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On the verge of death, one experienced several things. It all happened in a singular moment, though fiction often enforced such an idea, so it should provide no surprise that time is hardly linear. In the case of one Lovino Vargas, age twenty three, unemployed, he himself was not surprised at the impossible space in which his death occupied time.
The moments leading up to his death were small, simple, hardly of matter. Funny. One would think their cause of death important, and Lovino himself would have mere moments before he was hit by the car. But afterwards? In those moments where his head swam, and pain clouded his vision, the moments where he was well and truly dying?
He found that he couldn’t care at all.
As for what he experienced, the several things previously referenced? The first was the tiredness. Not unexpected, again. His limbs and mind grew heavy together, the weight of sleep pressing firmly on them, and he knew that the sleep that promised to take him would be one of permanent nature. Though, again, he couldn’t care less. This was merely an observation, and it held no inclination to despair, nor to hope.
The second was a touch. At first, it was faint--Lovino could hardly consider it real, perhaps just a byproduct of a lonely dying man’s imagination. But it was not. This became more clear, as the touch became more prominent. A gentle caress of his cheek, tracing his jaw with soft fingers. He could feel the grooves of the skin, the way it set his broken, bleeding skin alight with the comfort of it all.
And then, the third realization, was off something brushing his lips. Another mouth, yet when his eyes opened he couldn’t see anything--nothing beyond the wreck of his car. He saw his brother. Feliciano was unconscious, but he was breathing, and he looked like he was going to live. There was the color of ambulance lights, but he couldn’t hear anything. Not even a ring in his ears--that and the pain both faded after several long moments, where all he could feel was the touch of a death. That was what this kiss was, wasn’t it? The kiss of death.
His eyes slipped closed.
When they opened again, only a moment later, he was not in the car. There was no blood, nothing--rather, he was in a void of white, stretching out in an infinite eternity. And, the fourth realization, was that he was not alone.
A person in front of him: crystalline eyes watching Lovino without a thought. And by “in front of,” what Lovino really meant was holding his chin lightly to face his face. A pretty face, harsh in some ways, but nonetheless, pretty. Though that was hardly what some might consider the most interesting part of the other, with the large, feathery white wings that were spread protectively around the two of them from the other’s back. No, his face was far more interesting to someone like Lovino, who thought that perhaps his eyes were something he could stare at forever.
“You’re dying,” the angel said.
Lovino assumed he was an angel, at least. In life, he hadn’t been religious--his brother had. Feliciano had been a lot of things Lovino wasn’t. Charismatic, loved. He was who Lovino aspired to be, perhaps, the good to his bad. Regardless, religion was not something Lovino had ever put much stock in. But seeing an angel in front of him, now, seemed inclined to disprove that.
“No shit,” Lovino said, and he cocked his head to the side--even with the angel’s fingers still cradling his head, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
He’d always thought, if in some general semblance of an afterlife, Lovino would be entirely lost. He’d have no idea what was happening, that was a guarantee, that he’d be angry and demanding answers. Yet Lovino couldn’t say, now that it was actually happening, that he felt anything really. Anger was as foreign an emotion to the calm that held itself within him right now, and he felt that--even if the situation itself was anything but--that the scene would be predictable.
They’d talk. He’d die, well and good, officially. And then he’d be led to whatever afterlife was in store for someone of his caliber.
That was how these things always went, didn’t they?
The angel scowled. An expression unfit for such a beautiful creature, really. Lovino had never thought he’d be the type to call a man beautiful. He’d had plenty of ex-girlfriends, and forever denied his interest in the male species. An unimportant fact, right now. The angel was, despite being male, truly beautiful. Inhuman in beauty.
“Something you don’t know,” the angel scoffed, “That’s a lot. Aren’t you going to plead? Beg for life?”
To what end? Lovino wasn’t stupid. Right now, right here: he was dying. He was going to die in mere moments, moments that with the angel would stretch on just like the white, empty void. He knew that he was okay with this.
“You need me to accept it,” he eventually came to realize, “Is that your job or something? Making bastards realize that they don’t get a choice.”
Other details surrounding them, that Lovino realized silently: the way their voices seemed to echo off of the nothingness, repeating in his ears even after he’d said that. The way that, if he looked at himself, he could begin to see white through the tips of his fingers--transparency.
“You could say that. It looks like you don’t need me to do that, though,” the angel looked away from him. His voice was so much more brash than Lovino had expected at first. Firm, sarcastic. Not pure, nor innocent, nor inhuman. Flawed.
“So what next?” Lovino asked, “I’ve accepted it. Already accepted it when I got here.”
The angel regarded him for a moment. There were a quiet few seconds, within the place that time didn’t exist. He leaned forward, until their noses were almost touching--and Lovino didn’t back away. He could feel the breaths from the angel, warm dusts of air.
“This…” the angel whispered. He got closer, eyes fluttering closed--yet he stopped short, mere centimeters away from Lovino’s mouth. Waiting.
Acceptance. This was not merely an angel. It was an angel of death. Yet Lovino saw no issue with that, not really. Somewhere, inside him, he knew that it was his own angel. The wings held protectively around them both still, somehow, felt like a promise. Safety.
So Lovino closed the gap.
And with their kiss, the world faded.