"This is your home," she whispers. He belongs here, in Los Angeles, with his friends. With her. The problem is, she can never convince him that he is good, that he's not the monster he thinks he is. He has to learn that on his own.
He already has, almost. Chloe just has to have faith that he'll get there again.
"You said I'd see Charlotte again one day, in Heaven." The idea alone sounds preposterous when she says it out loud. "But you don't know that for sure. Besides, why would I want to go there? You're my partner. I don't want to go where you won't be."
Where do good girls who love bad boys go anyway, when they can't stomach the idea of being apart from them forever?
"This is my home," he agrees. Even if he could go back to Heaven, it had never felt like home to him like this place does.
"You will." He's sure of that, at least as much as he can be without hearing from Amenadiel that he had taken Charlotte with him when he returned there.
He turns to face her more fully, puts a hand on her face, and shakes his head. "If there's anyone who doesn't belong in Hell, it's you. You don't want to go there. Not even for me." Nor does he want her to go there. He will do anything he can to make sure she doesn't, because the thought of her spending an eternity being punished is the one that he can't stomach.
A problem that, as far as Chloe is concerned, has no solution. Either way, she's going to die, and Lucifer is immortal, for all intents and purposes. It's pointless now to know that Heaven is real because there is not much comfort in her for it. There's no guarantee that she'll see her dad or anyone else she loves when the time comes, if she even ends up there. The only thing that is certain is that she'll never see Lucifer again.
"Lucifer, if being around me makes you vulnerable, and the only place you can go after you die is back to Hell, I don't want that. You belong on Earth, which means..."
She puts him at risk, every day. There is only one solution, but it's painful to say it out loud.
Not together at all. That's the last thing he wanted to hear, and the opposite of the choice he wanted her to make only a handful of days ago. But it's what he had come close to suggesting himself earlier, because the only way to be sure she'll never be used against him again is for her not to be in his life.
It's not just his choice though, and he's resigned himself to living on Earth forever, or dying and ending up in Hell instead. He'll outlive everyone he knows how, and he has to accept that. It would have been easier to go back to Hell the first time Amenadiel asked him to.
But then he never would have met Chloe.
He removes his hand from the side of her face and instead takes both of her hands in his. "Is that really what you want?"
She feels like there's a fist tightening around her heart, and she stares down at their joined hands. Of course it isn't what she wants, but she's not sure what she wants anymore. Chloe knew exactly what she wanted a few days ago - she just wanted him. But now, he's so much more, and she feels so small.
"Lucifer, I care about you." More than she can say, more than she's even willing to admit. "But all of this... It's so much. I can't deal with us dancing around each other anymore. If we're going to be together, I was us to be together. But I don't know how we can do that anymore."
She knows too much now. She can't spend the rest of her life willfully ignorant, pretending that he isn't the Devil.
That hadn't been quite the answer he was expecting, although he doesn't quite know what he had been expecting, and that question had never worked on her like it had on everyone else.
He should probably get up. Stop touching her. Go somewhere else. But he can't, because what he wants is to be right here, with her, even as he knows what she says is true and the longer this goes on will only make the inevitable harder.
"You have to leave, Lucifer. You have to leave this all behind. Go and live your life on Earth without knowing that you could die at any moment. This isn't about the job, either. What if one day we're in a car together we crash, or we're making dinner and you cut yourself with a knife, or you trip over one of Trixie's toys. We're so fragile. If you leave me, I can never hurt you again."
That's not entirely true. She knows it will hurt him to leave her, just as it will devastate her, too. But they will both learn to move on, and she will know that he'll always be safe.
She cares about him too much to let him throw his life away--to risk him going back to Hell--just to selfishly keep him near. She feels the tears coming again, the wetness against her cheeks.
"If anything happens to you, because of me, I'll never forgive myself." At least on Earth he has a chance. At least if she ends up in Heaven, maybe she can watch over him.
"Chloe." He doesn't know what he wants to say, other than her name, but if it's the last time he gets to say it, he doesn't want to waste it. All he knows is that she's the reason this place is home, and if he never sees her again, he'll go back to being the old Lucifer, the one who hasn't felt at home in his life. And he knows that he doesn't want to go back to that.
"You'd take the same risk with any other man." Except that she'd know it from the start, and she would be the reason for his vulnerability.
He holds tighter to her hands, careful not to hurt her, but unwilling to let go. It hadn't been so long ago that he realized he even wanted this, and now it's slipping away.
"You're here because my father wants you here. He has some plan, and I don't know what it is, and I'm sure I won't like it, but that's the truth of it. We'll never know what that plan is if we never see each other again." And he can't do anything about the plan until he knows what it is.
Chloe nods, understanding everything he's saying and yearning to argue against it, but she can't. Instead, she holds his hands just as tight, taking a breath before she leans into him, her lips tentatively pressing against his. Her eyes flutter shut and she thinks about it, how his hands feel wrapped around hers, how soft his lips are against him. He's the same person he was before, isn't he? Nothing's really changed, besides the fact that now she knows.
Maybe it's a mistake. Maybe doing this will make the decisions they have to make that much harder, but she can't stop herself. Her feelings for him are the same; if anything, they have been made clearer, because knowing the truth hasn't changed a single thing for her, not when it comes to how her heart feels when she's close to him.
Maybe one day it will stop surprising him when she does that. Just like maybe one day it will stop surprising him that he feels this way in the first place. It's a human emotion, and he's the Devil, besides. None of his family other than Amenadiel bothered to keep in touch with him after his banishment, and he was their brother; why should anyone else ever feel this way about him?
It takes him barely the blink of an eye to get over his surprise and return the kiss, tentatively at first, because there's still so much they don't know, but he must have said something right because Chloe's not leaving. Maybe someday, but right now she's not, and that was what he had wanted. The one thing he had wanted most.
Despite everything, she's still here. Is this what it feels like to be chosen by someone?
She lifts her hands to cup his face, her lips plaint against his as she allows herself to melt into the kiss. His breath is hot and sweet against her and she breathes him in, letting her lips linger longer than she should have before she finally pulls away.
Chloe chose him. She's chosen him, every time. Even when she agreed to marry Pierce--for as short-term and ill-fated at that was--she still chose him, if only because marrying Pierce was the only escape she could see for no longer having to be the person who chose him and was not chosen in return.
But now she knows the whole time he's chosen her, too, in his own way, in a way she didn't understand before.
Her fingers brush across his cheeks as she stares up at him, her eyes wide. "What are we going to do?"
He had chosen her, in quiet, unknown ways, ways that he hadn't told her about because there was so much she didn't know, and he didn't know if any of this was real, and he didn't fully understand what he felt himself, or why he was doing the things he was doing. But she knows it all now and she's still here. She chose him even after she saw the truth about him, and that's something no one else has ever done.
"I don't know. Usually I just go with it." Plans are not really his thing.
"Really? I also thought you were the planning ahead type."
Her eyebrows are raised, her voice dripping with sarcasm, but she does risk a small smile. This is probably a bad idea. It's tempting fate, in the worst way. She's skirting a world that isn't her own now, and she can't even begin to fathom the consequences.
Whether or not God wants this to happen, well, that's an unknown. But Chloe wants it, and she knows there is no manipulation, from Lucifer to anything beyond, involved in that.
"You know spontaneity really isn't my thing," she points out. "If we're going to be together, Lucifer, I need you to be fully here. I can't deal with you ducking in and out on me anymore. We have to be on the same side."
No matter how hard Lucifer once tried, he just could not be the son his father wanted him to be, and that eventually had turned into him refusing to give his father what he wanted and doing the opposite instead. He doesn't know if this thing he has with Chloe is something that his father wants, but he knows that it's what he himself wants, and what he wants is what he does. He'll see this through, even if it means playing into his father's hands.
He takes Chloe's hands in his again. "I'm on your side. I've just never had to worry about how not to die before," he reminds her. "Or had to worry about someone I care about dying. So if you tell me that a situation is dangerous and you'd prefer me to stay behind, I'll take it into advisement, and then probably ignore it anyway because I can't just sit here while you put yourself in danger."
Our job. The corners of her mouth lift again and she shakes her head. If he's going to stay with her, she can't ask him to give up on what they do together.
"And you were right before. Being with you isn't any riskier than being with anyone else." The difference being, of course, that she's the one who causes his vulnerability, and that if anything were to happen to him, she would shoulder the blame no matter what. "But that doesn't mean I don't want you to be careful. When you're around me you're human, for all intents and purposes."
That's not an entirely bad thing if she has to be honest.
"But that isn't the only thing I'm worried about."
It's strange to him to think of what they do as his job, because he doesn't really need the money that he gets from it, and he was a club owner before he ever imagined helping to solve murders. Owning a club isn't really a job, either; it's a source of income that still allows him to do what he likes. Which, he supposes, is what working with Chloe is too.
"Humans must have ways of protecting themselves." He's never given it much thought, but he knows they don't just go in to battle unadorned.
She takes a breath, trying to find an answer to his question. Really, what isn't she worried about? Chloe is stepping into the world of divinity with Lucifer, whether she wants to or not; if it were her choice, she would take him and leave the rest behind. But Lucifer comes with that baggage which means if she wants him, she has to take the rest, too.
"You said your family has been manipulating me this whole time," she points out, pausing to take a breath and wetting her lips with her tongue. "If your brother went so far as to try to kill me... Do we really know what we're up against here?"
"They won't all be like Uriel." Uriel had taken advantage of the situation as he saw it, and underestimated Lucifer's attachment to both lives he was threatening. "He wasn't acting on my father's behalf. For all I know, what he did could have displeased my father." Maybe sometime he'll know for sure, but right now all he can do is assume that his father wants Chloe to stay alive, and that means something.
"Amenadiel likes you, and most of the others should listen to him if he says to leave you alone. I have it on good authority that I am the Angel of Death's favorite brother, so she won't be a problem either. None of them would dare kill a human outright anyway, just manipulate the situation somehow to make it happen."
It's not very reassuring, but there's nothing he can tell her that is. "I don't know anything more than possibilities, but I don't have to let any of them get away with it. We know it's possible. If any of them try to meddle, we deal with it as it happens." She likes to have plans, he knows, but until something happens, there's no way to plan a response to it.
"All I can do right now is make it clear that manipulating you is the best way to make sure I don't do whatever they're trying to get from me."
There is absolutely nothing about this that is reassuring, except for maybe the fact that Lucifer is still an angel, even if that in itself is only useful when he's not anywhere near Chloe.
"I think it goes without saying that you don't need me as an excuse to not do whatever they want you to." Lucifer's rebellious spirit certainly wasn't quashed by being sent to Hell; if anything, it intensified it. It's a part of him that half makes Chloe respect him and half drives her absolutely insane.
She nods, though, understanding completely what he is telling her. Her hand moves to cup his cheek again, her fingers brushing gently over his skin. "I guess if I want you, all the family drama comes, too. I'll have to find a way to deal with it."
"Yes. She escorts the dead to Heaven." It's not as sinister as it sounds. She has nothing to do with their death in the first place.
"Of course I don't, but if they know it won't work then maybe they won't try." It's not like they're unaware of his nature, after all. They'd seen what happened to him when he couldn't contain it anymore, and stood around and watched it happen.
"That is how it normally works, isn't it?" His family just has more drama than most. "I'll do my best to keep my family out of it." His family would never harm him, even with his banishment.
"I'll just have to deal with the fact that I'll never meet your parents, but I think I can handle it. My mom alone is a handful enough."
Her tone is joking again, a little playful, despite everything. At least Penelope likes Lucifer, so that might keep her off Chloe's back for a little while.
"So you're the Devil, and Amenadiel is an angel, so Maze has been a demon all this time too? I've been letting a demon babysit my child?" Granted, Chloe always knew Maze was a little off center, so the fact that she was telling the truth about being a demon is really a moot point.
"Your mother is delightful." But he'd say the same thing about anyone who's susceptible to his charms, so he might be a little biased. "You did meet my mother in a way. When she occupied the body of Charlotte Richards. You never met her as part of the family though." Which was probably a good thing, given her feelings about humans.
"That is correct. Maze doesn't harm anyone without reason though, if that helps." It's up to her if she continues to let Maze babysit, of course. "You've also left your child alone with the Devil."
"Of course you think she's delightful, she was practically all over you the minute you met." Maybe that was harsh, but things with Chloe and Penelope have never been particularly smooth. "And at my mother never tried to manipulate you into letting your father's killer off the hook."
She is still a little bitter about that, although she had eventually forgiven Charlotte after it became clear she was working hard to redeem herself. That's made all the clearer now that she knows it was actually Lucifer's mother and not Charlotte at all, which just brings the hurt right back.
"I'd be more worried if I felt like you both were having a negative effect on Trixie but I think she's had more of an effect on both of you." After all, if Chloe wants a relationship with Lucifer, Trixie is part of the package.
"I can't help it if I that effect on people." It's just part of who he is. Desire and all that. "And my mother didn't always do bad things." He, apparently, owes her his life, although he's not sure if that makes up for all the manipulation that came later.
He's got a complicated relationship with his family. It's probably a good thing that her family likes him. It makes things that much less complicated.
"As far as children go, she's tolerable." That's high praise, coming from him. "Perhaps more than tolerable."
She raises her eyebrows. "You do realize that if we're going to be serious about our... relationship, Trixie is part of the deal, right?"
So far, he's only ever had to deal with her in small doses, although Chloe is sure that Lucifer finds her daughter more than tolerable. She's seen them together enough to tell he cares about Trixie.
"You're going to have to get used to new family dynamics, ones that don't involve being manipulated by immortal beings."
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2018-12-05 05:02 am (UTC)He already has, almost. Chloe just has to have faith that he'll get there again.
"You said I'd see Charlotte again one day, in Heaven." The idea alone sounds preposterous when she says it out loud. "But you don't know that for sure. Besides, why would I want to go there? You're my partner. I don't want to go where you won't be."
Where do good girls who love bad boys go anyway, when they can't stomach the idea of being apart from them forever?
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Date: 2018-12-05 05:32 am (UTC)"You will." He's sure of that, at least as much as he can be without hearing from Amenadiel that he had taken Charlotte with him when he returned there.
He turns to face her more fully, puts a hand on her face, and shakes his head. "If there's anyone who doesn't belong in Hell, it's you. You don't want to go there. Not even for me." Nor does he want her to go there. He will do anything he can to make sure she doesn't, because the thought of her spending an eternity being punished is the one that he can't stomach.
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Date: 2018-12-06 02:37 am (UTC)A problem that, as far as Chloe is concerned, has no solution. Either way, she's going to die, and Lucifer is immortal, for all intents and purposes. It's pointless now to know that Heaven is real because there is not much comfort in her for it. There's no guarantee that she'll see her dad or anyone else she loves when the time comes, if she even ends up there. The only thing that is certain is that she'll never see Lucifer again.
"Lucifer, if being around me makes you vulnerable, and the only place you can go after you die is back to Hell, I don't want that. You belong on Earth, which means..."
She puts him at risk, every day. There is only one solution, but it's painful to say it out loud.
"Maybe we shouldn't be together at all."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 03:05 am (UTC)It's not just his choice though, and he's resigned himself to living on Earth forever, or dying and ending up in Hell instead. He'll outlive everyone he knows how, and he has to accept that. It would have been easier to go back to Hell the first time Amenadiel asked him to.
But then he never would have met Chloe.
He removes his hand from the side of her face and instead takes both of her hands in his. "Is that really what you want?"
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 03:16 am (UTC)"Lucifer, I care about you." More than she can say, more than she's even willing to admit. "But all of this... It's so much. I can't deal with us dancing around each other anymore. If we're going to be together, I was us to be together. But I don't know how we can do that anymore."
She knows too much now. She can't spend the rest of her life willfully ignorant, pretending that he isn't the Devil.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 03:41 am (UTC)He should probably get up. Stop touching her. Go somewhere else. But he can't, because what he wants is to be right here, with her, even as he knows what she says is true and the longer this goes on will only make the inevitable harder.
"Then what do we do?"
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 08:46 am (UTC)That's not entirely true. She knows it will hurt him to leave her, just as it will devastate her, too. But they will both learn to move on, and she will know that he'll always be safe.
She cares about him too much to let him throw his life away--to risk him going back to Hell--just to selfishly keep him near. She feels the tears coming again, the wetness against her cheeks.
"If anything happens to you, because of me, I'll never forgive myself." At least on Earth he has a chance. At least if she ends up in Heaven, maybe she can watch over him.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-07 01:20 am (UTC)"You'd take the same risk with any other man." Except that she'd know it from the start, and she would be the reason for his vulnerability.
He holds tighter to her hands, careful not to hurt her, but unwilling to let go. It hadn't been so long ago that he realized he even wanted this, and now it's slipping away.
"You're here because my father wants you here. He has some plan, and I don't know what it is, and I'm sure I won't like it, but that's the truth of it. We'll never know what that plan is if we never see each other again." And he can't do anything about the plan until he knows what it is.
"You are what makes this place home for me."
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Date: 2018-12-07 02:10 am (UTC)Maybe it's a mistake. Maybe doing this will make the decisions they have to make that much harder, but she can't stop herself. Her feelings for him are the same; if anything, they have been made clearer, because knowing the truth hasn't changed a single thing for her, not when it comes to how her heart feels when she's close to him.
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Date: 2018-12-07 02:49 am (UTC)It takes him barely the blink of an eye to get over his surprise and return the kiss, tentatively at first, because there's still so much they don't know, but he must have said something right because Chloe's not leaving. Maybe someday, but right now she's not, and that was what he had wanted. The one thing he had wanted most.
Despite everything, she's still here. Is this what it feels like to be chosen by someone?
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Date: 2018-12-07 05:05 am (UTC)Chloe chose him. She's chosen him, every time. Even when she agreed to marry Pierce--for as short-term and ill-fated at that was--she still chose him, if only because marrying Pierce was the only escape she could see for no longer having to be the person who chose him and was not chosen in return.
But now she knows the whole time he's chosen her, too, in his own way, in a way she didn't understand before.
Her fingers brush across his cheeks as she stares up at him, her eyes wide. "What are we going to do?"
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Date: 2018-12-08 03:28 am (UTC)"I don't know. Usually I just go with it." Plans are not really his thing.
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Date: 2018-12-08 03:40 am (UTC)Her eyebrows are raised, her voice dripping with sarcasm, but she does risk a small smile. This is probably a bad idea. It's tempting fate, in the worst way. She's skirting a world that isn't her own now, and she can't even begin to fathom the consequences.
Whether or not God wants this to happen, well, that's an unknown. But Chloe wants it, and she knows there is no manipulation, from Lucifer to anything beyond, involved in that.
"You know spontaneity really isn't my thing," she points out. "If we're going to be together, Lucifer, I need you to be fully here. I can't deal with you ducking in and out on me anymore. We have to be on the same side."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 03:58 am (UTC)He takes Chloe's hands in his again. "I'm on your side. I've just never had to worry about how not to die before," he reminds her. "Or had to worry about someone I care about dying. So if you tell me that a situation is dangerous and you'd prefer me to stay behind, I'll take it into advisement, and then probably ignore it anyway because I can't just sit here while you put yourself in danger."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 05:03 am (UTC)Our job. The corners of her mouth lift again and she shakes her head. If he's going to stay with her, she can't ask him to give up on what they do together.
"And you were right before. Being with you isn't any riskier than being with anyone else." The difference being, of course, that she's the one who causes his vulnerability, and that if anything were to happen to him, she would shoulder the blame no matter what. "But that doesn't mean I don't want you to be careful. When you're around me you're human, for all intents and purposes."
That's not an entirely bad thing if she has to be honest.
"But that isn't the only thing I'm worried about."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 05:39 am (UTC)"Humans must have ways of protecting themselves." He's never given it much thought, but he knows they don't just go in to battle unadorned.
"What is it that you're worried about?"
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 05:59 am (UTC)"You said your family has been manipulating me this whole time," she points out, pausing to take a breath and wetting her lips with her tongue. "If your brother went so far as to try to kill me... Do we really know what we're up against here?"
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 03:27 pm (UTC)"Amenadiel likes you, and most of the others should listen to him if he says to leave you alone. I have it on good authority that I am the Angel of Death's favorite brother, so she won't be a problem either. None of them would dare kill a human outright anyway, just manipulate the situation somehow to make it happen."
It's not very reassuring, but there's nothing he can tell her that is. "I don't know anything more than possibilities, but I don't have to let any of them get away with it. We know it's possible. If any of them try to meddle, we deal with it as it happens." She likes to have plans, he knows, but until something happens, there's no way to plan a response to it.
"All I can do right now is make it clear that manipulating you is the best way to make sure I don't do whatever they're trying to get from me."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 05:06 pm (UTC)There is absolutely nothing about this that is reassuring, except for maybe the fact that Lucifer is still an angel, even if that in itself is only useful when he's not anywhere near Chloe.
"I think it goes without saying that you don't need me as an excuse to not do whatever they want you to." Lucifer's rebellious spirit certainly wasn't quashed by being sent to Hell; if anything, it intensified it. It's a part of him that half makes Chloe respect him and half drives her absolutely insane.
She nods, though, understanding completely what he is telling her. Her hand moves to cup his cheek again, her fingers brushing gently over his skin. "I guess if I want you, all the family drama comes, too. I'll have to find a way to deal with it."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 05:15 pm (UTC)"Of course I don't, but if they know it won't work then maybe they won't try." It's not like they're unaware of his nature, after all. They'd seen what happened to him when he couldn't contain it anymore, and stood around and watched it happen.
"That is how it normally works, isn't it?" His family just has more drama than most. "I'll do my best to keep my family out of it." His family would never harm him, even with his banishment.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 06:16 pm (UTC)Her tone is joking again, a little playful, despite everything. At least Penelope likes Lucifer, so that might keep her off Chloe's back for a little while.
"So you're the Devil, and Amenadiel is an angel, so Maze has been a demon all this time too? I've been letting a demon babysit my child?" Granted, Chloe always knew Maze was a little off center, so the fact that she was telling the truth about being a demon is really a moot point.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 07:01 pm (UTC)"That is correct. Maze doesn't harm anyone without reason though, if that helps." It's up to her if she continues to let Maze babysit, of course. "You've also left your child alone with the Devil."
Which should also explain some things.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-09 07:01 pm (UTC)She is still a little bitter about that, although she had eventually forgiven Charlotte after it became clear she was working hard to redeem herself. That's made all the clearer now that she knows it was actually Lucifer's mother and not Charlotte at all, which just brings the hurt right back.
"I'd be more worried if I felt like you both were having a negative effect on Trixie but I think she's had more of an effect on both of you." After all, if Chloe wants a relationship with Lucifer, Trixie is part of the package.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-09 07:24 pm (UTC)He's got a complicated relationship with his family. It's probably a good thing that her family likes him. It makes things that much less complicated.
"As far as children go, she's tolerable." That's high praise, coming from him. "Perhaps more than tolerable."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-18 02:46 am (UTC)So far, he's only ever had to deal with her in small doses, although Chloe is sure that Lucifer finds her daughter more than tolerable. She's seen them together enough to tell he cares about Trixie.
"You're going to have to get used to new family dynamics, ones that don't involve being manipulated by immortal beings."
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