Page 33 of Angel of Thursdays

Shitty Betelgeuse and Shitty Deadpool exchanged waist-level thumbs ups, and the bus rumbled on.

A kid in a dinosaur costume hopped from foot to foot at the Judah stop. May watched the dinosaur’s mother adjust the costume’s tail so it wouldn’t drag and felt something clearing in his chest, a raincloud making way for sun, and he drifted on.

* * *

Sparrow’s purple paint wasn’t cheerful today, muddy in the fog. Just a building, same as the boutique ring shop beside it and the place with the soy wax candles that deceptively looked like other things. There were pumpkins (possibly candles) in the window as May passed. He snapped a picture for Louis, then strode onwards to the café.

He pushed through the door, declaring, “Betelgeuse!”

The barista, whose name was Jonas and looked like a Jonas, nodded. He was wearing a tiny witch hat on his mop of brown curls. No other embellishment or attempt made. May thought that was beautiful.

He was five minutes early, which wasn’t a record but still respectable. Cassiel’s bench spot was empty, which was wrong. Cassiel was always here first: drink ordered, bench claimed, fidget ring already clicking. May glanced at his phone. 9:55. No texts, no nothing. He looked around.

The specials board had been updated in orange chalk: PUMPKIN CHAI LATTE: IT’S SEASONAL.

He lingered near the counter for a minute or so, then when Cassiel didn’t emerge from the bathroom or spontaneously bamf into existence, he shuffled up to Jonas and ordered the pumpkin chai because it was seasonal and he was weak.

An interminably long time later, the door jingled open and Cassiel finally walked in and something was wrong.

Wrong was the volume dial turned down on a person who was already close to functionally mute. The general silhouette of him was normal. His green blazer all buttoned, his hair tidy, his messenger bag on his shoulder. Everything was technically right, but the fidget ring wasn’t moving. The ring was always moving—clicking through its beads in that quiet, constant rhythm that May had learned to read. And the clock above the front door said it was ten past.

“Hey,” May said. “Happy Halloween. Are you a ghost?”

Cassiel sat down. No answer, no detour to the counter, and no drink. Even the act of sitting was heavier than usual, like the bench had more gravity today.

May waited. He had a whole bit prepared about the pumpkin chai, seasonal!, and a follow-up about whether Cassiel had opinions on Halloween, because Cassiel had opinions on everything but expressed them like he was being charged per word, and drawing those opinions out was one of May’s favorite Thursday activities. But the bit died before it had a chance to come out.

He knew what this was. Not the specifics or the cause, but May knew what running on empty looked like, had seen it in the mirror enough times to recognize the bones of the thing. And Cassiel, who was always fine, buttoned up, tidy, ring clicking, sight line maintained, was sitting across from him with nothing clicking and nothing going on behind the eyes and nothing to say about Shitty Betelgeuse.

So May shut up.

The pumpkin chai appeared in the window and May went to retrieve it. Jonas tipped his tiny witch hat. May took an indulgent sip of the drink, then pulled out the purple notebook and pretended to look at something as the espresso machine made a ssshshshh sound from behind the wall. A girl at the window table turned the page of a thick-ass book.

After a while—two minutes? five?—Cassiel stood up, went to the counter, ordered his drink, and came back. The sit was no less heavy than before.

“They’re doing pumpkin chai,” he said.

“It’s seasonal,” May answered quickly.

The ring clicked. Once. Twice. May smiled.

They sat. May found the pen in the bottom of his backpack and started scribbling in the purple notebook. No words, just a series of squares, checkboxes for nothing, the pen moving because his hand needed to move. At some point May looked up and Cassiel was watching him draw empty checkboxes, and May could feel the attention on him.

“You don’t have to be quiet for me,” Cassiel said.

“I know.”

“But you are.”

“Egocentric much? I’m being quiet for me. You’re just passively reaping the benefits of my profound personal growth.”

The sound Cassiel made wasn’t a laugh, because laughs weren’t allowed to be that small and that tired. Cassiel’s hand moved on the table, a slight shift of position that brought his fingers an inch closer to where May’s pen hand rested on the open notebook.

May looked at the fingers. Looked at his own hand. His scar, between thumb and index finger, white and slightly raised, caught the light from the window.

He put the pen down and placed his hand on Cassiel’s forearm. His hand on the olive green of Cassiel’s blazer sleeve, resting, the way you’d put your hand on a table to steady yourself except the table was a person. He could feel the muscle under the fabric. The warmth of skin through cloth. The very slight tension that rose in Cassiel’s arm and then, after two seconds that were each a year long, released.

And the thing that happened—the thing he’d been not-looking-at for weeks, the thing the purple notebook knew about and the yellow notebook didn’t and the green notebook had no business knowing—pulsed in his body before it trickled up to his head. A warmth that started in his palm where it touched Cassiel’s arm and climbed through his wrist and settled somewhere inside his chest cavity. He could feel his own hand and he could feel what his hand was touching. The two sensations were connected and they were both his and he wasn’t behind the two-way mirror, he was here. Cassiel’s arm was here.