Page 108 of Angel of Thursdays

His mother hadn’t been mad at him, and he wasn’t mad at her. She was just being herself, the way Wuyue could not stop being May. The next time he went⁠—

“I think she liked you. She said your eyes were big, which is… I don’t know,” May said for the sake of saying something, adjusting the records in his arms. “God, she talks so much. Thanks for⁠—”

“It was fine, May.”

* * *

The apartment was cold when they got in because it was a bastard, but it was his bastard. May breathed in the lingering cheese smell from the morning and stretched and all of his joints crackled. Cassiel walked in behind him and closed the door softly. May made for the space heater and didn’t take off his—Cassiel’s, but his, they needed to discuss the custody really—jacket until he was good and ready. Then, sufficiently warm again, he placed the records he’d hugged all the way from the house to here onto the low table.

“The turntable’s been eating the same food since Christmas,” he said to Cassiel, who had finally removed the wool coat and was standing by the fridge, looking at magnets.

“Do you know how to change it?” Cassiel asked, not turning yet.

May scoffed. The answer was ‘maybe,’ but that wasn’t relevant. He walked back over and draped himself onto Cassiel’s back, arms looping around his waist, nose pressed into the space between his shoulder blades. He inhaled. The dumb cologne that smelled amazing through a no doubt disgusting chemical reaction with Cassiel’s sweat.

“Caught you,” he said.

“Mm. You’re tired,” Cassiel replied. His hand, larger, rougher but still more elegant, reached back and touched May’s hair, the thing he’d fixed himself.

“And you’re not short,” May carried on.

“Did someone say I was?”

“Maybe. Maybe that someone also said your eyes were bigger than mine.”

Cassiel let out an exhale which May had been categorizing under Basically-A-Laugh. May laughed too, felt it rumble through his chest, and then Cassiel turned around in his embrace and May was the one being held.

“May,” Cassiel said.

“Yeah?”

“I do like you.”

May’s ears heated up. He thought about that almost-mixtape, Cassiel’s pretty handwriting in the notebook in the brown ink that shifted between caramel and dark chocolate and the word Love and how he could turn it into a joke.

“I like you too,” May said instead.

Cassiel’s hand came up and held his face like it was something better, something found. His thumb pressed into May’s cheekbone and the flesh was real, the bone beneath it real, the man—real. The touch and the man stayed there.

May counted to five for luck and kissed him.

EPILOGUE

CASSIEL

A THURSDAY IN MAY

Cassiel woke to a stifled sneeze. His body knew the time instantly. There were two types of light against his eyelids he could feel—artificially warm on one side, pale and dim on the other. He opened his eyes and shifted toward the warmth. The screen of May’s laptop lit his face in the pre-dawn, illuminating the shadows under his eyes, the tongue stuck out at the corner of his mouth in concentration.

“Morning, angel,” May said, clicking something on the trackpad. Cassiel watched him for two, three seconds, the reflection of the screen in his eyes, before he shifted upright. The spring air off the ocean was damp but cool on his skin and it made him more awake.

“It’s almost sunrise,” he said. He didn’t need to look at the clock to know, but he peered at the corner of the laptop to confirm. 5:35 a.m.

May cracked his neck and removed his headphones. New, because May had not owned proper headphones in years and Cassiel could not watch him edit audio with a pair of broken earbuds any longer. The new ones were the result of one almost-argument and one reluctant acceptance and one week’s worth of consumer research. He rubbed his ears, then reached a hand to take his mug from the nightstand. The pink house still looked pink despite the light. He drank and Cassiel frowned because he could smell the dark roast and knew exactly how long it had been sitting, cooling.

“Don’t get up,” May said, but Cassiel had already shifted, his legs over the side of the bed, feet finding his slippers.

“I need coffee,” he said, ignoring the eye roll aimed at his back.