Samandriel shook his head. “No, we aren’t, but the last thing I want is for what I am to become common knowledge. Just because it doesn’t happen easily doesn’t mean that angels can’t be killed or tortured or forced into doing someone else’s will. If it got out, at best I’d have the government all over me and at worst there would be those who decided I wasn’t an angel at all, but rather Him incarnate. I’m not our Father and I have less than zero desire to be confused for him. I just...all I want is to put some beauty in the world and to be able to protect and care for the people I love.” He took a steadying breath.
No time like the present, right? There wasn’t any point in hiding the truth from Michael since a google search would link him to Lucifer Morningstar on the first page of results. “And if it comes to light what I am to the general public, it’s only one step to figuring out who my partner is and I’m not… I can’t bear the thought of losing him again, of torches and pitchforks and a mob rising up against someone who hasn’t done anything. I won’t do it. I did it once. I stood by and I held my tongue and I did my duty, but I won’t do it again.” Perhaps being human for the better part of two decades in this life had done more harm than good to his angelic sense of observation and blind loyalty, but he had free will now. He wasn’t going to waste it.
Michael generally did his best to avoid entanglements with anyone in a relationship. It made things messy and he actually did respect the concept of commitment, but he wasn’t perfect. He slipped sometimes, didn’t always ask or just ignored the signs when he saw them but was willing to be oblivious if he was attracted enough to a person. He had seen Samandriel’s ring but he hadn’t made an issue of it because he was happy to ignore it when the angel had come on so strong. Still, he wasn’t sure how to react when he brought up his partner, but the idea of him loving someone that others would have such a violent reaction to seemed strange to him. “Your partner isn’t Frankenstein, is he?”
It might have been a silly joke on his part but he was trying to wrap his head around it all. Humor was simply his way of giving himself an extra minute or two to make sense of it. “I know I don’t know you very well,” that tended to happen when you spend more time having sex than you had real conversations, but Michael was alright with how things were between them. “But I have a hard time believing that someone as… beatific as you are could be involved with someone who was terrible enough to be so hated.”
Samandriel could feel tension forming in the muscles at his back where his wings were still out of sight. It was a subtle sort of thing that perhaps Michael wouldn’t notice too much. “I’m...in a very committed, very open relationship with someone who is kind and compassionate, supportive and honest, refuses to do anything that might cause me pain or to make me do anything that I don’t wish to. But if people know what I am, they won’t see that the man who owns Lux, who keeps to himself and donates to charities, who plays piano and makes sure that if the people who work for him need time off to spend with their families or any other kind of help that they get what they need.” He looked at his hand with Michael’s, debating how best to phrase everything.
“They won’t even stop to ask anything. They’ll just assume that I was somehow tricked or manipulated. They’ll see the name Lucifer Morningstar and just stop listening. Nothing more will matter to them.” This might be the beginning of the end for him and Michael, but Samandriel really hoped not. Michael was family. Samandriel couldn’t turn his back on that the way other angels did so easily. It was why no matter how much he truly liked his brother, he couldn’t fully bring himself to trust Gabriel. “So I’ll keep quiet about what I am and let the gossip columnists only focus on our alleged age difference and nothing more, because protecting that secret means protecting Lucifer and Gabriel and Castiel and Dean and...and you.”