“Maybe I’ll cancel your credit cards.”
“You really are clueless if you haven’t noticed I’m not even using the old accounts anymore.”
Luce blinked. He wasn’t?
“Hard to believe, I’m sure, but not everyone needs you to get by in life,” Foster said with a snort. “You’re not that fuckin’ special.”
Okay, he deserved that too. Truthfully, Luce couldn't say he disagreed with his son. He had struggled to rebuild his self-confidence more than once in his long life, and he was currently at a rather low point. Especially with the ridiculousness currently going on. He was sitting on a filthy floor pleading for his own son’s attention.
“I may not be special, but at least I’m here. Can we please talk without a door between us?”
“No. Get lost.”
“Foster, please. I’m yourfather!”
“You never seemed to care about that before!” Foster pounded the door with his fist. “Where was that paternal instinct when I needed your love and support?”
“I have always loved you,” Luce snapped defensively. “Always, even when you were rebellious and hateful and all you cared about was your mother, I loved you! I still love you now, even with what you’re doing!”
A click and a rush of air and then suddenly the door was gone. Luce fell backwards, displeased to note that the ceiling was as dingy and stained as the carpet. His son’s apartment so far wasn’t much cleaner than the rest of the building. The smell of old sweat assaulted his nose and Luce hauled himself up, gagging.
“Do you never clean your carpets?”
Foster just stared at him, eyes hard and expression frozen in an aggravated snarl. Luce remembered the methodical way he’d acted in Mags’s latest vision, contrasted with the outright evil of the first vision, and found himself subconsciously checking his son’s rough hands for blood.
Luce cleared his throat awkwardly, still sprawled half across the threshold but somehow hesitant to rise to his feet without permission. Incredible! Permission, to get up off the floor! Yet he felt inside that maybe abiding this situation was the least he could do to begin to atone.
“What I’m doing,” Foster repeated Luce’s words in a slow drawl. “What exactly is it you think I’mdoing?”
Luce said nothing, cursing himself for blundering into this conversation and unsure of how he could even begin to answer that without further enraging his son.
“Because,” Foster continued, tone slowly heating with barely restrained anger, “it must be a pretty significant event to drag your sorry ass out of the dark to find me after all this time.”
“I didn’t need to find you,” Luce murmured, sitting up and leaning into the doorframe. “I always had someone looking after you.”
“Yeah? What, you mean Cwall?” Foster sneered. “Not quite the same as being here yourself, is it? Send someone to do your job for you, and you wash your hands of me?”
“Cwall understood that we both needed space; he was glad to do it.”
“I didn’t needspace!I needed mydad!”
What was he even supposed to say to that? It was undeniable that he had neglected his son.
“Oh Foster,” he murmured sadly, and let his headthunkback against the doorframe. “I have failed you.”
His son’s expression was murderous. “It took you a trip topside to realize that? I could’ve saved you the effort and told you years ago!”
“I am so sorry?—”
“No! No, you don’t get to ignore me for this fucking long, leave me alone when I needed someone most, and then just show up to have a pity party on my doorstep!” Foster panted,fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. “You don’t just get to come here like nothing happened and expect to slide back into being my dad like it’s some job you get to come and go from!”
“Foster, I?—”
The unchecked fury and grief in Foster’s expression ripped into Luce’s chest and gripped his heart like a vice. “I wasgrieving!I never expected you to fucking disappear!”
His son was in so much pain, and Lucifer felt the burden of the guilt.Hedid this, not only by neglecting the boy, but by keeping pieces of the truth from him. There was so much Foster didn’t know about what had happened back then, and Luce wasn’t sure he knew how to broach that topic now. This moment felt like the worst time to try, but he couldn’t be sure Foster would give him another chance.
“I never meant to hurt you,” Luce’s voice was hoarse and tight. “I’ve made such a mess of things between us. I will always regret how events unfolded that day.”
