Chapter Text
The desert is warm and humid behind his back, gray across the horizon and clouds flickering dimly in the distance.
Ahead, the sky is clear.
He reaches an ecotone of sand and dark gravel, freezing cold underneath his bare feet. He pays it no mind—there is something catching his eye up the mountain in front of him, high, high up where the sun should be, a glinting spec amidst all of the craggy sweeps of white. He walks for ages, perhaps even climbs forever. Behind him his footprints are clear in the snow, powder knocked loose on the barely-there holds his fingers had found. Facing forward, he is no closer to that spec than he’d been in the first place.
The storm that has been following him booms.
A jut of rock slices across his palm, and he looks into the snow expecting a steady mar of splotchy red. There is nothing of the sort, and instead he looks down at his hands and pauses because there is no skin to cut. No blood.
Only electricity.
His body buzzes. Since when is he made of lightning?
And then—and then the blue is in front of him—below him—he is so high up that he is fixed amongst the stars—and then his eyes are far too wide, and he’s aching, and for whatever reason his cry comes out like thunder, his spittle like rain in a desert, spelling his own name because that’s him he’s reaching for, following through a maze of terrain. That spec of blue is him—
OPEN YOUR EYES FOR ME.
“But my eyes are open,” he yells, and down below the snow he’s standing in starts to avalanche. “I can see so, so much—”
Too many things; too clearly—his vision is practically blinding in its wholeness, the images passing before him bringing forth startling confusion.
A soul in the dark, looking out a window, cantation written in the wave of its light.
A scattering of particles, flesh rendered nonsense, enflamed.
Nerves throbbing from combustion, brain scattered from deconstruction, and then suddenly he is calm, because that is right—he’s dead, he died, and that can’t possibly be him down there, standing in the Himalayas, the Sahara, the Taman; looking at lightning where blood is supposed to be.
In the space around him, the stars grow vehement.
His ear is ringing.
It’s a piercing pitch that sits in the way of every sense. He blinks but there is only the ringing. He inhales but there is only the ringing. Nothingness on his tongue—ringing. He winces, presses a palm to his head, wishing the sound away, and barely finds the time between his next breath to realize that he is now registering touch.
He doesn’t know how long the ringing lasts, only notices when it starts to ebb enough for him to hear.
“—isn’t it, Kento?”
His lungs rattle with a long exhale. Certain that his eardrums are hurting him now.
“Kento?”
He’s met with a rush of renewed sensation when he blinks next. He can feel. He can see, though his Eye stings. He can taste, citrus lingering on the tip of his tongue. At once he tilts into the warm breeze and slowly sinking sunlight. Notices the green. The hand in his, where he thought he’d seen electricity before.
‘Who..’ His mind slurs, ‘thought I was..alone...’
Far behind the gentle sway of the treetops, the sky burrs with a rumble.
“Y’okay, Ken?”
It’s strange, Kento thinks as he carefully takes in the curve of the beach; the shade of the rumah’s porch. It’s strange how far away he feels, like there’s been a desert warm and humid behind his back instead of the seaside’s breeze; as if the sky had been gray across the horizon with clouds flickering dimly in the distance instead of perfectly clear.
Kento looks past the porch and down at the bright shore, where he thinks an ecotone of sand and dark gravel, freezing cold underneath his bare feet used to be—out into the uninterrupted horizon where something had been catching his eye up a mountain, high, high up where a glinting spec beckoned amidst all of the craggy sweeps of white.
Hadn’t he walked for ages and climbed forever? Hadn’t his footprints been clear in the snow behind him, powder knocked loose on the barely-there holds his fingers had found? Hadn’t he faced forward after ages of ascending only to be no closer to that glinting spec than he’d been in the first place?
Hadn’t the thunder that had been following him sent rain in his name?
Isn’t there something he’s supposed to be doing?
Kento looks up from the strip of beach below and to the hand clasped in his; unmarred; and follows the line of long and familiar fingers up to the prominent web of veins—up sinewy muscle under pale olive until he meets patient, impossible blue.
“Gojo,” he says, and he’s sure this time, “how long have we been here?”
Gojo’s mouth quirks, a near smile. He makes a circle in the palm of Kento’s hand, an absent and repetitive motion. “Why?” He asks, leisurely beyond Kento’s reasoning, “want to go somewhere else?”
Kento starts; stops.
Somewhere else? They haven’t been here, sitting on the beach this whole time? It feels like they have. It feels like he’s supposed to be here.
The tide laps, slow and timely as Kento’s measured inhale. He stares out at the endless expanse, enjoys the wind soft on his cheek and the sway of the jungle behind him. It is wholly and terrifyingly contradictory to the swell of panic in his chest. There is a gradually yawning gap in the pit of his ribcage. Isn’t there something he’s supposed to be doing?
Gojo’s fingers slip between his. The movement startles Kento; sends his heart racing wild; and yet he finds that he is already returning the touch with a gentle squeeze.
His gaze snaps down to where they are now connected.
His skin hums. The ringing in his ear drones up a notch. Gojo invades his space, and the soft smile Kento sees there on his mouth is just as startling as everything else; the tenderness in diadem eyes and the air of ease and content.
“Anywhere,” and it sounds like Gojo is making Kento a promise, “you name it. We can go whenever you want.”
Unbidden, Kento recalls the oddness that he awoke with. When and his head rocks with a flare. Anywhere and somewhere else and the desert, warm and humid behind his back.
The sky, grayed over with stormclouds.
Footprints clear in the snow.
Space around him.
No blood.
A scream.
Blue.
Oh.