“Feel what? I feel<i>everything</i>,” he pointed out with a grin stretching across his face. It was true. His skin buzzed and hummed, so much that the hairs on his arms practically stood at attention. His fingers remained on the soft feathers of the wings that had bloomed from her back, poking awkwardly from under her shirt where they most likely wanted to be stretched out and free. His overly familiar touch took his wandering fingers down the collar of her top to feel between her shoulder blades for the root of the new appendages. Like from earlier, his touch prickled like static electricity against her skin.<br/><br/>“Can you feel<i>that?</i>” What he really asked was whether or not she was tender where her skin parted into knobs around the growth of her wings. His fingertips lingered there, then he brought them back up to lift the silk of her hair that shimmered through his comb through like spun gold.<br/><br/>“You think being an angel means being benevolent?” His snort was derogatory. “Regardless, anything with wings like these came from the same kind of lore at one point. You shouldn't believe everything you read when they say that angels sing in the heavens and demons moan in the depths of hell. That's a whole bunch of Christian mumbo jumbo because people don't understand the depths of their own world – or the concept that there is more than just this physical realm. In order to wrap their feeble minds around the widely unknown, man had conceptualized all sorts of bullshit...” He trailed off and circled back around to look her in the eye.<br/><br/>“Do you know anything about your family history? Dr. James can't make a proper diagnosis without doing the full work up, which means your past history. From what I can see in your face... Scandinavian roots.”<br/><br/>He already knew what she was thinking because he was thinking the same way. The smile that played across his face spoke volumes like that. Except the steam emitting from his jeans was getting stronger, finally drawing his attention down to it. What was perhaps worse was the trail of crimson that leaked from his nostrils, to be dabbed at with the tip of his tongue when the flow ran over his upper lip. Surprised replaced speculation. His fingers lifted to dab under his nose, pulling away bloody.<br/><br/>The shocked expression on his face was either of their final warning. James coughed suddenly as a way to clear his closing airway that was making it increasingly hard for him to draw breath. In the same moment, his heart thumped hard in his chest, sped up its rhythm to the point that he had to sink down into a new chair, then jerked again.<br/><br/>It was a heart stopping moment that was more literal than he would have liked. Coughing again, he closed his hand into a fist and thumped it against his chest with a shaky laugh. The look that he cast up to her face didn't garner the poorly placed humor. Darkness flashed in front of his face during the next hard thump. Then came the next cough – wetter than the previous one. This time, blood bubbled to the surface, smearing across his mouth when he went to swipe his nose again.