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Nick works as a probation agent. He had a family once, but not anymore. Working helps him get up from his bed in the morning, not that his job is a well rewarding one but it doesn’t matter. He likes the routine.
Lucifer is a gang leader, who keeps getting through the police’s fishnet. They can never link him to the murders they know he is guilty of, even if the little kill count tattoo he has on his face is proudly updated regularly.
One day, Lucifer is assigned to a probation agent who works in the same office as Nick and this one immediately sees the resemblance. Hell, those two guys have the same face. So he has the brilliant idea to call Nick and put the two of them face to face, yelling in the whole room that Nick didn’t tell them he had a twin! He thinks he is so funny.
It’s like a buzz around them, people are talking, but Nick and Lucifer can’t hear them, they don’t care what they're saying. But a thing is sure, they do not have siblings. Never had. And they are pretty sure, neither of them were adopted. So this is weird. But a little fascinating too to find yourself in front of someone who looks like you so much but at the same time, doesn’t at all.
Nick is all Lucifer will never be. Shy, introvert, wimpy looking, button down dressed, very uneased looking. And Lucifer is the complete opposite of Nick, he is what he could have been if life didn’t screw him up all the time. Confident, smart, muscular and proud.
Once the shock passed, there is no point in denying the evidence. They can’t say they don’t look like each other, they are like mirrors. Nick doesn’t like the idea of having an evil doppelganger. After reading Lucifer’s file, he knows this is something that’s going to end bad for him once again.
Sooner than he thinks, as that same evening, Lucifer rings to his door and invites himself in. He teases Nick for being so weak he didn’t even try to stop him. Though, they have quite a pleasant conversation. They find more unsettling similarities in what they like, what they experienced in life. Maybe it’s what saved Nick from being killed or scammed into being accused of Lucifer’s murders already.
But that strange encounter isn’t all that bad as both men take a little advice here and there from the other. Little things at first. Like when Lucifer exited Nick’s house and pulled a handful of his hair saying “cut that, you look like a moron”. And the next week, Nick came to work with a new haircut. It’s not because it’s the same as Lucifer’s that he should not have done it. After all, he knew it would fit him, he saw what he would look like. Or Lucifer being punctual to each one of his appointments with his probation agent and talking him the right way, visibly very aware of his rights suddenly. Yes, Nick pointed him towards the right laws and stuffs he could use to make his probation time goes quicker. But after all, the quickest Lucifer ends it, the best it is for both of them, isn’t it?
And then, Lucifer popping up at Nick’s house becomes something normal. They have a routine, and Nick likes routines. They watch baseball matches together on TV on Sunday afternoons, and then what? Can’t a probation agent and a gang leader be friends when they look like each other?
Nick’s colleagues make dirty jokes about it. They say, they are more than friends because that band of perverts can’t imagine finding their exact double and not making out with them to find out if they are really similar “everywhere”. Nick doesn’t answer them. They’re too stupid.
Sometimes he thinks, he would rather work with Lucifer’s people, instead of his own colleagues. At least, they don’t pretend they won’t fuck you up once you turn your back on them. You know what you are dealing with with them.
Because, yes, Nick knows Lucifer’s gang members now. They looked at him bad when he first came to see Lucifer without being invited. But Lucifer was proud to see Nick had the balls to come here unarmed. Or maybe, he is just a little dumb. Nick doesn’t believe guns, power and violence are an answer. He believes people are good. Lucifer thinks he is wrong and he will get himself killed. But at the same time, he envies him for looking at life that way when all he got in return was pain. He’d like to be more like him.
As a proof, his killcount hasn’t changed in a bit now. Nick thinks Lucifer could have been kinder to update it, when he sees what happened to those who crossed his path, but it’s a start, he supposes.
There are some other changes in Nick’s life, under Lucifer’s influence. Little by little, Nick doesn't let people use him as a carpet anymore. He says no now. It slipped a day he was in a bad mood. To his surprise, it worked and it didn’t have any bad consequences. Times where anybody could ask him anything and he’d do it are over since Lucifer told him how his colleagues were using him. Now, he doesn’t do extra time to help them anymore when they go home early to be with their family (because they have family, them). Now, he doesn’t take the crappy files nobody wants to take anymore. He said to his boss, he did enough of those, and his boss gave them to someone else.
And there was this one time too when that guy had a road rage tantrum, honked the hell out of him, and cursed him. He supposed the guy didn’t expect him to go out of his car, open his car door and told him to shut the fuck up. All talk, no move. But also, this time, Nick was wearing something very Lucifer like, that shows, as Lucifer says, “that he is built like a fucking brick house and not a math teacher”.
As for Lucifer, Nick is a big help when the police storms his home and arrests everybody they find under a new motive. Lucifer uses his phone call to ask him if he knows a good lawyer. This time the police has him bad. He didn’t think Nick would arrive and start to question every procedures the cops did so far in his case, while Lucifer waits for a super lawyer who apparently owned one to Nick for helping his kids when junior was arrested in possession of drugs.
Bureaucracy is a nightmare Nick seems to know well enough to bend it to his advantage. Who would have think, Lucifer would be free to go because of paperwork poorly done? Lucifer never thought it was possible, but there he is out of cell. It doesn’t please everybody though.
That they understand, when one of Nick’s colleague barges to Nick’s door that night, the very same who had introduced then in the first place. He is completely drunk and accuses him of a lot of bad things. Lucifer is ready to make him swallow back. But Nick is quicker to answer. There is more on the plate than just Lucifer being freed here. Apparently, they walked onto a well oiled plan and crashed the party. Both of them. Lucifer by attacking to wrong rival gang and Nick by helping him escape prison. Now, that colleague is in lot of troubles and he owes a lot of money to bad people, he won’t be able to pay because of them.
Nick can’t care less. He never liked the guy, never liked to crawl under work because of his lack of professionalism, never liked how he treated his cases and most of all never liked the shaby business he knows he ran for a long time on the back of people who just wanted a second chance. He never said a word about it because of the muted threats, but tonight he can just shut his mouth for once and let them enjoy Lucifer’s freedom.
The fight that ensues is ugly. The guy is down and he has no chance to get up again. Ever. Before meeting Lucifer, Nick would have been more organised and that hammer would never have stayed in the living room. It would have been in the garage with the rest of his tools.
Well, Nick doesn’t like to get choked either.
He doesn’t want to know what Lucifer did with the corpse.
When the bastard is found, the cops follow the trail to the bribings, the extorts and all the mud too. The police thinks he had been executed by a gang. The case is closed without Nick’s name being mentioned once.
That night, when Lucifer comes to Nick’s house with a smirk and tattoo supplies. Nick lets him in. “Not on my face” he simply says.