Work Text:
i.
To the untrained eye or the unassuming passerby, he looks like that of a normal scrawny kid, the kind that could get beat up for his lunch money. His messy brown hair is hidden by a knit violet beanie, underneath his bangs colours that can be deemed iridescent - from blue to grey to the deepest of greens and lightest of hazels - in his incomprehensible eyes.
He’s heard the stories of living in the city, of traversing the physical plane in search of something different from the life above, but there hasn’t been such a troubling occurrence for him yet. He isn’t looking for it, anyway. (And things do happen when he looks for it.) For now he’s being as inconspicuous as he can, though his eyes and heads and wings shift under such a figure so simple, so alien to his own, a lot of his self-control in restraining from showing his true form to mortals strolling the same streets he is.
A cold wind passes through and he buries himself into the jacket this form came with. Though his grip is normally firm, the limited form he’s in and its susceptibility to the cold makes his hand shake as he struggles to hold the piece of paper he’s reading. He tsks at yet another aspect human nature. Yet another thing to get used to.
There have been a few people who have stopped or looked at him for a second glance, and Seto sighs. His grip truly must be slipping, the cleaned glass of an antique store shows the glint of a halo just above his head.
ii.
It comes when he realises he has been walking around the same street, this the the fourth time he’s seen that sign pointing east, just as the sun starts to rise to the peak and it starts to blind those who don’t expect the harsh rays. It comes to him when someone, a little taller and a little thinner than him rushes at him, arms full with paper bags of fickle commodities.
The stranger bounds off him as if he is a concrete wall, and Seto’s fists ball up as he stands his ground, as if nothing had collided onto him in the first place. The stranger scrambles to put the scattered products back into their bags, a task which the angel quickly adapted to, not even asking to help him because, well, why wouldn’t he?
"Sorry!" the stranger apologises, breathless. "I’m really in a hurry, gotta get back to work!" he continues, huffing as he hoists the even more tattered and fragile bags up again.
They lock eyes, Seto’s naturally sliding into a bright hazel with flecks of green and shines a bit of gold in the light. He catches a glimpse of blue - a lovely cerulean that reminds him of all the times he’s let his wings glide on waves lapping in the Atlantic, the times he’d sometimes see the same colour in people at peace. It’s a particularly sobering thought, and life comes into motion again.
"If you have the time," he instructs in between huffs, "just follow me to the first bakery you see, tell Ian that Jason owes you something, alright?" and just like that, he’s gone.
It’s just like that, and Seto realises that life on this plane is so, so fleeting, one blink may see to someone’s end. Jason disappears from his immediate line of sight, but then he follows suit, a distance between the human and himself.
iii.
Jason doesn’t quiet believe him the first time Seto tells him.
(He stumbles over his words the next few days he comes in at work. Seto can feel the harsh gaze the younger’s coworker shoots at him sometimes, and he can only wish that the cashier could see the hundred of his sending it back with a blazing intensity. He’s patient though he can feel his heart pounding underneath the shifting skin, as Jason tries to wrap his head around the situation.
Most of the human’s unspoken questions at that moment were answered when Seto reaches over the counter and kisses him, chaste and sweet.)
Or the second, or even the third. He gets around to it, though.
iv.
The thing with being an angel is that you can’t forget. The little that does is stored in pencil strokes and abrupt realisations, in the long term memory chamber or whatever they’ve named it, in glimpses of neon lights and solitary candlelit spaces.
A particular human, Jason, finds it in the orange-red-yellow of the sunset as he walks up to the figure sitting on the park bench, looking out into the bay as stretches of the sun turn from blue to red to violet. He taps Seto on the shoulder who turns to him with a smile when he offers him a roll left over when he closed shop earlier.
They talk over a shared hot chocolate that’s gone cold, and a roll that’s tougher than the softer that it was when the baker first pulls it out of the oven a few hours ago.
Seto talks to him about the gospel, about the Almighty and the angels and their life Above. He talks to him about salvation and morning stars and time. He’s patient when Jason stumbles over words and raises his eyebrow at terms he doesn’t quite understand, and the mortal is more grateful than anything.
Jason teaches him humility and grace, the back-alleys where his friends sometimes smoke or talk about the riot that’s sure to erupt from the chaotic language of the press, of mortality and existentialism, and how to quickly repair holes by snags of greedy hooks sinking into cloth. It’s not something extravagant to him, but Seto takes it all in.
Humans don’t have the pleasure or curse of remembering everything, and Seto tries to recall this memory as many times as he can, enough for the both of them.
v.
They’re atop skyscrapers and taxis and gigantic screens and things that have caught an angel’s gaze over the time of humanity, where rascals of his own kind have raced over and caused gales on unsuspecting humans. He can feel Jason’s hand sweating and trembling in his own steady grip, knowing they are about to free fall.
Seto feels like he can breathe freely, as his wings take shape and cause a stir around them as they rejoice in their freedom. Jason’s eyes are wide and Seto wishes he could take a photograph, teeth shining bright in a gleeful smile. “Ready to fly?” he asks.
It’s a hesitant yes by the slight nod, as the taller boy gets the opportunity to look down. Seto’s grip tenses even further, only letting go when he’s wiped the tears of hysteria and fear from the human’s eyes, kissing some away even as they need to be. He lets go truly when the mortal’s arms wrap around his neck, letting his own body acquaint to the extra weight, and jumps into the fray.
Jason is laughing and screaming and waving at the ants below them and holding them up at the clouds above them and he is happy and shining brighter and Seto’s heart feels like it is flying.