Entry tags:

!: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: lucifer morningstar, ₴ inactive: sabrina spellman

WHO: Lucifer Morningstar and Sabrina Spellman
WHAT: Sabrina stops in to check on Lucifer's hellpuppy, Luci Jr. Thank you Maze for the name.
WHERE: Lucifer's penthouse
WHEN: A few weeks ago (K fails at timeliness)
WARNINGS: Hellpuppy cuteness
STATUS: Complete!

The apartment had become a lot quieter since all of the hellpuppies had vacated it. Sabrina knew that Nick and their familiars plus her poor put upon regular cat were happy with the peace, but she missed the rambunctious bunch. She didn’t want to mess up the bonding Atreus would be doing with his one and was certain Maze the Hellhound would be annoyed if Sabrina showed up at Pandemonium again to play with the one she was trying and failing to turn into a vicious hellhound.

So that left her dad’s one.

Which gave the added bonus of seeing Lucifer as well.

She headed to his place in between her classes, having a few hours before she was due at her next one. Sabrina had sent a quick text over, making sure she wasn’t interrupting anything with Chloe and him before heading over.

“Dad?” Sabrina called out as she stepped out of the elevator, rolling her eyes as she spotted Salem basking in the sun.

“I will be out in one short moment!” Lucifer called from the Penthouse’s library. Plenty of books lined the walls in the main living area but he kept a few shelves in another room to hold the overflow. Unlike the era of social media and eReaders, there had been a time when acquaintances presented him with signed copies of their work and he kept every last one, taking great care with aging bindings and yellowing pages. The book in particular that he was finding its place to return it to happened to be from a very saucy monk in the Middle Ages who was quite adept at creating new positions for sex despite not having it himself. ‘Divine inspiration’, he called it, though Lucifer would argue the inspiration was rather south of divine.

He finally found the place and slipped it in, dusting off its neighbor before he turned to head back out to greet Sabrina. He emerged from the hallway with arms thrown wide and a grin on his face, quite the turn around from the depressed devil occupying the penthouse not all that long ago when Vallo had sent the love of his life home - and then returned her only a handful of days later. The liquor wall still bore the signs of his attempt to drink Vallo out of its supply in revenge though.

“Hello daughter. I assume you’ve come to see if Luci Jr is still alive?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. He started to motion towards the bedroom where a baby gate spanned the doorway to keep the hellhound puppy where he couldn’t do much damage unattended - and stopped as he saw the gate in two pieces, lying on the floor with no puppy in sight. “Bollocks. Not again.”

Sabrina pressed her lips together, trying to hold back a snicker, but gave up on that seconds later. She’d experienced similar countless times at her own apartment before divvying the puppies out, but there was something hilarious about it now that she wasn’t the one trying to round them up. “I knew he’d be alive,” she countered as she eyed her familiar, wondering if he knew where the hellpup had gotten to, but Salem simply turned over on his spot, wanting more sun. “I just wasn’t sure how much damage he’d have done yet.”

Were the pillows on the couch new or was that her imagination? Tenebra had taken to chewing anything she could at Pandemonium, but Sabrina hardly cared if the pup managed to destroy anything and everything in the place. Lucifer probably wanted to keep his penthouse in one piece.

“Have you tried treats? He was usually pretty good at listening when I used those on him.” Though they probably needed to figure out where the puppy had managed to get first.

Lucifer huffed out a dry laugh. “Well a few expensive shoes for starters, two pillows, and one of the Detective’s new shirts although that one may be our fault for leaving it out as it were.” As if reminded he headed over to the couch and leaned over to check, finding all pillows in one piece and the stuffing inside where it belonged. “He is also impossible to be annoyed at for long which makes me more annoyed at myself,” he added in a quiet mutter.

He followed her gaze to Salem and rolled his eyes. “Please don’t raise a claw to help though I would not put it past you to let him out. On the other hand, perhaps even sharing a name with me might already put him on your mortal enemies list.” By now he and the familiar learned to exist without terrorizing each other. Most of the time. He doubted the puppy by virtue of being a puppy and Salem being a cat had learned that yet.

Reaching into a desk drawer, he held up a bag of treats and shook it. “Oy fuzzbutt! Time for yum yums!” he called. “I’m sorry, wrong word. Treats!” That produced a sound of tiny claws skittering on the floor followed by a yelp and something crashing into something else. The source turned out to be his walk in closet, Luci Jr’s head between the plastic slats of a laundry basket that he turned over by the way clean clothing lay tossed around the floor. “I’m thinking about renaming him Mischief. Mischief Managed Morningstar.”

Salem ignored them both, unwilling to let his naptime routine be ruined.

There was no attempt to stifle her laughter any longer as Sabrina took in the mess that the pup had managed to make. She fished her phone out of her pocket and immediately started documenting it. Had she taken up Nick’s suggestion of giving this particular one to her dad because of the hilarious chaos they had both thought he’d bring into his life? Maybe. So of course she needed to document it all.

“You can always make it his middle name. Lucifer Mischief Morningstar. Unless you want Maze to grumble non stop whenever she comes back.” Because Sabrina was just going to keep holding out hope that the demon would eventually return. It was just taking her some time.

She reached over, helping the hellpup out of the mess he’d managed to get himself into and happily accepted his licks before doling out some much needed pets and cuddles. She was still getting used to not having the three little terrors around all of the time and missed them.

“It's probably my fault he’s getting into so much stuff. I had a really hard time telling them no.” Was it her fault that she found all the chaos that they managed to make to be utterly adorable? Probably. “It was more fun to spoil them.”

“Telling them ‘no’ is a lost cause. I can tell you this from experience.” Lucifer fished out a treat and held it out to the puppy. It disappeared in one gulp and the tail kept wagging. While he wasn’t exactly melting at that face, his expression did soften and he ruffled the fur on its head before returning the treats to their drawer.

He snorted. “So you’re like a grandparent in that way then, eh? Spoil ‘em rotten and send them home.” Lucifer frowned, the line of logic taking him a place he didn’t quite want to go. “Except I am not a hellhound’s parent. He is the penthouse pet, not a child.”

As amusing as the idea was to her, it also broke her brain a bit, so Sabrina wasn’t going to tease too hard with that one. “At least I got them all house trained before I started handing them out.” Enough so that there shouldn’t be too many accidents. Luci Jr was a puppy though.

She reached over, grinning when the hound rolled over onto its back, wanting a belly rub that she was more than happy to give.

“Do you have hellhounds in your version of Hell?” Sabrina wasn’t all that certain if her own had them or not. She hadn’t explored it all that much back home and while part of it was in Vallo, it wasn’t as if anything sentient had really come with it. Aside from the creatures in the forest, there hadn’t been any hellhounds in that area.

Lucifer briefly envisioned the havoc Luci Jr would have created not being housebroken yet and shuddered. He made a mess in his penthouse occasionally but most of the time, it was not that.

“No we did not. At least not in the typical way of ‘hound’. There were souls whose worst nightmare was being treated as a pet and so demons would be their owners so to speak but no there was no guarding of hell or hellhounds.” Lucifer passed them both to take a bottle down from the wall. “Just demons and the damned. Not much variety, I’m afraid.”

Sabrina stayed on her spot on the floor, letting Luci Jr bring over his toys and a pillow and a few other things he could carry in his mouth to show her. She took the pillow out of it and set it to the side, having learned that trying to toss it back to the couch would only be seen as a fun new game of fetch.

“It’s weird how one person’s nightmare is another person’s dream. I know too many people who’ve thought being reincarnated as a housecat would be winning the lottery.” All that laying around in the sun and napping for most of the day seemed to be appealing.

“Well no, not reincarnated as. Still in human form, treated as an animal. Usually treated the way they treated animals in life which as you can imagine from that scenario was not well,” Lucifer replied as he watched the two interact.

Of course the pup then chose that time to reveal he’d filched a pair of fuzzy handcuffs from the bedroom and started trotting back to Sabrina, head held high but still tripping over the cuff dragging on the ground. Lucifer moved quickly, prying them from between sharp hellhound puppy teeth. Luci barked in protest but he did not relent. “Are you sure Maze the hellhound didn’t boff a retriever of some sort?” he asked.

“It does seem like a pretty fitting punishment for abusing animals.” Hopefully the animals they had abused got to go to an animal heaven of some sort, getting the life they should have had. Sabrina wasn’t sure she really trusted any god to manage that though. Not anymore.

She laughed as Lucifer started wrestling for the cuff with the puppy though. Luci had definitely been the troublemaker of the trio. “For all we know this could be what Maze was like when she was a puppy.” Though Sabrina kind of doubted that. “I hear spraying water works but I never had the heart to try it.”

“I always thought so. There is a reason there are no real animals in Hell.” Any animal that did appear was usually demonic in nature or a demon shifting shape. Honestly one of the reasons they felt oddly foreign to him on occasion.

Lucifer finally wrestled the cuffs free and headed over to place them on an upper shelf of the bar, well out of Luci’s reach. The puppy followed and sat down, staring up at him. “He enjoys water and mud,” Lucifer stated dryly. “That I have found out. The only true time out he seems to get is putting him in his kennel and then he just howls until the Detective feels bad for him.”

Sabrina patted her knees to get the puppy to come back to her, petting him when he headed over to her. “You just want to play, don’t you?” She ruffled his head before making a ball appear in her hand and rolling it for him to go after.

“Did he do the shaking all over after a bath and make your bathroom and you wetter than he was?” Because that had happened to Sabrina several times with the puppies when they had been with her and Nick. She did not miss bathtime. Thankfully Salem didn’t need one and Shadow wasn’t as crazy with them. It had to be an age thing. Or maybe it was just part of the puppies natural chaos.

“I understand that he wants to play but there is no off switch to that mood either.” And yet Lucifer’s protest could hardly be called that. The puppy had been a welcome distraction when Chloe disappeared and before she reappeared and if anything happened to it, well, people would pay.

“Indeed.” Luci Jr had succeeded in even splattering the mirror with his vigorous shake and then escaped as Lucifer attempted to towel him off, running through the penthouse wet and happy. “He is lucky I’m fond of him.”

“The older hellhounds aren’t as vigorous with their play so it's probably just a phase.” Admittedly Sabrina didn’t know how old the bigger hellhounds were or how long their puppy stages lasted. She scratched behind the hellpup’s ear. “But did you hear that, Luci? He’s fond of you.”

She looked up at Lucifer, her lips tugging into a mischievous grin. “Though now, I’m trying to imagine you running after a toddling human kid after a bath and it's a pretty hilarious image. Hopefully Vallo doesn’t pull any time shifting shenanigans like it did that one time when you went all young angel.”

“Now he’s never going to calm down. Thank you for telling him that.” Of course the dog heard but he had to tease. At the mention of his previous regression to Samael, Lucifer cringed and shook his head.

“Please never again. Some things are best left unvisited and that is one of them,” he muttered, “and I’d do with a toddler as I did with a puppy - learn while making plenty of mistakes along the way.”

Sabrina couldn't hold back a snicker as she ruffled the hellpup's head one more time before rising. "I think that's pretty much what everyone does, learning from mistakes." She nodded toward the puppy."And you've done a great job with him."

She could tell that the puppy was happy. It had been a good fit and she was glad the two had adapted to one another. Chloe might have been back, but it didn't hurt to have some other companionship too.

Other than her familiar showing up to do his bouts of terrorizing. "I should probably get to class."

Lucifer bent down to pick up the bouncing hellpuppy as it frolicked past, the puppy making a protesting sound before settling into Lucifer’s arms. “Well you did most of it. I just occasionally tell him ‘no’ and sit him down to watch YouTube videos.” He scratched under Luci Jr’s chin and watched the lids over fiery eyes start to lower.

“Ah yes, the plight of youth, the pursuit of knowledge,” he said. “Well don’t be a stranger. As you can see, you are quite welcome here anytime.”

“I know, dad,” Sabrina assured him, carefully coming in for a hug so she wouldn’t wake the sleeping puppy. She’d learned how important it was to get those bits of down time with the puppies. “I’ll stop by again soon. Plus there’s always family brunch.”

Lucifer wrapped his free arm around her shoulders and hugged tightly. “Indeed. Let us know what we can bring and we will be there,” he replied, smiling slightly.