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Confessions of an Engine Heart

by AbsentAngel

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He isn't a religious man – never was.

He doesn't believe in God as much as he does the Devil, because in all his twenty four years of life he's only ever seen demons. They are everywhere, preening behind every shadow, hiding behind every bottle stained grin. He has grown up with them, befriended them, and made them his only family because they are the only ones that never hide behind lies. Demons have no need, no desire, for pretty masks.

Then he meets her. It is mere accident – she is lost in the maze of alleys and has never learned how to see in the dark. She charms him with soft smiles and flatters him by not flinching away. When she is near there is a whisper of ink and ancient paper – leftovers from all the time she's spent admiring musty old books in a life that is far away from his own.

For a moment she tames him, and it's like Beauty and the Beast, but without the singing silverware and the clumps of fur clogging the drain. She sees past the piercings, the dark scowls, and even darker past. His soul is so weighed down with sin it feels as if every move is mechanical – the grinding of metal gears and the clicking of the engine he calls a heart.

She is too soft to be his and too good to be true. Demons whisper in his ear, telling him that she isn't Beauty and he is not the Beast. Rather, he is Samson and she is Delilah. She isn't trying to find the man in the monster, they sneer. She is only biding her time, learning how to tinker and twist the workings of his metal heart, so that she can systematically tear him apart at his welded seams. They warn him that it is only a matter of time before he wakes up with his hair cut, his strength gone, and with nothing.

He listens because they have only ever protected him before. He starts watching her with wary eyes and with guarded looks. He lets the demons coat his skin in steel scales because a girl like her – so pure, so innocent – doesn't exist. She is a lie and he will wait for for her to stumble so that he can see the blackness that must be hiding behind her pearly smile.

Months go by and she doesn't change, doesn't falter. He bruises her with words, lashes her with spite. He is good at giving pain. He has spent his whole life sharpening his tongue and honing his skills in the art of piercing words, yet she stands. She smiles as if she knows better; shakes off the barbs he throws at her as if they were made of dust instead of metal. She shakes her head, exasperated, and he feels like a child being scolded under her knowing gaze.

Roughly, he steals a kiss – but instead of striking him she rewards him with a hum of approval.

He is tired of her games, tired of fighting to see behind her painted perfection, so he pushes farther. He is not gentle, does not treat her like the delicate winged bird that she is, but she doesn't ask him to stop and she doesn't beg for him to lessen. Instead she sighs his name and it is like an unspoken prayer – more.

He lets her hands roam his chest and her nails leave half mooned scars on his shoulders. He sucks and bites at her skin – sweet, delicious, soft skin – and finds satisfaction in being able to see the marks he's made. Any moment now and he expects the angel to fall away and show the ugly human underneath.

But she only yields to his touch, molds to him like unbaked clay. She trusts his hands, submits to them, as if his touch has the power to make her into something more. For a moment – as she throws her head back, her body slick with sweat and her expression lax with pleasure – he almost believes he can.

When he wakes up she is still there and the demons can't find an answer for it. She has not left. She has not changed. She wears the same redeeming mouth, the same healing gaze.

It is that morning, under the softness of her smile, that a little hole (no bigger than her pinky) weakens his metal armor. For her, it is enough. She works away at him, prying up each and every steel scale he has hidden behind and collects them in a jar above her door. They shimmer like jagged silver medals behind the clear glass. Too soon he is as bare as her, easily bruised and easily broken. She doesn't repay the hurt he's given her, doesn't prod the old, unhealed scars. Gently, as if she knows he could tear, her eyes read him like one of those books she loves so much and shocks him when – at the end – she smiles instead of screams.

In his chest the gears turn faster, harder, and his engine heart starts to sound less like a machine and more like a pulse.

They lay together, his moth eaten twin mattress creaking under them and their bare bodies pressed together with their legs intimately entangled like loose thread. His strong arms wrap around her and he can't help but be mesmerized by how she can be so tiny and yet fit against him so well. Her sweet breath warms his chest and her fine hair (wild but shockingly untangled despite their previous activities) tickle his chin.

She is asleep, soundless except for the occasional incoherent murmur. Self loathing burns like acid in his chest and he hears blood (not oil) pulse loudly in his ears.

"How could you love a monster like me?" His words are no more than a husky whisper because he doesn't want to pull her from her dreams.

She sighs and startles him when she answers – her words warm and bathed in sleep against his chest, "Amantes sunt amantes."

He frowns, embarrassed that she heard his whispered confession and irritated by her answer. She is always using those little latin phrases that no one but her understood and quoting works that she had long since memorized (but that he had never even heard of). "You wanna tell me what that means?"

She curls into him and he can feel her wide smile against his skin. "Lovers are lunatics."

It is, and isn't, an answer but he finds that it soothes the burning in his heart anyway.

He is still not a religious man. He suspects he never will be. But there is something sacred and honest in her smiles, something lyrical in her laughter, that makes him think that Heaven might not be the world wide lie he had always believed it to be. That, maybe, it might be more than a bed time story to warn away the fear of death.

Gently, he traces her shoulder blade with calloused fingers and wonders if angel wings are something that can be felt by mortal hands.

AN: So, I had entered this in a contest and it didn't place. Since it was inspired by Gajeel and Levy's relationship, I figured it would work just as well as fanfiction. :)