Quid Pro Ho Ho Ho
Author's Notes - I was trying to wait for Christmas to post this but it's giving me an eye tick knowing it's on Ao3 but not here, so I figured I'd just get it done with, now. Thank you to Pellaaearien and PixelByPixel for helping me pick the title of this piece. And I'm guessing this doesn't even need to be said, given that you're all watching a show where Lucifer is the protagonist, but nothing Lucifer says about Christianity in this fic is meant, on my part, to be taken seriously.
December 20th
"Merry Christmas, Lucifer!" the child yells as she slams into his legs and wraps one arm around his hip.
"Ah …," he says as he skips a step, looking to the detective for help, but the detective offers none. He clears his throat, looking down at the child. "Yes, ah … hello, small human," he says. He tries to hold the child at arm's length, but this only makes her grip him with more ferocity.
"This is for you!" she announces, holding up an object with her free hand.
When he doesn't budge, she pushes her offering at him in a way that forces him to take it or drop it. Though his instinct is to let the package drop, the fact that the detective is watching him over the lip of her steaming coffeecup makes him clutch the object as though it were free will itself. He looks down, frowning at his new bounty.
The child has given him a squishy, thin, oblong box, perhaps a foot in length. Wrinkled paper covered by skiing kittens wearing Santa hats encloses the package, and the paper is taped shut with what appears to be an entire bloody roll of tape. A garish orange bow that matches nothing caps the ensemble.
"What is … this?" he says.
Beatrice beams up at him. "It's your Christmas present."
"She picked it out and wrapped it all by herself," Chloe adds. As if this is somehow a good thing.
He peers at both of them, unsure what to say. He doesn't celebrate Christmas. He didn't buy gifts for anyone this year, or any year. Neither the child nor Chloe bought him gifts last Christmas. Why have they done so this Christmas? But Chloe is looking at him expectantly, like her good mood this morning hinges entirely upon his reaction to this unexpected, unwanted, unwelcome debt to her sticky-fingered, grabby child.
"It's …." His struggles for something positive to say about a box covered in Santa kittens. The paper crinkles as his fingers clench. He glances down at the hopeful child. "You … must have spent a great deal of time on this."
Beatrice nods.
His eyes narrow as he tilts the package, inspecting it. "It's … boxy."
Luckily, the child seems to have a predisposition toward finding anything he says hilarious. She giggles. "You're so funny," she observes. And then she releases him to skip off to her room.
He watches her go, baffled.
Long after Beatrice has caught the bus, Lucifer is still staring at the Santa kittens. He pulls his seatbelt across his lap, one hand clutching the box so it doesn't fall. The morning sunshine glints off the bow and the shiny tape. "What do I do with this?" he says.
Chloe frowns as she settles into the driver's seat beside him. "Well, you open it."
"Now?"
"No …," she says slowly with a shake of her head. "On Christmas."
"Oh," he says.
She gives him an incredulous look. "Haven't you ever received a Christmas present?"
He hasn't received an unsolicited gift ever. "Of course, not."
"Right," she says. She rolls her eyes as she turns the key in the ignition, and the car returns to life with a low-pitched rumble. "Forgot who I was talking to."
He sighs. "Why does everyone assume I hate Christmas?"
"Satan doesn't hate Christmas?"
"Why would I waste energy hating something so bloody ludicrous?"
She raises her eyebrows, sparing him a glance as she rolls to a stop at the light. "Christmas is ludicrous?"
He shrugs. "Jesus of Nazareth was a human conman, unrelated to Dad, conceived via the usual method." He makes a lewd gesture with his hand, illustrating the "usual" method. The detective, of course, looks quite aggrieved.
"Jesus was a conman," she parrots.
He nods. "Bloody nice chap, though. I've no complaints."
"You've met Jesus."
"Oh, yes," Lucifer says. Though, he supposes, it would be more appropriate to say Jesus met him. After all, Jesus hadn't acquired most of his fame until after his not-death. "He was always the life of the party, and I do love a good party, as you know."
"Boy, do I," Chloe mutters.
"He performed some amusing magic tricks, what with water into wine, raising from the quote unquote dead, and all that," Lucifer continues as the light turns green, and the car accelerates, pressing him against his seat. "Attracted quite the following. But he was no son of God, I assure you."
"But you," Chloe counters with a humoring nod. "You, of course, are."
"Believe me, I wouldn't say it if it weren't true," Lucifer replies in a prim tone. "It's not a bloody thing to brag about."
"Right," she says, easing onto the highway's onramp and accelerating. "So, Christmas is ludicrous, because Christ was a conman?"
"Oh, no," Lucifer says. "I consider that par for the course of humanity. Swindlers. All of you." He glances at Chloe, frowning, and he amends, "Most of you."
"Then what's ludicrous about Christmas?"
He shrugs. "Celebrating Jesus's birthday via the idolatry of a fat old man with a sweet tooth? One who, in exchange for biscuits, distributes catastrophic debt to the world?" It's appallingly lacking in pragmatism, but, then again, humans also seem to be convinced the Orcytolagus cuniculus can lay eggs on Easter. "How in the bloody hell does that happen?"
Chloe snickers. "Riiiiight," she says, in that tone she reserves for when he's wandered a little too close to the loony bin and is threatening to fall in. Frankly, he thinks this is unfair, considering she's a proponent of flying reindeer.
He glares at the highway in front of the windshield as he clutches his gift. The detective is tailgating quite a lot more than a little. Not that he thinks he'll survive mentioning it, so he opts for silence on the matter.
"You really think gifts represent catastrophic debt?" Chloe says as she finally decides to pass the poor chap in front.
Lucifer shakes the box. "Is this not the reverse of an IOU?" he says. "A UOMe, so to speak?"
"You don't have to get her anything, Lucifer."
"Of course, I do," he says. "It's a point of pride, now. I don't shirk debts."
"You don't even know what she likes-"
"Cake," he interjects. "Cash. Me."
"-and it's not a debt," Chloe continues over the rumble of the highway. "She just wanted to do something nice for you."
Which, frankly, is even more baffling.
Chloe frowns when she catches up with what he's said. "You can't wrap you-"
"How very lacking in imagination you are," he says. He makes a disapproving clucking noise with his tongue. "Have you learned nothing from the strip-o-gram Ms. Lopez gifted you for your birthday?"
"-or cake," Chloe says, wrestling for control of the conversation. "And, please, don't give her cash."
He sighs. There goes his one idea. "Why the bloody hell not?"
"Because I don't want her to equate you with a money piñata." Chloe peers at him, eyes narrowing suspiciously before she turns her gaze back to the road. "And, I can't believe I'm saying this, but please, do not send my daughter you wrapped in a cake."
He makes a face. "Detective, I'm scandalized," he says. "Scandalized that you think I would do such a thing." He scratches that idea, too.
"Frankly, with you, I don't know what to think, sometimes," she grumbles under her breath.
He glowers. "I bloody well heard that."
She sighs. "Look, I can show you her Christmas list if you really-"
He holds up a hand, cutting Chloe off. "Let it not be said that the Devil can't find his own inspiration." Where? He hasn't a clue. But he bloody will.
"O … kay," she says.
"Besides," he adds, "the child has the mental capacity of a particularly intelligent monkey. How hard could it be to find something that would amuse her?"
All that gets him, though, is another incredulous, "Riiiiight."
"What in the hell is that?" Maze says as he sets the little gift down on the counter by his bar.
He sighs as he reaches for his favorite Bowmore single malt. "What's it bloody look like?" he says, sparing the small package a glance. "It's from the child."
"She gave you a Christmas present?"
"Yes," he says, setting the bottle and a tumbler down on the countertop with a clink. "Do you have any idea what's considered an age-appropriate quid pro quo for a small human?" He glances at the Bowmore. "Obviously, I can't send her my best bottle of scotch. I'd rather not have her mother more vexed at me than usual. And I've been forbidden from giving money."
Maze snorts. "I bet a clerk could help you."
"A clerk where?"
"At a toy store."
He glowers. "Maze, be serious."
"I am being serious."
"I can't bloody go to a toy store," he scoffs. "Particularly now. Shopping malls at Christmas are Hell."
"You should be right at home, then."
"You'll note that I left Hell for a reason," he replies without humor.
"I would think you'd get a kick out of the chaos," Maze says, folding her arms. "Humans fighting tooth and nail over pointless material goods. Entertaining, right?"
He kicks back his tumbler and takes a swig. "Not when I'm to be wading into it!"
"Well, you're all for novel experiences, right?"
He glares. "This is different."
"Why?"
"Because it is," he insists.
"Riiiiight."
He sighs. "Why is everybody saying that to me today?"
December 21st
This close to Christmas, the toy store in the mall isn't chaos. It's pandemonium. And Lucifer stands at the entryway being jostled by passing bodies, ambivalent, for the better part of fifteen minutes, as he stares at the horrifying sight before him.
Row after row after row of shelving in the store is stacked floor-to-ceiling with colorful, attention-grabbing, shiny things that seem designed to attract magpies. Several frazzled clerks struggle to keep the displays some semblance of organized, but their battle is lost before it begins, because grabby two-foot-tall monsters flail about in the aisles, playing tag, screaming at pitches he's used to hearing only in Hell. One of the little snot generators crashes into a castle constructed with red blocks, and the whole pile - blocks, small human, and all - goes crashing to the floor. The perpetrator's eyes go wide, and he says a tiny, woeful, "Uh oh."
Just in time for his hapless guardian to catch up with him and snap, "JUSTIN! WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT RUNNING IN THE STORE?"
The boy's lower lip quivers. His eyes become the purveyors of Noah's flood. And then he starts wailing.
Worse … everything smells like … jelly beans.
And though Lucifer quite enjoys consuming jelly beans, he's also of the mind that they shouldn't be perfume.
This store is the worst torture ever devised by man, monster, or maker.
Lucifer would rather subject himself to waterboarding, he thinks.
Or boiling in oil.
Flaying alive?
All three?
He winces, debating.
"Can I help you?" calls a tired voice to his right, and Lucifer turns.
A young bespectacled man with a scarred face full of acne, and dark circles hugging his eyes, is staring, expecting some kind of response. His name tag, which is pinned to a festive red shirt, reads: Ahmed.
Lucifer's eyes narrow, and Ahmed feels compelled to add, "You've been standing out here for like … eons."
"Fifteen minutes is not eons," Lucifer snaps.
Ahmed shrugs, holding up his splayed hands. "Dude, whatever."
Ahmed's shoulders slump as he looks back into the store. A woman with silvering hair and a woman sporting a heinous black-dye job stand beside an empty display farther inside the store. Each one has their hands hooked like claws into a box. The same box. Which is straddled between them by their opposing grips. And they're glaring with murder in their eyes. Ahmed sighs, like he'd rather scoop out his own eyeballs with spoons than referee two adult women bent on obliterating each other over a toy, of all things.
"I need to buy a gift for a small child," Lucifer says, taking pity on the clerk. "What do small children like to play with?"
Ahmed turns back to Lucifer, relief flooding his eyes. "Girl or boy?" he says.
Lucifer frowns. "Does it matter?"
"Depends who you ask," Ahmed says. "There's this whole feminist movement regarding Disney princesses and body shame-" At the sight of Lucifer's eyes glazing over, Ahmed rushes to say, "I suppose age is more important."
Lucifer's frown deepens. He remembers Chloe informing him of the offspring's age. It happened. He can say that much. And he's usually better at retaining details, but she was telling him no in the same breath, and he was far more interested, at the time, in someone who could say no to him, than in the age of her irritating little miscreant.
"… You don't know?" says Ahmed.
"Of course, I know," Lucifer scoffs. He just doesn't remember.
"Right," Ahmed says. "So?"
"… Fffii … our?" Lucifer guesses slowly. "Yes. Four." What's the bloody difference, anyway? "The child is four."
Ahmed nods, and then several things happen at once. "Well, there are several opt-" Ahmed begins to say. And the two women who've been having a glare-down break out into screeches and hair pulling.
"It's mine," shouts the silver-haired woman with a snarl.
The faux-black-haired woman rakes the silver-haired woman's arm with tacky press-on nails the size of small knives. "No, I had it first!" she snaps back.
Which is followed by a, "Hey, hey, hey!" from a poor young lady wearing a name tag as she rushes up to try and part the two women, only to get elbowed in the face for her trouble. "Ow!" she yells, clapping her palms over her nose as it starts to bleed. "Fuck!" she adds, muffled through her fingers.
One of the galavanting miscreants screeches to a halt by the lady clerk's feet, gaping, and says in a cherubic tone, "Mommy, she said a bad word! You're not s'posed to say bad words!"
The miscreant's guardian scoffs, "There are children here." As if that fixes anything.
Ahmed runs to help.
And then all five of the adults - the two clerks, the judging spectator, and the two toy-gladiators - are caught in a brawl, while the miscreant child continues his run amok, and the box everybody is fighting about gets kicked to the side of the aisle.
Lucifer rolls his eyes. This simply will not do. He's all for a bloody row, but not when it takes up his time. He lets the fury well up in his chest, sneering as he crosses the threshold. "You will cease this foolishness this instant!" he bellows. "You're behaving like your unsupervised, rapacious little spawns."
The brawling women stop. Turn to him. Glare.
"That's much bet-" he has a chance to say, and then all three women are advancing on him like a tidal wave, while Ahmed and the clerk with the broken nose try without success to stop the assault.
Which, Lucifer admits as the brutal wave cracks apart against his shore, isn't quite what he was aiming for.
He finds himself, two hours later, stuffed into a small lockup with a fat, drunk Santa named Ed. The cell smells of stale urine, and Ed won't shut up. A nasty little cretin had beaned him with a Tonka truck, you see, and Santa-Ed lost his collective ho ho hos in a whorl of red velvet and fury. Not that Lucifer can blame the poor chap.
This bloody holiday is dreadful.
Lucifer considers calling Maze to get him out of this predicament, but frankly, he's not sure he can handle the humiliation of explaining what happened, right now, and so he waits. The humans will let him loose, soon enough. It's not like he won't be able to afford bail. He's not in any danger. And so Lucifer waits, listening to Ed sing the slurred chorus of Deck The Halls, over and over and over again, until Lucifer wishes he could take the boughs of holly and strangle his atonal cohort to death with them.
Chloe finds him, later, pacing like a grumpy lion to yet another round of fa la la la la la la la la.
"Detective!" he says, surprised, just as Ed belts, "Tish the sheashn to be jholly!" flatly enough to be more than a whole note off. Lucifer slumps against the bars, barely resisting the urge to bend them open and escape this instant. "This … really isn't what it looks like."
Chloe stands with her arms folded, peering at him through the bars. "It looks like you broke a woman's hand," she says.
"No, a woman broke her hand on my face," he replies. "It's a quite different scenario!"
"You don't have a mark on you," Chloe says.
"FA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA," sings Ed.
"Because I'm immortal," Lucifer replies loudly, so he's audible over the awful din. "How many times must we go over this?" But as usual, Chloe doesn't believe him. Nobody believes him.
"You're lucky I talked the woman out of pressing charges," Chloe says as she unlocks the cell door and slides it open.
Lucifer sighs. "A woman opts to punch a concrete wall, and the wall gets in trouble?" he says as he steps out of the cell, brushing off his coat and straightening his cufflinks. "Really? Does the wall not have rights?"
"You're not a wall," Chloe says, unamused.
"Metaphorically, I am!"
But he can see this is a losing battle, and he's really not in the mood. This never would have happened if he still had his Devil face. The women would have wet themselves instead of trying futilely to beat him to death with their purses.
His nose wrinkles. He smells funny, thanks to Ed. He thinks he'll have to change.
He walks behind Chloe, back into the precinct, dejected.
Six hours after The Incident That Shall Not Be Named, having showered and put on less odorous apparel, Lucifer is back at the toy store, and the store is suffering much the same chaos. The woman with the broken nose is no longer working, but Ahmed remains, and his tired eyes widen as Lucifer stalks toward him. "What are you doing back here?" Ahmed says, accusatory. "Weren't you arrested?"
Lucifer rolls his eyes. "I'd like to know why everybody saw fit to lynch the Devil."
"Huh?"
"I want to know what gift inspired such violence," he clarifies.
"Oh, that," Ahmed says. As if "that" is a perfectly normal thing to have happened. "It was a Winona Winkyeyes doll," he says, and Lucifer perks at the name. Why, that sounds remarkably similar to- Ahmed continues, "They're new this year. Just released three weeks ago. They're flying off the shelves like hotcakes. We can't keep them in stock. People are getting kinda crazy about it."
Lucifer's eyes narrow. "Beatrice likes dolls."
"Well, you might not have much luck with-"
"Is Winona Winkyeyes related in any way to Tammy Twinkletoes?" Lucifer says, simultaneously unable to believe that he - the former ruler of Hell, the Will of the Demiurge, the First Fallen - is saying it.
"They're sisters," Ahmed says as he adjusts his glasses. "It's a collection or something."
"Then I must have one," Lucifer decides.
"Didn't you hear me?" Ahmed replies. "We don't have any. We can't keep them in stock."
"Surely, you have one in the back?"
Ahmed gives Lucifer an irritated look. Like this is some sort of retail faux pas, asking if a store keeps spare items in the back. "Sure," Ahmed says slowly, in a tone that's hardly friendly, "I'll go check right now." And he withdraws, muttering something about crazy people.
The moments pass in a long, torturous march, and Lucifer finds himself walking up and down the aisles to amuse himself. He stops at a particularly appalling display of multicolored equines.
Does Beatrice like these things? He can't recall ever seeing her playing with one. Not that he paid much attention to her choices of entertainment when her choices didn't involve pestering him.
His eyes narrow as he steps to the left. Next to the ponies are dolls. Human-ish looking dolls. But they have ears like imps. They're still the same ridiculous colors as the ponies beside them. Pink and yellow and purple and so forth. And they're still labeled My Little Pony.
"Tell me, why do you desire these ridiculous items?" Lucifer asks a little girl standing next to him.
She looks up at him, sucking her thumb. Her eyes widen. And then she runs away.
"Was it something I said?" he calls after the little girl, frowning.
But the girl doesn't stop to answer. Instead, she disappears around the corner, out of sight.
He sighs, thinking briefly of purchasing a pony for Beatrice. A real pony. He knows several breeders who owe him favors. But he thinks the detective might not like the responsibility of caring for a living equine.
"We definitely do not have any Winona Winkyeyes in the back," Ahmed says behind Lucifer's right shoulder.
Lucifer glances at the clerk with suspicion and pulls an inch-thick wad of $100 bills from his sport coat pocket. "Really?" he says, brandishing the money like a sword.
Ahmed snorts. "Are you seriously trying to bribe me for a doll?"
"Yes," Lucifer says without shame. "Why is that less believable than killing for it?"
"Er … good point," Ahmed concedes, rubbing his shoulder like it's sore from the earlier altercation.
Lucifer pulls another wad of bills from his pocket. "Would more, perhaps, convince you?"
"Dude, no amount of money is going to make Winona Winkyeyes appear out of thin air."
"You're certain."
"That's more money than I make in a month," Ahmed says, almost salivating as he eyes the thick roll of cash. "Believe me, dude, if I had a damned doll, I'd give you a damned doll."
"Well, are you aware of another store that might have one in stock?"
"I'm really not supposed to send you to the competit …." Ahmed gulps when Lucifer stuffs the bills into Ahmed's pocket. He slumps, like he's giving up. He sighs. And then he adds, "… Let's go get you a list."
The list doesn't prove fruitful, and Lucifer is glad he's immortal. If he weren't immortal, he would hurt everywhere. He covered more ground today than Moses did in his entire exodus.
Lucifer slumps into his chair by the fireplace with an open bottle of fifty-year-old Glenlivet. Defeat singes his pride off at the edges, and he doesn't even bother to pour himself a shot. He merely tips the bottle back and chugs, letting the peaty-tasting liquid slide down his throat like it's water.
Lucifer the Morning Star.
Bested by a bloody Christmas present for a fourish-five-year-old.
And, now, he's blown through a $30,000 bottle of scotch in three minutes because of it.
Will this torment never end?
He coughs, setting the empty bottle down on his end table with a thunk.
He glowers across the living room to his bar, where the badly wrapped present still lies. For the first time in his eons-long life, he's doubting his policy of always being owed, rather than owing. It's not as though Beatrice would torment him with the debt. Oh, she'd perhaps demand a slice of cake now and then, but that's no difficult request to fulfill.
Still ….
He rises to his feet and stalks over to the tiny present.
Lucifer! he can hear the child say in his head, and he can see her toothy smile and her bright-eyed face. Every time he visits the detective at home, if the child is present, she rushes to greet him like his presence is the greatest gift to her in the world. He's never met someone who is so routinely pleased to see him. Not without the assistance of his wiles or his money, anyway. Not even the detective, who now calls him friend, and whom he calls friend in return, is as pro-Lucifer as Beatrice.
It's ….
He swallows, staring at the present. He touches the wrapping paper. The tape is crooked, and the paper is a mess. The Santa kittens are appalling.
He finds himself shaking the box. Not that he's interested to see what's inside. It's just ….
The box doesn't shake.
Bloody Hell.
He snaps his hand back from the gift, dropping it onto the countertop, as though it's burned him.
Quid pro quo, he tells himself. Nothing more. Nothing less.
With a sigh, he picks up the phone and dials Maze's number.
"What?" she says when she picks up.
"I need a favor," he says without preface.
"You need a favor," she says. "You? Like a legitimate favor that you intend to pay me back for?"
"Yes," he replies with an irritated sniff. "For the child."
A long silence follows. "Lucifer … I have never seen you bend over backward like this."
"It's for the child," he repeats. As though that somehow explains everything. Really, though, it explains nothing. And he's as befuddled as Maze. "And I only have a few more days, or I wouldn't ask."
"All right," Maze says. "What do you want?"
And, thus, Lucifer sinks further into debt.
December 24th.
He slogs into the precinct, a veritable raincloud of gloom billowing in the air above him. How can a community of ten million not have a single Winona Winkyeyes? How?
"How goes the Christmas shopping?" Chloe asks as he collapses into the chair beside her desk.
He folds his arms, glowering. "Bloody terrible."
"Can't figure out what to buy?" Chloe says.
"I know exactly what to bloody buy," he snaps.
Chloe frowns. "Then what's the problem?"
He stares at the ceiling for a moment, praying for fortitude. "The problem is that I've checked all the bloody toy stores in a hundred-mile radius," he says. "I've bribed two-dozen clerks." He won't mention how much money he's wasted on that. And he definitely won't mention how much money he's wasted on booze after each failed attempt. "I've cashed in on four bloody favors." The Devil, unfortunately, doesn't seem to traverse the same social circles as most toymakers. "I even sent Maze down to San Diego to widen the search." Maze had called with an update an hour ago. No luck. He sighs. "Winona Winkyeyes is not in Southern California. She is not on E-bay. Or Craigslist. Or Amazon. She is nowhere. I'm beginning to think she's a mass hallucination brought about by consumer-driven holiday hysteria."
Chloe regards him for a long moment, silent, lips parted like he's stunned her.
He debates his personal moratorium on using his wings. He'd like to smite Christmas into the next millennium. "What is it?" he snaps, because he's at the bloody end of his rope.
"That's why you broke the woman's hand-"
"On my face," Lucifer interjects. "The woman broke her hand on my very hard face."
"But you were at the store for Trixie," Chloe says. "This whole week you haven't been working. This whole week, you've been racing around looking for a Winona Winkyeyes doll for my eight-year-old daughter, whom you hate, all because she gave you a Christmas present?"
"Have you listened to nothing I've said this past week?" Lucifer replies, exasperated. And then he frowns. "She's eight? Really?" Well, he'd just been right off on that estimate.
But the detective ignores his questions. "Seriously, you did all that for a gift for Trixie?" she says.
He leans forward, staring the detective in the eye. "I will not be caught owing your genetic proliferation anything." His eye twitches. "And I don't bloody hate her."
"Greatly dislike, then," Chloe says, correcting herself with a shrug.
"I don't bloody dislike her, either," he admits in a barely audible grumble.
Chloe gives him a since when? face.
And he feels compelled to elaborate, "Detective, the worst emotion I harbor for your daughter is my bloody incessant confusion whenever I'm in her immediate vicinity."
For some reason, the detective finds this admission amusing. Her smile is genuine, reaching all the way to her eyes, softening her gaze, making her irises and pupils twinkle. He loves her smile, and lately, he's been seeing less and less of it in his presence. Ever since Pierce showed up, and Lucifer started chasing after the Sinnerman.
"You look lovely, by the way," Lucifer adds, because it seems like the right thing to say.
She blushes, and she brushes a wispy, loose strand of hair over her ear. She clears her throat. "You should come over for Christmas," she says. "At 6, if you're up."
He frowns. "Why?"
"Trixie's usually up by 5:30," Chloe explains. "She can't sleep in. I'm sure she'd love to see you. We usually open presents around 6. And then we have pancakes. Come in your pajamas, if you want."
"I don't wear pajamas," he says.
She shrugs. "Whatever you sleep in, then."
"I don't sleep, Detective," he clarifies. "Not unless being in your immortality-destroying aura has somehow gotten me maimed enough to require prolonged recuperation."
She leans closer, until the space between them is almost gone. "Well, then I guess you won't have trouble being awake at 6, will you?" Is she … flirting with him?
"I thought you didn't want me to make a gift of myself," he replies, licking his lips.
"I said don't wrap yourself in a cake like a strip-o-gram."
"Would the debt to your child be settled, then?" he says.
She snorts like he's told her a joke. "See you at 6?"
December 25th.
"Lucifer!" says the child as she plows into him. She's wearing a heinous pink fleece ensemble that's covered in cartoon sheep.
He braces himself on the doorframe. "Hello, child," he says, giving her a pat on the head. The air outside is dark and cold, and he's not one to enjoy either, so he presses forward into the warmth of the apartment, despite her little body blocking him. She rides along, feet perched on his shoes.
The apartment smells of coffee and peppermint, two far more enjoyable smells than jelly beans. Daniel is sitting on the couch, peering groggily at his coffeecup. "Hey, man," he says with a nod, the words still thick with sleep. He blinks sluggishly and takes a sip from his mug.
Lucifer barely has time to close the door behind him and take stock of the small apartment before the child is tugging on his hand. "Lucifer, you gotta see all the stuff Santa brought me!" she gushes, bouncing as she drags him over to the tree, "I got so many presents this year!"
"Yes, I can see that," he says, noting the massive sprawl of wrapped boxes.
The Decker Christmas tree is a seven-foot-tall affair, covered in lights and ornaments and garlands. What grinds his attention to a halt, though, is the angel perched on the topmost, vertical branch. It seems as though someone has taken a marker to the blond ornament, turning its flaxen hair a deep, blackish brown. The angel's robe has been colored in black, too.
"Ah," he says, frowning. "Is that …?"
Maze snorts behind him. "The kid insisted."
He's not sure whether to be amused or offended. He decides on amused, for now. "Maze," he says, eyebrows quirked upward in question as he peers at her.
The demon shakes her head. "Sorry, Lucifer. No dice. I looked everywhere."
"It's all right," he says, unable to hide his disappointment.
"Did you like your present?" Beatrice asks, peering up at him.
He frowns. "I haven't yet opened it. I thought I was required to wait for Christmas."
"It is Christmas," Beatrice says. "You didn't bring it to open here?"
He didn't know he was supposed to.
"That's okay," Beatrice replies. "You can open some of mine. Santa gave me lots."
His frown deepens. He's not sure what to say to that that wouldn't shatter the poor child's cultivated delusions. But then Beatrice pulls him aside, away from the tree and from Maze and from everybody. She gestures at him to bend down, and so he does.
"I know Santa's not real, but they like to pretend," she says, a conspiratorial whisper against his ear, as she gestures at her parents. "Just go with it, okay?"
"Why, you little deviant, you," he purrs as his lips pull wide into a delighted grin.
Beatrice shrugs. "I think they still feel a little guilty for the divorce. I got a lot of stuff this year."
"It will be our secret," he says, a solemn swear, and the child gives him a toothy grin.
Maze, Daniel, Chloe, and Lucifer sit in a crowded, hip-to-hip line across the couch while Beatrice digs through her copious bounty. Christmas carols spill quietly from the stereo system, forgotten beneath the steady stream of socializing and cheer. Daniel waits at the ready with a boxcutter and scissors. The pile of wrapping paper on the floor is, at this point, taller than the child, and she giggles like a fiend as she tries to push it aside.
The ritual of watching her open all her gifts is … not as boring as he expected it to be. Seeing so many desires fulfilled at once - particularly hers - is pleasant. And, of course, the detective sitting so snugly beside him doesn't do him any harm, either.
"Why don't you open that one?" Chloe suggests to her daughter, pointing to a large box in the corner by the wall that has, thus far, remained untouched.
Beatrice follows the suggestion, scooting across the floor to where the box is resting. The package is wrapped in more of the awful Santa kittens, and there's a small strip of paper folded like a makeshift card taped to the top.
"Who's it from?" Chloe prods, and the child reads the little card.
"Lucifer!" she says.
And Lucifer blinks, perking up. "But I didn't-" he has a chance to say, only to receive a painful jab in the ribs from Chloe. He clamps his mouth shut.
Beatrice, ever skilled at degloving defenseless gifts, claws open the package in moments. She peers at the box, lips parted in amazement. She makes a funny gasping noise, like she can't quite get enough air amidst hyperventilation. And then, before he knows it, he has a giggly, ingratiated child squirming in his lap, saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lucifer!" in such an effervescent, endless stream of syllables that he can't get a bloody word in edgewise.
"You're … quite welcome?" he says, baffled as she slides off of him several minutes later.
The child barely hears him, though, as she races back to tear into the box and play with her new toy. Finally, he gets a look as "his" gift to her. Winona bloody Winkyeyes.
Chloe leans into him. "Dan and I thought you deserved the credit for that one," she whispers, breath warm against his ear.
How in the hell? Where?
"I know the manager of the Toys 'R' Us in Glendale from a case a while back," she says by way of explanation. "He held one for me."
"But …," Lucifer says, stunned.
Her gaze is soft when she adds, "Merry Christmas, Lucifer."
Three words he never expected to hear in his life. Not in the same sentence, and definitely not without sarcasm. Yet, now, he's heard them twice, first from the child and then from the detective, bald and with a genuine warmth. His chest constricts oddly, like someone has closed a fist around his heart. He's not sure he likes it.
"You really haven't done this before, have you?" Chloe says.
"Well, I don't lie," he grumbles to his lap.
She regards him silently for a moment while he finds reasons to look at anything but her.
"Are you going to stay for pancakes?" she says.
He opens his mouth to say no. He does. He's had quite enough Christmas for one year, he thinks, if his sudden heart problems are any indication. But then he looks at her. The twinkle is back in her eyes. The one that makes her look so beautiful.
"I'd love it if you stayed," she says, putting her hand on his knee.
And, really, how can he say no to that?
December 26th.
It's a scarf.
Beatrice's gift.
A knitted wool scarf in the most odious shade of mauve he's ever seen.
It's a scarf he'd never buy for an enemy, let alone himself.
But it's cold outside today.
And Lucifer is nothing if not pragmatic.
He stares at himself in the mirror with a sigh as he wraps the scarf around his neck and dons his sport coat. The ensemble's not … quite as hideous as he thought it would be, and the scarf is soft and warm. Which is nice.
He glances at his watch.
He needs to be at the precinct, soon.
After one last moment to primp, he grabs his keys, and he heads to his car, the tails of the scarf trailing behind him.
~finis~