When Roci awoke it was still dark out. He laid still, listening to someone breathing deeply and steadily beside him. Other than that, it was stupidly quiet, not even the dull roar of early morning traffic could breach the walls of the penthouse. It took him a few moments to remember where he was, and what they had done the night before. He shifted his gaze to the source of the rhythmic breathing and found the fallen angel there.
Doffy had one hand near his head, the fingers just touching the ends of Roci's blond locks, as if he had reached out to him in his sleep. He watched the other man for a bit, the rise and fall of his chest and the smooth, relaxed face. Doffy usually had a stern look to his angular features, but it was smoothed with rest, and Roci could arguably say that the other almost looked angelic. Maybe that was what he looked like before he fell into the fires of hell and all innocence was wiped clean.
Breaking his stare, Roci noticed the lack of hot, heavy air filling the room and slowly rose from the bed, trying his best not to wake the other. Softly, he padded over to the window and pulled the curtains back slightly. The city was cast in the turquoise hue of the early morning, the gradient sharply broken by pale lights and the steady red flashes of radio towers shinning like beacons. Checking the terraces of the neighbouring buildings, he saw no signs of angels patrolling the roofs. This was probably his best chance to leave, and no doubt Doffy would grow tired of his presence eventually.
Letting the curtains fall back into place, Roci slipped out the bedroom door and fetched his own clothes from the wash. The shirt was still a bit of a mess, a few of the buttons completely lost, but he worked with it anyway and pulled it on over his scarred shoulders. Neatly folding the clothes he took from Doffy he left the stack on top of the machine for the other to deal with in whatever manner he wished.
The elevator ride down to the ground level was a long and unbroken one, and he was left alone with his thoughts. Roci couldn't help but feel that something was terribly askew with the way he had engaged Doffy, or rather, how Doffy had engaged him. A niggling presence in the back of his head was putting up red flags, screaming at him that something was wrong with the situation, but Roci elected to ignore it. He didn't mind what had happened between them, but it was obvious that others did. They would just have to be more careful about it, he reasoned, and then pushed the issue from his mind. The elevator reached the ground lobby and opened with a cheery ding, drawing Roci from his reverie. There was work to be done, and he couldn't let that cloud his head.
He scanned the streets thoroughly before he stepped out of the building. The city was quiet in the waking hours of the morning, save for a few early risers heading to work. Despite the heavy aura of the higher ranked angels being weak and relatively dispersed, Roci kept to the back roads and slowly made his way home.
He'd be back to visit Doffy in a few days, when he was certain the angels had left.
When Doflamingo woke up and noticed Roci's absence, he had to recognize the feeling of worry that welled up inside of him. He had expected to find the angel sleeping beside him, especially after being watched all night, and it seemed suspicious that he was gone. But in his house there were no signs of violence and he reminded himself a few time that for angels, without his permission, it was impossible to enter. There were strong enough wards over the door that even the Seraphims would have a hard time getting through by force, and there certainly weren't any of those around.
But still, he didn't know where the other had gone to; it was like he had simply vanished. However, upon checking the laundry room he realized the angel had retrieved his clothes from the washing machine. That put his uneasy mind to rest a bit, and in the end Doffy shrugged it off and tried to think about something else.
He went to take a walk around the city as he did daily, watching accidents, staring at people and reading their thoughts: the normal stuff daily routine. He even had a pretty interesting conversation with a blind old woman about some radical congregation of extremists blowing holes in the fabric of society, and wished he was there to watch the action. He barely thought of Roci in all honesty, having his mind lost in his own thoughts, in his duties of demon.
Duties he had been somewhat neglecting as of late. He remembered the conversation with Vergo the evening prior. Vergo had told him about the new prospects of him advancing to become one of the rulers of hell. The rumour wasn't much of a surprise to Doflamingo though, since he was powerful and the other demons respected him greatly. Some had already started to refer to him as 'Master,' which he couldn't help but take with a cocky smirk.
Many creature of Hell didn't like the idea of a fallen angel as a ruler, which seemed ironic since Lucifer himself had been one of God's most beautiful and powerful angels before he was cast out of heaven. Now he was the king of all the kings of hell. Doflamingo and he had so many things in common that Lucifer had instantly liked him, and that was definitely a huge advantage. Especially when Doffy was eying the throne for himself.
It still gave him a sharp reminder that he was expected to be a ruler, a leader, and he couldn't forget that despite lazing around in the human world. Soon he found himself getting more in touch with his darker side in preparation. He was going out more at nights and sleeping through the days. After all, he belonged much more to the darkness than to the light, didn't he? As much as he loved to watch chaos unfold in broad daylight, he also needed to step up his game during the blackness of night. So night after night he flew above the clouds, falling to the top of the highest buildings and landing gracefully, making his wings stronger, getting faster. He had to stay in shape after all.
A couple days had passed quietly for Roci, with no signs of others tailing him to confirm their suspicions. He had kept to himself mostly, and was reading a book in his cramped apartment when he suddenly felt a calling. A shiver ran through him as his instructions were delivered, and he lost a hold of the paperback as it ran its course. At least the fact that he even got a calling after the fuss he had raised meant the issue had pretty much blown over. That was a relief.
It was a mundane task, but it got him out of his the sedentary lifestyle he had been living over the past couple days. And the place wasn't too far off, so he caught the next subway and headed out.
Less than an hour later, Roci found himself sitting on the grass in front of a church, back pressed firmly to the cool stone walls as he closed his eyes and listened. Windy organ music vibrated the air, faintly reaching his ears from inside of the church. However, it was nearly drowned out from the much louder prayers of the people inside. They came in droves and he listened carefully.
Prayer monitoring was a fairly simple task. All Roci had to do was sit and listen, picking out ones he thought deserved answering. It was both boring and enlightening at the same time. There were the standard pleas for wellness and success, but every once in a while there was something being asked of God that he found amusing or too genuine not to consider. Particularly, he found one prayer about a lost doll overly charming, and couldn't help but add that one to the docket.
The church was quaint, nothing over-zealous, nothing too shabby either. It was older, the walls being composed of hewn stone that was cemented together. He almost wanted to go inside to take a look, but he didn't want to disturb the service. Normally he would sit in on the service, as he found it to be much more engaging, but he had shown up almost a half an hour late, and decided it would be best to stay outside.
The sound of something moving in the distance broke his concentration though, and he opened his eyes. In a pool-sized grass plot running alongside the building there was a small graveyard which was crowded with headstones. The church was right in the city, when historically it had been on the outskirts. But with the expansion of the concrete maze, the little church had been swallowed up, and people were competitive about how far away from their homes that they were buried.
But something sauntered between the tight rows. A lone figure walked through the graveyard, eyeing all the tombstones. He didn't look like a relative of the recently deceased, he wore plain clothes and carried no flowers. The fellow stopped at no headstone for longer than a few moments, and instead it looked more like he was browsing like one would a grocery store going by the way he hummed and hawed over each grave.
Roci frowned slightly at the odd behaviour. The man was very tall and very round, his gullet wobbled as he walked, and his greyish skin looked like it hadn't seen the sun in years. Roci watched him for a while, curious as to what exactly the other was doing. He could see a lot of darkness inside the man, the kind of darkness that Doffy was often filled with except much more intense, which only brought more questions to his mind. But the man must have sensed Roci staring at him, since he turned his head and looked at him directly.
Quickly, Roci averted his gaze, but the other had noticed. Much to his displeasure the stranger approached Roci, a wide and toothy grin stretching across his greyish, fat cheeks. As he got closer, Roci noticed that he had a long, ugly scar running down his neck, like he had surgery and the wound didn't heal quite right. The closer he got, the more Roci felt uncomfortable with his presence, and he got to his feet, looking for a way out of it.
"You look like you're torn between praising with the living and sleeping with the dead! What're you doing out here when you should be in there?" The man said in a loud, nasally voice as he got within speaking distance. His laugh grated Roci's ears, and sounded like he was wheezing through the scar on his neck, a long, nasally kishishishishi….
"I'm just enjoying the service from afar," he said averting his gaze, trying to give the stranger a clue that he wasn't interested in this conversation.
The man let out another annoying laugh, "late were ya?" he said, slapping him on the back, in a manner that tried to be friendly but failed horribly. Roci tensed when he felt the hand connect with the back of his shirt, hoping the other hadn't noticed anything...peculiar. He pulled away and put a few steps between them.
But the man didn't leave him alone when Roci didn't answer him. "Ya sleep in? 'Cause you look a little tired to me," he said, his hand grasping his shoulder and giving him a friendly shake. Roci ducked away from it, now cautious of the unwanted attention. "Yeah, maybe I should get some rest," he said turning away and leaving the stranger standing in the graveyard. The guy was giving him the creeps bad, and he wanted to be somewhere else, preferably far away. So he walked away from it, not wanting the confrontation to go any further than that.
Roci didn't look back, and he didn't see how the man's face darkened, slowly sauntering on behind him.
"I can help put ya to sleep," the man murmured, following from a distance.
When Roci got to the subway station he discovered that an incident had occurred farther up the track and the trains were delayed. Just his luck, he thought, but sucked it up a decided just to walk back to the inner core of the city. It would take a while, but at least he would get a little exercise.
It was later in the afternoon and the sun was hanging low in the skyline, nearly swallowed up by the distant skyscrapers as the shadows on the ground got longer, darker. The temperature of the air was dropping too, almost too quickly, considering how nice a day it had been. Roci shoved his hands in his pockets and walked a little faster, feeling a shiver run down his spine. Something in him was telling him that it wasn't the cold doing it.
For good measure, he cast a glance over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of grey skin as it disappeared around the corner. It dawned on him as the suns set completely behind the large glass buildings, sinking like his stomach did as he re-evaluated his predicament.
Now Roci was acutely aware of the person following him, and he took as many twists and turns in the road as he knew to take, hoping to shake the other off his trail. He wasn't heading home, he wasn't stupid enough to lead someone like that to his own personal sanctuary. Rather he was making a beeline path to Doffy's apartment, hoping to lose the tall fat man, or at least get close enough to Doffy's that he could seek shelter from the other.
For a while he saw nothing, yet he never let his guard down. But just when he would start to think that he lost the man, a shadow would slide across the wall beside him, only to vanish a second later, causing Roci to walk just a bit a little faster. Constantly he threw glances over his shoulder, but the man was never there.
Good, he thought, he wasn't much of a fighter anyway. When push came to shove here on earth, he used strategic actions to avoid confrontation, but this was a little different than other conflicts he had been involved with. The darkness he had seen was telling Roci that he was dealing with someone bad, and he was in no position to take on the other.
He kept walking forward, catching a glimpse of a busy street up ahead. Whoever this guy was, he probably wouldn't cause too much trouble when surrounded by others on a public road. Determined, Roci kept his sight on the alley exit, feeling his heart race more as he drew closer.
About a hundred feet from the end of the alley, he was met with a confusing spectacle. Roci saw multiple shadows creeping slowly up the wall ahead of him, detached from any sort of solid form, and he stopped. They moved farther up the alley and slid down the wall, converging into a flat, dark mass. It looked like black oil had been splashed across the pavement, but it shimmered and shifted, almost like it was being blown by the non-existent wind. Then in small rippling motions the dark puddle jerked one way, and the undulating puddle moved closer toward him.
Ok, so he wasn't dealing with some mortal psychopath, that much was plainly obvious he noted, backing away from the dark liquid rolling toward him. That was definitely not something a human could conjure up, no matter how much they dabbled in the black arts. The oily puddle picked up speed, going from a crawl to a steady rush, and Roci backed away. He would backtrack and find another route out of the alley…
He kept walking backward, his eyes on the strange substance, until his back bumped into something solid but soft at the same time. The air temperature dropped dramatically, and he froze. Then he heard the wheezing laugh.
"How rude of you back there, I just wanted to chat" the fat man said behind him, and Roci whipped around, pushing away from the fatty mass of the man's stomach. But the stranger only caught him around the wrist and pulled him back in a vice-like grip.
Roci nearly screamed at the contact. It was like the man's hand was made of dry ice, so cold that it was burning him, boiling the bare flesh on contact. He struggled against the hand holding his wrist, watching wide-eyed at vapours rising from his skin due to the intense difference in temperature. He looked up into the man's face, biting back the pain.
So the rumours were true: a real demon's touch did burn like hellfire.
The demon's grin only widened, his eyes focused just past his shoulder, "so I did see correctly, angel."
With the demon making direct contact with his skin, no doubt the other could see his white wings. Roci brought his free hand up and began individually prying the man's fingers from his arm. With each painful instance of contact he saw the pair of horns, curved like a bull's, materializing on the man's forehead.
Panicking, he aimed a kick right in the other's solar plexus as hard as he could and the demon finally released his grip, hacking. Roci pulled away from him and clutched his throbbing wrist to his chest, an angry red and freezing scorch mark marring the skin.
Recovering from the hit, the demon stood back up to his full height. "Kishishishi…Good to see you have some fight in you, angel," he sneered, "it's been too long since I last played with one of your kind." He licked his purple lips and advanced with the sort of speed a man his size should never have.
Shit, this was no good. Roci was totally unprepared for a fight right now. At least he had one advantage, one thing the other seemed to lack.
He unfurled his wings, the flight feathers grazing the parallel walls of the alley, and prepared to fly out of the demons reach. It was getting dark, and no one would see him. While he wasn't the best flyer around, it would definitely give him an alternate escape route. Then he could seek shelter at Doffy's.
But something grabbed a chunk of his flight feathers from behind and yanked the wing down, painfully ripping some of the quills from their follicles and throwing him off balance. With a yelp Roci looked back and saw a shadowy imitation of the demon grasping his wing, slowly rising from the strange black puddle.
"Nice try," the demon cackled, and the clone brought its foot down hard on the wing it was pinning down. Roci heard something snap and an overwhelming flare of pain rush down his back, and this time he really did scream.