Wow. I didn't realize this chapter was going to be quite this huge. XD (or quite this silly)

Sorry it took so long! Honestly, I'm drowning in work and have been for a while. I am however seeing a break soon. Can't wait.

This is one of my wrap up chapters. I hope you like it. :) Thank you so much to everyone who's left a review along the way. You're all lovely.

Only a chapter (or two?) to go! :D


"Why this place?" Lucifer asked, adjusting his cuffs as he narrowed his gaze at the sign.

It was bright and colorful, with a large, overly adorable cat holding a coffee mug. The feline's anime-style eyes were closed in bliss.

"Meowful Café," he murmured, before looking down at Chloe with a pained expression.

"Sounds meowful."

She giggled, her arm twined around his waist as they walked to the glass door.

"And by that I mean awful."

"Oh, I know," she said with a laugh, stepping in as he held the door open for her, ignoring the little bell that jangled overhead. "This is one of Ella's favorite spots. She's excited about us meeting her new boyfriend."

"Hmm," he offered, noncommittally.

"She actually seemed more excited about you meeting him, for whatever reason."

"Mmm," he murmured, pulling out a chair for her to sit. "What was his name?"

Chloe sat and smiled up at him. "You won't like it."

"Oh?"

"Michael."

He grimaced. "Oh."

"Yeah," she said with a laugh. "Didn't think so. Anyway, she said he was something special. That's good. She deserves special."

Lucifer managed an earnest smile. "Indeed." He pushed in her chair and turned to orient himself to the barista. "Let me see if this-"

He stopped dead.

Chloe followed his gaze and squealed. "Ooh!"

"There are cats," he said flatly.

"Oh, did I not mention that?" Chloe said mischievously. "This is a cat café. They mingle fosters with people in the hopes of getting them adopted."

"You did not mention the cats," Lucifer said, frowning, as one feisty little ginger made a beeline for his leg. "Shoo. No. I have no desire to... Chloe... the animal is crawling up my leg."

"Oh my god, look at you!" Chloe squealed again, extricating the puss from Lucifer and pulling it into a hug.

Leaving a fascinating pattern of perforations and a streak of orange fur on his favorite pants.

Scowling, Lucifer strode purposefully to the counter, where another cat latched itself onto the back of his leg and started its ascent.

Scowl deepening, Lucifer ignored it pointedly, until a third cat jumped up on the counter as he was opening his mouth to make an order.

"Feline, now is not the time," he said, picking it up and placing it back on the ground.

The cat scaling his legs triumphantly emerged on his back, where it started rubbing itself happily.

"Get off," Lucifer snapped sharply, standing suddenly in the hopes of dislodging it, as more cats of all sizes and colors began to swarm his legs, rubbing their unsightly furs all over him.

"Unbelievable!" he growled, as the cat he'd hoped to dislodge held on for dear life and poked its head over his shoulder.

"What is the command to make them leave?" he asked the barista, desperately.

The barista snorted at that and her eyes widened as another cat jumped up on the counter and proceeded to rub itself all over Lucifer's hand, arm, and chest, smacking his face with her tail as she passed.

"Command?" she finally managed, poorly hiding more laughter. She shook her head. "They're cats, sir?"

"This is intolerable," Lucifer muttered, as the cries of delighted cats rose around him, mingling with the giggles and gasps of the patrons.

He batted them away, brushed them off, and shifted incessantly as the barista fulfilled his order, though she seemed terribly distracted throughout.

It mattered not.

In the end, he returned to the table with a triple espresso, a black coffee with two sugars, and seven cats. Three perched or climbing his person, four trailing.

Chloe looked up from stroking her new soulless ginger companion with a fond smile.

And jerked back at the sight of him.

"Oh my god, Lucifer?!"

He handed her coffee over calmly as the domestic short hair on his shoulder rubbed itself silly on his cheek, then he sat down stiffly opposite her. The felines merely shifted, one to the opposite shoulder, as an overweight long hair jumped on the table and headbutted his arm.

Lucifer looked at Chloe in pain. The four who'd been trailing him twirled around his legs, climbed onto the seat beside him, onto his lap, and onto the table.

"I do not like cats," he said, through the sea of waving tails.

"But," she said, her eyes wide, covering her mouth to hide an obvious giggle, "they really like you."

She leaned in as the crowd grew in number. "Seriously, why do they like you so much? Is it because you're an angel?"

He shook his head with a scowl.

Ignoring the cats was achieving nothing. Every time he brought the paper cup to his lips the cats bumped into it en masse, purring.

He gave up, tsking as the grey short hair on his shoulder started cleaning herself. He shrugged, hoping to dislodge her, but she merely hung on, her claws firmly embedded in his suit.

"Watch the Prada!"

She headbutted him fondly.

"Can't you just tell them to leave?" Chloe whispered through another giggle. "You know, talk to them? You can talk to anything, right?"

"I do not speak cat," he snapped, his eyes spitting red. "The debased language of these murderous vermin shall not pass these lips."

Chloe snorted, before pursing her own lips in an obviously gargantuan effort not to laugh.

"I'm so sorry, Lucifer, we can go if you want."

She said it with concern, but she was still giggling.

"No," he said, dislodging three cats from the table with a sweep of his arm. "I shall endure for Ms. Lopez's sake. I wish to meet this Michael. If he does not deserve her, I shall make him aware of it very quickly."

Chloe grinned. "I know you're trying to sound threatening, but you're literally a cat bed right now."

Lucifer crossed his arms with a dark scowl, pressing back into the seat. The cats immediately shifted, one claiming the prized space atop his arms and kneading into the inside of his elbow.

He glared at Chloe throughout.

"Hi-iii!" came the bright voice of their coworker and friend, following the crisp jingle of the bell over the door.

Ella bounced over, grinning. "Sorry I'm late, I... whoa." She stopped dead at the sight of Lucifer.

He looked up at her, unsmiling.

"Miss Lopez."

"That's... that's so weird," she said, pointing at him as Chloe looked up at her with a grin.

"What's weird?" Chloe echoed, her grin growing wider. "You mean, the carpet of cats Lucifer has become?"

"No," Ella said quietly, her finger still hovering in the air at Lucifer. "Because Michael... has the same..."

The door jingled again.

And in walked a blonde man in blue jeans, a grey hoodie and a horribly familiar, beatifically smiling, and eminently punchable, face.

"No," Lucifer whispered, sitting bolt upright before standing sharply to his feet.

The multitude of cats spilled from him with a range of disgruntled cries, before quickly circling back. But some of the mass shifted, drawn towards Michael like idiots to their idiot king.

"What?" Chloe asked, standing much more slowly, before turning to see who it was.

Michael's smile broadened, and he spread his arms wide.

"Brother!"

With a strange grin, Ella looked at Lucifer, then Michael, and back to Lucifer.

She giggled.

"Oh my god," Chloe whispered.

Michael stepped forward, wading through the shifting sea of felines, his arms still outstretched.

Lucifer shrank back against the booth. "What are you doing?"

"I am going to hug you," Michael said warmly. "Ella Lopez has-"

"Just Ella, babe," Ella said, scooping up a black and white cat and hugging it close. "I love tuxedo cats!"

Michael continued, nearing, "Just Ella has shown me that it is the best way to greet someone, especially if you do it very tightly and swing with your hips."

Ella snorted. "Not too tightly, though - remember what happened to that bus driver? He was not happy. And then we had to walk, then you got bored of walking and then we were..."

She stopped herself, grinning.

Michael shook his head, stepping nearer. "He was fragile, my brother is different. I am excited to give him the full experience without restraint."

"Touch me, brother," Lucifer growled, raising an index finger to make his point, "and I will tear off your arms and feed them to the vermin circling my feet."

"It is happening, brother," Michael said, grinning, "best lean into it."

Ella giggled. "This is so funny, and I can't even tell you why it's funny, and you would never guess in a million years why it was funny."

Lucifer knew exactly why Ella thought it was funny, but the moment was most unamusing to him.

"Michael," Chloe snapped, pushing up from behind Ella and stepping between them. "Back off."

The effect on Michael was dramatic, and immensely satisfying. Lucifer's sibling jerked back from Chloe, plowing through the cats milling about his legs, before tripping over one and promptly falling on his angelic ass.

"Babe!" Ella cried, rushing to help him up as he stared at Chloe in shock.

"You did not tell me that the Blessed One would be here," he whispered to Ella as he rose from the floor.

Ella frowned at him. "The Blessed what?" She looked at Chloe and back. "What are you talking about?"

"Miss Lopez," Lucifer said softly, ignoring the cats headbutting perilously close to this nethers, "it might be best if you sat."

Michael shifted, keeping Ella between himself and Chloe.

"You only told me that someone pretending to be my brother would be here."

Ella grinned. "Yeah, and you totally ran with it! I knew he would, cause he's an actor, but you! You were so funny!"

Michael frowned at her as a cat clawed its way to his shoulder and started making love to his ear.

"I was?" he asked, idly scritching the cat's chin.

"Yeah! I didn't know you'd run with it like that!" She giggled and grabbed his arm. "You don't joke around that much, I like it."

Michael looked to Lucifer.

"What have I run with, exactly?"

"Miss Lopez," Lucifer repeated, pointedly catching her eye. "I must recommend you sit."

And he gestured for her to do so, as Chloe retreated to her seat, glaring at Michael before glancing back at Lucifer in concern.

Uh oh, she thought to him.

Indeed, was his short reply.

Ella snorted and sat. "Okaaaay."

She grinned then, as brightly as Lucifer had ever seen, and slapped the table. "I have a secret, and I want to tell you so bad, but I don't want to sound crazy, or freak you out, so... I'ma just sit here and squeal every once in a while, okay? Ohmigod, look at this white floofball!"

She plucked a white long hair from the five cats swarming the table and cuddled the kitty in her lap, smiling. "I really just come here for the cats. They're kinda my happy place, you know?"

A guy wearing a pink Meowful hat placed a cup in front of her. "Here's your usual, chica."

Ella grinned at him. "Thanks, Roberto. Are you going to sit, babe?" she asked Michael, taking a long sip.

Michael's eyes were locked on Chloe.

"You will not attempt to kick my penis under the table?" he asked, holding two cats as a furry shield.

The coffee Ella had sipped burst in a fine mist from her mouth, sending every cat on the table scrambling for dry land.

Chloe snorted, then quickly covered her mouth.

Lucifer grinned like the devil.

"WHAT!" Ella squeaked, grabbing her napkin to wipe herself down before staring back and forth from Chloe to Michael. "What?!"

The word just kept coming then, as she looked between all of them. "What? What? What?!"

Michael pointed at Chloe helpfully. "I asked the Blessed One if she would refrain from kicking my pe-"

"Brother, stop," Lucifer said quietly, holding up his hand.

"What's going on?" Ella whispered, turning from Lucifer to Chloe. "Why does he keep calling you that?"

Chloe winced. Picking up her coffee, she dived into it instead of answering.

Help, came her thought.

"Miss Lopez," Lucifer said calmly. "I would suggest holding onto a cat."

Ella snorted with a wicked grin. "Why? You about to tell me something I don't want to hear?"

"Yes," he said bluntly. "Please, take one of mine."

And he pushed the newly restored layer of shifting felines her way.

She giggled and gathered two in her lap, as Michael slowly sat beside Lucifer, his eyes still fixed on Chloe.

Lucifer scowled as his brother shifted in, and the writhing mass of cats about them increased. "Please sit elsewhere."

"There is nowhere else, Samael, and I wish to be near this one. If you require me to fight you for this seat, I will."

Michael grinned then, entirely too close.

As were the ten cats now attempting to smother them both.

"What happened to all the kitties?" a family across the room asked, as did several others.

"That's not fair! How'd they get so many?"

"I want what they're having!"

Lucifer sighed.

"Wait," Ella said suddenly over her coffee. "Babe, what'd you call him?"

Michael leaned into Lucifer.

Lucifer leaned away scowling.

"She keeps calling me a diminutive of baby," Michael whispered. "I do not think she grasps my true age."

"It is a term of endearment," Lucifer murmured back, "one she is wasting on you."

And as his brother glared at his ear, he answered Ella's question.

"Samael."

Ella frowned, idling scritching a cat's head as it purred ecstatically. "Why'd he call you that?"

"It is my true name."

Chloe smiled at him softly. He returned the smile, then flinched as a giant calico bonked him on the nose.

Ella shook her head with a grin. "You two are going deep! Wow! Babe, I am so impressed."

"I am many billions of years old, Ella Lopez, I am not a baby."

She giggled, snuggling a tiny grey cat with bright yellow eyes. "I like this one."

Michael gestured helplessly. "It makes no difference what I say, I am now 'babe'."

"Well, babe, why are you here?" Lucifer said, on the cusp of a growl. "Why are you bothering Miss Lopez?"

"Hey!" Ella said, absorbing a third cat. "He's not bothering me! I found him in a church! He's a..."

And giggling, she took another swig of coffee, saying the word into her cup.

Everyone heard it.

"You deserve better, Miss Lopez."

"That wounds me, brother," Michael muttered, cuddling an enormous cat with a squashed face, who honestly just looked confused about being a cat.

"How could I deserve better?! He's like literally a," she grabbed the cup again and almost screamed it into the thing.

Chloe sighed and gently took Ella's hand. "Hey, Ella, um..."

"Let's go outside!" their friend said suddenly. "Maybe... maybe somewhere private, and then, you could maybe," she waggled her eyebrows at Michael.

He simply stared at her intently, waiting for her to finish.

Lucifer rolled his eyes.

Standing to his feet abruptly, dislodging a plethora of cats, he unfurled his wings with a snap.

Cats fled in all directions - some vertically - as his wings arched behind him grandly, bright in the spotlights of the café.

And he looked kindly down at Ella, who was soundlessly gaping up at him.

"Do not be afraid, Miss Lopez. I am as I have always been."

"Inferior to me in every way," Michael added, jumping up beside Lucifer with a grin as he unfurled his own wings. His illusory tricks kicked in just as swiftly - the dramatic hair, the halo, more wings.

Lucifer drew his own wing back slightly, then smacked his brother in the face with it.

"Ow!" Michael yelped. His illusions cut off abruptly from behind the newly restored wall of white.

"Lucifer," Chloe whispered, looking around the room slowly. At the families sitting drinking coffee, the barista hunched over the machine, the servers tending to customers without bothering to glance their way.

She looked back up at him with a frown.

"Why aren't they reacting to your wings?"

Lucifer smiled.

"They cannot see them."

The frown deepened. "But... I can see them, and," she pointed at the still-frozen Ella, "wow, can she see them. Why can't everybody else?"

"Because I am blocking their ability to do so."

Chloe's head jerked forward.

"You're doing what?!"

Michael emerged from behind Lucifer's wing holding his hand over his nose.

"Brother, that is most impressive," he said in the voice of a muppet.

Lucifer shifted his wing in front of him once more.

"Thank you. Now... Miss Lopez."

Ella hadn't moved. Her eyes were enormous, fixed entirely on Lucifer.

"Ella?" Chloe said, resting her hand on their friend's shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Buh," Ella said.

Frowning, Lucifer furled his wings.

At least, he attempted to.

One wing went in, but the other had a cat attached to it, its face buried in a clump of feathers.

Lucifer snapped the wing out sideways, flinging the cat across the room.

There was a distant human shriek as he straightened his suit and sat down.

"Miss Lopez?"

"Behbbuh," Ella said.

Michael sat beside Lucifer, nodding thoughtfully.

"I have heard this language before, when we first met, but I have not yet deciphered it. I have deduced that it is not Spanish, for she has spoken that. It is some other dialect. Brother, you speak every language, what does it mean?"

Lucifer stared at him for a moment, incredulous.

"Idiot," he murmured.

Michael laughed.

"Ella Lopez, you are correct, my brother is an idiot."

Lucifer bared his teeth.

Chloe rubbed Ella's arm, smiling uncertainly. "Hey, you okay? I know it's a bit of a shock, but-"

"The devil..." Ella whispered, her gaze still locked on Lucifer. "You always said..."

Her thoughts were turning sharp and panicked.

Not good. He could not have the world's nicest person freaking out in her favorite café.

Drastic measures were called for.

Clearly, they needed more cats.

Taking in a deep breath, resigning himself to do something he had vowed never to do, Lucifer closed his eyes.

And started a siren song of love.

In cat.

Every single furball in the entire café swarmed him, answering his call with wailing cries of their own, rubbing up against every spare part of him they could find. Outside the café, feral cats gathered, jumping up to peek in the windows, wanting what they just could not have.

"Brother, are you in pain?" Michael asked, attempting to part the waves of felines so he could still see Ella.

Chloe started laughing, and could not stop laughing, sinking swiftly under the feline sea, as Lucifer continued, turning the song into a request.

And every cat turned to Ella.

They started to purr, their eyes blinking slowly. Some jumped into her lap, others rubbed against her chin, others still simply threw up their legs and started cleaning their unmentionables in her general direction.

"No me gustan los gatos, señorita Lopez, pero por ti los llamaría a todos," Lucifer said softly, pulling two delirious cats from his chest and throwing them into his brother's lap. "I am still the same Lucifer you know. Please do not fear me. I do not believe I could stand it."

"What did you say to her?" Michael asked, frowning at Lucifer. "I demand to know!"

"Something really sweet, babe," Ella said quietly, her eyes still fixed on Lucifer.

Then she let out a forced breath and nodded.

"Okay."

"Okay?" Lucifer echoed, his brow raised. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Then he felt her next thought before she spoke it and his jaw fell.

"Oh no," he whispered.

"Call all of the cats," she said, smirking, even as every cat in the café milled between them, bumping into shoulders and arms and chins and anything within reach.

"But," he said. "They are all here."

Shaking her head, Ella stood and walked over to the door where a herd of ferals still milled outside.

She opened the door, and the ferals shrank back, darting back and forth just out of reach.

"All of the cats."

Lucifer looked to Chloe for help, but she'd abandoned ship, ducking away to the barista to refill her coffee.

"Miss Lopez, surely-"

"Oh, no no, not getting out of this!" Ella said with a smirk. "I've known you all this time, and you never once thought to pop those bad boys out to prove who you were?! You let me think you were an actor?! Do you know how annoying it is to meet a real angel, to barely keep it a secret, finally decide to tell your closest friends, and then find out that, oh yeah, Ella, that's no big deal - Chloe's been in love with one for FIVE YEARS?!"

"But I have not always had win-"

"You stole my angel thunder! I need this! You said all of the cats!"

Lucifer made a small noise of pain.

"Technically, I said 'los llam-"

"Nope!" Ella said, shaking her head. "All. Of. The. Cats."

"Chica," the guy said behind the counter, "please close the door - our kitties will escape."

"Oh, don't you worry about that, Roberto!" she called back, before starting at Lucifer pointedly. "They'll come back!"

"Fine!" Lucifer snapped back, before rising to his feet and straightening a suit now liberally speckled in cat hair.

"Just know, Miss Lopez, that this was your choice."

"Bring it."

Chloe returned at that moment, sipping her coffee with a smile.

"What'd I miss?"

"The fact that my brother is superior to me," Michael said, his voice strained, one hand propped under his chin.

Everyone turned to look at him.

"What?" Lucifer said.

Michael gestured sloppily. "You can alter what humans see, you understand everything Ella Lopez says, and you can summon cats..."

"I can also heal with a touch," Lucifer added quickly, "and came close to destroying a god."

"Lucifer," Chloe murmured, watching the effect on Michael.

Lucifer happily noted it. "So, yes, brother, I am superior to you in ev-"

"Lucifer!" she snapped.

His brother's head was now resting on the table, one arm folded over it.

A cat sat on him.

Lucifer looked at Chloe, who was gesturing emphatically in Michael's direction. Suggesting he should offer comfort to his brother in some way, be perhaps a little more sensitive?

"Tell me more?" he said to Michael, before looking back at Chloe for approval.

Rolling her eyes, she went back to the barista.

Ella walked back to the table, frowning.

"I can do none of these things," Michael mumbled from under the cat. "I am good only for battle. The base arena of combat." Releasing a heavy sigh, he waved his fingers over his buried head. "Mere brutish thuggery."

Lucifer nodded in agreement. "Yes, and?"

Ella smacked him on the arm.

"Babe, you're so much more than that," she cooed, sitting down next to Michael and draping her arms around him.

He stirred slightly, dislodging the cat to look up at her.

"I am?" he whispered.

Ella smiled.

"Yeah," she said.

At the same time Lucifer said, "No," which earned him another smack.

"You're my angel," Ella said with a soft smile.

Michael raised his nauseatingly perfect eyebrows.

"I am?"

She nodded, and squeezed him close.

He stared up at Lucifer in confusion.

"Is it normal for angels to belong to humans, brother?"

Lucifer shrugged.

"We do appear to be skewing the average."

His brother took the words in deeply - accepting them as some kind of authority. An anchor of sorts.

And Michael looked at Ella with something Lucifer had never seen on his brother's face before.

Open wonder.

"I have never belonged to another, Ella Lopez," Michael whispered.

And he gave a genuine, soft smile.

Lucifer took a small step back, his eyes locked on his brother in shock. There was something stirring in Michael. Something so alien in the landscape of his brother's being that Lucifer could only watch, stunned, as it filled the fabric of the space around them, twining with the undercurrent he was always now aware of.

A bright bloom of love.

"Well, you do now," Ella said with another brilliant smile, before tilting her head. "And it means I belong to you too."

Michael's smile grew radiant as his eyes grew brighter still - like crystal blue waters under sunlight. Leaning into Ella, he kissed her, and the bloom of love deep within him grew expansively, finding expression in a new light upon his skin.

Ella's eyes widened and she pulled back, her gaze wandering his face. "Babe... are you glowing?"

Lucifer tsked. "I can also glow, Miss Lopez, if I cou-"

A hand clasped over his own and tugged at him. Chloe drawing him away.

"Let them have that," she said gently as he turned from the couple, frowning.

To find the orange cat they'd first met in the café in her arms, under her beautiful, warm smile.

He pointed at it.

"You have a cat," he said.

"We have a cat," she said right back, grinning as the tabby rubbed its face on her chin, its expression one of bliss.

Just like the sign.

"No," he whispered, his eyes widening. She was holding papers by her side, and the cat rescue logo flashed as she shifted the kitty slightly to face him.

"Please?" Chloe asked, her eyes bright and hopeful, her smile growing even more beautiful. "I promise I'll do the poop scooping!"

The cat looked up at him and began to purr, loudly.

"See?" she said, grinning. "He loves you! How can you say no to that?"

Lucifer looked at her, his brow steepled.

He could say no to any cat.

But he could not say no to her.

Perhaps one more appeal to reason?

"Chloe, that is not love."

The slightest frown touched her brow as she stared down at the tabby, who was stretching out a paw to bat at Lucifer's tie.

"But he's purring! All of the cats adored you - I don't get why you don't like them?"

Lucifer let out a sharp sigh, yanking his tie from the tabby's grasp.

And unfurling his wings, masking the sight from everyone in the café, he gestured grandly at the broad, feathered limbs behind him.

"Because, Chloe, to these furry monstrosities, I am essentially a giant bird!"

And he glared at the tabby, whose pupils had grown enormous.

Chloe burst into laughter.

The tabby squeaked excitedly.

And drew a tiny little tongue across its lips.