Page 92 of Angel of Thursdays

“I mean, yeah. Your dad gave me a tour and now I know how to wrap a garment hooker.”

“Hanger.”

“Same thing.” May took a bite of his sandwich. “There’s a whole diagram on the wall about wrapping them. I wanted to take a picture and send it to you but then⁠—”

But then they hadn’t exactly been talking and the first proper breach of that wasn’t going to be a picture of a diagram, even if the diagram was awesome.

“It’s been there since 2013.”

“Of course you know that.”

“My dad drew it. Minju colored. I abstained.”

May banked the admission and didn’t dwell on it. He’d think about it later.

“Your sister was… nice,” he added, because he’d already started this. “And Jaewon invited me to his birthday party.”

“He’ll expect an invitation to yours.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

When they left, the fog had cleared and the sun hit Irving Street at a low angle and turned every shop window white and gold.

“Walk?” May asked, already heading toward the novelty candle shop which now displayed big red heart candles and big pink… something-elses.

“Sure.”

There were five blocks to 4th Avenue. They walked side by side and May’s hand found Cassiel’s between the second and third block and stayed there. Swinging.

* * *

Every other time May had been in Cassiel’s apartment, it was dark or darkish, the warm lamp light Cassiel kept the place dialed to. But in the afternoon the bay windows filled the living room with grey light through the French doors, and it reached all the way across the bedroom floor, catching dust, landing on everything—the desk and the nightstand and the CD player. The annoyingly tidy bed.

May stood in the bedroom doorway holding the bag with his father’s jacket in it and his Otagiri mug he’d just filled with water from the kitchen. Cassiel was behind him, and the apartment was quiet.

May set the mug on the nightstand and dropped the bag on the floor as Cassiel hung up his coat, revealing a dark blue button-down, a nicer version of the one May owned.

He was right there. Close enough that May could smell the cologne on his neck, fresh, not just a residue on a jacket. He turned and May placed his hand on Cassiel’s chest. Under the button-down, his heart was racing.

“I missed you,” May said.

Cassiel’s hand came up and covered May’s, pressing it flat against his chest. The look on his face was the one where he was clearly working on saying something.

But he chose not to. He leaned forward and kissed May, and May’s other hand came up to the back of his neck, and the kiss was unhurried and warm and tasted like choco mint. May laughed—cackled—into it because he was so fucking glad this person was still here, still his.

Cassiel’s hands went to May’s waist and pulled him hard against his chest, Cassiel’s back against the doorframe. May’s sweater was untucked and the fingers on the skin above his hip were annoyingly cold. May groaned.

One upside about the weird layout of the apartment was that it was very easy to stumble to the bed. May pulled Cassiel down with him onto the covers, the afternoon light on both of them, overcast daylight, and he could see everything—the mole at the hollow of Cassiel’s throat, the tension in his jaw, the way his eyes actually looked lighter the closer you were to him.

May’s sweater rucked up, the shirt underneath it too, and Cassiel discarded his own shirt much more efficiently while May worked on the belt. His hands fumbled, laughing again because the buckle stuck and Cassiel’s mouth was on his neck and it was hard to multitask when one of those tasks involved wet, wet tongue.

Impatient, or just showing off, Cassiel removed the belt himself, pushing May’s hands aside. Then soon enough—or finally—his skin was against May’s skin, the full length of him hard against May’s thigh. May shuddered, rolled his hips up and⁠—

—and Cassiel shifted, reaching past him to the nightstand drawer for the lube, and May snapped his teeth at him. Then the drawer closed, Cassiel was back, any other thoughts banished to the shadow realm as Cassiel’s hand moved down and wrapped around him. May’s back arched off the mattress as he keened.

He could feel it. All of it. His body was his body, his brain was his brain, and the hand on him was Cassiel’s hand and he was not watching this from somewhere else, he was not outside the room looking in. He was in the light.

Cassiel’s breath came ragged against his throat. May reached between them, found him hard, and the sound Cassiel made when May’s hand closed around him was fantastically wrecked. They moved together—rhythm found and gone in the next instant. May’s free hand gripped the back of Cassiel’s neck to hold him there, to hold anything, and Cassiel’s forehead pressed hard into May’s shoulder.