"Ok, Candy gave me some tips on what to wear to her shady strip—" Lucifer gave Chloe a pained look, and she corrected herself, "–erotic dance club where our killer is headed. We've set the bait with the ad for Candy's show, and laid down rumors of Candy being married so his jealous streak comes out. Hopefully he'll stalk me once I leave the club, and we can arrest him if he tries to kill me."
"There's just one problem, Detective," Lucifer said. Chloe immediately bristled at the smug smile on his face. "I won't actually be married to you."
Chloe exploded. "Wait, what? Why is that a problem? I mean you just explained you used your fake marriage to Candy to get information from someone, so why is this different?"
"You may find this hard to believe, given my disdain towards ceremonies that invoke my father in some weird ritual to ensure monogamy, but Candy and I were actually married Detective. I wasn't lying when I said she was my wife."
Chloe looked at him with utter horror. "So you want us," she gestured between them, "to get married for an undercover sting operation."
Lucifer grinned charmingly. "Only for the day, Detective. We can get a pre-nup if you want. The marriage should be simple to annul, given your tendency to turn down my sexual advances lately." Lucifer pouted slightly.
Chloe stared at him open-mouthed. "I can't believe you actually want us to get married." She choked and chuckled a bit on the last word.
"Trust me, Dectective, I'm as skeptical of marriage as you are. But I don't lie. Point of pride for me. What if one of the club patrons asks me about our marriage? What can I say that won't blow our cover?"
Chloe remembered a certain time when Lucifer told an entire crowd of wanna-be pick-up artists that she was a cop. "All right, all right, we'll get married." Lucifer's face broke into the biggest grin and he bounced a bit in his chair. "But we are going to keep this quiet or I will never hear the end of it in the precinct." She scribbled an address on a notepad and slapped it into his hand. "Meet me at this judge's office in two hours."
"You have my word I'll keep our whirl-wind elopement secret from your co-workers," Lucifer purred. "Especially Dan."
Chloe glared at him. "You're gonna make this a thing, aren't you?" Lucifer grinned, as satisfied as a cat eating cream, and put the note in his trouser pocket. "Fine, whatever, I'll see you in two hours."
Lucifer leaned against the courthouse pillar, bored and contemplating his latest move in Words with Friends. Maze was currently ahead in the game, and Chloe was running late. Their last text exchange read:
12:25pm Me: Getting cold feet?
12:42pm The Detective: Don't rush perfection.
Lucifer looked up at the sound of heels clicking across the marble floor. Pink 6" heels with a fake diamond strap. Impossibly long legs which Lucifer took extra time to admire. Skin-tight pink dress, with a midriff-length purple faux fur jacket. The jacket flashed open as the woman walked, revealing a barely concealed pink lace push-up bra peeking out of a dress designed to accent cleavage. Lucifer's hungry eyes traveled up to the woman's face, and then his jaw worked in shock.
"What?" Chloe asked, heels clicking as she sauntered up to him. "Is it too over the top?"
Lucifer's eyes followed Chloe's hands as she nervously smoothed her dress. "No, no, you're..." Lucifer swallowed and tried to regain his composure. "You're perfect, Detective."
Chloe cocked her head at him and then threaded her arm through his. "You know, Lucifer, you can't call me Detective while we're undercover."
"Right, well, I can't very well call you-" Lucifer's vocal cords worked around the name Chloe, but the memory of correcting himself in the bar before he found the wretched picture of Chloe's mom and Amenadiel hit him and he couldn't quite vocalize it. "-by your given name. Or by Candy, since that's not your real name. You'll have to introduce yourself, and I will have to come up with something else to call you. Perhaps 'sweetie' to give a nod to Candy's name?"
Chloe snorted. "Oh jeeze, that's so cheesy."
Lucifer grinned, pleased to make Chloe smile after her many days of anger with him. "What term of endearment would you like instead? Darling? Sweet cheeks? Dear?"
"Ughh, not Dear. Dan would sarcastically call me that after he lost a fight."
"Oh, already bringing baggage into our marriage, hmm?" Chloe rolled her eyes at him. "What about my little imp?" Chloe shook her head, holding back a laugh. "My temptress? Dancing queen?" Lucifer belted out a couple lines of the song, enjoying Chloe's shushing when the echos bounced off the high marble ceilings.
"That's quite enough cheesy songs for this week, Lucifer." She paused and gave him a mischievous look. "I think I'll just call you Sugar Daddy." Chloe flashed her left hand at him, the diamond ring catching the light from a nearby window. "Considering you can afford a rock like this."
Lucifer stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the ring. "Candy gave that to you?"
Chloe frowned at it. "Yeah, she said it meant something to you, so she couldn't keep it."
"It was Delilah's. The singer who was gunned down outside of Lux." Lucifer slowly reached out and took Chloe's hand to examine the ring (ignoring the surge in his heart rate at touching her). "She willed it to me. Said she stole it from Jimmy Barnes when she left him at the aisle. She wanted me to find a woman worthy to wear it." Lucifer looked up from the ring, and stuttered at the compassion and longing in Chloe's eyes. "Candy admitted she was uncomfortable wearing it, but now that you have it I... I can't think of a woman better suited to proudly displaying my engagement ring."
Chloe shook her head, and Lucifer could see her face suddenly close off. "I'm sure you'll find your soulmate some day," Chloe said briskly, quickly extracting her hand out of his grip. "Someone who would never abandon you without a single phone call or text." She strode off, heels clicking. Despite her angry jab at his two-week absence, Lucifer couldn't help tilting his head sideways to enjoy the view of the Detective's lovely backside wrapped in that skin-tight pink dress.