AN : Been a while, hasn't it? What can I say? Major IRL change - as lill' sister's death a few months ago - and before that, AO3 kind of attracted me a tad more than ffnet. I'm in no mood of writing these past months but I hope that fill you all up with the few chapters I've written the past year will ignite the writing passion once more. In this spirit, be warned that after the next (counting...) fives updates, there is no garantee of another one before a real long time.

Not discouraged? Enjoy then.

[Music - 'No rest for the Wicked'; KLERGY]

FAMILY ME BETTER THAN THAT

23

As with many famous men and women throughout history, the inventor of the ink pen eventually crossed the Devil's path. Not that it was called an ink pen at the time. From what Lucifer recalls, the man has been very attached to the 'fountain' reference.

And from what he can tell centuries later, humans haven't stopped being wrongly obsessed with the etymological source of words—from anyone human to the one and only Detective's interest in his many names.

The inventor was French, a painter. Claude, that was his name; obsessed with the idea of writing anything crossing his mind anytime, even in Lucifer's sinful company. To write restlessly required an as restlessly thick instrument.

In this regard, Claude's epiphany possibly came from Lucifer's stamina, but who could really tell after all this time with the Devil the only party alive? History erases many details in its wake, though the opposite would have been welcome here.

Remembering the man hasn't changed the Devil's sitting position on a desk that isn't his, nor the one of the ink pen in his hand, thick yet blatantly shooting blanks on the page.

It could help me….

Chloe's voice had tuned up with his slow exhalations against the cushions, as soft as a lullaby. The notes left in her barefooted wake from his bathroom this morning and the ones she had started playing along his newly grown feathers: he played his part with pleasure, with some teasing even. Therefore, Lucifer can't quite explain the abrupt change of tune that followed, nor what provoked it.

"It's obvious": that was what her gaze had shouted to his confused face.

After her departure, he turned blind to anything else, her gaze hidden in the most discreet folds of the bedsheet she had left near the shower cabin. It filled every breathable empty space of his penthouse.

It's not what I had in mind.

What then? Chloe wants a list. Of no 'little nothings', but of what? She didn't sound against 'positive' things for it: John's idea, who never mentioned anything else but 'little nothings'.

Did she discharge him off the case today because he didn't understand what she wanted? Never before this moment had the Detective discharged him off the consultant's paperwork duties.

And she did it in his penthouse.

Not long after she disappeared in the bathroom again, he felt something strange. A pit. Far from disappearing with her hurried steps to the elevator, the feeling had grown larger. It was nothing compared to what he had felt the week before, when she had abandoned him inside the interrogation room.

He was used to being left on his own around her space. Not around his.

None of his past guests ever made him feel like he was the one sent away. That had always been him, the one in charge, sending everyone off his place with one last kiss, satisfied to have fulfilled everyone's desires. Just deals reaching their ends. As the host, the master of the penthouse, it is only natural to find himself alone again.

It should have felt the same this morning.

The pit had kept digging through his thoughts, movements and whole demeanor. From a pit to an even deeper well when he took Chloe's bandage on the wet tiles.

It never felt wrong to him to clean out his lovers' presence once they were gone.

People come and go all the time.

Coming loudly in his bedsheets. Gone either to Hell or Heaven, but nevertheless gone for good from his thoughts.

Chloe wouldn't go. She keeps coming into his thoughts, on and on.

He endeavored to stop thinking of her, to convince himself that he wasn't the problem. From what he could tell and what he learned when it comes to the Douche, it could be another of these tensions between ex-husband and wife. Daniel is the perfect ex-husband to be annoyed with on regular schedules. It could be that or side effects from last night, which has been 'pretty rough', as she said on the phone.

Flames are anything but rough to the touch.

Those that had brushed his neck right before his wing had wrapped around the Detective had reminded him of the ones from his fall. So soft that you forget to fight back, until your flesh starts to melt and squeeze your muscles beneath. The memory triggered something deep within himself, something dreadfully cold. He wouldn't have been able to fly them both with one single wing out of the flames' grasp this fast in other circumstances.

The pain that had followed had been a minor nuisance, really.

Losing Jessie's diary is a big disaster, on the other hand—according to Chloe's displeased face when she figured that out. Would she have reacted the same if it would have gone into ashes in any car other than his? He truly wonders.

'Car'-thoughts have saved the rest of his morning, at least.

He didn't need to replace his Corvette as fast—he could have driven another one of his cars for the rest of the month—but the occupation has been as good as any others.

On top of that, the Corvette has a special place in his life here.

It was the first car he ever owned, the first one he had ever been determined to keep driving for a long time. This was also the first time he chose to stay for good; for his freedom at first, then for loving the Detective the way she deserves.

Staying for good.

Was that what she wanted on her list? She knew it was impossible to achieve, though. He had no other choice than leave.

And here he was, staring back at her, these eyes, in the rearview mirror of his 1964 Bentley S3. Fortunately, he parked in Gary Husher's parking garage seconds later. He and Gary had known each other for quite a while now, a human-like eternity one might say, as he was one of the very first humans to whom he had given favors after he bought Lux. As welcoming as ever, Gary's loud praises about the yet quite random car Lucifer was driving today helped him to look away.

The distraction lasted the time for him to scan through the cars, to check his all-new Corvette and to buy a little bonus for Beatrice.

Fleeting minutes of thick peace of mind.

Back at Lux, the Detective, although gone for hours, followed each of his steps, words and directives exchanged with his staff for tonight's opening. She moved from one bottle to another on the shelves of his bar upstairs, from the first of the thirty new suits he hung in his dressing room. He couldn't get her out of his mind, no matter what he was doing. Even when he managed to get rid of these bloody goats, she distracted him from fair satisfaction. Sixty-nine quadrupeds delivered to a yoga's club: a benevolent act about which he felt anything but pleased.

Pleased.

Why wasn't she?

He can't be the one responsible for it. Not again.

It's not what I had in mind.

What's on her bloody mind, then? What sort of list does she want?

These questions undermined everything he had touched, drunk and thought about. He didn't know what else to write on the list. That was when he started wondering if the place of his reflection wasn't playing against him. Lux, the penthouse: these were places of 'little nothings', obviously. Distractions, fun. Sex, which was distracting fun by definition. He needed to focus, to think about this somewhere else, some place where distractions weren't welcome. Where he wouldn't get distracted from the right answer.

He thought that Linda's office was part of the answer; it's the right place to strike his mind, in a deluge of handwritten no-little-nothings, but….

Impervious to his hopes, the pit inside him had kept thickening the bottom of his upcoming fall.

It feels more like an abyss than a pit now.

Lucifer leans back on Linda's chair with a deep sigh. Of lack of any other use, he throws the ink pen in the air several times. Its steady rise and fall in his palm soon inspires him to do more risky aerial maneuvers, for which he gets up and walks back near the shut door of the office after he has placed the empty tissue box at the center of the desk.

Not that risky. The ink pen he just threw by standing next to the couch falls straight into it. Not even a bump in the road.

Placing the box on the topmost shelf of his therapist's bookcase at the other end of the room, he aims at it with two ink pens this time, yet disrupted by a quite odd yowling from the corridor. He throws the pens with too much strength, one colliding with the flowerpot next to the wanted target. As for the other one, it bumped against the wood of the shelf. Eventually, both projectiles rolled back on the floor. Defeated.

Linda opens the door, freezing at Lucifer's sight and annoyed tone. "Now look what you've done, Doctor!"

"Lucifer? What are you doing here?" She shuffles Charlie upright in her arms, the child continuing to whine like a goat and pulling on his mother's white dress.

"Trying… well, formerly trying to find inspiration," he says, walking back to the desk to retrieve the pens.

"Inspiration?"

Given her lack of professionalism lately, he isn't surprised she sounds so shocked by his approach. Leaving Linda to her questions to which she couldn't handle the answers, Lucifer comes back to his former position, the two pens aimed at the appropriate angle for a split of a second before Charlie's next loud interruption.

"Do you mind?" He sighs, turning to Linda again.

They obviously don't; Charlie tries stealing the ink pens by leaning forward dangerously. As for his therapist, she keeps talking about meaningless facts. "I can't believe you just broke into my office for 'ink pens' pong!"

He snorts. He didn't break into her office. He just turned the handle.

Her words nevertheless worsens his inner abyss, Chloe's carving the edges twice deeper.

It's not what I had in mind.

"I didn't. Not initially," he admits under his breath.

Not so meaningless facts Linda just spoke aloud. They surely erased these pens' distraction from his mind. His eyes travel back to the desk. The piece of paper is still there. Blank.

A little nothing in the room.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

He knows that tone too well. A too kind intonation from a 'not-so-gifted' therapist eager to ruin his relationship with the Detective. "About how your advice is a waste of time? Pass, thank you."

Her even more puzzled expression inspires him with even less trust. More than puzzled, she seems hurt. Well, he is the victim here. Oh wait… isn't this a reverse psychology trick?

"A waste of time?" she repeats.

"Indeed. I've wasted too much by acting normal with Chloe, like you told me to!"

"I didn't."

"Add this to the one wasted by arousing her and freeing her from my Dad's tricky plans."

"Same. And could you avoid talking about the 's' topic around my son, please?"

He frowns. "That very topic brought him here. Among other vocal warm-ups."

Linda's cheeks turn red as she shuffles her son upright in her arms again, sighing. "Well, if you so much want to save your valuable time and mine, the door is right there and open."

There's no need for you to come.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because she bloody wants a list!"

Charlie's cry overcomes Lucifer's by far, blinking at the boy who hangs on to his mother's neck like a snake would squeeze the air out of its prey. Linda must be close to asphyxia, this is the only explanation for her lack of reaction to his words. As much as he wants to avoid listening to her bad advice again, Lucifer doesn't want to endure more silence than he has had since this morning.

Silence is thickening the one in his mind. The one from this bloody piece of paper.

What would happen if it stays blank? What is he going to tell Chloe at the precinct? What if he got her desires wrong once again?

Like he always has.

Everyone's expectations have always been a mystery to him.

"Father, you can't—!"

"I can and will, Michael. Now leave us."

"Lucifer?"

He looks up from the carpeting, Linda's soft smile at him as mysterious as the rest. No one emotionally sane would smile like that at the man who insulted her therapeutic skills seconds ago.

"Sounds like something to talk about on a couch, don't you think?" she says.

"I think out of your therapist's insanities, that's the whole point," he grouches.

"Who said it'll be a therapy chat?"

He gives her a wary stare. "You did. You always do."

"Well, not this time. I just want to sit, and for you and Charlie to be comfortable." She shrugs.

"Charlie?"

Her smile being a preamble to her mischief, Linda hands him her son who shouts at the top of his lungs their mutual reluctance to approach each other. "Here. Take him and have a seat."

"Why on earth would I do such a thing?"

"You don't want our talk to turn into therapy, yes?" She forces him to bear the child, his traitorous arms wrapping around him without any other protest than a strangled gasp. "Now, it's just… a family reunion. You talk, I listen and the best part is that you have no obligation to listen to me or my possible advice. No one listens to family advice."

No one ever shoved a child in his arms either. Rooted to the spot, Lucifer sees a bright smile enlighten his nephew's plump face. He grimaces, retrieving the little scamp's hands from his burgundy pocket square.

Really? A family reunion?

This is rather new for him.

Even so, he can't get rid of the sensation of being fooled. His legs bend against his will, his hands turning Charlie to face his mother and not his expensive suit. The leather noisily squeaks his quiet surprise when Charlie leans abruptly backwards in his hold, hitting his chest. They stare at each other. His nephew isn't heavy to hold, in either position, but the heat spreading from him, through his shirt and skin; this takes Lucifer off guard. He passes his arms around Charlie's chest, shortening the distance between them to the minimum.

Looking up, he meets Linda's gaze, her restless smile. "Is there something wrong going on between you and Chloe?"

"Define 'wrong', Doc— Linda."

"Anything that might cause you concern, to make you feel uncomfortable to the point of showing up here, regardless of my last 'advice'?"

"You're not wrong at defining things, at least…" Lucifer grants her that, averting his gaze. "Does Chloe seem as though she might be bipolar to you?"

Linda frowns. "Why might she be like that to you?"

If he didn't have his nephew pressed against his chest, this conversation would have already reached the point of no return on therapeutic levels. Lucifer sits Charlie up on his lap, like a shield ready to stop and alter the slightest unwelcomed speech.

"It's the only explanation to her actual behavior. She can't have another concussion, my actions during the car explosion aimed to avoid that. And the paramedics were affirmative about her good health so—"

"Excuse me: car explosion?"

"Are you even listening to me?" Lucifer groans, annoyed. "Yes, my car blew up to ashes in sadly not metaphoric ways."

"Is Chloe alright?" Linda asks nonetheless.

"Yes. I told you: I've shielded her from the blow."

"Are you alright?"

"Could you please damn focus?" He catches Charlie's hand before it grabs his cufflink. "This is about the Detective's mental health."

Charlie's fingers move in his palm, fast yet softly. The tingle feels familiar to him. Like….

Concerns, fear made him look up. Fear held his gaze straight into that of his Father. "Dad, I-I didn't mean to—"

"Of course, you did."

His mouth shut on his ask for forgiveness, his fingers closing on the tingle it couldn't contain and that soon spread to his forearm.

Lucifer lets go of Charlie's hand, blinking dazedly at his own fingers, cold and tingled with tremors that Linda hasn't yet noticed. Maybe keeping the boy this close isn't a good idea, nor the best way to keep his focus. The moment he has sat on this couch, his train of thoughts has been going off the rails of reasonable mental basis twice as fast.

"When did it happen?"

He blinks at her, not knowing what she is referring to, then remembers. Car explosion, her only unfocused concern, right. "Soon after we left the restaurant. Chloe was just like you, actually— worried sick about my health until this morning. After that, she just…" He shakes his head. "Do you think she's mentally unstable?"

"How would you have wanted her to react?"

"She should be happy. She got her date, I let her choose and lead the talks, I've spared her being fried on the flaming spot! She even got her way with my wings afterwards! And this morning, I rescheduled her workday so that we can spend more time together, but then she… she discharged me of paperwork."

Linda shrugs. "Maybe that's the problem."

"Paperwork?"

She shakes her head. "It sounds like you're putting Chloe first."

Of course he is. Not that he understands the need to emphasize on that. Yet, here she does. "Every time. Whether you're together or alone."

"Who else should I put first? Daniel? Miss Lopez?"

"What about you? When do you put yourself first, Lucifer?"

"I'm always putting myself first. This has been our main topic between these walls."

"So what brings you here today is your own self-interest?"

He stays quiet. She knows he can't, won't lie. Her gaze on him isn't the one he wants to see, because she is seeing through him something he can't quite catch. Obviously, she reads discomfort into his way of sitting up. Charlie's wild movements on his knees can be registered as so, without doubt. He tightens his hold around the little nephilim's waist.

Bright of life. Of heat.

A newly shaped bright star.

The clearest sign of discomfort, the kind of discomfort Linda is looking at, would be around his jawline. He clears his throat, pushing the tension out of his muscles, pushing further memories out of his mind as well. "I agreed to write the list."

"Can you tell me more about that list Chloe wants?"

He sighs. "From what I've understood, she wanted to list the positive parts of our current situation. But when I quoted mine, she looked…"

"Dad…."

Lucifer tries to ignore the knot inside his throat pressing on his breath. "—displeased."

"Right, I might… have a part of responsibility in this," Linda grimaces.

"Obviously, but go on."

"Let's say that I… suggested she finds a simpler, less 'head-on' way to co—"

"—conspire against my happiness, is that it?" he growls. "When will you learn to keep your bloody advice to yourself?!"

Linda endures his annoyance without batting an eyelid. "I should've kept my mouth shut."

"Finally something we agree on!"

"Not about the list, Lucifer. I shouldn't have told you about my role in all this because it's clear that you don't want to confront Chloe. In any way."

"I wouldn't need to confront her if you had advised me a tad better in the first place!"

"It's easier to be angry at me rather than her, I guess," she continues without turning a hair.

Lucifer snorts, lowering Charlie's hand that is an inch from wrinkling his suit collar. "Right. So is it impossible for you not to act as a therapist with me, isn't it? Well then, what is your new advice for the Devil's relationship? That I better stop hiding how I really feel, what I should feel, beneath good old anger, mh?"

Linda's next words extinguish any form of anger out of his system. Like a damn blown up candle. "Is that what's happening?"

He finds himself running out of air, of thoughts. But she doesn't stop there. "Let's consider the possibility that you don't make the list…"

"That's unlikely to happen," he breathes out, too fast.

"That you don't make it the way Chloe wants it, then. That you write it the way you want, no matter her desires. Would it be so terrible?"

The burgundy square pocket slows its motion on his index finger, which Charlie just stained with drool. His nephew's fingers wrap around the square pocket, the additional pressure, even though piddling, turns the softness of the fabric into a chafing nuisance. A corrosive flame that can't be mistaken with the one still against his chest, through his breathing. These sorts of flames burn flesh, little by little, when you drop your guard. They never quite burn out, not even after an eons' long fall from high heavens. And he fell because—

"It would mean that I failed… again."

"Lucifer, this isn't a test."

The sight of his pocket square, of the burgundy waves around alabaster skin, of fire around exile; it is too much to bear. He looks warily at Linda, instead.

He didn't mean saying this out loud. "How do you know?"

She shrugs. "I don't."

"Wonderfully useful!" he says with an eye roll. "Now, if you can't or don't want to 'family' me better than that—" he sits up, handing Charlie to her.

"What's troubling you the most: that Chloe might be displeased in general or that she might be displeased with you?"

"How dare you?!"

His brother's outraged reaction tore his eyes off this… irregularity. There was no other word to define, describe it. No spoken words, as he knew whatever he needed to from it already, deep inside him. Not those spoken by his brother that took so little interest in his opinion of the matter. He was the Left Hand and that was it.

That should have been just that. Just the Left One, just the additional detail and not—

His only reply to Michael's wrath was shocked, frozen silence. And through this silence that the Right Hand was keeping tearing apart with his too well known belligerence, Samael eventually heard it snap in His wake. Between the only hands that truly mattered, from which the wrath engendered absolute fear.

He squeezed his light tight between his shaking hands. "Dad…."

The memory flows within Lucifer like billions of ice buckets. He squeezes the heat to the closest to his fast exhalations in response. His ribs feel about to crack, the heat not brighter than a spark, about to burn out the moment he would breathe in. If he wouldn't take it anywhere else but here. Somewhere safe.

Stuttering syllables to Linda, he rushes to the door, his light pressed tightly against his fast beating heart: fidgety in his hold, but unscathed. He doesn't stop when he hears Linda urging him to wait and come back. Of course, she wouldn't want to let him go.

Even though he picks up the pace to the main exit, she manages to grab his left arm a few feet away from the threshold.

Left.

How ironic.

Linda pulls harder. "Lucifer, wait! Lucifer!"

"I-I… Lux duties' calls," he croaks, forcing his steps outside. One more and he would be out.

"Give me back Charlie, then!"

"Wha—" Lucifer stops, his light unusually heavy in his arms. He stares at Linda and tries to fill his lungs long enough to catch his breath, also unusually off control. His body responses feel like a stranger to him.

"Charlie," Linda repeats. "Give me back my son, Lucifer."

He stares at her hands extended towards his chest, looking down. Straight into Charlie's brown eyes, as puzzled as his uncle. "Oh." How could he have forgotten? "Right, I— Here. I'm…."

Linda has been the one insisting to get back her spawn, yet she seems to hesitate. She looks carefully at Lucifer. "Lucifer, you shouldn't keep your fea—"

He doesn't quite catch the rest, his attention drawn to the van breaking widely in the street behind him. Clearly, the vehicle is too big and too old to maneuver it this fast. Proving his point, the wheels bump into one of the flowerpots of the house facing Linda's office, yellow and blue roses flying in the air, before the open window of the passenger seat and the barrel of a machine gun.

Lucifer presses Charlie against his chest, pushing Linda to the floor with his free hand, his wings hiding the outside storm of bullets. He winces at the many impacts. It hurts much more than usual, but the shooting ends up fast, soon followed by breaking wheels speeding up on the asphalt the next second. His palm covers Charlie's skull who cries restlessly against his shirt, relief flooding through him of knowing him safe enough to pierce everyone's ears.

"Linda?"

He looks next to him, another billions ice buckets freezing blood in his veins. "Linda…?" he calls her again, his jaw muscles numbed with growing apprehension.

Linda's chin is frozen in action, her cry of surprise too much to express without risking flooding further red on her white dress. She pulls the fabric around the hole, dark but looking smaller and smaller at the center of its blooming scarlet petals above her brown belt, losing balance for good before Lucifer's stretched hand.

"D-Doctor…?" Lucifer whispers, Charlie's screams matching his distress to perfection.