A/N: They tell me I don't own GO or Lucifer, 'cause I'm in need of some restraint... There's only one more chapter in this fic, but I am percolating a few prequel ideas on Lucifer's previous trips to Earth before Adam was born and the headaches it made for Amenadiel and Crowley... Let me know if there's any interest in certain historical scenarios.


"Cor, Adam, when you said you had a summer job with some barmy old Soho bookseller, this is not what I expected." The young man walking into the club was wide-eyed and no more clumsy than any other youth still adjusting to his last growth spurt, but he already looked like he'd had a few drinks tossed at him and his loud, rumpled polo.

His more conservatively dressed companion at his left flank cleared his throat and brandished a steno pad. "Remember, we're here to study what the Americans consider cultural heritage sites. For Mr. Fell."

"Can't study the culture if you never look up from your notes, Wens," the forward scout of the four students of some sort or another* shot back. The rumpled boy was eagerly drinking in the scantily clad dancers and thumping speakers, letting his eyes drift hopefully toward the bar when the bespectacled uni nerd continued to hide behind his steno and a redheaded girl in a sleek sienna sleeveless pantsuit and Doc Martins elbowed her way up between the two.

*(Brian was minoring in a different avenue of Gender Studies than Pepper. So far, his major seemed to be in beer pong.)

"I thought Crowley said this was a piano bar," she observed, crossing her arms and surveying the club as if daring anyone to approach.

Her messier friend pointed across the dance floor and elevated tables to a currently empty low center stage, where indeed stood a shining ebon baby grand. "Don't suppose they've got a live act every night, Pep. So, while we're here, we might as well enjoy ourselves, and then come back some other time to get the selfie Mr. Crowley wanted…" He started for the bar, tugging the still discomfited "Wens" along, but found his path blocked by what had to be a plainclothes bouncer.

"Aren't you a little young to be at a club like this?" The man was bearded, bald, black, and big, but even more to the point, he frowned with that same paternal glower of disapproving forbearance that all four of the visitors might recognize from their own dads back home. If there were an ur-example of a less than pleased father, this man had learned from it directly.

"We're here for our summer internship," the youth in glasses said, shuffling his notes to pull out a British passport issued to one Jeremy Wensleydale of Lower Tadfield, age twenty and three months. "Studying history. We aren't here to drink," he reiterated while side-eyeing the boy who had just dropped his elbow.

"Though we could if we wanted, I reckon," the last member of the foursome finally spoke up. His face was haloed in cherubic golden curls, but his deep brown eyes somehow made the rolled sleeves and two open buttons on his dress shirt seem like a sin waiting to happen instead of as much of a mess as his companion. "We can drink at home, so why not on a trip?"

"Can't say we're too young to be here." The redhead lifted her nose in the direction of a corner booth, where a brunette preteen sat drinking a Capri Sun, kicking her feet, and glancing absently up at the dancers between pages of her book. Incongruously, a long dagger stood buried point first in the tabletop within her reach, its handle topped with a rainbow-maned plastic unicorn head. "She's what, ten?"

"Eleven," the bouncer corrected with an underlying groan. A dangerous age, in the Them's experience. "She's the manager's stepdaughter. Trust me, if it were up to me, Trixie wouldn't be here during business hours, but she's had Luci and Maze wrapped around her finger since they met her. The kid has probably seen worse than me having to deny service to underage patrons, though." The bouncer stepped forward, but Adam's devil's luck held true and the brick wall of a man was distracted by someone emerging from the elevator in the back that led up to the owner's penthouse. "Just don't do anything stupid," the bouncer warned them, putting a hand to the silver-encased baby feather pendant at his dark throat and turning away.

"Offspring, what have we discussed about knives in the table?" The black-haired man coming out of the elevator appeared to be in his vigorous mid-thirties, if one didn't look too closely at his ageless dark eyes, an Armani suit jacket tossed casually across his leanly muscular shoulder like a folded wing.

"That Dad would have a heart attack if he knew how many you and Aunt Maze have given me?" the girl in the booth responded innocently. She pretended to still be focused on her reading as the club owner strutted his way down to her sanctum, but it was clear who she'd been waiting for.

Her stepfather reached for the unicorn dagger, and there was a thunk audible over the music as he barely avoided taking a second blade to his hand. "And?" he prompted, not even blinking at Trixie's second surprise weapon. This one was black, sickled, and unicorn-topper-free.

"He'd have another heart attack if he knew why you and Mom let me keep them?"

"And, my tiny extortionist?"

"Jamming them in the table sends a clear message to every drunken idiot that I think I'm the toughest person in the room, so I'd better be ready and able to back it up?" The girl brightened at his nod, sharing a mischievous smile. "I'm getting faster. If it hadn't been you, Amenadiel, or Aunt Maze, I think I would've had it," Trixie blustered.

"I don't know, your mother is pretty fast, too," said her stepfather.

"Yeah, but we'd never fight each other." The club owner wordlessly kissed the crown of her head at the sheer faith in the eleven-year-old's voice before he rose up to survey his domain.

The would-be bouncer approached like an oncoming storm and whispered in his ear, pointing out the four British twenty year olds*. The manager nodded, face going completely blank before he plastered on a welcoming, slightly demented grin, and left Trixie at the booth with his brother.

*(Most of them were twenty. The tall blond had been on earth nineteen years, ten months, and four days. The club owner knew without having to see any ID.)

"So I hear that Lux has earned the attention of the historical society," he boomed over the music upon reaching them. "All the way from Soho? I haven't been there in years."

"Well, Tadfield, actually," the messy youngster said, perking back up at a proper East End accent in Los Angeles. It was said that Lux's owner commuted irregularly beyond the states, but no one was saying where he got to. "Our boss runs a bookshop in London, but the four of us are from Oxfordshire, in the country. Mr. Morningstar, isn't it? I'm Brian, and this is Wensleydale and Pepper and -"

"Adam." Both Lucifer and Adam Young finished the introductions with the same name before Brian could. The devil held out a hand, not really registering the grips of Brian, Wensleydale, and Pepper in turn, even though Pepper's handshake was firm enough to turn his fingers nearly as pale as his face. Adam didn't shake.

"Mr. Crowley said you play piano here?" Wensleydale asked, his preplanned interview questions abandoned at the strange expressions both his host and old friend were wearing.

"Crawly. Of course," Lucifer muttered, not quite suppressing a laugh. "The snake would stir up trouble. Any requests?" he asked the Them.

Adam looked over to the booth, where Amenadiel had retrieved a fresh juice pouch for Trixie. His erstwhile stepsister looked quite content with her place.

The last two messages from Anthony Crowley's cell phone had been worlds apart. The first text, which had actually been from Crowley, was short and simple and hadn't bothered with any punctuation: get a selfie w luxs pianist 4 me.

The second, which must have been dictated, considering Mr. Fell's utter incompetence with nearly any form of technology newer than eighty years old, and yet was perfectly spelled and formatted until he'd run out of space, had been a little longer, perhaps better suited to a voicemail. Hullo, Adam, dear. It's A. Zira Fell, the bookshop owner. I know that Crowley has been encouraging you to visit some more colorful locations on your sightseeing tour, and while I trust you to behave yourself and know your limits, I don't want you to feel like you have to go to any certain spot if you don't want to. If you ever have any questions or worries or just want to share, don't hesitate to call this line or the shop; Crowley and I are here for you. We can be en route to America the moment you need us. I know you'll be fine, but if you don't want to go to Lux, you don't have to. The owner is Crowley's former employer, and he knows a few things about your history that might be embarrassing to discuss in front of your friends. Don't blame Crowley too much, dear, we're just both so proud of you that he can't help but talk. It's entirely up to you if you want to go or not; we'll support your decision either way…

The Antichrist followed his friends and estranged birth father down to the piano. "You know any Queen?" Adam asked.

"Oh, two or three, at least," Lucifer answered modestly.

Wensleydale recorded the whole duet on his phone. Brian had been recording and adding uncertain backing vocals as well, but he had focused on the dancing girls instead of the singers. Pepper smacked him companionably upside the back of his head, and offered to edit both videos together, so that Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley could get the whole picture.*

*('You know I don't mind admitting when I'm wrong, angel," Crowley said as they huddled over his phone, watching the video Pepper had sent. "I may not like it, but I can admit it," he clarified under Aziraphale's lingering scrutiny. "First I thought it would be them versus us, your side against mine. Then I figured it would come down to us versus them, our old sides united against the new one. But I don't think I've given the sneaky little bastards enough credit. You, me, Lucifer, Mazikeen, Amenadiel... Her, for Her sake."

"You're sorry She left, aren't you?"

Crowley brushed off the angel's interruption with a smooth, careless "ngkk." "Why would I be sorry to see the back of the Goddess responsible for flicking me out of heaven like a beetle off a leaf and creating you to shine up my existence for eternity to the point where I can rarely focus on anything else?" Aziraphale cut off his momentum with his smile. The kiss was entirely unnecessary. Welcome, but unnecessary. "If She hadn't found that loose link in Her door chain and swanned Her way out of the universe, She probably would've come after me for leaving Mazikeen in charge of Her son and letting him damage his pretty wings. Not my fault Lucifer never listened to me." Crowley probably should have reported that locked door he'd bumped into, but by the time he'd noticed the link he'd bent**, he was leaving hell for the last time in his own body. It was just a mistake, surely. Not that anyone would've paid attention to a report, anyway. "I just think that with humans, it might not come to a fight at all."

"They are ineffable," Aziraphale agreed.)

**(Goddess's chains made great stress balls.)