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libraryscarf · 4 years

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Galo did not expect to meet an angel at the bus stop.

But then, not many people expect to meet an angel anywhere, bus stop or otherwise. Most people go entire lifetimes without meeting angels.

All of them, in fact.

Until now.

“‘S’cuse me?” Galo said, because he couldn’t very well say anything else.

The young man standing in front of Galo repeated himself obligingly.

“I am an angel.”

Galo gave him what he hoped was a flattering once-over.

“Well…you do look…um.”

The young man who called himself an angel did not seem either flattered or offended by Galo’s stuttering. In fact, he looked a bit bored with the whole conversation.

He was quite a bit shorter than Galo, and he seemed…translucent, somehow. As though he were more an echo of a person than the real thing. He was remarkably pale. He had a pale, angular face, and pale, silky-looking hair.

The only part of him that wasn’t pale were his eyes, which were a fierce, bloody pink. That couldn’t be healthy, Galo thought. Conjunctivitis, perhaps?

“You do not believe me,” said the young man who called himself an angel.

Galo’s eyes went very wide.

“Oh. You’re serious?”

“Of course I am serious.”

“Like, an actual angel?” Galo prodded “With wings and shit?”

The young man nodded. Galo needed a moment to process this. He needed several moments.

He could call Aina. She would probably know what to do.

“She would tell you to call the police.”

Galo reeled backward. “Can you read my mind?” he demanded.

“No,” said the angel. “But I know what you usually do in unprecedented situations. Right now, all of your friends would tell you I am delusional, and that you should call the authorities and get away from me as quickly as possible.”

Galo hesitated, then asked:

“Should I…do that?”

The angel looked him square in the face with those ferocious, beautiful eyes.

“That is your choice.”

Galo felt hot, from the tips of his toes to the very top of his scalp. He suspected that had more to do with this stranger’s devastating attractiveness than with his alleged divinity.

He cleared his throat.

“Can you prove you’re an angel?”

“I could, but it would destroy this body.”

Galo inhaled sharply.

“You would die?”

“No,” said the angel. “I cannot die. This vessel, however, can.”

An expression flickered across his face; if Galo trusted his eyes, it was almost a smile.

“As a general rule,” the angel said, “the human body does not enjoy housing a pillar of divine fire.”

Galo wasn’t sure if he should laugh or not. He tried to do both at once, which resulted in a sort of choked snort.

“We can start somewhere else,” he suggested. “Do you…have a name?”

The angel considered this for a moment.

“I did not give myself a human name,” he admitted. “It seemed unimportant.”

“Unimportant!” Galo repeated incredulously. “But it’s—it’s you! It’s the first gift you get in your life! You should give yourself a name. I can help you.”

The angel’s lips twitched again. Galo wondered, if under the right circumstances, he might hear him laugh.

“I do have a name,” the angel said. “A celestial one. It’s not exactly…friendly to human ears.”

Galo puffed his chest up.

“My ears are up to the challenge.”

The angel raised one pale eyebrow. Then he opened his mouth, and Galo’s vision went blurry. His head began to ring; it felt like all the air in his chest was being pressed out of him.

Then, everything went white.

When Galo woke up, he was lying prone on the bus stop bench. Something hot and metallic ran sickeningly down the back of his throat. He coughed, wetly, and realized his nose was bleeding.

The angel knelt next to him, and the expression on his face was no longer hard to read. He looked absolutely horrified.

“Are you all right?” he asked, as soon as Galo opened his eyes.

Galo sat up, wiping his nose off on his shirt. His head still seemed to echo with that otherworldly bell.

“Yeah!” he said. “That was cool as fuck! That’s your real name?”

The angel regarded him with narrow eyes.

“Something like that,” he said.

“I’m not sure I can pronounce that,” Galo admitted. “So I’m gonna think of something else to call you. Hey, our bus is here!”

: : :

Keeping an angel in his apartment proved to be more of an ordeal than Galo anticipated. This was complicated by the fact that, despite claiming to be a near-omniscient heavenly entity, Lio had no idea how to use a sink, or a toilet, or a stovetop.

(The name was Galo’s suggestion. “I think it sounds kickass,” was his argument. Lio had agreed.)

“For an angel, you sure seem hellbent on hurting yourself,” Galo muttered, snatching Lio’s hand away from the gas range for the third time that evening.

“I am merely researching.”

“Yeah?” Galo stirred the marinara sauce with unnecessary aggression.

“Can you go research on the couch, or somewhere else where you won’t burn your fingerprints off?”

“I don’t have fingerprints,” Lio said. He waggled his hands in front of Galo’s face to demonstrate that he did not, in fact, have fingerprints. The pads of his fingers were as smooth as glass.

“Damn,” Galo said. “You could really confuse some detectives.”

Lio blinked. “Are you suggesting I carry out a crime?”

To Galo’s horror, he actually seemed to be considering it.

“It would be a very new experience,” Lio murmured. “I would, of course, have to take precautions.”

Lio did this sometimes. He seemed to forget that the things he said inside his head and the things he said outside of it were not one and the same. It worked the other way too. He would occasionally wait for Galo to answer a question that had not been asked aloud.

Galo wondered if telepathy was a thing angels had. He swallowed hard, and looked deliberately away from Lio’s soft hair and pretty shoulders. He really hoped it wasn’t.

“We’re not going to commit crime,” he stated firmly.

“Of course you aren’t,” Lio corrected. “I was referring to myself.”

Galo pointed him sternly out of the kitchen.

“Go sit on the couch and watch TV until you stop thinking about setting your hands on fire or breaking the law. We’re going to have a nice dinner.”

Lio’s forehead wrinkled, cutely. Most of the things he did were cute, which made Galo miserable.

“You know, of course, that I do not need to eat,” he pointed out.

“And I still don’t care,” Galo retorted. “You can’t just sit around my apartment not eating.”

“Why not?”

“My conscience won’t allow it.”

“As an angel, I overrule your conscience,” Lio said. “By quite a lot, I might add.”

Galo dropped the spoon back into the saucepan.

“And there’s that.”

He spun to square off against Lio, hands on hips.

“I want answers.”

Galo tried to sound mad. He really, really did. But Lio was hard to be angry at. Negative emotions seemed to slide right out of Galo’s brain when he looked at him. It was like Lio emanated a calming, gentle aura that hung about him like a golden curtain. When Galo tried to look through it, he felt like he was on the verge of seeing something too good: too relentlessly beautiful to exist.

The whole situation really was a pain in the ass.

Galo fixed his eyes a little to the left of Lio’s face, trying to evade direct confrontation with the pleasant, tempting warmth that tickled the edges of his psyche.

“So if you’re an angel,” he said, slowly. “Why did you show up to me, specifically? Is this some It’s a Wonderful Life shit?”

Lio didn’t have a ready reply to that, which fueled Galo’s suspicions.

“I don’t understand what you’re asking,” Lio said stubbornly.

They had been dancing around this ever since the beginning: days and days of simply not talking about it.

Now, it suddenly seemed to Galo that this wasn’t something he would normally do. He wasn’t often the type to look at his feelings sideways.

On the heels of this thought, he realized: it must have been Lio’s influence. That sweet, irresistible halo of warmth depositing a steady stream of pleasant chemicals into his brain. Galo hadn’t wanted to talk about anything uncomfortable—not with the way Lio’s presence made him feel.

Now that he knew that, Galo was pissed.

“Not cool of you to dope me up with your weird angel pheromones, dude,” he said tightly.

Lio looked a bit alarmed, and the cloud of seductive warmth around him dropped instantly to a dull fizzle. Galo winced as the comforting glow in his head faded, replaced with awkward reality.

“I…I apologize,” Lio said. “I wasn’t…strict enough with myself. I too am learning how this works.”

“I want you to start explaining shit,” Galo said bluntly, before his own, entirely human reactions to Lio surfaced and caused any problems.

“What kind of shit would you like explained?” Lio asked meekly, his mouth pursed in a charming pout.

Galo narrowed his eyes. So the angel could play dirty.

“What are you really doing here?” he demanded. “And if I think you’re lying I’m gonna send a prayer direct to God himself and narc on you.”

Lio’s nostrils flared in what Galo chose to believe was amusement.

“I’ve never lied to you,” he pointed out.

“No, you just distracted and misdirected me. You started glowing all nice and everything just…slid out of my head.”

Lio maintained his staring contest with Galo’s chin, even as his own eyebrows drew together. It was the first time he had really displayed worry, and despite Galo’s demand for honesty, he wanted desperately to smooth those furrows away.

“I was hoping to curb your curiosity for your own safety,” Lio admitted. “I intended to tell you—afterward.”

The way he said the last word made the bottom of Galo’s stomach drop away.

“After…what?”

Lio pressed his lips together and looked up—straight into Galo’s eyes.

Galo saw it then. A wrong fold in the fabric of his life.

He remembered another himself: a Galo identical to him, but at a different time. He remembered fire. He remembered the door behind him locked. He remembered suffocation. He remembered pain.

For a moment, Galo remembered dying, as clearly as if it were happening that very moment.

When he opened his eyes, his cheeks felt warm and wet. Lio raised a hand to his face, wiping off the tears and mucus with his own sleeve. The intimacy of the gesture sank into Galo’s heart like a bullet.

“I’m going to die,” he said.

And he knew, as he said it aloud, how true it was.

: : :

Despite knowing the fact of his future death, Galo was more concerned with who was responsible for it. Someone had trapped him there on purpose. Someone wanted him dead.

“That’s not important for you to know,” was Lio’s only response. Galo saw red.

“There’s someone out there who wants to—who succeeds in—killing me!”

“You aren’t going to die like that, Galo Thymos,” Lio said.

“Well, how about some other way?” Galo retorted. “How am I supposed to relax, knowing that someone wants me dead? How can you say that’s not important?”

Lio’s face closed off like a trap, which meant Galo had struck a nerve.

“I’m not going to look for revenge or anything like that, Lio,” he pleaded. “I just want to be prepared. Please.”

The muscles in Lio’s jaw worked as he fought with himself. Finally, he ground out:

“I have broken so many rules just to get this far,”

“Great!” Galo said happily. “What’s one more?”

The wave of aggravation rolling off Lio curled the hairs on the back of Galo’s neck.

“Never mind,” he amended quickly.

“Galo Thymos,” Lio said, in a somewhat strained voice. “This is the end of your involvement. I ask you—I beg you, to let me take care of the rest.”

Galo went silent for a few moments. When he spoke again, it was quiet. Hurt.

“Who would hate me that much, Lio?” he asked. “Are you really not going to tell me?”

Galo felt sick at the very thought of it—that he had offended someone badly enough to warrant that hatred. That just wasn’t his style.

He was the guy everyone liked. Even if he was ignored, even if he wasn’t respected, he could be liked. He’d done his best at this, and after all that—had he really failed?

Lio said nothing, but he cupped Galo’s cheeks in his hands and lifted his face. It felt lovely.

Until today, Lio had so rarely touched him, and his skin was feather-soft. That alone was almost enough to make Galo forget how miserable he was.

Almost.

“Maybe that was the way it should have happened,” he said, barely above a whisper.

Lio’s fingers against his face twitched.

“What?”

“Maybe…” Galo’s voice trailed off. His throat felt like a clogged pipe.

“Maybe if I did hurt someone that badly…then maybe that way was right.”

“No!”

The light touch on his face vanished, just as Galo jumped at the force in Lio’s tone. He looked up and gasped.

Thin, bat-like wings unfurled from Lio’s shoulder-blades. They were huge and black: a hungry, hot black that made Galo feel slightly dizzy. Simultaneously, two horns erupted high on Lio’s forehead: wickedly sharp, their color bright, fearsome white that cast the rest of the well-lit apartment into shadow.

“You will not die before your time, Galo Thymos,” Lio said. Except… it didn’t sound very much like Lio anymore. His voice seemed to come from everywhere in the room, and the floor trembled.

“I will not let you.”

Galo could only stare, awestruck. When he found his voice again, the wings and the horns were gone. It was just Lio again, sitting there innocently like nothing had happened.

“Is that why you’re here?” Galo asked, promptly shoving the impossible vision aside to be dealt with later. “To prevent my death?”

Lio avoided eye contact. He hadn’t yet mastered the human art of lying. Despite the telltale silence, Galo had to believe there was another reason. Angels didn’t simply fall to earth to save one life.

“Let me guess,” he said, adopting a melodramatic attitude. “You’re here on a special mission to prevent global conflict! You have been assigned the critical task of protecting Galo Thymos, whose tragic and early death sparked riots all over the world!”

Lio didn’t laugh; he gave Galo a hard look.

“You do not seem to understand the value of your own life,” he said.

Galo shrugged.

“In my line of work, dying is part of the contract,” he said lightly. “But…I did kind of hope I’d be able to put out a few more fires before it was over.”

Galo’s rueful smile slid off when he looked at Lio again. For the first time since they had met, the angel looked furious. His eyes were pools of molten heat.

“How dare you,” Lio hissed. “How dare you, Galo Thymos?”

Galo’s mouth flopped open, uselessly.

“Huh?”

Lio stood, and for a moment Galo worried he was about to sprout wings and horns again. But the only thing he did was keep glaring down at Galo, rage peeling off him in terrifying, invisible waves.

“You would die alone,” Lio said cruelly. “You would be mourned by the few who know you, and then you would be forgotten. This does not bother you?”

“It sure doesn’t, now that I know heaven exists!” Galo shot back.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew it was foolish to escalate the argument, but he was tired of being scolded, even if it was Lio—beautiful, wise, immortal Lio—doing the scolding.

He stood, and was pleased to note that despite the angel’s formidable aura, Galo was still significantly taller.

“Typical Galo Thymos,” Lio said. His eyes were narrow slits of fire.

“Arrogant, irresponsible, and reckless.”

He turned, stalking out of the room, and Galo was left with a heaviness tugging on his heart that he had never felt before.

: : :

Despite his swagger and his bravado, Galo was afraid of many things.

He was afraid of hesitating during a crisis. He was afraid of losing the small group of people he considered friends. He was afraid of taking any action, making any decision that might dishonor the great man who had saved his life. The great man who stood before him now.

Kray Foresight grinned down at Galo like a lunatic, his eyes blazing red through a haze of smoke. The pungent scent of melting metal hung around them like a poisonous shroud, stripping away the inside of Galo’s lungs.

“I certainly didn’t expect you to make this so easy,” said Kray. “But you are, if nothing else, predictable.”

Galo was without gear, without matoi, without backup. He had already been inside the building when the fire started, just two floors down from the governor’s office. When smoke began pouring into the room, Galo realized that it was here.

This was the place he died. This was the man who killed him.

He thought he knew now what Lio meant, when he said dying alone was something to fear.

Kray looked down at him, the smoky shadow of his immense form filling the doorway. His eyes burned with insane, festering hatred as he looked at Galo choking on the floor. Then, wordlessly, he shut the door, and the lock clicked into place.

Galo tried to cry out, but his throat was on fire, his lungs withering. He shut his eyes against the smoke, and felt the dark coming to meet him.

Then he was lifted, cradled gently against a strong, warm body. Galo was confused at this. Had he already died? Could this be the beginning of an afterlife?

“I am sorry for cutting it so close.”

Lio’s voice came from nearby, the tone of it jagged with distress. To Galo, it sounded like every beautiful noise in the world.

“Ugh,” he groaned. “I ain’t dead?”

He hadn’t opened his eyes, but he knew from the lightness of his own heart that Lio was smiling at him.

“No, Galo Thymos,” Lio said. “You are not dead.”

Galo laughed aloud at that, even though it hurt. He was giddy from the adrenaline, the pain, the endorphins.

“What’s with that?” he muttered. “Why is it always ‘Galo Thymos’ this, and ‘Galo Thymos’ that?”

Lio seemed to relax as soon as Galo began complaining. “Is that not your name?” he asked innocently.

“It is! It totally is. But my friends just call me ‘Galo’.”

“Is that what we are?” Lio asked very quietly, almost to himself. “Friends?”

Before he could answer, Galo realized they were no longer moving. He peeled his smoke-crusted eyelids open. That was when he started to yell.

“Lio!”

“Yes?” said Lio, bewildered.

“We’re a million miles in the air!” Galo hollered.

“Two point eight, actually.”

Galo clung to Lio’s torso, his mind in ruins from trying to make sense of what was, quite obviously, a view of Promepolis from cumulonimbus height.

“Oh my god, we’re gonna die,” he muttered. “Oh my god, we’re totally, definitely, absolutely going to die. Holy shit.”

Lio’s laugh was a gorgeous sound, but Galo was too busy panicking to appreciate it.

“You really think I rescued you from a burning building just to send both of us plummeting to our deaths?” he asked, still chuckling.

“Yeah, actually, I do think that!”

Lio gently began untangling Galo from the protective pretzel he had tied himself into around Lio’s body.

“You can stand, you know,” he said, but Galo just gripped more tightly.

“I really gotta remind you that you’re the angel here?!”

Lio dropped him.

Galo gasped; he expected to feel the air rushing out of his lungs as he shot toward earth. But instead, he was standing up. It was as simple as it was impossible. There he was, standing on nothing at all.

Galo stared between his feet, every muscle screaming in panic. He squeezed his eyes shut again.

“Please don’t tell me this is some ‘believe in it and it’s real’ shit,” he groaned. “Because I am not good at controlling my thoughts.”

Laughing again, Lio said: “I know this about you, Galo Thymos. Do I have to remind you that I am the angel here?”

Galo forced himself to open his eyes. He looked from the distant ground back to Lio, then from Lio to the ground. He looked back at Lio, and his brain point blank refused to acknowledge what he was seeing.

In all the ways one might expect, Lio looked exactly the same. But he was another creature entirely. Galo saw, flickering at the edges of his vision, a massive, winged shape that seemed to be made entirely of fire.

He blinked a few times, but despite its size, the flaming, winged form managed to escape his direct gaze, and searching for it strained his eyes. But Galo knew without a shred of doubt that Lio was, somehow, both beings at once.

“I cannot let you see my true nature,” Lio said in answer to Galo’s wordless confusion. “I do not believe you would survive.”

Galo bristled.

“But I’m—”

Lio held up a hand to stop him. “Yes, despite being the great Galo Thymos. You need to comprehend at least nine more dimensions before you can behold my full glory.”

“I bet I could do it.”

Galo couldn’t believe the look on the angel’s face at his challenge. Lio was smirking.

“Do you really?” he asked dangerously. “I couldn’t even tell you my real name without half of your pitiful little organs exploding.”

But that smirk had Galo fired up. This, he wouldn’t lose.

“Try me.”

A few seconds later, Galo woke up, feeling the warm, salty trickle of blood out of his nose. Lio was crouching over him, his face torn between amusement and concern.

“Are you convinced now?”

“Okay,” Galo said sheepishly. “Maybe nine dimensions is still above my pay grade.”

He wiped his face, but then realized the blood was already gone. Moreover, his desiccated lungs now felt full and healthy. His scorched clothes were whole and clean.

“You’re, uh, burning a lot of that angel fuel on me right now,” he said. “Where was all this generosity when you first showed up?”

An odd expression flickered across Lio’s face.

“I had to be cautious,” he said. “I could not cause too much of a disturbance as long as your death was a variable. But now it doesn’t matter.”

A chill rippled through Galo’s stomach.

“What does that mean?”

Lio smiled and shook his head. He helped Galo sit upright, then lowered himself beside him. It was just the two of them, perched on nothingness.

At the periphery of his senses, Galo felt the presence of the “real” Lio. His head hurt at the idea of that enormous, incomprehensible entity manifesting as the beautiful young man next to him, feet dangling into emptiness. But Galo, above anything, wanted to perceive that true, divine shape. He wanted to show Lio how capable he was of understanding him—how willing he was to learn.

“I want you to look at the sunset now, Galo Thymos,” Lio said quietly.

“I wanted you to see it once like this.”

: : :

“I can’t come back with you.”

Galo frowned. The words didn’t immediately make sense to him. Of course Lio was coming back with him. Where else would he go?

“Why not?”

Lio gestured to the city beneath them, dappled with the shadows of clouds.

“This is as close as I can get.”

“But…you’ve been living in my apartment!”

Lio nodded, and the peaceful, resigned look on his face made Galo feel sick.

“Why can’t you come back with me?” he asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

Lio turned his head to look at Galo. The warm, dying colors of sunset made him look more human than ever.

“Remember what I said about the fragility of this body?”

Galo stared at him numbly as the pieces fell together. The Lio he had known—the Lio he had come to love in the fierce, desperate way a person can only love something temporary—was gone.

“You sacrificed it to save me,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

“It is good this way,” Lio replied. “I couldn’t have stayed forever.”

“Why not?!” Galo blurted out. He was so angry, it was so desperately unfair. “Why couldn’t you?”

“Because…I’m in trouble.”

Lio’s tone remained light, but Galo knew it was terribly serious.

“I ran into some friends earlier, at the Foresight Foundation building.”

The way Lio said “friends” led Galo to believe they were quite the opposite.

“They made it very clear that if I saved you, I would suffer for it later,” he said with a sigh. But rather than looking at all concerned for himself, he glanced guiltily at Galo.

“That’s why I took so long. I am sorry. Again.”

Galo could only stare. Lio looked so young and golden, it nearly broke his heart.

After a few moments of unbearable silence, Galo asked in a quiet voice:

“Are you going to tell me now? Why you saved me?”

The angel smiled at him, warmer than light itself.

“You still have to ask?”

Galo goes grocery shopping on a Thursday night.

He buys six frozen pizzas and twelve cans of dog food. He slings the bags over his arms and jogs out into the brisk night air. Ever since he moved deeper into the city, the sidewalks have never been empty. He weaves in and out between slower walkers, calling pleasant greetings to those he recognizes. Despite his better judgment, his eyes follow a head of pale blonde hair until it is out of sight. Another stranger, he thinks.

Galo takes the subway to a stop near his apartment and disembarks. The station is much less busy than usual, and although he doesn’t mind a crowd, it’s nice to hear just his own footsteps echoing against the tile.

Six years have passed since Kray Foresight was charged with first-degree arson. To Galo, each of those six years is a gift.

He almost doesn’t notice the slender silhouette leaning at the top of the stairs. His arm bumps their shoulder, and he utters an automatic apology.

Galo takes another two steps. He stops. The bags of groceries fall out of his arms, cans clattering across the concrete. He doesn’t want to turn around. If he doesn’t ruin this illusion, maybe it will last a bit longer.

From behind him, he hears a voice: achingly lovely, and as familiar to him as his own.

“Are you always this rude, Galo Thymos?”

: : :

Most people go their whole lives without kissing an angel. But for Galo Thymos, on a warm Thursday night at an unusually quiet train station, things were very different.

: : :

fin

(author’s note: this piece was written for the “parallels” galolio au zine, which raised over $800 to donate to the National Black Justice Coalition. it was fantastic to be involved in the project and work with some amazing people!!)

#scarfwrites #galolio #galolio fanfiction #promare #promare fanfiction

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