#cherryweek

part i: memento homo, quia pulvis eris et in pulverem reverteris

[remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return]

There’s a monster with gaping jaws in Mike’s chest, and it is desire; there’s a prophetic oblivion calling his name, and it is want. Both are the root of sin, and both have dug deep into his guts and veins and ink-black blood.

Will, however, seems to waver in that gray space between good and evil, virtue and sin: even his appearance marks this, with his hair that flickers between dark chocolate and ruddy blond in his light, eyes a dark brown spiked through with crushed bits of bright green, skin tanned to a nice shade contrasting with the iridescent light of his tattoos. In his strict adherence to the ways of the Holy One, he’s somehow managed to fall a bit from grace, and the messages he gives, though mixed, are comforting to Mike.

You are not beyond redemption, he seems to say with each meeting and conversation and glint in his eyes, and I am not beyond sin.

Or: After being forced to tend to souls in the wasteland between Heaven and Hell, Mike is given a mission: deceive an angel into leading him to the gates of Heaven.

part 1/7 of the bday gift for my dearly beloved @cherryisgone is here :D it’s got all kinds of fun things: angel/demon au, enemies to lovers, some ineffable husbands vibes, a self-indulgent amount of religious imagery, and, of course, lots of stuff i wrote in the middle of church!!

i’ll be posting once a day until it’s all done (because if Will Byers got a week-long celebration in this fandom then am i definitely gonna make sure my friend gets a week-long celebration too 😌✨), so expect to see more of this popping up in the coming days~

I have to live, he thinks.

uhhh apologies for the cryptic excerpt but um. am firmly in spoiler territory at this point. but it’s a beautiful sentiment, right, so why not include it?

Will scoffs, but his fingers drop from Mike's arm to brush against the tree’s bark, eyes tilted up to the branches. His fingertips gently follow the divots of the wood as if searching for an answer which has long evaded him.

Brimming with newfound courage, Mike stares as the color bleeds from Will's edges and out to the rest of the garden. In his stillness, they thread through the landscape, filling in all the barren places to reveal what the garden had once been. Life rejuvenates wherever Will’s light touches, and Mike watches in reverent awe as dandelions and daisies bloom near their feet, how the light runs through the bark and makes the leaves unfurl on its branches, the shriveled dollops of figs swelling once more with life, their plum hues nearly luminescent.

“I see,” Will says finally. He eyes Mike warily, but his finger continues to worry a notch in the fresh bark.

This close to him, Mike can see the exact gradations of the coral flush across his cheeks.

Mike is about to retort, but the light that’s been leaking out of Will has just reached the edges of where his heels dig into the dust. It tickles his skin with warmth, and he doesn’t want the angel to leave just yet; he craves this light.

He craves his light.

Will studies him, the wind shifting around him. It always seems to do that, as if the very air has to make room for his presence in this dead and dying place.

It doesn’t do the same for Mike, of course. Will brings light and life and color to this dreadful expanse of eternity, but Mike is its keeper, always cloaked in grays and dripping in pain and seeking to hurt, to lash out, to tear at the world for making him feel like he does.

Chestnut hair in a constant ruffle from the shifting of his feet in the dust. Alabaster feathers woven with gold thread down each quill, branching out to gild their edges. Cream swathes of fabric wrapped around his torso and shoulders that, for a brief moment, Mike had wanted to tug at, just to watch how they'd drape apart. He’d walked away wiping the front of his teeth with his tongue to taste the sweet symphony of the angel’s voice, a low rumble in his throat that had bloomed into a gentle, curious voice, surprisingly barbed at times with his teases. It wasn’t just the gold of his eyes, either–any angel can have gold rimming their irises, but his: carnelian brown with sparks of emerald crushed into the conglomerate, so rich and enchanting they almost became hypnotic. They’d been sacred in a way apart from what was spoken of in holy texts, one of the sweet songs of divinity hidden in the boughs and blooms of nature that man so often overlooked.

And it wasn’t just how he looked–all angels have those glyphs tattooed down their arms and gold rimming their gemstone eyes, and all of them have hair that anybody would want to run their fingers through. No, what was most enticing to Mike about Will was that he had spoken to Mike at all. It was his care, his attention, that he would so freely give of them as to deign to speak with a demon.

part 2/7 of si vis amari, ama is up!! our little demon boy is absolutely enchanted by the angel he just met :D hopefully everything goes ok :D

Most damning of all is the warmth, the light, the color; Mike is enraptured, and he wants to weave them into a cloak he can wear pressed tight against his skin for the rest of eternity. He wants Will’s arms to encircle him and never part, for fingers to tangle and lips to mash and eyelashes to scrape against cheeks.

He wants and wants and wants.

When they talk, they speak freely and with as loud of tones as they desire; their lords’ eyes are not on them, after all, and their ears cannot hear from the distances of Heaven and Hell alike. There is simultaneously too much time and not enough stuck in the confines of eternity, and no matter how long they remain in the Wastes, there is always never enough space or breath to say all that must be said. Memories, experiences, thoughts, arguments, theories, predictions of what is to come–they all melt like lead and twist into indefinable shapes, into conversations that loop forwards and backwards, words both already spoken and still yet to be said. They speak in snags of poetry, in enraptured giggles, in spluttering sobs that make tears spout from both of their eyes, inky black dripping with iridescent gold to form a filmy, oil-like substance in the dust.