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In a narrow alley where the street lights cant reach, he'd wander past it from his way home-- only to come face to face with a boy with a hair of chestnut brown. Slender fingers gripped around a blade that cried red, standing victoriously over a bulky figure lying on the ground, an angel of death.
The angel turned his single emerald eye back and smiled.
//
Holding down that brutes head, it was strange how the other couldn't find it in him to fight back at all, bodies mangled into grotesque paintings, then stuffed back into the garbage can without mercy. Crimson butterflies blossomed into view where the cold of the blade danced, they landed on his shoulder and dissipated into thin air, ethereal.
"Tell me you're enjoying this."
The man underneath him choked out a word of agreement, the butterflies escaping from his mouth, and spring daisies began to litter the ground. He gave a frown at those delicate flowers, cold light digging deeper between shoulder blades, and commanded the man to restate himself.
With his agreement, blossoms of flowers spread on the ground like ripples from a pond.
"You're, lying."
Swift and elegant went the blade, hilt still spinning in his hand as the butterflies took off in a flurry from the mans back.
What good was he now, being devoured by those fragile wings of pain. A sigh, he kicked him back into the back corner, and turned to the mouth of the alley.
There was an angel standing there, his head full of snow and his eye the color of the butterfly that landed on his shoulder. The streetlights lit up behind him, a halo of pure light surrounding his broad frame.
The angel didn't say anything, stopped in his tracks to contemplate the exhibition of his devilish hands. So he didn't say anything back.
That one functioning eye of his, a green muddied by the reflection of sinful red, crinkled up into a smile.
//
"Do you see them?"
The angel asked, brandishing his holy weapon to his face, the droplets of blood landed on his white and black striped shirt. The monster shook his head.
Whatever this holy being was seeing, he could not. Only dripping blood, the grotesque smell of a freshly opened human corpse, and a faint citrus.
"The butterflies. Do you see them?"
His chestnut ponytail bobbed up and down as he made his way to him, a little shorter than anticipated. Holding his naked arm up, the cold light of the blade danced upon it, gashes and gashes opened up one after the other, he could only watch in horror.
Gloved hands pulled the knife away, it rang loudly, thrown onto the concrete. The angel's thin bleeding wrists in his, shock coloring his pale eye.
"What are you doing? Doesn't it hurt?"
He shouldn't care, he doesn't even know who this angel was. Merely another light to shame him of his existence.
His blinding smile, how can he smile. How can he smile after that.
"You're moving your mouth, but you're not saying anything."
This angel must be deaf, he decided, pulling him along a little until the holy blade was out of an arms length. He figured he'd try again, dragging out his words long enough to hope that the boy could read his lips.
"Does-- it-- hurt--?"
The question dawned on the angel, and he shook his head. Lovely pink shells parted to reveal his rows of milky white teeth, another toothy grin, almost unbearably bright.
"Andrew, i love you. lets go back home."
Andrew must be his name, the monster mused. It didn't sound like a name a monster would own. He had no sense of self, no understanding of where home was, only following muscle memory in a world he did not know. This angel was a familiar stranger, there was something about his tattered eyepatch that brought feelings of fondness.
"I don't know you."
He answered quietly, yet the angel could not hear.
--
The angel didn't listen. He wont, he probably cant, either. He looked a little less angel-like with the blood washed out of his clothes and matted hair, just him in his striped shirt and his one single forest green eye.
He, the monster-- Andrew, was supposed to know this boy. Or so the other tells him, brows furrowing on his porcelain face when he read on Andrew's lips 'no'. They did not indeed meet before. At least, the monster thought so.
Perhaps, he had a faulty memory. He would not press on.
"I love you,"
The angel says every day, he was stuck in his house until otherwise, seemingly unable to leave its bounds. Something intangible chained him to the foot of the others bed, and he had not tried to escape anymore.
Andrew didn't mind it as much as he thought he would, quite frank. He had nowhere else to go, and having a partner to chat in this strange world filled his days with a little more excitement, a little more kindness than what he remembered. though he remembered nothing at all.
Years passed, months, days, seconds. time didn't exist in their little house, they need not for food nor water, sleep nor work. Simply existing, outside of time.
One day, as the angel-- Luca, he's come to learn-- sewed away on his little cross stitch, the needle pierced his paper skin. Andrew, for the first time in centuries, watched the stark red of a butterfly flutter skywards, vanishing into a pressured point of nothingness, bursting into invisible shards that held no touch, no view, no sound to them.
"Luca,"
He called, and the angel heard him.
He could see his angel's world now, the pink and purple cotton candy sky, the torrent of butterflies raining outside, the wilted succulents in the pot.
They shared a kiss. desperate, demanding. It was the beginning of the world, the end of the world. Andrew loved Luca, but it wasn't the right kind of love. not yet.
[...]
They went on a date, hand in hand. The streets were devoid of any other souls other than them, lights flickering on when they passed by, turning off after they've moved on. It was as if the world belonged to them, bent to their will, listened to their fluttering heartbeats. Andrew had a sneaking feeling that there should be more people outside at this time of day, when the sun hung low on the horizon, yet he couldn't quite find a reason as to why that would be. Besides, he did like this, alone with the stranger angel he loved.
The school Luca led him into was as empty as the streets, smell of old books and body spray faintly resided in the air. His chestnut ponytail swished from left to right, back from right to left, his own attracting citrus fragrance trailing in the path they wind through. He remembered this place vaguely in his memories, an almost tangible thick mist stopping him from reminiscence. This must have been his school then, right? Does it really matter if it was or not.
"Do you remember how we met, Andrew?"
His angel looked dreamily out the window, he followed the gaze to a dimly lit alley, wandering butterflies drifting in and out. There were more, in his memory.
"Yes."
The daisies blooming from his mouth gave him a scare, hacking out the roots of the plant from delicate innards. The angel and monster met each others gaze halfway, then down to the spring buds that have already claimed the floorboard as their flower beds.
"You're lying."
"Then, how--"
//
Crimson red stained his striped shirt, curling inwards as unforgiving hands and feet fought over which got to leave the bigger bruise. He bit his lip, tasting the bile and the rust of the sickly red that ran from his nose.
What did he ever do to deserve this, he'd wail to himself silently, numb to the onslaught of laughter and pain. It wasn't fair, this wasn't fair. Closing his eyes, he waited for time to pass.
"Hey!"
A booming voice, he could barely lift his head to see the other children scatter and disappear, cowering in the light of the angel that stood at the mouth of the alleyway.
The sunlight filtered in behind him, a halo of strength framing his broad shoulders. Rats, they're all rats, hiding into the crevices of comforting darkness, leaving the carcass they've scavenged behind.
"Are you okay?"
His head of snow, strands of icicles waving lightly in the breeze as he bent down, caressed the tip of a broken nose. Ruby eyes seemed to tear through his physical being, staring into the soul of the devil, reflecting the red within. Luca managed a groan in reply.
(Fucking hell. Do I look okay to you.)
This was Luca's first meeting with his angel.
Behind hushed voices and the metal slits of lockers, a little secret was born. Sealed into a letter smelling of citrus were words that could not be spoken out loud, a curse that would release all hell should anyone but an angel activate the spell.
He slid the rose tinted letter into a certain locker, and left hurriedly from the back door.
That same curse, bound to him as soon as mice ate their way through the combination of the lock.
"Hey, we found a letter in your boyfriend's locker room today."
"Hah, are you really developing feelings for him? You've only met once!"
"Unless, you've been stalking him? Crazy ass bitch. You should have just stayed at your private school."
The spell was destroyed, pink confetti celebrating a broken heart-- and perhaps, several broken bones.
//
"And then?"
The angels eye seemed distant, lost in unpleasant memories. He gave a quiet scowl, part of his canine poking out of soft lips.
"And then," whispered out, motioning for him to come closer. Andrew rested his chin on the others shoulder, both looking out the window to empty streets.
Quite suddenly, two pedestrians morphed out of the shadows of the dark alleyways, waiting to cross the road. They was an angel with hair of snow, walking hand in hand with his devil, maroon hair tainted red under the setting sun rays.
As they crossed the middle of the road, a car that had materialized out of nowhere crashed into them, the three entities dissipating in a cloud of red smoke and butterflies.
He cringed a little inwards at the sight, grip tightening on the other's dainty waist.
Andrew remembered. He remembered so well passing that dark alley each day to walk back home from school, remembered the boy lying down in the corner of the dead end, remembered calling for help and having no one come.
He remembered nursing Luca back to health after that expensive hospital trip, the promise he made him to always walk home with the other, the smell of citrus in his locker, yet having nothing there.
Remembered the speeding truck, and how he had held the boy in his arms at the last second.
Luca, his angel, his light. How could he have forgotten.
"Then," he breathed, "Are we dead? Is this heaven?"
"Devils cant be in heaven with an angel like you."
They laughed, soft and gentle, as if wind chimes swinging in the breeze. Laughed at their contrasting perception of each other, laughed at the ridiculous situation they've found themselves in, where neither could wish to be a holy deity-- to lose the other to heaven.
The monster and the devil shared a kiss,
Then two high school boys woke up in separate hospital beds.