Chapter 1/7
This mended heart is meant for so much more
Chloe stirs. Sleep clumped her eyelashes but warm sunlight caresses her face and a faint breeze tickles the sole of her bare feet. Humming, she sinks deeper into the fluffiness cradling her, luxuriating in the silkiness sliding over her bare arms.
She's floating on clouds. No. a bed of clouds.
She giggles as the memory of Heavenly Pudding's commercial shoot comes to mind. All those scantily clad "angels" lounging on a set of fake clouds.
Angel.
Lucifer.
She rockets into full wakefulness and jackknifes up on the mattress. Her eyes rove over the armchair in the corner, the strange brass statute seated next to it like some demented guard-dog, the low black minimalist bureau, and the childish watercolor painting of mermaid clowns hanging on the antique Assyrian wall. She's fully dressed and utterly alone.
Shoving aside the sheets with a ridiculous thread-count, she throws herself out of the California king. The rush of going from drowsy to panicked almost makes her sick. Air rushes into her lungs in large, starved gulps as she rifles through her memories for an explanation.
She and Lucifer had been nestled in the folds of his couch. They were talking. She'd missed his voice so much in their short time apart. His warmth and his soft-spoken tone lulls her, and Chloe's been running on nothing but caffeine and willpower for days and weeks...
She stumbles down the dark Italian marble steps—one, two, then three—into the living area. The sofa where they last sat is empty save for his suit jacket draped across the back. The crystal ashtray atop the baby grand cradles a lone cigarette, now long extinguished. The piano's cover is pulled shut over the ivory keys. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the sun hangs high in the sky, mid-afternoon she reckons with a sinking heart.
"Detective?"
The question comes from behind. She spins on her heels, loose hair whipping at her neck. Her heart skips a beat at the sight of him. He sits cross-legged on the floor with her Luci-board propped against the bar counter. Two decanters, one empty and the other half-full of amber liquor, rest next to his knee.
"I..." She swallows the lump lodged in her throat. "I woke up, and you weren't there."
She flushes, regretting the admission as soon as it leaves her mouth. It's childish, pathetic, and so not her. But she can't brush off the dread or the vision of furniture shrouded under drop cloths. She can almost taste the stale air trapped in the mausoleum of her memory.
"You could barely keep your eyes open. I thought it best to allow you to rest. I promise not to go anywhere until your curiosity is satisfied." Some small and huddled emotion flashes across his face, but he shrugs it off with a casual shoulder roll.
Chloe pads across the icy floor and plops down next to him. She tucks her bare feet under her thighs for warmth as the AC kicks in overhead. Up close, she sees that Lucifer has reassembled her board of clues. While she slept, he'd gathered the pieces that had fallen off and fixed them back where they belong. There's not a clue out of place, each rectangular piece arranged into a geometrically perfect grid.
"You tidied up," she notes dumbly.
"Yes, but I decided not to mess with your organization system as it were." His tone makes it clear there's ample room for improvement.
She can't fight the upward tilt of her lips, lost in the memory of what he considers a "filing system": sexy victim category and all.
He offers her his glass of alcohol, and she refuses with a gentle shake of her head. Chloe is decidedly not a day drinker, even given the current situation. She used to think Lucifer the world's most practiced "functional alcoholic." But she now realizes she's never seen him tipsy. It's something she'll chalk up to his extra-human nature along with his super strength. Lucifer has very nice, toned forearms; a notion reinforced for her every time he rolls his sleeves up as he's done now. He doesn't have the musculature that suggests he can throw grown men through glass plate windows with a flick of his wrist as he does.
Lucifer doesn't lie, but everything about him at first glance is deceptive as hell.
He gestures lazily at her board, deliciously exposed forearm and all. "You've been quite the busy bee, haven't you? You're very thorough. Though it's a tad too A Beautiful Mind for my taste."
A spark of annoyance flares to life. "Yeah, well, you didn't leave me much of a choice. You went AWOL on me."
He throws back the rest of his drink instead of responding and quickly pours another. He fixes his gaze on the swirls in the marble. "Apologies, Detective, I didn't think you'd want to see me after... after that."
That wounded thing twisted through Lucifer's features again. It's shame, she realizes at last. Lucifer, who has no compunctions about sex, drugs, or nudity, feels shame because of her.
She intercepts his hand bringing the glass back to his lips. With sure fingers, she peels it away and sets it on the ground. Raising onto her knees, she shuffles closer and frames his face with both hands. He swallows. His Adam's apple bobs reflexively. The quiet shame is still heavy in his brown eyes, but he looks at her with wonder and tenderness she can't deny.
"I missed you, you know," she begins almost conversationally.
His eyes widen a fraction. In some other situation, it might be comical. Here, it's heartbreaking.
"I listened to that voicemail a dozen times a day," she says with heat rising in her cheeks, but she pushes past her self-consciousness. "I fell asleep listening to your words on repeat more times than I can count. I couldn't help but wonder what would have changed if I knew the truth sooner. I know one thing though, Lucifer. I am better off knowing. I am better off believing you."
"You can't honestly say that," he protests.
"I can." That truth sits in the very bedrock of her being, newly exposed under the wall once erected between them. That wall's finally crumbled. She's been unknowingly chipping away at it for so long. She's so relieved she can cry.
"Chloe..."
She leans in, pausing a hair's breadth away to give him a reprieve or an escape route. He takes neither. His breath stutters and he freezes, but he doesn't pull or push her away. When she presses her lips to his, she's floored by his familiarity. From the scratch of his stubble against her palms to the curve of his cupid's bow to the arch of his Roman nose, he is a homecoming.
For as long as they can remember, the worst luck plagues them without fail. So Chloe waits with bated breath for the other shoe to drop. For the elevator to ping. For some interloper to waltz in. For the fucking world to end.
Maybe Lucifer fears the same.
Until he doesn't.
She doesn't.
A desperate sound claws free from his throat before he brackets her hips with two large hands and drags her into his lap. He goes from stone-cold statue to fire and passion in an instant. She trails one hand from his cheek, over the shell of his ears, and into his hair. He shudders and draws her impossibly closer. His iron grip is a brand against her skin, burning the words "mine mine mine" into her hipbone. Yes yes yes, her heart replies in staccato beats. When he sweeps his tongue past the seams of her lips, she forgets where she ends and he begins.
Her lips ache but she doesn't care. Not when he's breathing new life into her and intoxicating her with the whiskey lingering on his tongue. Walking heroin. Yeah, if this is what it's like to kiss Lucifer Morningstar, she can see how apt a comparison that was.
He trails a series of kisses over the corner of her mouth, down her jaw, and along the column of her neck. She sighs, leaning into the sensation of stubble burn soothed by his sinful lips. She almost expects him to suckle and leave marks. But he offers nothing more than the swipe of his tongue against her pulse.
"Lucifer," she murmurs, dazed and strung out. It may have been a question? Or even a prayer?
She rolls her head back to give him better access, and he responds with a quiet, appreciative noise. But the movement almost throws her off balance. He circles one arm around her waist to slide her completely onto his lap, bringing her into contact with his very large and hard interest in her.
"Shit." She tugs on his hair, causing him to jerk and rub against her.
He drops her face to her shoulder, trembling with every heaving breath. She untangles her fingers from his curls, bringing them to the nap of his neck.
"Too much?" she asks even though she already knows the answer. It's the way his shoulders shiver ever so slightly as he tries to hold his body still. It's how he clings to her shirt like it's a life raft.
He laughs a small and wet sound. But at least it's not hollow. At least it's not full of more self-loathing than usual. "Only you, darling, only you can make the Devil feel too much."
-x-x-x-
After staying wrapped around each other for a long while, Chloe's stomach reminds her she had skipped breakfast. She wants to die from embarrassment at the way it gurgles. Lucifer laughs, genuine in its timbre. He offers to make something, pointing out it's well past lunchtime. And if she sneaks a furtive glance at his crotch when he stands and adjusts his trousers, who can blame her?
She licks her swollen and chapped lips. Note to self: get some chapstick before kissing Lucifer again.
Lucifer has a kitchen. After two years of partnership, she finally learns he has an honest-to-God kitchen. It's sleek and modern, equipped with enough gadgets and amenities to put the set of Top Chef to shame. The layout is open like the rest of the penthouse with no doors in sight. Chloe sits at his island counter, watching Lucifer pull ingredients from the fridge and pantry.
"Here I thought you lived on smokes and scotch," she teases. Her fingers dart across the granite countertop and steal a cherry tomato from the packet he'd set out.
He winks. "Gluttony may not be as fun as lust, but it's a sin none the less."
She groans, "Oh... Jeez, you're going to lean into the Devil puns even harder, aren't you?"
The twinkle in his eye is all the answer she needs. He might be an immortal being as old as time, but he was also one of the most immature people she's ever met. She sits back and watches him work for a while.
"I can answer questions now if you wish." His fiddling with the panini press controls for longer than necessary belies any confidence he pretends to have.
She props her elbows on the counter and rests her chin in her hand. She mentally reviews her board, trying to locate the major gaps in her understanding. Frowning, she admits, "I don't know what I don't know. You saw the board. What am I missing?"
He assembles the first sandwich and sets it on the press before responding, "As I said, your thoroughness always impresses me, Detective. There are two main points you should be made aware of as they pertain directly to you."
He has yet to turn to face her. He throws himself into prepping a salad instead.
She can't deny she's nervous, but Lucifer is overdramatic at the best of times. "Okay, hit me."
His knife pauses halfway through slicing a cucumber. "You're a miracle."
"Uh, thanks?" She furrows her eyebrow in confusion.
He sighs, shoulders drooping, and turns to reveal his grim expression. He looks like an oncologist delivering a fatal prognosis. "You, Chloe Jane Decker, are a literal miracle."
"So you've said, but I still don't get it."
"Haven't you read the Bible? You are a miracle because divine intervention put you on this earth." His frustration bleeds through, clipping each word short.
Chloe's mind sputters like a dying engine. Bible. Miracle. Immaculate conception. A baby in a manger because the inn was full.
"Like Jesus?" she chokes out the word. "Wait, does that mean God is my dad? Are we siblings?"
Lucifer recoils in horror. "What? No! We're not bloody related. What gave you that insane idea?"
Chloe points an accusatory finger at him. "You! You're the one talking about the Bible!"
"No! Amenadiel blessed your mum with the ability to conceive. Without his help, your parents would never have never had you."
She folds her arms across the granite and buries her head in them. She slowly counts backward from ten, lest she's tempted to reach across the counter and wring his stupid, attractive neck.
"Detective, have I upset you?"
She lifts her head and glares. "You suck at this breaking news thing. Next time, Maze gets to do it."
"So you're not upset?" The strain of hope makes his words thready and fragile.
She runs a hand through her hair, now hopelessly tangled. "So my parents are still my parents?"
He nods.
"And I'm still human? Not part angel or demon or whatever?"
He nods again.
"Okay, what does it mean then?" she asks, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. She won't lie. It's vaguely unsettling news, but is she supposed to prefer not existing?
"I suppose it's what makes you immune to my powers. You've been immune since the start. But other than that, I... I don't know," Lucifer finally replies.
Her eyebrows creep up toward her hairline. "You don't know," she repeats flatly.
He's two seconds away from wringing his hands, which Lucifer Morningstar never does. "I thought I knew before. I figured it was another of Father's attempt to manipulate me. Maybe you were another one of his plans. But now? I'm not sure."
She narrows her eyes, studying him and the way he angles away from her. "But it bothers you still?"
He shoots her an incredulous look. "Yes, as it should you!"
"Lucifer, I don't know what you want me to say. But if the alternative is never being born, not having Trixie..." she trailed off while meeting his eyes, and he stiffens in that same way a rabbit does before it makes eye contact with a predator. "Not being here, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth."
A bone-rattling clatter echoes through the kitchen when he flings his knife down. She opens her mouth to scold him for his carelessness around sharp objects and for probably scratching his expensive countertops.
He bears down at her from the other side of the island, using his impressive height to bring them nearly face-to-face. The darkness hooding his eyes is taller and deeper than the shadow he cast under the kitchen's floodlighting. He doesn't need his so-called Devil face to terrify suspects. Not a drop of fear wells in her though, because she can see the desperation tearing his seams apart.
"Detective, I will not allow you to be a pawn in my Father's games. I will not allow him to use you," insists Lucifer.
Her lips thin. They had managed less than an hour of conversation before Lucifer's massive daddy issues reared its ugly head. "Okay, what are we going to do about it then?"
Chloe has always been a solutions-oriented gal. You present her with a problem, and she'll formulate a plan to address it. Persistence and patience win her the war, even when an individual battle wears her thin and battered. It's why detective work appeals to her. But the same question sucks the wind right out of his sails. Lucifer has never been good at tackling issues he can't overcome through a liberal application of his charisma and his sheer force of will. Early on, she wrote it off as a privilege he enjoyed as a rich, eccentric, and handsome man armed with a British accent. She's not necessarily wrong, but it's also not the whole picture.
His shoulders sag under an unseen weight. He digs his hands into the counter, squeezing fingertip-sized indentations into the surface as if it's clay. "I've already tried every bloody thing I could think of. Nothing changed. The answer isn't any clearer now than it was last March."
A bone-chilling iciness seizes Chloe. Last March: a period of her life she had turned over and over in her head while putting together her board. In terms of cases, they had put an end to Professor Carlisle's serial murders. In her personal life, she had kissed Lucifer for the first time right before that. Then she fell prey to Carlise's dying gambit and nearly died.
Before, she'd always assumed that their growing emotional intimacy sent Lucifer running. As of last week, she wondered if her near brush with death forced him to consider the follies of a relationship with a mortal. Turns out it's neither. His reasoning is a hundred-times worse and a thousand-times more self-absorbed.
"You ass. Was that what Candy was about?" she growls.
He freezes, realizing his mistake too late, and casts a terrified look at her. Some part of her registers how uncanny it is for a creature of his power to fear her, but she shoves it to the back of her mind. Pushing the stool with an ear-ringing scrape, she rounds the breakfast bar with purpose.
He skittles swiftly, trying to maintain some distance between them. But she won't allow him the luxury of either physical or emotional distance. Not when he so rarely reciprocates the courtesy. She crowds him toward a corner, doubles back to turn off the press so it doesn't start a fire, and doesn't stop until he's backed up against the counter with no escape. Unless he wants to climb onto the counter. She won't put it past him.
She grabs fistfuls of his waistcoat to hold him in place. The fact he has the literal strength of several grown men combined doesn't figure into the equation. "Was this why you dumped me for a stripper?"
"You weren't dumped. We weren't a couple," he reminds her with a touch of hysteria.
"Semantics, Lucifer!"
He starts to protest again, but she quells him with another glower. "You ran off and married a Vegas stripper after I almost died because you thought God was manipulating you through me."
"It made sense at the time." He looks everywhere but at her.
It pains her to admit it, but she can see his side of things. Chloe is only human. Even if she hadn't been an atheist, God's plan would always be something unknowable. Yet to Lucifer, God's plan is not some vague platitude. Lucifer has played an active role in said plan.
But Jesus, he hurt her. He hurt her so bad by not explaining things to her. By not helping her understand why. Linda once said there was no expiration date on healing. Now Chloe can see that this particular wound isn't as scabbed over as she'd thought.
It's raw and festering, with metaphoric pus oozing to the surface.
She blinks rapidly, determined to fight back the wetness stinging her eyes. "I thought there was something wrong with me! I wondered what it was about me that drove away all the people I care about! First, my marriage failed. And then you! I thought you cared and then you didn't anymore. Was I the idiot? Am I the stupid one throwing myself at people who don't want me? Who couldn't care less about me?"
"Detective, no, no, no. I do care. I care so bloody much it scares me."
He's so sincere and fucking oblivious all at once. God, the way he looks at her now. Like she's his judge, jury, and executioner; all despite him being the actual (former) king of Hell.
"There's nothing more important to me than your life. Than your happiness," he insists breathlessly.
He lays his hands over her white-knuckled fists. She can't shake the imagery of a pledge—of gauntlet fists thumping over armored hearts. His words are more than a promise. It's gone beyond the hypothetical for months even if she didn't know it then. Because she's still alive, and Trixie still has a mother because of everything he's done.
He's already died for her once.
"Maze said you went to Hell for my antidote," she sniffles.
Maze had recounted the story with her usual nonchalance like Lucifer had taken a trip to the corner store and not flung himself into the abyss of Hell. It resolved one of the biggest questions plaguing Chloe even before she found out the truth. For a second, she almost preferred the bliss of ignorance. Then she snatched the vodka from Maze and took a deep, fortifying gulp. She would run from the truth no longer.
"I would do it again in a heartbeat," he swears.
Her heart cracks anew. "You still left afterward without saying anything."
Does he not realize how cruel he was? To save her life only to discard her afterward?
"You needed to be free to make your own choices. I thought I could give it back to you by leaving. Forgive me, Detective, but I am selfish beyond compare. I couldn't stay away. So I came back. I'll always come back to you." He squeezes her hand, willing her to understand.
She presses her snotty nose into his expensive Italian wool. If he dares complain, she'll kick him in his sizeable balls. Instead, he bends his face into her bird's nest wreck of hair and breathes like she's oxygen itself. She returns the embrace, clinging to him as a lifeline in this brave new world borne out of the ruins of mistakes past.