Title: Rintrah roars

Characters: Lucifer, Jeshua, Azrael

Rating: PG-13 (this chapter)

Word Count: ~ 1.740

Chapter Summary: In which Lucifer's lazy Blakeian morning suffers an interruptus, Jeshua goes back to bed, and Death suspects there is no such thing as a free lunch.

~*~

Chapter Six

Rintrah roars

~*~

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained;

and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.

It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out, but the Devil's account is,

that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss.

[The Marriage of Heaven and Hell]

-

Blake, Lucifer wants to say, Blake wasn't so bad, but then it's too early for that and his thoughts float around like a small shoal of fish, back and up and around until Jeshua throws back the duvet and makes them flit away.

Experimentally, Lucifer opens one eye.

"My god, you're unromantic," he calls after him, but Jeshua is already pottering around their small country of a bathroom, making these Amen, amen, I say unto you, I'm just fixing my hair and then I'll be gone-sounds - what's the word again, ablutions? - right, morning ablutions, so he probably doesn't hear.

So fastidious, my little Jew boy. Lucifer yawns and rolls over to sniff at Jeshua's pillow... when he notices something he doesn't like, and ten minutes later he's still crouched in front of Jeshua with his naked butt planted on tile.

"This isn't going to work," Lucifer says.

Jeshua throws back his head and exhales with a hiss. "What if you loosen the straps?"

"They're already as far as they can go." Lucifer wriggles closer to rest Jeshua's feet on his thighs. "Sorry," he says, prying off a sandal, "but you might as well call for a wheelchair. I don't see how you are going to get that" - he waves at the offending limb - "into a shoe. Not even those trekking travesties of yours."

He can hear Jeshua's teeth grind and looks up. My, my. Those aren't tears, are they? Granted, he wanted to see tears, but not the watered-down piss of frustration - especially since, in the language of pain, this is nothing. Incensed now, Lucifer tugs off the strip of towel wrapped around Jeshua's left foot and squeezes, thumb digging into the mess. The second his fingernail scrapes bone, Jeshua yelps and spasms, dislodging him with a kick that throws Lucifer against the wash stand.

"Watch it, arsehole," Lucifer snaps, rubbing his chin, then slinks back to get a better look. It may not be much, but... it's still impressive. The weight of Jeshua's body has driven the nail up against navicular bone and talus, ripping a path through all those tiny, flexible, finely wrought bits that form the human foot. Cold iron hammered past the cuneiforms, locking his metatarsals in a twitching state of shock. "Poor you." Lucifer smiles sadly and pats the crippled foot.

Jeshua's plantar nerve must be going haywire.

"So what now," Lucifer says. "I call room service for bandages? 'Oh, hello, yes, this is Eosforo in the Penthouse Suite; so sorry but my consort has suddenly decided to sport stigmata, terrible bother, I know, but could you send someone up with a yard or three of gauze, that's lovely, ta?'"

"Your consort?" Wheezing, Jeshua grips the rim of the bathtub.

Not a good idea, that. Idly, Lucifer watches as Jeshua loses his balance and slips into a landscape of granite and enamel. Your first reflex would be to throw out your hands, wouldn't it? Funny how Jeshua prefers to take the fall instead, cradling his wrists against his breast. The wounds in his carpals have forced his thumbs inward while his fingers still claw at the air. So much for the use of opposable thumbs, eh? "My good friend the Meshiach, I mean," Lucifer says, contemplating Jeshua in the tub. How fragile he looks.

Nonsense; he didn't think that. He's merely offering his arm in concern. "Ah, such bravura. But really, Jeshua, you can come out and say it. It will be a relief, you know."

Jeshua closes his eyes and props his heels on the porcelain rim. "Say what," he echoes tiredly.

"Fuck you. Fuck off. Something like that." How about 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani'? Chewing his lip, Lucifer eyes the stains. There's not a whole lot of blood, actually; if done right, crucifixions can be surprisingly tidy. The re-opened holes look horrific though. "And now he rebukes thee in his wrath and chastens thee in his hot displeasure. Makes one wonder, doesn't it?"

Throwing Lucifer a filthy look, Jeshua crawls past the offered arm and scrambles out of the tub.

What? It's not my fault he's unhappy with you. Lucifer shrugs. I already feel like a broken record when I tell you to leave Him out of this.

"The Trinity is no onion, Morning Star." Using his teeth, Jeshua shreds another towel. "You can't peel away a few skins to get to the one you want." His voice is reedy, bubbling with blood inside his lung.

Lucifer shakes his head. "Well, fuck that. What do you plan to do about it?"

"Right now?" Jeshua coughs, "I plan to go back to bed."

---

Lord, he writes, then crosses it out, friend - he crosses that out, too, only a little less vigorously - Jeshua,

His pen hovers over the paper and drips slime while Lucifer gazes out over the city. What sort of note does one leave the Son of Man? "Mister God, this is Lucifer"?

I need to go. Something regarding your misplaced disciple, he writes in looping Greek letters. Will let you know when substantiated.

He signs with a sigil and banishes the more repulsive stains before adding,

PS, I was under the impression you enjoyed the amenities. Suite's paid for a month.

PPS, Try not to die of gangrene before I get back - I would hate to miss that.

Fiddling with his braid he looks across his shoulder to where Jeshua sleeps, curled in on himself. Slowly, Lucifer pushes back his chair and walks over. He wants to sit and watch, wants to trace Jeshua's lips and push errant strands of hair from his face.

Before this is finished, he vows, he'll be the agent of another fall from grace. He'll be the hammer and nails of Jeshua's failure. Best do it now, he thinks: pick up the stake while Jeshua is weak and heartbroken. Use gentleness and kindness to tear him limb from limb. Show him what it means to lose everything - not for three days but for eternity.

Gradually opening his fists, Lucifer slackens. Deluded, that's what he is, tangled in his own wrath and pity. When he bends over Jeshua for a kiss, the knowledge burns on his lips like herpes.

---

Selah: so the Brioni was a bit of a waste. Cheerfully urban, the marriage of wheat-coloured wool and white pinstripe, it's sorely out of place in a vale where the ground sweats poison and the air reeks of shit. Lucifer groans. It may be too early to feel irritated, but there are people (in the loosest sense of the word) he doesn't care for, and Azrael ranks high on their list.

The problem with Azrael is that he doesn't know the meaning of restraint: give him a single soul and he'll want a genocide. Probably dreams of taking out Lucifer and the Name, too - else the chitoned git wouldn't dare manifest like this, with his talons wriggling an insolent gimme.

"My reward."

For answering a summons? What are you, five? Lucifer quirks one eyebrow and spits. "You've forgotten the magic word."

"My reward, Lord?" Azrael smirks, and is thrown a lump he instantly starts to suck upon. Some might find the scene unsettling: the sculpted, doe-eyed perfection that is Thanatos, stuffing his face like a pig. Some will tell you that the soul, seeing the Angel of Death, 'falls in love and thus is withdrawn from the body as if by seduction' - well, not if she saw him eat, she wouldn't. "So," Azrael slurps and tilts the left ventricle to shake out the dregs, "what's he like in bed?"

"You are being indiscreet." Stubbing out his cigarette in Azrael's lunch, Lucifer turns the young girl's heart into a stringy old prelate's. "One of these days you'll discover it was shooting off your mouth that blew up your head; the two sit so closely together." As a threat it's petty and sub-par and Lucifer knows it, for unless Har Magedon isn't all it's cracked up to be, there will always be a Death.

A cloud, a pedlar, a thief... head or no head isn't going to make much difference. But it is imperative to maintain the status quo for a while - that's why they're here after all, among other things, meeting on an illegal rubbish dump at the arse end of Magliana. "Besides," he adds, "haven't you had him?"

Holding out the calcified muscle, Azrael mopes. "Alas, poor rabbi Jeshua! I knew him for, what, 48 hours? But not like that. I'll have you know that most dead make unhappy bedfellows. He was exquisite, naturally."

Yet you couldn't touch him. Not like you wanted. Lucifer smiles at the smoking rubbish underneath their feet. There's industrial waste and oil slick mixed in with the garbage, with the television sets and plastic bottles and broken dolls. It's not the Plains of Gehenna, no, but one day it will be, together with the rest of creation. Somewhere, something's burning. "So what about Juda from Kirjath?"

"What of him," Azrael shrugs. "I sent him on to you, didn't I?"

Liar. I'll fill your empty skin with excrement. "And yet he never arrived. Can you explain that?"

"Um. No."

Their eyes meet and lock for a near-endless second in which mutual aversion is expressed, some finer points of primogenitur are established, and safe passage is demanded and given - not without the usual round of haggling, of course.

As Lucifer gets ready to leave, Azrael doesn't move. He keeps squinting at a copse of pine trees, looking wistful. "Did you know Pope Leo X. caught his death here?" he asks.

"Really," Lucifer drawls. "At La Magliana. Who would have guessed."

"Picked up a chill after a day's hunt," Azrael says dreamily.

Where's the art in that? Lucifer wants to retort, but Hell, why piss on Azrael's parade now. "I think you have too much of the black gall, old friend," he says, clapping him on the shoulder. "Have you ever tried Prozac?"

The Angel of Death only blinks and smiles.

---

tbc