Fantasy short. An information merchant struggles with the angel that’s Fallen into his lap.
Rated T, 6.6k, M/M. Light-hearted bickering and some mild antics between a reluctant “hero” determined to feel sorry for himself and be lonely, and an angel who’s determined to have a pleasant time alongside him despite that. Adapted from a TweetFic.
Alexander was, by trade, a merchant and an information broker, and wrangling angels was not in his job description. He’d been travelling through the blue meadows around the Colt river when he’d seen the angel sprawled in the grass, recently Fallen, barely conscious and barely able to raise his head.
He’d carried him on his back the few miles into town, thinking that they’d be able to put him in touch with other angels, but once Alexander was ready to leave, the angel had eaten, drunk, and was awake enough to trail after him, wouldn’t let Alexander leave him behind.
He followed Alexander obsessively, even when he tried to leave him behind, and it was maddening.
He wouldn’t leave him alone — and wouldn’t say a word, even, no matter what Alexander told him, what he said to him, wouldn’t fucking go.
He tried everything, the first week or so. Started by telling him to leave him be, shutting him out of the rooms he rented or ushered him away from where he was sitting, insulted his appearance, shouted at him and clapped his hands like he was trying to get rid of a bird, threatened to kill him, even, threatened to hurt him, although he never actually did.
He wanted to. He’d even found his fists clenching a few times, but how could he throw a punch when the angel would just look at him with his silent, painful focus, just peer at him the way he did?
Alexander was lonely, sure. His life was lonely on purpose, not by accident — other people were dangerous in his line of work, when he was travelling and had to be travelling fast, had to be able to trade messages quickly, feed information back fast. Other people were painful vulnerabilities, but he could go back to being with people once his work was over and he could establish himself elsewhere.
He didn’t ask for the angel.
But —
But he was there. He stayed.
After three weeks, Alexander gave up trying to get him to go away, and he stopped letting the angel sleep outside. People blamed him for it, anyway, acting like he was neglecting him even when Alexander said the angel had nothing to do with him — they ate from the same plate, and Alexander would make sure he picked lodgings that had multiple beds when he could.
He was beautiful, naturally — Alexander had seen angels before, and most of them had a sort of ethereal and magical quality, commanded an aura that was strangely evocative, but was somehow more grounded than the magic that surrounded fae or sorcerers. They could look very ordinary, much of the time, although this one wasn’t.
His skin was a normal colour, a handsome golden brown, his hair thick and dark and only slightly wavy, and he was lithe and cat-like in his movements — but coming up from under the skin on one cheek and down the side of his neck were bursts of shining silver scales, and Alexander knew that they came up like that all over his body, the skin separating to show the scales there. The scales didn’t show as much on his wings, except at the very base of them, because they were covered in black feathers that matched the hair on his head.
His eyes were the same colour, silver and astonishingly, painfully bright — they glowed in the dark, which Alexander was unfortunately aware of because sometimes if he looked around the room in the night he’d just see the silver discs glowing in the darkness.
Alexander talked to him, at times.
Complained about him, about the work, told him where they were going next, what needed to be done. The angel listened every time, would always tilt his head and turn to look at him, his expression very intent, his attention wholly devoted to Alexander as soon as he opened his mouth.
The angel never touched him, although sometimes he desperately wished he would — and he felt like if he touched the angel himself, that would be a step too far.
For a while he tried to do his usual information trade extremely secretly, with the angel not present with him, which was hard, because the angel was always glued to his side and wouldn’t go anywhere.
The angel came inside after Alexander had sent him out to collect flowers just as he was passing a scroll off to an informant, who looked suspiciously at the angel before he left their inn room.
Alexander stared at the angel, at his still body, his still face, his still wings.
“You saw that?” asked Alexander.
The angel didn’t say anything, just sat cross-legged at the end of Alexander’s bed, and Alexander said, “If you tell anyone what you just saw, you will get me killed. That’s what I… do. Apart from taking the equipment orders and dispatching them around, you understand that? I trade information. Secrets. Do you understand?”
He didn’t say anything, of course.
He stroked his fingers over his own knees, where the silver scales under the skin showed through — apart from where they were obvious on his left cheek bone and under the right of his jaw, they showed mostly on his joints, showed on his elbows and his hips, too.
Alexander couldn’t help but wonder if they’d be rough or smooth under his touch.
“You might get me killed just being here,” Alexander muttered. “Everyone seeing me with you — I’m meant to be one person moving, working alone. I’m not meant to have a buddy. How long are you going to hang around for?”
He’d asked this before, to the same result: the angel yawned and curled his wings more tightly around his shoulders, huddling in them as though they were a blanket, and didn’t answer.
“I suppose you don’t even know what that means,” muttered Alexander. “Dying. Your kind don’t die — you just Fall, and then you go on forever.”
The angel’s eyes were half-lidded, and after a minute or two he laid down on his belly and went to sleep.
Alexander rolled his eyes.
* * *
The angel did pull his weight, at least — if Alexander asked him to do something, to wrap up products or pack or unpack things or fetch stuff from town, he would. He did whatever Alexander was doing if he hadn’t been given instructions, kept busy.
He barely ate meat — he would eat vegetables and fruit off his own plate or from Alexander’s, ate nuts, but almost never meat, and barely fish.
And he watched people.
He was fascinated by people as they walked around, whether they were around humans or, for the most part, fae — he would look with rapt attention as people folded clothes or pegged out their washing or washed their windows or cooked over a fire. He was interested and curious about the everyday, and at times it was endearing, if they moved through a marketplace or walked down a street and he wandered to observe and examine people’s wares — at other times, it was less so.
Alexander saw him staring openly at a couple who were kissing, and he smacked the angel’s hand to keep him from staring more.
The angel, all chagrin, looked at him, then looked away with shame writ on his features.
“You can’t stare at people like that,” he muttered as they went back into the inn later that evening. “It unnerves people, especially if they’re doing something like that.”
When the angel looked at him blankly — couldn’t he even learn to nod, or shake his head? — Alexander added, “Kissing. Or, or hugging. People will think you’re making something weird about it.”
The blank look went on.
“You’ve never… done any of that. You don’t know. Just trust me.”
The angel walked past him, sitting cross-legged on the end of one of the beds, and began to groom his wings. He did this a few times a week, combed his hands through the sleek black of his feathers, scraped out bits of dirt and dead skin.
He pulled feathers out, sometimes.
It looked almost painful when the angel reached into his feathers and tugged out bent feathers, wrenched out by the quill, and sometimes where was even a bit of blood, but the angel never looked pained by it.
He’d just scowl in concentration, focused, pull out a feather, and then sigh.
It was great, the way he sighed like that. He did it when he pulled out really bent feathers or pressed oil out of the glands at the base of his wings. His eyes would close and his head would tip back and he’d slowly exhale in sheer satisfaction and relief, and it was beautiful and —
And hot.
“Kissing isn’t sex, and nor’s hugging, but it can be a precursor to it, so when someone stares at someone kissing, people might think you’re doing it because in your head, you’re making it sexual. It’s creepy, is what I’m saying.”
The angel didn’t look up, tugging out a few downy feathers.
“You know,” Alexander said, “if you do… want that, you probably could. You know, if you left me alone, went back to human cities. Met other angels. Do you want that? Sex? Intimacy? Because you won’t get it here — and while you’re here, I can’t either.”
The angel looked up at him, tilting his head, and then he looked Alexander up and down, as if looking for something on him, or in him. It made his skin prickle.
“What, that surprises you? How am I meant to bring anybody back if you’re here, and watching?”
The angel kept combing through the feathers with his fingers, slicking oil over their surface and making them glisten with the shine.
“This isn’t normal, you know. I’m not… anything to do with angels. I don’t know how you’re meant to be rehabilitated or, or introduced to anything, or… I’ve told you countless times, I don’t want you here.”
The angel reached up behind him, awkwardly pressing underneath the base of one of his wings. He let out his beautiful sigh of relief, and brought his fingers back around glistening with filmy, golden oil, beginning once more to work it through more of his feathers.
“Fuck,” Alexander muttered.
He turned away to strip off his clothes, throwing them aside, and began to wash himself in the basin of warm water the inn had provided. The angel used to watch him when he undressed and bathed, but he didn’t anymore — he already knew what Alexander looked like naked, and the novelty had worn off.
The angel had been naked when Alexander found him, and now he was dressed in Alexander’s clothes, his oldest and most worn shirt with slits in the back to let his wings through — it was a bit too big for him, had to be belted around the waist, but he’d refused shirts his own size when Alexander had gestured to them at the market.
The merchant knew it was his own fault. He knew if he just locked the angel out, just properly shoved him away and ignored him, he’d probably give up and be gone, but he felt bad, doing it. He’d tried locking him just out of his room, but then the angel would sleep on the floor outside — when he left quickly or suddenly, the angel just followed.
He’d tried distracting him so he could go, even, sending him off on an errand, but the guy could fucking fly. It didn’t matter even if he caught a coach or a train to the next town over — the angel could easily catch up.
He’d taken off his shirt, shimmying out of it. Wing oil glistened on his back, between his wings.
“Wouldn’t you be happier somewhere else?” asked Alexander, scrubbing the sweat from his own shoulders. “With someone that actually liked you, and wanted your company?”
The angel looked at him over his shoulder. He didn’t look hurt or offended, just mildly curious.
“I don’t like you,” said Alexander firmly. “I look after you because you won’t leave me alone and I’m not so shitty of a person I can just… starve you or whatever, but I wish you’d leave me alone. I want you to leave me alone.”
The angel kept looking at him.
“I’m meant to be on my own,” said Alexander, more quietly now. “You think it’s an accident that I travel on my own, work alone? You could get me killed if someone realises who I am because of you.”
The angel flickered out his wings, shaking them like a bird in a bath, and then crawled up the bed to lie on his belly on the far side of it, looking side-on at him.
“Why don’t you just find other angels?” asked the merchant. “You’ll like them better than me.”
The angel said nothing, just watching him in his queer, silent way. Alexander had never seen him smile — or, he had, but only to himself, when he was doing something, never at somebody, and it was normally just a very gentle, contented look, not a full smile. He never frowned at anybody either, though, or rolled his eyes, or clucked his tongue. He almost never made any expressions at all, and Alexander had to imagine his own idea of whatever he was feeling.
“I know you know what it’s like with me,” he hazarded, “that something new is intimidating, but other angels must be better. They’d have to be better for you than me.”
The angel closed his eyes, relaxing into the bed.
Alexander usually got two beds, as much as he could, even though it made the angel hesitate, made him linger on the doorstep to a room and stare at the two of them before he went inside. He preferred one bed.
Alexander wondered if he was a fool for indulging that — they didn’t touch one another, never moved together in the night, but they laid side by side. The closest Alexander got was when he rolled over and smelt the citrusy-woody scent of the angel’s wings right next to his face, and rolled back over.
The beds had been pretty big so far.
He wondered what would happen when they got a smaller one, if the angel would through his wings over Alexander’s body like he did his own, or curl their bodies close together.
Alexander imagined that, the angel’s body touching his, the warmth of it.
He wondered what the angel’s kiss would feel like, if the angel did kiss him — the angel and his silvery, scaly joints, his black-feathered wings, his expressionless face. He shouldn’t know how to kiss, but maybe he could. Maybe he’d touch —
The angel had relaxed further into the bed, melted into the pillow, utterly boneless. He had that faint, almost invisible smile on his lips, and Alexander itched to touch someone, to be touched. If he left to go somewhere, meet someone, the angel would come looking for him within an hour — he woke often, in the night.
Alexander sighed and got into bed, under the covers that the angel never seemed to bother with. The wings were a built-in blanket for him.
He looked at one of the angel’s hands, the knuckles scaled in silver, the skin drawn back around the joints to show the bird-like but metallic scales underneath. Alexander wondered what it might feel like, just to hold that hand, and didn’t.
* * *
“You know, you could ask,” said the merchant some weeks later. “Who I spy for. Why it matters — why I trade in information. What my name is. You could ask, you know. You could ask me anything.”
The angel was placidly sitting with a needle and thread, stitching up a tear in Alexander’s shirt. He’d gotten caught on a window ledge this morning, breaking into the house of a local councillor — he hadn’t been seen, hadn’t left any fabric behind, and he hadn’t been but, but the angel had zeroed in on the ear as soon as he’d come back. He’d reached out, touched the gap in his shirt, and then gripped the hem of Alexander’s shirt, looking at him expectantly. He hadn’t even argued, had just lifted his arms and let the angel pull his shirt off so that he could sit down to repair it.
He’d learned to sew watching other people — watching Alexander, mostly — but he was better at it than Alexander himself, which was irritating, in a way.
“No questions?” he demanded. “Nothing? You don’t care?”
The angel glanced up, meeting his gaze for a second, and then went back to work.
“Yeah,” muttered Alexander. “I suppose you don’t need to ask, because I tell you anyway. I just trade in information — my father was an assassin, but I can’t… do that. Kill people. I couldn’t.”
The angel’s needle and thread ran a last loop through the fabric and then tugged: the seam closed in one smooth, neat movement, and the merchant knew without looking that the threads on the inside were smooth and perfectly finished.
“It’s precious,” said Alexander. “Life. You don’t understand, can’t understand, because it’s not the same for you, but when you have only a little life allotted to you, stealing it from someone else, cutting their life short, it’s… unforgivable. Disgusting.”
The angel cut the thread with his teeth, holding the shirt out for Alexander to take back.
“I’m not saying thank you,” he said firmly. “I don’t even want you here. The least you can do is… stuff like this.”
The angel yawned.
“What, I’m boring you?”
The angel reached out, plucking a piece of lint sticking to Alexander’s belt, and Alexander made an irritated noise, pulling his shirt back on over his head and smoothing it down.
“I bet you can talk,” he said. “That you just don’t, just to spite me.”
The angel didn’t say anything.
Of course.
* * *
“You know,” said Alexander, “you’d like the human cities in human lands better than out here. They have electricity — do you even know what electricity is?”
The angel kept picking the nuts that Alexander hadn’t eaten from his plate — he’d gotten used to leaving them and letting the angel take them.
“It’s… It’s like enchantment,” said Alexander. “But it’s more complicated than that, more layered. They have these screens called televisions where they play out visual depictions of stories, but they’re animated, they move as you watch. Can you imagine having a theatre in a little mirror, being able to see it from wherever you wanted? And pick between loads of them?”
The angel took a piece of walnut, dragging his teeth along its surface to skin it, and only after he had delicately taken off all the skin and swallowed it separately did he bite into the smooth, paler nut flesh underneath.
“Why don’t I go back?” muttered Alexander in an exaggerated voice, as though the angel were the one asking the question. “If I like it so much? Well, it’s… louder. More overwhelming.”
The angel picked up another piece of walnut.
“But you’d like it,” said Alexander. “There’s more music too, and books, also on these little screens, so you don’t even have to hold an actual book.”
The angel could read — he picked books up sometimes, read through them. He didn’t just look at the pictures, and while he rarely seemed interested enough in a book to stick with it, he did study the lines, read through them.
“And I bet you’d be able to meet people who actually like you.”
The angel picked up the last walnut from the merchant’s plate and hesitated, meeting his eyes and lifting it up.
“No,” said Alexander. “I don’t like them, you know I don’t.”
The angel’s lips didn’t quite smile, but they curved up at their edges. He slid the walnut through the honey left on his plate, put it to his mouth, and after swallowing the nut he sucked the honey from his fingers.
Alexander had to look away.
* * *
The rendezvous didn’t go well.
The angel said nothing the whole of the time, but it wasn’t even about that, he didn’t think, because his contact barely even looked at the angel — the whole time, he was slightly shifty, fidgeted under the table where he thought the merchant wouldn’t see, and although he would smile and keep his expressions even, his eyes kept flitting to the door, the window.
“Not good,” he said after.
The angel looked at his face, arching his eyebrows in silent question.
Alexander went on, “He was in a hurry — we’ve had this meeting scheduled for months, but suddenly he couldn’t wait to get away. He’s either going to try something on me, or he’s double booked.”
The angel’s eyebrows lifted higher.
“If he tries to kill me, fine, whatever. If he’s double-booked… Fuck.” Alexander’s hands itched, and he ached to go after the other guy, rummage through his pack, but he was a fucking hermit or some shit, normally went through the thick wilds of fae forest instead of walking on the paths, and Alexander was no good out there.
“Wish I could get a look at what he was carrying,” he muttered. “If he was a regular lcal, a noble or just someone with info, I’d break into his house when he was sleeping, just see, look at any notes he might have. This guy, he’s a right fucking weirdo. Sleeps in the woods in a bedroll.”
The angel’s head tilted minutely to the side, which from him was like screaming, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” directly into Alexander’s face.
“I’m no good at mundane forests, let alone magical ones,” Alexander said. “Can’t orient myself or recognise trees — and here, everything moves on you. Predatory mushrooms, the actual animals, obviously, big spiders, deer, animal traps, plants that can kill you… It’s not that it’s actually all that dangerous, just that it’s dark, and I know I’m shit at it.”
The angel nodded solemnly.
That night, when he rolled over in bed, the angel wasn’t there.
Alexander sat up suddenly, putting his hands over the bed where he’d been lying, and although it smelt of spiced wood, it didn’t feel warm — the angel’s clothes were gone, and the base fell out of Alexander’s stomach.
He’d gone?
He’d actually left, actually… gone? Why now?
Unless that was why Aodh was shifty earlier, because the angel had turned on him, but how the fuck could he, when he was stuck to Alexander’s side all goddamn day?
As he was fighting the rising panic, he heard a subtle shift of wood outside, and he grabbed the knife from his belt and went to the open window. The angel, who was perched on the windowsill with his wings starting to fold in so he’d fit through the gap, peered in at him. He looked, at most, mildly inquisitive, as he looked from Alexander’s blade up to this face.
“Where the fuck have you been?” hissed Alexander. “Are you fucking crazy? Flying around in the middle of the night?”
The angel crawled forward, and Alexander stepped back as he dropped through the window, landing soundlessly on the floor. He folded one wing out of sight for a moment, took the pack that was hanging at his shoulder, and held it out.
It was Aodh’s pack.
“Are you mental?” demanded Alexander, disbelieving as he took it from him. “You could have been killed!”
The angel looked at him a moment, eyebrows raising the barest amount and communicating an impossible scepticism.
Alexander let out a low, irritated sound. “Hurt, then.”
The angel wriggled out of his clothes, no thought given to modesty as he dropped them down to the floor, and when Alexander glared at him, he picked them up and neatly folded them, although with a put-upon air no one else would be able to pick up on.
Alexander put the hermit’s pack on the desk and opened it up, picking through the bundles of documents there — some of it was encoded, but there was a stolen stack of letters between some nobles to the east, a stack the Queen’s people could be very interested in, because the Lord of the Blue and the Sky Duchess were ostensibly still at odds, but this was a set of letters obviously passing between them, no matter that they were signed and addressed to peasant names — perhaps servants in their homes, or local areas.
There were a few other things, too — stolen love letters, a bundle of maps, a page copied out of a ledger. It was a veritable cache, and not one Aodh would have gathered himself, probably just something he was hired to transport at speed.
The angel was fastidiously picking leaves, twigs, and spiders’ webs out of his wings.
“I didn’t ask you to do that,” said Alexander.
The angel pulled out a twig that looked uncomfortably large, and dropped it into the pile.
“You can’t just do stuff like that without telling me — you can’t do stuff like that at all!”
The angel didn’t look up.
“What do you think my people think of me?” demanded Alexander. “I work for the Queen — other informants have definitely told her you’re hanging around, that I’ve picked you up. Don’t you understand that that’s going to be noticed, that people will realise you’re with me? They’ll assume you have a loyalty, the same loyalties I do, and you can’t just turn that over on a whim once you’ve acted for one party. Don’t you see how crazy it is, that you’re acting in service of someone and don’t even know who they are, or why they want what they want? You’re just doing it because I do it!”
The angel yawned very theatrically, sleepily blinking his eyes, and Alexander scoffed.
“Oh, you’re tired, I’m so sorry I’m keeping you up,” he said sarcastically.
The angel got back into bed, sprawling naked in the centre of it, his wings, his arms, his legs outstretched, an angelic parody of Da Vinci’s man.
“You look like a puppet with its strings cut,” said Alexander sourly.
The angel didn’t move, and Alexander spent a few more minutes pouring over the documents, making a few notes on their apparent origins. It was doubtless that they’d been prepared for interception — it was possible they’d even intended for Alexander to intercept the bundle, but he didn’t know, didn’t think so. Even if it was false info, it would still be valuable, if it was false info made for someone else.
This could do… a lot for him.
None of the missives from the Queen’s offices had mentioned the angel, but he wasn’t stupid — he knew that the Queen and her people must know, knew it hadn’t been mentioned in his orders because they wanted to see what he’d do with him, if he’d mention him, but what could he do?
After forty minutes, he went back toward the bed, blowing out the candle.
“Move over,” he said, and the angel turned his head on the bed but stayed outstretched, managing to cover the whole mattress with the spread of his skinny limbs and, mostly, the heavily feathered, muscular spread of his black wings. “Would you move? I’m tired too, you know.”
The angel lifted one wing, and Alexander stared at him.
“You want me to get under that? Have you cracked? Just get back on your side of the bed.”
The wing lifted higher.
Impatiently, Alexander leaned forward, trying his best to reach over the wing, and he grabbed the angel by the hair, dragging him backward. He knew already that the angel was light — he was muscular, but his bones were hollow, and he didn’t weigh that much at all as he was hauled up.
The angel huffed out a sound, not enough noise in it to be called a grunt, but turned to face Alexander when he dragged their heads together.
“I’m not fucking interested in playing games with you,” he spat.
They were almost nose to nose, and the angel’s hair was softer and silkier than he’d expected, even seeing how shiny it was — up close like this, the spiced wood and citrus smell of his wings was overpowering.
The angel leaned even closer, and Alexander recoiled.
His arms wrapped around Alexander’s chest, hands interlinking over the centre of his back, and he didn’t even try to pull away.
“What the fuck?” asked Alexander softly, and the angel tipped his head up more. “What? You want me to kiss you? You don’t even know what kissing’s for.”
The hands resting on his back slid down to rest on his arse instead, and Alexander let the angel go. The angel did not respond in kind: he dragged Alexander closer with surprising strength, pulled him onto the bed and then climbed over him.
He didn’t try to pin him down, just put his hands on the mattress either side of his head and leaned over him, but Alexander was pinned regardless, holding his arms tight into his body and trying not to touch him back.
“You don’t want this,” he said, aware of the desperation in his voice. “You don’t want me. There’s better people, actual people out there. Don’t you fucking get that people will hurt you? Not even to get anything out of me, just to, just to hurt me. I’m a nobody, I’m less than a nobody. Persona non grata. Do you understand what that means?”
The angel looked down at him, expression unchanging except that his lips were smiling, or almost smiling. It still wasn’t a full smile.
“This is such a bad fucking choice,” he said powerlessly. “I didn’t fucking pick you up because I’m a good person — I just didn’t want to leave you there for someone worse.”
It was definitely a smile now.
“Oh, fuck off,” said Alexander. “Just because I don’t kill people or let them die doesn’t mean I’m a good person, idiot. The information I trade in gets peoples killed — gets fucking kingdoms killed, or at least, de-kinged. That’s not for you.”
The wings were curled around them, the air smelling like incense at a funeral, and there was a devastating sweetness to it. The angel’s eyes glinted in the new darkness they were sharing together.
“You don’t want me,” whispered Alexander, almost desperately.
The angel kissed him, and light burst in the merchant’s mouth.
At first it just tingled, like static where the angel’s lips brushed against his, but then the angel’s tongue slid against Alexander’s, and Alexander arched off the bed like he’d been shocked, because he had been. It was like there was electricity crackling between them, a thrill he’d never felt.
The sensation, lightning hot and burning and prickling, was overwhelming, but as much as it was agony — it was all-encompassing, a field of fierce sensation that crept over all of his skin — he didn’t want it to stop, and he gasped as the angel kissed him deeper.
There was a sort of heat threatening to burst inside him, his heart beating fast, his breathing heavy, and while he was certainly turned on, his cock was forgotten amidst this: he felt like he was kissing a thunder cloud, and his brain — fittingly — short circuited.
A few seconds later, dazed and confused, he realised he was lying on his back, that he’d been unconscious for a few moments, and the angel was sitting on top of him, gently rubbing his chest in smooth, easy movements.
“What the fuck was that?” asked Alexander.
The angel raised his eyebrows, looking quizzical.
“Don’t you fucking raise your eyebrows at me. You know that’s not normal. What the fuck was that?”
The angel opened his mouth.
Alexander never usually looked inside his mouth — he kept it closed all the time, never talking, and he ate in polite little nibbles for the most part. Alexander had never had a reason to look closely.
There was… a glow. In the angel’s throat, there was a glow.
He had a tongue, Alexander could see, but it rippled with golden light now that Alexander looked at it directly, and further inside his throat, something crackled, like lightning jumping between poles.
“Will it kill me if I kiss you again?” he asked.
The angel shook his head.
“Can you talk?”
The angel seemed to think about it, his eyes narrowing.
“You can talk, but that would kill me?”
The angel shrugged, but tipped his head to one side, as if to say, “Probably.”
“Bet you can’t be around electricity, with all that in you,” he muttered. “You’d black out a whole city.”
The angel leaned over him again, cupped his cheeks. He was smiling again.
“That doesn’t mean you can stay with me.”
The angel kissed the side of his jaw and Alexander gasped, choking on air, because it sent a thrill over his skin, made him shudder, and it was sublime.
“You’re lucky I don’t have a, fuck, fuck, a fucking pacemaker.”
The angel leaned back, peering down at him curiously.
“I’ll explain later,” said Alexander, and unable to resist any longer he dragged the angel back down, crushed their mouths together in another kiss, and the angel’s hands slid over his skin.
* * *
He couldn’t move, after.
Every nerve was tingling, every inch of his skin feeling like it had been rubbed raw — electrified, in short. It was strange: he felt fresh and new and energised, but simultaneously so tired he could barely even twitch.
The angel was sitting up, combing his hair.
“I killed my father,” Alexander confessed. “That’s why I can’t be anywhere else — I killed him, and he deserved it, and it had to be done, but it made a lot of people angry. He was a good assassin, a good resource, and it was decided I had to pay back the cost of his life. And I’m no assassin, but I can trade in words and feedback intelligence.”
The angel nodded.
Alexander stared at him for a few seconds, not comprehending. “You knew?”
Again, the angel nodded.
“How the fuck did you know?”
The angel looked down at him, tilting his head, and then he reached up, brushing the side of his own temple with the comb.
Alexander laid there for a few long seconds, and then, tingling limbs be damned, forced himself to sit up. “No,” he said. “No, no, no, no — ”
The angel was smiling again.
“Fucking mind reader,” he spat. “You’re a fucking tele — you can’t do that! Just, just be there and skim off all my fucking thoughts!”
The angel arched an eyebrow.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, I can’t fucking stop you,” said Alexander. “You’re a piece of shit, you know that?”
The angel reached out with the comb and ran it through his hair.
“I’m not forgiving you,” he said.
The angel pecked him on the lips, making the skin tingle.
“So you knew this whole time I wanted you to stay,” muttered Alexander. The angel clambered into his lap, wrapping his arms around his neck. “That doesn’t mean you should stay. I’m still not a good person, like I told you, and I’m… This’ll put you at risk.”
The angel leaned in, brushed his nose against Alexander’s. The comb was playing through the thin hair at the back of his neck.
“You know everything that goes through my head?”
The angel shrugged his shoulders.
“Liar.”
The angel kissed him again.
“You can’t stay,” said Alexander between lip-tingling kisses. “I can’t… I can’t look after you.”
The angel’s laugh hurt his ears: it wasn’t actually that loud, but it sounded loud, came out at a frequency that his ears couldn’t take and that made his eyes feel like they’d pop. The angel clapped his hand over his mouth and looked very sorry, cupping Alexander’s cheek.
“It’s okay,” muttered Alexander, rubbing his ear. “You’re laughing that I can’t take care of you — well, I don’t need you taking care of me, either.”
The angel pressed his hand harder over his mouth to keep himself from laughing in his thunderous way.
“You know I don’t serve the Queen because I particularly want to,” said Alexander softly. “She’s dangerous, and she’ll sacrifice me as soon as I stop being useful — that extends to you too, if you throw in your lot with mine.”
The angel was looking at him indulgently, playing with his hair.
“Don’t you understand?” Alexander asked, and the angel sighed. “Yeah, I know, I ask you that a lot. But I can’t go back to… to mundane lands, most of the time I can barely go through human magical ones. She’s the only lifeline I have, and it’s a tenuous one.”
The angel cupped his cheeks, smiled and showed his teeth and his flickering tongue.
“That’s not an invitation to try to save me,” growled Alexander. “Christ, you Fall out of the sky and now you think you’re some fairy tale hero? Grow up.”
The angel kissed him.
“I’m not going to turn out of a frog,” muttered Alexander, and this made the angel tilt his head very far to the side, baffled, before he pushed the merchant down and laid on top of him. “I don’t deserve you.”
The angel raised his head and gave him a wry look.
“What, you expect me to believe you deserve me? That the fuck have you done to deserve that?”
The angel sprawled on top of him, putting his hand over Alexander’s mouth to keep him from talking. He reached up, taking the angel’s hand and interlinking their fingers instead — the scales on his knuckles felt smooth with firm delineations between them, almost like touching carved metal, but it was soft and warm to the touch.
Under a blanket of angel and feathers, he slept.
* * *
“My name’s Alexander,” he said the next morning. “I know you can’t say it, but… that’s my name.”
The angel looked at him.
“You already knew that, of course.”
That earned him a beam.
The angel beamed very literally: with his teeth showing and his mouth slightly open, Alexander could see the bright shine of the lightning in his throat.
“Do you have a name?”
The angel shrugged.
“It’s not like you need one, if you don’t want one,” he muttered. “You ready to go?”
The angel nodded his head, his wings shifting either side. He’d pilfered another of Alexander’s shirts this morning, a nicer one than what he’d been wearing, and Alexander wanted to be pissed with him, but it looked good. Better on him than it did on Alexander.
The angel’s beam brightened.
“Oh, shut up,” he muttered, and tossed the hermit’s pack of stolen intel over to him, grabbing at his own chest of goods and pulling it up. “When you get us both killed, I’ll say I told you so.”
The angel blew him a kiss, and Alexander jumped at the shock that hit him, a tiny lightning bolt that shot across the room.
“Don’t do that!” he growled as the angel stifled his laughter under choked, breathless noises.
They walked together along the path, and above them, thunderclouds began to gather, the air hot and thick.
“Is that you?” asked the merchant.
The angel shook his head.
“Bet you like it, though,” he muttered.
The angel smiled and put his hand in Alexander’s, interlinking their fingers once more. When the heavens opened and the rain came down, the angel lifted his wings in a natural umbrella, one of them shielding Alexander’s head.
“We look ridiculous,” he said.
The angel sighed happily, as if to look ridiculous was the most wonderful thing in the world, and squeezed his hand.
Thunder rolled in the distance, and Alexander pressed his lips together, but didn’t quite manage to stifle a smile of his own.
FIN.
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