Chapter 7 #2
He pulled the scrap of paper from his pocket and squinted doubtfully at the lopsided scrawl. Cwall had been adamant this was the place, and he should know, since he was the primary guard assigned to watch the prince.
The paper read ‘6060 S. Gold Street Apt. E3’. The rusted iron numbers 6060 were affixed to the building door, even if one of the zeroes hung at an odd angle. Luce turned and arched his neck to confirm that the worn sign on the street corner did say Gold and sighed heavily when he saw that it did.
“Well great. That means I have to go inside.” He shuddered, tucked the paper back into the pocket of his slacks, and reluctantly approached the apartment.
Frustrated, stressed and more than a little nervous, he paced the tiny hallway furiously.
Why was he here? He should have called on a Projector first. Luce almost turned and walked back out.
Those little boxes were a wonder, using magic to display images across leagues as if you had no more than a window between viewer and subject.
But he sincerely doubted Foster would answer any message from him, and then Luce would only be more anxious, wondering and overthinking.
No, it had to be in person. He knew his son deserved that much, even if it made him that much more of a coward to be looking for another option.
It certainly didn’t help that he was in a decidedly unwelcoming, surprisingly cold place.
Luce cast a disparaging eye over the cracked plaster revealed by peeling, dingy wallpaper.
The threadbare carpet gave the suggestion of having once been red but was now near black from years of dirty feet and slapdash cleaning.
There was a bag of trash near the stairs next to—oh damned souls, was that the carcass of some sort of vermin?
He shuddered and his nose wrinkled, in distaste and in rejection of the faint odor of mildew mingled with heavy spices that intensified as he climbed stairs.
He found it hard to believe that his son lived here.
His son, who at one point refused to leave the house before his hair was carefully styled and his shoes were polished to a shine?
Impossible. But if Cwall said this was Foster’s home, Lucifer had no reason to doubt him.
He scanned the hallway again as he reached E level, which was at least cleaner than most of the floors he had passed. Maybe he was doubting Cwall just a little. Enough. Luce brought himself up short, spinning on his heel to face door E3 head on.
He had passed through a rift to the mortal plane, he had taken a cab because he couldn’t portal somewhere he hadn’t been before, and he had climbed four flights of stairs in designer Italian loafers that would now need to be deep cleaned.
It wasn’t as if he could simply turn back now.
So instead, he took the last few steps and knocked sharply on the door.
A long, long moment stretched after his knock.
Only a few minutes. Less than a blip on the timeline of an immortal, but long enough for Luce to reconsider his entire life and all the choices that led him to be here.
A baby cried somewhere in the floors below, and Luce thought the child might not have the wrong idea.
Standing in this abysmal, filthy hallway, waiting to see if his son would open the door for him, the King of Hell felt very small.
The door swung inward with little ceremony, and Luce was greeted by the sight of a bowed head of brunette waves.
“Finally! I’m starving,” the unruly mop of hair rumbled, digging in a dark denim pocket.
A wallet was unearthed and popped open, head lifting to lock identical brown eyes with the man at his door.
There was a long pause, and Luce drank in his son’s face, so familiar and yet so different to the face he remembered.
Foster’s face twisted in fury, closer to the last time Luce had seen him. “You aren’t the pizza guy.”
“No,” Luce began, then had to clear his throat to regain control of his pitch. “No, I’m certainly not.”
“Might as well be, for all I’ve seen you.” A snort. “Actually, I see the pizza guy more.”
Luce winced. “I deserved that.”
“You deserve a lot more and a lot less, honestly.” A disgusted shake of those dark waves. “Why am I wasting time talking to you?”
The door snapped closed.
“Well.” Luce forced a smile. “That went well.”
“Go away,” Foster called through the door. “You’re ruining my appetite.”
Two could play at this game. Luce eyed the carpet with distaste but swallowed his pride and sunk down to lean against the battered door, long legs stretched across and almost touching the opposite wall. “Who’s to say I’m not going to wait here and steal your pizza?”
“I’ll order another one, you petty fuck.”
“Maybe I’ll cancel your credit cards.”
“You really are clueless if you haven’t noticed I’m not even using the old accounts anymore.”
Luce blinked. He wasn’t?
“Hard to believe, I’m sure, but not everyone needs you to get by in life,” Foster said with a snort. “You’re not that fuckin’ special.”
Okay, he deserved that too. Truthfully, Luce couldn't say he disagreed with his son. He had struggled to rebuild his self-confidence more than once in his long life, and he was currently at a rather low point. Especially with the ridiculousness currently going on. He was sitting on a filthy floor pleading for his own son’s attention.
“I may not be special, but at least I’m here. Can we please talk without a door between us?”
“No. Get lost.”
“Foster, please. I’m your father!”
“You never seemed to care about that before!” Foster pounded the door with his fist. “Where was that paternal instinct when I needed your love and support?”
“I have always loved you,” Luce snapped defensively. “Always, even when you were rebellious and hateful and all you cared about was your mother, I loved you! I still love you now, even with what you’re doing!”
A click and a rush of air and then suddenly the door was gone.
Luce fell backwards, displeased to note that the ceiling was as dingy and stained as the carpet.
His son’s apartment so far wasn’t much cleaner than the rest of the building.
The smell of old sweat assaulted his nose and Luce hauled himself up, gagging.
“Do you never clean your carpets?”
Foster just stared at him, eyes hard and expression frozen in an aggravated snarl. Luce remembered the methodical way he’d acted in Mags’s latest vision, contrasted with the outright evil of the first vision, and found himself subconsciously checking his son’s rough hands for blood.
Luce cleared his throat awkwardly, still sprawled half across the threshold but somehow hesitant to rise to his feet without permission. Incredible! Permission, to get up off the floor! Yet he felt inside that maybe abiding this situation was the least he could do to begin to atone.
“What I’m doing,” Foster repeated Luce’s words in a slow drawl. “What exactly is it you think I’m doing?”
Luce said nothing, cursing himself for blundering into this conversation and unsure of how he could even begin to answer that without further enraging his son.
“Because,” Foster continued, tone slowly heating with barely restrained anger, “it must be a pretty significant event to drag your sorry ass out of the dark to find me after all this time.”
“I didn’t need to find you,” Luce murmured, sitting up and leaning into the doorframe. “I always had someone looking after you.”
“Yeah? What, you mean Cwall?” Foster sneered. “Not quite the same as being here yourself, is it? Send someone to do your job for you, and you wash your hands of me?”
“Cwall understood that we both needed space; he was glad to do it.”
“I didn’t need space! I needed my dad!”
What was he even supposed to say to that? It was undeniable that he had neglected his son.
“Oh Foster,” he murmured sadly, and let his head thunk back against the doorframe. “I have failed you.”
His son’s expression was murderous. “It took you a trip topside to realize that? I could’ve saved you the effort and told you years ago!”
“I am so sorry—”
“No! No, you don’t get to ignore me for this fucking long, leave me alone when I needed someone most, and then just show up to have a pity party on my doorstep!
” Foster panted, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“You don’t just get to come here like nothing happened and expect to slide back into being my dad like it’s some job you get to come and go from! ”
“Foster, I—”
The unchecked fury and grief in Foster’s expression ripped into Luce’s chest and gripped his heart like a vice. “I was grieving! I never expected you to fucking disappear!”
His son was in so much pain, and Lucifer felt the burden of the guilt.
He did this, not only by neglecting the boy, but by keeping pieces of the truth from him.
There was so much Foster didn’t know about what had happened back then, and Luce wasn’t sure he knew how to broach that topic now.
This moment felt like the worst time to try, but he couldn’t be sure Foster would give him another chance.
“I never meant to hurt you,” Luce’s voice was hoarse and tight. “I’ve made such a mess of things between us. I will always regret how events unfolded that day.”
“Regret?” Foster spat. “You were glad to be rid of her, and I was too much of a reminder of your mistakes. My pain was too uncomfortable for you, so you ran away instead of being there for me.”
“Don’t you dare pretend I didn’t love your mother!” Luce snapped. “I couldn’t give you what you were asking for—no matter how much we both wanted it—and I saw how angry it made you. I thought you needed space to come to terms with it; that you would come home when you were ready.”
He had been waiting to have that difficult conversation with his son when Foster returned. When he hadn’t, Luce had assumed he wasn’t ready. Now he was seeing the error of his assumptions firsthand.