The two of you stand side by side, all bony elbows and quiet breathing, and wait.

‘It’s not like I’ve never seen a sunrise before,’ he says and drops his cigarette, grinds it into the pavement with the heel of his boot. He has burn scars on his hands and face; the sharp angles of his cheeks are framed by tangled dark hair. The leather jacket he’s wearing is old and smells of gasoline, the bright golden wings stitched on the back glowing orange in the sparse morning light. You know this without looking, you would know this without opening your eyes, you would still know this if you didn’t know anything else.

‘Right, because seeing the Sun actually rise is so important to you today, isn’t it?’ you say and he glares at the ground, his eyes a rusty brown as if his irises are already preparing for the heat to come. You knew it was cruel the moment the words left your mouth, you knew you couldn’t help it, you knew you never can.

‘You know it is, you know it always is,’ he mutters and lights another smoke. You briefly wonder if his lost humanity has anything to do with his crankiness. You briefly wonder why he’s always angry at night, ripping through what’s left of his life with a vicious intent, unsure and hollow and taking it out on those who get in his way. You briefly wonder why he searches for you every night. You briefly wonder why he searches for you at all if it’s only to lose you again once he’s found you. You briefly wonder why you let that happen, time and time again. There has to be something you can do, right?

For him there’s only you, there’s only for a night, there’s only the burning heat of the Sun in the morning and the tears on his face as you burn, and there’s nothing else, there never has been, there never will be.

‘I try not to look at it, you know. I turn my head away for as long as I can because looking is too much sometimes, isn’t it?’ he tells you and you ignore the memories that come to mind, ignore the echoes in his voice, ignore the pain in his words. You know he’s trying to tell you something.

He means both of your Falls, of course he does, what else could it be? There is nothing else, there never was, there never will be. You don’t allow yourself the luxury of thinking there might be.

Granted, both of your Falls happened years and years, possibly centuries, maybe even millennia ago, and you’ve both moved on from your respective personal disasters as best as you could – as best as you were allowed – but that doesn’t mean the old burns don’t hurt still. You’ve both got scars to prove just how much they do, after all.

You don’t say anything and so he throws away the still-burning cigarette, and so he throws away caution, and so he throws away everything, and so he reaches for your hand, and so the Sun Chariot crawls over the horizon like it’s hungover, all slow and drowsy and barely shining at all, barely aware of the pain it’s about to cause.

He refuses to look at you, and you can tell he’s savouring the feeling of you, the feeling of the both of you together, the feeling of the few moments you have left with him before the inevitable. His grip on your hand tightens and you squeeze back, trying to pretend that the sunrise isn’t the end of things, trying to pretend that you won’t burn the moment the sun-rays caress your skin, trying to pretend that there isn’t a good chance he’ll never find you again. Predictably, it’s not working but it doesn’t matter, not in the light of what’s about to happen. ‘Brace yourself,’ you warn. And then, perhaps as an afterthought: ‘You should let go of me.’

‘You know I never do,’ he says and – finally – looks at you. His eyes shine with tears not yet shed and he’s smiling; a smile that reeks of hurt but it doesn’t matter because he’s looking at you like you’re the only light he needs, like you’re all he ever wanted and worth all the burn wounds in the world.

He presses his lips to yours.

The Sun rises.