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“It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us.”
―Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Dying is inevitable, and Aki knows this better than anyone.
His death marches near; he can hear its heavy footsteps pounding the stone of the path menacingly, dragging a clock which hands are about to strike midnight and which chimes will unceasingly accompany his eternal sleep. Death, which has taken so much from him but whom Aki awaits with serene calm, will drag him with it for all the borrowed time, to meet on the other side with those who await him there.
And that was the thing; in the end, Aki does not fear his death. He doesn't want it to happen, but he has been dancing with it for so long that the tune is already familiar, and the soles of his shoes, worn from use, are a sign that at any moment that macabre dance will come to an end.
It is like a silent acceptance, aware after so long waiting for it that the ground will open up beneath his feet, and that will be the end of him. The only thing left for death to take from him is life itself.
He could say that he is so familiar with death that the only thing left for him to do is to look it in the face for the last time; demonic beauty, his undoing... but he feels that he has already done so, and that he continues to do so every time he looks at the man he loved, for every time he looks into Angel's eyes he feels he is looking into those of death itself, a bottomless void that will bring its end upon him.
And yet, he can't stop looking into them.
"You know?" Angel says absently nibbling on his ice cream, as Aki watches him as if in a trance; how the wind makes his hair flutter in the bright sun, or the way his wings fall behind him with heavenly grace. Sometimes Aki is content to just watch, and wonders how many men have had the opportunity to have such terrifying beauty as that of a fallen angel up close. "Really the saddest thing about you dying is not that you will die forever, but that I will have to go on living a thousand lives, and that you won't be in any of them."
Aki contemplates this for a brief moment. Something so selfish, yet at the same time so selfless, could only come out of Angel's mouth.
"And for you?" Angel continues curiously, looking into his eyes, and Aki again feels completely captivated by them "what do you think you'll regret the most after you die?"
A genuine question, Aki could deduce. After all, Angel didn't fear death either. Not for the same reasons Aki did, but because it was a concept a devil really couldn't grasp. Angel didn't fear death because he didn't have to run from it, or wait for it, or chase after it; because it would never pursue him.
Aki lets out air slowly through his nose and lights a new cigarette as he stares at the thin line where the sky and the sea merge.
"I've never given it much thought... I'll be dead after all, and the dead have no regrets. They have nothing" he takes a drag and holds the smoke for a few seconds before letting it escape from between his lips, accompanying his next words. It wasn't something he had never considered "I guess it would be the time I've wasted, all the things I haven't done, the 'what if's."
That confession implied many things that Aki didn't have the courage to say out loud; Power and Denji above all else, the revenge he owed his family and all that obsessing over it had taken away from him, a normal life, traveling, falling in love....
"You would have had more time if you weren't so stupid."
Aki looks at Angel, and acknowledges the start of a conversation they've had before.
"No one really ever has enough time, death comes to us all too soon."
"Dammit Aki, you know what I mean" Angel returns a somewhat desperate look "I've stolen from you the one thing that can't be taken back."
Aki hums, watching as his cigarette is consumed slowly between his fingers and some ash falls onto his shoe.
"The time I've lost because of you is time I don't want back, because what I've gained in return is something I wish I could take with me to the other side" Aki admits, being fully aware of the truth that each of his words held "Knowing you has been one of the few things that have made me fear death, because after it, I won't be in a world I can share with you."
"Knowing me has only shortened your life" Angel interjects, his voice slightly shaky.
"It has only made it worth living."
The sound of the ice cream falling to the sand only lasts as long as it takes for Angel's fists to close around the collar of his shirt.
"Can't you see!" Angel shouts, his eyes watering, his jaw clenched. Aki feels his hands tremble where they are positioned dangerously close to his neck. Aki swallows "I'm killing you!"
Aki brushes Angel's cheek almost imperceptibly, but his heart loses a beat in return. Angel grabs his forearm to stop him from repeating the action. "You saved me" Aki whispers against the other's lips, feeling Angel's agitated breathing on his "You make me want to live."
And that was the problem, wasn't it?
The game of fate.
Angel, while draining the life from him, imbued him with an immense desire to stay alive, if only to be able to be with him for another minute, one last second.
Aki catches Angel's lips with his, and this time the devil doesn't try to prevent it.
It's brief, shorter than Aki would like, than either of them would really like. But they both know that every kiss, every caress, every touch can be deadly.
He knew Angel would never forgive himself for what he was doing to him, but Aki supposes they both pay a price in this gamble, and that even so, neither comes out a winner.
"I wish we had more time."