True Self 1/1

Content warning:
Dubious Consent and unresolved victim self-blame.

Summary: Still new to Lilim society, and desperate for new experiences, Lucifer accepts an invitation to an orgy from one who holds ill-intent. The sex is fun...until it's not. Drugs, alcohol, manipulations, and dark intentions combine to trap Lucifer in a situation that goes very, very wrong.

"Come with me."

Over the last several hands of ashfalls, Lucifer had been to the Lilim pleasure building named The Commons three times without Maze. She'd given up on demanding to escort him after they'd been dozens of times together.

This female, with brown skin and yellow eyes and the only fully symmetrical, non-monstrous face he'd seen, had pulled him aside each time he'd been alone. He grew hard remembering the soft blue and green scales that covered her back and faded out over her ribs. The scales seemed to shimmer and shift in shade as they were stimulated, and he looked forward to experiencing those color changes over and over again.

Lucifer tilted his head back as her tongue trailed from his collarbone up to his ear. Shivers of pleasure crawled up his spine, and he licked his lips, eager to reciprocate. He didn't know her name, but he knew the heights of pleasure she brought him to, and he willingly followed her out of The Commons and through lanes he didn't recognize. She took him to a dome on the far side of the spire. A dull earthy odor emanated from within, growing stronger as she pushed aside the door covering.

It was… more than he'd expected. Better. Naked Lilim lounged on vast rugs of thick furs. Embroidered and decorated tapestries covered the walls. The air was warm, smokey. In the Commons, without Maze, only single Lilim ever accepted him. He'd been rejected by every group with growls and snarls. But these Lilim smiled, the friendly kind of baring teeth smile, and motioned him to join them.

The Lilim he arrived with handed him a bowl of liquid. "Drink."

He drank, the taste heavy and sweet with a spicy aftertaste. The substance made his insides warm and his lips tingle. A male laying on the floor reached over and caressed his lower leg, "Join us."

Oh yes.

Lucifer shed his clothes, grateful to find sensible, clothes eschewing Lilim who didn't growl at him at last. Still, he hung the clothes—the tunic and leggings and belt that Maze insisted meant better things than the more comfortable chiton—neatly on hooks near the door. Maze insisted he not roam the lanes naked. The only place other than her dome she approved of nakedness was the bathing dome—which he'd taken thorough advantage of before heading to the Commons. He wouldn't endure more jibes about 'angel stench', if he could help it.

The first time he'd entered The Commons, he'd been confused by the things the naked Lilim did to each other, but he'd found a sensation that he'd never suspected possible. Now that he knew the pleasures it offered, and it had become endlessly exciting.

He wanted more. More pleasure than he could give himself. More than the brief stints at The Commons where most of the Lilim refused to touch him. More than he and Maze could share alone. He joined the pile of lounging Lilim, reveling in the press of their bodies against his. Another bowl found its way into his hands and he drank it down. One after another, they took him to the heights of pleasure. Did things he'd only seen others do, did things he'd never seen before, and he exalted in all of it. He lost track of where one encounter ended and another started, but the yellow-eyed female took care to ensure that everything went smoothly. He closed his eyes, and he woke to more pleasure, more bowls of drink. The outside world ceased to exist. No worries. No responsibilities. There was only the here. There was only now. And that's where he wanted to stay.

Lucifer was too at ease and exhausted to do more than wait for whatever the next would give reached for the female who had brought him, through the haze of pleasure and drink, wanting to caress her scales, to make them shimmer and change, but she leaned forward, pressing his wrists to the bedding, smiling, smacking her lips at him. He let her maneuver him and returned her smile.

"I want to see you," she whispered, and his head grew heavy and his thoughts slower.

"Here I am."

Her voice took on a strange quality. Harmonic tones overlaying her voice, caressing his mind in unfamiliar, unpleasant ways. "I see a glamour. A falsehood. I want to see the real you. The beast underneath."

Beast. The pleasure haze fled from Lucifer's mind. He shook his head. "No."

"Show me your wings, living-angel."

"No!" He rolled, knocking her away as he staggered to his feet. He didn't want to be here anymore.

A ring of Lilim surrounded him, placating, encouraging. Hands reached out, fingers, claws, trailing against his chest and back. "Shh, stay, this is fun, yes? Feels good?"

He shifted his weight from foot to foot. He should go home. Maze would be worried. This was too much. He—another bowl pressed against his lips. Thirst raged within him and he drank.

"You want to feel good?"

The drink tingled in his mouth and warmed his insides. They wanted him. He needed to be wanted. He reached for them. "Yes. Yes, I want it."

A sharp claw ghosted across his lips and he opened his mouth. Someone fed him a thistle, and he chewed.

The danger was forgotten, replaced with sensation, with pleasure. Another thistle pressed to his lips, and he gladly accepted. He knew this game. He immersed himself back into the circle of Lilim, seeking their touch, their attention.

Lucifer's knees gave way, and they soon had him surrounded, under him, in him, on him. More Lilim entered the dome, coming and going. The female who'd brought him here exchanged words and coin with the newcomers. She came to him after each new Lilim left, gave him drink and spread something soothing over aching parts, bruises, and scratches. He felt cared for and protected, so he could enjoy the next encounter and the next and the next without having to think or worry and he loved the security of it.

It became too much. Too much sensation. The pleasure started to border on pain. Hands grabbed and groped, no longer caressing, but demanding and controlling. He gave them what they wanted so he could hold onto the moment, being accepted, rather than reviled and spat at and called a beast. To feel like he belonged to something grander than himself, just a little longer.

The hushed tones and the clink of coins continued. This wasn't fun anymore. And yet when there was a gap, when he found himself lying alone, he reached out, needy for their caresses, desiring the security of being held so intimately. Each of them fed him thistles when they finished with him, and the offered him more of the drink until his eyes closed again. He existed in a haze. Sensation. Pleasure. Pain. Did he dream, or did it happen? He didn't know, but if he dreamed, he didn't know how to wake.

A sharp jolt of pain to his cheek woke him. A second slap across his other cheek rocked his head. It hurt, but he was thankful to be awake.

"Try this," a low voice said into his ear. Quiet pervaded the room, this was different, someone different. Golden eyes shone out of the shadow that enveloped her, and his eyes couldn't focus, but he embraced her as he had all the others. Powder-coated the Lilim's finger, and he opened his mouth, sucking and licking it away.

The effects of the drug pulled at his consciousness. The floor dropped from under him as if he were flying. They were all flying.

A comfortable haze, even thicker than before, enveloped him.

The whisper in his ear, similar to the one he'd rejected, but insistent, inexorable, writhed its way into his mind, so quiet, so small that he didn't hear it at first. It reached his ears underneath the sounds of moaning—was that him making those sounds?— and flesh rubbing together. "Change. Show me. Show me your true self."

Heat encompassed him, and it was breathtaking, amazing, wonderful. His entire body crackled with sensation. He rode the waves of ecstasy and he missed the moment his skin changed, missed his wings unfurling, until everything stopped. The sounds and sensations slipped away, leaving him adrift.

Appreciative murmurs broke out around him and he opened his eyes. The glow from his feathers lit the room. No. This wasn't right. Hands caressed his wings, and it was wrong, but it felt good. The fingers were gentle, stroking the feathers, straightening the barbules. He shivered with pleasure and the female Lilim rolled her hips. A finger thrust into his mouth and he sucked more of the special powder, eager for the sensations of flight and peaks of pleasure, hands, and mouths, penetrating and being penetrated.

He embraced it. All of it.

He was sticky and sweaty and sore and tired and thirsty. Even as a sense of a deep disgust came with every caress and lick that stroked this corrupted skin, touched this ruined and profane thing he'd become, he wanted it. He wanted the sensual awareness of his body. The connection of flesh to flesh, the tastes, the scents. It was life and warmth and companionship. Even as he was too tired to pay attention, to keep his eyes open, being held and taken and surrounded, soothed a part of his mind that needed this. Needed touch that, even if it wasn't pleasurable, at least filled his senses.

The part of him that needed connection kept reaching out to them, accepting and accepting. He hurt. Pain had been his companion for so long. Yet pain made him feel alive. Pleasure sparked along his nerves often enough to keep him wanting and wanting and wanting—until exhaustion pulled him into oblivion.

His arms were outstretched, restrained, when his mind came to enough for the appearance of his skin to register. He was red and disfigured and the shadowy Lilim over him traced her claws along the ridges of his scars, scratching, trailing blood and fire behind them

No. Disgust filled him at the sight of his own self.

Only one Lilim touched him now—the shadow—she was everything, controlled everything. The others dropped away; the dome faded from existence. The shadow alone remained. He remembered her voice now, the one that had commanded him. Show me. The voice that had stolen his control. His body ached where they joined, ached everywhere with exhaustion and overuse. He tried to reassert his glamour. The colors rippled, but the red refused to be banished. He rolled his shoulders and his wings, too, refused to obey.

He closed his eyes; he didn't want to see himself. Contempt broiled deep within him, he could feel his corrupted skin, he could feel the scars as her fingers alternated between caressing and clawing over them. She rubbed more of the powder against his lips and he licked it, eager to stop caring.

He surfaced again. A clawed finger raked across his chest, and shock waves of pain rocked through him. He gasped. There was nothing left in him to filter his reactions.

"It feels good?"

It didn't feel good, but it felt and that was what he craved. He didn't reject the touch. Or the one after, or the one after that.

He woke to Maze shaking him while snarling. "Who did this, Lucifer?"

Fog filled his head; made his thoughts murky. He looked around the empty dome. There had been Lilim and bedding and… Maze glared at him, waiting for his answer.

"Did what?" His throat burned and his voice sounded rough.

She yanked him into sitting up. His glamour had reasserted itself. The off-balance weightlessness of his wings tucked away in the elsewhere tilted him onto his side. He felt grubby and gross, but with the glamour back he felt secure, shielded, covered. Maze grabbed a large cover left behind by one of the Lilim and started pushing it at him, but he ignored it as he rubbed his arms and reveled in the smoothness.

Her face had that pinched look that marked anger. "I've been looking for you for more than a hand of ash cycles, Lucifer!"

"Did I—? How? I never…" But did he? "It didn't seem so long." His skin hurt. The weight of the covering ground into it like gravel. He let the cloth drop as he stood and stretched, his muscles sore, sensitive areas burning. A bone-deep ache in his midsection drew him into a hunch.

Maze roughly spun him around, holding him steady when his balance faltered, inspecting him, prodding bruises and scratches. "Are you badly injured? I will hunt down every last one of those Motherless, slug-sucking, spawn killers and feed them their own entrails."

"Why?" A bowl lay to the side, and he picked it up, sniffed, recognized the bitter odor and tipped it up to his mouth to ease his thirst.

Maze grabbed it away and threw it across the room. "What happened here?"

There was a thistle in his hair, he plucked it off and considered eating it, but, no, just looking at the thing turned his stomach. He didn't like… He liked thistles. He didn't like how they had fed them to him. And he didn't like that he'd let them.

Nausea roiled his stomach. What happened here? The dome was bare of everything but trash…and him. He swallowed hard. They left him behind with the rest of the trash.

She pushed the body covering at him again, and this time he pulled it over his head and tied the belt in place despite the pain. His sandals should be here somewhere too. He started kicking at the refuse left on the floor. Discarded bones from the dead flesh the Lilim had been gnawing on, hides covered in a sticky syrup they'd spread on his skin to lick off.

It had felt good at the time. Until it didn't—and that…

"I can't find my sandals."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Maze sorting through the debris, collecting the clothes she'd made for him.

He wanted to wash.

"Here." She plucked the sandals out of a pile of soiled moss.

Wordlessly, he took them and crouched to tie them on his feet. His head swam as he bent, fingers fumbling, and she knelt and brushed his hands away, taking over.

"Lucifer, what happened here?"

He watched her tie the laces on his sandals, mind drifting. "I wanted to feel good."

"Here?"

He shrugged, not knowing where here was.

"Why did you stay so long?"

"I wanted to leave, but…" He looked around at the debris and memories of sensations ghosted over his body. He shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. "I lost track."

"Right." Maze finished tying his sandals and placed a hand on his back. "Let's go home."

They walked together in silence until Maze stopped in front of a small dome with ornate work in shades of green and yellow outlining the doorway. Lucifer stared at it for a heartbeat before he realized they were at the bathing dome.

"Maze?"

"Clean up." She gave him a gentle—for her—push through the door.

He looked back at her, panic spiking in his gut. Ridiculous, as Maze's dome was less than eight body lengths from this one. He had nothing to worry about. He'd wanted to be with those Lilim. He enjoyed it.

"Lucifer. Bathe yourself. I'll wait for you in the dome."

He nodded and took a step further inside. It was the chill in the air that made him shiver. The heat from the small fire within didn't reach the doorway. Nothing else made sense.

Lucifer secured the door flap and added moss to the dying fire. The hot spring that bubbled up from the ground was contained in a sealed reservoir box as tall, wide, and deep as his body length. The overflow bubbled from an opening near the top and washed down a green-tiled trough, across the dome to a grate in the floor. He'd often wondered where the grate led, but Maze didn't know and didn't care. The bathing basin joined the trough and was filled by placing a simple stone dam across the trough.

The oversized, smelly, disgusting garment he threw far from the bathing basin. He placed the stone across the trough, damming the water until the basin filled with hot water. Sitting in the hot water stung the overused parts of his body, and he hunched over breathing through the pain until it became tolerable. With clean moss and soap, he scrubbed his body and hair until the dirt and stickiness and crustiness had gone. He moved the stone and let the filthy water drain, refilled the tub, and scrubbed again. The sting of the soap made his eyes water, but he kept scrubbing.

Show me. Show me your true self.

He stared at his hands, his pale, smooth, perfect hands as they moved along his pale, bruised, scratched body.

Scrubbing wasn't enough.

The words echoed in his mind. The memories of the shadow Lilim who had dominated his mind formed and broke and fragmented and formed again. He couldn't hold onto them. There had been pain and fear, hadn't there? Was that part real at all? Did it matter? That was what they'd wanted all along wasn't it? The beast. The monster. The angel. That's all he'd ever be to them.

He startled when Maze placed a hand on his shoulder. "Lucifer?"

He looked at her, and at the crumbling scrubbing-moss in his hand. The water was cold. How long had he been sitting, brooding?

"I was just a beast to them, Maze," he whispered. The more he thought about the encounter the more he doubted: doubted his judgment, doubted what he'd felt. "They did something. I couldn't control my…skin. My wings. That was what they wanted. They wanted to treat me like a beast, and that's all I was. It didn't feel like it at the time, but—"

"Now it does," she concluded. "Come, I made you some porridge."

Maze wrapped a cloak around his shoulders when he stood and waited as he made a quick tie for his sandals. The cloak was big enough to cover him completely, head to toe, and not even ash touched him on their way back to her dome.

It felt good to return to what was familiar and he sat close to the heat of the hearth and ate the porridge Maze gave him. She lay by his side after, told him he should sleep, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw the shadow with golden eyes. Echoes of show me your true self chased him as he fought off slumber. When fatigue finally overpowered him, the darkness of his dreams held horrors he didn't know how to process.