colours

xii. inked with black

Wings.

They're tattooed on his skin; from his spine to the back of his arms, his nipped feathers branded onto the mortal flesh he's allowed himself to get into.

A cloud forms from his lips but it's not the same as the ones he's had at home. Instead, his clouds are fumes of smoke, the type that wells tears up your eyes and makes you cough.

The exhilarating feeling it brings; the fresh bout of nicotine reacting enthusiastically to his body, a good high--it almost feels like home when he closes his eyes.

(but only barely, only barely.)

People side-eye him, wary of his hooded eyes, dead stare and lit smoke, not knowing he was a fallen.

None of them have ever asked him if it hurt when he fell from heaven, but he'd always have an answer on the base of his lips if it ever came to pass:

It hurted more than you'd ever imagine.

--

He was not like his brother of an archangel, the Morning Star (because humanity fascinated him more than it could have disgusted). And though it hurts that he is a literal disgrace to his brethren, when he watches a homeless man share food with another in an even worse state, he dares think that maybe it's going to be okay.

He stubs the cigarette with the bottom of his shoe and twists on it with a heel, pocketing his hands in the oversized and warm jacket a woman had given him one evening when the wind got too cold for his bare wings.

It wasn't perfect, he knows without another glance at the gates of what used to be his home, and he blows out another cloud from his pale chapped lips caused by the chill and not the tar, thinking, maybe humanity could be his new home.

He feels his tattered wings curl over him for warmth with a flicker of hope; maybe they were enough for this world. After all, humans didn't even have wings to hold them when no one else could.

--

an epilogue of sorts

--

He'd met a man, one broken, piece of a man, who was fallen not in the same sense as he, but they'd been drawn to each other so much to the point that he swears he'd always feel the other man's light scruff burning against his skin from when they'd kissed against some alley's wall.

He'd latched onto the man's lips like he was hanging for his dear life, their hot, warm breaths intermingling with each other. They'd tripped over each other on their way to his apartment, the place smelling like flowers in the Spring (over the months, the cigarette butts were replaced by used nicotine patches) but the scent of leather and motor oil drowned his senses as he peppered kisses over the other man's exposed everything.

It had been skin over skin with rusted and guttered voices muttering each other's name against the other's flesh. He'd felt calloused fingers run over his tattooed wings (the real ones were long lost in the wind by now, with only echoes of warmth haunting him in the night), careful over each feather, tracing them, smoothing them over with soft strokes.

"My angel," his lover said, breathlessly.

He looked up at his beloved's eyes, his chin brushing over the other's bare chest before realizing in a swoop that he may no longer have wings, but for now, he has him.

"Yours," he agreed.

His story had began with a fall, and somehow, it's beginning again.

Though this time, falling felt more like flying.

--

a/n: I wrote this a few months ago, without the epilogue and I sent it to lemon_lemonade who said she had this feeling the angel was gay.

AND SO bc I'm certified trash, it made me write the epilogue with the image of one of my favorite characters.

That's why this was loosely based on a certain Castiel, a (fallen) angel from a certain show I hate (I tell myself this every day but it still doesn't stop me from being an enthusiastic member of the fandom), featuring the man he's sacrificed everything for.

...my fangirl is bleeding out.

-a