As Ralph left, I realized that everyone who had been staying the night was present. No one that we wouldn’t want knowing our secrets, but more than Sam would be comfortable having witnessed such a fight.
Ralph and Lilly were friends, sort of, in a confused, greyish mess. By fighting with Ralph, I would be seen as somehow fighting with Lilly, which would cause a problem with Grace. Even if Sam weren’t already going to be upset because guests had seen that little fight, I’d hear it because Grace was upset because Lilly was upset because Ralph was upset.
And I don’t think I should ever get in trouble for something I did twice removed from the one demanding I be punished.
Sam turned at my look toward the hallway. He glanced to the hallway and then over the room.
Several mortals had witnessed the fight as well. A few of them swayed, clearly drunk as could be. All they had seen was a fight between two brothers, and one who crossed a line. They’d think I was strange. They might stop talking to me.
But that was fine with me.
“Go,” Sam said to the guests who were staring openly.
The guests filed out, but for Lilly, who stood stubbornly by Grace’s side. After a moment of silence, Lilly marched up to me and slapped me across the face. My cheek stung a prickling sensation that turned to a burn as she clenched her hands at her sides and glared at me.
“You should be ashamed of yourself. Claiming to represent Heaven and behaving like that? For shame.”
She was gone before I could protest. Grace, behind Sam, just gave her head a slow shake and then left. Leaving Sam, Gabe, and me in the room alone.
“They’re going to drink the alcohol and probably do something foolish. Gabe, would you go keep an eye on them?”
Having someone watch them was hardly necessary. Sam was merely giving Gabe an excuse to leave the room without making it seem like Gabe might be running away.
“I’d rather be there than here,” Gabe growled, slipping his hands into his pockets before he considered me for the briefest of moments. He let out a sighed and gave his head a shake. “Humans give enough conflicting messages about the beliefs of Father without you muddling it up more.”
“Muddling more?” I protested.
But he left without explaining what he meant, which left me with Sam. He thrust his fingers through his thick hair and considered me, fingers still tangled in his hair.
Over the past four years, lines had appeared at the corners of his eyes. He was a little rounder than he had been before. Something about happy men meant that they put on weight, even when they worked out to keep in shape. Sam could still take any of us down, or a demon if one were to be so bold.
But he was rounder, softer than he had been before meeting Grace. The edge to his temper was no longer a burning rage, barely contained by the physical flesh he had chosen to house himself within. The old Sam would have done something terrible to me for that fight. If there hadn’t been witnesses, he would have taken me to the astral plane and ripped into me in a literal sense.
Even if he had softened on all sides, he was still our leader.
“We go over this every century,” Sam said. “This fight of yours has got to stop. Grace is here now. She’s talking about adoption. We can’t have children in the house with you two attacking one another over the smallest thing. Frankly, Mike, you’re, damn it I don’t even know how to say it. You’re fighting. But you’re not fighting him. You’re fighting something else, and I don’t know why or what. It’s something you have to figure out and soon. Before it rips the entire house apart.”
I stared mutely at him for a moment, knowing that he expected me to say something, but not wanting to dig myself a bigger hole. The silence drew out as he stood there expectantly, wanting me to speak up for myself.
“I’m not fighting anything,” I said.
Sam’s eyebrows raised. He slipped his hands into his pockets and considered me carefully before he sighed out.
“Really? Because what you did looked to everyone, myself included, as very homophobic.”
I shook my head and raised my hands away from my sides.
I had done the opposite of homophobic, surely. I had touched him. He was the one who had lashed out at me, not the other way around.
“I kissed him, how am I the homophobe? He’s the one who hit me for it.”
“Why did you kiss him?” Sam asked.
Silence followed the question because I didn’t have an answer for him. It had been an impulsive motion, one that I hadn’t thought about before I did it. In doing it, I had found a feeling, as if that might end the fight. It had ended the fight, but not quite in the way I had hoped.
Maybe it was because his pleasure had soaked into me on the astral plane, and I had reacted to it. Soaking in emotion there could affect our decisions in the physical plane. Anyone who said otherwise was telling themselves tales to make themselves feel better.
Never before had I reacted so strongly to an emotion before. Not even while soaked in Sam’s rage.
“You kissed him, Michael,” Sam said pointedly.
As if that explained why I was a homophobe for doing it, I didn’t understand how that worked, so I shrugged and shook my head.
“I know that. I was there.”
“Then you called him a human, little better than a possessed human.”
Again, he spoke as if that explained everything. I didn’t get it. I hadn’t done anything wrong. If Ralph was acting like he was possessed, it wasn’t my fault. I was simply calling it like it was.
“I was there,” I protested.
And I hadn’t done anything wrong.
“So why would you do that?” Sam asked.
Again, I struggled to find an answer.
I didn’t want to admit to him that I had soaked in Raphael’s emotion. I knew better than to do something so stupid. We kept our wings out of humans and held our being out of human emotion. That was the way it was. Emotion didn’t pool like that usually, it took a strong emotion, or a Heavenly Host, to pull it off.
“Michael, damn it. Ralph’s never… you can’t tease him like that. He’s the most fluid of us all. He’s the only one who still sees to men in a personal way. He’s probably a xer or ziddle, or whatever in the hell those people call themselves. You can’t treat him like he’s some flamboyant man.”
And you can’t call him a xer or a ziddle.
My annoyance flared because ‘ziddle’ was clearly derogatory and Sam should have known better. He had always been a little rougher, a bit more stubborn than the rest of us.
But he lectured me on being respectful of Ralph and then talked about him like that.
“He is a flamboyant man,” I countered
“He’s not. He’s an angel of the Lord and as such has no gender. He just happens to possess a penis that he likes to use because it’s easier to pleasure himself with that rather than a vagina. With the advent of the vibrator, he might change flesh over to a woman. He’s already broached the subject. Frankly, at this point, if he wants to change, you’ll be changing with him.”
“What? I’m comfortable in my flesh, and I’m not the one who did gay porn for three years, so why am I the one being punished for it?”
“You aren’t being punished for doing gay porn, and neither is he. He saved a lot of humans with what he did. And it’s weird, and I don’t understand how it worked, but it worked, and that’s the point.”
“Then why do I have to change?”
“Because you’re comfortable in your skin. We aren’t males, Michael. We will be returning to Heaven, and there is no room up there for angels who insist on dick measuring contests. We became male because it was easier to move through the mortal world, but sex and gender are human constructs. If I had my way, at this point, you’d be a hermaphrodite of some sort. You’re just lucky we wrote it into the rules that we can’t do that because it might have resulted in one of us being killed in public and we wanted to avoid that whole thing. Otherwise? Yes, I’d do it.”
Grace walked back in with a wicker basket overflowing with bottles of alcohol. It had several bottles of wine, two bottles of vodka, one of scotch, and three that were brands that I didn’t recognize. She dropped the basket at Sam’s feet with a heavy thump, clearly irritated still.
The moment she walked in, her eyes locked with mine, and she didn’t look away, even after dropping the basket at Sam’s feet. She glowered at me, casting Sam one look before she folded her arms and glared back at me again.
“Lilly told me to drop it, but I’m not going to,” Grace snapped, her face turning toward Sam for a moment before she refocused on me.
Sam flinched, almost winced, then slipped his hands back into his pockets and just stared at me. It was a new look, one that he had taken on over the past two years. That look meant that Grace was upset and one of us was going to fix it.
Or else.
He had added a great many expressions to his repertoire since meeting Grace. We had learned what each meant through trial and error, so we knew what the ‘or else’ was with intimate detail.
“What the hell is your problem Michael? Why are you picking on Raphael?”
“Ralph always blows things out of proportion,” I protested.
“Raphael,” Grace snapped. “Also, Lilly is Lillith now, and we’re just to shut up and deal with it. Anyone says otherwise, and I’ll smack them.”
Sam and I shared a look around Grace. Neither of us was certain where that had come from, but it was probably a declaration from Raphael and a snarky response from Lillith. She always just ran with whatever he said like they were old friends and he was the leader of their little group.
“Fair enough,” Sam said with very little resistance.
“Is it true that you boys changed his name to Ralph after centuries of Raphael because someone had compared his name to vomit?” Grace said, turning on Sam.
Whose eyes went just a little wider as he kept his attention on me. That was a new sort of look, one I hadn’t seen on Sam’s face before but I had seen on the faces of several desperate men. He knew he was trouble and was likely hoping that I would take all the blame for it.
Ralph’s nickname wasn’t my fault, but if it would keep me from being skinned alive, I’d take the blame this one time.
“Yes,” I said. “It was a joke. The rest of us had nicknames. He was the only holdout.”
“He’s your baby brother. You don’t do that to your baby brother!”
“We aren’t brothers!” I protested.
A stunned silence followed my words. She just stared at me. He looked surprised that I shouted it at such a loud volume. Even to my ears, my protest sounded desperate in nature.
Sam turned to Grace in that silence, as if judging her reaction.
“That’s really obvious to everyone,” Grace said with a nod of her head. “You’re the ones insisting on being called brothers and claiming you were all adopted by the same man. You’ve got twisted senses of humours is all I’m going to say on that topic. But if you aren’t brothers, then you need to change your public image. You can’t be kissing a man you claim is your brother. Humans are really understanding of a lot of stuff, but incest is not one of them.”
“We’re only still living here because we’re making our plans to move,” I said. “It’s tough since Sam’s made a name and a face for himself, but he won’t change flesh.”
“This flesh is staying, because this is the flesh that I just fucking married,” Grace snapped, jabbing a finger at Sam, then at me in an accusing manner. “And he’s not changing gender.” She turned to Sam. “I’m sorry, I love you, Sam, but I can’t be sexually involved with a woman and sex in the relationship is important to me.”
Sam made a motion to Grace and then looked at me as if that was somehow the law. As if whatever Grace wanted or said, she got. That was not how we made decisions. Sam might have the final say on a few things or might dole out punishment, but we voted otherwise.
A mortal woman, even if she was grace incarnate, didn’t make our decisions for us.
“Stop picking on Raphael,” Grace snapped at me. “I don’t need to be drinking when I feel sick already. I’m already going to be puking in the morning from the little bit of wine, and now it’s more alcohol because you went and kissed him and didn’t follow it through. Everyone but you knows that you get hard for him, you know that, right?”
“Like you don’t have a choice?” I asked in response.
Grace ignored my comment. Every line of her tense as she turned to Sam. She snatched up the basket, scowled at me and then jabbed a finger right at my face.
“Fix this.”
I opened my mouth to protest but was unable to find my voice as she marched out of the room. I turned to Sam, who was considering me carefully.
He hadn’t even tried to help me out, just allowed her to steamroll right over me and everything I might have to say to defend myself. When I shook my head at him in question, he seemed to shrug at me.
“I think she’s right,” Sam said. “I mean, we all know he likes you, but if you like him and you’re a homophobe, that’d explain why you’re such a dick all the time.”
Suddenly we were back to that topic of conversation. I sighed out through my nose, already tired of the argument.
“I am not a homophobe, nor am I a dick. I support all sexualities of consenting peoples.”
“It doesn’t seem like it. You need to sort that out. Just bang him and get it out of your system.”
“No, Sera, Sera, Sam,” I said. “I’m interested in Sera.”
I didn’t understand how Sam had forgotten about her so quickly. Even through the fight and Grace taking a strip off me, Sera had been there at the back of my mind. Sam acted like it was nothing at all. Like she was just some kind of stripper that I had randomly picked up somewhere.
Like I did that often.
Sam seemed to consider my words. Then he gave a shake of his head.
“I’m sorry, are you saying that you, the self-professed unsullied one, wants to bang a chick?”
“Not bang her,” I said. “She’s…” I struggled. “When you met Grace, how did you know? I mean, how did you know that she was your one? That she was your grace?”
“Do you not remember at all?” Sam asked. “I didn’t know. None of us knew. It took us so long to figure it out that we almost lost her, and even then I didn’t know she was my grace until it all happened and was done with. Remember?”
Barely. Grace wasn’t mine was all that mattered. We had stopped Baal from escaping into the physical plane. A building had exploded. That was all that I remembered. The rest was all just filler, snags of human life that I couldn’t spend too much time on. Otherwise I would be dragged down into the darkness as I had watched my brothers be dragged throughout the ages.
Just because human souls lived on, didn’t mean that we could sit back and watch them die without it affecting us. We wouldn’t see that human again until we earned our way back into Heaven, and we might never earn that golden ticket.
“Yes, but before you knew, you were into her, you were definitely into her.”
Sam shrugged. “That was just the way it happened. You guys were supposed to do it, but it ended up being me. There wasn’t any flashing neon sign, no way to tell for certain. It just happened.”
“I think Sera is mine. For me. I’ve never…”
“Almost slept with a woman before?” Sam asked.
“Exactly,” I said.
“That’s not true at all. You have a bizarre view of the past ten thousand years. If you want to lie to yourself, then keep on doing that, but you fool no one. You’ve had sex with women before. You just haven’t had an actual emotional connection. The only virgin still among us is Ralph.”
“You two have slept together plenty of times.”
“Sleeping together is different from sex,” Sam said. “Ralph has always been more sensitive than the rest of us. He’s a healer, not a fighter. He’s not built to be away from Heaven for so long. So, sometimes he spends the night with me because he can’t face another night alone. For some damned reason, you think that makes him weak.”
“He needs constant support.”
“Yes, and who did Father create to be the protector of all? Hm? Wasn’t me, that’s not my job. I’m here to lead and make the hard decisions. I’m here as the final line of defence. Gabe’s only job is to herald the apocalypse. Ralph’s job is to heal the world. So. Whose job is to protect everyone?”
I looked away, not wanting to answer. We all knew who the protector was, who the leader of Heaven’s armies was to be if we went to war. Not Samael, he was our leader, but he wasn’t meant to take to a battlefield the same way I was. He could, and he would. We had all been created to protect Heaven but in different ways.
“Whose job is it, Michael?” Sam asked again.
“Mine,” I said, not meeting his eyes.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that, whose job is it?”
“It’s mine,” I snapped at him.
“Good, deal with it.”
“That’s not helpful at all,” I said. “He’s the one—”
“No more of that. No more about how Ralph is the one at fault. I’m done with this. You’re the one who just antagonized him. You had plenty of opportunities to sleep with your date. Just because you have your holdbacks doesn’t mean that he has to do or be the same thing. You aren’t asexual, I’ve caught you masturbating more than once, and I know you’ve had women before for a reason besides getting rid of possession. And if you didn’t want him doing that, then you should have said so before, but I know for a fact that you were fine with it. So get your ego out of the hole you’ve dug because you aren’t a victim here, you’re a moron setting yourself up to look like the poor, pitiful guy. None of us are falling for it.”
“I’m not—”
“If you want attention so much, go find Sera, or go to Ralph and apologize. They’ll give you plenty of attention. I’m done.”
Sam caught himself and reached up, pinching the bridge of his nose as he muttered a curse under his breath and corrected himself, after the fact, on Raphael’s name.
“Why? Just because Grace is calling the shots?” I demanded.
“You’ve never loved anyone or anything but yourself, Michael. You couldn’t possibly know what it’s like to have someone who you rely on and who relies on you. I’m not the only one in the relationship with Grace and I’m doing whatever I can to make her happy because making her happy makes me happy. It’s just too bad that you’re incapable of emotion beyond hatred and disgust for everything that exists.”
“That’s not true at all,” I protested.
“Actions, brother, actions speak louder than words.”
His tone of voice told me that that was the end of the lecture. If I spoke up again, he’d strike out at me physically. I could take a beating, but I didn’t want to. Without Raphael to heal me, I would have to take my time and care for myself as a human might.
I did the smart thing. I kept my mouth shut and averted my eyes.
Sam left.
I huffed out a breath and looked around the room. I huffed out again and left in search of Gabe. He had been sent to watch the women and Raphael. I knew he would go to do as he had been told. He would also find a safe place to watch from, where I could also sit and watch out of sight and earshot of the three who were grumpy with me.
I found Gabe on the second floor in an unoccupied room, sitting on the balcony with a beer and a blanket across his lap. He glanced up at me and raised his beer bottle slightly. His eyes were half-closed, obviously sleepy, but he didn’t seem disturbed in the least. Like he was just enjoying a beer before bed.
“You cold?” I asked.
“It’s a comfort,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect the man who shamed the Spartans to know the purpose of comfort.”
“That was centuries ago, before Egyptian cotton sheets and silk underwear,” I muttered as I stepped further onto the balcony.
I looked over the balcony ledge.
Gabe had positioned himself in such a way that he could see the hot tub, which was occupied and on. Ralph sat with a full bottle of vodka, the end of it sitting in the bubbling, steaming water. Everyone knew warm vodka burned something terrible. He was making a bad choice there.
Grace was sitting across from him, Lillith beside him with her arms stretched out.
Lillith was naked. Full on, entirely naked. Neither of her companions seemed to notice that she was naked, though breast down was in the water, so she wasn’t exactly flaunting anything to the other two. Grace was wearing a bra, likely underwear as well. Raphael would have been dressed somewhat similarly.
I turned to Gabe. His eyebrows rose, then he motioned to the cooler beside him. I went and grabbed a beer and opened it as I returned to my place. Leaning against the railing, I took a sip as I looked down on the hot tube.
I didn’t know why Lillith was naked and I didn’t want to know, I certainly didn’t want to look at it.
“Sam thinks I’m a homophobe,” I said, to which Gabe made a grunting sound. “Says if Ralph decides to change gender, he’s forcing me to change too.”
I turned, placing my hips against the railing as Gabe refused to look at me. There was something about him that spoke of amusement.
“That wouldn’t be smart. Raphael being a woman and you being a man might end the fight,” Gabe said as he raised the beer to sip.
I scowled at him as he smiled, but kept his eyes on the hot tub. He sipped his beer and continued to watch the hot tub. I did the same, sipping my beer and casting a glance over my shoulder toward the tub. Then I turned back to Gabe.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I’m going to call Sera and set up a time for a picnic tomorrow,” I said. I hesitated, turning the idea over in my mind as I wondered if it would be smart to say. In the end, I spoke my mind rather than hold it back, “He’s strongly suggested I bone Raphael.”
“Little brother would follow you around like you were connected at the hip,” Gabe said.
Gabe had always teased me. He was the only one who could get away with it because he did it in such a light-hearted manner. Throughout the ages, he had giggled like an imp over the fact that Raphael wanted to play with my flaming sword. I had never understood what he had meant by that, but suddenly I was wondering.
“Wait, is that what you all meant about him wanting my flaming sword?”
“No, I said he wanted your sword. I said he is flaming. Are you going to do it?”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Throw him down and have your way with him,” Gabe said. “I could walk you through the way to do it super awkwardly so that you never have to do it again.”
I was willing to admit that the idea entertained me for a brief second, but then I dismissed it. Especially doing it awkwardly, especially doing it awkwardly on purpose. No matter what fight I might have with Raphael, I would never do something that would cause long-term harm on purpose.
“And scare him off pleasure in Heaven? No, but thank you.”
“Well, you two have been fighting since we came to Earth. In Heaven he was always watching you and, blushing, I guess is what humans would say. Once we came down, all of a sudden you were picking on him. For the first little bit, he just went with it. Then Lillith told him about abuse and manipulation, and the fight started. Frankly, I prefer the fight to that awkward bullying.”
“We talked to him just the same in Heaven,” I said with a shrug. “It wasn’t a problem then.”
Gabe winced.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“Sam just kept telling you guys to stop it, so it got more and more passive aggressive,” Gabe said. “I mean, he’s the end of all fighting, so there’s that. But he’s been very much about just getting through the day. He’s got these blinders on and never sees beyond the immediate. He’s always just thought that this is the blink of an eye or something, or like we can go back to the start of time once we have our graces back. Not going to happen.”
“And?” I asked.
“Do you remember Heaven?” Gabe asked. “Like, really, remember Heaven?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You and Sam spent a few centuries together. I had my lovely little cherubs.”
That made me chuckle as I brought the beer to my lips. Lillith and I had had a conversation with Grace about angel rankings one day, and Gabe mentioning cherubs made me think of that.
He raised an eyebrow in question, and I shrugged at it.
“Humans think cherubs are baby angels,” I said.
“I know, so don’t say that to Grace,” Gabe said. “Do you remember what Raphael used to do? He’d crawl between you and Sam. When the fights started, I’d always find him hiding in your rooms. You were the bad guy to the rest of Heaven, but he still hid in your rooms, not Sam’s. Sometimes I wonder if Raphael would have left Heaven if you hadn’t.”
“What? Of course, he would have, we all left as a show of solidarity.”
“Fuck no. Sam left for Lillith, or because he got dragged to Hell depending on who tells it. You left because you slept with a woman and as you slept she stole a feather, which gave her access to your grace until you cut it out. Once you were down on Earth, I broke into Hell, wedging open the gates by accident in a bid to get Samael out. Raphael followed behind. I don’t even know why he’s here. He’s done nothing wrong. Heaven still talks to him on and off.”
“He’s an innocent,” I said. “He’ll never understand what it’s like to be one of us, unable ever to return home. Or what it is to sin in Father’s eyes. He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“And I think that’s why you started to pick on him. You were jealous. He can still hear Father’s voice. Even without his grace, he’s blessed by the Heavens. You were meant to be the hero and protector. You were the one that the parades were meant to be thrown for, so to speak. But you’re nothing to Heaven except the dumbass who made dark witches.”
“I’m not jealous,” I said.
“No one believes that. You’re mean to him. Maybe you should change that. Maybe not be a dickbag all the time.”
“Dickbag isn’t a word, no matter how many times Grace says it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Gabe said. “That’s what you are. And you need to deal with that because Sam’s always been right about one thing. Father will not accept you back in Heaven with that dark cloud of jealousy that you’re carrying around.”