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“Bruh, am I low-key off-key?”
“Something sounds off.”
Polyurethane sighed and began the tedious process of testing out his strings against their proper sound, one-by-one. The harp wasn’t in tune. Again. He hated having to tune this ancient hunk of junk. “When they said ‘Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune,’ they weren’t capping…” Polyurethane grumbled to himself
“Maybe if dad were here half the time and didn’t just chuck these instruments in our hands and tell us to figure it out on our own for our ‘Heavenly duties’, we could cut down the tuning time by at least half,” Polyester offered evenly, setting down his horn and taking the chance to catch his breath. He was still red in the face from all that blowing, and his ears were ringing from it, too. He sat down next to his brother, shoulder-to-shoulder, and breathed out an irritable huff. “Uncle doesn’t even make his daughters do this! How do those mid, illiterate half-wits get out of official Angel duties and get to go fuck around all the time?!”
“Because they’re a couple of spoiled princesses…” Polyurethane groused.
With the apparent exception of Pantiel and Stokiel, angels were required to know the Heavenly Symphony. So music was also a compulsory activity and instruments were chosen from a very small list of options—psaltery, tabor, pipe, rebec, gittern, etc. Polyester and Polyurethane’s instruments had been chosen for them by their father though, so in their case, they were assigned an instrument without even getting that small range of choices.
A lyre for Polyurethane, a horn for polyester. A distant and stern “Master these well” before he was off on business again.
Neither brother was a very big fan. They had more fun then they had picked up those leaves between their lips and buzzed out a melody on those during that off day spent with friends on the road to Casino City. Compared to that, this was just unbearably cringe.
But they were expected to practice, which was troublesome enough. The instruments themselves demanded careful handling and care as well, which made it even more of a chore.
While he was looking over the strings, an unsightly crack in the black of his nails caught Polyurethane’s attention. “Ugh. My nail polish chipped again.”
“Let me take a look.”
His older brother held out a hand in offering, and Polyurethane obligingly placed his palm in Polyester’s gentle but insistent grip. Polyester turned Polyurethane’s hands this way and that way for closer inspection.
In uniform, Polyester always wore gloves, but outside of that, he kept his hands bare, free of even the nail polish that every other angel wore. Maybe it was because of those gloves he made sure to wear when he was hunting, but Polyester’s hands were soft like cloud and smooth like silk.
Compared to that, Polyurethane didn’t even use his hands in battle, but they were still calloused and blistered from all this harp playing. And to make matters worse, these strings had made his black nail polish was messed up again.
They were brothers, and there was no secret or shame between them, so it wasn’t like Polyurethane was self-conscious of having his own older brother hold his hand. He just couldn’t help but note the difference between them. In the early days, when they were just starting out and the harp’s sharp strings cut into his fingertips, Polyurethane’s blood used to stain against Polyester’s hands or mar his white gloves red.
“It’s not chipped too bad. We’ll hook you up with a fresh coat of paint when we head back,” Polyester concluded, releasing Polyurethane’s hand.
“Thanks,” Polyurethane said, pulling back his hand and looking it over. He reached to pick his harp back up, but he stopped short. “…I lowkey hate this,” Polyethurane complained in a quiet whisper, putting his harp to the side as well for the moment. “This old-ass aesthetic, this lame-ass practice on these boomer-ass relics.”
He flopped onto his back, splayed out against the ground. Polyester did the same at his side, folding his arms behind his head and glaring up at a cloud in the sky.
“Facts,” Polyester agreed in a voice just as quietly, as if there was ever a way to be so softspoken as to go beneath Heaven’s notice. “It’s so cringe. Everything about this totally gives me the ick.”
The silence stretched, the crickets chirped, and birds sang, and their frustrations mounted, until it all just boiled over and both brothers groaned out in a childish annoyance.
“Ick, ick, ick, ick!”
“No way, no way, no way!”
The brothers whined on the floor, flailing his arms around in a tantrum. And then, abruptly, they stopped.
“Okay, got that outta our system. Let’s try again.”
“Bet. Take it from the top.”
Before they could stand back up and collect their instruments, they heard rustling in the leaves from several feet away, too large to be a nosey squirrel. The brothers tensed and kept their guard up.
“—Who’s there?!” Polyester pulled on his gauntlet and fired a flurry of warning shots into the bushes. A frantic, high-pitched human yelp answered him as the interloper desperately scrambled out of the way of the bullets.
A familiar face came tumbling out from behind the shrubs. Well, more like a familiar mop of curly orange hair. Polyester held his fire and arched his eyebrow. “Well, would you look at that? It’s Brief.”
Polyurethane smiled and lifted a hand to wave, but again, he stopped short. He glanced over at his lyre and pouted. “What, are you here to make fun of us for doing our Heavenly duties too?!”
Polyester hummed pensively, tapping his fingers against his chin in thought. “Did our cousins send you to spy on us?”
Brief held up his hands in surrender and shook his head in desperate denial. “I’m not a spy! Really! And I—I wasn’t gonna make fun! I… I was just gonna say you guys are really good.”
Polyurethane grimaced, then made a face that neither Brief or Polyester could make out when he tipped his head forward and the shadows of his long bangs fell over his darkened face. “Uh, yeah, that’s cap,” he said, voice cracking in raw embarrassment.
Polyurethane leapt up and pounced forward in a fluid motion, and in the very next moment, Brief found a foot held up to his face. Polyurethane’s lower leg was adorned in a white greave with ornate blades affixed to the side. The sharpened metal glinted threateningly in the sunlight. “Liars go to Hell, you know,” Polyurethane teased in a naked threat.
Brief gulped nervously from where he was still on the ground. His eyes trailed up past Polyurethane’s weapon, up his bare leg underneath the white angel tunic—a breeze blew that made the skirt flutter, and Brief tried not to stare, especially since the fact that Polyurethane was wielding his thong-turned-weapon meant that he was currently going commando under there. Brief's gaze finally landed on Polyurethane’s face that was glowering down at him.
A shaky smirk on Polyurethane’s face showed off his sharp, almost shark-like teeth. When the wind blew his silky hair, the flushed tips of his ears showed that he was still blushing in embarrassment of this whole thing, but he tried to keep evidence of that out of his voice. His heel tapped against Brief’s head, sword dangerously close to his face. “If you ever want the chance to hear this cringey music playing on your way floating up past those pearly white gates up there, you better keep it a buck with us. I know how goofy I look and sound on that thing. Even my old man’s embarrassed at how I play.”
“No, really!” Brief swore. “My dad made me take instrument lessons for tradition’s sake, too. So I get it. But I like how you guys do your music.”
“No cap?” Polyester called, tilting his head. Brief was their bestie as far as their personal lives were concerned, but he was also Pantiel’s tag-along in their professional business. And band practice was more in the latter category. “What do you play?”
“Mostly the classical stuff.” Brief counted it off on his fingers. “Violin, piano, flute, harp… I play some bass guitar too, but, uh, that was something I picked up on my own, dad didn’t really approve…”
“Wait, I, like, totally heard harp on that list.” Polyurethane lowered his foot back to the ground. Brief breathed out a sigh of relief to no longer have the blade being held precariously close to his face, though he felt a little embarrassed about that reaction when Polyurethane giggled and said, “Chill, bro, it was a bluff. Divine weapons can’t kill humans, anyway.” That was something that Brief had heard Panty and the others mention, now that he thought about it.
“Y-yeah, my dad made me take some harp lessons when I was younger. He said it was part of being a proper son and knowing how to look proper in high society for him. He wanted me to at least look the part of a perfect, high-class heir for his legacy. But it felt more like being his puppet half the time…”
Polyester glanced to the side. “I know that feeling,” he said below his breath.
“Anyway, you gotta tune this for me!” Polyurethane shoved his small harp into Brief’s hands. “It’s lowkey a pain to do it myself.”
“Oh! Uh…” Brief plucked his fingers through experimentally. “Um… I think the middle range is just a little flat. Hold on, let me just…”
Grabbing a tuner and tuning key, Brief slid the tuning key onto the middle C peg. He methodically plucked each string to check the tuning, adjusting the strings when needed. Slowly, he slipped back into the world of cascading chromatic scales, until he was finally satisfied with the sound and handed the lyre back to its owner.
Polyurethane accepted the harp gingerly and plucked out a few notes. “Music to my ears,” he brightened, though the joy was pretty quickly dampened because this just meant he was back to more harp practice, anyway. And that wasn’t exactly cause for that much celebration. “Ugh, okay, let’s get this over with already—”
“—Um, I!” Brief cut in. “I have a suggestion?”
Polyurethane pouted again, not wanting to hear criticism of his music, but his brother answered Brief before he could. “Okay. Spill,” Polyester invited.
“I, uh, I just think… if you’re getting tired of practicing that song from before, you can play a different one. Sometimes it helps if you listen to yourself playing something else for a little bit.”
Polyurethane made another face, dubious of the advice. He wasn’t much into the lyre either way, but he’d never really tried to use it outside of official angel business, either.
In any case, he gave it a shot, trying to create a tune by ear rather than a set of memorized rules of which string to pluck and when and how. It was a different way of playing than he was used to, but between one string pluck and the next, he gets it. He was trying to make music—he couldn’t simply follow a set of instructions. He needed to listen, to feel the tune in his soul.
He plucked out one of the melodies he’d been listening to on Certified Bussin Vol 1 lately. It wasn’t perfect, but he was able to make the tune recognizable. Where he formerly focused on trying to make the harp sound beautiful and melodic, now he focused on making it sound like something he wanted to vibe to.
After he’d made his way through the song, Polyurethane looked up and saw Polyester and Brief both grinning. They let loose a round of applause.
“Listen to you, bro! That was a bop! Props, for real for real!”
“That sounded great, Polyurethane! See? I told you you sounded good! Uh, ‘no cap’ or whatever!”
A surprisingly shy smile spread on Polyurethane’s face. He angled his face to hide behind the shadows of his bangs again and changed the subject clumsily, “Well, how about my bro’s? I don’t imagine you’ve played that before? Not that his needs any tuning.”
Brief turned back towards Polyester, who held up his instrument. A long brass wind instrument of some kind. It resembled some stuff that Brief had seen, but also, kinda didn’t. The length was longer and the form was simpler than he was used to. “I don’t really recognize that. What do you play, Polyester?”
“Buisine. The old ‘herald’s trumpet’.” Polyester twirled it around in between his fingertips like a baton. “It’s like, so old-fashioned, isn’t it? So old you hardly even see it around anymore. Totally cringe. But tradition is tradition…”
“I don’t think it’s cringe, though!”
Polyester hummed. “Seriously?”
“Seriously! You must have awesome lung capacity to be able to get a sound out of that! And I think it looks cool! Like the sort of thing you can hear in the soundtrack before a big battle in war films! Or something a big army would play right before its troops march into battle in a period movie! Or like how elephants sound before they go at it against other elephants! Or…” he trailed off and cleared his throat. “Sorry, I guess dorky comparisons like that don’t exactly make it sound less lame…” Brief admitted.
Polyester cracked a smile. “No, no, those were cool examples! Maybe it’s not all that bad like I thought! That was a cute perspective. In fact, speaking of perspective… Havign a human hear out our practice wouldn’t be half-bad. They’re the ones who are supposed to be able to ‘feel’ the music we play anyway. Wanna try harmonizing again, Polyurethane? This time with a live audience?”
“I’m game!”
“Let’s take it from the top together then!”
Automatically, Brief plopped down on his butt to listen, as the so-called audience. The concert stopped right before it started though.
“Wait, wait.” Polyurethane put his harp back down, much to the other two’s surprise. He bent over to reach Brief from where he was sitting on the ground. “If we’re doing this, we want your full attention on us and our song. Headphones off!”
Polyurethane pushed Brief’s headphones off, inadvertently combing back his bands with his fingers in the same rough movement. He whistled in surprise.
“Whoa. Hey, bro, come check out this facecard! He’s lowkey a snack!”
Polyester took a closer look as well.
Brief’s auburn hair cutely framed his face from where Polyurethane had pushed back the bangs. The sun lit up the top of his hair, giving him an ethereal glow, like the sky had parted to shine a halo on him.
“Not a snack, Brief’s looking like a whole meal over here…” Polyester reached out as well, delicate fingers brushed the rest of the bangs aside neatly, tucking the longer strands behind his ears, the shorter ones simply falling back into place. The pads of his fingers lingering at Brief’s temple, before reverently moving across his face, tracing his features, committing the sight of him to memory with his hands.
Brief’s skin tingled at his touch.
Silky silver hair fell over Polyester’s face as he tilted his head, brows furrowed, eyes narrowed in intent scrutiny. “So pretty… Are you sure you’re a human, Brief? You’re mogging every mortal I’ve ever seen.”
Polyurethane cupped a hand against Brief’s opposite cheek.
Despite Polyurethane’s appearing much more delicate-looking than Brief’s, to Brief’s surprise, there were small scars and callouses coating them, speaking of a life that Brief couldn’t personally imagine. Polyurethane’s hands stroked and held him with a curious awe. His thumb traced a pattern that traced along Brief’s freckles. “Nah, angels lowkey aren’t this warm to the touch, are they…?” Polyurethane disagreed.
Polyester nodded, and his fingers traced a path from Brief’s face, along his jaw, up the shell of his ear as he swept another stray lock of hair back into place.
“Good point, bro.” Brief shivered at the cool breath fanning our against his skin and the amused laughter sounding out against the shell of his ear. “We probably feel kind of cold against your skin, don’t we, Brief?”
At the same time, Brief trembled at the feeling of Polyurethane’s hands caressing his face, calloused fingertips diligent as Polyurethane traced over the outline of his mouth and the bridge of his nose, then trailing down to his neck. “Never really paid this much attention, but humans really are warm. When they’re still alive, at least…” he mused to himself.
A warm flush crept up Brief’s neck and into his cheeks, and he felt his body tingle everywhere he felt the angels’ hands. They really did feel cool to the touch, but Brief couldn’t blame his trembling on that alone.
“He’s lowkey shivering bro,” Polyurethane teased.
“Do angels feel that cold against humans?” Polyester seemed genuinely inquisitive.
“Uh… uh… W-weren’t you guys gonna play your song or something?” Brief asked.
In perfect sync, both brothers pulled away and stepped back into place, instruments instantly in hand.
“Oh, bet! Say less!”
“Yeah, just sit back and let us cook!”
Polyurethane’s fingers glided over the strings of his harp, plucking out the opening arpeggios to the Heavenly Hymn. Polyester took a deep breath in and pressed his lips to the mouth of his trumpet, playing the notes on the familiar rhythm of the song they had been practicing for their entire lives.
A pleasant melody filled the air, of peace and love, joy and solace.
His heart had been racing so fast that it felt ready to burst out of his chest just seconds ago, but now, a calm seeped into every inch of him, down to his bones. Brief let himself be carried away in the melody, the music washing over him, enveloped him. The blare sounding from Polyester’s horn was enchanting— powerful yet soothing. The trill of Polyurethane’s strings was ethereal— a sharp, clear sound that sounded sweet.
Though Brief didn’t quite get it, the song warmed his soul like he’d never felt before. He almost felt like he was floating away with the notes.
“That was lit!”
“We ate that shit up, right?”
“We slayed, bitched! Right, bestie?”
Brief nodded, still in a dreary daze. “It makes me feel… warm, and calm,” Brief answered.
Slowly, after the music faded away, Brief opened his eyes. The angels were close. Very closer, staring at his face curiously.
“Whoa, he looked so at peace, it was like he was ready to pass on, right here and now. Did his heart stop?”
“I think he was lowkey about to cross over. That is song we usually only play after they’re already dead. Humans are pretty fragile. Think it almost worked in reverse?”
“Only one way to find out,” Polyester teased, tapping the fluted tip of his horn against the curve of his bottom lip.
Polyurethane raised his hand back to the strings of his lyre, flexing his fingers. “Ready for an encore?”
Brief panicked and scrambled back. “Wait! No! No matter how peaceful it is, I-I don’t wanna d-die!”
Brief pulled his headphones back over his head fretfully. Just like that, hair was back to a mess of orange curls, tousled even more than usual from hands running through them and the headphones coming on and off his head.
They weren’t playing any music though, and they weren’t noise-cancelling headphones, so it’s not like they did much of anything to muffle the peals of laughter coming from the angel brothers.
“Dude, we were like, just kidding. Your reactions are sending me, oh my God!”
“We’d be so cooked if we just went around merking random humans when it wasn’t their time, you know!”
Brief smiled when he saw them laughing. The mood had felt heavy at first, so this more lighthearted atmosphere was very welcome. It was nice to know that Brief had helped contribute to it, too. He joined in on the laughter with a chuckle of his own, and the angels brightened.
“Seriously, thanks for the help, bestie!”
“I don’t think we’ve ever sounded that good before.”
“Glad I could help. I just noticed that you guys seemed kinda troubled, so, since we’re friends—I mean, uhm, since we’re ‘besties’, I just… wanted to lend you guys a hand, or something.”
The brothers’ smiles softened, and they exchanged a glance with each other, then turned back to Brief.
“You should, like, totally bring an instrument and come practice with us next time, Brief.”
“I’ll make sure to get a tunic ready in your size, fam!” Polyurethane winked. “You’d lowkey pull it off, I think!”