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“Lucifer?” Chloe calls out as she steps over the threshold into his apartment. It’s an automatic response to make her presence known, ingrained into her after years of walking in on all manner of things that she wishes she could erase from her memory.
Although, in more recent times, since they became… a thing, she’s found his extracurricular activities have become a bit more… mundane.
Still, old habits die hard. Especially when said habits have saved you from various degrees of mental scarring.
Her footsteps echo across the sleek marble floor as she walks further into the seemingly empty apartment. He said that he’d be here, but the eerie silence that lingers seems to suggest otherwise.
“Lucifer?” she calls again, hesitantly creeping up the steps to his bedroom to peer inside, still edging on the side of caution. You know… just in case. But the bedroom is as empty as the rest of the apartment.
She stands there for a moment, resting one hand on her hip as she surveys the place. The silk sheet bedding looks undisturbed, no empty tumblers lay discarded, no tailored suit jacket hanging anywhere to be seen. There seems to be no signs of life in the place she’d once drunkenly called a ‘ five-star Hell hole’ .
Puzzled, she pulls her phone out of her pocket, about to check her messages and confirm that they had, in fact, intended to meet here today when his smooth, accented voice comes from somewhere deep in the apartment.
“Detective?”
She looks up from her phone. Somehow, he sounds far away, the word small as it floats through the air from beyond the arch in the bookshelf.
For a moment, she waits, eye narrowing, brows furrowing, ears straining to hear his voice. “Lucifer?” she says again after a beat of silence stretches between them. “Where are you?”
Her feet move of their own volition towards bookshelves.
“Down here” — his voice comes again when she reaches the top of the stairs— “in the study.”
Making her way down the stretching staircase, she looks around with interest. The stairs lead all the way down to what must be the next floor of the building. She has been down here once before, when she and Linda had commandeered the penthouse in his absence for a makeshift birthday party. At that time though, she’d been far more interested in Lucifer’s sock drawer and what mysteries it might contain. Not that she’d found out at the time. Of course, now she knows that— other than a preposterous number of designer socks that must’ve cost a ludicrous amount of money— nothing is out of the ordinary there. Even the Devil has a sock drawer and it’s probably tidier than most.
And she’d also been a bit drunk. Just a bit.
So really, she hadn’t been paying that much attention. She knows there’s a kitchen down here, if only for the fact that Lucifer had emerged one morning with a freshly cooked full English, but other than that, she doesn’t really know what’s behind the other doors.
It’s easy to tell which one he’s behind though. The closest door to her is the only one left slightly ajar, and though the lights are switched off, a ghostly blue light shines, dancing in almost hypnotic patterns across the floor like water.
Because it is water, she soon realises.
He’s sat, cross legged on the floor, the light softly illuminating his features, in front of a gigantic tank. The curtains are drawn, and darkness fills the corners of the room, but she can tell that the furniture has been moved to accommodate the massive tank.
She takes a few steps towards him, but he doesn’t seem to notice, his dark eyes fixed on the contents of the tank, his body blocking her view of whatever it is.
“Hey,” she says quietly, afraid of speaking too loudly lest she startle him, “what are you doing down here?”
He turns to her with a soft, surprised smile on his face, as though he hadn’t been expecting her. His state only adds to that assumption. His jet-black hair is slightly mused, and he wears an unusually wrinkled white shirt with his sleeves rolled up to expose his well-muscled forearms.
“Detective,” he greets her with a cheery grin, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”
She finds herself smiling back at him as she closes in, and he stares up at her from his spot on the floor, dark eyes twinkling, head tilted like an adorable little puppy. Her fingers stray, unable to help themselves, into his messy locks, her nails gently scraping across his scalp. “We had dinner plans,” she says, fond smile still in full force upon her face as he leans into her touch. “Did you forget?”
He suddenly straightens to sit upright, eyes going wide. “Bloody hell! Is it that time already?” He momentarily glances around at the room and then looks back to her. “Gosh, it’s easy to lose track of time down here. My apologies, Detective.”
Her gaze wanders from him, drifting to the lark tank before them that had held his attention so firmly before. It’s a fish tank. A big fish tank. It’s relatively bare decoration wise, with only a thin layer of silty fine sand covering the bottom and a few pitted rocks sitting on the floor.
And it only has one occupant.
A sleek, stone grey shark with a white belly and a black tipped fin swims gracefully, propelling itself along the length of the tank and back again with the subtlest of movements. It looks small, not much bigger than her hand, but from the pinprick eyes and characteristic fins, she knows without a doubt that it is some sort of shark.
“You have a shark?” she asks incredulously, whirling on him as he pulls himself from the floor. “Why— Why do you have a shark?”
He grins at her, a slightly manic glint in his eyes that he gets sometimes. “She’s my new pet!” he explains, still smiling like a loon. If it weren’t for the innumerable questions and initial outrage at his statement, she might have stopped to appreciate how adorable he looks.
But she can only blink back at him. He waits expectantly for her response, but when she opens her mouth, no words form. So, she stands there for what is probably too long a moment, index finger raised and mouth agape.
“Why— How? ” She finally manages to snap herself from her stupor. “I mean first of all, is it even legal to have a shark as a pet? Secondly , don’t they get like…” her eyes go wide as she remembers the size of the sharks when she’d taken Trixie to the aquarium one time, “ really big? Where ,” she glances around the room, worry setting deep in her bones as she realises how inadequate the tank in front of her is, “will you even keep it?!”
She loves Lucifer, she really does, but he has a tendency to leap before he looks. He never has quite grasped the concept of considering the consequences his actions might have. But she supposes being immortal will do that to a person. Give you a reckless indifference for your own safety.
Which he definitely has.
They are working on it though.
His smile hasn’t faltered the entire time she’s been talking, and he still stands there, grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Yes, not necessarily, and here,” he answers her questions easily in one go and looks very proud of himself whilst doing it. “She’s a Blacktip. They only grow to around forty inches in length.”
Oh.
“Okay,” she says, nodding slowly, eyes narrowing, “but isn’t it dangerous? What if it bites you when you’re feeding it?”
Lucifer scoffs and takes a step towards the tank. “ She,” he starts, pausing and giving her a pointed look, “is harmless, Detective. Look!”
And then, much to her horror, he pushes his sleeve up a little more, reaches over the tank and plunges his arm into the water. The shark notices the disturbance in its waters and makes a wide turn, heading straight for his hand.
“ Lucifer!” she shouts, stepping towards him, intent on grabbing his arm to pull it from the, no doubt soon to be red, water. “ It’s going to—”
But the shark doesn’t attack him. Quite the opposite, in fact. It— She pushes into his open palm, swimming quite happily against it.
“—bite you…” she finishes quietly, her words losing their lustre.
Lucifer stands there for a moment, eyes shining with a soft smile on his lips as he gently runs his long fingers over the shark’s back, careful to avoid her fins.
“See?” he says, pulling his arm out of the water and retrieving a black towel from somewhere around the side of the tank. “She’s just a baby, and I think she likes me.”
Chloe raises an eyebrow at him as he towels off his arm. The shark does seem to like him actually. She didn’t know that sharks could like people, but hey, she once saw a video of a person who was best friends with a bumble bee, so anything is possible.
And now her worry has settled, she can see that Lucifer actually looks happy . Not just hiding as he often does when he smiles, but actually happy. It’s all in his eyes. Those soulful depths that betray his deepest emotions.
“Do you want to pet her?” he asks, offering her the towel.
A nervous laugh bubbles up inside her and spills from her lips. “ No. Thank you. I’m good.”
“Suit yourself,” he murmurs, tossing the towel to one side.
“So,” she starts, her curiosity getting the better of her, “why a pet shark? Is this part of some deal or did you lose another bet to Maze?”
Lucifer’s smile fades a little, his gaze going distant as he turns back to stare into the tank. “No. I just…” he trails off, half shrugging, “I’ve just always wanted a pet shark.”
She listens intently, watching as he eyes traces the elegant, effortless movements of his cold-blooded new friend.
“People think they’re dangerous, but really they don’t bother humans. Not unless they feel threatened. But you humans, you have this idea that they are bloodthirsty creatures that would have you for dinner given the chance. Only that’s not true.” He pauses for one long moment that seems to stretch for eternity and then, almost as an afterthought, quietly adds, “They need love too.”
And that’s when it clicks. They’re misunderstood. Just like he is. People vilify the devil because they think he’s some kind of monster, but he isn’t. He’s far from it.
He’s a good person.
In that moment she can’t help but throw herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and holding him tightly against her. A surprised little noise escapes his lips at the unexpected embrace.
“I love you,” she tells him firmly, her voice slightly muffled by his shirt as she squeezes him tighter.
“I know,” he replies quietly, his voice rough.
He doesn’t say the words back to her, not yet, but that’s okay. She knows that he loves her too. She’s seen it in his eyes.
And as they stand there, his arms coming up to encompass her in his warmth, his lips pressing gentle kisses to the top of her head, she reflects upon how much she loves her life.
Normal couples get a dog or a cat as a pet. But her boyfriend is the Devil and nothing about their relationship has ever been anywhere even close to normal. So, they have a pet shark.
This morning that concept would have (and briefly did) horrified her.
Now she couldn’t be happier.
“So,” she asks, when they finally separate, “have you thought of a name for her yet?”
“Not yet…” he says, a slight hint of disappointment in his voice.
Sliding her hand into his, she gives it squeeze. “That’s okay, we can think of one together.”