HELL IS FOREVER (BUT YOU'RE NOT)
Hazbin Hotel: Lute x Fem! Reader (Reader is Adam's girlfriend)
Lowkey a songfic for 'Knocking on Heaven's Door'
Tags/Content Warnings: Yuri!!!! Adam is haunting the narrative; Character Death; Funeral described; Caniballism mentioned once; badly handled grief; sex implied and slightly described without detail; the 'other woman' is Adam's former girlfriend/lover!!; Reader not described
Mama take this badge from me // I can't use it anymore
They couldn't recover the body.
Retreating from the battle had been the priority—to save the handful of survivors and tend to the wounded. The corpses had likely been scavenged by cannibals.
She couldn't believe it; they... the angels actually lost. To those hellish spawns. Her sisters had truly fallen; (Lira being found dead was already a blow to the whole regiment, but this many wiped out in a single day...) and the General... and Adam... His halo was all she had left.
She clutched it as if it, too, might bleed out and fade before her eyes. But she wouldn't give it up, no matter what; not even for the funeral rites. It was her last keepsake.
They couldn't bury an empty casket. They offered the First Man’s estate—with that little toy of his in charge—his beloved guitar instead. (How dare she? Speaking on his behalf. Thinking she knows better than he would have said!) After all, it was his favorite weapon, practically an extension of him. Into the grave west of Eden went the instrument and his ceremonial robes. She had never even seen him wear them. It was all for show. A final wave of the hand before the whole thing was swept under the rug, and they could start pretending he never existed. Besides, after that farce they called a funeral, everyone scattered. Everyone had more important things to do; perhaps some only attended the wake to check out the catering. Abel stayed longer, moping around the garden, but he didn't come within a mile of the site.
Good. He only stains his memory. She doesn't want to see him. She doesn't want to see anyone.
Instead, at the back of his residence, in the gardens he never visited, a cross stood with a plaque commemorating the General. That was that. Lute flew there sometimes. Often. Daily? There, she felt closer to him. Did the current—sole—resident of the manor have a problem with that? She had no idea; she hadn't asked for permission. Too bad. What would she do, kick her out?
It's getting dark, too dark to see // Feels like I'm knockin' on Heaven's door
"He would have hated this silence, wouldn't he?" A voice drifted from behind her. She didn't even have to turn to know who it was. That small, conceited little... Ugh. Lute didn't even have the energy for this today. Usually, she’d snap back with a comment insulting the intellectual capacity of Adam’s current babe, to which the other would passively-aggressively suggest she do some laundry. (She doesn't need laundry! The bloodstains add an intimidation factor!)
"Mhm," Lute rasped, not turning around. Her new prosthetic twitched, fingers tightening on the railing. She hadn't shed a single tear in front of the other Exorcists, but now, in private, her face was a canvas of pure agony. "He’d be pissed they didn't play Black Sabbath at his funeral."
"Instead of those Gregorian chants." The girl gave a cold laugh, though it sounded more like a gasp for air. "I can almost hear him complaining that we didn't build him a monument. With an inscription like HERE LIES THE GREATEST ANGEL IN HEAVEN." She sat beside Lute on the bench, glancing at the plaque. Her nose crinkled. She bit back a comment on the silver-haired woman’s appearance.
Even though, objectively... well. How long had it been? Weeks? And it didn't look like she’d changed her clothes once since the battle. Or taken a shower. (It was... well, noticeable.) Or used a hairbrush. But she felt absolutely no need to torment Lute over it. She has boundaries. Besides, she wasn't in the mood. She had changed into dark clothes herself, and her sleep had been a wreck ever since...
"Yeah, except we’d be the ones cleaning that monument every morning." The Exorcist made a sound that the Winner only later identified as a dry laugh. This new, strange truce plunged them into a deathly silence as they stared at the horizon. "Everyone’s forgotten him." Her voice broke. "They pretend he wasn't here, that he never existed; because it’s easier than admitting they’re a bunch of cowardly... Why him? Why did the Almighty have to take him and leave someone like you behind?"
She didn't take the bait. Dammit. Maybe if she had, she could have stung back, and Lute could hate her again, and the world that had turned upside down might have one constant left. The angel sitting next to Lute didn't even blink; she just patted her on the back.
"Do you feel better now?" She swallowed hard. "I know, Lute. I know. At the end of the world, you hold onto whatever you can," she whispered. "Fuck, I know." She buried her face in Lute’s neck to hide her own tears. Generally, everyone avoided Lute because, besides being unstable, she... well, she hadn't washed since that night. But to her, it was the scent of the moment her world had stopped.
Lute was speechless. She blinked her yellow-golden eyes. How dare she? Be kind to her? Slowly, she turned her head toward her, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep and stifled tears. She fought the urge to wrap her hands around that slender, swan-like neck—and something even worse. Lute felt a sudden, sharp pang in her chest. It wasn't hatred. It was a searing sense of shared identity.
Disgusting. Weak. She isn't weak. The silver-haired woman’s trembling hands shakily gripped her shoulders. Totally out of character. Maybe she’d shake her. She growled and hugged her back, letting her shoulders heave. She would never mention this again, not even if she had to walk on red-hot coals, not even if they waterboarded her. "You smell like him," she sobbed. "It makes me think he's still here, and—and he’s not." She sniffled.
They held onto each other as if they were both hanging over the edge of a cliff and only each other kept them afloat. The anger that had always divided them mutated into a desperate need for physical contact—to keep from falling, and from shattering into a thousand pieces. Oh, grief, what you do to a person. An angel. You make them do anything, seeking shelter.
Knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven's door //
Knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven's door
She made a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a snarl. Her fingers dug into the smaller angel's back, nearly tearing the fabric of her dark dress. She pulled her in so tight, as if trying to merge them into one.
"I hate you, you know?" Lute rasped directly into her ear, but her grip said something else entirely. "I hate that you're the one here. That only you know how he laughed when no one was looking. That only you know what a bastard he was."
She pulled back, looking her straight in the eyes. Her gaze was wild, erratic. Adam’s death had left a void in her that couldn't be filled with prayer or service. She needed something tangible. Something that burned as much as the loss. Something to make her feel anything at all, even if it was hatred and self-loathing.
"Don't leave," choked out the person she hated most in Heaven. "Lute, hate me, but don't leave me alone in this shit." She looked deep into her soul with wide eyes and fragilely touched her face.
Lute didn't answer. Verbally, that is.
She abruptly closed the distance and kissed her so hard their teeth clashed. It was a collision. Searching for the taste of Adam on her lips until it burned. A desperate extraction of the last human instincts to cope somehow and forget amidst the pain and passion. The emotions had been building between them for months, fed by contempt and jealousy, only to explode in this way. The line between enemy and... someone close...? Blurred. All that remained was the beating of hearts and the sense that they were both still alive.
"Lute," she murmured against her lips. "But this, so soon after... and the two of us...? I don't know if..." Perhaps she didn't know like Lute, who was born in Heaven, but she had come from Earth. With all the internalized fears and realizations about herself. Yet, she kissed her back, biting her lower lip. Her lashes brushed against her white skin. She pulled her by the hand. After all, she lived here now and knew the layout—spots for a quickie or just where he liked to lounge.
Internalized human fears meant absolutely nothing to Lute. When the girl’s teeth sank into her lower lip, Lute let out a low, guttural hiss. That sharp, physical stimulus, that barely perceptible metallic taste, acted like gravity on her. She pulled her even closer, her hands sliding from her shoulders to the girl’s hips, gripping them possessively and hard.
"Fuck it," Lute growled directly into her mouth, her breath ragged and hot. "You think anyone in Heaven cares now? You think he would have cared? There’s only us. Everyone else doesn't exist."
When she tentatively pulled her by the hand, Lute didn't offer the slightest resistance. She let herself be led. The one who always gave orders was now blindly following the ex-girlfriend of her dead commander.
Mama put my guns in the ground
// I can't shoot them anymore
The Exorcist gave her no time for thought or further doubt. She sank into her lips, deeper this time, predatory, as her knee slid between her thighs. Lute’s hands wandered over the dark fabric of her clothes, searching for skin, warmth, anything that would allow her to drown out that horrific, rending pain in her chest. She was ravenous, clumsy with haste, and completely consumed by the moment.
"I’ve never—never with another..." the girl pressed against the wall murmured with a strange truthfulness and shyness, unzipping her dark dress for Lute. She, too, had stopped caring for herself quite so much after Adam’s death, though not to such an extreme. She moaned in embarrassment against her skin and lightly helped Lute remove her Exorcist uniform, being careful with her golden arm. She looked her in the eyes, catching her breath.
As the small angel’s fingers brushed her prosthesis, Lute flinched but didn't pull away. "Me neither," she admitted. "There was only him. But there’s no one here to judge us. He’d probably just laugh and want to watch... but now it’s only us. Only what’s left of us." She bit her collarbone, drawing a soft squeak, and emboldened, her teeth moved lower, eliciting new sounds. Aside from their sighs and the rustle of fabric, there was silence. The silence before the sensory storm that would drown out their thoughts.
"I know that he and you..." The civilian swallowed and closed her eyes. Trembling, she arched her back toward Lute. "When we weren't... when he needed something more than I could give. I’m not mad at you for it. Not at all. He had... a way with words. No, he had a personality that everyone else lacked. Fortunately for the world." She smiled bittersweetly, wrapping her legs around her. She kissed Lute’s hand, her lips touching her knuckles and then her phalanges.
That confession hit Lute harder than any weapon in Hell. The Exorcist froze for a moment, her breath hitching in her throat. The fact that the General’s lover knew—and that she felt no hatred, only the same kind of painful understanding—finally shattered the remains of the wall Lute had built around herself.
"He had... the worst personality in all of creation." Lute laughed without humor, her voice trembling dangerously. "He was loud, vulgar, and couldn't stand being told no. And now... now without him, Heaven is so damn polite I want to gag." As she began to kiss her hand, finger by finger, Lute felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the chill of the manor. It was pure, raw intimacy. Lute’s golden hand, cold and heavy, rested on her thigh, parting them slightly so she could fit, while the other—flesh and bone—entwined in her hair, tilting her head back. Their bodies collided, no longer barred by fabric. Their hips moved to a rhythm dictated by instinct and mourning. The concentrated warmth was like thermal shock to her emotional ice.
In this moment, there was no "Adam’s girl" or "loyal lieutenant." There were only two fragile beings who, in a final act of rebellion against loneliness, tried to burn together before the world forced them to be whole again.
That cold black cloud is comin' down
// Feels like I'm knockin' on Heaven's door
