Work Text:
Summer, 1802
“Allright then.” The wiry young man bends to unstrap the heavy crate of books. His fine thin fingers slide the delivery form across the countertop for my signature. Instinctively I reach out and taste the edge of his aura. Simple kindness is a warm base there and a tendency for seeing wonder in small things. He has the capacity to be that low banked fire that warms the heart of a community. It isn’t a grand or magnificent flash of purity or worth, but he could be the solid set of skinny shoulders that somebody might lean on.
“Oh for fucks sake, angel.” I can hear you scoff. “He is a fuckin alcoholic and can’t hold a job more than six months.” As if it is as clear as day. As if something about the way his head tips and his shoulders slump should tell me about all his sins. They don’t. They never have. I need you for that. To see it.
I look harder, pressing every probing eye to the shifting streams of his essence. It hurts a little. To look so carefully. None of it helps. I can’t see the laziness or bad habits. Nothing but the way he holds his children and his casual inspiring laugh.
They all are like this. Bright wondrous and perfect as stars set into their place. Only, unlike stars who share light long after they are gone, these will fade in a single instant. Dropped dead. Extinguished.
I wonder again if you are too. Gone. Fallen even further. Banished to some place I cannot reach.
A clearing throat. Ah yes. He is waiting for me to sign this paper. I have to stop doing this. They will catch on. They will see that I am not quite like them. The humans. Skinny pale fingers. So like yours, I can pretend for a second they might be. They might be yours. Holding the edge of the paper, warming the countertop with your wrist. That human-like pulse thrumming hot and alive and cradling the real you somewhere between its atoms.
Taking up the pen and ink, I scrawl my mark. There. He will go now. I won’t have to pretend anymore today. The shop is closed for delivery. I wonder if I should just close for good. I always pictured it. This place. The golden light glinting from the motes of dust that refuses to leave.
We never talked about it. The fall. The way you were turned out of your home.
“Oh don’t get maudlin angel. It's exhausting.” I know. I know. A house would have been too far. It wasn’t like that. Like the humans do it. The way humans in taverns and impluvium eyeing the slant of your hips and the crimson curl of your hair would assume. Not like that at all. They couldn’t possibly understand it. What it is like to stand next to your flame for four thousand years. Five thousand. Just close enough to burn. It's not like that. I’m not. Pederast. We aren’t. We haven’t.
I only wanted to give you a home. Not so vulgar with a bedroom and gossiping servants and a kitchen stuffed full of my own weaknesses. No. Something golden and private. This little shop that could be ignored by everyone. Where you could rest sometimes. You could drop the swaying slither of your spine just here. I will keep watch.
A guardian. It is what I am. Standing at the gates. I am awful at my job. Your bright eyes breached the walls before I could catch my breath.
So this new job. Bookseller. I am awful at that too. Closed for business too often. Too many hours standing still to count the seconds since I saw you last. It is agony that I can do that. There hasn’t been enough of them to worry yet. I tell myself. I am the worst liar.
“It’s your eyes.” you say. “You can’t hold them still.” The fictional you has found a chair to lounge in. Your head tipped back to expose the slender pale arch of your throat.
I have, though. Lied. Straight to the face of god herself. Unblinking and terrified but capable of spouting the most ridiculous lie. And to Gabriel. So many times. Is there some point where a liar is so terrible that they circle back around to being actually good at it? Simply because nobody can imagine that person holding up a falsehood at all? Is it possible that only the best and purest of us is the liar? After all, you are a demon. Vile. Evil. Slithering around and asking those questions. It used to be so clear. The answers to them. It isn’t anymore. Maybe it never was. What does it mean if you were right all along? It is more terrifying to ask these questions alone. So I ask them to this ghostly sprawl of limbs and scowling fiction that haunts my shop.
You don’t answer of course. You aren’t there. Instead it is 1601 and you circle behind me and I don’t dare turn my head to watch how your face tips toward me and that happy smile dances backstage, waiting for its moment to burst into the light and shake the trembling boards of my performance. “He is not my friend.” I speak the line. Hold my breath and feel the itch of my ruff collar and the burst of joy just behind my left elbow. I know why you are happy. The lie. Another one. An angel standing there beside a demon and saying such a blatant and desperate falsehood. I might as well have draped myself in silk and flashed an ankle for your pleasure.
Did I want your attention then? That lie is pretty bait to make myself something noticeable to you. I want you to see me. Desperately. Awfully. “What do you want?” I ask.
“Why ever would you insinuate that I might possibly want something?” You ask. Daring me to step away from our lines, our practiced and rehearsed places. Say aloud the things you want. Or the things I want you to want. Speak about the latent flame of your stare. As always I am too much a coward. I stay the course. I give just that much and no more.
“They will destroy you.” I remind you. All of the world is a stage after all, and we, standing there in the yard of the Globe step through the careful act. This is for you. Always for you. This aching distance. These inelegant clumsy lies.
Fall, 1803
It is Friday evening and I stare at the place setting at my table. Our table. Empty. Your chair sits even more expectant than I am and I stare at it, hoping that you have just stepped away for a temptation, a trick, a little delicious sin right out back where the carriages circle the block. You have stepped away for a moment but you will be back, won't you? I have daringly checked and rechecked the planet. Not a sign. Not a whisper. You don't want to be found. Or can't be.
"They will destroy you." I had said. As if the words could actually describe this feeling. As if they could encompass the way I trudge half hearted through these endless minutes.
I thought it would help, coming here. Everything makes a little bit more sense with the comfort of food and drink. We always made more sense that way. A crossroads where a demon and angel might meet. Places where humans are likely to sin or redeem themselves. Or both. Neither. Just enjoy a meal together. Just sit back in chairs and nothing has to be clandestine or sinister about that. Nothing suspicious about satisfying a small desire. A little taste. Licking the curve of a spoon and giving some small concession to the craving. Some relief from loneliness. My hunger for droll observations about the state of the world or the state of the table or the state of that woman over there draped in pearls. The shocking bright lick of lemon slipping between my lips and your own mouth tucking between your teeth in sympathy.
They would seat us at our table and their eyes would say. “Of course you are together. Like this. You obviously are together.” The discreet dining of well heeled gentlemen who enjoy each other’s company. Wink wink. Nudge. Always this misunderstanding. You never correct them. You only tip a smirking grin as if proud to plant these little deadly rumors yourself. Happy to let those humans assume all manner of illicit encounters between us.
You allow me to picture you like that. Here at the table. Your head tipped back and my tongue licking dessert from your skin. Sweeping all this fine china to the floor and lifting your skinny hips into my hands and spreading you out here for a feast. No. It isn’t like that. Has never been like that. No. You sat there across from me in that seat. Touching only the wine with your mouth and touching everything else with your eyes.
The sommelier clears his throat. I have to stop doing that. Pausing. Stopping. Forgetting to breathe or move. The humans will notice. I can’t just stare at empty chairs. I can’t keep asking.
Where are you?
Winter, 1820
I chased a man today. Down the street. Slipping on ice and cursing and grabbing the edge of a frozen iron fence as I rounded the corner. I had seen you. A sleek dark shadow of a man with a lick of blaze red hair. Just for a moment. In the corner of my eye. A madness seized me. Before I could stop myself I was tearing down the street in a wild dash. “I see you” I thought. I had wished hard enough. I dared to pray even. It worked. A prayer worked. I am an angel, I shouldn’t be so surprised by that. You are just there. Wait!
I screamed your name. You didn’t turn at all. Ignored it as if we had never met. All of the thousands of years a delusion. A mad little angel left among the mayfly humans who flicker and pass before I can even know them. My one friend. Walking away without a single care for my slamming desperate heart.
I reached him and he turned with shock. It was not you. His face was softer and wider and he was arching away from my grasp as anyone would from some wild man bursting and heaving and shouting strange names.
It has been twenty years. We live too long for that to mean anything except that I have felt every one of them like a stone packed somewhere in my lungs. It is winter again. You hate the cold.
It is 545AD and you shed the stinking wet layers of armor with a long hiss and pace the room complaining about every single minute of the drills in snow and ice. Bloody England. Bloody fog. Your fingers are bone white with chill and your hair sticks in plastered wet strands to your neck. Ignoring any hint of protest, you dive beneath the pile of furs and blankets where I sit reading. You curl your shivering pale legs up into my lap. You really are freezing.
“Shut up angel, and warm me up.” You snap before I can say a word.
You smell like horses and sweat. You smell like bonfires and sin. Your shaking hands curve around my neck and you tuck your face against my shoulder. You are a block of ice next to me but inside I am burning hot. You have never been so close before. Never pressed your forehead against my shoulder with only the fine fabric of a sleeping tunic between us. I can feel you breathing against me.
“It isn’t fair, angel. You get to stay inside and I am stuck outside training in the ice all day.”
I reach for your feet. Slender and perfect and completely faked for this moment. You could have shoes for feet right now. You could have warm rabbit slippers. Do you do this for me? Show me the arch of your freezing cold feet because you know it makes you seem so fragile? Have you planned to let me comfort you like this? Or has it become a habit? Have you needed to wear these pretty things for someone else? A human? To cover your inhumanity. Like the jittering jangle of your shivers. You could warm yourself with hellfire. You could outblaze the sun if you liked. Instead you curve here against me and let me hold your cold foot and warm it in my palms. Maintaining appearances. Sitting in my lap so soft and vulnerable. So desperately beautiful and letting me take care of you. I don’t dare ask. It would shatter the perfection of this moment. So I hold your body close and warm it in slow degrees with my own until you fall asleep.
Are you warm wherever you are?
Spring 1832
Fitting the key into the lock, I lean against the shop door until it pops open and shake my umbrella free of rain. “Good weather for ducks!” I chirp as I peel my overcoat free and reach for the warm dry replacement jumper.
“Ugh. It’s pissin down. You have some nerve, angel.” Your shade complains.
“Crowley I don’t think there is any weather you agree with.” I argue and bustle about the task of getting the kettle on to boil.
“‘I’m a demon. What world is it if I went around being agreeable?!”
Instead of answering, I only hum in acknowledgement. Your noises are infectious. I have caught them, along with the miserable need to see you again. I find you in books. In the banished shameful Byron.
Then tell me not, remind me not,
Of hours which, though for ever gone,
Can still a pleasing dream restore,
Till Thou and I shall be forgot,
And senseless, as the mouldering stone
Which tells that we shall be no more.
And in my equally shameful use of the memories I compiled of you. The way I have set them to walk about my shop. They carry me through the hateful hours without you. What harm is it? To become a little bit mad? A queer eccentric who speaks to an empty room and imagines some demon there.
“The Catholics do pretty much the same and get away with it.” The justification for my actions sound better in your voice. It always had. It is easier to deal with. This way. To mourn your passing by hosting your pretty ghost here in my sanctuary.
You would hate Byron. Never have been one for sentiment. “Boring! It’s so boring, angel. Why can’t you ever read anything exciting or funny?” I shoot you a look. The long-suffering academic look. You roll your eyes and stick out your tongue. The expression is so ludicrous that I can’t help the amused little chuckle that escapes. Triumphant at your success, you lean back and spread your long legs down the sofa and settle in to nap there.
Not wanting to disturb your peace, I quietly move to make a fire, stoking new flames to chase the damp chill from the air. I drape a blanket across your section of the couch and take a second blanket with me to settle in my own seat. It is hours later that I notice the chill. I sense the sleepy shuffle of your feet on the floor and the momentary draft of you lifting my blanket to slip beneath.
“Shut up angel.” You whisper and climb atop my lap. So cold. The icy wedge of your knees bumping my stomach and your long chilly fingers curving around my neck. You hum your pleasure at the warmth and rub your nose along my kicking pulse. “Please.” you ask while skating your lips beneath my ear. “Please warm me up.”
I turn my face into your bonfire hair and close my eyes. Just for a second. Let us be here just a little longer. The dying firelight tracing all the sharp edges of you. Your mouth tastes like smoke and honey and I rub warmth into it with my tongue. We don’t have to breathe but you do it anyway, just like those darling pale feet that press into my thigh. Like the icicle brush of your fingertips over my collarbone and down to warm against my chest. You don’t have to be here like this. With me. You don’t have to show me your soft bright eyes or chase my tongue with your own. You do it anyway.
No. I know. This is not how it happened. This memory. This moment. It wasn’t like that. I am your friend. I love you. Of course I love you. I would die for you. Would die to keep you safe. I never let it get this far. I never tasted your mouth. We were friends. Only that. No more. I kept you safe.
But you are gone. You have left me alone. Thirty two years. You are dead. You must be. I cannot find any hint of you in these years. Not here. Not in this galaxy. You are dead. Or thrown too far away to reach. Stripped out of that beautiful body. Tossed back into hell. I have absolutely nothing to comfort me now. Nothing but a handful of ragged memories. So I have done this thing. This secret thing. I added to them. Amended all the parts that could have gone better. Said the words that I should have said. Stood defiant and proud at your side.
“I miss you.” I whisper into the encroaching night. You fade without apology just like you always do. My face is wet with tears. Good. I’m glad you escaped. My tears are holy. They might take away what little is left. I would have hurt you with them in the end.
Fall, 1832
It's not like you at all. To leave like this. To vanish without so much as a whimper. I could always tell, when you entered a room. With my back to the door I could tell. The intent wave of your vibrant raging heart burning right over my shoulder. The ripples of chaos you scatter in your wake. The way even humans would turn and look. And look again. At your pendulum hips. Your sleek confident swagger. You are like an accident that already happened but refuses to stop on principal alone. I could find you anywhere. If I looked. I have looked. The world is missing one entire nebulae. How does it not spin right out of orbit?
Slowly I unscrew the press plates and test the boards of this new binding. It is dry and the scent of paper and glue is comforting. It is better to pass the night hours this way. Instead of staring at the empty sofa across from my seat and feeling colder every minute. The work. It is a reason to keep going I suppose.
It sweeps across my wings first, of course. The sensation like sunlight breaking over the horizon touches the folded ribs of my primary feathers. You. It is you. Behind me. Close. Not on the other side of the planet or across the galaxy. Much closer. Oh. My human heart slams until my head is reeling until I remember to slow it. It is a full minute that I hang suspended in disbelief and shock. Two minutes. Long enough to finally unfreeze and turn my head, turn in my seat. The approaching dawn of ethereal light.
It is Gabriel.
Exactly the opposite. Ethereal, yes. The waves of celestial intent and lick of power. But. It doesn’t feel like Crowley. Not now. Now that I am facing Gabriel I can clearly feel the press of heat and light for what it is. Heavenly. Not Demonic.
It is so hard to keep my disappointment from my face. I fail at it. I know I do. Gabriel isn’t capable of reading human faces with competency. If he could, he might edit his own expression. The plasticity of his face caught in the pleasant and harmless curves and lines of a dishonest merchant. It is fake. Just as fake the expression I am beaming back. I am glad no humans are around. They would be horrified by the uncanny valley we are performing for each other while he drones on about performance.
Apparently I am doing stellar work here. I haven’t bothered doing a single bloody miracle in fifteen years. I haven’t the heart for it and what is the point? Heaven is quite happy for me to leave it as it is. What am I doing here? Has there ever been a point to my work here?
For a handful of moments I felt you. Those minutes scrape off the callous I had grown around this ache. The refreshing rend feels corporeal, like it has torn something wet and throbbing from my chest. It hurts. Again.
Please come back.
Spring,1861
How foolish and dim my imaginary simulacrum were. How pedantic and self serving and boring. I fooled myself that they were anything at all like you. They were reflections of myself all along.
You came back today.
You outshine the sun, my dear. That flashing mouth, that twisting gait.
“Where was I?” you repeat my question with your eyebrows inching up your forehead. “Oh. Just needed a bit of a kip.” you say with one of your demonstrative shrugs.
A nap. For 61 years.
If my ridiculous leaping joyful heart weren’t singing right now I would strangle you.
Summer, 1862
I mourned and missed and died every day for 61 years and you ask me for a SUICIDE PILL.
I really might strangle you.
Summer, 2019
We lie exhausted on your charcoal sheets with our hands entwined.
“I thought you had died, Angel. In the fire. I thought you were gone.” You say it with soft tears falling down toward your ears.
“Crowley, did you know that your aura and celestial essence completely disappears from this plane of existence when you go into the deepest hibernation sleep?”
Your eyes widen with surprise. “No.” you whisper.
“Yes.” I reply back. “61 years Crowley.”
You wince. “I’m so sorry.”
I know you didn’t do it on purpose. There aren’t any other beings like us. You couldn’t possibly have known. It still feels wonderful to let you know this secret pain I had all along. The darkest stretch of our long acquaintance.
You break into my musing by pushing your chilly toes beneath my warm thighs. “Angel. My feet are cold.”
Come here then, my love. Let me warm you.