"Stupid Roderich and his stupid... his stupid..." Gilbert can't think of the word, flounders with his left hand as he paces the sidewalk outside the bar. "Words!" he settles on at last, but that isn't quite right.
He should go back inside—he'd departed the bar in a rush, and Roderich had merely nodded, like he'd expected it, like it was the normal reaction—but somehow he's finding himself stuck pacing the pavement outside. It's not that cold out, and the lights from each building on the street keep the area well-lit enough that he doesn't feel any sense of apprehension, none of that human fear of the dark that he'd developed.
He should go back inside, he should turn away and never come back. He was kicked out, playing around with some prophet won't do him any favors, oh, if he could be smited just for thinking about it he feels he probably would be. He waits for a moment, just in case someone up there was just taking their sweet time with the smiting, but nothing happens.
"Didn't think so," he says, more to himself than anything, sparing a glance at the heavens (which, in this case, means staring up at a streetlamp, because God can be found in light) before turning to head back inside, feeling just about untouchable.
"Fine," he says, sitting back down next to Roderich, which causes the man to jolt up from his drink, startled. That makes Gilbert smile—he'd felt like he's been on the back foot from the very beginning, nice to know that wasn't the case.
"Fine," he repeats. "Fine, if you really want to help me, or whatever, you can. I guess if I were you, I'd want to hang around someone as awesome as I am, too. No, it's okay, don't worry about it. I get that a lot."
Roderich looks somewhat irritated, but Elizaveta's hiding a smile behind one calloused hand.
.
It progresses from there. That following Thursday afternoon, he's sitting in his usual booth at Antonio's restaurant when the Spaniard plops down across from him, Francis following behind with a mug of coffee in both hands.
"You look troubled, amigo, what is it?" Antonio asks, and Gilbert shakes his head.
"That's not it, I just—hey, if you were a musician, where would you hang out?" he asks after a moment, because: that's what Elizaveta had said. Roderich sees God in music, in music. There's music everywhere in the world, Gilbert knows, that's something he's long understood about the Earth, but humans don't always listen for it. They tend to focus on specific types of music, the kind that they make themselves.
His friends share a look. "Looking to pick up an instrument, mon ami?" Francis asks. "There is a music shop I know of on fifth street, a block down from the public library, do you know what I refer to?"
Gilbert nods.
"The owner knows about everything from pianos to saxophones to xylophones, so whatever you wish to play, I'm sure he can help," Francis goes on before pausing to take a sip from the mug in front of him, which he immediately spits back into the cup. "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" he demanded.
"Coffee," came Antonio's reply.
"This is like no coffee I've ever had!"
Antonio paused, picked up the mug to sniff at it, then let a smile fall across his face. "Ah, this is Lovino's day-old. He leaves the leftover coffee in the machine and then just adds enough new to dilute it. There must have been a lot leftover yesterday."
Francis' expression could best be described as 'polite horror.'
"Anyway, Gilbert," Antonio went on, changing the subject easily, seeminly unconcerned with his friend's expression, "which instrument do you want to learn to play?"
"Hey, I didn't say anything about learning an instrument! What do I look like? Isn't music kind of... prissy?"
.
Gilbert can remember, if he tries, other prophets and saints, and how his more earnest siblings fell for them, moths to flame. Never Fell for them, of course. That would be stupid.
But the sons and daughters of men are born with stars in their eyes, and prophets get double that. They are limitless beings, not shut up in a set of angel-skulls. Limitless.
He doesn't want to wonder if Roderich is just as limitless and fascinating but: he does.
He wonders.
.
His second real conversation with Roderich and Elizaveta is much like the first in that it is infuriating, somehow. Roderich grates on his nerves and Gilbert has never understood the desire to snarl and argue before, but it's being drawn out of him like pus from a wound.
He mentions something to that effect, and Roderich's nose wrinkles with distaste. "What a metaphor," he says. Elizaveta laughs.
"How did you track down my music shop?" Roderich asks, choosing, apparently, not to dwell on allegories.
"Elizaveta said you see God in music. I asked someone I know where musicians like to hang out. He directed me here, said you know about xylophones and shit."
"Among other things, yes," Roderich says. Elizaveta laughs again, and she's lounging on a piano bench, apparently unconcerned with any of this.
"Who's this friend?" she asks.
"Just some guy," Gilbert says, evasive. Names don't mean as much to humans as they do to angels, but that doesn't mean he'll hand them out like... like... like something that gets passed around a lot. Candy, maybe? A song? Bottles of whiskey? He doesn't have everything he needs for metaphors, down here. Words without context. He has to make new comparisons.
"Okay, okay, I'll back off," Elizaveta goes on, and Gilbert shoots her a grateful smile.
Easier that way. If he doesn't have to explain it.
The bell over the music shop door chimes and Roderich looks up, sees a woman enter with a teenaged boy—mother and son, probably. "I have to help these two. If you'd like to chat later... there is a cafe down the block from here. Take a left outside the shop and you'll know it by the mint green chairs outside. Can you meet me there?" he asks.
Gilbert nods.
And out the door he goes.
.
On the awning above the outdoor part of the cafe there are birds nesting; their shit is all over the ground next to the table Gilbert is sitting at. He's sipping a cup of coffee, and it's better than what Antonio has Lovino serving. Does Antonio know this? Is this what coffee is supposed to taste like, or is this a weird deviation that tastes good just because it's different different? Gilbert isn't sure and, frankly, he doesn't care. He likes this coffee and so: he'll come back.
He looks up when he hears someone approach, but it's not Roderich, it's Elizaveta. That's okay, he supposes. He likes Elizaveta. She's pretty, the kind of pretty that he can normally only see looking down on Earth, not from the angle he's currently at. She's tough, too, he can tell, from the bruises on her knuckles and the callouses on her palms. Probably she's other things, too, but he doesn't know about those yet.
There's something lingering around her edges that looks half like divinity and half like monstrosity, but mostly she just looks like a very attractive lady with long brown hair. Mostly she just looks... hot.
"Hey there, Gil," Elizaveta says. "Want to split a sandwich?"
"Is Roderich coming?" Gilbert responds, looking at the sandwich, hungry.
"He had some customers to take care of—kid needs to test out violas or something. I don't know. He asked me to keep you busy until he can catch up."
Gilbert nods, accepting the offered half-sandwich and digging in. "What is this?"
"Roast beef. Do they not have roast beef in Heaven?"
"We don't eat in Heaven."
"You're missing out," she says with a smile.
He grins back at her. "Tell me about it."
Seeing Elizaveta this close, Gilbert takes a moment to study her—her copper hair, her green eyes. Gilbert has never known anyone who looks at you the way Elizaveta looks at you—like she's studying you and like she wants to trust you all at once. Hopeful but guarded, or something.
Gilbert takes another bite of the sandwich, eats it like he's starving. Wait. No. More like:
Gilbert takes another bite.
He's starving.
"You okay?" Elizaveta asks, her frown bringing a crease in between her eyes.
"Yeah," he says around a mouthful of meat and bread. He swallows before attempting a longer sentence. "Hey. Did God really tell Roderich to help me out?"
She shakes her head. "Not as such. Just... mentioned you were here, apparently. In passing, but Roderich—he focuses on details, a lot. I don't know what else to tell you."
There was a short pause and then, god damn it, Gilbert's sucking on his teeth to keep from asking more. Elizaveta's not the prophet, she wouldn't know about Ludwig, even Roderich likely wouldn't, if God wasn't big on elaboration. Gilbert's never thought of what it must be like to hear his Father's voice, even fragmented the way a prophet does.
"You okay?" he hears her ask again, and she sounds so damn concerned.
"Fine. I'm fine. Hey, how could someone who looks like this be anything but!" he declares and if she's rolling her eyes at him, well, at least she isn't looking concerned anymore.
They eat in silence for a while before Elizaveta looks up again, searching his eyes momentarily. "What's an angel of God doing down here? Is that kind of thing common?"
"No," he responds, talking more to his coffee than to her, eyes fixed. "It's really... really not."
"Do you miss it?"
"Sometimes."
"Then why leave?"
He lets out a huff of a laugh, shakes his head. It's stupid and it's not really fair, that he's sitting here, explaining his Fall to a girl who looks, around the edges, like divine monstrosity. "Dishonorable discharge," he settles on.
Her face falls. "Oh."
"Hoping for something more glamorous?"
"Hoping for someone who could actually help Roderich."
Gilbert looks up properly at that. "How do you mean?"
"Every time he has a vision or whatever, he gets a migraine, faints, starts speaking a language I've never heard before, scribbles on anything he can get his hands on. It varies. It's not pretty."
Gilbert opens his mouth to say something about futility and even a real angel couldn't help you, God made him to suffer but before he can, he hears someone clear their throat and looks up to see Roderich lingering by their table. "You aren't talking about me, I trust," he says, and his words are light, like a joke, but it is not a joke.
"Only good things," Elizaveta says. "And—I told him you get migraines."
"All prophets do," Gilbert shrugs, like it's no big deal, "you should have seen Daniel. Now those were some classic symptoms."
"I'd rather not," Roderich states plainly, and Gilbert shrugs again.
"Hard to show you anyway. You weren't around then. But listen, it's just a thing that happens. You'll burn it out of you eventually, they all did. Once you do what God wants or whatever. Gotta tell someone something sometime, and then it'll probably be over. I know that doesn't sound very, uh, holy, but I can make up something about temples if you want."
"No, that's fine," Roderich replies, shaking his head.
"Smart. I'm not as good at talking about temples as others can be. Never mind. Don't worry about it. Hey, so—I hope you take care of yourself when you get headaches and stuff. If you die before you
"I thought 'prophets cannot perish outside Jerusalem.'"
"There are no other cities."
Roderich doesn't seem to know how to respond to that.
