by Todd Young
Angel then heard Hunter clearly say, “You want to see me again?” his telephonically distorted voice raised eagerly.
“Yeah. Like I said. I’ve got a thing for you. I like it rough, just like you did. But I was hella angry when you took off without paying me. Then—”
A sudden pause.
Angel frowned.
“No. Barry? Who’s Barry?”
Angel stepped closer and placed his hand on Cole’s shoulder. He leaned forward and lay his head against the phone, but Cole pulled quickly away, frowning at Angel and stepping backwards.
“No. Like I said, I never heard of any Barry … I don’t have no pimp.”
Now there was a long pause through which Angel caught snippets of Hunter’s voice. He watched in anguish as Cole alternately frowned and nodded. He looked harassed now, and he was shaking visibly.
“With a friend,” Cole suddenly said, a catch in his voice.
Another pause.
“No. I can’t just give you his address. Can’t you tell me where I can meet you, or can we go to Bernie’s again?”
A silence in which Hunter failed to reply. Cole lifted his eyes to Angel and shrugged. Then he said, “Okay. Yeah. Sure I’ll come. You give me the address and I’ll come.”
Cole walked to the table by the door and found a pencil. He made a flapping motion with his hand, indicating paper, and Angel struggled to find something in his jeans. He drew a receipt from a carry-out store from his pocket and handed it to Cole, who turned to the table and jotted down the address.
“Tomorrow?”
A final pause.
“Yeah. I’ll come tomorrow. No. At sundown, like you say. I’ll meet you at sundown.”
43
Cole ended the call and threw the phone onto the couch. He walked into the bedroom and flopped chest-first onto the bed.
“I figure that’s me done for the day,” he said.
“Was it that bad?”
“You’ve got no idea. That guy!” Cole turned his head and tucked his chin in so he could see Angel. “I don’t think. I mean, he didn’t seem like a dark fucker — not when I was with him. But on the phone. His voice. He’s seriously … fucked.”
Angel nodded. He climbed onto the bed and lay beside Cole, studying him quietly as he brushed Cole’s bangs away from his forehead. “You’re like a miracle,” he said.
“A miracle?”
“When I first saw you, on the street, you looked like a dirty hustler, like a diseased, fucked up kid … and now you’re like …”
“What?”
“I was going to say an angel.”
“Yeah, well if I’m an angel my wings sure are itchy.”
Cole reached over his head and scratched a shoulder blade, and as he did so, a ripple of annoyance crossed his brow. “What’s that?” he said, plucking at the shoulder of his T-shirt and scowling. He got up quickly and drew the T-shirt over his head. “Am I bleeding or something?” he said, turning his back to Angel.
Angel didn’t know what it was. At first he thought it was a pale patch of something powdery, like flour. He got up and frowned over it before touching it tenderly. As soon as his fingers made contact, he drew them away, exhaling sharply, as though he’d been cut.
“What is it?”
“Feathers,” Angel said, exhaling in disbelief.
“What?”
“Feathers.”
Cole looped a hand over his shoulder and reached for the small patch of pale, white feathers that had erupted from beneath his skin. He plucked at them and then turned his attention to his other shoulder, where Angel saw there was a second, smaller patch of feathers breaking through. Cole groaned and then turned to Angel, still scratching, a beatific smile on his face.
“That feels divine,” he said.
“Divine?”
“Yeah. Like — I don’t know. Scratching the worst itch you ever had.”
“Show me,” Angel said.
Cole turned his back to Angel again and Angel studied it worriedly. On either side, on the ridges of Cole’s shoulder blades, a patch of feathers had burst through the skin like stuffing bursting from a couch. Tentatively, Angel reached forward and traced his fingers over the feathers again. They were as smooth and soft as a bird’s, but as Angel fingered them, Cole writhed uncomfortably.
“Pluck at them,” he said.
“Pluck at them?”
“Yeah. Just sort of stroke them and tease them out a little. Pull at them.”
Angel did as Cole said and watched in awe as a spray of feathers unfolded from what appeared to be a natural part in Cole’s skin, a part that reminded Angel of the pouch of a kangaroo.
They ate lunch, sitting at the kitchen table, curiously silent. When Angel stole a glance at Cole, he had the impression he was shimmering, shining with newfound life and strength and what appeared to be a silver aura. It was fascinating, but at the same time, Angel felt strangely distanced. He felt that Cole had stepped beyond him now and become something that couldn’t in any sense be called human.
44
Angel woke before dawn, wrapped in a wing. He didn’t know what it was at first, simply that it was soft and warm and that Cole was beneath it with him. Angel blinked at the ceiling, gazing at the spangled light of a passing car. He ran his hand over the wing, recognizing it for what it was as he drew his fingers through the pure white feathers. Cole sighed in his sleep and Angel answered with a sigh of his own, though it was a sigh of frustration and thwarted desire. Here was Cole beside him, but to Angel he was distant now — and … different.
Angel pulled his hand out of the wing and turned to Cole, turning over beneath it. The side of Cole’s face was pressed against the pillow, his dark eyelashes brushing his cheeks, the papery skin of his eyelids fluttering with the passage of some dream, unknown to Angel. Was he flying with a bird, the way Angel did, or had he moved beyond that now, so that he was dreaming of some heavenly realm?
Angel sighed and turned onto his back again, awkwardly concerned with what had happened to Cole. He glanced at him once more, reassured by Cole’s beauty, though he wasn’t sure why he should have been. What did it mean? An amalgam of skin and bones? And now … feathers?
Angel frowned, wondering why it hadn’t happened to him. Did the fact that Cole’s wings had sprouted mean that Cole loved Angel — in a sense that Angel didn’t understand — in a sense he could never understand?
And the wings? The transformation itself?
Well, it had certainly seemed a very odd thing last night, before they had gone to sleep, by which time Cole’s wings had lengthened and extended. And Angel now knew that this was what he wanted for himself, that this was a thing he’d been yearning for. This something — and he hadn’t even realized it was a something — this something in his chest, which he’d tried to allay by smoking cigarettes, was a yearning for love, and not only for love, but for a change within himself, for the sort of change that had miraculously, and it was a miracle, transfigured Cole.
As the dawn brightened, Angel came to a full understanding of the size of the wing that enveloped him protectively. It had continued to grow overnight and now seemed impossibly large. How would Cole go out? Wouldn’t a mundane person be able to see his wings?
Angel didn’t know. He closed his eyes, remembering the way Cole had looked last night, standing naked under the single bulb in the living room, his body hairless, pale and glowing in a haze of silver light. Angel saw now why he had no pubic hair. It would have been absurd, animal, and somehow revolting even. Cole’s pale skin was as much a part of his angelic nature as his wings.
Gently, Angel again began to stroke the wing that covered his naked body, trailing his fingers through the feathers and wondering at how soft and silken they were. He didn’t suppose a bird ever let itself be touched — at least, he’d never stroked a bird. Yet even so, Angel felt that the most beautiful of all birds couldn’t have feathers like these, whiter than a dove’s. He sighed. In his chest, the yearning, as
though of fluttering wings intensified, and quietly, he began to weep. He was beside the thing he loved most in the world, and it was as though he were unable to touch it. Yet he was touching it. Cole was on his stomach, his warm body pressed against Angel’s, and that harmonious rushing, like crashing waves, was resonating between them. But strangely, Angel felt cold and distant.
Surely he loved Cole?
He couldn’t love him any more, could he?
He turned onto his side again and watched Cole’s sleeping face, his rosebud lips slightly parted. In time, Cole slowly woke and they stared at one another, Angel watching as Cole came to a realization of where he was and who he was looking at. Cole stretched. His wings towered over them and flapped gently three or four times, sending a cool flurry of air, like that from an Indian fan, ruffling the white sheets that festooned the bed and turning Angel’s skin to gooseflesh.
Cole lifted himself onto his hands and onto Angel and hugged him, his wings folding behind his back with a flurry of feathers.
Angel laid his hand on Cole’s hip.
“I want to fuck you,” Cole said, his voice full of sleep.
“Fuck me?”
“I’ve been dreaming of it.”
They stared at one another in silence.
“I don’t usually—”
Cole silenced Angel with a finger on his lips. “I want to fuck you.”
Angel nodded, lost in Cole’s green eyes, which had darkened, as though the lake water had deepened. As Angel stared, Cole slid his hand onto the small of Angel’s back and then gripped his ass, squeezing it firmly.
“I won’t hurt you.”
“No. I’m not worried about that. I just don’t like it.”
Cole’s brows lowered as a thought crossed his mind. “In the dream, we were in water. Under the water. And we were kind of — dancing. Swimming, but it was a dance. We circled one another, came together, kissed, and then breathed together. Our breath was like water. I breathed into you and you breathed into me. And like that, beneath the sea, I fucked you.”
“We’re not in water.”
“Yeah,” Cole said. He slipped his hand out of Angel’s and ran it over his chest, twisting a finger around his nipple and tracing a line to his groin. He slipped his hand beneath Angel’s balls and held them gently for a moment. Then he rolled them in his hand and began to stroke the insides of Angel’s thighs.
Angel started to harden. He reached for Cole’s shoulder and trailed his hand to Cole’s wrist before taking Cole’s hand again. Cole bent forward and kissed Angel on the lips, their hands clasped between them. He propped himself on an elbow, suspended over Angel, and then began to run his fingers through Angel’s hair, smoothing it tenderly away from his brow. Angel closed his eyes. Sex had never been like this, with another person gentling him. It had always been he who took this role, and he liked it gentle, though it was certainly strange to be on the receiving end of it. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and then laughed when Cole ran his finger around the inside of his ear.
“Ticklish here?”
“Yeah. Real ticklish.”
“You like it?”
“Not so much,” Angel said, chuckling lazily.
Cole shuffled down in the bed and wrapped his lips around Angel’s cock. He ran his tongue around Angel’s head, along the underside of his shaft, and then forced his mouth forwards, taking Angel’s cock into the back of his throat. His wings expanded, forming a V over the bed, one that seemed impossibly immense. He ran his hands up Angel’s sides, over his collarbone, his neck, and onto his jaw while he continued to suck gently on his cock. He slipped a finger into Angel’s mouth and Angel sucked on it, sucking on Cole’s finger while Cole sucked on his cock.
He arched his back, feeling as if he were close to coming, and Cole lifted his head. He knelt between Angel’s legs, reached for the lube and slipped a finger into Angel’s ass. Angel closed his eyes, wondering at the sensation and thinking it didn’t feel so bad. He supposed he could see how a guy might like it.
Cole moved forward, looming over Angel again, a hand on either side of his chest now, the wings shadowing both of them. Angel parted his legs and Cole pushed forward slowly, effortlessly, it seemed. Though Angel remembered Hunter, with Cole it seemed so different as to be another thing entirely. Cole wasn’t particularly large, and the same rushing, fluttering feeling that was becoming familiar to Angel began to flood his senses again, flooding him with joy as Cole slid into him.
Once inside, Cole lowered himself onto Angel’s chest and tucked his head beneath Angel’s chin, his blond hair as ruffled as his feathers.
Angel ran his hands down Cole’s back and gripped his ass. He pulled Cole firmly into him and held him rigid while he breathed painfully. Then he closed his eyes, felt the gentle breeze on his brow from the steady beat of Cole’s wings, and for a moment he wondered if this wasn’t heaven. How had life ever gotten to be like this?
Cole strained against Angel’s grip, escaped from it and drew back before forcing his pelvis forward with a sudden jolt, a violent action that he began to repeat, smacking against Angel’s ass with sharp, jerky slaps. He was strangely practiced, his rhythm rapid, an odd staccato that threw Angel into the darkness of his imagination. As he began to feel he could no longer stand it, he opened his eyes to see Cole push forward with a final, sharp jolt. Cole held himself suspended, his bottom lip under his teeth and his eyes closed. Then he pumped forward with a final, unexpected thrust before dropping onto Angel’s chest and lying still. A lazy groan slowly escaped him.
Quietly, Angel came.
Then they lay in silence, in an affectionate embrace, their breathing heavy.
“Now I’m in you,” Cole finally said.
45
It was an hour or two later when Angel’s shoulder blades first began to itch, though it was more than an hour after that when Cole asked him why he was scratching.
“I don’t know. It’s just … itchy.”
“Take your shirt off.”
Angel peeled his T-shirt over his head and twisted his body, trying to see, though there was no way he could catch a glimpse of his shoulder blades.
“There. It’s happening to you,” Cole said.
“To me?”
“Dark feathers.”
“Dark feathers?”
“Yeah. Like your hair.”
Cole ran his fingers over them. “They’re only just sprouting.”
Angel stretched his hand over his shoulder and recoiled when he felt something unexpected, a ruffle of feathers sprouting from beneath his skin. He felt a little sick suddenly and swayed. Then he reached over his other shoulder and scratched again.
“They feel like …”
“What?”
“I don’t know. They’re not as soft as yours. They’re all bristly.”
“They’re twisting out of you.”
Angel walked through to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. He twisted one way and then the other, frowning at the feathers. It straightaway seemed odd to him that he was wearing a pair of jeans. Cole had been naked all morning, a thing Angel hadn’t questioned, though as he thought about it now, he couldn’t imagine Cole wearing clothes anymore. It would just look … ridiculous.
The day wore on, Angel pacing and scratching and Cole alternately laughing at him and telling him to come and play Grand Theft Auto, which Angel didn’t seem to be able to concentrate on. And the sight of Cole playing it, an angel, naked, seemed absurd.
Angel lit a cigarette, took a drag, and then slapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “You know, I don’t think I need these things anymore.” He stubbed it out, though five minutes later he had lit another and smoked it to the end.
He flopped against the couch and ran his hands through his hair. Then he shucked down and rubbed his shoulder blades against the back of the couch as though he were a bear scratching his back against a tree. He stared at Cole’s wings, frowned over them, and then moved forward. He gripped th
em at the base, from where they erupted from beneath the skin, and then ran his hands toward the apex of each, where they turned like elbows, beneath which they felt powerfully built with muscle and sinew.
“Do they feel good?” Angel said to Cole.
“Good?”
“Yeah.”
“They just feel like — I don’t know — like I’ve always had them.”
“You don’t want to put any clothes on?”
“Do you want me to?”
“No — well, maybe a pair of briefs.”
Cole paused the game and came out of the bedroom in a pair of briefs, a red pair with white piping. It was like seeing a child in a diaper — someone who should have been naked, clothed.
Angel chuckled.
“What?”
“You look ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you liked these ones,” Cole said, frowning at his groin.
“No — it’s just. It’s like you should be naked now that you’re a …”
“What?”
“Angel.”
“Do you think that’s what I really am?”
Angel lifted his shoulders hesitantly.
“I don’t feel any heavenly calling.” Cole twitched his nose. “But there’s this smell. Do you smell that?”
Angel took a breath, frowned, and then tested the air again. A hint of it, yes, and it was like — what? Hadn’t he smelled that before?
“It’s like … a pine forest,” Cole said.
“Or sea air.”
“Or some sort of cologne.”
“I thought it was …” incense, Angel had been about to say, but he knew. He had smelled it before. In Jason’s apartment. “I smelled it at …” though now that it occurred to him, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to tell Cole.
