AN:
This chap has both been a real pain in the ass and a delight to write. It made me smile in front of my screen, with stars in my eyes— yes, I make weird faces while writing, probably a good thing that I write alone in my bedroom.
Lucifer, dude… you didn't help me here (your POV for once, moreover!). Anyway, you're worth 4 rewriting X)
For such amount of work, of dedication and feelings filling these pages, this very chapter is my favorite by far. Can't wait to have your thoughts on it :3
A big thank you to Alindorie who helped me change direction when it was necessary and to OkamiShadou98 for checking my spelling as their daily support.
Music
Right place, wrong time | Dr. John (Lucifer piano)
Shooter | Tosch (ambiance LUX)
Someone you loved | Lewis Capaldi
Heart & Soul (Lucifer piano)
DESCARTES WOULD DISAPPROVE
17
Lucifer listens distractedly to the applause following the last brush on the piano keys and sung syllable.
Distracted.
He's not, not the way he wants to be. Neither of his ways had really distracted him till now. And 'now' is late enough to feel bloody infuriated. There are barely a dozen of his guests left from the hundred of the night, who had occupied every breathable space of his club as soon as the door had opened — and their applause sound worn out. A mindless reaction to their host, no matter how perfect his yet extemporaneous performance might have been.
Perfect performance. Worn out. Mindless, too.
Probably not that perfect.
His fingers run over the piano keys with a slight frown.
He had sat down, played a few tunes before this song. Enthusiastic start, melody of a desired although denied distraction, whatever he had done, wherever his face had turned.
Even though the melody has been long sung, some of its lyrics keep swirling in his mind.
'My head is in a bad place
But I'm having such a good time'
He sighs, the lid lowered on black and white keys.
Of all the attempts of normalcy - of 'good time' - he had tried so far, every one of them had turned into bloody failures. Even alone, the only one to risk disappointment, he had missed.
Not that it's his fault.
It's Linda's.
"Just act normal, okay? Don't ham it up."
The Devil never 'hams anything up'. Each of his actions is scrupulous balance between desire, logical thinking and physical skills. He had therefore had trouble with Linda's logic, the very one that had led her to question him about the precise amount of time he would stay on Earth, over and over again. If he balances this 'normal' action like everything else, what's the point of dwelling on such a demoralising monthly notion?
She knows, as everyone else - as Chloe - that he's not staying for long.
What he doesn't know is how to live in the moment with Chloe, in a relationship that has turned more private than professional. His previous 'lived moments' were nothing but drinking sprees, orgies and drugs. Three words out of the Decker dictionary.
A date. A kiss or two. For starters.
That, he managed. All has been settled, the tiniest detail has been handled according to her desires— simple, with nothing looking closely like their former terrible attempts of dating. New place, new menu… he would be present all along moreover, neither 'dump' moves planned nor stewardess interruptus at his place.
What is left keeps bothering him nonetheless. All those moments without carnal arousal in the air.
Chloe isn't only interested in his sexual performance which, as proven for millennia, is perfection. She's not Eve, obsessed with the Devil, the troublemaker— although she had been questioning a lot about Hell lately. Nor does she want his eccentricity, his money.
Whatever she desires, he would be happy to oblige. He thought he knew. He thought Linda knew.
He had asked for her advice last week, as soon as he had been able to free himself from Chloe's arms and walk away from her deep snores on the couch. He had gone to meet her, eager-... no, determined not to make any further mistakes in his relationship with the Detective for their short time together.
Act normal. Don't ham it up.
Linda's advice. That of a human, with the same perception of romantic relationships as the Detective, the same perception of 'earthly' matters in general. A human who had been in the same kind of relationship with another supernatural being, quite effectively he must admit. This is the closest situation to theirs.
Acting normal.
He hadn't acted this way since he's been back— they both had noticed. Had ensued his suspicion for Dad-signed plans and her worries about not being in control of her feelings at all.
It had been normal to avoid Chloe after his session, when she had been drowning under boring paperwork, normal to look for 'Miss Lopez' distractions. It had been normal to forget manners perceived as 'good' by the Detective for his own, so much better and distracting manners with the Douche. Normal not to waste his valuable time at the precinct when the case was at its least entertaining point, checking upstairs when she had been wasting her time downstairs... the victim's room surely was more distracting for him, if not useful for the case.
Which reminds him... in the rush, with Chloe's noises and cry downstairs - from this, Lucifer would never be distracted enough - the drive back to the station and his unpleasant departure; he had completely forgotten the private diary. It's still in the inside pocket of his jacket, completely ruined by the Detective's regurgitations, balled up at the foot of his wardrobe. Its contents might interest her, that's mainly why he had kept it.
"I suppose that your 'helpful try' is out of my perception, then."
He closes his fist on the middle of the lid, slowly.
Maybe not.
It would have been 'normal', however, to give it to her despite her sudden bad mood. Regardless of her glare that had carried words and tense voice, smacking in half the air between them.
But he had just-... lost track with normalcy and let his resentment take the lead, a harsh one. It had come out of nowhere. From just those few words. And Chloe hadn't brought the situation back to her bloody 'carpe diem' precept either. She had followed him in the shadow of this inconsistency that had come out of nowhere as well.
It's an anomaly. The entire day, tonight - even though it had been all about distracting him, as he would've acted before — the whole bloody last week had been an anomaly.
When did he act wrong?
Lucifer's hand brushes the black wood once more, he extends it towards the glass above seconds later. Empty. He turns it several times, in one direction and then in the other, turning also in countless directions what had happened at the precinct. Before that, in the car.
They had spent so much time in the car lately. Lucifer smiles at the thought, at the irony of what the car represents; frozen time, a supposedly 'moving' vehicle yet frozen in place. Yet driving at full speed. Like time does on Earth, like it nearly stops in Hell - faster, slower than anything else with nothing to distract himself.
Last night had been no distraction. Stakeouts rarely sound so. However the time, usually slower to the point of dreadful boredom, had stopped dead in its tracks with the Detective's first snore. At first delighted that she had proved him right, Lucifer had been careful not to point this out to her. At first amused by the force she had put into every snore, what he had felt afterwards... it had been the same feeling than a week earlier, on Chloe's couch, under Chloe.
The same exact feeling on his balcony.
The loss.
That feeling that would come back on her face, on her peaceful expression, for frozen time between two hells.
Here is why he keeps looking at her in those moments. The naive expression ignoring the forthcoming loss. Because nothing is ever lost in dreams, because time doesn't matter. Never. Here's the expression that would soon haunt his.
When time would go on at full speed once her eyes would open.
Here is why he smiles, jokes like he usually would.
Because she wants to live for today.
Not for the loss.
Because Linda had made him believe that her solution was the best of all to satisfy her, to spare her the loss, for just a little while.
But the Detective's expression, her behavior lately… it turns bad, worse even, after each of these 'car' episodes. She doesn't act normal. Less and less. She hesitates a lot, as often as when she had found out about him, although she's far less afraid. Or far more than he can tell. How could he? Her perception isn't his.
"I suppose that your 'helpful try' is out of my perception, then."
Linda had it all wrong.
He should have foreseen such a failure. His therapist had only dated an angel and, despite how most people perceive him, he is no angel. He's the Devil. He is King.
Lucifer pinches the bridge of his nose. Dwelling on the situation this long… it feels like his thoughts have swelled and started to push on his temples. One more push and his brain might implode if he doesn't take action right now. Seeking for something to drink is probably acting too normal or in Linda's way, which he now knows is a dead end. Still, a drink is all he wants.
That and figure out how to act from now on.
If he would keep acting as usual, the logical next step would be to wait for the next day or the Detective's call to show up at the precinct again. If she would act normal, she would then pretend to have more interest for the case than for him.
And he wouldn't care.
Normally.
Normally, he wouldn't have missed his session with Linda for so little. This anomaly, they would have talked about it, they would've both agreed on the Detective's irrational reaction to his laudable efforts.
Normally, he would have known how to act.
He always knew how to act.
Standing up from the piano bench, Lucifer sighs before passing, thanking and passing guests again, all of them thrilled by his performance or willing his company. Conversing with either of them, none of these normal distractions thrills him.
He shakes his head halfway up the flight of the stairs between the dance floor and the bar, both are half as crowded at dawn than during the night. The feeling of dismay sticking to him has too many similarities to what he sometimes feels after his therapy. He congratulates himself for not going last evening. Tonight is a bloody waste already, for only half of what he'd have felt after talking with Linda. His phone buzzes against his chest after another quickly closed chat with a customer.
Miss Lopez [04:01am] - Sham on u!
Lucifer frowns, reading the second text that appeared right after the first.
Miss Lopez [04:02am] - Nice bootie, got it. U can't goose others anywhere. NO EXUDE, DUDE!
Really confused, Lucifer starts to tap away. He offers to the forensic to resume their conversation once she'll have a functional phone, he would even be glad to provide her with an all new one at his expense tomorrow morning. He's been discharged by the Detective, anyway. His phone back in place, he sits on one of the bar tools, from where he could observe plenty without much effort.
The cold marble under his palms freezes his boiling frustration, which hadn't taken long to come back after the short 'texts' interlude, while Patrick pours him another drink to end the night. Maybe that's not its normal end, or it might be— after the pretenses of normalcy last week. The only variable is his gloomy mood, Chloe's, which made no sense at all.
He had much more cheerful night endings. Less weary.
"What's her name?"
His head turns while Patrick places his order in his hands, still flat on the bar. His gaze doesn't linger for more than a second on his interlocutor's face. 'Interlocutor' is a big word, for a locution not yet started. Once he's decided that the man's friendly features won't distract him enough - seated a stool away from his or not - Lucifer's attention goes back to his glass.
The whisky is still there, so little distraction. It doesn't talk, at least.
"It's a secret?"
"It's a sign that I have no desire to talk about it," Lucifer says curtly, not glancing once to the side.
"Who wouldn't wanna talk about their heartache?"
The ill-timed interlocutor's scoff has sounded closer and Lucifer watches from the corner of his eye as the stool to his right is pulled out for prolonged occupation.
"Being in perfect health and immortal, I doubt that my heart is aching in any way."
"Take a look in the mirror, buddy."
Lucifer sits up. He arches an eyebrow. The man points out his face. "That's heartache."
"I literally have no idea what that means."
The man frowns, his lips stretched towards other wrinkles, not as deep as Lucifer had first thought. He's no more than 50s, his black hair grizzled at the top of his forehead and the base of his neck. His gray eyes probe Lucifer's.
"First true love, isn't it?" he figures.
Lucifer's eyebrows rise with his smile, though he's still far from any joyful thoughts. "True? How could love even be lied to?"
"So that's a yes?"
"More like a 'who the hell might you be?'"
The man smiles, holds out his hand. "John Curling."
He shakes it. "Lucifer Morningstar."
"I figured."
"That would've been a real shame - rudeness moreover - if you haven't. Not figuring enough to leave the club owner bloody alone, though."
The whisky hardly burns the back of his throat.
"I can leave," John says.
Lucifer takes a closer - longer - look at him once his glass gets empty, which he tilts to one side and then to the other in his palm. The first affability has given way to a quite intriguing assertiveness. With one single gesture, Lucifer could wipe that smile off his lips; with one single glance, he could make his eyes widen with dread. None of these actions would have the expected effect, witnessed with many of his most unpleasant interlocutors— that, Lucifer knows for sure.
Nothing would manage to make this man tip over his seat, not even Hell on Earth.
For a second, when their eyes meet, it seems like Lucifer is looking at his own reflection.
In a blink of an eye, the illusion is gone. John's poor taste in suits helped, obviously. Lucifer never looks that sloppy — who still thinks that the Van Dycke beard is in, anyway?
Dithering, Lucifer quickly comes to the conclusion that this strange conversation might succeed where everything has failed tonight. Distraction.
"A drink, John?"
The latter nods. Lucifer's tilts towards Patrick, empty glasses out of their sight the next second.
"I rarely forget a face, but I don't think I've ever seen you in my club," Lucifer says.
"Well, Lux didn't exist the last time I was in town."
Lucifer arches an eyebrow. "Homecoming it is, then?"
"More like a nostalgic tourist visit." John turns his head towards the private spaces ahead of the dance floor. "My wife had a good time here."
Lucifer turns around as well, his gaze lingering on the woman sitting alone on the bench, next to the spiral staircase. His forehead creases. "And you leave your wife for a complete stranger's company?"
John shrugs. "You're looking like someone who just reached strong deadlocks, woman-related deadlocks. She'll understand."
"And I still don't understand why this is any of your business."
"Guys must stand shoulder to shoulder."
"We just did," Lucifer replies, to which John chuckles.
"I told you, I can leave."
Lucifer looks at his glass placed in front of him, then at his interlocutor's; two amber-coloured undulations frozen on a dark background.
"How do you know the Detective and I have reached deadlocks?" he asks, not looking up.
"Detective, mh? Funny name."
Lucifer smiles. "I got used to calling her that. She prefers it, too." He frowns, his fingers rotating the glass on the bar. "I think."
"You'll be really certain by asking her, won't you?"
Lucifer gently shakes his head, pinching his lips soon after enough alcohol has fallen in his throat, an endless fall, he hopes. Each glass empties far too quickly to distract him.
"Oh, I know what she wants. That's not the point."
"What is?"
Lucifer scoffs. "You sound like my therapist…."
His phone buzzes again, his expression darkened by the text he just received.
Linda [04:15am] - FOUR months?
He puts it away without texting her back. How does she know about this?
"Only questioning with terrible counsels," he mutters.
"I haven't counselled anything yet."
True. Lucifer stares at him for a moment, his frustrated expression - result of therapeutic scolding - disappears as seconds go by. He smirks, taking the new glass Patrick just poured him, even before it brushes the marble, before the alcoholic dance within it stops. "But you're gasping to, aren't you?"
John shakes his head. "Only if you want me to. Although… any advice turns more as bad than good ones if you don't know what it's all about, mh?"
"Therapist, part two! I doubt you'll be any more help than she's been so far, you and I have nothing in common."
"Oh, but we have," John contradicts him, his lips brushing his first glass for the very first time.
Lucifer stares at him.
John's hand lowers. "The 'first true love'. I know what it feels like."
Lucifer's head tilts to the side as he once again starts rotating his empty glass between his palms.
John leans forward, elbows on the bar. "What's wrong with your... Detective, is that it?"
Lucifer places his glass in front of him. It turns once... two, three times before he admits that tonight couldn't reach higher stages of disappointment anyway. At least, he hopes not.
He sighs.
"I-... I don't know if our two lifestyles will ever allow us to truly understand each other. If I could never give her what she wants. I wish I could, but-" He shakes his head, rounded shoulders, gaze lost in the darkness of the bar. "I have responsibilities that I cannot shirk. Quite invasive ones."
"She knows what these responsibilities are all about?"
Lucifer gives him a bitter laugh with a quick nod. "To their tiniest detail. I- Actually, I'm starting to wonder if she doesn't suffer from personality disorder sometimes! First, she asks me to live the moment without worrying about all this and then... nothing seems able to distract her mind from the topic!" He lifts his hands, frustrated, one threading through his hair next.
Non-stop talks about his responsibilities... it had felt like he had been back in Hell again, when he was visiting souls in their hell loops. All the supplications, their 'promising' way out through their perception, because they'd always focus on one detail only.
Always the most obvious, deceptive one.
You're the Devil, only you can change things!
That is what he keeps seeing in her eyes, despite her reassuring words, that she wanted nothing but the truth from him. Which ends up as a lie.
His throat muscles tighten like Amenadiel's balls before his arrogance was shattered in his plucked fall, drinking doesn't change a thing.
"Acting normal doesn't seem to be enough, like talking about the Hell waiting for me…."
"Maybe that's the problem?" John cuts him off calmly.
"What?"
"You both seem unable to focus on anything else but the bad. Even more so by putting that aside." He smiles, gives a friendly pat on Lucifer's shoulder. "Seems like you're perfect for each other!"
Perfect.
That's a matter of perspective. A God's miracle is perfect, by definition. Him? Not that much. Lucifer pinches the bridge of his nose. The discussion wasn't distracting enough to make him forget some paternalistic machinations. Although that was normal thinking.
He ignores John's last comment, like his crumpled suit at shoulder level.
He had the proof that acting normal wasn't helping. Crushing his interlocutor's fingers is therefore out of the question. Lucifer's breath quickens with the thought, not for the thrilling anticipation of barbaric distractions. No, there is still the strange certainty that no action of any sorts would manage to disturb the man's serene posture.
His phone stops the thought halfway.
Eyebrows furrowed, lips parted on many questions, Lucifer stares at the interactive picture that Miss Lopez sent him. A cat spanking another. Given its… childish lines, he wonders if the forensic hadn't sent it to the wrong person. Still... 5 AM, it's too early to disturb the Detective's spawn.
Better not forward it to Beatrice now. Obviously, Lucifer is more aware of the disciplinary restrictions put in place by his partner than Miss Lopez, even though he never understood their usefulness.
The child gets up at terribly early times to learn boring or simplistic concepts at school already.
Later, then.
Lucifer places his phone back in place. "There's nothing good in Hell to focus on.…"
"If you say so."
"And I know what I'm saying, yes!" Lucifer retorts annoyingly.
John shakes his head. "I've lived long enough to figure there's nothing strictly good or bad in this world."
"Not as long as I have," Lucifer replies.
John chuckles. "Do I look that young?" He lifts a hand almost instantly. "Don't answer that, it might get me down."
Lucifer chuckles in turn.
"Who's focusing on the bad now, mh?"
"Touché," his interlocutor admits while moving his glass to his lips. It's placed back on the bar once emptied with just two sips. "But let's focus on you being endlessly negative about everything…. Relationships are all about balance, about compromises. And, above all, communication."
"No compromise for such responsibilities, I'm afraid. I've already bargained far too much with-" Lucifer swallows, tilting his glass forward, the alcohol a millimeter away from spilling over on the bar, then towards his pants. "With the last person I'd have expected to deal with."
That is an unpleasant topic, something to forget with distractions. The glass squeals in his hands as he feels Gabriel's again, the slight shake with his Father's — present by proxy. Not even a deal with the Devil himself could make God come in person, could it?
Not even His dying son in Hell.
Raising his head, he notices John's stare. Watery gray from some strange, undefined feelings. Too much alcohol for his fragile, yet still young body, perhaps? John's sad smile makes Lucifer frown.
"Sounds like you sold your soul to the Devil…."
Lucifer bursts out laughing.
"Wrong deity." He waves his hand. "The communication between the Detective and I couldn't be more perfect. Not that it helped us much."
"Because you both can't help but talk about the same topic all the time. Always the same way, am I wrong?" His assumptions welcomed by a quite puzzled face, John adds, insisting on each syllable, "By always putting the bad in the front!"
"Come now—!"
"Prove me wrong," John challenges him.
Although he opens his mouth for fair, reasonable protests, Lucifer soon looks for words; true, unquestionable proves that their talk basis had been anything but 'bad' thus far. Quite the opposite.
Yet...
"You never told me… how you punished people in Hell."
"I thought that you were gone for... for good?"
"I was, indeed. I wasn't planning on coming back."
"Well, that's a problem because..."
"But there was a catch, wasn't it? There's always a catch."
"That's not fair."
"Who would want or even be able to sit on mine if I'd die?"
"It was the only way."
"I suppose that your 'helpful try' is out of my perception, then."
Mouth shut on an unquestionable confession, Lucifer keeps quiet for a long time, eyes down, choking on this knot that rises down from his throat to his chest. John takes his silence as an encouragement to continue, "How about you change your tune this time?"
Lucifer smirks. "Hell and my Father's absolutism are both unique tunes, I'm afraid."
John's hand feels both light and heavy on his shoulder, a support of which Lucifer doesn't think to be in need. It distracts him enough from the cracked glass in his hands, from the unpleasant pressure that swells between his ribs. Every time he thought back to Chloe's gaze before he left the precinct, before he left this world.
"Please… please, don't go. I-"
Lucifer's eyes meet John's gaze. It helps me settle into his seat, away from such... bad distraction.
"I'm sure you can find some good in all this bad."
"I'm definitely good at looking like the bad guy."
John smiles, his hand sliding over his shoulder until it's gone.
Lucifer breathes more freely.
"See? If you look deep enough... I bet that your Detective doesn't know all about… Hell," John says as he stands up, pushing his empty glass towards Patrick.
He turns his head, his smile shining with stronger affability than before, with something familiar. Lucifer freezes on his own seat. His mouth opens, yet mute, while his interlocutor finds further words to pin his silence down on his palate. "Or about you... Lucifer."
"You-" the latter whispers first, then clearing his throat. "You're sure we haven't me—?"
Another buzz sound brushes his chest and he jumps, rummaging through his pockets at mid-sentence.
"Wha-..." he whispers again, his expression opening up to annoyance, which turns to rage almost instantly while taking knowledge of an order in his name for—
Sixty-nine goats?!
Jaws clenched, Lucifer takes a deep long breath through the nose.
"Maze…" he roars before lifting his head. "I'm sorry John, but I must shorten—" His words die in his throat as he stares at the unoccupied stool to his right, "...-demon's limbs."
He turns his head to all sides, towards the dance floor first, the spiral staircase shortly afterwards. No trace of John and his wife. Lucifer frowns, his phone still in hand as he stands up. Of all the distracting skills that 'John' seems to have, manners are not one of them.
Chloe should be more concerned about all those people with no manners at all before his, not perfect but here nonetheless.
He knows how to behave, the proof being that he would wait until tomorrow - more like a few hours, now - before tracking down Mazikeen to deliver something very special for her. Within the next few hours, his gloomy perplexity would disappear— a Scotch, a shower and his bed would be enough. Lucifer turns his phone in his hands, its side gently tapped on the bar. He's nevertheless aware that whatever he had done tonight, nothing had managed to stop his thoughts for long. John's intervention had brought as much confusion as clarity to his mind. He is also aware of the weight beneath each of his muscles, beneath every blink.
Weariness hits hard this morning.
He runs a hand over his face, his breath over his tense fingers, a still blanket for the sigh that follows.
If a few hours sleep wouldn't bring any solution, it would certainly be a welcomed respite for his thoughts.
Lucifer walks away from his seat, the club and the late - morning - festivities without looking back nor stopping at his name cried by overly drunk customers. It's still with his phone in his hands that the elevator doors isolate him from any other sounds; his rhythmic breathing, tired of repeated thoughts, the dull sound between skin and technology, the fabric stretched over a longer breath that releases some tension in his shoulder muscles.
"I'm sure you can find some good in all this bad."
Good and Evil, hm?
Chloe is the good in his bad-self.
He found her. Keeping her, keeping her unspoiled, uncorrupted by all the bad of his existence… that's the problem.
His hand shakes slightly as he thinks of all they had talked about. All those bad touches about to fade her fragile perfection, about to turn her as bad as he is with any other words from him. She's not made for his world, she has nothing to do with it, especially since they were reunited in this one. Neutral ground.
He couldn't act normal, not anymore.
Lucifer almost lets go of his phone, which buzzes insistently. The melodic call pulls him out of his trance, invading the narrow silence of the elevator car. After a slight shake of the head, he picks up, not even thinking of checking who that was. "Hello?"
He hears a frustrated snort. He frowns.
"It's not fair..."
His breath freezes between his ribcage. "D-Detective?"
Another snort. Lucifer moves the phone away from his ear, staring at it for a second. Did the Detective finally decide to provide a domestic beast - judged 'so cute' - to her begging offspring? She hadn't stopped singing the praises of such a creature the other night, when he had come to her place; unsure of what he should do, yet very eager to see her.
His present feeling can relate.
He looks at the control panel of the elevator, the ascending numbers, illuminated, quickly back into darkness. Should he go back down, go to meet her?
She had agreed to contact him only for a significant advance in the case. A normal action.
Normal didn't help, however.
The phone is back in place, the control panel untouched.
"I-... To what do I owe the pleasure?"
That snort again. He only hears the Detective's voice around it now, though - how it sounded like when she was clearing her throat, deep, in deeper snoring sleep. She's not sleeping now, is she?
"Not fair," she repeats.
"Not fair? I don't understa—"
"Your voice is too fucking hot, whatever you say… 'ot fair."
Eyebrows raised, Lucifer opens his mouth without knowing how to respond to this complimentary reproach. "I-... thank you, Detective. That being said, I'd like to know what's the goal of th—"
"No."
"No?" he repeats, puzzled.
"Shhhhh!"
He flinches a bit. "Det—"
"You. Mouth. Shuuuut," Chloe's high-pitched voice orders. "Don't stand a chance if you distract me with your devilishly sexy tongue, hm? So... hush!"
Lucifer keeps quiet; surprised, because he doesn't know what to say, because anything he could say would be 'acting normal', acting against the Detective's desires. Because she called him for something other than uneffective normalcy.
"Good Devil," the Detective says.
It's a good thing that the elevator chooses this moment to stop and give a resounding distraction for both Lucifer and Chloe. She'd be displeased to hear the strangled noise out of his closed lips.
Who's getting distracted by some devilishly sexy sounds now?
"You know what else is good? Imagining your voice aaaaall alooooooong my skin."
Lucifer pauses in front of the bar, his free arm hanging above, to close reach of the first carafe of alcohol behind it.
"Question is… wheeeere would we hear it first, hm?" Chloe continues, touched fabric, moving body in the background.
Lucifer's body turns away from the bar.
"Maybe in the ear?"
Lucifer purses his lips. Logical starting point. That is precisely where the Detective's voice mutes his while he's waiting for other sounds. Her sounds, her words. His feet barely wait for the next syllable to lead him to the nearest chair.
The next sigh is slow.
So slow.
"Then my neck. Between every kiss, after your breath that would brush my hair, every lock spread by it. Slowly."
She sighs. Slowly. "I'd play with your hair, I'd move every curl away from my skin as you'd go lower... becauuuuse... nothing but your voice, nothing but your lips would be allowed to touch me. Nothing else."
Lucifer breathes in. Deep.
"Exactly like that," Chloe encourages him, giggling afterwards.
Her voice touches more than his skin, it winds around his muscles, tense, relaxed before... after each whispered word. Imagined one. Lucifer has no need to imagine how much she's affecting him.
He can hear it.
His breathing; slow, fast. His beating heart. Slow. Fast. The fabric stretched between his legs, which has nothing to do with a miscalculated cut. Although no one, not even himself, had ever been able to calculate to how much extent Chloe could affect the Devil. He closes his eyes, recalling how his breath had turned denser, making him feel dizzy while his nose had brushed her hair. His resolution to tempt her only with words that day in the interrogation room… it had faltered, with one slow sigh in her hair.
"And once you'd reach my lowest spot…."
He gulps, his throat muscles squeezing rapid pulsations, the surge of desire in his veins. In his breath. His free hand rests on the leather of the armchair, the seams pulled to their limit.
One more pressure and—
"Well?!" Chloe exclaims, pulling Lucifer out of his imagination, pushed to his 'lowest' reality.
The pulled leather squeaks under his stretched fingers. He blinks, slightly panting. He takes a step back.
"So?"
Chloe sounds impatient.
Lucifer's forehead creases, mouth open.
"You don't like it? 'Doesn't sound hornyyyy enough for Mr. Morningstar, does it?" She sniffs, loudly. "Why are you so quiet?"
"I—"
"Halleluuuuuuuja!" Chloe sings. "Were you even listening?"
"To the very last syllable," Lucifer says.
"But you didn't say anything."
"Because you asked me not to."
A long silence follows his explanation. He listens to the Detective's slower, faster breathing, utterly confused by this sudden change of mood. Not quite sure if she still wants him not to speak at all, Lucifer slowly makes his way to his piano. The shadows are already moving away from its ends, carried away by the very first lights of dawn.
"'m not a good temptress, am I?" the Detective eventually whispers.
Sitting on the bench, Lucifer's protests choke on a long exhalation, his gaze naturally drawn to his pants and their stretched fabric— both from his current position and a more specific, upright one. The lowest one.
"Quite the opposite," he says hoarsely.
He hears a groan. Different. Softer. "Liar."
"I never lie, Detective."
It requires lots of slow, controlled breaths to find back his 'devilish' - obviously - sexy tone; to sound more like himself.
"But you don't always tell the whole truth..."
Lifting both of his hands, Lucifer doesn't know what to say, his gaze stopping briefly on the phone, which is back to his ear soon after. "If you need concrete proof to believe me… how about I send you a picture of my cracked pants at crotch level, mh?"
The grin turns to chuckles as he hears her muffled, sniffed ones.
The weight between his ribs lifts effortlessly. He is still smiling, even past his comment. Past an even longer silence. Less unpleasant. Like the one that had extended between their lips that night. He had apologized shortly afterwards. Because he had felt like he had to, not before. Neither after.
Right there. Closer to her, to her breath.
But he had done nothing wrong here. Nor had he acted right. Just… acted normally.
He gently shakes his head.
"I thought-" he starts, taking a deep breath before continuing, "It felt like we'd parted on quite… distant terms earlier. I'm-... confused. Isn't this the strict opposite of what you wanted for us? Basics?"
Chloe breathes out. Loudly. "'at was before…."
"Before?"
He hears another sigh, footsteps and the Detective's loud groan shortly after something squeaks. He knows that sound. Although his own mattress never squeaks that loud. All about quality. He still has no clue how in the hell Chloe never ends up doubled over in pain with just one night spent on hers.
"I just-... I wanted to…."
Lucifer arches an eyebrow, his fingers moving back and forth on the closed lid.
"I just wanted to imagine being able to make you stay."
"You could call me, Dete—"
"Not thaaaaaat," she moans.
He falls silent, confused.
"You can't stay. Here. With me." She sighs. "You never stay."
Lucifer freezes, his fingers still on the 'bad', never disappearing fast enough around him, which was rushing too fast towards his vital 'good'. John is right. They always come back to the bad, to the shadow.
His shadow.
He closes his fist.
"You didn't stay at the precinct last night, did you?" he changes the subject.
His light tone can't pass the knot in his throat. Its exit is hoarse, nearly trembling.
"Uh-uh…" Chloe whispers. "'Need 'break… stop thinking."
"Stop thinking? Descartes would disapprove, Detective."
"'Depends."
"Of what?"
"Was he a drinker?" she asks in a drawling voice.
Lucifer frowns. "How should I know?"
"Yo'v'met toooooooons of people, quoth Linda! So?" Chloe whispers in confidence. "Was he able to hold Maze's drink?"
The Devil's lips curve into a smile.
"So that's how you came to 'stop thinking', by mimicking Maze? That's dangerous game, Detective."
A dull sound. Then another, before her brief sigh. "'inda and Ella drank too," she says shyly.
Lucifer opens his mouth.
That explains a lot.
"Right." He nearly chuckles by just imagining everyone's state by now, especially Chloe's. "Well… Descartes certainly had his own way of thinking, which aligned pretty well with mine. Anyway, these thoughts weren't yet mature enough, back when I was in Europe."
"W'y?"
"Because when you're barely two years old, you only think about—"
Lucifer stops talking. The conversation keeps coming back to himself, to the spent time between each of his visits on Earth, between everything he missed from down there, everything that disappeared in his wake. Unchanged. Darkness peppered with flickering lights for millennia.
He swallows, smiling by default, if not because he wants to. That's stupid. Chloe can't see him.
She can hear him.
"Well, you tell me, Detective. After all, you're the one living closely with a small human. What were your offspring's thoughts when she was even smaller than now?"
She sneers. "'uch an ass…."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You're such an aaaaaaaass," Chloe repeats, insisting on the last syllable. "Linda who said it, that too…. And Maze," she adds, her slurred voice wrapped around the 'z' like a snake. "But she thinks I'm acting the same as you are, so…."
Lucifer squints, his hand raising the dark piano stand. "Well... Seems like a good thing Miss Lopez was there to counterbalance with your low opinions about me!"
"Mmmh. She's very fond of your sweet cheeks."
He arches an eyebrow.
"Sweeter than Dan's," Chloe continues.
"Not that the difference is anyhow difficult to make up for," he says. "And where did this disadvantageous comparison come from?"
Chloe giggles uncontrollably for almost a full minute, during which time Lucifer gets rid of his suit jacket, now on the bench. He keeps the phone between ear and shoulder, freeing his wrists from the clothing constraints of public appearance at night. Soon Chloe's laughter turns into a whisper, like coolness threaded under his sleeves up to his elbows. "They diiiiiiiiiiiiid it."
Lucifer's eyebrows raise as he retrieves his phone from under his cheek with one hand. His laugh is not long to come, his smile as broad as it can follow his imagination, which can't picture Daniel's awkward performance to the fullest obviously. "Oh, now I really regret I've missed the party!"
Imagining all the allusions he could make about it as soon as the Detective would be fine with working back together and arresting their killer is positively thrilling. For normal actions. His imagination is cut short by a sniffling. Then another, soft, between two rubbings of fabric.
He frowns. "Detective?"
Sighs and noisy sniffing's get mixed up. Not as loud as the wind beating the door of the terrace that had stayed ajar, shut on the very last shadows of the previous night. Louder than his own breath, submitted to silence by her voice, which he wants to hear before anything else.
She sniffs, "I'm s'rry."
Puzzled, Lucifer sits up on the piano bench. "What for?"
"...rew you out of the precinct. N'reason. I'm-..." She takes a long, already noisy breath through her nose. "Why not stay with me?"
Lucifer's fingers twitch around the phone, his lips half open on an answer they both knew, from which he never protected her.
Always putting the bad in the front.
"It's pretty obvious, Detective."
The tense silence stretches longer than the few seconds it takes to break it, to pretend to her perception of the present moment.
He smiles. How little smile. "I hate paperwork."
She laughs, a little. He smiles, a little more. A little more alive, more awake than he had been all evening.
"Looks like a shared hatred," she replies before a new grunt surrounds the last word. "Mhm... hot…."
Lucifer, who had stretched out his only free hand towards the black and white keys, stops his gesture. His smirk follows Chloe's vague grunts, the even less clear noises in the background - a fall, the scraping of a zipper from top to bottom, the stretching of an elastic band snapped on the skin and, finally, the breath of air following whichever blanket sharply pulled forward.
His eyes squint.
"You're naked, aren't you?" he asks, his gaze naturally drawn towards his own bed and the memory of her so noisy naked conquest, a few earthly years earlier.
"Basics, Lucifer…" she groans.
He chuckles, brushes the keys from one end to the other. "Basically, the first man was born naked, Detective."
"Shut up."
Nodding, Lucifer hears no more than her steady breathing. Quite a unique sound. Unfailing. He flinches minutes later, after having distractedly pressed a finger on a key, about to press on another. "Pl'yingsome'ing.. f'r me?"
With another nod, the phone dislodged from between his ear and shoulder, Lucifer places it in the middle of the piano from where the light and nostalgic melody once played by both of them soon rises. For the present time.
The moment keeps stretching long after the first snoring echoes of the only good able to disperse all the bad gathered around him.
Dreamed, time never matters.
AN
They're so cuuuuute :3
I'm busy writing in french the next chap - a long one, surprise! - so the next update isn't for next week. We're getting closer to the end, btw (10 chaps or so). And to the date (like - really really close).
Also,
I've started a little game on twitter that we can also play here. It's the same principle of Netflix and the episodes titles : sentences with missing letters, you must guess the whole thing. At the end of each chap, in the end notes, I'll provide a sentence (a clue about what's coming next) and you can try to guess it right in the meantime.
(Congratulations to LucidDreamer & Morgane for chap17 guess sentence)
Here's the sentence for chap 18,
*****e will r*c***e a *e* **x* from ******r
Thanks for reading and commenting.
See u soon.
