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Alastor had never been in the habit of stumbling. Silly, ungraceful action that it was. Really, walking was one of the first lessons one learned - a grown man should certainly have a mastery of it by the time he'd lived, died, and spent a few decades in Hell.
And yet Alastor stumbled. He'd almost made it back to the hotel, could see his lovely clinging tower over the top of the next building on the corner, when his feet decided to betray him, the strength going out of one of his legs, like it wanted to bring him down with it. Alastor could feel the crackle of static sizzling across his skin as he sank his claws into the brick building beside him, hissing as he kept himself on his feet by sheer willpower alone.
This was a problem. This actually was a problem. He'd ignored the itching, crawling feeling in his bones, ignored the way each step he'd taken for the last however long had felt more and more like something he shouldn't be doing. His tolerance for poisons should have shaken this from him by now. He should be walking. He shouldn't have to stop.
But the sickening feeling of something foreign in his veins wasn't fading like it should have been. He could feel the heat flaring up his spine again, stronger than before, and it took every ounce of his practiced concentration to stop the way he wanted to open his mouth to breath.
To pant. Like a dog.
This was revolting. His body felt like it wanted to crawl inside out, the fatigue soaking slowly into his legs as his heart raced a little faster with each beat. Terribly - disgustingly - weak.
He was going to have to find the source of that vial, the small chamber of soft pink liquid sloshing about in the crude dart he'd so carelessly caught. It had seemed like a laughable attempt at poisoning him - until it had literally blown up in his face.
It was unfortunate that he'd opted to kill them all, in retrospect. The task had been delightful at the time, a symphony of screams as the Radio Demon pulled them each apart with delicate precision. But now he would have to wait for them to regenerate before he was able to interrogate them on the origin of their little poison.
He would have to properly dispose of them afterwards of course. It wouldn't be prudent for anyone to know he had an interest in the substance that - at the time - had seemed wholly ineffective.
It certainly was having some kind of effect now. Alastor focused on each breath, forcing them into something measured, even, when all he wanted to do was suck in as much cool evening air as his body would allow.
Focus, he snapped at himself, forcing his legs straight and letting the hand against the wall drop. He could feel the way his knees wanted to crumple, the muscles in his thighs twitching with the effort of holding him still.
He wouldn't be walking to the hotel. He might make it, but at what cost? A person seeing him walk like some drunkard back from a bender? He was lucky the street he was on now was deserted, and his smile twisted in irritation as he let the shadows swallow him instead, aiming to drop himself in his tower and figure it out from there.
Unfortunately, it seemed it wasn't only his legs that were affected by whatever this was. The walls that materialized before him weren't the familiar dark warm hues, but the bright yellow of one of the lower hallways, and Alastor hissed in static as his shoulder collided with the wall, the world tilting oddly around him.
Move, he spat at himself, shrugging off the wall and melting into shadow again, entirely focused on the short journey that dropped him - finally - into his familiar tower.
He toppled forward, catching himself on clawed hands digging into the wood of his desk. The crawling in his skin was headed for unbearable, each breath feeling like it was scraping through his lungs, and the familiar fabric of his shirt and jacket scratching at him like sandpaper.
It wouldn't kill him. Alastor was quite sure of that. He had surely suffered worse than this when he'd first started working on his resistance, and with the slow build that this concoction seemed to work at, it would never manage to burn through him faster than he could burn it out of himself.
But it was going to be unbearable while it lasted it seemed.
He should hunker down. Get comfortable and let it take its course. He didn't need to stand through it, not here, where no one could see him, in the safety of his tower. But the weakness in his legs was slowly turning to restlessness, the crawling becoming something else he didn't quite have a name for, something that urged him to move, and he dug his claws deeper into the wood, the room filling briefly with a cacophony of static as he bared his smile in a snarl.
The air cleared, and Alastor distantly considered shredding his desk, when-
"Wow, that was loud."
The Radio Demon spun, shadows striking out ahead of him blindly towards the voice as one of his hands remained firmly anchored in the desk that he now realized he desperately needed. He could feel each of his strikes miss their mark, and something almost like panic rose in his throat - was it that bad? Could he really not hit one simple target? - before his last attack was batted aside by a sharp pop of golden light, and Alastor's brain finally put the voice to a face.
"Alright, easy there, shadow octopus," Lucifer huffed as he brushed the remnants of shade away. He was standing just inside the room, door closed behind him, and Alastor realized with a sickening lurch that he couldn't begin to tell if the devil had come through the door or simply dropped himself into the room through one of his little golden doorways.
The fact that he didn't know, that he hadn't seen, that his shadow hadn't seen, was more disturbing than the shaking or the crawling or the weakness. And that realization was only followed by the next unnatural thought - that he wanted to sink his teeth into the smiling man across from him.
"Get out," he spit, the screech of static distorting the words enough that Alastor wasn't even sure if they were audible beneath it. But it didn't matter. The intent was clear. Lucifer had to know he didn't want him here.
Which, Alastor realized with a sudden sinking in his gut, was probably why he was here in the first place.
"Sure, that's an option," Lucifer shrugged, leaning casually on his cane as he cocked his head at the Radio Demon. "It seems like it'd be more interesting to find out why you're stumbling around the hallways first."
He wanted to bite him. He wanted to bite him, he wanted to bite him, he wanted to sink his bloody teeth into his pristine white skin and feel his mouth fill with gold. He wanted to dig his claws into soft flesh and scour lines into the canvas of his back and make him sing. He wanted-
He didn't realize he'd moved until something lashed around his wrist and yanked him back. The Radio Demon spun to snarl down at the bright golden line of light tying him to his own floorboards, the fury snapping up in his chest too quickly to squash it back down. He reached to snatch at the strange glowing rope, only for another line of it to catch his other wrist, and Alastor realized with a jolt that Lucifer was attempting to restrain him.
Suddenly the insistent crawling in his skin had a new home, sinking deeper into the frayed muscles of his arms, his back, his legs. He twisted sharply, yanking one of his hands free with a sickening pop, not feeling the pain as he lashed out at the other bond, only for a fresh line to wrap around his arm this time, pulling him bodily with it. Alastor snarled a harsh line of static again, letting the bones in his arms loose as they stretched and elongated. He could feel his antlers splitting into a twisted rack as a new line of golden light wrapped around his chest, his ribcage shifting and popping beneath it, each breath like jagged glass shredding his lungs.
The struggle was satisfying. The first balm of something to soothe the incessant need that had been twisting through his skin for so long now. Each time he fought, a new line of gold would snap over his overheated skin, tightening down on the crawling and the screaming in his bones, dragging the sensation back from the brink of unbearable to something merely deeply unpleasant.
He found himself eventually more gold than red. Each heavy breath was shallow against the unyielding rope, and he gave in - just a little - to the urge to slump against it, letting himself tip forward on his knees, arms stretched far back by their bindings to the floor behind him. Sweet-tasting air scraped past his teeth as his eyes focused slowly on floorboards beneath him, and the tips of sharp black shoes.
"Okay?" came Lucifer's voice, slicing its way through the fog that had built in his head. "We done, or you wanna contort yourself into some more freaky shapes first?"
Alastor wanted to laugh, something bubbling up his throat, but coming out more like a crack in his voice than any intentional sound. His bones ached, his head felt like it was slowly filling with cotton, and a sensation was slithering under his skin still, less frantic than before, but no less demanding.
"Are-" Lucifer started, stopping for a breath, before clawed fingers were curling under Alastor's jaw, and the shock of the sensation was enough to distract the Radio Demon long enough for Lucifer to turn his face up to look at him.
His face was too . . . bright. His stark white skin and stark white teeth and golden hair and golden eyes - Alastor found himself fixating on the red of his pupils instead, watching in some detached fascination as they shrunk and expanded in tiny fractions.
"Are you doped?"
He could hear the question. He even knew all the words. But it was hard putting them all together. Lucifer was holding him almost entirely by his claws, cold dead things, but he could feel the heat from his fingertips and it was strangely distracting. Each breath he took tightened the thick band of rope around his chest momentarily, put more pressure on his ribcage, on the aching muscles of his back. The strain in his arms felt like a satisfying morning stretch, and he could feel himself leaning further against the pull of the rope wrapped in a thick sleeve over each forearm, and consequently closer to the warmth of black fingers.
He was listing a little when Lucifer raised his other hand, reaching out to place it firmly on Alastor's cheek, thumb pressing to pull his lower eyelid down. But Alastor was entirely unprepared for the shock of his warm palm, some thin whine of feedback scraping out of him as his whole body was wracked with a violent shudder.
Lucifer froze, blinking at him for a long moment, before he leaned back a fraction, looking down the length of the Radio Demon's torso.
"Oh."
It was a light sound. Casual, like he'd learned a mildly interesting fact. A wholly inadequate sound for bringing Alastor to the same realization the devil had just stumbled on.
He wasn't unfamiliar with his body's various functions. It was based partially on the body he'd had when he was alive, and the occasional reactions it experienced were just as unconcerning in Hell as they had been in life. It was simple physiology that adrenaline and excitement might give him a hard-on, an unexceptional quirk that he very rarely felt the need to take any advantage of.
This wasn't like that. It wasn't until Lucifer drew attention to it, until Alastor noticed it, acknowledged it, that he realized what the crawling under his skin - the need to bite - actually was.
Alastor jerked his face harshly from Lucifer's grip, something hot and wretched washing up his chest and into his face. He immediately wanted to be gone, to be across the room, or maybe across Hell - anywhere but still within reach of Lucifer's smooth hands. But whether it was the poison or the golden bonds, he couldn't find the familiar thread inside of him to pull to bring the shadows to him. All he could do was glare at the devil with bared teeth.
Like some kind of trapped animal.
"Release me," Alastor hissed, voice still more static than words. Lucifer laughed, short and sweet, and Alastor wanted to dig his hands through his hair, wanted to see how far he could make him bend before he broke.
"Ah hah. No."
"Why," Alastor snapped, twisting in the ropes once more, only for them to tighten sharply, pulling some alien sound from his chest.
"Because you're drugged up to the nines and I don't know what you're gonna do."
"Since when have you been afraid of me?"
"Heh, yeah," Lucifer huffed a short laugh. "Not afraid for me."
It took a moment for the words to sink in, permeating slowly through the warm oily fog in his skull. Did he think Alastor was going to go on some kind of rampage? Go hunting through the halls like some kind of animal, maiming and killing and maybe worse?
. . . would he?
It was a sickening lurch in his gut to realize he didn't know. The time between the dart and now was messy and disjointed, but he couldn't remember planning to attack Lucifer. Not the first time or the second. Even now, there was that ache in his mouth, the alien urge to pin him down, tear clothing with teeth, get hands on bare skin and-
Was this what other people felt like? How did they live with it?
"Yeah," Lucifer said with a crooked smile. "Glad we're on the same page on that one."
Alastor narrowed his eyes sharply, hatred mixed up with the burning under his skin, and he fought to slow his breathing, to find a little bit of coherency.
"And what exactly," Alastor said slowly, measuring each word carefully. "Is your plan then?"
"I'm sorry, since when is your dick my problem?"
Alastor bristled, a sharp screech of feedback slicing viciously through the air, and there was a sick satisfaction in watching Lucifer flinch from the sound.
"You appear to have made it your problem," Alastor bit through a razor sharp smile. "So unless you intend to remain at this impasse-"
"Why not?" Lucifer shrugged, cutting him off. "You stay here, I don't have to worry about you going on some horny cannibal rampage, and eventually whatever it is will work its way out of your system."
And then he seemed to consider a moment, cocking his head.
"Or it kills you. I guess that's a possibility too."
There was a thin ringing in the background, an edge of feedback that wanted to pitch higher even as Alastor held it viciously in place. He hated him. He hated him. His mouth was burning, his teeth aching, every inch of his skin was shrieking for some kind of relief. It wouldn't kill him - he was sure, he was sure of that - but the idea of sitting here, of having to wait as the urge to flay himself open just to stop the screaming, yawning horror in his chest was unfathomable.
"Why not just kill me?" Alastor asked, the words slipping past his teeth before he'd meant to, and it made his stomach curdle to realize he'd had no control over it. He had to force his eyes up, force himself to look at Lucifer, like it was a challenge instead of the pitiful, vile weakness it had been.
Lucifer, for his part, seemed to take the question seriously. He wasn't quite smiling, watching him for a moment, before he asked simply, "Is that what you want?"
The idea was foul. Abhorrent. Lucifer killing him because he couldn't control himself. Because he couldn't manage to sit through some silly little poison, because he couldn't stand the feeling of something that wasn't even hurting him. It was vile enough that Lucifer was the one who'd found him here. But letting him hold that over him? Anyone else learning of his fate, of the great Radio Demon having to put himself together again, and the rumors that would fly after such a thing?
No. No, he couldn't tolerate that.
"No," he answered finally, the word blessedly clear. Lucifer nodded, shrugged, lifting a hand as if to say "what can you do?" and Alastor hated him so much it hurt.
"Well, then. Hogtied it is."
The thought made him want to thrash again. Alastor focused on each careful breath, focused on the pressure of the rope around his chest, the forced stretch of muscle, the way the air was sweet and cool in his mouth. He was aware distantly that that was the option he wanted. That if he'd been coherent enough from the start, maybe he would have lashed himself down just the same. It was a crushing bit of misfortune that it had been Lucifer who caught him like this, but still a better fate than making some kind of fool of himself in the public at large. Ruin his reputation, his carefully laid, decade-long plans, because his body was unfortunately still some kind of flesh machine that could be infected and driven, like everyone else.
Not all of him was following along with that line of logic, though. The crawling was returning, building slowly the more he thought about being stuck like this, waiting out however long the burn lasted. He was distantly aware of Lucifer speaking, but his ears were full of cotton, full of his own frantic heartbeat and the distant burning ache to bury his teeth in something.
This wasn't worth it. Just let him hunt, at least. Let him rend warm, living flesh - an animal, a filthy sinner, an imp, he didn't care. Let him sink his teeth in deep enough to crush, to work his jaw until he cracked bone, to feel skin split and blood spill and anything, anything to soothe the screaming need.
His ears flicked forward at a strange sound, his eyes focusing slowly on the fingers snapping in front of his face, and it took a moment to parse through Lucifer's voice.
"Alastor. Hey, come on, let's focus now, pay attention for two seconds, yeah?"
The Radio Demon watched the fingers for a long moment, before he finally forced his eyes up to Lucifer's face.
"Hi, yeah, can you, uh, can you shift back for me?"
Alastor felt his brow furrow, his grin twisting a little in confusion, before Lucifer gestured.
"You're all . . ." he waved his hand loosely for a moment. "Freaky. Twisty deer monster thing."
"So?" Alastor rasped. He could feel the way his body was still stretched, bones twisted at odd angles, but it seemed so incredibly unimportant right then.
Lucifer huffed something that almost sounded like a laugh. "Look, do you want me hovering over you through all of this? Because I'd like to not be in the room here, and I can't leave if you can just shift down and slip out of the ropes the second I'm gone."
Alastor glared at him through the haze, feeling the thin background hum of static filling the room. And then, slowly, deliberately, he forced his right arm to untwist, shrinking jerkily as the rope retightened quickly around it. He followed it with the left, having to focus on every pull of tendon and bone as the ropes adjusted to hold him.
He got lost after that, distracted by the sweet tasting air again, and it was several breaths before Lucifer's voice came again.
"Chest, Alastor."
Right. Unshift. He felt his clavicles pop, his whole body jerking to one side as one of his shoulder blades shifted back into place, and then the other. The ropes followed him down here too, and it was easier to focus on them, easier to concentrate on the steady pressure they awarded his ribcage as he brought himself back into a more everyday form.
"Nice. Okay." Lucifer was moving, stepping around to walk behind Alastor, and that should have been concerning, should have set off alarm bells, but there was no room for them in his cotton-stuffed head. "You can keep your neck and everything all freaky if you want."
The words reminded him that he'd never finished shifting, his eyes narrowing as he focused on retracting the broad branches of his antlers, undid the tangled mess of his neck, untwisted the joints of his knees, his hips, putting things carefully back into place.
He'd just finished when Lucifer placed his cool hand firmly in between the Radio Demon's shoulder blades, bracing him as he hooked the fingers of his other hand into the top band of rope, tugging it experimentally, and Alastor let out some screechy pop of static.
"Yeah, gimme a sec," Lucifer said, his voice lower, like he was talking to an animal. His hands were quick, but they were everywhere, feeling around the lengths of rope on his chest, down his thighs, his ankles, his arms, testing around where they pressed into skin. He made it a point to tug a bit of Alastor's jacket smooth along his right arm, releasing a sharp point of pressure Alastor hadn't noticed before, but the relief was negligible compared to the scratchy, incomplete feeling of Lucifer's hands on him, separated by layers and layers of fabric.
And then the devil reached up to fix his collar, errant thumb brushing absently along the side of his neck, and Alastor made a noise he'd never made before.
Lucifer paused, going still behind him, thumb still sharp and cool just under his hairline, and Alastor was considering biting off his own tongue to keep himself from squirming. He couldn't tell whether the sensation was good or bad, but he did know that he needed it to do something other than just sit there.
"Oh," Lucifer said, in much the same tone he'd used earlier. "I guess there is another option, huh?"
"What?" Alastor snapped, finally deciding he didn't care whether the thumb on his neck was good or bad, he just wanted it gone.
And strangely, he was obliged. The hands at his throat retreated - only for fingers to return at his nape, sliding up roughly into his hair.
He did know whether that was good or bad, and the knowledge was terrible. He could feel the way his body shuddered, some low sound vibrating in his throat, completely out of his control, and he couldn't even manage to wrench himself away. And then it was gone, and Alastor leaned further into the pull of the ropes at his arms.
"I could help."
The words didn't make sense for a moment, out of order, or out of shape. But then they clicked, and suddenly Alastor felt as clear as he had since he'd entered the hotel.
The Radio Demon went absolutely still, breath seizing in his chest as his eyes fixed on the floor. What? Why would he offer that? What was the twist? They had a perfectly good plan - an easy one for Lucifer - and there was no reason to think yet that it wouldn't work. He had no reason to bring that up. It didn't benefit him in any way. There was some kind of trick, or trap, or something in that, and he was too poison-drunk to parse it out.
They didn't have the kind of relationship where that made sense. They didn't even like each other - no, they hated each other. They both played nice for Charlie alone, and that was irrelevant here. Alastor had never given any indication that he had any interest in that. Because he didn't. Not with Lucifer, not with anyone. And of all the feelings he read off the devil, not one of them had looked anything like this.
So there was something else. There was a reason for this. Alastor's mind suddenly jumped forward, a stomach-churning thought rising up that maybe Lucifer had had some part in this from the start.
But that didn't make sense either. He'd been there for something so completely unrelated from Lucifer. And ask now? Why not just let him lose his mind until he didn't care?
That thought in particular made something inside of him lurch, the room twisting sickeningly, and it took several seconds for his vision to clear enough to recognize Lucifer standing in front of him, hands raised in placation.
"Hey, no, see, I'm way over here. No touching. Promise."
Alastor was distantly aware of the fading whine of feedback in the room, the grimace on Lucifer's face telling him it must have been quite loud. Alastor was almost tempted to fill the room with it again, on purpose this time, until he could drown out all of the questions, erase the slightly wary look on Lucifer's face that tasted too close to pity.
"Why?" Alastor finally managed, his voice coming out crisper than he expected.
"Uh, because you just turned into the world's worst fire alarm-"
"Why offer?"
"Oh." Lucifer stopped, like the question was somehow surprising. "Honestly? It's easier. I don't have to play dick monitor, you get to work whatever it is out of your system with something you can't hurt, plus you don't risk dying and coming back still fucked up without me knowing."
Alastor narrowed his eyes at the devil, considering the answer slowly. Strangely the pragmatism was . . . better. Than what he had expected as an answer. The idea that Lucifer would simply help out of some sense of self-sacrificing morality had tasted foul in his mouth, and the idea that the devil had any kind of interest made him want to bite until he broke whatever thread of want existed in the depraved little creature.
But out of self-serving laziness? That didn't seem . . . quite so appalling.
And there were a million reasons he could probably find to logic his way into it, but the simple fact was that he wanted to. It was such a foreign thought, and yet strangely familiar. A hunger like the constant clawing in his gut that drove him to hunt, the need for power that drove him to play his games. He wanted to put marks in his pale white skin, and here was the devil, offering him exactly that.
And if he was honest with himself, really, what were the choices here? The humiliation of fucking the devil? Or the humiliation of losing his mind on the floor of his radio tower? Lucifer had already seen it, already knew the state he was in, and really, if he had to do this, why not with someone who already held him in the lowest esteem?
Alastor took a slow breath in, a slow breath out. His skin was singing under the ropes, his teeth throbbing and his hands aching, and he forced himself to narrow his focus down, to not let himself get lost in the most critical part.
"This does not leave this room," Alastor said, each word coming out shockingly crisp. He held eye contact as he said it, watched as Lucifer's face shifted in something like surprise, and then something else Alastor wasn't quite as confident in identifying.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Lucifer said easily, dropping his hands and looping a messy, cock-eyed grin onto his face. "Any other ground rules?"
Only his hands reached for the fastenings of his jacket as he said it, and Alastor's concentration was broken, eyes falling to where the devil shed the white and red fabric easily, popping open the cuffs of his button-up to roll the sleeves up. He was stepping closer as he did it, eyes fixed on his sleeves as his hat wisped away into nothing, and he was close by the time Alastor was able to process anything else. Close enough that their new height difference was obvious.
I hate you standing over me, Alastor thought viciously, only for Lucifer to drop to his knees like he'd heard him, rocking back to sit on his heels, hands in his lap, and head cocked to the side.
"Hm?"
". . . don't fuck me."
"Okay," Lucifer said, blinking. "Does that mean, like, don't fuck you over? Or does that mean don't . . ."
He trailed off, raising his hands to make a crude gesture, and Alastor bared his smile in frustration, hating the man for making him use more words for this.
"Do not attempt to put anything inside me," Alastor said, as precisely as his mouth would make the words around his teeth. "Is that clear enough for you?"
Lucifer raised his hands between them, fingers and thumbs together in dual circles, and spread his hands with a click of his tongue.
"Crystal."
I hate you.
Alastor was sure there was more he wanted to say. More rules to lay out, more things to clarify. But Lucifer had shuffled a little closer, and he could feel the slight slack on the ropes on his arms, and the sudden immediate realization that he was about to satisfy the terrible screaming thing inside him was enough to blot out anything else.
Lucifer said something, leaning forward like he was going to touch him, but all Alastor could see was the hint of bare clavicle peaking out of the devil's collar, and his whole mouth was watering, and there wasn't any thought left in his head when he leaned forward to snap his teeth harshly into Lucifer's shoulder.
They slid in like butter, shredding his shirt like tissue paper as they sunk past the warmth of his skin to the hot embrace of muscle. He could feel the way the muscle threads split easily, making way for his teeth to make a new little home amongst them, and the instant wash of shivering satisfaction was like a cool balm against the burning of his mouth.
Lucifer tensed under him, a sharp hiss pressed against his ear, and Alastor could feel the tension return to the ropes at his arms, like he was going to yank him away.
But he didn't. After a second's hesitation, Lucifer shifted under his teeth, hissing again as he placed his fingertips against the ropes at Alastor's chest.
"Ow," Lucifer said in a flat, unamused voice, putting emphasis on the small word. Alastor narrowed his eyes at the snark, flexing his jaw to bite harder, feel the shift of ripped fabric, ripped skin, warm, strange blood welling around his teeth.
And, oh, the taste of gold exploding across his mouth was going to put so many future meals to shame.
"Fine, asshole," Lucifer scoffed, not sounding quite as put out as Alastor was expecting. "Be a dick."
And then he slid his hand down from the ropes at his chest, pressing firmly down the front of his jacket, following the line of buttons towards-
Alastor's jaw flexed again, this time more of a jerk, an involuntary reaction as his brain caught back up to the situation. Lucifer hissed again, stopping his downward trajectory just shy of his belt - and then popping the bottom button of his jacket to reach in and pinch him harshly on the stomach.
Alastor unclenched his jaw, a brief flash of outrage at the devil's audacity, before his hand continued its short trip down, spreading firmly over the heavy line of his erection without a hint of reservation, and sending Alastor buckling forward against the ropes.
"Hah," Alastor breathed, caught with his mouth open, still shiny with gold, and unable to stop the sound before it escaped. Lucifer made a noise like amusement under him, before turning his hand to get a proper grip on him through his pants, and Alastor snapped his mouth closed, biting down the next strange breath and fighting the way he suddenly wanted to twist against his bonds.
The ropes had been almost . . . pleasant before. They did the work of holding him up, squeezing the crawling feeling out of his skin, and keeping each breath steady, measured. But the moment Lucifer got a hand on him, suddenly they made him feel all too trapped, restricting him in a way that no longer felt convenient. He felt the immediate strain in his arms, the way his hands clawed at thin air, before balling into frustrated fists again.
"Yeah, I know, hold on," Lucifer muttered low under his breath, and Alastor was almost worried he actually could read into his mind somehow before he realized that he'd filled the room with harsh static again.
Lucifer squeezed, and Alastor felt a strange, alien urge to growl, like some kind of feral animal. He ground his teeth instead, smile pulled so wide he was in danger of splitting his mouth. He could feel Lucifer's other hand working his belt open, and he wondered if this was what it was like to feel hysterical, his heart hammering sharply in his throat, his breathing too short and quick, and he had the strangest urge to laugh.
Movement next to his face distracted him, and he turned just in time to see Lucifer lick a messy strip over his hand, eyes down and focused, and the obscenity of it was shocking in a way that should be impossible to someone living in Hell. He wanted it to be gross, wanted it to make his stomach churn, but something about the way Lucifer did it slowly, deliberately, all of his focus down on the task before him, made it . . . not . . . that way.
And then he got his slick palm on bare skin, and Alastor lost the next few minutes.
He was breathing harshly through his nose when he became aware of the room again. He'd kept his mouth closed, and he could feel the way his jaw ached at how harshly he'd clenched it, a similar ache present in the knuckles of his hands. The rest of him felt . . . decidedly languid for the moment, slumped against the ropes as the waves of aftershocks slowly ebbed.
Lucifer was talking again, and Alastor let it just be noise for a few moments before he bothered to focus on him again. The devil was wiping his hands on a small white handkerchief, face down at his task, but there was a messy smile on his face that Alastor couldn't quite decide if he liked.
It took him another moment before the devil looked up, smile still there, and asked, "Is it?"
Alastor made a questioning noise back, not quite caring to engage.
"Easier to think?" Lucifer clarified, tossing his handkerchief carelessly to the side. Alastor glanced at it before he managed to consider the question.
It wasn't . . . exactly. It was more just a different kind of fog he needed to cut through. Although, actually now that he was starting to pay attention, this new fog seemed to be lifting quite quickly. The room was already coming into focus, and the fact that he could easily find his shadow along the wall, restless and worried, was more a testament to his current state of mind than anything else.
"Yes, I believe," Alastor responded, and his voice sounded refreshingly clear, though not quite up to his usual pep.
"Awesome," Lucifer said, clasping his hands together in front of him before aiming his pointer fingers at him, thumbs raised. "Question. I know I said this wouldn't leave this room, but how would you feel about me dropping us somewhere with a bed? I don't know if you can feel what this floor is doing to your knees, but I am not looking forward to the bruises they're gonna give me."
Alastor could not feel what the floor was doing to his knees. But the idea of being somewhere else was not . . . unappealing. The more he became aware of the room, the more wrong it was to be here. To let Lucifer be here. His ear flicked slightly, and he could feel the way his smile had pulled into something a little more familiar, a little more sure.
"What a surprise," he mused, cocking his head to the side. "The King of Hell is a pillow princess."
Lucifer snorted, the sound half choking him for a minute, and he looked back to Alastor with watering eyes. "I'm sorry, wanting a bed makes me a pillow princess to you?" he laughed. "So I prefer a mattress to your freaky dirty floor, sue me."
"By all means, make yourself comfortable," Alastor hummed, ignoring the way it made something twist in his stomach.
Lucifer squinted at him, grin still in place, before suddenly the floor opened beneath them, dropping them unceremoniously from the radio tower.
The problem of course being that Alastor's hands were still tied. He could feel the lines connecting him to the floor disappear, only to be replaced by new lines binding his forearms together behind him, and he had nothing to brace himself with as they tumbled into an unfamiliar bed.
Alastor managed to catch himself on his knees, gritting his smile with the effort of holding himself up before he managed to balance again. He shot a look at the devil, sitting with legs akimbo, and watched as he laughed at him.
"You should see your face," Lucifer snickered, grinning from ear to ear, before he teetered backwards and flopped ungracefully onto the pillows behind him.
"Yes," Alastor said flatly. "Truly a masterpiece of comedy."
Lucifer laughed again, arms stretched out at his sides and facing the ceiling. He lifted one hand lazily, making a loose gesture, and suddenly the drawer of the night table next to them opened, something whizzing out to meet Lucifer's hand, before he tossed it carelessly onto the bed next to him.
It was only then that Alastor stopped to look at their new surroundings. They were in a massive, four-poster bed, curtains tied back around the edges, and half unmade, the comforter rumpled down under Lucifer's hips. The small night table had a lamp on it, but also a small collection of objects scattered over it, including a smaller picture frame, and- yes, when his eyes darted to the wall, there were more hung there, some with familiar faces in them, which must mean-
Lucifer had brought them to his room.
The thought was so startling it nearly made him laugh. A hotel full of empty rooms, plenty of options to choose from, and he'd chosen his one personal place? It was almost ridiculous. Why bring someone like Alastor here? Why let him potentially see something he shouldn't? Why let him taint the space that was completely his?
It seemed almost childishly naive.
"So how we feeling over there?" Lucifer asked casually. He was still flat on his back, a mess of limbs half buried in indulgent bedding, and Alastor couldn't tell from his angle whether he'd closed his eyes or was simply looking up at the ceiling.
"Like I'm quite ready to have my hands back, thank you," Alastor responded brightly.
Lucifer lifted his head, eyebrows raised as he gave him a once over. Alastor felt suddenly like a present wrapped up and dropped on the devil's bed, and the thought made him . . . rather sick.
"Yeah?" Lucifer asked, dropping his head back into a little valley of pillows. "Do I need to give you a sobriety test or something first?"
"Quite unnecessary," Alastor said, fighting the urge to grit his teeth. "I'm sure you can tell by my conversational skills that I am adequately clear-headed, your highness."
The moment those last two words left his mouth, he wanted to take them back. No, he wanted to purge them entirely from his vocabulary. They had been an easy go-to when it came to the devil, a thinly veiled insult that gave him the luxury of never needing to use his name.
But they tasted different now. Too much like their actual meaning. Too much like they could have been real accolades, like the fact that Alastor had never put merit into the King of Hell, that he'd never cared to give him an ounce of respect, was now in question. Like Lucifer might hear those words and not think of them as derisive.
". . . obviously still affected," Lucifer was saying, one hand raised above him to wave lazily. "So unless your anatomy is real different and you're just always secretly walking around with-"
"I am aware," Alastor cut him off sharply. Of course he was aware. It was his anatomy they were talking about. He was incredibly aware that Lucifer's "help" just a few minutes before had not been completely effective. All the more aware considering the devil had done him the kindness of tucking him back into his pants and Alastor didn't even have a free hand to adjust his still uncomfortably rigid length.
Lucifer had dropped his hand back onto the bed next to him again. He still wasn't looking at him, blessedly, but it was several long, uncomfortable seconds before he opted to speak again.
"So what's it feel like?" he asked mildly. Like it was a genuine curiosity.
Alastor gave in to the urge to scowl around his smile. "I believe you would be better acquainted with the feeling than I."
Lucifer snorted. "No shit. I meant right now compared to before. Obviously it's different."
"Obviously," Alastor agreed, but did not elaborate. Lucifer huffed something under his breath that most certainly started with "fucking".
"Alright, fine, how about this. Is it getting worse?"
Alastor hesitated. He'd been . . . avoiding thinking about the crawling in his skin. It was a unique relief to be able to ignore it at all, when it had spent a considerable amount of time being the only thing he could think about. But it had never properly . . . left. It was a soft background static now, almost like a sugar high buzzing under his skin, vs the screaming clawing thing that had made him dig his teeth into the devil.
But at the same time, it wasn't gone. And it wasn't fading. And if Alastor allowed himself to be honest, he'd known from the start that it was going to build again.
"Yes," he answered finally. Lucifer hummed from his place on the pillows.
"Do you wanna wait for it to get bad again before we take care of it?"
The "we" was odd. Before we take care of it. Like they were some kind of team here. It distracted him for a moment before he caught up to the question itself, and he took a moment to mull it over in his head.
What was worse? If they got ahead of it, perhaps they could keep it from becoming that mindless thing altogether. The orgasm had clearly had some effect on his condition, and it was entirely possible that they could continue to treat it in that manner until it had burned through him entirely.
But that also meant that he would have much less of an excuse for any actions he chose to take. Nothing to hide behind should some embarrassment creep up. And he would be faced entirely with every excruciating detail of the ordeal. There would be no losing time or taking action without thought. He would be in control of his hands and where he put them, each step of the process, and while he knew the theory, his practice was limited.
And yet . . . would that still be preferable to the indignity of losing his mind?
"What I would like is to be free of your ridiculous trussings."
Lucifer snorted, mouthing the word "trussings" like it was something funny, before he finally hauled himself up.
"Alright, alright," he said, tipping all the way forward so he ended up on all fours to crawl over to him. "Lemme un-truss you."
Alastor watched him approach warily. Lucifer's focus seemed to be down on the rope from the start, and Alastor was momentarily confused as to why he'd made the trip over here when surely he could have simply magicked it all away the same way he'd magicked it there in the first place.
Only, the moment the first line of gold unwound itself from his right arm, giving him a freedom of movement he hadn't had in what felt like hours, it became immediately obvious why the devil had closed the distance.
The pain when he first attempted to lift it was surprising, a sharp lance up into his shoulder that Alastor only barely prevented from escaping in a hiss. Lucifer's hands were there immediately, supporting the weight of his arm as he shifted it to where he wanted it, before he pressed two clawed thumbs into the sharp ache just below his shoulder joint.
Alastor jerked, pulling away on instinct, but Lucifer's hands kept him from going far, and before annoyance or panic could set in, there was a sweet release of pain along the joint.
Alastor relaxed slowly into the grip, watching with a detached kind of interest as Lucifer went through what was obviously some familiar ritual, slowly working his way down Alastor's arm.
"That is wholly unnecessary," Alastor pointed out blandly, already itching to have his other hand free, despite how . . . acceptable this feeling was.
"Cool," Lucifer scoffed, pressing circles that felt shockingly nice into his forearm. "Your token complaint is noted."
Alastor's smile twisted sharply, the brief moment of relief evaporating, and he pulled his arm deliberately from the other's grip.
Lucifer groaned, pulling his hands back and putting them up again, looking off to the side with obvious annoyance.
"Fine, sure," he snapped, making another short gesture with his hand. "Have it your way, asshole."
The ropes went slack all at once, an immediate freedom that brought on the newly expected ache - and an entirely unexpected feeling of loss. He felt suddenly unmoored, unsure how to even hold his balance for a moment. He hadn't realized how much he'd been leaning into the support of the golden lines, how much the pressure had offset the crawling feeling, how much the methodical massage Lucifer had started on his one arm had helped to mitigate what was now an entirely uncomfortable experience.
He made it a point to look unaffected, reaching up to finally fix the unevenness in his suit with arms that were thoroughly dissatisfied with this new turn of events.
"Much better," he preened, and Lucifer rolled his eyes, slumping back to sit haphazardly on the bed - before lifting a hand to make another lazy gesture.
The loose line of gold that slung itself around Alastor's wrist nearly startled him out of rebuttoning his jacket, his eyes latching down on the little bracelet, before following it all the way to where it linked with a matching loop on Lucifer's wrist.
"Just a little insurance," Lucifer assured, lifting his hand to show the way the line stretched easily between them, adjusting to the distance automatically. Alastor glared.
"Is that quite necessary?"
"Hey, be happy I put it on your wrist. It'd look a lot better as a collar."
Alastor let his smile tick a little wider. "I can assure you that would not have gone well."
Lucifer laughed. "Yeah, but A+ imagery though."
And then he pushed up onto his knees again.
"Hey, can I try something?"
Alastor went still, narrowing his eyes warily. "Try what exactly?"
"Calm down, bambi, I'm not gonna pull any freaky shit," Lucifer laughed, not answering the question and instead pitching forward to press one palm into the sheets as he shuffled closer again. "I just wanna see if it helps."
Alastor was almost tempted to leave. To simply back right out of the bed, put a significant distance between him and the fast approaching golden eyes. And yet, at the same time . . . it wasn't like he was trapped. He could in fact stop him this time if he so chose. And he had to admit to a mild . . . curiosity.
He wasn't entirely surprised when the devil placed a firm hand on his thigh, using it as leverage to haul himself up to straddle the Radio Demon where he was still kneeling on the bed. He was immediately far too close, the urge to pull away rather overwhelming, though the heat of his thighs over his and the press of his knees into his hips somehow helped. The way he brought his forearms up to rest on Alastor's shoulders was a little much, but they were still warm, and there was a certain amount of relief to be had by every bit of contact, even through clothing.
And then Lucifer leaned forward, too close, far too close, and Alastor jerked his face away, pulling back to watch the devil sharply from the side of his eye.
It didn't seem to bother him. Lucifer made a little noise, like a muffled laugh, and then turned his head, holding eye contact with Alastor for a long stretch as he leaned in slowly towards his throat instead.
Alastor watched him. But didn't stop him. He wasn't entirely sure what he wanted out of him just then, but the curiosity was still there, and the idea of having the devil somewhere where he couldn't see his face was a much more appealing idea.
"Do not bite me," Alastor said just as he felt the hot breath wash over his neck. It was distracting, a not altogether unpleasant feeling, and he found himself obliging as he tipped his head a fraction to the side to give the devil just a little more room.
"Hypocrite," Lucifer laughed, but he didn't bite. Instead, he traced a path from low on his pulse point, up and up, nearly into his hairline, without quite touching him, before he slipped a hand firm up against Alastor's neck, tangling fingers in his hair and holding him still as he scraped his mouth over strangely sensitive skin.
Alastor took in a breath a bit too fast, and Lucifer seemed to take it as permission, pressing closer as he worked his mouth over his throat. The sudden breadth of contact was alarming, an onslaught of warmth and friction, and the strange dual feedback of Lucifer humming that he could feel against his neck and chest alike. Alastor's hand came up to curl over Lucifer's hip reflexively, not sure yet if he wanted to remove him or not, only for the devil to flex into his grip, the dip of his hipbone pressing harshly into his thumb, and Alastor was suddenly hyper aware of the existence of Lucifer.
He'd been a bit of a . . . prop in his mind until now. An unfortunate element in the equation, and one who he'd wished he could remove completely. But he'd also considered him only in the sense of a voyeur party, someone who would see and know what happened here, who got to make backhanded comments and collect information that he had no right to.
It was only now that it occurred to him that Lucifer might not make it out of this unsullied.
Alastor's interest in the play of muscle and sinew and bone was nothing new. He was all too aware of how easy it would be to shift his thumb, slice his claw through his pants and the thin layer of white skin to see the workings underneath. But it was remarkable how much the context made it seem new and fascinating all over again. The smooth slide of muscle under his hand was languid and pliable, pushing into his touch rather than fighting against it, and subtle pressure from his fingertips was rewarded with another roll of the devil's hips, a new curve to his back. When Alastor brought his other hand up to rest higher on his waist, sliding up over his shirt to feel the faint rumble of his ribs, he earned the ghost of a sound, a breath taken a little too quickly, and then something lower and more deliberate when he did it again.
He wondered, suddenly, what it would take to play the devil like a fiddle.
Lucifer's hands had wandered as the Radio Demon explored, into his hair and over his shoulders, down his sides and up his back. Alastor found himself strangely distracted, not quite keeping track of the way Lucifer's mouth worked over him, or the way his hands traced over his jacket. It was easily secondary to the way he could make him arch in his grip if he pressed his hand just right between his shoulder blades.
It meant that Lucifer had managed to undo the knot in his bowtie before he noticed the nimble work of his fingers, and Alastor jolted, his hand lashing out to catch Lucifer's harshly around the wrist before he could start on his jacket.
Lucifer groaned. He didn't fight the grip, dropping his head with a thunk onto Alastor's shoulder and dropping his other hand listlessly into his lap.
"Like trying to fuck a priest," Lucifer muttered petulantly, and Alastor huffed, strangely amused.
"Have much experience with that, do you?"
"I'm giving it some thought right now," was the gritted answer, before Alastor felt him shift in his lap, a bitten-off hiss and the errant brush of knuckles against the Radio Demon's abdomen, enough to make him look down, and-
Ah.
He wasn't entirely sure why he found the sight of Lucifer adjusting his pants over the outline of his erection surprising. He had not been particularly reticent in his interest in sex in the past, and it only seemed natural that their current . . . interaction might provoke such a response in a person of such inclinations. And yet it was still strange to see there, in his lap, Lucifer's hand doing the work, Lucifer's mouth making the sound.
Alastor's own similar predicament visible between the spread of his legs.
He could feel when Lucifer turned his head, perhaps checking what had made the Radio Demon pause, only to tsk loudly as he sat up again.
"What, you're the only one allowed to have a hard-on?"
Alastor didn't dignify that with an answer. He was too busy considering the sight of the devil in his lap, hard and clearly uncomfortable, something like impatience running through him, and it took very little thought for him to reach out, lifting a single clawed finger to place at the apex of his shaft.
Lucifer tensed, a little surprised sound cut off before it could become anything else. Alastor could feel the way he jerked slightly in the hold he still had around the devil's wrist, and that was interesting too, the Radio Demon tightening his grip to keep him just there. He could feel the heat radiating off of him, and when he scraped his nail forward and then back over his shaft, just testing the feel, he could see the way it flexed, see the way Lucifer's stomach jumped as well, and Alastor realized that the crawling under his skin had turned into something warm and electric and compelling.
He pressed his hand down over the devil's erection deliberately, his palm hot against the base of him while his first and second fingers spread over his shaft. What an interesting, pretty picture that made. Lucifer's breathing had picked up, the flex of his stomach and thighs distracting, and Alastor was still considering him when the devil seemed to give up and rock up firmly into Alastor's grip.
Alastor hummed, something appreciative and amused, and Lucifer groaned as he pressed into his hand, tipping forward to drop his forehead against the Radio Demon's shoulder again.
"At least take off the jacket," Lucifer said against his clavicle, his voice less bitchy, more convincing. "You can keep everything else, just lose the dumb jacket."
Alastor considered the request absently, more focused on the delightful noise Lucifer made when he squeezed his fingers together, watching the roll of his hips as the devil tried to take advantage of it.
It wasn't until Lucifer made an odd, breathy noise, turning his face into Alastor's neck again, the "C'mon, please," he pressed against the skin there much more compelling than the bitching had been, that Alastor actually listened to the request. He pulled on the wrist he was still holding, tugging Lucifer's hand up to the top button on his jacket and letting him go in favor of getting a hand on his hip to guide his thrusts.
"Just the jacket," Alastor reminded him, his voice holding a thread of amusement that surprised even him in his current state.
"Yeah, yeah, just the jacket," Lucifer agreed. Alastor wondered if he'd meant it to sound annoyed. His hands were steady and sure as he worked through the fastenings, spreading it open and pushing it past Alastor's shoulders, only to be immediately stymied by Alastor's lack of cooperation.
It made something thick and warm spread through his chest to hear the frustrated sound the devil made.
"Could you work with me for two seconds," Lucifer hissed, tugging pointedly at the edges of his jacket. Alastor hummed, perfectly content to listen to the way his breath still hitched when the Radio Demon shifted his hand for a better grip, the way he was still letting Alastor pull him into a steady rhythm against him. Warm hands shoved up under his loose jacket, pressing through his shirt to skin that seemed to sing with relief at the contact, and Alastor hummed again, the sound deeper in his chest this time.
He could feel the way Lucifer had shoved his jacket over his shoulders, stuck there by Alastor's disinterest in moving his hands from their preferred tasks, and it wasn't until the long forgotten loop of gold around his wrist suddenly went taut, pulling his hand forcefully from Lucifer's dick, that he tuned back in to the devil's frustrated voice.
"Of course you're gonna go all fuck-eyed when I'm trying to accomplish something," Lucifer grit through his teeth, one hand fisted around the golden rope as the other tugged the Radio Demon's jacket from his shoulders. "You've gotta make everything difficult, why would this be any different?"
Alastor stared at him as he wrestled him out of his jacket, throwing it to the foot of the bed with a carelessness Alastor felt like he should care about. But Lucifer had settled back in his lap, spreading his legs easily when Alastor ran his hands up his thighs, and he was feeling particularly charitable as he ran his thumbs up into the crease at the juncture of his legs.
Lucifer laughed, an exasperated, slightly off sound, and Alastor watched in curiosity as his hands went to his own clothing, shedding his vest easily before starting in on his shirt. He had just worked open the third button when Alastor caught sight of a pale collarbone, jutting up under thin skin, and it took no thought at all to catch the devil's wrist, moving his hands out of the way so he could lean in to scrape his teeth over it.
"Fucking Hell," Lucifer groaned, twisting his hand free to press it firmly against Alastor's chest, prying him away with disturbing ease. "Give me two fucking seconds to get the damn thing off and you can have all the chew toy you want."
Alastor narrowed his eyes sharply, a flash of annoyance sparking through him.
If he wanted the damn thing off, there were so much simpler - and faster - solutions to be had.
Alastor reached out, hooking his fingers into the gap of Lucifer's now loose-hanging shirt, putting a light pressure behind it, like he was planning on pulling him forward, before he shredded his claws down the front of it, splitting it easily into ribbons and tattered edges.
He'd expected more annoyance, for the hostility to ramp up and for it to turn to a fight - a development that would not have displeased him in the least. But instead, Lucifer went still, eyes wide and a look of shock on his face, and Alastor watched as his small red pupils dilated, a breath of a sound making it past his lips.
And then Alastor glanced down to the tattered mess he'd left his shirt, his eye caught by the glint of something against the sharp white of his chest, and there, thin and shining against his sternum, was a beading drop of golden blood from where his claws had nicked him.
He wasn't quite sure how he ended up over him. Lucifer was sprawled out in his bedsheets, looking up at him with those same wide eyes, and Alastor watched the way his pretty white throat bobbed before Alastor leaned down to lave his tongue over the tiny cut, able to appreciate the sweet, electric taste of gold in his mouth this time around. Lucifer's hand was in his hair, threading roughly between his ears, before fingers scraped down the back of his neck, the tips of his nails scratching under Alastor's collar. Alastor licked over the same spot again, catching a weaker bit of the taste, before he leaned to press his mouth over the devi's side instead, opening to scrape teeth delicately along ribs, considering the merits of biting down.
He was distracted by the urgent motions of Lucifer's hands. He glanced down to find the devil quickly tugging at the laces of his pants, his feet already kicking his shoes clear of the bed. It was strangely coordinated, despite the speed, and Alastor watched in fascination as the devil stripped, kicking his pants away as well to leave him in nothing but his tattered button-up, acres of pristine white on display.
I could ruin you, Alastor thought to himself, cocking his head as he watched the devil dig through the sheets beside him. His hand came back up with a little bottle, and Lucifer pushed up onto his elbows, dropping it on his stomach as he urged Alastor up farther over him. His fingers tugged harshly at the fastenings on Alastor's pants, pulling them open and slipping his hand inside to curl around Alastor's shaft, freeing him from confines he hadn't noticed had become unbearable.
"Hold on, hold on," Lucifer promised, popping the bottle open with his teeth as Alastor pressed his thumb more urgently into Lucifer's hip. It was a fight not to dig his claws into the grip his hand had found on his hip again, but it was utterly worth it when Lucifer got a warm, slick hand around him, squeezing hedonistically slowly from crown to base.
Alastor let his head drop, shoulder blades sticking out sharply as he hissed roughly through his teeth.
"Shit," Lucifer breathed, his voice cracking. "That's-"
And then he shifted lower, thighs tensing to either side of Alastor's as he lifted his hips, pressing up against the Radio Demon to slide his own dick alongside Alastor's in the slick grip of his hand.
What an odd sight. What an odd feeling. Alastor hissed in a breath at the heat, at the soft skin and hard pressure, but it was lost under the devil's groan. Lucifer had closed his eyes, tipping his head back into the messy sheets, and Alastor was torn between watching the little shifts across his face and the slow, deliberate strokes he was dragging over them, his fingers spreading wide along Alastor, like he was more interested in touching than getting off.
It didn't take long for the feeling to become more frustrating than soothing. Alastor must have made a noise because Lucifer's eyes opened, blinking up at the Radio Demon with a lazy expression, before laughing at whatever he saw there.
"Yeah, sorry," he grinned, closing his eyes again as he thumbed over their glans together. Alastor tensed at the feeling, baring his teeth against the creeping urge to bite again, before Lucifer released his grip, hand sliding down along his hip, past the flexing base of his shaft, further between his own legs. Alastor could feel his knuckles brush against his thigh a few times, and it took him several long moments to understand what he was doing.
Lucifer opened his eyes again, that lazy, indulgent look on his face still. It seemed to take him a moment to focus on Alastor's face, tense and barely contained, the hand still holding his hip probably squeezing too hard. But when he did, his expression went a little messy, the haziness in his eyes more deliberate, and his mouth slashed up in a crooked grin as he made it a point to raise his hips a little higher.
Like a whore.
Alastor narrowed his eyes sharply, the ache back in his teeth. There were still smudges of golden blood just visible under the mess of Lucifer's shirt, but the wound was already healed, not a hint of Alastor's teeth left behind, and the way his hair was still too neat, his grin still too confident, his eyes still too fixed on the Radio Demon's face-
"Turn over," Alastor said on a hiss of static. Lucifer's eyes narrowed, subtle and tense, but the smile was still there, and it only took him a moment before he laughed, tipping his head back and then twisting over onto his stomach, shoulders first, and the rest of him following. He was talking again, but Alastor didn't pay attention to the words, too focused on the way the tattered shirt had fallen over one bare shoulder, the way he wanted to leave vivid, permanent marks on every bit of skin he could get his hands on.
Alastor hooked his fingers into the top of the ruined shirt, pulling it back, distantly pleased when Lucifer immediately shuffled to help, twisting his arms behind his back to let Alastor tug it off. It was a very particular imagery - the way his shoulders had to flex behind him, creating ridges of skin along his spine, the way his elbows looked, nearly touching - and he wondered if it was a sight that would survive through this moment, or if it would only ever exist right here.
The moment he was free of the shirt, Lucifer was adjusting, shuffling under him to give him a convenient access, hands curling up to either side of the pillow he pulled to him. Alastor was distracted by the shine of gold, watching absently as Lucifer twisted the line of rope connecting their wrists through his fingers, before the devil stretched, arms reaching out ahead of him as he arched his back further for the Radio Demon.
Alastor wasn't sure when his hand had returned to Lucifer's hip. It was an easy anchor, a hot brand he could scorch into Lucifer's skin, and he pulled him to him, leaning over him to breath heat along his spine. The devil shifted under him, impatient, and Alastor squeezed harder on his grip, holding him in place as he hissed over his back. There was satisfaction in just holding him here, feeling his bare skin against him, and Alastor closed his eyes, listening to the sound of his own thudding heartbeat over Lucifer's voice.
When he did breach him, he could see the way Lucifer tensed, shoulders tucking up close to his neck, the edge of his mouth bared around sharp teeth. His hands twisted in the sheets, arms flexing, and that was almost worth more than the sweet wash of relief, the flood of overwhelming feeling as he sank into yielding warmth.
When he'd bottomed out, Lucifer opened his mouth, not speaking this time, just breathing, and Alastor wondered if he was making noise. Moving made him open it wider, eyes closed, and it seemed a waste that he couldn't hear him, that he couldn't catalog every way he wanted to take him apart.
But there was very little he could do about it just then. The singing under his skin had hit a fever pitch, his hands barely his own as he fit one over Lucifer's side, feeling the shift of his ribs beneath skin as the devil pushed back against him. His awareness seemed to come in waves, brief flashes of imagery amongst an infinite sea of sensation. Lucifer's face as he turned to the side, mouth open and brow furrowed. The pale stretch of his back, muscle and bone shifting under white skin. The way he reached up to press a hand against the headboard for leverage as he hung his head between his raised shoulders.
And then it was the sight of Lucifer reaching his hand beneath him, shoved down between his legs as his other hand stayed flat against the headboard. His back was curved into an interesting line, made all the better when Alastor fit both his hands around his ribs, framed the twist and shift of muscle, and the way the devil tensed under his hands, the way his mouth shaped itself around a sound he could almost hear as he shuddered apart beneath him, was more than enough for Alastor to pull him to him roughly, arching over him to press his forehead between his shoulder blades, and let the wave of pleasure rush through him and take out every thought on its way.
It was pressure against his skull that brought him back to awareness. He blinked his eyes open slowly, taking in white skin beneath him, the heavy rise and fall of Lucifer's back as he breathed. Alastor shifted, recognizing pressure against his antlers, and lifted his face reluctantly, squinting against the harsh light of the room to spot the twin bleeding cuts the tips of his horns had scraped into Lucifer's shoulders.
A new place for his wings, some distant part of his mind mused, and Alastor narrowed his eyes, shaking the thought free. His body complained as he shifted his weight onto his hands to either side of the devil, wincing as it made Lucifer shift idly beneath him, and the slow creeping realization wasn't terribly surprising, but it was wretchedly loathsome.
He was still hard.
Lucifer made a noise under him, some ragged hum, and Alastor lifted his face to find the devil looking back at him out of one eye, a rueful smile on his face.
"Yeah, we're in for a couple rounds, I'd say," he said, his voice a little rough. His hands had unclamped from the sheets, his chest and shoulders relaxed into the mattress, and his hair had started slipping free from the perfectly coifed look he usually sported to fall in little waves over his forehead. "Wonder if we should start taking a tally."
Alastor didn't even consider answering. His mouth still felt dangerously unlike his, and even if he had complete control, there was nothing he wanted to say to the devil just then. He started to lean up, intent on pulling away, taking the brief respite in a more dignified manner. But the moment he started to pull free, his hips came sharply to a stop, distinctly of their own accord, and Alastor grit his teeth, closing his eyes and flattening his ears in mortification as he ground back into him without a single say in the matter.
Lucifer made a curious noise under him, surprised and interested, before Alastor thrust into him again, and the sound caught in his throat, the devil groaning low and muffled as the Radio Demon started up again.
This was much better and so much worse, Alastor decided. The need to drive into him, to keep going even as he had to grit his teeth against the oversensitivity, was a crushing force, something he didn't even get to hide from now that his head had cleared enough for awareness to take over. He was too conscious of his own heavy breathing, of the way his hands wanted to shake, the way his throat wanted to constrict over sound that he refused to make.
And yet, at the same time, the awareness extended to things beyond himself. And the first thing he noticed was that Lucifer was loud.
Not so much in a volume sense. But he didn't seem in the least bit concerned with the sounds coming out of his mouth, his voice catching over groans, pitching up at times into something breathy and undignified, and Alastor found it hauntingly distracting. Each sound he made seemed to echo around in Alastor's head, pulling him over and over into the moment, unable to escape as he seemed to fixate on every noise the devil made.
"Loud," he bit out finally, eyes still closed, ears still flat, and Lucifer's laughter was broken by a short, hitching breath.
"What do you- want me to do," Lucifer started, his voice shot through as he struggled to get the words around the sounds and the new, slightly baffling laughter. "Bite- ah, fuck- bite the pillow?"
Alastor cracked his eyes open to glare at him, a hot flash of something igniting in his gut, and he fit his hands over his hips, yanking him up higher to give him better leverage to fuck the laughter out of him.
That earned a new sound he hadn't heard yet. Something higher and more urgent, and Alastor watched the way the devil's fist twisted sharply around the rope again, thumping it against the bed, before he brought the arm up to drape over his head, fingers curling roughly into the hair at his nape.
It took him some time like that, distracted as he was by the new grip, the new angle, the new control he had over each harsh thrust, to realize the noises had dropped off. Alastor glanced up, narrowing his eyes when he realized that Lucifer was using his arm to muffle his sounds, his mouth pressed firmly into his bicep, eyes squeezed shut, and the Radio Demon realized then that no, he wanted the sounds.
He got a hand around the devil's wrist, extracting the fingers he had buried in his hair and pulling the arm he'd used as a gag out of his reach. He pinned the wrist down to the bed, leaning his weight on it as he used his other hand to pry Lucifer's face from the pillow, tucking clawed fingers under his chin and using his thumb to pry the devil's mouth open at the corner.
Lucifer resisted for a brief moment, jaw clenched tight, and Alastor wondered distantly if he would bite. He almost wanted him to. Almost wanted the excuse to return the favor. But then the devil opened his mouth and made one of those cracked, messy sounds, panting around Alastor's thumb, and the Radio Demon felt the violent urge slip away easily.
Instead, he slid his hand down to the front of Lucifer's throat, pressing his palm there just to feel each sound that tumbled past his vocal cords. Lucifer's fingers latched sharply around his wrist, simply holding onto him as the Radio Demon continued to thrust into him, and Alastor wondered briefly what this must be like for him. Was he oversensitive? Did his powers extend to stopping the aches and pains the Radio Demon was inflicting on him? Or was this just as overwhelming for him as it was for Alastor?
He couldn't hold onto the thought for long. He could feel the pleasure cresting again, his sore muscles kicking in harder to get him there, and Alastor felt himself curving over the devil again, groaning deep in his chest as the grip he had on his throat tightened, the hand he still had pinning Lucifer's wrist shaking as he neared the peak.
The tumble over this time was not quite as mind-whiting as before. It crashed through him violently, starting as a sharp tug behind his naval and ending in a beautiful, blissful sweep of satisfaction, chasing the electricity from his skin and allowing him to simply exist in it for a few rapturous seconds.
And then it was gone, and in its place came the crawling and the biting need and the bleeding, blinding frustration of knowing he was still hard. The knowledge that it wasn't over, that he didn't know when it would be over- if it would be over- cracked a line through his chest, and the slim control he still had slipped as a wretched sound pulled free from his throat.
Lucifer made a sound under him, something that sounded far, far too close to sympathy, and Alastor wrenched the devil away from him, abandoning him to his disgusting, luxurious bedding as he sat back to try to gain some futile control of his own breathing. His heart was racing violently in his chest, like a wild animal thrashing in his ribcage, but the burning in his mouth and the crawling in his skin had admittedly ebbed.
And if he could find anything inside him just then other than the all-consuming need to pull every single new and fascinating sound out of the devil that he could, that knowledge might have comforted him.
The hand at his face made him flinch, and he bared his smile sharply at the devil, narrowing his eyes as he looked up at the face much too close to his. Lucifer didn't seem to care, focused instead on pressing his thumb just under Alastor's eye, fingers spread along the side of his face and expression intent as he studied him for a moment.
"Looks like it's helping at least," Lucifer said finally. His cracked voice seemed to surprise him, his brow furrowing as he cleared his throat, only to pause as his eyes caught on Alastor again, a curious expression taking over his face.
It was only then that Alastor realized he'd been leaning into the hand still framing his cheek, and he pulled away in a wash of frustration.
"Lovely," he seethed, looking away and trying to find anything to focus on that wasn't the boiling in his gut, the burning in his skin, the terrible, cracked-open, flayed feeling in his chest. His hands were still itching to touch, but the flavor of the desperation had been steadily shifting since they'd entered Lucifer's bedroom, and the urge to bite and mark were no longer enough.
He didn't know what he needed besides for the whole thing to stop.
"Did you . . . want . . ."
Lucifer's voice was hesitant, awkward, and Alastor could see the way he'd lifted his hands as he spoke, not to make any crude gestures but to hang uselessly in the air for several long moments, and Alastor hated him for it. He hated him for wanting to help when he could have just left him. He hated him for his tolerance, for his noises, for the way he'd let him flip him over and fuck him like some kind of animal. He hated the crack in his voice and the faint bruises on his neck and the teeth marks missing from his shoulder and the way Alastor saw him reach for him again and couldn't make himself pull away.
Lucifer's hand brushed tentatively over his cheek, and Alastor made a wretched noise, something he managed to choke before it became unbearable. The devil's palm turned firm on his cheek, one and then the other, and Alastor couldn't help the way he leaned into it, couldn't help the way he let him take some of the weight and pull him closer. Lucifer made some low crooning noise, too gentle, as he leaned forward to press their foreheads together, and Alastor's hands snapped to the devil's wrists, squeezing harshly, his mouth full of heat and hatred and a desperate, yawning need.
I won't beg, he thought wildly, eyes squeezed tightly shut. I won't beg, I won't beg I won't beg I won't
He didn't even know what he'd be begging for.
"Don't," Alastor rasped. More words were supposed to follow it, to finish the thought as he felt Lucifer's thumbs brush over his cheek, but there didn't seem to be anything left in his head just then. Nothing but a need to stop him, a feeling almost like panic on the edge of his vision, and he wasn't sure what he needed the devil to not do, but it was important.
"Don't what?" Lucifer asked, too close, far too close. His fingers were moving on his face, his jaw, and it seemed to run a line down his throat into his ribcage, something warm and shivery and intolerably unknown. "Don't be nice?"
And then he turned his face, lips brushing delicately over the crest of Alastor's cheek as he breathed soft words against him.
"I can be nice."
Something snapped in Alastor's chest, the tenuous thread of control failing to a crushing tide of panic, and Alastor had the devil's wrists pinned to the bed before he'd taken his next breath.
"Nice," Alastor seethed between his teeth, looming over Lucifer's beautifully surprised face. "You wouldn't know the first thing about being nice."
He could feel the way his hands were shifting around the devil's wrists, sharp claws scraping against delicate skin as his knuckles popped and groaned. His chest felt deliciously freer as it stretched against his shirt, and there was an exquisite satisfaction to the way Lucifer's eyes had to look up and up to remain on his face as he gave in to the urge to let his body unravel once more.
"A selfish, pathetic coward like you," he spit through his grin, voice pitching up like he was going to laugh. "Too worthless to fix his mistakes. An unlovable little freak not even Heaven could tolerate, broken by the simple fact that not even the people made to love you can find it in themselves to care."
He twisted his head, feeling the heavy weight of his antlers spreading wide atop his skull.
"Is that why you offered to help me?" Alastor asked, shifting one long, boney hand to wrap slowly around Lucifer's throat. "Did you think if I was incoherent enough, you could steer me into being sweet?"
"No," Lucifer spat from beneath the careful pressure of Alastor's hand, and the Radio Demon laughed, venom flooding his mouth.
"Liar," he spat back. His other hand had found its way to Lucifer's hip again, drawing him up effortlessly. He felt like he weighed nothing in Alastor's monstrous hand, small and helpless, and he could almost believe it if not for the way Lucifer had clawed his fingers into Alastor's chest, fitting his hand roughly against the demon - without pricking a single hole in his shirt.
Because Alastor had told him he could only remove the jacket. Because Lucifer was still following the rules. Because the devil could put an end to all of this at any time, and instead he'd chosen to let Alastor do this, and the thing that flooded his chest, his mouth, his mind, at that was desperate and horribly base.
Lucifer's hand on his chest jerked, his eyes darted down, wide and wary, as Alastor dragged him up to press against him again. He could hear the devil's breathing pitch up slightly, his pulse hot and rapid under the fingers around his throat, and it made it easier, more enticing, to pin his thigh back against his stomach with one long, clawed thumb.
"Okay," Lucifer said, squirming again, practically panting as Alastor pressed himself against his wet heat. "Okay, okay okay okay- ngh!"
Lucifer threw his head back, his body making a pretty little arch as Alastor dragged him slowly onto his length. He was tight and hot, squeezing rhythmically around him, and Alastor hissed in appreciation, the hand around Lucifer's throat loosening just enough to press his thumb into the corner of the devil's mouth again.
It was easier now that he had let his body unravel. His fingers were long, the curve of his claw fitting perfectly against the inside of his cheek, and Lucifer didn't fight him more than dropping his teeth over Alastor's thumb - not quite biting, simply holding it there. Alastor could feel every breath the devil struggled around, heat scorching past his thumb, and then cool air sucking back in, a messy rhythm that hitched every time Alastor pressed that much deeper inside him.
Eventually Lucifer did twist away, prying his mouth from Alastor's grip to wheeze out a sound almost like a whine. Alastor didn't stop him, but he didn't make it any easier, watching as the claw on his thumb split the devil's lip, golden blood beading up prettily along the red curve of his mouth. Lucifer didn't seem to notice, the devil panting wetly as he reached down to press a hand over his stomach, and Alastor was vaguely interested in the broken, desperate sound he made when the Radio Demon moved.
The sound became louder when he drew back only to squeeze into him again, Lucifer's voice pitching up wildly as Alastor found himself petting his other thumb along the delicate skin behind his knee. The devil's eyes were squeezed shut, his mouth fixed open around his ragged breathing, and Alastor's eyes were trained on the liquid gold, on the pretty way it shined, on the way it shivered as Lucifer let out a shaky, pitiful whine.
He'd leaned in before he'd thought about it, having to curl over the devil's little form to reach his mouth and drag his tongue over the beading blood on his lip.
Lucifer jerked under him, a sound catching in his throat, and Alastor was only partially aware of it, too focused on the rich, exotic taste flooding his mouth, the immediate warmth and relief and pleasure it brought. He was tempted to scrape his razor teeth back over the thin wound, open it wider, draw out more of the exquisite flavor, but he was distracted by the sudden heat of Lucifer's hand against the side of his neck.
The devil was twisting under him, panting hotly against his mouth, and Alastor paused in curiosity, focusing on the fingers clinging along his neck - not violent, but demanding, desperate. Lucifer's mouth moved under his, opening wider, hesitant, then pressing shakily against his, molding along the shape of his lips, before the devil made a frustrated, cracked noise and ripped his face away from him.
Alastor let him go, watching the way he curled his hand viciously into his own golden hair, yanking it roughly, before he turned to shove his other fist against his mouth, the brilliant line of shining rope twisted over his knuckles illuminating the way his eyes were watering.
Alastor felt like there was something in that he wanted to know. Some little bit of information that was useful, important. But his mind was pressed in on all sides by warm cotton and it was so easy to let it go, to focus on the warm wet heat he was buried in, the pretty way the devil arched for him, the sounds he made as Alastor rocked into him again and again.
He was lost in it before long. His eyes had slipped closed at some point, and the only things in the world were the heat and the friction and the panting, moaning breaths of Lucifer beneath him.
The pleasure this time crested in a lovely wash of color, a brilliant heat up his spine and a wave of ecstasy that had him leaving bruises in the devil's skin, squeezing him hard as he stayed buried as deep as he could. He could distantly hear the devil's noises, the way he couldn't seem to stay still under him, one hand coming up to paw against Alastor's stomach, and he shuddered out a sigh as Lucifer groaned under him.
The frustration that came on the heels of his orgasm was tempered this time, a creeping exhaustion weighing down the wild panic that had almost overwhelmed him before. He was starting to feel the ache in his muscles, his back, a pressure in his head almost like a headache, though he hadn't had one of those since before he'd manifested in Hell.
Alastor opened his eyes slowly, letting the world come into focus in blurry pieces. He could see the bottom of Lucifer's ribcage, the soft line of his stomach, the shaky breaths he took in. There was a scratch just under his sternum, a line Alastor's claws must have accidentally drawn, and Alastor considered it for a few long moments before he finally turned his face up towards Lucifer's.
The devil's eyes were closed. There was a little furrow in between his brows, a slight pinch to his face, and his mouth was open around his ragged breathing, each one uneven, but a little surer than the last. When Lucifer opened his eyes, Alastor didn't look away right away, considering the hazy, wet look, the way his pupils were still too wide, even as he seemed to try to give the Radio Demon a weak glare.
"Dick," Lucifer rasped finally, and Alastor made a short noise in response, unsure if it was annoyed or amused. His eyes traced down over the devil's form again, slowly becoming more aware of the state of him, the little scrapes his claws had made in a half dozen places.
He hadn't meant to take him transformed like this. He was almost impressed at the devil's resilience, almost sorry he'd put him through it, before his eyes trailed down to find the arching shape of Lucifer's interest. He was achingly hard, precome beading generously from his crown, and Alastor made a noise, something like a scoff.
"Deviant," he accused back, his own voice terribly unsteady, and he grit his teeth in annoyance at the sound.
Lucifer laughed under him, a little jerky, and rolled his eyes, looking up at the ceiling.
"Yeah, well," he said, swallowing and clearing his throat. "Had to earn my place in Hell somehow."
A noise escaped the Radio Demon, something surprisingly amused, and he didn't have the energy to be annoyed at that too. He shifted, finding a better place for his weight, before he put a wide hand on Lucifer's hip to hold him still as he pulled himself free.
Lucifer made an unhappy noise under him, twisting slightly, before seeming to give up, simply laying there breathing as Alastor slowly shifted himself back, returning to his usual form.
"Look up?" Lucifer asked after a moment, and Alastor did without thought, dragging his eyes up to meet the devil's and simply waited.
He could tell the way Lucifer was checking his progress again, his eyes searching over Alastor's, and the Radio Demon wondered briefly what it was he saw there that told him anything.
"Almost done," Lucifer said finally, closing his eyes and flopping back into the bedding. His arms were both up near his head, fingers curled limply, and he took a deep breath, letting it out again in a slow, tired rush. "Almost done."
Alastor simply looked at him for a few long moments. His hair was a wreck, sticking up at odd angles, not a single bit of it still in place. His lips were swollen, raw-looking, like Lucifer had been biting at them, and the line where Alastor had cut him looked angry, faintly smudged with a smear of gold.
It seemed he'd given up on whatever effort he'd put in before towards fixing himself up. There were still light bruises around his neck, and little nicks from Alastor's claws everywhere, on his collarbone, his ribs, his stomach. There was a particularly deep cut in the dip of his hip bone, and Alastor found himself staring at it for a long time, letting his brain float as his eyes traced the curve of it, the slowly darkening blood turning to burnished gold and Alastor tried not to think of that as a waste.
Eventually he found himself reaching out to trail his thumb just shy of the cut. Lucifer made a surprised noise under him, shifting, before he hummed and relaxed back into the sheets. Alastor watched him for a moment, considering the steady rise and fall of his chest, before he let his hand trail up, smoothing over his ribs to frame another cut, and wondering distantly how long the devil would take to fix them.
He didn't bother policing his hands. What did it matter anymore anyways? He'd already been as much out of control as he could be, made as big a fool of himself as possible. It was pointless to put any effort into controlling the way his hands wanted to map out Lucifer's injuries, a patient glide over his skin that settled something in his chest, and it didn't matter.
Lucifer hummed occasionally as he traced over him, pressing lightly into the touch every now and then. His eyes stayed closed, his hands remaining limp in the messy bedding, and Alastor found it easy to let his hands simply wander, to do whatever they wanted.
He could tell the way his touching was affecting the devil after a while. He seemed to be making it a point to stay still, only shifting a bit at a time to lean into Alastor's hands, but his breathing was a touch too even, forced too regular. His erection was an obvious tell, time doing nothing to diminish it, and it was even easier to trail his fingers down, brushing over his lower stomach before letting his fingertips slip through the mess at the top of his shaft.
Lucifer's breath caught sharply in his chest, one of his hands lurching up like he was going to do something, before he turned it back to the bedding, letting it twist there instead. His eyes stayed closed as Alastor spread the slick slowly down his shaft, watching as it twitched under his fingers, strangely captivating.
The devil seemed to have more trouble staying still when Alastor finally wrapped his thumb and forefinger in an indulgent circle around him, dragging it slowly down his length and squeezing just slightly when Lucifer's hips shifted under him. It was only a few strokes before the devil let out a harsh breath, struggling for a moment, before he threw his arm over his face, groaning into it as his hips canted up.
Alastor rewarded him with his other fingers wrapping around him to join the first, holding him in a proper, solid grip, before he started up a lazy pace that seemed to wear down the devil's resolve all the more. First the occasional groan between his measured breaths. Then the pretty arch of his back, his other arm thrown over the first, as if it would do any more to cover his face. Alastor could still see the way he'd dug his teeth into his lip as he shifted restlessly under Alastor's hands.
One of his pale legs lifted to wrap over the Radio Demon's hip, his heel digging in a little roughly to Alastor's back, before the devil made an urgent noise he couldn't place. Lucifer twisted, tossing one of his arms to his side, before it sought out where Alastor was holding himself up over him, black-tipped fingers wrapping around his wrist.
"Come on," Lucifer urged, and Alastor didn't know what he wanted until the devil started pulling him, driving him forward with his heel until he was curved over his panting form.
Lucifer still had an arm over his face, his head tilting back so he could press it harshly over his eyes, his fingers twisted tightly through the gleaming gold of the rope, and Alastor had the strangest desire to move it. To what end, exactly? To see his disheveled face? To see the way his lashes were clumped wetly together, or how wide his pupils were blown? To encourage him to look back at Alastor, give him yet another opportunity to memorize the image of the demon cut so low?
He didn't give into the compulsion. Instead, he let Lucifer drag him forward, let the devil reach for him, guide him back inside to welcoming heat, and listened to the sound that earned him, watched the way Lucifer shuddered as Alastor squeezed a little harder on the upstroke. It was difficult to handle two rhythms at once, but Lucifer seemed more than happy to help with that, his back arching as he rolled his hips of his own accord, setting a pace that was perhaps a little more languid than Alastor would have chosen by now.
When Lucifer's hand shifted to wrap over Alastor's on his shaft, the Radio Demon assumed he wanted to dictate the pace there as well, slowing to wait for direction. But none came, and all Lucifer did was slot his fingers between Alastor's, raising his thumb to slide over his crown, and eventually Alastor resumed the slide of his hand, Lucifer sighing as he followed his movement.
It was yet another sight to be burned into his mind. The arch of the devil's back. The darkening cut on his hip. His long, pale fingers fit loosely between Alastor's as they slid over his leaking erection.
He wanted it to be ugly.
Alastor found himself closing his eyes, letting the fuzzy warmth creep further over his mind again. He was slowly discovering he could meet Lucifer's rolling hips without that much thought, an almost lazy effort as the devil made low, soft noises under him. Lucifer was slowly starting to put more input in with his own hand, squeezing Alastor's fingers lightly at first, and then urging him a little faster, a little harder, each breath coming quicker than the last, and it was such an alien thought to realize that he knew what the devil sounded like when he was going to come.
A few more strokes, and Lucifer's breath caught sharply, all sound cutting off as he shook under him. Alastor's eyes snapped open again, unable to resist the urge to watch, to take in the image of Lucifer's head thrown back, the arm that had been over his eyes now shifted down to cover his mouth. His throat was bared, his shoulders pressed harshly into the sheets as he shuddered through his orgasm, his hand first stilling on Alastor's, before dragging him to stroke him messily through it, his fingers warm and wet.
Alastor watched the way his throat bobbed, the way he could see his pulse hammering away under delicate skin, and he had the vicious impulse to wrench the devil's arm from over his mouth, pin it over his head and let him watch the way he fell apart.
Instead, he simply pitched over him, leaning down to press his forehead against Lucifer's shoulder, and rocked into him, closing his eyes and letting the need to chase the high attempt to blot out everything else again.
It didn't blot out the noises. He could hear the way Lucifer groaned, deep in his chest, turning his face away from where it was tangled with Alastor's hair. He must have moved his arm, because the sound was clearer, easier to hear as it pitched up, catching over the devil's uneven breathing, and Alastor didn't put any effort into ignoring it. It rang in his ears, clear and bright, as Lucifer cursed, slurring as one of his hands found its way to Alastor's back.
"Sorry," Lucifer hissed, and Alastor didn't care what he was sorry for. Lucifer's hand had spread over the ridge of his spine, and Alastor found himself pushing into the touch, making a low, quiet sound when another joined the first, fumbling against his shirt.
The fabric came loose from where it had been tucked into his pants, and there was a moment of cool air against his sweaty back before Lucifer's hands pressed greedily up across the new skin, spreading out along his sides and tugging his shirt farther up as he went.
Alastor could feel the vibrations in his throat, knew he was making some kind of noise, but it was so unimportant just then. The warm hands on his back were soothing in a way he couldn't name, the way Lucifer's skin brushed against his stomach occasionally as he rocked into him a balm to the cracked feeling in his chest, and he let his hand give into the urge to shove its way under Lucifer's back, hooking his arm there and holding him in place, warm and shaking and alive, as he chased the cresting wave again.
When it hit him, he turned his face, shoving it blindly into Lucifer's throat as the pleasure crashed over him. It was bordering on pain now, too much, too loud and overwhelming and his muscles were sore and his throat was raw and the pleasure was all-consuming and dreadful and-
And then, like some final string had snapped, it was over, and a violent relief flooded through him like an avalanche. Sweeter than the pleasure, more mind-whitening than the cotton thoughts. A release from it all that took the strength right out of him, and he was vaguely aware of the heat of Lucifer underneath him as everything else ceased to matter.
He wasn't sure how long he was gone. The floating bliss that covered everything was absolute - no sound to be aware of besides his own heartbeat. No sight to see, nothing to feel besides relief. Even when the world started to slowly take shape around him again, it was all so incredibly inconsequential that he found it difficult to care.
It was the fingers tracing along his spine that finally brought him back. It was a slow, unhurried process, distant sensation that gradually coalesced into familiarity, something he recognized. Lucifer's fingers were soft on the pads, cool around the hardened edges of his claws. The patterns he was tracing into Alastor's lower back were lazy, nonsensical, following no particular pattern and seeking no end. They traced over broad stretches of open skin just as much as they tapped over ribs, rumbled over the ridges of his spine.
It took him longer to recognize the pressure on his shoulder, to realize he'd been turned on his side, limp in the bedding and held up only by Lucifer's lithe form pressed along his front.
He could feel the devil's breath, warm and even, washing rhythmically over his chest. His hair was tickling under Alastor's chin, his forehead pressing lightly against his collarbone, and the weight of his arms over and under Alastor's sides were matched only by the way the Radio Demon's own arm was thrown over the devil in turn.
It was unique. And comfortable. And nice.
Until it wasn't.
It took much longer for his mind to become aware of anything outside of physical sensation. It crept back in slowly, like it was seeping in from his spine into the base of his skull, crawling out bit by bit as memories and information ate their way through the strange, alien comfort, and the impossible, terrible, sweeping understanding of how much Lucifer had seen burned a horror through him like his own death had failed to do.
The tension in his body had steadily increased with the dawning realization, and it was squeezing around his chest, trapping the wild, animal beating of his heart, when Lucifer pressed a soft sigh against his skin, the fingers stilling against his back.
"Yeah," the devil said, and his voice was soft and delicate and edged with something crushing, and it was too close, too close, too close-
Lucifer's hand spread wide and warm over his spine, fingers stretching over his skin, and for a moment it was an anchor, a distraction.
"I'm gonna move now," Lucifer said, distinct and clear, and Alastor wrenched his arm away from where it had been resting over the devil's side.
Lucifer pulled back, and Alastor braced for the assault of his eyes, fixing his smile rigidly in place as the devil turned to sit up. But he never looked at him, seemingly focused on the ginger way he shifted, turning to face down the length of the bed instead. The sight of his bare shoulders, the bare line of his back leading down to bare hips disappearing into the sheets, had Alastor's heart jumping in his throat as he recognized his own state of undress.
He wrenched enough strength from somewhere deep inside him to fix his shirt, his bowtie. His jacket flung itself back to his hand and he fisted his fingers tightly in it, wanting it back on, but unsure if he could manage it in that moment.
Lucifer's head was hung low, his breathing slow and deep, and the words weren't quite as clear when he spoke again.
"I'm gonna need to check your eyes," he said, his voice flatly neutral, and Alastor tried not to flinch, tried not to pull away. He was suddenly violently aware of the loop of gold still wrapped around his wrist, and he wanted to tear it off, to shred the skin it had touched. There wasn't enough space between them, and he had to focus on his own breathing, find the steady center of his own familiar expression, fix it onto his face with the help of decades of practice.
"Fine," he replied. His voice was rough, but steady, which was more than he'd hoped for.
Lucifer turned and he didn't seem to really look at him. His eyes immediately fixed on one of Alastor's own, scanning quickly, before his mouth twisted up and he turned to look away from him again.
"You're done," Lucifer said. He raised a hand vaguely, and Alastor watched in some kind of twisted relief as the gold unlooped itself from his wrist, darting back to Lucifer's hand, where he wound it slowly around his palm.
Lucifer didn't look at it.
"I'm . . . probably gonna sleep now," the devil said, a tired laugh flavoring the statement. His hands went limp in his lap, and he looked around the room slowly, his shoulders slumped forward and exhaustion painting his posture. "You can- stay or go or- or whatever you want."
Alastor's eyes were trained on faint lines scratched into the devil's back, lines he knew would line up with his claws if he placed his hand there. He wondered if he'd dug deeper if he would have caught his wings, or if there was nothing he could do to hurt them like this, if Lucifer would have had to make the conscious choice to bring them out to put them at risk.
He wanted to ask. He wanted to stay and find out. He wanted to fit his hand over the place he'd marked on his back and feel him breath under it.
He needed to go.
Lucifer didn't seem like he was going to say anything else. He'd let his head pitch forward, playing with a line of gold between his fingers, and Alastor hesitated.
He wanted to leave. He wanted to be gone. He wanted to never see the devil and his pretty wet eyes again, and he wanted to hunt, maim, kill, tear something apart with his bare hands and feel a shred, a single shred of normalcy.
And he also wanted strangely, desperately, to lay back down and feel the dance of Lucifer's idle fingers over his back again.
It was Lucifer that made the decision for him. He let out a breath, shifting, turning, and Alastor realized he was going to look back at him a moment before he did.
The shadows came to his call faster than they ever had before, blotting out the devil's silhouette from his vision as they pried him free of the room and the bed and the danger of Lucifer's eyes.
The terrible thing was that there was no escape from this. He couldn't abandon the hotel. He couldn't force Lucifer to leave. He couldn't even become some kind of ghost in the halls, avoiding any bit of contact that wasn't absolutely required. There was nowhere he could go and no plan he could enact that would get him out of having to exist around Lucifer Morningstar.
That had been crippling at first. He'd manifested himself in his radio tower, the location an effortless choice, and it had taken him four steps to spot the scrap of white cloth on the ground, to remember where it came from, Lucifer's messy smile and bright eyes as he asked him if it was easier to think, and Alastor was in his room instead before the thought had fully formed in his head.
But he couldn't stay there. He'd dropped himself deeper in the bayou, leaning back against a tree, taking deep, calming breaths of the familiar smells, the sounds of frogs croaking, the twinkle of fireflies. He stayed there for ages, eventually finding composure under the hanging spanish moss that let him stand up straight, look out amongst the trees, and actually consider the thoughts flitting manically through his mind.
He couldn't leave the hotel. His absence was unlikely to be missed yet, but it would be soon enough, and the only thing worse than having to face living creatures just then was the idea of any of them asking where he'd been. He would have to leave this sanctuary soon. And when he did, he would have to be prepared to face Lucifer.
He wasn't sure yet how the devil would handle this. He would have thought he'd had a pretty good guess before, but now . . . now he wasn't quite sure of anything. He could still see the devil twining the limp line of gold around his fingers, and he wasn't sure how that would translate in the light of day.
Maybe he would avoid him. Maybe the whole thing would be more uncomfortable or awkward or weird than the devil could stand, and he'd just make it a point to never be in a room with the Radio Demon again. The chances were astronomically slim - Alastor had never had the kind of luck or karma that would lend to such an easy solution - but it was still possible.
In the end though, it didn't matter what Lucifer acted like, what he chose to do. Alastor had no leverage to force the devil out of this place, and he had no leverage to leave. Regardless of how Lucifer chose to act, Alastor would have to grin and bear it. It simply was what it was.
And really, even if the devil were to spew it all out plain and simple, who would believe him? He was a fantastical story maker, a dreamer with a reputation of making a mess, and Alastor had been careful to build his reputation here for months before the devil had even thought to show up.
They might not even believe him.
Whatever happened, he would deal with it. He'd let himself have his little breakdown under the trees, and now it was time to play the game.
Slipping his jacket back on and finally fastening the buttons tight once more made the whole thing feel a little easier, a little more plausible, and he breathed in deep, tasting the bayou in the air one last time, before he called the shadows to face the bright lights of the hotel's common areas.
It was three days before he saw Lucifer again.
It wasn't a particularly long stretch of absence for the devil - it would have taken weeks of leave to be able to adequately conclude that he was avoiding the Radio Demon - but Alastor had felt the first wisps of hope as the third day had nearly come and gone without a sign of the man.
He had been following Charlie, listening to her desperately try to explain some ridiculous idea to Vaggie. The idea would never work of course, but Alastor delighted in goading her on, playing light delicate word games that had the couple both on edge for entirely separate reasons. A few hours of playing them off of each other, and it might just be possible to see a fantastic fight out of the pair.
A little worthless to be stirring a fight just then, he knew. But the parties he wanted to hunt down had not yet remanifested anywhere Alastor could find, and he found the idea of a little chaos in the hotel to be potentially cathartic.
He could see Charlie had started digging in her heels, her stubborn naivete shining through as she prepared to fight for her ideals, and Alastor had just about marked the endeavor as a success when the trio turned a corner and came face to face with Lucifer.
The devil was stopped partway down the hall, one end of his jacket tail in his hand as he turned it over to examine it curiously, and everything in Alastor wanted to come to a screeching halt. It took a monumental effort to keep walking, to stay in step with Charlie and her girlfriend, who took a beat longer to recognize the devil's presence, and he had to focus to breath, to keep his smile pleasant, to restrain the background static that wanted to pitch up around him in protest.
Lucifer, for his part, didn't seem to care that he existed.
"Charlie!" he said brightly, his face lighting up exuberantly, and Alastor bit down the urge to steer Charlie away, keep her safely clear of the devil's false sunshine.
"Oh, hey, Dad," Charlie said, somewhat haltingly, obviously surprised and thrown off by his sudden appearance, before something seemed to click in her brain. "Oh! Okay, so, Dad, I had this idea . . ."
She launched into an explanation, her hands gesticulating wildly as Vaggie crossed her arms and waited, scowled etched into her face. Alastor found it easier than he had expected to watch as Lucifer's expression slowly shifted, listening to his daughter prattle on and likely coming to the same conclusions about her ill-thought-out plan as Alastor himself had done.
And before Lucifer even opened his mouth, Alastor could see the way this was going to play out. He could see the way Lucifer was going to talk her down, give her a fresh alternative, steer her away from the pitfalls back into something actually plausible.
It wouldn't have been that hard for the Radio Demon to throw a wrench in his approach. Rile the devil and his daughter and the little angel guard dog up until everyone left annoyed and frayed and dejected.
But to do that, he would need the devil's attention. And he found he simply didn't care enough about this interaction to put in that kind of effort.
Alastor waited just long enough for the trio to be completely involved, Vaggie's hand resting gentling on Charlie's shoulder, talking her down from her disappointment as Lucifer prattled on in his irritating, unhinged voice, before he pulled the shadows to him and melted away, seeking out a distant part of the hotel to perhaps sew some new discontent.
Over the next week or so, Alastor became increasingly hopeful that Lucifer had picked a rather odd form of evasion. He didn't seem to be going out of his way to avoid Alastor physically. But he did seem to have opted out of interacting with him, simply ignoring his existence any time they were in the same room together. Every time he came across him, it was in the presence of others, and the devil's attention simply stayed on anyone but him, treating him like an unfortunate vase, or a friend's ugly dog.
Alastor found the compromise . . . acceptable. It was less comfortable than if the rattlepate had simply chosen not to be around, but he would take it over the myriad of alternatives.
It did have the regrettable side effect of allowing Alastor to look at him without much consequence. Which was quite . . . unfortunate given that Alastor did not care to look at him, despite what his own eyes might believe. He saw the devil quite enough in the flashes of memory that haunted him daily, and he did not need any more reminders of the devil's face or his eyes or his silly messy smile.
He'd just begun to relax into this new normal, the Radio Demon turning his focus outward once more, planning his careful deconstruction of the syndicate that had set all of these events into motion in the first place, when Lucifer decided to casually reset the balance all over again.
They were in the front hall, Alastor cheerfully brushing the torn shreds of a sinner's jacket from his arm. He could still taste the salty flavor of the shark-man on his tongue, rich and satisfying, as he fixed his bowtie, listening to Lucifer rant at his daughter with a distant kind of satisfaction.
The confrontation had been, of course, entirely avoidable. But the outcome had been delightfully serendipitous for Alastor, and the contentment that washed over him as he settled back into his regular form, well-fed and well-exercised, was more than worth the displeasure of a few hotel guests.
". . . can't keep treating them like this, Charlie," Lucifer was saying, his tone caught somewhere between pleading and anger. "These people aren't like you. Not everyone wants to play nice and do the right thing-"
"I know the risks, Dad," Charlie snapped back, clearly upset and shaken.
It was understandable, really. The sudden attack by the pair of new sinners had been fairly unexpected, even to Alastor, given away only by the slightly manic looks they'd cast towards Vaggie when introduced to her. He'd of course waited until they'd actually made a move to offer his services, but even still, it had only been a brief advanced warning.
"We're not doing this blind. We have fail safes in place-"
"You can't just rely on your pet demon to take care of everything you just carelessly let in!"
"I'm not relying on Alastor," Charlie snapped, and Alastor's ears pricked lightly, turning towards her with a placid smile. She'd swung her hand back towards him, gesturing angrily even as her eyes stayed fixed on her father. "He's helping because he wants to. I didn't ask him to do any of this. I didn't ask you to-"
But Alastor had stopped listening. And so, he believed, had Lucifer.
Charlie's gesture had turned Lucifer's attention back onto the Radio Demon, a brief flicker of eyes that seemed to stick in place. Alastor made the mistake of looking at him in turn, meeting his eyes just in time to see the way his pupils had widened again, the way his gaze flickered over Alastor's admittedly still grotesque form, the way his mouth moved imperceptibly as he swallowed.
Ah.
Alastor had hoped that wouldn't become a problem. He'd been optimistic when Lucifer had managed to stand around him without so much as a stray look. But it seemed he had simply latched on to a different form to take interest in.
The thought made his stomach curdle.
"Charlie has done a remarkable job kindling her pet project into something viable," Alastor spoke up, stepping forward to place his hand on her shoulder. "Why, she has put countless hours into considering hotel safety and how to create a welcoming environment in such an inhospitable place."
He cocked his head, feeling his mouth flood with venom as he smiled down at the devil, hating the wary look that greeted him.
"I should think if you have such pressing concerns, it would be simple for you to offer your ample free time to address the problem further, rather than leaving it to the - what was it now - pet demon?"
Lucifer's face flinched, his eyes going from wary to annoyed, and Alastor was relieved to find anticipation for the fight, already eager to twist Lucifer's retorts around until he'd sent the little man seething.
But before either of them had the chance, Charlie had turned away, wrapping her arms around herself in her sad and angry way, and Lucifer seemed to lose any interest in fighting, turning towards his daughter immediately.
And Alastor decided very quickly, as he listened to Lucifer's voice pitch low and soft, coaxing Charlie back into conversation, an apology in his eyes, that he did not have any further reason to be here. His mouth was still full of the taste of blood, his muscles singing from the joy of killing, and he let himself hang onto that instead, stepping away from the pair and removing himself from the haunting brightness of Lucifer's eyes.
He focused on the syndicate for the next few weeks. It was a delightful distraction, a rather towering organization that had climbed its way up the ladder much too quickly. Well, towering in the sense of a house of cards, or a model of the Tower of Pisa made of tongue depressors for a school project. Each new person he found crumbled with the slightest pressure, and it was almost disappointingly easy to dismantle the hierarchy, finding each critical point in the chain with minimal effort.
It fulfilled the purpose he needed it for, though. It took him out of the hotel during any free time he might possess, limiting his time to that spent with Charlie planning, and that spent checking in silently on the status of the hotel guests. And it gave him a charming outlet for the buzzing that had dug its way into his skin.
He pried apart demons with delight, set up elaborate schemes between parties that dominoed into all out violent feuds between factions. Every time his mind strayed too far into dangerous territory, there was someone to kill or terrify or torture, and he could wash the grubby feeling from his skin with blood and screams.
He couldn't spend all of his time away from the hotel, of course. He had work to do. A place to keep and people to keep in line. But the fleeting bits of time he could escape were enough for him. At least for now.
He'd just come back from a particularly wonderful outing, his nose still full of the reek of fear, when he'd stepped into the bar, intent on unwinding with a little fun at Husker's expense, only to find the bar was quite occupied.
Husker was there, cleaning a glass behind the bar, but the barstool was occupied with the stretched, artfully arranged body of Angel Dust, leaned back in his usual pointedly alluring way. Next to him, Niffty was sitting on another bar stool, little legs straddling it wide, hands pressed down into the cushion as she spun slowly, giggling to herself. Just when she started to slow, she reached out to tug at Angel's fur, grinning up at him, and the spider glanced at her with a reluctantly indulgent look, before he reached out with one of his lower arms and spun the seat for her, sending her into another fit of giggles.
And then the spider turned his attention back to the final party of the group, his grin turning salacious once more.
Lucifer, for his part, looked entirely out of place. He was standing several paces away, awkward smile on his face, and a glass of what looked suspiciously like water fixed between both sets of fingertips held down in front of his stomach.
Husk had already spotted him by the time Alastor realized the group he had walked into, and he had no choice but continue his confident stride forward, grateful for Niffty's easy presence to focus on as she caught sight of him and made a giddy sound.
"Alastor, Alastor," she called excitedly, bouncing to her little feet on the barstool and grinning at him with wild excitement.
"Yes, my dear?" Alastor asked, leaning against the bar next to her, the angle just right to see Lucifer from the far corner of his eye.
She leaned in conspiratorially towards him, lifting her hand, and Alastor tilted his head easily for her, letting her lean up on her toes to whisper into his ear around her cupped hand.
"I saw a roach today," she murmured, her voice pitching up in excitement at the end. Alastor turned to raise an eyebrow at her, a little admittedly surprised. Lucifer's new version of the hotel had been shockingly roach-free up until this point, and he had suspected the devil had done something to prevent them from being able to enter in the first place.
"How exciting!" he beamed back at her, his smile stretching wider as he watched her little legs dance on the barstool.
"I know," she hissed, grinning madly. "I think they got down into the cellar. I can hear them in the floorboards sometimes."
Alastor listened with amusement as Niffty launched into an exuberant rambling about the new catching method she'd come up with but never got to try out since the hotel had fallen. Apparently she'd learned about the art of insect pinning, and had taken entirely the wrong conclusion from the new information, planning some kind of mosaic he suspected even Charlie might struggle to justify.
As he listened, he watched. Not directly. His eyes stayed on Niffty, glancing away only once when Husker made a small gesture, offering him a drink, which he declined. But from the corner of his eye, he could watch Lucifer as he remained pinned in whatever conversation Angel had caught him in.
He was uncomfortable, that much was sure. But Alastor had a suspicion the discomfort had been going on for some time, a suspicion that was reinforced as he caught more of the contents of Angel's side of the conversation.
"Ooh!" Niffty suddenly shouted, bouncing on her toes, before pulling one of her massive pins from somewhere and scrambling off the barstool, giggling maniacally as she chased whatever unfortunate insect she must have seen out of the bar and far down a random hall.
There was a beat of silence where all of them were staring down the hall where she'd disappeared, listening to her fading cackling laughter, before Angel turned to look at him, and Alastor realized with a sinking feeling that he had made a mistake not immediately following her out.
"Now, him," Angel said, hooking a thumb in Alastor's direction. "Pretty sure he fucks like a freight train."
Alastor put every coherent thought he managed to hold on to into stopping the screech of radio feedback that wanted to play at that. His legs had locked, his breathing catching sharply in his chest, but he managed to prevent the way he wanted to jerk, the sound he almost made.
He wasn't able to prevent the way his eyes darted briefly to Lucifer. He'd known from the start all of the things he was now at risk of. All the ways he could be humiliated after the . . . incident . . . with Lucifer. The devil could decide to spill all of the indecent details about their time together, spread the truth around the hotel, or even all of Hell if he so chose. He could also opt for a slightly more tactful approach, instead hinting at knowledge that he had, letting out bits and pieces of it here and there, like a gossip holding onto juicy tidbits to hand out.
Or there was this rather uniquely terrible option. Where he could decide to say something here, something that might not be presented as true, might be presented instead as a theory, or an amusing talking point, but one that would be destructively pointed to Alastor. And the Radio Demon would simply have to listen, no possible option to rebut or escape.
Lucifer had not opted for either of the first two options just yet. But it seemed like only a matter of time before the devil's discomfort would wear off, or perhaps become so great that he sought a new outlet, one that made it less uncomfortable for him and more uncomfortable for Alastor alone.
Alastor had no leverage to stop any of these outcomes. All he could do was wait and weather, grit his teeth through whatever happened, offering up whatever deflections he might be able to get away with.
But when his eyes found Lucifer, the devil wasn't looking at him. He was looking at Angel with an expression that was confused and vaguely disturbed, his lip pulled up over a few of his top teeth as he looked at the spider in the same way one might look at a snake swallowing an alligator.
"Why is it always freight trains with you?" Lucifer asked, voice pitched up in bewilderment. "Does your studio only have one type of talent? Or did you just get typecast so hard you never learned that you can get railed somewhere other than railroad tracks?"
"Oh, did you wanna show me some new types of railing?" Angel purred, draping himself over the barstool on his other side as he reached out towards Lucifer, not seeming the least bit put off when the devil leaned just out of his reach. "I'd let you rail me like a 1940 Packard Darrin convertible."
Lucifer made a face, something that should have been amusing, delightfully distressed, but Alastor turned away before it could burn into his mind alongside the others, turning to smile widely at Husker as he leaned over the bar and plucked a particularly nice bottle of bourbon from the top shelf.
And then he left, blocking out the stressful sounds of Angel and Lucifer's continued conversations as he made his way back to his room and the peace of singing frogs.
It had been more than a month since the original incident, and Alastor found himself in a strange sort of limbo. None of his initial concerns or fears had yet come to pass - to his knowledge, Lucifer had not leaked any information about Alastor's affliction or his offered remediation, and the atmosphere between them in the hotel had been stiff, but not unworkably uncomfortable. Lucifer had not attempted to approach him or tease, had not spent any significant time looking at him or seeking him out, and Alastor found that it was becoming easier and easier to tolerate his face as time went on.
And yet, there was the constant knowledge, the constant certainty that it wouldn't remain this way forever. Perhaps Lucifer had had no reason to bring it up yet. But neither did he have a reason to keep it hidden. Perhaps he'd wait another month, or a year, or a decade. But eventually it would come out.
Alastor could only hope that he'd be able to set the groundwork in place to spin it in his favor by that time.
The episode at the bar had reminded him of how many ways this could be twisted, and how much work he would have to do to prepare mitigations, how much he would have to rebuild his reputation around a persona that wouldn't be hurt by the incident being revealed.
He wasn't particularly . . . fond . . . of that prospect. He rather liked the persona he had built so far, rather liked the way it kept most people at bay rather effortlessly. To rearrange it around this would doubtless welcome certain . . . advances until he was able to fine tune it enough, and the idea made his skin crawl.
But it could be worse. It always could be worse.
And then Alastor manifested himself in his radio tower to find Lucifer Morningstar perched against his desk, and he decided, no, it couldn't be worse.
He had to bite back the knee-jerk reaction to leave. There hadn't been a single instance of the two of them being alone since the incident, and having him here of all places, leaning against his familiar black oak desk and staring down at his cane across his thighs as he absently traced circles over the bright apple - it was too much.
He didn't run though. It would be pointless to do. Actively self-destructive, actually. Lucifer would find him no matter what if he truly wanted to, and to make it so clear he was trying to avoid it would only make it worse.
"Can I help you?" he asked, pleased with the crispness of his voice.
He was even more pleased when Lucifer jumped, fumbling his way away from the desk with a jolt.
"Uh," the devil started, looking like a deer in the headlights. "Hi."
"I don't believe I invited you into my tower," Alastor grinned, cocking his head. "Or have you become senile in your old age? Yours is on the other side of the hotel, I'm afraid."
"No, I know," Lucifer said, waving his hand. He wasn't looking the Radio Demon straight on, and Alastor couldn't decide if that was a good sign or not. "I know this is yours. I didn't- I'm sorry to just let myself in, but uh."
He trailed off for a moment, looking around the room, before he raised a hand to the back of his neck and looked up at the ceiling.
"I promised it wouldn't leave this room, so."
Alastor froze, fighting to keep his expression fixed seamlessly on his face. Of course it was about that. He knew the second he saw the devil here that that was what it had to be about.
He had still held out some useless hope.
Alastor waited a beat, taking the time to force his muscles to untense, his body to relax, before he spoke again.
"Go on."
Lucifer grimaced, his mouth twisting unpleasantly, before he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
"Yeah, uh," he said, stalling for a moment, before he finally looked back down at Alastor, the discomfort obvious in his expression. "Are you . . . o . . . kay?"
Each word came out a little higher than the last, and Alastor felt his face twist up sharply at the question, irritated and panicked and appalled by it, the only silver lining being the way Lucifer's face immediately twisted to match his.
"No, yeah," the devil said, cringing as he dropped his hand. "That was- sorry, that didn't sound that bad in my head."
"You must have a remarkable talent for imagination."
Lucifer cut him a look, his mouth twisting again, before he made a vague gesture.
"You know what I'm asking though."
Alastor hummed, considering. "Hmm. No, I don't think I do."
"Don't be a dick," Lucifer snapped sharply, before closing his eyes and taking a breath. "Look, this is- awkward enough as it is. So just . . . just work with me here."
"And how exactly do I need to work with you?" Alastor asked, cocking his head and sharpening his grin. "If you're here to assuage your guilt, I have no interest in indulging you. There are other things for me to tend to, and your feelings are quite far down the list."
"I'm not here to assuage anything," the devil scowled. "I'm trying to talk-"
"Oh?" Alastor asked, brightening falsely. "Then by all means. Talk."
Lucifer stared at him with a level of annoyance that seemed far too low for their current conversation. He was glaring at him, yes. But the anger in his eyes was lackluster, and it seemed to crumble away too easily as the devil stared back at him, mouth half open as he huffed a breath.
"Look, just," he started, huffing again and looking around the room, like he'd hoped to find something there. "I'm sorry, okay? That that . . . happened."
Alastor's ears angled backwards, his stomach twisting sharply at the words, and he didn't quite curb his urge to snap.
"I don't need your pity."
Lucifer pulled back slightly, seemingly surprised at the sudden aggression, before his own annoyance seemed to kick in.
"It's not pity," the devil started, his voice sharper, and Alastor laughed, trampling over anything else he thought to say.
"Your pitiful attempts to get in my pants again then," he corrected easily, smile too sharp, and the devil's bewildered expression did nothing to soften his bite.
"When-" Lucifer started, scoffing, then trying again. "When did I say that?"
"Oh, you had no need to say it, your highness," Alastor simpered, stalking slowly around the devil, and watching in pleasure as he moved with him, keeping the distance between them steady. "Your interests are not subtle. Tell me."
He stopped, cocking his head sharply as he looked down at bright yellow eyes.
"When you lay in bed with your seedy little thoughts, just how monstrous do you imagine me?"
He made it a point to let himself unravel just a bit, his antlers spreading slowly atop his skull, and he could see the way Lucifer's eyes flickered up to them, unable to hide the flash of interest.
"Yes," Alastor smiled, standing up straight as his body returned to normal. "Your motives are obviously entirely pure."
"You think I came here for a booty call?" Lucifer asked, his voice pitching up like he was offended.
"I think you came here because you wanted to," Alastor answered simply. "And not because of whatever altruistic end you've convinced yourself of."
Lucifer stared at him, eyes wide and mouth parted, before he laughed, sharp and humorless.
"If I wanted to get dicked, I wouldn't have a problem finding someone, Alastor," he breathed, his voice flecked through with hot anger. "It's Hell. Even if I was into the 'monstrous' shit, I could find it in a dozen places by morning."
He'd stopped stepping away from Alastor's approach, standing his ground and leaning forward with a snarling smile.
"I don't need to chase something that doesn't want me."
"No?" Alastor asked, feeling a sick rush of satisfaction before he'd even uttered the words. "It seems to be all you've done since your wife left."
Lucifer looked distinctly like Alastor had slapped him. The anger seemed to be shocked out of his face, his mouth open, eyes wide, entirely speechless. He could almost count the seconds as the devil seemed to process the words, each frantic beat of his heart marking the time.
And then the devil laughed again. Short. Turned his head and laughed again. Turned to pace towards the desk, before reverting sharply back towards him, and then to the side, his hand coming up to pinch between his eyes as he stared down at the wooden floor.
"Fucking-" he started on a short hiss of breath, before he closed his eyes, mouth flat. "Why did I- even think-"
Alastor hummed, ignoring the odd roiling in his gut, the ringing in his ears. Ignored the way the panic still made him want to run, the anger made him want to bite. Ignored even the sweet taste of victory in the face of the opportunity to rid himself of this problem.
"Yes," Alastor mused. "Why did you?"
Lucifer looked back at him, something low and familiar in his eyes, and it was almost a relief to see his old companion hatred reflected back at him.
"I don't know," the devil said flatly.
And then he stepped back, spreading his hands as he paced away from the desk, away from Alastor, smiling as he went.
"Have it your way, Alastor," he said, tipping his head. "How about I just get out of your hair and we can go back to never talking about this again."
"Delightful," Alastor preened, and watched with some kind of satisfaction as the devil stepped back through a sudden portal and disappeared from the room.
The silence after he left seemed to ring, and Alastor was left standing in the middle of his wonderfully, marvelously empty radio tower, and wondering why it tasted like ash in his mouth.
True to his word, Lucifer did not bring it up again. He took up his distance once more, existing around him in group settings and nothing more. They spoke occasionally, exchanging barbs when the need called for it, always under the eyes of third parties. Always playing a deliberate part.
There was a relief in that. A release of tension, of something too close to fear, that had been haunting Alastor since all of this had occurred. Each day that passed without retaliation, without comments or loaded passes, reassured him that it would be fine, that he could unwind the tension in his chest and go back to his life like nothing happened.
And maybe that was true. Maybe he could. But there was something new that seemed to haunt him instead.
At first he had been worried that the images of Lucifer from that night were going to be burned into his mind forever, always hovering just out of sight, nagging him as he tried to move past those events. But as time went by, they lessened, easing with his tension, until they became less a memory to haunt him, and more something he could simply recall if he so chose.
And in their place came the addition of new images.
Where previously he had kept an eye on Lucifer out of paranoia, an intense need to be ready should he choose to weaponize his information, now he watched him simply to watch him. Their altercation in the radio tower seemed to have erased the last of the awkwardness the devil had seemed to hold onto between them, and he seemed content to pretend like Alastor didn't exist most of the time, carrying on his life without even looking at him.
Which left Alastor all the opportunities in the world to study him. To watch him struggle through small talk with Charlie, smile too wide and too stressed. Watch him slip behind the bar when Husker was gone, pulling down a large bottle to replace its ornate stopper with one shaped like a stretching cat. Watch him perch on the windowsill of the upper terrace in the west side lobby, one wing tucked around his bent knees, just under his chin, as he stared out the window at nothing in particular.
Charlie and Vaggie's anniversary was coming up, and Alastor got to watch as the devil stood on one of the big dining room tables, shifting the elegant swan sculptures he had created on top of a much-too-large cake, until their necks were properly entwined, not quite touching, but as close as they could be.
The realization came in bits and pieces. It took each new bit of information being added into the picture for Alastor to slowly come to recognize what he was looking at, what he'd almost willfully missed before.
Charlie insisted on sharing the cake. Lucifer made a show of rolling his eyes at the inclusion of the others - at the inclusion on Alastor - but when Charlie handed him a slice to pass out, everyone busy and focused on other things, Lucifer simply passed it to Alastor with a quick, thoughtless smile, before he turned back for the next, and Alastor cocked his head, letting the other pieces slowly fit into place.
The steady pressure of Lucifer's hands smoothing out the pain from the rope. The aching gentleness of his fingers as he'd touched Alastor's face. The tremor in his voice as he'd apologized for the desperate, searching claws pressing up under the Radio Demon's shirt when he was well and truly overwhelmed with it all.
In "before we take care of it."
In "I'm sorry, okay?"
In "I can be nice."
And Alastor realized that wasn't quite it.
You're not nice, he thought, suddenly clearly. You're sweet.
And then, like an afterthought.
How unwise for the King of Hell.
Lucifer had turned his attention entirely back on his daughter and her partner, beaming at the pair of them as Charlie prattled on about something, and Alastor wondered if she'd even thought about how long Lucifer had spent perfecting the swans on the cake before they'd cut it.
When the celebration was over, Charlie and Vaggie off on a date atop the hotel's roof and the other residents dispersed back to their individual haunts, Alastor stood in the empty room and considered the swans. They had been set aside so as not to topple them during the cake slicing, surrounded by party favors and bright colorful tassels, forgotten now that the rest of the cake had been put away for leftovers.
Had he been that way since the beginning? Since he'd been cast out of Heaven? Was it something built into him that he couldn't dig out, no matter how much he tried? Or was it a choice, something he saw fit to nurture, something to hold onto in all of the wretchedness of his domain?
It was a terrible trait to have here. It served no purpose, gave no benefit, and - as Lucifer had obviously experienced - did nothing but open one up to pain.
You would think you would have learned your lesson in a few millenia here, he thought, cocking his head at the perfect curve of the swan's neck. Hell has no place for sweetness.
It was why his room was full of pictures, the Radio Demon realized. Why he'd decided to bring Alastor there, knowing he'd taint it. He'd likely filled it with a dozen different things to taint it out of some willfully misguided need to fulfill whatever it was inside him that made him that way.
Suddenly, Alastor wanted to see it. He paused, considering the swans, the tassels, the table. The celebration had ended hours ago. Most of the hotel was asleep if he had to guess, and to his knowledge, Lucifer followed a similar pattern.
But he'd only entered his room the once. It had never seemed prudent before, too likely that the devil would know he'd been there, would catch him, or simply had something in place that would prevent Alastor from getting in at all. And there was no use in vetting the devil. He'd always assumed he understood him well enough, and even if he was wrong, there was nothing he could do about it. No reason to risk going in his room.
Now he wanted to go just to see. To pay more attention to the pictures on the wall, the trinkets on the bedside table. To examine the way the devil kept the space that was entirely his.
It was, perhaps, the stupidest, most impulsive idea Alastor had had in the last half a century. And he didn't bother putting any further thought to it as he called the shadows and manifested himself in Lucifer Morningstar's room.
It was strangely just how he remembered it. There was a visceral sense memory when he first took it in, the lack of lighting doing little to take away from the sight of the curtains on the bed, the items strewn over the bedside table, the crooked tilt of the picture hanging just above the lamp.
The pale stretch of the devil's body twisted in the sheets.
Alastor watched the steady rise and fall of his chest, counting each cycle, matching his own with it until he calmed the spike in his heart rate. He stepped forward carefully, cocking his head as he considered the messy sprawl Lucifer made. He was twisted half out of the sheets, one corner of the bedspread wrapped around his lower leg, and the baggy shirt and shorts he wore were pulled in all which directions, like he'd rolled a half dozen times in his sleep.
His mouth was open, and Alastor spent some time simply looking at his slack face, at the way his mouth twitched every now and then, his hair falling in messy waves across the pillow he'd managed to mostly shove out from under him.
He seemed far too silly - far too inconsequential - to be king of anything. Far too trivial to have occupied Alastor's thoughts for this long.
Far too pretty for his own good.
Alastor's eyes tracked down the awkward tilt of his neck, gliding past the pristine line where his bite should have been. The shirt he wore was twisted up, showing collarbone and a line of soft stomach, a soft dusting of hair that Alastor skimmed past to see-
He stopped, eyes catching sharply on the devil's waist. Lucifer's shorts had bunched up, twisted at an awkward angle that showed off a stretch of bare hip. And there, nestled in the valley of it, was a thin scar.
It hadn't been there before. Alastor was sure of that. He had pressed his thumb into that spot over and over again, watched it flex under his hands. He knew it hadn't been there just as much as he knew he was the one who'd put it there. The memory of the deeper cut, the burnished gold, the way Lucifer winced when he sat up.
He must have banished the rest of them. None of the cuts on his stomach, his collarbone, his neck, were still there, and Alastor was sure in that moment that Lucifer had chosen to keep this one.
Sweet, he thought again, this time almost bitter. You should know better. You should have known what I'd do to you. What I will do to you.
He reached a hand out, deliberate and slow, watching the faint shadow of it from the light through the window dance up Lucifer's legs. He stopped just shy of his hip, his fingers hovering a hair's breadth from the faint scar, and Alastor considered the devil's sleeping form with a feeling that tasted a little bit like dread and a little bit like something else.
Lucifer was sprawled there, oblivious and trusting in his own safety despite the openness of his room and the mark on his hip and the demon hovering over him, enthralled by it all.
There was something distinctly unappealing about the man. Too loud, too stressed, too unstable. Willfully naive and weak in most ways that mattered. Arrogant and smug and fumbling and earnest and sweet, and there was nothing of worth to the person laid out before him, drooling into his sheets.
And yet Alastor felt the hook of curiosity tugging at him, felt the taste of something new and interesting curling on his tongue.
Hell had no place for sweetness.
But perhaps . . . perhaps Alastor could.