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When Angel first moved in, Aki had hoped that he would finally have someone to ease the workload that Power and Denji inflicted on him. But no. Apparently, even the possibility of Angel not making things worse was too much to hope for.
The first issue arose before he even moved in, though Aki at the time had been naïve enough to believe it would be the only one. They had no rooms to spare in the flat. Power demanded a room of her own, which she only allowed Nyako into, and no way was Aki allowing Denji to sleep in the same room as him.
Denji, too, turned out to be possessive of his space, growling as if he were nothing more than an untamed devil outside his door until Aki acquiesced to the inevitability of Angel sharing his room.
So, when Angel arrived and dumped his things – surprisingly far more than Aki had imagined he could have had room for at the Devil Hunters Headquarters – right in the middle of the corridor, Aki begrudgingly dragged it to their room. Angel surveyed the space with his usual look of slightly disappointed indifference before demanding Aki make him a perch to sleep on directly above Aki’s own bed.
“A what? No fucking way,” Aki spat. The stupid devil could sleep on the floor at the end of his bed for all he cared. “If you want to be a bird, go sit on the roof or some shit.”
Angel shrugged and walked out.
Aki foolishly hoped that he would simply decide whatever option would be the least nuisance by the time night came.
But before that ordeal came dinner.
As usual, Power made a mess of it, throwing vegetables all over the shop while Denji yelled at her to stop and tried to force the occasional carrot down her throat in the defence of ‘healthy eating.’ Angel was quiet as ever, watching them both go at it without even the faintest hint of interest.
It was only when Power tipped the entire bowlful of lentils onto the floor that he moved at all, springing up from his seat with uncharacteristic enthusiasm and then pecking up each lentil one by one like a fucking chicken.
Aki really hadn’t thought that those wings had such a psychological affect on Angel, but evidently, unfortunately, he was very, very wrong.
The problem continued as the three of them conveniently vanished just as Aki went to clean up the disaster they had made of the dining room. Denji stayed for about thirty seconds before he got distracted and ran off to his room. It wasn’t even the cleaning up mess that was the issue so much as what came after it.
He trudged back to his room, glad of the quietude that meant Denji and Power had hopefully already gone to sleep.
But when he opened the door, he was greeted with hell.
Where his bed normally was, there was a huge pile of sticks arranged into an approximately donut-like shape, topped with a thick layer of blankets. There was barely any space for him to get in the room, let alone for him to lie down and sleep anywhere.
“Get out.”
Something - it was Angel but it was buried under too many layers to be recognisably human, or devil – shifted and screeched sharply before settling down again.
“This is my room,” Aki said uselessly, already knowing that the dining room floor would be a shitty substitute for his bed.
“Mine too,” came a quiet grunt.
He gave up the fight before even starting it. He could set up that damned perch in the morning, and then get all of Angel’s shit up there and off his bed.
***
His back ached just as much as he predicted as he nailed the wooden board into place. Hopefully, the supports he’d managed to steal from the hardware store with the help of Himeno’s Ghost Devil would support Angel and his nest’s weight.
That evening, after the two of them had come back from patrol, their room resembled something that they both might be able to inhabit. Angel showed no sign of gratitude; that shelf where his nest now sat was no doubt a step down from the welcoming softness of Aki’s bed.
But still, when evening came and Aki had once more rescued the kitchen from another catastrophe, Angel had accepted the perch as his new home and slept in it quietly.
His bed had never felt so gentle as he sunk his weary body into it, never been so kind on his aching spine and weary muscles.
***
Something stank. Something stank so badly that Aki woke before the sunrise even broke through the thin curtains that covered the window. He rolled out of bed, a sinking feeling already taking form in the depths of his stomach.
With a switch of the light, he realised what the source of the infernal stench was.
“GET THE FUCK UP!” he yelled.
There were little patches of shit all over his favourite blanket, staining the soft blue fluff a sickly off-white. It was as if an entire flock of pigeons with the bird equivalent of IBS had taken roost right over his bed.
The shout had drawn Power and Denji’s attention, the two of them blearily and eagerly poking their heads round the door, but Angel had yet to move even a millimetre in his bed.
“Do you know how to use the toilet, or do we have to potty-train you like we did Power?” he groaned.
At the mention of potty-training, Power hissed and pounced on him, knocking him forward and right onto the soiled blanket.
Thankfully, though Aki definitely couldn’t bring himself to be grateful, the shit had already hardened enough that it wouldn’t ruin his pyjamas too. He rolled off it before it had the chance too.
It was too early in the morning for this kind of stupid shenanigans, but already Power had moved on to trying to scrape the pats of shit off his beloved blanket.
“Get off it!” He tried to wrench her away from it, but she refused, digging her claws into it like Nyako did anytime anyone other than Power tried to pick them up. “I will become the richest devil in the world selling Angel Poop Fertiliser!”
Aki didn’t care to try and decipher what she meant. All that mattered now was rescuing his blanket from her before it got torn to pieces or completely ruined by Angel’s shit.
***
In the end, though Angel never seemed to stop his nightly toiletings, Aki managed to resolve the problem with another trip to the hardware store with Himeno to get a hardy tarpaulin to catch the shit before it ruined any more of his bedclothes. Unfortunately, this made the poo far too easy for Power to harvest for her concerning machinations, but that was one thing more than Aki could bring himself to care about.