Chapter Text
— your arms are my cocoon .
Angel had spent his years hating.
He hated the laughter of the humans he held so lowly in his fractured heart, how it pealed like funeral bells. Nihilistic, perhaps, but Angel was so painfully aware of their demise that he couldn't humor them at all. He couldn't grant any grace to the joy of beings who didn't deserve to live, who didn't deserve the blessings they had brought themselves.
He couldn't stand the way they petted each other, affectionate in all the wrong ways. They held hands, they kissed, they slipped their arms about the others' waist, they'd waltz in broad daylight without a care in the world, hands intertwined and fates grimly certain.
They'll either die together or they won't, Angel thought, as he watched yet another couple enjoy their numbered days together, the concrete outside as their dance floor, one another's faces their muse.
He couldn't stand it.
Was it the pure idiocy of it? Entrusting a temporary heart to another? Or was it jealousy? Cursed with the blood and flesh of a devil, Angel could never hold another in that way. He could never feel another's warm breath against his skin, learn their heartbeat, their scent, reach every divot and blemish in their soul and console it, soothe and reassure, with his own two hands. He could never wake up in the arms of another, nor could he fall asleep, limbs entangled, hair frizzy and amess, with one he held dear.
Did he hate it because he wanted it, or did he want it because he hated it?
He resigned.
He would never know.
His tired eyes lowered, half lidded and obscured by pinkish hair, to the plate of half-eaten strawberry cake tucked within the crook of his left elbow, as if someone would steal it away. Another creamy mouthful waited upon his fork, offering sweet consolation where warm hands could not.
The window straight ahead was laden with streaks, dirtied with remnants of Tokyo rain. The tempered glass disallowed for that abhorrent human laughter to seep through the delicate barrier between human and devil, café and town square, but Angel could almost taste the joy, the love in the eyes of that hopeless couple, at the mercy of what was sure to come.
Country mouse.
The fork clinked against his teeth, sweet strawberry jam filling his mouth. He recalled a theory, one often used in prisons, about the diet's connection with serotonin. Coppen's theory, he recalled, in which it was proven that sugar within the diet increased serotonin, that it'd grant sweet release for as long as the meal lasted, and it worked. Angel was able to drag his eyes from the laughing, smiling, clinging couple wandering away from his line of vision and back toward his plate of sugary salvation. Just for a moment.
It was temporary, but it worked. Just like everything else.
He chewed another strawberry.
*
Returning home, Angel wasted no time, making quick haste to the bed he'd sworn his heart to. If he couldn't love, couldn't marry, he should have the next best thing, shouldn't he? An eternity of freedom and confinement, Stockholmed to the mattress he adored so much. Getting up and about was so much work, not to mention how awfully tedious it felt to rummage around for loose change he couldn't be bothered to count. Cake and other sweet pleasures must come at a paper-and-silver price.. albeit, a price Angel was willing to pay for his small luxuries.
Rolling over, a heavy sigh breaking the room's silence, the Angel Devil's heart began to ache. A slow, pounding, ruinous ache, washing over him in traitorous waves as he glanced at the single photo adorning the barren walls he didn't have the energy to decorate.
The photo, glossy and dog-eared with time and love, starred a smiling Aki Hayakawa, a sight so rare Angel felt he had to document it, lest he never see it again.
Aki's time was limited, after all. When your days are numbered, you only have so many smiles left in you.
Aki's frozen face was lit beneath a sea of stars, soft lamplight glow caressing his sharp features, cheekbone, jaw, nose so softly guided by the orange light. His strong hands rested on the pier railing behind him, stagnant river water glittering beneath, moonlight dancing atop its surface. Sailing boats resided in shadow in the unfocused backdrop. Aki's eyes weren't facing the camera; rather, they were looking elsewhere, taking interest someplace other than Angel's wanton, wretched heart, rather than his camera.
As was ritual, Angel kissed his index and middle finger, pressing them up to Aki's face, frozen in time within the lens capture.
It was the closest he would ever get to the real thing.
The closest he could ever get.
Goodnight, Topknot.