Page 43 of Angel of Thursdays

“Eleven blocks,” May told him.

“It’s thirteen from your apartment.”

“You mapped it?”

“Mm. When you said you were coming.”

May pulled up a stool. The laptop came out of the backpack and went on the empty stretch of bench beside Cassiel’s things.

“I brought work,” he said. “Kevin’s podcast stuff. I’m gonna sit here and edit and you’re gonna do your watch thing and we’re just gonna—be in a room together. Like study buddies.”

Cassiel looked at the laptop. “The gain on your preamp is going to clip if you’re using the built-in mic input.”

“I’m editing, not recording. The files are already—” May rolled his eyes. “The files already exist.”

Cassiel closed his mouth.

“You just heard something audio-adjacent and couldn’t help yourself,” May said.

The corner of Cassiel’s mouth moved. The glasses made it different—his face was slightly magnified behind the lenses, and the almost-smile was unguarded.

They worked, each on their own thing. May put one earbud in, the right one dangling so he could hear the room, and opened the project file. Beside him Cassiel picked up the tweezers and bent back over the open watch.

At some point Cassiel started humming. May had heard it before, though he couldn’t place the melody. It was something that was going to nag at him later. But that was later.

Cassiel’s hand landed on May’s knee. It wasn’t on purpose. His fingers hadn’t closed, hadn’t squeezed. Just his hand, resting there, like his body had reached for something his mouth hadn’t turned into a request yet, and if May had to think about what the request was he was not going to get anything done.

He could hear the tickticktick from the machine at the far end of the bench. Thin, fast, a heartbeat at double speed.

“What is that?” May peered over.

“Timegrapher.”

“Okay, Doctor Who.”

Cassiel, not going for the bait, handed him the loupe. May brought it to his eye and the movement opened up—gears smaller than letters, a wheel ticking fast and delicate, the whole mechanism alive under magnification. It kept going. Ticktickticktick⁠—

He handed the loupe back and Cassiel’s thumb passed over the scar between May’s thumb and index finger, feather-light but deliberate.

There was a word for what they were doing—side by side, shoulder to shoulder, both facing forward instead of facing each other. The word was too close to ‘domestic’ and May couldn’t think it while the STDY notification sat in his phone with a dancing lady emoji at the end of it, so he refocused on the work.

Peter came through once more, setting a mug of coffee on Cassiel’s bench without asking, appearing and retreating like a Gorpcore butler. At some point—two o’clock? three?—the barred light from the front window had shifted from white to gold and May’s coffee was cold, and he’d stopped pretending to work forever ago. Cassiel set down his tools and rolled his neck, his joints popping loud in the quiet shop.

“Hey. Come here,” May said.

Cassiel turned. May reached over and pressed his thumbs into the muscle at the base of Cassiel’s neck. The scent on his skin rose, woody and soft, underneath the metal polish. He felt the other man’s body go rigid and then a moment later, release. May’s thumbs found the knots and pressed and pressed, and Cassiel’s head dropped forward, and the quiet in the shop was soft, like the light from the gooseneck lamps. Warm.

“You’ve been sitting like that for hours,” May said.

“Mm.”

“Is that a good ‘mm’ or a ‘please stop touching me’ mm?”

“Just ‘mm.’”

May pressed harder. Cassiel exhaled. The sound went through May’s hands and into his wrists and he could feel it—the knots releasing, the warmth, his own pulse in his thumbs. The room was real. His hands were real. The body under his hands was real, and warm, and leaning into the pressure instead of away from it.

He kissed the back of Cassiel’s neck. Light. Just his mouth against the skin above the collar, where the woody scent turned into gin and tonic and skin. Cassiel’s shoulders dropped another inch. May kissed the spot again, then again.