a/n: thank you to astarisms on tumblr for reading this over for me and encouraging me to write it! I wouldn't have been able to do it without you! Next chapter will be up on the 3rd!

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Past the Clouds, Find the Sun

Chapter One - It Could Have Been Worse

Someone with more nerves than her would cower at the idea of facing a ghost head on, but then no other person had a ghost turn human turn boyfriend the way she did and they didn't have a ghost insulting their best friend either. Said friend floated between them with wide-eyed disinterest, darting around the edge of a tower to avoid the confrontation brewing above her.

"I'm telling you, there's nothing wrong with Libby!" she said, crouching beside the tank, eyeing Libby the fish with uncertainty. She wasn't an expert on animals and though she loved Libby a lot, she couldn't quite recall if she had always been that color. Was it a trick of the light or Lucifer's words that made Natalie McAllister worry?

"It looks a little sick, cross-eyed even," he replied, squinting down at the fish, who floated absently around the fish bowl that was her home. "And you're saying this fish is how old?"

Natalie gave the fish tank a tender touch, wary of touching the glass edges and smearing the result of her most recent cleaning spree, but unable to contain the tenderness that flooded through her.

"I got it when I was ten with my mom. She didn't have any pets when she was younger, I can't remember why, but she was pretty insistent that Max and I have something. My dad said it would teach responsibility," she said, a bittersweet smile tugging at her lips. Mentions of her mother often rolled Natalie into a grab-bag of nostalgia in which her mood could never decide if it wanted to swing one way or the other on the sadness-anger-happiness scale. She blinked once. "So she's about ten now. Much longer than most goldfishes."

"Indeed?" His tone changed, not quite soft, but the teasing dropped in the face of a history he didn't know.

---

"Yup."

The sudden silence reminded her of how new and tenuous they were together. Though they had been unwanted roommates for over a year and friends for the next year, they had only really seen each other for two months now. It wasn't even long by her standards, let alone the millenniums of his. Was this entire year a mere blink to him? She hadn't ever asked, afraid the answer would shatter them before they could even really begin.

She rushed to continue the conversation, following the whim of an idea. "So do your threats to Libby have something to do with the dinner later? I mean, I know it was out of the blue, but I can't really avoid it for much longer. I don't want to avoid it either," she said, nose wrinkling. "They are my family and you're my family, that makes them your family, you know?"

Lucifer scoffed. "It was hardly a threat to say she looked ill." It was answer enough to her and she hid a smile by stepping into the kitchen for Libby's food.

Her brother's unanticipated arrival had scared the pants off her and Lucifer alike though it was nothing compared to her brother's reaction. She didn't keep him up-to-date on her entire life – her love life especially, there were just some things that a brother didn't need to know – and she suspected that it was just as much hurt as it was mistrust that led him to stiffly invite them both to dinner the next night. She also suspected that Lucifer would undergo a vast interrogation on her brother's part if not her father's part as well, though she would do her best to step in before it got that far.

Who knew Satan would be afraid of meeting the parents? She thought to herself, sprinkling food into Libby's tank, trying to smother her smile and failing.

"We'll figure it out, it's not like we have to lie very much about it." Except the fact that he was much older than her, he didn't have anything in the way of a history that could be explained, and he was, well, Satan. So maybe a lot to lie about, but these were important to hide. She didn't want to imagine her father's reaction, short of an irrational fear that he would cart her off to some institution for believing it. He didn't even believe her about having a ghost in her apartment for the last year, he certainly wouldn't believe the ghost was Satan and that she had helped free him over two months ago because she loved him.

"I admire lying in most cases, but in this one, I'm inclined to believe that the truth would be much better." There was a little too much delight in his tone for her to believe this was a wholly angelic suggestion. He might not have been Satan for a long while, but the mischief was still engraved in him. It explained a lot of his antics when he was incorporeal, though.

"My dad would take us both to church." His fingers twitched, but she didn't comment on it, filing the knowledge away for future reference. "So I'm afraid that's not really an option. You'll just have to be Stan, a friend of someone who used to live in this complex."

"Why Stan?"

"The only other option is Lucy. I'm not opposed to it, but I figured you would prefer Stan. You've heard it enough that you'll probably respond to it, too, so that will give our story credit."

She thought the plan was rather brilliant of her. Simple, yet somewhat truthful. When he had haunted her building like a random ghost, they had communicated almost entirely through nudging, caveman gestures, and writing on reflective surfaces before he had grown strong enough to speak. When she had gathered the courage to ask him his name, she had only gotten a brief glimpse of the letter before her friend Michael had interrupted and she had incorrectly assumed his name was Stan.

It was a rookie mistake that he had rectified over the weeks, but she still used it sometimes and it worked well. She was more afraid of slipping and calling him Lucifer than of him forgetting to respond to Stan though.

But, anyway, he had been named Stan at some point and he was a friend of someone who used to live in the building. He was her friend after all and he could be friends with himself. It wasn't a total lie, though it erred close enough to one that Natalie felt uncomfortable thinking about it. If she were younger, she would have blurted out the secret right then and there, but the newness of what they were had her biting her tongue.

"You'll just have to wing the rest of it," she continued, frowning. "I don't think we'll have time to go over an entire story for this and I'd probably forget it, too."

He watched her, his eyes narrowed as though dissecting her thoughts. "As you wish," he murmured.

…

Natalie spent more time worrying than she did getting ready, something that would have irritated Lucifer if he hadn't been doing the same thing. Oh, he played it off well, picking out an outfit to wear from his meager choices and styling his hair in half the time that it took Natalie to pick out her clothes alone, but every so often, he felt his finger twitch with nerves. Every day since he was free of that mirror was unknown territory, but tonight was far beyond any of his realms of expertise.

Only one wrong move would be all it took to muck it up. As amusing as it would be for him in the moment to scare the hell out of Max and Alex McAllister, it would be temporary fun in exchange for months of despondency when Natalie fretted and worried.

Not that she wasn't doing a fair share of it from the time they climbed into her car till they arrived at her father's house. She worried her lip between her teeth, nearly chewing off the lip balm she had added before they got in the car, and he wordlessly passed the tube over to her again when they stopped. He had swiped it off the counter when they left, expecting that she would need to reapply it.

The more she worried, the more anxious he felt. It just wouldn't do for them both to panic. "We could sneak away," he offered, eyeing the door with distaste. It wasn't his first time in the car since he was freed and it wasn't the first car he had seen either, but it was infinitely different to be in one than see it on that television of hers. The time he lost in that mirror never felt more acute than when he was looking at some strange, mechanical beast without any idea of what it was.

It didn't bother him so much as annoy him. Natalie was patient, teaching him the things he didn't know, but the fact that he even needed a teacher was….

Well, there were no words to describe it. How did one explain the feeling of being plucked from the world and then dropped into it again only to find that everything he knew had changed? Well, almost everything he knew. The sight of Max McAllister in the doorway reminded him that he was very familiar with human emotions still.

Society changed; people didn't.

The house was the corner lot down a suburban neighborhood and the only difference it had from all its neighbors was the size of the front lawn, which stretched in emerald green grass around the bend of the street. Each house was cream colored with dark grey slated roofs and matching fixtures with window placements that were identically placed. The lawn was neatly cut and the foliage beneath the windows was a cheery addition, but identical to every other house on the block.

"Did you grow up here?" He said in disbelief. Natalie was casual in looks and actions. She didn't go out of her way to decorate the room with a thought in mind to it and that led to a rather odd result. But it was colorful and bright, the type of place that looked lived in, and he couldn't picture the Natalie McAllister beside him with the one who had likely grown up in a home so unremarkable.

"Not really," she said, leaving the rest unspoken. He nodded in understanding, deciding that all the things that made Natalie her would be the type of things that reminded her father of someone else. He could see not wanting to live in the same house where so many memories lingered – even if they were good – just because there were simply too many.

Natalie waved at her brother. Like her, Max was tall and slender with ginger hair and green eyes, but unlike her, he didn't have much happiness in seeing them. His brows were furrowed and he stared at them with such frostiness that Lucifer thought the temperature outside could have dropped several degrees. He hid a smirk as Natalie, undeterred, tugged him forward.

"Max! You didn't have to wait for us, I still have the key," she said, loosening her grip from his arm to fish out a silver key from her bizarrely packed purse.

Her brother didn't look as though he would unwind himself from his disapproving pose. "It's fine," Max said after a moment, his eyes locked on Lucifer, before he stuck out his hand. "I'm Max, which I would have said last time if you weren't sticking your tongue down my sister's throat."

Lucifer accepted it, trying not to laugh at the sharpness in Max's words. "Stan as I'm sure you already know. It would help to knock if you want to avoid a repeat, it's what most people do."

Neither of them let go, stuck in a private stare-down till Natalie let out a huff. She gripped both their wrists, her grip stronger than Lucifer expected, and dragged both into the house. Despite her urgency, her pace was steady and her tone normal. "Honestly, I'm starved, what are we having? Hopefully not barbeque, I enjoy a good steak as much as the next girl, but I remember the last time dad tried that."

"I cooked," Max interjected.

"Brilliant. You can't cook either," she said cheerfully. "But at least it won't be badly burnt."

Lucifer snorted. "I see your cooking talent comes from both sides of the family."

"As if you could do better," she shot back, a pleased smile on her face.

"Next time, I'll prove it," he said, patting her on the head, fighting back a laugh when she swiped it off with a mocking pout. He had little of an appetite since he returned, needing only to eat every couple of days, and he hadn't needed to prepare any food so his cooking was likely on par with an inexperienced teenager. But he was certain that a chipmunk could cook better than Natalie. He wouldn't need to work hard to surpass that goal – and he saw on her television that giving food was something people did when they were fond of each other.

A win-win. Prove that he was the superior cook and give her something from him, when he had so little in material things to give her.

He felt a pang at the knowledge that he could offer nothing, but it was momentary as Natalie directed them into the dining room. From the outside of the house, Lucifer had expected something posh and boring, with matching table sets and a floral centerpiece, but, unexpectedly, it was a simple dark wood table with plenty of nicks and mismatched brown and black chairs. There was no tablecloth and no silverware set in advance. It was plain, sure, but there was more character in the table than the rest of the house. A marker stain, scrubbed to near invisibility, told him that this was a table that Natalie or Max had used in their youth.

The room flowed into a brightly lit and sparsely decorated kitchen where an average height man with red-blonde hair and crooked, rectangle glasses stood in front of the stove. His hands fiddled with a pot, where a stew bubbled and popped, sending a strong aroma into the rest of the house – Lucifer didn't think it was an awful smelling one, but he wasn't sure if he would say it was good either.

Natalie dropped his arm, nearly skipping across the kitchen. Her father beamed when he saw her and she pressed a kiss against his cheek. "Hi, dad! I thought Max was cooking?"

"Just pasta. It will go well with Max's food," he replied, replacing a lid on the pot and turning around to face Max and Lucifer. He wore a teal colored apron around his waist, beneath which he wore a loose sweater-vest and pants, and the smile on his face was identical to his daughters, if not a little less happy. "Welcome, Stan, I've heard some about you!"

"Not nearly as much as I've heard about you, I'm sure."

"Alex," he said, offering his hand.

"Stan." Lucifer shook his hand, wondering what his family would think if they could see him. Then he decided they weren't worth the effort and pushed them from his mind.

Natalie chattered with her father and brother animatedly, her hands and face expressing more than her words ever could. The kitchen felt small with the four of them standing there and there was a part of him that felt out of place in the homely room. He hadn't ever felt that way before either and he frowned, trying to dislodge it, when Natalie placed a hand on his arm, squeezing it gently. She didn't stop speaking, but her eyes met his momentarily with a smile before she continued with her story about an obnoxious reader at the library.

Dinner progressed in much of the same way, though they roped Lucifer into conversation more often than they had while dinner was being prepped, and he found it was more difficult to explain his than he anticipated. There were so many things about his life that couldn't be translated into mundane speak. Natalie answered where he couldn't.

("Do you have a job?" "Not currently, my previous went out of business. I've found it to be difficult to find a similar position around here.")

("Do you go to school?" "With work being so iffy, he hasn't had the chance. I've been trying to persuade him to go! What do you think? Maybe a doctor?" "I would sooner gouge out my own eyes." "Hmm, perhaps history then." "Possibly.")

("Where is it you lived again?" "Small town, quite far from here, but unremarkable other than its intense heat." "He calls it Hell sometimes.")

He had thought the most important questions were out of the way, especially when they moved on to how Natalie and he had met. It was so much easier to describe their relationship from the time they met and onwards than it was for Lucifer to explain his life before.

They had met when he was staying with a previous tenant at her apartment, but it was just as friends. He had went away for a while to handle things at home, but he returned because he forgot something – and he prayed that her brother or father didn't ask what he forgot, because he would be hard-pressed to come up with an answer – and found out about her situation with a ghost. He had helped her rid the apartment of it and they had just connected from there.

Neither her brother nor her father objected to this story. Her brother's hands tightened around the edge of his fork, eyes darting between the two of them suspiciously.

Natalie slapped her hand down on the table, rattling the bowls and spoons. "I forgot! Where's Millie and Artie? I thought they were supposed to have dinner with us as well." It took Lucifer a long moment to figure out who they were, but then he realized it was Max's wife and son, the former of which Lucifer had never met and the latter of which had often played at Natalie's apartment. Less so now, because of school or because of Lucifer, he wasn't sure which.

"Home," Max said shortly. Natalie frowned, her mood dipping briefly at his tone, but her brother sensed it before Lucifer could react – possibly by jamming the fork into his hand or something akin to that – and continued gently. "I thought it best that we scope things out before bringing Artie into this, you know how easily attached he gets."

"I suppose that's true," she replied, tapping her fingers. "I haven't seen him for a while, I'll have to take him out to the park or something before the holidays. Or do you have plans for Halloween? Lucifer and I could take him."

Lucifer didn't argue. He was quite looking forward to that holiday and the mischief just waiting for him.

Alex laughed. "Nat, it's over a month till Halloween."

"Well, it's never too early to plan!"

"I don't think the stores even have costumes out yet," Lucifer reminded her. "You did look the other day for something to wear this year."

Natalie sighed loudly. "Yes, you're right. But still it doesn't hurt to plan it!"

"I think Millie wanted the family to go," Max said with an emphasis on family.

Lucifer didn't miss it. Natalie did – or she fought against it by ignoring it. "We are family," she pointed out. "And we could all go together. Maybe dinner beforehand then trick-or-treating afterwards?"

Max looked as though he would protest, but Alex jumped into the conversation, his voice quiet. "I think it would be fantastic for all of us to go together, we haven't spent Halloween together in a while. It's high time that we did something like that."

"That's exactly my thought," Natalie said, beaming.

Max nodded slowly, realizing he was overruled. Then, because Lucifer didn't bother hiding his smirk and perhaps because he had sensed all the things that Lucifer hadn't said about his life before, he asked, "So, do you have any family?"

It was like a bucket of water being dropped over his head, the residual mess falling onto Natalie's. She caught his eyes, lips pressed together in an unusually dark look, freezing in place as she waited for his reaction. Lucifer felt as though his limbs had become ice and he licked his suddenly dry lips, trying to decide on the best way to describe his lack of a relationship with his family.

How did one say that they hoped their family was dead or dying? The coldness of the words didn't astonish him, but they stretched the limits of his patience for the evening. "I have," he said curtly, then reigned in his temper because Max looked a little too smug for his own good. "Not particularly close anymore, I'm afraid."

"What happened?"

"Max! You can't just ask people personal questions like that!" Natalie hissed.

"The whole point of this dinner is to get to know each other," Max replied with a snort. "If he's hiding something, don't you think we should find out before we let him any closer?"

"I've told Natalie everything," Lucifer said, raising a brow. It wasn't a lie, but not the entire truth either. There were some things that Lucifer wouldn't share with anyone, but it was the truth that Natalie knew of this one secret's existence and she hadn't once badgered him to know it. "I believe that she's the only one who has to know anything. The rest is a mere courtesy."

"Wow, consider me blessed to meet someone so polite," Max said sarcastically.

Lucifer's finger twitched a little, but otherwise he gave no outward signs. He lifted his cup in a mock toast, draining the last of his wine and setting the empty cup down, gazing around the table.

Alex looked peaceful still, eyes moving back and forth between them, a polite smile on his face as he processed exactly nothing that was happening around him. Max's foot tapped incessantly, his fingers clutched around his drink like it was a frog trying to escape. Natalie had her lip tugged between her teeth, chewing as she thought of what to say. Her eyes lifted to him and she gave a half-shrug, communicating her desire without saying it.

All the better, really, because Lucifer was feeling tired for once. Nothing like meeting the family to kick the last of the wind out of his wings.

"Thank you for the dinner, but we really must be going. Natalie has school in the morning – as I'm sure such knowing relatives would know," Lucifer said smoothly, climbing to his feet, rather pleased with his parting shot at them both.

"You're welcome here anytime, Stan," said Alex, walking around the table to hug Natalie and kiss her on the cheek. Lucifer gathered their coats, giving Natalie time to say goodbye. "Come around again soon, Nat, alright?"

"Sure thing, dad. Bye, Max."

Max grunted, nodding his goodbyes, and then they departed.

...

"That could have gone worse," Natalie said optimistically once they reached their apartment. She climbed out of the car barefoot, her heels clutched in one hand and her keys in the other, and she leaned heavily into his side as they started up the path.

"I think it went quite well. I forgot how much of a spitfire your brother is."

"You think so?"

"I know so. He got it out of his system, it'll be smooth sailing from here on," Lucifer said, snatching the keys from her and unlocking the door, rather pleased to feel the bite of the metal beneath his thumb. He didn't want to ever take the feeling for granted, not after spending so long with nothing to touch or feel.

"Well, I'm glad it's over with, I didn't want to tiptoe around things anymore. Although I wonder how they'll take finding out we live together," she said thoughtfully. She discarded her shoes in the corner of the room, next to a pile of other dropped shoes, and stretched her arms above her head till there was a small crack. "We didn't tell them that, they think you just visit all the time."

"I'm not setting up a fake apartment for them to visit." He closed the door, kicking off his shoes.

"I wasn't going to ask you to!" she said, shaking out her hair and heading for the bathroom.

"Just making sure that's off the list of whatever plan you're trying to cook up," he called, shaking his head. He locked the door behind him, sliding the deadbolt into place with a click.

He whistled a little tune as he went into the kitchen to drop off the keys. The lights flickered on with a low hum and he tossed the keys mindlessly onto the counter on his way to the fridge. They hit the edge, clattering to the floor, and he sighed, abandoning his quest for a drink. He crouched beside them, reaching out a hand for the keys – only for his fingers to slide right through them.