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The first time Jimin meets Jeongguk, it’s 1183, and he is wrestling a minor demon on the edge of the Notre Dame Cathedral roof.
It makes an impressive sight, even to an angel of some two thousand years; a tall, long-legged daemon, black-haired and sparking at the edges with the eternal fires of hell (or some bullshit), cheekbones cut deep by the incoming dusk, shadows spun across the roof by the falling sun. The skyline behind them is smeared pink-gold-purple, clouds shadowing deep undertones onto the heavenly painting. Jimin hates to admit it, but this daemon is looking pretty angelic.
And he is trying to shove a wriggling, crimson worm demon off the top of the building.
“What the fuck,” is his eloquent opening, “Are you trying to do?”
“Get out of here, seraph.” The worm thing has a voice like grating nails across a cave wall. It clings to each syllable like slime; the words themselves feel like something Jimin has to wipe off of his being. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“You don’t speak,” the daemon snaps back, seemingly to the worm, rather than Jimin. His voice is less harsh on the ears, deep but less gelatinous. Like honey. Not an angel, Jimin reminds himself, but the daemon is far too good looking for his own good. Wide eyes, burning black in the fading sunlight, and a cute little nose.
Jimin has always been too superficial to be a good angel. Jimin knows this. Jimin doesn’t care.
“I’m lost,” he admits, head tilted to one side to convey maximum confusion. “What is a higher daemon doing, wasting time on such a piece of hellish trash?”
“Fuck you!” cries the worm at the same time as the daemon grumbles,
“We’re both from hell, dude. It’s not that bad.”
Jimin snorts. “No, eternal pain and damnation sounds positively lovely. Again, what’s happening here?”
With that, the daemon’s eyes narrow, just a little, and Jimin tries to deny the little shiver that ran down his back. “Why should I tell you?”
“Is the whole ‘messenger of god’ thing not enough for you?” Jimin does the quote marks with his fingers, slim golden rings flashing, and the guy’s face sours further.
“We’re on earth, seraph, you hold no power over me here.”
“Could always drag you up there,” Jimin drawls, dragging out the last word and letting it ring through the air.
The daemon rolls his eyes, seemingly not impressed. Jimin would be offended if he gave a single fuck about the opinion of daemons. “Not if I drag you down first.”
“Can we get on with this?” The worm snaps, drawing both of their attentions away from each other momentarily. Jimin had forgotten it was there, to be honest.
“Shut up,” they both chorus, and the daemon shoves a foot down hard on the worm’s- neck? Back? Head? Jimin doesn’t care.
All Jimin had wanted was to sit down on the roof of the cathedral, feel all the good energy of being on top of a place full of people who adored him, adored all the art and statues and things offered up to a god who would never acknowledge or notice them, and sit in the warm Parisian evening breeze.
But no, there’s a convulsing red worm that reveals a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth whenever it speaks, and a far-too-attractive daemon giving him attitude. This isn’t ideal at all.
“How are you not burning up right now?” Jimin questions, carefully keeping his voice monotone. “House of god, all that shit.”
“You’re more ignorant than you’d like to know, seraph,” the daemon retorts, but Jimin notices how he winces as he speaks, almost as if he had forgotten he was in pain. “I am burning. Just- not enough.”
“And that?” Jimin points down, not even bothering to waste a glance on the thing.
“That?!” It screeches, “I am older than your angel great-great-great grandmother, than the very rocks of this rotten planet-“
“It’s a miracle it’s not already fried,” the daemon sighs, digging his toe into the flesh of the worm. Its screeches merge into one long squeal.
“Why are you even doing this?”
“It pissed me off,” he drawls, checking his nails as if he couldn’t be bothered to be there, despite the effort it is clearly taking to keep down the demon. “Ate a stray cat I liked. None of your business anyway, seraph.”
“It’s Jimin,” he says, word annoying him more and more with each use. “And it’s angel to you, not seraph.”
“Jimin.” The daemon tries it out, rolling the name along his tongue. “I prefer seraph.”
“Alright, cacodemon,” Jimin smirks, and the daemon’s face tightens.
“Jeongguk,” he snaps. “I don’t think I’ll see you around anymore. Goodbye.”
And with that, he steps backwards off the ledge, gracefully disappearing over the edge of the roof, taking the worm with him. The demon’s screams trail behind them, coming to an abrupt halt five seconds later. When Jimin bothers to walk over and look down, both are nowhere to be seen.
“Jeongguk,” he murmurs, gazing out over the Parisian skyline. The sky is almost black.
The daemon had looked far too angelic for his liking, as he had swept backwards off the roof in a soft curve.
“Jeongguk.”
——
“We really have to stop meeting like this.”
Jimin’s drawl cuts through the scene before him like a knife through hot butter, the spear through Jesus’ side.
Jeongguk pauses, sword held to the throat of the soldier trapped below his booted foot.
This time, it’s Constantinople, Byzantium, and Jimin had been taking a stroll through the blood-stained streets of the city, with a particular kind of feeling lodged in the pit of his ribcage that he hasn’t felt quite so strongly since the time he’d watched the soldiers of the first crusade carrying out their bitterly justified work in- 1096? 97? Humans like to date things, the unimportant little creatures they are.
Still a crusade. Was it the fourth one, now? Jimin doesn’t really care. He doesn’t. Not about the numbers, the dates, the cold figures stamped all over this city and this world, running with blood. He’d had to float through the streets to avoid staining his shoes, wings unfurled and visible - to him, and Jeongguk, he supposes - while unseen by the people running by. Screaming. Crying. After a few centuries, it all blends into white noise.
It is 1204, Jimin feels far sicker than he will admit, or believe possible for angelic beings, and Jeongguk is about to drive a sword through the neck of a soldier, bearing the mark of a Venetian troop on his chest-piece.
They’re in a courtyard, a seemingly perfect square, cobbled and white-walled with nothing but the sliver of street visible through the single gate and the searingly blue sky above visible. Jeongguk is wearing a white shirt, slipping down over his collarbones, and Jimin kind of wants to bite them and see what daemons taste like.
“Really fuck off this time, seraph,” Jeongguk snarls, digging the blade further into the man’s throat. “This is all your side’s mess, and this guy just killed a whole fucking family.”
“My side’s mess?” Jimin repeats, hoping his tone is incredulous enough. “Aren’t you the ones responsible for all the misery and hatred in the world?”
“How long are you going to keep letting yourself believe that?” Jeongguk’s voice is almost feral, and when he meets Jimin’s gaze with a vicious glare, his eyes are completely black. Not the sliver of darkness he’d seen on that evening in Paris, no; the whole pupil, jet and burning. “How long?”
“As long as it remains true,” Jimin replies carefully. “And as a messenger of god, I feel it necessary to remind you that murder is not the way-“
With a sudden, heaving push, Jeongguk drives the sword down into the neck of the soldier, and doesn’t flinch when the blood spatters across his cheek. It’s a shocking contrast, the dark crimson against his pale skin. He doesn’t break his glare. “Tell that to the men running around this city, murdering women and children in the name of your god-“
Jimin crosses the distance between them, getting closer and closer, and Jeongguk doesn’t draw back, doesn’t flinch. His shoulders heave, and he looks straight at Jimin like he wants to run him through with the sword too, like he wishes it would slice through his veins and leave his life trickling down into the cobbled ground of the courtyard, just like the soldier carrying the cross Jimin may as well be fucking nailed to himself.
Jimin crosses the distance, and wipes away the blood that has hit just below Jeongguk’s left eye. It’s bright on his thumb, ruby and sparkling in the hot Byzantine sunshine that the open square offers no shelter from.
Raising his eyes to Jeongguk’s again, he slowly licks the blood from his hand, tongue trailing along his skin, and tasting metallic copper like the remnants of a bitter pomegranate.
He leans forward, lips brushing the shell of Jeongguk’s ear, hoping it will unsettle him enough to last for a century at least, and whispers,
“Let the little people run.”
Jeongguk recoils back like Jimin has thrust a crucifix into his flesh, and replies through bared teeth. “You’re a monster.”
“No,” Jimin laughs, light and airy as the sky above, with all the heat of the bleeding city. “You’re the monster.”
“These are innocent people who are dying because of your god,” Jeongguk says, slowly, as if he’s trying to make Jimin see through his - still black - eyes, but also as if he’s already given up.
“What do you care for innocent deaths?” Jimin snorts. “Lack of housing for all these soldiers, down there?”
“I’ve seen hell,” Jeongguk inhales sharply. “I’ve seen too much of hell. You should open your eyes a little further, seraph. Maybe then you wouldn’t be so blind.”
And with that, he thrusts the sword up into Jimin’s stomach.
The wound blossoms like a flower, first red with the thin layer of humanity stretched over his immortal bones, and then the gold of ichor, dripping down onto the cobblestones and leaving hissing scorch marks where it hits. Jimin hisses himself, air through his teeth, and grabs the ugly handle of the sword, pulling it out and trying to ignore the stinging spreading through his torso.
When he looks back up, Jeongguk has once again left, through the courtyard gates, and has disappeared on the dusting of red that coats the death-ridden city.
——
It’s late 1342, and Jimin is lingering on the edges of the great hall of the palace now belonging to Ashikaga Takauji. Japan has become a place shredded in its fragility, politically, socially- for an immortal being, it’s something of a breath of fresh air. Besides, Kyoto is a beautiful city. Jimin has always liked aesthetics; you have to see the beauty in everything, as something that has existed to see all that everything. All the death, destruction- if you didn’t see its loveliness, you’d go mad.
Maybe he’s gone mad. They’re probably all mad, the immortal folk.
The room is light, washed in white, and full of important people that drift around like lost dandelion seeds, floating on a desolate breeze. Jimin fiddles with the decorated sleeves of his hitatare, similar to those worn by the vast majority of the men within the room. Getting himself to this rank amongst the Muromachi nobles had taken a while, but what’s an angel to do in his free time except flirt and flatter his way into a government?
He’d entered Japan just after Ashikaga had taken over, watched from the sidelines for half a decade, and begun his worming into the court. All was interesting, all was entertaining. And that’s all that matters, really, isn’t it?
It’s a few minutes before he notices the man who’s just walked into the room, a low shadow that slips between people with an inhuman grace. Because that is inhuman, that is a daemon- holy fuck, it’s Jeongguk.
For half a moment, the surprise is enough to render Jimin speechless, as he watches the daemon cut through the swathes of people clustered together, offering polite half-bows wherever he turns. Then, Jimin realises that the last time he saw Jeongguk, he got poked with a Venetian sword, so he’s obligated to go and at least mildly aggravate the daemon.
Jeongguk sees him just as he closes in, and his eyes roll, probably by habit now. They’re on a little wooden platform at one end of the room, in the corner, nestled by a huge pot of carefully-arranged flowers.
“Wasn’t last time enough of a deterrent for you?”
Jimin winks, hoping his smirk is snide enough. “I was hoping you didn’t want the sword back, so I messed up the history timeline a little and gave it to some guy in Norway. He loved the design.”
“For a messenger of god,” Jeongguk sighs, scrubbing a hand through his dark hair, “You’re such an annoying little shit.”
“I try my best.”
They lapse into a silence, and Jimin doesn’t think about how comfortable it is, and how this is the third time meeting this daemon within the span of under two hundred years- far too often to be normal.
“This is nice,” Jeongguk says suddenly, and his own eyes widen as if he’s surprised even himself. “Quiet.”
“No families being murdered this time?” Jimin asks wryly, light-handedly sweeping a delicate cup of tea off of the tray a servant is carrying as she bustles past them. Jeongguk gives him an exasperated look, and for a moment Jimin thinks it’s about the tea, and then thinks about how that’s ridiculous because Jeongguk is the one who should be advocating for that kind of lifestyle, and then he realises it’s not about the tea.
“Just not in plain sight,” is his answer, and they go back to their quiet. It’s a little tinged with something Jimin can’t put his finger on. Doesn’t want to be able to figure out.
It’s odd, stood here in the corner of this room in Kyoto, next to a daemon who seemingly has more of a moral compass than Jimin, a literal angel, possesses. It’s refreshing. Jeongguk’s kataginu leaves his arms exposed, and Jimin wants to trace the toned line of muscle with his eyes, his hands, his tongue.
“It’s peaceful,” Jimin says, so that he doesn’t start licking Jeongguk in the middle of Ashikaga’s party. “Different.”
“This isn’t even peace,” Jeongguk sighs, surveying the hall and its contents with the kind of sadness earned over centuries of desperate monotony. “This is just a… gap in the fighting.”
“Better than nothing,” Jimin shrugs, and Jeongguk fixes him with a look. “What?”
“You seem to like fighting anyway.”
“Peace is great,” Jimin deadpans, “When you’re mortal, and peace means you get to live another ten years. For us? Not so much.”
Jeongguk just shakes his head. “If you’d seen as much of hell as I have, you’d never say that.”
Jimin takes a long sip of the tea - far too bitter - and gazes off into the crowd. When he looks back, Jeongguk has gone.
——
Orléans is hot in the summertime of 1428, and even hotter full of death.
The battlefield before him is a ruin: bodies are piling up; the grass - or what’s left of it - is more red than green, like some incredibly grotesque christmas colour scheme. The air, normally so quiet and full of birdsong in the French countryside, is pierced through by the sour clattering of metal on metal, cries and screams and shouts, blood pouring down.
Jimin is sat in a tree, shaded underneath the upper branches, his golden hair fluttering in the breeze, legs dangling down. The shirt he’s wearing hangs loose, but he still sweats through it. The human form was an inconvenience. He keeps himself invisible to the soldiers running around like insects fighting over a rotting pig corpse, but he still hides his wings. They’re an inconvenience sometimes, too.
“Having fun?”
Jimin doesn’t even need to look down to the base of the tree to know who the source of the voice is. “Fancy seeing you here. Battles seem to be a place you thrive, cacodemon.”
“Don’t call me that, seraph,” Jeongguk replies, and with a shove of inhuman strength, he shakes the tree so suddenly and viciously that Jimin is deposited on the ground below, with several new scratches left along his face by angry branches and a mouthful of dirt. “So ungraceful.”
“Ugh,” Jumin groans, rolling to his back and looking up at the daemon. “I hate you.”
“Yet we keep meeting like this,” Jeongguk says in an amused tone, not offering to help Jimin as he gets to his feet. “The universe seems to hate you.”
Jimin rolls his eyes. “Why are you always in the middle of the fighting?” He leans back against the tree, and watches Jeongguk from under his eyelashes.
Jeongguk pauses for a moment, surveying him, and then shakes his head so subtly that Jimin almost doesn’t see it. “Do you actually not know anything about daemons?”
“Why would I?”
Jeongguk chuckles, and the sounds is like the hot rocks of hell being dropped in the pit of Jimin’s stomach. “We always learn about you. About angels.” He leans in, bracketing Jimin to the tree, leaving a gap of no more than five inches between them. His voice drops to a murmur. “Who you are. What you like. How to kill you.”
“You wouldn’t kill me.” Jimin holds his gaze. Heat emanates from the daemon’s body, a constant reminder that Jeongguk is indeed a minion of hell, however high up or irritatingly good-looking he may be. Does it take away from those good looks, or add to them? Jimin doesn’t want to know.
“Who says?” Jimin hates how amused Jeongguk sounds, how much he seems to be enjoying this loss of power that the angel is currently suffering, held up to a tree by a daemon. “Why not?”
“You like me too much,” Jimin whispers, playing with the tassels hanging from the collar of Jeongguk’s shirt. His nails graze the collarbone, and both of their gazes drop to the action. “Besides, we met in Paris. It’ll be big, one day.”
Jeongguk laughs, and draws away, back to Jimin’s side to watch the battle once more. Jimin pouts when he’s sure the daemon isn’t looking at him. “I’ll keep a look out.”
Out on the field, a flash of gold cuts through: the sun glinting off of a crown of red hair. She sweeps through the air like a sword of flames, wielded by Michael’s hand, cutting down soldiers at her every turn. Never mind looking like fire, Jimin muses, she is fire, flickering and spitting and burning at each touch.
“You think she’ll last?” Jeongguk almost sounds sad, like he’s hopeful or hopeless. Both are equally heartbreaking, Jimin thinks.
“Maybe. Some of them do. Rarely, but it happens, little fiery ones.”
Jeongguk lets out one short, sharp laugh. “You’re the little one. Not as fiery, though.”
Jimin makes a sound of indignation. “I’m not little. I’m an angel of heaven. I could burn all these men up with one look in my true form.”
“Not all men, little one,” Jeongguk muses, and although his voice is still amused, his attention is back on the scene before him. “Not all men.”
Jimin isn’t even surprised when Jeongguk has disappeared, this time. He realises some time after that Jeongguk never really told him why it was so often a fight, where they met.
——
He hears about Joan’s burning, three years later, in a market in Bordeaux. He doesn’t attend the event. One night, sat outside a tavern on the main street, he briefly wonders whether Jeongguk has heard, heard about their little flame being snuffed out. And wonders whether he would even be surprised.
——
It’s 1554 when Jimin is at a banquet in flourishing renaissance England, all exquisite, white carvings and fresh flower bouquets, smiling guests and extravagance in extravagant, bountiful amounts. The music in the background floats from the string quartet in the corner of the room, light and soft, and the glass doors are open, revealing a manicured lawn and easy summer sunshine.
It’s a slice of upper-class calm, and he knows just who this capitalist paradise has been built on the back of. He’d walked through the local village this morning, seen the vagrants under the trees by the post office. It never changes.
He’s just avoided stepping on the hem of a particularly voluptuous gown, all emerald green and gorgeous, when he trips over thin air, and falls approximately 4,331 miles.
It’s a sensation like all the air being sucked out of his body, his limbs wrung out and stretched across the axis of the space-time continuum. He can’t breathe, can’t see anything but complete pitch black, pierced by the occasional glimpse of a galaxy, before he’s unceremoniously dropped onto a baked stretch of dirt.
He gives himself half a second to gather his thoughts, before heaving himself up onto his knees and taking in the scene around him. He wants to crawl back into the now-closed portal and return to his quaint little room of hypocrites.
The sun is burning down above, and the stink of burning meat - it’s human, Jimin knows the smell by now - seems to cling on to the very dust rising through the air. It’s a wreckage; houses lay half-burnt and smoking, some still ablaze and there are screams coming from inside those ones. Some are corpses, fallen-in and charcoal, and no sound comes from inside those ones.
It’s bathed in blood, a thousand times worse than Constantinople or Orléans; Jimin will later learn that this is Florida. A few centuries later, he will question why the largest massacre in human history has been silently forgotten, why nobody knows about this. Then, he’ll remember how small and corruptible and stupid humans really are, and sigh, and stop wondering.
And of course, there is Jeongguk, stood in the centre of the fight for once. Huge wings protrude from his back, black and clawed and stretched like a bat, without the feathers that pinned Jimin’s to heaven; this was Jeongguk, the higher daemon of hell, and Jimin couldn’t stop looking. His hair was a mess, out of place and hanging in sweat-covered strands over his forehead, and when he looked over to the angel, his eyes were once again completely, bottomlessly black.
Without breaking his gaze, he spears a soldier through the chest with the claw of one of his wings, and then Jimin notices the Spanish crest adorning the dead man’s armour, and the crucifix spilling from his neck. And Jimin realises why he’s here.
“This is what your side is doing,” Jeongguk says, and it’s not a yell, but the words are deep, loud, and ring through the battlefield. Still, only Jimin seems to hear them, and only Jimin seems to notice the daemon at all: the soldiers and natives alike run right past him. “This is your work, this is your people and your ideas and you. All of you. Always you.”
“Is that what you dragged me here to hear?” Jimin replies, trying desperately to keep his voice clear and the rush of hot, explosive hurt that was blossoming in his chest. “That I’m a murderer and all of my people are? These aren’t my people.”
“Then who are they?” Jeongguk is yelling now. It’s a thunderclap across the field, a gust of sulphuric wind slapping Jimin across the face, breaking his collected image finally and making him heaven forward on the ground, hands and knees on the dirt. The blood gets under his nails, in his hair, everywhere, and he watches as a soldier slices through the neck of a screaming woman holding a baby.
“You asked me why it’s always a battle, seraph,” Jeongguk booms, his wings spread out behind him, eyes burning and burning into Jimin’s. “I’m a daemon. I live off the fight. It keeps me strong, it keeps me going. It’s my food, water, all of that. I need it.” He gestures out around, to the whole scene around them, and his voice breaks into a desperate cry. “This isn’t a fight. This is genocide.”
Jimin’s eyes roll back into his head, the stink of sulphur and blood crawling up his sinuses and down into his ribcage, his stomach, his arms and legs. He claws at his throat. He’s choking. His body is on fire, this pathetic human form, burning like the houses and the screaming people.
“And you blame me for this.” Jeongguk is above him now, stood, looking down at him, and even with his black pupils, Jimin can see the fire there: this disgust, disappointment. It burns.
So he does the only thing he can think of, the only thing that can change anything here.
“Help- help me,” He gasps, chest heaving, trying desperately to breathe through the fire of the daemon’s anger. “Please.”
Jeongguk regards him for a moment, and holds out a hand. It burns Jimin’s where he grasps it, but he lets the fire in. He lets it in.
And he breaks down his back, stood, cracking deep down the curve of his spine, he breaks it all away, this human form and the red it bleeds and the sweat dripping down his chest. It cracks, splinters, and the glass breaks. He screams into the void of himself, feeling his wings unfurling, white and bright and brilliant.
When he looks back down at his hands, they’re tinged gold, an aura that floats behind when he trails his arm through the air.
It feels like coming home again, this skin.
When he opens his eyes, the field burns. Not like Jeongguk’s fire, the acidic, sulphur-spitting hellfire and brimstone, but a wash of golden light, like a wave coming into shore at the beaches of Eden. He feels as it cuts right through each person, splicing through their life force and then, they crumple.
When he pulls it back, snapping it like an band back onto his wrist, the field is silent. Bodies litter the floor like bee carcasses after the first freeze of winter. Jeongguk stands, impassive, beside him. The silence hangs heavy for a moment.
“At least you did something this time,” Jeongguk mutters, and Jimin snaps.
He curls his fingers around the daemon’s white throat, squeezing hard and watching as the black of his eyes shrinks, moulding back into pupils, and a ring of brown appearing from behind. From this close, he can see the fear in them, staining and widening.
“Don’t forget your place, cacodemon,” he whispers, and he can see himself in Jeongguk’s pupils, burning from the inside, eyes glowing gold, a thousand times more beautiful than normal in the most terrifying way possible. “Hell is a bad place to be thrown, however much you like the fire.”
Jeongguk doesn’t breathe, doesn’t move, and when Jimin withdraws his hand, he stays that way. A statue. His wings are down now, folded, and there are no sparks, just lingering wisps of smoke.
This time, it’s Jimin who turns, and walks away, thinking of some deep forest in the depths of Poland in which to fall into a slumber for a few decades and grow back a human form, and disappears into his own portal, this time. He doesn’t look back to see the bodies. He doesn’t look back to see Jeongguk.
——
The world explodes in the 1600s. England has decided it wants everything, all the gold of the seas and a bit of land that lies vulnerable in its peaceful nature. Jimin isn’t going back there; it reminds him of sulphur and blood and his back breaking in two as he hit the floor of the Piła forest in Poland. The ship he’s on does belong to the English, indeed, but it’s going somewhere else. Where, Jimin isn’t exactly sure; he zoned out while the captain detailed the voyage to him.
He’s sat in his cabin, which doesn’t actually belong to him (he blew the ship’s navigator for it; closeted homosexuality is always a good bargaining chip), with his shirt somewhere on the floor, and himself strewn across the hammock. Light and heat alike pour in through the small pane of glass that allows him a view of the horizon, the sky, and not much else.
He knows it’s too good to be true, and he’s debating exactly that, rocking slightly back and forth on the hammock with one leg hanging lazily to the floor, when his door bursts open.
It’s Jeongguk. Of course it’s Jeongguk.
“Go away,” Jimin mumbles, turning his head into the fabric of the hammock. “Are you following me? Is that what this is?”
“No, I’m telling you that the guy wants his cabin back,” Jeongguk retorts, slamming the door shut behind him. “He made a blood oath to me and everything. His soul for you wiped off the earth and ten more years of sailing. And his cabin.”
“He sold you his soul for that?” Jimin groaned as he stretched out, limbs languid and catching in the shafts of sunlight that cut across odd corners of the cabin. One illuminates a stripe of Jeongguk’s hair, dark and glossy. Jimin wants to weave his hand through it and pull. “What happened to the innocent dying and all that?”
Jeongguk’s expression crosses to something darker for a moment, before relaxing back into something halfway between confidence and boredom. “This is some English sailor that doesn’t want anyone to find out he likes dick. Not the same thing.”
Jimin laughs, like bells chiming on Easter Sunday. “I guess so. He never blew me. Not really fair, to be honest.”
Jeongguk’s eyes trace down his face, his neck, his chest. Jimin relaxes in the heat it brings. “No?”
“No,” Jimin sighs, and Jeongguk’s eyes travel further, further. His abs are chiseled as any Michelangelo. He knows he looks exactly like the kind of angel hell loves carving up. “There’s nobody here who even looks at me, for fear they’d want to.”
There’s a pause, and Jimin stretches again, yawning, and Jeongguk says, words soft and firm,
“Come here.”
Jimin watches for a moment, just watches, taking in that dark hair and those collarbones and the toned arms his shirt left visible. And then he stands with practised grace from the hammock, and hovers in the middle of the room. He steps closer, closer, until he can see the pupils of Jeongguk’s eyes, and how they’re slowly expanding like pools of ink.
Jeongguk reaches up, and lays a hand across the side of Jimin’s cheek. It’s warm, pulsing heat, and Jimin wonders if that’s how he feels to Jeongguk too. He wonders if he feels cold. Ice angel. Jeongguk traces his cheekbone with his thumb, soft and trailing sparks.
Jimin leans into the touch before he can help himself. And Jeongguk’s hands drop to his shoulders, and he slams them around, switching places and pushing Jimin hard against the wall. Jimin freezes momentarily, a soft whimper escaping his throat and making Jeongguk stop, eyes widening ever-so-slightly.
“You like that, little one?” He whispers, breath fanning Jimin’s collarbones and making him shiver. “When I push you around?”
Jimin can only look up at him, into those dark eyes. The daemon smirks, and Jimin feels it at the back of his neck and somewhere else.
“Remember your place.” The words are hissed, and Jeongguk leans closer, closer, and his teeth are on Jimin’s neck.
The angel gasps, the feeling of Jeongguk’s mouth like fire, tongue trailing skin like fire on paper, burning and lighting up, fireworks. His teeth sink into the softness of Jimin’s neck and it hurts, but it feels like Jimin maybe just died and went to heaven, a true heaven that actually feels like paradise to an immortal being. Or got dragged down into the deepest pit of hell. Either would be fine, as long as Jeongguk keeps on doing that with his mouth.
He laughs against his skin, red mouth on white, and draws back. His lips are gleaming, and Jimin desperately wants to slide his thumb in between them. But too late, because he’s gone.
He’s fallen to his knees. The daemon, on his knees, before the angel, silent prayers on his lips as he looks up at Jimin from underneath lidded eyelids. Jimin feels like he should be the one in worship, Jeongguk’s name as mantra, repeating in hallowed tones until existence draws to its close.
Jeongguk reaches and, with a soft hand, pulls down the waist of Jimin’s trousers, and takes his cock into his mouth.
Jimin lets out a soft whine, head falling back as he takes in the feeling of Jeongguk, daemon Jeongguk, with his mouth around his cock, white hot and velvet and better than anything he’s felt for centuries. He’s floating.
It’s tantric, the image of Jeongguk on his knees, and Jimin burns it into his brain like a grail. He threads his fingers into his hair, and all of a sudden, Jeongguk speeds up, bobbing his head and hollowing his cheeks, like the ship is sinking and he’s running out of time. His fingertips dig into Jimin’s hips where they hold, grounding him down to this room on this ship, in the middle of an ocean somewhere. Jimin has never felt less lost.
Jimin moans, loud and unashamed, and fucks into Jeongguk’s mouth, hitting the back of his throat. There’s fire burning under his skin, Jeongguk’s fire, like hell itself is smouldering there. Anything this good has to be a sin, has to be something that would make Jimin burst into flames or something; Jeongguk, lips and hands and tongue all on him like he’s some kind of treasure the daemon doesn’t ever want to share.
“Jeongguk-“ Jimin pants, and pulls on his hair sharply, dragging down, desperate to see his face. The daemon moans, pupils so huge he almost looks like the Jeongguk that stabbed a sword through the neck of a soldier in Constantinople, mouth vibrating around his cock, and Jimin comes.
Jeongguk swallows, eliciting another cry from Jimin, and pulls off. Jimin leans back against the wall, shoulders heaving and mind full of nothing but Jeongguk’s eyes, Jeongguk’s hair, Jeongguk’s mouth.
The daemon stands, and traces a finger along the line of Jimin’s collarbone. “I’m sorry about Florida.”
“You’re sorry?” Jimin snorts derisively, the intimacy of the moment half-gone but still clinging by a thread. He pulls his trousers up around his hips, feeling where he knows, hopes, bruises will form in the shape of Jeongguk’s fingers. “I’m the one who killed all of them. Natives too.”
“They were going to die,” Jeongguk sighs, “Some day. But- I still think I’m right. In one thing.”
“Which thing would that be?”
He raises his eyes to meet Jimin’s, and the brown of them has never looked quite so human before. “Heaven doesn’t give a shit, does it?”
Jimin opens his mouth to reply, but no words come out, and the harder he tries to draw something from his blank mind, the easier it gets to let the tears well up, and fall into Jeongguk’s arms.
They end up in the hammock, curled together, Jeongguk’s arms around him and bodies fitting like pieces of the same puzzle. He feels each rise of the daemon’s chest like his own heartbeat, where it meets his back. Jimin is so tired, bone-weary from centuries of this denial, the same denial of Paris and Constantinople and Kyoto and Florida. He’s so tired, so he closes his eyes, on the ship in the middle of nowhere, and lets himself feel at home in Jeongguk’s arms.
When he wakes, hours later, he’s on a warm beach somewhere sunny, and Jeongguk is nowhere to be seen.
——
Geneva, 1816, and Jimin finds Jeongguk in a tavern, swigging back ale like there’s no tomorrow- and, unfortunately for Jimin, Jeongguk is pretty much guaranteed that tomorrow.
The bar is one of the low-slung, smoky variety, one where the locals flog overpriced fakes to the passers-by, of everything from ‘pirate gold’ to local ‘blessing stones.’ The drink is cheap, and nobody would expect to see a consort of the great, revered Lord Byron here, so Jimin frequents it regularly.
He’s pretty sure, he thinks glumly, as he watches Jeongguk’s adam’s apple bob, that Byron was just the best fuck he could think of getting to try to replace Jeongguk. Byron was the closest thing the human world could offer to a daemon. Shelley’s wife - Mary? Far more talented than him, anyway - was just as intriguing, if not more, but Jimin is pretty sure that, after centuries of deliberation, he doesn’t really swing that way.
It’s unfortunate, then, that Jeongguk spots him before he can escape out the doors, and smirks darkly at him across the tavern.
Well. What’s Jimin meant to do? Ignore that?
He approaches like Jeongguk is about to attack, slowly and cautiously, eyes trained on his neck, his arms, his mouth. The daemon sets his shoulders as he draws near, setting down his drink and watching.
“You actually did follow me this time, didn’t you?”
Jeongguk chuckles, leaning back against the wooden counter behind them. “Yes. Heard about Byron’s new pretty thing, with blonde hair and big eyes and lips that could suck out your soul and still make you want to keep on living.” He reaches over and flicks Jimin’s lower lip, smirk still adorning his features. “Thought it sounded just like you.”
Jimin opens his mouth, closing his lips around the tip of Jeongguk’s finger, tracing his nail with his tongue. He watches as the daemon’s eyes glimmer, darkening a shade. Or maybe it’s just the dim lighting of the tavern.
“Yeah,” Jeongguk, sighs, words slow and drawled. “Definitely you.”
Jimin pulls back a little, so he can speak. “You don’t even care about how I am? What I’ve been doing?”
“I know who you’ve been doing,” Jeongguk replies, lips curving up around the words, almost cruel. “Is he good? The poet?”
“He’s good,” Jimin says, but the words come out a whisper.
“As good as me?”
“I’d say yes, but…” Jimin trails off, finally tasting some semblance of power through the words.
Jeongguk narrows his eyes, barely; Jimin still notices. “But what?”
Jimin lets the words hang heavy between them. “You’ve never fucked me.”
Jeongguk freezes, eyes widening noticeably, and for a moment, Jimin wonders if he’ll just leave, walk out of the tavern. Then he traces down Jimin’s arm, fingers soft and burning, and weaves his fingers between the angel’s. His hands are so much bigger, but Jimin’s fit into them perfectly.
“My room is on the top floor.”
Jimin lets himself be tugged across the tavern floor, over to a wooden door underneath a sign reading “lodgings.” As soon as they’re both through, and Jeongguk has slammed it shut, he’s being pressed up against it, and Jeongguk is kissing him.
He feels like he could die this way, burn up so bad he trips into hell and writhes for eternity, and he’d be okay with that. Because Jeongguk’s mouth is like honey beneath his, melting and sweet and hot, his tongue slipping through Jimin’s lips and into his mouth, exploring and licking out his soul from the back of his throat.
His hands are everywhere; in his hair, scuffing through the blonde and messing it up entirely, at his neck, his arms, his waist, feeling and trailing like he’s trying to map out Jimin’s body and press it into his memory.
They manage the stairs, somehow, tripping forwards and backwards and each being shoved up against each wall in turn whenever they make another landing. Jimin feels like the world is ending and paradise has come, and also like if he doesn’t get Jeongguk’s clothes off soon he’s going to die. Like, actually die.
“Why did you choose the top room?” Jimin breathes between, somewhere between exasperation and endearment.
“Nobody to annoy us,” Jeongguk says, and smirks up against Jimin’s lips when his eyelids flutter at the pronoun. “Because I knew you’d be in my bed by the time I was done here.”
“Congratulations, daemon, you were right,” Jimin says in to the back of Jeongguk’s neck as he works the key he’s produced from his pocket into the lock of the door, finally.
“I always am, little one.”
They tumble into the room, limbs working faster than minds, and Jeongguk kicks the door closed as Jimin falls back onto the bed. The blankets go mad, falling and folding everywhere, and Jeongguk all but jumps at Jimin, pulling the shoulder of his shirt down to get at the pale skin there.
It’s satisfied feeling, when Jeongguk sucks a bruise into the curve of his neck and pops all the buttons of his shirt to get it off faster, like they’ve both been starving and this is the first meal; like they’ve been wandering in the desert and found each other, the manna and the honey.
Jeongguk flips them with ease, leaving Jimin on his back, and the daemon sits back to pull his top off. Jimin’s hands trail up his torso, tracing the lines of his toned stomach, in adoration. He sits up sharply, pushing Jeongguk back, and straddling him, shoving himself into his lap and licking back into his mouth. He gets a hand in that black hair, pulling and swallowing the gasps Jeongguk feeds.
“Fuck me then, daemon,” he says, voice guttural and almost a growl, and Jeongguk’s eyes turn completely black at the same time as Jimin summons the bottle of oil from the dresser in the corner of the room.
He tugs Jeongguk’s trousers off, the daemon lifting his legs while trying to do the same for Jimin. It works eventually, and when Jimin pushes himself back into the daemon’s lap with nothing between their skin, they moan into each other’s mouths with all the harmony of a church choir.
Jeongguk eases the first finger into him slowly, like he’s trying not to scare him, and Jimin whines into the darkness of the room. He kisses along the angel’s shoulder, neck, cheek. His tongue trails fire. Jimin feels like melting wax in Jeongguk’s lap, with the daemon’s hands all over him and mouth on his skin.
The second finger is easier, and the third even more so, and when Jimin rocks back at just the right speed and Jeongguk crooks his hand back, Jimin gasps and grasps Jeongguk’s shoulders, arms locked around him and cock hard between them.
“Fuck me,” he pants, words shot through with a kind of desperation he’d never quite felt before. “Fuck me, Jeongguk, fuck me now-“
And Jeongguk slides his fingers out, there’s a moment of bitter, excruciating emptiness that makes Jimin whine, and then he’s fucking up into him, bottoming out and moaning into the curve of the angel’s throat.
Jimin is panting, holding onto Jeongguk like the world is shaking beneath them and he’s the only steady thing in the whole universe. He kisses him again, the burning daemon beneath him, and desperately tries to taste the fire that has followed him across the world for so many centuries. He tries, he tries, and he says, “Move.”
Jeongguk holds him firmly, hands grasping hips, and whispers against his mouth, “Beg.”
Jimin looks up at him with wide eyes and sees those shiny black eyes and whines from the back of his throat, feeling tears of desperation building at the back of his throat.
Jeongguk chuckles, low and dangerous and smouldering. “Beg, little angel.”
And Jimin wouldn’t, would never beg a daemon or any creature of hell for anything, but this is Jeongguk with his cock inside of him and his hips in his hands and his heart between his palms, and he begs. “Please. Please, Jeongguk, please, please-“ He breaks off into a sob, and Jeongguk finally thrusts his hips up.
Jimin fucks like a thunderstorm, all simultaneously drawn-out and heavy and as fast as light falling to earth from the heavens, riding Jeongguk like their time on earth is closing and this is the last chance they’ll ever get to do this.
“Think I love you,” Jimin gasps into Jeongguk’s mouth, “You stupid fucking daemon.”
Jeongguk moans into his mouth, a symphony, and comes when Jimin rakes his nails down his back.
It feels like heaven when Jeongguk gets a hand around him, and he comes into his grasp. The daemon pulls out, and they fall back onto the bed together, still clutching at each other with unholy desperation.
It’s almost silent, the buzz from the tavern three floors down muffled out. The moon peers through the window at them, two immortal bodies lying together, and Geneva is quiet, listening.
“Didn’t know angels could love,” Jeongguk says, and Jimin can just feel his smile. He slaps his chest, and Jeongguk laughs properly. “I guess so.”
Jimin lifts his head up, propping his chin up and leaning on an elbow, watching Jeongguk with half-closed eyes. “What about daemons? How are they with love?”
Jeongguk is quiet for a moment, musing, like he’s picking his words carefully. Jimin feels like his stomach is turning to stone, heart dropping, and then-
“I don’t know about the others, to be honest,” the daemon says, reaching out to cup Jimin’s face; he resists the urge to purr. “But I think I might be doing pretty well.”
“Would you consider not leaving in the morning?” Jimin asks, voice a soft murmur.
“Yes,” Jeongguk says, and Jimin feels like all the good in the world is in this bed with him, right now. “I think I might.”
——
It’s 2019 when the Notre Dame burns.
Jimin is sat on the roof, head in Jeongguk’s lap, as they watch the flames lick higher and higher into the air.
“What happened to that demon?” Jimin muses, looking up and thinking about how ethereal Jeongguk looked, framed by the fire, like he’s being crowned. “The worm?”
“I dumped it in some crevice of hell,” Jeongguk replies, “Where it could mull over its bad life decisions for a few millennia.”
“Like eating your favourite Parisian street cat?”
“Like eating my favourite Parisian street cat.”
Jimin traces his fingertips over the stone they’re sprawled over, hidden from view from below by a large shelf, looking up at the gargoyle carvings that seem to scowl at Jeongguk in eternal jealousy. “I mean, it was always going to come down eventually. But I’ll miss it.”
“They’ll rebuild it,” Jeongguk soothes, “They always do. You know that. You’ve watched them do it.”
“Won’t be the same,” he grumbles. “Paris skyline ruined.”
Jeongguk trails a hand through a burst of flame that engulfs the roof to their left, seeming almost mesmerised. “Just a building, little one. Besides, you’ve still got me.”
“I’m never getting rid of you, you fucking daemon.” Jimin sits up, and presses his mouth to Jeongguk’s. It’s a slow kiss, long and sweet as honey, while the cathedral burns around them. Time’s a funny thing, Jimin thinks. Paris in 1183 seems like yesterday, but this moment is spanning a blissful forever that he never wants to leave.
Jeongguk is the first to break away, hands holding his gently, like he’s trying not to break him. “Might be time to go, seraph.”
Jimin looks down at the rips in his black jeans, the dusty white of Jeongguk’s trainers, and has a momentary existential crisis. Then, he stands, brushes off his legs, and grasps Jeongguk’s hand firmly. “Together this time, daemon.”
“Together this time,” Jeongguk smiles, black hair hanging in floppy curtains that Jimin always, always wants to mess up, curling a little to the side of his forehead. That cute nose, the cheekbones, cut deep again by the firelight, this time. This time.
And together, they step off the edge, falling to some place on the other side of the world for another eternity.