Chapter Text
Sanemi sighs, collapsing into bed around 3 am. The return of Kyogo usually meant the return of the nightmares as well, which meant it was useless to go to bed any earlier, really.
Kyogo plops on the end of his bed, looking delighted. He stretches languidly, jaw splitting unnaturally wide in a tongue-curling yawn.
“God, what a day! I bet tomorrow will be even better. Or, today, I suppose,” he laughs. Sanemi just glowers at the demon in response, rolling over in an attempt to ignore him. Really, Kyogo had been getting too lax with his son lately. He supposes he was just too kind for his own good.
So, as Sanemi’s eyes drift shut, he tips his head back to listen, waiting for the sound of his breathing to even out as he falls into a deep sleep. After about twenty or so minutes, he stands and rounds the bed to loom over his beloved son, cupping the back of his head. His pointer finger rests at the base of Sanemi’s neck, claw beginning to sink into the flesh there.
Kyogo’s eyes flick toward the closet, violet meeting gold. The little angel squeaks, an involuntary noise of fear that makes Kyogo feel powerful.
He hadn’t always been this way. Perhaps, once upon a time, seeing an angel, a child staring up at him with such fear, would have horrified him. But it was heaven’s fault in the first place that he was like this. Becoming a demon had just… set him free.
Sanemi grunts, beginning to squirm with discomfort as his brows pinch. Kyogo coos at him, smoothing his free hand over his forehead to even out the wrinkles like he used to do with Shizu when she had nightmares.
Sanemi pants, turning his face into the pillow, and Kyogo finally pulls away, satisfied. That was plenty to tide him over. Instead, he sets his gaze on the peeking tom in the corner. The angel ducks back into the closet as Kyogo creeps closer.
“Aww, don’t you want to play with me?” He cackles.
He doesn’t worry about waking Sanemi; his influence ensures that he will be trapped in that nightmare until at least daybreak. He pauses outside the door, lightly tapping on the wood with his claws.
“That’s all right. I’m sure we’ll become quite close over the next few days. Weeks, even. However long it takes before you realize he’s mine.”
With that, he steps away, wandering over to the front door, relishing the sounds of Sanemi tossing and turning restlessly, choked pleas falling from him like water. He will let his power work its magic, explore the neighborhood a bit, and reap the results come morning.
Sanemi gasps, sitting up in a panic, cold sweat dripping from his forehead and down his back. Tears cling to his lashes, clumping the thick strands together as he desperately tries to catch his breath. The nightmare continues to play out behind his eyelids.
After a moment of panting, his lip curls as he spots Kyogo waiting in the corner, leaning against the wall and staring at the closet door.
“Was that the best you’ve got? It’s getting a bit old, isn’t it?” he taunts. It was never a good idea to provoke his father, but this was a mere ghost of the man.
Kyogo, rather than get angry, just shrugs, grinning unwaveringly as he shifts his gaze from the door to his bedside clock. Sanemi follows his line of sight, finding nothing unusual. Just his backup alarm clock, which…
Sanemi’s eyes bulge as he finally registers the time. Ten minutes until he was officially late and forty minutes before his first class. It took fifteen minutes just to get there.
He practically throws himself out of bed, scrambling to the closet to get changed. He had no time for a shower, even as disgusting and sweat-soaked as he felt. He throws open the door to the closet and nearly jumps out of his skin when he sees a figure curled up in the corner.
He lets out a rather undignified yelp, and when he blinks, it’s gone. Behind him, Kyogo cackles, and he glares over his shoulder.
Really? Had the demon regressed to petty jump-scares now? He rolls his eyes as hard as he can, just so the demon can feel his disdain, before stepping confidently into the closet.
A locked closet door, banging and screaming from the other side.
His heart jumps in his chest. He has to practically force the door shut, quickly flicking on the light.
It had been years since he’d reacted like this. After the… incident, he had thrown himself into what he liked to call “exposure therapy.” His therapist had insisted that what he was doing wasn’t clinically recommended, but it worked.
He doesn’t even bother buttoning his shirt before he escapes from the closet and back into the open. Kyogo was hovering over his desk, picking through his calendar, tail swishing jovially.
“You know, a very special day is coming up. We should go get a couple of drinks to celebrate,” he hummed as if he were talking about a grocery list.
Rage bubbles beneath Sanemi’s skin as a high-pitched ringing begins in his ears. He has to physically clench his jaw to keep from yelling, too tired to deal with any noise complaints from his neighbors today. Instead, he crams his shit in his briefcase, turning to his door.
“Oh, c’mon!” The demon laughs. “You forgot our anniversary? What an ingrate!”
The demon opens its disgusting maw to keep prattling on, but Sanemi is already out the door, vaulting down the stairs to get to his car. He starts it up, surprised that Kyogo hadn’t followed him out. Normally, he liked to nag him on the way to work, too.
He checks the time, slumping in his seat as he realizes he’s already late to work. The best he could hope for now was not to be late for his homeroom class.
His nails tap impatiently against the steering wheel as he turns into traffic, only to find that it’s more congested than usual. Apparently, there had been some kind of wreck the night before that the cops and tow trucks were still working to get cleaned up, which meant he had to take a detour. Because the entire fucking world was against him this morning.
He turns down the unfamiliar path, unable to stop himself from checking out the wreckage as he passes. It looked… pretty bad, actually. First responders swarmed around the wreckage; one of the cars was completely flipped over in a ditch, and the other car was crushed like a tin can.
What he couldn’t take his eyes off, however, was this one guy, just standing in the center of it all, calm and unmoving. They looked… serene, arms open as if to receive someone. A pit formed in his belly as the… thing turned and looked at him, eyes locking with his.
He sucks in a breath through his teeth, eyes snapping forward to avoid it. He just wants to focus on getting to work as soon as possible.
Genya huddles in the back of the closet, trying to erase the image of the demon’s wicked smile from his mind. The sick look of satisfaction on his face as he sank his claws inside the human, infecting him. He could see it in real-time, his miasma dripping over Sanemi’s soul like tar, smothering it.
He presses his face to his knees, fingers twisting into the feathers at the base of his wings.
What kind of angel was he? He was supposed to be righteous; he wasn’t supposed to shrink from evil. He can hear the human suffering, tossing and turning and moaning miserably.
There’s a sudden flash of pain, and Genya numbly realizes he’s holding a handful of plucked feathers in his trembling fist. A nervous habit he’d picked up since becoming an angel, he sighs and flicks the soft down feathers to the side.
He squeaks as the door is suddenly yanked open, eyes locking with Sanemi’s. The man lets out a high-pitched, strangled noise as if he had been startled by something. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, robotically stepping into the closet and shutting the door behind him, flicking on the light.
The man looks worse for wear. His eyes are bloodshot and red-rimmed, and deep bags line them like bruises, only made starker by his almost sickly pallor. Under the artificial lights, he can see a sheen of sweat across his forehead, and his hair sticks up in odd directions as if he had been nervously running his hand through it.
He shucks off his white tracksuit, which has the kanji for “kill” printed on the back, and lets it drop unceremoniously to the floor. Genya had become familiar with the x-shaped scar crisscrossing over his chest, but even more littered the man’s exposed abdomen, though Genya supposed he wasn’t too surprised to see them.
Sanemi turns to grab a shirt off the rack, and Genya’s breath catches.
His lower back was covered from top to bottom in red, shiny, keloid scar tissue. As if someone had flayed the skin from his back in one large sheet or…
…or burned it off.
As quickly as it was revealed, it was covered by a white button-up shirt, the same kind he always wore to work. Sanemi reached for the waistband of his grey sweatpants next, and Genya covered his eyes with his wings just as he heard the sound of cloth shifting.
Still, Genya was stuck on the image of twisted, mottled skin. He wondered if it still hurt. Genya knew his scars still hurt sometimes, and he wasn’t even alive. Despite spending every waking moment with the man for the past few days, he knew virtually nothing about him. He knew his soul, knew his demons, but Genya had no idea who Sanemi was.
He hears the closet door open and shut and peeks back over his wing, figuring it was safe to look now. He considers following the man out, but…
What if the demon came after him again? He’d naively thought it couldn’t hurt him the other day, but now he knew the demon was just toying with him. He could sense its presence outside the door and knew it could have followed him into the closet. It’s not like he could fly away; the demon had made sure of that.
Another sting of pain stabs through the base of Genya’s wing, and he angrily tosses aside another handful of down feathers. He hated when he did that; he hated feeling so… so fucking weak! If he had been a warrior-!
He clenches his fists and abruptly stands up, marching toward the door with his head held high. He sucks in a deep breath and forces one foot in front of the other, emerging from the closet just in time to watch Sanemi storm out the door.
The demon peers at him from over his shoulder, chuckling.
“You'd better run along, Kotori,” the demon purrs. And there’s something ominous about the pet name; it hangs heavy between them.
He shudders, running to catch up with Sanemi. He emerges through the door just in time to watch Sanemi vault over the safety railing of the stairwell, jumping from one floor to the next rather than taking the stairs.
He wonders if the man has realized he has yet to button his shirt or waistcoat.
Genya jumps the railings as well, spreading his wings to catch the air like a parachute and using his Grace to float down to the bottom. He spares one last glance behind him to see if the demon is following, finding it staring right back at him from the top of the steps.
Thankfully, it seems uninterested in coming after them. This brought Genya to his other problem: the car.
Cringing, Genya stretches his left wing in front of him, eyeing it critically as if it would somehow look better in the light of day. It didn’t take a genius to tell he wouldn’t be able to fly; he could feel it on an instinctual level. The demon had fucked with his remiges, specifically the primaries on the tips of his wings, trailing up to the coverts and over his alula.
With a sigh, he glances back at the car. Theoretically, he could cram himself into the front seat, but it’d be cramped, and he’d have to share the seat with Sanemi’s work crap. There was always the back seat, but…
“Get in the car,” a cold voice commanded.
There’s another prick of pain, and more feathers flutter to the asphalt.
Sanemi starts his car, and Genya panics; whatever he’s gonna do, he has to do it now. He makes a last-minute decision, planting his feet on the rim of the trunk and clambering up the side until he’s sitting on top of the car. He folds his wings behind him and lies down as Sanemi begins to pull out of the parking lot and into traffic.
It’s nowhere near as nice as flying, but Genya can admit that the wind in his hair and feathers is still nice. He has to resist the urge to spread his wings to try to catch the air, knowing he’d just end up crashing.
Sanemi takes a turn down an unfamiliar street, and Genya looks up, finally noticing the wreckage along their normal route. Sanemi slows as they pass the site, and Genya winces as the feeling of death hangs heavy in the air. This didn’t feel like a normal crash, and sure enough, Genya spies a few angels among the humans, including a Guiding Angel in the center of the chaos, ready to receive their new charge.
Guiding Angels were the bottom of the sevenfold choir, though their job was no less important than others. They guided souls to where they needed to go, ferrying their charges to the Great Beyond. Whether they ascended, went to rest, reincarnated, or were punished. The goal was to get there before a demon could.
Genya knew, logically, that a Guiding Angel must have ferried his own soul as well, though he couldn’t say he remembered much about his death. He’d been told that those with traumatic deaths rarely did. They’d say it with such pitying looks, too, their eyes burning far more than his scars ever did.
They turn another corner, and the wreck leaves his line of sight. Soon, they’re back on the normal path to Sanemi’s school.
They pull up to the gate leading to the staff parking lot, and Sanemi glowers at the poor security guard manning the opening, jabbing a finger at his staff card. The guard scrambles to open the gate, and Sanemi speeds inside, parking his car next to a bright orange car.
He slides off the top of the car as Sanemi bursts out, slamming the door shut and sprinting to the door. Genya wonders if the guy realizes how deranged he looks, his veins bulging and visibly throbbing with irritation. He looked like he was five seconds away from snapping and killing someone.
The students milling about the hallway stop what they’re doing to openly gape at the man as he passes, but Sanemi ignores them and beelines for the faculty office. He throws open the door and freezes suddenly as if he’d been struck, mouth dumbly hanging open.
Genya, curious, peers into the room to see what could have elicited this reaction. He finds what must be all the school faculty crammed into the small room, all gathered around a beautiful, doll-like woman with startlingly white hair and glassy purple eyes. Genya idly wonders if she’s related to Sanemi in some way. It’s not like white hair was common.
Everyone in the room turns toward the intrusion, including the woman in the center of the room. She raises a perfectly manicured brow, though her face is marble smooth and does not crease or wrinkle.
“Shinazugawa-san. While I’ve turned a blind eye toward your manner of dress until now, I do have to insist on at least half of the buttons on your shirt being done up for decency’s sake.”
There’s a snort, and a woman with pink and green hair suddenly flushes red. Her hand is slapped to her mouth as she visibly tries not to laugh. Some of the other teachers are much less gracious, openly chuckling as Sanemi finally looks down at his unbuttoned shirt. He drops his briefcase in his haste to do up the buttons.
“Though I am glad you’ve decided to join us this morning,” the woman continues. “I was just informing the staff that the director of education will be joining us soon for observation. They want to make some adjustments to our team here at Kimetsu Gakuen.”
A murmur rises among the staff, and the woman raises a hand to calm them.
“Now, I know how that sounds, but we’re actually looking to expand our staff, not reduce. They want to have a firsthand look at which departments we should start with first. So, I need you all to be on your best behavior.”
She clasps her hands together, bowing politely.
“That said, I’d like to thank you all for your exceptional quality of work for the students. Minor incidents aside, we have among the highest graduation and college enrollment rates in the country. The University Entrance Exam grades look excellent this year, and we have another batch of promising students coming next semester. Please continue to give it your all!”
Someone in the crowd begins to clap, and others are quick to follow. The woman smiles and dismisses the crowd with a few more words. They begin to disperse, teachers preparing to go to their classes, and other staff ready to get back to work. The woman sets her sights on Sanemi, gliding over.
“Shinazugawa-san. If you could follow me to my office, please. I’ve asked Tomioka-san to watch your class in the meantime.”
Sanemi bows his head, and Genya can practically feel the disappointment radiating off the woman. The boy folds his wings nervously as if he were the one in trouble.
Uh oh.