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The angel showed up on a Thursday.
At the time, Tetsuya was too busy to immediately notice. He assumed that the window-rattling thunder clap that heralded its entrance was yet another side effect of the demon currently trying to rip his soul from his body to consume it.
The demon, eight-eyed, spider-legged, and roughly the size of a very large horse, towered over him. One segmented appendage pierced through his shoulder to pin him to the floor. His blood was warm where it dripped down his back and soaked through his shirt.
“Please release me and leave my home,” Tetsuya said to the demon, annoyed.
Above him, the demon snarled. Viscous black saliva oozed from its mandibles and dripped onto his face. Tetsuya wrinkled his nose.
The demon bent, its whole body folding to let it lower its head toward him. Its mouth gaped open, closer and closer to Tetsuya’s face.
It was very unfortunate, Tetsuya thought, that most demons had no concept of personal hygiene. An introduction to tooth brushes would make his frequent encounters like this much less unpleasant.
The spider demon clacked its mandibles together and Tetsuya gathered himself, preparing to do something about the whole irritating encounter–
That was when all the windows blew in and the electricity fizzled out with a flicker of the lights.
Something gleaming and bright sliced through the resulting darkness, leaving trails of fire, pale and cold and terrible, in its wake.
On top of him, the spider demon went still. Tetsuya shifted. The demon’s head slid from its neck and fell to the floor with a meaty thump, rolled a few times, and came to rest staring lifelessly up at the man holding the burning sword who had just separated head from neck.
Tetsuya breathed through the pain of his shoulder and took the man in, his height, the lean strength of his muscles, the messy shock of dark hair atop his head – and the wings, downy white and faintly luminescing in the darkness, rising above the man’s head.
So, the angel. Who had just caused far more destruction with his appearance than all of the demons Tetsuya had fended off in the past month combined. Tetsuya did not, in fact, have a good enough relationship with his landlord, to have the windows (and likely most of the wiring, he suspected) replaced without having to answer extremely inconvenient questions, not to mention the cost on top of it all.
Also inconveniently, the headless demon above him gave one last shudder as its nervous system finally registered it no longer had anything resembling control, and collapsed. Tetsuya managed not to scream as the leg in his shoulder was wrenched from his flesh, and tried very hard not to suffocate beneath the corpse’s weight.
“Since I assume you are also not going to leave if I ask,” Tetsuya said to the angel wearily, “at least please get this off of me.”
-
Aomine took up residence on Tetsuya’s couch, alternating between glowering at the front door as though all the legions of Hell were about to pour through it, and flipping through the channels on Tetsuya’s out of date television set, complaining when there was no basketball to be found.
He also managed to begin a small scale cold war with Tetsuya’s new cat who had shown up outside Tetsuya’s door a day before the angel and, when allowed inside, made himself a considerably more welcome member of the household. Tetsuya often walked into a room to find the cat poised, tiger-striped tail in the air, ready to spring at Aomine with claws extended, and the angel using Tetsuya’s very expensive hardcover novels as shields to ward the animal off.
Surely, Tetsuya told himself, Aomine was just a particularly irritating specimen of an angel. Not that Tetsuya had met an angel before, even if his experience with the supernatural was markedly broader than most, but he refused to believe that all of the divine host could be so bullheadedly obstinate and casually rude.
Surely not, because no one who met Aomine Daiki would ever have called him serene and full of grace.
At the end of the week, when Aomine still made no signs of leaving, Tetsuya finally decided that something had to be done.
“Aomine-kun,” he said, planting himself between the angel and the Bulls game on TV to ensure that he would not be ignored, “is there some reason you are here in my home?”
As opposed to out actually doing whatever job it is an angel does, dripped from Tetsuya’s tone.
Aomine looked up at Tetsuya, annoyance from his game being interrupted in the very arch of his half-spread wings, and said, “I’m here to protect you.”
Tetsuya took a deep breath. Closed his eyes. Counted to ten and opened them again.
“I see,” he said levelly. “Do you mind telling me from what?”
“A demon,” Aomine snapped, and made an impatient gesture. Behind him, Tetsuya could hear the crowd yelling tinnily from the TV’s speakers, and was meanly glad that Aomine had missed seeing the shot.
When Tetsuya made no attempt to move, and, instead, planted himself a little more solidly in the way of Aomine’s basketball-viewing, Aomine made an unattractive face and grumbled.
“Look, one of the big ones is after you for whatever reason, and I’m supposed to keep him from eating your soul.”
“I see,” Tetsuya said again, doubtfully. He refrained from pointing out that this description sounded like approximately every creature that had made an attempt on his life in the last year. “So you’re protecting me by lying on my couch, shedding on my carpet, and eating all my food.”
Aomine shifted uncomfortably, his wings rustling in a distinctly sheepish manner behind him as yet another feather fell out and drifted down to land on the rug.
“He’s a nasty guy, really powerful, okay? And he was supposed to be here a week ago. I didn’t think I’d have to stay so long.”
“Please leave before you wear out your welcome, then,” Tetsuya said coldly. “I will be fine on my own. There’s really no need for you to babysit me, even if you want my soul for what I’m sure you consider a very important reason.”
Aomined opened his mouth to argue, perhaps struck by the bitterness in Tetsuya’s tone, but Tetsuya didn’t care. Aomine was like all of them, here for whatever strange quality of his soul made it appealing and valuable to the majority of Tokyo’s supernatural creature population at large. What other reason could there be for an angel to protect someone so unremarkable?
Mercifully, Tetsuya was spared from needing to continue the conversation by the cat leaping for Aomine’s face in his daily attempt to claw it off.
Tetsuya was content to leave cat and angel to their continuing grudge match. If the cat got in a few scratches, it was no more than Aomine deserved.
-
The worst part was that Tetsuya could not leave the angel to his own devices. He tried, once.
(“But, Tetsu, we don’t get internet in Heaven–”
“No,” Tetsuya said, and steeled himself to delete his browser history with his eyes squinted closed.)
After that, it was simply easier to take some time out of the day to spend time with Aomine rather than risk whatever trouble he inevitably managed to find.
At least Aomine liked basketball. That was some small consolation. The angel had never played. Heaven, Tetsuya took it, was not a place very fond of fun and games. He couldn’t help feeling a little bad when Aomine was so clearly enjoying his time away from strict rules and regulations, and so they compromised.
They settled into a routine: Tetsuya was Aomine’s to bother for meals, two hours out of the day of Aomine’s choosing, and a daily trip to the basketball court. In the meantime, Tetsuya was left in peace to work while Aomine and the cat were free to keep each other company (or not) as they liked so long as the apartment was left standing in their wake.
There was something nice, something better than he’d had before, in coming home to someone welcoming him at the door.
Eventually, Tetsuya became accustomed to having Aomine around. Tetsuya found it relaxing to walk to the kitchen and see the tips of Aomine’s wings poking over the back of the sofa. He found himself smiling when he heard a feline yowl followed by Aomine cursing in the background.
Aomine wasn’t so bad, really. After a while, he let Tetsuya stare him into helping with the dishes and he could, occasionally, be coaxed into sharing bits of information about some of the creatures he’d fought on Heaven’s command.
There was a softness to Aomine beneath the rude exterior, something sweet and undeniably likable that came out when he was holding a basketball in his hands, turning to Tetsuya and grinning after making an impossible shot – when Tetsuya fell asleep at his table, poring over ancient, cramped text, and woke to find a blanket draped over his shoulders that hadn’t been there before.
Once, Tetsuya looked up from one of his spellbooks and even saw Aomine cautiously holding out a bit of fish, trying to tempt the cat into a truce long enough to watch one of his endless basketball games undisturbed. Tetsuya took a picture with his phone and went back to work.
The presence of others in the apartment was soothing. Tetsuya found himself growing to like it, somewhat despite himself.
-
Immediately, his guard snapped up. He pulled a summoning slip from his pocket and held it out, ready to call the spirit it named.
Gingerly, he entered his apartment. The living room was a ruin, the sofa spilling stuffing, the TV cracked and sparking, and huge, deep claw marks gouged into the walls. Something crashed in the bedroom, the sound of bodies meeting in violent collision, and possibly being thrown against a wall.
Tetsuya ran to the door and skidded to a halt, greeted by the sight of Aomine menacing his cat, who had apparently been thrown not only against the wall, but through Tetsuya’s very expensive bookcase beforehand.
His cat, who happened to have grown to roughly five times its former size, sporting an extra set of eyes, a pair of sharp black horns, and flames hazing the air around its paws.
The tiger demon growled and lashed his tail as he picked himself up, baring his sharp fangs as he looked between Tetsuya and Aomine.
Tetsuya sighed and lowered the summoning paper. He walked over to the tiger and began checking him over for any injuries, running his hands down the tiger’s sides, his flanks, his legs. The tiger permitted the examination with ill grace, shifting his weight to keep Aomine in sight over Tetsuya’s shoulder at all times.
To the side, Aomine watched, outraged.
“Your cat is a fucking demon prince from Hell!” Aomine snarled.
“Yes,” Tetsuya said calmly, “I know.”
He went back to examining the tiger and, finding nothing more than an understandably bad temper, started scratching him behind the ears.
“A demon prince from Hell,” Aomine repeated. “The demon I’m supposed to protect you from! Tetsu, get away from that thing!”
But then he paused. Lowered his flaming sword.
“Wait, you know?” Aomine demanded.
“I should hope so,” Tetsuya said, turning to face Aomine. At his side, the tiger permitted one more pet, then stepped away.
Its form shivered, drawing in on itself, stretching as the flames raced up its whole body, obscuring it momentarily from view. A moment later, a man stood beside Tetsuya in the tiger’s place, red-haired and slit-pupiled, and glaring at Aomine with the tiger’s same distaste.
“After all,” Tetsuya said, “I summoned him.”
(the beginning)