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Sometimes, Chloe Decker has discovered, life throws you a wild card.
For some people, it’s a random hobby that quickly turns into a passion and switches up your path completely compared to what you once expected. Others may encounter an illness or difficulty in their life that forces them to change perspective. And a tiny percentage cross paths with somebody that flips their lives upside down like an empty trash can on a windy day.
Lucifer is Chloe's wildcard.
When he’d bounced into her world a few years ago with a wicked grin and perfectly pressed suit, she’d rolled her eyes at him and expected a few days of dealing with him before he got bored. Maybe a week.
5 years later, he’s still here... and she’s managed to fall in love with the idiot. It’s funny how life turns out.
Some things aren’t so funny, though- like Lucifer’s father (God Himself) popping down for a visit without warning. And calling a family dinner like He hadn’t tossed his son down to an unforgivable place to rule over the most depraved souls for all eternity.
That wasn’t funny at all.
After she’d calmed him down from the initial unrelenting panic this had brought on, the question had arisen about what to do- whether he would even go at all given the pain his Father had already put him through. But after careful consideration, it was decided that he would attend the meal in the hopes of keeping Michael from swaying God even more to his poisonous side.
Then, Lucifer had dropped another bombshell. He didn’t want Chloe to attend, no matter how badly she wanted to be at his side. She’d been hurt, wounded by the implications of his decision, until he’d explained that he just wasn’t too keen on her being anywhere near Michael after he’d kidnapped her. Which was fair enough, really. Kidnappers don’t usually make great company at dinner.
So, reluctantly, she’d agreed to let him go alone. Into enemy territory. Amenadiel and Linda would be there, too, but that didn’t do much to quell the rising tide of panic within her at the thought of him sat petrified at the table with nobody to hold his hand when it got too much. Because even seemingly arrogant devils require affection.
Currently, he’s been gone for three hours. Three tense hours of constant phone-checking in case he’d sent her an urgent SOS message. Three hours of fighting back the images flashing in her head of him feeling humiliated and small and alone. Three hours of torture and no way to tell how bad it is on his end.
The only thing she’s been able to do is fidget, because it means she doesn’t have to think about what he’s going through. The silent pain he’s likely suffering through every time Michael calls him ‘Samael’ or his Father says something outrageous.
After trying and failing to read a book, her mind so preoccupied she can’t get through a single paragraph, she picks up her phone and purse and leaves the building. It’s too stuffy in there anyway. The cool night air chills her neck and she pulls her meagre jacket tighter around herself as she descends the stairs towards her car. She’ll just head out to a gas station nearby and wander round aimlessly for a while, probably. Anything that’ll keep her distracted enough to not burst through Linda’s door and drag Lucifer out from the wreckage that is his dysfunctional family.
She clambers in, slamming the door shut behind her. It’s warm inside, and still smells faintly of his cologne from when they’d been driving back from a crime scene only a few hours earlier. Unable to stop herself, she inhales deeply. There’s a slight sweetness that snakes its way up her nostrils, followed by the smoky wood-fire aroma that seems to cling to him naturally. She wonders whether all those years in Hell are responsible. Finally, there’s a faint hint of whiskey. Not strong enough to be overpowering, but still there.
The mixture swirls into one single heady scent that wraps itself around her like one of his rare but perfect embraces. Lucifer.
When she opens her eyes, it’s an empty passenger seat that greets her. Not Lucifer.
With a sigh, she turns the key in the ignition and begins to drive.
**********************************
She’s strolling through the empty aisles of the convenience store, battered basket in hand. A dull and permanently buzzing strip light illuminates the floor, which is covered in stains and worn linoleum. If Lucifer were here, he’d probably be disgusted.
Her imagination conjures the image of him, brushing off his suit sleeves and muttering about how much his shoes are worth while she bites back a laugh. For a guy who literally spent millennia in Hell, he’s very particular about his appearance.
Shelf after shelf of crappy snacks line the aisle, each with a price below that is far too expensive but is apparently acceptable because... LA. She has no real reason to be in here except for mindless activity, but the moment her eyes fall on the signature blue packet she realises she might as well walk out here with *something*. She picks the bag up and slowly makes her way to the counter.
A hard-faced man practically glares back at her, taking the packet and scanning it before thrusting it back into her hands and barking out the price.
It’s nothing really, but she finds herself wishing he was with her again. Standing just behind her, a hand protectively placed over the small of her back though she doesn’t need it, shooting visual daggers at the clerk eyeing her like a piece of garbage on the side of the road. Perhaps one of his witty insults would roll off his tongue, leaving his opponent unable to do anything but blink meekly and hand her the change she needs.
Unfortunately, she’s left to take the bag alone and mumble a ‘thank you’ as she turns around to walk out. Cop she may be, but she’s not stupid enough to challenge a dangerous-looking man when she’s alone at night.
The sliding doors of the store open with an annoying creak and she steps out once again into the open air, bag in hand. It’s time, she supposes, to head back home and wait anxiously for news.
Then, her phone rings.
She nearly drops what she’s holding out of eager anticipation, fumbling in her bag until she finds it and swiping up to answer it instantly when she sees it’s Linda.
‘Hey, everything okay over there?’
Linda pauses. Not a good sign.
‘It could have gone a lot worse.’
Chloe waits expectantly. ‘But...?’
‘But the topic of Lucifer’s Fall came up and apparently his Father didn’t seem to grasp that his son didn’t want to talk about it. Things only went downhill from there.’
Oh. ‘What happened?’
‘Long story short, Michael said some deeply hurtful things to him- that he wasn’t ‘worthy’, that he had ‘never done anything good' and that he was ‘a useless coward.’ His Father didn’t intervene, so things got a little heated. And now Lucifer’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘He left. I don’t know where to.’
Chloe feels slightly nauseous. ‘Okay. Thanks for telling me. Are you okay?’
Linda hums an affirmative down the line. ‘Mhm. It’s insanely absurd that the literal devil and God of creation were having a heated conversation at my dinner table, but I don’t think I’m the one who needs emotional support. I’m good.’
‘Alright. I guess I’ll just try to find him?’
‘I would. I’m sure if he wants you there, he’ll leave some kind of clue to help you get to him. Lucifer may have the emotional understanding of a dishcloth, but if he wants someone, he will reach out. Just not in the way that most people probably would.’
‘Yeah, that makes sense. I’ll talk to you later?’
‘Of course. Go find that rogue celestial.’
Chloe hangs up, taking a deep breath and pinching the bridge of her nose with her fingers. Unsurprisingly, things had taken a turn. And now she has to try to track down the most slippery person she’s ever known.
She opens up her contacts and tries to call him first of all, just in case he decided to make it easier for her just this once. It rings and rings and eventually just ends without an answer, so she takes that as a no. Whether he even has his phone with him is something that she doesn’t know- if he doesn’t, she has little hope of finding him unless he’s being obvious and hiding out at his penthouse. Intuition tells her that that won’t be the case, though- his siblings and father know about his place, so it would be little refuge for him.
He’s likely somewhere more distant from society. Separate and untouchable. Hopefully with his phone.
Following the hope that he hasn’t dumped his cell by the side of a road somewhere, she opens up the tracker app they’d installed for each other on a whim a while ago at Lucifer’s insistence. That way, he’d said, they could find each other if things went wrong somehow.
Perhaps this is one of those occasions. Perhaps he wants her to find him that way.
The app opens and soon a map of LA covers her screen. A little dot poking out near the icon for a store indicates her position, and she zooms out to see if she can spot his marker. The tangled webbing of roads is disorienting even on such a small-scale screen; she becomes acutely aware that the city is BIG. Without this tracker, she’d have no hope. It would instead be a tense wait for him to return on his own terms.
Luckily, though, the app proves useful. A little red marker sits near the top of the LA map, close to the Griffith Observatory. She knows the area well enough to understand that this is away from the bustling city and further towards the wilderness. In fact, she’s hiked around here before. She’s seen the winding trails and gorgeous views, the dense forests and grassy outcrops so distanced from the busy nature of the inner area.
She presses the ‘directions’ button on screen and hops into her car to get him.
**********************
The paths leading to Lucifer’s location are unforgiving, but the views are stunning. Giant trees tower over her, blocking the light from the stars, but when she reaches an unobscured patch the galaxies above are visible like never before. Perhaps this is why he’d decided to come up here. A clear view of his creations that can’t be had in the polluted jungle down below- a clear view of one of his accomplishments that Michael had failed to mention.
Their two little markers on the map inch closer and closer, until it soon appears that they’re practically on top of each other. The muddy track Chloe’s walking is flattening out onto a small outcrop of grassland overlooking the city. It’s beautiful. And it’s exactly the kind of place she knows her partner would love.
There are so many stars visible from here, so many tiny pinpricks in the inky blackness. Not one inch of the sky seems untouched by the endless nebulae that stretch across the horizon like an ethereal patchwork quilt. She’s never quite appreciated the spectrum of colours in space before, but gazing up at the heavens reveals a dazzling lightshow of violet, cerulean and magenta flecks among the white dots, a flick of a brush on an empty expanse of canvas.
He’d done that.
Lucifer- her stubborn, immature and unbelievably inappropriate partner- had lit every star and used all the gorgeous colours at his disposal to create the most intricate and breath-taking masterpiece in history. Where once she had seen a simple magnificent natural occurrence, now she sees his attentive touch.
It gives her a little epiphany, really. Makes her understand him a little more.
Why wouldn’t the being who had created supernovas and arranged the stars in the most stunning way be particular about his clothing and fixate on little details?
When he had created light in such a manner that it scatters its rays across a canopy of leaves to disperse it among the life and causes brilliant patterns on the seabed through the ocean water, why would he be anything but a perfectionist?
As she takes in the sight before her, her eyes glimmer with moisture.
He deserves so much more than disownment. The stars are a testament to that, but if they hadn’t existed she would feel the same. He doesn’t understand that usefulness isn’t analogous to being deserving of love, despite how many times she tells him. He’s not unworthy and he never will be.
Maybe today she can show him how much she cares for him, no matter what.
No matter how many times he runs away out of fear that he’s not good enough.
No matter how many times he tries to convince her that she made a mistake in loving him.
No matter how many times his walls come up.
Her feet bring her forward onto the grassy area overlooking everything. You can barely hear the sounds of the heavy traffic below from where they are, and it’s refreshing. She scans the open area, heart in her mouth. She doesn’t see him instantly, and that concerns her.
But then she spots him. Laying on his back on the grass, just staring up at the stars.
At first, she’s scared he’s hurt. The way he’s laying there unmoving sets her heart racing and a billion scenarios for how this could have happened flit through her head in seconds.
When she approaches, though, she can see that he’s okay- maybe not mentally okay, but physically he’s fine. He doesn’t seem to notice her getting nearer (or if he does he doesn’t make any move to greet her), instead just gazing heavenwards as if he’s not present in this earth. Too deep in the tide of his own self-hatred to notice she’s here.
‘Lucifer?’
He tilts his head slightly so that he can see her before looking back up again, not moving from his position on the ground. Looks like she’ll be the one getting down to his level, then. Conscious of the fact that he mustn’t be too opposed to her presence- he would have turned off his tracker if he was- she lowers herself onto her back on the grass beside him. It’s a little cold beneath her, but the fresh scent of it next to her head is strangely comforting.
She turns her head to her left, where Lucifer is, searching him with her eyes for anything that might tell her what to do. His face, however, is an unreadable slate, a text written in a foreign language that she can’t decipher.
‘Do you want me to stay?’ she tries, hoping beyond belief that he doesn’t say no. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if he says no.
But he nods. It’s only a slight incline of his head, but she picks up on it all the same. A clear signal for once, a cognate in a language she can interpret. Even now, when she looks within the depths of his chocolate-brown eyes, she spots it among the multitude of glittering galaxies reflected there. A wordless plea that she feels within her from him.
Stay.
Her eyes find the stars above, and she decides to just get lost in them with him. It’s a clear night, so they’re all visible. Millions of them. His.
We’ll do it all.
She allows herself to slip into contentment, with only the gentle breeze in the grass tickling her and the sound of muted nightlife drifting from far away. This place is relaxing, and a far cry from where he’s been these past few hours.
Everything.
For a nightclub owner, it’s surprising how much Lucifer loves this kind of peace. Perhaps it reminds him of the Beginning, when there was nothing but emptiness and he had a family. Or maybe when your senses aren’t bombarded, you can just appreciate life a little more. Something tells Chloe that it’s the latter, and that he’s only learned to enjoy the quiet recently. A small, egotistic part of her believes that it was her influence that taught him the joys of tranquillity.
On our own.
In the corner of her eye, she sees the breeze ruffle his hair. It’s a little wilder than it had been when he’d left, but she always finds herself preferring that anyway. She thinks it makes him look more youthful.
We don’t need
Above her, a plane passes by, its blinking lights soon melting into the night. Sometimes part of her wants nothing more than to hop on a flight away from LA and live her life on a sunny beach somewhere. Waves lapping at her feet as a waiter brings her a Piña colada that tastes of ice cold summer.
Anything
But the warm sands of Barbados are nothing compared to the feeling within her right now.
Or anyone.
Because she’s with him, and when she’s with him the world outside is a shapeless blur that means nothing. Like the being he is, he commands attention whenever he walks into a room. But not just that- it’s also the knowledge that she is the only one who sees him for who he is. The only one who truly knows him.
If I lay here
A shooting star whizzes across the sky in a blaze of brilliant light and she can’t suppress a smile at seeing it. As it begins to fizzle out across the horizon, she turns her head back to him.
‘Y’know, when there’s a shooting star, you’re supposed to wish for something.’
If I just lay here
He doesn’t move a muscle. Doesn’t even smile. Maybe she said the wrong thing and messed something up all over again like she nearly had done when she’d tried to poison him. How did she ever think she could live without him? How did she ever think she could harm him like that?
There are a few moments where all she can hear is the distant sound of honking horns and she’s convinced she’s said something wrong.
Then, she feels the warmth of his hand reach out for hers and he speaks. It’s little more than a whisper compared to his usual chipper tone, so slight that it’s very nearly carried away in the breeze, but to her the words are nestled deep in her head the minute he says them.
‘I already have everything.’
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
He squeezes her hand and she feels like she’s floating on a feather, not atop a hill above LA. An uncontrollable bubble of laughter forces its way out of her- she’d been so worried for nothing. Her cheek touches against the damp grass as she looks at him, and notices the etchings of something serious on his face.
I don’t quite know
His Adam’s Apple bobs as he swallows, and she feels the concern begin to simmer in her again. He’d said he had everything, right? So why does he look so grave?
How to say
‘Lucifer? You okay?’
He doesn’t say anything yet again. There’s a desperation in the way he’s looking upwards; as if it’s the only thing holding him in one piece and if he moves, he’ll break. Despite being older than time itself, he looks so... fragile.
How I feel.
She rubs her thumb lazily over his knuckles, noting the way his jaw is clenched. Like he wants to say something but he just doesn’t know how.
‘It’s alright.’ She reassures him. ‘You don’t have to say anything, okay? I know it was hard and I’m here.’
Something like a laugh slips out of him, unbidden. Rueful and ironic. ‘You see, that-... that’s why.’
Her brows furrow. ‘Why what?’
He shakes his head and continues to look upwards, but she can see the beginnings of tears glimmering in his eyes. She’s never seen him cry properly before.
Those three words
Her mind tells her to say something to comfort him. No words spring to mind. He’s been faced with a glaring reminder of the family who’d left him today; of course he’s upset. And there don’t seem to be any assurances she could give him to make him feel better. She hopes just being there is enough.
‘You’re worth more than them.’ She says, giving him dignity by keeping her eyes on distant planets rather than her partner’s glittering eyes. ‘You... you deserve more than they gave you. Not because of what you did for them, but just because that’s the decent thing to do. You deserve to be happy. You deserve love.'
Something’s shimmering in the corner of her eye, and she knows within her that he’s crying. She doesn’t dare look, in case he wants privacy, but then he tugs lightly on her hand. A sign for her to look at him.
Are said too much.
When she does, she notes the tear tracks down his reddened cheeks and the wetness in his eyes. The shuddering of his breaths.
Is he panicking? Maybe he’s panicking. Maybe she should be doing something to help him and reassure him that-
‘I love you.’
He’s sniffling and half-choking on his own tears, but she’s suddenly hit by the realisation that this isn’t sadness. It’s the opposite.
Still clutching her like a lifeline, he looses another desperate sob, the words tangling within it as he tries once more to convey the depth of his feelings. ‘Chloe, I love you.’
They’re not enough.
She doesn’t feel quite like she’s in her own body. Instead, she’s standing at the edge of the grassy outlook watching as her partner breaks from the force of his own emotions for her. It’s like she’s observing the breaking of a dam that’s been filling up with water for too long, the bursting of one of his own stars into an uncontrollable supernova.
A supernova of love.
Finally coming to her senses, she closes the gap between them, however small it is. She’s reminded, as she pulls him towards her, that he’s probably never been held like this before and her own eyes begin to sting with overwhelming emotion.
If I lay here
As she cards her fingers through his hair, he doesn’t stop saying it.
‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ Over and over and over again until he’s so out of breath he has to gasp through his tears for air before continuing straight after. She’s said it to him before, of course- on the balcony that first time before he’d left for Hell, when they’d first made love in his penthouse, and every so often when she’d felt that rush of love at work.
But even though she’s said it many times over a fairly long period, Lucifer has said it more within the space of a minute. Into her hair. Into her jacket. Whispered between floods of tears.
‘I love you.’
The raw emotion every single time makes her heart sing until she’s crying just as much as he is.
He says it and says it and says it to the point that she can hear the hoarseness creeping into his voice and she has to stroke the pad of her thumb across his lips so he can’t say it anymore.
Soon, they fall into a comfortable silence. He holds onto her as if she’s tethering him to the earth and she musses his curls even more with her fingers. He must be exhausted, because she can see him nearly drifting off within her arms.
If I just lay here
They lay together on the grass, listening to the sound of each other’s heartbeats and watching the stars glitter. Chloe remembers something and reaches into her handbag to pull out the blue packet she’d picked up earlier at the convenience store.
‘I bought you cool ranch puffs.’ She says gently, offering the bag to him.
He looks up at her and gently takes it, adoration joining the galaxies in his gorgeous brown eyes. Right here, right now, he looks so young. So handsome. She leans down to kiss him and when she pulls back after savouring the taste of him, he’s still looking at her like she’s the one who lit the stars, not him.
‘I love you.’ He says almost dreamily, a genuine smile engraved on his tear-tracked face as he holds his bounty. He looses a slight laugh, lighting up his features more than any star ever could, before his head comes to rest back against her and they continue to watch the night sky.
Another shooting star graces them with its presence, and he’s the one to sleepily pipe up this time.
'Make a wish, Detective.’
She grins. ‘I already have everything.’
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
~Finis~