Work Text:
Chloe stared down at the lifeless body splayed upon the ground, transfixed with mute and detached nihilism (the kind acquired only after several years of solving L.A. homicide cases).
“I know, right?” came Ella’s wry murmur to her left. “Kinda makes you wanna go vegan.”
“Mhm.” Chloe’s answering smirk was tight, mostly humorless. “What do we know so far?”
“Jane Doe here's missing her ID, among other things,” Ella sighed, bending down for a closer look at the mangled corpse. “This head wound here?” She gestured with a pencil to the laceration splitting the dead woman’s ashen forehead nearly in two, a jagged raw opening black with clotted blood long-cooled. “Looks like your classic axe murderer.”
“Looks like,” Chloe nodded in agreement, tilting her chin with indication. “It would certainly explain the missing limbs as well.”
“Probably. I’d say that our hatchet-wielding psychopath also pulled this poor woman’s intestines from their pesky peritoneal coating while he was at it.” Ella shuddered, glancing up at Chloe. “This definitely didn’t happen post-mortem, either.”
The chirping siren of another cruiser made them look up to see Dan’s car parked outside the scene. He got out and ducked beneath the yellow scene tape, helpfully lifted by a rookie uni who looked pretty green around the gills.
“Hey, Dan,” Chloe greeted while Ella resumed photographing the corpse. “So, it looks like Choppy Chet’s been paroled and is back on his game.”
“Looks like,” Dan echoed, and a smirk tugged playfully at the corner of his mouth, blue eyes twinkling with mischief beneath the professional stoicism. “Check out Juarez. Betcha five bucks he’s about to hurl behind my car.”
Beneath her copper-toned aviators, Chloe smiled with secret camaraderie. “I’ll take that bet.”
“Hello, all!”
Lucifer’s bellowing greeting announced his arrival from twenty paces, and he strode up to the closed crime scene in a three-piece Armani suit and a glittering, winning smile. “Sorry I’m late, that DoorDash delivery boy decided he wanted to join in on the holiday festivities!”
“Lucifer—” Chloe began, sighing exasperatedly, then deflating visibly. “Which holiday?”
Lucifer stared with agitated incredulity. “Arbor Day, Detective.”
“Ah. Of course.”
“Maze and I always hire a few of the lovely male strippers from Beast Mode Enterprises to start things off properly. There’s one I like to call Trunks, because he’s hung like a tree. Get it?”
“Yes, Lucifer, we get it. No further elaboration needed.”
He approached the hacked-up victim, then, and his smile faltered through a sympathetic hiss. “Oof. It appears this poor woman’s been properly pruned for the season!”
Dan put his hands on his hips and scowled through sun-creased brows. “Have some respect, man. This woman’s been brutally murdered.” He gestured emphatically at the corpse to illustrate his point, then pointed toward the huddle of officers by the cruisers. “Chlo, they’re asking for you.”
Chloe sighed, pivoting away, her ponytail whisking a freesia-scented wave in Lucifer’s direction. He closed his eyes, heedless of Dan’s increasing disgust, and basked in her lingering scent for a moment longer. The gesture was a bit lecherous, a little sad, he knew, but her scent was simply intoxicating…enough to leave him slightly dizzy. Out of nowhere, he shuddered and sneezed, loudly enough to make four people within his immediate vicinity jump, himself included. “Oh! Pardon me,” he stammered, plucking free his silk handkerchief and tidily wiping his nose, stuffing it back into his suit pocket and smiling angelically at Dan. “I’m allergic to douchebags.”
Dan shifted impatiently, clearing his throat with official resignation. “Nice. Since you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful and come with me.”
Lucifer’s eyes opened, and he regarded Dan with a growing smirk. “Do go on,” he purred, hoping the lewdness was enough to distract from his momentary incapacitation. He resisted the urge to huff a restorative breath as his equilibrium balanced. How unsettling.
Dan rolled his eyes, turning away. “God, you’re weird, man. C’mon.”
He led Lucifer through the foray of uniformed officers and detectives crowding around the murder victim, ducking once more beneath the yellow scene tape and barely holding it for Lucifer to pass through behind him – not that Lucifer had followed that closely.
“Lucifer.” Dan craned his neck, peeking back over his shoulder in search of their consultant. “I said come on.”
Lucifer straightened up from his position bent over the corpse, lowering his phone and glaring at Daniel through eyes suddenly darkened with fatigue. “I am not your dog, Daniel,” he replied, and his light lilt was now laced with a hint of menace that definitely promised absolution. Regardless, he did bid the uni with whom he’d been conversing adieu, and got up to head toward Dan’s way. “What is it that’s so pressing, anyway?”
“Gotta look for the limbs,” Dan announced, as casually as asking what’s for dinner?
“I beg your pardon?”
“The victim’s arms and legs. They’re evidence, and they might be nearby, if the psychotic bastard didn’t throw ‘em in his trunk before hightailing it outta here.”
“Ah.” Lucifer sniffed and straightened his lapels, striding to catch up with Dan, who was disappearing into the fringe of woods bordering the crime scene.
The trees were spindly, branches only just beginning to bloom with light buds, and the earth below their feet squelched with the dampness of hidden rainfall. The air smelled damp and fresh the further they walked into the woods, but rather than clearing his head, Lucifer began to feel the inexorable tide of exhaustion weighing him down like a wet blanket. His lungs themselves seemed to swell with sludge from his exertions, and he found himself nearly gasping for breath by the time Dan stopped to bend down and examine what appeared to be a pile of nothing.
“Footprints. See that?” He glanced upwards, pointing at, yeah, that was a footprint - heavy boot tread, muddled by time and overnight rain. “Could be our guy. Which means he was on foot, which means—”
“That Suzy Ceviche’s limbs are close by as well, yes,” Lucifer murmured, voice thick and dull. His hearing felt faded, his own voice sullen, lost in the rising pounding of his head and heart. It was hard to breathe; he tried, lungs rattling with fresh phlegm, and coughed harshly for it. “Great detective work, Dan.”
Dan didn’t miss the sarcasm, but he chose not to comment, too focused on his newfound lead. “C’mon, we gotta keep looking.” His mouth quirked at the end, excitement mounting, blue eyes alight with the thrill of pursuit. He looked and moved like a little boy, sinewy muscle and quick darting glances here and there, looking upwards like he expected to see severed human limbs festooning the tree branches like macabre festival ornaments.
Festival. Arbor Day. Trees. Lucifer barely stifled an ill-timed giggle, blinking wearily against surging wooziness, feeling groggy, now chilled with fever, breathing audibly and roughly. His fingers brushed against rough tree bark, damp with moss; his shined Italian leather loafers scuffed against roots and piles of twigs. “Wish I would’ve known an excursion was in the works,” he huffed, voice hoarse, clearing his throat at the end. “I would’ve…dressed the part. Khakis and ka-bar and all.”
“You sound like hell,” Dan commented, finally acknowledging Lucifer’s mysterious ailment. “Lay off the cigarettes, might do you some good.”
“Right, Daniel,” Lucifer rasped, impatiently clawing aside a tangle of branches. “Suppose I’ll start…joining you for your morning workouts while I’m…at it—” His proclamation ended on a rough cough that caught in his throat and doubled him over, and he clasped his knees for support as he hacked up what suddenly felt like a week’s worth of mucus, tasting like infection and death.
Dan whirled to face him, brow furrowed, impatience dissolving into concern. “Okay, that sounds way too terrible to be allergies. What gives, man?”
Gasping for air, Lucifer strained his gaze upward through watering eyes, tears spilling, lips slick. “I—I don’t—don’t know, Daniel, if I did—” Abruptly, his chest constricted, his torso heaved, and he doubled over once more with an almighty hacking cough that dislodged whatever gunk had congealed within his chest. He panted wearily in the aftermath, reeling from exhaustion. “I need a moment,” he declared, as his knees promptly buckled into the dirt.
“Shit.” Dan hurried to Lucifer’s aid, kneeling beside him, wet dirt dampening his new jeans. “Hey, Lucifer, I gotcha – whoa, wow, you’re burning up, man.” Frustration sharpened his tone. Of course this dick would show up to a crime scene sick and try to hide it from everyone, then pull a stunt like this just to inconvenience him. Typical showboating Lucifer.
“Dan?” Chloe’s voice rang out from several feet ahead, and he looked up, still cradling Lucifer’s unconscious head, as she emerged into view from a snarled tangle of branches, flashlight-toting officers on her heel. She noticed the predicament, and her eyes bulged. “Lucifer?!”
“I dunno, Chlo, he was lagging behind and started hacking up a lung and just collapsed—”
“Did you stop to rest or did you just egg each other on till he passed out?” Chloe snapped, kneeling next to Dan and replacing his hold on Lucifer’s head. Lucifer, as if revived by her presence, began to stir, dark lashes fluttering and lips parting in a cracked moan. His breathing rattled like a filthy window fan in an Airstream trailer bedroom, and was about as healthy.
“Hey, Lucifer, I’m here,” she practically crooned, much to Dan’s irritation, carding nimble fingers through Lucifer’s sweat-dampened hair, the usually impeccable coif now untidy (made the guy look almost human, Dan thought ruefully). Her eyes widened. “Dan, he’s burning up.”
“I know. We gotta get him to an ER.” Beneath the machismo, Dan sounded sheepish. “”m sorry, Chlo. I shouldn’t have pushed him. I could hear he sounded like crap, I just got so excited—”
“I know,” she echoed. “We got Alvarez and Williamson on the trail. Good job finding it, Dan.”
“Thanks.” He reached for the radio in his jacket. “This is Detective Espinoza requesting medic unit to coordinates 34-118, we need ambo for an unresponsive civilian.” He lowered the radio and met Chloe’s eyes, their twin blue gazes mingling with warm familiarity. “Go on, I got him.”
That promise was enough to rouse Lucifer the rest of the way, and his breath hitched upon regaining consciousness, and he weakly shifted in Chloe’s arms, trying to aim his coughing into the dirt rather than into the crook of her blazer, which is where it mostly ended up. “Bloody hell,” he croaked, and let his forehead fall into her elbow. His heart pounded, and his head throbbed, swimming with vertigo. The damp earth reeled, and all he smelled was fungus and rot, probably coming from within his own body. Nausea swelled with the vertigo, like a slick and sinister eel. For one horrible moment, he thought he might be sick, and willed it away with all his strength.
“Lucifer?” Chloe cradled him closer, one hand cupping his forehead, the other warm and comforting against his chest, rising with the rattling tide of his breaths. “I got you. We got you. It’s gonna be okay. Just hang in there.”
Her voice was soft when she spoke directly to him, soothing in a way Lucifer had not experienced since his own mother had held him like this, millenia ago. His eyes closed again, and he let himself be comforted by her light touches, the loving surety of her presence enough to fade away Dan’s voice and the radio crackles and his lung crackles and the fever poisoning his body.
“…must be the same thing Trixie had…”
“…he did too, must be goin’ around…”
“…schools closed, this virus is pretty nasty…”
Adrift in a sea of meaningless conversation, dimly knowing that whatever mysterious illness had sprang up and begun ravishing his human body so suddenly was due to the proximity of the woman whose presence he was so currently, thoroughly enjoying, Lucifer willed himself to lose his tenuous grip on reality once more, and succumbed gratefully to the rising tide of blackness, hearing the distant wail of an ambulance siren as he passed out once more.
Whatever happened, he knew Chloe would have to leave his side eventually – ironically, perhaps the quickest cure for this ailment – but, somehow, he felt he’d be willing to suffer a thousand hellflus, trade eons of immortal invulnerability, for her tender touch to slowly nurse him back to health, even if for a little while.