1965-07-23 - Roses, Buckle, and Pillows
Summary: All the elements you need for a fight.
Related: None
Theme Song: None
michael lucifer 


.~{:--------------:}~.


So, when Lucifer should happen by the bedroom, with the great bed of dark wood and golden linens….there are roses sitting in the middle of it. Not a graceful pattern of rose petals, scattered to perfume the bed and stick to warmed skin. Just….a couple dozen roses in varying shades, clearly a florist's bouquet (several even, perhaps) just kind of lying there. And beyond, sitting on the edge of the bed, is Mike, bright-eyed with anticipation.

Clearly, he heard something about rose petals on a bed, and figured the whole flower had to be that much better.


He stays up later than he should. He stares into the night longer than is wise. Daylight brings the sweet relief of power, but the hour of darkness delivers the prayers in his name from six continents, prayers that do not belong by right to an angel that forsakes his role. So be it. Not exactly in a grumpy mood, Lucian stalks through the halls of Lux. He ascends the stairs carrying a peach blueberry buckle, something swept off a rooftop from southern Maine. Only Mainelanders would name a dessert 'buckle,' but it smells good enough that someone with no real need to eat anything but faith and starlight bothers. He holds his prize in one hand, flipping open the battered cardboard box's lid. A sigh escapes his mouth. And it so happens as he passes by, catching scent of the roses, he has to go in reverse to see what has happened to his bed.

Roses. Rose petals. Roses clipped in the season of roses. June is the month they truly belong to, but July has a rich flush.

Suddenly the dessert make sense. He walks inside, loitering in the doorway, holding that richly scented concoction, brown sugar melting into the sweetness of berries and summer fruit.


Mike frankly twinkles at him, a little ripple of iridescence through the visible spectra, finishing with a little fillip into ultraviolet. "Hello," he says, cheerfully. He did manage to find roses that were fragrant, not merely the chaste and shapely tea roses of florists's coolers. "That smells good. It has berries in it, doesn't it?" He makes an expression of grudging approval. "You have to give Lasciel credit, he did do an amazing job on them. Even if he wouldn't shut up about starfruit for months."


Twinkling like a Christmas star atop an evergreen tree, almost six months to the day out of order. Lucian's pale brows hitch ever further. His gaze roils with stars in a flamebath of ultra-indigo, the pupils bleeding away in a wash of living light absorbed through the unseen matrix of filaments and raw energy. "Blueberries," he says tersely. "Fresh enough, not frozen." Michael might be as deft at picking out flowers as his brother is about food, but then they share an artistic tolerance of the highest seraphs, built into their essence. Who knows aesthetics like they do? He leans against the door jamb, still taking in the details. "Lasciel's efforts are something, but Gadreel needs to be punched another time for durians. No one ever said spawning that on ninety-seven worlds was ever a good idea, not even in duplicate." He grudgingly holds out the box.


"Well, he's now the one dealing with the Host," he says. "I think that's punishment enough. He's always had that obsession with armor, I'm sure he's spending days on end gazing at himself in my shield," Mike says, wryly. "Prancing around in my armor. I think he got to work on durians mostly to shut him up." He rises to come take the box, forks a delicate bite and swallows, sighing. "Even if I don't metabolize sugars, they're such wonderful little molecules…."


Gadreel's obsession with armour of any sort turns Lucian's lip and not in an elegant way. He drags out the moment a little longer, his poised body a blade waiting to slice through the conversation at hand. "Your armour. You might have taken it and rendered it down for something relatively useful. A vehicle, perhaps." Divine armour turned into a Buick would explain a great many things. "Castoffs, however, are bitterly deplorable. Over the eons, I have quite enjoyed being me. Anyone else trying to usurp that role pales in bitter comparison from it." His mouth sharply lifts then, executing what amounts to a smirk. "You can metabolize them perfectly fine. Cram a piece into your mouth, and see what happens."


"I break them down," Mike agrees, after another bite, and then handing it back. No being greedy. "It just….I don't have the whole system for it, like humans do. No, it doesn't really belong to me, that armor. I'll need it eventually, when I get back." When he gets summoned for the end times. How tedious.


The buckle tastes like any good crumble ought to, rich in flavours defined by the sweetest heat and the long afternoons at high latitude where the growing season and the humidity somehow manage to ripen fruits in the orchard. Peaches will never favour the likes of Maine, but they certainly manage to thrive wherever the baker found them. "Of course not. Do you see the need for waste? Nonetheless, you can use a conversion that burns the free energy and recalibrates based off the remnants. Waste not, want not. They like to say that here." It's a principle of Hell as much as Heaven. Amusing the mortals never know it.


Mike looks thoughtful…..and then does exactly that. ONe last bite, and he sighs contentedly. Then, as if unable to help himself, pulls a scarlet petal off the nearest rose, and eats that, too. So much for that offering.

He does stop at one, though, and offers the blossom to Lucian, hopefully. Here, you try.


Fine, try another bite. Lucian has yet to eat, but then there could be just cause for that. He descends upon his own room, long steps conveying him forth into the familiar confines of a place that neither serves him to sleep or banish the awful knowledge of what he is. How rarely have they in this lifetime, ancient as it is, shared a space seated together, holding roses or desserts. The flower he takes and tucks through a button hole, weaving the stem this way and that to achieve a look amost amusing in its simplicity. "You thought to make a romantic gesture?"


"Yes," Michael says, after a moment looking bemused at the roses, as if not certain how they got there. "I thought….well, I thought it would be nice. Humans like to give them to other humans they think are beautiful, and you're the most beautiful being there is, so…." He looks to Lucian, guileless. Fairly well clothed in matter, to all appearances a man no longer quite young, but still fair.


He really isn't going to chew on the blossom. But the rose looks proper where it is, the scent of the bruised petal rising up to intoxicate what it would. "They do indeed appreciate flowers. They excel beyond trees, though it took long enough for the accelerated pace of life's evolution to take with flowers and petals here as a rule. Pity. The structures worked so well on that one planet… though I suppose Ioniel was responsible for overwhelming the place with flowers." Lucian's gaze settles firmly back upon Michael. "They are nice. Though usually the custom is to bestow it on a matrimonial bed with newlyweds, or those in a romantic relationship to kindle those feelings." Right. Because customs of humankind are oddly his to know.


Michael considers this, taking it in. And then sits down on the bed again. Looks at the roses, looks at Lucian, spreads his hands, as if to say 'Your move,' It is Lucian's house, after all. "Ioniel was a little crazy on the subject," he agrees.


Oh, his move, is it? Lucian is slow to react on that, knowing no doubt full well what outcome awaits any direct course of action against his brother. Therefore he needs another route entirely that does not involve a cake. That means something different. Levitating a pillow and sending it flying at the back of Michael's head counts as something skillful surely, as he drops down and lazily stretches out on his side.


Attacked by a bag of feathers. He senses it, turns just in time to get it full in the face. "Mrf," says the seraph of war, intelligently. Then he removes it, looks at it, then flings it at Lucian. Not hard, and purely by hand. He's heard of this game, and it makes him grin like a Golden Retriever.


It could be worse than a bag of feathers. It could be the razor-sharp edge of radiant wings, naturally, and that means trouble. When the bag of feathers comes flying back, Lucian raises his hand and deflects the blow towards the ceiling on an impossible parabola arc that swings wide to besiege from one side… but he can cheat, naturally, and fling the other pillow from the other side. Because Michael.


Taken from both sides. Mike flops over onto his side, manifests wings, and curls up entirely within their span. Shielded by the gray pinions, like some kind of fluffy egg….until he spreads some of the front primaries like fingers, and peeks at Lucian.


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