Chapter Text
The doctor tells her she was lucky. Just a few inches down and the bullet would’ve gone into her heart instead of her shoulder. While Chloe is grateful to be alive, that doesn't ease the burn in her muscles as she heals.
Chloe spends one night in the hospital and determines it to be more than enough. The Department had given her time off to heal and she would prefer to do that home. Dan was bringing Trixie shortly along with some of her own clothes. Chloe knows Dan’s heart was in the right place and he wants to help as much as he could but she bristles at the thought of his offer to stay with her as she recovers.
A knock at the door brings a smile to her face as she looks up to greet her daughter. Her mood quickly plummets as she sees who had knocked.
“Why are you here?” she asks, regretting the sharp tone in her voice immediately.
Lucifer feigns indignation as he stands in her doorway. “I was on my way back from therapy and I thought I might check up on you and make sure you’re still not dead.”
“You go to therapy? And you could’ve just texted,” Chloe says, knowing full well she hadn’t given Lucifer her number.
He scoffs at her statement, “I refuse to get one of those things.”
Chloe exhales; she’s already annoyed that this man had decided to bother her for no reason today. “Seriously Lucifer, why are you here?”
She thinks for a second she saw a flash of hurt cross his face at her question, but he quickly recovers into what she realizes now is his default smirk. “Well I wanted to make sure you hadn’t taken a trip to see dear old dad, but I also brought you these.” And with that, he makes his way into her hospital room with a large bouquet of flowers. The flowers were ostentatious and not Chloe’s taste at all, but all the same, she’s touched by the gesture.
Chloe reaches out to take the flowers from Lucifer and grimaces as pain shoots from her injured shoulder at the sudden movement. She knows it was written all over her face because even Lucifer could tell what she was feeling. He sets the flowers down on the standard-issue hospital bedside table. Her eyes are squeezed shut as she waits for the sharp pain to go away.
“Detective?” his voice is softer and she feels him close to where she was still sitting on the bed.
Thirty agonizing seconds later, Chloe opens her eyes, the pain in her shoulder has dissipated and returned to the steady ache she had been dealing with for the past day. She sees the clear concern in his eyes.
“I’m fine, I just moved too quick is all,” she tells him.
He nods, seemingly satisfied that she wasn’t going to drop dead in the next five minutes.
“Detective Decker, about what I said yesterday, I didn’t mean to pressure you about working together. I know I have an effect sometimes on women…”
Chloe holds up a hand to stop him from continuing. “Ok, gross. You do not have an effect on me Lucifer,” she says, exasperated. Chloe takes a breath and tries to adjust her tone for his benefit. She is aware she is being slightly unfair to the man who saved her life and brought her hideous flowers. “I have two weeks of leave from the Department. What if I call you or send you a carrier pigeon or whatever when I’m back? If you haven’t moved on to something new by then.”
Lucifer grins at her. Weird mojo effect or not, he is a good-looking man, and Chloe can’t help but smile back at him.
“That’s a deal, Detective,” he promises as he holds out his hand to shake with her good arm.
He is once again interrupted by the arrival of Trixie as she runs into the room to greet her mother. “Mommy!”
Lucifer quickly steps away and removes himself from the path of the incoming small human barreling toward her mother’s hospital bed. Trixie stops in front of Chloe’s bed and sees the large bouquet of flowers on the table. Her face lights up.
“SO PRETTY! Did you get these flowers for Mommy, Lucifer?” The child excitedly asks him as she stares up at him in awe.
Unaccustomed to conversing with a child, he tells her that he did bring them for her mother, taking another step back from Trixie as he does. Trixie follows him as he does, a grin is lighting up her face. She has her little arms wrapped around him before he can move. Lucifer wonders how the Detective's human offspring moves with superhuman speed.
Lucifer tries to remove Trixie from him with the tips of his fingers, only slightly playing up his disinterest in the child. He gets the reaction he was going for when Chloe rolls his eyes. Still attached to him, Trixie is still smiling at him, the gap in her front teeth unnerving him a bit.
“Babe, let’s let go of Lucifer, he has to leave. Did your Dad bring my bag?” Chloe addresses her daughter.
Trixie’s face falls at the mention of Lucifer leaving and a pang of something - guilt? - washes over him. She steps away from him at her mother’s instruction. “Bye, Lucifer, see you later,” Trixie tells him and he feels a little better that Detective Decker’s spawn doesn’t hate him. It’s new to care about the opinion of a child, but the smile on the Detective’s face is rather nice.
Lucifer takes his leave before the child’s father arrives.