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Keith

Blue eyes glowing gold. Brown skin turning caramel before my eyes. Strands of brown hair floating with static. Pink lips in a smile. Cold hands. Cold hands holding mine. Tethering me to Earth. Keeping me down. Pushing my head underwater. Around my neck. Choking. Taking my life. With a smile.

I lurched forward, eyes flying open. Heaving, I looked around frantically, confused. Afraid, even. It took me a few seconds to remember where I was.
The hotel room was pitch-black and silent, save for the angel's soft snores. I held my head in my hands, slowing my breathing.

Scenes from my nightmare kept flashing through my mind. One second, Halohead was holding my hands, smiling, and the next he was strangling me, eyes crazed. I glanced over at his sleeping figure, splayed out over the mattress, arms strewn recklessly beside him, chest rising and falling.

I pressed my hand over my chest, catching my breath, shaking slightly. I pressed two fingers to the side of my neck and found no pulse. I've never had one. I'm technically dead. Lance had one, though. I tuned into it now, hearing the comforting, slow pulse of his heart.

I turned to the clock on our shared bedside table and sighed, laughing a little. 2:46 AM. Even I didn't wake up this early. I flopped back down on my back, my pillow letting out a puff of protest. I looked over at Lance again.
Our beds were close enough that if I reached out, I could touch his mattress. Of course, I wouldn't, though.
I fell asleep to a deep, lulling thu-thump, thu-thump.

...

"Up! Up! Up!" I crowed, throwing a pillow at the sleeping angel. It was actual morning now, not the middle of the night, and I was in an incredibly good mood, for some reason. Not good enough to let Lance sleep in, though.
He had informed me the night before that we had a 17-hour drive ahead of us- from Seattle to somewhere called Lancaster, California. He'd even shown me a map.

"I need all the sleep I can get," Lance groaned at me, batting my pillow away blindly with a limp hand. His face was buried in his pillow and his hair was a mess.

"Guess I'll just pour coffee on you," I said, shrugging, and made for the coffee pot, "but I don't know how to cool it down like you can."

As if sensing that I would actually pour coffee on him, Lance scrambled out of his bed, muttering curses under his breath. "You asshole. Can't get my right quiznacking hours of beauty sleep with you around."

I wrinkled my nose at the odd swear. "Not my fault."

"Yes, your fault," Lance grumbled, pouring himself coffee that room service had brought. He flicked his hand at my bed and a messy pile of clothes flopped down. In a second flick, a neat stack of clothes landed on his own bed. I scowled at him.

"You sure are petty," I informed the angel, grabbing the clothes and walking to the bathroom.

...

"We need some guidelines," Lance said as we slid out of the lot behind the hotel after inconspicuously magicking up a car. It had visibly worn Lance out, but he seemed okay once he was sitting down.

The car he'd produced was cute in its own way. Small, a little bit cramped in the front, but cute. I had already pushed my seat all the way back and had my feet up on the dash, musing over the ways I was going to spend the next 17 hours.

"What do you mean?" I asked absently, leaning forward to dig through the glove compartment. The only thing I found was the car manual, but I wasn't about to start reading that, even if I was dying of boredom. 

"I mean, we need some rules. We're going to be stuck with each other."

"Aren't we always," I replied, laughing a little.

Lance rolled his eyes, "In an enclosed space."

"That still sounds like normal to me," I commented. Lance wrinkled his nose in annoyance.

"Without being able to move," he said, exasperated.

"There you go," I muttered.

Lance continued as we pulled onto the main road, moving slowly behind traffic, "It's always a rule that the driver picks the music," I snorted, "but, just for you, I'll let you play your own stuff for 20 minutes an hour."

I glared at Lance. "Quite a compromise you've got there."

"If you can't drive, you can't complain," Halohead replied in a sing-song voice. It made me want to punch him.

"Then teach me how to drive," I said impulsively.

Lance quirked an eyebrow, eyes trained on the road, hands relaxed on the steering wheel as he maneuvered through the rows of cars.

"What?" I demanded at his silence.
The angel paused for a second, smiling with closed lips like he was holding in a secret.

"I just think..." he stopped again. "That you need to control your own anger before you control a machine."

I sneered at the angel, gazing at my own hands. They were pale. Slim fingers and bones jutting out from the translucent skin. Veins that were shaded blue. Nails bitten to the bed.
I looked back to Lance's, loosely curled around the wheel. His skin was light brown and opaque and his fingers were long and nimble. His nails grew a little past his fingertips. Around his wrist, that trademark gold band.

"Love be with you". Bullshit.

...

hour 1 - 6:30 a.m.

Lance started to play his music and, after 5 consecutive Beyonce songs, I begged to take my own 20-minute music turn. Lance let me scroll through YouTube until I found something familiar. Queen. To my smug satisfaction, Lance looked pained as we listened to rock music on repeat. He eventually came out of his funk about my music taste when I played Bohemian Rhapsody.

hour 3 - 9:30 a.m.

We stopped at Panera and Lance left the car running (with me in it) as he went in to get bagels. I considered driving away but then was glad that I didn't when he came back with the best fucking bagel I've ever had. Lance played Shakira and I played heavy metal. We cross into Oregon.

hour 6 - 12:30 p.m.

We started the Hamilton soundtrack and Lance is a terrible rapper. I played My Chemical Romance to salvage my own ears, but Lance, the little shit, knew the words to The Black Parade.

hour 10 - 4:30 p.m.

We'd just passed the border from Oregon to California and Lance was singing to latino pop music he found on the radio. I kind of liked it when he spoke Spanish- he didn't annoy me as much. I relented into playing some softer music- Sleeping with Sirens and Makeout Monday.

hour 12 - 6:30 p.m.

Lance stopped on the side of a long, straight road and got out, stretching. He looked at me expectantly.

"You wanna drive?"

I got out of the car as well and look around. There were no cars in either direction. We switch places. Lance was very methodical about the way he explained things, but I just wanted to go. As soon as he released his hand from the clutch, I took over.

We sped down the road at a stunning 80 miles an hour. Lance yelled at me to stop, but he didn't explain the break and gas very well, so I screamed too, hands in a death grip around the wheel, Lance's knuckles turning white as he clenched my forearm. I could barely feel the pain until a jolt of electricity snapped out from Lance's halo and shocked my temple.

Somehow, I slammed on the breaks.

And somehow, Lance's face slammed into the dash.

And somehow, there was suddenly blood.

Lance cried out and lurched out of the car, clutching his nose as tears poured down his face. I slowly took my hands off the steering wheel and pulled the key from the ignition. I felt a bit paralyzed.

Carefully stepping out of the car, I walked over to Lance. Blood was running down his palms. The angel whirled towards me, eyes scared and upset and in pain. I stepped back unconsciously, unsure of what to do. His eyes were gold. They're terrifying.

His mouth is all screwed up funny like he wants to say something, his eyebrows raised in an expression somewhere between fury and pain. Instead, he stayed silent, and I watched him swallow his words. Lance's wings emerged from his back and wrapped around his frame, hiding his face and torso from my view.

I turned away. Shame rolled off of me and I hated it. I'm not used to the feeling. Back home, breaking someone's nose meant a victory in a fight. I knew it's not the same here.

After a few minutes of me staring off down the road, biting my lip and kicking at the dirt, I heard Lance's feathers ruffle and I turned back to face him and his smooth voice. Lance's face was no longer bloody and his nose was as straight as it was before. His shirt was clean. The circles beneath his eyes are darker.

He sees the keys in my palm and I felt them leave my grasp, pulled by an invisible force to Lance. He caught the keys and rounded the side of the car to the driver's seat. The ignition starts.

For a split second, I thought he was going to leave me there, alone on the side of the road, miles away from anything. But he waited until I was in the car with my seatbelt on before he eased into a gentle pace.

I couldn't  look at him. He didn't play music or speak.

hour 13 - 7:30 p.m.

Lance still wouldn't talk to me. The sunset, pink tonight, shone through the windows of the car and casted his skin rose gold. I saw signs for Sacramento, California. I wondered why Lance was doing this for me. I wondered if he was going to keep his promise. I wondered if I deserved it anymore.

hour 15 - 9:30 p.m.

I woke up to soft music on the stereo and I tried to remember when I fell asleep, but I couldn't. The lo-fi music Lance was playing was relaxing, and, try as I might, I felt myself falling asleep again, but not before I looked at Lance, who just looked sad now.

hour 17 - 11:30 p.m.

We arrived in Lancaster, California. Lance didn't say a word.

...

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