A Sacrament

"You needn't hide your wings from me, angel," a voice says next to him.

He knows this one. Known him for millennia. He's not interested. "I don't tend to uncase them in public."

His unwelcome companion, in a dark bespoke suit and shades, sits down beside him at the bar. "Shame. Always did like them."

The angel has seen this one's wings before: they're black, shiny, with galaxies in the depths of their shimmering feathers. The angel curls his fingers delicately around the bell of his glass, watching the splash of light on the bar, tinted reddish by merlot.

"So, what are you doing here on a night like this?" the fallen angel asks him, gesturing at the torrents running down the front window.

"Oh, nothing," the angel says anxiously.

But the fallen angel has known him for too long. "You're here on a tinder, aren't you. Waiting for some poor dame or fellow to come and meet up with you." He glances at the clock above the bar. "How late are they?"

The angel doesn't want to play.

"Oh, come on, let me at least keep you company till they get here. You look like a bit of a sad sack sitting here alone." The fallen slides his barstool closer and peers into the angel's glass. "Mm, Merlot. We did do a good job on wine. You lot fell for it."

The angel sniffs disdainfully. "You're mistaken. We did wine. Blood of Christ and all that."

The fallen tugs playfully, tauntingly at the air above the angel's shoulders, precisely where his wings would be if he were showing them. Picking at the phantom feathers. "You sure?"

"Positive. It's a sacrament." The angel is losing his patience.

"So," the fallen says, leaning in a little more, "what is it, I wonder, that drives an angel of the lord to go out on a tinder date with a human?"

"Bold of you to assume it's a human."

"Oh, it's not? What's his name, then?"

The angel leans his body away slightly and looks at the fallen: dark eyes, mischief on his lips, and a thousand years of sadness at least, written in the little crinkles around the corners of his eyes, in the roughness of his cheek.

In truth, his date is half an hour late at this point.

"I just want some company," the angel admits. "His name is Bradley. He's a painter."

"Ugh," says the fallen. "Bradley. That name ought to be a disqualifier right off." The fallen takes off his jacket, and the angel smells expensive French cologne, leather and a little bit of sulphur. The fallen has had a lot of time to get good at mostly covering it. The angel finds he doesn’t mind the mix of scents so very much.

“I like painters,” the angel says defensively.

“Painters are dreadful people,” the fallen shoots back with confidence. “Jackson Pollock? Basquiat? Drama queens and arseholes, the lot of them.”

“I liked Michelangelo,” the angel protests.

“He wasn’t really a painter. He was a sculptor. He hated painting so much he wrote poems about how much he hated it the entire time he was painting the Sistine Chapel. I know. I was there.” The fallen grins and flags down the bartender. “I’ll have what he’s having,” he says in a needlessly flirty way.

The angel isn’t sure why this makes him jealous.

“Well, whatever. I just get lonely sometimes. Don’t you?”

The fallen drinks his merlot and smiles wickedly. He doesn’t even have to breathe a word and the angel feels his cheeks flush. “All the time, angel. All the time. And never.”

The fallen lifts his glass and offers a toast.

“What are we drinking to?” the angel wonders.

“To being stuck amongst these fleeting, beautiful humans and their gossamer lives that get plucked away before we even get around to learning their names. To being alone on the face of the earth, the two of us. The last celestial agents, waiting for the end of the world.”

The angel feels a stab in his chest. The fallen’s words strike somewhere between two of his ribs. He gently taps his glass to the fallen’s and they drink.

How can a brief, fragile human ever truly offer the company he needs?

How can a fallen angel be the only one in all the multitudes on this ridiculous, delicate planet who could possibly understand him, and the strange elasticity of loneliness that stretches onward with him?

The fallen can read his thoughts. “We’re all subject to the slow violence of cosmic time, angel.”

The angel drinks his wine to the bottom of the glass. The merlot stains the fallen’s lips a darker red, and the angel knows that his mouth must look the same. He can tell, because the fallen is looking at it.

“Bradley can’t offer you what you need,” the fallen says, his lips dripping mockery all over Bradley’s name. The pregnant pause that follows is filled with the murmur of other patrons and seventies soft rock that he suddenly finds seductive. This must be a mistake.

But somehow, it isn’t.

“If I leave with you,” the angel asks, “does it mean I’ve fallen?”

“It took me thousands of years,” the fallen says. “It doesn’t happen all at once.” He drinks the rest of his wine with absurd, deliberate slowness, and suddenly the angel can't see anything else but the fallen's lips at the edge of the glass.

"Must you drink it like that?" the angel demands in a whisper that betrays his weakness.

"Of course. It's a sacrament," the fallen says with a grin.

A slow fall, the angel thinks. But in the arms of a companion, lips stained wine red, wings unfurled? A slow fall perhaps is better than no fall at all.

He doesn’t say anything. He just nods toward the bar’s front window, where on the other side, the rainy nighttime beckons. They hurry out so fast, there's nothing left but a few white feathers on the bar.