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She will later have reason to question her realisation and its accuracy, but at the time, it was such an obvious explanation that she couldn’t help but wonder why it had never occurred to her before. To any of them before.
Not that it actually had occurred to her if she’s being honest, given that it was actually Trixie who had eventually given voice to the thought.
“Mommy,” the young girl had started innocently enough, fiddling mindlessly with the strap of the seatbelt crossing her chest. “Lucifer is autistic isn’t he?”
That had made her pause.
“What makes you think that monkey?” she had eventually managed to ask back, voice as light and calm as she could make it despite the sudden turbulence of her thoughts.
“There’s a new boy starting at our school next week!” Trixie had continued with obvious excitement. “He’s called Tommy and today we had a special class about him ‘cause apparently he thinks and acts differently to most people, and Miss Turnbury and the other teachers wanted to make sure that we know that that’s okay and that just ‘cause he’s different doesn’t mean he’s not normal. Look! We all got a booklet about the stuff that autistic people do and how we can help autistic people feel happy and accepted!”
“Trixie baby, I can’t look at it while I’m driving,” she had smiled tightly. “How about you read it to me instead?”
“’K mommy!” she had grinned, still brandishing the folded sheet of paper like a prized trophy. “First it says that lotsa autistic people don’t like eye contact unless it’s on their terms. So Tommy tends to look over your shoulder instead of at you, but that doesn’t mean he’s being rude or ignoring you. And Lucifer does that too! He only looks at people’s eyes when he’s doing his secret magic trick to make people tell him stuff.”
“You’re right monkey, he does do that,” she’d said quietly as she’d flicked her blinker on and began to merge into the freeway exit lane.
“Uh-huh! And then the next thing is about touch and unexpected reactions to- to other senses. Tommy doesn’t like being touched unless you ask him first, and Lucifer always flinches when I hug him. An’ I know you said it’s ‘cause he’s just not used to hugs ‘cause his parents weren’t nice people, but it could be this too right? And he always turns to look real fast whenever there’s a noise or he sees something move in his perfit- perfiserol-”
“Peripheral vision?”
“Yeah that! Thanks Mommy! And um. The next page says special interests. Tommy really likes trains. ‘Specially old steam trains an’ the history of railway being built. We’re s’posed to pay attention when he talks about it even if he’s talking a lot Mommy, and never tell him he’s boring or that he should talk about other stuff just ‘cause we don’t like it.”
“And you think Lucifer has a- special interest too?”
“Well duh,” Trixie had grinned cheekily. “He likes music and languages and catching bad guys. And you! And all that adult sleepover stuff you still think I don’t know about even though I’m almost ten now mom, and I know about boys and girls and being gross together.”
Before Chloe had been able to inject her own thoughts there about the true extent of Trixie’s knowledge, Trixie had barrelled onwards with her mile a minute chattering. Chloe had silently decided to sit her daughter down for a proper talk soon, but otherwise let her continue.
“-And if it’s not one of those things, then he always just says it’s boring and he doesn’t care. And then he either tries to change the topic to something he likes or he just walks off.”
“So eye contact, sense reactions, and special interests,” Chloe had recited as they paused at an intersection to wait on the lights. “What’s next?”
“Uhhhhh, emotions,” Trixie had nodded after turning the page. “Autistic people have trouble understanding other people’s emotions and don’t get why something might be bad to say or inappropriate. And their own emotions can confuse them ‘cause they don’t know why they feel that way, so they try to run away or pretend it’s not happening. So we have to help by explaining things really clearly instead of just saying “you can’t do that.” Like when you had to tell Lucifer last week about that movie he wanted to watch and you said no, and he was upset until you ‘splained that it would probably give me nightmares. You have to do that a lot, don’t you mommy.”
“Eeeeeyyer, quite often I guess,” Chloe had conceded as she had dropped the hand break and pulled away again, glaring at the asshole in the next lane who had tried to cut in front of them.
“Right! He’s so funny when he says things he’s shouldn’t!” Trixie had giggled. “And he’s always so confused and adorable when you tell him that he shouldn’t say that. Last week,” she had added, dropping into a conspiratorial stage whisper, “he wanted to give me a hip flask to take to school so that I could drink in style. He said I could just put apple juice in it, but I said no because I would get in trouble for making everyone think I had alcohol. And then you would have to come and speak to the principal and he’d get in trouble too. He said he didn’t care,” she had finished, slipping back into a normal speaking voice, “but then I said that it would make you mad at him ‘cause you’d be upset that I got in trouble and that made him understand.”
“Well I’m glad you managed to explain it to him properly,” Chloe had sighed with amusement with a shake of her head, thoughts still racing and dots mentally joining. “It was very mature of you to take the time to do that for him.”
Trixie had grinned at her in the rear view mirror, feet swinging happily.
“Last page mommy! This one says “Routines and tics” at the top. What’s a tic? Miss Turnbury didn’t explain it very well.”
“Well how about you read what’s on the page and then we can work it out together?” Chloe had suggested, only having a general idea herself, and only in relation to Tourette’s syndrome.
“Welllll, first it says that autistic people like it when everything is done in an order they like, and that they like it when the order stays the same every day. And that if you try to change it without explaining why it has to be different that day, they get upset.”
“Like Lucifer and the coffee meltdown,” Chloe had chuckled, thinking back to the time the eccentric club owner had strode into the precinct with his hair mussed and eyes wild just because the coffee shop he always stopped at had accidentally run out of sugar free caramel drizzle.
“He’s so silly,” Trixie had chuckled, having witnessed both Lucifer’s arrival and the following rambling and long winded rant-slash-apology from behind the safety of her dad’s desk. “But that’s okay, because he’s our silly.”
“Yes, I suppose he is,” Chloe had grinned back, once again catching her daughter’s eyes in the mirror for half a second. “Now what else does this page say?”
“Errrr. If you try to change the routine without explaining it first then – no wait, I already read this bit! Some Autistic people do repetitive actions or behaviours. These are sometimes known as tics, but are habit- habit-u-al rather than compulsive. That means they do it because it reassures them, not because they can’t help it. Miss Turnbury said that Tommy likes rocking a lot, especially if he’s excited or really happy. Oh wait, so that’s what a tic is!” She had paused at this point, and Chloe could sense that she had tipped her head to one side in a manner that startlingly resembled Lucifer’s own confused habit. “Lucifer doesn’t do that though. Or the hand flappy thing that this page says.”
“No, but he does fiddle with his cufflinks a lot monkey,” Chloe had pondered as they finally turned into their own street. “And he taps his foot like he can hear music when his head is in the clouds at work.”
“Oh and he hums!” Trixie had added as they pulled into their parking space outside their apartment. “One long note like he doesn’t need to breathe! And he used to have the magic coin too, but I haven’t seen it for a very long time.”
“Magic coin?”
“Yeah! It was so cool! He could make it float above his hand and spin without touching it. It had an upside-down star and a goat on it.”
Chloe had shrugged, not recalling ever seeing any coin, “magically” floating or otherwise, and had instead ushered Trixie inside, thoughts switching away from her mysterious but dorky partner over to dinner preparations with the ease of long practice at compartmentalisation.
The thoughts had stayed with her though, which is how she came to be here three days later, sat at her desk in the precinct, watching Lucifer from the corner of her eye as he flits around Dan’s unattended desk and straightens the pencils in her Ex’s pot.
Tidiness and organisation is another facet of liking routine… she thinks to herself as she shuffles the pages of the report she’s just finished. And he was; very obsessed with order. Particularly in his own penthouse. Having been up to her partner’s lavish apartment more times than she can recall now, Chloe is well aware just how much of a neat freak he can be.
“Lucifer-” she starts, intending to reprimand him and call him back to her side when he makes to move on from Dan’s pencil pot to his report stack.
But then she stops.
And thinks about what Trixie and her booklet had said about explaining why instead of just demanding they do.
“Yes Detective?” he grins as he looks across at her. Eyes, she notes almost absently, focused on her cheek bone and not her own pupils.
“You and Dan have different ideas about what constitutes organised,” she tries, careful to not sound condescending or accusing.
“Well obviously,” he frowns with an almost-huff. “The Douche has no concept of organised at all! I mean, look at this desk!”
“But it’s Dan’s desk and he’s the one who has to be able to find things on it. So if you move things around so that they’re where you think they should be, they won’t be where Dan expects them to be. And then he’ll get frustrated and take it out on you.”
Lucifer blinks, and his head tips to the left.
“Daniel is hardly my biggest fan anyway, so why would that matter? At least this way I won’t have to tolerate his dislike and look at the mess.”
And okay. Point.
(Sort of. The pair of them have been weirdly bromancey lately actually, with Dan letting Lucifer tag along with him when she’s buried in reports, write-ups and other paperwork. And the… fangirling over that movie series. Bodyguards? Body bags…?)
“Why don’t you come organise my desk instead?” she suggests as an alternative. “I don’t mind so long as you explain your system as you go along and listen to my thoughts if I think part of it should be done differently.”
“Really?” Lucifer asks, now sounding thoroughly disbelieving. “But you hate me touching your work things! You object more than a hooker that hasn’t been paid when I “fiddle” with your belongings.”
“No, I don’t like not knowing where stuff is,” she corrects gently, ignoring his inappropriate metaphor with only a hint of an eye roll.
He gives her another (more than) slightly suspicious look, but he does strides gracefully back to her side and sinks into his usual chair at the end when she nods encouragingly at him again.
“Well first off,” he starts, sounding serious as he points at her own collection of stationary. “That is an abomination. You have paperclips in the same hole as staples! And why is that cracked pen still in there! It’s leaking ink everywhere!”
With a fond shake of her head, she passes him the offending desk tidy and watches affectionately as he upends it and gleefully starts pushing it into separate piles.
Three bodies, one high speed car chase, four fired bullets, and two murderers apprehended later, and Chloe insists that Lucifer accompany her back to her and Maze’s apartment for dinner so that she can try and calm him down.
Lucifer has been alternating between jittery, overly detached, and furious all day, burning from hot to cold to apathetic with barely a second’s warning. After having to forcefully pull him away from the older of their two too smug and unrepentantly guilty suspects when his anger had gotten the better of him, Chloe had squashed her instinct to snap at him for his conduct and send him home, and had instead bundled him back into his discarded suit jacket and pulled him towards the carpark by his hand.
“Really Detective, I am perfectly capable of looking after myself you know,” he is protesting grumpily as she pushes him into her passenger seat. “Despite how often you insist I behave worse than your spawn, I am in fact older than time itself and therefore a functional adult.”
“Well, functional is debatable,” she teases. “And you’re rather more middle aged than lived through the middle ages.”
“Ugh, the middle ages were awful darling,” he groans dramatically as she shuts the door on his side and slides into the driver’s seat. “So many pointless plague deaths and burnings and people feeling guilty for stealing food from their neighbours and family and parents despite the fact they literally starved to death. And all those snobby knights. Though technically you should call it the medieval period rather than the middle ages. Oh and don’t get me started on the crusades in the Middle East. A more rotten and self-serving bunch of stuck up pricks, I’ve never met. Save my own family of course.”
“Ah yes, God and his angels,” Chloe humours in deadpan as she reverses the car and heads for the exit.
“One of these days you really are going to have to start believing me when I tell you the truth about myself,” Lucifer sighs with a melodramatic pout. “Even your daughter knows I’m not speaking in metaphors!”
“Uh-huh. Shall we stop and pick up some chocolate cake for her on the way home?”
“…Only if it’s a devil’s food cake from the Bakery on Quentin Street.”
“Lucifer!” Trixie squeals with her usual enthusiasm, rushing towards her partner in socked feet with a megawatt grin.
But unlike her usual barrelling hug, she instead stops a few feet short and smiles up at him enthusiastically.
Lucifer glances between her and her daughter with obvious puzzlement, clearly still stiffened and braced ready for a pair of arms and a small body to crash into his legs.
“Lucifer,” Trixie asks almost stoically, “would you like a hug?”
“Your spawn has suddenly learnt manners?” Lucifer directs towards her rather than to her daughter after a split second too long silence. “And here I was thinking my father was still hoarding all the miracles for himself.”
“She always has had manners,” Chloe smirks back in jest. “You’ve just never been worthy of them before.”
“Oh so I’m a worthy man now, am I?” he purrs back with a long look up and down her body. “Worthy of your fantastic body at long last perhaps?”
“Down boy,” she snorts. “Answer Trixie’s question while I go catch up with Maze.”
She hangs her jacket by the door quickly before walking further into the apartment, half listening to Lucifer quizzing Trixie about her hand cleanliness, and how not to crease his Armani as she goes.
“And this shirt is Prada,” is the last thing she hears before her attention is taken up by Maze hanging upside down from the ceiling with a knife in her mouth, and the chalk silhouette of a man drawn on the ceiling with another knife stuck through its neck.
“Mommy, we forgot one of Lucifer’s special interests when we made that list.”
Because of course. They have a list now.
(More of a table actually. With three headings: Trait, Lucifer, how to help. It’s a work in progress.)
“Oh did we?” Chloe replies absentmindedly as she finishes washing the dishes from dinner.
“Yeah! Fancy clothes! I looked up all the stuff he told me on Tuesday before he said I could hug him. Armani costs so much money! I found their website and all the suits were reaaaaallly expensive mom. But he really likes it, so I think it should go on the list.”
“Well go fetch it from its hiding place then before Maze gets back.”
(Chloe hadn’t even needed to even attempt to explain why they should hide it from Maze, with Trixie insisting it should be their secret for now straight away. Thank god.)
Folded A3 sheet of paper in hand, Trixie returns to the kitchen table quickly, spreading an array of marker pens and crayons out around her.
“Okay I added it! What should I put in the third bit though?”
“I don’t know monkey,” Chloe muses back as she dries her hands and then hangs the tea towel back up. “Help him keep it clean?”
“We already do that by asking before we touch him now though. And he already has really fancy cleaning people. When I asked, he says he has everything dry cleaned twice a week. I looked up dry cleaning so I know what that is now.”
“What about learning about the different types of suits and jackets and things so we can talk to him about it?”
“Yeah! That’s a good idea! Oh I know! I could wear a suit to the parent’s ball in two weeks! And let Lucifer come with us to pick it!”
“I don’t know sweetie,” Chloe tells her cautiously. “You can wear whatever you like, you know I don’t mind, but Lucifer will want to spend a lot of money on an expensive suit and its not fair to use him for his money like that.”
“But doesn’t he like spending money on his friends?”
“No, he just doesn’t understand the concept of money as a finite resource monkey.”
“So he has so much money that he wouldn’t even notice how much one suit would cost?” Trixie tries slyly with an evil grin.
“You just want an expensive suit because you looked at all that Armani online, you cheeky imp” Chloe shakes her head fondly. Maze and Lucifer should never have been allowed to teach her daughter about deals and desire.
Speaking of deals…
“I’ll do the dishes for the whole two weeks if you let me invite Lucifer suit shopping?” Trixie tries with a faux-innocent look.
“Two whole weeks huh? Wow, you drive a hard bargain child of mine.”
“Two weeks of dishes, and I’ll make my own school lunches all week.”
Chloe narrows her eyes playfully.
“I’ll continue to do your lunches so you don’t die of malnutrition or a sugar overload, you have to do the all the washing up and drying except for the sharp knives and the crystal tumblers Lucifer thinks I haven’t noticed yet, no Tangled, Frozen, or Moana until after the ball, and Lucifer has to agree to stay within a budget I set.”
“Swap Tangled for Finding Dory,” Trixie pouts, crossing her arms across her chest dramatically. “And I get shoes to go with the suit, and a purple necktie.”
“Tangled in exchange for Dory if you can trick Maze into bringing all the dirty pots and glasses in her room to the sink at least once this week.”
Trixie squints back at her, her head raising consideringly.
“Deal Mommy,” she suddenly grins, her hand thrusting out to shake.
Chloe grasps it with a wink, and silently wonders what her world is coming to that she’s making business-style deals with her nine-year-old.
“Oh Detective,” Lucifer rumbles with a lick of his lips the following morning, “I’d love almost nothing more than to go formal clothes shopping with you.”
“So you’ll come then?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for my place in the world. And I mean that literally. I’d rather go back to hell than pass up this opportunity. You have my word.”
“Oh good,” Chloe grins shark like at him. “Because we’re shopping for Trixie, not me.”
“Wait. What? No no no no no, this isn’t what I agree-!”
Having already clapped him on the shoulder and walked away, Chloe doesn’t hear the end of his outraged sentence. Nor does she see the way he points accusingly at the ceiling and mutters about tricks and manipulation.
She does have a good chuckle with Dan at his expense when she gets back to her desk though.
“And I can get you any formal suit I desire?” Lucifer gasps with glee as they stand in the pre-opening emptiness of Lux after a fast-paced day of witness interviews. The self-proclaimed devil had quickly changed his tune and level of enthusiasm for the outing once Trixie had started to explain what she wanted and the deal she’d brokered to be allowed it.
“Within my set budget Lucifer,” Chloe quickly repeats, her no-nonsense mom/detective voice being used at full force.
“Please,” Lucifer scoffs back. “Budgets are for mere mortals.”
“Trixie and I are mere mortals.”
“On the contrary Detective. There’s nothing even the slightest bit mere about you. And I don’t just mean your… enviable assets.”
To their left, Chloe can feel her daughter’s eyes on the two of them, watching the flirty banter with undisguised amusement (and hope? No, she must be imagining that part).
“We’re not discussing this in front of Trixie.”
“Oh, so we can discuss it at a later date then?” Lucifer insists with a waggle of his eyebrows and yet another full body sweep with his eyes.
“You’re impossible,” she sighs exasperated. “Fine look. I reserve the right to put my foot down and say no, but I will graciously allow you to choose which store we go to first.”
“Oh spawn,” Lucifer purrs, rubbing his palms together, “When we’re done, sinful won’t even begin to cover how gorgeous you’ll look.”
Lucifer and Trixie have their heads ducked down over a book of fabric samples, Lucifer’s low rumble as he mutters to her daughter washing across her and the rest of the small store.
This place is not what Chloe was expecting they’d come to when they bundled out of her car at the barest fringe of Beverley hills, with its plain and unassuming front and signage, but despite it’s modest appearance, she still daren’t touch anything; if Lucifer is on first name basis with the establishment’s owner and they’re throwing the words “tailored”, “Tom Ford”, and “double cuffs” around, then even the plain black ties she can see hanging on the back wall display probably cost more than a month or two of her wages each.
God, so much for “within my set budget Lucifer”.
“Can I entice you with a glass of something while you wait Mrs Morningstar?” The proprietor suddenly asks her, flowing up to her side gracefully with a small, welcoming smile.
“Oh, I’m not-” she stutters, gesturing between herself and Lucifer. “We’re not- He and I, it’s not like that.”
“Oh, my apologies Ma’am,” the man replies with a disbelieving glance between them. “But we do have some bottles of top-quality Champagne if you would like a flute? Or alternatively, I do believe we have just received a fresh batch of Italy’s finest dark roast beans?”
“We’ll both have a glass of the 2007 if you still have some left please Antonio,” Lucifer interrupts without looking up from where he’s holding a patch of dark navy check against Trixie’s lower arm. “And a… sippy cup? of whatever Beatrice desires would also be lovely.”
“Lucifer I have to drive and we have Trixie with us. I’m staying tea total,” Chloe rolls her eyes. At the same time, Trixie starts babbling about being nine and sippy cups being for two-year-olds. Lucifer glances down at her in obvious bemusement, and then starts pulling her over to a tall cabinet full of tie pins, cufflinks, and polished belt buckles, nodding and humming as she continues trying to explain children’s drinking capabilities.
Chloe shakes her head again, noticing that… Antonio? Has vanished into the backroom and once again wonders what her life is becoming.
Lucifer won’t let her look at the invoice.
Given that Trixie just spent forty minutes being measured for proper tailoring and Lucifer insisted on a 10-day maximum turn around, it’s probably a good job she doesn’t see it.
(Chloe’s not entirely unknowledgeable about the world of custom tailoring. She knows that even Lucifer usually has to wait a full month or more between first measurements and walking away with a new suit.)
(She’s really glad she didn’t see that bill.)
Lucifer is whistling.
She thinks it’s something classical.
Or maybe Baroque?
She’s not all that clued up on what the differences between the two actually are.
But the point is that Lucifer is whistling through the relaxed smile on his face. His eyes are closed and he’s leaning back in his chair at the end of her desk, long legs stretched languorously out, first finger of his right hand tapping steadily on the side of her desktop file tray.
He’s whistling and the new detective that just transferred in from San Fran is glaring at the back of his head murderously.
Chloe shoots a glare back at him but it goes completely unnoticed.
It’s rare to see Lucifer this laid back and calm. When she has seen him this loose limbed, he’s either just been plinking away absentmindedly at his baby grand in his penthouse, or Trixie has goaded him into flopping on their couch in front of yet another Disney or Dreamworks movie so that she can laugh at him for mumbling disparaging comments all the way through it.
Never here at work.
Here at work, where he’s always slightly alert even at his most bored, twitching towards every slight noise or every flash of one of the unis striding across the atrium. Always fiddling with his phone (or hers, given even half a chance), or twirling a pencil he’s filched from Dan’s desk endlessly around his fingers.
Eyes wide open in case someone approaches them with a new case or new information.
But right now, he’s practically boneless in his sprawl.
If she didn’t definitely know otherwise, she’d think he’d just had the best ever lay of his already sex-filled life.
Either way, she’s not going to let Detective Intolerant march over here and ruin his good mood, which from the look on his face, will happen in less than 30 more seconds. A relaxed and calm Lucifer is her favourite version of him.
So she stands slowly, unsuccessfully trying not to disturb her partner, intending him to head off the newbie before he creates a scene.
“If you’re going to the break room, I’ll have a mug of English Breakfast without my usual splash of milk please,” Lucifer grins up at her, fingers dropping into stillness. “I’ll spike it myself when you get back, so don’t worry about that part.”
“You’re lucky I like you, slave driver,” she drawls with a smile. “I suppose you’ll want some cool ranch puffs from the vending machine too?”
“Oh, you know me so well,” he sings at her with a bright grin of his own, tapping resuming.
“I’ll be back in five then. Don’t break anything too badly while I’m gone.”
He winks as he hums his assent, and she steps round him with a gentle pat on his shoulder.
(Dammit! I touched him without asking him first again! not that he seems to mind if it’s me…)
She grabs Intolerant’s arm by the bicep as she passes him, dragging him towards one of the interview rooms with single minded determination.
“Your ridiculous partner is what now?” Intolerant splutters indignantly.
“Autistic,” she repeats slowly with a pointed look.
“Why the hell is he allowed to consult for the LAPD then? That can’t be safe!”
“I said he’s autistic, not incompetent,” Chloe growls. “The concept of high and low functioning is actually total bullshit as anyone with access to google can find out in 30 seconds flat, but he’s still perfectly able to function normally within society. He just has some quirks that neurotypicals initially find odd.”
“Neuro what nows?”
“Neurotypicals. People not on the autistic spectrum in this instance. Look, just go google it and stop trying to burn holes into the back of Lucifer’s head with your eyes before he notices and you upset him. The whistling and tapping are perfectly normal acceptable behaviour from him, as is any humming, clicking or singing. So I suggest you get used to it.”
“Oh and I suppose you condone his devil delusions too huh? I might be new here, but even I can tell the guy needs checking into a psych ward! And don’t think I haven’t heard the stories about him stripping naked in public already!”
Chloe takes a deep breath and tells the voice in the back of her mind (that sounds like Lucifer crooning about desires) telling her to punch the guy to shutup.
“One,” she says sharply eventually, “if both myself and his highly competent therapist can work within his metaphor despite seeing him day in and day out, I’m sure you can manage the two minutes per week you might have to interact with him for. And two, autistic individuals struggle to understand common social and conversational boundaries. Not because they don’t have any, but because they don’t understand the purpose of a lot of them. But that just makes him different not abnormal or wrong. And not that it’s any of your business, but we’ve discussed clothing not being optional in public anyway and once he understood why it wasn’t a good idea, he promised not to do it again.”
“-And my word is my bond,” Lucifer drawls.
Both Chloe and Intolerant jump near six foot in the air in surprise, neither of them having heard him sneak into the room behind them.
“Jesus Christ Lucifer!” Chloe spits in shock, trying to calm her suddenly racing heart.
“Is a human myth,” her partner grins cheekily back. “Well, I’m sure he probably existed, but really he was just another human that happened to be good at rambling on about my father. Nothing divine about him at all. Though I suppose I’ve never met him so I can’t be 100% certain about that.”
“…Sure,” Chloe nods with a frown, long used to his nonsensical biblical ramblings. “Um. Do you still want that mug of tea?”
“Yes, you were taking a rather long time procuring it for me, so I came searching for you. I do detest being made to worry about your person. I was beginning to think someone might have kidnapped you, or worse, Miss Lopez had dragged you into her lab to participate in her latest experiment.”
He doesn’t so much as glance at the other detective as he talks, seemingly blanking him entirely despite the incredulous look and scoffs being sent his way.
“Well, lead on McDuff,” Chloe shrugs with a smile, offering him her arm.
“Lay on. It’s lay on McDuff. Honestly, you Americans should never have been allowed to lay eyes upon Shakespeare’s works. You insist on mutilating it with this accent of y’alls.”
“Ugh, purist,” she snorts back at him as the door swings shut behind them.
Trixie is once again stood on the tailor’s stool, the miniaturised crisp deep charcoal suit fitting her like- well, a glove.
Antonio is flitting about her, making final adjustments and tutting around the pins held between his lips. Despite her age and usual abundance of energy, her monkey is managing to stand perfectly still while the other man fusses and Lucifer hovers over her protectively like a proud-.
Well okay, like a proud father.
(or maybe a proud mother duck? He’s certainly preening in a similar manner despite it not being him in the new suit.)
Credit where credit is due though, her daughter does look stunning and Lucifer really does have an eye for style and colours. She might even let him finally talk her into getting some formal wear for the more serious none-field events at work. For conventions and symposiums and the like. Maybe something more casual for the more frequent seminars…
“Simply ravishing darling demonling,” Lucifer utters sonorously when Trixie finally hops off the stool and turns to face them. The shimmery purple silk tie she asked for has been tucked into her vest (sorry Lucifer, waistcoat) and neatly pinned in place with a (hopefully not solid) silver pin, delicate little silver cufflinks shaped like devil emojis glimmering at the cuffs of her pale lilac dress shirt.
Trixie’s beaming smile could light up the room even without the help of Lucifer’s own shining grin and pleased twinkling eyes.
“Right, we have twenty minutes to hop over to the next street to collect your brogues,” Lucifer continues, tugging at his own cuffs repetitively, “fifteen back to Lux so that your mother and I can change into ball worthy attire, and then just under an hour to collect the douche and make it across town to your school.”
“Daddy is not a douche Lucifer,” Trixie reprimands as she shoves her slightly ratty sneakers back on.
“He most certainly is cretin,” Lucifer smirks, shaking Antonio’s hand and ushering them all back out onto the street.
“I desire to ask you something Detective. Chloe.”
They’re sat at a paper cloth covered table to one side of the under decorated school gymnasium. Their little Decker-Espinoza-Morningstar quartet is by far the best dressed group in attendance, and despite the advertising and advised dress code, the whole event feels rather more school disco than mock-high school senior prom. Chloe would feel self-conscious in her elegant crimson cocktail dress if any of the other parents were actually looking at her and not constantly at Lucifer in his velvet black tie tux and precise eye liner.
Trixie’s having the time of her life though, so she can hardly complain.
(and Lucifer is always easy on the eyes, even without the bowtie and slightly shimmering hair)
“Well so long as it’s appropriate for any little ears that might be eavesdropping go ahead,” she eventually answers him, leaning her chin on one palm and her elbow on the table, face titled towards him.
Lucifer pauses, seemingly nervous, twisting one platinum cufflink in an endless loop.
“Yesterday at the precinct,” he finally starts after an obvious swallow, his gaze resting somewhere above her left eyebrow instead of meeting her eyes. “You said you were going to get tea and coffee for us, but then you carted off Detective Grahams for a pseudo interegation of some sort instead.”
Chloe grimaces, remembering the other detective’s attitude. If he doesn’t buck his ideas up and sort his attitude out where her partner is concerned, she won’t hesitate to sic HR on him.
“Oh is that his name?” she says faintly in lieu of anything meaningful. “I’ve been mentally calling him Detective Intolerant all week.”
“Indeed,” Lucifer smirks slightly anxiously. “But I thought I was the one who was supposed to saddle your colleagues with inappropriate and salacious nicknames and forget their actual epithets.”
“Trust me, Intolerant is entirely appropriate in this instance,” she responds dryly, pushing a bright smile onto her face hurriedly as Trixie waves at her from the room where’s she’s dancing with a hilariously uncoordinated Dan.
“Well that’s rather what I was going to ask about,” Lucifer winces, his foot now tapping too. “You told him I’m autistic.”
Chloe suddenly has the horrible realisation that Lucifer probably doesn’t even know that he exhibits a lot of the signs and symptoms, if he even knows what autism is at all.
Of course he wouldn’t, he’s Lucifer. He tried to play fetch with her daughter like a dog when they were introduced.
“Am I?” he continues in a small voice. “I looked it up and I found one of those checklist things. Should I ask Linda about it? Mind you, the checklist was a lot more boring than the quizzes I usually do online. Did you know that BuzzFeed thinks I have strong submissive tendencies and that I fit the archetype of bratty bottom? Which is nonsense of course, I’m as verse as you can get, and a switch to boot. Heh, what if that dumb checklist was just as nonsensical as the sex alignment quiz? Really, is it worth bothering Linda with-”
“Lucifer,” she cuts gently across him, placing her hand on his shaking forearm.
He goes very still all of a sudden.
“It doesn’t change who you are, least of all to me,” she continues softly. “If you are, then you always have been, and if you’re not, you’re not. It’s just an explanation for what you’re already experiencing, not a new undiscovered facet.”
“But it would explain- it would- maybe- maybe it’s why Dad threw me out. Because when he made me, he made me defective.”
“There is nothing defective about you,” she spits defiantly and confidently. “You are perfect as you are, oddities and eccentricities all. Your father is an asshole and that’s on him, not you. No decent parent throws his kid out, no matter what they’ve done. Trixie could intentionally murder half the city and set fire to the other half and I still wouldn’t disown her. And neither would Dan.”
“Beatrice would never!”
“I know babe, but in such a hypothetical… I wouldn’t stop her experiencing the consequences of her actions, but I’d stand by her side through it. Not that I will ever have to; despite your fond pet names for her, she’s a really good kid.”
“Being labelled Hellspawn by the King of Hell is the highest compliment I’ll have you know. But the… sentiment is appreciated. That my Dad is the one in the wrong I mean.”
“If he ever has the misfortune of meeting me, I’ll kick him in the nuts so hard he won’t be able to walk in a straight line ever again,” she grumbles, sipping her cheap sparkling wine with a grimace at the taste (honestly, Lucifer has ruined her taste buds for everything but the good stuff).
“I look forward to it,” Lucifer smiles genuinely, turning his hand the other way up under hers and tangling their fingers loosely together. “And I’ll talk to Linda about this at my appointment tomorrow on one condition.”
“Oh I should’ve known you’d try and turn this into a deal,” she sighs fondly, rolling her eyes in familiar exasperation. “Go on then, what do you want this time?”
“I would like your hand for the next dance if you’re amenable, my fair lady,” he grins salaciously, standing in one smooth fluid movement without releasing her hand.
God, but he really is sex on legs.
One of these days she really will have to climb out of denial and-
It’s not quite six months later when she finally has to reconsider her assessment of Lucifer’s neurotypicality.
Can you be neurodivergent if you’re not human?
Is he actually on the spectrum, or is he actually standard levels of different for angels (and demons and- do vampires and werewolves exist too? What about witches? The abominable snowman? The Loch Ness Monster?).
Then of course she rolls her eyes and sighs deeply at Lucifer’s latest emotion-dodging antics at exactly the same time as Amenidiel and Rae-Rae. And then nope, definitely just Lucifer who’s the lovable oddball.
Good fucking god- no wait, not god. Not using that any more given that god is apparently real and exists and created the universe and is Lucifer’s actual dickhead of a father! And Lucifer is the actual Devil! Humanity's famed and framed scapegoat for all the evil in the world! She’s dating the actual Devil! Who’s an angel and has wings! And is a huge adorable dork-!
Anyway, back from that tangent. Good fucking lord of hell, she’s dating the world’s first neurodivergent. Hell, the universe’s first neurodivergent! Forget the original sin, he’s the original aspey!
Actually that’s a terrible comparison. Makes him and other neurodivergents sound evil. Which he and they definitely are not, fuck you very much god.
None-existent Christ on a bicycle, How is this her life now!?
“OH MY FUCKING GOD- I mean oh my goodness! I threatened to kick your father in the nuts! Your father who is actual god! If I get smote for blasphemy I’m entirely blaming you babe!”
“Yes dear, whatever you say dear. You’re always correct dear,” Lucifer recites mindlessly as he braids Trixie’s hair beside her and stares entirely absorbed at the cartoon they’re all watching in their PJs in Lucifer’s penthouse.
“Mommy you said a bad word!”
Chloe sighs and decides to be lazy for once and take a leaf out of her partner’s less than moral book, swiping his Italian leather wallet off of the coffee table.
“Here’s $200 to pretend you heard nothing monkey,” she rolls her eyes.
“Aw yissss,” Trixie grins, flopping back against Lucifer’s legs contently.
Lucifer absentmindedly pats her on the head as he shoves another handful of popcorn in his mouth, humming one long note and grinning.
Chloe snuggles against his side with an eye roll.
And all is well with the world.