Dietre A & Nilus D Who: Dietre Abendroth and Nilus/Zeke/John Doe. What: Reunion and revelations. Where: The carnival. When: VERY time fuzzy. Around when the carnival reopened after the rabies scare? Warnings/Rating: Low.
He couldn’t explain why the music had drawn him in, only that it had and he was standing in a strange place. Whimsical. A place designed for the misunderstood. It was rife with every sin, but it was not inherently evil.
The angel stood the at the end of the stage, looking up at the piano that had a life of its own.
He no longer wore the colors of the insane. He looked a healthy man in his mid-twenties, his hair curling against his forehead. He wore a simple pair of black jeans and a cardigan that looked as soft as it felt. For those that could see them, his wings were relaxed, plumage a delicate ivory. The tips were gilded, as was his station in Heaven. He was Michael’s flag bearer, protector of innocents, angel of mercy.
Nilus, no, Zeke. Zeke turned as he heard someone approaching, poised to scramble out of the tent the moment the individual walked in. He knew Misha and Damian, they had saved him, but they were busy. Elsewhere. He’d wanted to explore.
The carnival reopened, once again Dietre was able to vent his inner turmoil through music. He was in dire need of a way to destress, yet the scant hours he was free to play the piano hardly seemed enough to bring him out of the depression he had fallen into. He had still heard nothing from Liam, and there was equal silence from John. He was beginning to think he might have dreamed the two men up. He retreated all the more inside himself, a silent ghost during rehearsals, just going through the motions. The disappointment he felt every time he searched the audience for a familiar face only to find a sea of strangers was becoming too much to bear. Still, what choice did he have? What else could he do?
Night descended early this time of year, though the burlesque show remained hours away. Dietre drifted through the carnival, eyes downcast, head bowed. His demeanor screamed ‘Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me.’ He wore his costume in preparation for the night’s performance; a stiff collared white shirt, sleeves pinched by black armbands, his dark silk waistcoat accentuating his narrow figure. He earned many a glance wherever he wandered, most of them admiring.
To avoid unwanted attention, he escaped to the burlesque tent. He could hear the piano playing as if beckoning him. Someone must have put on a roll to practice without him. It was some cheery ragtime piece, the sort he often played during performances, though the music he played on his own time bordered on funeral dirges. He passed through the tent flap, head canted, curious, but also faintly annoyed that he didn’t have the place to himself.
From behind, the man inside was unfamiliar at first. Before Dietre had a chance to guess, the stranger revealed himself, and the german boy stopped in his tracks, caught completely by surprise.
“John..!” It was all he could say for a moment as he stood and stared. The angel looked so different. So vibrant, so alive. D blinked a few times before stammering, “W-what are you doing here..?”
"You are mistaken," the angel replied, "I'm not John."
He looked like him. He didn't carry himself like the shell Dietre had met in the hospital. He stood tall, proud almost. Those blue eyes brighter than ever. The piano stopped almost abruptly, "that was not mine to meddle with. I apologize," he tilted his head at the boy, looking beyond him to the ghost in the corner. They were nearly identical.
Zeke fluffed out his feathers, his hands going straight into his pockets so they weren't swinging idle. He was an odd creature, he hadn't even worn shoes. "Misha is my brother, Damian is a friend," he smiled, brighter than the sun.
It was Nilus. It was John. But this being was so much more. "You look familiar," he said aloud, stepping in closer, "the piano player, yes? I'm Zeke."
Dietre had begun to approach, but being told he had the wrong man brought him to another standstill. He held back, woefully confused and disconcerted. Misha his brother? Damian his friend? Since when? “...Oh.” He found himself introducing himself in a weak voice, “I’m Dietre...”
He could not stop staring. Something wasn’t right. After a moment he could make them out, indistinct at first, but if he concentrated and focused his gaze… There. Wings. The same as John’s wings, white and gold. Like the feather he had in safe keeping pressed between the pages of Wuthering Heights. Lately, on nights where he felt the most alone, he’d take it out and stroke its delicate softness and wonder what happened to his friend.
He knew nothing of angels. Maybe they all looked the same. Maybe Heaven was full of clones, all with the same dark hair and bronzed skin and bright eyes. But this one said he looked familiar. Didn’t that mean he knew him?
“Wait… I don’t understand--” Dietre shook his head, his expression pained, “You’re not John?”
"More or less," Damian had saved him, he considered him a friend. Misha was an angel. They were all brothers. The man named Zeke moved in an ethereal manner, getting right up alongside him, "I was told my name was Zeke. John sounds familiar too, like a dream? You look familiar, Dietre- I can’t place where I know you."
His stood there staring longer than what was comfortable, as if he were looking at a masterwork. "You're the piano player?" His hands. He'd noticed his hands. Delicate, long fingers. He was dressed to the nines. He took pride in his appearance.
"I was drawn here, it seemed a place of comfort. My mind has not yet caught up with the times."
Told his name was Zeke? By who? Dietre looked both suspicious and concerned. He was starting to believe this angel really was the man he knew as John, but clearly something had happened to him. His memory had been affected, yet, D was not sure if what happened was bad. The angel just looked too healthy and full of energy. The John he knew had been dead eyed and hopeless, only seeming to come alive when he painted, and even then he seemed sad and listless for the most part.
“Um… We met at Quiet Home. ...You don’t remember?” John’s-Zeke’s frank and constant staring made Dietre uneasy, a sort of fluttery nervousness that made him avert his gaze and look shyly down at his feet.
“Yes, I’m a pianist.” Those long fingers began to tangle with one another as Dietre wrung his hands. He glanced sidelong at the angel, brows still furrowed. “I played for you here, once. I thought it was a dream at the time.”
“Perhaps it was,” he mused. “Perhaps we were in each other's dreams…”
Zeke remained skeptical to the question, as if he believed every word of it, but it just didn’t make a lick of sense. Confusion passed over his features, “Quiet Home? You carry that energy with you, Dietre. The house of healing. You don’t belong there.”
He could feel the confusion rolling off of him in waves. He must’ve believed it, and Zeke felt terrible for him. As terrible as an angel could feel. He continued to stare, reaching out to lay a comforting hand on his arm. Every scar, every bruise was missing. He was the picture of perfect health. “There may have been a John, who’s to say you aren’t right?” his words were soft, offering promise, “I don’t know a John, I know a Nilus. It was a name given by the people of Egypt to an angel that didn’t deserve it.”
“I’m sure John is in a better place,” not necessarily dead. Just floating in a vast unknown. The far reaches of Zeke’s mind behind a wall. He didn’t dare go there. “He probably misses you. I don’t see why he wouldn’t. Your soul shines as brightly as a star.”
The angel plucked a feather from his wings, wiping away the blood from the pinion. Ivory, gilded at the tip. He held it out to Dietre, a poor gift for someone pining for a friend he lost. Or maybe Zeke knew what he was speaking of.
“He was someone special to you?”
The confusion Dietre felt was being replaced by a slow spreading sadness, an ache in his chest blooming with every word Zeke spoke. He gave his head a subtle shake, “Even if I don’t belong there, I can’t leave.” They wouldn’t let him leave, he was sure. He wasn’t well yet. And even if they did release him, where would he go? Misha had once offered him his own tent at the carnival, but he feared that living there full time would only hammer home how little he fit in.
There was something finalizing about the way the angel spoke of ‘John’ being in a better place. There was little question now in Dietre that the being who stood before him had once been his John, but the person he knew was gone. He was overcome with a sense of mourning. All those murmured conversations, those moments of quiet companionship as they sat together for meals… It was as if they never happened.
His eyes burned, tears beading on his lashes as he took the offered feather. “...He was the only person to have ever called me their friend.” Dietre breathed a great, trembling sigh, peering down at the feather as he twirled it between his fingers.
A soft sniff and Dietre half turned away, vaguely ashamed of his loss of composure. “I’m sorry…”
“May I?”
The question was soft spoken and out of sympathy for the young man. The angel looked on in guilt as he tore himself up inside. He didn’t understand why he was upset, John was in a better place- away from the abuse.
He laid a hand over his shoulder, sharing in the memory. As he tried, he cried out in pain as he came close to those memories. He didn’t understand why they were forbidden.
“Please, don’t hate me,” came the quiet words, almost an echo.
Zeke covered his face with his hands, rubbing at his eyes as John would’ve done after a lobotomy. His palms dug in deep and he let out a sigh that matched Dietre’s own. He shook his head and turned away, those silent tears staining that sweater he wore. He couldn’t remember. It was sitting right in front of him and always out of reach.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Zeke had taken his friend away from what he gathered. “Tell me about him.”
“I couldn’t hate you.” Dietre looked up in surprise at the suggestion. There must be a little bit of John in there somewhere. He heard it in that whispered plea, and hadn’t Zeke called his soul bright and shining, just as John had?
He forgot his own pain in his concern for the angel, who now also had tears glistening on his cheeks. What a pair they made, crying at a carnival. “Don’t,” he urged. “It is better that you don’t remember.” He might not have known all the horrors John went through, but the tiny bit he’d seen was enough to set his imagination running wild. He was sure it was a mercy that the angel’s memories were gone. If given the chance, he knew he’d opt to forget too. Who wouldn’t want to start over as a fresh slate?
Wiping at his face, Dietre tried to pull himself together for Zeke’s sake. “There isn’t much to say, to be honest. We just… talked, really. And I’d watch John paint. He said something about not really being an artist because he only painted things he had seen with his own eyes, but…” Here Dietre paused, frowning in thought, “I would say that he was.”
“...Do you paint?”
Tearful reunions. Zeke felt that John was still around, even now. He was reaching out to the young man called Dietre, the angel didn’t lift a hand to wipe away his tears, letting them stain his cheeks like a badge.
His wings stretched and he turned to the other man, “I can.”
He could pick up any instrument and play. He could pick up a brush and paint. Mimicry. There was no soul in it, only the action and technique.
“I see…” Dietre murmured softly, still looking for perhaps another glimmer of the old John in Zeke’s eyes. He couldn’t really find one, though the tears on the angel’s face were something, weren’t they?
Rather than rub his face in what he lost, D turned to finding answers as to how things came to this. Feeling awkward standing, he stepped aside and settled down on one of the chairs meant for the night’s audience. He sat looking up at Zeke, serious and somber. “You called Misha your brother… What did you mean by that?”
He couldn’t help but wonder what the connection was between that boy and the angel before him. Misha told him that he had never actually seen John in person when they spoke of him before, yet here Zeke was calling him a brother. It didn’t make sense. What was going on behind the scenes that Dietre didn’t know about? How many secrets were being kept from him? And why? Again Dietre could feel jealousy stirring inside him, like a sleeping giant tossing and turning within, on the cusp of waking to wage destruction on the world.
Zeke feared he had said too much when Dietre asked him how they were brothers, he wasn’t given much to go on. He’d just always called him brother. The angel eyed him a long while, silent. He felt he was caught in a lie and he hadn’t lied, per say, but he couldn’t give away secrets that weren’t his to tell. He tipped his head to the side, much like John when he didn’t understand what was being said.
He knelt in front of Dietre, his wings folded neatly behind him. What to say? “All the children of Adam are my brothers and sisters,” he supplied, smiling as bright as the sun. “In theory. We were told to love them as we would our own brethren. Misha has helped me understand many things, he’s treated me kindly and he is a brother to me. Damian is a friend, he has given me safe harbor.”
From what, he couldn’t think. The angel gathered Dietre’s face between his hands in reverence to the young man in front of him. He couldn’t place where he knew him, but he felt they’d been through something together. He was gorgeous through and through, there was no reason for him to be so sad. He had no sense of personal space. Most angels didn’t. Most angels went unnoticed by the general populace.
“May I search your memory for John?”
Dietre had not been brought up with religion, he never gave much thought to God and all that line of belief entailed. Yet here was an angel speaking of Adam and of being instructed to care for humans by a higher power. It gave him an uneasy feeling. Should he be worried about the state of his soul? Though… both Zeke and John claimed it was bright and beautiful, so maybe he was alright.
He was likewise unsure of how to take Zeke’s explanation of his relationship with Misha and Damian. It seemed there was quite a bit that he was left out on. He recalled bringing up John’s disappearance to Misha online and how the boy never responded, and felt a flicker of anger. If Misha had known where the angel was he could have at least let him know that he was alright. So much worry and anguish could have been avoided. What hurt could there have been in telling him? Did Misha think he’d turn him into the authorities or something? How insulting.
It was hard to maintain anger, however, when faced with such a smile. And when Zeke placed his hands on either side of his face, Dietre forgot Misha completely. His brows arched up, and beneath Zeke’s palms his cheeks grew warm.
“Oh.. I-I don’t know--” Dietre stammered. “...What if you see something that makes you remember something you don’t want to?” It was likely silly to think he could protect an angel, but he couldn’t help wanting to. He expressed reluctance, but if Zeke should look inside his memories, he’d experience the boy’s feelings regarding John. The irritation in the beginning from being stared at and followed. That annoyance melting into acceptance, and then a growing interest. The soothing comfort of having someone who looked happy to see him and who seemed to enjoy his company. The shock of discovering his angelic nature and the quiet awe he had for those gilded wings and shimmering rays of light. The hope of being helped with his strange gift and the heartbreak when John disappeared. And under all of this, buried hidden beneath many layers of emotion, a very human feeling of physical attraction.
His memories of living on earth were behind a wall, if he could see them through the eyes of another, they would only be moving pictures. They held no sway over him. He continued to smile in kind, moving in closer, his lips nearly brushing Dietre’s cheek, “you are kind to worry.”
“May I?” he asked again, pulling back to search his face for emotion, permission. He had a right to his personal thoughts, “if there is something you do not wish me to know, hold it to your heart.”
Dietre held his breath as Zeke moved in, able to feel the warmth of him against his skin though they didn’t quite touch. “John worried about me,” he modestly tried to deflect the compliment, “isn’t it right that I worry over you, too?” It was all rather confusing to try and figure out, as Zeke was technically not John and vice versa. He wondered if Zeke would carry out John’s promise to help him with the spirits and demons that followed him, but did not know how to ask.
“Um… Yes,” he whispered. “You may…” He hardly understood his thoughts and feelings as they were, so though Zeke told him he’d be able to hide what he wanted from him Dietre couldn’t even begin to try. So he just opened himself up to the angel, allowed him to roam the corridors of his mind without limit. He’d see his memories of John, and feelings, all overlaid with a veil of loneliness and a sense of loss.
“Thank you,” he said very simply. He grew silent over the next few moments, digging through memories. It took him some time to filter through earlier ones, noting that loneliness seemed at the forefront of every thought. He gave Dietre a feeling of bliss in return, letting him bask in eternal happiness that awaited him when this corporeal form was no more.
When he found John, he was less than pleased with the result, pain, torture. Heartbreak. A broken man, not an angel. Zeke had made an appearance during the the times Dietre had sat and talked. John was real, but he was only an illusion. A fragment of the whole. Dietre seemed to get along favorably with him, he wasn’t quite sure of the feeling, but a good friend. A protector? He couldn’t tell.
He dug in a little deeper, seeing the same man in passing. A man of medicine, then he smiled at him.
Zeke jerked his hands away as if he’d been burned, gasping softly to himself. No, no. “Dietre,” he furrowed his brows, pulling away to look at him. John was back, if only for a moment. “I’m so sorry, I couldn’t stay. Not any longer. What happened there was horrifying, what happened to this body I do not wish to repeat aloud.”
The feeling that washed over Dietre as Zeke searched his memories was unlike any he had experienced before. The only thing similar he could recall was the swell of emotion his mother’s smile gave him when he first played her a full piece on the piano with no mistakes. What he felt now was akin to how he felt when she laughed and kissed his cheek, but so much better. This was the elusive happiness he so longed for, and he began to weep afresh, overcome.
It didn’t last nearly long enough. He was left disoriented when the angel released him so suddenly. He instinctively reached out and grabbed hold of Zeke’s sweater to steady himself, shuddering as his usual despair washed back over him.
“Don’t be sorry.” Dietre’s gaze was intense, his voice firm despite his tears. “I understand.”
“I would make the same choice as you, if I could. I don’t blame you at all.”
“You aren’t bound to him, Dietre.” His father. Zeke was referring to his father. “You are your own person and you most certainly do not belong in a place like that,” the angel wiped away his tears as the young man clutched at his sweater, “I wanted to take you with me, but I couldn’t risk your well-being. They would certainly know if you were gone, I was no one. Expendable. I thought I belonged there, it was apt punishment for my actions,” what those were, he couldn’t quite name.
There were many things he couldn’t remember. He got the impression from Dietre’s memory that he was hiding there, he tolerated the experimentation. The angel still shook from his addiction to the medication, but he looked healthy. More alive. He could deal with small things.
“You taught me to love again,” he supplied, his eyes downcast as he tried to find the appropriate words. Humans were sensitive when it came to emotions. He spoke whatever came to mind, “I would see you thrive, not hinder yourself. I can’t offer you good conversation or a normal life, but I can offer my love, Dietre, and my strength.”
No matter how desperately he wanted to believe Zeke, Dietre’s mind rejected the suggestion that he was special. He had been told too often and for too long that he was not. He was touched that John had wanted to take him along when he was freed, but the angel was right, once his father heard that he escaped, there would be no living out in the open. He’d have to stay in hiding, most likely have to quit the carnival, and then how would he be able to put a roof over his head? It was impossible.
Talk of love was like a fist crushing his heart. It hurt to breathe. “But I haven’t-- I haven’t done anything..!” Anguish twisted his features. “How could I have taught you that?”
Zeke’s attempts to wipe his tears were in vain, they were replaced instantly, there was no stemming the tide. “I’m unworthy of your love… It would just be wasted.” He dropped his head, eyes squeezed shut. “...You shouldn’t throw it away on me.”
The angel said nothing, letting him believe what he wanted. There was no changing it, and it hurt. Dietre would never reciprocate, and he understood that. He wasn’t human, he was older than the ground they walked upon, his emotional limit was just that- limited. He watched and learned from others what it meant to be human- to love.
He didn’t want to tell him he was wrong, everyone was entitled to an opinion. There was no more talk of John, nor the quiet home. He lifted Dietre’s chin with a single finger, losing himself in that soul.
“Love is too precious to waste on anything unworthy of it,” he hesitated a moment, watching him through dark lashes as he slowly leaned in to close his lips over the other man’s. He’d given up on trying to stop the tears, but he could at least stop the words for a moment.
Dietre did not resist the gentle lifting pressure of Zeke’s finger under his chin. He was afraid to look into the angel’s eyes, he didn’t want to see his pathetic sniveling reflected back at him within them, so he kept his own shut. Perhaps, if they had been open and he was able to see what was coming, he would have ruined everything by jerking back in surprise. For once, luck was on his side, and he was unaware of what was happening until Zeke’s lips were already pressed to his.
Pale green-grey eyes flew open, wide with wonder, and Dietre was instantly frozen in place. He was too shocked to kiss back, or even take a breath. Indeed, though his lungs burned for air, he was a statue until the kiss was over. He made some inarticulate sound in his throat, and then, much delayed, his pale skin suddenly went quite scarlet.
“...W-why did you… do that..?” For an intelligent young man, he was being rather stupid. Hadn’t it already been said aloud? Love. But such a thing was incomprehensible.
It felt right. Zeke didn’t hold back a smile as Dietre slowly came to that realization that the angel had kissed him- he’d only ever seen such a thing between lovers. It had warmed his heart, despite the reaction despite the received in return.
Maybe he should’ve asked. Did one asked to kiss? He blinked slowly at him, his brows furrowing in confusion. “Because you needed it,” he answered, “because I think you’re worthy of it.”
The angel backed away some, his eyes downcast and his wings drooping slightly. He thought he’d done something wrong.
“Oh.” Dietre said softly, still obviously confused and flustered. He brought a hand to his mouth, absently touching the swell of his lower lip. He could still feel a lingering, phantom sensation of Zeke’s kiss. He had been shocked out of crying, thoroughly pushed out of the throws of self pitying angst and into some other emotion he didn’t have the power to name. What mattered was that he was no longer focused totally on himself and his misery, and so he caught on to the angel’s dejected aura and the fact he was to blame. He was still a new hand at comforting others, and didn’t consider himself very good at it, but was compelled by those drooping wings to try.
“...I didn’t mind,” he shly assured in a low whisper. “I just-- You surprised me.” That sounded lame, and Dietre frowned at himself. He fell into an uneasy silence, at a loss for what to say or do. He was in alien territory here. He was always so caught up in longing for love that he had never thought of anything beyond wishing, and now that it was being offered, he was too stunned to know to accept it.
Zeke gave a hopeful look when Dietre reassured him that he didn’t mind. Somewhere over his shoulder, James was smirking at him. Quite proud of the angel for stepping up where it was needed. He still couldn’t put a name to the face, but he looked awful familiar.
His wings perked up in any case, his mood changed for the moment. “May I? Once more, you pulled away too soon for me to find if I liked it.”
He did like it. His heart was all aflutter. He really wanted to kiss him again, but only if he allowed it.
Dietre’s gaze was reflexively drawn to Zeke’s lips when asked for another kiss. The flush of color that had come to his cheeks only grew brighter. The shyness he exhibited now was different than his usual sullen reservedness, it was more innocent. He was bashful, his self centered suffering temporarily forgotten as he struggled to navigate this unfamiliar experience.
He had never kissed anyone, or been kissed before now, save for the rare peck on the cheek or forehead from his mother. Apparently, Zeke hadn’t either, and seemed to have adopted the view of the act as an experiment that needed multiple test runs. Dietre couldn’t really argue with that logic. He knew he hadn’t disliked the kiss himself, but similar to Zeke, he didn’t know if he had liked it either.
Not trusting himself to speak, he only nodded his consent.
Logic. Of course, Zeke was thinking logically about this. The next kiss was innocent enough, it was definitely appealing. By angel standards, this was odd. Putting your lips against someone else’s was foreign to him, he never understood why humans did this- until now.
It was such a simple concept, intimate.
He bit back a grin as he pulled away, eyeing Dietre curiously. He wondered what sort of feelings it stirred. The heat in his cheeks burned as bright as his soul. “I like it,” he said very simply, his arms wrapping around himself as he turned his gaze. He was fighting off an intense feeling of joy that threatened to overtake him.
Dietre had shut his eyes as well for the second kiss, too afraid of getting lost in the angel’s gaze. The kiss was soft, and warm, and unthreatening, yet his heart began to race. A timid attempt was made to return the kiss, just a slight pursing of his lips as he leaned forward for fuller contact, but then it was over and D was ducking his head to stare down at his feet, hands clenched at his sides to keep them from trembling.
If Dietre was happy, it didn’t show on his face, and he absolutely refused to look at Zeke. The angel said he liked it, and D realized he had too, but did not know how to explain his feelings. He and Zeke seemed on the edge of an intimacy he was not prepared for. The possibility of it all going wrong was terrifying. Happiness was being dangled within reach, but all he could think about was the pain of losing it.
In the end, he possessed the power to resist as much as a cat possesses the power to leave a mouse half killed, or a bird half eaten. Instigating another kiss on his own was quite beyond him, but after a moment’s hesitation, Dietre reached out to slip his arms around Zeke, squeezing him in a wholesome embrace, his chin resting on the angel’s shoulder, his still damp cheek pressed against his jaw.
“Thankyou…”
“For what?” Zeke asked, his own arms wrapping around Dietre in a confused embrace. His wings went around him like a whisper, letting the human bask in his grace.
The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, at least not to him. He clasped his shoulder, giving him a reassuring squeeze, “You’ve given me something to think about. I’m not human, you understand?” He lacked real human emotion and free will. He would always be blunt and could even come off as unfeeling when he cared. He was also a very old being.
“Love is many things and something I know of. It may not be your definition, Dietre. You have no obligation to stick around.”
Dietre could not think of how to answer. He only clung tighter to the angel, hoping that somehow his feelings would get across through osmosis. He had many things he was thankful to him for, but most of all, he was grateful to Zeke for wanting him when no one else ever seemed to have. He buried his face in the crook of the angel’s neck and sighed. The wings that encircled them felt like a cocoon, warm and safe and comforting.
“...It doesn’t matter to me that you’re not human.” Though, he thought it should matter to Zeke. If the angel really did fall in love with him, wouldn’t it only end in heartbreak? He would only grow old and die while Zeke remained forever beautiful, forever glorious. And what would happen then, once he was dead? Could they still be together? He had once argued with Misha about the pain of fleeting happiness. He didn’t want Zeke to suffer, yet he was also selfish, desperate for the love the angel spoke of.
“I don’t know anything about love,” Dietre admitted. “All I know is that I want it…”
Zeke was more than happy to supply the emotion he was looking for. He gently pulled away from him, looking the human in the eye, “every being is chasing after the feeling. For that sense of belonging. You hang onto that emotion, but do not let it rule you.”
Heartbreak was the worst kind of pain.
“We’ll talk more later, I can drop by your room. I promised you a painting, did I not?”
For once, Dietre did not look away when their eyes met. He solemnly held Zeke’s gaze, and as he did so, the light in which he saw the angel expanded. He had always considered him handsome, but he was compelled now to take a closer look. He seemed a perfect being, someone to stand in awe of. But this really was not the time to contemplate his friend’s physical beauty.
“Yes, we’ll talk more later… I have to prepare for the show tonight. The other performers will be here soon.” Here, Dietre hesitated, not quite ready for goodbyes. He reached out to give Zeke yet another hug, followed by a kiss on the cheek before he whispered, “If you love me, I’ll love you. How can I not…?”
He pulled away, gravely serious but full of affection. “What kind of loving it will be, I cannot say. ...But I hope you’ll be patient with me, while I figure it out?” He caressed the side of Zeke’s face before stepping back.