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He killed the first thing he encountered in Hell.
Understanding returned in drips. He was dead. That much was certain. The rest were best guesses. A name: Aki. Perhaps his own. Perhaps the name of someone he’d known. It sat wrong on him, like shoes on the opposite feet. A place: Hell, though the darkness and the snarling devils all around him made that plain enough. A longing.
This last he struggled to decipher. It was as though there was a hole in him, an empty space, but he found no injuries on his body. The hole was invisible, but it ached in the center of his chest as surely as any wound.
It didn’t take long for one of the devils to notice him. The creature pounced, perhaps seeing his confusion and thinking of him as easy prey.
That was a mistake.
Aki raised an arm that was entirely a gun, and he fired a shot right into the devil’s face. Its head blew away in a messy spew of gore, and the creature collapsed, even more dead than before.
The killing almost tickled a memory in him, almost sparked something familiar. He used his other arm, the human one, to feel at his face, but he found another gun there, a cold, dark barrel jutting out where his eyes should have been.
Should they have?
Aki struggled to remember. The gun felt wrong, but it was an instinct, nothing more. He still had the senses he required to navigate this place, so it didn’t actually matter, did it?
He moved, some dark, goopy filth sucking at his feet with every step. He had no destination, no goal, but it seemed better than standing still. Aki wandered the darkness of Hell, occasionally fiery hot, occasionally freezing cold, occasionally nothing at all. The heat seared his bare skin and the cold chilled it, but Aki trudged on, pulled by the hole in his chest, searching for whatever was supposed to slot into the emptiness and ease the ache.
Along the way, he encountered more devils. He killed them all, slaughtered them effortlessly. He grew to hate them more with each death. He was like these repulsive creatures, but also … not like them at all. They repulsed him, wrong in the way a wrong note in a song is grating and nauseating and wrong. Some pleaded, some begged, but he killed them all the same, his naked body painted by their blood.
The one with the wings did not even flinch when Aki placed the muzzle end of his arm against the back of his head. He was a small devil, even smaller when he sat hugging his knees into his chest. Hair the color of dying rose petals tumbled just past his shoulders. His great white wings were too bright and soft amid all this jagged darkness, but if he was here, he had to be a devil, right?
He glanced back over his shoulder at Aki, and their eyes met.
It was like the devil had stuck his hand in that hole in Aki’s chest and twisted Aki’s heart. Aki’s whole body tensed like he was bracing for a punch, but the little devil before him hardly moved, simply watched him with eyes as pale as his hair.
“You,” the devil with the angel wings said.
“Me?” Aki said.
The Angel Devil cocked his head. “Do I know you?”
Aki scoffed. “How would I know?”
Yet some piece of him did know. It lingered on the edges of the pain in his chest, some brighter, keener edge. It was a different flavor of pain, not a simple physical ache but something hotter, some vicious.
Anger rose in Aki. He didn’t hate the Angel Devil, but the pain he sparked was so sharp, so deep that Aki had to claw it out of himself before it could consume him.
He tackled the Angel Devil, throwing them both into the thick, murky goop that covered the ground of this hateful place. The devil fought back, and soon they were a tangle of flailing limbs. Aki grabbed at feathers, yanking them out. The devil screamed and bit at Aki, teeth sinking into his human arm until he drew blood.
Aki shook him off, but the angel came right back at him, and they continued clawing at each other. Fluffy white feathers flew into the air in chunks. Bones crunched under them as they rolled in each other’s grasp. The angel got Aki’s hair tangled between his fingers and yanked until it tore free.
Aki screamed, bucking the Angel Devil free. He landed in the muck with a splash and lay there, his ruined wings dripping with blood and gore. They were more bone than feather now, only sad patches of soft white remaining.
He was beautiful like this, broken and vulnerable.
The ache inside Aki nearly screamed. He lunged forward, tackling the angel, but this time he did not pull at his scant remaining feathers or rose-colored hair. He caged the angel in his with arms, gazing down at him lying among the filth of this place. This, too, was familiar, so strangely familiar. Aki’s own confusion flashed across the pretty features of the angel.
“We knew each other,” Aki said.
The Angel Devil shrugged in the muck. “Does it matter either way?”
“I don’t know,” Aki said. “It could.”
The Angel Devil laughed and threw his arms around Aki’s neck. “Nothing matters down here.”
There was something repulsive about his touch, but also something familiar. Aki reeled and burned all at once. This was a devil just like all the other wretched devils he’d killed down here (and, he suspected, killed in his previous life). Yet when this one touched him, it was different. It was…
“Are you an angel?” Aki said.
It was the only explanation, but it didn’t make sense, not if he was down here. Aki didn’t need his memories to know that no true angel belonged in this place.
The man beneath Aki smiled wryly. “An angel. Wouldn’t that be something? Why don’t you call me Angel, then? I can be an angel, if that’s what you want. Maybe I even was one before. Who knows? Something about it feels right.”
Something about it did feel right. Too right. Too familiar.
“Angel,” Aki said, testing the moniker out. It felt like more than a title. It felt like a name, like a caress, like a kiss as the sound tickled past his lips.
That spark returned, that feeling like swallowing broken glass and letting it shred its way down his throat and through his chest. Why did that name hurt so much?
He grabbed at Angel’s wrists, pinning them above his head. Angel gasped, pretty lips parting around the noise, a blush as rosy as his hair and eyes lighting his cheeks.
“I definitely shouldn’t like that so much,” Angel said. “Who are you?”
“I don’t know,” Aki said.
And said no more. There was no point. Neither of them had any memory of who or what they were. All they had were the razor-sharp shards of some past life cutting them to ribbons.
If they were going to bleed, they might as well make it worth something.
Aki swept down, pressing his mouth to Angel’s, tasting his surprise, his delight, the little shudder that ran red hot through his slender body. He had to tilt his strange, gun-fronted head to manage it, but that didn’t seem to matter. Angel arched up onto his shoulder blades, and his body pressed against Aki, only the mud and muck and gore around them separating their skin. There was something very right about that, achingly right. It felt like Aki had waited entire lifetimes to have these lips against his, to have this body touching his. The brush of skin against skin was more profane than the way their cocks jutted to rigid attention. That was expected. That was ordinary. But this, this naked contact, this smashing of one mouth against each other with no barrier, no guard, no protection – this was what sent a judder of excitement through Aki’s entire body.
They broke apart gasping. Aki remained perched over Angel, who blinked up at him from the bloody bed beneath him.
“That was…” Angel said.
It was. It was and it was so much more.
And Aki could not stop now.
He sat back and used his one human hand to yank Angel up and into his lap. His hand settled around Angel’s throat, rough as he pulled Angel back to his mouth. Angel whimpered, but the way he squirmed in Aki’s lap spoke more of pleasure than pain.
It wouldn’t matter down here. Nothing would matter. What was the difference between pleasure and pain in Hell, anyway? Whatever they were barreling toward would almost certainly hurt, but that wasn’t going to be enough to stop either of them, not when every taste of Angel’s lips ignited some furtive spark of memory. It wasn’t true memory, more the feeling of one. Every kiss was like grasping at a whiff of smoke; Aki could feel something for a moment, but there was no hope of holding on.
Their lips slid apart. Angel sat close, staring at the gun obscuring what should have been Aki’s eyes. It was almost like he could still see eyes there; it was almost like he was looking into something more than a cold metal barrel when he looked at Aki.
Aki’s hand was still on Angel’s throat. When he stroked with his thumb, it lefty a bloody smear down that pale column, so delicate, so fragile. When devils died in this place, they died for good.
Still, Angel was unafraid. He reached up, tracing his fingers along the weapon protruding from Aki’s face, caressing it like a familiar lover. He brushed Aki’s hair away. Then a finger trailed down to trace the shape of Aki’s jaw.
Angel’s eyes flickered to the arm that was also a gun, this one even bigger and meaner than the one in Aki’s head. But this, too, Angel stroked like he was savoring the feel of a lover’s skin, familiar and soft and gentle instead of hard and strange and only good for harming.
“I don’t know why, but I get the impression you used to be different,” Angel said.
Aki did too, but he tried not to focus too much on that thought. It carried with it the possibility that this form he found himself in was some sort of monstrosity, a monstrosity he had to carry for eternity.
Instead he ran a finger along the naked bone of the closer of Angel’s wings.
“I get the impression you used to be different, too,” he said.
Angel chuckled, harsh and bitter, but no less beautiful for that. “Fair enough,” Angel said. “Maybe we’re both just monsters now.”
“Hm.” Aki regretted still having a human mouth in that moment. It revealed the way he scowled at the thought.
Angel’s laughter was lighter this time, genuinely amused. It rang through Aki’s chest. He draped his arms around Aki’s shoulders and leaned close, speaking right next to his ear.
“Fuck me like a monster,” he said. “Fuck me like a beast, like a devil. Like we’ve never met. Like we’ve known each other forever. Like we’ll never see each other again.”
Aki sucked in a startled breath as desire flooded his chest.
Then his hand flew to Angel’s hair. And he pulled. Hard.
Angel moaned as Aki yanked his head back. Aki dove for his throat, turning his strange head sideways so he could suck his way down Angel’s neck and sink his teeth into the soft, vulnerable place where it met his shoulders.
“Yeah,” Angel breathed. “Just like that.”
Aki bit harder, bit until the iron tang of blood peppered his tongue and Angel cried out in pain. Then he pulled his mouth away with a wet pop, lips likely blushing crimson, and used Angel’s hair to throw him to the filth beneath him.
He landed with a shallow splash, splayed out, fear and lust dancing in his eyes. He might have been preparing to speak, but Aki was past words now, past anything but the primal need coursing through his horrible body. Had there been a time when he wasn’t like this? Had there been a time when Angel looked at him like that and didn’t see this devil of metal and brutality, but instead something human, something actually worth loving?
Even if Aki could remember, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He threw himself at Angel instead, banishing those soft, rose-petal eyes by turning Angel around and placing him on all fours. Angel sucked in a sharp breath when Aki dragged a finger along his ass, then pried him open to glimpse his waiting core. Aki thumbed over it, and a shudder shivered through Angel’s whole body, reaching even to the tips of his skeletal wings.
Aki used that finger to explore, to prod, to poke. He dipped his fingers in the filth under them, filth that reached up to Angel’s wrists as he perched on hands and knees. Aki had no idea what this stuff was. Blood, obviously, but other things as well, some too horrible to name. Whatever it was, it was all they had, so Aki coated his fingers and pressed them at Angel’s hole.
Angel groaned as a finger sank inside him. Aki pumped, testing, feeling. This wasn’t for Angel’s benefit. Aki was relearning this, flickers of memory pinging at him like raindrops pattering against a window. He only got glimpses, but it was enough. He knew this. Not just the motion, not just having his fingers inside someone, not just wanting so badly to replace those digits with his cock instead. He knew this, knew him, this strange little devil whining beneath him, begging him for more. The pleas were as familiar Aki’s name, something he was sure belonged to him, but he wasn’t sure how.
He gritted his teeth against memories sharp as a bullet ripping through his brain and tore his finger free. That finger probably wasn’t enough, but the want boring a hole through Aki demanded immediate release.
He dunked his hand in the mixture of blood and worse at his knees, then stroked it onto his cock. It was horrible, but no more horrible than the rest of this, and it had seemed to work well enough with the finger. It didn’t need to not hurt; it just needed to get Aki what he needed.
Aki lined up behind Angel. He had the sensation that this was easier with two hands, instead of one hand and one ghastly black weapon stuck into the ground to brace Aki like a tripod. He managed it anyway, the head of his cock kissing Angel’s pretty hole, filth sliding between them.
“Too big,” Angel gritted.
Aki did not heed the complaint. It came to him like an echo, a voice from a memory.
That echo rang even louder in his ears when Angel moaned from the intrusion of Aki squeezing inside him. Angel panted and whined and squirmed, but Aki wasn’t stopping now. He forced himself deeper, delving into a warmth that gripped his cock like the first drag on a cigarette, a familiar comfort, the promise of fulfilling a craving. And he did crave this, he realized. Not just the sex, but this person, this devil. He craved Angel, whatever he was, whoever he was, whoever they used to be.
“Aki,” Angel breathed, and that was familiar, too.
Sheathed inside Angel, Aki grabbed at his hair again, wrenching his head back. Only then did he move his hips, grinding in and out of Angel’s tight hole.
Angel responded in groans and yelps. His reached for Aki, finding his hand, but Aki didn’t slacken his grip at all. He held tightly as he rammed his hips forward, jarring a shriek from Angel.
“Too tight, too tight,” Angel groaned. “You’re going to break me.”
Aki continued, even as the pleas dropped from Angel’s lips, even as the babbling turned senseless, even as the cries grew louder and higher. It was a show, but some part of Aki had seen it too many times to believe the performance.
Or perhaps he simply didn’t care. Perhaps he wanted it. Perhaps the shouting urged him on harder and deeper, throwing him at the consuming warmth within Angel.
“A-Aki,” Angel begged. “P-please. Please.”
Aki thrust his hips forward, jolting another cry loose, letting the sound wash over him. When his eyes fell shut with bliss, those cries filled a small, tidy bedroom instead of this pit somewhere in Hell. There was light, soft, normal light. Aki had two hands. Angel had wings, actual wings, soft and downy and fluffing up as pleasure took him.
Aki gasped, eyes snapping open as his hips snapped forward. He was deep inside Angel, hips slapping against his perky ass with every thrust. They weren’t in that pretty bedroom; they were sloshing around in the corpse-speckled muck of Hell. Angel’s wings tried to fluff and preen, but they were bare, cold bone now, only a few tenacious feathers still clinging to the skeleton.
The dream faded as Aki chased what he needed here and now. It was only a dream, a fragment. It washed away under the barrage of Angel’s pleading moans.
Angel seemed to clench tighter around Aki, holding him closer. Probably another illusion, another lie, but Aki chased it anyway, chased it all the way to the edge of his ecstasy.
“Oh fuck,” Angel gasped.
It could have been Aki’s own voice rasping out that cry. With a final slap of his hips, he let himself break, emptying inside of Angel heedless of whether his partner followed.
Aki’s eyelids fluttered. He let out what felt like all the air in his chest. Tension drained out of him, replaced with a high like the first nicotine hit of the day.
He started to pull out, but Angel stopped him.
“Don’t,” he said. “Not yet. Stay there.”
It was repulsive, but Aki did it anyway. He was softening as he lingered inside the only devil he hadn’t killed on sight in this place, yet he stayed as long as he could bear it before finally freeing himself.
Angel sighed and sat down right there in the muck. Aki hadn’t been able to tell before, but now he noticed the tracks cut into Angel’s cheeks by tears.
Aki stood.
“You’re a bastard,” Angel said.
“You wanted a devil,” Aki said.
Angel’s smile was crooked and pale. “You used to be nicer. I wasn’t sure if you’d actually do it.”
Maybe he had been. Maybe that tidy bedroom was real. It made no difference here.
“I don’t remember,” Aki said.
“Me neither,” Angel said. “It was just a guess.”
Aki turned away, meaning to continue his aimless trudge. He would kill the next devil he found, of that he was sure, but where he was going or why or how long it would take — all of that was just … just a guess. A feeling.
He’d made it several steps before he noticed someone keeping pace just behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to find Angel following.
He should have stopped and shooed Angel away. He should have shouted at him for following. He should have said that he was only here to kill everything he could find, that there was no point in being near him, that whatever might have existed before did not, could not, exist here.
But the echoes of those sighs were still ringing in his ears. So he said nothing, and simply kept marching through the endless dark of Hell, the angel only a step behind.
