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“Mom, mom wake up.”
Lucifer groaned and rolled over. Maybe the Urchin would let him sleep a while longer, and the Detective would—
Wait a second.
Why would the urchin be in his home?
He cracked open an eye only to be greeted with the face of none other than Trixie Espinoza mere inches from his own, jolting him awake and he recoiled practically to the far side of the bed.
“Bloody hell, child, what are you doing here?” he asked. Or, the Detective asked. Wait. His voice sounded strange. Why did he sound like—
“I missed the bus! I’m gonna be late for school!” the mini-Decker said, and Lucifer registered that she was, in fact, dressed and wearing her backpack, and that that must’ve been what the bleeding ringing was for when he’d snoozed the alarm earlier.
She grabbed his hand and started tugging at him, snapping him into action. “Very well, give me a moment and we’ll be off,” he replied, forcefully removing his grip from hers and shooing her out of what is undeniably the Detective’s bedroom and not his own. She scampered off to wait for him, leaving him to ponder the mystery of how he’d arrived here without remembering. He hadn’t taken that many drugs the night before. No reason to overindulge when they don’t work to wash away the thought of her and that man-ham.
Given the child’s urgency, and how the Detective was nowhere to be found, he scurried off to the bathroom, clicking his tongue at the paltry size as he flipped on the lights—
And saw Chloe in the mirror.
Sleep-rumpled in a tank top and shorts, he was enraptured by the messy bedhead and the strip of skin where her shirt rode up from the hem of her shorts, it was almost enough for him to lose focus.
He watched as a strand of blonde hair fell from its precarious perch on Chloe’s forehead, tickling his—her—nose and making it scrunch in the reflection before he tucked it back behind her—his?—ear.
What the…
“Mom!?”
Damn Dad and damn his games—
“Coming!”
He looked at himself—Chloe—in the mirror and could barely spare a moment to dust his fingers across her cheek. The skin was warm and soft from sleep, like his very-human nerves haven’t woken up all the way, and while he wouldn’t call the touch of his hand on her cheek electric, he knew, as dull as his senses apparently were now, he’d never trade this for anything.
Not when it might be his only opportunity to feel her.
He tore his gaze from her eyes and closed his own, savoring the feel of her small hand upon her soft cheek, wondering where the real Detective Chloe Decker was, if his own body was in need of a Devil-sized soul or if it discorporated when he slid into this one. What if—
Shit.
His eyes snapped open once more. If he’s here, and he no longer occupies his fourteen billion year old devilishly handsome body, Chloe must be…
“Mom!”
He jerked into action, whirling around to the closet. He rifled through desperately to match pieces of Chloe’s wardrobe into something amenable to his tastes, but his too-human eyes and the upper limit on how quickly his hands could fly over fabric made things difficult. The fibers felt too slick, too similar, he couldn’t tell cotton from rayon from dreadfully expensive polyester in this body, but the urchin needed to get to school and he needed to track down the Detective, which unfortunately would take some time without his Dad-forsaken wings.
Finding a pair of black skinny jeans, a red blousy top that reminded him of ripe apples gleaming in a long-lost tree, and a black blazer that hung a bit too far down his Detective’s slender wrists, he shoved on a pair of black ankle boots and headed downstairs.
The Detective would want her little urchin at the child prison above all else, so he would get her there. After that, he would tear apart Los Angeles, human body be damned.
When Chloe woke, it was gently, with sunlight like kisses covering her skin, warming her and making her reluctant to move an inch from the comfort of her bed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so well, with no alarm, no Trixie waking her up early…
Wait.
Her eyes snapped open as she scrabbled on the bedside table to find her phone, knocking it to the floor with a loud clatter. She swore and leaned over the golden sheets to grab at the sleek smartphone on the marble floor, and only when she’d grabbed it with a too-big hand and saw that it was past nine did every detail catch up to her sleepy brain.
She stared at her hand, masculine with long fingers, a black and silver ring on the middle digit as a cold and dark contrast to the sun-kissed tint of the skin and the golden gleam of the sheets she currently lay between. She looked around, taking in the stone walls that led to the main room of Lucifer’s penthouse, the sheer expanse of the mattress that she was—thankfully—alone in, even that ugly clown mermaid painting on the wall of his bedroom cemented the fact that she was not in her home, but Lucifer’s. Somehow. Without knowing or choosing to come by like she used to.
And she was Lucifer. Somehow. Without knowing or choosing to wake up in his body.
God she hoped this was a dream.
It had to be.
She tossed the phone onto the sheets and got up, doing her absolute best to not look down at the unfamiliar breezy feeling between her legs as she made her way over to Lucifer’s immaculate bathroom. She flicked on the light, and was met with the face of her partner, brown eyes wide with confusion, and it was so odd looking at herself—him?—at such a height. She always had to look up at least a little bit, and here she stood, taller than she’s used to, arms a little too long, the room felt a little smaller than before, as she physically took up more space than she had before.
Her gaze drifted down his—her?—body, taking in the smooth unscarred planes of his torso, the flex of muscle, the dusting of freckles like a star map, unfamiliar but comforting nonetheless. Her eyes drifted further down, only to realize that her idiot partner really does sleep naked, and that it’s just all hanging out for the world to see.
She snapped her eyes back up to watch the Lucifer in the mirror, half-praying this was a dream. But all the same, she couldn’t feel the brush of long hair over her shoulders and she felt entirely too clearly how perky Lucifer could be in the mornings.
The longer she looked at herself, the more she doubted it was a dream. Everything felt too real. She could feel the breath in her lungs, and the longer she watched, the more her eyes picked up flickers of dust motes dancing in the room behind Lucifer’s—her—reflection. She could see how the light danced in the curtains and along the edges of a whiskey glass forgotten and sparkling like cut diamond. The glasses had never looked so bright before, glittering with rainbows that seemed too wide, too rich in color for being blown glass like she knew they were. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and forced her shoulders to relax, and as she did, she felt her back flex and relax, and it was as though her—his—arms also stretched up, the wrists smacking the door frame and jarring her out of her denial. She snapped her eyes open and took in the sight of Lucifer’s arms still at her sides, while two massive white wings commanded the space behind her, as tense as she was. She could feel the doorframe digging into the wrists curled over her shoulders, the pressure of primaries brushing the floor. She felt how back muscles and bones that didn’t exist thirty seconds earlier slid smoothly against each other, as though the two sets of limbs had always coexisted, natural and unquestionable as having blonde hair or five fingers on each hand.
She screamed.
She lurched back, tripping over the feathered ends and landing on her back, wings flapping like mad as she tried to escape, to right herself, anything. “Oh my god, oh my god, it’s real,” she gasped, rolling to her hands and knees as her wings flapped and made a miniature maelstrom in Lucifer’s bedroom. “It’s all real, he’s the— he has— why am I in his body!?”
Her wings—his wings—the wings smacked the floor, the wall, knocked the glass over and made it shatter into thousands of rainbow-laden pieces, scattered jewels cut with chaos against the black floor like stars. Chloe’s breath was harsh as she felt the panic rising in her chest, and her face, her heart seemed to get hotter and hotter, tears building in her eyes as she wondered where her body was, where Lucifer was, if she was stuck like this. She felt something fracture inside her, the heat spilling into the rest of her body like molten lava, trailing down her cheeks and sliding down her arms, the burning ceasing at what could only be where the wings attached to her back in two cool crescents, grounding in their lack of sensation as the fire flooded across her skin.
She lay in the sunlight, burning like a vampire from one of her mom’s movies, the harsh rasp of her breathing a counter tempo to the sound of traffic echoing up from below. The rushing of air through the vents, the scrape of metal against the floor, the icy chill of the marble under too-large hands, it was all too much. She opened her eyes and saw fire racing under the skin of a man she thought she knew, the veins streaking under rapidly hardening and melting skin. The nails burst into blackened claws as the skin bubbled and melted, shifting between human and monstrous and flashing with heavenly and infernal light. She could see all the layers of the arm and then several more she shouldn’t as sinew and fire raced to the surface and then faded beneath patches of the same skin she’d always known, only to watch as scales rose and sank in the roiling sea of red muscle and scorched flesh.
“Oh god…” she whimpered, but she couldn’t look away.
Distantly, yet so, so close with her abnormally sharp ears, she heard the ding of the elevator, and a concerned feminine voice calling out… something familiar.
“Detective? Detective, are you here?” she called, and Chloe couldn’t place the voice. It sounded like she should know it, and she managed to rip her gaze from the amorphous limb as the fingers grew and warped. “Detective, darling, it’s only me, don’t be frightened,” the voice—a British woman?—said, and Chloe watched as… her own self came rushing to the steps to the bedroom. Hair loose, dressed in black and red, Chloe felt for the first time like she was looking in the mirror since waking up.
Seeing her own face had never felt so good.
But that accent…
“L—Lucifer?” she croaked, his voice sounding so… flat when she used it. But there was a rumble in her chest that frightened her and made her breath hitch. The voice she’d grown familiar with had a flat American accent, and something high in her throat like a melody jarred against the growl in her chest as she asked, “What’s happening to me?”
Dropping the urchin off was surprisingly easy, and again Lucifer wondered at how much she knew when she didn’t bat an eye at having to remind her “mother” how to get to her school. The cruiser could do with some upgrades, however, because when Lucifer attempted to drift in between two cars the old girl made a concerning sound and thumped unceremoniously against the curb. But with the little spawn off to cause mischief and a need to find his Detective, he was off, turning on the sirens to make it to Lux in record time. Really, she should use them more often, it’s so much easier to get where you need to go when the roads clear themselves, especially when he lacked his usual celestial reaction time and immortality.
Carefully parking the cruiser in the Detective’s spot, Lucifer made his way to the elevator and prayed to… well, he supposed he prayed to nobody, just that Chloe was in his body and that he got to her in time.
He wasn’t prepared for what would happen when he got there, however.
He was the Devil. He knew his face, stared at it in the mirror every bloody day since his Fall. He knew his body, the Heavenly visage that humans found irresistible, the molten and jagged fossil of his descent to Hell, and the form before form, when the Universe was naught but Power, Will, God, Goddess, and Time.
Oh how there’d been nothing but Time for him then.
Time he clearly didn’t have now, as he felt Chloe’s all-too-human brain try to process what he was seeing. He knew what his current mortal coil was trying and failing to process: a shifting and fluctuating hole in the universe, torn asunder when he Fell and the failed attempt at piecing himself together. The result was as piecemeal as it was petrifying, skin flickering in and out of view of Lucifer’s human gaze. Primal fear lodged somewhere under his sternum as muscle and ligaments rose to the surface, nausea rolling his stomach as joints seemed to stretch and break but snapped together once more, wings gleaming brighter than the silver walls of his first home. He wanted to fall to his knees, he wanted to weep, he wanted to scream, he wanted to run, he wanted and wanted and wanted her. She was everything, desire and holy beauty made impure, imperfect, everything his mortal shell should fear but all he could do was stare at her infernal incandescence and know that should he go blind, at least she would be the last thing he ever saw.
And then she spoke, a glorious, sonorous and sinister chorus of liquid gold, and she said his name, and he knew peace, and terror, and it was as though her voice could reveal the secrets of the universe. Secrets he once was privy to, secrets she could now hear herself, but the way her—his—vocal chords fried and stuttered, it disrupted the stupor his unfortunately mortal shell was susceptible to and he took a step forward, only to be stopped by a flailing wing as blades clattered against the steps.
“Detective, darling, it’s only me,” he said, and he was jarred again by how strange he sounded. The Detective’s voice, but his preferred accent and cadence. But she was falling apart at the seams. He couldn’t afford distraction now. “It’s Lucifer. I’m not sure how this happened, but you need to calm down.”
“Calm down?” she rasped, and he watched her—his—mouth stretch wider and she let out a plaintive whine. “I don’t—I can’t believe this is all real. There’s no way.”
Lucifer carefully stepped around her wing, and though all his current body’s instincts told him to run, he knelt down before her, keeping one hand on the sturdy outer edge of his wing. He didn’t have the strength to hold it down should she decide to decapitate him, but he could buy himself precious seconds if she panicked again. “I…” he swallowed, his throat dry, “this isn’t how I wanted to tell you.”
“Tell me that you’re the Devil?” A new eye surfaced to glare at him from the root of a wing as Chloe curled up, hiding from his gaze.
“Indeed.” He crept a little closer, keeping one hand on the wing he held so she knew where he was. A panicking celestial is a dangerous one, even Maze didn’t risk approaching him without warning when he was like this so long ago.
A broken sob of a laugh bubbled out of a mouth that opened between two fingers on her left hand, and Chloe flinched away from it. “Oh my god.”
“Wrong deity,” Lucifer replied automatically.
She whined again, and as she did, he flinched, covering his delicate human ears as the glass in the penthouse trembled from the pitch. This couldn’t go on, she would tear everything apart at this rate.
Once the whine subsided, Lucifer slowly removed his hands and carefully reached out to Chloe, wrapping her large misshapen hands in his preciously tiny human ones. He’d always feared this moment, the moment he couldn’t hold onto his form anymore for some reason, and Chloe was caught at the epicenter. And now she was breaking further and further with every layer of his self that escaped.
He couldn’t help but reach out and place a hand on the shoulder closest to him, careful to avoid the pitted furrow that still stung even billions of years later.
“Chloe,” he murmured, “Chloe, darling, breathe.”
The figure—his face, twisted and mangled flesh—glanced up at him, and at his instinctive flinch from those hellfire eyes, turned away. It afforded Lucifer a look at the jagged skull that never healed right. He heard the whimper—her fear, but his voice—and crept closer, ignoring the spike of fear her body released as he did.
He reached up with her—his—small hand, delicate and worthy of kisses and diamonds, and placed it on his—her—craggy cheek, pitted and raw even as flesh shifted and melted, then solidified once more into his Devil face, the lava flow stemmed by the tide of Chloe’s form. Even now, with Lucifer not even in his own body, Chloe’s hand was the cooling touch of the ocean, refreshing and calming as the tide.
“Chloe,” he said. “It’s okay, I’m here.”
Slowly, she turned to look at him, hellfire eyes meeting hazy ocean, and slowly she breathed in, a shaky breath, but a steadying one nonetheless. Her lip trembled and Lucifer brushed his thumb across the ravage of her cheek, and slowly, oh so slowly, he watched as one by one pieces of her body reasserted themselves into his devilish visage that he used to terrorize suspects. The wings too slowly curled back away from where he crouched, and he took her hand, gnarled and tipped with vicious claws.
“There’s my Detective,” he praised, feeling the unrelenting pressure slowly start to abate.
She managed a hesitant smile and gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “What… what do we do? I can’t exactly go to the precinct like this. I mean… how did this even happen?”
His breath caught and he sat next to her, leaning against her shoulder. “I wish I knew, Detective. I’m willing to bet my dear old dad had something to do with it, though.”
She tensed next to him and Lucifer rubbed her hand in both of his, a silent reminder she wasn’t alone. “Stay with me, darling,” he murmured. “I’m sure we can figure something out. We’re partners, even now.”
She rested her head against his and he sighed at the contact, somehow this was better and worse than he’d ever imagined. She covered his hands with her other one and said, “You’re… really calm about all this.”
He huffed in amusement. “Yes, well, keep in mind this is nothing I haven’t seen before. I must admit, being in a human body makes it a bit more jarring, but it’s still my face and… everything else.”
“You mean the teeth and light?”
“The teeth and light, yes.” He sighed. “I’ll fix this, Detective. I promise.”
She nodded and slowly, one wing came around to cover him, and he was relieved to feel only soft edges and down. “And in the meantime?”
“Well, I suppose you wouldn’t mind if I took point on our investigations for the time being?” he said, and like he’d hoped, Chloe let out a surprised little laugh.
“Absolutely not,” she replied, the amused rumble in her chest vibrating through Lucifer deliciously. “You’re too much of a wildcard to be a convincing me,” she replied, scooting a bit closer to him.
“I beg your pardon, I was a remarkably convincing you this morning,” he said, indignant. “I got the urchin to school on time and everything. Besides, we both know you’re the Detective, no matter what body you’re in. It’s who you are, you detect. You pursue justice. Now you’re in the body that can enact cosmic justice, no pesky human laws to hinder you if you don’t wish them to.”
“That’s not my job, Lucifer. We just catch killers, we don’t punish them,” she reminded him. “The jury decides what happens.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he conceded. “That’s one of the things I love about working with you, you know.”
“What, holding you back from punishing people?”
“Pursuing true justice.” Chloe pulled away to look at him and Lucifer met her eyes, still burning, but not frightening anymore. “Even when others would give into temptation to seek vengeance, you don’t, even when your heart is broken for the victim. You don’t let yourself get clouded and weak, even when it’s easier. And now you’re in my body, which is invulnerable and immortal, and you've felt the power at your fingertips, and you still don’t want to use any of them beyond your calling. That’s something only truly good humans could do, Chloe.”
Her lips parted in surprise as she was reminded of their conversation on the beach. It felt like forever ago for them both, both hurting and more distant now than they were then, but Lucifer wanted nothing more than to soothe it all. Whether this latest situation was his fault or not, he didn’t intend to let Chloe shoulder the burden any longer than she had to. He might be human now, but he would protect her until the end.
“So I give you my word, until we can figure out how to switch back, I’ll be here, right beside you. We’re partners, and we’ll figure this out together, alright?” He smiled up at her.
She blinked and slowly raised her hand to cup his cheek, and he leaned into the preternatural warmth of her palm. “Together,” she agreed, and dipped her head to touch their foreheads together. Their eyes both slipped closed and they felt each other’s breath, taking solace in this moment. Lucifer felt the press of Chloe’s warm and scarred forehead against his own, and he could swear he heard her heart begin to beat in time with his own. He cupped her cheek and felt the scars slowly heal and be covered by smooth skin, and he smiled, which in turn made her smile, and that was all he ever wanted to do. He would hoard her precious smiles in his heart for the rest of his life, whether he lives the rest in this body or his own.
He felt the rustle of feathers at his back, pressing him into an angelic embrace and it reminded him of the comfort of down against his skin. Her warmth slowly became his own as they shared this quiet moment to recover from their mutual panic, and the heartbeats grew louder even as they slowed. Perpetually in time to each other, he felt how his long hair brushed against the back of her hand and relished the faint tickle, and because he wanted to he tucked the strand behind his—her—ear and she traced one hand up his arm, resting her palm against her—his bicep. He could feel her brushing against him, soul to soul, and as the vastness of his Light brushed against hers, he cherished the delicate warmth of such a pure soul, and all he wanted to do was to hold her for eternity. So he unfurled his wings and wrapped her in them, opening his eyes and pulling away to tuck her under his chin and—
He was suddenly staring down at the familiar blonde head he so loved.
“Detective, we’re back,” he breathed, and as she opened her eyes and made a surprised sound, he clutched her to his chest, relishing how to his restored hearing, their hearts still beat in sync, though hers was quieter than a moment ago. But it was still a sweet sound and one he never wanted to stop hearing.
“Oh my god, I never thought I’d be so thankful to see you naked,” she said, and they separated, him with a bark of laughter and her with her cheeks bright red.
“One of these days I’ll be naked because you want me to be,” he vowed, snagging the rumpled sheet off the bed to cover himself.
She snorted and raised an eyebrow. “Who said I didn’t want you to be?”
He gaped at her for a second, his own cheeks burning, and then in a valiant recovery replied, “Well, if the lady insists. Why don’t I get us a drink, hm? Clothing optional?”
He stood and was about to let the sheet go when Chloe rolled her eyes. “Go put on a robe or something. I have a lot of questions for you, and this feels like a clothes-on sort of conversation.”
“Very well, red wine?” he asked as he snagged his red and black robe. He shrugged it on as he walked to the bar and let Chloe enjoy the brief show.
“Pour me whatever you’re having,” she said, standing up.
“I have a lovely Macallan vintage. Make yourself comfortable, Detective. This will take some time.”
She sat on his couch and as he brought her the glass, she appreciated the brief rainbow flash in the sunlight before meeting his eyes, the warm and familiar brown given new depth.