Michael tries not to panic. The possibility of twins had not hit him yet. Hell, while it felt like a thousand years since Azrael had told him about Gabriel's gossip, it had been hours. In that time, his mind had circled worries about protecting the child (singular) from Dad's designs and what if anything to tell Lopez. Even if he were honest, Michael had worried about himself, about what going through a pregnancy would do to whatever sense of self he had left and, to be blunt, what stress it would put on his bum side. On his cravings too. But the thought it wasn't just one nephilim in here, well, that hadn't even crossed his radar.
But it should have.
Father had been playing a long game since Michael'd woken up in Vegas as whatever he was now.
But the horror of it hits him like a fucking sledgehammer now. Two of them. Two children to try and save from Father's machinations, when Sam and he…no member of the Host had ever escaped God's clutches and emotional scars, not really. He didn't know how to save one, but both? He won't have Dad touch them or train them up like tools. He will not, but he has no idea what to do from here. And Lopez? She's finally free of Sam's crap and his own, free to have a life and a career and a chance, and now there's twins between them.
And what if they're identical too? What if they grow up as Will and Creation, same as he and Sam, and what if they grow to hate each other as much? What if just looking in the mirror makes both of them seethe let alone regarding their brother?
It has never bothered him this endless feud with Samael. Not for himself. Samael chose to Rebel. He flailed and probably didn't mean to grab Michael's wing to save himself, but he did. Since that final battle and since his ruination, Michael has not regretted being angry at Sam. His twin has earned it over and over on a loop, but there is something depressing in the thought that the lives growing inside of him might one day hate each other with the same fury. He doesn't want that for them anymore than he wants them exposed up close and personally to Dad's A+ parenting skills.
He wants them as happy and free as he wants Scrappy to be.
They are Lopez's children, and they can't be anything other than wonderful when they're born. They can't help but be like her and be as bright and kind and effusive and wonderful.
These children deserve neither being Father's playthings nor hating each other with the same fury that he despises Samael.
"Are you daft, Still Michael?"
Sam's word games snap him out of his own spiral fast. Michael regards him. "We are not doing that. And don't say at least you didn't call me a 'sister,' because I'm not."
"Yes, well," Samael started playing with the onyx ring on his finger. With Lily's ring. "Apologies then, Brother. But you can't be serious. Whyever would you think we're being replaced?"
He sits up as best he can on the sofa. His stomach still feels cold and vaguely gooey from the gel spread on it, even if Rae Rae helped mop him up before heading to the balcony for a breather. But Michael can't stop the way things fit into place in his mind. Sam was, as always, the flash. The Lightbringer, the one who brought you want you wanted. The Will to shape the literal universe. But Michael was, by design, the strategist. It came, in its way, with being able to read any opponent's fears like a book, but it also came with eons as the general for His Legion. And the perfect arc of such a long game is staggering but so clear now.
And he's beginning to wonder if meeting Lopez again in that alley in Reno was by chance either. Some small yet growing paranoid part of his mind is terrified it wasn't. That it had to be her, and at least that much Michael hopes he's wrong about. Because neither of them deserve to be Father's brood mares, though he's apparently—fuck you too Father—the carrying parent. If Father after all she'd suffered and survived…if he'd thrown this at Ella too, then Michael didn't give a fuck about his "delicate condition" or the impossibility of besting the Presence, he would tear Father limb from fucking limb.
No, she just…she had to be the unlucky first person to have slept with him this altered and apparently fucking fertile.
It is crushing, but apparently Dad doesn't just want powered grandkids but a way to start rebuilding and shaping things again.
Michael's hands cup his flat stomach tightly, and it takes a lot not to just curl up and want to hide. Talking to Samel—trying to get him to understand anything—is trying on most days that end in y. To try and get Sam to understand how fucked they are when he's barely thinking due to shock is a tall, tall order.
"Lucifer, why wouldn't we be? You're the Devil. I threw a fit and acted like a monster and tried to rape a Miracle."
Sam flinches at that, eyes going red probably on instinct. "I know that more than anyone, Brother."
"He can't use us for anything anymore. Dad can't trust us. You're at least partially demonic because of your own self actualization, and I'm a mess. My Fear is running wild, and I have to…you've seen how easy and fast it was to bring Amenadiel to his knees. I do things as brutal to humans," Michael looks away to the blanket at his waist. It's soft and a sleek grey. He's sure it's some cashmere thing that costs a billion dollars that only five other people in the city have cause it's such a Sam way to spend and waste money.
But it is awfully soft and comforting; he'll give it that.
"I've seen," Samael surprises him by saying that.
There isn't that usual humor or even self obsession in what he says. Just honesty.
Michael looks up to find his brother's eyes are brown again—are the set they still share in common—and regarding him with unblinking, unwavering focus. "You have?"
"We've CCTV footage for any crimes that happen on the property. I installed the best of the line and keep the technology updated after Delilah was killed…might have solved her murder faster if I'd had it, perhaps. I don't know."
Michael shivers a bit and pulls the throw up to his chin. "Do you always watch?"
"Just once. Hospital rung us up and asked if we knew about any potent street drugs near our club. One of our patrons that night—we stamp them like most clubs—was rushed there. The hospital staff was probing on hallucinogens because the poor sod wouldn't stop ranting about tarantulas, but of course we have good Molly and LSD here. The best chemists on this coast."
"I'm sure that goes over well with an EMT call," Michael tries to joke, but the sarcasm dies on his tongue.
"No of course not, but I knew you'd had a scheduled hunt, and I didn't think it was so grave. I've seen you do what you do often on the Host. It wasn't even like that on humans when you were here a year almost ago. But the footage in the alley I reviewed," Sam drifts off a bit and looks away as well.
Michael breathes somewhat easier without that unerring gaze leveled on him. "I can't help that I'm like this without my wings. I don't know if Father just wanted my Creation to go nuts so the wings off was part of that or if Creation being back so hard is apart from that. I just can't control the Fear or the Creation both. But when I get so weak…I don't like what I do, Sam. I don't. I try and delay it, and that makes it worse. That night…I was just in so much pain, and he was the first date rapey, roofie-loving ass who crossed my radar. I was already spasming so much and I just took."
His brother regards him and there isn't anger there, which is unusual between them. There isn't pity either. Michael recognizes the expression, of course he does. You can't be the Angel of Fear and not recognize sheer terror when you se it. Because it is horrifying. What he is underneath, what he has to do, and how little control he has over it.
"I…I can direct it. I can keep it to low lifes whose fears confirm if I take too much, make them nuts, well…no big loss. I wouldn't hurt your friends. I know I did a number on them a year ago, but I wouldn't do that to anyone. It's only for people who'd hurt others." He sighs and clenches his hands, though the right one barely fists at his side. "For douchebags who'd hurt women."
"Michael…" Samael starts and then stops. And that's unusual too; there's few things his brother can't think to say. A lot. It takes a few beats, but the Devil regains his bearings. "You know that this isn't sustainable. It makes you dangerous around any human, doesn't it? We have to find a better solution for your, shall we say, needs."
"It won't matter," he replies.
"It most certainly will. Can't have you getting peckish and driving the Urchin stark raving mad, can we?"
"No, I mean, Sam, I have what? Seven months? I deliver and then what do you really think Dad is going to do to us. He's not going to let you keep avoiding Hell and sucking face with the Miracle. He's not going to put me out to pasture somewhere like a cow who finished her job. You get that, right?"
"I'm not sure I do. Hell doesn't need a warden, Father told me and Amenadiel that. He's mentioned it at least once more to Menny while over visiting Charlie this spring."
Michael swallows hard at that. He hopes that doesn't mean that one of the new twins are being groomed for such a role. He wouldn't wish such a curse on anyone. But one problem at a time. "I think you still have your Will somewhere. Maybe it's been blunted. Your own devil issues and self loathing burying it. But I think it's like my Creation. Dad could distract us or put us in pain or psychologically fuck with us till accessing those powers was too hard. I honestly didn't think I could Create anymore since your Fall. But I think we both have it."
"Gifts with a no returns policy as it were?" Sam asks, turning the ring again. Michael wonders if he thinks of Lilith when he does it or if it's just reflex. He's not sure he wants to know the answer.
"Yes and banged up sure. Hardly up to angel par, either of us, but you can't have a new Demiurge and an old one. I'm not letting Him near my kids. Near Ella's kids. The Presence isn't going to tolerate that so I'm not…I finish gestating them and I'm a dead man. You think He'd risk a spare Will around to fuck up His plans either? You think Dad would really go through so much trouble and then just let you around or me to try and steal the twins back?"
"But He's…"
"Sam, you know Him. You might see him every so often or hear about it from Amenadiel and Dad's doing the sweaters and the golfing and the 'aww shucks' grandpa routine, but it was never real. He's the same monster that damned you. He's the same fucking snake that sent Mom to Hell. I know she couldn't just be left alone to send genocidal floods again, but as far as divorce strategies go, it was barbaric. He's the fucking deity who about a year ago decided He'd just remake me as he saw fit because, oops, banished my wife and need new incubator. You think He'd blink twice about eradicating his eyesore, fucked up, unstable twins to favor the new made-to-order ones? Really?"
And the words are harsh, but he still grips his stomach tightly. Because the children inside him—Lopez's children—deserve more than this. Because one day they'll be hand raised in the Silver City if he and Samael and Rae Rae can't stop it, and be little brainwashed foot soldiers the same way he was for eons, but they won't be at fault. It would never be their fault.
Just Father's.
It always came back to him.
It seems to finally sink in to Samael's inhumanly thick skull. He gapes at Michael but there is no longer that mirth at the edges, that need to tease Michael about his insane condition. "No, I never thought Father wasn't the same bastard. He made that clear by leaps and bounds at this family dinner we had shortly after you'd left the state and it was…always the same. Couldn't be at fault for anything in our relationships, couldn't say 'I love you' at the table."
Michael sighs and rubs belly. "You expected him to?"
"I wanted proof or a hint we can love because I see us as brothers and the Host as a whole and how Father and Mother's marriage exploded…how Father has never once given me anything but the deepest pain..how could I avoid doing the same to the Detective at the end of the day? How could I offer succor to the Urchin? If we've never known any true affection, Brother, how can we do better?"
Michael's heart goes cold at that too. Because Samael isn't wrong. They come from the first family, the most fucked up family, and he has no idea how to love anyone. He was simpering and offering fealty to Lily, which she soundly rejected. He loves Lopez with every fiber of his being, but he still lied to her, shattered her heart, and he knows he can't lash her to this circus. That she deserves the world, everything, and he's the furthest thing from that. But he led her on for months even though he didn't do it out of malice. He'd just been so scared she'd leave him. Terrified he'd tell her and she'd choose Sam, even as a friend, and side with the usual Lucifer flunkie.
But he'd been so selfish.
He couldn't let Dad have his twins, but Samael wasn't wrong about them as angels not knowing the first fucking thing about love or relationships. If he could even keep Father from taking the twins, would Michael be that much better as a Father…term used generously these days.
"I don't know but if we don't find a way to save ourselves and save them, then we don't have a chance to find out." He stands then, and it doesn't escape his notice that Samael puts his hands out to steady him. Sam never would before, but there are passengers now and Decker has the Devil thinking about protecting all miracles apparently, even the two unasked for ones inside of Michael now. "I…Sammy, please, I don't know what else to do. I can't leave here but I don't have any other allies to turn to. I know you don't give a shit if I live or die."
"I didn't say that in so many words."
He glares at his brother. "Oh, you like me now?"
"Definitely didn't say that either. But I didn't want you dead, just at first contained. Hell seemed useful but the tower does fine as that's what Dad decreed. Wouldn't want you to incinerate after you left the property line."
"Because now I've got Lopez's twins in here?" he asks, and his voice is rough like sandpaper. Halting.
Michael isn't sure why it matters. He and Sam have hated each other long before humans even existed. Hell, before most monkeys they came from existed.
"Because I do believe the universe would be less interesting without you in it. I'd rather you fuck off somewhere and never darken my doorstep again, but I don't want you dead, Still Michael. I wouldn't want that."
It's not exactly a Hallmark sentiment, but it's something.
"I don't want you dead, either, Lucifer. But I…if we don't figure this problem out, we'll be dead by Thanksgiving."
"Yes, well, hate to share the fate of some idiot birds around that time." He eyes him again, his twin's eyes falling over Michael's stomach. "You hardly look pregnant."
"It's been like ten weeks and I can't keep anything down right now." He says, blinking at Sam, as if in billions of years this is not the weirdest conversation they've ever had. "I'm sure I'll find something."
"Pish-posh, I'll have Linda recommend some nutrionist for you. We'll work on sustenance for you on both avenues."
"Both?"
"There has to be away to deal with your Fear problem more safely. Trial and error on that, I'm sure. But I don't want you dead, and I certainly don't want your children dead. I'd never wish anything to ever harm one of Miss Lopez's get, let alone two, but most of all, we both know how Father is. No being should be at His mercy."
"Talk about an oxymoron."
Samael nods and holds out his hand. "Then, I propose a deal. I will help you get the twins here and keep them safe from Father…we will make sure they don't grow up as we did somehow."
Hesitantly and a bit confused, Michael puts his hand out and lets his brother take it. He ignores the vertigo and the voice hissing in his head that their hands should be the same, that it guts him how Sam's swamps what passes for his own these days.
"But what do I have to offer?"
"You have to try with me. Not just figure out a way to protect dear Miss Lopez's offspring, but to be better for them. We have to get your…your feeding better controlled."
"I want to, and I'll try, agreed." He says shaking a few times and pulling his hand away first. "I…Lucifer, do you really think angels can't love?"
"I hope that you and Amenadiel can prove me wrong as far as parental whatnots are concerned, but honestly, I do not know."
He sighs. Of course, neither of them can tell and the odds feel insurmountable even for beings such as they are. "Right, okay, well, speaking of Menny. Call him. I'll pray."
"To Father? He'll hardly show."
"To Gabriel. I want all the information he has, and I'm not too 'delicate' to kick his ass until he coughs it all up."