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“Michael! Look at what I found!” Gavin called as he stepped into his apartment, bringing with him his typical flurry of life and noise. Despite the dreary day, the blond was smiling cheerfully, and from his perch atop the couch, Michael looked up and lifted a mahogany eyebrow. Though Gavin was dripping wet, the little bird cradled in his hands was dry, and it cooed as Gavin pulled it away from his body, the loss of heat rousing the small creature from its reverie.
Immediately it began to struggle frailly, beating one wing weakly against Gavin’s gentle grip while the man murmured reassuringly to it.
“How did you catch it?” Michael asked, stretching out his own wings in the cramped space. He could understand the bird’s desire to be free—after all, before he was assigned as guardian to this human, he hated being caged up with humanity. Everything they did was just so slow and insignificant.
Gavin… Gavin was helping him change that opinion. He’d forgotten what it meant to be a guardian before he met Gavin. He’d been angry, so angry, upset with his Commander removing him from the Army of the Lord and charging him with the task of protecting these useless, flawed, sinful creatures. Then Gavin… Gavin…
But that was beside the point. The point was that his human was clutching at this little bird so tenderly, trying so hard to keep from hurting it as he calmed it down.
“Its little wing is broken. I found it just lying about on the sidewalk, cheeping this pitiful little cheep like it was just begging for help. I couldn’t say no!” Gavin explained, finally giving up and just tucking the bird back against his chest. Almost immediately the thing (it looked like a goldfinch, in Michael’s opinion, but Aves were hardly his forte) was calm.
Michael gave the human an affectionate grin and slid off the couch, hovering before Gavin as he reached down to touch the bird. He frowned when he felt its fear, its pain, its confusion. He could feel the break—it was messy. Heavens, there was no way it was ever going to be able to fly again.
“I’m going to make it better, Michael,” Gavin said. He sounded determined. Michael shook his head wonderingly at the man—this human, his human, was amazing. Bright as sunshine in even the dreariest situations. Despite the angel’s reservations, he gave the human a smile.
“Okay, Gavino.”
For the longest time, it didn’t look like the bird was going to make it. It continued to flutter about weakly for the duration of the first day, but by the second it had stopped moving at all, only cheeping weakly whenever Gavin came by to check on it. He took it to the vet against Michael’s wishes—why spend so much time, money, and effort on a creature that was so soon doomed to die—but Gavin waved off his concerns, his determination unwavering.
Every time he asked the Brit why, Gavin would just smile, shake his head, and say, “Michael,” as if that explained a single goddamned thing. But Michael would drop it without fail, an annoyed huff his only dissent.
Gavin got medicine for the little bird—he even convinced the vet to wrap its wing, realign it as best he could to hurry along the healing process. Even after all that, though, by the second week, the bird had stopped chirping. It was eating less and less every day. It no longer followed every movement with its eyes.
Slowly but surely, it was giving up.
Michael tried to tell Gavin this too many times to count, but every time Gavin would just set his jaw, shake his head, change the topic. And though it killed Michael to see the blond deluding himself, setting himself up for disappointment and heartbreak (because Gavin got so, so attached to little things like this), the redhead didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was over. That there was no way this thing was going to survive another week.
But miracles did occasionally still take place, and the Father always did enjoy proving his omniscience in the most unexpected ways, so on the seventeenth day, Gavin woke up to loud, energetic chirping. He darted out of his bedroom to find Michael staring wonderingly at the little bird who was hopping around its cage, singing its heart out.
Michael turned wide brown eyes to Gavin, a smile tugging at his lips as he whispered, “I can’t believe it lived.”
“I told you,” Gavin said, grinning ear to ear. “A little love and care can bring anything back from the brink of death.” He slid onto the wide windowsill where he’d hung the bird’s new home, looking up at the creature as it hopped around, pecking at its food with newfound interest. “I want to give him to you, Michael.”
The angel looked at Gavin, lifting a red eyebrow in confusion. “You want… What? You want to give him to me? Why?”
“Because he’s a bit like me, and I clearly couldn’t take care of myself before you came along.”
“What? How is a bird like you, Gavin?”
Gavin sighed through his nose, the noise short and sharp, like he couldn’t believe he had to explain himself. “I was dying, Michael.” The redhead went still. “I was broken and you… you fixed me. Mended my little wings and gave me the will to live again.”
Michael was speechless—he never knew that Gavin felt that way, that the human felt exactly how he did. Gavin was the entire reason he hadn’t been struck down by now. It was all because of Gavin that he wanted to carry on.
The redhead looked up into the cage, frowning. He didn’t like how the bird was trapped. If this bird was his, how could he justify keeping it in such a small, confined space, while he could move and fly about as he pleased? How could he look at this representation of Gavin locked in a cage, stuck in a trap, doomed to never be truly free?
“You should let him go.”
Gavin always did know exactly what was on his mind.
Still, though it was exactly what he himself had been thinking, Michael asked, “Why?”
“Isn’t there a saying, ‘if you love something you have to let it go, and if it truly loves you, it will return’? I’m sure this bird can’t feel anything quite as complex as love, but… the sentiment is still the same. You can’t claim to love something if you’re keeping it locked away from the world,” Gavin explained. “I wanted to nurse it back to health because nothing, no matter how big or how small, deserves to be left to die. But nothing deserves to be locked away in captivity forever, either. So let it go, Michael. Sure it’ll probably never come back, but at least you’ll know you saved it. Somewhere in this world, there’ll a little birdie with a life all because of you.”
Gavin turned that bright smile on him and Michael couldn’t help it; he leaned down and pressed his lips to the human’s, kissing him with all the wonder and joy he felt in that moment and, if he were honest, in every moment he spent by Gavin’s side. The human laughed into the kiss and pulled his angel closer, carding his fingers briefly through Michael’s curly hair before he pulled away. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go let it free.”
Gavin pulled the cage from its hook and led the way outside. It was still early enough that light hadn’t quite hit the street over the apartment buildings, the streets were devoid of pedestrians, and only the occasional car trundled past, its driver bleary-eyed on their way to the early shift. The human looked both ways before opening the cage (it would be a tragedy, really, if he let the bird out only for it to hop out into the street and get run over) and helping their little friend out.
The small creature cautiously stepped out, fluffed itself up, stretched its wings for the first time in a long time. It gave a cautious flap to test the joint and then burst into movement, taking off with a flutter and a chirp so cheerful and joyous that Gavin couldn’t help but laugh. He stepped off the curb as the bird flew over his head, crying, “Look, Michael, he’s so happy!”
Michael couldn’t find it in himself to give a single fuck about that bird. His eyes were fixated on Gavin, who was babbling excitedly and watching their erstwhile pet flutter about, still trying to get used to the wind under its wings after so many days in forced confines. The human looked radiant, the early morning sunshine lighting up every highlight in his messy hair, his green eyes lit up in delight. He looked… perfect.
“I love you,” Michael blurted, and Gavin went still, turning that radiant smile onto him.
“Michael!” he exclaimed, his voice more musical than any bird’s song could ever hope to be.
“I mean it. I love you, Gavin Free.”
“Michael Jones, I—“
They never saw the car coming.
It was Michael’s fucking job and he was too fixated on his feelings, on himself to fucking do it and now Gavin was a hundred feet away, limbs sprawled at awkward and wrong angles and there was blood, oh God, so much blood—
“Gavin!!” Michael finally spurred his body into action and was by his human’s side in a fraction of a heartbeat, making helpless sounds as he tried to gather the man into his lap.
The blond stirred. He tried to speak, but the only sound he made was a thick, bloody gurgle. In the background, the redhead heard someone nearby, a panicked voice calling for help in the unearthly silence.
He forgot that only Gavin could hear him.
“No. No no no, Gavin, no. No, I can… I can fix this, I can… F-fuck, I can heal—shit, there’s just… there’s so much—“
“—chael…”
“No, shh, baby, you can’t talk. You need to… just… just—just let me—“
“Michael.”
Gavin’s voice was wet and rattled alarmingly. Each breath seemed more labored than the last, his body losing the fight against its injuries, the loss of so much of his liquid life simply too much for his fragile frame to bear. Still, his eyes were bright, pleading, just as piercing as they’d been a lifetime ago when Gavin had been standing there, laughing at that fucking bird.
“You… you have to… let me go, Michael.”
Michael sobbed and clutched Gavin closer, shaking his head and whispering no against the blond’s bloody shirt. The human tried a few more times to speak, clearing his throat and coughing, spitting blood out too many times to count, but each time he tried again he got weaker, his voice faded and cut out, the blood just ran thicker. Finally, he stopped trying. He stopped moving.
He stopped breathing.
And all the while, Michael held him and wept, stroking his hair away from his face and whispering furiously that it was going to be okay, he was going to be fine, he couldn’t let him go, not yet, Gavin, please, not yet.
He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there cradling the broken boy, but when he finally came to himself, he was hunched over on a golden road, surrounded by pristine structures made of iridescent pearl.
His arms were empty. His job was over. He’d been called Home.
An unholy fury filled Michael then and he stood, his wings trembling to the tips as his body vibrated with rage. He whirled around to find Geoff, his friend and former Commander, leader of one of the many Armies of God—and, recently, the one in charge of human fate, a responsibility passed between all warriors to remind them of the fleeting lives it was their duty to protect.
“Geoff,” Michael snarled, reaching for the sword by his side and drawing it in one smooth, practiced movement. The other angel’s movements were blurred and Michael blinked away tears to find his former friend holding up his hands in a gesture of peaceful surrender.
“Michael, let me explain—“
“You know what he was to me, out of everyone in Heaven, you knew best what he meant.” The redhead’s voice caught on every other syllable and his words came out thick with emotion that they weren’t supposed to feel.
Geoff’s eyes reflected his regret, but his voice was level when he said, “If you would just listen—“
Michael was never very good at that. With an enraged yell, the heartbroken warrior cum guardian flew at Geoff, his sword burning with a white, holy light—he would be struck down for this, cast into the deepest pits of Hell for eternity, but he didn’t care. His entire existence was Hell without Gavin.
“Michael.”
Never had one word so immediately and completely frozen a celestial being. Michael stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped moving as that familiar voice crooned his name, that stupid fucking accent making his heart trip over its own feet. The angel turned to find Gavin, resplendent in white attire and entirely whole, unharmed, mended. Uncomprehending, he turned to Geoff, who shrugged.
“It was the only way for you two to be together. I’m gonna get shit for it, but… hell, if anyone needs someone, it’s you, Mikey.”
Michael’s sword fell from his numb fingers as he staggered forward, reaching for Gavin like a man drowning reached for air. Gavin met him halfway and their mouths crashed together, each kissing the other like their lives depended on it, as though they couldn’t believe that they were truly here, together, inseparable even in death.
When they broke apart, both had tears on their cheeks and neither was sure if the tears were theirs or the others. Neither cared. Gavin smiled beatifically at Michael, carding his fingers through his rust red curls.
“I love you, too.”