epiproctan's writing blog

At the end of the second week, everyone was getting restless. Horikawa and Nagasone went to work in the fields without having been asked. More than one individual mentioned forming a team for a sortie, or at least an expedition, before being shot down by others telling him it was too dangerous, even if too dangerous wasn’t a thing that particularly bothered them right then. “She’ll be back soon,” they all promised each other over a somber dinner table. But late at night when they gathered in small numbers in dark rooms, when they were too restive to do anything but wander the halls or sit in the moonlight or wrap themselves around each other in their futons, they only had questions on their lips.

At the end of the third week, everything started going to shit.

Someone had left gaping holes in the screen door in the front hall and no one had bothered to fix it yet, despite multiple arguments over who’d caused the wreckage. The stench of sake hung in the air even six rooms down from Jiroutachi’s, probably due to the now-widespread habit of breaking into his stores. Ookurikara had taken a horse from the stables and hopped on it before thundering off one morning. When the horse had returned at noon, it dragged with it the shattered remains of a hilt, tangled up in its reins.

“It’s your fault she won’t come back, you know.” It was a whisper and a yell heard up and down the halls, passed from room to room. Between friends, between lovers, between enemies, hidden in kind-sounding statements or in the fistfight that broke out at dawn after a sleepless night. “She got tired of you. She doesn’t love you.”

But it was directed inward most of all.

It was a shock but not a surprise.

Red was a color that suited Kashuu, but the sight of it not only all over him but soaking into the tatami he laid on, splattered on the walls, was too much for Yasusada when he opened the door. Or perhaps it was the scent that did it, the overwhelmingly sticky stench, too fresh and too real. Although blood was something he dealt with every day, having been drenched in others’, having been drenched in his own, his new human stomach couldn’t handle the sight of his companion with his entrails spilling out onto the floor. He turned away to retch.

Yasusada’s knees gave out before he reached Kashuu, and he hit the ground with a wet thud, still-warm blood immediately soaking through his hakama and plastering the fabric to his legs. He crawled the rest of the way, and when he pulled Kashuu into his arms, his hands left trails of red on his over-pale skin. He was distantly aware that he was sobbing, that the blur over his vision was from tears and that it wasn’t the room shaking, it was his core.

It wasn’t right that he should have to face the same death twice.

He was so caught up in this thought for so long that it wasn’t until his wracking sobs had brought further attention, that someone was trying to pry Kashuu out of his arms, that he noticed the blood on his hands was fresh and warm.

He started to scream. He was told later that the sound scared the tantou so badly that they refused to leave Ichigo’s room, even after the sun rose the next morning. He thought what he was saying was to let Kashuu go. He was still alive. But all that rose from his lungs was a terrified and incomprehensible keen.

Kashuu’s eyes opened at the sound, glassy and unfocused, but alive.

Yasusada wouldn’t want to sift through the emotions he saw there, even if he had the capacity to at the moment.

He did have the capacity to inhale past his bawling, and choke out a strained, “Why?”

The only response Kashuu gave was a pained gurgle.

He wasn’t very beautiful right then, Yasusada managed to think through his haze. Not with the jagged hole in his chest, his rich clothes and his flawless skin and his battle-strengthened muscles torn right through. What he could see of his face past the blood and the disheveled hair was contorted in agony. It was probably the last way Kashuu wanted to be looked at, even now, and so Yasusada looked away.

Kashuu was finally wrenched from his grip and carried out of the room by people Yasusada couldn’t see talking in serious voices he couldn’t hear. Because all that was burned into his memory was the way Kashuu’s limbs hung limply at the eeriest angles, the way his organs oozed out of the holes left in his torso, the way his eyes burned, because he could feel

every

last

bit of pain.

 As it turns out, swords can only die if their blade is broken. No matter the harm that comes to their physical bodies,

--no matter how hard they try to gut themselves--

they won’t die.

Yasusada held Kashuu Kiyomitsu (the blade, not the body) for the rest of the night as he scrunched in on himself in a corner. Aside from the blood that had dried on it, it was as perfect as the day it was forged. There wasn’t a single scratch. No nicks, no broken metal. Kashuu was whole and undamaged.

Yasusada couldn’t think of a statement that might be further from the truth.

 He was sleeping when Yasusada went to him, a luxury that he didn’t think he deserved after the night he gave him. But he looked awful. He’d been cleaned just enough to make him look human again, though there was blood dried in his unkempt hair. He wore nothing except bandages, many, many, many bandages, and a sheet pulled halfway up his abdomen. His breathing was labored, rasping with pain, and all of him that wasn’t covered in flaking blood had a sheen of sweat over it.

“Yagen took care of him, but he’s sleeping now,” Horikawa explained, yawning himself. “Do you think you could look after him for awhile?”

No, is what Yasusada wanted to say, but instead he sat down at Kashuu’s side.

He wouldn’t  need to ask him why when he woke up. He already knew why. It was more that he couldn’t understand how. How the fear of being abandoned, the pain of having been abandoned, had pushed him him to that point. For Kashuu, for someone who had done so well to hold on for so long, who fought so hard for the life that he lived, Yasusada had trouble getting his head around how deeply this rejection had hurt him.

It’d happened to him once before, hadn’t it? And he was still here.

Well. Not anymore, not like he used to be.

He used himself to poke some holes in his own body, Yagen told Yasusada later. He had needed an incredible amount of stitches, and there was all sorts of damage done to his internal organs that they simply didn’t know how to deal with. The guess was that it would heal alright, eventually, since their bodies seemed to somehow be unaware of their own destruction unless it came first to their blade.

But he thought he was going to die. He was planning on it.

Swords don’t get therapists. Swords don’t even know what therapists are. Especially when their saniwa isn’t around.  

She’s not coming back, Yasusada thought as he heard Kashuu groan in his sleep, a nightmarishly raw sound of agony. She doesn’t love us.

Kashuu was more aware of that fact than anyone else.

And Kashuu really did have no use for them any longer. Yasusada had decided that himself, and since Kashuu was Yasusada’s and Yasusada’s alone, it only made sense that he could remove them if he wanted. It wasn’t Yasusada’s fault that Kashuu didn’t need them. It was Kashuu’s. Because Kashuu was the one who was so desperate for love.

Yasusada could give him that love. He was the only one who could give him that love. And he did, always. Yasusada gave him all the love that he had, day and night. Kashuu was his after all, and he owed him that. Kashuu shouldn’t ever need anyone else. Not them, and certainly not their love. And since that was the case, if Yasusada took his arms and his legs and his eyes, it wouldn’t matter, right? In fact, that was the right thing to do. That way, Kashuu would never be tempted by anyone else’s love.

Yasusada knew how much Kashuu hungered for love, after all. And he knew that even though Kashuu wanted his love, there were always other people who would be willing to give Kashuu love, too. Kashuu accepted lots of different love, because that was what he wanted and needed at his core. But Yasusada’s love should be enough to sate him. And he didn’t want to risk anyone else coming in the way of that.

That’s why Kashuu didn’t need his limbs or his eyes. Yasusada would take care of him. Those things were superfluous, when all he needed was Yasusada. Yasusada could feed him and clothe him, he could hold him and make him feel love. Kashuu didn’t need those things to accept Yasusada’s adoration of him. He barely even needed to be alive. So long as he had his necessary organs, Yasusada could hold him forever, without having to worry about anything.

This was the thing that would make Kashuu happiest, wouldn’t it? This was what Kashuu wanted. To be completely surrounded by love, to know nothing but love. He was still beautiful too, after all. Like a doll now, his skin pale and his hair kept flawlessly neat. No one could deny that he was wonderful to look on now, as always, and especially thanks to Yasusada’s alterations.

Not that anyone would be able to say or not besides him, because no one was allowed to look at him besides Yasusada anyway. Not even at his limbs, or his beautiful beautiful eyes, which weren’t even part of him anymore. Because only Yasusada could look at him, could touch him, could love him. Kashuu had to remain as loyal to Yasusada as Yasusada was to him, and this was the only way.

They both wanted it this way. Yasusada didn’t even have to ask the ever-silent Kashuu. He knew he wanted this too. He wanted this love.

Yasusada held him in his arms, felt his bare skin, stretched tight over the sharp angles of his bones. He felt his light trembling breaths, one of the few signs that he was still alive. He wrapped him so completely in himself, he surrounded him so that Kashuu could feel him and know how much he loved him. How much he belonged only to him, and how satisfying that was for the both of them.

This was exactly what they both wanted. To be unconditionally loved, to love unconditionally.  

Namazuo noticed. Of course Namazuo noticed, because Namazuo somehow always noticed and knew everything about Honebami before he was even told.

“Are you sure you want this?” he asked, his voice just over a whisper as the comforting half-smile he liked to wear for his brother crossed his lips.

Honebami searched his eyes, found there the thing he needed, and nodded.

The pressure was light and completely bearable and somehow almost comfortable in a way that Honebami hadn’t expected. Like being embraced. Namazuo never broke his eye contact, even as he began to move again, languorous and deep. Honebami didn’t want him to look away either. Not away from those dark eyes that held him so softly.

Honebami faced death every day. He put his life in harm’s way because that was what was expected of him, because as a sword that was his purpose. To fight. To get hurt. To possibly die, if that was his fate. But this was different. It wasn’t an enemy he was handing himself to. He could feel the very real possibility of death always, but now under the fingers of his brother it felt tangible in a different way. Like he could touch it without experiencing it, like he could taste it and find its sweetness here in Namazuo’s arms and still return to him. He could only do this because Namazuo was here, taking care of him as always.

And the way he felt filled with air despite his lack of it, the way his vision blurred out on the edges, he’d been here before. But this was different from smoke filling his lungs, from gasping for breath and only finding heat and flames. This was relaxing, cool, calm. Good. It felt good, and he was weightless and floating, and somewhere somehow he was aware of a pressure building in him, a deep ache, a delicious need, and Namazuo giving him everything he wanted, taking care of it, taking care of him.

He came with a sharp gasp, his spine arching up off the futon and his fingers clutching weakly at Namazuo’s clothes. It took a long time for clarity to wash in again and in the interim he knew a thrumming physical joy he’d never felt before, a buoyancy that wiped away reality, the unending and limitless presence of Namazuo.

After the fight, Yamanbagiri stands still amid the shattered remains of their enemies. He’s been in better states before in his life. His clothes are torn in places, his blood and others’ blood and dirt and sweat is caked against his skin in flaky patches, his tattered cloak swirling around him in the breeze of the cooling evening. His sword arm aches in the shoulder, whether from a hit that had landed on him or the moment in which he’d slightly overextended to squarely reach an enemy’s weak spot he doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter, really, either. He did well, he secured the battle, and next time he will do better.

“I am me,” he declares with conviction. If this statement is directed towards anyone, it’s to the lifeless corpses littering the ground at his feet. They could be listening, though they give no sign of it. But someone has to know.

He turns back towards the team and finds four of them only a short ways off, celebrating their victory with boisterous congratulations.

Not Ookurikara.

Ookurikara stands separate, notable in his silence. Something about that silence, so different from the overexuberance of the rest of the team, is inviting. Yamanbagiri knows better than to bother him. But there’s something in the way that he’s removed himself from the rest of the group, something in his posture with his back towards the others but his chin up and firm, that Yamanbagiri both identifies with and admires.

He wishes he could stand that upright.

“I am not a fake,” he mutters to himself, instinctively, and though his words are quiet he somehow is aware that Ookurikara has heard them on the breeze from the way his shoulders, almost imperceptibly, tense.

He watches Ookurikara sometimes. He sees him sparring just as the heat of the day is beginning to mount, where unashamed of his appearance he’ll whip off his shirt and double his efforts as his muscles slide under his dark skin, gleaming with sweat in the late morning sunlight. He sees him milling about the citadel, picking avoided corners and isolated halls as his haunts, speaking to no one except in curt low rumbles when absolutely necessary. He sees him brush his horse down, quick and efficient but never rough as he circles the curry comb over its coat over and over before giving it a strong pat on its side. He sees him in battle, fierce, unyielding, his strength allowing his blade to bite through enemies as though they’re open air, the way his arms tense and release as he springs forward into action. He sees him afterwards on the treks home, watches how the golden glow of the setting sun makes his skin radiant as he avoids the lively banter of the rest of the team and examines the tattoo on his left arm.

He watches Ookurikara sometimes, and it could be his imagination, but it seems to him like Ookurikara watches him. Not often, or notably, but as Yamanbagiri pulls his hood down further, draws his cloak tighter about his shoulders, he thinks he catches a glimpse of those golden eyes. He doesn’t know what they might be seeing. Not anything worth looking at, certainly.

“I am not a fake,” he reminds himself every time their gazes brush, under his breath and only for himself to hear.

They sometimes eat together.

Yamanbagiri doesn’t know if it’s an accident or not, every time it happens. And if it’s not an accident, whose fault it is. It could very well be his own for reasons that he doesn’t comprehend yet, but it could almost just as feasibly be Ookurikara’s, for reasons just as indecipherable. Their meals pass in complete silence in a way that comforts him. While the chatter of the others is not unpleasant, generally, there are times when speaking to them is more effort than it’s worth. If he’s talking it’s usually only because he has to assure someone of something (reassure himself of something, a voice in the back of his mind whispers), and he doesn’t actually have very much else to say.

Ookurikara, on the other hand, has nothing to say. Or rather, if he does, he doesn’t say it. Yamanbagiri appreciates this, at some level. Sometimes he gets curious. Wonders, briefly, about the life of a mumeitou, and thinks of how in some ways that must not be too different from being a replica. He couldn’t ever ask after that, but sometimes he thinks he might not need to. Not when the silence that passes between them is more meaningful than many of the words either of them ever speak.

(Words like, “I am not a fake.”)

“I’ll fight alone, and I’ll die alone.”

The sentence pricks at Yamanbagiri somehow. He doesn’t want Ookurikara to fight alone. He doesn’t want Ookurikara to die. Especially not alone.

He silently promises himself that Ookurikara will never fight alone if he can help it.

The next battle’s enemies come swift and unyielding and Yamanbagiri doesn’t get the chance to watch Ookurikara because his eyes are too busy watching the path of his own blade. But he can feel him at his back, his powerful presence and the strength of the tachi he wields. He’s wordlessly positioned himself at his side and attaches himself there. Because he won’t let Ookurikara fight alone. He won’t let him die.

It isn’t until he hears Ookurikara’s low words at his shoulder and the sound of his blade driving through an enemy that Yamanbagiri realizes something had crept up into his blind spot while he was focused on his opponent. He doesn’t have the time to thank him right now, but he’s aware that Ookurikara just saved him a great deal of trouble.

Ookurikara isn’t the only one who isn’t fighting alone anymore. He isn’t either. He doesn’t realize this until he’s staring his the ceiling that night, once again unable to sleep. But his hope is that Ookurikara will come to find new things to say that don’t make him feel as though his chest is squeezing in.

When it happens it happens with the suddenness of a summer downpour dropping its water onto the ground all at once, but anyone who had been paying attention to the weather would have seen the clouds gather and felt the air grow thick. It seems wholly unplanned, a rash and bold motion, quick and completely untender in its execution. Yamanbagiri barely has time for his eyes to flutter shut when Ookurikara grabs him by the shoulder and leans down. He’s just come back from the front lines and he smells sharply and overwhelmingly of blood and the sweat of horses, but Yamanbagiri finds this all incredibly easy to ignore in the presence of his pressing warmth.

It’s over almost immediately, but somehow it carries with it a promise of more meals spent in soothing silence, more battles fought back-to-back, and possibly even nights quickly shortening in each other’s arms. Yamanbagiri doesn’t know when he learned to interpret Ookurikara’s quiet, but he can read all this in the way that he stands over him, the angle of his jaw and the set of his mouth.

“You deserve better than a fake,” Yamanbagiri says after they’ve communicated all they can with the mere set of their faces.

Ookurikara looks down on him, and for a long moment, Yamanbagiri thinks he’ll say nothing, merely silently appraise him, eyes hard and harsh and cold. But then Ookurikara suddenly reaches out, hand pushing Yamanbagiri’s hood off with the same motion with which he ruffles his hair.

“You’re not a fake.”

It comes out as a gruff growl, and then he’s gone, turned around and walking away, before Yamanbagiri can even react. But the reaction does come, as a stirring warmth inside of him, pushing up from somewhere in his stomach until he can feel it searing in his face. He tugs his hood back up to hide the burning feeling in his cheeks and whispers the words under his breath to himself over and over, tasting their truth and their tenderness.

He knew it wouldn’t be a terribly large issue. He’d spent a whole year without Aoba once. It hadn’t been easy, but it had happened. However, the mere knowledge that he could didn’t stop his anxiety from rising when the alarm clock went off in the morning, hours before the time Aoba usually set it to. Ren hurried to turn it off as not to disturb his bedmate, but as he could have predicted, Aoba didn’t even budge at the noise. Before even leaving the warmth of the sheets Ren set two more alarms for him, since he wouldn’t have anyone around to wake him for work.

Ren rose, dressed, washed his face, brushed his teeth. He could do these things on his own now, completely without help, and he was proud of these small accomplishments. It meant that Aoba could keep sleeping peacefully as he got ready to leave, Aoba could stay in bed for awhile longer without being disturbed.

He knew he had to hurry and meet Tae downstairs at the time she wanted to leave, or she’d call through the house for him, potentially waking Aoba. Even worse, she could come up here and bring her usual racket with her, which would absolutely mean rousing Aoba. Ren had to be punctual and arrive downstairs before she could even consider shouting for him, which meant he didn’t really have any time to dally.

But there was one thing he had to do before he left.

Ren went to the bedside and stood over it, dragging the sheets up into the empty space he’d recent vacated. Aoba slept on, undisturbed, his hair splayed wildly across his pillow, lips parted in deep respiration, arms spread to occupy the entire bed as though Ren had never been there at all. Leaning down over Aoba, Ren gave him a single kiss, light and quick and quiet, and then pulled back some inches and hovered to take in the loveliness that was Aoba’s face. He hadn’t retreated very far, and Aoba must have felt his presence, because in his fractionally awake state he pursed his lips as if expecting more kisses to come raining down on them. When they were not forthcoming he frowned, concerned creases showing up in his forehead, and he lifted his head a little to search for Ren tactilely, eyes still shut tight.

Ren would have to scour his memory later to think about if he had ever seen anything cuter in his entire existence. But for now he could feel his chest closing up with how warm and thrilling it felt, and the way Aoba looked right now, with his neck craned up off the pillow and a pout and seeking lips, was so rich in its simple joy it made his fingers twitch. After a moment, Aoba, apparently having given up, dropped his head back to the bed and gave a sleepy sigh, his eyes never opening, his breathing pattern turning deep and even.

Again. Ren wanted it again.

He bent down close over Aoba again, whose lips parted almost expectantly as he came near, and pressed their mouths together, slow and lingering, before drawing back again. This time, only far enough so that Aoba’s face could be in focus as he, expectedly, continued to move his lips in a wanting, hopeful manner. The unconscious frown that appeared on his face as he slipped his tongue out to run over his lips made a laugh bubble up from somewhere deep inside of Ren. He had to go, but watching Aoba tilt his head as though preparing for someone else’s nose to nudge up against his own was by far the more important thing to do right now.

One more time.

This time Ren allowed his lips to hover only centimeters from Aoba’s, feeling his breath ghosting over his face for a moment. There was an electric tickle on their surface, a magnetism that he couldn’t fight even if he wanted to, and it felt like he was vibrating subtly with the want of him. But in an instant Aoba shoved up with more force than a mostly-sleeping person should really have and crashed their mouths together, and the tingling was replaced by a full-scale buzz all through his body. Ren was only taken by surprise for a second before he allowed his tongue to trace over Aoba’s lips in a broad, wet stroke, and then reluctantly, unhurriedly, pulled away.

This time Aoba used his arms, jerkily reaching upwards as he frowned his dissatisfied frown, the cute unaware pout that made Ren’s heart flutter almost painfully. Aoba fumbled one hand against Ren’s shoulder, but the other caught in the hair at the base of his skull and tugged him downwards again. Ren missed his lips and bumped his nose against his cheek, but he quickly oriented himself against Aoba’s mouth again and buried himself there, overcome by a moment of desperate happiness.

He had to leave.

He pressed in against Aoba once, twice more, before finally detangling himself from Aoba’s snaking arms and pulling further away. In response, Aoba made a muted frustrated, needy sound in the back of his throat, and Ren had to clench his fists in the sheets to keep himself from settling over Aoba and enjoying his lips for the rest of the morning. But the sound of his breathing quickly returned to his sleeping pattern, and Ren stood up straight and turned away to leave the room.

With his hand on the door he glanced back one last time at Aoba’s dozing form on the bed. As he was about to open it, he was surprised to hear the rustling of bedsheets, and turned to watch Aoba roll over onto his stomach, then slowly squint into full, or at least partial, wakefulness and prop himself up on his elbow. Hazel eyes unfocused, he looked for Ren, and when he found him he gave a satisfied yawn.

“Heading out?” he asked around his throatful of air.

“Yes,” Ren said quietly. He could hear the quiet bustle and clang of Tae moving around downstairs in the kitchen from here.

Aoba, appearing to not quite be completely in charge of his motor controls yet, let his eyes slip shut again for a long moment, though he remained up on his elbow. “Have fun today.” And then, lethargically, like a sigh in sleep, “I’ll miss you.”

He was disheveled, his hair hanging loose around his shoulders in bed-tangled clumps, his mouth and eyelids heavy with the weight of his drowsiness. But Ren had never seen anything so beautiful.

“I love you, Aoba,” he said.

Aoba’s face flopped straight down into his pillow in response, apparently having lost the strength to continue supporting himself. And although his answer was muffled into his bedding, Ren heard the sleep-slurred words loud and clear.

He hasn’t wondered too much since then. He’s met people whose strings trail off to nothing but a few ragged fibers a foot off their hand, people who purposely don’t look at their fingers because the red of their string makes them feel things they’d rather not feel, even people with two, three strings knotted around their pinkies. There are all different kinds of people with all different kinds of strings, Aoba’s learned, and they all have situations just as strange and wonderful as his own.

Okay, maybe not all of them. Or any of them really. Because he’s pretty much the only person he’s ever met whose thread has led him straight to a robot dog.

He doesn’t think it’s really his Allmate who’s his soulmate. That just doesn’t make too much logical sense. Allmates aren’t people, and soulmates have to be people. Otherwise how can you fall in love with them? Allmates, while programmed to show emotion, really don’t feel anything. They having coding, artificial intelligence, whatever it is that tells them what reactions to display when so that they have the appearance of feeling. While they show affection, and humans can have affection back, it’s not really possible for a machine, a machine shaped like a little blue spitz, to fall for someone.

He’s some kind of glitch in the system, probably. There’s always been something wrong with is string, and he’s known it. While it doesn’t really plague him the way people worry about their day-to-day things, like if their clothes look okay or if they’ll be able to pay their bills on time or if people are talking about them behind their back, it is something that kind of always sits in a corner of his mind. Why doesn’t he have a real soulmate? Was he supposed to end up alone? There wasn’t really anything wrong with that, but why connect him to his Allmate then? And what’s wrong with him, to have made him that way?

He asks Ren about it once, asks him if he knows why they’re connected. Ren admits that he doesn’t, and immediately offers to run search on the internet for similar situations. He doesn’t have to, though. Aoba already has, at least a dozen times. He’s never come up with a satisfying explanation or found any stories from people in similar situations to his own. He figures he’s just one-of-a-kind, and that maybe, perhaps, Ren is supposed to be the most important thing in his life.

“I guess we just are soulmates, somehow,” Aoba says. He’s not sure about how the finer details of this work. He’d always assumed that a soulmate was someone, a person, who you fell in love with and had a romantic relationship with and got married to and lived out your days beside. He’s not unhappy, though. He loves Ren. Of course he loves Ren. He’s always loved Ren, and he always will. And Ren loves him back, if a robot dog is capable of love, at least.

“I’ll remain by your side so long as I function,” Ren promises, and Aoba lifts him so that their foreheads press together.

 Ren was wrong. He lied.

 Aoba’s red string doesn't connect him to the Allmate anymore. It’s still there, still attached to his pinky, bright and distracting and a little bit—a lot bit—painful. As far as he can tell it’s not it’s not broken or torn. It appears to stretch away, far away, somewhere long into the distance. Aoba tried to follow it once and found himself at the edge of the island, staring out at the dark dusk-touched sea. The string slipped into the water and disappeared, lapped at by its waves, lost in its depths. He’s considered trying to follow it further, but he doesn’t even know where to begin. Fly to the mainland, only to find that it stretches on past that? Follow it to its end to find something unimaginable? He can’t even begin to think of what could be there.

Ren is gone. He doesn’t know where he went or why, but he’s not here. But perhaps he’s somewhere? Aoba couldn’t imagine where, or what he would be doing. And maybe that’s not who’s at the end of his string at all. He’s never heard of a soulmate being replaced, but…the bottom line is that Ren vanished. Aoba’s lived his whole life thinking something was wrong with his string, after all, and he’s used to relying on that notion. This is just another weird thing in a series of weird things.

But he misses Ren. He misses how he could glance behind him and see the way their thread draped between them as Ren trotted after him on his tiny paws. He misses the way his fur felt pressed against his forehead and the way his deep voice vibrated in his little frame. He misses the way Ren’s arms felt warm and comfortable around him the single time they were finally able to hold each other. He thinks about how all this time his soulmate was exactly the person that it needed to be, and how he had never fully realized it until it was too late.

It’s disappointing, for sure. More than disappointing. The realization, along with the other pain he’s feeling, pushes at him with a persistent sense of despair.

 Aoba doesn’t expect things to change the day he gets that call on his coil. But they do.

He barely notices anything as he hurries to the hospital, but some part of his preoccupied mind realizes that there is something weird going on with his thread. It usually trails behind him or to his side or loops around in some arbitrary direction. But today, today no matter which way he turns on his path to the hospital, it’s before him.

There was something in the way Aoba’s lips curved downward, how his eyes darted away as Ren kept talking, how his fingers combed restlessly through the fur of the allmate that alarmed him. Something was on Aoba’s mind. He was thinking too much again. Ren had known him too well for too long to not notice it.

“Aoba,” he murmured, leaning forward and cupping his palm on Aoba’s cheek, thinking that maybe this would best draw his attention, and he found it soft and warm and so beautiful under his fingers. “Is there something wrong?”

“No.” Aoba quickly turned away, pulled his face from Ren’s hand, but Ren didn’t miss the way a glassy gleam appeared in his eyes. He couldn’t be sure, as he knew his own eyes were faulty, and maybe it was just a trick of the light…but those very well could have been the beginnings of tears.  

“Aoba.” Ren leaned forward, the flash of desire to wrap his arms around him strong, but halted when he remembered the way his hand had been denied. Instead he stayed back, watching carefully. He didn’t have to observe too long to notice the way Aoba’s shoulders crept up like he was trying to shield himself from him, and then, slowly, they began to shake.

This was completely unexpected. Ren couldn’t even begin to imagine what may have happened while he was out. Helpless and bewildered, he hovered over Aoba’s back for a moment before settling back onto the floor. “Aoba, are you injured? Is there a problem?”

“No,” Aoba said again, and though he was doing his best to hide it a slight quiver came through in his tone. “I was just…thinking about some stuff.”

Ren waited for more. Aoba never hesitated to tell him what was on his mind. They spoke about everything and anything, even when it was embarrassing or personal or strange. Aoba had never delayed in telling him anything before, anything that he was seriously thinking. So why was he so silent now?  

No answer came.

“What is it?” Ren prodded gently.

He thought for a long moment that Aoba still wasn’t going to respond to him, but a gasping inhalation filled his lungs, and that broke his silence.

“Ren.” Aoba sniffled, bowing his head. “I mean, I—.” He paused, and took a deep breath. “All you’ve ever known was what you saw through my eyes, and then the inside of my bag, and my ankles as you ran after them. You’re—.”

Ren waited for Aoba’s shoulders to stop trembling, stop jerking with sudden erratic pushes from his lungs.

“You’re…your own person now. You can go out and meet other people, you can see new things on your own. What if you….” Ren leaned forward, craning around him to see his face, and found Aoba’s eyes closed, tears matting his eyelashes together before escaping down his cheeks. “What if you find someone you like more than me?”

There was a moment of striking silence, a stillness in which Ren felt like he was being rent, being sundered in two, his chest split down the middle and caving in without its supports. It was hard to breathe with his ribcage collapsed that way.

“Aoba,” he said, his airways blocked by some foreign obstruction. “Aoba, I could never—”

“You say that now,” Aoba cut in quietly, and the space between them weighed heavily on Ren. “But you don’t know. You don’t know who you could meet tomorrow or next week. Especially because you’ve never known. You’ve never known anyone but me. You’ve never….” Aoba broke into quiet sobs, and to Ren he had never looked so frail, so in need of protection.

But from what?

From Ren?

Ren had long since gotten used to the power that emotion had, the energy and the force with which it swept through his body, the way it could create a physical ache in every inch of him. He’d gotten used to it and he knew it, but he was still shocked by how strongly he felt this pain, this throbbing throughout his whole body. How could he have hurt Aoba like this? How could he have made him doubt him? What had he done?

“Aoba,” he said, voice bordering on demanding. He needed him to know. “Aoba, I could never leave you.”

“But you have before.”

The sting settled into his bones while Aoba let out a shaking sigh, wrapped up in his own arms. Ren was shocked still by it, silent and staring, for a long time, just watching Aoba look so small and feeling his entire body shatter and crumple inward. How could he have ever let this happen? How could he have let these notions creep into Aoba’s head?

How could he fix it?

“I’m sorry,” he said feebly, and he could hear the ache straining his own voice. “I’m sorry, Aoba. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Ren,” Aoba breathed. “It wasn’t your fault. But I….”

But he was still scared. Ren knew, Ren could feel it. He could feel it from himself, living in his own insecurities, and he could feel it in the loneliness that he knew was so present, so strong, in Aoba.

Ren would do everything he could to fight that fear.

This time he didn’t hesitate as he reached out, as he wrapped his arms around Aoba, as he pulled him into his lap and tucked him into his body. Aoba was limp and pliant as he came in, folding himself naturally into the curve of Ren, letting his arms support him and hold him to his chest. He leaned his head against Ren’s shoulder, and Ren, in turn, bowed his head down over him, as if he could encircle him completely, surround him on all sides with his warmth.

“Aoba,” Ren breathed into his hair, shutting his eyes. “I have loved you for my entire life. I will continue to love you always. It’s at the core of my being, Aoba. I exist to love you.”

“I know,” Aoba said into his shoulder, sobbing now, and the heat of his mouth bled through Ren’s shirt onto his skin. He didn’t care. “I know that. I just…get scared. Mom and Dad…they loved me too and they still….” Aoba took a huge shuddering gulp of air. “Ren, you loved me and you still….”

Ren held as much of Aoba as he could, tried to press every square inch of their bodies together, squeezed him so tight against his chest he wondered if they could take up the same space, merge into one. He wished there was some way, some way to convey to Aoba that his entire existence was for him, everything he was, is, and ever would be was for Aoba’s sake.

“Aoba, there are unfortunately things out of my control,” he said. “But as long as I’m able, I will stay by your side.”

It didn’t fix things. It didn’t make things better. There was always the possibility that there may come a day when Ren would have to leave Aoba for a reason that was beyond anything they could account for. One day one of them would die, for example. Ren couldn’t imagine that the other would be too far behind, and yet who knew what could happen.

But there was one thing that Ren could be certain of, and he could assure Aoba of its truth. He would never leave Aoba as long as he could stay with him. No one else in the world could ever consume his heart and mind and existence like Aoba did. No one else could ever provide him with this happiness or this warmth. No one else could evoke this fierce, determined love, the intense devotion he felt towards him. Maybe Ren didn’t know a lot about the world yet, and maybe there were people in his life he had yet to meet and form relationships with. But he knew, he felt sincerely throughout all of himself, that his entire being, his entire life, was completely dedicated to Aoba.

He told him. He told Aoba this, all of this, and Aoba slowly calmed. He was silent for a long while, thinking and breathing and feeling.

And then he reached up and looped his arms around Ren’s neck.

“Me too, Ren,” he breathed. “I think I can believe you…because I feel the same way.”

Ren sighed his relief into his hair. For the rest of the afternoon, and well into the night, he held Aoba so tight that he felt he could obliterate the painful thoughts from his head just by crushing them.

“Aoba…,” he said slowly, quietly, watching the way Aoba’s nipples, pink and erect and lovely, rose and fell with the heaves of his chest. “Out of curiosity….”

Aoba looked up at him, mouth slowly curling into a concerned frown, his fists loosening as the sensations stopped their onslaught. “What’s wrong?”

“Why is it that we don’t speak to each other like they do in those videos that you used to watch?”

For a second, watching Aoba’s face go through three distinct and progressively rosier shades of red, Ren wasn’t sure that this had been the right thing to say. He knew that Aoba got rather self-conscious about his porn, because apparently that was a private thing not to be spoken of, and he didn’t want to make Aoba uncomfortable…but he was curious. And Aoba’s blushing face was an incredible sight to behold. But sometimes it meant that Ren had said something strange or odd or bad.

Ren didn’t want to say anything bad.

Aoba glanced away. “People don’t say things like that in real life, silly,” he grumbled. “It’s different in those videos.”

Different. Ren wasn’t sure he totally understood. Such videos were essentially his only exposure to sex before Aoba, and though he generally relied on his instincts to guide him now, he had to wonder if the kind of sex that they had was usual or if it should be more like the stuff he’d caught glimpses of when he snooped through Aoba’s old downloads folder one day.

“Is it….” Ren paused. “Is it bad?”

Aoba’s eyes widened slightly, focusing back on Ren. “No, not bad exactly. Just doing that kind of thing would be…embarrassing.”

Ren could understand that. Ren found that now that he could properly identify feelings of shame and embarrassment, he felt them somewhat often. But not nearly as often as Aoba. Either way, he could see how such words could make one feel discomfited. He wasn’t sure himself that he’d be able to say things like the things he remembered hearing. Being straightforward was one thing he excelled at, but being frank in a teasing manner….

“Hey,” said Aoba, and Ren was brought back to the present by the sight of Aoba propped up on an elbow and leaning towards him, feel of his fingertips on his cheek. “You didn’t, uh…. You didn’t want to try talking like that, did you?”

Ren frowned. “It would make you uncomfortable.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Aoba said. “Would you like it?”

Would he like it? The thought had sincerely not crossed Ren’s mind yet, whether it would be something he’d find pleasurable or not. He supposed that, at the very least, it would be something unique, since Aoba spoke so rarely about sex, and generally when he did it was in a roundabout, euphemistic or elliptical way.

“I think it might be enjoyable to hear you say those things, Aoba,” Ren told him.

Aoba choked on his breath, like he had been expecting some different answer. Ren didn’t know how else he had been supposed to respond, since Aoba had asked him, after all. But then Aoba glanced down, away from Ren, and drew his arms in over his chest. He was silent for a long moment, grappling with his own thoughts, before he opened his mouth to speak again.

“I guess I could…try. Just a little bit.”

Ren’s heart rate jumped. He hadn’t thought that this was something that he wanted, but now faced with the prospect the idea of Aoba’s mouth forming those kinds of filthy words with that kind of breathless, whining voice, he couldn’t deny that he could feel the desire for it through his body and into his hips. Leaning forward over Aoba, he took his now-softening cock in his hand and began to stroke it again.

“Thank you,” Ren said, meaningfully, allowing himself a small smile as he watched Aoba’s face for signs of his pleasure.

“Don’t thank me,” Aoba grumbled, immediately before his hips jerked when Ren pressed his thumb into the spot on his head that he knew he liked. He was hardening quickly despite how recent his last orgasm had been, and he was already slick, making Ren’s motions easy and smooth. “Just…ah—touch me.”

He spat out the words as quickly as he would if they’d been some food he’d eaten that carried the taste of mold. In response, Ren did as he was told and moved his unoccupied hand beneath Aoba, feeling to make sure he was still loose from his earlier preparations. Ren wasn’t disappointed by what he found and slipped two fingers inside with little resistance, pushing, thrusting, then curling, and it wasn’t long before Aoba’s legs were giving frantic little quivers on either side of him. It was cute, like every other thing about Aoba, like the way he was looking at him with want and heat suddenly blazing in his gaze.  

“R-Ren,” Aoba gasped, twisting, wriggling, like he could hide his face as he spoke. “Please…please….”

His voice trailed off once, twice, his tongue seemingly unable to work around the words that wanted to come next. Ren stared down at him, quirked his head. He knew what Aoba wanted, he really did, and he could feel it in his own gut, burning and roiling. But there was something they’d agreed upon, and he couldn’t give in to it now.

“Aoba, instructions,” Ren prodded.

A moment of complete silence followed, during which Ren watched Aoba’s red cheeks puff up with air, as though all the word he wanted to say were catching there, before Aoba let out an unbidden, “Pfft.” And then suddenly he burst out, and was shaking, trembling with his full-bodied laughter, turning on his side and doubling in on himself in unrestrained amusement. Ren’s stomach tightened, dropped, and as he pulled back he frowned.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, feeling a little bit like he was collapsing in on himself.

Aoba took a moment of gasping between laughs to respond. “No,” he choked. “I mean—yes! But....”

Ren waited for Aoba’s laughter to fade, wondering what it was that he’d failed at. How he had done Aoba wrong. He had been told before, by a drunk Koujaku once, that laughter during sex was a good thing. But he didn’t think it should bring the entire experience to a halt. He had done something that prevented them from moving forward. Now Aoba didn’t want to do it with him. He was just going to sit there and laugh at whatever misjudgment Ren had made, and maybe his opinion of Ren was lessened now for it.

He felt uneasy and hunched his shoulders down, as though he could hide his bareness. But then Aoba glanced up at him with shining eyes, smiling wide. He sat up slowly, pushing up against Ren’s chest, making him straighten up, and reached for his face.

“That’s exactly what you’d used to say. In Rhyme,” Aoba explained, cupping his cheek with his hand. “It just seemed kind of out of place.” He flashed his teeth in an amused grin. “I wasn’t expecting it.”

“I’m sorry,” Ren said. He had an explanation for Aoba’s behavior but he didn’t feel any better about it. He had chosen the wrong words for the situation, even though they’d flowed out naturally to him.

But Aoba’s expression softened. “Don’t be sorry.” He drew up closer so that his face was close enough to Ren’s that he could feel his breath on his cheek. “That’s just how you are.” He placed a gentle kiss on the side of his jaw. “I really like that about you.”

Ren caught Aoba’s chin in his hand and jammed their mouths together, a little bit harder than he’d intended, but the way Aoba melted under him was sufficient to sweep any anxieties from his mind. He licked at his lips, his teeth, his tongue, experiencing the loveliness that was Aoba, before Aoba broke away.

“Let’s try again,” he whispered, running a hand up into Ren’s hair and sinking his fingers needily into his scalp.

“Aoba,” Ren replied, suddenly self-conscious again. But he only knew one way he felt comfortable, and Aoba had said that he liked it. It just felt right. “Instructions.”

A grin flashed across Aoba’s face, but it wasn’t derisive or mocking. Entertained, maybe, but Ren could have sworn he caught the hint of something darker there, something lustful and seductive.

“Ren, please,” Aoba begged, laying himself back down and pulling Ren with him so that they were horizontal and flush. “Fuck me. Fuck me…really hard.”

A charged shock of arousal flashed through Ren.

“Roger,” he replied breathlessly, taking in the sight of Aoba below him. He was flushed and willing and his eyes gleamed dark and hungry where he looked at him, and Ren could feel his gripping want reflected in him. He ran one of his hands down Aoba’s side, dragging lightly against the smooth sweat-slicked skin, his palm taking in every ridge of the muscle and bone that laid below. He was incredible, and he was Ren’s, and to have him under his touch was a thing to cherish.

“Ren,” Aoba said. “Hurry.”

Ren’s immediate instinct was to obey, and he lifted his hand from Aoba’s side to relocate it to a more important area. But he caught himself before it could get there. With an apologetic glance up at Aoba, he kept his hand frozen in midair, between their bodies.

“Hurry…in order to do what?” Ren tried. The words felt unusual and awkward,

but the look that crossed Aoba’s face was worth his struggle.

“Hurry and touch me,” Aoba whined, slower and needier this time, and Ren buzzed with the heat that roared through him at this.

“Where should I touch you?”

Aoba took a lungful of air in a gulp and seemed to use this to bolster himself. “I need you to…touch my cock….”

Something about the low growl that rumbled up from Ren’s chest had Aoba looking up at him with a dazed desire, and with just a glance at his hazy eyes Ren didn’t want to wait anymore. He wrapped his fingers around Aoba with one hand, the other creeping further down to check one last time. But Aoba was ready, and Ren was so ready, and he could barely contain himself as he lined himself up against Aoba. Grabbing his hips, he slowly, steadily, began to push inside. The way his blood was thundering through his veins, Ren could hardly muster the self-control to brush a sweat-matted clump of hair from Aoba’s face before cupping his face and asking him if he was doing alright once he was fully within him.

“I’m fine,” Aoba said, and then bit his lip and glanced away. “So hurry up. I want to feel you moving inside of me.”

Ren didn’t hold back.

The first snap of his hips was hard and fast, and Aoba let out such a sweet fragmented whimper that Ren couldn’t slow himself for the second and the third and all the rest. Instead he sunk his fingertips more firmly into Aoba’s flesh, to the point where he wondered distantly if his nails were hurting him, but the only thing he could read in Aoba’s face as he trained his gaze on it unwaveringly was an absolute and frantic pleasure. Aoba stared back at him, gasping and moaning and sighing, and if he the sight of him flushed and sweaty and wanting and fingers scrambling for a grip on something, anything, and his head tossing with the unbearable sensations inside of him weren’t enough to make Ren dig deeper, thrust harder, then those sounds absolutely were.  

Ren shifted his hips for Aoba, always for Aoba, and drove in again. Aoba’s response was for his eyes to shut, his arms to fly up around Ren’s neck.

“Ah, fuck!” Aoba gasped, uninhibited and uncontrolled. “That’s so—hah—good!”

“What is ‘so good’?” Ren leaned low and growled into Aoba’s ear, before his instincts took over and he bit down, fiercely, into his shoulder.

“You—!” was Aoba’s choppy response, bit into slivers by the rough thrusts barraging him. “Inside me. Ahh! You’re so—big!”

This was the impetus that pushed Ren dangerously close, that had his thrusts erratic and his brain blanking and his hold on Aoba tightening until their skin burned against each other, their muscles worked, strained together. He could feel him everywhere, Aoba, all his skin and their bodies together, connected, and the heat inside of him, and the way he moved so beautifully.

“You’re so good,” Aoba repeated, moaning, voice hoarse and breathy and desperate. “You’re so—hah… Ren...! Ren, I—love you!”

Ren came, he came hard, the release of pressure smashing back through his body so violently his head spun and his vision whited out and his entire world seemed to heave and convulse. He realized soon that it wasn’t the whole world but just him, spilling out into Aoba, filling him, watching Aoba himself arch his back off the mattress as the feeling of Ren spurting out drove him to his breaking point. Feeling Aoba’s semen splatter hot across his stomach and chest, his own wet and warm around him inside, Ren could do nothing but embrace Aoba roughly in his arms and feel the heat of his pleasure roll through him and then settle, gently, into a calm satisfaction.

They stayed like that for long, peaceful moments, Ren feeling Aoba’s pulse pound against him, his own thumping in response, his face buried in Aoba’s neck and Aoba’s arms around him, craving and comfortable. But after a moment Aoba began to move against the stickiness that was forming between them, pulling back from Ren to look into his face.

“How was that?” he asked, and Ren could see it there, his pleased little grin.

With a panting little, “Aoba,” Ren leaned down and kissed that grin, that happy smile, to let Aoba know that it was perfect, that everything about him was wonderful and good. With a movement natural and automatic, they pressed their foreheads together and looked into each other’s eyes.

“Thank you,” Ren said.

“Thank you, Ren,” Aoba sighed. “As always.”

Sly felt a reflexive grin rise to his face, his skin warm and sensitive where Sei touched him, and continued his examination of the flawlessness that was him. Sei’s hipbone was like a creamy mountain ridge rising off the plain of his body, and to Sly something about it looked particularly appetizing. He did what he was best at and acted on his instincts, sliding himself down Sei, lower and lower. If Sei thought Sly was going for something else, he didn’t show it, even as Sly nestled his entire face against his hip, right where the hollow of it was laid into his body. He took a deep breath there and then raised his head to glance drowsily up at Sei’s face.

At their eye contact Sei giggled, sweet and melodic, and out of all the drugs that Sly had tried in his life he’d never known anything as addictive as that sound. He wanted to hear it again, the way Sei’s breath escaped around his laugh and how his slender body vibrated fully with it. So he pushed his nose into the bend of his hip again, right where the bone met his lower stomach, and nuzzled in. The skin was soft and smooth and unblemished, and it smelled clean and new somehow, in that fresh mild that way that Sei always smelled, and he couldn’t help but want to taste it too. He parted his lips, spread them over the bone that was only separated from him by a thin layer of skin, nibbled there on the crest. When Sei sighed airily, Sly grazed his teeth down to the fleshier part of his stomach and sucked at a tiny bit of it until he could taste the tang of blood rising to the surface just under the skin.

“Sly,” Sei whined, needy and warm, but Sly continued to act as though he didn’t notice the way he was wriggling under his grasp, the way his cock was growing and hardening next to him. Instead he rested his lips against Sei’s hip again and breathed into it, easy and intimate. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Sei right now, but something about the way he was reacting just to this made Sly’s heart beat in a different way he was used to, fluttering and tripping instead of pounding. It made his chest warm and he liked it, and he liked the way that Sei was twisting in his hands and the cute little way he was mewling. There was something so sleepy and leisurely in all this as well, and Sly wasn’t quite sure he was ready to give up his half-awakeness, not really wanting anything more than some unhurried grinding or a lazy handjob. Or this, whatever this was.

Sei’s fingers suddenly found their way into Sly’s hair, nails scratching against his scalp, leaving electric shocks zinging through the sensitive strands. Sly grinned into his pelvis and a shiver danced down his spine at the touch, bringing some energy to his motions, giving him some reason to open his eyes a little further. He was greeted by the sight of Sei’s pale torso stretched before him, Sei’s pink lips turned up into a sweet sleepy smile, Sei’s dark eyes locked on him. Not breaking their gaze, Sly slipped his tongue out and dipped it into the hollow of his hip, tasting the heat of his skin.

Sei was so lovely.

Not to mention that rooftops are hard, and often cold, especially at night. Aoba’s head slams back against the tiles and Clear stops and asks him four times if he’s okay, if he wants to go home. Aoba’s spine fits uncomfortably against its slope, and when his hips are driven again and again into the unforgiving solidity of it he always aches for days. He shivers, chilled evening wind sweeping in off the sea and all over his bare thighs and his shirt rides up so that the small of his back is against the rough, cold, dirty surface. The tiles dig into his muscles and it hurts.

But Aoba’s getting used to it.

Aoba’s getting used to the way that Clear’s footsteps roll to a sudden stop, how their bodies jostle together with their momentum, how Clear grabs him and cradles him roughly and apologetically tells him, “I need you again, Aoba-san. Right now.” Aoba’s getting used to the way he’s laid down and how Clear huddles over him protectively, like he wants to shield him from the breezes that are up high and the weight of the clouds that float overhead. And Aoba’s getting used to the way he’s pushed into slowly, asked if he’s still loose from before.

“Of course I am,” he always mumbles, remembering how Clear most recently held him in his gleaming bedroom, had him uncontrollably chanting his name to the audience of glass bottles and their own reflections. The memory jolts straight down Aoba’s body and he can never really feel how hard the rooftop is after that, or how many people might be watching him, hearing him. He doesn’t care anymore. He doesn’t care.

And he knows it’s impossible to see stars, not with the glow of the city in the background, but he can. He can see them first prickling at the edges of his vision, and then they sear over the entirety of the Midorijima sky with their fierce brilliance. He can see every constellation ever known to mankind laid out before him, he can see the whole galaxy, the whole universe, as no one’s ever seen it before. They’re just pinpricks of sparkling white against the empty pale darkness stretching across his vision, but they’re always passionate and warm and tender and lovely.

And then he reaches up, fingers outstretched, expecting to touch them. He tries to gather them in his palms, hold them between his hands and in his arms. And they always solidify into a single being, a bright white something that shines with all the ferocity that they do, and then it’s not Aoba who’s holding them but Clear who’s holding Aoba. Clear wraps his arms around him back, reaching for Aoba in the same way that Aoba was reaching for him, and surrounds him in the warmth of all those timeless lights.