“Are you okay?” He looked at her with sincere concern, stopping folding his clothes in order to focus on his stance— one hand on his hip, the other on his cheek, topped off with a slight frown.
“I stayed up late last night studying.” To be fair, it was a good excuse. Just not one Maalik seemed ready to believe.
“Shouldn’t you be in class?” Yes. If she was still in her angel classes, she’d still be missing it, so he absolutely would know if she was lying.
“No.”
“Iofi... Look, can you please tell me what’s going on?”
“How was your medical field trip?”
Maalik sighed. “Fine. Medicine is incredible and the humans have come such a long way. I am humbled to be in their presence, to be reminded of my purpose, et cetera et cetera. The food was excellent as always.” He sat on her bed. “Blue, listen, I’m probably going to find out one way or another. And I’d rather hear from you, so I can help you.”
“Maal, have you spoken to anyone from school who isn’t me yet? Do you have class today?”
“...No.”
“Then I don’t want you to leave.” Iofiel stood up, unfurling her wings and stretching out their joints. “Til I say what I need to.”
Maalik watched her from her bed. “Then say it.”
Iofiel stood stiffly, her wings limp and dragging on the floor. She bit her lip. Then she sat on the floor. “I’m kinda afraid.”
“When you act like this, I’m scared too.” He joined her the floor, his back slouched. He looked distinctly tired too, she noted, with heavy bags under his eyes, his wings ruffled and stretched out behind him. He was likely tired from having to hide his unearthly features for such a long time— even his halo was a solid, basic dish like Iofiel’s right now.
“What d’ya think is the worst thing an angel can do?”
Maalik rolled his eyes. It was a dumb question, of course— “Morningstar.”
“Okay, but below treachery. If you’re loyal, if you’re still very good... how much do you think They’ll tolerate?” Iofiel leaned back. “I think I’m good. I think you are too. If we kissed, what would happen to us?”
“We’re not going to kiss.”
“You’re not one for hypothetical, huh? I... really do need to know if I can trust you though. That’s what it comes down to in the end.” Well, no. She just needed to hope he’d side with her— something which Santiago had sternly warned her against. Trust didn’t appear to be part of it.
“Of course you can!” Maalik said. “Please, please, stop being vague.”
“Can I be vague a little while longer?”
“Absolutely not.” His brow was low, his frown weary.
“Well, uh... Look, I really don’t know how to tell you this. I guess I do, but I’m also quite positively certain you’ll be vehemently against what I tell you, so... in an effort to delay the inevitable...”
“Iofiel.”
Iofiel swallowed. It seemed to easy to just tell him what she needed to, even to take her schedule out of her binder— only a foot away— and show him. She’d convinced herself she’d made the right choice, or at least, one she was capable of arguing for (‘what good is goodness if it does not extend to our foes’, etc.), but despite his personal struggles Maalik was a well-behaved angel.
She said something else instead— “Let’s go on a date!”
Maalik’s face was like a grimace without the elegance, a sort of slack jawed look of pure horror and complete disbelief. “That’s not what you were planning to say, and we’re not going to go on one.” He hadn’t regained his composure, but he still managed to squeeze in a little bit of that authoritative charm he tended to use around her. That ‘I know better’ aura.
“It is,” Iofiel insisted, though a lie was rather hard to maintain when the other person already knew it was untrue. And it was the first one you’d ever told. “So it’s not what I was going to tell you, but it’s still... true. Ish. I need to know I can trust you, and maybe this will help. Plus, I know what dating is from my culture class, and I can’t say I’m not curious.”
“You’re curious about everything. There is a difference between learning—”
“—From example!” Iofiel blurted, though she wasn’t sure how it helped her point.
“And… other things.” Maalik sighed, and for a moment switched to his ‘Proper Archangel’ voice. “The only love either of us needs is from The Good Neighbor, who will likely smite us where we sit if this goes any further.”
“It’s a date in words alone.” Iofiel tried to wave off the threat. It proved a little hard to do completely, but she reminded herself she’d been breaking the rules for a few days now and the worse that’d happened was. Well, yesterday. And perhaps some role in the apocalypse, but at least she was alive, right? “I want to get to know you better is all.”
“Fine,” Maalik grumbled. “We can hang out. Never mention this.”
It helped Iofiel calm down, though perhaps not focus, to suddenly invest everything into this non-date she was suddenly having. She leapt to her feet and killed the lights, and then parted the curtains to let in some softer light. While she was searching through her few possessions for anything that reminded her of romance, Maalik got up and closed them.
“What if someone looks in?” he said.
Iofiel put her hands on her hips. “What floor are we on again?”
“Our classmates have wings.”
“Okay, fine, but you’re going to need to make some candles then. Far lovelier.”
“Where did you learn about this?” he complained, sitting down again on the floor. With a series of broad hand gestures that mostly involved running his fingers across his skin, he produced two orbs of light, which hung about a foot in the air.
“Well, so much of humanity and history has been about marriages and love, so of course human culture needed to get all the angels up to speed on it!” It had been quite brief, naturally, with the demons snickering at every silly question an angel had raised their hand to ask, about the nature of love, and why humans ever bothered with it if it really caused such a fuss.
They’d watch a number of film scenes of romances, of human weddings, dates, and relationships just to get the idea. The fire orbs were a good step towards the kind of soft candles fancy restaurants had. “We need some food,” Iofiel pondered.
“I’ll go get some.” Maalik offered flatly, without moving, clearly aware she wouldn’t let him leave the room. Then he reached over for his bag, and removed a package of something she’d never seen before, red and white circles wrapped in plastic. He poured some on the ground before him. “Dorm date.”
“Dorm date,” she repeated. She grabbed one of the circles experimentally, feeling the plastic wrap between her fingers. She took it out of its protective shell and popped it into her mouth, a little shocked by the hardness, and then the sugar content. “So, what are your hobbies?”
Maalik looked utterly frustrated. “I am an angel. I do not have hobbies, I have a duty and a role. What are your hobbies?”
“Hey, clearly you enjoy... buying these things.” She popped another into her mouth. They were delightfully sweet, more so than anything else she’d ever eaten. “Just because we don’t do most things, doesn’t mean we’re suddenly barred from having any fun.”
“Fine. I like cooking.”
“Cooking?”
“Cooking, putting food together to make other foo—”
“No, I know what it is. Just, it doesn’t seem like quite the thing you’d enjoy.”
Maalik relaxed a little, his back crooked once more. “I sometimes have major difficulties with even mildly stressful events.” A short pause. “Anxiety, it’s called,” he said reluctantly, like giving it a name made it worse. “I cope by... baking things. And acting a little meaner than necessary.”
“Where? I mean—”
“There are kitchens here. Some students do volunteer there, except by ‘some’ I mean ‘me’ and once
Shamsiel came by to watch me make a batch of cookies. There’s something zen about putting things together by following an exact code, and only having to wait and hour or so for everything to be neatly through with.”
“That’s so cool!”
Maalik blinked. “That’s not normally what you’d say to someone who occasionally puts things in an oven.”
“Well, I want to have a hobby one day. You should teach me how to cook sometime.” Iofiel fell back onto her back, or at least as far back as her wings would let her.
“If you’d like.” Maalik was quiet for a moment. “What do humans talk about on a date? Mind you, this is still not one, and I figure its best neither of us ever learn, but... I’m out.”
“Don’t be boring.” Iofiel rolled over onto her stomach. “No one’s watching, except maybe The Divine, who you know, knows the future and stuff. So everything we do, whether or not we choose to do it, is already known. So overthinking things is silly— just tell me about yourself, and I’ll do the same. Love is all about learning.”
When Maalik threateningly pointed towards her, Iofiel giggled, “Not like we’re here to fall in love! I don’t want to do that with you. But friendship is a type of love too, you know.”
“If you were sincerely looking to be my friend, you wouldn’t subject me to this.”
“Please indulge me?”
“Fine.” Maalik swallowed. Despite his protests, he didn’t appear too uncomfortable with the prospect. Perhaps this wasn’t, despite the other angels’ teasing, his first flirtation with romance.
“You have pretty eyes.” Iofiel started with, after a beat. “They’re the color of a rare sunset and a good sunrise.”
Maalik blinked, as if suddenly hyperaware of his eyes. “Pinkeye is a common human disease that is highly contagious. Uh, your eyes are the color of... blue.”
“The night sky?” Iofiel suggested. Her eyes were darker than her hair, still unusual for a human but still capable of blending compared to Maalik’s soft pink irises.
“It’s supposed to be my job to think of compliments for you.” Maalik looked lost in thought for a second. “Do you want to hear a pick-up line? These are things humans tell each other in attempts of seduction.”
“Oh, you’re trying to seduce me now, are you?” Iofiel laughed, barely understanding what seduction was but entertained by the idea. Here she was, on a play-date to avoid telling the blasphemous truth. Here she was, able to flirt with the idea of flirtation for the only time in her life, even if it was mostly in jest. “Let’s hear it!”
Maalik needed to take a moment to concentrate, perhaps to properly channel the air of a human on the prowl for intercourse. “Hey... b-baby, did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?”
Iofiel waited for more, but there wasn’t any. She put a hand on her chin, mulling the question over. “So, humans are attracted to Fallen Angel types then? I suppose that explains why they’re prone to bad decisions.”
“No, see, humans call other humans ‘angels’ as a compliment. The line is meant to imply the recipient is, in fact, an angel. This is a more elaborate way of calling them ‘beautiful’.”
“Why wouldn’t they ask directly if they were an angel? ‘Hey baby, did it hurt when The Light carved you from stardust and burned wings of bone onto your back?’. Or like, ‘Hey baby, what’s it like promoting good morals and guiding humanity towards The True Way in preparation for the end of days, where The Adversary will be thwarted?’” She stared at Maalik, and began to crack up. He rolled his eyes again, but she felt it was affectionate.
Maalik cleared his throat, and then looked to the floor, muttering his next one with a slight blush. “Do you have a mirror in your pants? Be—”
“No.”
“Because I could see myself... in your pants.”
Iofiel cackled at this one, the euphemism unfamiliar but the punchline— sex— surely being the same. “Why do you know these?”
Maalik was quick not to answer. It seemed like this was maybe something everyone knew, or else humans were more deprived than Iofiel thought, and he had merely heard these on the street. “If I could arrange the alphabet, I’d put U and I together.”
Iofiel had to think about this one, remembering what order the alphabet was in the first place, before later realizing this part of it didn’t ultimately matter, and that homophones existed. All this deep thought prevented her from laughing much. “I think I thought of a better pick up line.”
“What could top these.”
“‘Hey, did you fall from Heaven? Because you’re ugly as sin.’” Maalik smiled, prompting Iofiel to grin, “So! This is romance.”
“No, it’s not. Romance is...”
“You don’t really know, do you.”
“I have better things to do than know. But I do think it’s about adulation, about putting one person above everything else, and the excitement of... that.”
Iofiel propped her head in her hands. “Are you ever jealous of humans?”
Maalik didn’t react. “If I had to talk about you—”
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
“I might say I like... That you’re so happy all the time. You smile and laugh a lot, and I can’t do that, so it’s fascinating to see someone who can. You’re young. And naive. But I probably only imagine you’re slowwitted. I-I-It’s like a choice you’re capable of making, and I could never manage.”
“This is making me sad for you more than it is boosting my ego. Maal, are you pathetic or something? ‘Cause what I like about you, is, uh. I don’t know much about you! I met you a week ago, so all I really know is that you’re going to be a healer, and you like to cook food. And that’s awesome. Healing is way too hard for me—” She laughed nervously— “So I gotta admire you for it. Being helpful is more than I’ll ever do.”
Maalik watched her for a few moments, his eyes strangely cold. Then he shook his head. “I can’t do this.”
“What?”
“I can’t do this. It’s wrong, and it’s— Iofi, I—”
Iofiel flung herself forward and kissed him, something she’d only ever seen in brief flashes, couples in the hall or clips in class. She knew lips were supposed to touch, and noses weren’t, and worked from there.
She pulled away very, very quickly, one knee on his lap the other at an odd angle on the floor, plastic-wrapped candy below digging into her skin.
“That was... bad,” Maalik said.
“Of course it was bad! It was a sin!” Iofiel exclaimed, her face no doubt very red, her place in the inferno below no doubt sealed.
“No, for a kiss, it’s—” He laughed, and then cackled, cracking up like she’d never seen him before, shaking his head at the ground like it was an old friend. “Permission to kiss you better?”
“Permission?” Iofiel was fascinated at his break, smiling despite herself, her heart a knot of fear and bad decision making. She grinned. “Let’s go for it.”
He shook his head, raised his eyebrows, frowned a little, and then he gently pulled her back towards him, and they kissed again. This one was notably less bad in the physical sense, but equal and/or worse in the sin sense. Maalik held her close, a hand on her back and another in her hair, his lips against hers, and he smelt oddly sterile, and—
They stopped.
“Oh,” Iofiel said, still splayed awkwardly in his lap. They were both still. Maalik looked utterly mortified with what he had done. Iofiel’s face was hotter than the fires of Hell her body was going to burn in. So that was romance…?
It was quiet for a long time, both looking anywhere that wasn’t each other, Iofiel eventually taking the time to move away from him. She popped another candy in her mouth.
Maalik was whatever came above ‘tense’ in terms of tenseness, some higher level of uncomfortableness, but he seemed to gain an ounce of composure first. “That didn’t count. You’re hiding something, still, and you only did that because— You didn’t want m— that.”
“No.” It was ha
rd for Iofiel to speak.
“Yes. I can tell you’ve been healed, I can sense the magic around you, and I didn’t want to press. I wanted you to just tell me, trust me, but if you won’t I’ll have to talk to someone else,” Maalik said. “I want to hear it from you.”
“I—” Like she hadn’t been rehearsing this in her head, Iofiel floundered at the thought of confession, suddenly at a total loss of everything. “I’ve made friends with demons, specifically that imp, and I switched my major to soul sales to support him. It isn’t disloyalty, but pity... he needed help, and I gave it to him, and please understand that’s all I meant by it.”
“I should have guessed as much. Knew it was something like that,” Iofiel had imagined his voice in her head, sometimes when she went to sleep, remixing his abrasive words into loops of horrible things: and even if he now wasn’t saying anything like that, the thoughts came back. She expected anger, but Maalik’s back hadn’t stiffened. His eyes did not twitch. Instead, he continued to sit on the floor, and he continued to face her. “Why are you like this?”
“He needed support. No one likes him, and everyone... deserves a friend?”
He shook his head. “Why are you like this.”
“Amariah let me, but the other angels seem to think it’ll lead to something terrible. I just figured I’d take demon classes for a semester, or a year, and then have to stay in school a little bit longer. That it’d be a non-issue entirely! And yet. Yeah. There was a fight.” Iofiel still couldn’t fully meet Maalik’s gaze, but her face was less hot, and the room seemed far colder. “The others say I have to keep going like this. Reap whatever happens. So I’m going to, and I hope you don’t hate me for it. I don’t like demons, but I like who I know. The concept is worse than the people.”
“None of us are people.” Maalik got up slowly, crinkling out his back one notch at a time. “I don’t like this. You knew I wouldn’t, and you were very correct. But I’ll try not to care. I don’t want to hear about your demons. I don’t want to meet them. But I’ll stay by you, and I’ll help you when you need it.”
Good Angel Page 12