The Angel's Cut by Elizabeth Knox

The tip of his tongue touched Xas’s and they were kissing.
    Xas put everything into the kiss. He said Yes in his mind, in his native language—but not aloud, not to God. He had a memory then, of flying under thick cloud in the dark of the moon, deviating back and forth, winding to follow the smell of river water, a smell like a wavering green curtain thousands of feet up in the air. This remembered river smell charmed Xas to move away onto a course that wasn’t his own. He was kissing, he’d let go of his bearings, bewitched by something both behind and before the kiss, the mouth that bit through the icy oxygen tube, and the story of a boy who first recognised himself from the air, in his discrete shadow. ‘I will follow this,’ Xas thought, in rapture, ‘I will follow this.’
    The moment that the stuff in the angel’s saliva hit his nervous system the man gasped and his whole body hardened and his lips flooded with heat. There was no distance between them then, for all their differences.
    The lamp was swinging, then the fuse in its bulb broke with a sharp musical noise, and the shade clattered. The ground was soft, and there were too many confounded clothes, big buttons and small, and a cummerbund with hooks and eyes hidden in its pleats.
    Xas had forgotten what it was like to take hold of someone avid, himself avid. He trembled and felt clumsy. His spit worked its magic—‘ une puissante potion d’amour ’—as his one true love had said. But the angel had forgotten how careful and exact he had to be. He was fumbling, palsiedwith pleasure and lack of practice, and by his fear of being too strong, till the man’s human hand gathered him and held them together, and moved, and mingled their wetness. The man’s other arm, braced against the floor, held his body above the angel’s, so that there was enough space between their bodies for them to press their foreheads together and look down the length of themselves, at what their hands were doing, and at their skins, damp and lustrous in the blue pre-dawn light. ‘Not so fast,’ the man breathed, though he was in charge, then, ‘Oh, you’re so beautiful!’ He kissed Xas and then stopped what he was doing and pulled the angel over so that Xas lay on top of him. Even in his eagerness he registered how easy it was to move Xas. People always noticed, whenever they by chance took his weight, that Xas weighed half what any human of an equivalent size did. ‘There’s nothing to you,’ the man panted. Then he tried to slip his arms into Xas’s opened clothes, to put his arms around him and hold him close. Xas remembered his back, and took the hands and kissed them, tasting their sweet mixed chlorophylls—and machine oil. The oil made his throat catch. He swallowed several times and the man rested the heel of his hand against his throat. He said, softly, ‘You’re not very substantial, but I think you must be—someone.’
    Xas coughed. ‘Why have you stopped? Please,’ he said. ‘Please.’
    â€˜I hope I can trust you,’ the man said, and caught Xas’s hands and held them still.
    Xas was astonished at this show of self-control. ‘I promise I won’t—’ he began, but broke off. ‘What do I promise?What are you worried about? What should I do or not do? Should I promise not to embarrass you? To be discreet? To keep out of sight?’ Then, wanting to pledge everything, he said simply: ‘I promise.’
    â€˜You promise easily.’ He stroked Xas’s throat with his palm, then his cheek with his knuckles. He said, ‘I get the impression you could cause me trouble. I wasn’t thinking of my public life. I always close the door on what I don’t like—what I don’t like at all, or don’t like any more. But it’s like you and I are in a room together already. One of my darkened