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“Well, you simply must go, Detective.”
Chloe sighed in frustration as she pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. She didn’t know why she was surprised her partner wasn't listening to her. It would be more surprising if he was.
“Lucifer, there’s no point. I didn’t fit in in high school and I’m not going to fit in at their stupid reunion.”
Lucifer scoffed, straightening his back in his chair and giving a casual flick of his lapels. He started talking again and she zoned out, focusing her eyes on the paperwork in-front of her. She just wanted to concentrate on their latest case. She wanted to lose herself in suspects, and evidence, and leads, and focus on work.
Not on the uncomfortable encounter she’d had at the grocery store this morning.
“Chloe Decker! Is that you?”
Chloe arched a brow as she turned around, her smile turning tight at the sight of the woman approaching her.
“Crystal,” it wasn’t difficult to recognise Fairfax High’s former class bully, “Hi, how are you?”
Chloe didn’t particularly care. Crystal Matthews had made her life a misery at high school, spreading rumours and giving her nasty nicknames, and she was really hoping she’d never have to see her again. But now here she was, standing in the snack aisle, clutching a bag of cool ranch puffs because the vending machine had run out and Lucifer refused to do any work without them.
“I’m so good,” Crystal drawled in her high, valley girl voice, “I’m a model now, and I live in Brentwood, and I’m dating an actor. I can’t tell you who.”
Chloe blinked, hoping that when she opened her mouth ‘I couldn’t give rat’s ass who you’re dating’ didn’t come out. She didn’t have the chance to say anything at all, because Crystal continued—
“But let’s just say he’s British and quite the man of steel… and you might have seen him in the Wincher.”
Chloe stared at her, wondering how she could be so dumb and so obvious at the same time.
“You mean The Witcher?” she corrected, assuming she meant Henry Cavill.
A muscle in Crystal’s cheek twitched as she plastered a fake smile on her face.
“So what have you been up to?” she changed the subject with a sickly sweet laugh, “I haven’t seen you in any movies lately. Did your career dry up after High School Hot Tub?”
This time, Chloe knew this slip up was intentional, and she clenched her jaw.
“Hot Tub High School,” she corrected numbly, “and no, I gave up acting. I’m a Detective at the LAPD now actually.”
She said it with a point of pride, finally feeling a bit smug at her accomplishments.
But Crystal Matthews had always had a skill at making her feel small. She had practically made ‘make Chloe Decker cry’ a sport in high school and Chloe hated that decades later, little had changed. She hated that one patronising look from her could revert her back to that insecure, lonely girl who felt like she didn’t fit in anywhere.
“Oh, well that’s okay,” Crystal pouted condescendingly, “Hollywood isn’t kind to everyone.”
“Well, I chose to—”
“So are you seeing anyone?”
Chloe fought the urge to roll her eyes because of course that would be important to her. She suspected Crystal thought life was utterly meaningless without a man on your arm to tell you what to do.
“Well—”
“What am I saying? Of course you’re not,” she interrupted with a wave of her hot pink claws, “old Bucky Beaver… so independent.”
Chloe winced at the nickname, the one she’d given to her and passed around because of her teeth before braces. She felt her cheeks flaring hot, and she went to open her mouth, but Crystal was once again interrupting.
“Well, I have to go. I’ve got a big shoot coming up. I would so totally love to see you at the reunion next week. But I get if it’s too embarrassing to turn up alone. Anyway, bye Chlo!”
She blew her a kiss and turned on her heel, leaving Chloe clutching her partner’s cool ranch puffs with a dejected feeling pooling in her chest.
“So I’ll come with you, and we’ll show those ageing bullies—”
“Wait what?”
Chloe blinked back to life to catch what Lucifer was babbling about.
He blinked, a deceptively innocent look on his face.
“Really Detective, you have the attention span of a goldfish today. I was saying… I’ll come with you to your silly high school reunion, and with me on your arm, those horrible miscreants who made your life a misery back then will be simply falling to their feet before you.”
She rolled her eyes at his dramatics.
“Okay one, only partners or spouses are allowed as plus ones. Two, why would you being there make any difference?”
An outraged huff rolled from his chest.
“I’ll simply pose as your husband,” he sniffed as though that was obvious, “and I’m charming, handsome, and filthy rich. That’s the difference, darling. Having me on your arm will raise your stock considerably.”
She rolled her eyes again but couldn’t help her laugh. He was so ridiculous… but maybe he was right. Lucifer Morningstar did have quite the reputation, and the thought of her classmates’ shocked expressions at seeing her as the one who had finally tamed him… it was starting to sound appealing.
Lucifer suddenly turned serious, leaning forward in his chair and folding his hands over the table.
“How did it make you feel when the woman with the hooker’s name said all that to you?”
Chloe sighed.
“Small,” she admitted, “sad. Humiliated. Like I was that shy little girl again, the one with the bad teeth and frizzy hair who didn’t fit in anywhere.”
Lucifer’s jaw clenched in what looked like anger.
“Well you’re not that girl, though she sounds rather adorable. You’re Chloe boring-middle-name Decker. You’re funny, kind, wildly intelligent, and one of the LAPD’s finest detectives. We’ll go to that silly reunion, and show them exactly that.”
Chloe smiled, a warmth replacing the tightness in her chest. Her partner could be exasperating and very challenging at times, but he could also be fiercely loyal and kind. With their kiss on the beach and almost-relationship last year burning in her mind, she reminded herself just friends, just friends, just friends.
He made that very difficult too.
“Alright, Lucifer, we’ll try it. Thank you,” she smiled, and then reached into her bag to toss him the cool ranch puffs. He caught them easily. “Now can we please do some work?”
A low whistle danced through Lucifer’s teeth as the elevator doors rasped open.
She was wearing a classic little black dress, dipped low at her back and accentuating her curves. Her hair fell in loose waves down her shoulders, and her lips were painted in a dark red. She hoped she looked good, but she didn’t feel truly confident until Lucifer extended his arm.
“Well, well, well,” he crooned as she took it, “don’t you look lovely?”
Chloe smiled, rolling her bottom lip between her teeth. She took his arm and let her eyes drift over his sharp grey suit.
“You look very handsome,” she admitted, pushing down the butterflies that were fluttering in the pit of her stomach.
This isn’t real, she told herself.
“I know,” he grinned cockily.
There he is, she thought with a wry smile.
He led her to the bar, chuckling lowly at how she tottered slightly on her too-high heels, and offered her a drink. She took it, grateful for the scorch of whiskey as it settled her nerves.
“So the hotel called…” she started slowly, “to confirm our booking. I was going to go for two rooms, but I just thought… if we’re meant to be married… and we don’t want to blow our cover obviously… but it means one bed and…”
She was stuttering.
Lucifer took pity on her.
He gently curled his fingers around her elbow.
“Well, you’ll just have to keep your hands to yourself, won’t you, Detective?”
She huffed a laugh, the heat in her cheeks calming down.
“Let’s go?” she suggested, arching a brow towards the elevator.
What the hell am I doing? she thought as she let her eyes drift over the immaculate fit of his suit again.
“Just one more thing, Detective,” he hummed, stopping her in her tracks.
She looked at him questioningly, watching as he reached into his suit pocket. He pulled out two gold rings, the thicker of which he slipped onto his finger, and the other he held up to her.
“To complete the ruse,” he smirked.
Chloe swallowed, her throat turning dry.
The air seemed to thin as he gently took her hand. It burned white hot between them, heavy with the weight of everything left unsaid—their kiss on the beach, Candy, Vegas, and all the secret reasons he didn’t lie, but also couldn’t be honest with her. As he slipped the ring onto her finger, the other piece of jewellery he’d given her, the bullet around her neck, burned on her skin.
“Shall we then, Mrs Morningstar?”
He extended his arm again with a warm smile.
The name should have sounded strange, wrong, but somehow it didn’t.
It really didn’t.
“The things I do for you, Detective,” Lucifer shook his head with a grimace as they walked into the hotel function room.
Gaudy decorations were peppered everywhere, balloons and confetti and banners reading ‘Class of too-long-ago-for-her-liking’.
His unimpressed eyes did a sweep, a brow arching in distaste. Finally, they landed on the bar, and he dragged her in that direction with a pleased ‘ah, lovely’. Chloe gave a grunt of surprise as he tugged her, uncaring how difficult it was to walk in these heels in his pursuit of whiskey.
He was just in the middle of a rant to the bartender, starting with an appalled “what do you mean you only have wine or beer?” when Crystal and a few others sauntered up to them.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe you came!” she squealed, grabbing her and pulling her into a tight, unwelcome hug, “Chloe Decker, can you believe it guys?”
Chloe smiled tightly and subtly elbowed Lucifer behind her.
“Ow! What on earth—”
He stopped when he noticed they had company.
A seductive smirk slipped onto his face.
“Oh, hello there," he purred, curling an arm around Chloe’s waist.
“It’s Morningstar actually,” Chloe corrected and couldn’t believe how easily it slipped off her tongue, “you didn’t give me a chance to explain this morning, but I’m married. This is my husband, Lucifer.”
If Chloe had any doubts about this, they faded with the gobsmacked look on Crystal’s face. A smug feeling of triumph coursed through her veins as the other woman opened and closed her mouth like a fish.
“I’ve heard of you!” Ben Daniels, who she had 10th grade math with said, “you’re, like, famous.”
“More infamous, I’d say,” Lucifer crooned, “but yes, I suppose I am.”
They made idle small talk for a while, Crystal still seemingly unable to speak, while Lucifer’s arm tightened around her.
“Anyway, lovely to meet you, but we’re going to get our drinks now,” he turned to Chloe with a warm smile, “come on, darling, I think they have some of that intolerable swill that you like.”
Five minutes later, he thrust a glass of rosé into her hand.
Back when they started working together, it hadn’t taken Chloe long to realise that Lucifer owned any room he walked into.
With his flamboyant entrances, and silken accent, and suits costing more than most people’s monthly salaries, he demanded to be seen. He pulled all the energy in a room towards him. So she wasn’t surprised that this night was no different.
Her former classmates quite literally flocked to him.
“Well, a lot of us share the same therapist,” he was saying of Hollywood’s finest, “I know, I know… so LA.”
“So who was your favourite?” Jenny Baker from 8th grade science was asking, stars in her eyes, “of all the famous people you’ve met.”
Lucifer hummed in contemplation. Chloe suspected he was trying to sort through the people he hadn’t slept with, because one of them was probably his favourite, but he couldn’t exactly say that.
Finally, he settled on—
“Oh, one of the Ryan’s probably. Gosling or Reynolds, take your pick. Both very funny chaps.”
The little crowd gathered around him ooh’d and ahh’d until one person asked, “and the worst?”
Lucifer didn’t have to think about this one.
“Henry Cavill, no question,” he said cheerfully, “insufferable bore.”
He lifted his glass of wine to his lips and took an innocent sip.
Crystal Matthews went pale, and with a thrill of hope swelling inside her, Chloe had never adored him more.
Two hours and three glasses of rosé later, Chloe was actually having a good time.
People were being nice to her, and the music was good, and she was comfortable. Deep down, she knew it was because Lucifer was by her side. He just made her feel safe, and happy, and he put her at ease. Watching him work the room and woo her former classmates, it wasn’t difficult to see why people fell for him.
Why she fell for him.
If she was being honest with herself, she knew she had.
The feelings had been pushed down and buried after Candy and Vegas, but now she felt them rising to the surface. All the affection, the trust, the love. Now, watching him put so much effort into this—a silly tradition she knew he didn’t understand—just because he knew it was important to her… it meant so much.
“So how did you pop the question?” someone was asking nosily.
Lucifer hummed, snaking his arm around Chloe's waist again. He pulled her in tight to his side and she could feel his strength and his warmth, emanating from expensive Armani. She could smell him, all whiskey and smoke and sandalwood cologne. She was dizzy with it.
Everyone in this room was jealous of her, and she knew it.
“Do you want to tell it or shall I, darling?”
Chloe just shook her head, overwhelmed.
Apparently spinning a tale for a cause was different to lying, because Lucifer launched into a suspiciously detailed story.
“Well, I took her to the beach where we had our first kiss. It was sunset, and a band was playing a medley of cheesy 90s songs, and I gave her a very romantic speech about how much she meant to me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the lovely necklace she’s wearing,” his dark eyes flickered down to it, “but it’s a bullet from where she shot me. I know, I know, but it was an accident, I assure you. Anyway, that bullet represents a lot for us. It represents how vulnerable I am around her, and how very important she is to me. How important she’s always been. So I told her I wasn’t worthy, just as I did the first time we kissed, but that if she kept believing in me, I would never stop trying to become so.”
Chloe listened with a burning in her throat and behind her eyes.
“And then I got down on one knee in the sand—in a suit like this, I know—and I told her she was my best friend. I told her she was the only woman I had ever loved… and the only woman I would ever love. And then I asked her if she would do me the honour of becoming my wife.”
Chloe’s heart felt too big for her chest as the people around them cooed in appreciation.
“How could she say no to that?” one asked warmly.
How indeed, Chloe thought.
Chloe’s eyes widened as she noticed Lucifer talking to Jake Gregson on the other side of the room.
She quickly made her way over, just in time to catch Lucifer’s loud laugh.
“Oh hello, darling,” he greeted, eyes glittering with amusement, “Jakey here was just telling me how he was your prom date.”
“Hi Jake,” she mumbled, and Jake looked as embarrassed as she did.
“Isn’t that marvellous?” Lucifer sighed happily before he turned back to the other man, “tell me, did you try to cop a feel in the limo, or did you wait for the cheesy motel room after?”
“Lucifer,” Chloe hissed.
“I’m sorry, my love, I just find all these silly high school traditions so fascinating.”
“Did you not… go to high school?” Jake grumbled, cheeks red.
“Oh no, we don’t have them in the Silver City,” Lucifer answered innocently, “angels burst into the world fully formed and with perfect intelligence, so there’s no need really. Although making out under the bleachers does sound fun… and we must get you one of those cheerleader’s outfits, darling.”
Jake blinked, dumbfounded, and Chloe threw Lucifer a warning glance.
“I’m just glad I have you all to myself now, Mrs M,” he merely crooned and leaned down to give her burning cheek a kiss.
“Sorry, darling, but I’m a taken man,” Chloe heard Lucifer tell a girl who asked him to dance, holding his hand up and wiggling his ring finger.
The girl slunk off, dejected, as Chloe sidled up to him.
He smiled, lighting up in a way that made her chest ache. She was about to speak when Yazoo’s ‘Only You’ came on through the speakers, the lights turning low.
A question hung heavy in the air.
Lucifer simply extended his hand and arched a brow.
She took it with a smile, and he led her to the dance-floor.
Chloe’s breath hitched in her chest as he wrapped one arm around her waist and held her other hand in his. They started to move to the music, the air thrumming like a living thing around them.
“Lucifer, I…” she started, before clearing her throat, “I want to thank you. For tonight.”
“Really, Detective, there’s no need,” he hummed, “it’s been rather fun being your husband.”
She smiled.
“Still, I really appreciate it. You’ve made tonight bearable. I wouldn’t have come without you, and I would have felt like that sad, lonely girl all night.”
His mouth twitched into a smile and he held her tighter. His arms felt so right around her, as though she belonged there.
“Crystal looks like she’s going to have a heart attack,” Chloe smirked, feeling the woman’s gaze like daggers from the other side of the room.
“I spoke to her briefly,” Lucifer said, “she was insufferable. I hope you know how superior you are in every way. More beautiful, more interesting, funnier, kinder and with a far better looking partner.”
Chloe laughed. He pulled her in tighter, a large, warm palm drifting lower on the small of her exposed back. She fought back a shudder that had nothing to do with the cold.
As the song started to come to an end, she didn’t want to miss her chance. She wanted to say what she needed to say.
“You are, you know,” she murmured.
“I am what?” he asked, amused, and then purred, “funny, handsome, charming?”
“Worthy.”
The grin slipped off his face, morphing into something more serious.
“You are worthy, Lucifer,” Chloe repeated, eyes fierce, “worthy of good things. Worthy of your father’s love. Worthy of me.”
She whispered the last part, nervous of pulling the rug from under them, of speaking about this thing between them so freely. They were so used to wrapping it up in denial.
She wondered if he even heard.
But then his expression flickered and changed, and his arms tightened around her, and she knew he had.
“So you’re okay with this side?” Chloe asked nervously, hovering by the side of the bed.
“Fine by me, Detective,” he insisted, uncaring, “but are you sure you don’t want me to take the floor?”
Chloe shook her head.
“The bed is plenty big enough. I’m not letting you sleep on the floor, Lucifer,” she rolled her eyes, “especially not after everything you’ve done tonight.”
“As you wish,” he said, drawing the covers back. She was already in her modest pyjamas, her cheeks having flushed at Lucifer’s laughter at the little horses on them, but he was still in his three piece suit. He left to go to the bathroom to change, and when he came back in just black sleeping pants, she tried not to blush.
She had seen his chest before, and she was no schoolgirl, but he really was beautiful—all lean muscle rippling under tanned skin. They both climbed in and she turned off the lights.
Thrust into darkness, the air seemed to crackle and pop between them, thick with tension.
“Lucifer,” she whispered when she couldn’t take the silence anymore.
“Mmm?”
“Thank you again.”
He huffed a chuckle.
“You’re beginning to sound like a broken record, Detective.”
She shifted so she was lying on her side. The half moonlight streaming in through the window meant she could make out his silhouette, lying on his back with one arm propped casually behind his head.
“I know, but… you said yourself, you didn’t exactly go to high school. And if you had, we both know what you would’ve been like. Insanely popular with all the girls, and boys, after you. You wouldn’t have even noticed me.”
She heard him scoff quietly into the darkness.
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I mean it,” she breathed with a laugh, “I was shy, and awkward, and lonely… and Crystal made everyone call me Bucky Beaver because of my teeth.”
“Crystal is a horrible person bound for you know where,” he insisted and then turned his head. In the darkness, she could just about make out his eyes shining sincerely, “Detective, in any life… I would always notice you.”
She swallowed, her chest too tight, and then he was continuing.
“Quite frankly…” he started, his voice low, “…most of the time, I don’t notice anyone other than you.”
Chloe sighed, her eyes dropping to his lips in the darkness. Without even realising it, she found herself shifting closer, crisp sheets ruffling underneath her.
“Really?”
He hummed, a silken sound that shot through her like a lightning bolt.
Perhaps the floodgates had been opened because he reached out, gently touching his fingers to her elbow. A shudder traced the length of her spine as he started to slowly draw his fingers up and down her forearm, his ring dancing across her burning skin.
“Chloe, when I said I was a taken man… well, you know I don’t lie,” he husked, her real name dripping from his lips like sin, “I am. You’ve had me, Detective. You’ve had me right from the start. You can have me… if it’s what you desire.”
Chloe leaned in and pressed her lips to his in response.
She felt his surprise, lips still beneath hers for a moment. She kissed him harder, pouring her consent into it, because this was what she desired. It was what she had desired for so long. Finally, he sparked into life and his mouth began to move. He kissed her back, lips sliding slowly, sensually, over hers.
Her heart pounded loudly in her chest, so loud she irrationally worried he’d hear it. She shifted until she was half on top of him, calf wrapped around his, hand on his warm, bare chest. She felt his own heart moving under his skin, skipping a beat with every particularly hot slide of her tongue.
“Tell you want me,” he begged against her lips when they broke apart, breaths panting in the gap between them, “tell me it’s not too late.”
“I want you,” she replied mindlessly, “it’s never too late.”
He growled, hands flying to her waist before he flipped them over. He covered her with his body, kissing her lips once before he traced his mouth over her jaw and down to her neck.
Chloe arched her back. He took her hand and laced their fingers, bringing their hands up next to her head as he kissed her.
The gold of their rings shone against white pillows, glinting like a promise.