fallingstarnovel

[fallingstarnovel]

NASA

[fallingstarnovel]

Chapter Nine

"Uh, hi," Evan said.

Ashlin didn't say anything in return, so Evan barrelled on nervously.

"I'm Evan. I should have introduced myself, haha... um. Did you... overhear...?"

Ashlin slowly nodded. Her pale eyes were bloodshot and bleary, which gave them a filmy, glossed over kind of look. Maybe Evan could convince her she was having auditory hallucinations due to lack of sleep?

"It's nice to meet you," he added, because awkward silences made him compulsively want to fill them.

"I recognise you," Ashlin said, eyebrows drawing together.

Evan nodded eagerly. "We're in the same class as Aliya. I've seen you there too."

"No. I've seen you in my dreams."

...

Evan deflated in his chair. Why couldn't he make friends with normal people? "Oh. That's... nice."

"I saw you making a cup of coffee."

Time came to a standstill, digging its feet into the ground and refusing to go no further. Evan went perfectly still. When he next spoke, it was casual, obviously so. "What do you mean?"

Instead of answering him, Ashlin picked up a pen and started drawing on the paper beneath her, tracing circles around circles in long black loops. "I don't think it means anything. It's just a dream I had. There's nothing special about making a cup of coffee."

"Oh," Evan said, like his hands weren't gripping onto the chair beneath him, white knuckled. He forced them to relax. "That's a boring dream to have about someone."

"Isn't it interesting?" she continued. "You looked so unhappy. Stirring and stirring and stirring..."

Evan felt his breath catching sharp in his chest. "Have we met before?"

Ashlin considered this, giving him another filmy look. "No. No, we've never met. Oh, you look unhappy again. I have a nicer dream if you want it."

Warily, Evan nodded. Ashlin began drawing more intensely, hand swirling around and around on the paper, though she wasn't even looking at it.

"I saw night walking through a meadow wearing her cloak of stars. You were following behind her, your eyes glass, on three legs, too afraid to touch. I saw you gather the courage and pluck a star right off her cloak." She yawned, her head drooping. "And then I saw you put it to your mouth. Did you eat it or did you kiss it? It was so interesting... I just wanted to keep watching..."

With that, her head fell on the desk again. Evan jumped in surprise.

Did she just fall asleep again? Just like that? And did that even count as a nicer dream?

He poked her, but she just murmured and let out a long breath from her nose. It was then Evan realised his hands were shaking.

It was fine. It was just a weird dream this girl had! Obviously she ate too much cheese before bed time. Or she was on shrooms.

It felt rude to leave her there alone, especially when Aliya had booked out the study room, and it wasn't like she was disturbing him, so Evan ended up staying there and getting some work done after all. It was better to focus on his studies than to think about... literally anything else.

Evan could not stop thinking about it.

He did literally the bare minimum of work, before bailing and heading to the nearest café for something sugary.

Ashlin's words kept knocking around his head and catching him off guard. Not just her weird dreams – though they were scary enough – but everything else too. Like the fact that there was a simple solution all along.

While he waited in line for a pastry and some hot chocolate, he sent off a text to Ruth.

> hey ruth sorry to bother you! i just had a quick question

The response took a little while this time. Evan was already sitting at a table with his order when Ruth finally replied.

You're not bothering me. <

> heh sorry

> but um anyway, question!

> today i heard that curse marks can get removed through being blessed, is that true?

Another long gap. Evan drank his cocoa and ate his pastry and didn't feel any better for it when Ruth next replied.

Sometimes. Where did you hear this? <

> well this is actually a very funny story!

> you're going to laugh

> i accidentally ended up studying with the demon from yesterday

These responses were very quick.

Did she hurt you. <

I am not laughing. <

Did she hurt you in any way. <

> no it was fine!! don't freak out, sorry, i probably should have opened with the fact nothing bad happened...

> but anyway yeah, blessing! why didn't we try that out last night?

> we should give it a go, right?

It might not work. <

> let's try anyway. i mean, i thought being blessed was a good thing! so even if it doesn't work at least i'll be full of good vibes and stuff!

> maybe we can try it out tonight?

There was a long delay, so long that Evan had finished his drink and left the café by the time he got the response.

Something came up. I can't come over tonight. <

Oh. Oh.

Well, that was fine. Evan blinked down at his phone, firmly ignoring his first reaction – which was childish and stupid, and tasted a little like betrayal.

> haha that's fine! maybe another night then :)

I'm sorry. <

> why are you apologising haha? these things happen, don't feel guilty!!!

I said I would be there for you. <

He did say that, didn’t he? But even Evan didn’t take it that seriously. He knew better than to expect someone to actually be there as much as they said they would be. Life was too complicated - something more important always came up. Always.

Anyway.

Since Ruth was busy, Evan could entertain himself. And he didn’t need an angel to bless him! There were churches full of people who could give blessings, right?

His mind made up, Evan pulled out his phone and started looking up nearby churches to visit.

Evan hovered in front of the church doors, too hesitant to actually cross the boundary and enter past the threshold. The doors were huge, made of old black wood, and were studded with iron nails - they looked like they were designed to withstand a siege.

There was a smaller door cut into the wood that visitors could enter through. Inside was too dark to see. Evan listened, but he couldn’t hear a sermon or a service or whatever.

He just had to go in, find a priest, and ask for a blessing.

…

He couldn’t do it.

It was too embarrassing, and there was a huge chance that whoever he tried to tell about his curse mark would think he was insane. Curse marks? Angels? Demons studying in the library?

His own memories of going to church were vague and unhelpful. Hard wooden pews, his feet dangling in the air, and an unbelievably tall vicar droning in the pulpit about… something to do with a ribbon wrapped around an orange. He wanted to eat the communion wafers because they looked like biscuits, but he was never allowed.

Not helpful at all. He should have paid more attention back then. Now he had an actual, practical reason to listen!

But Evan had never been back to church, not for a long time.

He took a deep breath and edged through the door, entering into the cool, dark interior. The inside was… surprisingly modern. Light wooden floors and caramel wood pews with pleasant cushions. Spotlighting on the dais and the pulpit.

A horrible electric thrill ran down his back, congealing over where he knew the mark was. It tingled and sparked, like it knew it was in dangerous territory.

Evan swallowed, and crept forward a step. There were one or two people sitting in pews, heads bowed in silent prayer. Before he met Ruth, Evan would have felt terrible coming into somewhere like this, where people were actively worshipping, while being somewhat indifferent to the concept of God. Like he was a sinister interloper hiding in a flock of sheep.

Now, though, he had rather pressing and deeply personal reasons to be here.

Evan started sweating as he tried to figure out his next move. He really didn’t feel like he was supposed to go deeper into the church, as if the closer he got to the pulpit, the stronger the feeling of imposter syndrome would be.

When an older woman in a dark shirt with a customary white dog collar appeared out of a nearby door, Evan made accidental eye contact with her and immediately regretted it. She smiled at him and made her way over - but Evan took a few steps back. Old, uncomfortable feelings were pressing down on him again, things he felt long long before he came to university.

“You look a little lost,” she said kindly.

Evan tried to make his mouth work. “No, I’m… I need… Can you…?”

As her smile turned into a confused frown, Evan flinched, before hurriedly tripping over his own feet in his haste to get away. He spilled out of the church and onto the pavement, strangely out of breath and flushed red with mortification.

The sun seemed very bright out here compared to inside. He was so distracted that he didn’t notice that he was about to bump into someone until it was too late: he and the stranger went sprawling.

“I’m so sorry,” he blurted out on autopilot. “Shit, are you okay - wait, you!”

The stranger he had knocked over was no one other than… hm. Evan had forgotten their name. Tree? Rock? Branch? No, it was probably Rock, right?

Rock was lying on the ground. When they saw Evan, they scrambled to their feet, eyes darting around nervously. “Hey,” they said, laughing awkwardly. “Evan. Didn’t see you coming out of… church.”

Their voice lilted curiously as they saw the doorway Evan just rocketed out of. Feeling very self conscious about the woman inside, Evan darted back onto his feet and held out a hand to steady Rock. “Yeah, I was trying to get blessed.”

Rock blinked. “… what? Why?”

“Because of this stupid tattoo,” he blurted out, and then sighed. “Someone told me to try blessing it, and now that I say it out loud, it sounds weird as hell.”

Rock slowly shook their head. “No, it doesn’t sound stupid at all. The tattoo you were asking me about, right?”

“Right.” Evan tried not to crumble with embarrassment. He probably sounded half crazy. “I thought about asking the vicar here, but I got a little nervous. They’d probably just tell me to stop pulling a weird prank on them if I asked.”

Rock was looking at Evan with a searching gaze, their eyes roaming over his face. They frowned for a second, before seeming to realise something.

“I know a priest,” they said hesitantly. “Someone who has experience with… well, it’s a curse mark, isn’t it?”

“Apparently,” Evan said helplessly. “I still don’t think it’s real, but I trust the person who told me. Wait, you know about curse marks?!”

Rock nodded. “You’re right to be cautious. It may be an ordinary tattoo. But let’s just say I’ve witnessed a curse before. I know they’re real. And this priest can tell us if it’s something you need to worry about or not.”

Taken aback, Evan looked at Rock with new eyes. He thought he was the only person who had experienced the supernatural, and yet Rock was apparently totally up to speed with the concept of curses. What the fuck? Was everyone around him getting cursed or blessed or followed by devils all the time, and he was just too oblivious to notice?

It was possible. After all, he point blank tried to tell Aliya that her study buddy was a demon, and she still didn’t get it. Was he just like that before an angel came along and opened his eyes to the truly abnormal things happening all around him?

“Okay,” he said hesitantly. “If you could, I would really appreciate seeing a priest. Does he. Does he have experience with. Um. Demons and stuff.”

Rock nodded. “Yes. Lots of experience. He travels around doing exorcisms and sermons, all hush because Big Church hates him. You know how it is.”

Evan, who did absolutely not know how it was, nodded and pretended he understood. “Well, lead the way.”

Rock guided them both through the city, down the sloping roads to what Evan recognised as one of the night club quarters. Now in day time, it was quiet and seedy, hemmed in by tall buildings with oppressively uninteresting entrances.

At night, this place was wall to wall with drunk students and youthful locals who wanted to find cheap booze and loud music. Or so Evan had heard.

Rock stopped outside of what might have been a shop front a long time ago. Evan looked up and examined the peeling name painted above the dusty windows.

“… the Blue Angel?” he said quizzically.

Rock shrugged. “Gotta let your clientele know where you are somehow, right?”

They knocked on the door. After a long minute, there was a rattle, and then the door creaked open. An older woman peered at them, her wrinkled mouth pursing in disapproval, but then she stepped aside.

She gave a particularly dirty look to Evan, letting out a judgemental sniff when he walked past. She disappeared into the gloom, leaving them alone in an empty bar that smelled of stale beer and alcopops. The floors were horribly sticky. It felt like they were loathe to let shoes leave their surface, clinging on with disgusting tenacity.

Bemused, Evan swapped a look with Rock, who just chuckled. “You should see this place on a Monday night. Pandaemonium. Alright, follow me.”

Crossing the room, they went down a very steep set of stairs into a basement with a low ceiling. Evidently this place, as damp as it was, was also busy on Monday nights, because there was another bar and a DJ booth crammed into the gloom. The smell was even worse down here, like old hops and vinegar and eggy vomit. The substance that made the floor so sticky also appeared to be on the walls and ceilings, making them shine like a watery cave. Evan swore he spotted stalactites forming in corners of the room.

It was dark, but Rock didn’t seem unnerved. They confidently opened another door, with another set of stairs behind it. There were several signs saying “keep out” and “staff only”, which they ignored.

Jogging down the stairs, the eggy smell got worse, like stagnant water. Evan surreptitiously held his nose. “Are you sure he’s down here?”

“He’s always down here,” Rock replied confidently. “When you need him, he’s always down here. He just kind of knows.”

Perhaps it was a mistake following this person he barely met at a party he didn’t remember to a nightclub he had never visited to see a priest who was definitely banned from every church in the country. Evan was starting to get second thoughts, and he was considering politely excusing himself, when the stairs finally ended. There was another door. Rock rapped on it, and someone inside coughed and yelled, “come in lad”.

Feeling socially obliged to enter, Evan stepped through the door and into a small, dark room. A fluorescent office light flickered above, casting a harsh greenish glow on the only inhabitant of the room. It was a man, maybe in his sixties, with a patchy yellowing beard poking out from his strange cowl. He looked like he might have fallen out of a sixteenth century plague pit, if only he weren’t wearing a grubby pair of white trainers and sweatpants that had seen better days.

Notably, he wasn’t wearing a cross or a dog collar. Evan wondered if this was what priests looked like on their days off.

Rock peered from behind Evan, patting him on the shoulder before scurrying into the room.

“Listen, we’ve got a poor guy here with a big fuck off curse on his bum.”

Evan turned red. “It’s not on my-!”

The old man raised his eyebrows. “Does he now. And why hasn’t he been dealt with yet?”

“Because it’s…” Rock said, before coming to a nervous halt. “Evan, do you mind showing him?”

Maybe it wasn’t too late to go home. But fine. He needed this fixed, and he’d done worse for the doctor, so Evan undid his belt and lowered his jeans just enough to show off the tattoo on his lower back.

The old man whistled. “Bit extreme. Someone really wanted this particular little shit.”

“Hey!” Evan said, but they ignored him. Tree said, urgently, “yeah. Someone did. Someone we both know did.”

Since he was facing away from them, Evan thought they had both gone silent, but when he turned back around, they were staring at each other with the telltale wide eyed look of a pair that had been in the middle of an intense whispered conversation.

“Bugger,” said the old man, and then, “shit me. You’re not really doing it, are you?”

“You fucking kidding? He’d kill me,” Rock said, looking both excited and terrified. “No way I’m claiming that, either way. But a mark like that. What do you reckon he’d pay for its safe return?”

The old man huffed, and spat, and then grinned. “Fine. But you didn’t talk to me. And I want tax. I’m investing.”

“Fine. Deal. So you’ll do it?”

“Yeah yeah, keep your hair on.”

Evan had very much lost the plot. “You know what? This has been lovely, but I think I’m going to head out.”

Rock and the old man stared at him. The only door into the room slammed shut, and the light flickered overhead. Evan suddenly felt like something had stuck the soles of his shoes to the floor.

Oh no. He really should have just gone to that nice, normal church. Even if they laughed at him, he had a feeling he’d be in a better position than he was right now.

“Don’t worry lad,” said the old man, leering with a dreadful tombstone tooth smile, “there’ll be someone to catch you at the bottom. So don’t bite through your tongue. They always bites through their tongue.”

Evan stared at him in bewilderment, and then at Rock. “What’s going on? What are you…”

Rock’s eyes were gleaming. There was a low susurration, the light flickered again, and then a trap door opened up underneath Evan’s feet.

Rock and the old man vanished from sight as Evan dropped like a stone into the void below the floor.

He fell for a very long time.

author’s note: this really happened to me actually

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#chapter

[fallingstarnovel]

Chapter Eight

Evan felt his face turning every colour possible. First he went red, and then white, and then red again, and then possibly green, before he had to cough and look away.

“Well,” he said, scrambling for something to say in response. “That’s. Thank you.”

Ruth snorted gently. His wings faded away from view, and he seemed more like a normal boy again. “You don’t understand yet. That’s okay.”

Of course Evan didn’t understand! This was too insane to understand!

“Okay, okay, I get it,” he said, because he didn’t think he could take anymore explanation. “That’s. Good. Okay. But uh, this means that demons are real, then.”

“Yes.”

So hot goth girl really was a demon. Evan quickly latched onto that instead of thinking about how intense and handsome Ruth was while swearing allegiance...

His heart was suddenly beating so fast. He needed to calm down.

"Um... so Ophelia, uh, attacked me. I just don't understand what she wanted with me," he said, averting his gaze in case somehow Ruth could read his mind. Could angels read minds?

"The same thing all demons want," Ruth said. "A human soul."

"Oh." Evan blinked and thought about it. "Does it need to be a bad soul?"

"They don't care about if it's good or bad. A human soul is powerful no matter who it's from."

"But why do they want it?" Evan said, peeking up at Ruth in concern. "What does it do?"

Ruth wore a heavy expression for a moment. Quietly, he took the seat beside Evan again, and summoned a small amount of light in his loosely clenched fist. It shone like a star trapped in his hand. Evan stared at it in enraptured silence.

"Why do you think humans have souls, Evan?"

"... To decide who goes up to heaven and who doesn't?"

Ruth shook his head. "There's something in that, but again, that doesn't interest demons. Do you know what else the soul does? It powers the body." The light pulsed, but when he opened his palm, there was nothing there anymore. "Demons don't have souls. They're awful, twisted things running on old mechanisms. It makes them hungry. Makes them jealous. A human soul is so heavy and so full of everything, so unbelievably condensed – what a valuable thing to have. What a source of power to covet."

Evan put his hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat. "So she was trying to take it. My soul."

"Yes." Ruth slowly let his hand relax again, his blue eyes flickering sideways.

"By killing me?"

"That's one method, albeit a crude one."

Evan was trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Ruth was the kind of person who said "albeit" out loud, when he realised what was said. "She really was going to kill me... shit, too deep, never mind that, what are the other methods?"

"Not important."

Evan waited, but Ruth really didn't say anything else. "Shouldn't I know just in case someone tries to do it to me?"

"They won't," said Ruth with an air of finality. "I'll be there to stop them."

That made Evan shut up, his face turning pink for no good reason. Slowly, quietly, he rearranged his thoughts.

"Okay," he said quietly. "But what if you're not there one day?"

Ruth opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He stood up as if restless, turning his body aside like he was examining something across the room. Tall and slender, his blond hair trailing over the edges of his collar in little curls, he was for a moment unreadable.

"That's not possible," he said shortly. "I will always be there from now on."

That made something in Evan's chest hurt. People said that. They really believed it. Evan didn't hold it against them – and he didn't think Ruth was lying on purpose – but nobody ever really stuck around for good. Things changed. Life happened. People grew apart from each other. Everybody left, in the end.

He didn't want to think about it anymore, and he certainly didn't want to make Ruth feel bad by pointing out how unrealistic that was, so instead he just smiled to himself.

"I should make dinner," he said, instead of anything else he wanted to say. "I didn't eat while I was in the library. I'm going to try making onion soup."

"That sounds nice," Ruth said, still facing away and holding himself as still as a statue.

Evan couldn't help but chuckle a little. "... Would you like some?"

Ruth turned around fast, blinking at Evan like he really hasn't expected that at all. His face melted into a sunny smile. Too bright, way too bright, Evan needed sunglasses to look at it directly!

"I've never had soup before," he said. "I think I'd like to try it."

And so Evan led the way into the kitchen.

It didn't feel scary handing Ruth a knife this time. Now that he was sure that the guy wasn't a secret murderer, but in fact a literal servant of God here to protect him, Evan didn't mind letting him handle sharp objects in the kitchen.

They fell into a companionable silence as they went through the steps of cooking. The kitchen filled with the smell of onion and butter as Evan showed Ruth how to fry the ingredients in a pan.

Slowly, after adding salt and garlic, and slowly pouring in some cheap ready stock he bought from the shop, the soup started coming together.

"I wish we had some tiger bread to dip in it," Evan sighed with longing as he poured two bowls of soup. "But we'll have to make do with the normal stuff."

Ruth stared at him when he said this, before nodding. "I'll bring some next time."

To avoid spills, this time they sat on the floor together on cushions taken from the sofa. Evan leaned forward and watched with wide eyes as Ruth took his very first spoonful of soup.

The angel's eyes closed, and his mouth twitched around the spoon.

"It's good," he said once he had swallowed. "It's very good."

Evan sighed with relief. He knew it would be okay — soup was hard to get wrong — but knowing that this was someone's very first introduction put a lot of pressure on his cooking skills!

Around mouthfuls of his own bowl, Evan idly asked, "don't you eat anything up in - up there?"

Ruth took some bread, tearing it apart with his fingers in obvious fascination. His expression was oddly blank when he replied.

"Food is a frivolity to an angel. We're not humans. We don't need nutrients or hydration. The celestial body remains unchanging, ever perfect, each molecule in its exact place. So no, nothing gets eaten up there."

Evan winced. "That sucks. Or maybe it's fine – it must be nice to not be hungry."

"Not to be hungry," Ruth repeated, "nor thirsty, nor sad. To do nothing but witness and sing and be, no need, no famine, no want." His expression softened a little as he held up his spoon. "But it means an angel never gets to taste soup like this. Isn't that a shame."

With great relish, Ruth sipped at another spoonful. Evan watched with a wide smile, and wondered what he could cook for Ruth next time. Assuming there was a next time.

When the soup was finished, Evan and Ruth washed up the kitchen together. It was a lot easier to do with someone helping. Evan didn't want to admit it, but he was quite a messy person – he tended to leave pots unwashed and dirty dishes in the sink. It wasn't like anybody would complain anymore since he lived here alone, but with Ruth being his guest, he felt a little ashamed to leave things in the usual state.

After they finished, Ruth gathered his things up and went towards the hallway. Evan blinked, a hollow feeling in his chest.

"Oh. You're leaving?"

Ruth looked at him, head tilted to the side. "It's late. Aren't you going to sleep soon?"

"Ah, I guess – I thought you were going to stay longer – but it's okay if you need to leave!"

"I don't need to leave."

"Then..." Evan hesitated, glancing up the stairs. "Maybe you'd like to... stay over?"

Ruth froze in place, eyes going comically wide. "Huh?"

"It's just that, since my housemates aren't here, I have two spare rooms, so you can pick whichever you like," Evan said, ploughing on with the offer even though he was fairly sure he was coming on way too strong. It was just that he really didn't want this nice evening to end. And there were murderous demons out there who wanted to kill him, apparently, so sue a guy for being a little nervous!

"In... in your spare room," Ruth continued, his voice somehow relieved.

"Yeah, I wasn't going to make you sleep on the couch," Evan chuckled. "Wait, but, um. Only if you want to! I understand if you need to go back to, um, you know," he said while nodding upwards, "and deal with some business. But you're welcome here too."

Then he felt a little awkward, so he added, "sleepover!" in a fun, quirky voice, and then immediately regretted it. That was even more awkward. Wow.

There was a long silence. Ruth stared at him, before slowly letting out a melancholic sigh.

"I do have business to finish," he said. "I can't stay tonight."

Evan deflated. "Oh. That's fine." It was fine! Maybe Ruth really did have stuff to do. Either that, or he was politely making excuses not to stay over with this weird guy who was being way too enthusiastic about his spare rooms. Understandable! Evan would do the same in his position!

"... Maybe tomorrow night?" Ruth said after a moment.

"Ah, tomorrow? Yeah, yeah! I'm free tomorrow! And every night, I guess, haha, I don't really do a lot-" oh my god stop talking!! "- sorry, tomorrow, that's fine!"

With a quirk of his lips, Ruth looked pleased. "I'll find you in the evening."

"Wh – find me? Oh, because you're my guardian angel. You probably know where I am all the time, right?"

Another moment of silence, before Ruth stiffly shook his head. "I have your phone number."

...

Angels needed phone numbers to arrange meetings?

Before Evan could ask any more questions, Ruth was making his way to the front door again, and after a few more goodbyes, he left the house. Evan couldn’t help but watch him go, as usual. It was like he wanted to make the moment last until he had to be alone again.

With a sigh, he closed his front door and headed upstairs to his room.

Evan didn’t really want to leave the house the next day, but Aliya sent him a text in the morning inviting him to a surprise study session in the library. She managed to book a private room and, since those were both more rare and more valuable than any precious metal or gemstone you cared to name, he wasn’t about to pass up this chance.

He rolled into the room with a meal deal and a cup of coffee, ready to go, only to find two interlopers side by side with Aliya. The first was the sleepy girl he kept seeing in their lectures with her head on the desk, clearly snoozing through the entire class. She had black hair that was dip-dyed pale purple, and it spilled over the desk as she leaned against the surface, supporting her head in one hand. She gave Evan a curious glance and then yawned so wide he could see all of her teeth.

To Aliya’s right sat a horribly familiar figure. She was bandaged up and had two black eyes, her face blotchy and swollen in patches, but she was still wearing her black platforms and winged eyeliner.

“You!” they said in unison. Ophelia the demon stood up and pointed, but hissed as her injured arm jostled too much in its cast.

Aliya sat in the middle with her laptop and a stack of textbooks and notepads. She hummed in surprise as Evan and Ophelia stared at each other, unblinking.

“You know each other?”

“I have to go,” Evan said, turning on his heel and walking out the door.

He didn’t get very far away before Aliya chased after him, catching him by the shoulder and stopping him in his tracks. “Evan, wait! What’s wrong?”

One of the students in the nearby seats gave them a very pointed glare.

Evan hesitated. His palms were clammy and he felt sick. “I... why is Ophelia there?”

“Ophelia? She’s my friend. I met her during freshers. How do you know her?”

Evan paused. “I met her at a party.”

There was an awkward silence. The student to the side kept glaring at them. Aliya tilted her head, before gasping.

“Wait, Evan, did you have an awkward hook up with her?!”

“Hey!” said the student angrily. “Do you mind?”

They both quickly apologised and moved to the side, continuing the conversation in hushed whispers. Evan was somehow both bright red and horribly pale at the same time.

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?” Aliya hissed. “Don’t you like her? Did she stand you up? Did she ghost you?”

She tried to kill me! But Evan knew it sounded crazy. If he said that, Aliya would never believe him again. “She... I don’t think we like each other very much. We didn’t hook up!” Evan thought about it. They did kiss... but that wasn’t exactly a hook up! She just kind of attacked him with her mouth. “No, we didn’t hook up.”

Aliya stared at him. “You paused in a suspicious manner.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.” She gasped again. “Wait, that party? The one I bailed on?”

Again, Evan hesitated. “What about it?”

“When you got so drunk you couldn’t remember anything...”

There was a very suggestive tone in Aliya’s voice. Evan’s face scrunched up as he tried to work it out - and then he grimaced. “We didn’t do anything. I think we kissed? It’s not important, that’s not what this is about, she was just - she did some questionable things to me-”

Aliya was vibrating in place ever since he said “kissed”, but when he said “questionable things”, she instantly went still, eyes lighting up with understanding. “Oh. Did she threaten to kill you?”

This threw Evan for so much of a loop that he was basically performing aerial gymnastics. “Wh. What? Wait, you know? About her being...?”

Aliya nodded, her eyes huge. “I know.”

Holy shit. Aliya knew!

“That’s, that’s amazing, I thought I was the only one - but how can you stand to be around her? Aren’t you scared? I mean, isn’t it suspicious that she wants to hang out with you even though she isn’t in our class?”

Aliya held up her hand in denial. “I invited her, how is that suspicious?”

“Why?! She’s a demon!”

“Oh, Evan,” Aliya said with a sigh. “Don’t call her names! I know you’re upset but there’s no need to be rude. I’ve always known Ophelia is a huge asshole and a bully. We’re both very perceptive people, aren’t we? But don’t worry, I won’t let her get away with this. Do you want me to beat her up for you?”

Evan was, once again, utterly fucking baffled. “But she... how can you beat her? She’s a literal demon from actual Hell, isn’t that scary?”

“Evan! I love this new side of you, it’s so rude. You should keep doing it. But I’m not scared of her at all - she’s not actually from Hell or anything, and she’s kind of weedy, so I reckon I could have her in a fight. I did kickboxing when I was in high school.”

Deflating, Evan gave her a despairing look. Wait. So Aliya didn’t know. She thought he was just insulting her friend. “So she’s just... a regular human girl. Who threatens to kill people.”

“I wouldn’t say she’s regular, that’s for sure. It’s a bad habit. She doesn’t actually mean it. I’m trying to train it out of her.” Aliya thought for a moment. “I’ll have to wait to beat her up until she’s finished healing. She’s in a pretty nasty way after the motorcycle accident.”

“Motorcycle accident,” Evan repeated flatly.

Aliya sighed. “I know she’s a bit abrasive, but please stick around and study with me. I’m really desperate and I can make her buy us snacks. Please Evan? Please?”

They both turned and looked back at the study room. There was a small glass window in the door, and Ophelia was pressed right up against the glass, watching them with wide, round eyes. When she noticed them staring, she fell away and scrambled out of sight,leaving behind a little fog cloud on the window.

“I don’t want to,” Evan said bluntly.

“I’ll buy you a big bowl of fancy beef noodles at the expensive noodle restaurant with takoyaki if you teach me how to do the last set of equations the teacher gave us,” Aliya countered.

Evan shook her hand. “Deal.”

Inside the room, the sleepy girl had not moved, her eyes gazing down blankly at her note paper. Ophelia was perched on a chair, somehow both very nonchalant and incredibly obviously aware of Evan’s position at the same time.

Aliya took her seat again and launched into studying, bringing up the slides from the last lecture they had. Evan tried his best to stay attentive, but it was hard. The side of his face was burning from knowing that Ophelia had her big green eyes trained on it, unwavering and creepy and right in his peripheral vision.

Beef noodles... takoyaki... on someone else’s debit card...

As Aliya went on, the sleeping girl’s head landed on the desk with a thunk as she appeared to fall asleep. It made one of Aliya’s precariously stacked piles of textbooks fall on the floor.

“Oh my god, Ashlin! Oh, she’s out. Sorry, Evan, she works night shifts... wait a minute.”

Aliya slid off her chair and slipped under the table, leaving Evan and Ophelia alone with the sleeping girl, who was apparently called Ashlin. Immediately, Ophelia hissed, baring her fangs at him in full display, her pupils turning into thin slits as she leaned violently towards him.

“Where’s your guardian angel, Golightly?”

She whispered it quietly so Aliya couldn’t hear it, but even though it was quiet, it was dripping with sarcasm. Evan didn’t rise to it. He just gave her an unimpressed glance, pretending like he wasn’t sweating through his shirt. Leaning away imperceptibly, he whispered back, “why? Looking for a second round?”

“So brave now you have your little putto to hide behind, humanboy.”

“Is that a slur?” Evan glared at her. He was so anxious that it didn't even feel real anymore. It didn't matter what he said because every nerve was lighting up in sheer fuckery and his heart was pounding like a bass drum in a shitty disco. “Don’t be fucking rude. Want to die?”

“I’ll slurp your marrow up with my long tongue and feed the rest to my deadlings as scraps,” Ophelia growled, her eyes glowing like strange lanterns.

Evan nodded like that was acceptable. Thinking for a moment, he tilted his head before whispering amiably, “our Father, who art in Heaven, blessed be thy name-”

Immediately Ophelia started writhing and shaking her head, smoke coming from her bandages. The room heated up a few degrees and thick black hair was sprouting from her arms. Before things could go too far, Aliya picked up the last of the books and remerged from under the table. She took one look at Ophelia and Evan, before yelling “hey! Are you guys about to fucking fight?”

“He was casting curses on me!” Ophelia immediately snitched out.

“Evan, I understand Ophelia incites murderous rage in anyone who looks at her for more than five seconds, but can you please hold back from casting curses on people before this study session devolves into chaos?”

“She doesn’t make me feel murderous rage,” murmured Ashlin sleepily from her position face-down on the desk.

“She was threatening me!” Evan complained, pointing at Ophelia. “She said she wanted to drink my marrow!”

“Oh, ew.” Aliya looked both disgusted and intrigued. “Okay, don’t flirt with each other either. Don’t talk about marrow.”

“-mostly Ophelia makes me feel rage but not the murderous kind-”

“What do you think marrow is?” Evan asked, horrifyingly curious despite the current situation.

“I don’t know! I don’t want to know!”

“- sort of a low burn. A nice grill. Grill rage.”

Ophelia was still hissing incoherently. Aliya put her head in her hands and sighed.

“Okay, let’s take a little break. This is nothing. This isn’t studying. Ophelia, come with me on a little walk, okay?” When Ophelia seemed resistant, Aliya added, “I brought the spray bottle.”

“Not in the library,” Ophelia immediately spat out, getting up and following Aliya out the door. Before she went, she paused, and seemed to think of something. Her eyes narrowed as she turned around and gave Evan a slow smile. “Human, why don’t you ask your darling Ruth why he doesn’t just bless you and get rid of that tattoo, hm? Or is he just waiting for the opportunity to FU-”

Before she could say any more, Aliya’s hand reached back and yanked her out of the room.

What?

Mentally exhausted, Evan kneaded his eye with the palm of his hand. Oh, this had been a mistake. Upsides: somehow he hadn’t been killed, maimed or kissed again. Downsides: he was fairly sure his only friend on the course was somehow now involved with a murderous demon, which was dangerous, except... she seemed to have a handle on it? Maybe.

And then there were the weirdsides, like... what did Ophelia mean by blessing the tattoo? Would that work? In that case, since it was so simple, why didn’t they do it already? Angels could definitely bless things! It was like, the most basic angel power, probably!

And as for the rest of that sentence... well, whatever, it didn’t mean anything. Ophelia was just weird.

Taking a deep breath to calm his pounding pulse - he got so angry when he was anxious, holy shit, did he really ask if she wanted to die? - Evan let his hand drop. When he looked to the side, he jumped in place.

The sleepy girl, Ashlin, was no longer face-down on the desk. She was looking at him in intense fascination.

---

me thinking up names: yeah make them all start with vowels, genius manoevres

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#chapter

[fallingstarnovel]

Chapter Seven

There was no time to move, no time to duck or run away. All Evan could do was stare in horror as Ophelia reared back, raising a hand that was adorned with sharp, shiny black nails. This couldn’t be real.

None of this felt real. This just didn’t happen to nice boys like him! He didn’t get kissed in alleyways by scary girls, and those girls didn’t turn into nightmare monsters that wanted to bite him in half. He had to be dreaming.

Breathless and terrified, he could only cringe away as her sharp mouth came nearer. Her breath was hot on his neck, so hot it stung. The sulphur stench was clearing out his sinuses.

Ah, well. He was actually going to die this time, right? Kinda cringe.

Before those sharp teeth could do more than leave a scratch on his skin, there was a whistling sound from down the alley. Evan turned his head to see who it was coming from and to call for help, only to pause. It wasn’t a person. It was a blinding white light, coming so fast his eyes couldn’t focus, so fast it was making a whistling sound as it tore through the air.

Oh, shit. It was coming right towards them. Was that a fucking rocket launched missile?

The white thing collided with Ophelia at full force, with an impact that made Evan’s teeth crunch. It stuck in her side like an arrow - and then the light grew so strong that he instinctively closed his eyes, covering them with his hands. It was magnesium-bright, making his vision glow red between his fingers and behind his eyelids. It hurt.

Ophelia yowled like a burned animal. There was a series of thumps and crunches. When Evan cautiously opened his eyes again, there were overexposed blue-green smears everywhere from where his eyes had been overloaded, and he couldn’t quite see right in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he was sure he saw Ophelia dart sideways. She was hunched over all wrong and feral.

The alley was suddenly lit up. There was the slow approach of footsteps. Evan tried to see who was coming, but looking at that intense white light hurt too much. He had to raise his hands to cover his eyes.

“Hahaha, there you are,” Ophelia panted, her laughs coming out short like she was forcing them up manually from her lungs. “Hello again, little putto.”

Evan turned his head to try and get a look at who she was talking to - but then a warm, smooth hand covered up his eyes, and a quiet voice murmured, “be not afraid”. It sounded deep and familiar.

There was the sound of fabric and fur swiftly moving from place to place. “Hey, don’t ignore me,” Ophelia purred from slightly further away. “Why did you hurt me so bad? I was only playing with him.”

“Back, foul creature,” the mysterious person said. It sounded a lot like Ruth, except his voice was... more, somehow. Bigger.

“Oh, so that’s how we’re going to act.” Ophelia snorted. “As thou wilt, o fearsome angel. Are you here to smite me, hm? Here to play the good guy in front of the prey–?"

Her voice crumbled off with a snarl as another pulse of light burst from between the gaps in Ruth’s hand, so bright it hurt.

"Ruth?" Evan said curiously. "What's happening?"

The hand seemed to freeze slightly. Then, nonchalantly, too nonchalantly, Ruth said, "I'm just dealing with some vermin."

"Ruth?!" screamed Ophelia. She sounded out of breath, her voice moving swiftly around as more crunching gravel sounds rang out. It sounded like there was a really interesting fight happening between her and Ruth right now – if only Evan could see it. "Is that what you're calling yourself now? You cherubic little hypocrite..."

"Die already," Ruth said, which made Evan forget all about the fight, actually. Were angels allowed to say that? It seemed so blunt.

Evan thought he might be going into shock again, because he honestly didn't feel very surprised to learn that Ruth was probably a genuine bonafide angel. Actually, the most shocking part was learning that angels were nothing like he thought they were. There was a lot less choir music and soft gold lighting and white feathers, for starters. What kind of angel had light-beam missile powers and said "die already"?

This was too exciting not to look at. His eyes were still mottled with light burns, but he tore Ruth's hand away anyway and tried to figure out what was going on.

Ophelia was a black furred lump that jumped from wall to wall within the alleyway. She was being forced to avoid small balls of light, brighter than a firework and faster too. He gasped in awe – only for Ruth's hand to cover his eyes again.

“Don’t,” he said urgently. Evan just wanted to look even more than before.

There was a loud screech. It felt like there was a sudden, slow build of pressure in Evan’s ears, like when there was water stuck in them and he needed to pop them. Ruth’s hand left his face, so Evan could finally look up and see what was going on. He raised his head.

He found himself looking up into Ruth’s face. Every inch of his skin seemed perfect in a very cold, solid way, like someone had carved him out of marble with a delicate, loving hand. There was golden light pouring out of his eyes, no iris or pupil, just a blinding glow. Even his hair was glowing, just slightly, and the air around him seemed to teem with energy.

He had both of his arms raised, bracketing Evan and keeping him safe. Behind Evan, there was the sound of Ophelia snarling like a wildcat and the high pitched bat-whistle whine of light being thrown at her, but Evan couldn’t see that. All he could see was the dispassionate anger that Ruth was wearing, the curl of his lip, the unhuman symmetry of his face.

Now, this. This was more like it. This was more like what an angel should be.

“Wow,” said Evan quietly.

Ruth seemed to hear him. It snapped him out of whatever mood he had been in before, and there was a hint of panic on his face. He floundered for a second.

Suddenly, he pushed Evan’s head so that his face was smushed into the fabric on Ruth’s chest. Evan tried to push back, but the hand on the back of his head was stronger than him, so he was stuck. However, even when he closed his eyes, he could still see after-images of Ruth’s face seared into his retinas.

Another screech, and then Ophelia laughed, high and sarcastic: “fine, I get it. He’s your claim now. Fucking vulture, always picking off the best meat first!”

A scuffle, a scrape - and then everything was perfectly still. Evan waited for Ruth to release him, and wondered what was going on. At least Ruth smelled nice - like an incense he had never smelled before, a little smokey like a bonfire, warm and strong. Was this what angels smelled like?

He felt a bit light headed. He just sniffed an angel. That had to be against the rules somehow.

“... is she gone?” he asked curiously.

He felt Ruth shift. “... she’s gone.”

“Oh. Good.” Awkwardly, Evan patted Ruth’s shoulder. “You can let me go now, Ruth.”

“Ruth? Who’s Ruth?” Ruth said. He sounded panicked again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Evan laughed. He twisted his neck so he could free one of his eyes, and turned his face just enough to see Ruth’s chin. “It’s okay. I know it’s you. I already thought you might have been an angel, anyway.”

Ruth stiffened. Gently, he pushed Evan away. No longer glowing with light but still handsome and cold, his expression had turned complicated.

“How did you know?”

Evan smiled and shook his head. “When you saved me from the truck... I saw your wings.”

“Fuck.”

Evan let out a shocked gasp. “Angels can swear too?”

Ruth’s mouth sealed shut, and he looked away sheepishly. “You weren’t supposed to know.”

All Evan could think was: how could I not know? You were glowing and shooting balls of holy light everywhere just now. You weren’t very good at hiding it. Were you even trying? But he just shook his head again and took a step back from Ruth so he could get a good look at his whole body.

“Huh. Not what I expected at all. You look just like a regular person.”

Ruth looked back long and heavy. “Let’s get you home. You’re shivering.”

“Am I?” Evan looked down - his body was shaking after all. “Oh. Huh.”

“Come on.”

The walk home was quite nice, actually. Evan felt strangely cold (it was winter, after all), but Ruth slung his arm around his shoulder until it didn’t feel like his body was jittering apart anymore.

“I’m sorry,” Ruth muttered.

“Huh? For what?”

“For not getting there in time.” His face was hard to see, now cast in shadow as they passed under the streetlamps.

“What do you mean? You got her before she hurt me.”

“That’s not true.”

Evan, confused and alarmed, tried to work out what Ruth meant. Hurt? But she didn’t. All she managed to do was...

“Oh, the kiss?” He chuckled. “That wasn’t hurting me. A lot of people would feel lucky to kiss a girl like that. I should be flattered-”

“Flattered she didn’t let you say no?”

Evan slammed his mouth shut. Ruth sounded angry. Shit, what did he say wrong? He must have pissed the poor guy off somehow. His heart was hammering. He never knew what to say when people were mad - he was always worried he was just going to make it worse.

Better to change the subject.

“Why did she say that I was your claim now?”

Ruth’s answer was clipped. “Some demons think like that. In terms of ownership and territory. They pick on humans as prey.”

“As prey? That’s scary. For like food or what? Why did she think you...?”

“Because she can’t understand that there might be another reason why I’d want to protect you.”

They were coming up to Evan’s front door now. He stepped away to unlock the door, but his heart was still hammering. Casually, way too casually, he asked, “and why do you want to protect me?”

When he turned back to look at Ruth again, he froze. Ruth was staring directly at him, intent and unwavering. His eyes were just as cold and grey as ever, but now they seemed tinged by something silver, something far stronger. They were glowing like stars.

Ruth looked away quickly, but it was too late. Evan saw it.

“... Ruth,” he said soothingly. “Sorry. I don’t mean to push. Forget it.”

“Because I’m your guardian angel,” Ruth said suddenly, all in a rush, before Evan had even finished speaking.

A moment passed. From a few streets away, someone’s dog was barking.

“My what?”

Ruth looked at him again, more sure this time. “Your guardian angel.”

“Sorry, one more time?”

With a little shake of his head, Ruth just waited as Evan visibly processed what was said. Guardian angel? Was this guy serious? But those weren’t real, right? Or... if they were real... why the hell did he have one?

“That’s... are you sure?” he said, half laughing.

Ruth just nodded, saying nothing else.

“Well.” Evan opened his door, and after a moment’s thought, held it open for Ruth to enter too. “I suppose I better let you in, huh?”

Evan brewed two cups of tea, because he wasn’t sure what the etiquette was when meeting a celestial being who was devoted to one’s safety and well-being. He took the time in the kitchen to get his thoughts straight, only for his brain to once again become a fuzzy, confused mess when he saw Ruth again.

Ruth, who was sitting quite normally on the sofa, looked up at him with an expression of concern.

The thing was that he looked like a normal boy. Sure, he was handsome, and there was something of a renaissance painting in his features, and sometimes he glowed and had wings, but he was also very tangible and real. He had spots of imperfection. His hair was messy. He swore, and he got embarrassed and flustered, and he couldn’t cook.

Evan had been idly considering this possibility for a while, but somehow when faced with the answer in plain words, it seemed a little... far fetched.

Ruth took the tea with a nod.

“Guardian angel, huh,” Evan said, because he had no idea how to approach this topic of conversation. “Wild. Like, a real angel huh?”

Ruth nodded and took a sip.

“With like, holy powers and stuff?”

Another meek nod.

“So that means... that heaven... and God...”

“Don’t say that name,” Ruth said quickly, and Evan slapped a hand over his own mouth. Oops. Was that blasphemy or something?

“Sorry, sorry. I don’t know how this works. I haven’t been to church in a long time, haha. Oh, fuck, I shouldn’t say that to you. I shouldn’t swear either. But you swore, so maybe it’s okay? Uh oh. This is bad.”

“Why is it bad?” Ruth said, once again looking concerned.

“Because I-” Evan said, and then gestured at his whole body. “I’m... you know. I’m not a... how do I put this...”

Ruth was giving him nothing to work with, merely staring at him in confusion.

“I’m not going up to heav- up there,” Evan finally hissed, pointing to the ceiling. Some of the tea spilled out of the cup he was holding. “Look, how much do you know about me? Did they give you a file or something with all my details on it? Did you get assigned to me because I was failing, or what? Okay, maybe I could use a little help. Is this like some kind of remedial class thing?”

“Stop panicking,” Ruth said finally, taking the cup of tea out of Evan’s hands. “I’m not here to quiz you or improve you. There is no test.”

Evan stared at him in incomprehension. “Of course there’s a test. How else do you decide who goes, uh, up or down?”

“I’m serious. Stop panicking.”

“I’m not panicking!”

Very gently, Ruth guided Evan to sit down on the sofa. With a complicated wave of his hands, he pulled a blanket out of nowhere and pulled it around Evan’s shoulders. It smelled like milk and honey. Evan wasn’t sure how he knew what milk and honey smelled like, because it wasn’t something that he had the opportunity to smell many times before, but somehow he just knew it would smell like this blanket.

“Even if you’re not panicking, you’re scared.” Evan went to protest, but Ruth cut him off firmly. “You’re shaking, and your eyes are darting everywhere. Listen to what your body is telling you.” Ruth kneeled in front of him, tugging the blanket shut. “And listen to what I’m telling you. Neither of us are lying to you. I haven’t earned it yet, but one day, you’ll be able to trust me like your own heart. You are the last person on earth I would ever lie to.”

The glow was coming back, just slightly, just enough to tell that Ruth really wasn’t just a normal boy. Slowly, the wings unfurled again, white and fluffy, one standing tall and proud, the other drooping and lazy.

“I’m not here to judge you. I’m not here to guide you one way or the other. Whether you think you’re good or bad, what you believe, the things you’ve done and the things you’ll do - none of these things matter. Evan, I am your guardian angel. My whole-hearted allegiance is to you.”

Previous Chapter | Contents | Next Chapter

#chapter

[fallingstarnovel]

Chapter Six

note: please see content note at end of chapter for content warnings!

Ten minutes later, Evan looked down at the bowl in front of him.

The contents were unrecognisable. There was nothing edible in this bowl. Instead, it looked a little like the kind of stuff they used to fill potholes on the road. It was black. It steamed. There were mysterious crispy chunks running through it.

Ruth stared down at the bowl as well. His face had turned completely red, and his eyebrows were twitching. This was the first time that Evan had seen him look so frustrated and embarrassed. It was so childish that it was oddly endearing.

"It looks good," Evan said after a moment.

Ruth pressed his lips together. "It doesn't look good."

"It doesn't look good," he agreed with a sigh. "That's okay. These things happen."

With a pained look, Ruth grabbed the bowl and tipped the black mess into the bin. It fell out in one congealed lump. "It's not okay. I wanted to do something nice for you. I should have... I should have practiced more, or paid more attention..."

Hearing that he sounded genuinely upset, Evan quickly shook his head and interrupted him. "Really, it's not the end of the world if the food got a little burnt. The fact you wanted to do something nice for me is already good enough! Haven't you ever heard that it's the thought that counts?"

Ruth glared at him, before looking away. "Thoughts don't do anything. Intention means nothing if you're not willing or able to carry it out in reality. I could sit here and think about cooking all day – it wouldn't do anything useful."

"Huh?"

"It's nothing, it's just – I'm just frustrated at myself, at managing to ruin something so simple..."

Evan thought for a moment. "Ruth, do you not know how to cook?"

Ruth blinked. Some of the frustration on his face faded into confusion as he looked at Evan. "Know how? What do you mean know how? Don't you just put it in a pot?"

"No, that's... you have to..." Evan said, struggling not to laugh. He couldn't laugh. He didn't want it to seem like he was mocking Ruth, but suddenly, everything that just happened made so much sense. "I'm not very good at cooking either, but why don't we follow a recipe together? That way we can both learn."

Ruth hesitated, before nodding. He still looked a little unhappy.

Evan wondered why he was so invested in getting this guy to smile again. Perhaps it was because he looked so much happier when he smiled. Like his entire face was made for it.

After searching for an easy pasta recipe, Evan was pleased to find that he had most of the ingredients already. He put the blackened pot into the sink to soak and got out a new set of pans. They technically belonged to one of his housemates, but he was sure they wouldn’t mind, and who was going to snitch?

This time, he made sure Ruth added the pasta to some boiling water. The recipe said to put some salt in the water, so Evan sprinkled some in.

"Is the salt necessary?" Ruth said suddenly.

Evan shrugged. "I don't know. I guess? Maybe it will dissolve in the water and make the pasta taste better."

Ruth hummed, eyeing the salt shaker with some trepidation and looking somewhat relieved when Evan put it away. He then immediately stopped looking relieved when Evan pulled his largest knife out of the knife rack and set up the chopping board.

"Ah, wait, I'll do it," he said quickly, but Evan held the knife away and didn't let him steal it.

"If you want to chop, you have to do it properly. Look, like this." He began chopping some scallions, trying to make the slices uniform. "Cutting diagonally makes them release more flavour... probably." He snickered. Ruth kept his eyes on the knife, hovering like a mother hen, fingers twitching with every particularly loud chop.

Evan thought for a moment. "Do you want to try it out?"

"Try out chopping?"

Evan nodded and stepped aside, holding the knife out handle first to Ruth. He looked up and down with an unreadable expression, between the handle of the knife and Evan, and for a moment, Evan had the irrational fear that Ruth was some kind of vicious murderer after all and he was about to get it in the neck.

Ruth merely took the knife from his hand and turned to the chopping board, inelegantly trying to copy how Evan had been cutting the scallions before.

Evan let out an internal sigh of relief. Of course this wasn't going to turn into a Hitchcock movie. Ruth just seemed nervous because he was inexperienced.

"Nearly. You just have to turn the scallions a little. No, no, hold them like... hang on, let me show you."

Sidling up behind him, Evan snaked his arms around the other boy and helped him position the knife and the scallions properly, moving his fingers and holding his hand from the outside to help him get the motion.

"See? Like this."

"Ah, I see." Ruth's voice sounded very distant and faint. Evan realised that he had gone stiff, his hands unresponsive underneath Evan's.

... Wait, what was he doing?!

There was no need to teach someone to cook this close! No wonder Ruth looked freaked out! His face had even gone pink with embarrassment! Evan took a quick step backwards, laughing nervously. What the hell had gotten into him lately?

"Sorry, sorry," he said awkwardly, stepping to the side to hide in a cupboard while pretending to find more ingredients. "I could have just... uh, explained a little better..."

Gradually, the sound of chopping came from Ruth's direction, slow and unsteady. Evan silently blew out a breath. It was because he hadn't had anyone in his kitchen before – clearly he didn't know how to behave in a normal way around guests anymore. He was practically spooning Ruth right against the counter! How weird! Weird behaviour!

When he stopped wanting to die, Evan withdrew from the cupboard holding a tin of chopped tomatoes and an onion.

"Haha, found it! Uh, so, I'll open this and then show you how to cut an onion without crying..."

In less than half an hour, Evan plated up two dishes of spaghetti bolognese and carried them into the lounge. At Ruth's confused expression, he laughed and nodded to the sofa.

"Student houses never have a proper dining table. I've been eating off my knees for the last two years. Sorry, I know it's inconvenient..."

Ruth obediently sat on a sofa and took a plate of food. "It isn't inconvenient at all," he said, which was very polite but patently untrue. Evan sat on the other end of the sofa, and they lapsed into comfortable silence as they both took their first bites.

Ruth blinked. He swallowed his mouthful slowly, as if he couldn't believe what he was eating. "Oh. It tastes good."

Evan nodded eagerly. "It does. Haha, why are you so surprised? Didn't you have any faith in our cooking abilities?"

"Of course I had faith," Ruth said firmly, before twirling a long piece of pasta around his fork. "It's just that I've never made food before. I wasn't sure what to expect. It's... really nice."

Evan felt his heart thump. If this was the reaction he got, he would be happy to cook with Ruth more often.

"You're acting like you've never had spaghetti before," he joked.

Ruth hummed, before filling his mouth with pasta again. The room once again occupied with comfortable silence.

Evan found himself growing more and more curious about the boy beside him. Even ignoring the mysterious hallucination and the weird events recently, he still didn't know much about Ruth at all. For example: where did he live? What kind of person was he? Why didn't he know how to boil pasta?

Either this guy was a spoiled rich kid with billionaire parents who had a private cook who boiled all his pasta for him, or he had managed to escape from some underground bunker where a cult raised him in complete isolation. Evan conceded that there were other possibilities at play, but those were the most alluring to his overactive imagination.

"Ruth, are you not used to cooking? Ah, I mean, do you not cook for yourself very often?" he asked, trying not to sound too nosy.

Ruth blinked at him, before smiling in a rather sheepish manner. "Not really. Nobody ever taught me that kind of stuff."

... That kind of stuff? That was too vague! This still didn't clarify whether he was a rich kid or a cult escapee! Evan waited for more information, but Ruth was unforthcoming, and he wasn't rude enough to ask any more questions over such a strangely touchy subject. Instead, Ruth asked him a question.

"What about you? Who taught you how to cook?"

"Me?" Evan smiled. "My grandma. She was a great cook. She liked to experiment a lot with her food – I would go over to her house, and we would make something new in the kitchen using random ingredients I picked from her fridge. She always managed to make it taste good. Like the time I picked chocolate and chicken nuggets."

Ruth laughed. "Really? Surely that isn't good for you."

"Well, it wasn't very often." Evan shook his head. "Anyway, after I moved out and started living by myself, I looked up recipes on the internet and kept teaching myself more and more. I wouldn't say I'm as good as she was, but I know the basics. And now I can teach you!"

He meant it as a joke, waving his fork in a grandiose manner like an old maestro gesticulating at his students, but Ruth just nodded firmly.

"Mhm. Now you can."

Ah? Huh? Did Evan just get roped into being someone's culinary master?

He didn't mind. In fact, he kind of looked forward to it. He didn't often get to spend this much time with another person like this.

"Hahah, well, I won't go easy on you," he said, trying to see if Ruth was serious.

"Good. I want to learn."

"I'll make you chop fifty onions in a row and watch to see if you shed a single tear!"

"If you say I can't, I won't." Ruth leaned towards him, eyes glimmering. "Not a single one."

... This sure was one devoted student. Evan gave up probing him. "Well, come over whenever you like, then. We can start your training as soon as you want."

Ruth nodded in satisfaction and sat back, taking another big bite of his pasta.

It was only the same old bolognese recipe that Evan usually made, but for some reason, it tasted better than it did before.

Over the next couple of days, Evan returned back to classes and fielded what felt like hundreds of emails from student services. He got the feeling that they were more anxiously preoccupied with making sure he wasn’t going to sue, but it did make him chuckle. In order to finally get some kind of support from his university, it only took a near death experience.

The exam he missed would have to be retaken in the spring. Evan weighed up whether it was better to delay more exams until spring and allow himself some recovery time, or to do them now anyway and avoid overloading himself when the new year came around.

He ended up politely declining any offers to delay his other exams. It was only a cut on his leg. Why did people keep acting like he was going to have a nervous breakdown?

He knew nobody was paying attention to him, but still, as if to prove the hypothetical people keeping imaginary tabs on him wrong, he made himself go to the library every day and put in extra study time. Sure, when he actually sat down with his books it felt like pulling teeth and his eyes kept glazing over - but that was just because he was a dumbass who picked astrophysics as a subject. He was struggling, but this was just normal levels of struggling. Nothing to worry about.

Since the sun set at about four in the afternoon this close to midwinter, the atmosphere inside the library was quite warm and cheerful in the evenings. There was one specific spot nestled between the rows of books where the orange halogen street lamps from outside glowed over the table, and everything outside looked so dark and cold, and everything inside was cosy and bright.

Unfortunately, Evan could not sleep in the library. He hovered at the exit, tugging his scarf up around his nose, before sighing and braving the windy, wet night.

There was a little narrow alleyway between buildings that served as a shortcut through this part of campus. Usually it was full of students, but it was nearing nine in the evening, and Evan was the only person out this late. He walked a little faster. Muggings weren’t unheard of around here.

“Hey,” said someone behind him.

Holy shit. He didn’t mean to manifest a mugging just by thinking about it. This was the worst superpower ever.

“Hey!” the person said again, louder and annoyed. Evan tried to speed up. Just a few feet and he’d be out of the alley! Stupid idiot bitch, why did he have to go this way?

“Hey, Evan, you dumb cunt!” the person yelled, which was both comforting and inexplicable. It made him stop short and turn around - only to find himself being crowded against the wall by a dark figure.

He squinted, and realised that the person currently fencing him against the wall with one elbow hitched up above his head was Hot Goth Girl. He could recognise that metal band eyeliner anywhere.

“It’s you,” he said dumbly, before realising that he had completely lost grasp of her name. “Uh... from the party.”

The girl gave him a long look, before grinning wide. “So it’s true. I heard you were going around asking what happened at the party.”

Evan nodded slowly and decided that even if she was hot, he was going to have to take the L here and accept that he was about to embarrass himself quite badly. “Sorry, what’s your name again?”

“Ophelia,” said Hot Goth Girl. Oh, yeah, Ophelia! That weird kid called Rock told him as much outside his class! He also said that Ophelia kissed... she kissed him... she...

Evan froze. “Oh,” he said, his voice mildly strangled, and suddenly became very aware of the way she was kabedon-ing him against the brick wall. “Hello.”

“Hello,” she mimicked smugly. “Heard you were also asking about the mark on your back.”

“Oh. Oh! You mean the tattoo? Yeah, actually, I was. If you can tell me anything about how it got there-”

“How it got there?” she laughed. Her breath washed over Evan’s face, and it stank of tar, like she just finished smoking. It was acrid and unpleasant. “I can do one better. I can help you get rid of it.”

Evan looked at her in surprise. “You know someone who can get rid of tattoos?”

“Not an ordinary tattoo,” she said, her black lips curling in a smile. “Can’t be removed by ordinary methods. Good news, there are two ways I can help you out, one nice, one not so nice.” Her grin widened. “Bad news, I’m not going to tell you what they are.”

“I want the nice one,” Evan said dubiously, before shaking his head. “Wait, I don’t want either until I know what they are, okay? If it’s laser removal, I can’t afford it, and if it’s make up, I can’t be bothered... look, can we move somewhere else to talk about this?”

Ophelia shook her head, which seemed very inconsiderate to Evan. He was starting to think that she was actually kind of a weirdo.

She drew something out of her pocket - Evan saw it glint in the light. It was a coin.

“How’s your luck been?” she asked.

“Bad. Hey, uh, we really should go-”

He tried to duck out of her way, but she body-blocked him. “Heads or tails.”

Nervously humouring her, he said, “tails.”

She tossed the coin. It tumbled and caught the orange of the lights down the alley. It arced and arced for impossibly long-

Ophelia surged forwards and kissed him.

Every single one of Evan’s thoughts ground to a halt.

A small animal part of his brain that had been in a coma for a while suddenly sat up and started hollering. Evan promptly ignored it. It had very strong opinions about kissing that ran counter to his sense of dignity and self preservation, and it had gotten him in trouble before. It had absolutely no problems with the fact he was getting smooched without permission in a grimy, cold alleyway that smelled of stagnant water.

The rest of Evan’s brain did have problems with this. Besides, the kiss wasn’t actually very pleasant. It was greasy in odd ways from her black lipstick, and it tasted of sulphur and burnt smoke, and his heart was thrumming in an unpleasant way. His back flared up with pain, right where his tattoo was, sending tendrils of itching, burning heat up and down his spine like insects were biting at his skin.

Somewhere beside them, the coin landed with a clink.

Ophelia stopped trying to worm her tongue between Evan’s clenched teeth and drew back to look at it with one lazy glance.

“Oh, tails,” she said in an off-hand voice. “Congratulations. You won.”

Evan looked down at the coin, at the faint impression of feathers on the tails side. His brain had not yet recovered. “What does tails mean?”

He looked back at Ophelia - and for the second time in thirty seconds, his thoughts crashed into a brick wall. Hot Goth Girl was a hot girl no longer. She had grown sharp incisors, poking out of her mouth like a horrible accident in a knife factory. Her eyes were huge and luminous green, and her pupils had stretched into vertical slits that seemed to widen and narrow rhythmically. Her face was entirely too close to Evan’s, and what he thought was cigarette stink now smelled purely like the deep belch of a molten, burning furnace.

“Not so nice,” her voice rumbled like a horrible, deep purr that did things to the monkey part of Evan’s flesh body, reminding it that in the grand scale of evolution, it hadn’t really been that long since big cats were once further up the food chain.

Evan blinked.

“What the fuck,” he said.

content note: non-consensual kissing in the second half of the chapter, not between the main characters

lmk what you think of this chapter down below in the comments or literally anywhere!! just tag me @scottiemadethis on almost any social media and i'll see it i prommy

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#chapter

[fallingstarnovel]

Chapter Five

The rest of the day just kept going and going. Someone called the paramedics for the cut on his leg, and he had to be taken to hospital to get stitches. The nice woman who ran over to him took his student ID and went over to the exam room to explain that he couldn’t make it. He had no idea if the university would let him re-sit the exam later. He sure hoped so.

"I have to sit my exam," he said anxiously as he waited for the paramedics to arrive. "I can't fail my module. My grade average is already ruined."

The lady shook her head. "You're just going to bleed all over the carpets, and the shock will hit you soon, and then you'll fail anyway. Now give me your ID."

He meekly gave her the ID.

The police questioned him, and he tried to explain what happened, but it sounded weird and muddy to his own ears. How could he explain what happened when he didn’t even know if it was all a hallucination or not?

After all, stress made people do and see weird things. He hadn’t seen Ruth again after that first time. And there was no way he could say to the police that he was rescued by an angel who called himself Ruth.

Maybe he hit his head. Maybe he was hallucinating.

He asked the doctor at the hospital to check his head for injuries, but she said he was incredibly lucky and was completely unharmed. Even the cut on his leg wasn’t too deep.

One taxi ride home, and he was sitting in his living room. Alone.

There wasn't really anyone he could talk to about this. He didn't want to bother Aliya, because she thought he was the fun, good vibes friend, and he didn't want her to think he was a bother. Obviously he didn't have anyone at home he could call. His housemates had all abandoned him. Not intentionally, but still.

Evan sat by himself in his quiet living room in his empty house and kept his hands to himself, and wondered.

There was only one person left, right?

> hey ruth so um...

> weird question. did today happen

Which part? <

> the part where i almost got flattened by a truck?

Oh. Yes. <

Are you feeling alright? <

> yeah um a bit shaky and just weird uhh

> you know when you just Feel Weird

> i'm feeling it

Make sure you eat something sugary and wrap up warm. Do you want to call? <

Ruth was always so nice. The familiar guilt was building at the back of Evan's brain, reminding him that he needed to stop being such a burden on other people, but technically this wasn't him looking for support.

He just wanted to confirm that this guy was actually an angel, not a hallucination. That was all.

He did see those glowing white wings and that sunny halo lighting him from behind like some kind of Renaissance painting, but that could just have been random neurons firing in his brain. Right? He needed to check.

> that would be nice

> call me whenever

A minute later, his phone started vibrating. He answered quickly.

"... Ruth?"

"Evan. Are you sure you're okay?"

Evan looked down at his injured leg, which was bobbing up and down rapidly. It hurt, but he couldn't stop it from happening even if he tried. He felt cold. "Hmm. Still a little weird."

"Go get some food. I'll still be here," Ruth said gently, and Evan obediently got up and went to the kitchen to make himself a jam sandwich.

"Ruth..." he said hesitantly, putting his phone on speaker. "Now. Correct me if what I'm saying sounds insane. But did you..."

"Did I...?"

Evan shut his mouth. It sounded too insane to say "hey, bro, did you grow a pair of wings today?". "Nothing. I just wanted to thank you for saving me again. This is like, the third time, right?"

"I'm not keeping count," Ruth replied earnestly. "I'm just glad you're safe."

So, so nice. Evan felt even more guilty. He didn't know what he had done to deserve this kind of kindness. "Well, anyway, I was really lucky that you were around."

"Maybe. I don't really believe in luck."

That was definitely something an angel would say, right? Angels flew around doing good deeds with big white flappy wings, didn't they?

"What do you believe in?" Evan asked without thinking, before catching himself. "Wait, I'm sorry, that was weird. You don't have to answer."

"No, it's alright," Ruth replied. He laughed, and his voice was low and melodic, pealing like church bells on a Sunday morning. "I believe... I believe that we hold a lot more control over things like luck and fate and coincidence than we believe. I would go so far as to say that we make our own luck."

Could angels make luck? Maybe they had a lucky energy field around them. That would make sense. They were supposed to be good. Evan hummed thoughtfully.

"What happened today... do you think that maybe... it was because of the bad luck curse mark?"

"It's very possible," Ruth said.

"Shit. Really? But it almost killed me! That was more than bad luck! If you hadn't saved me, I would have died!" Evan heard his own voice getting a little hysterical. He was allowed to be hysterical. He almost got turned into meat paste. "What if it happens again? What next? What if I'm walking along and a piano drops out of the sky and kills me? What if I choke on a peanut?"

"Don't eat any peanuts," Ruth said, which made Evan burst into incredulous laughter.

"Seriously?"

"No. But if you're scared... I can come with you next time you go out. To keep you safe. From falling pianos."

Was Evan scared? He wasn't sure. But for some reason, hearing Ruth say that eased some of the tense feeling boiling in his stomach.

There was a comfortable silence. He felt like he had a little more space to breathe now, somehow.

"Thanks, Ruth. I feel a lot better now after talking to someone. And eating this sandwich."

"Are you going to be okay by yourself?"

Evan snorted. He had to be okay by himself. It wasn't like there was anyone here to take care of him. "Yeah, I think I'll manage to tuck myself into bed with a hot drink and a blanket."

"No, really," Ruth said, "if you need someone. Any time, anywhere. You have my number. Just give me a call, and I'll answer."

"... Sure. Thanks."

"It's alright."

Evan sighed. "I'll be okay. For real. You don't need to worry about me."

"I will anyway. Good night."

"Good night."

After they hung up, Evan once again wondered what happened that night when Ruth brought him home. It was mortifying to imagine what he might have said and done when he was black out drunk, but clearly it wasn't a deal-breaker for Ruth, because he was still around. Being nice.

Being angelic, even.

Evan cleaned himself up for the night. He did his usual check of the house, making sure the windows in the empty bedrooms were closed and all the doors were locked, before settling into his bed.

He switched off his light. On the ceiling, a galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stars lit up with a soft green glow.

There was so much he had to worry about. There were exams to rearrange. He got blood on his lucky socks. He had to book an appointment with the neurologist to check for damage. He still had a bunch of group projects he needed to work on.

When he closed his eyes to sleep, all he could see was the side of the truck tipping sideways, hundreds of pounds of steel that would have smashed him into tiny little chunks of meat.

He opened his eyes again.

He was fine. He wasn't mincemeat. He wasn't in the hospital morgue. He was in his own bed, safe and sound, with only a slight scratch on his leg to show for it.

Evan rolled over and tried to sleep, but the accident played in his mind again.

That black cat had shown up at two accidents now. He couldn't remember if seeing a black cat was meant to be good luck or bad luck – he had heard both from different people. Was it trying to warn him about the accidents coming up? Or was it a terrible omen of death?

It was probably just a cat.

But then again, he thought Ruth was just a normal guy until recently.

When Evan went to sleep, he dreamed he was saving endless black cats from being run over by runaway trucks on a busy highway. Eventually, he dreamed of soft whispers and someone carrying him high, high up in the sky, tucked against someone's chest as the stars passed overhead one by one.

Over the weekend, Evan usually did chores. Today he needed to go food shopping, so he picked up his bags and left the house.

It was a long walk. He didn't realise how sore his leg was until now. It hurt every time the fabric of his trousers rubbed over the bandages on the cut on his leg. But he needed food, and nobody was going to buy it for him, so off he went.

He passed by the burned out church on the way there. He didn't know how it burned down, but it obviously happened a decade or so ago. The windows were empty and the church was completely hollow inside. In between the rubble, weeds and long grass were poking up. It was surrounded by tall buildings on all sides, hemming it into a claustrophobic box.

Evan wondered why it hadn't been knocked down and turned into flats yet.

After he finished getting all the food he needed, Evan had just left the shop when he recognised a familiar face across the car park. It was his lecturer, the one who always rambled for ten minutes at the start of class about different things he was interested in. He was an older man with grey hair and a goatee, like some kind of mad scientist. Evan supposed that when you were clever enough to teach atsrophysics at university, you were allowed to look however you wanted.

The lecturer spotted Evan. His eyes widened, and he walked over.

"It's you," he said as he got closer. "The student that almost got hit by a car."

"A truck," Evan corrected him politely. "Hello, Professor Bridgers."

Professor Bridgers' eyes widened even more. "Ye gods. A truck? How the hell are you still standing here?"

"It missed, sir."

"It missed! You're lucky!" The professor shuffled his shopping bag to his other hand and gave Evan an appraising look as if searching for hidden injuries. "Not a scratch?"

"Well, the storm grate scratched my leg when I was pulled out..."

"Storm grate? Pulled out? Your leg is hurt and you're walking on it?" The professor held out an imperious hand. "It's bad enough you had to miss your exam. Let me carry this home for you. You shouldn't be walking on an injury, or you'll end up missing my lectures, and I cannot abide a student skipping class because he was stupid enough to walk on an injured leg."

No matter how much Evan protested, the professor insisted. He ended up handing over his shopping bags, and together, they started walking back to Evan's house.

As they walked, he took a surreptitious glance at his lecturer. When he taught his classes, the professor dressed up in formal shirts and ties with extravagant waistcoats. Well, Evan thought he dressed up, but apparently that was just how the man dressed normally too.

Today his waistcoat was bright pink and covered in embroidered rainbow sheep. Evan rather liked it.

"Suppose they're sorting out your resits and whatnot in the administrator's office," the professor said suddenly. Evan nodded.

"They said they were going to arrange it for next month instead of the summer due to exceptional circumstances."

"Generous of them. They're probably used to lazy students making up hangoveritis symptoms – not used to boys being run over on their front door step."

Evan laughed. They lapsed into silence as they passed by the burned out church again. Feeling a little awkward about walking in silence with his teacher, Evan decided to make some conversation.

"Do you know how that church burned down?"

"What, you don't know?" the professor barked. Evan shook his head. "Really? Was the most interesting fire of the century. It was taken out by a meteor."

Evan stood stock still. He stared at the professor in shock. "What?"

"How old are you? You look about twelve. Were you old enough when the meteor fell over the city? Small thing or we wouldn't be here today. Was the luckiest set of coincidences in the world. Broke up as it hit the atmosphere, most of it burned up, but one teeny tiny little fragment landed right smack bang in the middle of the church. The heat of the explosion caused a raging fire." The professor looked thoughtful. "Lucky it was in the middle of the night and not a Sunday morning. Wouldn't have left a single survivor in there."

"This meteor..." Evan said slowly. "Was it about twelve years ago? And it made a huge noise... you could see it for miles..."

"So you do remember it," Professor Bridgers commented approvingly. "That's the one. Just before I started teaching. I was on the team that had to report to HQ that there was a non-zero chance the huge ball of rock rapidly approaching our atmosphere would wipe out half of Europe. Took us all by surprise. We tend to track all the asteroids that pass by in case they orbit around again and fall into our field of gravity. Plenty of near misses in the last few years. But that one came out of nowhere. Turned my hair grey overnight."

"Near misses?"

"Oh, plenty. Well, I say near, but that's still thousands or even millions of miles away from us. But near compared to... everything else."

Evan stared at the church for a long time, until the professor got impatient and started walking away, and he had to jog to catch up. He kept looking behind himself at the blackened walls and the empty windows.

"Professor, what do you think would happen if a bigger one hit us and it didn't break up in the atmosphere?"

The professor was silent for a moment. After a while, he said, "well, you better pray you're one of the lucky buggers standing under the blast site of where it hits."

"What? Why?"

"Bigger asteroids do more than destroy churches, my boy. You should already know this. Think about the dinosaurs."

Evan thought about the dinosaurs, and pressed his lips together. He felt stupid for forgetting. "Oh. I see."

When they got to Evan's house, Ruth was standing outside the front door, patiently waiting. He raised his eyebrows when he spotted Evan and his professor walking side by side, shopping bags piled into the old man's arms.

"Ruth? What are you doing here?" Evan asked, dumbfounded.

"I was worried about you," Ruth replied, as easy as breathing. It made Evan's face turn pink. "You shouldn't be walking on that leg."

"Finally, someone sensible," the professor said, handing the shopping bags over to Ruth.

Evan turned and thanked him over and over. The professor waved it away and walked off, but not before making a joke that if Evan got a bad mark on his resit exam, he knew where he lived.

Ruth stared after him as he walked away. "I told you you could call me if I needed help."

"I just ran into him and he wouldn't leave me alone," Evan said jokingly. "Look, I'm fine. Thanks for checking in on me."

Ruth turned to stare at him then. His eyes were unreadable, until he finally spoke up.

"I'm going to cook you dinner tonight."

"What? I can cook! My arms still work!"

"You should be resting. You had a terrible shock. Now let me inside."

Laughing and rolling his eyes, Evan decided to let Ruth inside, if only because he didn't have anything else planned for the evening.

Evan sat to the side as Ruth bustled around the kitchen. He pulled random things out of the drawers and started digging through Evan’s shopping bags, pulling out different vegetables and ingredients he had bought.

Evan watched him, feeling strange. Ruth had waited outside for him to come back. He didn’t even know where Ruth lived, and yet here he was, surprising him because he was worried, and now making a meal for him like it was nothing.

He couldn’t help but feel disconcerted. It wasn’t normal to be this nice. Nobody cared this much about a person they only just met. Evan rarely trusted people who were too nice to him - he didn’t understand why they would go out of their way to treat him well.

After all, he wasn’t anything special. He was a failing student and a lazy kid. He wasn’t especially interesting. In fact, Evan would describe himself as distressingly pedestrian.

There had to be some other motive at play here. Maybe Ruth was casing him out as a potential robbery victim. Maybe coming to his house and making friends with him was a long con, designed to lower his guard until - boom - Ruth whipped out a gun and demanded all his money in the bag, right now.

Well, maybe not.

Maybe Ruth was just lonely too. Maybe they were both two lonely guys who wanted an excuse to hang out together.

He just wanted to know what Ruth wanted from him.

“You know...” he began hesitantly. “You said that you liked helping people. I was just wondering... is that really why you keep hanging out with me? I just don’t want you to feel obligated to follow me around or anything...”

Ruth looked up from where he was chopping carrots into rough chunks. He gave Evan a winning smile, his dimples popping and giving him a very cute expression. “I don’t feel obligated. I like it. As long as you don’t mind me following you around sometimes, then it... it makes me happy."

"Following me around makes you happy?" Evan laughed in disbelief. "You must be the only person on Earth who can stand the sight of me. Give it a few weeks and see how you feel."

That cute dimpled smile froze. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing," Evan said, immediately feeling awkward. "Just kidding. Um, are you sure you don't want help cooking?"

Ruth had begun to chop potatoes. The trouble was that he was cutting them into lumpy, uneven shapes, unpeeled, and he had left all the little eyes and marks in the skin.

It was an unconventional way to chop potatoes.

"No," Ruth said eventually. He kept throwing glances sideways at Evan. "Why did you say that? Before, I mean."

"Just forget it, really. I was just joking around."

Ruth put a large pot on the stove top and lit the heat. Evan noted with some consternation that he didn't actually add any oil or water to the pot.

"Um, Ruth... what are you making...?"

"It's a surprise." Ruth shuffled in front of the pot to hide the contents. "Don't worry about it."

It didn't take long before the smell of burning carrot filled the kitchen. Evan opened a window before the smoke could set the fire alarm off. Just as he turned back, he saw Ruth pour a whole packet of pasta into the pot.

Speechless, he pretended he didn't see anything. It was incredibly difficult to remain silent. Ruth still wasn't adding any water. What kind of experimental god tier cooking technique was this?

"Stop peeking," Ruth said quickly. His face had turned pink and there was sweat starting to bead on his forehead.

Perhaps this wasn't a god tier cooking technique after all. In fact, Evan was beginning to suspect that Ruth had no idea what he was doing.

No, he had to have more faith! This would turn out great!

He forced himself to look away from the cooking process. "Alright, I won't peek, I won't peek. Just let me know if you need any help...?"

Ruth shook his head, making his curly hair bounce wildly around his face. "It's all under control."

The smoke alarm went off.

Extra:

[ruth voice] you let this man carry groceries for you??? you IGNORE ruth and solicit weird old men for help with your household tasks?? oh, pasta for evan! pasta for ten thousand years!

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#chapter

[fallingstarnovel]

Chapter Four

“Holy fuck!” Evan yelped, before running down the stairs and opening the front door. “Dude, you are fast!”

Ruth laughed and scratched the back of his neck. “It seemed like an emergency.”

“You’re not wrong,” Evan grumbled, before quickly ushering him inside. “I was going to apologise for the mess but I guess you’ve seen everything already.”

Ruth, to his credit, managed to look completely non-judgemental as he stepped over a pile of shoes and pizza leaflets. He waited patiently for Evan to close the door behind him before speaking.

"May I see it?"

Evan hummed and hawed for a moment, before sighing. May as well get this over with. He turned around and lifted up the back of his hoodie so that the tattoo was poking out over the waistband.

There was an intake of breath behind him. He felt a warm hand nudge his hoodie a little further up his back, being careful not to actually touch his skin.

"How bad is it," Evan said, full of dread. "Can you read what it says?"

Ruth hummed under his breath. When he spoke, he sounded like he was trying to be very careful. "Would you believe me if I said that someone put a curse mark on you?"

Evan laughed out loud, and looked at Ruth. The laughter died at the dark look in the other boy's eyes.

"Oh. You're serious."

Ruth nodded. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, curses are..." Evan began, before stopping himself. There was no polite way to say "curses aren't real". "They're... Kind of spiritual, right? More based in belief than fact."

The dark look was still there in Ruth's eyes, but he did manage an amused smile. "You're a skeptic."

"I'm a scientist," Evan replied flatly. "Trying to be. Sorry. If you're one of those people who believes in magic and stuff, that's super cool, I'm not going to call it bullshit. But this is probably just a normal tattoo."

"Just a normal tattoo that appeared on your body without you noticing."

"I might have been drunker than I realised," Evan said hotly. "But even if someone was trying to somehow curse me by tattooing me, I'm not bothered about that. Curses are... um. Probably not replicable in lab conditions. I'm more worried about the fact that they managed to somehow jab a needle in me when I wasn't looking and do some of the chunkiest black work I have ever seen. So what does it say?"

Ruth's gaze skittered away. His pleasant smile was like glass. "I don't know."

"Damn it. You're sure?"

"..."

"So how do you know it's a curse?"

Ruth swallowed. He hesitated, before holding out a hand. "May I touch it?"

Evan said "yes" without really thinking about it. He realized his mistake as soon as he felt two warm palms come into contact with the small of his back, brushing along his skin.

Oh no. This was really nice. It had been quite a long time since he had been touched by someone. With a nervous laugh, he jumped away in shock at the electric feeling that rushed through him.

"Cold hands," he lied.

"Oh. Sorry."

That was his second mistake. There was the sound of Ruth blowing on his own fingers and rubbing them together to warm them up, and then the hands were back, except now they were hot and unignorable.

Idiot. Idiot fool stupid ass. He just invited this random guy over to his house and said "oh sure touch my back in a totally normal kind of way" and now he's making it weird, and poor Ruth was probably standing there like, what's this weirdo doing blushing like some kind of idiot because I'm touching his freaky new tattoo? His weird drunken tramp stamp? Just copping a feel of this guy's lower back like a spectacularly PG version of a freaky train groper?

God, he wished he could get his brain to shut up when he was nervous.

"... It doesn't feel like a tattoo," Ruth said after a moment. "It feels like a curse."

"A curse to do what?"

"It's a bad luck curse," Ruth said. His voice was strange. "Luck so bad it'll force you to..."

Evan stared at him over his shoulder. "To what."

"..."

"To what."

"But it is only triggered when, under certain conditions..." Ruth began before trailing off. "The conditions will not be met. There is nothing to worry about."

His smile was very reassuring. One of his dimples popped. It was incredibly sweet.

"You're sure?"

"I'm certain."

Evan tore his eyes away and sat down heavily on the couch, putting his head in his hands. "So some kind of spiritual nutjob has put a weird mark on my ass. Wonderful. That's really great."

"I'll fix this."

Evan looked up at Ruth in surprise, before shaking his head. "You can't just remove tattoos so easily. It's going to cost so much money to remove, and it might not even work. And it's going to hurt."

He sensed Ruth coming closer, close like he might reach out and touch. But he didn't. He was silent.

"... You think it was someone at the party."

"Yeah. Maybe. I don't think I had it before then, and I don't know when else I would have been drunk enough not to notice it happening."

"A curse mark can be placed with just a touch–"

"Dude," Evan groaned, throwing his head back, "it's not a curse mark, it's just a pain in the ass. It's a tattoo. And I have to deal with it. I wish I–" he groaned, and buried his head in his hands again. "This always happens. I shouldn't go to parties."

Thick silence again.

Ruth’s voice was gentle. His hand landed on Evan’s shoulder. "You didn't ask for this."

"But what if I did?" Evan said. "It's the not knowing that’s the worst. What if I did want this? But why would I... I never would, but who knows? Who knows?" He stood up suddenly. "That's why I have to find someone who was there and ask them."

“I can help you do that.”

“... you can? How?"

"I think I might know a couple of people who were there," Ruth answered. "I can ask them."

Evan stood up and grabbed Ruth's shoulders. "Please! Can you come with me to meet them?"

His expression turned sour. "I would prefer you didn't. They are... they're not good company."

"I don't care. I need to ask them. Please."

A long tense silence, and then:

"Alright. I will ask around."

Evan sighed and collapsed back on the sofa. "Thank you. Really."

"There's no need. Anything you want, I'll do."

He gave Ruth a weird look, tilting his head in curiosity. "Are you this charitable with everyone? You've been so nice to me."

Ruth's smile returned with a vengeance. Cheerful sunshine was practically flowing from every orifice. He said, rather carefully, "not with everyone, no. But you could say that it's something that sustains me. Being helpful, I mean."

"Huh. You enjoy being a good Samaritan, then."

Ruth nodded. In between talking about the curse nonsense, and the desire to help people, and the way he was a little – hm, intense, Evan wondered if he hadn't accidentally made friends with a very motivated missionary. Weren't Christians supposed to love thy neighbour?

Oh no, was Evan being indoctrinated into a fundamentalist cult? Was that why Ruth was being so nice?

"... Are you religious, Ruth?"

He hummed, seeming to think about the question. "That... is complicated. I guess so. But maybe it's more accurate to say that I... that I do my own thing. Are you?"

That did not rule out the cult side of things. Evan nodded, hiding his suspicions deep where they couldn't possibly offend this potential fundie.

"I do my own thing too," he said, deciding to be cautious just in case. "I just try to be nice and hope for the best."

"A good philosophy to have," Ruth said with a laugh. "Keep it. Well, I should probably go and track down the people at the party. If you want anything, you can call me whenever you like."

Hm. Way, way too nice. "I will," Evan lied, before guiding Ruth back to the front door. "Thanks again."

"It's nothing at all," were Ruth's last words before he left, bundling out onto the street and walking away.

Evan watched him go. Watched that bundle of curly blonde hair and a warm blue scarf grow smaller and smaller until it turned a corner and once again disappeared.

A few days later, Evan was waiting outside of his lecture hall, when someone suddenly stopped beside him. He squinted at them, finding their face oddly familiar. That long brown curly hair, the wide set of their shoulders...

Wait a minute, this was the person from the party who kept giving him shots! Sand! No - Ice?

“Rock,” said Rock, looking exceptionally nervous. Their eyes kept darting to the side. “From the party.”

“No, yeah, I remember,” Evan mumbled, feeling a little dazed. What the hell. They just suddenly turned up with no warning. “What’s... up?”

“You said you had questions,” Rock said quietly. They seemed completely different now from that night. Whereas before, they were loud and bouncy, projecting their voice across the music, now they seemed to be holding their arms close to their body as if trying to look smaller.

It was weird.

“Um. Yeah. Hey, let’s just...”

Evan stepped aside from the other students who were waiting outside the lecture, and Rock followed, until they were both in a slightly more private spot.

“Are you good?” Evan asked, because Rock looked very sweaty.

They nodded quickly. “I’m good. I’m chill. Look, whatever you wanna ask, please go ahead.”

Evan thought about it. This was his chance. He needed to make sure he didn’t mess it up.

“So... did I do anything weird?”

Rock stared at him in disbelief. After a moment, their gaze once again skittered around the place. “No. Not really.”

Okay. Good. He would just have to try and believe that. “Sweet. Okay. Christ, um. Did anyone at the party have a tattoo gun?”

Rock swallowed and shook their head. “No.”

Shit. “Are you lying to me?”

Rock’s eyes widened, and their back stiffened. “No. No, I swear. Nobody had a tattoo gun.”

“Were you upstairs with me when we were... playing a game?”

“I was.”

Nice! A witness!

“Did I kiss someone?”

Rock nodded.

“Who?”

“Ophelia,” Rock said hesitantly. “She kissed you.”

Ophelia... “Was she, by any chance, the girl with the black hair and the platform boots?”

“That’s her.”

Wow. Hot Goth Girl kissed him. Evan thought he would feel excited about that, but instead he just felt a little nauseous. He was so drunk. How could that have been enjoyable? Surely he was way too much of a mess for her to get anything out of it...

“Rock, can I have your number? I might have more questions if that’s okay.”

Rock suddenly looked a little panicked. “You’re not satisfied?”

“What? Uh, I guess? Look, you don’t have to, I just--”

“No, you can, you can,” Rock said, hurriedly pulling some paper and a pen out of their pocket and wrote down a number. “Here. And... please, look, tell him that I’ll do anything you want, okay? I’ll cooperate, I’ll behave!”

Evan stared at them. “Tell who?”

But Rock was already running away, visibly sweating.

Huh. Weird.

Evan kept throwing glances behind him as he finally trailed into his next lecture. He found it difficult to concentrate on the class.

Bad luck followed Evan around that week like a bad smell.

He dropped his phone while he was walking, and the whole screen shattered so bad that he could barely see what he was typing anymore.

Whenever he went walking, he ended up stepping in dog muck. He didn't even know there were this many dogs in the city. How come all the owners had suddenly decided to be lazy bastards who didn't clean up after their mess?

If he forgot his umbrella, it rained, and if he brought it, he lost it. And then it rained anyway.

But all of this wasn't so bad when he thought about it. At least he still had his health, and his lectures were still taking place, and anyway. He wasn't doing as much walking now that exam season was underway.

It was today. Exam day. One of the big ones. He had small exams all week leading up to this one, but this was the one he was most worried about.

Evan still wasn’t sure he believed in the concept of luck, but he figured that now was as good a time to start believing as any. He pulled out his favourite pair of socks from the drawer and decided that they were lucky. As he walked to the exam hall, he made sure not to step on any cracks.

He wasn’t sure that cracks would affect his exam score. Weren’t they supposed to break your mother’s back if you stood on them?

He didn’t take any chances. If he wanted to pass this exam, he couldn’t risk getting called out halfway through because of any back related medical emergencies.

He also avoided walking under any ladders, or seeing any magpies, or opening any umbrellas indoors. If avoiding bad luck was a game, he had the high score.

Evan was just across the road from the exam hall when he saw that strange flash of black in the corner of his vision. He turned on instinct to see the black cat he often saw around campus sitting on the pavement a little bit ahead of him.

The cat looked up and made direct eye contact. Evan stared. He stared so hard that he didn’t notice where he was putting his foot until it was too late.

There was a groan and the sound of old metal creaking, and Evan found himself stuck up to the knee in the rusty grating of a road gutter. He tried to pull himself out, but he was well and truly stuck.

Something honked. Evan looked up to see a truck racing towards him. It was okay - the truck was far enough away that it could brake long before it reached Evan. He hoped. He tried yanking his leg out of the gutter again, but it felt like something was holding onto his foot.

Lazily, he felt the swish of something soft against his hand. The cat jumped past him, before racing up the road towards the truck. It ran out into the road.

The drive had presumably already been stressed out by the sight of a kid stuck in the road. He was already honking his horn and slamming his foot on the brakes, making an awful screeching noise. The cat must have exacerbated the situation, because all of a sudden, the cab of the truck veered sideways as if the driver had just pulled a sharp right.

In horror, Evan could only watch as the side of the truck began to tilt. It leaned, and leaned, tires squealing, black smoke pouring from where they scraped along the tarmac. Cars beeped, people screamed, but nobody was close enough to help.

Evan was going to die here, he realised. The truck was rolling over, and it was going to squash him flat. He would die right before his exam and fail it. Why couldn’t this happen afterwards? Didn’t he study hard? Didn’t he spend all night revising his notes and memorising formulas?

All that hard work, wasted! If he knew he was going to die today, he would have spent last night doing something fun instead!

The sun suddenly broke through the clouds. Sunlight bounced off the wet tarmac and the muddy puddles at the edge of the road. Evan couldn’t even think. All he could do was watch.

A strong hand suddenly gripped his underarm and pulled. There was a horrible lurch as his leg was pulled free from the grate, his jeans getting shredded and a terrible pain running down his calf, and then Evan was being lifted up and out of the grate into someone’s chest.

A sudden flurry of movement, and Evan was out of the road. A mere second later, the side of the lorry slammed down on where he had been stuck. Someone screamed far away.

If he was still there, he would have been flattened into a pancake.

Someone laid him down on the pavement, gentle and kind. Evan looked up, dazed and dizzy with adrenaline, everything seeming too sharp and too clear. Above him, looking down with a sweet smile, was a boy with curly blonde hair. The sunlight hit him from behind and made his hair glow gold at the edges, his face cast into shadow.

Evan swore he saw two huge white wings spread out from the youth’s back, one tall and strong, the other held slightly lower as if it was injured.

“Ruth,” he gasped. “Ruth, you're...”

“Don't talk,” Ruth replied gently. “Just rest. I have you.”

“Hey... hey, kid! Are you alright?”

Someone was running towards him, one of the bystanders who had seen the accident. Evan closed his eyes for a second. The pain in his leg was unbearable. At least he wasn’t flat.

When he opened his eyes again, Ruth had disappeared. A random woman was hovering over him, asking him questions and sounding panicked, but he could barely pay attention at all.

Was that... real?

Author's note:

if you've managed to read this far, it's lovely to have you on board! i've had internet issues so i had to post this later than i wanted to :( but now it's here!

thank you and enjoy, see you soon :)

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#chapter

[fallingstarnovel]

Chapter Three

That Monday, when he got to the lecture hall, he glared at Aliya for the entire time. She was visibly avoiding his gaze, tugging down her hair so she wouldn't make eye contact with him.

After it ended, he quickly walked over to her, coughing loudly from behind his fist.

"So. Judas comes to face his crimes."

Aliya turned and gave him a pitying look. "I'm really sorry! I completely forgot I had a revision session in the morning and I had to prepare for it. I felt so guilty."

Evan glared at her for another second – before rolling his eyes with a smile. He was a benevolent kind of person when he wanted to be. "It's fine."

"You sounded like you had a good time," Aliya teased him. “Your texts were indecipherable.”

"Uh. I think I did." He pulled a face as he failed to remember literally anything about how he got home. "It’s all kind of a blur. There was this girl..."

Aliya's eyes went wide. "There was?"

"Ah, shut up, she just said a bunch of stuff at me and then... Hm. I don't remember much after that, but clearly nothing weird happened since I got home safe and fully dressed."

Aliya tutted. "This is why I don't drink. Sounds kind of scary."

Evan opened his mouth to say something like "you get used to it", but then he remembered that he was trying to be normal and closed his mouth again. "Yeah. Haha, a little. I'm not sure you would have enjoyed the party. It was loud and everyone was off their faces."

"Maybe. I'm glad you were okay, though. And you got home safe."

Evan smiled. By now, they were long outside the lecture hall and were walking through campus. Students were rushing from building to building, or walking in groups and chattering away together. So many people who were meant to be here. They all looked like they were right at home.

There was a flash of black in the corner of his vision. Evan turned his head automatically, only to see the black cat from a few days ago sprawled across a wall. It was staring at him with green eyes, unblinking and imperious.

"Oh, it's the university cat," he said to Aliya. "Look."

"Aww. I'm more of a dog person," she said bluntly.

The cat's eyes narrowed in disgust.

Evan was about to go over and pet it when he heard someone say his name over his shoulder. He looked behind him, only to see a boy with curly blond hair and an angelic smile. He was looking at the cat with a strangely intense gaz, before snapping back to smile at Evan.

"Ruth!" he said. "Hey!"

Ruth waved. "Hello again. You look like you've recovered from Friday night."

Wait. Wait a minute... Evan squinted at him, before feeling his face flush red. Was Ruth there as well?! He didn’t remember seeing him at all!! He laughed awkwardly. "I am. So sorry. I don't remember a lot. I was... very drunk."

Ruth nodded. "I was. I thought you might have difficulty remembering."

Aliya's eyebrows inched up her forehead, right into her hijab. Evan realised that he had been quite rude, and quickly introduced her. "This is my terrible friend from Astro. She invited me to the party and then left me to die."

"I'm Aliya," she said, elbowing him in the stomach subtly.

Ruth gave her a polite nod, before turning his attention back to Evan. "I hope you don't mind that I let myself into your house. You seemed very worried that I was going to harvest your organs."

"You were the one who took me home?!” Evan yelped, feeling the blood rush all the way to the tips of his ears. “Oh, haha, what? Haha, so weird," Evan said, feeling himself dying of mortification again. "Thank you so much. I don't mind at all. That was really nice of you. Usually I just stumble home by myself, you know? God, sorry, I must have been so annoying to handle."

Ruth shook his head, his hair tumbling around his ears. "You weren't annoying at all. You were very sweet, like a well behaved child."

Evan wanted the ground to swallow him whole. "Haha, that's good. Still, I'm so sorry. Thank you. Augh."

How was he so bad at this?

An idea occurred to him. He quickly started rummaging in his pockets. "Wait, wait, I think I owe you a coffee for saving my life twice now. I don't have a lecture for a while, so..."

Ruth looked at him in surprise. There was a yawning moment of silence in which Evan questioned everything that made him ask that question and wondered if it was too late to change his name and move to Mexico.

But then Ruth smiled. "I think I owe you one instead. You spilled yours last time."

"In that case, I'll pay for yours and you pay for mine, and we can call that even," Evan laughed, feeling relief flood through him.

There was a polite cough from behind him. "Well, I have a study group to get to, so," Aliya said, shooting Evan a knowing smile. "I'll let you two go have fun. See you, Evan."

Evan felt a little bit guilty at accidentally muscling Aliya out of the conversation. He waved her goodbye and turned back to Ruth, and all his guilt was forgotten. Ruth's smile was blinding. There were two little dimples in his cheeks. Wow, he didn’t know anyone in real life with dimples.

"Let's go," he said, inclining his head in the direction of the coffee shop, and off they went.

Evan watched Ruth over his coffee while trying to look like he was doing no such thing.

Ruth was fascinating. He had a very handsome face, with eyes that could have been carved into one of those old statues they kept in the museums of Rome. His movements were all graceful and deliberate, from the way he stirred his coffee to the way he unwrapped his blue scarf from around his neck.

He was also tall. Evan wasn't short – okay, he was kind of short – but Ruth made him feel like a god damn manlet.

"So," he said, because he felt the need to fill the silence with something, "what course are you on?"

"Actually, I'm a part time student."

"Eh, no way. I didn't know you could do an undergrad part time!"

Ruth smiled and shrugged. "I have a job on the side. It takes up a lot of my time. I suppose the university understood I had other commitments."

Evan blinked. "Wow. Must be an intense job."

"You have no idea," Ruth said, something steely glinting in his grey eyes. "But it's rewarding."

"Is it why you skip so many lectures?"

Ruth nodded. Evan couldn't hold back his curiosity.

"Then what is it?"

Supermodel? Secret agent? Government official? What was important enough that the university would let him mess around with the schedule like this?

Ruth just winked at him, and Evan immediately upgraded all his guesses. Eldest son of a mob boss. Heir to the CEO of a huge corporation. A superhero in disguise as a student.

"That's fine. I didn't want to know anyway," Evan lied. "I bet it's something boring like business management."

Ruth ran his finger along his cup, his eyes flickering down to the table. "In a way, I suppose you're not far off."

"So... why astrophysics?"

"No reason, really. I just felt something pulling me here. That's all."

Wow! Such a free spirit! This guy was definitely some kind of billionaire. Only a rich person could afford to come to university on a whim and then spend half his time doing something else instead. Evan, who thought coffee was a fancy treat, tried to contain his jealousy and failed.

They drank their drinks in companionable silence. Evan was full of questions, but he didn’t want it to seem like he was interrogating his new friend. He was just curious!

“Do you... go to a lot of student parties?”

Ruth shrugged. “Not generally.”

“Oh. Aside from last night, I guess. Um... actually, about last night... I was wondering about what exactly happened.”

Ruth went still. “Yes?”

“Was I... alright? When did I go home?”

“I found you upstairs in someone’s bedroom with a few people. It looked like you were playing some kind of game that involved kissing,” Ruth replied. “You seemed very uncomfortable with the situation. Did I misread that?”

A kissing game. What the hell. Evan hadn’t played one of those for years. He wondered who he was smooching when Ruth discovered him. So deeply, horrifically embarrassing.

“I have no idea,” Evan replied with a shrug. “I don’t really remember if I was comfortable or not.”

There was a faint frown colouring Ruth’s pleasant smile. “Then I’m glad I was there regardless. There should be no room for doubt with things like this.”

“Hah, in an ideal world. In my experience, there’s always doubt. You just kind of have to move on afterwards.”

Ruth’s throat bobbed, but he didn’t say anything else. His coffee was steaming so much that it fogged up Evan’s glasses, and he took them off with a chuckle to clean them. “Wow, look at that,” he said, desperate to change the subject. “It’s that time of the year where I go blind every time I enter a warm room. You don’t wear contacts, right?”

Ruth, still speechless, shook his head. Oh, this was awkward. Evan got the horrible feeling that he had messed up somewhere.

“So lucky. Well, hah, look at the time. I should start heading to my next lecture.”

He didn’t have a next lecture. That was a lie. But he really didn’t want to hurt the poor guy’s feelings. He started gathering his stuff slowly, trying not to look like he was rushing out of there. Ruth let out a deep breath, before reaching across to lightly touch Evan’s wrist. His skin was very hot from where it had been holding his coffee cup.

“The next time you go to a party,” he said quietly, “take me with you.”

“Sorry?” Evan said, certain that he misheard.

“Take me too. I, ah.. I’m actually quite nervous around people. And I find it difficult to go alone. It would be... nice to have a friend to go with.”

“Oh, dude, me too,” Evan said, giving him a reassuring smile. “I have mad social anxiety. I actually don’t get invited to a lot of things like that anymore, but if I do, I guess I’ll text you and see if you’re free?”

Ruth nodded, his hand slipping off Evan’s wrist.

“Thanks.”

“It’s no worries. We can be anxious buds together.”

With a slow incline of his head, Ruth signalled that he would like that, and Evan felt some of his nervousness settle somehow. It was a surprisingly soothing gesture.

“Well. See you at the next one.”

“See you then.”

And then Evan rushed off to hide in the library for a couple of hours so Ruth wouldn’t see him walking around campus when he was supposed to be in a fake lecture instead.

Evan was getting out of the shower when he noticed something black flash in the corner of his vision. He whirled around, rubbing shampoo out of his eyes, visions of getting murdered by some opportunistic shower murderer running through his brain.

However, when he looked around, there was nothing there. He swore he saw something, though. Something in the reflection of the bathroom tiles near his back.

When he was done, he stopped by the mirror in the hallway and checked his body just in case the black thing had been a huge house spider or something. It wouldn’t be the first time that he had a spider fall on him in the shower. Usually they washed down the sinkhole, leaving Evan shivering and feeling strangely violated, but what if this one managed to cling onto his naked skin?

There was no spider. Instead, sprawling across Evan’s lower back like a trampstamp was a sprawling, intricate black tattoo, formed from archaic lettering and symbolism that he couldn’t read.

“Hey, what the fuck,” he said into the empty house.

Having no housemates meant that he couldn’t run into anybody’s room and ask them to read whatever the hell it now said on his back. He tried rubbing at it, but nothing happened. It didn’t even feel weird or raised. It just felt like skin, and it didn’t budge.

Not even soap or nail polish remover got it off his back. It was like ink had sunk into his skin and stuck there overnight.

Evan was, understandably, more than a little freaked out.

> HEY UHHH SO > sent: image_5473843.jpg > ???

wow, that’s a really interesting tattoo!! when did you get it? <

> well you see that’s the thing aliya. i didn’t. > i do not know where this tattoo came from. ummm > i am freaking out a little!!

wh??! < you mean it just....??? appeared?? <

> yeah?? i literally do not remember getting any tattoo there??! ever?

you do have a lot of tattoos... are you sure you didn’t forget about one of them? <

> you don’t just forget about a tattoo!! > okay actually. sometimes you do. BUT NOT THIS BIG. THIS IS A TRAMP STAMP > I WOULD NEVER GET A TRAMP STAMP > oh god what if this happened while i was drunk at that party

ok calm down do you want me to come over and look at it? <

> no, it’s fine. i’ll just. ???? hhhhhhhhh > wait, there is something you can do! can you get me the numbers of uhh. fuck what was their name uhhh Tree. Branch > ROCK > and there was this girl who dressed like a goth, they were both at the party, can you ask your netball friends if they have their numbers? they might know what happened?? i guess? help?

i’ll ask around babe x sorry about this maybe go to the police? <

> they’ll just say i was drunk and there was nothing they could do. but thank you anyway i really appreciate this. sorry for bothering you

no need to apologise at all xx hoping you’re okay xx message me whenever you like <

Evan examined the tattoo in the mirror again. Now that the shock had worn off... well. Aliya was right. He already had so many tattoos. Most of them were already stupid ones he got on a whim. So even if he didn’t ask for this one... it was okay, right? It wasn’t so bad.

It was even kind of cool, in an old-school, mall goth kind of way. Spidery webbing and dots of red ink in what he thought might have been flowers of some kind. He tried to take a photo with his phone, but his hands kept shaking, so he just kept getting blurry pictures of his ass. Not ideal, honestly.

With a sigh, he stretched out on his bed and examined his older tattoos. His favourite one was still the navy outline of a falling star stretching down his inner arm towards his hand. It was his first proper one that he got done at a real tattoo parlour. A lot of the earlier ones were... well, the less said about how close he got to a skin infection, the better.

With a sigh, he tugged on a long sleeved shirt from his closet. Until he could work out why he suddenly had that black monstrosity on the back of his hips, he wasn’t sure he wanted to accidentally keep catching glimpses of it in every reflective surface.

Wait a minute. There was someone else there at the party. Someone who might have seen something that could help.

He opened up the messages from the unknown number and prayed that it was who he hoped it was.

> heyyy ruth i hope this is you!! haha hi

The reply came back about half an hour later, which was just long enough for Evan to overthink everything that had ever happened to him.

It’s me. Rest assured. :) <

Oh god. How to word this?

> well i’m doing good actually i’m you know. chilling! > actually there was something i wanted to ask you > please excuse the ass in this photo!!!!!

The what. <

> sent: image_5473843.jpg

Who did this. <

> funny question! i don’t know > i was hoping you could help???

I’m coming over. <

> no, i meant like do you remember seeing anyone at the party with a tattoo gun or a stick and poke or something?? you don’t have to come over sorry i don’t want to be a bother

You’re not a bother. I’m coming over. <

Well. Fuck. Evan panicked and threw on a pair of sweats and a hoodie, and then felt stupid, because presumably Ruth was going to come and look at the tattoo. Maybe he should wear nicer clothes? Did he have time to tidy his room?

> are you sure haha i don’t want to inconvenience you!!!

I was in the area anyway. It’s okay if you don’t want me to come over. But I have an idea about what happened. < Sorry. I know this must be alarming. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. <

Evan thought about it. Well. It was the only lead he had.

> sure why not come on over

I’m outside. <

The doorbell rang.

***

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#chapter

[fallingstarnovel]

#reblog #sorry i know this isnt a chapter but ruth

[fallingstarnovel]

Chapter Two

content warning: alcohol, binge drinking

That was how Evan ended up standing in front of a huge house in a part of the city that he had never visited before with an unopened bottle of vodka in his hand. It was getting dark out – midwinter was coming fast, turning the air frosty and driving everyone indoors. At least it would be warm inside the house.

Evan took a deep breath, forcing himself to relax. A puff of vapour clouded the air before him. 

This was fine. It was fine. It was a party. He was supposed to be here – he had been invited. There was no need to be anxious. It wasn't going to be like it was back then. 

He could hear loud music pumping from inside the house, and spilling from between the curtains of the house was dim purple light. 

God, who was he kidding. He couldn't do this. 

As Evan turned around to leave, someone opened the door from the inside. 

"Oh, shit, there's someone here. Sorry, were you waiting to be let in?"

Evan looked up at the tall student who just stumbled outside. "Um. Yeah. My friend is inside. She–" 

"Go ahead," the student said, holding the door open and gesturing to go inside. Evan nodded in thanks, before stumbling into the house. 

Immediately, he was surrounded by people. The house was crammed wall to wall with students in various stages of inebriation, all chattering away at the top of their lungs as the hypnotic electro music filled the space between them. Evan found a pile of coats in the hallway and dropped his on top. He hoped it wouldn't get lost or stolen before he left. 

"Excuse me," he said, edging his way past a group of girls in short dresses who gave him judgemental looks. "Sorry. Sorry, sorry–" 

He couldn't find Aliya anywhere. She wasn't in the living room or the kitchen. Evan poked his head behind every door, but all he kept finding were more guests crammed into unlikely places like sardines in a tin can. He recognised one or two from around campus, but some of these people seemed slightly too old to be students. Was this really a university party? Did these people all know each other? 

Evan saw someone who looked like they were slightly in charge, maybe, and tapped them on the shoulder. They turned around with an unfocused look, hair in messy tumble around their head. 

"What's up? Didn't Fae get you it? Oh, shit, where did you get the vodka?"

Evan blinked. This person sure was saying words at him. "What?"

The person squinted at him. "Didn't you just ask me for a kitchen towel?" 

"No, I just got here," Evan said. "But thanks. Um. I'm looking for Aliya, do you know where she is?"

That got him a blank look. "Who?"

"Aliya! Aliya, you know, she does Astro with me. Uh." The blank look still persisted on the person's face. "She came here with volleyball? No, wait, I mean, netball? I think?"

The person looked vaguely less blank. "Oh, wait, the netball bitches. I love those girls, they make me feel like I'm some kind of insect. My name's Rock by the way."

"Oh," said Evan, who didn't know why that was relevant. "That's a cool name. Like Dwayne Jo–"

"Not like Dwayne fucking Johnson," Rock replied with a scowl. "I hate that guy."

"Oh. Sorry."

Rock just nodded, before tapping a person on the shoulder seemingly at random. "Is Becca around?"

"In the garden," the girl replied, "probably? Unless she left."

They were both yelling at full volume. Evan winced. His ears were already ringing. 

Rock led him through sweaty crowds of people to the kitchen, and then out of a door into the garden. It wasn't much of a garden – more like a patch of concrete with a few bricks and weeds lying around, as if for decoration. There were more people out here, mostly smoking. Some of them looked like they were asleep. It was so cold out here – the girls were huddled up under big jackets that they had stolen from other people. 

Wait a minute. Evan was pretty sure that was his coat. How did it get stolen so fast?!

"Aliya?" Evan called. Some people looked up, their eyes glazed over. 

"Aliya bounced," someone said. 

Evan's heart sank. "What?" 

"Yeah, she dipped pretty quickly. Said she forgot about a deadline."

God damn it. Evan fought the urge to bang his head off the nearest wall. Why didn't she text him and say so? He could have escaped too! 

"Right, thanks. I, uh–"

"Bro, no, you're not leaving yet, are you?" Rock said, giving him a betrayed look. "You just got here!"

Evan shrugged, plastering on a polite smile. "I don't really know anyone here–"

"Yet," Rock said firmly. "You don't know anyone yet. You know what they say about strangers? They're just friends you haven't made yet. Come on, live a little." 

Personally, Evan thought Rock was slightly unhinged. He must have looked obviously uncomfortable, because Rock held out a hand and squeezed his shoulder. 

"You don't go to a lot of parties, huh? It's cool. You can chill with me. Give it half an hour and see how you feel, yeah?" 

Why was this person so eager to see a complete stranger join the party? Evan considered saying no and leaving anyway, but then again... 

Evan wasn't a coward. He would give it half an hour and see if he made any friends. And if not, he could always leave. 

"Sounds good," he said. 

Rock cheered. A bunch of other people in the garden cheered too, though Evan doubted they knew what they were cheering for. "Alright! We got another one! Come on, pal, let's get you a drink!' 

Half an hour later and after a couple of drinks, Evan somehow found himself watching Rock pour out a tray full of shots in the kitchen. 

Several people wandered over in interest, lured by the idea of free alcohol like they were cats who just heard the tin of tuna being opened. "Who's down?" Rock said. 

A few people came forward. Evan watched as a girl slung herself over Rock's shoulders with a bored expression. She had long, long straight black hair, like an oil slick that ran down her back, and she was either exceptionally tall or she was wearing huge platform boots. Maybe both. Evan thought it was both. "I will."

"Evan?" Rock said. "You want one? It's okay if you don't, I know shots are a little much..."

"I can do shots," Evan said without meaning to. Oh, shit. Was he trying to impress the hot goth girl? He kind of was. "Uh, if that's cool." 

Rock's smile widened. "If you're sure you can handle it. Are you a lightweight, Evan? Because if so, I'm not going to be the one cleaning up your puke afterwards."

Evan smiled. "Ah, I don't know. Maybe. I'll try to keep it inside."

"Attaboy, big guy! That's what I like to hear!"

Soon, everyone around him had a shot in their hand. Evan had no idea what the liquid was. He tried to sniff it, but then Rock was counting down, and everyone was lifting their shot glasses up and drinking. 

People winced and made appropriate noises as the burn hit. Rock blinked away his tears with a grin, before watching Evan drink with interest. 

Evan calmly put down the shot. After seeing everyone else's reaction, he quickly pretended to gasp. "Oh, wow, the burn, wow..." 

Rock's eyes flickered over the glass. It was empty. "Have you done that before?"

Evan shrugged, waving him away. "Once or twice."

Hot Goth Girl finally seemed to notice him. She stared him down, before slowly smiling at him, her black painted mouth in a closed-lip smirk. It was kind of terrifying. 

"Hey Rock," she said, keeping her eyes on Evan. "Who's this?"

"I'm Evan," said Evan, before holding out a sweaty hand. She stared at it, and he immediately dropped it. "Haha, what, I don't know why I did that. Nice to meet you."

"I've seen you around," she said. 

It sounded like an accusation. Evan wilted – before perking up. Wait, didn't this mean she remembered him? She had noticed him before! This was good, right? He nodded eagerly. "You recognise me? I'm sorry, I don't think I've seen you around, otherwise I would have remembered – I mean, you're very recognisable, haha, there's not a lot of people around here who dress so, like..."

He trailed off, feeling awkward. Hot Goth Girl glared at him. 

"Like what?"

Evan blinked. She was wearing black lipstick and huge eyeliner, like two bat wings painted on her face. Most people around here weren't so brave. 

"Um... so, um... alternatively."

Her eyes narrowed. Slowly, she grinned. "Where did you find this guy, Rock?"

"Aliya likes him," Rock laughed, before holding up the bottle. "Let's do round two," they hollered, and the night took a downward turn from there. 

Coming to this party was such a bad idea.

When Evan woke up in the morning, he was very confused. 

He had a vague memory of someone carrying him home. And holding someone's hand. And... 

He groaned with embarrassment and rolled over to bury his head in his pillow to try and suffocate himself. When that didn't work, he rolled onto his back and massaged his forehead. 

It felt like something had crawled into his mouth and died. He was so thirsty. But mostly he was mortified. 

Ah, that poor person! Evan probably rambled on about weird depressing personal problems! He became one of those maudlin drunks who just starts crying about stuff! The person who carried him here must have been totally sick of his shit. 

What an angel. Evan wished he could remember who they were. 

He looked around for his phone, his bleary eyes cracking open. Whoever they were, they left a full glass of water on the desk. Evan jumped at it, drinking the whole thing in seconds. 

It helped a little bit. But now he felt nauseous. 

This sucked. Why did he do this. 

Oh, shit, his phone and his wallet. Did he have them? He looked around in a panic. Were they in the jeans he wore? Where the fuck were his jeans?!

Slowly, he looked under his duvet and realised that he was still wearing them. Ah. Oops. 

At least the person didn't undress him while he was drunk or unconscious. That would have been uncomfortable. In fact, he seemed in exceptionally good condition, considering he got black out drunk at a strangers house.

Aaaa god why did he do that!!! Why didn’t he slow down and drink some water!! This was so embarrassing, he could have done anything last night!!

... oh jesus fuck, why did his eyes hurt so much? They were so sore! It was like someone shone a supercharged torch in his eyes or made him stare into the god damn sun!! What happened last night?!

In his pocket, he found his wallet and phone, much to his relief. Evan quickly scrolled through his messages to see if he had sent anything weird to anyone. 

Huh? Who the fuck were all these people he had added on Facebook? Why had he sent out so many friend requests?! He didn't recognise any of the names here at all!

He also saw a series of messages he sent to Aliya. 

> you. are the qorst friend ever 

> ┻┻︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵┻┻

i'm so sorry!! i'm really sorry!! oh i feel so bad, i thought i text you not to come anymore!! <

> ABANDONED me 

> discarded me like an EMPTY CRISP PALKCET

> packet

... evan are you perhaps a little drunk? <

> everyone is very friendky. They keep handing me shots. These are my new friends now 

> you're fired

no!!! 😭😭😭 <

don't fire me!!! i need someone to copy revision notes off!! <

> too late. now rock is my new fri be. Goodbye

> oh shit they’re doiign WEED in here

> Your missing otu on thrjelkc weeb

who's rock?? <

seriously though, be safe evan and have fun. if you need to call anyone, im up all night doing this assignment so just call me okay? x < 

Just as he finished reading the texts, his phone buzzed in his hand. He nearly dropped it in shock. There was an unread text in his inbox from an unrecognised number. 

How are you feeling? <

This was awkward. Clearly, this was a person Evan gave his number to last night. Unfortunately, he had no clue who they were, and now he felt too awkward to ask, since they clearly assumed he knew who it was. 

> haha a little hungover!! oops

Was that too many exclamation marks? This mystery person would think he was a psycho. 

The reply came soon. 

Make sure you drink plenty of water. And eat something salty. < 

Do you want me to bring anything? <

Seriously, who was this and why were they being so nice? Evan still felt a little awkward. 

> i will :) and no thank you but that's so kind! how are you feeling? 

I'm fine. I'm glad you're alright. <

...

This was too much to deal with. Evan decided not to answer. Hopefully, whoever this was would drop a clue at some point, or just leave him alone.

There weren't many people it could be. He had all his friends (haha, all his friends, as if he had more than three) saved as contacts. So this must be a stranger from the party. 

A memory flashed into his head of the messy haired host – what was their name, Tree? Root? Boulder? – saying something stupid about all strangers being friends he hadn't made yet. It was probably them. They seemed overly familiar, so this lined up. 

Ah, what the hell. This was a problem for future Evan. 

He rolled himself into the shower without vomiting even a little bit, which he considered a huge achievement that should be celebrated with pizza for breakfast.

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(psst, read the next chapter early on my patreon here! or join the discord for pings when the next chapter updates!)

#chapter

[fallingstarnovel]

will you ever post this on ao3 (under the fandom "original work" ofc) or is this a tumblr-only kinda deal? btw i love your modern LBG-Ge fic

not sure yet! I know ao3 discourages people from posting original work there because of the legal problems it brings, so I don't want to make any trouble. This might be Tumblr only, unless someone can suggest a good alternative haha.

And thank you so much ❤️❤️

#ask

[fallingstarnovel]

Chapter One

Evan Golightly didn't consider himself an unlucky kind of guy. It wasn't like he was wandering around winning the lottery, but he also wasn't getting hit by chunks of blue ice from the sky from a passing airplane.

This week was just like every other week he had experienced so far. As he walked to his lecture across the university campus, he saw the same people he usually did and went to the same places as always. He didn't step on any cracks in the pavement, and he didn't walk under any ladders. He didn't find any four leaf clovers either, and he didn't have a lucky rabbit's paw on his key chain. He had a coffee cup in his hand – medium sized, not big and not small. 

He was a little late, because he had stopped to pet a black cat that lay on the pavement in front of him, but that was okay. The lecturer was very forgiving, and most people were a few minutes late anyway due to a clash in timetabling. 

Evan couldn't remember if seeing a black cat was good luck or bad luck. As the kitty purred and rubbed itself up against his fingers, he couldn't help but smile and talk to it quietly.

"Oh, you like that? You like the scritches? You're so handsome, such a handsome boy..."

Someone behind him coughed disapprovingly. A little embarrassed at getting caught, Evan straightened up and kept walking, forgetting all about whether black cats were lucky or not. 

As he approached the building where his lecture was held, Evan started climbing the concrete steps up to the entrance.

If luck could be charted on a bell curve, with some people being extremely lucky, and some being extremely unlucky, then Evan considered himself to be slap bang in the middle. If he entered the lottery, he might win one of the smallest prizes, but not very often. If he got onto a crowded bus, there would be a seat available, but not a very good one. If he chose answers at random on a test, he would get a 50% grade at the end. 

There was a meow from down by his feet. The black cat was following him. It had big green eyes which were staring at him as it meowed again. 

"I'm sorry, I would love to play with you, but I'm late," Evan said. He knew the cat didn't understand, but he still felt like being polite. 

The cat meowed very loudly and then started walking in between Evan's feet as he climbed the stairs. He started to worry that he was going to trip, slowing down and trying to shoo it away with his foot. It meowed again, but ran away, standing at a distance and staring at him. 

Evan had always been weak for cute things. He bit his lip. "Ahh, I'm sorry! Wait until my lecture finishes, I'll come back and give you scritches then!" 

He was almost at the top of the stairs now. Evan turned away from the cat – only to see a small black shadow out the corner of his eye down by his sneakers. He felt something brush against his leg, and then he tripped over something, and before he knew what was happening, he was falling backwards down the stairs. 

Evan let out a sharp cry, his arms windmilling around him as he went into freefall. 

Not the stairs... not the stairs! This was why he hated stairs! He always knew they would kill him one day! 

Before he could fall any further and roll down the stairs and smash like a boiled egg, he felt someone grab his arm and hold him still. His bag hit the ground and his coffee cup went flying, bouncing down the steps and spilling coffee everywhere, but Evan...

Evan was being held up at the top of the stairs by a strong, sure grip. 

He looked around in surprise. Holding his arm was a smiling youth with curly blond hair, tumbling in cherubic whorls around his ears. The youth looked just as shocked, his eyes big and wide as he stared at Evan. As he stopped Evan from falling. 

There was a moment of silence. The youth pulled Evan forward onto the flat ground at the top of the steps, and let go. 

"You..." Evan said in a rush. "You saved me! Thank you so much, I thought I was a goner..." 

The youth hesitantly smiled back, his eyes flickering down the stairs. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, I just tripped on a–" Evan said, gesturing to the cat. 

The cat was no longer there. It had disappeared. 

"... Huh. Guess I tripped on nothing. Um, thanks. Oh, man, my coffee..."

The youth picked up Evan's bag and handed it over to him. His eyes were wide, like he was recovering from a sudden shock. "Sorry. I'll buy you a new one."

"Don't worry about it, it was my fault," Evan said with a laugh. "I owe you for saving me. I should buy you a coffee!" 

The youth looked at Evan. He couldn’t help but notice that his eyes were light grey, bright and cold, crinkling at the corners in a warm smile. "There's no need to thank me. You don't owe me a thing."

Evan had heard those two sentences before many times in his life. He had heard it from friends who had done him a favour, and from customer service workers who helped him get a discount for his broken laptop, and from the nice woman in the corner shop who sent his mom flowers when she heard his grandfather had died. 

They had always been said with varying levels of sincerity. A lot of people said "no need to thank me", but secretly wanted to be thanked very much. If you didn't thank them, they wouldn't help you in the future. People were weird like that. 

But when this guy said it, for some reason Evan understood that it was the absolute truth. Like it wouldn't matter if Evan thanked him or not – he would still help him. 

Feeling a little flustered, Evan scratched the back of his neck. "Well, I have a lecture now, so I better... uh, you're sure you don't want a coffee afterwards?"

The youth seemed to think about it for just a second too long, before shaking his head. His smile was apologetic. "It's fine. Enjoy your lecture." He started walking away. 

"Ah, uh, you too," Evan said in a panic, before quietly smacking his own face. He had no idea if the guy even had a lecture. Stupid, stupid, stupid... 

The youth came to a stop. He slowly turned around, an angelic, apologetic smile on his face. "Actually, I'm a little lost. Could you tell me where room M42 is?" 

"That's – that's where I'm going now! That's where my lecture is!" Evan gave him a wide grin. "Astro 228, right?"

The youth nodded. "Right."

"Just follow me, then. Huh... I didn't know we shared a class, sorry I didn't recognise you!"

"That's okay," the youth said quietly from behind him as they entered the lecture building together. "I tend to stay quiet." 

Watery winter sun did its best to shine through the floor length windows of the lecture building. It shone off the back of Evan’s pale neck, the black hair that fell in every direction. It reflected off the otherboy’s grey eyes, making them seem more luminous, more pallid, as they watched Evan with keen, unwavering interest.

Evan walked slightly ahead to lead the way. "Well, I definitely won't forget you now. You saved my life! What's your name?"

The youth was quiet. Evan waited for an answer for an uncomfortably long time, before wondering if he had spoken too quietly. He was about to repeat the question when a soft voice from behind him said "Ruth."

Ruth? Wasn't Ruth a girl's name? Was this guy actually a girl? "Oh, Ruth? Ahh, that's a cool name."

"You don't think it's weird? That a guy has a girl's name?"

Oh, thank god, he didn't have to try and subtly ask awkward questions about pronouns. Maybe the guy was used to this kind of thing and anticipated the awkwardness. "No, I don't think so. As long as you like it, then that's all that matters. I'm Evan by the way." 

The youth hummed. "I know." 

Now Evan felt guilty. He didn't even remember seeing this guy around, but he remembered Evan's name. Ah, this was too bad. He would definitely make an effort to remember him now. "Well, here it is. Just in time–"

"Actually, you go ahead," Ruth said suddenly. "I need to use the bathroom."

Evan turned around and blinked at him. "Oh. Sure. I'll see you in a bit, then."

The youth nodded. He hesitated, before speaking again.

“It was nice to talk to you.” 

He gave Evan one last beatific smile, before walking away and disappearing around the corner. Evan quietly let himself into the lecture and scurried to the back, mouthing "sorry" at the lecturer, who ignored him. 

He made sure to keep the seat next to him free for Ruth even as other students trickled in. 

The lecturer coughed several times to get the attention of the class. 

"So, last week I opened the lecture with the following quote: God does not play dice with the universe. This is oft quoted and attributed to Einstein himself in a letter to a friend criticizing what he saw as the unacceptable flaw in quantum mechanics, that is, the possibility of unpredictable random events on a molecular level. In many ways, he was right. We have been learning how to chart the movement of objects in a vacuum – predicting the orbits of distant planets and stars around the insatiable black holes that are, themselves, in a perpetual state of movement. I know that most of you have grasped the basics of this particular module very quickly. Predictability is a magnetic lure – one gets lulled into the false sense of security knowing that we can work out the trajectory of some far flung meteor to a high degree of accuracy. As if space can be imagined as some unfathomably large clock, each cog in place, every heavenly body caught in an eternal, rational, predictable waltz to the swing of a baton that, if only we have the numbers, might one day understand the rhythms of. If you turn your attention to the notes we made on how you can work out the speed of rotation of a planet..."

Evan tried very hard to concentrate and make notes. There was always a buffer at the start of the class where this particular lecturer went on a long tangent about random things he thought were interesting, and he usually zoned out through them, but once the actual maths was brought in, there was no possibility of daydreaming and letting it slip by. If you missed anything, you ended up being more confused down the line when the more complicated stuff got brought in. 

The poor girl next to him was doomed. She fell asleep almost immediately, and Evan lit a candle in his mind for her. RIP your grades, you snoozy bitch. At the same time, he was envious. Why couldn’t he take a nap instead of doing work?

He tried to concentrate, but all through the lecture, Evan couldn't help but keep looking at the doorway, wondering when Ruth was going to appear. How long did it take to use the bathroom? Did the poor guy have a stomach upset? 

By the time the lecture was over, Evan had accepted that Ruth wasn't going to appear. He lit a candle in his heart for the guy's bowel system. Clearly, he had been having some kind of toilet trouble and decided to skip the lecture. 

What a shame. He seemed so... interesting. 

After the lecture was over, Evan slowly clambered out of his seat. The lecturer had set a bunch of exercises to do at home, and the library was calling for a study session. Time to shuffle into Tesco to get a £3 meal deal and sit down for several hours to pound his brain into submission! 

"Hey, Evan," someone called out as they left the lecture. "Evan, wait up!" 

There was a girl chasing after Evan. She had warm brown skin and an infectious smile, her eyes sparkling with excitement. 

"Oh, sorry Aliya," he said, slowing down so she could catch up. "Did you enjoy the lecture?"

Aliya pouted. "No, are you insane? Enjoy it? Why did I do an astrophysics course again? There's so much maths. I genuinely think I would drop out if I didn't think my mum would kill me."

Evan nodded in agreement. "Sometimes I think about switching to an art degree instead. I won't do it. But I just think about it sometimes."

"Wait, wait, I wanted to ask you something," Aliya said, slapping his arm lightly. "House party. I've been invited, but I don't want to go alone. It's a bunch of people I don't know very well, and..."

Evan rolled his eyes. "If you don't know them, why are you going?"

"Because I don't know how to say no!" Aliya moaned. "It's a pretty casual thing, don't worry. You know I don't drink, so I'll probably be dipping early. Please? Please please please? Please just come for a little while, just to keep me company..."

Evan wasn't a prude. He liked a good party. The thing was that he liked a good party with people he knew. "And I don't know anyone there?"

"Probably not, they're all from netball club. But hey – you'll know me!" 

"I don't know you. Who are you. Why are you following me."

"Evaaaaan. Please! I'll do anything."

There was a long silence as they exited the lecture building together. Evan watched the students stream out of the building on their way to other classes, or the library, or their rooms to go back to sleep. 

He wasn't exactly great at making friends. Aliya was the only person on his course that he talked to regularly. It was why he was pretty excited to get to know Ruth, except he disappeared, so that was a bust. He tried a few clubs and societies, but none of them had really clicked so far. 

He hadn't been to a party in ages. He was wasting the best years of his youth in university, and he wasn't even going to parties. What was the point? He was living like a grandpa and he was only twenty one! 

He wasn't an old man yet! He didn't have a pension! He still liked electronic music!

Maybe this was the chance Evan needed to make new friends. How hard could it be? 

"Sure, why not." 

Aliya cheered. "Yay! Thank you, big guy. I owe you one. Oh, wow, watch your feet, it looks like someone spilled their coffee down the stairs... haha, poor them..."

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#chapter

[fallingstarnovel]

Welcome to Falling Star!

This is a cool and sexy novel about a guy and his guardian angel, who is incredibly bad at his job.

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