Chapter Text
The first thing Lucifer feels is heat, searing and metallic, trickling down the slope of his lip. Something sticky and foreign that clings to his skin. For an instant, he thinks it’s the poison again, that liquid fire bubbling up through his veins, boiling him from the inside out. Then he tastes a more familiar tang of blood on his tongue.
He wants to wipe it away. Wants to snarl, to complain about the indignity of bleeding on his favorite shirt, but his arms won’t cooperate. The Devil is nothing but a marionette with his strings cut, leaving him suspended in the sickening space between sensation and nothingness.
The world wavers while shards of memory slice through him in disorienting flashes.
Sirens—distant at first, then swelling, keening through his skull. Red light bleeding across the edges of his vision. Hellfire? Something else? Next is a hard jolt beneath his back as he’s lifted and carried, jostled through a space of echoes. Someone is shouting what he thinks might be numbers, so quick they run together.
Hands. Too many of them. His first thought is demons. An ambush, perhaps, yanking him into the fray. These hands are rough, efficient, faceless. Gloves press against his bare chest, tugging at his arm, shoving something sharp into his vein. He wants to snarl don’t touch me, but his lips barely twitch. Whoever they are, they’re strangers, interlopers, and their touch feels wrong. Cold. Mechanical.
Almost the moment he feels himself getting worked up further, he feels another touch from a hand that isn’t strange. One he would know no matter the circumstances, including now.
Her hand.
It’s much smaller, barely able to cover the back of his, but it doesn’t stop her trembling fingers from trying to wrap around his, soothing him. Her grip is iron, the sort of strength born not of muscles but desperation. She doesn’t let go, not when another voice is telling her she needs treatment, not when they’re trying to pull her away from him.
The sound of her voice brooks no argument from anybody.
“He goes first,” Chloe says, hoarse but unrelenting. “I don’t care what state I’m in. Fix him. Do you hear me? Fix him.”
The words slice right through him. He wants to argue. Wants to tell her not to be so bloody ridiculous, to put herself first for once, to not risk what little she has left for the likes of him. To stop being so damn selfless. His brain howls the words, but his traitorous mouth refuses to obey.
His chest convulses instead with a sharp ache that spreads where water filled him, pressing against his ribs, heavy and suffocating. He tries to squeeze her hand, to reassure her, but even that slips away.
Darkness swallows him whole.
The next time he surfaces, there are voices in the dark. They fade in and out, more suggestion than actual substance, muffled as though he’s hearing them through layers of glass.
The first one is unmistakable: Mazikeen.
Her curses are sharp, violent, panicked in a way he has rarely heard from her. She’s demanding things he can’t parse, snarling threats at whoever gets in her way. The bite of her fury is wrapped around his fading name.
Another voice cuts through, low and soothing: Amenadiel. His brother’s tone is meant to be grounding and steady, but Lucifer knows the rhythm of it too well—it’s strained, brittle at the edges with worry of his own. Faintly, Lucifer wonders who he’s worried for, because surely it can’t be the Devil.
Then another. A voice that lances him like ice water. His mother’s, filtered through the vessel of Charlotte Richards. Even fevered and half-gone, Lucifer would know that timbre anywhere—the sharp elegance, the demand carried like a weapon. “Let me in, you maggots. I will see my son. You will not keep me out.”
Lucifer wants to laugh, wants to sneer, to ask her if this is the triumph she always dreamed of: her son, laid out like a cadaver, burning alive from within. If she saw this coming when she began her manipulations all those months ago.
The other, less familiar voices blur together. Clinical. Detached. He hears beeping, the rustle of fabric, the sterile clatter of instruments. Someone reciting more numbers that mean nothing to him. Someone else arguing about protocol.
But never the one voice he truly desires.
Never hers.
Every time he claws his way from the black, gasping for air he doesn’t need, it’s the same. Maze shouting. Amenadiel soothing. His mother demanding. Strangers muttering.
Never Chloe.
It gnaws at him, more vicious than the poison, more damning than the water in his lungs. Her absence cuts because he doesn’t know what it means.
Is she okay?
Is she safe?
Is she—?
If he had the strength, he would rage. If he had the strength, he would crawl out of this hollow shell and tear apart every wall until he found her.
But the fact of the matter is...he doesn’t. He drifts instead, a ship without an anchor, pulled deeper into the undertow.
Every time he surfaces, she is not there.
Every time, the darkness takes him again.
The fire is gone.
Lucifer realizes it only in contrast, because what replaces it is almost worse. Not burning, not the boiling of his internal organs, one-by-one—but cold. Bone-deep, marrow-splitting, soul-tearing cold.
He almost thinks he’s back in Hell, the way sensation twists itself against him. Not flames licking at his skin this time but ice chiseling into his ribs, filling his veins with frostbite. He remembers once, a very long time ago, what the void beyond stars felt like. That endless, frozen silence. This is worse.
He tries to move, and panic flares when his limbs don’t obey. He is weightless and heavy all at once, pinned beneath something he can’t identify. One feeling he has always despised is being restrained against his will. It’s one thing in the bedroom, with safewords and rules in place, but this paralysis is unbearable.
Finally, a sliver of light cracks through the dark.
His eyelids twitch open against a weight that feels glued shut. The world above him swims in blurred strokes—white ceiling, broken shadows, the hint of movement at the edges.
Not Hell, he realizes. And probably not another trap room.
A room, yes, but not one he knows. This one is...clinical and unfamiliar. A hospital, perhaps. Too still to be real. For a heart-seizing moment, he wonders if this is Death itself, if he has finally stumbled into his father’s great abyss.
The thought almost makes him laugh, except he hasn’t the breath to spare. He knows what death feels like; he’s died twice in recent memory alone. Once by gutshot from a psychotic, porn-stached cop; the other by stopping his own heart intentionally. He nearly didn’t make it back after that second time.
After taking in the whole of the room—the machines, the blinds over a dark window, a painting of a horse in a meadow—he lets his eyelids fall again as the cold wraps tighter, smothering his thoughts.
Darkness draws him back under.
He drifts for what feels like eternity, the dark clutching him tighter, no matter how he fights.
And then there's a new sound.
Well, not new new, but new in this specific Hellscape.
It isn’t the cacophony of voices from before, not Maze’s fear disguised by fury, nor Amenadiel’s steady gentleness, nor his mother’s grating insistence. This is softer. Lower. Threaded with exhaustion, rasped raw from overuse but unmistakable to him. To his soul.
Chloe.
For one disoriented moment, he thinks he’s imagining her, that she’s a hallucination conjured by fever and desire. But the cadence is too specific, too grounded. She’s talking—and from nearby. He doesn’t know to whom at first. Perhaps to herself. Perhaps to an empty room. He’s heard her do that during cases, muttering under her breath as she sorts evidence in her clever detective brain. She isn’t commanding or bargaining like the others. She’s just...talking. Words strung together in an ordinary, utterly human way.
Her voice washes through him like rain after a drought, pulling him to the surface bit by bit and keeping him there.
He doesn’t catch every word at first. They come in fragments, blurred by the fog still clinging to his mind. Mentions of paperwork, of Trixie’s stubborn insistence that she’s old enough for her own phone, of Maze complaining that hospital food being ‘an abomination’ while still stealing Chloe’s. None of it is extraordinary. But because it’s her, because it’s the Detective, it might as well be scripture as far as his heart is concerned.
And then he feels a weight on his hand. Warmth. Fingers curling around his, faintly trembling but unyielding. Or maybe that’s his hand. He summons everything he has left in him, dredges it up from the pit of his soul, and squeezes.
Barely a twitch, a hint of pressure, but it’s enough.
The words falter. She stops speaking altogether. For a moment, there's only silence, and he wonders if he imagined all of it after all.
“...Lucifer?”
His name is so small and fragile on her lips. He wants to open his eyes just to drink in the sight of her, but his lids are stone again. He tries instead to make his mouth work, but it feels stuffed full of cotton, his tongue too heavy to shape the syllables.
And bloody hell does it frustrate him.
Another pause, then her voice turns more urgent. “Lucifer? Can you hear me?”
He tries again, forcing air through the raw cavern of his throat. It emerges as a rasp, nothing coherent, but it’s a sound. It’s something. It’s more than he had before.
She shifts closer, and he feels the heat of her now, her breath feathering against his skin. Inches away. The space between them diminishes, and when he finally manages to crack his eyes open, she fills his vision. Her face swims, blurred at the edges, but her smile pierces sharp through the haze. Relief, raw and bright, breaks across her features like sunrise after an endless night.
“Well,” she whispers, so soft he almost misses it. “Look who’s back. Guess you didn’t die after all.”
A laugh scrapes out of him, more air than sound, but unmistakable. He knows those words. They’re his, the ones he spoke when she was the one nearly claimed by poison.
And now here she is, mirroring them back.
Her smile deepens, her eyes wet at the corners, and his battered heart stumbles in his chest, desperate to keep up. He lets his eyes close again, though not from weakness this time. Actually, he thinks it may be peace. Because for the first time since the darkness claimed him, he no longer fears it.
Not with Chloe’s hand in his.
Lucifer's eyes open again hours—days?—later. Time feels utterly meaningless in the endless haze of fever and darkness. But this time, clarity pierces through, cruel and sudden.
Memories slam into him all at once with the force of a meteor strike.
The case of the missing, tortured couples. That infernal warehouse filled with twisting corridors and rooms with sadistic trials not even he would force on someone.
Well, not someone innocent.
The ball maze that electrocuted Chloe, her body convulsing before his eyes. The confessional chamber that locked her away from him, and the sounds of her screams tearing through walls as her skin was ripped away. His desperation to get to her, and his frantic voice spilling truths he hadn’t wanted to share just to stop her suffering.
The realization that he was powerless to protect her with the poison coursing through his veins, weakening him. He was more than just vulnerable; he was helpless. All he could do was ensure she didn’t have to suffer more.
The water tank, choking him, stealing his breath, while Chloe—brave, stubborn Chloe—fought for him. Her voice, breaking on a confession he thought she’d never give. Are you in love with Lucifer Morningstar? YES! The flash of Hell he’d gotten when he drowned, and then the feeling of her breath in his lungs, bringing him back.
The gun room filled with a countdown and ultimatum—her or him. As if that was ever going to be a choice in his mind. As if he were capable of hurting her. The determination in her eyes and conviction in her voice when she insisted there had to be a trick, a way to beat the Game Master at his own game. His own grief when he realized what he would have to do. A kiss wrapped in an apology and goodbye. Then her sheer terror when he pulled the trigger, followed by her grief and relief disguised as fury.
The climax of the warehouse. The rickety, thundering contraption of gears and steel, his body convulsing, vision fading. Chloe’s hands cradling his face as she begged him to hold on.
Every detail slices him open anew.
He jerks, trying to sit up. The world spins violently, his muscles shriek in protest, and a firm hand presses him back.
“Easy.” Chloe’s voice, gentle but firm. She leans over him, her eyebrows furrowed, eyes dark with fatigue. “Hey, it’s all right. You’re not going anywhere. Just relax.”
Lucifer blinks at her, his throat raw. “Detective...” The word croaks out, broken, half a plea. He drags his gaze over her, and his heart twists into a knot.
Her arm is bound in a sling, stark white bandages peeking from her collarbone to her elbow. Other bandages on her wrists, her face, her temple. Her leg bears the stiffness of fresh stitches. Exhaustion clings to her like another wound. Yet she’s upright, breathing, alive.
Bloody hell, she’s alive.
Relief slams through him so fiercely he damn near weeps.
“You’re hurt,” he rasps.
Gentle fingers brush hair away from his forehead. “You should see yourself,” she counters softly. “Poison. Drowning. Seizures. You scared the hell out of me.”
He swallows, shame and gratitude tangling like barbed wire. “You—I need to know,” he whispers. “What happened? After...after I—”
“Collapsed?” she finishes for him, too quickly, too neatly. Her mouth twists. “You...almost didn’t come back.”
She tells him everything.
The machine, its rolling thunder, the ball clicking through impossible paths. The syringe in the tiny box, preloaded with the only antidote. The man—their sadistic Game Master—stepping from the shadows with his smug smile and her gun. Her fury, the tackle, the gunshot ricocheting off steel. Her pulling the trigger without hesitation.
And then...the livestream.
Lucifer stares at her, words deserting him. “I...beg your pardon? The what?”
“It wasn’t just us in there,” Chloe says, her voice low and tinged with bitterness. “The whole thing was streamed. People watched, Lucifer. They watched us suffer. Watched us bleed. Watched us...confess.” Her jaw tightens. “Watched me kill him.”
The admission guts him. It was bad enough he had to watch her go through that, someone who actually cares about her well-being, but the thought of others—sadistic psychopaths like the Game Master—who likely cheered on her suffering... Demons come to mind with their twisted, cruel natures, feeding off human pain and misery. He banishes that thought quickly, putting all his considerable focus on her instead.
He wants to reach for her, but his arms feel weighted with lead. “Detective...”
She shakes her head. “It’s been days since they got us out of there. We were barely missing for one, but when we didn’t check in with the precinct, they started searching for us.” She swallows hard, her eyes glistening. “They never would have found us in time.”
For a moment, she’s quiet, pressing her lips together like she’s swallowing her own pain. “After the doctors fixed my arm as best they could, Maze tried to drag me home.”
Lucifer looks away. He knows why Maze tried to get her out of here—to give him distance from her. So he would heal.
Chloe swallows hard again, her eyes darting to his. “You woke up long enough to ask me not to leave. And even Maze couldn’t say no to that.”
The words feel like a physical blow. He remembers none of that, but it certainly sounds like him when it comes to her—pathetic, selfish, clingy. Yet the fact that she listened, the fact that she stayed—
His throat closes.
For the first time in...well, he doesn’t know how long, he has nothing clever to say. He simply stares at her, drinking in every line of her face, every weary shadow beneath her eyes, every flicker of life that he almost lost forever.
She is alive. He is alive.
“But you’re...okay?” he asks quietly, searching her eyes. “Aside from the obvious, that is.”
When she flexes the fingers of her bad arm, she winces, then quickly smooths it away. “I’m...working on it,” she admits softly. “It only really hit me last night what we went through—the kidnapping, those sick games, all of it. I keep having to remind myself he’s gone, that he can’t hurt us anymore. But I still keep...thinking about it, you know? I had to give a full statement about what happened, and Trixie...” She trails off, shaking her head. “Obviously, I can’t tell her any of this. I guess it’s just going to take time.”
Which he can see frustrates her. She never did like not being able to solve a problem on her own.
And still, between them, the weight of all they said, all they screamed into the void, hovers unspoken.
Neither mentions their confessions.
Until Chloe does.
Settling in a chair again, confident he’ll stay in bed, she looks at him, searching his eyes for answers. “I know now’s probably not the best time,” she says quietly. “But...what now, Lucifer? Do we just...go back? Pretend none of it happened? Pretend we didn’t say the things we said?” Her voice cracks slightly. “Or do we finally stop lying to ourselves?”
The words hang there, heavier than any trap, sharper than any blade, worse than any poison.
Lucifer cannot breathe.
“I mean, we don’t have to have the answers now,” she adds quickly. “You should get better. I...in fact, forget I asked.”
He feels his heart twist painfully, and finally forces his hand to obey his desires. It slowly crawls across the scratchy blanket, seeking hers. “Detective...” he says again. He swallows hard, his voice raw as if someone took sandpaper to his throat.
Part of him wants to make a quip, to pull up the shields of charm that have protected him for so long.
A shield made of Candy.
But he tried that once, and it only made things worse. All he wanted was to protect her—from what he is, from his father, from the miracle—and the end result hurt her worse than the truth probably would have.
“There are things...you don’t know,” he forces himself to say. “About me. About...yourself. About us, I suppose. What I said in that room was true—I walked away to protect you. To give you back...your life. Your...well, everything. I know it won’t make sense to you, but...” He trails off, at a loss for how to continue.
Chloe watches him with an inscrutable expression. He almost wants to squirm under it. Her eyes flick down to his hand and she hesitates, then a second later, she carefully covers it with her bandaged one.
“You mean because...you’re the Devil?”
Lucifer is incredibly glad that he’s lying down. If he weren’t, he’s sure his knees would give out from shock alone. As it is, the room begins to spin again. “I’m...what?” he croaks.
He has known Chloe Decker for over a year now, and not once has she spoken that sentence without sarcasm or exasperation. But that almost sounded as though she believes it.
And that can’t be right.
“When we were in...that place, I remember thinking how impossible it seemed that you were still functional with that poison in your veins. We were unconscious for...hours before waking that first time, which means you should have dropped an hour into that nightmare.”
She frowns slightly. “But you just...kept going. You drowned, Lucifer. You were just...you were gone, and yet, you woke up again and got right up. Like it barely fazed you. And I saw your eyes a few times—they were red. I told myself it was a trick of the light. My imagination or adrenaline or...I don’t know what. I didn’t let myself stop to think about it; I couldn’t, there wasn’t time. But it wasn’t a trick or my imagination. Was it?”
His mouth opens to speak, but no sound comes out. He wants to blame the fog, the fever, anything but what it actually is—which is fear.
The whole reason he has kept the truth from her for so long is because he knows if she learns who’s been at her side, she’ll run. She’ll be afraid. She’ll bring an end to their partnership, their friendship, their...whatever the hell they are these days. And that is something he couldn’t bear, not after all he’s done to preserve what little they still have left.
But she’s still here...
Clearing his throat, he tries again. “No,” he murmurs, barely louder than a breath. “It wasn’t.”
Chloe swallows, and then nods. There's no surprise in her eyes. Just confirmation of what she already knew.
“Is it true that I make you vulnerable?”
He blinks in surprise that just keeps coming at him from all directions.
“Maze told me, when she tried to get me to leave. Am I the reason this happened to you? That you nearly died?”
Lucifer swears that if Maze even so much as hinted Chloe is the sole reason he got hurt in that hellhole, he will rip her apart with his bare hands.
“No,” he says firmly. “Detective, you didn’t do this to me. It was that sadistic psychopath. He dragged us into that house of horrors. He poisoned me and arranged all those traps. He is the reason you nearly lost your bloody arm.”
“But I—”
“I don’t know why,” he cuts in gently. “Not for sure. There are theories, but nothing more. Why you’re the only human in history who is immune to my mojo. The only one who makes me vulnerable. I don’t know why you’re...the most important person in my existence.” He hadn’t quite meant to blurt it out like that, but now that he has, he doesn’t want to take it back.
Chloe lets out a breath, her fingers tightening over his. “Lucifer...”
“And I understand if you...need time. After what you’ve been through. After learning what I am. Detective, I’m just...I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you better.” His voice breaks, despite his attempt to mask it.
She shakes her head. “You did what you could. We both did.”
Lucifer scoffs. “Darling, you did more for me in that place than anyone ever has,” he says softly. “You are...remarkable.”
Chloe leans closer, tilting her head until he’s meeting her gaze again. “So are you,” she murmurs. “And for the record, I don’t need time, Lucifer. I meant everything I said in there. You’re still you, Devil or not. That hasn’t changed for me.”
His lips part in surprise. “No?”
“No. Look, just...get better. Okay? I didn’t mean to put all this on you when you’ve just woken up.”
“Detective, I feel better than I have in ages,” he says honestly.
Not just because the poison is out of his system. Because she’s here, more or less in one piece, and unless he’s sorely mistaken, she accepts him—Devil and all.
“We can talk later,” she promises. “I mean, if you want.”
Déjà vu hits him like a brick wall. The role reversal—him in the bed, recovering from a poison that should have killed him; her at his side, asking to talk.
This time, he has no intention of running.
“You’ll stay?” he murmurs, unsure if he means right now or in the long run. Maybe both.
Chloe smiles at him, lacing their fingers together. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The band burns against her palm, her arm trembling like it’s trying to tear itself apart from the inside—again. Chloe grits her teeth and pulls again, the elastic stretching out with agonizing, frustrating slowness. Scar tissue tugs stubbornly beneath her skin, and fire licks down to her wrist, into the tips of her fingers.
Her breath hitches. She forces it through, anyway. “Again,” she mutters to herself, stubbornness ratcheting up another few notches.
Her arm quivers violently, shaking like a loose engine about to snap. She digs her heels in, pulling until her whole body hums with effort. The band slips, snapping back into her palm with a sharp sting. She hisses, shakes out her hand, then automatically reaches for it again.
“Detective.”
Chloe pauses for a beat at the sound of Lucifer's smooth, velvet-wrapped steel voice. He isn’t sprawled in his usual fashion today. He’s watching her closely, every line of him tense.
Every session for the last six weeks—sometimes three times a week, sometimes four—he’s been at her side, watching, listening to the physical therapists, learning the exercises along with her. Chloe told him more than once he doesn't have to be here; he only scoffed and led her to the car.
At first, it seemed odd that the Devil himself has become her biggest cheerleader as she fights to regain use of her arm. That passed quickly once she remembered he’s always been that way with her. Now, she appreciates him being here.
Lucifer.
Not Dan or anyone else.
In fact, her ex went into overprotective mode after everything that happened, insisting she was pushing too hard too fast. Maybe she is, but this is the only way to get her life back.
And Chloe Decker doesn’t give up.
“I’m fine,” she grinds out, not looking at Lucifer as she loops the band around her hand again.
“Darling, you’re shaking.”
“Means it’s working.”
“Unless I’m terribly mistaken,” Lucifer says, leaning forward with that sharp intensity he usually reserves for suspects, “it also means that you are about three reps away from tearing something vital. You really must forgive me for preferring you functional, Detective.”
She ignores him, gritting her teeth and pulling again. The scars pull harder, hot lines shooting down her arm. That doesn’t stop her.
Lucifer sighs, climbing to his feet gracefully. “Bloody hell, woman, do you have a death wish?”
Her hand slips. The band goes slack as her muscles give out, and the curse that rips from her is pure frustration. This has also been the routine—her, refusing to stop even when she should, and getting irritated at the too slow rate of healing.
He’s beside her in an instant, catching her wrist before she can hide the tremor. His thumb brushes along her pulse point as his eyes travel to the scars on her bicep, his eyes bending with worry as they find hers.
“You terrify me when you do this,” he says softly.
Chloe swallows, her throat tight. “You’ve done worse to yourself.”
Killing himself to get her antidote. Nearly getting himself trapped in Hell. Leaping into danger at every opportunity.
“Yes,” he says without hesitation, lips quirking with grim humor, “but I’m me. And you’re you. I happen to be quite a bit sturdier by celestial design. And I’d rather like it if you remained in one piece.”
Her chest aches, recalling he’s not always sturdy. When she’s nearby, he’s vulnerable, and she watched him nearly die in that place. She looks away instead of calling him on it, grabbing the stress ball off the table with her good hand. “If I don’t push, it’ll never get better. If it never gets better, I won’t heal. And if I don’t heal...” Her jaw tightens. “...I can’t get back to work.”
Lucifer plucks the ball from her fingers before she can squeeze, and she levels him with a glare that would burn a lesser man to ash. “Well, if you insist on murdering yourself in the name of progress, then at least let me help.”
She arches an eyebrow at him. “You? Doing physical therapy?”
“Why not?” His grin is rakish, deliberately overdone, but the warmth behind it disarms her. Not that she’s willing to let it show. “After all, I’ve been told I’m rather good with my hands.” He waggles his eyebrows. “By you. More than once.”
Although she rolls her eyes, she can’t quite hold back her laugh—or her blush. “Fine. But if you drop me, I swear I’ll—”
“Detective.” He smirks, slipping the band back into her palm and stepping behind her. The heat of him is a line all the way down her body, still making her shiver. “I would never.”
Despite everything, or maybe because of it, she knows it’s the truth.
“Right, then,” he says brightly. “Shall we?”
Chloe takes a deep breath and nods. He guides her arm carefully into position, one hand gently bracing at her elbow, the other steadying the band.
“Now,” he murmurs in her ear, his tone soft and coaxing, “try again, slowly. Breathe with it.”
She pulls, feeling the resistance bite deep in her muscles. The scar in her bicep tugs. A flash of memory rips through her—pure darkness, feeling around for an exit, steel teeth clamping around her arm. Even now she can remember the pain, every detail of it. Her own screams mingling with Lucifer's furious, frantic ones while the trap tried to take her arm and he couldn’t get to her.
Her body falters as she tries to force the memories away.
Lucifer's hand presses low on her belly instantly, firm, steady. “Easy, darling,” he murmurs soothingly. He knows the signs of what’s happening as well as she does now. “You’re here, love, not there. Focus. Only one more inch. That’s it.”
She forces the band back, letting his voice anchor her to reality and shattering the flashback.
“Better,” he says, low and approving. Proud, even. “No need to martyr yourself when a bit of support will do, hmm?”
“Don’t,” she says through her teeth. “Don’t look at me like I’m broken.”
“I don’t,” he says at once, fiercely. His breath brushes her cheek as he leans closer. “I look at you like you’re bloody unstoppable. Which, frankly, you are. But even unstoppable forces occasionally benefit from leverage.”
Her throat feels tight. But when she pulls the band back and holds, even when her muscles tremble, she finishes the rep. And for the first time, she doesn’t feel like a failure.
“Well done, Detective.” Lucifer smiles as she lets go of the band. He doesn’t tell her to rest or that she’s done enough the way someone else would. Instead, he guides the band to its base and retrieves the stress ball, dropping it into her palm. “Squeeze,” he urges, surprisingly not making an innuendo of it.
She obeys, even though her hand trembles. Her fingers don’t want to close. “Pathetic,” she mutters, glaring at them.
Lucifer's hand covers hers before she can throw it down in frustration. “The power isn’t in the squeeze, Detective. It’s in the fact that you’re still bloody trying. Now try again. Imagine it’s my neck, and you’re wringing it because I’ve annoyed you to your breaking point if you must. But try again.”
She shoots him a look, half a scowl, half fond exasperation, but she keeps squeezing. The ball yields, her hand shakes, and she still tries again. Lucifer counts under his breath, not numbers but praises. “Good. Strong. Better. Again. You’re not losing this fight, Detective. Not to rubber, not to scars, not to anything.”
Her chest loosens and the tiniest flicker of a smile breaks free.
Next comes the dreaded wall climbs. She hates them more than the bands. Arm trembling, she presses her fingers to the wall, climbing upward inch by inch. Pain knifes through her shoulder as scar tissue screams.
She hisses through her teeth. “Feels like it’s tearing.”
Lucifer's hand hovers at her elbow, steady without pushing or guiding. “It isn’t. I’d know if it were. It’s stretching. And you, Detective, are rather good at pushing through discomfort.”
She grunts, her jaw tight. “Yeah, well, discomfort’s one thing. This is—”
“Progress,” he interrupts softly.
Her arm reaches higher. Against her expectations, she touches the mark set by the therapist—and then surpasses it. She lets out a shaky laugh, part disbelief, part triumph. “I did it,” she breathes. It seems like such a simple thing, touching a mark on a wall, but for her, it’s one step closer to regaining her life.
Lucifer beams. “See? You may glare at me all you like, but I was right.”
Chloe shoots him a look. “Enjoying yourself?”
“Immensely. And do you know why?”
“You’re a sadist?”
“Well, yes, but that’s entirely beside the point.” He leans closer, still smiling. “Because I happen to find your stubborn drive incredibly sexy.”
From anyone else, it might sound teasing or even mocking. But from Lucifer...his brown eyes soften, belying his tone, and she knows he means it.
As it turns out, the Devil has a bit of a competence kink. One that is centered around her, specifically.
“Time for stretching,” she says quietly, holding his gaze.
A sinful look flashes across his face. “Ooh. Now that is something I know for a fact you are more than capable of.”
Lucifer eases her onto the bench, his hands gentle as he guides her arm through stretches he’s memorized. Within seconds, she’s shaking, ignoring the sweat beading at her temple. His touch is careful but unflinching, one hand back at her elbow, the other coaxing her wrist into extension.
She winces, sucking in a sharp breath.
“Just breathe,” he murmurs, eyes flicking from her wrist to her face. “I’ve got you.”
She breathes. And then she watches as her arm slowly, impossibly, moves farther than it did a week ago.
When it’s all over, Chloe is flushed, trembling, exhausted—but she also feels lighter. Lucifer presses a chilled water bottle into her good hand, his eyes soft in a way that makes her heart flutter and squeeze.
“You see?” he says, quiet but certain as he helps her back into her sling. “Still in one piece, as promised. And you didn’t even have to do it alone.”
Chloe drinks deeply, then levels him with a look over the rim of the bottle. “Don’t get used to it,” she mutters dryly, but her lips are twitching.
Lucifer smirks. “Oh, on the contrary, Detective. I fully intend to.”
Her laugh is tired but real, echoing through the room. For the first time since she and Lucifer were abducted and forced to play twisted games that nearly killed them both, Chloe’s injuries don’t feel like an end. They feel like the beginning.
As much as she doesn’t want to add to her partner’s smugness by admitting it, Lucifer is right—having someone to help shoulder the burden made it a thousand times easier.
Hours later, she’s in another atmosphere altogether. One where the music is low with sultry bass lines weaving through the air like smoke. Lux never truly sleeps; even on a quiet evening, there's always some rhythm pulsing, and warmth in the air that makes everyone feel like they belong. Chloe sits at the bar with her back straight, nursing a crystal tumbler of Macallan whiskey with her good hand. She’s gotten a taste for it in recent weeks, thanks to Lucifer.
The other arm rests in its sling, an anchor she both loathes and needs. Every time she catches sight of it in her periphery, the warehouse flashes through her mind—puzzles with potentially deadly consequences, knowing she had no choice because Lucifer had been poisoned, the trap that nearly claimed her arm. Even now, nearly two months later, she remembers how it felt, that white-hot pain of her skin tearing, muscle shredding, nerves snapping.
The real miracle here might be that she managed to keep going after that without bleeding to death. Not to mention all the other injuries she sustained and the trauma she still deals with on a nightly basis. PTSD isn’t something she ever thought she’d be diagnosed with, and while it’s a mild case comparatively, some days, it feels insurmountable.
She shifts, trying to ignore the phantom pull in her scar.
A man slides onto the stool beside her, smelling like he bathed in cheap cologne, his hair gel gleaming under low lights. “Rough day?” he asks, flashing a smile he probably thinks is charming.
Chloe doesn’t bother glancing at him. “Not interested,” she says dully.
“Aw, come on,” he persists, eyes darting to her arm. “That sling—did you fall off a horse or just fall for me?”
She rolls her eyes, giving him a flat look, feeling secondhand embarrassment rush through her. “Neither. But you’re going to fall on your face if you use that line again.”
He blinks, laughing awkwardly. “Uh...funny. I like funny.”
“Try again, and I’ll prove it,” she says sweetly, which in Chloe-speak means: run while you still can, loser.
His grin falters, but he slinks away back into the crowd with a muttered curse.
Apparently, he opened the floodgates; less than five minutes later, someone else takes his spot. This one is younger, tall and grinning a bit too wide. He settles on the stools like he was invited, leaning close enough she can smell the booze on his breath.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
She lifts her glass, tilting it so the light catches the amber. “Already have one.”
“Well, maybe I could—”
“No.”
On the other side of the bar, Patrick glances up from where he’s cleaning glasses, subtly raising an eyebrow to ask if she needs backup. She shakes her head minutely.
The guy beside her blinks, stunned by the refusal, then tries to laugh it off. “Hard to get, huh? I like that.”
Chloe turns her head, giving him a smile that’s in no way inviting. “Nope. Just not interested.”
He goes red, muttering something about her being a bitch, and shoves away from the bar.
Patrick’s lips twitch. She winks at him.
Annoyance number three is smoother—or thinks he is. “Mind if I join you?” he asks with a confident smile. “I promise I don’t bite.”
“I might if you don’t walk away.”
“I could get into that. But seriously, a beautiful woman like you shouldn’t have to drink alone.”
Chloe barely holds back her sigh. “I’m waiting on someone.”
He leans closer. “If you were mine, you’d never have to wait,” he purrs near her ear.
“Well, I’m not, and I’m never going to be. And I guarantee if you’re still here when my partner arrives, you’re not going to like what happens.”
“He the possessive type? I can certainly see why.”
“Maybe. But it’s more likely I’ll arrest you for harassment.” She turns to look straight at him. “I’m a cop.”
That seems to be the magic word. He scuttles off the stool so fast it teeters slightly.
“Someone’s popular tonight,” Patrick says, refreshing her drink.
Chloe sighs. “Unfortunately.”
As he walks away to tend to another customer, she takes a sip, enjoying the whiskey’s burn down her throat. She isn’t here to be wanted by strangers who don’t even know her name. She’s here because...the last few months cracked her open in ways she didn’t know were possible and she’s still trying to figure out where she fits now.
Her mind drifts the way it always does when she’s alone.
The poisoning was months ago now, but she can still feel the way her insides burned. The fear, knowing the chances of attaining the antidote were near zero. Of knowing she might never see her daughter again. Or her friends, her mom. Lucifer. The last thing she remembers clearly was falling asleep with Trixie, and then she woke to find Lucifer at her side, relief in his eyes he couldn’t hide—and guilt she couldn’t parse.
And then he vanished for weeks, leaving her to worry and wonder. Was it because of her? Because they were close to something? Because she nearly died? Had something else happened? He returned two weeks later like he never left with a ditzy stripper on his arm and a ring on his finger.
Meet Candy Morningstar. My wife.
Those words still hurt, but the pain is duller now. Some part of her knew all along there was more to the story. Lucifer didn't do commitment. He didn't do relationships, and she was supposed to believe he met a stranger in Vegas, fell into some whirlwind romance, and got married all in two weeks? Please.
But she went with it, because she knew he wasn't going to give her the full picture. So if friends was all he wanted, then friends was all he would get.
The distance between them hadn’t helped anything. But then they were abducted and dropped into a nightmare by a truly sadistic bastard who liked to watch people’s pain. Worse than that, he broadcasted to other sociopaths who subscribed to watch her and Lucifer and other couples who weren’t so lucky be tortured for entertainment. She was electrocuted, tore her leg open, had her arm mauled, and was forced to admit things she hadn’t been ready to speak. Lucifer was poisoned, drowned, and heard her suffering while he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
He tried to sacrifice himself with a bullet to the head to give her a chance. She has nightmares some nights where there was a bullet in that gun and wakes up gasping, calling his name. Those are the nights she ends up texting or calling him, just to reassure herself that he’s okay. That they both are.
Ella put it best when she muttered to Dan one night, unaware that Chloe could hear her, “Those two are going to need all the therapy.” She wasn't wrong.
Of course, Lucifer recovered when Chloe put distance between them, but that wasn’t the end of it for him. Aside from refusing to let her go through PT alone, he and Maze have been hunting down every single person who subscribed to that livestream. Chloe hasn’t asked what they do when they find those people—she doesn’t want to know—but she also hasn’t stopped them.
The LAPD has dismantled every inch of the warehouse. And they’re also going after those voyeurs—the top contributors, after dealing with the Devil and his demon, face federal charges for interstate commerce, conspiracy, and aiding and abetting kidnapping and torture.
With the Game Master—whose real name was Andrew Knox—dead, it’s some form of closure, though it doesn’t quite feel like peace. He was watching them for months, ever since Carlisle killed himself in front of Chloe, and knew things about them they hadn't even told each other. Once his apartment was raided, they learned how he knew so much: he broke into Linda's office, raided her files on Lucifer, and made copies of them. Linda had no idea there'd been a break-in at all, and has spent the last several weeks apologizing profusely to both Chloe and Lucifer. She's also invested in new high tech surveillance equipment for her after office hours.
Everything they've learned about Knox says the man was a true monster the Devil could never be. It would be one thing if this was some supernatural enemy, but it wasn't. He was just a sick, twisted human, which somehow makes it worse.
The only good thing to come out of the nightmare is the closeness between Chloe and Lucifer. Between their confessions in the warehouse and their talks afterwards, neither of them was willing to just go on like they had before—friends and partners, and nothing more.
Chloe meant everything she said—she doesn’t care that Lucifer is the Devil. She knows him, knows his heart, and refuses to give up on him. On them. Lucifer's hesitation—his belief that Chloe being a miracle means she has no free will—was blown to Hell when she called absolute bullshit on the theory.
“My feelings are mine and no one else’s. Nobody dictates how I live my life—not God or the Devil or anyone. I know what I want and who I want.”
They went back and forth on that subject alone for days, where Lucifer desperately wanted to believe her, and finally conceded the point—no matter what theories he’s come up with, they don’t know for sure why Chloe was put in his path and they probably never will. The only one who can tell them for sure is God, and as Lucifer said, they have more of a chance of Maze turning into Ella Lopez than that happening.
It took time, but she thinks he’s finally starting to believe her. At the very least, he's given her the benefit of the doubt.
When she feels eyes on her, she doesn’t stiffen or flinch; she knows who it is. She smirks into her glass, flicking her gaze to the mirror behind the bar. Up on the mezzanine, Lucifer steps up to the railing, curls his fingers around it, and scans his kingdom. His eyes find her and stay, and warmth washes over her.
Then he makes his way down the stairs, never taking his gaze off her. People move out of the way instinctively, but he doesn’t notice them. For all he’s concerned, there isn’t anybody else here but the two of them.
He slides onto the stool beside her, the same one the other men tried to claim. The difference being, she wants him there. “Hello, Detective,” he murmurs as a bartender slides a glass into his hand. Lucifer sips from it without looking away from her.
Biting the inside of her cheek, Chloe drinks from her own glass, tilting her head towards him. “You’re late.”
“Perhaps,” he agrees, his eyes sparkling. “But fashionably so.” Leaning closer, he lowers his voice. “Besides, anticipation suits you. Makes your cheeks glow, your lips tighten. Positively radiant.”
“Radiant, huh?” She smirks. “I guess that’s one word for it.”
He feigns offense. “And what would you call it, then?”
“Annoyed.”
His grin widens in delight. “Well, that just so happens to be my favorite look on you.”
She shakes her head, fighting the smile that threatens to spill.
“You were exceptional today,” he murmurs, more serious now. “I was quite impressed.”
Chloe hums into her glass. “Think so?”
“I know so. You’ll be back to detectiving before you know it.”
She isn’t so sure. In order to get back to where she was before, she needs full range on her arm, to be able to pull a trigger if she needs to, and not drop things with no warning because her nerves aren’t firing correctly.
Lucifer leans even closer, sliding his arm behind her. She shifts towards him on instinct, letting his presence, his scent surround her. This feels like home.
“Dance with me.”
Chloe blinks. “What?”
“You heard me.” She can hear the smile in his voice. “Come now, Detective, surely the sight of me swaying these perfectly tailored hips across the floor is something you’ve longed for.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” She swallows, trying to keep her voice dry, but he isn’t fooled. Not when her pulse betrays her, hammering loud enough she swears he can hear it.
“Wouldn’t you?” he teases, sliding to his feet. “You know what I can do horizontally. Imagine it as foreplay.”
Heat floods her cheeks as she looks at his hand. She does know what he’s capable of, but that’s entirely beside the point. Her shoulder still aches, her leg isn’t quite one hundred percent. Sex is one thing, but dancing is reckless in her condition. She should just say no, finish her drink, and drag him upstairs for something safer and more private.
But then he presses closer until she feels the heat of his body radiating through her. He curls over her, his lips brushing her ear.
“Dance with me, Chloe.”
And just like that, she’s lost.
She slides her hand into his, letting him pull her effortlessly to her feet. He guides her to the dance floor, a little smirk on his lips as if he won some prize. They end up in the center of everything, and his arm curls around her, his forehead against hers.
“My arm—” she starts.
“Is safe,” he murmurs in return. “You’re always safe with me, Detective.”
That was never in question.
The song shifts to something slower, and his eyes soften even as they darken a touch. Lucifer moves like water, smooth and unstoppable, his body aligning with hers in ways that makes more heat bloom in her belly. Every brush of his fingers on her back, every sway of his hips is a seduction—not that he needs to seduce her.
Which means...
“You’re showing off,” she accuses, though her voice is already husky.
“Darling, I’m merely existing.” His lips graze her ear as he spins her gently, careful with her injuries but making it look effortless. Even though she’s not the best dancer, he makes her feel graceful. “If that happens to drive you wild, well...” His smile grows against her skin. “Who am I to complain?”
She huffs a laugh, unable to hide how much she’s enjoying this. He doesn’t treat her like she’s fragile, doesn’t let her hide on her worst days. Like he had today at therapy, he pushes her to do her best, and that’s gone a long way to help her.
The more they move, the room might as well have vanished. The music, the lights, the crowd—none of it matters. There's just him, warm and strong, moving with a precision that is both art and temptation, and he knows it. There was a time when she thought herself immune to him, that his charm was all smoke and mirrors. This, though, this is real.
Everything about them is real. And after they were forced to fight for their lives, they’re finally here, giving in to what they both want.
She tilts her head back to meet his gaze, and what she finds there makes her breath catch. Mischief, yes, but also heat. Devotion. Something deeper, something that feels more like a promise.
“You’re ridiculous,” she whispers.
“And yet...” He spins her again, dipping her low enough for her hair to brush the floor. His mouth hovers just above hers. “You can’t look away.”
“Or maybe that’s you.”
Lucifer pulls her upright again, a soft half-smile on his lips. “Guilty,” he murmurs, curling over her. His hands slide up her body, cupping her face, and then he’s kissing her.
Chloe doesn’t hesitate to respond. She wraps her arm around his neck, her fingers slipping into his hair, and opening for him. He hums, tangling their tongues together with an expertise that makes her toes curl.
Nightmares and confessions and nearly dying hadn’t torn them apart. It only brought them closer. It brought them here. They fought and bled and survived. Everything they have now, they’ve more than earned. And Chloe won’t give it up without a fight. Because she’s exactly where she wants to be.
Here, in the arms of her Devil, she’s home.