Not Just For Christmas...
GillNotJill (Wynja2007), Runewif (Wynja2007)
Chapter Management
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Down in the kitchen, Gethin was more than a little tempted to take Blake's word for it that this was all just some weird dream or hallucination or something caused by too much to drink, to go back to bed and put his head under the covers and wait for morning to take it all away...
But it wasn't, and he couldn't, and it wouldn't; he had touched Blake's face and seen the dried blood, he had smelled the iron tang of it. And something else, too, a sweet, warm scent like... like Christmas, cinnamon and spices and under it a vague hint of chocolate...
Those wings, too, you couldn't dream those, not in such glorious detail, the pinky-beige tones of the main wings, the bright sapphire barring made even more distinct by the black and white flight feathers around them...
You couldn't, you couldn't dream it, make it up. He'd seen where the wings emerged from Blake's back, not stuck on or strapped in place, but actually were part of his body...
So what did that make him, then?
Gethin really didn't want to consider the possibilities, not just yet.
He brewed tea and found the biscuits, listening for the gush of water down the drainpipe outside the window to tell him when Blake was done washing his wings.
...washing his wings... was there any way that wasn't going to sound weird?
'I say...' Blake's voice drifted down the stairs, echoey and hollow as the sound bounced off the hard bathroom walls. 'I forgot... they hold a lot of water, these things, and no towel...'
Oh, great! A gorgeous bloke with amazing eyes, beautiful hands and mythological wings naked in his bathroom without a towel.
If Blake hadn't been straight it would have been perfect.
Blake was stood in the bath, his back towards the door, those ridiculous wings looking reduced and forlorn and tatty but at least giving him shelter from interested eyes. Gethin passed in all the clean towels he possessed, one at a time, watching the drip, drip of water from the bedraggled feathers.
'...I was only intending to wash the muddy bits but this shower thing of yours is a bit wayward... and the water felt so warm...' Blake fixed the first towel around his waist, draped a second over one shoulder and wing, a third over the other with a wince. '... that's the thing, you see, if we're hurt and we can't furl, we feel the cold more...'
'Yes, right... did you say 'we'? You mean there's other... people... with wings around?'
Blake nodded. 'A few.'
'A few?'
'Well, okay, quite a few... I don't suppose you have a hairdryer, do you?'
'A...? Yes, in fact, I do.' Blake's hair was darker, wet, smoothed to his head in interesting shapes... 'In the bedroom... um... but if you feel the cold, living room, p'raps?'
'Very kind,' Blake said with a closed-lipped smile that wavered on the edge of a grimace.
'You in pain, at all?'
'A bit. I banged my alula... that bit where the blue feathers start on the wing, there's a little hook of bone under it, lucky it didn't break, but it's bruised and sore and it's that bit I need to furl with...'
'Sorry, when you say 'furl'...? Must be sounding a bit dim, but...'
'Get my wings away out of sight. If you look...' Blake obligingly raised his uninjured wing up and twisted so that Gethin could see, lying beneath in the shadow of the feathers, a scar, or a slit about six inches long. 'That opening, there? Wing casing. I hook the alula in – and it all folds away.'
'All that? It'll never all fit in there...'
'Well, it does. They do. Except when I'm injured.' Blake sighed. 'Still, shouldn't be more than a day or so, I hope... pity, I was looking forward to going out a bit more...'
'Well, if it's not for long... anyway, come down when you're dressed... as much as you can... and I'll bring the hairdryer.'
'Thanks, thank you.'
Gethin found the hairdryer and its never-yet-needed diffuser and took it down to wait for Blake, putting the gas fire on to warm the room and turning one of the kitchen chairs round so Blake would be able to sit, facing its back, without his wings getting in the way... He wasn't quite sure, still, exactly what was going on; perhaps it was best not to ask... and he was tired now, beyond tired, hyper with the shock of Blake's wings, a muzzy ache starting behind his eyes...
Blake came in, towels still draped across his wings. He'd found a pair of jeans, but was barefoot and bare chested, of course. A suggestion of extra muscle around his ribs was initially surprising, but rapidly became interesting...
'Gethin? Are you all right?' Blake asked, approaching with anxious eyes.
'Oh, now you ask...!'
'You're in pain.' One of those wonderful hands reached out to rest on Gethin's hair for a brief moment, a gentle touch that was a benediction, soothing and taking with it the muzzy confusion of headache and hangover that had been threatening. 'Better? Look, I really am sorry about all this, it's not ... well, it's not something you should ever have had to see... if it's any consolation, I'm going to be in dreadful trouble about this...'
'No,' Gethin said. 'No, it's no consolation. Hairdryer's plugged in for you over there. Thought you might want to sit down.'
'That's kind. And tea, too, thank you.'
The noise of the dryer made conversation difficult, which wasn't a bad thing, as it gave Gethin a bit of time to get used to the sight of Blake, half-naked, working the hot air over his feathers, using one hand to stretch out the wing, the other to guide the dryer . It seemed to take a lot of effort, but slowly the feathers lost their sorry look and began to look sleek and shiny and really very nice...
Blake switched off the hairdryer.
'Nice?' he said. 'You think my wings are nice?'
'Sorry, what...?' Surely Gethin hadn't said that aloud.
'Because, well, thank you. I get a bit of a ribbing for them, sometimes. Jay's wings, like I said. Short and stubby, really; you watch a jay in flight, doesn't half make hard work of it, compared to some. Not a big span, really – they get very sniffy about their spans, too, anything less than ten foot and they sneer... look, there's I bit I can't reach, would you be a sweetheart and just... right between my shoulders...?'
'Okay.'
Gethin went over and took charge of the hairdryer, switched it on, glad of the noise as he wafted it over the damp plumage, watching the colour of the feathers change as they dried. It didn't seem to take any time at all, now he was involved, in fact he would have liked to stay there longer, there was something mesmerising about the patterns of air, the drift of warmth, the soft, spiced fragrance...
But he couldn't keep on drying already dry feathers.
Knowing that to switch off the noise would mean the start of explanations, still, he would have liked to carry on for a while, not asking, not knowing, not having to deal with whatever it was he was going to have to deal with...
He switched off the machine.
'Better?'
'Ah, thank you, that feels lovely... well, I expect you want an explanation...?'
'Dunno. Is there one?'
'Well, yes... not an easy one, though, maybe... but you've been so kind, so good, I want to try... I feel I owe it to you, and... well.' Blake shrugged, the wings rustling gently as he did. 'Look, would you mind, I feel ... it's a lot to ask, but if I'm going to talk to you about all this, would you sit with me and... and hold my hand a bit? Just friendly contact?'
'If it will help... come over here, can you sit on the sofa without hurting them? How's your face now?'
'Oh, I'll be fine... ' Jonathan made his way to the settee, sitting sideways so his wings draped over the arm. 'We really do heal quickly, I promise, and it hardly hurts at all... well, the alula's taking my mind of my face, really... It'll be better tomorrow. Would you mind...?'
Unable to believe that this was happening, Gethin took the hand Blake extended towards him, feeling the cool touch of Blake's fingers curling around his own.
'Thank you, Gethin; oh, that feels so warm, it's really comforting and... kind, I've said before but, yes. Of course, I'm not supposed to tell you any of this, I'm not supposed to show anyone my wings, or... but I did try, didn't I?'
'You did, you tried really hard.'
'Only, if you'd let me leave the bedroom window open, I would have come in that way and...'
'And how would you have got all that wing through the window?'
'Well, it's mostly feather, you know. Just a bit of bone and tendon really. Some muscle, not a lot. I... have you worked it out, do you know what I am yet?'
'Some sort of winged social worker?'
Blake smiled, shaking his head.
'I'm an angel. As in, '...from the realms of glory...' and other songs. You know.'
'Yes, I know what you mean. Winging your flight over all the earth, apparently, except when telegraph poles get in the way... An... Really?'
'Well, what else could I be?
'I saw this film once, 'Flash Gordon', there were hawkmen...' Gethin trailed off. 'Anyway, what's with the wings? Proper angels don't have wings like that.'
'Yes, that's what the others say...'
'...if they ever do have wings...'
'...just because I manifest as a jay and not something pure like a swan, or elegant like a falcon, or have two pairs or three, just because I've one of the shortest spans of them all, they say I'm not a proper angel and... and I have to work twice as hard to be half as good and I still get things wrong and it's true what Roscoe said, if I'm not careful I'll end up on deliveries, bringing other angels what they need so they can help people but it's what we're meant to do... and I am a proper angel, I am, I just...'
Through it all Blake had kept hold of Gethin's hand, increasing the pressure until it felt like he was hanging on, as if the contact was a lifeline.
'Hey,' Gethin said, folding his other hand around their joined fingers. 'I didn't mean you weren't a proper one compared to the other angels, I just meant... I thought angels generally, it's what people think you're like, isn't it, not what you are?'
'Not... not originally, no. But one day humans imagined us with wings, and so here we are...'
'I don't see what's wrong with being a jay. Clever birds, and beautiful. Striking, really. An eye for the shiny. Collect things, they say.'
Blake smiled at this.
'I suppose that's true, I do collect things...'
'Seems wrong to say, how long have you been an angel, but...?'
'Ha! Yes, well, all my life, of course. Except I'm not really alive, not in the same way you are; we aren't born, we're just created, as and when we're needed... and we don't die, either. We're not immortal, we're just... created eternal...'
'So, tell me, then? What's it like, being an angel?'
'Oh, it's... when I'm working, doing what I was meant to do, it's the best thing in the world...'
'Go on, then?'
'Well... I shouldn't say, I'm going to be in such trouble... except if I already am, then I might as well talk about it, I really want to, I've always felt it was wrong to lie to you humans about who we are and...'
And slowly at first, with a few pauses, and asides about the other angels and their attitudes, Blake began to talk, naming people he'd worked with, helped, speaking with real, true joy about his work and Gethin kept hold of his hand all the time, listening with wonder and trying to remind himself that it would never, ever work out between them because Blake was straight and, as if that wasn't enough, he wasn't human, he was an angel, and weren't angels asexual anyway...?
The night drew on and Blake talked about existing above everything in an energy stream the circled the world, just waiting for a human person to ask for help, to drop down through the skies and find wings, to finally reach the world beneath and take proper, human shape...
'So you see, once we're here, the metaphysical side of our nature is hidden within the physical; the wings furl away, and we look just like you, except for the openings where the wings go. We can walk amongst you and nobody would know, and the longer we're here, the more human we become; at first we don't need to eat or drink – we nourish ourselves in the energy streams, usually, or sleep, or feel human emotions; that was what Roscoe meant, telling me not to get contaminated; he wasn't talking about the illness, just about the angel part of me getting lost under the human...'
'But you said you were assigned to work with the gay community, not that you heard someone ask for help...'
'Well, you're not very good at asking for help, these days, you lot. And assignments are a good way for the ones above us to keep a watchful eye on what we're doing down here. Especially me, since I seem to be a little... accident prone... I've worked with children, and with old people and loved it each and every time... I made a mistake, though, last time, with May, and they made me go back up and lectured me...'
'What happened with May? Have you got something from her, in that collection of yours?'
'Yes, I do... a dance card from when she was young, she loved to dance even into her eighties... I was helping her after she'd been poorly, in her residential home... someone had the bright idea of tea dances for them, I turned up in time to partner her, got her talking about the old times... she kept saying there was something about me, was I her guardian angel, I told her, no, he doesn't dance... well, she had... some sort of thing, a stroke, heart attack – I thought, we all thought she was dying and... well, I hadn't liked lying to her about what I was so I... she was frightened, you see, I thought it would help if she saw my wings, so I showed her, only because she was dying, and she did, she felt better, and then... fuck me if there wasn't a last minute miracle, she got well, told everyone it was an angel saved her, there's her GA...'
'GA?'
'Guardian angel... looking daggers at me and next thing you know, I'm up on a disciplinary in front of Malachai for flaunting my wings...'
'Doesn't sound much like the Realms of Glory to me, all that bitching about wingspans and stuff...'
'You know, you could be right. So when I was given the job of looking after the gay community, it was sort of my chance to redeem myself...' Blake sighed. 'And then I go and ask about gerbils, and suddenly I have nowhere to go, and I meet young Jeff at the train station and he brings me to you, and then I let you see my wings... and just when I thought it would be all right, and I like it here, and... and now I'm done for.'
'No, don't think that... you said, your job went well, tonight. And yesterday, that young lad, you were very kind to him, probably wouldn't have got what he needed if you hadn't got him talking... I saw how you were with the customers, you engaged with them, they like you... Look, if anyone says anything, tell them to talk to me. I'll explain.'
'Gethin, you really are kind. Thank you, thank you for listening. You know, in the past, I've had people say to me, oh, you don't know what a relief it is to have someone just listen to you. Well, I do now.'
