No matter how many times Sabrina had been in Lux when it wasn’t open yet to the public, she still couldn’t get over how different it felt without people inside of it. It seemed almost like a ghost of itself, the near quietness only adding to the oddity of it. Everything was still in its place, but not needing to squish in between people to get to the bar or a spot on the floor somewhere still threw her.
She could have called out for Lucifer as soon as she entered, but didn’t want to break up any counting he might have been doing if he was still restocking. Especially since she was only meeting him to go out for lunch. There was no need to rush.
Instead Sabrina headed down to the piano, setting her bag down beside it as she sat down. She slid her fingers along the keys, getting a feel for them again before she finally pressed down on them, starting a fair rendition of ‘Bad Guy’ by Billie Eilish. She preferred singing over playing the piano, but it would have been sacrilegious--anti-sacrilegious?--in the Church of Night if she hadn’t learned how to play one instrument.
“I feel as if I should take some offense to you choosing that song for the moment of my appearance but Ms. Eilish is quite catchy so I will allow it,” Lucifer stated as he appeared in the main club not long after Sabrina began to play the piano. Luci Jr followed at a sedate pace at his heels, the hellhound grown big enough to resemble a wolf by that point. Until one got to know the creature at any rate.
He set the crate he was carrying down on the bartop and dusted off his hands. “I just have a few things to take care of and then we can leave for wherever you have in mind for lunch,” he stated.
“If the song was meant for you I’d have gone with this one.” It took a second, her fingers faltering briefly, but she managed to start ‘Sympathy for the devil’ after one false start. She stopped playing after a few more chords and turned toward him, beckoning the hellhound over. “Or that one about Georgia but I don’t like that one as much.”
Sabrina gave the not quite a puppy a thorough pet, grinning as he turned onto his back to try and get a belly rub too. It was almost ridiculous how silly he could be for something that was supposed to be incredibly ferocious.
“And I was thinking sushi. There’s a new place that’s getting rave reviews.”
“I do love that one. Keith Richards was very interested in getting it just right though I suppose he did take a liberty here or there.” Lucifer shrugged off the casual mention of the Rolling Stones’ lead man with whom he’d developed a friendship with. The man truly knew how to party but he also was quite the skilled student on the guitar. “Right. Tell Charlie Daniels that. He insists that just because I can play every instrument I would choose a fiddle in the South,” he added in a mumble.
Lucifer started to unload the glass bottles onto the shelves behind the bar, fitting the new into empty places left by drained bottles. He glanced back at Sabrina and Luci Jr as he did so. “You may want to avoid him breathing on you. Someone ate a seagull this morning and his breath supports it.” The hellhound also left the absolutely clean skeleton sitting atop his baby grand in the penthouse, most likely trying to offer it up as a present for his owner. Lucifer was getting quite the collection.
“Sushi it is. I have been craving a good roll or two the last few days.”
“Did you catch it off the balcony?” Sabrina asked the hellhound that was happily wagging his tail at the sound of approval in her voice. She wasn’t going to let it lick her though, not wanting to smell like a dead seagull when they did eventually leave. He got another thorough pat down before she slid off the piano seat and headed toward the bar.
“And I trust sushi here since we’re actually by the ocean and not in the middle of nowhere.” Because Sabrina hadn’t trusted seafood of any kind back in Greendale. Not unless it was something her aunts were making and they had teleported out of town to pick it up.
She sat down on one of the bar stools and watched Lucifer move around with the bottles. She’d done similar a few weeks back with Rory, watching her sister restock the bar. “Rory and I are gonna do a sister lunch once a month together. At the food trucks.” It had been the first place they had met up in Vallo. “I thought it’d be a good bonding thing.”
Because Sabrina wanted to get to know her half sister or whatever they were calling it. “And she agreed to it.” Which was good because Sabrina had half expected Rory to turn the idea down, but she’d agreed to it and they’d had a nice chat, even if it hadn’t been about the nicest topics.
“I would assume but he’s also eaten other large things so it may have been digesting from one of his walks.” If he and the hound were alike in any manner, it was living a lifestyle of hedonism. Lucifer just didn’t choose his hedonism to include eating birds and even if he did, he’d choose a better species of bird than seagulls. Luci Jr just didn’t seem to care.
Lucifer paused to glance over his shoulder at her. “Excellent. You two should spend time together. It’s good to know that if anything were to happen to me, you two would have each other’s back.” Vallo could be finicky on a good day and return to his world might happen at any moment.
Sabrina tried not to be selfish, she really did, but she really hoped that Vallo wouldn’t ever send Lucifer or a handful of other people back. She knew it was ridiculous to think that way. No one had any say in who Vallo kept or who it booted out, but this was the only place she would ever get to know him or Rory or Dan or Allison. Even Roz was different here. Their lives weren’t tied to all of the crap back in their world, getting a chance to do other things.
But there was no point in verbally saying any of that. Actually, it reminded her of something else she wanted to ask him and had been delaying.
“How do you…do this without Chloe here?” Sabrina didn’t know if she believed in anything like soulmates, but she knew her dad loved Chloe and the detective wasn’t there. She was pretty sure that Chloe was dead when Rory came from because of a few things said between them. “This other Outlander guy here was apparently flirting with me and asked me on a date and I didn’t realize he was doing either. Roz had to point it out to me. And I don’t know if that’s because he’s just really bad at flirting or I am really bad at picking up on signals anymore. But Nick’s not here and there’s always a chance he’ll come back or maybe he won’t while I’m here, but…”
She wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking. “Just…how do you do it?”
The question caught Lucifer off guard. Usually the conversation of that sort led to him dodging answering, finding a fire to put out or need to attend to, but he was alone in Lux’s main hall with Sabrina and doing either seemed pointedly wrong in that moment. Instead he pulled one of the bottles out and a glass from beneath the bar, filling it two fingers full before knocking it back.
“Day by day,” he replied finally, turning the glass on the bartop, shrugging lightly. “Dad didn’t exactly build us for navigating the trials of relationships with humans. He barely built us to have healthy connections with each other.” While he felt a little less ire these days towards his father, some things took longer to dispel. “Chloe’s mortality and my own immortality were also obstacles to consider though after she took her final breath, she came to my realm and there was no limit on her lifespan there. We are together there. Here?”
Lucifer finally looked up at her. “I imagine you navigate it at your own speed, feeling your way forward. Unfortunately I fucked my way through most of my life so the intricate details of relationships is a new course for me that I am none too happy to be on. If you have an interest in the Outlander boy, what is the harm in a simple date with no expectations?”
It was strange to think of Chloe in Hell or even Lucifer being there. Sabrina knew his version wasn’t like her own, but that didn’t mean it was a picnic either from what he’d told her about it. Even if he was leading therapy sessions now. Rory and her had talked about how the older girl moved between the realms with ease back in her home world but Chloe being in a separate one put a new spin on it that Sabrina hadn’t really considered before.
“I’m not really interested in this one. More thrown off that I didn’t realize I was being asked out or flirted with.” It might have been a handful of years since she’d gone on simple dates and not been in a relationship, but it wasn’t that long. “But, yeah, you’re right. There isn’t anything wrong with that or anything else that might come out of it afterward.” Nick would want her to live her life. Hadn’t he told her as much back when he’d been around?
“And I dunno. I think you’re doing a lot better at relationships than you give yourself credit for sometimes. I mean look at how far the two of us have come since first talking to one another. I think we said we were going to steer clear of one another and well.” Sabrina gestured between the two. “Instead you got yourself an extra daughter and an immortal frenemy in cat form.”
“I am sure what happened between you and Nicholas was real love but a time does come when realistically you have to decide if love is worth giving up living the rest of your life for.” What he had with Chloe was unique, partly because of interference by his father and partly because sometimes there was that one person. Lucifer harbored no illusions that lightning would strike twice but neither was he looking for another relationship. Though in speaking with Mr Vahn he wondered how he felt about just having a little fun.
Lucifer refilled the glass and knocked it back. “Yes, well, I had to learn. I imagine Rory has filled you in on how I found every way not to endear myself to her before finally finding honesty and…” He waved a hand in the air, unsure of what it categorized itself as. Reality perhaps. Giving up flash and expense for vulnerability. “I don’t always understand but that has not stopped me from trying.” Celestials were stubborn and relentless if nothing else.
“The only one who is going to know if you’re ready to move forward is you. Waiting for grief and longing to fade would probably lead to your life fading and ending first,” he added with blunt honesty.
Sabrina was the wrong person to ask to decide if love was worth giving up living the rest of her life for. She’d given her life up at least two times already, dying at the hands of supposed angels trying to convert witches and then later on when she’d sacrificed herself to save the world. But that wasn’t exactly the same as living the rest of her life and somewhere inside she knew that. She’d done that for a time back in December after Nick had left and she’d been unable to get out of the apartment much let alone leave her bed. It hadn’t been a way to live. She knew that now. On some level she knew that then as well, but hadn’t been ready to face that reality.
She reached around and withdrew one of the glasses, holding it out so she could get a glass as well. “I know. Helps to hear someone else tell me it too sometimes though.”
“But yeah, Rory told me the ridiculousness of you trying to make up for all her birthdays and a few other things as well. I mean, it makes sense, you went for like eons of mainly interacting with anyone in Hell, away from those who were your family, and then you like built yourself a family, right? Well, like eons later. Figuring out how to do that again with others when Grandpa was not exactly the best example…” Sabrina shrugged. If it had been difficult for her to figure out how to interact with her own family again after resurrecting she couldn’t imagine what it must have been like without that for as long as Lucifer had been around.
“Trying counts for a lot.” It was more than her own version of him had ever done.
“Well you can take what I say and do with it what you will. Just as I cannot lie, I cannot influence anyone’s life choices. That is up to whomever is hearing opinions,” Lucifer stated as he touched a finger to his ear in emphasis.
He huffed softly, rolling his eyes. “They did not miss me and after the first few decades or centuries, however time in Hell goes, I did not miss them either. It isn’t as if we have birthdays we celebrate or holidays. Bloody created before time even was a twinkle in Dad’s eyes.” Lucifer took a drink straight from the bottle. “As I said, celestials and humans do things very differently. What seems normal for the rest of you is absolutely strange to us and vice versa. Humans were the initiators of family groups for survival and then through the mere affection of each other’s presence.” So he’d done what he saw on the TV or other people do…all at once which was honestly the biggest mistake.
“Though I imagine neither of us is very good with the heart to hearts.” He put the cap back on the bottle. “The rest of this can wait if you’re ready to eat.”
“Are they still like that? Celestials? I know Rory visits the Silver City.” Sabrina was pretty sure that’s what it was called. She gathered up her bag even as she asked. “Or did having humans show up there--do they show up there?” Sabrina realized she had no clue how that part of it worked. She knew humans went to Hell if they felt guilty and then were trapped in their own hell loops that played on that guilt.
“All the ones I’ve met in my world have only ever tried to kill me.” She couldn’t help but envy Rory a bit for being able to go to that realm as well. To know other celestials that weren’t only Lucifer. Sabrina paused as she got to the door, her questions catching up to her.
She spun around to look at Lucifer, feeling a bit bad about dredging any of it up. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about this stuff if you don’t want to.”
“My brother Amenadiel has taken our father’s position. Given that he spent time on Earth as I did, there was no one better to succeed Dad. So things have changed.” Heaven and Hell now existed as a team rather than oppositions as he and Amenadiel remained as close as they had before, something that would most likely make theological heads spin.
“The Silver City is the center of Heaven so yes, souls exist there as well as the outskirts. There are still celestials that think humanity is very strange but some that have learned to live with humans and perhaps understand them a little better.” Which was still a work in progress as millenia of doing something a certain way was hard to do. “Though if you remember chain emails, those were all Gabriel’s fault. I still let most of their emails go to spam.”
Lucifer smiled slightly. “Where I am with my life back there, I am not as…prickly about it as I once was. A lot has changed with the new guard and I was a part of that. However relating to human emotion is still something I profess difficulty with at times. I am trying though.”
The changes he talked about sounded nice. She knew there could only be so many of them considering Rory wasn’t that old and a lot of it would have happened within her sister’s lifespan so far. A lot more peaceful than anything with constant conflicts.
Sabrina stepped forward and slid in for a hug. “I mean, I’m half human and I have difficulty with human emotions half the time. I was also raised by witches who thought cannibalism of dead corpses was a delicacy though so…” She loved her aunts, but some of their ways had definitely been barbaric.
“I trust your perspective on things, dad, or I wouldn’t come to you to ask about them. I’d just go to my therapist.” And while he was great, there were definitely things he couldn’t relate to by virtue of not being an Outlander. Or someone who’d live forever.
Lucifer made a face at the thought of dead corpse delicacy. “I try not to throw some stones as some keep their rituals to themselves and not force on others. Let it be what it is and all that.” It would not be cannibalism for him being a celestial and all but he preferred sticking with the flesh of animals instead.
“Please keep in mind my area of expertise is damnation and guilt.” That and he did not go through the amount of schooling Linda had vaguely told him about time and again when faced with celestial issues. Lucifer had tuned out occasionally, preoccupied with something else. “At least you will get honesty out of me whether you want to hear it or not.” He put his arm around her for a quick squeeze.
Thankfully her aunts weren’t going about forcing anyone to partake in their so-called delicacies and Sabrina had managed to get out of ever eating it as well, but it had been a bit part of witch society. So had purifying oneself in blood before rituals and a few other pieces that she’d managed to squirm her way out of by not being fully involved in anything until she turned sixteen. Even then she’d tried to change the really crazy things. The Feast of Feasts and how they’d all began to devour the witch who sacrificed herself still gave her the occasional nightmare.
“Honesty is what I need.” She pulled away to push open the door for them. “I’ve got plenty of friends who would all try to sugarcoat things or try not to tell me what they really think so they don’t hurt my feelings. If I wanted to wallow I’d just curl up on your couch with ice cream, not ask you what you think. What Nick and I have might not be exactly what you and Chloe do, but I know you love her and she’s not here, so I figured you’d have some insight. And you did.”
Well that was somewhat of a relief. Lucifer doubted he would have anything that would help the heart knowing he was navigating those waters for the first time himself. Something must have made sense in his words so at least one of them would be a step farther ahead. “Good. Hopefully some direction will come of it, a little less burden of the emotional kind.”
He reached out to grab his jacket, slinging it over his shoulder. “Shall we go fill our stomachs as we’ve filled mind and heart just now?”
It wouldn’t exactly be an easy step forward but she felt more comfortable allowing herself to think about actually taking that step, like it wasn’t an instant betrayal. Something that she had definitely been wrestling with before her talk with him.
Sabrina grinned. “I am ready to eat my weight in sushi.”