Chapter Text
At first glance the place looked almost exactly like the Penthouse: the grand piano, the leather sofa, the windows around the silk-covered bed. There were a few differences though, places where Chloe had left her own imprint. The wall of alcohol above the bar had a few bottles that weren’t amber and one chilled shelf full of beer. The bar itself had mutated into an almost kitchen, with a stove, a fridge and cupboards for plates and actual food. One section of the library was filled with paperbacks and the glass coffee table was littered with case files. The steps up to the bedroom still had the glass mural on one side, but on the other the ancient stone had been replaced a smooth wall, now covered in crayon drawings which featured two detectives, a young girl, and a well-dressed man with red horns. There were also pictures of angels, a demon with half a face, and slightly blood-stained alien.
The biggest difference was not caused by Chloe’s influence in the Devil’s home from home. As she sat and looked out from the balcony, she marvelled as always at the sheer beauty of the view. LA had its own kind of beauty, especially at night when the electric lights competed against her lover’s stars, but it had nothing on this. The silver buildings rose and fell, dancing into an impossibly twisted skyline, and reflected the luminescence of their inhabitants. Every time she looked it was breathtaking. She would sometimes lose herself for hours- which was fine, because she had eternity.
She sensed Lucifer’s arrival before the elevator doors began to open, his presence igniting something in her soul. Scribbling one last thought on the file in her lap, she came back inside, dropping it with the others and sticking the pen into her messy bun. As he walked in and dropped a few more files on the bar, she poured him a glass of single malt, which he took with one hand while the other snaked around her waist. He took a sip before kissing her, a kiss that made her rise up on her toes and then melt into him. “I do enjoy these welcome back moments,” he grinned.
Chloe spent a few moments just staring at his face, revelling in his light. “How was work?” she asked, as if he’d just come home from day at the office.
“Oh, the usual. Screaming. Pleading. Ash.” He nuzzled into her neck, and then paused. “You seem to have forgotten the difference between stationery and accessorising.”
“You keep bringing more work.” She nodded towards the new files. “I’m still trying to clear the backlog.”
“I missed you, and I wanted to stay a bit longer this time. So I made sure I brought enough to keep you busy while I’m paying back the time. Go on, take a peek, I know you won’t rest until your curiosity is satisfied.”
He leaned back and enjoyed his drink as she went to open the folder on top of the pile. Anna Williams. There were photographs, transcripts and notes from her Hell loop- all the things that haunted her, that she thought she’d done wrong. Chloe would read all the details carefully, sift through what was fact and what was unnecessary guilt, and try to figure out if she was redeemable. If she was, then Linda or one of her team would insert themselves into Anna’s story, help her work out her guilt, and guide her towards the way out.
“Maze is complaining you keep taking her toys away,” Lucifer said, pulling out the pen and untying her hair, settling it over her shoulders.
Chloe chuckled. They’d managed to save about a hundred souls so far, but they were getting better at the whole process, and their success rate was increasing. “She would. Although I’m pretty sure she’s getting shiny new ones all the time. I think maybe we should train up more therapists.”
“Apparently it’s difficult to get counselling experience in Heaven, because everyone is so perfectly content all the time. Which is why everyone in that pile was a psychologist in a former life.”
“So we rescue them and then ask them to work for us? Lucifer, that’s brilliant!”
“If we keep this up through the apocalypse, we might even manage to empty Hell completely. Then I can properly retire,” he joked.
She turned to him with a quizzical look. “What, you didn’t realise that was plan?”
“I had my suspicions. Just don’t tell Maze.”
“You know, I could probably work a lot faster if I could come down there and look around myself…”
He shook his head emphatically and gave her a tight squeeze. “No, not a chance. Not even if that place freezes over. You are my pure little miracle and I am not letting you anywhere near it. Giving you a glimpse in all these files is bad enough.”
“Explain to me again why Linda gets to visit and I can’t?”
“Because the good doctor has a much more flexible conscience. Also she’s a kinky little minx and you haven’t figured out how to get a demon up here yet.”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it. Trixie misses her too.”
“I still don’t understand why you don’t keep some of her more recent artwork. Her collaboration with Michelangelo was incredible. How did she talk him into it, do you know?”
“She persuaded him that because he was a miracle just like her mother, it meant that they were some sort of angelically blessed cousins. Then she started saying how you were practically her step-dad, and the suggestion that she might be able to persuade you to sit for him again was enough to get him to look at her collection. And of course once he saw her work, he wanted to work with her too.”
“Then why have I not yet been asked to pose naked?” he asked, confused.
“Because it’s Michelangelo, and he got carried away with something else. I’m sure you’ll get the invitation eventually.”
“Do you think we can get a copy if he does? It would be nice to have a picture of me without horns. And not done in crayon. Why did she never listen about the lack of horns?”
Chloe laughed. “She totally listened, she just kept doing it because she knew it drove you crazy. I keep those pictures because like them, they remind me of a very happy time. Our family may have looked a little strange to everyone else, but it was beautiful to me.”
“How is the little monkey, anyway?”
“Perfectly content, of course,” she said, with a trace of irony. Being perfectly content was the default emotional setting for humans in Heaven, and the idea of it seemed so boring and monotonous, but because she was so perfectly content it was extremely difficult to get upset about it. The worst part of it was that it left no room for desire, which was hard on Lucifer, and would have driven her to distraction is she wasn’t so bloody content about it. She still loved being close to him, enjoying the feel of his skin and his warmth, but the contentment left no room for that physical longing, the passionate urgency required for sex. She’d been nagging Dad about it for almost as long as she’d been here, and by the way that she felt with Lucifer’s fingers touching her back, she thought that perhaps He might have finally given in.
She looked down at her leggings and baggy jumper. “How about you go clean up and make yourself all beautiful while I slip into something less comfortable?”
“You could join me in the shower,” he whispered, “help me wash off some of the ash.”
Even though she knew he was only teasing, she felt the temptation. It curled with a delicious twist in her belly. Oh, yes! Her face must have registered her surprise because he took a step back and looked at her again. “What is it?”
She smiled. “I’ve been working on a surprise for you. Let’s go get clean.”
Some time later. A thoroughly scrubbed and sated Lucifer sprawled across the bed, his head resting on Chloe’s belly. It had been forty years in Earth time, much longer in celestial time. She had said he could play in Lux as much as he wanted between visits, knowing it wasn’t fair to ask him for celibacy. He indulged from time to time, and it was fun, but he couldn’t stop imagining he was with her and more the once had to apologise for saying the wrong name in the heat of the moment. He’d missed this so much; nothing could compare to the passion between the two of them, the look on her face as she threw her head back in ecstasy, then the languid relaxation as they lay together, waiting for her to be ready to go again.
“Is this what Heaven was supposed to feel like all along?” he asked as she combed her fingers through his hair.
“Maybe. How are you feeling?”
“Perfectly content,” he laughed. “Smug as a blasted cat.”
“Yep, that’s the one.”
He rolled over, propping himself up on an elbow to look at her, tracing her curves with a fingertip. “This is real, isn’t it?”
His hope was an almost tangible thing, it buffeted against her chest. “After all this time, you still need to ask?”
A protective wing curled around her. “Right now, in this moment, I’m happy. Ridiculously, nauseatingly happy. Which is usually the point that something catastrophic happens to me. But for the first time I believe it might actually last forever.” It would have been an impossibly tragic statement, had it not been for what followed. “But that might just be because I’ve finally had sex in Heaven. However did you manage to it? I thought Dad was completely set against the idea.”
“He was, when I got here. But then I used one of my daughter’s old tricks. I kept asking, repeatedly and at great length, several times a day, every day, until He gave in. And, now that I can, I plan to make you this happy a lot more often.” She stroked his feathers, then examined her hand with a look of disgust. “And I’m going to start by getting all the ash out your wings.”
He groaned happily. “Would you? I will be eternally grateful. They’ve been itching for ages. With all the to-ing and fro-ing I’m afraid they’ve been rather neglected.”
“I’ll go start the bath running again. Good job this place has an endless supply of hot water.”
He watched her as she left, knowing that she would be back. Knowing that she would always be back, and something inside him finally let go. She had changed everything- first his life in LA, then dear old Dad and now Heaven. He knew she wouldn’t stop until she’d emptied Hell, too. And until then, he had this: these perfect moments, filled with satisfaction and anticipation. Even returning to Hell didn’t seem so bad if he had this to come home to.
Was that it? Was this home now? He gazed up to see the room reflected in the ceiling. It did look like home. A new kind of energy was buzzing through him, and he considered what it would be like to set up a Heavenly version of Lux. Would that even work? Maybe, if the no sex rule was gone for everybody. The humans could certainly teach his siblings a thing or two about fun.
She came back, dressed in her own fluffy bathrobe, and he felt a familiar flutter in his chest. No, this place wasn’t home. She was. The rest was just an added bonus. As long as he was with Chloe, he would be home. And he knew that she would be with him for eternity.