Work Text:
Angel is halfway through washing his face when his mind catches up to him. He stops, lowers his hands, and then squints at them. His fingers glisten with water and soap bubbles that glow a hazy yellow in the low bathroom light.
He’s missing something, but he can’t remember what it is, so he just finishes up and pats his face dry with a towel that’s already slightly damp. There’s a hotel name in the corner of it—one he doesn’t recognize, but whose characters curl with pink flourishes. He blinks at them and then slowly looks from the fogged-up mirror to the bathroom door. Something tells him that he might not want to see what’s on the other side, but he also doesn’t want to be trapped in a bathroom until the end of time, so he sighs and turns the doorknob.
He emerges along with a puff of steam. The room outside is cold, but not too cold, and with the fleece pajamas he’s wearing he feels quite warm. Airy, even. Some of the steam seems to linger around him for a second, but then it leaves him behind. And it’s then that he realizes he’s not, in fact, alone.
Inexplicably, Hayakawa Aki is standing in the room’s tiny kitchenette, towering over the low stovetop. He’s holding a spatula, his black hair tied up in a tousled ponytail. There are bags under his eyes, tinted slightly purple, but he seems to be in otherwise good spirits—and also making himself a scrambled egg.
“Hm,” says Angel.
“Oh. I’m making a midnight snack.” Aki looks up from sprinkling shredded cheese onto his eggs, and moves over to start cutting up some chives. “Was the shower nice?”
“I’m…not sure.”
“Yeah, I thought the water was lukewarm, too. It helps if you really push on the valve.”
“I don’t think I tried that.”
“Well, you can always try some other time. Seems like we might be here for a while.”
“Where exactly is…here?”
“Does it matter?” Aki asks lightly as he scoops his eggs onto two separate plates. “You’re the one who told me to run. Here, none of it can get to us. Do you want chives with yours?”
I’m not following , Angel thinks. His memory is fractured, but pieces remain: a flash of magenta hair, a familiar face against the backdrop of the sea, a surge of anger that tastes sour in his throat. Makima. The Chainsaw. The Gun Devil. Death, approaching. He knows he was in danger. He knows he drew a sword. And yet—
“Sure,” he says. The side of Aki’s mouth rises ever-so-imperceptibly as he adds a generous pinch of bright green to both plates. He cuts his chives in practiced, clean diagonal slices. When he walks out from behind the kitchenette’s counter with the plates, Angel notes that their fleece pajamas match.
“Sorry that it got a little burnt there, on the end.”
“It’s alright.” Angel accepts the chopsticks and then watches as Aki goes back to grab his own.
They sit facing each other at the two-person wooden table on the other side of the kitchenette. It creaks, leaning toward Aki under them, but neither of them minds. Angel crunches on the chives, only pausing when Aki’s sock brushes his foot under the table and lingers there. Just below it, he can almost feel his skin. Something in Angel’s chest skips, just a little, and when he looks up, the light from the window seems to hit Aki’s face from a different angle.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Aki says quietly after a few long seconds pass.
Angel averts his gaze, realizing that he’d been staring. “That’s not what I meant. I believe you. But how can you be so sure that Chainsaw-kun won’t follow you here? You wouldn’t last long in a fight, even if I were to help you.”
“He won’t. Trust me.” Something sad flits across Aki’s face, but it’s gone so quickly that Angel thinks he must have imagined it. “There are some things you just don’t question. It’s easier that way. Do you want more eggs? I’m also sure we have ramen, somewhere, but I’ll have to look for it in my bag.”
“I’m full.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Suit yourself.” Aki takes both of their plates and passes Angel on his way back to the kitchenette. Angel is staring at his own hands, still trying to place what’s so odd about them, when something soft and warm pecks his cheek. Angel swivels in shock, and for a moment, the world seems to shimmer, layers drifting from one another. He can feel the warmth of Aki’s life force passing from his face to his neck, down his spine into his toes, but he also feels something else.
Usage: 1000 years.
Confusion stirs in him, but doesn’t stay. He still catches the remainder of Aki’s exhale as he leaves.
“One month,” Aki tells him as he flicks the sink faucet on. “I was careful, like you told me to be.”
Angel lifts one of his legs experimentally. It feels weak, lighter somehow, as if his bones have decreased in density. “I don’t remember that.”
Angel can no longer see Aki’s face, but he can almost hear his buddy frowning from behind the taupe wall that separates them. For some reason, the thought makes his stomach clench and he starts to rise from the hotel room’s little dining table.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” says Aki from the kitchenette. “And also…stay there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“Come again?”
“I should have made myself more memorable.”
He’s back on Angel’s side of the wall, this time with his black elastic around his wrist. His long hair falls over his eyes and cuts dark lines across the tops of his shoulders as he nears, his crooked half-smile just barely noticeable from proximity. The top two buttons of his pajama top are unfastened, probably due to the heat from the stove, but Angel’s eyes dart there—lingering. Bare skin. He knows it’s dangerous for the human and skirts backwards in his chair, but he also just keeps looking. At some point, unbeknownst to him, his wings unfurled.
“Hayakawa,” he finds himself saying, just to cut the moment short.
“Should I stop? I know we need to make these count.” Aki has reached the table and is leaning over it, braced on his elbows. He looks…casual, unbothered. Angel doesn’t think he’s ever seen him this calm in all the time that they’ve worked together. He’s heard a whole host of things about Hayakawa Aki throughout his stay in Public Safety. None of it makes him comfortable, exactly, but he can comfortably say one thing about his most recent buddy: he’s alert. He has to be, with hardly anything to protect him. And something has pushed him to the point where he doesn’t need to be afraid anymore.
Angel should be on edge (and, he admits, some part of him is), but he finds himself mostly intrigued. There’s a magnetic aura around this Aki—an Aki who doesn’t care.
“Angel?”
“I don’t…” A foreign, desperate urge crackles in Angel’s chest as Aki’s crooked smile starts to fade. He reaches out with one of his wrong hands. “...want you to stop.”
Something in Aki’s silhouette melts, just a little, like a distant puppeteer loosening a string, and then he’s back in Angel’s space. But this time he isn’t leaning in. He’s simply sitting, resting his weight against the side of the table. He reaches a hand out, fingers tucked into his sleeve, and then tips Angel’s face up to meet his. Part of Angel wants to run but most of him just stutters, stop-motion in the dim dining room light. He doesn’t stop Aki when the latter leans down.
Hayakawa Aki tastes like cigarette smoke, like a hint of sesame oil and the sharp crispness of neatly sliced chives. He’s warm, warm as sunlight, like every other human Angel has ever ruined and stolen for himself. His lips are soft, bruising on impact. Aki’s hands slip out of his sleeves, cupping Angel’s face as he explores, and the Angel Devil’s entire consciousness drifts. He can feel it happening: that familiar heat making its way through his body like a red lavish wine. It’s mixed with the overwhelming taste of Aki in his mouth, when—
Something scrabbling. There’s a familiar spark in those eyes.
“Usage: 100 years.”
X marks the spot. A high, reedy scream. It doesn’t sound quite human.
“Aki,” murmurs Angel as he pushes them apart. He doesn’t have much strength for it. His hands feel like phantom limbs. When Aki starts pressing kisses along his cheekbones, up to his forehead, he shudders.
“Six months, that’s all. We won’t do this for a while,” Aki promises, voice husky. Angel closes his eyes, letting him rain kisses down his neck, dark hair mixing with his own red strands. He can’t bring himself to say it to Aki’s face, especially now, so he turns toward the pockmarked ceiling.
“Aki…”
“Mm?”
“This isn’t real.”
Aki pauses against Angel’s Adam’s apple. He gives him one final kiss before stepping back. The bags under his eyes have somehow become more prominent, heavier. “I know.”
Angel thinks he should cry, but he just feels vacant. “I think I made you up.”
“If you did, would it be so bad?”
Angel doesn’t want to answer that question. Instead, he flips over his hands, studying his veins. They seem too thin. He then stands, pushes his chair in, and crosses the room to the sliding window that leads to the balcony.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” says Aki from behind him, but Angel ignores him.
The night outside looks unfathomably dark, as if there isn’t a star in the sky. He stands there in front of the glass, contemplating what he’s about to do, before he pulls on the doorknob and steps out into the cold. It’s the type of chill that stings, hundreds of pinpricks across his skin. When he looks up, he notices that there’s a brightness streaming in from above, even if it isn’t the stars. He blinks at the hotel’s name, glowing in neon lights above him: Kousetsu. Snowfall.
It’s then that he realizes that the cold isn’t stinging; it’s the snow. White flecks drift down from the sky, piling up on the edges of the balcony and the railing. Angel steps closer and slides his finger across the black metal.
“Come back inside,” Aki urges, “before you get hurt.”
Angel lifts his finger, studying it. He brings it to his nose, and then his eyes widen. He glances over his shoulder at Aki before staring appraisingly back into the darkness. After all of this, he isn’t surprised to see flashes of red-gold in the distance. He thinks maybe he’s been blocking out the screaming all along.
“Are you sure they can’t get to us out here?” he calls to Aki, who’s still watching him with crossed arms from the balcony doorway.
“Not if you come back inside.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You don’t need me to tell you again, do you?”
Angel looks back down at the smudge of snow—no, of ash —on his finger and then nods to himself. The air is suddenly acrid with the tang of blood. He lingers there just to let it sink in before he steps back into the warmth of the room and shuts the door with a click. The night becomes a black blanket again. Angel’s eyes drift back over to Aki, who’s pulled his hair back into his messy ponytail, and then smiles. As he walks past, he lifts himself up onto his tiptoes and plants a soft kiss of his own on Aki’s cheek. Aki’s smile is slow and maybe still a little sad, but it widens when Angel whispers in his ear.
“I’ll take those extra eggs you promised.”
After all, he knows better than anyone that there are worse things to dream.