a/n: Wanted to do a wingfic for a while, saw the new iOmg promo and got inspired. Randomness ensued.
...
He doesn't speak when sees her on an autumn day, when the leaves are fading from red to grey and the skies above are pearly. She sees him too but pretends not to, but he approaches her as she sits, alone and somehow not, on the cement pavement just several steps from him; her eyes are big, and her blond hair creates a sort of halo around her head. (Which Freddie finds kind of ironic because the Sam Puckett he knows is anything but an angel.)
He tries to speak but it catches in his throat, just one big lump of sorrow and saltiness he can't quite fathom. Awkwardly his hands fly to the pockets of his frayed tan jacket; he looks up at the bland atmosphere around him and questions silently the sheer vividness Sam is creating around her.
Her eyes meet his unblinkingly, and when she stands up, Freddie thinks he would not be surprised to see her in full flight, laughing at the world below her and leaving to join distant lands. But the thought is soon dispelled as she shoots him a look—of what, Freddie cannot quite say—and cocks her head.
"I know you." she says, and annoyance flashes through Freddie before he realizes that she's smirking in that queer fashion only she can pull off as she says it. "Long time no see, Fredward."
That's all he hears from her before she turns and leaves, each step full of casual grace and freedom he never knew she possessed. But he runs after her and catches her by her bare arm—scrawls on it with a sharpie his number and address. He notices that she doesn't look displeased, not at all.
"5o'clock good with you?" she says, and Freddie nods.
::::
This time he speaks, maybe a bit too much. He takes her coat, like a gentleman, and admires the way her shirt is the teensiest bit low-cut, unlikea gentleman. They don't make small talk; instead he clears his throat and talks about the first thing he notices.
"You didn't erase my number off your arm."
"I didn't want to, Freddo." she replies bluntly (she's never been a romantic) and proceeds to seat herself on the chipped kitchen table. She runs her fingers over the wooden surface and Freddie sits down next to her, marvelling again at the glow that seems to fill the small apartment just at her arrival.
"Why did you leave, Sam?" he blurts, and oh, aren't we good at making blunt conversation without thinking about the scars?
Sam takes long thinking of a response, and he looks at her, devours her, finally accepts the fact he's missed her terribly since the day she refused to say goodbye and left Seattle with thirty-five dollars in her pocket and a battered suitcase slung over her back. Now that he has her sitting three feet from him with a pondering look in her eyes, he begins to savour the feeling of having her near him, the radiance surrounding her.
"I left because I was scared." She says finally, and the air is suddenly heavy. "I-I ran, Freddie, I ran away, and don't ask why I did because you'll know soon enough." Her voice becomes sharp towards the end, and Freddie of course knows better than to go any further with Sam's cryptic response but instead rejoices in the sheer Samishness of it. She smiles when he doesn't answer, and just for a second he swears he hears something vaguely like the notes of a harp playing delicately in the background.
::::
It turns out she's brought over two twelve-packs of Blue and three bottles of vodka (of course she takes one more) and they end up hysterically, irrevocably, extremely drunk on his garage-sale sofa, but not before he learns of her life in the last twelve years—working the streets for three, then sobering up to actually get off her ass and getting her undergraduate to become a "culinary assistant" for the rest.
"—which basically means I get a bunch of free ham." She finishes, sitting haphazardly on the couch, long limbs everywhere. This strikes Freddie as extremely funny, and he howls with uncontrollable laughter until tears stream down his cheeks. The salty taste on his mouth jolts him back to drunken reality, and he can almost feel the sexual tension in the room go up ten notches as a strange golden fire is evoked in Sam's eyes and her fingers dance on his skin.
Then her mouth is on his, and they're kissing with a passion as strong as hatred as her hands roam freely underneath his shirt. Her hands are warm—strange considering the fact she's been clutching at an ice-cold beer seconds ago—and Freddie, fuelled by some strange animalistic desire, rips her tantalising top off and is about to unhook her bra when suddenly he feels them.
Wings.
Two large, white-feathered, beautiful, glowing wings are sprouting from her slender back and they flap as though happy to be finally freed, creating a gentle breeze around her bare torso clad only in the white bra. Her blond hair is shining and cascades down her shoulders in rippling waves of gold, and a soft light surrounds her form as she smiles on at Freddie. The smile holds a challenge; it dares Freddie to recoil, to be disgusted with her, to fear her.
Freddie, shaken out of drunkenness, thinks she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
"You're an angel, Sam." He whispers, his own soft voice seeming too loud in the eerie silence, and her lips grins crookedly. He knows he's safe, and her smile is bringing back the music he can almost hear, so beckoning and soft, surrounding him like a hug.
"What gave it away? Was it the two big wings?" she answers sarcastically, and her wings flap languidly as though laughing at Freddie's stupidity. Freddie forces himself out of his reverie, looks her clear in her star-dazzled eye.
"Funny though." He says, the irony of the situation getting to him now, "I'd always thought you were more of a demon." For a split second he's afraid he's gone too far, but then she laughs, the tinkling sound more magical to him than the faraway harps.
"I thought so too." She says, eyes bright. "But one day I woke up and I just knew. That's why I ran, Freddie, for a really stupid, selfless reason. You're my Saviour, and I'd only hurt you in the end."
Freddie looks at her, unable to register the words that echo in his brain. Saviour. It sounds like she expects him to be some sort of superman, and he says to himself, well, no pressure!
"I mean," She explains, thinking out each word carefully, "you keep me earthbound. We have to free each other in order to fly, and in order to free each other, one of us has to die." A silvery shine is coming from her now, and Freddie gasps when he feels the light dance on his skin. He forces himself to ask the next question, even though there are so many things to ask and so little time, he suspects, to ask them.
"What do you mean, free each other?" he asks, half-afraid to know. Sam's face twists unpleasantly as she grabs for her shirt and slides it over her golden head. She gets to her feet, all tipsiness gone, and Freddie stands as well. Something tells him they won't be coming back anytime soon.
"I think," she says, snatching up her purse, "it's time to go see a friend of mine."
He follows her wordlessly into the violet dusk.
::::
His first impression of Carly Shay is that she's a hardened, rough-talking sort of street thug with little regard for other people. But the hard shell ebbs away and he can see that she used to be sweet and vulnerable; he can see this by the way she treats Sam, carefully and gently, almost as though they were lovers. He guesses, by the delicate way Sam responds to this treatment, that they probably once were.
"Hey, handsome." She greets him as he approaches her hesitantly, shielding himself behind Sam. "So you're Freddie Benson, huh? Sam's fuck buddy, am I right?"
Sam glares at him in a way that says don't respond to that.
Carly is beautiful too, but in a way much different from the radiant angel beside him. Her black hair falls straight down her thin shoulders, her skin is moon-pale, and something in her dark eyes tell him that she's seen sorrow. But they're angry eyes now, and when he sees the black fire within them he knows that she's an angel too. There's no same golden light or light music, but she carries herself the same elegant way and he's sure he sees lumps in the back of her frayed drop-box shirt. He notices also the harshness of her voice, and that gets to him the most.
The two angels talk for a while and Freddie watches the early stars, noticing how bright they seem tonight as they pin-prick the darkened sky. He catches words from their conversation, words like freedom and flight, music and of course, Saviours.
"Guess who's mine?" Carly asks bitterly, cigarette muffling her words. "Nevel Papperman, the fucking bastard."
Sam looks genuinely sorry, and Freddie wonders who this Nevel is.
"No way, Cupcake! They know he's a pompous jerk, how the hell can he be a Saviour? I mean, a Daemon I'd understand, but shit, a Saviour?"
"Franklin's going senile." Carly says moodily, flicking the cigarette to the ground where it burns bright and extinguishes. "He thinks we'll be good for each other, that our souls are supposed to meet. How do they let a guy as trusting as that become the Chief anyway? He'd let Briggs be a Saviour if she said two nice things."
"Well, considering she's an extremely powerful force for evil, even for a Daemon, and tried to combust his soul the last time they met, I'd consider that a bit of an exaggeration." Sam responds drily, and the two laugh, Sam's laughter illuminating and golden, Carly's echoingly sad.
It's getting colder now, and Freddie envies how the two angels seem to be immune to the chilly air. Sam, seeing him shiver, intertwines her slender fingers through his. Her touch sends heat rushing through his body and he grips her hand a little tighter. Carly looks venomous seeing this, so Freddie quickly asks the question he's supposed to.
"So, what does it mean, to free an angel?"
Carly studies him reproachfully. "Why do you ask, handsome? You a Saviour now?" She laughs a little too hard at her own joke and begins to cough uncontrollably. Sam takes this time to look at Freddie in the fast-fading light.
"She'll kill you, you know." she murmurs, and Freddie can tell she's not kidding. "Hope you know what you got yourself into. Carls might not look like much now, but she used to be one of the strongest angels. Well, until..." and then she lets a sad sort of smile that looks entirely out of place on her fiery face grace her lips.
Carly's finished choking up her lungs, and she spits a wad of phlegm onto the pavement. She looks up, let her black eyes meet his. "Answer me, pretty boy. You a Saviour now, or what?" her voice is dangerously dark, and as her palms clench into fists, Freddie can almost see what looks like black fire building in her tight hands. Recklessness seizes him, maybe because Sam looks amused by the whole business and maybe because he can see that emotionally, Carly Shay is very much screwed.
"Oh, I just happen to be Sam's." He says offhandedly, though he has the vague feeling he's not too far from committing suicide. "We're connected, you know, like soul mates! Isn't that great?" he plasters a stupid smile onto his face and waits for the bomb.
It never comes. Instead Sam cries out like she's been shot and when he turns to look, Carly Shay is gone. All that's left is a single black feather, drifting onto the sidewalk like black snow and dissolving instantly. As he bends to stem Sam's blood, Freddie thinks he hears whispering words that fade away with the wind.
::::
"Sam," Freddie asks later that night as he sees the blood stain her pure wings like rose petals, "Why did you take me to see Carly? She never even told me what it meant—the whole Saviour thing."
Sam swivels around to send Freddie an exasperated look, even as Freddie trails broken kisses down her side and runs his fingers through her bloodstained wings. "Freddie, you know what it means. You knew all along."
Freddie shrugs, and presses himself even closer to the fire that is Sam. "Maybe I do. Is it that we hate each other?" He knows it's not, but the game is so goddamn addictive.
Sam laughs softly even as the blood runs heavier, cascading down her tanned back and onto the sheets below. "Benson, hate doesn't look like this. I should know. We love each other; get used to it. But then again, love and hate are pretty damn close." She says the last bit like she has endless experience with passion.
"I've always loved you," Freddie whispers into Sam, who shivers inexplicably. "You know that. But you didn't answer me yet. Why did we see her, anyways? All she did was hurt you, you knew she would."
But Freddie understands that Sam's always been a bit of a masochist, although some say that S&M relationships never work out. And maybe they're right.
Sam shrugs heavily, her blue-grey eyes unfathomable. "I hurt her first." She says, and Freddie knows instinctively that Sam is the reason for Carly's diminish, the reason she is more of a moonbeam than a sunbeam. "I was her Saviour before I knew you, Freddie, and what happened? I killed her Spirit."
He wants to ask what that means, but then he sees the gash in her wings are beginning to heal, mend themselves easily and flawlessly. Sam groans and intertwines her legs with Freddie's.
"We should sleep." She says, kissing the nape of his neck. Her nails claw across his back, and Freddie thinks maybe he's the real masochist. "We've got lots to do tomorrow." Moonlight filters through the window and illuminates her already bright form, and oh she is so very beautiful, defines the word beauty itself. He attacks her lips hungrily.
They don't get all that much sleep.
::::
They are wakened the next day by a fevered knocking on the front door, and Freddie thinks groggily that the neighbours won't be too happy by the noise. So he reluctantly gets up and pads to the door in only his boxers, groaning when he sees the hickeys and scars in the bathroom mirror. Sam is already up and she looks as though she's bathed in liquid sunlight. She's clad in only a robe, and a look of repulsed horror is on her face.
"Morning." He yawns, but she doesn't reply. Instead she points to the vibrating door.
"It's Papperman." She spits, looking horrified. "What the hell is that little asshole doing here?"
Freddie knows nothing good can come from this Papperman, so he puts his ear to the door.
"Open up!" a smooth, albeit angry, voice is saying from the other side. "Open up, Puckett, if you know what's good for you!"
Freddie looks to Sam who wrenches open the handle to reveal a slender young man in an elaborate suit and three-figure shoes. He looks very flustered, and he rushes into the apartment without being invited. He waves his arms wildly, and Freddie is reminded of some sort of octopus as he approaches Sam, who recoils instantly.
"What the fuck are you—"she begins roughly, but Papperman interrupts her.
"She's dead!" he shouts, eyes crazed, and Freddie wonders if any of the neighbours have called 911 yet. "The Daemons got to her last night, I've been told to alert the other angels. The blood is still on my hands." He holds up is red palms with a disgusted look, but Sam looks merely stunned.
"What?" she snarls, seizing Papperman by the shoulders. "Who's dead? It- it's not- can't be—"
"Carly Shay, that's who!" Papperman cries, looking ruffled. "Tragic, it was, what with the horrible laughing and the soul simply leaking onto the floor, and her laughing even as they tore her to shreds..."
There's real sorrow in the man's eyes and he collapses into a chair with his bloody hands to his face. Sam looks shell-shocked still, pacing the living room with her usual light step.
"No—no—angels can't die—"Sam says, as though reasoning with fate, and Papperman looks suddenly sympathetic, as though just remembering the relationship the two angels shared.
"They can if their Sprit already has." He says in a deadpanned voice, examining his crocodile-skin shoes. Freddie appreciates the fact he doesn't say who exactly killed Carly, but the room dims suddenly and he sees that Sam looks fainter, paler; like a day-old memory.
"I should free her." She says faintly, and Papperman's eyes bulge, all pity gone.
"I was her Saviour, Puckett! I already freed Carly!" he shrieks, doing his bizarre octopus impression again, limbs flying. Sam fixes him with a fire-filled glare that quenches him instantly.
"I was her real Saviour." she says, with a voice so honest Papperman doesn't respond. Freddie follows her wordlessly out the door and into the golden morning. She steps back to tell the dumbfounded Saviour one last thing.
"Don't bother trying to get rid of the blood." She says with a twisted smile. "Won't ever come off."
::::
What Sam does to free Carly is simple. They take a smelly bus to a small, run-down graveyard about an hour away, Sam looking hollow and lost all the while and Freddie knowing better than to make meaningless conversation. Instead he stares out the grimy window and wonders how exactly she broke her. He suspects he'll never really know, because Sam is just like that; refusing to reveal more than she needs to, covering up the wounds with a quick word and flick of her head. He thinks these thoughts until they've arrived, Sam touching his arm lightly and sending warm fire running through his veins.
"We're here." She smiles, and he smiles back.
"You ready?" he asks her, shoving roughened hands into pockets and stepping off the bus. The shrieking of children still echo, and Sam bites her lip. Her soulful eyes gaze into the weathered graveyard, engravings and faded flowers sticking out awkwardly from different angles like crooked teeth, early morning fog swirling around the tombstones.
"No." She answers, and sliding open the creaky gate, she walks inside, dew sticking to her worn converse. Freddie, as he often does, follows her shimmering form into the cemetery which looks gloomier than ever by contrast.
They walk amongst the maze of endless gravestones, some, though not many, looking tended for; the rest simply forgotten along with their inhabitants. Weaving between the sombre stones, Freddie wonders what exactly Sam will do to free Carly. No one has ever evoked such curiosity from Freddie—Sam is like a golden fire, wonderful to watch and admire but to be feared if blazing out of control.
Finally Sam stops at a patch of rough ground. "This is it," she says, no doubt in her voice. "Hold my jacket, will you?" She rips off the blue windbreaker and tosses it at Freddie, who watches in reverie as her wings flap free, looking so very out-of-place in its very beauty in the dead burial ground.
What Sam does to free Carly is simple. She merely plucks a golden-white feather from one of her wings and presses it to her lips. Then she gently sets it onto the barren ground. It flashes black and promptly dissolves into a golden mist.
"Carly Shay," Sam says, voice dark and deep yet somehow melodious, "I free you."
She turns then, locks her fingers with Freddie's, and they walk slowly out of the graveyard, neither one looking back.
::::
What Freddie will remember about the year to follow is the way Sam looks in the early morning, wings bathed in the light of dawn and eyes reflecting late stars. He will remember also the nights they spend together, hands and lips locked together beneath the night sky, the sadness only really showing then. The light strengthens him, brightens him, deepens him, until one day he feels it too.
Wings.
::::
I know this is really cliché and all of me to do, just before we get our happy ending, but I gotta tell you.
I'm leaving you, Freddie. I know you're ready now and so am I, and this is predestined anyways, one of us leaving. My spirit has already broken once; I don't think it can happen again.
You'll always be my Saviour, you know.
Sam
Freddie burns the note, thankful that his tears won't extinguish the flames but instead add to them.
::::
Oh, well. At least the stars still shine.
:::
end
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