Chapter Text
One week following the death of Aki Hayakawa.
Angel was a chained dog. That much was no different than his entire confinement under Public Safety. He hadn't realized how good he'd had it before, when everything was operating under "normal" parameters. Before everything really went to shit. Before Aki was gone.
Angel was effectively dead, his contract with Makima had been cashed out. He was a tool to her, a weapon she could conjure and dismiss. He'd be chained to her until she gave him up, or perished. Angel couldn't help wishing for the latter, but he wasn't going to hold his breath for it.
He wasn't allowed out anymore unless Makima wanted to use his power. No one knew of his continued existence except for Makima herself. He was trapped again, just like all of his other allies had been. Angel wished then that Aki had never taken his hand at all, that the damn fool had never spared him.
What the fuck did that man think he was saving Angel from, anyway? Neither of them were ever going to be saved, and they both should have realized it sooner. Their desperation and ambitions had only guided them toward ruin with expeditious certainty.
Aki's corpse was put on ice after Denji killed him. His remains were unceremoniously scooped up and thrown into a freezer so Makima could strip him for parts. She must have thought his remains would be useful for something. He had perfectly good Gun Devil flesh embedded within him, after all.
Angel might as well have been on ice. He was locked up just the same, alone in a morgue full of Makima's other puppets. She was saving him for later, he knew. The thought itself was revolting, though it was no surprise that he was simply in stasis until she decided she needed his power.
There was no point in thinking about the corpses that occupied the rows of frozen lockers. They were a collection of tools. Knives in a block, all lined up for whenever Makima decided to take one out for a spin. It wasn't worth thinking about Aki, frozen solid on the tray in the morgue drawer beside him.
Angel did it anyway, of course, even though it hurt. The thought of Aki was like picking a scab; satisfactory even if it was painful. A function of idle hands, an afterthought because he didn't care if that particular wound scarred.
His thoughts often drifted to Aki after he died. Angel was unaccustomed to the feeling of powerlessness. He'd watched Aki get turned, and had failed to stop it. Aki had come to him for help, a disastrous and stupid idea. The pair of them, the fucking lobotomized fools that they were, walked right into the trap without hesitation.
Guilty, the word returned to Angel's mind over, and over again. Angel couldn't have saved Aki, there was no question about that. Aki's attempts to live his life on his own terms put most other people's suicide attempts to shame. The man was on a collision course with destiny right from the beginning, and no amount of watered-down divine intervention could have prevented that. At the end of the day, Angel was only ever able to provide Aki with a beautiful dream.
Aki didn't need to see all the harm that he caused. What use was there for that kind of suffering?
Sometimes, Angel wandered the halls of the morgue. He set frozen, icy feet down on the concrete floor and paced. He couldn't leave there, wherever it was. He wasn't even sure if where he was truly existed at all, just some liminal space that only Makima could reach. For all Angel knew, he could have simply been a consciousness, a sputtering candle of life force soon to be snuffed out. Naught but a soul locked in a tomb made out of Makima's power.
That space was timeless and static all at once. Angel could have been there for hours, or months. There was no way to know, and it frankly didn't matter to him much whether the time passed at all.
Only once, Angel opened the drawer next to his own. His fingers wrapped around the frigid handle and pulled. The drawer glided open on stiff wheels, thunking into place before him.
The Gun Fiend's corpse stirred something within him. Regardless of the body laying right in front him, Aki was gone. The man was untouchable and lost, cast out into the ether without hope of return. Despite the ache, Angel couldn't help staring.
The body on the tray was beautiful, even without those perfect sapphire eyes. It was a curious thing, how some fiends lost their features. Angel wondered if the loss of those eyes was somehow an answer to Aki's prayer. The terms of the contract which Aki had unwittingly paid two months of his life to procure: he didn't want to see anyone else die. Angel did his best to make that happen.
Still, Angel missed those eyes.
He imagined what it would be like to stare at them in the vacant freezer, under flickering fluorescent lighting. He imagined deep blue looking up at him lifelessly from the table, a pair of perfect, glassy marbles.
It made him sick.
Aki was beautiful as a fiend, too. He was magnificent, with his malformed appendage and the barrel of a gun protruding from his skull. His jaw was the same, his torso, his hips, his heart. Angel tried not to think about finally getting to touch that body. Somehow, even that felt sacrilegious.
Angel caressed his fingers over the freezing barrel of the rifle on Aki's arm. It wasn't at all like holding hands.
Even when Angel grasped the frozen fingers of Aki's human hand, it didn't feel right. Too stiff, too frigid. It lacked all the heat and feeling of the real Aki's touch. It lacked the spirit, the care, and what must have passed for affection.
Angel tried to forget what Aki's skin felt like. He tried to forget how he tasted, and how he made Angel feel.
At the same time, he desperately didn't want to forget.
Angel's fingers trailed over Aki's frozen face. Blue lips with discolored, blotchy bruises blooming over exposed skin. Something like a smile twisted those pretty, doll-like features. Aki might have been happy in whatever delusion played out during his final moments.
Slowly, Angel leaned down and pressed his lips against Aki's. Ice on ice, chapped skin on frigid porcelain. Aki tasted of iron and smoke.
Angel grieved. He grieved the fact that touching Aki brought him no relief. He grieved the blackened steel that burned his fingertips with the cold, and what that form meant.
Maybe, just maybe, there was something left of Aki that Angel could have. Something he could keep and make part of him. If he couldn't have Aki's eyes, or his hands, or his heart, what was there? Angel couldn't keep his voice, except in memory. Nor could he keep his wit, his attitude, or his mannerisms.
All Angel had was a few months of Aki's life. Roughly six, between held hands, a stolen kiss, and a broken condom in the end. It wasn't much, but it was enough. It had to be enough.
"Usage, six months."
Angel held his palms face up, open and terribly empty. What would he make out of Aki's life? What could possibly be of any use to him there, or anywhere?
A vial and a syringe manifested from his halo, falling into his waiting hands. Midnight liquid swirled within the confines of the vial, like bottled dusk. Flecks of silver twinkled like starlight, shimmering and dancing as Angel held the glass up in the light.
It was curious, certainly. Angel had never made a weapon quite like that before. His tools were usually simple, brutal in their efficiency. His presence in the world was enough of a poison as it was, there was no need for the finesse or intrigue of making more. Still, he'd wanted a way to consume what little of Aki there was left behind. He wanted the real thing, not the empty shell on the table. That vial, more than any sword or dagger, could satisfy his need.
Angel removed the safety cap and pushed the tip of the needle down through the membrane on the vial's lid. He drew the liquid up into the syringe, careful to extract every last drop that he could. Aki might have wasted his life, but Angel had no plans to do so.
He flicked the syringe a few times, watching the liquid silver flicker inside. Angel set the syringe down on the tray next to Aki, rolling up a sleeve past the elbow despite the restrictive fabric of his uniform. The tight cuff of his sleeve was hardly enough to make a tourniquet, though it probably didn't matter much. Eventually, Angel found a vein, unsure if he needed to be precise or if anywhere would do.
Might as well be thorough, he thought.
Angel lined up the head of the needle, gently pushing the tip straight into his flesh. It stung a little, but he didn't really mind. He pushed the plunger down, ignoring the instant discomfort of fluid passing through his vein.
As soon as he pulled the needle out, the syringe dropped from his grasp. His knees buckled, no longer taking weight. Angel slumped against the drawer, placing shaking hands down atop freezing metal to steady himself.
Liquid fire bubbled beneath his skin. Angel hadn't really registered just how cold he always felt until that heat was shooting straight through him. It rushed through his heart, his fingertips, his brain. Stiff wings fluttered, spasming out of control.
Salt prickled and burned Angel's eyes. He gasped in a few unsteady breaths, trying to keep himself upright. Blurry vision landed on the Gun Fiend's visage, still frozen and beautiful, exactly like he had been the whole time. Angel felt like his blood was about to boil looking down on that perfect, impassive face.
Six months of Aki Hayakawa was one hell of a drug. It felt just like him. Worse than that, it felt like Angel looked straight into Aki's mind. Thought, feeling, sensation, it all flowed through Angel in a jumbled rush of stimulation. It settled like sludge in Angel's arteries; tar in his lungs from thousands of cigarettes he'd never once smoked.
Angel, Angel, Angel, he was the only thing Aki thought about when they'd touched. There was so much grief, laced with want and tangled with affection. Every minute that Aki willingly gave to Angel was solely for him.
Angel wept.
Tears spilled over, dropping onto Aki's face. Angel almost laughed, thinking that out of everyone, Aki was entitled to his tears. The burning, feverish heat within him didn't hurt half as much as the feeling clawing around inside his ribcage.
"You stupid, stubborn bastard," Angel whispered. He swore that the corpse on the table below him smiled wider at the admission.
Four months prior to the death of Aki Hayakawa.
Aki caved. He hadn't been able to help kissing Angel, shoving his tongue into his mouth and tasting him. It had been so easy to let that time slip away from him. What was a few more months worth, anyway?
It hadn't been enough. Aki wanted again, and again. Angel wouldn't let him try a second time. It made sense, Angel had every reason not to trust Aki after that. Angel didn't want Aki's life anyway, no matter how many times Aki kept trying to give it to him.
The thought of that kiss kept Aki up at night. The taste, the smell, the feel of it. Unforgettable, seared into his memory along with whatever it cost.
Aki didn't want to know what that kiss was worth. To him, it had been worth everything. Every day, every month that it stole from him was more than worth it.
Foolish. That's what it was. His desires, his impulse to be close to Angel. It was all an exercise in futility. Even so, Aki started wearing gloves after that tryst. The summer humidity made it miserable at times, but he got used to the discomfort.
Makima started "letting" Angel come over more. It was a chore, really, but Denji and Power liked the other devil well enough. They welcomed him into their loud, cramped home without a second thought. It was sickening how easily Angel fit into their lives.
Sometimes, Denji and Power fell asleep early in a tangle of limbs at the living room table with the cat. On nights like those, Angel and Aki sat quietly together. They spoke in low voices and chuckled softly to one another about trivial things. It was nice, despite how much it hurt if either of them stopped to think about it.
It was all so painfully normal, their closeness. Their proximity was a weight on Aki's chest that he could never get rid of. Yearning was a stubborn emotion, never successfully drowned. He tried to hide his stare, his eyes that seemed to linger on Angel at any opportunity. Angel always caught him, but never said a word.
Each night, Aki walked Angel home. They took the main streets after dark, always getting lost in the glow of city lights. Angel looked good bathed in neon, ethereal under flickering signage in restaurant windows. Each time, Aki tried to suffocate the feeling that squeezed his heart uncomfortably.
One night, Angel stopped next to a ramen shop. Luminous characters painted the devil in dazzling red. His hair curled like flames, auburn only amplified by the soft glow of his halo. He turned over his shoulder, catching Aki staring like he often did.
"I can always feel your eyes on me, you know," Angel said.
"Does that bother you?" Aki paused, just out of arms reach. He often found himself there, standing just far enough back to discourage himself from reaching out.
"No, I'm rather fond of those eyes."
Angel took a step forward. Aki stood still. In another step, Angel waited mere inches away. Aki had to peer down his nose at the other man to look him in the eye. His traitorous limbs wanted to move closer, nearly twitching with the impulse. He could almost smell Angel, a soft aroma like vanilla.
"You wear those gloves, but you never touch me. Did you get cold feet after all, Hayakawa?"
Aki raised a hand, hovering just above the soft skin of Angel's cheek. "Should I?" he asked. It was a real question as much as it was a flirtation. A plea as much as it was a confession.
Angel pressed his face into Aki's palm, closing his eyes for a long moment. That was answer enough, Aki supposed. He stroked a thumb over Angel's cheek bone, a motion not unlike wiping away tears. Angel's wings fluttered in response.
Aki waited, almost frozen. He wanted too much. He wanted skin on skin, fingers buried in silky hair. He wanted his tongue against Angel's teeth, desperate to breathe the air straight from his lungs.
"Let's take the long way home," Angel said, blinking open cherry eyes.
"Alright," Aki replied. The word almost didn't make it out of his throat.
Aki's pulse pounded with anticipation. Angel stepped away from Aki's hand as abruptly as he'd walked into it, leaving him to mourn the touch. They stayed close, walking side by side where their shoulders and fingertips could brush with each stride. Even such little contact was so intoxicating.
Each turn of a corner took them toward the path least traveled. They wove through shadows, lingering in a darkened corner of a park. Speakers next to the public bathroom periodically chimed, quiet and forgettable compared to the blood roaring in Aki's ears.
Angel took Aki's gloved hand, pulling him into the bathroom. White fluorescent lights hummed overhead. For a long moment, they stood staring at each other in the center of the room, hands still joined by interlaced fingers.
Aki practically dragged Angel into a stall with him, shutting the door. Angel's wings took up the majority of the space, flexing and contracting back toward his shoulder blades as they squeezed in together.
"Turn around," Aki murmured, leaning back to avoid taking part of a wing to the face.
Angel faced the door, sucking in a surprised breath when Aki pushed him against it. Feathers ruffled under Aki's touch, pristine white reflecting dim light. Angel shuddered, stifling whines with each caress.
Aki pressed his hips against Angel, wrapping an arm around the other man's slender waist. Glove-numbed fingers fumbled with button and zipper, pawing impatiently at fabric. Angel was half-hard already by the time Aki slid his hand beneath the waistband.
"Aki," Angel crooned. He twitched in Aki's hand, slowly working his hips to rut into soft leather.
"Acting so needy after weeks of trying to talk me out of it." Aki hissed into Angel's ear, earning another pathetic sound from the devil. He stroked Angel slowly, enjoying the way the other man threw his hips back into Aki's aching cock. "If you wanted this so badly, why did you bother stopping me?"
Angel's strangled groan echoed through the bathroom. Aki clamped his other hand over Angel's mouth to muffle the sound, pressing in closer still. Sweet friction muddled his senses, exigent pressure he couldn't relieve. Each shallow roll of Angel's hips only served to tease Aki, the contact nowhere close to enough.
With Angel turned away, the temptation to kiss was reduced. Aki struggled to rein in his impulse to mouth at the devil's neck. He wanted so badly to taste the sweat on his skin. Instead, he settled for breathing in Angel's scent, light and grassy.
The air between them felt unbearably hot. Sticky humidity coalesced beneath sweat-soaked fabric as the distance between them shrank further. Angel's teeth worked at the leather of the glove over his mouth, stifling a whine with a bite into the material. Aki couldn't help the low sound he made in response.
He wanted Angel's teeth against his skin. He wanted the other man to draw blood, to drink it straight out of the wound. It was more than depraved, it was antithetical. The thought alone made Aki giddy, urging him to pump Angel's cock with renewed urgency.
Angel jerked, moaning hoarsely into Aki's glove. The devil's knees trembled as he came, pressing back hard into Aki's hips. Angel slumped into the door, gasping in unsteady breaths when Aki pulled his hand away.
"Sit," Aki said.
He pivoted, moving against the wall so Angel could squeeze past and collapse onto the toilet seat. The devil landed heavily, blinking up at Aki with a dazed expression. Hair stuck to his temples, saturated with sweat.
Slowly, Aki licked Angel's release from his glove. Bitter salt stung his tongue, masking the taste of leather. Angel's eyes widened at the sight, locked onto the way that his tongue lapped at the seam of his gloves between two fingers. Amusement curled the corners of Aki's mouth. Finally, he could pay Angel back for a summer filled with soft-serve. He took his time cleaning up, relishing the undivided attention he held.
With a slightly damp glove, he unbuckled his belt and worked the zipper of his pants. Angel watched him, transfixed, lips parted in silent surprise while Aki pulled himself from his slacks.
Aki stroked himself, breath quickening into shallow huffs. The friction dragged, but it didn't matter. A blush dusted Angel's cheeks as he watched, reverent under the glow of his halo. There was something about the hunger on Angel's face that seemed illicit, far beyond the obvious of jerking each other off in a public bathroom. The normally passive expression was so painfully evocative, so full of want that Aki could almost feel it like an entity between them.
His free hand slipped into Angel's hair, grabbing a fistful and turning his face up to look Aki in the eye. The other man's pupils were blown wide, dark and full of something Aki couldn't name. Aki fought the urge to bury himself in Angel's throat. He vividly imagined the heat of Angel's mouth enveloping him, tears streaming from the devil's eyes while he choked. Aki almost came right then from picturing the scene, gritting his teeth with a harsh inhale.
"Open your mouth," he ground out. Angel complied without hesitation, sticking out his tongue slightly. If only he was so obedient all the time, Aki thought wistfully.
Aki barely controlled himself, pulling hair to guide Angel's open mouth mere inches from the tip of his cock when he came. Most of it made it into Angel's mouth, dripping back into his throat with a swallow. Angel licked the remainder from his lips, never looking away from Aki's face.
God, no matter what Aki did, it was never enough. Never quite satisfactory beside the allure of real touch. He appraised Angel's face to avoid the discomfort that roiled in his gut. Was it shame? Yearning? Aki refused to unpack it enough to find out, his sense of self-preservation kicking in far too late to do any real good.
"You taste good," Angel said, still staring up at him with something disturbingly soft in his gaze.
"You'll eat anything, I don't exactly trust your sense of taste." Aki reluctantly released Angel's hair, tucking himself back into his slacks. He couldn't look at those eyes anymore. It was too hard to compartmentalize their relationship if he kept looking at Angel that way.
"You seemed to like mine well enough."
Aki paused, embarrassment flushing his face. Angel's mouth quirked up into an almost-smile, mirthful and sincere. He wasn't wrong, but Aki didn't have to give him the satisfaction of confirming it.
"Let's go, you're due back."
The mere mention or returning to Public Safety seemed to wipe the smirk off of Angel's face. He nodded, brushing his hair from his face as he stood. The mask fell back into place, passive and empty. A pit formed in Aki's stomach.
He couldn't help feeling like he'd ruined the moment.
████ ██████ following the death of ███ ████████.
Makima was dead. That was the only explanation for the newfound freedom the Angel Devil possessed. The Control Devil perished and returned to the surface with surprising expediency. The Angel Devil reincarnated in hell. Part of him knew that he belonged down there. Part of him didn't care if he wasted away in hell's rot for the rest of time.
Angel wandered. He steered clear of other devils for the most part. He wasn't interested in picking fights, or doing much of anything, really. Something in him knew to be afraid of the other devils. Many of his counterparts were worth fearing. Those that had never died were reclusive, but terrible. The devils that other devils feared were not to be trifled with.
Frequently, a nagging sensation of having forgotten something lingered in Angel's mind. He could never quite place it, like a word forgotten on the tip of his tongue. It troubled him more than most other things. What was there to bother remembering? He'd died, and he'd returned back to where he was supposed to be.
Yet that feeling tormented him. Something sticky inside of him that refused to move or fade away from his attention. Angel rarely slept, but when he did he dreamt of something that made him wake with a sheen of sweat on his flesh and an ache in his chest.
He dreamt of the surface. Of humans in black suits, of fiends in bondage, and the revving of a chainsaw's engine. More than anything, he dreamt of a single man. Blue eyes with dark, inky hair pulled up into an awkward length on the top of his head. A man with a sword on his back, with scuffed blue sneakers and a sharp tongue.
Sometimes in those dreams, the man would open his mouth to speak, but Angel couldn't hear his voice. Other times, he'd simply dream of a hand in his, of arms holding him, a weight on top of him. He couldn't get those images out of his mind, no matter how much time passed.
Devils changed when they reincarnated. That was the way of the world. Whoever Angel once was didn't matter. Whoever he'd loved, or hated, or killed didn't matter either. Very few things in this world, or the next, did. Still, that belief never put an end to those dreams.
It must have been a kind of torture. A senseless torment designed to inflict some kind of punishment upon him. Did devils earn retribution in death? Angel couldn't remember. He'd never much cared for cosmology, anyway. Perhaps it was the divine essence within him that earned his punishment instead.
Angel continued to dream. Sometimes, he'd wake with the flavor of vanilla on his tongue and the scent of tobacco in his lungs. Other times, he'd dream of the sea and a terrible storm rolling in along the coastline. That was the dream he liked the least.
Hell was vast. The sprawling domains of fear and misery seemingly went on forever. Most devils were desperate to get out. It was true to their nature to seek to walk among the living and consume them. Angel only wandered deeper.
Hell was a way-point. A revolving door. Devils came and went, weak ones especially. Whatever went on in the world of the living shook the foundations of hell too. Terrible times everywhere, it seemed. Still, the business of living people never mattered much to Angel. He was on a different mission entirely.
Hidden among the figures in his subconscious was a fiend. Angel dreamt of the barrel of a gun, sleek and black. Of icy steel and a single, stiff kiss against rigor mortis lips.
The Gun Devil did not reside in hell. Even the weakest of devils knew that much. Its essence was powerful, a fear great enough to bring the waking world to kneel. Its body remained on earth, its spirit accessible to be called upon to wage war and kill.
Still, Angel wandered in search of this gun-shaped devil. Finding them was the only thing he could think to do. The gun itself was the only imagery from Angel's dreams that was actionable. Whoever he dreamt of was not the Gun Devil itself, but someone else entirely.
Who the hell was that, anyway? He couldn't help wondering. That single question moved his feet forward toward layers of hell he had no business walking into.
The deeper he went, the more fearsome were devils he encountered. Hell contained devils so feared they needn't rise to the surface. Ancient, powerful beings that always got their fill of human suffering just by being there.
Angel entered the domain of the Ocean Devil while wandering farther into the depths. Another paradoxical creature much like himself, a giver of life and harbinger of death. A wise being, though a fickle one, too.
They were beautiful, with glittering liquid skin the color of the wine-dark sea. Their eyes were a stormy gray, whirlpools of black at the center that saw through Angel easily.
"Angel Devil, what do you seek?" the Ocean Devil spoke in a voice like the tide, water rasping on sand.
Angel wasn't entirely sure. His visions were vague at best, his descriptions useless. Did he search for a fiend or a human? A soul or a body?
"Where does a fiend made from a fractured devil's flesh go when they pass?" Angel asked. Most devils perished when their inhabited host died. Most devils poured all of themselves into their incarnation, their corpse possession functioning as their body and essence.
Strictly speaking, that was not the case for the Gun Devil. The Gun Devil was cut into pieces, shared and distributed. The Gun Fiend was only a partial representation of the true devil. Angel was convinced of his suspicion that he needed to find the Gun Fiend, wherever he may be.
The Ocean Devil flowed closer. Their watery countenance shimmered, darkening to an abyssal blue. Luminescent particles floated within them. Each light danced in haunting patterns, a dazzling display that nearly distracted Angel from his mission entirely.
"A creature like that ends up in purgatory," the Ocean Devil said. Salty fingertips caressed beneath Angel's chin, tilting his face up to lock eyes with the sea. "A creature like that can neither die, nor become whole. If they perish above, they have no place here or on Earth. They're stuck in limbo, unable to move on."
"How does one enter purgatory?"
The Ocean Devil laughed, airy like a sea breeze, harsh like the squawk of a gull. "You want to see him so badly that you would venture there? Are you certain, dear Angel Devil, that you want to waste your divinity on him?"
Him.
Who was he? A memory ached in Angel's mind, cold and sudden behind his eyes. A pretty man, with eyes more blue than even the Ocean Devil. Hair up, face desperate. They stood by the sea together. Clouds rolled in over the shore, ominous and dark, just like in his dreams.
The man begged, pleading with someone Angel couldn't quite picture. Their eyes met; frightful, terrified. Angel remembered the handle of a blade clenched between his own teeth. He remembered lunging, only to stop short with an agonized scream. As the memory faded, Angel couldn't help the shudder that traveled up his spine.
"Yes, I have to know," Angel gasped, trembling in the Ocean Devil's grasp. They watched him intently, sea foam eyes wide.
"What a curious thing you are," they said, letting go of his chin. "Though perhaps one like you should have ended up there in the first place. Would you like to meet the ruler of purgatory?"
Angel nodded, bowing his head. A row of teeth exposed themselves in the Ocean Devil's mouth, jagged stones and sea cliffs beside pale shells and coral.
"What will it cost?" Nothing between devils was ever free.
"I simply wish to see where the tide takes you; I so rarely enjoy any true entertainment here. I'm sure whatever you find will be quite interesting."
"So be it." Angel extended his hand to the Ocean Devil.
They grasped Angel's palm with a frigid splash. Water wrapped around his hand, spiraling up to his shoulder. A wave crashed over him, filling his lungs with saltwater. Rushing water stung his eyes, searing pain tore through his chest cavity.
Slowly, Angel realized he was going to die.
"Fear not," the Ocean Devil's voice vibrated straight into Angel's mind. "You'll still be you when you get there."