Welcome to Hell, Bitch!

His words are lost when you cup his cheeks, pulling him closer until your faces are inches from each other. His eyes widen at the proximity, which, combined with the way your hands squish his cheeks, makes for quite the adorable sight.

He lets out an awkward chuckle, unsure what the sudden affection is all about. “Uh, honey? What’s goi- mmph!”

Once again, you don’t let him finish, instead crashing your mouth onto his. The suddenness of the action, combined with the intensity of your passion, makes his brain turn fuzzy, all coherent thought effectively lost and replaced with the sensation of your lips moving against his. His cheeks glow, literally, in the dim light of the hall, illuminating the small space around you with a shining golden light.

There’s a whumpf! as his wings jump out from his back, a flurry of feathers falling to the ground from the suddenness of their appearance. They flutter rapidly, struggling to catch up to the sudden influx of emotions.

Before he can even melt into the kiss, you pull away with a bright, too innocent smile. Pressing one final peck to the place where his nose would be if he had one, you step away, savouring the glowing, speechless expression on his face and wishing you could take a picture to remember this moment forever.

“Okay, thanks! I’ll see you later!” you say as you walk past him at a brisk pace, trying your best to stifle your laughter.

Lucifer doesn’t move, still standing there with a slackened jaw and rumpled feathers twitching behind him. It takes a moment for the shock to wear off, at which point he shakes his head and turns to face the direction you went off in (you’ve already disappeared), now expressing pure confusion and indignation.

He sputters, before exclaiming in a voice much too high to carry any dignity, “What the hell was that?! You just… you just attack me out of nowhere, and then leave me all high and dry?! Nuh uh! Not happening! No way! You get back here right now and finish what you started, missy, or so help me…”

You hear the sound of wings flapping, and the giggles finally burst out of you as you quicken your pace. There’s no point, since you know he can catch up to you easily, but the thrill of the chase is half the fun.

As predicted, he catches up fairly quickly, and you squeal as your feet leave the ground. Lucifer’s arms are wrapped firmly around your waist, heat radiating from his form and making your skin prickle with both the warmth and the anticipation.

“Let’s see how you like being teased, you little brat.”

Why does a tree even need a guard? It’s not as if the humans know of its existence, and they never leave the garden anyway. Besides, even if they did take a bite of the fruit, he doubts it could have lasting consequences like the kind they warn him about to make the job seem more important. It’s an apple. The only harm it could do is if they choked on it. He still suspects the only reason they came up with this punishment is so they could be rid of him for a bit.

No matter how pointless the job is, however, he has no choice. It’s his duty to guard it as punishment for something that wasn’t really his fault. He didn’t mean to set fire to Sera’s robes, the fireworks just went off before they were supposed to. A totally harmless accident (well, he supposes it wasn’t harmless to Sera’s robes, but they were easily fixed) that led to an entire month of punishment.

It’s not too bad, he supposes. It could be worse, he reminds himself. At the very least, he has himself for company, and in his opinion, he is an excellent listener, and he doesn’t pretend to listen to his ramblings while (not so) secretly thinking of an excuse to leave. He can’t say that about any of his coworkers now, can he? He can be his own best friend. He’s a cool guy! He knows a lot about ducks, he has a great sense of humour, and–

Oh, who is he kidding? He sucks, too. He can’t even be mad at the others for wanting to be free of him; if it were possible to leave behind the parts of himself that everybody else deemed ‘too much,’ he’d probably join them. But he can’t, and that knowledge creates a hollow ache in his chest that he’s grown all too accustomed to.

He groans, leaning forward until his head meets his knees. He closes his eyes, allowing the darkness to overtake him in the hopes of a distraction from his own thoughts before he can descend into another spiral. If he’s lucky, the emptiness of the void will seep into his brain and he won’t have to think about what a pathetic failure he is for a few minutes.

“Hi!”

The sudden voice makes him yelp, and his head shoots up as his wings flare, almost whacking the intruder in the face. It would serve them right, he thinks, before he looks up and sees a familiar face beaming down at him.

Never mind.

“You know, you should really think about investing in one of those bells,” he says as his heart calms down, your soothing presence already working its magic on his frayed nerves. “Maybe then you wouldn’t scare me half to death every time you visit.”

“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?” you ask with that beautiful, infuriating grin as you lower yourself to the ground. He shuffles over on the root he’s sitting on without even thinking about it, making space for you to sit. You do so, crossing one leg over the other. “I’d miss your screams too much.”

“Okay, I did not scream–”

“You so did–”

“–I yelped, and it was a very normal noise–”

“It was cute.”

Whatever retort is about to come out of his mouth is quickly replaced by a wheezy sputter, the finger he has raised in the air falling limp. No matter how many times you compliment him, it always catches him off guard. He hopes the heat that rushes to his cheeks isn’t as visible as he fears it is.

Thankfully, you don’t push the teasing for once. Even if he wouldn’t mind hearing you call him cute again– Wait, who said that?

“Sooooo… how have you been?”

Ah, there it is. The dreaded question. Whenever anybody else asks that, he knows they’re just being polite. They don’t actually care how he’s been, so he can just plaster on that grin of his and say, “I’m fine!” and then watch as they go on their merry way. But you actually ask that question looking for an answer. An honest answer that he can’t give because he doesn’t even know it.

“I’m fine!” He tries to sound assuring, but his voice is too squeaky and his smile too wide. He clears his throat and tries again, forcing his smile to relax and lowering his voice to a much more normal pitch. “I-I’m fine. Seriously.”

Your eyes narrow, and he feels the sudden urge to shrink into his robes. He needs to change the subject before you ask again and he’s forced to confront the feelings he’d been having before your appearance.

“How are the humans doing?” It’s the first question he can think to ask. He didn’t see a whole lot of them before being banished here, and as a naturally curious being, he can’t help but wonder how the new Earth species is faring.

You think for a moment, leaning back on your hands. “They’re… okay, I guess. Lilith is nice, at least. She was very polite when I went to visit them, if a little standoffish. Though I think that was mostly because of Adam.”

“Adam?” he questions, trying to remember the difference between the two. “Is he the one with the long hair or the one with the beard?”

You chuckle. “The one with the beard. He’s… uh… how do I put this nicely?”

“A jerk?”

“An asshole,” you say at the same time, seemingly having given up on trying to find a politer way to describe the first man.

Lucifer lets out a gasp, his hands flying to his face and squishing his cheeks together in a comically exaggerated expression of shock.

“Such language!” he scolds, as the shock turns into a disapproving frown. “What would the Seraphim say?!”

You laugh, and suddenly the ache in his chest has nothing to do with loneliness or doubt, and everything to do with you. Making you laugh like this, so open and unguarded, never fails to make him swell with pride, sinful as he knows it is to feel such a thing.

Though if it feels this good, then maybe sin doesn’t always have to be such a bad thing.

“Oh, shut up,” you retort, giving him a shove. There’s almost no force behind it, but it’s the suddenness of the action that makes his wings flare once more as he almost falls off the root. Once the shock fades, he lets out a laugh of his own.

“No, you shut up!” He pushes you back, and unfortunately your reflexes aren’t as quick as Lucifer’s, so you end up failling onto the ground, your eyes wide and mouth open in a perfect ‘O’ shape like you’re struggling to process what’s just happened.

Lucifer can’t help it. He bursts into more laughter—louder this time, and more free—at your absurd expression. He laughs so hard he ends up losing his balance as he leans forward, and falls onto the ground beside you, curling in a ball on his side with his arms over his stomach as he struggles to breathe (thank God he doesn’t have to). It doesn’t take you long to join him, collapsing right next to him.

You’ll both probably get a scolding later for muddying up your pristine robes, but he can’t bring himself to care about the opinions of others for once. In this fleeting moment that he wishes could last an eternity, his world has narrowed down to just you and him, rolling about in the grass under the shade of the apple tree.

It takes a few minutes for you both to calm down. When you finally do, taking a moment to look up at the sky and catch your breath, he feels your hand slip into his. He turns his head, not worrying so much about the blush this time.

“You okay?” you ask. Your hair is mussed, your cheeks flushed, and there’s a grass stain on your face. He’s sure he looks much the same. He smiles, squeezing your hand.

“Never better,” he says, and this time, he thinks he might actually mean it.