⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ WIP WEDNESDAY ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
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There was something…off about Lucifer.
Something that wasn’t adding up.
Alastor watched him from a distance. At first it was to get a better read of him, and how long he intended to stay, but the as the days ticked on, an unsettling feeling of wrongness grew in the pit of his stomach.
It’s the mixer that set off the first alarm.
Lucifer followed through with his promise to get Charlie a meeting with Heaven—now scheduled a few days from then—and he and Charlie were in the kitchen cooking up a celebratory meal.
Alastor hid in the shadows, watching the two bubbling personalities with growing boredom.
“Oh, wow, it’s been a while since I’ve been in here,” Lucifer said, wandering around the kitchen as Charlie pulled appliances out of cupboards and ingredients out of the pantry.
“Yeah, Vaggie and I rearranged a lot of the hotel. To make it new and refreshing, you know?”
Lucifer nodded, as if he understood exactly what she meant. “Well, you’ll have to show me where everything is, I guess,” he laughed, opening a few cupboards. “Because I have no idea where that blasted mixer is. I could’ve sworn it was in here.”
“I’ll grab it, let me just—oh, hold on,” she pulled her phone from her back pocket as it started ringing. “It’s Vaggie. She’s out running errands. Do you mind if I?” She gestured to the door.
“Oh, go right ahead. I’ll get everything ready in here.”
“Thanks, dad.”
She left and Alastor was prepared to follow her example, as there was hardly anything worth watching in the kitchen, but paused when Lucifer let out a deep, happy sigh and turned, walked to a cupboard across the room, and pulled out the mixer.
Alastor frowned.
But it could’ve just been a lucky guessed, he reasoned as Lucifer plugged the appliance into the wall, humming a jaunty circus tune to himself. But then Lucifer opened a drawer close by, grabbed a wire whisk, then hopped a few shelves over for a mixing bowl. The squirm in Alastor’s gut tightened.
For someone who hadn’t been there in decades, he sure knew his way around.
Still, that wasn’t too strange. Lucifer was an immortal being. A few decades was probably little more than a week for him. Who could say how his memory matched?
Except…
Didn’t Charlie say she and Vaggie rearranged everything?
His magic, Alastor decided. Divine powers of an angel, and all of that. Surely that would cover finding basic kitchenware.
But even that explanation felt a bit…off.
Something about it wasn’t right.
It was Lucifer’s confidence. The way he strode from cupboard to cupboard without a lick of hesitation or a hint of doubt. No fumbling, no second guessing, no pulling out the wrong drawer, even on accident.
Still hidden, Alastor inched closer, to get a better look.
That’s when Lucifer turned his head and looked at him.
For a split-second, when those red slitted eyes met his, Alastor thought he’d accidentally stepped out of the shadows, because all of the sudden Lucifer's smile was gone, his humming dropped, and the cadence around him became tangibly colder. Alastor checked himself but, no, he was still hidden. Still covered in shadows in the corner of the kitchen, where the lights didn’t reach far enough to give away his hiding spot.
But Lucifer didn’t look away. He wasn’t moving. Wasn’t blinking. It didn’t even look like he was breathing.
There weren’t many things in Hell that unsettled Alastor anymore. He’d encountered demons without eyelids, ones who seemed to disappeared when they stopped moving, plenty who didn’t need to breath or eat for days on end.
Lucifer was hardly the strangest, or scariest, thing he’d seen, and yet…
He slowly cocked his head and took a step around the counter. Alastor’s heart jumped. Lucifer still hadn't broken eye contact. He walked slowly, not like he was scared or nervous, but careful and quiet, like a predator stalking through bushes. Trying not to startle its prey.
Alastor figured he may as well step out of the shadows, seeing how his presence was obviously known. Or he could simply leave. Just meld into the darkness and return to the parlor to see if anything interesting was going on at the bar.
But he couldn’t, for the life of him, move.
His body refused to. His lungs held his breath captive in his chest. His heart thumped harder with growing unease.
Deep in the recesses of his mind, a small, intrinsic voice told him to stay still. To keep eye contact. So certain that if he moved, if he took his eyes off of Lucifer for one second, he wouldn’t be fast enough to see him a second time, and by then, it’d be too late.
The closer he got, the louder that voice became, until Alastor didn’t feel like he was controlling the shadows so much as the shadows were holding him in place. He was trapped, completely and utterly, and he could. Not. Look. Away.
Lucifer was only a few feet away when the doors flung open and Charlie bounded inside, hauling a load of groceries with Vaggie close behind. His change was immediate.
The air warmed, his dark demeanor disappeared and a wide, happy smile lit up his face as he whirled around. “Char-Char, welcome back! I think I found just about everything.”
“Oh, wow, you did,” Charlie said, looking over the counter. “It wasn’t too much of a hassle, was it?”
“Ah, not at all, kiddo. I found may way around. Ready to get started?”
“Yes! Here, Vaggie got the rest of the things we needed.”
Lucifer walked to her with a pep in his step, but as he rounded the counter, he looked at Alastor again, face impassive and cold, and suddenly Alastor was being thrust away. He stumbled out of the shadows on the third floor, knocking into a hall table that nearly took him off his feet. He clutched it, barely keeping himself from hitting the floor, and stared at the wall.
Stunned.
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I've mentioned that I've wanted to write a dark!Lucifer fic and I got an Anon a while back asking how I would go about writing that.
Well, here's a little piece.