AN

It's about time! (Or as I would say to my friend, Lili no Potter, "It's about 'luci'!")

I could explain myself for hours with numerous reasonable reasons about my 'lateness' to update, but we heard them all already and you, readers, have been part of the fandom long enough to discover that writers follow their own, weird, non-regular schedule. (if you're new to the fandom, you'll discover them soon enough)

So instead of focusing on the bad, I'd prefer to share the good in introduction to this chapter/as a closure to my past hiatus. You'll see the 'focus on the good' will be a topic in the next chapters as well (shhhhhhhh!)

During my hiatus,

I make new friends in the fandom, some of them being valuable supports during the writing process (*big hugs Lili)

I practiced my English translation (even though the chap is still unbetaed, I hope it's better translated than the 18 first chapters)

I read other fantastic fanfictions that nourished my muse (OkamiShadou, LucidDreamer :you're the best 3)

I read actual books that gave me perspective on my own writing. Really inspiring.

I hope your time (or 'luci') has been as much filled as mine these last six months, in the most positive ways.

With these words, let's go! Date time! (half of it, actually — the original chap was dazzingly long!)

Music theme:

'You are so beautiful' (Tommee Profitt, brooke)


CARNAL, WITH A CAPITAL 'C'

19


"You would feel safer, that's for sure."

"Safer?"

"I won't be always there to keep an eye on you and your spawn, Detective. And Maze hasn't been the most… regular bodyguard these days."

The dreadful consequences of his departure flow within her chest, like icy splashes of unwavering waters. Fortunately, pulling on the edge of her dress helps her wipe that off her mind. Her slow, steady breathing: to ground further thoughts in the present moment, as in Lucifer's present – persistent – stare on her thighs.

"I can hardly picture a goat doing better than a demon, than you."

Both aware of his gaze on her seconds ago, he nevertheless pretends looking at the road and nothing else the moment she raises her chin. "They impale balls and stamp on children like no one else."

She pinches her lips. "Stamp on children?"

Hands off the wheel, he goes through the pockets of his black suit, further blue visible from the shirt below. 'Moscow Midnight' shirt, in the devil's vocabulary. In hers, in whichever 'blue', his eyes are off the road.

Her heart missing a beat, she reaches for the door by instinct. "Lucifer!"

"What?" His hand still in the inside pocket of his jacket, his gaze travels to her and the road.

With annoying ease, he turns the wheel with one hand, stretching the distance between them and the other cars to a much more reasonable, safer one, as he has claimed. Maybe she would feel safer around goats, indeed; with anyone else around her. Thank god, the next traffic light puts a stop to his reckless driving and she lets go of the door with a shaky breath.

"It's a miracle you got your driver licence at all," he says.

"Seriously?"

His eyebrows rise at her tone. "I'm far from panicking like you are."

"You're not risking your life because of some numbskulled driver, like I did!"

"Now, you're being unfair! Dan's driving habits are risible but far from life-threatening," he says, his hand reaching for his phone in his inside pocket.

"Not Dan, Lucifer. You, you're the numbskulled driver here."

Lucifer frowns. "I would've thought that we'd first eat something before any further foreplay tonight, but your 'dirty-talk' desires are my command," he soughs, looking disappointed as she crosses her arms over the low v-neckline of her dress.

Of look, his lowers to the curve of her knees, foreseen foreplay slowing down his Adam's apple.

"My desire is to avoid hospital food. Keep your eyes on the road or I'll drive."

"Don't tempt me, Detective."

His gaze wraps her whole; her legs, her waist, the curve of her breasts under purple lace. It narrows with her next, deep breath, crushing down any doubts she could have had about him being serious or not. That and the fact that he is willing to let her drive his precious corvette….

A horn blast startles them both out of the moment and Lucifer turns over on his seat. He's vibrating with such wild annoyance that her smirk turns rapidly into chuckles, his unwavering glares towards the 'horn-blasted' driver behind not helping at all.

Pulling once more on the edge of her dress, she nods at the green traffic light. "Eyes on the road."

The sea breeze merges into the sounds, the shadows and colors of quieter residential areas, which merges into the festives sounds of the center of the town minutes after. Chloe leans against the door, shoving her hair back away from her face, her ears and, most importantly, from her eyes. Not that she would miss a thing; Lucifer isn't stopping the car to none of these restaurants.

Her thoughts drawn to further sounds and colors, she keeps threading her hair down to the shoulder leaning against the door. She then instinctively reaches for her necklace, her index finger curled around the chain, then the bullet.

She doesn't mind extending their drive a bit further. Of course, she likes ice creams and pizzas, but she hopes better than those from 'Salt & Straw' and 'Pizzanista' for their first 'official' date since Lucifer's return. With no regrets for the two restaurants, some tighten her chest as she gazes down at her dress.

Is she underdressed?

Her fingers leave the bullet for the chain, glancing at Lucifer: just perfect. Just wearing a suit. He has just left one button free as to properly represent the non-professional goal of their trip. Just him, in a blue shirt, black trousers and suit jacket. She had always been amazed by how easily he could make everyone else's outfits look outmoded, just by his presence. Either he was wearing suits or something more casual, he never looked out of place; others did.

She renounces to guess if her dress was appropriate or not, as to which of these restaurants they would eventually stop, and looks away from the streets. Her gaze stops on Lucifer's phone that is still jolting on his thighs, in whichever direction he is driving them.

Reaching out for the device, Chloe is pleased to see his hands tense on the wheel. "What did you want to show me?" she asks, turning the phone in her hands.

"Show, not touch— Ow!" he groans shortly after her fist has met his shoulder. "This won't help road safety, Detective."

"What did you want to show me?"

"Carnal. With a capital 'C'," he adds for her puzzled expression.

Squinting, she taps the password and the screen unlocks on a GIF that he had - in all likelihood - prepared in advance. Of course, he did. This one isn't sexually explicit, at least. Which had been all Miss Lopez's fault, for the one sent to Trixie; that's what Lucifer had been claiming when Chloe had called him once Dan had left for the precinct. Yet, she doubts that this will be enough to appease Dan at all.

"This is cats spanking each other and your child is fond of these creatures. What's wrong with that?"

She can't help but chuckle by watching the goat on the GIF hit an innocent child repeatedly, Lucifer fast to plead his cause again. "I told you, solid horns are the best protection you could ever dream for."

"What would be left of the universe without your sixty goats, right?"

"Sixty-nine."

She snickers and leans back in her seat. "I'm not gonna change my mind for either of them, Lucifer."

"Actually, I was more interested by Beatrice's he—"

"It's kinda ironic, you know?"

"What?"

"You, the devil, promoting goats. Aren't you supposed to 'despise' them?"

He shrugs. "I despise them very much."

"Where does it come from, by the way? The fact that you and this horned quadruped are linked through history?"

His fingers slightly tense around the wheel, his breathing overly slow. She had asked this with no other attention than to stop the debate, but now she is really curious. "It's hard to tell."

Chloe opens the glove box with a smile and places Lucifer's phone inside. "The devil, caught in a lie. Who knew?"

Her fingers scratch Jessie's notebook. Right, she almost forgot she had placed it there right after having fastened her seat belt, for lack of enough space in her purse and time to study its contents.

"There is no lie in ignorance."

"I'm sure you have some leads. Come on." Brushing the first pages of the notebook with her thumb, she waits for Lucifer to stop gazing anywhere else but in her direction, her smile widening as she calls his bluff long before his mouth opens — which is no more than switching gears. "Never mind. I'll ask Maze."

She could literally feel the fire ablaze his gaze as he turns to her. "All right," he concedes. "How about a deal?"

"So there are goat-stories going on here, aren't there?" She could swear she just saw his lower eyelid twitch.

"—I stop 'pestering' you about these creatures and you stop that paperwork obstinacy of yours. How about that?"

"Paperwork obstinacy?" she repeats with a slight frown.

He points at the notebook in her hands. "Taking work home—" He cocks his head. "Well... 'taking work for a drive' would be more appropriate, isn't it? Anyway, I'm not experienced in 'romantic basics', obviously, but I don't think that 'work' has anything to do with these, in the middle of a date moreover, am I correct?"

His way of looking for her gaze, looking for validation or any sign that he misunderstood the whole 'basic-deal' on her expression reveals a deeper feeling of insecurity than he intended to express. She finds his concern of doing things right rather sweet, even though it inflates a strong guilt feeling between her ribs.

In response, her hands cover the notebook. "Sorry. Dan, he—"

"He's a topic to avoid as well, isn't he? I might have missed some of the basics; the list in the forum I've read was dizzyingly long."

"You read forums?"

"The ones not too off-topic I could find. Googling 'Basic date with the Detective' didn't help me much, and when I added my name, it turned grotesquely cosplay-centered!"

A flush creeping up her face for another reason than guilt, she looks away. "Our date hasn't started yet, though. I just got bad news from Dan, about the case. So…." Shaking her head, Chloe opens the notebook, yet not reading a line.

"Bad news, you say?"

"Who's taking work for a drive now?" she teases him.

"The drive will last long enough, Detective."

How he insisted on the 'Detective'; it makes quivers rise along her neck. She sighs them out of her skin. "It seems that our smokescreen with Francis backfired at us. And now, the prosecutor is taking your— his lawyer's side about the evidences we gathered; all 'hardly incriminating' his client."

"Ryan has a talent for striking when his adversary least expects it. He did marvels helping me reacquire Lux from Mrs Bloom; a virtuoso of procedural violations! I'll call him tomorrow, if you—"

"It's fine," she cuts him off, not surprised by his gaze, filled with puzzlement. Of course, he won't understand what the problem was, that he was the problem. He is who he is. And she won't change that, she just no longer wants to encourage him in this direction, not as much as she did lately. "I… promised Dan that I'll take care of this, alone."

"But we're partners."

She reaches for his forearm, smiling fondly. "Always. For the case itself. As for Ryan, the Lieutenant and—" She shows him the notebook. "…boring paperwork; I'm on my own."

The fine line between his eyebrows expands to his forehead, the most visible sign – if not for his stare lasting more than it should – that he knows she's not being entirely honest with him, neither with herself, with Dan's nor the Lieutenant's concerns about the ongoing case. That these aren't the only reasons why she wants him to step aside, even for a small detail.

It surely isn't the most important reason and it certainly isn't the one pushing further 'close-dishonesty' out of her mouth, "Unless you're up for more paperwork, now? There's a desk free next to m—"

"I'm an active devil, Detective. Speaking of, has your reading been actively interesting?" he asks while pointing at the notebook.

"More like… confusing." She opens it at random, frowning. "That's strange."

"That's the idea of these both adjectives, but there is nothing strangely confusing about wording paperwork as such, I suppose."

Ignoring his comment, she brushes a dozen pages backwards, her hand covering one filled with black handwriting. As the first half of the notebook, these lines are spaced with equally 'strangely confusing' drawings; what they imply, more than their esthetics, are. This isn't the first time that Chloe sees such induced messages in her job, nor that she feels instinctively about to fail and the guilt following it.

She's holding a cry for help here. And to this, police officers often answer too late.

"Help me"; always the same message, although Jessie's has changed along the way, it seems.

Chloe runs her fingers over the right-hand page; it looks like she had written this weeks after the previous words, maybe more time than that. The sentences are shorter, the handwriting fluid and no longer piercing holes in the paper wherever Jessie's feelings might have been too hard to handle around a pen. "It looks like Jessie had suicidal tendencies."

Lucifer sneers. "And she thought she'd avoid the Almighty Douche's judgment by framing His words? Thinking of being able to make Him change His mind is typically human."

First annoyed by his reaction, Chloe frowns afterwards. He is right: Jessie's frame and all likelihood strong beliefs don't make sense, but….

The biblical text she had placed in her living room, if Chloe remembers it right, is about death— the shepard of human's souls.

"What about she did kill herself?"

Her question is barely a whisper, ultimately destined to her train of thoughts, but Lucifer's stares back at her, unstinting partner, whether she wants him to act so or not. "Someone definitely killed her, but not herself. Need I to remind you that she fought for her life? It's far from any 'suicidal' tendencies."

"It doesn't exclude the possibility. Look." She holds him out the notebook.

"'Don't read, just drive', Detective," he reminds her.

Chloe nudges him in reprisal. "There has been a radical change in her prose. Like here— first, it's focusing on what's wrong with her life: her parents gone, her last boyfriend gone too, just when she had lost her job. Him stoling all her savings moreover and then, just like that…." She lifts the notebook from her lap, showing him the right-hand page. "She listed positive thoughts, like a mantra or… homework, maybe?"

Her fingernails brushing her lips, she shakes her head, impermeable to Lucifer's scepticism. "'Maybe' is a forbidden word in your profession, Detective."

True, but still…. She can't scratch her intuition that there is a solid lead in there. The more she looks at these handwritten lines, the more these remind her of what any 'How to feel better in your life' books would advise.

There is also this name that keeps coming up: Billy.

'Billy understand what I'm going through—

Billy and I talked about what I saw. It's nice to feel heard, even though everyone else assures me that's why I'm here; to 'open up a bit.' His eyes, his expression; he KNOWS what I'm talking about.'

She wrote some verses after that: bits and pieces, first. Like a list. Then, printed pages of the Bible itself, which she had placed between those of the notebook.

Has she been institionalized?

The question itself pushes another, yet forbidden 'maybe' possibility in the center of her thoughts.

Penelope Sanchez… hospital admission. Did she—

"Your 'papework' time is up," Lucifer announces.

Pulled out of her thoughts, Chloe raises her head and stares at him. Soon, she takes notice of the lack of movements, as her hair having gone still along her shoulders and the unmoving shadows on the car body due to the setting sun. Shading her eyes with one hand, she looks around her, her gaze ending its course at a name.

'Alba de Javier'.

She looks down at the people gathering in the street in smaller groups, couples or by their own near the big wooden door of the restaurant.

Just for a blink, flames consume the present people; high into the night, but kept at bay Lucifer's jacket and his race through them.

"Lucifer, is tha—"

"Surprise, surprise!"

She certainly is.

For days, she had thought of whichever place he would choose, how the words 'basic' and 'date' would combine in his mind and, to a certain extent, Ella's elation about it hadn't helped her own theories. Chippendales performing a choreography about their partnership had been the least off-the-wall, but this….

Speechless, Chloe can't take her eyes off the walls and the roof of the restaurant, all gone in the flames of ambition years ago. What had been left of it after the blaze hadn't been much, barely the foundations.

It feels like a lifetime ago. And in a metaphorical lifetime, the frontage has been rebuilt, embellished even. The wooden staircase has been replaced by a steel one and the pictorial sun has gained all new colors that remind these of the actual, unique sun going down the brown roof tiles.

A 'lifetime'. Yet, Lucifer hasn't forgetten about this place.

As quiet as before, she looks at him bypassing the car, then throwing the keys to the parking valet who warmly welcomes him, like longstanding friends, although there is nothing strange in that— it's all Lucifer's magic.

The car door open on her side, he offers his hand as gallant support. "Detective."

Her smile is shy, mostly for all the customers' gazes on them. "I wasn't expecting this."

"As you were supposed not to with a surprise."

She lets go of his support with an even brighter smile, wrapping her hand around his arm as they walk towards the main entrance, passing the line of customers that hadn't stopped expanding.

"Shouldn't we…" She shows him the end of the line. Not that anyone seems to bother seeing them climbing the stairs first.

"Crossing lines is the Devil's thing."

"Lucifer, we can't do this. With a booking or not."

"Have faith that we won't cross the line of good manners by walking through this door before anyone else. I've got it all planned out."

She stops not far from the doorman, making Lucifer stop as well. "You haven't booked the restaurant for the whole night, have you?"

"Of course not! For the next half hour," he adds.

With an eye roll, she follows him inside with growing apprehension, neverthenless turning back at the people waiting outside and smiling apologetically at them before the door closes for good.

As it knocks the frame with a slight sound, it opens Chloe's mind to further memories about the 'Pops' case. She walks to the center of the still empty hall and turns around slowly, getting used to the warm yellow light effects on the off-white walls.

Her turn ends straight to Lucifer's face, wrapped in lights and shadows from the windows. "I can't believe Junior let you monopolize the whole building."

"Why wouldn't he? It's just—"

"A deal?"

"I was about to say 'It's just a partner's benefit'."

"Partner?" Chloe repeats. "When—"

"Lucifer! Como esta amigo?"

Chloe needs a moment to recognize Javier Junior as he and Lucifer shake hands like old friends. The man nearly about to hug her partner – black curls and muscular – has nothing similar with the young, rebellious son wrongly accused for his dad's poisining. But she recognizes his smile and the kindness in his gaze when he steps away from Lucifer who hasn't seemed bothered at all by his displays of affection.

"Junior. Gracias por esta tarde."

"Vamos! Es normal," Junior says, shaking his head.

Chloe draws their attention back to her by taking an hesitant step forward. "Lucifer….?"

"It's good to see you again, Detective." And as warmly as for Lucifer, his hand squeezes hers.

"Good to see you, too. And—" She lets go of his hand, waving at the hall. "—this place. Without the flames, I mean," she adds awkwardly.

Not taking offense, Junior unties his cooking apron with a smile. "So do I. Though, that's all Lucifer's doing."

"Is it, now?" She looks for Lucifer who has since been fascinated by the bottles placed in nooks on the walls.

"Yeah, 'right after the fire. This guy paid refub from A to Z, he even put me in touch with the best interior designer."

Lucifer dismisses Junior's praises by waving his hand in the air, the other placed in Chloe's back. "Please, it's hardly anything."

"Muchos, Lucifer!" their host insists, his cooking apron hold tightly in his hands. "Without you, my dad's dream would have burnt in ashes. You even helped me dream further than he ever did!"

"Well, that wasn't—" Lucifer sighs, yet cut off by Chloe's hand on his chest. Whichever reason encouraged him to help rebuild the family business – a reason billions of miles away from 'family spirit', of that she is certain – Junior doesn't need to know. In response to her quiet warning, Lucifer looks at her and pinches his lips on parricidal words. "As charming as taking a trip down to memory lane can be, we had—"

"—other plans for tonight, 'got it, man."

"Something like that."

"As we're back in present time, you two… is it recent?" He has gazed down to Lucifer's fingers on her waist.

Unsure of what to answer, Chloe shares an hesitant look with Lucifer who chooses the 'eluded' option. "Yes and no. Our partnership made several… detours along the way, but…." With no detour, his eyes meet hers, his smile not as broad, but radiant with a lack of hesitation that could blind her— she might have been, until he speaks once more. "Here we are."

There is no hesitation as he leans to her lips 'seductively' open like a baffled fish. She responds to the kiss quickly enough and reverses the roles, Lucifer's breath quickened once she pinches his bottom lip a bit longer than his thumb twitches on her dress, like a strong, vivid heartbeat. His slightly dazed expression before she turns back to Javier increases these of her heart.

"It's still nice of you to accept his request," she thanks him, aware of Lucifer's long gaze on her.

"Es normal. We're friends, friends help each other out! I must prepare with the kitchen staff, but Lucifer knows the way. I hope you'll like the room, Detective," he says, walking back to the kitchen where voices and smells of cooking start to spread in the air.

Chloe turns to Lucifer. "The room?'

"Well, yes. But don't worry, it's nothing extravagant."

"It is."

He sighs heavily. "Seriously, Detective: when was your last decent date with anyone else but Neanderthals?"

"Booking a room isn't 'decent', it's—" She sighs in turn. "It's too much for me."

"For you, nothing will ever be, Chloe," he says very seriously.

Even though she feels quivers squeeze the muscles of her back, Chloe can't share his look for more than a few seconds. Looking straight in his 'worthy' perception of her is like looking straight in the sun.

I'm not worthy of all this.

Clearing her throat, she moves away from his embrace. "Let's take a look at this room, then."

It isn't the kind of room she imagined while walking the stairs and through the main one of the restaurant, Lucifer's cheerful explanations about the latest refurbishments following her all the way. She passes the arc, coloured with worn white in her memories, now embellished with a line of grey cobblestones, stopping not far from their table— round, with enough space for either stay on one side or try to reach the other effortlessly.

She remembers a rectangular table, the tablecoth orange. She remembers the rustic style of the beams of the ceiling. They are all black, now.

He was like a father to me.

"Lucifer Morningstar: consultant for the LAPD, owner of a successful nightclub and entrepeneur…." Chloe turns back to him. "Yet, you still find something to surprise me with."

He walks to one of the chairs, pulling it backwards. "I sensed 'decent' approval in your words," he chuckles.

"More than decent."

"Wonderful."

Their faces close enough to forget the concept of space, she reaches for his forearm, Lucifer's gaze first following her hand moving up to his biceps, then her mouth curved into a broad smile. Even when he looks her in the eye, the lowest part of her face wins his longest, most lustful glance.

"It feels strange, though," she whispers while her hand slows down on his sleeve. "Coming back here after what happened."

"It impacted on my choice, I must say. Among other details." She frowns and he continues, "Your job is anything but similar to mine in hell, as your actions not only follow the sole purpose of punishing evil. What you're doing, who you are… it helps people moving on to something 'better'. I wanted to show you one of these many 'better' you've helped to build." His smile reveals a thin, unique feeling that soon – way too soon – vanishes.

Reluctantly, Chloe lets go of Lucifer's arm the moment he averts his gaze and takes a step back from the chair he has been holding since then. "Not to mention that the Devil literally burned for this place!" he adds much louder.

Chloe chukles. Keeping her eyes shut while shaking her head seems the best way to keep joy above another feeling, which has increasingly risen from her throat to her eyelids. Lucifer's laugh is nonetheless the only thing that succeeds to stop it midway, her eyes itching of tears as she brings him back to her with a slight pull on his jacket.

"Ella was right," she says, adding to his puzzled expression, "The Devil is hopelessly romantic."

"Devilish."

"A minor detail."

"Detective, the Devil is in the details. Although, one is missing."

"Is it now?"

His hands resting in her back move to her waist as he soughs confirmation. "A toast." She stops playing with his collar and frowns at his smile. "Such a romantic turn of events deserves no less than a celebration."

Smiling back at him, Chloe feels the fire within her getting fed with unique, yet numerous flames. There had been those that had brought them here years ago, those that had burnt him before the ones she had felt the same night, when she had let her guard down in his arms. As the miracle she is, and miraculously strong enough to not overthink further doubts around this moment, she takes the glass of champagne. She would take the slightest detail he put into this fancy, devilishly romantic start for the night to come.

A moment together, with no one else; they deserve no less.

Both wouldn't avert their gaze from each other, not even after the other customers walk into the main room. "To the romantic Devil," she says, Lucifer's smile outshining hers and the glass he is holding.

"To basics."


AN

As the next chapter is 3k longer, I will not promise an update 'soon' (not next week, that's for sure), but it'll be as soon as I can focus on translation again. But the more I write in French already, the more you'll have to read in English later, right?

Thanks for reading it!