"You're a coward," he says to you, back when the world was ruled and knifepoint and the people still worshiped all the old Gods. It's the worst accusation he can fling at you and he knows it.
He's so beautiful standing there. His pale chest is bare, dotted with freckles and not a single hair. His wings grow from between his shoulder blades, curving delicately. They flecked with gold, the shades of red and brown looking like dimmed firelight. The curve of his mouth is too sinful for an angel, but you've always been one to toe the line.
Maybe that's why you love him so much.
But you're not supposed to give your love away to anyone but the Almighty. He'll rip you both to shreds. He'll cast you down like broken dolls, let you float to earth as a crumpled feather. Or at least surrounded by them.
And you can't watch them be plucked from his back. You can't watch them tear each beautiful feather out, stain them with blood and pain. The same feathers you try to count, try to memorise as you run your fingers over gently over them.
You have to watch anyway. As he's cast down.
He doesn't even scream as they strip him of every title and two of his limbs. He just stares at you with rage and sadness in his eyes, his teeth bared in a grimace.
"You don't care at all, do you?" he says the night before, like he's coming to a realisation. He stares at you with his eyes so wide that they could hold the heavens. In their reflection, they almost do.
And he's so wrong, he's so incredibly, terribly, fatally wrong. But it's too late, because he throws himself down from heaven anyway. Or he gets thrown. You both know it's deliberate. The look in his eyes says he doesn't think there could ever be enough space between you. But what are you supposed to do? Spiral down with him?
You already know the answer even if it is too late.
It takes you centuries before you realise that the ache in your chest is never going to ease. It's always going to feel like you're burning, like you've been ignited under your skin. Only he knows how to fan the flames, only he knows how to extinguish them.
So you leave.
You throw yourself off the edge in the middle of the night. Because you'll never be done waiting. Because you'll never stop caring. And it warps you, it twists you into something colder and crueller than you ever were before. It tears off your feathers, your wings. It rips free bone and it flings you into the body of a screeching child that the mother won't even look at, who's birth the father wasn't even there to witness.
And you've always been scared. In heaven, it was God, it was falling, it was everything. As a mortal, it's Terry and the Southside and it's still everything. But he's there. He comes years after you, looking like he doesn't remember a thing. And maybe he doesn't, or maybe he just doesn't recognise you because this is what… his fifth life? Seventh? You lost count when you realised watching didn't stitch up the wound, it only poured in the salt.
He doesn't know you though, you're sure of that. But you know him. You know him from the moment you first saw him. Same face, same freckles, same soul shining through his eyes. You can still see heaven in them.
And he has freckles in the shape of where they ripped his wings free. You have tattoos on your knuckles.
You're just a boy and so he is. Heaven, hell, the mortal world. None of it will ever make it easy for you. They put you in a cage, behind bars, make you scream for him in silent syllables. They make you make promises to yourself and judge you from the shadows. But you don't cave because he doesn't know you and how do you explain? How do you ask for forgiveness for memories he doesn't have?
The answer is you don't.
Until you do.
Until you find him broken and bleeding, but smiling where he's lying next to you on the bed. His face is streaked with blood like war paint, just like yours. His breath is wheezing in his chest and your lips stings even as you kiss him anyway. You wrap your arms around him and wish they were wings. You wish you could save him, but he's always been beyond that, he's always been the one saving you.
"I always cared," you say, in a voice that you lost a long time ago.
"I know," he says in the one that only exists in your memories. "I'm sorry," he says.
"Don't be," you reply. Because it got you both here, to this moment.
There was always going to be blood and tears. There was always going to be pain. But it was always going to be worth it, because no matter where it took him, Mickey would always chase his own personal slice of heaven that lived in Ian's eyes.