Samandriel lifted his head to steal another kiss and to catch Michael’s fingers with the hand that no longer wanted to be completely separate on his chest. “You’re welcome,” he promised. It was what family did, even if family didn’t know it. He settled again, thumb brushing against Michael’s fingers in idle affection. “I play barefoot because it helps me feel the paths the music wants to take,” he said softly, returning to their first conversation and the joke Michael had made about missing shoes. “There’s a connection to my instrument that happens through bare hands and feet, taking the flow of the universe in and expressing it out through song.” He glanced at the pendant around Michael’s neck, and even though one day Michael would remember himself, Samandriel wanted to say it anyway.
“When Creation was young, and the Earth was just starting to be a place where life could develop, I used to paint. Sunrises and sunsets, great billowy clouds in the subtle shifting colors of blue in a sky. I would run and laugh, be given the multitude of names for plants and left to express what those would look like. Where my feet landed, flowers would grow and all I wanted was to show to my brothers and to our Father how absolutely beautiful and wonderful all of this was. To share the joy that His creation filled me with. I remember once, laughing through what would eventually belong to the Greeks, an older brother catching me from behind, picking me up and spinning me around. He said he was proud of me, of all I’d done in the service of the Name.” He and Lucifer had painted the sky together that night, the archangel indulging Imagination like Lucifer himself maybe couldn’t quite figure out how to do it with the same nuance that Samandriel did.
He brushed a kiss to Michael’s knuckles, knowing that the word ‘proud’ would probably be a very obvious giveaway to which particular elder brother it was (Catholic dogma in particular seemed only too keen to remind people which of the seven deadly Lucifer fell for,) but it was subtle enough that Michael could overlook it if he wished. “I could still do that now, but in this modern age it seems best to remain as subtle as possible. Music is the safest outlet for the joy of all the beauty everywhere. Sometimes, all I truly want is to let that full expression out again, to fill the room with flower and color and let everyone see what I see.”
Michael listened as the angel spoke, returning some of the more tender and intimate gestures. It wasn’t in his nature to be so affectionate so quickly, he tended to avoid situations where he would be in a position to be so affectionate, but the angel in his arms had changed the usual way things went. He had bypassed Michael’s MO by virtue of not being human. Of course if there were as many other angels kicking about as Samandriel seemed to suggest he could very well have to make new rules for himself. But for the moment, with that warm body next to him being adorably affectionate and that soothing voice telling him secrets and giving him glimpses of heaven, he was quite happy not to think of anyone or anything else.
It didn’t occur to him that Samandriel could have been talking about Satan. He had grown up with stories of God’s anger, how the Devil was supposedly everything that God despised and that when he and his followers were cast from heaven it had been a right and just thing in God’s eyes. It made sense to him that the angels would just agree and obey, as far as he had been told that was their function and that they lacked free will to form opinions that God himself did not put there. But his faith had been rocked before when he started looking at things from a new perspective, he could see no reason why an angel would have reason to lie.
“Why be subtle?” Michael asked after turning his hand and running a thumb over Samandriel’s full lower lip. “Are you commanded to remain hidden? If not, why hide yourself and your talent?” It was actually rather sad to think that he had this great ability and yet it had to be hidden away. “It seems like such a waste.”