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With no existential panic or ominous prophecies or emotional betrayals weighing on her for once, Chloe suddenly has the luxury of casual curiosity for the first time since the revelation about Lucifer had steamrolled her entire outlook on the universe.
The first thing she asks about is his wings.
“Where do you store them?” is her starting line of inquiry. She and Lucifer lean against his balcony railing shoulder-to-shoulder, sipping red wine and bourbon respectively. The sun is just beginning to set, staining the horizon a light coral that will only broaden and deepen within the next few hours.
Lucifer glances at her in mild surprise, almost as if he’s never considered that question himself.
“I’m reasonably certain they just manifest themselves,” he says after a few seconds of contemplation. “I’m not carrying a pocket dimension in my back, if that’s what you’re asking.” He sips his drink. “Though that’d be remarkably handy. I’d never need to walk another step for liquor again.”
Of course his mind would go there. Chloe shakes her head, though she can’t help the accompanying fond smile.
They stand there for a few minutes of companiable silence. An expanding bubble of anticipation is rising in her chest, compressing her lungs on its way up. Chloe’s heart thunders in her ears by the time she asks the next question.
“Can I see them?”
Lucifer’s expression is surprisingly reticent. He’s usually not the type for restraint, especially if it involves him showing off in some way.
“You already have.”
Chloe puts down her wine and turns to face him. “I was crying my eyes out last time. Come on. I want a good, appreciative look.” She layers her request with just the tiniest bit of innuendo. Lucifer, of course, catches it.
He raises a mildly sly eyebrow. “Very well.”
He turns to face her, rolls his shoulders, and gracefully unfurls them. The mild breeze of their emergence gently ruffles Chloe’s hair.
Lucifer’s wings are as captivating as she remembers, even through her haze of grief and heartbreak on that terrible night. Enormous, pure white to the point of iridescence, beautifully shaped.
And they look soft. So soft. And fluffy.
Chloe’s hand reaches out of its own accord, undoubtedly aided by the warm buzz of wine. Lucifer doesn’t move a muscle as her fingers sink into the mass of gleaming feathers. Yes, they are as soft and silky as, well, heaven.
Then it hits her all over again. She’s with an actual angel. An unfathomably old celestial being. With gorgeous white wings.
And he’s all hers.
A distinctive combination of pressure and warmth begins to coil in her lower belly.
“Keep them out,” is all Chloe says before her frenzied hands start tearing open his shirt buttons.
Lucifer is actually caught off-guard, for a full half-second, before he gladly plays along as usual.
*
“How strong are you, actually?” is Chloe’s next line of inquiry.
Lucifer smirks from his usual perch on her desk corner as he pours whiskey into his coffee. “I suppose I’ve never tested my actual limit. I’ve always been strong enough for whatever was needed.”
Chloe recalls the vivid memory of Lucifer singlehandedly holding an accelerating SUV in place, even lifting it off its front wheels. Her heart had skipped a few beats upon sight of that, back when she’d still been terrified of him.
Then Lucifer tuts in remembrance. “Well, there was the one time that fashion-challenged fake Sinnerman may have… gotten one over me.”
“Oh, how so?”
“A solid foot of reinforced steel.” Lucifer cocks his head thoughtfully. “I suppose I could have punched my way through. But it would have been tedious.”
Chloe hands him the metal fork from the lunch she’s been eating. “Show me.”
Lucifer rolls his eyes but takes the utensil anyway. He braces the pad of his thumb against the handle and presses with minimal effort. The steel bends like warm taffy.
He grins at her in anticipation of reverent praise.
“Cool, now you owe me a fork,” Chloe says with a barely suppressed smile at Lucifer’s now-affronted look.
*
Amenadiel had once told her that all angels are divine beings of pure energy and cosmic will, unparalleled in grace, power, and strength. It’s just a little hard to reconcile that awe-inspiring image with one of Lucifer cramming cronuts into his mouth as if his life depended on it.
“Lucifer, slow down, you’re going to get…” Stomachache? Heartburn? Diabetes? Chloe’s instinctive mom voice, well-honed by years of Trixie’s chocolate cake shenanigans, trails off helplessly.
“It’s alright, Detective.” Lucifer swallows and grins at her before reaching for another from the cardboard box. It’d been a thank-you gift from a bakery owner for solving his nephew’s murder. “I’ll leave a half-dozen for you and the spawn.”
Chloe closes the file she’s been working on. “Seriously, how does food affect you… if it even does? I’m guessing you don’t need it?”
Lucifer delicately wipes off a stripe of powdered sugar from the corner of his mouth as soon as it appears. Gluttonous he may be, but he’d rather be caught dead than in less-than-spotless shape.
“As I’ve told you before, I only drink for the taste.” He briefly lifts the already half-gone cronut. “The same applies to food. Bloody hell, I could inhale another hundred of these…” He takes another bite, briefly closing his eyes in bliss.
“And… after you eat it?” Chloe isn’t too jazzed about asking, but she has to know.
Lucifer looks at her blankly. “I absorb it, I suppose.”
“All of it?”
“That’s right.”
So Lucifer is basically a black hole. An excessively handsome, well-dressed, one-way abyss from which nothing escapes.
For some reason, Chloe has a much harder time wrapping her head around this newest tidbit than she’d had with his wings or strength. Perhaps it’s because he looks exactly like a human, yet a substantial chunk of human bodily function just… isn’t there for him.
Lucifer is quick to remind her that humans take after angels, not the other way around.
“Basically,” he explains, taking the last of his allocated half-dozen. “Dear old Mum and Dad created angels, the prototypes. Then Dad chose to populate the planet with weaker, smellier, and all-around less impressive versions of us.”
“Less impressive, huh?” Chloe rolls her eyes. “Right, that’s why you were moaning my name like a desperate nun last night.”
Lucifer, for once, doesn’t have a single pithy retort.
*
Chloe doesn’t want to ask her most pressing question, because she already knows and dreads the answer. But that doesn’t stop it from slowly eating away at her.
It all comes to a literal head one day when her work takes them to a retirement home in the wake of an elderly lady’s unnatural demise: a single, lethal bludgeon to the back of the skull.
Lucifer looks over the crime scene with his usual morbid detachment.
“Seems our lucky victim was spared the slow agony route.”
“It’s not that bad here,” Chloe says. Something about Lucifer’s tone sparks a slight defensiveness in her voice. “The facilities look good. There are worse ways to go.”
“Gradually withering away like an old husk?” His obvious contempt for such a concept makes Chloe’s stomach twist. “What’s the bloody point of wasting all that time? I’d much prefer a quick exit like this over the torturous, drawn-out version.”
Not that you’ll ever have to choose. Chloe swallows back a sudden, aching surge of unfathomable emotion.
*
They have dinner in his penthouse that night, seated on the carpet at his coffee table. A generous spread of Greek take-out spans the distance between them.
“Detect--Chloe,” Lucifer says hesitantly, wiping the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “I realize I may have… offended you earlier today with my comments on the case. For that, I apologize.”
“Lucifer, that’s not what…” Chloe smiles a little. “Yeah, it did sting a bit, but not for the reasons you think.”
“Aging is a perfectly natural part of human life. Just know that I’ll never think of you any differently than I do now. It was inconsiderate of me.”
Chloe puts down her spanakopita. “No, Lucifer, it’s not that.” She takes a few seconds to put her thoughts in order. “It’s just… I have maybe four more decades with you, five if I’m lucky. And then I’ll never see you again, ever, even though you’ll still be down here, and…”
She trails off. The very thought of their relationship’s inevitable endpoint hollows out her stomach and dulls her appetite.
Lucifer is taken aback. “It’s not like you’ll be left wanting in the Silver City. I’m not one to sing its praises, but the place is paradise by definition, after all.”
Even the suggestion of an idealized paradise without Lucifer is absurd, but she doesn’t bother arguing that point. “Then what about you? Won’t four decades just go by in a blink?”
He smiles a little sadly. “Typically, it would. Nowadays, I find myself appreciating every hour that ticks by. Funny, that.”
Chloe instinctively reaches across the table to take his hand. It turns out they’ve both been agonizing over the same thing, in their own ways. Lucifer hasn’t yet considered the true reason for his earlier callousness, but she already has.
“If you’re still locked out when I get up there, I’ll make sure they fix that. I don’t care whose celestial ass I have to kick.”
Lucifer smirks lightly, but Chloe can tell that he is genuinely moved. “Now there’s something I’d pay to see.” He gives her hand a gentle squeeze in return. The weight in her chest lifts, as it always does when she commits to a solid plan.
The tender moment doesn’t last long before her curiosity rears its insatiable head again.
“So, how long can you hold your breath?”