A/N Hey guys! This story is set a while after the events of All About Her (S3E12). Lucifer knows that (spoiler for those of you who haven't seen past the season 3 mid-season finale) Pierce is Cain, and no, Chloe doesn't fancy him yet. Although I will stick a knife in Cain's ribs if he steals Lucifer's girl. The writers are taking far too long to give Chloe the big reveal so I just wrote this in the meantime to hurry things along!

Do let me know what you think and any suggestions would be welcome!

"Well another criminal behind bars, detective. And all thanks to me! If I hadn't been standing there, ready to halt that dastardly wrongdoer in their footsteps, we may have had another killer loose on the streets." Chloe rolled her eyes for the billionth time that day. First she resolved to wipe that smug grin that was plastered across Lucifer's face. She tossed her files onto her desk.

"Yeah, Lucifer. Does your definition of "ready to catch a killer" involve flirting with the married secretary?" Chloe had caught sight of a band of gold flashing on her ring finger as she interviewed her after the body was found. Lucifer raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"She was married? Ooh, much more exciting!"

"The only reason you stopped the killer was because he crashed into you as you were seducing her. It. Was. An. Accident," she said, enunciating her words with venom. "But thank God he was stopped, if inadvertently."

Lucifer threw up his hands in exasperation. "Here we go again? What is it with humans and accrediting everything to God? He had nothing to with it. I stopped him. I was merely pretending to be distracted. Didn't you go to detective school, Decker? It's called going incognito."

Chloe gave up and threw herself onto the chair, sagging against the table as she covered her head in her hands. It had been an exhausting day. So many misleading clues, lying witnesses and a generations-old feud thrown into the mix. And the paperwork. So much paperwork. She groaned quietly, and rubbed the base of her aching neck.

"Lucifer, what are you doing?"

Lucifer had come behind her and was gently massaging her back, rubbing away the knots and tension.

"Why, giving you a back massage Detective. You look tired. And I'm your partner - it's my responsibility to help you out."

She was about to irritably say, "Getoffme" when she realised that she didn't want him to stop. He was actually rather good. Chloe supposed he had a lot of practice. The thought of that made her feel sick.

"Lucifer," she hissed, "we are in a professional place of work. You can't go round giving back massages in front of everybody." She softened on seeing his slightly wounded expression. "I appreciate the gesture though. It was very thoughtful of you."

Lucifer shrugged and sat on one of the swivelling chairs and started fiddling with one of the bobble head dolls on her desk as he propelled himself around. Chloe stared at him. He could be so… aggravating sometimes. She softened her voice into what she thought was a wheedling tone.

"You know, you being my partner and all, you could help me with…"

That was a mistake. Trust Lucifer to have interpreted her as being suggestive. He raised his eyebrows and gave her his knowing smile.

"Why, detective, I am more than happy to help. It took you a long time, but I knew you'd get there eventually. Women and most men too, find me simply irresistible. I must say I can't blame you…"

"No, no Lucifer. The paperwork. I want you to help me with the paperwork. You see this?" She gestured to the stacks of sheets strewn haphazardly over her desk.

"Well, if I remember correctly, the last time I decided to help out with the paperwork, you screamed blue murder."

"Oh for heaven's sake Lucifer…"

"There we go again. Humans and heaven…"

Chloe ploughed on, ignoring the interruption. "… If anything, you doubled the amount of work I had to do. Why? Because you sorted out the files depending on the attractiveness of the victim and whether or not the suspects were boring people. Which, by your standards, is anyone who sleeps with less than three people a week!" she finished vehemently. She looked around and noticed people giving her strange looks. She also noticed that she was standing up. She cleared her throat and sat back down.

Burying her head in her arms, she mourned her sleep-deprived state. She would apologise to him later. Right now she needed to get on with the paperwork. So many files and sheets and folders that were the bane of her existence, that bogged her down day and night. Her dreams were interspersed with sounds of shuffling sheets and popping paperclips. She could almost hear it right now.

Shuffle shuffle. Shuffle shuffle.

Except she wasn't dreaming. Not right now. She blinked, hardly daring to believe her eyes. Lucifer was sorting through the files, checking the dates, matching up numbers and license plates, organising the cases in chronological order, crumpling old sheets and tossing them over his shoulder, the balls of paper landing neatly in the bin. Her mouth was hanging open. She hadn't actually thought he would listen to her.

Dan stopped in his tracks on the way to the fridge and did a double take.

"Is this for real? Lucifer Morningstar handling the paperwork? There really is a first time for everything isn't there?"

Lucifer rolled his eyes and didn't deign to face him when he delivered his cutting retort. "Unfortunately not, Detective Douche. That pot belly of yours isn't going on holiday, no matter how many water sports you take up."

Dan's cheeks reddened slightly, and Chloe fought to bite back a laugh. Even Lieutenant Pierce raised his eyebrows from his office.

And so, she and Lucifer continued to work in a comfortable silence.

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It was dark when they left the office. Lucifer, for once, wasn't talking. If they weren't bickering, Lucifer would be cracking jokes to try and make her laugh. He seemed strangely sullen and uncharacteristic for a pompous ass.

She rested her hand on his arm. "Lucifer, you okay?" She paused, finding the words. "I may have been a bit harsh earlier. I didn't really mean it. I appreciate the things you do for me."

He turned around and looked at her, his eyes strangely unreadable.

"Why wouldn't you appreciate me Detective? Looks like this and the brains and brawn to match – I'm the whole package." His heart wasn't really in the joke. It sounded as forced as his smile looked.

They had reached the parking lot. Suddenly, he turned around to face her, a different expression on his face, which Chloe couldn't quite identify. They were standing very close to one another. She could smell his aftershave. It was intoxicating. If she leaned closer, she could…

"Good night, Chloe," he said, his voice heavy with emotion. Almost impulsively, he turned to give her a soft kiss on the cheek. Then he started walking towards his car.

Chloe stood there, dazed.

What had just happened?

Lucifer never called her Chloe, only when it was important. And that kiss. She hadn't ever seen him like this before.

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"Hey, Maze," Chloe called as she entered her house, still thinking about Lucifer. She peered into Trixie's bedroom and frowned. "Where's Trixie?" No reply. She turned to the living room. She had found Maze – draped over some young man. They were embracing… passionately.

"Maze!"

"Oh hey, Decker," drawled Maze, as she ran her talon down the man's chest. "Wanna join?" Chloe tried to suppress a shiver of disgust and privately thought that she would rather have gouged out her eyeballs with one of Maze's toys. She bristled with irritation.

"What are you doing, Maze? What if Trixie sees?"

"Hey, chill Decker. Trixie's having a sleepover with Gummy, remember?"

Gummy?

Gemma. The sleepover with Gemma!

She'd completely forgotten. Chloe sighed with relief. Trixie's wouldn't have her mind scarred for one more day. She turned to ask if there was anything to eat, then shuddered and decided it would be best to just go upstairs.

The memory of Lucifer's expression still haunted her. There were so many things that were left unsaid between them. How they really felt about each other. And the sheer number of unexplained events that had happened were mind boggling. Chloe had come to ignore it and take it all as part of Lucifer's weirdness, but there were some things which she truly couldn't put her finger on. And the last time she'd tried to open up to him, he'd ghosted her. Technically, it wasn't his fault. He was, allegedly, kidnapped.

And all those things which he still hadn't fully told her the truth about. Things that were too bizarre. He had been shot several times in the chest, on three separate occasions, and still survived. Those near death experiences, horrible scars, and a weird, complicated family she just couldn't get her head around. If someone had told her a couple of years ago, that she would be working with a nightclub owner named Lucifer Morningstar, she would have laughed in their face. What kind of parent names their kid Lucifer? The ultimate incarnation of evil? A scene from a few weeks back swam into her mind.

"Lucifer Morningstar at your service." He flashed a toothy grin.

The man's eyes bulged. "Lu..ci..fer?" he whispered, incredulous.

"That's right. I have many other names. You can call me Satan, the Devil, Mephistopheles, Shaitan, Belial, and there are many, many more, but my personal favourite is Beelzebub. Very expressive don't you think? Of course, you may call me bubby for short."

The man's face was beetroot red, and a vein in his temple throbbed dangerously.

"Bubby?" he whispered hoarsely. And then the man turned to Chloe and asked her if she happened to go by the name of Jezebel.

"No!" she had said, shooting daggers at Lucifer, "My name's Chloe Decker and I'm a detective with the LAPD..."

The unique shade of red that had coloured the man's face did not fade throughout the entire conversation. Beetroot man, as Lucifer later dubbed him, had in fact been jailed for embezzling half a million dollars from a charity. No wonder he looked that thunderstruck when someone parading as the devil came to haunt him.

Lucifer, despite his insistence that he was truly the prince of darkness, wasn't really evil. Oh, his intentions could definitely be misplaced, but he always had a good aim behind them. Despite what anyone said about his scruples, he truly did care about justice, about punishing the sinners and rewarding the worthy. In that big messed up metaphor which he insisted was his reality, he seemed quite hurt that people thought he was evil. But the Lucifer she knew had a good heart.

But what if it wasn't a metaphor?

Stop it, she chided herself mentally. Even if the devil did exist, and he decided to come to earth, why on earth would he decide to join the LAPD? Surely the Devil's thirst for punishing sinners would be a worldwide task? He would have joined Interpol.

Chloe had often entertained the possibility that Lucifer wasn't making things up. But she could never fully convince herself to believe it. Hell was a place that people made up to make people scared of the consequences of being bad. Peasants in the middle ages were told that if they didn't cough up the money, they would go straight to the pits of hell. It was a fearmongering tactic. Like when she told Trixie that she would need an operation to cut the chewing gum from her throat if she swallowed it. She chuckled softly. Trixie still wouldn't go near one.

She checked her watch. 10 o'clock. Oh screw it. She grabbed her keys and her phone and headed out.

"Don't wait up for me Maze, I don't know when I'll be back."

Chloe heard a thump, followed by a short giggle. She didn't know if Maze had heard her. She decided she didn't want to find out.

She walked into Lux. A party was going on at full swing. Music was blaring out from the speakers, people's bodies were pressed together in the swirl of lights, as the dancers moved in time to the rhythm. A nightclub definitely hadn't been Chloe's scene, but during her friendship with Lucifer, the atmosphere had a warm sense of familiarity about it. She walked up to the elevator, and waited for the soft ping.

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Lucifer stared out of the ceiling-to-floor windows, gazing as the cityscape before him: the city being still as busy and vivacious as it would be during the day.

Los Angeles. The city of Angels: ironic, considering the layers of subterfuge and deceit that lay underneath all of the glitz and the glamour. Betrayal, murder, lying, backstabbing. He saw it week in, week out. And they had the nerve to blame him. Him didn't make them do it. When humans got themselves into trouble it would be the devil's fault, when they get out of it, it would be by their own skill, or worse, they thought that God did it.

He was sitting, alone, at his piano, his wings rustling as the lights from the bustling city outside gently illuminated the expansive room. How did he get from the fiery bowels of hell to here? Why did have a glass clutched in his hand, full of expensive liquor that he wouldn't even react to? The perks of having a superhuman metabolism meant that he couldn't get drunk, even if he drank enough to paralyse an alcoholic.

Chloe's words replayed in his mind again.

…boring people. Which, by your standards, is anyone who sleeps with less than three people a week

By that definition, he was a boring person too.

He, obviously, still liked to poke fun with the ladies, but they didn't mean as much to him anymore. Of course, they didn't really mean anything in the first place; they were just there for his amusement. But, recently, he preferred to be alone. Or better, spend time with Chloe. Although she didn't fully understand about his life, and his problems with his mum, and his divine dad, and being manipulated into being a pawn in his game, and his pledge to help Cain, and those infernal wings popping up at random times, her just being there helped.

When did the King of Hell become so sentimental?

He brought the glass down on the lid of the piano, harder than he meant to, and the crystal shattered into several pieces. He winced with pain. He looked down in confusion at his hand, which was streaming with rivulets of blood.

The realization dawned on him just as the elevator pinged.

"Lucifer, I…"

Chloe eyes widened as she took in Lucifer, shirtless, with his wings stretched in their full glory, the white feathers luminescent with a pearly sheen.

Her world tilted sideways, and she barely registered Lucifer darting towards her to catch her before her head hit the ground.