XVII.
HEART AND SOUL
Chloe had meant to stay. Had every intention of sitting down and talking it out with Lucifer but she had turned chickenshitty, another Daddy Decker-ism, as the immense silence filled their in-between and a sweaty junkie watched empty-eyed at their forms caught in mid-flight, she had turned tail. Typical Chloe, running at the first sign of vulnerability. Queen of Dishing it Out but crumbling when it became a two-way street. Coward. Child. And wasn't it just the absolute height of hypocrisy to ask Lucifer to tell her everything but refuse to extend honesty in return? A modicum of compassion? Shame filled the small spaces she reserved for herself. If she couldn't be trusted to uphold the integrity of truth, how could she be responsible to uphold justice?
"He's the Devil, you know." Robbie had his forehead pressed against the window leaving behind a cloudy smear that she would later towel off disgustedly.
"I thought you said Gio was the Devil."
"They're all cut from the same cloth. Dudes with lots of money, disguised as gentlemen, playing with us like Barbie dolls. Demons in sheep's clothing and we're all headed to the goddamn slaughterhouse. Gio wasn't always like that. Didn't give a shit about anything except his personal privacy and Premier League until a few months ago when he met that broad and suddenly it was all Guccis and Beamers. Asshole even went out and got one of those little fucking yachts with all that Old World money his rich daddy left him after he croaked." He scoffed. "That Lucifer guy's no better, I don't know what you see in him. He's got a bad rep."
"Yeah? What kind of rep is that, Robbie?"
A sly grin cut into the tight skin of his lips. "He'll promise you whatever your feeble heart can dream up. Money, pussy, power, fame. But he gets a piece of your soul in return and some of us have so little of it left. He uses people, just absolutely ravages every part of them and when you're left with nothing but your rotting corpse, you'll thank him for it. He glimmers and glams with his pretty boy face and nice suits but he's the master manipulator. The Devil, if you dig it."
She shook her head. "Sounds like the rantings of Old Wives and tall tales. He's just a man. A strange man but he's not the Devil."
"Oh, you can't see. You're already trapped. Baa baa baa." He bleated. "So, what has he promised you? Love?" An unhinged giggle. "Certainly not riches because you're still driving around this piece of shit." He kicked the back of the seat.
"Stop it." She wasn't sure if she meant his feet or his words.
"Well if it's any consolation, he'll fuck your brains out if you ask him. Heard that's one of his darling goodbye gifts. A sweet little party favor for sweet little sheep." He saw her eyes blaze in the rearview mirror and laughed. "Oh, I'm sorry, guess you're still holding on to your virtue. Good luck with that."
"Shut up, Robert. Shut up or I'll make you shut up." Anger ballooned inside of her until it was the only remaining emotion. Better anger than the downward spiral of shame. Better to see red than the hurtful kaleidoscope of reality. Thankfully Robbie did quiet down although the knowing smile remained.
She had driven off without a specific destination in mind, more concerned with putting distance between Lucifer's confession and her ears than where they might be headed. Again she turned her eyes to the hunched figure still handcuffed to the door handle, wondering what she should do with him. Initially she had intended to arrest, process and detain him; just another societal shit stain, no big deal. So what if they had taken a detour? A nice little spin around town for a few hours, but surely nothing that would raise any eyebrows from the precinct. She was, after all, known as a goody-gumdrop cop and no one would call foul play for the gap in time. Not that they would care much even if there was suspected foul play. Palmetto had taught her that. Still, what to do with ole Robbie.
Night had crept in steadily during their meandering car ride, darkness now firmly settled between the buildings as their fronts twinkled with lights from windows full of people going through their nightly routines. Teeth were brushed, shows were watched, lunches were packed as people wound down from their weekday lives; others were just beginning as they ironed their third-shift uniforms, put on their night out clothes, got on their computers for a leisurely surf around the web while the evening grew long into the witching hours. Private moments highlighted in two second clips as a thousand drivers drove by living their own private moments, together but separately. At the next stoplight Chloe looked up to the second story window of an apartment complex set above a discount clothing outlet, its storefront full of stiff mannequins in cheap polyester skirts and faded shirts. A young man stood at the window, his arms taken up by a squat round baby that was currently pedaling its ham hock legs in the air. A man who looked like he had just aged out of being a boy not too long ago, holding an adult responsibility in his thin arms as he jostled the fussy baby up and down, the exhaustion on his face filling Chloe with both relief and sympathy. Been there, buddy. The light turned green, a car honked somewhere behind the sedan, then they were off, the young man in the window just another passing observation. Channel surfing. Except in reality, this tv held over a billion channels with each one featuring a living human's entire existence. What was it called when one realized that each random passerby is living a life as rich and complex as your own? Sonder? And if there really was a God-according to Lucifer not only was there a God but demons that wore human skin like a messed up version of dress up-how was He able to hold all of these vivid, horrible complexities and weave them together into the story of humanity? How was He able to hear every prayer, know every need, orchestrate Fate and Life and Death while basking in the praises of His diligent followers? Faith was the word congregations and believers used to explain the things we aren't able to understand; a blanket excuse for that which we cannot comprehend. If one sat and thought for too long about the sheer vastness of what one Being controls, how much fragile responsibility they hold in their hands...well, it would be enough to make one move up into the mountains and swear off all earthly possessions. At that point, your only job would be to give the Big Guy as much moral support as a meager human being was able to muster.
She turned onto Figueroa and could see the glittering pylon of the convention center. The last time she had visited the LACC was many years ago during the auto show when Dan had strapped baby Trixie to his chest and they had slugged through throngs of out of towners to take a few blurry pictures next to cars ladened with smudgy fingerprints. They had been beat cops back then, all conversations filled up with talks of making Detective and how to raise their growing baby. That life had seemed simpler, if only due to the nature of reminiscing and its ability to highlight the parts that are now missing. Life was and always would be complicated. Existing was and always would be complicated. And even though knowing is half the battle, the other half, the following through even in the face of that reality, was the hardest half. She pulled the car over and parked it alongside the main entrance to the center. A few stragglers in worn out clothing were settled under the small awning labeled South Entrance but no one else seemed to be hanging out at this time of the evening. The air was cooling down to welcome in the next breath of fall with winter not too far behind. Soon the streets of LA would be filled with red and white lights around palm trees, potential gifts filling store windows and holiday diehards wearing those jingling felt headbands meant to look like reindeer antlers. Trixie had surely started her wishlist already. Would the magic of the holiday season be lost on her as they celebrated their first Christmas as a broken family? Was she like that boy in the window with the chubby baby, just barely old enough to hold all those grown up duties but too young to fully understand the person it will make her become?
She turned to Robbie who was now half-dozing, his greasy head still pressed up against the window. The car rang out a few dings as she opened her door, the overhead lights casting her passenger's face in a ghoulish caricature of Murnau's Nosferatu, the first horror movie that had scared the absolute shit out of her younger self. "Get out."
Lucidity tried to glint into his features but he was crashing hard and could barely keep his eyes focused on the detective's stern face. "Waddya mean...huh?"
"Get out of my car and I don't ever want to catch you on these streets, Robert. You'll be dead before you see thirty if you keep this up." The handcuffs ratched open and Robbie rubbed his wrist absently.
"Waz there to live for, anyhow? Waz so great about bein 'live?" His legs wavered as he tried to stand. "Why the fuck would ya care what happ'ns to me."
She thought to say something mean, maybe an 'I don't care' or a 'get lost, asshole' but she bit her tongue. Robbie wasn't the person she was mad at after all. From the looks of it, he had his own shit to deal with and that feeling of sonder returned. Chloe had only known Robert Bernard as the junked out kid of a white collar criminal and she had arrested enough of them to know their profile. But what about the beyond? What about what led Robbie to this dark place or what he was trying to run away from as he chased the numbness down the rabbit hole? This kid, this boy really, used to be somebody's baby and they had done a piss poor job in giving him the love and attention he needed. Well, babygirl, you're not exactly winning any Parent of the Year awards yourself. "Robbie, go home. Go home and sleep it off. Then tomorrow, call your parents, get clean, kid. I promise there's better things on the other side."
A glistening line of tears danced near the edge of his eyes but didn't spill over. "Yea? I don't think there'll be anything fer me when I get there. You dig, officer? Sure you do. I seen it on your face. Imma goner. Bye. Poof. Kapow." A soft chuckle. "Tell them kids don't do drugs but if ya do, get the good stuff cause life...ya know, life just ain't good enough on its own."
And there was nothing to say to that because sometimes, well, sometimes Chloe felt the same. During the littered years after Daddy Decker's death, the drawn out separation and eventual divorce, the navigation of loneliness and facing the person she had become, being on the other side wasn't always quite good enough on its own. For guys like Robbie all that existed was the now. The fix. The high. And there was something to learn from that immediacy. As someone obsessed with the past, the future and eventuality, she had missed big parts of the in-between. Had forgotten to live in the immediacy. The high of existing.
Robbie had given her a curious look, perhaps waiting for her to change her mind or convince him that life was worth living. When she didn't respond he hiked up the saggy bottom of his pants and shuffled off towards the awning of the convention center. Chloe watched, one hand on the sedan's roof, the other still holding the warm handcuffs. She had stood that way long after Robbie's form had been swallowed into the thicket of darkness, her eyes vacant as she contemplated his future or whatever may be left of it. What was left of hers, of Trixie's, of Dan's? What was left of now? Nothing if she didn't get her shit together. With one long last look towards the mouth of the building and one more consideration for the future of Robert Bernard, a future that she would never find out, she slid behind the wheel of the car and pulled away from the curb.
It hadn't been a surprise this time when she ended up at Lux. The sight of Robbie's scraggly ass shuffling down the sidewalk had given her clarity. It was better to know, to turn every stone, to read every page than to keep rooted in the safety of maybes. It wasn't about seeking approval or worth (at least not solely) but knowing the why. Why her, why now. Why only after the fact that she had become involved with Michael? That was the one that haunted her most. She had to know if this was all part of some Cruel Intentions ploy that rich boys played to pass the time. Part of her hoped that was the case because it aligned with the reality she knew and understood: guys like Morningstar had no depth, no capacity to love. Another part, and maybe the best part of her, hoped she was wrong.
The club had been eerily quiet when she walked through the front door. No loud music, no hums of conversation, just the faint sound of a lonely piano muffled and faraway. Halfway down the corridor she recognized the melody. She had been no more than a toddler when it first came out but her parents had taken to it so enthusiastically that it lived on both sides of a bootleg mix tape John Decker had made for his wife one Valentine's Day. Some days they would slide it into the silver stereo that lived on their kitchen counter and the pair would sing along to David Bowie and Cher and ABBA as they washed dishes, eventually swaying to George Michael's One More Try as a damp dish towel hung from her father's shoulders. As the years had passed, the songs on the cassette had changed. Joan Jett turned into Bruce Springsteen, Hall and Oates to Michael Jackson, but George Michael's 1988 croon about heartbreak remained. She had heard it more times than she could remember. Always in the kitchen and always from the silver stereo that lived next to the toaster. The smell of long-eaten dinner and dish soap in the air as her parents shared a rare night together dancing along the hardwood, their bare feet whispering as Chloe watched from the dining room table. That was love. She didn't know if anything could live up to that image and maybe that was a curse.
Once she had passed the curtain, she understood why the sound of the piano had carried so far. There he was, alone in an empty room, sitting under a beam of light just as he had when she saw him earlier at the restaurant. Like then, she stood at the top of the stairs looking down at a man engrossed in his own undoing. If earlier had been Act One, this felt like the Final Act. Him with his hair in loose rivulets along his brow, vest undone, sleeve rolled up in a chaotic wrinkled mess.
Because it ain't no joy
For an uptown boy
Whose teacher has told him goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
She had wanted to tear down the stairs two at a time, grab his arms and fling them around her. Take off her shoes and sway with him under the criss-crossing beams of blue and white. His sadness carried its way up the stairs, calling to her. Beckoning the part of Chloe that always had to fix things.
No babygirl, not this time.
Instead, she willed her legs to slowly descend the stairs, her eyes never leaving the swaying form at the piano. He stopped singing when she hit the landing, the soft clack of her heels giving away her presence. Lucifer's eyes remained on the keys, unwilling or unable to meet hers. The empty bottle glinted on the bench next to his thigh and she took a moment to acknowledge the full one that sat at the edge of the piano. Alcohol's sharp sweetness met her as she perched near the end of the piano bench and she could now see the spots of wetness that dotted his usually pristine dress shirt. A thin trail of liquid had left a whisper from the corner of his mouth, down his neck and disappeared into the collar of his shirt where she could make out its final resting place. He had been hitting the bottle hard. They sat that way for a minute or longer, each too afraid to be the first to speak. One long chord rang out as his hands stopped moving, the notes lingering endlessly in the vacant room. Here they were back again in the stillness. The moment of in-between that had caused her to turn tail. Finally, with thick slowness, she placed her right hand on the white keys and hit a high C note. Then two more. Penelope Decker had once upon a time imagined a career on Broadway, long before her New York dreams came crashing down from an abusive relationship that left her fleeing towards the warmth of Los Angeles. Musical theater had been traded in for short stints on unmemorable comedy shows and television commercials for feminine hygiene products where she was shown running happily on some godforsaken beach clad in an all-white ensemble. Dinky gigs had eventually landed her bigger roles and soon she was starring in major motion pictures alongside the likes of Streep and Pitt. Still, the love of music never left her and she had wholeheartedly put those dreams onto her only child. Voice coaching, piano lessons, the endless train of classic black and white films where people sang in the rain and danced on air. Chloe had cried at every lesson and eventually Penelope conceded to her daughter's requests to spend her weekends fishing and hunting with her dad instead. The only residual that remained were her love of those old musical comedies which they still watched together when fortune found a shared night together. Chloe hadn't necessarily hated the music lessons, there was a joyfulness in the sound of a piano when she hit the right notes, but had begged to forgo the torture of how bad she was at playing. Daddy had always told her that anything worth doing was worth doing well and the discordant notes when she would hit the wrong keys screamed that she was definitely not doing it well. Now fishing and hunting, those she could do. Whenever she'd pull in a wriggling bass after hours of sitting quietly in the boat, man, was her Dad proud. Seeing a piano brought up those acrid memories of inadequacy but she had retained the stalwarts of every defunct player's repertoire: Heart and Soul plus a pretty mean rendition of Chopsticks. Smoothness found its way into her fingers as the long-forgotten joy of playing the right notes lit childhood feelings. His wonderful voice followed soon after.
She briefly felt his gaze settle on her face but she didn't look up, too engrossed in their lilting music. Right now their problems seemed so small. Their complicated lives rendered meaningless within the flow of a few simple notes. Smiles pulled at lips that had cried in anger, frustration, loneliness. Lightness ate up faces that had contorted with pain, inadequacy, confusion. For a few moments they were heart and soul; for a few verses they were dancing on air.
But now I see, what one embrace can do,
Look at me, it's got me loving you,
Madly…
Her hand jerked as she sang along silently, the words seeming to burn her fingers through the keys. What had been a lighthearted song that held no deep meaning suddenly fell out below her in a black chasm. Her mind continued to sing even though she willed it, begged it not to.
Oh! but your lips were thrilling, much too thrilling,
Never before were mine so strangely willing.
They were pinwheeling towards inevitability. She knew that now. Knew that's why she had come in the first place. Knowing the whys, that had been secondary. Shaky hands clutched at the rocks glass next to the sheet prop and she took a long hard gulp. Numbness spread from her throat then down into her stomach and she closed her eyes to trace its trail. It settled snugly along her thighs and down into the ends of her toes. She heard the faint rasp of fabric as his hand moved away from the piano and into the spill of hair that adorned her shoulder, brushing it back gently. The hot air licked at her exposed neck. She felt her nipples harden when his thumb lightly grazed the thin skin of her jaw. No, all of this, it was too much. Too gentle. Too honest. Too inevitable. She opened her eyes, hoping to tell him to stop. There was a complicated life out there. One that couldn't take on the responsibility of what was happening between them. There was too much at stake, too many hearts and souls to hold in their selfish hands. Mazikeen. Delaney. Robbie. Gio. Dan. Trixie. Michael.
Michael.
Stop, she told herself but couldn't will the words to leave her mouth.
It was his eyes. Or rather what she saw in them.
Fever. Lust. Helplessness.
But more than anything, fear.
Deep pools of it sat in the inky darkness of his eyes. It crumbled the reality she had created for Lucifer and for herself. Here sat depth. Here sat capacity. What she had believed or more so what she had needed to believe was falling away like dry dirt from a stone.
He was pulling and like a drag line she felt herself being pulled. Willingly. Impatiently. It was all too easy. The moments before their lips touched, in the waiting room between anticipation and contact, she was cocooned in his radiating heat. The bitter waft of alcohol and cigarettes from his parted lips mingled alongside his faded aftershave. Soap and sweat and, yes, there it was, that particular smell of insanity she had picked up during their first meeting in the penthouse. That sweet familiar scent brought back those images of the darkness that seemed to slurp inside of him. Something sinister. Something that beckoned to her own darkness.
Their lips met gently and she was overcome at the kindness in them. As though she were made of glass. And maybe she was. Her body hummed its sharp crystal note like the tap of a fork on the side of a good wine glass, the reverberation filling up her body in its high clear ring. She would surely crack, break, fall to pieces. A slim hand crept up the front of his shirt towards his shoulder, a tether to keep herself whole. His heart was beating slowly under her palm and she wondered how he could be so goddamn calm when she could feel her own chest racing. Then his breath was back on her face, their lips now parted and already she was wishing them back. It had been too short, too subtle. He had moved kindness into a place where she now wanted ruination. Damnation. Fuck the world, fuck all the hearts and souls. She only wanted him to pull her back. She wanted to shatter. The bench gave out a groan as he shifted closer, his hands now a little more greedy. A little more urgent. Good, she thought, yes.
A shrill ring sprang up between them and she briefly considered throwing her phone across the room. Duty could wait. Honor could kiss her ass for a spell. She was in the midst of her own rare selfishness and everything would just have to hold on. Still, against her body's wishes, loyalty to justice won out and she frantically palmed her ringing phone. Dan's voice sprang up excitedly. They had pinged Gio's phone to a tower near the Black Rock desert and Nevada sheriffs were already en route. He hadn't seemed at all surprised to hear she was at the club and told her to meet him out front in twenty minutes; they were going to leave tonight to make it in time for an early morning rendezvous. Chloe pulled the phone away from her ear and checked the time. Just barely past eleven. If they didn't hustle they could lose their chance at pinpointing Gio's location in the vast stretch of earth that made up the surrounding desertland.
The phone disappeared back in her pocket, her mind already formulating the next steps: a few late night phone calls to the local Nevada departments, warrants exchanged, search parties assembled, transport arranged. Her hand brushed vacantly against swollen lips, a quick reminder of a kiss that now seemed to have happened to another Chloe, and she shook her head. No time for that now. Lucifer had tried to get her to sit back down but she had gently shook his hand off of her wrist. She hated the distressed look on his face. Hated herself for coming here only to take what she had wanted and leave. Her curiosity-hell, let's be honest, her obsession with knowing the truth at all costs-constantly left a slew of bodies in its wake. How could she keep calling herself one of the good guys when she so enthusiastically used up the good in people all in the name of justice? Having a moral code meant nothing if the heart couldn't back it up.
She was no more than two steps up the curved staircase when he had caught up to her, a wildness now eating away at his face. It was the final brushstroke of the masterpiece that now stood before her; all hellfire and chaos, his usually well put-together countenance torn asunder by tonight's long teeth. Exhausted, broken, he had met her on the stairs with a desperation that shook her resolve. You did this to him, she scolded, you did this to him and now you're just walking out again. In her mind she had been the victim tonight. He had blindsided her with his honesty; ambushed her with a truth that she both hated and wanted. Then why was she the one leaving? Why was she the one stoically watching as a man fell apart? She was the one doing the hurting. She was the villain.
"Lucifer...what is it? What's...out there?" She felt the arm around her waist tighten and all at once she was afraid. A shaky hand weaved its way around the front of his shirt, trying to draw the truth out of him once again.
"Death. Demons." Wetness glimmered in his round eyes. "Things I don't want you to see. That no human should ever see."
A slithering form in a papery cocoon. Being birthed. Reborn. Why was her mind so enthralled by the idea? Why, in the crisscrossing beams of the overhead lights, did it seem not only plausible but real? He may be the one with those crazy ass eyes but, babygirl, you're the one who's officially lost it. Two large hands bookended her face in its own cocoon and she fought the urge to tear her head away. He implored her to stay, to reconsider. And for a moment she did because the goose wasn't just stepping on her grave, it was goddamn tap dancing on it. And in some alternate universe maybe she would have given in. Hung up her gun and badge for a few hours to sit and listen to Lucifer's pleas; wasn't that what they were trained to do: use the weapon of their mind first, hands last? Another version of Chloe in another timeline may have put away her pride and her fear to allow the immense possibilities to not only exist but thrive. That Chloe may eventually even find solace and love in the arms of someone like Lucifer Morningstar, but it wasn't this Chloe of the here and now. Not this time. Because Fate and Faith and Destiny had other plans for the detective on the staircase, her hand still entwined in the fabric of his dress shirt, still pleading for an honesty that she didn't have the capacity to accept.
Michael's voice broke their intensity, his voice thick with worry. She tried to turn her head to meet him, to let him know that it wasn't what it looked like, but Lucifer's hands remained firm. Perplexity swam in the depths of eyes that seemed incapable of focusing on anything else and perhaps they didn't want to. They were trying to tell her what his words could not. Promises of comfort, of leisure and pleasure, of a life that could be more than work and hunting and catching. Possibilities of a blooming partnership and friendship and, yes, hopefully down the line, a relationship. His hands sought the wisps of hair that framed her face, trying to find the space that the two of them had lived in only moments ago. If only they could return there, they could figure out what this was all supposed to become. She saw his eyes dart towards the figure at the top of the stairs and fill with anger. With contempt. They were also welling with self-satisfaction. All at once Chloe seemed to understand why Lucifer had wanted her in this when, in this how. This wasn't about the Hand of God was it? This was just old fashioned, machismo-fueled competition. This was about who won. Who could take what away from who. Was this all one big game to Lucifer and she was just something to put on the mantle, eventually forgotten to become another dusty piece of flesh to point to and say, I earned that? Hot sparks of rage licked the inside of her chest and she used it to fuel the ferocity at which she tore his hands away from her face. He had been so tender, so gentle with her. So...honest. Could it really have been a lie? Could anyone be that good at the art of manipulation or was she grasping for excuses again? Looking for an exit, no matter how small, to leave behind the things that frightened her.
Her legs were already running. Up the stairs and into Michael. What she had told Lucifer earlier tonight had been the god-honest truth: there was steadfast security when she was with Michael and here she felt it double over as he wrapped a smooth hand around her shoulder. The weight of it calmed her racing heart. Would it have been so easy to throw it away only minutes ago when Lucifer's lips had been over her own? Robbie's words echoed in her mind. "He glimmers and glams with his pretty boy face and nice suits but he's the master manipulator. The Devil, if you dig it."
And yes, she did dig it. Because the words felt right. Felt true. She had known it in some capacity the moment they had met. Had sensed the crawling creature that lived beneath his skin, watching and waiting. A shiver worked its way over her body and Michael's arm tightened.
"You okay?" he asked.
She reached up and squeezed the hand that hung over her shoulder. "I think so. What are you doing here?"
"Dan called and told me about Gio. I cashed in a few favors and got us a charter that can take us to the regional airport in Empire. Figured we could use all the help we could get to catch this asshole."
"Yeah? And who's gonna fly us there?"
He smiled. "You're looking at him."
And she was. She was looking at him. Looking at a face that she knew one day, in some distant future, she could love. Because he was stable. He was uncomplicated. But mostly because he shared a face with someone who had gripped her pragmatism and shattered it into bright shards of hope. A man who made her believe that there were other worlds than these and that they were all filled with infinite possibilities. Heaven, Hell, demons, devils...they all seemed within grasp when the words fell from his lips. And that was dangerous. That was what kept her feet pointed at the door. Better the devil you know than the angel you don't. Another saying pulled from the Holy Word of Papa Decker, say amen. She fought the urge to look over her shoulder, too afraid that if she saw the broken form of his face she would cry off, turn her feet and fall headfirst into the infinite world. Better the devil she knew. Better to walk out into the comforts of Los Angeles and the LAPD and Michael. Better to live in the finite world where borders were clear and love followed a simple timeline. The arm around her gave another solid squeeze and they walked out the doors of Lux.
A/N: Thank you all for following along so far with this little slice of AU. Your words of encouragement and excitement fuel the days when writing feels all but impossible. Grateful for this community and for the chance to re-imagine worlds together.