Author's notes:
Yeah, finished! ('got scared this morning, I've nearly lost half of it because Drive decided not to save the chap last night.) Crisis averted, anyway.
Let's go.
Another case, another week on Earth, another quarrel about the Devil!
Music:
Lost Control | With Lions
SACROSANCT DOUCHE
13
"Whoever did this is a very bad person."
Whoever's in the room, alive and aware of the seriousness of what's been done here, wouldn't contradict Ella.
Who would see anything 'good' in murder?
Those responsible weren't always bad, but... the consequences were always far from what they all hoped for.
Lucifer's reaction was also far from what Chloe hoped for. "Evil is a very human notion, Miss Lopez. It's only natural, given your origins..."
Seeing Chloe's, Dan's and Ella's puzzled stare on him, he adds, " 'So God created man in His own image'?"
"I have a preference for -'He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him'," Dan recites from the corner of the living room.
Chloe has met his gaze past the first part of the quote, as annoyed as she feels guilty by the last part about the truth. She's aware that his words are for her as much as they're for Lucifer. She knows she can no longer put off having a real talk with him, about what happened that night in the temple.
Nor can she tell the 'truth', as he implicitly asked for it.
What is she supposed to say?
That Lucifer had brought a demon invasion in line - demons possessing dead bodies - before going back to Hell to keep order, to keep them all safe?
Lucifer maintains eye contact with Dan, stony-faced and yet amused by another moralizing biblical attack against the Devil. He did, until he heard the part about how the truth hadn't been a part of whatever he'd said or done since the beginning of time. He tenses in front of the door wide open on the street, on neighbours and others curious from the neighbourhood or not of their new victim.
It's only thanks to Ella's intervention that the quotes game won't turn into a far less politically correct exchange, exchange of punches even, at a crime scene. "See? We're all feeling the loss today. All because there's someone bad enough to kill on 'Big Guy's Day'..."
She shakes her head, her camera slowly raised up to her sad face for another shot of the victim's, immortalizing this profanation crime to God's day.
"Sunday is His day. That and Ben's day," she says.
"Ben?" Chloe repeats, intrigued.
Ella nods, passes the strap of her camera over her shoulder before taking her kit from the bag at her feet. "Ben & Jerry's Karamel Sutra on my couch after service."
"Out-and-out foodle are you, Miss Lopez? The Almighty Mindless Idiot couldn't be sanctified in other ways!" Lucifer teases her, overly emphasizing the 'mindless idiot' part when his gaze meets Dan's.
Torn between making fun of him and her growing inner conflict, Chloe takes great care to not cross their gazes, far more interested in solving this murder than in her both ex and future husband's conflicts.
Future husband?
The word went so quickly through her mind that she barely catches its meaning now. It's not so much the word as what it might imply that bothers her.
There are so many names for their relationship, she and Lucifer.
'King and Queen of Hell' wins the overstatement's gold medal, for sure; although it's an accurate statement given the facts. That's what it is; a fact, it's more factual than desired, more than a word of their own.
For them.
The other words are simple, more complicated, which doesn't entirely fit with them as a couple. Even the word 'couple' sounds...
… wrong?
Partners, companions...
Boyfriend? Ugh, no; she's not a kid anymore.
Deckerstar? 'Sounds more like an eulogistic title than a real naming for what they are.
What are they?
What could they be over four months?
What would they find after eight months - more for him - of separation?
Find out whoever did this, Chloe. Find some normalcy in your life again.
This thought brings a long sigh to her lips. There is few things better than murder to 'get back to normal' after the Devil has started to nest in your version of normalcy. The corners of her mouth turn up as she imagines Lucifer cleaning his feathers like any other nestling of Earth's wildlife.
After all, God could very well have been inspired by His children to create the rest, just as He had created Humanity from His own image.
Thinking about the murder is also reassuring, it's comforting - somehow - to realize that her life had never been... ordinary, even within the framework of 'normalcy'.
She's never been normal anyway.
"What a mess…" Chloe says, looking around.
She steps over a broken terra cotta vase near the front door, probably placed there to brighten up the victim's modest interior space. The decor is modest too, just like the neighbourhood. El Sereno isn't really a stopover for tourists and even less so for the rest of L.A.
Chloe can't help but see a connection with Penelope Sanchez's murder.
East Los, again.
Another strange death in less than two weeks, not the kind of murders that were often recorded in this part of town moreover.
Could it just be a coincidence?
Sanchez didn't live in this kind of poor neighbourhood, unlike Jessie Evans - lying dead between the kitchen door and the living room, her face buried in the round carpet that is as wide as the coffee table; baste of used woods and different pieces of tinted glass for its top.
And home invasions happen all the time around here.
Chloe shakes her head.
Still... who would assault a young woman in broad daylight?
"Yeah, there was a struggle for sure," Dan says, pointing out the cracks in the glass, next to a cup whose contents now soaks the carpet as much as Jessie's blood.
"Perhaps she knew her attacker?" she wonders, looking at the still intact teapot on the edge of the table.
Lucifer leans forward, gazing at its contents with a disdainful sniff, "Who would've killed her for serving him flavoured dried powder?"
"This isn't a murder motive," Dan replies.
Lucifer stands up, shaking his head, "I can't believe you're working for the L.A.P.D..."
Dan looks him straight in the eye, warning him then, "Something you really should keep in mind, man."
Lucifer arches an eyebrow, "Excuse me?"
"Ella, we should analyze the tea once we get back to the station, we never know…" Chloe cuts them off quickly, touching the blue teapot with her gloved hand. "It's still warm."
"Better not drink this, Detective," Lucifer tells her, Dan's strange threat forgotten for the moment.
She rolls her eyes while putting her other glove on, "Because it might be useful evidence for the investigation?"
"Because it's undrinkable!" he says very seriously. "Tea bags... here's the real blasphemy!"
Still taking pictures of the table, broken cups and teapot of bloodcurdling murder, Ella chuckles, "So it's true? British people are really tight on the art of tea?"
"I'm not British. I am Devil-ish."
Ella stares at him skeptically. "And the accent is for...?"
"For sounding as charming as I look," Lucifer replies, as serious as ever.
"Really?" Chloe asks.
He shrugs. "I speak every past and present language, Detective. How foolish of me it would have been not to make good use of it. Besides... I know how much you like this accent. I thus tend to believe that my choice was the best, wasn't it?"
She could hardly pretend the opposite, not with this arousing quiver running down her spine. She gives the glare, though - annoyed with him not respecting the 'professional behavior' rules they agreed on since his return.
She's even more annoyed when she gets that he respected them a second later, that he's just acting… 'normal'.
It is.
It's them.
She's the one who is acting different now, who's taking whatever he says as anything but an inconsequential teasing.
But there would be consequences.
Quick ones, as quick as her inappropriate thoughts following this quiver.
"Lucifer."
"Detective?" he answers back, with the 'best' intonation for his devilish charms.
"This is a crime scene."
"So it seems."
"Shall we focus on the crime?" she proposes.
"Great idea," says Dan.
Lucifer nods, his amused smile - proud, perhaps, of the effect he knew he had on her - not leaving his face as he walks back to the front door, Ella whispering to him, thumbs up; "Great choice, buddy."
"Thank you, Miss Lopez."
Shaking her head, Chloe pulls on her gloves to wrist level and flexes her fingers before grabbing one of the photo frames that had fallen on the carpet. The glass is cracked in the middle, an almost perfect diagonal crossing the text within, preserved from the dust and blood that had soaked much of the synthetic wool.
"Looks like our victim was a believer too," she says, her fingers passing over the glass at the level of the cross overhanging the text, then frowning. "What's that, Latin?"
She doesn't have time to decipher the first sentence when Lucifer has once again approached her to try to take the frame from her hands.
"Rather fitting to this Holy Sunday," he says.
Chloe moves her gloved hand away from his that's over her shoulder. She taps his fingertips, replying reproachfully, "As much as not contaminate possible evidence. Gloves?"
Lucifer rolls his eyes, "Right… gloves would certainly prevent the contamination of Father's sacrosanct Word from a devilish touch of mine, what the hell was I thinking?"
Chloe giggles, Lucifer's sulky expression disarmed by her reaction. A smile drains his face from the heavy tension of Dan's unfounded, yet totally understandable, accusations against them both. Eager to maintain some frivolity around such a serious crime, Chloe does her best so as not to look at her ex, neither listening to his sighs nor his muttering near the window.
She turns her attention back to the photo frame.
"Quasi gregem, sunt posuit in inferno; mortem facit eorum pascua..." she reads aloud. " 'Gregem'... gregem; it means 'group' or 'gang', maybe? 'Inferno' for Hell and 'Mortem' for dead. 'A bit macabre, mh?"
"More precisely; 'Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol; death shall be their shepherd, and the upright shall rule over them in the morning. Their form shall be consumed in Sheol, with no place to dwell," Lucifer translates effortlessly as only two in three present persons stare at him, surprised.
Well... Chloe is still getting used to it, slowly but surely.
Once the surprise is gone, Ella shivers in front of the body. She shakes her head and grunts, "Psalms… not my favorite part of the holy book."
"That makes two of us," Lucifer says. "Boredom is part of the deal when you read such bloody nonsense, anyway. But I'm surprised you know a few Latin words, Detective!" he adds, turning to her.
Shrugging, Chloe puts the frame back where she found it, "Just a few words."
It's the least you could do after days spent on the web or with your nose in arcane books. This is the only useful thing she had learned, really; really annoyed that every website, every read book, from the first page to the last one, every available terrestrial source of information had proved Lucifer's point.
Human perception really sucks.
Centuries of sanctifications, of shared ideas about the good, the evil, about God, the Devil, Hell, Heaven; years of moronic, yet supposedly intensive judgment of every detail around this single, big question….
'How does Hell work?'
And no one ever agreed on an answer?
How could Humanity have only agreed on the Devil being 'evil' in the first place?
United in stupidity, not knowing an inch of the truth.
Chloe knows better, at least. She knows the Devil.
Yet, she wants to know more.
She had promised herself that she would no longer go alone in this quest for... for 'multiple perceptions' since Kinley, since Lucifer's return in Hell. Back then, she hadn't been alone, not the first days. Linda had listened to her, answering general questions about Lucifer, like Amenadiel had given some answers about Hell's functioning, back to the time when he wanted his brother getting back to his task. Maze had been there, too - telling her everything she knew about Hell's borders, who could come in, who were guarding them and why.
"There are some creatures that aren't welcome anywhere, you know?"
Then everyone had come to terms with the possibility that had gradually become the truth; the truth that Lucifer would never come back.
But he did.
And he would leave her again.
Chloe is determined not to let him go as easily as the first time. And if he must go anyway, well... she wants to make sure she'd done everything possible to keep him safe here with her.
He did come back, when everything said that he wouldn't, when everyone told her that he had had no choice, that it had been the only solution for everyone.
Whether he made a deal with God or not, whether Hell can only contain these unruly roaring demons for a few months, whether Michael isn't Lucifer, that he's the rightful King or not... all this only sounds like the 'truth' to her, all this still remains to be proven, to be contradicted if they're lucky.
With some research.
Research she wants to do alone this time.
What's the point in telling anyone?
She already knows what everyone would say; said differently for different people, but the message would remain the same disillusion, her heart being stabbed all the same.
That's the way it is, there's nothing you can do.
She can't give up.
Not just because the last week of research has been dead ends after dead ends, not just because Lucifer seems to get used to the situation...
Not just because 'that's the way it is'.
This is them, him - Lucifer, her... her indefinable half - that matters to her.
"I'd be happy to fill in these language gaps for you Detective," Lucifer whispers with a smirk.
Chloe turns her face slightly towards his, which is closer than she first thought. The gap left between could be filled with just another movement, her thoughts turned intense for this ambiguous offer.
The close sensation of his body could almost overshadow everything else around. She's close to overshadowing everything else around, her senses aroused by the gap. They hadn't been so close, hadn't been together in the same room for so long, for a few days.
Chloe probably wouldn't have seen him until Tuesday night if they hadn't been called on this new murder this afternoon. She'd been quite busy with paperwork about Sanchez's still unresolved case and he'd been as much busy with his club and other things seemingly more important than another 'boring' paperwork session. Checking every available data about the volunteers with Francis' help wasn't a partner's prerogative, as he'd told her on the phone.
Neither are they prerogatives for her, to be honest, not for the 'results' and 'strong leads' part at least.
Dan had been right about that; the real murderer had also been smart enough to give a false name and remove any pictures of himself from his personal file. As for surveillance images in the Center, he'd barely been shown in a partial, unusable profile on them. How clever he'd been to use a junkie to do the dirty part...get a good Identikit picture from Francis had been….
Well, it'd been 'interesting', to say the least.
First, the guy has brown shoulder-length hair. Then red short-hair, grey protruding eyes. But no, his eyes are small, green….
She'd never admit it, but...
Lucifer had been right not to get more involved, even though she would have liked to have him with her anyway.
Chloe had been reluctant to let him attend to his business - whatever it was - but she couldn't keep him around day and night either, not just because these days, these nights, would soon be over.
Her hands soon grow sweaty, latex sticking to them as she'd have liked to touch him, touch his lips, to be able to forget the slightest gap in her life. Her heart beats rhythmically with the panic she knows too well now.
One beat for Hell, for its mysteries that she'd probably never understand.
Another beat for the time being, passing by again.
The next one is for the present, remaining time.
Before Tuesday.
"Not sure this woman's beliefs are gonna help us fill in the blanks around her murder…" Dan mumbles.
"Oh come now, Daniel!" Lucifer exclaims, turning his face away from the Detective's, "This is His day!"
Chloe coughs as her cheeks turn pink, and then straightens up, "Dan's right. Let's focus on the wolf."
Lucifer's laugh fills the room as his hand brushes his partner's forearm, who quivers with inappropriate and unexpected pleasure under her sleeve, "That's a good one, Detective! Although I'd rather have chosen the 'beast', to fit with the simplistic conception of 'Evil' here."
Chloe turns to her colleague, "Ella?"
Ella pulls some bloody locks of hair out of the victim's wound, right behind the left ear, "She died from the blow to the head, that's for sure - given the amount of blood on the carpet. Maybe with…" She falls silent for a second, looking at the debris, then at the baseball bat that rolled under the couch, "...a blunt object?"
She turns the aforesaid object in her hands, the wood polished by years and frequent use revealing a spot with clotted blood a half-turn later.
Definitely a blunt object.
Lucifer scoffs, "Baseball is definitely His thing."
Chloe's eyebrows rise, "You don't like baseball?"
"He doesn't like team sports in general…" Dan sighs in the corner, eyes stuck to his notebook.
Lucifer's glare welcomes his provocative comment.
"I have my reasons. Who would like to see such a regrettable home run anyway?" he murmurs, sincerely sorry for the woman's fate.
She was so young.
Way too young, younger than Chloe.
She quietly watches blood trails coming from Jessie Evans' dark hair to her cheek. She's barely 30 years old, no children, working in a minimarket. No close relatives to call. Another blood trail is nearly touching her right open eye; open to this eternal question.
Why me?
She probably imagines this but… now that she knows, Chloe can well hear this question repeating itself over and over again for the many victims who felt guilty before their death. In their hell loop.
Would Jessie be the same?
Believe in all this… it doesn't protect you from your twisted feelings.
Kinley knows it doesn't, wherever he's being tortured in Hell.
Chloe's gaze naturally comes back to her partner.
Could he know if she's down there, too?
She purses her lips, he surely would know - if not here and now, in four months, in Hell. Maybe less if Lucifer's estimation is false. How can they know if Hell, if this 'Lilith' and Michael will be able to rein demons in until he's back?
This is Hell.
Hell forever bound to Lucifer.
What if something happens? What if Michael wanes someday? Knowing the guy, he could make the task harder for Lucifer, too. What if Lilith gets tired of doing the Devil's job and starts to want more? Something more like the throne?
"Hell was built so that no demon could take control of the throne. Only a celestial could rule. An angel…."
Well, Chloe and Lucifer were 'built' so that neither could live without the other, without following their needs.
Perhaps even more Lucifer than her, a 'simple' miracle desperate to make the Devil stay?
"Not listening to my desires isn't my nature, is it?"
"But I also feel so much more."
"I want more; for you, for me."
More.
Is she only able to give him whatever he needs, whatever his most darkest desire is?
A phone ring cuts her thoughts off.
Lucifer takes his out of his inside pocket, then checks who's calling him, not taking the call.
A smirk appears on Chloe's face, "Don't tell me Maze's still acting up with Lux stocks."
"Oh she wouldn't dare, not after you forced this deal on both of us, Detective! Besides, my apologies were breathtaking enough to have five 'decades' peace."
She can see Dan's skeptical eyebrows rise from here, "She's a lucky weirdo, yeah."
"I'll take the call outside," Lucifer says, which makes Chloe frown.
"Why?"
"It's date-related," he answers, walking around Jessie's body.
Chloe ignores Ella's high-pitched squeal near the coffee table.
" 'Our' date, yes," she replies as Lucifer has already a foot outside, "What are you hiding?"
"Nothing, Detective. I just want to make it special, that's all."
Not giving her another chance to distract him, Lucifer walks to the porch, his phone at ear level, away from any eavesdropper inside - dead or alive.
Ella squeals louder, "Oooooh! It's so cute!"
"Could we just… focus on the body at our feet?" Chloe mutters, embarrassed.
Dan approaches the body, more annoyed than he previously was, "I definitely can."
-xXx-
The afternoon isn't yet over that Chloe's annoyance has gotten close to Dan's, although hardly for the same reasons. It escalates as she looks up from her papers.
"Please tell me you didn't book a hot air balloon or a private jet," she says.
Lucifer looks up from his phone, Chloe's main source of irritation - right after the phone's owner, her ghostly partner of the last few hours of investigation. She gets that the start of new cases isn't always... thrilling, past the discovery and researches on the crime scene; the pictures and papers placed here and there all over her desk aren't.
She also knows that Lucifer isn't the type to stay still for more than five minutes. However, watching him going out to take phone calls, no matter what they were busy with - questioning witnesses, gathering evidence, trying to make links between their statements and the rare surveillance footage they got from traffic cams… it's seriously starting to get on her nerves.
All the more so that he persists in keeping her in the dark.
All the more so that she can't rein in this feeling of panic by questioning, gathering and making links between the few available clues.
It gets worse as hours go by.
She can't focus on anything, when all she should be thinking about is how best to find the person who did this to this woman.
Nothing had enough power over the Devil.
Nothing Lucifer would do would make the situation 'normal'.
"Book a private jet?" he repeats. "Why would I do such a thing?"
"I don't know. Looks like you hold the reins of 'our' date."
"No 'reins' in the air, trust me on this," he says, his phone back in his pocket after this thirtieth text conversation.
Chloe arches an eyebrow, to which Lucifer reacts right after sitting on the edge of the desk; "No excessive bookings of any kind, you have my word."
"No hot air balloon?"
"None. The weather isn't really in line with 'airy' activities anyway."
She smiles. "No private jet?"
"None that I'm planning to book for the occasion, Detective. I've got three in L.A."
Watching her eyes widen slightly amuses him, given his smile widening over seconds.
Yet, he puts his hands in the air, "...and not planning to use any of them."
Chloe breathes a little easier. Smiling too, she grabs a picture stuck under her partner's buttocks which he slowly lifts for her, his smile even wider. Pulling the photo sharply, she looks away from the temptation.
"I hope so," she tells him. "I have Trixie all week and I can't ask Maze to keep her longer than a couple of hours."
"Why not ask your ex to keep the little urchin?"
"Because there's 'ex' in the word 'ex'?"
"A short word moreover, not that it helped the Detective Douche to learn its meaning, did it?" Lucifer points out to her as he takes his flask in his other pocket. Unscrewing its neck despite Chloe's disapproving look, he shrugs, "Well… we can't ask too much from 'mindless idiot', I guess."
Chloe puts the first picture in front of her and takes another one away from her partner.
She shrugs in turn, her fingers passing over Jessie Evans' lifeless eyes, "It's not so much our…" She hesitates so long that Lucifer has already drunk two or three sips of whisky and screwed the neck back on. Passing a fourth round movement of his fingers around the silver cork, he stares at her quizzically, "-our... relationship that's the problem as the way you left," she manages to say without stumbling over the word.
Lucifer's puzzled expression doesn't budge. "You're not planning additional bargained apologies for your ex, are you?"
Chloe rolls her eyes. "Not what I meant, no."
"Good! Calming douches require much more skills than my natural charms can provide."
Natural? She wouldn't put it that way.
Devilish? Yeah, more accurate.
"Although I'm surprised that he missed me at all?" Lucifer continues, frowning. "What should I've done anyway, put a basket of pudding in front of his door with a farewell note?"
"It's not you."
He turns to her, "But you just said that—"
"Yes, it's you. It has something to do with you and your last departure, but-" Chloe sighs deeply, her fingers tapping the edges of the picture repeatedly, "...it's my fault, not yours."
"How so?"
Another sigh crosses her lips as she meets Lucifer's perplexed gaze again. She looks around, making sure there's no eavesdropper nearby, making sure Dan is still busy at his desk - a lonely figure of professionalism that she was finding it harder and harder to respect since she knew the whole truth about Lucifer.
She doesn't even dare to think about the times before, all those strange details that had almost made her cross this crucial line between 'good' and 'evil', between what is allowed or not to do justice to the victims... all those details that had only a single origin; the Devil sitting on her desk.
That knife that had disappeared from evidence, or when Lucifer showed up 'drunk' at a crime scene - well, now she knows it's literally impossible for him -, drunk or on the verge of passing out, an out of control Devil during murder investigation...
Jeez, he had brought her out of rules since day one!
He had 'kidnapped' their main suspect in a car accident, had given him a gun and organized a western-like duel.
How could she still be surprised that Dan no longer trusts her?
After all this, after what happened to Charlotte...
What she asked him, back to the temple, it's—
This was a terrible mistake.
"I-I... I asked him to help me cover our tracks at the Mayan temple that night," Chloe confesses, not daring to look at Lucifer.
She only hears their respective breathing and the brouhaha of the station after that. She lifts her chin eventually, intrigued by his silence, even more surprised by his expression of deep perplexity.
"Your fingerprints were all over the place," she explains to him. "Mine too, it was... I couldn't hide these bodies, couldn't make them look like mass suicide all by myself. I… I didn't know who else to call."
"You took unnecessary risks, Detective," he finally says.
"I couldn't take the risk of losing my badge, Lucifer," she retorts, annoyed.
"What I meant was that it would've been better to call Maze instead."
Chloe frowns, "She's a demon, yeah - but I doubt she'd have managed dozens of bodies all by herself, too. Not without drawing attention, at least…."
"True for the last part," Lucifer admits willingly, tilting his head to the side. "But she'd have definitely helped with the Douche's suspicions about you and me. As a demon, it wouldn't have been the first time she would clean up a hellish mess for me."
With these words, he takes one of the pictures, mixed interest gleaming in his gaze before he notices his partner's confused one, "Come now, Detective! Arson would have been easier to sell than 'mass suicide', don't you think?"
"Arson?" Chloe repeats.
"Well, yes, isn't it the best way to destroy unpleasant evidence and yet stick to the facts?"
It might have been best, indeed. If she'd have asked Maze to help her instead of Dan... all they'd have had to do was get rid of the most 'damaged' bodies. As for the corpses left, well...
It isn't strictly a 'bonfire', but—
"Right. That's one way to do it," she admits after a few seconds.
In her defense, she had a lot of things on her mind that night. Warning Dan had seemed the least worst of them all. Now, in hindsight, something out of Dan's reach; it's like she'd shot herself in the foot.
"Damn it… I'm so stupid!" she grumbles.
Lucifer is fast to comfort her, "Come now, let's save this title for your ex, shall we?"
"Dan's not 'stupid' enough to let go, Lucifer. He still hasn't…."
"Why should we care?"
Chloe shakes her head, her eyes go back to Dan's desk; empty. Then to the Lieutenant's. She purses her lips, looking at Lucifer, "We should care because he might talk to someone. And I won't blame him for trying."
Lucifer stares at her for a moment. "Whether he speaks or not, you don't have to speak for him, you know? You have every right to feel betrayed."
"I don't," she instantly replies, "And he won't betray me."
At least, she hopes not.
Lucifer nods, willing to trust her on this as she keeps trusting a man who had hated her partner since day one, really. He puts the picture back on the desk, his index finger lingering on the broken pieces of their victim's tea set. "I'd like to believe the same, and quite honestly, I have nothing against yet another Devil hunt in the name of my Sacrosanct Father, led by the sacrosanct douche of the precinct moreover. As long as you aren't around; I won't risk your life, nor your spawn's… never."
He smiles at her; sacrosanct expression of his feelings for her, for her well-being, as much as her daughter's.
"Anyway, meanwhile your ex's decision, I could just… take things in hand. What do you say?"
Chloe squints. "By 'hand' you mean 'your hands-hands', right? Too bad, I was just starting to get used to your 'good manners' and 'holy words', really."
"Actually, I had other bodily extremities in mind," he says, folding his 'hands-hands' on his lap.
She stares at him. Lucifer raises his thumbs and mimes the awkward flight of a truth perfectly hidden between his shoulder blades.
Chloe opens her mouth.
"How did you know?"
Both partners turn their heads towards Ella, arms folded over her chest and a polar bear happily licking an ice cream dripping with melted chocolate on her T-shirt.
"Know what?" Chloe answers - 'asks' - back.
Her friend shakes her head, "Han han! I asked first, Decker - now spit it out, so I can praise you properly!"
Lucifer laughs, amused, "All the more appropriate in this 'holy' day. You're God's miracle, after all!"
His comment with double meaning annoys the aforesaid miracle even more.
"Ella, how can I even tell you how I knew if I don't know what you're talking about?" she sighs.
"'Traditional ovation' it is, mh? I was planning a 'Decker-power' choreography but hey... you're the miracle!" Ella complies with a shrug.
Lucifer's smile lights up his whole face, "That right she is."
Chloe does her best to ignore his charming intonation, her 'charmed' body parts too. She ignores the thought following her gaze, first from annoyance, then stopped to his groin, then his hands a bit lower.
The thought, the memory of his hands in her own thighs.
"Anywhere, Chloe."
She ignores it.
She's trying.
Trying hard.
"You were right - because you. are. so. ta-len-ted!" Ella overemphasizes on these last words, "Something was clearly wrong with the tea!"
Lucifer sits up, making Chloe's 'ignorance' easier, "Besides its bitter taste?"
The Detective smiles, teasing him; "And here I thought you like that…"
The Devil's lips hesitate between pout and grin; his gaze, between revolt and desire.
She looks at him. For a long time.
She should stop.
"Whatever it tastes, this would've been the least of Jessie's problems if she'd drunk any."
Chloe looks away, frowning, "So she didn't?"
Lucifer smirks, "It would seem that the Sacrosanct Douche up there spared her quite unpleasant aftertaste at death's doors."
"And not just any aftertaste!" Ella adds. "Which brings us back to you Chloe, you and your unmatched sixth sense."
Waving her arm exaggeratedly, she places the folded paper on the desk, then working her shoulders so that it fits with her singing ovation, "Decker-power ooooon, go on and wooooon!"
Chloe reads what's written on the paper, raising her head shortly after to Ella, who's still dancing around her desk, "Tetrodotoxin?"
She spins around and clicks her fingers, "Yeah! So? How did you know?"
Lucifer takes the paper from the desk, frowning, "Isn't this the same substance that shortened our previous victim's life?"
Chloe nods, "Mrs Sanchez, yes."
"Looks like our man is keeping himself busy," Lucifer adds, putting the paper back in place.
" 'Keeping killing'," Chloe whispers.
"How did you know?" Ella repeats for the third time.
Chloe sighs, shakes her head, "I didn't. It's just... another first-degree murder in East Los in less than two weeks, it's…."
"It's a sign that you're awesome, Decker-girl!" Ella congratulates her with a slight punch to Chloe's shoulder, who smiles.
"Thanks."
"This one is nothing like his 'first', Detective," Lucifer suddenly says.
She looks at him, himself busy looking at the many pictures of the crime scene. His expression is so much more focused than the last few hours, more like the Devil seeking justice than like her partner seeking distraction.
More immortal than human.
She starts to imagine this same expression in a more 'hellish' context.
She imagines the King in action.
Another kind of shiver runs between her shoulder blades.
"What do you mean?"
"Look at all this mess. This doesn't look like our suspect; he was much more in the details with his first murder. Things didn't turn out the way he hoped. Well, we never feel the same as we did with our 'first', do we?" he adds; the previous royal presence fading away with his proud, broad smile.
Chloe takes a closer look at the pictures too. Now that she knows that the two murders are linked for a detail, others - looking useless at first - might emerge and give an even stronger lead.
One picture after another, she thinks over the last crime scene, goes through the intriguing details around the poisoning.
One poisoned by a third party.
The other one almost poisoned... by someone else, too?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Francis had poured the poison when Penelope was still in the Center and then followed her to make sure she was okay - full of remorses. He had lost her in the street a few minutes later and, feeling even more guilty, had turned back to a fast-food restaurant where he had heard the news hours later.
The video footage from the restaurant proved his innocence, for the rest, even though most of the crime had been... his doing.
The cross under Penelope's eye.
Water mixed with sodium chloride around her head, face to the ground.
Chloe didn't see any of this at Jessie Evans' place.
But this murder was 'messy', as Lucifer said.
It had turned into another kind of murder, a lot messier than intended.
Maybe Jessie saw him pour the poison and fought back?
Maybe they knew each other? From before?
"What about the rest? 'Found anything else?" she asks Ella.
Turning her head, she sees her friend shaking hers, "Just that the time of death almost matches with the 911 team's arrival. Jessie's neighbors reacted pretty fast."
"It matches, really?" Chloe repeats. "How much exactly?"
Ella shrugs, "So much so that our guy would've been caught if he'd stayed sixty seconds more? But he's gonna be caught," she adds convincingly. "Because Decker-power is ooooo—"
"As much as I appreciate the tune, Miss Lopez, you should seriously reconsider the lyrics of the chorus;" Lucifer cuts her off.
"Sixty seconds earlier and we'd have got him locked in jail forever…" Chloe whispers, annoyed.
Lucifer turns to her with a smile, "Well, if it makes you feel any better, Detective... I think our suspect is a lot more frustrated than you are."
Chloe stares at him, confused.
"You have spoiled his fun," Lucifer says. "Being so abruptly interrupted while his first time was so perfect…. Surely, he must be climbing the walls by now!"
Chloe sits up, eyebrows rising and mouth opened. It makes sense, especially since the poison hadn't been used as originally planned by their suspect. Nothing happened as he'd planned; the tetrodotoxin, slow death by suffocation and paralysis, the rest of his M.O.
In addition to the unexpected, the unfinished had followed.
It's double or nothing, but...
Given the first murder, given its details...
There's a small chance that—
"You're right," she says.
She meets Lucifer's gaze.
"Shouldn't we make it up to him, then?"
He arches an eyebrow, "What's on your mind?"
"Private performance?"
Lucifer doesn't take long to understand what she means by that, enthusiasm sparkling in his eyes as he smiles at her, "Brilliant idea! It will require some preparations, but this soul in torment deserves all these efforts, doesn't he?"
Ella, who has watched them all along, listened to each answer and deduction from one partner to the other, makes a noise between a squeal and a fond sigh, her hands pressed against the polar bear fond of chocolate ice-cream, "Haaaaan! 'Never think this possible but… watching you both exchanging words that would sound nonsensical for anyone else and yet finding some sense in them… This is cute as ever!"
Ella's hands clap in rhythm with her song, "Deckerstaaaaaaar, star piercing the sk—!"
Moving hips and shoulders in rhythm as well, she's nevertheless stopped by Lucifer's raised hand, "You just reminded me why karaoke is proscribed in my club, dear."
Chloe stands up and sees that Dan has just come back. "I'm gonna call the officers back from the crime scene and ask Dan to watch Trixie for the night."
"How about reminding him what 'ex' means as well, Detective?" Lucifer exclaims in her back, then sighing, "Do-... Okay, how about you stop hugging me like bloody anaconda, Miss Lopez?"
Chloe's amused smile starts to fade as her steps bring her closer to her ex's desk, who doesn't look up from his laptop, not even when her presence near the staircase is plenty noticeable. "Hey, Dan."
"Chloe."
"Are you busy right now? I need you to do something for me," she asks him, brushing her palms together.
Dan sighs and moves his chair aside to face her, "Go ahead."
"Could you keep Trixie tonight?"
He raises his eyebrows, surprised. He sits up, both hands on the arms of the chair, his expression changing instantly, "Oh."
"I know it's my week, but-... We're gonna have a stakeout, at the victim's house. There's a small chance that our man comes back on the crime scene, so... It might last longer than expected, as you know. I'll probably be back home at 7 next morning," Chloe explains.
"Sure, no problem. It's… for the best, I guess." He smiles; a tense smile as he rubs his hands, "I wouldn't have liked spending the night on my own, anyway."
Chloe frowns, staring at him. He keeps rubbing his hands, first avoiding her gaze, then looking for it; "Tonight is... it'll be…."
His gaze comes back to his desk, to the photo frame on the left - Charlotte Richards' lost smile, Dan's - lost, too.
That's when Chloe gets it.
"Oh, Dan… I-I'm sorry, I really am. I didn't realize that… that it'll be a year tonight."
She'd been so annoyed by his behavior over the past few weeks that she hadn't even asked herself why he'd been more aggressive in the past few days. Neither did she ask when he came to pick up Trixie on Friday evening, when he barely spoke to her and cut off her questions about his private life.
She only thought of herself, of his obsession to piss Lucifer off.
She didn't even think—
Chloe chews on her bottom lip, "I can ask someone else to watch over Trixie, if you'd rather... Maze's on a hunt, but I—"
Dan stands up and gathers his papers into a file, "No, no. It'll be fine, don't worry. Besides... I don't mind keeping our daughter away from your boyfriend's weird sidekicks for a while. You know... with the last unexplained events."
"Maze would never hurt Trixie, Dan."
"I'd like to believe that; just like I'd like to believe that Lucifer's not a bad guy, but…."
He sighs heavily.
Chloe looks over her shoulder. Lucifer is busy showing Ella pictures on his phone, one nodding in approval, the other smiling at every comment she makes - far, so far away from the 'bad guy' analogy.
Far from what Dan thinks to know about him.
She turns back, moving a hand towards him, "Look, I know you're angry with me about the temple, but whatever you think happened there is more complicated than it seems, Lucifer is more complicated than he seems, but certainly not 'bad'."
"Maybe. Or maybe it's you who sees more in him than he really is," Dan replies. "As always, as with Charlotte's murder."
"Dan, Lucifer had nothing to do with—"
"I know." Dan runs a hand over his face, sighing again, "I know he's not as responsible as I'd like him to be. But he knew! He knew who Pierce was long before Ch—"
His voice breaks, his gaze lost in the past as Chloe averts hers, the loss shimmering into his being too much for her.
He gulps, eyes to the ground, "I'm trying to get over this, to move on. I really am, Chloe."
"I know."
"But I won't be able to do so without answers. Why didn't he say anything? Why didn't you tell me about that night at the temple?"
Chloe's mouth sets in a hard line, "I can't answer that, Dan."
Her answer, which isn't exactly one, upsets him more, "Well then… you'll understand that I can't let Trixie spend more time with a potential mass murderer."
Chloe frowns, more annoyed than sorry by the situation.
She folds her arms on her chest, raising her chin defiantly, "Too bad, because she did spend time with him. Long times."
"What?"
"Lucifer came by the other night. You know... our 'Taco's Tuesday night that you skipped?"
"Seriously, Chloe?!" Dan whispers angrily. "You're completely out of your mind!"
"Lucifer's not a murderer, Dan!"
"Tell that to Pierce."
Shocked that he would bring up Pierce's case to support his absurd behavior, Chloe takes a deep breath, her fingernails digging into her shirt sleeve so that she doesn't do anything too rash in response, "It was self-defense, and you know it."
"It's the only thing I fucking know!" he exclaims.
She approaches him, dragging him away from his desk behind the stairs, away from supernatural and human eavesdroppers. Some colleagues are already starting to stare at them, including Lucifer and Ella.
"Don't play that card with me!" she retorts, as much furious as he is. "It's more than I ever knew with Malcolm and the Palmetto case."
Dan shakes his head, raising his finger, "Don't use Palmetto to support your secrets, Chloe!"
"Why? Because you're the only one who's allowed to have some?!"
"Because it's notthe same thing!"
"Isn't it?"
He nods, "I wasn't part of Malcolm's scheming! Turned a blind eye to it? Maybe. But I didn't hesitate to stop him when he was ready to kill you! Not once."
"Right… my 'hero'!" Chloe says bitterly.
"I turned myself in! I did the right thing when the situation demanded it."
"When it was too late, yeah."
Dan falls silent, hurt, aware that it hadn't stopped his former partner from kidnapping his daughter, endangering Chloe and others in the chaotic path of this tormented soul who had been released from Hell for the sole purpose of bringing Lucifer back to where he 'belonged'.
Chloe finds this kinda ironic.
A fanatical priest was all it takes to bring the Devil back in Hell, in the end.
What a cliche.
"Right," Dan admits, quieter. "I reacted too late."
He looks at her.
"I don't want this to happen to you, too. Trust me, Chloe, you don't wanna live this kind of shit..."
Chloe shakes her head, her throat tight, "This is different. You have to believe me, Dan."
He nods, "Then give me something to believe in. And if you really can't, well... at least let me get to believe that I still know what's best for my child."
She lets him go back to his desk without a word, with no other choice than to believe like the others that the Devil is only good at doing evil, only good at spreading chaos wherever he goes.
Maybe it's true.
Her life had never been as chaotic as it's been since she met him.
Yet, Chloe only feels grounded in reality, in this world torn between the logic of some and the apocalyptic chaos of others, when she's with the man who'd caused it all.
The same man who's smiling at her, stability into her chaotic, 'normal' life, as she joins him, "Ready to go, Detective?"
She nods.
Lucifer stands up, adjusting his cuffs, then the lapels of his jacket, "Lovely. The sooner we solve this case, the sooner I can get back to preparations."
Chloe smiles, picking up her car keys in the drawer, "No yacht either?"
Before Lucifer could reassure her - or worry her, 'depends on the Devil's answers and mood - Ella shakes her head, bouncing up and down, "Oh, no, no! It's so much better than one hundred yachts!"
While Chloe stares at her friend, Lucifer glares at her.
"Miss Lopez—"
The latter raises her hands, then mimes a key turned between her closed yet curved lips about whatever she knows for Lucifer's plans.
The Devil's forehead creases even more.
"Yup! Don't worry, Luci-Juan! These lips are sealed!" Ella promises him, although her thrilled intonation is quite worrying.
"Thank you," Lucifer tells her; as much annoyed by the diminutive as Ella's intervention.
"I'll just say... you've found your gem, Decker!" she adds, elbowing the Detective. "The Devil is a hopeless romantic!"
Lucifer's expression changes instantly, "I beg your pardon?!"
Chloe could've sworn she saw him blush the second before; it's hard to tell. Probably her eyes playing tricks on her.
Hands in the air again, Ella walks back to her lab, a broad smile on her 'almost' sealed lips, "If you really are the Devil, of course!"
"I am!"
She rolls her eyes, "Sure. Whatever. See you, Deckerstar, staaa—"
The rest of the melody gets lost inside the lab.
Chloe turns towards Lucifer, definitely redder than he's supposed to be. Anger, embarrassment, his devil-form... it's still hard to tell.
"Romantic, hm?" she teases him.
He avoids her gaze.
"Devil-ish, Detective," he corrects her. "Shall we go?"
Not waiting for her approval, he turns back and hurriedly walks towards the exit, the back of his neck still showing red signs of possible romanticism. Or devilish form, who knows?
Chloe follows the Devil's red path with a grin and much less flushed skin.
Big, big chapter, phew!
It's starting to be a habit, isn't it?
As for the next chapters,
I've decided to wait to write everything (and translate in English) before updating anything new. It can take a while. I hope to see you again once it's done ;)
Thank you for your kind words on the previous chapter, feel free to reiterate for this one (which I thank you for taking the time to read) and follow me on twitter/tumblr (ID on previous chap)
See you next time!
