Sherlock is 22 when the inevitable pull of raging teenage hormones finally sways his mind into at least agreeing to attempt sexual activity. He is, of course, a thinker first and foremost, an intellectual completely, and he isn’t so much attracted physically to anyone as he appreciates a keen mind. But nevertheless, before dismissing the concept of sex entirely, he would be a poor scientist if he didn’t at least perform some basic field tests first.

He has but two equals then, one male, one female. The male, Edmund, a scientist like himself, of course driven more by sex than Sherlock himself is, as all boys their age generally are, (And Sherlock has never referred to himself amongst that, as “a boy their age” because he is not, and never will fit any demographic, no matter how hard he might wish for it at times, before he grows secure in himself.) He has a sharp mind, a good, analytical mind, and Sherlock admires him for his scientific theory, though he isn’t by any means within Sherlock’s own league. His body barely even factors into Sherlock’s own appraisal of him, and even then it is only in passing, a casual acknowledgement that whilst he personally is not physically attracted to his friend, Edmund is nevertheless attractive to look at. He has a build that does not in any way betray his preference for academic arts, a sportsman’s build, broad-shouldered and well honed, with smooth, tanned skin. Sherlock far prefers his eyes, the bright, loud intelligence that they hold, the warm smile and the curve of his mouth as he tells Sherlock of his latest academic achievements, drawing patterns in the air in too-hot summer afternoons in a cramped bedroom meant for only one.

Alana is creature of another matter entirely. She has a mind that knows exactly what it wants and when it wants it, her thoughts comprised of swirls and patterns. She is an artist, be her medium words, a brush stroke over crisp white canvas, the way her body moves as she dances; the loud peal of her laughter as her mouth curls scythe-sharp around her language when she manipulates it to do her bidding. She is like a flame, beautiful to behold in full glory, her hair, too bright red like the well of blood from an aching wound. She is quick to anger, quick to protest, to tell Sherlock that he’s wrong, wrong, wrong, and that’s new. She uses her language as a weapon against him, cuts him deep and deeper still, still bringing him close and laughing, praising, rejoicing in his victory as if it was her own.

It seems a natural conclusion for the peers of his mind should become those of his body. She comes to him first, drunk on triumph and their own clever wit, pulls him into the sheets of her own thin cot and presses him down, down, down. She speaks to him then, talks for what seems like endless hours about everything and nothing, all of it irrelevant and brilliant, even as he peels back her clothes the same way he denudes her mind, leaving her spread open and bare beneath his gaze and his fingertips. He is deluded, if he thinks that she is anything but in perfect control of the situation, even as he scatters her words and her thoughts like stars in a few short heartbeats, brings her down into more animal exploits and wrenches gasp after delighted gasp from her with his quick, clever tongue and long, elegant fingers. He plays her every bit as expertly as he does his violin, until they meet, with his long, sloping back as he arches, overwhelmed, terrified for the way his own thoughts escape him, and her breathless exaltation, and none of it, none of it compares to when she rests her cheek against his racing heartbeat and laughs at him, Wilde tumbling from her lips. He thinks that she has wounded him somehow fatally, with her brilliant mind and the way her hair tumbles across alabaster skin like blood on snow.   

—-

And here is some demiromantic, asexual Sherlock half-smut for you. Because even asexual Sherlocks get curious and need to know.


In case you hadn’t guessed.. University!Sherlock. :T

Truly, it begins the moment the kids happen to have a mishap in the study. Hank is testing the versatility of fabrics against Alex’s lazers, with varying degrees of success, but the mishap comes not in the form of a blinding beam of light, but rather a body. Not a human body, a mannequin, but even so, Alex misjudges his strength and sends the plastic model crashing through a second floor window, utterly destroying Charles’ study. (Inventory needing replaced is one lamp, an antique that Charles doesn’t care much for above the fact that no one was hurt, or worse, discovered by the accident.)

More importantly, Erik thinks, when they come to play chess that evening is the sudden absence of two rooks, a bishop and a badly maimed knight. Armies suffering casualties, both men are forced to call off their nightly battle in favour of each other’s company, and if Erik can find it in himself to complain when Charles breathes his name like a song when he comes, that part of him is small and easily silenced.

When he wakes, he presses a brief kiss to a sleeping Charles’ temple and promises to endeavour to return before the telepath wakes. He tears out of the mansion on a newly-bought Royal Enfield Interceptor and heads into the nearest city, an hour away. Contrary to what some might believe, Erik is scarcely sentimental, and carrying around a bar of Nazi gold was less than practical, and had left him with a small fortune that would be no doubt spent quietly on more practical pursuits. It had set him back more than he’d normally have paid for anything not absolutely necessary, but he adores being able to sit astride the engine and feel it purr better beneath his fingertips than any car ever could.

Unfortunately, between his search and traffic, he returns in the late afternoon to find Charles pottering in the garden, watching the kids play with a frisbee. The telepath looks him over and raises his eyebrows as Erik rumbles into the parking garage, but if he finds anything odd about him, he doesn’t project his curiosity into Erik’s unguarded mind.

Erik, for his part, ignores Charles for the time being to place his new acquisition in the study, pausing only in his travels to slide into the kitchen and grab a beer from the fridge before joining Charles on the patio.

“You left in rather a hurry this morning,” He says, blue eyes glancing down at the bottle in Erik’s hand, a small smile touching too-red lips as the German crumples the bottlecap from the top of the bottle with his mind alone, the small, newly-formed ball of metal dropping into his pocket for disposal later.

“What, no hello?” Erik deflects, and Charles has the good English manners to look suitably embarrassed at that, a flush setting high across his cheekbones, kissing across the bridge of his nose. He sniffs somewhat ashamedly, though doesn’t cease with his smiling, and doesn’t move to correct it. Erik feels something of approval curl warm and familiar in his gut, and bobs his head, his gaze levelling out towards the children.

“You didn’t bring me a drink,” The telepath is smiling wider now, a mischievous expression bearing down across his pale features, and Erik finds himself huffing a soft laugh in spite of it, rising to Charles’ challenge of verbal sparring with “You didn’t ask.”

“I didn’t know,”

“You’re a telepath,”

“You asked me to stay out of your head.” Erik nods at this and shrugs his shoulders, turning his attention to his drink for a moment, seemingly in thought. Charles watches him all the while, cerulean eyes looking over him as one might some kind of creature in a zoo—No, Erik decides, he knows what that feels like, and Charles would never look at another being, mutant or otherwise, like that. (Because he knows Charles knows, whether through his own feelings or Raven’s or Hank’s or any of them, what it is to be hated for your blood and appearance.) Charles looks at him as though he’s some kind of mystery, and Erik finds that a novel thought, that Charles, who knows everything about him, still doesn’t have it in him to understand Erik.

Erik’s thankful for that. He, whilst knowing that they’re so very far from normal, sometimes yearns for a base level of normalcy, one that comes in the form of being able to trust people enough to tell them of himself, not having them read it from his mind or a case file. It’s never something he’s had before, trusting someone, and he finds that sometimes it’s something he’d like to try. (And if anyone could make him want to try, it’s Charles Xavier, with his bright, hopeful smile and bright, hopeful mind and bright, hopeful ideas for the world.)

“To answer your opening statement, I took it upon myself to replace your chess set.” He hums, and Charles blinks owlishly in the sunlight, confusion passing his gaze.

“You didn’t have to do that, my friend, but thank you nonetheless. I believe we’re behind one game..?” The invitation is left open, and it’s one that Erik takes with a nod, his fingers itching to curl around Charles’ hand and brush his fingertips against the ring Charles is wearing on his left index finger, the silver watch that Erik can feel tick-tick-ticking away seconds between them, the cuff-links that were a gift from Raven. The moment passes, and Erik’s hand remains by his hip, even as he’s turning and walking inside.

They take up seat in the study, and Erik goes to the liberty of unpacking the new chess-set. Charles’ eyes widen beautifully when his brilliant mind comes to the sudden realization of why Erik made it his personal business to buy a new chess set. The entire thing is cast in metal. The white pieces are formed of flawless polished platinum, the curve of each smooth and perfect and so unbroken and unblemished that Charles can see his own reflection in them. The black pieces are dark, smoky steel, the light glinting off of them and casting an oil-slick rainbow over each one. Each piece is a little larger than standard chess pieces, a little larger than the foldable travel-chess set Charles had used before from his days at University, clearly meant to be displayed.

Charles’ fingers, Erik notices, almost seem to shake as he moves the first piece. Erik counters it with an elegant twist of his own long fingers, and Charles seemingly cannot decide whether it would be better to watch his lover’s hands in motion, or the pieces that move themselves. They’re not half way through playing when Charles’ mind is suffering under the unique, strange beauty of Erik’s gift, the way his hands dance in the air as he manipulates each piece with expert precision. Erik watches the dip of Charles’ adams apple as he swallows self-consciously, before he’s shifting the table aside to pull Charles into a long, slow kiss.

Charles responds like he’s only been waiting for it all day, a tiny squeak of surprise startling from him before it’s swept up in a moan that Erik is only too happy to taste, his tongue flicking its way into Charles’ mouth. Whenever they do this, Erik plays Charles like an instrument, his fingers sliding beneath the professor’s clothes before either of them realize it’s happening, because Charles is beautiful and a pale clean canvas, and Erik is an artist, a painter, a sculptor, and if he can memorize Charles’ form absolutely, he’ll sculpt a twin exactly like him and even after Charles has decided, much the same way the world has, that he’s tired of the broken toy Erik Lehnsherr makes, Erik will have Charles forever.

Erik knows Charles is listening when he stifles a half-sob of both pleasure and denial against the cushion as Erik turns him around on the chair. He pulls Charles’ hips into the air and Charles hasn’t even noticed that he’s naked, too swept up in Erik’s ever-present sense of loss. Erik is learning, though, and he uses that distraction, (Charles’ fixation on his feelings,) to retrieve a jar of something slick and cool of which the label’s long since peeled off. It’s seconds before he’s pressing his long, elegant, work-roughened fingers into Charles, the telepath squirming and shoving his hips backwards, breath escaping him in tiny, measured pants.

Erik’s grin widens into something shark-like and predatory when Charles moans at the loss of his fingers, shifting restlessly in the chair, his head tipped to rest against the plush back, hiding his eyes from view while Erik works, first, on removing his own clothing, secondly—Charles doesn’t know what Erik’s doing, and Erik knows it, but the way Charles shoves his hips reflexively forwards, the curve of his cock smacking wetly against his thigh when Erik uses nothing but his mind to press the smooth length of the black queen piece into him, is utterly captivating. Erik’s thoughts scatter like stars, and where others would be afraid of losing the piece to the tightening of Charles’ muscles, Erik knows intimately where it settles, growing warm with Charles’ heat, feels it press its smooth cap bluntly against the man’s prostate.

It’s not thick, nor long, and not at all satisfying, the teasing evident from the way Charles shifts and whines, his toes curling in the air even as Erik’s fingers are twitching, slowly fucking the piece into him, drawing a startled little grunt each time, but watching Charles twitch and tense around it, feeling it like an extension of himself has Erik’s cock jerking upwards, almost painfully close to coming from the sound and sight and sensation alone.

A twist of his hand brings it corkscrewing tightly against Charles’ prostate, the smaller man crying out as his orgasm takes him completely by surprise, hips pistoning forwards, the psychic backlash of it completely blindsiding Erik and sweeping him along in its tsunami wave of pleasure, completely incapable of doing everything but cling helplessly to Charles’ hips and rest his cheek in the small of his back, carefully guiding the chess piece away and back to the set.

(And in the days that follow, it’ll become a game in its own right, Erik will march and conquer and with each piece he takes, it will find a place inside Charles until he’s claimed each and every one of them, and they’ve been thoroughly used in every sense of the word. And if he’s feeling benevolent, he might even extend the rules in Charles’ favour, allowing the telepath’s clumsy, physical attempts to replicate Erik’s motion with nothing at his disposal but his own hands.)

And maybe half of it is the fact that in days to come they’ll play with this set again and again, and each day Charles will sit and watch Erik’s fingers stroke lovingly over the piece, each day Erik will manipulate it and the both of them will know exactly how it was christened, a moment shared perfectly between them and them alone. And even after Erik is banished from Charles’ life as he no doubt will sooner or later, however many chess matches Charles may have with however many people after Erik is gone, this piece, right here, will be Erik’s, the metal moulded with his own control and Charles’ heat and both of their desire.

Adam had been brought to awareness by something that could only be described as the sensation of sinking upwards. It was, admittedly, what he’d envisioned dying to be like, only, he’d died before, and he didn’t remember dying. At least, the death he did remember was full of pain and blood and violence and this.. just was.

Judging by the calendar, it had been a grand total of four months since he—Michael.—had fallen into the pit with Sam—Lucifer.—and.. everything was surprisingly normal. But he was at a loss. He’d awoken in a warm, clean bed in a warm, clean room of a warm, clean flat in (predictably, for nothing was ever simple,) Detroit. All attempts at research suggested that he’d just bought the place and moved in. The neighbours thought, after that first week, that he’d been hit on the head or had some kind of mental disease. Maybe he did.

Because whilst Adam remembered, he couldn’t quite remember. He remembered that light, Dean’s departure, that bright, brilliant light, a slow, melodic voice, and then nothing. Other than the occasional snapshot of warmth, safety and then—here. He thinks he might have been in heaven, but heaven wasn’t like that—Wasn’t light or warmth or anything. It was memories—Happy memories, of course. But Adam couldn’t live in the past, it drove him insane, living events that had already happened again and again, and he imagined once that maybe heaven was subjective and what would happen if he picked up the knife Mr. Jameson was using to cut the birthday cake of the girl he’d liked and killed them all like the ghouls had killed him—

Adam exists. Of this he’s fairly certain, (as certain as anyone can be of such an assertion,) and he exists in relative peace for three weeks. It is then that he begins to grow restless, pacing the walls of this perfectly human cage like a captured animal before he decides to leave. He finds himself sat on a bench two towns over by the time his feet are walked raw and sore, staring at an old, gnarled oak that looks older than the earth itself. He wonders if that’s where people find God, in those things that never began, not in human memory, they just were and just are and always will be.

A man in a truck suggests that Adam might be lost. Adam thinks he might be right, and he lets the man take him back to where he could be found, that flat in Detroit with the one window that seems perpetually frosty even on a clear summer’s day. And then one day—Adam’s lost count of how many days, how many long walks and bruised souls soles later—he has a visitor.

The man—(Not the man in the truck, for that would be odd and Adam might find himself concerned by that, hunting instincts ingrained, warrior’s soul and heart and mind fighting even when his body is weary with not-remembered happiness,) stands in the center of the room a tub of water, (Warm, Adam notices, it’s faintly steaming,) watching him. He looks familiar, but Adam can’t quite place him, and is alarmed—But only by the fact that he isn’t alarmed, staring mutely at this stranger-friend-stranger like he cannot bring himself to be concerned by his presence. Oh.

Michael.

Adam, Michael says. Or rather, thinks, because Adam doesn’t recall hearing it, but then there’s blood rushing through his ears as his heart nearly stops from the shock of it all, “Adam.”

And then he’s kneeling, drawing one of Adam’s feet up into his hand to lay it on his thigh where the muscle is pulled taut by his position. His head dips downwards. “Please.”

Adam’s heel is cradled reverently in Michael’s palm, the angel’s other hand resting feather-light on the bridge of his foot as he lowers it into the water, fingers—Rough, Adam notices, worked hands—tracing the lines and bruises that mark Adam’s foot, tracing away the pain.

“You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am.” Michael murmurs, and Adam finds himself watching the curve and twist of the angel’s lips as he speaks. Michael draws up an impossibly soft towel and dries across Adam’s damp flesh, making sure to tend every nook and cranny. “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

Adam wants to strike out, force Michael away with scathing words, a laugh, so kinky, Michael, and you’re supposed to be an angel, but Michael lowers his head and presses his lips, warm and dry and slightly chapped, to the arch of Adam’s foot and the boy is so struck by just how tender the gesture is that he is rendered speechless by it. He ignores the moisture that gathers in the corner of his eyes, ignores the hysterical sob that rattles out of his chest in favour of lancing the sharp knot of what he realizes is loneliness, desperation.

Michael’s eyes are impossibly blue and seem to almost glow as he looks up at the boy, and then down as Adam slides from the couch and into his lap. Michael can offer nothing more than comfort anymore, Adam collapsing into sobs and for once in what is a very long—too long, oh Lucifer, I’m so sorry—time, Michael cradles the young man as he cries.

It’s not easy, working with a demon, but Castiel is desperate and Dean is busy, always busy these days. Hunting down Eve and now Crowley and Castiel is so damn tired  of it all. Tired of the fighting, tired of his family’s warring, tired of lying and cheating and sneaking around behind his friends’ backs when they call on him with trust and hope and love that Castiel can’t even fathom anymore.

It feels like falling, the hope in Dean’s eyes, the determination that lights them up, the sickening lurch of guilt in the pit of Castiel’s belly. No, his mind supplies him with, You need this. For them, all of them, you need to do this. No matter what. It’s been curiously insidious as of late, that voice in Castiel’s head that never had voice before Dean Winchester, and is starting to sound a lot less like him and a lot more like Lucifer. Castiel thinks he might be sick—Knows he is sick, thinks he might be falling.

He’s angry, today. Crowley makes him angry, makes him burn with anger like he’s never felt before. Crowley’s tongue is quick and spiteful and he can read Castiel like a book, because he knows exactly what to say to ease the dry slide of heat and rage into Castiel’s grace like carving his name into the tree of Castiel’s own being. If Castiel didn’t know better, didn’t know where Crowley’s bones really were, didn’t know that he’d been a man once, a father and a husband and human, Castiel would suggest that Crowley had been the Serpent in Eden, shifting coils of lies around Eve’s vulnerable, naked, (trusting,) form.

Today, Crowley is angry too. Or rather, frustrated, because Castiel doesn’t believe he’s ever seen Crowley truly angry before. Crowley is a hard dark stone wrapped between layers and layers of control, so much so that Castiel cannot truly tell what Crowley wants anymore. (Some days, he thinks Crowley was more suited to his self-claimed crown than Lucifer ever was. Crowley is measures of hate and venom, but to Castiel, Lucifer only ever radiated suffering and loneliness.)

“Cas,” Crowley drawls, the name rolling off his tongue in an almost experimental fashion. Judging by his eyes, it’s good, he likes it. Castiel does not. “Be a darling and just go kill the stunted ape and his pet moose that you’re so fond of, would you?”

Castiel doesn’t speak, doesn’t rise. He rarely does, because that’s all Crowley ever wants of him, the rage. It makes him easier to predict, easier to control and manipulate. Wrath. The first of his failings here.

“Cas,” Impatience now, hidden beneath the sing-song tone that Crowley so jovially utters. It’s almost enough to make Castiel look up, turn his attention from the sword in his hand, (his sword. Utterly unique, like one to every angel in Heaven.) shiny from where he’s been polishing it with a rag. (It’s habit more than anything. Something to do with his hands so they don’t seek out Crowley’s throat. Something to occupy his mind from the inevitable future.)

“What, Crowley.” It’s a statement more than a question, Castiel’s uninterested tone edged barely with that anger that has settled as a familiar ache in his bones.

“How long, do you suppose, would it take Dean Winchester to break this time?” It’s conversational, but something about the way Crowley has a vampire’s heart, wet and glistening, in the palm of his hand, running bloody rivers down his pale wrists to where designer shirt-sleeves are rolled up to the elbow makes something dark and ugly lurch in Castiel’s stomach. “A week, maybe? I’d have to be careful, bodies are much more delicate,” He squeezes that fat organ in his hand and the vampire on the table screams and twists, fear contorting her eyes, “than souls. D’you reckon, maybe if I did Sammy first, made Dean watch, that he’d give up his soul again? How long do you think that would take? Hours? Minutes?”

“You will not harm them, Crowley.” Castiel grinds out from between his teeth, blue eyes forced on the sword in his hand, for one dark second imagining what it would be like to plunge it through Crowley’s heart. Would he scream? The moment passes, and Castiel feels sick.

“How far would he go for little Sammy, eh?” Crowley’s grinning now, and dropping the heart onto the metal table with a wet slap, waving for a pair of demons to wheel away the remains and dump them somewhere. Inconspicous or no, Crowley doesn’t care. “I wonder. What d’you reckon? Would the righteous man let a demon fuck him in exchange for his brother’s life?”

The expletive leaves his tongue and Castiel’s veins feel like ice, unaware he’s moving before he’s already across the room, hand a fist and striking Crowley hard across the jaw. It isn’t until Crowley’s back hits the wall, tiles crunching behind him, that Castiel realizes the howl of rage is his own. Crowley uses that against him, though, shoving Cas away where the angel overbalances  and topples backwards, crashing against the table. Crowley isn’t about to let it go, following the motion with a growl and a fist of his own.

And that’s how a demon and an angel end up wrestling on the blood-spattered floor, beating seven shades of Hell out of one another. By the time Crowley decides he’s had quite enough, his suit is ruined, he has a split lip and a bruise that spreads from his eye down his cheekbone,  and Castiel looks not much different. Understandably, Castiel is more than surprised with what comes next—Crowley’s mouth covering his own, teeth biting into his lip for a bloodied kiss that is designed more to evoke reaction than give satisfaction, but judging by the instinctive upwards press of Castiel’s hips, he doesn’t mind much.

And if he does, (which he does,) Crowley doesn’t care, swallowing the punched out breath of shock as it leaves the angel, Castiel can do little but growl and roll them both over, blunt human teeth carving a blunt human pattern out on Crowley’s mouth before inhuman strength flips the demon over, Crowley’s cheek hitting the tiles with a resounding crack.

If Crowley wasn’t hard before, he is now, and judging by the insistent press of hips behind him, the little angel that could is just as ridiculously aroused, Castiel’s rage flares around them like the opening of brilliant flowers consumed by a wildfire. Lesser men might wither away from it, but Crowley seems to decide that if one thing is happening today, he is not going to play bitch to an angel, and with a charming smile that is somewhat diminished by the black eye, split lip and cut cheek, Crowley flips them both over once more.

Castiel doesn’t have time to think let alone respond before Crowley’s dextrous fingers are tempting open his belt and pants, and Castiel barely registers the almost anguished sounding moan as the cold air of the room hits his cock as his own. If there’s one thing that can be said about the demon, he gets shit done, and when Castiel can finally register what’s happening, Crowley’s choking on a growl and hissing in his ear as he presses down completely dry.

It hurts. It burns, for the both of them, friction painful enough to draw a stumbled curse from even Castiel’s lips, eyelids fluttering like pinned butterflies, but Crowley doesn’t give him time, and is moving, moving and whispering filthy things in Castiel’s ear. Things that would make even Dean—Poor, now-forgotten Dean Winchester, with his tired green eyes and pained smiles and broken heart and soul—Blush red with how dirty they are. He uses words like want and fuck and love and Castiel can’t think about love, not now, not when a man he does love wears his betrayal like shackles in a motel room six states over.

So caught up in it is Castiel, that when he comes, he’s blinded by the sudden shock of it, a raw shout punching out of him—Dean! His mind sobs—and he’s not paying attention to Crowley long after the demon’s already come, making another exquisite mess of his already ruined suit.

And if Crowley finds something amiss with the way Castiel howls another man’s name when he comes, he guards it close with a knowing smile and eyes that glitter with a knife-edge cruelty.

It’s become a game of sorts. Though not exactly a game, as that would imply some degree of fun, and Michael is scarcely anything but serious, but in terms of what they are doing, (And that Michael’s mind categorizes it as dirty, sinful, blasphemous and wrong, and that makes him crave it all the more,) it could be regarded as play of sorts.

The church is deserted, always deserted when Michael enters. The silence stifles and his footsteps ring like the toll of a bell, calling him forever forwards. As always, Michael gazes to Christ on the cross and swallows his inhibition and pride for a moment, his eyes flicking downwards. As always, he loses himself to the feel that he no longer belongs to this place, this House of God, for the sins that he has committed, and in part been punished for.

As always, any prayer he leaves directly to God goes (sometimes thankfully,) unanswered. He kneels before the altar and bends until his forehead touches the cool stone, leeching away his heat and becoming warm before he rises, hands clasped in his lap and head bowed. It’s here that he waits. He waits for hours, sometimes, in silence, his mind troubled by too many a thought of sin and destruction these days.

And eventually, his waiting bears fruit. Unlike Michael’s footsteps, those of the priest are almost whisper soft. Caught in himself, Michael doesn’t hear them until the priest’s hand strokes over the back of his neck, fingertips almost unfelt aside from the electric jolt as they ghost over the raised red ridges of a handprint that marks him like a brand. He stands before Michael, leaning close to the altar, and Michael doesn’t look up from the black cloth of his cassock.

It begins, as always, with confession. But it’s delivered there at the altar before the eyes of God, instead of shame hidden away in a little wooden box.

“Forgive me, Father,” Michael begins, his voice hoarse and rough with lack of use, “for I have sinned.”

“And what are your sins, child?” Lucifer inquires, and Michael imagines it’s with a tilt of his head, barely able to contain the smirk. If he looked, however, he’d find Lucifer’s face curiously devoid of both these things. A brief darkening of his gaze is the only reaction at all.

“I have betrayed my family,” Michael murmurs, head still bowed, eyes downcast, “I have fallen to wrath, and to pride. I have hurt and maimed and killed.. And I have betrayed my brothers and now my God.”

“Grave sins, indeed.” The priest agrees, placing his hand carefully on the back of Michael’s head, fingers stroking through the fine strands of hair, in a mockery of the way Michael would have his wings groomed when they were both still little more than children, “Do you know what happens to betrayers, Michael? To those who betray their family, and even the Lord their God?”

“Yes,” The archangel whispers, the word catching in his throat. Against his thighs, his hands shake. “They go to Hell,” And to Hell, and to Hell.

“Which circle?” The question is sharp, Lucifer’s fingers tighten in his hair, but resist the urge to force his brother to look up at him, allowing him willing humility for the moment.

“Ninth, on the frozen lake, spread beneath the Cage.”

“Why have you come here today, Michael?” It’s the use of his name that shakes him to his core, Lucifer’s voice gentle and easy, as though he’d heard and given confession a thousand times before.

“To be forgiven.” Michael looks up at him, then, blue-green eyes dark with something unidentifiable, his face pale and drawn. Lucifer clicks his tongue on his teeth, once, twice, and removes his hand from Michael’s head, folding them over his lap. Or rather, what would be his lap through the indistinct material of the cassock he wears.

“But to be forgiven, you must first atone, wouldn’t you say, Michael?” The questioning isn’t exactly as it would be for humans, not in this day, this century, but Michael knows what Lucifer is doing, and gives it up for him with some degree of difficulty. Humbled, he lowers his gaze again.

“Yes, father.”

Lucifer leaves. Michael counts one hundred and eighty four seconds and twenty two steps before he returns, carrying with him a branch to which knotted leather braids are attached. He taps Michael’s clothed shoulder with it, startling the angel.

His hands shake as he unbuttons the shirt he wears, allowing it to slide down his arms until his chest and back are bared before that effigy of their Father crucified. Lucifer hands him the whip.

“H-how many?” He curses the way his voice cracks, and can’t deny the way heat pools in the pit of his stomach throughout the entire exchange.

“However many it takes,” Lucifer replies with ease, tapping his shoulder and leaning back, sucking at his teeth. He fingers the rosary he wears beneath the collar of his cassock. Nothing happens. Lighting does not strike, the flags beneath Michael’s knees do not crack, candles do not flicker out, and the flowers around them don’t die.

Michael raises the whip and brings it down hard over his shoulder, a burn igniting across his shoulders, the skin raising red and angry. He gathers up his grace and prevents it from healing the wound, balling it down somewhere deep within him whilst he ignores the way the pain sparks down his spine and tightens in his gut.

“Count,” Lucifer drawls, and Michael doesn’t need to see the priest’s face to know the way his brother’s eyes darken with want, his brother kneeling before him in humility and penance for sins committed. Sometimes it’s almost enough.

“Two,” Michael breathes, bringing the whip down with a slap over his shoulder. His back rolls with the strike, the whip’s nine-tailed kiss flaying the skin. He bites his lip and refuses to cry out, refuses to give Lucifer that satisfaction.

“Three,” The third breaks the skin in a spray of blood, the fourth smears the blood across the skin. Michael reaches ten, and by that time his back is raw and bloodied, and if he looked up, Lucifer is decidedly less composed than he was when Michael began.

“Enough,” Lucifer says, laying his hand into the print on Michael’s neck, the older archangel’s knees press apart enough to alleviate the pressure on the hard line of his cock, but not too much that it couldn’t be passed off as seeking comfort on the hard stone beneath him.

Michael’s breath shakes from him in ragged pants, thankful for the fact that having drawn his grace away to allow his flagellation to remain a mark across his back, his wings are kept out of the way. He can scarcely bear it, but they’re not finished, not by half, and Lucifer moves closer now. Michael knows enough of their roles to know what ought not to come next, but they never were human.

His hands still shake when he reaches into thick, dark cloth and tugs free his brother’s erection, vicious and twitching. Michael casts his eyes up to his brother, and Lucifer gazes at him, his eyes almost black with want. Lucifer’s hand reaches the back of his head once more when the damp pink tip of Michael’s tongue strokes carefully over his cock, before his elder brother takes the head into his mouth and sucks.

But Michael is here to repent, and Lucifer won’t let him forget that, so as soon as Michael is eased into it enough, Lucifer’s hand is on the back of his head once more, threading fingers into his hair and forcing him down. If Michael was human, he might choke badly around the thick length of his brother’s cock, and it’s some small mercy that he has enough presence of grace to prevent that from happening.

Lucifer doesn’t let him touch himself in these exchanges, he never does; Michael’s cock remains a tight, insistent throb between his thighs, and he’s so hard it physically hurts. When they’re like this, it’s Lucifer who holds every card, and if Michael is honest, that turns him on exactly as much as it terrifies him. The blood is sticky and hot against his back, and the salt of Lucifer’s skin is bitter on the back of his tongue, but it’s all he can do not to sob with need when the hand at the back of his head forces him further down, and the priest fucks into his mouth.

“God the Father,” Lucifer breathes, his eyes hooded, and Michael’s cock twitches demandingly—His fingers bunch into the cotton of his pants, “has freed you from delusion—“ He cuts off with a low, breathy noise when Michael’s throat tightens around his cock, and Michael can only imagine the sight he must make, lips stretched tight around his little brother, hard and aching and bleeding, and every drop of it for Lucifer.

“G-given you new birth by water,” Lucifer is close, Michael can feel it in the way his voice catches on every other syllable, the way his thighs are twitching and tensing as he holds back enough to complete his rite, the way his cock throbs urgently against the flat of his tongue, but the archangel doesn’t let up for a second, desperate to snatch victory from Lucifer by making him come before he’s quite ready.

“And the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his—ah—holy people.” His eyes are screwed tightly shut now, hips giving the barest of twitches as he attempts to fall into stillness enough to carry on speaking. He pulls free of Michael’s mouth, and Michael becomes aware of how sore, how broken open he feels. And it takes one, two pulls of his hand before Lucifer is coming in a few hot stripes that mark the bridge of Michael’s nose, his forehead, his lips, chapped and slightly cracked—“He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation,” and Michael’s gut churns both with arousal and how wrong this is, how much he needs it.

Still, Lucifer continues, saying in little more than a breathless whisper; “As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.” It’s ironic, really. These words are human ones, a rite of baptism if Michael recalls correctly, which he does. It does nothing to alleviate the way his dick is so hard he feels he might burst into flames, his skin is too-tight and too-hot, the burn not only isolated to his back, but every inch of him. He burns with shame and need, chest heaving with every breath, but it needs to be done, and Lucifer is watching him, still watching him, even when he licks his brother’s come from his lips and breathes out “Amen.”

The cage was not built for two.

Destiny averted rather capriciously, two archangels found themselves sharing the space that only one was meant to occupy. (Two archangels and two human boys, actually, both sets of brothers drunk on hate and resentment, but for once, this story is not about Sam Winchester.) Lucifer and Michael fight, their rage spilling out across Hell through the bars of the cage, the violent reality of their blows flaying fragile human boys in their skin.

Cracks form.

There are visitors. First, an angel, spiriting himself through the cracks that their anguish has created, stealing away a body to reanimate, a soul left behind that will rot without a husk to protect it. Second, Death itself, passing through the bars in a cold breath of finality, drawing away that tiny shivering thing trapped between the fire and ice of two brothers who have so much left to fight over.  Adam remains.

The cracks also remain.

Lucifer and Michael tear into each other because that is what they were made, supposedly, to do. What passes for fingers curls into delicate feathered down and tears, and their agonized howling echoes louder throughout Hell than the screams of the broken, until those screams are silenced and only two (three) remain. It’s a bitter reality, doomed to fight and never to die. No one dies in this place, by the very nature of the thing; eternal punishment has never seemed so eternal. Being forsaken leaves Michael more alone in the company of his brother than he has ever been without him.

The cracks widen.

In what might be a second millennia, there is a split second of silence in which two shapes which might on some days pass for men drink in what passes for air in this place without, and watch. There is doubt, a breaking-edge of uncertainty in the elder brother’s eyes, and that’s all Lucifer needs to twist into his wings and drag him into what passes for the ground, riding him hissing and spitting through the hate and the pain until the both of them lay too exhausted to fight anymore.

The cracks open.

Lucifer is the first away, using his brother as a board with which he rips his way free of the cage, dragging himself to the surface and taking his light with him. Michael exists for a single moment without him, cradling the tender ball of still-flickering light that Adam has become in the palm of what passes for a hand, coaxing him gently back into brilliance and tucking him into the warmest centre of his grace, the softest down at the heart of his wings, wings that can finally be spread as the cage crumbles to dust around them.

He takes Adam home first, or rather, to what Adam will call home. His mother’s Heaven is most often a warm Friday afternoon watching her six year old son climb all over the bars of what looks like a Technicolor cage to Michael, and when Adam catches what passes for a wrist and turns the archangel to face him, breathing thanks that he can barely voice, something inside Michael breaks like the cage he’s just escaped from.

Heaven is in tumult and he does not belong here anymore, he feels the taint of having been in Hell clinging to his grace like hooks, wisps of shadow that he cannot seem to break free of no matter how hard he beats his wings. He seeks guidance, not knowing how. God has abandoned them, and Michael with them, and Michael is no longer sure how to speak to a father who he knows exists somewhere in the world, but a father that he cannot touch any longer, one that is as lost to him as his little brother.

He keens bereavement into the wind on a Monday morning in a park in Maine, wearing the skin of a recently liberated John Winchester of an alternate reality where Michael might have won his fight, might have remembered why he was fighting at all.

And if a little girl in a white dress suggests that people go to churches to talk to God, it isn’t her conviction of that fact that convinces Michael he should at least try, it is the way she touches his cheek and brushes away his tears, her blue eyes equally luminous when she tells him that she doesn’t have a daddy either, but that’s okay because she’s a big girl of five, and her bear Mr. Tony is her best friend in the whole world. No, it is her smile when he tells her that Mr. Tony seems like a very nice bear, and the way she tells him in the absolute honesty that only a child can manage that she hopes he finds what he’s looking for that has Michael sitting in the back of a small church in the middle of New York City.

It is this church where Lucifer finds him.

Michael doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting in the empty church when Lucifer appears, watching the light from the stained-glass window filter dappled and pure across the stone altar, splaying out a myriad of colors across the otherwise crimson cloth. He’s long since become accustomed to the quiet sanctity of the place, the scent of the air that only the worldly age of churches and the occasional library seems to acquire, the way the heavy oak doors cut off the hustle and bustle of the city beyond, bathing the vaulted ceilings in a silence so pure that it’s almost stifling.

In truth, Lucifer doesn’t appear until Michael has decided that simply sitting in the place isn’t enough for him to have sated his curiosity, the echoes of his own footfalls as he ascends the aisle to stand before the altar like thunder in his own ears. He swallows, and feels for a second what it must be like to be human in the eyes of God, uncertain whether he is still worthy of asking for his father. Michael falls to his knees before the altar, his back bowing until he rests his head against it, feeling the stone cool beneath his forehead even through the crimson cloth covering it. There is something about the cloth itself that makes Michael’s fingertips tingle, but that is a face he disregards.

It is only then that Lucifer appears, and not in a way that Michael, nor anyone else who knew of the devil, could have pictured. There is no show, and Lucifer does not take advantage of Michael’s almost prone form, but he must have flown in because the door doesn’t move; the only hint of any movement at all is the whisper of a chill across the back of his neck, and the soft sound of Lucifer’s footsteps as he moves closer.

Michael knows it is his brother the instant he hears him; something inside of him as ancient and tireless as the both of them calling and answering, but the elder brother ignores his sibling. Lucifer waits, and takes perch on the nearest pew, folding his hands into his lap and simply watching.

He begins in English, because it seems right; that this is a human place of worship and despite the fact that his opinion of humans may even be lower than his opinion of his brothers right now, it seems best and the right course of action to humble himself before the effigy of Christ. So he speaks.

“Forgive me, Father. I have strayed.”

A lump forms in his throat, and anger rises in his chest when Lucifer snorts softly. Michael can picture the roll of his brother’s eyes.

“My pride has allowed me to be turned from my course; and I have failed in my own destiny.”

Lucifer is laughing somewhere behind him, and Michael shifts his wings invisibly in a sharp, irritated rustle, at the quiet huffs of his brother’s amusement, the air of the church growing colder from his left, superheated by his own form. Michael, in an effort to rouse his little brother in surprise at the past, ceases to speak in any human tongue and lapses into the low, rolling consonants of their own speech.

“Forgive me, Father. I am not sorry of that.”

The sharp intake of unneeded breath is all Michael needs to hear; that Lucifer is now directly behind him, that he has been startled into something not entirely like humility, but close enough that Michael might forgive him his laughter. He stands to greet his brother, and in turning, allows Lucifer to push him back against the altar, an almost sad expression reflected in his eyes.

“He isn’t listening, Michael.”

Lucifer’s voice is a pale shadow of the truth of himself, murmured against Michael’s cheek. Rather than face that fact, Michael closes the distance between them and presses his lips chastely against the younger angel’s, his fingers curling around each of Lucifer’s wrists. Lucifer opens beneath his mouth, his breath like ice against Michael’s.

They turn, and it is Lucifer pressed back against the altar cloth, pressed right back until he is laying across the thick, cold stone and Michael can press his hands above his head and lick his way into his brother’s mouth. They don’t break for air because they don’t need it, sharing the same space as easily as they ever had, something strange in his brother’s emotions allowing Lucifer to submit easily enough beneath Michael’s hands as they untuck and unbutton, push and pull Lucifer into nudity, laid bare across the stone like some kind of sacrificial offering.

Michael doesn’t know when he realizes it, between the soft stuttered moans exhaled into each other, that he is just as so very hard as his brother is, but the fact startles him. He distracts himself from it by kissing across Lucifer’s chest and biting a mark into the skin above his heart, his wings splaying invisibly behind him to balance him. Lucifer is not as patient as Michael is, and it is an extension of his grace that has Michael naked, skin sliding against borrowed skin.

Despite wearing vessels, the two fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, Lucifer rocking into the curve of Michael’s hip and stifling his moans by biting his lip. Michael shifts against his brother’s thigh, moaning into the pale length of Lucifer’s throat when he releases his wrists to reach and grasp at wings that ought not to be seen here, his own hands forming bruises in his brother’s hips in an effort to get him closer.

It takes nothing to push Lucifer fully onto the altar and force hesitant thighs apart with a soft stroke of his fingertips, fingertips that dip into the oil of an unlit lamp on the cloth beside them and press their way into the yielding ice of his brother’s body. Lucifer arches beneath him and, ever rebellious, refuses to give this final inch, swallowing his sounds and keeping them tucked firmly away. He can’t possibly know that this makes Michael ache for him all the more, the fact that he can find his equal and opposite so absolutely beautiful in his defiance like a knife between his ribs.

Lucifer doesn’t even make a sound when Michael presses into him, taking the burn with his brother’s unnatural heat and savouring the slow-fading marks it leaves on his grace like a breath exhaled on a pane of glass. It isn’t until Michael begins to move, whispering Enochian into his skin in words like proud and beautiful and beloved that Lucifer shakes beneath his hands, a series of low, keening noises shuddering free of him before he can catch them. I love you, Michael says, blunt tip of his length sliding against a spot that makes the younger angel twist and arch beneath him, I love you and I need you and I always have.

And when they consecrate and desecrate in equal measure; Lucifer spilling between them and Michael inside him, as Michael falls apart and breathes out Lucifer, into the kiss that follows, along with mine and please, and stay, he realizes that perhaps he has found what he was looking for after all.

When Legionaries are disloyal, some are punished. The others are made to watch.

Normally when the condemned are flogged, the calls of their betrayed comrades outmatch the bitten-off screams of the punished. Those punished are chained to a post in the arena and beaten raw—the whipmasters pride themselves in slewing flesh from the bone. The humiliation of the punishment is worth more than the pain—Legionaries do not respond to torture under any circumstance, they know that the price is much worse than torture if they break. No, it is the defamation before their brothers that brings a Legionary to his knees before he is executed for his disloyalty.

But today, there is silence. The legionaries ring the arena, of course, but each man holds his tongue. Today, there is only one man punished—After all, a contubernium was led by its Decanus, and a centurion was scarcely punished for following orders. Should a contubernium fail to follow command, there was one man to blame and that was the Decanus who gave the order to break rank. Today, the man at the whipping post is Decanus Vulpes Inculta.

There are but two sounds that can be heard above the baying of the occasional mongrel hound at the bitter copper stench of spilled legionary blood, and those are of the punished and the instrument of his torture. Vulpes Inculta is 22 years old, and yet proud enough that he would sooner bite through his lip and crush his teeth against the pain than allow his punisher the satisfaction of hearing him scream. The whip itself is a vicious instrument designed more for the benefit of the crowd watching than the man lashed to the post; He will be dead within the week. The length of it is compiled of woven strips of leather forming nine “tails”, each knotted at the end with a sharp barb or fishing hook created to tear into vulnerable, exposed flesh and embed into the muscle before being ripped away.

It is not merely his back that is targetted, but the Decanus is stripped entirely, each lash shredding the delicate skin of back, buttocks, his thighs and bollocks. The punished is made to stand with his legs astride, the whip sparing nothing. They are given neither shred of dignity nor mercy. The muscles in his back and thighs twitch with each tearing strike, forcing a strangled howl from between clenched teeth. Vulpes settles his hips forwards against the stake to which he is secured, the wood abrasive against his cock, but infinitely sweeter than the kiss of the whip. They are about to wash the blood from his wounds with a bucket of salt water—(Oddly more merciful than the other acts they’d commit to prevent infection, merely shoving the snarling Decanus down into the dirt and pissing on his wounds,) when one of the Praetorian Guard, a man named Lucius, bids them halt.

“Caesar demands that the..” Lucius gives pause, clearly uncertain, between Vulpes’ punished status and the intent of Caesar’s summons, how to address the man as of yet lashed to the post, “Decanus be brought to him immediately.”

And that is that, and it is all that Vulpes can do, with the cloying stench of his own blood in his nose and the burn of agony across his torn muscles as he is pulled fully to his feet, not to pass out, to cover himself and his shame before Caesar.

At the birth of his first son, a father sits back and admires the child—His child, his work. He made this, and it’s for a single, terrifying moment, a realization that shakes him. But it’s good, this little creature with fingers too small to wrap around even one of his fingers. He sets him free amongst the plants and the strange fauna, his pride and joy and he has only eyes for this child in those first few years—All of his plans, his ideas are put on hold just watching.

He watches the child crawl around the garden, touching and tasting, sees the wonder in those huge eyes  and joy when butterflies make temporary nest in dark hair, the child’s trilling laughter, clear and bright in response to colourful, vivid birds that watch him from their perch and sing their songs.

He watches the child take his first steps, wobbling across the lush grass and giggling as he falls on his behind, the next time a tiny fist curls into the bristly fur of an enormous she-wolf, the hound licking cowlicks into the child’s hair as she cleans him every bit as delicately as she does her own pups. And the child wobbles, but doesn’t falter, taking step after slow step. The father smiles from his distance away and watches his son learn about the world around him all by himself.

The child is a height of six years old when he grows dissatisfied with the world around him, with his father’s absences, and seeks the father out. “Father,” he says, his voice like the peal of a glass bell, crystal in its clarity, “Are there more like me?”

“No, son,” The father says, placing the boy on the grass and kneeling to look at him, “You are the very first and you are special; this heaven is yours to explore and shape through your actions, and you must look after it.”

The child seems satisfied at that, and the father watches him run off, laughing at squirrels that chase him across the verdant lawns, their bushy tails like waving flags. He watches, because that is what he does, and the child learns, teaches himself to fly. He watches as the child spreads his wings and tumbles the first time, watches him pick himself up off the ground and wipe away his own tears and learn to be strong for himself, watches him take to the skies and soar.

The child cries twice, perhaps, in the years that the father watches his son. He doesn’t cry after that; the child learns that there is little use expressing sorrow or pain if his peers aren’t ones who understand it. The child learns that his cries prompt no reaction, and he discards them as useless.

Standing at seven, and the child grows quietly pensive, drawn to thought and peace. He sits in the garden for hours at a time in one spot, staring at the sky, or at the trees, and ignores the animals that nest in his lap, that curl their bodies supine around his own, the monkeys that pick through his feathers as though he was one of them.

The child learns, weaving clothes from soft cottons and linens, and from those linens he forms toys of his own, a blanket, a panda-bear inked black with ink from the squid in the ocean and the thick black paste that forms as sap from certain trees. He curls himself to sleep beneath these objects and compiles his own songs of the language that he has been given to use, sings the lullabies sung to him by the trees and the animals.

He climbs his first mountain and soars with the eagles, laughing his triumph to his monkeys, who stare at him as surely as if he’d said nothing at all. He is one of them, and yet not.

And one day, the father leaves Lucifer, squalling, frightened, pink, tiny and new in the grasses, and watches as Michael picks his brother up, cleaves to him that panda bear, and wraps him in his own blanket.

Lucifer doesn’t need to look. He knows where Sam is, like an instinctive throb in his very soul, but not quite, settling for the gentle pulse of blood around flesh curled around bone. The only problem is, he doesn’t know where Sam is. It would be simple, so simple to find him, he would have to close his eyes and he would be there, but not really. Humans call it an out of body experience. Lucifer calls it irritating.

So very irritating that he knows exactly where Sam is, at every moment of the day, but he can’t get to him because he doesn’t know his physical location. Sam won’t tell him, of course he won’t, and his presence is shielded from Lucifer’s view by something. But that’s fine, because Lucifer doesn’t need to be near Sam to talk to him, to touch, smell, taste him in on the air. Sam is different and special and his (Or, he will be. Soon, so soon,) and Lucifer needs this, thrives on it.

Not a night goes by when Lucifer isn’t there, even if Sam can’t see him. He can taste the fluctuations in the boy’s emotional state, how he goes from fine to suicidal at the flick of a switch, how empty he feels, how alone without his brother, and Lucifer feels so much the same he can’t tell where Sam’s emotions end and his own begin.

The crisp, fresh-snow taste of Sam’s sorrow is like dying, the honey-sunshine flavour of his happiness when he gets back together with Dean is like salvation. Lucifer lives from Sam’s emotion, like a parasite, and he finds himself wanting to laugh with the boy in his elation; to weep bitter tears at his pain.

When Sam is asleep, Lucifer cannot feel his emotions anymore and it becomes a void, expanse of seconds tick by and he breathes, the weight of it all making his borrowed chest ache. Lucifer comes to realize their connection reminds him of home, of being able to hear his brothers sing inside his head, and it hurts.

Sometimes, Lucifer sleeps. And consequently, he dreams. Lucifer dreams of home, that is to say, heaven, in a time that was better than this one, where he was happy and warmed by basking in the light of God’s love. Lucifer dreams that he can hear his brothers, can taste their happiness and bliss at just being, how grateful they are for all of it, how much they love God. Lucifer dreams that he trips and falls, and the inky abyss swallows him, and he awakes screaming and crying at the silence in his head.

It is these nights, and the days that follow, that Lucifer hates the world, that he wants to watch it burn and die, because if he cannot have absolution, no one can. Sam shies away from Lucifer, in fear and revulsion and it is like falling again and again, or rather, like hitting the ground. But Lucifer reaches out, again and again, because it’s all he can do.

It’s late afternoon when the heavens open and rain pours down on that little woodland glade like someone had drank up all the water in the world and deposited it in one fell swirl in the clearing roughly half a mile wide. Clouds roll in, charcoal black and angry, the sky swelling and rolling with thunder breathed out like the roar of some beast of myth angered by the summer heat. The sun is blotted out like the stab of an inked thumb, and the darkness it casts over the glade shadows the world in black and white and shades of gray between. Wind picks up, a whisper and then a howl through the trees, the usually glassy waters of the lake whipped into roiling waves that break on the shore like an ocean.

There isn’t a living soul for miles around; the fauna of the forest have hidden themselves away from the storm’s wrath, huddled and hunkered down in burrows and nests, anywhere that the water’s angry beat can’t reach. The figure that stands in the centre of the glade is not, however, a living soul. He appears for all intents and purposes as a man, of average height, with a handsome face and a strong jaw, broad shoulders and a long, sloping back that seems designed to twist and roll. The rain plasters his dark, usually neat, hair to his forehead, and something in his eyes burns, burns along with the rest of him, the water hitting the bared flesh of his back and torso and rising in tiny whorls of steam as it evaporates in contact with his skin.

The man falls to his knees, bare skin squelching on the grass, and sits on his haunches. A moment passes in complete and absolute silence, raindrops pausing in their deluge for just a second, as though caught in awe as a pair of enormous wings unfold from somewhere, the muscles of the angel’s back pulled taut with their weight. To look at them, one might think that they seem almost unreal, glowing very faintly as though lit by some internal light, each feather seemingly carved out of pure gold. The light fades and the plumage seems dusty now, the color of sand, dampened by the storm, both wings stretching up and outwards, catching the drops that roll off the topcoat of feathers.

Michael raises a hand for a single, tremulous moment, and then sinks his fingers into the searing heat of the down layer of his wings. Lightning arcs down his spine, the same heat pooling in his gut at the sensation, human body rationalising angelic pleasure in the only way it can. He swallows around the sensation, carding his fingertips through the damp down, organizing the feathers into neat, straight lines. His hips twitch forwards once, a soft, stuttering noise breathed out and swallowed by the roar of the storm.

Questing fingers probe deeper until he finds what it is he seeks hidden amongst the depths of his feathers, a small, raised knot of flesh already leaking oil into the surrounding feathers. A careful press of a fingertip has the liquid running down in rivulets over his fingers, pleasure like someone pouring molten metal into the pit of his stomach driving its claws into him and twisting—Wringing out a choked moan. A human body reacts, flesh hard and twitching obscenely between his spread thighs, the angel wrapping a rain-slick hand around the length of it, hips pressing unconsciously forwards into his own easy grip.

Well-oiled, the feathers align quickly, growing whisper soft and glossy beneath his fingertips, the well-practiced motions drawing not-so-well-practiced reactions from his vessel, one hand making broad, easy strokes, the other awkward and learning; well taught in the art of lust and not so well in pleasure. And if he imagines in the privacy of his own stolen moment in time that another pair of hands could reach every corner of his enormous wingspan with greater ease, quicksilver and fluid and almost familiar, then it is his own business.

One hand is replaced by the other, the other wing the focus of Michael’s attention, oil-slicked fingers glistening over the long length of his cock, pushing down in slow, cautious movements, learning where to twist his wrist, where the scrape of a work-calloused thumb will have his thighs shaking with need. His attention is drawn to his thoughts, this practice—of cleaning, maintenance, his wings—Second nature to him after millennia. Soon, the fingers buried in his feathers fall to tugging and pulling in time with the careful, shaky push of his cock through his closed fist, eyes shut tight and one name, the same name repeated from his lips like a prayer—Lucifer. Lucifer, Lucifer, Lucifer—the brother whose hands are quicker than his own, smile once a quick flash of joy and beauty so pure that Michael’s heart still breaks for it.

It’s that brother that Michael thinks about, always, and that brother whose name he cries when he comes, breath chased from him like the howl of a storm.