. The contrasts, the dichotomy.

Alastor wants to take him apart, and Lucifer might let him.

How is it that people charm potential lovers again? Alastor can be charming when he wants to be. He excels at courteousness, he can do compliments, he can even do real ones.

“Were you trying to show off for me, my dear?” Alastor croons, sounding slightly slurred both from misbehaving transmission interference and heavy salivation. Was Lucifer Morningstar trying to show off for a mere sinner? Intoxicating. “There’s no need — you are incomparably lovely as it is.”

Lucifer tenses and inhales, and stares desperately wide-eyed at Alastor, not seeming to notice himself  surrendering his own weight into the dark embrace.

“Your reputation is well earned.” Alastor lurches forward from the desk, graceful in the way of drunks and the inhuman, limbs too long and claws elongated to stiletto knives.

The dark shadows laid on starched white fabric are a striking aesthetic — but Lucifer’s skin is just as bright a white, with porcelain translucency and luminance. A tendril slides between Lucifer’s shirt and waistcoat, and oh-so-carefully tugs. Exactly one button, at the very top of the vest, slips open. Alastor is toeing the thinnest of lines. “Imagine what a sight you’d be,” Alastor wonders aloud. “Without any of this in the way—“

Lucifer makes a sound, and his chin tilts up, exposing pale porcelain skin and a rapidly fluttering pulse point.

Alastor’s mouth is watering; his teeth itch. He reaches, he hovers, but he doesn’t dare touch skin yet. His shadows squeeze and release Lucifer in primal rhythm.

Alastor breathes, grin feral, static cracking. “Are you going to let me, Lucifer Morningstar?”

…But Lucifer smirks, and tilts his head just so, and says, “What happens if I say no?”

Alastor freezes, drooling ichor, claws inches from the starched fabric of Lucifer’s clothing.

‘A gentleman always asks,’ Mama had said; she always masked her accent when it was important. ‘And a gentleman respects a refusal.’

‘You’ll give us a bit of dignity, won’t you, honey?’

The corners of his grin tighten and warp.

And Alastor steps back.

His shape shifts back to his typical form with a rapid pop-pop-pop series of sickening cracks; the shadows which had wrapped so firmly around Lucifer loosened and lifted off of him, touching nothing as they uncoiled and withdrew.

Lucifer sways a bit, briefly looking bereft after losing the support that the tendrils had offered. Squaring his stance, he abruptly bares his teeth at Alastor in indignation. “What the actual fuck, Alastor.”

Alastor is out of breath despite doing nothing to exert himself; he tries to slow his breathing forcibly as he looks down his nose at Lucifer.

Alastor isn’t a good person and doesn’t try to be, but he does try to be the gentleman his mother taught him to be. Much of that standard had never actually applied to Alastor before. He’d never played the little courtship games, seeing no need for either sentiment or sex. But this is about sex, isn’t it? Sex adjacent, at a minimum.

His mother had taught him perfectly well how to treat a lady — or a partner in general, he supposes, given how Lucifer Morningstar isn’t a lady in the slightest. He’d earned a good part of his way to hell enforcing those standards on others, with extreme and violent prejudice.

Alastor is many things but no hypocrite, to partake in the behaviors he so gleefully disembowels others for.

“We agreed on a demonstration,” he says, and his ears briefly pull back despite himself. “You asked, and so I am demonstrating what happens if you say no.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Lucifer narrows his eyes at Alastor incredulously. “I wasn’t being literal, you ass.”

Alastor almost snarls. Almost. He’s trying to be charming at the moment, which is difficult when one must also devote a certain amount of focus to not sprouting twice as many teeth as a human jaw can comfortably hold.

“If you say no,” Alastor can’t help but wrinkle his nose at verbally addressing the topic in such a blunt, crass manner, “Then I have it on good authority that it stops being sex and starts being something in which I’ve no interest.”

A pause.

Lucifer drags a hand down his face, the other on his hip. “Yeah. Uh. That’s… fine. Great.” He looks Alastor up and down again, the appraisal undefinably different than the ones he’d previously made, and laughs incredulously. “Alastor the fucking Radio Demon, cannibal, overlord, all-around asshole. Also a big fan of verbal consent, apparently — how the fuck was I supposed to pick up on that?”

Alastor hums around a thin lipped smile. “No need to sound so surprised,” he says mildly. “My manners are impeccable.”

Lucifer snorts. “How does that work in your head, exactly? Do you say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ before you maul and eat someone?”

“Ha! No, it’s quite simple.” Alastor stands a shade taller, his vertebrae lengthening, eyes black and dialed. “People either deserve courtesy or they deserve consequences.” He waves enthusiastically. “We’re in hell, my dear, so it’s usually the latter.”

Lucifer doesn’t reply to that, looking doubtful.

This has not gone according to plan. A tactical retreat is in order.

Alastor leans in, even as his eldritch form subsides and his shadows well around him for transport.

“I believe I’ve made a sufficient case for my proposition. You’ll get back to me after you’ve considered my offer, won’t you?” Alastor cants his head to the side, eyes and grin as open as he has ever made them. “You were a marvelous show, by the way, just delightful, truly a revelation — ”

Lucifer looks startled, and something else that Alastor can’t identify, before the shadows slip Alastor away.

Alastor doesn’t know exactly which hall he steps out into, or which of the many vacant floors — he just takes the first opportunity he has to be alone so he can finally think.

This has NOT gone according to plan.

Alastor has always been weak to curiosity and hunger — albeit a different kind of hunger — and both had taken over his senses.

He had always thought himself above that sort of thing. Above those specific urges, the senseless need to make oneself vulnerable with another. He’d felt that the lack of drive to indulge in carnal pleasures made him better in some way.

How could Alastor have possibly predicted that not only was Lucifer Morningstar so pathetic that he enjoys debasement, but that actually performing said debasement would be the most satiating thing Alastor has experienced in a century?

What kind of power is this? Was this power at all?

Alastor considers, briefly, a faceless body in the same circumstance and feels nothing. Is it just Lucifer? What Lucifer is, and what he represents?

He needs to think about this.

…This doesn’t have to impact the plan.

Alastor grips his microphone tighter, drumming his claws on the head, clickity-click. The proposition is going to weigh on Lucifer’s disorganized mind, as planned. This will limit what he can do before his attention span finally runs out. And if Lucifer chooses to engage in an affair of this kind, it will perhaps be even more distracting.

…And what harm could it be, if Alastor indulges in a bit of novelty in the meantime?

𐡸𐡷

The plan is working.

Lucifer made himself scarce, after their little conversation — a result that kept Lucifer away from Charlie for several days, which Alastor has accepted smugly as a victory.

Now though, it’s the night before the conference, and Lucifer has resurfaced to watch Alastor from across the lobby.

Alastor generously makes a point of stretching — his back and rump facing Lucifer — as he begins excusing himself for the evening.

“Well, then, ladies!” Alastor summons his microphone from the couches where he was finalizing a few details with Vaggie and Charlie. “I’ll just run a few last checks upstairs and see you in the morning, shall I?”

Alastor turns and doesn’t bother hiding that he’s checking on Lucifer. Lucifer doesn’t hide that he is watching Alastor either, and maintains eye contact as he takes a sip of his (tall, fizzy, umbrella-topped) drink.

Despite its success, the plan had been impacted by Alastor’s burgeoning sexual interest. He had previously intended to needle Lucifer post-proposition with innuendo and suggestive language, thus distracting him to uselessness. Now that Alastor’s carnal proposition is somewhat more genuine, the rules are changed. He’d firmly placed the ball in Lucifer’s court, so to speak — a gentleman does not press an unwanted suit.

Alastor’s mother had always said that men who aren’t gentlemen are worth less than dirt. She likely hadn’t intended for him to kill quite so many men over it.

Staying away from Lucifer for the past week has proven an unexpected struggle.

Alastor has never before been interested in sex, and truly, the messy bits with all the body parts still didn’t appeal, at least not when Alastor considers his own physical person in the picture. And watching others inspired nothing, either. Using his shadows was a clever workaround — he’d not anticipated any reaction on his part.

But react Alastor had.

It’s so new, so different. And Alastor craves novelty.

So Alastor feels anticipation shiver up his spine when Lucifer keeps deliberate eye contact and says, “I think I’ll head upstairs too.”

“Goodnight Dad. Goodnight, Alastor,” Charlie waves them off cheerily. Vaggie squints at Alastor, but nods at them both.

And when they both materialize in the hall by Alastor’s office, instead of Lucifer heading up to his private room as implied, Alastor grins at Lucifer widely.

He leans in, microphone clasped behind his back. “Why, your Majesty! What a surprise!”

It isn’t. They both know it isn’t.

“Alastor.” Lucifer clears his throat.

“Have you ever used my name before?” Alastor asks, all casual conversation. “I enjoy how you say it; you have a most expressive voice.”

Lucifer Morningstar, Sin of Pride, defier of the Heavens and ruler of Hell, age numbering in millennia, flushes gold. Exhilarating. Alastor sways in a bit further, doing his best to conceal the mania threatening to bubble up.

Alastor has considered the events of the previous week carefully; he’s paced in his bayou and held the memory up to the light of introspection, inspecting it from all angles. The only thing differentiating that encounter from every other unfortunate experience in Alastor’s past — is Lucifer himself.

Lucifer himself is licking his lips. “I have a question for you.”

Alastor raises his eyebrows encouragingly. “And I am all ears!”

“You said…” Lucifer hesitates. “You said people deserve either courtesy or consequences. What… How do you differentiate? In your mind.”

Alastor pauses for a moment.

Then he stands back straight again with a bark of laughter. “Ha! Ha ha! Do you know, I wasn’t expecting a question on philosophy.”

“Yeah, funny ha ha.” Lucifer mutters. “But I was thinking about it. Weirdly enough.”

Well. Alastor supposes he can humor it.

“It’s nothing so mysterious,” Alastor says indulgently. “I’m merely a great believer in social contract. Everyone deserves a bit of dignity, right up until they deny that dignity to others.” Alastor’s eyes crinkle as his grin stretches. “Then, they deserve me.”

He hadn’t been raised to have drastically different morals than everyone else. As far as Alastor is concerned, he’s just the only one to take them seriously. “People think they can get away with imposing indignity on others without consequences — consequences which I am delighted to impose.” The corners of his mouth turn up and up and up. “Sometimes violently. It is deeply fulfilling.”

Lucifer squints up at Alastor, clearly dubious.

“And you think that’s your place?”

“I earned that place.”

Alastor had decided long ago that he’d had enough of suffering consequences he hadn’t earned, while others abused their power to avoid all consequences, no matter how justly deserved.

So yes.

Alastor had earned that place. Alastor deserves that place.

What could an archangel turned king possibly know of enduring indignity and disrespect just for existing, suffering for choices others made? What could he know about the rage it engenders, the fury under the breastbone, the seething mass of impotent anger that has no outlet — not until you tear them apart for daring to believe they’re worth more than you —

Alastor settles, but his smile has turned brittle, and he is suddenly feeling less inclined to humor Lucifer.

“Besides!” Alastor coos in a drastically lighter tone, “If not me, then who? Am I stepping on your toes?” Alastor laughs, and steps past Lucifer towards his office.

“Wait! I, uh. Ok, honestly, that’s not as bad as I thought. As far as philosophies go Hobbes isn’t the worst; I’m guessing Foucault was after your time —”

Alastor goes to open the door.

“Aaaand uh — I’ve been thinking about your offer!” Lucifer bursts out.

Alastor stops, hand on the doorknob. He leans back, and looks over at Lucifer. Lucifer looks a bit surprised at himself.

“That was a horrible segue.” Alastor points out, gleefully mean. “You are an even worse conversationalist than I thought!”

Lucifer winces, but he continues. “You’ve got a thing for verbal consent, I’ve got a thing for not sleeping with actual monsters. Sue me.” He straightens. “Look. I don’t trust you, so we need to have a conversation before I can agree to anything.”

“Oh?” Alastor grips the doorknob tighter, reflexively. “More philosophy questions?”

Lucifer’s gaze is carefully trained on Alastor’s face as he opens a portal, red and sparkling. “No.” He gestures to the portal as though ushering a debutante into a carriage.

Alastor is rarely the recipient of such gentlemanly manners. He bestows Lucifer a long and appreciative glance from under his eyelashes.

“My! You’re too kind,” Alastor purrs, and he swings around and strolls through the portal as though the dangers of a secondary location never once cross his mind. He steps carefully to the side as Lucifer follows, folding his hands in the small of his back, inspecting the stripes on the curtains and the patterns on the carpet and the ducks with a judgemental eye. Atrocious.

“Not many people get to see the devil’s bedroom, you know.” Lucifer walks to the bed and sits on the edge, facing Alastor, crossing one tall-booted leg over the other. He raises an eyebrow over heavy-lidded eyes and flashes his perfectly white teeth in a salacious grin, attitude suddenly cocky and brazen. “You should feel lucky.”

“Should I? I can’t imagine why,” Alastor says brightly, taking in the gaudy chandelier, “The decor is awful.”

Lucifer’s smirk balls up into the most exquisite expression of frustration Alastor has ever beheld — before he exhales and allows himself to flop backwards, arm over his eyes.

“God I fucking hate you,” Lucifer groans without any real heat, wiping a hand down his face. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“If you don’t want me here, I will leave.” Alastor snaps his gaze back to Lucifer and feels his smile grow rigid. “None of this is appealing to me in the slightest if you don’t submit to it willingly.”

The fact that Lucifer would be allowing Alastor to do horrible, disgusting, humiliating things to him — and that Lucifer, being the wretched creature he is, would actually like it — is rather the point.

Lucifer’s voice is muffled as he talks through his hand; he’s still flopped over dramatically. “Give me a sec. I’m still squaring that with the rest of you.”

“Good heavens,” Alastor deadpans. “Do you mean to say I’m not an entirely one-dimensional caricature?”

“I’m beginning to pick up on that, yeah.” Lucifer sighs morosely, sounding as though this is unwelcome but unsurprising news. He props up on his elbows to peer at Alastor. “Ok, but seriously. You want my attention? Consider this an audition. Ground rules: No damage that can’t be healed, no pain for pain’s sake, no bullshit. I’m looking for a good time for one evening, this evening, and you’ll do your best to provide it, in good faith. No one else finds out about… this.” He huffs. “Also, you’re clearly into some weird, kinky shit and we need to talk about boundaries.”

Alastor arches a brow. “Are you proposing a deal?”

“I don’t make deals with Sinners,” Lucifer looks up and grins nastily. “Break your word and I break you.”

“Wonderful,” Alastor deadpans. Boundaries, though. He isn’t naive, he’s been in hell for nearly a century. He’s also been living in close proximity to a porn star. “I don’t like being stimulated, and I greatly prefer to remain clothed.”

Lucifer looks supremely unimpressed. “…You do know how sex works, right?”

Alastor tilts his head, grin wide with great cheer, the shadows in the corners of the room stirring up into thick inky ropes. “Limitations breed creativity!” They shift fluidly to encircle the bed like hungry eels, silent save for the susurrus of the sheets as they glide across the surface. They very carefully do not touch Lucifer. “And here I’d thought you might appreciate my exercises in creative problem solving.”

Lucifer eyes the encroaching shadows, mouth twitching indefinably. “Yeah, ok,” he almost muses, before looking back at Alastor with a filthy grin. “Feel free to be a bit firmer with those, by the way. I’m hard to damage.”

Alastor narrows his eyes; Lucifer doesn’t object as two carefully wrap around his torso. He squeezes — hard.

Lucifer’s breath catches, and he does not object.

Alastor relaxes them, but allows them to begin a careful mapping of Lucifer’s flesh. “If I’m to provide a ‘good time’ — what else do you like, your Majesty?”

Lucifer exhales. “I’m really not super picky; I don’t even know what to say here. I can handle a bit of pain as an accessory to roughness, but I don’t enjoy it. I’m not a fan of being insulted, I don’t want to be thrown or smacked around or cut open — or bitten, you fucking cannibal — ”

“A pity,” Alastor murmurs. And it is. Lucifer makes his teeth itch; he wants to taste him, explore him with the hungers he most enjoys — but if Alastor wants another opportunity, he’ll need to earn it.

That said, Alastor can’t help but notice Lucifer is telling him quite a bit of what he doesn’t like, and not much of what he does. “I uphold my agreements, deal or no, and I’m agreeing to provide you a pleasant evening with all due discretion.” He leans in. “What’s keeping you from telling me what you enjoy, hmm?”

Lucifer laughs, dry and unhumorous. “Long list. Don’t worry about it, you shouldn’t have much trouble.” He swallows. “I — I’m told that I’m easy, actually.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Alastor says conversationally, watching him from under lowered lashes.

Ah well. Alastor doesn’t need him to be forthcoming, really. As Lucifer speaks, Alastor is gathering information on his own — the shadows shift around Lucifer, testing pressure on flesh, and Alastor takes note of what makes Lucifer shudder and inhale, what makes his lashes flutter as he tries to keep his composure —

Lucifer licks his lips. “I did like… ” He looks a bit uncertain, even. “When you said I was… it was a compliment. I liked your tone of voice.”

…Lucifer Morningstar is so incomprehensibly pathetic, it makes Alastor’s teeth and claws feel like they’re dragging on a chalkboard, like the only way to make the sensation end is to sink them into Lucifer’s impure flesh.

“I believe I can work with that,” Alastor says instead, as though commenting on the acid rain, as though Lucifer hadn’t just told him that he gets off to the one thing that Alastor has always excelled at, made a living at, a craft honed and perfected — talking.

The Morning Star, prime temptation, first seducer, progenitor of adultery, wants Alastor to tell him that he’s pretty.

“Anything else?” Alastor approaches the bed. “Or are you ready to proceed?”

Lucifer rolls his eyes. “Yes, please, proceed to have your wicked way with—”

Alastor’s shadows strike like asps.

They coil around his thighs, they loop over his torso and pull him further onto the bed until he is kneeling there, they slide around his wrists and hold them above his head.

Lucifer could break out easily, but he won’t, because Lucifer wants Alastor to do this.

Lucifer Morningstar — King of Hell, Prince of Darkness, the Adversary, Son of the Morning, Bearer of Light — wants Alastor to give him a “good time”, wants Alastor to subject him to any number of disgusting, humiliating acts for sexual gratification. The limits placed on this were both unfortunate and laughably few — no pain or insults, no abuse or biting —

Lucifer is laughing, wriggling in place. “Called it,” he says, grinning like a shark. “Kinky shit.”

“That’s not a complaint.” Alastor reaches out to take Lucifer by the chin, gripping firmly, reveling in the fact that Lucifer doesn’t resist, that Alastor gets to turn his face this way and that, that he gets to inspect Lucifer’s faltering grin so closely.

“Like what you see?” Lucifer tilts his head winningly, but when he licks his lips it speaks more of uncertainty than seduction.

Lucifer is many things; ugly is not one of them. Alastor replies simply. “Yes.”

Lucifer’s reaction is immensely entertaining. His eyes widen, his pupils dilate, he holds his breath — Alastor has no idea why this man is called Great Deceiver when he can’t conceal so much as a single emotion.

Alastor lets his smile curl in amusement.

The Star of Morning actually does need to be told he’s pretty.

Alastor trails the claws of his other hand down Lucifer’s jaw and long, swan-like neck. “You are objectively the most aesthetically pleasing creature in hell. Hilariously, you seem to need me to remind you of this.”

Lucifer opens his mouth as if to speak, but says nothing.

Alastor tsks, and traces a claw along the skin next to the collar. The button-up fabric is very nearly the same color as Lucifer’s skin: the shirt is starched and blued a cold white, the porcelain translucency of Lucifer’s skin carries a golden cast.

“Your clothes are in the way, my dear.” He flicks his eyes up from inspecting a collarbone, meeting Lucifer’s gaze. “Do get rid of them.”

Lucifer is already breathing slightly deeper, bright gold eyes all the way open, and he swallows. His wrists are bound above his head, but he makes a circle motion with an index finger — and the clothes all melt away, save his briefs.

Alastor flicks his eyes down for only a moment, and meets Lucifer’s eyes again. One of Alastor’s hands traces down Lucifer’s bared chest, into the dip at his hip bones, and then a single claw slips into the briefs’ waistband. It is their only point of contact as Alastor leans in. “All of it, if you please.”

Lucifer makes a noise — like some small mammal, like a dumb prey thing, Alastor had made him make such a stupid sound — and obeys.

“Good.” Alastor hums approvingly, and steps back, removing his hands for the moment. His shadows hoist Lucifer fractionally higher; the play of light and shadow shows off the lines of his torso and slender waist to excellent effect as his back arcs, nude and posed as pleasingly as a painter’s model, a sculpture, Geefs’ L'Ange du Mal brought to life.

Lucifer’s muscles flex as he tests the shadow ropes; his erection is filling. “So, Alastor,” He asks, using a tone Alastor suspects is supposed to be alluring, “Gonna do more than look?”

“Yes. Presently, however, I’m enjoying the view,” Alastor murmurs, stepping around the bed to take in the sight from different angles. Lucifer’s waist nips in more dramatically from the side; his back has pleasing lower dimples. The white porcelain is unblemished, the black ombré scars are striking, the hooves are delicately turned.

Lucifer shifts restlessly under the scrutiny. When Alastor steps back to center, he lifts Lucifer’s chin with the tip of his microphone, and from his full height he makes careful eye contact. “Cease  fidgeting.”

There are a few seconds where Lucifer only stares wildly at him, breathing heavily. Alastor bends at the waist to his eye level.

“Better,” he purrs, “You look sublime, my dear.”

Lucifer reacts to the praise immediately and, by this point, predictably — a quiet gasp, a twitch —

And at the same time, the shadow coils on Lucifer’s thighs push up and into the seams of the groin, the sensitive skin between thigh and erection.

Lucifer makes the most interesting sound.

Alastor takes two steps back, folds his hands in the small of his back, and finally sets his shadows to work in earnest.

The shadows given form are eldritch things, uncanny and foreign and disconcerting in a way that most mortal Sinners find inherently disgusting, yet Lucifer arches into their many touches with abandon, like he’d been craving it, craving touch, craving any contact at all.

It is a fully coordinated assault on the most sensitive parts of Lucifer their explorations had found. Alastor receives limited sensory feedback from his shadow appendages but for now he luxuriates in the phantom sensations, the subtle give of flesh and muscle as the shadows press and explore.

Lucifer writhes, breathing fast, eyes wide, looking very near to overwhelmed. Alastor wonders when the last time was that someone touched the man.

Lucifer had been lifted for better display, and the dark coils winding sinuously up and around equally dark limbs up to pale white thighs and shoulders make for pure artistry. Now, however, Alastor lets those arms lower, settling Lucifer back onto the mattress almost gently — even as the largest tentacles far less gently force his thighs open, even as they press him down.

Lucifer makes a high-pitched noise as he is — handled, for lack of a better word. “Wow, you — ha —”

He looks so vulnerable like this. So exposed. Alastor feels a manic giddiness thrill down his spine, like the thrill of the hunt and the kill, the blood and the butchery, ecstatic and feral. His human form is slipping.

“Are you comfortable?” Alastor coos; his stare is unblinking.

“Wha —“ Lucifer makes another sound, breathing heavily. “I — hah, give me a sec, it’s been a minute, this is — a lot —“ He exhales, shakily, and he pastes that absurd false bravado on his face again, looking up at Alastor through his lashes, arching his back and tilting his hips just so. “You really do like to — to watch, you creepy fuck — so how’s the show? Yeah?”

Lucifer’s erection is on full display; Alastor has not yet compelled anything to touch it.

It’s perhaps time to change that.

A tendril wraps around it — Lucifer almost jackknifes at the sensation; another tendril coils up around his long neck and pushes just enough to force him flat. A new tentacle slips into existence, glistening wet. It slides up the bed, over the folds and wrinkles in the sheets, up to Lucifer’s entrance.

He’s pinned and pinned open — like an insect, like a dead bird —

“Thus far?” Alastor sweeps his gaze across him. “Compelling.”

Lucifer moans and he sounds absolutely wretched, Alastor doesn’t know how Lucifer hasn’t simply expired from shame and embarrassment. Alastor could never put himself in Lucifer’s position. Alastor would rather sell himself all over again. Alastor would rather die.

Lucifer Morningstar is, just as he’d said, easy.

How hasn’t he gotten himself seduced by some ambitious soul already? The man is powerful beyond all reason, wealthy, lonely, and desperate. Easy. How is the rest of Hell so stupid as to not take advantage? Alastor had barely even needed to try. It isn’t as though spewing meaningless compliments to royalty is a new concept. They don’t even need to be meaningless lies — Lucifer may be mentally weak and verbally obnoxious, but physically the man is a literal angel and metaphysically he is an unholy powerhouse unmatched —

“You look exquisite,” Alastor tells him, filter thick with the pops and grating scrapes of interference, “You are a vision.”

The appendage at Lucifer’s entrance is circling and pressing slick all over, slippery and insistent — Lucifer winces and writhes at it —

“Fuck — ” he pants. “Why’d you — have to make it so big?“

“Is it?” Alastor tilts his head. “I was going by personal reference.”

“What?” Lucifer squawks, almost sounding lucid again. “No, that is not the actual size of your — HRK!”

Alastor pushes the head of the appendage into Lucifer, and Lucifer throws his head against the sheets as his eyes roll back.

Lucifer pushes against what binds him, breathing wildly, going nowhere.

Alastor walks back and forth in front of the bed, stalking the room like a caged predator, eyes fixated on the bed. He wants to eat Lucifer, devour him, grow in size and put Lucifer in his mouth and swallow him whole.

And suddenly the pretension of insouciance seems so pointless and Alastor is leaning forward — his neck an uncanny too-long as his bones stretch out crookedly in his excitement, eyes dialating, antlers arcing forward as eagerly as the rest of him. He has, he notes distantly, an erection.

He steps forward in an inhumanly smooth motion, limbs cracking and popping as their suddenly less-human configuration slinks forward towards the bed, eyes unblinking, grin fixed. Lucifer notices his advance, but is distracted by a shadow’s clever twist and push. Alastor’s hands, skeletally long and dagger-tipped, reach out and dig into the mattress on either side of Lucifer’s writhing body, boxing him in on top the bed, taking up his entire field of vision.

“You’re doing so wonderfully well, Lucifer,” Alastor croons, audio distortion warping his crisp consonants and round vowels into a much deeper growl than he is naturally capable.

One monstrous hand releases the ragged mattress fabric to oh-so-gingerly brush the bangs back from Lucifer’s face, a single claw carefully tucking a stray lock behind his ear, then pressing against Lucifer’s bottom lip. It is, shadows excepting, their singular point of physical contact.

Lucifer’s bottom lip, on the pad of Alastor’s thumb, is very soft.

Lucifer lightly scrapes his teeth and laves his tongue across Alastor’s finger before sucking it into his mouth, looking up at him. More appealing by far is the shock and desperation and confusion that underscores the action, like Alastor is the answer to a question he’d forgotten he’d asked.

“Oh, yes,” Alastor coos. “Very prettily done, my dear.”

Lucifer hiccups.

Alastor drives his shadow deeper, harder, rhythmic, withdrawing and then pounding back in. Lucifer’s body is jerking rhythmically beneath him from the force of being fucked into. Lucifer’s hands, still bound over him, clench and release against the sheets and the air, left with nothing to grasp to ground him. Lucifer’s sing-song little ah-ah-ahs are forced from his lungs like the gold-limned tears from the corners of his eyes.

The shadows are relentless and unmerciful; they roughly squeeze and thrust and pull Lucifer down onto the writhing tentacles below him, treating him like a sleeve.

Alastor is looming over him, monstrous and ugly; black ichor drools from his teeth onto Lucifer’s pure white and flawlessly smooth neck, and pools in the indent between his collarbones.

This, in Alastor’s grasp, is the most beautiful and most powerful creature in hell. Stripped of all finery and pretension, delicate and bird-boned in appearance, Lucifer is teary-eyed, panting, staring at Alastor’s face scant inches from his own. Alastor had done this to him, Alastor had reduced him to this. He looks wrecked, he looks pathetic.

He looks delicious.

Alastor purrs, hungry, ravenous, frequencies growling, “Ah, but you do look lovely —”

Lucifer comes, violently and loudly.

He wears his pleasure on his face like it’s pain, and that is loveliest of all.

-

Some time later, Alastor is settling on the bed with a book — but as his shoulder brushes against his bedmate, Lucifer startles back to consciousness and opens his eyes, gaze suddenly locked on the ceiling.

“ …Holy shit.”

Unsummoning the book, Alastor props himself up on his stomach and elbows, grinning broadly. “Welcome back, my dear! Did you enjoy yourself?”

Lucifer looks over at him with a dazed expression, patting himself down as though to verify that he is, in fact, clean and fully dressed and in one piece. “Um…yes.”

“Ha!” Alastor laughs, nasal and in high spirits. “Ha ha! And I couldn’t have imagined better! What a performance! You were truly a delight to behold. Riveting. You had the entirety of my considerable attention!”

Lucifer stares.

“I’ve never had a sexual encounter so satisfying!” Alastor sighs, resting his head on his interlaced fingers, kicking his legs.

“I don’t — You can’t mean that,” Lucifer sounds oddly aggrieved, voice cracking. “I didn’t do anything — what are you even getting out of this?”

“You, my dear.” Alastor hums, still on his stomach. His tail might be wagging. “And no small amount of personal satisfaction — would you like some coffee? Tea?”

“…Tea?”

Alastor summons two drinks — coffee for himself, tea for Lucifer. Lucifer stares into his mug with a blank expression on his face. “Is this aftercare? Are you doing aftercare right now?”

“I am doing bare minimum hospitality.” Alastor takes a sip of his coffee. “Seeing as I rendered you too indisposed to properly host.”

Lucifer looks up at nothing. “Alastor the fucking Radio Demon, cannibal, overlord, all-around asshole. Big on verbal consent. Service top. Does aftercare. What the actual fuck.”

Alastor hums again, entirely smug. Lucifer is looking guilty, but that’s not really an Alastor problem, now is it?

He does so love to exceed expectations.

𐡸𐡷

Alastor hums cheerily — a Bessie Smith tune — as he makes his way through the lobby. He’s feeling uncommonly satiated today, even though he’d done nothing to feed his typical hungers.

“Charlie, do tell me, why am I seeing you without a smile?” He gestures widely with his microphone as if unveiling the crowd to her, his grin wide and sincere, “Look at all this! There’s plenty of time for things to go horribly wrong!”

Vaggie leaps down from the balcony, wings catching. “There’s actually a lot of people here, and they’re still coming. How many are we expecting?”

“Several dozen, my dear!” Alastor summons the registry, waving a hand with panache and deftly catching the clipboard as it pops into the air. “A bit over sixty, as of yesterday afternoon.”

“There’s already like a hundred people here; they’re still coming.”

“So many people…” Charlie looks like she is about to hyperventilate. “This — this could be it, the thing that really spreads the news of the hotel and what we’re actually trying to do! This is our chance! To be something besides a — a monument to hell’s most delusional aspiration!”

Charlie had clearly heard that last phrase somewhere. It may, upon further reflection, have been from Alastor himself.

…But Charlie is correct. This may, in fact, be a make or break moment for the hotel. And — Alastor glances over the crowd, and at those still making their way across the hotel grounds — and there is perhaps a slight possibility that they’re underprepared.

“Yes, the hotel’s reputation is amusingly horrendous, just abysmal really, but Charlie —” Alastor grins merrily, “Do remember it can get worse — it could always be known as the monument to hell’s most delusional aspiration that can’t even host a proper fête!”

Charlie once again looks like she’s going to be sick. Well, that simply won’t do.

The things Alastor does for this ridiculous venture.

“I’ll just double-check a few arrangements.” He lifts her jaw, forcing her posture to straighten even if she flails a bit off-balance. “Chin up, my dear! Let everyone know who’s in control, hmm?”

Alastor first checks the bar.

“Good evening, Husker!” Alastor leans against the bar with great animation, “I see the bar is quite well-stocked today!”

“No shit, you’re the one that stocked it. You’re in the wrong place to fish for compliments, Boss.” Husk glanced over, and then did a double take at Alastor, giving him a hard look. “…The fuck’s got you in such a good mood?”

“Why, you can ask anyone: I’m always quite chipper!” Alastor beamed widely. “How wonderful it is, a new opportunity to mingle with the hoi polloi of hell!”

“…You know what? I am definitely better off not knowin’.” Husk turned back to the bar with a disgusted snort.

Husk is busier than expected, and while Alastor had just restocked the bar, several bottles were already half-empty.

Alastor next checks the front ballroom and the dining room, both converted into stages.

Cherri Bomb is giving her seminar to maybe a dozen demons, which frankly is about a dozen demons more than Alastor expected to listen to any of them. Why, the surprises of the past few days! It’s nearly enough to make him question his presuppositions.

Last, Alastor checks the buffet.

They only started an hour ago and the food is already half gone.

…Well. This may be a problem.

Alastor was right when he’d assumed most would come for free food. As much as he loves being proven right, once the food runs out, the hotel would empty quickly. More pertinently, future such events would be much more difficult to find an audience for.

“Wooow, just check out all this turnout!”

Lucifer.

Something inside of Alastor thrills. The sheer intoxicating novelty of — of their entanglement the previous evening is pumping through Alastor’s veins; his attention is immediately captured.

Despite the looming crisis, Alastor takes a movement to graze his eyes over Lucifer — he looks so prim and proper, all that nipped-waist tailoring in white and pink and red, making him look like a spun sugar candy confection for Alastor to sink his teeth into. Alastor allows his grin to spread, his eyes to widen, leaning in close, too close, not close enough. “Good afternoon, my dear! How are you feeling? Did you get my note?”

After waking up for his morning broadcast, Alastor had left a note and a freshly-brewed magically-warmed tea on the nightstand, in case Lucifer woke up before dawn. It hadn’t exactly been poetry ( My sincerest thanks for an exceptional evening! Regards, Alastor) but Alastor wouldn’t want to be seen as neglectful; the deal — unofficial though it was — had clearly stated that Alastor was responsible for ensuring Lucifer had a “good time” for the entire night, and someone bent on semantics might argue that pre-dawn twilight still counted.

Lucifer leans away. “Um. Yes.” Alastor leans forward; Lucifer twitches and leans further back. “…Thanks. For that.”

“Dad! You made it!” Charlie bounces in. “Dad — Dad, look at how many people showed up!”

“Well.” Lucifer clearly tries to look humble and demure but utterly fails, inspecting his nails. “I may have pulled a few strings last minute.”

“Dad! That’s — that’s so great!” Charlie looks genuinely touched, before reverting back to her previous anxiety, “That’s — we — we really weren’t prepared for such a huge crowd.”

“Huh. Really.” The smirk on Lucifer's face stretches broader into a toothy grin, face lighting up with some kind of barely contained mischief. “And whose job was that to prepare for?”

Alastor is trying to keep half an ear on the conversation, another on the new crowd lurching towards the buffet, and an extra eye on Charlie — the growing murmur of the crowd is really just emphasizing the surge in attendance, and her anxiety isn’t faring well — but he rolls his eyes at the unsubtle jab.

“It’s true, the buffet is looking a bit worse for the wear!” Alastor drums his claws on his microphone as he considers options.

“Is it? One second—“ Charlie rushes off.

Vaggie, now alone with Lucifer and Alastor, exhales in exasperation. “We’re underprepared — too used to being under capacity. Think we should have opened the rear ballroom too?”

“Hmm.” Alastor hums, which he and Vaggie both know is an agreement.

“Yeah, well.” Lucifer smirks. “Maybe if someone had been paying attention last night, someone would have seen all the last minute RSVPs.”

Alastor freezes.

That is undoubtedly a part of Alastor’s job.

Time slows, in the way that it sometimes did in times of crisis.

Alastor had been about to check the last minute registrations, the night before. He’d had his hand on the doorknob.

But Lucifer had stopped Alastor.

He’d stopped Alastor at the door with the one thing he thought would turn Alastor’s attention entirely away.

Alastor had thought he was distracting Lucifer— but it was Alastor who had been deliberately distracted. And of all things, distracted by — by sex.

‘Trust a man like you’d trust the Devil,’ his Mama had sighed, ‘Only with things you can stand losing.’

Alastor’s eyes go black. His antlers are threatening to extend to a full display. Static crackles. “You. You insufferable —”

The only reason that Alastor doesn’t make himself into more of a fool than Lucifer already has is because Vaggie intervenes. She forces herself between the two — very brave, really — and snarls “Really? Did you two fuck up Charlie’s event because you can’t get along?”

“I didn’t ruin anything,” Alastor spits, spine rigid, “He deliberately prevented me from doing my job.”

“HAH!” Lucifer leers, “Don’t try to blame your lack of priorities on me —“

“No one cares about your dick measuring contest!” Vaggie snaps. “Alastor, can you fix it?”

The nerve. “Of course I can.”

“Great, you — you do that. And you.” Vaggie rounds on Lucifer. “If you’re smart? Don’t say anything to Charlie.” She seems to run out of steam. “Ugh.”

Lucifer watches her stalk off and then laughs incredulously. “Why is Maggie protecting you of all people?”

“She isn’t.” Alastor snarls, turning on his heel and sweeping into the service corridor that leads to the utilities and kitchens — Lucifer is on his tail. “She’s protecting you from the logical consequences of your own actions.”

“My actions?” Lucifer scoffs dismissively, always so dismissive, Alastor should have known Lucifer was planning something from the start —

Alastor turns on his heel to face him, very deliberately containing his true form, itching to show itself. “Because whatever your goal was regarding me, you’ve risked the hotel’s reputation for it.”

“It’s a short term loss for the long term gain of getting rid of you. And in the service of the greater good, I’m even willing to do it again — and the only greater good in hell these days is Charlie.”

Alastor’s static feedback whines, high pitched in the air. He's been tricked. He’s been made a fool of.

Lucifer laughs, coldly. “Did you forget I invented manipulation? I’ll admit — I wasn’t expecting the sex angle from you. Didn’t seem like the type honestly. You caught me off guard, congratulations. And I wasn’t expecting it to be that enjoyable either. But I’m not so shitty a father that I’ll put fantastic sex above my daughter.”

Lucifer had played him.

If nearly anyone else had done it Alastor would be slaughtering them, but Lucifer is too strong, and so Alastor is left with the humiliation and the rage —

Hip cocked and winking, Lucifer pointed at Alastor. “You’re going to fail, and fail repeatedly — I’ll ensure it — and eventually you won’t be welcome anymore. You’ll have to leave, and this place will be well rid of you.”

Alastor had been bested and betrayed.

And worse.

Alastor, always cunning and always patient, had been bested by this… this…

“You placed your dislike of me above your daughter’s happiness. For that.”

…This absolute idiot.

“That was the plan?” Alastor’s spine is rigid, jaw clenched, but somehow his voice comes out in a not entirely ragged tone. “Do you honestly not know your daughter at all?”

Lucifer must sense that something isn’t following the absurd fantasy he’d spun up; his arrogant little sneer falters somewhat.

Alastor lets the question sit for a moment, long enough for Lucifer to find an answer by himself, before he deigns to enlighten him.

“Dearest Charlie,” And here Alastor giggles, “Doesn’t give a single solitary fuck if I ‘fail.’”

Just what had Lucifer thought it meant, having a daughter so obsessed with second chances?

And Alastor finds his laughter bubbling up in a barely controlled hysteria —  “Ha! Ha ha! Charlie doesn’t care if anyone here fails! As far as she’s concerned, no one has to be halfway competent at anything! Me and mine keep this hotel standing! Ha ha, ha! — It’s why this hotel has been one of the most riotously comical experiences of my afterlife!”

For all the laughter, Alastor’s impeccably trained voice is perfectly clear.

“Even the minor setback you’ve caused today will matter less to her than the fact that you involved yourself at all. Do you want to know something else about your daughter?” Alastor is gripping his microphone like it’s a sword, a machete, a blunt force thing. He’s lost all wit, he’s lost all his conversational nuance, he’s lost his clever wordplay and his witty turns of phrase, he’s lashing out in the bluntest way he knows how short of physically striking the man, “I’ll tell you! I won’t even make you ask!”

Lucifer’s porcelain fair skin can’t go any paler; he remains silent.

Alastor leans in, near enough to kiss, near enough to bite.

“Charlotte Morningstar does not despise failure, my dear,” Alastor croons. “You do. You despise failure so much, you’ve gone and projected it onto the daughter that you fail to understand.”

Lucifer’s wide eyes dart across Alastor’s face; his mouth opens and closes, exactly as Alastor’s words had aimed for. Good. Lucifer deserved to look that way right now, wretched, gutted. Yet even though Alastor had made him look that way, it brings Alastor little joy, little thrill, almost none of his usual maddeningly visceral schadenfreude. It is, at best, a grim satisfaction. It is completely foreign to Alastor’s experience.

Charlie deserves better. The thought is there, clear in Alastor’s mind. Charlie deserves better than this. The sweet girl had done nothing but be optimistic, while her idiot father did nothing but force his shortcomings onto her.

But Alastor can’t say that, no matter how fantastically hurtful it would be, because that would imply that Alastor cares what Charlie deserves — even though —

Alastor puts a hand to his head. “Your little stunt achieved nothing but to threaten the success of Charlie’s most recent pet project. Which I don’t intend on allowing to fail, in any case – because who do you think she’ll run to, to fix your most recent of failures?” He’s run out of laughter. His grit-toothed grin feels crooked on his face. “Oh, the hilarity.”

How did someone as transparent as this manage to fool Alastor?

Alastor gathers himself; he is many things, but he is also the Radio Demon. He looks Lucifer squarely in the eye, an act which Alastor is pleased to report requires quite a bit of looking down Alastor’s nose at him. “This will not happen again. I am seldom fooled twice, and unlike your daughter, I am disinclined to second chances.”

“ALASTOR!” Charlie bursts in.

Alastor takes a huge step back from Lucifer as though he’d been burned. Charlie is too distraught to notice, emotionally wrought thing that she is. “We’re definitely going to run out of food within the hour! The seminars aren’t even half done…”

Alastor catches her shoulders in his hands before she can fling herself into his arms. Thank the hells, Vaggie is close behind — he spins Charlie lightly and deposits her right into Vaggie’s much more capable embrace.

Alastor squeezes Charlie’s shoulder as he passs, and plasters on an even more exaggerated flamboyance than usual. “Charlie, dear, you just keep focusing on charming everyone, and leave the rest to me! We won’t be short on anything, an hour is plenty of time!” Alastor will ensure it is plenty of time.

“Charlie.” Lucifer stepped forward, expression pained. “Sweetheart, I — I didn’t really want to make things difficult for you…”

And Charlie, who is entirely oblivious but so forgiving that it wouldn’t even matter if she knew the whole story, smiles brightly. “I know, dad.” But she doesn’t. “You were trying. And I really appreciate that.”

And Charlie and Lucifer duck their heads together, words gone quiet, two Morningstars shining golden brightly in the evening.

Charlie is smiling.

…As Alastor had predicted.

Well.

Alastor waits, and watches, for a handful of seconds longer than strictly necessary — and leaves.

They can just… do that, then. A wonderful, touching, sentimental father-daughter bonding experience, wrought by Charlie’s well-documented and only sometimes charming weakness for absolute fuck-ups.

Alastor stalks into the kitchen, the double swinging doors slamming into the walls and thrashing wildly on their hinges as he enters. He strips off his coat into the shadows, tying on an apron as shadows burst forth from the corners of the room. Person-shaped shades and shade tendrils alike tremble as Alastor pauses in the center of the kitchen, teeth clenched, rolling up his shirtsleeves with furious economy of movement.

They can do as they wish.

Alastor has a job to do. They’ll all be oh-so-grateful once he is through saving this fucking hotel. Again.

𐡸𐡷

He’s got two tentacles pulling out every pre-chopped onion, celery, and bell pepper they have in the freezer, and another pulling out the 50lb bag of rice; every stockpot the hotel has is already on the commercial stovetops, half of them heating up to a boil.

Alastor’s actual hands are in flour and water and egg and yeast. He works the round of dough furiously, and seethes.

Has Lucifer faced a single real consequence since he Fell? Is he so unable to cope with his own failings he must recreate them with his own child?

Charlie is too forgiving.

Another round of dough, and another.

He slaps the huge boules of dough into a bin — a shadow helper tossing a kitchen towel over the top —  and rounds to the stovetop as a tendril gets the rice started. There simply isn’t enough time to make a proper dark roux; a blonde roux will have to suffice. He gets it started by feel, both oil and butter like his mother taught him — ‘honey, we gotta be economical’ — and assigns a shadow to stirring.

Having power means that no one weaker than you can punish you wrongly — or hold you accountable. Everyone in hell is weaker than Lucifer. He has reigned, flailing from failure to failure without consequences, for millennia.

Alastor shadow-reaches into his personal hunting domain for his current prize stock — an 8-point white-tailed buck. Shadowy ropes hold the deer in place as it scrabbles hooves on the kitchen tile, chest heaving and eyes rolling in panic and terror. It kicks and dents a cabinet, baying in guttural rasping lows.

Deer are dumb animals.

So easily caught. So easily fooled.

Alastor’s long dagger claws and disproportionately long limbs provide the grip and leverage he needs to dig clean through the animal’s neck. He barely even relishes the slimy slip-and-slide of wet raw muscle between his fingers as they rend, severing the esophagus and arteries and spine and then physically pulling and tearing and wrenching its head completely off —

Stupid creature. If it didn’t want to die then it should have been better.

He tears it apart, limb from limb, antler from skull, barely checking himself sufficiently to prevent the bowels from ripping open and ruining the meat — the bones grind and the cartilage pop-pop-pops as he twists them from their sockets, a shuddering greasy wet slide of bloody torn sinew.

The kitchen door opens.

Alastor’s claws impale the deer head like a pitchfork, through eye and cheek and lolling swollen tongue — and he hefts it up and hurls it, dislodging it from his claws with a squelch, at the far wall next to the door. It impacts with a satisfyingly meaty thud, and slides down to land in a puddle of its own fluids with a wet slapping noise. He rounds on the intruder, all static and distortion and radio-magnetic petrichor.

“Get out,” he slurs, mouth full of blood and saliva and too many teeth, “of my kitchen —“

Charlie is in the doorway.

She almost slips on the mess. Alastor freezes under the headlights of Charlie’s bright gaze.

Alastor knows what she sees. He knows he’s at least partially shifted, sclera black, too many teeth in too small a skull. Tentacles are writhing and stirring and chopping intermittently, dark shades skittering about across the countertops, all the stoves at full flame with every pot and every burner in use, chunks of fur and blood on every surface, and in the center a hulking bestial half-transformed Alastor, wrist-deep in a pile of viscera.

She has no right to look at him like that. Alastor is fine. He is in control.

He’s heaving for breath as much as the doomed buck had, his distorted musculoskeletal structure bent half over the wretched steaming pile of unrecognizable carcass that had been a living creature three minutes ago.

Charlie gingerly steps back a pace. It is a step away from Alastor. And that’s just ridiculous — she can’t be afraid of him. He’s done nothing to warrant her fear. She finds the typical violence of hell off-putting, surely this is just run-of-the-mill distaste for the mess.

Why does he care what Charlie thinks? He shouldn’t give a single damn about what she thinks of him.

And yet.

And yet Alastor very deliberately shrinks himself to normal size, Alastor makes himself smaller. He stands straight, smile tight as he inhales slowly through his nose and forcefully summons a shred of his normal cheer.

“Charlie! My dear, I am…” He pauses. Somewhere behind him, a piece of viscera slides off some surface and slops noisily onto the floor. “…Cooking.”

Alastor’s canned audience laughter is perhaps a few seconds too late.

His obligations didn’t demand anyone here actually like him. His deal only demanded he be of use, in a very specific way. When had he gotten so caught up in Charlie’s good opinion?

“…Ok, Alastor.” Charlie looks over the blood in the walls, the blood on the floors, the blood on his clothes and hands and face. “Are you going to—“

“No need to worry!” Alastor raises a hand in a casual deflection; it splatters more gore, “I’m making excellent time!”

Charlie scowls. “I was asking if you’re going to be ok!” Another glance around the kitchen. “You seem… upset.”

Upset. Ha!

...Why is Alastor so angry? This -- this entire situation -- is something he knows he can fix. It’s an easy fix, simple, a tiny crisis caused by an idiot. He should have laughed in Lucifer's face and skipped off to save the day, feeling unruffled and more importantly looking unruffled.

“I’ve never felt better!” Alastor is still bent oddly, his eyes still burn. “Your concern is unnecessary.”

Charlie is concerned about everyone. She forgives far too easily.

Alastor exhales slowly. “Please let me finish here, my dear. Go on.”

Charlie bites her lip, but a noise from down the hall driatracts her, and with a hesitant look back, she leaves.

Alastor stares after her. When had this happened? Alastor’s grown beyond just accustomed. He’s grown fond.

It’s as though Charlie’s brief visit cut right through his adrenaline. Alastor breathes in, ragged, and looks around.

Blood is everywhere. It’s in the rice. That’s fine, he’ll just make it a red dirty rice. It’s in the roux. Also fine, it needed salt anyway. There’s a towel over the dough. That’s good, the salt would’ve impeded the rise.

…He had, perhaps, gone a bit overboard with the buck.

He sighs, and snaps away the worst of the mess.

Alastor had kept his head about him enough not to break the innards. He butchers the animal, properly this time, with a knife. The conveniently tenderized meat is torn to shreds, and browned with seasoning — vinegar, pepper, thyme, cayenne — and most of it gets dumped into the simmering roux and stock and vegetables.

A heap of parcels pop out of the ether according to his summons — shrimp, sausage — and with this, a monger on the other side of the pentagram has halved his debt to Alastor. Perhaps less; on such short notice they had been unable to meet his exact requests — but needs must. Two shadows chop the sausages into pieces and dump them into pans to cook; Alastor himself is pan-frying the shrimp — they require a more delicate hand.

He hadn’t needed to set out to essentially seduce Lucifer. Nothing in Alastor’s deal specified that he had to protect Charlie from getting her feelings hurt. Alastor often did the hurting of feelings even; he’d deliberately taken advantage of them at one point.

No, he had decided all on his own to act the fool, in an effort to keep Lucifer from hurting Charlie again. He’d put himself in a sexual situation in an effort to help her, and the fact that it had backfired didn’t change Alastor’s motives.

Alastor is furious and disgusted and seething with rage at Lucifer because Lucifer made a fool of him, yes — and Alastor very much intends to hold that grudge close — but Lucifer had made far more a fool of himself, in the end. There’s enough karmic retribution in that to render Alastor less consumed by rage than he might otherwise be. He bears a colder, less volatile anger against Lucifer because Lucifer had simultaneously failed Charlie. Again. Heaven knows the fool girl isn't sufficiently grounded in reality to get angry on her own behalf.

Which is fine; Alastor is angry enough for her . 

When had he become attached? After the battle? Before? When had this happened, how long has this been — how long has he been — ?

The cooked sausage, chopped vegetables, half-cooked rice, heavy spices, and remainder of the venison — minced — are dumped into larger pots to simmer. Red rice and sausage.

The shrimp is added to the stockpots of roux, stock, venison, and vegetables. Venison gumbo.

They both need to simmer, but they’ll be done in time.

The boules of dough are only barely risen enough for a first rise — helped, fortunately, by the excessive heat currently in the kitchen. Alastor washes his hands and punches them down, setting shadows to cutting and shaping — the second rise will have to compensate for a poorer first rise.

Alastor steps back to mentally rifle through his rolodex of debts. The rear ballroom needs to be set up for dining. Who owes him, or who does he own, that can provide him with fifty tables on short notice? Surely he owns a restaurateur or two? Damnit, all the restaurants he frequents are in Cannibal Town and those Sinners are all Rosie’s —

Alastor owns two coffee shops (and their management) nearer the V’s tower, specifically to mess up any order intended for the television. He pulls their tables and chairs and full service sets to the rear ballroom, and sends a summons to Niffty to do any final setup needed there. She and Husker will have to play waitstaff.

A dozen 35-quart stockpots of food are simmering — enough to feed over a thousand.

The beignet squares are rising nicely. The fry oil is getting hot.

Alastor tastes the batches of gumbo and red rice, and makes adjustments. More vinegar, more salt, more butter in the rice. More stock, more thyme and cayenne in the gumbo.

Alastor looks down at what he’s spent nearly an hour preparing, with its thick hearty chunks of venison, the bell pepper and celery and shrimp, the flecks of herbs and grease floating on top of the roux. It’s acceptable. Good, even.

The meal has come together.

There’s a bit less than ten minutes to spare. Alastor finally, finally has a little time to set the spoon down and put his head in hand. The corners of his tight-lipped smile quiver. His ears press tightly to his skull. He closes his eyes for the space of a breath, two breaths, and then he stops counting them.

Alastor has fallen prey to sentiment — attachment — before, but this is different from Rosie or Mimzy or Niffty — nearer what he felt for his mother, but that’s not quite right either —

The gumbo bubbles. The burners hum. The ambient frequencies that no one else can hear hiss, quiet, omnipresent.

And then Alastor opens his eyes and straightens.

Alastor has obligations. Alastor has expectations to meet.

Alastor has a show to put on.

His most eye-catching wreath of shadows, a loud static crackle, and a piercing shriek of feedback announce his arrival in the hotel lobby. The lights shudder as he steps from his portal onto the lobby’s stage — and the Radio Demon himself makes a spectacular and signature appearance.

“Good evening~”

His voice shakes the walls, frequencies broadened to boost all the bass he typically filtered out, and the crowd seems to fluidly heave as they turn in a unit to face the threat that has appeared above them.

All eyes are on him.

Ah. Alastor always did have a flair for the dramatic. He taps his microphone to draw it out a moment longer.

“Salutations! To all our esteemed guests, friends, and anyone unfortunate enough to be my enemy —“ He grins viciously, allowing a shred of his furious mania to shine through — and then snaps back to bright and affable cheer. “We here at the Hazbin Hotel are delighted that you’ve enjoyed the hor'dourves, but I do hope you’ve left room for the main course!”

Alastor narrows his eyes and wrinkles his nose at the crowd as it murmurs — fortunately for them, good southern hospitality has been bred into him, and he is a consummate professional when delivering an announcement.

Charlie jumps up with him, but waves off the microphone when offered; Alastor mutes it. “Dinner after the seminars,” she hisses, trying to be quiet, “Or they won’t bother listening!”

Ah, Charlie is finally learning some realism. With a raised brow Alastor leans back into his microphone. “Once our penultimate seminar concludes this evening, we will be serving our guests in the rear ballroom — diner’s choice between venison gumbo or red rice with sausage.” And here Alastor squeezes Charlie back in by the shoulder as she’s trying to sneak down off the stage, “And in a minor change of schedule, our very own Princess Charlotte Morningstar will be delivering our final seminar over a dessert of beignets and coffee!”

Alastor steps back and applauds her on the center stage as though she’d done literally anything. He grins viciously down at the crowd as he does so and they wisely join him in clapping.

Charlie waves timidly, clearly just hating it.

Good. A bit of hatred builds character.

She forgives him immediately after they step off the stage. “Alastor! Is there really a whole dinner done?”

Lucifer hadn’t missed Alastor’s entrance, of course. He’s standing across the room, in full royal tailcoat, watching Alastor talk to Charlie. Alastor puts on his chummiest and most familiar smile and deliberately puts his hands on Charlie’s shoulders.

“Charlie, surely you didn’t doubt me?” He smiles and no one can tell it’s genuine, because that’s rather the point of them. He can no longer say he’s never failed her before — Adam had seen to that — but at least it’s never been from a lack of effort.

“Of course not!” Charlie says, with an utter lack of guile.

Lucifer is still watching them.

“Alastor — can I borrow you for a minute?” Charlie hesitates. “Privately?”

Alastor arches a brow. “I hope you’re not trying to re-open our conversation in the kitchen, my dear.”

“No, no!” Charlie laughs and scratches the back of her neck. “Totally different! Promise.”

“Then of course —!” Alastor responds much louder than it needs to be, and just because it looks much more dramatic and incriminating, he uses his showiest of portals to abscond with Lucifer’s daughter right under his minuscule nose. He teleports them to a hall upstairs, near enough the main stair they can still hear any problems that arise in the lobby.

“Now, what is it that you require —“

Alastor goes to lean into her space, and then stops.

Charlie’s wrapped her arms around herself, tears welling in her eyes, her lower lip quivering —

— She had been fine literally a second ago, what could have possibly happened between then and now?

The hotel is packed with outsiders, and the walls potentially have more eyes and ears than even Alastor was able to catch. This is not the time for her only-occasionally-charming soft heart to be making her look weak.

Well, more weak.

Alastor sent out a wider scrambling frequency burst on sheer reflex, even as he placed himself between Charlie and the entrance to the hall. A quick shadow opened an empty ‘staff only’ room to the right, and he ushered her in with an eye on the other end of the hall.

“Charlie my dear,” he says with as cheerful a look

and tone as any, “Tears ought to be saved for a more private event, don’t you think?”

He leans in with the most infectiously charming smile in his arsenal. Charlie laughs through the tears, a bit miserably to be frank. She looks up at him and sniffles.

…By the seven hells. Last time she’d been this distressed in his direction, Alastor had milked a fantastic deal from her, and he’s certain the rest of the hotel has contingency plans to ensure it can’t happen again. But Alastor isn’t aware of any wars that he might arrange victory for, at present — so why the hell was he here and not Vaggie? Or even Angel Dust, or Husk? Surely Husk got cried on frequently enough? Literally anyone else on the hotel staff.

“You are an extremely unattractive crier, Charlie. This is quite beneath you,” he hums, tapping her below the chin with his microphone, “And all of this, after the evening has been perfectly salvaged.”

“I still have to give my seminar, Alastor — and I’m still horrible at public speaking.” She snorts, unladylike. “I’ve only ever been able to do this kind of thing well once, and that was with help from you. And this time is worse because… well, Dad is here.”

Alastor feels his smile go off-kilter a tad, because he knows exactly where this is going. She’s suffering from stage fright because of Lucifer. She wants Lucifer to be proud of her.

“Dad’s a natural showman,” she’s saying, “A great public speaker. He can — he can command a room no problem.” She looks up at Alastor, teary-eyed. “And now he’s going to see how bad I am at it.”

Alastor has a million responses that jump to the tip of his tongue at that, because this is the perfect opportunity to drop venom in her ears.

He could easily pivot this conversation to throw Lucifer’s deliberate sabotage into her face, cooing about how her petty father had prioritized a dislike of Alastor over Charlie’s pride and joy. It would be so easy. ‘Charlie my dear, it’s not as though he’d care, why just earlier you won’t believe what he tried.’ ‘Charlie my dear, I’m sure he is just too busy with more important matters to mind the consequences.’ ‘Dear Charlie, if he thought you could stand on your own, he’d let you.’ ‘Charlie, don’t you think — perhaps —‘

He shouldn’t hesitate.

But.

Alastor had first come to the hotel because he was forced by contract. Additional accomplishments were always going to be making the best of things — his relationship with Charlie began as purely transactional, even if it was in his best interest that she see things differently.

But that’s no longer the case.

Alastor can hold a charming conversationalist on nearly any topic, cook a mean jambalaya, and transmit or intercept any frequency from 3 kHz to 300 GHz. He can pull roughly two tons of material at a time through his shadows, disembowel four men at a time without rupturing their intestines, and has amassed ownership of a few hundred thousand souls, give or take.

Charlie doesn’t want any of that. “I just… I really want to make Dad proud. I guess. Is that dumb? I just… Am I making any sense here?”

Alastor has been railing at himself — When did he start to care? Why does he care? How stupid is he to care? — but it doesn’t change the fact that he does, apparently, in his own particular way, actually care about Charlie.

Alastor pastes on his most charming grin. “Charlie, every performer knows a bit of the pre-show jitters! You’ve progressed to a nearly adequate speaker, even.”

Charlie ignores the backhanded compliment. “Alastor, you always make it look so effortless. When you talk, people listen. It’s not just intimidation. You have… charisma. Dad too. And I don’t.”

Alastor feels his smile weaken a bit. “So quick to speak like that! And no real reason to, either. You’re still quite raw, but you have plenty of potential to live up to yet.”

Alastor knows an emotional weakness when he sees one. Charlie may think she’s asking him for public speaking advice, but what she really wants is for Alastor to convince her that her father will still love her if she fails.

“However.”  Alastor taps her on the shoulder with his microphone. “Here is a piece of advice you may find useful: know your audience. You do know your father, yes?”

Charlie blinks up at him with wide, trusting eyes.

She doesn’t get it.

…Charlie deserves a better father. Alastor’s mother had deserved a better son. And Alastor has only ever been able to give people what they deserve when what they deserve is cruelty.

But right now, Alastor is the only one here.

“Charlie, dear.” Alastor takes both her shoulders in his hands, making eye contact. “Considering everything he is, your father is a shockingly simple-minded creature — particularly when it comes to you.”

And whatever Lucifer might deserve — or even what Alastor deserves — Charlie deserves better and she deserves it more.

Alastor makes careful eye contact, leaning in, smile as gentled as he can manage, his entire skin itching at what he is doing, what IS he doing —

“Lucifer Morningstar,” says Alastor, “Wouldn’t know how to stop being proud of you.”

Those big eyes fill with more big emotional tears, and Charlie gives a sniffle before — finally — offering him a big watery smile.

Something in Alastor relaxes, releases, at that.

“Now then.” He pulls out his lightly starched handkerchief and very carefully takes her chin in one hand so he can blot her face with the other. She submits to the treatment with no complaint. “Dry those eyes — they look hideous like that — and no more of this embarrassing noise over a little man whose good opinion is already assured.”

He hands the handkerchief to her and she blows her nose with a wretched honk.

“And there’d better not be a repeat of this nonsense.” Alastor straightens his posture and folds his arms behind his back with a sniff. “Because if you ever make me say that again, I will destroy something. Preferably something belonging to that sad father of yours.”

Charlie bursts out into a giggle, then immediately looks guilty. “Alastor, no, that’s mean.”

But now she’s giving him a very different smile, one Alastor is much more comfortable with. He steps back with a flourish of his microphone, grin wide, “Oh heavens, I meant sad as in emotionally! Aren’t you always talking about the importance of being in touch with others’ vulnerable emotions?”

“Not to make fun of them!”

“How disappointing; fun is my favorite thing to make.” He looks her up and down. The eyes are a bit puffy, but that will settle in the time it takes her to walk back. “I suppose you look acceptable enough. Are you ready, my dear?”

“Thank you, Alastor.”

He bends down slightly to get at her eye level, and his smile is as genuine as he knows how. “I’ll be down before dessert. And Charlie — Don’t forget to smile.”

Alastor watches her go.

All of hell believes Charlie is weak. She is weak, functionally, practically — for all that sheer Morningstar power she’s inherited, among the strongest in hell, she also suffers from too much misplaced sentiment to ever use it.

Alastor has never suffered from an excess of sentiment. His personal connections are few and loosely tied, which is exactly how he prefers it when his professional bonds tie him so tightly.

But Charlie Morningstar had burrowed her way in. Somewhere along the way, his association with Charlie had taken priority over all his objectively more valuable relationships, and he’d taken more and more risk on her behalf. Alastor had suffered for this new chink in his armor before he’d even realized it was there — Lucifer would never have had an opening to betray him had Alastor not been so ready to throw himself into the fray to protect Charlie.

It isn’t, surprisingly, a weakness that Alastor feels particularly keen to remedy.

Charlie’s potential — which Alastor hasn’t really tried particularly hard to guide — is almost entirely unshaped. For the time being, Alastor is far more capable of weathering any kind of storm than Charlie is.

…Though he’s perhaps less capable as a shoulder to cry on. What had the girl been thinking? Thank all the hells that no one had been near enough to hear that frankly embarrassing little chat except himself and Charlie —

Alastor shuts the door, and there behind it is Lucifer Morningstar.

He stares unblinking at Alastor, eyes bright like hot irons.

Fuck.

𐡸𐡷

The utility rooms don’t have the soundproofing Alastor had ensured in the rest of the hotel. Had Lucifer been listening?

“I eavesdropped, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Lucifer immediately informs him mildly.

How much does that mean he heard? Alastor mentally runs through his conversation with Charlie, and the timing is just… spectacularly  unfortunate.

Lucifer is leaning on his cane with a jaunty little cock of his hips. “She said you’d helped her with public speaking before?”

Alastor tucks his hands behind his back and leans forward, his smile tight. “Charlie struggles to understand motives that she is too soft-hearted to share. I intervened as necessary.”

Lucifer hums, tapping the toe of his heeled boot. “I, uh, guess I should thank you, for what you said on my behalf there,” he says —

— and the words are scarcely out Lucifer’s mouth before Alastor snarls, the lights dimming and the shadows in the hall stretching oddly. His eyes and mouth stretch slightly too wide and when he turns his head, the bones pop jerkily and the resulting angle is slightly too wrong.

Lucifer, damn him, wore dismay charmingly well. “Why is that hot. That should not be hot. What the fuck.”

“I have done nothing,” Alastor spits, “On your behalf since before dawn.”

Anyone else would be terrified — anyone else would be a smear on the carpet for daring to incur the Radio Demon’s infamously capricious and violent wrath. Lucifer Morningstar merely winces, as though at a minor social faux pas. “Yeah… I appreciated the tea by the way? You didn’t have to?”

This had to be intentional; he was rubbing Alastor’s nose into it at this point. Alastor felt his mouth once more pulling wide and mentally shook himself, settling back into a properly human shape.

“Yes. Well. How short-sighted of me.” Alastor’s teeth grit and jaw clenched, as he plastered on the best attempt at a not-incandescently-furious expression he could manage. It probably wasn’t very good. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

But Alastor found his exit path blocked by Lucifer’s staff.

“Nope.” Lucifer is looking at Alastor through his lashes. “We’re talking.”

How this man could be the most socially bankrupt idiot in hell in one moment, then flip a switch to assume command so completely, is beyond Alastor.

“I suppose if you’re just that desperate for my conversation, I can spare a few moments. I do have places I’d prefer to be.” Like literally anywhere else in the seven rings.

Lucifer steps back and scratches the back of his head uncomfortably. “Right. Yeah. I’ll just, like, get to it then.”

Lucifer clears his throat.

He rocks back onto his lifted heels. “So. Uh. Wow, now I don’t really know where to start.”

Alastor narrows his eyes, his grin fixed rigidly in place. “Start what?”

“Uh. An apology?”

An apology.

“Ha!” Alastor throws his head back. “Ha! Ha ha! Oh, an apology, why didn’t you say so! Why don’t I help you?”

Alastor slips into his silkiest, smoothest, most scathing of tones. “Just a few short days ago, you made a deliberate mockery of me in the lobby of the hotel I manage! Why don’t we start there?”

Lucifer winces.

“Despite this, I still deigned to offer you both my exceedingly rare sexual attentions and a shred of good faith engagement. Which you promptly betrayed! You did your damnedest to make a deliberate mockery of me again, and this time you not only failed miserably but endangered your own daughter’s entire hotel venture in the process! And I had to fix it!” Alastor’s grin is manic. “Hilarious! What fun you’ve tried to have at my expense!”

Alastor steps back and leans forward on his microphone. “Now tell me. Which of these things do you believe I would ever, possibly, accept an apology for?”

Lucifer straightens from visibly cringing at this point, and coughs. “Right. I was kind of hoping all of them.”

He must be joking. Alastor’s brow twitches, but his eyelids remain at half mast.

Lucifer clears his throat, and looks up at Alastor with a wide and what would usually be an adorably charming smile, toothy and bright. “…I’m sorry?”

Alastor leans over Lucifer and does his very best to loom. He understands he’s quite good at it. “Consider the states in which I’ve seen you,” Alastor slowly and carefully enunciates, his grin a sneer, “As I tell you this: that was the most pitiable, sad thing I have ever seen you do.”

Lucifer, wide-eyed, makes a very quiet wheezing noise.

Alastor leans back, straightens into his favored formal posture, and turns to go. “Do tell me if it ever works for you, though! Ta ta!”

“Wait, Alastor —”

Alastor does not wait.

“Alastor — wa — Ok, OK! Let’s — Let’s make a deal.”

Alastor stops.

Alastor turns his head, eyes narrowed and tight lipped smile firmly in place; Lucifer didn’t look as though he’d misspoken. He turns the rest of himself around to face the other.

“…You have my attention.”

Lucifer exhales slowly. “Yeah. Look, in my defense, I told Charlie the apology thing wasn’t a good idea.”

Alastor hums; he’d figured as much. “What are you offering me?”

“…I’m unsure what you’d accept. Pretty sure you’d be offended if I offered sexual favors.” Lucifer shakes his head, rueful. “So. I’m open to suggestions.”

The static around him changes as Alastor’s receiver de-tunes briefly; he stares at Lucifer, wide-eyed. Dictating terms to the Devil is an unexpected — and near incomprehensibly advantageous — opportunity.

Alastor had been honest, days ago, when he said he wasn’t planning to seek power or wealth from Lucifer. It wasn’t that Alastor had scruples, of course; it was just that there were many other — much easier — paths to such things than trying to cozy up to a man who’d spent years hating Sinners like Alastor.

It’s entirely different to have offered outright.

Alastor could ask for near anything. He could ask Lucifer to boost his powers. Alastor’s resources could be recouped. Alastor’s unstable wealth of deals and favors could be bolstered by more traditional, more monetary wealth.

Lucifer could, potentially, open a path to Alastor’s freedom.

“And what is it you seek from me?” Alastor asks, filter slightly thicker than usual.

“I want to put these past few days behind us,” Lucifer speaks plainly. “Charlie likes you, I should have realized there’s a reason for that. I fucked up, I get it — so I’m willing to make a deal to make it right and just… start things over.”

Alastor feels his breath quicken, his grin tighten, his antlers extend.

Of course Lucifer manages to ask for the most infuriating thing possible — he wants to avoid all accountability for his actions, comfortable in the knowledge that he’s powerful enough to get away with it.

And he’s nearly correct; even Alastor had been nearly breathless at the chance. It’s disgusting.

Yes, Alastor has many obligations, and Lucifer has the power to lighten that burden. But Alastor has many other paths to those things.

And there’s one thing only Lucifer can provide.

“I was a serial killer on Earth, you know,” Alastor says, almost pleasantly, as casually as recalling a funny anecdote. He takes a step towards Lucifer. “Though that label didn’t exist yet. But not just anyone deserved the hunt; there really were more decent people than not. You might find that surprising; I had to be incredibly selective.”

Lucifer frowns, but says nothing one way or the other.

“It’s much easier, here in hell. Everyone is here because they deserve punishment in some form or another. That’s what makes the hotel so entertaining!” Alastor shrugs, showing teeth. “There’s no undoing what has been done! People seeking to undo the consequences they have rightly earned? What a folly! Even if it’s possible, it would be a rare few who could ever hope to even their scales.”

Wary, Lucifer eyes Alastor as the latter steps even closer. Smart of him. “What… does this have to do with our deal?”

“It’s rude to interrupt.” Alastor tilts his head as stalks forward, maintaining eye contact. “Power makes people so  disrespectful, doesn’t it? It’s the lack of consequences, you see. Because they think they’re too good for it, or better than it, or better than me. And they’re wrong.”

Alastor takes the sides of Lucifer’s jaw in an ungentle grip, claws not yet breaking the skin, using the leverage to bend him nearly backwards as Alastor’s frame twists taller and leans over Lucifer. Neither of them look away.

“You offered sexual favors, yes?” Alastor’s smile is nowhere near genuine. “I suppose I could consent to wring any number of violent orgasms from you — but let’s not pretend you wouldn’t enjoy that as much as I. It is a far, far more onerous request to ask me of all people to willingly set your insolent, ill-conceived slights against me aside.”

Alastor tightens his grip an infinitesimally small amount. Lucifer remains silent, watching Alastor’s face, shifting in discomfort.

“You seek, even now, to use your power to avoid the consequences of your actions.” Alastor pushes Lucifer up to the wall, pulling Lucifer’s chin up, exposing that lovely swan-like neck, baring his teeth in Lucifer’s face, vicious and feral. “I despise it. Charlie deserves so much better than  you.”

And perhaps Lucifer has the sense to agree, because he says nothing in response.

Alastor hisses in a breath, tapping one red-tipped claw on the corner of a cheekbone, right below Lucifer’s eye — and watches in fascination as the eye twitches and waters. “It’s unfortunate that Charlie requires things I can’t well provide — kindness, affection. A gentle touch. Things she could get from you, if only you were at all reliable.”

Alastor leans in, smells the pulse point, watches the artery flutter rhythmically. “So. Here is my counteroffer.” His mouth twists. “I will forgive you. Bygones shall be bygones! I’ll even help you smooth over any and all repercussions from this little mistake of yours. How wonderful for you.”

He pulls back and meets Lucifer eye-to-eye, his voice a perilously soft sing-song. “And from this day forward, whenever you sabotage Charlotte — when you inevitably follow those miserable wretched impulses from your clearly malfunctioning brain, and thereby threaten her happiness and well-being — you will submit yourself to be accountable to me.”

Lucifer blinks up at him, nothing short of bewildered. “…What?”

“Consequences, my dear.” Alastor croons, almost tenderly. “You lack them, sorely. I would provide.”

Lucifer blinks up at him. Alastor smiles viciously.

“…Risky.” Lucifer murmurs in a hoarse whisper. “Long-term, indefinite, demanding.”

Alastor knows. It’s not a deal he’d ever take himself — but Lucifer. He’s thinking about it. He is actively considering.

The man does love Charlie.

Alastor pushes his advantage. “I am getting a long-term benefit, in the ability to take you to task for your failures as a father — and you get a long-term benefit in which we leave here and restart our personal interactions on a clean slate! And,” Alastor purrs, lowering his frequencies, “We can agree on sexual favors?”

Lucifer looks up. “Consensual sexual gratification, in such places and times that do not interfere with our various obligations,” he amends quickly.

“Acceptable.”

“Right.” Lucifer exhales. “I… accept those terms.”

Alastor doesn’t give him time to reconsider. He takes Lucifer’s hand and slams it to the hallway wall, fingers intertwined, palm to palm as needed for — “We have a deal.”

They hold the pose as Alastor’s green crackle and Lucifer’s fire-limned golden crackle sizzle down the hall. Lucifer looks up at his pinned hand and then up at Alastor.

Alastor looks down at him, and his grin slowly spreads, feral, edged in green. He is not a man known for his forgiving nature.

Lucifer breathes in. “Alastor —“

“I’m invoking my right to hold you accountable for what you did today. One moment, please.” Alastor raises shadow barriers at either end of the hall — privacy — before turning his attention back where it belongs. “I will also remind you that our little forgiveness clause does not take effect until after we leave here.”

Lucifer opens his mouth to object, pauses, then lets his head fall back with a resigned thunk. “…I was distracted.” He looks up at Alastor, searching his face, not liking what he finds there. “…Fuck.”

“We’ll see.” Their hands are still intertwined on the wall; Alastor drums his claws against the wallpaper, clickity-click. “First. Why don’t you tell me exactly what I’m holding you accountable for.”

Lucifer licks his lips. “I put Charlie’s dream at risk?”

Alastor waits.

“…I put Charlie’s dream at risk, specifically trying to get rid of you.”

“Ha!” Alastor barks out in staccato laughter, giddy. “Ha ha ha! And yet, here I am! You didn’t even do a good job!”

Alastor doesn’t often touch his victims anymore. He doesn’t like when others touch him, and has his shadows, so he can and does stay out of reach.

But Lucifer isn’t going to fight back, is he?

The deal specifically says he must submit himself to Alastor. And he is! Lucifer is looking up at Alastor, more wary than anything, not fighting or defiant, not even trying to regain control of the situation  —

Alastor takes his free hand and lines up his claws with Lucifer’s hairline, just enough pressure to hurt but not enough to bleed, and drags them roughly across the scalp, grasping Lucifer’s thick hair. He admires the aesthetics of it for a moment — bright and shining gold, gripped tightly in a black and red grip, Lucifer’s face twisted into resignation.

“Lucky for you, I have to leave you whole enough to appear undamaged when we return,” Alastor muses, considering his options. “Lucky for me, I think you can handle some rough treatment.”

Lucifer shoots him a half-hearted grin. “Oh, really?”

“Is that what submitting looks like to you, Lucifer Morningstar?” Alastor clenches the fist in Lucifer’s hair harder and gives it a good yank — and that makes Lucifer’s pupils expand precipitously.

Alastor pauses. “You told me you didn’t like pain.”

“I don’t.” Lucifer shifts.

Alastor yanks him again. Lucifer’s eyes water, and he looks up nervously.

“Are you lying to me?”

“No! Yes?” Tears are welling up in Lucifer’s eyes and one is threatening to spill over. “I didn’t think I...”

“You didn’t think you’d like that? But you do?” Alastor inspects Lucifer’s expressions with glee. “Are you embarrassed, my dear? Humiliated? Have we finally found a scrap of your remaining pride to bruise?”

Lucifer bares his teeth in frustration, but keeps his free hand obediently pressed to the wall even as Alastor pushes a palm onto Lucifer’s throat, thumb on the carotid.

“Fuck you,” Lucifer chokes out as he’s forced to stand on toe.

“Oh, I would hate this.” Alastor presses more firmly, fascinated as he watches Lucifer start to squirm. “I would never allow such a thing. What is the limit to the debasement you enjoy?”

Alastor leans in, inhaling, frequencies scanning wildly as he speaks into Lucifer’s ear, squeezing, “How am I supposed to punish you when you so enjoy being brought to heel?”

Lucifer whines.

The pulse point on Lucifer’s neck flushes gold as Alastor relaxes his grip —

None of the restrictions from their previous night are in play. Lucifer agreed to submit, to whatever Alastor gives —

Alastor sets his teeth on Lucifer’s neck, delicately pressing down so Lucifer could feel the pinpricks of sharp teeth. Alastor breaths in with his nose and his mouth, tasting salt and sweat and fermenting fruit, feeling the shudders beneath him — Lucifer’s arms seize as though to stop him, but Alastor’s oversized claws grip around him and Lucifer settles so wonderfully pliant, gasping  — he could rend Alastor limb from limb but he isn’t —

Lucifer pushes against what binds him, breathing wildly, going nowhere. Alastor is the one in control.

Alastor bites down, and drinks.

Lucifer tastes glorious. It is like nothing Alastor has ever had before. The sickening sweet fermented fruit scent blooms into full richness on Alastor’s palate, the texture and mouthfeel of a sweet liqueur, divine power burning his tongue and throat like fine whiskey.

He detaches, semi-circles of deep punctures in Lucifer’s neck, bleeding sluggishly. Lucifer squirms in his grasp, moving mindlessly against Alastor; Alastor pushes and grips him more firmly — Alastor seals his lips on the skin around the deep puncture wounds, tonguing the edges of flesh, and sucks, hard. The liqueur burns. Alastor moans as he gulps in hot blood; Lucifer is whining and gulping in air.

It tastes divine.

It feels like retribution.

It lasts forever, and not nearly long enough.

When Alastor draws back, he coughs with a gurgle of golden ichor, the last mouthful coating his tongue and roof of his mouth, remnants already beginning to congeal at the corners. He wipes his lips with the back of his hand, probably not achieving anything beyond smearing it, before leaning back to assess the damage.

Lucifer is pale, and leans heavily against Alastor, sagging in the cage of his claws, between Alastor’s torso and the wall. Alastor’s leg is holding most of his weight. He is still writhing up against him, eyes distant and dazed.

Lucifer has an erection; he’s rubbing it on Alastor’s thigh.

“— I — I deserved —” Lucifer, glassy-eyed, is slurring heavily.

“You no longer decide what you deserve,” Alastor murmurs gleefully, voice hoarse, eyes burning. He sweeps his gaze up and down, a laugh threatening to bubble up from his diaphragm. “Look at you. Trying to rut to orgasm, on my leg, like a dog.”

Lucifer half-focuses on Alastor, blinking blearily.

Alastor pushes his body forward roughly, jostling Lucifer, and the sound that Lucifer makes is heavenly.

The power is intoxicating, and Alastor can afford to be generous. “Fortunately for you, I’ve found this all remarkably cathartic. I suppose I’ll allow you to continue degrading yourself.” He leans in, beyond reason, voice dipping. “Proceed.”

Lucifer does.

Alastor watches, grin wide, eyes wider.

Lucifer, fully-dressed and bleeding, is beautifully noisy as he utterly humiliates himself — voice cracking, writhing on Alastor’s thigh, eyes wide and unfixed, expression so much like pain that Alastor can scarcely tell the difference — all the way to completion.

And when Lucifer finally slumps against the wall, limbs limp and relying on Alastor to take all of his weight, Alastor does, cooing at him.

Alastor shuffles him over — Lucifer flops like a doll — to check his pocket watch before eyeing Lucifer again.

Lucifer looks an absolute mess, eyes glazed over, panting. He’s covered in blood, bright against the starched white and pink cotton, and there’s a damp patch on his crotch. He certainly can’t show his face anywhere looking like that — but Charlie is expecting both him and Alastor downstairs in twenty minutes.

Alastor considers him for a moment. Usually the sensation of a man touching him would make every instinct shriek in revulsion. Somehow, Lucifer draping loosely against him does not. Alastor drums his claws on Lucifer’s shoulder, to no reaction.

Alastor sighs, and lifts him princess-style. Lucifer had taken some time to come back to himself post-orgasm, the previous night. Alastor is clearly going to have to get him started on clean-up if they’re going to attend Charlie’s presentation on time.

Lucifer returns to awareness a few minutes later, seated nude on Alastor’s bed and looking shell-shocked. Alastor, having just finished cleaning the blood from Lucifer’s neck and shoulder, snaps his fingers and presses the resultant hot tea into Lucifer’s hands.

Alastor isn’t quite feeling normal yet, either. He’s fixing Lucifer’s messy hair as a thin excuse to lean into Lucifer’s personal space, eyes wide and black and taking in every detail — the movement of his wrists, the contrast between pale matte skin and dark glossy ceramic, the way the light glimmers off the corner on Lucifer’s gold-rimmed eyes —

“…What’s left?” Lucifer croaks. He is shaking — blood loss, surely — but his hands are steady around the mug. “…Of my punishment?”

“We’re done, my dear.” Alastor continues working, using his own hairbrush to comb Lucifer’s hair back into something resembling his normal coiffure.

“…Done?”

“Mmhmm.” Alastor uses his little finger to tuck one of Lucifer’s forelocks to where it belongs. “I’ve already fixed all the damage from your ill-considered actions, and I believe I can shift Miss Vaggie’s ire towards myself.”

“…Really?” Lucifer blinks up at him, eyes still dazed. “That’s it?”

“I’m perfectly satisfied. All is forgiven, as agreed.” Alastor uses another finger to turn Lucifer’s head this way and that, inspecting his work. “Do compose yourself, dear. You’re to make one more appearance for Charlie’s sake, but after that you’ve nothing left to concern yourself with.”

“…I think,” Lucifer looks down, not focused on the correct priorities at all, “I’m used to punishments… lasting longer.”

“Well, we do have a schedule to keep this evening.” Alastor straightens and stands back, looking Lucifer up and down. “You might consider clothing.”

Lucifer looks down, flushes gold, and his signature uniform pops into place with a red-and-gold fizzle.

His bowtie is crooked. Alastor adjusts it.

“…Alastor.”

“Hmm?” Alastor steps back again.

“What else were you considering asking for?”

Alastor tries to give him a sharp look but Lucifer is still looking for answers in his mug of tea.

“I fail to see how that’s your concern.” Alastor turns to retrieve his own drink. “I am sufficiently gratified by our agreement.”

“Hah! A tall, charming, relatively strong guy like you can get that kind of gratification anywhere.”

…Lucifer clearly has no idea just how picky Alastor is with ‘that kind of gratification’, and that is for the best.

“Your request was really for Charlie’s benefit, not your own, we both know it. That's most of why I agreed to it.” Lucifer snorts. “Alastor the Radio Demon, a cannibal, an overlord, and an all-around asshole. He’s violent and power-hungry. He’s also big on verbal consent, he service tops, and he does aftercare.”

Lucifer looks up at him. “And he follows an ethical code.”

He smirks. “And he loves my daughter like she’s his own.”

…This is why it is smarter to avoid sexual entanglements. They inevitably expose vulnerabilities.

And Alastor doesn’t know if it’s true, if he’s capable of that ever being true — “I do not.” — but it’s near enough to being true that denying it feels like a lie. Alastor’s a fantastic liar, smooth as anything, glancing at Lucifer like his words don’t matter at all.

A smile is still breaking across Lucifer’s face like the dawn, radiant and sweet.

Alastor stares and feels his lips thin, trying not to protest too much. “…Anything else I might have asked for, I can get elsewhere.”

And that is true. Given enough time, he can recoup his losses, make more deals, acquire more souls and favors, and recover his reputation. Alastor’s wound aches and burns, but even that must heal eventually. “With more time and difficulty, perhaps, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” Probably.

Lucifer squints at Alastor, still smiling. “I’m beginning to see why Charlie worries about you.”

And if that thought isn’t absolutely and entirely revolting, Alastor doesn’t know what is. He looks at Lucifer, appalled.

Lucifer continues squinting at Alastor, but now with a growing amusement.

“What is so amusing?” Alastor snaps.

Lucifer grins up at him from the bed, like a shark. “You know I can literally tell if you’re lying, right? Prince of Lies, Father of Deceit, all of that?”

Alastor stares at him with a growing and ill-concealed horror.

“Yep.” Lucifer beams. “The whole time.”

-

It is some time later that Charlie is stepping onto the stage platform. The microphone in her hand dissolves — and is replaced with Alastor’s microphone.

She looks up and finds Alastor in the crowd — the back of the room, standing tall with impeccable posture. Lucifer is hiding the blood loss by leaning more casually against the wall next to him; he gives his daughter two thumbs up with a toothy wide grin and far too many enthusiastic head nods.

Charlie puffs up a bit, and begins.

“Good evening, everyone! I’m Charlotte Morningstar, founder of the Hazbin Hotel!”

Her posture and cadence are more than reminiscent of her father, and Alastor hates to admit it, but her voice is starting to share some compelling qualities with her mother’s.

“I’m so glad you made it! This is our last seminar of the evening —“

She grins defiantly, fiercely, out at the crowd in front of her, razor incisors on full display — it is difficult to tell it isn’t genuine, certainly impossible to those who don’t know her.

And Alastor feels an odd yawning sensation in his chest, under the sternum, deeper than his healing wound —

— Because she’d not learned how to fake a brilliantly aggressive smile that well from either of her birth parents.

He glances down to gather himself.

Charlie’s seminar title is the last one on the schedule.

Blood, Water, and Other Bonds: Finding Family Where You Are.

𐡸𐡷

Alastor has added a new task to his docket of morning chores: wrangling Lucifer.

Many of Lucifer’s traits that Alastor had found disrespectful or irresponsible or lazy were not, in fact, those things. Not deliberately, in any case. Lucifer functions fundamentally differently. Time passes differently. Conversations interpret differently. Everyday stressors register differently. He’s not normal.

A cannibalistic serial killer can’t throw too many stones from a glass house, but Alastor is self-aware enough to know that he became a monster, he wasn’t born one. A violent childhood of privation, the Great War, the constant vigilance required to live passant á blanc — one or all had taken their toll. He might have been a normal man — a lesser man, in his opinion — had his urges and hungers and ethos not been so altered.

The point there is that Alastor was made different by his life. Lucifer was just made different.

Alastor is now of the opinion that Lucifer had been intended for something useless and angelic — to sit around, look pretty, and obsess over some minutiae — and his real punishment was being made King of Hell despite an inbuilt inability to rise to the task. He had always thought God was more laissez faire than actively sadistic, but perhaps not.

So while Alastor could spend the bulk of his time inflicting repercussions on Lucifer for any given screw-up or random mistake, he has other things to do as well — so Alastor engages in a bit of pre-emptive effort.

“Breakfast,” says Alastor, “Is in fifteen minutes.” And he tears the duvet off the huddled figure in the comically large bed.

Lucifer curls into a ball and mushes his face into his pillow, making a sound that would sound more appropriate from a pasture animal of some sort. A goat? He does have hooves.

Alastor narrows his eyes down at him. “ Charlie is cooking this morning.”

Lucifer emerges from his pillow, looking up at Alastor blearily.

Alastor looks on pitilessly. It takes more than adorably out-of-sync blinks, a fluffy poof of sleep-missed hair, and over-large duckie pajamas to inspire any mercy in him. “She will be very disappointed if her father doesn’t show up.”

Lucifer blinks again, better but still not quite synchronized, and Alastor loses his patience. He snaps Lucifer into a dressing robe and slippers — breakfast with family and staff is an occasion that permits casual attire.

Lucifer knows what comes next, and he scrambles on the bedsheet as he yelps. “I’m up! I’m UP!”

He’s not up fast enough. The shadows come forth anyway, sweeping across the bed to knock Lucifer ignominiously to the ground. Alastor feels a little thrill as he watches the flailing bundle of limbs tip over the opposite edge — he’s not sure if Lucifer allows such things to happen or if he is genuinely so uncoordinated upon waking, but both options are funny.

Lucifer pops up from the other side of the bed, glaring balefully. “You. Are such a dick.”

Alastor keeps his hands clasped behind his back as he leans forward, “Now, now. Your Majesty is hardly in need of any more beauty sleep.”

Lucifer flushes.

Predictable.

Alastor is quite pleased with his recent results, to be quite honest. He’s objectively come out ahead in all of these affairs. Between an incredibly satisfying deal with the devil himself, and the continued trust of the devil’s daughter, he’s made allies of the two most powerful beings currently in hell.

Admittedly, they come with their own challenges.

Charlie needs some encouragement to learn to unleash her strength, and it’s a good thing that Alastor is here or that bleeding heart of hers might get her into serious trouble.

And while Lucifer knows his own strength, he’s so lost in his own head he’s lost all impetus to use it, and that’s not even mentioning his particular brand of dysfunction.

Yes, Alastor’s Morningstars clearly need some time and space to come into their own, and that’s fine — there’s plenty of time to had in hell, and Alastor can make space — and everyone already knows not to mess with what’s the Radio Demon’s, so he’ll just keep them in pocket as much as he can.

Alastor knows himself. He’s a jealous, possessive creature, grasping at power and control and recognition — and he keeps a tight grip on those who belong to him.

Whether they know it or not.

Lucifer is grumbling as he forces his hair into a semblance of order. “This hotel has shit wake-up calls,” he mumbles. “One star, terrible service. The hotelier should fucking quit.”

“Oh, I would never!” Alastor chirps with exaggeratedly chipper morning cheer. “I quite enjoy my job — perks include ruffling the feathers of his Majesty the King of Hell himself —”

Lucifer glares sullenly as he opens a portal to downstairs, but he still executes a perfect and dashing bow to usher Alastor forward. He really is quite charming at times; Alastor can’t help but lift his chin and preen a bit as he passes through.

Alastor is scarcely two steps into the kitchen before he breaks out into cackling laughter. “Ha! Ha ha!” Takes his microphone in both hands and really leans onto it —

“Alastor!” Charlie stomps her foot in the middle of the mess.

And it is a mess. It’s almost worse than Alastor’s deer situation had been; flour and soupy dough are spilled all over the counter and floor and the ceiling. Eggs, shells included, are strewn about in no discernible pattern, the air is filled with smoke from a burning pan, and the sink is filled with nearly every cooking implement the kitchen possesses. Charlie, covered in flour, freezes in place like a child caught sneaking sweets.

She has clearly tried so hard and failed at the simplest task Alastor can imagine, and that is hilarious.

“Alastor, it’s not funny!” Charlie says again, and Alastor almost snorts mid-cackle.

Lucifer rushes forward, falling into the kind of affection he seems to find so easy, all squeezes and comforting words. “Aww, sweetie, I know you put a lot of effort into making…your, uh…”

Alastor and Lucifer both peer into the still-smoking pan — it looks like scrambled eggs, if scrambled eggs were made of a dry too-floury dough. Whatever it is, it’s burnt black on the bottom. Lucifer doesn’t seem to have any more of a clue what it’s supposed to be than Alastor does.

Lucifer gives Charlie a one-armed hug. “It’s OK, you’ll do better next time with your… um, omelets?”

“They’re supposed to be crêpes!” Charlie wails, covered in flour.

“Crêpes! Charlie, my dear!” Alastor snaps away the unsalvageable mess, and materializes an apron with a cackle and stylish flair – spinning Charlie into a pirouette that ends with Charlie in an apron of her own, tied in a long-eared bow. “It is long past time for someone to teach you your way around a kitchen.”

“Ooh,” says Lucifer. “Can I watch?”

Alastor ignores him.

He despises others in the kitchen when he cooks. They get in the way, they try to steal food before he’s done, they wouldn’t know proper mise en place if it hit them upside the head —

He knows Charlie and Lucifer are going to do all of these things, and yet he’s allowing it anyway. Absurd. Ridiculous.

“We’re short on time, so we’ll stick to a simple scramble.” Alastor counts out the eggs. “Eight people, two eggs each, so sixteen eggs. Crack these into this bowl — one tablespoon of milk for each egg.”

“Right!” Charlie sets to her task — and promptly drops one of the uncracked eggs whole into the bowl. She peers in at it with comical levels of disappointment.

“Anything I can do to help?” Lucifer pipes up from behind them.

“Yes.” Alastor, pulling vegetables from the icebox, points at the counter stools without looking at them. “Stay out of the way.”

“Alastor!” Charlie shoots him a look.

“Please,” Alastor sniffs. “He’s lucky I’m not kicking him out entirely.”

Alastor dices onion and tomato and bell peppers, setting each aside into their own bowls. When Lucifer reaches over to the bowl of chopped green pepper for a taste Alastor smacks his hand away — Lucifer withdraws with a pout. “Not fair,” he grumbles.

“We don’t eat ingredients. It’s wasteful.”

“She’s doing it!”

Alastor turns his head nearly a full 180 to catch Charlie going for the yellow bell peppers. She jumps back with a tiny shriek and a laugh. “Dad! Don’t tell on me!”

Charlie still has flour on her face.

In one of his last conversations before his death, Alastor had been helping his mother with the baking. He’d apologized to Mama for not being more like her. He’d had 17 victims by then; while each had gotten exactly what they deserved, he knew that if his mother ever learned of them, she wouldn’t approve.

‘Oh, honey.’ His mother had only sighed and, without brushing off her hands, pulled him into a hug. Flour had gotten all over them both.

‘I never did raise you to be like me.’ Her eyes had crinkled, crows feet in the corners. ‘I raised you to be happy. Ain’t life better with a smile?’ 

She’d been right.

She usually was.

So Alastor remembers his mother, sometimes. And right now he’s watching Charlie pick eggshell out her bowl, and Lucifer is eyeing the bowl of diced tomato, and for the first time in a long time, he thinks — perhaps — if she were here, if she could see him in this exact moment —

Alastor thinks this is something like what his Mama always wanted for him.