Chapter Text
Yugyeom had always been a pretty normal child. Uncomplicated, unproblematic, very well-behaved. He had been cheerful and gentle even as a toddler, most often found with a wide smile on his face that made his eyes disappear into little crescents because of his chubby baby cheeks, and he very rarely caused any sort of trouble or mischief. The few times he did - like when he ruined the cake for his aunt’s birthday by stealing and eating all the chocolate roses and then trying to lick the cream off the cake, ending up with the cake on the floor and his entire face white with cream - no one managed to stay mad at him for more than a few minutes because of his animated stories about his two angels who had said it was okay, since the cake was going to be eaten anyway. It wasn't like there was anyone who could appreciate the chocolate roses more than Yugyeom did, right?
According to Yugyeom, the angels were about as big as Yugyeom’s head, the perfect size to whisper into his ear when sitting on his shoulders, their tiny legs dangling against his collarbones and their wings occasionally tickling his ears.
Everyone listening to his tales couldn’t help but to smile at his excitement. They told him how amazing it was that he had such a lively imagination, ruffled his hair and set to clean up the mess he had left.
The story didn't work quite as well anymore two years later, when his angel stories had grown to include names and hair colors and one of his angels - Jackson told me to, mom, I swear! - had convinced him to climb up a tree on a quest to find the most perfect apple because sure his mom would be happy if he gave that to her. Of course Yugyeom had managed to get himself stuck in the tree, about 2.5 meters above ground, and had to be rescued with the neighbor's ladder after Yugyeom’s brother Jaebum had found him up there and gone to find their parents.
It definitely did not count as an excuse anymore another year later when Jackson and Mark had stolen Yugyeom’s toothbrush and made him chase them around the house to get it back. They didn't even know how it had happened afterwards, if Mark had taken too sharp a turn and brushed past it with the toothbrush, or if Yugyeom had been too fast and bumped into the table too hard in his quest to catch the little angel, but the result was his mother's favorite vase, irreparably shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor.
Yugyeom had never seen his mother quite as mad before, and when he tried to explain what had happened, she told him to stop making up lies and start owning up to his mistakes.
When she was gone, after she had cleaned up the mess of broken glass pieces and told him to just go to bed and they would talk about it tomorrow, Yugyeom turned towards Mark and Jackson who both had guilty looks on their faces, tears in his eyes. “Why didn’t you do anything?” he demanded angrily. “Why can’t you just show yourselves to her? Why are you so selfish?”
Jackson flinched, his wings that were holding him steadily in the air faltering for a moment, but he caught himself in the same moment Mark moved forward towards Yugyeom, a hand outstretched, only to stop when Yugyeom took a step back.
“We can’t, Yugyeomie,” Mark said sadly. “We would if we could. We would do anything to help you.”
Yugyeom glared at both of them, blinking through his tears. “Why not? You’re supposed to be angels, why can’t you do magic? You could have just fixed the vase.”
“Gyeomie, we’re angels, and not fairies. And not even high-ranking ones. You’re the only one who will ever be able to see or hear us,” Jackson said quietly, a silent pleading in his eyes, but Yugyeom was too caught up in his own hurt to pay attention to it.
“Why are you so useless?” was the last thing he said before bolting to his room, slamming the door shut.
He’d been lying in bed awake for half an hour when he heard the door open and close - which took Mark and Jackson’s combined efforts - and then Mark settled into the curve between Yugyeom’s neck and shoulder and Jackson snuggled into his chest, clinging to his shirt, and Yugyeom was finally able to sleep, one hand curled protectively around the angel on his chest, the other angel breathing steadily next to his ear.
Yugyeom learned pretty soon after that it didn’t help him in the least to keep telling people about his two small companions, because they would never believe him. Apparently not everyone had two angels on their shoulders.
Not that they were much help, really. They kept getting him in trouble for a long time after the vase incident, and were little to no help getting him out of the trouble they had caused. They were the only reason he ever got in trouble at all, really. Most of the time, at least. More than half.
In any case, whoever had come up with that picture of the angel and the devil on your shoulder had gotten something seriously wrong, because he had two angels on his shoulder, and both of them were basically just balls of mischief, convincing him to play pranks, to learn how to ride a bike without holding on to the handlebar (which was surprisingly easy) and how to climb out from his window onto the roof (which was not as easy as it should be and almost ended with him falling three floors to the ground and breaking his neck). They were also the ones who told him to join in when the kids at the mall were doing hiphop freestyling which ended with horrible embarrassment for him because he had never danced before.
They did have good sides, too, though.
For example he found out through that one embarrassing experience that he actually really liked dancing and started practicing on his own, and the next time he danced in front of other people, nobody laughed at him. Or that one time when Yugyeom was 12 and they tied the shoelaces of that kid in his class together, the one who had laughed at Yugyeom for tripping over his own feet because he was awkward and his legs were too long for his body, and made him fall flat on his face in front of the entire school. Sometimes they even helped him out during tests by telling him what the other students wrote down, but not too often because ‘We’re supposed to help you build your character so that you grow up as a good person’. He wasn’t sure how exactly Jackson yelling that Jimin was only doodling on her sheet, while he was trying to concentrate on whatever it was that the author of this poem was trying to tell the world, was supposed to build his character, but he certainly wasn’t complaining when Mark told him the answer to a math problem the next day. He also didn’t quite understand why it was bad for his character to tell him the answers to test problems, yet it was not an issue to tell him what cards his friends had when playing poker, but he wasn’t going to ask about that, either.
Okay, so maybe Yugyeom wasn’t exactly a normal child, after all, but he pretended to the best of his abilities and managed to seem like one, most of the time. For example, he didn’t talk to Mark and Jackson while others were in hearing distance, or at least tried not to, because they were really hard to ignore sometimes. He also learned to remember exactly whether he was supposed to know something or if one of his angels had told him in advance, like the time Jackson had found his christmas presents two weeks early.
But for all the trouble they had gotten him into over the years, Yugyeom had never been quite as afraid of what his angels might do as when he had his first real crush.
He’d had crushes before, of course, like on the older girl next door who left for college when he was in sixth grade. His first guy crush had been on G-Dragon, because really, who hadn’t had a crush on G-Dragon at some point in their life.
But it had been an innocent crush on an idol when he had been 14 years old and while Mark and Jackson had, of course, teased him about it, it hadn't been bad and Yugyeom was almost completely sure Jackson had had a crush on Taeyang, much bigger than the one Yugyeom had entertained.
This was completely different, and Yugyeom was terrified.