Chapter Text
Here’s how it starts:
“Dad? Do you have a minute? I need to talk to you about…something.”
“Oh, uh, s-sure, honey. Of course. But you know, I’m alright. Really. I’m perfectly fine. You don’t have to keep checking in on me.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I promise to stop bothering you. That’s…that’s not why I’m here. I need to talk to you about…um, our newest guest.”
“Oh?”
“I just thought I’d give you a head’s-up. It’s, um, it’s Adam.”
Here’s how it’s going:
Adam’s head snaps back. Bright red blood gushes from his nose and over Lucifer’s fist.
“Harder!”
Lucifer punches him again. The crunch of cartilage is satisfying.
Adam spits up a wad of blood. “Is that the best you can do? Goddamn it, you pussy, I said hit me harder!”
Something uncoils in Lucifer’s stomach. The chains that have been holding him down for thousands of years slip free.
“With pleasure,” he purrs. And obliges.
So here’s how it really starts:
It’s a few weeks after the…after the debacle. The failed attack on heaven. The whole…thing.
Things are good! Things are—they’re fine. Lucifer is fine. Yeah, he spent the whole time trapped and locked into a machine that drained his power to use in the failed attack against heaven. That hadn’t been pleasant. But he’d walked it off. There were more important things.
Charlie had been vindicated in front of the entirety of heaven and hell. Her dream was finally taking off.
No thanks to him.
Man, he fucked up. He fucked up really bad. Charlie says she’s not mad at him anymore. She’s even apologized to him. For yelling at him. She asks him several times a day if he’s alright. He tells her he is. He’s fine. He’s had worse.
He’s not fine.
He cannot stay up in his room all the time. There are more guests than ever now. He needs to go down and…be seen with them. Or something.
For Charlie.
They make his skin crawl.
And then, she comes to his door with this news. “It’s Adam.”
So, Adam is alive. And a sinner. And he’s spent a miserable two months in hell trying to scrape by, which has left him desperate enough to come to Charlie.
Lucifer supposes he should feel a little satisfaction. Maybe he’s not the most pathetic creature in hell after all.
And Adam really is pathetic, when Lucifer finally sees him. Skulking about in the hallways, trying to avoid the other guests. For good reason, most likely. He is undoubtedly a sinner now, though. His wings have been clipped, the horns of his exorcist’s mask now made part of his skull. The bags under his eyes are very bad. It’s hard to tell if he’s not sleeping or if that’s just, like, part of him now. Eyes perpetually sunken. Face perpetually lined from scowling.
He hisses at Lucifer when he sees him. Like a feral animal. His body is furry now, and every strand stands on edge. “Charlie promised me you’d stay out of my way.”
“She said the same thing to me.”
“Why would I need to stay out of your way? I don’t want anything to fucking do with you.” Adam jabs a finger in Lucifer’s face. “You’ve ruined my life over and over again. You’ve ruined the lives of everyone you’ve ever fucking shared breath with.”
Lucifer grins sardonically. “Can’t say I really disagree with you there.”
Adam scowls. He’s always been so easy to nettle. He loves his cruel mockeries, but he will never laugh at himself. Ever. Even now, when he’s at rock bottom, when he’s relying on Charlie’s help after he tried to murder her and destroy her dream, he won’t embrace the obvious. The words of some stranger are meaningless when you’ve said a thousand times worse about yourself for thousands of years.
“That’s what I do,” Lucifer elaborates. “I ruin things.”
Adam’s lip curls. “Is that why your daughter doesn’t give a shit that you were almost killed?”
Lucifer lifts his head, stares up at Adam from under the brim of his hat. “Excuse me?”
“Just saying, she doesn’t seem especially bothered that the sinners she’s trying so hard to help found a way to turn her father into a living battery. In fact, she’s more buddy-buddy with them than ever.”
“One sinner,” Lucifer amends. “One sinner who…”
Adam waves his hand dismissively. “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. Don’t get me wrong, her bleeding heart shtick worked in my favor. But if it were me, I’d be fucking pissed if my dumbass kid saw me eat shit and then went, ‘Aww, wet’s make fwiends with the demons.’” He raises his voice into a falsetto and bats his eyelashes. “Loser-ass behavior.”
Lucifer feels something slithering in his gut. “Easy there,” he warns. Adam can say whatever he wants about Lucifer, but if he thinks he’s just going to stand here and let him shit-talk Charlie…
“Or what?” Adam jabs his chest then. “What’re you gonna do, fucker?”
He gives Lucifer a rough shove that sends him stumbling back a step.
“You gonna step up? Fucking do something? We both know you won’t.”
“I handed you your ass once before.”
Adam grins, something cruel and mocking. “Back when I was an angel. Can’t do anything to me now, though, can you?” He gives Lucifer another shove, harder this time, using hands on both shoulders. “The only goddamn perk of being a sinner is that you can’t do jack shit to me, asshole.”
Lucifer clenches his jaw. He clenches his fist.
“Oh? You gonna hit me? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I enjoyed it immensely the last time,” Lucifer agrees with a cruel and mocking grin of his own. God, how good it had felt to unleash on Adam back then. To finally be let out his cage and use his strength.
“Yeah? Then go ahead.” Adam thumps his chest. “Hit me with your best shot, fucker.”
Lucifer obliges.
He’s shocked when his fist makes contact and Adam goes flying backwards, down the hall and through several walls. Several people scream. The hotel guests, caught off guard by a wayward First Man crashing through their rooms. Dust fills the air, and the screams turn to coughing.
Lucifer stares at his fist in awe.
He just…struck Adam.
Despite the limitations, he managed to strike him. Is…is Adam perhaps not truly a sinner?
And then he hears groaning. Through the smoke, a shape pulls itself from an Adam-shaped hole in the wall and staggers forward on shaky legs. There’s blood dribbling from his chin. It’s red. Adam is a sinner. But there’s…
Lucifer was able to strike him.
Adam wipes the blood from his face, stares at its color on his hand, and then looks at Lucifer. His eyes widen. “The fuck? You hit me?”
It sounds like a question. And incredulous question.
“You hit me!”
Less of a question that time. More of an enraged squawk.
“What’s going on here?”
Shit.
The flapping of wings announces the arrival of Charlie’s girlfriend, spear in hand. She touches down between Adam and Lucifer, pointing her weapon at the former. “What’s going on here?” she repeats. “Did he touch you, sir?”
“What? No,” Adam cries indignantly. “He hit me!”
Her nostrils flare. “You agreed to follow Charlie’s rules when you signed in at the front desk,” she says, baring her teeth at Adam. “Trust me, I’ve been looking for an excuse to—”
“It was me.”
She swings her head around to give Lucifer a confused look.
“It was me,” he repeats, plastering on a grin. A mea culpa grin. “I got a little carried away and…”
“Sir?”
“I—I’ll fix the damage. Just…um…”
Her face softens. She lowers her voice, down to a whisper. “Lu?”
He blinks. Right, he told her to call him that.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine!” He tugs on the brim of his hat and turns and rushes off at a clipped pace.
He’s fine he’s fine he’s fine.
***
He’s back in his room. He’s been here for several hours. He has a barrier up on the door. It feels safer that way. Nothing can touch him. He may not be able to touch the sinners, but he has his defenses. He has his walls. No one can get through. Not the sinners. Not Charlie’s girlfriend, when she comes by to ask, again, if he’s alright. Not even Charlie, when she drops by as well to ask the same thing.
Both times he raises his voice to be heard on the other side of the door: “I’m fine!”
Then he goes back to burying his face in his knees and trying to breathe.
He threw Adam through a wall. Several walls. Adam is a sinner. Lucifer shouldn’t be able to hurt him, to draw blood. Is it…is it because Adam used to be an angel? Maybe his limitation doesn’t recognize Adam as one of his subjects. It doesn’t recognize Lilith as one.
N-not that he has ever laid a hand on Lilith! Not in anger! But she does like a bit of rough play in bed. He does too. He really likes it when she pins him down and has her wicked way with him. And she likes when he bites her neck right where it meets her shoulder and…
He shakes his head. He shouldn’t be thinking about that now.
But maybe it’s connected. The first people, the true first people. Of all the sinners in existence, for some reason, those are the ones he can touch…
A violent knock at the door has him lifting his face once more. Is it Charlie? The knocking sounds so angry. Did she find out that he hurt Adam? Has she come to yell at him?
“Open up, asshole!”
Oh, not Charlie.
“Please, Adam, I’m begging you. Just…fuck off.”
The banging continues. “You can’t just throw me through a wall and then flounce like that.”
“I’ll do worse if you don’t fuck off!”
“Yeah? Is that a promise?”
Lucifer uncoils himself. He’s flinging the doors wide open before he even realizes it, looking up to meet Adam’s glower. His hair and fur are ruffled, but he doesn’t look any the worse for wear. He’s not bleeding anymore, at least.
“What the fuck do you want?” Lucifer demands. “You said you were going to stay out of my way.”
“You hit me!”
Lucifer throws up his hands into a boxer’s pose. “I’ll do it again!”
To his surprise, Adam leans in. “Do it.”
It’s a challenge, and every part of Lucifer bristles at it.
“You think I won’t?”
“I’m hoping you will.”
“You’re not an angel anymore, dumbass,” Lucifer snarls. “I could punch your head clear off your shoulders. I could end you!”
“Then fucking do it, pussy.” Adam shoves his way into the room, barging straight through Lucifer’s barrier like it’s nothing. And infuriatingly, he doesn’t even seem to realize what he’s done, because his face remains as pissed off as ever as he forces Lucifer to back up. “Knock my fucking block off, asshole. Make me hurt!”
Lucifer still has his fists up, but he’s struggling to keep space between himself and Adam. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Of course you do. I tried to kill your daughter. I would have done it and not felt bad about it at all.”
“Adam,” Lucifer warns.
“I’m here taking advantage of her good will and I don’t even believe in redemption. I don’t give a shit about Serpent-us, or whatever his name is. And I know you don’t either. Not really.”
“You need to stop talking.”
“Shut me up then.”
Lucifer’s back hits against the wall. He’s allowed Adam to corner him.
He feels hemmed in. Trapped. Trapped by a fucking sinner.
Again.
Shit, is the air in here getting harder to breathe?
“You miss your wife?” Adam asks, tilting his head cockily. “Surprise, numb-nuts, she’s in heaven.”
“Wh-what?”
“That’s where she’s been these last seven years. Enjoying paradise away from you. She shows me all the times you and your loser daughter have tried calling her. All the desperate beta-cuck voicemails you leave begging her to come back.”
H-how would Adam even know that? He can’t possibly.
Adam smirks to meet the doubt creeping up Lucifer’s spine. His breath is hot and noxious against Lucifer’s face. “We laugh about it, and then I give her a good dicking down. How does that make you feel?”
Something breaks. The snapping of a string that has been wound too tight.
Lucifer hears his own enraged roar. Feels the side of Adam’s face cave in as his fist hits the man’s jaw. But it happens so quickly. The crunch of bone. Adam’s body colliding with the bookshelves clear across the room with a thunderous explosion. A rain of books and rubber ducks cascading down on him, burying him.
And Lucifer standing there, chest rising and falling as he tries to breathe. Wisps of smoke rise from his still-clenched fists. They are covered in red blood.
The aftermath happens in slow-motion. No, no-motion. Time stretches on without movement, without sound.
From underneath the rubble, Adam doesn’t stir.
“Shit!” Lucifer drops his fists and rushes over. “Fuck!”
He buries his hands into the pile and begins sifting around for the body beneath.
Shit, shit, shit! I killed him!
Charlie is going to be so mad!
His heart gives a lurch when he hears coughing from underneath everything.
“Adam!”
Okay, he’s alive. Whatever else that blow did to him, he’ll come back from it.
Lucifer’s hand finds fabric, the collar of Adam’s robes. Without an ounce of gentleness, he hauls the dumbass out of the pile, coughing and sputtering through a face full of blood. His face is already starting to swell and bruise, and if his jaw isn’t dislocated, Lucifer will be amazed.
But he’s alive.
Lucifer gives him a violent shake. “Are you happy now, fucker?”
Adam turns and spits out a tooth onto the carpet.
“Are you happy?” Lucifer repeats as he flings him around.
Adam’s head lolls. His eyes are unfocused. But he manages the most aggravating grin Lucifer has ever seen in his life. And he’s had to put up with the radio demon and his sleaze. Adam’s grin is insufferable because he’s just so damned pleased with himself, even with his missing tooth.
“Shit, yeah,” he says. “Do it again.”
Art by Cosmo_Horse