A/N hey guys! I am so sorry that this is late - the amount of work that I have had is unbelievable. I am drowning in essays.
A huge thank you to all of you amazing people who are following, have favourited and reviewed. Reading all of your comments just brightens my day!
Chloe hurtled down the stairs, sweeping her jacket over her shoulders, as she searched around for her keys. She was nearly in tears as she combed through the sofa for the billionth time, searching with ever-increasing frustration for those damned keys. She was breathing heavily as she tried to keep her annoyance and irritation under control. Maze was no help to her – she was sick, although Chloe doubted very much that she would have been useful even if she was well and sprightly.
Chloe didn't foresee her housemate getting better any time soon. Maze had vehemently refused to see any doctor, and was actually in denial that she was even ill. Chloe had taken one look at Maze's pallid face and sighed – she'd looked after Trixie enough times to know when someone was ill.
She hurled the cushions across the room in frustration, and they landed by the door, just as the bell rang. Chloe stomped over to the door, kicked the cushion out of the way, and flung the door open, expecting to see Dan waving her car keys with an apologetic expression on his face. This would be the tenth time that this had happened over the past two years.
So it came as an extreme surprise to see Lucifer, dressed in a suit, leaning against the frame, with a thoughtful expression in his eyes, holding a bag of croissants in one hand and a cup of coffee in another.
He held them up. "I've brought you breakfast."
Chloe tried to pull her mouth up off the floor, and knew that Lucifer was sniggering internally at the baffled expression on her face. He rolled his eyes.
"I haven't got all century, Detective. Take the goods I am offering, and I can give you a lift to work."
Chloe stared for a few more seconds, and then gathered her wits about her, and dashed off to get her things. This was too much of a fortuitous occurrence to just let slip though her fingers. Lucifer stepped in the house, looking about him with a mild interest - this was the only human home that he'd actually ever entered. It was obvious that a child lived here: pictures and drawing pinned to walls, toys and games dumped in a corner, and in random places. He was especially enjoying the barbie doll stuffed headfirst into the fruit bowl, though he rather suspected that was Maze's touch as opposed to Trixie's.
Chloe came back, looking a little more composed than she had been when she yanked open the door earlier.
"Where's Maze?" he asked, curiously. His henchwoman was nowhere in sight.
"She's come down with some sort of fever. She's in her room." Chloe replied, digging into the pastry. They tasted heavenly, and before long she had wolfed down two of them.
Lucifer, in the meanwhile, was extremely confused.
"She's ill?" He looked at her with his eyebrows raised in disbelief. "We are talking about the same Maze, aren't we, Detective? The Maze I know doesn't get ill."
"Everyone gets ill, Lucifer, and Maze is no exception. She's got a fever, and has barely enough energy to walk around," Chloe told him. It had unnerved her to see Maze so feeble, but accepted that everyone had their down days. Even badass bounty hunters who claimed to be demons.
He blanched. He moved towards the staircase, and climbed up them two steps at a time, almost running to Maze's room. He banged on the door.
"Maze?" he shouted.
"Go away," a voice croaked.
He swung open the door, and the sight that met his eyes completely threw him. Maze, his chief torturer, born and raised among the fires of Hell, bounty-hunter extraordinaire, was sick. He was utterly nonplussed.
Demons don't get ill, he thought.
The fearful look he saw when he looked into her eyes was seemed to reply, I know.
She looked awful. Drained of the vitality that usually radiated off from her, and lacking in the energy that she usually emanated made her seem like a completely different person. Her skin looked haggard, and there was a greyish tinge to the brown complexion, and her hair was fanned out dank and limp on the pillow.
She looked weak. She looked vulnerable. And neither Lucifer nor Maze liked it.
"I… I… don't understand," he said. "How has this happened."
Maze shook her head as if to say, no clue buddy.
"Maze is going to be fine, Lucifer," Chloe assured him, after seeing the flabbergasted look on his face. "I checked her temperature all night. Her fever is coming down, and she will be on the path to recovery very soon. She will get better, trust me. As long as she drinks and eats everything I've prepared for her, she'll be up and kicking in no time at all." The bedside table was cluttered with thermos flasks filled with steaming soup and food for her to eat if she felt peckish, though Chloe severely doubted that she would be able to swallow anything anytime soon.
Lucifer didn't understand what was going on. Maybe her time on earth was changing her, he thought. Maybe she was becoming human? He'd noticed her unusual attachment to the Detective's offspring, and the sudden thirst to get a job and fit in to the human world. He'd noted her increasing mundane-ness with some amusement. He'd never have imagined that it would have a physical effect on her.
He would have to go and see Amenadiel later. Ask him for advice.
Well, he thought wryly, that's something to look forward to.
He nodded distractedly at the detective's words and let himself be herded out of the room, still stunned.
Chloe wasn't sure she really wanted Lucifer to be driving. He seemed to be in a state of shock. Chloe wondered why he was so distraught. Yes, Maze was his close friend, but it wasn't as if she was dying or anything. Hadn't he seen anyone ill before?
Then again, she reminded herself, this is Lucifer. In whichever way you'd think he'd react, he'd do the completely opposite thing which was usually what you least expected. She placed a hand gingerly on his back, hoping he'd see it as a gesture or comfort.
"She will be fine, Lucifer," she said. "Trust me."
He turned to look at her and smiled softly, saying, "I hope she does. We should get going."
As he pulled away and walked away from her, Chloe realised, with some shock, that her hand had been right where she'd seen his scars to be, when she had stumbled upon him unawares that day. She had touched the gnarled skin, callous and rough like the face of a cliff would be after a storm had sent the rocks crumbling into the depths below, before he'd gripped her hands and looked at her with those pleading eyes.
But now, she hadn't felt anything but smooth skin under the fabric of his shirt and suit. Surely, if the scars she remembered were still there, then there would be some sort of texture or depression.
Her hand dropped to her side as she watched him walk down the steps and get ready to leave. It was Chloe's turn to look stricken now.
His scars had disappeared.
Don't be silly, a voice said in her mind. You probably couldn't feel anything underneath all the fabric he was wearing.
But those scars were deep, reminded another part. You would have been able to feel them through a woollen jumper.
"Detective, get a move on!"
As she finally left her house, she decided that she would settle this once and for all. She would tell her fantastical mind and overactive imagination that Lucifer did not have wings and that his scars hadn't magically vanished.
She had to see him shirtless.
Again.
Well, this should be fun.
###
The pair walked into the precinct laughing at a joke Lucifer had just made, with Chloe rolling her eyes as usual.
"Ah, Sir Douche," said Lucifer, pinching Dan's cheek playfully, "how are we this fine morning?"
Dan batted his hand away and replied, "Good, thanks."
"I would say that's good to hear, but then I'd be lying. I merely wanted the opportunity to greet you as Sir Douche." Lucifer smiled brightly before walking off.
Chloe rolled her eyes. "Do you have my keys, Dan?"
He shook his head. "How did you get here then?"
"Lucifer dropped me. And about yesterday's case..." Chloe ploughed into the conversation about any identification of the bodies.
Lucifer was wondering, in the meanwhile, what had actually possessed him to buy the detective breakfast, turn up to her house and offer to drop her to work. The notion of giving favours to people without them actually asking for it was a foreign one to him, but he had come to accept that that the Detective was the exception to all of his rules.
Azrael had wanted his to distance himself from the detective. Dad knew how many times he'd tried to. He had tried everything to make him hate Chloe, to make Chloe hate him. He'd even organised a fake wedding to let her believe that he didn't care about her. Yet, despite everything, she was here at his side.
He couldn't let her go. Try as he might, they were bound together.
And even if he could stop caring about her, he wouldn't have wanted to.
Since meeting the mystery that went by the name of Chloe Jane Decker, he'd woken up to the start of each day with a fresh sense of excitement. For the first time in millennia, he had looked forward to the day with a sense of wonder as to what it would bring and the adventures he would go on.
He knew he was weakened because of her. He'd killed his brother to save her life.
Azrael wanted to preserve the balance of the universe. But if Chloe would bring down the balance of the cosmos because of his connection to her, then so be it. His Father was the one that put her in the first place. The irony of ironies would be that his intervention to try and control Lucifer's life would be creation's downfall.
Lucifer hated the thought that if he was around Chloe he was acquiescing to his Father's plan. But he couldn't let her go. And not for the first time and certainly not for the last time, he cursed his divine Father's name. Lucifer was not going to change anything to save the universe. The fate of the world could go and do something that was anatomically impossible with itself.
###
"Right so we have Cora Stone, meteorologist, 29, who has allegedly killed Mason Heathcote, 55, and has then killed herself." Chloe gestured to the screen in the boardroom, displaying images of the two victims. Charlotte made a sound of disgust at seeing the photos of the corpses. Ella patted her shoulder. Lucifer was lounging in the chair as usual, with his feet laced rebelliously on the desk, and grimaced, while Dan was flipping through the records.
"Any link between the two?" asked Charlotte.
"None whatsoever. They're incompletely different circles, completely different walks of life. We've found nothing so far and it's unlikely that we will, but we are still searching," said Chloe.
Ella frowned. "Well we ran the DNA test to see if it was Cora who struggled with Mason, and the test results were positive. Have their families been informed?" she asked.
"That's the thing. They don't have any. Mason retired early, having made his fortune in shipping, and, from what we can gather, was a churchgoing bachelor. Didn't marry, no siblings." Chloe always felt the worst when there was no one to tell. It was hard to break the news to their families, but at least the dead person would have someone who cared about their loss. It made her angry to think that Mason might of been targeted because of his isolation, because there was no one to cry for him at his burial.
"The man was wealthy. He made several donations to church and bequeathed his wealth to various missions and charities, but we don't think that money was the motive here," explained Dan.
Lucifer rolled his eyes. He was dealing with one of his fathers obsequious humans. "And the girl? Cora?" he asked.
"Same story. Parents died a few years ago in an accident. She lives alone in an apartment. No siblings, no boyfriend. She wasn't particularly rich and has no social media at all whatsoever," Chloe said. Strange, Lucifer thought. Humans her age were broadcasting anything and everything these days. Not that he was complaining - it made tracking them down just that much easier for him and Chloe.
"We contacted her colleagues and the landowner, asked them what they knew, and apparently she is a pretty private individual, very shy, and seems nice for what they knew."
"And the tattoo?" Lucifer asked, unable to keep his curiosity down any longer. At this point, it didn't seem as if the murders were specifically targeted at him, but he had to make sure.
"No matches to any gang symbols in LA. You have lots of snakes in tags and things but we haven't found anything with wings, or quite that much detailing," supplied Dan.
"Are you sure you've looked?" he asked. Chloe thought she could detect a note of fear or uncertainty in Lucifer's voice. She raised her eyebrows.
"They ran the search all night on the database and the Internet. Zilch," said Ella.
The room was silent for a few looked worriedly at Chloe, not knowing quite what to say. They hadn't been in situations like this often, where there were absolutely no leads to follow. She shook her head, as if answering his unasked question as to what they were going to do next. She had no ideas at all. Her mind was blank.
Chloe opened her mouth to say something, but just then one of the junior recruits swung open the door, panting heavily.
"You need to see this, Detective."
A/N So, what's up with Maze being sick? And what is it that Detective needs to see? Let me know what you guys think!