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Moxxie's first thought, when he wakes up, is that Blitzø's broken into their apartment again.
He groans, rolling over slightly to look at Millie. She's still out, snoring, her anti-snore strip somehow stuck on the pillow next to her face. She's curled up on one side and sprawled out on the other.
The air in Pride is somehow drier at night than it is during the day. The fan in their window hums. Even blowing, it's too hot for Moxxie to sleep deeply. Or longer than a few hours. Their bedsheet is balled up on the floor across the room, where Millie has kicked or thrown it in her sleep. The water in the baking sheet she placed beneath the window fan is half-evaporated. She says that helps. Moxxie wouldn't know, still feels dry to him. He's still a Greed Imp, he supposes.
The air conditioning for the whole floor is busted, and it'll be weeks, if ever, before it's fixed. And this time of year, that means there's only a few hours a night that are sleepable, and he's missing some of them now. Great.
The noise that woke Moxxie is just hoofsteps, around their kitchen, sounds like… Just Blitzø again. There's no point in getting up to confront him, he won't stop doing this, he's probably just eating Moxxie's snacks.
And Moxxie really shouldn’t be eating those, anyway, not that he has the energy to stop Blitzø from taking them.
He's already halfway back to sleep when he hears it again and jolts completely upright in bed. Someone's knocking at their door.
Blitzo would never knock.
Moxxie's pistol is in hand before his hooves hit the floor. Mag in place, hooves muffled by the rug.
The bedroom air feels like ice.
Not seven years ago, this was him. It's simple: you knock, you wait, they answer, you shoot. It's quick and clean. Makes examples. Builds dread. That's why they favored it.
The knock repeats itself. Rhythmic and firm, but as polite as a midnight knock could possibly be.
Moxxie borrows Millie's slippers on the floor to keep his steps muffled. He already knows where they are. Doesn't want to lose the edge. Checks brass, moving forward.
He's chilled to the bone now, and he doesn't think twice about answering the door. There's no reason to worry. He was always the best and fastest shot out of all of Crimson's enforcers.
There's no reason to worry.
Moxxie's best cover at the door is the fridge to his left. That's if he makes it onto the counter first. He won't have much time to do that when he opens the door.
The other side is a different story. The door is a botch job like the rest of the floor. Swings out into the narrow hallway. Hingeside is useless: utility closet on the dead end.
It's a tight squeeze for even a guy Moxxie's size. The guy can't be much taller than him and even fit down the hallway. It'd make impotent cover. There's only one spot someone could really be standing, and it'll be the first spot exposed when he opens the door.
And if there's more than one, they'll have to be nearly single-file up the hall. Moxxie can handle that. There's no room to position an ambush without taking the neighbor's door off. And Crimson wouldn't stand for that. Too messy.
You always keep the neighbors happy.
Moxxie takes a breath, waiting for the knocking to repeat before he opens the door, gun raised.
Well, aiming for the chest, the only thing Moxxie really guessed right was the height.
He only stands about a head taller than Moxxie, and he's absolutely beautiful. His skin and hair are so fair and polished, it looks like the city air has never touched him.
Sure, he recognizes the King of Hell. Everyone recognizes him. Everyone has seen him in pictures or on television, at least, even though he hasn't made many public appearances in at least as long as Moxxie can remember.
That's Lucifer fucking Morningstar standing there in the doorway.
And Moxxie is pointing a gun at him.
Is this how he dies? Oh, Satan.
A chuckle. “Wrong guy.”
This is definitely how Moxxie dies.
But Lucifer's laughing now at the dumb look on his face. “Just a joke. You can relax. I'm not so delicate.”
He's so gorgeous though, so perfect, that he should be so delicate. He should shatter in the wind. The hallway should be dark. The kitchen should be dark. Is he emitting light? Is he really made out of light?
Moxxie's hand trembles around the gun he realizes now that he still hasn't lowered. Wracking his brain for something, anything to say, he chokes out, “I'm sorry, your- your Majest-” He coughs. “I'm sorry.”
Lucifer looks Moxxie up and down, studying the old t-shirt he suddenly feels self-conscious in, and clears his throat. “No, no. I'm sorry, son. My fault. I didn't realize what time it was.” His eyes rest on Moxxie's frayed neckline, and he asks. “Are you the one that saved my Stolas?”
Okay. That sounds like a good thing. If that's what this is about, maybe Moxxie doesn't die tonight.
He sucks in a breath. “…Yes?”
“Well,” Lucifer chuckles. “That's good. Can you imagine if I'd got the wrong place?”
“Hehe… yeah,” Moxxie agrees.
Lucifer stands in the doorway, just as awkwardly silent. They both stay like that until Millie comes out, in her nightgown, wielding a hammer as big as she is.
It crashes to the floor as she looks between Moxxie and, “Na- Lucifer?”
But she's only stilled for a moment before she glares Moxxie's way. “Now, why would you leave him standing in the doorway, Mox? Get in here, your Majesty, sit down.”
Lucifer nods, stepping through the doorway with a “Yes, ma'am.” And he does just as she says, sitting delicately at their table, crossing his ankles, his back straight. He's even small enough to sit comfortably in an Imp-sized chair.
Moxxie doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. He may die yet.
“Can we get you a coffee, sir?” Millie's voice is sweet as can be. Like she can make this normal by acting strongly enough that it is.
“If it's no trouble, please,”
No trouble. Yep. There's no trouble at all in hosting the King of Hell in your cramped kitchen, wearing your pajamas at two in the morning.
Millie gives Moxxie a look that turns him on his hooves straight to the coffee pot.
Alright, coffee. He can do coffee. They gave him Millie for the moments like these, he just knows it.
They're still pretending this is normal. This is normal.
The King of Hell is sitting at their kitchen table, politely sipping their cheap coffee— with sugar and oat milk, because they don't have any cream. This is normal.
After ensuring that Moxxie gets his coffee after pouring Lucifer his, Millie sits across from Lucifer with her own mug. And she's talking to him like this is normal.
He asks them about Stolas, about Striker, about Wrath in general. Millie answers most of his questions, while Moxxie does his best to keep up.
He's not shaking from the coffee. He doesn't think he's cold, either, but he trembles as if he is, overly conscious of his bare legs.
As melodic as Lucifer's tone is, and as pretty as his lips are on Moxxie's coffee mug, there's the faintest scent of anger lingering underneath. It's a deeply repressed, powerful, rolling fury. His unbelievable beauty and his perfect performance as guest to Millie's hostess can only distract so much from that scent.
Moxxie must be wearing his thoughts on his face a lot more than he thought, because Lucifer interrupts himself to say, “You're okay, son. Try to relax a little.”
Moxxie's stomach flips. He sputters a moment, trying to come up with anything to say. He settles on, “How is Prince Stolas doing?”
Lucifer's face somehow softens even more as he smiles at Moxxie. “He's going to be alright. He's healing.”
“Oh, thnn-” Millie cuts herself off, instead saying, “Glad to hear it. He had us real worried for a minute there.”
It's an understatement of the highest magnitude. Moxxie can still see Stolas broken and bleeding in the backseat of the van, unresponsive to Moxxie yelling at him as they sped Inter-Ring.
Lucifer nods. “He had us all worried.” He sips from his coffee, and ever so gently taps his nails against the side of the mug. It makes him sound as ceramic as the mug. He looks it too, his skin impossibly smooth and poreless, evenly off-white and matte in the kitchen light. He looks thoughtful for a few moments, then asks, “And how do you two know my Stolas?”
Moxxie feels all the air leave his body. What do they say to that? What can they say? Fuck, they can't lie to him, either. Lucifer can tell when somebody's lying, everyone knows that.
What do they tell him about Blitzo and Stolas? What do they say about the business? Do they mention Stolas's Grimoire?
What do they tell him that doesn't get them all killed?
How much does he know already?
Millie takes the lead as they navigate their explanations. Somehow they manage, without lying, not to say that they, or Blitzo— or Stolas, for that matter— had done anything illegal. They manage not to say it, but Moxxie is sure Lucifer has an idea.
He doesn't ask that many questions about their work at all, really. He seems disinterested in the obvious holes in their story. It's as if he's agreeing not to know. He smiles, sips his coffee, practically winks at them, and instead he just starts talking to them about Stolas again.
“I hope that this whole… incident,” Lucifer says— and incident is quite the choice of word for all of this— “doesn't ruin Wrath for him. He's always loved Wrath.”
“And Wrath loves him! We'd hate for him to stop visiting.”
Some of the Ars Goetia are better known in some Rings than others, of course… but Stolas in Wrath? Between almanacs and crop cursings and harvest predictions, he's pretty popular there. Not so much in Greed. Moxxie remembers when he barely recognized his name.
“The folks always love seeing him.”
Lucifer nods along with Millie, looking much more relaxed. “And how long have you been living out of Wrath, darling?”
Millie keeps the conversation firmly in Wrath while Moxxie pours everyone another cup of coffee. Lucifer chuckles, his voice like chiming bells, insisting on stirring the sugar into his own coffee, rather than letting Moxxie do it. His fingers are paradoxically cold and tissue soft on the back of Moxxie's hand.
It's very hot in this kitchen. Moxxie might melt. He watches Lucifer's lips move, several seconds behind understanding him ask Millie, “Is he alright?”
And Millie— oh, Millie— says, “Oh he's fine, Sir. He's distracted by how pretty you are, that's all.”
This is the night Moxxie dies.
But Lucifer just chuckles along. He leans a little closer Moxxie's way, saying, “That's alright, son. I know it's a lot.” His posture shifts into one much more relaxed. He's visually smaller than he was just a moment ago, and he smells like spiced apples. Fuck, why did Moxxie just sniff the King of Hell?
Lucifer keeps Millie talking,
Lucifer looks at the light creeping in through the window— it looks like time occurs to him as a distant acquaintance— and stands up.
He takes Millie's hand in his own and presses a kiss to the soft flesh of her inner wrist. When he pulls away, he leaves behind a golden bracelet— serpentine, with small gems for eyes— wrapped around her wrist.
Moxxie's heart drops as Lucifer takes his hand to repeat the gesture. His breath is impossibly cool on Moxxie's skin, his lips as. delicately soft as rose petals. He doesn't linger, his touch gone as quickly as it came. The jewelry is cold, sensationally bizarre where its weight drags.
“You two need anything, I'm yours,” he says seriously.
For a long moment, Millie is as stunned silent as Moxxie is.
“There, then,” Lucifer says, putting his hat and gloves back on. “I have to be going now. Charlie's gonna kill me if I'm not back before breakfast.” He chuckles, barely waiting for them to nod along. “You take care of each other.”
“Oh, we will.”
Lucifer's gone in a moment, leaving the kitchen in silence. Moxxie finds himself shaking, and turns to Millie. Her shoulders are shaking as she laughs disruptively.
Moxxie laughs too, because what else can he do? “What was- what-?”
Catching her breath, Millie hics and nods. “I'm callin' Blitz.”
Oh, they should. They really should, and Moxxie doesn't feel even a little bad about waking Blitzo up. As Millie turns herself around back to their bedroom, he says to her, “I'm gonna scream.”
She calls back, “Me too, Mox. What the fuck?”