Angels Lie

You know how bombs work? They’re still. Silent, until they explode, almost unexpectedly, shattering around the entire building, knocking out the poor innocent people – the ones who had no idea their lives were going to end that day?

Bert learned how to make them, once. Bombs. When he was a teenager, he learned how to make them, just cherry bombs, the ones you could set in your neighbour’s mailboxes, then run behind the bushes and watch the mailbox shatter around hitting the pavement. He sold them to the twelve year olds that lived on the block so he could get cigarettes. Then when he walked past a house with a blown out mailbox, he would grin, deep proud satisfaction coursing through his veins. Nobody got hurt by those kinds of things, he thought.

The thing was, hearts were like bombs, he learned. Only, not like the cherry bombs he used to factor out for everyone. These were more like the real things, the big ones, that would shake the house and murder everyone standing within three foot of it. Hearts, like bombs, were stood on a delicate timeline, waiting waiting waiting to implode. At any given time, the timer could go off. And then it would explode, and the organs would shatter and shrivel, and the person that the bomb had exploded in; they would be so… fucked up.

Bert sat gripping a coffee in hand, listening to the murmurs of the crowd in the bar. People surrounded him everywhere, suffocating. The boy sat across from him, a small smile on his face. Only, for some reason, Bert saw right through it, to the bone. The man sat in front of him was translucent. His topaz eyes sparkled with the need for comfort, and his lips trembled. “May I ask what happened?” Bert whispered out.

The eyes flickered from the coffee mug to Bert, and then back again, surprised. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out, so he just closed it again, and turned back to absently stirring the coffee with the tip of his finger. “You don’t have to talk,” Bert mumbled.

“Did you mean it?” he asked distractedly. “When you said you liked me, I mean.” Bert growled inwardly, and took a drink of the coffee, ignoring the question.

If you ignore it long enough, it might go away, if you’re real lucky.

“I never actually caught your name,” he said airily, praying this made the project forget his previous question.

“So you didn’t,” his chin tilted upwards. “I’m not a cheap fuck,” he hissed. “I don’t like being messed around with; I hate people toying with my fucking emotions,” he leaned forward. “Fuck, don’t mess with me, dude.” Bert leaned into his face, just as close.

“Yes.”

A blank look. “What?”

“Yes. I meant it. I don’t know you. Fuck, I don’t even know your name; but you’re intriguing. And you’re broken.” The last part wasn’t even a question, the boy realised, as he blinked, sitting back into his seat.

“Oh. Oh, dear.”

“What is your name?” Bert asked, changing the subject, taking a drink of his coffee. “I’ve shot guesses in the dark all evening long, but I still can’t figure it out.”

“What’s yours?”

His lips curled upwards. “You play hard to get; you know that?” he asked. Meta-Bert slapped himself in the head for even trying this plan out. What the hell could he do? He wasn’t even supposed to be talking to the project, let alone finding out his name, pretending he liked him, etc. Blood pounded in his ears, threatening to make his head explode.

The project looked at him curiously still, eyes twinkling with laughter and amusement. They still hurled out pain though; a ton of pain, the type of pain Bert couldn’t decipher. He supposed he’d died before love could kill him. “Look, if I tell you my name will you get off my back about what’s wrong with me?”

“Depends,” Bert licked his lips and waited patiently. The coffee the boy in front of him held soon lost its steam.

“It’s Gerard. My name, I mean,” he mumbled under his breath. “What’s yours?”

“Guess,” Bert grinned, happy to have a name for his new project, and able to get rid of the stupid title, ‘the project.’ Gerard – meta-Bert smiled – looked up, and rolled his eyes again. He seemed to do that a lot.

“I don’t do guessing games,” he retorted.

“It’s Bert,” he said finally, taking a drink and setting the cup back down neatly. “Do you want to go somewhere else, clubs aren’t really my thing?” Gerard looked around at the crowded room, and then back at Bert, before nodding. He thinks you’re a sociopath, meta-Bert laughed.

He probably did, was the sad part. A sociopath who planted cherry bombs in people’s mailboxes for thrills. Only, he didn’t know that. So just a sociopath.

As they walked out, Bert shoved his hands in his pockets and grabbed his cigarettes and Zippo. “Want one?” he offered. Gerard accepted, and they walked in silence. This is ridiculous. Say something, say something, say something.

Can’t. He couldn’t. There was nothing he could say, that was interesting; he wasn’t interesting, was the problem.

“Are you a stalker?” Gerard asked, looking at him. Bert’s eyes widened, and he stifled the laugh that was bubbling up his throat, threatening to erupt. Gerard’s face seemed so serious though, that he swallowed it.

“Look, is it so hard to believe that I’m just fucking interested in you?” Gerard shrugged, flicking the cigarette out.

“People don’t take immediate interest in me,” he replied.

“I did,” Bert retorted. Liar liar pants on fire, hanging from a telephone wire. He cringed; told meta-Bert to shut up. He wondered whether angels were even allowed to lie? Were they? When they got back up… there, would they be banished and sentenced to eternity in Hell, instead? Would He be mad, or disgusted? This was to protect Bert’s job, wasn’t it?

Shut up.

So he did. And he waited for Gerard’s next response, which was somewhat delayed, and well thought out, in the end. “People are… they’re… disgusted with me, somewhat,” he said slowly. Bert didn’t say anything, just waited. “They leave me, in the end,” he blurted out. “They just get up and leave because they’re tired of me waiting to change things around. Is that fucked up? Messed up?”

“No.” Bert muttered. “You try, I mean – don’t you?”

“Sort of. I mean, I guess I’m careless, and stuff, but it’s not like I purposefully hurt everyone that surrounds me. They just tend to get hurt anyways,” he whispered. “Or they use that excuse.” His gaze hardened.

“That guy, at the bar…” Bert trailed off, and Gerard nodded grimly.

“He’s my boyfriend.” A slight pause. “Was,” he corrected. “Was my boyfriend. Until tonight.”

“What… why?” Bert hesitated.

“Because he said it wasn’t working out. That between my job and blah blah blah; we weren’t right, so he left. That’s that. He’s gone.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologised.

“I liked him. Love is fucked up; but I liked him.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Can I ask you something?” Gerard questioned again. Bert looked up at him and nodded. “Do you really like me?” His eyes shined with confusion.

“Y-yeah.”

“Then can I kiss you?”