Chapter Text
"you dangle on the leash of your own longing;
your need grows teeth"―
Alastor was an alpha, or so Lucifer inadvertently learned a few weeks after they rebuilt the hotel. There’d been some sort of commotion in the city that day, though Lucifer had only heard of it when some of Charlie’s friends burst into the library where he’d been reading, one leg delicately crossed over the other as he lounged in the tall-backed chair.
“Did you see that? Bet he’ll be short-circuiting for weeks,” one of the demons—the persistent flirt with the ironic name who occasionally sprouted extra arms—crowed, viciously satisfied. Lucifer didn’t bother looking up from his book, having given up on doom-scrolling earlier that day. They hadn’t noticed him, apparently, too caught up in their own discussion and reliving whatever unhinged bout of Hell-typical violence they’d just witnessed, but thank God for it, because Lucifer preferred that over trying to force small-talk with people who were still strangers to him.
It was the downside of being in public again. His study beckoned, always, but Charlie wanted him to be seen on occasion instead of simply holing up in the palace or in the suite of rooms he’d designed for himself here in the hotel, and he couldn’t bring himself to disappoint her so soon after they’d begun to fix things.
“Yeah, yeah,” one of the other demons grumbled—the bartender, whose name Lucifer was still not entirely sure of, due in no small part to the fact that he couldn’t seem to catch the final consonants. Hux? Huxley? Something to that extent. Lucifer didn’t know, and he’d be the first to admit, in the quiet parts of his mind, that he hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to learn yet.
It was easier to not. No good ever came out of growing attached, or of hoping for the impossible. He was here because Charlie wished for him to be, and he would do a better job of keeping his skepticism hidden while he supported her, but it was only a matter of time before she no longer needed him, or wanted him, and Lucifer—
He was prepared for that.
So he tuned out the rest of their conversation, only catching snatches of things here and there. It wasn’t enough to fully comprehend what had happened, but even so, he managed to glean a general gist: that there had been some sort of dispute between their resident psychotic Radio Demon and another of the Overlords vying for control of Pentagram City. And that Alastor had come out on top.
Politics, Lucifer huffed inwardly, flipping the page, gently biting at the inside of his cheek until a new thread of conversation caught his attention.
“—think Smiles is all good? He seemed, uh, mighty tense after that standoff, if you know what I mean.” The words were accompanied by a suggestive sound. Lucifer felt a prickle of warning race up his spine moments before Alastor materialised from the shadows, his voice silky and dark as he spoke.
“Who’s tense?”
The question was followed by a yelp of surprise from Angel (whose name truly was regrettably easy to remember, even for Lucifer), and Lucifer flicked his eyes up. Alastor stood watching Angel with a narrowed gaze, one hand gripping his microphone, the other resting with deceptive idleness on the wooden table that housed the old radio. Unusually, the radio was crackling with static, interrupting the program Lucifer had been listening to before everyone decided the library was the perfect place to disrupt. Lucifer sighed, quiet as he dared. He liked it here because almost everyone in the hotel thought it was a useless room, avoiding it at all costs, and so it was the perfect place to retreat. Hell, the only one who usually ever haunted the shelves with him was Alastor himself, and that, well.
Well.
Lucifer frowned. Something was wrong. The air was too thick, a subtle press that Lucifer had felt before, but never here.
“Jesus, Al,” the bartender grumbled. His tone seemed off, and when Lucifer peered closer he could see a genuine tension present in the other demons that hadn’t been there before, and that wasn’t usually present when Alastor was around, psychotic Overlord or not. “Always with the fucking drama.”
Alastor inclined his head, smile firmly in place, but there was a wildness to his eyes that Lucifer wasn’t used to seeing, and the smile seemed overly wide, barely holding back whatever monster it was stretched too-thin trying to contain. It seemed the other two Sinners noticed it, too, the bartender’s tail swishing nervously while Angel noticeably refrained from making a vampish comment, cringing back in a way Lucifer had never seen him do. They exchanged a few more words, and just as Lucifer thought his presence was about to go unnoticed a tendril of shadow wrapped around his wrist, cool to the touch.
“Your Majesty,” came Alastor’s voice, immediately drawing all the attention in the room to him. Lucifer grumbled, setting his book to the side, crossing his arms with a scowl.
“What,” he asked flatly, because Charlie had told him to be nice. The shadow around his wrist shifted to coil up his arm, and Lucifer raised an unimpressed brow, one leg still crossed over the other. Normally Alastor would follow up with some cutting insult and Lucifer would hiss one right back, but this time Alastor was unnervingly quiet as he approached, eyes narrowing more the closer he got, forcing Lucifer to rise from his chair.
“What?” Lucifer asked again when they were nearly face-to-face, but Alastor merely continued to stare at him through slitted eyes, which turned more black by the moment. Baffled, all Lucifer could do was hold his gaze—he was not about to be stared down by a Sinner, Overlord or not—and narrow his own, ignoring the shifting of the shadows and the way the room seemed to darken as Alastor leaned closer and closer. When Alastor stopped, his head inclining, eyes black pits with only a pinprick of red, Lucifer nearly startled at the hand that found his jaw, then the back of his neck, pressing down in a way that was as deliberate as it was bemusing.
Then, abruptly, Alastor vanished, the shadows swallowing him whole and leaving the room much lighter for his absence.
“Jesus fuck,” someone said. Lucifer just blinked, then whirled to face the bartender, who looked a mixture of grim and just as confused as Lucifer felt.
“That was kinda hot. I think,” Angel added, staring.
“Never seen him…” the bartender muttered before trailing off, his jaw flexing, before apparently thinking better of his statement and sighing. “Whatever. I ain’t paid enough for this.”
Lucifer was fairly certain none of them were paid at all, but he didn’t voice that.
“Huh. Think Smiles is all right?” Angel asked after another beat. The bartender shrugged.
“He’s an alpha—just let him get it out of his system.”
Ah, Lucifer thought, eyes glued to the spot Alastor had occupied only minutes ago. That explains that.
Except it didn’t. Not really.
Lucifer didn’t know what could.
When he asked Charlie about it later she confirmed Alastor had had “small tiff” with one of the other Overlords.
“Soooo wanton slaughter and destruction, then,” Lucifer drawled, trying not to roll his eyes too obviously but unable to feel any sort of surprise. “Did he stab him, at least? Get a good hit in?” Overlords. It was in their nature. Charlie winced, then looked chiding.
“Dad, it’s—well, okay, it’s not ideal but trust me, the people Alastor was fighting really aren’t nice guys. Alastor’s just trying to help.”
“Mhm,” Lucifer said, unconvinced. Help from a demon like Alastor always had strings attached, and he was terrified Charlie was barrelling headfirst into a tangled mess of them, thin as a spider’s web and just as sticky.
“Dad,” Charlie said, with more exasperation this time, looking at Lucifer where he sat at the table, his arms crossed leisurely. “You know, Rome wasn’t built in a day! Just give it time.”
“Yeah, well, sure, but kiddo, I do remember Rome being built, and it involved both a lot of heinous, violent carnage and a lot of time. I’m really not sure we have centuries to wait for that kind of change.”
Charlie blinked at him owlishly, a strange expression flickering across her face, then stared at him as though he’d suddenly sprouted a lion’s head. Lucifer peered at her, a tad concerned, before she shook herself out of whatever it was and shrugged, rubbing at her upper arm—an old habit she’d had as a child. He remembered Lilith always trying to dissuade her from it.
“Right. Well.” She cleared her throat. “He won! Obviously. Um. A bit unsettled, after, I think…”
Lucifer thought back to the weird way Alastor had behaved in the library and snorted. “Yeah, I, uh. I noticed.”
Charlie sighed. “You didn’t provoke him, did you?”
Lucifer huffed. “I did not! He was just being, you know…” He made a vague gesture. “Creepy. I think the others were unsettled.” He shrugged. “But hey, it’s however.”
“Whatever.”
Lucifer frowned, not understanding, and Charlie sighed again.
“The saying. It’s ,’it’s whatever,’ not ‘it’s how’—Just! Never mind. I’m glad you two didn’t fight.”
“No,” Lucifer said slowly, frown still in place, but this time it was more thoughtful as he turned over the encounter in his mind. “No, we didn’t fight. He just… well. Hell if I know.”
Charlie looked concerned, so Lucifer briefly explained the library encounter, as well as the comments made by Charlie’s friends.
“But that… That makes no sense. You, um. No offence, dad, but… You’ve no scent. Not like that. So he wouldn’t be… Well! You know.”
Lucifer hummed. He knew. Of all the beings in Hell, he was probably the only one to completely lack such a thing—even demons born in Hell themselves had scents that gave them away, and in Heaven, the angels who had once been human or who were born in Heaven would have them as well. Lucifer, though, had been created in a time before Man, had been lovingly crafted by his Father’s own hand, and so, like others of his kind, those who remembered a time when there were only a few of them, those who still remained in Heaven—
It was different, they were different, and he also knew many found it strange and off-putting. Frederick had commented on it more than once, and even Zestial and Carmilla had made remarks before, as delicately as they could. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume Alastor had noticed it as well. Perhaps that was why he’d gotten so close: his instincts telling him there should be a recognisable scent, even a beta’s more neutral scent, and bidding him to look. When he’d found none his rational mind had taken over, and he’d left.
Inasmuch as Alastor could be rational.
“Maybe that’s why,” Lucifer said at last, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Some find it a bit, well. Well! It’s a little weird to them, is all. Can’t say for sure, though, kiddo,” he amended, loathe as he was to admit that whatever was going on with Alastor, it was beyond him. “But, ah… I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Sinners will be Sinners and all that.”
Charlie sighed, giving him a reproachful look, but she was happy to be distracted when Lucifer suggested lunch, and they laid the matter to rest.
The funny thing about Alastor was that it was, at the end of the day, very easy to forget that he was an alpha, and not just because Lucifer was in the habit of not thinking about the natures of others. Yes, Alastor was a power-hungry, social-climbing psychopath with delusions of self-importance, but in a world of other power-hungry, social-climbing psychopaths with delusions of self-importance, each of them using anything and everything at their disposal to attain and maintain their place in Hell’s hierarchy, Lucifer would have expected Alastor to use the fact that he was an alpha in more… overt ways. Throw it around a bit more.
Instead, Lucifer simply hadn't known about it. Sure, Alastor was dominating and domineering and a relatively powerful Overlord when up against the others, but while Alastor was quick to exert his will over unsuspecting (and suspecting) victims, it wasn’t by utilising his secondary nature in a way Lucifer noticed others would. In fact, were Lucifer a betting man (and, well, he was on occasion, but it wasn’t really betting when he could ensure he always won), he’d bet Alastor was, on occasion, actively refraining from giving into any characteristics that might otherwise scream alpha, now that Lucifer was given cause to comb back over some past interactions.
But that was just a theoretical bet. A silly little theory. At the end of the day Lucifer didn’t know, and he didn’t care.
It was always easier not to care.
“Uh. You all right there, Smiles?” Lucifer heard Angel ask a couple days later. The core group of them were lounging in the new pool area—all save Alastor, who had been in the main city for some business, as he called it. Lucifer hadn’t asked, and hadn’t cared.
He cared even less now as he floated lazily in the water, legs crossed and book open on lap, buoyed by the large duck float.
“Perfectly,” he heard Alastor reply, having apparently returned, though the words sounded forced. With a sigh, Lucifer flipped his sunglasses up, glancing at their resident whatever—seriously, what was Alastor’s official role here half the time, besides being a professional annoyance?—as he stood near the lounge chairs, still in his regular day clothes, and even from where he floated Lucifer could see the tension in his shoulders. Alastor was staring at him, and Lucifer stared back, lifting his brow as if to say, what now? Angel quirked an eyebrow too, then coughed, discreetly fanning himself before muttering, “sure.”
“How’d it go, Alastor?” Charlie called from across the way, waving where she stood in the shallow end, a large beach ball clutched in her hands. Vaggie, sitting at the pool’s edge, scoffed, but Lucifer watched with fascination as Alastor visibly reigned in the sharpness of his expression, letting it settle into something more placid. His shoulders, too, he seemed to force to relax, and he tore his eyes from Lucifer to glance over at her.
“Perfectly fine, my dear,” he said. “You’ll be pleased to know, I’m sure, that everything has been… hm. Squared away, as it were, from Monday’s little spat. Some people just never learn, I’m afraid.”
Charlie smiled, but when she asked if Alastor would join them the Radio Demon shook his head, declining with a veneer of politeness.
His eyes cut to Lucifer only moments before he disappeared again, and Lucifer shook his head.
“Is he always that dramatic?” Lucifer asked.
“Yes,” Hux or Huxley or Husky deadpanned from the pool bar, which Lucifer had floated near. “And no.”
“And no?”
“Alphas,” Lucifer heard Angel murmur. It sounded equal parts resigned, aroused, and irritated. Lucifer made a face.
“Is this another nature thing?” he grumbled.
“Eh, more like a lack of nurture, I think,” came Angel’s cheeky response. Despite himself, Lucifer laughed, and a few more hours passed by in relative peace. It was only as Lucifer was pulling himself out, socially drained for the day, that he brought it up again, stopping by Hux-Huxley-Husky (Hucks?) before he stepped back into the hotel:
“This isn’t something we have to be concerned about, right?”
Huskly shrugged, and Lucifer did what he did best: he left it.
For the most part Lucifer kept himself out of the hotel’s day-to-day business. He knew Charlie wished he’d have more of an active presence, but Lucifer preferred to watch her succeed on her own merit—and, more to the point, he wanted the rest of Hell to know she was succeeding on her own merit, and not because she was letting Lucifer prop her up, the way the damn television reporters had stated in the aftermath of Adam’s attack.
(Maybe one day, when he was feeling charitable again, he’d give Killjoy her regular voice back.)
Still, living in the hotel, a least part-time, meant that Lucifer did, occasionally, have to interact with others, and he’d sent more than one grumbling text to Frederick about it—Alastor being the topic of many rants—only to receive a laughing voice message in response. This time, after a prolonged exchange, his friend had appeared in a flash of eldritch tentacles to laugh at him in person.
“There’s an easy solution for this, of course,” Frederick drawled, one leg crossed over the other as he lounged in Lucifer’s suite, his teeth sharp as he smiled, “but I think the socialisation is doing you good, Apple Pie.”
Lucifer huffed, listening to the sound of the rain against the glass window. “I am out of practice.”
“Of course, dear. Need I remind you that you hardly even spoke to me these last seven years?” There was a hint of reproach in the words. “I was surprised you even let me in, to be frank.”
Lucifer just shrugged. He’d known this would be the result when he gave Frederick the address and permission, and Charlie wouldn’t have an issue with it, he knew. Were she in the hotel today she might have even been happy to see Frederick who, alongside his wife, had doted on her as a child, and who hadn’t iced her out after her relationship with their son ended.
“All things must change,” Lucifer murmured, a beat too slow. Something shifted in Frederick’s gaze, deep and unfathomable, and a moment later his friend lifted himself off the couch, placing a hand against Lucifer’s neck.
“Indeed they must.”
Lucifer looked at him, but in the green of Frederick’s eyes only the abyss stared back.
“How about you show me around, then?” Frederick said then. The air felt thick—were Lucifer of a nature, he suspected he would have felt the pressing weight of an alpha’s will or simply the sheer force of fathomless, ancient power, but that was also how Frederick had always been, siphoning and feeding off the energies of those around him. He could no more turn it fully off than Lucifer could stop being an angel, no matter how many in Heaven wished he could. He’d never used it to harm Lucifer or his family, and Lucifer was largely unaffected by it besides, always feeling that push at the edges of his consciousness but never feeling compelled to give into it; to surrender to the web he’d seen Frederick weave so effortlessly around others.
“Stop that,” he said anyway, because it was what he was expected to do in this little ritual, batting at Frederick’s overwhelming presence with a few sparks of light and hiding a smile when Frederick laughed, the room immediately breathable again. “All right, fine. But you’d best behave.”
“Darling,” Frederick cooed, slinging an arm around Lucifer’s shoulders as they left his rooms, “when have I ever not?”
“I must say, old boy, you’re looking rather worse for the wear,” Frederick was cooing only an hour later, head tilted to the side, eyes glowing. “Did your vacation not agree with you?”
“Oh, no, it was very relaxing, I assure you,” came Alastor’s staticky response. “Perhaps you should try it. You’re looking a little, hm, green.”
“You call this behaving?” Lucifer muttered, watching Frederick and Alastor glare at each other in the lobby, both of them smiling and both filled with violent intent. It reminded Lucifer, rather strangely, of his own first meeting with Alastor, and he wondered if this was what they’d looked like, biting at each other’s heels while Charlie and her friends looked on.
Of course, back then Lucifer and Alastor had been fighting over Charlie. Lucifer had no idea what Frederick and Alastor had to fight about now. They’d started off pleasant enough, after all—it had been Lucifer who’d been surprised at their familiarity. Frederick was many things, and it was easy to forget that he held the title of Overlord as well. At some point, though, after Lucifer had joined the conversation and Frederick had begun sharing anecdotes from across the centuries, the politeness had given way to barbed words, the air in the lobby growing thick and oppressive. Few cared to brave it, leaving as soon as they entered, but Lucifer remained, ready to step in if he had to.
He was really hoping he didn’t have to.
“—must say I was surprised to hear you’d taken up residence here,” Frederick continued on. Outside, Lucifer could hear the storm picking up, and when the lightning flashed it cast its reaching fingers across the lobby, making the shadows dance. “Luci only mentioned it very recently.”
What? “What?” Lucifer sputtered, thrown off by the lie. “It was on the damn television, and I’ve been complaining to you for mo—“
A tentacle—fleshy, unpleasant, a horror from whatever terrible cosmic void Frederick and his wife Bethesda had crawled from centuries upon centuries ago—wrapped itself warningly around Lucifer’s waist. It wasn’t anything Lucifer wasn’t used to, but without meaning to he compared it to the shadowy tentacles Alastor always manipulated and found, to his own dismay, that he’d come to prefer the feeling of the shadows instead. Alastor was hardly free with them, but there’d been arguments before where Lucifer would find one wrapped around his wrist, or Alastor would simply be in the mood to try and rile him up, or they’d be cooking and Alastor would scoff and use them to pass an ingredient, or—
Or like now, one shadowy appendage coming up to swat at Frederick’s more tangible ones, which made Frederick’s face crease into the sort of quick grin Lucifer had come to learn meant trouble.
“Freddie,” Lucifer said sharply, but Frederick was already oozing forward, either not seeing the dangerous anger in Alastor’s countenance or seeing it and then choosing to be an idiot anyway. Fuck.
“This has been a cute dance, old pal, but let’s cut to the chase. You’re in a bit of a state, aren’t you?”
There was a genuine rage in Alastor’s eyes now, one that Lucifer had never seen even directed at him before, let alone someone he ostensibly got along with. Lucifer wasn’t sure if he was more disturbed that Frederick was deliberately trying to provoke it, or confused as to why.
“I’ve no idea to what you refer, I’m afraid,” came the response, Alastor’s voice dangerously silky. Lucifer resisted the urge to scrub a hand over his face as the two men leaned into each other’s spaces, both smiling, two sinister entities pitted against each other.
“Oh, but you do,” Frederick purred. A malicious little laugh followed the words, and he tilted his head slightly, but when he tried to reach out and press a hand to Alastor’s chest, the way Lucifer himself often did when he and Alastor fought, Alastor’s hand snapped up and wrenched Frederick’s wrist away before it could make contact, the air thick. Out of the corner of his eye Lucifer saw Angel Dust step into the room and immediately flinch back, looking like he’d taken a battering ram to the centre of his chest. “I’m not sure how you’ve dealt with it all these years, but I know how you haven’t,” Frederick continued, blinked slowly, and Lucifer almost thought he saw a pitying look cross Frederick’s face.
“You know far less than you think,” Alastor seethed. Lucifer’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly as the room darkened menacingly, shadows slithering this way and that. When another wound around his arm he let it remain, unsettled by the way Alastor’s control seemed to be fraying at the edges. Drop it, he thought in Frederick’s direction, years and years of conflict avoidance making him jittery, and hating why this situation, in particular, was making the golden blood swim under his skin.
“Do I?” came Frederick’s almost idle response. He seemed to study Alastor for a moment, and then a green light flashed. When it abated, Angel had been transported from the entrance to a spot right next to Alastor, looking both winded and more than a little afraid in a way Lucifer wasn’t used to seeing.
“Freddie,” Lucifer said again, more grim this time—a warning. Frederick made a little gesture, showing he’d heard.
Trust me, my dear, he said without words. Lucifer shook his head. It was one thing to squabble with a fellow Overlord, but Lucifer knew Charlie would take a dim view of her friends getting pulled into… whatever this was.
“Freddie.”
“Ssh,” Frederick hushed, never removing his eyes from Alastor, who almost seemed to recoil from Angel’s presence. “Fascinating,” Frederick murmured. “This far gone… any of them should be driving you mad, old boy. Not your type? I’ll bet I can guess what is, going off of this little show, but he cannot sense these things as we do. The instinct isn’t there.” A pause. “Maybe that’s what you like.”
Alastor cut in, almost no radio filter left in his voice. “I will tear your tongue from your throat.”
“No, no, this is very interesting. I think I’m actually a little impressed, begrudgingly, and Luci here can attest to how rare that is. Tell me, are you fraying yourself to little ribbons right now? Can you feel it clawing at you, every second of every day? Eating at you?” Frederick’s eyes glowed, almost manically so. The genuine excitement there put Lucifer on edge. “How long have you been like this? Hours? Days? Such control. And I do mean that honestly. Most would have gone mad by now, even here, but you haven’t. At least not yet. Perhaps you’ve simply rode it out alone before, but it’s different this time, isn’t it?” Frederick’s smile widened, sickly and sweet. “It’s not going away, and I can tell you why: because it was triggered, not scheduled. There’s only one way to solve this, and you’re running out of time, old boy. Better ask him before it gets to that point.“ Frederick’s gaze flicked to Angel. “Or procure a flexible substitute.”
“Well, hey,” Angel stuttered, just as Alastor’s eyes flashed in a way that Lucifer knew all too well, “I think this is a little—“
“Frederick, that is enough!” Lucifer forced himself between Alastor and Frederick as quickly as he could, aware of the faint golden glow he cast as his presence pushed the two men to step back from each other, Lucifer’s back to Alastor. A hand grabbed his wrist, but when Lucifer opened his mouth to scold Frederick, he realised his friend was too far away to be the one holding him and that Frederick was, instead, watching with a satisfied smile on his face—the one he only wore when he’d won something. It was Alastor grabbing him, then, and whatever he looked like now… Lucifer didn’t know, but it was enough to hold Frederick’s attention. Angel, too, was staring just over Lucifer’s shoulder, his expression entirely free of any flirtation. Instead, Angel’s eyes were wide, and he almost seemed to cringe back at whatever he saw, exhaling shakily.
“Jesus, Smiles,” he said, sounding almost sympathetic. Frederick was still smiling.
“Ask him, Alastor. He may surprise you.”
Alastor was breathing behind him—deep, ragged, every pull of air staticky and suffocating to Lucifer, who stood so close but could not see. It was the sound of an animal barely clinging to control, and Lucifer, who knew how much control meant to Alastor, and who knew Charlie would be furious if this went on, could not let it continue. It was one thing to rile Alastor up himself, but something squirmed in his breast at whatever unspoken thing was happening here.
“Frederick,” he said again, voice quieter, but more firm. Frederick finally tore his eyes away from Alastor.
“My most sincere apologies, Apple Pie,” he murmured, giving a little half-bow, but he slanted his eyes as he said it, a smirk pulling at his mouth. He reached for Lucifer’s other hand, bringing it to his mouth in an apologetic kiss, and Lucifer felt rather than saw the way Alastor stiffened, his hand still gripping at Lucifer’s wrist, his front nearly to Lucifer’s back. “Won’t happen again.”
“You make a desert and call it peace,” Lucifer hissed, tugging his hand back and sighing as Frederick’s smile widened.
“Vitia erunt donec homines,” his friend purred in turn, not missing a beat.
“Well you don’t have to help those vices!” Lucifer snapped, eyes narrowed. He turned at last to look at Alastor, whose expression had smoothed out in the interim, though he remained unerringly close in a way he usually only was when he and Lucifer were arguing.
“Right,” Lucifer said. “We’ll just be… Well.” He didn’t finish, instead pulling out of Alastor’s grip and herding Frederick out of the room, leaving Alastor to do whatever he did in times like this. Something insane, undoubtably. Lucifer still remembered his first introduction to the original hotel. Still, he couldn’t help the guilt that churned in his gut, and he hated the very real sense that he was missing something to that whole interaction. It was far too pointed, and Lucifer had never known Frederick to care enough about the other Overlords to rile them up so. This was pointed, in a way Lucifer didn’t understand.
And he didn’t like that.
“What was that?” Lucifer snapped the moment he and Frederick were back in his rooms, but Frederick just smiled.
“A helping hand,” came the cryptic response. “Not that he’ll take it that way, of course, but, well, I can’t be expected to do all the work, now can I?”
“Freddie,” Lucifer hissed, but Frederick just leaned down and kissed his cheek with a low chuckle.
“Keep an eye on him, Apple Pie,” he murmured. Lucifer blinked, gormless.
“For God’s sake, why?” he demanded, baffled. Frederick smiled, small and private, squeezing Lucifer’s hand, an edge of pity in his eyes.
“Serit arbores quae alteri seculo prosint,” he murmured. Lucifer resisted the urge to throw his hands up.
“And what future generations are you planting seeds for, exactly?” he snapped, but Frederick just continued to smile, that selfsame pity still in his eyes, warring with the ever-present amusement.
“It will be good for him, and good for you. You’ll thank me one day, too. Well, or be very cross, but it’ll be nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Lucifer sighed deeply, and when Frederick took his leave, he spent the rest of the evening staring out at the storm, wondering why it was starting to feel like a metaphor.