We Are Bulletproof

He knew it was him but he didn't know why he asked. Why he doubted Julio's sincerity, his feelings. There were feelings; Julio was baring his own heart to Angel, he could tell. How could he miss it? The signs were there and Julio even put it into words, black and white and plain as day. No one would come this far for him, offer to give him a key, tell him that they would always come for him, solely out of friendship.

But again, there was pressure to reciprocate and Angel wasn't ready for it. Julio wasn't pushing for anything, he knew that, but still, the knowledge weighed on him. It was just a picture though. It wasn't a marriage proposal or anything. It said a lot about Julio's sensitivity, really, and about his bravery. Putting himself out there, showing him this, it couldn't have been easy. Angel didn't show him any of the sketches or paintings or sculptures he did, after all—he wasn't brave.

The more he looked at it, the heavier his heart felt. There was joy and happiness mixed in with his pain and sadness. Angel's eyes were misty as he sat there taking it all in, not only the picture but Julio's feelings too, his heroic effort, his kindness and his heart. "I love it." He didn't just like it. Like wasn't a strong enough word for how he felt about it, and how much he needed something like this to take away that horrible voice inside, at the back of his mind, telling him to fly. To jump.

Angel didn't let go of the phone as he turned and slid his arms around Julio's shoulders, hugging him tight. "I love it," he whispered into Julio's shoulder. "Thank you."

Angel didn't know what to say to anything Julio typed out. There was so much pressure to say something—because he could, because he had the words inside but the problem was, they wouldn't come out. It wasn't the right place, outside in the blustery streets with so much noise wrapping around him. He found it hard to focus on any one thing, much less his own chaotic thoughts at the moment.

Once he stepped into the taxi it was better, but he didn't feel completely safe. Yet. Julio sitting beside him was already a great sense of relief, though they didn't touch. Angel glanced at him briefly when the cab rolled off, back to Hazleton and back to Julio's apartment. Unexpectedly in the town where he was attacked, a safe haven opened up. Kind of ironic, though—in the place he felt the least safe, he found refuge as well.

Angel didn't say anything and he kept his eyes on the window, idly watching scenery flashing past, until something landed in his lap. He picked it up and was briefly confused but that was him all right. Blue hair, blue eyes, dressed like a superhero. And again it was rough in the way that amateur art tended to be, but there was still something intriguing in it that transcended the sketchy lines. There was... emotion behind it. A strong emotion.

"Is this me?" He asked, slowly beginning to smile as he looked up at Julio. Then he looked back at the drawing again and gently ran a thumb over it, taking it all in, in its entirety. The figure in the drawing had much more strength than he felt he had in that moment. It was someone he hoped to be, though. Julio somehow had seen straight through into his heart, into his deepest desires, as if he had a direct line to Angel's thoughts.

There it was again, muddying the waters of their strange relationship: I like you, Angel. What did they have? Friendship? Acquaintanceship? Angel didn't have a name for what they were except maybe involved. They were involved with each other; Julio was involved in his life, weaving himself into every moment of Angel's day.

He kept his gaze on the screen, re-reading the words. Julio being here was a godsend because Angel would have jumped had it not been for him. But having him here and forcing him to play superhero, just like last time, didn't sit well with Angel at all. Julio was already a hero—the foes he battled were inner demons. And he won. That was what made him a hero in Angel's eyes.

But what did he say? To the fact that Julio liked him? To his insistence on being here for Angel, who only seemed to get himself into situations where he needed saving? He didn't want that—for himself or for Julio. He wanted to be strong, too, but he didn't quite know where to start.

Slowly, he nodded, encompassing everything in the motion. Maybe it started with being honest, like Julio had been with him about the private shows and about them making him uncomfortable. Angel took a deep breath and turned into him, feeling the chill all over just at the thought of revisiting what happened to him all those years ago. Not yet. Not out here, exposed, in the open. Luckily the cab rolled up and beeped at them and he looked up quickly at the sound.

"Let's go." He held Julio's hand tight as he stood and waved to let the taxi driver know they were here.

It was a lot colder out here without a jacket; upstairs with so many bodies crowding around it had been stifling, which didn't help his anxiety one little bit. Angel huddled on the bench beside Julio, glad for his warmth. But only on one side. The other side just had to freeze, there was nothing to be done about it.

Angel watched him typing away, studying his face by the light of the screen. He felt as if he hadn't seen Julio for weeks, but it had been days. Mere days. They talked all the time; in the morning as soon as he woke up he would check his phone. Out of the shower, the first thing he reached for was his phone. Every time the screen lit up with a message, his eyes lit up too and he would smile to himself. At night laying in bed, he would try to stay up as late as he could, catching messages between shows. Julio still had to work, after all. But more often than not he fell asleep clutching his phone, usually mid-message.

And he couldn't get Julio out of his head. Not only in thought, but his image, his profile, his smile and laugh. His eyes. His light. Where once Angel's sketchbooks were filled with Logan, now it was all Julio. He painted him and sketched him and sculpted him. There were a lot of half-finished busts that he kept hidden, not knowing if Julio would think it creepy that he was forming him out of clay. None of the pictures completely captured the real Julio though. There was a good likeness but his light couldn't be so easily portrayed.

"I'm sorry you had to come here." Angel slid a hand over Julio's, head on his shoulder and eyes on the screen. "I'm sorry. Next time don't come, even if it's my address. Especially if it's my address." He felt like Julio had been tricked—someone used his address and Julio had to come see what was going on. Jaime didn't do it to lure him out but it still felt horrible to know that he had exposed Julio to something like this.

Nobody really seemed to notice them leaving, which was a good thing for Angel—his head was still spinning from what happened. What almost happened. One of the other strippers did try briefly to stop Julio before they got out the door, but he stopped once he noticed them holding hands. A kind of knowing smile crept over his lips; he patted Julio on the back and then turned away into a group of women clustered nearby.

Angel didn't really have many words left in him and trying to think of things to say was exhausting, so he let the silence dominate. Down the elevator, out into the glitzy, glamorous lobby, then outside into cold air. His shoes scuffed the pavement that his body would have splattered onto had he leapt and even in that moment, he still thought about it. Flying.

He was about to call a cab when he realized that he didn't have his phone on him, and finally broke his silence. "Can you get a cab, Julio? I don't have my phone. I can pay for it."

Angel nodded his understanding, not very good at expressing himself either in so many words. Funny... kind of, that he had all the words in the world at his disposal and couldn't use them. Meanwhile, poor Julio was restricted to texting—also, all the words in the world—and still, somehow, they didn't quite get there.

"I don't have my phone on me." Now it was Angel's turn to be shame-faced. He probably left it in his bedroom. In the rush of the party and just... hating how loud everything was, how confusing—how triggering—the last thing on his mind was his phone. But he ought to have had it, just so he could text Julio. He really thought about it, and he wanted to, but that thought was chased out of his mind by his own nerves and anxiety every time it surfaced.

"I want to get out of here, Julio." Angel didn't look at the balcony again. He fixed his eyes on Julio instead, shifting even closer to him and gripping his hand tight. "I want to go back to your place. Can we please?" He liked it there last time. It wasn't like his apartment, sterile and cold and white. It was lived-in, everything there screamed Julio and it had memories of one of the best nights of his life—movies, Steven Seagull, making dinner together.

Angel sat up too, rubbing his elbow and watching Julio keenly as he tried to explain himself. "This isn't my party..." He glanced back inside; Jaime was nowhere in sight. "It's Jaime's. The one who pulled us down. He's an old high school classmate and he came from Spain, I didn't want to tell him to go stay somewhere else. But I didn't know he called the club. And he... it's hard to say no to him. He doesn't listen..."

Well, it was a long story but the point was, this wasn't Angel's party. He would never do something like this, trash his apartment and then order strippers on top of it, one of whom was Julio. Of all people, Julio. Angel sighed and turned back.

"Did you think I made the request?" Scooting closer he took Julio's hand, as it was a rhetorical question. Clearly Julio thought he did—it was his address. He didn't know what name Jaime gave them but it didn't look good either way. "I wouldn't do that to you, Julio. Why didn't you text me? I would have told you..."

Angel let himself be held. A step back from the ledge. Then another. The urge to fly faded with each stroke of Julio's hand against his hair and his heart rate calmed as the noise faded back into his apartment suite. Everyone wanted to watch the strippers; nobody wanted to stand around to look at two people laying on the balcony. There were a few people splashing around in the pool and laughing but they sounded far away to Angel.

Finally he looked up when Julio signed against his hand. It took him a brief moment to realize what it meant, then he shook his head bemusedly. "For what?" Angel shifted his weight; he didn't know if he was making Julio uncomfortable, laying on him like that. But he didn't go far and he held on to Julio still very tightly. If he lost his grasp... he might go back over.

"I thought you stopped doing shows," he said softly, searching Julio's gaze for answers. There had to be an explanation that made sense. Julio didn't lie to him, did he? He couldn't, not if the story he told was true—and not merely a story.

"You could have died you sons of bitches!" Jaime shouted furiously, and he actually looked scared. For once he wasn't glib or flippant. For once he seemed almost human. And Angel laughing didn't make him more inclined to calm down because he looked like he might murder them both.

It was just

He thought they were there by accident. That they didn't know they were on a ledge, about to take the fatal plunge over...? He was so stupid to think that. Angel was going to throw himself off, and here was Jaime thinking they were... what? Fooling around? He was so stupid. Angel stopped laughing finally—it was actually not an amused laugh. It was the delirious laugh of someone driven to the brink of madness.

He clung to Julio again and went silent as Jaime shooed the other party-goers away, telling them everything was fine. Angel closed his eyes and breathed in an unfamiliar scent—the outfit Julio had on—and then a familiar one when his head shifted. Julio's skin. Warmth. "Julio," he said quietly as his breathing finally began to calm. "You're here."

No? Don't jump? But... But he was finally here. He was finally at the edge, ready and willing to take the plunge down into darkness. He could close his eyes and fly and all of his troubles would be gone, right? No more nightmares, no more looking into the mirror to see his own darkness staring back at him, no more cold nights and frigid hearts. No more... nothingness...

Julio's hands though, they were warm, both of them. Angel kept getting distracted by different things. The noises around them one second, the whistle of the wind past his ears, Julio's hands, the ledge. "Julio..." Julio couldn't speak but at that moment Angel didn't need more noise adding confusion to his brain. And Julio never needed to talk to be expressive. His eyes, his expression, the tension in his body and his hands, those all spoke on his behalf.

Angel took an unsteady step closer to him, drawn in by his touch and his eyes. The sadness in them, he knew it. It was his own sadness. He... had been prepared to share his story with Julio before all of this happened. He thought Julio wouldn't judge him; Julio had been through the same thing. Then his plans were derailed and...

All of a sudden the world came crashing down over his ears. The noises increased tenfold, driving him to the brink of madness. He threw himself into Julio's arms and clung to him tight and buried his face against Julio's chest to try and block out the sounds around him. Then suddenly somebody yanked hard on him—and on Julio—to pull them back down onto the balcony, off the ledge. Angel fell awkwardly, banging his elbow. The pain brought him back to the present, where a furious-looking Jaime was standing over them and yelling at them for being stupid assholes and almost falling over the edge...

For some reason, Angel laughed.

One step forward, two steps back. That was how it always went. He took one step towards the ledge and then two back, never quite making that final plunge. Tonight, everything around him drove him to the brink. Two steps forward, zero steps back.

Angel couldn't breathe. The night air sliced through his lungs like a knife, cutting him deep, cutting him down to the core. He wanted so badly to jump. Somebody screamed behind him and he heard a commotion, as if people were finally noticing him dancing at the ledge, prepared to end it all. And he was. If Julio wasn't who he thought he was—if he maybe lied, if he was only here because Angel was stupid enough to think that he could draw Julio's attention—then there wasn't much to hang around for. As sad as that was. There wasn't much to live for.

Someone came up beside him and he skittered away, startled and defensive and frightened. Another creep? At first he still didn't see Julio. Just another person, another reason to jump. Angel even started to put his foot out, looking right through Julio, but then... Then the hand touched his face. He knew that touch.

"Julio?" He asked in a scared whisper, finally looking at him instead of past him. Was that him? In that silly outfit? Julio looked scared too; it was in his eyes, the way he looked at Angel. Was Julio scared of him? Angel reached up to touch his hand, still breathing erratically. "Julio... I have to-to get—to go." His eyes flicked away again, to the vast space off the side of the balcony. "I have to..."

The punch startled them both—Angel and the guy trying to hit on him. While the drunk guy fell over backwards with a loud shout and a string of curses, Angel hugged himself tighter and tighter and tighter, feeling that horrible iron band crushing around his chest. He started to shake; the breaths came in small but violent bursts as air ran out in his lungs.

All around him was the noise and the music and voices, laughter and shouting, a wall of stimulus. It was too much. It was all too much for him, when he had been living in silence for so long all on his own. Even when the guy fell over, nobody noticed. They were all drunk or high; the ones around them seemed to find it funny, even, pointing and laughing like hyenas.

But Angel didn't think it was funny. A loud ringing started up in his ears again and his vision tunnelled into the past, to another party just like this one, also hosted by Jaime. But back then he had been fifteen, young and impressionable and eager to fit in. He went to the party alone where another older guy tried to be friendly and he bought it. They went upstairs; Angel didn't know what that really meant at the time. He thought... they would talk. Someone older paying him attention was flattering.

"I can't..." He looked up at Rey finally with desperate eyes. "Please get—get me out... I have to get out..." And then his gaze started to dart around, looking for a way out. Looking for an exit. The door was blocked; there were too many people thronging around the strippers. Angel's eyes skimmed over Julio but he didn't even see him. He didn't see anything except his desire to get away from the noise and the laughter and the music—and the ringing in his ears.

Then suddenly, Angel ran. He bolted for the open door to the balcony, clipping people as he passed them by. He ran... he ran to the edge of the balcony, right to the ledge and he stood there teetering over the brink, looking down at the expanse of open air and freedom. The wind buffeted his hair as he leaned forward, steeling himself for the jump.

He had to get out.

"No I'm fine... no I don't want..."

The guy was trying very hard to lead him outside where there were fewer people clustered together. Some were enjoying the pool but most were here, watching the show. Apparently everyone knew about the strippers except the person who owned the suite.

Angel kept an eye on Julio--or tried to--while resisting the overly friendly guy. He smelled like liquor and the way he smiled made Angel's skin crawl. The look in his eyes was too familiar. The way he rubbed Angel's arm was very much unwelcomed.

"Rey..." He turned again to see where Julio was and caught a movement. Costumes were coming off now, flesh was exposed. Something heavy landed in his chest and he quickly looked away, back to Rey. He was the only nice one of the group, really. Angel nodded slightly and hugged himself. "I want to... to leave," he said quietly.

"Hey what the fuck! Who the fuck are you?!" The drunk guy shoved at Rey aggressively.

It was Julio...

There was Logan creeping up on him but Angel didn't even see him--funny because the only person he used to go to that club to see was Logan. But someone else had taken his place now, someone else had outshone him and all without saying a single word.

Angel felt... confused. Odd. He didn't know what he should think about Julio being here, if he should be angry or suspicious or more trusting. Did Julio have an explanation for this? Jaime didn't mention he hired strippers but this seemed up his alley somehow. Strippers. Hookers. Blow. He had the trifecta.

They made eye contact and Angel's stomach flipped unpleasantly. His heart lurched. He wanted to give Julio the benefit of the doubt, definitely, so he was trying not to jump to any conclusions. Before he could go over to ask Julio what he was doing here--his phone, he realized, wasn't on him and it looked like Julio was texting someone--somebody hooked an arm around him. Angel looked up, startled.

Some random guy with a beer in one hand was grinning at him. "Hola," he said pleasantly. "I've been watching you. You look uncomfortable. Want to go outside?" The music came on and Angel looked up at Julio with panic in his eyes, to see one of the other strippers pulling him away. The show was starting, apparently.

Somehow, the past always had a way of catching up to him. Angel didn't know what to do when Jaime messaged him out of the blue to tell him that he, his sister and 'some poor person' were all staying with him. He thought it was a joke and didn't even respond. Why would he? Jaime did nothing but torture him when they went to school together. Why should he acquiesce to the demands of a bully?

But then that familiar face showed up at his door and Jaime waltzed right in and took over--like he always did. Any time Jaime went somewhere, he seemed to act like he owned the place and people like Angel let him. Because they were weak. Because turning them out didn't seem right but letting them stay also didn't feel good.

Yet here they were. Jaime threw a party the next night--at his place. Angel didn't say much. He felt himself sliding back into his old ways, silently letting Jaime walk and talk all over him. Part of him wanted to talk to Julio, to ask his advice, but he knew that Julio wouldn't want to be involved with this bunch. The 'poor person' called Rey didn't seem bad. A little intimidating, but not bad. Jen was just as overbearing as her brother and together the two of them took over.

So there he was at the party, hiding out in a corner while strangers danced and drank and snorted lines on his coffee table. The doorbell rang again; somebody went to get it and the volume in the place ramped up once a bunch of men entered, dressed as firemen. Angel was about to flee to the balcony when he saw Julio...

He swore the world bottomed out from under him. Julio? And--Logan. Other dancers. Here for a private show. But Julio didn't do private shows anymore... Or so he claimed...