InsaneJournal

The Enterprise had departed Yorktown that morning, and Lucifer had spent most of the time since in the gym. The starbase had proven to be a welcome break from the monotony of living in space, and a distraction as the week went on. Now, with nowhere else to go and the lounge still closed, he’d spent hours doing a full circuit workout. It probably wouldn’t have been healthy, but he didn’t need to worry such trivial things as health or obsessive workouts. And he’d lost count of repetitions or the amount of weight he had on the bar. He was just focused on pushing himself, nothing else.

To the point that he didn’t notice that Beckett had entered the gym until she was looking down on him.

For being the person who’d introduced him to his new hobby, this was the first time he’d actually seen her in the gym since he’d tracked her down there.

Kate had still been going to the gym, she had just adopted her usual routine from home of going in the early hours of the morning. Even if her shift was scheduled overnight, she had adjusted to the same schedule, completing her workouts after she had clocked out and then bothering with the rest of her day.

But it was a bit different today. The overstimulation of her virtual reality encounter with Castle as they watched Jurassic Park had put her on edge and left her a bit jumpy which, in turn, had left Kate frustrated and annoyed with herself. Life on the Enterprise wasn’t at all like life as part of the NYPD, she didn’t always have to be on high alert, but she hated those days when her mind seemed determined to shake her at every turn.

The only way she knew to control herself and maintain her focus was to go inward. Locking herself into a routine that was as much about pushing her physical self as quieting the inner one. Yoga helped sometimes, but she hadn’t wanted the calm of the twelve poses and the stretching of her muscles as she shifted and flexed her body.

What Kate Beckett wanted was a long, hard run.

“I had heard you were spending a lot of time in this place, but I didn’t really believe it,” she told Lucifer as she stood over the weight bench. Normally she would offer to spot for whoever was underneath the bar and doing their reps, but Lucifer didn’t need the help and would definitely let her know it.

“What can I say?” he asked cheerfully, “You’re a good influence on me, Beckett.”

He carefully set the bar back, and then sat up. “I’m surprised I haven’t seen you here before now though. Have you been slacking off?” He was teasing, and that was evident in his voice.

Glancing up at her he asked, “Were you ready to return to simply flying through space endlessly? Because I’m going to miss the closest thing to civilization that we’ve seen for months.”

The smirk she shot his way was pointed, her eyebrows flicking upward in one sweeping movement before she stepped up onto the treadmill closest to where Lucifer was stationed. “No,” Kate replied, pausing to gather her long hair into a high ponytail and neatly secure the whole mass of curled hair with the elastic tie around her wrist. “I’ve been here, just early in the morning when no one else is really around. But I’m also not staying in here as long as I was before.”

The before was clearly in reference to Castle and the pleased hint of a smile at her lips made it fairly clear that she was still thrilled that her husband had arrived. Pressing a few buttons to set the speed and the distance that she wanted, Kate began her usual stretches before she hit the start button to begin her run.

“Up for company?” Lucifer asked, as he eyed the treadmill next to hers. Otherwise he’d head out. “You’re lucky, you know. I broke my period of self-imposed celibacy and since then I’ve been in here more.”

He wasn’t even sure why, other than both Hawke and Mary weren’t the sort of women he normally slept with. Mostly because he already knew them.

Oh, Kate was very aware that she was lucky. The ship was filled with people who wished every day for their significant others or family to arrive and here she was with her husband and a life that was different from how it had been at home but still pretty damn great.

If she were honest, she had really planned on turning on the music that was still stored in her iPhone and running until all the battered places in her mind had gone silent but Kate also had enough experience in life to sense that Lucifer wanted to talk and that she needed to be less concerned about her jumbled up mind and focus on being a friend.

“Go ahead,” she said, gesturing towards the machine that he was looking at. “You look like you need it.” And she meant it. It was subtle, but the signs of discontent were still there in small ways when she really paused to look at Lucifer which didn’t make much sense because he’d just told her that he’d slept with someone and, usually, sex had the opposite effect.

Kate was living proof of that, not that she chalked it all up to sex. It was mostly just Castle being around and how his personality served to loosen her up and make her life brighter and easier but, at the same time, the sex was - and always had been - fantastic.

“What?” she asked, flashing a grin from over the curve of her shoulder, “Did you find some random girl in a bar in Yorktown and seduce her?”

“No,” Lucifer replied. “Because that would have been the smart thing to do, rather than sleeping with two people I’ll see around the ship constantly.” He shrugged, stepping onto the treadmill next to Kate’s and matching her speed without bothering to warm-up. “It’s not that it was bad, very much the opposite, in fact. But I just don’t ever… do that.”

He shrugged, debating whether or not it would annoy Beckett if he turned the speed up, but then decided he needed to actually distract himself, and adjusted the pace accordingly.

“The thing is,” he said, “sex is different with people you actually care about.” The statement may have been obvious to just about everyone else in the world, but it hadn’t been to Lucifer. “And now I expect the detective to show up just to spite me.”

Whatever she had been expecting for Lucifer to say, it wasn’t that he had slept with someone on the ship much less that he had slept with two different people. Her eyebrows raised slightly with surprise at the news, lips pressed together while she tried to figure out what she should say to him about it. “Well, there’s a first time for everything,” she replied after a moment of quiet. “And that doesn’t automatically mean that it was a bad thing that you did something different.”

Kate wasn’t bothered by the change in Lucifer’s pace. He wasn’t speeding up to try and beat her, and even if he had been, she was aware that he wasn’t human. He didn’t tire and probably had no real limitations to what his body could go through compared to hers. But she did watch him increase speed, a little dent forming between her eyebrows while she continued to run at her usual pace and study the guy next to her.

“Sex is better with people you care about,” she said quickly, not really thinking about the implication of the words but accepting that they were true even as she heard them come out of her mouth. “It’s as much emotional connections as it is a physical release.”

Was that what was bothering him? That he had slept with two people and neither of them were Chloe? “Unless you didn’t tell me the whole story, Chloe doesn’t really have a claim on you. You weren’t together when you came here.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Lucifer agreed. “After Maze disappeared I decided I was bored with wanting to go two hundred years back into the past.” Which was true, for the most part. But he also wouldn’t be too upset if the detective were to arrive one day on the ship.

He increased the speed on the treadmill again, running for a moment without thinking. But that speed was too ridiculous, even for him, and he slowed it back down.

“Right, so again, it wasn’t bad but then after one of them keeps wanting to talk about it? Is that even normal? Other than Maze, I’ve never slept with people I’ve been close to.”

There were the Brittanys of course, but they were just frequent visitors of his club. He didn’t actually know them, only slept with them repeatedly. That was different. “I think it’s a lot easier to avoid sex with people who aren’t strangers. Right?” He actually sounded quite confused by it all.

Laughing was probably the wrong thing to do, but Kate did it anyway. The sound bubbled up and out, accompanied by a fond shake of her head. “No. If you’re attracted to someone initially, and you hit it off with compatible personalities, it’s usually that much harder to resist sleeping with them once you’ve gotten to know them. Sometimes it takes years before you give in….” Again, Kate was speaking from experience. “But I’d say 95-percent of the time, it’s inevitable that it will happen.”

Was talking about sex after the fact normal? She thought about the other question Lucifer had asked her, thinking beyond her own preferences and experiences and digging through her memories for conversations with the few girlfriends she had. There definitely weren’t many men that she knew who made a habit of discussing sex after having it in great detail, they usually just thought about the chances of getting laid and the act of having sex in general.

“I suppose it’s normal for some women,” she said with a shrug. “They want to know if it was any good or what it meant or didn’t mean -- I’d say that’s pretty common for some.” But Kate was very happy that she wasn’t one of them; at least not since she had gotten older and stopped worrying over what it all meant and realized after she’d gotten some experience under her belt that she was actually quiet talented when it came to sex.

“Some like Mary?” Lucifer asked, not even worrying about adding a name to the story. “Because she wouldn’t shut up about it.” That may have been an exaggeration, but it had been annoying all the same.

On the other hand, he hadn’t actually spoken with Hawke since, and that was bothering him.

“So if I’d just had a random shag with some random woman I seduced at a bar in Yorktown, I think I’d be better off.” He glanced at Kate. “Am I learning your history with Castle right now?” That was mildly distracting and he smirked at the thought, amused.

Lucifer invoking Mary Crawley’s name as one of the women he had sex with took Kate completely by surprise, so much so that the steady stride she had been running with faltered as the toe of her left sneaker caught the edge of the mat on the treadmill. “Fucking hell--” she didn’t swear often in public, and especially not with the first word out of her mouth, but given that Kate was a moment from face planting on to her machine, she figured she had earned a pass.

With a grunt of frustration, she grabbed the handlebars to keep herself upright, quickly moving her feet to the edge of the treadmill and away from the rolling track. “You slept with Mary Crawley?” she asked, a certain fierceness to her voice that had nothing to do with the news and everything to do with nearly hurting herself because he had surprised her. With a quick press of the buttons the treadmill began to slow, coming to a stop while Kate stood there waiting on her breathing to return to normal.

By the time that happened she’d had some time to digest the news and admitted to herself that it wasn’t that surprising. She hadn’t been around the two of them at the same time that often, but she had seen enough of their interactions from a distance, heard of others from Lucifer, and read more on the PADD to get a general idea. “I think you have to consider how Mary grew up,” she finally said, crossing to the station in the wall with water bottles already filled. Pulling one out for herself, she extended it in Lucifer’s direction to ask if he wanted one without actual words. “England in the early Twentieth century, high society upbringing where nannies do the raising and most of the people in your home are the hired help. Sex was a duty and not necessarily something you were supposed to enjoy. And sleeping with a man you weren’t married to would be unthinkable in her time.”

Unscrewing the cap on the bottle, Kate took a quick drink and swallowed it down. “Maybe she wants to talk about it because she feels unsure about what she’s done, or maybe she just thinks she’s bad at sex and wants assurance otherwise.”

Taking another drink, she considered his other question and gave a slow nod. “In the sense that you wouldn’t be spending your time locked into a vessel that makes it hard to avoid her? Yes, you’d be better off.”

And then Kate rolled her eyes at the mention of Castle. “You already know it took years before we got together, no need to go on a fishing exploration. If you’ve got a question about our relationship you might as well ask.”

Beckett certainly surprised him when she suddenly swore, and Lucifer was off his treadmill in flash, but jumped back on as Kate steadied herself. “Bloody hell, what was that?” he asked her, nodding at her offer of water. He hit the stop button, sliding down and jumping off before the machine slowed completely.

He was well aware of the time period Mary came from, and the fact that Mary saw sex as far more than a duty, but he wasn’t about to share that. Instead he just nodded. “I guess…” He was never the best at considering the needs of others above his own though, so he’d have to work on that.

“Anyway, that was bound to happen at some point, and now it has, and we’ve had our fun. Hawke on the other hand…”

That was different. That he hadn’t been expecting, or at least, it was a far more recent development. Considering her offer as he drank some of his own water, he said, “Maybe later? For now the only thing about your relationship that concerns me is that you got to watch Jurassic Park like that. I mean, even if the depictions of the dinosaurs weren’t entirely accurate,” he added. “That would have been brilliant.”

“That was me swearing because I nearly knocked myself unconscious on a treadmill,” she replied, pulling out another bottle and throwing it underhanded to him. “But I stand by what I said earlier,” Kate continued, not at all deterred by Lucifer’s noncommitment to her explanation of Mary, “Some women just want to talk about it when it’s over. I don’t really know why, but it happens and I think all men must hate it.”

The other girl was Hawke? Again Kate had to pause for just a moment, letting that extra piece of news roll around in her brain until, finally, she rolled her eyes. “Of course you’d sleep with Hawke. Who I bet didn’t want to talk about it beyond maybe telling you that she had a lot of fun.”

Stepping past Lucifer, Kate walked back towards her treadmill and dropped her water bottle in the designated holder before she stepped back up on the machine. She might have been interrupted, but she wasn’t close to being finished with her run nor was she going to be deterred from it. At least not because she and Lucifer were discussing his sex life. “We didn’t know what we were getting into,” she explained, “Castle suggested it and we both thought it was a regular movie until it started. Once you got past being scared it was a lot of fun.”

Of course she’d spent last night and this morning very skittish as an unfortunate side effect but it would pass; and the next time they would be more careful about the movie they picked.

“Well at least my reaction is normal then?” he asked. That made him feel slightly better, and less like he was being an arse. But then her next statement made him pause. “What do you mean, of course I’d sleep with Hawke?” She was right though, and that was a bit spooky. “No, she left the next morning and I haven’t spoken with her since. And that’s annoying.”

So Mary talking to him was annoying, but so was not talking to Hawke. Bloody hell, even he was annoying to himself presently. The movie was actually a welcome distraction of a topic.

“I can’t believe I missed that, and didn’t find out it existed until the last day. I’d love to see some old Hitchcock movies done that way. Like Vertigo? Or The Birds?” Of course, his taste in horror movies extended to a wide range of B-movie classics, but he didn’t even start listing those off. “I did look for Castle’s books in the bookstore, but didn’t find any of them. The inventory was very scattered though.”

Her reaction was decidedly noncommittal, Kate giving a hum and a little bob of her head. “I think normal is different for everyone and in every relationship. Your not liking to talk about it isn’t abnormal, but there could be a situation at some point where you would do it anyway because you care enough about the person talking to you.”

With the treadmill back up to speed, she gave a smile. It was as much for the feeling of her muscles moving and straining as she went along as the question he asked. “Hawke is your type, Lucifer,” Kate started with a laugh. “She’s mysterious and very smart, she doesn’t stand for any sort of airs or really like things to be complicated. She’s got a history in combat and she’s magical, but she’s got a sense of humor and some good comebacks.”

“And it doesn’t hurt that she’s sexy, either. In fact, that’s the first thing that likely got your attention,” she continued, giving a shrug, “She’s the type of woman that most men fall over themselves for. Women, too. I don’t swing that way, but even I know she’s attractive and interesting and that’s exactly what you like. Beyond that? Hawke isn’t going to do anything she doesn’t want to do on her own. It’s not about wearing her down or winding her up. Just physical attraction.”

The look she gave him at his declaration of how annoying it was not to have spoken with her was somewhere between pity and outright amusement. “It’s not like you don’t know where she lives. There isn’t anything stopping you. If you want to talk to her, go talk to her.”

Licking at her dry lips, Kate took a moment to be quiet, driving all of her focus into the run as the treadmill kicked into the highest setting she had programmed. Once she felt comfortable she spoke up again, “I always liked Rear Window. Jimmy Stewart. Grace Kelly. It’s classic.”

“Okay, just stop,” Lucifer said, his expression amused. “That’s creepy, the way you just got into my mind like that.” Everything she’d said was spot on, and it was slightly unnerving, even if he knew she was trained to read people. That didn’t make the skill any less impressive.

She’d also gifted him with clarification, knowing how he felt more than he did on that particular topic. “Right. I could just go talk to her,” he mentioned. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to do that right that moment, but he could always message Hawke first.

“You’re a brilliant substitute for my therapist,” Lucifer informed Beckett. “So thank you.” He paused. “Especially since I think you came here to be alone.” Taking another sip, he glanced around the gym to make sure he’d cleaned up after himself, that all weights and machines were properly set. “Rear Window is one of the best,” he added. “Though maybe not as great in that sort of theater?”

“You aren’t that hard to read, not really.” Kate said, “But it’s not even you specifically. It’s moreso Hawke and the type of person she is. People respond to the confidence she has in her own skin.”

Giving a little nod to assure Lucifer that he could go talk to her, she also took it a step further. “It doesn’t sound like you are done with her.” He had said that he wasn’t really interested in revisiting things with Mary, and sometimes that happened with people, but he hadn’t said anything of the sort involving Hawke.

It wasn’t necessarily surprising because Hawke was both a challenge and perhaps an easier fit for what Lucifer seemed to want at the moment, but Kate had been wrong in her initial thinking. She had expected that whoever Lucifer eventually broke his celibacy with would be a one and done deal because he was still concerned with Chloe and his life at home. In the end, she had only been half right.

“Oh, I’m a therapist now?” she laughed at that, reaching up to wipe at the sweat beading up on her forehead. “My therapist would be both horrified and proud at the very thought.” Hell, Castle would probably be surprised if she told him because even though she was good at reading people, Kate had spent most of her adult life making terrible decisions and self-sabotaging her own needs and happiness. “But you’re welcome. I can be alone whenever. You needed a friend, so here I am, being a friend.”

“No, Rear Window would be a little boring in that setting. Castle is hoping for some zombie movie or a slasher film. Maybe an action movie.” Kate could handle the first two, she wasn’t sure the third would be a good idea. She could generally watch action movies without any trouble, but a submersive experience would almost certainly trigger a PTSD episode.

Maybe he wasn’t hard to read. Lucifer was generally upfront about who he was and what he wanted, it was just that he was used to people rejecting the fact that he was in fact the devil. “Yes, well, my therapist spent almost a year using the entire devil thing as a metaphor and then went into shock when she told me I should be real with her,” Lucifer said. “She got over it, though, but this scenario is much better.”

It was definitely a boon to just be accepted as he was, and the fact that people weren’t afraid of him for it was an added bonus. “And you are a good friend. One of the best I’ve had.” Of course, Lucifer could count the amount of actual friends he’d had on his hands. “I’m hoping to repay that some day.”

He hadn’t actually brought anything with him to the gym, so he nodded at Kate. “One of these days, I’m going to get you to spar me. See if you can even land a punch.”
He headed to the door and paused, like he was going to say something else, but then merely added, “See you later, Kate.”

“Mine spent a year telling me to let go of my past and focus on my future,” Kate said with a slight frown. “Well, really it was more about letting go of my fear about what had happened in the past to have the possibility of a future. And how to handle PTSD, though it took me months before I’d even accepted the idea that I actually had it.”

And that was more than she had ever said about her past to Lucifer, at least her past where it wasn’t specifically related to her relationship with Castle.

Ignoring the rest of that deep dark hole, she gave him a smile and a shake of her head. “You don’t have to repay anything, that’s not how friendship works. At least not with me.”

She snorted at the idea of sparring with him, rolling her eyes up towards the ceiling even as her smile grew just a bit. “I wonder why the thought of fighting a guy that has supernatural abilities doesn’t thrill me,” she replied, her voice dry and full of sarcasm as Lucifer headed towards the door. From her position on the treadmill, where the screen told her she still had a good ten minutes left in her run, she couldn’t see his expression or that he lingered by the door for a moment. All Kate heard was his goodbye, which she returned by lifting up her hand with a brief wave. “Have fun talking to Hawke,” she called as her farewell, grinning to herself because even if Lucifer didn’t go find her straightaway, she would bet good money that he would do so sooner than later.

She’d brushed away her talk of therapy quickly, but even at the door, Lucifer lingered for another moment, considering her. This wasn’t the time, though it was proving to be an effective place for such discussions. This one would wait. They had time, unless she somehow disappeared too, and Lucifer didn’t even want to consider that possibility.

“Yeah, I will,” he called back, leaving. He had no idea what he wanted or didn’t want from Hawke, but surely they could talk again. And with a better understanding of where Mary was coming from, he could at least try and be better there too.