Work Text:
Chloe Decker and Lucifer Morningstar sit on that hilltop bench as the sun sets and the night comes alive around them. They sit at times in surprisingly comfortable silence and at other times in an ebbing and flowing conversation that meanders its way through the details of their “case,” teases smiles and eye rolls from them both, and bolsters a fledgling mutual respect. They sit for God knows how long (and indeed He knows exactly how long), frankly enjoying the simple pleasure of one another’s company a great deal more than either had expected, and it seems neither wants nor has any reason to leave.
“Well that was quite fun, wasn’t it,” Lucifer remarks as he offers Chloe a draft from his flask. “Not bad for a half-in-the-bag club owner and an actress.”
“Well I—I don’t know if ‘fun’ is the word I would use,” begins Chloe, taking the flask.
“No?”
“Yeah, but it certainly was fulfilling,” she concludes. Lucifer looks reflective for a moment, considering. “You know, it makes me think,” Chloe continues, “maybe I’m tired of playing a cop in the movies, you know; maybe I’d like to play detective for real.”
Lucifer laughs, incredulous. “What, hang up the glitz and the glamour for a badge and a naked man with a harpoon?”
“Yeah,” Chloe replies, utterly in earnest, ignoring the reference to her father’s rather extreme encounter in the line of duty.
“Oh? Maybe I’ll tag along,” Lucifer retorts, with a look on his face that puts Chloe in mind of a cat about to pounce.
She shakes her head at him and smiles, sceptical but amused. “It’s never going to happen.”
“Care to wager?” Lucifer challenges, taking another sip. The glint in his eyes has gone from playful to determined in a split second.
Chloe scoffs again, but it’s half-hearted in the face of what ultimately seems to be a genuine offer of comradeship from this strange, clever, shameless new acquaintance of hers. She can hardly swallow Lucifer’s apparent new interest in becoming anyone’s partner (after having claimed earlier that he wasn’t “really a work-together kind of devil”), but her disbelief pales in comparison to the disbelief prompted by her own seemingly sudden decision to change her career. And yet she feels firmly resolved in that decision. Perhaps it has been a long time coming.
Their conversation—dare Chloe admit it to be banter? Effortless banter, even?–continues, their voices rising and falling, their laughter freely exchanged, as the lights of Los Angeles gradually twinkle into a brilliant nightscape below them.
She’s tenacious. He admires that.
Pleased at first by her status as a luminary (albeit a minor one) among the puny humans—in meaner terms, by her fame—and secondly by her obvious beauty, Lucifer finds himself increasingly intrigued by Chloe Decker on a level that goes beyond the usual trappings. She has a quick mind. She has a keen sense of justice. And—for some truly unfathomable reason—she isn’t charmed by him at all. Frankly, she makes a first impression on him that sinks deeper than that of almost any other person he’s met in his long existence, whether Below or during any of his topside dalliances. He feels an unfathomable but undeniable connection to her.
His demon, Mazikeen, seems to notice something is amiss over the next few days. He knows she can tell he’s preoccupied.
If she brings it up, he’s ready to wax philosophical about the pursuit of justice, the punishment of those who deserve it, his rightful role in that punishment, the power he feels in performing that role of his own volition and not at the insistence of Another, and his newly rediscovered zest for life given the opportunity he’s just had to exercise that power. If he happens to have also enjoyed the company of a certain delightful bottle blonde with rather striking blue-green eyes, well, that’s neither here nor there, and he’s ready to unequivocally insist upon it.
Thankfully Maze doesn’t bring it up.
Chloe hadn’t officially taken Lucifer’s wager that first evening, but the half-in-the-bag club owner manages to hang around nonetheless.
He finagles his way onto the guest list of her last-ever movie premiere, sauntering up behind her on the red carpet and purring words of congratulations into her ear—not about the movie but about her acceptance into the Los Angeles Police Department’s police academy. She hasn’t made that fact public. How does Lucifer Morningstar know she is enrolled to start two Mondays from now, when she hasn’t even told her father yet?
“Attending your final A-list event solo, Detective?” Lucifer asks, leaning close to her ear, gleeful and almost maddeningly handsome in his tuxedo, as he slips her arm into the crook of his elbow and escorts her further down the red carpet. “Not on my watch!”
“Who is this guy?” one of the paparazzos shouts at her as Lucifer leads her into the theater, and Chloe has to laugh, because, yeah: who even is Lucifer Morningstar?
It had been so surreal, opening that acceptance letter, and making all the preparatory changes to her life, that she has superstitiously kept the news to herself. It hadn’t been an easy or comfortable transition, either: the Weaponizer franchise publicists and marketing team had been baffled and angry when she backed out of the movie’s entire press junket; she knew they were scrambling to fill her empty interview slots, scrambling to explain and work around her retreat. Her agent was flummoxed and then incensed when she fired him, even though she tried to deliver the news of her retreat from Hollywood kindly. And her friends on set, fellow actors and crew, had run the gamut from bereft to vitriolic; she knew some of them considered her a turncoat. (Why, she wondered, in the back of her mind, but persistently, did those she had considered friends not simply offer their encouragement and support? Why did it seem there was only one person who was truly rejoicing in her personal successes? And why was that person a quirky, vain, British man she’d only recently met?)
Writing her Personal Qualifications Essay for the LAPD application had been a breeze; she’d simply gushed, formally, about the work she knew her father had done, the people he’d protected, the community he’d served, and indicated her enthusiastic interest in following in his footsteps. She’d passed her background check and polygraph without a hitch. She’d already been in decent shape as an action star but had refocused her physical training in certain areas for a few months in preparation for the physical abilities test, which she had then also passed. Likewise the medical and psychological evaluations. The final step of the application, a panel interview, had been somewhat intimidating, but she’d donned her camera-forward, movie-star-doing-PR persona, which had helped veil her nervousness. And it must have gone well, since that acceptance letter turned up in the mail shortly thereafter.
Chloe throws herself into a very different life, with a very different kind of people. She spends six months with her nose to the LAPD police academy grindstone: academics and law, driving tests, firearms training, tactics, human relations training, and a demanding regimen of physical training. She barely has time to come up for air. It’s the hardest she’s worked in her life, not even counting the ribbing she keeps taking from the other recruits for being “a half-decent actress who thinks she can hack it on the streets.” She’s also a fair bit older than the rest of her cohort, having chosen this path later in life than most of them, so she feels she sticks out like a sore thumb. Still, she has a sense she is where she’s meant to be. It feels good. It feels right.
Lucifer stays in touch, in what Chloe comes to recognize as his signature manner: flighty yet directed, lascivious yet gentlemanly, aloof yet personal, carefree but with a hint of hidden, unplumbed depths. Nigh inscrutable, emoji-laden texts arrive at all hours. Purportedly accidental meetings occur at various unexpected locations throughout the city as she carries out aspects of her training. Other purportedly accidental meetings occur on occasional weekends while she’s out for lunch with her mother (and Chloe can only marvel at how easily Penelope Decker succumbs to Lucifer’s solicitous charms. She invites him to their next family dinner, for God’s sake! He shows up!).
How’s police academy going, Mahoney? Lucifer texts one night. Up to your eyeballs in hijinx?
It’s hell, she jokes in response. I haven’t slept in years. What even is a meal. Law is complicated.
I’m sure you’ll come out on top, he responds. Queen of hell.
Let’s hope, she texts back. And I won’t dignify your bad puns with a response.
You just did, he texts back with lightning speed. Chloe knows she doesn’t have to reply; he will picture her rolling her eyes and shaking her head in supressed mirth, and he won’t be wrong, just as she’s not wrong to picture him tonguing his cheek and raising his eyebrow, dark eyes twinkling.
Immediately after her graduation from the police academy, during the bare-bones but fairly jovial and bustling reception, while her parents engulf her and shower her with flowers and congratulations, she notices Lucifer standing at the back of the sparse but crowded room. Leaning against the wall and sporting a satisfied grin, he takes a familiar flask from the inner breast pocket of his impeccably tailored suit jacket and raises it to her. Chloe nods and returns his grin. She intends to go say hello, thank him for attending (despite never having been told when or where it was happening), but he’s disappeared by the time she extricates herself from the clutches of her parents and her father’s friends on the Force.
She requests assignment to the same precinct as her father and duly receives it, apparently without ruffling any feathers. On her first day as an officer, Captain John Decker greets her warmly as a colleague, and looks at her uniform appraisingly. It’s a delight to work with him, near him, for him, even if their individual jobs are still quite different.
Chloe, of course, does her due diligence as a uniformed officer as she works her way toward becoming a detective. Having gladly accepted her duties, her occasionally changing partners, her shifty work hours, and her lot in life as a servant on the front lines of some of life’s most difficult moments in the City of Angels, Officer Decker undergoes the second part of her initiation: grunt work.
Lucifer, of course, keeps busy running his opulent, debauched nightclub and living his opulent, debauched lifestyle. He is clearly devoted to it, so Chloe lets go of any lingering idea that he might possibly make good on his threat and take up crime-solving with her, somehow. Still, he refuses to work with anyone else in her “corrupt little organization” when police matters touch his life; she gets assigned (by higher-ups who’ve been somehow influenced by Lucifer, she surmises uneasily) to every crime with any relation to Lux. First things first, there is the ongoing case related to the burglary of hundreds of thousands of dollars from his penthouse safe and the allegedly related disappearance of Lucifer’s attorney as well as a possibly corrupt LAPD officer—though Lucifer seems quite unconcerned about the stolen money and declares himself to be much more invested in the principle of the matter (“nobody steals from the Devil!”). Later she assists on cases related to the drugging and attack of a Lux patron, a mugging that happens to occur in an adjacent alley, and a burglary of petty cash from the till. “I want Officer Decker involved,” Lucifer always demands. “I want someone reliable and trustworthy and good.”
He invites her to Lux every now and then. (“Come now, let your hair down, Detective!” “Detective, I hope you know you’re at the top of the guest list.” “Detective, you should know you’re always welcome in my club and in my home.” “Detective,” and “Detective!” and “Detective…” as though her dreams are as good as achieved.) She doesn’t go as often as he’d like her to, not being naturally inclined toward the clubbing scene, but she does enjoy seeing him perform—not that she would ever say it aloud and risk further inflating his planet-sized ego, but wow, those dulcet tenor tones, those eyes that sparkle in the spotlight, the play of his long, elegant fingers over the smooth ivories of his baby grand—and she does make an effort for special occasions, like to attend his “rebirthday” or whatever he’s calling it.
(Chloe thought she’d been the actor, of the two of them, but now that she knows Lucifer better, she’s impressed: he really never lets up with his devil shtick. Is he an amateur method actor? Is it some sort of publicity stunt? Chloe doesn’t quite know what to make of him, but this devil business seems pretty harmless on the whole so she generally ignores it.)
The night Lucifer stages a sit-in at Lux to combat a threat of eviction, Chloe convinces her team of fellow unis that she knows him best and will talk him down. As soon as they leave, she tells him to get the party started again—“Lucifer, it’s your home; I was always on your side!”—and he looks at her with stars in his eyes. That night, his unadulterated joy trumps her awkwardness, and he persuades her to dance with him into the wee hours. She finds herself whirling around the dance floor, held tight, grinning right back at her partner, letting loose more easily with him than she ever does with anyone else. When she further assists by helping to fast-track a heritage designation from City Council, thus protecting the building from redevelopment, Lucifer looks at her as though she’s the one who lit the stars themselves. He takes her out to dinner in thanks, and she can’t help but think it’s the best date she’s been on in years—though neither of them seem to be willing to broach the topic of whether or not it is in fact a date. (Or maybe everything counts as a date, for Lucifer? she wonders. Or maybe nothing does?)
Speaking of: Chloe dates around a bit, but her focus on moving up the ranks quickly—making up for lost time—is singular, so nothing much blossoms in her love life. Besides, no matter how many times Chloe insists Lucifer is just a friend—a barely reliable, frustratingly enigmatic friend at that—the people she dates seem turned off by his unpredictable but gravity-shifting presence in her life. She fails to understand what they’re so worried about, given that she only crosses paths with Lucifer every few weeks, if that. Not to mention her irritation at the double standard: nobody seems to get on Lucifer’s case about her presence in his life, about her cramping his style—but she ultimately shrugs that off as part and parcel with typical reactions to their diametrically opposed lifestyles.
In her loneliness and sheer frustration—and after a visit with her aggravating mother, who manages to get Chloe fairly sauced at dinner—Chloe takes a leap and rides the elevator all the way up to Lucifer’s penthouse, where she stubbornly plans to cash in on all his bedroom-related boasts and promises. But then he outright refuses her drunken advances, seeming to surprise even himself, and if Chloe is honest with herself, it proves what she has always known: despite the constant stream of innuendo and the performative leering, Lucifer has always respected her.
It feels like it takes ages, though it’s only been a few years, but she’s finally promoted. Chloe Decker is officially a detective.
Her dad has just retired, so the two Deckers will never properly work a case together, but she knows he couldn’t be prouder of her. Anyhow, it’s probably for the best; as much as she loves and admires her dad, she doesn’t think their methods and attitudes would align perfectly. It’s not always a great idea to work closely with a family member.
Returning to her apartment after a celebratory dinner with her parents, Chloe finds a black box, tied up in a silky black ribbon, on her welcome mat. After tossing her keys into the dish and flopping onto her couch, she discovers inside the box a deer-stalker hat, a magnifying glass, and a note whose elegant, almost calligraphic handwriting simply reads: “Well done, Detective.” She can’t hold back the grin that breaks onto her face, or the blush.
Thoughtful, funny, sweet—and yet: how on God’s green earth had Lucifer known her home address? Perhaps she really should’ve invited him to accompany her in her career change; his knack for dealing in dirty details is apparently unparalleled.
Sometimes Chloe thinks about that first night, the night they’d sat together on the hilltop bench, between the winking stars and the glittering lights of their city, talking long into the night. It has come to occupy a special place in her memory—a perfect, untouchable place like a quiet snow globe on a shelf in her mind. Never before or since has she felt quite so at ease with a new acquaintance—no, friend—nor quite so comfortable in her own personhood, nor quite so spellbound by possibility. That night, that first case, will forever mean something to her, and she knows that experience of meeting someone new who already feels comfortable and familiar is precious and rare. Despite Lucifer’s merely sporadic presence in her life, that memory is one of her dearest.
She wonders, sometimes, if that night had felt revelatory for Lucifer as well, but to bring it up with him would be to touch with sticky fingers the perfect, crystallized memory, and she doesn’t dare tarnish it.
When Chloe gets reassigned to the homicide investigative branch (finally!), Lucifer shows up to her first field case. He just strolls up to the crime scene, fussing with his cufflinks and looking like he owns the place—‘the place’ being a dismal stretch of disused road under an overpass. How did he even find it? Who even let him past the tape? How does he just get away with everything like this?
After some needling and a healthy amount of colourful commentary—par for the course with Lucifer, she has now accepted—he learns she hasn’t yet been assigned a permanent partner. To Chloe’s surprise, he actually gets serious about the proposition he’s been casually making, on and off: he shows up at the precinct, demands an audience with Chloe’s lieutenant, and offers himself up as a civilian consultant on her current case—and all of her future cases. Since she does have fond memories of working in this way with him, Chloe can’t find it in herself to mind the fact that his methods of persuasion (coercion?) actually succeed with the lieutenant. Her partnership with Lucifer makes no sense on paper, but in real life, for whatever reason, it just works: by week’s end, they’ve apprehended their first killer.
His admiration for her tenacity is justified.
Just look at his clever detective (his detective! How Mazikeen and her heartless gaggle of followers would recoil!): Chloe’s made detective in a supremely short amount of time despite having had to play catch-up with the other recruits and in the face of no small amount of opposition from her fellow (mostly male) officers. She’s closed her first case in the blink of an eye. Surely her superiors will be impressed. Hell, he’s impressed, not to mention immensely pleased that he got to be there with her as she did it. As they did it.
Lucifer is glad now that he never figured out how to shake that first night out of his system. How many nights has he spent drawing women into the web of his titillating repartee, his magnetic presence, and yet none stand out or seem to matter quite like that night he spent with the detective, sitting innocently on a bench and whiling away hours upon hours talking, of all things. He’s glad he’s a devil of his word: he stuck with her, and now he’s won his wager. Not even the Devil himself gets out of a deal with the Devil. Perhaps he should remind her. Surely she hasn’t forgotten?
Chloe knows now that that first night had been important to him too. She sees how he’s stuck by her, supported her as she worked toward her dream, then presumptuously joined her in the realization of that dream. He lives her dream with her, now, every day, and whatever else she fails to understand about him, she does see his loyalty, his admiration for her, his trust. She hopes she gives him those things too.