An emotion in purple
At The Resort’s front desk, he found out Aiden wasn’t here. He’d come down early in the morning with a glass in hand, not an envelope, and sat by the mailbox outside. The front doors usually stayed open during the day, so the receptionist had been able to see him. When Jean showed up, Aiden had talked to him before leaving for the woods, possibly headed to town. He hadn’t returned since, but had kept the booking on the room, which made the receptionist believe he’d be back at some point.
Nathaniel offered them a quick thanks and left for the nearest fountain. A bar appeared on the surface of the water, half a block away from Aiden’s apartment. That reminded him he’d never actually told Sio to update the paperwork. He’d do it later.
This bar was a relatively calm place, if compared to its neighboring businesses, offering a small selection of food and strong coffee—not a party place in the slightest. If anything, it was the quiet and semi-deserted diner-like establishment where partygoers usually crashed after a fun night. At five in the afternoon, was Aiden one of them? Considering how the dark district disregarded the passage of time, he might as well be. Approaching the bar, Nathaniel had his suspicions confirmed. Aiden sat at a booth by the window with a short coffee cup in front of him and his face hidden in both hands, holding his head, elbows on the table. Hangovers didn’t exist in Paradise, so this must be bad news. With his heart leaping for his throat, Nathaniel walked in.
Standing by Aiden’s seat, he placed a hand on the back of his neck, running it over the short portion of his hair with a small, private greeting. Aiden moved up to glance at him, fully reanimated. The moment their eyes met, a big smile dug dimples into his cheeks, pushing him to stand on both feet and greet Nathaniel back, a little breathless, chest filled up. The closeness between them peppered the air with almonds and oranges, stuck to Aiden’s skin as if part of it, something distinctly different than any cologne he’d worn before. Nathaniel’s pulse skipped, a slight scowl on his forehead. Did it bother him? Should it bother him? His jaw clenched.
The pseudo-intimacy that his wings provided, blocking any view from the inside of the bar, brought a distinct eagerness to Aiden; a breath caught in his throat, an electricity in the short space between them. He expected something, waiting for it, a second away from taking the initiative and going for it himself. His eyes shone, his chest filled up, and something around Nathaniel’s heart squeezed it, suffocated it, lodged it all the way up his throat. Instead of giving Aiden what he wanted, Nathaniel slunk away, letting out a breath, shoulders dropping. He took a seat across from Aiden and watched him sit back down, face tinted red, an embarrassed half-smile replacing the previous one. Not sure why, since he’d never touch Aiden in public anyway; expecting otherwise was just ridiculous.
“Why are you here?” he asked, keeping a close watch on Aiden, on the awkwardness of his shoulders and the color of his cheeks. A shrug.
“For coffee.”
Squinting, he leaned back onto his seat, arms crossed over his chest. “Now try sincerity.”
That tugged a fleeting half-smile on Aiden’s face, joyless. “I just needed a break.”
“From The Resort or from partying?”
“I didn’t know when you’d be coming back.” Aiden’s tone was mildly defensive, an instinctive reaction to criticism that didn’t exactly hold up. “I was just wasting time the only way I know how. I didn’t think you’d care.”
“I care about everything you do,” Nathaniel corrected, softer now. “I wasn’t interrogating you; you’re free to act however you want to. Did you have fun?”
The defensiveness from a second ago immediately dissipated. Aiden’s shoulders relaxed, eyes glancing out the window. “Yeah, sure.” His gaze dropped to his own hands next, limp over the table. “Kinda wish you were there, though.”
Before Nathaniel could comment on that, Aiden promptly changed the subject, glancing up at him. “How was the meeting?”
His blood ran cold. “There are certain foundations of the administration of Paradise that don’t necessarily fall into a mutating scale of good or bad and the board meeting is one of them. It went exactly as it should’ve gone.” He uncrossed his arms while speaking, leaning forward to rest an elbow on the table, eyes sharp. “I paid your friend the Oracle a visit today, to see how she’s doing.”
A scoff from Aiden, sarcastic. Good. “She’s not my friend.”
“I know. She told me just a minute ago how much she doesn’t give a damn about you.”
Silence from Aiden, eyes down at the table between them.
“You mentioned being a pawn last night,” Nathaniel continued. “What did you mean? What game is she playing?”
“She wants me to take you down for some reason. It’s like, a whole thing.” Aiden glanced up at him, holding the stare. “Obviously, I’m not doing that.”
“Why wouldn’t you? We don’t even get along.”
“Yeah, we do,” Aiden quickly retorted, thoughtless and sincere, straight from the heart. “The connection we have is astrological; we were assigned to each other.”
“If the Oracle’s plans are so big, why wouldn’t that be part of it? What if you’d been looking for someone else this entire time, but she pointed you to me to fit her own narrative?”
“No, I was looking for you; that just happened to be useful to her. It’s the other way around.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Because…” Aiden faltered, eyes holding his own. “Because it has to be. We—we’ve talked about this; it’s beyond our reach. We agreed on that.”
“The fact is you were looking for someone, spoke to her, and later found out that someone was me.” He gestured with a hand, a half-shrug on his shoulders. “It just seems a little suspicious, is all.”
“Because it was obviously orchestrated, but not by her.”
War and Justice. Could the Oracle have been involved in their plans? Due to her position in Paradise, he found that hard to believe. A criminal could very well be involved with War, but it was a little more difficult to see how they could be of use to Justice. It just didn’t seem likely. Maybe Aiden was right.
“I thought we were on the same page about this,” Aiden protested, exasperation in his voice, hurt.
“We are,” Nathaniel reassured, more tender now, trying not to be so hurtful. “I’m just concerned about what she might pull off.”
“No, you’re worried you won’t be able to stop it.”
Their eyes met. “I know I will.”
“I know that too.”
Glancing out the window, Nathaniel exhaled, unable to relax his shoulders. His foot tapped under the table, but he kept that leg from bouncing—a conscious effort. “When you were in contact with her, did she mention someone by the name of Blaz?” he asked, meeting Aiden’s eyes again, still focused on him.
“No, I don’t think so. She only told me about your friend.”
He nodded in silence, eyes darting over Aiden’s shoulder—of course. Off to the left, further inside the bar, an angel stood behind the counter, tending to it, and two other people, scattered here and there, sat a few booths away. Only the clinking of silverware cut through the silence.
“Do you wanna get out of here?” Aiden asked, a hint of apprehension in his voice, as if ready to cower from a blow. “I want to show you the club across the street.”
“Is that where you were all day?”
“Yeah.” Brown eyes, wide and vulnerable, stared at him.
“I don’t dance.”
“You don’t have to; there’s a lounge upstairs with booths and drinks. We can just sit and watch the crowd.”
That didn’t sound too bad right now.
Music boomed just past the front door, shaking his rib cage with each beat, loud enough to muffle every voice in the club and make it impossible to understand one another without shouting into each other’s ears. The first floor had a long bar pushed against the wall, neon green and pink, with hundreds of bottles in lit-up shelves behind the counter and a crowd of people lined up to order. Past the bar was the dance floor, completely packed with moving bodies under flashing lights, and on the far left, hidden in a corner, was the stairway up to the second-floor landing. Aiden didn’t waste much time down here and quickly led Nathaniel to the stairs, where one of the barmen caught sight of them and called out Aiden’s name.
“Another Tom Collins?” the bartender asked, fixing his eyes on Nathaniel, for some reason; a hard stare that held his gaze through the question, despite not addressing him at all. What was that? There was judgment in the angel’s voice, but he couldn’t tell why. He’d never come here before; this man didn’t look familiar at all—were they supposed to know each other?
Aiden paused in front of him, standing at the foot of the stairway. “Yeah, but I’m ordering upstairs.” They left for the second floor.
The VIP lounge was quieter and a lot less crowded too, with booths along one wall and some spare tables closer to the railing that overlooked the dance floor. The bar up here was at the back of the room, a sized-down version of the one downstairs, except the bartenders didn’t seem to know Aiden this time around. They nodded at Nathaniel, acknowledging his position, but didn’t say anything.
With a bottle of mezcal and a couple of drinks in hand, they left for one of the more isolated booths along the wall, hidden within tall partitions. Nathaniel took the only seat with a view, overlooking some of the tables by the railing and the flashing lights above the dance floor, leaving Aiden to take one of the two seats next to him. A few tables ahead, some humans talked, although the music was far too loud for conversations to reach them, a row of silhouettes in the partial dark. Aiden poured them both some mezcal.
“So this is what you do all day,” Nathaniel commented, watching Aiden put the bottle down. “Somehow, it’s better than everything The Resort has to offer you.”
“You know they’re trying to psychoanalyze me, right?” The question came just before Aiden sipped from his own glass, eyes fixed on him.
“Who’s they? I know Richard is a psychologist, yeah, but he’s not the only one on staff. You’ve met Ophelia—is she trying to psychoanalyze you too?”
A small tut from Aiden. “I just have a bad feeling about that place. I know you trust your friends more than me, but there’s something going on in there, I just know it.”
“Like what? Soul disembowelment? They just gave you a bad first impression, Aiden; nothing weird is going on.” His head shook during the last sentence, hand bringing his glass up for a sip. The mezcal burned down his throat with a pleasantly smoky aftertaste.
“Man, you gotta at least agree that it’s fucked up how Richard tricked me into attending group therapy, like, why didn’t he just invite me? Why is it called a board meeting? It all just feels deliberate.”
“Why are you so averse to therapy?”
“So you agree that’s what it is.”
“You said it. I’m just curious as to why you think that and why you hate it so much. Are you afraid Richard might learn something he shouldn’t?”
“I just don’t like being nitpicked and analyzed; it’s fucked up. It feels like I’m the frog that gets cut up in science class, like I’m no longer human.”
“Sounds like you’ve been to therapy before.”
Brown eyes, as dark as the night, locked themselves on his face. “I fucked my therapist.”
Nathaniel grinned. “Of course you did.”
“Great role model, great medical professional; knew exactly what I liked and used that to his own advantage. Awesome dude.”
“I think you just like an authority figure.” He shrugged, studying the sharp edges of Aiden’s eyes, fixed perfectly on his face. In dangerous territory, he decided to push forward, despite every reason to fall back. “You fucked your therapist, you dated your boss and now you’re here, with me. I said I was responsible for you and that immediately got your attention, didn’t it? You like the care it entails.”
“How many pages into my report did you find that? Or did you figure it out by yourself? Because I could’ve told you for free. Actually, anyone could’ve told you that, because if you don’t like to have someone look after you and care for you, then you’ve either never experienced it, or you’re a fucking liar.” Aiden’s tone was sharp and aggressive, but nothing that managed to pierce through Nathaniel, mezcal burning down his throat.
With nothing to add, Nathaniel bounced his eyebrows in acknowledgement, allowing Aiden to continue, softer now, shoulders lowered.
“There’s nothing better than knowing someone cares about you, that they’re thinking about you even though you’re not there, that they’re looking forward to seeing you again.” Aiden’s voice was surprisingly tender, a poignancy that squeezed his heart in a tight fist. “If you’ve ever had someone tell you you made their day just because you had lunch together, or ran into each other on the street, or sent them a text, then you know there’s nothing better than that. Just knowing you matter to somebody else.”
You sound extremely lonely. His lips parted, but he didn’t say that. The alcohol in his stomach burned, the warmth in his chest spread, but he still wasn’t drunk enough to hit Aiden with something like that. Actually, he didn’t think he ever would.
“You know what I’m talking about; you like having people depend on you,” Aiden continued, stern now, leaning back on his seat. “You like the praise and devotion that come with being Paradise’s savior. Angels stare at the wreath on your head every time you come around and you eat it up. That’s why you wear it.”
What kind of turnaround was that? His heart raced, blood warm in his veins. “You’re deranged.” Nathaniel scoffed the comment into his own glass, nearing a growl. His hand closed into a fist under the table.
“Tell me you don’t like the power, Nathaniel. Tell me you don’t get off on being respected like one of the fucking gods. Tell me you don’t love the privilege of looking down on everyone else knowing they’re all below you; knowing they’ll do whatever you ask and thank you for your service.”
Their eyes held the stare, cutting. With his heart beating like a drum, and an urge to shut Aiden up stuck halfway up his throat, Nathaniel remained silent, lest he proved Aiden’s point by accident. Perfectly satisfied, Aiden brought his glass up for a sip, hiding an infuriating half-smirk behind it.
“We’re not so different, man. You love attention as much as I do, except yours comes in a different package.” A shrug and Aiden broke the stare, dropping his gaze to his own glass, contents swirling. “Truth is, I need you as much as everybody else does; I’m not gonna say I don’t. You leave and I have nothing to do; it becomes a matter of filling in the void between your visits.”
His heart skipped, hand bringing the glass up. Suddenly, he didn’t want to participate in this conversation anymore.
Aiden slouched against the padded backrest, eyes down, pensive. “It wasn’t always like that, but you have a way of making yourself so important in someone’s life that everything else pales in comparison. My day revolves around yours and I have a feeling I’m not the only one; I’m sure dozens of people depend on you going to work every day, and dozens more depend on what you do outside of it. Their reliance is your lifeblood, as much as your visit is mine.”
His heart beat deep in his chest, muffled by a feeling around it, a tenderness that he couldn’t name. No one had ever reached into his core before, not like this, pulling him inside-out, undoing everything that made him just for a look. The glass in his hand was empty. Quietly, Aiden reached for the bottle of mezcal, keeping his eyes away from Nathaniel. He placed his glass next to Aiden’s for a refill.
“Tell me about your day.” His tone was soft, barely recognizable as his own voice. Aiden filled his glass.
“I just tried to make the hours pass faster.”
“Aiden.”
Aiden set the bottle back down, eyes off into the distance. “I went to the library. There’s a big one near the museum with hundreds of books inside, and like, five people total. Thought I’d find something to fill in the gap, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that wasn’t happening; it just wasn’t going to, so I came here.”
“The bartender seemed to know you,” he commented, a viciousness in his tone, dripping with a sort of venom that he hadn’t intended to use. It was an accident; he didn’t actually feel that way.
“Yeah, he made me fifteen Tom Collins. It’s just—it’s a way to snip the day in half when you’re blackout drunk and high on coke. It’s what I used to do to get rid of the weekends.”
“You mean the spare time until you got to see Ben again.”
His remark got a look from Aiden. Holding the stare, they both drank.
“Did you sleep with him?” Nathaniel asked, conversational, doubling the size of Aiden’s eyes. “The bartender.”
“No.” Aiden’s voice was loud, matter of fact, borderline offended.
“Who was it, then?”
“Just… a couple of strangers; I don’t even remember their names. The bartender was just trying to be cute, because I’ve been here all day and he’s seen me with all these different guys. He probably thought you were one of them.”
Hm. Well, that wasn’t all that far off from the truth, was it?
“I hope you realize that, if you keep delegating the meaning of your life to other people, you’re never going to be responsible for it.” His tone was nice, eyes down at the contents of his own glass, disingenuous. “You’re revoking agency, which makes it easy to blame everybody else for your misery. How could you possibly enjoy your weekend if Ben’s off with his family? How could you see the day through without me there?”
Silence from Aiden. When Nathaniel looked up, all he could catch were brown eyes that swiftly glanced off, furtive. The lack of a reply prompted him to continue. “When you blame someone else for your shortcomings, you’re exonerating yourself. You’re enabling self-destruction in a justifiable way, because if you showed up drunk to work on a Monday morning, then maybe Ben should’ve spent Sunday night with you, and if you spent all day in a drunken haze, then maybe I should’ve come back earlier. It’s a pattern of unaccountability that stalls any growth.”
“Well, I still made it here, didn’t I?” Aiden cut in, eyes sharp, locked on him now. “I must’ve done something right.”
“Of course you did, but you don’t have to stop there; there’s plenty of growth to be done in Paradise too. I’m just saying you have potential.”
A shrug from Aiden, disinterested, ending the conversation right there. Fair enough. In quick retrospect, maybe Nathaniel shouldn’t have gone so hard on him.
Aiden drank in silence, eyes down at his own glass. Blacklight lit up the side of his face, hair glowing like an inverted halo, bright violet. He finished off his mezcal shot and moved onto the cocktails, disinclined to make any further conversation, which Nathaniel honored by keeping quiet too. Despite the unspoken apologies hanging off the tip of his tongue, it was still peaceful to just exist next to each other. He should apologize, of course, but the mezcal burned, and the neon lights started to all blend together, and his heart pulsed completely numb.
Lyrics poured across the club and the beating of the music shook his ribs, pushing onto his chest as he drank from a glass and watched Aiden do the same, head moving a little bit, fingers tapping to the rhythm. Light shone through the contents of his Tom Collins and colored it in varying shades of purple, making the lemon slices that floated within look like plums. Absently, he entertained the idea of Aiden being a lot more than just an assignment, and this, right here, being more than just two friends drinking at a club. The thought escaped him immediately after, lost in the mesmerizing shimmer of Aiden’s drink.
Their eyes met, held the stare, and Aiden asked him if he knew who this singer was. He did, but said that he didn’t, so a half-smirk would pull at the corner of Aiden’s lips and prompt him to tell Nathaniel all about them, speaking over the music. None of it was groundbreaking news, but there was a glint in Aiden’s eyes and an enthusiasm in his chest that drew Nathaniel in and held his undivided attention all night through; the hint of a smile whenever Aiden touched on something funny, the way he tilted his head the tiniest bit to the side, the color of his eyes in the dark, the shape of his lips around each spoken word—fascinating.
With mezcal in his bloodstream, Nathaniel let Aiden guide the conversation to the futile and the pointless, talking to him as if newly acquainted socialites at dinner; half-flirting, half-mocking, all incredibly entertaining. It was obvious that Aiden just wanted to have a good time, steering clear of anything deeper than his favorite color, which Nathaniel granted in a heartbeat, playing along with these characters they had just created, trying to make Aiden laugh, and it sounded like fireworks. Deep in his chest, stones rolled down a stream, and he felt himself chuckle too. By the end of the night, Aiden was surprised to find that his favorite color was red.
“Mine’s also red,” Aiden confessed, a shine in his eyes, a half-smile on his face. In the blacklight, he glowed; beautiful, perfect.
“Looks like we’re meant to be.”
Staring at the full-fledged smile on Aiden’s face, wide enough to push dimples into his cheeks, he knew the alcohol in his stomach wasn’t responsible for the warmth that ran in his veins.
Unlike the warped and inaccurate way humans viewed the passage of time, in need of a tool to tell it, angels simply knew it, intrinsically connected to the universe, in perfect unison with its machinations. Nathaniel was painfully aware of his utterly unavoidable departure. He listened to the sweet timbre of Aiden’s voice, and the explosive nature of his laughter, and drank the last of the alcohol without much input because of the blade that cut through the warmth in his chest and poisoned his bloodstream. Strangely, he didn’t want to go. A movement from his left, and Aiden touched his hand, fingertips brushing over his knuckles.
“What is it?” The question was a whisper, teeming with concern, accompanied by a delicate scowl on Aiden’s forehead. “You’re introspecting.”
“I have to go soon.” Not soon, but now; two glasses ago, three topics ago, and the scowl that stared at him deepened, grew openly pained. It hurt to see it. “Are you spending the night here?”
“Can I come with you?”
“I’m going to bed, Aiden; it’s not entertainment.”
“Why? This is Paradise; we can party all night and still make it just fine to work in the morning.”
“You mean you can party all night and do whatever you want, but I need to rest. This isn’t my afterlife; it’s yours.”
Aiden’s neck moved, Adam’s apple bobbing with an awkward swallow. “Why can’t we spend the night together like we did yesterday?”
“We can, but only on one condition,” he explained, holding Aiden’s full attention. “That you stay at The Resort for a while. Just a few more days, if it’s really all that bad.”
Aiden gave him a look halfway between intrigued and suspicious, but didn’t exactly question him about it, accepting the deal at face value.
Safely locked together in room 201, part of him expected Aiden to wrap an arm across his shoulders and pull him into a kiss, but that didn’t exactly happen, or not right away. Aiden mentioned needing a shower and invited him to come with, very nonchalantly, in the opposite way that he usually flirted, which prompted some doubt to come forward. Still, Nathaniel accepted.
Under the warmth of the falling water, they passed each other the soap and did each other’s backs. The feeling of Aiden’s hands on his skin, fingers pressing lightly between his wings, relaxed his shoulders and closed his eyes, heart beating deeply. No one had ever touched him like that. Actually, he’d never let anyone touch him like that, raised to always watch his own back, inherently distrustful of his surroundings. Aiden ran both hands along his spine, grazed his waist, and pressed a kiss to the nape of his neck that plunged his heart deep into a feeling he couldn’t name, but refused to let go.
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