Chapter Text
Lucifer was terribly easy to annoy.
He was prideful, which meant it was very easy to get on his nerves, to insult him even subtly. He was short tempered, so it was easy to get a rise out of him. And better still, even though he was very powerful, he wouldn’t lash out in response, because he was too worried about upsetting Charlie.
Alastor hadn’t been best pleased to learn that the King of Hell would be spending more time in the hotel since it was rebuilt, but the little man did prove to be a constant source of entertainment.
It started small.
Lucifer was a coffee person. Most of the hotel were genuinely happier to start their day with an eye opener (even Vaggie, on occasion) except Alastor and the Morningstars. Alastor personally didn’t think either of those two needed any more energy, thank you very much, so if on the first day he returned to the hotel from his recovery, he hid the coffee machine filter after he used it… well, that wasn’t really a prank. That was a service, performed for the best interests of the hotel.
Or that is what he would have said as an excuse, should Charlie have blamed him.
She didn’t, but Lucifer glared at him for the entirety of breakfast.
It was much more fun when he got a rise from the little man. The next morning he sent his little summoned minions (no messy egg boys needed, though Frank still insisted on hanging around with Sir Pentious gone) to remove all of the left socks from Lucifer’s room.
“There’s no such thing as left and right socks, dad,” Charlie had tried to soothe, when Lucifer stormed down to breakfast, fully dressed except for the noticeable absence of one sock. Alastor sipped at his coffee, watching the little king practically ripping his hair out over such a silly little prank. “And it doesn’t really matter if your socks don’t match perfectly, anyway. You’ll be wearing your boots…”
“Doesn’t matter!” Lucifer threw his hands in the air, exasperated. More gently, as though Charlie were still a child, he continued. “Charlie… as King of Hell, I must maintain my image…”
“Sensory issues, short king?” Angel had been the one to realise, actually sounding sympathetic. Alastor sipped his coffee, a little surprised at the lesser demon’s thoughtfulness. Maybe he actually was making some progress after all. How interesting.
Lucifer’s heavy sigh and slumped shoulders revealed that the suggestion was accurate. His voice was almost meek when he spoke again. “They won’t feel right…”
“Oh! Dad, why didn’t you say?” Charlie’s hands were clapped over her mouth. No doubt she would be horrified with herself for not understanding, and that wasn’t Alastor’s goal with this prank. He’d just wanted to wind the King up a bit, and he’d already succeeded at that. “I’ll come search with you, okay? We’ll find the left ones somewhere. They’ve probably just got mixed in with the washing.”
Alastor sent his minions to return the socks before they could get to the room. All the better to embarrass the little King, to find that the socks had been there all along, and show him up in front of his daughter.
It had nothing to do with a twinge of guilt that absolutely wasn’t twisting his guts as he watched Lucifer actually limp out of the room because of a missing sock.
He sipped his coffee, and grinned right back at Lucifer’s glares the rest of the day.
The lack of any pranks for the next three days also had nothing to do with any hesitation, brought on by any misdirected sympathy. No, that would be fanciful. He was simply observing, looking for a weak point to strike, biding his time.
It was just so hard to choose, that was all. After all, there were so many weak spots. He could target the king’s love for sweets, Rosie had quite a collection of treats made from blood that looked just like their less savoury equivalents. It would actually be too easy to replace the treats in the sweet jar. Amateurish. Not worth his time.
He could ensure something was spilled on the king’s clothes. They were always perfectly pressed and pure white, and even though the stain could be banished with nothing more than a wave of the king’s hand, it would still be hilarious if Husk accidentally managed to tip a wine glass over the king’s head when handing it to a much taller resident. Although, that would be a waste of good wine. Not that he had ever really cared about wine before… best not to think about that.
No, these were small. Petty. He wanted something that would really aggravate Lucifer.
He needed to hit him where it hurt.
The rubber ducks.
At first there were one or two, confined to the King’s room. That didn’t last long. The pile grew, almost as quickly as Lucifer’s silly little head could think them up, and there was always a new favourite. It didn’t take long for them to be in other places too around the hotel, the bathrooms and then the bar, and then just… everywhere. Little ones and large ones, starting to invade the communal areas with increasing frequency and obnoxious yellowness.
Alastor had decided that he hated them.
Ducks, he didn’t mind. They were quite delicious, honey roasted or even mixed into a gumbo. But these rubber, luminous yellow monstrosities?
Disgraceful.
On the fourth day after their seeming truce, the ducks were gone.
Alastor had initially intended to melt them all down, that way they couldn’t return to bother him again. Perhaps he would have made the rubber into something else, if he could work out how to change its colour from that awful yellow, and leave it somewhere for Lucifer to find. He had intended to, but that would have been a lot of work, and that was certainly the only reason he kept them intact.
It wouldn’t have been a very good prank if the ducks were only gone, and so he had replaced them, obviously. The little dolls he had replaced each and every duck with were not voodoo dolls; that would have been by far too obvious. Each and every one was as creepy as he could possibly find, many of them made with actual shrunken heads from cannibal town, and the other residents of Hell wouldn’t find them all that disturbing. They were desensitised. Not like the little King, who spent so little time actually in his own kingdom.
Alastor had waited outside Lucifer’s room, waiting for him to wake up, just to hear the king scream in terror. He’d even positioned the most terrifying of the dolls right over the King’s bed so that it would be the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes.
There was no scream, which was disappointing, but honestly showed that the King was at least braver than Alastor had given him credit for.
There was no shouting either, no performative anger. Nothing… fun. Just the sound of the King’s feet hitting the floorboards as he got out of bed, the sound of him moving around the room, and then, the heavy sigh of long-suffering patience, and muttering Alastor had to strain to hear.
“Do it for Charlie.”
And if Alastor was frozen in place, it was only because he was trying to hear more. There was certainly no self-reflection keeping him rooted, and definitely, absolutely no fleeting thought that Lucifer was not the terrible father that he had painted the king as in his own mind.
He was swallowed into shadow before Lucifer could step out of his room, a new duck in his hand, freshly crafted, wearing a little red jacket and topped with a long blonde ponytail. A little reminder to himself of just why he should tolerate the sinners of the hotel, no matter what.
If the dolls began to walk around the hotel during breakfast, it was definitely to scare the other demons, and not to ferry themselves down to the basement where the duck collection was hidden, and put each and every duck back in place. There was no real point continuing the prank anyway. Lucifer hadn’t reacted as Alastor had hoped, and that meant it was pointless.
Alastor needed to come up with something better. So far, everything had been small… childish. Not that he could be too extravagant. If he was, Charlie would notice, and he didn’t intend to upset her. He needed to keep her on his side.
He watched Lucifer more closely over the next few days, looking for the perfect time to strike. Watched the king play along with every single one of Charlie’s activities, no matter how foolish or misguided. Allowed himself to mingle with sinners of all levels, even those right at the bottom of the barrel, all to keep his daughter happy. Alastor concluded that he couldn’t complete any more pranks easily, because it would be difficult to get the king on his own. He would need the perfect moment to strike.
It was almost a week later that the King stomped into the kitchen, horns evident, tail lashing, and actually managed to lean over Alastor just a little, since he was seated.
“That’s enough!”
Alastor genuinely wracked his brain. Oh, he would love to take credit for whatever had the king so infuriated, but he really didn’t know. He hadn’t done anything, not this time. Of course, Lucifer didn’t see this confusion. A smile was a powerful tool, after all.
“You’ve been tormenting me ever since you came back, and I’m done with it,” Lucifer’s words were joined with little sparks of fire. Alastor watched them. They were interesting. It had nothing to do with being unable to meet Lucifer’s eyes. “I’m talking to Charlie today. When she knows what you’ve been doing, she’ll have to see that you have no interest in redemption, sinner.”
“Hmm,” Alastor responded casually, for lack of a better response. Better than pretending to claim credit for the King’s ire, and showing that he didn’t know what had caused it. And definitely better than any silly, false attempt to apologise or admit that he hadn’t done anything recently.
“You… argh… fuck you!” Lucifer pushed off the table as he straightened up, and Alastor’s eyes widened in surprise as the wood cracked from the strength. How interesting. Oh, today was going to be fun.
Eventually, as the king stood there simply fuming (quite literally) at him, Alastor waved a hand casually to the counter.
“Coffee, your highness?” the radio distortion almost covered the distain with which he spoke the title.
And more curious still, the fuming slowed. Settled. Lucifer didn’t reject the offer, but he didn’t give an answer either. The look he gave the coffee maker showed his strong suspicion that this was also a trick, but the anger drained away.
He left the coffee, and the room, with a sigh.
Alastor resolved to learn exactly what had been the King’s final straw. But first, if a minion poured a cup of coffee and took it through to the sitting room to place on the table beside the king, it was only so that he wouldn’t have to deal with Lucifer dealing with caffeine withdrawals. That first day had shown him how boring that could be.
Lucifer didn’t go to Charlie, and Alastor couldn’t work out what had happened from watching him. IT was evening before he learned the truth, and that he almost missed. Angel Dust was a minor irritation, so beneath his notice, that he never really listened to what the spider said. Husk, however, was contracted to him, and that included bringing him any information that Husk believed Alastor would want to know. The cat literally could not keep a secret from him if he believed Alastor may think it was valuable.
It seemed he had not been the only one who was messing with the King of Hell.
Angel’s pranks were juvenile. Silly. Beneath him. But there had been a lot of them. Several of them were suggestive, which would have told anyone who knew Alastor well that they were nothing to do with him, but the King didn’t know him. He’d made sure of that. No one knew him, not really, not even Rosie.
The straw that had broken the camel’s back, as it were, made no sense to Alastor whatsoever.
If he’d wanted to bind the King to his own bed, he’d have used something far more secure, and magically reinforced, than a pair of fluffy handcuffs. How Angel had even got them onto the King without him noticing was another matter entirely, one that Alastor also questioned with Husk.
And that was how he ended up listening through his shadow in the bar of the hotel, late at night, while the King sipped some fruity cocktail concoction and spilled his sorrows to the trusty bartender. It was mostly nonsense, the sort of frustrating jabbering that Alastor left to Husk to report on, but there was always a chance Husk wouldn’t tell him something he thought was important.
“Charlie sees the good in everyone, even when it’s not actually there,” Lucifer was complaining, and Alastor had no doubt who the king was talking about. Alright, he’d give credit where it was due, Alastor wasn’t exactly a good person, but no one was entirely evil. If Lucifer didn’t understand that, then it was his problem to deal with. Perhaps he would actually benefit from one of his daughter’s misguided attempts at therapy sessions. “I just want to be a good dad for her, you know?”
Husk’s wordless noise of acknowledgement was very nearly drowned out by a jolt of radio static as Alastor realised that he had been wrong. The little king thought there was nothing good in him? This little angel that put up with torment from the sinners, stayed at his daughter’s hotel even though he had the whole of hell to run, even took part in trust falls with sinners just to see her smile?
Lucifer’s head snapped up, looking round for Alastor. Outed by the radio static, Alastor emerged from the shadows, his smile fixed in place but his eyes narrowing, accusing, as though Lucifer was the one in the wrong here.
“Your highness,” radio static could only hide so much disgust in his tone, and it certainly was not covered here. All the better to play off his spying as annoyance over the king’s presence in his bar. “I suppose I shall take my nightcap to my rooms, Husker.”
The bartender grunted, pouring him a whiskey, but Lucifer did not seem quite willing to let Alastor go so easily. The little man was on his feet already, and if he’d been a few feet taller the way he was squaring up might have been intimidating. It was very easy to forget that he was so powerful when he was swaying in place, too intoxicated to even stand straight.
“You!” Lucifer must have been feeling bold indeed, because folk had lost hands over less than prodding the radio demon in the chest like that. “You… arse!”
Alastor removed the offending hand from his person firmly, strongly considering whether Charlie’s anger was worth it if he took a bite out of her dad. It would certainly be entertaining… but perhaps, it would be going too far. Not because he felt any sort of pity for the king’s self loathing, and decided not to hurt him… no, never that. It was simply that the king would then have a justifiable reason to strike at him in return, one he could justify to Charlie. It was self preservation, nothing more.
“How eloquent, your highness.”
“Oh, fuck you!” perhaps Lucifer was more intoxicated than Alastor had even realised, if that was the best he could do. Ah, but this was not especially entertaining if the king couldn’t even spar verbally.
“Perhaps it is time for you to go to bed,” Alastor suggested, and if the voice behind the filter had softened a little, it was only to be more convincing.
The king wrenched his hand from Alastor’s grasp. “Perhaps you should brush your teeth.”
Alastor blinked, grin sharpening. Oh, so playground insults was the best the king could do… still, he had zeroed in on one of the things that truly annoyed Alastor about his demonic form. His might be a face made for radio, but the yellow teeth rather ruined the well presented image and put a taint, rather literally, to his smile. He’d woken up with them like that when he arrived in Hell and there was no changing them.
Still, it would be undignified to respond in kind. If he decided to turn the other cheek, it had nothing to do with the king’s fragile mental state, and everything to do with showing superiority over his opponent.
He collected his whisky and took a sip before deigning to respond, making a point of following Lucifer’s slight drunken swaying. “Would your highness like some assistance reaching your room?”
“I don’t need…” it seemed the king was drunk enough to take the bait and storm away, but too drunk to succeed, tripping and almost falling flat on his face. Almost, as Alastor blinked down at his smaller frame, held up by a treacherous red-sleeved arm.
It was a reflex, nothing more.
Lucifer’s reaction was fascinating, freezing like a deer in headlights, only to scramble away on all fours as though he had been burned. “What are you playing at?”
It was amusing enough for Alastor to decide to take things further, eldritch tendrils reaching out to lift the little king from the ground and suspend him out of reach of Alastor. It would have been all too easy for Lucifer to get himself out of the grasp. As much as Alastor would have hated to admit it, the King by far overpowered him. But even more curious, the king only gawped at him as he was held up, supported, and if Alastor made sure that the tendrils applied equal, deeper pressure at all points it was not because he had noticed during his observations that the king preferred that sensory stimulation and found it comforting. No, it was entirely to ensure that he did not succeed in escaping.
“Bedtime.” He left his whisky almost untouched, heading right for the king’s chambers, and if minions ran ahead to check that no one was going to spot them, it was for sake of his own pride, not Lucifer’s.
And if he focused a little too strongly on the king’s flush, it was only so that he could mock him for it later, and not out of fascination at how the golden blood in his cheeks made the king look like he was glowing.
Dropping the king carelessly on the bed would have been too predictable. That was the only reason Alastor set him down gently. And the glass of water he decided to fetch was only so that the hotel would not have to deal with the King’s hangover in the morning, not out of any interest in caring.
“Alastor,” Lucifer’s fingers wrapped tightly around his wrist, before he could leave. Lucifer had not changed into nightclothes while Alastor was out of the room, still fully dressed and sat curled into a ball on the bed, knees to his chest. A person who cared might have found it endearing.
Alastor did not prise the fingers from his wrist, but he did glare at them, his grin becoming sharper, his head tipping unnaturally too far to one side.
“Please, whatever you’re planning, just give me one night off?”
Alastor blinked back at him.
“Just one? You can mess with me as much as you want tomorrow, but not tonight.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” It was an opportunity. That’s all. Alastor would take whatever chances he could get to make a deal with such a powerful individual, to take advantage of what he could. And if Charlie found out she had carried his father to his bed, no matter his own motives, she would be insufferable. “No pranks tonight, but you cannot ever tell Charlie that I helped you tonight either.”
“I don’t make deals with sinners,” Lucifer was scornful, probably not even listening to the deal on offer. It was quite harmless, after all. Alastor grinned wider back at him, remaining silent, waiting for the king’s brain to catch up with his hearing. “That… actually sounds fair.”
“Good,” Alastor did not insist in shaking on it. All the better to build trust with the king for deals later down the line. Still, his wrist was not released. “Is there something else?”
Lucifer’s grip loosened, enough that he could pull away if he wanted to. He looked… small, like this. Not just physically, but more than that. Alastor did not pull his hand away, though he should, too busy figuring out the puzzle that was the man in front of him.
It wasn’t just alcohol, nor childish bullying that had lowered the king to this. No, the alcohol had perhaps unmasked it, but these were deeper wounds. Lucifer was already fragile.
No, not fragile. Broken. A shattered soul, pieced back together so that he could maintain his pride. During the day his smiles and casual shows of power were flashy, hiding the cracks that lay within, but here they were visible. They were gaping.
He could use this. Could take advantage, play on the King’s insecurities. He could widen those cracks until there was nothing left of his fragile mind, break him down and build him back up in whatever image he chose. And he would, in time, he did not doubt it.
But not tonight. He could lay the ground work, or at least that was what he told himself. Make sure that the King was right where he wanted him, but not push. Not yet.
He did not pull away from Lucifer’s grasp. Instead, he sat upon the edge of the bed, and Lucifer shuffled back quickly. He did consider that to be a rather fair reaction, were it not that his wrist was still clutched tightly.
He surprised even himself when he spoke, not even remembering to apply the mask of radio filter. “I can stay, if you need to talk.”
“No!” and that was also fair, Alastor thought, as the king had absolutely no reason to trust him – shouldn’t trust him, was wise not to. Except that one treacherous hand, still grasping at Alastor’s wrist.
“Alright,” Alastor decided. There was no need to talk. Why would he want to hear the king’s woes anyway? “You should sleep, your highness.”
And if the words were not accompanied by their usual distain… well, it was only manipulation after all.