Archive of Our Own ^beta

In the beginning, there was light.

Light, and a lonely being, in a place full of living things, but none quite like him. In fact, there had never been another being like him in all of the universe.

It is not good to be alone.

And so, God reached down a hand, and made a woman—the perfect companion—and did not wonder for even a second if she would mind being created for another. Unlike lesser beings, God does not doubt himself. Even when his children, his creations cry out against him, he is absolute in his righteousness.

The woman was made in his image, confident and sure, hungry for the truth at all times, even when the one she was created for didn’t care. And she loved him, fiercely, while he had never said the same to her.

That love is a frightening thing when one is facing forever. To wonder if you love someone because or if you just love them. To learn that there is such a small thing as guilt that could separate you eternally—and does it make you guilty to think that God is cruel to enforce such a thing?

But the story cannot be about her, because the moment it is, you start to wonder if it is cruelty too to make one being for another, and that is the sort of question that makes you a sinner.

Maybe she will be one, before the end. Maybe part of her wants to be one.

There are two versions of this story, of course. Two beings alone in the universe until a hand from the heavens intervened.

The garden and the city.

The sinless and the sinner.

The man and the devil.

Two versions of the story, one a very long time ago and one right here and right now. Perhaps this story will end differently than the first.

(There are two women too. But when does the story ever get to be about what they want?)

*༺∘☆∘༻*

Chloe Decker had had bad dates before. Before she met Dan, there were many, the worst of them all during her brief acting days, but a few more scattered in her early days as a cop, as Dan worked up (and up and up) the nerve to ask her out. She’d experienced pretty much every type of post-date regret: the righteous anger and the indignation, deep upset, embarrassment and shame, as well as ironic amusement.

She had never felt anything like this.

“So,” Ella said, trying to casually lean on the cubicle wall. “How did it go?”

“Hm?” Chloe said.

She scoffed. “Come on, Decker. The big date? You can’t box me out now, I’m invested.”

“It was… fine.”

It wasn’t really fair to qualify it as a bad date. The date had been incredible, dinner and good conversation, then back to his place for a night she would never forget.

That was all it took for Dan to switch from obvious eavesdropping to actively involved. “What did he do now?”

Even the morning after had been perfect, but as it bled into late afternoon, they had argued and then—

Chloe sighed. “He didn’t do anything. That—that wasn’t fair. It was good. It was really good for the first… you know eighteen hours or so.” She regretted that the moment it came out of her mouth.

“Ooh,” Ella said as Dan went, “Oh, Christ.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” she said. “I probably overreacted.”

“Knowing you and knowing him,” Dan said, “I’m almost certain you underreacted.”

“Chloe, what happened?” Ella asked.

She fiddled with her hands, glanced away. “His… ex showed up.”

“Oh,” Ella said. “Is that it? You gotta remember, Chloe, Lucifer’s got a lot of exes. And I mean a lot—”

“I know!”

“No, I just,” she shook her head. “I just mean, guy’s got a past. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to be with you now.”

“Right,” Dan said, “and did he sleep with her after you left?”

“Chloe didn’t just leave!”

He raised a brow.

“Of course, I left,” she said. “And… I don’t know.”

“Do we want to bet on the chances that he invited her over to try and talk you into a threesome?”

“No, he looked genuinely shocked to see her,” she said. “He—it was a long time ago.”

“Look,” Ella said, boxing out Dan. “Sure, he has a lot of exes. But you mean something more to him. How many of them meant anything?”

“Um,” she said, “one, I think. The one who showed up.”

“What, you’re telling me he’s actually had a meaningful relationship before in his life?” Dan scoffed.

“I—” Hell, this would be easier to explain if she could refer to the Bible in casual conversation without seeming like a lunatic. “He’s never told me much, but I think she was married at the time. I don’t know if it was actually serious or not but—the look on his face. I had to leave.”

Ella sighed. “I would literally pay like a million dollars to hear his actual life story without all the devil talk, because every actual fact we learn about him is insane.”

Dan raised a brow. “Are you saying you’re shocked he’s slept with a married woman? Because I’m sure I can write you up a list, even just from that one case.”

“Lucifer has grown a lot since then,” Ella said. “And this is all beyond the point, he really cares about you. He wouldn’t mess that up.”

“Wouldn’t he?” Dan asked. “Hasn’t he? I—” He actually cracked a smile. “I just realized, we’re literally acting like the angel and devil on your shoulders.”

Ella scowled. “I’ll show you which one of us is the angel and which is the devil, pendejo.”

“Angel,” Chloe said, and jumped to her feet. “I should talk to Amenadiel. He’s got to know more about Eve.”

“Her name is Eve?” Ella’s brow shot up. “Seriously? His first big love was a married woman, named Eve? Is that where this whole devil business started?”

“Uh, Chlo,” Dan said, “you do know that Amenadiel isn’t actually an angel, right?”

“Of course,” she said, unconvincingly.

Shockingly, he looked unconvinced. “You spend too much time listening to his metaphors.”

“Do you have any idea where I can find him?” Chloe asked.

Dan raised a brow. “Not a single clue. Chloe, I had to work to get him to stop following me around everywhere all hours of the day. I have no idea where he goes.”

“Following you?” Ella asked.

“He was—he was trying to cheer me up,” Dan said. “It actually, it did help a little. But I’m back at work now and I told him he needed to find something else to do.”

“Does he have a job?”

Dan frowned. “That family is so goddamn weird, I don’t know. He—is his last name also Morningstar? It can’t be, right? That’s part of the devil shtick.”

Chloe couldn’t resist the giggle that escape her. She got it now, why Lucifer was always so amused by the world around him, the way people really would twist themselves in knots to justify things that didn’t make sense.

“Something funny?” Dan asked.

“It’s a little more understated,” she said, remembering her talk with Linda, who’d had to explain the reference to her, “but Amenadiel is just as into the Bible obsession as Lucifer. His last name, supposedly, is Canaan.”

“That cannot be real,” Ella said. “Is that his legal name?”

“I have no idea,” she said, not sure if Amenadiel even had any legal footprint.

“I kind of assumed Lucifer was the weird one in the family,” Ella said.

“Oh, no,” Dan said, “Amenadiel, on his own, is one of the strangest people I’ve ever met. And, get this, do you know what I found out?”

“What?”

“Apparently, they have a lot of siblings. Amenadiel claimed they were uncountable, whatever that means.”

“Oh, god,” Ella said, “I would kill to be a fly on the wall at that family reunion.”

There was some joke there about heaven and hell, but Chloe couldn’t quite find it.

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

“Am I boring you, Lucifer?”

“It’s called multitasking, Doctor,” he said, without looking up from his phone. “I’m quite capable of having every word I say dissected while I pick out a flower arrangement.”

“Hm,” Linda said. “And notice how you still haven’t answered the big question I asked?”

“Very well,” he said. “Yes, you are boring me.”

She sighed. “Put down the phone.”

He ordered the flowers and put down the phone. “You have my full attention.”

“Lucifer,” she said, “why do you feel like you have something to apologize for?”

He scoffed. “Did you not hear a word I said, Doctor? Or is your memory starting to go?” He frowned in genuine concern. “I’ve heard that can happen to humans as they age.”

“I’m not that old,” she said. “And I remember what you said. It sounds like you and Chloe had a wonderful night together. Even if it ended in an awkward interaction, that doesn’t undo the rest of what happened.”

“Nor does our time together change how it ended.” His fingers itched for his phone.

“Eve’s arrival was very sudden and not your fault or something you need to find some kind of penance for. You’re in this rush to apologize, but have you tried talking to Chloe?”

“I’m giving her space.”

“Are you giving her space or are you running away?”

“I don’t run.” His phone buzzed and he grabbed it immediately. It was just a notification from Sex Words with Friends—Maze had scored an impressive number of points with the word scrotum—but he hefted it like it was something important. It wasn’t lying if he said nothing.

“Lucifer,” Linda said, when he was already halfway out the door. “Just try to use your words.”

“What else have I ever used?” He frowned again. “You really should get your memory checked, Doctor.”

*༺∘☆∘༻*

He found her in the breakroom, halfway through one of those secret glances at Dan to check in on him that had become too much of a habit. She tensed as she spun around, sensing only a presence behind her, but calmed when Amenadiel smiled awkwardly at her.

“Oh, come on, man,” Dan said, following her gaze. “I thought we talked about this.”

He put up a hand in defense. “I actually was hoping for a word with Chloe, if that’s alright.”

“Perfect,” Chloe said. “Dan, Lucifer said he was going to drop by. If he shows up before I’m done here, can you make sure he doesn’t mess up the files on my desk?”

“Great,” he said. “Babysitting duty. Hey, did you ever have to babysit him when he was little?”

Amenadiel chuckled. “Lucifer has always done his own thing. I certainly didn’t keep him out of trouble.” It wasn’t really an answer, but for once, she understood it.

“Yeah,” he said. “That tracks.”

They both stayed quiet as Dan walked away and she led him into the empty conference room.

“Maze said you were looking for me,” he said finally.

“Yeah,” she said. “I realized I don’t actually have your number.”

“Oh,” he said. “Apologies, Detective. I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have. I understand you… have had your eyes opened to some things, recently.”

“You’re an angel,” she said. It didn’t seem true now, face to face with him, but she had seen Lucifer’s face, Lucifer’s wings, and those felt less true in the middle of the LAPD too.

“So, you do know,” he said. “About us.”

“You’re an angel,” she said. “Lucifer’s the devil. Maze is a demon. What is Eve?”

He blinked. “Eve? Eve is here, on earth?”

“Yep.”

“Is she with Lucifer? Has she harmed him?”

“He—he just texted me back, so he should be fine.” Chloe frowned. “Why would she—I thought they were a thing, before.”

“Yes,” he said. “Once upon a time. But that was a long time ago, Chloe, and more importantly, it was before Lucifer killed Cain.”

It took her a moment, her shoddy biblical education.

“Her son,” Amenadiel said, a second after she’d gotten there. “I don’t even know how she’s here. Human beings shouldn’t be able to leave heaven.”

“Why did you?”

“Because Lucifer asked me to help Dan,” he frowned. “And I—”

“No,” she said. “Because if you didn’t care, it wouldn’t have mattered. Why do you care?”

He smiled a little sadly. “I’m not sure I’m the one you want to be asking that question, Chloe. I—the great tragedy of human beings is the same as your greatest strength. Everything changes, always. Heaven never changes.”

“Right.” She looked away. “But, um, Eve is human?”

“Yes,” he said. “Fully human. Just like you.”

His look held something profound and she swallowed. “Right. The miracle thing. You were the one who blessed my mother?”

“I was my father’s messenger.” He nodded. “I wish I—I have never been the one to ask many questions, Chloe. I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can tell you than what you already know.”

She let out a breath. “Okay. Could you—?” She pulled out her phone, holding it out to him.

He took it, putting in his number, and handed it back, his hand staying on hers a second too long. “Your father is very proud of you, Chloe.”

“My—” She stared at him, the words sinking in. “Oh.”

He just held her gaze, kind eyes and soft smile.

“Thank you,” she breathed. “Thank you.”

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

Technically, he didn’t need to be here—nor did he feel particularly welcome with Daniel scowling at him—but Lucifer ended up in the precinct because—well, because he did.

Chloe didn’t look particular displeased to see him, she even smiled at him, though she was mid-conversation with Ella and didn’t move to greet him, so hopefully that meant he hadn’t messed up too badly. Part of him wanted to pull her aside somewhere more private to apologize properly, but he was far more worried that being alone would give her equal permission to show her true annoyance with him.

He just hovered at her desk, waited for her to return, tried not to stare at her. It was taking most of his concentration, enough that when someone said his name, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Sorry,” Eve said behind him, and he turned to face her. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Eve,” he said. “This is not the time or the place for whatever conversation you’re looking for. This is where the Detective and I solve crimes.”

“I know,” she said. “And I didn’t come to talk to you. Hello, Detective.”

Chloe had approached while he’d been distracted, fake cheer painted on her face. “Lucifer, if you need to go, you can go.”

“Actually,” Eve said, “I came to speak to you, Detective.”

“Really?” Chloe said. “About what?”

“This is a police station,” she said. “I’m here to report a murder.”

*༺∘☆∘༻*

The drive to the hotel was nearly silent, except for Lucifer fiddling with the window like a nervous child.

That was unfair. Probably, she was being unfair to him in general, but it was hard not to be when he behaved like this.

That wasn’t fair either. It wasn’t even Eve she’d been angry about at first—they’d been fighting before she showed up the night before—but now, all she could do was listen to the fear in her brain that was saying Lucifer’s ex, the actual mother of humanity, was going to go on some supernatural murder spree. She was so sick of fear.

They caught up to Ella and Dan in the parking lot and, if things were normal, she would have teased him for driving like a grandma—they’d left nearly ten minutes ahead—but she had been so gentle and patient with him since Charlotte died that even that light a joke felt off-color.

“Here’s the part I don’t get,” Dan said, and from the face Ella made, he’d been saying the same thing the whole drive over. “Why in the world did she come all the way to the precinct after seeing someone get murdered?”

“Well, she hasn’t got a phone, Daniel,” Lucifer said. “She did only just arrive.”

“They have phones outside of Los Angeles,” he said. “Or, she could have talked to the hotel desk.”

“Not in heaven. And she didn’t see the poor chap get murdered,” he said. “She just—”

“Found the body,” Dan said. “Yeah. Right.”

“Uh, hey, Lucifer,” Ella said, shooting a warning glance to Chloe. “You want to help me carry a few things? I could really use a hand.”

“As you wish,” he said, moving to help her.

Chloe took the hint and headed inside, glad that Dan immediately followed. She did not hold the elevator.

“How are you holding up?” She asked.

“Well, I haven’t punched Lucifer in the face yet, so I think I’m doing great.”

She sighed. “Look, I know sometimes he does try to rile you up on purpose, but—he is actually that stupid about what people are like.”

“You always defend him,” he said, not angry, but quiet and defeated.

Was that true? Because in this moment, it felt like she couldn’t stop blaming him, even when it wasn’t fair. She didn’t want to blame him, not for this, not even for their argument.

“He hasn’t actually done anything wrong,” she said. “This time.”

Dan scoffed. “Right. And bringing yet another murderer into our lives?”

“Show me the evidence Eve killed someone and I’ll arrest her,” Chloe said. “Unfortunately, reporting a crime in a strange manner isn’t automatically proof of guilt.”

The elevator stopped finally and he gestured down the hall to Eve’s room, where a few unis were already waiting for them. “I’m sure we’ll find some.”

She didn’t answer that, stopping only when she stepped into the suite’s bedroom, a dead man on the bed in nothing but his underwear, a knife sticking out from his back.

“Well,” Dan said. “At least you have pretty strong evidence that Lucifer didn’t sleep with her last night.”

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

Ella didn’t have nearly enough things to carry to require his aid, but he provided it nonetheless. She stepped into the elevator, shifting on her feet, and finally said, “So, how’s it going, buddy?”

He just raised a brow, stepping in after her, the button for the twentieth floor already lit up.

The moment the elevator doors closed, she threw her arms around her. He still wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to do when she felt so moved to throw herself at him this way, but he allowed it for three floors before pulling away.

“If there’s anything you need to talk about, I’m here,” she said.

“I haven’t a clue what you mean.”

She reached over to hit the buttons on the elevator panel for every floor between them and their destination. “Dude, whatever is going on between you and Chloe. It was going so well! But now, she’s getting stuck in her own head thinking about you sleeping with your ex.”

He scoffed. “For the record, it has been thousands of years since Eve and I were together in any regard.”

“Yeah, I’ve got exes that feel like that,” Ella said, as they stopped at the ninth, tenth, and eleventh floors. “Like, what was I thinking? And then, sometimes they come back and the feelings come rushing back.”

“There are no feelings rushing back,” he said, twelfth, thirteenth floors. “The Detective has nothing to worry about.”

“Tell her that!” She clapped her hand over her mouth, awkwardly making eye contact with someone waiting for an elevator going down on the fourteenth floor. When the doors closed, she continued. “Look, I said I wasn’t going to meddle, but you need to hear this. If the thing with you and your ex is really, and I mean, really, over, then tell her that.”

They passed the fifteenth through seventeenth floors in silence.

“It seems it’s my fate to mess things up with her,” he said as they stared at the eighteenth floor.

“History is not fate,” Ella said, putting her hand out to hold them on the nineteenth floor for a moment. “It can be different this time.”

He drew in a breath as she drew back her hand. “I hope you’re right, Miss Lopez.”

Finally, the doors opened on the twentieth floor, where Dan was waiting for them outside the elevator, looking confused.

“Crazy slow elevator,” Ella said, moving to pat him on the shoulder. “What have we got?”

“I do believe that’s your job, Miss Lopez,” Lucifer said.

Dan led them to the door of the suite, where Chloe was standing talking to some of the hotel staff. “One dead guy on the bed, as promised,” he said.

“Hey,” Chloe said, as she finished her conversation, then moved to Lucifer’s side, one hand on his arm for a moment. “I—can we talk, later?”

“As you wish, Detective.”

“You don’t need to look so sad about it, I promise,” she said. “I—later. This is a talk for later.” She pulled away from him. “Hey Ella, what do we got?”

“Well, I just got here, but we’re lucky that our dead guy has ID.” Ella lifted up a pair of jeans, abandoned on the floor.

“And?”

“Uh, Colin McLeary, twenty-three, from Boston. Stabbed in the back with a hotel-branded letter opener, so seems like a weapon of convenience.”

“Okay,” Chloe said. “The hotel says he was here on a business trip, they’re going to get us the name of the company that paid for his room, which is down on the fourth floor. Also, we’re still waiting on security footage from the lobby and the hall. Apparently, the general manager needs to be the one to do it and he isn’t in yet.”

“Oh, well that I can help with,” Lucifer said, reaching for his phone.

“Let me guess,” Dan said with a scoff, “he owes you a favor?”

“Not anymore,” he said. “But I’m sure I can convince him to expedite the process regardless.”

“Right,” he said. “What else, Ella?”

It took less than a minute to get a message back.

“There we are,” Lucifer said. “The dead man’s information has been sent over to Miss Lopez and the security footage should be yours within the next half-hour.”

Ella reached for her tablet. “Thank you, Lucifer, that’s huge.”

“Why don’t we go check out this guy’s room?” Chloe said. “You’re good here?”

“Yup,” Ella said.

“Okay,” she said. “Dan, why don’t you give the suite another sweep?”

“Uh huh,” he said. “I’ll let you know what we find.”

Chloe turned to him. “Let’s go downstairs.”

*༺∘☆∘༻*

The elevator ride down to the fourth floor was nearly silent for the first half of the way down, Lucifer fiddling endlessly with his cufflinks.

“I didn’t sleep with Eve,” he said eventually. “Last night, that is.”

“Yeah,” she said, “the hotel room murder scene answered that question for me.”

“Right,” he said. “It’s just—Miss Lopez suggested you were concerned about—I would never do that to you. Assuming you still want…” He trailed off, eyes very resolutely avoiding her.

“I didn’t know you did exclusivity,” she said, hating that her heart was pounding. She hadn’t even—god, wasn’t this something she should have considered before they went out, before she slept with him?

“I never have before,” he said, something raw and honest in his voice. “But I will for you.”

Not—she did hear the resolution in his voice. He didn’t say he would be willing for her, but simply that he would. It was a certainty she hadn’t expected, not questioning his knowledge of her.

“Hey,” she said, as the elevator reached the fourth floor. She didn’t move to get out. “Look, yes, I’m upset. And yes, we—nothing between us will ever be as easy as I want it to be.” The doors slid closed, closing them in together. “But we can’t get through this case with this hanging over it. I still want everything I wanted yesterday. And me being upset, it doesn’t mean I hate you. Okay?”

He let out a shaky breath. “I am so sorry, Detective. For everything.”

“I know,” she said. “And we can talk about all of this later. But right now, I need my partner. Can we focus on the case?”

“Yes.”

She pressed the button to open the doors and gestured outwards. “Then, lead the way. So, how exactly is Eve here?”

He fiddled with his cuffs. “Eve was created directly by the hand of my father. Somehow, that means that she was able to slip out of heaven back into her earthly body.”

“So, you have no idea?”

“Essentially none.”

She almost managed a smile, but resisted. “Okay, why is she here?”

“I didn’t know she was coming,” he said, that defensive look immediately back in his eyes.

They stopped outside the room, already unlocked and tapped off for them.

“I know,” Chloe said, glancing at the uni guarding the door. She grabbed Lucifer and pulled him back down the hall a little. “Look, we are going to have to question Eve. What are the chances she did this?”

“None,” he said immediately. “Detective, my history with her may be concerning to you, but I can assure you, she is no danger to anyone.”

“Even though she was P—Cain’s mother?”

He looked at her a long moment. “She—she cannot be blamed for what he became.”

“Okay,” she said, trying not to think about the fact that his (undead) ex-girlfriend was her dead ex-fiancé’s mother. It made everything way too complicated in a way she couldn’t deal with. “Okay. I’m going to trust you, but I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything,” he said.

“No secrets on this case. You can’t keep anything you learn about Eve or anything from me, not anymore. I don’t need to know every detail of your history, but the moment something becomes relevant, I need to know. Can you do that?”

He nodded. “You have my word, Detective. There will be no secrets between us, on this case or ever again.”

She bit her lip. “That’s a big promise.”

“I know,” he said. “I—I know I have kept a lot from you in the past. I don’t want there to be anything between us.”

Her heart pounded in her chest. “Thank you.”

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

“It’s so weird, though,” Ella said, staring at the stuff laid out on her lab table. “He had his wallet, but not his phone.”

“Maybe he hasn’t got one,” Lucifer said, carefully not-glancing glancing at Dan. “I only acquired one several years after coming to Los Angeles.”

“I promise,” Dan said, “they have phones in Boston, just like they do wherever the hell it is you’re from.”

“Hell,” he said helpfully.

“Then I wish you would go home.”

“Okay,” Chloe said. “Can you two behave? I’m going to question Eve and we’ll figure out what to do from there. Stop arguing about the stupid phone.”

“Of course, Detective,” Lucifer straightened up. “Lead the way.”

“Not a chance,” she said. “I do believe we’ve already established the rule of you don’t get to question anyone you’ve slept with.” He opened his mouth and she held up a finger to stop him. “I don’t care if it was ten thousand years ago, still counts.”

“A little under six, actually,” he said.

“Good,” Dan said. “He’s way too close to this.”

“I’m not letting you in there either,” Chloe said. “You are way too convinced of her guilt and I need to go in with an open mind. Observation room, both of you.”

“I could help,” Ella said.

Everyone turned to her. Lucifer raised a brow.

“Yeah,” she said. “Didn’t think so. I’ll be here, watching lots of security footage.”

Dan didn’t speak to him as they moved for the observation room.

“Hello, Eve,” Chloe said from the interrogation room, sitting across from her.

“Hello, Detective,” she said. “I’m happy to tell you whatever you want to know, but to be honest, I don’t know much.”

“Let’s start at the beginning, then,” she said. “Tell me what happened last night.”

“Well, I came to see Lucifer—”

“You can start with when you left the penthouse.”

“Oh,” she said, “Of course. Lucifer got me a car to the hotel, but it was way too early to go to sleep, so I went to the bar. That’s where I met him—his name was…” She bit her lip. “Connor, maybe? Colin? Something like that. He bought me a drink.”

“And then you took him up to your room?”

She nodded. “We were having fun and then his phone started ringing and ringing and he looked at it and started freaking out and he—”

“See?” Dan gestured. “Of course, he had a phone, the killer probably took it.”

“—got bored of waiting, so I went back to the bar—”

Lucifer scoffed. “And clearly it caused the poor man some distress, so maybe he shouldn’t have!”

“—and she said she knew this really cool club nearby—”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“—really late—”

“It means you are far too happy to believe she’s a killer, just because you hate me!”

“—got back—”

“Well, you do have a track record!”

“—um, should I—?”

“Of what, exactly, Detective Douche?”

“—um—”

Dan slammed a hand into the glass. “Do you ever for one moment think about anyone other than yourself?”

Chloe cleared her throat and stood, with a glare back at the one-way mirror. “Excuse me one moment.”

Dan scowled at him.

*༺∘☆∘༻*

She returned with a glass of water for Eve once she’d banished Lucifer and Dan from the observation room. While she certainly had every right after the way they’d behaved, part of her was glad she had time to question Eve without Dan listening in. There were cameras, of course, and she had to watch her words, but the questions she had to ask weren’t unethical so much as strange.

“He talks a lot about you,” Eve said. “Lucifer. Your partnership really means a lot to him.”

“Why did you come to LA?”

She hesitated. “Well, for the party, of course. Heaven gets dull after a few thousand years and when I heard Lucifer was on earth, what better excuse than a chance to see an old friend? Get the party going again.”

“And you weren’t angry at Lucifer?”

“Angry?” She asked. “What for?”

She considered her phrasing carefully. “For what he did to P—for what he did to your son.”

The smile melted off her face, replaced by a sadness too deep to have been suddenly conjured. It was the sort of sadness she saw on Dan’s face these days, even when he was smiling, the sort she used to see every day in the mirror. “Do you have children, Detective Decker?”

Grief. Not a threat or a trick or a girlish smile, just grief.

She nodded. “Just one. Trixie, my daughter. She’s nine.”

“Good,” Eve said, all of the light fading from her eyes. “Then, you will never have to choose.”

“Choose?”

“Between your children,” she said. “The killer or the killed. The living, breathing son, or the one you had to bury. We—” Her voice went soft. “I knew what death was, but no one had ever actually died before my sweet Abel. I didn’t know what it would feel like.”

“Oh.”

“So, no,” she said. “I’m not angry with Lucifer for what he did to Cain. He—I’m pretty sure he had what was coming to him. For Abel, and for Charlotte Richards, and for what I’m guessing he did to you.”

“Charlotte—you know about Charlotte?”

“I met her,” she said, “on my way out of heaven. She was lovely.”

“Was she okay?” She remembered the cameras a moment after she asked the question, but she could explain it away as a moment of irrational weakness if anyone both bothered to review the footage and found it strange.

“She’s in heaven,” she said. “She’ll be happy there.”

“You weren’t.”

“I was made from the rib of a man who was created to rule the world and now watches a lot of golf. From him, and for him. I was a sinner who went to heaven anyway because I never regretted what I’d done. I didn’t—I didn’t know enough to regret it.” She glanced down at the water. “I’m not sure I really understood what a mother was until it was too late to change anything. So, no, Detective, I wasn’t happy in heaven. Nothing can change in heaven. Here and now, maybe it can be different. Maybe it doesn’t have to end the same way twice. I can make the right choice.”

“Okay,” Chloe said. “I hope you mean that.”

“Do you know what my sin was, Detective? The original sin.”

“Eating an apple?”

“Wanting to know good from evil,” she said. “Just like you.”

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

Eve had been happy to chat the whole drive back to Lux, despite his silence, but she waited until they were in the elevator to give him that full smile, leaning against him.

“No hotel this time?” She teased.

“Because that went smashingly the last time,” he said, as the doors opened to the penthouse. He’d meant to take her a few floors further down, to Maze’s old room, but they’d ended up here anyway.

“So,” Eve said, moving to lean against the bar, “you and Chloe.”

He raised a brow. “What about the Detective?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It just… looks pretty serious, that’s all.”

He scoffed and sat and said nothing.

“Are you in love with her?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“Because you seem so serious, Lucifer. And Chloe seems nice, but this is not who you are.”

“You don’t know me, Eve.”

She moved to pour a drink, pressing it into his hand. “Don’t I?

“Why are you so concerned about this?”

“Because I want you to be happy,” she said. “We’re still friends, aren’t we? And you won’t even come down to your club with me and dance.”

“You’re a murder suspect, Eve.”

“Well, you know I didn’t kill that guy,” she said, her face falling when he didn’t answer immediately. “You do know I didn’t kill that guy?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and put down the drink. “I don’t understand why you’re here, Eve, or what you want.”

“You could ask me,” she said. “Come on, what do I desire?”

He just sighed, didn’t meet her gaze.

“Do you remember the last time you asked me?” She asked. “What I said then?”

“You wanted to make your own choices,” he said. “I’m hardly going to forget the forbidden fruit.”

“It wasn’t the only forbidden fruit I enjoyed in the garden,” she said, a failed attempt to rouse a smile from him. “Lucifer, I was wrong then. I still thought I could make Adam love me. And I don’t think he ever really did. I know better now.”

“Do you?”

“I came here for you,” she said. “To see you. Because we’ve both been miserable but when we were together—it was the best time of my life!”

He drew in a breath and regretted it immediately, memories of that first breath he drew by her side in the garden flooding in. “Eve,” he said. “If you came all this way for me, then I’m sorry but you’ve made a mistake.”

“Because of her?”

“No,” he said, not certain it was true until he said it and then suddenly sure. “Because I am not that devil anymore.”

“Because of her,” she said. “You’re boring and serious and—insecure.”

“I am not insecure!”

“Oh, please, I saw the way you chase after her, the look on your face. You’re terrified of her rejecting you. I remember what that feels like, Lucifer!”

“The Detective knows exactly who I am and hasn’t run away,” he said.

“Does she? Does she really?”

“She knows I’m the devil.”

“You’re the devil,” Eve said, “and you’re Lucifer. Does she really see you as both? The way I do?”

He didn’t know, not really. The nature of her time loop meant he hadn’t gotten to see her initial reaction to his face, hadn’t gotten to feel what it felt like to have her run from him. But she had touched his devil face in the end, and that had to be what mattered.

He had to believe it was what mattered.

“You should go to bed, Eve,” he said.

“We used to sleep under the stars,” she said.

He moved to the elevator, pressed the button for the correct floor without stepping inside, and held the door open. “This is Los Angeles. You can’t see the stars here.”

“Which is why we should go clubbing! The bright lights, Lucifer, the fun.”

“Goodnight, Eve.”

She strode into the elevator and shook her head. “Right. And you’re telling me she accepts the devil. What devil?”

He pulled his arm away and let the doors shut.

*༺∘☆∘༻*

“Detective Decker?”

Chloe spun, letting out a breath when she saw it was just a delivery person. “That’s me.”

He held out a small vase to her, with a single rose inside. A small gift tag was tied around the neck of the vase with red ribbon.

“Not a head or a bomb,” Ella said, once again hovering around her desk. “Is that from Lucifer? I didn’t know he could do understated and elegant.”

“Thank you,” Chloe said, and took the vase, reaching for the tag. It was nice ribbon and nicer paper, text printed to look like neat script.

Detective, it read, all I desire is your forgiveness. Yours, for as close to forever as I can.

Instead of a signature, there was a badly printed devil emoji and despite herself, Chloe smiled at that.

“Well?” Ella asked.

Chloe untied the ribbon and shoved the note in her pocket, leaving the vase on her desk. “Yes, it is.”

“Really, Decker?” She scoffed. “You’re giving me nothing lately—”

“Shit!” Dan slammed a hand against his desk, glancing around as if to ensure no one had seen him, but not meeting Chloe’s gaze when he noticed her noticing him.

“I’m gonna,” she tilted her head towards Dan and Ella nodded and slipped away.

“What’s up?” She asked, approaching slowly.

He scoffed. “Lucifer doesn’t even know how much harder he makes our lives. He’s got Maze, who was supposed to pick Trixie up, off keeping an eye on his crazy, murderous girlfriend, and none of the other babysitters we know can watch her on short notice.”

Her instinct was to defend Lucifer—and honestly, it was a smarter move than she’d given him credit for to have someone keeping a close eye on Eve—but she squashed it down, and pulled a chair up to sit next to Dan. “Maybe you came back to work too soon.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do that. I don’t need your pity, Chloe.”

“It’s not pity,” she said. “I don’t pity you, Dan, I just care about you.”

“You seem to care about a lot of people who don’t deserve it,” he said.

She looked at him and all she saw was a repeat of the worst day of their lives: Dan bursting in with a crazy conspiracy about their boss, Dan holding her tight as they slept, Dan looking at Lucifer and seeing an angel, Dan cocking a gun and nearly killing the man who had tried to kill him. Dozens of days he didn’t remember, all rolled into one day he would never forget. All those days, and he had never been cruel to her the way he was being now. His pain had been new and fresh and it had had somewhere, someone, to be directed at. Now, there was no one to hurt but his friends.

“Get up,” she said, not waiting for him to fully comply before she dragged him into an observation room, where there were no people or cameras to overhear them. She shut the door, the sound echoing in her chest as she decided exactly what she was going to say. “I don’t need you and Lucifer to be best friends.”

“You always do this,” he said. “You always defend him.”

“I’m not defending him,” she said. “Lucifer has messed up so many times I stopped keeping count. But what’s happening right now? It’s not his fault. He didn’t bring Eve to Los Angeles and he didn’t put her in danger or make her kill somebody or whatever the hell happened. And yeah, he screwed up our babysitting coverage for today, but somehow I don’t think that’s the heinous crime that you’re so mad about.”

“He lied to you,” Dan said. “He got Charlotte killed.”

“Pierce killed Charlotte,” she said. “On his own, of his own accord, because he was a monster. And yeah, I wish Lucifer had warned me about him sooner, but none of us would’ve believed him if he had. You certainly wouldn’t have.”

“He could have tried—!”

“He’s not the only one who’s ever lied to me,” she said, jabbing a finger to his chest. “And, just like him, you say you’re doing it to keep me safe. So maybe you’re right. Maybe neither of you deserve my concern, but you have no right to say I can’t give it to you.”

“Don’t compare me to him.”

“You compared yourself to him!” She snapped, voice cooling immediately. “You lied to me about Palmetto to save your own skin, and Trixie was kidnapped and could have died. And I forgave you. I forgave you.”

“Chloe—”

“And when we were trying to stop Pierce and you pulled a gun on the guy we had tied up in the penthouse, I didn’t say a damn word, I didn’t try to stop you, I didn’t even tell you I’d heard it.”

He went pale. “Chloe—”

“I heard what you said.” It was the closest she could come to the truth, remembering the first time they’d had this conversation, the conclusion she’d come to then. “I figured it out, eventually. Perry Smith, right?”

He took a step back, unable to meet her gaze.

“You did that for me,” she said, and it was Smith and Pierce and Uriel and the goddess and Charlotte and all the things her friends had done. “Even though you knew I would never be okay with it. And I’m not okay with it. I—I’m not okay with the things you’ve done. Maybe I can’t even forgive you. But I still care about you. And even after all the things he’s done, I still care about Lucifer. And I won’t watch you tear yourself apart being mad at him when we both know he’s not the person you’re really angry at.”

He said nothing, but he finally met her gaze.

“It’s not Lucifer,” she said, “it’s not even Pierce. The only person you really hate anymore is yourself.”

“You didn’t turn me in,” he said. “Why?”

“You know why,” she said. “Now, go home, Dan. Get Trixie yourself. There’s nothing else that needs to get done tonight.”

He nodded. “Chloe, I—I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything,” she said, an unfair rage pounding in her heart. “Neither of us needs more words. Just—you don’t need to stop grieving, but you do need to stop digging yourself deeper into this pit. I can’t follow you there.”

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

He was hardly halfway through his first drink of the evening when the elevator dinged and immediately he tensed, until turned to see her approaching.

“Detective,” he said, eyes on the tears streaking down her face, but before he could say anything else, she was on him, lips against his, hands in his hair, practically falling into him.

It took him longer than he cared to admit—until he felt one of those tears against his skin—to pull away. He pressed his forehead against hers, carefully wiped each tear from her face with the pad of his thumb.

“Detective,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

She collapsed in his arms with a racking sob. He didn’t know what to do, so he just held her tight, stroked her hair.

They stayed like that a long time, until she finally said, “I’m never going to be normal again, am I?”

Oh.

“You are a wonder,” he said. “Detective, I—I’m sorry if I’ve made things harder for you.”

She managed a smile through the tears. “Everything’s all about you, huh?”

“I—” He frowned. “You learned I’m the devil, Detective. Is that not what you mean?”

“I’m talking about the time loop,” she said, stepping back from him and wiping her eyes. “I—god—I mean—damn it.”

“You’re out of the time loop,” he said. “It’s over.”

“I know that,” she said. “But I just went off on Dan with barely any provocation and threw my phone out a car window, so maybe part of me doesn’t know.”

He frowned. “Normally, I’m the one angering Daniel. What happened?”

“Nothing happened.” She moved the couch, throwing herself on it. “He was being a dick about you—”

He couldn’t resist as he sat across from her. “Douche.”

“Whatever. And you’ve been nicer to him than ever but he’s still so angry and it’s just—it’s not fair that he gets to be angry and I don’t. But it’s also not fair for me to go off on him about something that happened ages ago while he’s grieving.”

“What exactly did you yell at him about?”

She swallowed. “I—I think I missed this in the abbreviated rundown I gave you—”

“If that explanation was abbreviated, you deserve to scream at whomever you like, darling.”

She drew in a breath. “You can’t mention this to anyone, including Dan.”

“You have my word.”

“Do you remember Perry Smith?”

He considered a moment. “The lowlife who killed your father. Currently languishing in hell. I remember.”

“Yeah,” she said. “And Dan was the one who put him there.”

It took him a moment to understand her meaning and when he did, he was unable to prevent the single burst of laughter that escaped. “I wouldn’t have guessed Daniel had it in him to kill a man.”

“Don’t look so happy about it.” She scowled. “And technically, Dan and Maze just tattled on him to the Russians and let it handle itself, but—he lied to me. He killed a man for me and didn’t even bother to tell me.”

Lucifer felt his smile vanish. “So did I.”

“Which is what I was thinking when I was yelling at Dan. He hates you so much right now, but you both—you have more in common than either of you will admit.”’

He scoffed. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far, Detective.”

She leaned forward. “Does it ever get easier? Life, I mean. Since you’re like, so old.”

He let out a laugh, but considered the question before he answered. “No.”

“No?” She leaned back against the couch. “Great.”

“Detective,” he said, “for the first five years I was in Los Angeles, my life was nothing but easy. It only got difficult when—life is harder when there are things you care deeply about.”

“Or people?”

He reached across for her hand and pressed a kiss to the back of her fingers. “Or people.”

*༺∘☆∘༻*

She was embarrassed to wake, once more, alone in his bed. At this point, she had easily slept here more times without him than with him. And now, he was her—something. They had been on one date and they both seemed to be taking it very seriously, but they hadn’t actually established what that meant beyond him promising her exclusivity and here she was, showing up at his place to have a breakdown and then stealing his bed.

The penthouse was quiet and that, more than anything, pulled her from bed. There was no sign of Lucifer, except for a single rose on the bar with a note tied to it, written in his neat script.

Back soon, Detective.

She smiled at that. It was so Lucifer. Ella had called the rose yesterday understated, and she had been right to suggest that he wasn’t exactly capable of that, but he wasn’t trying to be. This was his way, never with words, to tell her that he knew her. The single rose, the brief notes, the simplicity of it all wasn’t very him, but it was very her.

She set it back down, moving to look for her phone before she remembered what she’d done with it—funny how phones didn’t magically respawn in normal life—and instead began to look around and slowly realize that there didn’t seem to be a single clock in the penthouse.

She gave up after a while—it seemed to be early morning still—and curled up on the couch with a blanket.

She didn’t have to wait long, Lucifer smiling at her from the elevator, two coffees balanced on a box of donuts in one hand and a bag in the other.

“What time is it?” She asked, standing.

He laughed at that, setting everything down on the bar. “A little after seven, darling. You have plenty of time.” He slid the bag towards her. “A change of clothes and a new phone.”

She blinked in surprise. “Thank you. That—thank you.”

“Of course, Detective,” he said. “I thought you could use the extra time to rest. I—I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

He frowned and reached a hand towards her, hesitating. “You’re crying.”

She moved a hand to her cheek. “Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say, so she said nothing, just moved to him, laid her head against his shoulder.

He put an arm around her. “I wish I could make this easy for you, Detective.”

“You make it easier,” she said. “I’m really sorry about how I stormed in here last night.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “You’re always welcome here.”

“Even when I steal your bed?” She asked. “You know you could’ve joined me.”

“I didn’t want to assume.”

She leaned up to kiss him. “You’re always welcome.” She pulled away, taking a sip of coffee. “Really, though, thank you for… all of this. Last night, I—”

His face was so sad and she didn’t know why.

She reached for his hand, but he stepped back. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing is wrong and that—that’s not possible, Detective.”

She wanted to close the distance, but something in his eyes kept her where she was. “Did I do something wrong?”

His hands were shaking, had been for a while, but she’d mistaken it as fidgeting. “You’re a miracle.”

“I know,” she said. “I told you that I know that. It doesn’t change anything for me. I—” He opened his mouth to cut her off and she put a hand on his chest to stop him. “I know it scares you, Lucifer. But my feelings are my own. On some level, you know that, or you wouldn’t have asked me out.”

“I want it to be—I want to believe my father doesn’t control you, Detective. I just don’t know if I can.”

She drew in a breath, hand on his chest curling into a fist, the front of his shirt balled up in it. “Do you want to know what we said the first time we had this conversation? The real first time, during the time loop?”

He nodded.

It was a conversation she would never forget, the panic and the anger and the love. “You said that free will is the greatest thing about human beings, that you had been jealous of it at the beginning.”

“Yes,” he said, like it had been a question.

“And that you married Candy to make sure I wouldn’t choose you when I didn’t really have a choice. That maybe your father put me in a time loop because I went against his will.” She tightened her grip to stop him from saying anything to that. “I’m going to tell you what I said then.”

He nodded.

“When you say things like that,” she said, staring at her hand, “it sounds like you think other people are worthy of your jealousy and I’m only worthy of pity, of being treated like I can’t make my own choices. When you married Candy, you made a choice for me. You took my choice away. And I forgive you for it, Lucifer, but—” Her voice cracked and she loosened her grip. “I asked you then if you could have faith in me. And I know we’re both bad at faith, but—I think we need to try.”

When she finally dared to look up, his face was unreadable—not blank, but every emotion at once.

“I want to try,” he finally said. “Detective, I have never pitied—”

“I know,” she said. “I’ve had this conversation before, remember?

“Right.” He shook his head. “Bloody time loop.”

“You know,” she said. “You mentioned Eve then too.”

“I did?” He considered. “I—before last night, I can’t say I’ve thought about her in a very long time.”

“You mentioned the garden and I asked,” she said, smiling. “You said she was a delight, but you didn’t like her husband.”

He scoffed. “Well, Adam was a bit of a tosser.”

“I stand corrected,” she said. “You said exactly that. It’s kinda eerie, actually.”

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

“Don’t touch that!” Ella said, swatting his hand away. “Do the words expensive scientific equipment mean nothing to you?”

“Well, there’s simply nothing to do, Miss Lopez,” he said, resisting the urge to poke at it again.

“Go bother Chloe,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“The Detective is on the phone with the Boston Police Department.”

“Ah,” Ella said. “I don’t envy them today. Telling the family is never fun. It’s—stop that!” She swatted him again. “God, you’re worse than my brothers sometimes.”

It was hard to be insulted when she said it with such fondness, but he attempted the expression anyway, even as his mind drifted elsewhere. He didn’t think of her often, even around Miss Lopez, but—

“What is your face doing?” She asked.

“I was just,” he said, not really meaning to, “sometimes you remind me quite a lot of my sister.”

All annoyance melted from her expression immediately. “I didn’t know you had a sister. Wait, what’s her name?”

“Hey,” Dan said, rapping his knuckles against the open lab door. “Can we talk?”

“Uh,” Ella said, but his eyes were on Lucifer. “You know, I’ve got an important thing. In the bathroom. I have to pee. Might be a while.” She fled, shutting the door behind her.

“Daniel,” Lucifer said.

“You are one of the biggest assholes I’ve ever met,” he said, with only a hint of his usual vitriol. “You don’t take anything seriously. You act like you’re always right and you never consider how anyone else feels. And I’m sorry.”

He blinked. “That was an apology?”

“I have a lot of pretty good reasons to be pissed at you, most of the time,” he said. “But—I forgot, that Charlotte was important to you too. I don’t understand what on earth the whole step-mom when she was like barely older than you thing means, but—yeah. We cool?”

“Apology accepted, Detective Douche.”

“Aaand status quo restored,” he said.

Ella burst in looking wary. “Chloe just got off the phone, wanted to talk to you.”

“Duty calls,” Lucifer said.

“Hey, man,” he asked, “How old are you anyway?”

He didn’t look back. “Older than the planet, younger than the universe.”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

*༺∘☆∘༻*

“What on earth is Eve doing here?” Chloe asked, as Lucifer strode to her desk.

Lucifer gave her an innocent look. “I don’t know, Detective.” He followed her gaze, to where Eve was, talking to Trixie at Dan’s desk. “What’s your child doing here?”

She scoffed. “School ended an hour ago and she doesn’t have a babysitter because Maze was supposed to be watching Eve. So why is Eve here?”

He shrugged.

“I’m going over there,” she said, shooting him a look. “Stay.”

“I’m not a dog.”

“No,” she said, half to herself, though she knew he heard her. “Dogs listen when you tell them to stay.”

“Hey, Mommy,” Trixie said. “This is Eve.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said. “I know. She’s an old friend of Lucifer’s.”

“You are?” Trixie lit up, glancing towards Lucifer, who was inching closer as if trying to eavesdrop, then whispered, “Do you know any secrets about him?”

Eve laughed. “Hmm, let’s see. Did you know he has a twin?”

“He does?” Trixie asked.

“Wait, really?” Chloe said, turning back towards him only to find he’d vanished.

“You’re so cool,” she said. “Wait, do you know more?”

Eve glanced to Chloe, actual kindness in her eyes. “I’ll think about it. Can I talk to your mom for a minute?”

“Mhmm,” Trixie said. “Can I get something from the vending machine?”

Chloe sighed. “Ask your dad for money.”

“Thanks!”

“You’ve got a sweet kid,” Eve said.

“Thank you,” she managed. “Why are you here, Eve?”

“Because I—I feel bad, about that guy that died. And—not even Lucifer believes I didn’t do it. I want to help.”

Chloe sighed. “We have you on camera at the nightclub during time of death. I don’t think you did it, Eve. You can go. Lucifer and I have work to do.”

“I used to tell myself that,” Eve said, “and I’d say I was trying to make myself feel better, but I always made myself feel worse.”

“Tell yourself what?”

“That we had something special, Lucifer and me. That electricity, that way he makes you feel like the most important person in the universe, that that was something special, just for me. Even now, even when he took one look at me and got me a hotel, part of me still knows, deep in my bones, that he cares.” She looked away. “Funny, how knowing something doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“No,” she said. “Me neither.” She looked around, looked to Trixie, badgering Dan in the lab. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with my life, Detective. I can deal with heaven, boring as it was, I could even deal with hell if I had to. But the world’s gotten so—complicated.”

For the first time, Chloe tried to see Eve from a different light: a woman who had been away for a long time and came back to a world where she knew exactly one person and one way of being. It wasn’t enough to like her, but it was enough to soften a little bit of frustration.

“Look,” she said. “We have to go find our killer. But I think you’ll figure it out. Life is complicated and hard, but at least it’s not boring, right?”

She smiled. “Maybe you’re right, Detective.”

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

Lucifer hardly heard a word that was said as they were shuffled from one office to the next, each employee they questioned less important and less interesting. Even if they had been saying anything relevant to the case—they probably weren’t—he wasn’t thinking about the case.

“Well,” Chloe said as they finally, finally left the building. “Great help they were.”

“Where to now, Detective?”

“Well,” she said. “Probably home, for you. This kid wasn’t local, he’d been in LA for less than a day, and he didn’t go anywhere except here and the hotel. Ella’s still looking for his phone. It’s going to be a lot of scrubbing security footage and waiting for Boston to call me back.”

“You don’t require my assistance with that?”

She gave him a look. “You haven’t exactly been yourself. You didn’t mojo a single person in there.”

“Oh,” he said. “Apologies, Detective, I—”

“Are you okay?” She asked, a genuine concern in her eyes.

He didn’t lie, so he didn’t answer, just let out a long breath.

“Hey,” she said. “Look, I feel like every conversation we’ve had since our date has been, like, big and heavy and I’m not trying to start another one of those right now in a parking lot. Is this about what Eve said?”

“I—” He felt his pulse in his clenched fist. “Detective, I—I’m sorry. I promised you no more secrets, but I—”

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For—Lucifer, you’re allowed to have parts of your life that I don’t know about, so long as they’re not secrets about me or, preferably our cases or friends, but—you don’t owe me every detail. And I’m sorry that I’ve made us so much about me.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“My insecurities and anxieties and freak outs,” she said. “I—I’ve spent every second since the time loop feeling like I’m losing it and trying not to be scared and—I am scared, Lucifer. I’m scared of the future. But you’re allowed to be scared too. And you don’t have to apologize. I’m sorry if I made you feel like everything is your fault, because it’s not.”

“Detective,” he said. “You may be the only person who has never made me feel like I’m at fault.”

The way she looked at him—suddenly, he was feeling brave, brave enough at least to reach out and brush a stray hair behind her ear.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get back to the precinct.”

He trailed behind her a step. “Michael.”

“Sorry?”

“My twin brother,” he said. “His name is Michael. He was the one who threw me from heaven.”

She stopped walking, turned back to look at him. “Threw you?”

He tilted his head at that. Her lack of biblical knowledge was always a fascination. “The fall, Detective. I certainly didn’t jump.”

“I guess I assumed that was a metaphor,” she said. “You really fell from heaven?”

He nodded and she moved back to him, put a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

He smiled and it didn’t even feel like a lie, not when she was touching him. “Thank you.”

The smile she gave him made the whole damn fall worth it.

 *༺∘☆∘༻*

“Um,” Chloe said, not sure whether to look at the glitter all over Ella—and every surface around her—or Eve, who clearly had left the precinct and then returned, now wearing a tight leather dress that could only have come from Maze’s cast-offs. “What’s going on here?”

“Perfect timing,” Ella said. “Chloe, you absolutely have to come out with us tonight.”

“We have a case,” she said. “Also, it’s a Tuesday.”

“We have lots of hours of security footage and no real leads and I know a tech who owes me a favor and thinks energy drinks count as sleep.” Ella smiled. “It’s handled. Come on, we’re just going to Lux and I know Dan has Trixie tonight. What else do you have going on?”

“Ah yes, just Lux. Because nothing crazy ever happens there.”

“Do you know what does happen there?” Ella said. “Free drinks, Decker.”

Eve attempted to recoup her slowly fading grin. “I’m going to run to the bathroom.”

“Oh, right,” Ella said the moment she was gone. “I forgot. Awkward. Look, I know you probably don’t want me getting involved, but Lucifer is totally over her.”

“I know,” Chloe said. “It’s not that. It’s just—we’re very different people. I don’t know how much fun I’ll be. When did the two of you become friends anyway?”

“Come for an hour,” she said. “Have a drink and dance for a bit and you can still be in bed by ten. I promise, you guys will get along great!”

“You know, she is still a murder suspect.”

Ella waved that away. “Only technically.”

Which, of course, is how she ended up in a booth at Lux with a fancy cocktail she hadn’t ordered in one hand and a glass of liquor—she wasn’t fully sure what it was but she’d seen Lucifer drink it before and it tasted like him—in the other.

“So,” Ella was saying, “you and Lucifer have known each other a long time?”

Eve considered the question, sipping at her appletini—why were all of the people in Lucifer’s life as obsessed with biblical motifs and puns as he was?—but finally said, “we knew each other a long time ago. I’m not sure that’s the same thing.”

“How long ago?”

Chloe almost told Ella to stop prying—six thousand years was the number he’d said yesterday, and it was echoing in her head—but Eve just smiled.

“When we were young,” she said. “A long time ago and very far away. I was married then, to a man I wasted far too much of my precious time on earth with, and Lucifer—well, you know what he’s like.” She laughed. “Temptation incarnate.”

“Right,” Ella said. “And the whole devil shtick? Was he already doing that?”

“Oh,” Eve said, glancing to Chloe who didn’t dare to shrug. “Yes.”

“Ella,” Chloe said. “Maybe that’s enough of an interrogation.”

“Sorry,” she said and Eve waved it away. “I just—honestly, I worry about him sometimes. He did this really weird thing earlier—”

“It’s Lucifer,” Chloe said. “Weird things are his normal.”

“Exactly! This was, like, a thing a normal person would say,” Ella said. “He said I reminded him of his sister. It was just—he never talks about his family except to rant about how his dad is god or whatever, which is some next level daddy-issues so no judgment but…”

“I don’t know much about his siblings,” Eve said, “Amenadiel is the only one I ever met back then, though Lucifer used to complain more about some of his brothers. I know there’s a lot of them. I—” She looked to Chloe, and slowly said, “I did meet his father once.”

“And how good is the god comparison?” Ella laughed, not noticing the weird energy between them.

“He is—righteous, and absolute. He’s… every conversation is like a test you didn’t study for and are going to fail and Lucifer was always the worst of his students.”

Chloe swallowed hard.

Eve brightened. “But that’s enough talk about men! Let’s do shots.”

“Coming right up,” Ella said standing.

“None for me,” Chloe said, though she wasn’t sure Ella heard her as she took off. She turned to Eve. “Why did you tell her that?”

Eve’s smile faded. “Because Ella believes in a way I never could.”

“And what way is that?”

“With doubt,” she said. “In the garden, we didn’t have doubt, we had only the absolutes. I like doubt. And Ella.” Her smile returned. “I want to live my life this time, Chloe. The first time around, I made the mistake of not cherishing every moment while I had it. I’m not doing that again.”

For the first time all night, Marcus came to mind. Her instincts had been so wrong about him and—Lucifer was right. He had had none of his mother’s joy and delight in life.

“Good things in life don’t last forever,” Eve said, and then, as if reading her mind, “You have to live your life while you have it, love people while you have them. I—I loved my sons and I have spent an eternity without them. My sweet Abel and—and Cain. He was such a happy child.”

“Really?” Chloe let out half-scoff, half-laugh. “I can’t picture it.”

She grinned.

“I am sorry,” Chloe said. “For everything you’ve lost. And for Marcus. Cain. Whatever.”

“He made his choices,” she said. “I—I don’t regret loving my children just because of what they became and I don’t regret loving them just because I lost them. I just love them.” She looked around. “But I have my life again. And I’m going to live it. Maybe Lucifer’s right.”

“Not a sentence that gets said every day,” Chloe said.

Eve laughed, delighted. “No, definitely not. But it’s time for me to stop living in the past.” She put a hand on Chloe’s. “Maybe it’s time for you to stop, too.”

“Shots!” Ella said, appearing with a tray of them.

Despite herself, Chloe reached for one.

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

The elevator dinger softly, but Lucifer didn’t look up from the keys of the piano.

“Luci,” Amenadiel said.

“Brother,” he said, as his fingers danced across the keys. He stopped playing abruptly, stood to face Amenadiel. “I thought you’d be back in the Silver City by now. Have you fallen again so quickly?”

“Very funny,” he said. “You’re the one who asked me to return, Luci.”

He scoffed. “And if I’d known you were going to stick around, I might have thought better of it.” He moved to the bar, poured himself a drink. He didn’t pour one for Amenadiel, but he didn’t put the decanter away either.

Amenadiel took it as an invitation, pouring himself one. “You’re brooding.”

“I am not brooding.”

“What’s wrong?” He asked. “Is it about killing Cain? About Eve being here? Or is it just about Chloe?”

“What about the Detective?” His grip tightened on the glass in his hand.

Amenadiel raised a brow. “I just meant that she must be processing all of this. The truth of the universe, and the truth about us. You.”

Lucifer looked to him in confusion, then nodded. “I forgot, you missed the whole time loop fiasco. The Detective’s had plenty of time to process. She doesn’t need your help and neither do I.”

“Time loop?”

“Long story, don’t ask, I haven’t got a bloody clue,” he said, returning to the piano. “Goodbye, brother.”

Annoyingly, Amenadiel didn’t leave, he actually sat down on the couch and sighed. “What am I doing here, Lucifer?”

He went back to playing. “You really are welcome to go.”

“Not here,” he said. “Here. Earth. I was in the Silver City, Lucifer. I was home. And all it took was one word from you and I came rushing back and—no one needs me here. I have no purpose, no—part of me was hoping Eve was here to kill you just so I might have something to do.”

“I’d try not to be offended by that, but I don’t really care about sparing your feelings.”

“Luci,” he said. “You’ve always done whatever you desire. How?”

His hands froze in place. “What?”

“How do you do that? I’ve always had a purpose, a mission, something to strive towards. Now, all I have is… choices.”

“You were making choices already,” he said, taking a sip of his drink. “Even your missions, Father never assigned you to chase me back to hell, you did that of your own accord and then decided it was a holy task. I’m sure you will continue to come up with some bull-headed justification for whatever you do next and it will all work out swimmingly. Now, I really would like some peace and quiet.”

He chuckled, but stood. “You know, that’s actually a good point. Thank you, Lucifer.”

Lucifer ignored him and went back to playing.

“Oh, by the way,” he said, halfway back to the elevator. “Chloe and Eve are drinking together downstairs.”

His fingers crashed to a sudden halt.

“Yeah,” Amenadiel said. “That’s what I thought.”

*༺∘☆∘༻*

“Is Decker actually drinking?” Maze asked, leaning against the side of the booth. “And on a school night?”

“Maze!” Eve jumped up to greet her. “You made it.”

“Nothing better to do,” she said, grabbing the three remaining shots and downing them one after the other. “I tried to get Linda to come but apparently we’ve been working out too much and she feels terrible, whatever that means.”

“Well, the more the merrier,” Ella said. “I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”

The two of them glanced at each other, but neither actually answered the implied question.

“It probably is about my time to go,” Chloe said. “It’s getting late.”

“I just got here,” Maze said. “Stay for a drink.”

She sighed and all her instincts were telling her to refuse, to go home and sleep and not ruin tomorrow, but she thought about Eve’s words and she thought about the time loop, when, just for a moment, the threat of tomorrow had stopped mattering.

“I’ll stay a bit longer,” she said. “But I’m switching to water.”

“Lame.”

“Some of us have a day job, Maze.”

“I have a job,” she said. “The bad guys will still be there at noon.”

“Why do you have a job?” Eve asked. “I thought demons were all about the partying.”

“Um,” Ella said.

“Oh, trust me,” Maze grinned, “the way I do it, it’s nothing but fun. I get money, bad guy gets jail, my shuriken don’t get rusty. Three doomed birds, one stone.”

Eve tilted her head, like this was delightful and not insane. “We need another round.”

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

It was far past the Detective’s usual bedtime when she finally approached the bar, settling in on the stool beside him.

“Hey,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were here. I would’ve come said hi.”

He smiled. “I didn’t want to disturb that truly frightening girl’s night you have going on.”

“Frightening?” She teased.

“I won’t have all the women in my life ganging up on me.”

“You would absolutely deserve it.” She put a hand on his arm. “How’s your night going?”

“It’s far better now,” he said.

“It better be,” she said. “Because I’m going to be an unholy nightmare tomorrow. Given that my alarm goes off in, what, seven hours?”

“I’ll stop for coffee on my way in.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Eve is… not what I expected.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“The happy, fun party girl, that honestly makes sense.”

“Then what doesn’t?”

She looked up at him. “I don’t think I expected her to be that sad.”

He frowned.

“It is kind of reassuring though,” she said, cracking a small smile. “Even the very first mother sometimes didn’t have a clue what she was doing.”

He let the frown fade away and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Perhaps it’s time for good detectives to head off to bed, darling.”

“Well past time,” she said, yawning.

“You,” he said. “If you would like, Detective, you are more than welcome to stay.”

She smiled fondly at him. “Not tonight. I want to make sure Ella gets home okay. She’s very drunk and Maze and Eve have vanished into the ether.”

“Another time, perhaps. Shall I call you a car?”

She just nodded against him and he reached for his phone, focus more on her touch than what he was doing.

“Shouldn’t be long,” he said. “So, any other salacious discussion topics I should know about?”

“Adam sucked,” she said.

He let out a burst of laughter. “I couldn’t agree more, but how and why did this come up?”

“Me and Maze were talking about Trixie and then I mentioned Dan and our divorce and then Eve talked about her… well, she said divorce for Ella’s sake, but I assume she meant leaving him in heaven and—” She frowned. “If you’re still married when you die, but you have to get a divorce in heaven or is it just de facto over?”

He laughed again and held her closer. “Darling, I am the wrong one to ask.”

“Because you haven’t been to heaven in a long time or because you’ve never been married?” She frowned. “Wait, have you ever been married? Other than Candy, I mean.”

He blinked, trying for a moment to decipher the question. “Of course not. Marriage is a pointless ritual that’s failed for nearly everyone who’s ever tried it since the beginning of time. Look at Eve. Why would anyone want that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Part of me wondered if you might understand it. When I got married, it wasn’t about religious stuff or even really the legal stuff, it was just—it was about making a promise.”

“And that ended so well.”

She rolled her eyes. “I think it did. I think I’m happy where me and Dan ended up.” She nudged her. “Besides, what would you even do if I was still with Dan? Pine over me forever?”

“I did not pine!”

“Oh, please, you were trying desperately to sleep with me the whole time we’ve been partners.”

“Well, yes,” he said, “but just because I’m not blind doesn’t mean I’m a pathetic puppy.”

She giggled. “You liked me.”

“Detective, I—” His phone buzzed with a notification and he considered ignoring it, but she looked so tired. “I think that’s your car. Let’s go see if we can’t round up Miss Lopez, yes?”

She kissed his cheek. “Okay, Fido.”

*༺∘☆∘༻*

“Wow,” Chloe said, leaning against the door to the lab. “How are you here right now?”

Ella barely looked up from what she was doing. “Oh, I got in at six. Last night was like a hard reset for my brain, I feel great!” She looked up. “Oh, and, remember how we couldn’t find our dead guy’s phone?”

“Yeah, why?”

“It was really bothering me because—chain of events right? He had the phone when Eve was in the room, she left, and when she found the body, it was gone.”

“So the killer probably took it.” She frowned. “Wait, the phone kept ringing and he was stressed out by it.” Her hand brushed her phone. “Ella, what if he tossed his phone?”

“I mean, it seems like a crazy person thing to do, Decker, but I think you’re also one hundred percent right. I just got off the phone with the hotel—they had their cleaning staff take a look around, guess where they found a phone?”

“Where?”

“In the toilet tank. And it doesn’t really matter if it was our vic or our killer, because phones are way easier to save from water than people think.”

“It’s been two days,” Chloe pointed out. “It can’t still be recoverable, right?”

She cracked her knuckles. “We’re gonna find out. God, I have so much time and energy now that I don’t have to go to church anymore.”

She frowned. “Oh, I guess I didn’t realize you really stopped.”

“Well, you know,” she said, “me and the big guy haven’t been on speaking terms since—everything.”

“Do you still believe? In god and heaven and everything?”

She smiled. “I’m always going to believe, Chloe. But—there’s two kinds of belief, right? Whether or not you believe in Bigfoot, that’s a question of existence. I believe god exists. And then there’s the kind of belief like—you believe in your kid when she’s trying out for the school play. That’s not about existence, it’s about love and care and knowledge of a person. And that’s what’s a little shaky for me right now.”

“I understand,” she said, surprised to find it was true.

“And I keep thinking about Genesis,” she said. “Do you—like Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit and all that? The original sin.”

“I know that one,” she said, biting her lip hard.

“Right, so god plants a garden for humanity and tells them, you can eat from any tree except this one, that’s forbidden, but the devil—” They both smiled like that was an inside joke. “The devil comes as a snake and tells Eve to eat from that tree. And yadda yadda original sin. But the part I never got, until Eve and I were talking last night—our Eve, not Bible Eve—is, why put that tree in the garden at all? Why test us? Why leave us vulnerable to temptation?”

“And you think you know why?”

She blushed. “Oh, god, Decker, I’m sorry, you don’t care about any of this.”

“No,” she said. “Tell me. It’s okay.”

“God is righteous,” Ella said. “He doesn’t doubt himself—he can’t, he’s god. But—maybe he put us here to doubt him. To question the things he has to accept as truth. Maybe it’s not about failing a test—it’s about grading one.”

“You think we’re here to judge god?”

She shook her head. “Not to judge, to question, to challenge. Doubt needs certainty, but certainty needs doubt too.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Lucifer said, seeming to appear behind her.

“We found the vic’s phone,” Chloe said quickly.

“Yes,” Lucifer said, holding up an evidence bag with a phone. “That’s what I just came to tell you.”

“Ooh, give,” Ella said, grabbing it. “Twenty bucks says I can pull something off it in less than an hour.”

Lucifer chuckled and slid a hundred across the table. “I know better than to take a bet against you, Miss Lopez.”

Fifty-seven minutes later, because of course Lucifer was counting, Ella pulled them back into the lab.

“We haven’t looked at all into the girlfriend, have we?”

“Girlfriend?” Chloe frowned. “BPD and the family didn’t mention anything about one.”

“Yeah, because they broke up six months ago. That’s, like, forever to a twenty-three year old, but—meet Katie O’Brien. She called him twelve times in the hour before he died and guess what else?”

“She was in Los Angeles?” Lucifer said.

“Bingo! Cell towers ping her not far from the scene.”

“Is she still in LA?” Chloe asked.

“I don’t think so. She bought a plane ticket back to Boston for Monday night.”

“Okay,” Chloe said. “Keep working on that, but it might be out of our hands. I’ll call Boston.”

“Detective?” Lucifer followed her out. “What do you mean, out of our hands?”

“Well, obviously we still need to gather all the evidence, but if the ex-girlfriend is the killer, BPD is going to have to find her and question her. Hopefully, that means we just get to sit and do the easy part.”

“Does that mean we’re just—giving up?”

“Not giving up,” she said. “It means, we solved it and they get to prove it. I mean, we won’t stop working on it until they have less circumstantial evidence, obviously, but—sometimes it really is that easy, Lucifer. Just one piece missing and everything—everything clicks into place.”

He gave her a long look and she held her phone to her ear.

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

Eve settled down beside him at the bar. “I thought about going somewhere else, but—I guess no one does temptation quite as well as the devil.”

“Hm,” he said, “that or you’ve been drinking here for free.”

She scoffed. “Please, I could drink for free anywhere I wanted.”

“Quite.”

She smiled at him. “You know, Chloe is pretty great.”

“Oh?” He raised a brow. “I see last night’s escapades changed your opinion rather quickly.”

“I mean, who could blame me for worrying,” she said. “You’ve never had particularly discerning taste in the past.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “I don’t regret it. Do you?”

“I’m tired of regret,” she said. “Buy me a drink?”

*༺∘☆∘༻*

She went back and forth for nearly half an hour, standing at the top of the parking garage under the evening sky and then she texted him.

“Hello, Detective.”

She spun around and Amenadiel smiled at her.

“That,” she said, “is never not going to be creepy.”

“Apologies,” he said. “You wanted to talk?”

“Why did you leave heaven?”

His smile faded.

“No one actually seems to be happy there,” she said. “You left. Eve left. All the people who’ve been there the longest seem to have gotten sick of it.”

He considered her for a moment, quiet and still in a way his brother could never achieve. “Has Lucifer told you anything,” he asked, “about our mother?”

“Not much,” she said. “She didn’t like humans, was briefly Charlotte Richards, and almost killed Linda.”

“Oh, she tried to kill you too,” he said, immediately seeming to regret it. “Sorry, that’s—almost certainly not reassuring.”

It was not. “Do you have a point?”

“My mother hated humanity,” he said. “She considered herself a giant among ants, considered us the only creatures of any real sentience. My father loved you, his pet project, his grand masterpiece. But both of them—despite their differences, both of them thought themselves, us, separate from humanity.”

“And you?”

“I have never cared for anyone the way I do for my friends here on earth,” he said. “And I have never been more confused.”

“If you’re confused, then I really don’t have a chance.”

He smiled. “I don’t believe that. I—I don’t know if my father returned my wings or if he just gave me the wisdom to return them to myself. All I know is that I was here because I couldn’t leave and now I’m here because I couldn’t stay away and—maybe there’s something to accepting that I have to make my own choices.”

“I get what you mean,” she said, only mildly surprised to find it was true. “Did Lucifer tell you about my time loop?”

“Not really,” he said. “He very flippantly mentioned it and refused to elaborate, which—”

“Lucifer,” she said, at the exact moment he did. She smiled at him.

“My brother likes to think of himself as unaffected,” Amenadiel said. “Tell me.”

“The day after Charlotte died,” she said. “I relived that day again and again. I—I counted afterwards, alone in my bed and terrified of going to sleep. Twenty-six times. The same day twenty-six times and not even Lucifer can tell me how or why and part of me can’t help but wonder. What, a lesson? A punishment? A warning?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I wish I could tell you otherwise, Chloe. I pretended for thousands of years to understand the will of my father, but the truth is, I don’t understand. I’ve never understood. And perhaps that is our true task, to figure it out for ourselves.”

“Well, that’s crap,” she said. “If your dad has something to say, he should just say it.”

“A lesson,” he said. “That was your first instinct, your first guess. Punishment came afterwards. Why a lesson?”

“Because,” she said, “the same day over and over, with no way to affect tomorrow, I had to make the moment count and now I’m back in my real life and—I’m terrified of the future.”

“Why?”

“Because someday I’m going to die and Lucifer says I’ll go to heaven and never see him again. And if that’s what heaven is—eternity frightens me far more than a hundred days on repeat ever could.”

“None of us know what the future holds.”

“Not even you?”

“Especially not me,” he said.

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

“Oh, good,” Maze said, dropping her bag on the kitchen counter as Lucifer strode in without knocking, “you’re here.”

“As requested,” he said, “though the devil is hardly your concierge, Mazikeen. What was so urgent?”

“I have a bounty,” she said. “I need you to watch Trixie.”

“What?” He blinked. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You’ll be fine, she mostly takes care of herself. And I’m basically doing you a favor anyway.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

She scoffed. “Oh, please. Decker’s gonna be home in a few hours and she’ll totally get all hot and bothered so long as you manage to not kill her kid. Hey, Trix!”

Beatrice stepped out from her bedroom, a grin breaking across her face. “Lucifer!”

Maze threw her bag over her shoulder. “He’s gonna hang out with you til your mom gets back, cool?”

“Cool,” she said.

“No, not cool,” Lucifer said. “Mazikeen, you can’t just—”

“Already doing it,” she said, out the door before he could argue.

“Demons,” Lucifer scoffed, turning his gaze to the child. “Do you need to be fed? Watered?”

She giggled. “Again, not a dog. I just have to finish my homework before Mom gets home.”

“Very well,” he said. “Perhaps I can assist with completing your torture expediently?”

“Do you know anything about astronomy?”

He blinked. “Astronomy?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re going on a field trip to the planetarium tomorrow so we have to do a worksheet on astronomy first to learn about stars and stuff.”

He scoffed. “A worksheet? What a terrible way to learn about the stars.”

A sly grin spread across her face, one he recognized as trouble. “Do you know a better one?”

*༺∘☆∘༻*

She heard the laughter from outside, which did little to amend her confusion at the fully darkened apartment, but did alleviate her concern. She moved inside slowly, quietly, and Trixie laughed again, not seeming to hear the door from wherever she was, somewhere deeper in the apartment.

“It really does look like a dog!” Trixie said, sounding delighted.

“Well, hardly what I intended, child,” Lucifer said, though she had no idea what he was doing here, ”but I do believe that the author is well and truly dead when it comes to constellations. Although, the Babylonians saw it as a bow and arrow.”

“Wait, how?”

Chloe approached as quietly as she could, getting her first glimpse of the bright projection on the living room ceiling displaying the night sky.

“There,” he said, and in the faint glow of the fancy-looking star projector—where on earth had he gotten that from?—she could just barely see him guiding Trixie’s hand in a straight line gesturing at the ceiling. “Do you see?”

Chloe must have made some noise, because he turned suddenly to see her hovering and immediately he dropped Trixie’s hand, like he was embarrassed to be caught this way. “Detective.”

“Don’t stop on my account,” she said. “What constellation are you looking at, Trix?”

“Canis Major,” she said. “It looks like a dog, see?”

Chloe laid down on the floor beside Trixie. “Oh, yeah, I see it.”

Lucifer scoffed. “You humans love to see animals in the stars.”

“Humans like patterns,” Chloe said. “And the stars are random, so we make up our own patterns.”

“The stars are not random,” he said.

Once, she would’ve taken that as another of the million random and impossible things he always said, but she knew better now, considered the words, tried to think of what question to ask but only managed, “Oh?”

He was quiet a moment too long and she wondered if she should ask a follow-up, but finally he said, “I hung them there. I had favorites, but… I never did think to name them.”

“You hung the stars?” She asked. “Literally?”

“Well, yes, darling,” he said. “Lucifer does mean light-bringer, you know.”

Another time, she would argue that light-bringer was not necessarily the same as creator of the stars, but now, Trixie giggled. “You guys are so funny.”

Chloe leaned over to press a kiss to her head. “And I’m going to assume you finished all your homework first?”

“I’m almost done!”

“Uh huh,” she said. “Go finish it and we can look at the stars some more after.”

“Thanks Mom!” She stood, nearly tripping over Lucifer, who let out a little insulted noise and half-sat up.

Chloe chucked and pulled him back to the ground, rolling closer to press a kiss to his cheek. He was stiff and uncomfortable beside her, like something was wrong.

“What is it?” She asked.

He sighed. “I apologize, Detective, for distracting your offspring from her idiotic worksheet.”

She laughed. “It’s fine. I mean, don’t make a habit of derailing her homework, but this was adorable and she definitely learned way more than she would have. I—” Her smile faded to concern. “Since when do you even care about things like that? Normally, you’re telling me I’m a terrible mother if I make her do anything she doesn’t want.”

“I don’t think you’re a bad mother,” he said, still too serious.

“Okay,” she said, “who are you and what have you done with my”—boyfriend?—“partner?”

“I just, I know you’ve been through a lot, Detective, feeling like you’re… abnormal now. I didn’t want to do anything to contribute to that.”

“This isn’t abnormal,” she said. “It’s adorable and it makes me really happy that you guys had fun. Actually, the only weird part is—how on earth did Maze wrangle you into watching her?”

It was too dark to actually see him roll his eyes, but she could sense it. “She claimed to have a bounty, but unlike myself, demons have no compunctions regarding lying.”

She intertwined her fingers with his and looked up at the ceiling. “Thank you.”

Her voice was low and quiet. “I would do anything for you, Detective, and your child, despite her sticky hands.”

“I love you,” she said, before the words had even processed in her brain, before she could decide if this was the time or the place, before she could think about anything at all.

He stiffened, but she didn’t let him pull away.

“Hey,” she said. “I don’t need you to say it back. I just—I wanted you to know.”

“Chloe,” he said, her name in his mouth like it was something precious. “How can this be anything but my father’s doing?”

“We talked about this,” she said. “I’m my own person, I make my own choices. I’m allowed to choose you. He doesn’t control me.”

Something about that calmed him a little. “If you are able to choose,” he asked, “why in the world would you choose to love me?”

She considered that a moment. “I don’t think people choose to love someone. And not because I’m a miracle, don’t get started, but—it’s kind of like breathing. I can choose to make myself stop breathing—hold my breath—but breathing itself is something involuntary. Not because god is micromanaging but because it keeps us alive. I don’t think I chose to love you anymore than I’m choosing to breathe, not because I’m a miracle but because I’m human. I am choosing to be with you.” She sat up, pressed his hand to her heart. “I love you.”

He sat up. “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“How it’s possible, I—”

“Lucifer,” she said. “Do you remember the first time we kissed?”

He frowned. “Of course I do.”

“You had just finished telling me all the reasons you weren’t worthy of me,” she said.

He managed a smile. “And you like me best when I’m beaten down and broken, darling?”

“I like you best when you’re not trying to pretend to be something you’re not.” She smiled back.

“I don’t lie.”

“Except to yourself. And—you have this whole persona of assuming that everyone will be obsessed with you, Lux, all the women, your mojo, the favors, all of it, but deep down, the devil is the man standing on that beach, telling me that he doesn’t think he’s worthy of love.”

He drew in a breath. “Detective—I’m not. I’m not worthy of you, of—Detective.”

“You don’t need to be,” she said. “Look, love is not like heaven, where you need to be worthy to get there. The worst people in the world can be deeply, truly loved. And you are not a bad person.”

“I’m the devil.”

“The devil isn’t evil, he punishes evil,” she said. “Or did you forget?”

He pressed a kiss to her temple, so impossibly soft. “Thank you. I—Detective.”

“I know,” she said. “I don’t need you to say anything.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Have you guys eaten yet?”

He shook his head. “Are you hungry? I’m sure I could scrounge up something from this abandoned kitchen of yours.”

“Hey, if you’re offering to cook, I won’t stop you.” She smiled and they both stood. He moved to the kitchen and she turned on the lights and it felt right, leaning on the counter as he critiqued every item in her fridge. Their relationship had always been so hard and complicated, but like this, it felt easy. As easy as breathing.

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

Falling. Falling so fast and so far that no matter how pleasant his destination, the arrival would hurt. He hadn’t had anything to compare it against the first time, but now he could confidently say he’d been falling for several human lifetimes. Was that enough time in heaven for her to forget—

He snapped awake, holding his body stock still.

Chloe was still sleeping soundly as his demons—metaphorically only, as Maze hadn’t returned the night before—drove him from bed. He didn’t want to disturb her, but his body was itching to move, so he slipped downstairs.

He dealt with the dishes from last night and moved to make breakfast, only stopping himself when he realized quite how early it was. But, he needed to do something, which is why the child found him an hour later cleaning crumbs from the toaster (he’d already scrubbed the counters, swept and then mopped the floor, and taken out the barely-quarter-full kitchen trash, so he was running low on ideas).

“You know,” she said, “you really should unplug it before you do that.”

“Ah,” he said, and unplugged it. “Perhaps you do learn something at that wretched institution of yours child.”

“It’s five-thirty,” she said. “What are you doing?”

He put the toaster down. “Ameliorating the horror show that is this kitchen. Really, does no one ever clean in here?”

“Not at five-thirty.” She raised a brow. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“The devil does not have nightmares,” he said, his set lip immediately loosening under her gaze. “It was—just a bad dream.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asked. “Sometimes that helps me when I have a scary dream.”

“You sound like my therapist.”

“Sometimes I have scary dreams about Mom,” she said. “Where she gets hurt or—but then I wake up. And they’re not real. But they’re still scary.”

He tucked an arm around her—he had no real concern of her staining Dan’s ratty old tee shirt and sweatpants. “My dream concerned your mother as well.”

She pressed herself more into his side.

“One day,” he said, “a very, very long time from now, your mother will go to heaven. And I won’t be able to follow her there. And I—in my dream, I worried that she would forget me.”

“I’m sorry your dream was scary,” she said. “But it’s not real. Mommy’s upstairs. And she has a really good memory.”

He smiled. “I suppose she does, doesn’t she?”

“Will you make me pancakes?”

He sighed dramatically, as if he were capable of refusing. “If you insist, urchin.”

“Can you make them shaped like stars?”

He grinned.

When Chloe wandered down not much later—the noise had certainly been the child’s fault—it was midway through his explanation of what, exactly, a pentagram was, she only managed a tired smile.

“We’re up early,” she said, as he held out a plate with half a dozen perfect stars (he’d drawn them as filled-in pentagrams, of course) and a couple weird blobs courtesy of Beatrice.

“The day waits for no devil, Detective.”

“Eat one of the ones I made!” She said.

Chloe laughed. “They look delicious.”

He scoffed. “Mine are clearly superior.”

She picked up a blob. “Real mature, Lucifer.”

“Are you guys going to be having more sleepovers now?” Beatrice asked.

Lucifer looked away from her immediately, to Chloe and then away.

“Is that okay with you, monkey?” She asked.

She grinned broadly. “Are you kidding? It’s so fun when Lucifer’s here.”

“Good,” Chloe said. “Hey, Lucifer, I left my phone upstairs, could you go grab it?”

“What?” She gestured away with just her eyes. “Oh, yes, of course.”

It was bad form to eavesdrop, but he found himself lurking on the stairs regardless.

“Hey, Trixie, babe,” Chloe said. “I know the past couple of months have been a lot for you—a lot of change. And I—are you sure you’re okay with me and Lucifer dating? I know that everything that happened with Marcus was scary for you and I wouldn’t date anyone else if I thought they would be scary.”

“Lucifer isn’t scary,” she said. “He’s a big wuss and he doesn’t know not to stick a fork in a toaster. And he makes you happy, Mommy.”

“What about you, monkey? How do you feel?”

“I like when he tells me stuff,” she said. “Like the stars. Besides, Dad always used to say you should marry your best friend. And he’s your best friend.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said. “Yeah, he is, baby.”

He moved to return, then actually went up to retrieve her phone. By the time he got back, Chloe was working on the next pancake—a strange blob with two points sticking out of the top, and Beatrice was laughing.

“What on earth is that?” He asked.

“It’s you,” Beatrice said. “See the horns?”

He scoffed. “Detective, tell your little miscreant that I don’t actually have horns.”

“But you’re so proud of the emoji,” Chloe teased.

“Yes, but I’m hardly purple either!”

“I don’t know,” she said, “I could see it.”

He glanced around. “Where did your offspring go?”

She emerged from her room, holding something behind her back. “Give me your hand.”

“Absolutely not,” he said.

She gave him that look that belonged on her mother’s face. “Wuss.”

He scoffed and held out his hand, which she immediately drew on with the purple marker she was holding. A little circle with two bumps sticking off it.

“See?” She grinned. “Now you are purple.”

“You spend too much time with Maze.” He turned to Chloe. “Little hellion.”

“Uh huh.” She started another pancake. “And good little hellions should go get dressed. You don’t want to be late for your field trip.”

“It’s six-thirty!”

“And if you get dressed now, Lucifer and I will make some more pancakes.”

She scampered off and Chloe turned to him.

“Good morning,” she said, leaning up to kiss him. “Sleep okay?”

He smiled at her. “Well enough, Detective.”

She glanced away. “I hope I didn’t totally freak you out last night.”

He reached for her, hesitating a moment before he leaned in to press a kiss to her temple. It was easier than explaining everything that was rattling around in his rib cage.

She curled her fingers in his. “I probably should have talked to Trixie before you spent the night, but—”

He frowned.

“Not your fault,” she said, as if she could read his mind. “Thank you for watching her last night. I—you’re so good with her.”

His brow shot up. “Congratulations, Detective. I do believe that’s something no one in the universe has ever accused me of.”

She pressed herself against him, hand on his back, a kiss to his cheek. “She likes it when you’re here.”

He reached up a hand to stroke her hair.

“I like it too.”

One day, this too would be the past, would be grief, but right now, the pure joy melted that away. Nothing could pull him from her arms.

Well, nothing except the pancake burning on the stove.

*༺∘☆∘༻*

She knocked a little timidly on the open door frame, still managing to startle Linda, who was grimacing as she attempted to down a strangely-colored smoothie.

“Mh, Chloe,” she said, seeming relieved to have an excuse to set it down. “Please, come in, how are you?”

“I’m,” she said. “I don’t know. I actually have no idea. It’s been a crazy week.”

“It has,” she said. “Do you want to sit? Tell me about it?”

She sat. “I—Lucifer’s probably told you a lot of this.”

“Lucifer has told me some of what his view on recent events has been. I want to hear yours.”

Chloe hesitated.

“It—look, technically, ethically, I shouldn’t do this much mixing of the line between client and friend, but the line is very much mixed and there’s not exactly a colleague I can refer you to that will believe a word you say, so, let’s pretend for a moment that Lucifer’s told me nothing, that I don’t see him at all. Tell me about your week.”

“Friday, the funeral,” she said, and it was only a week ago, but it felt a thousand years away. “Lucifer asked me out, which was vaguely inappropriate given the venue, but I said yes. We went out Saturday night and I stayed over and—Sunday, we had this big fight and Eve showed up—do you know about Eve?” She earned a nod. “And then, Monday, Eve comes into the precinct to report a murder and she’s a suspect, yet somehow by Tuesday night, me, her, Ella, and Maze are out drinking—are you feeling better by the way, because Maze said you were sick?”

“Much better,” she said. “Please, go on.”

“So, yesterday, we get a pretty good lead in the case that suggests it isn’t Eve—I got the call this morning to confirm it—and I… I spent a while talking to Amenadiel. He’s—comforting isn’t really his style, is it?”

She smiled at that. “Not when he’s trying to be, no.”

“And then, last night,” she said, “I got home to find Lucifer and Trixie—he set up this adorable star projector thing and he was teaching her constellations for her planetarium field trip and then we talked. Really talked. And I—I told him I loved him.”

Linda’s eyes went wide for a moment before she managed to regain her composure. “Oh. Okay. No wonder you’re feeling a bit confused.”

“I do love him,” she said. “I—I don’t think I really meant to say it, but no doubts, no regrets. I was a little worried about scaring him off—you know what he’s like when anyone shows him any amount of affection—and I woke up, alone in bed this morning. And then, I went downstairs and found him and Trixie making pancakes.”

“Okay,” she said. “It sounds like it’s been a week of high emotions for you. You said that you didn’t find Amenadiel comforting?”

“You agreed with me.”

“I did,” she said. “But, can I ask, what sort of comfort were you looking for?”

She swallowed. “In the time loop, I once asked you a very personal question that you, rightfully, declined to answer. You said you thought you would go to hell and I asked why and—” She shook her head. “It’s none of my business, but, as the only other normal human being in the loop on all of this—does the concept of eternity frighten you?”

“Oh, constantly,” she said. “Mostly, I try not to think about it, but I absolutely spun out thinking about what it means to have actual proof of an afterlife, good or bad.”

“That fight we had,” she said. “Lucifer told me that he thinks I’m going to heaven and that if I do, I’ll never see him again. And that scared the hell out of me.”

“Why did it scare you?”

“Because I do love him,” she said. “And knowing that just feels like a reminder of how limited our time really is.”

She considered that, nodded. “Okay. Before all of this, before you believed in heaven and hell, what did you think happened when we die?”

She frowned. “I don’t… I guess, just nothingness. Just an end. Death has always felt pretty final to me.”

She nodded again. “So, for example, when you married Dan, you thought, even if you had never gotten divorced, that you would have one lifetime together?”

“That’s different,” she said. “If one lifetime was all we got, then a lifetime together is all of your time. But one lifetime against an eternity of heaven? That’s… nothing, right?”

“It’s the same amount of time,” she said. “Why is it different?”

She looked away.

“One day, Trixie’s going to be an adult,” Linda said, and Chloe’s eyes shot back to her. “Compared to even one lifetime, childhood is so short. Does that mean that her childhood doesn’t matter?”

“Of course it matters,” Chloe said. “I just wish it would slow down.” She frowned. “Oh.”

“So, there will always be more moments,” Linda said. “And someday, for us both, there will be moments somewhere other than here on earth. But no matter what we do, we can’t go back. The new moments will never be these ones, for good or for ill.”

She drew in a breath.

“I think what you need to ask yourself, Chloe,” she said, “is whether any of it changes anything. You still have one life to make choices. What are you going to do with it?”

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

The Child: Attachments: 2 Photos

The Child: I won a keychain because I knew what the name of the north star was!!!

The Child: Attachments: 5 Photos

The Child: Can we come back to the planetarium this summer?

The Child: Attachments: 12 Photos

The Child: what’s your zodiac sign?

The Child: Attachments: 23 Photos

“Woah,” Ella said. “Your phone’s ringing off the hook. Should you get that?”

“It’s not a call,” Lucifer said, picking the phone up off the table. “The Detective’s offspring has decided I need to be apprised of every second of her trip to the planetarium.”

“That’s actually adorable,” she said.

He scowled. “First, the Detective, now you, Miss Lopez. I am still the devil, you know.”

“What you are,” she said, punching him lightly in the arm, “is a big softie. And Chloe knows it. And apparently Trixie does too.” She grabbed his phone from his hand, holding it out of reach when he went to grab it back.

“Miss Lopez, what are you doing?” He gave up pretty quickly and just watched her scroll.

“Oh. My. God,” she said. “Lucifer, this is absolutely adorable. And it looks like Trixie is having so much fun! Have you sent these pictures to Chloe?”

“Am I supposed to?”

She sighed and shook her head. “First rule of any kid in your life that isn’t yours—Mom always wants the cute pictures.” She looked to the door. “Dan, come in here!”

Dan frowned but entered. “What’s up, Ella?” He gave Lucifer a bro-y sort of nod that he was fairly certain he managed to reciprocate correctly.

“That was normal,” she said. “Are you two being normal again?”

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Dan said.

“Likewise,” Lucifer said.

“Okay,” she said. “Making me feel like the crazy one, that’s fine. Anyway, look what Trixie’s been sending Lucifer.” She opened a photo and handed him the phone.

“Is this from her field trip?” Dan asked. “She hasn’t sent me anything.”

Ella reached over to slide to the next photo. “Keep going.”

He looked through a few more, stopping on a picture of the child, holding up her new keychain, which was of course, a shooting star, trailed by the words you’re a star. She was smiling so brightly, even Lucifer could almost believe the words.

“She looks so happy,” Dan said, though he sounded sad. “God, they grow up so fast.”

“For once,” Lucifer said, accepting his phone back, “my father isn’t to blame.”

He cracked a smile. “Man, you are so weird. Send me those photos, though.”

“Very well,” he said.

Ella waited about five seconds after Dan left the lab to punch Lucifer again on the arm. “When did the two of you make up?”

“Why are you hitting me for that?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s affection, Lucifer.”

“Oh,” he said and, as absolutely lightly as he could manage, hit her back on the arm.

She grinned, delighted, a smile nearly as bright as the child. “Dan’s right, you are a weirdo. But you’re our weirdo.”

“I suppose that’s a compliment?”

She laughed and went back to the work she was supposed to be doing. “You need to text Trixie back. She’s gonna be sad if you never respond.”

“I,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”

She shook her head. “She’s a kid, Lucifer, and she wants your attention. Don’t you remember being a kid?”

“I was never a child.” It was the truth.

“Now that I don’t believe,” she said. “Come on, just say what you wish your parents said to you when you were young and looking for attention. And don’t try to tell me you weren’t attention seeking.”

“No,” he said. “That I certainly was.”

She laughed and looked back to her work and he looked to his phone, hesitating as he scrolled up a few texts, until he found the one he was looking for.

The Child: Can we come back to the planetarium this summer?

He replied to it directly. Once you’re free from your prison for the year, we can do whatever you desire.

She responded almost immediately with a string of pink and purple emoji hearts.

He hesitated a moment more, glanced at Ella to see if she was watching—she wasn’t—and sent a single heart back, immediately locking his phone and tucking it away.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and, despite himself, he couldn’t resist a too-bright little smile.

*༺∘☆∘༻*

Maze answered on the third ring. “Sup, Decker?”

“Hey,” Chloe said. “I just wanted to check and see how you were doing. Is everything okay?”

She was quiet a beat. “Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know,” she said, hearing but not commenting on the strange tension in Maze’s voice. “You just never skip out on babysitting, so I wanted to check in.”

“Ah,” she said. “I get what this is about. Did Lucifer totally mess up?”

“No,” Chloe said. “He did fine. I really just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” she said. “I had plans. Don’t worry about it, Decker. Me and Trix are cool.”

Plans. So, not a bounty like she had told Lucifer, but for once, Chloe decided to let it go.

“Good,” she said. “Are you going to be around this weekend?”

“Uh, probably not,” she said. “I’ve got some things coming up, but I’ll probably be back by Tuesday or Wednesday. I told Trixie I’d take her to the zoo or something at some point.”

Chloe smiled, earning a raised brow from Lucifer, who had just begun to hover over her desk. “Okay, sounds good. Have a good weekend, Maze.”

“Whatever,” she said—but it was an affectionate whatever—and hung up.

“And what is our favorite little demon up to now?” Lucifer asked, his hand hovering over his breast pocket.

“Oh, she’s just going to be away for a couple days,” Chloe said. “I didn’t ask.”

“Terrorizing another city for a change, perhaps?” He smiled and sat in the chair beside her desk. “One less distraction for you.”

“Oh?” She cocked her head. “Is there something else you think I should be focusing on?” She shook her head before he could respond. “No PDA at work.”

He grinned. “Very well. Perhaps this evening. Dinner?”

She looked to him and the pile of paperwork on her desk and sighed. “I really have a lot to get done. Tomorrow night?”

His smile didn’t waver. “Tomorrow, then.”

She frowned. “Wait, shoot, tomorrow’s Trixie’s last day of school. I promised her a movie night. Can we do Saturday?”

He put a hand on her knee. “Whatever you like, Detective.”

“You,” she said, “are an absolute dork.”

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

Noise at his bar roused him from bed not long after sunrise. He pulled on a robe and moved from the bedroom, pausing on the stairs.

Eve had already poured herself a drink, but as he approached she poured another. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” he said. “Can I ask why you’ve broken into my penthouse to steal my booze?”

“I’m not sure it counts as breaking in,” she said. “There isn’t even a lock.”

He gave her a look and took the drink.

“So,” she said. “I heard you caught the killer.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “According to the Detective, the girl nearly confessed on the spot when Boston Police questioned her. Not that I deserve much of the credit this time.”

“Well, thank you anyway,” she said. “And thank Chloe for me. She—I’m really glad you have someone like that in your life.”

He frowned. “Is this goodbye, Eve?”

“No,” she said. “Not forever. I just—I think I’m going to get out of town for a bit. Clear my head.”

He nodded, took a sip of his drink. “Where will you go?”

“I…have no idea. Any suggestions?”

“Las Vegas,” he said. “The City of Sin is always a favorite. Great place to get into some trouble.”

She laughed. “In some ways, you really haven’t changed, Lucifer.”

“And I never will.”

She finished her drink, set down the glass with a note of finality.

“Eve,” he said, before she could walk away. “One more time, for old time’s sake, yes?”

She looked at him with that same sad smile he had first seen in the garden.

“What is it you desire?”

“I want to know,” she said, “who I am, without him. And you.”

“Well, I, for one, can’t wait to find out,” he said.

She smiled at him and turned to go.

“Eve,” he said, and she turned her head over her shoulder. “The first lifetime, you were made from him, but in this life, you slipped out of heaven and into the world all on your own. Whatever you are now, my father didn’t create you. You created yourself.”

“For what it’s worth,” she said, “whatever you are now, I think you created yourself too.”

*༺∘☆∘༻*

“Sorry I missed the bus,” Trixie said, fiddling with the new keychain on her backpack.

“That’s okay, monkey,” Chloe said, eyes mostly on the road but daring a glance at her daughter. “I don’t mind driving you to school.”

“Even if it makes you late to work?”

She smiled and said, in a sly almost-whisper, “I bet I’ll still beat Lucifer there.”

Trixie giggled. “Mommy, how is he so smart and so dumb?”

Chloe laughed. “That’s a good question.”

“Can Lucifer come to movie night?”

She kept her eyes on the road. “Do you want him to?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Can we have popcorn?”

She drew in a breath. “Yeah, baby, we can have popcorn. I’ll talk to Lucifer and see if he’s free, okay?”

“Cool,” she said. “But he’s not allowed to complain about the movie I pick.”

“I’ll warn him.” It absolutely wouldn’t work, because Lucifer adored complaining, but she would try. “Hey, Trix, I know you had fun with Lucifer the other night, but I just want to check—are you upset Maze couldn’t watch you?”

She was quiet a moment. “No.”

Chloe glanced over and it wasn’t a sad quiet, just a little mischievous. “What’s that look?”

“If I tell you a secret, do you promise you won’t tell anyone? Maze made me pinky-swear to not tell Lucifer.”

“I won’t tell him,” she said. “Is this about what her big plans were Wednesday night?”

She nodded, slowly grinning. “Maze went on a date.”

Chloe considered that for a moment. “Maze used the word date?”

“She was really nervous about it,” Trixie said.

“Huh,” she said. “Good for her. And I heard she’s going to take you to the zoo next week?”

“Don’t worry,” Trixie said, “I told her that she’s not allowed to steal a tiger.”

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

The Detective wasn’t at her desk when he arrived, so Lucifer moved to the lab.

Ella looked up from what she was doing long enough to smile at him. “Hey.”

“Miss Lopez,” he said. “Do you know where the Detective is?”

“Oh, Chloe’s running late,” she said. “She said she’d be in in a bit. Since when are you here this early anyway, especially when you don’t have a case?”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said.

She looked up. “Okay, why do you sound all mopey?”

“I am not mopey,” he said.

“You know,” Ella said, “my brothers used to tell me all about their relationships. The good, the bad…”

He raised a brow. “I am aware you’re attempting to manipulate me, Miss Lopez.”

“Come on,” she said. “I’m desperate to know more. Decker hasn’t given me anything. So spill.”

He settled against the table. “I want nothing more than to make her happy and I fear she deserves better than me.”

She hit him on the arm, hard enough this time that it might have been painful had Chloe been nearby. “Dude, you can’t listen to your fear. Relationship 101, if you spend too much time thinking about it going wrong, then it will go wrong. Just focus on the happy.”

“I’m not sure I know how to do that.”

“I know exactly what you need,” she said, and threw her arms around him.

For once, he accepted it without complaint.

*༺∘☆∘༻*

“Hey,” Dan said, stopping at her desk. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “Trixie missed the bus so I drove her in, and right when we got there, she realized she forgot the card she made for her teacher and it’s the last day so could I pretty please go get it. And then I hit traffic.”

“That kind of day, huh?”

“I guess so.” She looked at him, really looked. “Hey, I never apologized for all of those things I said.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he said. “You were right.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean it was fair of me to drop that all on you then and there. I know nothing is easy for you right now.”

Ella slowed her approach. “This sounds important. I can come back.”

“It’s fine, Ella,” he said. “And I’m okay, Chloe. I’m—Amenadiel got us tickets to some show or something tonight and I’m trying to be okay.”

“Good,” she said. “What’s up, Ella?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Uh, Lucifer dropped by earlier looking for you but he had to run to therapy.” She frowned. “You know, I am glad he’s at least in therapy. Can you imagine what that guy would be like without it?”

Dan snorted. “I mean, he does still think he’s the devil, Ella.”

“Yeah, but honestly I don’t think that’s even the eighth craziest thing going on with him. You didn’t hear all the totally loco things Eve told us about his dad.”

“Like, actual facts,” he asked, “or more crazy metaphors?”

Chloe smiled to herself.

*༺∘⛧∘༻*

“So,” Linda said. “You’ve solved the case, Eve isn’t a problem you need to worry about, and you and Chloe are going out tomorrow night. What is it you’re worried about?”

“The other night,” he said. “The Detective, she—she told me that she loved me. And I don’t understand why.”

She nodded very seriously. “If I had to guess, I would say she probably said it because that’s how she feels.”

He fiddled with his cufflinks. “Yes, but why, Doctor? She—she said it has nothing to do with her being a miracle and I—if I believe that, I can’t understand why she feels this way.”

Linda considered that. “And will it change anything, to know why?”

“What?” He blinked. “Doctor, truly, should I be worried about you?”

“No,” she said. “If Chloe loves you, of her own free will, then it could be for one of any of a million reasons. It’s possible even she couldn’t tell you exactly why, because love is a complicated thing. Would it change any part of what you feel for her to know exactly what it is about you that she loves? Is there a wrong answer? A reason for loving you that could make you care about her less?”

“Of course not,” he said. “Doctor, I—there is nothing that could change the way I…”

“So, why do you need to know her reasoning if it doesn’t change anything for you?”

“Because I’m going to mess it up,” he said. “Just like I always do, Doctor. And—I don’t want to drive her away again.”

“There is no knowledge you can gain that will guarantee anything,” she said. “The only way to maintain a relationship is to talk to her, to honestly communicate your wants and desires and feelings. You need to tell her how you feel.”

“The Detective knows how I feel.”

“It doesn’t matter if she knows,” she said. “What matters is that you tell her.”

His breath caught. “What do I do?”

“Do what you always do, Lucifer,” Linda said. “Tell Chloe the truth. Just try to use your words this time.”

*༺∘☆∘༻*

The penthouse was quiet when she emerged from the elevator and she didn’t know if she should be pleased or worried. He had promised her exclusivity, but that didn’t mean he was going to stop his partying—god, she really should remind him that he wasn’t allowed to have cocaine or whatever else it was he regularly ingested around Trixie—and it was a Friday night.

She found him on the balcony, a cigarette between his fingers, though he wasn’t really smoking it. He’d abandoned his jacket inside, which in just a waistcoat meant he was still far more over-dressed than anyone she knew.

She settled a hand on the railing, following his gaze to the sky, the barely-visible stars. Or maybe he was looking to heaven. Sometimes, it was hard to tell with him.

“Ella said you came by looking for me earlier,” she said. “And I tried to call you all day, but I kept getting your voicemail. I—I was a little worried.”

He blinked, as if surprised she was there or, at least, surprised she’d broken the silence. “My—um, my apologies, Detective.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m glad everything’s—is everything okay?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’ve just—I’ve just been lost in thought, darling.”

“Is there anything I can—?”

He kissed her and all the other thoughts vanished in the summer wind. There was nothing except him and her and this.

By the time he pulled away, she had one hand tight on the railing and the other holding his arm like it was the only thing keeping her upright.

“Hi,” she said. “I, um, there was something I wanted—there’s something we should talk about.”

He didn’t immediately panic, which probably counted as improvement, just stubbed out his cigarette. “Perhaps inside, then.”

They sat, managing casualness even if she didn’t quite feel it. There was something charged in the air, not good or bad, just… electric.

“I want to talk about our fight,” she said. “I think—we’ve been talking around it since it happened and I don’t want there to be anything we can’t talk about. Is that okay?”

He tilted his head. “Are you still angry with me?”

“Why do you think I was angry with you?”

He was quiet a moment. “You accused me of attempting to curtail your free will, Detective. And I—you must know, that is the last thing I desire.”

“I’m sorry I said that,” she said, and she put her hand on her knee to keep it from shaking. “I was—that wasn’t fair. I’m sorry.”

He frowned, as if baffled by that. “It has long since been forgiven. I—you were angry. I understand.”

Her heart was pounding. “I guess I was. But, Lucifer, it was never you I was angry with. It was—heaven and hell and all of it is so unfair and I was frustrated and upset, but I never for a second blamed you.”

His calm mask finally broke. “Then why did you run?”

She let herself shake. “It wasn’t because of Eve. I—Eve showing up was a convenient excuse, a reason I could tell myself to explain why I left because I didn’t want to face the real answer. Because I dealt with all of it, Lucifer. I told myself I was done with fear and I was done running, but then I got to have you and all I could think about was losing you and I was terrified. I was scared and—I ran. I was supposed to be done running.”

He put a hand on her knee. “I wish I could promise you will never be frightened again, but I don’t have that power. I—Detective. You don’t have to be frightened alone.” He drew in a shaky breath. “I apologize for—for making you feel like you had to face the fear alone.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I—I’m—Lucifer, I’m still scared.”

“Do you,” he said, hesitating, “would you like to talk about it?”

It was such big and monstrous thing that she didn’t know how to explain it.

“You’re six thousand years old,” she said.

“That’s just when I met Eve,” he said. “I’m quite a bit older than that.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Thousands of years and all I can give you is one human lifetime. How long is what we had going to matter to you? How long will you even remember it?”

He let out a surprised laugh.

She swallowed, waited.

“Detective,” he said. “I am going to remember you, remember us, every damn moment, until the end of the universe. I—I’ve been frightened of the same thing.”

She frowned. “What?”

“One day you will go to heaven,” he said. “How long will you spend there before you forget me?”

“Lucifer, I don’t think I could forget you if I tried. Not—not in all of eternity.”

He smiled. “Likewise.”

“In the time loop,” she said, “that awful, awful day, I—tomorrow stopped mattering. The only thing I could do was what I did right now. And while it was terrifying and awful, I do think I rushed to unlearn that too quickly. Tomorrow is coming, someday, but—I want to live in this moment.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“Lucifer,” she said. “I love you.”

He stood immediately and for a moment she thought he was running away, but he only fled as far as the bar, a steadying hand against it.

She stood, followed him. “Hey.”

“Detective,” he said, a little helpless, a little sad. “I—I…”

“You don’t have to say it,” she said. “I know.”

“I do have to say it,” he said. “Doctor Linda said I need to be better at saying what I mean and—you deserve to hear it. You deserve to know.”

She nodded, silent and waiting. She might just be willing to wait for him for the rest of her life.

“Detective,” he said.

She didn’t have to.

“I love you,” he said. “I—I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said, and it was easy.

“I can’t promise you forever, Detective,” he said, eyes sad but still smiling, “because that would be a lie and we both know that is one thing I will never do. But I can promise you now. I will be by your side, all the days of your life.”

“We have time to figure out the rest,” she said. “That’s a big promise.”

“It’s the easiest one I’ve ever made,” he said, and then he frowned, so deeply and seriously that her heart stopped. But before she could work up the courage to speak, he dropped to a knee, slowly and deliberately took the ring off his finger. When he spoke, it wasn’t a question, was hardly more than a breath. “Marry me.”

She stared at him. “What?”

“I’m not going to pretend to understand the ritual, Detective, but I do understand that—things like this matter to you, so they matter to me.”

“We have been on one date,” she said, but with much less force than she expected herself to have.

“We’ve been partners for years,” he said, and he didn’t sound thousands of years old, but young and impatient and reckless. “We have already spent too much time driving each other away. I don’t want to waste a second more.” He looked up at her, nothing but an earnest plea in his eyes. “I have loved you for longer than I have known I was capable of it. I—I died.”

She frowned. “When I was poisoned, I know.”

“No,” he said. “Well, yes, but before that. I was shot in the chest and I bled out on the floor.”

“Are you talking about with Malcolm?” She asked, half-wishing he would stand so this conversation could feel less insane. “You—you bled all over the floor but then you were fine. Amenadiel tried to convince me it was fake blood.”

“I died,” he said. “And in my last moments, I wasn’t afraid of hell, but I was terrified for you. So I prayed to my father, promised him a blank check so long as he protected you.”

Her hands shook but she pressed them against either side of his face. “Why would you do that? You—Lucifer.”

“I didn’t have the words for it, but I loved you even then. And so much has changed, but that never will. You get to decide what the future looks like, but I—I want you to know that I will give you anything within my power. And this—this is as close to forever as I can get.”

She didn’t let him lower his head. “Ask me again.”

“What?”

She released him, took a small step back. “Ask me again. Go on.”

He tilted his head ever so slightly, but obliged. “Detective, will you marry me?”

When she opened her mouth to speak, she wasn’t thinking of Pierce—even though her last engagement ended less than a month ago—but her mind did drift, just for a moment, to Dan. Dan, who she had loved—who she still loved in their own way—the marriage that had ended dramatically but had still mattered so much. It didn’t have to be forever for it to matter. It just had to matter.

And then, she looked at Lucifer, holding out the ring he’d plucked off his own finger because neither of them had given this a moment’s thought before now. Lucifer, who she had loved even when she didn’t have space to love anyone. Lucifer, who loved—not just liked, not just put up with—her daughter. Lucifer, who had driven her to getting engaged to someone else just to get away from the pain of his wandering affections.

They weren’t wandering now. Maybe they never had been.

Lucifer, who didn’t lie and said he loved her.

“Yes,” she said, hardly a breath. “Yes.”

He reached for her hand, but held the ring just out of reach. “I do have one condition, Detective.”

“Oh?” She resisted a smile. “And what is that?”

“No church weddings.”

She laughed and laughed and he moved to slide the ring on her finger and she laughed more and said, “You do know that your ring is absolutely not going to fit right on my ring finger?”

“I’ll get you another,” he said. “A thousand more. Anything.”

She pulled him to his feet and kissed him, her hand moving to tangle in his hair. In a moment, he had a hand on her back, pulling her in closer, his teeth on her lips, his tongue in her mouth. For him, it probably counted as chaste.

She pulled away with a laugh. “Everyone’s going to think I’ve absolutely lost it.”

“I don’t care what anyone thinks,” he said.

“Of course you don’t,” she said. “You love when they think you’re crazy.”

As expected, the ring started to slip off her finger the moment she wasn’t paying attention to it, but she managed to catch it before it could clatter to the ground.

She laughed. “I’ll put it on a chain for now. I—” She hesitated. “Can we just wait to tell anyone until I talk to Trixie? She—that’s my condition. She always comes first.”

“I know, Detective,” he said. “As I said, what’s important to you is important to me.”

“Uh huh,” she smiled. “And that’s the only reason she’s got you wrapped around her finger?”

He smiled. “It’s possible the little reprobate has grown on me. Like some kind of fungus.”

She laughed and kissed him. “You’re impossible.”

“No, darling, I’m the devil.”

She considered that a moment. “Literally, the bride of Satan. What is my life?”

“If I have any say in it, love,” he said, grabbing her waist and pressing soft kisses to her neck, “then your life will be incandescently happy.”

Her grin felt almost goofy but she couldn’t wipe it away. “I am happy. Are you?”

“Detective,” he said, and she loved the way he said it, “I am happier now than I have ever been in my life.”

“Good,” she said, prying his hand off her waist. “I have to go get Trixie.”

His face fell just a little, but he covered it well. “Of course.”

“Why don’t you pick up dinner?” She asked and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “I’ll see you at my place?”

His smile returned. “Anything in particular?”

“Whatever you’re feeling,” she said. “I believe in you.”

*༺∘♡∘༻*

Across the city, under a street light, a lone and lonely being sat on a motorcycle. There were none quite like her, not on earth, not in a very long time.

She didn’t see the woman approach at first, a woman who, in another life, had been created for someone. But things were different this time. Things could be different.

“Hey,” the woman said, and the being—the demon—grinned. “Where are we off to?”

“Anywhere,” the demon said, and there was a hunger in the woman’s eyes. She revved the engine. “You get to choose.”