In a cosmos governed by hierarchy, obedience, and binding contracts, mercy is considered a weakness—until someone proves otherwise.
Rook was once an angel who believed in the system. Daveed is an incubus who understands empathy well enough to survive it.
This is a story about chosen family, generational trauma, and the quiet terror of a universe discovering that freedom—real freedom—might actually endure.
Not a war story. A boundary. And the irreversible consequences of crossing it.
Headaches or migraines from hearing too many thoughts at once, including light and sound sensitivity
Trauma from viewing certain thoughts/memories
Bloody nose or passing out from over-exertion
Feeling other peoples’ strong emotions or pain
Completely zoning out in the middle of conversations when they use their powers
Struggling to control someone’s mind
Having their powers blocked and being cut off from the outside world
Alternatively, being given a drug or something that amplifies their powers to the point that it’s painful
Being held somewhere where they’re surrounded by other people suffering to the point that they can’t block it out (and after being rescued from that place the silence is just as overwhelming)
CW: STILL SET UP, Empathic whumpee, incubus whumpee, angel whumpee, painful empathy, Heaven as an antagonist
TAGLIST: @flowersarefreetherapy, @oddsconvert, @cepheusgalaxy, @flailingfrog
CHARACTERS: Daveed Anastas, Rook Rivera
Rook swings their legs once, twice, heels tapping against the metal lip of the rooftop. The sound echoes farther than it should,ringing thin and hollow through the open air before dissolving into the city’s constant hum. Far below, traffic crawls like glowing veins, horns and engines blending into a restless, living noise. Wind slides in from somewhere higher, colder, tugging at Rook’s coat and lifting the ragged edges of their wings. Frayed feathers whisper against one another. For a moment, they look almost careless—balanced on the edge like gravity is only a suggestion, like falling is a choice they’ve already made once and survived.
“So,” they say, voice light, conversational, as if they’re talking about the weather instead of the unspoken tension coiled tight between them, “what’s your angle,Daveed-of-the-too-quiet-heart?”
Daveed exhales through his nose, a soft huff that fogs faintly in the cool night. The sound feels louder in his own ears than it should. “That obvious?”
“To me?” Rook shrugs, one shoulder rolling, wings shifting instinctively to counterbalance. “Yeah. You feel like you’re holding your breath.”
He closes his eyes for half a second. Empathy is a curse when you forget you’re allowed to have feelings of your own—when you spend so long bracing against other people’s pain, fear, desire, that you forget the shape of your own emotions, forget how to unclench.
Silence is survival.
“Habit,” he says at last.
Rook hums, low and thoughtful. Their emotions shift—not pity, not fear. Respect, clean and unexpected, edged with understanding. It hits him warm and sudden, like stepping into sunlight you didn’t know you missed until it’s already on your skin.
“Surviving Heaven isn’t much easier,” they offer. “Different weapons. Same scars.”
Daveed opens his eyes and looks at them properly this time. Not just the wings—blackened at the edges, feathers uneven like they’ve been torn out and grown back wrong, like healing done under protest—but the way Rook holds themself. Spine straight, shoulders squared, chin lifted a fraction too high. Like someone perpetually braced for an impact that never quite comes. Like someone who learned early that softness was dangerous, and that obedience did not guarantee mercy.
“You don’t belong up there,” he murmurs.
Rook’s head snaps toward him. “You can tell?”
“I can feel it.” He taps his temple, then his chest, where empathy coils like a second heart.
“You’re… loud in the wrong frequencies. Like a choir note that refuses to harmonize no matter how hard the conductor glares.”
Their laugh is sharp, surprised, edged with something bitter enough to sting. “They used to call me discordant.”
“Figures.”
Silence stretches between them again, but it’s changed—no longer empty or cautious. It hums, dense with awareness. Daveed becomes acutely conscious of how close their shoulders are, of the heat Rook gives off, of how their emotions brush against his skin like static—prickling, alive, impossible to ignore.
Then—fear.
Sudden. Bright. Spiking so hard it makes his teeth ache and his wings twitch reflexively.
Daveed straightens instantly, muscles tightening, wings pulling in close against his back. “What is it?”
Rook freezes. The easy slouch vanishes, replaced by stillness so complete it’s almost violent. Every muscle locks, wings half-spread, like a prey animal caught mid-step. Their gaze lifts skyward, eyes narrowing, pupils sharpening to points of pale light. “You ever get the feeling someone just noticed you?”
His empathic sense flares painfully, like a nerve exposed to ice. Judgment. Cold, immense, blindingly certain. The kind of attention that doesn’t look—it measures, categorizes, decides what you are and what will be done with you.
“Oh,” Daveed mutters. “Yeah. That’s not good.”
Rook stands, boots scraping softly against metal, wings flaring. A few damaged feathers shake loose, scatter into the air, and dissolve before they hit the ground, fading into sparks that wink out one by one. “They’re not supposed to watch this far down.”
“They do when angels misbehave,” Daveed says. His tail lashes once before he forces it still, the heart-shaped barb catching the city’s light. “And when demons get… interesting.”
Rook looks at him then—really looks. Not just the obvious things, not just the silhouette. The four arms, two folded tight like shields, two hanging loose and ready. The wings like inked leather stretched over bone. The faint glow beneath his skin where infernal power and empathic sensitivity tangle together into something dangerous and rare.
“You’re afraid,” Rook says softly.
“For you,” Daveed admits.
That does something to them. Their emotions swell—surprise first, then something aching and fragile underneath it, something dangerously close to hope. Daveed feels it crash into him like a wave, unbalancing and raw, filling every empty space he didn’t realize he had.
“I don’t want to go back,” Rook says. The words are barely more than breath, torn loose from somewhere deep. “If they call me, if they drag me—”
“They won’t,” Daveed says, too fast. Too certain.
Rook searches his face, eyes sharp and luminous in the city’s reflected light, searching for the lie. “You can’t promise that.”
“No,” he agrees. “But I can run. I can hide. I know half the wards in this city, and the other half owe me favors. I know where Heaven doesn’t like to look.”
“Why?” Rook asks, quiet and dangerous in its simplicity.
Daveed’s answer comes before he can stop it, before he can sand the edges down or dress it up into something safer. “Because the idea of them breaking you makes me feel like I’m tearing in half.”
There it is. Naked truth, exposed and trembling in the open air.
Rook steps closer. Their emotions blaze—fear twined with hope, sharp and intoxicating. Daveed has fed on desire his entire existence, has known hunger in every possible form, but this—this isn’t hunger.
It’s recognition.
Their fingers brush his wrist. The contact detonates through him.
Angelic grace—raw, fractured, brilliant—collides with infernal empathy. Daveed gasps, knees nearly buckling as sensation and emotion flood him all at once: Rook’s loneliness like an open wound, their defiance burning white-hot, the unbearable weight of being seen by Heaven and found wanting. It’s too much and not enough all at once, overwhelming and devastating in its clarity.
Rook sucks in a breath. “Daveed—what did I—”
He steadies himself, gripping the edge of the roof until metal bites into his palms, grounding him. “You exist very loudly,” he manages, voice rough and shaken. “Please don’t apologize for it.”
Rook smiles, soft and uncertain, like they’re not used to smiles being safe or returned. “You’re strange.”
“Takes one.”
Above them, something shifts. The pressure eases—not gone, but distracted, like a vast gaze sliding away to reassess elsewhere, displeased but not yet ready to act.
Rook notices immediately. “They looked away.”
Daveed wipes sweat from his brow with the back of one hand. “Yeah. For now.”
“For now,” Rook echoes.
They don’t move apart.
The city hums beneath them—traffic, voices, neon and concrete and ordinary lives—utterly unaware that something irreversible has just begun. That an angel has found sanctuary in a demon’s presence, and a demon has found something worth burning the world down to protect.
CW: expect a whole lot of religious trauma and wing whump in the future, this is just the set up
TAGLIST: @oddsconvert, @flowersarefreetherapy @cepheusgalaxy, @flailingfrog
CHARACTERS: Daveed Anastas, Rook Rivera
Daveed Anastas knows exactly when he has them. It’s the moment the man stops pretending he’s listening to the music. The bar hums low and intimate, bass vibrating through polished wood and worn leather, amber light catching on glass rims and the sheen of sweat along exposed throats. Conversations blur into a soft, meaningless murmur. It's background noise to the real exchange happening in this booth, in this narrow pocket of attention.
He leans back, easy, wings tucked tight beneath his jacket, posture loose in a way that reads harmless and inviting all at once. He takes up space without crowding it and allows the silence to stretch just long enough to be noticed. His smile curves slowly. Deliberately. It’s not sharp with hunger, not yet, and it isn't rushed.
It’s patient. Confident.
Empathy unfurls inside him like silk sliding off skin.
It’s immediate and intimate. Loneliness first, deep and old, worn smooth from being carried too long. Desire follows, tentative but persistent. Then the ache beneath it all—the need for closeness, for permission to stop holding everything together. It’s packed tight behind the man’s ribs, compressed by routine and restraint until it’s almost painful.
Daveed lets it wash over him, catalogues the layers, sharpens his focus until the man’s want rings clearer than the music, louder than the room. He filters out everything else—the bar, the other patrons, the messy spill of half-drunken lust nearby—until there is only this thread between them, humming and warm.
He lowers his voice, lets it slip into the space the man keeps leaving open.
“You’re holding yourself together so carefully,” he murmurs, gaze steady, intent, never quite leaving the man’s mouth. “Doesn’t it get exhausting?”
The words land precisely where they're meant to. They remain soft.
The man swallows. His knee bumps Daveed’s beneath the table—an accident, clearly—but neither of them pulls away. The contact lingers charged and uncertain. Daveed feels the spike of self-consciousness, the flare of hope that follows it, and he answers without touching.
He lets a little warmth seep into his gaze. Just enough to be felt.
The desire flares in response, sudden and bright, curling low in the man’s body. Daveed feels it like a spark catching dry tinder. He leans in now, closing the distance inch by careful inch, until the man can feel his breath—warm, steady—and catch the faint, sweet-dangerous note beneath his cologne. Not overwhelming. Just there.
“I could make you forget that weight,” Daveed says softly. “Just for tonight.”
The words aren’t magic. They don’t need to be. They’re an invitation, not a command.
His fingers slide across the table, slow and deliberate, brushing the inside of the man’s wrist. It's barely a touch, more suggestion than contact. The instant skin meets skin, Daveed opens himself.
The feed blooms under his sternum like heat, spreading outward in a slow, pleasurable wave. The man exhales sharply, shoulders sagging as tension bleeds out of him, pleasure curling through his body in a low, steady pull. Not overwhelming. Not crude. Just relief—clean and honest.
Desire pours into Daveed in return, rich and heady, laced with gratitude and need. He draws it in with practiced ease, savoring the hum of it in his veins, the way it steadies him, fills the hollow places he never quite talks about. He keeps his grip careful, measured, making sure the man stays grounded, present, safe.
The man’s breath stutters. “God, what are you?”
Daveed smiles, close enough now that the question dissolves between them before it needs an answer.
“Not God. Someone who knows how to listen.”
He feeds until the edges smooth, until the desire settles into something warm and satisfied, until the man’s pulse slows and his shoulders drop completely. Only then does Daveed pull back and he does so gently, leaving warmth behind like an afterglow, a soft echo of connection instead of emptiness.
The man blinks, dazed, lips parted, eyes a little unfocused. “I feel… good.”
“You are,” Daveed replies, his voice velvet-soft again, the intimacy fading without snapping.
He stands, wings shifting subtly beneath his jacket, tail curling once behind him before stilling. He doesn’t give his name. He doesn’t ask for one. There are no promises and no expectations. There's only the clean memory of being held together for a moment.
Outside, the night air cools his skin as he steps away from the bar, the city’s emotional noise rushing back in waves. The hunger is quiet now, satisfied.
He finds himself perched on the fire escape outside a third-floor bar, boots hooked through the rusted railing, metal biting faintly through the soles. The cigarette between his fingers remains unlit not because he likes the ritual of it. The weight. The pause. The way humans think it means something about restraint.
The night presses in thick and damp, heavy with summer heat and human ache. Sirens wail somewhere to the west, Doppler-blurred and distant. Below him, bass from the club thuds through brick and bone, a steady pulse that rattles the fire escape just enough to be felt. Desire leaks out of open windows like steam. It's sloppy, unfocused, and abundant. Loneliness coils around it, familiar and dull.
It’s easy feeding here. Too easy.
Daveed’s empath sense stays half-open by habit, a low hum of want and hunger and irritation brushing constantly against the inside of his skull. He skims it without thinking, pulling a little here, smoothing a little there, barely engaged. He’s almost bored.
Then, the noise clears.
It doesn’t vanish. His empathy never works like that. It never shuts off, never cleanly silenced the way some demons could manage. Instead, it clears, like someone flung open a window in a burning house and let the smoke pour out. Everything else drops back into distant static.
Alarms go off in his head.
Daveed stills, cigarette forgotten between his fingers, and looks down.
They’re standing on the sidewalk directly beneath him, turning in a slow, uncertain circle like they missed a turn somewhere important. Darkwash jeans. Black combat boots scuffed at the toes. A leather jacket thrown carelessly over their shoulders. Over their wings.
Badly.
The feathers are pulled tight, compressed in an awkward, painful attempt to pass as nothing more than a terrible fashion choice. It’s obvious to anyone who knows what to look for, and Daveed swears quietly under his breath.
Ginger hair catches the streetlight as they move, copper-bright, shimmering when the lamp flickers because their grace presses against it, distorting the light just enough to be noticeable.
An angel. Here.
Lost, then. Or reckless. Or both.
Daveed frowns, unease curling low in his gut. Angels don’t wander into places like this by accident. Not intact ones, anyway. And if they are intact, they don't stay that way for long.
As if summoned by the thought, they tilt their head.
Their eyes track the fire escape with unnerving precision, landing on him as though he’s been highlighted. The moment their gaze locks on, something slams into Daveed’s chest. It's not lust or hunger.
It's interest.
Clean. Focused. Undiluted.
They smile like they’ve found something they didn’t know they were looking for.
“Well,” they say, voice carrying easily over traffic and music, clear and warm and unafraid, “you’re not subtle.”
Daveed snorts despite himself, tension cracking just enough to let amusement through. “Funny. I was about to say the same thing.”
They step closer, craning their neck to look up at him. Curiosity spills off them in bright, careless waves, threaded with delight and something sharp-edged and reckless that makes Daveed’s incubus instincts stir. They don’t shield themselves at all. No barriers. No discipline.
Daveed feels everything.
Fatigue, worn deep and old. Defiance like a live wire. Longing - not sexual, not yet -but vast and aching, aimed at something they don’t quite have words for. It hits him hard enough that he has to brace a hand against the brick.
He’s not sure whether to shove the mess of emotions away or lean into them and drown.
They take his breath away.
“You’re a demon,” they say cheerfully, as if identifying a breed of dog.
“Incubus,” Daveed corrects automatically. “There’s a difference.”
And there is. He wishes people bothered to understand it.
“Of course there is,” they reply, unbothered. “And you’re an empath.”
He freezes.
“…Most people don’t see that,” he says carefully.
Their smile turns sly, eyes bright with interest rather than suspicion. “Most people don’t feel like a warm, judgy blanket when they look at me.”
Daveed laughs, startled and helpless. “I’m not - okay, maybe it is.”
They’re close enough now that his wings itch beneath his skin, glamour straining to keep them hidden. Their grace hums against his senses.not painful, not sanctified, not blinding. Just alive. Present. Human in a way the hosts of Heaven always hated.
“Are you lost?” Daveed asks quietly. “You shouldn’t be down here. City’s rough on your kind.”
They shrug, feathers shifting beneath the leather. “Heaven’s rough on mine.”
The words hit hard.
Their emotions flicker. There's defiance first, then exhaustion, then that bright, aching streak of longing again. Daveed feels it instinctively and, without thinking, lets calm roll back toward them. Just a touch. A gentle pressure, like hands on shoulders.
Their breath catches.
“Oh,” they say softly. “You do that on purpose.”
Daveed blinks. “Do what?”
“Make the world stop hurting,” they say, grinning. “Rude of you, honestly.”
Before he can stop himself, Daveed swings down from the fire escape. Boots hit pavement with a dull thud. Suddenly they’re eye to eye, streetlights painting gold into their gaze, close enough that the pull between them hums like a live wire.
“I’m Daveed Anastas,” he says, holding out his hand.
They take it without hesitation.
The contact snaps something into place. Emotion surges both ways, a bright, dangerous resonance that makes Daveed’s heart stutter and his empathy flare wide open.
“Rook Rivera,” they reply. “Nice to finally meet you.”
“Finally?” he echoes.
Rook’s smile turns knowing, intimate. “Feels like it, doesn’t it?”
Daveed feels it as a pressure spike behind his eyes first, a sudden compression of emotion so dense it almost knocks the breath from his lungs. Hell doesn’t announce itself politely—it asserts. Heat coils under his skin, not the familiar, lived-in warmth of infernal magic he controls, but something invasive, claiming space inside him without asking permission.
He staggers.
The apartment reacts instantly. The plants along the windowsills shiver, leaves curling inward as if bracing against a storm. The wards embedded in the walls flare—soft gold and umber light bleeding through plaster—then flicker, struggling to hold.
Daveed’s empathy ignites.
It's not a gift at this moment. It is agony.
Hell’s attention slams into him like a tidal wave: expectation sharpened to cruelty, amusement edged with contempt, the cold satisfaction of power that knows it will be obeyed. Thousands of emotions layered atop one another, all loud, all insistent. His vision blurs. His claws scrape faint white lines into the hardwood as he catches himself on the back of a chair.
“Daveed?”
Rook’s voice cuts through the noise like a bell rung underwater. They’re halfway off the couch already, wings twitching, guardian instincts flaring bright and fierce.
The brightness hurts.
Daveed gasps, sucking in air that tastes suddenly like iron. “Don’t—” His voice breaks. He swallows and tries again. “Don’t spike. I can feel it.”
Rook freezes instantly.
The fear doesn’t disappear—it never truly does—but it tightens, disciplined, compressed into something controlled and sharp. Daveed still feels it, like a blade kept carefully sheathed, but at least it isn’t slicing him open from the inside.
Crimson lines burn into existence beneath Daveed’s feet, precise and merciless. The summoning sigil unfolds like a geometric flower, every angle intentional, every curve ancient. The wards scream this time—not audibly, but in Daveed’s bones—as Hell overrides them completely. The air thickens, gravity tilting just slightly off true.
Rook stares. “That’s—”
“Hell,” Daveed says, the word scraped raw from his throat.
Heat radiates upward from the sigil, licking at his boots. His wings shudder violently, feathers trying to flare on instinct before he forces them still. Showing weakness in Hell is an invitation.
Rook steps closer anyway.
Their grace reacts to the infernal presence like a struck chord, humming low and dangerous. Daveed feels it immediately—and the clash nearly drops him to his knees. Angelic order and infernal command grind against each other inside his empath sense, sparks flying.
“Rook,” he says sharply. “Stop.”
They halt, guilt flashing across their face as they rein themselves in again. “They’re summoning you,” they say, voice tight. “Right now.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re just—what—going to let them take you?”
Daveed laughs, breathless and bitter. “That’s usually how summons work.”
The sigil pulses. Impatient.
Rook’s hands curl into fists. “Then I’m coming with you.”
“No.” The word comes out fast and absolute.
Rook’s head snaps up. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
Daveed forces himself upright, every nerve screaming as Hell presses harder, testing his resistance. “I do when it gets you killed.”
“I’m a guardian angel—”
“Exactly,” he cuts in, voice shaking despite his control. “You’re still Heaven’s. Hell would tear you apart just to see how much light you spill.”
Rook steps closer anyway, eyes blazing. “You think I’d let them hurt you alone?”
Daveed reaches for them before he can stop himself, fingers closing around their wrists—grounding, anchoring. The contact sends a rush through him: concern, love, fear sharpened to a vow. It hurts. Gods, it hurts but it also steadies him.
“Listen to me,” he says softly, leaning his forehead against theirs. “Empathy is killing me right now. Hell is loud. Heaven is loud. And you—” His voice cracks. “You’re the only thing that isn’t hurting.”
Rook’s breath stutters.
“I need you here,” Daveed continues. “Safe and Untouchable. If you come with me, I’ll be fighting Hell and worrying about you, and that will get us both destroyed.”
The sigil flares brighter. The heat surges. Time is nearly gone.
Rook’s emotions swell again—anger, fear, helpless devotion—but they keep it contained, jaw clenched so hard it trembles. “And what if you don’t come back?”
Daveed doesn’t answer immediately.
That silence says too much.
Finally, he squeezes their wrists gently. “Then you keep living. You keep guarding. You stay you.”
Rook swallows hard. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
They search his face, desperate for a lie he won’t give them. At last, Rook nods once, sharp and decisive, like accepting a command they hate but will follow.
“Then I’ll wait,” they say. “And I’ll make sure Heaven doesn’t touch what’s yours.”
Something fierce and grateful coils tight in Daveed’s chest. “That’s my guardian.”
“I’m not fallen,” Rook says immediately. “Not yours to claim.”
He smiles despite the pain. “Never claimed you. Just… trusting you.”
They lean in, foreheads touching. Rook lets a thin thread of calm slip free on purpose, careful and controlled, wrapping it around Daveed like a brace around cracked ribs.
It's enough to help.
“Come back,” Rook whispers.
Daveed steps backward into the circle, reluctant fingers slipping from theirs. “I always do.”
The sigil ignites.
Fire, gravity, command - all of it folds inward, swallowing him whole. The last thing he sees is Rook standing firm in the center of the apartment, wings tight, light unbroken, refusing to chase him into Hell.
Then Daveed is gone.
The apartment falls silent.
Smoke curls faintly from scorched lines on the floor. The wards slowly, shakily reassert themselves. Rook stands alone amid the wreckage, chest tight, emotions locked down with guardian precision.
“He better come back,” they murmur to the empty room.
Far below, Daveed slams into black stone, knees buckling as Hell’s noise crashes back into him—laughter, hunger, ambition, cruelty—too much, too fast.
Power turns toward him.
Interest sharpens.
Through the pain, through the screaming empathy and infernal heat, one thought anchors him like a lifeline pulled taut:
He feels it before he sees it—the way Rook’s emotions begin to steady, the violent spike of Heaven’s presence collapsing into something tight and brittle instead. Daveed’s arms stay locked around them, wings flared just enough to shield, tail curled unconsciously around Rook’s calf like an anchor. His empathy is wide open now, not feeding, not shaping—listening. He tracks every echo of celestial pressure as it fades, every hairline fracture in Rook’s grace knitting itself back together through stubborn will alone.
Anger burns there, sharp and disciplined, the kind Rook keeps honed instead of explosive.
Fear lingers at the edges, quieter now but still bright enough to cut.
And beneath it all—love. Fierce, luminous, unashamed. It hums through Daveed’s chest like a second heartbeat.
He exhales slowly, deliberately, and lets calm seep outward. Not dominance. Not magic. Just presence—warm and steady, a reminder of weight and breath and gravity. Something real.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs into Rook’s hair. His voice is low, roughened by restraint. “You’re here.”
Rook’s fingers are clenched in the fabric of his shirt, knuckles pale. It takes a long moment before they nod. Another before they trust their weight fully against him.
“Sit,” Daveed says gently, guiding rather than commanding.
They let him lead them to the couch. Rook folds their wings too tightly at first, feathers ruffling in irritation before Daveed carefully eases them looser, one hand sliding to the base where the muscles ache most after forced manifestation. He kneels in front of them without thinking, checking wrists, shoulders, the faint glow beneath their skin where grace runs hottest.
“They didn’t hurt you,” he says quietly.
Rook swallows. “No. They never do.” Their mouth twists. “They just remind you that they could.”
Daveed’s tail flicks hard enough to knock against the coffee table. He stills it with effort. “They don’t get to define you.”
Rook lets out a soft, humorless breath. “They’ve been doing it since the day I was created.”
“And you’ve been defying them just as long,” Daveed replies.
Their eyes meet. Something steadies between them.
“They marked me,” Rook says after a moment.
Daveed freezes. “What kind of mark?”
“Observation,” Rook answers, touching their chest, just left of center. “Not a leash. Not a command seal. More like… a lens. They’re watching how I act. Who I prioritize. Who I let close.”
Daveed doesn’t look away. “That includes me.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Rook’s head snaps up. “Daveed—”
“If they’re going to watch,” he says calmly, voice edged with iron, “then they’re going to see the truth. Not whatever sanitized obedience narrative they prefer.”
Silence stretches. The kettle clicks off in the kitchen, forgotten. Outside, a car passes, bass rattling faintly through the window. Life goes on.
Rook studies him with something like awe. “You’re not afraid of them.”
“I am,” Daveed admits. “I just don’t let fear decide who I love.”
Daveed feels how Rook’s emotions flare bright and painful and hopeful all at once.
“They questioned my methods,” Rook says quietly. “Said I’m too attached. Too… involved.”
Daveed huffs softly. “That’s rich, coming from a system that fractures souls for efficiency.”
“I told them compassion prevents collateral damage.”
A corner of Daveed’s mouth lifts. “It does.”
“They didn’t like that.”
“They never do.”
Daveed reaches out slowly, giving Rook space to refuse. They don’t. His fingers slide into the feathers at the edge of Rook’s wing, careful and reverent. He projects warmth—not hunger, not seduction, just grounding. The emotional equivalent of a steady hand on a racing pulse.
Rook exhales, shoulders finally loosening.
“They’re going to test me,” Rook says. “Harder assignments. Situations where doctrine conflicts with mercy.”
Daveed nods. He’d already felt the shadow of it coiling in Rook’s fear. “And you’re worried you’ll fail.”
“I’m worried I won’t,” Rook says.
Daveed’s expression softens. He leans forward and rests his forehead against Rook’s knee, eyes closed. It’s an unguarded posture, intimate and vulnerable. “Then you’ll still be you.”
“That’s what scares them.”
“That’s what scares anyone who survives on obedience,” Daveed replies.
Rook’s hand finds his hair, fingers threading through dark curls. The touch is tentative at first, then sure. Comfort offered, not demanded. Daveed lets it wash through him, steadying the roar of his own emotions.
“Stay with me tonight,” Rook says quietly. “I don’t want to be alone in my head.”
Daveed opens his eyes and looks up at them, gaze fierce and tender all at once. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”
They move to the bedroom together, unhurried. There’s no urgency, no need to drown the moment in heat. They undress carefully, folding clothes, making space for wings. Daveed dims the lights until shadows soften instead of sharpen. He helps Rook settle, adjusting feathers so nothing pulls or strains.
They lie tangled beneath the sheets—Rook half-curled into Daveed’s chest, Daveed’s wing draped protectively over pale feathers. His empathy stays open but gentle, smoothing jagged memories as Heaven’s presence tries to echo.
Rook traces idle patterns against Daveed’s ribs. “If I fall,” they murmur. “If they decide I’ve crossed some invisible line—”
“I won’t let you fall alone,” Daveed says instantly.
“That’s not how it works.”
“It does for me.”
Rook goes quiet. Daveed feels the shift. Their fear gives way to resolve, bright and sharp and dangerous.
Eventually, sleep takes them. Their dreams are still vivid, but less cruel. Daveed stays awake, listening to the city breathe, to Heaven whisper faintly at the edge of his senses.
Let them watch, he thinks. Let them see a guardian angel who refuses to harden. Let them see a demon who won’t feed on what he loves. Let them see what happens when rules meet choice.
Daveed tightens his wing around Rook just a fraction, holding fast. Whatever Heaven decides next, they won’t face it alone.
Morning arrives carefully, as if it knows better than to rush them.
Light slips through the blinds in thin, pale bands, striping the bed and catching on the soft sheen of Rook’s wings where they’re half-unfurled in sleep. Outside, the city exhales - early traffic, a distant siren, someone laughing too loudly for the hour - but inside the apartment, the air is fragile with quiet.
Daveed wakes before the light fully settles. He always does.Empathy drags him out of sleep like a hooked wire pulled through his chest. It’s never gentle. Never just there. It blooms sharp and invasive, a sudden flood of sensation that makes his ribs ache as if they’re being pressed outward from the inside. He clenches his jaw, breathing through it, letting the pain crest and recede into something manageable.
Rook is still asleep.
Daveed feels sleep’s heavy warmth first. It blurs Rook’s emotions at the edges when they're unconscious. The nightmares are quieter than they used to be, but they’re still there: white halls, burning wings, voices that call love obedience. Each jagged spike sends a corresponding lance of pain through Daveed’s sternum, phantom agony blooming like bruises inside his heart.
He doesn’t reach out. It would hurt more if he did. He focuses on containment instead and keeps his empathy from surging outward and tangling with Rook’s grace. Contact amplifies everything. Relief becomes ecstasy. Fear becomes agony. And love…Love is unbearable.
Rook shifts in their sleep, feathers whispering softly against fabric. One wing slips loose, brushing Daveed’s collarbone. The touch sends a bright, painful spark through him, empathy flaring instinctively before he can stop it.
Daveed gasps, sharp and silent.
The pain hits first: Rook’s exhaustion, deep and bone-heavy; the lingering pressure of Heaven’s scrutiny; the quiet, aching joy of waking up somewhere safe. All of it slams into Daveed at once, compressing his lungs, setting his nerves alight.
He forces himself still and breathes slowly. Controlled projection. He bleeds calm outward like a tourniquet, knowing the cost, accepting it. The pain dulls into a deep ache behind his eyes.
Rook exhales and relaxes against him, tension loosening as if soothed by an unseen hand.
“Morning,” Rook murmurs, voice rough with sleep.
Daveed swallows, throat tight. “Morning.”
They stay like that for a moment, foreheads nearly touching, sharing a quiet that feels hard-won. Rook’s fingers curl into the fabric of Daveed’s shirt again, grounding themself before fully waking.
“They’re still watching,” Rook says softly.
Daveed nods. The motion sends a dull pulse of pain through his chest. “Yeah.”
“You’re not blocking them.”
“No,” he says. “That’d hurt you more. And it’d look… defiant.”
Rook studies him, eyes sharp even through sleep. “You’re in pain.”
He considers lying. Instead, he exhales. “It’s manageable.”
Rook frowns, emotions flaring with concern. It's a blade sliding between his ribs. He clamps down instinctively, jaw tightening, knuckles whitening against the sheets.
Rook notices immediately. “Sorry,” they whisper. “I—”
“Don’t,” Daveed says quickly. “Please. Don’t apologize for feeling.”
He leans in and presses a brief, reverent kiss to Rook’s temple. The contact hurts—sharp, radiant pain—but he doesn’t pull away. He never does.
“Do you have an assignment today?” he asks.
Rook hesitates. “I should.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“They’ll test me,” Rook admits. “After a summons. They always do. Someone complicated. Someone whose suffering doesn’t fit clean doctrine.”
Daveed’s jaw tightens, empathy flaring hot and furious. He forces it back before it spills. “Do you want me to walk you?”
“I'm a Guardian,” Rook smiles, small but real. “I don’t need guarding.”
“I know,” Daveed says. “I just like… being close enough to feel if something goes wrong.”
Rook reaches up, cupping his cheek. The touch is gentle. The pain is not.
Daveed sucks in a breath as Rook’s affection—warm, luminous, unshielded—floods him. His vision swims for a second. He leans into the touch anyway.
“I’ll be back,” Rook says quietly.
Daveed nods. “I’ll be here.”
They kiss before Rook leaves—slow, intentional, restrained. No magic. No hunger. Just choice layered carefully over restraint. When the door closes, the apartment feels hollow in a way that settles deep in Daveed’s bones.
He stands there longer than necessary, breathing through the ache.
CHARACTERS: Mads Anastas, Daveed Anastas, Rook Rivera, Stara Emrys
Daveed goes to work the way incubi are taught to—but not the way Hell expects.
He leaves quietly, the apartment still dim and hushed behind him. The wards along the doorframe respond to his touch with a soft thrum, layers of magic folding over one another like silk curtains being drawn. They recognize him not as a weapon, not as a Knight, but as home. Daveed pauses anyway, palm resting flat against the wood.
His empath sense reaches inward first.
Stara’s presence is clean and precise, her thoughts already dissecting the anatomy of angelic wings with clinical fascination as she reviews notes she pretends not to be writing. Madison is gone—her energy distant but unmistakable, sharp and coiled, moving through Hell’s channels with purpose and impatience. Tyell floats lazily near the ceiling, humming something off-key, emotionally bright in that impossible way only the dead seem to manage.
And Rook—
Rook is awake.
Not fully alert yet, but aware. Their emotions drift toward Daveed like sunlight filtered through glass: concern tempered by discipline, curiosity kept carefully in check, and beneath it all a steady, luminous grace that hasn’t dimmed. Guardian energy. Ordered. Intact.
Daveed’s chest tightens.
“I’ll be back,” he murmurs under his breath, though he knows Rook can’t hear him. The words feel like a promise anyway.
The city meets him with heat and hunger.
Neon bleeds across wet pavement. Music seeps out of doorways and into bone. Humanity crowds in messy, overlapping orbits—desire brushing against despair, hope rubbing raw against loneliness. Daveed lets his glamour settle over him like a second skin, smooth and practiced.
Wings folded away. Tail hidden. Eyes darkened to something warm and inviting. Nothing monstrous. Nothing divine.
Just a man.
He steps into the club and the noise hits him all at once—bass vibrating through ribs, bodies pressed too close, sweat and perfume and desperation tangling in the air. Daveed tightens his empath filters immediately. If he doesn’t, the flood will drown him.
He doesn’t hunt.
He listens.
He lets his awareness drift, skimming the surface of emotions the way one might skim fingers across water—never plunging in without invitation. He feels heartbreak disguised as bravado, exhaustion masked by flirtation, desire sharpened by loneliness.
Near the bar, there’s a man sitting along. His drink remains untouched. His emotions are tightly bound, controlled but fraying: craving closeness without daring to ask for it, wanting to be seen without risking rejection. Daveed watches without staring, waiting for the moment when interest flickers back at him like a match struck in the dark.
When their eyes meet, the spark is quiet but undeniable.
Daveed slides onto the stool beside him, careful to leave space. He always leaves space.
“Long night?” he asks, voice low and steady, laced with just enough infernal warmth to soothe rather than overwhelm.
The man exhales a laugh that sounds more like relief than humor. “You could say that.”
Daveed opens his empathy just enough and lets calm bleed through the connection, reflecting reassurance instead of taking immediately. The man’s shoulders loosen. His breathing steadies.
They talk. About nothing and everything.
Work frustrations. Old regrets. Music tastes. Daveed listens like each word matters, because to him, it does. He tracks every subtle shift—the way the man leans closer, the way laughter comes easier, the way loneliness eases when someone pays attention without demanding anything in return.
When their knees brush, Daveed doesn’t pull away.
When the man’s fingers hover near his wrist, uncertain, Daveed reaches out and closes the distance himself. His touch is warm, grounding, deliberate. Consent rings clear and bright.
Only then does he feed.
Carefully. Precisely. Desire flows into him not as a consuming fire, but as a steady warmth—intimacy flavored with trust, relief braided with longing. Daveed takes just enough to quiet the hunger without leaving emptiness behind.
The man sighs, eyes fluttering shut for a heartbeat. “I didn’t know I needed that,” he murmurs.
“Most people don’t,” Daveed replies gently.
He pulls away first. He always does.
They part without promises, without hooks sunk deep beneath the skin. Ethical feeding leaves Daveed grounded, steadier—but it doesn’t erase the ache entirely.
Not anymore.
Between stops, Daveed steps out onto a fire escape. The night air clings to him, thick with heat and sound. He lights a cigarette he won’t finish, watching the ember glow and fade as his thoughts drift despite his best efforts.
Homeward.
Rook’s presence is a constant pull. Guardian grace doesn’t taste like human desire; it hums with duty and compassion, curiosity bound tight by restraint. Daveed never feeds on it, he never would, but feeling it changes him.
It softens instincts forged in Hell and reminds him that hunger doesn’t have to mean harm.
He crushes the cigarette under his boot and checks his phone.
MADS: You done pretending to be normal yet?
DAVEED: Define “normal.”
MADS: Angel still intact?
DAVEED: Very.
MADS: Huh. Miracles do happen.
He smiles faintly and pockets the phone. One more stop. One more careful interaction. Enough to keep the edge from cutting too deep. By the time he leaves the district, the hunger has settled into a low, manageable hum instead of a snarl.
The walk home feels longer than it should. When Daveed climbs the stairs, the building creaks in familiar protest. The wards stir as he approaches, recognizing him, opening like a breath finally released.
The apartment is warm.
Rook looks up instantly from the couch, wings half-unfurled on instinct before they still themselves. Their emotions flare bright with a relief that’s unmistakable and unguarded.
“You’re back,” they say.
Daveed shrugs off his jacket, glamour dissolving the moment he steps inside. He lets his empath sense open fully now—no filters, no walls.
Rook is safe. Curious. Tense beneath Heaven’s distant pressure but grounded.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “Work ran late.”
Rook studies him with a guardian’s sharp perception. “You fed.”
He blinks. “You can tell?”
“I can feel the difference,” they reply calmly. “You’re quieter inside.”
Daveed huffs a tired laugh. “That’s… accurate.”
Rook shifts, making space beside them without comment. Daveed sits close enough to feel their warmth, their grace brushing against his empathy like two harmonies finding balance.
The grocery store squats on the corner like a concrete afterthought, all plate glass smudged with fingerprints and old flyers, fluorescent lights flickering with the stubbornness of things that should have been replaced years ago. It’s wedged between a payday loan place with barred windows and a taquería that never quite closes, its open sign buzzing through the night. A hand-lettered poster taped crookedly to the door promises WEEKLY DEALS in three different fonts, two of them spelled wrong. The city smells like rain, hot asphalt, and grease that’s soaked into the sidewalk and decided to live there forever.
Rook hesitates as the automatic doors hiss open. The wards stitched into the lining of their coat prickle, cheap enchantments skidding across their skin like static—threshold magic baked into the building, mass-produced and barely maintained, meant to discourage shoplifting and nothing else. It doesn’t recognize what they are, only that they are more than the system expects. Their wings are folded tight, feathers hidden but not gone, a familiar pressure between their shoulders like holding in a breath they’re not sure they’re allowed to release.
Daveed nudges the cart forward with one foot, casual as anything. “You’re good,” he says. “The worst thing in here is expired hummus.”
“That’s still a sin,” Rook mutters, but they step inside anyway.
The doors slide shut behind them with a final, mundane thump.
The lights buzz overhead, bathing everything in a flat white glare that kills shadows and mercy in equal measure. Refrigerators hum in uneven harmony. Somewhere near the cereal aisle, a child is screaming with the raw, righteous fury of the betrayed, the sound echoing down polished concrete. The place is aggressively mundane. It’s the kind of normal that makes the supernatural feel like an intrusion instead of a secret, like reality has rules and neither of them quite qualifies.
They’ve been together a month, maybe more. It hasn’t been long enough for this to feel boring yet. It’s been long enough for it to feel real.
The cart immediately pulls to the left, one wheel squealing in protest.
Daveed clicks his tongue. He reaches out with two hands at once—one steadying the handle, another pressing briefly against the warped wheel. Infernal heat flares, precise and contained, then fades. The metal shivers and straightens with a sharp squeal.
A man stacking sale flyers nearby pauses mid-motion, frowns at the cart, then very deliberately looks away like he’s decided the universe is testing him and he’s not playing.
Rook smirks. “That was subtle.”
“I didn’t use fire,” Daveed says mildly. “I’m evolving.”
They head for produce.
That’s where the looks start.
A woman weighing tomatoes glances up, her eyes catching Daveed’s reflection in the misted mirror above the apples. She tracks it for half a second and does a visible double take. Her gaze lingers on the faint shadow his wings cast, the way his coat doesn’t quite conceal the extra breadth of his shoulders, the wrongness she can’t quite name. She blinks hard and goes back to the tomatoes like she’s lost an argument with reality and decided not to escalate.
Rook leans in, voice low. “We’re being clocked.”
They pass a display of bananas. A teenage boy openly stares, phone halfway raised, thumb hovering like instinct has outrun common sense. Rook meets his eyes, expression calm, steady, almost gentle.
The boy pales, makes a strangled noise, and bolts down the aisle.
Daveed snorts. “You scared him.”
“I saved him from learning too much too fast.”
In the apple section, Daveed slows, head tilting slightly. Empathy rolls outward in a thin, instinctive sweep, brushing against the quiet emotional residue clinging to everything. His brow furrows. “These ones are stressed.”
Rook closes their eyes. “Do not.”
“They were shipped in bad conditions.”
“Daveed.”
“They know it.”
Rook grabs a bag and starts filling it at random, pointedly not looking at him. “You are not allowed to emotionally profile fruit in public.”
A woman passing by whispers urgently to her partner, “Is he talking to the apples?”
“Yes,” the partner whispers back without hesitation. “Don’t engage.”
They move on to dairy. Cold air spills out when Rook opens the case, frosting the edges of their coat and sending a shiver down their spine. Without hesitation, they grab whole milk and oat milk, balancing both against their hip with practiced ease.
Daveed pauses. Something warm flickers in his chest, unexpected and tender. “You remembered.”
“You drink oat milk in coffee,” Rook says, a touch defensive, like it’s a purely logistical decision. “And you said almond milk tasted like regret.”
“It does,” he says softly.
An older man stops dead in the aisle, staring openly now. His eyes snag on the faint ripple in Rook’s coat as a wing shifts, feathers brushing fabric.
“Cosplay convention in town?” he asks, not unkindly, just curious enough to be dangerous.
Rook smiles with practiced urban politeness, the kind that deflects without challenging. “Everywhere, if you know where to look.”
The man laughs uncertainly and walks away faster than strictly necessary.
Frozen foods is chaos. Daveed argues passionately for a pizza brand Rook insists is “structurally unsound.” Rook accuses Daveed of having no respect for cheese as a concept. Daveed counters that Heaven literally dissolved cities and therefore has no moral high ground on toppings.
Rook laughs sharply. It’s bright and real. It carries far enough to make heads turn. Conversations pause. For a moment, the entire aisle seems to hold still, caught in the impossible normalcy of a demon and a fallen angel laughing together over freezer-burned pizza and cardboard crust.
Daveed feels the emotional ripple spread outward: confusion, unease, curiosity—and beneath it, something quieter. Relief. The sense that the world is stranger than advertised, but maybe not worse for it.
At checkout, the cashier scans their items with bored efficiency until she reaches a bundle of loose feathers Rook added at the last minute—replacement stock, legally sourced, heavily warded.
She stops. Looks at the feathers. Looks at Rook. Looks at Daveed.
“…Craft project?” she asks.
Rook glances at Daveed. Daveed smiles, small and sharp, just this side of polite.
“Something like that.”
The cashier shrugs and keeps scanning. “You want a bag for the cold stuff?”
Outside, the city exhales. Sirens wail in the distance. A bus wheezes to a stop, brakes screaming like it’s offended by existence. The night is warm and wet, streetlights stretching into long gold smears across shallow puddles.
Rook rolls their shoulders, wings loosening slightly beneath the coat. “You know,” they say, quieter now, “for something Heaven once classified as an error that feels… safe.”
Daveed bumps their shoulder with his own. “Told you. Cities are good at hiding things that don’t fit.”
They walk down the block together, grocery bags biting into their hands, passing under flickering neon and cracked streetlights. People glance. Some stare. Most keep moving.
Urban legends don’t announce themselves.
They just buy milk, argue about pizza, and go home together and the city learns to live with them.
