Lucifer drummed his fingers on the dashboard, shifting around in the passenger seat. He was the very picture of nervous energy.

Chloe shot him a look. "Are you planning on telling me what's going on with you?"

They were on the way to a crime scene at the very edge of the precinct's jurisdiction, and Lucifer had been unusually quiet for the entire ride, unable to sit still. He seemed to be on edge for some reason. He'd been like this for the last couple of days, at least, but she hadn't commented on it until now, thinking it was just one of his moods, and would pass on its own.

Lucifer looked uneasy when he replied. "It's nothing. I'm just having a bit more trouble than I thought with- dealing with, you know, our situation."

Their situation? Chloe's heart started beating faster, her hands suddenly getting sweaty. Was he having second thoughts? Did he want to break things off?

They'd come to the agreement that there was something worth pursuing between them, but after everything that happened, everything she had to process, they decided not to rush anything. So they'd taken things slow. Really slow. Frustratingly slow. They had gone on a couple of dates, which turned out really nice. He always made her laugh, and started opening up about his past a little. Things were going well. At least, she'd thought they were.

Many of their dates had been followed by intense make out session, yet one or the other of them always put a stop to proceedings. For some reason, they just weren't quite ready to go there yet. It was slowly, but surely, driving Chloe insane. There was a part of her that was completely on board with waiting until they were both ready, until the moment was right. But then there was also a part of her that woke up in the middle of the night, almost every night now, remembering intense fragments of very explicit dreams.

She looked over to Lucifer, blushing as she recalled the details of her dream the previous night. She quickly cut off that train of thought.

"What do you mean?", she asked.

He took a deep breath, then exhaled it. "I'm more affected by the celibacy part of it than I expected. I thought I had more self control than this." He sounded frustrated and angry with himself.

Chloe's heart started thundering in her chest. Was he about to tell her that he'd cheated on her?

Lucifer took in her expression and quickly lifted up his hands. "Not like that", he reassured her, apparently realizing how his admission must have sounded to her.

"When I first arrived here, I was, how should I put it, very active", he gave her a smirk that did things to her she would never admit to. "But ever since we agreed that we're-", he gestured aimlessly, searching for the right word, "-a thing, I've stopped having sex with anybody, including myself, and it's affecting me more than it should."

She stared at him, dumbfounded. "You stopped having sex with anybody-", she paused for a beat, "-including yourself?"

He looked at her, brows drawn together in confusion. "Yes. That is what is expected when committing to a relationship with only one person, is it not?"

"Umm", Chloe said.

"Isn't that what monogamy is all about?"

"Umm", Chloe said again, trying to wrap her head around what she'd just heard.

"Well?"

"It's certainly expected that you don't have sex with any other people."

"Right", Lucifer said, nodding.

"As for the not having sex with yourself part, that's, ah-", Chloe's cheeks had turned a bright shade of red at this point. She certainly hadn't expected to be talking with Lucifer about masturbation, of all things, on the way to a crime scene, yet here they were. "-I don't believe that's commonly expected, no."

"No? Interesting. So you've been doing that while not having sex with me, have you?" He didn't sound the least bit accusatory, only curious. Chloe felt the blush spread all the way to the tips of her ears.

"That's a bit- personal."

"Isn't the whole point of being in a relationship to share personal things that you wouldn't share with anybody else?"

Well, he certainly had her there. She thought back to some of the dreams she'd been having and what had happened on most occasions after she'd woken up.

"Fine. Yes."

He seemed mildly surprised at actually having gotten a reply to his question. Then his expression turned thoughtful.

"What do you think is holding us back? Is it the whole-", he made a circling motion with his hand, indicating his face.

"No", Chloe said quickly. "No. I don't know. But it's not that. I just don't want to rush things."

"It's been three months and 14 days since we agreed to start dating", Lucifer said, still sounding more like he was trying to figure things out, rather than putting blame on somebody.

"Has it really been that long?" Chloe chuckled. "At least you're not counting the hours."

"Three months, 14 days, 6 hours, 22 minutes", Lucifer replied without missing a beat, checking the time on his phone. Chloe gaped at him.

"And all this time you've been, umm, or rather not been-" She lifted her hand, waving it around, hoping he would have mercy on her, and not make her complete the sentence.

Instead, Lucifer grinned at her, raising his eyebrows, clearly having no intention to interrupt her.

Chloe swallowed. She was a grown woman. This was ridiculous. "Not been masturbating. You haven't been masturbating."

"See, that wasn't so hard now, was it? To answer your question, yes, I haven't masturbated or had sex in any shape or form. I'd have expected to have stopped thinking about it by now, but I find that the opposite is the case. I'm thinking about it almost constantly at this point. It is very distracting."

He looked over to her again. "You're not helping matters by looking gorgeous all the time."

Chloe wouldn't have thought it possible for her blush to get even more pronounced, but it did. She looked down at herself. She wasn't wearing anything special, yet he'd sounded completely honest, as if he were stating a fact that brook no argument.

"Thank you", she said after a moment of silence. Chloe swallowed around a sudden lump in her throat. "Maybe it is time for us to, you know, move to the next level. If you're comfortable with it, that is."

She chanced a look at him when he didn't reply immediately, finding him staring out the windscreen, deep in thought.

"Are you sure?"

Chloe took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. Good question. Was she?

"After everything that happened with Marcus-" She saw Lucifer flinch slithly at her mention of the name, even though he caught himself quickly. "-I needed time to figure things out by myself. I didn't want to make the same mistakes all over again, and rush into something else. But I feel things have settled down now, there is a bit of normality again- what I'm trying to say is-"

She suddenly had a vivid vision of a dream she'd had a couple of nights ago, they'd been in his bed at the penthouse, she'd been on top that time, he'd been moaning her name over and over again, falling apart beneath her- "I'm ready. Yup. Definitely ready."

He raised a questioning eyebrow at her sudden outburst. "Alright. How about we go somewhere for the weekend? Get out of town? You could leave Trixie with Dan."

She tried to recall when exactly he'd stopped referring to her daughter as her spawn or offspring and simply started calling her by her name. She couldn't pinpoint it, but it must have been sometime in the last couple of weeks.

"Sounds like a plan", she said, smiling brightly at him.