Chapter Text
Ask anyone, and they’d tell you—Chloe Decker was the best damn detective in the LAPD. Maybe even the country. Only thirty-four years old, she’d already been approached three times by the FBI, especially after the Palmetto arrests. She’d single-handedly taken down a ring of corrupt cops after a stand-off where she’d been outnumbered three-to-one. “Remember Palmetto?” had become a repeated motto around the precinct, spoken whenever Detective Decker made yet another bizarre request or suggestion, and it always, always paid off.
She got it done. Every case she was assigned, she solved in a matter of days. Sometimes, just hours.
So, naturally, when a famous pop singer was dramatically gunned down in front of the hottest club in Los Angeles, Chloe Decker got the call.
Chloe cemented the professional smile onto her face and tried, once again, to question the obnoxiously handsome club owner, who hadn’t even bothered to stop playing his damn piano.
“Lucifer… Morningstar,” she said, double-checking, as if she hadn’t already run his ID in the system. Twice. “Like the Devil?”
His fingers paused on the piano keys, and his eyes lit up with delight as he turned his full attention to her. “You’ve heard of me! Or…” His expression turned speculative. “We’ve already met, then. You do look terribly familiar. Have we had sex? I could swear I’ve seen you naked.”
He had, actually, but only through a screen like the other eight million or so people who’d watched that damned hot tub movie she’d done as a teenager. Not that she planned on admitting her old shame to this guy.
He’d find out soon enough anyway.
“Delilah—she used to work here?” she asked, pointedly ignoring his question.
Shrewd calculation flashed briefly in his eyes, behind his layered armor of humor and charm, and he eased back on the piano bench with his drink in one hand. “You’ve done your homework, Detective,” he noted with cautious approval. A moment later, though, the flirtation returned in full force. “Caught your interest, have I?”
“My only interest is in bringing the person responsible for Delilah’s murder to justice.”
He snorted softly. “Well, the sorry sod who shot her got sandwiched between several tons of steel. He does deserve more punishment, of course, but as I’m up here, and not down there, I suppose it’ll have to do.”
Down there. Referring to Hell, no doubt. More Devil stuff.
He was watching her. Gauging her reactions while he sipped his drink. That frivolous playboy mask of his hid, among other things, a piercing intellect.
“Case closed, then?” she suggested, a challenge whispering in between the nonchalant words.
“On the contrary.” He leaned forward, resting both elbows on top of his piano. “I actually had an interesting little chat with the bastard right before he kicked off.”
“And?” she prompted him, when he paused for dramatic effect.
Another appreciative glint. “He told me he did it for money. You humans, you do love your money, don’t you?”
“So do you, from the looks of it,” she countered, glancing around at the decadently appointed nightclub.
Lucifer conceded the point with a tilt of his head. “Hm. He also said, ‘I just pulled the trigger’. Now don’t you think that’s interesting?”
“You think he was a hired gun?”
His appreciation grew into a pleased smirk. “Well, yes. That’s exactly what I think, Detective.” He leaned back, drink in hand. “You know, I’m rather impressed. I was certain your corrupt little organization would be happy to accept such a neatly wrapped little package and call it a day, but you…” He raised his glass to her in a cavalier toast. “You’re actually competent, aren’t you?”
Chloe bit back a weary sigh. This guy never got less obnoxious, did he? “I try,” she replied drily. “One thing I still don’t get, though. How does Delilah end up dying in a hailstorm of bullets, and you get away without a scratch?”
Lucifer chuckled. “Benefits of immortality,” he told her, taking another sip of his drink.
“Immortality. Don’t you mean invulnerability?”
“Both, actually.” His smirk became an outright leer. “I’d be very happy to give you a private demonstration.”
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe later. For now, how about you give me a list of anyone who might’ve had a grudge against Delilah? Ex-boyfriend, maybe?”
“Mm. Yes, actually,” he said.
Jackpot.
“Now that you mention it, you ought to take a look at her ex-fiancé-slash-record-producer,” he continued. “Jimmy Barnes.”
“…Wait, what?”
Things would’ve been so much easier if that damned man had just looked Lucifer in the eye. Then he’d have confessed, Chloe could’ve arrested him without incident, and she could’ve finally moved on with her life.
Instead, what Chloe got was a front-row ticket to yet another gorgeous woman drooling all over herself the moment Lucifer turned his attention to her, some delicious shadenfreude when the would-be bride admitted her disgust with the man standing next to her at the altar, and well over an hour of her life wasted, only to find herself right back at the rapper 2Vile’s enormous house anyway.
At least now she knew how Lucifer had ended up there. And at least they’d been able to get the clue about Delilah’s therapist without any death threats.
“Seriously, though,” she said to him after they made it back to her cruiser. “How do you do that?”
“What, be this irresistible?” Still buoyant from the triumph of remembering “Hot Tub High School”, after 2Vile and his buddies had spilled the beans, Lucifer was bouncing like a little kid about six inches too far into her personal space and grinning like an idiot.
Maybe attempting to arrest him had been the better option.
“No, I mean get people to confess everything to you. Like a priest on steroids.”
Hilariously, this comment elicited even more offense than the one she’d made before about sins.
“Absolutely not! I’m nothing at all like Dad’s cronies, Detective. No, no, no, I simply have the ability to draw out people’s desires. The more simple the human, the easier it is. The more complex, the more challenging. And exciting, really,” he added, already rallied from his momentary lapse in mood and back to his usual flirtatious self.
“So the Devil’s in charge of desire instead of sin?”
Lucifer grinned. “Precisely!” He leaned against the side of her cruiser, his expression turning thoughtful. “You know, Detective, most people don’t believe me when I tell them I’m the Devil. Plenty of them play along, of course, but they don’t truly believe. But you do, don’t you? Believe me, I mean.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Chloe protested. But, then again, she’d witnessed the reaction of the priest at the wedding when he’d seen Lucifer striding up the aisle. She doubted the man had been crossing himself in fear because of her.
There were other reasons, too, of course. But she wasn’t about to admit to those.
“You’re considering it, though, aren’t you?”
“Just because you’re… I don’t know, good at hypnotism or something, doesn’t mean you’re the Devil.”
“‘Hypnotism’!” he sputtered. “As if I’d resort to such cheap tricks. Here, I’ll prove it to you.” He leaned forward, catching her gaze with his dark, captivating eyes. “Tell me, Detective—”
“It’s not going to work,” she warned him.
He cocked his head at her in a brief, good-natured reprimand. “Tell me, what do you desire more than anything else in this life?”
She regarded him steadily for a moment, considering her options. “Becoming a cop like my dad” had been a bit too true—a real desire, just not her deepest one. “World peace” would be too easily mistaken for her genuine answer.
“…Detective?”
“Yeah, yeah, hold on. I’m trying to come up with something good.”
“Well, you’re not supposed to think about it!” he complained. His charming, self-assured smile had disappeared completely, replaced by sheer consternation. “Why don’t I affect you, Detective?”
“I guess I’m just special. Now, come on. We have to go find this therapist Delilah talked to.”
Not right away, though, of course. Moments after she gave the officer on the other end of the line the information about Delilah’s pseudonym, her phone rang yet again. Trixie’s school, and Chloe dearly wished she could go back in time and stop her daughter from finding Snapchat.
“I’m not here to help you run errands!” Lucifer protested when she told him about their detour. “I’m here to help you solve a homicide.”
“I don’t suppose the Devil has any interest in punishment, too?”
Lucifer stopped mid-rant and blinked at her in surprise through her car’s rearview mirror. “Quite a lot of interest. Why do you ask?”
“Some brat of a fourth-grader has been giving my kid a hard time. And I’ve got a feeling you might be able to… I don’t know, put a little fear of hellfire into the girl.”
From the expression on his face, he couldn’t possibly have been less interested in such a task, and was mildly offended that she could ever think he might be. “Children’s squabbles? Detective, please, I do have my dignity.”
Chloe had no doubt. But something about Trixie had convinced him to step in. “Tell you what—you come in and deal with the bully, and I’ll wait in the car for ten minutes after we talk to this therapist we’ve got to see next. Apparently she does hot yoga.”
This, finally, seemed to intrigue him. “Hot yoga, you say? I’ll need twenty minutes, at the very least.”
“Ten,” she repeated firmly. “Consider it a challenge.”
“Very well, Detective. You have yourself a deal.”
After that, the case didn’t deviate much from what she knew to expect. Dr. Linda quickly confirmed the “rumor” that Chloe had heard about Delilah having been seeing Grey Cooper; Chloe spent the time they’d saved sitting in her car waiting for Lucifer to… well, finish… and trying not to connect the dots on how he’d gotten so incredibly rich. She wore body armor to the mid-afternoon confrontation with Jimmy Barnes and didn’t even end up needing it because she made sure not to take her eyes off the bastard for so much as a second until he was handcuffed in the back of her cruiser. If she got lucky with traffic, she might even be home in time for dinner.
Lucifer hesitated, his hand on the door handle, when she pulled up to the curb outside of Lux. “You’re clearly quite smart, Detective,” he told her. “I would never be so foolish as to dispute that. But the way you solved the case today…” He turned to regard her with armor-piercing curiosity. “It’s more than that, isn’t it? You knew to ask me about an ex-boyfriend. You knew to ask Dr. Linda about Grey Cooper. Considering that awful detour you made us take to the precinct, I’d say you even knew that Jimmy Barnes would be carrying a weapon.”
“Experience,” Chloe told him brusquely. “I’m good at my job.”
“No, it’s more than that. You’re not… psychic, are you?”
Chloe laughed. She couldn’t help it.
“What?”
“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”
“I’m the Devil, darling,” he reminded her. “I’m already well aware of many things you humans would never believe.”
“Fine. You really want to know?” She was insane. Things never turned out well when she admitted this to someone else. Never. And even then, they never remembered anyway. But for some reason, her gut was telling her she could trust Lucifer Morningstar with the truth. “I’ve already done all this,” she confessed. “The past two days. The first time, though, I got shot in the shoulder and nearly died. But hopefully I got it right this time and the next time I wake up it’ll finally be Thursday.”
Lucifer was staring at her, his expression unreadable.
Chloe sighed. “And now you think I’m crazy, just like everyone else I try to tell.”
“On the contrary, Detective. As a matter of fact, I have a brother who can slow time to a near-standstill. Repeating time, while not something I’ve encountered before, does seem like it would be within my Father’s capabilities.”
“You believe me?”
“You know, I think I do.”
“Then why are you staring at me like that?”
“Well, it’s just that I’ve never met someone who’s been as thoroughly and personally screwed over by Dad as I have. You certainly have my sympathies.”
He believed her.
He believed her.
Nobody had ever believed her.
“Thanks,” she said with a tight smile. “But, hey, at least the Devil’s on my side.”
The least she could do would be to believe him, too.
The next time Chloe woke up, it was Tuesday. Again.
That evening, she got assigned to a double homicide at the hottest nightclub on Sunset. A famous pop singer, as well as an unlucky bystander, had been gunned down by a drug dealer inside the club. A considerable deviation from her previous experiences, but one she was sure she’d eventually figure out. After all, she had all the time in the world.
Served her right for trying to tell someone, and thinking that just this once it might stick.
Chloe pasted on her most professional half-smile and surrendered to the inevitable. “Lucifer Morningstar. So you’re the Devil himself?”
He looked up from his piano and shook his head in exasperation. “No, no, you’re supposed to ask ‘Like the Devil?’.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “I… what?”
“And then I say, ‘You’ve heard of me!’ and ask if we’ve ever met.” When she showed no sign of retrieving her jaw from the floor, he rolled his eyes and stood up from the piano bench. “Yes, all right, I suppose we can skip that bit. I’m the Devil, you starred in ‘Hot Tub High School’, and Jimmy Barnes paid for Delilah’s murder with a wristwatch. Now let’s move along to the part where you tell me how we can move on from this terrible bloody couple of days, hm?”
She needed to sit. She took his vacated spot on the piano bench. “I don’t understand,” she mumbled. “How could you remember? Nobody ever remembers.”
“No, nobody ever lives the same day twice!” he corrected her. He took a quick gulp of his drink and started pacing as he launched into his rant. “Sorry, two days. Except you, of course. And souls trapped in Hell, reliving their guilt for eternity, but that’s a completely separate matter. And now me, thank you very much! I should congratulate you, actually, for somehow managing the impossible.”
“Trust me, reliving half of my life over and over again is not something I’m doing on purpose.”
Lucifer scoffed and waved the thought away. “No, no, not that. I meant sex. You’ve actually made it boring!”
“Wh— Excuse me?!”
“I had arranged a perfectly delightful ménàge-á-sept yesterday, Detective. Yesterday meaning ‘Monday’, that is. As in ‘the day that was supposed to come before today’. So imagine my surprise when they all showed up back in my penthouse this afternoon! Same desires, same fun little tricks, and there I was reciting lines like some… some actor! It’s unconscionable.”
“Gee, I’m so sorry about that,” Chloe replied with the driest, most monotone sarcasm she could muster.
“Well, I appreciate the apology at least,” Lucifer huffed, tugging on his cuffs. “Now, I do believe we’re all caught up, so can we get on with it?”
“It’s a whole new investigation!” Chloe protested. “Eddie Deacon came into the club and fired into the crowd this time! There’s a second body and three others in the hospital because of this guy! The whole thing is screwed up!”
“Oh, my sincerest apologies, Detective,” he shot back, his words laced with acid. “Silly me, thinking I might be able to save Delilah’s life this time.”
Chloe’s heart sank as she finally put two and two together. Of course that’s why the case had changed. He’d known that bringing Delilah outside would lead to her death, so he’d kept her inside. Trying to protect her. “Shit. Of course. I’m sorry,” she said, genuine this time. “She really meant a lot to you, didn’t she?”
“Yes, well.” Lucifer drained the last of his whiskey. “Lesson learned, I suppose.”
“Well, at least we have Deacon alive and in custody this time,” Chloe offered. “It’ll be easy to get him to talk once he realizes I already know about his deal with Barnes, which means this damn case should finally end.”
“What, is that how it works? You get to continue on with your life once you catch your killer? But we caught him the first time!”
“And the second,” she ruefully informed him. “You didn’t remember the loop until I told you about it.”
“So, what—”
“As far as I’ve been able to figure it out, I can only move on if there’s nothing I feel guilty about.”
He froze in place the moment she said the ‘g’-word, horror dawning in his eyes. “Hang on. You’re saying you have to relive your guilt, over and over again?”
“Only until I fix it,” she said with a shrug. It was a fact of life it had taken her years to come to terms with, but she had indeed come to terms with it. Eventually.
Against all expectations, Lucifer laughed. “Dearie me, I’m not sure whether to offer my condolences or congratulate you.” At her baffled expression, he explained, “You, Detective, have apparently been given a guaranteed ticket to the Silver City once you depart this Earthly plane. Or Heaven, as you humans call it.”
Holy shit. “Hang on—you said souls in Hell relive their guilt over and over, right? Is that what sends them there in the first place?”
“Got it in one, not that that’s surprising.”
“But I always get the chance to fix things I feel guilty about.” Good God in Heaven. Literally. Because apparently Chloe had someone Up There keeping a careful eye on her. “That’s… holy shit.” Not that she’d ever been afraid of going to Hell—after all, up until very recently she’d been a staunch atheist—but to learn that she would, beyond a doubt, be getting an afterlife? The best possible afterlife, at that? “Holy shit,” she repeated.
“Are you all right, Detective?”
She packed away the looming existential crisis for a more convenient time and smiled wanly at the Devil. “Right. Well, um… I guess I’d better go interrogate Eddie Deacon and arrest Jimmy Barnes.”
“Indeed. Perhaps you could come by again tomorrow for a celebratory drink,” Lucifer offered. “Assuming tomorrow is, of course, actually tomorrow.”
Chloe made a non-committal noise in the back of her throat. “We’ll see.”
She questioned Deacon. On his testimony, she arrested Jimmy Barnes. No confrontation in a recording studio. No bullet piercing her shoulder. Two guilty men safely behind bars and no loose ends whatsoever. She went to sleep that night making optimistic plans for Thursday.
The next morning, she was assigned a new murder case. Jimmy Barnes had been shot dead in his own recording studio.
It was Tuesday again.