Archive of Our Own

1.

Aki’s hand is heavy with the weight of stolen life. Two months make a cruel blade: a long knife with a slight curve, the silver handle solid and ornately engraved, the life-forged steel coming to an impossibly thin edge that glints in the cold autumn sun. The blade, Angel told Aki, would easily cut through any part of Angel’s body—flesh, bone, and guts alike. It’ll never grow dull, nor will it ever break.

Two months. That’s all it took to make something this deadly.

“Your two months,” Angel said when he presented the knife; Aki still isn’t sure if he was joking.

Now in the wide, empty field, Angel stands still, idly examining his own blade—almost a perfect mirror of Aki’s, made solely to cut him. His eyes flick up to Aki. Despite his bored expression, there’s a light in his eyes, something that taunts and tempts and calls to Aki from across the field.

Come and get me, his eyes say.

Wind cuts against Aki’s skin like a portent, a promise of what’s to come. He runs his thumb over the staring eye engraved on the hilt of his blade. It’s cool to the touch. As he looks at Angel, Aki focuses through his right eye, calling upon Future Devil’s power to see a precious glimpse of the coming battle—but there’s nothing. Aki huffs. Fine, then.

Aki pulls in a deep breath. Finally he stalks forward, watching Angel for a reaction with every step. There’s nothing. Angel doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. He just waits.

Lazy son of a bitch.

Aki’s lips curl. Even in this, he still has to do all of the work. He tightens his grip on the knife and charges Angel.

Aki has never seen Angel fight. With every devil they’ve ever encountered together, the most Angel has ever done is get out of Aki’s way. When he suggested they battle each other, he knew he was going into uncharted territory, that he should expect anything from a devil—they’re tricksters, after all. So when Angel deftly dodges his attack, Aki is ready to counter him; what he wasn’t counting on is how fast Angel can move when he wants to. Before Aki knows it, Angel has dashed past him and left a shallow cut on his side.

Aki gasps at the sting, how it scatters across his every nerve, his body feeling all the more alive for the blood that it’s losing. It’s the most natural feeling in the world. It’s a small wound, one that he struggles to find when he holds his side, but—there—he presses his fingers into it and loses his breath all over again, outrage chasing pleasure chasing pain. Aki snarls as he turns, knife ready to cut Angel back. There’s a spatter of his blood on the grass between him and Angel, who’s perfectly still, almost smiling from across the field.

“Thought you could see the future,” Angel calls out.

The taunting lilt in his voice is too much. Aki rushes Angel again. This time he’s prepared for Angel’s quickness, and he manages to slash Angel’s shoulder, tearing through fabric and skin to reveal the pretty red that lies beneath it all. Angel touches the wound tenderly, like one might touch a mark left by a lover. He laps the blood off his fingers. Their eyes meet and Aki sees his own arousal and bloodlust staring back at him.

They continue circling, rushing, dodging, trading nicks and cuts every time they meet. Each shallow wound makes Aki’s heart beat faster, faster, faster—not just the blows he deals, but the ones he takes, as well. Each one feels like a new reason to live. The pain thrums through him, begging for more bloodshed, whether it be Angel’s or his own. In a matter of minutes he and Angel are covered in small, precious wounds.

Eventually Aki’s blade catches a wing, sending a whirl of halved feathers spiraling into the wind, and Angel screams. It’s blood-chilling. It’s beautiful. Aki wants to hear it again and again, to make that sound echo through the empty field—but then he catches a glimpse of Angel out of the corner of his eye and finds himself backing away. 

Blood wells between Angel’s fingers where he clutches his wing, marring his dove-white feathers with deep red. His whole body heaves as he pants through the pain. But his face shows nothing but pure fury, burning hot in his cheeks and rage-wide eyes, his lips curling back to bare his clenched teeth. From across the field, Aki hears a growl emerge from Angel’s throat.

Aki braces himself. Through his right eye the future flashes, a few seconds’ warning of where Angel will be: feinting to the left, then dashing right, blade aimed to cut across Aki’s chest. Aki counters with his own feint, preparing to block the false attack but sidestepping at the last moment, spinning around to face Angel’s new position—

But Angel is quick. He’s smart. Most of all, he has seen Aki fight. Before Aki even fully turns there’s a knife in his back, a perfect fit between his ribs, cutting his breath short. He coughs, blood splattering on the grass.

The blade hurts worse as it slides out, and even more when Angel stabs him again, mirroring the wound on the other side of his spine. He grits his teeth and wrenches out of Angel’s grasp. Aki lashes out as he spins around—a desperate, stupid move that he doesn’t get a chance to regret before Angel topples him over with a kick, using Aki’s own momentum to knock him onto his back.

Then Angel is looming over him, knife dripping Aki’s blood.

For one moment—the space between two heartbeats—everything stops. Aki didn’t expect this. When Makima told him that Angel was the second-strongest fighter in Division Four, he thought she was just trying to placate him, but…she was right. Angel can fight. Angel can kill. Humanity is lucky that he’s lazy, that he’s compliant; if he ever unleashed this fury, he’d be one of Public Safety’s worst enemies.

But he’s never shown this before. No one else gets to see this side of Angel—this rage is for Aki, and Aki alone. It’s all his. And he wants it.

From the look on his face, Angel wasn’t expecting this, either. But his shock only lasts that half-heartbeat before he dives down and plunges into Aki again and again and again, his blade easily carving through flesh and muscle and bone, turning Aki’s torso into a mess of gore. It’s mere moments before Angel is drenched in Aki’s blood. It matches the deep red of his eyes, burning with delight that Aki has never seen before. He’s smiling. He’s grinning. He lets out a horrible sound, something between a growl and a laugh. Aki can’t even struggle, too overcome with the pain of being ripped apart.

For the first time since they met, Aki is terrified of Angel.

This was a trap. Angel must’ve planned this from the moment he agreed to the contract. Aki should’ve known, should’ve never let his guard down; Angel is a devil, after all, and devils only care for themselves, devils will always betray you, devils only want humans to die in agony—

His thoughts are interrupted by the bright, metallic taste of Angel’s blood on his tongue, spilling from a fresh cut on Angel’s wrist. Aki’s eyes blow wide. He clutches Angel’s arm and licks at the wound desperately, pathetically. Immediately his body starts pulling itself back together: bones filling in cracks, fibers knitting and mending muscles, skin stitching itself closed. It hurts. It hurts almost as much as the wounds did. He welcomes the pain, agony blurring into bliss, relief and rapture filling his lungs as they heal and pulling a groan from his chest. 

He can’t believe Angel saved him. Why wouldn’t he take the opportunity to kill Aki like any other devil would? It doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t make sense. Maybe he just enjoys watching Aki in pain and terror, likes to see him suffer, wants to see how close to death he can bring him.

A shock of rage surges through Aki, even hotter than the pain and pleasure he felt moments before. He jerks back from Angel’s wrist. “You’re gonna fucking pay for that,” he growls.

Angel might be quick, but sometimes, raw strength wins out. In one quick motion Aki twists Angel’s wrist and throws him to the ground, snapping the bone with a beautiful, sickening crack. Angel screams again. Aki smiles. He pins Angel down with an arm braced against his neck, crushing his throat, staying steady as Angel struggles. He claws savagely at Aki’s arm, thrashes his wings, finally tries to land a kick in Aki’s gut, but the movement only gives an opening for Aki to shove a knee between his legs and grind hard against his cunt. Suddenly Angel’s protests falter. A small moan struggles to break free from his throat.

“That’s better,” Aki says. He lets up on Angel’s neck and doubles the pressure between his legs, feeling Angel starting to rock back against him. Once he’s fully distracted, Aki grabs his knife and stabs into one of Angel’s wings.

The scream Angel lets out is electrifying. It makes Aki shiver, a wave of arousal hitting him in the gut, and he presses down—grinds harder, cuts deeper—deeper—until he feels his blade break through the other side of the wing and dig into the ground. He groans when Angel screams his name, raw and ragged with agony. It feels so good. It feels like heaven.

Through his pained panting, Angel spits out, “Let—me—drink—”

Aki doesn’t hear him. It’s his turn to grin, to laugh, to unleash all his rage, to wreak havoc upon Angel’s body and leave him in pieces. He carves into Angel’s other wing, mirroring the first wound, then slashes it again, again, again, sending blood and feathers flying through the air—

And then something tugs hard on Aki’s spine, doubling him over. Pressure crushes him like he’s being held in someone’s fist. He tries to inhale, but all he can do is wheeze horribly. His eyes bulge out of his head, his bones splinter, his lungs collapse, and above it all looms a wretched dread—something is coming for him, and he can’t escape.

“Let me drink,” Angel repeats, and Aki realizes just what exactly the new pain is: the weight of their contract dragging him down, slowly killing him as punishment for not obeying Angel’s command.

Aki manages to growl through clenched teeth and crushed ribs. He slits his palm and slaps it over Angel’s mouth, satisfying and silencing him in one swift movement. The horrifying pain disappears as quickly as it arrived.

“You’re pathetic,” Aki says. His fingers curl into a cruel grip around Angel’s face. “I thought you liked it when it hurts.” His other hand drops the knife and goes for Angel’s pants, clumsily opening them and shoving them down. Slickness shines all over his thighs. Another cruel smile twists Aki’s mouth. “Guess I was right.”

With that, he grabs his knife and stabs Angel’s belly. His nails dig into Angel’s face as he writhes, groaning in pain and pleasure. Aki tosses the blade aside and shoves two fingers in the wound, soaking them with blood before the cut can heal, then forces his fingers deep inside Angel’s cunt. Angel’s eyes roll back. He says something muffled by Aki’s palm.

Aki wrenches his hand out of Angel’s grasp and away from his mouth. “What'd you say?”

Angel’s eyes are wild with want, his chest heaving. “Fuck me.”

Finally. Aki shoves down his pants just enough to pull out his cock. He’s as far gone as Angel, the head of his cock slick with precum and the entire length flushed a deep, aching red. He lines himself up, not meeting Angel’s eyes. Angel’s eager hips press down to push the tip inside. Aki finds more blood—pooled in the hollow of Angel’s throat, dripping off his feathers—and slicks himself up. He takes a deep breath and plunges inside.

Thrusting into Angel’s cunt feels just like stabbing into his flesh. Aki doesn’t even get halfway in with the first thrust, but he has to hold still and catch his breath, already overwhelmed by how Angel feels around him—softer than silk, hotter than hell, welcoming Aki inside with a vise grip around his cock. Angel winces when Aki thrusts again. He ignores it. He can’t think about how this is Angel’s first time. If it were anyone else he’d take it slow, gently pushing inside them and stopping whenever it hurt, but it’s Angel lying beneath him. Angel wants pain. Angel deserves pain. And Aki is all too happy to give it to him.

Once he’s fully sheathed inside Angel, Aki meets his eyes. Despite the pain creased into his face, Angel’s eyes still burn with desire, and he weakly cants up his hips. “C’mon.”

Aki pulls out slowly, cock dragging against Angel’s tight walls, then clumsily thrusts in again. Angel cries out. Aki gives him a small kindness, pressing a hand low on his stomach so he can stroke Angel’s little cock with his thumb. The effect is immediate, pleasure rippling through Angel and squeezing Aki so tight he can’t even move. It feels incredible. He focuses on Angel’s cock, gently rocking his hips as he strokes Angel faster and faster. Angel’s cunt gradually relaxes around him.

As soon as he’s able, Aki starts thrusting again, immediately falling into a fast, brutal rhythm that has Angel clawing at him. He makes the most beautiful sounds when he’s getting fucked like this, moans cut short by cries of pain and tinged with the rawness of a scream. Still Angel wants more, bucking up to fuck himself on Aki’s cock, wrapping Aki up with his arms and legs and wings to bring him even closer. Aki pulls up Angel’s hips as he thrusts and Angel wails, clenching around Aki again.

Aki grits his teeth and shudders, forcing his way through the next thrust. “I’m close,” he warns.

“Already?” Angel asks.

Aki snarls. He thrusts sharply, hitting Angel’s sweet spot hard enough to make him yelp. “Shut your fucking mouth.”

Angel smiles up at him, mocking, lips still red with Aki’s blood. Aki hates him and wants him all at once—he wants to slit Angel’s throat, wants to break his neck, wants to fill him up—

So he buries himself to the hilt and sinks his teeth into Angel’s neck and digs his fingers in Angel’s plush, bloodied wings, letting out a deep groan as he empties himself inside Angel's cunt. Nothing else compares to this, not choking Angel or pulling his hair or cutting him wide open. It’s better than Aki ever imagined. He rocks his hips to ride his orgasm out.

When he pulls back, Angel is pouting. “I didn’t come.”

Aki wraps a hand around Angel’s throat, thumbing the mark where he bit down, admiring the broken vessels that blossomed there. Angel’s pulse jumps. “Guess we’ll just have to keep going, then.”

“Good.” Angel glances at Aki’s lips and pulls him in. Aki lets himself be kissed, tasting his own blood in Angel’s sweet mouth, then gives in and kisses back. It quickly turns into another battle, trading sharp bites and the blood that flows as a result. Aki moans as he presses even deeper inside Angel.

He can’t wait to see all the ways they can destroy each other.

v.

“A contract?”

“So I can actually touch you.” Aki stares straight ahead, arms crossed, bracing himself against the autumn wind as it blows through the park. He sees Angel shiver out of the corner of his eye. “If we’re going to keep this up, I’d rather not risk dying just to fuck you.”

“What do I get?”

“Me touching you.”

“That’s not enough,” Angel says dismissively.

“Like hell it’s not.” Aki finally looks at Angel, who’s huddled on the opposite side of the bench, wings swaddled around himself like a blanket. Despite the growing cold, he’s happily lapping at an ice cream cone he’d whined for Aki to buy him. “I do all the work. It’s more than equal.”

Angel gives him a level look. He slowly licks his ice cream; Aki tries not to watch too closely. “It sure seems like you want it more than I do.”

Heat floods Aki’s face. “Shut up,” he growls. When Angel actually follows the order and doesn’t respond, Aki sighs, looking ahead again. “What do you want?”

“Mm…” Angel is quiet, considering. Then: “Your blood. Whenever I want it.”

“What?” Aki fully turns toward Angel this time. “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s worth way more than—”

“Think of something else you want, then,” Angel says.

Aki pauses. There is something he wants, almost desperately, though he’s loath to admit it. It’s a desire that’s burned inside him in the weeks since he first touched Angel, but…saying it out loud would make it too real. It’d mean he can no longer deny that he’s the kind of person who longs for such horrible things.

Finally, he quietly admits, “I want to hurt you.”

The response is immediate, like it’s been waiting in Angel’s throat. “Then I get to hurt you back.”

Aki stares at Angel, waiting for the punchline, but it never comes. He blinks. “...Are you joking?”

“No.”

“No way. I can’t heal like you do. If you hurt me too badly, you’ll kill me.”

Angel laps at his ice cream. “What if you could?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if you could heal by drinking blood?” Angel asks. He speaks in his usual monotone, but his eyes are sharp and bright. “My blood?”

Aki looks away again. He wants to say no—well, he wishes he wanted to say no. In reality, the idea of tasting Angel’s blood is intoxicating. It makes him hungry. Blood tasted means blood spilled, means opening Angel up, means really hurting him, the way that Aki has fantasized about in his darkest moments. He knows it’s sick; he’s told himself that over and over. But since this whole thing between them started, since he discovered how much Angel liked pain—and how much Aki himself liked dealing it out—he’s been consumed with thoughts of hurting Angel, ruining him, bringing him to the brink of that death he claims to want over and over.

What he really wants is within reach. He just has to take it.

“Would that work?” he finally asks.

Angel shrugs. “I don’t see why not.”

Aki meets Angel’s eyes. He pulls in a deep breath. “Okay.”

"Okay?”

“I agree to those terms,” Aki says. “Your blood heals me, and your touch won’t steal my lifespan. In exchange, you…you get to drink my blood.”

“Whenever I want,” Angel adds.

Aki huffs, fighting an eye roll. “Yes. Whenever you want.”

Angel hums in contentment. He returns his attention to his ice cream, pressing his tongue inside the cone to lap up everything he can before popping the whole cone in his mouth, and licks each of his fingers. Aki’s heart climbs into his throat, already begging to see Angel bleed.

Agitated, Aki stands up. “We need to test it.”

Angel looks at him for a moment, expression unreadable—is that glint in his eyes fear or desire?—then pushes off the bench. “Fine.”

The alley they find is familiar and unknown all at once. After weeks of sneaking off together, all their hideaways have started to feel the same, and yet this ordinary alleyway holds more promises within its dark and filthy depths than anywhere they’ve been before. Angel’s halo thrums with possibility, illuminating the grime on the bricks and the depravity in Aki’s mind: images of Angel bruised and bleeding by Aki’s bare hands, of Angel moaning in agony and in ecstasy. Finally, a chance to give this brat some real consequences.

Once they’re away from the street, Angel flares out his wings to cover them and leans against the wall. He looks up at Aki expectantly. “Well?”

Carefully, Aki peels off one of his gloves and tucks it in his pocket, watching Angel watch the movement. He steps closer, nearly pressing their bodies together. Their eyes meet. They both hold their breath as Aki’s bare hand reaches for Angel’s cheek. He stops just short of touching him, suddenly hesitant, then gathers his courage with an inhale and taps Angel’s cheek. Not even a second of contact, but enough to know whether the contract worked.

“Anything?” Aki asks.

In lieu of a response, Angel grabs Aki’s wrist and places Aki’s hand back on his cheek, leaning into the touch. Aki exhales sharply. It worked. He spreads his fingers, one tucking under Angel’s jaw to trap his racing heartbeat while his thumb slips between Angel’s lips. Angel dutifully takes it in, closing his eyes and humming as he sucks hard, clutching Aki’s wrist in a bruising grip like Aki’s touch is the only thing keeping him alive—like he wants to be alive. It almost makes Aki’s heart hurt, watching Angel devour every little touch that he’s given.

Angel’s eyes open slowly. They shine with hunger, staring at Aki’s throat. He pulls Aki’s thumb from his mouth. “Let me taste.”

Aki wants to hesitate, just to see what would happen—to see how prettily he could make Angel beg—but his eagerness wins out. He finds the utility knife he keeps in his suit jacket and flips it open. The edge of the blade shines sharp with promise. He makes a quick cut on his wrist, and before he can even offer his arm Angel surges forward, clutching Aki’s wrist and bringing it to his mouth. 

Aki is used to pain. He’s used to giving pieces of himself away. It’s the life of a devil hunter—contracts always require a sacrifice of some kind, whether it be flesh or senses or time. At this point, pain is a boring fact of his life. But this…this is different. Even though this is part of a contract, that contract isn’t for Aki’s job. It’s for pleasure. And watching that pleasure bloom on Angel’s face…hearing his moan rumble against his skin…feeling his tongue pressing against the wound, trying to get in, to go inside him…it’s incredible. Doling out pain for the purpose of pleasure is new enough for Aki, but receiving it is something he never dreamed of—and even if he had, his dreams wouldn’t compare.

Angel squeezes Aki’s wrist, forcing out one last well of blood. He licks up the length of the wound before finally dropping Aki’s wrist. A few precious drops spill onto the ground. Angel watches them fall, and Aki watches Angel, still transfixed by the hunger he can see all over his face and the small smear of red on the corner of his mouth. Aki’s want moves through him, making him cup Angel’s face and wipe the blood away with his thumb. He presses it inside Angel’s mouth again. His hum of satisfaction reverberates through every hollow in Aki’s body.

Angel pulls the thumb from his mouth and nods to the utility knife in Aki’s hand. “Your turn.”

This time, Aki hesitates. Maybe it’s from fear. He’s not sure what he’s afraid of—maybe there’s some consequence for drinking devil blood that he’s about to find out. More than that, he’s afraid of just how excited he is to open Angel up. He’s afraid of what he might be about to awaken.

But Aki has faced greater fears than this, so he grabs one of Angel’s wrists, finds a pretty, blue vein, and cuts into him. He can see Angel’s pulse jump, the blood flowing more eagerly as his heart picks up speed. Angel’s blood looks just like Aki’s. It looks human. And Aki has spat up his own blood enough times to know what human blood tastes like.

There’s nothing to be afraid of, he tells himself. So Aki brings Angel’s wrist to his lips, closes his eyes, and drinks.

Immediately he makes a small noise of surprise. It’s not like the raw iron of his own blood—it’s sterling silver, gleaming bright in his mouth like a precious treasure. It tastes…good. He can’t suppress his shudder. He squeezes Angel’s wrist just to get more blood to spill, lapping it up like he’s hungered for this his whole life, then gives in and latches on to the wound so he can suck the blood right from Angel’s vein, moaning as it flows freely into his eager mouth. His stomach twists. He shouldn’t enjoy this, especially not this much, his heart pounding and arousal stirring in his core. What would their coworkers think if they saw him right now?

They won’t ever need to know, he decides. They wouldn’t understand.

There’s a strange ache in Aki’s wounded wrist, another new kind of pain that makes him pause. He lifts his arm to see the cut disappearing before his eyes.

“Amazing…” he whispers.

At Aki’s pause, Angel takes back his own arm. He stares at Aki's wrist. “I want more.”

Aki is even more eager this time. He nicks his wrist again and brings it to Angel’s mouth. Angel laves at the cut slowly, relishing both Aki’s blood and the sensation of touch. His eyes flutter shut as he sucks hard on the wound, a soft noise escaping him, and he looks—he looks—

Aki jerks away. Angel licks his lips and opens his eyes, staring up at Aki, just watching. Waiting. Aki can’t help himself, not when he’s riding such a high, the thrills of power and hunger singing in his blood—his blood, finally alive; his blood, ready to be spilled; his blood, all over Angel’s rude, smart, gorgeous mouth—

Aki can’t help himself. He kisses Angel.

Of everything they’ve done together, this somehow feels like the most illicit act of all. Angel moans, a sweet sound, clutching fists in Aki’s suit jacket to pull him closer. Aki feels sick. He can’t stop. He tastes his own blood in Angel’s mouth, and beneath that the sickly sweetness of ice cream, and beneath that…something, something that draws him in, makes him deepen the kiss, licking into Angel’s mouth to get at that incredible taste. It takes much too long for the realization to hit him: that taste is Angel, just Angel, finally with no barriers between them.

Aki jolts away again, his breathing ragged. His body so badly wants to keep going, but he denies himself and steps back, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He stares at the mess left behind, his own blood indistinguishable from Angel’s. It makes him want to spill even more.

“What now?” Angel asks.

Aki looks at him and sees all the ways he could hurt Angel, all the places he could cut and claw and bite—yet, in the same moment, he sees the ways he could bring Angel bliss. Pain and pleasure, now impossibly intertwined.

“I have an idea,” Aki says.

2.

Before Angel, Aki never truly appreciated the beauty of bloodshed. Violence was a means to an end—the means by which Aki’s life was ruined and by which he would live the rest of it, dutifully marching to whatever end awaited him. He’d never considered the pleasure that could exist alongside the pain. He’d never listened to the story that every wound weaves. But here in the field, looming over Angel and pressing a blade into his gut, Aki understands. He knows.

This is the closest he’ll ever be to anyone.

Angel’s wound grows, his blood soaking through both their clothes where their bodies are pressed together. By the end of the assault Aki’s whole hand is submerged, tucked inside the warm wreckage he has wrought. He can feel Angel’s pounding heart mere inches from his fingers. His own heart pounds, too, as he tilts the blade to push deeper and Angel chokes, wheezing, coughing blood onto Aki’s face. Aki licks his lips. He can’t help the cruel, teeth-baring smile that follows. 

Aki pulls back and waits. He watches. Angel tries to look brave, eyes striving so hard to stay open despite the pain, but it’s only a matter of time…any moment now—

—and there, there’s his favorite part: the spark of fear in Angel’s eyes, the moment where he thinks Aki might actually kill him this time. It makes Aki’s cock throb. He surges forward and licks into Angel’s sweet mouth, relishing the tastes of both their blood combined on Angel’s tongue. Even as he chokes, Angel kisses back, a moan of Aki’s name drowning in his ruined lungs. Aki sighs. He moves his blade in and out of Angel's gut, mimicking the rocking of his hips as he grinds on Angel’s thigh.

With his eyes closed and so many pleasures distracting him, Aki doesn’t notice Angel’s hand searching for his knife in the dead grass. He can’t see the future that awaits him. One moment Angel is kissing back; the next he’s lashing out with the knife as he bites down on Aki’s tongue, carving a deep, welling wound in Aki’s shoulder and filling both their mouths with yet more blood.

“Fuck!” Aki jerks back, pulling the knife out of Angel in the process. Angel’s nails dig into his shoulder to keep him from getting too far.

“Let me drink,” Angel commands hoarsely, barely intelligible. Aki obeys with gritted teeth, pulling Angel in close to let him latch on to his new wound.

His eyes flutter shut with a sigh as Angel drinks. He clutches Angel closer, fingers knotting in his bloodied hair, encouraging him to drink more—and more—and more—groaning when Angel’s tongue presses inside to lap blood straight from the vein, the sensation sending a bolt of want straight to his cock.

“Fuck…” Aki says, this time as a wanting sigh. 

Angel hums, his tongue pressing deeper. One of his hands claws at Aki, finding his throat and digging nails into his flesh, barely breaking the skin—a half-hearted threat that makes Aki shiver and groan all the same. Aki grips Angel’s wrist tight and guides the hand down to his aching length. Angel’s touch doesn’t soften; if anything, he gets rougher, pawing desperately at Aki through his pants.

The sex is almost secondary these days. More than anything, Aki looks forward to their trips for the horrible things they do to each other—that they could never do to anyone else. Aki could go to a bar and pick up a guy any night, but these hours he spends with Angel are special. Not that they mean anything, but…no one else would ever let Aki do this. No one else would ever do this to Aki. No one else could make him feel the way Angel does, for better or for worse. The thought makes him sick.

Aki breaks free of Angel’s grasp and shoves down Angel’s pants. Just like with Aki, it takes barely any actual touching to get Angel riled up—their fights are foreplay enough for them. Aki dives in. The taste of Angel’s cunt is a potent distraction from the bile rising in his throat, and with Angel’s moans filling his ears, Aki doesn’t have to hear the sound of his own pounding, uncertain heart. He can ignore the strange-yet-familiar feeling rising in his chest. All that matters now is this moment: the pleasure that precedes the pain, existing only to make the agony feel that much sweeter.

That’s what Aki tells himself, anyway.

3.

Aki watches the sky as Angel climbs off of him, his head spinning and chest heaving, the sunset’s brilliant colors blurring together in a hazy glow. His heart beats weakly in his ears. Though his wounds have healed, his flesh now unmarred, his contract with Angel can’t remedy blood loss; sometimes Angel takes too much—sometimes Aki gives too much. And now his afterglow is being ruined by his body desperately trying to reach a point of stability.

Another light appears in the corner of his vision, closer but dimmer than the setting sun; faintly, he recognizes it as Angel’s halo. The devil comes into view, peering over Aki curiously. Maybe. Aki can’t really make out his face. Angel says something, but he sounds so far away, Aki can’t understand him.

“Wh…” Aki tries to speak, but it only sends a shooting pain through his head. He clenches his eyes shut.

“—re you gonna get up?” Angel’s words come into focus mid-sentence, echoing in the darkness.

“I…” Aki exhales. His fingers curl in the dead grass, wishing for the strength to even sit upright, but he knows better than to try. Even the slightest movement makes him feel weaker. If he tried to get up right now, he’d only fall back to the ground in a pathetic heap. “I just…need a second.”

“Here.”

Aki cracks his eyes open to see Angel closing in, gripping Aki’s shoulder and sliding his other arm under Aki’s back, their bodies pressed together as he helps Aki sit up. The world spins. Aki closes his eyes again, his stomach twisting, but manages to steady himself with his hands braced on the ground—then Angel lets him go and he lurches, nearly tumbling backward.

A wing unfurls to catch him. It’s surprisingly strong, easily holding him up, and Aki collapses against it, fully surrendering to the wing’s embrace with a groan. It wraps completely around both of them, shielding them from the late-winter wind.

“I don’t think you can drive like this,” Angel says.

“I just need a second,” Aki repeats. He tucks his head against Angel’s shoulder. The wing is nice and warm, and Angel is warm, and Aki almost feels safe here, his heartbeat growing calm and breaths becoming steady. They sit in silence for a while—maybe a minute, maybe an hour. 

A hesitant hand brushes Aki’s face. In the daze of blood loss, Aki presses into it. When was the last time someone touched him like this? So gently, so tenderly—

Then he remembers, and his eyes snap open. He sits up, trying not to tremble from the effort of keeping himself upright, and pulls as far away from Angel as he can while they’re trapped by the wing.

“What are you doing?” he asks, more a threat than a question.

As always, Angel’s expression is unreadable. “Helping you.”

“Well, quit it. I don’t need your pity.” Aki stumbles as he stands up, the motion making the world spin all over again, Angel’s form blurring into the sunset sky. Despite every part of his body telling him to stop, he forces himself to start towards the car.

Angel follows him. “It’s not pity.”

“Whatever.”

Somehow Aki reaches the car. He fumbles with the key, missing the lock as his vision blurs again, and suddenly Angel’s hand is there to guide him. He shoulders Angel away. The ringing in his ears drowns out the sound of Angel falling to the ground.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Aki spits.

He just about falls into his seat and slams the car door behind him. His head drops back, eyes closing. The sound of the passenger door opening makes him wince.

Angel’s voice comes through, muffled by the headache throbbing through Aki’s entire skull. “You wanted me to touch you earlier.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

That’s something Aki can’t explain even when he isn’t on the edge of passing out again. He opens his eyes, finding the world is still enough for him to jam the key in the ignition and start the car. “It just is.”

4.

The field is quiet. Calm. There’s blood spattered all over the grass and a trail of clothes that leads to where Aki and Angel lie together, catching their breath. Angel strokes Aki’s bare chest, fingers trailing lightly over his heart, leaving their combined blood smeared over his skin. He spreads his hand wide and digs in his nails, grabbing like he might reach right through Aki’s chest. Blood wells up under his nails.

“I want to eat your heart,” he says.

Aki’s pulse skips. It should be from fear. It’s not. “You’d have to kill me.”

“Mmm…nah. It wouldn’t be the same.” Angel leans down and kisses Aki’s chest, finding each tiny wound where his nails bit into his flesh and lapping up the pinpricks of blood. His words rasp against Aki’s skin. “I’d want you alive.”

Aki doesn’t respond. He stares at Angel’s mouth, at his bloodstained lips and the shining teeth behind them.

“Would you let me eat you alive?” Angel asks. His pretty mouth moves so sweetly around such dangerous words.

Aki should say no, but the truth is that it’s something he’s thought about before. He’s imagined those teeth digging into him—his shoulders, his thighs, his neck—and ripping him apart piece by piece, leaving him utterly ruined. He’s imagined Angel forcing him open. He’s imagined Angel inside him, delving deeper and deeper until he reaches Aki’s core. It would intertwine them in the deepest way possible. And somewhere, in the dark recesses of his heart, he wants that.

Aki should say no. But Aki is a fool. “Yes,” he says softly.

Eyes dark and halo bright, Angel moves up and leans in, his lips brushing Aki’s. “Will you let me?”

Aki exhales slowly. He finds Angel’s knife and presses it into his hand, then guides him down, the tip of the blade dragging along Aki’s skin and leaving a faint line of red that leads from the center of his chest to just above his navel, almost parallel to his scar from Katana Man.

“Do it,” Aki says.

Angel searches Aki’s face. He kisses Aki, just once, a moment of sweetness that makes Aki jolt in surprise. Aki breaks away. He squeezes Angel’s hand, urging him, and Angel finally pulls back and shifts down, stradling Aki’s thigh as he cuts into Aki’s belly.

Aki barely registers the wound. He’s been cut open more times than he can count, many of them by Angel’s hand, and the feeling has shifted from the excitement of a new lover to the comfort of an old friend. It’s anticipation, not pain, that makes him hold his breath. It’s excitement. Desire. His heart pounds with it, forcing fresh blood from the well of the wound that Angel eagerly licks up.

Angel sets his blade aside and gives Aki one last look, one last chance to back out. Aki doesn’t take it. He waits in silence, unmoving, and watches Angel close his eyes and open his mouth wide.

The initial wound was familiar, but the bite—the moment Angel’s teeth sink into the lip of the wound, capture a chunk of flesh, and tear it away—that is brand new, a sharp, hot agony that shoots down his spine—wrenches a breathless shout from his chest—bolts to his cock, making it jerk in Angel’s grasp. It’s incredible. It’s perfect. His whole body arches, a ripple of ecstasy chasing the pain and leaving him dizzy. He thought he knew what pleasure and pain were, knew all the twisted ways they intertwine like veins and arteries, but now he sees that he knew nothing. Nothing could compare to this. Nothing could compare to being consumed.

Just below the ringing in his ears, Aki hears Angel hum through a mouthful of blood as he pulls back from the wound, his eyes shining bright and black with new hunger. He holds Aki’s gaze as he swallows. Aki finally exhales. They’ve crossed a line, gone beyond anything Aki ever thought he’d do—anything he ever thought he’d want—but God, did he want this. God, does he want more.

But Angel moves away from the wound now, ducking down to give Aki’s aching length some much-needed attention. He strokes Aki slowly, thoughtfully, then squeezes the head, forcing a thick bead of precum from his slit. He laps it up as eagerly as Aki’s blood.

“Mmm…” Angel takes Aki into his mouth, sucking hard on the head before diving down and taking Aki’s entire length in his hot, tight throat. Aki groans. Though he wants more of Angel's violence, he can’t deny how good this feels, too. Angel slides a hand up to cup Aki’s side, thumb rubbing the edge of the wound, a sweet reminder of the pain that pairs perfectly with the pleasure of his mouth—humming around Aki’s cock, nuzzling the dark curls at the base before finally coming up for air. He meets Aki’s gaze, thumb dipping into the wound as he sucks the head of his cock. Aki isn’t sure which pleasure is greater.

“You taste good here,” Angel says, squeezing another drop of precum onto his tongue. He drops Aki’s cock and hovers over the glistening wound. “But I like this a lot better.”

He sinks down like a predator, tongue laving the edges of Aki’s wound before sliding right inside, pushing in like he’s searching for something within Aki’s depths. Aki’s eyes roll back. Every nerve is on fire, spikes of pain radiating from the wound as Angel works his tongue deeper, thrusting in and out like he’s fucking Aki—yet Aki is starting to lose feeling, too, all the sensation overloading his brain, the pain gradually becoming an anaesthetic. This is shock, he thinks. I’m going into shock.

“More,” he chokes out.

Angel’s halo brightens. His teeth sink into Aki again, this time catching some muscle along with the skin, and Aki cries out—something between a scream and a moan—as agony overpowers the encroaching numbness. His cock jerks against his stomach. Almost absentmindedly, Angel takes Aki in hand, lazily stroking him as he continues widening Aki’s wound. Aki barely keeps himself from falling over the edge.

He won’t come from this. Not yet. Not when there’s so much more of him for Angel to consume.

Angel buries his face inside Aki, just like Aki so often buries his face between Angel’s legs. He lets out a low moan. Aki can feel it reverberating through him, echoing in his abdominal cavity and the chambers of his heart, thrumming through the muscle and connective tissue that Angel has exposed to the cool spring air. The sound keeps him grounded, connects him to the pain, to Angel: Angel is eating him alive and enjoying it, grinding his dripping cunt against Aki’s thigh as he closes his teeth around something—some part of Aki that he can’t identify—and bites, tears, chews, swallows, devours. Aki lets out a raw, ragged scream, back arching and cock throbbing as the white-hot agony claws through every nerve.

Darkness threatens Aki’s vision. He pulls in a gasp and shudders, threading his weak, needy fingers through Angel’s hair. He doesn’t want to stop. He doesn’t want this to end. It feels too good to be consumed like this—for pleasure and pleasure alone—but his body is panicking, extremities tingling with numbness and heartbeat growing faint. If he’s going to survive this, it can’t go on any longer.

“Ang…” he slurs. Then his mouth stops working. He can’t feel anything, can’t move a muscle. The void creeps in further and further, leaving only the beacon of Angel’s halo—so bright, a light that will guide Aki straight to hell—until eventually, even that fades into darkness.

The next thing he’s aware of is Angel’s blood spilling into his mouth. It’s brighter and sweeter than it has any right to be, and he chokes in surprise at the taste before he manages to swallow it down. His eyes open. He locks in on Angel’s face, searching past the blood. There’s a new hunger lurking in Angel’s wide eyes and parted lips.

“Bite me,” he says.

Aki pulls back from Angel’s wounded arm. “What?”

“It’s your turn.” Angel presses his arm against Aki’s mouth insistently. “Bite me.”

Aki hesitates. He’s thought about this, too, but…differently. He always imagined it happening by accident, maybe while he’s buried in Angel and lost in his pleasure and rage, biting down on his neck and ripping out his throat just to see if he could still scream. He never thought Angel would ask for it.

He takes Angel’s arm in his hands, running a thumb along the wound, then pulling it open to look inside. All he can see is more blood. He licks his lips. He surges forward. His teeth catch the lip of the wound, and he digs in, harder, harder, feeling Angel’s flesh fill his mouth, closing his eyes when the sweetness hits him, moaning as his teeth close down—almost hitting bone—and break free. It’s done. Aki holds a piece of Angel in his mouth, hot and alive, and that heat spreads through Aki’s whole body when he swallows. He gasps for air while Angel screams.

Angel’s other hand finds Aki’s hair and clutches it, holding him in place—no, pushing on his head, urging him to keep going, to take more, to take all of him. Aki feels sick with hatred and want and fear and need, but he bites down again and swallows another piece anyway. He doesn’t know how to say no to Angel. Not when he’s whining so sweetly, and especially not when he looks like that. Aki wonders if this is what he looked like while Angel was eating him alive: completely peaceful despite the agony, eyes rolling back and cheeks flushing, mouth dropped open on a low moan. Utterly enraptured, utterly divine.

Aki’s stomach twists. He can’t stand to look at that face for another second.

“Turn around,” he growls, shoving Angel’s arm away.

“What?”

“Turn around.” 

“Wh—ahh!”

Aki cuts Angel off by grabbing him and spinning him around, sending feathers flying. He clutches Angel close, feeling the soft feathers at the base of his wings press against his chest and stick to the blood covering his skin. As Angel squirms in his grasp, Aki reaches around, lines his cock up with Angel’s entrance, and thrusts inside him. This pleasure is familiar. It grounds him, steadying the world as Angel takes him in. Angel flinches away from the sudden intrusion with a cry. Aki nearly slips out of his wet cunt, but he just wraps both hands around Angel’s waist and forces him down, spearing him on Aki’s entire length. Angel yelps.

“That’s it,” Aki hisses in his ear. “Take it all.”

“A—Aki—” Angel whines. He goes limp in Aki’s grasp, letting him set a steady pace of deep, brutal thrusts. “Oh—oh, f-fuck—”

“This is why you want me alive, isn’t it?” Aki punctuates the question with a particularly sharp thrust, aiming right for Angel’s sweet spot; judging by the sound Angel makes and the way his walls clutch Aki’s cock, he succeeds. “I can’t fuck you if I’m dead.”

Angel actually laughs. “Rigor mortis,” he chokes out. “I could ride you until you rot.”

“Fuck.” Aki clenches his eyes shut, his cock throbbing at the image—the thought that Angel would stay even if he killed Aki, that Angel would use his body for as long as he could. He pulls Angel down into the next thrust.

Angel shudders in Aki’s grasp. His words are strained, barely escaping between the sounds of pleasure that spill from his lips. “More blood.”

Aki groans. His hand fumbles in the grass, grabbing the first blade he finds and clumsily slitting his palm. Angel clutches Aki’s arm and latches onto the wound. His own gnawed wrist quickly heals, the evidence of Aki’s most depraved deed disappearing before his eyes. Angel licks into the wound, nipping the edge of it, teasing Aki with that twisted pleasure he was given before. Aki buries his face in Angel’s neck, desperately lapping up the blood there—his own blood, tasting of harsh iron—as he rushes toward his peak.

“You wouldn’t get this if I died,” Aki says. He thrusts faster, trying to shake Angel’s composure, but Angel just moans into his palm as he keeps drinking. “You could fuck my corpse, you could rip me apart, but you’d never get this again. Wouldn’t—nngh—get to drink from me while I fill you up—”

Angel hums. Aki’s hand dives to stroke his little cock, matching the movement with a set of hard, deep thrusts. Aki grins at the gasp he wrenches from Angel’s throat and the flutter of pleasure that surges through his cunt.

“Do it,” Angel says, breathless, his voice trembling. “Prove that you’re worth keeping alive.”

His teeth sink into Aki’s flesh. Aki hurtles right over the edge.

He almost whites out, just barely holding onto consciousness as his orgasm overtakes him. He feels Angel coming around him, but he can’t hear anything over the blood pounding in his ears—blood that’s full of life, desperate to be spilled, irreparably mixed with Angel’s. They’re locked together forever. In the throes of all-consuming pleasure, Aki accepts this wholly, too overcome to fight his feelings. He hides his soft, tender moan in the crook of Angel’s neck.

And then it’s over. His cock slips out of Angel with a messy pop. Over Angel’s shoulder, Aki watches the flood of their combined cum spilling out of him, mixing with both their blood as it drips onto the grass. Some primal part of him wants to push it all back inside, keep Angel full in as many ways as he can. Instead, he releases his grip on Angel to let him slide off and sit beside Aki in the mess they made.

Angel pauses, looking unsure. His lips part around a thought unvoiced. He carefully lays a hand on Aki’s stomach, brushing over the freshly healed skin, tracing the shape of the wound that he tore into Aki. The gentle touch feels nearly as foreign as the sensation of Angel biting down. Avoiding Aki’s eyes, Angel leans down and kisses the place where his teeth first sank in. Aki shivers. The kiss echoes through his whole body, shuddering along every nerve, making his skin tingle. Yet again he feels sick, not only from Angel’s closeness but from the reaction he has to it—the way his heart stirs with warmth, even without the rush of desire egging it on.

Aki’s body is not his own as he reaches out for Angel. He watches his fingers wrap around Angel’s wrist, holding it in a gentle grip like it might break—like he’s afraid of breaking Angel, despite how many times he’s taken joy from it before. He watches himself bring Angel’s arm to his mouth. He watches himself kiss the place where his teeth tore into flesh only minutes before. The moment his lips touch Angel's skin, everything comes rushing back, drowning him in feelings he doesn’t understand and doesn’t want but can never get rid of for long. He grits his teeth and winces like he’s been cut wide open again.

Dropping Angel’s arm, Aki rolls over and stands up. “Let’s go. The sun’s setting. Headquarters will be expecting us to report back soon.”

Angel stays still, watching Aki gather their clothes, only getting up when Aki shoots him a sharp glare. His face is impossible to read. “Fine.”

5.

One morning, they’re about to head out on patrol when Makima pokes her head out of her office. “Hayakawa, could I speak with you for a moment?”

“Of course.” Aki glances at Angel over his shoulder. “You wait here.”

Angel slumps against the wall. “Fine.”

When Aki steps inside her office, Makima is sitting behind her desk. “Shut the door, please,” she says.

Aki pauses. With Makima, it’s always impossible to tell what she’s thinking. Her voice is deceptively soft, eerily gentle, a near-monotone that once soothed Aki but now just unsettles him. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he finally says, shutting the door behind him and walking over to her desk, clasping his hands behind his back. “May I ask what this is regarding?”

“Angel,” she says, and Aki’s blood runs cold.

It’s all he can do to keep his voice level. “What about him?”

“You two have been buddies for almost a year now.” She rests her head on her hand, eyes wide and pondering. “You’ve grown close, haven’t you?”

Aki glances away. A drop of sweat runs down the back of his neck. “As close as I could ever get to a devil.”

“I suppose your contract must help with that.”

Aki freezes. How does she know? How much does she know? “Miss Makima, I—”

“It’s all right, Aki. It only makes sense.”

Carefully, Aki looks back at her. “It does?”

“Of course.” She drums her fingers against her cheek. “You don’t have much time left to live, and Angel’s power makes him a danger to you. You simply found a way to protect yourself.”

Sure. Let’s go with that. Aki clears his throat, swallowing down his panic. “I’m sorry that I didn’t go through the proper channels,” he says. “I’ll fill out the paperwork today.”

“Though I appreciate that, it’s not why I asked to see you.” She lifts her head and folds her hands on her desk. “I’d like for Angel to move in with you, Denji, and Power.”

“What?” Panic floods Aki’s veins all over again, his stomach twisting. He stutters as he struggles to compose himself. “I—I’m sorry, ma'am, but I don’t think that’s—”

“I’m sorry, Aki, but it’s not a request,” Makima says, a sudden edge to her voice, so subtle Aki almost doesn’t register it. “He’s been living here in Public Safety headquarters since he began working with the Special Division, and I think he’s grown tired of it. It’s similar to when Power moved in with you.”

Aki knows he’s fighting a losing battle, but he’s used to that. “There isn’t anywhere else you could put him?”

“Doesn’t housing him with his buddy make the most sense?” Makima asks. “Besides, it’d be difficult to find anyone willing to rent a space to a devil, even if it were on behalf of the government. And with your contract keeping you safe, there’s no one in your home who could be harmed by Angel’s power.”

“But—”

She tilts her head. “Is there a reason you’re so against this idea?”

Is there?

Aki opens his mouth, trying to think of something to say, but nothing comes. Not even the truth. He can’t place a reason behind his resistance—not one that makes sense, anyway. What could he possibly be afraid of?

Defeated, Aki drops his head. “No. There isn’t.” He bows slightly. “He can move in with us. Power’s old room is open.”

Makima just smiles. Once Aki would’ve been hypnotized, but now it just seems calculating, almost sinister. “Look at this as an opportunity, Aki,” she says. “You’ve proven yourself by getting Angel to form a contract with you. This is your chance to bring him even closer.”

iv.

It was only a matter of time before something made Aki break. For Angel, it’s just another complaint; for Aki, it’s another insult, another slap in the face of everyone he’s ever lost, another piece of proof that Aki should’ve let Angel just blow away.

They’re finishing a devil corpse drop-off when it happens. Aki is exhausted, splattered with blood, streaks of it growing thick and dry on his shirt and slacks. At least he managed to get most of it off the leather gloves he now wears—he’s not going to lose another second of his life for Angel. He sends Angel a glare as they walk back to their patrol area.

“You were no help at all,” Aki says. “I don’t know why we keep you around when you won’t even help carry a body.”

“It’s not my fault I’m still here,” Angel says. “You’re the one who saved me. You should’ve just let me die like I wanted.”

That’s it.

Damning caution, Aki grabs Angel’s shoulder, drags him into the closest alley—a tight fit, barely enough room for both of them—and slams him against the wall. There’s a crack when Angel’s head hits the brick, accompanied by a sharp cry from Angel, but Aki doesn’t even register it. He wraps his hand around Angel’s throat and squeezes.

“You ungrateful piece of shit,” he spits. “I’ve seen dozens of good people die, people who actually deserved to live, and you can’t even be thankful for the second chance I gave you. You’re worse than useless. I should just kill you.”

There’s the same look in Angel’s eyes as the night Aki saved him: a readiness, an acceptance, looking death in the face and beckoning it closer. “Do it,” he says, his voice rough. “I told you I’m ready to die.”

Maybe that’s the reason Aki doesn’t kill him, won’t ever kill him: the fact that he wants to die. It’s not a punishment if he’s begging for it. It’s not a consequence. It’s a reward. And besides…even though Aki would never admit it aloud, his death threats have always been empty. Killing Angel would be like giving up.

At a loss, Aki eases his hold on Angel’s throat. Angel inhales. His heart flutters under Aki’s grip, but not with fear—Aki has never seen Angel afraid, but he’s sure this isn’t what it would look like. This almost looks like…desire.

A desire that mirrors Aki’s, much as he denies it.

Aki doesn’t know why he makes his next move. It almost feels like some unseen force is pulling him closer. But something about the way Angel is looking at him, the way Angel’s body feels against his own, makes him shove one of his legs between Angel’s thighs. Angel’s eyes widen, a gasp catching in his throat. Another sound follows when Aki starts grinding against him: a moan, low-pitched and quiet, rumbling against Aki’s palm.

“Wha—what are you doing?” Angel asks, breathless.

“Do you want me to stop?” Aki halts his movements and, reluctantly, loosens his hold on Angel's throat.

Angel stares at him for a moment, wearing that same blank look of shock he had when Aki saved him. Then he shakes his head. “No.” He presses his hips forward, better exposing Aki to the growing heat between his thighs, and carefully grips Aki’s wrist to guide his hand to his chest. “Keep going.”

Aki doesn’t speak, doesn’t nod. He palms Angel’s chest, feeling the soft swell there, and circles one of Angel’s nipples with his thumb. Angel’s breath hitches. He grinds down on Aki’s thigh again, letting out a soft whine at the friction on the small, hard length between his legs. Aki can feel it throbbing even through their clothes. He’s so desperate and needy already, just from a couple of touches.

A realization hits Aki. “This is the first time you’ve been touched like this, isn’t it?”

Angel nods.

“Have you thought about this?” Aki cages Angel’s head with both forearms, leaning in close, the danger only heightening his desire. Death is a mere breadth away, calling to him with a soft gasp that tickles his lips. “Have you thought about me?”

After a moment’s hesitation, like he’s afraid this is a trap, Angel nods again. He stares at Aki’s mouth with obvious longing.

A kiss is something Aki can’t give him, wouldn’t give him, even if it weren’t a death sentence. A kiss is too tender. A kiss would mean too much. It’d be more than this brat deserves. But there’s plenty of other things Aki can do that don’t have to mean anything—things that Aki himself has imagined in the depths of night, when he gives in to his desire just long enough to touch himself and come with Angel’s name hidden behind his clenched teeth.

He grabs Angel’s waist and pulls him back from the wall. “Cover me with your wings.”

Angel obeys, his wings unfurling to their full size and enclosing the both of them completely. A cruel satisfaction simmers deep in Aki’s gut. He’s found a way to make Angel compliant, to make him obedient, and after months putting up with his bullshit it feels good to finally have some control.

Aki slides a hand between Angel’s legs, groping him through his pants. He meets Angel’s lust-black eyes. “Don’t think this means I don’t hate you.”

Once again, Angel just nods.

With that, Aki makes quick work of Angel’s belt and tugs his pants down his thighs to reveal his soaked cunt. Aki pauses—he’s unfamiliar with this anatomy—then decides he doesn’t care and shoves his hand between Angel’s legs again, slipping a finger between Angel’s folds and pressing inside his tight entrance. Angel gasps at the intrusion, hips bucking into the touch. Aki watches the dark leather of his glove disappear, a stark contrast to Angel’s flushed, pink skin and copper curls. His hands are big enough that he can grind the heel of his palm against Angel’s little cock, and Angel moans, his walls clenching around Aki’s finger—so tight that Aki has to force it deeper, but Angel seems to like the pain, letting out another moan and bearing down on Aki’s hand.

“You like that?” Aki thrusts his hand sharply. “You like it when it hurts?”

Angel just whines, and Aki grabs his hair and yanks it, banging his head against the wall again. The wings are there to cushion the blow this time, but Angel still winces.

“Answer me,” Aki snaps.

“Yes,” Angel says.

Aki presses against Angel to get some friction against his own length. With their height difference, he ends up grinding against Angel’s stomach, cock sliding along the tight muscle under his shirt. He’s barely getting any stimulation from this, but he doesn’t care. As he touches Angel, his resentment ebbs and flows—arousal fighting lifelong hatred, rage at Angel’s insolence fighting the want that’s been there from the moment they met—and the intense emotions alone are more than enough to sate him for now, making his heart pound and his cock throb. He grits his teeth to hold back a groan.

Angel, however, doesn’t care about holding back. On the contrary, his moans are only growing louder, echoing in the alleyway and threatening to draw attention.

“Be quiet,” Aki hisses. “If we get caught, I will kill you.”

He expects Angel to snark back at him, but he doesn’t—too lost in pleasure, his mouth slack and eyes hazy, only giving Aki a single nod in response. Aki rewards his compliance by sliding another finger inside, hooking them deep. Angel whines softly at the stretch.

Who knew this is what it would take to shut him up?

Aki stills his hips, deciding to focus on Angel, and picks up the pace of his fingers. He needs to see Angel come. Angel is a devil, a monster, he’s scum, but none of that changes just how beautiful he is or how sweet his little noises are or how much Aki likes watching him writhe in desperation. None of that changes how much Aki wants him. It makes Aki sick with rage, but in this moment, he can’t deny his desire any longer.

Suddenly Angel’s eyes roll back. Aki feels Angel coming around him—walls nearly trapping Aki’s fingers as they clench down, his little cock throbbing against Aki’s wrist like an echo of his pounding pulse. Aki has to let go of Angel’s hair and slap a hand over his mouth to cover his moans. Despite himself, Aki can’t help but let out a soft groan of his own. He fucks Angel faster and faster, keeping him coming, every brutal thrust of his hand blurring the line between pleasure and punishment. He smiles cruelly at Angel’s whimper of pain.

Eventually Angel’s trembling body goes slack, nearly sliding down the wall if not for Aki holding him in place, and the last tremors of his orgasm fade. Aki slowly pulls his fingers from Angel’s soaked cunt. Part of him wants to lick them clean, maybe shove them in Angel’s mouth, but instead he fishes out his cock and starts stroking the length, letting Angel’s cum ease the glide. He wraps his other hand back around Angel’s throat.

“Guess I have to do this myself, too,” he mutters, “since you can’t be bothered to wear gloves.”

Angel’s eyes are fixed on Aki’s cock, watching hungrily. “Maybe I’ll start.”

Aki’s hand stutters, then picks up speed. He’s already close. “You wanna do this again, huh?”

“Yeah. It feels good—unnnh—“

Angel moans when Aki squeezes his throat and just like that, Aki’s coming, nearly collapsing against the wall as his rage blurs into bliss. He aims at Angel’s groin. Angel whines in annoyance, but cants up his hips to let Aki mark him. Wave after wave rushes through Aki and spills out of him, more intense than any of the nights he’s spent alone in his room, and he almost wishes that they’d done this sooner—that he could’ve known just how good this would feel.

Aki strokes his cock until it almost feels raw. As he tucks himself away, he surveys the mess he’s made. He drags his fingers through it, brushing Angel’s little cock—which twitches with interest—as he gathers up as much cum as he can, then shoves three fingers inside Angel’s tender cunt. Angel gasps. They lock eyes as Aki forces his fingers deep. Angel winces, but presses into the touch, eager for Aki to fill him any way he can.

Once he’s satisfied, Aki pulls his fingers out and looks at his hand, slick with a mix of their cum. Curiosity gets the better of him: he slides his fingers into his mouth. They taste good together. It makes Aki want to spit the mess right back out. 

Instead, he wipes his hand on his shirt—it’s already ruined with devil blood anyway—and pulls up Angel’s slacks, neatly tucking in his shirt to hide any evidence of their deed. He hooks two fingers under Angel’s collar and pulls him close. “Don’t you dare say a word about this to anyone.”

Though his face is blank, there’s still a flicker of hunger in Angel’s eyes. “Of course not.”

5.

Aki knows Angel better than anyone. He sees parts of Angel that no one else has ever seen—that, most likely, no one else will ever see. He’s seen the rage that Angel has pent up in his heart, borne of hurt that Angel can’t remember but has to feel all the same. He’s seen the cruelty Angel is capable of. He’s seen Angel’s hunger—not the voracious appetite for food that he always displays, but the hunger for touch, for intimacy, for violence received and violence dealt.

But living with Angel shows Aki more than he ever expected to know. At work, Angel is lazy and lifeless; on the field, Angel is bloodthirsty and passionate; at home, he’s…different. There’s a quiet life to him. He reads books that he stole from Aki, he watches TV alongside everyone else, he joins in on the conversation at dinnertime. He gets along surprisingly well with Denji and Power, and Nyako immediately falls in love with him, following him around so she can snooze on one of his wings. Most strikingly, Angel smiles at home. Not the teeth-bared grin of cruelty that Aki has seen on the battlefield, but small, genuine smiles, warm and soft and often directed at Aki. Each one makes him feel sick in a way he can’t quite describe.

Living together is awkward at first, of course. It takes a while to figure out the new rules of their situation. Aki is constantly holding his breath, both around Angel and around Denji and Power. The boundaries between him and Angel are more unclear than ever—what’s okay for them to do in the odd space they occupy between coworkers and roommates, between enemies and friends and lovers.

As for his other roommates…Aki is borderline desperate for them to find out absolutely nothing about the twisted relationship between him and Angel, but it’s difficult to hide when he and Angel are constantly around each other. He tries to keep his distance. He tries to keep his tone civil, not letting any familiarity slip through. He avoids talking about anything that might blow their cover.

But in the end, all of Aki’s efforts to hide his thing with Angel turn out to be for naught.

It’s been a few weeks, nearly a month, when they’re finally caught. The household is gathered around the table for dinner.

“So, like…” Denji says. He picks at his food and shoves a bite in his mouth, then gestures between Aki and Angel with his chopsticks. “What’s goin’ on with you two?”

Aki has tried to prepare himself for this conversation, but the timing of the question catches him off guard. His voice cracks as he asks, “What do you mean?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the corner of Angel’s mouth twitching up, barely hiding a laugh. Aki has to fight not to glare at him.

“You two are all weird around each other. “

“I still don’t know what you mean.”

“I thought that you guys hated each other,” Denji says. “But you’re different at home. You’re nice to each other. And I keep seeing you almost touch.”

Aki steels himself. Time to come clean, at least partially.

“We have a contract,” he admits, doing his best to keep his tone neutral. He glances at Angel. His face is kept carefully blank. 

“Huh?”

“So that we can touch.” Aki shoves some food in his mouth, not tasting a thing. He swallows it down alongside the lump in his throat. “I can’t afford to lose any more time. After I saved him from the Typhoon Devil, we decided to make a contract so he wouldn’t be a danger to me anymore.”

“A surprisingly intelligent move for a human,” Power muses. “What are the terms of this contract?”

None of your business, Aki wants to say, but that would only make him look more suspicious. He has to lie. Thankfully he thought to prepare one a while ago; he can only hope that Angel will go along with it. “If I buy him ice cream whenever he wants, I can touch him.”

“What?!” Power and Denji shout in unison.

“No fair! I want ice cream!” Denji says.

Power slams her fist on the table, scattering rice all over and scaring Nyako off her shoulders. She points at Angel. “You are such a fool, Angel Devil! Why would you ask for confections when you could have demanded something useful?!”

“I like ice cream,” Angel says. 

Thank you, Aki thinks, though he doesn’t risk meeting Angel’s eyes.

Angel picks up some of the scattered rice and pops it in his mouth. “What else does Aki have that I could want?”

Aki’s relief disappears, and he braces himself, already knowing what Power’s answer will be.

“Blood!” Power pounds on the table again. “You could have a living blood bank at your disposal, but you settled on simple sugary treats! What kind of devil are you?!”

Angel shrugs. “Blood doesn’t taste as good as ice cream.”

His wings twitch. He’s lying.

“What horrible taste you have,” Power mutters.

“Nah, he’s right,” Denji says. “Blood is so gross. You only like it cuz you’re the Blood Fiend.”

“Nonsense! I simply have a refined palette.”

From there, the conversation ventures away from the subject of their contract, and Aki can only hope to quiet the sigh of relief he lets out. He allows himself another look at Angel. He’s as enigmatic as ever, but over their time together, Aki has learned to read his microexpressions. There’s a trace of anxiety in the tight muscles around his eyes, but it fades as the evening goes on.

After a while, the tension in Aki’s body ebbs away, too. His roommates laugh, and Aki laughs along with them. Warmth fills his chest. He never thought he’d find family again, didn’t think he deserved it, but Denji and Power have made him feel a little closer to wholeness. And then there’s Angel, smiling alongside them before they start bickering yet again.

There’s Angel, fitting perfectly in the patchwork of Aki’s life.

Without a word, Aki shoves himself up and heads to the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” Denji calls after him.

“I’m going to clean up.” Aki knows his tone and the stomping weight of his footsteps are giving him away, but he can’t be bothered to care. He can’t stand to look at Angel for another second, can’t bear to think what he was thinking—that Angel fits. That he likes having Angel here.

“What’s his problem?” he hears Denji ask.

“Topknot has always been moody,” Power says dismissively. “I say leave him to it! There’s no use in pondering the emotions of humans.”

The two of them fall into their usual banter, chattering and shouting, while Aki falls into his post-dinner routine. Cleaning helps clear his head, gives him time to think. Time to be alone. With the roommates he has, he barely gets any time to himself; with the roommates he has, he doesn’t have to worry about anyone trying to join in on cleaning without being told to do so.

After a few minutes of busywork—putting leftovers away, wiping down counters, gathering dishes into the sink—the tension in Aki’s shoulders and the twisting in his stomach finally ease away, the mundanity of housework helping him forget the mess his heart is in. Then there’s feather-light footsteps behind him at the sink, and Aki immediately tenses up again.

“Are you okay?” Angel asks.

Aki keeps scrubbing, not even glancing at Angel. “What do you care?”

“You were happy a minute ago.” Angel hoists himself onto the counter, sitting at the edge of Aki’s vision. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

Angel’s silence is heavy with words unspoken. Out of the corner of his eye, Aki can see Angel staring at him, watching—no, waiting. For as long as it takes for Aki to finish the dishes, Angel waits in painful silence. Finally, once he’s run out of ways to delay the inevitable, Aki sighs, shuts off the water, and turns to meet Angel’s gaze.

For a moment Angel still doesn’t say anything, and Aki is about to just leave when Angel says, “Don’t lie to me.”

Aki’s stomach twists. He scoffs. “You’re in no place to be giving me orders.”

“I’m not,” Angel says. “I’m asking you.”

He’s utterly sincere, as he so often is, and Aki wants to squirm under the weight of what Angel is really asking—talk to me. Rely on me. Trust me. Instead, he says, “Just leave me alone.”

Angel actually flinches. His eyes are open wounds, brimming with genuine hurt, and Aki has to look away before he does something stupid like screaming at Angel, or hitting him, or holding him close and telling him everything that he can—every feeling in his foolish heart that he can give a name to, and maybe the ones he can’t. Even when he’s looking away, he can feel the heavy weight of Angel’s stare on his back.

“Fine,” Angel finally says, so quietly Aki barely hears it. Angel pushes off the counter and walks away, not even glancing at him. One of his wings brushes Aki as he passes. “I’m going to my room.”

Aki just watches him go, unable to breathe until Angel’s bedroom door shuts, leaving Aki alone.

7.

Aki isn’t sure who stabs first or who kisses back. Everything happens all at once. Angel’s blade slashes across his chest—Aki’s sinks into Angel’s gut—he threads fingers through Angel’s hair—their mouths meet and Aki moans at the taste and Aki hates himself for it—his hand finds Angel’s throat and squeezes—Angel sucks Aki’s tongue into his mouth just to bite it off—a flood of blood fills Aki’s mouth, his cock, his heart—Aki loves the pain, loves the release, loves—he loves—

The world spins when Aki jerks back, every color washed out except all the spilled red. He falls to his knees. His breathing is wet and ragged, blood spilling into his throat. It’s easy to make a new wound in Angel’s precious, tempting body: Aki never pulled his knife out, and the blade slides effortlessly through muscles and organs to split Angel wide open, ruining the newly-healed flesh. Aki buries his face inside to drink and Angel moans like Aki’s already sucking his cock. It’s the first time in almost a month that Aki has gotten to taste Angel’s blood, and God, did he miss it.

Aki’s practiced fingers undo Angel’s pants and shove them midway down his thighs. From the gaping wound Aki slides down, now burying his face in Angel’s dripping cunt and parting his folds with a long lick, his brand new tongue lighting up at the taste. It feels completely new somehow, even though Aki has lost count of how many times Angel has come on his tongue—this time, the taste of Angel’s pleasure overpowers the taste of his blood, and Aki can’t get enough, pressing in as deep as he can to fuck Angel with his tongue.

Angel lets Aki eat him out until his legs tremble, and then he’s shoving Aki back, knocking him off balance and sending him to the ground. Angel crumples on top of him, one hand clutching his stomach to keep his insides in place while the other slashes Aki’s palm and brings it to his mouth. 

Pleasures blur together—Angel’s tongue inside his wound, Angel’s blood-slick fingers stroking him through his slacks, Angel’s wet folds parting around the head of his cock as Angel guides Aki inside. Time slows down. Inch by inch Angel takes him in, agonizingly slow, forcing them both to feel everything. His soft walls flutter around Aki’s cock, betraying his body’s desperation. Angel is still close to the edge, but instead of rushing toward his climax, he takes his time: slowly rocking forward on Aki’s cock, then back, savoring every inch that fills him. His eyes shut as a moan falls from his parted lips. 

But Aki doesn’t want to go slow. He wants to make Angel fall apart.

He plants his feet, grabs Angel’s waist, and gives a sharp thrust of his hips. Angel gasps, shudders, pulls away, nearly slipping off Aki’s cock entirely, but Aki is there to guide himself back in and pull Angel back down, meeting the motion with another thrust.

“A-Aki—” Angel gasps. Aki answers with another buck of his hips. He holds Angel in place and keeps fucking up into him, setting a steady rhythm of deep, grinding thrusts, and it’s not long before Angel collapses into a trembling mess against Aki’s chest as he comes.

“That’s it,” Aki says, one hand finding the base of Angel’s wings and stroking the sensitive skin between them, feeling the muscles spasm as Angel’s orgasm wracks through his body. Aki wraps his arms around Angel and holds him tight. “Keep coming.”

“Aki,” he hears Angel whimper, muffled against his skin. His wings flutter in Aki’s grasp. As his orgasm fades, Angel pushes away from Aki’s chest to try and break free, but Aki just clutches him tighter and picks up the pace—he needs to make Angel come again now, needs to hear his pounding heart, to feel his nails dig in and mark Aki’s flesh—and this time, Angel’s moan is raw, breaking into a sob halfway through as pleasure overwhelms him. He comes hard on Aki’s cock, walls gripping so tight Aki can’t even move.

Aki clenches his eyes shut. “Fuuuck, An—” He chokes, barely keeping himself from moaning Angel’s name. He’s never done that before. Even after all this time, after all that they’ve done, it feels like a step too far.

Soon Angel whines from overstimulation. Aki shows some mercy, slowing the pace of his thrusts and loosening his grip. Angel sits up. Tears shine on his face, cutting faint lines through the blood smeared around his mouth, and Aki’s hips stutter.

He’s never seen Angel cry. Even with all the pain and overwhelming pleasure that Aki has given Angel, he’s never brought him to tears before. Aki almost wants to reach out—no, he does want to reach out, to cradle Angel’s face in his hand and wipe the tears away with a gentle brush of his thumb, but—he can’t. It’s another step he can’t make himself take.

Instead he just keeps rocking his hips. Angel can barely hold himself up, his arms trembling as he braces himself on Aki’s chest, wings fluttering with every aftershock that Aki sends through his body. He pulls in a shaky breath, his lips quivering. A few more tears spill down his face. His eyes are brimming with something that Aki has never seen before, that Aki doesn’t understand, and it sends a wave of anger through him—why does Angel have to be so goddamn confusing? Why does he have to bring up all these feelings that Aki has never experienced before, that Aki doesn’t want? He’s a devil. He should be just a devil. He has no right to make Aki feel the way he does.

While Aki is lost in thought, Angel searches through the summer grass to find the blade he tossed aside. Aki snaps from his spiraling rage when nails dig into his flesh, one of Angel’s hands pressing down hard on his chest to hold him still as the other raises the knife high. Their eyes lock. Beneath Angel’s hand, Aki’s heart skips.

With one last steadying breath, Angel plunges his knife straight into Aki’s throat.

There’s no pain. There’s no fear. There’s barely even any blood. His heart beats steadily—more steadily than it has in a long time. He could count each individual pulse if he weren’t so transfixed by the feeling of the blade in his throat. Aki can feel it perfectly blocking his airway, the point almost scraping his spinal cord, and he realizes that even the slightest increase in pressure or the tiniest slip of Angel’s hand would end his life. He doesn’t care. Even worse, he welcomes this. Months ago he would’ve panicked, would’ve flown into a rage and shoved Angel off of him so he could do horrible things to him as payback, but now…Aki just lies there, completely at peace with Angel holding his life in his hands.

Will this be what his last moments feel like? Will he accept his true death as much as he accepts this taste of the end? Will he be looking into Angel’s eyes?

The tears stop. With one hand keeping its grip on the knife and the other bracing against Aki’s chest, Angel starts riding again. It’s slow, steady movements, Aki’s cock kept buried deep inside as Angel gently rocks his hips back and forth. Aki is distantly aware of the pleasure, but his focus keeps coming back to the solid presence of the knife in his throat and Angel’s too-soft eyes, watching for the moment when it becomes too much. Even when he has a knife in Aki’s throat, Angel wants to take care of Aki. Angel cares about Aki—really cares about him. The realization makes his head pound harder than the lack of air.

Back when all of this started, the thought of dying at Angel’s hands terrified him. It made him sick. He wanted his last moments to be with someone he cared for, someone like Denji or Power or the countless friends he’s lost throughout his life. But now he knows how wrong he was. Now he’s realized all that Angel has given him.

He wants to be hurt. He needs to be hurt. And Angel is the only one he can trust to hurt him right. All the pain they’ve given each other, all the things they’ve put each other through, and it took Aki this long to realize it.

He wishes they could stay like this forever. But instinct kicks in eventually, the lack of air flipping the panic switch in his brain, and he grabs for Angel’s hand. Even if Aki trusts Angel to hurt him, there’s no fighting hardwired self preservation.

But Angel pulls out the knife before Aki can touch him. Blood spurts from the wound, immediately drenching Angel in deep, lost-life red. Now there’s pain. Aki can’t even scream, the gash in his throat cutting off his voice, but it’s barely a second before Angel is kissing him, mouth full of blood from his newly-split lip. Despite his damaged throat, Aki swallows down the life that Angel gives him.

One moment he’s drowning, then the wound closes—he coughs up the blood—his airway clears—he pulls in a huge breath like it’s the first of his life, as if he was reborn from Angel’s blood—sudden pleasure rushes in—and his orgasm hits him like a blow to the head, like being thrown to the ground, like—like falling in love—

He thinks—no, he knows he’s never come this hard in his life. Everything goes white. All the air leaves his lungs with a shout. He grabs Angel without thinking—clutching him even tighter than the night he saved Angel, like he might get blown away—and buries his face in the crook of his neck, muffling the moans that won’t stop coming out. His whole body thrums, more alive than ever. It might be a full minute before the tremors stop and Aki can finally catch his breath. 

After it’s over, Angel slides off wordlessly and sits beside Aki with a sniffle, wrapping his arms around his legs. He stares off across the field. Once again his face is blank, his eyes unreadable.

Shakily, Aki props himself on his elbows. “Why did you do that?”

Angel shrugs. “You liked it, right?”

Aki exhales. “Yeah.”

“Then it doesn’t matter why.”

“That’s not true.”

Angel shrugs again. “I wanted to. That’s all.”

His wings twitch, a tell that he’s hiding something, but Aki is too tired to keep pressing. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to feel. Somehow he feels both closer to Angel and further from him than ever before—bound by the intimacy that comes with placing your life in someone else’s hands, kept apart by…everything else. His stubbornness. His fear. The numerous tragedies that weigh them both down, hiding them from each other.

At a loss for what else to do, Aki follows the yearning in his heart and leans against Angel, tucking his head by his shoulder and closing his eyes with a sigh. He feels Angel turn to look at him. There’s the flutter of a wing unfolding, and then Aki is surrounded, wrapped up in the soft strength of Angel’s wing. He wraps his arms around Angel’s waist; Angel’s second wing encircles him. Wordlessly, they fall back to the ground together, ending with Aki on his back and Angel tucked against his side.

Angel lays a hand on Aki’s chest. He touches the scar from Aki’s fight with Katana Man—an almost perfectly vertical line that runs from just under his collarbone to below his navel, the tissue still raised and red, puckered around the edges from the stitches that held him together. It’s ugly. He knows that. Aki might feel self-conscious about it if it were somebody else in his arms, but…with Angel, he doesn’t have to worry. Somehow he knows that Angel would never judge him for it. Angel’s fingers trail down the scar, mapping it: the places that healed easily, and the places that didn’t. Aki shivers. It doesn’t tickle, exactly, but it feels…invasive, in a strangely pleasant way.

Angel moves on to Aki’s arms, brushing over the patchwork scars he has from the Fox Devil. They never were grievous wounds, but he’s acquired a lot of them in his years with Public Safety, and the varying ages and severities create strange, shiny patterns on Aki’s skin. Angel’s fingers drift up. On the right side of Aki’s torso, tucked between his ribs, is the thick, blunt line that marks where Kobeni stabbed him in the hotel. Angel presses his thumb against it, feeling its smooth texture. 

Aki watches Angel and wonders if he’s thinking the same thing: how strange it is that, despite all the violence they commit against each other, none of the scars on Aki’s flesh are from Angel. With their contract, Aki heals like a devil would. He imagines what he’d look like if Angel’s wounds left a mark and has to push the image away.

His eyes roam Angel’s body, taking in his bare legs and the scraps of exposed skin where his shirt was cut open. His body is unmarked, unmarred, showing no evidence of the life he’s led or the horrible things he’s been through—the horrible things Aki has put him through. He looks as pure as he must have the day he was born.

Angel notices Aki’s gaze and pauses. “What?”

“Nothing,” Aki says. “Just…you don’t have any scars.”

“I’m a devil. We never do.”

At least not on the outside.

Aki reaches out. He hesitates, then gently strokes Angel’s face, a tender touch he’s never given Angel before—one that Angel receives with wide eyes, waiting for Aki’s sweetness to turn sour. It doesn’t. In the moment, this just feels right. “Angel…”

“Yeah?”

“Come here.”

With a moment of hesitation, Angel does. 

Aki doesn’t know why he’s doing this. Angel has an uncanny way of making him do things he doesn’t understand, for reasons he can never fully grasp. But he pulls Angel in and kisses him anyway. It starts slow and soft—a long, single kiss, nothing but the ardent press of Aki’s lips and Angel hesitantly kissing back. Angel’s lip is still bleeding. Aki ignores the blood and kisses the wound with no hunger, trying to soothe the ache.

Angel pulls away and looks at Aki. He searches Aki’s face, looking for something—an intention? An explanation? Aki doesn’t know, but apparently Angel finds what he’s looking for, as his hands cup the back of Aki’s head and bring him in for another kiss.

Aki deepens the kiss, pressing in harder, pulling Angel closer, spreading a hand over his ribcage and fitting fingers between his ribs in a gentle yet insistent grip—you’re mine, whatever that means. Angel sucks on Aki’s bottom lip, lightly grazing his teeth over it. Aki makes a noise that’s much too sweet, a sound he doesn’t think he’s ever made before, and clutches Angel even tighter. He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, how many kisses they trade. When Angel pulls back, Aki mourns the contact.

“Aki…” Angel whispers, his voice warm, hopeful.

And with that, Aki snaps out of it. He jerks away from Angel like he’s waking from a nightmare, and his brain is just as groggy, slowly working to comprehend the details of the reality before him—Angel’s flushed cheeks, his kiss-swollen lips, his hair tousled by amorous hands. This is the picture of someone touched by a lover, not someone recovering from a fight to the near-death. 

That familiar twisting feeling hits Aki’s stomach hard. It catapults him upright, forcing him to his feet. “We need to go,” he says.

Angel is still sprawled on the ground, frozen, staring at the space where Aki was lying just moments ago. His eyes search the ground, tracing the shape of Aki’s body in the grass, then finally lift up to meet Aki’s gaze. There’s a flash of pain on Angel’s face—that same hurt that Aki saw when they spoke in the kitchen days ago. It’s gone as soon as it appears.

Aki’s heart tugs on his bloodstained sleeve. Go back, it tells him; go to him, it begs. When he turns and walks away, it feels like he’s being ripped apart—like he’s ripping himself apart, his nerves and veins pulling, stretching, snapping with every step as he leaves his insides to rot in the grass. Every step is agony, and he has to dig his nails into his palms to ignore it.

He does not look back. Angel will follow him soon enough.

iii. 

Aki doesn’t have time to think. Even if he did, it’d lead to the same result: his bare hand clutching Angel’s, holding onto him like it’s his own life that depends on it, summoning every ounce of strength he has left to pull Angel back in. Maybe he’s imagining it, but he could swear he can feel his lifespan slipping away—a strange, pulling sensation in his fingers, like blood being drawn from a vein. His muscles strain, fingers stiff and aching, but he can’t let go. He can’t. Not if there’s a chance for him to save even just one person.

Himeno is dead. Nomo is dead. All those rookies are dead. So many people are dead, and Aki carries their memories like a pallbearer, straining under their weight. He can’t take another body on his conscience.

Even if Angel is a selfish, bratty monster, Aki refuses to let him die.

Finally he conquers the cutting winds and pulls Angel back to him, bracing an arm around his chest to keep him close. Angel is completely limp in his grasp. Aki catches a glimpse of his face and sees it blank with shock, his eyes wide as they stare into the dark.

“Wha…wh…” Angel sputters, his voice raw like he’s near tears. Suddenly he twists in Aki’s arms, shouting in his ear, brow furrowed and mouth twisted with an emotion Aki has never seen on his face: anger. “Why did you touch my hand?! Do you want to die?!”

Is he really that ungrateful?

“Hell no, I don’t!” Aki shouts back. “How much did that decrease my lifespan?!”

Angel is silent. When he speaks again, it’s quiet and raw, with more emotion in it than Aki has ever heard before. “By about two months,” he says, the words nearly lost in the wind.

Aki stares ahead. Two months. He lets out a shuddering breath, the weight of all his loss multiplying with every second that passes—precious seconds, even more so now that nearly a tenth of his time left to live is gone. He looks down at the ground, watching the debris flying in the wind, sailing towards the open, roaring maw of the Typhoon Devil just a couple blocks away. A fate Angel could’ve shared. A fate Angel wanted to share. He got a second chance he didn’t deserve and he spat on it, on the graves of everyone whom Aki has lost. Aki clenches his eyes shut.

“If you want to die, do it somewhere far away from me.” He collapses against the telephone pole, wrapping his other arm around Angel, keeping him tucked against his chest like he might try to break free. Even if he did, Aki would be stubborn enough to save him again. “I’m sick and tired of people dying on me right before my eyes.”

Angel says nothing; Aki is glad for it. Nothing either of them could say could make him feel better. Nothing either of them could say could make this okay.

He clutches the devil close, shielding him from the storm, and hopes that his sacrifice was worth it.

8.

It’s not that Aki is avoiding Angel. That would be childish; considering their work and living situations, it’d also be near impossible. But since that last time out in the field, Angel’s presence is suffocating. He walks into the room and suddenly Aki feels trapped, anxiety gripping him like a phantom hand around his chest, reminiscent of that horrible pressure he felt when he bent the rules of their contract. It makes sense that he would need a little space.

Truthfully, it seems like Angel might actually be trying to keep his distance. Since their last outing, he’s barely been alone in a room with Aki for more than a minute. Which makes it all the more surprising when one night, just as Aki is cracking open his second beer, Angel pads up from behind him and joins him on the couch.

Aki carefully watches Angel from the corner of his eye. The devil tucks himself into the far corner of the couch, curling in on himself, wrapping his arms around his legs before unfurling his wings and swathing himself in his soft feathers. Even though he’s the one who came to Aki, he’s trying to make himself small, keeping as much distance between them as possible.

“When will Denji and Power be back?” Angel asks.

“Late. Kishibe likes to keep them for a while.” Aki takes a swig of his beer.

Angel doesn’t say anything. The silence between them overwhelms the low buzz of the television and the faint soundtrack of the city, everything else falling away under the weight of words unspoken. Aki can’t even begin to think of what to say. His fingers tighten around his beer can and the crack echoes through the room. He quickly chugs the rest and sets the can aside, sinking into his seat, focusing on the late-night melodrama that’s playing on the television.

Aki is almost to the point of numbness, lulled into a daze by alcohol and bad TV, when he feels Angel shift on the other side of the couch. He doesn’t look. Maybe Angel got tired of waiting for Aki to speak and just left. Maybe he’s fallen asleep.

What Aki doesn’t expect is to feel the cushion sink next to him, nor an uncertain hand softly touching his thigh. He turns to look and jolts back. Angel is right there. His halo thrums steadily above them, casting gentle light on his parted lips and the hand now squeezing Aki’s thigh. The look in his molten eyes could be hope or uncertainty. He breathes slowly, carefully, the warm air brushing Aki’s skin like a tender caress, as he leans in even closer.

The whole time, Aki is frozen. He doesn’t know what this is. All he knows is that he wants it and desperately wishes he didn’t.

Angel looks at Aki’s lips. The hand on his leg moves up, fingers brushing his inner thigh before they leave to cup Aki’s face. Aki can feel his own heartbeat trapped in Angel’s hand.

“What are you doing?” Aki asks.

Angel is so close their mouths nearly brush when he speaks. “Do you want me to stop?”

Deep inside, in the darkest chambers of Aki’s heart, is a voice that screams yes: his anger, feeble but desperate, clawing at his chest in its struggle to stay alive. Anger tells him he doesn’t want this, that Angel is a devil like any other, and devils only deserve death. Anger tells him to shove Angel away and leave. Anger is an old friend. Anger is the reason Aki has stayed alive all these years. But right now, all it takes to drown his anger out is Angel’s soft breaths.

“No,” Aki finally says. “Keep going.”

Wordlessly, Angel climbs all the way into Aki’s lap. Aki’s hands immediately find his waist, holding him in a gentle grip, fingers tense with the effort of not clutching him tight—if Aki holds too tight, the spell might break. This might become something else. It might stop altogether. And as much as what’s happening terrifies Aki, all he wants to do is keep going. 

Once he’s settled in Aki’s lap, Angel just…looks at him. Aki looks back. Angel is beautiful, just like he’s always been, but this is the first time Aki has let himself really see it. No conditions. No excuses. No telling himself that he doesn’t actually feel the way that he does. Angel is beautiful, looking every bit like those divine beings he represents: wings cresting on either side of his head, framing his face; red hair spilling down his shoulders like sacred flames; halo shining soft, holy light upon Aki, illuminating his unworthy hands around Angel’s waist, his chest where his pounding heart hides, his reverent face looking up at Angel as he leans in once again and presses his lips to Aki’s.

It’s a sweet kiss, utterly chaste, seeking nothing but the sensation of their lips meeting—the soft but insistent pressure, the warmth, the connection. At first, Aki doesn’t kiss back. He just lets himself be kissed. When Angel’s lips break from his, leaving uncertainty in the space between them, Aki surges forward and finally kisses back. There’s the tiniest sigh from Angel, maybe of relief. Aki swallows it whole. He kisses Angel again, and Angel kisses back, beginning a tender push and pull as they move together in hypnotic harmony.

Aki’s hands roam Angel’s back, one slipping under his shirt to stroke between his wings, the other wrapping tight around his waist to pull him in—not even seeking friction, just closeness. Holding Angel for the sake of holding him. Angel makes a soft noise against his mouth, a little sigh, and Aki takes his parted lips as an opportunity to press his tongue inside. Even now, the kiss stays chaste. It’s just another way to touch, to intertwine, to prove just how well they know each other.

Aki loses time. They might kiss for ten minutes, for an hour, for days on end. However long it is, he  doesn’t mind. Aki keeps a mental counter of the months he has left to live; sometimes, when he can’t sleep, he stares at his ceiling and counts the days one by one. But if he could spend the rest of his life like this, he’d be happy. Lost in a kiss, sharing tenderness with the person whom he…he…

He doesn’t want to think about the next word in that sentence.

It only feels natural when Angel softly grinds against Aki, giving a bare hint of the heat and hardness between his legs. It only feels natural when Aki starts to slip Angel’s shorts down. It only feels natural when Angel undoes the buttons on Aki’s fly and frees his cock, then stands to kick his shorts the rest of the way off. It all feels so natural, so normal, and that feeling in and of itself is confusing and terrifying and overwhelming—they’ve never had sex without a blow to the head or a knife in the back to accompany it, but everything is coming so easily right now, like they’ve done this a thousand times before. Like they were meant to be together like this.

When Angel is back in his lap, Aki’s hands slip under his shirt, wrapping around his waist so his fingertips brush the space between his wings. Angel clutches onto Aki’s shoulders with steady hands. He perches above Aki and reaches back, taking Aki’s cock in hand and lining it up with his entrance. Their eyes meet. Aki can’t nod, can’t move, can’t speak. All he can do is look at Angel and hope that he can read whatever’s in Aki’s eyes, because Aki sure as hell doesn’t know. After a long, silent moment, Angel carefully presses the tip of Aki’s length inside.

Angel is so wet, so willing, but he’s tiny. He winces as he slowly slides down Aki’s cock, and Aki—Aki wants to take the pain away, and that terrifies him. Throughout this whole thing between them, Aki has been happy to see Angel in pain—been happy to give Angel pain—but now he sees Angel hurting and wants to make it stop. He does what he can, supporting Angel with a firm grip around his ass and guiding him down.

He’s so focused on helping Angel that he doesn’t register how this feels until he’s buried to the hilt, their hips flush, and all the sensation of having Angel’s lush, warm walls wrapped around him hits Aki so hard he gasps. Angel just kisses him again. And again. And again. Somehow the kisses still seem innocent, untinged by their usual violence or the hunger to reach their peaks. This isn’t about getting off. It’s about being connected. It’s about being together. 

Angel braces his hands on Aki’s chest and starts riding him, luxuriously slow. The spell over Aki deepens. Usually he would be annoyed by the pace, would try anything to get Angel to speed up, but now he just lets it happen. He enjoys it. This speed lets him fully feel Angel, taking in every point of contact, from the soft skin beneath his hands to the tight walls that grip his length and flutter in time with Angel’s heartbeat. They’re both nearly silent, only letting out soft breaths in between kisses. Aki doesn’t think he could talk if he tried. He’s too spellbound; more than that, he’s too afraid of what he might say. If he opens his mouth too wide, his heart might jump out.

It feels like they’re locked together for hours. Gradually, Angel picks up the pace, aided by Aki’s steadying hands, and Aki starts rolling his hips up to meet Angel halfway. Angel trembles in his grasp. He pulls back from kissing Aki and drops his head against Aki’s shoulder, letting out a shaky breath. Aki tucks his face into Angel’s neck.

He presses kisses to Angel’s pulse point because he can, because Angel’s pulse is there, brilliant and alive and fluttering right under his skin. Aki doesn’t need to cut him open to see it. It’s right there. It’s there for him to watch, for him to suck bruising kisses against, for him to hear when he buries his face in Angel’s neck. It’s fast, but nowhere near the adrenaline panic that Aki is used to hearing. He likes it. He hates how much he likes it. There’s something wrong with him, clearly; he shouldn’t like any of this—he wants it to end, he never wants to stop, he wants to die in Angel’s arms—

Then Angel pulls Aki’s head back to kiss his lips, and everything falls away again. Aki can’t help the way he melts. They stay close even after the kiss breaks, sharing air as their breathing picks up. Aki clutches Angel tight and meets his hips with a deep thrust of his own, shocking a gasp out of Angel.

“Aki,” he moans softly—sweetly—

—and Aki comes. He pulls Angel down and grinds up his own hips, holding himself impossibly deep as he fills Angel up. Angel whines, bucking in Aki’s grasp, chasing his own release, so Aki lifts him up and thrusts until Angel gasps and shakes and kisses Aki again. No matter how many times Angel comes on his cock, Aki will never stop loving how it feels. Tonight it feels better than ever before, knowing that Angel is coming from pleasure and pleasure alone. His trembling isn’t from pain. His soft sounds aren’t cries of agony. He buries his face in Aki’s neck to kiss him, not to tear into his flesh. It feels good. It just feels good.

So good that Aki keeps himself locked inside Angel, lifts him up, and flips them over to lay Angel on his back. Angel yelps, the movement pushing Aki’s cock even deeper, so deep that Aki could swear there’s a small swell in Angel’s stomach. Angel stares up at him. Even as his cock throbs, even as his whole body screams for him to keep going, Aki is still. He looks at Angel, terrified.

“I don’t want to stop,” he finally says.

Angel wraps his legs around Aki’s middle, holding him in. “Then don’t.”

In the split second before he kisses Angel again, Aki smiles. He surges forward to press their lips together and clutches Angel tight, rolling his hips up and into Angel, setting a rapid pace that has them both panting.

The few words they spoke seem to have weakened the spell. Now neither of them can stop making noise. Angel moans and gasps with nearly every thrust; Aki lets out soft moans against Angel’s mouth as he kisses him, and then—

“Angel,” Aki says, burying his face in Angel’s neck, trying to hide. He’s never said Angel’s name like that, never given in so fully, but now he can’t stop. “Angel, Angel, Angel…fuck, you feel so good when you’re full of my cum…”

“More,” Angel says.

Aki pulls back and presses his forehead to Angel’s, thrusting a little slower, a little deeper. “I’ll give you more,” he says. “I’ll give you everything.”

His hips stutter when he realizes what just came out of his mouth. What am I saying? He kisses Angel deeply, afraid of what might come out next if he doesn’t keep his mouth occupied, and picks up speed again. 

On a particularly sharp thrust, Angel shivers. “There,” he gasps against Aki’s lips, “right there, Aki, there—“

I know, Aki almost says. He knows Angel’s body as well as his own, maybe even better. But he doesn’t say anything. He just rolls his hips to hit that spot the way Angel likes and groans as the ripples of pleasure rush through Angel’s cunt, gripping Aki’s cock so tight he can barely move. So tight, it’s like Angel doesn’t want Aki to leave.

“You first this time,” Aki says. “I want you to come first this time.”

“Mmmh—don’t stop—” 

“C’mon, Angel.” Aki grabs Angel’s hips and pulls them in, meeting his next deep thrust. He grits his teeth through Angel’s blissful shudder. He has to hold on. “Come for me.”

“Don’t stop,” Angel keeps pleading, voice high and tight. “Please, Aki, please, don’t stop don’t stop don—ahh—!”

Angel starts to come again, even harder this time, and Aki groans. He clenches his eyes shut. He can’t look at Angel’s face; this will be over far too quickly if he does. All he can do is hold on until the strongest tremors subside and Angel goes limp in his arms.

Finally, Aki lets go. He pulls Angel’s hips closer, clutches him tight, and goes still, unable to take any more as his orgasm hits him. He feels himself throbbing inside Angel, filling him up even more. Angel’s walls clench around him to milk him dry. It almost hurts. The pleasure edges into overstimulation, and Aki shudders, suddenly having to hold back a raw sob. Tears prick at his eyes. Angel strokes Aki’s back, coaxing him as he comes down. 

Once his orgasm fades, Aki carefully lets Angel go and pulls his cock free, letting the mess spill freely onto the couch. It’s over. After what felt like hours, it’s over. The spell has broken, just like it has every other time, but even in the aftermath the air itself feels different. Something has permanently changed. Aki can’t tell if the change happened inside himself, between the two of them, or both.

Too afraid to articulate his feelings, he starts off with objective facts: “You’re a mess.”

“Mm.” Angel’s hand drifts across his own face, brushing away sweaty locks of hair as his eyes close, his lips hinting at a smile. “Your fault,” he murmurs.

“You’re the one who told me not to stop.” Aki tucks himself away and stands up. He grabs Angel’s shorts off the floor. “Come on. We both need to shower.”

“Carry me.”

“What? No.”

“I’ll drip everywhere if I walk.” Angel opens his legs wider to draw attention to the mess between them. “My legs are sore from riding you, too.”

Somehow the brattiness is endearing, as much as Aki wishes it angered him. He sighs. “Fine.” He bends down to scoop Angel up, cradling him in his arms. “Lazy.”

Angel ignores the insult and tucks his head into the crook of Aki’s neck with a contented hum. He presses a gentle, sleepy kiss to Aki’s throat. Aki falters, wanting to ask why Angel did that, but the likely answer is too daunting. He heads to the bathroom in silence.

“You can shower first,” he says when they arrive, carefully setting Angel down on the stool. “I’m gonna go cl—”

“I want a bath.”

“Whatever. Just get clean. I don’t care how you do it.”

“I’m so tired,” Angel says, and his earnestness makes Aki pause. He’s not just whining. “Can you help me?”

Aki wants to sigh again, but instead he goes over to the tub and turns on the water. “Fine.”

While they wait for the tub to fill, he dampens a washcloth and nudges Angel’s legs apart to tend to the worst of the mess between them. Angel winces, tender from their coupling. The urge to kiss him grabs hold of Aki like hands around his throat. He waits it out, holding his breath until the feeling passes.

By the time Aki scoops Angel up again and helps him into the bath, Angel is dozing off. He hums happily as he sinks into the warm water. Aki lets him go and starts washing his hair, carefully working the locks between his fingers. Angel folds his arms over his knees and lays his head down.

“I’m not doing all of this for you,” Aki warns.

“Uh-huh.” Angel yawns, then sleepily reaches for the bar soap.

Before long, Angel has finished washing himself, and he lays his head back down while Aki finishes rinsing his hair. Aki lingers after he’s done. Angel is half-asleep, and so Aki allows himself this moment of weakness: he strokes Angel’s back, his flat hand perfectly bridging the space between his wings, brushing down the soft, tiny feathers that sprout from his skin like spring seeds from the earth. It feels like trespassing. He rubs his thumb back and forth through the little feathers, stealing moment after tender moment, hypnotized once more by how good gentleness feels. 

“Mmm…” Angel stirs, and Aki freezes, dread twisting his stomach. “That feels good.”

Aki clears his throat and draws back his hand. “I need to go clean up before Denji and Power get back.” 

Angel tucks his head back into his arms, hiding his face. “Fine.”

“Don’t fall asleep.”

“I won’t,” Angel says, then yawns.

Aki hopes cleaning will distract him, but it doesn’t. Every bit of mess he wipes up is evidence, proof that he wasn’t dreaming, and it makes him sick how his heart keeps fluttering with every memory of what just happened. When he finds one of Angel’s primary feathers tucked into the couch cushions, he wants to burn it and kiss it in equal measure. He settles for sliding it into his pocket.

Once Aki is done cleaning, he takes a scalding hot shower and scrubs himself raw, trying to get at that incessant itching stuck under his skin. It’s no use. Whatever is inside him is buried far too deep.

When Aki enters his room, Angel is already asleep in his bed. His hair and wings are still damp, shimmering in the glow of his halo, and a shard of moonlight breaks through the parted curtains to fall upon his lips. He’s beautiful. He’s the most beautiful thing Aki has ever seen, the most beautiful person he’s ever seen, and bile burns Aki’s throat—when did Angel become a person? When did he become more than something to be cut open and killed?

It was probably a long time ago, but Aki isn’t ready to admit that.

Still he crawls into bed behind Angel and pulls him close, taking in the flutter of his wings when he stirs and the soft noise that escapes as he buries his face in the crook of Aki’s arm. His heartbeat flutters, too, and Aki’s heart skips in return. He can only hope that Angel didn’t notice.

ii.

“I think it’s a civilian devil hunter,” Angel says. “Looks like they got eaten by this devil. No bottom half. They’re gonna die.”

He sounds so apathetic, talking about a human’s suffering the same way most people talk about the weather, and it makes Aki sick. 

The mangled human croaks out plea after plea for death. Aki looks at their face: dazed with pain, spattered with blood and sweat, eyes half-closed and muscles spasming as their brain is overloaded with agony. His fingers twitch around the handle of his katana. “Your power can kill them painlessly, right?” he asks, looking at Angel. “Put them out of their misery.”

Angel barely turns his head. “Huh? No way.” He looks back at the devil’s corpse, zeroing in on the human engulfed in gore. There’s no change in his eyes—no recognition of another living being’s suffering, much less pity or mercy. His face stays blank. His voice, however, is low and heavy as he says, “I’m devil first, angel second. I think humans ought to die in pain.”

Aki can’t think of a response. What the hell could he say to that? How could Makima have ever expected him to get along with this? Denji was a pain in the ass when they started working together, sure, but at least he cared. Angel is just heartless. He might not be hostile, but he has no regard for human life, just like every other devil Aki has ever faced. He knew he’d never be able to work well with a devil.

He silently raises his katana, eyes locked on the suffering human, and kneels to plant the blade in their chest with a sickening sound—the sound of mercy. They let out one last groan of pain. Gore wets Aki’s clothes as he watches their eyes close for the last time, a peaceful near-smile pulling at their lips.

“Thank…y…”

Beside him, Angel is unmoved, eyes boredly roaming the mess of gore before them. Aki stands back up and pulls his sword from the human’s body. Blood drips from the blade. His fists clench as he turns to Angel.

“I can’t even pretend to get along with you,” he says.

Angel doesn’t even spare him a glance. “I guess not.”

9.

In the morning, Aki forgets.

He wakes slowly, early-morning sun sneaking through the curtains and falling across his face. There’s a warm body in his arms. It’s been a long time since he woke up like this, yet his body responds so easily, pulling the other person closer like it’s second nature. He tucks his head against theirs and sighs, content.

And then he registers the hum of a halo near his ear. He recognizes the shape of folded wings against his chest. As has happened so often as of late, the realization hits Aki worse than any physical blow: this is Angel. This is a devil he’s holding close, holding like a lover. He remembers last night, how strange and soft and terrifying it was, the pleasure and fear that came with giving in to gentleness. He remembers, and he wants to run away all over again.

Despite himself, he pulls Angel even closer.

He’s never held Angel quite like this—tenderly, tucked perfectly against his own body—and it’s strange, wonderful, sickening. He wants to shove Angel away. He wants to never let him go. He wants to memorize this feeling, to be able to recall the shape of Angel and smile as he dies. This is wrong, he thinks, he’s a devil, he’s an abomination, you shouldn’t feel like this—you shouldn’t—

“You’re thinking too much,” Angel mumbles, still half-asleep.

Aki blinks. “What?”

“Your fingers.” He twists an arm to catch the hand Aki has around his waist. “They twitch when you’re anxious. It tickles.”

Aki holds his breath, trying not to choke on the realization that Angel knows him so well he can call out Aki’s habits in his sleep. Habits Aki didn’t even know he had. “Sorry,” he says after a moment.

“Mm.” Angel sounds uninterested in staying awake, much less in acknowledging the apology, and soon his body goes lax as he drifts back to sleep with a sigh. He doesn’t let go of Aki’s hand. 

In yet another moment of weakness, Aki intertwines their fingers. His hands are so much bigger than Angel’s, the spaces between his fingers seemingly made for Angel’s fingers to fit inside perfectly. It feels good. Aki wishes he could hate that. Aki wishes he could hate Angel. He wants to hate Angel as much as he hates the Gun Devil, and the Bomb Devil, and every other devil who’s ruined his life. But Angel destroyed him in a different way than the others: he crawled inside Aki’s life, inside Aki himself, cracking open his chest and pulling out his heart to devour it whole. And Aki let him do it.

“Still thinking too much.” This time Angel is annoyed, squirming in Aki’s arms, though he keeps holding his hand.

Aki ignores the comment. “We should talk about last night.”

“What about it?”

“It…” Aki pauses, mouth open. Did Angel really not feel it, too? How couldn’t he? “It was different. It changed things.”

“It wasn’t that different.” Angel rubs Aki’s thumb with his own. “Maybe we didn’t try to kill each other last night, but…it didn’t feel that different. This hasn’t been just sex for a long time.” He pauses. When he speaks again, his voice is soft, careful. “Not for me.”

That’s a confession. Aki can’t stop his breath from hitching this time, and he could never hope to quell his pulse now, pounding in his throat and forcing out a question he never wanted to ask: “Do you love me?”

Angel’s silence lasts only a few seconds, yet it’s agonizing, tensing every muscle in Aki’s body with hope and dread alike. Then, he murmurs, “Yes.”

Aki’s fingers twitch again. Angel squeezes his hand, steadying him, though such a tender act makes Aki feel sick. “Why?” he chokes out.

“Does it matter?”

“I—” Aki deflates. “No. It doesn’t.”

“Glad we agree.” Angel yawns, pressing himself closer to Aki’s chest. “Are we done? I wanna go back to sleep.”

“No.” After a moment, Aki gives in, pressing his cheek to Angel’s hair and breathing deep. He smells like Aki. “I don’t know if I want things to change.”

“They don’t have to.”

“But—”

"Aki.” It’s strange to hear Angel say his name like that—not crying out in pain or moaning in pleasure, but just…saying it. “You have less than a year left to live.”

As if Aki could ever ignore the ticking clock of his life, the way its pendulum swings ever closer to him like an executioner’s blade. “I know that.”

“Do you want to waste your time torturing yourself?”

“Do you want to get attached to someone who’s going to die so soon?”

“It’s a little late for me to not get attached.”

“You know what I mean.”

Angel sighs. “I’m tired,” he says. There’s a weight to the words that makes Aki’s heart sink—a fatigue that comes from trying too hard, from caring too much for too long. Out of all the ways Aki has made Angel hurt, this one makes his insides twist with the strongest guilt. “You know how I feel. In the end, it’s your decision. But you should make it soon. You don’t have to be in pain like this.” He squeezes Aki’s hand again. “Neither of us do.”

Aki doesn’t say anything. He just lies there, holding Angel in his arms, their hands still clasped together. Angel’s breathing grows slower and slower as he falls back asleep. Aki stays awake, staring through the curtains at the breaking sun.

What he really wants is within reach. He just has to take it.

i.

“Hey, you. Got a handkerchief?”

It’s a soft voice, too gentle for this battlefield, too passive for all this violence. Aki doesn’t recognize it. He turns toward the source to see one of the new Special Division 4 members he’d been briefed on—the Angel Devil.

From what Kishibe told him, Aki knows that the Angel Devil is everything a devil shouldn’t be: unhostile towards humans, quiet, cooperative. But as the battle stills and time slows down, Aki sees that, more than anything else, he’s beautiful. Beautiful. So beautiful that, for the first time in ages, Aki’s heart stirs with something warm, something that isn’t hatred or sorrow or the need for revenge. It’s something he’d forgotten the shape of. His heart aches as the feeling tries to fit itself inside his chest.

He buries it deep instead, his stomach twisting. Devils are tools to be used at best, and otherwise, they’re the enemy. Aki could never want one. He doesn’t have the time to want anybody at all. There’s too many lives still on the line, too many lives that still need to be avenged.

He approaches the devil like a man to the gallows and holds out a handkerchief. Their fingers nearly brush when the devil takes it, so close that Aki can feel the air move between them.

“I’m surprised you’d get this close to me,” the devil says flatly. “If I touch you, I’ll shorten your lifespan.”

His tone gives Aki pause. There’s no cruelty in his voice—this devil doesn’t take joy in harming humans, unlike every other devil Aki has met. If anything, he sounds tired. 

“It’s safe through cloth, right?” Aki asks.

Suddenly his right eye shows a flash of movement, a man with a gun, the spark of bullets being fired; what Future Devil doesn’t show him is a huge wing unfurling around him, blocking the bullets’ path. The devil is shielding him. The gunman’s attack wrests Aki from his stupor, and he surges back into the mindset of battle, charging the gunman and knocking him out with a single blow. He calls out a command to the devil and strides out of the room, leaving any thought of the Angel Devil behind. 

He’s only a devil. That’s all he’ll ever be.

10.

Late summer wind blows through the grass, caressing Aki’s skin and blowing his hair back from his face. He looks out over the field. It’s still the middle of nowhere. It’s still empty. There’s still no one around to hear them scream. And yet the space between him and Angel seems fuller than before, the distance spanned by the wounds that connect them—full of life, and full of a feeling Aki finally knows the name of.

He’s still not quite at peace with his heart. He’s not sure he’ll ever be. But Aki only has months to live, and he knows that Angel is right: he can’t keep torturing them both for the rest of his life. Not when he can get the hurt that he craves in a much more satisfying way. 

Their eyes meet. They don’t need to speak, don’t even need to nod; Aki can read the readiness in Angel’s eyes. He charges his lover at full speed and Angel meets him in the middle.

Their blades collide, sending a sharp metallic ring echoing through the air, but Angel is quick to move and carve a deep gash from Aki’s shoulder to his chest. He stands on his tiptoes to bite into the wound, tearing a piece of Aki away. Aki moans as he wraps his arms around Angel, clutching him tight, giving him a squeeze before stabbing into Angel’s side and dragging the blade down to his hip. Aki’s fingers find the opening and press inside.

The wound is admission enough, but Aki says it aloud anyway: “I love you.”

Angel smiles, blood dripping from his mouth. He pulls Aki down and kisses him sweetly, devouring his choked gasp when he slides his knife between Aki’s ribs, finding a home right beside his heart. His words are warm against Aki’s lips. “I love you, too.”