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When Angel imagines his death, he assumes it’ll go something like this:
Makima assigns him to a mission related to the defeat of the gun devil. Angel goes, because Angel follows orders. Cannot do anything but follow orders, nowadays.
Then he dies.
Then he’ll reincarnate with the revving of a chainsaw, but that’s unimportant as he won’t remember it.
It will be an anticlimactic kind of thing. He’ll die some horrible, gruesome death, and it will be painful, maybe painful enough for him to question if dying lives up to the hype, which, of course, it’s not like it can really live up to anything, but—
Well. There’s no point in feeling that kind of thing, so close to death. By that point he’ll already be good as dead.
There’s some irony in this envisioned situation that he can’t quite put his finger on, something like the fact that his ability drains life in the most painless way possible, but his death will be painful beyond measure. But it’s not really irony, because Angel doesn’t feel much pain—doesn’t feel much of anything, nowadays, so he’s sure that he’ll die just fine.
If he allowed himself to be hopeful, he’d retire to the countryside, maybe, and nobody would touch him, and he’d stay sad and lonely and probably die from that, an affliction so painful and common that he’d wither into skin and bones in a mockery of old age before finally kicking the bucket. It’s a nice dream, Angel thinks. Unattainable, but nice.
What he’s never told anyone is that when he saps the life out of someone, it has this flavor to it. Sweet like a reddened strawberry and drenched with the sharp tang of blood, a dizzying flavor that almost overwhelms, when it’s too much. In subtle notes, people taste different—a disgruntled office worker can sour the sweetness of the overall pack, which Angel has come to expect, and almost delight in.
He doesn’t hate sweets, but sweet humans are disgusting. He’s eaten enough to be far past the point of being sick of them.
The taste of human life is a little too personal of a thing for someone with his powers, so he keeps his mouth shut about it. Besides, he’s a devil first and foremost. He may know what these humans taste like, but he doesn’t care about them. He won’t mourn them or honor their memory or carry any kind of sentiment, really.
But Angel remembers strawberries, sour and sweet in alternating bites, unable to tell which fruit is the correct amount of ripe. He wonders why, out of all things, it had to be strawberry—one time, he’d gotten strawberry-flavored ice cream by accident and spit it out when that sickly sweet flavor hit the back of his throat. That mishap aside, it’s an easy enough thing to avoid, so a real one feels more and more like a far-off unreal memory. Even if he knew what a perfect one tasted like, it would be one of thousands or other people. Still, as much as he tries to push the flavor out of his mind, he remembers how humans taste, each and every one tucked into the corners of his tongue as his mouth washes clean with blood.
Hayakawa Aki passes him a handkerchief, and it’s suddenly the closest he’s been to touching anyone in a while. That’s somewhat of a lie. Angel touches a lot of people—they’re just usually dead or close to it after he does.
“You’re not worried?” he asks Aki, mustering what he thinks is a smile to his face. But he’s not really smiling—he’s not really built for that thing, nowadays.
Hayakawa doesn’t smile either. He just acts reasonably and logically, and he’s not scared of him, because that would be foolish.
There’s something wavering in the air; Angel hesitates, but finally calls the vague feeling kindness, and he doesn’t smile but wonders if Hayakawa can still understand what he means.
It’s a fruitless endeavor, but there’s a small delight in his stomach at the delusion of it, to imagine a day where they could have smiled at each other, exchanged pleasant greetings, and become friendly coworkers. Something impersonal yet indescribably important, like a life where his mouth didn’t faintly taste of tooth-rotting sugar.
So often, people’s lives taste like strawberry syrup—unbearably sweet, precious, and fragile. Angel wishes that more truly miserable people existed in the world, but he supposes it’s the inherent meaning of life that allows him to make his weapons, and the same meaning which makes them so sweet.
He imagines a person like Hayakawa would taste faintly bitter, like the flat, troubled expression on his face, and his stupid hair. At the very least, it would be something different than the rest.
“I don’t really like you,” Hayakawa says.
“Mm. Okay,” Angel says.
Hayakawa looks neither bothered nor elated by his response. He’s got that same vacant stare he usually does, revealing nothing at all, but Angel’s heard enough to know that Hayakawa cries more than any devil hunter out there.
So Hayakawa doesn’t like him. Angel has never been as easy person to like. Hayakawa doesn’t like him, but he’ll hand over a handkerchief without flinching. He’ll breathe in Angel’s space like it’s natural, like most people don’t keep a wide berth in the case they might knock into him, suddenly, somehow. Their life is so precious to them, after all.
For someone with so much conviction, Hayakawa has a strange disregard for his own life. It seems, more than anything, that he seems to forget why he’s here, but still can’t forget, in some messed up way that is as unexplainable as anything else in this world. Angel struggles to call him a corporate slave. If Hayakawa’s in service to anything, it’s something far more nebulous. Even the way he calls Makima is mild-mannered despite his obvious, bleeding respect for her.
Besides, even if Hayakawa absolutely hated him and wanted nothing to do to him and wanted to be one hundred meters away from him at all times, Angel wouldn’t hold a grudge. But since Hayakawa has decided to be quite contradictory about what he’s like and what he likes, Angel is left thinking about a lot more things than he’d like to admit he’s thinking about.
Angel likes him. That tentative breath of that thought chills him to the bone. He knows, already, that Hayakawa does not like him the same way. This is again a thought that leaves him oddly sated, like wind and sun after a rainstorm.
It’s been a while since he’s had such a positive opinion about someone. Hayakawa’s measured, careful, attentive. He’s sweet, but not in the kind of way that makes Angel feel sick.
He just doesn’t want to let anyone die on his watch. Not even Angel. Even though dying is so easy.
If Angel imagines his death, he wants Hayakawa to be the kind of person who would never die. He seems almost invincible, in some manner, but Angel knows that he’ll die quick like a flash, so quick no one will be able to do anything. Maybe they’ll even die together, since Hayakawa’s so obsessed with the gun devil. A death like that would be painful, but righteous.
But Angel doesn’t really care about human morals. If Hayakawa ran, and ran forever, that would be something else. It’s not something that’s possible for him, so he indulges the small illusion that it could happen for someone else.
“What are you thinking about?” Hayakawa asks.
Angel blinks up at him. You, he doesn’t say. “Have you heard about the country mouse and city mouse?” he asks instead.
Hayakawa’s a good fit for the city. He’s got that open, dead-eyed stare that fits right at home with everyone else there. He likes to lean on high balconies and smoke cigarettes like he’s inhaling the melancholy of the world. His steps are proper, measured strides that click in time with the rhythm of the crowd. Every evening he returns home, makes dinner for Power and Denji, and settles into sleep if there’s no mission to be completed.
Angel dislikes crowds. He can’t stand or sit normally. If he’s in the city, he hangs out on the top of buildings where he shouldn’t be. He doesn’t have a house.
Angel has the dead eyes, though. Hayakawa may have the stare, but unlike him, Angel doesn’t remember how to cry.
This… thing he has with Hayakawa has moved from morbid interest into some kind of obsession. Makima has the oddest look on her face when she sees him, now, like she’s trying to calculate how to make use of it. Angel wants to laugh. If she wants to make use of him, then so be it. He’s already her servant.
He kills the girl that she points at. He wonders if this will reduce the amount of tears on his face, even just a little.
There’s no one who could make Hayakawa quit, Angel knows, but he realizes suddenly why people try so hard to make him. Someone so good doesn’t deserve to exist within this pit. In the same way, someone so good exists there because of it.
“You’ve grown close to Aki lately,” Makima says.
A dilemma, for sure, but not one he's allowed to have a stake in. “Hayakawa?” he asks. “He’s annoying. I didn’t want him here.”
“You’re going to be partners,” Makima decides. “I think you two will work well together.”
“Hm,” Angel says. “If you say so.”
“Here,” Makima says, producing a cone of ice cream from who knows where. “You like this, don’t you?”
The light pink color sends a wave of nausea shuttering through his spine, and he stiffens. “Yeah,” he says, making a grabby motion towards it. “Give it here.”
Nothing in her expression flickers. Figures, since he hasn’t told her anything about it, but it’s still exhilarating, to get some kind of upper hand over her.
In the end, that designation of partners becomes irrelevant. Makima seems to forget about it as soon as it comes up, and Angel has no reason to pester her about it.
The wind is so fierce that it feels like it could pierce him through the heart. Not that he has one of those, of course. He doesn’t have one, but Hayakawa’s hands are cold, and of course they’re cold because of the wind, the night, the deep chill that everyone hunting devils carries, but it’s still such a shock that Angel can’t do anything but close his eyes tightly.
Though they’re cold, he’s pressed up against the fabric of Hayakawa’s clothes, wrinkled and stiff. Hayakawa’s holding him close, like he’s really afraid Angel’s going to die, like he’s someone that matters—
And Angel leans into his embrace, tucked carefully in his hold, skin not touching skin, feeling the warmth from Hayakawa’s body seep into his like the faintest trace of hope. He recalls what summer feels like within an ocean, the smile of someone he can’t quite remember.
The inside of his mouth is sweet and sour, but it’s not painful. Angel, hatefully enough, likes the sting.
Two months of his life down the drain. Smoking cigarettes like it could kill him.
Strawberry, flushed red like blood, and deliciously ripe. It doesn’t matter whether Hayakawa likes Angel or not; what matters is how much Hayakawa values his own life.
There’s a bittersweet memory that aches in his head when he looks at him. When he looks away, he thinks there’s a new one begging to form between his teeth.
Two years, counting down. Even though it’s meaningless, Angel doesn’t want to see him die.
There’s a strange look in Aki’s eyes when he visits him. “You look like you’ve been violated.”
Tonelessly, Angel says, “Isn’t that you?”
“I told you, I don’t like seeing people around me die,” Aki replies. “If you do, please do it while I’m not around.”
“I’m not a person, so it’s fine,” Angel says. at Aki’s look of consternation, he shrugs and plays the act up. “I told you I don’t really care for humans.”
“You’re not sitting next to me,” Aki says. The envelope clutched in his hands crumples a little in his grip.
Angel tilts his head. “What?”
“You… the distance is further away… than usual.” As if he’s just realized what he’d said, his face colors an ugly shade of pink. “Sorry, I just—”
“Don’t read too much into it,” Angel says.
“Your eyes—”
He can’t help the bewilderment bubbling inside of him. If Aki knows, then he’ll know, and if he’s knowing—
“Don’t read too much into it,” Angel repeats, purposely killing the rest of any inflection in his voice. “We’re not that close, and we’re not friends, so it doesn’t mean much.”
Aki tucks the letter in his pocket, reaching towards him for a split second before his hand closes around empty air. Angel suddenly has the terrifying desire to lean forward and press that hand against his face. If he could cry maybe Aki would wipe the tears off his cheeks.
But no one moves. Aki looks at him with clear, glassy eyes. “Angel,” he says, his mouth caressing the word. No The, no Devil.
A rotten sweet taste fills his mouth, like strawberries close to spoiling.
Eyes on the place where arms once were. Quick as a flash, Aki’s eyes move to his face. Angel drags his gaze from the pit where Aki’s arm once was. An arm is just an arm, but that’s the arm that held him for a moment. It’s not like the hand he held remains, either.
It feels, in some miserable way, that they’ve thrown off their attachments to each other. After all, it’s hard for Angel to touch anyone without hands, anymore.
It is a wonder this man is alive; as daunting as the task seems, Angel wants to believe in him still.
But Aki won’t run away for him. A simple wish from Angel isn’t enough. Still, he can’t help but follow him, talking by his side and storing the words like precious, precious gifts.
When he catches Makima’s eyes, he remembers the word partner, again, and for the first time he feels so sick he thinks he’s about to throw up. The bitter overwhelms his senses and snaps his memories into clear, terrible focus.
Makima beckons him forward.
Angel goes, because Angel follows orders. Cannot do anything but follow orders, now.
Death glimmers in his eyes, but he's not at the center of it. His vision's filled with Aki, colored a deep, bloody red, and he commits the taste of his life in his mind, savoring it as the last memory he'll have.