Archive of Our Own

They meet each other in quite a boring way. Not at the dawn of the world, nor on the brink of its existence, but rather about five years after it was destined to end. A quiet and dull time, and a coastal town in rural Devon matches that, not standing out in any way at all, buried in an uneventful slumber.

And also, it’s quite difficult to keep a straight face when you gaze up, feeling someone else’s presence, and see… a creature hanging upside down from a branch of the tree, clasping it with his feet in some absolutely incomprehensible but effective way.

Dominic is pretty sure he sensed the aura correctly but the sight before his eyes is so unlike a typical Hell’s resident that he can’t help asking:

“Are you… a demon?”

The demon snorts offendedly and in one swift motion jerks forward, doing a flip mid-air, and lands on his feet, with hardly any grace but steadily.

“What, I haven’t got the looks?” he narrows his eyes, carefully glancing over Dominic. “Don’t even have to ask you, though.”

Dominic rolls his eyes: even his own kind relentlessly teases him about looking too much like an angel. Although, his new acquaintance might be getting a lot of commentary on his appearance, too.

He has messy hair, eyes of a mad scientist (don’t act so surprised, science fiction is one the best ways to kill time in the human world), a skinny build – his bones almost seem visible through the clothes, honestly, and a crazy yet sincere smile, the kind that doesn’t make you think about something evil at all.

“Oh, you’ve got the looks. The looks of a local punk with huge dreams, a false cynical attitude and zero fashion sense,” Dominic raises an eyebrow, and the demon laughs.

“You’re not as innocent as you seem, huh?” he eyes him again, more earnestly. “Matthew. Won’t go for a handshake, just in case.”

“Dominic,” he nods. “I’m not looking for a conflict… But you’re right to be careful.”

“Dominic? Seriously?” Matt grins. “Could you choose an even more obvious human name?”

“Like you’re the one to talk, with a biblical one.”

“Got me there. So, what is such an angel doing in such a place, Dominic?”

“Talking a couple of local punks with huge dreams into leaving this place for college,” Dominic starts bending his fingers. “Giving the mayor a hint that the promenade was due for a repair three years ago. Blessing a newly wed couple. What about you?”

“Same scale, opposite intentions,” Matthew gestures vaguely. “Utter boredom, in short. Didn’t expect to meet someone from the… competing department,” he catches Dominic’s bewildered stare and chuckles. “No, I am in my right mind, it’s just Amduscias… my superior… yeah, he’s got a bit of a problem with the word Heaven.”

Dominic barely holds back a sarcastic thank-you for this incredibly valuable piece of information, but Matthew is easily the most potentially interesting company he’s had this year, so…

“Will you be done with your business by evening? There’s like, only one decent bar in the whole town, but it really is decent.”

“I know. Yeah, I think I will,” Matthew raises an eyebrow. “Um… I know the situation right now is pretty calm but…”

“If we get into any trouble, you were seducing me with the dark side, I was convincing you to repent your sins.”

“Surrender to your fate, young Dominic,” Matthew hisses in an annoyingly close imitation of Emperor Palpatine, and Dominic hates him already for that reference, and even more, himself for understanding it.

And of course, neither of them is even remotely close to young, although most people would probably naïvely think they are no more than two or three decades old.

The bar near the town’s central square is remotely close to decent, but all it takes is one occasional glare from Matthew for the whiskey in front of them to get ashamed of itself and turn into a high-class drink you might expect to find in the quarters of those who determine the world’s fate. Or rather, those who think they determine it. Hell, however astonighing it might be, doesn’t drink, and Heaven predictably prefers the nectar. Certain individuals from below or above, however, don’t mind an occasional drink along with a trip down memory lane at all.

“Oh, you’ve met the Crowley?” Dominic glances sideways at Matthew, more and more interested in him with every moment.

“Ran into each other a few times.” Matt shrugs. “You know, he was considered a bit odd even before… everything, but I liked him. He was interesting. Although, I still have no idea what to think about him now that his efforts canceled the ‘final battle’,” he doesn’t show quotation marks with his fingers, but his intonation still leaves them hanging in the air.

Dominic understands that all too well. Among the angels, some were openly furious, some were almost openly overjoyed, but most, himself included, felt a weird mix of disappointment and relief.

“Did you want the Armageddon to happen?”

“Not that I was actively wishing for it… I mean, I got used to this world, too, after all,” Matthew takes another sip, briefly closing his eyes in pleasure, and leans back in his chair. “But I didn’t mind it either, I guess? I feel like it was about time for something biblical to happen, don’t you think?”

“I do. But I’m curious to see where mankind goes from here, too. I guess we’ve all gone a bit… native.”

Meanwhile at the other end of the bar two middle-aged men get into a quickly escalating argument. Dominic channels his mental energy into settling the conflict peacefully, knowing full well that Matthew, frowning in concentration next to him, is trying to achieve the exact opposite.

He should be angry about it, but somehow, feels like laughing.

In a couple of minutes, a grumpy bar’s owner enters the stage, threatening to cool down the heated discussion by sprinkling the men with a firehose and politely but firmly offering them to leave, and so they do, pushing each other’s shoulders a couple more times with a half-hearted “who do you even think you are”. Having restored the peace, the owner returns to his place behind the counter with a smug face. Matthew and Dominic exchange brief glances and snort.

“Shall we call it a tie?”

“Probably.”

“Maybe we’ll hang out again another time?” Matt asks nonchalantly, but immediately turns his eyes away from Dominic’s stare. “I mean, we don’t know each other for 6000 years and we didn’t save the world together but… with you, I don’t feel bored.”

Dominic contemplates for a bit whether he should fake a little reluctance and remind Matt about Heaven and Hell’s rivalry, but this age, to be honest, is not the one for making big speeches, and Matt is right: today he didn’t feel bored, either.

“Okay,” he stretches out his hand, a little tentatively, but nothing, of course, happens when Matthew shakes it. “If someone told me a century ago I’d be befriending a demon impersonating a bat…”

“I wasn’t impersonating a bat!”

“Then what was your weird demonic ass doing on that tree?”

“Conducting an experiment.”

“A demon can’t die from brain haemorrhage. Even if he’s an idiot.”

“Not that kind of experiment… I was curious how many people I can disturb by doing that. Fear of the unknown, ever heard of it?”

“And how many?” Dominic tenses slightly, mentally preparing to fix the damage. (Although he has no idea how: for some reason, they don’t instruct you in Heaven on how to help people who saw a demon with really odd ideas).

“No one even noticed me, except you,” Matthew smiles carelessly and adds without a pause: “Can I call you Dom?”

Angels’ names, to be honest, are not meant to be shortened, but coming from Matthew, it sounds so natural and confident that Dominic feels it’s too late to argue and smiles instead.

“Just don’t call me angel, or people will get wrong impressions.”

A worried news dictor’s voice mercilessly states the sad facts that Dominic already knows, and the caption at the bottom of the screen flashes a monotonous warning to get children away from TV. Dominic thinks that the shaking abrupt frames are, in fact, far more likely to upset adults.

A phone number he’s gotten used to over the past few years pops into his head and starts dialing itself before Dom has time to consider whether it’s a good idea.

“Yeah?” the voice on the other end of the line sounds a bit surprised.

“Let’s get out of the city for a while. Somewhere. To Scotland, to the mountains.”

“Hm-m,” Matt hums, even more clearly bewildered. “My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here?... Alright, I’ve got no plans anyway. Pick you up in five minutes?”

“Don’t kill anyone on your way here,” Dominic asks almost automatically, and Matt snorts before disconnecting.

They’ve known each other for only a tiny period of time, by immortals’ standards, but an inside joke about Matt’s driving formed itself in the first two months, as well as his indignant retorts about having it under control and Dom being overdramatic. To be fair, most of the time he does have it under control, and yet, a few people are currently walking the streets of London only thanks to God’s mercy. Or angel’s mercy, to be precise.

Matt’s red Alpha Romeo stops outside, breaks squealing, in three minutes instead of five, and Dom, putting a light jacket over his shoulders, hurries downstairs. Matt gazes at him above the sunglasses, completely unnecessary on a cloudy day, and invites him into the car with a nod. Two more minutes after, they successfully bypass all the trafic jams in the city (no one even needs rescuing from getting hit) and accelerate once they get to the highway leading north.

“So, what’re you all gloomy about?” Matt raises an eyebrow with unconvincing indifference.

“Haven’t you seen the news? Africa, Beni Messous…”

“I don’t watch them at all. It’s basically an endless stream of negativity. Our work, what’d you expect.”

“There was a massacre. Over eighty people died.”

“Were you watching over one of them?” Matthew pulls a pained grimace of understanding, but Dom shakes his head.

“No. But some of ours were and, to be completely honest, it’s their mistake. Deaths… could’ve been avoided.”

“That sucks,” Matt sighs, not looking away from the empty road in front of them.

“You don’t care, do you?”

“Are you using some kind of angelic telepathy on me?” he narrows his eyes suspiciously.

“That’s not a thing.”

“So, just because I’m a demon, then.”

“Something like that.”

“You’re right,” Matt nodds coldly and, after a few seconds of heavy silence, finally turns his head towards Dom, annoyed expression on his face, “I had nothing to do with it, in case you’re wondering, and I’m not overjoyed when people kill their own kind but I’m not going to take every incident like this to heart. And I suggest you don’t, either, even though you’re an angel.”

“It’s a part of my job description,” retorts Dominic a bit harshly. “And even if it wasn’t, I can’t. I can’t and I won’t become of the bureaucrats from above who only see people as… abstract units and numbers.”

He shuts up abruptly, realising what exactly he is saying, and hits his head on the headrest in a late attempt to stop himself. Matthew is looking at him with a mixture of admiration and pity.

“Wow. Did not see that coming from you.”

“Me neither,” Dominic mutters under his breath, “Look, you won’t tell-“

“For Hell’s sake, I got better things to do than snitch to Heaven that they’ve got an angel with too much empathy and lose… a company.”

“You won’t lose it, though,” Dom chuckles dryly. “If they banish me, I’ll become one of your kind and…”

He trails off, interrupted by loud hissing, and gapes at Matt: for a brief moment, his eyes become crazy (more crazy than usual, that is) and angry.

“Don’t joke about it. Ever.”

“I-,” Dom suddenly realises he might have hit too close to home and stumbles upon his words, lowering his head. “I’m sorry.”

Matt lets out a tired sigh and seems to calm down a little.

“I’m sorry, too,” he rubs at his face, removing his hands from the wheel which, of course, doesn’t prevent the car from maintaining a perfectly straight course (and there’s no one else on the road anyway). The silhouettes of mountains up ahead are already visible to a non-human eye. “I just… There was a time when I, too, was throwing sarcastic jokes all around and asking too many questions, and that didn’t end too well.”

Dominic can’t look away from his saddened face for a long time and when the mountains start to occupy half the windshield, finally dares to ask:

“Do you regret it? Your fall?”

“I used to regret it,” Matt shrugs. “And I used to get upset over people a lot, too. Over things they did with my influence, and even more, over things they did without it. Well, you know how it can be.”

“But not anymore?”

“I quickly realised that my regrets and heartaches won’t change a thing, and I did so just in time. I have no idea how I would’ve survived the Middle Ages worrying about every single injustice. How did you?...”

Dominic makes a vague gesture: it’s definitely not the time he has fond memories of.

“By helping whenever I could and believing that it’ll get better someday? I don’t know. Maybe I only truly realised all the horrors in hindsight. It did, after all, get better.”

“Yeah, they’re beginning to see some reason... How was that? That time will come, one day we’ll see that we can all be friends?” Matt sings all of a sudden, in a pretty decent and recognizable way.

“Hell listens to Queen?” Dom feels a wide grin spreading over his face.

“Heaven listens to Queen?” Matt retorts with a little too much astonishment, and they laugh.

“Well, most of us don’t. Only a few of those who live here get into Earth’s music.”

“Same here. Their loss, though,” Matt chuckles and turns on the radio. “But seriously, Dom. you worry too much. It might turn out bad for you, eventually.”

“Who’s worrying too much now, huh?”

“Just giving out words of wisdom,” Matt shakes his head, pretending to be unfazed.

They reach the place where the road starts ascending steeply, and Matt hits the gas as a stretched-out “hey, man, slow down” echoes from the radio, and makes a rapid turn, ignoring Dominic’s not-exactly-heavenly-worded but justified worries about them falling off the cliff.

Human tragedies don’t really get to him anymore, and even if they did, Matthew, as a strong believer in reason over emotion, would never let said emotions have an impact on him. So, what makes him rush to New York on this pleasant autumn morning? And rush, to clarify, at a speed far exceeding that of a human: he gets there even before the echo of an explosion dies down and the grey smoke clouds the sky above. Destruction and panic all around blind him momentarily, overloading all senses, and Matt, weakened after not-so-easy-even-for-a-demon teleporting to another continent, struggles to keep his balance and becomes lost for a few seconds. Then, among the fragile figures trying to run away, his eye catches the only one making its way in the opposite direction, and Matt chases after it. The dust and smoke in the air burn his lungs, making him cough violently, and only then he realises that out of habit he forgot to stop breathing.

He grabs Dominic’s hand as the heat from the burning debris is already hitting their faces.

“Stop, goddamit!” he breathes out, not even knowing whether in annoyance or relief. Dom turns to face him, shocked, lost, with an empty expression in his eyes. “These temperatures could destroy even our bodies!” Matt grabs his shoulders, shaking slightly. “You’ll disintegrate, and for what? Down there,” he nods at a scene horrifying enough to belong in the Hell’s lowest circles, “it’s too late to help anyone.”

Dominic’s lips move, and his demonic hearing picks up the words despite the overwhelming noise:

“I couldn’t save him.”

“Dammit,” Matthew clasps his shoulders even tighter, as if that could shake Dominic back into reality. He quickly glances around: no one in sight except for the heavy cloud of smoke. Somewhere in the distance behind it, sirens start wailing. Technically, he is not breaking the “don’t reveal yourself to humans” rule.

Matt spreads out his wings, immediately wincing as ash and dust fall on them, strengthens his grip and, covering them with a simplistic attention deflecting shield just in case, rises up to the sky. The ruins left of the twin towers look even worse from the above, and Matt shudders, heading for a different part of the city. Doesn’t matter which, doesn’t matter that he doesn’t remember or never knew in the first place how to get around here, all that matters is far away from the sickening stench and loud screaming.

Eventually he lands on a rooftop. Not a skyscraper, they’ve had enough of them today, just an unremarkable old row house. After hesitating for a bit, Matthew removes the shield around them: even if somebody does notice them, to hell with that. He seems to say that last bit out loud, and the lack of response from Dominic speaks volumes about how badly shook he still is. Not that he is completely without sin in that matter himself, but usually he tells Matt not to swear just because he’s supposed to.

Dominic is standing exactly where Matt left him with an unnaturally straight back, eyeing a dirty street beneath with a blank expression. Behind him a pillar of smoke raises to the sky, drowning the blue in heavy grey. Matthew tentatively reaches out to touch his shoulder.

“Were you watching over someone there?”

Dominic nods after a noticable delay.

“His name was Kevin. A londoner. I got assigned to him soon after you and I met. Perfectly boring: graduated from college with a-little-above-average grades, got a job, was planning a wedding with his girlfriend… Went here on a two-day business trip,” his voice cracks for a split second. “I took the same flight, had a bad feeling, you know? Was constantly thinking that something would go wrong with the plane, and when we landed safely, I allowed myself to relax,” he whispers. “Left him alone for a minute.”

“This is terrible but it’s not your f-“

“Maybe it isn’t, really. Maybe Kevin was indeed destined to die on this day. But how many Kevins are out there?” Dominic’s shoulders slump, and he sinks down right in the middle of the roof, clutching his head in his hands. “You can’t hear them, can you?”

“Who?” Matt sits next to him, back to back, barely touching.

“Their screams. They’ve probably died down by now but when the explosion hit, all those souls… Still ringing in my ears, yeah,” he cuts off angrily and takes a shaky breath. “Do you think your people or mine know who’s behind this?”

“If they don’t now, they will by noon. But you know that-“

“That I can’t just go and reveal it to humans. As well as you do. And that pisses me off the most.”

Matt opens his mouth and closes it again, at a loss for words. His instincts are screaming to make Dominic shut up, to cut off all of his questions because they sound too familiar to him and because he knows exactly where they will inevitably lead. The road to a literal fall he once took.

The weather hasn’t gotten an ounce colder, but Matt feels a shiver running through his body. He shifts closer to the warm back behind him and shuts his eyes tightly for a moment, getting ready to do something utterly foolish. But even if Dominic laughs at him, it will still pull him out of this dangerous mindset. Totally worth it.

He breathes in the air soaked with relentless flames and cries of pain and turns it into a clear sound. At the dawn of creation singing was a sacred art of Heaven. Humans have taken it for themselves long since, filling it with an unimaginable range of forms and meanings. Matthew lets out what has been buried in him, probably, since the beginning of times. He echoes the thunder that thousands of fallen left behind with tense gut-wrenching notes, and centuries filled with hopeless attemts to find his peace float by, and come out in words about wishing for a non-existent absolution. And his voise is shaking because somehow, that damned angel broke through all of his unbreakable defenses. Because he made Matthew care again.

He screams the last lines at the dark grey skies, and the unbearable heat, and the powers hiding in the shadows that swept thousands of Kevins from the board in one move, chasing their own goals in an ineffable and merciless game. Who will save their souls if the saviors themselves have none?

He falls silent again, breathing heavily. Dominic doesn’t say anything, either, and his back seems to tremble slightly.

“Are you laughing at me because I’m being theatrical or crying because I’m right?” Matt mumbles, a little embarassed.

“What do you think,” Dominic’s voice couldn’t be further from laughter. “Not that I need sleep, but deep down, I still hope that all of this is a very realistic nightmare. Stupid, huh?”

“I hope that the whole world is a very realistic nightmare,” Matt echoes. “On the other hand, what’s the real world like, then? What if it’s even worse?”

Dom’s hand suddenly covers his own, and Matt squeezes it back without thinking.

“Did you get banished from Heaven for singing something like this?” Dom asks nonchalantly.

“No. I didn’t sing back then. Or didn’t sing something like this, at least.”

“When did you start?” Dominic continues to press the subject.

“…Today?”

“Oh,” silence for a second, and then, hoarse and barely audible, “Will you ever sing again?”

“After another catastrophe, sure,” Matt tries to get up but Dominic grabs onto his hand, not letting go.

“Can you do it… now?”

“It’s not a tap you can just turn on, Dom.”

“I know. But I’ll never believe that you ran out of-“

“Voice?”

“Pain.”

Matt almost responds, out of habit, that he doesn’t feel anything but after that outburst, he doesn’t quite believe it himself. He tightens his grip on Dominic’s fingers that would be broken by now if he was human, closes his eyes, and lets the words that have waited for centuries for this moment flow. He sings about the weak and the broken, and about the world where no one is dying alone. He can’t even hide anymore that these words are about him as much as the humans, and trusting an angel with this fragile truth is, of course, beyond stupid, but this angel, it seems, is not the smartest, either: he drops his head on Matthew’s shoulder and simply listens.

And, beyond all, he sees Matthew exactly for what he is and still willingly remains by his side.

They can’t bring themselves to teleport again and return to England by airplane instead. It doesn’t even take them to use their powers to get last-minute tickets, and their co-travelers all look pale and tense. The tragedy in New York became a harsh reminder about how fragile and fleeting human life is, and humans typically don’t like being reminded of that.

Dom and him once had a long conversation about it and reached a conclusion of shared admiration for humans’ optimism and ability to ignore the inevitable, but right now, optimism is hard to find on the faces around them.

Matt could try telling them that this airplane has double protection from Heaven and Hell, and they balance each other out, so it’s quite unlikely to end up in either of these places but, to be fair, he doesn’t find the part about balance all too convincing himself.

Dominic, sitting by the window, doesn’t even notice the flight attendant offering them soft drinks and stares at the clouds gently lit by the setting sun.

“This time is not too bad, after all,” Matt mumbles to break the awkward silence. “It seems like only yesterday crossing the Atlantic took about three weeks.”

“Sometimes it feels like the Titanic was only yesterday,” Dom sighs, not looking away from the window.

“You’re not gonna say that you couldn’t save someone there as well, are you? Or do you mean the movie?”

“Not the movie. And no, I wasn’t watching over anyone there.”

“That door was more than enough for two, though…”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Matt lowers his voice to a whisper as the people around them start falling asleep. “What are we gonna do for the next nine hours? Reflect on our mistakes and shake our fists at the heavens?”

Dominic gives him a disapproving look and Matt raises his hands in surrender, shutting up. Dom, however, reaches for his bag, fishing out a cassette player and…

“Are those in-ear headphones which are absolutely not available on the market yet?”

“You can get certain things if you’re an angel… and a music lover,” Dom looks shy and a little bit proud of himself, and Matt suddenly feels embarassed to admit that he wanted to get a pair for himself, too, but never found the time to do it.

After hesitating a bit, he stretches out his hand.

“May I?”

“For one ear?” Dom pulls a face but Matt stares intently at the headphones, and when Dom looks back at them, they look deeply convinced that they have four wires instead of two, and were always meant to have four, and that their absence till now has been a small but annoying mistake.

“Now that will definitely draw attention.”

“We’ll just say we work for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and get our hands on all the cool stuff earlier than anyone.”

“Or for CIA,” Dom chuckles but stops abruptly. “Yeah, let’s settle for Peppers,” he hands two wires over to Matt. “Any preferences?”

“Just play what you have. Either I’ll like it, or I’ll laugh at you,” Matt puts on the headphones and throws his head back, closing his eyes.

He doesn’t feel like laughing all the way to London, and not only because Dominic’s taste in music is impeccable.

They catch a cab outside the airport and, without planning that ahead, simultaneously name the same bar in Soho.

At the bar they barely talk, saving all efforts for getting drunk with whiskey, then somehow get a human to join them, and slow down a bit, so he wouldn’t die trying to catch up. The human’s name, it turns out, is Chris. He works at a musical intruments’ shop, even does repairs sometimes, he adds proudly, and his face darkens when he learns they just got back from New York. He throws back his glass, gulping loudly.

“No surprise you’re getting wasted in the middle of the day, then. I would probably shut myself off from everything for a week. Or maybe I wouldn’t even dare to take the flight back, for a start. Weren’t you scared?”

“We were. For the other passengers and for those who stayed behind.”

Matt can’t help admiring how briefly and accurately Dominic puts that.

“Yeah, that, too… You have children, perhaps? I mean, any of you?” Chris’s speech starts getting slurry, and him stuffing his mouth full of cookies doesn’t help. “Or both of you, together?” he glances from Dom to Matt, visibly confused.

Matthew doesn’t fully comprehend the question, lost in thought about how to let Dominic know that bars don’t typically serve cookies, especially in such quantities, and that materializing them because Chris is hungry is, no doubt, noble but, if he has the right to speak after the headphones, unwise. Only when Dominic blushes and starts speaking with an adorable stutter, he snaps back to reality.

“N-no, we’re not a couple. Just, um, how to put it, friends… Colleagues but from competing departments? And… we don’t have any children separately, either,” he finishes a little awkwardly.

Matt almost wants to tease him and say that Dom is just being shy but loses that thought somewhere around the word “friends”. Chris nods calmly.

“Friends is great, too… Me, though, I have a son, and a newborn daughter. And it’s just… I’m looking at them and feeling happy and all, and then I get paralysed with fear. Fear of them having to grow up in the midst of all this,” he gestures vaguely at the TV screen where a muted news report about the terract is shown again.

Dominic opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something reassuring, but stays silent, and that silence becomes heavy, and Matthew, out of nowhere, is hit with a thought that now it’s up to him to say something.

“Free will sometimes does terrible things to people,” he says, not knowing yet what to follow it with. “I mean, people do terrible things because of it. But… I have faith,” he feels Dom’s surprised stare, “that in the end, when it really matters, people do make the right choices. Take a path of love and peace, all that stuff,” he finishes nonchalantly but it seems to have no effect: both Dom and Chris gaze at him in slight shock.

“I don’t know who you are, mate,” Chris finally says, “and what you’ve seen in this life, but thank you. I try to believe in that, too,” he raises his glass in a salut.

Dominic’s obvious astonishment is amusing, and Matt chuckles.

“Chris, would you believe that me – that both of us – are not of this world?”

Dominic’s eyes seem to express enough panic to blow their cover for real, and Matt barely holds back his laughter.

“I’ve got enough whiskey inside of me to believe just about anything,” Chris snorts. “But for real, would believe that about you but not Dom.”

“Why’s that?” they ask in unison.

“I don’t know. Matt, you look like a time traveler from a TV show or something. And, no offence, but you’ve got crazy eyes,” and now it’s Dom’s turn to hide his chuckle behind a glass. “Dom, on the other hand, is just your regular fellow. Good at making friends, even better at being ladies’ man. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Dom’s face reflects the internal struggle between “don’t blow the cover” and “how the hell am I a ladies’ man” (Dom wouldn’t swear but Matthew is interpreting to the best of his abilities), but eventually, he sighs in surrender.

“Close enough.”

Their conversation then moves to the London’s streets and to a passionate discussion about music, and it’s a good couple of hours before they part ways with Chris after walking him home and exchanging phone numbers. Matthew wants to laugh at himself, but since he is now apparently friends with an angel, adding a human to their company doesn’t make it much weirder. Chris mentions briefly that he’s from Teignmouth, and Matt and Dom exchange subtle smiles. A place where they first met. They might be just drunk enough right now to believe in destiny.

On their way to Dom’s apartment, however, they allow themselves to sober up at a supernatural speed and the mood falls slightly once again.

Dominic stops at his doorstep and, if Matthew’s not imagining it, is almost about to invite him inside but ends up only giving him a small smile.

“Don’t teleport across half the globe to get to me next time.”

“Okay,” Matt nods. He can’t deny that these words made him feel a pang of disappointment in his chest but tries his best to not let it show.

Dom’s smile gets a little warmer.

“I’ll bring you along from the start.”

And now, Matthew officially hates himself for being so overjoyed and returns the smile, curling the corners of his lips.

“Next time, playlist’s on me,” he waves at Dom and walks normally to the corner of the street, and then, after making sure no one’s around, conceals himself from prying eyes and rises up through the misty air to the pearly clouds.

And while he floats above the same-looking rooftops, for the first time in centuries new lyrics come to him, rushing and chasing one line after next, lyrics about an unreachable starlight, enormous black holes, and, no matter how hard he tries to push this one away, about love as the purest form of resistance.

Be it a legend of Faust in the Middle Ages or “Supernatural” in the modern day, Dominic never gets bored of exploring human fiction about Heaven and Hell. Sometimes the descriptions are frighteningly accurate (by accident, without doubt) but mostly, he finds it hilarious.

Humans, for instance, seem to be convinced that demons and especially angels spend their time on extremely imporant God’s (or Satan’s) business, and even when they do dabble in primitive human entertainment, they only pick the finest of its forms. Something prefixed with “classical” or, better yet, “antique”.

Dominic could show them the bookcase in his apartment, stuffed with all imaginable kinds of detective stories from Arthur Conan Doyle to Jo Nesbo. He probably wouldn’t fight if you insult Agatha Christie, as he’s an angel, and quite a non-violent one, but rest assured, he’ll give you the deadliest stare he can manage.

Dominic could tell them that he likes strolling around London’s parks on weekends and happily greet every dog he meets, walking with an owner or homeless. He doesn’t dare to get his own, scared that he’d forget to feed it or would be someday forced to return to Heaven and leave it on its own, but still dreams about it a lot.

He would probably be ashamed to say that ever since Matt and then Chris appeared in his life, he’s gotten used to weekly rounds at a bar.

Matthew wouldn’t have to even say anything, he would simply invite you to join him in binge watching yet another show. Dom gets dragged into this almost against his will but in the end, the temptation (Matt continues to call it that, ignoring all protests) succeeds perfectly.

They both like “Doctor Who”. “Game of Thrones” scares Dominic away with its graphic scenes and a sadly realistic interpretation of the world’s history while Matt can’t get enough of it. “Stranger Things”, on the other hand, make him yawn, constantly leave to make tea and complain that the stories where main characters are children bore him to death, meanwhile Dom watches the season in one go and, for the first time in centuries, contemplates falling asleep for a couple of years until the next one comes out. Matt talks him out of it, admitting with a slight reluctance that he would miss him.

One time, Dominic asks Matt jokingly if he secretly gives plot ideas to the showrunners, and Matt changes the subject in a suspicious hurry.

They could also try to explain why they are celebrating the twenty-year anniversary of knowing each other (a laughably microscopic number, but still) sitting on the rooftop of Matt’s ten-story house and drinking Starbucks coffee at 3.30 am, legs dangling over the edge and loosely matching the rhytms of “The Dark Side of the Moon” playing from the tape recorder.

The apartments on all the ten floors belong to Matt, as a result of a week in a particularly misantrropic mood, a few made-up names which might or might not have included “Jimmy Hendrix” and a tiny bit of demonic powers. The recorder belongs to him, too: Dominic discovers, much to his surprise, that Matt is not so good at adapting to technical novelties.

If you really asked him for an explanation, Dominic wouldn’t probably be able to provide one. It feels free, calm and good, even in the midst of the city noise which doesn’t die down for the night at all. Even side by side with a demon. People would find this confusing but people, as always, don’t really notice them. Their superiors would find this extremely confusing but what they don’t know, doesn’t hurt them. Did Dominic pick up this kind of sacreligious ideas from humans or from Matt?...

“Do you ever get l'appel du vide?”

Dom flinches, pulled out of his thoughts, and turns to face Matt who seems to be trying to lean as far down as he can.

“Huh?”

“The call of the void,” Matt repeats. “I’ve heard humans experience it. A sudden inexplicable desire to jump off a high building or a cliff. Never understood why.”

“Well,” Dominic leans forward, too, narrowing his eyes at the dark asphalt beneath, wet from a recent rain and glimmering slightly in the dim light of street lamps, “maybe if I look down long enough, I’ll be able to convince myself that I feel dizzy and fall. Does that count?”

“Hardly.”

“No, then. Maybe it’s because it won’t kill us?”

Matthew hums in thought, then ungracefully turns around, sitting with his back to the edge, crosses his legs and even leans back a bit with a careless smile.

“You know, even though Chris says you don’t look otherworldly at all, you’re completely giving yourself away.”

They’ve been friends with Chris for how many years – ten, fifteen? He has three times more kids than he did when they met, and Dom sometimes wonders, watching the crease between his brows, if his fear for them is also three times stronger now, but on the outside, Chris always appears calm and collected. Neither Matt nor Dom like tricking him into not noticing that he is the only one getting older in their company, but they don’t have a choice.

“How so?” Dom frowns, wondering if he had actually been doing something stupid in front of thousands of people for all these years.

“A human would ask at least once in these twenty years whether it hurt when I fell from Heaven,” Matt leans back even furthter with a straight face but almost loses his balance when Dom gives him a push on the shoulder. “Woah, the roof, of course, pales in comparison, but it’d still be unpleasant.”

“I thought it was a sensitive subject for you!”

“It kind of is. But it’s okay if it’s you,” Matt finally gets away from the edge, lies on his back in the middle of the roof and looks away.

While Dominic thinks about what he is supposed to do with this level of trust and whether it’s too late to finally make that joke, Matthew turns the recording off with a snap of his fingers and starts singing.

Despite his own words, Matt doesn’t reserve his songs for another catastrophe. Maybe he wants to share something other than the tragic and heartbreaking stuff, or maybe the muse visits him more frequently these days. Either way, Dominic doesn’t mind at all, especially when Matthew accompanies himself on the piano bought from Chris’s shop. Sometimes they joke around about recording an album, but once, in a somber mood, Matt says indifferently that he missed the time to do it and that now it’s hard to really touch people’s souls. And he simply won’t settle for less.

Dominic might have a few words of contradiction in response, and he hopes to put them together one day and make Matthew listen. And then, make the whole world listen to Matthew.

Here and now, Matt sings something about a city of delusion in long, resonant notes, and Dom, mesmerized by the melody, slips out of reality and gazes at a sea of lights blinking and rushing underneath them as far as the eye can see.

The echo of the last note is still ringing in the air as Matt gets up abruptly, takes two large steps towards the edge, turns around and, without hesitation, falls, arms stretched wide, body as tense as a string.

Dominic reacts on instinct (which angels aren’t supposed to have) before he has time for a single thought, jumping after him, grabbing the collar of his jacket and spreading his wings at the last moment before they hit the asphalt, leaving them a couple of inches above the ground. The wind that whistled in his ears a second ago turns into white noise, and somewhere on the distant rooftop, “The Great Gig in the Sky” starts playing again.

Matt, holding tightly onto his shoulders, is eyeing him with a sly smile from even-less-inches away and has the audacity to giggle.

“If someone can see us, they’re probably thinking they had the wrong kind of mushrooms for dinner.”

Dom mouthes a curse, quickly hides his wings without thinking and, of course, Matt falls on the ground and he falls on top of Matt.

“What was that, may I ask?”

“M-m,” Matt clears his throat awkwardly. “I did get l'appel du vide?”

One could master the French accent to a perfection, having so many years to do it, and Matt’s can’t even be called decent, for Heaven’s sake.

“Think of something better.”

“Alright,” Matt stops laughing but in the corner of his eye, there’s still a crazy glimmer. “I wanted to know how you’d react.”

“Happy, you goddamn manipulator?” Dom can’t tell anymore if he’s playing along or really being mad at Matt and himself.

“Such language…”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Beyond happy.”

They lean towards each other at the same moment and their kiss feels more like a collision than a fusion: awkward, not meant to be, probably funny from the side, a little angry, and too much like the fall from a great height and relentless wind hitting on the face. Dom props himself on one hand so he wouldn’t completely fall on Matt, but Matt mumbles some kind of protest into the kiss and pulls him closer.

When their lips separate, Matthew looks lost, as if he’s desperately trying to hide behind the usual mask of indifference and sarcasm but, all of sudden, has forgotten how to do it. Dom hopes deep down that Matt doesn’t release the tight grip on his shoulders out of astonishment and not fear that Dom’d want to leave.

Because it takes the last ounces of reason Dominic has to resist the idea of lying on this road for a few more hours. Days. Years.

He leans closer again until their foreheads touch and whispers:

“Let’s go get the coffee and recorder from the roof and go to your place,” and, after considering all possible implications of this phrase, adds hopelessly, “And you’ll play me something?”

Matthew raises a hand (it seems to be shaking, but that could be Dom’s imagination), touches Dom’s cheek with the tips of his fingers and trails them towards his ear, tucking a loose strand of hair behind it. And then, smiles in such a way that for the first time, it’s really easy to see him as an angel.

His response is pretty suggestive, too, but Dom believes, also for the first time, that he does it unintentionally.

“I’ll play for you till my piano breaks.”

The next day, Matt falls from the rooftop again, this time in an abandoned warehouse district, clutching a wound in his side from a stab of a cursed blade capable of hurting even a demon. After he hits the ground, thick blood begins flowing from it even faster, soaking the dirt around and giving it a nauseous muddy brown color. His vision gets dark and cloudy.

Down in Hell – and probably up in Heaven, too – somebody decided that a kiss between an angel and a demon is a problem. How unexpected. And how unexpected that they chose the simplest way to deal with that problem.

The worst thing is not the end but the fact that they’ll make sure he never sees the end. And he can’t run away forever, even when he’s not bleeding out.

But spending so much time in the human world, it seems, gave Matthew an instinct of self-preservation, and so, the very second his executioners land next to him, he teleports away. Of course, he can’t cover any sort of real distance in this state but, if he’s extremely lucky, he might be able to manage moving within the limits of the city. He doesn’t have time to consider whether there is any anti-demon protection where he’s going and has no choice other than blind trust.

When he falls heavily on the soft carpet in Dominic’s apartment, he is indeed nearly blind: he can only hear a panicked cry and barely see the figure in the chair throwing a book away and rushing to his side.

“Matt! Oh my god, Matt!”

Matt winces and hisses at Dominic’s hands messily touching his shoulders, and head, and the wound.

“Go. You must go. Now.”

No matter which side was spying on them, the other one inevitably knows, too. If they came for him, they’d come for Dom very soon.

“Don’t move,” a grip on his shoulder suddenly tenses, and Matt doesn’t even have enough energy to say that he wasn’t going to, anyway. “Don’t move and don’t you dare die on me.”

A trembling hand covers his solar plexus, and Matthew, despite the warning, immediately struggles to break free out of pure instinct, but Dominic doesn’t let go, and even in this state, even on the verge of blacking out, a wave of panic hits him.

Matt finds most human studies on chakras, “energy centers” of the body and such amusing, but somebody, surely by accident, once stumbled upon a piece of truth. All life energy of a demon (and an angel, too, to be precise) in a human body is concentrated exactly in the place where Dominic’s hand can surely feel a rapid uneven pulsation.

It also happens to be the most vulnerable place on their bodies. Even a human could hurt it, given proper tools, to say nothing of an angel, and no matter how much Matt trusts Dom, the instinct to protect the only breach in his perfect defenses is stronger.

But Matt is so weakened that Dom effortlessly holds him down, probably not noticing his pathetic attemts of resistance at all, and he eventually gives up struggling and goes limp, paralysed with dizziness, fear and helplessness. And the next moment, the pain in the wound starts to cease, and his insides feel like they’re being bathed in sunlight (he would kill himself for this phrase if he could move), and it seems horribly wrong for a demon, but somehow, it calms him down. Finally, he manages to focus his vision on Dominic’s pale face.

“What are you doing,” Matthew, still barely able to move, tries to grab his wrist. “What the fuck are doing, you’re about to pass out yourself, you bloody good samaritan, stop.”

“Sh-h, be quiet,” Dominic gives him a smile, but it comes out a bit forced.

Matt, supressing a groan, sits up, grabbing both of Dominic’s hands.

“Listen to me! My own people did this! Yours will come for you, too – now!”

“I understood that,” Dom mutters, leaning dangerously to the side. “I knew there’d be consequences. I’m ready.”

“Well, I’m fucking not!” Dominic closes his eyes, not responding, and Matt shakes him by the shoulders. “Going fatalistic, are you now? Hell no, you’re gonna live,” he mutters through his teeth and braces himself enough to clumsily stand up.

He expects to spend all of his strength on teleporting again, but it seems, the angelic energy started to work differently since his fall because when they land in a non-crowded street, he doesn’t feel much worse. Or maybe there’s something speical about Dominic. Dominic, leaning heavily on his shoulder, looks around, bewildered.

“Where are we?”

“In a place that’s a little less obvious than our apartments.”

“Less ob- Wait,” Dom tries to stand up straight, “is that Chris’s shop?”

“Well, I didn’t dare to go for his house with six kids even though they adore you,” Matt takes a step towards the door, but Dom grabs his sleeve with surprising strength.

“We can’t.”

“Only for a couple of hours, just until we feel better!”

“Matt, we can’t drag Chris into this. What are you going to tell him, for a start?”

“The truth? And then erase his memory of it?”

“We’ve lied to him enough,” Dom frowns. “I don’t think we have the right to, on top of that, endager him, do you?”

The problem is, Matt doesn’t, and an even bigger problem is that he has no other ideas. For a brief moment, he barely holds back from breaking down howling right here in the middle of the street. Everyone will think he’s just another victim of mental breakdown from overworking, anyway. Hell did quite a number on the labour law at some point.

“What do we do, then?” he turns away from the door, and instead of a howl, lets out a quiet hoarse groan. “Accept our fate? Run while we can?”

“They won’t kill us, will they?” Dominic’s voice breaks, betraying his horror.

“No. That’s the worst thing about it.”

Dom nervously rubs his temples, raising his head to the darkening evening sky, and suddenly, frowns in concentration.

“Maybe there’s a way. I’ve read about it… A long, long time ago and I’m not sure anyone actually tried it.”

“Anything, Dom-“

Dominic cuts him off with a gesture and glances around sharply.

“My people,” he mouthes. “Will be here in half a minute. God, where can we-”

“Don’t waste your energy,” Matt interrupts him, taking his hands again.

By all logic, his demonic essence should’ve rejected the angelic energy, but if it works, he doesn’t mind, nor does he have time to be picky or surprised. When another teleportation seems to not take away any of his power, he just accepts it for granted.

Strong wind ruffles their hair, and the unmistakable smell of salt fills the air. A pier, unrepaired since their last visit and the last century, creaks, echoing the cries of seagulls. This time Dominic realises where they are almost instantly and, despite everything, smiles in nostalgia.

“Teignmouth?”

“First thing that popped into my head,” Matt waves him off. “What way?”

“Well,” Dominic turns to face the bay and seems to be carefully choosing his words, “you can change the department, so to say, in one direction only, right? An angel can be banished but nothing will happen to a demon and,” he looks down as if ashamed, “there’s no chance of redemption, like for humans.”

“If you’re thinking about falling and then presenting it as my win-“

“Tempting idea but there are too many things that could go wrong.”

“Good,” Matt clenches his teeth: there is little good about it but he’d never allow Dom to do this.

“So, I’ve read there’s something of a third way-“

“Limbo is not the place where I fancy spending the rest of eternity, to be honest.”

“Would you stop interrupting me?” Dominic turns to him angrily, and they exchange intense stares for a few seconds before bursting into uncontrollable laughter.

“I’m sorry,” Matthew manages to breath out and hopes this won’t turn into a real breakdown.

Dom only shakes his head, unable to speak, bending over the rails on the pier. Matt moves closer to him and puts his head on Dom’s shoulder, narrowing his eyes at the sunset. How much time have they got before someone finds them again?

“Well, what’s your idea, double suicide?” he mumbles, unable to restrain himself, and Dom suddenly finds and squeezes his hand.

“Not too far from that, you know.”

“I’ll take it at this point, you know.”

“So, apparently, if we combine our energies the right way, they’ll neutralize each other and deflect.”

“And?”

“And we’ll lose them. Become humans, sort of.”

Another rush of the wind hits them, carrying tiny droplets of water shining in the sunlight as they fly through the air. It gets colder with every moment, and Matt shifts even closer to Dom. Time is running out for this day and for them, and he never wished to be able to control it more.

“Matthew.”

“Yes.”

“They can find us any moment,” Dom pulls at a strand of his hair. “Say something.”

“Banana.”

“Please remind me how’d I ever fall in love with you?” Dom elbows him in the wounded side and stops smiling as Matt gasps. “Sorry, I’m so sorry, I forgot.”

“We-“ Matt stumbles upon his words and gazes at the peaceful waves dancing beneath. “We’ll just forget everything, live human lives and… die as humans, too?”

“Probably. Oh, and a pleasant bonus, we can get thrown into another time period.”

“Wonderful. Which one? The past? The future?”

“You do realize that no one ever tried, and I don’t know, right?”

“Yeah, but questions keep me from panicking.”

“Any luck in not panicking?”

“Not really.”

Dom puts an arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer, and probably barely holds back from hurrying him again, and Matt has no idea what to do.

“That’s… how many years? Seventy to eighty in the modern age, minus ten for each century going back?”

“I did say it’s not too far from suicide.”

“We’ve known each other for twenty years.”

“Met just around the corner,” Dom nods in the direction of a row of neat white brick houses going in a straight line away from the sea.

Feels like it was yesterday, Matt wants to say, but stops to think, trying to count how many times they’ve seen each other over these years. It’s not a small number, really, and there’s also the fact that humans have less of a tendency to get away from the world and their loved ones for undetermined periods of time… But of course, it’s not enough and it will never be.

“Let’s do it,” his whisper is barely audible but then again, there’s hardly any distance between them.

“Are you ready?”

“…I’m not. But let’s do it and… I don’t know. Pray that we don’t end up in the times of plague.”

Dominic pulls at the collar of his shirt, making Matthew raise his head, and kisses him – passionately, furiously, desperately, and then pulls away just as suddenly, even though it’s definitely too late to restrict himself and stay away from temptation. Then he gently pushes Matt to step back a little and takes his hands, and Matt is mad at himself for not being able to stop them from shaking.

“Honestly, I don’t really know what to do but I think we should try something similar to how I healed you.”

Matt nods, watching the reflection of the setting sun in Dom’s eyes.

“Thanks for that, by the way. And… see you in the next life?” he curls up the corner of his mouth, trying his hardest to sound confident.

“Sure,” Dominic nods calmly but his trembling voice betrays him, too.

Matthew closes his eyes and, feeling an already familiar light energy flowing towards him, channels his own to meet it. That part of himself that he wanted to keep as far away from Dominic as possible, the part made of pain, and unanswered questions, and sinful wishes – now there’s no choice but to share all of it. Their powers collide, trying to overcome each other awkwardly, and then, as if responding to a hidden signal, combine, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle, and flow back into them, a strange mix unlike anything they’ve known before.

A fleeting we did it flies through Matthew’s head, and then everything becomes mixed up: the day they met, New York, their entwined fingers, the fall from the roof and the kiss, a new melody that couldn’t choose a better time to come to him along with lyrics about a guiding light, and, in the last seconds before everything goes dark, I love you and please not the fourteenth century.

“Howard! Hey, Howard, have you fallen asleep or something?” Dom flinches, looking away from the group of sport kids on the other end of The Den* and answers his friends absent-mindedly, still glancing over there from the corner of his eye.

He probably just imagined a familiar face, or maybe it’s really someone he knows from a distance. New faces are hard to find in their town, save for the tourists.

It begins to rain in an unpleasant light drizzle, and Dom is about to offer the rest of them to leave and have a rehearsal somewhere, when a skinny clumsy figure separates itself from that group and crosses the lawn, approaching them.

This is definitely the face that caught Dom’s eye and he definitely doesn’t know this guy, and yet, something about his eyes and a little crazy expression in them seems familiar, and he feels drawn to him, as if subconciously convinced they’ll like each other.

“Hi,” the guy, awkwardly fixing his tracksuit, comes closer to him. “Sorry for being so sudden, but you – all of you – play really well, and I thought you could help me a bit with my guitar.” Dom continues to stare at him in confusion as he stretches out a hand. “I’m Matthew, by the way. Matt Bellamy.”