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“Why didn’t you show me the wings?” Chloe asks Lucifer softly. She rests on top of him on the sofa. Her arm cradles his head, his wraps around her waist, holding her close to his chest.
“Hmm?” he mumbles lazily into her neck.
She plays with a lock of his hair, enjoying the texture of it - rough and natural and hers to hold. “That time at the station,” she continues, “before I believed you. When you didn’t have your face. Why didn’t you show me the wings?”
“Mm…” he shifts slightly and Chloe rides the roll of muscle against her back. Passing clouds make shadows on the ceiling as she imagines the man beneath her sifting through his mental pockets for the right words. “Imagine for a minute that you had to prove that you were Chloe Decker. How would you do it?”
“Show them my driver’s license?”
He shakes his head slightly. His stubble tickles her ear. “No, not like that. You aren’t trying to prove that your name is Chloe Decker. You are trying prove that you are Chloe Decker. What would you do?”
She considers this. What does it mean to be Chloe Decker? Before anything else, she is a mother. But how to prove it? Bring Trixie? She knows from too many years on the job that having children does not necessarily turn a person into a parent. Besides, she has a feeling that this is not quite what Lucifer is looking for. “Show them my badge,” she answers, finally.
He nods as if this is somehow the correct response. “Now, imagine that you had no badge and no license. Imagine that the only item you had on your person which could possibly prove your identity was a copy of Hot Tub High School. Would you whip out the DVD player?“
Chloe cringes. “I think I understand. That isn’t me anymore.”
He lets out a small sigh into her ear, the muscles in his neck relaxing back into her arm. Chloe lets the moment hang, pondering the implications of the metaphor. “So,” she asks, “is the face still you?”
He doesn’t answer so Chloe turns her head to look at him. His forehead is furrowed slightly, in thought or in pain, she cannot tell which. “I don’t know,” he whispers.
Chloe rolls over onto her stomach, right arm still trapped beneath Lucifer’s head, left now propping her up on top of him. His lips part slightly as he looks up at her, waiting. Waiting for what? Chloe wonders. She leans down and presses her lips to his forehead, smoothing the line away. He smells of whisky and French cologne. She moves next to his lips, a gentle press and gone. He hesitates, then pulls her down to return the kiss. “It’s okay,” she tells him, when they come up for air. “We’ll just have to find something new.”