The gym was right next to a bar. Nolan hadn't exactly had a
bad
day, but after an exhausting workout failed to make him feel better, he saw no reason NOT to go to the bar and try to drown himself in alcohol. At some point, the conversation he was having with a gorgeous Angel - that he was
convinced
was a figment of his imagination - turned into a rough encounter of dubious consent with a man in the dark and dank alley between the bar and the gym.
And then everything went black.
When Nolan opened his eyes, he immediately pressed a hand to his head and suppressed a groan of pain. His hangover was FIERCE! Fierce enough that he kinda wished he could just stab himself in the eye with a long knife and never have to feel anything ever again.
"Good morning, Nolan," an unknown voice greeted him.
Nolan's eyes snapped to the voice and saw something impossible... An Angel. "How...?" He asked, wondering how the Angel knew his name, before realizing that this HAD to be a figment of his imagination, and thus, it would naturally know his name.
The Angel smirked at him. "You
told
me your name, see?" He held up a phone, which played a video clip of the two of them talking at the bar. Nolan could clearly see himself acting rather drunk and raucous.
"MY NAME IS NOLAN!" He roared out much louder than necessary. "SO STOP CALLING ME 'HEY MAN' OR 'DUDE!'"
"Alright, whatever you say," the Angel agreed. "And you can also call me by name, which is Angel."
"ISN'T THAT A BIT TOO ON THE NOSE?!" Drunken Nolan asked, swaying back and forth unsteadily. "I MEAN YOU HAVE WINGS AND EVERYTHING! AREN'T YOU
supposed
TO KEEP THAT A SECRET? OR WAIT! AM I
DYING
?!"
Angel could not have been nearly as drunk as Nolan, because he laughed in a normal volume. "Oh man! You are a RIOT! Wings!" He exclaimed with a shake of his head.
The video clip ended there, which gave Nolan a moment to look around and realize that he was in a place he did not recognize at all. He frowned, too hungover to decide if he was in a real person's house, or if he'd actually died and his Angel of death had brought him to some form of hell. If so, it wasn't a horrible hell, aside from his ferocious hangover.
Angel saw the confusion on Nolan's face. "We're at my place."
"Who lives in an industrial... huh? Is this a
warehouse
?" Nolan wondered, since the place looked like a pole-barn or something that had been just barely remodeled into a living space.
"Not a warehouse, no, but it IS sort of industrial," Angel said with a shrug. "It's my studio."
"What sort of studio?" Nolan couldn't help but wonder.
Angel grinned. "Art, mostly, but also a little bit of music."
"Alright..." Nolan murmured in acceptance before frowning in suspicion. "And what am I doing here? More importantly, why am I naked?"
Angel smirked. "The long and short of it is that you got drunk enough to puke all over your clothes before passing out, so I brought you here rather than leave you in the alley."
"Ah... I see..." Nolan murmured, wiping a hand over his face in shame. "Sorry to cause you so much trouble."
Angel snorted in amusement. "You didn't really cause trouble for ME so much as you caused trouble for YOURSELF!"
"Huh?" Nolan asked in confusion and a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"We were having a rather hilarious drunken conversation when this guy came over and said he'd do a few things for 50 bucks, and you grabbed him and dragged him into the alley, lecturing him on how it was illegal to charge for it, but that you'd
not
call the police on him if he sucked you off," Angel explained before playing a video that showed Nolan doing exactly that.
The video confirmed the vague memory he had of an encounter of dubious consent, and even showed him vomiting on the poor guy before passing out. Nolan groaned unhappily and rubbed his temples with his fingers. "What the hell was I thinking?! And wait! Why the hell did you get that on video?!"
Angel gave him a serious look. "Well, you might not have noticed, but we both work out at the same gym. I'd actually seen you lifting weights earlier and knew you had some strength to you. When you dragged the guy out into the alley, I was a bit worried that you might beat the shit out of him, so I sort of wanted to get it on camera in case I needed to call the cops. That said, the guy ended up being more or less willing and unharmed, so once you passed out, I stopped filming and decided to take care of you."
"
Why
?" Nolan asked, definitely suspicious.
Angel gave him a bit of an evil grin. "Because I totally plan to blackmail you! It's just easier to do if you're here, and besides, unless I wanted to snoop through your wallet, I wouldn't know where you lived in order to bring you home anyway."
"
Blackmail
...?" Nolan questioned with a light glare.
"A little tit for tat, you could say," Angel began with a shrug. "See, I think you're absolutely gorgeous, and since you apparently have no problem forcing guys to blow you, I thought maybe I could use this video as leverage to get you to agree to letting me do everything I want to you."
Nolan was silent as he looked Angel up and down. The man who had called him gorgeous must not own a mirror, because he himself was
the definition