#effortless prowess

... As a matter of fact, yes he does. But she never lets that show. What would it look like if she crumbled and fell right in front of Scaredy Four-Eyes?! She's Upper First Class, she's his superior, she's strong and proud and fiery and just overall better than him.

Isn't she?

He's beautiful and bleak.

She watches him from afar, even when he doesn't know. She loves playing cat and mouse with him, but she sometimes finds himself on her couch with a blanket and four beers, and a completely incomprehensible wish of being the mouse sometimes. She's no masochist, but when she imagines what it would be like to just let him win for once, life feels a little bleak.

He has a porcelain face that cracks when he speaks.

They both wear incredibly thick façades. She has long since gotten used to hers, but he still has cracks in his own -- his brother, his heritage, his father's death, the tiniest tremble in his fingers as he pulls the trigger, because he hasn't slept properly in four days. You have the true potential to turn out a monster, not Rin, is what she relayed to him once, but even back then, she knew he isn't the one who takes the advice -- he prefers giving it. But in the end, that's only one of the myriad of things that make them mirror images of each other.

She would find it humorous, if it wasn't so bitter, knowing what pulls her in is also what will only repel her in the end.

I go to start a conversation, but I get no reply,

Have you been avoiding your checkups, she asks. I had no time for it lately. He is already turning away, and she could scream in his face, I know you're lying, I know, I know, I know everything, just stop.

He does smile to himself, but he does not turn back. He never does.

Instead you stare like a statue as I break down and cry.

There has only been one single person ever to see Kirigakure Shura cry. Okumura Yukio isn't that person, and will never be the second. Or so she thinks on those nights, when he is sitting in the grass in the middle of some park, too drunk to get up on her own, Rin is on a mission, and not even Angel is willing to pick her up anymore. This is the only reason she doesn't call him -- the fact that somewhere deep down she might be a little ashamed of the state she got herself in again is definitely not a part of it.

If she wasn't so drunk, she might even be able to explain why exactly she is about to cry, anyways -- but, then again, she only does so when she is drunk, so that was pointless to begin with.

Your face is like an eagle, but your mind's like a crow.

He's so full of surprises that sometimes she does think she might be a masochist after all. She's long since lost count of how many times she caught him off guard, and also how many he caught her.

And boy, I know you have opinions, but you don't let them show.

She doesn't really care that she doesn't have a filter; she never had one, and she is just fine this way. He thinks otherwise -- but, then again, his filter is so thick that no real feelings come through. He only voices his opinion when it's of irritation, and sometimes, she finds herself intimidated by the fact that he might be actually scared of her. It's an unnerving possibility of the existence of a boundary she has secretly been wishing to overstep, or even crush.

But in the end, even she cannot crush every obstacle.

You're a shelf of books, without the pages,

He has entirely too many books and too little beer, she thinks while she curls up on the couch of his apartment. He probably thinks the same about her home, just the other way around, but she has been ending up at his place a lot more frequently than he does at hers; slowly but surely, she finds herself remembering the order of the volumes on his shelves, as she spends long and empty nights staring at them wide awake, wishing she had his arms around her waist to distract her from too sober thoughts.

A wealth of thoughts locked up in cages.

Each of his bullets is a thought unsaid.

She likes to imagine his confession would be a headshot.

You write me letters in a pen with no ink,

He spends hours in the evenings just waiting for her. Of course, he keeps working meanwhile, there is no moment he doesn't have anything productive to do, but he would be lying to himself if he didn't admit that he keeps waiting for her to turn up on his doorstep with a sixpack and a wide grin on her plump lips, and obviously no additional filled out paperwork in tow that she was supposed to bring for him too. He has given up on that a while ago, too, but of course he will never admit to that either -- hope dies last.

And you have your own eyes, but you don't dare blink.

His eyes are so wide when she turns his way, that he thinks he might have forgotten how to blink. There is something flashing in her eyes that he doesn't remember ever seeing before; she is drunk as hell, but he has a feeling it doesn't have much to do with it. He pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, but the movement remains unfinished as she pulls his hand away, and the next moment, the glasses themselves are off too.

Such insecurity, almost fear; there are a lot of different things in their relationship, but trust?

Her kiss is everything but chaste.

You speak in words without a sentence,

Her words don't make sense anymore; she's more drunk than he's ever seen her, and he hasn't the slightest idea if she will even remember any of this in the morning. All he knows is that his skin still feels like it's on fire from her touch, much like the all-consuming flames that her hair reminds him of. All he knows is that it was a touch unlike any other experience he had (not that he's had so many kisses in his one and a half decades), and it's a kind of intimidating thrill he could certainly get addicted to.

In a way, he is already addicted to her anyways -- would it really make a change?

You're the ghost that haunts me without a presence.

She leaves on a week-long mission, and comes back battered and bruised. She leaves on a week-long mission, and comes back to find him with almost black circles under his eyes. She comes back to find him wishing she never left, but of course, he doesn't say that out either. She has to experience it for herself, just how much she was haunting him without even being around; it could be an irritating reminder of past times when her presence was the source of most anguish for him, but now it's just a mildly bitter acknowledgement of the fact that they are at the point where they both became each other's drug. He admits to it wordlessly, with his teeth that he drags across her lower lip, and she admits to it too, with her hipbones pressing into the brick wall painfully but willingly as she lets herself be the one subject to being ravished for once.

And if blood runs through your veins,

He has accused her before of having cold blue blood running through her veins, similar to that of her loved snakes. Right now, she feels that even if her blood was in fact crystallized, it would still melt and boil and burn up and then evaporate, just like how she feels like evaporating under his touch.

Don't you suppose it's such a waste, to be composed in such a way?

When she kisses him, she feels like she is dragging a curtain aside. There are no other chances of peering behind his unbreakable mask; sure, it has cracks in it, and she has begun to master the art of sticking the tips of her nails in between and strain it a little, but in the end, the only time his well-composed fake face falls to pieces is when she sticks her tongue in between instead, telling everything she didn't have words for that way.

In a certain sense, she is the one who guards secrets better.

Just let me in.