The first sin
Perhaps checking on Aiden first thing in the morning had been poor planning on his part. Aiden liked to take up time and ruffle his feathers, which had greatly impacted the rest of his day yesterday—lesson learned. If he had a strict schedule to follow and needed a clear mind at work, then he simply couldn’t afford to let Aiden take control like that. No. Today, he’d leave checks for last.
Before leaving, he splashed some holy water over The Bleeding and pressed a prayer on his arm, just in case. If he had some time after work, he could stop by the waterfall and take a dip, but it probably wouldn’t do much. The emotional labor of dealing with The Drowned heavily outweighed any possible benefit the waterfall might bring, which, once again, probably wasn’t a lot. There was no way of knowing. Still, Charmaine’s advice remained valid and deeply appreciated.
At work, the first thing he did was show his arm to Charmaine. Then, he told her nothing had happened and promised to stop by the waterfall sometime, not sure when. He had so much backed up work from yesterday that The Bleeding soon became the last thing on his mind. He started with the older files on his desk and slowly worked his way up to the newer ones at the cost of everything that arrived throughout the day. It was only halfway into the afternoon that he managed to start on today's files and early in the evening when he actually got to his mail. Quickly flipping through it, Aiden’s name came up, scrawled on a light blue envelope. His heart skipped. Aiden’s handwriting resembled a drunk man on acid, barely legible, yet, somehow, full of personality all the same. He hadn’t dropped by when he usually did and had also failed to inform Aiden of the time change, so the letter was probably about that, whether he’d be going over at all. He would, of course. It was his job, his responsibility; something he'd signed up for and would absolutely deliver on. He just—well.
He'd been avoiding it, or better yet, he'd been avoiding Aiden. It wasn’t fair, of course. Aiden hadn’t done anything wrong; he was just infuriating and if the color of his eyes was the perfect shade of brown, and the shape of his jaw was just sharp enough, and the smirk on his face looked like somebody else’s, it wasn’t his fault. He was still Nathaniel’s responsibility and shouldn’t be penalized for any of that.
In the army, he'd picked up the habit of always having some sort of weapon on himself, even while off-duty, in case of an emergency. There was no good reason for him to carry weapons in Paradise, but the weight of something as small as a letter opener was enough to bring him great relief. He used it to slice open the envelope and pull out an empty item delivery form which, when turned, revealed Aiden’s note on the back, penmanship even worse than before. Knowing him, it would be no stretch of the imagination to consider he might’ve been drunk while writing it.
Where are you? I thought checks were supposed to be daily. Sorry for being a dick yesterday. Are you still coming over? I miss you.
Despite how much Aiden vexed him, his heart still ached at the vulnerability shown here. It made him wish he didn’t care for Aiden as much as he did, because he'd been conditioned to, because Aiden was a work assignment, because his reputation depended on it. But Aiden made his pulse race, his blood sing and memories flood his mind with something long forgotten. He didn’t mean that, though. It wasn’t all he could think of, or why a breath caught in his throat every time he so much as considered crossing the valley. He couldn’t wait to see Aiden again. Except that wasn’t true at all.
He knocked on the door—Aiden didn’t seem to have automated this place yet. Again, a voice from inside told him to come in. With his heart skipping a beat and a sense of foreboding falling over him like a thick veil, he walked in, taking a tentative step into the living room to find Aiden on the couch surrounded by letters and beer cans. Typical. So he was drunk.
Since there was no outside indication of the passage of time in the dark district, Aiden probably didn’t know how long he'd been drinking, writing to Nathaniel the moment he'd failed to show up this morning. While Aiden could very well have checked his phone for the time, the papers scattered about told Nathaniel that probably hadn’t been the case. He’d been busy.
When their eyes met, a wide smile pushed dimples into Aiden’s cheeks, a mixture of surprise and delight so gorgeous that Nathaniel’s breath caught in his throat. It occurred to him, like a thought rushing from the back of his mind, that Aiden was the most beautiful man he'd ever seen. This guy, sprawled all over the couch, drunk, in a t-shirt that was at least two sizes too small for him somehow rivaled the only one who'd ever made an impression. The hint of color across his cheeks, the flair of his grin, the dimples that finally strayed from the original but still made him the more attractive one. Nathaniel’s heart choked him. He shut the door.
“I knew you’d come over; there was no way you’d forget about me,” Aiden remarked, hubris in his voice, speech slightly slurred.
The way he sat, askew on the seat, on the brink of slipping right off it, rode up the hem of his shirt; a sliver of skin flashed just above the waistband of his pants, a strip of underwear poking from underneath. Nathaniel had to force his eyes away, training them on Aiden’s face, blood running warm. Fuck.
“What took you so long?” Aiden asked, eyes half-lidded with intoxication.
“Work, which is what you’ve been giving me,” Nathaniel answered, perhaps a little too harshly and totally uncalled for, but that was on purpose. Aiden's smile faltered.
Sheepishly, Aiden moved up to sit like a normal person, gathering his mail in a messy stack. He placed the pile on the end table and glanced up at Nathaniel, hand patting the empty spot next to him. “C’mere; tell me how I can be less of a burden,” Aiden teased, low and flirty. It closed Nathaniel’s hands into fists, pulse skipping in his veins. An incredible urge to take Aiden up on that rose up in his chest—no, he wouldn’t do it. “Despite what you might think, and what I’ve made you believe, I’m actually on your side here.”
Unwavering from his strategic position near the door, Nathaniel squinted. “What does that mean? What have you made me believe?”
“You know, that I’m an uncaring asshole who just wants to make you angry, a soulless businessman from Silicon Valley. For as much as I play the part, none of that is actually true. I mean, that’s who I was, sure, but not anymore.” Leaning back on his seat, Aiden dropped the stare. “You’re just—you’re so nice to me that I don’t know how to act. For the first time in my life, I have nothing to offer. I don’t know how to pay you back.”
Yeah, he wasn’t buying that. The performance alone perfectly illustrated why Aiden had never made it as an actor, despite living only a few minutes away from Hollywood.
“How about trying not to be such a dick all the time, huh? You could start with that.”
A tug on the lips, but the smile never formed. In the short silence that followed, a strange poignancy fell over Aiden, almost out of place. It didn't seem like it belonged near someone so successful and sure of themself. It made Nathaniel wonder if the vulnerability of that letter hadn’t only been a drunken tactic to get him to come over and if this wasn’t an act either. Aiden might just be bad at candor.
“I can try,” Aiden admitted, glancing up with two brown eyes so round and warm that Nathaniel's entire chest ached, the very same ones that had stared deep into his own in the silence of the meadow, open and nonjudgmental, as he'd touched the side of his best friend’s face and felt the softness of his skin under delicate fingertips. His lungs filled up, fists pushing nails into his palms. How was Aiden so like him? “But I can’t promise that I’ll make it.”
“You will,” Nathaniel reassured him, acting out his part of the scene; sitting on the grass after practice, under the shade of the firs and cottonwood trees, sweaty and winded, trying to catch his breath. “You just have to keep at it,” he added, reciting from memory. Aiden’s eyes were bigger than the moon and the shade of his hair was just the right type of blond. The afterimage of an angel, a reminder of who Paradise had lost.
“You know I always do my best.”
“That’s more than enough for me.”
“Says the angel.” Aiden grinned, following the script to perfection, no hiccups, no hesitation, as if he'd been there that day. How did he know? This interaction had happened such a long time ago that Nathaniel had almost forgotten about it. Says the angel would be his response before shoving Zea on the shoulder, making him laugh.
Loosening his fists, he took a few steps toward the couch. Who was Aiden? The looks, mirrored after his best friend’s likeness; the attitude, insufferable with just the right amount of sweet; the complete indifference toward Paradise, as if he already knew everything it had to offer. Could it be…? Speechless, with a scowl pressing hard into his forehead, Nathaniel took a seat, close enough that their knees touched, askew so he could stare Aiden in the face and study the brown eyes that so innocently looked up at him. Zea? That wasn’t possible.
“Did you miss me?” the boy in front of him whispered. A hand lay over his own, pushing it against the seat. He could almost feel the grass under his palm, hairs standing on end.
Yes, he wanted to say; so fucking much, but there was a knot in his throat that choked him alive, impossible to breathe. How was this happening, and did anybody know, and was it really him? Questions flooded his mind but never made it past his lips because a hand found his face, and touched his jaw, and pulled him close, eyes slipping shut.
Their faces met in a firm kiss, mouths pushed hard together, Zea’s lips as soft as he remembered them. His heart punched his throat through the pain in his chest, aching. The hand behind his neck drew him near, held him in it, a lifeline and a noose. Fingertips touched the shaved portion of his hair, a hand brushed him on the chest, and a tongue met with his lip, warm on the skin. Reflexively, instinctively, he moved to let Zea in and completely take him over, deep, hungry, with a warmth he'd never felt before, setting his entire body on fire. It brought him back to their tent in the woods, and their bunk bed in the barracks, and their long nights after hours with Zea on his skin and no breath left in his lungs.
A hand moved up to touch Zea’s face, brush a thumb across his cheek and bury fingers into his hair, pulling him closer, off the couch. Naturally, they shifted, moving together without rehearsal, grabbing and pulling Zea into his lap, kiss unbroken, teeth tugging. Zea’s body was a familiar weight that rubbed on his crotch and set his skin on fire, hands digging fingers into Zea's thighs, the urge to have him growing deeper. A sound came up his throat only to die on Zea’s tongue, muffled against his mouth, followed by another as Zea moved, and rubbed, and ground down on him, heavy on his thighs, holding him by the neck.
A tug and Zea's hands slipped into his tunic, flat against his stomach, warm enough to leave goosebumps behind, feeling him up to the chest. The teeth on his lips bit down, the hand on his chest grabbed it, and he could no longer resist. Breaking the kiss, he pulled Zea's shirt off, quickly so their faces could meet again, teeth practically clinking together, kissing hard enough to hurt. Hands touched him on the sides, running over his skin, down to palm him through his tunic, rubbing against him, making him groan.
“Do you want to?” Zea asked, speaking into his mouth, pressing onto his crotch.
“Yes.”
Fuck it; he'd missed this way too much, waited for too long. He never thought he'd see Zea again. It was insane to think he was actually here, in some human’s body, touching him just how he used to, reminding him of their time together. Nathaniel didn’t care. It didn’t matter.
He helped Zea with his pants, pulled the tunic open and let Zea sit on him, fire in his blood, breath in his lungs. His hands dug fingers into Zea’s hips as he buried himself into carnal sin, skin burning, shivers running down his spine.
Their bodies moved in perfect synchrony, a dance rehearsed to perfection with two wings wrapped around them both to make up for the lost pair, face hidden in the crook of Zea’s neck, breath hot in his ear. The couch staggered with each thrust, blood singeing every fiber of his being, burned.
It was unlike anything he'd ever experienced, different than every other time before, when Zea was an angel, in his own body. Piety crumbled to dust compared to this, the closeness that bound them together, the intimacy that beat their hearts as one, the heat that clung his skin to Zea’s and dug fingers into his flesh, far deeper and more consuming than the stain on his forearm could ever be. Were there class benefits to sin?
Holding Zea tight in his arms, squeezing him hard against his chest, Nathaniel felt nails dig into his back. Teeth sunk into his neck as waves finally crashed, fire burning through the pit of their stomachs. Anchored to one another, they went still, pulsing with each other’s heartbeats on the palm of their hands. An exhale and the embrace loosened, allowing Nathaniel to lean back against the couch and breathe, ears ringing, body shivering.
Aiden smirked. “I’ve never been fucked like this before,” he commented, breathless and wicked, leaning forward to tower over Nathaniel. A hand grabbed his face and held it as Aiden landed a kiss right on his mouth, heavy enough to push his head back. Feeling his skin sing, Nathaniel grabbed Aiden by the neck and kissed him back just as hard, diving in deep to get as much out of this as he could because he knew he’d never do it again.
A smirk pressed against his face before Aiden pulled back, eyes shining wide, the embodiment of sin. Not Zea, definitely not Zea, but right now, as Nathaniel's blood ran hot and his chest expanded, he didn’t care. Looking Aiden square in the face, at the wicked glint in his eye and unholy smirk on his lips, Nathaniel realized that, actually, he would’ve done it again. With Aiden in his lap like this, he would’ve taken it back from the top.
“And you said you’d never do it.”
“Who are you?” Nathaniel asked, breathy, making the smirk in front of him widen.
“I’m your worst nightmare.”
The still surface of the lake was a perfect mirror of the sky, glittering with the stars that cut through the darkness and the galaxies that existed just beyond this realm. The waterfall itself was hidden deep within the forest, miles from shore. Black ink swallowed Nathaniel’s feet in a shocking cold. It sent a shiver up his spine, but still he pushed forward, stepping further into the lake, letting it swallow him up inch by inch, from calf to knee to thigh to hips, further and further, into a blanket of ice surrounded by a perfect stillness.
There was little movement as he walked in, a mostly undisturbed sheet of black that looked like an oil reservoir, numbing his feet. The tip of his feathers brushed over the surface of the water, forming long shapes that stretched further with each step. The next one couldn’t reach the bottom, sending him deep underwater, swallowed in a single gulp. His wings folded upwards as he fell, submerged with the rest of his body. They could’ve swum him up to the surface but didn’t.
Silence. Nothing to see or hear, hands and feet numb, his entire face aching. The weight of his body dissolved into the inky blackness, taking away any indication that he still sank, or perhaps even rose, replaced with a constant feeling of stillness. Unmoving, he now existed between the surface and the bottom, a speck of life in the very stomach of the lake. Quiet, infinite, staring into the abyss, he pushed out one last breath and breathed in the darkness, letting it gush down his throat and wash his organs, one with purity and salvation now, a thin layer of light. He could feel his sins peel off like a layer of grime, pulling and tugging on the skin, cleansing his soul. The blood in his veins ran brighter, skin glowing.
A shockwave through the water, shaking him where he floated, brought the screeches of The Drowned. They scratched his ears, making his skin crawl. They'd noticed his presence, possibly alerted by the brilliance of his halo, already on their way over. Shrieks grew louder, traveling fast underwater. Faint dots of light, far in the distance, pierced through the abyss, moving and twisting, ten, twelve, twenty pairs. They spoke a language that he couldn’t understand, words like metal scraping together. His teeth clenched.
Eyes surrounded him in a vortex of yellow stares that illuminated one another and the mass of eel-like limbs, starch black, that formed their figure. Thin and flowy hairs touched his legs and brushed him on the arms, closing in on his body. Instinctively, he flinched away. The eyes moved erratically, glancing him up and down, inching closer as their limbs began to wrap around him, snuffing out the glow of his skin in pitch black. Long limbs brushed his neck and wrapped around his mouth—they were about to claim him. It was time to get out.
His wings, trapped and tangled in their limbs, were strong enough to struggle and make room to wiggle free, pushing on the water to get him moving. The drowned didn’t fight; they only claimed what wanted to be claimed, so when his legs kicked and his arms flailed, they let him slip from their grasp, eyeballs watching him in dozens of dimly lit orbs.
Swimming towards what he hoped was the surface, he still had the sensation of hairs brushing on his arms and legs, which only helped to make him move faster and thrash more vigorously. It was dark, but steadily growing quieter, and glancing down, he could see faint little dots in the distance, whispers and screeches unintelligible and muffled.
Breaking through the surface, he immediately expunged the contents of his stomach and lungs, vomiting into the lake, coughing and gasping for air. Although he didn’t breathe, his body still behaved like a human’s, since, for the most part, it'd been shaped after one. Wet and weighing about a ton, his wings were much more useful submerged in water, rowing him to shore where black pebbles shone silver in the moonlight, easy to keep track of.
The sand and stones gave under the weight of his palms, digging shallow graves where he pushed and crawled away from the water, wings heavy at his sides, cleaving the shore with their weight. He moved to a sitting position and stayed right there for a moment, allowing his body to rest.
Lit up by the vibrant glow of his own halo, as well as the shine of the moon, he noticed a writhing limb of darkness on his left arm, clinging to it in what seemed like a tangled mess of its own body, dull eyeballs along its length. A full-body shudder shook him with fright, heart pounding hard into his chest. Not thinking, he quickly grabbed The Drowned and ripped it off his skin, slithery to the touch like viscera slipping through his fingers. Adrenaline hurled it far into the lake. A small tremor indicated its absorption.
The branding on his arm was gone.
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