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- THE SPIRIT
The spirit ebbs and flows throughout our plane of existence like ocean waves. The spirit lives on an inhumane and unimaginable plane of being, though it stands right beside us. It’s as if there is only a thin veil to separate us from our dead friends, family, and lovers… The veil ebbs and swishes like a curtain enough to reveal the shape of a face over your shoulder, or the comforting feel of your fingers entwined with someone who you know isn’t there. But are they really gone? The spirit never dies, it’s rather a matter of if it can learn how to find its way back to our living world, or if it will spend its days rotting on an astral plane far, far away.
2. AKAASHI IS LONELY
The burning sun rises outside of the window where Akaashi sits.
“Are you free right now?”
His old wall telephone is posed to his ear. His slender fingers curl in the tangled tan wire tightly as his perfected body language otherwise shows a cold front of chilled courage. He sighs.
“Who is this?”
“Akaashi,” he whispers, his throat tightening. “Keiji.”
“Why are you calling me?”
“It’s twenty years today.”
The line goes silent, though Akaashi can feel Bokuto’s soft gasp on the other side. He clutches the phone tighter. His heart sinks into his stomach, leaving him to feel nauseous and sickly. He clenches his teeth as the acid takes over, leaving his heart scorching raw until his blood boils into vapor left clogging in his wheezing lungs.
Bokuto coughs aloud into the phone. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Do… do you miss him?”
“You know I do,” Akaashi sighs, pulling his knees to his chest on the wooden dining chair that he sits in. He watches the autumn trees outside of the window fall in hues of red, orange, yellow, and green. “Why else would I call you?”
“I don’t know. I should’ve known,” Bokuto scoffs in reply. It freezes burning cold in Akaashi’s sensitively numb ears.
He purses his lips and presses on. “Are you free today or not?”
“You want me to go to the cemetery with you?”
“Yes.”
Akaashi holds his breath while he waits for a reply, but he receives nothing. The line clicks, Bokuto ends the call silently.
Of course . He should have known.
3. AN ANGEL’S TRANSITION
The hellbent sound of the seraphs screeching sin, forgiveness, and power fills the rich white walls of Heaven. The dead sit enveloped in the pearly wing of the great albatross, ruminating in their regret and hate. God loves the seraphs better than any one of the residents inside of His glorious house, He leaves them pounding on the walls until their dead, cold fists are bloodied and their skin is peeled to bone. There is no veil in Heaven, you are trapped between four unbreakable stone walls.
His seraphs will take your lungs and rip them out of your back, leaving them to burgeon into wings white from the lack of oxygen. They fructify upon your skin and attach their trachea to your spine, leaving you forever held down by the weight of your puritan life.
All you have now is the sky above you.
Purgatory is no longer an option when you become an angel.
4. AKAASHI IS SCARED OF HIS LOVER
Akaashi dials another number on his outdated telephone. The recipient picks up on the second ring.
Akaashi presses forward. “Are you free today?”
“Keiji? Is that you?”
He curls his toes on the edge of the chair, his breath shortening.
“Yes.”
“How are you doing?”
“It’s been twenty years today,” Akaashi replies, his stomach swirling as he says so. He bites his lip hard enough to taste blood while hoping that Kuroo might have a little bit more remorse or empathy than Bokuto did.
“Oh, Keiji…,” Kuroo murmurs, albeit only half-sympathetically. Akaashi can tell.
“I’m terrified, Tetsurou.”
“...Are you afraid he’s going to come back?”
Akaashi clenches his teeth. “I need to visit him. I need to tell him to leave me alone.”
Kuroo sighs. “And you want me to go with you.”
“I don’t want to go alone.”
“Akaashi…,” Kuroo whines. He sighs again, lost at how to go about this situation. “I can’t.”
“Please. He’s your best friend.”
Kuroo groans. “Not anymore, Akaashi. He’s been dead for twenty years. I’m not getting myself involved again.”
“Kuroo, please! He won’t leave me alone!”
“Maybe he just fucking misses you, Akaashi! I don’t want to hear about how he visits you, because he didn’t even try to tell me he was there! Not even once did he give me a sign or anything that he was okay! You know, I fucking loved him too! It’s not my fault that he chose you!”
Akaashi closes his lips. He opens them slowly to mutter, “He doesn’t come back the same, Kuroo.”
“He still came back to you. So shut the fuck up and leave me alone like I asked you to twenty years ago. Because he still hasn’t come back for me.”
Kuroo hangs up as a tear runs down Akaashi’s cheek.
5. KENMA FIGHTS GOD FOR HIS LOVER
God feels no remorse for those separated from the living too soon. He never understood the human emotion for He never created it. It cultivated through the growing of His creatures into extraordinary beings. God felt no emotion like a dead man did. He felt nothing as you screamed into the empty air for Him to take you back to your lover, mother, sister, or brother.
Kozume Kenma was only one of his millions of Heavenly victims, but he was special. He was sent away from the Earth too soon; proclaimed dead at the apex of his life when his back was shot twice saving his lover in a nightclub shooting. He grew an extra set of wings below his lungs, his kidneys taut sprouting a flushed peach from the bullet wounds.
God paid no mind to Kenma’s screaming to let him go. He could not have cared less what the dead men on His ground had to say. Not until Kenma had each and every one of God’s seven archangels wrapped around his fingers, that is; it was like a red string binding Kenma to each divine legend, as well as his lover on the ground. And it took Kenma breaking Ariel’s heart in half for the Almighty God to even bat an eye his way, for He had no idea how powerful Kenma was.
Kenma was not a God. He was born of something rather malicious, something selfish. He wanted Akaashi back, and he fought his way into God’s inner circle in order to have his request fulfilled.
He tackled the gatekeepers next, made the seraphs weep until each and every one ripped his own wings off and sat helpless in purgatory. When Kenma refused to let anyone else into heaven, that was when God confronted him.
The ground He walked on was plated in gold. Kenma’s was stained with blood.
God asked with a crackling thunder voice, “What do you want? What do I need to give you for you to leave my servants alone?”
Kenma grimaced, holding his head high enough that his eyes met God’s for the very first time. Kenma did not look down from the golden beams of His pupils until his request was granted.
“I want my husband back.”
“You cannot leave here.”
“Why not?”
“You cannot interfere with the living.”
“Who made that rule?”
“You could harm them.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Your spiritual body isn’t strong enough to make it through purgatory to get back to Earth.”
Kenma clenched his teeth—his decision to leave was already made. God was helpless to stop him now.
“I don’t need it, not when my body is already where I want to go.”
6. AKAASHI’S LAST HOPE
Akaashi tries one more phone number before he gives up and succumbs to the fact that Kenma will come back to see him and he’ll just have to cope with it.
He has to dial twice before someone finally answers.
“Hello? Is this Hinata?”
“Yes, who is this?”
It didn’t sound like Hinata to Akaashi.
“Hinata Shoyo?”
The other line goes quiet for a moment. “No, Hinata Tobio. Who is this?”
Akaashi bites his lip. He knew if Hinata was married he wouldn’t want to help. Not if he had already gotten over Kenma like Kuroo did.
“Akaashi Keiji. Is Shoyo there?”
“Uh, yeah. Give me one second.”
“Please tell him I need to talk to him.”
“Uh huh,” Tobio murmurs, followed by the shuffle of feet. Akaashi waits with an antsy heart, knowing full well that this is his last chance to find someone to help him through today.
Kenma didn’t have many friends while he was still alive, and it was coming to bite Akaashi in the ass.
Soon enough, Shoyo spoke on the other line.
“Akaashi?”
Akaashi felt his heart escape, washing his body with a sense of relief. “Shoyo, are you free today?”
“I—,” he began, but stopped suddenly. “Why are you asking? Why are you calling me?”
Akaashi freezes, then sighs. “...Today marks twenty years since he passed.”
Hinata stays quiet on the other line. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want to be alone today,” Akaashi replies, his chest clenching. “I want to visit him, but I don’t want to go by myself.”
“I’m sorry, Akaashi…”
“Please, Shoyo.”
Hinata takes a deep breath. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Akaashi pleads, though he already knew the answer. Alas, he was desperate.
“He’s been following you around. I—I can’t get myself involved in that. Akaashi, I have a husband. I got over Kenma years before you two even got together. I’m not putting myself back in the picture now.”
Akaashi shakes his head. Tears began to fill in his eyes, and soon enough he couldn’t hold them back. His voice broke as he replied, “Bokuto and Kuroo already said no. I need someone.”
“You’ll have to find someone else. I’m sorry.”
Hinata hangs up the phone, leaving only a horrifying click to sound in Akaashi’s ear.
He is left with silence; he is left to fall apart, alone with Kenma’s spirit hovering over his shoulder.
He realizes how lonely Kenma must be, with no one but Akaashi missing him. Maybe that’s when he realizes why Kenma visits only him, and nobody else.
It’s because nobody else cares about him. Nobody except Akaashi.
Akaashi watches as the burning sun begins to set. It’s almost time.
7. KENMA’S LAST WORDS TO GOD, HIS INFERIOR
Kenma could not be held down.
Not by a God, not by angels, not by rules, not by the universe, not by a grave.
His God warned him, “You'll face extreme consequences if you disobey my order here,” but Kenma didn’t care to listen.
He told God right back, “Nothing you say or do will hold me down. Nobody can take my love away.”
God told him, “Be weary.”
God said, “Don’t make me take your wings,” but Kenma just laughed.
He replied, “You couldn’t take them if you tried.”
Kenma could not be held down, and he was not held down.
He plummeted through Purgatory with a devious grin on his face, watching as God above him wept in loss of total control.
Because now Kenma knew damn well that no God could ever beat the power that comes from a lost requited love.
Nobody could hold him down now.
8. THE FATED MEETING OF A SERAPH AND HIS LOVER
Akaashi was met with unease as soon as he saw the burning sun rise in the cold night sky. He knew what was coming.
The wind begins to pick up, which gives him a bit of respite because he knew that it meant Kenma was farther away than he had originally thought. But as soon as the wind disappears entirely and leaves the air in a static heat—he knows that his dead lover is very close by.
Akaashi waits at the kitchen table, two glasses of wine sitting out before him. He clutches the bottle to his chest, taking long sips as he anticipates this yearly meeting.
Kenma did not use the front door. He never does. And Akaashi never knew where he came into the house from, but he didn’t want to ask. There were so many things he had rather not known.
He sees the grotesque peach webbing of Kenma’s lower set of wings before he sees his body. But seeing the wings is enough to make him feel nauseous.
“Keiji?” A scratched, shrieking voice asks. It wasn’t Kenma’s voice, but it was all Akaashi could get. He knew by the loving inflection who was standing in the door frame—but he didn’t want to. Kenma was a monster. Kenma is a monster.
A dead monster, with his dead body stretched across his dead limbs and his dead, sunken amber eyes staring straight into Akaashi’s.
Akaashi grits his teeth to keep from howling in fear.
“Kenma…”
“I missed you,” Kenma replies. His wings collapse on themselves and press onto his back as he smiles, his lips splitting to show the bone of his teeth. His gums are blue from the lack of oxygen and life. Akaashi winces and looks away.
Kenma sits in the chair across the table from Akaashi and watches him carefully.
“I know you don’t like it when I visit you,” Kenma says, using his gnarled fingernails to scratch his head with long locks of dead brown hair cascading off his shoulders and down to his stomach, where his bloodied exit wounds are fully visible through the veil he wears over his body. Kenma sighs. “But it’s all that makes me feel anymore.”
Akaashi nods, though he doesn’t say a word. His voice is trapped inside his throat, and he won’t breathe in fear that he’ll inhale Kenma’s wispy white soul, floating in spirals around his cold corpse.
He pushes a glass of wine in Kenma’s direction, and Kenma takes it with a bright smile. It’s a smile that could terrorize any man from six miles away, but to Akaashi—it’s somewhat endearing. He’s more comfortable with Kenma now that he has had to endure twenty years of haunting.
Kenma looks to be twenty three, his eyes are still young. Akaashi watches them closely—for those irises are the only part of him that hasn’t rot yet.
Kenma has said in the past, “You should see me in Heaven. I look beautiful there,” and Akaashi would nod, thinking about how beautiful Kenma used to be.
Kenma was not beautiful now. He was hideous, he was frightening. And yet, Akaashi offered him wine and company for one night more. He sat across the table from a corpse and tried his best to enjoy it, though he barely ever did.
There were moments that made Akaashi smile, there always were. When Kenma would act like himself, those were Akaashi’s favorites. When he knew it wasn’t just a dead body across from him, but his husband—that was his favorite part of these encounters.
Kenma sits across from him now, drinking wine with a delicate hand on the cup. His bones were starting to show through his fingertips, but it didn’t bother Akaashi much. He watches Kenma giggle, putting the empty glass down on the table.
“You drained that,” Akaashi manages to spit out, stretching a forced smile across his face.
“I haven’t had wine in such a long time,” Kenma replies. He closes his eyes and pulls his knees to his chest, his wings spreading as he does so. He looks like a real angel when he hides his features away, and Akaashi stands up to see him better.
“Are… Are your wings real?”
Akaashi surprises himself when he asks it, clamping his mouth shut quickly. Kenma is surprised too, he jerks his head up and his neck cracks as he does so. But his eyes are wide and excited.
He smiles as he eagerly replies, “Yes! Both sets!”
What Kenma does not tell Akaashi is that his wings are made originally from his organs. He thinks it’s better to keep that a secret than to sicken Akaashi even more than he already has.
Akaashi stumbles a little bit closer to Kenma, closer than he’s ever gotten before. “...Can… Can I touch them?”
Kenma’s eyes meet Akaashi’s, and suddenly Akaashi is washed in relief. He feels those eyes comforting him, he knows he's in the same presence as the person who saved him twenty years ago in that bar.
Akaashi feels somewhat… content. Knowing that for the first time in twenty years, he can be in the same room as Kenma’s corpse without crying for God to take him away.
“Of course you can,” Kenma whispers in reply, spreading his wings further so that Akaashi doesn’t have to come too close to him if he doesn’t want to.
But Akaashi moves right beside Kenma, taking a deep breath. He tightens himself up to prepare for the smell of rotten flesh—but is surprised when he doesn’t smell it. In fact, Kenma smells… like Kenma.
Akaashi gasps, and takes another deep breath through his nose. He looks at Kenma as his eyes begin to water, and he says with a croak, “You… You still smell like you.”
Kenma nods. “I try to mask the rot as well as I can. I wish I could just bring my spirit. I would be a lot less intimidating, really.”
Akaashi reaches his hand out and slowly strokes Kenma’s top wing, which is the color of an oyster’s pearl. Akaashi notices how the wing seems to breathe, fluctuating with each moment.
“Your fingertips feel nice.”
Akaashi bites his lip and moves his hand to brush against Kenma’s lower wing, which is a lot stronger and more muscular than his first set. It’s the color of a light peach, and it moves into Akaashi’s touch.
He laughs as Kenma beats his wings, much like those of a butterfly. Akaashi brushes the apex of his wing, then slides his hand down to where it meets his skin. He slips his fingers against the skin of Kenma’s back, but is quickly mortified by how callous the dead skin is.
His worries wash away though, when his eyes meet Kenma’s. “I’ve been watching over you, Akaashi. Did you know that?”
Akaashi looks down. “I didn’t.”
“Do you feel safe here? On Earth?” Kenma asks, humming in content when Akaashi puts his hands back on Kenma’s wings.
“I do.”
“Good,” Kenma replies. “But if that ever changes, you tell me, okay? I want to make sure you always feel safe.”
Akaashi nods. “Okay.”
“I love you so much, Keiji,” Kenma whispers, his voice lightening from the screech that it was previously. “And I’m so sorry that this is the only way you get to see me. But I can’t be without you. I miss you too much.”
Akaashi closes his eyes. “I miss you too, Kenma.”
Kenma shakes his head, his wings moving with him. They press into Akaashi’s hands warmly. Akaashi lies his head on the top of Kenma’s wing with a sigh.
“Do… Do you ever feel me when I’m not here physically?”
Akaashi nods. “Sometimes. Usually it’s after you leave, I can feel your presence in the house. And I can feel you lace your hands with mine, like you used to. And some years I can feel your body against mine when I’m going to sleep—but I can’t see you there.”
“I try really hard to be here with you. It’s difficult.”
Akaashi turns to face Kenma. He says, “You know, you don’t have to keep coming here if you don’t want to.” He lowers his head, a blush coming over his cheeks. “I know you’re with me, Kenma. You always will be. You don’t need to hurt yourself in order to show me proof.”
Kenma laughs. “I don’t do it for you, Akaashi. I already know that you hold me close. I do this for me, because you’re so far away.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” Kenma sighs, leaning back in Akaashi’s dining room chair. His old dining room chair. Akaashi continues to rub his wings, his fingernails lightly scratching over them.
“Will you stay here with me tonight?” Akaashi asks.
“With my body?”
“No, no—just… your spirit.”
Kenma nods. “I’ll try my best.”
Akaashi smiles, and places a soft kiss on the apex of Kenma's top wing. It flutters under his lips.
“I haven’t felt your touch in so long…,” Kenma murmurs. “I know it’s about time that I usually leave but I… I can't help wanting to stay. It feels like you finally aren’t afraid.”
Akaashi laughs. “I’m scared shitless, Kenma.”
“You know I would never hurt you, right, baby?”
Akaashi bites his lip, his heart soars upon hearing the pet name he hasn’t heard in such a long, long time.
“I know. But you don’t look… like you.”
“I know. I’m disgusting, honestly. Still trying to figure out how to come down here with my other body, but usually I can’t make it past purgatory with more than my spirit so I have to just… take my old body out of the grave.”
Akaashi sighs, still brushing his fingers over the smooth wings on Kenma’s back. He leaves a few more kisses on them, surprised that it doesn’t repulse him. But Kenma’s wings are the least repulsive part about his body at the moment, his wings are beautiful and big.
“It’s going to take me another few years, but I think I’ll get it sometime soon. Especially if I get put somewhere else than Heaven sometime soon. I’m not God’s favorite by any means.”
Akaashi snorts. “That’s okay. You’re my favorite.”
Kenma coos, “Oh, I’m so glad. You’re my favorite too. I love you.”
“I love you.”
“I wish I could just stay right here and you could rub on my wings all night.”
Akaashi bites his lip. “You can, if you want.”
Kenma cocks his head. “What changed, Akaashi? Why aren’t you horrified anymore?”
Akaashi lowers his head. “I called all of your past friends today. I asked them all if they would come over and sit with me when you came to visit tonight. But all of them refused. Bokuto, Kuroo, Shoyo… None of them wanted to see you. They were all scared… And I realized that I was the only one you had anymore. And you were the only one I had. Yeah, it’s fucking weird that you use your dead body to come visit me but… it’s the fact that you can visit me. And you choose to, when other dead people can’t. Right?”
Kenma nods, his eyes glistening. “Yeah. You’re completely right.” He wipes at the clear tears that drip down the rotting skin of his hollow cheeks. “I would hug you so hard right now, but I won’t. I’ll hug you later, while my spirit is still floating around here.”
Akaashi grins. “Okay. I’ll look forward to it.”
“Okay. And I’ll come back next year at this time. Maybe I’ll be able to transport my other body by that time. I’ll try really hard while I’m gone.”
“Okay. I’ll look forward to that too. I bet you’re a beautiful angel.”
“Oh, oh no—a seraph .”
“Seraph?”
“I’m a lot more powerful than just an angel. Who knows. Maybe one day I’ll be better than God.”
Akaashi laughs, and Kenma laughs with him. Akaashi says, “I’ll look forward to that.”
“Okay,” Kenma whispers, and reaches his hand out to Akaashi’s. Akaashi takes it, though cautiously. He lets Kenma kiss it with his split lips, and depart. “I think it’s time for me to go.”
“Okay,” Akaashi repeats, then again. “Okay.”
Kenma smiles as he stands up, his limbs cracking as he does so. His wings spread to their full capacity, marveling Akaashi.
“Hopefully next year I’ll be able to kiss you.”
Akaashi nods. “I hope so too. I love you so much, kitten.”
Kenma’s warm eyes meet Akaashi’s one last time. “I love you more, Keiji.”
The wind picks up, and Akaashi feels his eyes sting as Kenma walks away.
The burning sun sets.