#deckstar

Chloe forgot that sometimes. Okay, most of the time. But one evening she had invited him over to work on a case after dinner, and he had ended up coming, and when she came back from loading the dishwasher she found them with their heads close together over a piece of paper. When she got closer, she saw that it was Trixie's math homework.

"No, no, darling, you have to carry the- no the other one." He pointed at the paper, then just took her pencil and scribbled something down, circled something else, and set it down. "See? Once you're past the bit with that old fool Tom eating a dozen apples, and the debauchery of our economy, you've got the simple formula there, yes?"

Eyes skittering across the paper, Trixie's brows furrowed as she tried to follow along.

"So it's really just x+y=z? Are you kidding me?" She huffed and threw herself back in her chair, crossing her arms. "Why don't they just say that?"

"Because they're teaching you real-world examples, Monkey." Chloe said, stopping by her other shoulder and ignoring Lucifer's rolled eyes as she studied his hand writing, so clean and neat in its calligraphy-like style against her daughters childish scrawl.

"A bunch of bullocks that is." He muttered, but pointed at the paper again and his writing. "But yes, it is as simple as that, Beatrice."

"This is stupid." She grumbled, but finished her work anyways. When she was done and turned it to Lucifer, he barely glanced at it before nodding and erasing his own handwriting from her work.

"Exactly, not so hard, was it?"

"Yeah, thanks Lucifer."

"Of course, child."

And Chloe didn't think much of it other than him helping her daughter with homework was incredibly adorable, until a few weeks later when they were inspecting the lecturing hall of the recently deceased Professor Harvey, his blackboard a mes soft calculations and theories.

She had been searching the place for clues while Lucifer looked at it with his hands in his pockets, making comments she wasn't paying attention to until she heard a sharp 'tsk' and the scratch of chalk. Turning around, she found him erasing large chunks with his fist and writing new numbers in their place.

"Lucifer! What the hell-"

"Bloody idiot, he was, Detective. Couldn't even write his own work right-"

"Lucifer-"

"Bloody hell, what is this?!" He cried as he looked further, almost frantically erasing more. "You do NOT use interger functions like that, oh my Dad-" as he continued to grumble to himself, Chloe watched on incredulously as her partner rewrites at least half of the man's board with furious surity. He didn't hesitate, didn't pause to use a calculator or his phone in the next few minutes he took to fix it. His answer was a decimal he circled three times before tossing the chalk aside and running the hand he didn't use through his hair, sighing at the finished board.

"You'd think someone as much of a genius as he was, he'd have his equations sorted out, wouldn't you, Detective?"

But Chloe could only stare at him, then the board, before frantically pulling her phone out to get a picture of the problem and put it through Google. When she couldn't find anything, she sent it to (name) and submitted to a math site. The only thing that brought her back to the room was Lucifer wiping her hand down her sleeve, and she frowned at the white marks left behind.

"Lucifer, what the hell was that?"

"That, Detective -" he pointed to his answer, them at a picture on his own phone of a safe requiring four digits, just like the number before the decimals. "May just be our answer."

He was right. The professor had been a fraud, and Chloe got an answer from the math site saying it was correct, but incredibly complicated and WHAT KIND OF GENIUS FIGURED THAT OUT???

Genius. Chloe looked up at her partner who was flirting with one of her coworkers by the coffee machine, grinning charmingly and speaking no less than the same. She knew he was clever. Witty, and incredible business man, yes. But... actually SMART? By the textbooks, equations, that stuff didn't seem in his wheelhouse at all.

Just another mystery for the great Lucifer Morningstar.

---

She asks him where he went to school. He scoffs and shakes his head.

"I didn't go to SCHOOL, Detective, I was never a CHILD. I already knew everything I needed to know." Then he frowned, staring at the road. "Well, then when I didn't and asked my question, He didn't take too kindly to that, now did He." Chloe watched his eyes grow glassier, further and further away. "It had been just the one." He murmured, most likely to himself.

"So you were homeschooled?" She asked, choosing to unpack the other parts later. His trauma constantly seemed to be rooted further and further than she thought. Her cult theory always seemed to become more and more likely by the day.

Lucifer didn't even glance at her as he sighed and shook his head, making a right turn. "If that's what you want to call it, sure." He said.

"And you didn't go to college."

"Nope."

---

What was MOST impressive, Chloe realized, was his knowledge on history. He recounted facts and events as if he had been there.

"Oh, he is a looker, isn't he?" He leered. Chloe raised her eyebrows, and he mirrored her expression. "What?"

"Just, didn't know you swung that way."

There was a moment of confusion before he was rolling his eyes. "You know, you humans are really the only ones that seem to have issues with that sort of thing. Bats shag their mates all the time, and they're not being prosecuted for it."

"I didn't mean it like that!" She defended, but he waved he off.

"I know, Detective. I'm just saying there's no need to be surprised."

---

Lucifer can sign off a license plate from weeks ago with ease, statistics from outlandish sources, etc.