Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It began, like with many things, a blinding light. Cutting through the grim gray of the afternoon sky, bouncing off rusty warehouse walls and reaching out for Sunny with what he could only describe as a desperation. Metal crates overturned, dry grass lit on fire, a brilliance grasping at Sunny's pale wrists, rearranging his soul like a Rubik's cube with one touch. Even in the moment, in the haze of the 5:00pm confusion, Sunny was vaguely aware that the light was a life-changing force. 

Whether it was for better or worse, Sunny still does not know.

-

Sunny had never longed for anything else but the mundane. 

He had not spent his elementary school years dreaming up unicorns, or playing make believe with the other children in his class. Sunny had no interest in anything besides what he had been given- dreams were a complete waste of time to him. His middle school years had been spent at the town graveyard, staring down at the dry soil beneath his feet and thinking little about afterlives or greater purposes. 

(Sunny spent most of his time at one specific grave, of course. The grave with lily of the valley flowers littered around it, tombstone reading: "The sun shined brighter when she was here.")

Nothing changed when Sunny grew. The people around him changed of course, gradually became more similar to him, dreams thrown out the window and stamped into the ground with little regard to their younger selves. But Sunny never changed. He woke up in the same white, empty room every day, walked to school on the same dim asphalt sidewalks. Watched the sunset at the edge of the town on top of abandoned warehouses, saw the sun disappear below the power lines and the sky became a murky gray color when the clock hit 5:40pm.

Sunny’s life made sense. That was really all he needed it to do. He didn’t have many aspirations for the future. He slacked off in school, his grades frequently dipping down into low D’s and on rare occasions F’s, although he never cared if he failed. Some of the people in his town longed for college, or moving to the city when they graduated high school. Sunny didn’t see the point. 

One of those people was Kel Vasquez. Sunny’s… ‘friend.’

The day before Sunny met the light, Kel had been talking to him about something during math class. Sunny had been absentmindedly listening to him and nodding along without much care for the actual contents of the conversation. He had been trying to balance a pencil on his nose for the whole day up until that point (through first period English and second period biology), and he felt that he was moments away from a breakthrough.

“So, what about you, Sunny?” Kel's voice had suddenly cut through his focus, right when the pencil had leveled flat on his nose. The wooden pencil fell to the linoleum floor with a light clatter. Sunny shot Kel a glaring look, but the other boy didn’t seem to notice, as he was just staring at him with an intent smile.

Sunny had no idea what Kel had been talking to him about, so he opted for the most harmless answer he could think of:

“Yeah, me too.” he said simply. His voice flat as tap water, grainy from frequent un-use.

“Oh, really?” Kel said with interest. He leaned closer to Sunny from where he was sitting (a desk to the right of him), his brown eyes gleamingly genuine in a way that Sunny could never imagine being, “What college are you planning on going to?”

Ah. Sunny thought to himself, a sourness in his mouth. 

Kel's family had always been intent on sending away every single one of their children to the city for ‘higher education’ once they finished high school. Kel and Hero had been talking about it since their shared childhood. Constant blabbering about GPA's and extracurriculars, letters of recommendation and college majors. Sunny remembers that Mari had been rather dazzled and inspired by Hero's enthusiasm about the subject. Mari had told Sunny, when he was around 10 or so years old and the two of them were sat out on their porch as the sun set over the town, that she was going to go away for college with Hero once she graduated.

Hero ended up going away for college. Mari didn't.

(That's not even mentioning how Hero had returned home only a year later, burned up after dropping out because of what Kel told Sunny was 'stress.' Hero began working at the town supermarket and hanging out with Kel again. Nowadays he always had a smile on his face, but it never reached his eyes.)

Sunny didn't plan on going to college. Even as he began Junior Year and the clock ticked toward graduation ever more with every day passed, he never saw any need for it.

Sunny shrugged in answer to Kel's question.

"I haven't decided yet," he said. He looked up at the clock hanging over the chalkboard on the top of the wall. 11:20, it read- ten minutes before the next bell.

Kel was still looking at him. His smile fixed onto his face, secure and easy, unapologetically candid. Caramel skin lit up by a beam of sunlight peeking through the window, dark hair tied up in a small ponytail at the back of his neck. Sunny began to feel distantly uncomfortable with the boys' eyes fixed on him so thoroughly. Has the conversation ended yet?  Sunny wondered, almost hopefully. Decidedly not, as Kel began speaking yet again a couple beats later.

"I can give you some recommendations, if you want," Kel grinned at him, straight white teeth winking at Sunny, "You know where I'm planning to go?"

Sunny eyes jumped to the clock again. The tiny hand was ticking away seconds. 11:24, it read. The voices of bustling students around them filled Sunny's ears, and he was suddenly more sharply aware of the background hum then he was before. Of cackling laughter and pencils tapping against wooden desks, crumpling paper and squeaking sketchers on linoleum. Sunny sighed and shook his head to answer Kel's question. He knew, rationally, that the correct thing to say here was something similar to:

'No, I don't know where you plan to go! Why don't you tell me?'

Sunny was never the type of person to engage in idle chit chat. He desperately wished to escape the classroom more with every second. The clock continued ticking mercilessly.

"Well, I think I'll go to the same college Hero did, the one in the city," Kel went on, spinning around a black pen in his fingers skillfully, "He said it was nice there."

Even though he dropped out.  Sunny thought, narrowly stopping himself from making a biting comment about it. He had never talked about Hero's failure to succeed with either of the brothers, and he wasn't jumping at any opportunities to. Sunny was sure he didn't care. He just found it a little ironic was all. How Kel still dreamed of this idyllic college fantasy even with living, breathing proof in the form of his brother that it was all a lie. He wasn't going to say anything, though. Sunny didn't find interest in telling other people what to do.

"I bet." Sunny responded dryly. The bell rang through the air like a prayer. His fellow students all seemed to spring out of their desks as if on cue, a stampede of wild animals gunning for the door, pushing and pulling and overlapping with each other carelessly. Sunny distantly heard his teacher yelling something about slowing down. Kel had stood up now, too, and was waving his goodbye to Sunny. It was lunch period and practically everyone in the high school was gathering at the cafeteria to grab their government issued food. Kel was going to spend his break with his basketball friends, Sunny knew that.

He sighed and pushed himself out of his desk, gingerly grabbing his black backpack with nimble fingers and hauling it onto his shoulder. 

-

During lunch break, Sunny retreated under the bleachers. He curled up onto dead, dry grass, and pulled up tiny daisies in-between his fingers. Faint whispers of an autumn breeze blew onto his face, carrying the smell of pinecones and the river, which was very close to him, with it. It wasn't picturesque by any means, but being away from the eyes of his peers if only for a little while brought him peace. He would distantly hear shouts coming from the school field in the distance, or maybe a creak of metal as someone sat over him, but he paid no attention to it. On certain days he would find company in the form of long black hair, blue contacted eyes and biting words. Most of the time however, Aubrey didn't show up, only seeing fit to appear when it was convenient for her.

Sunny didn't mind- he actually slightly favored the days where he was left to himself. What he did with his thirty minutes of break varied from day to day. Most of the time he would lay his head down and stare up at the columns of metal seats above him. On a couple spare occasions, when the weather was warmer, he would take off his shoes and socks and dip his feet in the river, becoming engulfed in murky water and reeds, the smell of wet dirt and decaying fish filling the air. 

The day before Sunny met the light, he spent his lunch period sitting by the river and staring up at the sky. He set his arm on his knee and rested his cheek on his hand, staring out at the vast blue-gray sky and the town underneath it. The town he had lived in his whole life. Power Lines stretching across rivers and cutting through trees, connecting the town at every corner, the large rusty bridge in the distance that hung over the river, empty railroads rolling across the pastures at the end of town- paired with the abandoned warehouses from the shutdown factory. Boxy, uninspired tract homes, used bookstores, the town supermarket. Dry grass poking up in backyards.

Sunny could see it all from where he sat. An unignorable ache filled his chest the longer he stared at the depressing scene. He sighed and reached in his back pocket to pull out a half empty pack of cigarettes and his plain black zippo lighter. It was technically against the rules to smoke anywhere on school property (In fairness, Sunny smoking at all was illegal, not that he could be bothered to care), but since no one could see him under the bleachers, he felt it was safe to do it from time to time.

Sunny just needed a distraction, was all. The piercing silence was too much for even him at times, and nicotine helped him ignore it.

After lighting his cigarette, he lifted the flimsy object to his mouth and inhaled, long and sweet. Chemicals stained his tongue, polluted his nose. 

He exhaled with relief. 

-

After school ended at 3:00pm, Sunny walked his way toward the supermarket. He needed to buy time until the sun set later that day (a ritualistic habit of Sunnys: retreating to the far edges of town, near the pastures and railroads and warehouses and watching the sun go down in the sky), and he thought getting something to drink from the store might be a good way to do it. On the way there, a train passed by in the distance, bells ringing out warnings to cars. The locomotive seemed momentarily endless to Sunny as it continued stretching on and on, carrying the slightly unpleasant smell of cows along with it. However, as all things do, the train eventually came to an end, and continued past their town.

There was one small chink in Sunny's supermarket plan that he was blind to. 

When he picked out the drink he wanted (Sprite, in a metal can rather than a plastic bottle) and went to go check it out at the front of the store, he was greeted by two recognizable faces that made his mood sour. Hero and Kel Vasquez were standing at the register Sunny had walked up to. 

Because of course they are, Sunny thought sarcastically to himself, resigned above all else. 

Kel's face lit up, as if a switch had been flipped, when he spotted Sunny. Hero's expression change was much less genuine than his brothers- a slight raise

 of the eyebrows and a polite, but clearly forced smile. Hero was wearing a green apron with the supermarket's logo printed brightly on the front of it, along with a name tag that read "HENRY." His hair fell in slightly messy waves around his ears, and a slight stubble painted his chin. Sunny noted the small eyebags he had acquired.

"Hey, Sunny!" he said warmly. Hero was always great at being charming. Flashing bright smiles at others, using his good looks and likable personality as a tool to make it through life.

Sunny respected it, really. But he couldn't help but notice that both what Hero said and did seem less candid than it did when they were younger. There was a clear shift in his demeanor at around the time he turned 16. When Mari...

"Hello," Sunny responded. Tone even. Eyes focused on Kel and Hero's features, avoiding eye contact without necessarily realizing what he was doing. The brothers' faces looked strange in the fluorescent lights that bathed the store. Too bright- too noticeable, too defined. Sunny handed the Sprite can to Hero, before looking away and down at his own shoes. 

"Ah, Sprite," Kel mused above him, "A man of culture, I see."

It was a joke. Sunny knew it was a joke. He still didn't laugh. Hero scoffed a little at Kel's words, although it seemed more obligatory than involuntary.

"That'll be..." Hero muttered, punching numbers into a machine while he did so, "Two dollars and thirty nine cents, please."

Sunny nodded, reaching into his front pocket, where he usually kept his wallet. He was surprised when he felt nothing but air where the mass would usually be, and frantically patted himself down in an attempt to find his wallet. After scouring every article of clothing he was wearing for it, he admitted the unsavory truth in his own mind.

I forgot my wallet. Sunny thought miserably, looking at Hero and Kel with a tight lipped expression. They already seemed to understand without him having to tell them. Sunny opened his mouth to apologize for wasting their time, but Hero waved his hands at him in a silent motion before he could say anything.

"Hey! It's on the house." Hero laughed, handing the can back to Sunny with a bounce. Sunny felt the cold, metal surface of it in his palm. He bit his lip, wondering if he should decline or not.

The polite thing to do would be to say: 'No, I couldn't possibly accept this.' 

The Sunny thing to do would be to take the goddamn free soda.

"Oh..." Sunny said, lowering his arm and grasping the can by his side, "Thank you."

Hero smiled at him. A little more genuine this time, the bags under his eyes lifting up as he did so.

"It's no problem," said Hero, giving Sunny a large thumbs up. Kel was still behind his brother, leaning on a desk behind the register, now. As Sunny prepared to turn and leave ( Finally, he thought to himself), Kel began speaking, pushing himself off the desk and getting closer to him.

"Hey," he said. His tone was a bit too apprehensive to be normal Kel fare, "Do you guys remember how close we all were when we were little?"

Sunny felt something curdle in his stomach. Stifled memories of childhood flooded his mind at Kels words. Sun kissed memories full of scraped knees, creaking swing-sets, melted popsicles, and sandboxes full of toys. Reassuring words, spit and snot running from his face as he buried his face into Maris shirt, chlorine filled swimming pools. Sitting on the wooden white steps of his porch with his sister, and resting his head on her shoulder as they watched the sun set over their town together. Orange slices and chocolate milk.

Sunny felt sick. Felt an ache grow in his chest, felt the need to light a cigarette spark in himself.

"Yeah," Hero answered, an awkward and slightly pained edge to his voice. "Those were fun times, huh?" In one swift motion, Heroes chocolate brown eyes caught on Sunnys- like a hook latching onto a fish. The two of them exchanged a tense, unexplainable moment of eye contact. One that felt as if it was struggling to open the floodgates. Desperately demanding that someone talk about it.  That someone did more than visit graves and leave flowers that would rot and die in a week. Sunny gasped, below his breath, too quiet for anyone beside himself to notice.

"Thank you," he croaked out, "I'll see you later." At that, he turned a corner and walked out of the supermarket as quickly as he possibly could. Through the sound of the automatic doors sliding open and a resounding " beep" following it, Sunny could distantly hear Kel calling out a goodbye. He ignored it and emerged out into the open, letting out a breath he didn't know he was holding. 

Sunny looked up, at the large parking lot in front of the market. A healthy amount of cars stood by, empty and standstill. A group of children, freckled and bright eyed, ran past him, giggles echoing off of Sunny's skull. The distant flow of the river carried through the air, and it was then that Sunny noticed the trees had begun shedding leaves, and that the sparse leaves that remained had reddened. A cool chill flew past him, signifying the beginning of fall.

Sunny also noticed that it was much darker than he predicted it would be. Street lamps were flickering on, casting a warm yellow glow in their wake. The insides of stores began to shine in dichotomy to the lighting outside. Sunny came to himself with a start- and realized that the sun was barely a sliver on the edge of the sky. He gasped, unfeigned, and broke off into a run without a second thought, his eyes trained on the warehouses at the edge of town.

He sprinted through town with little regard to how silly he looked. His shoes scraped the concrete below him in a deafening sound, boxed houses and power lines flew by Sunny in a blur. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see concerned housewives looking out at him from their little yards, but he paid them no attention.

Sunny reached his destination decently quickly, and hopped the small metal fence that walled off the warehouses, running up into the heart of the abandoned factory and gazing out at the sky. The sun had already set, leaving nothing but small trails of light in place of it. The evening had conquered the sky completely, as it was now that disgusting murky gray-blue color that Sunny hated so much, lifeless and obsolete. He sighed, turning around in place, aimless.

And then, there was radiance.

An unignorable beam or light bursted out from one of the rusty old warehouses- the one Sunny was closest to. Sunny stumbled backwards, shielding his eyes from the blinding brightness in a knee-jerk reaction, mouth opened wide in confusion. A fire?  He wondered to himself with panic, alarm bells ringing in his mind hopelessly. He let his hands down from his face to get a better look at the scene, and saw that the light had slightly calmed down, in that Sunny could look at it head on now with only slight wincing.

He was even more bewildered by what he saw when his eyes adjusted. In fact, He choked when he saw it. 

It   was a mess of overlapping wings, blinding, ethereal light, and eyes. Shapeless and cosmic, lovecraftian in form, existing outside of what Sunny's brain allowed him to believe. Sunny swore he could see the universe reflected back at him through the effulgence, gaping, wide, suffocating. He stumbled back another step, and then another, before hitting the metal fence behind him. His fingers grasped at the gaps in it, shaky and unsure. A large blue eyeball on the light roamed around frantically, before attaching itself right onto Sunny. Stared at him with the intensity of a thousand suns, of every universe, of the afterlife.

And then-

And then the brightness reached out, and brushed against Sunny, and Sunny opened his mouth in a silent scream, fire erupting through him, stars and Apollo and beauty claiming his body-

And then, suddenly, a boy stood in the warehouse in place of the light. A boy who was Sunny's age, 17 years old, with brilliant blue eyes and stringy blonde hair that swooped up around his ears. In comparison to what had been in place of him seconds before, Sunny thought he looked decently normal...until he noticed that there was something glaringly wrong with him. A beaming white halo circled his head, floating in mid air, and his back had feathery gray wings attached to it. 

Sunny stared at him in shock. And then stared some more. Still firmly attached to the fence, dumbstruck.

An angel, Sunny thought with frozen terror, an angel.

The angel was looking right at him, blue eyes glowing in the ever darkening world around him. Blonde hair swayed in the autumnal air. The angel's skin shone at Sunny, sparkled and glittered, like a flashlight. Slowly, cautiously, the angel raised his right hand up. The ratty blue robe he was wearing lifted along with it. The gesture was unsure and unpracticed, like the movement of a baby. The hand of it was splayed out, and slowly swayed from side to side. 

A wave.

The angel grinned at Sunny, then. Wide and awkward, as if it didn't really know how to smile. There was a gap in his front tooth. 

Sunny came back to life. Turned away so fast he lost himself in the movement, accidentally rammed himself into metal before hopping over the fence and running away.

He didn't stop running until he reached his porch, fell to his knees, and buried his face in his arms.

The sunset was long forgotten.

-

Sunny was pretty sure he was losing his mind. 

The night after his encounter with the angel at the warehouse, he couldn't sleep. Of course he couldn't sleep. He was too busy questioning both the fabric of his reality and his own sanity, replaying the evening in his head and trying to make sense of it. Sunny tried to reason with himself that the whole thing must have been a big misunderstanding. Because there was no way what he saw had been real- because Sunny's world was perfectly boring and mundane, and because there is no reality in which boys are birthed from light.

Of course he considered the idea of it all being a figment of his imagination. Some sort of schizophrenic daydream caused by loneliness and an abuse of cigerattes. The idea of what Sunny saw being nontangible, however, seemed much more unreasonable than the existence of the supernatural. He was sure that what he saw in the warehouse had been real. The whole experience had been so alive that Sunny was sure it couldn't be anything else. It was throbbing heart, blood coursing through it's veins, the proof that it had happened nestled in it's very being.

But Sunny also knew that there was only one way to prove he wasn't insane. He made up his mind about the matter at about 4:31am, while laying splayed out on his dirty rug and staring up at his own ceiling.

He was going to go back to the warehouse. 

-

Sunny's initial plan was to go after school. He made this plan at 5:00am, but after a frenzied thirty minutes spent doodling in an old notebook (pictures of wings and eyeballs, blonde hair and a gap tooth), he began to grow impatient. He wasn't even supposed to go school for another three hours, and the longer he spent waiting and wondering, the more insane he felt. Which is what led him to grab his backpack off it's hanger, throw on jeans, and put his shoes on. Sunny also, after a bit of thought, shoved a knife in his bag in case he needed to defend himself. 

The walk to the warehouse was filled with a reasonable amount of paranoia. It was still mostly dark inside, the sky a deep shade of blue with a couple of fading stars littered across it, and most people in town weren't awake. Sunny had never liked the dark, and he liked feeling vulnerable even less. He braved the walk however,  while sparing glances around himself every couple of minutes to make sure he wasn't being followed. 

By the time Sunny arrived at his destination, his stomach had tied itself into knots. He couldn't remember the last time he felt so naeusous about something. Adrenaline and fear and excitement were jumping at him all at once- along with a loud voice in the back of his mind that was yelling at him: "Stop! Stop! Go back home!" 

He ignored it. Hopped the metal fence, his feet landing on browned and dried grass, crushing petals of flowers under his soles.

As he walked closer and closer towards the large, rusty warehouse opening, he began silently praying to himself that he had imagined everything. That it was a trick of the light- that it could all be explained away using wordly logic- that his life could return to it's normal status qou with no fuss about it. Sunny hoped that he would peek his head inside the building and it would be filled with nothing but metal crates and stacked cardboard boxes, and he could go home and muse about how silly he was being.

But nothing ever went Sunny's way, did it?

The angel was still glowing. Curled up into a ball, on top a large stack of metal crates, and shining in the darkness of the early morning. His wings were splayed out on either side of him, in a position that Sunny couldn't help but think looked uncomfortable. His halo still floated above his head, unbothered by the horrified look Sunny was giving the bright ring. He found that he had been overcome with a primal fear at the sight of the angel. 

Sunny didn't fully understand himself why he was so afraid of it. The angel itself didn't look very scary, not anymore. It looked decently normal now, with all the attributes of a typical human. But there was something so terribly eldritch about it, at the way it's skin shimmered in a way that no humans ever could, at how bright it's hair was, and at how...at how it's eyes seemed to be picking apart Sunny when they looked at him, splitting his skull open and exposing everything about himself that he hated.

Speaking of which. The angel had noticed his presence. Luminescent blue eyes spread wide open and pin-pointed right onto Sunny. 

The vague idea of "Fight or Flight" drifted around in his mind as stood in silence with the angel. He thought that there should really be a third option in the saying- "Freeze."

The angel spoke.

"Hello," it said from atop it's crate, pushing itself up into a sitting motion clumsily, wings folding up at his back. It stared down at him with a smile that Sunny could almost have described as shy, but of course it couldn't be shy, because that was only something humans reserved the right to be.

Sunny's throat felt dry, and he was sure by now that running would probably be the best course of action, but against his own will he began speaking as well.

"Hi." Sunny responded. He couldn't stop his voice from from shaking even if he made an effort to- not that he was. The angel gave him a reservedly interested expression, before (to Sunny's absolute horror), it jumped off of it's crate and floated down from the top of it. Gliding like a feather. Breaking all the laws of nature that Sunny knew so well. The laws that Sunny respected. The laws that helped him understand his own world, being single-handedly defied by the creature infront of him so casually.

"Fuck," Sunny rasped out, barely even thinking about it. His head dropped down, willing itself to look anywhere but the angel infront of him. He pressed the palms of his hands to his eyeballs, rubbing his heavy lids in desperation, "This can't be real." He didn't think much about how the angel could hear him. Sunny's lack of sleep was catching up to him, and the pure absurdity of his situation was causing a sort of cognitive dissonance to form in his brain.

This cannot be real, he thought, even though he had clear proof that it was.

"Are you a human?" it's voice suddenly asked. Sunny looked back up the angel, who was tilting his head at him, eyes still cutting through Sunny mercilessly. 

He couldn't do much but answer truthfully, "Yes."

The angel grinned at him again. It was a big smile, but strange in how it affected no other features on it's face. No wrinkles appeared with the motion like they would on a human. The creatures face stayed smooth, serene. The gap in his teeth shone brightly at Sunny.

"Wonderful," the angel breathed out, finally drawing his eyes away from Sunny's, before bringing up his hand to tap his chin in thought. There was an uncomfortaly tense moment of silence that left Sunny wondering if he would die tonight. The knife in his bag now seemed like an exceptionally stupid thing to bring, because in what reality would a man-made weapon ever stand a chance against an omnipresent being? The angel began speaking again after atleast a full 60 seconds of uncut quiet, "Could I ask you a favor?"

A favor. 

"Um." Was the answer Sunny provided. Wonderfully articulate, his tired mind sarcastically and unhelpfully provided. 

"It might be a lot to ask of you," the angel continued, voice unbearably soft, "I won't be upset if you decline."

"I-" Sunny began, a bit distracted by the beat of his heart in his own ears, fast as a rabbits, "You can- you can ask me a favor."

The angel smiled at him again, then. That same plastic, uncomfortable, linoleum smile.

"Okay," it said, tucking it's hair behind it's ear in a motion that momentarily baffled Sunny (much too bashful, timid, why on earth would an angel be timid?)

The angel then broke off into a ramble. Another thing Sunny didn't see coming.

"A- as you can see, I'm clearly not human," the angel began, twirling it's fingers around it's hair in a way that almost look absentminded, "You must be very alarmed right now. You're taking it rather well. I - I mean, I can see you're scared. Dont be!" It raised it's voice in an energetic pitch, waving it's hands reassuringly at Sunny, "I won't harm you. But I do have a problem that I think you might be able to help me with."

"So, um. I- I want to become human," the angel finished, eyes locking with Sunny's. 

Sunny didn't think the night could possibly get any more strange. He had reached his limit for being bewildered however, and was now beginning to accept the reshaping of his reality with trepidation. Maybe talking with angels was just another one of those great changes in life adults always talked about. Like getting your license, or moving out of your parents house.

"You...want to..." Sunny repeated, his voice sounding dumb even to his own ears, "become human?"

The angel nodded it's head enthusiastically.

"Mhm! You could help me that, right?" it asked, curious, "Since you're one?"

Sunny could tell the sun was starting to rise because of the beams of lights flooding into the warehouse. One of them hit the angels eyes, illuminating it even further than it was usally was. It was, in all honesty, a bit overwhelming.

All Sunny could respond with was a simple question. It was the first thing that came to mind, his immediate reaction. He barely even had time to think before the word came out of his mouth.

"Why?" Sunny asked. Why would something like you ever want to become human?  He didn't say.

"Because I want to die." The angel answered simply, a smile still on it's face. The words came easy to the angel. As if he hadn't said something considered very taboo in Sunny's society. It seemed to notice Sunny's dumbstruck expression, and laughed (soft, like a cotton-ball). "D- don't look at me like that. There's nothing wrong with wanting death. I've been deprived of it for so long, you know. Being immortal and all."

Sunny took a second to step back and mull over what was being asked of him.

The request to make an angel human seemed laughably impossible. This creature had to know that. Was this some sort of a joke? Sunny had no idea how he would even begin to go about completeting the task. It seemed outside of the bounds of even his imagination...it would certaintly be unable to happen in real life. 

Sunny was allowed to decline, in theory. The angel had told him that he could say no. Sunny could decline, and walk away from the warehouse, and avoid it for the rest of his life in hopes of never seeing the angel again. He could resume his mundane life. The life he always wanted. The familiar, comfortable life that he knew.

He knew he couldn't do that now, however. Now that he had met an angel who's skin glowed, now that he had been touched by light and seen a flash of the boundless universe if only for a second, now that he had seen a boy float, the thought of the mundane made him sick. And so he looked right into the angels eyes, swallowed down phelgm that was stuck in the back of his throat, and whispered into the air of the early morning:

"Sure. I'll help you."

He, the angel, beamed at Sunny. He almost seemed to go in for a hug, before catching himself and pulling back, tugging his arms behind his back in an embarassed motion. 

"Thank you," he said softly. He looked off into the sky for a couple of beats, before his focus returned to Sunny yet again. "Say. What's your name?"

"Sunny." He answered automatically, "Yours?"

The angel looked at him with a startled expression. As if he had just been asked an incomprehensible question. 

"I, uh," the angel said sheepishly, "I suppose I don't have one. I've never really thought of it before."

"You need one." Sunny answered simply. Fully accepting of the surreal. 

"Hm," he tapped his bright chin in thought again, the action looking almost performative. His eyes latched to something in the distance that Sunny couldn't see, and his expression lit up, "What about...Basil? It's the name of that plant over there, right?"

Sunny didn't turn around to look at the plant. He just nodded his head compliantly. 

"Basil," he repeated, melancholy. "I like it." 

-

Chapter Text

Sunny first began regretting his decision to help Basil when he visited him on Saturday and saw, with a reasonable amount of horror, that the angel had killed and gutted a rabbit. Even more abhorrent was that Basil had been eating the animal, his mouth covered in bright red blood, tiny bits of guts stuck between his teeth.

Sunny’s immediate response to this had been staring down at Basil in a stunned silence. The angel was curled up on the muted yellow grass, knees digging into dirt, light blue robe now stained with red. Basil looked up at Sunny with a jarringly innocent expression, swallowing whatever part of the rabbit had been in his mouth and smiling at Sunny, baring bloody teeth.

“You can’t eat that,” Sunny managed to say, his voice wavering at the sight. Basil’s face morphed into a slight, confused frown when he heard it. 

“Why?” he had asked. His words sounded apologetic, and vaguely ashamed the moment they hit the air. Sunny watched with wonder as the angel's face slowly turned a light shade of pink. 

Immortal beings shouldn’t be able to blush, he thought stupidly.

“H- humans eat meat, do they not?” Basil asked, quirking an unsure smile, looking more embarrassed than anything. 

“Not that type,” he responded quickly. He shot an apprehensive look down at the dead rabbit (white fur matted with blood, neck bent at a painful angle, stomach ripped open), before drawing his eyes away quickly. Swallowing down vomit.

Sunny always hated dead things. 

“I can bring you food.” Sunny said, opting to stick his eyes onto Basil to avoid looking at the grotesque dead body lying by him. The angel nodded and stood up, so that the full state his clothes were in was revealed. The large, pale robe he had been wearing was now drenched in blood, practically dyed another color from the staining. “And a change of clothes.”

“Ah…” Basil said, blushing ever more (although it looked a lot more like glowing now, if Sunny was behind completely honest), “Thank you.” The angel tucked his (strangely large) hands behind his back, the blood covering his mouth and chin still disgustingly noticeable. 

Sunny felt very harshly confronted by the fact that this was his life now. Promising to bring food and clothes to a blushing, suicidal angel who lived in his towns abandoned warehouse. 

He sighed, a tiny ghost of a breath escaping his lips. 

There wasn’t much else he could do but accept it. 

-

Sunny's spindly, pale fingers were wrapped around his zippo lighter, thumb rolling against metal frustratedly. Over and over again.

Click, the metal taunted. Click. Click. Click.

He was probably failing to light the flame because of the weather. Chilly even for the fall seasons, dry and airless, the sky hung a depressing overcast. Being so close to the river couldn't be helping either. Or maybe it was because of the eyes on him. The reliable, intense and judgmental gaze of Aubrey drilling into the side of Sunny's head with little mercy. 

"Are you going to be doing this the entire break?" she suddenly said, words cutting through the brittle air like a knife. Sunny looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She was sitting criss-cross applesauce on the grass. Thin arms crossed over her chest, turquoise eyes narrowed at him, accusatory. He glared right back at her, resuming his work on the lighter.

"Your lips are chapped," is all he said, biting. He felt the impact of an object being thrown at his head only a few seconds later. Sunny looked down at the ground to see a tube of used chapstick next to him. The outside of the tube was oily and gave the impression of a life well spent. There was no cap, and that allowed Sunny to see the inside- completely drained of its contents. Rendered useless. 

"If you have such a problem with it," Aubrey spat out, voice sincerely hostile, "You buy some more for me, jackass."

Sunny didn't respond. They sat in silence for a tense moment, the only sound being the " Click, click," of the metal. After a couple deafening moments, Aubrey groaned, and grabbed the lighter from Sunny's hand. He opened his mouth to protest, but quickly shut it when she managed to light a flame within only a few seconds of trying. She shoved the lighter back into Sunny's hand, then, and swiftly leaned onto her back, hitting the grass with a thudding noise.

He lit his cigarette with reserved gratitude. 

" Thank you, Aubrey." Sunny said, voice cloying, more mocking than genuine. Aubrey shot him a venomous look from where she laid on the ground. Trying to kill him wordlessly, Sunny assumed.

He took a drag of his cigarette, feeling as if he was inhaling tarmac or battery acid or something of that nature into his throat. His lungs contracted satisfyingly as he held the smoke in his body for a delayed minute. Sunny released it soon however, the wispy gray vapor circling him and Aubrey and clogging where they sat with an unignorable smell. Sunny exhaled in relief, folding his arms over his knees, and letting the cigarette stick rest in his mouth.

Aubrey began coughing, dramatically, clearly fake. She sat up and started waving her hands around, dispelling the air around them.

"Gross," she coughed, "I don't understand how you enjoy those things."

Sunny shrugged. Kneaded the thing between his teeth. 

"It calms me down," he responded, monotone. He turned to her. "Are you going to the game tonight?" The look she gave him as an answer was almost comical with how disgusted it seemed.

"The school one?" Aubrey asked, her face growing even more sour when Sunny nodded, "What kind of fucking question is that? What do you think?"

"You're not going." Sunny said, deadpan. He was far too tired for Aubrey's passive aggressiveness shtick, already too stressed with the thought of Basil, bloody and clueless, waiting for him at the warehouse.

"Correct," Aubrey bit back, "And what? Are you?"

Sunny considered the question. Kel had asked him to come to the game earlier that day, while they sat side by side in math class. It was a home game for their school basketball team- the team that Kel himself played for. Practically nothing of interest ever happened where they lived, so chances were at least half of the town would be gathered to watch. Sunny had always hated crowds. Hated the noise, hated the smell, hated how strangers pressed up against you and swarmed about you like they were bugs.

Sunny wasn't considering going to the game because he thought he would enjoy it. He truthfully just needed an excuse to ditch his evening visit to Basil. The angel had been making him grow more and more stressed as the days ticked by.

Sunny wasn't built for the kind of strain Basil was putting him through. Every afternoon, when he trudged up the familiar path to the warehouse, he would find his heart beating faster than usual, and his hands would become clammy. A nausea would start permeating in him, a headache forming in the front of his head. It was an unfamiliar feeling to Sunny, one that he hadn't felt since he was very young. 

All in all, Sunny needed a break. Just one night where he didn't have to be around Basil. 

And so, Sunny shrugged noncommittally at Aubrey's question.

"Maybe." he answered, taking another drag of his cigarette, "My..." he hesitated as he thought of how he should refer to Kel, "Um, a guy I know asked me to come."

Aubrey cocked an eyebrow at him skeptically.

"The tall, popular douchebag who's always talking to you?" Aubrey asked, her nose scrunching up. Sunny felt a bit of unexpected defensiveness rising up in him at Aubrey's words. Probably something that was left over from when he was a kid and actually enjoyed Kel's company. 

"Kel's not a douche," Sunny said flatly, keeping his tone emotionless, "Just because he has more friends than you doesn't mean you need to be a bitch."

Aubrey’s bitter expression suddenly faltered, her eyebrows scrunching up in a way that almost looked pained. She seemed to catch herself quickly however, pursing her dry lips together and huffing out a breath of air in offense.

“Shut up.” she said simply. Words lathered in cruelness to try and hide the genuine hurt underneath them. Sunny didn’t point that out. He knew Aubrey didn’t like to be questioned about her emotions. And Sunny didn’t like hearing about them.

They both sat in a stilted quiet, the only sound the creak of metal seats above them, until the next bell rang.

-

When Sunny arrived at the game at around 6 in the afternoon, he thought to himself that he should really stop making decisions altogether. 

The sky was a shade of deep gray, whispers of stars beginning to pop up in the dark. Streetlamps flickered on and off in the parking lot Sunny was standing in, illuminating the space along with the headlights of cars that were pulling into the game.

The gymnasium building the game was being held in loomed over Sunny ominously. Even from the reasonable distance he was at, he could already hear the bustle coming from inside. Rubber balls striking the floor, shoes squeaking against polished wood, overexcited cheers roaring from the audience.

Sunny was seriously considering ditching his plans and heading home. Spending a whole day alone for a change, like he used to, before Basil came into his life. Not being plagued by worries every minute of the day. Enjoying the mundane. Like he was always supposed to.

Unfortunately, this idea was rendered impossible when a blue haired girl popped up behind him, waving hellos and asking for Sunny to join her in watching the game.

Oh. Sunny had thought begrudgingly, It’s Chris.

He remembered, with a start, that Kel might have said something about her when he was inviting Sunny during math class. A wiggle of his eyebrows, a mischievous expression, the words: “ Chris will be there, too, ” leaving his mouth. Sunny had hardly been listening, so he must have not processed what was said.

Chris wasn’t Sunny’s friend. Kel wasn’t either, but he was at least a bit closer to the concept. Sunny had known Chris since middle school, and she had been around, grouped up with Kel, sometimes bothering Sunny along with him. But the two of them were never close. Sunny didn’t even know what her house looked like.

“Sunny!” she had said in a greeting, waving her left hand, far too excited to be genuine, “Kel said you might show up. How have you been?”

Cheers erupted from inside the building. Sunny wanted to bolt away from the entire situation.

“I’m…good.” Sunny said, words stilted. “I’m good.”

A beat of silence. Chris’s washed out, dyed blue hair glimmered in the flash of the streetlamp. Sunny, vaguely, wanted to shoot his brains out. 

Another roar from the building. Chris feigned an expression of urgency.

“Shoot, we’re missing all the action!” she huffed out, turning to Sunny with a smile. They walked through the parking lot and inside the gymnasium together, Chris telling Sunny something about her swim team, something about going to the city, something about college. He grunted in response.

He was slightly caught off guard when, once they were inside, Chris turned to him with an eager (albeit slightly awkward) expression, and asked him what his hobbies were.

Sunny didn’t have hobbies. Even if he did have hobbies, it would be hard to recall them now that they were surrounded by a flood of industrial lighting, tumbles of people, and the deafening noise of a crowd.

“I’ve been focusing on school recently,” Sunny managed to respond, raising his voice to be heard over the chirruping from the audience. He was lying. Sunny’s grades were mediocre at best and disappointing at worst. 

But he couldn’t tell her that what he was really focussing on was tending to an angel and trying to teach him human customs. So, a little white lie would do for now.

“Oh, that's cool too!” Chris responded. Flashing him another grin, revealing slightly crooked teeth underneath her lips. The two of them managed to find a spot on the bleachers, wedged in between two groups of people like sardines. 

Sunny’s bones itched underneath his skin. 

Chris wasn’t helping with the sensory hell Sunny had been thrown into. She just kept talking, practically yelling into Sunny’s ear to be heard over the noise. 

“I don’t think everyone needs to have a hobby, or play a sport, you know?” Chris said, “I mean, people like me and Kel enjoy that stuff, but some people just don’t, and I don’t see a problem with that.” Sunny nodded, worrying his bottom lip in between his teeth. 

Chris quieted eventually, and the two of them watched the game with no more talk between themselves. Sunny could see that Kel was on the court, his jersey number 11. He was good, unsurprisingly. He actually seemed to be the best on the team from what Sunny could gauge, a majority of the points being scored for their team being his doing.

Which is why it surprised him when Kel was taken out of the game, ordered to sit on the sidelined bench by his coach. A question slipped out of his mouth involuntarily, not even necessarily meant to be responded to:

“Why would they do that?” Sunny asked to air, momentarily forgetting he had company. Chris perked up beside him, leaning, slightly uncomfortably, closer to Sunny to respond.

“Our coach likes to give everyone a chance to play,” she explained, sticking one finger up (her fingernails were painted a dark turquoise color, reminiscent of a lake), “To be fair.”

That’s stupid, Sunny thought, face scrunching up without meaning to. He let his expression fall flat again immediately after he realized, but Chris had already seen. Luckily she didn’t seem offended, barking out a sincere laugh instead.

“It seems weird, I know,” she said, “But sometimes having fun is more important than winning!”

“Oh,” Sunny said, although he completely disagreed, “Yeah, sure.”

Their schools team ended up losing, even with Kel's competence. The other team rallied and guffawed as they made their way out, the 'guest' side of the court slowly dispersing as they ran to their cars in victory. Chris and Sunny walked up to Kel afterwards, Chris giving her apologies about their lose. Kel seemed unbothered, just a cheery as usual.

"

Ah, don’t worry about it,” Kel grinned, as sweat drops rolled down his tanned caramel skin, “I don’t play to win.” Chris giggled, and the three of them walked out to the parking lot together. Chris and Kel talking about who knows what, Sunny keeping quiet.

As they were exchanging goodbyes, the moon fully in the sky now, casting a vaguely eerie glow over the town, Chris turned to Sunny with a shy expression. Her arms were clasped behind her back, hair falling over her eyes just slightly. 

“Thanks for hanging out today, Sunny,” she said, with a strange tilt in her voice that Sunny didn’t appreciate, “I had a lot of fun.” The girl blushed then, pink brushing over her cheeks in a way that would have been pretty if Sunny wasn’t so horrified.

As Chris walked away cheerfully, in the direction Sunny presumed her house was in, a realization settled over him. Suddenly the night made a lot more sense- Chris’s curiosity in Sunny’s life, her high pitched giggles and how she played with her hair whenever she spoke to him.

Chris was interested in Sunny. 

-

Sunny didn’t like Chris back. He barely even knew her. He also had zero idea why she would be interested in him, of all people, but he wasn’t stupid. He was good at seeing signs and identifying what they meant. And everything was pointing to one answer: Chris was romantically interested in Sunny. 

The problem with Chris having a crush on him was that she was going to confess. She seemed like the type to declare love confessions, rather than hanging on an unrequited crush for too long. And when Chris admitted her feelings to Sunny, he would have to reject her. 

More problems would follow after that. Chris was the type of girl to have a group of friends, and so not only would she hate Sunny, atleast 5 more girls would hate him by association. It was far too much attention for Sunny to handle. 

Furthermore, Sunny already had enough stress in his life. His every-day anxiety levels had reached an all time high. Partly because of the suicidal angel that was most likely waiting for him to show up after he ditched their daily meeting last night. 

Speaking of which.

Sunny was grasping a plastic bag in his left hand, slightly sweaty from the effort. In the bag was an assortment of foods he had bought from the supermarket. A sparse collection of vegetables, fruits, and cheap candy was all he was able to afford. 

A stack of fresh clothes also lay in the bag. He had gotten them from the lost and found box at school. Sunny would lend his own clothes to Basil, but the idea of the angel wearing his shirts and pants made him uncomfortable for reasons he couldn’t explain.

Basil was waiting for him at the metal fence when he arrived. Leaning 

 over it slightly, his arms rested on his cheek in an awkward position. His face lit up when he spotted Sunny. It was golden hour, the orange sun peeking through the slight clouds in the sky, illuminating Basil’s face with an aureate sheen. 

Sunny hopped over the fence and landed on the grass with a dull noise. He almost gagged when he smelled the angel. The blood had been washed from his face and teeth, but it still hung stubbornly to his robe. Sunny thrust the plastic bag into Basil's hands, dropping his arm when Basil took it with interest. 

“There's some human food in there,” Sunny said, trying not to inhale the smell of death through his nose, “And a change of clothes.”

Basil had his full head stuck in the bag, his hair the only thing poking out of it. Sunny could have smiled. He picked out the clothes first, holding them up and examining them like specimens. 

Sunny did not expect Basil to begin undressing. 

The movement was casual, as if he was doing nothing wrong. The angel shoved his robe over his head quickly, leaving his body bare to Sunny’s eyes. Sunny practically choked, turning his head away immediately before he could get that good of a look at him.

Distantly, almost comically, a question he had been wondering about was answered in his mind. Basil did have genitals.

“Um-” Sunny said, his face traitorously heating up, “You can’t uh. You can’t undress in front of other people.” His voice came out more grainy than he intended it to.

He heard Basil’s disembodied voice from the side of him. Something quietly stirred in him- a feeling he couldn’t place.

“Why?” Basil asked, innocently.

“Because most humans don’t get naked in front of each other,” Sunny said, for lack of a better explanation. He paused for a second, before adding, “Sometimes they do. But, um, not usually.”

Sunny heard the sound of a zipper being pulled up. Likely the shorts he had brought.

“What do you mean, sometimes they do?” Basil asked. Voice annoyingly curious. “Okay, I’m dressed now.” Sunny turned to look at the angel. He now looked at least marginally more human. 

He was wearing a thin, sage green t-shirt (that was a little too tight on him, but fit for the most part), and jean shorts. His knees and legs were smooth, untouched by the cruelty of the earth. Basil was still barefoot. Sunny decided he could deal with that later.

“Let’s not talk about this right now.” Sunny said, coughing under his breath after he said it. Basil frowned at him, his expression almost a pout.  

“O- okay,” Basil responded, kicking dirt underneath his feet, “I sort of already know what you mean, though. I understand the basic functions of human reproduction, so-”

“Okay! Changing the subject,” Sunny butt in, causing Basil to laugh. Head thrown back, the gap in his tooth being revealed yet again. Sunny picked up the plastic bag from where Basil had left in on the ground, rifling through its contents. 

His face was still red. He tried to ignore it. 

Sunny sat down, and began laying out food on the ground for Basil. The angel followed suit, folding up onto the grass along with Sunny, resting on his knees, his posture rigid and perfect.

Sunny pointed to the banana and apple he had grouped together. 

“That is fruit,” he explained. Basil gave him a reservedly amused expression. Sunny got a feeling that the angel already knew what fruit was, but if he did, he didn’t say anything about it. Maybe Basil was trying to be polite.

“That’s a vegetable,” Sunny pointed at the bundle of celery he had bought, “And that’s candy. It’s more manufactured than the other stuff. Do you know what sugar is?” He asked, glancing up at Basil as he asked. 

The angel was giving him a look.

“Y- yes, I know what sugar is, Sunny,” he responded. Sounding slightly fed up.

A large gust of wind sweeped past them. Dead leaves whisked away into the air, along with the now empty bag. Basil haired whipped around aimlessly. Sunny wondered if the angel would allow Sunny to cut it. It was stringy and wild, with split ends forming at the tips. It was also a bit too long for a boy. 

“Try some,” Sunny said, picking a mini-Hershey's bar off the ground and holding it out in his palm. Basil took it gingerly, his surprisingly big fingers brushing against Sunny’s hand as he did so. 

The angel unwrapped the candy, blunt fingernails digging into plastic packaging. He tossed the wrapper on the ground when he finished. Sunny watched with bated breath as Basil opened his jaws, fully exposing his mouth, and set the tiny chocolate bar on his tongue.

The angel snapped his jaws shut, and chewed quietly. Sunny kept watching, waiting, slightly, inexplicably anxious, for a reaction. His eyes trailed down Basil’s throat as he swallowed.

Basil hummed in consideration.

“It’s good!” he declared brightly, sparing Sunny a smile. Sunny felt something warm permeate in his chest at the sight. He noticed, in the now stark, golden sunlight, that Basil had light freckles dusting his cheeks. 

“Good,” Sunny repeated, voice sounding strange to his own ears, “I’m glad you like it.”

Basil slowly started picking up more food off of the ground, chewing and swallowing to his heart's content. Sunny did nothing but stare at him as he did so. The sun began to wane in the sky, eventually disappearing below clouds. Basil's halo was soon glowing in the ever present darkness.

The angel looked up from where his eyes had been fixed on the ground before, slightly disarming in how quick the movement was. He was chewing around the apple, crunching the food between his jaws with rigor. Basil's blue eyes were locked on Sunny’s with a look behind them he couldn’t place.

“You didn’t show up yesterday,” Basil said, voice barely a whisper.

Sunny dragged his eyes away, feeling scrutinized.

“Yeah, I was…” Sunny trailed off. He couldn’t really describe what he had been doing. Trying to get away from you? Sunny thought to himself grimly, “Hanging out with my, uh, my friends.” He looked back at Basil, who was still staring at him with an unsettling expression, “Sorry.”

The angel was silent for a moment. A tense, horribly uncomfortable moment. 

“Okay,” Basil said, lips forming into an apprehensive smile, although it didn’t seem very happy, “I forgive you. Just don't do that again, okay?” 

Sunny felt something crawl underneath his skin. He swallowed around a lump in his throat and nodded, slow and compliant.

“Okay.” He responded, “I won’t.”

Basil’s smile became a little more genuine. He resumed his feast, reverting back to his usual, slightly less unsettling behavior, jumping over the moment as if it had never happened. 

Chapter Text

By the time Sunny arrived, golden brown rays were cutting across the rusty warehouse building, and two cones of ice cream were dripping down his fingers. Basil was waiting for him at the fence again, and shot a curious look down at his hands when Sunny stopped in front of him.

Sunny wordlessly shoved the cones towards Basil’s chest. The angel blinked at him politely, holding his hands behind his back, unmoving. Sunny huffed out an exasperated sigh.

“Take them?” he said, his tone slightly breathless.

“Oh!” Basil squeaked quietly then (so quiet Sunny almost didn’t hear it), before taking the ice cream from him, gripping the wafer of the cones a little too hard, the substance slightly cracking under the angel's large thumbs. 

Once Sunny’s hands were free, he hopped over the fence in a sluggish, tired movement. His legs brushing across metal as he did so. When he reached the other side, he was tempted to let his knees fall out from under him and fall asleep on the dead grass below.

Sunny had had a long day. But he knew he still had to visit Basil. 

(He tried to ignore how uncomfortable he felt thinking about why he had to visit Basil. Tried to forget how the angel had stared at him before, ultramarine blue eyes filled with vague, inexplicable threats. Tried not to feel terrified at the sight of him.)

Speaking of which. The angel was staring at him. Sunny could see it out of the corner of his eye. Eyes spread wide, burning a hole into the side of his head. Lips pulled into a tight, thin lipped smile. Sunny felt something squirm beneath his skin. 

He cautiously tilted his head toward Basil. The angel tipped his head at him as he did so, almost playfully. The ice cream had started to roll down the sides of the cones and drip onto his fingers, at a snail's pace.

Sunny cleared his throat. Tried to dispel the exhaust from his body.

“That,” he said, pointing his finger matter of factly, “Is ice cream.”

“A- ah,” Basil responded. He glanced at it cautiously, ( finally ) drawing his eyes away from Sunny’s, “Is it any good?”

Sunny shrugged. Eyed the white drops that were landing on blades of dried grass below his feet.

“I like it. If that means anything,” he responded, as casually as he could muster. Words frayed at the edges with unsureness, stained with insecurities and unconfidence.

Basil seemed to be satisfied with his lackluster recommendation. Actually, the moment Sunny said the words “ I like it ,” the angel raised one of the cones up to his mouth and engulfed the ice cream fully in his mouth.

His lips moved against the vanilla slowly, white streams of sugar and ice sliding down Basil’s chin. He seemed to be enjoying the treat, at least. Maybe a little too much, Sunny thought, after the angel didn’t pull away after a solid 50 seconds of working on the ice cream.

Sunny watched him, tired and unexplainably entranced.

 The other boy's tongue darted out to swipe along the base of the cone, and then around the cream again. Sunny was caught slightly off guard when Basil’s eyes glanced up to meet his own, just as the angel made this sound in the back of his throat- low and rumbly, almost akin to a purr.

His long, blonde eyelashes were lit up by red sunlight. His pupils were blown to the thousandths and almost seemed to be throbbing. Sunny felt very suddenly overwhelmed at the sight. 

He noticed then, for the first time, that the angel was very objectively beautiful. Mostly stripped of all of the little imperfections that hindered humans, Basil was ethereally pretty. The type of pretty that scared Sunny. Made him want to run very far away and never look back.

He settled for tearing his eyes away from the angel, instead. As a compromise.

“Uh,” he muttered, and realized with mortification that he was blushing, the heat under his skin running rampant, “Do you like it?” 

Basil finally pulled his mouth away from the cone. Pink lips stained with white.

“It’s fine,” he responded from Sunny’s side, “A bit too sweet.”

Sunny decided he was too tired for whatever was happening. He could feel his knees practically giving out from under him, his bones wilting and his muscles shutting down. It contrasted horribly with how alert Basil was making him. He knew he needed to stay awake, but he felt moments away from passing out.

He opted for wordlessly shuffling over to a lone crate, a bit closer to the angels’ warehouse, and pulling himself up to sit on it. His legs ended up feeling marginally relieved. Basil was quick to join him, positioning himself a couple inches away from Sunny on the crate, so that not even their knees were touching. 

The sun was low in the sky. A blindingly red point on the edge of the horizon. 

Basil handed Sunny a cone of ice cream. It was the one that the other boy had already eaten from. Wet and covered in spit, the cream caved in from the angel's tongue. Sunny didn’t mention it. 

He didn’t eat from it, either, though. Obviously.

Even though the sun was warm, it was still cold out. A harsh, unmoving chill permeated the air around him, and all of the leaves had fallen from the trees, leaving empty trunks and branches in their place. Frost was left on the tips of grass in the early morning.

Sunny didn’t like winter. It’s not like he enjoyed summer any more- but he particularly hated the icy, frozen feeling he would get in his bones during the winter seasons. Hated how fragile his long, spindly fingers would feel against the brittle air. Hated the way his hands shook when he went to pick up a pencil in class.

He shot a glance to the right of him, checking to see what Basil was doing. To his surprise, the angel’s eyes were unfocussed and lidded, and bobbing open and closed in a choppy pattern. He looked tired. Something Sunny had never seen him as. 

Can something like him even get tired? He wondered. His internal questioning was quickly cut off when Basil’s eyes drifted fully shut, and the boy's whole body fell over, onto Sunny’s shoulder. 

There was a moment of shock in which he didn’t move. A moment where Basil’s smooth, glowing skin brushed against his own, and he hardly noticed anything was wrong, not being able to process the sensation. But then… Sunny’s body… erupted.

The feeling was staggering. Suddenly there with no warning, all-encompassing, impossible to ignore. He could distinctly feel every vein under his skin, every muscle in his body, contracting and swirling around and beating, alive. It was as if he had entered another plane of being, through the angel's touch- the air was crisper around him, the sky shone brighter, the sound of wind ripped through him violently.

Sunny couldn’t stop himself. Couldn’t contain himself from letting out a yell, terrified and confused, and wrenching himself away from Basil, falling back onto the ground with a loud thud.

For a second he couldn’t see. He could hardly breathe.

When Sunny heard a muffled yell above his head, he slowly started coming back to himself. The first thing he saw was a pair of blue eyes, spread wide, frantic. The first thing he felt was dry grass poking into his back.

The first thing he heard was Basil’s voice, high pitched and panic-stricken, bending over him and blabbering inconsistently.

“Sunny?” the angel gasped, “Sunny? Are you okay? Sunny?”

He managed to nod his head up and down, the movement jerky, disingenuous. His hands grasped at the dirt underneath him, trying to steady himself back onto earth. He, vaguely, felt the need to throw up.

Basil folded up beside him on the grass, a reasonable distance away. Sunny couldn’t help but flinch back. At the motion, the angel's eyes flashed with something he couldn’t place. The emotion was barely there, gone in a moment, but cutting nonetheless.

“What,” Sunny said, his voice involuntarily coming out as a gasp, “What was that?”

Basil stared at him. Blinked once. Then twice.

“I-I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he whispered. His tone ashamed, with a tinge of something else. “When I touch you, it…affects you. A- as you saw.”

Sunny stared at him. Jaw spread open, mouth gaping.

“Affects me?” Sunny repeated, dumbly. Completely shell-shocked from what he had just experienced, his senses still dully tingling in its wake. 

“Well, you…” Basil paused, tapping his chin thoughtfully, “Your sensations get heightened momentarily, when we touch,” he cast his eyes onto Sunny’s again, piercing through his skin, “I’m sorry. I should have warned you.”

Sunny swallowed around something sharp in his throat. Hesitantly, he pushed himself up off of the ground, steadying his feet and trying to dispel the dizziness from his body. The angel was still looking at him intently. 

“Do you forgive me?” Basil asked. Alarmingly soft. Peeking up at him through blonde eyelashes.

Pretty, Sunny thought deliriously, still reeling from the aftershocks of the angel's touch. He nodded slowly, untruthfully, and Basil beamed at him. Almost detached from himself, Sunny heard the rustling of dry leaves.

The sun had gone down. 

-

Sunny hadn’t wanted to go away for the weekend. 

He didn’t like traveling. Didn’t like sitting in a cramped car for two hours, stuffed into the seats like sardines. He didn’t like being so far away from home, away from his room and Mari’s cat. He didn’t like falling asleep somewhere that wasn’t his own bed.

Which is why he had tried to politely refuse when Kel and Hero had invited him on a weekend vacation to their families lake house. Keyword being tried. Of course, Sunny, with his lack of conviction, couldn’t stand a chance against Kel’s never-ending persistence.

So. Sunny wasn’t at his home for the weekend. He was instead leaning his head against cold wood, watching Kel and Hero splash in a lake from the comfort of the house's balcony. The air was biting. Mocking, really.

Sunny had been asked to join them in the freezing water. The idea seemed completely preposterous to him, so much so that his mask of frigidity almost slipped, and he quite nearly yelled at Kel for suggesting such a thing. He ultimately kept silent though, managing to decline without too much fuss. 

Sunny didn’t like water. Even when the water was a reasonable temperature, and it might even be pleasurable to go in, he couldn’t stand it. He hadn’t ever really figured out how to swim either. The entire practice was so full of flailing panicked limbs, of closing lungs and uncontrollable alarm, that he couldn’t bring himself to learn. 

(A memory was tugging at him, in the back of his mind. One that took place at the very lake he was looking out on. If he let himself fall back into the memory, Sunny was sure he could almost feel Mari’s hands dragging him out of water. Her warm body enveloping him in a hug. Kel and Hero’s voices yelling apologies over top of him.)

A loud splash, followed by a shout of anger, interrupted Sunny from his stupor. 

The two brothers seemed to be having fun. They were shivering from head to toe, but barking out enough laughter to signify they didn’t seem bothered by it. A couple of times, Kel’s eye would catch on Sunny’s, and the tan boy would wave his hand enthusiastically towards him.

For a moment, Sunny almost felt relaxed. With his head resting against wood, and the methodic sounds of moving water and Hero and Kel's shouts providing him background noise, he felt strangely at peace. 

He soon realized why this was. And when he did, his good mood immediately sunk, replaced by nothing short of dread.

Sunny had forgotten to tell Basil he would be away for the weekend.

-

Sunny wasn’t sure why he was so afraid of the angel. There was the obvious answer. The fact that Basil was in essence an eldritch, unearthly being who was sure to leave any human with an uneasy feeling with his presence.

But there was also something else. Something that was slightly newer, and harder to explain. 

(It probably had something to do with the way Basil looked at him. Maybe it was related to how he had felt when Basil touched him. Maybe it had to do with the sound Basil had made when he was eating ice cream.)

Although, even though Sunny would never admit it to himself, there was something more pressing about how he felt towards the angel. A small part of him, distantly, felt sad that he wouldn’t get to see him for the weekend. 

“Sunny?” Kel’s grading voice interrupted him from his spiraling thoughts, “It’s your turn!”

The fireplace crackled from the side of him. A warm spot on his left arm was starting to permeate, slightly uncomfortably. Kel and Hero were both staring at him intently from their respective sides of the coffee table. 

Both of them clasped sets of playing cards in their hands. Sunny looked down at his own deck. He hardly had any idea what the rules of the game they were playing were, having zoned out for most of the explanation Kel had provided.

He resolved to set down a queen of hearts. This action was immediately met by confused noises from the two brothers. 

“Why would you do that?” Kel asked, horrified, as Hero tried to contain a snicker, “Do you even understand the game?”

Sunny knew it was said as more of a rib than a serious question. But he also knew that if he were to answer honestly, he would say he didn’t.

His eyes flicked up towards the large window at the edge of the room. It took him a while to process it, but Sunny soon noticed that white flakes were falling from the sky, and coating the trees and ground with a sheen.

Kel and Hero’s neverending banter continued without stop as Sunny became entranced, staring out the window. The snow really began picking up after a couple of minutes, the snowflakes becoming heavier and heavier until they seemed to take up most of the air. 

Sunny spoke. Almost against his own will.

“It’s snowing,” he said. His voice was quiet, gravelly to his own ears. The brothers' heads shot towards the window without a second of lag, Kel’s face setting aflame like a lightbulb when he saw it. Both of them sprang up in an instant, running toward the glass in a flash. 

The window was crowded, now. Sunny could hardly see peek of it through Kel and Hero’s overlapping bodies.

He was okay with it. The two of them seemed excited, and he couldn’t in good faith bring himself to hate them when they looked so pure in their emotions.

“I love the snow!” Kel yelled suddenly, spinning around to face Sunny, “We should go out and play in it!”

“That’s very immature, Kel,” Hero responded, ultimately unserious. His brother stuck his tongue out at him and blew a raspberry. Hero’s only rebuttal was a resigned rolling of his eyes.

Sunny felt a strange ache in his chest. A faint longing for something he didn’t want to think about. 

“It’s getting late,” Hero said after a couple more minutes of pressing his face up against the glass, “We should probably make dinner and go to bed.”

Kel lightly elbowed him in the arm. Not hard enough to cause any genuine harm. 

“You’re so boring,” he huffed out. Nevertheless, the two of them made their way to the kitchen a few seconds later, calling out for Sunny to join them. 

-

Sunny couldn’t sleep. In all honesty, it was predictable. He had trouble sleeping in his own bed back home, where he was actually comfortable. He kept trying to relax his mind, but the unfamiliar bed he was laying in wasn’t doing him any favors.

Crickets hummed outside of his window harmoniously. Old, wooden floorboards creaked under the slightest movement from Sunny. Cold wind whipped around leafless trees outside. 

Sunny’s mind was louder than all of these sounds. 

There was the obvious, immediate worry. Basil. Sunny would be driving back home with Kel and Hero tomorrow, and he would inevitably have to face the angel as well. He tried soothing himself. Telling himself that nothing bad would happen. That Basil was harmless.

Sunny couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling in his stomach, though. He also couldn’t forget the words the angel had spoken to him last time he ditched their daily meetings.

“ Don’t do that again. ”

Sunny swallowed. Grasped at his pajama pants under the covers of his bedding.

There was one more thing that was bothering him. Something that was very stupid. 

Sunny groaned in frustration, audibly and decently loud. He peeked over at the alarm clock on his desk. It read: 1:12 AM. He sat idle for a few moments before pulling himself out of bed, and walking downstairs.

The main room, the one he had been playing cards in with Kel and Hero only a couple hours earlier, was empty and lit only by the dwindling fireplace. The crackling of embers was the only sound in the otherwise silent night. It popped in Sunny's ears.

As quiet as he could possibly be, Sunny creeped towards the top of the fireplace. His hands grasped at the hearth blindly, as he squinted his eyes to try and make out what he was grabbing. He managed to get what he truly wanted- a small, framed photo now rested in between his pale fingers.

Sunny brought the picture towards the light of the fire, illuminating the contents of it.

It was a simple photo. Bright and slightly overexposed. A younger Sunny, Kel, Hero and Mari all sat on a picnic blanket together, the wide blue of the lake over their shoulders. They wore swimsuits. Spare droplets of water dripped down their skin. Mari had Sunny tight against her chest, a wide, protective smile on her face.

Sunny stared at the photo silently. Frustration pooled into him. 

He had always hated dead things.

What he really wanted to do was toss the picture into the fire. It was obviously the wrong thing to do, but he couldn’t help himself. Sunny didn’t have any pictures of his sister at home. If he destroyed this one, he would never have to be reminded of her ever again. 

He would never have to feel like this again.  

His hand shook as he nudged the framed print toward the fire. Mere centimeters away from letting it be destroyed by flames. 

“Sunny?” a deep, familiar voice cut through the silence. Sunny whipped around, his reaction immediate, undeserved adrenaline spiking throughout his body at the noise. Hero was standing in the hallway foyer, holding his phone as a light. He was wearing a full pajama set, white and blue striped.

Sunny didn’t say a word. The post midnight confusion caused him to barely process what was happening around him. Hero’s eyes had flicked to the photo, and then back up to the fire, before finally falling idle on Sunny’s face.

His eyes were sympathetic. Eyebrows curved and soft. 

“That’s a cute photograph, right?” he said, barely a whisper, but still loudly juxtaposed against the quiet night. Hero shuffled a little closer towards him to get a better look at the photo.

A chuckle sounded from over Sunny. He bit the inside of his cheek, wishing more than anything that he had stayed in the comfort of the guest bedroom and avoided this whole situation. 

“That was the day that you fell into the lake, right?” Hero asked. A resounding silence was Sunny’s only answer, “Well. I guess it was more like me and Kel pushed you in. I’m sorry about that, by the way.”

Hero had already apologized, rather profusely, over a million times since it had happened. The funny part about it was that Sunny wasn’t even angry about it in the first place.

“Hey…” the older boy said, leaning over Sunny awkwardly, “You can burn the picture. If it makes you feel better.”

Their eyes met, for the first time, when Sunny’s own flicked up in slight alarm. 

“I-” Sunny began, his words catching on something in his throat, like a fish on a hook, “I wasn’t planning on doing that.” He really wasn’t sure if he was lying or not.

Hero flashed him a slight, crooked smile. It didn’t look forced, but it also didn’t look very happy. Bittersweet seemed like the right word for the expression. Sunny was sure he could hear the sound of snowflakes hitting the ground outside. 

“Photos of her make me sad, too,” said Hero, his voice croaking, “But I think that's okay.”

Sunny tried to be focussed on the fire. On the way the flames licked up against charred wood, on the way the heat spread onto his arm and legs, on the way it popped and crackled into the hush of the winter night.

He wasn’t really able to. His mind was intrusively flooded with memories- one of his least favorite things, a real hindrance to his day to day life nowadays- filled with Mari, and country lake houses, sun kissed picnic blankets and cut up watermelons. There were more grim memories as well, of gray gravestones and closed funeral caskets, of church pews filled with unfamiliar faces, of lily of the valley flowers littered around dead grass.

Internally overwhelmed with his uncontrollable and ever unwinding thoughts, Sunny let out an involuntary gasp. Hero’s sturdy hand grasped his shoulder as his body swayed forward. 

And- ah.

Sunny was crying. Small tears dripped down his pallid face against his own will. In the haze of everything, he could distantly hear Hero’s reassuring voice saying something comforting. Even though Sunny could hardly understand any of it, he felt a warmness in his chest at how Hero was at least trying to help. 

“Photos of her make me sad, too ,” thought Sunny, replaying his words, “But I think that's okay .”

Even though he felt horribly stupid for his outburst, he cried harder. Hero wrapped two arms around his back and pulled him towards his chest.

In a moment that must have counted as some sort of psychosis, Sunny felt, bright as daylight, that everything was going to be okay.

-

Damage control. That was what Sunny was going to do. 

He returned back home the following day at around 5:00 PM. The sun had already set, and blurry stars were beginning to appear in the dark. Powerlines cut across the dark blue-gray sky, harsh black lines against the backdrop of the sky. 

Sunny decided to get Basil a gift. Unfortunately, he was currently broke, his monthly allowance being completely spent so far into December. So, he opted for plucking a pretty flower from the ground that he found on his walk to the warehouse. The flower was small, yellow, and in all respects boring. 

But, Sunny thought hopefully, it had managed to survive the cold of winter this far. Maybe it was a special dandelion, resilient, slightly magical.

His head was spinning by the time he reached the warehouse. The building was a dark, shadowy mass, barely indistinguishable from the airspace around it. Sunny hopped the fence, cautiously, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jacket and taking tiny steps forward, eyes searching for the angel.

A tiny flicker of light came from inside the biggest storehouse. Sunny froze, his body going rigid, as the angel's body emerged. A glowing beacon against the winter night. His skin seemed to be glowing more than usual, Sunny thought, maybe a little deliriously, as his heart jumped into his throat.

Basil stood right in front of Sunny. He was silent, unblinking. His mouth was a thin, straight line across his face. 

Sunny was tense . A gust of wind blew across the air, blowing the angel's blonde hair to one side of his face. Sunny gripped the dandelion slightly harder, to ensure it didn’t get whisked away.

“I’m sorry,” Sunny began, trying to keep his voice steady, “I…was on a vacation. I forgot to tell you.”

The angel was quiet.

“I didn’t even want to go,” he went on, barely thinking about what he was saying, simply trying to dispel some of the tenseness from his body, “I would have stayed home if it was my choice.” His voice shook around the edges.

The angel was quiet.

Sunny bit the inside of his cheek, hard. It drew blood, metallic, staining his mouth.

“I got you a gift,” he said, his eyes flicking up to meet the angels, which were unnervingly still, glowering and sparking blue. 

Sunny shoved out his hand, the one that grasped the dandelion. Basil didn’t even look at it. 

“It’s a flower,” he muttered. The angel was quiet.

The wind seemed to be roaring around them, now. Sunny could barely hear himself over it, pounding into his skull, stealing his breath. The angel, slowly, almost imperceptibly, tilted its head. 

The movement happened in a blur. A confusing mess of searing light and overlapping eyes, reaching arms and falling stars. Basil seemed to lurch forward, and without a moment to process, Sunny was in the angel's arms. 

The feeling was staggering. Too much and too little all at once. It was slightly familiar at this point, but confusing nonetheless. The universe gaped at him from where the angel held him in his arms. Beams of light fell toward the earth, split through the ground and toppled buildings.

Sunny didn’t try to move. The hold of the angel was all encompassing, impossible to ignore, like a knife being shoved into skin. Distantly, he felt Basil’s hands grasp at his back. Sunny keened forward, almost against his own will.

He realized, in the haze and overstimulation of it all, that it almost felt good. Basil’s head tucked against his neck, the angels glowing skin all over him, the two of them almost conjoined, indistinguishable from one-another. Sunny’s body shook involuntarily, all over, and Basil only grasped him in his arms harder.

It felt good. The hug felt protective. Promising. As if Sunny was always meant to be there, nestled in between the angel's body and his own. 

The release was abrupt. It was suddenly cold again. The wind stopped bellowing, and when Sunny spun his head around (he couldn’t move his legs, they had been reduced to jelly), he saw that everything was in place. Powerlines intact, buildings standing upright. Basil was standing in front of him again. A linoleum smile stretched across his face, tooth gap showing. 

A stream of blood was dripping from the angel's nose. It was falling into his mouth. Sunny stared at it silently, watching as it painted Basil’s pink lips a faded red color in a matter of seconds. Basil himself didn’t seem to notice the nosebleed.

“I forgive you.” The angel said. His voice seemed to have more layers than it usually did. It sounded slightly less human. Sunny stared at him, stared at his dirty clothes (Sunny needed to bring him new ones), at his bare feet, at the uncharacteristically shy way he tucked his arms behind his back.

Basil turned away, silent as can be. He walked back into the large warehouse, his light fading from Sunny’s vision.

…

Sunny really needed a smoke.