Lance wasn’t his

It was hard for Harry to accept that humans were a mistake. That Lance's skin that felt just like the very clouds Harry had been born from, was nothing more than a branded imprint in a wasteland to his fathers eyes. The boy and his voice was heaven and hell, sin and forgiveness, the very sight of him causing storms of archangels, putting to shame the idea that anything else in this universe was even remotely as powerful as them blue eyes.

Still, the idea that this was wrong wouldn't go away.

Even with the excitement of a rekindled friendship still buzzing along their skin like ants, a thin armor with their tiny feet creating millions of tiny vibrating footsteps that reached the very core of who they were. Apparently an absence of any length was unacceptable, but one extending beyond their ritual nightly goodbye and set their routine off course just wouldn't do. Set the both on edge, made them antsy and when they finally came together once more it was as if fire and ice were clashing for the first time.

Ice taming the hot flames of the flickering fire as the fire warmed the core of the ice. Destroying each other in the process but ultimately helping build the other up to achieve all they've ever hoped for. Lance didn't know this, would never have the knowledge of the real world like Harry did, of the future and all the generations of his family that lived through the line he created one drunken night in a bar with one lonely widowed woman in search of a companion for a night. And through their shared heartache, an understanding for the others pain, they eased the ripples of pain for the night with the promise of being gone by the next morning and leaving no imprint.

Her late husband who never returned from the war was still fresh to her despite years having passed, and Lance... Lance remembered a green eyed male a little too well, but he would forever be disconnected from the emotions: the memories. Not allowing him to forget them and the pain but to view it as an outsider, almost as if he couldn't shake the affect from a book he'd read. The pages still imprinting the back of his eyelids with memories not his own.

It would be a pain not his own, but his body would be convinced otherwise.

And Harry hated himself for being the very reason of causing that pain.

But with flickering images of a small little boy chasing a flock of chickens through the waist high corn fields with a beautiful woman trailing right behind him, dirt smeared across her upper brow with dust sticking to her skin and dipping into her wrinkles that heightened the effects aging had on her; proved her years of hard work— was something he would never forget. That little boy was his Lance, born into another body, a piece of the soul he once knew carried in that little boys heart and passed down from child to child.

Creating an endless version of Ludovico Thompson, past known by that name, currently known by Lance and in the future by many, many more names. But the heart was the same.

Forever would be.

And it was through that pain that Harry caused, that set Lance's future on course.

—-

Unaware how to breach the subject of Lance's dying mother, Harry remains silent. Not that he felt silence was more welcoming than the truth, but in this case, he felt only right keeping certain things to himself. What has yet to be defined as cancer, just a disease that approached you silently and killed you before you really had a chance to grasp life, was thick swirls of branch's twirling around her bones, striking through her stomach in spotted patterns and he could smell it now that he acknowledged it existed.

Humans and their fragility was something Harry would never understand. Sickness was a foreign word amongst the angels, only ever used to describe a soul long beyond the realms of being salvageable or deemed not worthy enough to live in Heaven. Lucifer had been sick. The sickest of the sick.

But now, the word carried a new meaning. One Harry wasn't sure what to do with the weight that came with it. Did he carry it alone? Or confide in the human he'd grown… close to. Or rather dependent on. He needed to learn the ways of Lance's kind and the sweet human helped him without even realizing so.

Harry could spend centuries parsing through Lance's mind like a minor chiseling away precious chunks of diamonds: priceless yet invaluable to anyone who dared tried to steal them.

He'd figured the longer he stayed the less his infatuation would grow but that had been his first mistake. To ever think the bags of flesh and bones would grow boring to him when, in his centuries long life, they were the most intriguing things he'd ever had the privilege of laying his eyes on.

And Lance was at the top of that chain.

He sends a harmlessly crooked smile over his shoulder and Harry's heart hammers in his chest, a foreign feeling that had thoroughly terrified him the first time it happened and he'd been convinced his father's summoning was so powerful it was going to turn him in side out. But the second time it happened, he figured it was Lance who had caused it. Who had summoned such a reaction by brushing Harry's hair out of his face, tracing along the bones and curves of his fingers or doing something as simple as looking at him. It goes wild then.

He's come to the conclusion he knows everything about the humans, but nothing about Lance. Nothing the boy doesn't want him to know and Harry takes its because he's convinced he will never have the chance to know someone as intimately as he thinks he knows this human.

And he doesn't want to.

~~

Some days, they never leave the castle. They hide in the lengthy corridors, voices carrying to sound like whispered threats bouncing off the clay statues that reside in every corner. Wooden brooms turn into dangerous swords, towels rolled into balls acting like grenades on the verge of detonating the second a twitching finger moved from the perfect fold of fabric. Sandals stuffed full of clothing to appear like legs are left lying around the castle, severed limbs being tripped over by the staff who just shake their head at the two boys wreckless fun and move on.

On sunny days, they sneak to the highest watchtower in the castle and sun bath, Lance hiding giggles in cupped hands as he watches the knight combat below them, training to move to the first line of defense even if most won't survive to hit their mid twenties. On those days, he appears to be the happiest. Most carefree. Throwing light jabs at Harry due to him never showing Lance his place of occupancy, or never removing his clothes while in the presence of someone and, "Do you even have a body? Or are you really just sacks of flour posing as a god?"

If only he knew Harry wasn't a god, and at this point, he really wasn't even an angel.

The first day he ever does remove his chiton was the day they snuck down to the pond to help Edward with this latest catch of the day. Harry wasn't aware of the word, "shy or self conscious," or rather he'd never truly known the feeling associated with those words until he stood bared before Lance, his trousers hanging dangerously low on his bony hips that jutted out and pulled his tanned skin taut.

Immediately, he wanted to cover his body. Lance's eyes scanned over his skin so intently, watching him like he was the next course to be laid out on their ridiculously large table and he couldn't wait for the second he was given permission to bite into the forbidden fruit.

"You're Gorgeous," the boy breathed out, hand tentatively tracing the curve of Harry's waist without even realizing he was moving his hand and Harry shivered: a deliciously glorious feeling that stained his unblemished skin with goosebumps.

They'd both admired each other before, but never has Harry seen someone gaze at his body with such unfiltered hunger. "As are you," he replied smoothly, taking in the tan male standing before him, biceps muscled and thick with a flat stomach that clenched under the rays of the sun. Harry, in comparison, was more noodly. Lanky limbs making him more coltish in his movements, and despite years of practice he could never grown into the long limbs. He had a broad chest and the forming of what humans called a six pack, but he was mildly attractive when standing next to someone so breathtaking.

Lance flickered his eyes up to meet Harry's, the blues gone and in their place was the heart of a ocean amidst a storm; swirling and dark and oh so alluring to even the scardest sailors. "You are incomparable, Harry. Even the most beautiful knights haven't the slightest clue what you could do to them with a simple flick of your finger," Lance breathed, and Harry wasn't entirely sure he was talking in sentences that made sense or if his ears were just ringing so loudly he couldn't catch the entirety of the sentence.

And Harry realized he was too far gone to simply leave.

It was that day he understood; his feelings were no longer innocent.

On pleasant days, Lance convinces his heavily pregnant mother to join them down in the garden where they mindlessly tend to the knee high flowers sparking the very life into Harry's beating heart. Jealousy was a flaring torch that ignited the second he took a step back to admire the scene laid out before him, Lance in the middle of a patch of flowers telling his ridiculously long story of his experience during their trip to the other kingdoms and Jay is listening with such intent and fondness in her eyes that Harry's heart aches. In months time, she would be gone. In months time, he would be gone. And with no time in that span could he ever look at Lance so openly the way she was.

Lance was a jewel he could admire in the shimmering sun, but in reality he wasn't meant to keep it. Such beauty wasn't meant to belong to a person who could never truly take care of it; give it the life it deserves.

So Harry remains silent until it's his turn to tell his own stories and myths; though slightly edited versions to keep his identity hidden for just a while longer. He tells of witnessing his youngest sibling leave home because he'd grown bored of the routine they'd all sank in to, and rebelled in a way that was not only frowned upon but extremely dangerous and in his quest to find who he was and his own personal freedom, he'd been disowned and sent to live on his own. Lucifer was doing fine now, and often tried getting Harry to succumb to the dark and join him in the pits of hell but Harry was holding out with the hope he too would find his place.

He told of witnessing Zeus pluck his first lightning bolt out of the sky, and how immediately following was a shower storm that would've wiped out civilization if it hadn't been anything more than dirt and empty craters at the time. It was taken in with giggles and under the pretense it was a myth, a story stretched so far and told so much Harry had actually accepted it into his own life as a true event and he didn't bother correcting them.

Jay's stories are full of her own embellishments; inside jokes with Lance or Harry that set the two intrigued boys off in giggles, dirt smeared across their skin like markings from a tribe; branding them with a place to belong even if that place was their own little haven amongst flowers who couldn't talk back but listened nonetheless.

Jay told Harry of a young man she'd fallen in love with before she met the king, and with the story she kept throwing pointed glances at the two boys like she was speaking her truth to keep them from making her reality theirs. Protecting them from her own mistakes like she could read the words written between their laced fingers squished in the dirt, Harry's longer fingers completely enclosing Lance's in a woven barricade of flesh.

She was speaking like her summer romance had somehow come to life before her very eyes.

Her voice was by far the best, and her stories even more vivid and realistic than Harry's even if hers were born from fantasy and strayed so far from the truth it had Harry giggling for other reasons than Lance could ever attempt to guess. Her voice was soothing and warm, wrapping around his mind like a hug that spoke words to him and planted the images in his mind. He seen the beautiful gods and goddesses she was describing, watched as they fought side by side in the battle of titans for control of the world. And somehow, her stories replaced his very own and he couldn't decipher reality from fantasy.

"Every night," Jay confided in Harry while Lance busied himself with watering the flowers, "Lance would make me walk him to the pond so he could sit in the sand and speak to Poseidon. He said he spoke to him, too, and promised him one day to bring him a gift in green in exchange for his undying loyalty."

Lance looked up at that, shooting a grin at Harry as water fell in cascades from the tin; bouncing off the flowers in delicate droplets. "I suppose his gift to me was you, Harry."

And Harry shouldn't have enjoyed that as much as he did. Shouldn't have to wanted to accept the idea that Poseidon had flung him from heaven for the intent of fulfilling his most loyal followers wishes.

But, he did. And he was there wrapped in green.

And on the days Harry does leave, too guilt ridden to allow himself the luxury of lounging around in a castle all day, playing knights and dragons with Lance and the ridiculously squeaky five year olds who would insist he crawl on his hands and knees and roar every time he advanced on them to, "make it more real," he finds himself wandering earth. Feet leaving a ghost of dusty trials in his wake as he moves from place to place, never being seen but felt.

He provides safe passage for the souls who have recently perished, knowing full well he wasn't permitted such a privilege because of his incompetence and reluctance to become the angel of death.

He did it nonetheless.

Guided the drunken man from the bar to the safety of a local inn that was really no more than three rooms the size of closets. He consoles the weeping woman who stands over her own body, dehydrated and malnourished and oh so abused as it lay to bake for hours longer in the sun. Her children are playing with the other kids, oblivious that their mother had been slipping her portions to them for months and that one last time had been a time too many. He promises her kids will be okay.

Knowing he could never waver in his duty to watch over them. It was a lifelong task now.

He quietly ushers the man murdered in an alley for his golden coins towards the hovering light breaching the temple of Hera, promising in a soft voice that his god would be there the moment he crossed over to welcome him. He always wondered what Hera would say when she learned Harry gave her believers a direct passage to her throne. He'd never asked her, and she's never thrown a fuss while in his presence but she was a busy woman. Using her valuable time to lead the souls who dedicated their lives to her was possibly the least of her worries.

He stays hidden under the radar, ducking from his siblings prying scans when they catch a glimpse of the young angel, feel a ripple of his powers through the tethering line that connects them all in one way or another. He does his job silently, and without a fuss, the title still without a claim and him just as ditzy as ever.

Being the angel of death was a task he should take pride in. Being trusted with the fresh souls Lucifer could easily snatch away at any given second, but he knew it was a last effort from his father at having some control over his flunked creation.

One day specifically seems to drag on, leaving little to remember it by until he walks through the gates at the familiar kingdom and is immediately greeted by Arthur, an older knight who'd made it his duty to protect the lanky angel even if he'd never asked and Harry seen it more often than not, the looks he threw Lance when he wasn't looking; like he was just now seeing the stars in the sky and appreciating the light they brought but somehow, in some way, Lance shines brighter than all of them combined.

Arthur was kind, and dedicated, but he was often too clumsy in his ways and Harry found it hard not to like the man despite finding every attempt to. He knew he was a pawn, a way to get closer to the young prince and although jealousy was ever present in his wildly beating heart, he still couldn't treat him with anything but kindness. Yet another flaw.

And in their short walk through the lantern lit town, towards the castle, Harry pries. Digs into the humans life with questions thought it so carefully they seemed harmless. He found out he lived in the castle, in the middle level where all the other knights who moved far from home resided. He was from a noble family, Lord Zachariah and his wife living in a small village just outside of the North's kingdom. He came from a large family, with three sisters (all who have already been married off and the youngest was thirteen, which made both men cringe and share a look of complete disgust but both knew better than to discuss such a topic in public) and seven brothers, most of whom were sent off to become knights. Most went to the West, but Arthur and his younger brother, Samuel, came here.

Samuel died last year in a harmless patrol around the kingdom when a group of stragglers thought they needed his horse and belongings more than the boy did himself.

And despite his title, his wealth, he was even more like the peasants Harry had grown to know and care for than any other person of rank was. He was kind and soft, masculine and hard while balancing everything else that came with being a knight on the basket of bread he carried around on the back of his horse daily to offer the people in the kingdom.

"Most would go hungry," he said, "it's the very least I can do. They depend on things like this, the small things,"

And somehow, with his heart full and the night luring out the side of him he'd always intended to keep quiet, Harry was pulled to the side of the stores and he found himself standing outside a low light tavern with Arthur digging into the pocket of his trousers, hidden beneath armor and pounds of metal.

He produced a small red bag, the inside a deep violet color that was velvety (Harry could tell without actually touching) and out slipped a golden bracelet, simple in its design with the linked hoops all linked together with three pearls trapped in the middle, daunting in its simplicity but beautiful in the light of the burning moon.

"Do you think he'll like it?" He asked, eyes wide and hopeful with a light pink dusting his cheeks that flared in the orange glow from the flickering flame. "I realize the king would go mad if he found out his son accumulated a gift from one of his knights, but you know as well as I do urge to please the young prince can't be ignored." He smiled soft, a knowing pat leaving Harry's upper arm stinging with an unsuppressed bought of anger. And rather than waiting for a response, he continued. "I spent months torturing myself while considering what would be best to get him. I'm hoping of doing it soon, tonight perhaps. After you two have had your dinner, of course."

"Doing what?" Harry presses despite knowing, stomach in knots that his hands tried to desperately work out with his knuckles subtly pressing into the smooth flesh.

Lance wasn't his.

Lance wasn't his.

Lance wasn't his.

Something that, no matter how many times he repeated it, he couldn't make himself believe. He knew Lance wasn't his, in his heart. Knew he never could be and offering Arthur a chance at the prince was the least he could do. He needed to step back and breath, allow him room to advance and if Harry ripped himself apart in the process, at least he could say he did it to make Lance happy. Because, as the knight said, pleasing the prince was an urge one simply couldn't ignore.

He gave Harry an incredulous look, like the answer had been there the entire time and the curly haired man surely wasn't stupid enough to not have caught it. "Tell him, of course. He believes my infatuation lies with Shaun, who has on more than one occasion confided in the prince and confessed his feelings for me but he was a night of fun I'd had. Lance is who I've been… who I've wanted to— you get the idea, yeah?"

Harry questioned what led him to this moment. What led this specific knight into believing he could tell a near complete stranger his biggest secret and actually confide in him. Whatever had, whichever path he'd taken, he was hoping was blocked now because he couldn't do this again. Couldn't force a smile despite the sudden pain ravaging his body and offer words of encouragement to the scared man; telling him everything would be okay even if Harry felt like he was dying.

He left after that, wishing Arthur good luck in his mission and he quietly crept out of the kingdom once more and just.. left. Not to a place where existing was anything more than just a thought. A plane where his own body wasn't something he could feel, just for the sake of escaping the pain that seemed to haunt him even in his thoughts.

He didn't explain why he was opting out of dinner that night: didn't give Lance a reason why or even greet him like he did after everyday he randomly disappeared and came back with no explanation.

Lance yelled at him the next day for it, and it didn't go by without Harry's notice that the bracelet was absent from around his wrist, Arthur was hovering at the gates behind them with a permanent pout, and Harry's necklace laid claiming against Lance's chest. Out on display when days ago it had been tucked beneath his shirt.

Arthur and his advances on Lance was never mentioned again, and the knight was somehow easily forgotten the second Lance tackled Harry to the floor in his bed chambers and tickled the man until he was breathless and all giggled out, tears leaving trails on his flushed cheeks. "Abandon our dinner plans again without letting me know hours in advance and I'll tickle you until you pee yourself!" Lance had threatened, him too breathless from his place perched over Harry, straddling his hips with his hands braced on Harry's chest.

Any other setting, and Harry would have caught the intimate moment the second it happened. But he somehow missed when Lance drug his hands down his chest and moved them to rest at the bottom of Harry's stomach, spanning across his waistline so his fingertips met in the middle and his palms pressed firmly against his jutting hip bones. Lance was feeling him without Harry realizing it, tracing what he could while he could, and it was only when the boy leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to Harry's cheek that he was made aware of their position. Of the burning trails his fingertips had left down his torso like razor blades had just kissed his skin in long gashes.

That night, Lance unknowingly made himself Harry's again, without truly being his. A cycle that could never be broken.

—-

"Your parents," Lance began one day as they scoured the bed of sand for shells and rocks, treasures, "were they married?"

Harry stuffs his hand into the wet sand that hangs at the edge of the sand barrier, the overlapping water washing up his hand to the wrist before it is sucked back down and he grabs the tiny black rock with white striking through it like bursts of lightning and offers it to Lance with a grin. "We don't have marriage where I'm from," he admits a little sheepishly, standing to dust off his red knees. "And I technically don't have parents." He says, but that just sounds too odd so he rushed to correct it with, "I knew my father, but never my mother."

Lance's eyebrows furrow. "No marriage at all?"

Harry shakes his head. "Marriage isn't the same concept as it is here," he gestures around them, "my people aren't bound to one another with laws written; but if a bond is strong enough they can choose to remain together for their entire life."

"And where you're from, do they accept your.. er, kind?"

Harry didn't understand the question at first, confusion swamping his features and tugging down his eyebrows until Lance waved a hand over his own body. People like us. He spoke silently.

"People who are fond of the same sex?" He clarifies, and at the nod he huffs before falling back to sit on his butt. "It isn't a rule not to interact with the same sex in intimate settings, but it also isn't a topic that is brought up with fondness. My people are kind, but they're a little more traditional than most would understand,"

Lance nods, lips pursed as he switches the rock from palm to palm, balancing the weight on the top of his finger. "Father is strict against homosexuality," Lance admits softly, reluctantly with pain knitting his eyebrows together as his face scrunches with the open realization that his father didn't accept him, that he'd never be free to be who he was without being scorned or banished. "Would your father accept you?"

And Harry has to consider the answer for a second, has to honestly mule over the different thoughts racing through his mind to pinpoint the one not born out of hatred for his own kind or biased because of how he'd been treated. "My father would try," he says, "but he's never been able to understand me. Out of all my siblings, I am the one he's always had trouble with."

Lance must have sensed the dark turn the conversation was quickly taking, because he set down next to Harry just as quickly as one could blink and was leaning against him with his head resting on his shoulder. "Your siblings," he says, hand resting on Harry's knee in a comforting touch, "you never talk about them. Did they remain with your father?"

"Most did," Harry admits, eyes focused on the lowering sun. "Others left to fulfill their own duties. I was to come… here with the intention of working, too,"

He was supposed to accept his role as the angel of death and offer safe travel to the confused souls but his wings remained white and he remained titleless; dutiless.

"You never mentioned a job!" Lance exclaims, pointing an accusing finger at Harry as he pops up from his lounging position. "Or duty or whatever you refer to it as. What do you do? Do your siblings have similar jobs? Is that where you sneak off to!"

"I have a job, I just haven't gotten around to doing it as much as I should," Harry says with a cheeky grin. "And no, they don't have similar jobs. We each have our own specific duty. They do their own work, and I do mine. I've just been neglectful,"

"You're too cryptic," Lance complains, flinging himself back in the sand.

Which is how he was to always remain. Hidden. Cryptic. Offering crumbs to Lance without the chance of the boy ever piecing together the puzzle of his life.

At the thought of his siblings, Harry feels multiple tugs in his stomach, all in different directions and all equally as demanding. He can feel Gemma, hundreds of miles away, doing her daily duty at attempting to reach out to her younger brother in hopes he would finally return her call but he ignores them. All of them. And only answers the call of the boy tugging him down in the sand so they lay parallel to one another.

They breath in sync for a while, just staring at one another with not a single word passing between the small spaces between their faces and Harry brands this face into his memory. The crinkled eyes, kind and soft with a gentle smile rolling his lips up to display gleaming white teeth.

This image would forever be his favorite.

"If given the chance," Lance began in a voice so soft Harry was sure if he hadn't seen his lips move he wouldn't have even been aware the slight whisper of breath were actual words spoken, "I would marry you, Harry,"

"If given the choice," Harry admits in a voice just as quiet, "I'd marry you, Lance."

He was in a world not his own, and finding everything right in what his father had deemed wrong.

And it was then Harry was made aware of how pathetically deep he already was in this.