Archive of Our Own

Alastor, flat on his back in bed, takes a deep breath in. The thin cotton pajama shirt he was comfortable in last night pulls a little tighter across his chest, and the inside of his skin begins to itch.

His heartbeat echoes in his ears as he lies back and lets Hell’s ambient radio wavescape wash over him, trying to make his body be more receiver than man.

Hm. More receiver than man. He rolls that around on his tongue, then sits bolt upright in bed.

The shirt pulls tighter as he stands up.

“Niffty, darling,” he calls as he strides to his ensuite, summoning her to his room. “Get me set up, please.”

Niffty, the dear, does not try to follow him into the washroom. She simply giggles and calls, “Of course, Alastor! Will you need a nurse too, or is today a shadow day?”

“I believe it’s a shadow day, dear, though I appreciate the offer.” Alastor carefully extricates his claws from the gouges they’ve dug into the porcelain sink. He ought to put in a maintenance ticket.

“Are you sure you don’t need me? You sound a little under the weather, no offense.”

Alastor chuckles. “Your concern is wholly unnecessary, my dear. My shadow will come and find you if something should go terribly wrong.”

“Okay, Alastor, but only since you promised.” Her tone brooks no argument, and Alastor finds himself grateful for the comment. At least someone cares about his wellbeing.

With Niffty humming and clattering away in the other room, he slices the buttons off of his nightshirt with one sharp claw. They bounce merrily against the tiled floor, scattering in every direction. Niffty will surely find them later and offer to reattach them.

The shirt slips off his shoulders and follows its buttons to the floor. Alastor takes a deep breath, refusing to look at his reflection, and twists the hot water tap all the way open. He plucks the stiff-bristle brush off the hook it lives on and makes sure to get every last particle of the politician he slaughtered yesterday out from under his claws. Unscented suds from the bar that sits next to his nail brush foam up to his elbows as he scrubs.

His shadow slips in between the edge of the counter and his torso and swabs his front down with iodine on a cotton pad. The air of his room is cold on his now-wet skin, and he resolutely ignores the way the chill makes his nipples perk up under his shadow’s hands.

It’s such a shame that the dense fur that had covered his legs and upper back upon gaining his demonic form had not seen fit to cover his chest too, though he supposes it would get in the way of this ritual he’s perfected over the years.

Niffty squeals with delight, then sighs, audibly satisfied with a job well done. “All set up, Alastor! Bye!”

“Goodbye, dear. Enjoy your breakfast.”

Once his permanently blackened hands are meticulously clean, his chest is disinfected, and Niffty’s skittering footsteps have faded, he returns to his room. A job well done, indeed. Everything is staged at right angles on trays she would have sterilized like her afterlife depended on it. He sits on the coffee table and picks up the scalpel with the tips of his claws, turning it this way and that so it catches the light. Then, he deftly flips it and makes the first incision, right at the top of the swell of flesh he wants gone.

He draws the blade horizontally across his chest in delicate, sweeping motions, careful not to graze his pectoral muscles. It works like a wedge, really, sliding between fat and muscle and skin and ever-so-gently separating the parts of himself he can’t stand to be attached to.

It feels like hours are dragging by, but he knows the procedure only takes minutes. (It has taken mere seconds in the past, when he couldn’t sit still long enough to be careful, the itch under his skin driving him forward like a panicky horse.)

One after the other, he lays the two now-inert chunks of flesh on an empty tray and sets the scalpel back into its original place, perfectly aligned with its backups. He snaps his fingers, and a film of his magic winds itself around his ribs so his blood won’t stain his shirt—his demonic healing has kicked in and it’s already slowed to a seep, but he doesn’t want to worry about staining his favorite shirt. In an hour he’ll be well on his way to perfectly limber again, but it will take the rest of the day for all the extraneous fat and skin to reassert its presence. As a rule, he does not leave flaps of skin hanging from his chest to stitch back down over the open wounds, because it cuts his body’s already-unfortunate recovery time in half.

Alastor stretches his arms above his head, relishing the sharp pain that blooms all across his chest. His grin stretches to match them. He carries the tray with the flesh on it over to his armchair and sets it down on his lap, fetching a fresh scalpel with a shadow tendril and using it to cut the chunks into smaller pieces.

Starting the day with finger food. How decadent. But he supposes he can be forgiven his little indulgence.

After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Alastor looks up at his reflection in the mirror with a bloodstained smile.

His magic is a cool, soothing balm against his flat chest as he slips his undershirt over his head. It settles against him and he hisses in delight as he rubs his palms over the fabric to smooth out the wrinkles. The pain shoots exquisitely downward, transmuting into heat as it pools between his legs.

This is as close as Alastor gets to what Angel would refer to as “feeling himself.”

Alastor can’t stop staring, his eyes darting up and down his torso like it’s the first time. Even though it’s been decades since his first attempt at this particular ritual, it always hits like a bump of cocaine. Riding this high, he could make Vox kneel and mewl like a kitten.

Another wave of heat crests. Breaks. He can feel the tide of it rising up his spine and crawling up the insides of his ribs.

There’s always been a certain appealing hedonism in chasing sensation for its own sake.

His grin widens. He doesn’t strictly need to be in the kitchen making breakfast for another thirty minutes, yet, and he is ever so warm all of a sudden. His undershirt and shorts rustle softly as he walks carefully back to his bed.

Part of Alastor’s punishment, he supposes, is that he enjoys this. Pushing his rivals—or in this case, one overconfident archangel—until he gets a sick thrill at the thought that they’re treating him like a real man.

(Not that he’s not one—he’s known for as long as he’s known anything that he’s not a woman. He does toy with the thought sometimes that he’s not quite entirely a man, either, but as with so many things, that’s completely unrelated to how he’s perceived.)

It causes the same syrupy heat to drip down to the base of his spine as looking at himself in a mirror and seeing a flat chest does. That heat has never dragged him toward another person like others have described, but he thinks this might be close.

He’s had to avail himself of the hotel’s shower facilities to deal with this feeling in the past. He’s planning on heading home after this to do exactly that.

Of course, he would never have expected Adam to actually get a hit in. Which is…irritating, to say the least, if only because it’s ruined his opportunity for a truly satisfying evening.

The wound hurts in a way nothing else ever has. It’s already chewing on the fringes of the soul that’s not even his, beginning what will surely be an excruciating process of slow erosion. Idly, Alastor wonders if Rosie is still capable of owning his soul now that it’s been angelically corrupted. He wonders if she’d even want it anymore, and a faint trickle of worry drips into his thoughts.

What if Rosie ends the deal because of this? What if she won’t fix me?

But no. Surely everything will be fine. He will allow for a few minutes of emotional outburst, just to burn off some of the shaky terror that would absolutely ruin his image if anyone saw it in his face, and then he will disappear to Rosie’s to recover.

Maybe his coworkers will finally appreciate how much he actually does to keep this hotel together and afford him the respect he deserves.

Hopefully Rosie won’t ask too many questions about the half-healed evidence of his ritual—with a pretty substantial amount of luck (which had not proven to be the state of affairs thus far in the evening), the area around the gash will be so torn up that the earlier cutting he’d done won’t even be visible.

There’s a comforting familiarity to his thoughts; the complete destruction of his chest is a well-worn fantasy. Alastor clings to it as he heaves himself to his feet and prepares to dip into the shadows.

The ritual is no longer an option, what with the gaping angelic wound in Alastor’s chest, held together by a hasty staple job. He’d performed it with his own magic under Rosie’s terse direction—the woman couldn’t even be bothered to do the spell herself. That chafes at him almost as much as his clothes have started to. He just can’t get comfortable anymore.

“Husker! I need a glass of about three fingers of whatever you’ve got, my good fellow.” Alastor leans against the bar to wait, hellfire ants crawling over every square inch of skin touching the stiff fabrics he’s always loved.

The first time he worked up the courage to try his ritual, the angelic infection started crawling across his skin at an alarming rate to worm its way into the new cut he’d made. The incision closed up before it got there, thankfully, but he is not willing to try that little experiment again until the residual grace has been removed from his person.

Flattening his not-insubstantial breast tissue down the old-fashioned way isn’t really a possibility either. The first time he tried to put on the corset he relies on when it isn’t a ritual day or he wants just a bit more volume in the chest area, it hurt so badly he saw stars. Pain is an old, close friend of his, and he can even admit to getting off to it sometimes, but that was…a bit much.

Husker grumbles something as he digs around on the bottom shelf of the liquor display behind him.

“What was that, my dear?” Alastor lets his smile tip toward dangerous.

“Uh, nothing.” Husker stammers. “Just that, uh, my knees are bothering me, and the bottom shelf is, uh. Low.”

Alastor nods and accepts his glass of bathtub gin—made in one of the hotel’s own bathtubs, if Niffty is to be believed. Angel and Husker must be working together. Driven by pure nostalgia, he turns a blind eye. He flips around so he can scan the lobby for the inevitable small bit of entertainment—some loud disagreement between Baxter and Rooster, Angel Dust coming in from work while clumsily trying to hide the mascara stains on his face, Charlie having yet another Heaven-related panic attack, or another of the multitude of daily miniature dramas that play out in the hotel’s most populated public space.

He sips, and relishes the burn. His right eye twitches—ah, he’d expected better than this from Angel, if not Husker. Turning a blind eye to their moonshining was never meant to be literal. The methanol level’s not too terribly unpleasant, though, and any actual vision loss he experiences as a result will be temporary, so he leaves Husker to polishing the glassware.

Any additional vision loss, that is. The need for prescription eyewear he’d retained even through death is just another straw of Hellish unpleasantness on the proverbial camel’s back.

While he’s on the subject, he takes a moment to curse whoever invented the genetic lottery that stuck him with fucking D-cups (the first piece of vocabulary he ever intentionally picked up from Angel Dust, for its utility in sending mental death threats at whichever angel thought that was a good idea). His mother had had them, so he got them. As Alastor is not in the habit of being ungrateful toward his mother, he directs his rage Heavenward.

He contemplates opening his mouth just a little more, wedging his top teeth into the rim of the glass, and biting down until it shatters. Instead, he takes another sip. The itch of badly distilled grain liquor feels like it’s caressing his wound from the inside, and almost manages to drown out the itch that runs under his skin, singing a song of flesh, removed and consumed.

It’s been a few weeks and the gash is still festering, gold creeping out from its edges across his chest even without new cuts to chase, and he really should keep checking on it if he wants to figure out if any of the treatments he’s been trying are helping, but if he has to examine his bare chest one more time while his body is shaped like this, he might be sick.

Lucifer chooses that moment to arrive in the lobby. Alastor’s grin widens at the way the king’s face is contorted with frustration. He’s come down to the bar in his nightclothes, apparently, approaching at speed wearing a ridiculously large T-shirt that says “Robber Duckies” under a picture of two rubber ducks in striped shirts and black masks. Alastor worries briefly that the king has had what Charlie calls a “senior moment” and forgotten his pants, but miracle of miracles, he spots the hem of a pair of lavender shorts—or perhaps a skirt?—peeking out from under the shirt.

The only solution Alastor has found to the problem of fitting into any of his everyday clothes (he would rather leave the slinky black velvet dress that lives near the back of his wardrobe for special occasions) is to manipulate space with his shadow dimension—basically creating two small portals to it on his chest. It’s far from a perfect fix, draining energy away that could be used for more entertaining purposes.

Like needling their unfortunate monarch.

Alastor takes a couple of steps toward the royalty in question, swirling the liquor left in his glass. “Is your majesty finally deigning to grace us with his presence at, oh—” He mimes checking a watch, then looks up with a cold grin on his face, “a quarter after two in the afternoon? What happened, sire? Still getting sent to voicemail?”

Lucifer snarls and Alastor nearly throws an actual fit when Lucifer goes to put a hand on his chest because cold fear washes down the back of his neck, screaming if his hand hits my breastbone it’ll aggravate the gash and if it hits to either side it’ll feel the unusual amount of give under my jacket and if he touches me at all right now I think I’ll give killing him a legitimate try.

So. That’s not ideal.

Instead of throwing a fit or killing the Devil himself, Alastor sidesteps smoothly and draws a short loop of shadow up from the floor to make Lucifer stumble.

“Getting too old to manage walking without an escort, your majesty?” Alastor asks primly, minutely adjusting his bowtie. “One would think after ten thousand years you would have at least mastered that skill.”

Lucifer turns toward him, wearing that smug grin that Alastor so loathes. “Oh yeah, bellhop? Would you like to be my ‘escort,’ if you think I need one so badly?”

Now, Alastor would know what Lucifer meant by that even without the dramatic air-quotes the man is clawing into the space between them. “Not a snowball’s chance, sire. I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.” He lifts his microphone and jabs Lucifer’s chest with the foot of it. “I’d much prefer you showed me the same courtesy.”

“Yeah, whatever, Bambi. Hey, uh, Hank? Can I get a, uhhhhh.” Lucifer looks around as if he’s searching for something that’ll give him a clue of what to order, and Alastor’s smile widens just a touch when he visibly realizes his only options are Husker and Alastor himself. The little king sighs, dropping his head into his hands. “I’ll just take a double tequila, please. Big ice cube.”

“Hard day, y’majesty?” Husker grunts, raising a feathered eyebrow as he pours.

Alastor feels himself lean forward a fraction of an inch. Almost curious to hear about his day.

Only for the purposes of mocking him for his likely gold-plated problems, of course.

“What? Oh, because the…yeah.” Lucifer pinches the bridge of what should look more like a nose, but doesn’t. He must have forgotten that Alastor is sitting in ammunition-gathering range, because he continues. “There’s a trace of angelic grace somewhere in this hotel, and it’s driving me crazy because it keeps moving around.”

A chill rushes down Alastor’s back, like the salt-covered ice chips Lucifer had slipped down his collar a few months ago.

“I’m hoping it’s just that one of Niffty’s little roach things consumed too much exorcist blood, or something,” Lucifer is rambling on, “because I can’t even fathom what else the issue could be. I don’t want to fathom.”

When Alastor opens his mouth, he finds that briefly, horrifyingly, no words will come out. After a moment, though, he collects himself, clears his throat, and tries again. “Could it be an exorcist who survived the battle, but couldn’t make it home due to her injuries?”

Lucifer wets his top lip with tequila and swipes the shine off it with his forked tongue.

Alastor fails to blink, gaze fixed on the delicate tips of Lucifer’s tongue.

“Don’t think so. I have an ear for this kinda thing, and it’s not that much of a signal, although…” Lucifer turns his head this way and that, and Alastor feels distinctly as though he stepped off a cliff without even seeing the edge, and now the ground is rushing up to meet him. His stomach braces itself to violently reject the bottom-shelf swill it has always so admirably tolerated. Lucifer’s tongue flickers between his lips again. “...it’s really coming in strong all of a sudden.”

Lucifer turns to look at Alastor suspiciously. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Husker backing away and hears his muttered, “Oh-kay, I’ll just leave you two to whatever the fuck this is,” as he—shrewdly—vacates the bar.

“And…” Lucifer says, tone suddenly that of a viper poised to strike, “it sounds like Adam’s grace.”

Alastor raises his hands, palms out, in a gesture of surrender. His teeth grind together hard enough to creak. “Now, sire. There’s no need to look at me like I’m a threat. I have a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“Oh, I would love to hear this,” Lucifer says, rolling his eyes. “Come on, then. After you.” He picks up his mostly-untouched tequila and waves his other hand, opening a portal to his unfortunately duck-themed bedroom. Alastor makes a show of a long-suffering sigh and a rather aggressive eyeroll of his own before complying.

Hell is finally beginning to feel like the torture they’d warned him about at catechism.

“Hey, uh, buddy. Can I ask a question?”

Alastor’s shirt is unbuttoned just enough to allow a partial view of the inconvenience Adam inflicted on him so many days ago. Lucifer is peering through the parted fabric critically at the wound. There’s a glass of ice water sweating directly onto the surface of his nightstand.

Alastor elects not to comment on that particular little hypocrisy.

“Didn’t you just?” Alastor’s ears are pinned back so hard they’re trembling. His muscles are held in the kind of stiff mimicry of relaxation that Vox used to mistake for the real thing.

He can’t even begin to address being called “buddy.”

“You know what I mean!” Lucifer looks so deliciously frustrated, Alastor is convinced he’ll never have to come up with another form of entertainment again.

“You may,” Alastor allows graciously.

Lucifer is twisting the hem of his own ridiculous shirt around his finger. Not touching, at Alastor’s sharp request. “This came from the battle. You were protecting Charlie.” He looks up at Alastor’s face, eyes wide and wet.

“I have yet to hear a question, sire.” He doesn’t have all day. Adam’s grace, he’s fairly certain, will keep sapping his strength until he has none left. Succumbing to an angelic wound sustained in a battle to defend the Hazbin Hotel, of all places—a disgustingly noble way to cap off his existence.

“I’m sure you can feel that this is killing you.” Lucifer reaches out, but stops himself. Oh, he really wants to touch, doesn’t he? It makes denying him all the sweeter.

Alastor inclines his head in assent. “Still not a question.”

“It’s really the only important question anyone’s ever asking. Why?”

“Oh! Very good, sire. I did it—” an anticipatory drumroll stretches the tension— “because I just couldn’t resist.” Alastor widens his smile deliberately. Let Lucifer use his imagination to fill in the gaps. Alastor has no need to explain himself. It’s not as if the little king can do anything to him.

Lucifer covers his face with a groan. “You fucking suck, you know that?”

Alastor nods, now sincerely gleeful. “Oh yes, sire. Occasionally, I even swallow.”

And Lucifer chokes. It’s an absolute pleasure to watch him recover.

Alastor shifts his weight a little in the chair and doesn’t notice that anything has changed until Lucifer’s eyes glue themselves to his chest in a way that makes him squirm.

“New question, sinner,” Lucifer says. His voice carries a barely perceptible tremor. His forked tongue flicks out from between his lips. “What have you got going on there?”

Alastor looks down to see the neon-green stitched edge of one of his portals. He flicks his shirt back over it. “Why, whatever do you mean, sire?” He refuses to capitulate to the hot rush of adrenaline coursing through his body at the look on Lucifer’s face—the type of look that, when directed at a woman, had put man after man on the business end of his hunting knife.

“It looks to me like you’re hiding something.” The Devil’s smile has grown smug, which makes Alastor’s claws itch to rip it off his face.

“Oh, it’s nothing of import,” he sniffs. He misses superior by about a mile and lands in defensive instead.

Lucifer seems to read this for what it is and pivots. “So tell me,” he says.

Alastor can’t resist interrupting. “Is that an order?”

“If you like. I’m curious, though. I always thought your, like, ambient blood scent,” he waves his hands around his head and Alastor isn’t sure how to assemble a facial expression that will even remotely begin to telegraph how he feels about that, so he just lets his smile tick wider, “was just a natural consequence of the cannibalism and, y’know, you being you. But now I’m thinking—”

“Thank God you’ve finally started!”

Lucifer takes this jab on the chin with the good humor of a prosecutor who has bribed the entire jury. “—that you’ve got a fun little amputation hobby.”

“Ha-ha! You’re tossing wild accusations at me based on a half-second glance at the body I didn’t even want to show you? That’s,” Alastor narrows his eyes, “ridiculous.”

“I think—”

“Lord, there you go again!”

“—that this is not your first massive chest wound.”

Alastor aims his very widest, least genuine smile at Lucifer. “What gave you this divine insight, sire?”

Lucifer mirrors the smile, eyes narrow. “I can see your scars, you know. All of them. They glow. The one Adam gave you is the only one that sings, and it’s driving me up the wall, but looking at you even before that was like staring at one of those billboards in the entertainment district.” Lucifer squints harder and peers at Alastor’s chest. “This whole mess was camouflaged by the rest of it—Hell, you’re basically Theseus’ demon—but those are definitely self-inflicted. Repeatedly. That’s my insight, you ungrateful little shit.”

Alastor’s eyes are so wide, Lucifer’s breaths start to dry them out. He can’t feel the bottom half of his face. Can’t tell if his smile is still there. The only thing giving him any hints is the pain in his temples from how hard he’s clenching his jaw. “Fix me, then, and stop looking at me.”

Lucifer looks at the floor and mutters, “You’re just as bright out of the corner of my eye.”

Alastor jerks back when Lucifer goes for his shirt.

Lucifer holds his hands up in a placating gesture until Alastor settles, then reaches out slowly again. He brushes one side of the shirt out of the way with the barest touch, then does the same with the other. The glowing edges of the portals peek out, but Lucifer only spares them a glance.

Alastor hisses as Lucifer waves his hands over his sternum, and begins to heal him. The pain is exquisite as the grace retreats, atom by atom.

It puts Alastor in a good enough mood to give Lucifer a little treat.

“I am used to walking around with chest wounds. Just not ones that go clear through to the bone. As I’m sure you can see, they’re normally a bit more…precise.”

The Devil himself looks up at Alastor like a child who just got an offer of candy from a stranger. His big, wet, golden eyes say “Reeeally, mister?” and Alastor wants to pop them out of his skull and eat them.

He sucks in a breath as the last of the grace creeps out of his body, attracted to Lucifer’s hands like iron filings to a magnet.

So.

Alastor’s had…a long month.

Lucifer refuses to stop looking at him.

The second Lucifer declared him “fucking quiet, finally” with a delicately pointed ear to his chest, Alastor had melted into shadows and called Niffty to his room.

“You usually want this stuff set up a bit earlier in the day, don’t you?” she had asked, and Alastor had had to bury his claws in the doorframe so he wouldn’t snarl at her.

“Yes, dear,” he'd said instead, voice carefully controlled. Mostly because if it’s a ritual day, I like to spend as little time in my original form as possible, he hadn't said. Niffty would only worry over him, and he’d do anything to keep her world as simple as rat blood and roaches. “How kind of you to notice.”

She'd giggled, and looked to him when she was done, placing her tiny hands on her hips. “I think you’re good to go! I’ll see ya later, bad boy.”

One of Alastor’s shadow tendrils had closed the door behind her after she skittered through it, even as his smile shrank into something genuine. Niffty always knew just what to say to cheer him up.

With a snap of his fingers, the portals had disappeared from his chest and he was striding over to the coffee table. His hand had been shaking with hunger as the scalpel sliced through his flesh.

The month after that passed mostly without incident—except Lucifer will not leave him alone.

Now, he’s sitting in the staff kitchen at—pardon the pun—a positively ungodly hour of the morning, having his first coffee of the day.

Lucifer is staring at him.

Alastor has no choice but to stare back.

Lucifer polished off his coffee ages ago. Alastor’s headache eased the second the smell of the Devil’s hazelnut and vanilla syrups cleared. He sticks his nose into his own mostly-empty mug and savors the chicory-scented steam.

“I don’t get it.”

Alastor rolls his eyes. “You’ll have to be a bit more specific than that if you want me to understand what you’re referring to, sire.”

Lucifer groans, resting his forehead on the rim of his empty mug. Amusingly, it leaves a wet line of coffee behind when he lifts his head back up, which he doesn’t seem to notice. “Your whole deal. About your…gender, or your body, or whatever the fuck.”

“My ‘whole deal,’ sire?” The air quotes aren’t physically present in the room with them, but they’re there in spirit.

“Yeah. The…portals. And your whole thing about your injury. What did you mean by ‘precise,’ exactly?” Lucifer leans across the table toward him.

Before he can stop himself, Alastor is reaching out and swiping the coffee stain off Lucifer’s porcelain-smooth forehead with his thumb. “If I show you, will you promise never to ask me about it again?” He sticks his thumb in his mouth, sugar flooding over his tongue.

Lucifer takes a second to respond, his eyes fixed to Alastor’s lips. “Uhh. Huh?” He blinks, then answers reflexively, “No deals with sinners, remember?”

Alastor grins. “All I asked for was a promise.”

“And I'm asking: what’s in it for you?” Lucifer, it seems, is learning.

Alastor grins wider. He traces his finger around the rim of his coffee mug. “Other than being left alone? Maybe I’d like to see if I can show the Devil himself a novel experience.” There is a gnawing hunger clawing at the bars of his ribcage that urges him to find every last spot of holiness left in the former angel and defile it. Said hunger's origin is almost certainly a can of demonic worms best left sealed.

Lucifer snorts. “I’d like to see you try.” He traces his finger through the air in a mockery of Alastor’s idle fidgeting, and a portal opens up behind him. “After you, then.”

Alastor hesitates, not having expected his challenge to work quite so quickly, but steps through the portal into the hallway outside his own room. He places his hand on the doorknob, feeling the wards slough away, but doesn’t turn it. He has always functioned best when he has a performance to put on, and it is occurring to him that today's show is already over. “You know,” he says abruptly, “we don’t have to do this now.”

“Why not, sinner? I thought you were going to show me a good time.”

“That is not what I said,” Alastor replies, voice tight and clipped. He enunciates his syllables carefully as he opens the door to his room, not waiting to see if Lucifer is following him through it. “I’ve already completed my…routine for the day. There’s nothing to show you but the results.” He turns to gauge Lucifer’s reaction.

There’s an odd look on Lucifer’s face, but he’s not focused on Alastor. “Fine, fine. Is there a fucking swamp in here?”

Alastor sees an opportunity to do something extremely funny while Lucifer obeys the inexorable pull of a novel experience. “Yes,” he says, “would you like to explore?” He sheds his coat and begins to unbutton his vest.

Of course, Lucifer nods, still not looking at him. “Some kind of dimensional rift…?” he mutters.

“Oh, it’s much more than a simple rift, sire. My shadow will show you around, if you like.” The vest comes off and a shadow tendril puts it on a hanger.

"Uh-huh."

Alastor’s shadow smiles impishly as it leads a thoroughly distracted Lucifer deeper into the bayou. He makes a mental note to let it practice violating the Geneva conventions on Vox in the near future as a treat for being so well-behaved. Turnabout, after all, is fair play.

Alastor toes off his shoes, tucking their laces inside, and aligns them neatly, toes under the edge of his armoire. He unclips his socks from their garters, rolls them off, and sets them to the side. His hooves flex, freed from their leather prisons, as he starts in on his shirt buttons.

His fingers shake between buttons as he makes his way down the placket.

This has all come so completely out of left field. His defeat at Adam’s grasping, lecherous hands; Rosie’s seemingly complete disinterest in helping him recover; the fact that Lucifer was apparently able to slip into his role as hotelier without so much as a bead of sweat forming on his brow, and everyone else at the hotel was willing to allow it without a single backward glance—Alastor briefly considers if all this uncharacteristic behavior is indicative of some kind of stress-induced mental breakdown. He slides his shirt down his arms and drops it into his laundry basket.

It begins to sink in that he’s going to be naked from the waist up in front of Lucifer. On purpose. By his own offer, in fact.

There’s no sign of Lucifer or his shadow from the bayou. Alastor hopes he’s currently a chew toy for a helligator, though it would be a shame to miss the show.

He stalls a bit more by leaning down to check his hair in the mirror and magically dust Niffty’s roach crown. He also manifests a glass of water atop an unmistakable bright red coaster.

After a brief once-over to gauge whether he looks debauched enough, he unbuttons his slacks where they sit high on his waist. The snugness of the waistband eases, and they slide down the tiniest bit.

Another look in the mirror, and he grins to himself and undoes the remaining three buttons, letting his pants settle low, clinging to his sharp hipbones. When he finally loses his last layer on top, the trail of hair below his navel will be visible where it disappears into the waistband of his undershorts. He'd be a fool if he didn't take advantage of the chance to show off every bit of the body Lucifer so obviously wants to see.

Glancing around to ensure he's maximized his likelihood of flustering Lucifer (whom, it cannot be overstated, is one of the beings involved in the creation of the universe, and Alastor is insane to even try), he pinches the hem of his undershirt between his fingertips and calls his shadow back.

As an unharmed Lucifer emerges from the bayou, brushing Spanish moss out of his way and grumbling about Alastor's shadow tripping him and flicking mud at his face, Alastor sweeps his arms up, pulling his undershirt off in one smooth motion.

Miraculously, Lucifer’s jaw drops.

Alastor snickers meanly at him, depositing his undershirt into the waiting arms of his shadow. “See something you like?”

The Devil himself is speechless as he stares at Alastor, who can’t help but preen.

“...You were…not kidding. About the…” Lucifer trails off, gesturing vaguely at his own chest.

“The in-house surgery?” Alastor supplies cheerfully. “Why, no, sire! I was not!”

His pectoral muscles are visible through a thin, neon green sheen of magic. He knows from experience how mesmerizing it can be to watch them shift as his arms move. Placing his hands on his hips, he shifts his weight—mirroring those plaster imitations of ancient Roman marble statues that populated the gardens of the rich residents of New Orleans.

Lucifer crosses the room faster than his eyes can follow, and Alastor very carefully does not flinch away from him. If he had a human nose, it would be fractions of an inch from Alastor’s exposed muscles as he squints at the edges of Alastor’s skin.

“You also weren’t kidding about the precision. I hate to admit it, but this is excellent work.”

“Oh, sire,” Alastor rests his fingertips delicately on his collarbone. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

Lucifer’s red-on-gold, oxlike eyes flick up to meet Alastor’s gaze. “Everywhere?” he asks, and Alastor could almost believe he sounds a little breathless.

“Within reason,” Alastor hums.

“Can I…?” Lucifer hovers his hands over Alastor’s ribs.

“I don’t know, can you?” Alastor smirks, then allows: “If you’d like to, you may.”

Lucifer rolls his eyes, but they’re laser-focused on Alastor’s chest as he rests his palms on Alastor’s ribcage and traces his thumbs along the cut edges of his skin.

The contact sends a shock of sensation spiderwebbing out from Lucifer’s surprisingly warm hands. It crawls over Alastor’s skin and settles low in his belly like a cat curling up in front of a fire.

Alastor casts his gaze to the ceiling because everywhere else is unsafe to look. Lucifer’s hands on his skin, tracing the cuts he made only an hour ago; Lucifer’s wide, fascinated eyes; Lucifer’s chest, rising and falling so, so quickly with breaths he most likely doesn’t need; Lucifer, Lucifer, Lucifer. The Devil is taking up most of his field of vision and every single one of his thoughts.

“Why?” The word slips between Lucifer’s lips cautiously.

The only important question anybody’s ever asking.

“Simply correcting a divine mistake.” Alastor shrugs because he knows the sight of muscle fibers sliding over each other will keep Lucifer entranced while he schools the expression that involuntarily formed on his face.

“Bold.” Lucifer laughs, the kind of laugh that’s half awe. “Is that it?”

“The pain’s a bonus.” Alastor captures Lucifer’s wrists in his hands, making cuffs out of his fingers. With as little contact as possible, he lifts Lucifer’s hands off his ribs and guides them to hover over his exposed muscle. His magic shimmers in the face of corrupted angelic essence, but holds its ground. He lets go.

“You want me to…?” Lucifer’s fingers twitch and Alastor leans forward slightly, pushing his chest into the Devil’s waiting palms.

The rush is every bit as strong as he expected. Pain flares brightly, and the heat pooling at the base of his spine matches it. He tips his head back, a small sound sneaking between his clenched teeth.

“Beautiful,” Lucifer whispers. In his voice, Alastor hears the fascination that comes with knowing, intimately, how a thing works, and still standing in awe that it does. Alastor is familiar with this level of intense fascination, though he suspects their reasons for it are different.

He squirms, one ear pinning back under the scrutiny. Lucifer flexes his fingers so his claws prick through the membrane of Alastor’s magic, and the burn of it is white-hot and exquisite. Alastor can't stifle all of the small noise he makes in response.

They stay like that for a while, Lucifer exploring around and Alastor trying not to move or make any more embarrassing noises in front of him, his ears flicking wildly and his chest gleaming green in the dim light of his room.

Alastor is just about ready to write the interaction off as a success and send Lucifer on his way, newly marked by his influence and unlikely to probe the topic of Alastor’s little hobby again, when Lucifer’s tongue flickers between his lips and he pulls back slightly with a conflicted look on his face.

“Hey, uh. Not to be rude, but—are you gonna wanna do anything about…that?” He flaps his hand vaguely at the lower half of Alastor's torso.

Alastor takes stock for a moment and immediately identifies the issue in question, but decides to feign ignorance, just for the Hell of it. “About what?” To turn the torment up a notch, a pair of shadowy hands conspicuously tug his pants back up until they're settled around his waist. They do the buttons up with a flourish. Alastor feels his shadow grinning over his shoulder at Lucifer before it disappears again with a crackle of static.

“Oh. Um. Never mind.” Lucifer’s face flushes bright gold, and he takes his hands off Alastor’s chest.

On instinct and nothing more—he is absolutely not already missing the feeling of Lucifer’s claws slipping under the edges of his skin—Alastor reaches for his wrists. “Sire. About what?” When Lucifer doesn't answers, he quips, "Do you expect me to read your tiny, addled mind?"

“That’s not even—that’s not the right question. I didn’t mean that." Alastor knows. "I just—I’m not trying to imply—we don’t have to—I just thought you might—ugh!” Lucifer’s hands fly out of Alastor’s grip to twist in his blonde hair, mussing it up. “I haven’t had to actually have this conversation in, like, decades. This is awful! Is the mind-reading offer still on the table?”

Alastor recaptures his wrists and tugs on them until Lucifer releases his hair. A couple of strands float to the floor, looking significantly closer to the barbs on a downy feather than anything that might grow out of a human scalp. “Lucifer, if you don’t collect yourself enough to—coherently—ask your 'right question' soon, I’m going to be forced to crack open your skull and see if I can read it that way.”

Lucifer’s arm muscles flex, but he doesn’t break Alastor’s hold, and he refuses to meet Alastor’s eyes.

They both sit there in silence, allowing it to stretch until Alastor, unable to shut the fuck up under even the most ideal conditions, elects to finally snap it.

“Oh, operator,” he singsongs. “Am I coming through?”

It’s incredibly entertaining to watch Lucifer squirm as he works through the guilt or shame or whatever else it is that’s making him clam up.

Finally: “I could smell you,” Lucifer grumbles. His eyes remain fixed on the floor.

Alastor chuckles. “Yes, you’d mentioned before! My ‘like, ambient blood scent,’ wasn’t that it?” He modulates his voice to imitate Lucifer’s—Vox hadn’t come up with that trick on his own, of course.

“Not. That,” Lucifer spits through his gritted teeth.

“Then I’m afraid I’m quite at a loss, sire!” Alastor, not even a little bit lost, lets his smile curl up cruelly at the corners.

In lieu of an answer, Lucifer just…pushes him. Bullies him back toward his bed just through the dual points of contact of his wrists against Alastor’s palms.

Alastor, for his part, lets himself be moved until his knees fold over the edge of his mattress. He feels the duvet puff up around his hips as he sits, and the way the wetness gathering in his shorts presses uncomfortably up against him.

Wetness Lucifer could apparently smell. Which is more than a little disconcerting, but that's none of his business.

Lucifer parts Alastor’s legs gently with his knee, more a request than a demand. Alastor lets his thighs flatten the covers as they spread wide around Lucifer’s hips. His grin widens. He is going to make Lucifer confess his sins.

“You know how I love precision, your majesty,” Alastor purrs, leaning back to rest his weight on his hands. He also loves to push his luck. “Do use your words.”

“No,” Lucifer’s eyes are glowing now, more red than gold. All the gold has traveled to dust his cheekbones with a fetching flush.

“Feeling shy all of a sudden, little king?” Alastor squeezes Lucifer’s hips with his legs. “Are you sure you don't want to tell me?" He clicks his tongue mockingly when he is met with further embarrassed, gold-flushed silence. "If you can't use your words, I suppose you'll just have to figure out another way to get your point across.”

He feels the tip of Lucifer’s finger slide between his stomach and the button on his pants. “May I?” Lucifer asks.

“It’s such a pleasure to see a pupil take to his grammar lessons,” Alastor says, tipping his head back leisurely. He makes Lucifer wait a moment longer, before sighing, “If you must.”

Lucifer pops the button free, and then the three buttons below it. Alastor very obligingly lifts his hips and allows Lucifer to slide his pants off, kneeling to work them carefully over his hooves. Instead of standing back up, he stays on his knees, and Alastor feels another pulse of heat bloom low in his belly.

The king of Hell, kneeling at his feet. Wild exhilaration mixes with his blood, making his breath catch and his legs twitch further open. Lucifer’s gaze meets his, and his forked tongue flickers between his lips again.

Tasting the air like a snake.

Against his will, Alastor shudders. Lucifer hooks two fingertips in the waistband of his shorts, and waits.

Alastor waves his hand in a gesture to go on. He’s not convinced his voice wouldn’t betray him if he spoke.

Lucifer, still kneeling, tugs.

Alastor’s shorts slide down, down, down his silvery-brown legs. He sucks in a breath when Lucifer’s face reappears, an expression on it that Alastor knows well.

It’s the face Alastor makes when looking at himself in the mirror post-ritual, with a piece of his own flesh in his blood-soaked hand.

The face he makes before he feasts.

Lucifer wraps his small, warm hands around Alastor’s waist and traces his thumbs along the jutting mountains of Alastor’s hipbones. Alastor shifts, his arms beginning to tingle.

“Lie back, it’s okay.” Lucifer's voice is quiet and reassuring in a way that doesn't match the voracious hunger in his expression.

“Stop that.” Alastor can't explain the discomfort that washes over him in the presence of that mismatch. He just needs Lucifer to be the monster Alastor's been obsessed with since the day he arrived.

Lucifer freezes. “Stop what?”

Alastor flops back and grabs Lucifer by the hair. It’s shockingly soft, reinforcing his earlier impression of it being closer to feather down than hair. He yanks harshly until Lucifer gets the hint and crawls up the bed, the fabric of his godawful pink waistcoat scratching pleasantly over Alastor’s bare skin.

“Acting like I'm interested in chivalry from you.” He doesn’t try for accusatory, but it sounds that way anyway.

“I don’t…” Lucifer’s smooth brow crinkles. “I’m just…usually, when I’m about to go down on someone, I try and be a little considerate.”

“Being about to suck me off doesn’t in any way require that you should start pretending to be kind to me.” Alastor pulls Lucifer down by the shoulders until they're pressed together. He’s heavier than his small frame would imply, and the pain from the new weight on Alastor’s chest is enough to have him rolling his hips up against Lucifer.

Lucifer grins at him, propping his chin on Alastor’s sternum. “Is this your version of talking dirty? I like it.” He traces one claw along the edge of Alastor’s missing flesh, slipping the tip of it inward to scrape against his breastbone. Another shudder races over Alastor’s skin. “You couldn’t handle me being mean to you.”

“I don't want you mean. I want you honest.” Alastor gives Lucifer’s hair another experimental tug, and Lucifer whimpers.

Undeterred by Alastor’s refusal to let go of his hair in the aftermath of this new revelation, Lucifer levers himself up and drops back to his knees on the floor. His vest scrapes Alastor’s skin as he slides down his body. The smile on Lucifer’s face is incandescent. So hot it could burn.

Alastor’s head hits the duvet as Lucifer buries his face between his legs.

“Why are you coughing? Can’t you just elect not to have lungs?” Alastor aims his next plume of smoke off the balcony, just to be polite.

“Where the fuck do you get off blowing smoke in my face?” Lucifer sputters, extinguishing Alastor’s cigarette with a snap of his fingers.

Alastor sighs, and the cherry relights. “Hm, where the fuck do I get off?” He taps his chin performatively, pretending to think. “Why, I believe the correct answer is: all over the Devil’s face!”

Lucifer chokes on nothing again.

Alastor summons the glass of water, coaster and all, from his bedside table and places it in front of Lucifer, who glares at the garishly red piece of wood. Just before he takes a sip, Alastor blinks innocently and the water is suddenly 40% pure ethanol.

“Do you want me to slap you?” he asks gleefully, as Lucifer collapses into yet another round of coughing.

“Fuck off,” Lucifer wheezes, once he gets control of himself.

“Is that really the phrase you were looking for? Could I offer you a ‘fuck me,’ or perhaps even a ‘fuck you?’” Alastor descends into maniacal giggles when Lucifer fixes him with a glare that would have outright erased a lesser creature. As he is not a lesser creature, it just tickles.

“One of these days, your mouthing off is gonna get you into a situation you can’t find a way out of.”

"It hasn't killed me yet."

Lucifer shrugs and takes another sip from the glass of suddenly-liquor he’s still holding. “Hey, it's your funeral. Want some? Oh, and also: fuck you.”

Alastor plucks the glass from his fingers and takes a nip. “You already did, sire.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Lucifer’s eyes are rolling and he’s scrubbing a hand over his cheek, but his voice is soft enough that Alastor can be reasonably sure he’s joking.

…Reasonably.

“This turned out excellently,” he says, handing the glass back and refusing to examine why he wants that to have been a joke so badly. “I’ve never tried to make liquor with magic before. Only ever by hand.”

Lucifer traces his gaze over Alastor. An understandable action, given that Alastor, feeling unusually hedonistic, has elected to sit out on his balcony in nothing more than a pair of flannel pajama pants. The wrought-iron chair traces cold patterns against his back and thighs.

A white layer of subcutaneous fat has encroached over his pectoral muscles until they’re no longer visible—a shame, but a natural consequence of his demonic healing.

They’ll be missing him downstairs by now.

They won’t be missing Lucifer—his attendance at breakfast and the morning meeting has been, generously, infrequent.

“So…do you use magic to do…whatever it is you do?” Lucifer gestures at Alastor’s chest.

“There’s none in the doing. That’s all manual. Doing things by hand is its own type of magic.” Alastor pauses to lean forward and carefully ash his cigarette directly into Lucifer’s still-mostly-full glass. “However, I find that a film of my power is much more effective than gauze at keeping blood off my clothing, so I do indulge in that luxury.”

“I could make it permanent for you, you know,” the Devil says, as if he’s not offering a service that brazenly ignores the entire point of the ritual. It’d be like receiving store-made cakes for every occasion for the rest of one’s life, and never having the opportunity to bake something oneself ever again.

“Why would you think I’d want that?”

Lucifer looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “You clearly want your body to be different than it is. I could give that to you. All you’d have to do is tell me what you want.”

“Try to change me and I’ll find a way to kill you.” Alastor blows another puff of smoke toward Lucifer, but he must have elected not to have lungs because it doesn’t make him cough this time.

“Control freak.” Lucifer takes another sip of his liquor, ash and all. He hums approvingly at the addition.

“Doing things by hand," Alastor repeats, enunciating carefully, "is its own type of magic." He pauses to take a drag. "There’s just something about excising the parts of me that don’t belong and turning them into something more useful.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Lucifer’s lip curls.

“What is it that you think I do with my excess anatomy? I’m a cannibal, Lucifer, or have you forgotten?”

Lucifer’s normally pink cheeks take on a greenish tint. “That’s beyond gross.”

“You just made me come with your tongue.” Alastor raises an eyebrow at him, and when no counterargument is forthcoming, presses on. “In any case, I don’t always want this, either.” He waves his hand over his flat chest. “I spent a few years perfectly happy without modifications…oh, hm, I think sometime in the nineties, and a couple weeks at a time here and there since I got it down pat. The need for it comes and goes.”

Lucifer, ever consistent, utterly misses the point again. “Well, I guess if you ever wanna be…called something different, let me know.”

“There’s no point to that, sire,” Alastor snickers. “You can barely remember my name now.”

“I’m trying to be respectful, you unrepentant menace.”

Alastor rolls his eyes and stubs out his cigarette. He stands up just so he can look down his nose at Lucifer. “Don’t kid yourself. You don’t respect us.”

He knocks over Lucifer’s glass and watches the liquor drip through the slats of his little table onto Lucifer’s lap. Lucifer doesn’t make any move to stop any of it—just stares, shellshocked, at the empty glass.

“I believe I’ll be needed downstairs for my one-on-one with Charlie in a short while,” Alastor finally says.

“Okay. I’ll just fuck off then, right?” Lucifer’s mouth is twisted with frustration.

“If you would be so kind.” Alastor even holds the door to his room open for him as they head in from the balcony.

Once Lucifer is gone, Alastor scrubs his hands over his face. He dresses with sharp, efficient movements, not even properly enjoying the shocks of pain when he stretches too far. He should be satisfied that he’s made yet another unique mark in Lucifer’s millennia of memories, but all he can think about is leaving a more physical mark next time.