For all of her qualities, the art of intentional dressing is one which Chloe Decker has never quite mastered. She always looks good — composed, professional, sleek — but the mention of a costume party is throwing her for the world's biggest loop. She's standing in front of her closet, hands on her hips, lips pursed, staring at the mess of clothes that litter the hangers and the carpet.
"Are you going on a date?"
The words are sharp and pointed behind her, and she whirls around to find Trixie staring past her to the mess of crumpled clothes with marked distaste.
"Uh, no, monkey. Not a date. It's a…costume party. At Lucifer's."
"A costume party?" Trixie's eyes light up — she's been waiting eleven years for this moment to come. She strides past Chloe, wriggling between her mother and the door and rooting around inside the closet, burrowing into the mess of clothes like an enthusiastic termite.
"What's the theme?" She asks, voice muffled as she yanks strategic pieces out of piles and tosses them into the bedroom.
"It's—" Chloe relents, and sits on the edge of the bed. It's not exactly the quiet, post-celestial-war evening with Lucifer that she had imagined. "It's Heaven themed. You know, angels and halos and wings, that kind of stuff. But I don't have any of that. Maybe just a white dress—"
Trixie wrinkles her nose and faces Chloe with a scrunched gaze. "No way," she says, relenting with a sympathy far beyond her years at the sight of her mother's bewilderment. "Don't worry. I'll get backup."
The backup comes in the form of one very bemused demon. Maze enters at Trixie's behest, dressed in a slitted, mottled grey snakeskin top that leaves little to the imagination. "What?" She says, shrugging at Chloe's look. "I'm going as the…serpent. It's biblically accurate, or whatever."
"Great. Okay, well, I actually don't need any help, I'm not sure why Trixie called you in here and I'm sure you're busy doing that thing for Lucifer, so—"
Maze shakes her head. "Not busy." She stalks around Chloe, examining her like one might check a piece of fruit for bruises. "You were right to call me," she says to Trixie, who only nods solemnly in return.
"How about…this?"
Chloe's eyebrows flit to her forehead in surprise. Maze is standing in front of the door to the closet, wielding a low cut, crimson dress with a slit halfway up to Heaven on the thigh. She stares.
"Good for you, Decker," Maze muses, looking at the dress in her hands. "Didn't know you still had it in you."
"Excuse me?" Chloe snatches the dress from her hands, her cheeks flushing a deep shade of red. "Okay, first of all, I am not some frumpy grandmother who lives in pajamas all day. I have fun. I go out. Sometimes. Second of all, I am not wearing this."
Maze and Trixie face her with parallel pouts. "Why not?" Trixie pipes up, the excitement that had scrawled across her face at the sight of the dress quickly dashed.
"Yeah, why not? You'd look hot."
"Because! It's a sting, not a…" she glances at Trixie, and the thought that had been on her mind dissipates in the presence of her young child, "It's not appropriate. I'm on a case. Besides. It's not even the right theme. White, for angels, right?"
"First of all," says Maze, thrusting the dress back into her hands where Chloe had tried to return it — "You are no longer a Detective. You quit, remember? So the whole professionalism thing is bullshit. Besides, it's a sting, right? What happened to giving it your….hot, red-dress all? And—" she continues, before Chloe can cut her off, "Angels are boring. Trust me. No one wants to bone an angel. But the devil," she wags the red dress in front of Chloe, and the flush deepens on her face, "is sexy."
It's not a battle Chloe is going to win, and she knows it. She relents, and as she goes to change Trixie reappears at her elbow with a peevish grin. It's the most animated she's seen her since — Chloe's heart falls, then bouys once more at the sight of her daughter's smile.
"Don't forget these," Trixie says, and produces a small set of flimsy, Party City devil horns in her hand. "From Halloween last year," she explains, proudly. "It is a costume party, right?"
Chloe sighs. As Trixie darts from the room with mischievous abandon her thoughts drift to a dream — that dream — that had seared into her memory so many years ago: Lucifer, kissing her, pulling her down onto the couch, smiling as she clung to a set of Devil horns on his head not unlike the cheap headband she now held in her own hands. She wonders, cheekily, as she slides them onto her head and stares in the mirror, if it's not too late to make it a reality. For now, the case comes first.
Hopefully, she'll soon follow.
Chloe's heart is pounding when she gets to Lux. It's hardly her first rodeo, but this time feels…different. There's more on the line than with the usual homicidal maniacs she lies in wait for — this particular sting carries with it the weighty responsibility of the universe on its shoulders. But it's more than that — more than the celestial craziness which had come tumbling down around her and consumed her wholly and completely. She's done a hundred stings in a hundred different places, seeking a hundred different things. But this time, she's nervous.
Standing outside Lux, shivering in the crisp night air and suddenly very aware of the eyes glued to her and the feeling of cheap plastic in her hair as she readjusts Trixie's devil horns, she's on edge. Not for the thief, not for the staff, not for the sting. For him.
She's debating walking away, tearing off these stupid horns and changing into a tasteful blazer and slapping on some gold eyeliner and calling it an angelic night — but his booming voice, clear and keen, stops her in her tracks.
"Detective, over here," he calls, and she can feel him behind her, waiting expectantly with that idle, roguish grin.
She turns, rubbing a clammy hand against her thigh in an effort to quell the sudden spell of anxiety that washes over her.
Should Chloe Decker ever fall victim to a deadly sin, it would surely be pride that takes her in this moment, as Lucifer's jaw goes slack and he stares at her in a quiet, unabashed trance. She's taken his breath away and he's standing, utterly helpless, trapped in front of his own club in a black three piece suit and a drink in his hand that now hangs and leaks like a forgotten toy onto the sidewalk.
She swallows, hard, not unaware of the look he gives her and also not unaware that they are working a case, for the love of God, and so she straightens and speaks to breathe him back to life. "Maze said angels were boring," she says dumbly, instantly regretting the words as they come out of her mouth. Romantic. She gnaws on the inside of her lip as he blinks, once. She's not even sure if he heard her.
"Did she?" His voice is almost a whisper; stripped clean of its usual teasing lilt and now little more than a questioning whimper. His eyes are roving down her body, down the slit on her leg and back up again with a gentle, burning gaze, as if asking her for permission before staring any longer. She steps closer in response, closing the distance between them and smirking up at him with a surge of renewed confidence. Maze was right. The red dress was doing wonders for the wicked sense of devilish certainty now brimming inside her.
"Let's get to work," she says, the smile still tugging at her lips as she leans close and breathes the words against his ear. She can feel him go rigid against her; standing stock-still as if trying not to wake from a lucid dream. When she makes to pass him, however, removing herself from his side and stepping towards the doors, he shakes himself from his stupor and grabs her wrist with catlike reflexes.
All the crimson-infused confidence that the dress and the slit had imbued her with seems to slither away at the feeling of his hand clasped around her wrist, yanking her towards him as he fixes her with a tilted chin and a gaze of renewed composure. It doesn't take him long to regain his senses; for his eyes to darken at the sight of her and at the swirling thoughts in his mind of what exactly he's going to do to her, later, and the thoughts are so loud that she's blushing as if he's speaking them to her right then and there on the damp, steely sidewalk. He tears his hand from her wrist and places it on the small of her back, instead, tracing an almost-imperceptible thumb down her spine and sending a shower of sparks raining down to mix and muddle with the heat building in the pit of her stomach.
He's silent as they enter Lux; as they stand at the top of the stairs and watch with wandering eyes the party that already seems to be blasting in full swing. Amenadiel is there, draped across a white booth with a Shirley Temple in his hand and a look of concentrated focus plastered to his face. Across from him, trawling the dance floor, Maze and Eve flit through the crowd like a pair of rattlesnakes, popping up with a seductive flare in front of a clubgoer every now and then — no doubt to inquire about the whereabouts of a particular piece of wood. The costume theme seems to have been taken up seriously by those eager to gain entry into Lux: a sea of white dresses and white linen suits flash in the strobing light, and Chloe can see even from her vantage point a number of flimsy plastic staff-knockoffs in the hands of drunken partygoers. None that fit the bill. She notices with another tightening of nerves that she's the only spot of wicked red in a field of white. So much for blending in.
She turns to Lucifer, to see if he's registering the same observations as her, but where he had stood seconds before at the railing beside her there's now only empty space. She pauses, mouth slightly ajar and looking about in unqualified confusion as the crowd tightens and flows around her and fills the space where he just stood. And then she sees him — darker still amidst the throngs of white suits surrounding him — bending to exchange a hurried word with Amenadiel as his brother lounges guardedly in the booth. There's a nod, a brief look of shared understanding, and Lucifer is straightening, making his way back across the floor and up the steps with an unreadable expression shadowing his face. There are men and women clinging to him, grasping at him and mumbling words of heightened admiration in his ear as he crosses the floor — he extricates himself from their grasp without a backwards glance and continues at a determined pace. As she watches him she realizes his shadowed gaze is pointed directly at her, never breaking pace as he mounts the stairs and takes them two at a time.
He's back by her side faster than he had left, taking her by the hand and pulling her wordlessly from the railing and down the corridor, past throngs of drunken conversation and couples plastered against shadowed walls and heated exchanges in the darkness of a hidden corner. He drags her down and she doesn't resist, doesn't ask him where they're going or where he's taking her with such fervent direction or why he stops in front of the coat closet and pushes the young couple pressed against the door out of his way with a whine of impatience. In fact, she doesn't speak until he's whisked her inside the cramped room and her back is pressed against sequined coats and puffer vests and his own head bumps softly against the back of the door. It's only then that either of them makes a sound; that his eyes blaze and his ragged breathing suddenly fills the tiny space between them.
"Lucifer," Chloe murmurs, brushing the sleeve of a Moncler jacket from her face and nervously readjusting the flimsy horns atop her head, "We're on a case."
Even she doesn't believe the words as she says them. They sink and settle into the small space and die, choked in the fur-lined hood of the coat pressed against her.
"It's almost time for the judging portion of the evening," he says, soft and low and heavy against the darkness, "And, ironically, I fear I'm better off absenting myself." He steps closer, pulling away from the back of the door and running a finger along the outline of her dress, down her shoulders and along the curve of her waist. She shudders at the touch; at the dim sight of him looming above her in the cramped, tiny, space. "If our suspect was ever to make an appearance, now is his time to shine….and I believe God hovering at Amenadiel's shoulders might do our cover more harm than good, Detective. Wouldn't you agree?"
She nods. Yes.
"Besides," he drawls, a slow smile spreading across his face, "Maze and Eve will keep tabs on our guests. What could possibly go wrong?"
It sounds like a terrible plan. It sounds like everything could go wrong. She has no idea why she agreed to this; why she had let him take the lead on a potentially universe-altering — no, universe-ending — altercation. But it's the best idea they've got — and if anyone can pull it off, it's him — and she desperately, desperately, wants to give him any professional reason to stay exactly where he is right now. And so she nods; because she trusts him, because she's out of ideas, because she wants him, right now.
Outside the closet, muffled by the insulation of fifty unruly coats and the chatter of passers-by, the microphone screeches to life and strobe lights flash under the crack in the closet door as the contest begins. Inside, inspired by the unintentional soundproofing of the sturdy jackets and inches from the cloying masses in the corridor, Lucifer's head knocks softly against the door and a low moan escapes his lips as Chloe sinks to her knees.