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Anders figures that some good things come out of religion; like Mardi Gras. Ok so maybe it's not really religious anymore, especially not when you’re in New Orleans in the French Quarter down on Bourbon Street with a drink in one hand and a stripper grinding away on your lap. She’s there because she’s getting paid and if he uses a little bit of compulsion for her to break the rules then he thinks nothing of it.
The floor is sticky with spilled drinks, heat lingers in the air and cheap whisky on everyone's breath. It doesn’t help that New Orleans has a “bring in your alcohol!” policy from other establishments, it’s resulted in a constant stream of drink to drink, bar to bar, stripclub to his hotel bed in a blur of days.
He doesn’t know if he likes bourbon, the taste of the barrel thick on his tongue. He’s used to vodka, he figures he really only did like vodka so much though because it was free back home. Could be free here too, he thinks as the blonde in his lap tosses her head back, her hair falling onto his shoulders and smelling of cheap perfume and other men. He doesn’t mind, she doesn’t belong to him and that’s how he likes it.
Anders eyes make contact with a man across the room. It's dim and the only lights are dim pink and purple ones that cast strange shadows and for a moment Anders swears the man's eyes are black. Anders blinks, finishes off the rest of his glass and slams the tumbler on the side table. He pushes the stripper off of him, tossing a wad of cash in her direction. There’s something unsettling about the unruly dark curls, sharp features, and long thin limbs that seem to be so out of place in a seedy place like this.
It’s then Anders realizes that it’s not the first time he’s seen him this week.
Anders pushes him up against the wall in the back alley. He figures its not the worst thing the city has seen.
“Why are you following me?”
He also figures this can go one of two ways and is currently leaning towards the latter idea in his head.
The man doesn’t say anything, he keeps his eyes focused on Anders, who feels his grip loosening as he watches the man’s eyes change from brown to black to brown again, like he’s watching an eclipse.
“Found you interesting,” he speaks in an Irish accent and Anders feels a chill run up his spine at the cadence of his vowels.
“I can show you something more interesting.”
Anders tries to fuck him in the alley in broad daylight, swearing that they won't be arrested. The man drags him to a motel.
When Anders face is pressed into the mattress he tries not to notice that it looks like the man has been living there, that the plaid shirts hanging off the back of the chair are worn and faded. That the take out on the table is at least two days old. He closes his eyes, tries not to focus on the details, on the green patterned wall paper but instead of the feeling of someone inside of him.
Anders leaves after, leaves Mitchell to sheets going cold and a setting sun.
Mitchell looks up at the sky, looks up at the stars and knows the ones flickering are satellites. He thinks about
asteres planetai,
when the Greeks looked up at the same sky with their telescopes and came up with the word for planets. He wonders if then that was the crux of it, his downfall. His need to understand, his need to be human.
When he fell, it was dizzying, it was screaming and blazing wings. All he knew was the feeling of falling, of heat burning his new skin, of the feeling of fear tearing through him like a war being waged.
After, when he’s clawing his way out of the ocean, away from waves that pull like hands, his lungs coughing and working against him, he falls back onto the sand with a smile on his face. A grin to God, and a whirlpool in his chest as he realized for a moment he knew what it was to feel.
“Why the American South?”
Mitchell thinks it's obvious, from the graveyards to the churches, the way religion seeps into the foundations of it. The same way the bald cypress tree roots seem to be endless in the swamps, rooted to the land.
He shrugs, “guess I can’t let it go.”
He watches the way that people go on the weekends to get saved, how they welcome religion into their hearts and he wants to tell them it’s only temporary. That all of this is fleeting, that after centuries of being on earth he’s starting to wonder what he found so interesting about it in the first place.
There’s too much pain, too much heartache, all of it bleeds and blends together and it’s hard to find a light, but he figures this is their way of having hope.
Anders is full of pain, despite what he thinks or how he tries to push it down and put on a show. And Mitchell? Mitchell is fascinated. Mitchell is brimming with it. Anders tragedy is tangible to him, it rolls off of him in waves to the point what Mitchell can almost see it and Mitchell wants to ask how he’s
survived.
He learns, quickly, he learns through tricks, alcohol, and heat between Anders legs is how he chokes it all down.
There’s something about cheap motels and old American muscle cars that fit Mitchell. Maybe it’s all the plaid he wears of his “zero fucks given” attitude but Anders thinks that he fits into the backdrop of all of it, of the neon flickering lights late at night talking about tarot readings and the early morning rush of mass as the faithful flock to the pews.
“I sit in the back every Sunday,” Mitchell says as he sits in the pew now. Moonlight straining to stream in through the stained glass windows.
Anders doesn’t sit, instead he shoves his hands deep in his pockets, as he stands in the aisle on the stained red carpet leading up to the altar.
“I don’t do churches.”
“You’ve said that.” Mitchell keeps his eyes focused on the cross on the altar, at the dark wood and seeing if his eyes can see the grains from this far back.
“You know I’m a god right?”
Mitchell grins at this, takes his eyes off the cross and looks at Anders with the same grin he had when he fell. For as much as Anders wants to believe he’s above it all, he’s dripping with it, with the stench of humanity and all of the spectrum of emotions that accompanies it.
Maybe it's the jazz music that blares off of Frenchman Street, the way bodies seem to meld together in the dim light of clubs, or the slow drawl of words and the deep rumble of the south that are starting to take root in Anders, or maybe it’s the way that Mitchell looks at him when Anders speaks, like he has something important to say and Mitchell is clinging on to each word like it's a sermon and these are the end of days.
His hands are fists and they are ever grasping.
Anders runs his hands down Mitchell’s back, feels the smooth skin of two long scars that run wide.
“Do you miss them?” He asks, a thumb running circles.
“Have you ever missed anything?” Mitchell retorts.
Anders grins and leans in.
"Why? You make it sound like God thought you were made with a forked tongue and a pentagram burned into your skin."
"Because I wanted to be human."
"I like the story about how gravity was discovered." Mitchell says one night in bed. Anders hasn't snuck out of Mitchell's motel yet.
"Why?' Anders voice is quiet.
"I don't know, it sounds odd but I liked that it was because an apple had fallen. That it was something that had fallen that had caused something good."
That's when Anders learns that Mitchell has learned of regret.
“You do know hanging out in cemeteries is incredibly cliche of you? Would have pegged you as a vampire.”
“Very funny,” Mitchell calls over his shoulder as he walks down the broken stone path.
“Why are we here again when there’s bars calling my name?”
“History lesson.”
“In what? How to depress a date and ruin a good time.”
“In how to bury your dead.”
“Because that’s not fucking morbid or an instant boner killer.” Anders follows him down the path, to giant stone statues of angels and crypts.
“Up to a hundred bodies can fit in there,” he gestures to a mausoleum.
“That seems excessive.”
“They’re family crypts. When a loved one dies their bodies are put in the tomb and the gravekeeper waits a day for mourning then comes and pushes the body down.”
“He just pushes it down? WIth what, a pole?” Anders scrunches his eyebrows and checks his pocket for a joint.
“Sometimes, maybe a shovel. They have to though because of the rain, there’s not enough land here to bury.” Mitchell runs his hand over the letters engraved in the marble.
“You come here a lot.” Anders makes it clear it’s a statement.
“Like to remind myself of the fragile state of mortality.” Mitchell tries to bullshit it.
“No, you like to torture yourself.” Anders lights his joint and inhales. He blows the smoke up, his head tilted back and his neck exposed.
Mitchell watches the vein in his neck move, watches how Anders seems to have such control. “Come on, I can think of another type of torture for us. There’s shots of fireball calling our names.”
Mitchell looks at the yellow bottle with the dancing red devil on it and grins to himself. Being here with Anders, it’s not heaven, and it sure as fuck isn’t hell, instead it’s some combination of the two and Mitchell is grateful.
Mitchell kisses Anders with his cinnamon whiskey coated tongue, kisses him until it burns.
Sometimes words feel heavy on his tongue, he’s learned too many over his years, different words for the same thing. He mixes up their names sometimes, says the old word for it, something long forgotten. There’s times when his vocal chords ache for his true language, the words of angels. He thinks it’s some sort of way that the universe or God is fucking with him when he ends up falling in love with the God of Poetry, some sort of sick punishment.
But Anders doesn’t like to waste words(he does like to bullshit, Mitchell learns very quickly). Mitchell also learns that he has an affinity for languages as well so Mitchell starts teaching him a dead language, one that seems rusty and metal tasting on his tongue, until Anders says them with perfect clarity and suddenly Mitchell is home.
“You know I’m bad for you, right?” Anders says it without any concern in his voice as his mouth trails up Mitchell’s jeans and his fingers find the button.
Mitchell looks down at him, mouth parts and breath coming out in quick pants. “I’m a fallen angel, I’m bad for myself.”
His head bangs against the wall as Anders swallows him down. He looks up at the ceiling and thinks, how do you like me now?, as a middle finger goes up to the sky.
“Next time when I’m blowing you can you not flip off God? A bit off putting.”
Mitchell laughs, he laughs harder than he ever has and for the first time in a very long time he doesn’t regret being fallen.