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There are fountains scattered throughout the park, large and small. And one of the largest and most glorious is the Bethesda Fountain, set in its terrace. The sculpture of the Angel of the Waters tops it, her hand outstretched in blessing. The water shimmers with light at the darkening of the day, with the lights by the fountain.
There's the actual angel sitting on the rim, looking up at her. His wings are down and half-spread, like a raptor sunning itself. While the base color is an ashen gray, they seem to glow with a rosy iridescence. There's a crowd of pigeons around him, all gazing at him expectanly. Mostly silent, save for the occasional liquid curl of sound, cooring and burbling.
*
Lindon is having his evening constitutional, and he happens to be in the area. The fountain is beautiful, and Lindon likes to hang out at the fountain for awhile. When he spies the angel, he stops short, like someone spotting a lovely deer in the woods and fearing startling it. His breath catches as he thinks 'angel' but then relaxes as he thinks, 'mutant.'
He starts walking again, unhurried, toward and around Michael, casting a glance his way. He wants to say something so much, but what's he going to say, 'hey, nice wings?' He is himself in a dark grey suit under a long coat and a hat against the cold. He smiles, awkward, should eye contact be made.
*
The pigeons look at Lindon first - even with whatever spell Mike casts over them, they have to be alert for predators. Or people with breadcrumbs. And then Michael himself turns. He's cannibalized a t-shirt to give room for the wings, and wears only that, old fatigue pants, and battered combat boots. What else would the quintessence of soldiery wear in this day and age, after all.
It's the eyes that make it clear this is something more than a mutant. Pale blue and clear as a summer sky, and filled with a strange light in their depths. He watches Lindon approach with mild interest, making no secret at all of his scrutiny. "Hello," he says, pleasantly. The accent's distinctly English. God is an Englishman after all, it seems.
*
Lindon offers no threat to the pigeons, and he's been in New York long enough to have learned how walk among the little tree rats. The light in Michael's eyes capture Lindon, and he catches himself staring as his steps slow. "H-hello," he says, and he smiles reflexively. "Sorry, I, er. I was just walking by." Inwardly, he curses himself. Why would this total stranger care what he was doing?
*
He's apparently not yet learned the New Yorker etiquette when it comes to passersby. Far from it. Mike's gazing at Lindon as if he were quite the most interesting thing he'd seen all day….even as a pigeon tries to settle into his lap. He sets the bird aside gently, and she hops down from the rim to join the flock. They don't scatter, but they do make room for Lindon. "It's a lovely evening for a walk, isn't it?" says the creature who doesn't walk anywhere, if he can help it.
*
Lindon is usually so good about not addressing people around him. It's one of the things he loves about New York! It's just that Michael's dazzled him. It's his resemblance to an angel that does it. "Yes," he says. "It's a gorgeous night." He adjusts his hat and glances at the pigeons so as not to stare. He smiles a little at the creatures, so soft-hearted is he for critters. He draws another step closer. "So, uh. Yeah. I was just out for a walk." Oh god oh god oh god how to words work?
*
The pigeons look at Lindon, expectation clear in their beady little eyes. "They hope," Michael explains, cheerfully, "You might have breadcrumbs." He draws his own wings up from that lazy, drooping half-spread in the the usual position one expects for an angel at rest, back and folded. The shimmer is iridescent - they do seem to have a light of their own. "I'm Michael," he adds, after a moment, with the air of one who realizes he's forgotten his manners.
*
"I'm Lindon," says the tall man in the dark coat. He tells the pigeons, "I see you, little beggars. Let me see what I've got." He reaches into his pocket and draws out the half of a peanut butter and jam sandwich he didn't eat today. "I suppose I can be suckered out of a few crumbs." He gestures to the fountain beside Michael and asks, "May I?" He tries to sound smooth, but this is clearly not something he does often.
*
There's a ripple of reaction in the flock, but no one lunges for him like something out of Hitchcock. The angel smiles, and it's beatific. "Thank you on their behalf," he says. "And I'm pleased to meet you, Lindon. Please, do sit."
*
Lindon sits, and he tears a piece off the sandwich and tosses the crumbs to the birds. "I know it's not the idea diet for you guys," he tells the animals, "but a snack is a snack." Sometimes he comes along with proper bird seed he brings from home, but today it's a sandwich. "Can you speak to them?" he asks tentatively. If he focuses on the birds, the dazzling Michael may not distract him too much.
*
"I can. And they to me." There's not a lot of pecking and fluttering. Something about the angel's presence seems to calm them. …..and Lindon, though he's hardly a pigeon, might feel something of that, himself. For someone who's usually a harbinger of war and destruction, he has a remarkable aura of peace. A kind of depthless calm.
*
Lindon does relax, more than usual when he's around strangers. Feeding the pigeons is soothing, besides. "That must be nice," he says. "I like animals. I like to think I know what they're thinking sometimes. Cats are easy to read when you're used to them. Dogs, I have no idea." He finds himself babbling at a stranger about cats. He has nightmares like this, the kind that wake one up in a cold sweat. But he's calm around the angel.
*
"Animals' thoughts are usually basic," Michael says, musingly. In my experience. "And yes, cats and dogs are. They're so in tune with humans, after all those centuries of domestication. It's amazing, watching that relationship grow."
*
Lindon is quiet a moment, then says, tentative, "You sound like you've been there watching it all along." He wants to believe this is an angel, but he's got to be objective here and make no assumptions. He chances a look at those startling eyes. "I can use the past for a reference, but personal observation hasn't seen enough years to gain any real perspective."
*
"I've looked in, from time to time," Michael says. One persistent pigeon, who's an odd reddish color, has finally taken up station in his lap. He pets it absentmindedly. "I've caught glimpses. Eli was so proud when the first real dog was born - that's his field, all the animals that aren't humans."
*
Eli. Lindon swallows. His mind is racing, filling him in with information, and he still tries to remain objective, but the facts coming in are all pushing him toward that one conclusion: angel. His hand trembles a little as he offers the bird on Michael's lap a palm of crumbled peanut butter and jelly clinging to bits of bread. "I prefer cats," he admits, "but dogs are man's best friend."
*
An actual angel. Not merely a winged mutant. The pigeon takes the crumb decorously from Lin's hand. Michael reaches out to take the human's hand once the pigeon is finished, examining it. "Don't be afraid," he says, gently. "I won't hurt you."
*
Lindon swallows again as his hand is taken. There are still crumbs on it, just a few. Long-fingered, slender. Soft hands, not of one who is used to hard labor. The nails are neatly manicured. There's one chewed hangnail but it has been trimmed back. "It's awe," he whispers. Then clears his throat and says, "I'm not afraid, it's all right. You're… you're Michael." His hand reflexively holds the angel's.
*
Michael takes the hand in both hands, rubs Lindon's with a kind of absurd matter of factness, like a mother trying to chafe chill from her child's fingers. There's no concept of personal space. Humans need touch, he'll give it to them. "Yes, I am," he agrees, and with no note of someone humoring another.
*
Lindon smiles despite himself and ducks his head as he's rubbed back to warmth. He'd be mortified if some stranger did this, but this a real life angel. Not just an angel, one of the Archangels! "I believe you," he says with a twinge of guilt in his reverence. He's Catholic. He can't help it. His sins are replaying themselves in his head as he thinks of all the reasons he doesn't deserve to be in such an august presence.
*
One hand comes up to brush Lin's temples, smooth his hair back. That parental tenderness, "No," he says, softly. "No. I know what you're thinking." Does he? "The story has been distorted. You judge yourselves far more harshly than you shall ever be judged. Not even my brother at his cruellest is he as vicious as you are to yourselves. You are loved."
*
Part of Lindon longs for that parental touch, and he leans into it. He's been an orphan for years now, but the sting of losing his parents is still there. He blinks back a sudden rush of moisture in his eyes, and his voice rasps. "We're taught we're creatures of sin and separate from God, even though the truth is so much more complicated."
*
One of those immense wings comes around him, curves close. There's a warmth to them, though they're absurdly light, soft. Hardly substantial enough to bear a body like that in flight, surely. But then, even having taken on flesh, he's not playing by all the rules of the world. "More complicated and simple. But you can no more separate yourself from the love of God than the stars can from the space around them. You exist within it."
*
"That is a lovely thought," Lindon says quietly. He leans into that warmth. Objectivity has fallen away, leaving emotions raw and exposed. He misses his religious and spiritual life. He's abandoned it for a lie, felt betrayed by it, repudiated it, then goes back from confession because of the guilt it drilled into him all his life. And he misses it so much. The belief that there's anything amidst all these monsters and dark gods and magicians that might resemble God's perfect love. "I live a lot in the dark now," he says.
*
"IT is the truth. I've stood in the light of the Presence, and shall again. So will you, out of time," he says. It's an odd phrase, but also the truth. He gathers the human close to him, an arm coming around the Archive. "And you bear a heavier burden than most, I see. The tree of knowledge grows yet, and not all of its fruit is sweet." He kisses the human on the brow. The angel has a scent, terribly subtle but present. It's the cool, breathless stillness of the last hour before a summer dawn: things growing, mist, silence.
*
Anyone could come by and see. These are the things Lindon's nightmares are made of. The ones that aren't eldrich and horrific. Someone could see him in a man's arms, here on the street, and he should be running for the hills. But that scent, it draws him in, and the kiss disarms him. "It's going to consume me someday," he murmurs, almost dreamily. "I'm just trying to live every day as much as I can." It's something he avoids talking about for want of reassuring his lovers, his friends. That they should focus on other things than the inevitable someday. He, however, never forgets about it.
*
"That remains to be seen," he says, calmly. No tinkering in the fates of mortals. Much, anyhow. Michael holds him, gently. "But that philosophy is always wise. One feels so conscious of one's limits, when one is within time."
*
"Especially when everyone around you is immortal or has managed to cheat time somehow," Lindon says wryly. He closes his eyes and rests his head on the angel's shoulder in a rare moment of perfect comfort. "I can't let myself see a way out," he says quietly. "Here's the rub: the more I delve into it, the bigger the chance I'll trigger a vision that'll eat up more my mind. Of course I will delve because I desperately want to live. If I let myself think it's possible, I won't leave it alone. If I resign myself to its inevitability, I don't tear myself apart looking for answers to questions others are already asking."
*
It feels perfectly fine. As if this were how it should be. Everyone gets to have an angel for comfort, at least once. "I do not see ahead, I'm not Gabriel, it is not given to me. But I would say….take strength. There are those around you who can hold you together while you look." He strokes Lindon's hair, hand light.
*
"Maybe when I'm feeling less scattered," Lindon allows, because the hair stroking is lulling him as easily as stroking a friendly cat. "I'm afraid of the visions. If the madness. Whenever I lose myself I wonder what isn't going to come back. What if someday it's my parents? Something I can never get back?"
*
HE frankly cuddles Lindon, as if he were a teddy bear. The lineaments feel as they should for someone human. He seems to have breath, a heartbeat. "You don't lose it. You lose access," he says, suddenly. "That is the secret. One of them. What you lose remains within you. Harder to find, but not destroyed."
*
Lindon's voice catches as he says, "Really?" He looks up at Michael, and the sudden urge to kiss the angel brings him right back to his guilt. He clears his throat and his cheeks color. "You've given me more hope than I've had in years," he says. His dark eyes glitter with unshed tears. He's beyond susceptible to an angel's glory.
*
Michael cups the human's face in his hands. His expression is somber, but there's still that infinite tenderness there. "Yes," he says, simply. Then both wings come around them, a shield, a veil, and he kisses poor human on the lips. It's chaste as snow, but….