Growing Pains

[Lucifer]

Lucifer's lips parted and she accepted the bite of spaghetti, her eyes widening as the flavor of the sauce seeped into her tongue. With a soft noise of enjoyment, Lucifer chewed, though her fork had already ventured into Echo's bowl once more, swirling spaghetti around the silver tines.

"I cannot tell what I enjoy more," Lucifer said, once she had swallowed that first delicious bite. "The delicious meal you have cooked...or feeding each other."

She smiled, then, seeing a splotch of sauce on Echo's lips, and leaned in for a kiss...

[Echo]

5.

"Lucifer!" a feline hiss, blade sharp eyes, wide and disbelieving. Darting between the imperious women that was her heart and the fleeing employee, safely in the arms of a manager. Who was glaring at the pair of them, before returning to the sobbing wreck in her arms. "You made him cry!" she spits. "Totally not fucking called for!" she shrieks in a register she didn't know she could reach.

She reaches for the Fairest's sleeve, "We have to go, security's probably been called, and we obviously need to talk."

[Lucifer]

"Not called for?" Lucifer hissed, allowing herself to be dragged out of the store, leaving the sobbing man to soak his manager's shirt and his own horrible beard with his tears.

"If it wasn't for me, that sexual predatory would have been staring at us the entire time we were in there! 'Can I help you find anything?' Lucifer mocked, her discordant voice pitched ridiculously low, and injected with more than its fair share of stupidity. "Please! He was only saying that so he could oggle us up close! His vile eyes, and that hideous, unsanitary mustache! As if a pitiful excuse for a human being could possibly be worthy of anything but my deepest contempt! He's nothing but a peon, a lowly servant, a disgusting, foul smelling, failure! If it wasn't for me, he would probably still be gusting his putrid breath all over you!

"Now, let go of my sleeve or you're going to stretch it!" she concluded petulantly, slapping at her lover's hand.

[Echo]

Her eyes search Lucifer's, numbly she drops her sleeve.

"..." she can only take in a breath at first. "Lucifer. He was employed at the store we were just in." she says, "Sure he stared. But we're fucking hot. Of course he's going to stare. But he get's payed to ask that question and to help us if we answer positively. Which. I. Did." she says slowly, "I needed to know where garbage bags were, or did you miss that part of the conversation before you decided to tear him to pieces?" she growls out, huffing, arms crossing even as broken glass claws want to stretch.

[Lucifer]

Lucifer sighed, but stepped closer to Echo, setting her hand upon her lover's lower back.

"Echo, I know that you think the best of people, I know that your soul tastes sweetness and light, but there are predators out there. Most of them will hide behind their jobs, or hide behind their smiles, but when you've attuned yourself to their perversion, as I have, you can taste it," the Shadowed Beauty attempted to explain. "Beauty comes at at price. It is one of our most powerful weapons, but it is also a beacon that draws the slavering predators to us. I only wanted to protect us from that. It was clear to me that he was imagining...foul things."

[Echo]

Lucifer draws her closer and she leans in, nuzzling into the crook of her love's neck. Eventually she feels the ever telling hint of moisture.

"Sweetness and light?" she eventually croaks, "We see all the time. Or sometimes...I think." she's ignoring the rest of what spilled from soured lips, but right now, she needed Luci to understand this "I'm cracked darling, others see sparkles, or lights. Feathers or coloured air. I-I see, blood. Always and ever." she comes in closer, "Have you wondered, what else I am? I told you I'm a Truefriend. But you've wondered why I'm so hard, so sharp. You've wondered why I'm kin to Ingrid." she pulls away, burning the glamour to bare her joy and her shame. "I'm a Razorhand." she whispers, mirror bright eyes, given depth by unshed tears.

Her hand raises, even as the glass turns molten in an instant, liquefying and trailing up and down. Sealing the broken, cracked juts and edges, then racing to reach the very tip of her claws, joining them into one, indistinguishable glass blade.

"So you see. You're wrong about me. You're wrong about them too."

She holds out for one more moment to make her point, before she bashes her hand against the nearest wall. The once liquid glass, shatters. Bursting into burnt glamour, and to Echo's eyes, ever and always blood. Leaving behind, her perfectly familiar broken glass claws.

[Lucifer]

"My dear," Lucifer whispered, coming around so that she stood before the Lioness, blending her fingers through the tawny fur and pulling Echo's forehead to her own.

"I've always known that violence lurked in your heart. Your claws were certainly a give away, as was the way you like to pounce on our bed." A smile colored her words silkily barbed words, even if Echo could not see it. "I know that you are a killer, but within your heart is also a wellspring of joy and trust, and that is what predators prey upon. They do not just look for weakness, they look for that which they can feed upon, and you, my dear, are a most delicious meal."

[Echo]

She trembles, nodding. "Okay. Okay. So You've seen. But you didn't-you don't-" the words tumble and fall, and she didn't pick them back up. Now...outside of a store? She sighs, emotions and vision. Clouded and confused.

"They have. It has." she says instead, turning upon something new, and old. "Being over There taught me that." Looking up to her love's capericorn eyes, "But I know that now. I can watch for it. But, Lu-if you always do....then you're just a-a-a....you're just Rapunzel with sort hair."

[Lucifer]

"The reason why I know so much about them, my dear," Lucifer continued, gently stroking the distressed lioness' back, "is because I used to be one of them. I would look not just for weakness, but for what I could feast upon, and feast I did. Messily. And you...you were going to be my prey."

The Shadowed Beauty pulled back so that her eyes could properly meet Echo's razor sharp gaze, though her hold upon the back of the desert beauty's neck held firm. "But I found something much better instead. I found something that I never thought I would be able to find, something that...I've never had. And though I will rely upon your blade sharp claws, little kitty cat, I'm going to do everything I can to protect you, too."

She leaned forward, planting a soft kiss on the Lioness' lips before she pulled away, stepping to her side and slipping her arm around Echo's waist

"Now, what's this about Rapunzel?"

[Echo]

It wasn't a shock. She knew Lucifer better now, then she did when they met and she'd fallen over herself just to see more of the unparalleled vision in a dive bar.

Echo had a type and it wasn't just tall, dark and fucking fatally gorgeous. She's been used and abused, time and time again, and try as she might, being devoured was all that she knew...to know that she offered more to Lucifer then just another mark on an already impressive tally, that made her heart flutter. She leans in closer to the Fairest, snuggles under her arm, and starts to explain what she meant about Rapunzel, the princess in a tower so tall that without her impossibly long hair, she'd never let anyone in, and ambled with her heart towards their home.