Yes, I broke every rule in the book.
No, I wasn’t being rebellious.
Reckless,
stupid,
head-over-heels in love,
but not rebellious.
Yes, I sneaked out of the house
to fly with her in the dead of night
when all the good angels were asleep.
No, I wasn’t doing it to prove anything.
I just wanted to fly with my girlfriend.
Yes, I went against everything you ever taught me
and made my vows with the wrong person.
A rebel,
a demon, 
a woman.
No, I’m never backing down.
I’m not a rebel.
I’m being honest.
I love her.
The end.

--

So Aster wrote a poem.

I wasn't aware it was going to be a poem until she split the third sentence over four lines, and then suddenly it was a poem.

The yes/no thing makes me giggle.  And I love that the rebel/demon/woman thing is progressing through "worse" attributes.

Aster was stealing my drink all night, despite the burning sensation that made her shudder with every sip.  Maybe I should’ve stopped her, but I was too curious.

I was disappointed until a minute ago.  Didn’t think an angel could hold liquor like that.  Just two girls sitting on the rooftops looking at the stars and trading swallows from a plastic cup sometimes.

Everyone has a breaking point though.

She tastes like alcohol, but cold and sweet underneath.  Sharp enough to clear the fog from my head and deep enough to drown me.

I think I like when Aster’s drunk.

One.  Two.  Five.

Seven hours late, she crash-lands on the roof outside my window.  I throw it open and drag her inside.  She swallows a scream just enough to lower it to a dull shriek.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I hiss.  “Keep it down or my parents will wake up!”

I flick on the light and choke.  Her skin is purple over the brown, her lips bloody, her wings look ghastly.

“Help me...”

Diana never asks for help.  I start to clean her up, crying.

“Who... Why?”

“They found out.”  She smiles a little.  “You’re worth it.”

We’re lying on our backs with our eyes shut, fingers twined between us.

“The conference is this week,” Aster says softly.  “I’m eighteen; I get transferred this year.”

That’s right.  I’d forgotten. “Shouldn’t you be packing?”

She snorts.  “For what? Prissy teenagers, stuffy adults?  I’m not going.”

I open my eyes, shocked.  “Not going?  To the very important conference in heaven where you officially become a full adult angel?  Are you insane?”

She sits up and leans over me, her face serious.  “I don’t need to go anywhere.  You are my heaven.”

Then she kisses me, and my heart melts.

Needle flashing, weaving through and through the strands.  Around and around, circles within circles.

“What are you doing?”  Diana rests her arms across my back and leans over my shoulder, breath tickling my neck.

I string a bead onto the thread for the next pass.  “Making you a dreamcatcher.”

“What will it do?” 

 “Protect you from the nightmares.  I need a feather.”  She combs her fingers through her wings and comes up with a loose one.

One of hers, four of mine.  I tie them on at the end and pin it over her bed.

“You’re safe tonight,” I whisper.

--

This is one of those where the scene really could've been written in way more than a hundred words, and is pretty incoherent in only that many.  But apparently it was nice, so that's good enough for me.

White feathers swallowed me up, pale arms snug around my waist.  Hers was the best sort of embrace, soft and clingy.

I dropped a kiss into her hair, then one against her temple.  Braver now, a kiss on her cheekbone, the corner of her jaw.  She didn’t stop me this time.  Perhaps the boundary had moved?

I kissed her nose playfully to break the tension.  She giggled, her eyes shy.

“What does that face mean, my little angel?”

The slight tilt of her head was answer enough.  So the boundary had moved.

When my lips met hers, she was smiling.

--

Squishy drabble.

I had originally intended to write about an event farther down the road, but a bunch of people I didn't know very well turned up and I decided to play it safe.

There are so many ways to write their first kiss.  This is one of the cuter ones.

Blood rushing, hands outstretched, a perfect streamlined point above my head.  Tuck myself in and flip off the back end, shooting out again for another lap.

Cold stings my eyes and scrubs my chapped skin, but my time is improving.  Next time, I’ll beat her.  Next time, I won’t make myself a fool.  Next time, I’ll finish the race.

One more turn, can’t slow down now.  Feathers whip past my face as I draw in my wings for the turn and snap them out again.  Beating, gasping, reaching.  My fingers brush the tile.

Not fast enough.  Tomorrow, I’ll do better. 

--

And once again, I take the prompt and run in precisely the opposite direction.  I am utterly hopeless.

I do really like this, though.  I like how energetic it is, the urgency and rush.  I love how it reads as a swimmer until you hit "feathers" and "wings", and then your brain sort of scrambles to reassemble your mental image because oh, no, she's flying.

And a flight race resembling a swimming race is just a cool concept.

Only idiots think the world is never black and white.  Mine is.

My world is held in by a canopy of black and white feathers, her wings and mine arched over our heads, hiding our whispers, giggles, and stolen kisses.

Her white fingers lace securely through my black ones, clinging to me.  Trusting, confident, beautiful, everything she makes me feel as well.  Like she’s my reflection with the colors switched, or the yang to my yin.

Maybe the world out there is grey.  But in here, it’s black and white.

Only idiots think angels and demons can’t love each other.

--

I asked for this prompt because I wanted to write something adorable with it, and this is the best I could come up with.  I'm only a little bit frustrated that you can read this one as a male/female pairing, because I kind of enjoy that you have to be familiar with the characters to read it as it's supposed to be.

I think it's funny that their society is completely built on black and white.  These are the blacks, these are the whites, and that's how it is.  And yet Diana takes it a completely different path, taking the idea of "black and white" into a grey area where no one else dares to go.

And then saying in a surprisingly subtle way, what I'm doing is the obvious decision for me; how can you not see it.

She keeps glancing over her shoulder.  I know she knows I’m there.  I don’t care.

I saw her shut off her phone.  I know she’ll tell me the battery died.  I don’t care.

She’s not really mine, it’s just... a game?  I know she has every right.  I don’t care.

I don’t care.  But I’m there anyway, hidden in the shadows, watching.  Not missing anything.  Does she know I’m there?

I don’t care.  I have to know what she does that she won’t tell me about.  And I know, now.

Tears drip into my hands.

I lied.  I do care.

--

These two again.

No, I have no idea what Diana is doing.  Yes, I feel immensely bad for Aster.  She's completely failing to convince herself that she's okay with whatever is going on.  She's still unarguably an angel.

I'm pretty sure I was frustrated with my own partner when I wrote this.  But not for any reason like it.

Diana made a face.  “How can you eat something that melts in your mouth?”

“How can you eat something so absurdly dense?”  Aster shoved her plate of dark chunks toward Diana.  “You may keep your foodge; I don’t want this demon’s concoction.”

“That’s ‘fudge’, my dear girl.  And anyway I don’t want your ‘linen candy’ either,” Diana shot back dryly, popping a fudge square into her mouth.  She glanced at Aster mischievously. “This stuff is definitely good for one thing though.”

“What’s that?”

Diana leaned close and whispered in her ear, “The sweetest kisses imaginable...”

Aster quickly discovered she agreed.

--

Thus starts my fixation on Aster and Diana.  I didn't realize I'd never written a drabble for them before.  They've been around a while.

I think the idea of angels and demons having different tastes in sweets is an intriguing one.  And I think it's cute that although Aster doesn't like the fudge alone, she's readily fond of the chocolate-flavored kisses Diana offers.

In the original draft of this drabble, by the way, Aster snatches the cotton candy back from Diana's hands.  A very un-Aster-like move that underscores just how demonic she's getting under Diana's influence.