Golden yellow wings flared, flashing brightly in the sun's rays as the angel fell onto the crystal blue floor of the sky. The creature dropped to one knee and his wings spread out across the wispy ground before folding tightly to his muscular back, flamingly beautiful feathers dusting his torso.
"TSUNAAA!" Howled the angel, gunmetal grey eyes finding the small brunette among the cirrostratus. "I SAVED THE GIRL YOU ASSIGNED ME TO!" Determination radiated from his built frame, every sinewy muscle tense and bulging.
Titian orbs switched from the universe above to the force of nature, bright and orange in concentration. "… But you're not content, are you?" He frowned and tilted his head, taking slow and smooth steps towards the shock-white haired fellow. "That woman… she meant something to you. You don't want to leave her behind, do you, Ryohei?"
The angel, Ryohei, dipped his head and glared down into the cumulus swells.
The brunette's two twin sets of blazing carnelian wings fluttered thoughtfully at his sides. With incredible gentleness, he rested one hand on Ryohei's forehead, as if taking his temperature, and looked back up to the unattainable galaxy as if answers were written in the unseen stars. "… You should go back to her, Ryohei."
"What?" Gunmetal eyes were wide and startled, glowing with hope.
"You should go back to her," repeated Tsuna, smiling softly. "You saved her from the shadows, but I don't think your duty is done yet." He gestured loosely through the untouchable floor to the green fields and tiny pinpoint homes far, far below, their own sort of sea while they stood on a proverbial cliff. "Happiness is what truly saves us from the darkness left by the tainted souls that will neither ascend nor descend. Leaving her as she is, you will leave her open to attack."
"… IS THIS EXTREMELY TRUE?"
"Yes." Tsuna crouched low, four wings encompassing the glassy surface they floated upon. "Hana, that was her name, right?"
He nodded sharply and grunted an affirmative.
"She's strong and independent. Physically, she has average human strength. And she is very cynical. She is very different from your first love."
"She's her own woman!" He barked. "She's the strongest human I've ever seen, NO MATTER HER SIZE! She's so damn powerful, she stole my heart from my chest." He clenched a huge fist over the center of his chest, over said organ. "Her loyalty is unmatchable TO THE LIMIT! And you know what else?" He growled lowly, eyebrows furrowed as he glowered up into the warm gaze of his superior.
"What else?"
"She kissed me goodbye and said that SHE LOVES ME!"
Tsuna cupped one hand to his mouth, smiling around his fingers. He chuckled. "I thought something like this was going to happen. A year is a long time to spend with such a strong-willed woman… though, for someone with preferences like you, I guess it wasn't long enough."
The wheels in his mind visibly turning, expression twisted in thought, Ryohei's wings shivered in dawning realization. "You knew from the beginning that I was going to fall in love with her."
"Did I?"
"YOU SNEAKY DEVIL!"
"Perhaps."
"But now that we love each other, WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?" His wings ruptured from his back, downy blades of glory, and his stark white teeth flashed in a scowl.
"I want you to forfeit your wings and live a human life. Live, love, and laugh with her until old age leads you back home to us."
Ryohei stared, with complete shock, up at the leader of his legion. "Won't you need me?" He nearly shouted.
"Yes. And when I will have need of you, I will still have you. When I need you, we will come to you." Tsuna stroked back his hair and then rested his hands on his broad shoulders, inches from the bridges of his wings. "I have given every one of my guardians the chance to be happy, for as ever long as happiness could be found. It's your turn now, Ryohei."
The earth far below was suddenly miles closer, them kneeling on cement with wings safely concealed by the fracture of light off of the clouds.
Just feet away, a woman walking down the sidewalk paused and turned around, as if she suddenly knew she was no longer alone. Her eyes narrowed and then focused, widening on their forms.
"Ryohei!" For one glorious moment, she appeared to nearly be drawn to tears, but then her immense inner strength came into play and turned her grin into a glower, purse in hand abruptly a weapon that she sent right across the fallen angel's face. "Don't you EVER do that again, you goddamned flying monkey! I told you… I told you I loved you and you still left!"
The white-haired man looked from her to his hands and then up to where Tsuna had moved apart from them, still graciously at peace. His two twin sets of wings flapped wide open and then, in a gust of September wind, he was gone.
The clouds above floated away and still, Ryohei's wings were hidden. Gone, even. He stared at his hands and then finally looked up at a secretly relieved Hana. With a burst of energy, he had her up in his arms, pulled tight to his chest, and he was kissing her like there was no tomorrow, because, as far as he was concerned, there wasn't.
"And I told you I loved you," he snapped when they pulled apart. "AND I CAME BACK!"
And he kissed her again, this time with her eager cooperation.
Watching from far above, Tsuna laughed at the joy that there was and turned his back on the couple. "Mortality must be the most beautiful thing all of creation…" His eyes sidled around to the abrupt appearance of a dark man, slate blue eyes slanted towards him. "Am I right, Hibari?"
The angel of death sneered and stretched his vivid mauve wings wide, each nearly twice the length of his body, and snapped them irately to his back. "Mortality is a blink of an eye. How can the darkness behind your eyelid be beautiful?"
Tsuna slid a hand over the angel's eyes, closing his own to match his legion's blindness, and waiting for as long as the blink of an eye before pulling his palm away. "How was it?"
Slate blue eyes fluttered open, as if from heavy sleep, and stared down at the brunette. "It was dark," he clarified with annoyance.
"And?"
"And you might die at my hand for touching me."
"And?"
"You're annoying, why don't I just kill you now and save myself from your ignorance?"
"And?" He pressed excitedly, hands clasped in the lapels of Hibari's suit jacket. There was almost childlike delight in his tangerine gaze.
"… And it was warm."
"It felt special."
"I feel especially murderous."
Tsuna pressed a kiss to the corner of Hibari's mouth. "This is his happiness, not yours. You had your time. With me. So even if mortality isn't beautiful, this is his euphoria to experience. Be kind."
The raven-haired angel snorted. "Kind? I was created to be unkind."
"No… You were created to lead the lost, protect the forgotten, and, most importantly, keep my legion in line." He pressed his lips firmly to the chilled man's lips.
Though neither was warm, Hibari was tundra frozen compared to Tsuna's mountaintop cool. One was of ice and the other of autumn, crackling leaves in the days of October a memory tattooed into the brunette's flesh while the blizzards of the Antarctic had sliced deeply into the death angel's skin.
"I don't think you're unkind at all. You are just… dangerously physical and outspoken." He offered a wicked smirk that belied his rank.
"Are you mocking me, Tsunayoshi?"
"I wouldn't dare."
As Hibari launched his attack, Tsuna escaped on a breeze, four wings flared out from his body as he flew away. Hibari, mauve wings broadening from his back, stalked his prey with single-minded purpose.
Laughter was caught in a layer of cirrus, echoing throughout the sky like wedding bells.
At the entire opposite end of the spectrum, layers beneath the earth's crust in a molten layer of hell that burned the damned to crisps and burned the guilt off of victimized souls, another immortal sighed in exasperation and crossed one ankle over the other knee, head leaning on one fist.
"Children…" He muttered with the slightest hint of affection. "Will they ever age above a game of tag?"
A husky chuckle sounded behind his high-backed throne built on the skeletons of the most villainous beings that had ever had the pleasure of descending, followed by hands running down the devil's chest to laze casually over his defined middle. "Will you ever age above a game of tag?" Purred a voice into his ear, pink tongue catching the lobe and dragging it between coral lips.
Reborn shifted in his seat and turned obsidian eyes onto his devious lover, a smirk of his own growing. "I've lived long enough to enjoy myself."
"You've lived long enough to become an insufferable bastard."
With carefully placed hands, he flipped the mischievous angel over the chair and into his lap where the young creature yelped in surprise.
Electric green eyes found his in the glow of core fires. "See what I mean? An insufferable bastard."
"You live here for a millennium and think you know me?" His face drew intimately close to the angel's, needle-sharp fangs bared and dangerously close to the younger's throat. "This insufferable bastard can eat you alive."
"My oh my, I thought you have already eaten me alive… multiple times… or was I just having one too many dirty dreams?" He wrapped his arms around the devil's shoulders and let his head fall easily back into the other's bicep, emerald wings tightly trapped to his back and following the curve of his bent torso.
"You make a terrible angel."
"A thousand years with you does that to a person. I was only a child when I came here, Reborn, I was raised in terrible surroundings…"
"You came of your own free will."
"I was five years old."
"And now you're older."
"Time passes so fast in hell…" The younger wriggled his eyebrows. "Want to play tag?"
She clung to her dream of angels and demons, wishing she could be with the glorious and magnificent people she saw in her mind's eye. Alas, morning came and her alarm tickled the air with a sweet ballad that forced her awake.
With a subtle pout, she slid out of bed, violet eyes on the glossy wooden floor that turned to ivory tiles as she switched from her bedroom to the shower, slipping her silk nightgown off of her small frame and onto the floor. She tweaked with the knobs until lukewarm water sprayed from the showerhead, catching strands of her indigo hair and clinging to the side of her cheek.
As a final step, she slid off the eye patch she wore in sleep and wake, not wanting to dampen the black leather with a silver skull stitched into its design. That had been a precious gift from the very person who had gifted her, who had touched her broken body and given her a new life, declaring that she would live and live to see the lives that had never truly been lives but existences outside of human understanding.
He had called her a prophet. And then he had named her Chrome, claiming Nagi to be her pet name, the name he would use specially to call her by. Their pretty little secret, he had cooed and winked as he had led her off of the street she should have died on and into heated darkness.
The three dimensions of subsistence, all with their own subdivisions, but majorly three categories in total: Heaven, Middle ground (earth), and Hell.
She prided herself on being one of the few humans who actually understood what and where those places were, not actually all on the same plane as earth, but separated into three different worlds warped into one that had an eyehole into the other surfaces. Heaven and Hell shared peepholes for Middle ground, and yet only Middle ground was blind… well…
She stared thoughtfully at her bottle of pineapple-scented shampoo. She wasn't blind. With only one eye, living half a life that depended purely on the aide of a single demon and a legion of angels, she possibly saw more than any other person on earth.
Only minutes later, she abandoned the bathroom, wrapped modestly in a fluffy towel that reached mid-thigh and cupped her small breasts. On silent feet, she padded into the kitchen and decidedly pulled yogurt from the refrigerator, not exactly hungry but not wanting to be scolded by her ethereal friends. The legion of Vongola was known to pop in randomly on her and do an once-over of her improvised home, just to make sure she had everything she needed or could even possibly want. Every other once in awhile, her superior and his pack would come in for a few days at a time while they caused havoc in her town and she was just happy with that.
Settling with a shiver on a stool at her kitchen island, she nursed the strawberry-kiwi yogurt and stared at the black surface of the table, filled with longing after such a beautiful night.
Boss, or who others referred to as Tsuna, worked so hard so everyone else could be happy… She doubted Ryohei fully understood what it cost for him to be on earth, only temporarily human. Boss had higher ups to consider, namely the archangels, and they would not be pleased at all, having lost one of the members of their tenth strongest legion. Then again, they hadn't been happy at all when Lambo had settled contently in hell, and yet boss fought for his right to be there with no sour emotions.
Her boss was so sweet… she sometimes wished she could fall in love with him. Some other times, she wished she could take care of him. Always, though, she wished she could just be with him. But that wasn't always possible because she was human and he was an angel. His business was above in his own layer of the world and she should be in bliss over having merely a window into his life.
She shut her one eye and when she opened it once more, a man sat in the seat opposite hers. His long azure tresses were scruffy at the top of the hair tie and then fluid reaching down his spine. His one cobalt blue eye was affectionate on her, its fraternal twin shut seeing as how he was on the earth's surface and revealing his power would attract likewise enemies or worldwide madness – though one could consider them one and the same.
"My Nagi," he greeted in an upbeat tone.
"Mukuro…" She drew energy just by him being there, near enough for her to touch though she knew she wouldn't do so. A demon he was, but she looked at him and she saw god.
"Did you see it?"
She nodded, knowing exactly what he was talking about. "Boss brings out a more playful part of Hibari…" she dipped her spoon into her breakfast and then licked the metal clean, not even paying attention to her taste buds. "Lambo and Reborn seem a lot like them."
"Kufufufu~ can you believe I was stuck there as the devil began fucking that pitiful angel? I even had an appointment scheduled, but that damn Reborn ignored me anyway and kept screwing that little bundle of innocence blind. Disgusting, to be attracted to such naivety."
She considered that point of view even as she wondered whether or not to make tea. "I don't think he's naïve. He's been in hell for nearly a thousand years." She would like to think that that constituted for something.
"Time passes much faster in hell compared to heaven or earth. It's all location, location, location~ do not give him a break because he decided on the wrong location."
Instead of tea, she thought of coffee. "I don't think he needs a break. He's been incredibly happy as is."
"Kufufufu~ exactly. He doesn't need a break…" He mocked a pout as he stood from his stool and swaggered around the table. His leather-clad glove grazed the black tiles as he pushed closer and closer until his mouth was on her cheek, breathing sweetly into her ear. "My beautiful, beautiful Nagi… A conversation wasn't what I came here to enjoy~" he purred, one hand trailing down her throat and catching on her towel, sliding it free and revealing her perky breasts. He cupped one happily, tweaking it with patience as she arched into his touch and sighed in shaky pleasure.
"I know," she whimpered as she let her legs fall open at the command of his other hand, feeling his palm slide tantalizingly along her inner thigh.
Mukuro laughed deviously against the soft curve of her jaw. "Of course you did. You are, after all, a prophet."
She let herself submit to him without another word, falling into forbidden euphoria as hands that had once drowned in blood trekked and teased her shattered body.
"I don't even know why we're here," growled a silver-haired creature, spitfire green eyes directed angrily ahead and bleach white teeth clenched around the butt of a cancer stick. In the rays of the sun unfiltered by small clouds, the shadow of his wings could be seen – though not strongly, only possible with a third glance and then a squint, but what human was going to be so desperate to prove their own lunacy?
"Mah mah, Tsuna said there was someone here we would have to save." Beside him walked a taller creature, this one of burnt sienna skin and black hair, kind amber eyes trained on the silverette as if the world danced around him. And, maybe, considering just how strong his affection was, such was true. Behind him also showed the silhouette of wings, an afterthought to their descent. His hands were planted in his pockets and cast around his waist was a sash with a blade wrapped in tattered lengths of silk.
"I heard what Tenth said," the first growled. Tenth was his term for Tsuna, the leader of his legion. The reason for the name was that they were the tenth legion and with Tsuna presiding, it only made sense to the angel to call him such.
"Then you doubt him?"
"Never!"
"Then we'll just have to keep looking, hm?"
"Of course!"
"Hah hah~" the taller tangled their hands together and squeezed their sides together, slouching so his head rested securely on the silverette's shoulder. "Then you shouldn't doubt him, Hayato. Doubt isn't healthy for anyone, especially someone as old as you."
"I can't die from stress, you asshole. Or old age."
"Hah hah! Of course not, or else none of us would be here now." He looked back to the street and hummed thoughtfully, gaze ancient and considerate. "I miss the powdered wigs they used to wear."
"They haven't worn those in years."
"I remember them giving it up some time in the 19th century, right?"
"Now you're jus thinking too hard."
"This street used to be cobblestone, remember?" He turned his head and nibbled on Hayato's jugular, the outline of his wings flapping pleasurably. "There was that dark alley somewhere around here that had that barrier of crates. Remember what we did there?"
"Stop now while you're still alive."
Yamamoto laughed good naturedly and left the teasing at that. The silverette was at least letting him hold him and that was more than he could have ever asked for.
"Hey, Takeshi," the other experienced angel snarled randomly, stopping on the sidewalk and forcing pedestrians to walk around them, "you're the one Tenth told that there was someone to save here, right?"
"Hmmm… Maybe?"
"How is it that everyone looks perfectly happy?"
"Well, Tsuna never clarified on who needs saving."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He pressed a kiss to Gokudera's jaw and grinned, over all pleased. "Tell me, Hayato, do you feel happy yet?"
There was a moment full of shock and growing rage as the silverette slowly turned his head to glare down at him. "What?"
"Happy 399th anniversary!" He pointed to a nearby alleyway, the one he must have earlier mentioned, and smirked. "That's the alleyway where you first admitted to loving me."
"… I can't believe you."
"You should~"
"No, I literally can not believe your stupidity! You dragged me down to earth while darkness is taking over for an anniversary that we've had nearly 400 others of! You idiot!"
Yamamoto considered him with narrowed eyes, gouging his actual emotions on the situation, and then smiled. "You forgot, didn't you?"
Gokudera's cheeks colored darkly. "I hate you."
The taller nuzzled the broader's throat, humming happily. "And I love you more."
Author's Note: I've been watching Supernatural lately. Does anyone adore Castiel?