Chapter 15
Raphael
Abstinence was hard. That became apparent to me just a few weeks into the agreement. I could have made those three months much easier by avoiding temptation, secluding myself in my room and pretending no shapely legs or kissable lips existed, but I wasn’t a coward. If this was going to be a test of my will, then it should be a proper one. So my itinerary didn’t change much. I attended my Archangel and Heavenly Healer duties, then switched to leisure time. Except now I went to Steel Velvet or human clubs, BDSM or not, only for the most basic level of companionship. Just to have fun.
In the past I took care not to create a legend of an immortal regular. I switched up every few years which clubs I attended. After all, it wouldn’t do for people to notice my lack of aging. Fortunately, the whole world was my oyster, so I could show up in Paris one day and Seoul the next.
Today, I found myself in a newly opened establishment in Warsaw. They had nice decor, and the music wasn’t so bad. I took to the dancefloor like usual, letting the low bass thrum through my body, my movements flowing to the rhythm. But the difference from my routine was that when I was propositioned, I said ‘no, thank you’. At first, saying so really pained me. I was high-strung after what happened with Tirael—a mix of guilt, nervousness, annoyance, impatience, and maybe a dose of yearning played first fiddle in my mind—and getting into bed with a willing partner could help settle at least some of those emotions. But I persisted, making friends instead of new lovers I would discard after a night.
Just before the three months were up, I was sitting at a table with three humans who adopted me into their little group and didn’t even bother to flirt with me anymore. They just slung their arms around my neck and sandwiched me between them in the booth; a casual intimacy that wasn’t related to sex.
It felt good.
My first epiphany of the day was that my escapades, while centered on sex, provided an important part in giving me the dose of contact I required and an outlet for caring for someone, especially if they allowed me to go all praise-dom on them. I was a very tactile person, and I had a suspicion I required a huge amount of those touches and closeness. More than normal humans, or demons, or angels did. That day, I realized I could supplement my routine with those non-sexual touches.
The second realization I had was I might have been missing out. See, I was coming to quite like Szymon, Kasia, and Marzena. And I had enough self awareness to know our friendship wouldn’t be able to blossom as it did if I took one or all of them to bed and then tried to distance myself from them if they asked for a repetition. How many times did I interpret a casual invitation to hang out to have an attached ultimatum of, ‘yes, that means I want more sex and I won’t take no for an answer’? My Polish friends had a saying ‘dmuchac na zimne’ which translated more or less to “blow onto something already cold” and meant that it didn’t hurt to be overtly cautious… but I wondered if I wasn’t doing myself a disservice by keeping everyone at arms length.
When I told my three new friends I wasn’t interested, it closed one path but opened another.
“I think I want to pursue someone,” I told them, while staring at the depths of a full glass of craft beer in my hand.
“Woo-hoo! Go for it!” Kasia shouted enthusiastically.
Marzena lifted an eyebrow at me, and Szymon planted a sharp elbow in my ribs. “Tell us about them!”
“He is… shy and determined. Pretty… though he won’t acknowledge that. It’s so frustrating,” I said.
“Well, did you tell him he’s pretty?” Kasia asked.
“Yes, many times.”
“Did you show him he’s pretty?” Szymon asked with a leer.
“I did,” I said primly. “But he still thinks of himself as plain and uninteresting. And here I am, not being able to think of anything else.” I thunked my head against the back of the booth with a sigh.
“That sucks, man, but I’m sure you can get through to him.” Szymon patted my arm comfortingly.
“Making someone change the view they have of themselves is hard,” Marzena said seriously. “Be patient with him.”
“I will,” I said. “I only hope he is going to be patient with me.”
Beelzebub
We stared at each other as if we were in the middle of a battlefield. Raphael measured me with his stare, then frowned.
“You already know how I did, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” I responded with a raised eyebrow. “What? Did you think I would just believe whatever you said? Lying isn’t above angels. As the master of espionage, I know that better than anyone else. But I’m surprised that you noticed the little helpers which reported back to me.”
“I didn’t,” Raphael sighed. “I realized you spied on me when I saw that expression on your face.”
“What? This one?” I pointed at my face, trying to look the most innocent I could.
Raphael shuddered.
“Stop it. That’s giving me the creeps. That kind of expression has no place on your face. Just tell it to me straight. What’s the verdict? Do you think I can keep it in my pants for long enough to give a relationship with Tirael a go?”
“To my astonishment, it seems so.”
“What about you, then? I did not have anyone spy on you.”
“Why? Of course I have restrained myself.”
“I was going to believe you, but now you are making me worried,” Raphael responded to my tone. “How can I be sure that you are telling the truth?”
“Well, you just have to trust me… or check one of my favorite illegal fighting pits. They threw me out for getting too violent.”
“That isn’t exactly reassuring, you know that, right?”
“You don’t need reassurance. You need to believe that I have been channeling my dark instincts into something other than pleasant torture in the bedroom.” Raphael’s lips thinned, but in the end he nodded sharply, choosing to put his trust in me. “What a lovable fool.” I clapped my hands together. “Thus, the first stage is completed.”
“Last time you mentioned something about a plan?”
“Indeed, I did. I believe to achieve our goal of having our own little Tirael to do with as we please, we need to work in three stages. And in the end, I believe we will have his heart.”
“Hopefully in a non-literal sense,” Raphael said under his nose. “Alright, give me the deets.”
“Our second stage: we actually need to get to know him.”
“That seems like a good idea.”
“Don’t look so surprised. I have good ideas all the time! So, let’s do this. Get all the information we can to have an easier time connecting with him. I can put four… no, six demons on this… hmm, maybe four demons and two angels…” I pulled out the phone to look at the list of my contacts and only then noticed that Raphael was staring at me as if I was insane.
“No, bad idea. Bad Beelzebub! Maybe you have some good ideas, but this is definitely not one!”
“Why not? I have tools at my disposal and I am not afraid to use them.”
“’Why not’ he asks…” Raphael pinched the bridge of his nose as if I was giving him a headache. “Because it’s immoral. It’s an invasion of privacy. We don’t know if Tirael will even forgive us and grant us another chance, and you want to give him a solid reason to reject us for being stalkers?!”
I crossed my arms, displeased with being denied the thrilling possibility of misusing my power and my web of spies.
“If you’re so clever, what’s your idea?”
“Talking to him. We need to convince him to spend some time with us. I don’t know if he will be willing to meet with us alone at first, but maybe we could show up at one of the events he attends and just strike up a conversation. We should make him used to seeing us again first, and we can observe how he interacts with people, what he wears, what he likes to eat. Small things. Oh, oh! I know!” Raphael was getting into the idea now. “Surely, between the two of us, we already know some details. Let’s make a list. For example, we know he prefers strawberries to any other fruit. That’s a good start.”
“And he prefers hemp to other kinds of rope.”
“You couldn’t have come up with something more useful in everyday life?”
“Well, it tells me a lot about him. Creating a psychological profile is important.” I gave him my patented smirk.
“Ah, get your mind out of the gutter.” Raphael rolled his eyes, unimpressed with me.
That’s all right, I was impressed with myself enough. I didn’t need external validation.
That’s how part two of our plan came to life. We still stalked Tirael, no matter what Raphael wanted to call it, but we did it in person, using no one else. First, we showed up to an open discussion between angels and demons organized by the Embassy. It was a new monthly event where the two sides had a moderated discussion about different topics. Today’s discussion was about fashion. Predictably, Aurelius was the instigator but thanks to his status as a newly made Ascended, he was not the chief authority in the room.
It was quite a lively event as two different cultures tried to talk about thousands of years of different fashions at once. My tastes definitely skewed more to the demonic side, what with the dark corruption on my body, the skull face, the leather sleeveless coat and my wardrobe consisting solely of different shades of black, so I was a bit bored at times. Raphael turned out to be actually interested in the topic; maybe not as a creator of fashion, but definitely as its avid consumer. While I studied Tirael, who acted as a moderator when things got too heated and had a list of topics to move things along, I could study Raphael as well. The way he perked up at the mention of certain topics made me note those fashion references down in my mind to research them later.
As for Tirael, I noticed he liked to have something in his hands. A pen, a page, even his sleeve to fiddle with. But every time he caught himself doing it, he forced himself back into stillness. It worked for a while, but then he got distracted or focused too much, and both of those instances resulted in him getting back to his fidgeting. It was driving me crazy. Why was he denying himself such a simple little thing? Was he worried that someone would judge him for twirling his pen? It was more likely than I wanted to admit.
It may be that he was actually more nervous than usual because he was up close with his ex-lovers for the first time in three months. We pretty much avoided each other, keeping our distance from Tirael, just like our deal demanded, but now here we were, back in his sights.
By the end of the two-hour discussion, Raphael seemed pretty happy. He even opened his mouth a few times, adding his two cents to the debate. I wondered if he still remembered why we were here, but when people filed out, I could see his eyes were laser-focused on Tirael as the little angel gathered his notes and spoke quietly with Aurelius. Good. A neutral party would help balance things.
And make it harder for Tirael to run.
I let Raphael take the point on this one, and the angel didn’t disappoint. He greeted Tirael politely with a small smile and skillfully trapped Aurelius in a conversation, expounding on the topics of the discussion with finesse. Tirael looked like he wanted to escape, so I stepped to the other side of the table he was sitting at, keeping him in our little group. Raphael had vetoed many of my underhanded methods, but he couldn’t forbid them all, so I leaned against the desk. Though, considerately, I had dampened my usual intimidating aura a bit. Sometimes you had to be careful with your prey.
I had a feeling that Tirael was at a point where he would just pass out if you stared at him too much, like one of those weird fainting goats from the supposed mind control experiment. So instead of using my aura of terror, I nodded at Tirael when I caught his gaze.
“You handled those angels and demons well.”
Tirael looked at me like a deer in headlights. He didn’t know what to do with me praising him, especially when no mocking commentary followed. I didn’t turn the praise into a joke or use it to make the next words hurt even more, which would be something Tirael had experienced before in the middle of our play. Now, the praise was just hanging in the air, ready to be admired.
“Thank you?” Tirael said, and the way his voice lifted at the end made it sound like a question.
“You’re welcome.”
I stepped away, Raphael staying just a while more to wrap up his conversation and attack Tirael with his own praise.
“This was a pretty good idea. I’m excited to see what you will come up with next.”
“Oh, it wasn’t me! It was all Aurelius’ idea,” the poor angel stuttered.
“Sure, but the next meetings are going to be under your jurisdiction, won’t they? And you have organized this one and made sure everything went smoothly. Well done.”
This time, words failed to come to Tirael. He just nodded. There it was, his refusal to take anything good at face value. The hint of sadness deep in his eyes didn’t help matters.
Be patient, I told myself, observing the situation from near the door to the room. Don’t spook him. Take it slow.
Raphael followed me out after that. Our interaction with Tirael was quick, but quite meaningful. It was a stepping stone towards what we wanted. A foundation. A sign for Tirael that he didn’t need to avoid us anymore.
The next three months passed like that, with us orbiting Tirael until he accepted us back into his space. There was still hurt in his eyes, sadness, feelings we put there with our inconsideration. I could admit to myself I was playing with him before, as I played with all of my marks. Why would I care what happened to them? Adults playing at sex or BDSM were responsible for their own actions and their own feelings. How could I have known I would come to regret being so shallow in this one particular case?
As far as I was concerned, Tirael should hate us, but the fool of an angel was extremely forgiving. And I could see, as several months passed, he didn’t blame us two anymore. But that only meant that he thought the entire fault for the fiasco of our relationship laid solely on his shoulders. I needed to break that martyr mentality he had, preferably by breaking his skin. The urge t to take my whip to him again was strong. I had to force my spiraling thoughts away from that particular subject, as I knew we were quite a way away from any activities of this magnitude. Fortunately, I had more scheming to occupy myself.
Raphael and I decided Phase Three was a go.