A week into kindergarten, and Lucifer had already categorized every possible variation of tedium the institution could offer. Circle time: mind-numbing. Story hour: insulting to anyone with basic literacy. Arts and crafts: legitimately painful to watch kids eat more glue than they used.
Saturday morning arrived like a pardon from the governor.
The kitchen smelled of bacon grease and imported coffee—the kind that came in bags with more adjectives than actual coffee beans. His mother stood at the marble island, spatula in hand, humming something that might've been jazz or might've been her own creation. The morning light caught the steam rising from her mug, turning it gold for a moment before it dissipated into nothing.
Now or never.
"Mom, I want to play basketball."
The spatula stopped mid-flip. A piece of bacon sizzled abandoned in the pan, the sound suddenly loud as gunfire in the silence that followed. Alice's shoulders tensed—not much, just enough that someone watching might notice how her silk robe pulled slightly across her back.
She turned. Her smile was there, but it took a second longer than usual to arrive, like it had to travel from somewhere far away.
"Basketball?" The word came out careful, like she was testing its weight. "That's… that's wonderful, baby."
Too easy. Adults never agreed that quickly unless something was wrong.
The car hummed its electric silence through downtown Chicago's maze of glass and ambition. Alice's hands gripped the steering wheel at perfect ten-and-two, her knuckles slightly paler than the rest of her honey-brown skin. She kept glancing at him in the rearview mirror, opening her mouth, closing it, opening it again.
"Lucifer, I need to tell you something."
Here it comes. The reason for the weird tension.
"I said… your dad used to play basketball."
The words hung in the climate-controlled air like they had mass, like they were changing the molecular structure of the space between them. Lucifer had never asked about his father. Some part of his adult mind had assumed deadbeat, maybe prison, maybe just gone. The way his mother never mentioned him had seemed like answer enough.
"He was good?" Keep it simple. Five-year-olds asked simple questions.
Alice laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. It was the kind of laugh that came out when crying would be inappropriate. "He was the best. Back in the early 2030s, he even got MVP his first year."
MVP as a rookie? That's… that's impossible. Only Wilt and Wes Unseld ever—
"He got cancer in his leg."
The words landed like a meteor. No preamble, no softening. Just the fact, raw and horrible.
"But he didn't tell anyone. Not his team, not the media. Not even me, not at first." Her voice had gone somewhere else, somewhere years ago. "He played that full year with cancer in his leg and got a ring and MVP. The doctors said later they didn't understand how he could even walk, let alone…"
Let alone become a legend.
The Hoops Cathedral rose from the concrete like exactly what its name suggested—a temple to the religion of basketball. Three stories of glass and steel, with banners of current stars rippling in the wind like prayer flags. The entrance was flanked by bronze statues of the greats, frozen mid-dunk or mid-shot, their faces carved with the kind of detail that suggested the sculptor had been a true believer.
Inside, the smell hit first: rubber and leather and that particular scent of new athletic gear that triggered something primal in anyone who'd ever loved sports. The ceiling stretched up into darkness, with spotlights creating pools of light that made everything look like it was for sale in heaven's gift shop.
The centerpiece was the court—a full-sized, regulation court right in the middle of the store, surrounded by stadium seating where shoppers could watch pickup games. The squeaking of shoes on hardwood mixed with the thump of dribbles and the sharp bark of players calling for the ball.
"Look," Alice said, stopping in front of a statue near the court. "Kyrie Irving."
The bronze Kyrie was captured mid-crossover, the ball seemingly floating between his hands, his body twisted in that impossible way he'd made look easy for two decades. Even in metal, you could feel the ankles breaking.
"Your dad beat him in the playoffs." Alice's finger traced the air near the statue's face, not quite touching. "Game seven. Eastern Conference Finals. Twenty seconds left, down two. Your father took the ball coast to coast and…" She made a shooting motion. "Scored the winning shot on him. Right in his face."
Angelo Capone beat prime Kyrie Irving in Game 7?
The shopping became a blur of decisions that weren't really decisions. Youth-sized compression wear that cost more than most people's groceries. A ball that felt perfect in his small hands, the pebbled leather gripping his palms like it belonged there. A bag with more pockets than anyone, five or fifty, could ever need.
The shoes, though. The shoes were ceremony.
"Which ones?" Alice asked, though her eyes had already gone soft looking at the Kyries. The same shoes her husband had scored on. The same shoes he'd rendered irrelevant for one perfect moment.
"Both," Lucifer said, pointing at the Kyries and a pair of Kobes that looked like they'd been designed by someone who understood that basketball was really about controlled violence. "Please?"
She bought both without hesitation. Also grabbed training cones, a jump rope sized for someone who came up to most people's knees, and a shooting sleeve that would look absolutely ridiculous on his tiny arms but which he wanted anyway.
They stayed for hours. Lucifer pressed against the glass barrier around the court, watching the pickup games with the intensity of someone studying for a final. The players were… adequate. Local guys, probably former high school stars, maybe some who'd played small college ball. They moved like they were fighting gravity instead of working with it. Their shots had that slight hitch that meant they were thinking too much. Their passes telegraphed intentions like they were sending smoke signals.
I'm going to destroy all of you.
The thought should have felt arrogant. Instead, it felt like prophecy.
By the time they left, the sun was painting Chicago's skyline orange and purple. Lucifer made it exactly three blocks before the weight of the day crashed into him like a defensive linebacker. His eyes went heavy, then heavier, then closed entirely.
Alice carried him from the car to his room, his new gear clutched against his chest even in sleep. She laid him in his bed—Egyptian cotton sheets, because of course—and stood there for a moment in the doorway, backlit by the hallway light.
"My little Lucifer," she whispered, the words barely more than breath. "You look just like him. Same eyes, same stubborn chin, same way of focusing like the whole world disappears." Her voice cracked, just hairline, just enough. "I wish your dad was here with us and watch you grow and love the same sport he loved."
She closed the door with the kind of care reserved for sacred spaces.
In his dreams, Lucifer was already playing. Already flying. Already becoming what his father had been, and more. The ball felt perfect in his hands.