The World Before: MM Romance Read online

  But that is not the case. And the truth is that Mathieu screwed up a long time ago, that he’s missed his chances too many times that he ended up in the friend zone. He was too busy being an ass, but it’s okay, and Mathieu is glad he can have such a close friendship with him. So, Jakob is perfect, and Mathieu loves him, and he can’t sleep because he’s worried out of his mind.

  “I have a few weeks worth of holidays saved up anyway,” Jakob tells him when Mathieu is over at his apartment like he is always in his spare time nowadays. “Turns out being a workaholic has its perks.”

  Mathieu sits down on the edge of the bed Jakob has barely managed to crawl out of since before Christmas. “Could be a burn-out,” he suggests, although he knows that’s not it and Jakob knows it too; he’s no idiot, he’s seen a doctor, and apparently, he’s as healthy as one can be. Mathieu had speculated about something like acute depression, but that's been ruled out too.

  “I’m just tired,” Jakob says, and he looks every inch of it. He’s pale, and his cheeks are sunken, and he could probably use a shave.

  “Coffee?” Mathieu asks. “There’s this place close to mine I just discovered. Kinda quirky, a bit weird. You’d like it. The coffee is awful, but the guy who runs it is one attractive piece of—” Jakob raises a brow at him. “Okay, shutting up.” He sighs. “Scoot over.”

  Kicking off his shoes, throwing his jumper into the corner and lifting the duvet, Mathieu crawls into the bed. He feels Jakob’s shoulder blades protruding against his chest and the contour of his ribs when his hands brush Jakob’s sides to hug him close. Jakob is such a weak and lifeless body in his arms that Mathieu has to bite his lips to suppress his own desperation.

  “I saw this documentary once,” Jakob tells him with a tight voice, well into the night after neither of them has found sleep in hours. “About war veterans who’d lost limbs in combat. They’d lost arms and legs and yet—they’d still feel pain where that limb used to be. It’s called phantom pain.” It sounds hollow in the dark room. Mathieu touches his forehead to Jakob’s neck.

  “It sort of feels like that, you know?” he continues. “There’s something missing. I can’t remember, but I know it was there and now that it’s not—” He breaks off, and they descend into silence once again.

  If Jakob has a temper, then Mathieu has a lot more of one, and sometimes he’ll get so frustrated he’ll start yelling without really meaning to.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know!” Jakob will shout back at him, desperate and annoyed with himself.

  “Are you just saying that because you don’t want to tell me?” He’ll ask tiredly. “Or do you really not know?”

  Then Jakob will sigh, and his shoulders will slump, and Mathieu will feel like an asshole.

  “I just don’t know.”

  And that’ll be the end of that.

  * * *

  A cup of coffee is placed in front of him.

  “What’re you writing?”

  Mathieu glances up from the bright screen of his laptop. Brath is only wearing a t-shirt again, despite it being January and cold outside. In big, bold letters it says Which day did God make all the fossils? on it. He feels his mouth twitch in amusement as Brath sits down opposite him, a soft twinkle in his incredibly dark eyes and if Mathieu were to write about them, he’d probably mention that they seem to absorb every flicker of light in the room.

  “I’m just doing some rendering,” he replies. “I write books, and my editor wants this printed and published by the end of the month.”

  “Hm,” Brath hums, toying with the hem of his shirt, exposing a sliver of pale skin for a fraction of a second, yet it still makes Mathieu’s throat go dry.

  “So I guess I’m safe to assume you’re quite the expert on stories.”

  Mathieu shrugs. “I wouldn’t say, expert. But they sell.”

  “Have you come to a verdict on mine?” Brath asks and leans in, elbows on the table and Mathieu finds himself staring at his hands for a few moments. For some reason, he’d expected them to be slim and delicate, slender much like Brath’s frame, considering his narrow shoulders and hips and the way he can roughly see his collarbones looming through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. They’re small, yet sinewy and strong, like—like they could wield a sword and Mathieu isn’t sure where that thought suddenly comes from.

  He clears his throat. “Very entertaining. You sure have a hand for them. But I think I have to hear more about it to pass my judgment.”

  “No,” Brath declines with a smile and Mathieu has a second to feel disappointed before he goes on. “I think it’s your turn to tell me one.”

  “Well,” Mathieu blinks in surprise. “What do you want to hear?”

  Brath’s lips part to reveal a line of immaculately white teeth. “You can tell me whatever you want,” and maybe Mathieu is in over his head already—probably—and maybe he's hearing things, but somehow, it sounds like a promise.

  He swallows thickly, awkwardly, and notices that there are two pairs of eyes watching them. The dark-eyed barista with the ever present smile and another guy, considerably taller, wearing an apron, a smudge of chocolate on his forehead. They see Mathieu looking at them, but they don’t avert their gazes as normal people would, they just keep on staring, and Mathieu forgets to be freaked out by that.

  Brath shifts, tilting his head as he waits, baring his neck. Usually, Mathieu is a pretty able flirter, confident and smooth, but Brath is already turning out to be infinitely different from anyone Mathieu would normally go for, so he guesses it makes sense that he feels out of his comfort zone.

  “Well,” he says again, and thinks, smooth Mathieu, really smooth, and flexes his hands, runs his fingers along the seams of his jeans. “I write fiction. Don’t really stick to one particular genre, but I guess most of my books could be considered gory. So I don’t know if they are good stories.”

  There’s a wicked edge to Brath’s expression now. It makes Mathieu’s spine tingle. “Oh, gory is always good,” he says. “But since you’ve finished that one,” and he points to Mathieu’s quietly humming laptop, “How about you tell me about the next one?”

  He’s about to kindly decline, since—well, he never tells people about his ideas, not even Jakob. But Mathieu finds the words coaxed out of his throat before he’s even finished his thought.

  “I just thought about blurring the lines a little, between what’s real and what’s not. And I don’t know how I came up with it, and it’s probably stupid, but it just came to me, and I can’t get it out of my head,” and he wants to stop right there, but Brath silently urges him on. “The main idea is this: a man wakes up in the middle of the night, and he has no recollection as to who he is and where he is from. He starts wandering around the city and discovers that he is being followed and throughout this night, as he walks, he gains a brief memory at a time. The closer his follower gets, the more elaborate details he remembers, vague stories, he never knows if they’re actually true. And in the end, the pursuer catches up with him, and he remembers that he fell from the sky.” He pauses as Brath’s brows rise slightly and has a sip of his lukewarm coffee. “It won’t be revealed who actually chased him; if it was a regular person, an evil spirit, or just his own imagination.”

  Brath hums. He does that a lot, Mathieu registers. Then he says, “How very intriguing,” and it sounds honest, although Mathieu isn’t quite sure if he should believe that.

  “Nah, I suck at this,” he utters. “I’m better at writing than storytelling. And saying it out loud, it just sounds weird.”

  But Brath keeps smiling and sitting opposite him in that ridiculous shirt, and it occurs to Mathieu that he’s probably falling. Hard and fast.

  * * *

  Soon after that, Mathieu finds himself dividing his time between Jakob’s apartment and Brath’s coffee shop. He gets most of his editing done, but of course, his agent sends it back, tells him to shorten it a little and whatnot, so he carries his laptop a
round and types whenever he has time for or feels like it.

  Jakob continues to worry him, and the fact that there is absolutely nothing Mathieu can do to change that, keeps him up at night, which is why he continues to drink the most horrendous coffee he’s ever had. Seeing Brath on an almost daily basis—well, that’s definitely a plus. He’s fascinated, simple as that, because, in spite of their regular chats, Brath doesn’t reveal much about himself (to be fair, Mathieu doesn’t reveal much about himself either, but that’s beside the point).

  He spins tales around Mathieu’s head, detailed and intricate; stories about ancient kingdoms and lost cultures and he does so with a wicked smile, teasing, always teasing and if Brath is aware of the effect he has on Mathieu, then it’s downright cruel. He wears t-shirts with weird slogans, always somewhat offending religious themes, and Mathieu wonders what the hell is up with that. But considering that Brath employs two freaks that barely talk, only stare and can’t make coffee—or bake for that matter—it’s probably not the weirdest thing about him.

  Mathieu is having a particularly shitty day (his boiler breaks, resulting in a cold morning shower) when he meets Perry for the first time. He walks into the coffee shop sometime in the afternoon, ready to sit down in his usual seat, ready to soak up Brath’s company, when he finds an incredibly tall and lanky guy in his armchair. He’s got the brightest pair of blue eyes Mathieu has ever seen and probably the goofiest smile too. And he stares at him with as much open interest as the guy who regularly ruins his coffee.

  It makes Mathieu turn on his heels and find another table to finish his work at. A brief glance to the counter tells him that Brath’s not there; neither is the other guy (Keith, Mathieu keeps reminding himself, Brath had said his name was Keith). The one who usually sets the kitchen on fire is leaning on his elbows, looking at him with a serene smile. Mathieu coughs.

  Well, this is awkward, he thinks, sets down his bag and walks over. “Can you manage a decaf?” He asks, his forehead in frown lines.

  “Brath’s not here,” the guy says.

  Mathieu blinks. “That’s not what I asked. I just asked for a decaf.”

  “It’ll be right over,” the other guy winks, wipes his floury hands on his striped apron and fumbles with the espresso machine. His touch is much more practiced and what comes out at the end of it, placed in front of Mathieu while he slides over some change, looks and smells much more like the coffee Mathieu knows and loves.

  “Thanks,” he mutters, turns around and finds the tall guy sitting at his table now, looking at him expectantly. Mathieu stops short. “This isn’t funny, you know?” He tells him, growing impatient with annoyance and puts his cup down on the table with force, sitting down. “Do you mind? I’ve got things to do.”

  Mathieu tries to be friendly about it. Mostly because Jakob always tells him to be friendlier, because he always goes on about how one should treat others like one would like to be treated. But the guy doesn’t budge an inch, just keeps sitting and keeps staring and so Mathieu stares back to spite him, friendliness be damned, but this is some intrusion of privacy. They stay that way for roughly a few minutes, Mathieu guesses, and he’s not proud to admit that he snaps first. “What?” he asks, almost barks. “Did you escape some mental institution?”

  The guy moves, shrugs, smiles as if Mathieu had just asked him how he was doing. “Nah, just visiting Brath,” and Mathieu admits that suddenly, it all makes a little more sense. He should’ve known that Brath collects these nutcases like marbles. He doesn’t have to understand why Brath seems to have taken a liking with taking in weird strays or having weird friends. Mathieu absentmindedly wonders what that says about him.

  “Good for you. Still, what do you want? I need to work.”

  His teeth are unnaturally white. “Oh, go on, don’t mind me,” he grins. “I’m Perry, by the way.”

  Mathieu asks himself when he took a wrong turn in his life and says, “I do mind. Perry.”

  That seems to finally deflate his enthusiasm a little and Perry gets up and mutters, “Brath lied. You’re no fun at all.” Then he saunters over to the kitchen. “Hey, Gareth, what kind of devilish treats are you making today?” And the door falls shut behind him.

  Mathieu sighs and gets on with work.

  * * *

  “Is he an ex?” Mathieu asks Brath the next time he sees him. “Because he’s annoying as hell, but also freakishly good-looking and I guess I’d understand. Not that it’s my business.”

  Brath blinks at him for a moment. There’s some icing sugar on the corner of his mouth from the pastry he’s been forced to try, and it’s driving Mathieu crazy that he can’t stretch out his arm and wipe it off.

  “My ex is dead,” he says then, and Mathieu feels like a dick.

  “Oh. What happened?”

  “Tragic accident,” Brath replies.

  “I’m sorry,” Mathieu says because it’s polite.

  4

  Brath

  Brath remembers the day Lucifer fell. He remembers the war in heaven and slaying his own brothers because his Father had commanded it and Brath hadn’t known about choice back then. What Brath wants to remember are pain and agony—what he does remember are emptiness and complete indifference. Now he finds it ironic that he’d never noticed how perfectly thought out He had been in His creation of their kind. Brath had obedience plastered onto his soul before he’d opened his eyes for the very first time. He’d been unable to question and scrutinize.

  Lucifer had been the first to doubt. Lucifer, the morning star, the shining one, the unmatched favorite. Brath can’t recall the exact wording of the matter, he hadn’t been made to pay attention to anything that wasn’t his concern, but now he would probably say that Lucifer called their Father out on his bullshit. That he’d dared to demand answers and justice and an explanation as to why he’d been created for no other purpose than to serve—serve and worship those inferior things He’d given the entire world to.

  It had opened Brath’s eyes.

  As much as Lucifer had always been their Father’s favorite until his fall—Brath had been his. “So very talented, baby brother,” he used to say to him. “Such an agile mind, such an inspiring soul. And what a waste,” and he’d stroked a finger down Brath’s throat, leaving a sensation behind he hadn’t known until this moment. “You shouldn’t serve anyone. You were destined to rule.”

  Lucifer had planted the seed of doubt, and Brath guesses some could argue that he could be the one held responsible for Brath’s own downfall. But Brath doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t blame himself either.

  He blames their Father. He blames the rats that He values above all of them.

  Since Brath fell, he’s been down in the abyss. First involuntarily, then because he’d wanted to. It’s how he picked up Keith and Gareth. It’s how he’d found Lucifer, or rather, what’s still left of him and all their brothers who’d fallen with him. It’s frightening, even to him, to see what the abyss turns perfect souls into. Once in a while, Brath will wonder if he should tell Keith and Gareth how they’d been before, who they had once been, because they don’t remember much of it, but then Brath decides that it’s a good thing they don’t.

  He sighs and lets his fingertips drum against the shiny surface of the countertop he’s sitting on in the kitchen. The air is thick with dust and dim light and clouds of flour. It smells burnt, and Brath thinks that it faintly reminds him of the abyss.

  Gareth is getting scarily good at this though, and Brath has to admit it to himself. He’d nicked the last piece of cheesecake the day before, and maybe he’s starting to understand why they’d picked this place and maybe he’s starting to resent it a bit less.

  But Brath’s having a bad day and he doesn’t have many good ones, no amount of pastries Gareth pushes his way will change that, and sometimes he wants to set this city on fire and burn it down to the ground.

  Sometimes Brath hates the world. He hates it and the scum that inhabits it.

  * *
*

  Keith is cold. His hands are freezing, and Brath doesn’t particularly like the feeling, but after a couple of thousand years already, he is used to it, and he doesn’t mind it so much anymore. Keith is draped over his back, fingers playing with the hem of Brath’s t-shirt, icy breath close to his ear. It’s the middle of the night, and they’re perched on the very top of the Sagrada Família. If Aleksander is really watching Brath’s every move, he might as well spite him a little.

  “They’re really simple though, aren’t they?” Keith asks, and Brath needs a moment to remember what they’d been talking about before. “Why do you bother with them?”

  Brath looks up at the sky, full of clouds, sniffs the air and wonders if he could make it snow. “They can be entertaining,” he answers. “If you know what to do with them. I can appear in their dreams, and I can make them believe certain things, I can twist their minds into whatever I want them to be like.”

  “Is that what you’re planning to do to Mathieu?”

  Brath pauses for a thought and then says, “You know, most cherubs and seraphim are incredibly dull too. Only a few have managed to be more than just a simple tool He can utilize. There are even fewer people whose minds are too complex to be easily manipulated. You have to find other means to engage them for your own purpose.”

  Keith’s lips are like ice against the skin behind his ear as he whispers, “and what are those other means?”

  Brath quietly laughs, angles his head to meet Keith’s eyes over his shoulder. They are shining in a blistering black, holding the depths of Hell. “I think you know,” he says and makes them disappear into thin air.