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It really is a pattern, how many of their achingly frank moments come when sitting in the car on a stakeout.
Perhaps it’s the monotony of it, of waiting for a suspect who will never come. Perhaps it’s the silence, stretching out tense and painful, waiting to be filled by a confession. Perhaps it’s just them, always slightly out of sync, just missing each other, like two ships passing in the night.
Chloe thinks about the case they’re working, about the victim and the man she left behind. The similarities between their situation, and hers and Lucifer’s, were startling.
“You know, I could have made her so happy,” the doctor smiles sadly, voice tinged with regret, “she should have given us a chance.”
Next to her, Chloe feels Lucifer stiffen, the words pressing too close. They hurt her too, burn like acid on her skin, but she can’t help herself from asking—
“Why didn’t she?”
“She was scared, I suppose,” the man shrugs, “as another doctor, scared of blurring the line between co-workers and friends. As a mother, scared I wouldn’t fit into her daughter’s life. With my… let’s say colourful… past, scared I hadn’t changed. I’ve always been impulsive, she is—was—very rational. In general, she didn’t like to take chances, but… damn, we would’ve been worth the risk.”
Chloe works up the courage to glance at Lucifer and sees his jaw clenched tight. Implication burns white hot in the air between them. So many missed chances, so many wasted opportunities, just like this man and his almost-lover.
She takes a step forward and curls her fingers around the man’s elbow. He looks lost, but comforted by the touch of a stranger.
“I’m sure it was her biggest regret.”
She says quietly—because it’s hers.
Sitting in the car now, she can’t stop thinking about the exchange. Call it a cop’s intuition, but she’s ruled the doctor out as a suspect. The pain and regret shining behind his eyes… you couldn’t fake that. She sees it in the mirror every day.
She’s still scared, and she doesn’t know everything—but she knows that without Lucifer, she’s left in the dark. She knows they'll give up on the stakeout soon, and the moment will snap and break. It will pass. She'll go home and fall into an empty bed, and he'll fall into Eve.
So she needs to take this moment. This moment to tell him that he makes her life messy, and complicated, and confusing, and bright.
So she takes a breath and says—
“I made a mistake.”
Lucifer hums, as though he had been miles away, lost in his own thoughts. She wonders if he was thinking about Eve. She wonders if he was thinking about the conch shell, and the aquarium, and the entire cast of Cirque de Soleil. She wonders if he ever thinks about her, because she’s sure at one point he did.
“Not to worry, Detective, happens to the best of us,” he dismisses casually, “the miscreant is obviously off causing trouble elsewhere.”
Chloe sighs, eyes slipping shut, nerves flaring.
“I don’t mean with the suspect.”
“Oh?” he arches a brow, but doesn’t turn to look at her. He rarely looks at her these days, as though the thought is too painful. “You mean you think it was someone else? I doubt it. I told you, I think McDreamy is innocent too. You were right.”
She takes a deep, patient breath. She should’ve known this wouldn’t be easy. When is anything when it comes to him, to them?
“I was so wrong," she counters.
He doesn’t reply, eyes focused ahead on the empty warehouse, so she continues.
“She never gave him a chance.”
“Who?” he asks, confused.
“The doctor,” she swallows, “he loved the victim—Grace—but she never gave him a chance.”
She watches a muscle in his jaw leap as he finally gets the message.
He still won’t look at her, but his pain is easy to see. He’s been so guarded lately, hiding it behind the easy flick of a lapel, or the twist of a cufflink, or an orgy four times a week. He tries to hide it, but she feels it, rolling off him in waves. She hates that she’s the cause.
He might be the devil, but he would never hurt her.
She hurt him.
Deeply.
She wants more than anything to make it right.
“Please look at me,” she whispers then, voice achingly small.
That muscle in his jaw leaps… but he does. He turns his head and finds her eyes, because he pretends he doesn’t care, but he still dances on her string.
“I made a mistake,” she says again, her breath suddenly very tight in her chest because this is it, so many years of pain and longing and love spilling over.
Before he can question her, she decides to make it very clear.
Chest aching, she says, “I should have given you a chance.”
He blinks once, twice, and then sighs.
“Chloe.”
“Don’t call me that,” she breathes in a painful rush of air, “please.”
His eyes glimmer a little coldly.
“It’s who you are, isn’t it?”
“Not to you. I’m the Detective.”
I’m your Detective.
“It’s done,” he says then, his voice clipped and short, and to her despair, he turns away from her again, “what use is there in going over it now?”
“Because it’s not done,” she insists heatedly, “and you know it.”
If it was done, this tension between them… it wouldn’t be burning hot and brimming just under the surface. It wouldn’t be a pressure cooker, ready to explode, to burst into brilliance. If it was done, they would be able to walk away from each other, rather than falling right back, no matter how much it hurts. They would be all cool indifference, unaffected steel, not fragile glass, ready to shatter with a hurtful word.
“I have someone in my life now,” he says quietly, “someone that I care about. It’s not what you and I had, not even close. But… it’s something.”
The glass shatters, and tiny shards stab at Chloe’s heart.
She can’t speak for a moment, can’t breathe past the lump in her throat, so Lucifer looks at her again.
Now she wishes he wouldn’t.
She’s a mess.
“The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you,” he murmurs softly, “but those are the facts.”
Humiliation lashes at her like a whip, hot and fierce, and she almost gives up. She almost says, “I understand” and “I missed my chance”. She almost allows them to go back to partners and nothing more; she knows it’ll be painful, but at least she’ll get to keep him in her life.
But then she thinks about what he said.
It’s not what you and I had, not even close.
So they did have something, and it was something more than what he has with Eve. He cares about her… but he didn’t say anything about love.
So she asks him explicitly.
“Do you love her?”
His jaw clenches again.
“You can’t ask me that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not fair,” he bites out.
“Because you can’t lie?” she reads him like a book—still, always.
He makes a noise of frustration, half a sigh, half a growl.
“I think you love me,” she says brazenly.
A choked sound rumbles from his chest this time.
“Bloody hell, Chloe.”
He’s shaking his head tiredly, and rubbing an anxious hand over his jaw, but he’s not correcting her. Hope blossoms and spreads like warm sunlight inside her chest.
“You don’t have to say it,” she says quickly, quietly, “I feel it.”
When he turns to look at her again, there are angry red flecks burning in his eyes.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he asks fiercely.
She swallows, remembering a time when she had asked the same. God, they had made such a mess of this. But the tremble to his jaw and the tightness in his shoulders tell her it’s not too late.
“I’m just asking if you love Eve.”
He laughs—but it’s a bitter, humourless sound.
“Did you love Pierce?” he bites out, clearly expecting her not to answer.
But as she said before, she’s done hiding. Done running.
“No, I loved you,” she whispers, achingly honest, “I still do.”
She watches his chest cave with a sharp inhale of breath. His eyes turn glassy almost immediately, shining with the weight of her confession. He looks like he’s never heard that before. With 92 dispassionate testimonials from 92 uncaring lovers burning in her mind, she thinks he probably hasn’t.
He doesn’t say it back, but he doesn’t run for the hills either, and that’s… something.
But he does murmur—
“You really hurt me.”
She feels the words in her chest, a painful ache.
“I know,” she whispers, “I’m so sorry.”
“Eve, she’s…” he pauses, an expression she can’t read flickering over his features, “she’s not a consolation prize. She cares about me. She accepts me. I’ve known her since the beginning of time.”
His words are clear, but there’s a question lining his tone. Chloe’s not sure who he’s trying to convince. She swallows, shifting in her seat to draw herself a little closer to him.
“And yet, she doesn’t know you like I know you,” she whispers, voice low and dropped a note.
The few years they’ve been working together are a drop in the ocean compared to a history spanning back to the Garden, and yet—he’s never looked at Eve the way he looks at her.
“You don’t know me at all,” his voice is just as low, “you thought I would hurt you.”
“No,” she shakes her head, because she didn’t think that, “not deep down. I just lost sight of things. I see you now, the way I’ve always seen you. The angel and the devil.”
He thinks Eve accepts him, but she doesn’t. Not really. She accepts only the dark, the devil he no longer wants to be. Chloe accepts it all. She wants it all.
She twists her body until she’s sideways on the seat. She leans in closer.
“Forgive me,” she murmurs, eyes dropping to his lips, “please, Lucifer.”
He sighs, heavy and surrendering.
“I forgave you as soon as you did it, Chloe.”
“You did?” she asks, eyes and throat burning, because it sure as hell didn’t feel like it.
“There was no point in not. It didn’t change the way I felt about you. It didn’t change the fact that you, Detective… you are all I bloody think about.”
She exhales on a trembling breath, leaning closer to him without even realising it. Somewhere along the way, he’s done the same, and now they’re angled towards each other, the console between them.
“You’re not angry anymore?”
He shakes his head, eyes dropping like an anchor to her lips. They darken further when her tongue peeks out to wet them.
“No.”
She leans in closer; close enough to feel the heat that clings to him, heady whiskey and smoke, but not close enough to touch expensive Armani.
“You don’t want to stop working together?”
Because even though she’s sure he had only tried that in the heat of an argument, it had stuck.
“No.”
He leans in, meeting her halfway, and the soft light streaming in from the street lamp outside brings out the red in his eyes. The atmosphere thins, heavy with tension. It crackles and burns in the space between them. The car is filled, lit up, with it. She doesn’t know how she’s resisted it for so long.
“Do you love her?”
“No,” he finally answers, and then he closes the gap so their mouths brush hot and electric as he murmurs, “I love you.”
His mouth covers her sigh of relief.
He kisses her, one hand lifting so it can cup her jaw. Long fingers slide into her hair at the same time as his tongue slides into her mouth. Her own hands fly to his lapels, bringing him in closer, wanting to swallow him whole. She tries to ignore how they tremble, while his are steady and strong. Their ships are moored now; he anchors her.
It’s similar to the two kisses they shared in the past, and yet nothing like them. Before, they had been so unsure, so tentative. Now, he kisses her like he’s claiming her, like he knows what he wants and he’s no longer afraid to take it. She pushes right back, pouring all the guilt, all the sorrow, all the pain of missing him into the kiss. She hopes he can feel how much she wants him, how much she loves him.
“Please,” she whispers against his lips when they break apart, “please choose me.”
“It’s always been you, Detective,” he murmurs, “there was never any choice to make.”