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Lucifer awoke with a silent scream, kept restricted in the back of his throat intentionally.
This wasn’t the first time this has happened, but he’d admit that this is the first time it's happened in many months: his slumber being abruptly put on hold by a nightmare. What said nightmares focused on would vary from time-to-time, but this time around, it focused on the gorgeous woman he lay in bed with. Watching her bleed out under his protective grasp, begging him to understand that the events of the day were not his fault. The very thought of the scene made his chest tremble, so he forced himself to put the memory away in some metaphorical safe until it came up again.
After taking a moment to collect himself, Lucifer soon props himself up on his elbows, peering out the windows of their bedroom. Tonight, they were staying at Chloe’s, where they’ve been at an awful lot lately- not that he minds. The skies remain pitch black, meaning it couldn’t be any later than six, when his star began lighting up the sky. He silently thanks the world for giving his Detective more time to sleep, but then again, he could change the time if he so desired anyways.
Deciding that he shouldn’t wake Chloe to complain about his problems, he begins to lay back down on the bed, before a loud but unconcerning noise stops him in his tracks. Chloe stirs at the sound of it, but he stops her from moving, placing his hand on the small of her back.
“Sleep, darling,” He tells her, ducking down to kiss her hair, “I’ve got it handled.”
She contently hums in half-slumber, not arguing against it, as he moves to stand up from the side of the mattress.
He walks out of their bedroom and to a hallway upstairs, making his way through the corridor. The noise loudens as he gets closer, and he chuckles to himself, it being all-too-familiar in the last few months. Most people would call it annoying, and perhaps it is sometimes, but he adores it more than he cares to let off, because the sound is a result of the best creation he’s ever been (admittedly, half) responsible for in his unimaginably long life.
Eventually, he makes it to the desired room, peeking through the doorway and walking in.
“My sweet Delilah, you nearly woke up your mother!”
He half-whispers, half-exclaims the words, approaching the pearly white crib in front of him and peering in. There lay his daughter, no more than four months old, screaming and crying for no discernable reason at the moment. He leans over to pick up the small girl, one hand on the back of her head and the other behind her waist, bringing her upwards and shifting to position her comfortably in his arms.
Lucifer begins gently bouncing her, making shushing sounds repetitively as he does so. She looks up at her father with wide, curious eyes, her wailing beginning to calm down.
“Now, my dear offspring, I understand that being held by your father in the middle of the night is of utmost importance to you, but the Detective and I must sleep, too,” He explains to her, smiling sleepily as she calms down. She snuggles into his bare chest, cries now quieted down to tiny, endearing whimpers.
Lucifer takes the moment to observe the child, walking over to the rocking chair in the corner of the room and sitting down (he never would have agreed to purchase one, if it hadn’t been for Trixie’s insistence that they’re fun to sit on).
When she was born, one of the first things he noticed about her is that she acquired her mother’s dirty blonde hair. While their offspring lost much of her hair a few weeks ago, which Chloe assured him was normal, he remembered the wavy locks fondly and would wait patiently for the day they returned.
Neither he nor Chloe could be sure of what eye color she acquired just yet, but as of right now, her eyes shimmer with a bright, endearing blue the likes of which he’s never seen before. Lucifer swore to Chloe that they were the most beautiful he’d seen, and she laughed, already having felt such with Trixie when she was born. But in the end, she couldn’t deny that their daughter’s eyes were gorgeous, as the shape of them was so blatantly Lucifer’s.
Above all, though, one of his favorite traits that his urchin shared with her mother was her nose. It held a youthful, button-like appearance that all small humans shared, but it was so jaw-droppingly the Detective’s that he often found himself rubbing the pad of his thumb against it in silent adoration.
Lucifer simply couldn’t believe that the two of them, the newly-promoted God and the Goddess, were able to create such a wonderful little being.
He’d never thought it to be possible to begin with. An angel wasn’t supposed to be able to bear children- his father had specifically crafted them to be that way. He supposed Amenadiel proved to be the exception to that rule, but he was all-too-human when Charlie had been conceived, so he’d struck down that possibility.
So, after that, he’d considered all the other possibilities. Maybe it was because he became God; it might have changed his very being, thus making him fertile. Maybe it was just another form of self-actualization that would take him eons to figure out. For a moment, he even entertained the idea that there was some symbolism within the fact that the Tree of Life had struck Chloe in the stomach, but as soon as the idea lit up in his mind, it was extinguished. He refused to allow himself to think any longer about that day than absolutely necessary, and he most certainly did not want to think about the possibility of their daughter being alive because of that day.
Until, one fateful day, when Chloe was about three months into her pregnancy- They both were laying in bed, holding each other as they attempted to fall asleep. Chloe began drifting off into a peaceful slumber, until she noticed that Lucifer was doing quite the opposite, staring at the ceiling above. Her eyes fluttered open as she brought her right hand to his cheek, her head tilting to the side as she looked up at him.
“What’s wrong?” she’d asked.
“..Nothing at all, Detective,” He’d replied, and it didn’t take an investigation for him to figure out that she didn’t believe him. Scoffing, he shook his head, “Just… trying to figure out what happened in order for this to be possible…”
He lowered his hand towards her already-swollen abdomen, snaking it under her baggy pajama shirt. At the time, he’d still been coming to terms with the fact that he, they, would raise a half-angel (half-God?), half-human baby of their own. What would that mean for their already-complicated relationship? He didn’t even like children. Beatrice had proven to be the one and only exception to that rule; Charlie was great and all, but after being in Hell for so long, he hadn’t grown fond of the creature.
And Chloe, in all of her kind and patient ways, understood that.
For a few moments, neither of them spoke, Chloe gazing down towards the direction of her stomach.
“Well,” she began, looking him in the eye, “Maybe we don’t need to.”
Lucifer squinted at her through the dark (she very well knew he didn’t need to, being God and all), perplexion clear in his features. She loved seeing him like this; neither physical nor figurative walls between them as he spoke clearly about how he felt. It was such a change from the devil she knew in years prior, who tended to build walls rather than break them, perhaps even subconsciously.
“Whatever do you mean?” He asked quite simply, brows furrowing.
“Lucifer, how many years have we spent trying to find answers to these kinds of questions?”
“Well-”
“Rhetorical question,” she rolled her eyes, smiling, which awarded her a sheepish grin from Lucifer, “We’ve spent so much time dwelling on why. Why you’re vulnerable, why you’re invulnerable, why you gain or lose your devil face, why I’m a ‘gift’... and for what? Do we feel any better when we get those answers?”
Taking in a deep breath, Lucifer leaned into the touch of Chloe’s hand, shaking his head a little, “Usually not..”
“So why bother?” She moved her thumb to rub against the edge of his lip, “Our little baby boy or girl will be here all the same, and rather than get ourselves cooped up over why or how, we should just enjoy it.”
The two- three of them, if you included the offspring that would join them in the outside world in about six months- fell into silence again, Lucifer considering her words as she silently begged the world to help him understand. Soon enough, there was doubt in his eyes, and Chloe knew him enough to understand that it wasn’t directed towards her words.
At that, she brought down her other hand to cover Lucifer’s, which lay still on her stomach, pressing it closer to her abdomen to accentuate her words.
“You’re going to be an amazing father, Lucifer.”
And as he sat there, rocking his daughter back into a peaceful slumber many months later, he hoped the Detective was right.
Because before his daughters’ existence, he disliked all but two children in this world, and when the third one came around, he felt the overwhelming desire to do right by her that hasn’t left since.
That desire was only strengthened as he watched Chloe birth her, soon holding her in her arms with exhausted cries of joy. It was strengthened when he watched Trixie hold her for the first time, eyes watering in joy at the sight of her first and only sibling. It was strengthened when Amenadiel brought Charlie with him into the hospital ward, allowing the two cousins to formally meet.
Their little Delilah soon had Lucifer wrapped around her incredibly miniscule finger, and he wouldn’t want it any other way.
Lucifer watched as the child drifted off to sleep in his arms, snuggling the left side of her face into his bare chest (he had the decency to wear boxers nowadays, thank you very much). He found himself also drifting off to sleep in the rocking chair, blinking himself out of the urge every once in a while in fear of hurting her in his slumber. Eventually, the urge got to be too much, so he stood, bringing her back to her crib.
Leaning over, he placed his offspring on top of the mattress. She squirmed a bit at first, her tiny brow furrowing in discontent at leaving her father’s arms, but she soon contented.
“Goodnight, darling.”
He began to turn around to walk back to him and Chloe’s bedroom, only to see the woman herself standing at the doorway, watching them fondly.
“Ah, speak of the Devil,” he smiles at her, eyes drowsy.
She huffs a small laugh, moving forward to look down at Delilah. He mimics her gesture, both of them standing side-by-side.
“How’s she doing?”
“Far better than previous weeks, if I do say so myself,” He puffs his chest out with a smile, whispering, “I got her to sleep in minutes, Detective! That has to be a record.”
Laughing again, she nods, “I’m proud of you, Lucifer.”
He makes that little hiss sound through his teeth that she loves, and he continues, “Yes, well, I must admit that I’m only fifty-percent responsible for the little creature we have here. It was a bit of a team effort, wouldn’t you say?”
Turning to face him, she moves her right hand up the expanse of his left arm, looking up at him with a fond smile, “Of course, but I wasn’t the one who was calling children germ-spreading parasites less than a year ago,” she used a fake British accent to get her point across, earning a chuckle from him.
“Children are germ-spreading parasites. Ours and the urchin are the exceptions. The jury is still out on Amenadiel’s.”
Both of them grinning, Chloe leans upwards, kissing him delicately. It lasts a few seconds before they part, not moving too far from each other.
“You’ve changed so much, Lucifer,” she tells him, “You’re the best father Delilah could possibly ask for.”
“You… You really think so?” He asks, his head tilting to the side like a puppy. Her heart twists into a knot at the sight. The Devil, an archangel, God, the most powerful being to exist in this universe, doubting his capacity to be a good father for his child. Under all of the titles, he’s just a man who wants to be loved, who wants to love- and she’s more than willing to do that for him.
“I know so.”
She moves her hand upwards to the back of his neck, budging his head down so that she can press a firm kiss to his forehead.
“I think it’s time we go back to sleep now,” she tells him, “she’ll have us up in another two hours to do this all over again.”
Lucifer chuckles, nodding, “That sounds lovely, Detective.”
They both look back at Delilah for one more moment, Chloe leaning over to brush the pad of her thumb over her cheek affectionately with a quick, “I love you,” before walking out of the stuffed animal-filled room to continue their slumber.