IX.

LIVING LOVELY

—

Damn

Love or lust

Damn

All of us

Give me a run for my money

There is nobody, no one to outrun me

So give me a run for my money

Sipping bubbly, feeling lovely

Living lovely

Just love me

—

She hadn't been expecting the rest of the night to take such a sharp turn. It had already filled her up with promises of nightmares and blood and feelings that she would much rather forget. There was so little left of herself anymore, but she had been surprised when given the opportunity to share what remained. There was still something left to give. Apparently, there was still a lot of it to give.

Chloe Decker had been curled on the couch well into half a bottle of wine and absently watching an old VHS of Top Hat when there was a soft tapping at her porch door. Indecision gripped her between duty and self-preservation. But in the end, old habits died hard and duty won out.

"Maybe my face isn't the one you want to be seeing right now, but I just wanted to check in and make sure that you were okay." Michael shuffled nervously on her back deck and pointed behind him. "I can leave if you need some space to yourself."

The detective paused for a brief moment, allowing the anger that bubbled up at seeing the face that caused so much destruction in her life to dissipate. Right face, wrong person. She took a step back and gave him a tired smile. "No, come in."

"You left the mansion before I could get past all the uniforms. And I know it's completely selfish of me to impose myself to fulfill some hero dad complex—", he slumped onto the couch with a sigh, "but, I just had to see you."

"Selfish complexes seem to run in the family." She opened a cabinet and pulled out another wine glass and waved it towards her guest. "I'm nursing my pain with some chablis if that suits you."

He nodded. "Yeah, I—I can't wrap my head around it. What happened tonight. What's still happening."

The long necked bottle gurgled as she poured most of its contents into Michael's glass. A few errant drops trickled onto the coffee table and left little glistening pools. "Join the club, my friend."

"Although I'm glad to see you're getting extra mileage out of that dress."

She looked down at the red-going-on-black velvet of a gown that had started its night as a gorgeous reminder of who she wasn't. It had picked up a few scrapes and bruises throughout the night, namely a large dark patch of what she hoped was spilled liquor but was more than likely blood. "It only took me a few hours to ruin it to shit, hm?"

Their clinking glasses chimed dully in the living room as they toasted to a night not worth recounting. "I was dying to see what you looked like in that dress. Would it be gauche of me to say that I was jealous of Lucifer for being able to lay eyes on you all night?" Michael took a small sip from his cup.

A timid hand went up to the hair around her shoulders, a sudden shyness taking over her. "I mean, not to sound too full of myself, but I feel unbelievable in this dress. It's probably the nicest thing I've ever put on my body." She blushed. "Well, at least as far as articles of clothing go."

A soft, hungry look passed over Michael's face for a brief moment.

"I was…a whole other person in this dress. The kind that trampled on the necks of men and drew envy from the eyes of women. It felt…powerful." She smiled sheepishly. "Does that sound silly?"

"No, and if it's any consolation, I think you already do that, dress or no dress."

"Well, thank you. And I'm glad I can live in your mind as someone who's capable of both beauty and brains." Chloe chuckled and eyed the curve of his lips as he took another slow sip from his glass. There had always been an undercurrent of easygoing flirtation, somewhere between office tease and work husband. The kind of winks and smiles that broke up long days but were never carried into the realities of everyday life. But here, in the aftermath of chaos and blood (and the unexplainable), she allowed her eyes to trace the hard line of his jaw, the dark ink of his eyes, the soft part in his hair where she could see the fine markings of the comb that had run through it this morning. A piece of her wanted to reach up and run her fingers along the ridges. Wanted to make contact. To prove she was alive. To prove that she made the right choice.

"Chloe?" A line of worry knitted its way across his brow.

"Sorry." She shook her head to rid the intrusive thoughts of her overloaded emotions that were veering into dangerous romanticism. "I think I'm just starting to process tonight and…well, it feels unreal. And not just tonight…these past few months…I've never been pushed so hard on a case. As a cop but also as a person."

"Were you afraid? Tonight?"

"I mean, yeah. But it's my job."

"But that doesn't mean it's fair. Or right."

"God. It feels like I'm standing on the edge of something. I'm at the top of the roller coaster and it's those long few seconds of teetering before the ride opens up and I'm plunging into the unknown. I'm getting close. It doesn't look like it, but I just…feel it, you know? Those crazy things that Gio was saying, they don't make much sense, but I think there's a lot there. I just don't know where it's supposed to lead me."

"So what's the next step?"

The detective shook her head. "There are none. At least not for me. I've compromised too much—my morals, my safety—to continue as the lead investigator. I'm asking McMullen tomorrow morning to re-assign me. Stephen Delaney, Mazikeen Smith…they deserve better. They deserve a detective that is going to see this all the way through the right way."

A dark contemplation settled onto Michael's usually friendly face. Shadows of worry. Shaded thoughts of an inner working that still fascinated Chloe. "What does that mean then...for us?"

"You'll get reassigned a good veteran from the force. Someone with fresh eyes that aren't muddled with…involvement."

"And what about you?"

She shrugged.

"Aren't you afraid?" He asked.

She shrugged again. "It's the right thing to do."

"Fuck being right, Chloe. Fuck being 'good'. It's all subjective." He scooted closer to the small figure propped up against a beige cushion. "You're the best detective this precinct has ever seen. You're also the right detective for this case, red tape of bureaucracy be damned."

"You're starting to sound like your brother."

"Well, maybe he's on to something. Listen, the constructs of right and wrong, sinners and saints…it's all made up. Human beings created them under some selfish moral compass and called it law. So you broke a few rules, big deal. What matters is that the crazy self-righteous asshole that murdered all those people gets dealt with." A wildness glinted in Michael's eyes and she swore there must have been a feral genetic marker that the brother's shared. The morning of Lucifer's abrupt visit to her home flashed in her mind: the wolf in sheep's wool. The Devil in human clothing.

She lighted a hand onto his knee, seeming to tame him from whatever rough teeth that were threatening to creep out. "I think…I think it's for the best. I'm not myself lately. I've been making decisions that are putting the people I love at risk." She motioned to the empty house around her. "I've pushed away the things that tether me, that hold me, that love me back. I don't want to risk losing what I have left."

"I get it. I do, Chloe." He slid a smooth hand over the one on his knee and gave it a light squeeze. "This is your last stand. It's where you're drawing the line. I have to admire that even though it kills me to think I won't be seeing very much of you after tonight."

A soft redness swathed across her cheeks. "So...why don't we make the most of it then?" She stood up and took the wine bottle by the neck. "It'll kind of be our last stand." Slim fingers reached out towards him. Beckoning him. "I never got to finish that dance tonight. Would you mind helping an old gal come full circle on one of her fondest memories?"

He started to extend his own hand but paused briefly, regarding her gentle face with nervousness. Memories from the elevator painted the inside of his chest with moments of bated breathing and soft lips. The tangle of her fingers, now so openly extended, curled around the nape of his neck. We can't do that, she had said. Michael had backed off. Had brushed it all under the rug because she had asked him to stop feeling whatever was growing inside of him whenever he saw her. It sat there as an undisturbed hard knot, a constant reminder that she hadn't wanted what he had wanted. For the most part he was able to ignore it, instead throwing himself into menial tasks at the club while Amenadiel watched in stolid perplexity. But now…a hand. An invitation.

The television mumbled the sounds and sights of Ginger and Fred sitting together under a gazebo while a 1930's studio rain fell outside. Cases of mistaken identities, crossed wires and tumbling into love. Little Chloe Decker had wanted all of those things as she danced around this very living room, imagining her small chubby cheek pressed up against her Daddy's as her oversized purple nightshirt transformed into the white ostrich-feathered gown in the final number. Adult Chloe cocked her head slightly at the memory, a flood of hair sweeping down over her shoulder, hand still extended.

Michael finally took hold, his fingers lacing gently over her own as if afraid that she would crumble beneath his touch. A vapor. A wisp. A figment of his soaring imagination. "Now I feel extremely underdressed." He tried to offer a smile but could only manage a slight pull at the corner of his mouth. "But you sure know how to sweep a man off of his feet."

He folded his right arm around her waist and Chloe pulled the hand still clutching the wine bottle around his neck. The other hand soon followed. The music swelled into its rich cacophony of strings and brass, barely audible with the volume on so low, but it didn't seem to matter. What mattered was the feel of his cotton shirt under her palm and the feel of his hip against her belly. What mattered was that after thirty years of playing the same old VHS, she had found a dance partner to twirl with around the couch. Someone to help her forget for a little while that tomorrow held teeth and blood and bones. Consequences. Choices.

"We don't have to think about tomorrow. Or tonight." He brought his face closer and rested his cheek against her ear. Warm air entwined itself into the fine hair at her temples and she pulled herself in a little closer, relishing the feel of his heartbeat. Of his absolute…aliveness.

She shook her head slowly. "I just want this moment to be about now. A reprieve between two storms."

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

A pause. "Yes."

"Why?"

They rotated slowly around the low coffee table, the nearly empty green bottle clunking softly against his back. Bare feet shuffled quietly against the hardwood. Everything seemed to be waiting. Holding. Chloe waited with them, afraid to speak aloud her greatest fears but knowing that they would come tumbling out anyways. She wasn't a religious person but there resided in her a deep need to confess. To hear it said aloud. To speak it into existence. "If I had died in that room tonight…would I have died without anyone really knowing who I am?"

"And who exactly is that?"

"A good cop. A great mother."

"Those are jobs you fulfill, Chloe." His cheek moved up and down against the side of her face as he talked. "Not what are you. Who are you?" The deep low vibrato of his voice echoed under her dampening palm and down into her hips, her knees, her feet. Tonight's fate seemed to be sealed in that vibration. They were crash-coursing into what felt like an inevitability.

"I guess…I'm someone who's afraid that there is nothing more than that."

Michael turned his head and placed a dry kiss on top of the fading pink line of a scar near her hairline that seemed the catalyst to the ensuing chaos of the past few weeks. How many more had she collected since that fateful night when their orbits had aligned to cause this explosion of raw matter and dark stars? Who was she before then? Did that Chloe even exist anymore?

She tightened her grip around his neck, just as she had done not too many hours earlier, around the neck of someone who she thought she was starting to understand. Someone who she thought understood her too, maybe just a little. The scent of vetiver and sweet hay wrapped around her and she had a flash feeling of being cocooned in dark wings while sharp blades of glass bit into her hands and knees. There was death and sunlight in that smell. Of early morning grass and the sap that would run down pine trees in the early summer months as the dappled leaves would start their slow descent onto the ground where they would soon turn into the damp bedding of fall. It was the smell of Americana memories and the horrors of getting there. Of running through the flatland plains of nowhere with her cousins, the stalks of yellowing reeds slapping at her calves. Grabbing at them like clawed hands.

"It was you." She raised her eyes, meeting Michael's, a secret understanding blooming. Her voice was a low murmur. "That night in Echo, at the modeling agency. You're the one who came. You're the one who saved me."

He shrugged. "You sent out the bat signal. Although I wasn't expecting it to be an office chair through a sixteen story window." His teeth made a brief appearance in a boyish grin.

Golden sunlight seemed to radiate from the simple curl of those lips, bathing her in what felt like dry summer winds of a childhood that belonged to another Chloe Decker. To an entirely different human being than the one that was standing in her living room, bare feet and blood stained dress, contending with the loss of her identity and everything that felt so sure only a few short months ago. Maybe this was a part of growing. A part of becoming whatever the next stage of her life was supposed to be. Maybe it was the complete and utter stripping that was necessary to reform and rebuild something that was completely her own. Or maybe, it was the beginning of her destruction.

She stopped swaying, much to Michael's disappointment, and carefully brought the bottle to her mouth. Her full lips came away in a glisten of alcohol. His eyes traced the halo of lights that lived there. Waiting. Asking to be drunk away. Still, he held back because his heart remembered the hot sting of rejection outside of an elevator that had held all the symphonies that Tchaikovsky could ever write. Memories of hot tears running down his face as he ran through the harsh cold of St. Petersburg. Deep wells of pain and love and every delicious emotion that still didn't have words he understood spilling over in clear sloppy ripples.

"Michael." Her voice, barely audible. Watery. On the brink. Her eyes refused to leave his, steely resolve glimmering behind a haze of exhaustion and chablis.

He thought back to his earlier comment about being envious of Lucifer for being able to see her beauty so closely. To touch her and hold her as they pretended to live another life for the night. Now, he thought, that envy wasn't the right word. Because who could be jealous of this rending feeling of uncertainty and pathetic hopefulness? Who would want to look into the eyes of someone as powerful and soft as Chloe Decker, knowing that the bearer would live the rest of their lives on their knees? He had the sudden urge to push her away, throw her to the floor and tear out into the night.

But it was too late.

Her hand had already slid up his chest and was now resting along the crook of his neck. Up behind his ear. A deep, dark heat pulsed within him and he couldn't help the way his hands gruffly clasped her waist. Finding traction beneath a velvet gown the color of blood, his thumbs digging trenches into her hips. Her fingers had furled themselves around a mess of hair behind his neck and pulled hard at the sudden pressure that was filling up at his rough touch.

Still, he tried to cling on to the last few feet of rope. Hanging on but silently hoping that the currents would rip him out into the open waters where he could be swallowed up entirely. A lonely victim who could finally, completely let go. A firm thigh slid between his and all at once, he was carried away. Here was the riptide. He pressed himself against her, relishing in the soft moan that slipped from her mouth. Fervent hands were roughly grabbing every part of him they could hold, as if she too were drowning. Her lips had found his, engulfing him in the taste of sweat and alcohol and fear. Hungry.

She had heard the bottle clanging to the floor but it had sounded so faraway. Almost non-existent. All noise, all color, all matter had faded deep into the backdrop. All she wanted was for his hands to touch every part of her, to hold her as proof that she was still alive. She was still free to make her own choices. All she wanted was for Michael to fill her up, devour her. All she wanted was for him to use what pressed hard against her thigh and help her forget. Make her forget. Greedy lips found their way to her neck and she gasped at the rough scrape of teeth against tender skin. She pawed greedily at his belt buckle but a firm hand laid over hers.

"Chloe." He pulled back, eyes half-closed, neatly parted hair now a messy tide of waves.

A wolfish grin cut across her lips as she peered up at him through a thick hood of lashes. "What is it?"

His slow heavy breathing hung between them as he regarded her predator's smile. Did it matter why she wanted to sleep with him? In love and war, there were no wrong reasons, right? It was what he had wanted since the first night he had spoken with her. It was those eyes. The ones that saw a little too much, a little too often. He thought, maybe, they could see right through him. And maybe that's what he had always wanted.

"I want you." She pulled him in closer, her back now flush against the living room wall.

"And just me?" He hated the childishness of his question. Hated what it implied.

"Just you." She ran her hand tightly over the buttons of his jeans, eliciting a gruff grunt. "Michael."

And, for now, that was enough.

His lips re-found hers, his hands relinquishing control as she aggressively pulled at the buckle on his belt. Her long legs wrapped tightly around his hips as his fingers found the flesh of her thighs, pulling violently at the miles of fabric unraveling between them. And her fingers had found him. Pulling him towards her. The fervor at which they found themselves together, the unbridled need for connection, no longer felt so foreign. So wrong. They had found something in each other that felt fully their own. A chrysalis to their own metamorphosis. No longer slaves to the roles they fulfilled in other people's lives but something different. Something new. Two bodies, full of warm sunlit afternoons and goldenrod mornings and bygone eras bursting with joy and vivacity. And death. Here, in each other, they also found their destruction.

—

Lucifer had seen enough to know how it would play out.

Seething, dejected, confused, he quietly left the Detective's back porch and slid into his convertible. Why had he come out here in the first place? What had possessed him to rip his car around three lanes of traffic to drive out to her sleepy little neighborhood?

Not more than two hours ago she had told him to fuck off. Move on. And he had happily indulged himself at her request. Things were getting too complicated anyways. The Detective, the investigation…they were pulling him away from the life he deserved to live. If anything, they had done each other a big favor by ending their loose partnership.

And for her to ask—no, demand—that he divulge his long held secrets and inner thoughts? How dare she. No mortal had the right to ask anything of an angel (that's bullshit and you know it) let alone demand it. Lucifer Morningstar had lived uncountable lifetimes. He had created the motherfucking stars and planets that rocketed their orbits through the emptiness of space. He owed nothing to no one. Let alone some little slip of a thing in a red dress.

Still, the picture of her, standing there in the greying hallway as the echoes of a busted party faded into the black and white marble. As her wide blue eyes blazed with anger and pride, hurt and fear. As black smears of makeup painted the lovely thin skin above her cheeks. She had looked so small. So lost. Another marooned soul swimming, clawing, drowning. Hadn't she asked for a lifeline? Just as he had?

It's not the same thing.

Wasn't it though? Since the existence of man, Lucifer had othered them. Beings of a lesser form and function. Separated by their weakness and their neediness. The ways in which he had suffered—cast away, marooned, forgotten—could never be fully understood by any mortal being. He was a hostage in a life that he didn't choose for himself. The Detective had the free will to choose the life she wanted to live; all humans did.

But…those eyes. The upending sadness that had met him in those brief moments before they had been rudely interrupted. He had recognized them, had seen them in the mirror countless times over countless centuries.

Gio had asked him, before guns were pulled and mayhem ensued, if freedom was what Lucifer desired most. Yes, of course, he had thought. It was, like, kind of his whole thing. He wanted the choice: to not be the caretaker of Hell, not spend eternity as an outcast, to live a life outside of his own past mistakes. If goddamn Persephone could live half her time on Earth and the other half in Hell as Hades' lover, why couldn't he? Where were his pomegranate seeds? But, maybe that meant there were others like him here on Earth. Humans, for all their faults and short feelings, could also be hostages to their pasts. Is that what he saw in the Detective's eyes? Is that what gave him that brief glimmer of hope? Briefly, his mind wandered to the memory of the painting that had hung cheekily over the trick door. Metamorphosis of Narcissus. Was that the lesson that Dad was trying to impart or was Lucifer just projecting his own complicated feelings about selfishness? Was Chloe Decker the Echo to his Narcissus?

Lucifer had peeled his car around then, curiosity overtaking any puff-chested feelings of pride. He would tell her what she wanted to know. Fuck. He would tell her everything.

The back windows were aglow from the recessed lighting in the kitchen when he pulled his car into the narrow alleyway behind the Detective's bungalow. They sent warm ideas of reunion and penance towards him. A good omen. He saw the golden splay of her hair as she sat against her couch, a glass of wine in her hands. She smiled and suddenly he felt relief. Somehow, they would work this out.

Deep laughter echoed from within and Lucifer paused, his foot halfway up the second porch step. Another voice, low and placating. He heard the Detective talking and peered around one of the scrubby bushes that lined her windows.

Michael.

Hot liquid lurched up Lucifer's throat at the sight of his brother's back.

Why was he here?

But Lucifer knew why. Knew it from the moment he had seen them together at his penthouse during their first fateful meeting. Michael and Lucy may have been estranged but they were still twins; an invisible umbilical cord connected them mind, body and soul. It was always going to come to this, wasn't it? They had been drawn together—hand of God or no, it didn't really matter anymore—but Michael, as always, had been faster to realize the cosmic connection that had been linked to this divorced, LAPD mom of a little hellion. Michael the Archangel. Michael the Healer. Michael the Leader Against the Forces of Evil. Michael who always won first prize. Who always got the things that Lucifer wanted.

Dark eyes watched in helpless wonder at the riveting complexity of her face as she freely gave his brother something that he himself was never able to draw out of the Detective. Openness, comfort, unguarded access. The person he saw through the window was the fully fleshed-out Chloe Decker. Someone he had only caught glimpses of in shaded corners and misty reflections. Here, fully bloomed. With Michael. Seething painful jealousy clenched his stomach.

Now she was standing, arm outstretched. Just as she had done earlier tonight after she had placed that quick solitary kiss on Lucifer's surprised mouth. (Without even realizing, Lucifer placed two fingers on his own lips as if trying to re-live the memory). Except now, it wasn't a game. It wasn't a role she was filling. Here was the offering, as her full self, as Chloe Decker. Long legs, long arms, the sharp cock of her head as a torrent of golden hair fell around her shoulder like prisms of sunlight on a waterfall. A small god embodied in smooth skin and hard steel. Lucifer had never seen something so lovely. Or so frightening.

A throbbing lump had started to pulse in his throat as he watched Michael gingerly take her hand. Nearly choking now as his brother's arms wrapped themselves around her waist. He had a yawing bout of vertigo when he realized that this exact image had already played out earlier tonight. This is what everyone else at the mansion had seen as Lucifer and the Detective had swayed carefully along the dance floor. Except, here, he had been removed from the equation. Now, he was just a careful observer, just like all the other guests at that party. Hopelessly, helplessly watching as two people created their own magnetic forcefield, one that continued to eat up all color in the room. He pitied those partygoers. He pitied himself.

That's enough. You've seen enough.

Yes, he had seen enough to know how it would play out.

There wouldn't be any careening couples to break the spell. No distractions to use as excuses to pull out of the looping gravitational pull. Michael the Great, Michael the Winner. He would get to put his hands around that face. Get to place his lips onto hers while an old black and white played its muted music in a living room where he looked right at home. Good Michael. Righteous Michael. Someone who wouldn't corrupt the blinding goodness that still lived inside the Detective.

I hope you love her. And I hope it kills you.

Somehow the sentiment gave Lucifer a bitter joy that carried him back into the awaiting lights of what he understood.

Alone.

Along the shore, with nothing but his reflection on the water to keep him company.