A/N: Squee, thank you for reviewing! *bouncebouncebounce* I'm having a little too much fun over here…

Part 48: Falling

"You press this to unlock it. Yeah. Then, swipe sideways." Satoshi stole a look at Krad's concentrated expression. "Okay, now go to dialpad. No, up here." The boy sucked in a breath as their hands bumped into each other above the tiny screen. Krad hesitated only a second over Satoshi's reaction, then pressed the correct button.

"Okay," the angel confirmed softly.

He looked so focused. "Okay, let me get the number," Satoshi said, pulling out his own phone. He tore his attention from Krad to find the boy's number. He still couldn't believe the blonde actually wanted to connect with another human. Then again, Krad was full of surprises lately.

"Here," he said to the blonde, holding his screen out. Krad frowned. "This one turned off."

"It's asleep. Wake it up again," Satoshi said, and gave himself some points for keeping a straight face. Krad's perturbed frown was strangely endearing.

"Not even I fall asleep that fast," the angel objected, trying to find the button Satoshi showed him before.

Satoshi smiled, shaking his head and reaching to indicate the side panel again.

Krad glowered, but woke the screen and carefully copied the number from Satoshi's phone. "This one?" he asked, finger paused over the green call button.

"Yeah." He's actually calling it.

The angel pressed the button, and held the phone up near his ear. The movement looked unnatural. Satoshi reminded himself that Krad had probably never spoken to someone on a phone before. He faintly heard someone's voice answer, and watched Krad curiously. The angel didn't greet the person at the other end. He looked caught off guard.

"Say hello," Satoshi prompted.

"Who is this?" Krad said, eyes narrowed as he tried to make something out on the other end. He listened a few more seconds, and the temperature in the room began to dip.

Alarm started up in Satoshi's brain as the air grew rapidly colder and Krad's expression became a stormcloud. "Krad?" he whispered, trying to calm the angel down.

"Who is this?" Krad snarled. "Where's Jirou?"

More silence as Krad focused on something on the other end of the line. His power blew like static through the room. The phone in his hand sparked and turned off. The blonde glared at it, then spun to Satoshi. "Where is Koteki Park?" he demanded.

That was when Satoshi noticed more than just fury in the angel's eyes. What on earth was going on that had him worked up like this? What would happen to the kid if he showed Krad how to get there in his current mood?

Trust him. Something's wrong.

"Let's go," he heard himself say before his brain had fully agreed to go along with him. He went to the window and slid open the door to the balcony. With a careful look back at Krad, he offered his arm, a silent permission.

Krad hesitated a moment, trying to read his wing host correctly.

"It's okay," Satoshi said.

The blonde came to his side and swept him up against his chest. Satoshi didn't resist the sudden contact. The angel's arm tightened around his ribcage, holding him secure, and then they were bolting across the city. Satoshi had been airborne with Krad before, but never at this speed and never this low. Trees and buildings flew by just below them. He locked onto the angel with both arms and held on for all he was worth. He was glad Krad couldn't see him right now, because he was definitely afraid. Living with the angel made it easy to forget how strong he was. "Two o'clock," he winced at the ground through the wind.

Krad banked right, and Twelfth Avenue shot by below them like a time-lapse film.

"Three more blocks," Satoshi croaked. They rose a little higher to get above the high trees of the park forest. Krad was scanning the area for something, slowing down.

Satoshi was actually the one who saw it first, quite by accident. His first thought was "Why are there kids shouting at the water tower?" He put it together when he saw two figures near the top of the structure. One was standing steady on a metal beam, and the other was hanging upside down. No way… This reaction from Krad was because the boy was in trouble?

"Krad!" Satoshi shouted, "Look right."

Krad turned in the air and followed Satoshi's gaze to the tower. The hanging figure slipped and hung from one hand. Urgent gold eyes glanced back at Satoshi.

"Yes. Go!"

Krad went. Alone. He pressed a palm to Satoshi's chest, and a binding spell bloomed around the bluenette. It separated him from Krad and left him stuck in position in the air. He'd seen Krad use this spell on Dark, once. If he remembered correctly, it was difficult to maintain. Satoshi's stomach lurched up into his brain as he realized how high he was. The angel turned from him, pulling into a dive.

The kid's remaining hand lost its grip on the metal structure. Krad was still a good ten yards above the falling boy's position, his wings pinched into his body to maximize the dive. Jirou screamed as he plummeted. Satoshi watched the scene in slow-motion horror.

The boy somersaulted downward, falling faster and faster. A few yards off the ground, Krad overtook his target. He seized Jirou in against his chest and twisted in the air. They were going too fast. They couldn't level off. Krad wrenched sideways and hit the ground on his back with the boy on top of him. The impact raised a long trail of dust as they dragged to a stop.

"KRAD!" Satoshi shouted. The spell that held him aloft flickered like a spent fluorescent bulb, but didn't break. Satoshi looked on urgently, but he couldn't see Krad or Jirou through the dust. The kids at the base of the tower were running toward where they'd landed. A few moments later, the dust cleared enough that he could make out Jirou climbing sideways to get his weight off Krad's chest. He looked okay.

Krad looked like he was trying and failing to breathe. His wild amber eyes ignored the humans around him and sought out his wing host. Satoshi stared back. Eye contact shouldn't feel this intense from two hundred feet. It was hard to watch the panic in the angel's expression. *Krad, are you hurt?*

Instead of answering, Krad stretched an arm in his direction, long fingers drawing into hooks around some invisible rope. As he drew the hand in toward his chest, Satoshi floated downward. It had to be taxing, controlling the spell and managing the pain of the fall at once. Krad's gaze on him held, unwavering, as he brought him down to the ground beside the tower. Only when the wing host's sneakers safely touched down on the grass did the angel arch onto his side, his lungs wheezing to recover the wind that had been knocked from them.

Jirou was sprawled on his knees next to his breathless savior. "Krad?" he asked tinily.

"Sakamoto wasn't kidding! He really knows him!" the shortest of the three boys was gushing.

"Kei, that's not important right now," a blonde boy growled. He looked anxious as he tried to get a closer look at the fallen angel and his classmate. "They hit really hard."

"Give him space," Satoshi ordered, running toward them. The kids looked back at the blue-haired man, and apparently recognized him from the news, because they parted out of his way like there had been a spring between them.

Satoshi knelt next to Krad, an outstretched arm holding the other children out of the struggling angel's space. He bent low to take a look at the blonde's back and wings. They flexed naturally as Krad finally managed to suck in a few real breaths. Nothing looked broken at a glance.

He leaned around Krad to get a better look at his face. The angel's eyes caught his for an instant and then he looked away, coughing. Not quite fast enough. One glance at the angel's pained expression had made the silence of their mental link a shock to the bluenette. Krad had gotten a little too good at shielding him from his thoughts and feelings. Well, I'm the one who forced him to, he thought guiltily.

"Is he alright?" Jirou murmured. "Why can't he breathe?"

Satoshi looked down now that the boy reminded him of his presence. "It looks like he got the wind knocked out of him. He'll be through it soon. Are you hurt?"

Jirou was shaking like a leaf, but shook his head. "No… I'm okay." He stared at Krad. "I don't understand...What are you two doing here?" was all he could say.

The angel sent them all back a step as he shoved up onto one elbow and glared at the boy. "What are YOU doing here?" Krad rasped, even though his lungs still weren't cooperating. "What the hell was THAT?" He flung a hand to encompass the tower next to them.

The boy flushed and looked at the ground. "I was just climbing the tower," Jirou muttered.

"You call that climbing?" Krad spat. Raising his voice made him start coughing again.

"I'm a good climber! My leg just stopped responding," the boy squeaked.

The angel's glare promised that Jirou's words didn't make sense to him in the least.

"The wound from the earthquake? It still hasn't recovered-?" Satoshi stopped talking and studied Krad carefully. The midsummer breeze around them was feeling unseasonably cold all of a sudden. The blonde looked ready to kill, if he could figure out who it should be.

Jirou glanced down, embarrassed. "It's healed… it just doesn't work exactly the same. It hurts randomly. If it gets stressed, it goes numb."

"It's our fault. We dared him," the blonde-haired child said, his two friends huddled next to him.

Krad barely even looked their way. "Why are you around these idiots?" he asked hotly.

Jirou winced. "Idiot friends are better than no friends!" The insult registered on the other boys' faces, but they were too starstruck by the sight of their classmate in a shouting match with the white angel to complain.

Krad looked at the unfamiliar children like they were rotting garbage. "I disagree."

"Well, you disappeared!" Jirou yelled.

"I was dead!" Krad snorted.

"I KNOW!" The angel and boy glared at each other. Jirou's frown was beginning to melt into tears. "I know. I saw you die on TV. Everyone did."

The angel shrank at that revelation. The other kids were nodding. Krad sat up stiffly. "That was on television?"

Satoshi crouched carefully next to the angel, imagining what he must be thinking. "They saw what happened in the sky with Dark," he clarified quietly. "Not the woods." No one saw me hit you for kissing me, he might as well have said. No one else watched you bleed to death.

Krad looked pale as he nodded. Knowing the angel was reliving that memory made Satoshi want to erase this whole night.

"I'm not dead anymore," the blonde said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah. That was on TV, too," Jirou sniffled, standing up. He held an arm down to Krad. The other kids looked stunned as the huge angel accepted Jirou's hand and stood. "I just didn't think I'd see you again."

"Think more," Krad ordered. He looked away, tense and probably hating the presence of the unfamiliar children. Satoshi studied his posture. The blonde was definitely still in some pain.

"We're going," the angel said, without releasing Jirou's hand. He looked at Satoshi like he might reach back and tether his wing host to him in the same manner.

Satoshi took up beside him without testing that theory.

"Going where?" Jirou asked.

Krad's wings braced with irritation. He hadn't thought that far. It was late, and he was done with human birthday-idiot-suicide-nonsense. "You're going home." He looked at the skyline, like he was finding his bearings for a flight.

Satoshi looked sidelong at the blonde. "Krad," he said quietly. He didn't try to slow him, but neither Krad nor the boy seemed to be walking all that steadily. "Let's use a cab."

Krad looked like he wanted to protest, but then nodded, seeming a little relieved. His back must really not be feeling too great. Ten minutes and a very confused cab driver later, they stopped in front of Jirou's apartment building. A curtain moved in the second story window.

"Are you sure you don't want to come in? We have ice packs I usually use for my leg," Jirou fussed.

Krad rolled his eyes. "For the last time, I'm fine," he glowered. "Next year I'm not calling you."

Jirou's eyes turned to saucers. "Next year-...wait, you know it's my-? WAIT… that call on my phone was YOU?"

Krad glared, and Satoshi snickered despite his best judgment. Jirou's eyes turned to the wing host. "He has a phone number?" he pleaded.

"Get out," Krad groaned, shoving the boy toward the door.

"I'll text it to you," Satoshi winked.

"You shall not."

Satoshi backed out of the argument as Krad barely maneuvered Jirou out of the cab in time to avoid another conversation with the boy's mother. But not fast enough to keep Satoshi from recognizing the woman who rushed out to collect her son.

"That's Jirou's mom?" Satoshi realized. "The woman who came to the apartment?" He was connecting dots, and they were making his head spin.

Jirou's mother waved as they pulled away from the curb, as though to thank him for taking Jirou out for his birthday. "She has the wrong idea," Krad muttered.

Satoshi wasn't so sure about that. But he spared Krad that argument and focused on directing the cab driver toward home. He kept glancing at Krad's back and wings to make sure they looked okay. It was hard not to look at the wings, because even folded, they took up half the cab. They looked ruffled, and dirty, and very soft.

His ears tipped red and he rushed to straighten out his train of thought. The whole evening kept playing back in his head. He was a little frustrated when they reached the apartment and stepped back out into reality. The apartment was as they'd left it, Krad's new phone lying shorted out on the floor. It drew both their gazes as they entered.

"I may have destroyed it," Krad said, like he'd done something inevitable.

Satoshi got the feeling he was thinking about something other than the phone. He walked to the device, picked it up, and pressed the side button. The small machine lit up and began displaying its boot sequence animation. He dropped it into Krad's cautious hands. "It's not that easy to destroy," he said, smiling.

"It's really-?" The angel was still focused on studying the tiny screen when Satoshi brought over a glass of water and some pills cupped in his hand.

"Ibuprofen," the boy explained, holding it out to him.

Krad just blinked.

"It's a pain killer. For your back."

The angel pocketed the phone, and accepted the pills silently. It made the bluenette feel irrationally pleased.

"That was amazing, what you did tonight. If you hadn't reacted as fast as you did…" Satoshi swallowed. "He is damn lucky you were there."

"He's a worthless brat," Krad murmured.

Satoshi arched a brow. "Uh huh. But really, I never thought I'd see you protect a human like that."

"I've protected you," he argued simply.

The boy blushed. "Yeah."

"I'm taking a shower," the angel muttered, turning toward the bathroom.

"Krad," Satoshi said.

Krad turned back toward the boy who'd moved to follow him. It put them too close. Just close enough. Satoshi held his breath, almost backing out. Screw it. "What you did was amazing," he said. He tilted his chin up and kissed Krad's cheek, a soft, quick contact. When he drew back, Krad was wide-eyed. Two pale fingers had risen to his face and ghosted over the skin of his cheek. Satisfied, the bluenette bit back a smile. He walked to his door with the dangerous urge to turn back and do it again.

"Make sure the water's warm this time, okay?" he ordered, and headed into his room.

To be continued…