The black swirls of the mostly red hell portal were nice and all, but Minseok would have rather gotten home by now. A dim light emanated from the moving walls, so he could sorta see himself. He floated and was moving forward, and he could spin and flip as if he were in zero gravity, which was fun for the first few minutes. Now though, he just stared into the darkness, waiting for something to happen.

He wondered if he had to do something. Suho hadn’t told him any instructions, so Minseok had assumed that maybe Suho had picked a destination for him. Or maybe going from hell to Earth took a bit of time.

Floating along, Minseok found his mind straying to Chen. Only because the demon had saved his life, and he had to think of a way to thank him without dying—either by annoyance or by embarrassment. No doubt that the demon would scoff or taunt him for being a pathetic weak- human, but Minseok wasn’t someone to just take a favor and not pay it back.

Besides, he wasn’t ungrateful to the efforts of Chen and Suho for saving him even if…

He shook his head and rubbed his forearms.

Even if he had to endure it, he would let Chen gloat a little about his strength just so that Minseok could have a moment of non-self-consciousness, because if the demon was gloating that meant he wasn’t glaring or watching him. He noticed while getting ready for the dinner that Chen tended to observe him. Before too, when he was a cat guest, he would follow Minseok with his eyes.

That made Minseok think of how he had amber eyes in his cat form but brown eyes in his humanoid(?) form. He already had his questions of whether every demon and angel had an animal form and if they sometimes changed eye color. He just noticed the difference specifically with Chen since he knew Chen as a cat too.

He smacked a hand to his face, remembering again how he had called cat-Chen beautiful. Well, it wasn’t as if it was untrue, but how was he ever going to live it down if the demon threw that back at him?

Minseok didn’t have an answer for that, and he didn’t get time to think about it when the red swirls faded. The walls cracked, and light blinded him. Gravity whammed him downwards, and he smacked into the ground but also something else. It and him tumbled, and when they finally stopped, Minseok landed on something that felt like leather but with shape. The scent of incense and rain flooded him, and a grunt breathed in his ear.

“What the hells?”

Minseok looked up and felt his eyes blow open wide. Chen peered down at him with one eyebrow raised and one cheek scrunched in disgust, but the evening bathed half his features in evening gold. All of Minseok jolted to a pause. He watched both light and shadow play over his skin, his eyes, his lips, like the phenomena themselves had put aside their differences to share their individual aspects of beauty over this demon’s face.

Minseok’s palm moved even though he didn’t tell it to, and he looked down to see why and saw that he had caught himself on Chen’s chest. A blush shot from his face to his hands, and he flung his body back, stretching out to catch himself.

But his hands caught nothing.

Wind rushed his back, and the sky shone in between clouds, gold, and metal , shrinking between the spaces permitted by the skyscrapers. Gravity sought to claim him.

Then a flash. Arms clamped around his torso, and he was zipped sideways. The sound of glass shattering barely registered in his ears as he rolled, smacking his nose into something hard when he finally stopped. There was a groan but annoyed and not from him.

“You human.”

Minseok’s eyes flew open, and he looked up to see Chen glaring at him, amber flashing in his irises. He had several cuts on his face, and his clothes had torn a bit and discolored with dust.

“Wha—”

“When you portal in, do it in an open space, not on ing top of someone!”

Minseok jerked away, but Chen just yanked him back, and from that movement, it occurred to him that Chen had locked his arms around his shoulders.

“Don’t ing move because there’s glass and shards everywhere, and I’m not going to clean any oo you get.”

So he stayed with his nose tucked into the demon’s collarbone, his shoulder uncomfortably jammed between the ground and Chen’s armpit, and Chen’s knee in the back of one of his. He heard pieces scraping dully and guessed that they laid on cement. A dizziness swam in his head, but he tried to hold his breath because otherwise then he would smell ash and rain again. That plan failed when a hand jabbed his stomach and made him gasp.

“Breathe because trying to hold your breath to kill yourself doesn’t work.”

“That’s not what I was trying to do,” he muttered.

But the dizziness started to fade, and Minseok could feel the tingles of adrenaline start to recede from his limbs. He did smell incense and rain and a little static, and he sighed at the scent. The combination was actually kinda nice. A warmth wrapped around him too. He probably hadn’t had a hug, accident or not, since he had broken down in front of Yixing.

“Okay, get up.”

Minseok loosened his hold (damn, he was holding onto the demon’s shirt really hard—his knuckles had turned white), and Chen untangled himself first, standing up. Minseok sat up and looked around. They were in a fancy parking garage with wide paths and turns and had crashed into a pillar… that now had a dent in it. Minseok glanced at Chen, whose leather jacket had the imprint of a square dusted across the black, and he winced in vicarious oof.

“Are you okay?”

Chen paused and rolled his shoulders back. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Minseok rolled his eyes and watched the demon sweep the glass with his shoe. They hadn’t crashed into any cars, so Minseok wondered where the glass had come from, but then he saw Chen toss the remains of a florescent light to the side.

“Chen!”

“What? They can just blame it on vandals.”

He sighed and looked to see if any cameras had caught their unintentional destruction of property. Luckily, none were angled at this area. Then he saw Chen toss the parts of a CCTV in the same pile, and he facepalmed himself.

“So? Care to explain why you portaled into me?”

“I don’t know. That’s just where it opened. Your unit leader opened it for me.”

“Of course, he opened it for you. You don’t have the power or control to use any aura. I meant, why did you tell the portal to open to me?”

“I didn’t. I was just floating through it until there was a crack and I fell on you, I guess.”

Chen narrowed his eyes.

“Did my commander explain to you how to use the portal?”

“No, we got caught up on… something else.”

He wasn’t sure if Suho wanted this appellation business as private or secret, now that he thought about it. Chen glared at him for a little longer but eventually shrugged.

“Portals work by channeling your connection with hell or heaven and then making it open in front of you. You direct it where you want to go by thinking of that place, or in this case, person. So what about me were you thinking of so hard, huh?”

Minseok filed back through his memory and shot to his feet, powerwalking away.

“Hey!”

“Exit’s this way.”

He made a turn and skid to a stop when the demon ran in front of him, the ends of his mouth curling almost sweetly as he put a hand on Minseok’s shoulder and leaned in.

“Tell me.”

“Is that your seduction face? Because you need to work on it.”

His mouth dropped, and Minseok snickered as he moved past the demon. A few steps later and a presence joined his side.

“You’re lucky that I’m required to protect you.”

“Ah, yeah. Thanks for saving me. Twice.”

“‘Oh, yeah, thanks?’ That’s all I get? You were poisoned by a vampire and just now, you almost fell to your death. Humans are so ungrateful.”

“I see that. Demons and angels protect humans from things they can’t even sense.” He sighed, knowing he was going to regret his words. “And you saved me twice, so is there anything you want me to do for you?”

Chen stopped, so Minseok stopped too and looked back at him.

The evening sun dazzled behind them, and the golden light blinded Minseok, making him unsure if he actually saw lightning buzzing  around the demon.

“You’re offering me a favor?”

“Sure, if you want to see it that way.”

“Hm. Fine. Then I’m going to save it.”

“Suit yourself.”

Minseok started back out of the garage, and Chen followed. They made it out with a few more rays of the sunset. The demon inclined his head to it as Minseok pulled out his (miraculously unharmed) phone and figured out their location. They were closer to his car still sitting at Champagne Lights, so he led them there. While pulling out his phone, he had also touched the fabric Suho told him to give Chen, but he waited for the demon’s gaze to have turned back to the sidewalks before handing it to him.

“What, a dirty handkerchief?”

“No, your commander told me to give this to you.”

He took it, and Minseok thought that it was a bit dark to see anything, but Chen sighed.

“Fine.”

“What’s it say?”

“It says that you’re a baby who needs educating.”