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The early evening sky darkens slowly, stars pulling themselves out of the sky. 'Hikaru' digs his feet into the grass, part of his attention busily appreciating the novel feeling of the green living slide of the strands against his bare toes, the rest just watching Yoshiki lying there, staring up into nothing, his hands folded across his belly.
"Hey," 'Hikaru' says, stretching out one green stained foot to poke Yoshiki's leg with his big toe. "Whatcha doing?"
"Nothing, what do you think?" Yoshiki tilts his head slightly, looking over at 'Hikaru' through his bangs, then blinks, breathes in sharp, flinches almost, leans up on his elbows. His eyes are fixed just over 'Hikaru's' shoulder, his pupils shrinking to tiny dots as if someone had suddenly flicked on a brilliant light in the darkness.
'Hikaru' doesn't feel anything, though. He should be able to feel it, if something's there, especially if it's something out there that wants Yoshiki, but there's nothing. Slowly, he looks back over his shoulder: there's nothing. Yoshiki's going to laugh any second now, right? He's going to touch 'Hikaru's' shoulder and laugh and it's going to be a trick he played, a joke between the two of them, a sign Yoshiki likes him back.
But Yoshiki doesn't say anything. The sound of his breathing is covered by the drone of the cicadas. If 'Hikaru' couldn't still feel the bit of himself he'd left in Yoshiki, if he couldn't feel Yoshiki's leg still against his foot, it could almost be like he wasn't there at all.
A tiny golden light blinks in the darkness at the edge of the trees, in amongst the thick grass and shrubs: on, off; on off. A firefly, Hikaru's memories suggest. It's joined by another and another; they swirl about each other slowly, drifting closer, closer.
The three small flickers are almost close enough to touch before the wave of desire and loneliness hits 'Hikaru' like a wave, crashing into him with an almost-tangible force. At the same time, behind him, Yoshiki finally makes a sound, a soft thready whisper that could be fear, could be interest, could really be anything at all.
How could he have missed this? How could it have hidden itself from him? 'Hikaru' doesn't know, because it shouldn't be possible, but he'll find out. He'll tear it apart, he'll eat it, he'll own it, and then he'll know, and Yoshiki will be safe and his. He lashes out, wrapping shadows over and around and through the three little lights until they're lost inside him, until he can feel that bright flick flick flicker like the stab of grass blades against his insides. Until he can feel the ravenous loneliness and want beating up against him, tearing at him as he tears at it in the same ways, in the same places, and the thing says to him, impossible voice whispering along the curling paths inside him, Yoshiki...
"Hikaru," Yoshiki says.
'Hikaru' turns back around, very slowly. He feels blood trickle down his nose, spattering off his lip and into the grass but that doesn't matter at all because Yoshiki hadn't been talking to him. He knows it, and the thing, the other thing that's still inside him, that he hasn't been able to pull apart, that's pulling back at him, that thing knows it too. Yoshiki, it says again, and the word, the name, whispers out of his mouth without his consent, snatched from him and set free into the air.
Yoshiki reaches forward, very slowly, the way he goes to pet the cat at the butcher shop, and wipes the blood off of 'Hikaru's' face, tracing the lips that said his name; for a moment, as he touches 'Hikaru', the pain inside dulls to a quiet churn. He stares, his pupils still tiny pinpoints hardly bigger than his moles.
There's something fragile about him, something that 'Hikaru' could shatter so easily. There always has been, but at this moment he's made of nothing but fractures and fault lines, calling out, pleading, begging to be bruised and broken and devoured slowly, piece by piece, until 'Hikaru' is sated, until he's alone again.
No, the thing inside him says, sharply, and 'Hikaru' jerks at the sudden burst of renewed pain it rakes through him; coughs, turning his head away from Yoshiki barely in time to send a thick black-swirled spatter of blood onto the ground instead of over Yoshiki's hands. What is it, he thinks, what is it, it can't be, it can't be, it is. Yoshiki, it says again, and reaches with light-spindled fingers for his (for its) memories, scraping and scratching through his nerves with everything it touches.
Yoshiki reaches out and grabs his hand, smearing blood and filth and ugliness over his own fingers. The pain dwindles to nothingness in an instant. 'Hikaru' feels the scraps of his blood and power sinking into Yoshiki, burrowing in, going to join the part that's already living tucked away deep inside; he hears Yoshiki's badly-hidden, half-bitten gasp as they bite in deep. But he says: "Hikaru-- you're hurting him."
It's hard to say which Hikaru is more surprised by this; they share a jumbled, inseparably tangled mass of confusion and surprise, of dark curls and jagged light. They look down at Yoshiki's hand on theirs, moving the body as one.
Yoshiki's fingers, slick with blood, twine between theirs and squeeze briefly before he pulls back and flinches away with an expression like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't. The second his fingers leave 'Hikaru's,' the gnawing agony is back-- but the other Hikaru is so close to him, buried so deep inside, that he can feel the pain twinned in him, not just an echo but the real thing, the real loss of him. He reaches out and grabs Yoshiki's hand again before he can get too far away and -- relief, doubled as the other Hikaru feels it too.
"We can't let go," 'Hikaru' says. His hand slips up to Yoshiki's wrist. The more they touch, the more the hurt and wrongness fades, leaving familiar emptiness behind it.
The other Hikaru is hungry, too; he's ravenous in a way that's foreign to 'Hikaru,' that he doesn't understand: maybe a human hunger or maybe whatever he is now. Whatever happens to meat afterwards. He wants to touch Yoshiki. He digs and squirms around inside 'Hikaru' in a way that should be agony but isn't, running sparking tendrils over the memory of Yoshiki in the storage room, Hikaru undressing-- discarding it in disgust as soon as memory-'Hikaru' opens up for him. That's not right, he wants something else, but 'Hikaru' doesn't know what. The time when he'd told Yoshiki about the girl who'd confessed to him: the other Hikaru lingers a long time over that, so long that 'Hikaru' shoves at him in confusion and gets a surge of irritation and impatience back.
Yoshiki reaches to touch their face with his other hand, brows drawing together in concern, and the other Hikaru wrenches control long enough to grab his hand before he can, holding him by both wrists now, and say "Yoshiki-- I like you."
They both catch a glimpse of Yoshiki's eyes widening before he tips his face down to hide behind his bangs (so familiar, Hikaru thinks, and 'Hikaru' agrees). "Don't say that to me," he says quietly. It sounds like all the pain that he inexplicably keeps away from them with his touch has seeped out of them and into his voice. "Not now."
But the other Hikaru can't answer, can only push the words, the knowledge, the memories at him. He hates them, he wants to rip them up until they aren't real. Instead he opens his mouth and says them, because it’s better for him to say it than the other Hikaru to steal his mouth back and say it himself: "He couldn't say it before," he says, his hands tightening maybe too hard on Yoshiki's wrists, though bruises don't spread out under the touch, "because-- of me."
'Hikaru' hates that it's true. He hates that without these memories that used to be the other Hikaru's he would have been so lonely and so hungry when he came here that he would have taken Yoshiki apart and picked him clean without knowing better, without understanding anything. Without feeling all of these things that aren't just Hikaru's old feelings and memories anymore, because some of them are all his, all new, all 'Hikaru's'. He doesn't want to say that to Yoshiki, but the other Hikaru can tell just by looking at him, with some closer, more-human wisdom that sets jealousy burning and festering inside him, that Yoshiki somehow already knows most of it.
"I like you too," 'Hikaru' says, because he can't, he won't let the other Hikaru inside him be the only one to say it. He pulls hard at the memories between them, yanks something free, something new that the other Hikaru wanted to keep hidden. A cliche old rooftop confession on some TV show, a glimpse of Yoshiki's face in profile as they watched together after school.
He doesn't understand it, not really, but it doesn't matter, he doesn't care. Before Yoshiki can react, 'Hikaru' pulls him forwards, letting go of one of his hands just long enough to pull him fully into his arms and press their lips together. The sensation is beyond relief, beyond emptiness: it feels good, like he feels after a good meal or when Yoshiki runs his hand through 'Hikaru's' hair without thinking that he shouldn't. The other Hikaru feels something different that leaks between them, a consuming, burning need that has their body reacting on its own, stirring blood through it, sending heat to their cheeks, their fingertips, their--
Yoshiki shoves at him and manages to pull back, gasping for air. ('Hikaru' knows that sound, it's how Yoshiki had sounded gasping for life on the classroom floor, how he'd sounded elbow-deep inside him. His hunger curls around the other Hikaru's need, joins with it, changes it.) "Stop it, what are you doing?"
Pain eels back into him as soon as they fall apart, into both of them, and they gasp with one voice, twist up, clutching at their chest, their guts. It feels like ‘Hikaru’ is going to split apart, to let all the ugly parts out, rushing and surging outside of his control, and he can’t let that happen, he won’t let it happen.
The other Hikaru is remembering the way it had felt to fall in the mountains, a similar agonizing, battering loss of control, the end too final. Yoshiki should leave them here to die again like this, he’s thinking: he should run, and let the two of them be the end of it, should go away to some city ‘Hikaru’ doesn’t know and never come back to the mountain. Yoshiki should find somewhere where he can be happy. He should find someone who he will be happy with.
“No,” ‘Hikaru’ says, growling the word into the dirt. He wants to rip the other Hikaru’s mind apart and devour those thoughts piece by piece, submerging them until they’re gone for good. It’s all he can do to hold the pieces of himself shut, to keep the split from opening up beneath his hands, to keep his face solid. He can’t fight the other Hikaru at the same time. He can’t make him shut up, but every stupid thought he shoves into ‘Hikaru’s space is making it so much worse. Yoshiki can’t leave. He can’t leave ‘Hikaru’ alone. He can’t. He can’t.
Suddenly, the pain eases. ‘Hikaru’ pulls in a deep, shuddering breath and opens his eyes. Yoshiki’s hands are on his shoulders-- he’s kneeling over ‘Hikaru’, hauling him back half-up into his lap, wrapping his arms around him, cradling him close. He didn’t leave. He’s still here. ‘Hikaru’ reaches out with his insides, curling long tendrils around Yoshiki’s wrists, holding him there.
Pain flickers over Yoshiki’s face-- the other Hikaru tears at him again. ‘Hikaru’ pushes him back. It’s true, he doesn’t want to hurt Yoshiki, but he’d rather hurt him than lose him. By his side is the best, but-- to have him inside, even if it’s just for a little while before he fades, would be better than not having him at all.
He didn’t leave, the other Hikaru spits at him, and it’s the unexpected bitter jealousy in it that stops ‘Hikaru’. He didn’t leave you, ‘Hikaru’ hears underneath it. He grabs the thought and yanks hard, losing hold of Yoshiki briefly in the struggle. He gets one good bite in before the other Hikaru fights him off and they’re back to an uneasy standoff except that now ‘Hikaru’s’ insides are coated in the taste of it, the knowledge of how much the other Hikaru fears being forgotten.
“Hikaru,” Yoshiki says. His hands are still on ‘Hikaru’s’ body, his arms wrapped around him, holding him close, despite the savage slashes of black bruise that spread over them like winter deadwood everywhere ‘Hikaru’s’ insides touched. Pain is still cut into his face, tear tracks streaking his face.
He leans down and kisses them and doesn’t leave.