I don't trust, but I see right in front of me

[thedevilwhorose]

Who: Lucifer, others
When: May & June
Where: Thorne, Nott, Nocwich, the Horizon
What: OTA prompts and some closed things
Warnings:
Nocwich with Castiel: Cyfaill-induced Problems.
Nocwich with Istredd: A Lot of Blood, animal death, part harvesting, ???? it's a weird thread




I don't know who to betray. ♫
[Will match style.]

Comments

𝑓𝑙𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑒𝑝𝑖𝑠𝑜𝑑𝑒

[stations]

So, this was inevitable.

Lucifer lives just a couple of doors down from him, as if the faction weren't plenty small enough to lead to a run-in eventually. It was inevitable — it's just, Satan hadn't actually crossed his mind until the moment Jack set eyes on him. His thoughts have been in a pleasantly chaotic fog, devoted almost entirely to the woman he's got his fingers threaded with as they hold hands through the hallways.

Only for him to stop them both short suddenly the moment Lucifer emerges from his room to go... wherever it is the devil hangs out. Puppy cemeteries? Orphanages? Whatever the case, Kill Bill sirens start alarming in Jack's brain, his hand squeezes Sabine's tightly through one lightning-bolt intense flash of protective instinct, and then he just sort of... short circuits as Hyper-Defense Mode kicks in.

"Hey, hold on just a second, okay?" His mouth says to Sabine chipperly, entirely disconnected from his brain so that he sounds like a too-cheerful mascot from a car insurance commercial for... some reason.

That is very much not what it sounds like when he rounds on Lucifer and points with his free four-fingered hand.

"You. We need to talk. Now."

He disentangles himself from his girlfriend so he can quickly, purposefully stride across the hall and clear the distance between the two of them.

"Look at me, because I'm not fucking around right now. You know all that fucking-around you're used to from me? It's not here. It's gone. The next two minutes are the most fucking-around free you've ever had in your entire life. You see her?" He shifts just enough to glance over his shoulder and point at Sabine, only long enough for Lucifer to get a glance — and then pointedly moves back to cut off line of sight of her again. "If you try and pull the shit you did on me with her, if you screw with her, if you so much as smell bad within, like, ten feet of her? I will ruin your life. I have a lot of free time. Please know that I'm being the most serious I have ever been when I say... I will devote all of it to ruining everything you enjoy. I will find a way to burn it all to the ground. Do you understand?"

[thedevilwhorose]

Castle Grounds offering combat training, usually, thanks. Or the Winking Cauldron. Way to pay attention. Of the two of them the one with the 'cemetery problems' is Jack, not Lucifer. But then asking and expecting Jack to pay attention to anything would be an astounding feat.

In the hypocritical way that is Lucifer, he is not paying attention to Jack. He is staring at the girl with him, head tilt just so, utterly perplexed. It's only when Jack's voice shifts into a mode Lucifer's never recognized from him that his brain ticks back into gear, slowly.

Wait, is he being threatened?

By Jack Townsend?

He turns his baffled expression to the his sometimes-student, blinking slow.

He is actually being threatened by Jack Townsend.

'You see her?'

Lucifer points oddly to indicate her before scratching at the side of his head with the same hand. So he's being threatened by Jack Townsend on behalf of the human-shaped figure that is in no way human, but Jack certainly seems to think she is and--what?

What is even happening right now??

The thing is Jack could ruin his life. Of anyone capable he's got enough reckless determination and absentmindedness and whatever the hell ELSE going on that all he really needs to do is find the kid that shares his first name and go to town on metaphorically burying Lucifer.

"O..." He's still coming to terms with the fact that this is currently happening and that this is his life. "... kay."

And because he can imagine the response only that will get, he adds, with a slight further hint of clarity, "I understand."

He does not understand.

[the_keeper]

It's the manic, almost sing-song, commercial shift of Jack's voice that confuses her first, as he's disentangling their hands, but she stands when asked to wait for the full beat of how long it takes Sabine to realize who Jack is suddenly approaching.

Or more aptly

w h a t

Sabine blinks, head tilting almost in a match with the one that meets her gaze. At once too aware of the endless doubled layers of what she was seeing. The broad overarching immensity and the suffocating compression. The strung thorns and etched lines, all of it bars of a crude but capable cage, woven through what looks like every iota of the husk-body standing before her.

And Jack.

It takes an act of God and Congress for Sabine to stand there when the first urge in her—green eyes making the slow, decided circuit of the head and shoulders of the 'man' in front of her, Jack obscuring a straight on for the rest of him— is the want to reach out and jerk Jack back immediately.

[stations]

Well.

That... went surprisingly better than he thought it would? There's a long moment there where he squints at Lucifer while Lucifer squints at him, the both of them almost equally confused. Lucifer over the fact that it's happening at all, Jack over the fact that he just accepted it so easily, and without looking the slightest bit mischievous or full of bullshit.

Part of him kind of wants to ask, wait really? But that would probably... ruin the whole effect, so he manages to bite it back.

Instead, he forces out a somewhat-lame, almost-tough sounding, "Good."

Another awkward beat passes.

"So. That's- that's pretty much it. I'll kill you, and... stuff. Okay, good talk."

Damn it, he was doing so well. Fumbled it on the landing. Whatever, it got his point accross. As he peels away and turns his attention back to Sabine, he points over his shoulder with a thumb and kindly explains, "That's Lucifer. Like, the devil. Satan? From the bible. Just... for the record."

[thedevilwhorose]

"'And stuff.' Right."

He doesn't know what any of this matters. He's awfully certain whatever thing she is doesn't need protection, not Jack's protection.

He holds up a hand in off-beat greeting to her. "Hi," he says with zero inflection.

[the_keeper]

Sabine's first response, along with an expressively rebuffing scrunch of her face, really wants to be no, he isn't, and for all intents and purposes, it almost is. Except. Of course, he isn't. And is. Just like every other weird, warped, pulled-from-everywhere example of the people walking around. So that maybe no, he isn't, and yes, he is, stick together.

"Seriously?" Sabine asks.

Though none of that really matters.
She looks back because she can't get over it.
It's right there, as he holds up a hand to say hey.

Whose Cheerios did this new knockoff!other-brand!Satan piss into so hard he's tied down in every way but being ball gagged?

[stations]

It would probably be irrational of him to shush the devil and insist that he doesn't even talk to her, right? They share a faction, they share a hallway, and beyond that, technically... Lucifer is tutoring him. Also, Sabine's her own person and she can decide who she does and doesn't speak to. It would definitely totally completely be overboard of him to try and somehow prevent them from interacting at all.

But. Okay. Admittedly, a deeply worried, rabidly protective piece of him wants to. Genuinely. It takes actual self-control to keep himself from trying (and failing, because he has no discernible skill or physical dexterity) to karate chop Lucifer directly in the throat reflexively after that deadpan hi.

His second impulse is only marginally better, and even harder to quell: the bizarre urge to jump between them and make screeching, cawing bird-noises to drown out all conversation.

Tone it down, Jack. Just. Take a deep breath.

"Yep," he says, pretending like he totally has his chill. "He kind of sucks, but we have an arrangement, so."

Shrug.

It is what it is.