Archive of Our Own ^beta

Closing the door, Lucifer expected no less but torrential rain and far thunderbolts. 

God's rage – or should he rather say 'disappointment' – wasn't these sorts of inconsequential outbursts, the ones consumed at once, not yet fully inflamed when ashes had already replaced the former flames. The Devil knew better than anyone else that the Almighty-Perfect-Ass' show of anything close to feelings had never been related to flames, by any means. 

God was in the rain. 

Noah knew it. Evey Hammond in 'V for Vendetta' knew it: bald shaven, soaking wet through God's feelings while walking as a free woman for the very first time of her scripted life. Would she have been real that she would have known that neither the rain, nor God's presence and free will could mix. Where such a well-scripted, yet naive movie character had wandered towards her first free inhalations, Lucifer was fast walking towards the driveway. Almost running, one might say, but they wouldn't be wearing a Prada suit as he was, which was close to 'rain'-destruction from some Perfect-Yet-Incapable-Of-Love-Prick's outburst, would they? As for his first inhalations outside the house... well, they turned much – so bloody much – heavier than he had first expected.

Expected.... 

Nothing went as expected. 

Being the Devil, the rebellious son, the black sheep of which the shape was darkened by the raging storm, because of everything that his Father had made him become, he should have enjoyed such an unexpected outcome. He should have been smiling while first passing Linda's unexpectedly laconic face, then Amenadiel who hadn't even tried to defend God-All-Fatherly-Good-Enough like the favorite son he was. Sympathizing with their Dad, was that it? 

His own smile should have grown on his face while passing Mikaël, caught off guard by the truth for once, that his shadowing twin stood up for him as well. To a certain, necessary extent. And his Dad... oh, dear old Dad, all powerful and quiet. What a vision. Because, finally – the most unexpected, although wonderfully delectable finale of the dinner, the ultimate icing on the cake – finally, his Father had confessed a failure in His whole bloody perfect planification of the universe. 

Wasn't that a 'nice' family dinner? 

Lucifer's expression – if he ever had any since he had left the table – hadn't changed. Stone had to feel as such: nothingness, tension. Nothing and everything of these. It probably explained why his gloating words had stayed stuck in his throat, too – until they fell into nothingness trampled on his tense wake.

Nothing. 

Nothing ignited within him as he stopped in front of his car. He stares blankly at his Corvette, all open to the modern version of the Old Testament Flood. He should stretch the roof, save his car from further damp damages. He should have left sooner, the moment his Dad's strong disappointment about His children's behavior had fallen from heavens. 

Hide from God. 

Keep up appearances of his all-Devil-pouting-self and drive back to Lux with floods of intoxicating, excessive alcohol and songs until the storm would leave its place for another day. 

But God wasn't the One to forgive and forget easily. Of that, Lucifer was aware, that and of how wilder the wind made his suit jacket flap against his upper left thigh. The rain was even faster to touch one cheek then brush his chin, which had stayed low and tense since... well, since the family dinner had turned a tad 'nicer' than all of them had at first expected. 

The storm would last, obviously.

Surprisingly. 

He never would have thought that his Father would be so affected by his speech. Hard to tell which of these emotions were leading the storm to new heights: anger or disappointment, sadness or disdain... the only certainty was that God – the unshakable, peaceful-looking and most all-powerful Being of the universe – had been... touched. Somehow.

Miracles were making a comeback, so it seemed. 

Lucifer's touch along the handle of the car door lasted as long as the thought to turn around, towards the one he just closed. Closed. Not even slammed shut, or smashed into splinters of…. 

Of something. Anything. 

With a tighter squeezing of his lips, an even heavier exhalation and a stronger tremor of his fingers above the handle, Lucifer touched his Father's 'touchy-feely' presence one time too many. The thought of not letting his convertible be vulnerable and ruined within minutes got trampled under his feet as he walked away from the car, away from Linda's house and away from anything he should or shouldn't do by now. Anything expected from him, right?

He didn't have to walk long to find himself even more harassed by the storm, his therapist's house not even enough to keep him safe. 

Safe.

That was something therapists tended to say, wasn't it? 

You're safe here, with me.

The word pressed the overlapping of fabrics against his chest even more. Nonsense. Feeling safe... he couldn't bloody care less about that, he— 

If he had wanted to be safe, he would have taken his car and driven back to Lux, to end up the least soaked by such a hypocritical flood of feelings from high heavens. He would have saved his suit, his shoes, his possessions – because he was his own man, his own dev—

Because he cared about these things, about what he owed to himself alone. 

Alone. 

One single drop of rain brushed his eyelids from below. Proof that this storm was one of the most unusual kinds. It was windy, thundery and rainy everywhere....

Everywhere except for within himself.

He crossed over one road amongst many others crossed before, and even after that. Waves after waves around his shoes where the asphalt wasn't perfect, roars after roars above his curls plastered on his forehead – which were blinding him with darkness after having been blinded by one too many thunderbolts – he looked through the tiniest space of feelings he should have been feeling by now. But the only, unchanging, detail he kept facing was… absolutely nothing. 

And for that... I hate him even more.

He didn't. Not even a bit.

The most dysfunctional family ever.

He must have turned so, at some point. 

Actually, it's... it's wonderfully normal.

Nothing had been so since He screwed them up... the Devil himself, even more. 

And there it is. The Old Testament Wrath. 

Wrath. 

That had been something he had expected to feel. No offence to his dear lackey brother and his judgmental speech about Lucifer's 'spoiled child' predictable behavior, but wrath had been part of his life, of himself, for eons now. His eyes, the fire raging within them anytime he would open himself up to the feeling; it hadn't come from nowhere. From down there, actually. 

It had been the main, only essential and inevitable feeling that had accompanied his steps on grounds devoid of water of any sort. 

Are you ever going to tell us why Hell suddenly doesn't need a warden anymore?

No. Nada. Not a single spark of wrath like the one he had felt back then. 

Not anymore. 

No more relief either, that being said. Or 'not' being felt, in his case. 

It seemed like his old testament – yet quite contemporary – grudge against his Father had just vanished, leaving behind a hole to unreachable bottom.

Unreachable silence. 

That's not what he said!

Silence said plenty enough, yet not enough to stop his internal pit to dig deeper through fabric, skin, blood and muscles. It couldn't even make him stop walking dazzlingly in streets that he would never have walked on in normal times. 

Was he approaching the Lux location or extending the gap between his home and Linda's? 

Home.

It's about going home.

Hell wasn't home and Heaven was—

Lucifer wiped his snarl of disdain with one hand, receiving more water than he managed to remove in the first place. It hadn't been the first time that Amenadiel was taking one of their parent's side, now that he remembered. So much for the changes, so much more wrath he should have felt by now. For the same, old and unchanged expressions his 'family' kept sending him back as he was making a gesture in their direction. Every time he tried to make them understand something about himself. 

Something simple.

Neither of you understand do you? You never have. 

Puzzlement. Disdain. Disappointment. 

Frustration.

And still no sign of his. 

The tip of his head got brushed by branches, all heavy of endless rain that ran between his hair and down the back of his neck. It felt like a flood on its own, like a thought flowing around his watertight mind.

Don't you see? This is progress.

His progression hastened after he bowed his head, shaking it far, as much far away as he could from Linda's imaginary – annoyingly – trouble-shooter speech. There was no significant improvement of any sort. There would never be any of that. He would rather take his lack of... reactions as... as the lack it was. A lack of himself, his free-self. 

The void inside him went stiff, freezing the air and the few drops of rain that had managed their way between his lips. 

Slowing down his steps one by one, swirl after swirl, Lucifer soon stopped dead in his tracks. He couldn't care less about the fact that he was standing right in the middle of the road or that the present horn blast might have pierced anyone else's eardrum. His suit was soaked with too many drops to even count the ones added by the driver's roared bypassing manoeuvre. 

His eyes shut on a blinding front beam intertwined with the latest fatherly thunderbolt; tight shut for the memories intertwined with the latest fatherly attention he had sought and hidden himself from afterwards. The thin line of damp reality passing through his eyelashes widened the gap of billions of years between this moment and the other one. Same planet, same storm... not the same reaction from both parties, strangely so. Lucifer was no longer hiding in a cave, the deepest and darkest hole he had found to avoid most of his Dad's wrath and now his Dad....

Well, He stayed inside, didn't He? 

Not even looking for him and reiterating this incredible gesture and desire to talk with each one of His children. Would Earth eventually collapse if He had gone after the banished one? Or maybe had He already left Earth? Wasn't that what it was all about? That "until we've all talked" nonsense? 

But apparently that's too much to ask.

Lucifer's eyes opened. 

This was pointless. 

Remembering angelic 'good times' and God's perfect punishment given His never fully fulfilled expectations, remembering his fear to disappoint Him furthermore, of not—

It's just... three sons who want their father's love. And who don't feel like they're getting it. 

"I don't want—" Lucifer started whispering to the curtains of rain falling around him, the next words dying in his throat the following second, when he realized that he didn't know that for sure anymore. 

Dad.... Do you—

Thunder crashed nearby. The vibration left in God's all-powerful wake falling deep down the void that he felt even more embedded inside him. Falling. That was precisely that. 

If I have to tell you...

No catharsis. 

...then I really have failed. 

Falling. Again. 

Funny.

No, not even that for... for one bloody simple question. It wasn't that complicated to answer as simply, really.

It's... it's complicated.

That's assuming you know what you want. 

He couldn't exactly tell when his hand had started rummaging through the inside pocket of his suit, nor when his fingertips had ripped the wad of cash within it in half – like a knife would have sliced butter. All he knew was how nice the dial tones coming out his phone sounded in his ear. Fast, steady heartbeats in deadly heavy, internal silence. 

"Lucifer?" Chloe's voice yawned early sleep. "Wasn't expecting your call."

He let out a sound, annoyingly sounding like... no, that wasn't a sob.

"Lucifer?"

He closed his eyes. Of course, she heard it the wrong way. 

That's not what he said! 

All he had to do was say these out loud. Three words. Simple. For an as simple question. 

Dad....

"Lucifer? Where— Are you outside? But, it's—"

He cut her off, "You told me you'd be ready to listen when…." Silence got stretched, touched by the tiniest drop between the phone and his ear, for so long that he lowered his head. "I-I'm sorry, Detective, I- You probably have other plans for tonight than—"

"How far are you from my place?"

He thought he had walked to the Detective's place faster than any of his previous wandering steps. Anyhow, her reaction after opening the door wasn't the one expected and it puzzled him for the time she stopped staring critically at his appearance, soon remembering that 'unexpected' reactions were to be expected. 

Even so, Lucifer would have preferred by far these smiles and shy gazes she had given him lately. 

Her deep frown embedded the nothingness in the pit of his stomach, a slight punch of fierce, yet invisible winds through his resolve to make her understand that he was…. 

That he was not like—

"I expected you a bit... earlier, but—" She opened the door wider. A line of light from the wall lamp to her left brushed her shoulder – golden waves of loose hair upon a beige wooly hooded top – before splashing on his suit of darkness. "God, Lucifer, you're... soaked!" 

Oxymoron. Understatement.

These two words grazed his mind, an even more fleeting brush of air for the most stormy one of all the words and names she just exclaimed. 

What are you gonna say to her? 

The scoff coming out of Lucifer's lips was anything but romantic as he mentally brushed-off his Father's long-gone hand from his shoulder. 

God, indeed. 

"Indeed what?" she asked.

"Mh?" He lifted his chin, staring back straight into Chloe's concerned eyes. 

Right. 

Still concerned about inconsequential details, wasn't she? This was just rain, just his Dad's annoying manifestation of feelings after billions of years of quiet ignorance from Him. 

Funny how one tiny detail weighed on Lucifer. Just like that. 

He couldn't have cared less about the innumerable liters of rain soaking his clothes until this very moment, when he met her gaze. If he would close his eyes, water would turn into wood, heavy as it felt against his skin, between each wavy folds of shirt along his steady breathing. 

Strips of rainy wood caging the Devil. 

Appropriate. None of his flames could explode over the abyss. 

Chloe's touch ignited something different, however. 

Her thumb found its place beneath his: a sparkle that made the next stormy thoughts stutter. Her slight pull around his hand as she urged him to come inside tentatively enlightened the depths of the nothingness. 

The moment she let go of his hand to close the door behind him, the sparkle blew with the thundering sound. Following the loss, more drops fell between his shoulder blades, the tiniest remains of hope brought by her touch properly extinguished. Unwilling to fall back to the void that fast, Lucifer let his next deep exhalation encircle its edges, yet perfectly aware that this wouldn't keep God's hand at bay for long. The rain against the window, endless thumping thrown within him, wasn't as weak as it wanted to sound. 

Endless. 

His gaze lingered on the couch, the blanket left on its back. The fireplace in front of it was inhabited by small, flickering lights. The corner of his lips trembled. In response, one of the flames inside the fireplace shook off the group for a second, its amber-coloured shade rising to the hole above. 

Lucifer blinked on its expected disappearance, blinking a second time and more rapidly on the Detective's face. He inhaled sharply. "I'm sorry." He cleared his throat, heavy and dry – funny that. "I-I can leave if you—"

She frowned in response.

"It's late," he added first, then again, "You... expected me sooner, I'm sorry." 

The line between her brows creased deeper. "It's okay. I was just...." She let out a sound – maybe a giggle ? The rain was ringing bloody too loud around his skull for any clear translation – before shrugging. "It's stupid, forget it." 

Lucifer frowned in turn and she shook her head, pink spots appearing on her cheeks while she looked at her bare feet on the carpet.

"Just... I thought that you... that you'd fly to come here, it's-...." She giggled, swallowing away from his stare.

"Right. Well…." He stared at the still falling rain against the window to his left. "Not the best time for that, obviously." 

Both could grasp the meaning hidden in his answer, for both the way he shivered in his clothes and the Detective not falling for his comment about the weather outside. 

It wasn't just about rain. Although... it was, in a way, as He was in the rain. 

He was everywhere.

Lucifer could count the number of drops knocking slightly on the silence that was still extending itself between them. First slightly surprised by his inability to shape his thoughts into clear sentences, he wasn't so much for not feeling as cold as suggested by the previous shivers. 

No more vulnerability.

The lump in his throat tightened muscles and breathable air together. Even though he felt close to asphyxia, none of this was real, literal pain. 

None of whatever he would have looked for in here could even ablaze the darkness into which he was falling once more. 

Chloe eventually broke the silence. "You look like you just took a swim in the sea." As he kept staring at her without a word, she pinched her lips and pointed at the staircase. "I must have dry clothes in your size somewhere...." 

She took a closer look at him, from ruined and squeaking Louboutins to his face, all this with an unreadable expression. 

Her mouth-pinching intensified. 

Oblivious to her determination to rummage through the whole room for clothes in the Devil's size, the aforesaid invulnerable-yet-soaked-Devil would nonetheless have hardly been able to look away. 

The flames dancing on her hair as she leaned forward, in front of the widest window, they caged his gaze. 

The shadowy lines running down the glass, brushing her lips yet never touching them – not once….

 A heavenly vision. 

Not a "what", a who.

This is your Father's doing, Chloe is His doing. He put her in your path. 

Why don't I call you what you know you really are ? 

You're struggling with feeling like you can't cope—

You are an angel, you deal with celestial craziness all the time.

All I ever wanted was to empower you....

Unworthy.

He did a good job to muffle the pitiful sound rising through the lump in his throat. His whining exhalation even went mostly unnoticed, thanks to the Detective's loud research. 

Anyway, as soon as she raised her head in his direction....

"Lucifer?"

Regardless of what happened, we're family. 

"Lucifer, honey?" 

Chloe's hands had come around his face in a blink. 

Darkness made him lose track for quite a long time, it seemed. He didn't recall her approaching him again, neither his going out and back inside before her thumbs started drawing small circles on his cheeks. He must have gone outside at some point. How to explain the additional drops weighing on his eyelashes and tickling both his and the Detective's skin otherwise? 

"Talk to me, what's going on? What happened?"

Swallowing the lump stuck for too bloody long between his mouth and the words she asked for, the ones he needed to expel before drowning for good, Lucifer's forehead leaned towards hers. The sensation was comforting, although a tad more different. 

Always his Dad's touch in-between.

Always.

His hands squeezed the soft fabric around her shoulders. It stuck to his palms, peckering water on his skin, like a billions of needles. Or sparkles.

Just like when He touched him at the minigolf. 

I've come to ask you something. 

Ask, ask, ask… always ask. Never answering, never where Lucifer expected Him to be. He squeezed Chloe's shoulders even stronger, hardly able to focus on anything else but the thunderbolt splitting darkness in half for a few seconds. 

Why was He still here? 

"Here? Who's here?" she asked. 

Why couldn't he phrase his thoughts as before? Another trick from his Dad, was that it? Was this what just brought him to brush their foreheads together from one inch to the other? To lift his trembling lips and…. 

"My Father...." The last syllable twitched between his teeth. 

How pathetic he just sounded.... Anyway, that was nothing compared to how the water rolled from his eyes again; how even more pathetic, whining breaths got expelled off his lips, soon back with short, louder inhalations. Coherent thoughts clashed against his attempts to sputter further syllables: all failures, all falling in the void and as fast as his tears.

Tears.

This was the very last feeling of all he had expected tonight. 

He wasn't sad. 

He wasn't hurt. 

He. Was. Not. Broken. 

"Shhhh... I'm here. It's gonna be okay. I'm here." Chloe's voice was low, much lower than any of the sounds coming from him – unbelievable – much lower than the storm, which was still tauntingly tapping against windows, walls and the edges of the hole inside him. 

Unbelievably so, her voice rose higher in the room. 

Not that unbelievable, her touch was more important than his Dad's damp touch on his slightly trembling shoulders. Clenching his teeth as an attempt to control the stronger tremors running through his body, Lucifer got lost in the embrace. Soft, short strokes in circles on his back, then fingertips releasing his curls from rainy remains, from his neck to their still joined foreheads. It felt nice, off – really off – his Father's presence everywhere. 

"It's gonna be okay," she repeated. And again after that, for all the tears to come and burst into nothingness. 

And Lucifer really wanted to believe that. 

Water had left him bared on the floor. 

No metaphor. Well, a bit of that as he did feel 'bared' inside but the floral blanket – lilac, was that it? There were poorly drawn horses on it too – weighing on his stripped shoulders was no metaphor. So were the dark blue piles of the Detective's carpet tickling his knee pits. He didn't feel like moving his legs, though. He didn't feel like moving the slightest inch of skin. 

Weight was no metaphor either. 

It was surprising, as he had thought that getting rid of all his soaked – in all likelihood ruined – clothes and shoes would have made a real difference. It felt better, the slow disappearance of the slightest damp mark in the flames, which were cracking defying sparks in the fireplace after each thunderclaps outside. However, Lucifer was feeling even more bared than before. 

Dried up.  

Heavy.

No wonder most humans looked like they were about to faint after quite a long bout of crying. Tears were draining the slightest drop of water from their limbs, leaving them all shameful and as heavy as lead on the floor. Of course, his previous... distress was nothing like these. And he wasn't ashamed. 

If he wanted to be honest with himself, he still couldn't tell how he was exactly feeling, beneath his heavy, dried up immortal sheath. 

The void was still there, of that he was certain. Still, it felt different, yet the same. It was so hard to put words on his state that he had given up trying to as soon as he had finished explaining to Chloe the all 'nice' dinner debacle at Linda's house. 

A weight.

The only detail that was clear, weighing towards the void. 

Chloe's bare, left heel poked the back of his neck as she wiggled on the couch and the weight increased a bit inside him. Even more so when she placed her hand back at the base of his neck, stroking as slowly as before the very last remains of water in the lowest curls with a towel. It could nearly weigh on his eyelids, these little paths drawn through his hair and tense skin. It would feel nice, to no longer stare at either the rebellious fire or the god-like flood through the window. With the curtains drawn, rain had turned into strange and 'void-inspiring' waves against the glass. 

However, it looked like he was safe here, even though he knew that no such thing was possible as his Father was everywhere, anytime. 

Bloody tactless omnipotence. 

As if she knew where his thoughts were leading him, Chloe pulled harder on his curls. 

He sighed.

'Looking like' looked like enough. 

Still. How ironic to find shelter in the house of God's miracle. How natural.

Was that all part of Your Plan?  

But he would never have an answer, would he? 

"When?"

"Mh?" Lucifer turned his head slightly, Chloe's loose hair invading his sight before her cheek and half of her inquisitive gaze. 

"When did...." She paused, sitting up until her back was straight against the cushion and her hands too far away from his skull. 

The towel fell around his neck and shoulders, but he didn't mind. More weight would do no harm for the expanding abyss in his chest. Taking realization of God's presence as a real thing, a real person with real powers over them all... tough realization. Not that he was finding this more shocking than dating His miracle and she the Devil in the flesh. Bare flesh, on her carpet. 

"When did He... arrive?" 

Lucifer looked straight into the cracking flames, his features cut with thundered tension around them. "Yesterday." 

Whatever had been happening within him since the dinner (maybe even earlier than that) had quite odd effects on his mind because the 'yesterday' sounded anything but near the truth in his mouth. However, it was the truth, true timing, true memory. Still, thinking back on yesterday almost felt like it happened seconds ago. Same for the dinner. On the other hand, he felt like he had been sitting on the Detective's carpet for hours, days even while he knew for a fact – fact circling in time with the hands of the clock on his right – that barely half an hour had passed since his….

Since he arrived at her place. 

That was strange.

He rolled his shoulders around the shiver that just sneaked through another vision of the past. 

The past: that was exactly what was yesterday, just as were these child-like instinctive body responses in front of his Dad. 

He cursed his present slight tremor, glaring at the wavering pure light through the window. Chloe chose this moment to take back the towel still around his neck, first brushing his stubble then the curls behind both his ears with even gentler strokes. All new shivers found their way in each of his heavy-tensed muscles, these of his eyelids soon submitted and shut, craving to open for the next stroke. Close to whimper despair that he never thought he would have felt seconds ago – and for too much time stretching between the last touch and the next, highly expected one – Lucifer almost missed Chloe's heavy sigh above his head. "I'm the worst detective ever."

His eyes opened, frowned even before his eyelids lifted thicker darkness from his sight. "I think you have quite a long solve rate going against such a statement."

"The worst girlfriend ever, then." She sounded annoyed. 

He turned his head once more, half of his face soon covered by the towel and its edge in his mouth, open in protest. He spit the fabric the second after, pulling it to the floor, next to his knees while the Detective had a hard time to stop giggling, even though he replied to her with his most offended glare. 

"If girlfriends aren't supposed to mock close asphyxia by bath towel in the living room, then maybe you are the worst indeed," he muttered, wiping the saliva inadvertently spit on his chin.

She shook her head, her hands resting on the blanket around his shoulders. "Don't you know? Mocking boyfriends is rule number one!"

"Is it now? Well then, you won't mind me mocking your bedding taste." 

Grabbing the towel on the carpet saved him from her pinch behind the ear. 

"This is Trixie's!" 

"I'm sorry, was that supposed to make me change my mind?" 

Chloe managed to pinch him this time, right on the most vulnerable shoulder now free from the spawn's awful bedding. 

He felt the weight, how brief it was meant to last with the lack of the pain he had been used feeling literally around her for years. He felt something wrap itself around the void inside him. As brief. As quick as going out the window. Gone. 

Chloe's fingers didn't. They draw new, yet similar circles as these on his hair on the curve of his shoulder. First around the long gone, so 'not' felt pinch, then lower. They bypassed the edge of the blanket still covering most of his arm and followed a thin, almost dried drop of rain on his torso. Lucifer let her do so, smiling softly as he noticed the drop's final destination and thus, the Detective's fingers'. His heart, heavy like never before, beat even faster and as expected once her hand stopped there and brought something new. 

Something romantic. 

His eyes shut on their own when her cheek pressed against his left temple. She sighed, her fingertips playing quiet notes around his heart. "I'm sorry."

"For being the worst Detective ever, although the best ever, too?" he teased her and she poked him between his shoulder blades with one of her feet. "Right, my bad. The worst girlfriend, am I correctly disagreeing?"

"I thought you were projecting your latest issues on the case and…" She sighed again. "Well, I guess I was right. In a way, but…. Your dad, on Earth? Not what I had in mind." Her next sigh lasted longer, pinched and shaken by her previous nervous chuckle. It shook air and some curls in its way. Her strokes on his chest slowed down, another sign of how the news had hit her with full force. "I thought it was about Michael a-and… and me, I-... I'm sorry."

Lucifer opened his eyes, lifting his chin just enough so that the tip of their noses nearly touched. "Projecting my latest issues on the case…. I never noticed." 

She snorted, "I bet."

Inflamed cracklings mixed with their chuckles, which soon stopped after an umpteenth bolt of lightning outside. As always driven back to his Dad's unmissable presence, Lucifer blinked on the sporadic light and the dense darkness that engulfed its last remains in distant, celestial roarings. As instinctively, his left arm rose from beneath the blanket, his thumb drawing tentative circles along her hand. 

"You thought it was about Michael?" he wondered with a slight frown. "Why?" 

"Why not?" He looked aside her slight shrug from only one shoulder, her gaze on the flames in the fireplace. "He tried to play 'you', he kidnapped me and played with my f—" 

Silence stretched as far it could between all those little noises around them. Silence was always the most loud in endless, rhythmic sounds – Lucifer knew that from Hell. No hell loop was ever dead silent. He felt nearly trapped into his own, with Chloe's sudden silence and its loud manifestation in her whole body. Her right feet on the carpet that was moving forward and back against the couch, the discreet hum of muted thoughts coming out of her parted lips every time she was breathing out. And, finally but no least, this sound of friction, whenever she was moving back a lock of hair behind her ear. She used to act so when she wasn't feeling at ease. Last time was when she had insisted quite oddly and repetitively about how helping him with his family issues would help them to solve the 'Kingdom' case once and for all, or 'hole' in that case. 

"He played with everyone's fears," she eventually said. 

"He surely did." 

Lucifer could hardly deny it, not after his speech at the dinner. Admitting that his twin brother had that much power on them was as pleasant as eating glass. Such comparison was meant to emphasize the disagreement, because humans could only imagine the pain that would ensue; nothing that had ever been willingly tempted by any mortal however. Human, Lucifer was not. He was even less mortal – even though he only came back to his full immortal form a few days ago – and thus knew for a fact that glass indeed had an awful taste and texture in mouth. That was how the admission about Michael's control over him tasted.

Bloody far worse than glass. 

Admitting the possibility that he had manipulated him since the beginning of time felt like splintered glass in his arse already. And the thought that he had fallen for that over and over again….

Michael impersonating him, ravaging what he had built here? He left Hell in a huff. Michael telling Chloe about her being a miracle? Lucifer worsened the situation by remembering that, every time he showed himself around. He called him Samael, listed his mistakes and failures from the past? He lost his temper and engraved his wrath through his twin's face, like the good Devil he had become because— 

—All 'your' ideas!

Girlfriend kidnapped? Because Michael had turned his focus on Daniel, another stupid revenge to plan. Chloe out of danger? He still managed to make her doubt about what they had. Lucifer only protecting humans and the small part of the family he cared about from this prick that had turned Mazikeen against him? 

God appeared in the flesh.

Lucifer's features tensed seconds ago, but thinking back on everything that had happened since a few weeks ago as a few billions of years between either his brother or his Dad… this was far too much tension for one single face, even the Devil's. The hole had been digging so deeply inside him that the nausea at its bottom seemed to flow like an old, wary underground river. Like it had always been there. 

It had. 

This thought. 

Something he had always thought true. 

This is all His fault.

This is all my fault. 

"What is?" 

Lucifer flinched. He blinked dazzlingly, the flames burning with wilder moves every time he closed his eyelids, these provoking strong, inside gusting winds towards the fireplace. Catching her cautious glance and arched eyebrow, he sighed heavily – not a single flame wavering in response to it. Of course. 

"I must stop doing that…" he muttered, averting his gaze towards the folds of the blanket above his crotch. 

"Doing what?" 

"Thinking out loud."

"And what were you thinking? " 

He stayed quiet at first, his thumb moving back and forth around her wrist – a few times, more times he would have needed to answer something that simple. The question was: simple. 

His thumb stopped in the middle of her wrist, another sigh about to reach his lips.

He was thinking a lot. Too many thoughts, truth, lies. Expected moves from him. 

"Why?"

"Because all our lives, you thought that you were better than me."

"Lucifer?" Her hand moved an inch away from his heart. 

He squeezed it in place. 

"I was thinking that I'm no better than him."

"Your Dad?" she asked with a hint of hesitation in her tone. 

He smiled. Not his first thought at the moment, but… "And my twin," he whispered, adding before she got the time to protest against his true statement, "I was also thinking that you were right." He inhaled in a quick heartbeat. "Back then, at the precinct."

If a human body had ever been capable of freezing for good – without the slightest sign of life as a heartbeat or air lifting cartilage and muscles every now and then – Chloe's would have been the first one to excel at it. Surely she could have felt as dense as a stone in his back. 

Speaking – or rather thinking – of….

That wouldn't do at all.

Lucifer didn't mind the blanket falling as he was standing up from the floor. Actually, the touch of the fabric sliding along his arms, then his hips and – finally – his upper thigh felt nice. Not as nice as the Detective's hands that had been incredibly fast to catch the bedding fabric. Not fast enough not to avoid brushing his shaft in the process, though. 

"Detective, we're thinking of serious matters here," he lectured her, smirking nonetheless when the same hands wrapped the blanket – or at least tried to, quite awkwardly – around his hips and brushed his buttocks as well. 

The glare she gave him squeezed sparkles of desire – something romantic again? – tight in his chest. "If so, I seriously think that you should take a seat."

"You're reading my mind."

Whatever left of these sparkles past her second glare got properly extinguished once buttocks and flowery blanket touched the free space on the couch next to her, far from the window and his Dad's endless presence. Whatever may be the thing squeezing his chest right now, desire was no part of it. He had expected that sitting at the same 'face-level' with Chloe would make the… well, thoughts easier to chest. But he kept losing sight of tonight's fundamentals.

Nothing went as expected.

"Right. I… I guess you remember what you told me that day?"

Chloe's hand had stayed on the blanket, around his knee, since he had taken place on the couch. She let it slide on the empty space between them as he spoke, her eyes turned towards the kitchen. Again, one time too many, the other hand brushed locks of hair away from her cheek. "I've said many things."

"And I haven't, not enough." 

His smile was faint as she turned around, nearly a grimace when he looked away from her – back to the flames, back listening to the rain so he wouldn't listen to his rising fears for too long. 

"You're right; Michael taps into people's fears just like I… push upfront people's forbidden desires. It's never been about getting in anyone's head, has it?" Turning his face back to her, Lucifer noticed how confused she looked after his speech. He shook his head, lips contorted with bittersweet truth. "And I'm doing it again!" 

She frowned. "Doing what?"

"My Father! It's—" He shook his head once more, unable to align other syllables than sounds of disgust for himself. 

"Sorry, but I don't understand—" Chloe started saying, yet cut by Lucifer's infuriated snarl as he got up from the couch, fully naked and the blanket falling on her knees. 

"Of course, you don't!" He started walking back and forth in front of her. "How could anyone understand gibberish nonsense when all they want, all that matters is to get one. simple. answer. to. one. simple. QUESTION?! " 

Panting, Lucifer stopped halfway to the fireplace, next to the Detective's coffee table although his back was hiding most of the flames from her sight. If she was still looking at him after this….

What was 'this' anyway?

He thought he was done with these unpredictable drops of feelings. He shouldn't have been feeling one running on his cheek and tickling his stubble. He shouldn't have been thinking of his Dad while all that mattered was the Detective. 

He shouldn't have kept projecting his latest issues here, but his latest issues… that was precisely what had pushed him before Chloe's front door tonight. Projecting was the simplest answer he could give.

What's your question Samael? 

"He couldn't even answer that…"  

"Answer what?" 

Chloe's voice sounded closer than he expected and soon, her hand felt warmer on his right, bare shoulder than any other flames. He waited to see her face, her eyes and the lack of anger within them – of any of these troubling feelings swirling into his internal void of his right now. Always – to answer. Simply. 

"If He loves me or not."

He would have laughed about how the next thunderbolt and the flames just emphasized her surprised expression if he hadn't known what was about to come from her already parted lips. "Don't. Please." 

"I haven't said anything yet."

"Yet you were about to sympathize with me and condemn my Father's behavior."

"Actually, I was about to say that even though I do like watching you walk wildly and naked in my living room – and I do admit, it's even better with lightning and flame patterns on your…" She looked down, lips twitched, then back focused on his face alone. "...skin – I think you'd be better on the couch." 

"So that you could be on top again?" His mouth had lifted its defeated corners in wild, expected desire to know how much more another step or another of his hip movements could inflame the Detective's thoughts. 

Surely, he had some leads about these, given how – even now – she couldn't help but look down again, a much longer time. Her hands slowly fell from his shoulders to the latest abs. She bit her lip. 

"So that I can apply rule number two," she eventually whispered. It sounded hesitant, almost like a question to which she couldn't answer yet. Or wouldn't dare to. 

Cocking his head slightly, Lucifer's puzzled expression increased beneath the deep line across his forehead. He let her pull him by the arm to the couch, soon seated once more although at Chloe's previous seat this time. She didn't let go of his hand after she had sat down, keeping his palm up to the ceiling as her fingertips drew completely different patterns on it. There were lines for most of them: perpendicular ones to his wrist, shorter diagonals between the thumb and his ring. He was fine with either drawings really, as long as it would keep further negative thoughts at bay. Proof was, he only thought about how much she liked his… skin indeed since they had been back on 'top' of the couch. 

But she did look up. Straight in his eyes and the void hiding behind them. 

"Rule number two is about support. That's what partners do, any time, so…" She took a deep breath, nodding. "Yes. Yes, I might be about to emphasize your Dad's shit moves to you." 

"Because you're the worst girlfriend ever?" He tried to make fun of this, but this just sounded off, even for him. If his words and tone wouldn't have betrayed his true spirit by now, the twitch that just bent his middle finger surely did. 

"Because I'm a parent."

"Detective, it's not—"

"The same?" she finished for him, smiling softly as he sighed. "Look, I get it. It's God and it's… overwhelming, for sure. Anyway, He's a dad like I'm a mom and like Dan is a dad, too."

"Do we really have to bring your 'douchy-edgy-ex' in this? One dick is plenty enough, believe me." 

"My point is that being a parent, a good one for your children, it's… He has no excuse for screwing that up, even more so such a—" She breathed in and sat up, letting go of his hand. 

Lucifer watched her shake her head and bit her lower lip for something entirely different than arousal. It aroused conflicted feelings within him. He closed his fist on the back of the couch, slowly. Each drop of rain poking the window in his back was like a needle through his skin, each one of them grazing the rough edges of the void, pulling it upwards. Around his heart. 

"So just tell me. Is that… why you haven't said it back?"

"Haven't said what back?" 

Her eyes….

Did he look at Him the same? With—

"It should be easy to say. Especially to your son," she whispered, her eyes getting lost in the flood behind him. 

"And to you."

She found his gaze, Lucifer's faint smile welcoming her frown. 

Breathing in even more heavily than she did earlier, he took her hand – an inch away from his on the back of the couch – and took the lead of simple, short drawings on it. Not cryptic. 

"I guess projecting my latest issues is not… all bad? I mean… that was what made me realize that—" He sighed once more, his fingers applying additional pressure on her skin. Soft, slightly trembling; he could feel it if he stopped. But that was the last thing he wanted. The only thing that needed to stop was his inner void. And— 

You have that look on your face.

His mouth twisted around a bitter laugh. "I hate when He answers me evasively. Cryptically, and I-I did the same with you lately. I bloody did…."

"Lucifer…."

He shook his head, not giving her any chance to stop him or retrieve her hand. His gaze instinctively sought out any other view than her even more creased forehead and that look… that look on her face. As it swifted between the corner of the blanket beneath her knees and the slight movement in her loose hair on her shoulders, he thought back about how she had avoided his gaze and he hers at the precinct. 

He stopped eluding and looked through the void, deep into it. 

"I know that, by all this self-crazy-unruly-self-actualization of myself, my mojo going back and forth between us, my… invulnerability again… it can feel as cryptic a-as my Dad's cryptic ways. I know it can be… unsettling, to say the least. The-... what happened tonight: the dinner, that another cryptic talk with Him while what I only desire was clear answers, it's-... I've come to realize that how I feel right now, this… this is how you must have felt when I… well…." 

He swallowed, yet still unable to say these words for her. Stopped. He opened his mouth, nearly choking on the bleak within him. It kept growing, no matter his efforts to make things right to her. 

"You're not the worst girlfriend, neither the worst detective. I'm the worst, because—" He cocked his head to the side, a bit more of this void burning his eyes when it already had frozen his heart. 

His lips twisted on his inner struggle. He couldn't stop now.

Not now. Not again.

"...because I'm blaming my Father for something I failed at doing myself." 

"Hey, shhh." 

He was the worst, no doubt. He damn was: for welcoming Chloe's hands on his cheeks, for how bloody fast he flew out of the void and intertwined their fingers together, weighing on her vulnerability to forget his. The thought hit him like a rock in two strangled inhalations. Was that why he was invulnerable again? Because he couldn't stand to fill his void with something new.

Romantic.

The void inside him. It wasn't new. It never had been. The void had been there since the beginning – It had opened with his parents' first signs of negligence, it had grown wider with Michael's words, to an uncountable size through his fall and the hell that had followed ever since. 

Anger, fear, regrets and any other bad feelings that had followed – these had filled this hole for so long and then….

Then here she appeared and turned the void upside down. 

She had filled it with something unique. 

"Shh...hey, hey," Chloe was repeating, stroking his cheeks – tense between rapid, shaky breathings. "You're not to blame here. You're the best man I—"

"I'm not. I'm not a man, I'm the Devil – because I'm no better than my Dad." His fingers wrapped around hers, not to keep them in place. Far from it. "Don't," he stopped her as she opened her mouth. "You thought it just a few minutes ago while I was thinking out loud…  don't deny it, Detective." 

"Lucifer, I thought you were comparing yourself to your Dad because your Dad seems like 'the' tonight problem. He is 'the' everything moreover. Come on, you just said that it was He who made you realize how I could feel the other day! So don't start playing it like 'I'm-the-Devil-to-blame-forever-and-for-everything' again! We've passed this!"

Taken aback by her vivid reply, Lucifer stayed agape for a few seconds. "But not your desire to hear me say these words back to you," he remarked carefully.

"I don't want that."

"You don't?"

"Well, yes I do, but— I don't want you to feel this way by doing what I want to make me feel better, okay?"

Lucifer frowned so much that his forehead could have split in half if he ever added additional pressure through his skin. "Is that another sharing-mojo-thing between us although for the cryptic talk this time? Because I can hardly grasp what you mean here."

"Look…." she starts, although quiet right after. Her hands between his weren't. He felt the painless pressure of her fingernails increase in his palms a few times. "I really appreciate that you want to say these words back to me, but—"

Her middle finger was back drawing small circles on the small space of skin between his thumb and forefinger. 

"But it would be for the wrong reasons. Or the best, most adorable one."

"Still lost here." 

"You just left what was – I think – a really, really emotional family dinner with your Dad and the brother who tried to ruin what you've built here. Plus, you hadn't seen your Dad in…." She stopped, asking him with curiosity; "How long had it even been? Billions, trillions of years since your last talk?" 

Lucifer's lips barely lifted to answer that Chloe shook her head.

"Not the point, alright, I…. What I meant is that my feelings aren't important here, okay? Especially knowing what happened these last two days. My God... it's just been two days , hasn't it?" she wondered, her gaze drifting back to the window.

"Three, actually," he corrected her, the 'three' just passed on the clock. 

As she looked down at his face, he smiled for lack of any better comfort to give her. The smile itself twitched with his Dad's presence vocalized by his still slightly dazed partner about time and its creator. "And your feelings matter to me. Always." 

"I know."

He frowned, doubtful. If she ever did, why did she doubt it two – three – days ago? 

She smiled, a soft line of pink surrounded by golden curtains. "Because I let my fears get the best of me. Of us."

"Alright, when did I self-actualize exactly? Because you're reading my mind!" 

She giggled, yet he was serious. And concerned. 

His nose wrinkled. "This isn't funny, Detective. Many of my thoughts could have been used for our next private recreations and others about you could distract yourself in duty—"

They really were distracting her already. And so skillfully. Lucifer's words and further thoughts got properly extinguished as soon as her lips touched his – a wall of fire against the crackling remains of his in the void. He pushed back, the proper level of pressure to feel her pushing it upwards, around his upper lip. Right where he could feel all of her at once: lips, breaths, brushing nose, cheeks and chin. 

Bloody, annoyingly too early, she sat up. 

Her hands moving back around his neck, she stroked his stubble. "You really don't have to worry about being as cryptic as your Dad. Your face speaks loud and clear truth: that's how I know how much you care about my feelings, Lucifer."

Her hand lifted to his confused eyes. There, she started stroking the end of his left eyebrow. 

"I know when you're looking at me this way that you wonder if I haven't turned crazy because of your Dad's presence, if you'll ever be able to give me what I deserve and that I deserve everything because I'm me. Special."

Her finger brushing his eyebrow one last time, she looked him straight in the eye. 

"Actually, I was thinking of another word," he whispered, then clearing his throat. "Six words." 

She squinted.

"The best detective in the world."

Detective she was to figure what he had in mind again, leaning back for a kiss – longer but soft, a fleeting thought of arousal rising between their lips. 

"I don't need to hear these words from you, Lucifer," Chloe said after they moved away from each other. "Not when I see them. Here. " She emphasized these words with a curved stroke beneath his left eye. 

"You forget yesterday."

"Yesterday, I let Michael play with my fears. But…" She breathed in, nibbling her bottom lip for a few seconds. "But they were just that – fears , okay? A-And… And if love was just a matter of words, then I… I guess I haven't been better than you." 

"Chloe—"

"Remember when Jed asked me if I was dating someone?" she cut his protests off. 

Almost instantly, the twinging he had felt back then pinched his chest even harder. He pinched his lips, avoiding her gaze like she had avoided his while answering to this 'cherry-obsessed' DJ. 

Right. 

"See?" she said, smiling. 

"I should close my eyes…." he muttered, provoking more of her giggles. 

"And cover your face? And no longer touching me?"

"Now, now Detective! Let's not overthink such trivial… well, thoughts." He hastily grabbed her hands – resting on his shoulders since then – so that she wouldn't be able to retrieve the slightest touch. "Besides, what would I do with all this skin of mine without your diligent strokes on it?"

"What I'm trying to make you understand, you and your skin ," she insisted. "….it's that love is not just about words. It's also about showing it and in that, you're the best I could have ever dreamed of."

I love you. 

Blinking at her, Lucifer remained speechless. Not that it was a bad thing – wasn't it? – especially after what he had just heard. Still, showing felt barely enough at this point. 

"It's a team effort, partnership." 

And I, you. 

Still turning in circles around these, wasn't he?

As long as it was around her, always… he didn't mind that much anymore. And so didn't she, it appeared. It felt even more certain with the kiss that followed and soon Lucifer's last remains of doubts about 'showing love' vanished with her sucking his bottom lip in the most sinful, softest way. He cupped her face, moving her hair away from longer strokes on her cheeks and neck. Her left hand squeezed his right shoulder and the fire weighing pleasantly in his endless void burnt it further down.

If I have to tell you… then I really have failed.

He barely registered Chloe's hand slide down his shoulder, but he did notice the heat frozen inside his throat. Like eaten glass. 

Her lips left his, filling the tiny space between them with words again. "What's wrong?"

He sighed. "You're bloody too good at reading through the Devil's body language, dear." 

She gave him that look, the one that wouldn't fall for any of his innuendos and other body language than the one that just happened. A shame, really, all the more so with the firm language between his legs as he imagined her riding his most expressive feeling of all on the couch. How lucky they were to be alone tonight, at her place. Surely such an opportunity couldn't go into waste for another of his… extempore projection. 

He held her gaze for a few seconds, yielding in front of her stubbornness with another sigh. 

"I just… I was thinking about my Dad." She frowned slightly, to which he answered by a shrug. "Seems like He is not as perfect as I thought, a walking-divine-fiasco when it comes to expressing His feelings, but—"

The frozen fire seemed to split in his throat. It spread around his voice, weakened yet heavy with long-forgotten feelings. Long-buried beneath tons of ashes. 

"I always thought He was perfect . In everything. W-While I was…." 

"You," Chloe finished for him despite his head shaking against this simple word. She cupped his face, looking straight into his eyes. "You are you, Lucifer."

He smiled softly, wrapping his hands around her wrists as softly. "Hard to be anyone else," he complied. 

"What's the matter, then?"

He breathed in her scent as her thumb brushed the corner of his lips, moving his left hand along her forearm to pull her slightly forward. Not resisting, Chloe kept staring at him all the same. Once she was close enough so that only an inch of air remained between their faces, he let go of her. "I thought He never loved any of us, that perfection was only possible if you didn't care about anyone else but yourself, but…" 

He shook his head. 

….You will never love us, because You're incapable of love.

".…maybe He's just been incapable of expressing it all along. In any way." 

Catharsis there had been. That was…

Unexpected. 

His lips twitched on unspeakable feelings about such a realization. Was that even possible or had he been much more desperate to get his Father's love that he thought in the first place? Was it just him imagining signs or the lack of it as… as something that had never been proven? 

His Dad… God…

He couldn't have failed that many times at showing love, could He?

Could He?

….then I really have failed. 

Then what had been His past failed attempts? Linda had wrapped her weak-minded (that was his opinion back then) strategy as a therapist around the fact that even his name connotated his Father's love for him, but what else? 

His fall? Letting him live at all after the Rebellion? On Earth many, many years after?

The Detective—

Did Lucifer get all His signs wrong since—?

"Lucifer, hey… hey…" Chloe soothed him, closing the gap between them to wrap her arms around him and take a bit of his rising tremors. 

Why was he shaking again? Why didn't he get anything, why did His Father—?

"Hey, it's okay," she said, welcoming new tremors with additional strokes in his curls, along his neck and shoulders. 

"It's not…." He exhaled shakily against her neck. "It bloody isn't. I-... what the hell am I supposed to do now?"

Either going back to Linda's house and confronting his Dad once more or let it be this way, neither of these possibilities were helping him see through the void his Dad reopened to its original, roughest stage. None of this made sense. 

"I don't know, but what I do know is that your Dad is here. On Earth." She pushed on his shoulders and Lucifer reluctantly left her embrace. 

His eyes shut on an umpteenth thunderbolt through the window. 

This one just looked too bloody much like another of his Dad's admonitions about his current behavior. 

Keep Your storm out of this, will You? 

"Everyone in Los Angeles is damply aware that He is, Detective," he replied. 

"It's a chance, Lucifer."

"A chance?" 

Chloe nodded. "Who knows when you'll ever get another opportunity like this?" 

He cocked his head to the side. "True. Although, I'm not sure I really want to waste another pair of Louboutins by kicking His celestial arse out of Earth—"

She gave him a slight punch in the shoulder. "I meant 'talk to Him'!" 

"I would ; not with words, that's all." He frowned at her unreadable expression. "What? I'd only make good use of one of the Devil's best assets, darling. Show, don't tell , is that it?"

"You're unbelievable," Chloe laughed against his lips, showing much more than told so far by scratching his stubble with her fingernails. 

He breathed in faster with teeth teasing his bottom lip, then her tongue pressing forward – seemingly so like the rest of her body. Their thighs overlapped, her hands running on his torso for the skin he couldn't touch yet, as fully clothed as he was bare naked under her. Again.

His smile widened too far for her lips. "Is this your way to tell me that you want to be on top?" 

He grunted with a long stroke of fabric at hips level. 

She kissed the rest of his vocalized surprise. Deep. "Just wait another four times – six, actually – and you'll have my position."

Moving his lips to her neck, he started pulling her pants down, his fingertips touching the edge of her panties then sliding beneath them. "Call it a hunch but… feels like I'll have to wait for God's rain to stop for that."

Hell had frozen over already. And it only took years.

Unexpectedly so, God's flood chose this very moment to lessen and, finally, stop outside. Blinking on the very last waves of celestial water against the window, Lucifer's lips lifted on a growl as he sat up on the couch and inches away from Chloe's top desire for body language. "Oh, You Son of—!!"

Chloe's laughs muted further annoyed expressions out of the devil's mouth, her next kiss putting desire back on top. 

And, expectedly so, this weighed amazingly light.