Chapter Text
A rumble in a gut long paralyzed, Lucifer freezes where he sits. Familiar. He stretches through the shiver up his spine that threatens his long-battled-for composure and looks towards the sound of footsteps.
"It's been some time, Lightbringer." Yeshua says warmly, the sun behind his head creating a natural corona that's wasted on present company.
Lucifer snorts and spits, a gob of unnaturally coloured expectorant splats near Yeshua's worn sandals.
"We need to stop meeting like this." His voice comes rougher than expected as the stirring in his stomach builds. Lucifer wonders dimly if fentanyl could dull the openness forced into his corpse every time he sees the man. Heroin hadn't.
"You look well." Leaning on your crutches so quick? Has this millennia tortured you so?
Returning his gaze to the waves, Lucifer presses to his feet with some effort and tries to reign in his megaphone-loud mind. Knees crack and he feels transparent, arthritic and shining with youth. All pomp no substance.
"Never better, Messiah" He brings all the venom he can to the honorific. He's tired, more than he can ever remember being. "What can the earthly meager do for you today?" Is there a reason you disturb me, twat?
Yeshua smiles slightly, turning slowly as he begins away from the small peninsula.
Lucifer rolls his eyes, the assumption is pompous. This man has never beckoned, never repeated a command. He longs to subvert the bullshit and make him falter just this once. But eternity is forever and he's been bored for most of his life. So he follows.
They make their way silently away from the beach, small patches of grass giving way to a dry field. It’s desolate. Something about the land barely-trodden calls to Lucifer's tired soles so he has visited again and again. They walk the winding path through the brush. It was forged in the decades Lucifer spent walking up and down the peninsula, just to see how long it would take to wear his mark on the earth. As if he couldn't impact the world any other way. As if he wasn't corrosion itself.
If Yeshua can hear the murmurs of all the times Lucifer walked this path echoing in his mind, he has the good sense not to mention. He leads them to a wide flat rock, sitting and patting the surface in invitation. As if he's the one who’s been visiting this place for millennia, Lucifer bristles but sits.
"Peter had a similar place he loved," Yeshua says, settling back on his elbows. "He would sit and weave his nets there, sometimes I think it meant more to him than prayer" he chuckles softly.
"Here to reminisce?" Lucifer cocks a brow. Why do you speak of your long dead twelve?
Yeshua continues undeterred, "He taught the rest of them, I do think they caught more with those hand-woven nets. Though it never mattered. They could bring me one herring and we would feast. Miracles..." He waves a hand vaguely upward. "I think they missed their work, perhaps not Matthew, but the rest who worked with the land. I could not have asked for better preachers. They could have lived to grey though. Could have caught fish, tilled land, gotten sun wrinkled and watched their children grow.”
There is a pause. Lucifer doesn't chat with the Messiah and there’s no reason he would start now. He holds his flat expression, hands worrying with a foxtail he doesn't remember plucking.
"I hear Paul's head hit the cobbles." Yeshua states blandly, "It bounced, you know. I hear it again and again. Echoing thuds in the silence.”
He turns to meet Lucifer's eyes, his warm brown level against flagrant gold. He looks older than last time. Worse somehow than his body sagging away from that cross, wet and stinking.
"Why do you tell me this? Am I the only one scornful enough to hear it?"
Yeshua shakes his head magnanimously oddly casual, more so in his eternity than he was in his original life. "Oh they would listen. Micheal would besmirch his virtue if he thought it might earn my voice. I tire of it. The willingness.”
"Not you, Son of God" Lucifer says, half exaggerating to cover his earnest surprise. "You are the washcloth, you do not tire and you do not dry. If you are not cleaning the sinful..."
"You see my impasse"
Lucifer scoffs, slowly coming to a fucking insane conclusion. But he can’t think of another, "Are you coming... to me... for career advice?"
Before Yeshua can respond he sees the answer in a flicker of embarrassment across endless-love-brown eyes and begins to cackle. He rolls to the side of the warm rock, laughing and coughing. "I –fell-" Lucifer wheezes, still losing out against the stupidity of the situation. Yeshua straightens uncomfortably beside him. "I- " he tries again "- was the first being to ever be fired! What the fuck can I offer the Only Begotten Son ?"
"And whose counsel do you suggest I seek?" Yeshua mutters tiredly. "Shall I approach one of many creatures sculpted in His image and say 'I wish to differ from His design'? Oh you are no first choice Morningstar. I have tried..." Yeshua pauses, seeming to gauge whether elaborating is wise. "You would not believe the ability of a Seraphim to look surprised" he finishes bitterly
"You-" Lucifers' shock has begun to steer away from hilarity to insanity here. "You would deign to discuss such things in the Kingdom of Heaven? Oh Yeshua and I thought you were so dull! Doubt in the trinity after all..." All that tempting and it only took a few centuries stuck with your better halves.
Yeshua shoots him a warning glance . Disdainful, earthbound in ancient shoes, the Prince of Peace works against the moniker. "Doubt is not the word" Watch your step Belial .
Lucifer feels his dead flesh prickling uncomfortably. It always catches him off guard, just when he thinks he will rot in earnest the nerves spark again.
"I see the works. I feel the love always, endless, giving. My heart could no more doubt than the sea could resist Moses, than Eve's mind could resist your methodeia..."
Lucifer rolls his eyes, the Prince always had a knack for thinking in absolutes. Very closed-minded for a third of the most incomprehensible throuple of all time. He slumps backwards, beginning to slide bonelessly off the smooth rock face.
"I tire of this" He mutters and it takes all his energy not to flop down into the soft grass. He has an image to maintain so he settles for remaining vaguely upright, brushing his hand against soil that dries and becomes acrid with his touch.
"Petulant as always," a sandal brushes past his shoulder. Overfamiliar.
"Don’t get cute with me Son of God" he sneers, pushing to his feet. He’ll be the one to walk away this time. If the Prince follows he follows but Lucifer can only gossip with goodness for so long. As he ascends the small hill he thinks of one of his favourite suites and steps easily onto plush carpet. The opulence is overkill, but he finds himself missing it whenever he tries somewhere more subdued. The gentle slapping of worn soles follows as he ducks behind the bar to grab his favourite absinthe and shaker.
The Lord himself, Prince from on high, straight from the Kingdom of God, looks around stiffly. He has one hand on a plush barstool, as if the scenery would bite were it not placated by his touch. Lucifer presses a cold glass into his other hand, bringing him back to himself.
"Ah" He looks down at the drink, unimpressed.
Lucifer scoffs and downs his, almost choking on the garnish of orange as the heady mixture races to his gullet. Hardly worth mixing when his always-three-drinks-away satiation keeps him from savouring it, but he enjoys the process. He turns back to his shelves, mixing something saccharine before snorting a lovely white anthill. Yeshua clears his throat.
"Sorry, how rude of me, want some My Lord?" He punctuates this last with a ridiculous silver spoon. Maybe he is having a little fun.
Yeshua meets his eyes with hilarious hesitance, "Gracious..."
Lucifer scoffs as Yeshua settles on a stool, a sparrow on Mars couldn’t look more out of place. The tattered linen of his robes pooling on the marble borders on obscene. “Oh don't placate Prince, I know you wouldn't debase the flesh so. It can't get in your bloodstream from here no need to be so fucking tense. Was it not you who said 'be not afraid'?" He says the last with exaggerated air quotes and, seeing his hands trailing more than strictly reasonable, hums with the pleasure of blurring reality. He should take 100 years off ketamine more often, always nicer when you come back. He leans across the cold marble towards his guest. The joy-love-forgivethosewhomurderyou bullshit wafting off Yeshua is less oppressive through this haze, he almost looks like a regular man.
Yeshua meets his gaze as Lucifer gulps his second drink, crunching through the rim of the too-thin glass on the way. Shards crunch with ice in the chew he manages before his hunger demands he gulp. He flashes a bloody smile.
"Unbecoming for the Messiah to sit amongst such hedonism, should I call around and find you a stable? Do you long for the poke of the straw?" He grabs Yeshua's glass and throws the contents down as well. Blood and spirit, a pair nearly as old as him, soothes.
Yeshua rises, “I will leave you to your evening, I hope to speak when you are lucid ” he says pointedly, making his way to the door.
“Oh you’re no fun Messiah” Lucifer hollers after the retreating man. Welp, no need to show such restraint now. He grabs a bottle labeled ‘chew ;)’ and makes his way to the chaise. He flops down, shakes out some pills, and begins a bitter crunch.