Adventures in Urchin Rearing: an Iris One-Shot Collection

~~Dad In Charge~~

A month after Iris was brought home, the family still took up residency in the penthouse. There was no threat they were hiding from nor any other reason for them to still be living there. Chloe fully intended on both of her daughters moving back into the apartment. However, living with an infant and being constantly sleep-deprived made it hard to remember needing to move, much less actually moving. 

Maze continued living in and checking on the apartment whenever she wasn't off chasing bounties. She had tried to guilt-trip Chloe and Lucifer into thinking it was there fault that she had missed so many jobs over the past few months, but they had a feeling that, deep down, Maze wanted to be around when Iris came. She liked to "check in" on them a lot too, but seemed pretty fascinated by the baby whenever she did.

Right now the penthouse was a complete disaster. Lucifer tried to keep picking things up and cleaning as best as he could, but Iris wouldn't stop crying. Constantly, he and Chloe would be taking turns holding her; any attempts in talking over the wails about what she could possibly want were stymied by more crying. Burp cloths, onesies, and even adult clothes ended up strewn across the floor. They couldn't find the time or opportunity to do anything with them. 

After about two weeks of this, Lucifer figured out that Iris still enjoyed hearing the piano. He and Chloe discovered this one day during her pregnancy; Iris kicked while Lucifer played and stopped as soon as he stopped. This he didn't mind. If his playing was one of the only things that would calm her down, he would play for hours if that's what it took. 

Chloe was about five weeks into her six week paid maternity leave. Thankfully, she got one week of paid leave for pregnancy disability while she waited for Iris to come out which didn't count toward her maternity leave. She had her own issues about the term "pregnancy disability" and her department only allowing new mothers six weeks maternity leave, but that was besides the point right now. While she did enjoy spending all this time bonding with her daughter, she was getting a little restless in the penthouse. So when the lieutenant called and asked her to come into work one day, Chloe argued a little bit, but still agreed to come in.

"What the bloody hell is so urgent?" Lucifer complained, "You've just had a baby and you're breast feeding. They can't leave you alone for one more week?"

Chloe sighed as she looked through the closet for clothes that might fit her. 

"Apparently there was some mixed up paperwork from the Greenhouse Case we were on that they need me to verify."

The Greenhouse Case, as gruesome as it was, actually held special meaning to Chloe; it was while she and Lucifer were undercover for that case that she found inspiration for Iris's name by being shown a bed of irises. Thankfully, the store owner who showed them to her wasn't the killer. In fact, it ended up being the emo teenage clerk; like they had predicted, the murder was drug related. The teenager was selling drugs out of the greenhouse and the victim hadn't paid on time, leading to his (accidental) death. 

Lucifer scoffed, his face encroaching with worried wrinkles Chloe had never seen before. He was burping Iris after her last feeding, the baby leaning against his right shoulder.

"Then I'll call them and convince them to leave you alone or we can go in together."

He followed her like a lost puppy to the bathroom where Chloe wanted to change and put some makeup on in privacy. It would be her first time out in public in a month, so she wanted to dress herself up at least a little bit. 

"It's not a big deal, Lucifer." Chloe called through the door. "I'll only be gone for a few hours at the most. And, actually, you're not on paternity leave from the L.A.P.D. because they don't pay you. You just stopped showing up because I stopped showing up. C'mon, you're her dad, you can be in charge for a couple hours."