Work Text:
There’s a lot Chloe Decker has forgiven her partner for.
She forgives him every time he’s late for work, lipstick marks on his collar and the trace of Chanel No.5 clinging to him. She forgives him every time crime scene evidence goes missing, and he turns up suspiciously chipper with a brush of white powder on his nose.
She forgave him when he insisted he was a master juggler, but then dropped two of the victim’s breast implants in the sea. She forgave him when that flight attendant interrupted their almost-kiss, and when he walked into the bullpen with a stripper (no, exotic dancer) on his arm after their actual one.
Lucifer isn’t a difficult person to forgive. He’s charming, magnetic… and she hates it, but with a flash of that smile, or a croon of some silly 90s lyrics, all is forgotten.
He always talks too much, and he never listens, and sometimes that’s fine.
But the day he pokes at a sealed box in Ella’s lab, clearly labelled an unknown biohazard, Chloe thinks he’s really pushing it.
“Don’t touch that,” she hisses, slapping his hand away, “Ella doesn’t know what it is yet.”
He huffs, his eyes glittering.
“Oh don’t be so dramatic, Detective,” he scoffs, “it can’t possibly be anything I haven’t seen before.”
Ten minutes later, the alarm had been sounded, the CDC was on their way, and the precinct was thrust into a lockdown for risk of infection.
“Oops,” he’d whispered, lips twisted into half a charming grin, half a wince. She’d narrowed her eyes as lights flashed and people rushed around them.
So yes, Chloe Decker always forgives her partner.
She just thinks this time… it might take a while.
“This is boring."
Chloe sighs at Lucifer’s whine, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.
“This…” she manically waves a hand around the empty room they’re stuck in, “…is your fault. I told you not to touch that box.”
He pouts and adjusts his cuffs. They’re sitting on the floor in the evidence room, and she tips her head back against a shelf, her eyes slipping shut.
They fly open again when she hears him sniff.
She knows that sniff.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she exclaims, crawling over to him and snatching the bag of white powder from his hands.
“Stop juggling crime scene evidence, stop opening crime scene evidence,” she fumes, shoving the bag onto a shelf behind her, “and stop sniffing crime scene evidence.”
Lucifer rubs the side of his index finger under his nose, his pupils already dilating.
“Detective, you cannot bring a child to a playground and expect him not to play.”
“Yeah well, you’re not a child,” she insists through gritted teeth, “even if you act like one sometimes.”
“Do not,” he pouts.
Chloe sighs in frustration, an incredulous huff of air escaping her lips.
“You’ve certainly penned me in like a child though,” he mutters, his mouth pinching sourly, “or an animal. Same thing, I suppose.”
She lets her eyes slide shut again.
“I want you—”
“Oh, you want me,” he interrupts, eyes glimmering playfully.
Her jaw ticks.
“—where I can see you.”
"Which parts of me, Detective?”
She huffs in annoyance again.
“I’m locking us in here until the CDC arrives and clears us of any risk of infection,” she explains, her tone curt.
Technically, Ella’s lab and the entire precinct has been exposed, so they could move about freely. But Chloe thinks it’s safer to keep him where she can see him, to limit his movements. She supposes a pen was quite a fitting description, actually.
“I don’t trust you,” she adds in a grumble. Nauseating images of him curing his boredom by carelessly flicking through her case files and messing them up, or changing all the desktop backgrounds to naked pictures of himself flash through her mind.
When it’s silent for a moment, when he doesn’t reply, Chloe flicks an eye open.
To her surprise, he looks a little pensive.
“Surely you don’t mean that, Detective.”
His voice is quiet, barely above a low murmur.
She doesn’t.
He’s incredibly annoying, but this unfortunate experience aside, she trusts him to be serious when she needs him to be. She trusts him to turn up to crime scenes, and to work with her as her partner. She trusts him to talk to suspects when she needs him to, and to shut up when she doesn’t. She trusts him with Trixie.
If she’s honest with herself… she trusts him with her life.
“I don’t,” she admits, “but you have just released a potentially deadly toxin into the atmosphere, so just… let me be pissed at you for a bit, okay?”
He chuckles, and then he whispers, “okay.”
Lucifer’s quiet for approximately four minutes before he starts talking again.
“You know, Detective, this is just like that episode of Bones.”
Chloe grunts, focused on the book she swiped from the lab. It’s about biohazards, and toxins, and her stomach turns as she looks at pictures of the effects of anthrax. She really should leave this to Ella, but she hates sitting around doing nothing. She hates feeling useless. She hates feeling powerless...
She had felt powerless when Lucifer had turned up married to Candy.
She pushes that down because it’s done now. She’s got milk in her fridge that’s lasted longer than that marriage, but it bothers her that she still doesn’t know why. She doesn’t know why he did that. She wishes she had the courage to ask.
Because she knows she’s not alone in this. She knows he feels something. She could hear it in his heartfelt speech on the beach as he listed all the reasons he thinks he’s not worthy. She could feel it in the way he tensed and shuddered under her touch, in how the self-proclaimed King of Desire froze against her lips for a beat before he kissed her back.
He’s not ready... and maybe neither is she.
So she just shuts her book with a sigh and asks, “which one?”
“The one where the gang are quarantined in the lab over Christmas,” he explains, looking pleased that she asked, “they’re examining remains from the ‘50s, I believe, and Zack cuts into a bone and accidentally releases deadly fungus spores. See? Could happen to anyone.”
“How convenient that it happened to you.”
“Well, yes, I suppose,” he mumbles, “it’s irrelevant anyway. I’m no Zack. I’m clearly Bones, and you’re clearly Booth.”
“Clearly,” she replies dryly.
He sits back against his shelf, looking awfully pleased with himself.
“Although they did drag on that awful will they/won’t they thing for six seasons,” he sighs dramatically, “I do hope you won’t make me wait that long.”
He grins, and the words might be a joke… but they don’t feel like one.
“You guys holding up okay?” a voice calls through the door.
“Yes.”
“No.”
Chloe rolls her eyes, glaring at him.
“Lucifer, you’re fine,” she hisses under her breath as she stands up and goes to the door. She peeks through the glass window to see a CDC employee in a hazmat suit.
“We think it’s harmless,” he shouts through his speaker system, his voice grainy, “but we’re going to keep you in there for a little while longer while we run some tests.”
“No problem,” Chloe replies, “take your time.”
The guy nods. Chloe watches through the window as he walks away to join the others examining whatever the hell it is Lucifer’s let loose.
Speaking of, her partner was currently lifting his arms only to drop them again in frustration.
“Take your time,” he mutters under his breath, incredulous, “one would think you want to be stuck in here.”
Chloe grins, leaning her back against the door and crossing her arms over her chest.
“Is it really so bad?”
He scoffs.
She glances at him, sitting cross legged with his finger tracing an absent pattern on the floor, and she thinks he looks a little ridiculous. Lucifer is normally so… large. She doesn’t mean his height (which is also a bit ridiculous), but his character. He fills up, lights up, any room he walks into. Looking at him now, he looks like a little boy in comparison, one who’s been told off and put in the naughty corner.
“Yes,” he answers sullenly, “there’s no alcohol in here, and you won’t let me have the fun stuff, and I’m hungry, and look at my hair, Detective.”
Chloe blinks, her eyes flicking to it. She bites into her bottom lip. She hadn’t really noticed it before, but his hair is a little… dishevelled.
“Stop staring,” he grumbles.
“You told me to look,” she laughs.
He huffs, sitting back against the shelf and crossing his arms over his chest. Chloe takes a moment to really look at him, distracted as she’d been before. She doesn’t know if they’ve turned the AC off for some reason, but it’s ridiculously hot in here, so he’s shed his jacket and rolled his sleeves to his elbows, revealing slivers of tanned skin. His shirt clings to his lean muscles in all the right places, causing a heat of her own to build inside her.
Most of all, the humidity has risen to tease the product out of his hair. Now, instead of the perfectly arranged quiff he always wears, messy curls adorn the top of his head. He looks annoyed about it, his hand lifting so his fingers can run through it. Touching it is only making it worse.
Or better.
Definitely better.
She likes him like this; less put together, less in control. With his shoes kicked off too, she’s suddenly struck by the realisation that she’s never seen him barefoot before. He looks younger, and softer, and real. Vulnerable.
He’s still huffing, clearly uncomfortable. She doesn’t want him to feel that way. She always wants him to be comfortable around her.
“This is ridiculous,” he complains, “I need my pomade.”
She rolls her eyes and moves over to him.
“Shut up,” she teases, and then before she can talk herself out of it, she lifts her hand to run her fingers through his hair, “your curls are cute.”
He scoffs, offended... but she can tell he’s pretending because a smile pulls at the corners of his lips.
She expects him to make some sort of quip about how the Devil is not cute; he’s sexy, and charming, and able to make you orgasm six ways from Sunday. He doesn’t say any of this. Instead, he leans into her touch. She continues threading her fingers through his hair; it’s softer than she imagined. Not that she’s imagined it, of course.
Eventually, a silken purr rumbles from his chest. Chloe fights back a shiver. She’s so attracted to him, she can’t think straight, and she really needs to think straight.
“You know, Detective, if you wanted to tug on my hair,” he starts, voice dipped to a seductive croon, “I could give you a far more fun reason.”
She rolls her eyes because there he is, and pretends that when she lets him go, her fingers don’t trace gently down the side of his face first.
“Detective.”
Chloe hums, blinking past her tiredness.
When she looks up at Lucifer, he looks uncharacteristically sincere.
“I’m sorry.”
Chloe softens, a smile tugging at her lips. She blinks, her shoulders slumping in surrender, before she pats the space next to her. Lucifer shuffles over to sit beside her.
They sit shoulder to shoulder, their legs extended in-front of them. Chloe huffs a wry laugh at how much shorter hers are.
“The CDC guy said they’re pretty sure it’s harmless,” she murmurs, “I do wish you’d listen to me sometimes, but… it’s okay.”
“You forgive me?” he asks, nudging her shoulder. His tone is playful and teasing, but she can tell there’s an undercurrent of seriousness.
She grumbles.
“Come on, Detective,” he croons, “forgive me. You know you want to.”
She rolls her eyes, pursing her lips to contain her smile.
“You’re ridiculous,” she says, but then adds, “and I forgive you.”
He makes a pleased sound and sits back.
“I really am sorry,” he says again.
Chloe turns her head to look at him.
“I just told you it’s fine.”
“I’m not talking about that.”
She arches a brow in question.
“I’m sorry about what happened in Vegas,” he murmurs, his eyes locking significantly with hers, “with Candy, and… well, you know. I never meant to hurt you, but if I did… I’m sorry.”
Chloe swallows. She was annoyed about being locked in here, and about him not listening, but maybe now she’s grateful, because if he had, they wouldn’t be here talking about this. He would still be running.
“If you didn’t mean to hurt me,” she starts, “why did you do it? Did you… love her?”
She pauses, because the words are physically painful to say. White hot jealousy licks like flames inside her, so intense there's no way it doesn't show on her face.
Lucifer shakes his head.
“Detective, there’s so much I want to say,” he starts slowly, “there’s so much I want to tell you.”
“But you’re not ready,” she finishes for him.
She watches the movement of his throat as he swallows.
“But I can say with utmost certainty that I didn’t love her. I’m not ready to tell you the very messy specifics of why I did it, but rest assured, it wasn’t because of that. I never loved her. I never loved anyone before, until—”
He stops again.
Chloe inhales, her heart leaping to her throat.
The air suddenly feels thin and heavy with the weight of everything left unsaid.
She takes his hand. His eyes flick down to it, his expression hesitant and unsure.
“It’s okay,” she whispers, “you don’t have to say anything.”
His shoulders drop in relief. She knows him by now. She would never push him. She also knows he’ll never make the first move, not really, because he thinks he’s not worth it. He thinks he doesn’t deserve her. She had kissed him on the beach, and if she wants it, she needs to be the one to kiss him now.
And she does want it.
She wants it more than she remembers ever wanting anything.
So with the air still thick and tense between them, she lets her eyes drop to his lips. He follows suit, his pupils blown in the half darkness. She leans in and hesitates. She watches his lips part. Her breath quickens, nerves fluttering into full blown butterflies in the pit of her stomach.
Finally, she tells herself to be brave, and takes the final push.
She leans up and closes the gap between them, pressing her lips to his. He freezes for a moment, mouth still under hers, before he starts to kiss her back. His hands lift from his lap to cradle her face. She sighs into it, relieved to finally have his lips on hers again, relishing in his taste—whiskey, and smoke, and something sweeter.
Long fingers slide into her hair as his thumbs run gently over her cheekbones. The steel of his ring is cool against her burning skin. Her own hands rest on his waist, feeling expensive material under her palms.
It’s not particularly heated. She’s panting and trembling a little, but it’s more from nerves and anticipation than anything else. There’s no tongue, or grabby hands; it’s all above the waist.
It’s three main messages tied up in their mouths.
I want you.
I forgive you.
I’d like to start again.
A knock on the door breaks them apart.
Lucifer’s forehead touches hers, his hands slipping down to her neck.
“All clear, guys!” the CPD guy calls through the door, “you’re free to go.”
Chloe feels the curve of Lucifer’s smile against her lips.
They walk out, their fingers brushing against each others before he takes her hand, two very different people than who walked in.