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Earthly attachments.
This is the phrase the leader of his garrison so lovingly appoints to the human in Yamaguchi’s charge. Yamaguchi finds it entirely too vague because frankly, he has lots of earthly attachments. So many eons stationed on Earth does that to an angel. He forgets what it’s like for his schedule to be completely void of meals and verbalizations and walking with legs and feet and the myriads of other things celestial beings have no reason to partake in that humans find so traditional and necessary. Humans are so, so cute like that.
But they are also oblivious. This is especially true of ones who wear giant white headphones as they cross main streets, completely unaware of any night buses that careen straight toward them without any intention of stopping. So, although he mostly watches, sometimes Yamaguchi has to step in. Protection, like grace, is woven throughout him. It’s stitched into the ashen feathers of his scrawny wings.
So like a strike of lightning, Yamaguchi zips to the human and zips away with him in tow, searching his thoughts to decode a location he knows as home.
They end up outside a large brick building. Numbers and letters adorn each gray door of the building’s face and with just a passive glance, Yamaguchi learns who lives through each of them and everything he’d ever want to know about their tiny lives. There is a young man in 2A who harbors six cats—an entire four cats more than the apartment building’s codes entitle him to. There are exactly two pounds of recreational drugs beneath the floorboards of 3B. In 4D, two women act out their carnal desires. Yamaguchi silences the extraneous information to focus on the human in front of him: Tsukishima Kei, twenty-four years old, lives alone, deep-seated fear of failure, profound predisposition towards self-isolation, currently considering changing the color of his hair—
“What the fuck?” Tsukishima sputters, ripping his elbow from Yamaguchi’s grasp.
He pulls his headphones off and twists around. Amber eyes glance to the pavement to the familiar building to Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi blinks at him. He scans the features of his face with adoration. Being so close to humans is always a treat and Tsukishima’s eyes remind him of heaven; they glow, warm and golden even as they sharpen with suspicion.
“What are you?”
+ + +
“You are an angel in observation. Your earthly attachments shall not persuade you to stray from the path of God,” says the leader with a soft, steady sort of authority.
“I do not stray,” replies Yamaguchi.
Her glow envelops him. His grace reaches out and flows into hers, intermingling.
“You are essential,” she tells him, “but your focus is concentrated.”
This is not a compliment, Yamaguchi knows. His grace pulses. A familiar thrum passes through him, a glow he’s grown so fond of that it pushes out even the leader’s theoretical embrace.
She recoils gently. “He calls you now, does he not?”
In his very core, Yamaguchi’s grace perks up.
“He does,” he answers dutifully.
“Then go, angel.”
+ + +
“I’m going. What, just because I’m human, I have to get the door?”
“I save your life, you get the door. Seems pretty fair to me, Tsukki.”
“You can’t keep milking that.”
Yamaguchi’s borrowed body shrugs its shoulders. He’s grown so used to it, freckles and all (yet another earthly attachment of his, he acknowledges). He’s unsure how his brothers skip easily from one human into the next. It seems so careless, so impersonal and as angels, Yamaguchi thinks they should take more care than that.
“What’s that face for?”
Tsukishima stands in front of the door, the brown paper bag of takeout nestled in the crook of his arm. Yamaguchi curses his quick adaptations to the ways of humans; to the easy, revealing portrayal of any given emotion on their beautiful faces.
“The food deliverer. He thought something impure about you.”
Tsukishima rolls his eyes. “Don’t tell me stuff like that.”
“You thought something impure in return,” says Yamaguchi.
There’s something to be said about the way Tsukishima’s stare can scorn even beings of the divine persuasion, beings who’ve seen famine and war and destruction of obscene nature.
“I told you not to read my mind,” he replies. “You promised.”
“Sorry, Tsukki.”
+ + +
“It’s fine. You’ll be just fine, okay?” Yamaguchi insists softly.
He presses his hand over the wound. The little girl’s blood is hot, her shiny brown eyes glinting up at him from her place on the ground. The stick that impaled her jabs into his palm. One warm thought and it disappears, the wound sewn up and her dress back to its former sky blue rather than the ugly purple her blood had dyed it. She blinks up at him, unsure of how to react to the sudden lack of pain. Yamaguchi pulls his hand back to his side. He stands up. The warm blood drips from the tips of his fingers and soaks into the playground mulch below.
The girl’s mother babbles, her tone grateful yet dumbfounded as she kneels to cup her daughter’s wet face in her hands. The daughter giggles, pointing enthusiastically at Yamaguchi and stomps her feet like her tiny body can’t retain her newfound energy. Her mother grips her tight. They wind their arms around each other and stay that way for a long, long time.
Yamaguchi has observed them for years. He has been watching humans for centuries, has studied them with a profound and patient interest that’s renewed every single second, and they still fascinate him.
+ + +
“Fascinating,” he voices as he appears in the middle of Tsukishima’s apartment.
Tsukishima flinches and drops the vase he carries, water splashing across the hardwood floor. The vase breaks into shards. One skitters across the floor and knocks into Yamaguchi’s shoe. Yamaguchi cringes.
“I forgot about the door rule. Let me.”
He raises his hand over the mess but Tsukishima shakes his head.
“It’s fine. I hated that vase anyway.”
He bends over and picks up the two flowers that had dropped. Yamaguchi thinks they’re beautiful, regardless of species or color or anything because they represent life. He wonders if humans stop to think why they give each other flowers to represent their affections; if they realize they give literal life to one another with every leaf, every stem, every petal. Briefly, he contemplates bringing flowers to the favorite human in his charge (he’s really not allowed to have favorites, but he feels this instance is out of his hands).
The flowers between Tsukishima’s fingers drop back to the ground with a soft sound. He stares at Yamaguchi’s right hand, eyebrows knitted together.
“Yamaguchi, you’re—is that blood?”
Yamaguchi makes an assenting sound. He must’ve forgotten to rid of it. He’s tempted to as Tsukishima surveys him, heavenly eyes wide with concern, but inexplicably denies himself. He watches with interest as Tsukishima’s mouth softens into a slight frown.
“It’s not mine,” Yamaguchi says.
“Great. Glad we cleared that up,” Tsukishima deadpans. “Wait there.”
He returns from the kitchen with damp paper towels. Yamaguchi lifts his hand when Tsukishima prompts him to, fingertips pressing lightly into Yamaguchi’s knuckles and thumb bent around his index finger to keep his fingers splayed. The blood has mostly dried. Tsukishima rubs the towel over Yamaguchi’s skin and wipes away the crimson. His touch is firm yet gentle, as if he handles a child.
“Do you even bleed?” asks Tsukishima.
“Not me. But my vessel does, Tsukki.”
Tsukishima nods and rearranges his grip so his palm cradles Yamaguchi’s hand. He wraps the paper towel, now dyed a deep pink, around his thumb. He works it over the lines that traverse Yamaguchi’s palm, wiping away the blood that’s dried into the shallow cracks and then down each one of his fingers. Slowly, Tsukishima drags his thumb to the tip of each finger and up again.
Yamaguchi lifts his gaze from their hands to Tsukishima’s face. With Tsukishima this voluntarily close, he can easily regard his features as they change. The softness of his amber eyes is attractive. Yamaguchi’s grace swirls inside his vessel at their familiarity. But his attention is more so pulled to Tsukishima’s mouth, the way it slackens and purses ever so slightly with each swipe over the skin of Yamaguchi’s palm.
“Don’t read my mind right now,” he warns.
“I won’t,” says Yamaguchi. “I wouldn’t.”
He tells Tsukishima of the babbling mother, of her little daughter and the fallen tree branch that impaled her on some playground in the midwestern United States. Intently, he listens. He scrubs away the final flakes of crimson from Yamaguchi’s skin.
“That’s more than I’ve done for anyone in my entire life. Cumulatively,” he murmurs.
“So few humans are able to save lives in such an intimate and direct way, Tsukki.”
The corner of Tsukishima’s mouth quirks up.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Yamaguchi cocks his head and asks, “Doesn’t it?”
Tsukishima huffs a laugh. His eyes glitter and Yamaguchi searches them for shooting stars, for comets and for planets, because he has seen an unfathomable amount of them in his existence but never has a single pair been so alive, so captivating and impactful. The brown tones within them remind Yamaguchi of the girl from which the blood seeped, of the way her mother’s arms wrapped so protectively around her daughter.
He mimics the pose with Tsukishima now, pulling his hand from his grip and winding his arms around his middle. He rests his chin upon Tsukishima’s shoulder. He’s never thought much about bodies and their entanglements. The warmth is staggering, Yamaguchi thinks, his vessel a steady partition between his grace and Tsukishima’s beating heart, the one organ that keeps humans like him upright and vital.
“Do, uh—do angels hug?” Tsukishima wonders.
“Not before they met you.”
+ + +
“Then why did I meet him? Why did we meet if it’s so crucial I deny him my attention?”
“There are leagues of others,” coos his leader, “that demand celestial attention.”
And yet none them capture it so effortlessly, he acknowledges.
Sometimes Yamaguchi thinks he’s meant for something else.
+ + +
Sometimes Yamaguchi thinks his Father had gotten it all wrong—that Tsukishima was meant for divine purposes while he was meant to meander down on Earth with the wonderful, unhindered humans. He knows Tsukishima would never do something as dangerous and irresponsible as loving a human being. He wouldn’t allow himself to fall for something that’s entire existence is a mere drop in a perennial ocean.
Yamaguchi has watched humans for years. He’s studied them endlessly and to perfection. But Tsukishima’s existence is the first bump in the theoretical winding road; the first hitch that has Yamaguchi circling and circling instead of continuing on.
But this is the greatest thing about humans: they are all so vastly, incredibly different.
+ + +
“What’s the difference?”
“It’s…impossible to vocalize, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi tells him, “even for me.”
Tsukishima hums. He sets his pencil down and stops it with a gentle nudge as it attempts to roll off the table. He meets Yamaguchi's eyes.
“Why do you think it’s me?”
“I don’t think, I know.”
“Fine. Then why do you know it's me?”
“Because I’m a celestial being,” Yamaguchi answers, tongue-in-cheek.
Tsukishima stands and joins him on the small couch, sitting at the opposite end. He pulls a knee up to rest his chin upon it, his restless gaze falling to the floor. Yamaguchi follows the patterns his eyes make. The sounds of electricity and ventilation whir in the silence.
“Maybe it’s just humans in general that you’re fascinated by. Maybe it’s humanity you love, Yamaguchi.”
Yamaguchi considers this. He imagines being so wholly enraptured by every single human being; every worker at the street mart where Tsukishima gets his flowers, every renter in his apartment building, the survivors of every wound Yamaguchi has ever healed and every body he’s ever existed near.
It sounds absolutely exhausting.
And Yamaguchi is not exhausted—he is alive and well, he is thriving and glowing, he is practically bursting from the vessel he adores so much with his very enthusiasm to be in Tsukishima’s mere proximity.
He stretches his closest wing to curve around Tsukishima where he sits. Feathers of dull silver brush his back and bend harmlessly over his opposite shoulder like Yamaguchi attempts to pull him closer. But it can’t be done; an angel’s wings aren’t visible to humans. He lets it rest protectively around Tsukishima, reassuring in a way that’s impossible for anyone but himself to realize.
Tsukishima moves. He leans back minimally, almost like he shifts into the veiled touch. Yamaguchi's feathers ruffle with the slight motion. Hesitantly, Tsukishima reaches to rest his hand on the couch between them, the worn fabric scratchy beneath his palm. Yamaguchi reaches back. Their fingertips rest between one another’s, the slightest, softest touch that has Yamaguchi’s grace stirring, sparkling, spinning circles in his vessel.
+ + +
His leader spins circles around him, her glow looping around his in an unhurried manner.
“Your grace,” she worries, “it’s torn, angel.”
“I feel strong,” Yamaguchi tells her.
“Torn between here and Earth,” she continues.
Yamaguchi stays silent.
“Your earthly attachments hold you there. Do you not notice?”
Her light leaks into his, probing him for doubt, for recognition, for unease. Finding nothing, she retracts. Her warmth is protective. It’s maternal and snug around Yamaguchi’s own, but her concerns are clear.
“You want to fall?”
+ + +
“Absolutely not. You are not doing that.”
“What if I want to?”
“Yamaguchi, no. Not for me.”
“For who, then?”
“No one,” Tsukishima pleads, “nothing. Don’t fall.”
Yamaguchi regards the galaxies in Tsukishima’s eyes and wonders just how painstaking it would be to fall from heaven, to gain mortality and shred his grace to bits between his fingers. Angels have done it before. He would certainly not be the first. He tells Tsukishima this much. Tsukishima shakes his head and avoids Yamaguchi’s eyes, choosing instead to watch his own hands as they wring in his lap.
“They had better reasons than for me,” Tsukishima counters. “Just—just wait till I die.”
“Tsukki,” Yamaguchi scolds.
“What? It’ll feel like a blink of an eye for you.”
“No way. Besides, when you die, I’ll still be stationed here on Earth.”
“You don’t know that,” drones Tsukishima.
“I do, actually.”
“What if I somehow surpass all other living humans? What if there’s some weird gene I’ve inherited that lets me live forever?”
Yamaguchi snickers. “Your forever is not the same as my forever, Tsukki.”
“How do you know? We’ve never discussed it,” quips Tsukishima.
“You’d want to live forever, Tsukki?”
“God, no,” he groans, falling back on the bed. He tells the ceiling, “I’ve lived far too long already.”
Yamaguchi leans over him with a frown. “You don’t mean that.”
With a loose grip on Yamaguchi’s wrist, Tsukishima brings his hand to his cheek. He cradles his face in Yamaguchi’s palm. His pale skin is smooth and especially bright beneath Yamaguchi’s darker complexion. This body feels more and more like his own each time Tsukishima touches him. He feels his grace tear further.
“No,” Tsukishima agrees, voice low, “because you make it feel not that way anymore.”
Yamaguchi is bewildered by the way Tsukishima’s jaw moves beneath his palm as he speaks.
“You’re something to look forward to,” he mumbles. “I didn’t have that before. You saved me from that bus, and then over and over again without even realizing. So don’t fall, okay?"
“Okay, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi breathes.
"You’ve already done enough for me.”
"If you think so, Tsukki."
“Love me for the rest of my forever,” Tsukishima says.
Yamaguchi’s grace glows warmly in his chest. “I can do that.”
“I know it’s not your forever, but my forever is still pretty long. Especially with you around.”
Tsukishima grins. Yamaguchi traces the curve of it with his thumb. He feels the heat of Tsukishima's pink blush on his palm.
Though earthly attachments tear him in two, he feels more whole than ever. Humans are incredible. Of all creatures, humans are Yamaguchi’s absolute favorites. He’s not supposed to have favorites, he knows. But this particular human, galaxies in his golden eyes, will be Yamaguchi’s favorite forever.