#and yet I somehow managed to melt a cactus

[what-yadoking-likes]

“NO,” Wolf’s declaration was loud, clear... and totally ignored by Hoxton, who continued carrying the poinsettia into their bedroom.

“No, No, NO!-” Wolf body-blocked the doorway, his stocky frame just enough to keep Hoxton out - despite this the Brit weaved and dodged as if he could slip between the tiny cracks Wolf couldn’t cover with his body alone.

Eventually Hoxton stopped trying to phase through the doorway currently being blocked by his partner.

“What’s your problem?”

Wolf glared at the crimson flower as if it had personally done him harm. “It’ll die.”

“We all die some day, Wolfie.”

Eye-roll. “You know what I’m like with plants. I’ll find a way to kill it even if I do everything right.”

Wolf’s reputation for speedrunning killing plants was the stuff of legend. He had somehow managed to melt a cactus he’d bought and put in their shared bathroom. Sure, he’d blamed it on it being placed too closely to the fan, which could blast cool or hot air into the bathroom, but nobody knew for certain - how did cactus’ MELT when they lived in deserts where it was nothing but hot?

Hoxton’s expression softened. “I’ll take care of it,” he insisted, doing his best to pull the exact expression he knew would have Wolf appeased and gazing at him with such strong affection it at times stung his heart - it was a warm, doting look, focused so completely on him as if he were the only thing in the world.

Wolf was unmoved. “No,” he said, folding his arms.

Hoxton dropped the look. “Git. I’ll get it in there somehow.”

“I’d like to see you try!” Wolf sing-songed as Hoxton retreated to the office to finish whatever work he had to occupy himself with before they were officially off-duty for the holiday season.

[yellingmetatron]

The Light in Heaven

So.

Well.

Something like two freaking years ago, or thereabout, I told @kissofmistletoe I was writing a little character study about Metatron and Baldr.  Various things took up my time, I had difficulty getting into a desired headspace, and this little character study never materialized-- until now.  It’s short and it’s not beta’d but I think that it does what I set out to do, and again, it’s been something like two years. So, to @kissofmistletoe: Sorry for the wait, and I hope it’s at least somewhat entertaining.  Hope other people enjoy it, too.

----

Metatron has always enjoyed watching people.  It’s a good thing, considering his purpose, and especially considering he has so many other inclinations that seem at odds with that purpose.  But life can’t be all torment, even for an archangel.

There’s something about perceiving a person, recognizing them as another self that Metatron finds… what’s best word?  Enrapturing, enthralling, intoxicating?  None of those words seem to speak very well of the person being enraptured, enthralled, or intoxicated.  All of them imply loss of control, and Metatron hates not being in control, especially when the matter is self-control.

Metatron often hates things he thinks he shouldn’t want.  Often, but not always.

Baldr wanders the wildlands of the Shamayim, Heaven, like a native.  The geography of Heaven is much like the geography of the Levant, but as it was before so many empires demanded their tithes of lumber for ships and incense.  Aromatic cedars stretch tall and wide all across the mountains, boughs covered in snow.  In the valleys between the mountains, ice-cold rivers run into the eternal sea of Heaven that stretches quite literally into infinity.  Baldr has told Metatron before that he was pleasantly surprised by Heaven.  He had feared it would be a dead, white place.  Metatron had managed not to be offended, at least not by Baldr.

How do humans keep getting things so wrong?

Metatron watches Baldr. The god had seen the sun rise over the mountains, and expressed a desire to take in the winter sun.  Metatron had told him of course he could, and he didn’t need to ask: He was an ambassador, not a prisoner.  Baldr mused there was overlap in those categories; after all, his presence must be accounted for, his movements verified.  Metatron had told him nobody expected him to sit in his room all day and only come out for political discourse.  That sort of treatment was reserved for Sheol, not Shamayim.  Baldr had smiled, but then said that of course the most responsible thing he could do as a guest was to seek the approval of his host before adventuring.  He had tilted his head in innocent inquisitiveness; wasn’t he Metatron’s charge, for the time being?

They had gone on like that for a while, a kind of verbal play-fight that ended with Baldr on his back—as it were.  The kind of deference shown by someone who knows they’re going to get exactly what they want, and who knows a little show of submission can be a balm.  Baldr, fuck him, had worked out long ago that Metatron liked it when people were mindful of his authority.  So few of his siblings were, nowadays, and the lower choirs were only frightened, most of the time.  One of the humans, some Italian or another, had once said that love and fear could hardly exist together, and that if you had to choose, fear was the safer bet. But fear is lonelier than love. It’s lonelier even than simple respect. Well, Baldr gives Metatron respect, and as for the other thing—

--that doesn’t bear thinking about right now.  Baldr fits the landscape too well.  He shouldn’t; for one thing, he’s not wearing a fucking shirt, and it’s only just above freezing.  If he were a human, this would be a clear sign of madness or masochism.  But the incongruity somehow melts away in the image as a whole: A lone, golden figure, ankle-deep in snow, meandering the mountains with no purpose but pleasure in the cold and quiet.  The winter light seems to flow over Baldr’s skin like anointing oil, tarrying over the angles of his body, reluctant to leave him. Metatron has seen deer walk through the snow, lean in the winter yet somehow serene, patient for the Spring. As Baldr stops, turning around to see how far he’s climbed, chest rising as he breathes in cold air and the scent of snow and cedars, Metatron knows Baldr doesn’t need to be patient for Spring: Warmth and life are already inside of him, and will be always.

It's so fucking infuriating.

The archangel may as well be a statue as he watches.  His arms are folded in across his own broad chest, and his wings, six in this form, are stock still, not a feather out of place.  His expression is difficult to read; it could pass for either melancholy or irritation depending on the beholder.  He feels neither-- not exactly.  There are two feelings that come to mind, neither of which translate well to English nor Aramaic nor Hebrew.

Saudade.

Hiraeth.

But neither of them fit perfectly.  Both imply longing, a quiet-leaning-to-unquiet desperation for something lost or missing.  The former implies an unconquerable expectation, and that’s accurate enough but not complete.  The latter implies time and place specifically (he remembers old mountains that once were taller, he remembers lavish tents and smoke that smelled of incense and burnt offerings).  But what do you call a longing that isn’t quite?  How to you express an incomplete yearning?  Because however much he misses the past, he doesn’t want it back.  However much there is of an old god left within him, he wants to be an angel more.

Metatron remembers the Old Days, when he and his siblings were young and terrible.  He had a chance to challenge Haddad for kingship, and he vehemently refused it.  Strictly speaking, not much is stopping him from issuing a challenge now.  He has a duty to the One-As-Three, but it could be fulfilled in many ways.  His angelic brethren would be horrified, of course, but he knows for certain that a number of his Canaanite siblings hold a quiet conviction that Metatron—Malakhael, some still call him-- would make a better king than Haddad.  Not enough to agitate for it while it’s clear Metatron doesn’t want the job, not enough to plead with him to reconsider his loyalties, but…

Oh fucking cactus-sodomizing shit, now Baldr is lying down in an actual fucking snowbank.  And he looks so fucking pleased about it.  He’s luxuriating in the winter sun like a snow-leopard, not caring about the cold but only the light.  That sounds like some kind of stupid inspirational quote mortals would plaster on their dorm bedroom walls.  Something corporate-sponsored snowboarders would quip with a vapid grin.

The light that shines off snow can blind men and animals.  There’s a fucking quote for you.  But it’s nothing to gods and angels, and Baldr himself shines more brightly than anything else around him and oh fucking Sheol why is Metatron thinking like this?

Baldr still hasn’t gotten up from the snowbank.  Metatron wonders if he’ll doze off like that.  It’s not as if frostbite or hypothermia are a problem, and he’s angled so he’d be getting sun pretty much for the rest of the day.  For a Prince and state dignitary, it really doesn’t take much to make Baldr content.  Maybe he won’t even feel the need to get up at sundown; these past few nights have been clear and cold as glass, the moon and stars shining down with rare intensity.  It’s because of Baldr, Metatron is sure; light celebrating its ultimate source.

Mortals sometimes have difficulty wrapping their heads around the fact that more than one divinity can be the ultimate source of anything, that two or more celestials can personify the same concept.  It doesn’t help that it’s hard to explain it in a way they can understand, some answer limited to four dimensions.  Metatron’s go-to answer is “What’s infinity plus infinity?” which has the benefit of being no answer at all.  It almost works, and sometimes almost is enough.  Most people manage to be quite content with almost.

Metatron and Baldr are both beings of truth and light.  They are more than that, they transcend that-- and they are not the same entity.  There is more to each of them.  And yet somewhere, deep in Metatron’s sephirah, there is something that makes no distinction between himself and the godling.  The phrase “kindred spirit” is used carelessly by mortals who don’t understand the depths of those words taken together— certain saints and poets being an exception.  The highest level of self-awareness most mortals attain is the ability to look in a mirror and know, That’s me.  Gods and angels don’t have the luxury of leaving things at that.  An archangel must be careful when looking into certain gods’ eyes, because in an instant they may recognize something even deeper than mere surface-self.  Two sets of eyes can lock, and suddenly the line between I and Thou becomes dangerously blurred.

And oh, we must be careful of that.  It’s such a sweet poison, like wine and mead.  Two selves lost to each other.  Quintessence seeing itself, shattering any illusion of division.  All light is light; all truth is truth.

It would be so easy to leave the illusion of a lone ego behind.

But what would one come back to, when one is no longer one?

Metatron discovers that unthinkingly, he has managed to turn away from Baldr and his light.  Now his expression is recognizably melancholic.  Letting a feeling besides anger make it all the way to his face is an indulgence, but he needs some kind of outlet, and anyone no-one’s around to see.  He walks back into his library proper from the loggia from which he had watched his guest.   It’s well-lit, lamps burning with the clean light of Heaven, and yet it seems undeniably dimmer.  As he walks down the porphyry-columned hall, past the cyclopean bookshelves, under dome and arch, Metatron feels lonely—but only briefly.

Pining, still? Comes Sandalphon’s voice in his mind. The question would be intolerable from anyone else, but this is his sister, so it makes him smile a little instead. She’s not here physically—so much work of her own to do—but they’re never really apart.

I will concede that I am, he replies.  He stops a moment, and suddenly the hall isn’t a hall, it’s a reading room—there are still porphyry columns, of course.  One has standards.  Though I couldn’t tell you for… what, exactly.  He reminds me of so many things, achoti.

Its been a long time since you’ve had much traffic with elohim outside of the family, Sandalphon notes. And then suddenly she is present physically, reclining on a sofa by the window, wings tucked neatly behind her. Metatron sits on a perpendicular sofa. Mediterranean seating arrangements used to be much easier for people with wings, and in Heaven there’s no need to discard useful fashions.

“Don’t see family having much to do with it,” Metatron says.  “As making much difference one way or another, I mean.  I get fucking moody when I have to talk to Haddad, too.”

“But not moody like this, achi.  You’re used to Haddad.  He doesn’t make you so… nostalgic.  Not the best word, I know, but it will do.”  She smiles, a little sadly.  “You’re so used to each other.  When you look at each other, you don’t think eloah or angel, you both think brother.”

“I have dealt with foreign elohim before,” Metatron says a little more impatiently than he intends—but of course Sandalphon knows his heart, and takes no offense.  “None of them… did this to me.  It’s like…” he sighs, running a hand through snow-white hair. “It’s not just that he’s an eloah.”

“It’s the kind of eloah he is,” Sandalphon says.  “I understand.  But I do think the intensity of your feelings is due to how novel all this is.  It’s been so long, achi.  So long since you’ve had anyone but me to be so close to.”

“I have my subordinates,” Metatron says wryly.  “And hey, who needs more fucking company than people who are all kind of terrified of you?”

They are silent together for a time.  The sun of the Shamayim sinks a little lower, and the shadows of the bookshelves move with it.  The moon is barely visible, a ghost against the blue.  Metatron at last breaks the silence.

“Am I worrying you, achoti?”

“Always, Metatron,” Sandaphon laughs, “I’m your sister, that’s my prerogative.  You’re much more fun to worry about than anything else.”  He smiles crookedly in return.

“I promise I won’t… withdraw from this,” he says, “Because I know that’s the big fucking worry.  I can handle having feelings, Sandalphon.  Just a little out of practice.”

They stand and embrace. Metatron realizes it’s been a few months since they last hugged.  He squeezes his sister tight, and when the separate she gently punches his shoulder.

“Just remember,” she tells him, “I won’t have anyone treating my twin worse than he deserves to be treated, and that includes you.  If you need to talk, about this eloah or anything else, come to me.  Everything’s easier together.”

And then she’s gone, but not really.  They’re never really apart.

Metatron smiles softly, and looks out the window.  He can see Baldr from here—really, he could see him from anywhere in his palace-library. The young god is wandering leisurely back towards palace, still fucking shirtless.  Really, that’s insufferable.  The dimming light is just as flattering.  And worst of all, his expression is one of perfect contentment.  He’s had a good day.  He’s thoroughly enjoyed his time here, in this place that Metatron rules.  He’s probably going to make irritatingly excellent conversation tonight, especially over wine.  Metatron’s going to have to deal with so much sass.

The angel’s hand goes to his chest thoughtlessly.  His sephirah feels warm.

He allows himself a brief, sweet awareness that it’s not so different from a flesh-and-blood heart.