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Ella’s hangover is the mother of all hangovers she’s ever had.
Her head feels like it’s in the middle of hosting the Tokyo Grand Prix. Every sound is like a Formula 1 racer shooting past her on the track. She doesn’t think she’s going to survive today alone, which is why she’s gathered reinforcements. She’s nursing a warm cup of mocha with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles, courtesy of Lucifer, to stave off every stab in her cerebellum, but it’s slow-going. Her sunglasses are also an awesome creative choice, a real ten out of ten. Her secret treasure is having all the lab blinds closed but being able to peek out of the one broken slat no one else knows about. It gives her a not-too-shabby view of the entire bullpen from her stool. Ella rarely watches from the sidelines, but the bustling precinct does totally feel like looking into an aquarium, or, like examining cells under her microscope. Like she’s a part of, but apart.
Ella’s stomach churns. She doesn’t want to take the time to study whether her inner contents’ discomfort is really in revulsion to the amount of tequila she had last night or, the comparing-humans-to-cells-under-her-microscope comment, her… her darkness. Maybe.
She diverts her attention outwards instead, a typical Ella-move these days. Through the broken slat, she can see detectives and unis milling about, some of her favorite people to talk to hanging around outside by the coffee machine. They’re smiling, making small talk, laughing. She knows she should go out. She sometimes wants to. But it’s very different when she’s around. She knows too well by now the solemn hush she gets when she’s with them. It’s been three weeks since Ella stood with her colleagues over Pierce’s body in a cryptozoologist’s wet dream of a crime scene. The Loft Pillow-Fight Incident. She’d been removed from the scene before she could investigate the place filled with feathered mysteries. Conflict of interest sort of thing.
From the safety of her lab, Ella’s gaze moves across the precinct. It finally rests on Dan. Her friend sits alone at his desk, an invisible radius of ‘Do Not Approach’ about him. Everyone in the precinct somehow seems to have gotten the memo. They’ve left Dan mostly to himself, even after the funeral. Dan looks absolutely shattered every day he insists on coming into work. His bobbleheads aren’t in their right places, some collecting dust beneath his desk. He’s clicking away at something on his desktop monitor, but his eyes have a hundred-yard stare like he’s not really reading, just existing to breath another moment.
Ella turns away. Her fingers fly to the cross around her neck. Her lip wobbles. She bites down on it to tamp down the rising emotion in her, her head screeching in protest. Dan was there with Ella when she watched the coroner unzip Pierce’s body bag in the morgue. Ella doesn’t want to think about the cold detachment to which they both looked down at their ex-boss’ face for the last time. You know, the one she’d tried to ship with her best friend. A murderer.
The scientist pulls in a breath. Anyway. She’s going to stop right there. The whole affair had been dispatched to the FBI faster than she could binge the entire series of Star Trek. She tries not to hover over Dan, because she knows he hates it. But it’s hard. Still, Ella doesn’t go outside.
Then there’s Lucifer. Looking like the poster child of ‘Sleep is for the Weak’ and ‘Abandoned Puppy’.
Huddled atop her stool, Ella doesn’t look at Lucifer sitting at Chloe’s desk. Well, not really. Like, more in the corner of her eye, not staring, type of way. Like, if she looks to much, she’ll jinx it and there’ll be a train wreck. The fragile routine Ella and Lucifer have built in the past three weeks will be pulled from under them and they won’t stop falling afterwards.
They don’t really look at each other anymore, ever since Charlotte. She doesn’t want to see the face. He’s wearing that face now as he fusses over paperwork Ella’s never seen him touch. He wears that face when he walks her to her uber every time she gets drunk at Lux. He wears that face when she hugs him, leaning in when he seemed so allergic before. Ella can’t remember him not wearing that face. Maybe since Pierce. Maybe before that. But ever since Chloe left, it’s gotten worse. Every day he comes in and fiddles with the knick-knacks on Chloe’s desk, it’s like another piece of him gets chipped away. It’s as if he no longer expects her to come in, but coming to the precinct plays such a part of his daily routine he doesn’t know what to do without it. Ella doesn’t look at him. It would be like looking at herself in the mirror, like she knows she hasn’t been doing properly when she’s putting on her rave makeup instead of going to church. Worshipping the dancefloor instead of a God she no longer wants to believe in.
And Lucifer just drinks. And sings. And drinks. They don’t judge each other for their less than stellar choices in the last three weeks, and that’s all Ella wants. She doesn’t look at Lucifer.
It hurts.
She looks at him. He’s still sorting his way through Chloe’s old paperwork, something he’s been doing and re-doing ever since he refused to work with anyone else other than the Detective. His hair is still meticulously combed and gelled back. His suit cuts his body into perfect lines, like always. He looks deceptively well put-together. If Ella were anybody else, she wouldn’t have noticed the permanent frown that has taken a seat on his face, or the bone-deep tiredness that slowed his movements, taking the wind out of his eye-catching sails. Unlike Dan, people still flit about him, waving and chatting with him. It’s like he can’t help but draw attention, even if he doesn’t want it. Her colleagues don’t notice how after every chat, Lucifer pulls in his elbows and hands closer and closer to himself, as if he’s trying to make himself small. But he turns on like a lightbulb again every time someone comes over and flips his switch. He’s one of Ella’s online avatars, a fictitious profile, put upon like he’s been conditioned to never be known by others, least of all himself. But Ella’s seen him after he leaves, when he asks Ella if she’s heard word of Chloe’s return yet. She sees him after when she sits in his club and he sings that song. I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo. Ella doesn’t want to think about how much she understands the feeling.
But to all other external onlookers, Lucifer looks fine.
And that’s the problem. Ella’s doing her not-looking-at-Lucifer-thing when she sees a uni drop off a bag of cheese puffs on Chloe’s desk, trailing a hand up Lucifer’s arm. From where Ella’s sitting, the uni’s back is facing her. She must say something because Lucifer laughs.
And Dan loses it.
Ella is too focused on Lucifer pulling his arm gingerly away to notice Dan storming towards them. He reaches the desk, then sweeps all of the paperwork and precinct snacks off of Chloe’s table in one swoop. Everything lands with a harsh crash. Carefully sorted papers fly. A coffee mug cracks wetly against the cement. An unused vase shatters into a thousand pieces. Then Dan is shouting.
“—the hell is wrong with you? Laughing and smiling like you own the goddamn place! This is Chloe’s desk. She doesn’t need some lying whack job who lets criminals run free invading her space! She clearly doesn’t want you here, otherwise she would have told you she was leaving! Why can’t you take a hint, huh?”
Dan looms over the desk, shoulders squaring and neck muscles jumping. The entire precinct has gone silent. Ella scrambles off her stool. Her eyes don’t leave the commotion. She has to get out there fast, before they get into a fight. Before Lucifer loses his temper. What if one of them throws a punch in the middle of the precinct? She’s about to stop eyeballing the crack through her blinders to leap out her door, when she stops, staring.
Lucifer doesn’t spit back or stand up to square up to Dan. Lucifer just… sits there. Gaze lowered. Dan is still shouting.
“I don’t even want to imagine what it says about you, that Chloe would rather be with a crime boss than spend a single moment with you.”
Lucifer’s shoulders hunch forward and his eyes lower to his shoes. His lip trembles. He looks like he’s bracing for a punch. He pulls his other arm into his lap to hide it underneath the desk. If the entire bullpen was quiet before, it’s gone full radio silent. Ella can hear her heart beating in her chest.
“What, too exposed to lay that snark into me? Where’re all your jokes now?” Dan snarls.
Lucifer doesn’t respond. He looks like he’s turned to stone. Dan lets out a growl at his silence. The detective shoves the desk aside. It groans and screeches, its legs torn slightly off their screws as it skids across cement. Lucifer shrinks back. Ella scrabbles for some semblance of sense in her brain at what she’s seeing, but it doesn’t make sense.
“You know, when I first saw you, I thought you were an asshole, but then I realized Chloe kept you around because you were useful. At some point, I was even rooting for you. But you haven’t helped at all. All you’ve managed to do is make everyone’s work here harder, especially Chloe’s. You don’t take anything seriously and that’s why nothing matters to you. It’s about time that Chloe’s finally realized you don’t matter to her. You must really have some huge-ass delusion to think she’s going to bother coming back with you still in the precinct! There’s a reason she told all of us not to tell you where she went!” Dan growls. “What are you waiting for, a pink slip? Get the fuck out of here!”
Lucifer finally looks up at Dan with a strange, cracked-open stare. Like he’s an animal being compressed into the back of a crush-cage and he can’t fight back. Or like he’s been asked to walk the plank. Like he’s been told he’s going to Fall.
Ella feels her stomach roil, her skin breaking out into sweat. No one is doing or saying anything out in the bullpen. It’s just Dan. Not even the uni who gave Lucifer cheese puffs speaks up. Ella doesn’t even think. She pulls away from the window and throws the door open. She sprints out, her brain and her heart thrumming with her buzzing blood. Her heart stutters when she sees Lucifer sway, like he’s trying to stand to do as he’s told, but his legs won’t cooperate. He drops heavily back into his seat.
“What the hell is wrong with you, pendejo?” Ella wedges herself between them just as Dan advances on Lucifer.
She pushes Dan away, channeling years of wrangling four brothers, her skin feeling hot. Ella’s hands ball into fists and her heart hammers against her sternum. Dan steps back on one foot. His eyes are wide at her unexpected intrusion, but he still looks livid.
“Ella, stay out of this,” he warns, his arm reaching out to push her to the side.
“Don’t tell me what I’m staying out of!” she shrugs his hand off. Yanking her sneaker off her foot, she hits Dan with it repeatedly on the shoulder. “You take all that back! Right. Now! Tonto!”
She’s mad. She’s so mad. She hates how her voice cracks as she’s yelling at him. How could Dan say such horrible things to their friend?
Her outburst causes the precinct to finally snap into action. Some officers move to pull Dan away, blocking his line of sight from Lucifer.
Dan is protesting, “What is with you people taking his side?”
But eventually, as the officers mutter to him and point at the interim-acting lieutenant staring at the commotion with a raised brow from the stair railing of her office, Dan relents. Ella has no time to feel self-conscious, as Dan lets them lead him away to cool off, but not before he tosses another gem over his shoulder, “Go to Hell, Lucifer.”
“Hey, no mames! Watch your mouth!” Ella shouts after him as Dan is pulled into an interrogation room.
She watches, stuffing her hands into her jeans to keep them from trembling, as two officers walk in after him. Her eyes don’t leave the disappearing officers until the door shuts behind them. The rest of the bullpen hovers concernedly over her, but they don’t come too close. Ella realizes her body is still squared, her chest rising and falling. Everything in her head and chest feel like they’ve been stuffed unpleasantly to the brim with warm cotton. She also needs to cool off. She takes a deep breath. And another.
“Everything okay now?” asks Lieutenant Cooper from the railing.
“A-All good here!” Ella blows out in a gusty breath, feeling her cheeks flare hot. “Yep. Yeppidy-do!”
Lieutenant Cooper frowns at her weirdness, but she gives a nod and pads away. Ella wonders if the lieutenant will ask Dan to take some of his bereavement leave after he cools off. She really hopes so. Everyone seems to be giving Ella a wide berth. Blushing when she realizes she’s still wearing her sunglasses, making her expression unreadable, she takes them off. Light stabs into her skull and she rocks a little on her heels. Hey eyes blink away the blue spots. She pockets her glasses and makes a mental note to never break up a fight with sunglasses and a hangover again. She blows out another long breath. Her heartrate feels like it’s gradually slowing to a normal rhythm.
Then she turns back towards Lucifer.
She hasn’t noticed he’s stood up and moved away while he was behind her. He’s absently clutching the packet of cheese puffs in one hand, like it’s a raft and he’s in the middle of the sea. He’s trying to right Chloe’s desk from its lopsided state. Lucifer doesn’t look at anyone, the table his sole focus. He looks out-of-sorts, wide-eyed and graceless as he tugs the table back to its usual place, the legs giving a creaky groan.
“Hey, Lucifer, buddy?” Ella approaches him, trying to see more of his face, or at least enter his line of sight.
“Miss Lopez,” he hums absently, eyes assessing the ground covered in scattered papers and glass shards. “It appears I’ve quite literally crashed the party.”
Ella swallows at his words, how he can’t seem to look at her in the eye. Oh. Right. They were doing the no-eye-contact-or-they-will-cry-thing. Glass crunches under both their shoes, and before Ella can protest, Lucifer is crouching down and picking up the paperwork off the floor. The cheese puffs drop to the floor like they’re an afterthought. Shards slide treacherously off the pages as Lucifer sweeps a hand over them to brush them off.
“Wait, wait, Lucifer!” Ella hurries to crouch down next to him, their shoulders brushing. She lightly touches his elbow to dissuade him. “Hold on, you’re totally going to skewer yourself!”
It must be something she says, because his gaze darkens.
“No, I’m not,” Lucifer says, adding another paper to the pile. “I will always be ‘just fine’ if she’s not here.”
Whatever that means. Ella bites her lip.
“Look, I don’t know what happened between you two, but Chloe will be back soon. She won’t be happy if she sees that you injured yourself,” Ella reasons.
His eyes stare down blankly. He doesn’t look at her still.
“I doubt that. It’s just me.”
His voice is pitched low, almost ashamed of the admission. Ella gapes, trying to process his words.
“Well, you’ll never be ‘just you’ to me,” she juts her chin out, feeling the back of her eyes burn.
He shows barely any signs of having heard her. She wishes he had. Maybe she’ll get a chance to repeat it again, when he’s not so preoccupied. Lucifer continues miraculously navigating through the glass without getting hurt, but Ella figures it’s just a matter of time before his attention slips and he does. He’s gathering them with a frantic quality about his movements, like he can’t gather them fast enough. She places a hand on his arm again, her lips pursing and the space between her eyebrows creasing. He’s being so stubborn about this.
“Hey. Hey. Let clean up duty deal with this, they’ve got the right kind of protective gear—”
“No!” Lucifer’s eyes lunge up to catch hers, finally, finally meeting her gaze.
She can’t appreciate it though, because he’s staring down, down, down into her in utter misery like she’s in the bottom of a well. It’s the face, full force, like he wants to ask for help but he doesn’t think he’ll get any. It’s the face that simultaneously spurs her to comfort him as much as it ties her arms behind her back because he won’t tell her or anyone what’s wrong.
“No,” his voice cracks. “No, I have to fix it, or she won’t…”
He trails off.
“Chloe won’t what?” Ella asks softly. “You know what Dan said isn’t—”
“She mustn’t know I was here,” Lucifer shakes his head, his eyes staring through her, a frazzled look about him. “If anything is out of place she’ll notice, she’ll know I was here. She’ll know it was my fault. What if she comes back and sees I’ve ruined her work?”
“Dude, dude. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s Dan’s. He was totally out of line,” Ella says, placing her hand on top of his and pulling it away from the glass. “Dan will just have to tell Chloe himself.”
She watches with rising alarm as Lucifer doesn’t calm. He grows more panicked, words flowing without catching his breath, “I didn’t actually mean to upset Daniel this time, I swear to Dad, but if the Detective ever finds out, it could be the one thing…”
He doesn’t finish, because he starts cramming more papers into his hands and it’s like he can’t waste any time speaking. Lucifer, who loves to talk. Ella feels her heart squeeze.
She hasn’t missed how Lucifer has the tendency to think everything is his fault and that no one will help him fix them.
“Ok. Ok,” Ella murmurs, reaching for his other hand that she doesn’t have in her grasp, the one that’s reaching for another pile of papers. His attention returns to her, tired and confused. She squeezes both his hands in hers. “Ok. Let’s get Chloe’s desk all cleaned up then, alright buddy?”
Lucifer stares at her like a deer in the headlights. Then, he nods, slowly, like he’s not sure he’s misunderstanding her offer to help. She gives his large hands another squeeze.
“We can do it together, but you gotta wait here until I get the gear,” she stands up from her crouch.
Noticing that some of the unis are still shooting glances at them, she waves her arm at them, “Nothing to see here, folks!”
With some reluctance, the precinct goes back to minding its own business. She gets the protective gloves, broom and pan, and she and Lucifer get to work. It’s slow and meticulous work, but they clean the mess up together amidst the muted bustle of the bullpen and it isn’t so bad. Once they’re done, Lucifer stands up and empties the glass into the nearest trashcan. He frets over the paperwork, tapping them against the desk to at least set them in a straight pile. Ella takes that time to take back some of her own bereavement days, tapping on her phone today’s date into the LAPD’s time-off system. When Ella finally looks up, Lucifer is fussing over a newton’s cradle by inching it slightly to the left before she intervenes.
“Hey, buddy, want to get out of here?” she asks, approaching him again.
Lucifer is hunched over Chloe’s cleaned up desk, staring at it in muted relief.
“…Ok,” he says absently.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that the poor guy’s running on empty. He’s completely checked out now that the perceived danger of Chloe finding her workplace disrupted has been repaired.
“Lucifer, I’m going to drive you home, ok?” the scientist reaches out, slowly telegraphing her movements.
He doesn’t move, so she links her arm around his. She tugs gently, and he shuffles after her. He doesn’t make a sound. It feels so wrong that he’s so quiet and obedient, but she’s not sure she can handle the face again if she isn’t allowed to help, so she keeps leading him to the car park. Her car is in her usual spot, and it’s kind of weird watching Lucifer fold his broad frame into her vehicle for the first time. Her baby is a sight to behold, but it’s nothing like the fast cars she used to steal. To any other onlooker, her Toyota would be quite the severe downgrade. She thinks it helps steer her away from the memories of her wilder days. Well. Wilder until now.
She gets into the other side, starts the engine and peels out of the parking deck. She flips down the sun visor to avoid unnecessary light pain, tempted to put her sunglasses back on. But Lucifer seems shut off enough from his friends that she thinks he could do without them covering her expression. As she hits the interstate freeway, she can’t help but shoot Lucifer occasional side glances. He’s just as silent as he’d been when Dan yelled at him, and when he’d attempted to clean up Dan’s mess, but it’s less frantic now. He’s staring straight ahead at the rows of cars in front of them, his gaze shut down and hollow. It holds none of the usual glimmers of glee that make Ella so happy to see him. Another five minutes go by without any words.
“Is it true?” he asks suddenly, breaking the quiet.
It’s startling in the sense that he seemed so out-of-sorts for most of the drive so far. Ella looks over at Lucifer.
“What is?” she prompts him, turning her eyes back to the car ten feet in front of them.
“That she told all of you not to tell me where she went,” his voice is small.
Ella shoots him another glance. He’s rigid in his seat, back ramrod straight. He’s fiddling with his cufflinks. He doesn’t look at her, just stares out the window. He looks resigned. Ella’s gut knots. She feels guilty, but she also hadn’t wanted to betray either friend’s trust. It appeared Chloe sent both her and Dan the same text. She doesn’t know how else to tell Lucifer, so she says the truth.
“Yeah. I’m sorry,” she whispers.
Lucifer doesn’t say anything for a while. His eyes screw shut, like he’s being fried alive. Then, his expression smoothes out by the time she glances over again as another ten seconds go by with none of his typical humorous comebacks.
“I… I wish I knew why she said that buddy, I really do. I’m sorry I didn’t bring it up, I just figured whatever happened between you two is none of my business unless you wanna share. But like I said, Chloe’ll come back, I know she will. She has a home here,” Ella assures him.
Lucifer makes a pained sound at her last words, strangled in a way that it must have forced its way out of his throat against his will.
“The Detective must really think I’m a monster.”
The despondence in his words makes her freeze. Her hands white-knuckle the steering wheel. She suddenly feels angry again.
“You know what? That is crazy. Ok? What Dan said is totalemente loco! And Chloe, she’ll figure it out, ok? You gotta stop listening to everything people have to say about you, ‘cause not all of it is true. Trust me, I’d know,” Ella goes off, waving one hand and thumping it angrily into her knee with every emphasis. “When I…When I started talking to ghosts and going through some things, they told me I was crazy. They tried to label me with all kinds of judgements, but they never really stuck, you know? I realized the only opinion that mattered when it came to whether I was truly happy with myself was me, yeah?”
Lucifer’s gaze is focused on her, the way it is most of the time when she talks about her latest scientific discoveries. But this time, he doesn’t hum, or give his opinion or compliments. He just stares at her, like he’s hanging onto every word because he has nothing else left.
“Well. You know what they say about the majority opinion and all that,” he says after a while. “And you, Miss Lopez, are everyone’s favorite forensic scientist. Someone reliable, smart and good. No one would ever ask you to leave the LAPD.”
Ella’s about to tell him that that’s very sweet of him, but he goes on, “The Detective is the only partner I am willing to work with. If she no longer wants to work with me, Daniel is right that it is pointless for me to keep coming to the precinct. I’m afraid I’m not very useful to anyone at the moment. Perhaps it’s best if I take the initiative and hand in my two weeks’ notice, so I leave before the Detective has to do additional work on my account upon her return.”
He shifts in his seat, suddenly moving his back away from the seat, like he’s been stung. He licks his lips uncertainly, his eyes flitting about the car, like he’s deliberating whether to share his next words.
“I don’t… I don’t think I can take being kicked out of another home. The best thing to do is leave on my own terms.”
All the anger drains away, and the only thing that’s left in Ella’s internal colander is heartbreak. Lucifer’s palms run up and down his thighs. He still doesn’t look at her, but his lip is shaking again. Ella will never tell Lucifer, but his bottom lip does the same thing as hers does when she’s trying not to cry. It’s the one thing Ella’s mother used to point out to her before never bothering to console her. Ella’s parents weren’t the best, but at least she had abuelita.
“Lucifer, buddy? Can I hold your hand?” she says, and it feels weird without injecting her usual cheer to it, but also realer than when she faked it to her LAPD colleagues these past three weeks. “Sorry, I just can’t hug you right now, driving and all.”
“Yes. You may,” Lucifer makes a sound that suspiciously resembles a sniff, before extending his arm over a little warily, like he expects her to grab his hand and run away with it.
She doesn’t point out he looks like a King extending his arm for a kiss on the hand, because it’s not an appropriate time to poke fun. Slowly, she reaches out and holds his larger hand in between the car seats. She squeezes it.
“I-I’m sorry your parents kicked you out. You didn’t deserve that, no matter what you or they think you did. And you don’t deserve this either. Things are so hard right now for everyone, but it doesn’t mean they have to take it out on you. You and Dan were buddies before… before it all, even though you won’t admit it. It must hurt that he’s so angry with you that he’d say all those horrible things.”
Lucifer stops looking at her again, swallowing, his throat bobbing with discomfort at being laid too bare. He looks like he’s about to disagree, but seems to think better of it and stays silent.
“But you knew Charlotte too. You know you don’t have to just sit there and take it, right? I’m going through it right now too, but you’re always there for me. I’m here for you, you know? You don’t have to leave or keep coming back to the precinct if you don’t want to, ok? I can text you where our crime scenes are, so you’ll have something to do,” Ella says. “It doesn’t matter what Dan or Chloe might say. I want you there if you want to be there, yeah?”
Lucifer stares at her for a long moment, but she can’t see what expression he’s wearing from the focus she has on the road. He eventually answers her.
“No matter what?” his voice is tremulous.
“No matter what,” Ella echoes, her smile wobbly.
His lips purse like he’s holding back from saying more, and she looks quickly just in time to see the face coming back in full force. This time though, he doesn’t tell her what he wants to say. He shakes his head at himself, shivering, and settles back in his seat. Ella elects not to poke him again. They stay silent in the car for the next ten minutes as Ella cruises past a Prius. She doesn’t notice he’s falling asleep until his hand loosens and slips out of hers. His eyelids droop and his shoulders slouch. His posture is a far cry from the rigidness he held earlier, where he stiffened in expectation against the truth about Chloe he knew was coming. He looks as if he is about to nod off and take back the nights he hasn’t let himself rest.
Meanwhile, Ella frowns, fiddling with the leather on the wheel. How seriously has Lucifer taken Dan’s words? What if she drops him off at the penthouse and he does something stupid? She turns her indicator lights on and changes course off the 405.
“We’re going to my house, ok?” she tells him. “Mi casa es tu casa.”
Lucifer seems to be inches away from sleep. His head lolls between the car seat and the window. His breath comes out against the glass like fog. His gaze and lashes dip. He blinks slowly.
“Home?” he mutters tiredly.
“Yeah. Home.”
“…Detective?”
Ella feels like the inside of her throat is filled with rocks. She can’t speak. Her heart hurts. Her eyes feel like they’re bruised underneath. Ella bites her lip to keep it from trembling. It finally clicks for her that Lucifer didn’t mean the precinct was his home. And now Lucifer knows his actual home doesn’t want Ella to tell him where she is. And Ella doesn’t even know why. She feels so useless. Chloe would have so much more to offer Lucifer than drinking, singing and crying.
“No,” Ella says eventually, her breath coming out like someone’s knifed her. It sounds like she might be crying. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just me.”
Her tears bubble over and Ella blinks them away furiously. A warm hand re-settles over hers, the one that’s in her lap. They’re at a red light. Ella turns. Lucifer’s eyes are closed, but his voice is soft.
“Never ‘just you’ to me, Miss Lopez.”
And then he falls asleep.