Chapter Text
The laughter against Alastor’s mouth was like. Like. Like something. He couldn’t put the words to it, but it was something beautiful. So, so very beautiful.
Arms wound around his neck, sweet and gentle as they tugged at the curls on his nape. Lips pressed against his own, whiskey kissed and unafraid of the cruelty behind his sharp, carnivorous teeth. Alastor pushed and pulled and tugged, so greedy for the sin before him. But who wouldn’t be greedy, with their hands on the hips of the sun?
They stumbled out of the elevator, tripping over their own legs like drunk fools. His vest was undone by deft hands, pushed from his shoulders so a mouth could kiss kind bruises into his skin. Something in him was hungry, so hungry. He pressed the man – the angel – against the wall, their chests flush against each other but not close enough. Never close enough. Alastor dug his nails into the skin of his ribs, and for a second he considered gutting the angel open, if only to crawl inside and make a home beside his heart.
He didn’t. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t, not to him. Instead, he took his loves hand and cradled it like a prayer, like a rosary in the hands of a saint, pressing a kiss to the ring adorning a blackened finger.
“Your room or mine?” Muttered low against the hollow of his neck, voice echoing against his vocal cords as if it were his own.
“Yours.” Alastor hummed, a bit breathless. “It’s closer.”
The angel laughed, a sound like tinkling bells and horrible wails and the choir of heaven, dragging him down the hall of the hotel.
***
The knock on the door pounded on the inside of Alastor’s head, spearing his skull like a knife over and over. He groaned, shielding his eyes as he dragged himself from the warm comfort of the bed. Something pounded like a sledgehammer behind his eyelids, and he squeezed them shut against the dim, rainy light streaming from the tall windows.
He tripped over himself, throwing one of the fancy, provided silk robes over his shoulders and tying it loosely. Pushing his hair back, he tried to make himself even slightly presentable before he opened the door, smile strained and stitched at the edges.
“Hey, dad, just wondering if you’re still joining us-” Charlie looked up from her cellular device, blinking up at him. “Al?”
“Hello, my dear.” Alastor coughed, trying to clear the rough static from his voice. “I believe you have the wrong room.”
Her eyes were almost comically wide, avoiding his gaze like the plague. “Um. No. Gosh, sorry!” She squeaked, covering her face with her hands and backing up slowly like he was about to pounce. “You know what, everything’s fine! Don’t worry about it! Glad you two are getting along! Bye!”
She ran off with a strangled, down-right deranged laugh that he would have been proud of if he wasn’t so confused. He stood in the open doorway, blinking at the space she had been. Or maybe she hadn’t been there at all – perhaps it had been a hangover induced hallucination.
The door creaked shut behind him as he slinked back into the room, his body already preparing to wrap himself back into the warmth of the bed calling to him like a siren song, boiling headache washed away by deep sleep and the pattering of rain, only to stop short.
Because the bed was not empty, the naked white shoulders of a man taking up the space, rising and falling with deep breaths, the blanket low around his hips. Bare hips.
Something sick and sharp twisted in Alastor’s gut, twisting like a dagger in his side, and it made him angry. It made him furious.
“What are you doing?” Without thinking, he tore the blanket off, snarling down at the devil.
Lucifer screeched at the sudden violence, sitting up abruptly and covering his chest with blackened arms as if he were an innocent, unassuming maiden in distress. “What the fuck?!”
Alastor’s face twisted, forcing his eyes away from the naked devils body. “What are you doing?”
Lucifer snatched the blanket back, glaring. “Well, I was sleeping.” Then, he startled, pulling the blanket up to cover himself further. “What were you doing?!”
“Sleeping!” Alastor waved his arms around wildly, static striking the air. The robe fell from his shoulder, and he tugged it up with far more force than was necessary, feeling something like a frazzled house wife.
He felt more than he saw Lucifers eyes very suddenly find their place on his collar, burning a hole into his bare skin. Like his gaze was all-fire, imprinting itself on him. It made Alastor want to tear his flesh off, but he settled for wrapping the silk tighter around himself, crossing his arms.
“Sleeping.” Lucifer echoed, his voice strained at the edges before he shook his head. “Here?”
Alastor’s nose twitched. “Yes.” He stressed, as if talking to a particularly difficult toddler. “I believed this was my room.”
The devil scoffed. “Well, it’s not.” He waved a hand to the ground lazily. “My clothes are here.” He said, as if that was the deciding factor. The gavel on the royal sound block.
Alastor jabbed a finger at a pair of his pants, strewn haphazardly next to tall black boots that certainly weren’t his. “So are mine.”
There was a moment where they just glared at each other, standing their uneven grounds. Then Lucifers eyebrows furrowed, and Alastor’s mouth twisted, and something barrelled into them like a car crash.
The king opened his mouth, gaping like a fish out of water. “Did we-“
“No.” Alastor denied quickly, tugging his curls away from his face. “Certainly not.”
“What did we-“ Lucifer stuttered over his words, a look of downright horror marring his face. “Oh, fuck, we did.”
The radio demon laughed, short and shrill, absolutely no humour in it. A laughing track played in the air, cords of trapped voices forced to strum like bass strings. “No. No, absolutely we did not.”
Lucifer laughed right back, gesturing around them wildly. “Well, we fucking might of, if the clues point us in the right direction.”
But Alastor wasn’t listening. No, he was too busy tugging his hair out as if that could let him claw into the crevices of his own brain and reach into the foggy, drunken memories hidden in there.
They arrived in Lust, they went out to dinner with Lord Asmodeus – Ozzie, he made them call him Ozzie – And then dinner turned into drinks, and drinks turned into more drinks at the hotel. Yes, yes, and then eventually it got late. Ozzie went home to a lover Alastor cannot be half-bothered to remember the name of, and Charlie bid off to bed, leaving he and Lucifer to avoid the provocative decor and…activities in the lobby together.
They went to the bar, they had more drinks. A smoke or two. There was a band, a lovely band. Alastor’s hooves hurt; maybe they danced? He remembered laughing so hard he got stitches in his side, but he can’t remember what the joke was – all that he knows is that it came from Lucifers lips. Lucifers lips.
The cold press of metal against his mouth – a ring. A ring on a finger. A ring, an angel, a ring, an angel-
“There’s a chapel downstairs.” Alastor mutters into the stifling air, cutting it like an axe splitting wood.
Lucifer raises a hand to run over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How do you-“
But then he stops. Because there, on his left hand, is a ring. A simple, lovely gold ring. Alastor can’t even bear to look at his own hand as he raises it, but he knows. Oh, he knows; on his own finger, is a matching band.
Alastor can’t help it; he laughs. Cackles, really. Violently and shaking as he smooths a hand over his forehead. “Shit,” he starts snatching his things from off the floor, practically shoving his monocle into his eye. “Oh, boy!”
“Why in the world are you laughing?” Lucifer hissed, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and fumbling to put on a pair of boxers that could have been either of theirs. “Fuck, my mouth feels like I drank Novocain. Did we go to a dentist?”
“Not unless you can get married at the dentist!”
Lucifer throws a pillow at him and it hits pitifully on his arm. “This is serious.”
“No, you’re right.” Alastor tries to school his expression into something less manic, and definitely misses by a quarter mile. “We have so much to discuss. Like our starter home – I’m right fine with a small apartment if you are.”
“Al,” The devils jaw works around the words, his eyebrows furrowing. It’s not angry, though, and Alastor doesn’t care to think about how he can tell. It’s just not burning, that’s all he knows.
“Oh, and of course where to honeymoon!” He continues, not even bothering to look at the man anymore, pulling on a pair of underwear. “Miami is nice this time of year, but it’s probably long overbooked. We could go on a cruise!”
“Al-“
He shucks on his trousers, loose and open around his waist because he cannot, for the death of him, seem to find his belt. “Goodness, and we need to meet each other’s parents! You are catholic, yes? Because my mother would throw a right fit-“
“Alastor.” Fire spits from Lucifers lips and Alastor can taste the phantom of them on his own. It aches.
He throws his shirt over his shoulder, picking up his shoes and turning his back, relinquishing the burden. The burden to look upon his own folly. “Ah, you know, now that we’re discussing it I believe I want to break it off. I hope you understand; cold feet and all. Hope we signed a prenup!”
And with that, he swung the door open and slammed it behind him before Lucifer could even get a word in.
When he found his way back into his own rooms, he tore the silk robe and wrinkled pants from his body as if they had burned him. The stench of rye and smoke clung to them, infected them. Under them, he found not his own undergarments, but ducky-printed boxers, thrown on in his haste.
He rubbed at the sore in his chest absently, a warm thing right next to the place beside his heart.
***
Lucifer eventually dragged himself into something presentable – a foul attempt to make himself look like he didn’t get shitfaced, married, and fucked broken in the wee hours of the morning. Something on Ozzie’s face told him he was missing it by an acre.
The tour around the hotel was easy, at least, if only for the fact that it had nothing that they would need. Charlie was far more interested in the large, industrial kitchen than the hidden orgy rooms – which was all for the better, in his opinion.
They stood in the lobby, watching her rush around like a kid in a candy store and jot down notes in her little pocket-journal on the layout of the front desk and the trolleys that carry guests bags. Once or twice she would send him some odd look, like she knew, and then look away because just knowing made her want to die. But she couldn’t have known. She couldn’t have.
Lucifer toyed with the apple top of his cane, twisting the green leaf around and around as he stared at the sign next to an open archway, advertising the chapel inside.
“Something on your mind?” Ozzie asked, his voice lilting like he knew something devious.
“No.” The devil answered far too quickly, then winced. “Yes. You can get married here?”
The sin of Lust tilted his head, the fire around it crackling with his movement. “Oh, yes. It’s…uncommon for my people to fall in love, but there’s no reason for it to be difficult to be together in any way they wish.”
Lucifer nodded, worrying his lip. “Is it…legally binding?”
Ozzie snorted, waving a flippant hand. “Oh, no, no. That’s so human, legality. Owning each other. It’s a bond, not a deal.”
As if a weight lifted, Lucifers shoulders dropped, the tension falling. He hadn’t even realized they were so tense. “That’s good. Great.”
Asmodeus hummed. “Great.” A funny looking smile tugged at his lips, one that said something Lucifer could not name.
They went back to watching Charlie, who had moved on to the sconces on the wall, scribbling furiously in her notebook.
“So, who’s the lucky guy?”
Lucifer sputtered, coughing. “What? Sorry, what-“
Ozzie laughed heartily, clapping him on the back. “Just messing with you, I already know who it is! Tall and scary really is your type, huh?”
The devil slapped his hands away, hissing like a snake behind gritted teeth. “Shut. Up. Shut the fuck up. Charlie cannot know.”
“Awe, there’s no need to be scared, Luci-“
“It’s her hotelier!” He nearly yelled, voice inching on clinically insane. He coughed, waving awkwardly at a succubus who sent them a weird look as she passed, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “It was a mistake. We were drunk.”
“Oh.” Ozzie nodded in sage understanding. “Well then, you’re fucked.”
Immediately the weight and then some was dropped back directly onto Lucifer shoulders. “You said it wasn’t legal.”
“Yeah, because you made Hell have no laws.” The sin dragged his hands down his face, tugging down his eyelids. “I took creative inspiration from you and Lilly with your marriage. Bonded – soul bonded. Real fucking bonded.”
Lucifer dug into the plane of his chest with his left hand, a hole of space next to where his heart would be if he had internal organs. He recognized it, now, dimly. Some hundred years ago, a comfort from before Lilith tore off her ring and threw it at the wall.
It echoed with his anger, and he could not tell if the burn was his own or was Alastor’s. Surely, he had to be angry, too. “Why in the seven rings are you bonding people in a Vegas chapel?”
“People don’t get married often!”
Lucifer groaned, and it melted into a sort of pathetic half-sob. He looked up to the ceiling, as if his Father would be looking down at him now and shaking his head in abject disappointment. Perhaps, if he prayed hard enough, He would have mercy on him and strike him down where he stood.
But no, God had no mercy for him. Not anymore.
Now, he had to deal with a fucking divorce lawyer. Again.