Archive of Our Own

A metronome is ticking behind his eyelids.

It pounds, slow and dragging, clawing at the inside of his skull with every pulse. Each beat draws hot, searing lines across the dark his closed eyes should’ve granted him, pulling him free of the shallow, drunken haze he’s tried to sink beneath. 

Yoshiki can almost see it, his own blood, rushing and coursing through his veins, like some kind of surge spilling into every corner of his blackened vision until it blurs and swims in bloody rivulets, taking up every corner of his mind. 

For an unbearable moment, he thinks if he opens his eyes, the world will be nothing but red.

When his lids finally do drag open, the world comes apart in a blur. The ceiling, the faint ghost of the walls, the washed-out lamplight, everything bends and wavers around him like it’s dipped in a kind of feverish heat. 

His chest lurches with the abruptness of it all, of his fragile sleep now becoming hazy awareness, every breath drawing shorter and shorter the longer the world remains unwhole, heart hammering like it wants to claw its way free from the clutch of his ribs and find a safer home. 

Time feels like it’s slipping wrong around him the longer he lays there; minutes, hours, whole lifetimes seem to collapse into the space between his heartbeats.

With the sour taste of liquor still burning his throat, Yoshiki can’t tell if the pounding in his skull belongs to the alcohol, or if it’s an echo of something deeper. He wonders how little it matters if he can’t get it to shut up.

He tries to steady himself, breathing in and out, in and out, in and out.

In and out.

As his breathing begins to slow and the thumping beneath his skin wanes to a quiet hum, the room folds into a moment of silence, the air growing heavy with it. Except it’s not silent but somehow still dense, with a kind of stillness that magnifies every sound until it presses against his ears. The low hum of the lamp, its filament thrumming like a vein from across the room, the cicadas rasping faintly from outside, the tatami cracking under the shift of his own weight.

Lifting a hand to rub at his eyes, he brushes against something warm at his side instead, knuckles skimming soft flesh. Nothing cold and rigid like his nightmares have been plaguing him for months, but alive beneath his hand, moving with quiet breathing. 

His blurry gaze falls to the side.

Hikaru.

The name rises up his throat, heavy and unsaid against the roof of his mouth but thrumming through his chest like his name is something alive, tangled with the pulse in his ears as it picks back up its pounding momentum. 

Yoshiki’s hand recoils as if he’s been burned by that living warmth, pressing down instinctively against his chest where his heartbeat races like he’s just escaped death.

(Sometimes with Hikaru, it feels like that. Most of the time.)

He sits up and sways with the motion, limbs thick and sluggish, and he’s reminded of the alcohol he’d perhaps over indulged in to rid himself of any thoughts now diluting his senses, drenching him in this calescent state of disorientation. It feels like his mind is trying to sharpen against the haze the longer he takes everything in, testing the cage of his own muddled restraint as blood roars in his ears, filling every corner, deafening.

Hikaru lays partially curled on his side, mouth slack against the sheets, seeming almost human in sleep. Almost. A stray line of hair clings to his cheek, shadows from the angle of the lamp carving strange patterns over his face, shapes that waver between something tender and something else. His lashes flicker with the faintest twitch, like maybe he’s dreaming, breaths slow like the rise and fall of his chest. 

In this fragile stillness he could be anyone, no, not anyone. Him. The boy Yoshiki had grown up beside only to find dead on the mountain, the best friend he’d cared too much for, more than he ever should have, more than he was allowed.

The resemblance carves something open in him, sharp and merciless in its path. 

Yoshiki’s throat tightens and he crushes the thought before it can spill blood, shoves the image of that Hikaru, his Hikaru, dead Hikaru, back down into the gory pit it’s always crawling free from. He can’t hold both of them at once, not without truly coming apart.

This isn’t him. This isn’t the boy he grew up beside, not the one whose absence shook the very earth around Yoshiki, hollowing him out till he wanted to be nothing to get rid of the pain, taking a sacred part of him he knows he’ll never get back. 

This Hikaru is something other. 

The being at his side wears the same face Yoshiki has known forever, has the same fragile bones beneath all his familiar flesh and unfamiliar other, but he is not the same. This Hikaru is the one who’d torn himself open and broken part of himself away from his whole, pressing half his being into Yoshiki’s hand, stitching himself into the raw place left behind. One who fills him with something foreign and transcendent, something searing and bloody and hungry, something that burns Yoshiki from the inside out whenever he presses his hand to the part of Hikaru tucked over his chest.

And Yoshiki wants him despite everything. Wants everything from Hikaru, wants inside Hikaru. Wants past the softness of  his skin, past the tender barrier of muscle and bone, into the core where the real Hikaru pulses raw and true, like something wounded that refuses to close, that begs to be touched and opened wider, that beats like it belongs to only Yoshiki.

The lingering alcohol smooths the thoughts over and makes it almost easy to accept, far easier than he usually lets himself think, even inside his own head. Where guilt usually would have slammed the door by now and shoved him somewhere deep and painful until he buried his wants, it tears him wide open instead, rushing in like a fever. 

It spills through him like it can remap his synapses, reshape the feelings of guilt and self-loathing he normally harbors for things he shouldn’t think of, and it carves him a new kind of hollow, leaving only the sharp edge of want sawing through each shaky breath.

He can see it in his mind, eyes falling half-lidded as he fixates on the body beside him. His wants so painstakingly clear in a way that makes him almost afraid, but he isn’t, not right now. Instead of fear, he imagines peeling Hikaru open and reaching deep, deep, deep inside, not to drag out a ghost, not to pull out the face of his dead best friend, but to touch that raw essence he knows lies within. That core that calls to him like hunger and grief and love rolled into one unbearable thing.

Unbearable, but reachable.

He pictures all of him splayed open like a map of something divine and terrible, beckoning him closer, every line a summons, a call that weaves through his flesh and bone and marrow, down to his very soul. It draws him nearer, luring him like a siren’s song, like a demon’s wail, like the sorrow of a god.

Rending through the fragile human disguise he’s coveted for so long, tearing through pale flesh and muscle and sinew and all the delicate tissues that make up the surface of him. Stripping this Hikaru bare, layer after trembling layer, down to what writhes beneath, to the glowing marrow of him, until his hands can sink into the pulsing slick of his exposed soul.

There’s something in him that wants to abrade Hikaru, wants to ruin him and cradle him in turn. This monster, this god, this impossible being that stole everything he’d never been able to hold, everything he could never keep, yet gave it back twisted and remade, half his own. He wants it all so fiercely his hands begin to quiver against the sheets, longing rattling through him like something alive.

Something that wants to take what he’s already been given.

His breath goes thin at the thought, the room pitching around him in a feverish haze.

He tries to bury the thought as it slowly drifts through his mind as if underwater, drowning it in his skull beneath a torrent of guilty denials, yet it slices through with some sort of manic clarity. He wavers under the weight of exhaustion, under the drag of alcohol still heavy in his limbs, but his hunger remains, a fevered, terrible thing.

Yoshiki’s eyes fix on Hikaru’s chest, on each borrowed breath moving through it. On what else could move through it. He remembers how easily it had opened up for him before, had split for him as if it was nothing, as if he was meant to look inside. 

The terrifying beauty of being welcomed into something that was no longer human.

His hand jerks on some aborted instinct as he finds himself reaching for Hikaru, an attempt to escape his own wants more than anything. He tries again despite the lingering itch to flee, fingers clumsily grazing fabric stretched over skin before pulling it up and out of the way. 

The warmth that greets him beneath is startlingly real, is human, radiating into the air the kind of heat he’s only ever known in hesitation before touching someone, so familiar with it that it’s impossible to deny. 

For an instant Yoshiki’s chest clenches with panic, because what if there is nothing waiting beneath? What if he had dreamed it all, the tearing open, the brilliance, the gift of half a soul?

No. No, that really happened. Just like this, is really happening.

Dizzy, his eyes fall shut at the way the room tilts. It makes everything else fade away, until Hikaru’s breathing is the only thing that exists between them. Each breath beneath his hand a rhythm, a lullaby drawn out slowly, and even without seeing, he can almost believe the sound belongs to him, that the lungs pulling air are his own.

Didn’t he say they were mixed? Is that what this feels like?

But it’s more than that, it has to be.

He has to know.

Yoshiki fits his fingers in the center of Hikaru’s chest and presses as hard as he dares without waking him up, needing to touch now that he can, and he’s searching, almost desperate for a seam, a hidden slit, some doorway back into the cavity that had once yawned wide open for him.

But there is nothing. Only warm skin, only the give of muscle beneath, only bone unyielding at the center of his chest. No seam to slip between, no hidden slit waiting to be pried apart by hands that have already been inside. He finds nothing but the solidity of a body refusing him, closed tight against his longing.

Is it because Hikaru is sleeping, or is it something else? Maybe because he hasn’t been invited in this time, or maybe the opening is closed to him now? 

Could it be…that he isn’t wanted this time? 

The questions gnaw at him, sharper than teeth and crueler than the edge of a knife, piercing deeper the longer he doesn’t find a way inside Hikaru, scraping him raw until it feels as if each thought, each doubt, is grinding straight against his bones.

His splayed fingers trace the curve of a rib as he presses with more force yet again, as if wanting this so fiercely might be enough, as if need alone can command Hikaru’s skin to split apart once more, soft and pliant. But nothing gives.

Frustration swells up his throat, threatening to spill, and he clenches his teeth tight at the thought that it might come out, trying to swallow it. But his lack of inhibition fans it back into flame, hotter, brighter, impossible to choke down.

Why not? Why won’t he open for him now? Hikaru did before, had split himself wide, revealing what pulsed beneath. He had let Yoshiki touch it, cradle it, be branded by it.

Why not now?

Yoshiki goes still when he finds his nails digging into Hikaru's skin as if in retaliation for this rejection, and he has to force himself to stop touching. Throat dry, it convulses with sudden nausea, heart pounding against his ribs as if trying to break itself apart. 

What are you doing? 

Are you that desperate?

Are you that sick?

Some sense screams at him to pull back and stop this, a small bit of logic that tastes like guilt trying to overcome his hunger. But the alcohol that remains slurs through him as well, whispering in a far sweeter, coaxing voice; you’ve already been given so much, why shouldn’t you take the rest?

Gaze crawling over Hikaru’s face, it stays slack with slumber, untouched by Yoshiki’s turmoil and greed. There’s a kind of peace laid bare on him that feels almost vicious in its gentleness, unknowing and so complete it makes none of this feel real.

But it is. It’s real. 

Why shouldn’t you take the rest?

His thoughts spiral, hesitation collapsing into want, want twisting into guilt, guilt sharpening into hunger, the cycle looping back to begin again and again and again. It makes his skull feel almost weightless, spinning out of his reach like someone has severed it and now it’s floating away on its own will, yet his body still burns, as if this fire he’s been harboring for Hikaru will consume him whole whether he wants it to or not.

Pulse surging again, the vision comes rushing back as if his guilt has lost once more to everything that won’t stay buried. It’s still Hikaru’s skin splitting wide open for him, except not gently this time but forced. Skin tearing, ribs bowing outward like doors, blood catching the lamplight in a dark gleam. That otherworldly coldness spilling loose and caressing him, his own hand pushing deep inside as he reaches through viscera to find that core and essence unfolding like an invitation around him and finally beckoning him inside in response. He can almost taste on his tongue the way it had invaded him before, can almost feel it clinging to him, slick gathering under his nails as if it never truly left.

His chest aches when the vision doesn’t bleed into reality, but beneath the ache, beneath the guilt, beneath the longing, a thought burns him clean; if he won’t open for me, I’ll open him myself.

The thought sickens him and it exhilarates him all at once, thrumming through his body with the same relentless rhythm as the pulse hammering behind his eyes, impossible to escape or deny.

Yoshiki curls his hand into a fist and presses it hard against Hikaru’s sternum again, as if daring himself to break through, as if testing whether his body will yield, as if his skin might finally split under the pressure, might tear open in answer to the fevered blood clouding Yoshiki’s mind.

He doesn’t move for a long time, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Slumped and bent over Hikaru, he feels like a marionette caught in its own knots. His heartbeat crashes against him with every second that goes by, almost viscous in anticipation, and he swears he can feel it bleeding through, pulse echoing up into his palm in thick and slick heat, as if blood is already coating his hand from the inside out.

Hand slipping slowly down Hikaru’s chest, he lets himself touch, fingers drifting over fabric, drawing idle circles as if he can sketch the shape of his bones through touch alone. With the way he’s feeling, he thinks maybe he can. 

He wonders what color Hikaru’s insides are under this light, if opened up to the room they would glisten with an orange hue soaked in the lamps dull glow, or if they would look something darker, like slippery copper melted over bone.

His mind fills in gaps hazily as he trails, sternum, cartilage, ribs curled like a cage of fingers holding the tender weight of organs close. Fragile, human.

Not human.

Then, monster?

Yet Yoshiki has always carried this darkness within himself, has always been a monster, and this act, these thoughts, this hunger, only solidify that. How different from each other can they really be? 

How different, when the same darkness beats through them both.

Drifting, his head tips until his forehead nearly brushes Hikaru’s shoulder. He forces himself to stay like that for a few breaths, his breath catching in the fabric of Hikaru’s shirt. So close to him but it’s not enough, it’s not enough.

His eyes squeeze shut but the darkness that lays behind them betrays him. Images bloom of Hikaru split open, radiant and terrible, his body pulsating like an open wound. Yoshiki sees himself inside of him, arms buried to the elbow, drowning in a heat no human touch should ever know, blood singing against his skin.

Slowly, he pulls away, easing himself back from Hikaru’s warmth inch by inch. The loss raises prickles along his skin where the heat of Hikaru’s was and he stares down at his hand, turning it in the dim light, studying the lines of his fingers as if he’ll find blood already clinging beneath the nails.

“Pathetic,” it scrapes out before he can stop it, though he doesn’t know which part of himself he means. The part that wants to tear Hikaru open without asking, or the part that quakes at the thought of touching him like this at all.

It’s all so pathetic.

His skull aches, every throb blooming hot behind his eyes until it shapes itself into some discordant rhythm. 

Helplessly, his gaze drifts back to Hikaru.

The lamplight washes him in sepia, softening the edges Yoshiki knows should never be allowed to be so gentle. Lips parting for breath, lashes falling against his cheeks, he still looks as harmless as he did when Yoshiki woke. 

It’s a lie he knows, Hikaru is anything but harmless. 

Yoshiki’s fingers slowly drift forward again as if of their own volition. They find Hikaru’s wrist this time, the barest graze against skin, just enough to catch the faint thrum of a pulse beating beneath.

Thump, thump, thump.

So terribly human, and yet not at all.

He lets his thumb wander along the vein, trailing it up the length of his arm into the crook of the elbow. The skin is so soft, fragile and thin as paper. He can see himself slicing there too, just enough to open flesh like fruit yielding under a blade. Will his blood spill sweet and citrusy like the satsuma oranges he always smells of, or will it be thick and metallic on his tongue, heavy with copper?

His mouth fills suddenly, saliva pooling thick against his tongue. He recoils in realization as revulsion twists through him, and yet beneath it, a desperation that clings just as fiercely.

“What’s wrong with me,” he breathes, the words breaking low in his throat, meant for no ears but his own. Hikaru remains unmoving, untouched by the sound.

Everything burns. The room tilts in a slow, drowning spin, as if the world itself is being submerged. Fever writhes through him, crawling under his skin, each knot of desperate hunger and waning guilt pulling tighter until he can no longer tell them apart, only feeling the weight of all of it crushing through him at once.

He wants to be inside Hikaru.

And, since he’s admitting desires that have tried to stay buried in disgust and pain yet keep finding ways to be set free, he wants Hikaru inside of him too.

He wants to feel something real, something that can’t be denied like everything else in his life has always felt. Something that will tear through the boundaries of humanity and flesh and bone and speak in a language older than touch, screaming; you are mine, I am yours. 

As if something inside himself has been waiting for him to finally admit it, the memory of the knife presses into his mind until it feels as if it’s in his hand again, buried inside of Hikaru. The knife that opened Hikaru lay waiting, still here with them. Always here with them. 

Even when he told himself that he had forgiven Hikaru, had accepted all of this and moved on, he still kept the damned thing within reach.

Its presence lingers like a damning shadow at the edge of his sight the longer he stares down at Hikaru, and it feels almost inevitable. 

It has to be this way, doesn’t it?

“…Ya know,” he mutters, voice fraying at the edges, “ya make it really fucking hard to be normal.”

Hikaru remains still, chest rising and falling with a calm so indifferent it’s almost cruel, like no accusation has been leveled at him at all, like he’s done nothing, like none of the blame, none of what Yoshiki is feeling is on him.

Like he has no responsibility in what they’ve become.

A watery laugh escapes Yoshiki, carrying none of its shape except the name. “Ya just lie there, like you’re harmless, like you’re clean.” His fingers flex uselessly against his knees as his gaze stays locked on Hikaru’s face, afraid that if he looks away, if he even blinks, the body beside him will vanish, or worse, open eyes and see what he’s become.

Become, as if he hasn’t been this all along.

But Hikaru, Hikaru is forcing his hand, he is, he is. 

“Do ya even know what ya do to me?” It cuts harsher than he means, but once it breaks loose he can’t rein it in. “Ya act like… like ya don’t understand anything, like....like pain is new. Like wanting is new. Like you’re just… learning.”

His breath hitches, heat prickling behind his eyes, and he wonders if all this will amount to him crying like any other night, like nothing's changed from the start. Like he’s still that same boy who saw his dead best friend and still couldn’t admit anything, like he’s still too burdened by his own guilt that he can’t even keep what he has now, take what’s been given because what if he can’t hold it, what if he can’t keep it?

Hikaru had given Yoshiki half of himself, had torn himself open to do so. Yoshiki has to keep that, even if it means……even if it means…….

Even if it means he has to tear Hikaru open himself as well.

“But ya know,” he continues, voice cracking as it drops to something thin and soft and desperate, “ya have to, ‘else, why give me that part of yourself? Why let me inside? Ya can tear yourself open whenever ya want, just… peel it all back like it’s nothing. But now…” he finds his hand hanging a breath above Hikaru’s sternum again, fingers curling tight. “Now ya won’t. Not for me.”

Hikaru had let him in, laid bare what no one else was supposed to see and showed him everything, letting him touch the part of himself that made him something more, something divine despite what everyone else in this village may believe. He let Yoshiki fall into him with no way to ever possibly escape with anything left of himself, had swallowed him whole and given himself over as well so neither of them was alone, letting him think he could have him, all of him.

So why won't he let him in now? 

I hate you, some quiet part of him whispers low in his chest, and Yoshiki clings to it like he’s drowning and it’s the only liferaft left without holes punctured through with his longing. He wants it to be true, needs it to be true, because hate is easier, cleaner, something he can build on top of, something he can use to patch himself up with so he never succumbs again. Never falls again.

Hate can sever that tether between them, can’t it? Can make all of this hunger and longing vanish, can make Hikaru nothing more than a monster, a ghost, something that shouldn’t exist, something that should’ve let what was dead stay dead.

But it’s not that simple, nothing is ever that simple. It was never hate that hollowed Yoshiki out in the first place, and it’s never going to be hate that keeps him tethered here, trembling above Hikaru like something starving. It’s want, it’s need, it’s a hunger so strong it nearly makes everything feel like it doesn’t matter.

It’s the unbearable truth that Hikaru’s carved himself into places no one else has ever reached before, replacing everything Yoshiki thought he was with who he’s realizing he is, replacing everything he thought he could hold onto with something actually within his reach, replacing again and again and again until all that remains is this spiraling ache, this confession he can never stop bleeding.

Hikaru is replacing him.

Yoshiki goes still, every muscle locking as if even the smallest movement might shatter him, breaths stalling in his chest, eyes wide and unblinking, unseeing. Faintly he realizes that he’s shaking, shoulders jerking with a shiver that nearly breaks into something more, and he won’t cry, he won’t.

Even Hikaru’s breathing doesn’t seem real anymore, some cruel trick of silence with the way the only sound left is the roar of blood in his ears, hammering so loud it drowns everything else out. 

“…You’re not him,” he thinks he’s speaking but can’t tell over the blood in his ears. His lips shape them anyways, like if he says this, then he’s finally accepting it. “I know that, I do. But ya wear his face, ya wear him. Ya lie next to me looking like the boy I.....like the best friend I lost, and then,” it tastes raw, like blood tearing from the inside of his lungs, spilling into every syllable, “and then you open, and you’re something more, ya give me something more. And when ya do, it’s like you’re something no one else gets to see. Something finally mine.”

Tears blur his vision until the room falls away, and he feels like he’s balancing on the edge of some vast abyss, the darkness yawning wide and promising to devour him whole. And yet he can’t step back, can't move at all, can’t begin to pull himself away from the thing he wants most, even if it means everything else is lost. All he can do is gaze into it helplessly, already lost to the part of this being he’s accepted as his own.

And isn’t that what he wants?

“Ya gave yourself to me,” he chokes out, torn ragged and bloody, more a plea than the accusation he wants it to be. “Ya said I could have ya, didn’t ya? So won’t ya let me in if you’re mine?”

No reply comes, only the rise and fall of breath, steady as the metronome that woke him.

It feels like consent carved out of silence, permission by omission, and in that silence the thing holding him back, the threads of guilt, the sorrow that’s been keeping his aching desires from eclipsing everything else, snap one by one, fraying to nothing, collapsing under what he truly wants most.

Yoshiki leans down, breath ghosting over Hikaru’s cheek, his voice no more than a bloody, snapped thread. “…You’re the one making me do this.” 

He lingers where his hand has fallen against Hikaru’s chest, as if rooted into him, as if the flesh beneath his palm has finally swallowed him whole. Warmth bleeds into Yoshiki’s flesh and bones and marrow until it’s impossible to tell where he ends and Hikaru begins, and beneath it all, a rhythm throbs, his own pulse stumbling until it stills into perfect unison with the steady beat beneath Hikaru’s ribs.

Mixing.

Maybe it’s meant to be this way.

The world tilts, like it’s no longer weighed down by the axis of his constraints, and to think, none of this would’ve happened if Hikaru didn’t want to try getting drunk, to try loosening the weight of it all, to try letting go.

Yoshiki wonders just how much of this is fate, how much of this that either of them can resist as they mix more and more, and decides it doesn't matter. He’s already too far gone for it to change anything.

His knees protest as he shifts his weight, muscles pulled taut from spending so long crouched, the tatami a brittle rasp of straw beneath him, loud in the suffocating quiet as if the room itself is listening to him, bearing witness to his desperation. Vision bending at the edges and shadows slipping where they shouldn’t, he stands, the alcohol a foul tide laced with heat in his gut, nausea knotting together with a sharper, hungrier ache. It churns through him like oil bleeding into water, impossible to separate.

His toes curl when they touch the floor, as if they’re seeking something solid and steady to ground himself on, and he forces his body into motion, Hikaru’s warmth lingering on his palm like phantom blood.

He can feel the knife before he even sees it.

Yoshiki remembers like it was yesterday, the moment when metal kissed flesh that should have been mortal, but wasn’t. The realization crashing down around him that the skin wearing Hikaru’s face was truly only a fragile mask, stretched over something far beyond human. The way Hikaru had absorbed the wound without flinching, discarding the pain as if it were nothing, like the vulnerability that Yoshiki had taken his last will to carve into him had been nothing more than a secret of infinity being whispered into his ear. He remembers the terror searing through him, the hopelessness that had come along with all his desperate effort to finish this, finish them, yet he also remembers it crumbling away to a kind of awe blooming from beneath, inseparable the moment Hikaru reached into himself and tore half out, and in that mingled rush he became lost, unable to stop wanting it all.

The drawer is half-open where the knife now lays, it always is. He grips the edge and slides it open, and it’s no fanfare, just a blade glinting softly. It’s common steel, wrapped in worn cloth, something that belongs to his mother.

His lungs seize at the reminder, and he drowns it out before it can become something more. There’s no room left for hesitation, no room for running, nothing holding him back now, so he can’t let anything, or anyone else get in his way either. He can’t let anything stop him now, not the weight of fear still buried somewhere in his mind, not the ghosts gnawing at his chest alive and dead, not even Hikaru himself.

Hand lowering with a kind of reverence, he closes his grasp around the handle and takes it out, a shudder tearing through him at the familiar weight sinking into his bones with the intimacy of memory.

For a moment, he sees the blade parting flesh, but not Hikaru’s. His own. He imagines reaching inside himself, offering his insides the way Hikaru had offered his. A bargain, a mirror, a promise.

See me as I have seen you.

Outside, the cicadas drone in chorus, their song swelling sharp and insistent as if they can sense the tilt of something unseen in the air, shrill voices weaving into the darkness like heralds of an omen that has finally arrived.

“Okay,” he whispers, an uneasy reassurance for himself that barely makes it past his lips, and he turns to make his way back slowly towards the bed, like he’s approaching an altar, or maybe a grave.

This room, this bed, this could’ve been their grave the last time he held this knife in his hands. Had Yoshiki succeeded, had they died. But they are still here, still breathing, still alive. Now what will it become? What will he make of them this time?

The fever inside of him sings.

Yoshiki sinks to his knees on the side of the tatami bed, his body heavy as if bowing before something holy, something too immense to face. Or maybe that’s just the weight of what he’s about to do, and he’s preparing to seek forgiveness from something he knows he won’t stop. Forgive me, for I will sin. 

It feels like a lie because even if he isn’t forgiven, he won’t regret this.

The knife rests in his palm, its weight pulsing through him, an echo of the memory tied to it. Will it remember this too? The room feels smaller with the thought, walls pressing in, and beneath him each breath from Hikaru rings a steady, intoxicating drum in the silence between them.

Yoshiki’s eyes wander over him, searching for some kind of sign, some kind of invitation or even dissuasion that he knows isn’t coming. The fragile hollow of Hikaru’s throat where each breath slips through, the curve of his stomach soft and deceptively human. Each line, every surface seems to call him closer, begging to be touched, to be opened. And yet his hand doesn’t move and instead only clenches tighter around the knife, gripping so hard it begins to ache, knuckles bleeding bone-white with indecision.

Where?

Where does he begin? Where can he start to open him? 

His eyes fix on Hikaru’s chest, where his own palm was moments ago, desperate for entry. If he lets his eyes close, he can see the shimmer of insides alive with impossible light and darkness, can see the way that essence breathes and moves, as if hungry, as if calling for Yoshiki alone.

Consume, devour, until there’s nothing left. 

Knife in hand, he lets himself drift lower, eyes tracing the faint trail of shadows cast by the lamp light until they land on his stomach. He can press the blade here and sink it deep, carve his skin open enough to push through to the heat within. Can follow the path of blood and viscera, feel the slick drag of muscle yielding beneath his hand, tearing his way toward that impossible cold buried beneath that he craves. A grotesque comparison, nothing like the grace with which Hikaru opens himself up, offering everything so willingly.

And yet Yoshiki’s mind twists it into a mirror, an echo, a temptation he’s going to follow through on.

The knife shudders in his hand, tension coiling through him as he tries to guide it downward. His wrist falters just before touching and he adjusts, inhaling sharply and forcing the motion again, as if repetition alone can steady him, can make this blade return to where it had been once before.

He stops again just before making contact, his own stomach clenching, a knot of nausea and want pulling him taut as wire.

If not the stomach, then maybe the throat? That delicate hollow beneath his jaw where his skin seems almost too fragile to be real. His memory lingers on the moment Hikaru unzipped himself from there, from neck to belly like some divine seam revealing all that lay beneath. If Yoshiki can’t find the opening while Hikaru is asleep, then should he follow the path he made and carve from there, remaking what once was? 

He lifts the knife to that vulnerable spot, hand unsteady as it rises halfway only to falter and sink back down again. His breath snags in his throat, caught between release and restraint, each inhale and exhale ragged things.

Come on, come on, come on. 

You want this, don’t you? 

“Yes,” he hisses at himself, and he wonders if this is what madness looks like. Hovering over a sleeping boy with a knife in hand, whispering to the dark about where to split him open. It’d be a relief if it’s only insanity, or perhaps even a curse. A curse gives this a name, gives him a sickness to blame other than himself. But it isn’t that, it’s only this. It’s this fever, this hunger, this unbearable, undeniable thing. “Just…not there.”

The knife falls into his lap, metal resting heavy and accusing against his thigh, like it knows it’s waiting to spill blood. His free hand rises, fingers shaking as they graze the side of Hikaru’s face with the faintest whisper of touch, warm skin burning beneath him. The lamplight shivers across his skin in waves of amber, painting him in molten warmth, the air carrying citrus rinds left too long on a windowsill, sweetness curdled from within. Blood hiding in sugar, something feral hiding inside something achingly familiar.

For a heartbeat, in that fragile hush between breaths, he looks more like the Hikaru he’d known than he ever has before, and it strikes deep, sharp as a blade, meaning to gut him.

But he won’t be stopped. Even if he himself ends up split open in the process, gutted and bleeding out, even if his mind decides to turn against him after finally granting the brief illusion of freedom and taking what he wants, he won’t be stopped by the likes of a few memories and a ghost. Nothing will bar him from this, not when his hunger has already claimed him whole.

“I don’t know where to start,” the words spill low, his lips quivering with the strain of voicing them. He can’t tell if he’s confessing to Hikaru or cursing himself, the gnawing echo inside his own skull making it nearly impossible to differentiate when everything about them feels so inseparable. His gaze stays fixed desperately on the body before him. “Ya won’t open for me… so how the hell am I supposed to know? Tell me, show me, just once more. Please.”

That familiar ache pulses when there's no answer, but he’s expecting it.

The subtle swell and dip of his stomach draws him back to it, the vulnerability striking as something almost obscene, too bare, too open, an invitation that shouldn’t exist but feels like the one he needs.

“Ya gave yourself to me,” the knife follows his voice, its edge lowering until cold steel kisses warm flesh. Hikaru doesn’t move, doesn’t tense, only breathes with that maddening calm, each rise and fall steady, unguarded, too trusting, too still. Yoshiki’s throat tightens, his whisper slurring after it, “I’m jus’…trying to find ya.”

His hand presses down, trembling with the weight of his intent.

The blade dimples skin without splitting it, and for a breathless moment there’s nothing, only flesh refusing to yield. Pressure builds, a quiet thing of denial between their bodies, and Yoshiki’s lungs catch, his hand growing restless as doubt crawls up his arm. He teeters on the edge of retreat, almost pulling away. Almost.

Can he…..can he…..

The knife sinks in.

It doesn’t slice so much as it takes, flesh parting around the blade as if it's always been meant to, as if it's been waiting for this moment. The shallow wound doesn’t resist, swallowing, embracing, drawing the steel in, and the sound is an obscenely wet and tender thing, an almost quiet intimacy of metal slipping past the fragile veil of skin into the heat beneath.

Yoshiki gasps raggedly at the sensation, a shudder spearing through him.

The edge of his sight wavers, blurring like the air in summer's heat, as if it can already feel it emanating from his insides. Hikaru lays unmoved as if nothing has changed at all, like Yoshiki’s blade isn’t slowly carving its way through him. 

“I’m sorry,” the words catch like barbed wire in his throat, but his hand doesn’t falter, doesn’t still, pressing on in spite of his wobbling voice. “I’m sorry, I have to...I can’t-”

He can’t stop when he’s so close. 

He drives the blade further.

The second layer gives way almost grudgingly, slower than his skin. It’s dense and fibrous, dragging against the edge of the knife on a slithery slide, muscle straining beneath the pressure, refusing but never enough to make it matter beneath a blade. It almost feels like cutting through sodden rope, like forcing steel into soaking hot cloth. His grip is slick with sweat, a tremor running through him as if his whole body is laboring with the cut.

“Please,” he begs, to flesh, to steel, to Hikaru. “Let me in.”

It’s only when the knife is buried to the hilt that Yoshiki feels the wetness on his cheeks, and there’s no accompanying sobs like he thought there would be earlier, just tears sliding free without permission. They fall soundlessly onto Hikaru’s skin, right into the gleaming wound where they meet and mixing with his blood before disappearing.

Yoshiki’s fingers uncurl one by one until he pulls back. The knife stays lodged where he leaves it as if taunting him, quivering slightly from his lingering touch while his hand hangs uselessly in the air, empty and shaking.

Very slowly, he presses two fingers to the parted flesh, giving himself no room for hesitation, denying the chance for doubt to take root.

What greets him is heat, fresh wet living heat, seeping into his skin and searing him to the bone. 

It’s a kind of heat that pulses, that breathes, a kind of heat that welcomes.

Skin gives like soft clay around his fingers, muscles and heat squeezing around the intrusion with a wet, clinging grip. Slick, resistant, alive. The boundary dissolves and there’s no line left between Hikaru’s body and Yoshiki’s, seemingly no distinction of who is entering and who is being entered, only the blur of contact consuming them both in hold of his insides.

A choked sob breaks out of him at last, and it feels almost freeing.

Driving his hand deeper he sinks past the threshold of just skin, until his knuckles vanish inside the body he can’t let go of, the one he’ll never let go of. It almost feels like his flesh is steaming around him, thick resistance softening the further he presses, as if the deeper parts are no longer human at all but something other, something vast and unearthly, waiting for him.

Yoshiki swears he brushes against something that isn’t flesh at all, not an organ, not a bone, nothing human. Something deeper shifts against his hand, something slow and deliberate stirring, as if it’s been waiting for his touch and is finally answering from within.

He braces his free hand on Hikaru’s chest for balance, fingers splaying wide over his sternum. Beneath his palm remains the unshaken thrum of his heartbeat, untouched by what Yoshiki is doing. His fingers hook from inside and curl instinctively inward, and the wound answers, flesh clinging and drawing tightly around him all hot and pliant, sealing to his hand like a mouth.

A shudder rips through Yoshiki, spreading all throughout his body.

Hell, that feels–

Heat slicks over him, enveloping him in a shivering sheath of flesh that grips tight and refuses to let go. Every twitch, every tiny movement inside draws back sound, wet murmurs and soft catches of suction that threaten to turn his stomach even as they urge him to sink deeper. 

Yoshiki drags in a breath through his nose, slow and shaking. The air tastes of iron and sweetness turned rancid, of something citrus curdled into rot. It clings to the back of his tongue, slicking down his throat until every swallow feels like pushing blood past the tightness there. His whole body is shaking but he’s too far gone to still, too deep in to turn back.

And he truly doesn’t want to.

Stretching his fingers tentatively his fingers move cautiously, grazing along a taut and slick surface that slides away and back towards him on its own, as if it’s breathing. He startles and nearly yanks free, forcing himself still at the last moment. The recoil of it, the alien shift is so unlike anything human that his stomach lurches and he swallows hard against the sting of bile and lets his forehead sink toward Hikaru’s shoulder, closing his eyes and letting it all wash over him for a few breaths.

“I don’t know if ya can hear me,” it feels like he says the words against flesh, speaking into Hikaru, “but I just need ya to let me see ya, let me in.”

Sinking into flesh that closes wetly around his wrist, he searches, trying to find what he’s been after this whole time. Sensation sears him as he goes, suffocating and intimate all at once, as if he is being devoured even while he’s the one invading. Warmth clings to his arm, slick and unrelenting, a living thing determined to anchor him in place.

Inside, he envisions a cathedral, vast and pulsing all around him, walls bending with bloody shadows and heaving breaths. Every muscle fiber, every slick membrane becomes carved stone, archways curving inward toward a hidden sanctum where the core of Hikaru lays waiting. His hand gropes blindly, fumbling through what should be flesh and blood, desperate to reach past organs, past viscera, past all other to the thing beneath it all, that essence, the soul that was once inside of him, the soul the marked him, that broke away and gave him everything. 

Where are you? 

The further he sinks, the more his perception reels as he sways from alcohol and heat and fervor, the obscene closeness of this violation twisting his mind inside out until only raw instinct remains. It makes him clumsy, desperation eating away at him even now, and his knuckles scrape against something harder, ridged beneath the slick warmth, a reminder of what he still can’t touch.

Fresh tears sting his eyes, hot and unbidden, and he can’t tell if it’s because of all his efforts still not being enough, or if it’s because he’s so close to what he wants yet still isn’t being given what is already supposed to be his. All he knows is this unbearable nearness, this intrusion, his hand buried inside another body, seeking not destruction but a connection that defies reason and flesh and all else.

When he twists his wrist the wound stretches with a wet sound, a new wave of heat dripping down his forearm. It coats his skin in a slick and sticky mess, pooling in the hollow of his elbow and the tatami beneath him darkens, dampening under the spread, the scent rising sharp and metallic.

Yoshiki doesn’t pull out, fingers curling deeper, sliding past boundaries that should never be crossed, hungry for what he tells himself is closeness, not desecration, a justification that trembles on the edge of truth and transgression.

He doesn’t even realize he’s speaking until the words bleed out between his teeth, damp against Hikaru’s skin. “Hikaru please, I’m…I’m not tryin’ to hurt ya, please let me in…"

Please, please, please. 

The faint flutter of movement shatters his focus, gaze snapping to the slow parting of eyes above, lids lifting with excruciating slowness until they meet his own. Otherworldly eyes fix on him with quiet, unblinking awareness, seemingly ancient and endless, and Yoshiki forgets how to breathe like he does every other time they look at one another.

Hikaru’s eyes hold him with a kind of fathomless stillness that strips the sound from the air. There’s no fear in them, no confusion, only something deliberate and ancient in that calm. The quiet between them is heavy and palpable, settling against Yoshiki’s skin and sinking into his lungs, every breath turning shallow beneath that stare, every nerve singing with the urge to flee and the ache to kneel. His hand prying into his guts suddenly feels meaningless compared to the unbearable gravity of being seen.

“What are ya doing?” The words are gentle, almost familiar, yet slightly off, carrying a resonance that tugs at Yoshiki’s gut, unbalancing him entirely. It’s not accusation and it’s not mercy, but a question born of awareness, of witnessing rather than feeling, as if Hikaru has always known this was going to happen and has simply been waiting to see how far Yoshiki would go. 

Yoshiki goes still, the tremor running through his buried arm violent enough to rattle his teeth. The heat clinging to his skin pulses once, alive beneath his fingers, and his breath catches somewhere between a sob and a gasp as those eyes hold him, stripping him bare to the bone. He imagined horror, imagined pain or rage or something that would make sense of what he’s done, but not this. Not the quiet comprehension that greets him like a mirror. The calm in Hikaru’s gaze makes everything feel smaller and crueler by comparison, a desecration laid open in stillness.

“I…” His voice breaks, thick with fevered guilt, but he can’t find the words.

Hikaru’s eyes don’t waver. They study him with that strange patience that makes Yoshiki feel like a trespasser in sacred territory and a worshipper all at once. The silence stretches the longer Yoshiki doesn’t say anything, pressing against his chest, his ears, his trembling fingers. Every second feels infinite, every breath, every heartbeat, every twitch of flesh beneath his hand magnified into unbearable intensity.

“Ya wouldn’t let me in,” Yoshiki finally croaks in a desperate voice as his forehead presses closer against Hikaru’s shoulder, sweat and tears mingling on the warm, slick surface of skin. He forces himself back up not a second later, shaking but unwilling to look away from Hikaru for too long. “I… I had to… I needed to know… to feel… please…” 

A slow, dangerous smile curves on Hikaru’s lips, something twisted and feral, something that carries both delight and unearthly hunger, flickering in the amber glow of the lamp.

“All ya had to do was ask,” he says softly, almost tenderly, yet a promise lurks behind the calm cadence, the words deliberate and measured, carrying weight far beyond the sound itself, reshaping the air between them.

The quiet acknowledgment presses down like a tidal wave against every ounce of fevered obsession and guilt inside him. He has crossed the impossible boundary, and yet there is not fury or rejection, but something darker, something more intimate, something that makes his entire being shiver and quake with the pull of being permitted this proximity.

Hikaru eyes him in the most imperceptible ways, as if measuring Yoshiki’s devotion, his desperation, his heart. Yoshiki can feel every pulse of awareness radiating from him and it sends a wave of something like worship and terror coiling through his chest. Every whispered apology, every fevered, broken plea seems to absorb into the stillness, acknowledged without comment, sanctioned without celebration.

Yoshiki feels something almost tender thread through the horror of what he’s done, a kind recognition that he’s been seeking, a strange allowance of his obsession. The stillness of Hikaru’s body, the weight of his gaze, the faint, slightly off human warmth of the voice saying “All ya had to do was ask” makes the impossible closeness all-consuming.

Yoshiki presses further into that warmth on pure instinct alone, every nerve ending vibrating with guilt, reverence, and a fevered obsession that leaves his body trembling. The blade having fallen to the side long since becoming secondary, his own desperate presence feels sacramental now, something transgressive and intimate and horrifyingly right as he goes deeper, deeper, deeper.

And Hikaru just watches, seemingly content to let Yoshiki have his fill.

Have his fill of him.

For the first time in years, he feels as if he’s reached something, something alive, something aware, something that can never be owned but ccan perhaps be touched. 

Hikaru’s stare lingers on Yoshiki before a low rasp breaks the thick, suffocating tension of the room.

“Let me show ya,” he says, resonating with something Yoshiki can’t name, some unholy delight that vibrates through the air, unsettling in its calm assurance yet threaded with a faint warmth that makes Yoshiki’s chest seize.

Before he can think to pull back Hikaru’s fingers are snaking down and curling around Yoshiki’s wrist with a firm, unrelenting hold. The motion drags him further into the body he’s been violating, much much deeper, the slick and wet sound of skin sliding over skin and blood-coated fingers echoing faintly in the quiet room. Yoshiki’s chest tightens as fear and something more fevered swirl together, his body shivering against the heat, hindbrain quaking as the horror of it all intertwines with the aching obsession that has driven him here.

Yet he’s not truly afraid. How can he be? Hikaru is a monster, yes, but he’s his monster to keep. Every pulse of heat, every inch of resistance, every wet, yielding shift belongs to him. This, all of this, belongs to him.

Hikaru’s smile widens to something feral yet uncruel, slicing through Yoshiki’s thoughts and leaving him raw and exposed, trembling with a terrifying want.

“It hurts,” Hikaru laughs softly, an unsettlingly bright sound as his own fingers move up Yoshiki’s wrist to meet the end of the cut Yoshiki had made. The edges of the incision glisten faintly under the lamplight, and Yoshiki shivers at the subtle tug, the way the soft tissue and muscle give under combined pressure.

Pain is still new to Hikaru and Yoshiki’s mind flickers with the forbidden thrill of introducing him to it, of watching and feeling how the unfamiliar sensation stirs something strange in him. Guilt blooms hot in Yoshiki’s chest immediately after the thought, but it tangles with fascination and a reverence that leaves him trembling. He finds himself almost savoring the weight of this moment, the first time he can show Hikaru experience and sensation while having been the one to initiate it, the uncharted depths of both agony and awareness without resistance.

Hikaru’s lips catch in the lamplight all dark and slick pretty things and Yoshiki can’t tell if the tint is shadow or blood. A warm, coppery tang fills his nostrils as the smell of iron and sweat twist with the faint citrus rot he’s come to associate with Hikaru, and it makes him quiver in ways he can’t define. Every inhale brings the scent of their shared presence, all blood and warmth, and he feels himself unraveling in a spiral of fevered obsession, each soft and measured motion of Hikaru’s guiding hand a confirmation of their impossible intimacy, their shared sacred desecration. A slow and torturous merging of fear and desire and devotion that makes Yoshiki’s mind quake and pulse in rhythm with the body beneath him.

And then–

Hikaru shifts enough to guide Yoshiki’s hands toward himself as he, almost ritualistically, begins to open. His skin yields with a quiet sound, a line tracing slowly from just below his jaw through the submental area and down down down his chest. Yoshiki’s eyes widen even as he feels the warmth and resistance, the tremor of something impossibly alive beneath him. Every muscle and sinew yields in a slowly measured way, as if Hikaru has rehearsed this a thousand times for someone like him, for someone desperate and fevered and unworthy yet trusted.

For him.

He braces himself over the opening, every breath catching, every shiver magnified. But beneath it, Yoshiki feels a stark shift.

The inside of Hikaru’s chest cavity is nothing like the warm human flesh and meat outside. It’s cold and slick and strange, reminiscent of raw chicken coated in marinade, with the same texture but the opposite sensation, unyielding and alien. It sends a shiver through Yoshiki’s spine, simultaneously revolting and magnetic.

Slick and pulsing, and he can feel the subtle heartbeat of the essence within, alive, conscious, raw.

Every inch of him screams in reverence and terror as his fingers sink deeper, guided by Hikaru’s own until he’s being cradled by something far beyond human flesh. It pulses and yields in a way that makes every fear, every guilt, every ache of obsession coalesce into a single, overwhelming sensation; he’s found it. The thing he’s been yearning for, trying to grasp in fevered dreams and drunken needs, has finally been given to him, and it’s more than he’s dared to hope for.

Fingers cradled by that strange interior, he feels the pulse of Hikaru’s essence, vibrant and yearning and impossibly present. Every time he touches it the sensation is almost pleasure, a tremor of vulnerability and desperate longing radiating from Hikaru, echoing into Yoshiki’s chest like a shared heartbeat. It’s intimate and terrifying, a combination of awe, and worship, and fevered obsession.

A faint tremor replaces Hikaru’s stillness, the slightest shift of his breath, the essence inside him reacting with a pleading acknowledgement that makes Yoshiki’s blood run hotter and colder all at once. Every movement, every sigh, every subtle twitch of the being beneath him reinforces this impossible communion and Yoshiki’s mind spins, shivering in the friction of horror and awe. They’re both submerged in something that transcends human boundaries.

His mind swims in fevered fragments, flashes of the boy he had loved and lost, the creature who’d stolen everything he could never hold, the impossibility of everything he’d gotten in return, down to the intimacy of this.

He can’t leave, can’t unsee, can’t unfeel. There’s no returning from this.

They stay that way, held together by the tremor of life and the pulse of essence, the reverent acknowledgment of the horror and sanctity. Breaths mingling together as one, hearts beating in sync, time stretches and in that stillness they find terrible, exquisite, unfathomable quiet.

The reality presses down on him like a tide, what he’s sought for years, is now utterly and irrevocably real in his hands. There’s no undoing it, no reclaiming innocence, no stepping away from the raw and unholy intimacy that stretches between them. Every pulse of essence, every tremor of heat, every soft sigh of vulnerability from Hikaru is a tether that binds him here forever.

In the horror of that realization, in the impossible weight of obsession made flesh, there’s also a quiet, staggering tenderness. 

Yoshiki’s lips brush the soft skin at the edge of the cavity before he can think about it, tasting copper and salt, and he shivers all over again. “I… I can’t leave this.”

He rests his forehead against the warm skin of Hikaru’s shoulder, fingers trembling in the slick depths of his soul. The essence inside him pulses, in response, wrapping him in a quiet, almost unbearable connection. Fear and worship collide in every nerve, every breath, every heartbeat.

Mixing.

A hand curls in his hair, gentle as it drags him back up just enough to meet Hikaru’s stare.

Hikaru’s lips are a tender curl brushing against the terror and devotion in Yoshiki, his voice caressing every part of him it reaches as he murmurs, every word threading with a quiet invitation, a shared reverence, “is this you asking?”

Yoshiki crowds him in further in response, embracing Hikaru in his hands, feeling him pulse in reaction to every touch. Cold and clammy as it is, the interior of his chest is alive and vibrant and all his. He already has half of him, why should keeping the rest not belong to him in the same way? Like this he can’t think beyond the all-consuming need to map every contour, to feel the pulse of life and vulnerability and mutual obsession.

“Yes.”

Hikaru’s eyes soften fractionally and in that almost imperceptible tilt, almost a caress of acknowledgement, he seems to say the same without words. 

They remain open together, suspended in the terrible and devouring truth of it all, of their sacred violation, their fevered reverence, their shared obsession that has consumed every boundary between them until nothing else remains but this.

The lamplight flickers once more, shadows pooling along the edges of the tatami. Blood and heat and essence cling to every inch of them, melding, intertwining. In the trembling quiet of their shared breaths and pulse, in the unholy, tender communion, there is also a strange kind of peace. They've found one another entirely, in obsession, in devotion, in horror, and in the sacred intimacy of being wholly, unbearably known. And in that, Yoshiki knows there’s no returning. 

Yoshiki’s mind shivers with the finality of it. He’s found what he’s been longing for, and everything else now lays stretched before him like a horizon he can never leave behind, will never want to leave behind.

There is only this, devotion and consumption and the quiet, insatiable wonder of what it means to touch what is never supposed to be held, yet be given that very thing in its entirety right into his waiting grasp regardless. It’s the paradox of wanting to keep what can’t be possessed, of reaching for something infinite and finding it pressing back into him completely. It’s the world contracting to the pulse beneath his hand, to the impossible exchange between human and other, giver and taker, until he no longer knows which he is. Touching what’s supposed to be untouchable and being invited to hold it, keep it, consume it, and become one anyway.