A/N - A little bit of context. I only started watching Lucifer recently. As of writing this, I've not caught up yet. But shortly after starting, I had a massive urge to write some stuff for this fandom, which also helped to partially overcome a writing block I'd been and still am dealing with. I'm definitely aware that some stuff might be contradicted by future seasons, but either way, I hope you enjoy my impulsive scribbles.

This first chapter came into my head after the fight at the end of 1x07, tbh. I kept wondering what would have happened if Chloe had found Lucifer on the beach afterwards, which basically resulted in me writing down that little idea. I'm actually pretty pleased with how it turned out, honestly.

Chloe Decker had been telling the truth that night, the night where she and Lucifer had waited for Carver's kidnapper, so close together in the front seat of her stationary car that their knees had been brushing up against each other. The car's lights had been turned off in order to maintain secrecy, and she remembers how the rays of orange flickering lights of machinery had fractured through the windows and illuminated his face in a soft, fiery glow.

She had told him that she didn't believe in the whole fiery damnation thing.

He had looked at her, then, with something unreadable dancing in the black pits of his irises.

"Do I scare you?"

"No."

The Detective had shifted, her skin prickling as she felt the heat radiating off of Lucifer. Even through the fabric of his uncreased trousers, it had always felt, to her, like he was running a fever whenever she made contact, but it clearly didn't bother him so she'd never brought it up. In the end, she had accepted it as one of his natural quirks.

A permanent aura of warmth that cloaked him like a shield.

...

The Detective's jaw works furiously as she tries to straighten out the complex threads of her own mind, trying to unpick her reasons for coming here, for all places. Here, at the beach, with the waves lapping softly in the distance as the last echoes of sunlight sink beneath a boiling horizon. The wind tugs strands of hair loose from her ponytail and whips them into her eyes.

She hadn't been lying to Lucifer back then and even if she had, he would have called her out on it. Chloe isn't a believer, not of divine judgement, nor of fate. So how, then, can she explain the roaring conviction that had ripped her away from her investigations at Palmetto Beach and brought her here instead. A feeling, no- more than a feeling, somehow, Chloe had just known that she was meant to be here at this exact moment.

For what?

Almost unwillingly, she begins to walk forward. The darkness presses in on her and the heavy, cold presence of the gun in her back pocket is a reluctant comfort. The metal tip of it peeks out, and burns her fingertips as they trace over it in the fleeting moments before Chloe forces them away and back to her sides. The sand gives way beneath her shoes as her eyes scan the empty dunes.

There.

Her breath catches in her throat. A cold, sticky sensation of dread coils inside the Detective, seeping, dripping down until it settles like a physical weight in her gut.

A prone figure, lying down, breaks up the blurred expanse of sands stretching out ahead of her.

Shit.

...

The feeling is back. And although Chloe has no way of telling- not from this distance- no way of making out who it is, it doesn't matter.

Because she can't help feeling like she already knows.

Her unconscious steps forward morph into a half-jog, half-run, her feet sinking into the sands as her heart bounces in her chest like a ping-pong ball, like a marching band thrown out of rhythm, a confused and erratic pounding that she can't ignore. Again, there's no evidence to back up her instincts as they scream at her internally, but that doesn't stop the name from involuntarily tearing itself free from her throat as she runs towards the body.

"Lucifer!"

The wind snatches her cry away. The echo of it lingers around her, but just to mock her, there's no way that anyone could have heard her calling out.

As she approaches, the smell of burning hits her like a wall. Nothing's burning now, of course, Chloe realizes, it's just an echo. A memory of the past - the recent past. Something was burning here recently and the smoky, bonfire-like smell that's been left behind clogs her airways and forces an audible, ragged breath to escape her lips in order to clear them.

As she closes the final few metres between her and the body, her worst suspicions are simultaneously confirmed and disproved. Chloe can't work out if the burst of emotion swelling up inside of her is relief or... fear.

"Do I scare you?"

"No."

It's Lucifer. Of course. He's fully conscious, with the stars reflected in the inky black irises of his open eyes as he stares up at them. Lying there.

Just lying there.

Her heart skips a beat at his expression. Despite his layered web of metaphors and delusions - she doesn't really believe he's the Devil - Chloe has never, for one single moment, seen Lucifer as mad. On the contrary, the Lucifer that she knows has always been in control of any conversation, always with the upper hand, never caught off-guard, always fully aware, definitely not mad. There's a spark of brilliance burning in his eyes that she's never understood but never questioned, either.

But, right now, her mind can't process his expression. The ghost of rueful laughter etched in the corners of his expression, a fleeting, ironic smile, and that spark of his isn't just burning, it's raging with a storm of mingling regret and sadness as if the two emotions are fighting for dominance inside of him. All as he stares at the blinking stars with half-closed, tired eyes

Chloe falters.

"Lucifer?"

She sees his chest rising and falling as he gives a shaky exhale of breath, as his head turns toward her voice.

"Detective?"

His voice is quiet, lacking the confidence that the Detective has grown so used to when it comes to Lucifer. And God, its absence makes him sound so young. He watches her blearily, attempts to blink at her, only to wince instead.

That's when Chloe realizes that his eye is blossoming with the blues and blacks of heavy bruising, already starting to swell up.

She steps back, her own gaze widening as she does so; now that she's no longer fixated on his expression she's also seeing his other fresh injuries. His lips are wet, bleeding, unmistakably, with blood. The same substance stains the sleeve of his shirt, the fabric is steeped in it, and the area around the bruises of his left eye is red, angry and raw.

She recognises the marks as what they really are.

Someone's been punching him. Over and over. If she squints she can make out the indents made by individual knuckles against his skin and-

Chloe doesn't realize that her hands have balled up into fists by her side until she looks down. Faintly aware that she's been towering over him she finds herself crouching down on her knees. Lucifer isn't vulnerable, the fact that he hasn't moved from such a low-down vulnerable position is what scares her, right now. Her eyes narrow in fury, She's going to kill whoever did this-"

"Don't."

Lucifer looks up at her. She pauses, her train of thought derailed.

"Don't."

"Please."

He proceeds to break into a bout of violent coughing in front of her, either unable to or unwilling to expend the effort to fight it, which results in tiny tremors that run through his body.

Chloe doesn't miss the extra flecks of blood dotted around his mouth afterwards. It makes her blood boil.

"Why." She replies with deceptive calmness.

"- Not... not his fault. He was provoked."

"By who?"

"Me." Lucifer exhales. "I wanted to see how far he would..- could go. I'm not innocent here, Detective. I asked for it."

"Don't say that!" She recoils, vehemently.

"Oh, come on, I literally asked him to hit me!" Lucifer retorts, a little stronger, his voice had regained some of its all-too-familiar snark and dripping with exasperation as he shakily pushes himself into a sitting position. As a brief grimace flickers across his face, protests bubble up in Chloe's throat, festering, like burning coals on her tongue.

They don't get any further, though, maybe because she recognises their futility. He's clearly made up his mind that's he's fine, built barriers based on that fact, and nothing that Chloe can do right now will break those barriers down.

"Who's he?" She changes tactics.

"Not important." Lucifer's response is almost instantaneous. Automatic, even.

She releases out a long, hard breath of air.

This isn't going to work.

Maybe she's going about this wrong- fuck- why is information even her priority right now? Lucifer's hurt, that should be-

Out of the corner of her vision, she spots Lucifer attempting to stumble to his feet. Chloe's muscles stiffen up for a moment, in the next she finds herself rushing forward to support him. She doesn't recognise the feeling scorching through her veins, the catalyst behind her sudden surge of adrenaline as the next few seconds pass in a blur, blinding, every one of her movements entirely instinctive.

Then the world slows down again.

Chloe's arm is beneath one of his, around his back, propping him up and serving as support. Lucifer stares at her, with slightly dazed, confused eyes. The heat that usual radiates from him is absent, an absence that feels off to Chloe, given how used to it she's grown. She'd accepted it as a part of him, and now, it's a part of him that's missing.

She'd call it another red flag, Except- she's lost count of how many there have been at this point. That he's not himself, at this point, is a cold hard fact despite his best efforts to convince her and maybe even himself that he's fine, when he's so obviously not.

"This is unnecessary, Detective," He huffs next to her, flashing her one of his trademark grins.

"Stop complaining. I'm taking you back to your place and getting you fixed up." Chloe retorts, firmly, in the type of tone that always works against Trixie. The type of tone that will take no arguments. "My car's nearby. You think you can make it that far?"

Lucifer's mouth opens, but no protests pass his lips.

She sees his shoulder fall.

He pauses, briefly, and then gives her a mute, jerky nod of affirmation.

...

The car journey back to Lucifer's place passes in silence. Chloe Decker had never anticipated that the day would come where she missed Lucifer's steady stream of sex jokes and comments, but his quietness as he sits in the seat next to her gnaws at her, like a great, yawning pit has opened between them. Like the Lucifer she found on the beach is a hollow shell of the one she's grown familiar with, and that the bruises he took when he got beaten up weren't just physical.

Like something equally cavernous is gnawing at him as well.

As she drives through the rain-slicked streets of Los Angeles she keeps snatching glances at him, and every time, she finds him leaning back against the seat with a resigned air as he stares ahead.

He's probably still in shock.

Chloe shakes her head, roughly, but the imprint, the memory of him lying there on the beach, unprotesting and uncaring, has already etched itself onto her irises so that she's forced to relive the moment every time that she blinks.

As her tires screech into one of the parking spaces at Lux, the light from the bright neon entry signs splinter through the glass of her car. It's a cruel parallel to when she and Lucifer had waited for Carver's kidnapper. Only this time, all it shows Chloe is that Lucifer's face is several shades paler than normal, a fact that she hadn't truly appreciated in the dark muddled tones of the beach or her car.

"C'mon," She pushes her door open and walks over to his side, opens that door as well, and holds her arm out; an invitation to take it if he needs to.

"I keep telling you, Detective, I'm fine."

Lucifer rebuffs her offer, using the return of some of his strength and composure as an excuse to brush her extended arm aside as he gets out of the car and begins to walk towards the entrance.

"Lucifer!"

"What?"

He glances back at her. The blackened edges of his irises glint with defiance.

Chloe chews on the edge of her cheek.

"Let me help. Trixie's asleep, Dan's on a job, I have nothing better to do." Lucifer opens his mouth, but Chloe sails right past him, emphasising every syllable. "Believe it or not, Lucifer, I care about you. Whether you want my help or not, you're getting it. Got it?"

Lucifer stares at her like a deer caught in the headlights. His gaze flickers like a guttering candle, but it still has the strength left to burn her. Dark and piercing, as if scouring her core for answers to questions that she doesn't understand. Chloe doesn't flinch. Even as she stares back at him the wounds on his face harden her resolve because the night shadows don't hide the blood or the bruises. She might not entirely understand her own drive to help, and certainly, can't make sense of her protectiveness towards him.

But whatever it is, it doesn't falter under his gaze.

Eventually, his eyes drop softly, and a dry chuckle escapes from the depths of his throat.

"I won't stop you, Detective. I know a lost fight when I see one."

...

"You got any ice packs around here?"

Chloe's voice bounces off the walls of the bar as she heads down the stairs. Lucifer, a few steps ahead of her, is leaning against the countertop.

"Really, Detective, what sort of a club do you think this is?" Lucifer's hand goes to his chest, his eyes widening. Pretending to be offended. A brief smile forms on Chloe's expression before she can help herself. Some of the uncertainty that's been tugging at her seems to dissipate, her muscles relaxing, almost imperceptibly.

A single eyebrow, raised sceptically, serves as her response.

"...Beneath the counter. Bottom right, there's a mini-fridge for stuff like that." Lucifer relents, carding his fingertips through messy waves of dark hair, shaded by the ever-shifting hues of the screens. Chloe's eyes follow the motion automatically. He speaks again, breaking her reverie, traces of impatience creeping up at the ends of his words "What about me?"

"You?"

"Am I just supposed to sit here like a lost puppy or something whilst you sort everything out?"

"Oh." Chloe bites her lip as she pauses for thought, all too conscious of the unspoken time limit that she has before Lucifer's patience with her breaks. Or not. Maybe 'breaks' is the wrong word. The Detective senses that Lucifer's shields have temporarily lowered, either intentionally or not, she can't tell. Regardless, it's the reason he's accepting her help. And she also knows that if she's going to help, she needs to act carefully in order for him to remain open to the concept.

For his sake.

Her gaze lingers for a moment on his face. Then it falls. She swallows, hard.

"You might want to change. There's a bit of... you know. On your current one."

"Blood."

"Yeah."

Lucifer cranes his neck to look at the stains. The dried blood contrasts with the white of his shirt, and Lucifer runs his fingers slowly over the marks in morbid fascination. Chloe doesn't understand why. The sight of his own blood doesn't seem to disturb him, but that, at least, doesn't surprise her. She still holds the vivid memory of his reaction after she shot him. He hadn't recoiled at the sight of the bleeding wound, the opposite, in fact. He'd been drawn to it, like a moth to a flame.

She feels the same air of fascination radiating from him now as the one that had back then. That's it. Pure fascination. Without a single trace of fear.

She shakes her head, roughly.

"Of course, Detective." Lucifer pulls himself upright again, shooting her a quick grin of reassurance. If he can sense any of her qualms, at least, he's doesn't mention them, "I'll find something clean. Be right back."

His footsteps are loud, every one is a hammer that breaks the silence and interrupts Chloe's thoughts. She doesn't want to admit that she's grateful for that. It stops her from overthinking. It stops her mind from running wild as it's so prone to do, to grasp at all the wispy tendrils of smoke floating around in her head and to try to understand them.

That faint smile returns to her face as she wanders idly forward and begins to search for the alleged ice pack. Her mind is focused on other things.

Maybe she doesn't need to understand Lucifer.

Maybe she just needs to be there for him.

Maybe that's enough.