Soon.
He doesn’t know when it’ll happen exactly, days, weeks, or maybe even months from now, but he knows it’s going to happen soon. He’s standing at the precipice. The end or the beginning of everything. His end or beginning.
The restless worry sits just inside his ribs, makes it impossible to stay still, makes him wander the corridors, makes him useless to do anything else. Instead of counseling, he visits the loops to give himself something, anything at all, to do to pass the time. Mostly he just freezes them; he’s never been able to figure out what to do with people who feel guilt for anything but their crimes. He tells himself that at least they’re not actively suffering anymore, and maybe that’s enough.
He wonders what that's like.
The club is quiet.
Sometimes Lucifer lets some of the souls visit, when he senses they’re about to have a breakthrough; before they leave this place behind forever. Sometimes there are demons taking a break. Who could’ve thought that good alcohol would make them so much more agreeable?
Right now, Lucifer wants the silence. He wants to hear the keys as he presses them one by one. He wants his memories to shout loud and shine bright before everything changes.
Either way, everything will change.
His fingers twitch. The anxiety gets stronger. He tries to drown it in whiskey and the comfort of his piano, but it only barely works. Like a living thing, it sets every nerve in his body alight with awareness, and he wants to claw out of his own skin. It feels like torture.
The therapist helps doomed souls out of their Hell, but who helps the therapist out of his?
Closing his eyes, Lucifer lets his fingers dance again, lets the sounds drown out everything; his thoughts, his fears, his hopes. Until he hears it. Like a loved one picking up the phone, after you’ve given up hope. Like a voice through the static of a radio after the world ends. Like the sound of the wind when someone fights their way above ground.
“Lucifer Morningstar, is that, uh, a stage name or something?”
His heart skips a beat.
No.
No, it gives a little jolt before it begins beating again. Painfully. Like a key turning in its rusted lock. Finally. After all this time of being half alive. All those years of being half awake. It contracts, sending pins and needles across his body, and Lucifer aches.
“God given, I’m afraid,” he finds himself saying, watching his fingers still and hover above the piano keys, trembling.
Her footsteps are soft as she moves closer. As he imagined, fantasized, dreamed she would countless times, and now that she’s here, finally here, he’s afraid to turn around. He’s terrified to look at her for what if she disappears again before his very eyes?
She rounds the piano, entering his field of vision. Like a star’s gravity she draws his gaze to her. His breath catches in his throat. She’s so beautiful, just the way he remembers her, and Lucifer can’t breathe. Can’t do anything but stare, wide eyed and hoping against hope.
But she doesn’t dissolve into nothingness. And he doesn’t wake up with her name on his lips and sorrow weighing him down. With a small smile, she leans on the piano, and it’s warm, like a ray of sunshine shining down on him after the endless night. On most days, he didn’t think he was going to make it to dawn.
His lips move against his conscious command. “You look familiar, have we met before?” A lifetime ago. Lifetimes ago. His voice is hoarse, and yet she smiles at him, brilliant.
The radiant Chloe Decker.
“Hi,” she says shyly.
The loud bang of the piano bench goes unnoticed by him; in a second he’s standing right in front of her, and she’s smiling up at him, biting her lip. Hands shaking, Lucifer touches her temple, a gentle press of his fingertips to her soft skin. He swallows hard, unable to look away. Unable to believe that she’s here, solid and real, and won’t slip through his fingers like water. Like everything he’s ever wanted but couldn’t have.
“You are real, aren’t you?” he whispers, and Chloe nods jerkily. She covers the back of his hand with hers, pressing his palm to her cheek, leaning into it.
“I am.”
His lips crash onto hers.
Like finally coming home after a long journey.
And then he’s wrapping his arms around her, swallowing her squeal of surprise that turns into laughter. It’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. He sets her down onto the piano, her arms and legs draw him closer, locking around him, and Lucifer never wants to leave her side.
“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers into the space between their faces, stealing kisses from her smiling lips, like a drowning man. “I can’t believe you’re here,” he whispers into her cheek, pressing his mouth to every bit of skin within reach. Her temple, her ear, back to her cheek, her nose, her lips again. It’s not enough. What if he never has enough of her?
Her hands trace a path from his back and shoulders, to his hair and neck, and finally his cheeks. Holding him, thumbs tracing the soft skin just above his stubble, she pulls back. They’re the same height like this. “I’m here, Lucifer,” Chloe’s voice hitches. “And I’ll be here for as long as you want me.”
Forever, he wants to scream. He never wants to spend another moment away from her. But something in her voice makes him pause. Makes his heart clench painfully in his chest. Perhaps this is the real precipice. His judgment day.
He shakes his head, confused. “Of course I want you.”
She smiles at him, sunny and warm, fingers tracing his stubble, but there are tears welling up in her eyes. He leans into the touch; it’s as natural as breathing, he doesn’t know how to do anything else.
“There’s something you have to know,” Chloe says, her throat bobs as she swallows. He recognizes the nervousness, the courage she searches for and finds before she speaks again. He loves how brave she is. He loves her. “I’ve changed, Lucifer. I may look like her, but I’m not the same woman you said goodbye to.” There’s pain in her eyes, and guilt, and sorrow, and something else. It echoes in his soul. The acute sadness that he wasn’t there for her, loving and supporting her through the changes, through everything, has torn into him, has left its imprint, its scars. After all these years, it’s just another part of him now. “But I never stopped loving you. No matter what, Lucifer, no matter who I became, the one thing that never changed was how I felt about you. So-” a tear rolls down her face, and Lucifer reaches out to wipe it away; she leans into his touch. “So if you still want me-”
“Yes,” he interrupts her. Breathing harshly, he gently brushes her lower lip with his thumb. There is no need to think about it. It’s simple and true and unchanging. Like one of the fundamental forces holding the universe together.
Lucifer Morningstar loves Chloe Decker.
Always.
Forever.
No matter what.
He kisses her again.
“I love you,” he whispers, his lips brushing her. Her legs tighten around him, and her breath hitches. “I love you. Whether or not you listen to the sweet 90s jams or classical music. If you wear your sensible brown shoes, or if you’ve developed a fondness for crocs.” She laughs, and Lucifer can’t help smiling in response. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I couldn’t be there for you, I’m sorry I couldn’t love you the way you deserved. But if you give me a chance-” He blinks, feeling a tear escape. “-I promise you, I will do everything in my power to make up for it. You say you’ve changed, well then I want to get to know you again. If you will still have me.”
Smiling through tears, she pulls his face close. “Yes,” she whispers into his mouth. A promise. “Yes, I will. From now until the end, right?”
He nods, wrapping one arm around her as his other hand tangles in her hair. “From now until the end.”
Her mouth finds his again, sighing in relief when he opens it to her tongue. Anything she wants, everything she wants. His eyes close, and he feels her hands go to the buttons of his shirt. He bites her lip gently, before soothing it with his tongue, and she pauses, whimpering into his mouth.
She’s wearing a shirt too. A white shirt, it jogs something in his memory, but the feel of her, the smell of her, heady, and so familiar even after millions of years, makes it hard to think. Pulling back slightly, Lucifer unbuttons the first few buttons and then simply tugs the shirt over her head, forcing her to stop touching him. Chloe makes a displeased little sound as he throws it away, immediately returning to her task of getting him out of his clothes, impatiently ripping his shirt open and pushing it off his shoulders.
And then he freezes, because he hadn’t noticed it, but she’s wearing the bullet necklace. The mood changes once again as Lucifer reverently touches it, the memories crashing into him all at once.
Chloe’s hand presses to his cheek, her other comes to rest upon his hand; the ring is back on the fourth finger. He swallows hard. “I never stopped wearing it,” she says softly. “I had to fix the clasp though.”
All that time. All those years. And still she’s here. Still choosing him. Their eyes lock; her love shines brightly at him in her ocean blue eyes, and Lucifer wonders what he’d done to deserve it.
Gently, he closes the distance between them again.
“Please, Lucifer,” she whispers. “I want you. I need you. Now.”
He needs her too. More than anything else. More than he needs to breathe.
Making quick work of her zipper, Lucifer drags the jeans and panties she’s wearing down her legs, pausing only to pull off her sensible brown boots. It makes him smile. His belt is already gone and he doesn’t bother stepping out of his pants. When he looks up, she unclasps her bra and throws it uncaringly away. For a second he stares, she’s naked and breathtaking in front of him, wearing only his necklace and his ring, and then he slides his hands under her thighs, pulling her to the edge of the piano, towards him.
Chloe’s hands run across the muscles of his chest, and when the tip of his co*ck nudges her delicate folds, she grips his sides; the sharp bite of fingernails makes him hiss with pain as it mixes with pleasure. She’s wet, she’s so wet and ready, it nearly overwhelms all his senses, and he isn’t even inside her yet.
Her hands move up, scratching at his skin, and then she’s pulling his face close, crashing their mouths together. Gently, he pushes home. Swallows the moan that rips from her throat at the stretch and fullness. Her legs lock around his hips. He presses his forehead to hers and with one hand, Lucifer cups the back of her neck, but she doesn’t even try to pull away. And then he bottoms out. And everything stops.
Their sharp breathing is loud in the open space of the club. Their noses touch as they stare into each other’s eyes; the reality of being together finally sinks in. She feels so good, surrounds him completely, and his self control is faltering already. He has no idea who makes the first tiny move, but then she’s gasping, and he’s moaning, and her fingers slide into his hair, dragging his mouth back to her, and he’s helpless to resist the pull to move.
She makes desperate little sounds, each of them like a knife to his heart, like a balm to his heart. He swallows them, pulling out and pushing in, long and deep and slow, shivering with sensations. With want. With love.
His skin burns everywhere she touches him. Setting his nerve endings alive, the way only she can. Only ever her. She soothes the raw wounds with every caress of her fingertips, every kiss, and for a brief moment Lucifer wonders just how many it'll take before he's whole again. But then he hits that spot inside her and it makes her keen, and everything else ceases to exist, even time itself. There’s only Chloe and him, moving and breathing and loving together, again and again, as one; and the sounds of their bodies meeting together, a symphony of their own making.
He falters, close, and slides one hand between them to rub her cl*t in tight circles. Her head rolls back with a breathy moan, exposing her long neck, and he claims it with his mouth.
“You’re here,” he murmurs. Repeats it like a mantra, over and over again. He’s not alone anymore, never alone anymore, because she’s here, she wants to be here. “I’m never. Letting. You. Go. Again,” he says, kissing his way up to her mouth, punctuating every word with a thrust, a slide of his fingers against her bundle of nerves. He knows she’s close by the noises she makes, by the way she kisses him back, and pants, and clenches tight, drawing a desperate sound deep from inside him.
“I love you. So much. Always loved you,” she gasps out before everything shatters.
She sobs as she comes all around him. Her arms tighten, hands grip his hair to the point of pain, and then he’s following her over the edge, falling into a million pieces, trembling and gasping and moaning his relief aloud into her neck.
Still shaking, Chloe clings to him as he clings to her, trying to get closer, under each other’s skin. To become one being. Through the storm of emotions racing through his body and mind, and tears stinging his tightly shut eyes, all Lucifer can hear is her voice. Whispering his name like a promise.
“Never letting you go,” he makes a vow into her neck, voice rough with feelings and determination. “Never ever again.”
And for the first time in millions of years he feels alive.
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