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1. Agape
When all is love, when there is nothing but love, how should one be able to feel it? So the Almighty made sure to sow the seed of something other than love right at the beginning. To set apart and distinguish love from that something other. And the other somethings grew alongside the love that could now be felt, could be distinguished, for universal and all-encompassing that it was, it still made room for something else.
And so it was with trepidation that a cherub — formerly unconcerned in Heaven's universal happiness — discovered that his spiritual and all-encompassing love had tipped over its carefully curated edge into something else. A spike of worry, a flash of pity, a pang in his chest.
He tried to chuckle it away, pointed out the pink and blue parts in the corner of a freshly formed nebula. But when he turned back towards the angel that radiated feelings he wasn't even able to name as of yet, he knew in his heart that the universal, all-encompassing love of the Almighty within himself had just irrevocably changed.
Somehow, even though a part of it seemed to be gone, it didn't feel any less than before. Not at all.
2. Storge
How was it possible to love them the way he did?
He had been appointed Guardian of the Eastern Gate — but it had never been specified if he were to guard them from what was outside or stop them from finding out what was.
The beings that had come to life in the garden were wondrous and endearing, unruly and ignorant and blissfully innocent. And he loved them. From the very first moment they had come to be.
And he kept loving them, their discoveries, their surprise, their growth, even when they failed the test, even when they left through the gate he had opened for them. Even when they started killing, hurting, lying, trampling — they didn't know better, did they? But even when they did, when they should have come far enough to know what they did to each other, even when he was so angry at them for committing those atrocities, he still couldn't stop loving them. Unconditionally. Unintentionally. Unfathomably.
He had watched the first storm gathering over Eden, and later the storm of worlds meant to bring a very first apocalypse to the beings he loved, and he had doubted himself for his love.
But he had never been alone.
For there was another who loved them just as much, if not more, just as irresponsibly, just as foolishly as he did.
3. Philautia
To have so much love within oneself, for everyone, for everything, makes it quite easy to overlook how little love you have for yourself.
Who was he, now? Not yet a fallen angel, but a torn angel, ripped apart between what he was told to feel and what he felt instead. Where was Her love, in all that mess of duty and obligation, of betting and testing and throwing Her own magnificent creations to the wolves time and time again? Where was Her love in the sanctioned murder of innocent children? Who was he to defy Her? And who would he be if he stood by and let it happen?
A torn angel, who found himself dropped into a basement alongside a demon. A demon, who wasn't allowed to show love, who shouldn't even have the capacity to love, but who loved and loved more than he'd ever dare to admit.
An angel who had taken all his courage and trusted the demon, twice in a row.
The taste of an ox rib, burnt crisp and spicy, acute where his palate was accustomed only to mellow and ethereal. He chased it with his tongue, greedy for this intensity that broke through the haze of confusion and questions, that left no room for doubt. Real and true, in a way that nothing else had ever been, not just because of the texture in his mouth. Novel and exciting and in the same instant reassuring, filling, satisfying.
This could not be a sin. If it were, why would it make him feel warm inside, happy in a way he'd never been? Curious for more warmth. Curious to learn what this body could feel. What he could.
He had been tempted. That much he understood. But there was no evil to be found, neither in the ox rib nor in the one who offered it to him. The one who gave him this gift.
4. Ludus
What had gotten into him? Oh, let me tempt you to— And the demon had turned, with a look on his face that curled into him from head to toe like a lazy cat, a look that grazed his cheek and stroked down his spine, a look that suggested the other had found something worth looking at.
Once it had happened, neither of them seemed to be able to stop looking. Enraptured, he watched an oyster slide from its shell, slip between lips, swallowed with a slow bob of the larynx in a slender throat curved back to facilitate its journey, jaw working around the briny aftertaste. Enraptured, he sensed the demon watching him as he pried open another oyster with his knife, as he cut the muscle and squeezed a drop of lemon into the cupped hollow.
The shell passed from one hand to another. Fingertip to fingertip, damp with juice. The urge to lick it clean. Ophidian eyes behind dark glasses, following the slide of his tongue over his thumb. A slow smile. “Perhaps I should think about extending my stay here.”
“It is the hub of the world, right now, so to speak.” Sudden dismay when his hand found only one last oyster. Desperate to prolong what was going on here, between them. “Lots of opportunities to tempt, I'd wager.”
“Hm.” The demon's hand hovered over his own for a moment, delicate middle finger and thumb closing around the shell and plucking it from his palm. A knife slicing cleanly through the muscle, cracking the oyster open with a twist. The flesh-filled part held out to him like a toast, like it was meant to go directly from the other's fingers to his lips. “I'll keep that in mind, Angel.”
5. Pragma
I am an angel. He is a demon. A truth and a reminder. When he returned from Edinburgh just in time to see the last performance of Hamlet, erupting into frantic cheers with the rest of the audience, he felt a familiar presence prickling the skin of his neck. The quiet clapping of an amused watcher.
The temptations were small, never conflicting in a way that would have made him renounce their Arrangement. The humans would do what they already meant to do and he would lay a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow. It poured from the snap of his fingers just as easily as the blessings.
I am an angel. He is a demon. It wasn't like he could forget the very essence of their nature. He kept repeating it to himself, just in case. The Arrangement saved them a lot of time, a lot of hassle. He comforted himself with the thought that the way he and the demon canceled each other out must have some sort of meaning in the grand scheme of things — it seemed just as ineffable as the rest.
It was no explanation for the fierce rush of joy that took hold of his entire body when he recognized the other's voice in the dungeon of the Bastille. I knew he'd come. A certainty, deep like the roots of a fig tree. Trust that branched out and wound its way through pre-regulated constructs, gently pushing into the grey spaces between.
How bizarre. To be able to rely on this, on the strength of what was growing between them, strong and steady, through hundreds of earthly lifetimes.
6. Philia
Change. In the colors of the foliage framing a duck pond. In the sounds of horse hoofs and honking cars. In fashion, frock coats and flounced skirts, waistcoats and petticoats, poufs and buns and jeans and mutton chops, passing the bench in St. James’ Park.
Centuries of everything being subject to change. Everything but the one sitting by his side. Decades whirling past them, but in between a constant that had become an unfailing source of comfort.
The sheer safety of knowing. Knowing the other, down to the details of his ever-present frown, down to predicting the patterns of their interactions.
Except for the times when the demon would force him out of this comfortable standstill. Would request, demand, and in turn he would step hard onto the breaks, afraid of losing what they had, of losing a familiarity he might not be able to do without. And weren't they content, the way it was? Staying below the respective radars of their superiors as both Heaven and Hell turned a blind eye to their more and more frequent meetings.
Then again, the flash of hurt he could detect even behind those dark glasses.
You go too fast for me. A hand shifting gears between them with the pretense of ease. A ride through fire and flame, books clutched to his chest. An unparalleled show of trust. Moments that reverberated within his soul as he remembered them throughout the years that followed.
And oftentimes he'd watch the humans, afterward, all too aware of their ephemeral existence, and marvel at their ability to move forward while he hesitated, while he dallied, while he waited for the moment when change would lose its terror.
Until at last a (more or less) human baby managed to change everything, for them both and for the world.
7. Eros
Unforeseen. That it was, for sure. Out of the blue, when they found the world they had just toasted to aligning itself around them in sparkling chandeliers and fizzing champagne. And everything had become light and effervescent, except for the feeling buried deep in his guts. That squirming, sickly heat, stirring every time he met the demon's eyes, every time he allowed himself to study the unguarded softness of his features.
He was not a fool — he'd read books about it for centuries. But an angel couldn't be blamed for assuming this was something too human, too physical, too attached to the flesh, and therefore something that couldn't happen to him. His first thought was to separate this new aspect from what he had felt — in all sorts of variations — over the last six thousand years. It probably came with the body, like tense muscles and inebriation, and could be miracled away, willed out of existence. In any case, it would pass.
But it didn't.
Even more unnerving, he found himself unwilling to let go of these magnificent sensations. The pounding and pulsing and throbbing, a yearning that had been a part of him for so long finally freeing itself from the confines of his mind, finding a place in this world. Sometimes it approximated the effects of alcohol — addled senses and thoughts, spells of forgetfulness, clumsiness, difficulties of expressing himself — sometimes it resembled pain — a clenching in his chest, a tug in his abdomen. Sometimes it was a thrill like music and dance — innocent joy — and sometimes the pull of a lightless, sucking void — thoughts so sinful his cheeks burned searing red in embarrassment.
The sway of his hips: a serpent's poise, gazelle legs, always on the edge of exorbitant. The line of his jaw: calligraphy and shading in red chalk, sharply pronounced as he growled, a soft twitch of the snake tattoo, when he tipped his head back for a large gulp of whiskey.
He was out of his mind. There was a mystery to solve, a former Archangel to protect, a plan to carry out. Yet, his entire self centered and orbited around the demon's palm against his. The light pressure, the gentle curl of fingers despite the harsh words hissed at him. The graceful steps, the solemn stare. A moment — oh, so brief — that he'd been hoping for, begging for, working for, only to have it ripped apart by a legion of the damned.
8. Mania
He hadn't known. Hadn't known anything.
Hadn't known that it could feel like this. Eating away at him, like acid, from the inside out. Constantly.
Each time he closed his eyes he felt the demon's lips, pushing so hard against his own he could feel the shape of both their teeth through the soft flesh. A seal of hot wax, pressed into him like a stamp, like a branding. The urge to cry out — for more, for the other half of his soul, for another chance. For some sort of justice they deserved, instead of this. Instead of separation and silence, and the stubborn anger, and the nettle sting of guilt.
Nonetheless, he'd close his eyes, and put his fingers to his lips, mimicking the pressure, but the physical discomfort would never match the suffering of his soul. And still, he'd want it, he'd want it.
It was not the yearning of a body — there was no corporation he could wear upstairs, at least not for very long. The burn was deep, etched into his very essence, with no way to reach it, to mend, to soothe. He longed for comfort. For himself. For his demon. For all of Her Creation. There was no serenity in Heaven, no peace. He ached to do something about it, but the one time he desperately wished for change, there was only stagnation.
And when at last he found himself cornered, beleaguered, everything he loved endangered, it erupted from him like a scream, like a choice, like a miracle.
An answering miracle reached out towards his own, unfailing, threading its gentle tendrils into his frayed edges.
9. Nos
The equivalent of an embrace, on a metaphysical plane.
“You caught me.”
“Hnnn. I did.”
Two pairs of wings tucked into each other. Fingers digging into shoulder blades beneath the soft feathers.
“Why? After all I…”
“You were falling. Couldn't very well let you drop.”
“I certainly deserved it!”
A growl without a voice, face lifted out of the mess of silver curls.
“Nonsense! Never deserved any of this. Neither of us did.”
“Oh my dear, I'm so sorry.”
A shiver running through their intertwined souls. An incorporeal hitch of breath.
“....right. S'alright.”
“It's not. I should have listened.”
“Should've listened, too, I guess. I said a lot of things but never really stopped to—”
“—to see things from your perspective . Me, too. I've thought about it, up there, and I… I think I understand better now.”
“Well, I—”
Forehead leaned against forehead. Hands cupping a sharp jaw.
“I'm never going to leave you alone again.”
When their lips touch, their miracle echoes within them. A bond that cannot be undone.
“....Angel…”
“Don't say that… I… I don't think I am, anymore…”
“Look… Angel, you're— No matter what they say you are— you're always gonna be, to me.”
“Oh, oh my darling….
What are we going to be?”
“Just us, Angel. Just us.”