It turned out the drive to Francis' had taken more out of him than Alfred had anticipated. After a few hours, he started considering the intelligence of his panicked absconding. Half-wishing he'd waited and thought of a better plan of escape, Alfred was wondering if he should pull over and nap for a half an hour when the angel on his back seat had told him in no uncertain terms to stop at the next service station to get some sleep before he crashed, or at least some energy drinks.
Alfred had almost argued on principle before hearing Arthur's stomach rumble. Laughing as the angel flushed with annoyance and embarrassment, Alfred had dutifully obeyed. Arthur had sent Alfred into the service station with a mental list of food he wanted, waiting in the mostly empty car park with his wings concealed behind one of the blankets that had been on the backseat.
Of course, Alfred didn't get any of the food asked for, returning with what could be summed up as a lot of sugar. The angel rolled his eyes at the mountain of junk food that a grinning Alfred brought back, but didn't comment. However, when he took the hot drink offered he took one sip before pulling an overdramatically disgusted face.
Alfred watched with faint amusement from where he was leaning against the steering wheel, knees propped up in front of him and blowing into his own drink, as Arthur's perfect nails prised the plastic lid from the cup to look at the brown liquid.
"You got coffee?" he said, sounding utterly horrified.
"You don't like coffee?" Alfred responded, equally horrified.
The angel levelled him with a pitying glare. "I should have expected as such."
"Hey!" protested Alfred. "What's that suppose to mean?"
"Tea," Arthur said instead of answering, wings moving agitatedly beneath his blanket. Alfred was momentarily distracted, watching white feathers flutter at the edges of the dark fabric. When he tuned back in a few seconds later, Arthur hadn't noticed his preoccupation. "I asked for tea. If you couldn't find anything else, you should have still have gotten tea."
"Dude. It's not that big a deal."
"I will go in there myself," Arthur threatened, forcing the rejected disposable cup into Alfred's free hand.
"You will not."
"Won't I?"
"No!"
"You're right, I won't, you're going to."
The discussion concluded with Alfred drinking two coffees and Arthur sipping at a cup of watery tea as if it was relaxation liquidated and then heated up. The angel's eyes were closed, and his whole body loose as he cupped the drink in his hands. Alfred would have been complaining, but he did get two coffees out of it and the angel's utter satisfaction made his whole body feel lighter. Arthur's attitude to him had improved in direct correspondence to the distance they got from Francis' house.
"How come you are such a limey?" Alfred asked about half way through his coffee.
Arthur eyes opened, and Alfred felt a stab of regret before his curiosity won out and he looked on expectantly.
"I beg your pardon?"
Alfred balanced the two half empty coffee cups on his dashboard, leaning forwards. "You just did it again."
"What are you talking about?" Arthur said, raising an eyebrow as he lowered his drink, leaning back in response.
"You. Being a limey. Even though you're not really."
"What exactly are you accusing me of?"
"Britishness."
Arthur looked at him blankly, brow crinkling up in confusion. "I fail to see your point."
"I mean, you aren't really British, are you? Or English, or whatever."
"I suppose not…"
"But you act like it. You speak like it." He pointed a finger accusingly at the drink in the angel's hands, "You drink like it."
Arthur's face closed up.
"None of your business," he said shortly, closing his eyes again, all softness gone from his features.
Frowning, Alfred leant back and grabbed one of the coffee cups before leaning forward again and taking a serious sip.
He poked Arthur's leg. The angel's limb jerked up, Arthur scrambling to the other side of the car before Alfred had a chance to pull his hand back, eyes wide and panicked. Alfred froze, watching the angel to see what would happen next, trying to convey as little of his shock and as much of his apology as he could without moving. Arthur visibly forced himself to loosen, taking another sip of his tea as he raised both his eyebrows as if to ask what?
"You can't sulk at me," Alfred said as if nothing had happened. "I brought you food."
"You brought me sweets," Arthur corrected.
Choosing not to comment on the word 'sweets', Alfred folded his arms, coffee cup resting in his grip on one elbow.
"Do not dis the sugar," he commanded.
"I will 'dis the sugar'. You are aware I've not had anything to eat in days, and the first thing you bring me is a snickers bar?"
There was a silence as Arthur's words hung in the space between them, the angel desperately looking as though he wished he could take them back.
"You said 'days'," he commented eventually.
The angel looked at him; gaze carefully even as he sculpted his face into apathy. "I did."
"How long had you been at Francis'?"
"Two weeks."
"Two weeks," Alfred gaped. "I thought he only just found you!"
Arthur shook his head, green eyes still meeting Alfred's.
"And he forgot to feed you?"
"I'm not sure that 'forgot' is the right term. He didn't feed me, except for the first time I woke up. He gave me fruit, and then after that seemed to decide that along with wings comes a lack of need for basics like food, which is only true in a very limited sense. It'd never kill me, but it certainly didn't do me any good."
Alfred gaped at him. "He gave you water though?"
The angel nodded. "In a dish."
They both looked at each other for a few long moments before Alfred turned to the passenger seat next to him, currently occupied with service station food, and rummaged about. He produced a packaged sandwich and offered it to Arthur.
"Best they do. Sorry."
Arthur looked between the food offered and Alfred's hopeful expression and the edges of his mouth curled up into a smile, wings dropping from their tense position as they draped around his shoulders.
"Thank you."
"Alfred, whatever you keep opening your mouth to say, spit it out," Arthur said with a sigh. They were driving again, the day outside the car fading into night and fellow drivers disappearing at the same pace.
Alfred opened his mouth again, snapped it shut, and then glanced quickly at Arthur in the mirror.
"Alfred," the angel warned. The blanket had been shifted to wrap around the angels bare feet, which were resting on the seat opposite him as he leaned against the window, cushioned by his wings. The restraint of having them covered had gotten to Arthur only a few minutes after they'd started off again. Alfred figured anyone that saw the wings through the window would probably just assume they were part of some costume. It wasn't a mistake you could make up close, but something a tired adult would just write off.
"How did Francis catch you?" he blurted out, keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Silence met his words and dragged on long enough for Alfred to back track.
"You don't have to say, I was just wondering," he said, chewing his lip, "Stupid question, you probably don't want to talk about it-"
"Alfred, shut up."
Alfred went obediently quiet, biting the inside of his mouth a bit harder as he mentally kicked himself.
Minutes ticked by. Arthur said nothing, and Alfred didn't dare break the silence again.
"Do you think I'm beautiful, Alfred?"
He almost didn't hear the angel speak. He almost thought that he'd not spoken at all. After a few beats pause, the silent expectance in the air prompted him to reply.
"The most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
In the mirror, Arthur's face darkened with an unhappy smile. "All angels are beautiful. Where would you say angels live, Alfred?"
"Heaven?" Alfred suggested. "In the clouds?"
"Right on both accounts, though it depends on your definitions of both. We call it Heaven, though I have never seen a God there, and among the clouds but not ones that bring rain. It'll sound strange, but where I came from is as insubstantial as I was before I ended up here."
"Insubstantial?"
"You've heard of the expression 'head up in the clouds'? Keep that in mind. Angel's are made up of thoughts and feelings, rather than actual bodies. They interact like conversation or music, mixing and overlapping but not actually touching. That's why they don't all fall to earth, thoughts are lighter than air."
Alfred silently listened. Absorbed and contemplated. A world filled with beings that were made up of thoughts like the ones in his head? He supposed it made sense, in a strange sort of way. The indefinable sensation of words, sentences and ideas in his head could exist physically in a different place, for all he knew. Trying to grasp the idea was making him feel dizzy, so he trained all his concentration back to Arthur.
"Angel's can watch Earth easily. What's harder is actually coming down. It's difficult to stay here, almost painful; they can't stay long. The wayward thought or idea that you forget is an angel briefly slipping through your mind, a lodger in your own body for just a moment. It's not dangerous for you, or them, even if you feel a little disorientated once they leave. It's an unconscious favour, in some ways, a little glimpse of Earth as an angel wouldn't get to otherwise.
"After a while, most angels get bored. They pass through a conscience once every few years, in different parts of the world but most of the time are unbelievably indifferent. Curiosity is a trait of humans, not angels. They are happy with thoughts on what they know and what they can coax out of what they know, uninterested in potential. I was different.
"I loved Earth, a huge amount by angel's standards. I've been to every continent, every country, trying to see as much of it as I could in a few seconds glance. I spent the most time in England and that's where I first saw Francis. He was only holidaying, he lived in France at the time, and in England I saw him only once. But he was constantly in my thoughts and as I have told you, thoughts are all an angel is."
Alfred was very no good at reading other peoples moods, but he could feel Arthur's. The angel's voice was filled with restrained anger, an anger Alfred's gut told him was aimed inwardly. Anger and bitterness and regret, mixed in with something he couldn't identify but made him want to wrap his arms around the angel and pull him close.
"I made a conscious effort to find him. Before I'd randomly moved through minds around the globe but now I was focusing on trying to find Francis', or the ones around him. I didn't even know why I was doing it, but I persevered anyway. It took me a year because I was mainly thinking of France, and by then he'd moved to America. But I did it." Arthur's voice was trembling.
"I began spending more and more time flitting through minds on earth, ones that were around him. His friends, his family; even yours, one time. Gradually, without my notice, my time spent in Heaven and my time spent on Earth became equal. And then it started to tip out of Heaven's favour.
"My thoughts were getting heavier. Turgid, that's how I considered an angels existence. Consistent and relentless, a world of white with no colour. I found myself longing for the times I could be on Earth, miserable because I could never stay there longer than a few moments. Or so I thought, in any case. Even now I'm not sure if I'd have done anything differently if I'd known exactly to what fate I was heading. I'm not sure if I wouldn't have embraced it.
"Eventually what I should have known was inevitable happened, even though I'd never heard of it happening to another angel before. What I suppose you'd call my spirit was so full of heavy, world-ridden thoughts of what could be and physical thoughts and that bastard Francis that it was sodden with them. I'm a fallen angel; my thoughts dropped out of heaven and into a palpable form.
"It was the most painful thing I've ever lived through. Everything I was, wrenched apart at the roots and seams, slammed back together in a mess of tangibility. I wanted to throw up and rip myself open at the same time, get rid of the thoughts that were seeping away from me anyway because it'd stop me being able to feel this agony.
"And then it was over. Then it was my face was pressed into the earth, not someone else's, my hands scratched and bleeding as I tore them on sticks getting to my feet. It was like visiting, but thousands of times better. My own arms and legs, head, fingers. I felt practised at this, the sensation wasn't so strange after I got used to it. The only thing that was alien was my wings, but they were fantastic. I could fly, still feel as weightless as a thought, but it was easy to slip back to earth and walk on the ground."
Quiet dry sobs filtered through his words and hovered like far away rain inside the car.
"I went looking for Francis. I thought this was the answer to everything I didn't know I'd been wishing for. I knew where he was, I knew how to get there. I thought that I'd meet him for the first time as myself, with him knowing it was me and that after that everything would have no choice but to fall into place. I flew there without resting; I didn't need to, I was running on hope and stupidity. Francis didn't need to catch me, Alfred, I went straight to him."
Alfred watched as the angels' hands came up to cradle his face, heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. The car swerved, Alfred righted it, and then pulled over onto the hard shoulder. He unplugged his seat belt and, without a second thought, scrambled into the backseat to wrap his arms round the angel. Arthur leaned into his embrace and cried quietly into his shoulder.
"I fell in love with him and out of everything I'd ever had and he put me in a bird coop. Just an animal, a beautiful creature in a cage. And I can't ever go home, I can't change back. I'm not an angel anymore and I'm not human, I'm a man with wings. I can fly, but I'm grounded and I don't know what to do and, God, it hurts."
Alfred held him closer and felt Arthur bury his face into the side of his neck, tears soaking into his shirt. They stayed like until Arthur's exhaustion won over, and he slipped into a drained sleep. Alfred gently leant him back against the seat, and climbed back into the front as quietly as he could, then started up the car and continued the drive home.