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Lucifer showed up bright and early on Sunday morning. He knocked, and Chloe had to swallow a pang of sadness. She never thought there would come a day where she missed Lucifer barging into her house, and yet there she was. Wishing she had woken up to him having let himself in to make breakfast for them, Trixie sitting at the table bugging him while they waited for her to get up.
"Come on in," she said, opening the door. "We're just finishing breakfast."
"Hi Lucifer!" Trixie waved from the table where she was covered in maple syrup.
Chloe was going to have to grab her and make her wash up before she hugged Lucifer, and sure enough, she made a beeline straight for him. Luckily, she managed to nab her kid around the waist, hauling her up while she squealed and giggle.
"Go wash up first, Monkey," she said, sending her off to the bathroom before she could get syrup all over Lucifer's nice suit. The grateful look he shot her was so overblown she could barely keep a straight face. "Ready to go buy some ornaments for your tree?"
"I have conditions," he said immediately, watching her with a kind of suspicious almost-hostility, like he was waiting for her to tell him that wasn't allowed. In fact, she was pretty sure that was what he was waiting for.
So she just said, "Okay, what are they?" and started cleaning up breakfast.
He fell in beside her, putting the maple syrup and butter back in the fridge as she gathered up the plates and moved to the sink. "First, no angels."
"No angels," she repeated. She had figured that would have been one of them, even if he hadn't outright stated he had conditions "Got it."
"And no stars."
That one brought her up short, though. He was the Lightbringer, and she knew her bible now. "Didn't you make the stars?"
"Not that one," he said darkly, glaring a hole in the door of the fridge as he closed it. She wanted to know more, but decided to drop it. The point of this was to convince him that Christmas wasn't terrible, not to grill him on one of the many injustices he had suffered.
"Okay, no angels, no stars." She paused to consider, drying off her hands. "And I suppose no nativity scenes, or anything like that?"
He blinked at her, like it was some great big surprise that he might not want anything religious on his tree. "Quite right."
"We can do that," she said. Before she could ask if there was anything else, Trixie came running out of her room, her present for Lucifer in her hands.
She thrust it toward him, telling him to open it, and he took it with so much suspicion that this time she couldn't stop the laugh from escaping. Lucifer's attention jerked from the small, sloppily wrapped package in his hands to her, a look of confusion passing over his face before something softer replaced it. She smiled back at him, and motioned toward the paper in his hands.
"Open it," she said. "Before she dies of excitement."
He slid his finger under the tape, carefully peeling it up. Of course he was going to be one of those people who opened presents like they were planning on reusing the paper or something. Trixie was biting her lip as she watched him intently, her fingers twitching like she wanted to tear the paper off for him. Chloe leaned her hip against the counter, watching the two of them, the smile on her face growing with every second it took Lucifer to unfasten the piece of tape. He looked up and, with a tiny quirk of his lips, caught her eye. She released he was doing it on purpose, just to tease Trixie.
Her heart may have grown three sizes in that moment.
"Come on, Lucifer," Trixie finally said, putting her hands on her hips and sounding exasperated. "Just open it."
He chuckled and slid his nail under the final piece of tape. When he pulled out the piece of construction paper inside, he just stared at it for a moment, something in his eyes that Chloe couldn't identify. She knew what the present was, had gone to the Walgreens and printed out the photos and drawn the outline of the Christmas tree for Trixie to cut out. What she didn't know was how Lucifer was going to react to it, if it was something he would put on his tree or something he would toss in a box and never take out again.
Trixie was explaining the whole thing to him the way small children did, and he was nodding along like he was listening, but Chloe could see that his attention was mostly elsewhere, on the ornament in his hand and somewhere far away.
"So..." Trixie said finally when he hadn't said anything in too long. "Do you like it?"
"Yes," he said, and cleared his throat before transferring his attention to her. "Yes, I do, very much. Thank you, Beatrice."
"Mom got you one too!" she said to him then turned to Chloe, expectant look in her eye.
Lucifer looked like he needed a moment without an excitable kid in his face, so she said, "Why don't you go get it for me, Trix," and stepped around to lean on the counter beside him when she was gone.
"You okay?" she asked quietly. The three pictures taped to the front of the tree were faces, cut out like little ornaments themselves, one of each of them. Trixie had agonized over which pictures from Chloe's phone to use, and ended up going with some older ones, from closer to when they first met.
"Of course," Lucifer said, but he didn't sound okay. He sounded almost choked up, his gaze still fixed on his present.
She touched his shoulder and he jumped, but she didn't pull back her hand, instead squeezing gently when he looked at her. "You don't have to put it on your tree if you don't want to," she told him. "She probably won't notice."
"Of course I'm putting it on my tree," he said, sounding scandalized that she would even suggest not doing that. His smile, when he finally returned hers, was radiant. "Of course I am," he said, softer, looking down at her.
Sometimes, she wanted nothing more than to kiss him, to show him how much it meant to her that he would humor Trixie within reason — and sometimes even without — and how much it meant to her that he was here, still. She could lean up on her tiptoes right then and press her lips to his if she could only get up the nerve. But before she could, Trixie was back with the small wrapped box Chloe had left on her dresser, giving it to Lucifer.
He didn't take his eyes off Chloe as he unwrapped it, still careful but nowhere near as slow as he'd been when he'd done Trixie's. Before he even finished taking the paper off she was rushing to explain, worse than Trixie had.
"Every year, in my family, we each get a Christmas ornament from a collection. I've gotten Santas since I was a baby, and Trixie gets Christmas mice. I figured you would appreciate the classic cars over something more Christmas-y-"
She cut off with a squeak when Lucifer pulled her into a tight hug, catching a giggling Trixie between them. His voice was rough when he said, "Thank you, darling."
"You're welcome," she said, hugging him back just as tight. She just breathed him in for a moment, while Trixie shoved her way out from between them, the spicy scent of his cologne calming her nerves like nothing else ever had. When they finally parted, it was more because Trixie was hovering by the door, all ready to head to Target, than because either of them wanted to let go.
"Ready to face Target at Christmas?" she asked.
"No," he said honestly, and added, "but let's go anyway."
Target was packed.
Chloe grabbed a cart, reasoning that they had to get an entire Christmas tree's worth of supplies, and that was one big tree that Trixie convinced Lucifer to buy. It had been almost a hundred dollars, but he'd gamely paid it just because Trixie told him to. She found herself smiling as she wheeled the cart back to where they were standing, Trixie looking around with a big smile on her face and Lucifer looking around with something far too close to dread for her liking.
"Come on, guys, Christmas decorations are this way."
Trixie ran around to the end of the cart and jumped up onto the bar. "Let's go!"
Lucifer walked with them silently, sticking close to Chloe's side. She let him stew in... whatever he was stewing in for a few minutes, but his moody silence — so different from his happiness when they were at her house — was getting to her. So she elbowed him in the side and grinned at him when he looked at her.
"Come on, Lucifer, enjoy the holiday ambiance," she said, waving around with one hand. Trixie had run off up ahead, already digging through a box of garlands at the entrance to the Christmas aisles.
He frowned at her for a moment, but she refused to be cowed. Finally, he said, "There's an awful lot of... holiday music."
"Well, yeah, it's Target." For a moment she had forgotten that he wasn't the sort of person who had probably ever been in a Target. Or any other store that would be playing Christmas carols over the sounds system. "That's what big box stores do. And, well, every store around now."
He looked at her, a look of incomprehension in his eyes. "They do not."
Right. "Do you even go shopping?" she asked.
He looked offended as he said, "Of course I do." Then he paused, and added, "Although, I do try not to go out much during this particular season."
"What, you mean between Halloween and New Year's?" she asked, joking. But Lucifer just nodded seriously, and she suddenly just felt sad. That was so much of the year to just be... miserable for. Because she was sure that's what it must be like, to be him during the holidays.
"It's alright," he said, and she must have looked sad enough for him to notice. "You wouldn't believe the number of things you can get people to bring you when you're as wealthy as I am."
She probably should have thought of that before she brought him to Target. At least it wasn't Walmart. For a moment, she felt intensely self-conscious, uncomfortably aware of that gulf that separated them sometimes.
Then he stopped and said, "What is that?" in the most horrified voice she had ever heard.
For a second, she thought he'd seen a dead body or something. But then she realized they had reached the Christmas aisles and he was staring at the light-up display in front.
"It's a pig," she said.
"Yes, I see that, Detective," he said. "Why does it have wings? And a halo?"
She didn't really have an answer for that, but she tried. "Because it's... an angel?"
He looked at her, then back to the pig angel, then back to her. "You can't be serious."
Then Trixie was calling them from the end of the aisle. "Lucifer, you need to get this!"
She was waving a box of Christmas lights in the air as they approached. Chloe grabbed the box before she could be hit in the face with it and studied it. It was little LED lights in the shapes of stars. As soon as it registered, she was putting it back on the shelf, saying, "Let's just get him some regular lights, Monkey," with a pointed look.
Trixie looked like she was about to argue, but snapped her mouth shut when she glanced at Lucifer, who wasn't looking too happy. He gave her a close-lipped smile, clearly attempting to look like everything was fine, but not succeeding too well.
"Why don't you go find some garland, okay?" she said, directing her back to the front of the aisle. "No angels, no stars, got it?"
"Got it, Mom," she said and ran off.
"Hey," Chloe said, putting her hand on his arm and drawing his attention to her. "We don't have to do this, we can go home."
He looked like he was considering it, but ended up saying, "No, it's alright. I'm just..."
When he didn't continue, she slid her hand down his arm and slipped her fingers through his. For a moment, they just stood there, holding onto each other until she felt his grip start to relax to something less tense.
"We need garland, lights, and ornaments, and then you can go home, okay?" she said. His hand slipped from hers, and he stepped back, nodding.
"Of course," he said, sounding stiff, and she didn't know what she'd done. He could be so damn moody sometimes, but she decided to cut him some slack on the basis that he was clearly miserable in the first place. She wasn't doing very well at convincing him that the holidays weren't awful.
Trixie came back with wiry garland with little Christmas balls, in alternating red and green. She dumped it in the cart and distracted Lucifer with talk about what kind of lights to get, and explaining the difference between white lights and multi-color lights and clear lights and how only the little ones were okay to put on trees. He listened intently while Chloe watched him.
He looked... tense. Tense enough that she wanted to rush through the rest of the shopping and get them home where he would relax and just... not look so tense. Not look so unhappy. Not so much like she was torturing him by making him be there.
"Hey guys," she said, breaking into their conversation, grabbing a box of the multi-color lights and holding them out. "Let's just get a couple boxes of these."
They agreed and she dumped them in the cart. For ornaments, Lucifer let Trixie pick out a bunch of individual ones — which Chloe okayed before she showed them to Lucifer — and Chloe grabbed some silver Christmas balls. They managed to get to the checkout line in under fifteen minutes, and were out of the store in another twenty.
"So, ornament shopping is a bust, huh?" she said when they were back on the road, glancing over to Lucifer, who was looking out the window.
"It... wasn't the worst thing I've ever done," he said, skirting around the truth very obviously.
"It's okay," she said, laughing a little to herself. "You can say that Target is terrible."
"Bloody awful," he muttered, sending a small smile her way.
"Seriously, are you okay?" she asked, reaching over and taking his hand again, running on instinct and a need to connect with him. He stared at their hands together, and she thought that maybe she had made a mistake. Then he squeezed her fingers and smiled.
"I'm alright," he said. "I don't mean to be such a grump, darling."
She smiled back at him, "I think you've got the right, all things considered."
They smiled at each other while she waited for the light to change. When they reached home again, she invited him in, but he begged off, saying that there were some things that needed taking care of at Lux. It didn't sound like a lie, but it didn't sound like the whole truth, either, and it left her feeling a bit off kilter. She had planned on him spending the whole day with them, but she supposed she couldn't complain when she hadn't ever mentioned that to him.
"Do you want to come over tomorrow?" she asked after shooing Trixie inside. "We'll be decorating our tree." It was currently out back, leaning against the house, waiting to be put up. She could certainly use the help in getting it straight, that was for sure. Dan was usually around to help her with it, and the one year she'd had to put up the tree on her own, it had looked more like the Leaning Tower of Pisa than an actual Christmas tree.
"Are you sure you and Beatrice wouldn't rather it be a family affair?" he asked, looking indecisive. She found herself not wanting to give him an out, to make him come help them because that was where he belonged.
"Of course I'm sure," she said, and stepped closer to him, putting a hand on his chest to emphasize her next words. "We want you here, but if you've decided you've had enough of the Christmas spirit, you don't have to come."
One of his hands came up and covered hers for a brief moment before she reluctantly pulled away, waiting for his answer.
"I suppose I'll follow you home from the station then," he finally said, and she could feel the brightness of her smile warming her.
Ornaments may have been a bust, but she would make sure tree decorating was not.
The End