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He alights on the balcony and retracts his wings. The inside of his chest is tight and burning; his skin burns too, sizzling against the cool air of the LA night and the tears that streak his face. He sinks to his knees and curls forward into himself, trembling with emotions that he can’t control. He doesn’t even want to anymore.
He’s made it.
He’s fought his way back to her, although at what cost… He shudders. He can’t endure thinking about it, but he’d do it again. He’d suffer that a billion times over. He hopes he never has to, but with Dad calling the shots, he can never be sure.
He rises unsteadily—the sufferings of Hell take their toll even on the strongest—and casts a cursory glance across the twinkling lights of LA. It’s well after midnight, and dawn will be chasing over the horizon soon, yet the city is still alive and noisy. He smells the clamour, the blood and drugs, the debauchery and hate, the hope and love. The distant wail of a police siren worms its way lazily into his consciousness.
Home Sweet Home.
The edges of his lips twitch, but he’s not smiled in a long time. He’s relieved, yes, but happiness remains a remote memory. He can’t rediscover it alone; eons of living have taught him that much, at least. Anyhow, joy would be too much right now. He’s tired, so very tired. Exhaustion throbs in his skull and gnaws every fibre of his being.
He wants some whisky. Oh, how he’s missed a decent drink. He pushes aside the balcony door and steps inside.
Then he sees her.
The world starts to quake around him. He steadies himself, somehow, and drags in a slow, shaky breath. He absorbs the sight of her, whisky forgotten, as he quenches an infinitely greater need.
She’s lying on the sofa, curled on one side with her head pillowed on an arm. It’s dark, so the dim illuminations from the city below cast golden streaks through her hair and set her pearly skin shimmering. A lump clogs his throat, and a surge of emotion nearly fells him.
She is just like an angel. Or, at least, how an angel should be, if Dad hadn’t screwed everything up quite so monumentally. Her skin does, so it seems, make him cry.
He reaches toward her, a mere lift of his fingers, then freezes again. Is she real? Is he even here? It’s all too perfect, surely Dad would never gift him this perfection, even if he has fought his way up from the bowels of Hell. He frowns, as another question enters his muddied mind.
If she is real, and this isn’t some trick… what is she doing here?
She’s wearing… oh, that’s his crisp, white shirt. It drowns her as if she’s a child wearing an elder sibling’s gear, kissing to her bare thighs. He’d forgotten he owned more than one shirt, and he suddenly becomes aware of himself and how he must appear. His clothes are wrecked; his jacket lost and his trousers torn. His shirt is dirty and bloodied, hanging open and unbuttoned, half-ripped from his back. His hair is an unruly mass of dark cropped curls, and he’s forgotten the scent of styling gel.
But he doesn’t matter. He blinks the mists of tears and misapprehension from his eyes, and notices that… she’s cold. She’s shivering, trembling like a leaf… and there’s an empty bottle of claret lying discarded on the floor. On a table, a wine glass lies tipped over, the grainy dregs dribbling across the marbled surface.
Detective… what have you been up to?
Ah yes, Detective. He’d almost forgotten that this is what he calls her. Thinking her name—let alone articulating it—was too painful while he remained in Hell, although he dreamed of her constantly. Now he rolls her many names luxuriantly around his mind, and finally, he dares draw closer.
The Detective. My Detective. Chloe. She needs me…
He wants to scoop her up in his arms, but he’s still a little wary that this fantasy will break. How can this angel ever need the devil? He recalls her words, her pleas when he left her. Her declaration of love. If they weren’t a hallucination he’d conjured amidst the furnaces of Hell, then… perhaps this makes some sense.
He crouches down beside her, and presses his knuckles to her cheek. The skin is cool and damp. She’s been crying. She needs him, he’s desperate to believe it… and yet… He strokes her gently; her lashes flutter, but she sleeps on, breathing steadily, evenly.
“Detective?” he whispers.
Her eyes flicker open; she blinks, and they both draw breath sharply, as one. He turns rigid; his fingers unmoving on her flesh. He’s so scared—yes, he’ll boldly admit that he’s bloody well terrified—that this illusion will shatter. She’ll disappear, or worse, she’ll reject him. The pits of Hell will suck him back and he’ll stick there forever, a wasp drowning in a vat of broiling treacle.
“Are you real?” she asks, her voice brittle, a thread of hair slipping down over one eye. She lifts her fingers, pushing back her hair then skimming his hand that touches her face. His skin tingles beneath her featherlight touch.
He speaks very quietly. “I believe I am.”
Undiluted joy lights her eyes, and arcs like electricity from her soul to his. He smiles, a smile only she could tug from his still-mending heart. Irrevocably drawn, he leans toward her and their lips meet.
And then it’s all real, and he’s kissing her truly, and he’s sweeping her up into his arms as she clings tight around his neck. She’s cold, still trembling, but he’s steady on his legs now and he lets his heat engulf her.
She was here. Waiting for him… and desolate without him. Dare he believe that? Her kiss provides a tentative answer, and he responds to her with all that he has. She ripples her fingers through his hair and strains up into him—to say he’s left Hell and found his Heaven is blatantly inadequate. Her curves crush closer into his chest, her bare legs smoothing against the crook of his arms, and they abandon themselves to the kiss.
Heaven was never this perfect, and it was never his. Part of him now dares believe… could she finally be his?
Their kiss lingers on, deepening, intensifying. His fear is ebbing, the slightness of her weight in his arms somehow strengthening him even further. Eyes screwed tight, he tastes bitter wine, their blended tears, and something intrinsically, wonderfully her.
He opens his eyes; the kiss finally breaks. They breath only of each other’s hot, gasping breaths; he presses his forehead down to meet hers.
“I’ve missed you, Chloe,” he whispers. “I’ve missed you so much.”
She still looks shell-shocked, as he is, but the familiar way her cheeks furrow when she smiles drags from him another forgotten grin. He’s rinsing his memory of terrible things faster than he expected. It seems like an eternity since he left Hell; perhaps an eternity passed in that kiss.
“I was a mess,” she says, still breathless. “I’ve come here every night that Trixie’s been with Dan. I just waited. I don’t know why I was so sure, but you left from here, so I always believed, if you did return…” She trails off, biting her kiss-swollen lip.
He knows what she means. If the tables were turned, he’d have drunk himself to death waiting for her here, the place from whence she’d left him. He’s only glad she’s the sensible one.
“I should have you charged for breaking and entering,” he says, and her laughter thaws the remnants of any ice about his heart.
“There was no breaking, Lucifer! It’s not like you ever leave this place locked.”
“And wearing my shirt?” He’s grinning properly now, buoyed with devilish glee. “Have you fallen on hard times, or has the lost waif look become de rigueur again while I was gone?”
“It’s all I had left of you. And…” She goes very solemn. “When you went, I was lost.”
Not as lost as I was, he thinks. But there will be time enough for words under the balmy morning heat of the Californian sun.
Right now, he simply needs to kiss her again.