Author's Note: If you can pick out the references to a particular movie in this chapter, you will get virtual cookies and virtual Lucifer plushies! ^_~
Chapter 2:
Lucifer's brow furrowed a little as he was slowly regained consciousness. There were soft notes of music tickling the air around his ears, coaxing him to wake fully. He took notice of the soft feel of the Egyptian cotton under his fingertips and the cradling that the mattress was giving his body. Blinking open his eyes he was greeted with the ceiling, his ceiling, he was back in the loft, in his bed. The shaft of sunlight streaking across the crown moulding told him it was mid-morning. He groaned as he shifted cautiously, his body protesting to the movement as he still wasn't healed fully. Most of the beating he took was healed, but his muscles ached and his lip was still split.
He remembered getting back to the loft in the early hours of the evening, his injuries feeling all that much more worse the higher up in the elevator that he went, and then seeing Chloe at his piano. The pain became too much and he collapsed. His throat felt sore, he needed a drink, but he was too sore to move. "Maze…" he tried, but his voice came out as a mere whisper. He swallowed roughly and tried again, "Maze."
The music stopped and there were footsteps to the bedroom door, he turned his head slowly towards the door. "A drink if you please Ma..." It wasn't Mazikeen standing in the door but the Detective. The wave of joy at seeing her again threatened to overtake his senses and his eyes watered, he hadn't realized just how much he had missed her.
Chloe stepped up into his bedroom, stopping at the dresser to pour a glass of water from the pitcher there before moving over to the bed. "Morning, I am glad to see you awake. Do you think that you could sit up?" she asked gently.
Lucifer attempted to sit up but his muscles were still too weak. Chloe set the glass down on the side table and curled her hands under his shoulders to help him lift his upper body. After a little bit of maneuvering Chloe was sitting against the headboard, the pillow tucked behind her, one leg folded under her and Lucifer's back resting against her chest, his head resting on the crook of her shoulder and neck.
Chloe wrapped her right arm around his ribs to hold him in place before tugging the blankets up higher with her left and then grabbing the water glass. She held it out for him but when it was apparent that his muscles wouldn't cooperate, she wrapped her fingers around his on the glass and lifted it to his lips. Letting him guide the glass to drink as much or as little as he needed, he drained about half the glass before tilting it away from his lips.
"Thank you Detective," came his soft rumbled voice as she set the glass on the bedside table.
Chloe rested her hand over top of is on the covers and nodded, "How are you feeling?"
Lucifer snorted, "That is a loaded question Detective. I guess the best way I can describe it for you is I feel like I have been hit by a truck."
Chloe smirked behind his head, "Well you look a lot better than you did last night. You looked like you were hit by a truck."
Lucifer hummed in response, his brain still a little foggy he took no real notice of her response to his appearance from last night to now. The water helped ease the dryness of his throat and Chloe's body heat behind him helped ease a few of his aches and pains. He knew that he would be fully healed if she wasn't there, but he had missed this closeness for the last 3 months he wasn't about to ask her to leave just yet, no matter how much he hated her seeing him so weak.
"I…" Chloe started but hesitated, there was so much that she had to say but she didn't know where to start. "I'm glad you are back," she murmured into the hair just above his ear, "I have so many questions for you." Lucifer tensed in her arms for a moment and she rubbed her fingers over his arm. "The big one is, where did you go?"
Lucifer sighed, "That is the simplest and the most complicated to answer, my dear Detective. The simple answer is that I went to find and talk with my Father. If you want the more complicated answer I am going to need something stronger than water."
He looked at her from the corner of his eye and saw her nod. "Why don't you grab a shower and warm up a bit, it will help with the stiffness in your muscles you feel," she suggested.
Lucifer smirked, there was a hint of teasing he could do about her helping him out in the shower, but he was still weary from his journey so he let the comment slide. Chloe helped him rise from the bed, both missing the comfort of their bodies pressed together the moment they separated. Lucifer shuffled off to the shower, Chloe paused and watched him go, there was something different about the smooth skin of his back, but she couldn't really place her finger on what. Chloe shook her head to clear the thoughts before heading out to the couch to remove the rest of the dust covers.
It was a very short time later when Lucifer re-emerged from the shower, warm from the water, dressed in a pair of black silk lounge pants and a long sleeve Henley shirt that was a soft grey in colour, open at the collar and sleeves pushed to his elbows. It was the most relaxed that Chloe had ever seen him and she was glad for it. He eased his tall form onto one of the couches as Chloe came over with two tumblers, snagging the bottle of whiskey from the piano. She folded her form onto the other end of the couch, one leg tucked under her and facing her partner.
The first shot that she poured for them both was knocked back quickly and the second was just enough to be sipped at. "So," Chloe started as Lucifer looked at the amber liquid in his glass. "The complicated answer?"
Lucifer's eyebrows furrowed, "I am not sure if you would understand if I tried to explain it, or even believe me if I laid it all out for you."
"I would like for you to tell me anyways," Chloe stated seriously. Lucifer still hesitated sipping at the whiskey in contemplation. Chloe and Linda had talked about Lucifer's need to process things at his own pace and that if she were to pepper him with questions he would get defensive and close up. Lucifer looked up at Chloe and saw that she was watching him with a curious but open look on her face.
"As I said in my letter, you did get it didn't you Detective?" Lucifer paused, if she didn't find the letter he would have to start at the very beginning.
"Yes Lucifer, I got it," she indicated with a nod of her head back to the piano, Lucifer turned his head to look and noticed a picture frame that was not there when he left.
"Keeping mementos of me Detective? How very coy of you darling. If you wanted something to remember me by I am sure that there are a few other things that I could ~give~ you that would be better than a letter." Lucifer wiggled his eyebrows at her with a salacious grin.
Chloe just smiled and shook her head, "I know that you are trying to distract me Lucifer, it isn't going to work this time. Please tell me about your journey."
Lucifer huffed and took a sip from his glass. There was a feeling in the pit of his stomach that warmed him to know that she had taken the care to frame his letter and put it on display where she clearly spent a lot of time in his absence. "Right, so as I said in my letter I went in search of my Father to get some answers from him. He had been, shall we say off the grid, for some time and Amenadiel wasn't very forthcoming with the last time that he had seen Father in all His Glory, so I had to resort to some other family members for the information..."
"Metatron! METATRON!" A deep booming voice echoed out over the valley, "Bloody Hell ENOCH! Get your head out of your record books and come down here!"
There was a fluttering of wings and Lucifer turned to face his step-brother. "What do you want Lord of Hell? I am rather busy."
"Well hello to you too brother," Lucifer sneered, "I need you to tell me where Father is." Lucifer had been searching for the better part of a month before he decided to bite the bullet, so to speak, and ask the one being who might tell him where to find his Father.
Enoch huffed a little, "Why should I tell you that? You have been nothing but trouble since your Fall, you have done naught for the rest of us."
Lucifer fumed, "And whose fault was that? The rest of the family shunned me like I was the Antichrist and that was BEFORE Father called Jesus his son!"
Enoch's feathers fluttered around him in annoyance and hurt. "I still don't have to tell you anything."
Lucifer paced a few steps away and took out his cigarette packet, pulling one from the pack and placing it between his lips to light it. He actually liked Enoch. While they hadn't been particularly close, he was always a good source of information and dry wit in the Silver City archives room. After taking a drag to calm down he turned back to the record keeper a little more composed. "Not that it is any of your business bookkeeper, but I have some questions for dear ol' Dad that only He can answer. I am asking you," Lucifer swallowed hard, "please Enoch. Where can I find Him?"
Enoch stared at Lucifer for a moment, the dry breeze of the valley they were in fluffing out his wings as he contemplated the man before him. "I had seen the reports about you Lucifer, but I wasn't sure if I could actually believe what I was reading." Lucifer quirked an eyebrow in question but refrained from responding. "The last I spoke to Him he was heading to Tampa Bay, Florida to 'mingle amongst the mortals'." Enoch used air quotes when he said that last part. "He wasn't going for long, He never gives me time tables, but I would have suspected to have heard from Him before now."
Lucifer nodded. Dad had to pick the one place that Lucifer despised more than Hell. Florida. "Thank you Enoch."
"I hope that you find him Lucifer, if all that you manage to do is get Him back to the Silver City it would bode well for you in the long run." With a flap of his wings Enoch was gone, leaving Lucifer to ponder the last words of the Records Keeper. He finished his cigarette and stamped it out in the dry dirt of the valley before heading to his car to start his journey. Ugg, Florida.
"Wait wait, you are telling me that Enoch is your half-brother and that he told you that your Dad when to mingle 'amongst the mortals' in ~Florida~?!"
Lucifer took a sip of his whiskey and looked out the balcony to the summer afternoon. "Yes, well I do suppose that there are better places to travel than Florida, what with all the hurricanes, alligators and randy geriatrics. Some days I wonder where I get my suave style and excellent taste from, cause it certainly wasn't Dad. However, rumor has it that Dad is a bit of a Pinball fanatic and the carnivals down there have some of the best machines."
Chloe just shook her head and shifted a bit on the couch making herself more comfortable. "Alright, so you went to Florida… you must have hated it."
"I'll tell you it was no walk in the park Detective! I was manhandled more than a prostitute at a gang bang." Chloe snorted trying to hold in a laugh. "And while I don't mind being manhandled on occasion this was a bit excessive even for me."
Chloe cleared her throat and tried not to laugh at the indignant look upon his face. "So did you find your Dad while fending off your older suitors?"
Lucifer turned to find mischief dancing in the Detective's eyes. Oh how he had missed her while he was away, her snark and quick wit rivaled his own. "Oh har har Detective. Right, well yes, I made some inquiries about him and after several leads that didn't pan out the way that I had wanted, I finally managed to track him down about a month and a half later… for all the good it did me at first."
Lucifer stepped into the brightly lit room, the humid Florida afternoon kept at bay by the AC unit recycling the antiseptic air of the hospital. There on the bed lay an older man, hooked up to various tubes, wires and a breathing apparatus. It had taken him days to find out where he was once he had a solid lead.
From the retirement community that he visited, he managed to locate a man that had recently moved into the residence that liked to go down to the midway nearby to play pinball most days. After talking to many of the neighbours, and being manhandled by more feisty old ladies than he was really comfortable with, he managed to find one older gentleman who told him about the accident down at the midway.
The older gentleman by the name of Ralph, dug out last week's paper from the recycling bin and handed it to Lucifer. "Mags was a good man, shame what happened to him," Ralph stated as he passed the paper over. The article indicated that there was a freak storm that rushed up over the midway pier with fierce winds throwing articles that weren't tied down into the air. There were no fatalities, however three men had been injured in the gale as they attempted to get others to safety. All three had been taken to the hospital for treatment but one name caught Lucifer's eye. A one, Magna Opalhead, was taken to hospital with a severe head injury, internal bleeding and broken ribs. Lucifer pondered for a moment, It couldn't be something so prosaic as an anagram, could it? Alpha and Omega. Lucifer scoffed at the thought, How droll Dad, and predictable.
"Which hospital was he taken to?" Lucifer inquired gently of Ralph as his brain processed what he knew of hospitals and brain injuries. His Father, in mortal form was probably being kept alive by modern medicine and unable to release His spiritual form back to the Silver City. It explained why Enoch hadn't heard from Him in a while. Lucifer would just have to see for himself if the mortal calling himself Magna was actually his father or not. Then he would get the answers he was looking for.
It had taken all of his charm and persuasion just to be granted access to the man who had been hurt a mere week ago in a freak storm. Lucifer snorted to himself as he looked at the man lying on the hospital bed hooked up to various machines. He picked up the chart at the end of the bed and looked it over. Deep contusion to the left side of the head, three broken ribs on the same side as the head injury, internal bleeding that had been stopped by surgery, put on ventilator for the purpose of keeping the patient alive until someone claimed him and could make decisions about what to do.
Lucifer put down the chart and heaved a sigh. There was only really one way to know for sure if the mortal was actually his Father. He really wished that he could have a smoke or a really large drink, or both before he did this, but it was necessary. Stepping over to the panel where the ventilation tube was plugged into and reached out to disconnect it, but before his fingers could grasp the tube, he was hurled through the air, through the window and down into the garden below.
Lucifer dropped from the second story window and landed hard on the grass of the garden creating a small crater around his body. His landing startled a few people who were milling about, and even though he was attempting to sit up on his own, a few of the medical personnel started coming towards him to aid him, however turned and fled when a dark figure leapt from the window, coming to land hard on the ground straddling Lucifer's body, the glittering sharp point of a sword inches from his throat.
"I cannot allow you to wake him Brother," the voice hissed out as Lucifer was able to focus on the face surrounded by wavy cinnamon coloured hair. Bright amber eyes filled with contempt and menace glinted just as dangerous as the wickedly sharp blade in the figure's grasp.
"Ares," Lucifer breathed, "What are you doing? Why are you here? Why haven't you woken…" his questions came to a sudden stop as the blade point pressed into the soft skin at his jugular.
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