Archive of Our Own

It’s really not every day you sit in an overflowing bathtub threaded with your own blood. In fact, it’s, more often than not, a once-in-a-lifetime thing — you slit your wrists and then you’re in there for, what, five minutes? And then you’re dead. Gone. Banished, betrothed to whatever afterlife there is out there.

For whatever reason, however, it’s been an hour, and Flux is still sitting in a bath of his own blood.

Flux had always hated baths. There was something fundamentally revolting about them, something that made his skin crawl no matter how clean the water looked at first. 

A shower at least made sense to him — dirt went down the drain, carried somewhere far away from him, and when he stepped out afterward he could pretend he’d shed something along with it. Baths only trapped everything in with him. Sweat, dead skin, the grime of an ordinary day, all of it steeping together in the heat.

As a child he used to sit perfectly still in the tub, trying not to look at the surface of the water for too long because eventually he would start imagining things floating there — loose strands of hair winding around his knees, tiny gray flecks he didn’t want to think too much about, specks of dirt. 

The heat always became unbearable after a while, pressing against his chest until breathing felt thick and difficult, and whenever he finally climbed out, pruned and flushed red, he carried the sensation with him for hours afterward, and sat in his childhood bed trying to scrub all of it off.

It seemed strangely appropriate, then, that this was where he had chosen to kill himself.

He had no interest in romanticizing himself into something tragic at the very end; he knew himself too well for that.  The reality of him had always been smaller, meaner, more pathetic than the kinds of people stories were written about, and sitting alone in a bathtub he despised felt much closer to the truth of who he was.

If he was going to die, he thought it should happen somewhere uncomfortable, somewhere damp and ugly and faintly suffocating. Just like his stupid, angsty teenage life. He wanted one more chance to wallow in self pity, to indulge in his ugliest, most grotesque thoughts and compulsions. 

He had spent long enough thinking about it that the idea no longer frightened him. This has been something he’s been dreaming of for ages. He had every little detail smoothed out, down to the minute somebody would find him. 

As gruesome as it sounds, he wanted to die, but that didn’t mean he could let go of the part of him that remained absurdly preoccupied with avoiding inconvenience. He didn’t want the tub overflowing. He didn’t want water leaking through the floorboards. He didn’t want to think of his father complaining about stains on their ceiling while his body sat on the other side of the wall — once again, stewing in a soup of… well, himself.

The thought almost made him laugh.

Instead, he turned the lights off and stood in the dim bathroom while steam drifted upward around him, blurring the mirror until his reflection disappeared completely. 

The big, spacey house he had lived in for his entire life, just beyond the door, felt far away. It always has, even as he was right in the middle of it; eating dinner with his parents and siblings, enveloped in an awkward silence. 

The blade was in his hand. The bath was warm enough and full enough. The lights were off. He was situated in the bathtub, with the little shower curtain drawn.

All he had to do now was draw the blade — a long slash right where his radial arteries should be — and hiss and relish in the fresh rush of air that threatened to seep under his skin.

…

…

…

That was an hour ago. 

He’s had his eyes closed since then, just letting the blood rush out. 

So, how come, with all things considered, he’s still conscious?

He comes up with three things off the top of his head —

First, he assumes he’s delirious.

As far as he knows, no human being can survive bleeding out a major artery with no resistance for an hour. Shock, blood loss, oxygen-deprivation — the brain starts inventing things long before the body actually dies. 

He knows that. He’s read enough case studies, emergency medicine reports, survival accounts to know what happens when circulation collapses. He’s delirious. He’s hallucinating. This is the seven minutes they talk about.

By every metric he can remember, he should already be dead. He should have been dead a good 55 minutes ago. But he’s not seeing the most memorable parts of his life, from childhood to present time — he’s just sat in his bathtub with a blade in his hands. 

If this was a hallucination, it would be so fucking lame and underwhelming that Flux wanted to kill himself a second time.

Second, then, he considers he might have missed the artery.

…No. That’s ridiculous. He knows exactly where he cut. 

He can still picture the diagrams he studied beforehand — branching vessels mapped in red and blue, annotated cross-sections, clinical photographs buried in medical journals he probably should never have opened. He remembers tracing the route with his fingertip against his own skin just days, hours ago, feeling for the pulse, rehearsing angles in the mirror with detached, clinical concentration. Like he wasn’t taking his own life, but  preparing for a major surgery.

If anything, he should have overthought it. He should be too accurate. He should have gone too deep and died before he could even close his eyes. He knows damn well it’s not just his ego talking. He’s more sure of the accuracy of this than he is of his own middle name, at this point. 

And if he somehow fumbled, which he didn’t, c’mon now. A gaping wound where a network of blood vessels should be? He’s seen #shtwt posts of people getting hospitalized from the same, or even much milder cuts in less vital places. He had to be really fucking unlucky.

Third, it finally dawns on him that he could be dead, for all he knows.

This, being the most harrowingly existential of the three, gets him to attempt to move after being frozen up, waiting, for the better part of an hour.

He lifts up one arm from underneath the water, raises it to eye-level, and he finds that the blood doesn’t trickle down his forearm. It kind of… stays inside? Like there’s a clear film keeping it intact. There’s a clean, fresh laceration where his pulse should be, and if he squints his eyes and tilts his head, he can see his pulse. It flutters, as if ignorant to the fact it is, quite literally, exposed. As if it was perfectly normal for there to be a breeze hitting his insides like that. 

But he isn’t bleeding anymore.

That should be the weirdest thing right now, but another oddity becomes prevalent. 

The room is bright. Too bright. He was pretty damn sure he’d flicked the lightswitch off before he started all of this.

This has to be some fucked up nightmare. Or maybe he’s still at the party he was at last week, and his drink got spiked and he’s on the world’s most realistic acid trip. Or something. Because there’s no other way all of this is happening.

The light doesn’t come from above, where his bathroom bulb should be humming weakly behind dusty plastic. It leaks from behind the shower curtain instead — persistent, needling through the seams like sunlight through cracked blinds, and Flux can only gauge that there is some… source? beam? of light, just right around where his fucking toilet should be.

Baffled, bewildered, and against his better judgement, he draws the curtain, and is immediately flash-banged. He screws his eyes shut, his head snapping away from the source.

“Dude… what the fuck?” he curses to himself, trying to ignore the fact his eyes just got involuntarily, unexpectedly bleached.

“Shit, man, my bad!”

That makes Flux immediately look back up, fighting the afterimages of glowing rainbows.

“What the fuck are you?!” he yelps, fully yanking back the shower curtain and pointing his measly little razor blade at whatever is in front of him. He still can’t fucking see right with the patterns and orbs dancing around his vision, but he can make out a human-ish silhouette — is it still a silhouette if it’s essentially just light?

It shifts in pose, raising its hands in resignation, stammering — “B–be not afraid!”

And it does much for Flux to not feel afraid, because he’s more pissed, if anything now. 

“B–b–be not afraid,” he mocks bitterly, “What are you? God, of course this freak shit has to happen when I finally decide to kill myself.”

The figure pauses, clears its throat, and lets the silence sit for a moment, presumably to let Flux adjust. Both him and his eyes.

Flux takes that time to sulk, his eyes settling on the glimmer on the edge of the bathtub. He has no patience for the paranormal or for the spiritual or whatever bullshit was going on right now. Hell, he had a track record of ditching both the Sunday school and madrasa that either parent pushed for him to attend. 

Under no circumstances would he fold and believe in a higher being, or an otherworldly force, or whatever people were so scared of. The 

“...Are you gonna kill me? On with it. Could’ve done it myself…”

Finally, the figure takes a sigh, “No, actually. Quite the opposite…” it laughs, and Flux internally scoffs at the audacity. 

“I mean, I would love to kill you! There’s no other way to say this, but… I’m kind of your guardian angel,” it shrugs. 

Flux scowls from when he’s looking, but he finally redirects his gaze —

The light is much softer now, no longer the violent white that had swallowed the room whole a moment ago. Flux can actually look at the thing without squinting. The bathroom returns around it in pieces — the yellowed tile, the damp shower curtain stuck to the side of the tub, the mirror clouded with steam and age and mold around the corners. Water laps against his ribs whenever he breathes too hard.

And in the middle of all of it stands the “angel.”

The first thing that catches Flux’s eye is that literally everything on it is white. 

White in the way bones are ivory white beneath skin and muscle and blood; in the way hospital lights bleach the world clean of warmth. 

The robes draped over its body are long and layered, hanging in folds that should look regal but instead look oddly heavy, like wet laundry thrown over a coat rack — normal enough to be reminiscent of the portraits of saints Flux has grown familiar with after every church visit, but not normal enough to soften the Uncanny Valley effect. One side slips off a narrow shoulder, exposing a collarbone so pale it almost reflects light. 

Its hair is white too — not old-man gray, not platinum blond, but an almost silvery white that catches the glow around it and diffuses it softly. Fine strands brush past pointed ears and frame a face so colorless it looks sculpted rather than alive. Beautiful in the same way statues are beautiful. Made to be adored, admired; not to live and breathe. Not to share a space with a measly, mortal being like Flux.

Except it is breathing. Flux can’t tell if he’s imagining anymore, but as far as he can tell, it is breathing… and it’s right in front of him.

The thing emits light from its skin in a dull, ambient way, but behind its head burns something brighter: a halo suspended several inches from the back of its skull. Not a delicate ring, but a hard circumference of white-gold radiance, intense enough that Flux probably can’t look at it for more than a few seconds without going completely blind. The air around it warps faintly from the brightness. Every now and then it gives a subtle electrical flicker, like a bulb straining against bad wiring.

Then there are the wings.

They should not fit in the bathroom. Spread out, they would have to span wall to wall and then some, each feather longer than Flux’s forearm. Yet somehow they fold neatly behind the angel without touching anything at all. They occupy space incorrectly. Flux’s eyes keep trying to measure them and failing. Sometimes they seem tucked close to the body; other times they fill the entire corner of the room. The feathers overlap in endless layers of pale cream and pure white, so clean they don’t seem real.

The whole thing appears too large for the room.

Not literally. Obviously, it's in the room, so it can fit, all logic set aside.

Rather, Flux feels like his bathroom — hell, his life — is too insignificant to contain a  literal angel.

The angel is looking down at him, but not directly at him. Its gaze narrowly avoids his eyes.

And Flux doesn’t know if he buys any of this.

Maybe he lost too much blood. Maybe he finally snapped. Maybe this is the last strange flicker of consciousness before death finally takes him under. None of the options seem less insane than the others.

But the thing is standing there regardless, and it doesn’t look like it has any plans on going away.

“Couldn’t you go off shift for like, an hour? I’m trying to die here, if you can’t tell.”

The angel sucks in air from behind its teeth, wincing and shaking its head, “No can do, buddy — but, hey, look at me for a second.”

He raises his head fully and looks straight at the angel’s face.

And for the first time, the angel looks back.

Its eyes are not white. It's a shade of pale gray akin to that of the sky right before thunderstorms. It looks like a cataract covering its entire iris.

Flux has exactly enough time to notice this before—

“Shit—!”

The pain is immediate and absolute, sharp enough that his body folds around it on instinct. The razor slips from his fingers and clinks uselessly into the bathwater below. He grabs both wrists at once, breath punched from his lungs as hot pain races up his forearms. His pulse hammers in his ear. 

He jerks his hands away just enough to see blood smeared across his palms — fresh, bright red, startling against his skin. It pours from wounds that seconds ago had definitely not been bleeding.

He barely manages a yelp, the pain overcoming his senses. 

Until it stops just as quick as it started. The blood dries up in seconds, and he’s left to deal with the shock.

When he finally comes to, he finds that the angel had been laughing at him.

Flux chokes out a breath, dry heaving as he forces words out: “You—!”

“Oh, my God!” the angel laughs more, almost doubled over, as if it itself cannot breathe. Its halo brightens erratically with every breathless wheeze, flashing in tiny pulses like it’s feeding off the laughter, “You should’ve seen the look on your face!”

Any remaining shock drains out of Flux and leaves irritation in its place. 

“Some guardian angel you are…” Flux mumbles.

The angel finally reins itself in enough to straighten. It sucks in a long breath through its teeth and smooths one hand down the front of its robes, trying and failing to regain composure, until it finally catches its breath, kissing its teeth before saying—

“C’mon,” it throws its hands in the air, “I deserve this!”

Flux glares, dumbfoundedly, minisculely shaking his head.

“No, seriously.” The angel points at him emphatically. “Do you have any idea how much stupid shit you’ve survived?” 

“I’m in a bathtub bleeding out,” Flux deadpans

“Yeah, now you are,” the angel rolls its eyes. “But before this? You’ve done too much catastrophically dumb, and otherwise fatal garbage throughout your life without even realizing it counted as a near-death experience. God forbid an angel wants to have some fun too!”

It starts ticking points off on its fingers — Flux, yet again, scoffs at the audacity.

“You almost got clipped by that delivery truck when you snuck out just two weeks ago.”

Flux blinks, still incredulous.

“You fell asleep with your overheating, beat-up laptop just inches from your face.”

“…What?”

“You almost got caught stealing your dad’s cigarettes, which he definitely would’ve killed you for—”

“That one shouldn’t count, he’d kill me for most things—”

“That one especially counts,” the angel says dismissively, shuddering — staring off into the distance like a traumatized soldier, as if it had seen the outcome already.

It steps away from the sink as it talks, pacing carefully through the cramped bathroom with the strange, gliding gait of something not entirely affected by gravity. Its robe hem passes through the puddles on the tile without soaking. The wings trail behind it in slow, lazy movements — still somehow never colliding with anything. Its eyes never seem to trail toward Fluixon’s face, just stuck on the ground as it speaks.

“You are,” it says with mounting emphasis, “so, incredibly, undeniably lucky to have me as your angel.”

Flux takes the sight of it in — the ridiculous white robes, the glowing halo, the giant wings. If he drank, like, a gallon of radioactive substances and bought an angel costume from a Spirit Halloween, he, too, could look like this supposed divine messenger in his bathroom pacing in his bathroom.

“I mean, you look the part, but —” he hesitates, watching how the angel’s face scrunches up in curiosity, “—but you don’t even talk like an angel.”

The words slip out before he can stop them. The angel pauses mid-step.

“Now, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what it means.” Flux gestures vaguely with one wet hand. “You sound like some guy — no, some cynical guy at that. You’re irreverent. And you’re supposedly an angel? You’ve used the Lord’s name in vain, like, thrice throughout the past five minutes!”

“...Twice, actually—”

Flux points at him with his palm up, like a cue more than an accusation — “You’re telling me there’s a Heaven somewhere and this is the so-called angel they sent me?” 

The angel just stares. 

Flux lets his head thunk weakly against the back of the tub. “Were you just assigned here to haunt me? To keep me from killing myself?”

It shrugs, “Haunting? Not my department. Keeping you alive? I mean, well, that’s kind of the entire job description—”

“You’re a fucking asshole. Convince me it’s ethical for you to show yourself when I was supposed to be dead. Convince me how it’s ethical for you to, I dunno, stop my body from shutting down as my wrists are literally slit open.”

It shrugs, yet again, “Okay, well, you have to hear me out on this…”

“I don’t have a choice but to hear you out. I’m pretty certain my life is, quite literally, in your hands.”

The angel sits to crouch beside the bathtub, ignoring how Flux inches away from it. “Okay, to start things off, I think you humans are more empathetic toward more human things, yeah?” 

Flux half-heartedly hums, pretty much defeated. 

He finally, finally gets the courage to try to kill himself after wanting to do so for years. Of course he has to have a guardian angel who is so insistent on having him live. It’s so on brand for his life — nothing goes his way. 

His near-perfect plan to kill himself has to get ruined by, in the most literal sense for the saying, divine intervention.

“Well, hey, my name is Saparata. Call me Saps,” it extends a hand, and when Flux doesn’t take it, it kind of laughs awkwardly. “Really, we’re more alike than you think.”

“I don’t know about you, but I think I’m in every right to think we aren’t,” he spits out.

“Yeah! Yeah, you are, but like you said — angels don’t have to be all, like, high and mighty, holier-than-thou… y’know?”

Flux’s eyes widen, he puts his hands up in a vexed shrug, “Sure. Whatever. Get to the point — why am I alive?”

The angel, Saparata, chuckles softly. 

“Okay, I need you to keep an open mind when I say this…” it clicks its tongue.

It rests an arm on the rim of the bathtub, its hand swooshing the blood-infused water around like it were just a normal bath. Surely, immortal beings have more pressing fears than getting their hands bloody. However, it only makes Flux more impatient.

“I… kind of have a few other guardian angel friends, and we were kinda drunk, fucking around in Heaven…” Flux doesn’t like how it sounds; despite himself, he has no choice but to nod, urging it to continue.

“So, we made this bet, right? We picked, like…” the angel pauses, monitoring Flux’s reactions. He just stares back, very eager to hear.

“We picked a suicidal teenager each… and we kind of, y’know…” it trails off, flashing a grimace.

Flux, for what feels like the billionth time in this timeframe, gapes at him.

“Okay, well, I know, I know! It’s horrible, see, but for my buddy Snowbird, the shit already hit the fan, so it’s just me and Micro—”

Flux shrieks, “You’re putting my death on hold for some stupid fucking bet? Are you out of your mind?!”

“It’s not on hold! Let me explain—”

“No, no — it can only get worse past this point. I just—” The words cave in on themselves. He finally finds it in him to climb out of the bathtub, one trembling hand braced against the tile wall while red water streams down his legs in diluted ribbons. Every movement looks painful, like gravity itself has doubled.

He tries to shoulder past Saparata toward the bathroom door, frantic to get out of the room, to stop breathing in his own blood and whatever photon-adjacent particle the angel is exuding. But a wing unfolds in front of him.

“Move.”

Saparata doesn’t move, stilling his wing right in front of Flux.

“Let me leave. You’re not even letting me die, just let me get out of here!” he shoves at the wing with both hands.

It doesn’t budge, like at all. The feathers give under his palms, soft as down jackets and fresh snow and all things good in the world, but the wing itself refuses to budge. Worse, his fingers can’t seem to grip it properly. They slide uselessly through the outer layer like a child on a hot air balloon trying to grab at a cloud.

“What the fuck even are you?” he spits, “Does anything about you make sense?” his voice cracks halfway through the sentence.

His heel slips against the wet tile. Instead of catching himself, he lets himself fall sideways against the bathroom wall, sliding back down into the tub, which right now is both a metaphorical and literal pool of blood and misery.

Flux curls in on himself immediately, knees dragged to his chest, forehead nearly touching them. The position makes him look much younger and much less resentful than he is.

Saparata folds its wing back in with visible caution, as though approaching a wounded animal, when it is completely sure Flux won’t break free. It hesitantly reaches out towards Flux. Somehow, by some miracle, without Flux throwing a fit, it manages to settle a soothing hand on his shoulder.

It’s cold — oddly so. But Flux only has to assume angels don’t have the average human anatomy; no organs to produce warmth, and no blood to keep it so. 

“Flux…”

“Don’t,” his voice comes muffled against his knees, “Don’t use that tone with me. You don’t have the fucking right.”

Saparata sighs, still reaching across the tub to keep its hold on his shoulder.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? But I have no other choice. And it’s just temporary.”

“You had the choice to pick a less depressed, less suicidal teenager,” Flux bites out, laced with pure anger, betraying the sad, sorrowful pout on his face. He brings his knees to his chest, feeling and looking so, so small. So small in the grand scheme of things. So small when faced with an angel.

“No.”

“What the fuck do you mean, no?”

“...No!”

“Literally anyone else,” Flux says, lifting his head finally. His eyes are red-rimmed and exhausted, further underlined with dark, heavy bags. “You could’ve picked my sister, or something. She’s still suicidal, I’m sure. But she wouldn’t have done it. Not right now, at least.”

Flux continues rambling, his breath becoming evidently more unstable, “...Or do you asshole angels have rules? Did the teenager have to be an active suicide risk?”

“No, it’s not like that—”

“You picked the suicidal kid bleeding out in a bathtub right now. You picked the kid with cuts littering his forearms and suicide notes readily stored in his bedside table. This is all on you.”

Saparata looks at him and decides to let him have this. He didn’t expect to make this past this point — he’s probably more than exhausted. And more than that, he looks like a wet, grumpy, neglected kitten that just got kicked out of a subpar animal shelter.

The angel hums, after a few beats of silence, “You don’t really, technically have to be in the bathtub anymore…” its hand slips off Flux’s shoulder, tracing the pale, scarred underbelly gently — lifting it, almost. 

Flux shudders, but doesn’t resist. Eventually, the angel’s finger meets Flux’s palm, and it grips, then pulls him up.

“We can get you cleaned up right now,” it says, all low and quiet, in a new, unique tone that Flux hated equally as much.

Flux jerks his hand away instantly, “No.”

Saparata pauses. “Flux—”

“I said no.”

“You’re covered in blood.”

“Really?”

“There’s dried blood in your hair.”

“Cool. Whatever. Call it a fucking fashion statement.” he spits.

Saparata stares, pale eyebrows furrowed. Flux didn’t even notice it had eyebrows, oddly enough — it was such a human feature, it was a little jarring to notice on something otherworldly.

Flux finally swings his legs over the side of the tub, glaring up at the angel with wet, furious eyes. He’s trembling now — partly from blood loss, partly from adrenaline, partly because he’s, quite frankly, exhausted to the bone. 

“...I am not taking a shower. No less, in your presence.”

“Why? I mean, I’ve been here for longer than you know, and I know for a fact you shower every other day, so I’m not surprised—”

Flux chose to ignore the rest of the sentence. “Because I said so. Wait, you’ve watched me shower—”

Saparata cuts him off, “That’s not an answer.”

“It is when I’m the one saying it.”

——————————

True enough, Fluixon does not shower that night.

He leans over the sink instead, scrubbing shampoo through his hair while the faucet spits uneven streams of lukewarm water into the basin. The whole process leaves him bent at an awkward angle, neck aching, one hand braced against chipped porcelain while the other works soap through blood-stiff strands. By the time he rinses it all out, his sleeves are damp to the elbows and the floor around him glistens with stray droplets. 

He dries himself off in sections afterward, rubbing a towel over skin already wrinkled and oversensitive from the evening. Everything about him feels swollen with moisture. Not clean, exactly — something almost opposite, however. Uncomfortably damp, like the towel that rests on their kitchen sink.

The bandaging takes longer than he expects, and takes a lot more energy out of him than he anticipated. Saparata offers help more than once, hovering nearby with that patient, infuriating calm unique to things that apparently do not tire. Flux refuses every time, even when his fingers slip from the tackiness of antiseptic and fresh gauze. Pride probably should not survive blood loss, yet somehow it does.

This entire thing is not a normal experience. 

Obviously. Flux noticed that a long time ago.

But knowing it’s fucked up that doesn’t soften the fundamentally, profoundly jarring experience of wrapping your own artery; pressing layers of white cloth over the place where your body nearly failed to remain closed. Flux can feel the pulse beneath the bandages afterward. He keeps expecting it to burst through again if he moves wrong enough.

At some point, the deep, near-existential exhaustion of killing yourself and instead meeting your guardian angel drags him into bed.

Flux falls into a begrudging sleep — painfully aware of the glowing-white entity too close to him. It made no sound, as Flux had repeatedly made it promise. He knew he could see it, and despite any bit of reassurance it offered, it could never be too certain that his family couldn’t. 

Regardless, Saparata was pliantly situated in the corner of the room, ready to catch any unforeseen falling objects, and ready to tackle any unwelcome intruders. Flux himself and the knife on his bedside table included, of course.

Flux turns toward the wall. He could barely sleep with a huge night light cowering somewhere in his room, but at least this way, he could pretend not to see it. The only tradeoff was that he had to fully trust that the angel quite literally had his back. Still, he wasn’t too worried about that, considering the thing had already shown itself willing to disrupt what was probably some sacred chain of reality for him. All over a measly bet.

Instead of counting sheep, his mind drifts elsewhere.

What do angels even wager with?

Human beings gamble money because money matters. They gamble favors, possessions, years of their lives. But angels? What could possibly hold value to something ancient enough to speak of saints like they’re chummy-chummy and dangerous enough to mindfuck reality for those around it? 

Souls seemed too obvious; time felt redundant. They’re probably immortal, so neither could be it. Holiness sounded less like currency and more like, well, a given. You can’t be an angel without holiness, Flux assumed.

Maybe they wager names. Flux remembers Snowbird and Micro — do all non-biblical angels have such odd names?

Maybe memories. Well, Saps had to have some sort of life before being an angel; or did he live vicariously through Flux? Or other people he’d “guarded” before him? Was he the first?

Maybe they wager pieces of fate carved off living things in increments too small for mortals to notice until their lives start bending strangely around missing corners.

…Was intercepting Flux’s death apart of the game? 

He’d never know.

Do angels have a fragment of the supposed Lord’s omniscience?

It dawns on him that he has no idea what kind of “angel” Saparata was, if it was even telling the truth. Is it one of God’s right-hand men? Is it a mere enforcer of divine truth? Or is it actually a devil in disguise, deceptively leading Flux every step toward its fucked-up way?

Flux stares at the wall harder. Behind him, the room remains silent except for the faint hum of celestial light and the occasional rustle of feathers shifting against themselves. (If Flux listened closer, he’d probably vaguely hear the seven trumpets, or whatever.)

He stows all these thoughts in the forefront of his short-term memory; he has to ask Saparata. Saparata owes him this, at the very least, for essentially taking his life from his hands.

He wonders what Saparata won from this.

More importantly, he wonders what it lost.

——————————

When daylight starts to spill in through his blinds, Flux tightens his eyes, and curses himself for sleeping facing the window.

He rolls over, only to be met with an even brighter light.

Saparata is now perched beside the bed.

Morning light filters weakly through the blinds in fractured gold bars, though it does little against the angel’s glow. The radiance no longer floods the room with the unbearable intensity it had last night, yet it still persists, woven through the dimness like light trapped beneath skin. Saparata shines through daylight rather than alongside it. The effect makes Flux feel vaguely ill.

The angel has compressed itself into the cramped proportions of the room with visible care, knees angled inward to avoid the clutter near the bedframe, wings tucked tightly enough that the outermost feathers barely graze the dresser. Even restrained, it occupies the space too completely; reality seems to bend around it in subtle, nauseating ways, as though the room itself recognizes something holy has entered and does not entirely know how to contain it, and instead, makes room for it.

“You’re awake.”

Flux squints against the brightness already drilling behind his eyes. “Yeah, shocker — killing myself didn’t work last night>”

“Yeah, you’re welcome.”

Flux rolls his eyes and pushes himself upright with slow reluctance, and his body punishes him for the attempt almost immediately. 

Awareness returns in miserable increments: the stiffness pulled through his shoulders, the raw ache lingering beneath his ribs, the deep sting wrapped carefully beneath fresh gauze. His arm throbs in heavy pulses beneath the bandages, and for one irrational second he becomes horribly conscious of the artery underneath them, still functioning despite everything; a thin layer of gauze separating it from the risk of actually getting severed.

The room smells faintly of antiseptic beneath the usual dust, stale fabric, and mildew. His damp hair sticks coldly against the back of his neck, which he is quick to brush aside.

“You remained asleep for six hours and fourteen minutes,” it says.

“Congratulations,” Flux retorts, voice rough with sleep and irritation alike, “You can tell time.”

“It’s kind of my job to watch over you… it’s on the tin, y’know? Guardian angel.”

“Well, good news, smart ass — oh-so tragically, I’m alive,” Flux swallows against the sudden dryness in his throat. Saps snorts.

“You still want to kill yourself?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You obviously do.”

“Okay, well, no shit, Sherlock — maybe let’s eat breakfast first, and once I’m not so famished from almost bleeding to my death, then you can psycho-analyze me.”

“Angels don’t give half a rat’s ass for trivial, meaningless rituals like breakfast,” he makes a deal of saying the word “breakfast”, like it was bitter on his tongue. For comedic effect? Flux couldn’t tell through his irritation.

“...Because of course you don’t,” Flux fruitlessly attempts to push himself off the bed, barely taking off because he is swiftly, harshly reminded of his life(-ending) decisions from last night.

“You should avoid straining your wound,” Saparata says, but it doesn’t sound concerned whatsoever. It’s almost robotic. It can say so many things animatedly, but it can’t even feign sympathy for Flux.

“You should avoid trying to steal the sun’s spotlight at seven in the morning,” And stating the obvious, he bites back.

“I can dim myself further—” would’ve been a sufficient answer for Flux, but the angel tacks on, “—anything for you, your Highness.”

Flux exhales, a yawn and an exasperated sigh in one, “Please, do.”

As if juxtaposing the mockery, its light does soften obediently.

Finally, since his eyes aren’t being forcibly strained, his consciousness fully settles over him. He can study Saparata more carefully. 

The thing remains exactly as impossible as it had been the night before — all elegant proportions and layered feathers and movements too smooth to belong to anything terrestrial. Even sitting still, it carries the oppressive sensation of contained enormity, like staring at the ocean through a crack in a door.

And — woah, it had two dots perfectly centered, situated just below its eyes.

…Despite all of that, despite the unreality of having a glowing biblical entity seated beside his bed like the divinely-assigned babysitter it was, Flux finds himself focusing on something else.

“What did you even bet?”

Saparata blinks, “Huh?”

“Huh?” Flux mocked, “So much for divine blessing… I said, what did you bet? What intangible possession was worth more than my autonomy over my life?”

It takes two seconds to process, and Flux pinpoints right when the question settles in. It swallows, “About that—”

“Please, Lord, don’t let this be some stupid shit again…”

“It’s… complicated. You humans familiar with the sin of pride?”

Flux nods.

“...Yeah, see. The stakes are, uhm, bragging rights…” he winces. Flux is unphased, at this point, but that doesn’t pad the deepening scowl on his face.

By now, he has, with full certainty, concluded that this is the most selfish, douchebag of an angel out there. Who the fuck plays around with a teenage boy’s life like this? Flux knows he himself has a knack for winning juvenile bets, but he thinks if it came down to this — especially with the angel aspect — he wouldn’t do something this extreme.

“At some point, I’d rather you lie and tell me your angelic license was on the line, or whatever.”

Saparata pointed assertively at the halo overhead, “Remember, I’m an angel? I can’t lie and all, y’know?”

Flux huffs, “Does artificially prolonging a poor boy’s life to win a bet with no stakes not constitute lying?”

“Well, it’s complicated, Flux,” it mansplains, “How do you think we’re supposed to guard you? There are exceptions to fate.”

“I think if this,” he makes a big circle in front of him, “was fate, true fate and destiny and whatnot, and you weren’t doing anything wrong — I wouldn’t be able to see you. How about that?”

As his guardian angel, Saparata doesn’t have the leeway to retreat from a little bit of sass. “I’ll kill you when the other guy dies, alright?”

Flux chooses silence, staring daggers into Saparata. The angel just wants to incite a reaction, any reaction.

“I can’t believe you’re still mad. Any other human would’ve slept it off.”

“Obviously, either you don’t know much about humans, or I’m an anomaly. And seeing as you’re a whole-ass angel and I’m a suicidal freak, it could very well be both.”

The angel is momentarily at a loss for words, but being the smart-ass it is, it is quick to recover, “Not much we can do about it now, okay? Let’s make the most of it, then.”

Flux mopes at that for a few moments, still on his bed. He makes it a whole thing to avoid looking at Saparata, like looking at it was deadly. 

He just wants out of here, he thinks.

Subsequently, he realizes he could be out of here.

Pointedly, in one swift movement, he gets out of bed — startling Saparata. 

He strides with purpose towards his bedroom door, “Let’s fucking go then. Let’s frolic in the fields and be happy, or whatever — take me on a joyride on your wings, or some bullshit!”

Saparata follows him out — it’s really the only thing it’s supposed to do. That’s the whole job and all. Follow the boy and make sure he doesn’t die. Flux doesn’t need to turn around to know Saparata is behind him; in the stead of a shadow, literal light trails behind him. 

“Fuck!”

In the doorway, Flux pauses, as if to explain: “I’m not dying until your stupid bet is won, so you need to make it count. Make my stupid, extended time worthwhile, Angel.”

Saparata sighs, but does not protest. It grabs the car keys latched on the hook beside the door and dangles it, “You know how to drive?”

Flux’s hand freezes, hovering over the car door. He shakes his head, “I mean… I wouldn’t trust myself with it. Do you?”

“I can do pretty much anything.”

“...On second thought, if other people can’t see you, they’d probably wonder how I’m riding in a driver-less car.”

He fiddles with the doorknob, before he ultimately makes his mind—

“A walk wouldn’t be too bad.”

“A walk?” Saparata echoes.

“Yeah, y’know, one foot in front of the other. Typically with a destination in mind. Though, we don’t need one—”

“I got that much,” Saps cuts him off. “It’s just, if I know anything about you from watching you…”

“What? I don’t go on walks?” 

Saparata braces itself for the suicide excuse again.

“I don’t! I also typically don’t slit my wrists in the bathtub, but hey, we all try new things!” and he turns on his heel, like a man on a mission.

Aaand there it is!

Saparata can’t really argue with that, so it just follows suit, and then they’re on their merry little way. But they run into their very first problem:

There’s not much to do around this part of town.

Flux wanders the streets without any real destination in mind, looking equal parts aimless and lost. He doesn’t know where he wants to go — only that if he keeps moving long enough, he’ll stumble into something. Anything.

A friend? Probably not.

A way out of this whole miserable situation? Even less likely.

Still, there has to be something waiting for him out there.

Talking to Saparata makes Flux look crazy, because nobody else can see it. So he has to keep his eyes straight ahead and refrain from opening his mouth too much. Saparata talks his ear off for the time being, leading to the realization that— 

Wow. He’s just like Light from Death Note! 

Eventually, he decides to humor the angel anyway. If he keeps his voice low enough, people will just assume he’s muttering to himself. And if anyone does notice? Whatever. It’s not like he’s planning on seeing these people again.

Saparata keeps talking — rambling, really — about things Flux is almost certain he should never be hearing. Secrets about angels he’ll probably never meet. Names of people Flux knows and how they’ll die. Pieces of information no normal person would ever know, nor could ever possibly begin to come up with. There’s an unspoken understanding between them that Flux can’t exactly report any of it to somebody else. Even if he tried, who would believe him?

Besides, it’s kind of a whole unspoken agreement that Flux will be dead by the end of the ordeal.

“Take a guess,” Saparata says suddenly, breaking the silence between them, “how long do you think I’ve been watching you for?”

Flux glances up from where he’s been bullying a rock across the dirt path, kicking it hard enough to send it bouncing ahead of them. “Hm. I don’t know…”

“C’mon,” Saparata folds its arms, walking backward now just to keep its eyes on him. “Given everything I’ve mentioned about your life, I think you’ve got enough breadcrumbs.”

Flux frowns. The rock catches against a root. He kicks it again, harder this time. “Well, I don’t know.”

“Not even an estimate?” the angel pries, a stupid, devilish grin tugging at the corner of its mouth. “Ballpark it. A month? A year? Since a particular embarrassing haircut phase?”

Flux shoots it a glare, “I hate guessing, okay?”

“That bad, huh?”

“Yes.” Flux jams his hands into his pockets and keeps walking. “Because every time I guess something around people, they get that look.”

“What look? You seem to be very particular about looks, y’know…”

Flux’s glare deepens, “That annoying look where they already know the answer and they’re waiting for me to say something stupid and embarrass itself.”

The angel laughs under its breath.

A gust of wind pushes through the trees overhead, stirring loose leaves across the trail. Flux’s rock tumbles off the edge of the path and disappears into the brush. He watches it roll away — so pliable to the changes of the wind, just like the wheel of time.

Saparata studies him for another moment. Flux pretends not to feel the divinely ominous gaze.

“Fine,” it starts, “I’ll help you out.” 

It taps two fingers against his temple dramatically, “I was there when you sprained — yes, it was sprained — your ankle while sneaking out. And never got it checked professionally, because it wasn’t that big of a deal,” he draws air quotes for that last bit.

Flux stops walking. “What?”

…That was a good two years ago.

“And I’ve mentioned this before, but when you stole your dad’s cigarettes at like, thirteen. I don’t keep track of time.”

Flux huffs. He opens his mouth, then closes it again.

Saparata’s smile widens, as if fondly recounting memories that belonged to itself — “Oh, and the first time you—”

“Okay, stop!” Flux throws a hand up, suddenly walking faster, “It’s getting creepy.”

“It’s my job!”

“It isn’t apart of your job to like stalking me, weirdo.”

Saparata jogs a few steps to catch up, hands raised innocently. “You asked for clues.”

“I literally told you I don’t like guessing!”

“Eh, to-may-to, to-mah-to — you practically begged.”

Flux groans into his hands. “Why are you like this?”

Saparata has a laugh. Like, a genuine laughing fit. Flux chooses his free will and sanity and speeds up again, nearly tripping on the very ankle he just learned was sprained for two weeks two years ago.

At this point, Flux has no idea how, but his feet have taken them about thirty minutes closer to the beach.

The air smells sharper now — salt mixing with humid pavement and sunbaked weeds. Every so often, the wind carries the distant crash of waves, if Flux listens closely enough.

Flux slows a little, chest still tight from equal parts annoyance, embarrassment, and stress from not getting any physical activity for the past two weeks. Saparata, unfortunately, seems completely refreshed by the exchange. It strolls beside him with its hands clasped behind its back, almost buoyant.

“You know,” the angel says, “most people would be way more alarmed by the whole divine-observer thing.”

“I am alarmed.”

“You’re acting annoyed.”

“Because you’re annoying, obviously.”

Saparata grins at that like it’s a compliment. It also knows what’s to come—

“And you… do I even have to say it? You’re holding back my suicide.”

“No. On the topic… hey, do you even want to kill yourself anymore or are you just dragging it on because I ruined it for you?”

Flux knows better than to fall for this divine ragebait. He exhales sharply through his nose and drags a hand down his face, “Fuck off.”

His brain is still jet-lagged from the expectation of death only to end up on a stupid fucking walk. Only God knows what else that angel had tucked away somewhere in that horrible, scheming, conniving all-seeing angel brain.

Saparata doesn’t fuck off. It does the opposite. It follows along and pushes harder, like the worst best friend ever. It doesn’t matter if Flux travels across the globe to evade it, or intentionally blinds himself so he could never see it again. Helen Keller, after all, probably had a guardian angel, too — it didn’t matter if she had no idea.

“Do you think you’ll end up in Hell or Heaven?”

There’s a flicker of clarity in Flux’s mind. 

Not about whatever afterlife he’ll end up in — he’s come to terms with that a long time ago. No, the realization is simpler than that: he doesn’t owe Saparata a damn thing. He could laugh in his face, walk away, leave the angel standing there. Hell, a part of him was sure if he really meant it, he’d stop seeing the angel at all.

But he doesn’t leave.

As furious as Flux is — at Saparata, for forcing him to live, especially — there’s still that miserable, selfish part of him that doesn’t want the angel gone. Saparata is obligated to stay. Saparata is bound to him by whatever greater, divine being he chalks up to be God. Saparata is cursed with guarding the life Flux keeps trying to waste.

And pathetic as it is, that means Flux never has to be alone. At least not until he can finally fucking die.

Because when all is said and done, this stupid angel is the only constant left in his life.

“The Christians say killing yourself is a ticket to hell. Which is a good thing on my part, because I’d hate to be in a Heaven you’re in.”

As the words leave his mouth, he finds sand at his feet. He looks up, and now they’re at the beach.

——————————

Not to be crass, but they get really fucking high at the beach.

Saparata finds a pack of cigarettes. Or so, he claims to have “stumbled across” a pack — Flux believes some angel-ish powers came into play.

But hey, he’s not complaining.

Flux frowns, but compared to all the other times he’s frowned at Saparata, it’s light-hearted. It’s more pensive, if anything. If Saps were a little higher, he’d think the smoke around Flux was a thought bubble.

“What business does an angel have with debauchery?”

Somehow, Flux is laying with his back on the sand. This isn’t the Flux who can’t even handle the texture of sand anywhere but his feet. Saparata is sitting over him, leaning on his own arm — kind of like a washed-up siren.

Saps laughs, “Look, I can do tricks too—” he blows out smoke rings, which does little to appease Flux. He grins with the cigarette still in his mouth, then holds out his pointer finger, as if to say wait! there’s more! and blows little bubbles to go through the rings.

Flux wordlessly stares like a half-amused child all throughout. Kind of like he’s waiting for his turn to speak. “You do this pretty frequent? You said you drink with the angels. Do you guys smoke together too?”

“Fuck yeah,” Saps says, holding a cigarette to Flux’s lips. Ironic, for a guardian angel to do for somebody he’s divinely obligated to protect. But Flux digresses. Indulges, even.

“God, that’s— that’s good,” he smiles. Kind of. His lips are pursed and it's a vague suggestion of a smile. Saps takes it, because that’ll probably be the most positive reaction he’ll ever incite from Flux.

“...Don’t tell God, though.”

——————————

Nothing like some good ol’ drugs to kickstart a… friendship? Partnership? Begrudging alliance? Whatever. Something along those lines.

They end up anywhere they can travel by foot — empty basketball courts at midnight, rooftops still warm from the day’s heat, sketchy gas stations that are probably money-laundering fronts. Flux drops the whole stunted suicide thing. 

He doesn’t, actually, but progress is progress. He still thinks about it when Saps goes quiet for more than two minutes, but at the very least, the resentment no longer has him in a chokehold. He can breathe around Saparata without wanting to kill himself again.

He goes through the notions of the typical teenage experience — sneaking out, doing drugs, fucking around, finding out. He feels immortal, and he pretty much is.

“What are you?” Flux drops out of nowhere, as they take a seat each on the swingset of a deserted playground. The park looks half-abandoned: a slide that was more of a tetanus-inducing shot, a wood-chipped seesaw that housed more termites than people in its time, and swings creaking haphazardly with every lazy sway.

It’s become something of a habit for both of them to have cigarettes either on hand or in Flux’s pocket at all times. Flux perpetually smelled like ash, while Saps remained odorless.

“I’m getting some real deja vu here.”

Saps kicks backwards, garners momentum, and swings as high as he can. The momentum snuffs out his and by proximity, Flux’s cigarette. 

It’s no big deal, though. Flux just clicks his tongue and leans sideways over the gap between the swings. He presses the dead tip of his cigarette against the edge of Saparata’s halo. The ring answers with a sharp little tsss, heat skimming over gold-white light, and the cigarette flares back to life like he’s touched it to a stove burner.

Saparata snorts a laugh through his nose and swings back around. A minute later, when his own cigarette burns down unevenly and dies at the paper, he reaches over and steals another light from the halo himself, casual as borrowing a lighter.

“No, like, seriously,” Flux says eventually, exhaling a thin stream into the cold air. “You can get drunk and high and make stupid decisions as an angel. That’s so… jarring.”

The angel takes a drag, smoke curling lazily past the glow of his halo like a warm breath in the snow, “I told you right off the bat, didn’t I? We’re more alike than you think.”

Flux mirrors the inhale unconsciously, “Yeah… I’m still in every right not to believe it. There has to be some catch.”

“There always has to be a catch with you people…”

“I mean,” Flux pauses, tilting his head back against the swing chain, staring up at the starless smear of city sky, “At what point is angel, angel? Where do the lines blur?”

Saparata shrugs lazily, “It’s either you have wings and a halo or you don’t, man.”

“So… you were born this way?”

“Eh, hard to tell.”

Flux cuts him a look. “Gee. Thanks.”

“No, seriously!” Saparata waves away a cloud of smoke with exaggerated emphasis. “You know how humans just… know things? Like walking, talking, eating, sleeping. Instinct stuff. We’ve got that too. We just kinda know what we are.”

Flux huffs, “Do you just know you have to smoke, drink, and gamble?”

Saparata shrugs dramatically, “Apples-to-oranges; do humans just know they have to have vices?”

“Humans barely know they’re human.” Flux digs the heel of his boot into the mud and kicks off the swing harder, dirt splattering everywhere. Pitter-patters land on his jeans, some spatters across the rubber edge of his shoe.

None of it touches Saparata.

“Have you never heard of existential crises? Rebellious teens?”

“Seeing as I’m your guardian angel, I’d say I’m well-acquainted with both…” the angel says. Flux rolls his eyes.

Every conversation with Saparata ends the same way: with more questions than answers. Flux gets tired of prying. It’s the same dead end he’s gotten from years upon years of trying to comprehend the incomprehensible; of trying to envision an afterlife untainted by the prejudices of religion.

“I know for sure you’re not a Christian-type angel,” Flux mutters eventually, mostly to himself.

“No, where’d you get that idea? I am!”

Flux makes some kind of shock sound.

“They just forgot to mention the part in the Bible where Gabriel offered Mary a huge blunt—”

Flux physically recoils, “Oh my God.”

“—in case she didn’t wanna be the Lord’s mother, you know? Professional courtesy.”

Flux groans loudly and turns away, “Ha-ha. There we go again with the casual sacrilege.”

He quickly follows that thought up, “For all I know, you’re just some guy with a high-tech angel costume, and you’re fucking with me.”

“You know I’m not,” Saps says, still unphased. “And — sorry to shove this into the convo — but you’re aware I’ll be killing you, right?”

“Yeah.” Flux says plainly. 

And the conversation abruptly dies down. 

——————————

Flux spent the entire walk across the parking lot trying to convince Saparata that this was a bad idea. 

Well, bad is being generous. He thought it was a genuinely terrible idea, doomed from conception, and only getting worse the longer either of them thought about it.

Unfortunately, Saparata had already made up his mind.

"Dude, I don't understand why you're making me do this," Flux said, stopping beside the driver's door instead of opening it. "I don't even need to drive. We just have to walk while high, and it won’t even feel like a walk. It’ll feel like floating.”

"That's exactly why you need to learn," Saps replied. He was leaning against the roof of the car, arms and wings folded, with the infuriating patience (stubbornness, Flux’s mind supplied) of someone who knew he was going to win the argument. 

"...Says the guy who can literally teleport."

"I can't teleport."

"Well, you teleported in front of me,” Flux crosses his arms.

“Not teleporting!”

“Okay, sure, even if I believed you… you have wings.”

“I can’t use them; not in the human realm.”

Flux clicks his tongue.

He looks at the car again. The driver's seat sat empty behind the window, waiting for him. The steering wheel needing one harsh nudge to send his soul straight to the depths of of hell.

It was fucking terrifying.

Sure, he wanted to kill himself… but that was on his own terms! On the road, for all he knows, a 40-ton semi truck can swoop in and take the kill.

"What if I hit someone?"

Saps hesitated for a split-second, finger poking up and mouth hanging open just for a split-second.

"See? That's exactly what I'm talking about."

"Flux."

"No, seriously. You can see the future. You know how my life ends. You probably have seen me die this way, like, ten times over!"

"If I knew exactly how everything ended, my life would be a lot easier. We wouldn’t even be here. We wouldn’t…”

Saps cuts himself off, looking at Flux with something of regret. Like he felt guilty for even thinking about it.

To pivot, he pushed himself off the car and opened the driver's door.

"Get in."

Flux stared at him with a frown and his arms crossed. He was the youngest of a household that always had to be right — he knew how to play the waiting game better than anyone ever.

Saps, on the other hand, had (probably) centuries upon centuries of experience. That shit forces you to develop even a semblance of patience.

They stared at each other. The wind picked up lazily, gradually; ruffling Flux’s hair and doing absolutely nothing to Saps. God damn it, he just looks like a PNG, and Flux hates how he’s kind of into it.

But Saps is no match for a petty, suicidal kid. Eventually, the angel sighed—

"You're acting like I'm asking you to diffuse a bomb."

"I would rather diffuse a bomb. I probably can, too.”

"I know. That's the problem.”

Flux groaned loudly enough to make his feelings on the matter perfectly clear. But still, he climbed into the driver's seat.

Flux gets into the driver's seat, kinda-sorta-maybe-half-high and inexperienced.

Saparata takes the backseat for himself, because he doesn’t quite fit into the passenger’s seat. (Trust, they’ve tried — his wing would warp through the car door.) 

But even absent the angel in the backseat, practically breathing down his neck, the scene has Flux just a little claustrophobic.

The mirrors — the one overhead and the ones on the sides — showed him a borderline druggie alcoholic who probably hadn’t slept in ages. His hair was tousled by the wind, but even without that, he probably would’ve looked like shit anyway. He stares for just a little too long, before the click of the backseat door locking snaps him back.

"Okay," Saps said, settling in. "Baby steps. Just back out of the parking space."

Flux stared through the windshield. Then at the mirrors. Then back through the windshield.

"Which mirror am I supposed to be looking at?"

"All of them."

"That can't be right… at the same time?”

"It is. Deal with it.”

"That's way too many things to look at at once."

"You haven't even started moving yet, dude, chillax!”

That wasn't encouraging. Flux wonders if all of this is necessary when Saps can just prevent him from dying. He shouldn’t need a mouthy backseat passenger when said backseat passenger can predict incoming car crashes and rewrite time.

The engine started with a low rumble beneath him. Flux immediately became aware of every possible thing that could go wrong. The angel’s reassurance didn’t matter, because if he didn’t die, he could still very well end up incapacitated for life.

Very carefully, he shifted into reverse.

The car rolled backward. Flux waited for a tick… tick… boom!

Nothing exploded.

Unfortunately, this only seemed to encourage Saparata.

For the next half hour they practiced the same handful of maneuvers over and over and over again. In and out of parking spaces. Wide turns. Narrow turns. Parallel parking, which Flux maintained had been invented by a deeply vindictive person. By the time they left the parking lot, his shoulders ached from how tightly he was gripping the wheel.

The angel leans over the seat, squeezing into the space in between the supposed driver and passenger, “No, dude, you have to go slower—” 

Flux swerves abruptly, climbing a curb and sending Saps across the backseat.

“Shut the fuck up. It’s literally your job to keep me alive, not mine.”

Saps murmurs, rubbing his head, “Ow… okay, you gotta learn somehow, someday.”

“I’m gonna be dead by the end of this. It doesn’t matter.”

——————————

 “You know, I stopped praying just a few months ago,” Flux says suddenly, while they’re sitting on a curb, just under the yellow streetlight, around some sketchy part of Flux’s neighborhood.

It’s the kind of place you wouldn’t think about visiting unless you had business there. It wasn’t outrageously out of the way; just a riskier turn in the fork in the road.

A few months ago, he would've avoided this side of town after dark. Now he cuts through alleyways without thinking, steps into abandoned parking lots, sits on curbs at midnight. 

Knowing his guardian angel is legally — or cosmically, or whatever the proper term is — required to keep him alive has done strange things to his sense of self-preservation. That and the bet aspect.

This time, instead of smoking, Saps suggested they drank. Flux didn’t mind, as long as he didn’t have to spend a waking moment sober, thinking about how miserable he has to be for his only “friend” to be an angel who is obliged to stick with him.

Flux was barely three-quarters through his first one, and already he could feel the pleasant fuzziness settling over the edges of his mind, loosening his tongue and dulling his brain. Saps, meanwhile, had consumed enough alcohol to hospitalize an ordinary person and seemed almost completely unaffected. The cans accumulated in between them, where dead moth carcasses eventually accumulated with them.

The angel titls his head, “Odd. Did you even believe in God, ever?”

“No. I mean, Elanuelo was not religious whatsoever, but his family was apparently Christian of some sort.”

Saps nods, as if encouraging him to continue speaking.

“Crow… sure, he encouraged us — me and Ender, specifically — to pray, fast, avoid pork, all that… but it never stuck.”

"Right."

Flux lifts one hand and makes exaggerated air quotes. "I pray to God."

Saps doesn't react.

"Sorry. He might be your boss or whatever."

"My boss?"

“You get it…” Flux takes another sip.

“Anyway, it’s more of a peace-of-mind thing than anything. And seeing as you're real—" He gestures vaguely at Saps with the can— "I don't think I missed the mark all that much."

It’s an obvious, something-of-desperate attempt to get Saparata to address the concept of God thing. Flux’s expectations were padded after poking and prodding time and time again, but a man can only dream of the answers to the entire universe.

Cars pass, splashing wet puddles of mud around Flux. On occasion, people walk past, looking at him for a moment, and turning around when he catches their gaze — as if expecting him to approach.

And just for a split second, Flux sees himself in third person.

Sitting on the curb with a beer in hand, in a while a pile builds up beside him. In his gray jacket littered with ash stains and cigarette burns. Nobody could see the angel beside him, so he probably looked like a pathetic hobo; all he needed now was a cup to beg for change in.

He could probably make some money off of that, if he let go of his last shred of dignity. 

——————————

Today, they do nothing fun. No drugs, no alcohol, no weird escapades. Just... stuff. Average people things, or as average as they can get, anyway.

Saparata leads for once. Flux trails behind.

It's weird at first, but then again, there's never really a moment he can think of where one of them ever actually decides where they're going. They just go. Usually it's a haze of smokescreens, exhaustion, and something nonsensical and stupid. Fluixon's bizarre adventures.

The city thinned around them gradually. Cluttered storefronts gave way to neighborhoods. Neighborhoods gave way to lonely roads with few people. The road gave way to gravel and dirt crunching beneath their feet. Steady, one-two steps of rocks under their feet.

Flux shoves his hands into his pockets and keeps his head down. He picks up the pace to catch up with his angel. He walks like he's floating, sitting on the edge of reach. The only sound other than the gravel under his shoes are his thoughts, and he'd rather not listen to them.

"You're being weird," he calls, trying to make something out of nothing.

Saps ignores him.

Flux looks up, and he sees a pond a few hundred feet ahead.

He glances up to make a face. Ahead of them, there's a pond. He pinches his lips together before makes a little huff. 

“Huh. Didn't think we had those around here.”

Saps turns around, and with one of those 'no-shit-dumbass' expressions, “Didn't even notice we're in a whole new state, did you?" 

Flux chooses to deflect. "So you do speak.”

And the second his back turns again, it's like a door closing. Saps goes back to ignoring him like he's not even there.

What fucking ever. That's fine. He didn't care in the first place. It's not like he wanted to ear Saps's grating voice anyways.

They tread through overgrown full-blown ecosystems over what should’ve been fencegates.

They wade through grass up to their thighs, overgrown and kind of itchy. Vines wrap around old, rusted fencegate. It's a whole new ecosystem around them. Everything around them is green anywhere he can think to look.

Eventually, his eyes reorient to the obnoxious angel wings in front of him. 

Dusk starts to settle in. The weary road seems to stretch for ages. But it’s not so bad when he has the human(-ish) incarnate of life right in front of him.

The pond keeps getting bigger the closer they get, unfolding out of the trees like something hidden on purpose. What looked small from the road turns out to be wide enough that Flux can't immediately see the other side. The water catches the dying light and turns it into streaks of dull orange and gold. Reeds crowd the shoreline, nesting

Saparata finally slows. The path narrows into little more than flattened grass, winding around clusters of shrubs and half-submerged stones. Their shoes sink slightly into mud hidden beneath the weeds with every step.

They emerge from the overgrowth onto a small clearing hugging the edge of the water. Saparata walks right up to the shoreline and stands there with his hands in his pockets. For a moment, framed by fading sunlight and rippling water, he looks less like an obnoxious angel and more like an old fisherman who lived on a dock.

“...You wanna know how I started smoking?”

The question comes out of nowhere, after Saparata gave him the silent treatment. Flux looks at him incredulously, watching as the angel crouches near the shoreline and picks up a pebble.

Flux breathes out a sigh and shrugs, "Not particularly."

The pebble skips once before sinking. Saparata looks satisfied enough.

"Good. I was gonna tell you anyway."

"Of course you were."

Saps points at him emphatically, "See? This is why we're friends."

"We're not."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night."

Flux rolls his eyes, but he sits down anyway. The grass is damp. It'll probably stain his jeans.

Saps starts talking.

Apparently, centuries ago, he watched some guy smoke a pipe exactly one time. 

“The guy looked cool.”

"You picked up a lifelong addiction because some random dude looked cool?"

"He looked really cool."

"You're really stupid."

"Yeah." 

They settle down, pick at grime, and toss pebbles.

Saps keeps talking. About the pipe guy. About getting caught. About accidentally inventing three separate house fires. About a decade-long phase where he insisted cigarettes made him look mysterious despite everybody repeatedly informing him that he looked like an idiot.

Flux only listens to about half of it, humming along but not quite processing. 

For the first time all day — all week, even — Saparata actually seems relaxed. 

"...So, anyway..." Saps tosses another pebble. He tacks on, quickly, as if apart of the topic — "Did you know the bet's been over for, like, a couple of days?"

Flux hums absentmindedly.

"Mm."

"Yeah, I’ve just been fucking with you. Circumstances, and such.”

"What circumstances?"

"I forgot."

Flux nods, brain lagging behind just a bit.

The peace on his face stays for just about a second until it clicks—

"Wait."

Saps continues staring at the pond.

"What?" the angel chirps, halo swelling a bit.

"Wait, what?"

"Hm?"

"The bet."

"Oh."

Saps finally glances over, grinning. “Oh, that."

Flux straightens. "The bet?"

"Yeah."

"The bet."

"The bet."

"The one we've been doing."

"That'd be the one."

Flux points aggressively — first, at himself, then at Saps. His mouth hangs open as he tries to piece together his point. "That bet."

Saps snorts. Then chuckles. Then his laugh builds up like an old, beat-up car engine struggling to start. "Yeah! Other kid kicked the bucket! Can you believe it?"

Flux's hand slowly lowers. His brain doesn't immediately supply him with a reply. He just stares at Saparata dumbly.

Huh.

He's been waiting for this moment.

It's kind of anti-climactic to have it end like this.

"So," Flux says eventually.

Across the pond, a bird pecks at the water's edge. Probably at a dead bug, or rat, or some other critter.

"That's it, then?”

“Pretty much,” he says, like he’s not talking about a kid’s life here. “I mean, I had fun. I don’t know about you!”

It’s crazy, because nothing about this is normal. He should have been dead weeks ago. In his bathtub, in the comfort of his childhood home. With his back against the faint mildew on the walls and the weird, unsettling black vines in the corners of his bathroom mirror. 

But instead, he’s sitting amidst the reeds beside a pond he hadn’t seen since today.

“Do you think we’re gonna see each other again?”

Saps shrugs it off, “Dunno.”

Flux scoffs, “Sure. Insightful. You string me on just like that for like, what, two weeks?”

“Hey, man, I just work here. And since the bet’s done... I've got nothing else to do here.”

Flux doesn’t really know what to make of it. 

Now that there’s no cigarettes or alcohol to help him through this, reality sort of catches up with him. Nobody’s looked for him. If they did, they didn’t look hard enough. He’s found a sick, twisted joy in getting fucked up with his guardian angel, but at the end of the day, he still has nothing to live for. 

“So, can I just kill myself now?”

“I mean, if you still wanna, man. That’s what I did.”

On any other day, Flux would’ve pried. Saps probably knew — it was something of a doorway confession, then. That sick bastard had to torment him with curiosity one last time. It was a parting gift.

Saps stares at him, the grin tapering. Flux stares back. Flux doesn’t know what else there is to say.

“So, uhm—”

“Bye, Flux— wait, were you going to say something?”

“No, nevermind. Bye, Saps…”

They continue staring for a few seconds too long.

“No, seriously—”

“No, yeah, don’t worry about it, man.” Flux winces.

Yet another beat of silence. 

“Alright… so, yeah. Bye, Flux.” He waves. The stupid, stupid grin finding its way back onto his face, all too naturally. Flux’s hand raises to reciprocate.

And then the light swells brighter and brighter. And at some point, the wind picks up. Until he’s consumed by a flash of pure light.

By the time Flux’s mind catches up, he’s left alone in an empty field all the way in another state.

“...Bye.” he waves awkwardly, at nobody in particular.

——————————

He doesn't remember the way home. He isn't even sure if he walked home at all. 

He just remembers snapping out of a daze and finding himself sitting on the edge of his bed. 

He took a breath — a long, deep inhale for the first time since this whole thing started. The familiar burn wasn't there. No tar clawing its way up the walls of his throat. No suffocating heaviness lodged beneath his ribs. It feels like he hadn’t smoked a day in his life, when in reality, he’d been chainsmoking for two weeks in a row.

It should’ve felt good, to not have to cough right back out the air he’d inhale. But instead, it drew more attention to the elephant in the room. Or rather, the lack thereof.

The past few days, he’s been living like he’s immortal. Like he could walk into incoming traffic, sink to the depths of the ocean, or beckon lightning to strike him down and walk away scot-free.

Hell, it was probably true, too.

His eyes darted around the space he’d occupied for the entire span of his life. The lights are off, the door is locked, all things he’d do if he had to leave his room.  It felt smaller than ever after he had seen how wide the world could be.

But his room hadn’t changed at all, to his knowledge. Miscellaneous books still litter his bedside table; the pile of laundry hasn’t even diminished. His backpack probably still held everything it did when he last opened it. His world had ended and started again somewhere between then and now, and somehow nobody had gotten the memo but him.

Now, this is a fitting end. When Flux finds what it’s like to live, truly live, it’s with a being too high for himself. It’s a fleeting phase of his life that just so happened to have occurred right as it ended.

For years, life had felt like something happening in another room. Something other people got to participate in while he watched through a keyhole. Then, somehow, impossibly, he'd gotten a glimpse of it.

And it really was everything non-depressed people made it out to be. Except perpetually intoxicated, of course.

Saparata leaving was to be expected. But he was far crueler for making Flux’s time with him something-of-worthwhile.

Everything at the moment is a stop-motion montage for Flux. 

He’s spacing out. And then he’s standing up. And then he’s pacing his room. And then he’s back in the bathroom. Oh, and the lights are off. And the bath is running. And, for some reason, he’s in the bath.

Again. Of fucking course he’s here again.

The water this time is cold. It laps around his torso, sending goosebumps up his neck. It kind of numbs the rest of his body, and along with it, his mind.

The faucet drips, as if taunting him, long after the tub was filled to the brim. A beat. Metronomic, in a sense.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The ripples breaking surface tension just remind him of the blood from the original night. 

Life goes on.

The realization irritates him.

The universe should've had the decency to pause for a little while.

Just a few hours. A few more hours he could be spending with Saps.

Instead, people were probably ordering food. Watching movies. Arguing online. Going to work tomorrow morning. The world had already moved on from the most important thing that had ever happened to him, and sadly, the only being that knows of it probably has as well.

Flux sinks lower into the tub. Cold water, familiarly, climbs up his ribs.

He takes one last look at the scars, and a memory flickers by—

“Do you think we’re gonna see each other again?”

“Dunno.”

Dunno. Too noncommittal to be a yes; too sanguine to be a no.

If he goes through with this, will Saparata pop back up and stitch him right back up? Will he kiss it all better, get him out of this shitty household, and take him around the country with all the cigarettes and booze they’d need for life?

…No.

He wouldn’t.

Flux holds the razor back to his wrist, trying to stiffen his trembling hands. He closes his eyes, pushes deep, and swipes.