#the reveal of the ears scene inspired by simphany da kat's animatic

[serasfanfiction]

Inspired by this Twitter thread.

Part 1 | Part 2

Lucifer had managed to keep his side of the deal, mostly by straight-up avoiding the hell out of Alastor. This sometimes resulted in him walking right back out of rooms he'd just walked into, exiting stage left upon Alastor arriving, and one memorable portalling out of a room when he turned around to discover the red head between him and the only exit to the room.

He was suspicious Alastor had done that last one on purpose, but Lucifer had no solid proof he could actually show, so he'd swallowed his measly dignity and all but literally fled. It had galled him to do it, but he'd done far more embarrassing things for his beloved Char-Char and this honestly didn't even rank.

This little game might have gone on indefinitely, if Charley had not called a Hotel-wide meeting. It sounded like she had come up with a new team building exercise and wished to try it out on the residents.

Lucifer had overheard talk about the exercises from Angel (something about being thrown off a building and trust falls?) while sitting at the bar shortly after moving into the hotel, but had never personally seen any himself. Curious, he'd come down to watch, even if he hadn't intended to participate.

He really should have known better. The moment Charlie spotted him, her eyes lit up with that smile he was so terribly a push over for. "Dad! Come join us!" She near skipped over, snagging his hand. "Pleeeeease? I've already made it up with you included! It'll be so much fun!"

"Uh..." Lucifer glanced behind her, eyes falling on Angel, who had snorted. Husk(er? Was it Husker? or Husk? He really needed to get their names down better) and Maggie (Vaggie?) appeared to be long suffering, but present. Nifty was her usual self.

And then there was Alastor. Alastor, who was watching him like a particularly interesting specimen he was just waiting to see what it would do. Like he was just waiting for their king to make a fool of himself or run away.

Well, fuck that! Yes, he could be socially awkward sometimes and he found large crowds of people overwhelming, but! He could do interactions! And it was supporting his daughter - that was always good, right?

Right.

He turned his own smile on Charlie. It was a little too big, but he really meant it. "Of course, sweetie. What are we doing?"

Charlie near squealed, permission given to tug her father over to the rest of the group. She plopped him down beside her girlfriend - noticeably leaving breathing distance between him and Alastor - before taking her place on the other side of Vaggie.

"So, for this exercise, we are going to need to draw names!" She pulled out some folded up pieces of paper, holding them up for everyone to see. She opened her mouth to continue, only to pause as if realizing something. She bit her lip as she looked to the papers to the group of them. Then her eyes fell on her father and Lucifer could all but see a light bulb go off over her head. "Dad! Could we borrow your hat! We can draw the names out of that!"

Lucifer huffed softly, bemused, but handed over the hat easily. A few eyebrows went up from the other members of the group, as if they were surprised he would so easily give up what was for all intents and purposes the Crown of Hell to be used for his daughter's whimsy.

Heh! Jokes on them, because this still didn't even count as the least dignified thing he'd ever done to entertain his kid (because she may be an adult now, but she was a baby once and he may have been absent throughout most of her life, but not even he had been absent during her baby/toddler years. Lilith would have killed him).

Charlie took it, throwing the names into the hat. Carrying on as if there hadn't been a disruption, she explained, "When the hat comes to you, you pull a name out." To demonstrate, she reached in and shuffled the papers. Pulling one out, she proceeded to hand the hat to her girlfriend, who also did the same. As they passed it on, she added, "Once everyone has a name, look who you have! That's who you're going to be saying something nice to!"

Angel, never one to miss an opportunity, leaned against the bar in such a way that every curve was accented. "Oh, I don't need a trust building exercise to find something nice to say about some of you's." His smile was just as suggestive, and while the line seemed to be thrown out to the group in general, no one missed the way he glanced at Husk.

Husk himself gave a slight roll of his eyes in response, but it didn't appear any more gruff then Angel's comment was overtly pushy. If Lucifer wasn't mistaken, he would have said both of their expressions looked fond.

Lucifer tracked the progress of the hat as it made its way around the room, coming to Niffty. Her grin widened and her little hands twitched. "Ooooo. This could use a little polishing." Her single eye peered up at Lucifer from across the room, as she near vibrated with glee. "You don't mind if I polish this do you?"

"Um--" Lucifer's own hands twitch with the sudden need to retrieve his hat and wait. Was she removing one of the strands of his hair caught in the hat and pocketing it??

"Nonesense, Niffty." Alastor's near drawl put an end to her manic episode with ease, his hand coming down to pat her head as if she were a mere child. She certainly smiled up at him as innocently as one as she snagged her paper and held the hat up for him. "I'm sure he keeps all of his possessions nice and clean."

Damn right, he did. So what if he cheated a bit and used magic to do so. The end result was all that mattered.

Alastor gave her one last pat on the head, before locking eyes with his king. Never breaking eye co tact, Alastor placed a single hand under the top of the hat, his smile smug and something close to victorious as he took possession of it, however briefly.

(The image rose in Lucifer's mind, sudden and unbidden, the whisper of a warning, of this sinner wearing the hat - the crown - as if he were born to it. His shadows dark around him, eyes and teeth alight with sinister power.)

Lucifer shuddered. He blinked hard to dispell the vision.

Alastor's smile was all teeth as he plucked out a name. Not even remotely pretending to be pious, he held the hat out to Lucifer. "Your hat, your Majesty."

Lucifier was almost loathe to take anything from the Alastor, his own hat or not. Narrowing his eyes, it was only his promise to Charlie that held his tongue for him (and judging from the little shit's expression, he knew it). Lucifier near puffed himself up, his own smile gracious and over-the-top as he snatched the hat, aggressively pulling the final slip of paper from the hat. He held the smile as he placed his crown back where it belonged, the motion finally chasing away the last of the unease from the vision.

Everyone had either already opened their paper or were in the process of doing so. Lucifier felt it was like being the first to blink - breaking eye contact - but his self confidence wasn't quite so low he couldn't let Alastor have this one. He looked down at his paper, opened it up, and then felt his stomach drop.

Sitting their in his daughter's handwriting, innocent and damning all the same, was the name:

Alastor.

Somewhere, his father was laughing at him, pettily and pitilessly. He could almost hear it all the way down there in Hell.

Lucifer balled the paper up into a fist, eye twitching. He could feel Alastor watching him intently, but he refused to give anything else away. Ignoring the sinner felt like pulling a tooth, but he did it anyway, focusing on Charlie.

"Great! Now that everyone has their name, we can start. I'll go first and the person I have will go next and so forth!" She held up her paper for them to read the name. The hotel's oldest guest's name stared back at them. She turned to him. "Angel, I just want to say how proud I am of you and your progress! We've even found fewer stashes lately!"

Angel leaned on the hand he had braced on the bar, his expression near screaming he thought Charlie was adorable in a way that Lucifer could almost see Charlie suddenly questioning if they were finding less stashes lately because Angel had actually been using less or if he was getting better at hiding them. Just as equally visibly, she shook her head to banish the thoughts as if she found them too mean to think before standing resolute by her statement.

Angel wasn't the only one looking at her like they thought she was just too adorable at that point.

His daughter really was too good for this place.

Still, Angel seemed to soak up the positive feedback, something a little more genuine to the playful smile he turned on the bartender. His little paper read, Husk.

Huh, so his name was Husk? But Lucifer thought he'd heard--

Eh, it was a mystery for another day.

Lucifer tuned back in to Angel saying, "You already know you're my favorite person. You always know just what I need after a long day of work."

As if feeling the awkward tension rising from the rest of the group (curiously, all Husk gave was a grunt, and a highly tolerant one at that), Angel shot a coy look over his shoulder at his audience. "All I meant was a good drink. What did you think I meant?"

Charlie clapped her hands together, shaking off whatever just happened there. "Ooookay! Husk! Why don't you go next?"

Husk didn't look thrilled to have been roped into all of this, but he also have the look of someone who had long ago learned it wasn't worth fighting it. He held up his note, which had Niffty's name on it. "Thanks for keeping the bug population down," he rumbled, just this side of sincere.

Niffty was pleased with it either way. She turned on Vaggie (Maggie?) without bothering to pull out her slip. "I really like your room. It has all the mother bugs in it. I thought they could hide from me, but I found them anyway." She cackled, a kitchen knife appearing in her hand seemingly out of nowhere.

"Thaaaanks..." Vaggie's eye twitched as she reached over and plucked the sharp object out of the maid's hand. It disappeared onto her person, likely wherever she hid her spear. Dangerous object temporarily no longer a danger, she held up her paper. Lucifer, it read.

The devil in question felt a small spike of anxiety. He knew what his reputation was like and how it was perceived in Hell and on Earth. He may have ignored it at the time, but he hadn't failed to hear what Adam had spat at him.

The Most Hated Being in All of Creation.

Vaggie, an angel herself, would have heard all the same spew of lies and truths. He didn't think she thought of him that way, but as Charlie's partner, her opinion actually mattered to him.

As if reading his thoughts (and who knew, maybe she could, he was aware of how expressive he was), her sharper edges softened a bit. "I, uh, I'm glad you're not as terrible as they said you are," she offered, looking away.

Lucifer blinked, refusing to admit there might be tears at the corners of his eyes.

He really, really needed to learn her name. Number one goal after this.

Charlie hugged Vaggie, singer her praises. Vaggie played it off that she wasn't moved by them, but one had to be blind not to see how she melted into her girlfriend's arms.

Caught up in the moment, Lucifer could almost forget that it was his turn. And that meant he'd have to say something - ugh - nice to a certain Hellian. He wanted to live in this nice little bubble for a moment.

Sadly, Charlie herself burst it, turning to her father expectantly.

Oh. Oh, how he really didn't want to do this. It didn't help that when he turned to Alastor, the Radio Demon already knew who he'd gotten.

One day. One day, Lucifer was going to wipe that grin off his face. He could be patient.

He could.

Alastor watched him, waiting to see what he'd come up with. Perhaps still waiting to see if he'd make a fool of himself.

Lucifer forced down the irritation, the anger. Felt his muscles loosen. It made it easier to call up his own brand of charm - the same charm that lured not just Lilith but Eve in as well. (Had lured Adam in as well, but, well, that never made it in the history books.) He looked Alastor up and down, eyes half lidded and smile all teeth.

"With a voice like your's, I can see why they let you be a Radio Host." Lucifer's smile edged a touch bit more towards a grin at the way Alastor's eyes widened ever so slightly in surprise. On a bit of a high from catching him off guard, the little king reached up for his hat, pulling it off with a flourish. He gave his head a slight shake, as a pair of dear ears - blond, like his hair - appeared on top of his head. A movement off to his left caused them to twitch towards the sound before moving back to face forward. "The ears are cute, too."

This was not the first time he had mimicked someone. He'd become a small, yellow version of Ozzie during performances at the House of Asmodeus. He'd fashioned himself white and red wings like Bee's on the occasional party of hers that he had attended.

The times he'd mimicked Lilith... well, he'd leave that one to the imagination.

Alastor?

Alastor didn't respond. At all. He might as well have been made of stone.

Alastor continued to not respond long enough that Lucier was genuinely worried he might have pushed too hard.

For a split second, between one blink to the next, the Radio Demon's eyes flickered with dials. Something unnerving flickered behind that gaze that set alarm bells off in even the King of Hell's brain.

Slowly, as if it were being drawn up by a puppeteers' string, a single one of Alastor's hands rose up. His eyes locked and his own ears - and how had he not known they were ears? - trained forward as all of his attention remained on the ears on Lucifer's head. Claws sharp enough to go straight through metal like tissue paper ran lightly down one of the blond ears.

Startled, Lucifer lost the concentration needed to hold their shape, ears disappearing.

Alastors' fingers withdrew and if Lucifer didn't know any better, he'd say that was disappointment on Alastor's face. "A shame," he said wistfully. "You look good with them."

Lucifier stared, heat rising to his cheeks and it took ever ounce of self control not to leap across the room.

Alastor, as if nothing had just happened, turned to Charlie. Lucifier didn't hear what he said (it made Charlie happy, whatever it was), something between heat and a chill running down his spine as he worked out what he'd seen.

He knew why it had never occurred to him Alastor was a deer. That look had been hunger. A wendigo's hunger, famished and bottomless.

And, maybe, just maybe, an altogether different type of hunger.

Oh, he was absolutely was never using those ears again.

Tbc

Part 3