The ache between his shoulders woke him in the early hours of the morning. The light was grey and slipping through the windows of the penthouse but just barely when he grit his teeth and sat up in bed. Lucifer shuddered and reached behind his back with both hands, frantically trying to reach the spot between his shoulder blades that now burned almost as fiercely as his skin had in the immeasurable time after he'd first landed in Hell. But it was a spot he simply couldn't reach, where no matter how he twisted his long arms, he couldn't get a finger against the risen bump Ella had described about eight hours earlier, around eight p.m. and before she'd left.
A final twist nearly caused him to tumble out of bed, and Lucifer swore. "Bloody fine then. I can get this sussed out another way."
Albeit he didn't want to try turning a million different ways in front of his bathroom mirrors either. He supposed a selfie with at least the mirrors helping him might get him a better idea of what was happening, but he needed someone to touch it, to let him know what the Hell---operative term that---was happening to him. There was another solution, one that would not involve Ella and give the game away, but he wasn't sure it would work.
How much of a brother-sister bond he'd established already, and if the stitched back relationship between him and Azrael covered another medical check in. Only one way to find out. Slipping out of bed, Lucifer rushed through his closet, which, alright, was roughly the size of the average flat in Los Angeles or New York, and grabbed a pair of sweatpants. He was taking far too much advantage of his "in case I shred your clothes" stash. But he didn't feel like dressing fully, yet wanted more than just his usual robe would have provided.
The concessions he was making to the fashion gods of late.
Sitting on his sofa soon after, tumbler of Scotch in hand, he pressed the palms of his hands together and did something he hadn't done since he was young and answered to the name Samael.
Azrael, please, I need you.
Before he even opened his eyes, he was welcomed by the flutter of wings. Flicking his eyes open, Lucifer held back a sigh at the sight of his sister's feathers. Pride had always been his sin, and, when he'd cared for them, his wings had been the most beautiful amongst his siblings. The only wings in the Silver City as white as snow, as pure as marble. Azrael's were mottled, like an osprey or another bird of prey. Not unbecoming, but not as gorgeous as his had been. Something sharp lanced through his lungs, and it was harder to breathe than he'd like to admit. If she ever saw what they'd become now...
Angels didn't react to the infernal with fear and insanity the way humans tended to. Although, in Linda's defense, she had bounced back from her catatonia like a champ. But his siblings could and had looked on him with disgust. When he'd changed while still bound and chained in the Silver City, with the ashes of the angels fool enough to side with him still hanging in the wind around him, all of the angels present had gasped at him in utter revulsion.
But Azrael hadn't been there to see, hadn't been able to bear it.
He couldn't let her see what he was now, what he'd apparently done to himself all along and now done even worse. If she ever saw the bat-like mockeries that divinity he sported now, she'd leave him. He knew that, could feel it deep in his bones. And his heart.
She schlooped her own feathered appendages away and strode toward him, her frown deep and concerned. She sat beside him on the sofa and shook her head at the mostly-finished tumbler in his hand. "You don't always have to drink, Lu?"
He clenched his jaw and took in several, shuddering breaths before replying. She was trying so hard, and he was just folding under the weight he was trying to carry. Lucifer wasn't as tired as he'd been with the Angel of San Bernadino debacle, but he was floundering and finding sleep harder and harder to obtain as his benching had drawn on. And damn it all if the detective hadn't been right. A small, tense argument with Ella in the lab and he'd grown a tail. Butting heads with the Douche, and his shoulders felt like they were on fire.
He had less control over his body than he'd ever had on this plane before, and if this was what epiphanies meant, then count him out for any others.
"I like the taste, and I can't get drunk without substantial effort. I was six or seven handles in for amputation, but I rarely drink myself into a stupor."
Azrael still frowned back at him and, despite her own ancient age, she still seemed so young. Technically, she was a few millennia his junior, one of the last angels Mum and Dad had ever sired before Dad fell in love with his new pet project---humanity---and out of love with her. Yet, whenever he looked at her, especially now with those Coke bottle glasses perched on her nose, she seemed as young and as vulnerable as she always had when they'd hidden away from too many annoying siblings among the clouds.
"I worry."
He sighed again and set the glass down. "Have you ever heard that adage humans say?"
"Which one?" She quirked her head at him. "I spend time with humans, dude. I mean, mostly dead ones, but Ella and I have been friends a long time. I'm not some alien here."
He grinned at that. "If you were stoic, we'd never have gotten on, little sister. Amenadiel still seems, Dad help him, like he's on a long, long learning curve for human behavior. Some things he gets, some things might as well be in Greek to him."
"We don't all have silver tongues," Azrael said. "But which expression?"
"'Be careful what you wish for.' And I suppose that since I spent a lot of my time on Earth until recently brokering in deals with humans in which fine print was of the utmost importance, I should have been more aware of it on my own behalf as well."
"I don't understand."
He stood but angled his backside away from her. Even if that spot between his shoulder blades burned like a raging fire, he didn't want her to check for him. At least not for a few moments longer. "Linda once told me there's a huge difference between being lonely and being alone. When I was able to go on holiday..."
His sister rolled her eyes. The brat. Tough if she didn't like the accent. He'd cultivated it since the 1800s. It was his. He didn't begrudge her for sounding like she was from the San Francisco Bay area. They all affected whatever they chose, at least the angels who passed and worked among the humans. The few of them there were. No one spoke Enochian on this plane, after all.
"Uh-huh."
"Whilst I was up here, until my consulting job, I was never alone in a room."
His sister blushed. "Lu! I do not need a sex story. I, uh, might have ducked in once or twice into Lux and seen more in booths than I needed to."
"Duly noted," he said, forcing levity into his voice. "But I mean it. I would cram any abode full of humans ready to party and, yes, to partake in any temptation I could offer them. I thought it wasn't being lonely because it was so much better than the demons of Hell I was surrounded with, Maze excluded. But it was still so lonely. Working with Ella and the detective...once even with Daniel...it's felt like family. Having Linda and a better relationship with Amenadiel has made me crave that kind of familial attention even more than I ever thought possible."
"And, dude, that's totally a good thing."
"Yet, now I see all the women in my life: you, Ella, Linda...even the detective in her own way. I don't want to be lonely, but I don't want the concern in your eyes to be so pitying. I'm a grown devil, made my own bed, and now I'm lying in it. I'll figure it out."
Azrael stood and sighed up at him. Like Ella, she was so tiny too, so fragile. Remy wasn't any taller than she, but she was a warrior, as fond of the wild hunt as any Greek goddess or alleged Amazon was rumored to be. She projected an aura of ferocity. Most of his sisters did in their own ways. Not so with Azrael. She was small and delicate, still felt like she needed protecting, even if she was no peach herself or hadn't been quite this soft before Ella.
