Nick stands in the doorway.
He peers in for a moment, awkward and stiff, and leaves.
Those red marks climb up my arms, skin dying in rivers along what used to be veins. They make the heat blisters stand out on my hands, looking like something trying to erupt.
Seraph pushing out, the Flood pushing out, hungry.
* * *
Later. The door opens. The door closes.
My eyes open just a crack. Nick stands in the room, unsure, doing that tapping motion again—tp-tp tp-tp—over and over, until it’s not enough, and he violently shakes out his hands. He tips forward a little bit, back a little bit, forward, back, and soon his expression doesn’t look as pained. Still hurting but not unbearable. Another shake of his hands. A breath with eyes squeezed shut.
I say nothing. Not just because I’m pretending to be asleep, but because I know this is something private. He’s gone to such lengths to hide this side of himself—the side that flaps his hands and rocks until he’s together again—that admitting I’m a witness to it feels wrong.
But I do make sure he’s in one piece. That’s all we can ask for.
He is, eventually. His breathing evens. He pushes his hair out of his eyes and primly fixes his bobby pins. He stands with his feet firmly on the floor.
He crouches beside me.
I fight to keep myself still. As still as possible. His breath gently huffs behind his mask; his shoe scrapes on the carpet as he keeps his balance. He smells like smoke and sweat.
Nick’s fingers hover, for a moment, over my arm. Over my cheek, over my hair.
“Shit,” he whispers. “Shit.” He gets up and goes to the door but stops, reaching for the doorknob but unable to grab it, and he turns away like he can’t consider the idea any longer.
He takes off his jacket.
And his shirt.
The pale expanse of his chest is cut through with awful scars. He’s not as muscular as I thought he would be, but there’s power in the way his arms move. He turns his shirt over, inspects it. There’s a scar on his shoulder and a few on his collarbone. One on his soft stomach, shiny and white. He pats his pockets, then digs in them.
What—what are we? Am I still mad at him? He apologized, and I guess I accept it. I need to apologize to him too. I want to get past this, I don’t want to worry about this anymore; I want to sit down, talk about it, and move on. I’m sick of worrying about where I stand with the boys in my life.
I have the apology in my pocket. And right now, Nick is with me.
Nick, seeming to accept that whatever he’s looking for isn’t in his pocket, turns to shake it out of his jacket. With the faint moonlight coming in through the narrow window, I can make out the mass of scars on his back. There are so many, it makes my stomach turn. They’re dark, all the way from his shoulders to his waist, a pattern—
A pattern I know.
Those aren’t scars at all.
They’re tattooed wings.
What the FUCK.
That doesn’t make sense. That can’t be right. No, I’m seeing it wrong, that has to be it. The shadows are playing tricks on me. I’m seeing feathers where they aren’t supposed to be. I saw them before I fell asleep, it’s Seraph messing with me. That must be it.
But he shifts in the light, and they’re still there. They’re carved into his back, scoring all the way down like acid poured across his skin, like a monster tore him apart with its claws.
Nick was a death-squad soldier. Nick was an Angel.
A knife falls out of his jacket and hits the carpeted floor with a muffled thump. His shoulders go with it, sagging like he’s suddenly carrying an unbearable weight. He sinks to the floor, absolutely unreadable behind his mask, and he starts to cut his shirt into strips. His arm strains when he yanks at the fabric. I stare at the muscles there, at the edges of feathers creeping onto his sides. There are so many little scars in lines down his sides, right where they would be if he’d tried to claw them off with his fingernails.