Chapter Text
Another case solved, another perp reduced to a gibbering wreck by the simple expedient of her infuriating partner merely looking at the guy. By now, Chloe was almost - but not quite - used to it, both to the fact that Lucifer could clearly do whatever it was he did, and to the fact that she still didn’t know what it was he did or how he did it. She had resolved not to ask. She’d only get the “I am the Devil” explanation again.
She sighed. It was simply another case of needing the eggs, she supposed.
“Well,” Lucifer said, turning to her with his familiar smug expression, “that’s him served, and it isn’t even time for lunch yet. We’re getting boringly good at this whole detecting lark, Detective.” There was a twinkle in his dark eyes that she had by now learned to look for, one telling her that he was deliberately winding her up in what could be construed either as good-natured banter or as part of foreplay Lucifer-style, whatever she might desire it to mean.
Rolling her eyes, she opened her mouth to tell him that there was nothing boring about police work that successfully brought murderers behind bars when she saw his eyes widen in something that looked remarkably like shock as he shifted his focus to something behind her. His expression was unlike any she had ever seen from him before; it sat so uneasily on his usually suave and in-control face that her cop instincts responded instantly, the playful mood evaporating.
She whirled, her hand automatically going for the gun at her hip.
The sight that greeted her was that of a woman, tall, slim, black hair, dark eyes, and holding a - crossbow. Aimed at Lucifer.
Well, that’s new.
Before Chloe could even draw up her gun, the woman pulled the lever. The crossbow gave a twanging sound even as Lucifer yelled “No!”. His voice cut off in a choke as he was propelled backwards by the impact of the projectile.
Feeling herself go cold inside, Chloe kept her focus on the woman and fired her gun at her, one, two, three times, each bullet hitting its target, but the woman merely smiled at her before dismissing her and turning back to where Lucifer had fallen.
“Brother,” she said with an accent Chloe couldn’t place, “it is time for you to stop with this charade. That free will you covet so much only works when one has all the information. I believe it’s called an ‘informed decision’.” Her dark eyes briefly flicked to Chloe. “Father requires you to come clean with her now.”
Focus . Chloe kept both her eyes and her weapon on the woman who had called Lucifer ‘brother’. “Who are you? What do you want?”
The woman finally deigned to spare Chloe her attention, smiling serenely. “Make him own up to what he is.”
Next thing Chloe knew, the woman had disappeared before her eyes. One second she was there, spent crossbow in one hand and an almost sad smile on her face, the next she was gone as if she’d never existed.
Right. First things first. Dismissing the past thirty seconds or so as something she’d deal with later, Chloe ran the short distance to where Lucifer had fallen and dropped to her knees next to him. “Lucifer! Can you hear me? What -”
She broke off. He appeared to be conscious, or at least his eyes were open, but he was barely moving beyond taking fast, shallow breaths. His hands were clutching the crossbow projectile - a slim, silvery bolt protruding from his chest, dead center, having apparently penetrated his sternum. She could see him straining to yank the thing free, but he couldn’t, and at last his hands fell away weakly, the bolt still in his chest.
Her training reminded her not to try to pull the bolt out. Left where it was, it would plug up the wound until help arrived. Besides, it could have barbs and such.
She whipped out her phone, intending to call an ambulance. Then she remembered that the paramedics would want to know whether the patient was responsive, so she bent over him, trying to catch his unfocused gaze. “Lucifer! Lucifer…”
No response, just the sound of fast, shallow breathing, but his empty stare finally found her. The expression in his eyes was one of utter terror. Beyond his panting breaths, he wasn’t moving. She noticed that there was no blood, just a clean hole in his shirt where the spike had struck. That definitely wasn’t normal.
And then something happened that made her drop the device from nerveless fingers.
Before her widened eyes, Lucifer was changing, morphing into something else. His pale skin darkened, turned reddish, seemed to shrink away from his face to expose the raw flesh and bones beneath; his hair disappeared; his normally brown-black eyes, fixed on Chloe all the while, turned to orange within dark sclera that no longer looked human, surrounded by skin that appeared dark red, in stark contrast to where the white of the bones surrounding his eye sockets showed through. Even his hands were affected; they now seemed like something straight out of - well, hell.
She could feel her lips go numb; blackness encroached upon her field of vision, but she staved off the impending bout of passing out by taking a couple of deep breaths and invoking her native stubbornness. She was a cop. She was not injured. Her partner needed her. She had no physical reason to faint. Ergo, she wouldn’t.
Then, the thing lying gasping and twitching before her made a soft, weak sound of despair. It had Lucifer’s voice. It was still Lucifer. He might not be changing back; he might continue to be this strange, burned-looking creature that Chloe’s senses refused to take in completely, but he was in distress, he clearly needed her help, and she was damned if she passed out now or refused to help him just because she was a little overwhelmed by what she was seeing.
She’d figure this out later. Deal with the emergency now, Decker. Go to pieces after.
“It’s okay,” she forced out, her voice sounding alien to her own ears, not knowing whether she was talking to Lucifer or to herself. “I’ve got this. I’ve got this.”
Reaching down, she picked her phone back up and forced her brain in gear. The hospital was a no-go, obviously. They wouldn’t know what to do with it… him, even less than she did. Then it hit her. The person to call now was Maze, who had once claimed to have been forged in the fires of Hell.
“Yes, Chloe!” her roommate’s voice came when the call had connected, sounding so incongruously eager and cheerful that Chloe had to fight off another bout of blackness.
“Maze,” she said, trying to force her voice to sound normal and failing. “I need your help.” On the ground in front of her, Lucifer was staring at her out of his dark red eyes, now lying utterly still. She was grateful. She suspected that, if he made a move, any move, her precarious self-control would shatter and she’d run away screaming.
“Sure,” Maze said easily. “What can I do?”
Chloe swallowed down bile. “Come… come over here and…-” Her voice broke. She realized she was hyperventilating.
“Are you alright?” Maze asked, sounding concerned now. “Do I need to kill someone? Where are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said, “it’s Lucifer. I’m… -” Where was she? She couldn’t remember. Some parking lot somewhere. “Lucifer is…He’s... I’m…” Her voice flat out refused to cooperate at this point, which wasn’t so bad, since her brain was clearly beginning to shut down on her.
She could hear Maze swear and the sound of a door slamming shut. “I’m on my way. Chloe? Just stay calm. I’m tracking your phone. I’ll be there in a few seconds. Okay? Chloe? Are you still there? Don’t go. Talk to me. Tell me what happened.”
She was still staring at Lucifer, unable to look away. By now, she found she was beginning recognize his familiar features in the hellish visage; they were there in the height of the cheekbones, in the jawline, in the shape of the nose and brow…
“Chloe?”
With a jolt, she came back to herself. “There was this woman,” she said slowly, trying to focus. “She had a… a crossbow.”
“A woman with a crossbow, got it,” came Maze’s voice. In the background, Chloe could hear strange sounds, almost but not quite as if Maze were running. More like flapping sounds? “Keep talking. What happened then?”
“She shot… the crossbow… at Lucifer.” Focusing on the immediate past actually helped. Chloe silently congratulated Maze on her unexpected psychological skill. “The bolt hit him. It’s still in him. I thought it best to leave it in. He’s not bleeding, but he’s not moving, either. Like, at all. The bolt did something to him. Maze, he’s changed. It’s… “ She choked. “He’s looking like -” Her voice gave out again. Not quite so recovered as all that, apparently.
“Dammit,” Maze said succinctly. “Like the Devil. Chloe, he’s looking like the Devil. I think I know what this is, Chloe. The bolt didn’t turn him into anything, it just kinda made you see the truth. Just… stay calm, okay? He hasn’t changed, you got that? He’s still Lucifer, same as he’s always been. Don’t panic. I can see you now, I’ll be right there.”
“Yeah. Okay.” She put the phone away.
Lucifer made another wretched sound. His right hand twitched where it was lying on his abdomen.
Chloe stared at it. So different from his beautiful, elegant pianist’s hand. But his voice was still the one she had come to know and love, and the sound he made tore at her as though the bolt had penetrated her instead of him. “Lucifer,” she said, forcing herself to look back at that terrible face. “It’s gonna be alright.”
The red eyes bored into her. Their joint breathing, fast and shallow, was the only sound.
Then Maze was there. The fact that Chloe hadn’t heard a car didn’t even register as something to be questioned. Quick as a thought, Maze knelt down next to Chloe to peer at her from up close. “You’re doing great, Chloe,” she said, giving an encouraging smile. “You’re still here, and you’ve still got it relatively together. That’s a very good start.”
For the first time since all this had happened, Chloe felt a stab of an emotion other than numb horror. “Told you I’m fine. Take care of him , dammit.”
Maze’s face assumed an expression of surprised approval. “Even better than together. Yes, Ma’am.” With that, she leaned over Lucifer, blocking Chloe’s view. “I’m here,” she said to him. “I’ll take care of it.” With a yank, she pulled the bolt out and glared at it. It was a silvery clean spike, no blood on it.
There was no blood on Lucifer’s chest, either, just a small hole in his shirt where the spike had been.
Chloe briefly closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Maze, what’s wrong with him? Why is he looking like… this…?”
Maze put the spike into an inside pocket of her leather jacket. “We don’t have time for explanations now. Where’s your car? We need to get him to safety before a mortal spots him. Other than you, obviously. C’mon.”
With easy strength, Maze bent down, gathered Lucifer up and rose with him in her arms. “You’re driving,” she stated briskly as she began to walk, carrying her burden cradled against her. “I’ll sit in the back with him and keep him from falling off the seat in a tight curve.”
Chloe merely nodded, grateful for the fact that Maze was calling the shots and she didn’t have to think right now.
And so, she found herself in her car, driving along with no destination, while in the back seat Maze was sitting with her arm wrapped around Lucifer.
“That spike is an angel’s weapon,” Maze said. “I think it’s called a Piercer of Lies. I’ve never actually seen one, but word downstairs is that it will disrupt any glamour and render the target paralyzed until its work is done. In Lucifer’s case, it disrupted his angelic glamour, so what you’re seeing now is his Devil form. The one he tried to keep you from seeing all this time. That’s one of the lies the spike pierced.”
Chloe nodded to acknowledge that she had heard, if not really understood, what Maze had said. “So it was all true,” she latched onto the single thing she did understand. “When he said he’s the Devil…”
Maze met her gaze in the rearview mirror. “Oh yeah. Everything he ever told you about himself was the absolute and literal truth. High time you finally believed him.”
The Devil. A fallen angel. Lucifer was not named after the Devil, he was the Devil. A.k.a Satan, the Lord of Hell. All the things he’d said, about doing favors, about his dad - Chloe’s mind refused to go there -, about him and priests being natural enemies, about him being a punisher, about having had his wings cut off - ...
Chloe shook her head briskly, hoping that the facts she had learned would somehow settle in her mind so the world would go back to making sense. But how could it? This meant that it was all true. God. Angels. Hell. Heaven. The Devil. Demons. Damnation.
How was she, an atheist, supposed to deal with that?
She decided to begin by focusing on the here-and-now. “Uh, where are we going, Maze? Where will he be safe in case she comes back?”
Maze scoffed. “Not anywhere on earth. Only place he’s safe from angels is hell. Since that’s out, we’re taking him to Lux. He’ll be most comfortable in his own home until this shit wears off.”
“And how long will that take?” Chloe asked, taking a left turn.
She could see Maze shrug. “Until the lessons are learned, apparently.” She scoffed again. “Angelic magic. Stupid complicated.”
Fortunately, it was too early for Lux to be open, which meant no lines at the entrance, and so they managed to bring Lucifer from the car inside the building without anyone seeing him. Maze carried him easily up to his penthouse and straight into his bed.
Chloe considered it a sign of resuming brain activity that she finally managed to wonder about Maze’s unexpected physical prowess. The ex-bartender certainly didn’t look brawny, and Lucifer was a tall man. “So…” Chloe said, watching Maze fuss over Lucifer from where she was standing next to the bed, “are you an angel as well?”
Maze looked up from where she was making Lucifer comfortable, opening his shirt and taking off his shoes. Her expression turned into one of disgust. “Definitely not. I’m a demon. I’m his demon. He made me.”
“Okay.” Chloe nodded, distracted by Lucifer’s eyes. They were open, tracking, and kept returning to her, still red-orange in a red Devil’s face. Looking strangely un-terrifying, more like ... terrified.
Before she had time to ponder that, Maze, having finished draping the black comforter over Lucifer, turned to her. “Right,” she said. “Now. Excellent work on the holding it together, Decker. Couple of things you need to realize before you do go into hysterics.”
Chloe nodded again, more firmly this time. She had no intention of going into hysterics this long after the fact, but the strange, fluttery feeling in her chest told her that she wasn’t out of the woods yet. “Okay.”
Maze sat down on the edge of Lucifer’s bed, blocking Chloe’s view of him much to her relief, and took one of his hands in both of hers. “Listen. Angels use the Truth Spike to teach each other lessons. It’s imbued with a spell. The one who’s hit is unable to use any kind of disguise while it lasts. This,” she lifted Lucifer’s hand, demonstrating how inhuman it was looking, “is the obvious effect. Not the only one, though. He can’t disguise his own feelings, not to anyone around him, not to himself. He’s emotionally naked now. Anyone can see what he’s feeling, and he can’t lie to himself either.”
Chloe looked at the hand, her brain stalling. Something inside her kept whispering that this was not happening, that she was dreaming or maybe even in a coma in some hospital somewhere.
Maze glared at her. “Do you get it? He’s completely vulnerable, even more so than he usually is when you’re around. You’ve got some sort of power over him. That should be impossible, but it is what it is. You can hurt him deeply at the best of times, so think about what it’ll do to him if you decide to run away screaming from him now when he has no defenses.”
Chloe swallowed, nodding, the terrified look in Lucifer’s eyes fresh in her mind.
“Do you get it?” Maze repeated intently.
“Yes, I do,” Chloe said, not liking how brittle her own voice sounded.
“Good. Now prove it.” With that, Maze lifted the monstrous hand she was holding and held it up to Chloe.
The reddish fingers were twitching.
She stared, trying to make herself move.
“Decker!” Maze hissed.
From behind Maze, she could hear Lucifer’s panting breaths. Terrified .
That sound finally gave her the strength to push past her own paralysis. Reaching out her hand, she made her fingers touch Lucifer’s.
The first thing she noticed was how inhumanly warm the skin was. And it was skin, no matter how much it might look like raw flesh; it felt smooth, very smooth, and very warm. Carefully, she closed her hand about the long fingers, feeling them twitch as they tried to curl around hers.
Maze gave her an approving nod and a bright smile. “See? Not so bad, right?”
Chloe looked at their joined hands, raising her other one to cover Lucifer’s in both of hers. Whatever terrible things her subconscious kept expecting to happen continued to not happen. “Yeah,” she said, beginning to relax. “Not bad at all.”
Maze beamed at her. “I gotta admit I didn’t think you had it in you. That damned spike is teaching all of us a lesson, apparently.”
Chloe’s thumbs had begun to gently stroke the hot fingers she was holding as if trying to calm their trembling. It felt good not to be so in shock anymore; almost like a rush. She was beginning to think that maybe she could really do this.
“Right,” Maze said. “Now for the hardest bit. Don’t fuck this up, Decker, or I swear I’ll rip your heart out and eat it.” With that, she stood up from the bed, once more revealing the sight of the Devil’s face to Chloe.
Their eyes met. His were wide, unblinking, pleading.
She could feel his hand go utterly still in hers, could hear him hold his breath.
Realized that she, too, had stopped breathing.
His Devil face had lost much of its horror for her now that she had seen it before, but this wasn’t just about being able to stand the sight of it. This was about acceptance, complete acceptance of this aspect of him. And every second she was making him wait was a second he spent in fear of her rejection.
She had kissed his human face, had loved touching him, spending time with him, just being around him. He was infuriating, unbridled, uninhibited, sometimes even violent, but also charming, honorable, truthful, and a genuinely good person. She suspected that she was more than just a little bit in love with him.
All that had to still be there now. His being hadn’t changed. Still the same old Lucifer, no matter what he might look like now. Now matter what rap the Devil might get.
Suddenly, it was easy.
Not letting go of his hand, she took the place Maze had just vacated on the edge of his bed. Then she leaned forward, her eyes never leaving his. “It’s okay,” she whispered.
His lips parted on a sharp inhale.
Chloe kept her eyes open until she could feel the heat of his lips against hers.
They still felt the same.
Freeing one hand, she placed it alongside his face as she kept kissing him gently, caressing him, feeling the impossibly smooth skin of his face, the smoothness that made it glisten, but not with moisture. Carefully, she ran her hand towards the back of his head, wanting to touch more of him, ending the kiss only to immediately kiss him again, and again.
He still couldn’t move, but she could feel his breath hitch. So she pulled back at last to look at his face.
It was wet, his eyes brimming over with tears.
“Oh, Lucifer,” she whispered, feeling her own eyes fill.
There were no more words, only the need to feel him, to reassure, to calm him, so she kicked off her shoes and climbed into the bed with him, threading one arm underneath his neck to cradle his head against her and be as close to him as she possibly could.
Long minutes passed. The intense heat from Lucifer’s body slowly permeated her own as she continued to caress him and kiss his tears away. Emotionally naked, Maze had described it.
She smiled. “So,” she said, “the Devil really is a big softie.”
His eyes found hers. He blinked, freeing fresh tears.
She kissed him again. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”
His lips twitched. At the same time, she could feel his arm come up against her shoulder and his fingers tighten around her hand where she had held his all this time.
And then, she watched the Devil’s eyes fade away to be replaced by Lucifer’s familiar brown ones.
He blinked and opened his mouth. “I should bloody well hope so.”
Laughing, she drew back to take in the familiar sight of his human form. “So, what, that was it? We’ve all learned our lessons?”
He nodded, eyes soft. “Seems so.” She could feel him stretch, moving against her body, his muscles tensing and relaxing with obvious enjoyment. “Oh, that’s better.”
She anchored one hand in his thick black hair, grateful to have it back, and gave a playful tug.
His eyes widened. “Ow. What was that for?”
“You lied to me, Mister,” she said, assuming her stern cop expression.
“Never,” he protested, eyes still wide. “Point of pride for me, actually, as you very well know.”
“I didn’t mean the things you told me, Lucifer. I meant this.” She released his hair to gesture at his face. “You said a while ago that there was no obvious proof for you being the Devil, when all along you could have just shown me your Devil face.”
He frowned. “I use that face to scare and punish people.”
“You’ve never shown it to any of your friends?”
“Oh, I did, once, to Doctor Linda. Took her a whole week to get over it. I didn’t want to take the chance with you going crazy.”
She compressed her lips. “I can take it, as you’ve just seen.”
He had the decency to look embarrassed. “Yes, well. You weren’t ready before, but I was gearing up to it.”
“Really.”
“I never lie, Chloe. Yes, really. I would have shown you soon. Azrael just pre-empted me. Bloody typical.”
“Azrael. Your sister.”
“Mhm. Of course, it’s not her fault, really. Dear old Dad once again decided to meddle, so He sent her to rudely disrupt my perfect plans for the rest of our day today. How much time has passed, anyway?”
“Dunno. Couple of hours, maybe.”
“Excellent. So there’s still time for sex and cuddling before you have to go and be bored in the precinct.” He waggled his eyebrows.
Chloe couldn’t help but laugh. Just like that, they were back to normal. “So, really no horns,” she said, going along with him, because really, what else could she do? He was the Devil.
“Told you.” He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close.
She nuzzled into his neck. “Pity.”
“Why?”
“I had a dream about you. Sexy dream. You had horns. They were… practical.”
“Oh? Do tell me more, Detective.”
In the main room, Maze was listening with half an ear while carefully stowing away the Truth Spike in her boot. She was impressed with how well it had worked, even on someone as powerful as the Lord of Hell. And with this many celestials around, you never knew when something like that might come in handy.