Chapter Text
Under the blinding light of the midday sun, surrounded by mountains on all sides except for the sea, Aki feels his gunmetal heart pumping blood into his veins.
Standing at the modest hotel's balcony, he brings a hand to shield his eyes from the scorching light. The shadow lets him watch the city that expands before him. He could say it's beautiful, were it not for his gunmetal heart.
Reality is simple, peaceful, and people walk up and down the streets, roofs spread messily in unruly blocks, and at the end of it all, the ocean. Aki stares and breathes in the smell of sea and hinoki trees, forces the hot air down his throat, into his lungs.
It's only when someone else steps on the balcony, when cherry blonde hair shows up in his field of vision, that Aki lowers his hand and closes his eyes. Light bleeds through his eyelids.
"Admiring the view?"
When Aki opens his eyes, Angel has his hands on the railing, leaning in to look down at the fall like only a winged thing would do. He's sleep-wrinkled, dressed down to his dress shirt and pants, no tie.
"It's not bad," Aki says eventually as they stand there, together, on the balcony. It feels like standing on the other end of the earth. After Makima, after rebirth, after they claimed back their spots in the world like thieves. On this side of the world, the walls Aki had meticulously crafted between them feel useless. Perhaps they always had been. So he ventures: "Denji would like it here."
Angel lifts his head, peeking from under his hair. It's hard to keep his eyes open under this light, so he raises a wing above them both, casting a convenient shadow on Aki’s face, Angel’s illuminated by his halo.
"Chainsaw likes beaches?"
Aki nods. He isn't sure when the thought of Denji had invaded his mind, but he's thinking about him and Power more often than not these days. He feels guilty, being here without them, for too many reasons to count.
"He wanted to go to Enoshima," he elaborates. But that was a lifetime ago, before death and revenge, that was on the other end of the earth.
"Couldn't you bring them along with you?" Aki doesn't fail to notice how Angel is smart enough to use them instead of him.
"I wouldn't let him miss school." Though that's not really the whole truth.
The whole truth is that being sent down south on a fool's errand to kill devils away from the public's eye was just a cop out. A cop out for Public Safety and a cop out for him. Their interests aligned by chance, fortune after a lifetime of the opposite. Now the government could hold him within the length of his leash, just on the verge of being hidden.
Now Denji and Power didn't have to see him like this.
Aki's new position granted him as many hindrances as advantages, but one of the benefits was being able to force the Public Safety's hand, too valuable to be killed. He was able to get them off the field.
They deserved as much.
They deserved a quiet life with good food and no surprises.
Selling his heart for it was a bargain.
"Isn't summer break soon?" Angel asks as he lets go of the railing, pulling him away from his thoughts. "Maybe you could take them, then."
He tries not to let his expression shift. It's such a mundane, trivial thing. The idea that they could have a vacation, that they could hold the thing that had been just out of reach. He tries not to show what he's thinking, but something must cross his face, because Angel is fluttering his wings and saying:
"Maybe once you finally go on vacation you'll stop being so stuck up." And he's turning on his feet and walking back inside. Aki is momentarily stupefied, too stunned to be offended.
He follows suit.
"I'm sure you'd like that," he says, sliding the door closed behind him as he steps into their small hotel room. Two double beds. It's probably the hotel's best room, which doesn't mean much in this backwater of a place. "Then you'd get a vacation from me, at last."
"Now why would I want that?" Angel shoots back, plopping back down on his bed, the sheets tangled underneath his wings. There's a brief moment in which Aki is almost touched. Then Angel is throwing him a glance, resting on his elbows. “They would just make me work with someone else. Someone worse.” He sighs tiredly. “I wish I could go on vacation."
At least Angel's aversion to working is everlasting, unchanged even after everything. It's almost amusing. It's almost endearing. It's mostly just comfortable to have something so familiar.
"Yeah, well... That's not what this is." He should say as much, in case Angel is forgetting it. “Let’s get going.”
—
And indeed, It's not a vacation, but there are worse places for missions.
There are places where the sun isn't always this bright, and it doesn't make Angel's hair glow like ambers. There are places where he has to be a lot more concerned about being recognised, about his duties, about the devil within.
Here, however, Aki finds he can finally look at Angel and see him sweat.
Aki is sweating himself. The hot air of summer is unforgiving, and that's one of the downsides of the coast. It sits on his skin like a cloak, heavy and thick, and he sweats, because sharing his soul with a devil didn't mean his physiologies were any different. He finds out that the same applies to Angel.
Where sweat would make Aki feel and, surely, look disgusting, on Angel it only makes him seem wild. It beads on his skin like droplets of water on marble. He constantly fans himself, using the tip of his wings to do so. And when the wind blows on his hair, it makes rose colored strands stick to his cheeks, to his forehead, to his jaw.
Aki had always known, objectively, that Angel is beautiful. It was undeniable, but it was also irrelevant.
Irrelevant, because Angel was a devil who killed by touch alone, because Aki hated devils, because Angel hated living. Most of all it was irrelevant because Aki was dying.
And when he wasn't dying, when their walls had crumbled and Aki had held him close to his chest, when they'd gone to hell and back—in the literal sense… Even then Aki was too preoccupied with slaying devils, protecting Denji, guiding Power and playing the game of grappling for time as it slipped between his fingers.
Aki would die, so he didn't have time to think about the way the sun reflected on Angel's eyes, making his irises seem like rubies. Nor did he have time to think about how his eyelashes were just as bright as his hair.
If they were here a year ago, or if they'd gone somewhere else, then perhaps Aki still wouldn't have time to deal with all those things.
But they're here now, and Aki, absurdly, finds that he does.
"What is it?" Comes Angel's voice, breaking Aki's reveries and he feels as though he would blush if he were two years younger.
"You seem pleased," he offers, just to have something to say. Angel does seem a little bit happier ever since they got here, to be honest, and he looks particularly satisfied now, sitting next to Aki on the bench with a popsicle in hand, staring at the passerby.
"Soft serve is still better," Angel muses, "but this is good. It's just melting too fast."
He proceeds to wrap perfect lips around the vanilla popsicle. It is melting fast, running down his fingers in thick white drips as he tries to hold the stick. He's not usually this messy, but the combination of the heat, the wind and the ice cream has both hair and sugar sticking to his face in all places. Aki just continues to watch in quiet wonder as a seemingly holy being—and an otherwise devilish one, struggles to eat a popsicle.
That is, until another gush of wind blows, and Angel stirs as he tries to avoid getting his hair stuck on the damned thing. It's amusing, he looks so outraged at the whole situation, but at that point Aki is done watching. He reaches for his own ponytail, pulling the elastic off his hair. Black strands fall messily around his face.
"Why don't you pull your hair up?" He offers him the tie.
Angel stops his struggle to look at him like he's the most stupid being on the planet.
"That would have been a great idea before I got ice cream all over my hands…" He groans, and Aki has to admit that is warranted. He lets his eyes fall over the length of rosy strands.
"Okay…" He pauses, thinks for a moment and not a second longer. "Then let me do it."
Angel's expression shifts only slightly, eyebrows raised.
"What?"
"Let me pull your hair up," he ventures, motioning with his hands for Angel to turn around.
When he doesn't budge, Aki continues. "I'll only touch hair. It's not—live cells. I'm not gonna touch you." It made sense in his head, though Aki couldn't pinpoint what exactly was driving him to test it. Maybe having so much time wasn’t so bad..
Another gush of wind, another groan.
"Ugh, fine." Angel relents. He turns his back to Aki and shields himself from the wind with one of his wings.
"Be careful."
Aki is careful.
He scoops the hair away from Angel's neck, wrapping steady hands around the length as he lifts it up and holds it in a pony. Sweat pools at the nape of Angel's neck, dozens of stray strands sticking to it messily, and Aki's chest tightens with the unjustifiable urge to touch. With his other hand, he loops the hair through the elastic, he wraps it around and it is over. Just like that.
The result is imperfect, the ponytail is looser and lower than the ideal… It's better than nothing. At least it exposes Angel's neck to the wind, which is always a relief, as Aki knows first hand.
He also remarks, internally, that he now knows what the nape of Angel's neck looks like.
The devil turns back to him.
Aki says nothing. Out of nowhere, there's something lodged in his throat. A weight to the air that he can't fault the weather for.
Angel licks the stick long and slow, fitting his whole mouth around it and then pulling it out with a pop, licked clean. Aki realizes he's staring again. He coughs.
"What?" Angel says for the third time in the last 5 minutes, he throws the stick in the bin next to the bench.
"That's it?" Aki spurs, still indignant, regardless of how distracted he might be. "Not even a 'thank you'?"
Angel huffs, and Aki knows now that that is supposed to be a snort. He looks up at Aki.
"Thanks, human."
Despite his unwillingness, there's honesty in the way Angel says it. And there's something more in the way his lips move around the word 'human'.
Aki doesn't know how he can get exactly what he asked for, and still feel so unsatisfied.
"Should you even be calling me that, still?" He asks around the lump in his throat. Angel raises a perfect rosy eyebrow in confusion, so Aki adds: "Human?"
Angel only frowns.
"I'm not really human, anymore," Aki goes on, but the knot in his throat only tightens.
"Sure you are," Angel replies, his expression relaxing slightly. "Just like Chainsaw, right?" He looks away, brings one of his dirty fingers to his mouth. "Besides, what else would I even call you?"
Swallowing around that lump, Aki feels ridiculously bare. He doesn't know why he had asked Angel that, when he had no better alternatives. He doesn't know why he spoke at all.
Now he feels exposed, dressed down to the basics. Angel looks back at him, expectant as he sucks on his thumb and Aki forces himself to look away.
"Should I call you topknot?" Angel continues in Aki's silence, clueless. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna call you 'gun'."
That, at least, is enough to snap Aki out of his thoughts again. The idea is so revolting that it has him abruptly turning to look back at the devil who suggested it, eyebrows furrowed. Angel looks back at him with nothing but mischief in blood-red eyes.
"Thanks for that," Aki manages with no lack of irony, sighing tiredly.
But Angel just shrugs, licking the last bits of ice cream off his fingers. His face seems brighter without hair to frame it. Aki had never seen him with his hair up before.
"Just call me by my name," Aki decides at last. It earns him a hum from Angel, nothing else.
Inexplicably, the knot in his throat starts to unwind.
How silly it is to say this now, as if they're both strangers, when they're anything but. As he looks away, Aki can't help but feel like he has broken some tacit rule. First a touch, then a name. Too intimate, too close.
But his throat is free when he swallows this time.
***
Regardless of where they were, though, work was never over.
They were both dutifully aware of that, as much as Angel would like to ignore it.
He couldn't ignore it, because neither could Aki.
Aki, the embodiment of responsibility and duty, would probably work even if he had a choice.
They didn't have a choice.
Their affair was so different now, from before, and so similar still. Something would always bind them together, whether it was a sword siphoning Aki's life much like Angel would, or public safety making them work together. He knew their lives were woven beyond repair.
What Angel didn't know was when he started to care. When Aki's life became something he thought about, worried over. When their life became something to share.
That's a lie. He knew exactly when it started. Aki's hand in his. Aki's arms around him.
It was easier not to think about it when Aki was more of a stranger. Harder not to think about it now that they had both died side by side.
Not that it mattered.
What actually matters, it seems, is work.
They find the devil they'd been hunting a few miles away from the coast, towards the land.
They find it in the orange farms, and Angel takes the responsibility of evacuating the farmers while Aki brings hell.
If there's any upside to all they'd been through, it's probably the fact that Aki is even more efficient now, so much so that Angel has to fight even less than he already did.
Now, Aki is different. Both on the field and off of it.
For starters, Angel learned early on that Aki hates being seen as the gun. There isn't much he can do about that, though Aki didn't seem to mind when Angel was the one who saw him..
Naturally, Angel took on the job of evacuating people, but it was hard to tell whether Aki actually appreciated that or not. Hard to tell what he was feeling at all when he transformed.
When Aki transforms there's just bloodlust.
Aki no longer fights like a human being. There's no hesitation, no calculation. There's no goal in his movements as his skull becomes gunmetal, as barrels sprout from his arms. There's no revenge there. It's a bloodsport.
By the time Angel comes back to the scene, the sound of Aki's shots reverberate from the tip of his wings down to his toes.
The scorpion devil is an ugly, vaguely humanoid thing with a tough exoskeleton that doesn't break easily with the force of Aki's bullets. It repels them, and bullets build up on the floor, lost in the tufts of grass.
Even so, Angel expects Aki to win this fight soon, one way or another. He always does. Different from a man-made weapon, Aki has a limitless supply of ammo, and the gun devil never tires of killing. Most devils are scared of him.
What Angel doesn't expect is for the stupid devil to see him behind Aki's shoulder and attack him. Because Angel is a devil, surely it can smell him. The idiot devil has no real reason to attack him.
It springs so fast, Angel can barely see those eight legs move.
The devil shoves him on his back on the floor, all the air leaving Angel's lungs at the impact. He's gasping for air when the devil presses its disgusting limbs on Angel's chest. Its face—or what Angel assumes to be its face—is inches away from Angel's, the piercers just about to fit around Angel's neck. Angel is heaving. Eyes focusing on the stinger coming down from above him to stab him right in the face.
"S-six years' usage," Angel manages with a heavy heart, feeling his body thrum with the energy of human lives.
He struggles as much as he can while the halo delivers. He sees the sword out of the corner of his eye: a katana. But what use is it for when the scorpion is holding down his arms, poisonous sting about to pierce his eyeball?
Angel closes his eyes as his last resort, and braces for the sting.
It never comes.
Instead, he hears the sound of a blade cutting through air and then of meat being sliced.
The carcass of the devil falls on top of him along with its blood and guts. Angel groans as he opens his eyes, finding Aki standing right before him, katana in hand. Just like before.
He loses the last bit of air he had in his lungs, the image of Aki—not Aki, the gun devilman holding a katana in Aki's hand. His poise is so achingly familiar that Angel can only stare for a moment longer, half afraid, half something else, something he doesn't have the name for.
But all Aki does is throw the katana aside. He slouches where he stands, like his head is too heavy for him to hold upright, and his chest moves with labored breaths.
In the end, Angel has to find a way to wriggle from underneath the monster on his own. Aki doesn't move at all. He walks back to Aki's side once he manages to get back on his feet, making a miserable sound at every step of the way.
Aki doesn't even look up, but that's not unusual. Sometimes take longer than others. Whenever they were done, Aki was always exhausted, and despite how exhausted Angel always felt, he knew Aki's weariness was beyond his own comprehension. A state of disconnect. Ego death.
Slowly, Angel drags his eyes away from the devil’s corpse and up, up to the devil by his side.
He’s even taller than Aki. The gun devilman balances a large rifle on Aki's neck, it sticks out from his skull— no, rather, the rifle is his skull, and where a trigger would be, his mouth stretches on. His teeth are long, thin bullets with ridiculously sharp edges, twin barrels sprout from his arms. He was almost just as terrifying as the devil who almost just killed him, but Angel's heart doesn't race at his sight.
That was Aki, after all. Underneath all of that.
If Angel could, he would reach out and hold his face in his hands. His heavy, inhuman face. Angel would touch the sharp bullet teeth, even if they were covered in blood. He would then place a hand on Aki's shoulder and wait until Aki looked down at him and saw.
And if he still didn't look at him, then maybe Angel would press his lips against those sharp teeth.
He chokes on his breath, half-revolted at his own thoughts, half something else. His chest turns heavy, falls to the bottom of his stomach like a bullet case.
If being selfish is a natural part of being a devil, Angel can't help but wonder why his stomach sinks at his selfish thoughts. The guilt is all-encompassing, difficult to distinguish from grief. The most difficult thing of all, however, is standing there, hearing the distant sound of the waves and trying not to remember.
He still feels the energy in his veins, human life taken by a thief.
He looks away from Aki, at the katana and wonders if he tried hard enough, if he could feel the lives he stole all those years ago, on a beach not unlike the one in the horizon.
Picking up the katana from the floor, Angel shoves it back into his halo as if that would undo what can’t be undone.
It's all grief, Angel figures. Grief, not want that makes him reach out anyway, and grab the edge of Aki's wretched shirt.
He tugs on it lightly, looking back up at him again.
Aki only looks down after the third tug.
"What?" He asks, his voice a shadow of what it usually is.
"It's over," Angel says, feeling a little silly for stating the obvious. It's almost like maybe Aki had actually been there all along, had watched him stare, had watched him want.
But the human only shudders. Angel drops his hold. Aki grunts as his body slowly melts back into human shape.
—
The afternoon is almost over by the time the Public Safety agent arrives at the scene with a car to drag the body away.
Today they had left the hotel very early in the morning to look for the cursed thing. The day was long, and Angel is tired.
The walk back is as miserable as everything else.
If Angel narrowed his eyes, he could see their hotel perched on the slope of a mountain, off in the distance. Which meant that not only were they on the opposite side of it, but also incredibly far away from it. They walk along the shore.
Sticking to the beach meant that they were less likely to get lost, and at the same time, less likely to scare the humble residents of that small town.
And they are a scary sight.
Angel can feel the blood drying on his face, on his skin, so that when he frowns his dermis tightens under the clots. His hair clings to the mess, itchy and disgusting. His wings are also heavier, weighted down by plasma and guts and so are his clothes. He's so tired of walking.
His only solace is the ocean breeze.
As he walks next to Aki, Angel stares off at sea. The sun made its way down in the sky, closer to the sea with each step that they took.
It brought back memories, Angel's mind flooding with grief and a nostalgia so rottenly sweet that it made him ache.
He tried not to think of the humans in his past. He tried, instead, to focus on the sea.
But the sea made him grieve, too.
Angel watches as the waves crash against the shore with their unpredictable rhythm, the sun reflecting in the water and glistening like his halo. He longs, thinking of days spent swimming and the taste of salt on his tongue.
He wonders if Aki feels it too, the pull of the tide, beckoning him closer.
"We could bathe," he eventually suggests, turning to look at Aki with just a tad bit of wariness.
They'd said nothing at all until now, but Angel knew Aki was eerily quiet after big fights.
Even so, Aki says, "Bathe?"
"In the sea." Angel slows down to a halt. Aki stops as well, turning to look at him with a look Angel can't quite place.
He's just as filthy as Angel. Blood smeared on his face, dark hair clinging to his cheeks, to the gore. His blue eyes, the only light in his semblance.
"It feels dumb that we're walking along the beach covered in gunk," he goes on. "When we could just take a dip."
A pause. "I guess." Aki sighs. "But I also want to make it back as soon as possible."
"We'll have to find your car," Angel argues. "Which means going into the city looking like this." When Aki doesn't say anything back, Angel scrunches his nose and continues. "I mean, would you rather be covered in monster guts or just salt?"
That seems to convince him, Aki's eyes soften.
***
Now it's a bit too late to be diffident.
Angel takes no time to undress, soon leaving a heap of blood stained clothes behind as he walks off into the sea, blue converse sneakers left planted in dry sand.
Aki pretends not to stare. He pretends his eyes don't linger on the buds on his chest, or the subtle slope of his waist. He pretends he doesn't have to stop himself when his eyes fall to the tawny-pink hair between Angel's thighs. He grits his teeth, feeling warm.
The heat only grows as Aki watches Angel disappear into the water and then emerge, red hair slicked back, tamed for the very first time. Angel washes himself in the waves, swimming farther as he does so, white wings glowing against the deep blue, though they're stained with blood. He doesn't look back at Aki.
Behind Angel's silhouette, the sun makes its way down in the sky, no rush to meet the horizon, casting the beach in one hundred shades of orange.
There's nothing left for Aki to do now, but to join him.
He lets his blazer fall to the ground and unbuttons his shirt with idle precision. Then off go his trousers, his boxers, his shoes. Aki stands at the waterline, naked like the day he was born, and wonders what he would end up with if he could just keep going.
What would happen if he unlaced the knots of keratin binding his skin tight to his flesh? If he went on, still, and let his flesh fall to the sand, stood there in his bones. If his bones fell, too, and he was left with nothing but a brain and a heart. What would he be then? Man or devil?
The water moves like it holds the answer and by the time Aki wakes from his reveries, he's already in the ocean.
He closes his eyes before diving, and when he emerges, there's salt on his lips, on his hair, on his skin. Salt, no more gore. He feels new. He pretends for a second that the devil within him stayed there, at the shore, with the rest of his clothes, and for a second he lets himself believe it.
When he opens his eyes, he meets Angel's.
He's swimming, a funny look on his face, one Aki had never seen before. It's the ghost of a smile, if ghosts haunted angels. The most elusive thing, but Aki sees it, and Angel sees him.
They wade closer to one another, waves crashing against Aki's back.
"Salt over guts?" Angel still has the same expression, the shadows of happiness on the edges of his face, not quite making itself known.
"You really wanted to dive, didn't you?"
Angel blinks, some of it fading. "Yeah? We were filthy. You still kinda are."
"You'd been staring longingly at the sea ever since we got here," Aki adds, just to show that he knows. It makes Angel look away, he looks at the ocean again. "I thought you just didn't know how to swim."
There's a pause. They drift in the water, the waves making them move up and down again.
"A human taught me," Angel says finally, looking back.
He realizes then, what this meant.
When they met for the first time after Makima's death, Angel had told him—what he remembered, how he had people he loved, how he had remembered it too late.
Aki didn't ask anything about it afterwards.
"What else did they teach you?" He asks now.
"Didn't I tell you? They taught me how to speak." Angel shrugs, his hair sticks to the skin of his shoulders.
"Did they teach you how to read?"
Angel nods. "And write," he says, pauses. "Everything I know."
There's something almost thankful in the way he says it. Aki digs on the seabed with his feet.
"My dad taught me how to swim."
He doesn't know why he says it, only that it feels right to share it. He knows what it's like to lose the ones who taught you how to swim.
They stew in it for a moment, floating together under the sun. Angel's eyes drifting away again, shadows forming between his eyebrows, then fading. When he speaks again, his voice is different.
"I just remembered something else that they taught me," he tells Aki. But before Aki has the chance to even ask him about it, he's disappearing under the water.
Aki drifts on his own for a while, abandoned. He doesn't entirely mind it, though. It's nice to swim. He can't remember how long it's been since he had last gone to the beach. Did he ever go with Himeno? Was it the last time when he was still a kid?
He had more time now. Unlimited time.
He wants to bring Denji and Power here and, for a second time, he marvels at how he might actually be able to.
The tide is low and there's peace in his heart, but Aki knows it will be ending soon.
Behind him, his clothes wait for him at the shore, and everything else waits behind that.
In front of him, Angel reappears, his figure outlined by the sun. He glistens as he emerges, white wings spraying salt water everywhere.
"Here," he says once he's settled, extending a hand out to Aki. In it he holds out a white, hefty circle, about two inches big.
"A sand dollar," Aki announces promptly to which Angel nods and gestures for him to take it.
Aki raises a hand and presents it palm up.
There's no clothes here, and barely any distance. Angel deposits the starfish on Aki's palm, fingers dangerously naked. They linger.
"They taught you how to find them?" Aki asks, genuinely curious. He raises the sand dollar up to eye-level, holding it against the sun.
"Yes, and how to know if they're dead," he says. Aki looks back at him. "I can't hold live ones."
"And how do you tell them apart?"
Angel flits closer, impossibly closer.
He's right next to Aki, looking up at the sand dollar and pointing at it.
"If you flip it over, you see… The live ones will have all these spines…" And Aki does flip it over, but he isn't looking at the sand dollar at all. He looks at Angel, and clings to how light his voice sounds as he speaks. "But they're also a lot whiter, that's how I could tell from afar…"
Nodding, Aki lowers his hand. Angel is still looking at the dollar, and his face is clear from all the usual melancholy. They're close. Close enough that Aki can see water sliding down his face, drying on his skin. And his face is so bare. No hair to hide behind.
"I didn't know that," Aki manages eventually.
"One time," Angel starts as a matter of response, and he lifts his eyes from the starfish, meeting Aki's with unusual carelessness. "The kids at the village wanted to open one up. They cut it, and these little pieces fell from the inside of it," his voice is soft, gentle. Almost too quiet to be heard over the sound of crashing waves, were Aki not so close to him. "I think they were pieces of its skeleton, y’know? But they were white and they looked like wings." As Angel speaks, the gentleness spreads through his features too, a delicate tenderness that curls his lips up. "So they brought them to me and told me there were little angels inside of the sand dollar. They even asked me if that's how I was born."
The tenderness bursts in a waft of laughter, if you could call it that. It's quiet, small, a smile with breath more than anything else.
And Aki doesn't know what to do. He has never seen Angel laugh — or even smile — before. The water makes them feel closer than they really are, or maybe it's this place, this city. Aki's gut aches, his ears burn and his eyes run over Angel's expression, stalling at the swell of his lips.
He thinks of kissing him.
He knows exactly how it would go.
Angel would taste of salt, and he would go so very still. His lips would be the softest lips Aki has ever kissed, and his breath would smell of sugar.
"I've never seen the inside of a sand dollar, either," he manages.
Aki can't think of why he shouldn't be kissing him. He has a very long life ahead of him now, perhaps eternal. Would it really make any difference if Angel got some more of it?
"Keep it then," Angel says, and Aki raises his gaze, meets his eyes. "We can open it later."
Later, Aki can't make the thought leave his mind.
But he does keep the sand dollar.
They wash their clothes in the saltwater and put them back on, all soggy and cold.
Even so, Angel doesn't say a word, which has to be a record of how long he's ever gone without complaining.
There's a silent agreement between them of staying until the sun sets. They sit on their blazers and stare at the ocean as it swallows the sun in the afternoon. The breeze is cold, but it's a nice contrast to the heat they had to endure the past couple days. If Aki shudders, he doesn't mind it. If Angel feels cold, he doesn't say it.
Only when the sun has set and they bask in the glow of dusk, does Angel break the silence.
"It's not so bad is it?"
Aki raises one eyebrow, looks at him.
"What is?"
Angel doesn't look back.
"The country mouse."
It's too dark now to make out the finer details of his expression. Aki clutches the sand dollar in hand, and begins to stand up.
—
The walk back to his car is less dreadful than it seemed, and by the time they make it there, they're practically dry. Aki is thankful that they bathed in the ocean, for more reasons than one.
They take no time showering once they reach the hotel, and Angel falls into deep slumber seconds after lying on his bed.
Aki clings to his last remaining energies to go downstairs, asking for the landline phone.
Denji picks up after three rings and he sounds out of breath.
He tells him he's getting better at cooking, which means that he didn't burn himself today, only the rice.
He tells him that Power ate the burnt rice anyway, and so did he.
"But she still wanted to drink my blood afterwards and bit me without permission," he says.
Aki can hear her voice in the distance, a faraway scream: "I did no such thing!"
Aki tells him that he swam in the ocean today, and Denji curses him for having fun while working.
Aki thinks about bringing him here, but that, he doesn't say.
Once the call is over, Aki finally makes it to his bed, his heart aching. He thinks about taking Denji to see the ocean, he thinks about teaching Power how to swim and about buying them ice cream.
He looks at the sand dollar on his nightstand and thinks about showing them the angels inside of it.
He doesn't think about the gunmetal inside his chest. He doesn't think about the devil within.
Soon his daydreams become slumber.
—
He doesn't get much of it.
He never does, after an ugly battle.
Carnage. Bloodbath. The faces of each person who died at his hand. Tears in Denji's eyes. Snow.
By the time Aki wakes up from the nightmare, he's dripping in sweat. He sits up in a hurry, feeling the beating of his own heart like gunshots against his chest. The sheets are crumpled in his fists. He steadies his breath and squints, eyes adapting to the dark much faster than they used to.
There's no sign of bloodshed in the hotel room.
Rather, the opposite.
An angel sleeping peacefully on soft pillows.
Aki feels his heart rate slow as he peers over Angel's face. He breathes in slow, leisurely breaths. Angel is serene, vulnerable. His hands are joined under his head as he lies on his side on top of one of his wings, the other curved around the figure of his body protectively. The spitting image of purity, he might as well be sleeping on a cloud. What could be more comforting than that?
But Aki feels the gunmetal now. He can't shake off the gooey, sticky feeling that clings to him after every nightmare. His whole body tenses with a very familiar urge.
He gets up in silence and reaches for the cigarette pack nestled inside his pocket. It's unopened. He got it recently, on the way to the coast.
Even after dying, Aki had kept his promise. He had told himself his smoking days were over, buried alongside Himeno.
Now, as Aki heads to the balcony, pack in hand, he wonders what Himeno would make of him.
Outside, the sky is still dark. The countryside wasn't like Tokyo, where the city lit up at night like a galaxy. In the country, the only light comes from the moon and the stars. By now, though, there's the slimmest edge of light down in the horizon.
He rests his arms on the railing, shifting his attention away from the scenery and staring at the cigarette pack in his hand.
His soul itches. It'd take him less than a minute to light a cigarette. He could smoke away his anguish then chase away that feeling.
He doesn't know how long he stays like that, threading the line between doubt and want, only that by the time he hears the doors slide behind him, the weak streetlights of the road are dying one by one. The sun peeks from behind the ocean.
"Is that how I'd been looking at the sea?" Comes Angel's voice. Aki turns to look at him, a mix of surprise and confusion settling on his face. "Earlier you said I'd been staring longingly at the sea. That's how you're looking at those now."
It's a weird feeling, being seen. Aki drops his gaze back to his hands, turns back to the city.
"I didn't mean to wake you," he says in lieu of a response.
Angel settles by his side, hands on the railing just like they did yesterday. "It's okay."
"I had a nightmare." Whether that's a justification or a plain confession, Aki doesn't know.
"I know."
Their eyes meet again, and Aki finds no judgment in blood-red irises. Eventually, though, his eyes find their way back to his cigarettes.
"Are you going to smoke those?" Angel asks.
A sigh leaves Aki's lips before he can stop himself. He feels the heaviness of each of his limbs, the heaviness inside his head.
"I don't know."
"I've never seen you smoke before," Angel says, and it takes Aki by surprise. Though he supposes that makes perfect sense.
"I used to smoke," he explains. "I quit."
Angel raises an eyebrow at him. He's sleep-rumpled again, this time wearing only a dress shirt, strands of auburn hair stick out from his head at all sides, they glow under his halo.
"Then why go back to smoking?"
"Why not?" He shoots back, shrugging. "I'm part devil now. I don't think these will kill me."
There's a long beat before Angel replies, yawning. "That's not why you quit, though," he says simply, like he knows him.
He might. Aki clutches the pack in his hand.
"No," he agrees.
"Then…?"
Aki takes a small step away from the railing. In the distance, the sun starts to reveal itself like a secret.
"I just wanted…" But he doesn’t know where his sentence was going. He sighs, shaking his head.
He looks at Angel with some reluctance, but Angel's face is as immutable as always. He gives a slight nod, yawning behind his hand one more time as he takes a step forward.
He reaches for Aki's hand, slowly, carefully, with the surgical precision of someone who's used to the kind of meticulous touch that manages to snatch a cigarette pack from someone's fingers without touching skin. Aki lets him have it, staring dumbly at him, his own face shadowed by his dark hair—he didn't tie it to sleep.
Angel opens the packet, snatches a single cigarette and then offers it to Aki. He doesn't hand it out, though. He holds the cigarette between slender fingers and raises his hand above his own head, so that the cigarette lingers in front of Aki's mouth.
By instinct, he parts his lips and Angel places the cigarette filter on Aki's bottom lip. Aki closes his mouth.
Following along, wordlessly, Angel reaches for the pockets of Aki's sweatpants, grabbing the lighter hidden there, and Aki can only wonder how he knew about it.
He holds it up, flicking the flame alight, and Aki finds himself leaning down to facilitate Angel's movements. He finds himself inhaling as the cigarette touches flame, he finds himself letting it all happen.
Nicotine in his lungs.
When he leans back, Aki's entire body swells with satisfaction. When he exhales, his sigh carries the utmost amount of relief. The last time he felt this relieved he was bathing in salt water.
He looks back at Angel and can't help the way his eyes carry his gratitude. He would feel embarrassed, were Angel not looking at him with softness in his own gaze, a light aspect to his features that could easily be mistaken for fondness.
The sun is fully out now, and Angel's hair matches the color of the clouds.
There's another urge. Just like his itch for nicotine. He wants to reach and touch that mass of hair.
Silence stretches, Angel's eyes dropping from Aki's own, to his mouth, where the cigarette rests between his lips.
"Can I try it?" The devil asks.
It's unexpected. Angel does the unexpected whenever Aki is the least prepared. Perhaps it's the unpredictability of it, or perhaps it's the way the sunrise casts the softest of sun rays on Angel's face, perhaps it's the way Aki's heart sinks whenever his eyes drift away. Whatever it is, it has him leaning in closer, stepping into Angel's space and parting his lips.
Angel's mouth falls slack in quiet surprise, and Aki exhales the smoke right into that gap. Angel gasps, but breathes it all in, there are quiet coughs. They're close enough that Aki can see the finest of hairs on his face, on his upper lip, the shape of his perfectly sculpted cupid's bow. When he raises his gaze to Angel's eyes, he finds them still locked on his lips.
He runs out of smoke and self-preservation. Aki closes his eyes and presses his lips against his.
It lasts only a second. He hears the flutter of wings. The devil pulls back, lips still parted.
"Aki." He's breathless and it's the first time he said his name.
"What?"
But Angel is frowning, a look of distress growing on his face as he attempts to take a step back. "What are you doing?"
It only downs him then, what he had just done. Aki blinks once, twice, and takes one more drag before letting the barely-smoked cigarette fall to the floor.
Angel presses on. "Do you want to die?"
Of course he wants to die.
He wants to die just as much as he wants to live. Just as he is now devil and human, just as Angel is both beautiful and monstrous. Aki swallows the smoke and it kills him a little, just as it makes life a little more liveable in return. That's how it's been for most of his life.
"That's not what this is about," he says simply, unable to explain it.
"Then what was that for?" There's no affront in Angel's voice, though, nor upset in his expression. He is confused, round eyes looking up at his.
"I just—" He starts, grappling for words. "It should be fine. I'm not human anymore. The cigarettes can't really hurt me. Touching you shouldn't hurt me."
"But it does," Angel replies sternly, much to Aki's surprise. "You are still human. A part of you are. I can feel it."
There's silence and the downing, loaded realization that it doesn't even matter. It doesn't matter if he's still human. The comfort lies in the fact that it doesn't matter that he's a devil, either.
All that matters is holding onto this one second, as the others slip between his fingers, and making it worth it. Dying to live. Time after time.
"Then how long was that?"
It's that question—not being kissed nor Aki's touch—that makes Angel's cheeks dust a lovely shade of pink. Unmistakable now, even under this light.
He stammers. "I--- I'm not sure."
"What do you mean?"
Angel's flush seems to deepen, there's a line between his eyebrows. Aki finds himself stepping closer to him.
"That wasn't the same as a normal human's," he explains, looking down. "It was— I don't know, usually I'd be able to tell right away but that seemed— Slower. I've never—"
It's easy, then, for Aki to decide that he should kiss him again. This time, he lifts a hand to his face as he does it, thumb tilting Angel's chin upwards as he leans down to press their lips together, interrupting Angel's sentence. This time, Angel lets it happen. This time, Aki can feel how soft his lips are, he can catch the faint aftertaste of smoke there and how he's holding in his breath.
"How about now?" Aki asks once he's pulled away. He opens his eyes to watch Angel screw his own shut tighter, frowning a bit. Delicate hands, folded into fists, come to rest on either side of Aki's chest.
"That—" He exhales as he opens his eyes, hesitating to meet Aki's gaze. "A minute," he says softly. "Or two. I can't really tell— Your life— It feels different."
"A minute?" His chest unfurls. Aki takes another step, caging Angel against the railing as he brings his other hand to his waist.
Angel nods slowly, like he isn't sure about it. He doesn't move away from him, though, and Aki's stomach seems to fold and unfold on itself.
He had lost two months when he first touched Angel. Now, he had just kissed him for much longer than that first touch had lasted.
He raises his hand, thumb back on Angel's face, and the devil closes his eyes as Aki runs his finger over his cheek, cups Angel's jaw.
"Then it doesn't matter," he whispers, so close now to Angel's face that he can feel his breath, the way it hitches when Angel opens his eyes, looking at him from under his eyelashes.
So Aki kisses him again, of course. Softly at first, pulling away just so he can kiss him again, then again, then again and every time is different from the last.
Aki could tell Angel had been holding back, tucked within himself. But his resistance fades away each time their lips meet. He can feel Angel's body beginning to uncoil, the movement of wings falling open.
Angel reacts to every kiss like his world is falling apart beneath his feet. He hesitates to breathe, so when he finally draws in a shaky breath, Aki drags his tongue in between his lips.
That's when Angel falls open, a gentle noise at the back of his throat when he kisses back. Every wall he's set for himself has been properly torn down, and Aki can taste the desperation and relief that comes from their collapse.
It's intimate. He can finally bury his fingers in Angel's hair, thread them through it, curl his fist around the back of Angel's neck.
The sun is bright when they finally break apart.
Angel is flushed, hair a mess, lips glistening, kiss-swollen. He looks exactly like an angel who has just been kissed for the first time.
And Aki is sure he looks just as messy, but looks half as good. He can feel that pleasant warmth smoothing under his skin.
"Let's go back inside," he says quietly.