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Chloe ducks back under the crime scene tape after speaking with a witness in time to see the forensics team packing up their kits. As usual, Lucifer is the center of attention—he’s currently lamenting to a bored-looking officer about ‘the unimaginative murder’ that took place here last night. Most people are used to Lucifer's shenanigans by now, and barely bat an eye.
Ignoring the commentary, Chloe scans the room. Dan passes her on the way out with a reminder he’s taking Trix this weekend, and claps Lucifer on the shoulder in a casual goodbye.
It should be nothing, just a friendly show of affection.
Lucifer freezes. Just for a second, barely a blink, his entire frame goes taut. Anyone not watching, anyone who doesn’t know him, wouldn’t notice at all. Then he’s moving again, tugging at his cufflinks.
“Detective Douche, always a pleasure. Do take care not to pull any muscle patting yourself on the back for a job well done.”
Dan rolls his eyes and leaves, unfazed. Chloe frowns, the tiniest wrinkle forming between her brows. She’s seen it before, dozens of times over the years—that momentary stiffness whenever someone touches him without warning. It’s easy enough to write off, which she has, more than once. She formed several theories ranging from a bad childhood to absent or abusive parents. It’s a story she knows all too well. That was before she learned he really is the Devil.
But the look in his eyes isn’t annoyance. It’s...something else. A look she’s never been able to quite work out.
Later, at the precinct, they pore over evidence together. Chloe slides a photo across the desk towards him, their hands brushing as she withdraws. Lucifer stills. Not the faint recoil she expected. He goes utterly still, like a wild animal caught off-guard.
Then, after a beat of hesitation, he leans into the contact. His hand slides forward a couple inches to brush against hers instead of pulling away, prolonging the moment.
Chloe notices that, too.
She doesn’t move, pretending to scan the photo again, while his hand lingers against hers for a few seconds longer than necessary. Finally, he withdraws, clearing his throat as though nothing at all happened.
But she can’t seem to let it go.
For a long time, she assumed his skittishness around casual affection is because of human baggage. An abusive father, perhaps. His mother leaving. Something he didn’t like to talk about. The only times he ever mentioned his family, he didn’t paint them in the best light, and Chloe saw the scars on his back early on. Scars he said were related to his father, which only cemented her later theories.
Recently, ever since his return to Hell after the demon revolt, a new idea has begun to form. Particularly since he’s started opening up about his past.
The Devil. King of Hell. Fallen archangel. Whatever title applies to him, it all means one thing: he lived millennia without anyone touching him like this. Sure, there was the sex. Endless, meaningless flings. But real contact? Affection? Comfort? That’s entirely different.
She thinks back to moments that suddenly take on new meaning. The first time she touched his bare skin, his scars, and he whipped around like a viper and gripped her wrist so hard it bordered on painful. Then he fled back to the sanctity of his closet to actually put on clothes.
When she hugged him that morning over egg sandwiches, after he said he thought her father would be proud of her—he went stiff as a board, like he had no idea how to respond. After a few seconds, he relaxed, hugging her back and pressing his cheek to her hair.
The way he skittered away from Trixie every time she tried to hug him early on, and later, how he held his arms out to the sides until it was over. Though, admittedly, that could be because Trixie is a child and the Devil has an aversion to human spawn. Then again, he does the same thing with Ella.
But even the most innocent touches—a hand on his arm or shoulder, a pat on the back—always drew that subtle tightening of muscles. More than once, she’s also seen a look in his eyes like he thought he was about to be attacked, especially if the touch came from behind without warning.
He isn’t used to it. He genuinely doesn’t know how to respond.
And yet, here, now, with her hand against his, he hasn’t pulled away. He leaned closer.
“Lucifer,” she says softly, studying him.
He looks up, raising an eyebrow, all polished charm. “Yes, Detective? Do tell me you’ve unearthed another clue hidden within that dreadful photograph. Or are you merely enjoying the proximity of my devilishly good looks?”
Chloe almost smiles. The deflection makes her heart squeeze. His usual armor. Or maybe he isn’t even aware of what just happened. It honestly wouldn’t surprise her. She doesn’t push. Not yet.
“Nothing,” she says, leaning back in her chair, but her gaze stays on him a second too long. “Just...thinking.”
“Well, do be careful with that, Detective. Thinking often leads to worrying, and you’re entirely too wrinkle-free to start down that road.” He flashes her a grin, but there's a softness in his eyes she hasn’t seen before, as though he knows she noticed something.
Chloe lets it rest there. She doesn’t need to call him out on it. But the thought roots itself firmly in her chest.
Lucifer Morningstar isn’t afraid of touch. He’s starved for it.
And for the first time, she realizes she might be the only person in the world who can give him what he needs.
From the time she was young, Chloe has always been physically affectionate with the people she loves. It’s just part of who she is. She grew up with two parents who brushed a kiss to her head for a job well done, or hugged her before bed, or always did something to demonstrate she was loved. And she and Dan both make sure to do the same with Trixie, so she knows the same.
She doesn’t even think about it anymore; it’s second nature to pat a friend’s shoulder or reach for their arm. Granted, she isn’t nearly as open about it as Ella, but she always tries to find some small way to show people she cares.
Maybe that’s why the realization about Lucifer hits her so hard. Because for her, physical affection means love. For humans, that’s what it means. But Lucifer isn’t human; he’s a celestial being, and his upbringing (or what amounts to one) was...substantially different.
Because it means he wasn’t shown affection when he was younger—not by his parents, and probably not by most of his siblings. She doesn’t know how old he was when he was banished from Heaven, but she suspects it was in his more formative years. It would go a long to explaining why he doesn’t understand basic emotions like friendship or love.
Tonight, the apartment is unusually quiet without Trixie’s chatter filling the space. Chloe ordered takeout earlier, and now the cartons sit half-empty on the coffee table beside a bottle of wine from Lux’s cellars. The only light comes from the lamp in the corner and the flicker of the TV, some old movie playing more for background than attention.
Lucifer is stretched out on the couch beside her, legs crossed at the ankle, jacket discarded over the armrest. He looks impossibly at home and relaxed. He isn’t trying to fill the silence or entertain or be the center of attention; he’s just...existing.
Chloe’s gaze lingers on him longer than she intended. The memory of that moment earlier in the precinct is still playing in her mind: the way he leaned into her hand instead of pulling away. Such a small thing, but not for him.
Another night pops into her thoughts—the night shortly after his return from Hell, back when she was still reeling from the miracle revelation. The way he looked at her when she kissed him, as if he’d spent those thousands of years thinking about nothing but that, and didn’t believe he’d ever experience it. He was trembling slightly after that kiss, she felt it.
Or the way she’ll cup his cheek in her hand and he leans into her palm.
A thousand other instances come flooding back, and it breaks her heart a little imagining how lonely he must have been in his life. Another thing he’d never admit.
On impulse, Chloe shifts, her fingers brushing through his hair to test the idea. As expected, he goes still. His eyes flutter closed, lips parting with a quiet, startled breath. And then, to her shock and absolute delight, he lets out the faintest sound, low and content, like a purr.
She presses her lips against a laugh. The Devil, undone by a simple touch, sounding like a cat curling into sunlight. It’s a comparison he would absolutely hate, which makes it all the more endearing. She lets her hand trail again, making it seem absent as she combs through silky strands. Lucifer tips his head subtly into her touch, lashes still resting against his cheeks. Every inch of his usually poised, untouchable frame has gone languid, melting into her couch as if gravity is pulling him down.
How long has he been waiting for something this simple?
She experiments, tracing her fingertips lightly down his arm where it rests on the cushion between them. He shivers, the sound that leaves his throat halfway between a sigh and a hum. Encouraged, Chloe lets her hand drift across his back in gentle strokes. His posture shifts instantly—shoulders lowering, tension draining away as though she’s brushing it out of him with each pass. His entire body leans slightly closer, seeking her out without realizing it.
Chloe swallows against the ache in her chest. Images she doesn’t want but can’t avoid creep in: Lucifer on that throne in Hell, alone. Centuries, millennia, passing with no one daring to reach for him. Touch, if it came, was power or lust, never comfort. Never love.
Now here he is, melting under her hands like he’s been waiting lifetimes for this. Because, she thinks, he has.
Lucifer cracks one eye open, perhaps sensing the weight of her thoughts. “If I didn’t know any better,” he murmurs in a low voice, “I’d say you were attempting to seduce me, Detective.”
As if she’d have to actually attempt.
“Or maybe I just like touching you,” she replies, scratching her nails lightly against his scalp.
He hums contentedly. “Yes, well, who could blame you?” he says on a sigh.
She gives him a faint smile and turns her gaze back to the television, but keeps her fingers in his hair. He sighs again, almost boneless now, and she can feel the vibration of another faint purr rumbling in his chest.
It’s ridiculous. And completely, heartbreakingly beautiful.
She doesn’t mention what she’s actually doing, unsure how to really explain it to him. Besides, if she says any of it aloud, that he’s touch-starved, that he leaned into her like someone dying of thirst finally given water, he’d shut down faster than she can blink. He’d scoff, deny, twist the words into innuendo. But she doesn’t need him to admit it. The way he melts under her touch is confession enough.
While she knows she can’t make up for all he’s been through—how could she?—maybe this, offering him affection could go a long way to easing him into the idea. That he’s cared for, that he’s loved. That he isn’t alone anymore, and if she has her way, he never will be again.
The next few days confirm it wasn’t her imagination. It wasn’t her own ego convincing her she’s more important than she thought.
It starts small, at another crime scene. Officers flit around the taped-off alley while Lucifer prowls at her side, tossing out inappropriate commentary as usual. Chloe is barely listening, distracted by the evidence bag in her hand. On a whim, she lets her free hand reach out until their pinkies curl around each other, just for a few seconds with their colleagues milling about.
Lucifer startles, barely a flicker of widened eyes and a pause, but then his face splits into the most unguarded grin she’s ever seen. It isn’t one of his usual smirks or a devil-may-care grin, but something pure, bright, almost boyish.
As if she did something infinitely more significant than linking their fingers for a few seconds.
Chloe has to look away before she gives herself away too.
Later that afternoon, they’re sitting in her car, stalled at a long red light. The silence between them is unusually comfortable, filled only by the hum of the engine and radio playing softly.
Chloe glances sideways, then stretches across the console and laces her fingers through his fully. Lucifer stiffens, blinking rapidly as though he was a million miles away. He looks down at their hands with a slight frown, and she nearly pulls away, thinking she’s pushed too far even though it’s not the first time they’ve held hands. But then his hand tightens around hers, anchoring their joined fist against his thigh.
She turns her head slightly, catching him in profile. His eyes are suspiciously bright in the fading light. He clears his throat loudly, looking anywhere but at her.
“Well, this is hardly proper driving etiquette, Detective. One must keep both hands on the wheel, lest the humans around us meet their untimely demise.”
“Um, this coming from the man who doesn’t seem to know where the brake pedal is? Also, I’ve never seen you with both hands on the wheel.”
He smirks. “I happen to possess celestial reflexes that are far superior to a human’s,” he says primly.
“Okay, well, we’re at a red light, so...”
“Well,” he murmurs, squeezing her hand once more before releasing it as the light turns green, “I suppose that is acceptable, then.”
Chloe rolls her eyes, lips twitching. “Glad you approve.”
Smiling to herself, she pretends not to notice how carefully he places his freed hand over his thigh afterwards, as if memorizing the ghost of her touch.
The next morning, Chloe wakes to find herself entirely ensnared.
Lucifer wrapped himself around her in sleep, one arm slung across her waist, a leg hooked possessively over hers. His face is buried against her neck, warm breath ghosting over her skin. He looks...content. Peaceful, even.
She tries to shift but stops herself when he murmurs something unintelligible, tightening his grip around her like an octopus refusing to release its catch.
“Adorable,” she whispers, amused, running a hand gently over the arm locked around her middle.
She knows he’d hate that comparison too—Lucifer Morningstar, the glamorous Devil, reduced to a clingy sea creature. But in the quiet glow of the morning, she doesn’t care. He’s soft and vulnerable and hers. She lies still, letting him hold her as long as he needs to.
In the evening, she finds him at the piano rather than down in Lux with the party.
The music is low and aching, something that sounds like longing put to sound. He hadn’t heard her come in, too lost in the music, so she stops to listen for a moment before stepping farther in. His head is bent over the keys, eyes closed, and there's an expression on his face that looks almost pained. Chloe stands behind him and rests a hand on his shoulder.
Lucifer flinches slightly, then stills, as if realizing it’s only her. He looks up at her, lips parting, probably with a quip to deflect, but seems to change his mind at the last second and says nothing. Instead, his fingers shift, and the melody brightens, lifts, as though the simple weight of her hand turned the song towards the light.
Keeping her hand in place, she sits down on the bench beside him, letting her hand slide lower, between where his wings are hidden. She can feel the tension draining from him.
Chloe blinks hard, emotions pricking behind her eyes. He hasn’t said a word. He doesn’t need to. She understands now.
Somewhere along the way, she’s become his anchor.
A few days later, following a long case, Chloe is in the penthouse unwinding in the corner of the couch. Her shoes are kicked off, and a glass of wine sits forgotten on the table.
Lucifer is moving with his usual restless energy—straightening his record collection, fussing with a decanter that doesn’t need fussing. But eventually, he drifts towards her, his jacket abandoned somewhere along the way.
Without a word, he collapses gracefully onto the couch, sprawling until his head is resting in her lap. Chloe blinks down at him, startled. Of all the postures she expected from him, this wasn’t one. He doesn’t typically seek out affection on his own.
Yet here he is, a man who revels in control and posture and presentation, placing himself in the most vulnerable position possible: head tipped back, throat exposed, body stretched out with no defenses at all. In her lap, like he owns it.
Which, in a way, he does.
She almost makes a joke about it. But then she sees his eyes, half-lidded and soft, right before he turns his face and nuzzles against her belly.
So Chloe says nothing. She simply lifts a hand and cards her fingers through his hair, nails scratching lightly at his scalp in the way he likes. Lucifer exhales, a sound like surrender. His eyes close fully, and she can feel his faint, disbelieving smile through her shirt. Like he still can’t believe he gets to have this.
Her chest aches worse than ever. She smooths his hair back from his forehead, then traces her fingertips down the sharp angle of his cheekbones. He leans into it, tentatively curling his arms around her waist, and Chloe realizes she’s never seen him like this, even in sleep—completely unguarded, vulnerable, at peace.
Minutes pass, her hand moving in slow patterns: hair, temple, cheek, jaw. Every time she pauses, he makes the faintest sound of protest, almost subconsciously, like a child half-asleep unwilling to lose the comfort.
And then he falls asleep.
Chloe stares down at him, floored. This is Lucifer—the Devil, the King of Hell, the man the world has feared for millennia. And instead of wreaking the havoc they expect, he’s asleep in her lap, trusting her with every inch of himself. Terrifying to the world, yes. But to her? He’s just a man who craves touch so desperately he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
The irony twists something deep inside her. How many centuries has he endured without this? How many lifetimes has he gone untouching and untouched, playing the role forced on him while starving for something this simple?
Her throat tightens. She thinks back to all the times he stiffened under casual touch, how she mistook it for arrogance or discomfort. But no, it had been confusion. Fear. He hadn’t known how to receive it because he’d never been given it.
And now, when he finally has it in spades, he’s clinging to it as though it’s oxygen.
Chloe’s hand drifts across his temple again, tracing the edge of short hairs, her touch a promise she doesn’t need to speak aloud. As long as he’ll let her, he will have this, have her, have love. And the people who played a role in not giving him that when he was younger—his family—well, if she ever meets them, there are many things she intends to say. Possibly with a fist to the face—or her gun.
Lucifer stirs after a while, caught somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. His lashes flutter, and in a voice husky with drowsiness, he mutters, “Don’t stop.”
Her lips curve, warmth spreading through her chest. She doesn’t tease him, though she could. She doesn’t make a joke or call attention to how devastatingly endearing he is in this moment. She simply keeps her hand moving, stroking through his hair, brushing her thumb along his temple.
“Don’t worry,” she whispers, so softly she isn’t sure he’ll even hear. “I won’t.”
Lucifer sighs, melting deeper into her lap, his breathing evening out again.
Chloe leans back into the cushions, looking out at the city beyond the windows, her hand never leaving him. Whatever the world thinks of him—Devil, monster, temptation incarnate—she knows the truth. He’s touch-starved, love-starved, desperate for real connection.
She might not be able to erase his past, but she can ensure his future is nurturing—and she will. Every chance she gets.