Pete is pissed. Not only is he spectacularly hungover, which automatically lowers his patience levels a considerably, but that damn orange cat is sitting at the end of his bed, blinking at him as he rolls himself from the covers and sits up. The man he took home is gone too, but that's nothing new.

The house is suspiciously quiet as he stalks through it, now fully clothed and clasping a squirming cat which he dumps unceremoniously out of the back door. It gives him a reproachful look, distinctly ruffled, and Pete feels a cruel satisfaction when it finally turns its back on him and jumps on top of the fence. It's his damn house.

There's no prizes at all for guessing who let that fat ginger thing into the house; Pete knows it's the other fat ginger thing flopped on his couch, looking infuriatingly peaceful as Pete seethes his way back to the kitchen. He's pretty sure he makes the kettle boil with his glare alone.

He takes all his various pills, along with an aspirin or two to tame the furious ache in his skull, and flops down at the kitchen table, burying his face in his hands. He hasn't felt this low in a while; he's due for a blood transfusion in a few days time, meaning he's doomed to a purgatory of exhaustion until then. The week leading up to it is always the worst. He thought sex would help, which it did, for approximately eight minutes, but now the guy's gone, and Pete's barely even surprised. He seemed flighty.

It's only when he stands up to find the cereals he sees that the money on the counter is gone.

He doesn't lose hope right away; he checks to see if it's fallen off at some point, perhaps he moved it to the dresser, maybe he forgot all about his little scheme and put the notes in his wallet. There's a distinct sinking feeling in his chest as he realises that this isn't the case.

The sigh he lets out is one of frustration and disappointment. He was only a few days shy of taking the notes back and chiding himself for ever mistrusting Patrick; the kid gave him his word, after all. But, Pete thinks, feeling rather stupid, the first time he met Patrick, the boy stole from him, for crying out loud. Has Pete really got so embroiled in Patrick that he's forgotten that?

He steels himself to confront the kid, but, at the last second, diverts his steps up to his bedroom; first, he needs to check that Patrick only stole the money. Money is replaceable – if his laptop or his phone is gone, he might end up having his monthly breakdown a little early.

To his relief, the safe is untouched, but his watch – a £9,250 IWC Schaffhausen Portofino – is nowhere to be seen. He feels a lead weight land in the pit of his stomach when he realises he must have left it on the bedside table, in full view of thieves. His dad gave him that watch. The fact that Patrick must've come upstairs and taken it whilst he was sleeping makes Pete feel a little sick. And more than a little angry. 

And to have the audacity to still be asleep on Pete's couch, wearing clothes Pete bought for him and filled with food Pete made him, well. It makes Pete hate Patrick, that familiar feeling of disgust bubbling up to the surface once more. He storms down the stairs, deciding to dodge any pathetic tramp bullshit the kid might throw at him as an excuse, plus any punches. He won't be a pushover.

Despite Pete's thundering footsteps, Patrick's still fast asleep when Pete rounds on him; he's covered in what looks like road maps, and he's curled up in the same position as the cat at the foot of the couch. They're both a picture of peace. It's a shame, a real shame, that Patrick turned out rotten. Pete was starting to enjoy spending time with him.

But that doesn't change the fact that his thieving tramp fingers have been all over Pete's stuff. He dreads to think what kind of awful germs are spread over his beloved watch – maybe traces of old food, maybe spit, maybe – ugh, maybe all manner of bodily fluids. The thought makes Pete shudder, and he carefully avoids Patrick's hands as he pushes one of his sleeves up in search of his watch. If the kid's wearing it, Pete might end up breaking his self-induced pacifism and clocking Patrick round the head.

There's a glint of something gold underneath the fabric of his jumper, and Pete pounces on it, simultaneously marvelling at the kid's sleeping ability. He doesn't stir as Pete shoves his sleeve up to the elbow and sees his beloved – ah. And sees a pure gold band sitting at the top of his forearm.

What in the name of hell, Pete thinks as he crouches down for a closer look. The gold looks back, so highly polished that it throws Pete's reflection back at him, distorted with the curve of the metal. It's not his watch, but it looks just as expensive, and that reminds him; the kid's a criminal. No prizes for guessing where he might have got the bracelet.

It takes Pete a little while to work the band off the kid's arm – Patrick keeps flinching in his sleep, like it's hurting him – but when he does, he feels its weight, its size and thickness and knows this is no cheap replica. Whoever Patrick stole this from must be sorely missing it.

The kid's face twitches as Pete pulls his sleeve back down, and his eyes slide open, his arm moving back to his chest. Pete jumps back instinctively, shoving the band in the pocket of his jumper and standing up quickly, almost tripping over the coffee table behind him. He rights himself with a huff and a glare as Patrick blinks at him.

He smiles distantly as he focusses on the older man, but Pete's not having any of it. He points a finger at Patrick and growls, "Where the hell is my watch?" He's rather proud of how aggressive he sounds.

Any trace of sleep disappears from Patrick's expression. "What?" he says, shifting his legs to the floor and fixing Pete with a stare icy enough to skate on, "What the fuck?"

"You know exactly what the fuck, Patrick," Pete scathes, folding his arms. "There was money on that kitchen counter, and a very expensive watch on my bedside table and they're both missing."

"What, you think I took them?" the boy retorts, hands tightly curled around the edge of the sofa. For a second, he looks confused, pained, even, tongue flicking over his lips and his eyebrows pinched together. Then it disappears, and Pete wonders if he imagined it.

"Of course you took them, who the hell else would take them? You're the only damn thief I know!" Pete's close to yelling, and even closer to telling Patrick to get out and never come back.

Patrick stands at that, so close to Pete that the man reels back a few paces, where he's beyond punching distance. "Your fucking friend, that's who! He fucking left during the night and he...uh..." the kid falters, scrunching his face up and reaching out a hand to steady himself, stumbling a little. Fucking pity ploy.

"You expect me to buy that?" Pete laughs bitterly, "What have you done with them? Did you swap my watch for drugs, did you use it to pay off some gang member, is that who you're running from?"

But Patrick doesn't seem to be paying any attention to Pete; he's clutching at the arm of the sofa, swaying a little as if he might collapse. Pete's hand slips into the pocket of his jumper as he sees Patrick pull at his sleeve.

Pete takes out the gold band and toys with it, feeling increasingly deflated as he realises this is only going to end with both of them gaining an enemy. "Where did you get this," he says flatly.

The look on the boy's face when he sees the object in Pete's hands makes Pete step back slightly. "Give that back," he says, and it's not a shriek or a yell but a low, snarling threat.

Pete won't let himself be ruffled, though, and keeps on playing with the band, feeling powerful in the midst of Patrick's lack of composure. He's going to win this battle, he's certain of it. "Who'd you take it from?" he wonders aloud, trying to remember if he himself owns something like this.

"Give it back," Patrick says again, and now he's advancing on Pete, knuckles white and the muscles in his neck defined with tension.

"Not until you tell me where you got it," Pete says petulantly, "and what you've done with my damn watch."

All of Pete's confidence disappears, however, as Patrick lets out a wild – inhuman – cry and lunges towards him, hands outstretched and eyes furious. Pete slams his eyes shut as his back hits the lounge wall and Patrick careers into him, grip painful on his upper arms and stale breath hot on his face. This is it, he thinks, this is where he kills me.

He tightens his grip on the band as Patrick scrabbles for it, holding it as far out of the boy's way as he can. His eyes snap open when Patrick starts to snarl.

It's a low, rattling sound, a little like someone slurping at a smoothie, but what strikes Pete is how his mind reacts to it; it doesn't just scare him, it injects an instinctual terror right into his core, as if his ancient ancestors had run from that very noise, as if he's prey in the claws of a predator. He lets go of the ring.

The snarls die away in Patrick's throat as he backs away from Pete, focussed solely upon wrestling the bracelet over his hand and shoving it up his arm until it sits beneath his elbow. He covers it with his hand for a few seconds, eyes shut and breathing fast. Pete just stares.

"It's mine," he says gruffly, pulling his sleeve down over the gold, "don't you dare touch it again."

Pete doesn't say anything, just stays pressed against the wall, his heart hammering out of his chest. He can feel the pain more clearly now, in his shoulders where he was shoved, in his arms where he was grabbed. When he looks down at the hand that held the ring, there's long, white scratch marks trailing down his wrist, and crescent indents in his palm. They sting when he stretches his fingers.

"Get out," he says quietly. He can't do this anymore.

"I didn't steal your stupid fucking watch, okay?" Patrick says, running a hand through his hair. He has his back to Pete. He sounds exhausted.

Pete would be willing to believe it if it wasn't for all the other lies he's been fed over the past couple of months. "Look, Patrick. I can't have you in my house if I don't trust you. And I don't trust you," he says simply.

The boy turns, keeping his distance, his shoulders hunched and his face flushed. He speaks slowly and shakily, as if something inside him has reached its breaking point. "It wasn't me. It was your shitty friend, I woke up and he was there and he took the money from the kitchen. I was gonna stop him but I couldn't 'cause you told me not to fucking hit anyone. I don't know if he took your watch but he probably did. I made a promise not to steal from you and I won't break it, why the fuck would I give this up for a hundred quid and a watch I don't know how to use?"

He's got a point. Pete looks at him for a few long moments, meeting his dull gaze and weighing up the boy's arguments. It makes sense; Patrick would have to be pretty stupid to steal from Pete only to keep sleeping on his couch. "Okay," he concedes, "but that doesn't mean I trust you. What's that," he gestures vaguely in Patrick's direction, "thing? Where'd you get it?"

"Fuck off," Patrick says with no real force. "You said you wouldn't ask questions."

"Yeah. Well," Pete scoffs, "I've changed my mind. Who the hell are you?"

"Fuck off," Patrick repeats, frowning at his socks. "You promised."

"No, Patrick. I'm done, I can't keep on like this. Tell me who you are." He's sick of guessing.

"Stop it," the boy says, and he begins to back away, his eyes darting as if there's snipers trained on him. "Stop it."

"For god's sake, who are you?! Why don't you know what stuff is?! Or is that a lie too?" Pete spits, his voice raised and his hands flying about the place in frustration.

"Stop it, I-"

"Who are you running from?! What've you done?! Why are you so stupid?" he yells, watching with grim satisfaction as Patrick cowers away from him, his hands jammed into his eyes and his fingers tugging at his hair.

"Stop," the boy says weakly, and Pete has to remember that he is just that, a boy. Whoever he is and whatever he's done to get himself into this situation, it probably wasn't entirely his fault. Pete remembers his mother's voice telling him Shouting will never get you anywhere whenever he threw a toddler-tantrum. It's no way to deal with someone like Patrick, either.

They both take a moment to calm down, looking around at anything but each other, and the lawyer in Pete tells him to tread lightly. He's got to handle Patrick with care, otherwise, the kid might just close up and refuse to tell him anything at all.

He makes his way over to the couch and sits down, shuffling the ruffled maps into a neat pile and placing them on the coffee table. He's careful not to disturb Sam, who's somehow slept through all of this; the cat might help with negotiations. When an agitated Patrick meets finally meets his eyes, Pete beckons him over, and the kid sullenly obliges.

"I'm not stupid," Patrick says quietly once he's sat down. He's staring at the floor, his hands tying themselves in knots, face reddened and hair falling into his eyes.

"I know," Pete nods, calm and collected. "I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean it."

Patrick stays silent, which Pete decides to take as a good thing. He's not being sworn at, so it's a start.

"However," he continues, "I did mean it when I said I needed to know who you are. And, like, not even just because I need to know if I can trust you, I want to know, Patrick. I've never met anyone like you, and, y'know, you're my friend, I want to get to know you." In Pete's experience, the word friend has the same effect upon Patrick as the word walkies upon a puppy; sure enough, the boy's face brightens minutely, and he finally makes eye contact with Pete.

"So, like, can you tell me?" Pete cajoles when Patrick remains quiet. He knows it won't be that simple, but he needs to start somewhere.

A long, rather tense silence stretches out after Pete's question, during which Patrick's bottom lip receives a mauling from his teeth, as do his fingernails. Pete knows not to push, so he simply waits, watching Patrick sift through whatever thoughts are occupying his head.

Finally, and a little anticlimactically, the kid says softly, "You'll call the police."

Pete can't promise not to, not when Patrick just attacked him, not when he has no idea what terrible things the kid might have done in the past. But he can be reasonable about this. "I don't intend to. But I might have to if I think I'm morally obliged to, if you catch my meaning."

Patrick doesn't look like he's caught anything at all, he just says in that same, unnervingly weak, un-Patrick-like voice, "You can't."

"Well, have you killed anyone?" Pete asks, murder being top in his list of unforgivable crimes.

"No!" Patrick snaps, staring at Pete with a look of utter outrage. "I'd never do something like that, you f-"

"Alright, okay," Pete says steadily, holding his hands out in an attempt to pacify Patrick. "I'm just, y'know, testing the water. Turn of phrase," he adds when Patrick's eyebrows pinch together. "Have you raped anyone?"

"I don't know what that is," Patrick sighs, bringing his knees to his chest and huddling into the couch.

"It's when you, like, have sex with someone without their consent."

"Why the fuck would I do that? I haven't had sex," Patrick scoffs, folding his arms. Pete feels a brief pity for the kid, then realises that perhaps not everyone has to cure themselves with sex. He decides to move on.

"Okay, so, have you hurt anyone? Like, badly?" Mutilation is third on the list; he can't have an eye-gouger or an ear-slicer living in his house.

Patrick thinks about this just long enough for Pete to begin to panic, then says, "No. Not badly, not – deliberately. No worse than I just hurt you," he glances at Pete, gaze heavy with guilt. "I'm sorry." It's forceful, but not aggressive.

"Well, we can talk about that later," Pete says gently, waving a hand like he wasn't just scared out of his mind, "but, y'know, if you really haven't done any of those things, then I, y'know. I won't call the police."

"You promise?" Patrick asks slowly, eyes narrowing.

"Yes, I promise." He's not being entirely honest; if it turns out to be child abduction or drug trafficking or some other vile activity, then to hell with promises, this is real life. "So, why don't you tell me, and I'll decide whether I want to, y'know...uh..." He struggles for words, but Patrick interrupts.

"Keep me?" he snarls, his eyes darkening to a glare, and Pete realises this feeling of superiority might have gone to his head.

"Well, no, no," he backtracks, his stuttering mess of a personality spilling over his professionalism. "Just...if I think that, like, no, this big secret isn't something I can handle, then we'll have to go our separate ways. I'll give you some cash, and some clothes, whatever you need, of course."

Patrick nods, his eyes moving to Sam, who's trying to worm his way into the boy's lap. He cuddles the cat close, and for a moment, Pete wishes he'd have simply let this lie; he doesn't want to have to ask Patrick to leave. Sam would hate him forever. In fact, Sam would probably leave too.

"It's not something I've done," Patrick starts to say, and Pete's heart leaps a little because this might be it, "it's something I...I don't know," he finishes with a sigh, dropping his head. "I can't," he pleads to no-one in particular, "I just...can't."

There's a few moments of silence as Patrick agonises over his words, and Pete nearly feels bad; the boy looks so distressed, as if Pete's twisting a wire tighter and tighter around his neck.

Tears crack through Patrick's voice as he pushes his fingers into his eyes and shakes his head, "You can't tell anyone, you can't, I don't know what they'll do to me, please, you can't tell anyone."

At this point, Pete'll agree to anything in order to get to the bottom of this. He nods quickly and blurts affirmation at Patrick, mind reeling ahead.

"I haven't done anything," the kid repeats, "I'm just not...I'm not..." The sentence remains unfinished, but Pete fills in the gaps with the first thing that springs to mind. He'd been so obsessed with potential crimes, he'd forgotten the crux of the matter; Patrick doesn't know anything about the world. He attracts cats. He heals at lightning speed.

"Uh, Patrick," Pete begins, preparing himself for a question he never thought he'd soberly ask, "are you an alien?"

The boy makes a noise of frustration, "I don't know what that is."

"It's like...someone who isn't from here. Like, not from this planet. Not...not human," Pete finishes, wondering how years of rational thought have led to a conversation like this.

Patrick hides his face a half-second before Pete's stomach drops.

"Um...right." Pete looks around his lounge, as if the mother-ship is upon them already, then back at Patrick, who's now a shade between fuchsia and marinara sauce. "So, so, uh..." he tries to think of some intelligent question to ask but ends up just staring dumbly at the extraterrestrial life form in front of him and wondering if he owns a phaser.

"You can't tell anyone. I don't know what they'll do to me." Patrick's voice is quiet and measured, but his eyes scream panic beyond belief.

Rather than make any more promises, Pete just gapes, "What are you? Where do you come from?" He supposes this is the point where Patrick will laugh and say "Just kidding, I'm from Wolverhampton," and this will all have been some huge misunderstanding.

Instead, the boy breathes a heavy sigh, leaning forward on the couch and keeping Sam close to him; the cat's staring at Pete like he's a terrible person, and Pete marvels at the bond between them, wonders if it's something to do with who Patrick is. Maybe he's secretly a cat.

"I, uh..." Patrick starts, nosing Sam's head and flicking his eyes at Pete as if to check he hasn't run away screaming yet, which is not an unreasonable presumption and may indeed happen in the near future, "I...I'll show you."

Pete barely has time to freak out before Patrick's rising from the sofa, placing Sam down on the coffee table and looking at Pete expectantly. His hair's a mess from being pulled on,  his eyes bleary having had fingers pushed restlessly into them. When Pete stands up to follow, Patrick looks a little like he's walking to the gallows.

Pete wants to comfort him, tell him that whatever it is, it can't be that bad, but with what he just heard, it really could be that bad. The word alien keeps bouncing around his head like a bullet round a prison cell. Hopefully, it'll be enough to wake him up.

They walk in silence, Patrick leading Pete through the house and into his bedroom. Once Pete's inside, the boy shuts the curtains and the door too, only stopping to let in a pining Sam. Then he simply stands in the middle of the room, staring at the floor. Pete places a hand on the doorknob. 

"Uh, Patrick?" Pete coaxes gently, when he's been hovering around the kid for a good minute. Patrick's breathing very fast, and his hands are curled so tight, his knuckles are bleached pale blue. Pete wonders briefly if he's trying to transform.

He's just about ready for Patrick to shed his skin and reveal his true lizard-man self, when the boy sighs shortly and whispers, "Help me if it's not okay. Please." It takes Pete a few seconds to realise Patrick's not talking to him at all, but to the cat, looking up at the boy from the floor.

Patrick seems close to tears when he finally meets Pete's eyes; Pete's beginning to feel a little like a medieval torturer given the task of wounding Patrick until he cracks. It looks like he's already succeeded.

He watches with wide eyes as Patrick reaches for the hem of his jumper, his shoulders hunched and his fingers trembling. Pete remembers the mysterious skin condition, and braces himself for tentacles. If this is real, does that make this first contact?

When Patrick finally wrestles the jumper over his head, Pete doesn't quite see it at first. Well, them. What he does see is the various belts wrapped tightly around Patrick's chest and stomach, and as he undoes them, one by one, Pete sees white fluff peeking over the boy's shoulders. He doesn't fully register what he's looking at, though, until the last belt is unbuckled and tossed to the floor.

Patrick's head is bowed as he stretches out a pair of feathered white wings, each several feet in length, the longest of the feathers brushing below his hips as they fan out into broad curves, light filtering through them. He turns a little, and Pete moves closer, blinking as he stares at the place on the boy's back where pale skin fades to white and fluff covers the thick bones of his wings, protruding just below his shoulder blades. The ropes of muscle between his back and his wings flex as he breathes, the soft rustle of feathers filling Pete's head.

"Just fucking say something, please," Patrick says thickly, after several moments of stunned silence. His gaze is fixed upon Pete warily, as if he might do something stupid.

Pete takes a few steps back, unable to look at anything but the wings, the wings, that twitch minutely with each move Patrick makes. "Well," he gulps, "y'know. There you have it." He runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head a little. No amount of life experience could have prepared him for this; words seem a little ambitious right at this second.

"I'm not a fucking criminal," Patrick protests, background noise over Pete's whirring thoughts, "I didn't mean to hurt anyone. I just, fucking...don't always understand."

"Yeah," Pete nods at nothing in particular, "you've got wings. How...how long have you had them, exactly?"

Patrick shrugs, and the wings droop a little, folding in on themselves. "I was born with them."

"Right, okay," Pete says, nodding again like the dog in the adverts, "so, you're, like, an angel," he finishes, the word lingering on his tongue.

Flushing slightly, Patrick purses his lips. "If you wanna call it that, then yeah."

Pete breathes a laugh, a weak, hysterical thing that dies as soon as it hits the air, and says, slowly this time, "You're an angel. From...from heaven?"

The kid, the freaking angel kid, shakes his head and sighs. "I don't know it like that. That's your word for it. I just...it's just home, to me."

Pete'll think about the religious connotations of this a lot more when he lies awake that night, but right now, he's just gotta fire off all the questions in his head and clear the smoke. "So, like, what are you doing down here?"

A frown crosses Patrick's face at that, and his eye line returns to somewhere around Pete's feet. "I fell. I was there and then I fell and when I woke up I was here, I don't know shit about it."

"You fell? Like...like Satan?" Pete laughs shrilly, "you were kicked out of heaven by God and his glorious servants?"

Patrick simply scowls. "I know I'm difficult, but I'm not the fucking embodiment of evil, you dick. I wasn't kicked out, fucker, I fucking escaped."

Again, Pete will spend hours agonising over that little fact at a later date, but at the present moment, he wants to make the most of what he assumes is a dream, perhaps the result of some sort of narcotic. He'll have to ask Dr. McKee to alter his prescription.

He stares at Patrick a little more, seeing the pink indents in his skin where the belts were fastened, the glowing pale of his chest and his arms, where the band of gold still sits. It all begins to fall into place. "So, that's your..." he reaches out to towards it, but Patrick yanks his arm away, shielding the bracelet.

"Don't fucking touch it," he spits, a wing reaching round to block it from view.

Apologising quickly, Pete places his arms behind his back. "But it's your halo, right?"

"Yes. It's like, part of me. And it hurts if you touch it, so don't."

Pete suddenly feels a rush of guilt; he'd physically wrestled the thing off the kid's arm, he'd left his fingerprints all over something so precious to Patrick. Maybe that's why the boy's still eyeing him warily, his shoulders hunched and his breathing still shallow as anything.

"You can't tell anyone," he says, face pleading, "or they'll catch me, and I can't go back, I can't." He wipes at tears Pete failed to notice, and sits down on the bed, looking utterly miserable.

"Who's after you?" Pete asks gently, sitting down beside Patrick, hyper-aware of the big white wing hovering behind him, not quite touching him.

It turns out that Patrick can't answer as many of Pete's questions as either of them would like; he says he thought it was the police who were chasing him, because that's who all the homeless people he met were afraid of, but it sounds like they're from the same world as Patrick, and they want to take him back to wherever he came from. Pete watches Patrick's crumbling face as he tries to say why he can't go back; they hurt him. He says they kept doing it over and over and he couldn't get them to stop, so he figured out an escape. Pete has no idea how much he believes, but he can't deny the emotion in Patrick's words, the fear. And, of course, the damn wings sticking out his back. Pete'll pretty much believe anything by this point.

It all makes a little more sense, at least – or much less sense, Pete doesn't really know. From Patrick's garbled explanations, he's gleaned that a) he's an angel. b) he escaped from whatever world he came from and ended up on earth, somehow, and c) he needs to be protected from whoever hurt him. Pete's rather surprised at how up to that task he feels.

When Patrick looks like he actually might pass out if he keeps talking, they sit in silence, both staring at the floor. Pete has no idea what's going through Patrick's mind, but his own brain is currently reassembling its perception of reality. It's surprisingly easy; he just slots a sliver of the supernatural into the picture, and he's done. His mum always believed in this stuff anyway – it's probably in his genes.

Inevitably, his eyes are drawn back to the enormous feathery limbs emerging from Patrick's back. They've folded themselves in a little, curving over his back where he's hunched over. He's all pale skin and even paler feathers; he's beautiful, really.

But he's reaching down for the belts again; distinct indents run across his feathers where they've dug into him, and there's  reddened sores sitting starkly on the skin where they were wrapped. Pete catches the boy's arm to stop him.

"They don't fit under clothes if I don't do this," Patrick protests, but he doesn't struggle against Pete.

"It's okay, you don't have to, y'know, hide them," he says gently, hand still placed on Patrick's arm, "that looks like it hurts, anyway." He gestures to the raw bands around the boy's chest. Patrick just shrugs – then stares at Pete in earnest.

"Wait – aren't you kicking me out?" he asks, hand still reaching towards the nearest belt.

Pete frowns. "Of course not, I mean – okay, this is fucking weird, and I'm probably going to freak out about it later on, but y'know, it's better than a lot of my guesses, and y'know, you're – you're...an angel, for crying out loud."

Patrick smiles slightly for the first time since Pete woke him up, and the tip of his wing brushes Pete's shoulder. It's thanks enough, and Pete leans into it.

"Can I?" he asks, raising a hand and wriggling his fingers. Patrick looks unsure, then nods minutely, spreading his wings a little more.

Pete strokes a finger lightly across the top edge of the nearest wing, and his face stretches into a smile when he feels how devastatingly soft the feathers are. It hardly feels as if he's touching anything at all, the fluff is so fine, like silk slipping through his fingers. He feels the way the feathers shift with each of Patrick's movements, interlocking perfectly with one another. "They're beautiful," Pete says absently, and the boy's wings ripple as he smiles, maybe wider than Pete's ever seen him.

He keeps stroking until Patrick looks uncomfortable, and maybe a little cold, too; he's wrapped his arms around himself, the hairs on his skin standing on end.

"Oh, clothes," Pete says stupidly, realising why Patrick had been such a bitch at the store. "You can't wear t-shirts."

"Nope. Too tight," he shrugs, and Pete has an idea.

He leaves Patrick bewildered on the bed as he hops up and flies out the room, only allowing himself five seconds of breakdown in the kitchen before he's racing back to Patrick, armed with scissors and an old t-shirt.

Sitting back down heavily, he sets the shirt in his lap, deciding how best to butcher it. The way Patrick flinches when Pete opens the scissors breaks Pete's heart a little bit.

He can feel Patrick's gaze on him as he cuts a long slit up the back of the fabric, wider than the widest point of Patrick's wings. Patrick lets him feed each one of them through the slit, and after wrestling the shirt over Patrick's head, it fits pretty well, the fabric not straining too much against his wing bones, and his torso mostly covered, even if it's a little short on him. Pete's admiring his handiwork, smoothing his hands over the boy's hips, when he catches Patrick staring.

"You're – you're seriously gonna let me stay?" Patrick asks again, eyes searching Pete's face. He smiles again, real and gorgeous, when Pete nods.

"I won't let them hurt you," Pete says, as if he has any experience of looking after other people, let alone supernatural beings. It seems like the right thing to say, though, because Patrick wraps his arms around Pete's chest and squeezes, his wings enveloping Pete in the best and weirdest hug he's ever had. He can feel feathers brushing the back of his neck and curling around his sides, and smiles into Patrick's shoulder.

When they finally pull back, their noses touch, and Pete kisses Patrick's lips like it's the easiest thing in the world. It's stupid and he'll probably regret it later, but he does it again anyway, enjoying the feel of Patrick's hands on his chest and Patrick's hair under his fingertips.

"You didn't ask," the boy says indignantly as they break apart, but he's smiling idiotically and his hands linger before they fold in his lap. Laughing, Pete lets himself stare again, lets himself wonder at Patrick and every mystery he's brought with him. He'll save the over-thinking for later.

He spends most of the afternoon in a dream world, cutting up more shirts for Patrick, asking him random questions about what he does and doesn't know about Earth. It also occurs to him that the primary function of wings is to fly, and apparently Patrick can't, not well, anyway. They didn't really let him, back home, and Pete hates them for it, whoever they are. He makes a mental note to take Patrick out somewhere he can fly as high as he likes.

They eat copious portions of pasta that evening, just like normal, Pete shows Patrick a new TV show he thought he might like, just like normal, Patrick asks bizarre questions about the world, just like normal. The only things that aren't normal are sprouting out of Patrick's back. Pete doesn't ask who Andy is, he doesn't ask how Patrick got here, or what, specifically, they did to him back home; they can wait for another day. For now, he just stares, completely bewildered but at the same time relieved that Patrick didn't reveal a set of slimy suckers meant for stealing Pete's skin.

When he's lying awake that night, wondering how he'll cope with work knowing there's an angel in his house, it's not as difficult to get his head around as he might have thought, not when he's seen it right in front of his face. It's laughable, but not unbelievable. Not when the boy fell asleep curled up against Pete's side on the couch, his wings tucked around him and his face a picture of serenity; it actually seemed quite a logical outcome.

He grins into his pillow for a few moments, before rolling over and hoping this will all still seem so simple in the morning.