The Inferno | Lucifer x Fem!Reader (Hazbin Hotel)

Part One: Lead Us Not Into Temptation

The strain of staring at the screen in front of you had caused your eyes to ache. Stubbornness alone kept you focused on your work – squinting until you had to tear away. Phantom squares of blue light danced on your vision and you rubbed your eyes to banish them, not caring that you were smudging your meticulously applied eyeliner. The last of the interns had left hours ago. Hell, you were fairly certain you'd heard the late-night cleaning lady come and go.

What time is it anyway? You snatch up your cell and check the time. 3:33 am.

"Shit," you hiss under your breath, falling back heavily into your desk chair. The hour didn't make a damn bit of difference. You'd be getting a call from your client bright and early and he expected some good fucking news. This is gonna take either a strong coffee or a strong scotch, you think bitterly to yourself. Definitely scotch.

Your mind made up, you rise from your desk and practically sleep walk over to the bar cart in the corner of your office. There's a modest splash of dark brown liquid at the bottom of the polished crystal decanter. If there was ever a clearer sign of how this campaign is going... you scowl and drain the last of the 16-year single malt into an elegant rocks glass. With a resigned sigh, you and your scotch get comfy together back in front of your laptop.

The latest poll numbers were fucking abysmal.

"Explain to me how we can lose seven points to 'undecided'?? Seven. Points," you grumble, thinking aloud as you pore over every last data point. Every demographic. Every trend. No matter how many ways you rearranged the numbers, there was no positive outcome. Your candidate was simultaneously running an impossibly tight race while rapidly losing sections of his consistent voter base. Fuuuuucccckk...

You knock back a swig of scotch and suck in a deep, steadying breath – anything to slow down the thundering of your heart. You can feel the pinch of a headache forming behind your knitted brow and you snatch up your pen to drum it on the desk's edge while you try to think. In a last-ditch attempt to find the bright side, you check the feedback on the latest cable ad. Fucking awful.

"I swear to God, I'm firing Jason," you grit through clenched teeth, the tip of your pen sliding as you slash out a repetitive pattern. The top of your desk is littered with legal pads, covered in scribbles. Drawing mindlessly has always helped you gather your thoughts – you left countless graffitied desks in your wake at your Catholic high school. They repaid the favor with sharply administered slaps across your knuckles, and the back of your knees when you grew over the summer...

You wince. The memory stings as much as the punishments did. And that's why I never chase the religious vote, you smirk and continue your doodling while squinting at another disappointing set of analytics. You'd experienced low points in your career – such was the state of this beyond fucked-up system – but this was a deep dark hole. It would take a miracle to pull a win out of this.

"Come on, son of a bitch," you implore to the universe, "Give me something good. I need a win."

The pounding in your head is sharper and more insistent and you finish the rest of your scotch in the hope of deadening the sensation. Your eyes burn. You need to sleep. This shit-show will still be here in the morning...

You half-heartedly tidy your desk and spare a glance at the legal pad you'd been scrawling on. An uneven, five-pointed star – the sweeping pen-strokes pressing into the paper over and over, so hard that the shape has been branded into the next ten pages of the notebook. Your lips curve into a small smile at the whimsical little design.

"Call me Dream Maker and I'll answer!"

The sudden intrusion of a man's loud, boisterous tone makes you jump out of your skin. "What the fuck," you bark, wheeling in the direction of the voice. Your anger quickly dissipates into unease. Not only are you not alone. Your guest is entirely too close for comfort.