Sunny Side Of Hell

CHAPTER 9

Soon Luce and Thea settled into a routine. Luce would get up around 6am and get ready for work. He'd go downstairs and make breakfast for him and Thea, eat, feed Cobra, and then go upstairs and wake Thea up to say goodbye. He'd then leave the house and start the short walk to the office. For the first part of the morning he'd look over some paperwork, things like disciplinary actions taken during the night and requests for in person meetings, then around 11am he'd leave the office and walk home to check on Thea. He'd never go into the house, but he'd look through the windows to make sure nothing was amiss. After that he would walk around Hell for a while and make sure that everything was running smoothly. He'd do that for about an hour. Then around 12:30pm he would go back to the office and get into his car and head to Purgatory for meetings with his father and brother. Then around 4pm he'd head back to Hell and walk around doing another check for an hour before heading home to Thea and Cobra at 5pm. It was a long day, but Luce had been doing it for millennia.

There was once where he had found it tedious and thought about quitting and going to Earth to live as a mortal, but he never actually went through it. He felt too much obligation to Hell to quit. Now he felt rejuvenated. His mate was here and everything he did seemed to have a new purpose. Everything he did now was for her.

Oh man did he love her. It was like everything about her was made for him. Lucifer was a hard man. He always had to be strong, you can't successfully run Hell without being strong. Before Thea he would let that hardness consume him, he would have never sat down to play board games and watch movies, choosing instead to research new torture methods and would even go out and test some of his research out on newly arrived souls. But now that Thea was here it was like a piece of him had softened. Don't get it wrong, Luce was still one bad motherfucker. He could kick anyone, or anything's, ass into tomorrow, he could torture the worst of them to a point where they would be a blubbering mess on the floor calling out for their mommy, he could make anyone regret the day they were born. But now there was this new found softness to him that only existed for Thea.

It was this softness that allowed him to notice the smallest things about her. The way she would seek out the softest things in the house, including Cobra, and surround herself in them, how she would scrunch up her forehead when reading a particularly intense book, how she would cuddle closer to him, or Cobra, in suspenseful or scary parts of movies, how she would let out the cutest grunt when he woke her up. Everything about her was absolutely adorable to Luce. He had never expected to have a mate. Subconsciously he knew that he should, but it had been so long and he hadn't found one. He had the mentality of, if it hadn't showed up yet, it never would. So the fact that she was here made Luce the happiest man in the cosmos.

He knew everything with Thea was still fragile though. He could sense that she was holding back, that there was something not quite right, that she was hiding something from him. He first noticed it when he walked into that room in Purgatory and she was just sitting there, silent. Every time he had to be in that room, the being that was in that chair was either crying, asking numerous questions, or trying to fight anything and everything, but she wasn't. It was like she was resigned to her fate. It wasn't just that though. The second time he noticed it was on their date. Yes, she was answering his questions, but he could tell they weren't the full answers. Now it was all he could notice. She put this fake air of happiness around her, though sometimes Luce could tell that she was actually happy, and Luce couldn't figure it out. He needed to know what happened to her, but he wasn't going to pry. She needed to tell him herself, all he could do was show her how much he cared about her and that she had the space to tell him. That and maybe some gentle nudges. Yes, he could look deeply into her files, he didn't think that Jonathan would fight him on it, but that was such a violation of her privacy that he couldn't bring himself to actually do it, no matter how much the alpha male in him wanted to.

That night Luce came home a little early, he was missing Thea and wanted to spend some time with her. For the last hour he had been thinking about how she looked that morning when he left, all curled up with the fuzzy blanket from downstairs that she loved so much. The night before she fell asleep on him while wrapped up in it and he couldn't bare to wake her, so he carried her up to bed. He wanted to go home. He wanted to make dinner, a nice potato soup he had seen her eyeing in the cookbook one night when he came home, and play some uno, she had been on a winning streak and he needed to bring her back down to earth.

When he walked through the front door of the house he was surprised. There, on the couch, curled up with Cobra in the fuzzy blanket, was Thea, reading a book out loud. She was so absorbed in it that she hadn't noticed Luce walk in. For a moment he just stood there, watching her, listening to her beautiful voice reading to the dog, and basking in her essence. It was not often that he could just watch her without her noticing. Soon though, she looked up and noticed him.

"Oh hi," she said, with a soft smile, looking up from her her book.

"Hi," Luce said, with a smile to match. Even though he had only been gone for a couple of hours, he was happy to see her. He quickly walked over to her and pulled her into his arms. He then nuzzled his face into her soft hair, appreciating the smell of her and her shampoo. Soon though, he released her.

"What was that for?"

"I just missed you, is that allowed?"

She laughed. That night he made Thea's favorite, lasagna, and then they played Uno until it was time for bed. Luce did win one game, but only one, and at the very beginning. He could have beat her a few times though, but the look of triumph when she won sent such a warm feeling of, what he could only describe as, home that he couldn't help but let her win, even if it meant listening to her gloat. Then they went to bed, snuggled together, with Cobra curled up in a ball near the door.

Hello everyone! I just wanted to give a quick explanation for why it took me so long to get this chapter out. As I said in a previous authors note, I am a college student. Sometimes I have all the time in the world to write and sometimes I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off. On top of a crazy quarter academically, I have been struggling with some personal issues. I started a new medication that has had some pretty nasty side effects, like not sleeping, having no appetite, and an increase in anxiety. I will be on spring break soon and will hopefully get a chance to write more then. Anyways, enjoy this chapter!

-themagicalpants