The truth came in the late afternoon, sun-drenched and speckled in loose sand that felt more like sandpaper between Sabrina's often stocking-covered toes, but before either of them could even try to deny it out loud, said truth had already grown into a massive thing, complete with windows and spires and the most attention-seeking facade that the curious passerby at Long Beach, California had ever seen in their lives.

...The devil and the antichrist just built a sandcastle.

(And they weren't gonna lie, they were pretty damn good at it, too.)

"I don't know," Sabrina hedged, taking a few steps back to inspect their handiwork. She had her father's vintage Vuarnet sunglasses on her left hand, a tacky neon orange bucket on the right, and to top it all off, an appraising tilt to her brows that made the whole thing seem more ridiculously high-stakes than it actually was. "The scale still feels a tiny bit off."

Lucifer scoffed from where he sat on the ground. His Prada suit jacket had long been discarded in the afternoon heat, and the pristine cornflower sleeves of his dress shirt were now pushed carelessly up the elbows. Normally, he'd rather lick a cheese grater (Maze dared him to try it once, it wasn't as bad as he thought) than be caught looking so disheveled in public, but as it stood, his daughter had very strong architectural ideas that she wanted done even at the cost of his sand-ruined clothes, and try as he might, those fierce chestnut eyes of hers were rather difficult to refuse.

"Hellspawn, the bloody thing's already taller than you! A few feet more, and we'll have a second Tower of Babel in our hands."

(He could still remember what an absolute headache the first one had been. Dad's stupid language barrier extended all the way to Mesopotamia's newly dead, and he had to spend the rest of the week teaching world languages to the torture demons. Suffice to say, he quickly realized why most hell loops took place in a high school classroom.)

"So?" The young witch shrugged. "We build a Sandlux so big that it pisses off the False God. Doesn't sound so bad to me."

Lucifer quirked an amused brow. "Sandlux?"

"Yeah, sorta like a play on sandbox — oh, will you stop laughing? It's not even that funny!"

The sandcastle — or Sandlux, as his daughter had now immortalized in a dad pun to end all dad puns — was born out of an argument that the pair had while downing their second round of Whiskey Smash back at the tiki bar.

(Sabrina managed to flutter her impossibly long eyelashes at the bartender while her father wasn't looking, and yes, Lucifer had a one-drink rule, and yes, it was frankly terrible parenting to let her get away with it, but she did flirt for those cocktails fair and square, and maybe there was a teachable moment buried in the bottom of all that. He just wasn't sure what it was.)

Once he talked Sabrina into the idea that sand sculptures weren't necessarily just for five-year-olds and socially-inept art school dropouts ("You're one to talk. You didn't even go to school." "Yes, well, not the point I was trying to make, hellspawn."), the real challenge came afterwards, when the subtle buzz of alcohol was just beginning to kick in and it became increasingly clear that both father and daughter were cut from the same cloth: proud, obnoxious, and incapable of having a healthy conversation without disturbing everyone within a 10-meter radius.

("So I was thinking, something like the Neuschwanstein Castle or the Windsor, perhaps? I mean, not to toot my own horn, but I did design their original plans as a favor to the royal-"

"Yeah, yeah, I get that you're like a billion years old and stuff, but you don't have to make it painfully obvious."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, calm down, Bob the builder. All I'm saying is there's nothing wrong with going a bit more modern. You know, something fun and hip and challenging!"

"Now you're just stringing nonsense words together. You sound like an iPhone commercial."

"For heaven's — Okay, how about this? The glass pyramid at the Louvre. It's cool. It's iconic-"

"It's also just a big bloody triangle.")

Eventually, when he'd listed just about every medieval building in continental Europe, and Sabrina countered each and every one of them with ridiculous suggestions of her own ranging from the Guggenheim to the Met (so his daughter was inexplicably fond of art galleries; probably that sketchbook-toting miner boy's fault), the bartender surprised them both by slamming a hand down on the wooden counter and staring at them with tortured eyes that probably would've alarmed Lucifer had he not spent millennia seeing the exact same sort back in hell.

("For the love of God," the man said, practically begging. "Just pick a building and go. The other customers have been complaining about you two for the past half hour. This lady at table 3 says if she hears another word about gothic vs. contemporary architecture, she's gonna scream."

Lucifer scoffed, staring into his Whiskey Smash as he swirled it around. "Well, she can scream all she bloody well wants. We're not leaving until we make a unanimous decision."

"Come on, there's gotta be something...Your house! You folks look like you live in a big, fancy place. Why not just go with that? Please just go with that."

The devil paused mid-drink. Across the bar, Sabrina caught his gaze and gave a contemplative tilt of her head.

"That's...not half-bad, actually. Not bad at all."

"Oh, thank Jesus-"

"Yes, I'd stop with the religious references now if I were you," Lucifer said, holding up a hand. He leaned back against his seat and picked at the mint leaves stuck to the side of his drink as he mulled over a new thought. "Say, you don't happen to be looking for a new job now, do you? Because I own this lovely little club on the Sunset Strip, and I've already got a bartender that kills people and a bartender that's a bit heavy-handed with the alcohol. All I'm missing is one that gives good advice, and the collection would be more or less complete."

"No offense, buddy," the man said, already clearing away their glasses. "But I'd rather not see you two again for the rest of my life.")

Which brings them to where they were now, exactly two hours later, blacklisted from a tiki bar and standing in front of a five-and-a-half-foot-tall sand version of Lux.

"I still think it could be bigger," Sabrina grumbled under her breath, blowing away the sleek platinum curls that fell over her eyes.

Lucifer almost laughed at the petulance of it all. He liked seeing her like this, it turned out; pouty and irritated and childish. It made her seem younger than she was. It made 16 feel less like a number and more like a suggestion, and time was just a nasty little construct that told him things like "you're too late" or "you missed your chance," when in reality, all that mattered was that he was here, and his daughter was here, and they were here together.

He'd stop the clocks right now if he could, but that was always Amenadiel's thing more than his.

"I could say the same thing for you, hellspawn, but you don't see me making a big fuss over it."

Sabrina's mouth dropped open and she mock-punched him in the shoulder. (At least, it felt like a mock punch. It could very well have been a real punch, but the witchling probably never bothered to learn fist-fighting when she could just burn people to a crisp like she did with the mugger at the park. Which reminds him, he should really teach that girl some non-flammable self defense methods.)

"And whose fault do you think that is?" She said, eyeing him accusingly. "You can pass on world-ending supernatural powers but no, a couple inches of more height is apparently off-limits."

"Well, excuse me for following the same rules of genetics as everyone else. I mean, have you seen your mother? You can pluck that woman off the ground and put her in your pocket!"

"That's just ridiculous."

"A very large pocket then."

Sabrina crossed her arms and gave him a withering look. "Do you really have to drag Mom into this?"

"Biologically, yes," Lucifer said. "She is responsible for half of you. I don't know why you're so intent on pinning everything on me."

The witchling shrugged. "Because I can and I will. Like I'd ever blame Mom for anything," she scoffed, brushing it away as if it were the most insane thing on earth. "Mom was an angel."

"Are you kidding—"

Now it was Lucifer's turn to give her a withering look.

"...You do realize that of the two of us, I'm the actual angel, right?" He said, using the bright pink shovel in his hand to gesture for emphasis. "Not to say that your mother wasn't an absolute light to the world, but if celestial status is the sole criteria, then I don't think I should be the one taking all this verbal abuse on a perfectly fine Saturday afternoon."

"Verbal abuse?" She raised a brow. "Really?"

"I don't know, witchling," he sniffed, folding his arms against his chest. "My emotions were rather bruised today. I might have to tell Dr. Linda about this."

Sabrina mock-gasped. (Or it could have also been a real gasp. Her acting skills were a bit touch-and-go. Maybe he could get Dan to drag her along to an improv class one of these days.)

"You wouldn't!"

"Oh, trust me, I would. I very much would," he nodded. "I can see it now. The doctor scribbling away on that little notepad, gut-wrenching disappointment clear on her face-"

"Now you're just playing dirty," the teenager said sourly.

He grinned back, a devilishness to the pull of his lips, the crinkle of his eyes. "Well, hellspawn," he poked her in the stomach with the plastic shovel, and she quickly swatted him away as if he were a very irritating fly (or maybe Beelzebub. He could definitely see her swatting away Beelzebub). "Can't say you don't deserve it."

Sabrina's back was already turned to him, but she paused and glanced amusedly at him from over her shoulder. "Have you just been waiting to say that to me since I sassed you at breakfast this morning?"

"...Maybe."

She outright snorted at that and shook her head, silver curls catching in the yellow light. "You're unbelievable."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that, witchling," he said, going to poke her again with the shovel, but this time, she had the incredible foresight to laughingly inch away. That was another thing he liked, he found out. The sound of her laugh when it came unbidden. Like faraway church bells, only without the judgement or the hauntingness. Like Diana's. "The rather sizable chunk of Devil worshippers around the world seem to find me quite believable."

"As if that means anything," Sabrina rolled her eyes. "Anyone can have worshippers. Charles Manson had worshippers."

"Are you calling your father a cult leader?"

"I'm calling my father a megalomanic man-child who thinks he's more charismatic than he actually is," she said, smiling sweetly. Like she didn't just burn him better than she did the mugger at the park. (He always knew Zelda letting her watch Drag Race at 9 years old would come back to bite him in the backside one day.)

"Now scooch over." She tossed her neon orange bucket to the ground and sank to her knees beside him. "I still think Sandlux could use a couple more inches at the top."

"You are absolutely relentless, aren't you?" He said in disbelief. Still, he started scooping up more sand and water before she could even ask.

(It was those big brown eyes. She could start a cult of her own with just those eyes. She'd be better than Manson and Jim Jones combined — who, ironically enough, shared the same cell back at the Pit, in full earshot of the constant musical stylings of Chet Ruiz — and he wouldn't be the least bit surprised.)

He must've let the last part slip out loud because she stifled a laugh and suddenly the church bells were ringing all over again.

"Yeah, well," Sabrina bumped her shoulder against his and Lucifer paused to stare suspiciously at her, wondering if this blithe, affectionate version of his daughter was simply drunk on more whiskey than he managed to keep track of. "Can you blame me? Like you said. I'm half you."

Lucifer hummed. "Right. Remind me again, is that the good half or the bad half?"

The teenager slipped the vintage Vuarnet sunglasses over her eyes and gave her father a flippant shrug.

"Let's just call it the irrationally-annoying-but-slowly-growing-on-me half, and let's leave it at that."

The words flitted through the air and settled somewhere in the back of Lucifer's ribcage, warm and mellifluous and splitting him open with an incessant burst of fondness.

(You're growing on me.)

Suddenly, he felt like downing some celebratory shots of whiskey himself (uncharacteristic shoulder-bumping be damned), if only the nearest bar within walking distance didn't just ban the two of them for life.

"What does hell look like?"

The question came later, when Sandlux was finally deemed complete at a whopping six-and-a-half feet (much to Lucifer's utter delight and Sabrina's eye-rolling exasperation when tourists started coming up to take pictures — why yes, we are professional sand sculptors, how very kind of you to notice), and the two now found themselves back on their overpriced beach chairs, passing what little was left of Lucifer's flask tequila back and forth as they watched the sunset over the saltwater horizon.

The devil sighed and twisted in his seat to look at her. "Sabrina—"

"Relax. I'm not asking you to take me there. I'm done asking, honestly. Just..." His daughter trailed off, shrinking into herself the slightest bit. It left an odd pang in Lucifer's chest. Sabrina Spellman may have been rather small in stature, but she wasn't made to feel small. She usually towered over everyone else in both confidence and bravado, so to see her as anything but bothered him more than he could put into words. "Tell me about it. Please."

Lucifer let out a breath and glanced back out into the sea; its crashing waves, peaceful shores. He still didn't know why his daughter was so insistent about hell (Well, perhaps he did know. Something about revenge, she says. He was too hesitant to ask; afraid that he wouldn't understand and she would push him away all over again when he'd barely even gotten anywhere close.)

Today was supposed to be a reprieve from that. A few hours of simple, mindless fun to distract her from the things that weighed down on her delicate shoulders and bled into her dreams every night she went to bed. And for a while, it actually seemed to work, didn't it? She got sand stuck between her toes, and she scrunched her nose at invasive tourists, and she laughed and laughed and laughed with him like he was someone that had been around all her life.

And it was good, as Dad used to say.

Of course, he should've known that as soon as the sun began to set and their laughter dissolved into calm, easy silence, that was all the window her mind needed to come wandering back to the thoughts that he'd been trying to keep her from all day. Thoughts of whatever drove her away from Greendale. Thoughts of hell.

And he would've been perfectly content to just keep dancing around it all like an endless, infernal game of ring around the rosie (the black death; of course it was her favorite childhood nursery rhyme) if only she didn't look at him that way. Without magic, without malice. Just the plain vulnerability of a daughter asking a father for something he couldn't deny.

He blew out a breath.

"It looks like this," he said at last, finally relenting. He swept a hand to gesture at the sprawling space around them. "Hell looks a little like this."

"Hell is...a beach?" She frowned.

"Well, no. Not entirely. Just a part of it, the Shores of Sorrow. Then there's the Field of Witness, the Forest of Torment. All along a blood red road that leads right up to Pandemonium."

"Pandemonium...that's where you lived, isn't it?"

Lucifer could feel the hellfire lapping at his shoes at the mere thought. "For torturous millenia, yes."

"Well," Sabrina frowned to herself, fiddling with her fingers. He hadn't the faintest clue what was running through her head. "Did you like it there, at least?"

The devil scoffed and reached back for his silver flask. "Darling, if I liked even the smallest iota of that place, I would've taken you from those witches and raised you there myself."

"I'm sure that would've gone well," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Maze could've changed the diapers. We would've had a blast."

"You would've had a heart attack, more like."

"Witchling, you severely underestimate your father," he tutted.

She seemed to take that as a challenge and pushed herself up on her elbows, peering at him from over the edge of her sunglasses with a dubious look on her face.

"The only plants that manage to survive in your penthouse are made of plastic," she said dryly. "Trust me, you would've handed me back to the aunties within a month."

Lucifer opened his mouth to retaliate, before realizing he didn't really have anything as cutthroat to say to that. Babies really were quite horrendous, even one as exceptional as his. All that wailing and screaming and pooping…

(Besides, he wouldn't put it past Maze to let a toddler Sabrina run around with demon blades just for the fun of it.)

The devil cleared his throat awkwardly. "You know what, you're probably right."

"Are you even surprised?"

After that, they lapsed back into a comfortable silence, their eyes returning to the water which was now a steady canvas reflecting the orange light. A colony of seagulls flew past somewhere above them. Those birds must take comfort in it, Lucifer supposed, knowing wherever they went, they could always return together.

"Why do you ask?"

"Huh?" Sabrina looked up from where she grabbed the flask back from him.

"About hell, why do you ask?" Lucifer repeated.

The teenager stilled for a moment. The question must have taken her by surprise because this time, she didn't have something quick and sardonic already sitting on the edge of her tongue. Instead, she just sat there with brows furrowed, fingers absently screwing and unscrewing the silver cap of the flask as she sunk deeper into her deck chair.

"I have people there," she said finally, simply. She looked down at her hands with a soft frown. "I guess a small part of me just hoped they're not having it as bad as I thought."

"Your family, you mean? All those witches and warlocks from the Spellman side?"

She shrugged one shoulder. "...Something like that."

Lucifer sighed and gave her arm a comforting squeeze. To her credit, she barely seemed to notice. Didn't even try to hex him all the way to Alaska this time, which was probably what Dr. Linda meant by progress.

"I wouldn't worry about them too much, hellspawn. They knew what they were in for. They probably even spent their whole lives thinking they'd go to hell, so none of them should've been particularly surprised when they actually got there."

"I know."

"But you're still worried," he said.

"I'm still worried," she agreed.

She tilted her head to the side, both younger and older at once, and Lucifer was struck with the wistful thought that if only she'd been born with wings like his, she could escape to anywhere in the cosmos. Heaven, hell, wherever she pleased. And he would have nothing to be afraid of because wings, much like the birds that kept circling them overhead, meant she would always be able to come back.

"But you're far too human to come back," he murmured softly under his breath.

"What was that?"

("If I take you to hell and we somehow lose track of each other, no magic in the world can bring you home and that terrifies me more than anything," he almost said.)

He smiled tightly, reassuringly. Even gave her arm another soft squeeze for good measure.

"Nothing," he said instead.

Sabrina frowned curiously at that but didn't press any further. That was where they differed, him and her. Where Lucifer would keep digging till he got what he wanted, proud persistent creature that he was, Sabrina knew when to stop. She knew when to be kind. As if she'd been pushed and prodded to explain herself all her life, and now she understood that discomfort far too much to expect it of anyone else.

"So…" She trailed off, legs swinging back and forth from where they dangled over the side of her deck chair. Thinking, he thought. He noticed she swung her legs or fiddled with her hands too much when she did that. Maybe she did it as a child, too, but he was never really around to pay attention.

Her gaze locked back to him. "What do we do now?"

It seemed such a silly thing to ask in hindsight, after they just talked about hell and death and satanist relatives navigating the afterlife, but Lucifer recognized it for what it was. An out. She was giving him an excuse to steer their conversation away from volatile waters back to whatever precarious line between civility and familiarity they barely toed before.

"Whatever you want, I suppose," he shrugged. "We are at the beach. We could go for a swim, if you'd like. Take your grandmother-y bathing suit for a test drive."

She rolled her eyes at him, but it came off as more fond than anything else.

"Please. Do you even know how to swim? Because I am not coming after you when you start to sink out there."

"I'll have you know, hellspawn, your grandfather threw me headfirst into a lake of burning sulfur," he said, the slightest bit smug. "I wouldn't exactly be here right now if I didn't learn to freestyle my way out of there."

(It was true. Painful and skin-searing, but also oddly satisfying once he got out. You truly do feel like you can do anything — even ignore your father's orders and one day abandon hell — once you've clawed your way through liquid fire.)

Sabrina gave him a weird look. "That's actually more sad than impressive, but go off, I guess."

"What do you mean sad…" He crossed his arms in indignation. "I'd like to see you try then, hellspawn!"

"Why? Are you about to start throwing me into sulfur lakes anytime soon?" She raised a brow.

"No—"

"Are you gonna let anyone throw me into a sulfur lake?"

"Of course not—"

"Then I don't see what it matters!" She said, doing some sort of exasperated gesture with her hands that had Lucifer half-convinced she was trying to curse him. "Besides, I don't really like swimming anyway. Witches float by default, so whatever I do, I always end up on my back. I feel like a turtle turned over on its shell. It's embarrassing."

He suddenly imagined Sabrina as a red turtle with platinum hair, and he couldn't quite help the spurt of amused laughter that bubbled from his mouth. "You know what, darling, I'd pay good money to see that."

Sabrina shot him a world-ending glare. Somewhere in Europe, probably, a field of flowers burst into flames. He'd wager a cheekily-shaped highway in greater London was up next.

"Maybe not then," Lucifer said, pressing his lips shut.

His daughter hummed in satisfaction and turned her face back towards the water.

"Actually, there is something I've been meaning to do," she said suddenly, getting up on her feet. His eyes followed her curiously as she rummaged around in her tote bag (stamped with a big, fat logo of The Fright Club, whatever on earth that was) and pulled out a camera that seemed like it's been plucked straight from a 1980's thrift shop. "I should probably get some pictures of Sandlux before it gets too dark. I mean, Roz and Theo are not gonna believe—"

Thump.

Both Morningstars glanced up at the sound only to see the aforementioned Sandlux now a large heap of nothing, a vaguely familiar volleyball still rolling around where it once stood.

"My bad, bros! I didn't see—" The blond surfer boy with tight blue trunks and a bandaged nose slowed his jog, eyeing the pair of them warily. "Oh no."

"Oh no, indeed," Lucifer snarled.

It was one of those Abercrombie rejects that kept circling his daughter like a pack of vultures earlier. They were just looking for more players for their little sports game, they said. Oh, but he saw right through them. Those roaming eyes, those charming smiles. He could call Amenadiel right now and even that socially-clueless brother of his could piece it all together.

The devil marched right up to the teenager and grabbed him by his tacky puka shell necklace, inching dangerously close to the face he'd hit square with a volleyball just a few hours before.

"One would think you wouldn't come back here after I knocked some sense into you and your Billabong-wearing friends. Or was the message simply not clear enough?"

"Look, dude—"

"No, you look here, Baywatch." Lucifer jammed a finger into his chest. If the lad stumbled a few steps back from the sheer force of it, then that was the overtanned beanpole's problem, not his. "First, you eye my daughter like a piece of prime rib, now you casually destroy the very thing she spent half a day working on. You need to understand. When you disrespect her, you disrespect me."

He let his eyes flash a glowing, embering red. He couldn't say he didn't enjoy the delicious thrill of power that came with watching the boy tremble where he stood.

"Do I look like the kind of person you disrespect?"

"N-no, sir…"

"Then why do you insist on—"

"Alright, that's enough." Sabrina caught the teenager by the shoulder and pulled him away, taking his place in front of her father. She ran a hand through her seasalt-mussed hair.

"God, I can't believe I'm saying this, but…" She shook her head like she was about to say something abhorrent. "Maybe violence isn't the answer?"

Lucifer raised a brow. "That's a first."

"I know. It feels strange even thinking about it," she frowned, rubbing her arm.

Off to the side, the teenage surfer boy was still staring blankly into space, barely aware of himself, much less the two infernal celestials conversing right next to him. (Lucifer should probably do something about that. He thinks the medical term is "shock," but then again, everything he knew about healthcare came from whatever Dr. Oz episode was re-running while he rode out his drug highs at 2 a.m.)

"Look, all I'm saying is, maybe there's a better way to handle this. You know, less fire and brimstone, and more…" Sabrina was twisting her fingers again, not even aware that the shapes she kept making with her hands was a latin incantation away from overrunning the whole beach with plague-like locusts. "Mortal," she finished.

"Mortal?" Lucifer wrinkled his nose. "What, you want to film his lecherous behavior with your camera phone and hope the internet cancels him?"

"That's a thing?"

"I keep forgetting it's your first time in L.A."

She furrowed her brows at that, but then cleared it all away again with another shake of her head. "Well, no. Nothing like that. I just think there's no harm in dealing with this like a normal person."

"Normal's awfully boring."

"Besides the whole using-magic-on-a-murder-suspect thing, today was pretty normal," Sabrina argued. "And today was...nice." She looked down at her feet as if they were suddenly the most interesting things on earth. "Really nice, actually."

Lucifer paused. She'd threatened to slash the Corvette's tires at least twice today with one of the ceremonial knives she kept tucked inside her pocket (he had a feeling Maze had something to do with it; he didn't even want to know), but in all the time they'd spent together, this was the first time she paid him a compliment that wasn't backhanded or sarcastic or buried under seven hundred layers of subtext.

His insides felt all putty-ish in a way he couldn't quite explain.

"Fine," he said.

"What?"

"I said fine. We'll do it your way," Lucifer shrugged amicably. "What my daughter wants, she gets. And if she wants normal…"

He made a sweeping gesture to the space around him, the universal sign for 'be my guest.'

Sabrina's gaze darted from the volleyball to the frozen boy to the group of teenagers huddled around, watching them from the distance. He could see something devious light up her eyes just then. He just wasn't sure what it was.

"Hey," she said, snapping her fingers.

The surfer boy broke off his trance with a jolt, and Lucifer recognized the stream of Latin that Sabrina quickly murmured under her breath to clear his mind of the traumatizing events of the past 10 minutes.

(That was her mother in her, he'd wager. If it were up to Lucifer, he would've let that boy grapple with the fear of hell for an hour or two longer. Even just for shiggles.)

She tossed the volleyball back to him.

"Up for a game?"

"Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant."

It was a little over 9 pm now, and both father and daughter were on the elevator going back to the penthouse, Lucifer with the two ghastly deck chairs tucked under his arm (he'd wanted to chuck the plastic things to the nearest dumpster as soon as they were done, but Sabrina kept insisting they'd make a nice addition to his balcony) and Sabrina with a smug, self-satisfied look on her face the whole ride up.

She'd challenged the group of surfer boys to a beach volleyball match, her and Lucifer up against all four of them. The odds were very clearly stacked against their little two-person team, but with Lucifer's inherent competitiveness and Sabrina's surprising athleticism (turns out she was a flyer for their cheer squad; he never knew that before), they somehow managed to pull through.

Well, that coupled with the fact that she enchanted the volleyball to bounce off their competitors' heads at every given chance.

"Tell me, though, whatever happened to doing it the mortal way?" Lucifer asked, stepping off the lift as soon as the doors slid open. The folded chairs in his arms practically weighed nothing, but their sharp angles and boxy shape made them cumbersome to lug around all the same. He was just thankful that Sabrina didn't make a case for the gigantic beach umbrella, too.

"Bold of you to assume the mortal way doesn't involve cheating and a healthy dose of deceit." She said, stepping off the elevator after him.

"Those witches taught you well."

"Those witches have names," Sabrina chided before nodding her head once. "But yeah. I think they taught me pretty damn well, too."

Soon enough, when the newly-acquired patio furniture was tucked away, Lucifer too tired to even pour out his celebratory whiskey, and Sabrina once again enamored with the insufferable black feline in her arms (it was alarming how the little gremlin attached itself back to her the moment they arrived), the two now found themselves at a standstill, awkwardly hovering around the living room without the faintest clue what to do next.

"So…" He began.

"So…" She echoed, idly bouncing on the balls of her feet.

The last time they stood here, she was engaged in a one-sided screaming match about hell, and he was trying very hard not to lose his mind (the jury was still out on the latter). But now, almost 24 hours later, the air had already shifted into something lighter, softer. Not to say that either of them had really grown so much in the space of a day, but there was a possibility there now. A potential.

Like maybe they could grow together if only they weren't so helplessly lost.

"Thank you," Sabrina said quietly, breaking the silence first. She had her lips pursed and couldn't quite look him in the eye, but her hands absently dragging through Salem's fur gave her away. She meant every word of it.

"What for?"

"You know what for," she scoffed, pinching her brows at him. "Don't make this harder than it already is."

"Well, what's so hard about—"

She shot him a warning look.

"I'm kidding!" He laughed, holding up his hands. "God, you're far too easy to wind up. You're like an angry little alarm clock."

Salem gave an affirmative meow, and Sabrina bristled like grass in the wind. He had a passing thought that she might chuck the familiar out the window. Not that he would be particularly adverse to it.

"You're welcome," Lucifer said earnestly after a beat. "Though I wish you didn't have to thank me for a good day. Every day should be a good day, don't you think?"

"Yeah, well, that's impossible."

"If anyone deserved the impossible, hellspawn, I think it would be you."

Her eyes softened slightly.

Lucifer thought she might say something else, maybe even a snarky comeback about how cheesy he'd become or how he'd better not say embarrassing things like that in public, but she quickly turned her back and started down the hallway before he even realized she was gone.

He shook his head fondly at the empty space she'd left behind.

(As if the witchling actually thought he wouldn't notice the way her lips pulled up at the last second into a small, unexpected smile.)

"Well, I guess that's good night to you, too."

Sabrina was dreaming again.

Lucifer wasn't nearly as unprepared for it this time, just calmly walked through her door at the first sign of distress, smoothed back her hair, muttered the softest enochian protection wards he could pull from millions of years of memory.

Still, when the evening had grown quiet and he felt confident enough to return to his room, this time, it was the devil tossing and turning in his own Egyptian cotton sheets.

Just before the pull of celestial power took her under, he was so sure he heard Sabrina muttering angel names in her sleep.

(Jerathmiel. Mehitable. All that nasty business again of repentance and the Silver City.)

And if he wanted to get to the bottom of it, he knew he needed another angel on his side.

"Brother."

"Luci? It's 3 in the morning. Why on earth would you possibly call—"

"What do you say to a long-overdue family reunion?"