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Eve was watching Lucifer and ‘The Detective’ as they spoke softly to each other at the latter’s desk. Lucifer had asked her to meet him here because she’d asked him if they could have a night out on the town. She watched as Lucifer placed his hands on Chloe’s cheeks and gave her a sad smile. He bent to place a kiss on her forehead and as Eve came closer she heard him speak.
“Are you going to be alright, darling?” his voice was soft, much softer than anything she’d ever heard him use. He had dropped one of his hands and was stroking the blonde’s cheek with the thumb of the other. “Do you need…” He trailed off, looking down.
“I’ll be fine, Lucifer,” Chloe said, “I just need to hug Trixie…”
Lucifer huffed a soft laugh. “That little urchin will hug anything.”
“She loves you; of course, she’s going to hug you,” Chloe smiled at him. She placed a hand on his forearm and gave it a squeeze. “Besides, she only hugs people she knows.”
Lucifer hummed and the gentle smile never left is face. “Tell her I said hello, won’t you?” he asked. Chloe nodded and left.
Eve watched Lucifer watch her go, the gentle look never leaving his face. She walked up to him and said, “Hey, Luce!”
His head snapped in her direction and his smiled gained its usual sharpness as he saw her. “Eve,” he greeted her. “Ready?”
They we’re in his car and Lucifer was talking to her about work (the case they had been working on was sad and Eve didn’t care for it, wanted him to stop talking about it and how it had made his partner feel and that perhaps they could just go to dinner and skip the club hopping because he wasn’t feeling up to it), when Eve interrupted him. “I don’t think you’re yourself around Chloe,” she said.
Lucifer’s brow furrowed. “What?” he asked.
“You’re the Devil, Lucifer,” Eve began, her voice entreating. “You do whatever you want, and you punish people and you have fun all night long! You don’t care about people’s feelings!”
He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, much softer than she expected him to, “Right, of course… Silly me…”
Over the course of the next two weeks, Eve was having the time of her life. Sex and drugs and violence. She’d had Lucifer start more bar fights than she could ever remember, and she relished each one. She didn’t see Lucifer’s empty gaze and emotionless face… his forced smiles or his heavy sighs.
.
Eve had kept him moving and moving and all he wanted was a moment to himself. He was tired and wrung out and the only time he ever got any peace was when he was with the Detective. And Eve had even started to invade his work life. She was accompanying him to the precinct more often, and he was… He just wanted… he didn’t know what he wanted (he did, he knew… he wanted his time with Chloe, he wanted to be able to relax in her presence, to not… to not be what Eve said he was and had to be… He was tired of pleasing her, tired of being used… but it was what she desired, so he gave it to her).
They had a suspect in the interrogation room and Eve had been egging him on, to be harsher on the suspect than he normally would, especially with the Detective in the room, but Eve was… she was pushing him to his limit, and he was… he was angry. He was unnecessarily rough when he picked the man out of his chair and slammed him into the wall. They got their answers, but the Detective pulled him aside to talk to him.
“Lucifer,” she started softly. “I’m… I’m worried about you. You’re not… you’re not usually like this…”
Lucifer scoffed tiredly and looked away from her, “According to Eve, it’s the Devil I’ve always been, darling.”
Chloe was biting her lip, and Lucifer had to clench his fists to stop himself pulling it from between her teeth. He didn’t want her to worry about him, but… but the Devil didn’t care about feelings, he told himself. “I can see how- how tired you are, Lucifer,” Chloe shook her head. “You don’t need to put on this, this persona for anyone okay? I know that… I know that you…” She sighed. “I just want you to be okay, and right now… it doesn’t seem like you’re okay…”
“I’m the Devil, Detective,” he said, his eyes closing like he was exhausted. “The Devil is always ‘okay’.”
“Lucifer, I know you… The Devil might be your job, but its not who you are… not to me…” Chloe placed her hand on his arm, and he felt himself lean into the touch just a little (it wasn’t enough, might never be enough).
Lucifer disguised a sob as a scoff. “I’m not…” he swallowed loudly. He wanted to say that he wasn’t hers anymore, because he was hurt and a little angry, but… he never lied. And he promised that that was something he’d never do to her, so he was stuck with a lump in his throat. “I can’t…” he sighed. And then he walked away from her because if he stayed… if he stayed then he would’ve been lost to her.
He met Eve at the end of the hall who looked like she’d just had a taste of something she’d like a lot more of, and he sighed knowing he was in for a night of… of being the Devil for her. “This case is over, right? They don’t need you anymore?” she asked. When he answered in the negative, she jumped with joy. “Come on! Let’s go clubbing! We can be Devilish!”
“Eve, I don’t feel like going out,” he told her. He wanted to stay at home, watch a movie, something quiet (he felt like he needed to recharge, and he didn’t know why. He’d never really felt like that before and it was… it was strange).
Eve’s smiled dropped and he saw the Detective come up beside them trying to edge by. “But I desire it, Lucifer,” she said with a hard edge.
“Alright,” he agreed, and motioned for her to lead the way out of the precinct.
Eve had them going all over town. Lucifer was tired and he wanted to stop moving. He mostly stood against the bar while Eve had fun with people, really only participating when she requested it of him. He didn’t feel anything, and he wanted it to stop, just for a moment he wanted everything to stop so he could… could be something, someone for himself. He’d just pulled up at another bar, lagging behind as Eve rushed toward the door. He was accosted by noise as soon as he went through the door and Eve clutched at his arm as she bounced excitedly, and then ran off to the bar.
“Lucifer, is that you!” he heard. He turned toward the voice and gave Ella a fond smile when he saw her. She crashed into him, obviously very drunk.
“Hello, Miss Lopez,” he said with a chuckle.
“We’re having Tribe Night! You gotta come to the table!” the forensic scientist exclaimed, pointing behind her. At said table was Maze and Chloe and he waved with a small smile. They started making their way toward him and he tried not to panic.
“Lucifer!” Eve interrupted, practically skipping back over to him. “We should start a bar fight!”
“No, I don’t think we should,” he told her. “I’d like to leave, actually.”
Eve turned toward him and glared. “We just got here! Besides, that’s not what I desire!” she said, that hard edge to her voice again.
.
Chloe watched Lucifer sigh heavily. She was extremely very drunk, but she knew her Lucifer like the back of her own hand. She wanted to glare at Eve and tell her that she should respect what Lucifer wanted because he was good and kind and looked so very tired that she wanted to find him a quiet place to nap. Before he could walk away from them, Chloe called out to him. He met her eyes, and she saw that his soul was as tired as he looked. “Lucifer, can I… do you want to go for a walk?” she heard herself ask over the noise of the bar.
“With you?” he asked, tilting his head in that adorable way he had.
She let a fond smile take over her face and nodded, “Yeah… do you wanna?” She bit her lip and felt him slide closer. She looked up at him, “We could find a food truck or something…”
“Yeah, alright,” he said, and he let her catch his arm as they headed out of the bar.
“Lucifer, if you leave, we’re over!” Eve called after them, in what Chloe imagined to be a desperate attempt to keep him there. She knew he’d heard her, but he just kept walking with her, he’d never even paused.
As they walked she could tell that he was a little hesitant with her, like he didn’t remember who she was and how well she knew him, how much she loved him. Tentatively, she put her hand on his arm which he bent like it was a natural thing for him to do, something she noticed he didn’t really do with anyone else (and maybe that was because he never let anyone close enough) and she felt safe tucked against him (and, sure, she was a little more drunk than she should have been but that didn’t matter because she knew it was partially why all she wanted was for his arm to go around her waist, but she didn’t think he was quite ready for that). She leaned her head against his arm and closed her eyes for a moment, she loved the quiet moments with him. The ones where they could just sit or walk and breathe in each other’s energy.
They came upon a taco truck after a long moment and Chloe heard him huff out a laugh as she perked up. She was hungry, and this was her and the girls’ usual stop before heading home. Chloe bounced up and down in line. She was so excited that she missed how he smiled as her like she was the only light in his life.
She let him buy her a few tacos after a moment of protest and she ate happily as she watched him polish off two of his own in quick succession with a fond smile. That was her Devil, the man who would eat good food and hum contentedly as he licked his fingers. He watched her eat hers at a much slower pace than he’d eaten his (and she really appreciated that he’d ordered four for her because she hadn’t eaten since lunch and it was currently a little after one in the morning). She could feel his eyes on her, and she let him look, sometimes looking up at him to give him a soft smile.
“Why are we here?” he asked out of the blue. “Why did you ask me to go on a walk?”
Chloe sighed and made sure to look him in the eye as he stared at her. “You… you looked like you didn’t want to be there anymore,” she told him.
“But…” he started. His brow furrowed as he stared at her. “I don’t understand…”
“You looked like you didn’t want to be there, so I… I got you out,” Chloe told him.
“Why would you care what I wanted?” he asked her, and it broke her heart… how utterly confused he was.
“Because I care about you,” she told him gently (and the surprise she saw flutter across his face made her tear up because how could he not know?). “You don’t have to do things just because other people want you to… That’s not how a relationship should work, how any relationship should work…”
He looked down at his shoes with a deep frown and stepped just a little bit closer to her. “How do they work then?” and he looked at her through his lashes which charmed her just a little bit but… This man was eons and eon old and he didn’t know what a healthy relationship was like (that broke her heart, but him looking up at her through his eyelashes just… he was so cute sometimes)?
“Well,” she sighed. “There’s a lot of compromise sometimes… like when I ask you not to throw people off of balconies or when I’m in the car you go the speed limit because you know I don’t like it. And when I agree to let you take me out to lunch when a case is getting to me, or promise not to eat vending machine sandwiches for every meal… That’s us doing something for the other because we know it bothers the other or makes them worry, you know?” She watched him nod slowly. “And you… When you love someone you’re not… it’s not supposed to be… you don’t change for them unless you want to, you know? Or they change you before you realize it, and…” She sighed, knowing she might be confusing him. She hoped she could get him to understand.
.
He listened to her explain compromise nodding along with her explanation. He listened to her try to explain loving someone, and he still didn’t understand… He was about to ask when she sighed and continued, “Loving someone is putting their happiness before yours… Like when I… When Trixie wants something for Christmas or her birthday and it’s a little more expensive than her other presents I’ll hold off on buying things for myself. It makes you selfless… It’s like…” Chloe took a shuddering breath and reached out to him, fingering the end of his suit jacket and biting her lip. “It’s like when you jumped in front of that axe for me, and when I stepped in front of Pierce so he wouldn’t shoot you… It’s selfless like that and it… it hurts sometimes, but when you… when you find someone who… when you find the right fit it doesn’t hurt as much, until eventually the hurt goes away.”
He stared at her for a long moment, more still than he’d been in a while. He still… he’d never… He sighed and couldn’t help sliding closer to her. “But what if… what if I didn’t do something they wanted?” he asked his voice small and he hated it.
“That happens sometimes,” she told him, and then she gave him a fond smile. “You do things I don’t like all the time, and I’m still here for you… If that’s something that’s unacceptable to them, then that’s not a good relationship to be in.”
He looked down at her hand on his suit jacket again. “But that’s… that’s how it’s always been,” he told her, but he couldn’t look at her. “For me, that’s… that’s all I’ve ever known.” He sighed. “My Mother and Father never… I did one thing wrong and they would… And Eve… the first time she… she always wanted me to… Well, she still does, doesn’t she?” He huffed out a humorless laugh. “Everyone I’ve ever cared about just… they want something from me, except for you, or if you do I have no idea what it is…” He shrugged one shoulder and looked away from her.
“I just want you to be happy, Lucifer,” she told him, stepping into his space. She was so close that when they breathed their bodies would touch. She had tears in her eyes, and he didn’t know why, so when one fell he wiped it away with his thumb. “All of them… They were all wrong, every single one of them.”
“I… I don’t understand,” he said, his voice thick.
“That’s okay. I just,” she took a deep breath and let it out. “I want you to know that they were wrong, because that’s not how you treat the ones you love. That’s… that a form of abuse, Lucifer, if someone is treating you like that then… it’s not good, ba- Lucifer, and it’s…. You don’t do that in relationships…” She shook her head and slipped her hand under his suit jacket, resting it against his side. He could feel the heat of it through his waistcoat and shirt and it almost made him shiver. “You’re not supposed to… There has to be give and take,” she told him. He tilted his head at her, and she gave him a fond smile and a soft sob. “Like when… when the person you’re in a relationship asks you to do something, or you want to do something for them?” She cleared her throat as he nodded. “They should do stuff for you too.”
His brow furrowed. “Why would they? They don’t… they can’t do what I can.” He watched Chloe’s eyes fill with tears.
“It’s not…” Chloe sighed and leaned her head forward, so it rested against his chest. He placed his hands at her elbows, and she relaxed against him. “It’s like this, Lucifer. Me and you. When we spend time together… Like when Father Frank died I was there for you. I didn’t want or expect anything in return I just knew you needed me. And when… that case with my dad’s killer, when you told me that my dad was proud of me… it’s… it’s like how that feels.” She sighed. “I’m not explaining this right,” she sighed.
“It’s… it’s like back there when you asked me to take a walk with you?” he questioned. She looked up at him and made himself continue. “You saw what I… what I wanted and you, you helped?”
“Yeah,” Chloe said. “It’s like that. If you’re in a relationship with someone they have ask, or see what you want or need and do it for you… If they don’t then it just, it feels like they don’t care…”
Lucifer nodded at her and sighed. He knew Eve always dismissed his wants and it… it hurt, but he hadn’t known that he was… that it wasn’t supposed to be like that. He snapped out of his thoughts as Chloe slid both of her arms around his waist. He wrapped his arms around her and cocked his head to the side as she looked up at him. “Alright?” he asked when she bit her lip.
She nodded. “What do you wanna do right now?” she asked.
“What?” he asked as a fond smile started on his face.
“What do you want to do right now? Anything at all,” she told him squeezing him a little tighter. When he told her he didn’t know, she just smiled at him again. “That’s okay. Just let me know when you decide.”
He looked down at her and sighed. She tucked her head under his chin and waited silently as he thought. His desire to go home had dissipated as soon as she had led him out of that bar and all he wanted was more time with her. He looked around, not really wanting to move, but wanting to please her just a little bit. He recognized the area they were in and perked up a little bit. “I’ve got an idea, darling,” he told her. And then he pulled back and took her hand in his as he led her down the street.
.
Lucifer led her down the street and Chloe couldn’t stop her grin at his enthusiasm. Sometimes he was absolutely adorable, and she adored him for it (if she were less drunk, she could’ve been more articulate, but she wasn’t, so that’s all she could think). She laughed, absolutely charmed, when he stopped in front of an arcade that claimed to be open twenty-four hours and gave her one of those proud smiles he had every so often. She let him pull her inside and laughed when he pouted about getting game cards instead of quarters.
She’d never had more fun in her life. She laughed more than she had in months and months and she knew Lucifer was having fun too. They went through all the two player games first, Lucifer winning all but one of the racing games and Chloe dominating at the first-person shooter games (she was more than sure he let her win that last race because when she squinted at him in suspicion he winked at her and she’d had to hide her grin).
The both of them absolutely refused to do any of the dancing games but Chloe dominated on Galaga and Lucifer let her play as long as she wanted getting her as close to the high score as she could. Chloe laughed at how he was absolutely terrible at PacMan and then when they were leaving Chloe said that they should bring Trixie with them the next time they came, and she’d never seen Lucifer look so very hopeful.
“Now what?” Chloe asked with a grin.
“It’s your turn, darling,” he told her with a gentle smile.
She grinned suddenly and pulled out her phone. She looked up bowling alley’s and she was in luck there was one just around the corner. And it was open very late. “I don’t know if you can handle this one,” she said with a grin. He told her to lead the way, so she grabbed his hand and they were off. She pulled him along with her and she tried not to laugh as he gaped up at the sign.
“This is an actual human activity?” he asked her as they walked in.
“Yeah,” Chloe rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you ever seen The Big Lebowski?”
“Of course, I have, we watched it together after the urchin went to bed one night,” he told her, and she smiled at the memory. “I just… I didn’t think it was a real activity.”
She shook her head and asked what his shoe size was and then explained that they needed special shoes for bowling. He made a face, but he put on the shoes, and then he went to go get them a drink from the bar. She explained the rules to him and then she showed him what to do. Or she would have, had she been any good at bowling. Lucifer laughed at her when she explained that instead of the ball going into the gutter, it had to hit the pins, but when he tried it he got the same result as her. She laughed at him and he huffed playfully at her. They only played the one game, but in-between their laughter and hopeless playing, they managed to be there for a while at least.
When they stumbled out of the bowling alley, they were smiling at each other even as Chloe gloated about her two-point lead at the end of the game. She looked up at him and caught him smiling at her so wide that it looked like it hurt. “What do you want to do now?” she asked him, breathless with laughter.
She watched him stare at her, his whole face soft and gentle and just for her (and how was this something she was just noticing, him looking at her like that and she was… he really looked at her like this all of the time…). She felt her smile soften as she looked at him. “Would you really like to know?” he asked, stepping just a little closer.
“Of course, I would,” Chloe said. And then she gasped just a little as he stepped into her space and she had to look up at him because she wasn’t wearing heels, she was wearing flats (and had he always been so very tall?).
“I’d like to kiss you,” he said softly.
“Oh, really?” Chloe asked, biting her lip and trying not to blush.
Lucifer huffed a laugh, placing a hand on her cheek. “Well, I always want to kiss you,” he told her, “but the urge is particularly strong at the moment…”
“Well, it is your turn, so I guess you better do it,” she told him, and she forced herself to keep looking at him.
He leaned down and covered her mouth with his, and it… she’d never had a more perfect kiss. It was soft and gentle and perfect, and somehow she ended up standing on her toes with her hands in his hair, and as he tried to pull away she followed, making him smile against her lips.
“It’s your turn, darling,” he told her, caressing his cheek with her thumb, and she decided that other than him kissing her, his hands were her favorite thing in the whole world.
“What’s my turn?” she asked, her eyes darting between his eyes and his lips. He chuckled, deep in his chest, and asked her what she wanted to do next. She bit her lip and watched his eyes dart to them. “Well,” she started, trying not to blush, “I want to kiss you again, but you’re all the way up there…”
His eyes lit up with surprise and he bent a little closer before saying, “That is a shame…”
She grabbed his head and brought his lips back down to hers, and this kiss was somehow even better than the last one. Sweet and gentle and he opened to her when she nipped at his bottom lip, so she got to taste him, and it was… it was so much better than she ever thought it would be. She never wanted to stop, but when they both pull back they’re breathless and Chloe is a little bit dizzy, because she still a little tipsy. It hadn’t been that long since they’d left the bar. She rested her head against his chest for a moment and then asked him, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I’m only thinking of you, darling,” he told her.
She hugged him to her and practically sobbed at how absolutely sweet he was being. “That’s so cute,” she said and heard him scoff at her. “It is!” she insisted. “But I was thinking, I’m still very kinda tipsy, it’s amazing I won those arcade games actually, I was really drunk then, but I guess that’s being good at my job?” she asked with a shrug, but then she continued before he could say anything. “We need to find pizza.”
Lucifer chuckled at her and she snuggled into his chest, content to stay there even though she really, really wanted that pizza. He made her move after a moment and she pouted until he put an arm around her waist. She let him order her two slices of pizza with extra cheese and bacon on them and then he stood behind her as she leaned back against him (his hands on interlaced on her stomach and that… she liked that a lot). She fed him bites of pizza every so often, and then she remembered. “We skipped you! What do you want to do?” she asked licking her fingers and looking at him over her shoulder.
“Be with you until you tell me you don’t want me any more…” he murmured into her hair.
“What if I want you until morning?” she asked, suddenly very nervous.
“Then I’ll stay until morning,” he told her.
“What about Monday?”
“Yeah, until Monday, darling…”
She covered his hands with hers, and made herself ask, “What if… what if I want you there until forever?”
He was silent for a moment, and asked like he barely dared to believe her, “Until forever?”
“Yeah,” Chloe blew out a breath. “You know… forever, like… until I die or something… that kind of forever…”
She felt him breathe out a laugh before he said, gently and just for her, “I guess I better be there forever then…” And they were quiet for a moment until he asked her, “What do you want to do now?”
Chloe smirked, “Well, I have it on good authority that this guy I know is going to stay with me forever because I asked him to, so what if we rented some movies and went back to my place?”
“What, Redbox?” he asked, a little baffled. “You do know I have subscriptions to all the streaming apps, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” Chloe said, “but that’s not quite the same thing as when I was a teenager and I rented some movies so that I could make out with my high school girlfriend, so…”
“They call that ‘Netflix and chill’ now, darling,” he told her with a raised brow.
Chloe sighed, “Well, we’re gonna ‘Redbox and make out’ so that’s different.”
He shook his head at her, she could tell even though she wasn’t looking at him and hugged her closer. “Alright, Redbox, then,” he sighed. And then Chloe turned in his arms and kissed him again, lingering and soft. When she pulled away he was smiling, and she was so glad because she had missed his smile so very much.