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Lee stares down at the patient’s list of requested tests. There was Lithium, which is a fairly standard test as his clinic, with this patient having to get it checked before her regular treatments for manic depression, but which was less standard was the mineral profile that followed: Chromium, Cobalt, Copper, Manganese, Molybdenum, Selenium, and Zinc. Paying out of pocket, as the patient would have to without a doctor’s order and without insurance, it would be unreasonably expensive.
No clinic that does blood draws even on the side is stranger to the odd clusters of people ordering obscure, expensive tests, though. Maybe they were suggested in a health magazine. Maybe some forum swore by them. Regardless of a reason, sick people flock to them, desperate for something to alleviate their pain.
Looking up from the offered paper, he tries to choose his words carefully. The patient, a middle aged woman — or perhaps not yet middle aged; only thirty-four, he recalls from her EHR, with a smoking habit and symptoms of psychosis and hypochondria he can only imagine the ways in which it must weigh on her — files through her purse and pays him little attention in turn.
“Mrs. Brown,” he begins. “Have you recently come into contact with a construction site? …Or a mine?”
“No,” the patient scoffs, as if his question is bizarre. “Of course not. You think I’m ‘crazy’ too, then?” She shifts the arm of her purse over her shoulder as Lee fumbles for something to say. “I haven’t, but I’ve been experiencing some symptoms lately, and…well, you know that sometimes doctors don’t believe or understand.”
“...I do. I’m very sorry the specialist I referred you to was unable to help you. I could give you a different —”
“That’s not the issue,” she interrupts, not unkindly. Though she’s a strong-armed woman, he has the impression she holds no particular ill will towards him. “Anyways, I’d like to do these tests so I can show that doctor that my values are unusual and so he’ll finally listen to me.”
Reluctantly, Lee nods, punching in their codes into his pricing tool. “...Then, that will be $484.72, Mrs. Brown.”
“Oh.”
He raises his eyes from the screen to her face, which is vaguely pained. He looks back away. “If you only want to do a few tests on the panel, some are more —”
“No,” she insists. “I have to run them all.”
Lee looks down to his hands to realize he’s tearing his hangnails again. Abruptly, he stops. He’s been trying to do it less often lately. “Alright,” he says. Then, “Cash or card?”
The tests are simple to draw, if nothing else. Just a couple royal blue EDTAs, and then an SST for the Lithium. “One, two.” She’s a quick draw, straight-backed and patient as her blood collects into the tubes. He has them in the centrifuge within minutes.
She’s polite but clipped with her goodbyes, but so is he. As the final patient of the day, he cleans up behind her, happy to let the sound of the spinning centrifuge and the fish tank’s gentle filter fill up the clinic. He clears the counters, takes out the trash, documents the finances for the day — all charges under $20, mostly with cash, until Mrs. Brown’s — places the prepared samples, all having finished being spun, into the drop box out front for the courier to take that evening, and then sets about his favorite task: cleaning the shrimp tank.
He’s just finished up, having taken to gazing at them interacting with the newly cleaned rocks he replaced, when the phone rings.
Lee’s heart jumps. He wipes his hands on the rag at his side then moves towards the landline to pick it up, stumbling even as he tries to hurry. “Hello,” he calls, holding the phone to his ear with both hands, cradling it in hopes his too-clammy palms don’t slip.
“Hey, Lee,” Angel’s voice rings out like a bell. Lee stifles a sigh at the sound, too aware it would be audible over the line. “Are you almost on your way home?”
He’ll never get tired of hearing that, never. ‘Home.’
“Yes,” he answers. “I didn’t forget. I just finished up here.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” Angel’s voice is just the slightest bit amused. He’s glad; he likes them being so assured of his devotion to them that to question it is absurd.
“...I’ll be home soon and we can head out.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
That time, Lee can’t stifle his sigh and it comes out awed, too-loud and shuddering. Angel snorts. “See you soon, Lee,” they say, good-natured but teasing. Lee feels himself start to sweat, his cheeks start to warm.
“Until then, Angel.”
Having driven just a bit faster than is advisable, not because he’s late but because of his haste to see Angel again, Lee arrives at their new home soon enough that he hasn’t stopped sweating. Though that may just be the thought of Angel.
“Thanks for coming with me,” they say again, looking away, gracious but wrong-footed. They’ve been nervous for their upcoming appointment for a long time, and even if Lee wasn’t their ride everywhere, he would have been insistent on accompanying them just so they had someone by their side.
A little anxious, Lee wraps his hand around theirs. “Of course,” he says, letting his fingers close around theirs entirely, showing them how he’ll always protect them. Angel looks up to smile at him, leaning their shoulder into his. Their nerves haven't disappeared, but they are eased, just a little. “Are you ready to head out?”
“Yeah,” they say, their expression narrowing into something resolved, and their hand closing around his in turn.
Angel is uncharacteristically quiet for the drive there, looking out the window and fidgeting with their hems, their (new) jacket’s pull strings, anything they can get their hands on. Lee doesn’t try to interrupt. He figures anything he has to say would be unhelpful. Instead, he focuses on the drive and on getting Angel there safely. It’s close enough that Angel doesn’t need to worry for long.
The community really was lucky to have a clinic willing to be open so late that Lee could take Angel there after his own clinic closed up. They were all working people sitting shoulder to shoulder in the lobby, of course. Everyone coming after work, after school; people who couldn’t afford to take time off of work for a doctor’s appointment, or whose work wouldn’t allow them to.
It also didn’t escape Lee that he was the only white person there. Telenovelas play on the old CRT in the corner (and local news on another), the magazines strewn across the odd side table all read only Spanish, and the handful Angel took off from the candy bowl at the counter came back half Dum-Dums and half fruit-flavored hard candy filled with chili, which Lee hadn’t expected, but found that he liked. He has been working at a low income clinic — working in healthcare — far too long to recognize the disparity, or the systems that make things the way they are.
The walls are yellowed with age, which Lee finds comforting. They took care of Angel well when Lee brought them to get up to date on their vaccines and get their flu shot, so today will go well, too. Lee wills himself to believe it.
Once Lee is done checking Angel in and showing the staff their tattered insurance card, which Lee now keeps in his own wallet so Angel doesn’t have to worry about it, he looks around the lounge for them. Angel had chosen a spot in the very furthest corner. When Lee takes the empty spot next to them, Angel’s hand reaches out to grip his tightly.
“It’ll be okay,” he says. “...Do you want me to come in with you?”
“Fuck no,” Angel hisses, sounding horrified.
Lee tries not to feel offended. He understands it’s very personal. “Alright.”
“It’s just too…too much,” Angel says.
“No. I understand.” He does.
Angel untangles their hands to wipe their own on their jeans, and Lee knows it’s likely more due to the sweat on his palm than theirs. “Sorry,” he offers.
Angel gives him a half-smile but doesn’t reach to take his hand back. Instead, they fiddle with the tassels of the jacket just in the way they did when Lee first met them, tangling the cord in on itself and running in between two fingers to make it spin.
“Is there anything I can do?” Lee asks, watching the way their fidgeting is amplified by their anxious thoughts.
Angel takes a moment to think. “I don’t think so,” they admit after their deliberation, which hurts about as much as if Angel had pressed that old power drill into the meat of Lee’s stomach then flicked the switch to ‘on.’ “I mean, I’m just nervous. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s very natural to fear an experience you haven’t had before, especially one in which you —”
“Yeah. I get it.”
Lee closes his mouth.
In that moment, the NP calls “Ángela,” from the door and Angel stiffens.
Desperately, Lee reaches out to take back Angel’s hand and squeeze it. “It’ll be okay.” He aches for them. He knows they’re strong enough, but he doesn’t want them to be. He wishes he could be there for them, but they don’t want him to be. Suddenly, absurdly, he wishes he studied becoming an OB-GYN instead of orthopedics, if only Angel could be with someone they knew only wanted to protect them, and so no one else could see them in such an intimate way. Maybe it would have been easier to learn.
Angel squeezes his hand back and slips out of his grasp, rising from their seat to follow the NP. They look more like they’re heading to the gallows. It must feel much the same.
Then, Lee is left there alone. He can only think about how scared and uncertain Angel must be there without him, how uncomfortable they must be with strangers touching them where they don’t want, all for “their own good.” Why on earth did Lee agree to this? Sure, Angel was a few years late for their first pap smear, but surely nothing was wrong.
Lee chastises himself. They don’t know that for sure. He’s a medical man — he shouldn’t be so irrational. They have recommended start dates for certain procedures for a reason. Angel should get it done so they can have peace of mind going forward, so they don’t need to worry about it again until the next time.
The thought of someone else prying open Angel’s legs and looking inside — of Angel scared, afraid, sick to their stomach and reminded of their trauma, physically restrained and unable to escape as something is forced inside them, and something else taken out — while Lee sits here, impotent and defanged, failing them, all before he’s even able to touch them makes him want to kill himself just to stop the thoughts from spiraling even worse. But that doesn’t give him the right to barge in there and demand the medical professional stop doing their jobs.
Angel is brave. Angel is strong. Angel agreed to do this, knowing what it entailed, knowing it was for their health. Lee will trust in them, just as Angel trusted in him to behave himself. Even if Lee isn’t sure if he’s regretting getting Angel the PCP who ordered the pap smear in the first place, he needs to behave himself.
He’s sweating. He pops another piece of the chili candy in his mouth, finding that the outer coating of this one is mango, and tries not to pick at his nails because he knows Angel doesn’t like seeing him bleed.
He’ll be good. He’ll be good. He won’t make Angel upset.
He sits there in the waiting room and, like a neglected dog, prays that Angel comes back soon.
When Angel totters back out into the lobby what was realistically less than an hour but felt closer to an eternity later, Lee stands from his chair with what must be too much enthusiasm, backing it against the wall with a clatter. Angel raises their head to meet him so Lee can see their face — more or less in one piece. Lee lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
The woman at the counter says what Lee is sure is something like ‘have a good evening’ and Angel says something equivalent in response, so they head towards the door. Once they pass through it and are outside in the stuffy, hot night, Angel wraps their arms around Lee’s, tugging it towards their chest and leaning their head on it. “H-how did it go?” Lee asks.
Angel is quiet at first and Lee doesn’t force them to answer, just waits for them to gather their words. Lee is trembling, but Angel isn’t, so everything must be okay. He forces himself to calm. How can he protect them when he’s a mess like this?
The smell of gasoline lingers in the air as they shuffle through the dark parking lot. The clinic is a thin, poorly-maintained sidewalk from the busy intersection and the bus stop where many of its patient’s huddle in wait for the bus. Here, the sky looks like a blank canvas of hazy sky free of stars, drowned out by exhaust and light pollution.
“...It sucked,” Angel eventually admits, miserable.
Lee feels every protective and furious urge he’d tried to carefully temper bubble back to the surface. “What happened?” he asks at once, walking them to the truck, carefully picking across a large crack in the asphalt. “Did the doctor hurt you?”
“I mean, he was really annoying. He kept getting on my case about waiting too long for my first pap smear, and he only spoke Spanish even though the website said he spoke English too and I said I was more comfortable with it.”
“That is…frustrating. Receiving a lecture from your doctor makes it feel like you aren’t being respected as a patient, or a person,” Lee says. Having arrived at the truck, they sadly have to part, but Angel seems as reluctant to let go of him as he is to be released, which does soothe some of the hurt.
“Exactly,” Angel replies once they’ve hopped into the passenger seat. “And when I had to get on that scary chair thing he called me ‘good girl.’ Ugh.”
Lee’s finger’s flex around the steering wheel. He should kill him. He knows Angel wouldn’t take well to the suggestion, though, so he swallows it down for later. “...That is very unpleasant.”
“And then when he actually had to do the pap smear, apparently the first one was expired, or something, so they had to do two,” Angel whines. “At least he realized right away, but how do you not check that before?”
Lee chokes around a gasp. Angel — Angel’s biological material, a piece of them, a piece of their body — is sitting there, rotting, unappreciated, in some biohazard container somewhere. A piece of Angel that the doctor had no right to take but did anyway, and now that he did, it’s neglected, forgotten. Lee would treat it so much better. He should —
“Is this because I’m poor?” Angel asks, miserable. Lee is horrified to realize they’re on the brink of tears, and forces himself to focus. “Are normal people’s clinics better?”
Lee couldn’t stand lying to Angel when he had to, even by omission. He doesn’t have to when he says, “No. They’re really not. Mostly, doctors get away with whatever they want to, regardless of where they’re placed. Mistreating their patients, being sloppy…” Lee tightens his jaw then releases it to speak. “Maybe for the upper middle class, where they may genuinely have to fear litigation, it’s different, but I wouldn’t know.” The upper class itself goes without saying. He’s sure those patients are untouchable.
Angel sniffles. “I thought you said you had to be careful with your script and everything because of worrying about being sued.”
“But I’m not a doctor,” Lee reminds them. “I could be let go for a patient’s particularly bad day, if they really complained enough. A doctor doesn’t have much to fear at all.” Where it’s tenure, unions, or scarcity, Lee has never seen a doctor fired even when it was sorely needed. He’s seen many nurses quit, in turn.
They seem to think. “...The nurse and front staff were all really nice,” Angel decides. “It was just the doctor I didn’t like.”
“Which still isn’t ideal. We can try a different doctor, or a different clinic.”
Angel wipes their eyes. “Just a different doctor for now.” They look at him, as much as he can tell from the corner of his eyes. He always spares them his periphery even if tries not to endanger them by taking his eyes from the road. “Thanks, Lee.”
Angel’s laugh must be at the sudden flush of his cheeks. They pinch the skin beneath his eye, where he knows he’s pinkest. “So cute.”
He lets them do what they want even as he’s just blushing deeper and deeper. “I’m sorry it was a bad experience,” Lee tells them, and with all the hope he still has for the medical system, he continues, “but it won’t be like that every time.”
Angel’s smile drops at the same time as their fingers from his cheek. “...I don’t want to think about ‘next time.’ I don’t ever want to do that again.”
Ardently, Lee wishes didn’t have to, either.
“And don’t you think of doing anything stupid. I know that look,” Angel calls, settling into the car seat to press their forehead against the window for the long ride home.
Lee tries to shift his expression. “Sorry.”
Once they get home, Angel leaps from the truck to hurry to the kitchen. “C’mon, Lee,” they call. “Aren’t you hungry? I’m glad I planned ahead and made chili. It’ll still be warm.”
He hadn’t been aware of his own hunger until then, but the thought of Angel’s cooking always is enough to make his mouth water.
With Lee’s diagnosis and prescription (and his supervising physician’s coordination), Angel has been trying out some ADHD medications. The first made them feel like an entirely different person, which they couldn’t stand. The medication they’re trying out now still makes Angel a little sluggish, but much less than the first, and Lee is grateful for it. He’s been encouraging Angel to try another prescription but with so few covered by their insurance, and all the yellow tape being so draining, they’d rather give up.
That’s why Lee will handle everything. His salary is pointless if not for taking care of the things that matter. Now, he’s meticulous about making sure they take their meds on time. Angel was always scrupulous about meals, but not always about mealtimes and medication.
Having made the table, Lee sits down and watches as Angel works at spooning chili into large bowls, one with quite a bit more than the other. Once they round the kitchen counter to join him, he wonders how obvious his smile is. Angel is so good at taking care of those things — at homemaking. He’s never managed to forget what they said that day, about wanting to be a bee in a hive raising the “young,” or a rabbit caring for the “babies in the burrow.”
Lee has thought about it quite a lot.
Angel sets the fuller bowl in front of him then settles into their own seat at his side.
“It smells delicious,” he says.
“You always say that.”
“It’s true.”
Angel snorts, but doesn’t protest again. “If you say so.”
His mind is absent as they eat. He means to pay attention to Angel’s conversation — to follow their discussion of their day, including an amusing encounter with a commissioner that they’re eager to share now that they’re no longer petrified by an incoming appointment — but Lee’s thoughts wander on their own.
The food is delicious, the company more than he deserves, and yet he’s not satisfied.
How selfish of him.
He wishes he was able to forget about it, but he hasn’t been able to. Even here, with Angel beside him, all their bones and blood and living cells accounted for, he’s still thinking of the little pieces of them that were taken away and now sit waiting to be thrown away.
“Lee.”
Angel is leaning over the kitchen table, peering into his face with bare concern. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
He’s not supposed to hide anything from them. He can’t, or else they’ll leave. Uncomfortably aware of the sweat dripping down his neck, down his temple, Lee manages, “I want it.”
“Huh? You want what?”
He forces himself to speak. “I want that vial — the extra one, from your pap smear. They’ll just throw it in the biohazard. You deserve so much more than that.”
It’s almost like a startled rabbit, how quickly Angel straightens in their chair, shifting their weight. Their eyebrows raise, their eyes widen; all of their attention is tuned entirely onto Lee, and it’s excruciating. “Lee,” they say again, a little breathless, a little horrified, “uh, what for?”
“I-I just want to have it.”
Angel looks at him.
“Really,” they say, unconvinced.
Lee looks away. “...I don’t think you want to know.”
“Tell me.”
“I,” he tries, his tongue feeling too thick for his mouth, Angel’s eyes on him too piercing, too arresting, “want to smell it. While I…”
“While you jerk off? Like you did on my jacket?”
Lee shivers. “Y-yes.”
Angel’s watching him still. At least he hasn’t horrified them so much as to scare them off. No, he knows they’re more resilient than that. They fold their arms over their chest and tilt their head as they look at him. “Only smell?”
Lee raises his eyes from their crossed arms to their face. “W-what?”
“You don’t want to taste it?”
Lee’s mouth falls open. His heart is racing so fast, his hands so clammy where they’re clasped to his knees, that he knows his sweat must be dripping down the neck of his shirt. “...I do.” he says quietly.
“Gross,” Angel reflexively laughs. “Aren’t we still talking about my ‘vial’ that you’re theoretically breaking into the clinic to dig through their biohazard trash for? If you did that, I guess you could.” They fold their legs, and Lee’s eyes drop to follow the motion. “But why would you?”
“...Why?” he echoes.
“I mean, it wasn’t like a swab. It’s this little brush that he stuck in a tub of liquid.” Lee is aware. It’s not the best way to get his fill of Angel since the cells that are them would be diluted by the solution, but he’s so greedy he’ll take anything he can get. And, of course, there’s the fact that it’s a part of them so internal, so intimate, so — he glances down at their lap — so erotic that makes it more desirable than discarded gum or bloody tissues.
He’s horrible.
“Lee,” Angel calls. “You are not doing that. That's way too far for me, and also probably illegal.”
Lee stares at his knees in shame. “Okay,” he says, his voice small.
“But I’m right here. You only have to ask to have the real thing.” When Lee snaps his eyes up to look at them, it doesn’t look like Angel is joking. No, they look dead serious.
Lee inhales a shaking breath. He doesn’t think he’s misreading this anymore. He thinks he knows what Angel wants. What he wants, too.
He moves from his chair to the floor beneath Angel’s, and doesn’t let out the instinctive ‘I’m going to taste you.’
“May I taste you,” he says instead, even as he’s closed the distance between them, his hands settling at the wood where their thin body doesn’t fully encompass the seat and back of the chair; caging them in.
Even on his knees, it feels as though he looms over them. How are they so small?
But he glances up from Angel’s too-pale thighs to their face to see their expression again. He can’t make it out, not entirely. He thinks they’re smiling, or maybe a little nervous, or a bit disgusted.
“...No,” they decide. Lee’s heart drops, his hands tighten against the wood around Angel’s little body, and he’s confused and upset and bereft — but of course he understand, of course he understands, he would never push, and why would anyone want to let a bad, ugly person like him touch them anyway, especially someone as precious and perfect as Angel — and then Angel says, “Not in the kitchen. Take me to our bed first.”
Lee exhales. “Y-yes. Of course.”
Hesitantly, watching Angel’s face for any hint of disapproval, Lee slides his hands beneath their knees and back to lift them up. “Is this alright?”
“Yeah.” Angel is so small. So light in his hands. They weigh hardly anything, but thankfully more than when they first met — surely closer to 118, now — so that it’s hardly a strain for his muscles. He’s used to carrying much more. Angel still seems flustered, shifting their weight with their pink face, murmuring, “I’m not too heavy?”
Lee looks at their precious, shy face. His own is sweaty and overly-warm, but as he swallows the saliva gathering in his mouth and tries for some kind of applicable expression, whatever that would be, he feels that his eyes are still too intent. “No. You’re about half of what I bench each day.” Just a little less.
“O-oh,” Angel says.
Lee gently places Angel on the bed, his heart pounding out of his chest. Before he can pull back, Angel’s hand reaches for his shoulder and keeps him close.
It feels like everything moves so fast. Angel curls a hand into his hair, pulling him close enough that their lips brush, and then Lee is so overcome with love and desire that he presses them down against the sheets as he reciprocates, all hesitation forgotten. His hands skim up their sides, brushing up the hem of their shirt, swallowing their shiver and hitch of breath. It’s his, now. All his.
Having left a religion that’s more like a cult and being left bereft of a God, Lee found his life lacking the space that worship used to take. It was inevitable that when he found Angel, they would slot effortlessly into that empty spot. Lee is a man used to being on his knees and to devotion, and so his shrine to Angel was his attempt to recreate God: idols and images with which to pray to, rituals to practice his worship. Since Angel asked him to treat him like a normal person, he’s tried his best, though it’s been difficult. They don’t know how they’re asking him to blaspheme.
He’ll try for them, though. For his Angel.
“I’m surprised you lasted this long,” Angel murmurs.
Lee’s found his way down to nose along the line of Angel’s underwear, the wiry hairs peeking out from the hem tickling him.
Oh, God. He’s drooling. He swallows so his saliva doesn’t drip onto Angel’s thigh and blurts, “Huh?”
“You’re not that subtle, at least once I figured out how to read you. You’re always thinking about me. Always wanting me.”
Guilt sinks heavy in Lee’s gut. It’s that obvious? It must be unsettling. Angel must feel like they’re living with a drooling predator. ‘Surprised you lasted this long.’ They were just waiting for him to lash out the way their coworker did.
He pulls back. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Wait, what?” Angel’s little hands reach for his shoulders. “Why are you sorry? I like it.”
Oh — maybe they don’t mind his desperation so much after all. Maybe they actually like the way he obsesses over them, or they like being desired: his Blue Morpho, his Jenny Haniver, his Angel; something beautiful, and unfathomable, and awe-inspiring, and his.
How intoxicating it would be if he could really possess them. Running his hand up Angel’s spine, over each of their vertebrae — first from those of their lumbar then all the way to the cervical ones at their nape, where they shiver — Lee thinks about it. He thinks about a world where he’d never have to be afraid of losing Angel because they’d be pinned down in a box on his bookshelf, beautiful and still and eternal.
He closes his eyes tight as he kisses them, the force of it pressing them back against the sheets. Angel is so light, so fragile, it happens practically every time Lee touches them. He has to be so conscious of the force he uses, the weight he puts into every action.
Angel is trembling beneath him.
“More,” they say. “Touch me.”
Lee does. He’s never forgotten how they said they froze when their coworker assaulted them so rather than verbal cues, he replies on physical ones: even when Angel cries, they still pull him closer, so he keeps touching them. He tugs down their damp underwear, smells their sour-sweet musk, and is overcome.
“It won’t…hurt?” Lee asks, his mouth painfully dry. They’re so beautiful. The throbbing of his own shameful arousal is more demanding than ever, but he’s used to ignoring it.
“Why would it?”
“From the speculum.”
“Oh. I guess the doctor said there might be a bit of blood.”
Lee’s brow furrows, but Angel makes an impatient noise and pulls him closer with all four limbs, their arms tugging at his shoulders and their splayed legs hooking around his sides and digging in aimlessly. Lee relents and crawls closer, lower, and greedily sets his tongue to their wet hole.
He’s bad for wanting to defile Angel like this, for being unable to think of anything else but this, but if it brings them pleasure, then it doesn’t matter. That’s all Lee is good for: protecting Angel, serving them, loving them.
Angel’s making a broken, desperate sound, winding their fingers into Lee’s closely shorn hair and tugging him closer. They bring a hand between Lee’s face and their hips, drawing the pads of their fingers over a little red bud of tissue — of course. Lee didn’t mean to neglect them.
He replaces his tongue with his fingers, assisting Angel with a thumb on their clitoris until they’re satisfied and let him take over with a gasp, tilting their hips into his touch. He slides two fingers into their dripping hole and gently, gently spreads them apart. He tries to peer inside but it’s too dark.
Angel winces. Lee pulls his fingers back to find they’re speckled with blood.
“It’s alright,” he tells them. “I’ll help you.”
After Angel’s coworker hurt them, Lee was the one to give them a place to sleep, groceries to make real food with, and safe company. Lee was the one to eliminate the threat. Now, after being hurt by a medical procedure, Lee will soothe the pain. He is Angel’s protector first and foremost. When he fails in that duty, Angel relies on him to help them heal. That’s the only way he can make his life worthwhile.
Lee devotes himself to his task with the fervor he always gives to Angel: unrelenting, clumsy but earnest, single-minded and obsessed. In turn, Angel holds onto him tightly as they moan and cry, refusing to let him draw back an inch until they’re sated — as if anything in the world would pull Lee away.
Angel lies on his chest after, pressing their thigh against his persistent erection with their sly eyes watching his, waiting for something. When Lee merely shuts his eyes and tries to hide, Angel laughs, and rests their head on his chest, too. “Thank you, Lee,” they say. “I’m happy we did that.”
If he voices any reply, he’ll cry, so Lee merely holds Angel as tight as he can.
The next morning is as normal as any other. Lee didn’t die in his sleep, the sky doesn’t fall, a nearby volcano didn’t erupt to come take him away. Lee wakes beside Angel, just as he always does, and they’re sticking their cold foot against his calf the way they always do and laying half-on him, half-off the way they always do, except this time, they’re not wearing anything.
That part is new, but Lee likes it a lot. He stares too long, getting up to brush his teeth only when he hears Angel start to stir, and then only out of shame.
He hurriedly clothes himself then proceeds through his morning routine, intent on beating Angel to the kitchen for breakfast, though he still catches them rubbing their eyes and pulling a shirt from the floor on his way out. He almost points out the stack of clean clothes he set out for them before he sees it’s his shirt, and then he shuts his mouth.
“Morning, Lee.”
He attempts to open it back up, creakily. “Good morning, Angel.” They smile at him, fond and groggy.
“How do pancakes sound?”
“Wonderful,” he answers. Angel leans up onto their tip-toes to kiss him which briefly sends sparks through his entire body like a live wire, and then they head to the kitchen together.
Angel sets out for the cabinets immediately, patiently parsing through Lee’s mother’s decades-old pans for a usable one before they pull out the ingredients. Lee occupied himself in pouring Angel a glass of orange juice and water for himself then opening Angel’s pill bottle to place that day’s medication by their cup. He sets their places — the plates, silverware, napkins, place mats, and little bowls for the fresh fruit that Angel likes to have — and, seeing that Angel is still hard at work, goes to get the mail after sending a quick word to them.
The cool morning air hits his face as he steps outside. Angel likes me, he tells himself, his daily mantra. Angel wants me here. Angel needs me to protect them.
He steps back inside to the soft sound of cooking, of scraping bowls and bumping cabinets and efficient whisking. Love swells in his chest at the sight of Angel there, same as it does any other time he looks at them, but this time it’s that bit more special.
Lee takes his place at his seat and looks over the mail he’d gathered. Junk, bills, community outreach, junk, coupons, bills, pharmacy. Lee tears open the one from Angel’s pharmacy with a furrow in his brow.
“Anything interesting?” Angel calls.
Lee stares at the paper and attempts to stifle an oncoming migraine. “The pharmacy rejected your insurance.”
“Fuckers,” Angel swears.
Lee can’t help but agree.