A/N: This is pure, unadulterated fluff. I can't even imagine where they're going after the Season 5a cliffhanger, so this is a little happy ending sojourn to get me through the wait for 5b. I hope you like it!
It happens so slowly, he almost misses it. One day—one night, really—the Detective just stops going home. There's no need to. Her laptop lives on his desk now, along with all her in-progress work files, and all of her charging cords are tangled up on what has quickly become her side of their bed. The cupboards are full of the pedestrian kind of snacks he's never bothered to stock up on before, and he's starting to wonder if the entire point of Dad's tinkering with humanity was the singular achievement of extra toasty cheez-its. Truly, the universe is a better place for it.
In the bathroom, her products take up a fraction of the space his do, but there's a critical mass of her clothing in his closet—sexy stuff, sure—cocktail dresses and heels and silky blouses that make him want to feel the slip of them against her glorious skin—but there's also boring cotton underwear and lazy-day sweatpants and so many work appropriate tweed blazers and t-shirt combinations that even his extensive waistcoat collection is starting to look a little paltry by comparison.
There's something magical about it all. Something—dare he say it—divine about the way she glides into place in his apartment the same way she slid into his life five years ago—or two thousand and five years ago, depending on who's counting—and made herself right at home in his heart, mind, and soul. It's precious, coming home to find her nursing a glass of mediocre red, curled up on the couch in an ugly, fuzzy bathrobe that he's tried and failed to replace with exquisite silk. It's captivating to join her on that couch in his own robe where she drapes herself across him while they watch old black and white movies that make him think of Dietrich and Hepburn and Bogie and Bacall and all his other old friends who never would have believed that the insatiable Lucifer Morningstar might one day be persuaded to open his heart and his home to a woman who genuinely prefers cracker jacks to caviar. A woman who regularly and reliably naps through the climax of any film he tries to show her, but who also blinks up at him with such warmth and love once the credits roll that it's all worth it.
It's ridiculous, of course. He's the devil, for Dad's sake. He doesn't do domestic. Except that of course he does, now. For Chloe, he'll do pretty much anything.
That's put to the test fairly quickly, once she stops going home. There's the small matter of her child, after all. And Maze. And Dan. And—horror of horrors—her mother. Come to think of it, the woman does seem to have a penchant for collecting strays, but Lucifer can't complain, really. He's the biggest stray in her life, after all.
But still, one night he comes home from surveying the bar at Lux and finds his sanctum unexpectedly full to the brim. Dan and Amenadiel are on the balcony, talking bollocks, no doubt, while Linda and Charlie are passed out on the couch. Penelope Decker has helped herself to his top shelf whiskey and is trifling with his piano in a manner almost unfit to be borne. Ella's keeping her company, and he pats her shoulder in thanks on his way through to the bedroom.
He's never had this many people in his space before—well, not for any reason less compelling than an orgy—and even if the Detective were game for one tonight, he thinks he'd have to draw the line at Dan. And Amenadiel. And—you know what? Orgies just aren't what they used to be.
Like his bed, for example, which tonight holds three women—well, one miracle, one tweenager, and a demon—all completely clothed and only one of which seems to have missed him at all. She grins at him from his pillow on his side of the bed, unable to move toward him while she's fully pinned down by her sleeping offspring and a surprisingly restful looking Maze, who has one hand curled around Trixie and the other firmly logged in the collar of the Detective's umpteenth brown tweed blazer.
"Should I be jealous?" He asks, feeling a bit of good humor finally, since the last time he saw Maze, she was trying to kill him. Now she seems to have settled for stealing his bed for the evening, along with his detective and his...step-daughter? Dad above. "Is Maze better in bed than I am?"
"Of course," Chloe says softly, laughter in her eyes. "Such a shame I fell in love with you instead."
"Truly a burden," he agrees. "Think of all the trouble it might have saved."
"Mmmm," she hums, stroking Trixie's hair and pressing a kiss to the peach fuzz on her forehead. "At least our place together had more bedrooms. And you know—walls. To protect the innocent."
"I quite see what you mean, Detective. I don't suppose there's room for me in that bed?"
"You could wake up Maze?"
They both look to Maze, who's muttering something brutal in a guttural demon tongue that's quite chilling when you bother to really listen to it.
"Perhaps not," he concedes. "Best to let sleeping demons lie."
"Where will you sleep?" She yawns on the question. Clearly, she's ready for sleep now that she's satisfied herself that he's made it safely home. Sometimes he wonders about that. Where else would he go? He's been begging to come home to her for years. And then he remembers leaving for Hell, and, well, that answers that question.
"The couch, I suppose. I'll go evict the family, shall I? What were they all doing here, anyway?"
"Impromptu housewarming," she says. "It was supposed to be a surprise. Also, Dan and Amenadiel wanted to baby proof the place, but I told them that would be a one-way ticket to hell, and I think they almost believed me."
"You're a miracle," he says with a grin, and she grins back at him, all the sting finally gone from that particular bombshell.
"Damn right," she says, yawning again. There's a rather undadly twang from the piano in the other room, and he winces. Penelope's never been much of the musician she pretends to be, but even for her, that twang was beyond the pale.
"Lucifer, dear?"
"Yes, Detective?"
"Get rid of my mother, would you?"
"My pleasure."
It turns out that Penelope and Ella are the easiest to shoo away. Linda's still asleep, and with Charlie in his arms, Amenadiel wants to talk about the fact that Lucifer's bachelor pad is a death trap for a toddler. Which it probably is, but Lucifer hadn't exactly planned on being an uncle when he'd designed the damn thing.
"Be that as it may," Amenadiel says—calmly—too calmly—"how are you going to babysit if every surface here is a danger to my son?"
Babysit? Since when—
"Also," Dan says, lurking behind Amenadiel as usual, "I'm not loving the fact that my daughter has to walk by your bed every morning just to get to school. Somehow I don't think you're the pajama type, and she's almost old enough for that to be a real problem, sooner rather than later."
Lucifer can't really argue with that. He has taken to pajama bottoms lately, as it happens, precisely for that reason. Trixie's been spending the nights she's not with Dan or Penelope in a what essentially began life as another palatial walk-in closet, and even if she wasn't sleeping right off their bedroom, there's no wall between their bed and the rest of the apartment, which means there's no privacy to be had with an eleven year old around the place.
The lack of privacy used to be fun—tantalizing, even. Now it's just damned inconvenient.
And then Lucifer realizes that his life as he knew it is well and truly over.
Thank Dad for that.
"I couldn't agree more, Daniel. Amenadiel, leave it with me."
It takes a little longer to rouse the good doctor and collect Charlie's things, which are plentiful indeed. Finally—finally—he sees them all into the elevator and when the door closes, he's alone at last. Well, other than the pile of totally uninterested sleeping women in his bed. He wanders into the bedroom again to watch them all. The Detective is snoring now—so human—and Maze has stopped muttering demon curses under her breath, and Trixie's little button nose is pressing into her mother's neck, which Lucifer can sympathize with, really. He loves that neck and everything attached to it, including the little urchin currently usurping his favorite spot.
But that's what children do, don't they? Usurp. Dad knows, he tried. He's lucky, he supposes, that she's got Dan's mortal DNA and not his rebel angel genes. Should make the teenage tantrums much less life threatening. He's almost looking forward to it.
The Detective opens her eyes a little when he leans down to kiss her and Trixie goodnight.
"Rest up," he whispers. "Tomorrow we're going to tear this place apart."
"What?" That wakes her up, and she frowns up at him with that little wrinkle between her eyebrows that drives him crazy. "Why? We just settled in?"
"Yes," he says, smiling down at her rumpled hair and that awful blazer that he can't wait to strip off her tomorrow morning. "You're home now. I think it's time to redecorate, don't you? Put a bit of your own stamp on the place. Get Trixie her own room. Maybe a guest room, yes? So that Maze can get out of our bed. And a wall, I think. With a door? Just about here."
He's standing in front of the steps down into the living room, and Chloe glows in the soft golden light from the chandelier behind him. She's smiling now. She's everything.
"Okay," she says, closing her eyes to go back to sleep. "Walls would be good. But just so you know—"
"Yes, Detective?"
She opens her eyes again—bright light in the dark—more precious than diamonds. "I don't care what the place looks like, Lucifer. You and Trix—you two are the only home I need."
She's asleep before he can tell her the same, but it's okay. There's time, now. So much time and so much space here in their new, old home, together at last.
He almost doesn't mind, sleeping on the couch. For once in his life, he's exactly where he's meant to be.