A/N: This is just a little short that came to me trying to explain why Lucifer might be mortal around Chloe. If nothing else, it was fun to write!

Set sometime soon after season 1 finale.

Lucifer was housesitting.

Yeah, not exactly a pastime he'd ever imagined himself doing. And yet, there he was. Puttering around the detectives' mother's house like he owned the place.

Chloe had informed him a while back that she was planning to take the child to visit Penelope Deckers' beach house in Florida. They were going to do the whole Disneyworld thing, experience it while Beatrice still had some magic in her eyes. Lucifer was half tempted to invite himself along. Maybe whisk them both down to Miami for a few days and show them some of his special brand of magic.

But there had been a string of burglaries in the detective's neighborhood as of late, and she'd been a little warry about leaving her house unattended. So, naturally she'd asked Lucifer if he'd check up on the place while they were gone. All he had to do was flick on the lights every once in a while and make sure there were no unwelcomed visitors.

He'd agreed almost before the words were out of her mouth. After all, it was not every day one got an open invitation to freely riffle through the detective's possessions in order to gather more pieces of the puzzle that was Chloe Decker.

And thus Lucifer found himself making a cup of tea in the kitchen at 10 o'clock at night, enjoying opening up the cabinets and peering inside like they were Christmas presents. But soon even exploring grew old. Lucifer was a little terrified to realize that the house felt wrong without Chloe or Beatrice home. It was just so empty, more like a house and less like the home he had come to expect from the place.

Soon he gave up and nestled into Chloe's bed. Completely naked, of course. It wasn't like she'd told him not to spend the night. And the scent of her all around him was intoxicating, amazingly relaxing. When he closed his eyes he could easily imagine her lying next to him.

But satisfaction quickly changed into a deep longing. The smell of her everywhere just made him desperate to see her, to touch her, to hear her voice. He missed her so much, and being in her damn house just seemed to make it a hundred times worse.

"Bollocks!" He hissed, reaching for his phone with self-contempt. It wouldn't kill him to give her a call, would it? Just one call to check in, and hear her lovely voice in his ear.

She was number three on his speed dial. It was ringing when he heard a clatter from downstairs.

"Hello? Lucifer?" Chloe's sleepy voice rattled through the speaker.

"Hang on, Love. I'll call you back." He muttered, hanging up on her and slipping out of bed to investigate. He was silent as a cat as he glided down the stairs, barely stopping long enough to slip on his silk robe.

He could hear muffled voices as he drew closer.

"It's not here! Are you sure this is the right address?" A nasally voice hissed.

"Yes! I'm sure. It has to be here somewhere. Keep looking!" A painfully sharp voice answered.

Lucifer's eyes squinted accusingly. He knew those voices, knew them from a long, long time ago.

"I'm telling you, we've searched the place, and it's not here. Maybe we got the timing wrong."

"It's been nine months! That's the proper timing for these things to happen, isn't it? Oh Hells, she'll kill us if we screw this up! Why do humans have to be so complicated?"

The voices were coming from Beatrice's room, and the thought of those grubby creatures putting their filthy hands on the little girl's things filled him with rage. Fire brimmed from his eyes as he stormed over and threw open the door with a bang. The monsters within froze and slowly turned to look at Lucifer looming in the doorway.

Neither were human, or really even human shaped. More like nightmares come to life. One was sickly grey-green with yellow silted eyes and two long fangs. It didn't have any appendages whatsoever, instead moving like a snake, whereas the other one had too many legs. Black furry arms/legs stuck out in all directions from a central mass of glowing red eyes like a firework.

Yet despite the grotesque nature of the monsters, both did a very good job of looking absolutely terrified to see Lucifer.

"Styx, Nyx." Lucifer purred, danger and a predatory hunger dripping off his smile.

There was a half a breath where the snake-like one uttered in a stunned whisper;

"Lucifer."

Then both bolted for the window.

The monsters were quick, but Lucifer was quicker.

He jolted forward and slammed his hand down on the windowsill, preventing their exit. He grabbed one of Trixie's plush 'power puff girls' blankets and tossed it over the fleeing pair like a net, jumping on top to pin them down. After a few minutes of struggling, Lucifer stood up with them confined in the blanket like a sac and dragged them into the living room.

Thankfully he'd already riffled through all of the detective's things, so he knew exactly where the rope was. Twenty minutes later, both creatures were hanging suspended over the coffee table whimpering as they watched him seek out instruments of torture.

"Now, I'm only going to ask this once, so pay attention." Lucifer announced, his face lighting up happily when he found a large kitchen knife in one of the drawers. "What exactly are two of my mother's henchmen doing riffling around a human dwelling? Hmm?" He raised his eyebrows at them expectantly.

"None of your business!" The snake-like one, Styx, said but he wouldn't meet Lucifer's eyes.

"Yeah, what are you even doing here?" Nyx said, blinking its red eyes at Lucifer's casual appearance. "You don't… don't actually live here, do you? I have to say, not really your usual style….."

"ANSWER THE QUESTION!" Lucifer roared, power thundering from his very being.

Styx and Nyx cowered into each other.

"Oh please don't hurt us!"

"It's not our fault, we didn't know you were here!"

"Yeah, we were just looking for the child! We swear!"

Lucifer's heart came to a cold stop as dread filled him. They were looking for Beatrice? But why? She was completely innocent, she had absolutely no part in the cosmic games his family played. It was easy to assume that whatever Styx and Nyx were up to, it was on his mother's orders. Those two didn't have enough initiative to fill a shoebox.

"What in Hell's name would my mother want with a human seven year old?" Lucifer asked, trying very hard not to let them see how rattled he was.

Styx and Nyx shared a confused glance between them.

"Seven year old?"

"I think he means the older one."

"Oh no, not that one. You can keep that one" Nyx breathed out with relief, as if he was hoping this was all some misunderstanding. "We want the new one. The baby."

"Baby? What Baby?" Lucifer hissed with exasperation. This conversation was even more confusing than normal for those two.

"You know, the one you…" Styx started to say, but was interrupted as one of Nyx's many arms jabbed him hard in the side. Red eyes glared at him warningly before turning hesitantly to Lucifer.

"Err…This is Chloe Deckers' residence, yes?"

Hearing her name come from Nyx's sharp jutted pincers pushed Lucifer to the boiling point. He snatched a furry spider-like leg from Nyx and in one swift move used the kitchen knife to sever the appendage. The monster screamed an inhuman sound and black acid spurted from the wound, eating through the coffee table.

Lucifer had time to hope he could find a suitable replacement before the detective got home as he watched the now detached leg twitch on the carpet.

"You will start making sense right now, or I swear I will take my time dismembering you both piece by piece before I mail the remains back to hell in a matchbox! Now what does this have to do with Chloe Decker!"

"She's the one! The one your mother put the spell on!"

"WHAT SPELL!?"

"The one to make you mortal!"

Lucifer blinked, stunned. It had been his mother. The whole time she was the one responsible for his vulnerability around Chloe. She had placed a spell on her.

"Why? Why would she do that? What does she want?" Lucifer asked, more to himself. Therefore he was surprised when Styx gave him a whispered answer.

"She wants what every mother wants: a grandchild."

"Or in her case, an antichrist she can raise to rise up and destroy humanity." Nyx added, a little bitterly.

Lucifer's mouth had literally fallen open in shock. It was a very unbecoming look for the Devil, but he didn't much care at that moment. He was pretty much focused on not letting his legs buckle out from under him.

"I…..Um…..but…..What?!?"

"It was kind of brilliant actually." Styx explained, his adoration for his mistress shining through. "See, your mother knew you couldn't sire children while you were immortal, and you would get suspicious if she casted the spell on you directly, so she cast it on the girl instead. That way the effects would be temporary, only lasting as long as you were in her presence. With a little luck, you wouldn't even notice the difference."

"We figured you'd sleep with her, then loose interest." Nyx added. "And when she came to you saying she was pregnant, you would assume she was lying because it's supposed to be impossible. Then all we would have to do is show up nine months later, steal the child and bring it to your mother."

Lucifer collapsed into the couch, his brain trying to process what he was hearing. He snorted mercilessly at the thought of anyone attempting to steal a child from Chloe. They really had no idea who they were dealing with when it came to her.

"Why detective Decker?" He asked.

"We chose her." Syx said, almost proudly. "We saw how you tried to protect her when that other human shot her, and figured she must be a favorite consort of yours. Plus she already had one offspring, so we knew she was fertile."

Lucifer let out a bark of a laugh. They had assumed he was having sex with her, just like he knew most of her co-workers did. They had been betting on his playboy charms being able to win her over, and other than that little miscalculation, Styx had been right, it was a good plan. Lucifer could easily see it; if one of his many partners had come to him claiming to be carrying his child, he would have immediately dismissed it as false. It did happen from time to time, but he was immortal- he couldn't have children. He would have cast her out as a gold digger.

Unbidden and unwanted the image of Chloe in a hospital room, a tiny bundle in her arms, popped into his head. She was beaming happily at him while Beatrice was at her side peering down at her new sibling with wonder. Lucifer's breath caught in his throat as he imagined it- a baby. A baby with Chloe. Part her…and part him.

It was something he'd never considered, not in his several millennia of existence. Sure, he'd created demons, but that was decidedly different from siring a child. And the demons had been created out of his anger, his hate for his father and the injustice of it all. A baby with Chloe would….

He couldn't afford to let himself finish that line of though.

"There's no baby." He told the monsters harshly.

"What do you mean, no baby?" Nyx stuttered "B-but, we made sure! Cast a fertility spell on her and everything!"

"Yeah, it was a sure thing!" Styx protested. "A guarantee, she'd get knocked up the first time you two….you know…did the do."

Lucifer pinched the bridge of his nose.

"There is no baby, because Chloe and I have not had sex." He groaned out loud as he realized "and probably never will now! Bollocks, now I have to worry about getting her pregnant if I ever do manage to get her into bed."

Well that certainly put a damper on things.

He was trying really hard to ignore the little part of him that desperately wanted his vision of the hospital room.

Dragging himself back to the matter at hand, Lucifer took the knife and severed the ropes confining the pair, not caring that he sliced them up a bit in the process.

"Scurry on back to my mother, and tell her that her plan has failed. There is no child for her to steal, and she is to stay away from Chloe Decker. Is that understood?"

"Yes Lucifer."
"Yes, my lord. We'll tell her." They bowed to him. After all, they may have served his mother, but he was still the king of Hell. They scuttled away into the shadows and vanished.

Lucifer made his way back up to Chloe's bed and collapsed onto it with a weary sigh. This new information…..complicated things. Didn't it? He hated the way his mother was trying to manipulate him, but hated even more the way she was trying to used Chloe. He wished he hadn't been so predictable, but the truth was the only reason he hadn't played right into his mother's scheming was the detectives' immunity to his advances. It certainly hadn't been for lack of trying on his part.

He'd have to figure out how to lift the spell if he ever wanted to succeed in going to bed with her and not end up with a little hellion as a result. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how much he wanted the picture in his head. He wanted a child, a family…..with Chloe. Of course he'd have to marry her first. Probably the only way to get her to agree to have his demon spawn.

In the back of his head, Lucifer knew it could never happen. There were too many complications, like his mother, and tying himself to Chloe and Beatrice so permanently would most certainly put a target on their backs from all host of enemies, both divine and hellish. He would never put them in danger like that.

But as he drifted off to sleep that night, he allowed himself to dream of Chloe in a white dress and the sound of small, happy voices filling up the currently empty house.

Thanks for reading! let me know what you think!