Page 92 of Vanish Into Light

“I got you something,” Rose said, and pulled a book from her bag, and slid it across the island.

Beck recognized the cover straight off: it was a little tattered and waterlogged, but he’d had an early edition of this same book, before; had once walked into the library and found a much more timid Rose reading it, curled up by the fire, lips parted, enraptured, as her eyes flicked quickly back and forth across the lines. A book about a boy with wings, and the girl who loved him.

Beck didn’t realize that he’d closed his eyes until Rose’s arms slipped around his waist, and her face pressed into his chest. She stroked his back. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

~*~

Shock. That was what was wrong with him. He came to the realization in the wee hours one morning, Lance snoring against the back of his neck, arm flung over his waist, Rose curled up beneath his chin. The impossible had happened to him, and he’d lived, was here breathing, and growing stronger, and it was too much; it had broken his brain, his wonderful, clever brain, and he was in shock.

He closed his eyes, and thought about sleep until it finally claimed him.

~*~

He started working out again. Lance and Rose made protesting noises, but backed off when he sent them alook. He took over an empty ballroom near the back of the house, one that, magically, became clean, and gained a set of free weights that he didn’t comment on, because neither of his sneaky roommates would have confessed to buying them, anyway. He started slow, using his own body weight, planking, and bridging, and learning how to do a proper push-up all over again.

Within a few weeks, he was doing regular sets with the dumbbells, and going for three-mile runs in the mornings, just around the block and back. He could hear birdsong; he saw people in yards who were clearing debris, and putting in new fences; people who smiled and waved at him, because they didn’t know he was – had been? – the devil, and that all the misery of the past thirty-plus years had been his fault.

“Hey, neighbor!” a man in a hardhat called, and Beck lifted his hand, failed to scrounge up a smile, and kept running.

~*~

Shock. He was in shock. And it was eight months after Saint Michael carried him back down from heaven, a fresh scar over his chest where the sword had driven the immortal part of him out, that he finally accepted the state of things.

Or, rather, the truth of it all crashed over him like the worst sort of thunderstorm.

It was a Friday night. Beck had made stew with something approximating meat – it had just said MEAT on the package, but it had smelled fine and browned up nicely – and they were in the room they’d been using as a den. Lance was paging absently through a book over by the window, and Beck sat on the couch, Rose curled up at his side, a half-finished glass of wine in one hand. He’d never liked watching TV, before, but he tended to space out when he tried to read – like he was doing now, as the nightly news report highlighted the ongoing cleanup in Times Square. Electronic billboards were up and running again; someone on the street was being interviewed about Broadway possibly making a comeback, while the sun beamed down, and pigeons flew overhead, and a busker off-camera blew a few lonesome notes on a saxophone.

Pages rustled as Lance turned them, and Rose’s fingers were warm and callused when she slipped them beneath the hem of Beck’s shirt and trailed them over the skin of his hip.

It struck him all at once; lit him up from the inside-out like lightning.

This was his life. This here, with them. Dinner, and runs, and cleaning this house bit by bit. Channel-surfing, and dusty old used books. Checking the cucumbers, and putting things on the grocery list, and receiving their smiles: loving, relieved, happy, so impossibly happy, after everything.

Happy to have him here with them. Because, Lucifer or not, wings or not, power, strength, money, seduction or not…they love him. Not the military, not their careers, not…not…they lovedhim.

Rose said, “You okay?”

He opened his mouth to respond – and a ragged sob tore out of his throat.

“Beck!”

He dropped his face into his hand, and felt the wet heat of tears. He tried to breathe, and choked instead, crying – just crying, in a way he hadn’t since he was a very little boy.

Rose’s hand landed on his neck. “Baby,” she murmured.

The couch shifted on his other side, and he could smell Lance, then, even as his nose started to get stuffy: his soap, and cologne, and the product he put in his hair. A large, warm hand landed on his back, and petted over his spine, and he cried like an idiot, like a baby, unable to stop it.

He was the devil…the real, actual devil made flesh, and theylovedhim. They’dstayed.

His life hadn’t flashed before his eyes either time he’d died – or, well, gone to hell, and then flown up to heaven – but it did now, a rapid flash of every kiss, every fuck, every kill. Every line snorted, every pill taken, every punch thrown. He could hear Kay tutting and muttering over him, and Castor laughing, nastily. Could feel the scorch of flames, and the burn of ice, and over it all, again and again, he felt the gentle touch of his lovers’ hands, and heard their whispered assurances that they were there, that he was okay.

Finally, he sucked in a ragged breath, and, not caring if it was gross, lifted up the hem of his t-shirt to mop at his face. His eyes ached – and his chest ached, when he turned to Rose, and found her watching him with such worry.

“It’s over,” he said, his voice wrecked. “It’s really over.” His whole life, since boyhood, living in a world made upside down by the powers of heaven and hell – and now it was just…normal. It was just people, living, and working, and trying to make things better.

And maybe…maybe he was just a person, too. At least for the time being.

It took a beat for Rose to catch his meaning, and then her expression softened. “Yeah. I think it really is.”

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