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She’s still getting used to the wings again.
The hotel is nearly rebuilt, just receiving the last of its finishing touches, but there are still a few unfinished hallways that no one has gotten to yet. The walls are bare without paint, rooms and doors present but without decoration, and it’s quiet. It’ll disappear soon – this little hallway, her solace, when Charlie and Lucifer make the final rounds to ensure everything is perfect. But for now, Vaggie takes the space just to sit quietly.
Every so often, a few minutes of silence, to breathe and relax, have kept her sane over the past week of rebuilding. Her “social battery” has never included Charlie – Vaggie can be at her side every second of every day without even a hint of emotional exhaustion. Well, there are some exceptions to that. But overall, it’s not Charlie that Vaggie needs a moment from – it’s everyone else. Angel, Husk, Niffty, Cherri, Lucifer – they can be… a lot. Hour after hour, surrounded by far too much personality after the ordeal they’ve all just gone through.
Now, though, it’s less about the silence. It’s more about… her growing issue.
The return of her wings leaves her feeling complete in a way that she’s long since forgotten about. But old habits die hard, and well… hers have died their deaths already. Even as she gets used to flight, soaring through the air with childish delight that she keeps to herself, the maintenance aspect of wings has completely escaped her concern. She remembers that wing care is ongoing. You don’t put it off forever and ever until you can’t. Not like she has.
Because it leaves you feeling like this.
This break from the others isn’t even about quiet anymore, but trying to hide the growing itchiness and discomfort of new wings that haven’t been groomed properly.
“Shit! Fucking stupid–” Vaggie growls. She’s gripping the top cartilage of her right wing, trying to keep it in place despite the growing cramps and additional discomfort of that position. It hurts to bend the wing like this, both in the wing itself and where it emerges from her back. But she can hardly reach the right spots otherwise. Feathers have already become compacted on each other from not being picked out, accelerated by their oils not being properly spread across the feathers as a protective covering.
Preening. This used to be such a simple process, right? And, fuck, this is only the side that she can reach. The back of her wings… she won’t be able to get there. She’ll have to get Charlie’s help. That’s a lecture about self-care that she won’t be able to avoid, and she’ll have to talk Charlie through actually preening her wings properly. Just as likely that someone without wings will pull the wrong feathers, or miss important spots with the oil, and Vaggie will be in the same spot that she already is.
But who’s she kidding? It’s Charlie. The moment she makes a mistake, she apologizes and corrects it quickly. She’s more of an angel than some real angels, and Vaggie would jump through every ring of Hell to stay with Charlie before returning to Heaven.
Besides. Charlie grew up with a father who has wings. So maybe she already knows some wing care. Six wings that need constant upkeep must be miserable to try and handle on your own, right? But maybe not. Maybe Lucifer’s powerful enough to keep his wings clean and preened with a snap of the fingers rather than submit himself to grooming by someone else.
Fuck. Vaggie hisses as she herself pulls on the wrong feather – that one needs to stay. At this rate, her wings will feel raw and painful before she’s even done. These breaks are supposed to be short, but how long does she have until Charlie comes looking?
Shit. She lets go of the wing and it practically snaps back into its regular position, the cramp relieved as she stretches it out. Fucking hells, how is she supposed to do this on her own? She remembers in Heaven that it was natural, unspoken, to groom a friend or comrade’s wings for them. Adam had been enough of an asshole about wing maintenance that the exorcists knew damn well to keep it up so they weren’t singled out. Picking loose feathers as you saw them or lending a hand for the oils was entirely natural and easy.
Vaggie takes a deep breath. Hurry it up. As she stretches out her right wing again, trying to shake off the cramp sensation, she turns to the left, pulling it in.
Only a few of the loose feathers come out before she hears footsteps and freezes.
“... Hello?” she calls out. “Charlie?”
“Try again,” a voice responds, and it’s Lucifer who steps around the corner rather than Charlie. He leans against the corner of the wall, arms crossed with that playful smirk she’s gotten used to. His apple-topped cane is held in his crossed arms, and Vaggie scrambles up to her feet.
“Sir,” she says. “Uh…”
“Charlie wanted to find you, but she got distracted by that… psychopathic little housekeeper of yours, so I said I’d–” Lucifer is looking at the walls as he speaks, but then his eyes turn to Vaggie and he… stops. His eyes widen a little. “Oh.”
Vaggie can feel the heat creep into her face. She’s standing in a messy pile of her own feathers, an obvious situation even if she had furled her wings in time to hide them. “I’ll be right down,” she says. “I just… uh, needed a minute. But I’ll be down!”
Lucifer raises his eyebrows, but now he stands straight, cane planted in front of him with both hands on it. “Like that?” he asks, eyes clearly roaming over her wings. Vaggie feels the heat intensify in her cheeks, barely chancing a glance at what mess she must’ve turned them into. “... We both know Charlie’s a little distracted, but those are… uh, I’d be very concerned if she didn’t notice.”
Vaggie grimaces. “They’re… that bad?”
“Not bad,” Lucifer says quickly, and with an awkward laugh. “Just, uh… before, you might’ve been able to say you’ve just got thicker feathering, y’know, but it’s pretty clear now that you haven’t groomed them. At all.”
She tries not to make herself look as small as she feels. She rubs at one arm, though, practically hunched in on herself. “It’s… been a really long time,” she says in a quiet voice. “I didn’t want to bother Charlie with it.”
Lucifer’s shoulders relax and he smiles. Not a smirk, but a gentle smile, almost the one he looks at Charlie with. “Well, as the only other being here with angel wings,” he says, “I can be bothered with it.”
Vaggie’s head snaps up to look at him. “Uh, sir,” she says quickly. “You don’t have to. I can… I’ll figure it out.”
“Nonsense,” Lucifer says, and he gives a dismissive wave of his hand. “Unless you don’t want me to. Charlie does know a bit of preening, though it was a long time ago. And you’ve only got one pair.”
Vaggie stares at him.
“... It’s not a bother,” Lucifer says, a softer note to his voice.
Vaggie takes a deep breath. This is the best possible being in all of Hell to re-teach her to preen, and it’s an offer of relief now rather than fumbling through the process with Charlie. And besides, couldn’t he be her father-in-law one day? This could be… nice.
“Okay,” she finally says, and Lucifer’s grin suggests he’s actually thrilled at that answer. For a fraction of a second, Vaggie wonders if this was a terrible idea.
“Alright!” he says, and he tosses his cane into the air where it disappears in a poof of red smoke. “Just sit where you are, and...”
Vaggie sinks down to sit cross-legged on the floor again, and Lucifer himself disappears in that cloud of smoke before there’s another poof behind her. Vaggie barely stops herself from jumping in surprise at the sudden teleportation, but she holds herself still and tries not to shudder at the pair of hands taking gentle hold of her right wing.
The first time Charlie touched her wings, it had elicited a full-body shudder. Now, she was getting used to it again, but different hands on her wings were still… foreign. She lets her eyes shut as the pair is inspected.
“Hmph.” The noise is ambiguous. “You made some progress.”
“And some damage,” Vaggie sighs.
“Well… yes.” Lucifer touches the spot where Vaggie was last working and she makes a light hiss at the pain. He quickly pulls back again but makes a more disapproving hum this time. “Some progress into butchering yourself, then.”
“I…” Vaggie hesitates. “I can’t tell which ones need to come out or not. Not anymore.”
“You will,” Lucifer says. His voice is assuring, and gentle, and it’s almost enough for Vaggie to melt into herself like a small child. Is this what a parent is supposed to be like? What he was like in Charlie’s childhood before the separation? “It’ll become second nature again with time.”
They fall into silence. Vaggie pulls her knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them, and she keeps her wings flared but still relaxed for Lucifer to pull them as he needs to. This is… much better. Her winces and hisses tell him where the pain spots are, and he focuses on those first – much to her chagrin, at first, that he’s looking for what hurts and then staying at that spot. But the other fallen angel does it to get those areas over with. The pile of feathers around them grows larger as each loose feather is cleared away, and once the sore spots are taken care of, the pain finally dulls to distant throbbing.
“You do have beautiful wings, Vaggie.” Lucifer is the one to break the silence. “Even without grooming. They’ll be gorgeous, after.”
The heat creeps back into Vaggie’s face, this time caused by the compliment rather than embarrassment. “I don’t think they compare to yours, sir,” she says.
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’,” Lucifer says. “Someone who makes Charlie as happy as you do shouldn’t bother with that.”
The blush deepens and Vaggie smiles, hiding it against her knees. “Okay. Lucifer, then,” she says.
Lucifer nods with a smile.
“How do you… manage them? Six wings?”
“Routine,” Lucifer says with a chuckle. He’s sitting beside her to finish the front of her right wing, and as he now runs his fingers through the feathers, it begins to feel more like a massage. There’s plenty of dust, dried angel blood, and debris that got stuck beneath the feathers during the fight, and the itch begins to leave those spots along with the loosened down. “Get them in the right condition, and you only need to do a little bit every day. Plus… Lilith loved to do them for me. Every night, before Charlie was born, it could help her fall asleep. She would do the parts I couldn’t reach, and when she was asleep, I’d finish whatever she didn’t get to.”
Vaggie draws in a breath. The mention of Lilith at all is… don’t fuck up, Vaggie. “And… you said Charlie knows some, too?” she says. “She must’ve helped.”
Lucifer’s fingers pause. Vaggie freezes, and wonders if this little question alone is enough to stir painful memories. But the fingers start again and Vaggie chances a look over. The angel is… smiling. There’s a faraway look in his eyes.
“She came in, as a toddler, and saw Lilith working on my wings,” he says. “She should’ve been asleep. But Lilith only brought her up on our bed and began teaching her to do it. Explaining why Daddy needed help with his wings, and how to do it proper. Charlotte just… loved it. She fell asleep pretty soon, but she wanted to try it herself the next day, so she learned. I don’t know what she remembers, now — she wasn’t as interested when she got bigger.”
Vaggie gazes at Lucifer. He’s got a small but happy smile, that faraway look still there as if he’s reliving the memory. Vaggie smiles, too, and leans her cheek onto her knee.
They lapse into silence again. Finally, her right wing’s front is finished, and Lucifer moves to the back. Vaggie looks over the front. Minus the damage she caused with her own hands, it’s a beautiful job; the wing looks much thinner without the compaction, and she hadn’t even noticed Lucifer giving attention to the oils being spread across, as well. With that part done, it’ll take a long time and a lot of neglect to get to the same state.
“I kept meaning to tell you, Vaggie… thank you. And, I’m sorry.”
Vaggie frowns. “For… uh, what?”
“Thank you, for everything you’ve done for Charlie,” Lucifer says. “Keeping her safe, keeping her so happy. She can sing your praises for hours. But sorry, for how much of my own mess you’ve had to clean up. The last seven years, they’ve… Charlie deserved better from me. I didn’t even know she had a… I should’ve met you sooner.”
It’s the most somber, most serious, she’s ever heard him be. Vaggie smiles to herself. “It’s okay,” she says. “And, you’re welcome. Charlie is… she’s amazing.”
“She really is.”
The back of the wing is finished faster than the front, and Lucifer snaps his fingers. All the spare feathers disappear from the ground. Lucifer moves over to her other side and begins on the back of the left wing. Vaggie lets the right one rest against the ground, finally relaxed.
“... Uh, sir – Lucifer,” Vaggie says.
“Mm.”
“Tell me if I shouldn’t, or…” she hesitates. “Do you miss it? Heaven?”
Lucifer’s hands slow, but he starts again at the same pace. “... I miss the dream I had for it,” he says. He lets out a sigh. “What might’ve happened if they’d been more open-minded, or… I don’t know. I mean, fuck, probably better this way. Adam, Lili, and I in Heaven? Ha, I mean, just a disaster waiting to… happen.”
“Right,” Vaggie says.
“And you,” Lucifer says. “I know you went with Charlie.”
Vaggie frowns. “I don’t miss it,” she says. “I thought, if I went back, maybe I’d feel different. But I didn’t. It just all seems so… fake. It’s all a front. At least down here, it’s all real.”
“Heh. That’s what I prefer, too.”
Vaggie relaxes further as more loose feathers fall. This is… nice. And it’s intimate. Not romantically or sexually, not in the slightest, just… nice. Letting someone handle her wings takes trust, and that’s the sensation stirring in her chest. Her trust in Lucifer is growing. Sure, he can be a lot. A lot. But that’s when he’s worked up, rather than this calm moment, where the conversation flows from the heart.
And again, she thinks of how they’re the only two fallen angels in Hell. That should count for something.
“I haven’t done anyone else’s wings in… I can’t even remember,” Lucifer says. There’s a slight chuckle at the end of the sentence but it falls flat. “Before Eden. Y’know, I had hoped that maybe Charlie would get wings from me, and I’d be able to teach her. Maybe that would’ve been… kept us together, when I…”
Vaggie looks at him. But Lucifer only shakes the thought away and Vaggie doesn’t push as he finishes the back, shifting to now preen the last part. She watches more closely as he gently shifts through the feathers, somehow able to pick out which feathers need to come loose. More dirt and debris fall from between them, and he’s slow but methodical in spreading the oil from the base of the feathers to the overtop of them.
It really feels like… a wonderful massage, right over sore muscles. Or a nice shower after being caked with dirt and grime. The wonderful feeling of being clean, being put back to rights. Vaggie is relaxed, and Lucifer seems to be, too. Perhaps he enjoys doing the work as much as Vaggie enjoys it being done. Imagine that?
“... There.” The King’s hands disappear from her wings after a final brush through and Vaggie lets out a sigh of relief. She gives both wings a shake – no feathers fall free, and she gives them a thorough stretch as the fallen feathers disappear. Her wings appear much smaller now, but far more pretty, with the extra fluff removed. Lucifer gets up from the floor and Vaggie stands, too.
“Th… thank you,” Vaggie says. “That feels so much better. Thank you.”
“Of course.” Lucifer gives her another smile. It fades slightly, and for a moment, they only look at each other. Vaggie isn’t sure if there’s something she should say. But she doesn’t get to think of anything when Lucifer is suddenly pulling her into a hug.
A real one. Not the rushed, painful, awkward one when they first met, when the angel had appeared flustered and manic. Vaggie tenses at first, but she relaxes into it and wraps her own arms around Lucifer. It’s warm, secure, and safe. Nothing she minds at all.
“Y’know,” Lucifer says when they finally separate. “Not to rush you two, but… I really wouldn’t mind calling you ‘daughter’, one day.”
Warmth begins to spread through her chest, up into her face, and Vaggie bites back a huge grin. Calm down. “I don’t think I’d mind calling you ‘Dad’, either, sir – uh, Lucifer.”
“Good!” Lucifer says. He throws his hand out and his cane poofs back into existence. “So – suppose we should return to Charlie? Let her know this is the last hallway to fix up.”
“Yeah, we should,” Vaggie says with a grin, and they start walking.