Oliver still wasn't sure, entirely, how he ended up here, nursing a drink in an empty nightclub that reminded him painfully of Verdant in the glory days when he'd run it side by side with Tommy, though Lux- true to its name- was a million times more decadent than Verdant had ever been. He should have been in Star City, with William and with Thea and with Felicity. Home, with his family. He shouldn't even have left. But he'd needed time to… think. To process. That could only be done with distance, and the part of his brain that was always looking for threats, for targets, had sent him here, after the man who claimed to be the Devil and granted favors to those who sought him out, provided they caught him in the right mood.
"Oliver Queen," said a voice behind him, one that he'd never heard but was sure belonged to the infamous Lucifer Morningstar. "Come to expand your vigilante operations and build a lair beneath my nightclub as well?" Oliver stiffened. He had no idea how Lucifer knew that he is- or rather, was- the Green Arrow, or how he knew about the old lair underneath Verdant, but then, Lucifer Morningstar had a reputation for knowing things he shouldn't.
"I actually don't use the lair underneath Verdant anymore," Oliver said without turning, seeing no point in pretense. "It was compromised about two years ago. I came to talk."
"Ah, here for a favor, are you?" Lucifer asked, something eager in his voice. "I must admit, I didn't realize that my reputation had spread as far as Star City, but I'm happy to oblige."
This time, Oliver does turn to look at him. He wasn't sure what he expected the self proclaimed ruler of Hell to look like, but the tall, dark haired man standing in front of him, wearing a thousand dollar suit and a wicked smile, wasn't it.
"No," he said flatly, though there was a part of him that leaped at even the thought of there being a way to make his indictment and Agent Watson's investigation just…disappear. Lucifer looked downright disappointed at his response. He moved toward the bar, reaching over it for a bottle of scotch and a glass with an inhuman, feline grace. He gestured toward Oliver with the bottle, to which he replied with a shake of his head. Lucifer nodded, filled his own glass, and set the bottle down on the bar. The room echoed with the resounding chink of glass hitting glass. He took a sip of his drink and leaned back against the bar, bracing his elbows on the edge of it. Oliver watched him warily out of the corner of his eye. There was something about Lucifer Morningstar that set him on edge.
For a long while, neither of them spoke. Lucifer finished off his drink, setting his empty glass on the bar next to the bottle of scotch.
"So tell me," he said, turning to face Oliver, his smile dark and dangerous, lascivious and teasing and a million other things besides, things Oliver didn't know how to put names to. "What is it you truly desire?"
"I…" Oliver said hesitantly. The world seemed to fall away, until nothing existed but himself and Lucifer Morningstar's obsidian eyes and a void that he might fall into if he looks at it too closely. It occurred to him, in the small part of his mind that was still, well, his, that this was some sort of magic, and the visceral need to get as far away from any form of magic as possible couldn't quite overcome the strength of Lucifer's hold on him."I want to go on a honeymoon with my wife." He lingered on the word wife. It was still new- new and beautiful and amazing- to him that he was married to Felicity. "Leave William with Thea for a few days and just…get away from it all."
"Oh, how nauseatingly pedestrian," Lucifer groaned, slumping back against the bar, breaking the spell in an instant. "I expected more from the Star City vigilante."
"I'm sorry," Oliver snapped, an unexpected flare of anger burning away the remnants of the trance. "Is what I want out of my life boring to you?" He resented the implication that Lucifer had been intending to use him as some form of cheap entertainment. He hates the feeling of being used, in general.
"Yes," Lucifer said brusquely, pretending to stifle a yawn. "'I want to go on a honeymoon with my wife,'" he added, mocking. "Do you have any idea how many men want to go on honeymoons with their wives?"
"None!" Oliver shouted, stalking away from the bar and starting to pace, to Lucifer's apparent surprise. "Because they don't have to just want to!" He continued pacing until he'd calmed down a bit, silently cursing his outburst. Revealing too much personal information to someone who may or may or not have been the Devil probably wasn't the best idea.
"My apologies," Lucifer said. There was something strange in his voice. He sounded almost…contrite. "I didn't realize that I'd struck a nerve. I didn't intend to anger you." Oliver suspected that that wasn't entirely true, but he let the matter lie.
"I have to make a phone call," he said instead.
"I don't know why you're telling me," Lucifer replied in a bored tone, his words punctuated by a lazy shrug. "Do what you want."
Oliver was pacing again, this time from one end of the bar to the other, running a hand through his hair while he talked on the phone. Lucifer watched him, bemused. Human behavior was often puzzling to him. There was an affectionate purr in Oliver's rumbling baritone voice as he spoke to the person on the other end of the call that filled Lucifer with a deep sense of longing that he couldn't quite place. What exactly was it he was supposedly missing? Hearing someone speak to him with love in their voice? He had never desired that, until...of course. His features folding into a scowl, he tried to push those thoughts away and returned to watching Oliver pace, although truth be told, at the moment he didn't present the most interesting subject for people-watching. He was in the middle of exchanging goodbyes and "I love you"s with the person on the phone.
"What are you so angry about?" he asked, pulling Lucifer out of his musings. He wasn't sure why he cared. After all, they were practically strangers. He made a vague gesture upwards, which, had he been speaking to Chloe, she would have understood to mean "Dad". The thought of Chloe only served to make him angrier. He didn't answer Oliver's question though, because it bloody well wasn't his business what he was angry about. They stood in tense silence, Oliver clearly still waiting for an answer that Lucifer had no intention of giving him. Finally, he shrugged and moved back toward the bar, conceding defeat. Lucifer got the feeling that conceding defeat wasn't something Oliver Queen did very often.
"I understand why you don't want to talk about it," Oliver said, leaning on the bar. "I can see that you've been through hell."
"How could you possibly know that?" Lucifer asked, bristling. He tried very hard to maintain his cool, uncaring persona, but it seemed Oliver was adept at disrupting it. Oliver scoffed.
"Are you kidding?" he asked. "It's like looking in a mirror." Lucifer didn't immediately respond. He wasn't entirely sure what the appropriate response to a statement like that would even be. Finally, he decided on, "It would seem that we are both broken people." He joined Oliver in his deceptively casual repose against the bar.
"Yes," Oliver agreed, his voice quiet, "but we don't have to stay that way. There are ways for us to be...less broken."
"I don't see how," Lucifer replied doubtfully.
"I can't answer that for you," Oliver told him. "You have to find the way on your own, but...if you can find someone, someone who is always there for you, who believes in you when no one else does, that's… that's a start."
"Do you have someone like that?" Lucifer asked.
"I do," Oliver said with a nod. "Do you?"
"I thought I did," Lucifer told him. "But now…I'm not so sure." Oliver didn't respond.
"I thought what we had was real," Lucifer went on. "Or rather, I think I wanted it to be real, but it wasn't, and I should have known. I should have realized that Chloe had no control over her feelings. She would never feel that way about me if she had any say in the matter."
"Well, that's awfully defeatist,"Oliver muttered.
"I see no point in thinking any other way," Lucifer countered. Oliver sighed.
"Look," he said. "Take it from someone who had to learn this the hard way- you can't be happy if you don't allow yourself to be. If you keep discounting all the good in your life, eventually you'll stop seeing it entirely. That's no way to live, trust me." Lucifer took a moment to ponder his words.
"And how, might I ask," he said, "did you finally come around to this conclusion?" Oliver studied him for a long moment before answering, as if assessing what he might do with whatever information he was about to pass on.
"Someone showed me the light," he said cryptically, and then, for reasons unknown to Lucifer, he left.