WATCH THE NIGHT PASS US BY : IRA

Restraint was what protected people from blurting out that someone else had something green in their teeth. Restraint was what protected people from charging into things, headfirst, that could get them laid out across a surgical table plugged up to eight monitors all beeping at once with frantically rushing doctors all about with scalpels and blood pressure pumps - restraint was what saved people from being the hungover and hugely sick friend over the designated driver and restraint was often the very last (and first) thing that saved someone's lives. Restraint was integral ... everywhere. You literally couldn't live without restraint.

As pointed out, quite thoroughly, Miyu had little to no restraint when it came to protecting his only connection to the world. The only one reason he was really sticking around this little city anymore; the only reason why he hadn't sprint his feetwings wide and taken off like a ... bird.

For Andi, you went hard or you went home, and Miyu toppled over the edge.

The demon flexed his hands in his puffy gloves, stuffed as they were within his pockets, and circled automatically about midair with only a subtle twist to face the angel, face set with nothing but fierce determination - a stark change from the typical lackadaisically cheesy grin that held it under siege. As a demon, his subtly but noticeably, helpfully (you had to be just a little superhuman to find someone that didn't want to be found like Andi) enhanced senses were enough to keep him going through the night, following that one smell he remembered - enough to detect that the other truly was there, that he wasn't just speaking into the abyss for his voice to ring back. Miyu tilted his head up then followed the other's descent with his eyes, intent and almost even unblinking.

'Sure did,' he affirmed, voice deceivingly light and cheerful as it always was. 'Actually, I wanted to talk to you.'

This birb bird man ... he was suspicious. Presumably swooping out of nowhere to intercept Andi's path and stop her in her tracks before Miyu could but, though he'd clearly threatened her and had to be stronger, without attacking outright. Even ... being playful, or some semblance of it. In fact, had he even been helping Miyu catch up to her?

It made no sense. None at all. Why would anyone nowadays just stop and ...?

Miyu's frown deepened.

'What do you want with my sister?' he demanded, pulling his hands out to cross his arms over his chest and eye the other accusingly, simply smirking and looking just as he had yesterday - with a crown and large wings and the faintest scar Miyu only noticed through his intense inspection and all. His bat wings flapped rhythmically, a continuous buffet of the slightest wind giving life to the otherwise eerily silent neighbourhood aside from crickets and, sometimes, very vague voices. Plus car horns. 'Who are you?'

He's going to find the answers here and now or he will actually SCREAM.

Anyone who knew Miyu on a personal, deep level knew that he didn't have a poker face. People who knew Miyu well knew that he couldn't poker face to save his life. People who just knew Miyu were aware that his emotions were an open book. People who remotely knew Miyu could tell that he wasn't used to hiding his emotions away. Heck, even plain strangers could take a single look at Miyu, humming in broad daylight and swinging his arms to the same beat in which his bat wings were idly flapping as he walked down the street, and tell that he was nowhere near the realm of not having his heart on his sleeve.

It was truly almost a pathetic sight, witnessing a demon almost outright skipping down the sidewalk with zero to no irony nor purposeful humour in it at all, but that was just the way he rolled. Like a snowball down a mountain causing a gigantic avalanche. Extremely hazardously.

As such, though Miyu's voice was perfectly serenely normal, his face expressed in at least three visual languages how ready he was to give this winged stranger a good solid whack to the back of the head numerous times. The expression exacerbated at the response, Miyu's immense glower faltering with almost dumbfounded shock at the ever-increasing width of the angel's large smile - they weren't lying when they said that a smile was someone's greatest weapon when you wanted to intimidate, and the sight of it (even if - especially since - Miyu was most definitely the smiley type himself) sent a touch of discomfort coursing plainly in his face. Geez, how do his face muscles do it?

The angel's words, in particular, brought forth a truly fierce grit of the teeth. He was being played with. 'Yeah, don't you feel special?' he retorted, after a flustered angered fumble and utterly wounded at the impression that his species being seen as any lesser than any random bird man with a crown, and hesitated on the grounds of plainly not knowing what this guy was - a fact that was more than a little ... degrading. 'You .... um ... angel!'

Yeah. Giant white wings and a crown, right?

Though he swore that angels should look a little more ... holy. Then again, maybe he should also question himself for not looking more demonic in the same way.

The other's next answer had Miyu entirely blindsided.

The brunet blinked - then blinked a couple more times, and he dislodged an arm from its cross to raise, bewildered, to touch his own face. 'Wait ... you ...'

And his next words had Miyu almost entirely thrown off-guard. The demon jerked with utter stupefaction, and he almost dropped down to one knee then and there and pronounced him your Majesty until wait. Miyu took a step back, analysing the male for who he truly was - not that he'd even been hiding, what with his blatant crown and his sword and his ... everything. Wow. Good job, Miyu. You'd think that as another supernatural being ...

Miyu jammed his mouth shut, pressing his knuckles now over his mouth and affixing the stranger a long solid stare of contemplative distrust. Noooo ... he couldn't be .... but, at the same time, he very much could be king of the jackasses.

Damn it.

Finally, slowly, he asked, 'Why should I trust you?'

notes NO IT'S GORGEOUS THOUG H OMG i am so ready for this

The king's casual pose was nothing less but putting on pure display how nonchalant he was about everything - generally, it'd only be a flippant movement, tucking your thumbs into your pockets. The typical body language of ultimate relaxation - amenable tranquility, simple direct calm. It meant that he didn't feel threatened. That, at least, he was in familiar territory. Or it could have been a bluff. Who knew.

In any case, however, here it was blatant disregard.

For Miyu. For his words. For everything that he was feeling, indignant and a little lost - most definitely scorned and with a healthy tossing of anger on the side served ice cold, Miyu had to bite hard down on another furiously thrown accusation at Nico's words. Implying he was stupid. That he didn't know anything, simply didn't see the bigger picture ... again, like this winged creature was so much better than him. This Avimosum.

And the fact that it was honestly true just made him angrier.

You look surprised.

'I --'

And then that was it. The man's next words rolled off his tongue with the perfect smoothness of nobility, finely tempered uncaring in a mixture of even drawled amused humour. Small amusements. It definitely took a while, figuring out exactly what this king was saying - piecing it together, his calmly entertained rhetoric and all his perfectly monitored words aside. Deciphering him almost needed the same consideration as jotting down notes for an English class, unlocking every little nuance of a character's words in a play. Uncovering their meaning from their context and the clues they'd left prior and searching deep within.

When it clicked - small amusements equating to homo sapien - Miyu's hand fell gradually from his mouth to hang out by his side, other arm doing the same in tandem. He stared, long and hard, as the Avimosum then idly suggested a few things that might stir up some foundations of belief - a name, a spell, every nitty gritty qualification.

Magic - now, that was something that had already been proved. Smug douche.

A name? Hmm... well ... wait.

A battle.

The bat wings on Miyu's feet fired up.

'She's my SISTER!' the demon shouted, and surged forward in a move attempting to tackle the birb straight over.

SEE. SEEEEE. ABSOLUTE evidence that this guy was messing around with him, there was now absolutely no doubt about it. Like, zero. He was playing around with him - playing him like the world's smallest violin ever. That was just how much Miyu was being played. If only he could gather this evidence and show it to his lawyer so they could properly convict this darn infuriating birb once and for all.

And also if only Miyu was actually aware that there'd even been an admittance.

After all, it was all mental. Of course it had to be. Couldn't make his life any easier, could you.

Miyu's shoulder managed to knock hard against the other's but it was, overall, a mere graze, the horned demon spinning about with a dark and very brusquely hate-filled snarl - frightening. Not at all unnatural, this was what demons were - but this wasn't an expression that was meant to exist on a face like Miyu's. 'Yeah, my sister,' he panted, not exactly out of breath from exhaustion - of course not, it'd only been one blow, but he'd been riled up far past the point of peace.

He stiffened at the next question, cerulean eyes dilating. That question... it was like they were mere experiments. Fascinating. To be clinically examined. 'It doesn't matter!'

Miyu persistently chased after the Avimosum, bat wings working with long experience to accommodate his weight, and there'd be no running away here - he threw an arm forth to aim for grabbing one of the stranger's to then tug sharply closer.

An angel, he'd thought he was. What a joke.

notes it's so hard typing on mobile ira i have so much respect for you
FUDGE D

The exhilaration of FINALLY being able to gain the upper hand brings back an abrupt flare of rabid competition sparking in the dizzy swirl of Miyu's veritable maelstrom of thoughts, grin splitting wide and narrow across his face though his teeth still grind with the frenzy of battle - only his expression puttered entirely with lost incomprehension flashing, just for a moment, over his face when the other man ... went with it.

The brunet let out a strangled sound on impulse on having his arm snared, the right one streaked chaotically with dark indigo markings gripped, and by sheer primal instinct does he flinch minutely back at the butter smooth action of a sword being raised to his throat.

Time tread on. Nico's breath fanned over his ear and, unexpectedly, he wasn't dead .... yet.

The demon was frozen like a rabbit, both of them locked in a stalemate - except they weren't. This Avimosum was holding his blade to his neck and, by all means, AGAIN, easily had the capability to kill him.

For the second time in two days.

More than mockingly being shown that someone was better than him, this was Miyu being scorned.

The brunet jerked away with the swing of a roundhouse kick loosely aimed at the other's ribs, more for the purpose of escaping the other's hold if anything else - the way he said his name sent a bite of rampant discomfort eating at his mind. He knew his name.

This King was stringing him effortlessly, carelessly along and he knew it. They both knew it.

Wings on his feet beating and poking out the carved holes in his shoes, Miyu backed up, regaining his smile of challenge - with some difficulty. 'Drop the sword, then,' he contested, crossing his arms then behind his head. 'That gives you unfair range. Unless you're too scared to fight without it?'

Their close proximity and the hushed words almost contemptuously murmured directly to him --

It sent Miyu's (potentially hypothetical, if demons HAD them) heart skipping with warring confusion and unease all in one, biting his tongue and breathing pent up air out harshly.

Like his Majesty had any right to tell him to take this seriously.

notes i suffer

Abject hostility was a thing Miyu scarcely felt, if ever; jealousy, yes. Irritation - who didn't? Annoyance was more than a frequent visitor, most often tied in with stubborn frustration, and then there was disgruntled disgust and petulance and horrorstruck revulsion ("Andi what are you LOOKING AT?"). But downright hatred was on a whole nother level. An entirely different ballfield, if you would. The difference between soccer and football - arguably the same, but it really depended on the country.

Or, in this metaphor, it depended on how much he would give to kick someone's royal hind.

Everything about the other throttled his steaming up to unbearable levels - his careless movements, natural grace, even his mere face - and the warmth that still lingered over his whispered-to ram horn and ear remained there like a dull throb, a reminder, and damn it this stupid faux-angel was still haunting him in Miyu's subconscious even though he was right there! Though tailless, a trait that fluctuated within all demons, Miyu's would have whipped in utter strangled outrage. Why did this guy have to win in everything?

It wasn't only that. It was how the Avimosum found it so easy to threaten him. Everything he loved - that is, Andi alone. How he could back up those claims with barely the twitch of a finger (actually, he'd merely raised them), to the point where Miyu had had to actually request a handicap.

He was a walking contradiction. Mocking and sly, teasing and amused, cold and kingly and yet always with that cunning smirk of his - another contradiction, considering just how much he seemed like an angel. That was agonising.

Miyu, wind resistance grazing about the soles of his shoes held aloft, could barely restrain the twitching of an eye at the statement on top of everything else. Of his entire face, honestly. 'Y'know, I find it kinda hard to take you seriously when you're hiding behind that sword of yours,' he threw back, balling up his fists. 'And that magic. It's almost like you don't know how to fight without party tricks!'

He wasn't going to lose to this freaking humanoid chicken. Not again. He had to do it for Andi.

'How about getting a little hands-on for once?'

The demon pushed off toward the other once more in a flash, if he was always going to have to be the one to take initiative, and careened around him at the last moment with a heavy shoe lashing out directly towards between the stranger's shoulder blades, expression affixed in deadset concentration. King he might be, that was no way to talk about Miyu's little sister.