8. Eight o Clock

Silene wasn't still quite so used to seeing the God of Life sitting at her kitchen table, trying all of the sweet goods she had baked all night long because she couldn't sleep at all thinking about his ridiculously handsome face, imagining running her fingers over his mouth, down his nose, over his eyes, through his hair. Suddenly overpowered with a strange sensation that vaguely reminded her of grief. She felt as if she was leaving someone else behind—one she could not take with this time.

Cupcakes and cookies of all shapes lined the kitchen counter, while the rest of the cakes were resting by the windowsills, cooling for her to put frosting on.

From time to time, she raised her gaze from her buttercream, looking at him. Only looking away because the urge to do as she'd imagine all night long grew unbearable.

"You still haven't told me the occasion for all of this," he said, licking some frosting from his finger and then running his tongue over his lips as he leaned back on her kitchen chair, giving her his full attention.

"No occasion."

His brows lifted up as he took in all the desserts crowding her kitchen. "Not opening a bakery? Catering a birthday? Feeding at least five impoverished nations?"

"I bake for fun."

"You don't look like you're having fun," he said, standing and bracing his hip on the counter right next to her. "You look distressed."

Clamping her lips shut, she turned to beat her buttercream until her arm almost fell off.

Something cool rested under her chin, and she jolted when she looked down at the tip of a butter knife against her skin. Gabriel used it to gently turn her head in his direction. "I'm not beyond slaying any demon, human or not, if you ask me to, my ruin. Just ask me. Tell me what is hurting you and I will hurt them back two-fold."

Silene was so confused. So very confused. Terribly confused. Why her? Why? What in the cruel, cruel name of fates was happening? What did this mean?

Swallowing, she said, "You can't slay time."

A smirk twitched on his face. "I wouldn't be quite so sure."

Her eyes roamed all over his face, and she realised why she found so much comfort in his eyes—skies, seas, lakes and rivers, it's what they reminded her of. "Shouldn't you be the pacifist of all Gods? The most docile of them all?"

"What about me is docile? My power is violent, perhaps the most violent of all. Uncontrollable. It can grow a flower as it can a tumour. It can bring hope as much as it can bring ruin. Once life takes root, I no longer possess any control over it, it can either bloom or rot. The purpose of my existence was to give life, not to control it." He dipped his finger on her buttercream and brought it to his lips, licking it off. "Weren't you the one to tell me that I"ve never been the good guy? I'd rather you don't grow fond of me, my desolation."

"Fond is not the word I'd use." She had not lied. It was something akin to fascination, perhaps addiction, too. There was something eminently…moreish about him. His presence was all too light, like moonlight. Gentle, not blazing or burning like sunlight, but featherlight and effulgent. Longing would strike upon you when you least expected it. Like rain on long and hot summer days. You would not realise how much you missed it until the dried earth mourned for a drop.

"What word would you use then?" he asked, using the butterknife to turn her attention back to him.

She'd never wished more that it was his fingers resting on her chin instead. Silene had never known how it felt for someone to crave her attention—and she was not entirely sure she hated it. "How am I your ruin?"

The question seemed so simple. Yet he took a while to answer her. Only for it to be no answer at all.

"What am I to do, Silene?" he asked, his eyes eating her whole. "This buttercream is fucking heaven. Your buttercream has ruined all buttercreams for me. I might hollow out and vanish if I don't have this buttercream every single day. I will dream about this buttercream. And every time I go past pastry shops, I will long to see this buttercream on all the cakes."

She grabbed a mitten and threw it at his face. And a tea towel. And then a ladle. And a few more other stuff as she chased him out of her kitchen. By the time she had him out of her door, he was keeling over from laughter, holding a few of her cupcakes that he'd collected on his way out.

"Leave before Azriel comes and kicks your ass out."

He threw her a wink. "See me later. Preferably not only in my dreams."

She gagged. "Ugh."

"Not the sound I'd love for you to make, but I'll take it."

She raised a middle finger, and he puckered his lips, blowing her a kiss, sealing their battle zero to one in his favour.

Two deaths had been left for her to collect after the one she'd just sent off to Asphodel.

She'd done it with such mellow steps, almost tempting time, almost provoking the unforgiving Goddess. From time to time, she'd glanced over her shoulder, hoping Gabriel would interfere. That kind of hope had left her with the bitterest taste in her tongue, and she'd quickly sent the soul back to Asphodel, not even waiting for a second boat, afraid he'd find her if she stood too long in one stop. So, she'd circled the small city of Asador round and round until she was sure she'd confused Fates themselves to the point she'd rewritten destiny.

Just as she was about to cross the street towards the invisible bay where a boat was now finally waiting for her, a silver car stopped right at her feet for some reason, the windows rolling down the passenger side. "Why are you hiding from me, Silene?" Gabriel asked, leaning in the passenger seat to look up at her.

"I'm not hiding."

"If I can't find you, it means you are hiding," he threw her own words back at her.

"I need some space."

His brows pinched with confusion. "Fine, pick a few stars or whatever else, and I will get them for you, what is the big fuss?"

She rolled her eyes. "As in distance." Pointing between them, she added, "Between us."

That look of confusion deepened in his face. "There's always space between us, so get in the car."

"No."

"Get in the car, Silene."

She got in the car, making sure to stomp and slam her way in, refusing to let down her feigned wall of indignation that was now paper thin and no longer keeping him away. "Where are you taking me?"

He lifted her folded paper between his two fingers. "Three more demands to go."

"What's the rush?" she asked, biting the inside of her cheek raw, only stopping when she felt the taste of blood on her tongue. A thousand thoughts crossed her as she held her breath, wondering if it had happened because she was so close to paying her debt to Azriel or because she'd gotten so close to Gabriel and therefore closer to getting a taste of her old humanity back.

Like the devil he was, he flashed her another of his sinful smirks. "I can take it slow, Silene. As slow as you want, my ruin. Come here," he beckoned her, and for whatever reason that would not come to her at that moment, she leaned in. Her lashes fluttered fast when he leaned in, too, his lips so close to her neck. So very close she shivered as if he'd pressed them against her skin.

And when he breathed her in and exhaled, a tendril of tender, warm fire licked a path down her chest, teasing every curve and dip on the way until it pooled into a burning hearth between her legs. It was such a strange sensation to Silene. So new. So forbidding.

"So sweet, my ruin, you smell so sweet." He lifted a hand to her face, the tips of his fingers just ghosting down her jaw. "I've been trying all day to recall your perfume. I was growing afraid I'd gotten it wrong. I don't want to forget it."

No one—nothing at all had ever made Silene feel as she did by mere words alone, by their mere breath on her skin, by their mere presence so near her.

Silene had never…never wanted to be touched as much as she had wanted that very moment. And as she stood there with that realisation, another settled in. Nothing had ever wanted her back.

When he lifted his head just a little to look at her, their lips gently brushed the other's. It was a touch as brief and gentle as the breeze, but Silene slammed her eyes shut, pulse beating hard against her neck, her temples, her chest. Her heart had never pulsed so furiously even when she'd been alive.

"Forgive me," he whispered, full of defeat, bracing his brow on her seat's shoulder.

Her fingers ghosted her bottom lip, wincing when they brushed against the new bruise there. "It's alright."

"It is not. It is not alright at all."

He only raised his head when she carefully and very gently brushed her fingers against his hair. It was a brief, tentative touch, but he looked at her as if he'd found salvation.

"I've always wanted to do that," she admitted. "It feels just like I imagined."

"What else have you imagined, Silene?" he asked, his voice almost drunken.

"Can't really say," she vaguely said to him, turning her body towards the window and chewing on her thumb as she stared at his reflection on her window.

"You will tell me eventually," he confidently said, starting the car.

Her face was plastered against the window as they drove through the city, over a tall bridge and into the other side of the city where the buildings grew sparser, less tall, somewhat more colourful. The further in they went, the more greenery she could see. First it was just a couple trees, then whole gardens and flower filled pots scattered all over the front of the houses. Children loitered the streets, some on their bikes, others jumping on one foot on squares they'd drawn on the ground. The elderly had joined the young, too, some sat on their porches just watching life pass by, while others sat around a game board.

She turned to him. "You've never told me why you stay in this realm."

"It's only been a few years. I move from place to place."

"Why not settle like your brother?"

"I try to go where I'm most needed. Where life of any kind grows sparser. It helps life grow back."

"Is that how you found me? Were you staying in my realm?"

There was a brief pause before he said, "No."

"How did you find me?"

"I stole a wish from a star."

She sneered at him. "If you don't want to answer me, just say so, you don't have to be a prick about it."

He dropped his head back on the head rest, grinning ahead as he drove them towards what looked like a hill, one entirely dressed in green.

Carefully, she threw some more glances at him. "You could have just snapped your fingers and taken us there."

"I thought you wanted to go slow?" he asked, slightly angling his head in her direction. "Besides, when you're in a rush, you tend to miss the beauty around you. Thought you might enjoy seeing the sides to humanity."

"Could never understand why anyone would choose to live out there when they could live here."

"Some live fast, Silene. Some live slow. Some live loud and some quiet. Some have the choice, and some don't. Some like the company of others, some don't. There are such a myriad of characters between your kind."

"It is pretty."

"As are you. Your new tablecloth suits you."

"Shut up," she muttered, dusting off her long, brown skirt she'd spent at least a couple months making.

He chuckled. "No one could ever pull it off like you do, my ruin. Not even a table."

Not wanting to give him the satisfaction, she shifted entirely on her side, hiding her smile.

The car stopped right at the foot of the hill, and Gabriel came to open her door, waiting until she was out before he grabbed a basket from the back seat.

"What's that?" she asked, squinting at him and putting a hand on her brow to shield her eyes from the harsh sun.

"A picnic basket."

She blinked once. "What's in it?"

"Food."

"What food?"

"Food I made," he told her, like it was utterly normal.

Silene tried really hard to hold it in, but she could not resist the urge to laugh at the image before her. "All you're missing is a chequered apron, some red lipstick and a perm, and you'd be the shining resemblance of those housewives from old human magazines."

"You need to stop reading that shit."

"They're entertaining." She rolled her shoulders back, wearing an expression of utter seriousness. "What have you prepared for us, dear wife?"

He shot her a look, one half amused and half warning. "Done?"

"I'd smack you in the butt and tell you what a good little wife you are, but I don't want my hand to fall off," she giggled, following after him towards the green fields where many people had set camp to picnic. "You should have brought Tommy."

She watched as his expression fell just slightly. "He isn't entirely himself lately. I didn't want to tire him."

A sense of gloom settled in her stomach. "Oh. He'll be okay," she offered, joining his side.

"Yeah," he replied, voice weak. "Yeah, he will. Both of you can't leave me at once."

She'd laughed to her heart's desire when he'd started laying a blanket down under the shade of a grand willow tree and neatly placed food out on a tray. Her imagination was not rich enough to have ever conjured a more outlandish scenario than the one before her. "You should have tried a wedding dress the other day. Would have been such a lovely bride."

"Glad I can make you laugh, my ruin," he said, making her smile turn shy all of the sudden.

She cleared her throat and sighed, observing the world around her move and bolster alive with such a violence that she had never witnessed, such vibrance she did not know it existed. Children were screaming, running, playing and laughing. Adults were chatting and shouting to their kids to be careful. Birds and crickets were composing their own melodies, somewhat matching each other's tunes. The willow branches hissed and floated in tender waves as the gentle wind picked them up, letting the sun sieve through them. Silene found a fervent urge to hum along that sound and reach a hand out to play with the strands of sunlight peeking through between the branches.

Resting her chin on her knees, she smiled, drunken from the spring air that was filling her lungs with more than just oxygen, with something else, with something equally peaceful as it was violent, something akin to…hope. With hope that it would be better. That everything would be alright. That she should not fear. It terrified her just as much as it pacified her.

"Why did you stop?" Gabriel asked.

"Something was missing. A sound was missing."

"What sound?"

His voice.

Turning, she rested her cheek on her knee and looked up at him. "I love the sun. And the moon. I love yellow. And lilies. The wind and the sea, oh I love the sea. Cold wind, too. I love winter, but only when it is not raining. Spring is my favourite. I love spring. But mostly I just love the sun," she confessed. "Azriel once told me to make a list of what I missed from back when I was alive. Besides my brother, I could not recall anything else. Now I can give him a list." She waited a moment. "The lilies. It was you, wasn't it?"

For a few seconds, he just looked back at her, his eyes pacing between hers. "Would you hate them if I said yes?"

She'd doubted. She'd doubted for so long it had been because of him. "Why?"

"I didn't know how to bring you out of your house. You'd never leave it. Only would sit in a window and watch outside of it."

"How did you do it? Something like me isn't able to touch without killing."

"I bargained."

An anxious flutter settled in her chest. "And my dreams? You got my nightmares to stop a couple weeks ago."

His mouth twitched. "You knew it was me?"

"You told me to have sweet dreams. And I did. What did you bargain for them?"

"Nothing of importance," he lied to her, and lifted a plate full of some sweet treats to her. "Have one."

"I don't have to eat," she said, watching the strawberries dipped in chocolate laid out with a pang of disappointment.

"Doesn't mean that you can't."

"They will surely taste like nothing."

Grabbing a strawberry, he held it up to her mouth. "You will never know unless you try."

Reluctantly and very slowly, she leaned forwards, her teeth digging on the fleshy fruit, and she paused, rolling her eyes up at his that were watching her with such smouldering attention.

It was sweet. It was the sweetest thing she might have ever tried.

He then lifted a spoonful of sweet, flavoured yoghurt to her, and she opened her mouth again, letting him feed her, and watching as he brought the same spoon back to his mouth and licked the rest of it clean. "So?"

"Sweet."

Satisfied, he grinned at her and laid down, stretching on the blanket.

Silene glanced at the people a small distance away from them running around with strings tied to kites carried by wind so high they were about to disappear between clouds. It wasn't the only thing she noticed. So many eyes were in their direction, but they were not on her. Everyone was looking at the God laying down beside her with his hands under his head and his eyes closed, his black shirt pulled up to reveal a sliver of skin on his stomach that was covered in tattoos like the rest of his limbs were. "Finally see something you like?" he asked, smirking.

"Women and men look at you like they want to have you."

He flashed her a wolfish grin. "Who would not?"

"I've watched humans complain enough to know that arrogant men are always lousy lovers."

"Perhaps."

She was stunned at his admission. "Perhaps?"

"It has been so long."

"Since what?" she asked, grabbing another strawberry.

"Since I've been anyone"s lover. Five hundred and something years to be exact."

Silene stopped chewing her strawberry, the sweet fruit suddenly tasting sour against her tongue.

Taking advantage of her distraction, he sat up and leaned in to bite the rest of the strawberry she was holding between her fingers, his lips almost grazing her skin. "Celibacy has not been half as bad," he said, licking his lip and standing there, his face merely inches away from her. "First the object of my desires tends to hide from me. I can say it with full confidence that it hasn't been much of a struggle. Especially when I spent half of that time imagining her to be in love with my brother and the other half of it contemplating what I could give to be able to just touch her."

Silene swallowed, the world around her suddenly starting to spin too fast, so fast that she grew dizzy. "Don't speak."

"Forbid me."

"Gabriel—"

"Have I told you," he said, moving her billowing hair out of her face with the gentility of the wind. "How much I love how you say my name? Like you wish to gut me and eat me alive. I'd let you feast on every single bone. Pull me apart however you'd like."

"Why? You never tell me why? Why won't you tell me anything at all?"

"You would not understand. You never would understand if I told you how my soul has been forever tied to yours in ways no soul should ever be tied to another's," he said, his eyes dropping at her mouth. "For a while I could not understand myself. I couldn't understand anything at all. I had to make peace with the fact that I'd be longing for you forever before I even knew why."

She whispered, "That does not sound nice at all."

"If I could steal anything—anything at all," he breathed, "I'd steal just a kiss from your lips."

Harsh wind swept across the hill as she sucked in a breath before saying, "I would have given it to you."

Slowly, his head lowered and his eyes drew shut, as did hers, for there was finality in their fates—a finality she still did not entirely understand.

Why would they both be sentenced to such a fate? What had they ever done to deserve it?

He walked beside her as they retreated back to his car close to the day's near end, the doomed two feet space between them somehow growing vast, deeper than any canyon or river or sea. The longer she remained there, just two feet from him, the further she felt from him.

So Silene inched closer and closer with each step they took, and unlike the many other times when that space between them had been breached, she didn't feel weak at all. If anything, Silene felt unbeatable. Perhaps it is why she did what she did next.

Her pinkie brushed his, and she heard him suck a sharp breath. "Silene—"

Before he could even finish saying her name, she slid her hand against his, linking their fingers together. She only felt him for a fraction of a second before her entire body was possessed by pain. Tears clung to her eyelids as it raked through each muscle, bone and sinew, carving its path deep inside the very core of her soul.

She still wouldn't have let go of him if he had not let go of her, backing away again to restore that wretched invisible isthmus between them.

He stared at her hand that had turned a rotten shade and almost gnawed to the bone. Terror changed the very blue of his eyes into an almost deep, dark sapphire. "Silene," he breathed, stricken with panic.

"It will go back to being fine when I return to Asphodel," she reassured him, pulling her lace scarf off and wrapping it against her unfeeling limb. "What would a ghost like me even need their hand for anyway?" She looked up at him just as a tear made its way down her cheek. "What's the point of even having one if I can't hold what I want to hold?"

Wind picked up, carrying his hair away from his brow and removing shade from the blue irises that had turned turbulent.

She reached a hand to her throat when those eyes dropped on the scar there, the scar she always hid.

"I should have obeyed the fates, I should have stayed away," he said, pressing a hand to his head and grasping at his hair. "At least I couldn't hurt you then."

A stab pierced at her insides at his words. She wanted to tell him that she didn't mind. That her body could do nothing besides bruise and bleed. In fact, her body did it best. She bruised and bled like no other. So much so that her father had turned her into a spectacle for it. But why was he not laughing like her father and the monsters made of men had? Why was he staring at her as he was? Why had he never laughed?

"How am I even losing you," he said, his mouth stretching into a trembling grin despite the tears in his eyes—tears that softened the very ground she stood on. Silene's world had never been shaken the way it did just then. "You were never even mine."

His.

Silene had never thought…she'd never thought she'd wanted to belong to someone. Someone who made her feel so light, so warm, who made her smile, who'd comforted her, who circled around her like the sun itself. Someone who had given sense to wind and rain, to rocks and clouds. Someone who made the entire world disappear for her.

One moment, she was there, at where she had always been—two feet apart from him. And the next, her arms were reaching over his shoulders, closing over his neck as she got on her toes and pressed her mouth to his.

Pain struck her across her chest first, grasping her heart in a firm, tight grip until she could barely breathe. But she'd been barely breathing for hundreds of years now so she paid no mind to it. How could she when his hands cupped her face and pulled her limp, pain ridden body to his firm one.

But her embrace was the place hopes went to die.

He was wrenched away from her too suddenly. So suddenly that she swayed on her feet and almost took a tumble. Gabriel stood where he'd always stood, two feet away from her, but this time watching at her with a pair of wide and terrified blue eyes, breathing hard and fast.

Silene looked down at her hands, her arms, her chest, at the skin around them that had turned almost entirely grey, violet veins spreading all under her skin with blood that stung like poison. Everything came crashing in all at once. Realisation and pain alike. And she fell to the ground, her limbs struggling to hold her up. She didn't resist the call of weakness that lured her body to lay down on the cold, wet earth fresh from evening's dew.

And as her sight blurred, giving into the darkness, she saw him again, leaning over her, holding a shaky hand over her face. Silene had never witnessed such a storm, such angry skies and seas as the one in his eyes as he looked at her and shouted, screamed things she could not hear while her consciousness slowly dipped into darkness.

The next time she opened her eyes they were looking up at the wrong brother as he carried her in his arms. "Where is he?" she asked, her own voice like blades against her throat.

Death did not look at her as he continued on his path to Asphodel, on the hill towards her home. "Gabriel will not come near you again."

"But I want him to. I was the one who got close."

He stopped, still not looking down at her though she was sure the scowl he directed at nowhere was meant for her instead. When he finally looked at her, there was nothing but pity in his gaze. And she'd never seen Death pity anything. "Do you know what that would mean, Silene?"

"I find very little meaning in things these days," she said, pushing at his chest and testing her feet. "I want to see him."

"I will not allow that," he said with a finality she'd not heard from him before.

"Az," she started, prepared to beg him, too.

"It is final," he said, vanishing.