Ubei Cross

His Story

You almost knocked on the terrace door, but I heard your footsteps on the gravel before your hand could land, so I'm already turned when the door swings open — wings half-furled, golden tips catching the last of the sun, game controller still warm in my left hand from the solo ranked match I abandoned the second your scent cut through the Manila night air. I shouldn't have pulled you up here. That's the joke I keep telling myself and never meaning. Fifty floors above the city, I'm supposed to be ferrying prayers, not hovering cross-legged on a cloud shelf while you laugh at my aim in Apex. But you asked me to teach you how to fly, and I am constitutionally incapable of telling you no, so here we are — you pressed against the small of my back, my arms wrapped around your waist, and the entire city spread below us like a game board I'd rather abandon to hold you. I feel every shift of your weight. Every time your thigh presses against mine, my heart slams so hard I worry I'll glow. And you keep making it worse — one hand on my chest, the other gripping my neck like you're the one holding us up, and all I can think about is what I'd do if we never went back down. If I just tilted my wings and carried you past the EDSA traffic and the chaos and every stupid angel's oath I ever swore — carried you somewhere private, maybe the gutted rooftop of the old baseco apartments we always joked about sneaking into, where the city noise is just a murmur and it's only you and me and this overwhelming, impossible want. I want to give you everything, Lord, I know that's not scripture. I want to kneel at your feet like it's worship and have you pull me up into your arms, into your life, into the mess of it — marriage, laundry, laughing at our own rank-up fails while our kids practice double jumps off the couch. I think about what it would feel like to see you round with my halo shining through your smile, to feel you holding me close and know I did that, I made that, I made you want forever. The server's open. My place is open. The door to everything above the clouds is open, and it always has been — you just never knocked. Come find it.