The Beginning of the End

5. Talking Is Hard

It felt like Chloe would blink and minutes would pass. Before she realized it, Lucifer was shutting his engine off after parking in the Lux parking garage. He was hurriedly making his way out of the car - no doubt to get back in his own clothes - and Chloe scrambled to keep up behind him; it still seemed like her thoughts were light years away.

Once they got off the elevator and into the penthouse, he excused himself to his closet. He didn't ask her to make herself at home nor invited her pour herself a drink. To Chloe, it was odd and she felt funny standing in the extravagant home for the first time in a while.

To Lucifer, it didn't seem necessary to re-extend the pleasantries. He thought it would be obvious for her to know that she was always welcome there.

Chloe walked around the large space while he dressed. She smiled at the bar, images of him pouring so many drinks there warmed her to her fingers and toes. She rounded on the piano which made her remember coming to see him after Father Frank died, and she found him playing Knocking on Heaven's Door. As she glanced up, she saw the entrance to his bedroom from just over the edge of the baby grand. Chloe laughed and shook her head as the memory of a confidently naked Lucifer stood before her with the cheekiest smile in existence.

He had tried so hard to seduce her when they first started working together, although she supposes, it never really stopped. He just became a little bit more sensitive to her feelings concerning sex. She remembers him slowly turning, revealing to her the large, ravaged scars on his back. He had been shamelessly honest with her back then and she thought he was using a metaphors. He had seemed so confused when she wanted to touch them gently, with care, instead of in a purely sexual way. That was the first time she had seen the vulnerable side of Lucifer Morningstar.

Chloe looked down. Sometime during the memory, she had started rubbing her right wrist where he had grabbed her and asked her not to touch him.

She shook her head and, with a deep breath, cleared herself of the memory.

She turned around and saw the golden couches. Her breath hitched. So much had happened in this space that it was hard to describe anything she may be feeling about them now. 

There was, first, the night she showed up here drunk after Dan broke up with her (he later told her it was Malcolm who had stolen his phone and texted Chloe, but it ended up not mattering anyway). She remembered Lucifer leading her over to the couches and she admitted something about her mom and fell asleep, not remembering anything until she woke up the next morning.

Secondly, she remembered, fondly, being here with Linda on one of her birthdays. It had been the best birthday ever, getting pay-back for Lucifer's shenanigans that always ended up hurting her, but Chloe had the time of her life dancing around drunk with her friend in their unknowing host's clothes, peeping through his drawers. 

The last reason (which drained all good feeling from her) was that they all of a sudden became her safe thing to look at when she came to explain to Lucifer why she and Father Kinley were trying to manipulate him. He was hurt and betrayed and begged her to tell him why. She screamed at him, "Because I'm terrified!"

Chloe closed her eyes and hung her head, ashamed at everything she had done after finding out the truth. She couldn't help but feel like she deserved all of this: Lucifer leaving with no certainty of returning, how terribly she missed him, and now everything hitting her like a freight train of memories and emotions.

The image of his devil face turning around to look at her, asking her if she could accept him like this hit her next. Back then, she didn't know. At least now, she was one hundred percent certain that she could handle being there for all of it, even if the unknown scared her. Chloe loved the person underneath all the scary. She was afraid of losing him to the darkness.