A/N: Sorry for the improptu hiatuses! I'm currently struggling with a housing issue so most of my energy has been put into that! It's been a rough couple of weeks since I returned from London so I wrote this little tidbit to cheer me up! I enjoy all the time I get to write, though, and they lift my mood so much so a huge thank you to everyone for all the support even when I'm not active :) Out of all the brothers, Lucifer is the one who I could see most as my own older brother (even though both of mine are nothing like him), and I have found a lot of comfort in that since I started playing the game. Because of that, this fic is probably one of the many brother! luci fics that I'm gonna write
Lucifer's head felt as though it were going to split in two from the migraine that had been building up all day. Meeting after meeting, he could barely find the time to eat a quick snack or drink a sip of water (which he often hesitated to tell his younger pbrothers, knowing all too well they would take the situation into thier own hands and, without meaning to, would make matters much worse than if he'd just handled things on his own). Once he finally found time to settle down at dinner, his hands were shaking so badly from the exhaustion he had to simply pack his meal away (somehow avoiding suspicions from the other residents of the House of Lamentation, minus his sixth youngest brother, who shot him a worried glance from across the table). In his office he was greeted with a stack of paperwork so high he began to question how Barbatos managed to sneak the whole stack in without any of it falling down or alerting Cerberus to the sudden intrustion.
By the time he finished the stack, it was already late into the night. The inky black of the Devildom's night sky seemed to silence the world outside of the sins' safe haven (the darkness being one he believed he could never get used to, no matter how many centuries would pass). It was far too dark, even for the beings who could see in the dark, only broken by purple and golden stars that flickered and shone down upon the residents. If he strained his pointed ears he could make out the vague sounds from the house; faint music from Levi's room, with a shout here or there; Mammon's snoring (which he could hear even from the other side of the house, a feat which he would never not be impressed by); a thud from Beel followed by faint crunches and the rustling of wrappers; another thud followed by a soft groan, likely Belphegor sleepwalking once more and being lifted by his twin to return to their shared room; the only brothers of his who he couldn't hear were Asmodeus and Satan, the former likely getting his 'beauty sleep' and the latter likely silently reading (a hobby which Lucifer appreciated for the lack of noise and the distraction it gave his mischevious younger brother).
The demon sighed, loosening his tie and folding it on his desk, standing and stretching his arms above his head. The bones cracking along his spine and joints seem to relieve some of that tension. He heaves a sigh, finally releasing the breath that had been held prisoner in his lungs from the moment he woke up- an anxiety he was far too used to dealing with. He swallows briefly, the dryness of his mouth and throat making it a near impossible task. Had he had any water that day? He recalled taking a sip or two at dinner, however...
Shrugging off his vest, he folds it over the back of his office chair and begins his trip to the kitchen. Lucifer doesn't bother turning on the lights- even if he couldn't see in the dark, he knew this house better than the back of his own calloused and scarred hand. Each hall and hidden passageway was mapped in the back of his mind at all times. Every dent in the corners and tears in the wallpaper from his brothers and their fights, some of them he hadn't bothered to fix due to the memories they held.
His favorites were the ones which his brothers had made, like the dent in the wall from when Mammon, upon the first decade of the Fall, had decided it would be fun to ram his horns into the wall to see if they would stick (and they did, they all learned, after having to pry the demon out of the heavy stone behind the wallpaper); Or the lipstick stains that Asmo had drunkenly left on the wall around the large mirror that hung in the hallway.;The small dents left in the floorboards from Beel dropping one of his weights, or the chip in the tiles of the bathroom from when Belphie fell and smashed a tile with one of his horns, the outline of a book that Satan threw into the wall after a particularly horrible ending, and the carving of a strange symbol into the florboards from a bored Levi- all of them held stories of his brothers being themselves, not simply the embodyments of the sins.
