Amenadiel stormed out of Chloe's bedroom, throwing his hands up in defeat. "I give up. He's impossible to work with."
Lucifer strode out after him, equally upset. "I'm the one who's impossible to work with? You're completely unhelpful." He imitated Amenadiel's accent, making air quotation marks with his fingers. "Just fold them away." He glared at his brother. "If I knew how to bloody fold them away, I wouldn't need your help in the first place, now would I?"
"I'm trying to help you", Amenadiel said, exasperated.
"Okay", Chloe chimed in, "Maybe we're going about this the wrong way. If you just showed him how you make your own wings disappear, Lucifer could try to imitate the movement." Chloe couldn't believe that she was asking one angel to show another angel how to use his wings, but apparently this was her life now.
Amenadiel's expression changed completely. Emotions flickered over his face in quick succession. Guilt. Regret. Shame. Anger.
"That won't be possible at the moment." He glared at Lucifer. "Why can't you just listen to me for once and do what I tell you?"
Lucifer lifted up his hands in exasperation. "I. Don't. Know. How.", he said, enunciating every word.
Amenadiel stood there for a moment, seething. "This is going nowhere. I'm done here." He turned around and left.
"Amenadiel! C'mon!", Chloe called after him, but he neither replied nor turned back. Chloe pinched the bridge of her nose. Fantastic. The only person they knew who might have been able to help Lucifer control his wings had just left in a hissy fit. Now what? She turned back to Lucifer.
His anger had dissipated as quickly as it had appeared and now he just looked lost. Helpless. Chloe had the sudden urge to give him a hug. Normally, she would have fought it, but right now she didn't really see the point. She walked over to him and embraced him, careful not to touch his wings in the process. Lucifer sighed and lowered his chin to rest on her head, returning the embrace.
"Thank you", Lucifer said, his tone very serious.
Chloe pulled back, looking at him in confusion. "I didn't do anything."
"Now, that's nonsense. You've done a lot of things. Thanks for being here. Thanks for not running away screaming. Thanks for trying to help me figure out what to do with these- things."
Chloe cleared her throat, unsure how to respond to that. She decided to keep it simple. "You're welcome." Then she had a sudden idea about his current predicament. "You know, maybe we have been approaching this the wrong way, trying to do this consciously."
"I'm afraid I don't follow."
"Close your eyes. I want to tell you a story." This would only work if she managed to distract him enough from thinking about what they were trying to do.
He raised an eyebrow, regarding her doubtfully.
"Humor me", she said. Lucifer sighed, then closed his eyes as instructed.
Chloe took a moment to come up with a scenario that she thought would achieve the goal of distracting him while hopefully cause him to do subconsciously what she wanted him to do.
"Hello? Still there? I hope this wasn't a ruse to sneak away from me unnoticed", the words were meant to be light, but she easily detected the very real fear underlying them.
"Don't be silly. You're in my appartment. If I wanted to get rid of you, I'd be throwing you out the front door. Now, where was I. Okay, imagine you are getting ready for a date."
A smile tugged at the corner of his lip. "With whom?"
She should have seen that coming. "Let's say with me."
The smile spread over his face. "What do we plan to do?"
Well, at least he was distracted now. "Ice skating."
"Interesting choice."
"You're standing in front of the mirror, getting ready, deciding what to wear."
"Probably a nice jeans and a shirt."
"No, you're definitely wearing a suit."
"Don't be silly. Why would I wear a suit to go ice skating?"
"Because you're you", she said, realizing her mistake too late.
He huffed, the smile dissipating. "I wouldn't wear a suit to go ice skating. What are we trying to do anyway? This is stupid."
"Bear with me." Chloe decided she needed to fix the mistake she'd just made or her whole plan was doomed already. "You are wearing a suit because I like how you look in them and you're going on a date with me."
He blushed. It was adorable. And very unlike him.
"Now, you want to try on that nice dark purple dress shirt-"
"Is this fantasy for me or for you?", he interrupted, a shadow of the cocky grin he'd worn almost constantly in the early days of their partnership on his face. It was strangely at odds with the blush on his cheeks.
Now it was Chloe's turn to blush. Thankfully Lucifer still had his eyes closed.
She cleared her throat. "Nevermind. Just focus on what you're doing. Put on the shirt."
He raised an eyebrow, but followed her instructions and mimicked drawing a shirt over his arms and buttoning it up.
It didn't have the effect she'd hoped for, though. "And now the suit jacket."
He complied, even though the whole thing must seem pretty silly to him by now. The old Lucifer probably would have made a remark about knowing more exiciting role plays by now.
Still nothing happened. She was beginning to think that this might have been a silly idea.
"Okay, now check your appearance in the mirror."
Again, he did as he was told, even though she hadn't explained to him what she was trying to do. Like he trusted her blindly.
He ran his hands through his hair, achieving only to muss it up adorably, rather than getting it back into shape. Then he flicked an imaginary piece of dust of the shoulder of his imaginary suit jacket. It was a gesture she'd seen the old Lucifer do many times and it made her heart ache. Then, like an afterthought, he made a shrugging movement with his shoulders, and the wings dissappeared.
"Like riding a bicycle!" Chloe exclaimed smugly, delighted that her far-fetched idea had actually worked. Lucifer opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder, pure astonishment on his face.
"How did you do that?"
Chloe smiled at him. "You did that all on your own. Using muscle memory, I believe. Now, if you can try to make them reappear, we can figure-"
"No." He locked eyes with her, raising his hands, his look almost pleading. "No. I want them gone."
Chloe caught his hands with hers. "Hey", she said softly. "I know this is hard, but you need to learn to control them, so they don't just make an appearance whenever they want to. Okay?"
For a split-second a pained look crossed his features, then he nodded, resigned. He made a movement with his shoulders. Nothing happened. He did it again, rolling his shoulder blades, but the wings remained stubbornly absent.
"Bloody things don't do anything I tell them to", he grumbled.
"I have another idea."
"Great. More fantasies?", he inquired, raising an eyebrow.
"No", she said, grinning, and leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss him. She'd planned for it to be a quick, chaste kiss, but things turned out differently. Lucifer's hands let go of hers in favour of cupping her face. She melted against him, her hands starting to roam over his back. She lifted her right hand, running it through his hair and he moaned, deepening the kiss.
An insistent voice in the back of her mind reminded Chloe that she was doing exactly what she'd promised herself not to do while he didn't have his memories. She was tempted to ignore it, but in the end, common sense won out. She pulled back from him. They stared at each other for a moment, panting. Then Chloe broke eye contact to look at his shoulders.
"It appears that didn't work either" she said, still breathless.
"Depends what you were trying to achieve", he replied, smiling, equally out of breath.
Chloe cleared her throat. Her phone alerted her to the arrival of a text and she immediately picked it up, grateful for the distraction.
"Dan and Trixie are done at the fair and he's asking if he can bring her home or if she should better stay at his place tonight."
"It's probably best if I go back to the penthouse. I don't want to keep your daughter away from her home." His tone suggested that leaving was the last thing he wanted to do.
"Your wings are gone for the time being. I think it's fine for her to come home again."
"And what if they pop back out again?", he asked.
"Then we'll find a way to explain it to Trixie."
"But don't you think it's- it's unsafe for her to be around me?"
Chloe looked at him in confusion. "What are you talking about?"
"After all, I'm- I'm-", he hesitated, struggling to get the words out, "I'm the devil. I'm dangerous. I shouldn't be around her. For that matter, I probably shouldn't be around you, either." He said the last part more silently, admitting it more to himself than to her.
Chloe stepped closer to him, putting her hands on his arms soothingly. She wondered when comforting him had become such a natural thing for her to do.
"You're not dangerous."
"How would you know? What if I have other powers? What if I can set things on fire with my mind? Hmm? What then?"
"Sure, who hasn't heard of the devil being able to set things on fire with his mind", she said, going for levity. She could immediately tell by the look on his face that it had been the entirely wrong thing to say. "Okay. How about we talk to Maze and find out what else you can do and if anything poses a danger. And then you can stay here." She barely stopped herself from adding where you belong and wondered where the hell that had come from.
He thought about it for a long moment, then nodded his agreement.