#maybe... maybe

First up, Angel Xiao and Devil Aether! In this world setting, Heaven is in the business of answering prayers, while Hell helps fulfill desires. 

Aether is a little too nice to be considered a good devil, so he gets locked out of Hell by his boss until he improves at his job... but he has no idea what to do, so in his desperation, he prays to God for help... and God answers his prayers by sending an angel down to help him! Predictably enough, that’s Xiao.

In Xiao’s case... The way prayers work, is that the prayers will be sent to the angel must suitable for the job. Xiao’s an angel who specializes in fighting, so his prayers have always been subjugation and other things that can be solved via violence. In time periods where humans were trying to summon evil beings, this was pretty common, but nowadays it’s peaceful, so Xiao doesn’t get a lot of work. 

So when he gets called down to the human realm for a prayer to “become a bad person”, he doesn’t know what to expect. Certainly not a teary, sparkly eyed devil who clings to him the moment they lock gazes... After some back-and-forth, Xiao agrees to help Aether. At the very least, he can’t let a devil go unsupervised like this.

As you can probably guess, through their wacky misadventures of Aether trying to sympathize with humans who do things for their desires and Xiao trying to understand why humans value such meaningless things... they fall in love!

And through the Power of Love, (which I hope becomes this blog’s trademark alongside happy endings!), they finally understand..!! Aether gets why humans would summon devils out of jealousy or anger now! After all, he gets jealous when Xiao gets eyed up by other people! Xiao gets why humans cling to the little things now... He’s valuing every moment he spends with his stupidly nice devil, after all...

They’re a lovey-dovey couple by the end of it...  Aether gets back to Hell and finds out that their bosses set them up... Since Heaven and Hell get along, their respective bosses are actually good friends, so they get together and talk sometimes... So they’d talk about work, then their subordinates, then their most troublesome ones, Aether and Xiao, and then the idea of putting them together came up... the rest is history. (Venti is Aether’s boss and Zhongli is Xiao’s boss, by the way!)

What do you mean Devil/Angel AUs are usually pretty serious?? This is my blog??? We only serve happy endings here???? This is a feel-good zone only?????

(I wanted a cape... but I also wanted wings... so here’s the explanation for it. It’s just an image, that you can also touch, but it’s just a touchable projection, really... Aether has a Realization... He’s a devil, okay? It’s normal for his thoughts to go south..!!)

Their human realm disguises(?)!! Definitely only for working undercover!! They totally not just going on dates!!! Xiao’s carrying Aether’s bag, if you’re wondering.

Devil Xiao and Angel Aether! This one is only a smidgen more serious than the other one. In this world setting, Heaven and Hell are in the soul business. Souls are sent to Hell where they’re redeemed and punished, then sent to Heaven to be reincarnated when they’re judged ready.

However, sometimes a soul’s good heavily outweighs their evils, so an angel comes down to collect the soul early. Then sometimes, a devil disagrees with the judgement, so they get into little spats now and then...

Aether and Xiao are always clashing during soul collection! But it’s not as if they actually disagree with each other... this is just how they interact with one another. They’ll argue about the most nonsensical of things just to spent a couple more minutes together! They’ve been pining for like... a bajillion years. It’s so bad, both Heaven and Hell have started a betting pool about them and haven’t informed either of the two...

They’re always making excuses to be together longer or to casually touch one another... Xiao pointing out that Aether has something in his hair (he doesn’t have anything), Aether grabbing Xiao’s sleeve to stop him from grabbing the soul and running off (he wasn’t going to), and both sides knowing the other is lying for some reason, but going along with it anyways. They’re dumb and very much in love.

(Note: Xiao does not require his hands to use his devil powers.)

As some fun lore dump, Heaven and Hell in this AU used to have a terrible relationship. It was a traditional kind of conflict between angels and devils you’d see anywhere else... and yet, Aether and Xiao met and fell for each other during such a time. At that point, the soul system was not in place yet, as it was a result of the two sides collaborating and compromising for peace.

But these two fell so hard, that they couldn’t stand for it. So, they fiercely worked towards peace and eventually, after an absurd amount of hardship, accomplished their goal of obtaining peace, just because they fell in love with someone from the other side... And thus the soul system was established, thanks to their efforts! However, despite being so certain of their own feelings, they don’t know how to interact with the other person at all... But they’re slowly working it out!

They go out on little outings (read: dates) together all the time nowadays, when they’re free after work. They’re a married couple that doesn’t know they’re married... after all the hard work they did to just spend time quietly together, it’s all they do. They just do domestic stuff and spend their days slowly, yet happily...

Human realm looks! They’re out shopping together. It’s not relevant in any way to plot, but I must inform you that they own a house together. Actually, it’s Xiao’s house. It’s pretty common for devils in their world setting to have human identities, so they have houses and such to go with it. Some devils even build their houses themselves, since that would be like an immortal being’s version of building blocks...

Once Aether and Xiao were hanging out on a regular basis, Xiao’s basic house gets a lot more cozy, since Aether starts helping out too. They have a big enough bed that they can spread their wings out, and Xiao will groom Aether’s feathers even though he technically doesn’t require it... And on cold days, where Xiao refuses to use his powers to warm himself, his wings will get cold fast, so he’ll use his equally cold tail to pester Aether until he finally relents and wraps Xiao up in his wings....