Just binge watched the whole of Lucifer! How come I missed this?
First ever Lucifer, not what I was supposed to be writing but it wanted out.
Everyone thought that he liked Whisky for the taste of it, which he couldn't deny.
He loved the burn as it eased down his throat, the kick as it hit his stomach. He couldn't enjoy the buzz though, not without drink twenty or so bottles.
What he did love though was the colour.
Blood Red.
Hold up a glass and the world was the colour of his soul, stained with thousands of years of punishing others.
Making them bleed.
Ironic that it was his soul that was bleeding now, punctured like his wings had been from the events of the day.
Lucifer slowly put down the drink on the top of the piano and stood, his body protesting the movement, the ache deep from the damage to his wings.
The healing process was a test of endurance and a credit to his stubborn nature. It would be easer if he let them out, let them breathe the sweet oxygen they craved to heal. He should, because they had saved the detective's life and his own.
His hate for them though wasn't past enough for him to grant them freedom from their prison willingly.
Especially now they may be about to carry him back to his.
So, he kept them tucked away, punished them as he was being punished, and let himself pretend for just a moment that he was indeed just a man that lived his life in metaphors.
Pretend that was until he looked down at his reflection in the smooth, polish surface of the piano.
The Devil face that he had raged over loosing was now stuck firmly in full view, his ability to blend in robbed from him by his rage at Cain trying to take the detective from him.
You killed a mortal.
But was Cain human?
The voice was that of his dead brother's Uriel, coming back to punish him for his demise and that of Cain.
Cain had won, became a mortal and achieved the death that deep down he had still desired.
God had won too, his son's punishment now all too clear to all.
There was no way Lucifer could blend in now.
Monster.
He was.
A dry chuckle rose in his throat and he by-passed the glass for the bottle this time. Lifting it he walked to the balcony and cast his gazed heavenward.
He wanted to take the bottle and throw it into the sky, let it bleed down on all his father's creation and let everything drown in red.
Destroy it all as he was destroyed.
He didn't.
Instead he took a long pull and lifted the bottle in a salute to the skies. "Well played Father." His feelings for the detective had been his salvation and his undoing and now? Well now he was finished. "You win," he uttered quietly.
Dropping the bottle at his feet he gripped the balcony.
Hell was waiting on him.
He cast his eyes heavenwards as the noise of the elevator doors sounded behind him. Could it be? It made him pause, loosen his grip and turn. The sight of her standing so small and afraid in the open doors made his throat seize. A tear that had sat patiently waiting for release caressed his burnt cheek.
"Detective?"
He forced the word out, repeating it as he had at the crime scene when she wouldn't come to him.
When she had ripped his heart out, scalpel precision to her task.
He needed her acceptance but all she had done was ask that he leave.
Now he waited for her to come to him.
Eventually, she did, stepping towards him, pulling her jacket tighter around her. Her eyes roamed the room for an escape route, a nervous deer approaching the wolf, looking for the way out.
She didn't find one, knew that she wouldn't.
There were only two ways out of the penthouse, over the balcony and the lift. She wasn't leaving so she had no choice but to move towards him. A thought crossed her mind, replaying his grip on the glass of the balcony, the angle of his body against it. She realised what he had been about to do, and she wasn't going to lose him that easily.
"Lucifer."
She stopped just out of his reach, the cop in her refusing to let her step into the danger zone no matter how much she needed to. Refusing to let her step into the clutches of the monster before her.
"Detective." Lucifer's voice when he found it was wounded. Broken.
She lifted her gaze finally to his face, the one that she didn't know at all and smiled. "I'm sorry," she told him her hand coming up but stopping in mid-air, unsure of its path. Scared of its welcome.
"Don't be afraid of me. Please, not you," he asked, tone worried and a little nervous.
"I'm not," she reassured him. "It's all true. I see all of you now. "
She recognised the familiar, suggestive smirk that glanced across the unfamiliar landscape of his face and smiled again, stepped towards him.
The movement caused a changed to the light in the room, the red receding for a moment, his face flashing briefly to pale skin and stubble before it took on a glow of the morning sun and its fire reflected on the walls around them.
"Morningstar," she whispered. He wasn't the Devil to her, he wasn't hideous. She loved him.
"Lucifer." She had been shocked before, the cop kicking in before she could stop it but now she was just Chloe Decker, and she knew that the man standing before her loved in a way no other ever had.
He was asking her to love him back the same.
His red eyes watched her as she stepped closer still.
Well, maybe not quite the same, she thought.
Finally she stepped into his space, her hand coming up of its own accord, resting on his cheek. She locked eyes with him, quirked her mouth to the side. "So…usually when most people say that they have a little bit of the devil inside them, it isn't usually true."
She tried for light, missed it by a mile.
He didn't seem to care. "I told you I don't lie, and I don't remember saying anything about the Devil being 'little'." A fire twinkled through his eyes.
"So, is this it? Is this all you have to show me?" She knew it wasn't.
"De-tective!" And there was her Lucifer. His smugness was returning and as it did the red faded, his Devil face fading to the man she knew so well, or so she'd thought.
Wings, she knew he had them, thought she might have even caught a glimpse of them on the roof.
"No, there are two other things," he told her.
Putting her hand in her pocket she pulled out a bloodied feather from the crime scene. "Pillowed Cain and his thugs to death, did you?," she asked coyly.
He raised an eyebrow and she laughed. "I think I might know what they are." She raised her other hand and only hesitated briefly before she pressed her lips to his. "Show me."
He shivered at her touch then pulled back, straightened stiffly and slowly unfurled his bloody, beaten wings.
She stood for a moment, bewitched by their beauty even in their current state of disarray.
Then it hit her. He was vulnerable when he was with her. He had told her time and again and now she got it.
"You're hurt! Can I help?" She cupped his face with one hand and rested the other on the top of his wing. A groan passed his lips, half pleasure, half pained.
He pulled her to him then, his confidence easing back. "More than you are just being here with me?" His head came down to rest on hers and his arms enfolded her, his wings following. She realised that he had changed back into the Devil.
They stood like that for so long it was as if Amenadial had slowed time just for them.
It was Chloe that moved first, Lucifer reluctantly releasing her from his wings and arms and letting her take him by the hand, leading him through to the bedroom. Lucifer bled back in as the Devil faded once again. He started to fold his wings in, but she stopped him. "Don't, not yet."
She pushed him back gently onto the bed and he let her, waiting until she moved on top of him before he reached up and captured her lips. His wings were displayed out in all their tattered glory, his face slipping again between its two visages as he lost control of everything to the feel of her lips on his.
Disappointment filled him as she pulled away.
"These need to be cleaned," she told him quietly as she lightly touched the bullet holes in his wings. The pain was immense, but he endured it silently for her.
"They'll heal in their own time," he started but she quietened him again with a finger to his lips.
"Please, I want to help."
He caved at that, watched as she fetched the water, cloths and towels. He'd never let anyone touch his wings, save Maze when she hacked them off, but he sat meekly now and watched her approach. Chloe made him sit on the end of the bed and then she settled in behind him, jacket discarded to the floor, her need for armour gone.
The water was warm and her touch soothing, even as she pulled the bullets from the bones of his wings and cleansed away the blood and grime of the gunfight.
Her touch was feather soft, if you could excuse the pun, as she touched his wings with a reverence that ignited something deep inside him, making him glad that she was behind him. She bathed them in sections, exploring their structure as she did and raining a gentle kiss down on each part as she finished her ministering. Warm hands smoothed ruffed feathers, love peppered every touch.
His distaste for his wings faded as the feelings in him ramped up, her hands and her lips turning his blood to molten fire as they worked their way to his neck. He let her pass gentle, light kisses to his neck and shoulders before he had to get her to stop.
Before he couldn't.
"Chloe." He hardly recognised his own voice, cracked and smouldering with desire. He had always wondered what humans felt when he had asked them, "what do you desire?" Now, he thought he knew. Other had spoken to him in the tone he had used but he had never felt this way about another. Had never known this feeling of too much.
She pulled away from him and he stood, tucking his wings away as he turned.
He stared at her bewildered, lifted an arm and gently caressed her face. The stress of his injuries and the strength of the emotions flooded though him and he wavered, only the touch of her hand on his arm stopping him from falling.
"Lucifer."
"I'm so very tired," he confessed to her, the weariness the only thing strong in his voice.
Using her heels she pushed up the bed, grabbed his arms, pulled him with her.
He wanted nothing more than to take her and show her how much he needed her, loved her, wanted her. Chloe though had other ideas.
He let her pull him down onto his side, slowing inching in to snuggle into his arms.
"The Devil doesn't snuggle," he informed her haughtily. "Lucifer on the other hand," he continued more softly.
She settled in a little more against him.
"How did you explain….?" he started to ask.
She put a finger to his lips. "Dan's got it."
He pulled her closer, moulded her to him. "So, we're all doomed then?" He chuckled softly, kissing the top of her head.
"It's ok," she whispered to his chest. "I know a guy."
He chuckled once more and unfolded one wing spreading its tattered feathers out and covering them both.
'Sleep now, 'she whispered.
And he did.