Disclaimer: I own nothing. Netflix renew Lucifer for a fifth season.

In the end, it's because she doesn't blink.

"Lucifer, enough," She sighs, turning the safety on her gun back on and reholstering it. She would've preferred if it hadn't come to this but, well—it was effective. And less bloody. It's much easier to cuff the perp when they're still mobile, just cowering, rather than bloody and dying.

Lucifer turns to look at her, full Devil face on, and scoffs, "But Detective, this scumbag deserves to be punished!"

She grabs her handcuffs and brushes past him, kneeling down to cuff the perp who's incoherently begging for Lucifer to stay away. She rolls her eyes and looks up at Lucifer, "And he will—in jail. We have an airtight case on this guy, there's no way he's walking away anytime soon."

She drags the perp up onto his feet and glares at Lucifer, "Got it?"

He blinks and he's back to his normal face, "Got it, Detective," he murmurs, looking at her strangely.

She squints at him, "Why are you looking at me like that?" He has that look on his face when as if he can't believe she's standing right in front of him, like he's just seen something new and surprising for the first time.

He opens his mouth and then closes it, and does it again before he finally manages, "You seem quite . . . unperturbed, Detective."

A uni comes and collects the perp from her so she turns her attention back to Lucifer. "It's not my first rodeo, Lucifer."

He steps a little closer into her space, and she hates how every cell in her body starts to hum because of it. "You're not scared, Detective." Immediately, the situation makes sense, like understanding a new language for the first time, and she shifts under his intense scrutiny. He's staring at her as if he can find her thoughts tattooed on her skin and she knows in the pit of her gut, in the same place that tells her a suspect is actually innocent or that something isn't lining up, that this is it and she cannot mess this up.

So she resolutely does not square her shoulders, does not cross her arms, but just gazes back at him and tells him, "No, I'm not scared." She hopes that he understands what she is saying: that she understands who he is and that she's not scared of him because she believes in Lucifer, her partner, and believes that her partner is a man with many demons (both literal and figurative) and she thinks he's stronger than all of them.

The way his eyes shatter as he takes in her words breaks her heart. Lucifer wouldn't agree, but he is the most emotive person she knows. He wears his feelings on his cheeks, his emotions practically rolling off of him in Lucifer-sized waves. And it shakes her to her core that she put that pain in his eyes.

"What changed, Detective?" He whispers, broken.

She smiles—because of course, he still doesn't know, her silly Devil—and reaches out to touch his cheek, "Nothing, Lucifer. I just needed to realize that."

Lucifer's face scrunches up like he's straining against something inside of him that won't break, "I thought you hated that part of me—the devilish side, the evil side." He's whispering now, as if saying it too loud will break her again, and she's endlessly frustrated that it took her this long to realize what she had done to Lucifer.

She understands now why it was painful for him, why he said the things that he said.

"But I don't like the way you make me feel either."

"You'll never have to see anything monstrous ever again."

She was his mirror and she threw everything he hated about himself back at him by looking away—by fearing him.

She has to make it right.

She leans into Lucifer's space, "Lucifer, it is a part of you. It helps make you, you. And well," she doesn't know how to say this part because this part is a lot and it's hard but she has to so she forces the words out of her mouth, "I like you."

Lucifer reels back as if he's been electrocuted but she steels herself and keeps going, she has to say this, "Once I realized that, it wasn't hard to stop being scared. You're who you've always been with me, Devil face or not, and now I can see all the parts that make you my partner."

"Detective—" he protests but she cuts him off, "You may be The Devil, Lucifer, but The Devil isn't evil, he's my partner—"

He kisses her.

Her eyes widen in surprise at the feeling of his lips pressing firmly against hers, his hands coming to cup her face, gently. Her breath goes and dies somewhere in her throat, and she's shocked only for a moment before she's moving her hand from his face to tangle in his hair and resting the other on his waist, pulling him closer to her, diving headfirst and following her breath wherever it went because it leads her to him.

The kiss isn't very long, or very deep, but when they pull apart, she can't tell who's breathing harder: him or her. Somewhere during the kiss, her eyes had closed and when she opens them, she finds Lucifer's eyes squeezed shut, his face frozen in an acute grimace.

She frowns, "Lucifer, what's—"

He pulls away from her, "I'm sorry, Detective, I shouldn't have done that."

Every kiss, every touch, every dream she's shared with this man, she can feel under her skin, bubbling and boiling and nearly spilling out of her with its intense desire to be felt, to be freed. She wants Lucifer, wants every part of him. She wants the parts that make her laugh inappropriately at crime scenes, the parts that make her furious beyond imagine, the parts that make her vindicated, safe, perplexed, encouraged, protected, everything.

She grabs his arm before he can turn away from, "No, you should have. Lucifer, please don't go." She's pleading with him now but something deep inside of her can't bear the thought of this—whatever this thing between them is—slipping out of her grasp again.

He turns back to her, "How can you say that?"

She stares him down, "Lucifer, you have to trust me. Take a leap of faith, if you will. I want this. I want you. Don't leave again, please." If he doesn't stay after all of this, she doesn't know what she can say or do that will make him stay.

She hopes with everything she didn't even know she had that he does.

Because that's the thing about Lucifer—he pushes her to be more than what she is. She was fine before him, she had Trixie and she had her job and she was fine. But he makes her job fun and light, and helps her see things in ways she had never considered, new angles on both her suspects and her life. He makes her better, and she wants desperately to be that for him, as well. To be the person who doesn't fix his life, but makes it feel right.

Lucifer makes a broken sound, something that barely escapes his mouth, his entire body deflating before he's back in her space, engulfing her in his arms. He buries his head in her neck as if he's planning to stay there, and takes deep, stuttering breaths. She doesn't think he's crying, but he's wrecked in a way that she suspects a lifetime of self-hatred and doubt would do to a person. She wraps her arms around his waist, linking her fingers by his spine, and presses her face into his shoulder. She closes her eyes. She hopes that they can stay like this—together—for the rest of her life.

"Okay, I'll stay, Chloe." She almost misses it, but she's glad she doesn't. It sounds like a promise.

And Lucifer doesn't break his word.

A/N: let me know what your thoughts are in the comments!