Work Text:
I. INTROIT
Schoolboy shoes, old soles. The suit has never fit him quite right, he thinks it never will. Not that it matters with the nature of his job, but he tucks in his button up and keeps his tie straight anyways. He doesn’t have a reason not to.
Schoolboy shoes, bloody soles. More often stained red than not. He carefully makes his way around the zombies, not one wasted move. It’s just another operation. Clock in with Kishibe. Pray (or don’t) that someone will sleep in their bed tonight and that someone is you. He already gave up his flesh the second he joined the Public Safety Committee. All he owns now are the thoughts in his head (and on some nights, the luxury of dreaming).
The room is too loud, filled to the brim with empty screams and darkness. Ambulatory shadows dart around the room, and he dodges what he can.
There’s never light in these operations except for the ones they leave behind, and he never turns to look at the doorway he came from. Not until the mission is complete. A sword does not think of its sheath mid-swing, it has no reason to.
Blood drips down the walls in thick waterfalls, staining every surface in crimson. Not that he can see it, but he can sure smell it – iron, dereliction, and the absence of Gods.
There are no humans between these walls, only monsters, and the Gods have abandoned them long ago. Maybe it was the Gods who took away the light. Monsters - human and devil alike - do not need light, not when they’re most alive in the dark.
Just when he thought his eyes had adjusted to the room, he sees amidst the stygian blackness:
A halo.
A katana.
Vermillion hair falling gently from a featherlight breeze.
Blood dripping off the katana blade.
Azure eyes meet auburn ones, and this feels familiar – buried softness tinged red with something other than blood.
They approach each other. One step at a time.
Exaudi orationem meam,
Ad te omnis caro veniet,
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Hear my prayer,
All flesh shall come to Thee,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
II. QUID SUM MISER
They make their way to an empty bench, bodies collapsing onto cheap wood after a long work day.
Aki’s bones ache with an age he never expected to reach. Should he be grateful for the way his neck pops when he tilts his head or the way his spine collapses in on itself without his knowing?
“Too bad the ice cream truck is closed,” Angel says, all splayed limbs with one wing grazing the ground and the other folded up neatly next to Aki.
“You shouldn’t-” eat so much ice cream, it’ll give you stomach aches. You shouldn’t slouch like that, it’ll hurt your back and probably your wings too.
Angel looks over at him, and Aki thinks he shouldn’t care so much about a devil.
“We need to do a debrief before checking back with Makima-san,” he says as he loosens his tie.
“Hmm,” Angel fiddles with a stray feather. “More work after a full day of patrolling. Can’t we do this tomorrow?”
“No, we should get the details straight while our memories of them are the most accurate.”
“ Your memories,” Angel drops the feather, letting the breeze carry it away. “Human memories. Devils never forget anything.”
Aki watches the white plume meld with the early autumn leaves until the speck of white is no longer visible to his ordinary human eyes.
“Then will you be so gracious as to report back to Makima with your impeccable devil memories tomorrow since my human ones are subpar to yours?”
“So much work,” Angel mutters, staring off into the distance at something Aki couldn’t see. Perhaps a feather. Or a memory. Maybe there is no difference between the past and what one sheds.
He watches their shadows grow and intertwine under the setting sun, and he suspects that overlapping shadows is the closest thing to human contact Angel will ever experience.
He also suspects that he’ll be doing this report on his own, not that he anticipated anything different after working with Denji and Power, neither of whom can write a single sentence without the help of a dictionary.
“You looked away,” Aki states. “When I stabbed the half-eaten hunter. I saw you look away.”
“Did I?” Angel whispers, asks no one in particular, with his head downturn in confession.
If devils could go to confession, if uncertainty was a sin.
Angel looks like dying embers against the last of the daylight – russet hair turned into a halo of fire. Come too close and he’ll singe not only your life but also your heart.
It was Angel who refused to put a human out of their suffering, but it’s Aki who remains hurting.
He looks at Angel, faded embers, the supposed embodiment of human fears towards all things divine. Angel wants to die, and Aki wonders if he too believes that deliverance can only come in death.
Angel didn't look at the body when Aki stabbed it through the head. It doesn't have to mean anything. Why would a devil with nothing but an appetite for savagery care for something sweet like ice cream? It doesn't have to mean anything.
If Aki tries hard enough, it can mean nothing at all.
“Nevermind,” the devil never asked for salvation. “It’s not important,” how human a devil can be, how earthly an angel can become.
If the Angel Devil hears his words, he doesn’t show it.
“What do you think came first, Aki? The angel or the devil?” Angel asks.
“The Angel?”
“Neither,” Angel responds, distant. “Angels aren’t real. I'm a devil composed of human fears. I didn't exist until I was feared. I’m just an aftermath of humanity.”
“What does this have to do with-”
“Angels aren’t real. It was a risiduum. Cause and effect. Nothing more.”
After embers comes ash and soot, and Angel looks like he’s on the verge of being carried away by the wind. Wings and all.
Aki pulls out a cigarette.
Quidquid latet, apparebit,
Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?
What is hidden will be revealed,
What shall a wretch like me say?
III. LIBERA ME
Angel opens his eyes to the sound of rustling grass.
A single light pierces through the overcast sky like a trope from an old European painting. It’s comical, the idea of heaven reaching down for him. The idea of the Gods loving all creations even the ones that are bastardizations of human thoughts.
He’s only an angel in appearance. The only thing waiting for him is hell or another assignment from the Bureau. The reality of the situation isn’t lost to him even as he feels his body go cold from blood loss.
Let time do the killing – it’s incredible how quickly a body can die when left alone.
Devils don’t do funerals. There’s no need to bury a body that no one will pay respects to. But the ground is soft and sunlight pours over him, the warmest embrace he’ll ever feel, and well, this isn’t so bad . He supposes there are worse ways to go. Though he never cared much about going . Only about being gone.
“Shit.” The sound of tearing cloth rips through the air, jolting him from his thoughts. “Shit shit shit.”
Aki hovers over him, the fabric of his jacket between his teeth as he continues yanking it until he tears it to shreds.
“You- you didn't have to do that alone. W- why didn’t you call for h- nevermind,” he cuts himself short, stuttering as he fumbles with the black fabric and something silver.
Angel doesn’t register what Aki is doing until Aki hovers his hand above Angel’s mouth.
“Drink,” he says, and it sounds like a plea.
Blood trickles from Aki’s hand onto Angel’s chapped lips, and Angel lets it slip into his mouth.
Aki tastes bitter, like medicine, like a smoke trail, and Angel has only begun tracing it back to the source of its fire. Bitter, like nicotine and the sweetness comes only after choking down the ashes. Aki tastes half-alive, but alive nonetheless, and he pulls Angel to shore.
Aki bandages his hand and slips on a pair of black leather gloves, the ones he always kept in his jacket pocket when patrolling with Angel. “Sorry,” he sounds more pained than Angel, and he’s not even the one bleeding out of his gut. “You lost too much blood. Bear with me,” he says before sliding a gloved hand underneath Angel’s torso.
Aki lifts him up.
Angel screams.
Life spills from his body, and his wings feel like ship anchors against his back. Heaven laughs at the devil who thought he could get a peaceful death and reminds him that death is meant to hurt.
To reach the hilt of the sword, he must first pass through the blade. All of it.
The sun disappears.
The ghost of the claws that cut into his side lingers as Aki sets him down. He feels pressure that wasn’t there before. Bandages , he confirms with a swipe of his thumb. Or rather, Aki’s jacket that he tore into bandages for Angel.
His cries must have sounded demonic because Aki is crying. Red-eyed and quiet. If the wind hadn’t stopped, no one would hear him stifling unsteady breaths.
But over the ringing in his ears, Angel hears him – small, lamentable, and irrefutably human. Nothing at all like the hunter who decapitates devils for a living, who can kill with the same expression as someone waiting for their coffee to brew.
He reaches up, ready to wipe away Aki’s tears-
Ah, right.
Death must have made him stupid. Made him forget who he was. Death waits on the surface of his skin and in the marrow of his bones. Why should he be afraid of death when he is death itself?
Aki cries harder. Audibly now.
It looks exhausting – feeling. What a waste , Angel thinks, letting his arm go slack.
Before it can hit the ground, his hand is caught by something warm, alive.
Aki wraps Angel’s hand in both of his – gloved, safe – and doesn’t stop his tears from falling onto Angel’s skin before resting his forehead on clasped hands.
He no longer feels the presence of death or the mockery of heaven. He only feels Aki. Aki’s tears rolling down his hand, past the cuff of his bloodied sleeve. Aki’s breath, hot and unsteady against his wrist. Aki's blood on his tongue, under his skin. Aki’s eyes closed tight against the rest of the world. Aki’s jaw clenched. Aki's lips trembling.
Aki Aki Aki.
Though their skins will never meet, at this very moment, Aki feels so tangible. If he reached a little further, Angel thinks his fingertips would bypass skin and sink straight into Aki’s heart. He thinks it’d feel like sadness.
Aki’s sadness feels molten, and Angel lets Aki burn him alive.
“You didn’t have to do that. Any of that,” Angel says once Aki’s tears ebbed. “Devils don’t need to be bandaged, and there’s plenty of blood back at the station,” he groans as he feels his body attempting to piece itself back together. “Now you have a cut on your hand.”
Aki sighs with the gravity of someone thrice his age. “You might not have made it,” he says, still positioned in prayer with his eyes closed.
“Devils don’t die that easily.”
Aki looks up from his litany with bloodshot eyes. “But you might not have made it.”
The way Aki’s voice trembles on “you” sends goosebumps down Angel’s skin and spiders through his veins – blood cells that are not his own.
Yes I would have , he wants to say. He’d make it because… because Makima isn’t done using him. Because he’s a devil, and devils don’t die that easily. If it was that easy, he wouldn’t be breathing despite having gashes across his abdomen from helping out in human affairs, and his hand wouldn’t still be held by a hunter who curses the existence of devils, even the ones with a heavenly facade.
“Suit yourself, human,” is what he says instead. The words cold against the residual taste of iron and ash on his tongue.
If the words affected him, Aki doesn’t show it. He gently sets Angel’s hand down across his body and rubs tears and affliction from his eyes. Carefully, he picks up Angel, cradling him in his arms as he makes his way back to their car.
In Aki’s embrace, Angel is safe from the rest of the world.
So this is what it feels like? To be touched tenderly. To be touched at all.
Exhaustion sets in, and Angel leans against Aki’s chest, listening to the heartbeat of the hunter who shed tears over a devil.
Aki’s heart beats in the past tense, in “should have’s” and “could have’s” with “what if’s” in between. A metronome stuck in reverse, counting backwards instead of forward.
It sounds like melancholy, like he swallowed rain clouds and bottled up the flood.
In spite of it all, the space between Aki’s arms is safe and warm.
Angel feels the heat of Aki’s skin and the pulsing of his blood through his work shirt, and suddenly, the proximity feels too kind. Too human for an angel much less a devil.
Kindness puts Angel to sleep in the backseat and holds him tight on the ride home.
Quando coeli movendi sunt et terra,
Quando tremens factus sum ego et timeo,
Libera me.
when the heavens and earth shall be shaken,
When I am seized with fear and trembling,
Deliver me.
IV. OFFERTORIUM
Does the universe falter when angels die?
As Angel’s shirt slips from Aki’s grasp, the earth stops spinning to bear witness. It watches Aki watching Angel with monsoon eyes. It reshapes itself, atom by atom until the greatest force is the gravity between them, pushing and pulling at fibers and heartstrings.
The past and future cease to exist, and Death watches, waiting.
Maybe Angel was right. Humans are selfish. Despicable. Only capable of looking out for themselves. Because when Angel says he’s ready to die, Aki wants to say no you’re not. You’re not ready to die because I’m not ready to let go.
He doesn’t know when he became so selfish. He doesn’t know when he started wanting something other than revenge.
He doesn’t know when he started wanting .
His whole life has been a series of black rooms, and he has gotten used to the darkness. If he can’t see time, then tomorrow won’t come, and after a while, it no longer bothered him that he couldn’t see as much as he used to. He didn’t need to. On some days, he even found it comforting, walking through life with a blindfold and nowhere to go.
So when did he start wanting out of the darkness? When did the blindfold become a tether? When did it bind him to an Angel?
Because when Angel says he wants to die, Aki wants to say fuck you . He’ll curse him back to existence. Haunt him in his death because he didn’t have enough of him in life.
Because when Angel says he wants to die, Aki realizes that he wants Angel to live.
He lets go, only for a moment, and it’s stupid how peaceful Angel looks no longer burdened by life. Angelic even, glowing halo and untainted wings amidst the chaos of the universe.
It drives bile and disgust up Aki’s throat.
He’s known death his whole life, and he won’t let it any closer.
He grabs Angel's hand.
Death watches, amused.
With his eyes closed, Aki hears as much as he feels: life traveling down his arm and out of his hands, Angel screaming, shrapnel clashing, gravity pulling them closer and closer.
Death gets the last laugh, and that’s all Aki lets it have.
Angel is a drowning diver, and Aki pulls him out of oblivion and into his arms.
Do you want to die? Angel cries.
Hell no I don’t. (Not like this. Not when Denji is still fighting. Not when I haven’t saved you.) How much did that decrease my lifespan?
By about two months…
He says it like he delivered Aki’s death sentence, and Aki pulls him into his arms.
Two months… Angel wanted to die, and Aki would have had to live through two additional months without Angel.
In this moment, Aki feels infinitesimal. The universe has had its fill, and time starts moving again under his skin, palpable and alive in the way a mayfly realizes its life with the sunset.
Holding Angel is like holding an ocean in his arms, and Aki is trying not to drown despite every cell in his body screaming danger! Swim away! Save yourself!
Yet Angel is still smaller than he remembers, smaller than when he carried his body nearly sliced in two back to their car. Ragdoll limbs and deflated heart, Angel doesn’t move in Aki’s arms, but he still feels like he’s on the verge of slipping away.
Aki doesn’t know how to embrace something so fleeting.
But he tries.
He tries to grip the ocean in his arms, even though Angel is too vast for Aki to protect in this lifetime. Even though Aki is certain he was never made to hold something as ephemeral as a living being.
He tries. Two months at a time. To swallow the ocean whole.
De pœnis inferni et de profundo lacu:
Libera eas de ore leonis,
Ne absorbeat eas tartarus,
From the pains of hell and from the bottomless pit:
Deliver them from the lion's mouth,
That hell swallow them not up.
V. MORSE STUPEBIT
When Angel takes, he repents.
He takes blood, I’m sorry .
He takes a life, I’m so sorry .
He plays the role of an Angel – creating a scene so believable, the dying trust him to send them to heaven – and then carries out the will of a devil. It’s formulaic, clinical. The same way nurses don’t flinch when drawing blood, Angel is simply doing his job.
When Angel takes two months from Aki, he doesn’t apologize.
Instead, red hot rage reaches the surface of his skin, and there’s no way Aki doesn’t get burned, not when he’s gripping Angel’s hand so tightly there’s not a molecule of air between them.
Why did you touch my hand? Do you want to die?
(Are you stupid? Where are your gloves? What was that for? Don’t you know that you’re much closer to death than I am? Why are you still holding on?)
Before he can spit enough vitriol to push Aki away, Aki holds him tighter – one arm then two, and Angel gives in because it’s this again. This kindness that feels so wrong, and Angel hasn’t apologized yet.
About two months , he had said, circling around definitives like a sinner in confession.
He can hold the rest of Aki’s life in the palm of one hand, and Aki chooses to hold all of Angel with his entire being.
The value of human life has never been lost to Angel. In fact, he probably understood that better than humans themselves. He facilitated the equal exchange between time and weapons; siphon some years, construct a weapon, use the weapon to shorten another’s life, repeat.
Aki gave him two months, and Angel doesn’t understand how he is worth 8% of Aki’s remaining life – the human arithmetic lost on him.
As far as Angel is concerned, he’s been half-alive for quite some time, and this, whatever this is, is his purgatory. Just another place he’ll pass. The weekdays line up in front of his bedroom, each month longer than the last, and it has been so long since he was warmed by the sun. Spring never seems to come, but Angel has long since felt the passing of time, only the existence of it when he holds it by the hilt.
Two months feel like palms callused by years of swordsmanship. Like electricity through his fingertips and cigarette smoke wrapped around the back of his throat. Two months feel like human blood cells circulating in places they shouldn’t exist – devil heart chambers, angel wings, rotten bones.
Two months feels like… too much. It feels like it’ll burn him alive, and any second now, he’ll look down to find the ashen ribcage remains of a house he could’ve built into a home. It feels too kind, and that makes it sad. Because now he knows what two months feels like, could recognize it if it stood outside his bedroom – tall, uniformed, a katana strapped to his back, sweet nicotine trails, and fresh laundry.
Two months was not supposed to persist in his mind like this. It should’ve passed like the rest of his colleagues, but Aki has since put his blood in his veins, time on his side, and arms around his devil body.
How is Angel supposed to forget the person who forged the rest of his life?
He closes his eyes.
I'm sorry, he thinks, and there’s neither enough devil nor angel left in him to say this out loud.
How wretched it is to exist in a body measured only by what it can create?
Mors stupebit et natura,
Cum resurget creatura.
Death is struck, and nature quaking,
All creation is awaking.
VI. QUAERENS ME
On nights like these, when the whole world fits on the threshold of his apartment balcony, Aki considers tomorrow; what to make for breakfast, a new recipe to coax Power into eating vegetables. Go grocery shopping, don’t forget the cat food, pick up more ice cream – strawberry shortcake, Angel likes those best.
He leans on the railing and lights a cigarette out of habit, taking a couple of drags before letting it hang from his lips to burn itself out.
“Those will kill you, you know.”
Aki turns around and chuckles, nicotine sweet, as Angel steps out into the fall air.
“You think I haven’t heard that before?” He jests as he puts out his cigarette, half-used.
“Well, you haven’t heard it from me yet.”
Aki notices Angel checking the space between them before leaning on the railing even though he’s bundled up one of his hoodies (or was it Denji’s? It’s hard to tell anymore with how much the kid has grown in just a few months). It’s so large that only Angel’s fingertips make it past the sleeve cuffs.
“Fair enough,” he says.
“Thanks for dinner,” Angel says, rubbing his hands together through hoodie sleeves. “Again.”
“Anytime.”
“Are you allowed to do this? Inviting devils to your home for dinner?”
“Well,” Aki had never thought about this despite how many times he has had Angel over. Makima never explicitly said anything against it and… he also never asked. Recently, Power and Denji have been out training late past dinner time, and he wasn’t used to cooking for one anymore. (It’s just not possible to make a single serving of curry). Needing help finishing leftovers became keeping the freezer stocked with strawberry shortcake ice cream and, “technically I’ve been inviting my coworker to my home for dinner. And there’s no policy that says I’m not allowed to do that.”
Through lapis and city lights, Angel smiles just a little, and his crimson hair softens to a warm amber, inviting, beckoning Aki to touch it to see if he’d survive.
Celestial bodies are always brighter at night.
Angel looks at him and tilts his head. “What are you looking at?”
Aki blinks, suddenly hyper aware of how he’s been slowly leaning towards Angel. "Nothing,” he straightens himself, resetting their distance. “Umm… you seem cold?" Aki bites down on his tongue. Hard.
Of course he's cold goddamn it. It's nearly winter, and that sweatshirt clearly doesn't fit him right, he's practically drowning. Why did you even bring him onto the balcony in the first place, Aki??? When there’s a perfectly good kotatsu for you both to sit around? Aki you idio-
“Mmm,” Angel doesn’t seem to notice the way Aki’s leg has started jittering. “Well, your sweatshirt is warm, and I don’t mind it here. It’s nice.”
So it is my sweatshirt.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he keeps his response short and concise before his mouth runs off with his thoughts.
“Well, I do owe you,” Angel exhales, rubbing his right wrist. “For saving me.”
Angel stares at his hands (or rather, the sleeves of Aki’s sweatshirt), and his hair curtains his face.
The Angel looks chagrined, and Aki doesn’t know how to react to Angel being anything other than indifferent.
“I remember, back in my village, the humans would give each other their time when they had nothing else to give and, well,” he picks at a loose thread, unraveling more than he probably should. “I already took your time, and I have nothing else to give.”
Aki stills, unsure of what to say and what to do with all of Angel’s time . Unsure of what to do as it slips by him – the rising moon, the waking of an owl, the waning rush hour traffic. Autumn winds entangling auburn hair. He’s never been given something he can’t have, and it doesn’t sit quite right in his chest. It makes his ribcage rattle because his bones are not accustomed to holding so much of… whatever this is.
“Unless,” Angel says. “You’d rather I forge you a new weapon.”
“No!” Aki answers a little too quickly. “This is fine. Great actually. I don’t mind this. This is- this is nice.”
Aki wants to crawl into a hole.
Teetering on the verge of laughter, Angel smiles, again, and Aki doesn’t know what to do with this either. “It was a joke, Aki. Humans tell jokes don’t they?”
(Do we? Do devils tell jokes? Do angels?)
“Besides,” Angel continues. “If you needed something from me, you would’ve asked for it already.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
The ramifications of Angel’s words are drowned out by the furor in his throat – too many words unsaid and none of the right ones coming out.
His whole life, Aki has tried to live honestly. There was not much for him to hide in the first place. But he has started to wonder if saving Angel was not so much a want but a need . He needs powerful people on his side. He needs people to stop dying around him, in front of him, in the mirror of his eyes. He needs someone to help him eat all the food that he cooks because Denji and Power always eat out after training no matter how many times he tells them there’s food at home. He needs-
“What?” Angel is staring at him. Aki must have spaced out again.
What he needs is to get his shit together.
Alabaster wings encircle him before he can respond, and his breath hitches in the back of his throat along with everything else he’s been pushing down.
“What’s this for?” Aki looks around at the chancel of ivory feathers, pristine in spite of battle.
“You seemed cold,” Angel murmurs sheepishly, balling his hands up, making mittens out of Aki’s hoodie sleeves. “Your face was turning red. Humans are so fragile.”
If Aki’s face was red before, being seen only reddens it more.
Time and space wait at the perimeter of Angel’s wings as the world fills the gap between them.
Angel’s halo hangs above them like a lone lightbulb beating against the night.
No wonder why painters used to paint angels in gold.
If there were a clock to be seen, Aki thinks it would be frozen, or at the very least, broken. He doesn’t mind the idea of buying into that illusion because what else could explain why his heart has stopped working. No other creature seems as concerned with time as humans. Do birds know the difference between flying and walking or is moving forward all the same?
“Thanks,” Aki manages.
Angel nods in acknowledgement. “Least I can do when you cook and do the dishes.”
“I can leave the dishes for you next time.”
“Then there won’t be a next time.”
“I’m joking!” Aki panics. Was that sarcasm? He can’t tell. Better be safe than sorry. “I don’t mind doing the dishes,” he adds with more enthusiasm than necessary.
Laughter bubbles from behind Angel’s lips like carillons resounding from a bell tower.
It’s volatile, maybe even lethal.
If Aki microdoses poison, will he become immune to its sweetness?
He’s in a house with no fire escape, and there’s nowhere for his eyes to go but towards Angel. Aki thinks humans were not meant to see angels laugh much less hear them because now it’s rooted in Aki’s head like a record player pin stuck on the same groove, and Aki doesn’t mind living in the present if his past and future sounds like this.
His eyes are filled to the brim with nothing but Angel, and who’s to say that doesn’t make Angel his whole world even if only for a moment.
Quaerens me sedisti lassus,
Redemisti passus me,
Mihi quoque spem dedisti.
In search of me you sat down weary,
You redeemed me,
You gave me hope too.
VII. LUX AETERNA
“The sun is coming up.”
“Mmm, just a little longer,” Angel drawls.
This particular mission took them to the countryside and kept them up all night. The second they killed the devil and all their henchmen, Angel flopped onto the field of grass, and Aki followed suit.
“Debrief…” Aki groans.
“Nope.”
“Yeah. That sounds nice.”
Angel turns his head to check if he heard that right.
In the faded grass, Aki lays with his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling on the edge of sleep and serenity – most definitely in no state to debrief.
Aki is intangible in the morning gray. Not that he ever is, for Angel anyways. His edges are hazy as if Angel’s hand would pass right through Aki if he tried to reach for him.
He is unsaturated, as though the world has yet to touch him. Human heart set in porcelain stone, Aki looks timeless, and Angel wants to check if he’s real.
Do all humans look like angels when they sleep?
Angel produces a handkerchief from his pocket, wraps it around his finger, and pokes Aki’s cheek. To check if he’s real. To check that people don’t disappear when they’re not seeing or being seen.
The sun rises with Aki, and of course the heavens would want to bear witness to his waking.
“What was that for?” He says, voice low and laced with sleep.
“Just checking that you’re still alive.”
Aki grabs Angel’s hand through gloved ones and waves it in front of their faces. “Still very much alive.”
The handkerchief falls onto the grass in slow motion.
If Angel takes Aki in pieces – a tug of his jack, an elbow jab during work, a tap on the cheek – will he ever get used to having someone within arms reach?
Then, Aki rubs circles on the back of Angel’s hand. Angel can feel the warmth through the thin leather and wonders if all wildfires start with miniscule fervors until something, someone , is set ablaze.
Angel stills as tumultuous waters boil under his skin, threatening to capsize him.
Aki doesn’t let go.
“Sorry…” For waking you, you looked so peaceful. For taking your time, you had so much life to give.
Angel takes a second too long to finish his sentence because Aki turns towards him, cerulean eyes filled with all the light the dawn had to give.
“Stop,” he says, and it’s as cold as it is warm. “Stop apologizing. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
There’s no use in protesting against Aki, so Angel turns towards him instead and drowns himself in blue.
If gravity pulled at heartstrings, it would’ve dragged them both to their demise long ago.
“And stop looking sorry,” Aki adds.
“I’ve drunk your blood and taken two months of your life. Aki, I’m nothing but sorry,” he tries to pull his hand away, but Aki doesn’t let him go.
Aki pulls them closer until they’re a whisper apart.
“And I’d give you more if you’d let me.”
“Don’t be stupid, Aki.”
“Already am. I’m human , remember?”
How could Angel forget? The way Aki cries, the way he bleeds, the way he smokes his life away, bullet-quick. He’s reckless and oh so stupid in ways only humans can manage.
He’s too trusting, too kind, too tender, too sad. He wields swords when he should instead wield gold so he can fill the cracks on his porcelain skin when sadness and heartache seep past the surface. And if he can’t find gold, Angel will give him his feathers, so he has a soft bed to cry on.
Aki is too human.
He hasn’t let go of Angel’s hand, and he’s running the other through Angel’s hair.
Angel stills, both their lives depending on it, trying to stifle the goosebumps creeping down his neck. “Two months,” Angel warns him, but there is no bite in his voice. Not when Aki is unwinding him – body, mind, and soul.
“Mmm,” his fingers take their time, charting every surface of Angel’s scalp and auburn hair. When Aki’s fingers brush against his ear, Angel feels it travel down his spine.
“Aki, this is-” dangerous, mercurial. Catastrophic even.
“I have gloves on,” Aki reassures him. “Do you want me to stop?”
Angel shakes his head.
With every touch, Angel is reminded that he is not just an amalgamation of fears. He’s corporeal and can be touched the same way he can be cut except a cut will fade and a touch will singe him bone-deep and leave him wanting more.
A tug of his jack, an elbow jab during work, a tap on the cheek.
Two hands holding on for dear life.
So this is what it’s like to be real.
If Angel takes Aki in pieces, he is left wanting more. He is left selfish, humanly so. Arms reach becomes the seven seas, and Angel doesn’t want to be oceans apart from Aki.
There is no such thing as a smoker who microdoses nicotine.
Angel grabs a feather, places it on Aki’s lips, and kisses him.
He watches Aki’s eyes close before closing his own. His heartbeat sits on the surface of his lips, and Aki’s breath is the only thing reminding him just how real this is.
They’re a wildfire setting heartstrings aflame, and Angel can feel the heat pass his breastbone and scorch his heart.
“Come to Hokkaido with me?” Aki asks, breathless and wanting.
This is the source of the smoke trail, and Angel lets it burn him alive.
“Okay.”
Angel sees the corners of Aki’s lips turn upward from behind the feather.
Aki slips gloved fingers up the nape of his neck and presses them closer.
Even gravity doesn’t know how to pry apart longing hearts.
Lux aeterna luceat eis,
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Let everlasting light shine upon them,
And let perpetual light shine upon them.
VIII. IN PARADISUM
A human and a devil walk side by side, hand in hand, on a beach in Hokkaido. The ocean waves don’t dare touch their footsteps, not wanting to wash away something so fleeting.
When the universe took its first inhalation, did it plan for a love so impossible it'd have to hold its breath again for it to be true?
They walk leisurely, as if time was on their side. Perhaps today, it is. Perhaps all they need is today – something small enough to fit in their coat pockets to muse at when workdays are too long, when there’s not enough light in their labyrinths.
Perhaps they’re both selfish for wanting when the world was never theirs to take.
Perhaps they have been forgiven. Perhaps they have forgiven each other. Perhaps they will forgive themselves.
They are improbable crossroads. Gunpowder between their teeth, and matches in each other’s hands, already lit and burning swiftly, aimed at each other’s mouths.
They are a home without a fire escape, not that they were ever looking for one. Because devils don’t die that easily and neither do humans. Because they will die with each other's names on their tongues and hearts in each other’s grasps.
If their bodies are their resting place, may they be laid side by side.
If they are headed for damnation, may they find it together.
If this is rapture, may it be entirely theirs.
If this is real, may it be eternal.
The universe exhales.
A human and a devil walk side by side on a beach in Hokkaido.
Thank the Gods they saved one another.
In paradisum deducant te angel,
Quondam paupere, æternam habeas requiem.
May the angels lead you into paradis,
Once (a) poor (man), may you have eternal rest.