Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Lucifer characters. Borrowed for fun.

Authors note: Missing scene from 2x17, to fill in some blanks after Lucifer and Maze's trip to Linda's office after their big fight. Feel free to read this as Lucifer/Maze friendship only or as more, but I wrote it a sort of friends with benefits sort of relationship in mind rather than it being instead of Lucifer/Chloe in any way. Hope that makes sense.

Connected (one-shot)

He presses the cool crystal tumbler against his sore temple, rolls the glass back and forth over the bruised skin and sighs as he leans back against the elevator wall. He closes his eyes, just for a second and feels his mental exhaustion seep into his bones. Just because he doesn't necessarily need sleep to function, doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy the peace and quiet of it all… at least when he was lucky enough to get through the night without nightmares. He didn't have time right now though. There was the sword and the key and his mother to deal with. His splitting headache didn't help and deep down he felt a growing ball of panic tightening in the pit of his stomach. If Dr. Linda stayed suspended, how would he know what to do? How would he cope? It was all just awfully inconvenient!

The elevator doors slide open with a soft ping to announce his arrival to his own dim penthouse and he pulls himself away from the wall he's been leaning against and only takes a couple of steps towards his bar, intending to refill his glass, when he realises something isn't the way he expected. He slows his movements down, frowning into the darkness.

"Mum?" he calls out, wincing a bit at how pathetic it sounds for a grown Devil to stand frozen in… not fear of course, but apprehension, in his own home, calling out for his bloody mother like some child. There is no reply and he's about to forget about the whole thing and pour himself that drink when he sees something out of the corner of his eye. Up the couple of Italian marble steps sits his large bed, bathing in the moonlight spilling in through the thin white curtains. Silver ribbons of night light is stretching across the floors and the bed and lucifer gingerly puts down his glass on the bar top, forgetting about his no longer pressing need for hard liquor to treat his not of this world concussion. The moonlight dances across the deep black silk sheets but it's the form between the sheets that has mesmerised him completely. He narrows his darkened eyes at the soft curve of her back where she lies perfectly still, propped up on her side, turned away from him and his curious gaze. His breath catches in his throat, the small gasp he lets out making the woman in his bed shiver. He slowly walks up the stairs, shrugging out of his suit jacket as he goes. He carefully places the discarded garment at the bottom of the bed as he rounds it to come to stand on the other side, looking down at her still form.

Maze isn't asleep, he knows that already before he rounds the bed because if she had been he would have found himself pinned to the wall the second he shouted out for his mother. To say that the demon was a light sleeper was an understatement and he wanted it that way. She attacked first and asked, few if any, questions later. Again, all for him and his eternal safety. No she was awake, even though the stillness of her form could have tricked anyone lesser than himself to think she was dead.

"You're in my bed."

It's a statement, not a question and the warm rumble of his voice is so familiar to the demon on the bed. It's late, they've both had a long and trying day in this hell hole that ironically enough was far away from Hell and she could hear the trace of the scratchy combination of cigarettes and scotch on his vocal chords.

"It's my bed too," she responds quietly after a moment of silence. She still hasn't looked him in the eye and Lucifer tilts his head, trying to really take her in where she lies. Half of her face is buried in his pillow and most of her body covered by his duvet. The moonlight highlights her cheekbone where she lies with her eyes down cast and he sighs.

"Was, occasionally…" he drifts off huskily as he sinks down so that he's sitting on the edge of the large bed. "I didn't expect you to be here tonight. You live with the Detective after all…" there is an 'and' hanging in the air. It's suspended over their heads on a thin line of tension and Maze groans quietly into his pillow. And, they had just tried to bash each others heads in mere hours earlier. His gaze drifts up, past her and his eyes seem to glaze over as his mind wanders and Maze flickers her eyes up to seek his just at that moment. She watches as he frowns again, looking off into the distance.

"What?" she huffs and Lucifer almost jumps at the sound of her voice.

"Oh… I just tried to remember the last time it was just you and me, here," he looks down the bed and Maze doesn't know what to say. She remembers perfectly well. It was the night before he had met his pet Detective, but it wasn't what this was about.

"I'm not sex deprived," she points out with a small sigh and he looks almost confused at that. Like he has a hard time grasping that concept at all. Something flickers over his face as he looks like he's very much trying to but gives up.

"I would sure hope not!" he looks positively mortified and she fights the urge to roll her eyes at him. "I count on you taking what you need, darling. If not from me then from whoever else you may want to have your wicked way with at that given moment!"

"Lucifer…" the way his name leaves her then makes him still again. It wasn't much more than a broken whisper, something in between a muttering and a whimper and the way his eyes widen in surprise makes her curl up even further, as if she's shielding herself from his reaction. She's half a fraction of a second away from taking the dreadful moment of vulnerability back. She has time to contemplate just running away when he leans down closer to her, his face pale and his eyes pitch dark as they take her in.

"You didn't want me to find you here tonight, you didn't think I would be here," he thinks out loud and she goes to roll over, away from him and his intense eyes when he reaches out to stop her. She could pull his hand away quite easily if she had wanted to but she stills and Lucifer gives her upper arm a soft squeeze.

"Mazikeen, look at me…"

"I don't want to."

"Look at me!" he repeats and his voice is sharp and demanding now so she does, without thinking she does what he asks of her. She silently curses her inability to stay disloyal to him and the corner of his mouth curls up into a half smile.

"There you are," he muses and she swallows hard. She wants to look away again but she can't, not now.

"I thought you would be out helping the Detective or…"

"So you came to have a little lie down? Could have done that in your… new, bed."

"I wanted…" she starts but stalls again and Lucifer hurries to press the matter as he can see how her walls are beginning to go up around her again.

"Yes?"

"You're still going to go," she says then and Lucifer blinks in confusion. He feels this strange ache under his skin and he fights against the sudden need to reach out to touch the demon.

"Go?" he asks, his voice breaking slightly with emotion he didn't realise until that moment even existed within him. In that moment he genuinely can't comprehend the idea of ever going anywhere. Instead he wants to touch her so badly. Something in the way she held herself, curled up on her side, hidden away in his bed made him feel like his protector felt unsafe, for once. He just couldn't understand why just like he had never understood how angry she had been with him or how hurt she was before Linda had pointed it out. He cursed himself for not being able to piece it together for himself.

"You're still going to go through with your plan, you're going to leave and go to Heaven. You're going to leave me here."

"Well you can't come with me…" he replies numbly. They both know that already he just didn't realise it was all still something that was on her mind.

"No, I can't," she agrees. "I'm going to stay here."

It takes Lucifer's pounding head a second or two extra to figure out just where 'here' is. It's here. It's his bed in the penthouse.

"You can if you want," he nods slowly. "I'll only be gone for a moment. I told you, my plan is not to stay for a second longer than I need to."

Maze doesn't say anything at that at first. Instead she rolls onto her back, her eyes now turned to the ceiling above them and Lucifer feels oddly cold as he loses eye contact with her. It makes his frown deepen.

"You'll go where I can't find you, can't feel or sense you… I won't know if you're safe…"

Lucifer's eyes widen in realisation as he takes in what she's saying.

"I'll be masterless, Lucifer. It could be just a moment for you, but it will be an eternity to me."

Masterless. The word sounds so ugly on her lips and Lucifer finds himself losing the battle against himself. He sinks onto the bed, reaching for her out of pure instinct.

"Wait!" he rasps out as he digs his fingers into her wherever he can reach. He shuffles further onto the bed. "Mazikeen!"

She struggles against his hold and he pulls at her until she's on her side again, facing him.

"You never even considered it," she gasps then. He can hear the fury building up inside of her but he can see the hurt well up in her red eyes. Earlier, at Dr. Linda's office he had let her think that he didn't notice the tears that fell down her face. He thought it would make her feel worse if he acknowledged her tears. Now he's done pretending. He doesn't look away as Maze continues. "You never took even half a moment to consider what would happen to me after all of these years, all of these millennia, that I've served you! You said it yourself," she spits as she glares at him where they lie in an odd pile now, with her half pinned against the mattress by the familiar weight of the Devil himself. "I exist to protect you, to know where you are and who you're with at all times… whether I want to or not! That's my only purpose, remember?!"

He can feel the hurt radiating off her skin now. It almost burns his hands where he holds her down and he wants to look away in this odd thing he knew was shame. He had indeed said that to her. He had pointed it out with frustration laced glee. He didn't know what he wanted to accomplish in that moment necessarily other than to put her in her place, but he definitely didn't know that she would hold on to his words in this way. Before the Detective came along it had never really been very complicated. Maze had been his bodyguard, his lover and his companion. She had cheered him on as he cured his boredom with anything and everything his father would have disapproved of, she killed for him, made indiscretions go away and explored his sexuality with him. She had always been forced to do so, that wasn't anything new - she had no choice in the matter as she belonged to him, existed for him and his needs - she had taken a vow - but it was simple and clean cut. He was the Lord of Hell and she took every breath only to stay serving him. He had attempted to reinvent himself but clung to Mazikeen still.

Now, as his grand plan was designed by default to leave her out he realised that he had also taken away her choice to fulfil the only task she had only been given and accepted. She was right. It had never even crossed his mind.

"Your strength… it's connected to me," he thinks out loud as he pulls at her again and she stills just enough to allow him. He's on his side now, holding her tightly against his chest. They'd spent years having sex since they arrived on earth, but Maze was still acutely aware of the fact that the last time he had held her to him like that, not to fuck her, but to just hold her was five years ago, that night they arrived in Los Angeles. "You sense me and where I am, if I'm hurt or in danger, because that's the purpose I have given you. You were created for me…"

"Without my master in a universe I can follow him into," she fills in for him, her voice thick and muffled against his warm chest, "I… I can't use your power as strength and I… well I would die," she says quietly and he draws in a quick shaky breath. When she died, she would do that for him, she had told him so himself, a millennium ago but he had never actually considered what that meant or the fact that her vow to protect him could come to mean that he would condemn her to death himself.

He drops his head down to rest his forehead against her shoulder and soon finds himself gently nuzzling the crook of her neck. Maze's eyes fall shut and she's once again brought back to their first night spent in LA. Blood was still trickling down his back in steady streams and in her head she was secretly keeping track of time as she blocked out the sound of his moans of pain. She needed to make sure he didn't bleed out. He muttered incoherently against her skin as he fell in the sand, pinning half her body underneath his and he hid his pale face in the crook of her neck as near animalistic cries ripped through him. The abandoned feathers moved in the wind where the wings had fallen at both their feet and Maze had let her Lord and master dig his fingers into her skin, desperately and urgently. He had promised her that this, cutting his wings off, fell well within her duties of protecting him but it had felt like the opposite. It had sounded like the opposite as he drew raspy, ragged breaths under the clear night sky. The bleeding had eventually stopped and her Devil eventually pulled himself up onto his knees in the sand. He had reached out to pull her up with him and whispered a thank you she knew he thought she wouldn't catch over the sound of the rolling waves as they crashed up over the sandy dunes.

"Do you remember…?" she trails off and doesn't like how thick her voice sounds. She never used to cry and she never asked for this new world where she felt non-physical blows and the sting of rejection. Now she could feel more tears burning behind her eyes and she hated herself for it but couldn't bring herself to hate him.

"Yes," he replies where he lies, still clinging to her and she's almost surprised. "I asked you to cut my wings off. To free me from my last personal Hell… It hurt and you knew it would but you did it anyway, because I asked you to."

"I'm asking you now," Maze continues carefully, "to go through with it, go with your family to Heaven if it's what you want. If it's what you need."

"I need my freedom," he sighs, "but I don't need any of this world without you. I know this wasn't your idea and I know you've never had the same freedom I've asked you to help me protect at all cost-"

"I exist to protect you," she reminds him, "I don't need to be set free from that, I can't."

"You'll die," he reminds them both but it's not needed really. They're both aware and he's finally aware of the fact that as much as this human world is rubbing off on him he must have been naive to think it wouldn't affect Maze in some way after all this time. "There will be none of that," he adds then and the final way he says it makes her chuckle were she lies. She can feel him smiling against her skin and it makes something in her stomach flutter.

"Who would save my ass from getting kicked on a weekly basis when I come back to LA?" he continues, clearly relieved to be back to something resembling light hearted banter.

"More like daily," she snorts and he tugs at her until she's on her side and her back is pressed firmly against his chest. He presses the length of his body against hers and they breathe together, his heart beating firmly against her back. After the bleeding had stopped, five years ago, he had checked them into a hotel and held her exactly like this until the sunrise lured them both up to the roof of the building where they had sat, the golden oranges and pinks of morning reflecting in their dark eyes and Maze had absentmindedly pushed her hand in under his shirt and let her fingertips trace the edges of the newly forming scars on his back.

"You don't miss them?" she had asked him then and he smirked at her, the stubble on his chin dark against his pale skin.

"I feel light, Mazikeen. Weightless." He laughed at himself and Maze studied him carefully. "Maze, darling, I feel free!"

Now Maze looks up at him where she lies on his penthouse bed, five years later and she wonders what they'll both end up having to pay in order for him to be able to keep that freedom. As if he's read his mind Lucifer gives her hip a squeeze before he speaks.

"I'm going to make sure Mum can't hurt anyone else. I need to make sure she doesn't get to Chloe or anyone else but I will find another way…"

"You won't leave me?" Maze whispers back, as if careful to not make him take his words back.

He seeks out her eyes, locks her dark, familiar, gaze with his own.

"I won't leave you."

And this time she believes him.