castheangelofthursgay submitted:
[It’s late at night when Castiel appears next to him. Naturally, Erik isn’t asleep, and the cool blue of his eyes snap like ice swallowing the summer creaks. The angel blinks in reply, acknowledgement heavy on his hair as he nods.]
Good evening.
[Idly he contemplates his appearance, his trench coat still clads him, but on his head there is a wrapped Santa hat, framing his face with an unfitting joy that gleams a brazen rouge.
His cheeks flush.]
I was…thinking recently.
[His voice is deep, a broken brogue dipping along shattered octaves and clinging vowels that shake his larynx with a surprising humanity. The angel’s fingers twitch timidly, awkwardly shuffling around the small pot enveloped in his calloused hands. Suddenly, his form is swallowed in an air of apprehensive self consciousness, but then he blinks—
and the blue of his eyes ripples
—before placing the glimmering object on the desk in front of him.]
Take only a small drop each night, and make a wish beforehand.
[He’s about to disappear again, but his stature stands still, neck arching curiously behind him for one final smile, sighed too loudly from torn lips and cracked teeth to seem as at ease as it did—]
Tikkun olam.
[—and then he is gone.]
[The surface of his mind is occupied with wondering first howdidyougetin and then with a soft buzz of Castiel?Castiel? that is nearly confused in its hesitancy. The second layer idly compares blue-blue-blue, the flicker in the angel's eyes to the vaguely-shimmering pot on the desk--because of course he can't not think about that, even if he wants to--the shade of the pot is precisely the colour of the now-vanishing eyes in front of him.
The Hebrew ticks through the gears of his brain more quickly than the rest of it, the metal bits sticking with each other periodically as he hits a logical snag--whyishehere--and the cogs turning over to pull from his youth the words he'd heard in prayers.
He doesn't remember their meaning for a long while. It has been a long time since he was a boy, listening to Papa read.]
REPAIR THE WORLD,
[he murmurs, and his voice pitches not uncertainty, but rather soft confidence. But what on earth--
--could it mean? Something, perhaps, for the tiny bottle that--
--adorns the blank of his desk?
The blue is startling again as he picks it up, three shades lighter than Mystique's skin and one darker than the pain in an old friend's eyes. Blue, blue, blue, he thinks, always blue, and as he turns the stoppered thing over in his palm, it glints bright against the callouses and makes it impossible to notice the number stamped just below the place where it rests.]
'Take only a small drop each night, and make a wish beforehand'.
[The repeated words don't trip off of his tongue, nor do they skip or walk or run, but rather simply fall, drops into a bucket, as Erik's words are wont to do. Short, brisk, over, never-said-again. Such is the way.
He holds the bottle up to the light and feels the push-pull of liquid against its sides.
How odd.
Setting it down on the corner of the desk, he resolves not to carry those instructions out. Whatever is in that bluesoblue bottle isn't something he's ever come across before, and while he doubts poison, he would rather like to stay clean of drugs. An angel's gift is not necessarily to be trusted, he has found.
It will be years before the temptation breaks him.]
